Two little boys had a tea party with pizza today. Five children carefully painted paper stars. There was singing and dancing and riding bikes and drawing one very big and one very small shark. All is well.

Imean... nobody knew, but someone noticed. More than one someone. I got to become a whole person with them. And I learned the people who didn't know didn't try. If you are honest, open, and routinely misinterpreted anyway? Sometimes it's because you picked the wrong people to communicate with.

Spicy take: "I like this" and "this is gross" are not always stances of equal moral weight. I am specifically talking about sex-positive discourse. When expressing distaste -publically- at any sexual activity, you usually have the full weight of institutional sex negativity at your back.

The dichotomy of being vastly happier than I have earned, and yet in a world of unfairness and horrors, is a tough mess to detangle. "Like other great men under reverses, I must endeavor to subdue my mind to my fortune. I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve."

I have become the resident expert on getting my kids (in childcare) to eat New Things. The trick is that I don't actually have any particular goal about them eating new things. I just sit next to them and explain what the foods are, offer them various individual parts of the meal, and wait.

Currently having pizza pops, rice peas carrots, a prepack yogurt and fruit by the foot for lunch like an actual middle schooler. I *might* be compensating for four to six years of frozen burrito lunches daily.

Knitting is good for the brain.

The trouble with dehumanization is the anthropocentrism - if not-humans are not worse than humans, inhuman is not an insult :)

Do science to it.

Halloween is about laughing at death. We send children off with treats because children are how we laugh at death. Death gets all of us, but it can't get us all.

This dog was spotted wearing shoes. This is not a drill. He hopes you like them. 13/10

"No sane/reasonable person/society would ~" who told you we live in a sane reasonable society full of sane reasonable people?

"All suspects are presumed cisgender until proven guilty of transsexuality in a court of painful self-exploration." _OUCH_ Look, most of y'all on this page already know themselves. But in case it helps anyone, this is a good read. If you're testing yourself for transness, you probably aren't cis.

I'm not asking for much, just mutual worship in all that we do

Someone painted over some but not all of this. Guess which got spraypainted green, and which did not 🤬

Yeah, sure, gods teapots sentience and morality... who wants soup?

There is a spectacular ego boost to the way that just existing the way I maturally want to exist is treated as brave and helpful and transformative. But like.. it is. I got to do this because others did first, and I am a far better person for it as well as more satisfied and complete feeling. =♡=

Sol! I have relatively few OCs I draw much but here he is <3

It's also useful as an argumentative tactic to presume into the conversation that racism is bad and no one knowlingly wants that, even if you know it's false. Then you present the nuance of the definition, allowing the racist to gracefully reposition without accepting they were consciously evil.

Me: I'll buy a pattern for this! That will save me time! Me, 20 minutes later: this pattern sucks, I'm doing my own thing.

Explaining to a friend today that my love language with my partner is psychic damage, getting slightly terrified nods. Look, me and @shibbi.bsky.social are actually very good for each other and have a genuinely sweet relationship. Which involves many "aughhh why would you inflict this on me" =♡=

Much suffering is optional. Some suffering is worth it. Much less of the suffering we think is worth it is necessary to the thing it's worth than we imagine. Shove at the thing making you suffer sometimes. It might shift!

I recognize there are five books here, you don't have to read the ENTIRE works of Oscar wilde to get me, but this feels like a good and well distributed primer on Mishas. Tempted to reorganize and add Akwaeke Emezi's pet to this stack while I'm at it but. Not. The. Point.

Trans power soup social ART WORK

The world is better when we all work together. 🍄 #art #cuteart #traditionalart

1. The government for not setting a living wage. 2. The bakery for not paying one. 3. The customer for failing to tip, fully knowing that 1 and 2 aren't in place, and that it's on them to cover the gap for the service they received.

Twelve to one ratio.

Binaries are almost always bad models. Adult/child is a binary. Discusssssss

Fuzz therapy

Ok, let's have a chat about children's rights and agency. Bc if there is any group of humans who gets default treated as though they don't have those, it's kids, and it's kinda wild.

Health Canada puts out guidelines recommending N95s and clean indoor air! Let’s do this! Yes it’s overdue, and no it doesn’t address every risk factor, but we can significantly curb COVID with respirator use and clean air. www.canada.ca/content/dam/...

There are moments in childcare that make it all worth it. Some are heartwarming - the kid who grins and toddles into your arms, the tongue out making artwork chilbd, the very serious conversation about how that's daddy cloud and that's baby cloud. Some are "child poured glass of milk on own head"

Having a hell of a time tracking reality and trying to stop myself hardening in response. I feel monstrous and angry or terrified and vulnerable by turns, when I am not distracting myself working on something else. This is not a new problem for me. I left climate work for similar reasons as a teen.

What a shock

Calling AIgen tech assitive and its detractors ableist implies the existence of can't-be-creative disease, no? Bc these are generally people who have the physical capacity to control a keyboard if nothing else.

We (the community) will survive. We (the people) will get through this. The bastards will lose, as they always must. There will be better days. We, the individuals? May not see them. May not be able to enjoy them through our grief if we do. All we can do is hope, and find joy where we can.

Continuing to try, to have faith in the leaders you choose, and in your own leadership, in the capacity of the world to change, is the only way we win. It may be irrational in every other sense, but it's unavoidable. Choose your guiding star, commit to the course. As many times as it takes.

Warching AItists claim artists are being elitist when we say they find the product of billionaire's pet project to make art creation skills obsolete distasteful feels like nothing more than DARVO. If y'all didn't think skill or effort matters you could publish the prompts instead of the results.

Yes, many AI critics are in fields that AIgen work directly competes with and disrupts pay for. Many AI proponents stand to gain from AI either from investing or by avoiding the costs of paying those people. Each bias is equally (and not particularly) disqualifying. Whom do you prefer to defend?

I should get back into knitting.

We cannot talk about the suffering disabled people face without also talking about the ways the state creates and upholds the conditions of suffering.

My kids painted pumpkins today. Among other joys of childcare, this is one of my favourites - watching children get focused and fascinated with exploring something new to them, with building a skill. Pumpkins are round and slippery, paint interacts with them in novel ways. It drips. It slides.

AI "artists" have zero underatanding of what creative work actually means omfg. -If I trace, it's not my work -If I copy as closely as I can, it is not my work. -If I tweak details, the details are my work. The rest isn't. I can make non original work. It is unethical to claim it as mine.

You took a perfectly good rock and you runied it is what you did, look at it, it's got viruses and depression

Watching old star trek and fondly remembering the time my high school english teacher assigned us to write about "measure of a man"

Highlight of the day - the kid who hates eye contact now looks at my face, because I mimic his lookaway thing and went "hey if you want you can look here instesd of my eyes" and tapped my forehead. So now I get to see his silly lil gaptoothed smile head on.

Good morning to all the well behaved people in my time zone who are already asleep. 😒

To any of you still outside at approaching midnight - get home dangerous

Why is the an awake small problem? The problem is making fun horrifying dragons for #pokemoninfinitefusion I sleep now.