likes-squared
93 posts
Latest Posts by likes-squared
If the Internet Archive goes down or stops allowing the uploading of books, the other GG archivists and I have everything backed up and are working on disseminating the archive amongst ourselves to make it more infallible. We'll reupload it if we must. I hope it doesn't come down to that, but I'm grateful we were all here to save everything while we're still were able to
As I've said before, will say again, and will say some more in the far future: The internet is ephemeral. If you love it, save it. Your copy may one day be the only copy.
Is your landlord invading your privacy? Is your apartment heated inadquately? Do your utilities keep getting shut off because your landlord isn’t paying? Have you been trying to get them to repair your dishwasher for five months and they won’t replace the spray arm part even though it’s visibly broken?
You’ve heard of employee unions using collective bargaining to force the bosses to provide better pay and better working condiditions. But did you know if you rent an apartment in an apartment complex, you can do something similar?
It’s called a Tenant Association, and it’s basically a union for renters.
Here’s an overview of the why and how of forming a tenant association
Here’s a more thorough organizing manual
When it comes down to it, you and your fellow tenants are the ones paying your landlord’s salary. Go remind them of that.
I'm sorry I can't remember who on my dash said they were going to have a ton of spoiled food because of the hurricane.
If you have any kind of home insurance (owner or renter) there is likely a clause to cover spoiled food in the event of a power outage or disaster. It's generally between $200 and $500 and often no questions asked about the food itself. But you do have to call them and request it.
If you know anyone who's having this trouble please tag them in on this.
Thought I would share this here. Image is a clickable link that will take you to the account that posted it! ID has now been corrected, and is in alt text. It is also below, please excuse the redundancy:
—
Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) tweeted: “No one can make you stay in an unsafe worksite. Close up and walk out with your coworkers until management or nature fixes the problem. Contact us for help.”
EWOC quoted their own tweet and added, “If your boss won’t let you evacuate: Convince as many coworkers as you can to all leave together & contact us right away. You have the right to organize & leave an unsafe worksite. If they’re not bluffing & still try to fire you after the storm, we’ll help you fight it.”
Attached to the OP is a meme of a skeleton marching away, titled “Just walk out - you can leave!” It lists, “wildfire smoke, hurricane, flooding, no heat, powers out, no water, tornado warning, AC broke, weird fumes.” Bottom text reads, “Climate sucks… hit da bricks!” Overlaid is the meme’s author, “@/organizeworkers.”
End ID.
I know there’s an existing post somewhere, but here’s the list of OBGYNs in the USA and other countries that will perform tubal ligation (aka female sterilization) without arguing with you
EDIT: this list is not mine. It has been curated by Dr. Fran Haydanek, here is her instagram
Lovely people of tumblr, if I may speak with my librarian hat* on for a moment:
If you are in the US, you may be aware that librarians are Going Through It because some malicious people believe in fascism and have decided to make that our problem. Whether you are in the US or not, there is something you can do to help your local librarians out:**
Say something nice to us.
You can post on social media and tag your library, you can find the library’s main phone number and call, you can go in person, you can send a card (we display cards in our break room)! I guarantee you that you will make the day of the person you talk to, we will immediately go tell all our colleagues how lovely you were, and you will help us live to love and fight another day.
*it is a fetching piece of millinery in purple silk
**I propose we make this an international group project. Whether your librarians are going through it or not, we all appreciate a kind word.
We've lost a lot to the onslaught of enshittification but I can think of none more brazen than Discord getting rid of the send button
Here's a legal PSA:
If you've committed a crime and a detective gathers everyone involved in the room, especially if he's not actually a detective and is instead a novelist, puzzle-setter, psychic, fake psychic, dog, chess grandmaster, etc. ...
YOU SHOULD NOT CONFESS.
Every year, hundreds of people are put away by non-traditional "detectives" who have either inserted themselves into the case or are working with the police in a dubiously legal capacity as advisor. In 99% of these cases, the murderer gives a full confession even though the evidence against them is circumstantial at best and often requires a long just-so story which can only guess at motive.
If this happens to you, stay quiet, do not attempt to defend yourself or talk your way out of it, only say "I want a lawyer".
Now if you find yourself being investigated by a boy genius, magician's assistant, anthropologist, classics scholar, or philosopher, it's likely that refusing to talk to the police (or investigator with no legal authority) is merely the end of the second act, and by the end of the third act they will have you dead to rights.
YOU SHOULD STILL NOT CONFESS.
Make them take it to court. Force the eccentric detective and his straight-laced police partner to take the stand and explain their methods to a jury of your peers. Have your lawyer look at the chain of custody on the evidence, especially if you believe it to have been handled by someone who has only bumbled into detective work through their natural charm and/or unique set of skills and outsider perspective that come in handy more often than they should.
