Latest Posts by horsecatfairybunny - Page 3

Have you as a commuter ever experienced a late blog post which cause you to miss a connection, only to see three posts appear at once? @mbta-unofficial has a bunching problem. We’re aware of this. However, the political will to solve it, such as through posting priority hours or reducing the number of stops in order to achieve higher running speeds simply isn’t there. If you want to contribute to solving the @mbta-unofficial bunching issue contact your local representative about implementing solutions such as scheduled minimum and maximum posting, Express blog operation during rush hour, or the experimental Post Reversal where a post operating too close to the subsequent post in the schedule allows its notes to depart and board the following post and reverses direction in order to efficiently meet demand in the opposite direction of operation.

Political will for these changes often requires sacrifices, such as reductions in the number of street parking spaces or bus stops, which are often easier to quantify than the proposed benefits of more regular blog service. However, the problem of late or absent blog posts disrupting commutes is solvable.

Through backing careful implementation of solutions like these you can contribute to a more reliable @mbta-unofficial.

Edit: I am fully aware it is spelt “sewing” and that “sowing” is related to crops and the grim reaper. I’m bad at homophones and you can’t edit polls.

A spoon's only objective in life is to make soup go upwards, and it knows this. That's why when you put one under a running tap it blasts the water way high. The spoon thinks there's suddenly TONS of soup to deal with and it freaks out.

To some people you’re an NPC

To other people, you’re the special, unlockable character that they worked and worked to finally get- and when they do they’re so happy because they got the game just so they could find you.

All spies need to feel they are loved. One of the most powerful forces in espionage and intelligence work (and one of its central myths) is the emotional bond between spy and spymaster, agent and handler. Spies want to feel wanted, part of a secret community, rewarded, trusted, and cherished...Exploiting and manipulating that hunger for affection and affirmation is one of the most important skills of an agent-runner. There has never been a successful spy who did not feel that the connection with his handler was something more profound than a marriage of convenience, politics, or profit: a true, enduring communion, amid the lies and deception. - The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre

Helpful former homeowner.

Now, I'm about to say something sacrilegious. I'm thinking of painting my Ashford Elizabeth.

Her stain job is slightly off and it Bugs me. I don't use her as much as I should and I want her to be a jaw dropper.

Now I'm debating doing a paint job similar to those below:

First from here and next from here.

Now unfortunately I love magnolia home colors, but I get Ace Hardware to match it on non magnolia bases so I don't pay those people.

Color for base of the wheel???? I'd also stencil it with folk designs. Put a lil Mokosh sigil on there too somewhere. Just to really make it mine.

Now the poll: am I crazy to paint something I paid 800 for? Or do I yolo it and paint it bc it is mine and it will spark joy?

Marian Ellis Rowan (1848-1922, Australian) ~ One hundred and fifty-eight medium- and small-sized moths, in seven columns. A wide range of families is represented, including the NOCTUIDAE, ARCTIIDAE, LASIOCAMPIDAE, LYMANTRIIDAE, GEOMETRIDAE, PYRALIDAE, SESIIDAE, etc. 

Watercolour with bodycolour on green paper

[Source: Christie’s]

My latest cartoon for New Scientist

A Twitter Thread from David Bowles:

[Text transcript at the end of the screenshots]

I'll let you in on a secret. I have a doctorate in education, but the field’s basically just a 100 years old. We don’t really know what we’re doing. Our scholarly understanding of how learning happens is like astronomy 2000 years ago.

Most classroom practice is astrology.

Before the late 19th century, no human society had ever attempted to formally educate the entire populace. It was either aristocracy, meritocracy, or a blend. And always male.

We’re still smack-dab in the middle of the largest experiment on children ever done.

Most teachers perpetuate the “banking” model (Freire) used on them by their teachers, who likewise inherited it from theirs, etc.

Thus the elite “Lyceum” style of instruction continues even though it’s ineffectual with most kids.

What’s worse, the key strategies we’ve discovered, driven by cognitive science & child psychology, are quite regularly dismissed by pencil-pushing, test-driven administrators. Much like Trump ignores science, the majority of principals & superintendents I’ve known flout research.

Some definitions:

Banking model --> kids are like piggy banks: empty till you fill them with knowledge that you're the expert in.

