Today at after-camp daycare, we played Life and Death and God.
Basically, it’s the Game of Life but with some alterations created by the six 8-10 year old boys that were there. I was designated writer of The List Of Stuff, aka the list in which anything we currently “possessed” (ie houses, children, pets, spouses, Gifts From God) was listed under our name so we could keep track.
God was played by the one boy who didn’t want to actually play. When I asked him how God was going to fit into the game, he said that God worked in mysterious ways so he could randomly give people News From God whenever he felt like it. We settled that if someone spun a three, they’d receive a miracle, and if they spun a seven, they’d get bad news, and at the end of every round (ie when everyone had had a turn) he could make a new rule for the world.
“Dude, you should’ve prayed more,” God told one boy as he spun a seven. “Your dog got possessed by a demon and ate your baby. You need to get an exorcism. That costs $50,000 and a life card.”
“Aww man,” the unfortunate demon dog owner said. “Not Shark Tooth Junior. She’s my only daughter.” Flips through his money “What if I don’t want to spend money to get an exorcism?”
God shrugged. “Then I guess you can keep a demon dog,” he said, “but it requires a human sacrifice every turn or it’ll eat you.”
The demon dog owner sighed and paid the money, and I crossed off both Shark Tooth Junior and Chicken Strip the dog off his List Of Stuff.
“Congratulations!” God said on another turn. “You’re pregnant!”
“But I’m a man.”
“That’s why it’s a miracle,” God pointed out. “It’s the next Jesus! Also you have to name him Jesus The Second cause I’m God and I say so.”
I was blessed with the ability to turn water into wine at one point, and started a winery as a side business. Both were added to my List Of Stuff.
At one point, not long after he’d had his first child, one of the boys’ mom came to pick him up.
“Come on,” she said. “We have to go.”
“Give me a minute, Mom,” he called back. “I’m dead. We have to read my will.”
Thus proceeded the reading in which I read through his List Of Stuff one by one and he declared who each item/ability/person/animal went to and I then transferred each thing to other Lists Of Stuff.
“Your wife,” I read. “Elizabeth.”
“I’m leaving her to,” he trailed off, tapping his chin as he considered his options. “You, Kee.”
“You can’t give Kee your wife!” another boy protested, one who had already received three of the dead boy’s children. “That’d make her gay!”
“Kee can be gay if she wants to be,” the dead boy pointed out.
“Yeah,” the boy agreed, “but she’s already got a husband.”
“She can have a husband and a wife,” God declared. “It’s called being bisexual. It’s allowed. Plus I’m God, so that makes it double allowed.”
And that was how I ended up receiving everyone’s wives in their wills, and ended up married to my original husband, Lizard, and my four wives, Elizabeth, Lizzy, Eliza, and Shark Tooth (there was a theme that God had declared we had to follow in naming our spouses, a declaration which came after one of the boys had already married Shark Tooth). I had no children of my own, but had eventually received dozens in wills, as I ultimately ended up as the last person left in after-camp.
And yeah. Life and Death and God was definitely a fun time, and I feel like we’ll be playing it again in after-camp tomorrow. It felt a little like dnd, tbh, with God being the dungeon master, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone wanting to spice up their Game of Life. You could probably add in a drinking game aspect if you’re not playing with small children, or make like God Cards or something for people to pull from if no one wants to be God.
“plus i’m God, so that makes it double allowed” is the best sentence i’ve read all day
Plenty of people have outlined what’s fucked up about that “white male atheism is fundamentally different from Marginalized Atheism” post, but I just hit on the main reason it bothers me:
It positions religion as the human default, from which you are excused only if you’re sufficiently damaged. Like “I guess it’s okay if you’re shipping to cope” – if it’s just a consolation prize for being broken and pitiable, it’s not really okay at all. It’s okay if you can’t be religious because of trauma, but always remember that this is a personal flaw, a result of your damage, and that *healthy people* are religious.
Under this schematic, atheism isn’t simply another way to be human and think human thoughts. It’s a deviation from the “natural”, i.e. religious, state, and you’d better have a damn good reason for going against the grain. You think you can defect from normal society just because you *want* to? That’s just your white male privilege talking. Marginalized people have suffered enough to earn the right to defect, but you’re gonna shut up and praise God like a normal person.
