"She was trying to tiptoe around his moods and desires, making herself smaller to fit into the space he left her, though no space would ever be small enough."
(Or what you will, Jo Walton)
yesterday was a funny day on twitter XD
https://twitter.com/GailSimone/status/1061786484028596224
as requested (though this is more resources and less vibes) and with a bigggg caveat that, obviously, life looks very very different for all of us right now. hopefully something on the list below will be useful to you. (art)
this is gonna sound stupid but i really recommend deep-cleaning your house/apt, for a number of reasons. one, you’re gonna be spending some serious time in there, you deserve a nice space. two, you will inevitably unearth fun stuff you forgot you had. case in point: i found a deck of cards and now all we do is play rummy 500.
reading. so hot right now. trends really do come back.
comfort reads (and these) (and these). personally i’ve been alternating between bon-bon YA and slow, lush works by writers i already know i love, like melville & anne carson.
pandemic reads (and these).
scribd (unlimited ebooks & audiobooks) has a one month free offer rn; it’s usually $9/month. kindle unlimited also has a 2-month free subscription but i’m not linking to that, stop giving your money to amazon.
crafts!! producing an object with my own two hands feels like the best thing right now. i’ve been making kitschy potholders because i am emotionally in the third grade, but that spring cleaning will probably turn up all sorts of good crafty objects. if the adult coloring book your aunt gave you is lost for good, i recommend checking out #colorourcollections pages from years past.
go for walks/runs/whatever, but keep it local (no driving 4 hours away and infecting a new town with your old town’s germs), isolated (no popular jogging trails!), and legal (state parks & beaches are closed for a reason).
PC games: here + here
print-and-play boardgames (& also cards against humanity, family edition)
magazines (through RBD + your library)
tv/movie streaming: HBO is free rn! & here are 10 other free streaming services. feel-good show plug: leverage is available on IMDB tv :-)
academic books: biiig long list here; does not include de gruyter (not all books are free rn, but a lot are–i downloaded 27 the other night. you may need to use a university VPN in order to have access, i can’t quite tell); cambridge UP; or manchester UP.
free exercise classes (big list here; i hate working out so i’ve just been doing yoga with adriene.)
museum tours
theater & opera (the UK’s national theatre at home; the shows must go on; the met)
NPR has an ongoing list of free virtual concerts, sorted by genre & time.
nikon is offering all of their photography classes for free during april
fender’s offering 3 months of free online guitar lessons
adobe creative cloud is free for students until june
also there are a million academic MOOCs available right now, if your brain is in a place where that seems doable.
supercook lets you input the ingredients you’ve got and suggests recipes that make use of them! good for figuring out to do with those weird beans in the back of your pantry.
in my house: we’re working through the stupid big tea stash i unearthed and eating a lot of big-batch comfort food–soups, homemade mac & cheese, etc.
maybe this is only happening in california but we haven’t had flour in a full month so here is a roommate-approved chocolate cake recipe that only uses 1 tbs of flour
keep track of local food service strikes! if you’re ordering delivery from local businesses, please tip generously.
(wheeze)
i hate working at home because i am really, really bad at it. the only thing that’s done the trick for me is physically changing workspaces (i never work at the dining room table downstairs but i live there now), wearing headphones, and lighting a candle.
ambient sound: coffitivity; DIY mixer.
cold turkey.
in general i’m just trying to be gentle with myself and acknowledge that doing work right now is absurd–it’s has to happen but it doesn’t have to be good or graceful.
facemask template. this is the handsewing one i’ve been using, from the NYT; if you have fabric + a basic sewing kit (needle, pins, thread) you’ll be good to go. if you don’t have access to a sewing kit, the CDC has two new-sew options here.
healthdata.org. this website has been good for helping my brain be reasonable about the situation; data is saturating the news rn but this site has concrete region-specific projections about fatality rates and resource use and is good for reminding you that this thing has an end point.
🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮
Boycott Eurovision
The modern adventures of Leia and Ben Kylo (feat. Finn)
Kylo goes to visit an old friend who left his group, trying to get him to return. He goes about it the way he usually does.
The rest of the series is here
this is so compelling and heartbreaking and important and i wanted to share it. this is the reality of getting an abortion even with roe v wade in place and it's about to get worse.
These murderers are admitting they lied only after the damage has been done and is STILL ongoing, and I am beyond pissed.
When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.
Seeing animated works like Spider verse and Arcane and you can just see how lack luster and boring all the character designs in Disney movies are, especially the women. Give me some bunny teeth, crooked teeth, give me freckles that aren't immediately aesthetically pleasing, wild hair, broad shoulders, fat arms, gimme a nose that's too large on her face, beauty through character rather than facial symmetry, perfection is alien and somehow mundane simultaneously, I want crows feet, laugh lines, a lazy eye maybe and ears that stick out i can't deal with soulless designs anymore
There's a super famous singing festival in italy that airs for a week every year. This year, one of the singers, Ghali, did some very remarkable things on that stage. Ghali was born in Italy from Tunisian parents, his career has been going on for a while, but this was his first time on that stage.
He made a song where he references Palestine where he sings: "how can you say everything is fine down here, where in order to trace borders with imaginary lines you bomb an hospital, for a piece of land or for a piece of bread there is no peace" . He also did a medley, singing also in arabic for the first time in the history of the festival.
Last night, during the final, he ended his performance asking to "stop the genocide!" I don't have to tell you that there's absolutely nothing pro-Palestine on italian media... and he used the biggest stage he could use to say that.
Today on a tv programme he was accused by the Isra*li ambassador of spreading hate and violence, to which he replied with those words in the following video (credits to the person who translated it here):
The italian TV broadcaster quickly posted a press release to distance themselves from this speech and to reiterate their whole support to Isr*el lol Towards the end of this tv programme, a few hours after Ghali said what you can hear in this video, they read the press release out loud. This is how Isra*li propaganda works everywhere, thanks to the complicity of our governments.
Just want to post about him because he really risked it all and I appreciate him incredibly for everything he did...if only everyone could do the same. And fuck italy and its fascist government.