Lyceum --> originally Aristotle's school, where the sons of land-owning citizens learned through lectures and research.

Things we (scholars) DO know:

-Homework doesn't really help, especially younger kids.

-Students don't learn a thing from testing. Most teachers don't either (it's supposed to help them tweak instruction, but that rarely happens).

-Spending too much time on weak subjects HURTS.

Do you want kids to learn? Here's something we've discovered: kids learn things that matter to them, either because the knowledge and skills are "cool," or because .... they give the kids tools to liberate themselves and their communities.

Maintaining the status quo? Nope.

Kids are acutely aware of injustice and by nature rebellious against the systems of authority that keep autonomy away from them.

If you're perpetuating those systems, teachers, you've already freaking lost.

They won't be learning much from you. Except what not to become. Sure, you can wear them down. That's what happened to most of you, isn't it? You saw the hideous flaw in the world and wanted to heal it. But year after numbing year, they made you learn their dogma by rote.

And now many of you are breaking the souls of children, too.

For what?

It's all smoke and mirrors. All the carefully crafted objectives, units and exams.

WE. DON'T. KNOW. HOW. PEOPLE. LEARN.

We barely understand the physical mechanisms behind MEMORY. But we DO know kids aren't empty piggy banks. They are BRIMMING with thought.

The last and most disgusting reality? The thing I hear in classroom after freaking classroom?

Education is all about capitalism.

"You need to learn these skills to get a good job." To be a good laborer. To help the wealthy generate more wealth, while you get scraps.

THAT is why modern education is a failure.

Its basic premise is monstrous.

"Why should I learn to read, Dr. Bowles?"

Because reading is magical. It makes life worth living. And being able to read, you can decode the strategies of your oppressors & stop them w/ their own words.

hope is a skill

I got a laptop with Windows 11 for an IT course so I can get certified, and doing the first time device set-up for it made me want to commit unspeakable violence

Windows 11 should not exist, no one should use it for any reason, it puts ads in the file explorer and has made it so file searches are also web searches and this cannot be turned off except through registry editing. Whoever is responsible for those decisions should be killed, full stop.

Switch to linux, it's free and it's good.

for every 1 minutes of work, grant yourself 100 minutes of unrewarding aimless phone time

Vorkosigan Saga fanfic where Mark and Kareen, sometime post-Cryoburn, find out that they’ve actually been legally married for years.

I’m not writing it, but here’s the bullet points:

like 15 years ago, they bought a house in Vorwhatever District for tax purposes. As business partners, they had to joint-sign the papers.

today, they receive a form letter in the mail informing them that an assortment of antiquated laws are being cleaned out of the books in Vorwhatever District, including one that if a man and a woman co-inhabit a domestic building for ten years, they are legally assumed to be married in the District - and thus, thanks to federalism, in every other District across three planets. Though the law is being removed and updated, the letter assures them, their marriage will remain binding and valid. If they wish to have it annulled for any reason, they may petition the office of the Count

after a non-zero amount of swearing, they decide to fly down to Vorwhatever District and petition him directly

Count Vorwhatever frowns, staring at the paper. “Wait, Vorkosigan - ah, you’re technically in the line of succession, aren’t you? For the District?”

Mark waves his hand. “After all of Miles’ children, thank god, which will probably be several dozen by the time he dies.”

The Count shakes his head and pushes the paper back across the table. “I cannot interfere with another count’s lineage. I’m afraid you’ll have to take it up with him.”

“Absolutely not,” Mark says promptly. “He’ll laugh himself stupid.”

Some arguing later, Kareen says thoughtfully, “Could we petition Count Vorkosigan’s liege lord instead?”

Gregor, when they sneak in time for an appointment, does not laugh himself stupid. Gregor, it turns out, knew all five years, because of ImpSec’s general alert for for the name “Vorkosigan” showing up in a legal context anywhere in the Empire and also on several other planets. He hadn’t mentioned it because he’d assumed Mark and Kareen knew, and that they hadn’t mentioned it to anything because it was either private or they just regarded it as a fairly irrelevant business thing.

okay, Gregor laughs at them a little bit. He does the Gregor thing where his eyes widen and he smiles just a little and if you know him, you know that he’s trying not to laugh openly.