This is exactly it! I’m not an atheist because I’m damaged, or because I don’t have numinous experiences, or because I haven’t enjoyed them.
I’m an atheist because when I think about the question of whether gods are beings or stories, my answer is consistently that I think they’re most likely cool stories.
Like, I try to tell myself “think they’re not stories for an hour or two, just to understand people better!” And my brain goes “but I’m pretty sure they’re stories…?”
I know people find this insulting, and I think I get why, but honestly… I’m in fandoms, and those fandoms have literally saved my life. “Megatron is fictional” and “Megatron is unimportant” have different truth values to me. So me thinking your god is probably a story too actually isn’t me thinking “your god shouldn’t matter to you.”
I get that it’s something you still might not like! And that’s okay!
But calling religion made up and calling religion stupid are actually different things.
This. This, this this, good fucking lord this.
Scepticism is healthy. Atheism is often a natural result of scepticism. It doesn’t matter what your skin colour is or whether or not you’re angry about having been lied to or whether or not you have a fucking penis.
A lot of these anti-white-male-atheist screeds are anti-scepticism and anti-rational-thinking, and it makes my fucking brain hurt.
Calling religion made up and calling religion stupid are actually different things.
Yep yep that thing right there is why I have complaints about that whole discourse, too.
I don’t really self-identify as atheist, but my view leans towards “I believe gods exist in some kind of meaningful way, but I also believe Luke Skywalker exists in a meaningful way in that stories are things that demonstrably exist and the characters in them can be meaningful and have a great deal of cultural significance and/or importance to individuals who exist in the flesh-and-blood sense, and maybe that’s what gods are too”. I’m flexible about entity-vs.-construct (both at once? something else?) views of deities, and think that many people who believe one way or another have some good arguments for their viewpoint but there’s no proof either way so it’s really just a matter of what you decide to believe. And what you decide to believe on subjective-opinion matters like “do gods exist and if so what are they exactly” is far less important than how you treat people who disagree with you about them.
Yeah, I’m not *terribly* far off from this.
Hell, I tried to do the whole “I’m religious but I also think gods are stuff humans made up” thing.
I just personally ended up eventually going “but wait… then I’m technically still an atheist?”
That’s not self-loathing you’re thinking in there. Your internal monologue is made to recite cues from its models of various aspects of your social environment. That’s some other asshole telling you you’re a piece of shit. Tell it to go fuck itself.
Always remember that your conscious/linguistic mind evolved to process your social environment, not to understand objective reality. Our instincts were already there to handle survival a billion years before the human ego, and formal logic is a sub-section of the social mind that a couple people just happened to have tuned properly; Your thoughts at large are a complex system of delusions tailored to your culture.
Don’t let their lies ruin you. You don’t even need to give them sisyphean counter-arguments. They’re not waiting to be answered; They’re cues for how you think certain other people might think. Let the spirits tear the flesh from their bones.
SO I actually get this question a lot! Hope you don’t mind a bit of back story with your answer ❤
My husband was always REALLY allergic to cats. He would wheeze and typically have difficulty breathing while around one. We weren’t even going to adopt a cat when we got Heimdall, but the big dude really just won us over. So I researched. A lot. And basically this is what I found.
It depends ENTIRELY on the severity of your allergy. My husband’s, while uncomfortable, wasn’t the throat-closing, hive-raising reaction that I’d seen from others. He personally has success with his daily allergy medication, so he uses that to counteract anything our other endeavors don’t take care of. Your own personal reaction will be the best way to tell how to handle it.
We have 8 cats in our house currently. Yet my husband isn’t constantly in a state of anaphylaxis.
We have air purifiers in every room. They’re outfitted with special filters that specifically handle pet dander. We clean them frequently and replace the filters as per the suggestion on the box. We also vacuum. A lot. We dust our shelves. A lot. We allow the cats to sleep in the bed with us, but another helpful step would be to train the cats to not sleep on your bed.
