Opening writing commissions. If interested, please inquire through an ask or
email me at dugasdannelle@yahoo.com
with the subject line Writing Commission.
the way the wire sets up these two opposing forces in garak’s psyche that I think continue to wrestle it out in the background for the rest of the show – on one side, his father-who-won’t-even-acknowledge-that going ‘I hope you keep living in shame and despair and desolate isolation for decades to come sport😜’ (tain has basically gone 'be so kind as to create a hell of your own making and then stay in there for me, there’s a good boy’. and garak has done that. oof. tain made him build a closet in his own head and locked him in it by doing nothing except make it clear he’s not allowed to get out because he deserves to be in there. he never had to tell garak to do anything; that’s what makes him special. I. am in shambles)
and then on the other side coming in with a steel chair, julian’s soft steady voice going ’no one deserves this’ and 'I don’t want to hurt you’ and 'I’ll help you through it’.
one side that not only utterly abandoned him to his own misery but engineered it in the first place to control him, and one side that boldly, brazenly, doggedly refuses to abandon him, both on principle and out of personal care, no matter what garak says or does through the episode to try to throw him off. (and accepting the personal care aspect seems to part of bashir’s journey of the episode; he has to admit to himself that yeah they are friends at this point. he is not personally watching over this guy while he sleeps like a lanky dweeb guardian angel for purely professional reasons lol thank you for calling his fucking bluff jadzia.) tain and bashir are basically having a quiet faux-affable battle for garak’s soul at the end of that ep and while it starts small, down the road it eventually becomes clear julian won. tain gambles that his own influence will always triumph in the long run (he got there first, after all), and he’s wrong.
all of this is presumably also why garak writes a stitch in time specifically to julian (aside from all the normal gay reasons) – at the end of that he all but says that it’s partly because he knows in such a deep way that julian would never judge him as harshly as he judges himself. the kindest voice in garak’s inner world is julian bashir, that’s how deeply he’s internalized it. what the fuck. that’s one of the most beautiful ways of touching someone’s life I can imagine I feel nauseous and disoriented adn I need to go lie down for a while
PSA: tomatoes are not spicy. Tomatoes and tomato products should not be spicy. Pizza sauce isn’t inherently spicy. Tomato-based pasta sauce is not spicy. Ketchup is NOT spicy.
If tomatoes are spicy, you have an allergy to tomatoes.
This announcement brought to you by my almost 29-year-old husband learning for the first time in his 2.8 decades of putting food products into his mouth that spaghetti and saucy pizza aren’t spicy foods
Seeing the tags on this as it’s going around again, so I have returned to say a few things:
If your mouth hurts, feels raw, or itches when you eat something, please don’t eat it! It might not be a full-blown allergy, could be something like a sensitivity to the acid content or maybe even Oral Allergy Syndrome, but also, you might very well be allergic. Unless it’s explicitly designed to be sour or spicy, it’s not supposed to do that.
Bananas are not spicy, prickly, or tingly! Kiwi is not unbearably sour and tingly! You people probably have an allergy! Stop eating the death fruits!
Mango and pineapple are a little odd. A lot of people react to pineapple because of an enzyme it contains which breaks down proteins; depending on your sensitivity level, it can make it feel like your mouth is being dissolved, because that’s kind of maybe what’s happening? You might not have a full-blown systemic allergy, but if it hurts, listen to your mouth and respect its stopping point. Mango has a compound super similar to urushiol, which is the stuff in poison ivy. A lot of people get oral allergy symptoms with fresh mango. Again, not necessarily a systemic allergy, but also, your body doesn’t like that. Please listen to your body.
Honey is not naturally spicy, sour, or tingly. (Spicy and infused honeys do exist, but I’m talking plain honey.) It might be a bit rich/overly sweet, but no, it should not make your tongue funny, ‘prickle,’ or otherwise hurt your mouth. You are probably allergic to honey. (insert “ghost bees” post here lol)
Many peppers are spicy, but bell peppers are not. Repeat after me: Bell Peppers Are Not Spicy. If they are spicy, you are probably allergic! This is yet another one my husband learned recently. Bell peppers/capsicum are also called sweet peppers, because they are sweet.
