80 posts
Latest Posts by heavilyglacialvalhalla - Page 2
harry potter is STILL a trending topic meanwhile trans women are not legally protected as women under gender equality in the UK, in no small part due to JKR's massive terf influence and active monetary donations to anti trans causes. if you still actively support JKR, hp, even just liking the characters, fuck you. i have absolutely no respect for you.
Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free
you know what perhaps strange women lying in ponds distributing swords IS a pretty solid basis of government actually
Yep, same. Also worth asking if bears are Catholic.
me: hey do you want some grapefruit?
wife: does the pope shit in the woods?
me:
wife:
me: …no?
wife: *does not break eye contact but very pointedly slurps the chunk of grapefruit off the spoon while nodding as if to say, uh, yeah. dummy.*
Of course, multiple years is a long and normal amount of time to remember someone's brain fart.
DMing is hard. I acknowledge this. Weaving a story with words for long periods of time means you’re gonna say something silly sometimes when your brain blips. And it’s not your fault that it’s so silly that your players share it around turning it into an inside joke, immortalizing your brain fart moment forever.
My DM was narrating a scene between our tiefling rogue and the NPC she was romancing. He was trying to set the mood for their first kiss, up on a tower overlooking the city, looking into each others eyes. They’d just been on a romantic date, there was a bottle of wine between them. And this was their moment.
The NPC leaned in to kiss the rogue and the kiss was, according to our DM, “long and normal.”
The entire session went off the rails. We became ungovernable creatures of hilarity. How long is normal?
We are informed normal is six seconds and we devolve even further into chaotic paroxysm of laughter. The DM desperately tried to rein us in but for the rest of the session everything took a long and normal amount of time.
My betrothed and I would kiss each other while counting to six in our heads then declare afterward, “Ah yes! Long and normal!”
I accidentally told my school team about it, reasoning that they’d at least never meet the DM who lives out of state. They’d say we needed the scene to be the long and normal length, or hold a pose for a long and normal time.
At the end of the year I invited them to my house for a celebratory meal and was surprised when my DM joined the DnD video call early. My teammates looked at him, expressions slowly spreading into evil grins. “Long and normal!” They greeted him.
He turned a look upon me of utter betrayal while I hustled them out of my house.
“It’s been a year!” He cried at the unfairness.
“Maybe it’ll phase out by next year,” I told him.
Happy Trans Day of Visibility! I've made 20 of these! That's crazy considering I'm a full time teacher and graduate student.
Send these to someone to crack their egg.
trans women, i love you.
you were a woman yesterday. you're a woman today. you're a woman tomorrow. you're a woman forever.
trans women have existed long before those stuffy bigots sitting in a court room have. trans women will continue to exist long after they're dead and rotting in the earth.
From what I understand, they didn't "bring back" the dire wolf, which went extinct 10,000 years ago. What they did was mutated a grey wolf and grew pups who have exactly the same genome as the long extinct dire wolf.
This does beg the question how much does it matter if they are actually linearly related, if they have the same genetics?
Of course as Jurassic park pointed out, this is not exactly a great idea. We don't have the ecosystems that support a creature with those genetics any more.
Lol. Lmao even
I love my rainbow unicorn! Honourable mention are my wolf and otter though.
i just think it says a lot about the person. my favorite is a bear named theodore
u can call ur skull-head deer oc literally anything else u don't even have to change the design
burning text gif maker
heart locket gif maker
minecraft advancement maker
minecraft logo font text generator w/assorted textures and pride flags
windows error message maker (win1.0-win11)
FromSoftware image macro generator (elden ring Noun Verbed text)
image to 3d effect gif
vaporwave image generator
microsoft wordart maker (REALLY annoying to use on mobile)
you're welcome
HEY, FELLOW HATERS OF INSANELY-BRIGHT CAR HEADLIGHTS, SOMEONE HAS STARTED A PETITION TO REGULATE THEM.
It's an official petition through the Australian Government's e-petition page, which means if it gets enough signatures, it will be tabled in government.