A typical cat allergy is related to the proteins cats produce on their skin and in their saliva, not the actual fur. There are things you can do to help keep these protein levels down. Brush them frequently, use dander wipes on them. Some people recommend bathing them, BUT, bathing them can cause them to groom more if they’re unhappy with how they smell afterwards (yes it might be nice that they smell like Lilac Meadow Dream, but Whiskers really just wants to smell like Whiskers). When a cat grooms themself, it produces more of that protein you’re allergic to. Hence more of the thing that causes allergies.
Some people have a bad reaction to the litter box. This is typically more related to breathing issues related to asthma, but not totally unheard of. Getting a silica litter is EXTREMELY helpful in aiding this.
We’ve found, over the years, that simply doing these things, and getting one cat at a time, my husband’s allergies are MUCH better than they were years ago. He still reacts if we’re in a home that doesn’t clean as often as we do, but it’s more tolerable than it has been in the past. This is obviously not going to be the case for everyone, but it is, as I understand it, the nature of some allergies (oddly enough I worked as an administrative assistant in an Allergist’s office for a short time so I learned a lot about this there).
Typically short hair cats with less thick coats will produce less of the protein that causes allergies. You can find a list of “hypoallergenic” cats anywhere on the internet, but they’re typically either hairless, or have very short, thin coats, although there are a few who have longer, thicker coats but produce less of one protein found in the skin.
And despite what some people believe, no, shaving a cat will not help. Honestly shaving should only be done if absolutely medically necessary.
While I ALWAYS encourage people to adopt from a shelter, these hypoallergenic breeds are INCREDIBLY sought after. And unless it’s a very special circumstance, they typically aren’t surrendered. In the rare cases that they ARE, they’re snatched up almost immediately. So if you’re DEAD SET on adopting, you might be waiting for a while. If you decide to go for a breeder, I just recommend doing your research. The cats can be very expensive, but it’s important to recognize a good breeder from a backyard breeder. I know this may get some negative attention. All of my cats come from a shelter. But no shelter worker I’ve EVER known has EVER seen a pure bred Devon Rex walk through the doors (again, not saying its impossible, but an owner is less likely to surrender a cat they paid $2k+ for than a shelter cat they got on sale during kitten season for $20).
Essentially, see what you can handle. If your allergies are SEVERE, you may have to see if you can handle the hypoallergenic cats. If your allergies aren’t terrible, just uncomfortable, you can work with a short-haired cat that you adopt, just be sure you clean, and groom the cat with brushing and wipe regularly!
If you are SUPER ULTRA MEGA set on adopting every single long-haired cat on the planet, then your best route might actually be to meet with an allergist and see if the series of shots they provide can help you. It’s ENTIRELY up to you with how much you can afford to do, how badly you want a cat, and how you personally react to the allergy.
Something about Rebecca Sugar coming out as a nonbinary woman is a huge surprise but it also makes so much sense in retrospect. The Gems aren’t nonbinary because they’re aliens or because she wanted to look Woke or whatever….she was literally just representing her own gender identity this whole time, even if she admittedly did make it subtle (except Stevonnie, she said the fandom knows they’re very obviously nb) but I think making subtle representation for a group you belong to is very very different from a cis creator who just wants to throw the nb community a bone but not quite commit to it, if that makes sense
Rebecca Sugar: One of the things that’s very important to me about the show is that the Gems are all nonbinary women. […] They’re coded female, which is very important […] I was really excited […] to make a show about a young boy who is looking up to these female-coded characters.
Interviewer: I’m sorry, when you say they’re “coded female” what do you mean by that “coded”?
Rebecca Sugar: They appear to be female. They’re a little more representative of nonbinary women. They wouldn’t think of themselves as women, but they’re fine with being interpreted that way amongst humans. And I am also a nonbinary woman, which, it’s been really great to express myself through these characters, because it’s very much how I have felt throughout my life.
Wait, nonbinary women?
Is there more content out there somewhere (aside from the interview) by nonbinary women that I could read? About being nonbinary women and what that means to them? And how they decided that this was the right identity/label for themselves, as compared to other identities like “nonbinary” or “demi woman” etc?
Because I’m trying to figure out if this might fit me.
I’m … mostly a woman? Close enough to that identity to feel it’s fair to consider myself … mostly? Cissexual/cisgender? (Not 100 percent perfectly, but close enough that I generally say I have cis privilege in most if not all contexts that count.) But with weak identification with that gender. Or with gender in general. So I’m also kinda a little bit agender? I know “demi woman” is a thing, and could maybe be a fit for me. But would like to also know more about nonbinary women so I can consider where that fits in relation to my identity as well.