He also reads over the paperwork they give him and then hands it back with an almost entirely deadpan expression and an apology that no, even as Emperor he cannot annul their marriage, due to not just restrictions on Imperial interference with a Count’s inheritance but the intersection of that and some other fairly esoteric laws - in force across all the Barrayaran Empire, actually, and put into effect during the Regency, that make Vor/prole non-Vor marriages particularly complex to dissolve. 

“Trust me,” Gregor adds, “I studied these laws quite thoroughly, when I was anxious about proposing to Laisa.”

Kareen grimaces. “Miles is going to laugh himself stupid at us.”

Gregor is not foolish enough to disagree. “Not quite as hard as Ivan and Tej will,” he instead says helpfully.

Mark groans.

Smash cut to Mark and Kareen sitting in Miles’ study while Miles laughs so hard he nearly falls out of his chair.

also, I guess, he dissolves their marriage, if they want.

they probably don’t end up doing that. 

they send a letter to select friends and family a week or so later informing them that they are, in fact, married now, do not want gifts or a party or anything but just FYI

vent post. There are two stories i was told in my teenage years that even before i had a real concept of trans issues made me uninterested in discussing the supposed sacredness and safety of separated sex-based spaces.

First, when i was like 13 or 14 my PE teacher told us about a time she went to a women's public restroom, some guy was hanging out outside the bathrooms, she didn't think anything of it, went to the bathroom, and he walked in after her and like, creeped on her over the top of the stall. She was ok, she wasn't telling us this to scare us, just telling us what to do in situations like that (and iirc she was telling the whole co-ed class this, not just girls, bc it's useful for everyone), but this taught me immediately and forever that there's nothing actually keeping these spaces separate really, that anyone can be a creep in any space, and that establishing a space like that as for women only isn't actually particularly useful for safety.

Second, when i was 16 i was at an anime convention, a friendly acquaintance of mine and i ended up in conversation outside, and he showed me his bare wrist and told me he'd been kicked out. A female friend of his had stepped in dog poop outside, and between that and the stress of the convention she'd had a bit of an emotional breakdown, so being her friend, he started comforting her and ushered her into the women's restroom so they could wash the poop off her shoe together. And because he was a man who went into the women's bathroom, he got kicked out, no matter that he was doing something that was actually beneficial to a woman. Punishing a woman's friend for supporting her was supposed to... protect her somehow? This made it clear to me that a no-exceptions rule separating the sexes like that wasn't actually inherently good for everyone.

And this isn't even getting into me as a child needing to accompany my younger sister to the restroom when we were out with just my dad because she had certain support needs past the age he felt comfortable bringing her into the men's room with him. And what if I'd been born a boy, or she'd been the first born? Who's helping her then?

And of course even putting all this aside, we should always prioritize compassion and support anyway. But i never even needed to meet a trans person to know that "keeping men out of women's bathrooms" is silly nonsense. But trans people also need to pee anyway and as humans they have that right, so leave them the fuck alone. your precious women's restroom is just a fucking room with a door, holy shit give it a fucking rest, if someone is attacking you in the bathroom that's bad and if someone is in there to pee that's good and it doesn't fucking matter what their junk is or was when they were born.

a woman could have done the exact same thing to my PE teacher and it would have also been bad no matter how "supposed" to be in the restroom she was, and no one should ever be punished for helping a crying friend wash their shoe.

Anyway i know I'm speaking to like-minded folks here, i just think about those two stories literally every time bathroom gender shit comes up and it pisses me off.

debating if it would be funnier to have a bumper sticker saying "my other ride is a [exact make and model of the car the sticker is on]" or "my other ride is a [equally shitty but different car]"

You gotta read and watch some old books and films that aren’t 100% modern politically correct. I’m not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.

Also, more often than you might think, they’re not actually promoting bigotry so much as “didn’t consider all the implications of something” or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.

Kill the censor in your head.

Mutie Lord (Vorkosigan saga)

Corry Csurik has a scar on her lip.  It’s because she’s a mutie.

Most people don’t know that, just by looking.  There’s plenty of ways a person could get a scar like that, people don’t assume “mutie” straight off.  But Corry’ll tell anyone who asks how she got it, she ain’t ashamed.

