Yep this. I’ve been given the advice to step away from my baby when she’s crying if I’m overwhelmed and she’s in a safe place. That’s advice from basically every medical professional I’ve encountered during pregnancy and post partum. Because it is so, so important to not let your nerves get fried in an attempt to be a perfect parent, because letting your nerves get fried will lead to shit you’ll regret down the line. Be that shouting or checking out mentally or way worse stuff.
Ear plugs =/= can’t hear. Loops specifically are designed to allow you to hear but not have hearing damage.
My baby is colicky AF and will scream while we’re in the process of making her a bottle. Or while we’re burping her. Or when we have to pull the bottle away to wipe spit up. Or while we’re in the process of soothing her but not soothed yet.
I’m pretty patient (with children, not judgy parents though) but I’m not perfect. I can parent better and be more present while not massively overwhelmed by a noise designed by evolution to be horrible and intolerable.
I can see the concern, as a trans and nonbinary person, about the phrasing of the headline. Casual readers will totally think the actual guidance says “if you fuck up a person’s pronouns, you go to jail” or whatever.
But not the guidance itself. We need more protections against intentional, malicious misgendering as verbal harassment. Which is usually less “she said— oops, they said—“ and more stuff like “(female coworker) put has pronouns in her signature? I thought she was a REAL WOMAN”
(The second being a real example from a friends work place. Funny thing is, friend is stealth trans and the coworker being misgendered is cis, but i digress)
But yeah all that aside I think the real context is misgendering when someone needs the bathroom, e.g. “you’re in the wrong bathroom” type comments. Where we really need stronger protections.
We’re not talking about hair colour though, this is obviously reducing a pic of some friends to “haha big booba small booba”. That’s kind of textbook objectification.
Moving to a city with a tool library. For an annual £20 fee I can borrow any of a myriad of power tools. Currently using an orbital sander for some DIY, previously borrowed a hedge trimmer for the garden, it’s freaking great.
I’d be down but I require my own personal bucket of thumb drives
While I don’t feel like this shills IKEA that badly, i wanna thank you for giving me the term “fast fashion of furniture” because I had yet to find a way to explain why I fucking hate IKEA furniture
(Caveat that fast fashion/furniture is a complex, awful issue when we’re paid in pennies and still required to have clothes and also like sleeping in beds. But I fucking hate when it’s unnecessary)
queerness intensifies
Regarding doomers: Big agree in general. My understanding of a "doomer" is someone who thinks all hope is lost and there's no use doing anything. That extreme pessimism doesn't add anything tbh, especially in a hope-oriented instance.
Regarding civil disobedience, I also strongly agree.
Re: absolutist veganism... while I agree it can be as much of a hindrance to discussion as doomerism, I'm not sure we should have something codified specifically about vegans. The thing is, anyone can be so fervently for ANYTHING that they're not able to have an open-minded discussion assuming good faith. Heck, that includes the "I don't eat greens I'm not a rabbit" folks. I think it'd be a better step to have a rule against... I don't know what to call it, dogmatic arguments? Absolutism, ad hominem attacks, etc, the stuff we see with a lot of online Veganism but that certainly isn't only vegans. For sure we could use the example of veganism, but also of religion vs. atheism (not as relevant here, but I feel prone to the same behaviour, at least from my experience in online Atheism), maybe it could even tie in with the doomerism rule.
Either way, I want to echo what others have said and say this is already a lovely, inspiring community, and I'd love to see that wonderful community codified in some way.
grow something. Doesn't have to be via digging in the dirt (though that helps), even a houseplant or hydroponics setup or a jar of herbs on a windowsill can remind you that you're a part of the planet, not just a guest. And I think that mindset shift that comes with caring for greenery is of utmost importance.
This also scales: You can start out with a gardening kit or hydroponics kit, then you can maybe grow some herbs from seed on a windowsill, then one day you're hoisting up a grow light over some tomatoes in your bedroom and all the sudden you're growing food to feed yourself and your community. All very solarpunk in increasing intensity.
