Day: August 11, 2023

I was going to but then

I was going to talk about the death toll in Hawai’i. From the fires. Fanned by a storm. I was going to talk about the death toll of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which has been horrific, but I decided not to. I thought about reporting on the death toll of migrants drowned in the Mediterranean, which was considerable this past week, but I thought not.

Instead I’m going to comment on how, when Suzanne’s washed the kitchen rugs, Buster finds a moment and scoots a metre and a half across one, because as far as he’s concerned, we just washed his toilet rag. If mOm had known, crocheting that sucker, that it was going to be kitty toilet paper, she might have frowned, but kept going, cause that’s what we do, is keep going.

I have had coffee, and made tea for iced tea, and in about five hours someone’s going to flatten my breasts into machine readable tortillas and I’m going to feel sorry for myself.

I am rewatching S2 Good Omens with Jeff and trying not to squee at my favourite bits.

Michael Sheen, who plays Aziraphale (he was named by Terry Pratchett so it’s not a real hebrew angel name but it either means raphael’s strength or the helper in alt-hebrew) understands that some of the character’s hand gestures correspond to autistic stimming and actually tweeted “God bless the happy flappers” which given that I’ve stimmed (and been mocked for it) my whole life it was like being pushed into a chair when you’re about to faint.

David Tennant, who plays Crowley (more on that in a minute) has been known to sport non-binary and trans persons supporting merch and has a non-binary child (apparently part of his blended horde (any more than two is a horde, sorry) of offspring with Georgia Tennant.) Angels in the Gaiman-Pratchett-verse don’t ascribe to the sexual binary. So essentially both lead characters are non-binary but present male. Usually. So this global icon has been seen wearing ‘LEAVE TRANS KIDS ALONE YOU ABSOLUTE FREAKS’ Tshirts and the response of the exceptionally trans-hating UK press has been livid. LOL die mad ya salty beeches.

He had to wear dark glasses and contact lenses for the entire shoot and apparently was caught running into walls during takes since he couldn’t see what the hell he was doing. This makes his acting even more next level to me. I enjoyed Michael Sheen but it’s Tennant I can’t take my eyes off.

As in 2019, the fandom’s going insane. It’s also rescued me. There’s a fan theory about season 3 (if it ever happens) that put my feathers back in place, and it has to do with how Crowley…. isn’t who he says he is, or indeed who anyone says or thinks he is. The evidence was all gone through in a tumblr post and I am convinced. Therefore as sad as I am about the final scene in S2 I have decided to psychically crawl from my bed of pain into the toilet of relief, and possibly later visit the fire of collations.

Dr. Jen Gunter’s latest newsletter says that

20% of all Ayurvedic medicine sold in the US and Canada is contaminated with lead.

Jaysus and his lady mother and his poor poppa. Mercury too, apparently. Ha ha, little joke for a friend. But yes, mercury. So

As Dr. Gunter remarked If 20% of all the creamed corn in the US and Canada was contaminated with lead, that would probably lead to public health action of some kind. My take is what is preventing this stuff from being banned is (checks notes) fear of accusations of racism and anti-religious (anti-Hindu) sentiment and a heftic dose of CAPITALISM CURES ALL I guess. However, putting lead OR allowing lead into the manufacturing process of supplements ‘medicine’ SPECIFICALLY sold for the use of pregnant women is a failure on the part of every link in the supply chain.

Herewith my comments on Bluesky, a Social Media platform established by the guy who started twitter. He stole a metric crapstack of twitter’s old employees, but elongated muskrate dood that hisself by firing them all.

bsky creeping up on half a million users!!
 
fun place – trans people welcome; still issues (which no one is trying to hide but the company needs a kick) for PoCs and Indigenous – you can autoblock terfs, antivaxxers and bad political actors with one click and the list keeps growing but you’re already subscribed, isn’t that amazing? autoblock lists on social media are the fucking BOMB
 
I see Russian, Ukrainian (once mistook the two, had to abject the apology fuck me that was bad)  and Turkish in my feed. It’s overwhelmingly an English speaking place.
 
not enough aziracrow content <—- (written or drawn, mostly drawn, so I guess I’m sticking with tumblr for now LOL and I’m there under my real name which REALLY makes me stand out extra LOL although to be fair writers which I am use their real names)
 
Not enough weather and disaster on-the-ground content (twitter’s shining star)
 
YOU WILL GET ‘NOTES’ if you DON’T ALT YA PICS – this is a fantastic norm for a social media site. “Hello, I love you, won’t you please alt your pic!” (Provide a description for people who can’t see).
 
extremely thirsty (current slang for horny), much nood, no gifs yet (DAMNATION PEOPLE GET ON IT), no DMs (direct messages) and you can’t chain ‘skeets’ which I call bleats because it’s not gun related. Also sheep look like clouds in a Bluesky, the name of the app!!!  Adult content asks if you want to see it. Thank you! sometimes I want to see (I am just as prurient as the next chump, thanks) and mostly I don’t care. The last thing I looked at was a man’s back. It was muscular and full of tattoos and while it didn’t make my day it did make me smile.
 
The MAIN GOAL is to curate your experience so asshats can’t get at you by blocking IMMEDIATELY. No discourse, just block. In consequence it’s almost entirely free of interruptions by asshats and when they do get through you just block them once with neither guilt nor backward glance. Lovely. No asshats, all genders, no huhu.
I have put the second letter on Keith’s embroidered apron.
Only wrote 31 words yesterday. I will lie fallow for a few days, try to get back at it on Monday.
chamomilegeode-deactivated20221 on tumblr five days ago said:

did you know that, besides the apple of knowledge and the pomegranate of life, there’s another mystic fruit, one that grants you a sense of purpose?

yeah, it’s the raisin d’être

conversation on tumblr – this kind of shit happens every day on tumblr so I’m sharing it because of how it illustrates and supports the hive mind in a super creative and positive way

person 1

Please retire the “we are made of stardust” phrase I am so tired of it

person 2

Stars are made of flesh

Person 1

I change my mind bring back the original phrase

person 1

If I remember correctly, elements heavier than iron are only created when a star dies.

This is interesting because 1) it places a lower bound on when life can evolve, and when life is most likely to evolve, assuming any of a number of certain chemical compositions are necessary and 2) it means that a significant portion of the matter around us was forged by the death of a star.

Stars, when they die, can create new elements and I think that’s cool as fuck.

Person 1

I looked it up, actually it’s like this:

Helium and Hydrogen were created by the Big Bang.

Elements from Helium up to Iron are created by stars through nuclear fusion during their lifetimes (In a process called Stellar Nucleosynthesis)

And elements heavier than iron cannot be created except by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, by the collapse and death of a star, and elements from silicon through iron still are mainly created by Supernova Nucleosynthesis, since stars big enough to create them by fusion in life are pretty rare

The stardust makes you alive! It’s neat.

Person 4

This! Yes!

Okay, so, this is a thing we actually know a bit about.

While what you’ve brought up is the leading theory, and has been for a good while, there are some inconsistencies — particularly with the far end of the stable elements and the radioactive elements. The amounts produced in Supernova Nucleosynthesis would be far too low to actually account for the amounts seen in the universe.

So, how were they created?

The best theory we have is collisions between neutron stars.

When two neutron stars collide, they produce a supernova with the required energy density to create those ultraheavy elements, which means that not only are you made of stardust, if this theory is correct, you are made of stardust that was released when two of the most violent, extreme objects in the universe collided, possibly billions of years ago, hundreds of millions of lightyears away.

Person 1

You are the wreckage of a violent multi-star pileup