On that note, here’s a handy metric: If you find yourself wondering how people just looooove this food, or how they always fail to mention the weird sensory feature about it–primarily the spiciness, ‘fuzziness’ in mouth, or pain it causes–your experience is probably out of the ordinary and could very well be some kind of allergy.
And now, an update on my husband’s journey of allergen discovery, because I’m sensing from the tags and comments this might be relevant to a lot of y’all.
Yes, he is definitely allergic to tomatoes. Went and got him allergy tested to confirm it, and it came back pretty darn high on the list. Along with a crapton of other foods he’d been eating his entire life. We immediately got rid of all of those things in our diet, and wouldn’t you know it, his lifelong “IBS” went away.
So here’s a further PSA.
If you have “IBS” or a “sensitive stomach,” try to get tested for food allergies, too. Not all food allergies send you into anaphylaxis. Sometimes they give you smelly gas, diarrhea, constipation, acid reflux, recurrent tummyaches, nausea, and headaches. And it doesn’t always happen right away, sometimes taking several hours or most of a day to produce the unpleasant results, so you might not be noticing what your specific triggers are.
Also, I see all you people in the tags talking about how you’re gonna eat your allergens anyway. Please don’t do that, unless you’re 100% medically sure it’s just something like a surface sensitivity to enzymes or an oral reaction that’s not actually an allergy. Eating your allergens all the time inflames your whole system, and it can cause a lot of damage that takes a long time to heal. Be kind to your body, friends. You live there.
Also, if you realise you’ve been having a reaction to a particular food or ingredient, and you have a history of anaphylaxis, even if it’s only been induced by medication or other non-food substances in the past, please don’t keep eating it to test it or whatever see a doctor particularly soon. They really need to check that stuff out and get it documented in your medical notes.
As OP said, don’t keep re-exposing yourself “to test it”, and if you’re seeing an escalation in the symtpoms you get when you eat it over time, particularly share that info with your doctor.
As a disabled person who’s loved LEVERAGE and LEVERAGE REDEMPTION since the beginning - for the characters but also the whole ethos of performing acts that help people against crap systems, it’s wonderful to be reminded that it springs from reality.
I actually wanna chime in here and give my two cents since I’ve done a lot of anxious research for similar fears of mine. So here goes. Summary/TLDR at the bottom:
The more browser extensions you have installed, the more fingerprintable your web browser is!
That’s why on the TOR Foundation’s website they recommend that you install ZERO extensions on the Tor Browser. Of course, in reality most people want or need some, so here’s what I’ve come to learn on a few vital and mentioned ones. The goal is to minimize your extensions as much as possible.
You don’t need two ad blockers. uBlock Origin is the best of the best, and has an element zapper if it ever misses anything automatically, which it rarely, if ever, does.
Privacy Badger is (allegedly) an outdated extension that doesn’t do very much other than make your browser more fingerprintable.
minerBlocker (while I haven’t don’t much research) doesn’t sound very useful. Because Firefox, if you change the Cookie Block settings, can block CrytoMiners on its own. uBlock Origin can also do this with a special script, but that’s beyond me, so you’ll have to turn to Reddit if you wanna use it for CryptoMiner blocking.
If you’re worried about viruses, the app Malwarebytes is cross-platform and open-source. It’s widely trusted by r/privacy and r/piracy. The free tier won’t run automatically after your free trial is up, so just run it every time you install a piece of pirated software, and then every once in a while after.