Know your rights. Don't let eccentric detectives put you away.
Reading rahaeli's bsky feed is an education in itself. I did not realize it was so common for undercover agents to join even harmless social activism groups and try to encourage people to do things they could be arrested for. The song has about a dozen verses, all of them based on incidents that resulted in felony charges o.O
The whole thread is very worth reading, especially since the incoming administration has been been very clear that they want to criminalize being trans or supporting trans rights. (Among other things.)
A lot of younger people have no idea what aging actually looks and feels like, and the reasons behind it. That ignorance is so dangerous. If you don’t want to “be old,” you aren’t talking about a number of years. I have patients in their late 80s who could still handily beat me in a race—one couple still runs marathons together, in their late 80s—and I lost someone who was in her early 60s to COPD last year. What you want is not youth, it is health.
If you want to still be able to enjoy doing things in your 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, what you want to do, right now, is quit smoking, get some activity on a regular basis (a couple of walks a week is WAY better for you than nothing; increasing from 1 hour a day of cardio to 1.5 will buy you very little), and eat some plants. That’s it. No magic to it. No secret weird tricks. Don’t poison yourself, move around so your body doesn’t forget how, and eat plants.
If you have trouble moving around now because of mobility limitations, bad news: you still need to move around, not because it’s immoral not to, but because that’s still the best advice we have. I highly recommend looking up the Sit and Be Fit series; it is freely available and has exercises that can be done in a chair, which are suitable for people with limited mobility or poor balance. POTS sufferers, I’m looking at you.
If you have trouble eating plants because of dietary issues (they cause gas, etc.) or just because they’re bitter (super taster with texture issues here!), bad news. You still want to find a way to get some plants into your body on a regular basis. I know. It sucks. The only way I can do it is restaurants—they can make salads taste like food. I can also tolerate some bagged salads. On bad weeks, the OCD with contamination focus gets so bad I just can’t. However, canned beans always seem “safe,” and they taste a bit like candy, so they’re a good fallback.
If you smoke and you have tried quitting a million times and you’re just not ready to, bad news. You still need to quit. Your body needs you to try and keep trying. Your brain needs it, too. Damaging small blood vessels racks up cumulative damage over time that your body can start trying to reverse as soon as you quit. I know it’s insanely, absurdly addictive. You still need to.
You cannot rules lawyer your way past your body’s basic needs. It needs food, sleep, activity, and the absence of poison. Those are both small things and big asks. You cannot sustain a routine based on punishment, so don’t punish your body. Find ways to include these things that are enjoyable and rewarding instead. Experiment. There is no reason not to experiment—you don’t have to know instantly what’s going to work for you and what won’t, you just need to be willing to try things and make changes when things aren’t working for you.
You will still age. Your body will stop making collagen and elastin. Tissues you can see and tissues you can’t see will both sag. Cushioning tissues under your skin will get thinner. You’ll bruise more easily. Skin will tear more easily. Accumulated sun damage will start to show more and more. Joints will begin to show arthritis. Tendons and ligaments will get weaker and get injured more easily, as will muscles. Bones will lose mass and get easier to break. You’ll get tired more easily.
But you know what makes the difference between being dead, or as good as, in your 60s vs your 90s? Activity, plants, and quitting smoking. And don’t do meth. Saw a 58-year-old guy this week who is going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t quit whatever stimulant he’s on. I pretended to believe it was just the cigarettes, and maybe it is, but meth and cocaine will kill you quicker. Stop poisoning yourself.
Baby steps; take it one step at a time; you don’t need to have everything figured out right now. But you do need to be working on figuring things out.
If you’re in the US (or in correspondence with people from there) and you haven’t been paying attention to this issue… it’s time to start.
Hey you know what sucks is predatory companies that make you enter your email address so that they can harass and advertise to you to access resources you might need to keep track of expenses after a disaster. So, uh, fuck them.
If you need to track the cost of things like hotel stays, pet kenneling, medical care, etc. after a disaster you can use this worksheet.
If you need to create an inventory of your home for an insurance claim (and if you'd like to do this to keep someplace safe before a disaster) you can use this worksheet (two pages, instructions on the first page, worksheet on the second).
And here's a FEMA document with numbers for disaster relief groups and a checklist of documents that you may need to have replaced as well as a description of what to do if you had cash in your home that was destroyed and can possibly be replaced.
Get stronger without moving!
Isometrics are known to improve strength rapidly (think highly targeted, specific strength training). As a result, a lot of people train them with high weight and short hold times.
However, while "strength training" like this sounds great, it took me a few years to realize the strength I actually wanted was much more in the 30-second range. While there's obviously transfer between the ranges, this way is more targeted (like getting stronger at what you can do 3-5 reps with will also improve your 9-12 range and vice versa).