Query open to anyone who feels comfortable answering with links you think might be useful. Thanks!
Signal boosting for andreashettle in case any of my friends knows anything.
I see doubt in the notes so just wanted to say that YES, this is a unicellular organism! This is a species from a genus of green algae called Caulerpa, which are a siphonous algae. The frond shapes, the “rhizomes” it grows from, and the “roots” it extends into substrate are all extensions of a single multi-nucleate cell. Here’s what a siphonous alga looks like under a microscope, with no divisions in its cytoplasm:
It’s not the only algae like this, either! Caulerpa is a member of order Bryopsidales, which are all siphonous. Here’s some more macroscopic single cell algae:
Codium fragile, or dead man’s fingers. This one is a single long noodle of a cell with swollen growths on the outside called urtricles, packed together to create a firm “skin.”
Halimenia, a calcified algae whose shed growths are responsible for a lot of the beautiful white sand on tropical beaches:
It’s not that I object exactly, but seeing posts tagged as “cursing tw” makes me die a little inside.
Like, the people putting those tags on are mostly the younger generation. You guys are supposed to be exerting your freedom! Rebelling! You’re supposed to be casting off societal rules that hold you back and don’t really matter! Now you’re telling me that “fuck” is naughty again?
I know, it’s different, and that’s why I can’t precisely object. You’re not telling people not to say fuck. You’re just alerting people to the presence of fuck in a post. That’s different. It’s expanding people’s options, not narrowing them, and it’s showing sensitivity to people who for whatever reason are genuinely upset by such language.
But… we came so far, you guys. We were casting off purity culture, we were learning to enjoy our bodies and the words for our bodies again. Then someone came along and said “but what if someone is triggered by our bodies?” and they weren’t actually wrong, that does happen… and somehow it’s winding us back to the point where it’s again normal to put up warnings and barriers and age restrictions before saying that our genitals are beautiful and pleasure is good and sex is fun and our minds and bodies and words are our own to use for any filthy thing we please.
I’m not saying that this new Tumblr kind of consideration is exactly the same as censorship, but it’s building up that same shamey flavor, those same weak “of course it’s okay to discuss such things in appropriate contexts” excuses, and I don’t like it.
“But what if someone is triggered by your bodies” is exactly how people justified trans exclusion at mwmf.
It’s like… people have no idea how these things have been weaponized before.
I’m tired.
Some people have asked me to make “cursing free” versions of the stuff I post on tumblr and I 100% get it. I’ve written comics about consent and invisible illness and queerness and some of the people who are looking for swearing-free versions are doctors and educators. I’m totally onboard with that. Sometimes I’ll be asked to make a no-cursing version of an educational/informative post, for instance there was a kid who wanted a “here’s how to get cheap glasses” without cursing so they could print it out and show it to parents and get glasses. And I’m totally here for that, I feel you kiddo.
And then there are the types of people who reblog my LOTR but with raccoons post edited “because there were a lot of f- and s- words so I fixed it” and you precious angels can fuck off.
Sometimes the “fuck” is intentional. Sometimes the vulgarity is inextricable from the humor or frustration of what I’ve written or made.
And it drives me up the wall to see my posts reblogged with “UwU I fixed all the bad language in this so now it’s safe and purified and the righteous can enjoy it as well as all those fallen sinners who have been passing around the original.”
Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte (Spanish for Our Lady of Holy Death), often shortened to Santa Muerte, is a female deity or folk saint in Mexican and Mexican-American folk Catholicism. A personification of death, she is associated with healing, protection, and safe delivery to the afterlife by her devotees. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, her cult has become increasingly prominent since the 2000s.
The worship of Santa Muerte is condemned by the Catholic Church in Mexico as invalid, but it is increasingly firmly entrenched in Mexican culture.
Santa Muerte is also seen as a protector of homosexual, bisexual, and transgender communities in Mexico, since many are considered to be outcast from society. Many LGBT people ask her for protection from violence, hatred, disease, and to help them in their search for love.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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