Also, you forgot the golden rule of torrenting. A good browser and extensions only prevent fingerprinting from a website, itself. This isn’t what’s gonna get you in trouble with the law. So: GET A VPN!! The ONLY way to prevent your internet service provider (ISP) from seeing what you’re doing is to encrypt your network usage with a VPN. Mozilla (the makers of Firefox) have a paid VPN which I personally use and is very beginner friendly and cross-platform. Most free VPNs cannot be trusted and usually collect, sell, and report illegal data, which defeats the purpose. Without a VPN, however, your ISP will be able to see that you’re downloading peer-to-peer content. Now, that isn’t always a bad thing. Some ISPs don’t care, and won’t do shit. For example, Mozilla VPN has failed a few times for me when I left my client running overnight, and nothing’s ever happened. If you live in Germany or another country with stricter piracy laws, or you have a stricter American ISP, you could get fined and/or have your service turned off. In Germany people have even gotten jail time. The #1 thing to do if you have anxiety about piracy is get a well-trusted VPN like Mozilla’s. In fact, if you only do one thing from this thread, THIS is the one to do. I highly recommend that you NEVER download to upload peer-to-peer pirated content without one, as it is a serious risk.
And finally, use r/piracy as a means to find reliable websites. Do not download torrents or files off random websites before looking it up on r/piracy. Stick to popular and active torrents, and I would suggest primarily using 1337x.to as a trusty website. Also, look for trusted crackers and repackers. For example, if you’re torrenting Mac Apps, a well known cracking group is TNT. If you want games and Windows software, FitGirl and DODI are popular repackers for them. DODI’s repacks are also among the only ones I’ve found that word with Translation Layers like Wine, WineSkin, and CrossOver on macOS and Linux.
Also, no amount of extensions on Firefox will make you anonymous. If want anonymity, you need to download the Tor Browser, add ZERO extensions, and NEVER change the default window size or settings. This level of security usually isn’t necessary for your average torrent downloader, though. I’d much rather use Firefox + a VPN than Tor. Tor is extremely slow because of it’s Onion Anonymizing Network, and is really only needed for people who have a reason to hide from the government, ie: political whistleblowers, protest organizers, etc.
There is also an extension called NoScript. It’s the only extension that comes with Tor, and it can be downloaded on Firefox as well. This extension is your gateway to preventing websites from collecting and sharing your data. HOWEVER, this extension will break websites, and it can be very frustrating to use if you aren’t privacy-minded, tech savvy, and patient. So, if you’re a beginner, I’d recommend trying this one at another time.
And finally, you need a way to download the torrented data (duh). The only two clients (apps) most people trust are qBittorent and Transmission. uTorrent is no longer trusted due to privacy issues. DO NOT USE IT. If you’re a beginner and want something with a pleasant UI, I highly recommend Transmission. I’ve been using it, and personally I love the simplicity over qBittorent; however, I know a lot of more advanced users really love qBittorent.
So, if you wanna get into the basics of piracy, here’s what you need:
Firefox
uBlock Origin
ClearURLs
“Strict” or “Custom” Cookie Setting on Firefox
Mozilla VPN!!!
Transmission
If you wanna go more in depth, add NoScript and swap Transmission for qBittorent.
And if you wanna go really advanced, replace Firefox with Tor Browser and download ZERO extensions. If you need me to tell you how to use Tor and what it’s for, though, then you probably don’t need it.
If a website has a paywall, like New York Times, DO NOT use the ctrl+A shortcut then the ctrl+c shortcut as fast as you can because then you may accidentally copy the entire article before the paywall comes up. And definitely don’t do ctrl+v into the next google doc or whatever you open because then you will accidentally paste the entire article into a google doc or something!!!! I repeat DO NOT do this because it is piracy which is absolutely totally wrong!!!
Also do NOT append “12ft.io/” before a URL ! Typing an URL like this https://12ft.io/<URL> will redirect to a site that would break the display of the page by removing the paywall !