You do have to be an Australian citizen to sign it, BUT!!! PLEASE REBLOG THIS EVEN IF YOURE NOT, because these kind of things have a roll-on effect, and if Australia legislates LED headlights, then other countries may follow.
FYI, the petition asks only for your name and email, and once you've clicked the sign button, they'll send you an email to confirm your signature --- you need to click the confirmation link in the email to have your signature counted.
Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.
Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.”
“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”
“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”
It’s just.
50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.
This dates the OP's trip. These days you'd never be allowed on a plane with a safety pin!
When I graduated high school my folks decided to go on a family trip to Europe. I was extremely surly about this as I had an undiagnosed UTI but I was extremely excited to speak German with native speakers, convinced I would be an asset to my family across our travels.
Tragically, it was immediately apparent that three years of public school German meant I could communicate at the level of a first grader.
I was nonetheless elated when a child approached me at the train station to ask “Haben sie ein Kuli?” “Do you have a pen?” I was able to say, “Nein, aber ich habe ein Bleistift!” “No, but I have a pencil!” The kid seemed confused by my triumphant tone but borrowed my pencil anyway.
But my absolute greatest victory in vocabulary came during an airline check. They had me go through a metal detector, and they assumed my belt had set it off. I knew my belt was non reactive metal but! My favorite jeans had lost their zipper and I had them safety pinned shut.
The man approached me with a metal detector and seemed puzzled my belt wasn’t reading. I remembered the safety pin in the front of my jeans and I happened to know the word so I joyously announced, “Ich habe ein Sicherheitsnadel!” “I have a safety pin!”
As if to an infant, the man said slowly, “Nein, das ist sein Gürtel.” “No, that is your belt.”
I waved at my crotch and insisted, “Nein, in mein Hose ich habe ein Sicherheitsnadel!” “No, in my pants I have a safety pin!”
I couldn’t remember the name for zipper but luckily he caught the shine of the metal where a zipper should be and finally realized why this crazy American teenager was gesturing to her crotch. He scanned his machine over the offending pin which pinged and he cleared me to go.
I marched off to board the plane in a glow of pride that I had gotten to use an obscure word and the poor man got to return to his day.
Pretty sure kangaroos can have one in the uterus another tiny, blind one permanently attached to a nipple in the pouch and another bigger one that is mostly in the pouch. Not 100% sure of the details but they can have multiple babies at multiple ages.
Concept: cursed blade rehabilitation center. Destroying a sentient weapon is expensive and highly unethical, so adventurers bring them to the center where highly trained staff can care for them and eventually find them forever homes. It turns out most cursed weapons are products of trauma and are not strictly evil themselves. Some blades turn out to be fiercely protective companions. Others don't even want to be weapons at all, finding joy in simple work like blacksmithing or farming. Most blades just need to be loved.
Rewatching the extended fellowship of the ring compelled me to make this shitpost video of Legolas and Aragorn being besties
Ah, is that what the pandemic was. Unsanitized database inputs?
The grim reaper was initially illustrated as doing a mundane, regular job that everyone has seen done - a reaper swings his scythe and the hay falls, just as easy as people fall as death swings. Now many people who have never been to a farm only know the scythe as the weapon of Death personified, and farmers in most places of the world don't even use them anymore.
Imagine Death personified as someone doing a modern regular, mundane job. Imagine thinking "hoo boy, this is it for me. The Grim Bin Man is coming to collect, hauling my sorry soul into the trash compactor of his great eternal garbage truck."
I wanted to remember Terry Pratchett today, on the tenth anniversary of the day he met Death.
I don't really have the words, but his books spoke to me in ways others didn't.
GNU Terry Pratchett
I cannot stand the parodies of modern major general, they're overdone and simply not as good as the original. They've done them about everything, whatever topic, big or small.
And when i notice one of them my eyes will always start to roll.
The diction's always slurry when they rush the complicated words, and adding many fricatives will turn it so cacophonous. The slanted rhymes are silly and they keep just making more and more, please someone stop the parodies of modern major general.
