Look, I Am Not Jewish – I Was Raised Catholic And Am Now Agnostic/atheist (I Don’t Know What There

The wardrobe source post

Have had several Asks about where I get my clothes, so here we go.

My general style:

My build: I am 5'10", around 155-160lbs. I am a trans man, so that means some fit challenges. 36R tops, 32x32 bottoms, 8ish shoe.

My preferences: I adore 1930s/40s outdoor "country gentleman" and work wear -- I am building a wardrobe here. I love texture and mixing patterns. I try to stick to natural fibers. I am spending more money on pieces that last longer and shrinking my closet to a modern capsule and a vintage capsule. (Though I will sometimes mix eras.) Brown is my favorite color.

Online thrifting:

Unclaimed baggage. Really great for giving higher end brands a shot at huge discounts.

Gem App. Fantastic for searching multiple sites like ebay, poshmark, etc.

Modern clothing:

Taylor Stitch. Standouts are sweaters and wool trousers. Sizing runs trim - I size up to a 38 here instead of my usual 36. This means it's a great source for smaller trans mascs.

Yiume. Shirts a bit thin, but fun prints and frequent sales.

Imperfects. Small range, but fun, higher waisted fishtail trousers.

Taft Boots. Comfy right out of the box. Great at making small feet look elegant. Men's sizes start at a 6.

Schott. Fantastic pea coats. Recommended by Derek Menswear.

Vermont Flannel. Super thick plaid, flannel shirts. Very warm.

Sterkowski hats. Range includes flat caps and captains/fisherman.

Spier & MacKay. Great winter coats, run a bit trim. Their trousers look hideous and despite a bit of a vintage look, everything else in the catalog is too low waisted and skinny.

LLBean. Great for sweaters. I love my grey commando style one.

Banana Republic. I like a lot of their older stuff, so a brand to watch on Poshmark.

New Vintage:

Cathcart London. Sweaters and jeans are great. Hit or miss fit on the rest. Frequent sales, small runs.

Darcy Clothing. Great all across the board. They are a film supplier, so restocks are regular. Their suspenders are hard to find, fyi, so search under "braces".

Revival Vintage. Dipping into poly blends, but a great selection of fairisle sweater vests.

JoBear boots. Great prices and styles, requires breaking in.

Focusers. Vintage glasses. They will replace lenses. Love the Peabody gold wire frames.

Old Glasses Shop. Frames you won't find at Focusers. You can try on frames before committing to an Rx, but have to pay for the return. Love their round tortoise shells.

One of the most important things to unpack and unlearn when you’re part of a white supremacy saturated society (i.e. the global north) and especially if you were raised in an intensified form of it (evangelicism, right wing politics, explicit racism) is the urge to punish and take revenge.

It manifests in our lives all the time and it is inherently destructive. It makes relationships and interactions adversarial for no good reason. It undermines cooperation and good civic order. It worsens some types of crime. It creates trauma, especially in children.

Imagine approaching unexpected or unacceptable behavior from a perspective of "how can this be stopped, and prevented" instead of "you’re going to regret this!”

Imagine dealing with a problem or conflict from the perspective of “how can this be solved in a way that is just and restorative” instead of “the people who caused this are going to pay.”

How much would that change you? How much would that have changed for you?

no idea if this is true, but it feels true

jaggedwolf said: can’t say this and not link/say which one it is

the original “turing test” paper is so beautiful.  more beautiful, i imagine, than most expect going in—he’s got this underlying warm humanism and gentle humor throughout.  (it’s present even in his more technical papers, but it shines here)

and the section that slays me each time is this:

“It will not be possible to apply exactly the same teaching process to the machine as to a normal child. It will not, for instance, be provided with legs, so that it could not be asked to go out and fill the coal scuttle. Possibly it might not have eyes. But however well these deficiencies might be overcome by clever engineering, one could not send the creature to school without the other children making excessive fun of it […]”

like.  this is the original “turing test” paper.  this is the first dude to formally conceptualize the whole “~*~what if computers learn to think, how could we tell~*~” thing.  which, in subsequent SF invocations, is used mostly in spooky or paranoid contexts: the Voigt-Kampff test of Blade Runner, the preemptive rushes to constrain that budding will in I, Robot and others, and in modern worries over AGI.  and i like those stories!  they’re interesting and cool and eerie!

but

but

the original guy was not scared or unsettled or spooked by the prospect of new minds.  this dude’s primary concern, when facing the dawn of artificial intelligence, was instead: “what if we teach computers to think and then the other kids on the playground bully the computer, that would be so mean :(((”

i love that, so much.  i love people so much, sighs into hands

Blake Flayton

How I weave in ends in advance when starting on a new colour

OH, here's something I forgot to mention in my bullet points! The movie is very intentional about when and how other characters touch Nessa's wheelchair.

You know the stage version of Dancing Through Life, where Boq says "Let's dance," and immediately pushes Nessa's wheelchair around as a part of the choreography? None of that here. The movie goes out of its way to have Elphaba and Nessa emphasize that Nessa should be in charge of her own movement. When Boq wants to dance, he gets in front of Nessa and takes her hands. When someone pushes Nessa's chair without asking, that is a bad thing.

I'm not qualified to do more than observe the effort I can see the film making, but I definitely noticed the effort. Especially with the casting of Nessarose being so phenomenal.