In honor of World AIDS Day, I'd like to share a story that breaks my heart whenever I tell it. Please read it. It's the story of David Carroll.

Thread, up and down. Something I keep in mind — my gran was a plump lady, and when I got custody of her, she was falling 3-4 times a day. She got bruised, one time she cut her forehead, but all that adipose in her butt and thighs? Shock absorbers. Someone thinner would have broken both hips.

hey y’all our sale is still ongoing and ngl as a small business that uses certified ethical labor we could really use the sales 😅 it’s been a damn rough year

Psst: if you have both a local food bank and some spare cash, Penzey’s is doing buy one trial bag, get a second one of the same type free. Up to three bags of each type, so buy 3 granulated garlics, get 3 more for free. My local food bank doesn’t ASK for spices, but they very much appreciate them.

#AllIsBrightAdvent starts today! I'll be sharing BTS info, Welsh context and other non-spoilery bits and bobs related to the day's chapter. You can use the hashtag to react as you read, too! Plus, it's still on sale for today (Dec 1) if you haven't grabbed it yet: books2read.com/u/bPOa0d

Ah yes, the season where American Christian hegemony means every "holiday" thing is actually Christmas and also where American Christian culture just tramples all over the actual liturgical season of Advent. Heard someone say "the 25 days of Christmas" recently and died inside.

Yesterday, not today, was the first day of Advent. Advent is a season of preparation and fasting in solidarity with the poor. (And yes modern culture has absolutely shifted WAY, WAY away from that). Christmas is the 12 days from sundown the 24th to Epiphany on the 6th of Jan. Now shoo.

Thread:

Having a snowstorm on small biz Saturday is really gonna fuck our holiday szn, please consider buying a book for a gift (ppl in the USA) to help keep this queer little bookstore scooting along.

The Sweet Hereafter just deployed their Christmas-season cheesecakes! One of the best things we do for the season is order a whole gingerbread cheesecake and eke it out. (Doable because it freezes so well.)

NORMALIZE GIVING SECONDHAND GIFTS 🎁

Some folks have brought this up in comments, but just saying... maybe we should ACTUALLY PAY ATTENTION to the multitude of studies showing COVID infections (even "mild" ones) cause brain changes and ongoing cognitive decline. We've been letting our young people get COVID over & over & over again.

Freelance friends, advice apropos of nothing: When negotiating a rate for a job, the best thing is to let the client say a number first. It will often be higher than what you would've put forward bc we almost always undervalue ourselves.

Under normal conditions I wouldn't take the time to fill out a form like this for maybe $25, and then maybe more if there's any left. But, if that money comes from the Westons then sure, I'll take a few minutes, because fuck them.

My sister @briespangler.bsky.social has a new etsy shop! She's a professional illustrator and is doing pet designs Also she's been staying with us and for unknown reasons she added two dog shirts to the store, no idea why, these dogs certainly don't look familiar to me www.etsy.com/shop/yellows...

This is true of any ruminant whose diet is low enough in protein. There are videos on the internet of cows and goats casually snapping up baby chickens that happen to wander by. Ruminant molars are sharp enough to give you cuts like a scalpel, they can easily grind tiny birds.

how it started vs how its going! 3 years ago today, fish dad and i got the best black friday deal of all

Philly, I got this lil guy out of the pouring rain last night! If you're interested in adopting a very very friendly sweet kitten lmk!

Heads up, there's a recall on pecorino romano cheese from several brands (Ambriola, Locatelli, Member’s Mark, Pinna, and Boar’s Head) over concerns of Listeria

Soup tastes better when you are eating it out of your most beloved bowl. Coffee or tea taste better when you are drinking them from your most cherished mug. A book is more captivating when you’re reading it in your preferred chair. Denying these facts is akin to denying science itself.

THREAD. 3 years ago, with no warning, a brilliant orange farm cat wandered over from the draughty barn where he had been living, in rural Cornwall, and decided he wanted to live with us instead. We decided to call him Jim. This is the first photo I took of him, on that night: December 1st, 2022.

won't have em for this weekend, but i've been getting a few more people at my table than I'd like lately asking *very pointedly* if i drew everything myself, so i designed a new sticker this afternoon that will hopefully quell some of those concerns. #art

Saint Munditia, patron saint of spinsters, died circa 310 AD, beheaded by a hatchet. She was transferred from the Roman catacombs in 1675 and put on display in Munich, her bones encased in a bejeweled shroud, her hands clasping a glass container of dried blood. www.atlasobscura.com/places/jewel...

It's also helpful when you put the tag at the beginning of your post, so people immediately know if they want to scroll away or read it.

Learn from a LEGEND.