The scanning of the lyrics in the meter is unbearable, they emphazise the syllables in ways that are untenable, in short in matters musical, prosodic and ephemeral, i cannot stand the parodies of modern major general!
The peel perhaps could protect the wizard from any other pineapples. It might be defensive and territorial.
This is incredible!
I love the way they are moving around so each member can get a full experience of the sound of the others too!
Such a beautiful arrangement and beautiful voices singing it.
This is ridiculous! I don't know what's on!
dr who’s on first, doctor strange is on second and doctor house is on third. theres no way theyre getting through a single inning
Aliens doing this to me would really annoy me. I enjoy my internal jukebox and don't mind if they listen in, as long as they don't skip the songs I like.
As such, HR would definitely get involved because I would just start playing very NSFW songs! 🤣
Telepathic aliens enjoy that humans will "play music" for hours at a time. When it's too mentally quiet on deck, they just announce the catchiest song titles they know and the humans will start thinking about it automatically.
The humans hate this so, so much.
Zorf: Human Steve, can you please play that song I like, the one with all the females
Steve: what
Zorf: A little bit of Monica in my life
Steve:
Steve: mother fu--
Those who do study history are doomed to watch as everyone who didn't repeats it around them.
Yo, correct me if I am wrong please, but didn't Hitler rise to power because he promised to fix the German economy and people really liked that so they looked past everything else he was doing??? Like exactly what's happening in America right now???
So many people said they voted for Trump, put a truly evil person in power, because he said he'd fix the economy, and a little voice in my head is going, "Isn't that what happened with fucking Hitler??"
But I've seen no one point that out so maybe I'm miss remembering???????
I play what we've named "cinematic D&D" which is basically collaborative story telling. There's one person assigned "storyteller" and each of the others are characters. The storyteller sets the scene, builds the world (or easier, borrows an existing world, eg. LOTR, Witcher, Blade, etc.). You then play in the same way: 1. storyteller describes the situation. 2. players describe what their character does. 3. storyteller describes what happens.
After you play a bit the story will flow. It's a really great, creative way to pass some time. It also helps if you treat it as cooperation rather than adversaries, even if the storyteller is "being" the adversaries. What I mean by this is not to block the other person's ideas, to accept & include them and ultimately make a good story. This applies to everyone, not just storytellers.
What's the longest/your favourite fanfic you've written?
I've never posted any fics anywhere, actually. I generally just get on discord and type out extremely long-winded character & dialogue scenarios for my friends to live-react to, hahaha. I guess I love the "audience." It's especially fun because they get to provide input along the way, like "okay wait but what if [x charcter] responded like this..." It's like I'm the narrator giving them occasional dialogue options, ha. I had a lot of fun doing a pretty self indulgent tenth doctor au the other month, and right now I'm enjoying "writing" about the BG3 cast along with my friends' player characters. I do have a Geralt x Reader fic sitting in a Google doc right now that I may one day post, god willing and the creek don't rise. We'll see.
Guidance that Schools do not have a general duty to allow a child to socially transition
We all agree that schools have a general duty of care, to provide a safe environment for children to learn. This includes taking reasonable steps to protect them from foreseeable risks, including physical and emotional harm. Safeguarding policy states that there is a legal duty to promote the welfare of children and young people under the age of 18 who are in schools and colleges. However, this guidance is telling schools they do not have to “allow” a child to socially transition. This goes directly against the principle of promoting the welfare of these children.
Respecting pronouns (in a home environment), if a young person’s pronouns are respected by all people they live with, they attempt suicide at half the rate of comparable young people who do not have their pronouns respected. (ref https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/suicide/documents/pronounssuicideprev.pdf)
Suicide risks are reduced 73% for transgender and nonbinary young people when they receive gender affirming care (ref: https://www.hcplive.com/view/suicide-risk-reduces-73-transgender-nonbinary-youths-gender-affirming-care, this study looked at medical transition, not social).