Everyone in Silvy Vale knows of course, and none of them mind one bit.  Least ways, none of the younger ones mind, some of the adults probably do, but none of them says nothing.  Folks in Silvy Vale know better, nobody dares say anything against Corry or her Mama, not since the Mutie Lord came and set things straight.

Corry was born in the hospital in Hassadar like the rest of her siblings, and she came out with her lip split in two and a hole going up straight through the top of her mouth.  Mama showed her pictures when Corry asked, and it looked real delightfully gruesome, but the doctors in Hassadar fixed it up right quick, and all she’s got to show for it now is the scar.

Corry’s the oldest of Lem Csurik’s kids, all of them born down at Hassadar General.  She’s the oldest and the only mutie, except that she’s also not.  Corry could have had a big sister, born way back ages ago, before Mama even went and got her education. Her name was Raina and she was a mutie just like Corry, except she was born up here in Silvy Vale instead of down in Hassadar, and she was murdered by her grandmother.

That’s when the Mutie Lord came, to bring justice for Raina, because Mama walked all the way down the mountain and asked him.

There ain’t many Count’s sons, Corry thinks, who’d go and do a thing like that for any baby, let alone a mutie one.  But the Mutie Lord did.  There’s folks as says that the Mutie Lord only came because Raina was a mutie, but Mama says that ain’t so.  The Mutie Lord came because he cared.  Because the Mutie Lord cared about Mama and he cared about Raina, and he cared about justice, even in Silvie Vale.

Old folks up here still talk about old Count Piotr, who fought the Cetagandans from these mountains.  Most poor folks in other districts don’t care much for their counts one way or the other, but us as belongs to the Vorkosigans are different.  Old Count Piotr was a legend, not the sort as stays far away in some castle, but the substantial sort, as gets its hands dirty and is of some use.  Everyone’s proud of Count Aral, of course, because he was Regent and Prime Minister and all, and Mama says it was him as let her tell about Raina, gave her an audience all formal like, and sent the Mutie Lord to be his Voice, so Corry supposes he’s all right enough too.  But it’s the Mutie Lord, who will be Count one day, who is the best of all of them, Corry thinks.

Mama and Da go down to Hassadar sometimes to argue with folks about Silvie and the rest of the villages up here in the Dendariis.  What sort of things they need up here to make their lives better, and what sort of things they really don’t need, whatever the Countess says.

(Mama’s got a whole lot of respect for the Countess on account of all the things she’s done for them as lives out in the backcountry, enough she named Corry after her even.   But the lady’s got some strong ideas about what it is they should want when it comes to modernizing and so forth, and Mama gets right fed up sometimes explaining to her and her city experts that it ain’t their right to get to decide what’s best for them, them as belong to these mountains are more than capable of doing that on their own.)

Anyway, Mama goes down to Hassadar a lot, and she brings the kids along too a lot of the time, and it was in Hassadar that some city boy punched Corry for calling the Mutie Lord the Mutie Lord.

Corry just stared at him sorta aghast for a second after, because didn’t this boy’s da ever tell him it ain’t right to hit girls?  But then Corry supposed he could be from a modern family that thought that old fashioned chivalry was a kind of oppression, so maybe the punching was a sort of compliment.

“Don’t you dare call Lord Vorkosigan that, he’s our Count’s son and I won’t let some backcountry bumpkin disrespect him,” the boy said.

And if he’d had the sense to stop there, Corry might’ve let it be, might even have apologized.  Because there’s folks as think calling anyone a mutie ain’t right on account of the word itself being dirty.  Corry’s never agreed with it, mind, so far as she can see, words is words, it’s peopleas have to go and be rude about it.  But if the boy just didn’t like calling him the Mutie Lord on account of the word, that’d be fair enough.  But then he had to go and keep talking.

“Lord Vorkosigan isn’t a mutant, he was deformed by a soltoxin attack, but his genes are as good as anyone’s.”

Corry’d crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes at him real stern, “What difference does that make?” She said.

The boy looked baffled, “It’s the whole point isn’t, it?  We can’t have a Count with some kind of mutation. The whole line would be tainted.  And a mutation like that , they say he’s completely deformed.”