This will only matter to like 4 of you but I've coordinated about 20 Disney trips in my life of big groups of friends and as such get asked for tips a lot. So a thread, apply none or all. 1) a backpack 2) in it, bring a spare pair of underwear in case you sweat through pair one

AI is a very general term, you have to be more specific. Do you mean the AI that stole my copyright, the chatbot causing teen suicide and psychosis, the deepfake porn of women without their consent, the bots driving political division or the ones polluting communities and driving electric bills up?

There's a pretty great Tumblr post about this:

my aunt got me this cute penzey's DEI themed advent spice calendar. we love an extremely woke brand don't we folks

🚨PPE SUPPLY CANADA IS HAVING A SALE 🚨 This is where I get my face masks. The only ones I can find that fit. They also have covid tests for 20% off (ALTHOUGH THEY SHOULD BE SUPPLIED WITHIN THE COMMUNITY FOR *FREE*) www.ppe-supply.com

This blue lobster is about one in two million, and displays the beautiful blue colouring due to a genetic mutation. This mutation suppresses other colours (red, yellow, green). #NovaScotia #Lobster

Looks like neither Qobuz nor Deezer natively offer Linux desktop or Roku apps (either of which would've simplified things; possibly they can be MADE to work), so my choice to take a stab at Qobuz first (and only, if I bond) was based on being able to actually *buy* music through it, not just stream.

The 25th of November is St Catherine's feast day. "This isn't about God, the stained-glass legends of broken wheels, the barrowload of miracles, or the dinner-plate halo they will nail to your head. Under the gospel, the truth of it: woman answers back, ends up dead." - Rosie Garland

Amazing thread:

it was a constant battle between the insane chemistry of the leads & the blinding white-hot talent of vince gilligan & darin morgan versus the worst writing a freshman college student ever spun out after reading nikos kazantzakis & dostoevsky

i love the x files but chris carter may be the worst writer of dialogue american television ever produced

when people are like "x media is good but the dialogue is overwrought" i'm like dude my favorite show is Hannibal where in the first episode one guy asks another guy "what do you see me as" and he responds "i think you are the mongoose i want under the house when the snakes slither by"

Okay, so you cannot avoid a Thanksgiving event, and it’s not entirely under your control. You’re home from college, you live with your parents, your spouse isn’t ready to process how awful their natal family is. It happens. THERE ARE STRATEGIES YOU CAN EMPLOY TO YOUR BENEFIT.

For one week only, get my F/F romance advent calendar novella for 99p! Bethan, dragged back to her Welsh village, is desperate to escape before Christmas until she meets new neighbour Mali. One chapter per day from 1-25 December - snap it up now to start reading on Dec 1! books2read.com/u/bPOa0d

As we are now T minus 3.5 days from Thanksgiving, if you need to deploy Operation Avoid The Boundary Tramplers, tonight is when you post where they snoop about a headache or a queasy kid, or a funny noise from your car, or your pet acting strange, or a serious work issue or an unexpected paper.

It's time for everyone's favorite chronologically unanchored holiday, The Story of the Lizard in the Leg.

I think the Americans have the right idea putting a major holiday in between Halloween and Christmas. Join me this week, fellow Canadians, as we celebrate in the inaugural Feast of Mr. Dressup. We will eat ketchup chips with puppets and hold the Christmas music at bay.

New rule. When I order quilt fabric for a project I am required to IMMEDIATELY label a gallon ziplock with said project and put the quilt pattern and fabric IN THE BAG. I have so many interesting sets of fabric I have no idea what I planned to do with.

GenAI has polluted image search results, especially for animal pics. It’s now basically impossible to find accurate art references. Enter this: a repository of open-access, AI-free images of wild & exotic taxa. Artists creating *without AI* have blanket permission for derivative/transformative use.

Thread, also concerning shelters: I find it distressing that people will justify harsh measures saying people won't go into the shelters and not immediately ask what is wrong with the shelters that people would rather sleep in the rain than use them

If someone knits or crochets you a blanket or sweater, they want to keep you warm AND they dedicated many hours of their lives to making it for you. There's no profit in fiber arts, not when you can get a machine made at Target for 30 bucks. So know fiber artists making for you? Is an act of love.

Well, I still haven't actually chosen a new music streaming service (Qobuz and Deezer are the two I'm waffling between), but I did at least *finally* cancel my paid Spotify subscription.

Sometimes I think about when Wheel of Fortune changed from movable blocks to touchscreens, and how no one for a moment imagined getting rid of Vanna White, even though technology was mostly "doing her job", bc her ACTUAL job was keeping the audience engaged and making the reveal timing perfect.

This thread is ... aaaaaaauuuuuugh

The holiday season often requires discussion with loved ones about COVID boundaries, here’s a blog post I wrote with some ways to approach these conversations www.oliviabelknaptherapy.com/post/tips-fo...