Even just one significant adult in a transgender young person’s life reduces the risks of suicide by 39% compared with transgender peers who were not accepted. If this significant adult is specifically a school professional, they have slightly less effect than a parent at 33% reduction in suicide risk. (ref: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/acceptance-of-transgender-and-nonbinary-youth-from-adults-and-peers-associated-with-significantly-lower-rates-of-attempting-suicide/)
All of this evidence clearly shows that if a school refuses to “allow” a child to socially transition, they are putting that child at a much greater risk of suicide. This directly contradicts their safeguarding duty to “promote the welfare of children and young people.” as the school would not be “taking reasonable steps to protect them from foreseeable risks”.
To solve this, the guidance must be changed to include that the school has a duty of care to support and affirm the child’s social transition. This change is important given the fact that affirming someone’s gender is suicide prevention as well as the other significant benefits to the child or young person’s mental health that this would bring.
Parent first approach
The guidance states “Parents should not be excluded from decisions taken by a school or college relating to requests for a child to ‘socially transition’.”
Given the increased rates of domestic abuse suffered by transgender people, this guidance is simply unsafe. Forced outing of children to potentially transphobic parents is very dangerous, and will prevent these children from being supported anywhere, because school will out them to their parents.
In a study, 43% of transgender and non-binary people have suffered abuse from family members (ref: https://galop.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Galop-LGBT-Experiences-of-Abuse-from-Family-Members.pdf). Often the only way to keep safe is for the transgender or non-binary young person to remain closeted and keep their identity a secret from the rest of their family.
Transgender adolescents reported abuse rates of nearly double that of their cisgender heterosexual peers. These rate multipliers are (1.84 for psychological abuse, 1.61 for physical abuse and 2.04 for sexual abuse, ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8344346/). This is for the general population, the abuse will be very skewed towards parents who are transphobic abusing their transgender adolescents. Therefore, if a child or young person does not feel safe coming out to their parents, they likely have good reason and the school would be going against their safeguarding principles to forcibly out them to these parents.
To correct the guidance:
To correct the guidance it must be changed to a “child first approach” where the child is believed, and the child themselves must explicitly give permission to the school for the school to discuss any aspect with their parents, if they wish to have their parents involved. The default must be to maintain the child’s privacy so as not to inadvertently subject them to abuse. The child first approach would be more in line with the guidance that teenage pregnancy does not need to be reported to the parents, but the child is encouraged to inform their parents themselves (https://www.pathwayslearningcentre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Teenage-Pregnancy-Guidance-for-Schools.pdf).
General Transphobia in the report
Even the title is transphobic, it’s “Guidance for Schools and Colleges: Gender Questioning Children”. Which portrays all transgender and non-binary children as questioning rather than certain. It allows people to subconsciously write them off as “not sure” or “still questioning”, when in reality many transgender and non-binary people know from a very young age who they are.
Most transgender people, approximately 75% of those studied, reported experiencing gender dysphoria for the first time between the ages of 3 and 7 years old (ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8766261/). This is roughly when the concept of gender, and the differences between children are developing.
Some children and young people at all schools and colleges may well still be questioning their gender identity. However, helping them find themselves by using the pronouns asked for and affirming their gender will enable them to discover who they are much more quickly than just suppressing any exploration. This will also help those that are certain who they are, as it just increases the respect and acceptance of all people in the education system.
The idea that gender is a contested belief is reiterated throughout the report. The report also tries to negate any support for transgender people by stating that it must be done while respecting other people’s gender critical beliefs. This is just plain transphobia and should be eradicated at every turn.
Hi Everyone,
I wish I didn’t feel that I needed to write this post, and it contains discussion of: transphobia, including from the state; suicide; and domestic abuse.