Corry’d turned her eyes into a full on glare then, she knew how to be right scary when she wanted, “There ain’t nothing wrong with being a mutie, I’m a mutie,” Corry said, and the boy stared at her, shocked, that she was a real honest breathing mutie standing in front of him, and that she’d said it right out like that in broad daylight, “D’you think it matters to the Mutie Lord one bit how he got the way he did?  Bet it don’t hurt less to have his bones all stunted and fragile on account of soltoxin instead of a mutant gene.  And anyhow, if you’re so worried about the precious bloodline, you know for certain any Vorkosigan babe’d be cooked up in one of them fancy uterine replicators and gene cleaned and all.  But it don’t matter either way, because being all mutie looking as he is doesn’t make the Mutie Lord any less of a Count’s heir a smidge.  It don’t make him less clever, and it don’t make him less kind, and it don’t make him less wise, and he’ll be best of all the Vorkosigans there ever was when he’s count, mark my words.  So you’ll take it back, else I’ll have more than words for you, and you may be egalitarian enough to hit a girl, Piotr Gansy,” (that being the boy’s name) “But I’m betting you ain’t so egalitarian you’d fancy being beat by one.”

The boy didn’t apologize, but he did run off, and Corry supposed that was satisfaction enough.  She likes to think she gave him something to think on, at least.

Corry thinks on it often enough, certainly, her and the Mutie Lord.  Because the Mutie ain’t a mutie, technically, but he looks it, and Corry is a mutie, but she don’t.   The folks in Silvy Vale, they know what’s what these days.  But Corry’s heard folks down in Hassadar, grown folks she ain’t in any position to lecture.  They talk about the Mutie lord, and sometimes they talk something ugly.  And Corry supposes it’s even worse in other places, where folks aren’t predisposed to like him, him being their very own Vorkosigan, and she supposes it was worse when he was younger, before he went and got himself made Lord Auditor and all.  And there ain’t nothing he can do about it, because everyone who looks at him sees a mutie.

Corry’s not sure what she wants to do with herself when she’s grown, but she’s got an idea of going to university on one of Countess Cordelia’s scholarships, maybe all the way in Vorbarr Sultanna.  She’ll have a choice then, of whether or not she’ll tell folks she’s a mutie.  She supposes it ain’t none of their business, really, but she thinks she’ll tell anyway.  Because she can , see, and Raina can’t.

Mama says that uterine replicators are getting more and cheaper all the time.  By the time Corry’s ready to be thinking of having children of her own, maybe there’ll be some even for folks in Silvy Vale.  Someday, maybe there won’t be any more muties like Corry.  There’s always been accidents, though, and there’s always been war, and Corry can’t see that changing any time, so there’ll always be muties like the Mutie Lord.

It matters , Corry thinks.  It matters how folks think, and it matters how folks see each other.  It matters what and who folks count as important.  They learned that, they as live in Silvy Vale, when the Mutie Lord came all the way out to bring justice for Raina.  So Corry’ll tell folks she’s a mutie, because she was lucky, growing up in Silvy Vale.  She’ll say it because it matters, and she won’t be shamed.  She’ll say it for all those as don’t get a choice whether to say or no.

Starting to think a cooler headcanon for Clark’s upbringing might just be that the entire town of Smallville collectively decided to just go with it and accept that Martha and John's kid has superpowers, but we don't talk about it.

Someone's tractor gets stuck and nothing can get it out? "Be a dear and run down to the Kents, would you? Ask for Clark?"

"Why Clark, we need a machine--"

"Run along now."

Or if he kicks too hard and the football vanishes into the upper stratosphere, no it didn't, we all collectively saw it land over there *vague hand movements*

150 years ago, a boy was born to my great-great grandmother. And that was the last time that happened anywhere on my maternal line until my son was born in 2016. This is a story about intersex people.

For 150 years, the women of my family kept having daughters, who either also had daughters, or they were oddly unable to have children. Strange quirk, we assumed. No boys.

In the late 1970s, my mother’s sister had a daughter with Down Syndrome. Genetic testing was done, and it was discovered that although she looked female, she actually possessed the male XY chromosome combination. Her sister was born three years later. And because of that genetic concern, her genes were checked. And she possessed … the XY chromosomes. A third daughter, born a few years later, possessed the usual XX.

