“In Sweden, having drugs in the bloodstream is punishable with prison”

Oh wow, I didn’t know that

What do you expect her to do instead?

What’s your favourite scent/scent note? (Either scent to work with if you make perfumes, or just something you personally enjoy for your own use)

I know of Chappell Roan because she’s recently been ruffling people’s feathers by asserting boundaries against fans’ parasocial weirdness; I’ve never heard any of her music, but this alone is enough to make me a fan.

On paper, the Equality Act 2010 is great in a bunch of ways. In practice, it’s exceedingly difficult for the average person to pursue justice through it. I imagine the barrier is similar to how it works in the US, except the UK has way less of a litigation culture.

Ah yes, thank you for adding this.

I really hated learning how to drive, because I’m good at learning things in a knowledge type way, but that was little help with learning how to drive. I’m not very good at being not very good at things, which sounds like a humble brag, but it actually means I get frustrated and find it hard to stick with things I don’t immediately click with.

It took me a decent while before driving began to feel more natural, but it did get easier; one of the changes I noticed as I improved was I gradually came to treat the mirrors as an extension of my visual perception rather than things I needed to remind myself to check (this also meant I preferred reversing for tight manoeuvres, because the mirrors meant I could better gauge my “vehicular proprioception”, so to speak (how close I was to other stuff))

None of this will make your quest any easier, because the process does take time and it sucks for the majority of that. However, I hope you take some comfort in knowing that this certainly isn’t a you-problem.

Sometimes I need to ignore American politics, because I’m not even American and it makes me feel sick to think about how impacted the entire world will be by this election, and most of us don’t even have a vote. Makes me feel pretty powerless

It sounds like you already have a decent handle on juggling self care alongside your activism, but I still feel compelled to remind you to be kind to yourself and take breaks if you need them. Perhaps it’s because I know too many people who are working to save the world, who forget that they are a valuable and necessary part of that world that’s worth saving too.

I have a Catholic friend who says she treats her body like a temple — full of red wine and guilt

If you like video essays, Dr Fatima on YouTube has a brilliant video about colonialism in astronomy which covers some recent Hawaiian protest movements

My younger sister got books from Dolly’s programme. We lived in a shitty little council estate in the North of England, and my little sister got to grow up with more books than I did because of a US country music star. It always blew my mind.

When I find myself becoming irked by someone offering help I don’t need, it helps me to think of things in terms of people who slip through the gaps: the system that the social worker is a part of strives to help those who need it, and you not needing that help makes you a false positive. You were likely flagged because sometimes when someone is living in their vehicle, this is a symptom (and reinforcing factor) of their life being in disarray. That is to say that some people who superficially look a lot like you are in need of support, and not catching these people would be false negatives. Bonus complication is that many people who do need this help may also be resistant to support (for a variety of reasons).

Given that no system is perfect, and the error rate will always be greater than zero, we can ask the hypothetical “is it better to have fewer false positives and more false negatives, or more false positives and fewer false negatives?”. Put a different way, when you’re bothered, that’s you slipping through the gaps in a system that has opted for more false positives with the goal of helping as many people who need it as possible.

Unrelated to everything else I said, I’m glad you’ve been able to find a way of living that you’re happy in — it is a challenge when the life that is best suited for us is one that society considers “abnormal”, so I’m happy to hear about anyone who has broken into what works.

I thought the same. What kind of music do you reckon they’d play?

No need to apologise — the world is grim, we’re all burnt out and having each other’s backs is how we survive, especially when it comes to the little things like this. Teamwork makes the dream work.

I came to the comments to say this, but I couldn’t say it better than you have here.

Link to aforementioned, for people’s convenience https://github.com/chiteroman/PlayIntegrityFix

(N.b. I have not personally used this, I just checked it out and wanted to facilitate other people’s curiosity)

I can’t help but wonder whether some people are aiming to scapegoat her. Like, this is a huge trial, with many defendants (I’m unsure whether anyone else besides her was sentenced to death at the first trial), but maybe pinning more stuff on her will make others (who may be more culpable for some of the charges than she is) less likely to get the death penalty.

This is incredible in ways I can’t articulate

What a cutie. I’m glad I get to see him via a photo though, and not in the toilet bowl when I’m trying to pee — that must have startled whoever found him

Grace Petrie is great for queer folk punk