...the "growlight in the bedroom for tomato plants" might just have been a me thing though. (It didn't work so well)
Not the OP so can't say why they're doing it, but in the UK at least it's really common practice for people who grow gardens because we'll frequently have "hosepipe bans" which means we can't hook our hoses up to the mains to water our gardens. So, you either have stored rainwater (like OP is doing) or... a very dry crispy garden.
I don't know how much it saves money wise, but ecologically using water from rain instead of the mains offsets the amount of water that needs to come out of treatment plants. After all, plants don't care about water treatment really. So they don't need the fancy drinkable tap water. They can have rainwater and that means more for the humans.
(See also: My awesome gardening coveralls, which I made myself to be as Loud as possible. Also, one of my dogs)
I've recently bought a house and there's a LOT of work to be done in the back garden to get things ready for my purposes. Little by little I'm clearing away dead stuff and overgrown bushes... and oh god so much of it has thorns. but I'll persevere.
(But if anyone has a brand or type of garden glove they like for dealing with thorny plants, I'm all ears.)
I'm also curious what you all would do with all of the garden waste this generates? I have a bin I can put garden waste in, but before I start binning the clippings and such, I want to be sure they can't be used. I have started a compost pile that desperately needs more browns, but with regards to the greens it's getting quite full!
so this is the other end of animal husbandry, but I feel it's important to know how to deal with an animal on the cutting board with skill and respect before you ever dispatch one. I'll try not to make this too long and rambly, but here's my thoughts on why you should try to learn how to properly break down whole birds.
First, respect. I find that seeing an animal in a form that still looks vaguely like an animal helps build that connection in your mind that yes, this was a living creature once. And I think that's important when we're still buying chickens from the grocery store-- obviously if you're raising your own chickens already, you're more intimately aware of that. I have a lot of issues with the meat industry, and one of those is how sanitised and detached the meat buying process is. It's a lot easier to ignore that the food you're buying was once alive when it's a plastic package of seven breasts from 3 and a half different animals.
Second, frugality. I'm not saying it's strictly cheaper to buy chickens as whole birds vs. a pack of breasts or thighs, maybe like for like but I find when I buy a whole bird I'm more likely to purchase one that was as high-welfare as possible. But once I have that bird, I'm more likely to use the whole thing in a frugal mindset. I'm not going to toss the drumsticks if I don't like dark meat, or discard the skin. I worked hard to make that one bird into what can be around 10 meals (for a single person), and I'm going to appreciate each bit, up until all that's left is bones and I'm making stock.
Third, meal diversity. I know a lot of people just eat the breasts, but continuing from the second point, when you've broken down the entire bird you're kind of boxed in to making a meal with the drumsticks, with the thighs, with the wings. Maybe this is only a benefit to some people, but I feel like when I have ingredients I Must use I have an easier time deciding what I will make. And I'm pushed out of my comfort zone of diced chicken breast into remembering that there are recipes I love for thighs, and that I can make my own hot wings.
Anyways, now that I've hopefully convinced you that you should have this butchering skill whether or not you intend to raise meat chickens, here's a video I used to learn how to do it myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTNEjPOixKY
Also please enjoy the photo of my recent chicken butchery... nobody make fun of me for having the shittiest plastic cutting board and knife, I just moved house and all of my nice stuff is still back in my old place and I needed Something on a tight budget so I could still cook. (But in general, if you're looking for a cutting board, get one made of wood. The heavier the better. These shitty plastic cutting boards are like chicken turntables I swear to god)
Oh geez this. My parents never let me try out new things if they would be messy or might fail. I wanted a veggie garden, nope. Baking, too messy. Tons of craft things were vetoed for a very long time too. Thankfully as an adult I’ve rekindled these desires, and i have a garden I cultivate and a sourdough starter going (as examples). But I do mourn the learning I could have done as a kid.
I’m determined to let my kid do messy things. Right now the messiest thing she can do is spit up, but when she’s older she can have so much play doh and dirt time and baking time.
(Play doh only if she’s not eating it)