Keeping in the tradition, my mother had two daughters. Because of our cousins’ genetic conditions, my sister and I were both checked. Both of us appeared typically XX. And so for more than thirty years, it was dismissed as a quirk, and no one said the word intersex because that wasn’t a thing in 1980.

In 2014 I had a son, breaking the chain of girls. It was an interesting story! I then had two daughters, and didn’t bother to do any genetic checking.

And then in 2020 my sister became pregnant. Early genetic testing said boy, XY. Twenty week anatomy scan said girl. Definitely 100% girl. Uhhh?! As expected, she*** was born genetically male, possessing only male gonads in the form of undescended testes, but female external genitalia.

It was Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, a genetic mutation carried on the X chromosome. See, all bodies start female. Then, when the hormonal influence of the Y chromosome kicks in, instructions on the X are supposed to detect the testosterone and create male genitalia. Except a person with AIS is non-reactive to testosterone, and the body stays, at least superficially, female. Genetic check would say boy. Presence of testes says boy. Pants check says girl. Making the question of sex (sex. Gender is something else, ok?) distinctly complicated.

If someone has a mother who is a carrier of AIS, there are 4 possibilities. Unaffected XY, and so genetically and structurally male. Affected XY, and so intersex. Affected XX, and so a female carrier. Unaffected XX female and entirely unaffected.

My grandmother was a carrier. My aunt and mother are carriers. My sister is a carrier. When my niece was born, my single non-intersex cousin and I did genetic testing. And we are both carriers as well. My son is an unaffected XY male. My niece is affected XY intersex. Both my cousin and I also have 2 daughters each. And, because it is medically and psychologically relevant, we had them tested. All XX.****

And I was ready to check one more thing: are my daughters carriers? There is a 50/50 chance. And then I stopped, because they are preschoolers, and that is their reproductive decision. They know three intersex people. And if they care, someday they can check their genes and the odds that my grandchildren will be intersex. The intersex people they know will, I hope, be able to talk to them about the beauty of their lives as one of the wonderful variations of humanity.

It’s easy to feel invisible, but if you disappeared so many people would notice and care. The neighbors who always see you walk by, the shop owner or the cashier at your grocery store, the dog next door that likes to bark at you, the person at work or school who’s still working up the courage to talk to you, the friends you think forgot about you when you lost track of each other, the babysitter you had when you were four. You have touched a million lives in perfect little ways. Do not underestimate your importance in this world, you deserve to be here and you are wanted here.

'mental health matters!'

until you dont feel anything for anyone and have no sympathy

until you have never loved your family and hate them

until you have ruined peoples lives and ruined your own relationships

until you dont get better even with support, medication, and therapy

until you refuse therapy

until you always worsen yourself to get 'sicker' than others

until youre homicidal

until youre 'bitchy' , 'irritable' , and 'pissy'

until you have crying meltdowns over chewing sounds

until you have gender dysphoria

until you're extremely impulsive

until you cant remember anything about you and your childhood

until your room piles up with clothes, piles of unwashed laundry, bedsheets and blankets that have not been washed for months

until you have P-OCD

until you have cluster A personality disorders

until you have cluster B personality disorders

until you have cluster C personality disorders

until youre on the schizospec

until youre bipolar

until you are a system

until youre hypersexual

''mental health matters'' until you struggle with real mental illness and not 'oh i was feeling pretty stressed today'

if you struggle with any of these i love you, you are safe here

You know, if we DO make contact with aliens within the next hundred years-ish, enough people are going to give the Vulcan salute to the first alien they see in real life (whether out of quivering excitement, lol memeitude, or sheer awkward, panicked grasping for the one prominent alien greeting nested in the social conscious) that there's a solid chance that it becomes a thing we're known for as humans.

Live Long and Prosper, my friends.

"AO3 doesn't need a "dislike" button"

Um, actually, it already has one. Depending on your specs, it might look a little different but over all it looks kinda like this:

You can find it at the corner of your screen, which corner is dependent on your layout.

Anyway, if you dislike a fic, you can hit this Dislike Button until the fic goes away. It really is pretty amazing actually.