Honestly it’s kind of prohibited to mash CTRL+P before some paywall windows can load in to get a PDF of the article. Really shouldn’t be done tbh very dangerous🤷🏿♂️ ❌️
If you use Firefox, I definitely would NOT recommend looking up add-ons by magnolia1234 on a certain hub for gitting open-source software.
Add-ons from unverified sources are ALWAYS dangerous - you can’t be certain what they’re doing with your data.
If such add-ons were truly safe, Mozilla wouldn’t have kicked them off their own site.
During the most poor and homeless period of my life, I had a lot of people get angry with me because I spent $25 on Bath and Body Works candles during a sale. They couldn’t comprehend why the hell I would do that when I had been fighting for months to try and get us on our feet, afford food, and have an apartment to live in.
Those candles were placed beside wherever I slept that night. In the morning, I would move them and set them wherever I’d have to hang out. At one point I carried one around in my purse - one of those big honking 3-wick candles. I never lit them, but I’d open them and smell them a lot.
I credit that purchase with a lot of my drive that got me to where I am today. I had been working tirelessly, 15+ hour days with barely any reward, constantly on the phone or trying to deal with organizations and associations to “get help at”. It’d gone on for almost a year by the end of it, and I was so burnt out, to the point that I would shake 24/7. But I could get a bit of relief from my 3-wick “upper middle class lifestyle” candles. They represented my future goals, my home I wanted to decorate, and how I would one day not be in this mess anymore.
When we moved into the apartment, and our financial status improved, I burned those candles every single day. When they were empty, I cleaned them out, stuck labels on them, and they became the starting point of my really cute organization system I had ALWAYS planned to have.
So whenever I hear about someone very poor getting themselves a treat - maybe it’s Starbucks, maybe it’s a home deco item, maybe it’s a video game… I don’t judge them. I get it. I get that you can’t go without anything for that long without it making you go crazy. You need to pull some joy, inspiration, and motivation from somewhere.
poor people deserve things they want, too. it is unfair to expect poor people to only buy things they “need”.
My grandfather used to tell me: if you only have 20 kr left, you buy grocery for 10 kr and flowers for the other 10 kr because you need a reason to live as well.
“Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.”
Hey, I made a silly quiz about the early-2000’s internet if anyone wants to take it!
The Relic
You were there. You were immersed in the early-2000’s internet and it still has a hold on you. You remember it fondly and you probably say “back in MY day” to the young whippersnappers of the Net.
“The entire British museum is an active crime scene” - John Oliver
[image description: two pictures, one above the other. The first image shows a statue originally from the Acropolis in Athens, now in the British Museum. The statue is a column shaped like a woman. It is labelled London. The bottom image is from the Acropolis Museum in Athens, showing the other five matching column/statues, with a space for the missing statue pointedly left open. This picture is shot from above and is labelled Athens.
image in savvysergeant’s reblog: screencap of tags from two people. Feeblekazoo’s tags read: the degree to which the Acropolis museum is designed to shame the British Museum is spectactular. butherlipsarenotmoving’s tags read: the acropolis museum is the most passive aggressive museum i’ve ever been to and i love it
/end id]
For those of you who don’t know museum drama, one of the largest and most famous parts of the British Museum’s collection is the so-called Elgin Marbles, which were looted from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin in the 18th Century. (The Acropolis is the hill in Athens, Greece which has some of the most amazing Greek ruins anywhere, the most famous of which is the Parthenon.) Elgin had (or at least claims to have had) permission from the Ottoman Empire to take stuff home with him, but a) this is one empire asking another empire if they can loot stuff from the other empire’s subjugated people, so, not exactly any moral high ground there Elgin, and b) he took a lot more stuff than the Ottomans said he could have.
