Kyn-elwynn - Second Home

Begging people to stop reblogging this AI trash from “The Phantom Painter” on Instagram (instagram.com/phantom.painting). I’ve been seeing it on my dash more and more often from people who are otherwise anti-AI and either can’t tell it’s AI or don’t care because it looks cool.

This is the kind of shit that is VERY CLEARLY trained on the works of existing talented artists’ with distinct styles and this asshole is selling prints and making a profit off of stealing other people’s hard work.

Don’t give people like this money or attention and they will go away.

Please, if you’re going to buy art prints, buy them from an actual artist.

i am increasingly convinced that the wedding industry is having a statistically significant impact on young women leaving the mormon church. has anyone looked into this?

For the last goddamn time...

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Good grief....

"In case anyone missed it, the tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas has now spread to Ohio.

[The Republican Administration] has ordered the CDC to not report on this"

I bought a nice storage box at an estate sale without looking inside, and it was full of 8mm home videos.

It should be the start of a horror movie, and it kind of is, in the way that we see the past.

The films were made by a young, rural father throughout the 40s-50s filming in excessive and loving detail his baby son and homely but sweet-looking wife. The things that he chose to film belie this idea of “traditional family values” and masculinity, especially in the American and Canadian West (it’s unclear what side of the border they were living on.)

This young man was trying creative and artistic ideas with his hobby (his camera), like filming his wife doing her hair through the mirror, lots of landscapes, and flowers growing in their tiny garden.

The thing that struck me so much was the complete adoration of his family, in a way that might not be “50s Dad-Husband.” He’s spending hours of film taking care of and documenting teaching his son to garden. He sets up the camera to film himself and his wife laughing while doing the dishes. He gives her a gag gift of an apron for Christmas and she throws it at him while laughing. Her real present was a pair of hiking boots, which she is adorably delighted by.

This family was working poor, with a tiny rural house, and the home films capture warts and all. Instead of “Leave It To Beaver” dynamics, we have a family who should embody what people think of as the worst (or best) of 50s families, but absolutely do not.

The 50s weren’t the glossy advertising version that conservatives want to “return to”. This family was poor, and the camera was clearly the one hobby that the husband allowed himself. The young parents are delighted but exhausted. They are sharing housework. The homely but adorable young mother has terribly crooked teeth and wears overalls in the garden. Dinner parties include a surprisingly diverse group of friends.

I think the estate sale was after the death of the (now elderly) little boy in the films.

We can’t go back to an era that didn’t exist in the way that we assume it did. Even the 50s were full of complex and interesting people who weren’t just Suzy Homemakers and Pipe-smoking Fathers.

My point is that history is more complicated than we think. We can’t go back to a world that only existed in advertisements, and there were people living and loving each other throughout history.

I was struck by how much this young father loved his family and was so invested in his child and partner. He wouldn’t fit into any “traditional masculinity” molds, but he was delighted by his camera and capturing the things important to him. I’m so glad that I got to see his life through his eyes.

At the risk of destroying my notifications again, I'm back with another fundamentalist Christian translation.

A friend of mine who is studying to become a nurse mentioned that the CDC website on STI treatments had been taken down and she needed for her homework. I tried getting it myself and couldn't. I then tried accessing alternative guidelines I remembered and couldn't get those either.

She was frustrated and said "Why would they do that? Treatment is like the least controversial thing!"

And I was like "Well..."

On the less extreme end, I know lots of fundies who don't want information on STI treatments to be available because then people will think they can go sin without consequences.

The ideal sexual life in fundamentalist Christianity is to be a virgin, court and marry another virgin, and then get married and only ever have sex with that person for your entire life (and have lots of kids). And STIs are seen as proof of that because the only way (in their mind) to avoid them, is abstinence so it must be what God intended.

On the more extreme end, there is the occasional fundie who thinks that treating an STI (of someone who got it through sinning) is actually immoral because "the wages of sin is death" and that is God's design. This was not most people I knew but I certainly heard it enough.

Look, you can poke holes in this all you want but at least spare my notifications of it. Make your own post. I was in sex education on the practical and research side for a few years in part because of this specific issue so it hits close to home.

I mention it so people can know what to expect from this administration and hopefully prepare. Collect quality information especially on marginalized health conditions and be ready to spread it around. If you or a group you belong to have the equipment to run tests and treat them, stock up on supplies.

If anyone has taken their eyes off what's happening to federal workers in the US right now, here's some highlights that we're hearing from our comrades across the government who have not yet been fired:

In one building (hosting multiple agencies), the locks on the bathroom were changed so employees no longer have any access to a bathroom during the workday. People are peeing in trash cans.

Elsewhere, multiple agencies have reported that hand soap is no longer being supplied in the bathrooms.

Toilet paper supplies have not been adjusted to meet the needs of a vastly increased number of in-office employees.

Employee-owned coffee and coffee makers have been stolen or thrown away without notice (it was already illegal for taxpayer dollars to be spent on supplying federal employees with amenities like coffee, so many offices have coffee supplied by pooled employee funds).

Meanwhile, many offices don't even have potable drinking water (recurrent legionella outbreaks), so employees have to bring their own water from home.

Despite an explosion in the number of workers in offices, cleaning budgets have been slashed and many offices are not being cleaned regularly enough to remain sanitary. Pests like roaches and rats are a problem.

The firings continue, legal and illegal. Entire programs are being cut. Managers have no idea when they might lose staff. Employees are getting fired at 6pm on a weekend or finding out when they're unable to log into their computer or when they receive a shipping label in the mail to return their equipment.

Through all of this, the DOGE employees in federal workplaces are enjoying incredible and expensive luxury: AI-powered sleep pods, entire dormitories so they can live in federal buildings, nurseries for their children on site, free food and beverages, laundry services, and who knows what else. They have special security to restrict access to their areas of the buildings, including armed guards.

And I'm not just saying this to lament how bad it is for federal workers. I'm saying this because, as workers are reporting this to one another, the response is, inevitably: "This is illegal." "Yes, but who would I report it to? OPM? They're a DOGE puppet. OSHA? They've cut OSHA. The Inspectors General? Cut. The NLRB? Cut. My union? No longer recognized."

There is no one left to enforce these laws, so taking away access to basic sanitation is now effectively legal. They are doing this to federal workers, who historically have been some of the best-protected workers in the country. They are doing this specifically because it demonstrates to the public sector that it is now legal to do these things to their own workers.

obsessed with how fixable society is, on a structural level.

obsessed with how all you need to do is throw money at public education and eliminate most standardized testing and you will start getting smarter, more engaged, kinder adults. obsessed with how giving people safe housing, reliable access to good food, and decent wages dramatically reduces drug overdoses and gun violence. obsessed with how much people actually want to get together and fix infrastructure, invent new ways of helping each other, and create global ways of living sustainably once you give them livable pay to do so. obsessed with how tracking diseases, developing medicines, and improving public health becomes so much easier when you just make healthcare free at point of use.

obsessed with how easy it all becomes, if we can just figure out how to wrench the wealth out of the hands of the hoarders.