This way was less strenuous (allowing me to do more), more stable, and encouraged better form for me. It also transferred well into my daily activities, which usually required more than short holds. Think of carrying a heavy bag across the yard for construction. There are also some potential rehab benefits for joints.
Neither way is necessarily "wrong," but I just wanted to share the value I found in longer holds.
thriftbooks better world books half-price books wonder book pangobooks libgen archive.org ubuweb kanopy (library card required; free) tubi pluto tv
storygraph
abebooks, book depository, and goodreads are all owned by amazon.
Hey kid you want a job?
Great get online and go to a job board. Indeed, Linkedin whatever. Now you're gonna search for a role that's in your city, fits your qualifications, and doesn't seem like a bad time.
See that easy apply button? Don't hit it they just throw those in the trash. Now you're gonna want to go to the company's website and check their careers page.
Oh? That job doesn't exist anymore. Cool go back to the job board and find another one.
Great you found another job, you're on the company's career page and the job exists!! So you're going to need to make an account on the career page website. They're using Workday, the same site as the last job you applied for? Who cares? You need to make another account for THIS job's workday page.
Now you're going to upload your resume. That'll autopopulate about 15 boxes with everything on your resume, except formatted wrong and with tons of errors. So just go through and painstakingly check the dates on all of that and rewrite everything you already laid out in an aesthetically pleasing format on your resume.
Ok time for the cover letter, explain why this specific job and company are deeply important to you. You love their mission statement and wouldn't even laugh if their ceo was gunned down in the street. You'll really want to reiterate the things you just spent the last 20 minutes filling out on the resume section
(Remember to include language from the job description, people who work in HR are lower than dogs and they need patterns or they get confused.) Write about a page, but hey don't sound too desperate or robotic this is where they judge your character!
Maybe add your portfolio site at the end here, who knows if that helps no one has ever clicked mine haha.
Anywayyy time to hit apply! Congrats! You'll see that confirmation email come in and you should be getting the rejection letter in about 2 weeks. Unfortunately your resume didn't have the right buzzwords and the AI auto rejected you :(
Time to start again and try not to kill yourself!
Some thoughts on fitness and health in 2025!
The video is mostly just me riffing on the word "bodybuilder". It helps to know that people interpret the word differently:
A.) Some think of it as the apex of all fitness and the default fitness goal.
B.) Others don't like it as much and may say they prefer "functional" training, etc.
But I do think that if you are actively training towards a goal, then you should be building your body to be healthier, more functional, and more fit.
That leaves me with 2-3 main messages in the video:
1.) If you're improving, you're building yourself, and that's really cool. You're literally building an improved version of yourself.
2.) Your health should improve or maintain along with your fitness. If you're sacrificing health for "fitness", then it may not actually be fitness.
3.) Have a beautiful year!
just an FYI for trans people in the US right now
[id: reddit post by user spaghettishoestrings titled "(UPDATE) Just lost my healthcare !" with the flair "Celebratory."
Post reads:
Original post is viewable through my profile. Apologies, since I’m on mobile, I couldn’t hyperlink. The TLDR: my doctor called me on Monday and informed me that their practice would no longer be providing treatment for gender affirming care as a result of a recent presidential Executive Order, even though the EO was for people under 19. Even though I’m 25.
Also, because it was asked a few times, this happened in Michigan, and I’ve been on HRT for 5+ years. It’s a practice that includes like 15+ physicians, and I think that the decision was made over my PCP’s head, given that she once told me that she literally moved states to be able to provide gender affirming care here.
First off, genuinely, thank you so much for all the replies and messages. I genuinely felt frozen after that phone call and didn’t know where to start, and you all really helped me get my feet off the ground.
A couple people mentioned contacting the ACLU, which, truthfully, I thought, “there’s no way that the ACLU will get back to me” but I sent a message anyway. They actually called me a few hours after my post and we talked about the Executive Orders and my rights. They offered to fax my provider a letter reminding them of my rights and some other legal terms. It’s crazy how a post on reddit resulted in my name being on the official ACLU letterhead.
Anyway, today my doctor’s physician assistant called me and shared that their practice is reversing their decision and they will continue to provide gender affirming care. I’m still keeping a bunch of the resources that y’all shared saved, including Planned Parenthood, Plume, and looking into a private endocrinologist.
This whole experience just reminded me how great this community is. I appreciate y’all <3"
[end id]
source
[id: reddit user copurrs commented:]
You should contact Chase Strangio from the ACLU, I believe he is looking for reports of folks being denied their GAC due to these EOs. He's @chasestrangio on IG and Threads.
[end id]