Greece has been asking for those statues and sculptures to be returned since they won independence in 1832. That’s right, 1832, 190 years ago. The British Museum has had a number of excuses over the years, one of the biggies of the late 20th Century being “we couldn’t possibly give them back because Athens doesn’t have a nice enough museum to display them” and ignoring Greece’s response of “we will BUILD a museum just for them if you will just give us our damn stuff back!“
Finally, Greece said “fuck you” and built a museum at the bottom of the Acropolis called the Acropolis museum. It is huge, it is gorgeous, the collection of objects is amazing and the educational bits (“this is what it is and why it matters”) are really well done. It’s probably one of the best archaeological museums in the world; it definitely is the best collection of ancient Greek artifacts in the world, both for the size of the collection and the way it’s displayed.
Oh. And it is amazingly passive-aggressive. Every single piece of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum has an empty spot on display waiting for the piece to be returned to Greece. For example, there are a lot of pieces where Elgin took, say, the nicest (or easiest to remove) one of a set. The column/statue in the OP’s image is one of these. Friezes from the roof of the Parthenon are another example. The Acropolis Museum displays each one of these sets with space for the stolen pieces, along with a picture of what the stolen piece looks like and where it is. It is a giant middle finger at the British Museum, disguised as helpful information.
There’s no chance that the British Museum will return any of this in the next generation. It’s not up to the curators at the British Museum; they don’t get any say in this. The board of governors of the British Museum is made up of old posh English people who genuinely believe that the Empire was awesome and England has a perfect right to everything in the British Museum. They have set policies about what can and can’t be removed from the collection, and according to those policies nothing of any historical or monetary value can be given away or sold. And they actively promote the idea that their predecessors had a perfect right to loot the cultural heritage of the world, and that the museum has a perfect right to keep it forever. The only way to get anything out of the British Museum and back to its rightful place would be to completely replace the entire board of the museum with new people who think completely differently. And that’s not happening any time soon, alas.
By the way, the British argument that Greeks wouldn’t know how to care for the antiquities……. Greece has 206 archaeological museums. It’s not only incredibly demeaning as an argument, it’s also straight out false and misleading.
One thing (and with the massive caveat of I don’t disagree with the above in the slightest): the Board of Trustees isn’t like that. They’re not all white, they’re not all rich, and they’re not all English. By and large they’re academics. I was speaking to them the other week with regards to repatriation when I visited and they’re actually very much all for it (bar one or two exceptions…looking at you George) and are working on things. A group of 5 of them I can confirm actively loathe Elgin and the marbles room. The problem lies with the British Museum Act of 1968 (hereafter referred to as BMA68) which was a law created by the government to prevent anything within the BM, which the government owns but wants very little do to with unless you’re trying to repatriate fyi, being removed in the “national interest”. Repatriation is, annoyingly, illegal in the case of the contents of the BM. So the Board have been trying to change this by putting pressure in various areas to get the laws changed, and the government screws them by enforcing term limits for serving on the board and then trying to stack the board in their favour to prevent further action. It’s a game of politics and the government do not want to give up BMA68 at all.
I know we like to categorise everyone we’re up against in the fight for repatriation as “old, white, rich guys” but it’s not helpful when it is decidedly not the case. We need to be mad at the right people and focusing on efforts to change this ridiculous law. At this time, supporting projects like the International Training Partnership, which is the BM’s way of building a network of curators and training them so organisations like the British Government can’t say “hurr durr they can’t look after their artefacts” because actually they can, we trained them ourselves. The network of curators also allows them to build mounting international pressure. It’s not going to happen overnight, but the pressure is building now, I promise you.
“We need to be mad at the right people” is the crux of SO MANY THINGS
Thank you Lottie, as always.
So the problem isn’t even the people who run the museum, who are after all museum people and want museum things to be done well and respectfully, but the government, who want the museum to remind everyone of the time before they made their entire country a laughingstock.
So I got scammed and my bank cannot guarantee I’ll get my money back, I am currently unemployed but hoping that changes soon. I don’t like asking for help but it’s currently my only option. I need to open commissions to pay for some debts coming up.
I have paypal and Ko-fi. I understand that things are tight for many people so if you can’t donate please share this post.