Look I know people are all on Mastodon but right now Tumblr has, en mass, decided to make up a 1970s Martin Scorsese mafia film that they've all seen that doesn't exist, and is doing pantomime fandom about it and it is AMAZING. It's like the cross-fandom a/b/o cannon except it's a whole damn made up movie with agreed upon ships, discourse and rarepairs which, again I emphasize, DOES NOT EXIST

And it's not...a/b/o

Starling might need some stitches so we’re at the children’s hospital and how are people not masking in a fucking children’s ER. I am not keen to be polite about this at this point. We gave up and went home. I’m not interested in all these people coughing on us.

There’s mandatory mask signs all over as the security guard sits around, with no mask, snacking.

I see we're doing the "parental estrangement" discourse again.

As a therapist I've been with many many client's who made the decision to stop having their parents in their lives. I have never, and would never, dictate such a decision to a client. No therapist who doesn't want a lawsuit would- it's a massive overstep in our role.

Scribble favors me over Ty. Tamino favors Ty over me. That makes sense since those are that cats each of us picked out.

But I think Starling is starting to get wise to each of us having a cat that's "our cat" and may campaign for a 3rd cat and dear lord that's too much cat. When we were picking out cats in the first place she kept asking for "an orange kitten", which of course are plentiful in cat rescues, but I did not want a kitten.

Now Ty has talked about how a kitten might help Scribble and Tamino bond.

Someone buy me this. barnesandnoble.com/w/cyberpunk-cu… WAIT THIS IS AN ACTUAL PROFESSIONAL EXPENSE FOR ME I CAN WRITE IT OFF ON TAXES

I love my job.

Ok, time for the "wow there are suddenly a lot of you I guess I'll introduce myself a little bit" thread. I'll try to keep it brief. Likes appreciated so the algorithm doesn't hide this because it has links.

For reminders- you likely followed me because of Swedish Chef CC. Here's the bad news- I don't think I can regularly give you Swedish Chef CC content. Sorry!

Ok, I'm gonna tell you all a little story about survival. CW for animal experimentation. I heard this story studying psych, and it's always stayed with me. So, for some reason, someone found out how long rats can swim by putting them in a bucket they can't get out of, so their options are swim or drown. They got stats on how long before their little rat bodies just gave out.

Bear with me.

Psst. Fatphobia and Ableism are two branches off the same evil tree. Both seek to limit empathy by suggesting that others needs are unreasonable because if people "took care of themself" they would not have that need. Both seek to disavow the role chance, genetics & systemic issues play in people's suffering by focusing on "personal choice", using bad science and public shaming to deny others access to empathy or care.

I'm just gonna say it- Christian adoption agencies shouldn't be a thing. They promote funneling the children of poor people into explicit religious indoctrination in a way that reminds me of MANY similar horrible Christian practices in the US and the church's history. Agencies that offer first & foremost resources to parent's looking to place are better. Agencies that default to empowering those parents to make choices about who their child is placed with are FAR more likely to respect the birth parents as people, & to be culturally competent.

Oh look. Trump can't lay still and listen to the instructions given to him by some of the best medical professionals in the world.

My goodness. What a shock.

Do you suppose this will have any impact on his recovery, as it would for...you know...basically anybody else? It's been my opinion from the start that the moment he would get upright, his pathological need to be seen as invulnerable and important would propel him out of the hospital.

$5 says he ends up collapsing on a golf course, then ineffectually lying about it.

OK, darlings. As promised, here's a tropetastic thread on the triumph of young love. It is all true.

May be bouncing in and out throughout the day- because toddler.

Mute if not interested- it will be long.

But it will be cute.

https://twitter.com/AmmoniteInk/status/1310638251317899264

We THINK the story begins in 1991. We know it starts at theatre day-camp for kids, a summer when we were both in elementary school.

The earliest memories are vague- I remembered a super cool kid from the older class with dark eyes who I was desperate to eat lunch with every day.

A lot has been said about how many Millennials don't feel like adults because many of the markers of adulthood we were brought up to expect were unrealistic in the years we entered adulthood.

But- I've seen less said about how many of us have had to make do with infantalizing work environments. With being micromanaged, excessively controlled, digitally monitored. The technology marking our lives have altered our working conditions.

A lot of you think you're "bad at adulting" or "bad at coping" when what you actually are is criminally overworked and underpaid.

You're tired because we are not built for the modern work culture. It's not sustainable.

Be mad at your employers, not yourselves. Anybody who wants to argue with me better have a hell of a lot of high quality backup data because darlings I have studied this and we are well within my professional wheelhouse.

Can I just say that a solid 70% of what I'm treating as a clinical therapist are the natural and inevitable outcomes of various broken societal structures? Like these people would mostly be FINE if their community hadn't actively knocked them down over and over. There is nothing normal, natural, or inevitable about the rates of drug abuse, anxiety, and depression we're seeing today. It's not because of cell phones or Kids These Days or hair dye.

It's because our society is fundamentally toxic w/no opt out.

So I'm sitting here, trying to write, but I keep getting weepy about CONvergence, my beloved home con, and how good it is to me and how HARD it tries to be good to it's whole community. I have been going to this particular con for 20 years- from age 15 to 35. This boggles my mind. And this year I thought a lot about how much I learned about community from this con, and how much the community has changed.

Here's a mental health rant intended to get this off my chest, more than anything else.

Lemme talk for a sec about Evolutionary psych, what it is, what it ISN'T and why most of the people publishing and discussing it are full of shit. A bit of background- being the completely extra person we know I am, I did an original research thesis in undergrad.

Mental health ramble incoming!

Lot's of people are talking about getting organized in 2019, and, more specifically, how grim they find their chances of getting organized in 2019.

I have suggestions. For background- I used to be so disorganized that they almost held me back a grade- truly. I was in Special Ed for years largely because even if I DID THE HOMEWORK I could never manage to get it FROM MY PLANNER TO MY TEACHER within a day of the due date.

It has come to my attention that many of you don;t fully appreciate the beauty, diversity, and weirdness of fungus. So here comes a bunch of pictures I've accumulated in referencing that death god of decomposition I was referencing. And some more.