However, it is necessary to fight back against the Conservative government’s latest attack on trans people, this time coming after trans kids. They recently released “Gender Questioning Children Non-statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England”. It is full of transphobia in the form of Gender Critical ideas and, if schools follow this ‘guidance’, it will cost many lives of trans kids. Gender Critical beliefs include the belief that sex is biological and immutable, people cannot change their sex and sex is distinct from gender-identity. This is fundamentally transphobic by denying the very existence of transgender people at all. Before diving into details, I ask that you read at least the summary and then use talking points from my template response at the end to write to your MP, school, and also contact the government's consultation on this guidance. The official consultation finishes near the start of March 2024 so please submit a response soon.
TL;DR: The main problems with this guidance are:
That schools do not have a “general duty to allow a child to socially transition”, by for example changing a child’s name and/or pronouns used.
“Parents should not be excluded from decisions taken by a school or college relating to requests for a child to socially transition”.
Throughout the guidance, there are a lot of Gender Critical opinions being stated,using language such as “ has been linked to gender identity ideology, the belief that a person can have a ‘gender’, , that is different to their biological sex. This is a contested belief.” This language is trying to suggest that the basic existence of transgender people is a contested belief.
The Truth.
Social transition, where adults close to the child/youth affirm their gender is known to be hugely beneficial, even acceptance & use of correct pronouns from one significant adult resulted in 39% lower odds of attempting suicide.
Across the population, transgender adolescents reported abuse rates nearly double that of their comparable cisgender heterosexual peers. Forcing the school to ‘out’ transgender adolescents to their parents drastically increases that child’s chances of being subjected to abuse.
It is well understood by most leading scientists in relevant fields that gender exists, and is separate to biological sex. Plus, biological sex is not a binary, and is not immutable, many aspects of it can be changed with medical intervention. This intervention has also proven to be very effective in helping people with gender dysphoria.
Letter Template
The following template letter is intended for parents to send to the head teachers of their children’s schools. Of course, you are free to modify it however you would like and it is only provided as a suggestion. Please remove or change parts in angle brackets <> as these are intended for things specific to you.
Dear <head teacher's name>,
I am writing to express my concern about the recent government guidance for schools on “gender questioning” children. The guidance is transphobic all the way through and will cost lives. Transgender children deserve to be affirmed and treated with respect, enabling them to learn and grow just like any other child.
Specifically, there are two particularly dangerous parts to the guidance. The forced outing of transgender children to their parents, and the declaration that schools do not have a general duty to “allow” a child to socially transition.
Firstly, affirming a child during their social transition by using their pronouns is suicide prevention. Studies have shown reduced rates of suicide attempts in transgender young people when they are affirmed in their gender. If a young person has their pronouns respected by even one significant adult in their life attempted suicide rates are reduced by 39%. (ref: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/acceptance-of-transgender-and-nonbinary-youth-from-adults-and-peers-associated-with-significantly-lower-rates-of-attempting-suicide/). For many transgender children with unsupportive or transphobic families, school is often the only place that can provide this affirmation of their identity.
The school’s duty of care to children and young people includes taking reasonable steps to protect them from foreseeable risks, including physical and emotional harm. Clearly these suicide statistics constitute foreseeable risks of actual harm to children if their gender identity is not respected and correct pronouns are not used. People at the school using the correct pronouns would be considered “reasonable steps” to prevent this harm. Please ensure your school never contributes to these preventable deaths of young people. You must reject this government guidance.
Secondly, the guidance takes a “parent first” approach. It should be obvious that the main person needing protection is the child themselves. Forcibly outing anyone to anyone else is never ok. Especially when that person is a child and you're outing them to those who have the most power to hurt the child.
In a study, 43% of transgender and non-binary people have suffered abuse from family members (ref: https://galop.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Galop-LGBT-Experiences-of-Abuse-from-Family-Members.pdf ). Often the only way to keep safe is for the transgender or non-binary young person to remain closeted and keep their identity a secret from the rest of their family.
Transgender adolescents reported abuse rates of nearly double that of their cisgender heterosexual peers. (ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8344346/ ). These rates are for the general transgender population, the abuse itself will be very skewed towards parents who are transphobic abusing their transgender adolescents.
The decision of when and how the young person wants to inform their parents, must stay with the child, for their safety. Please ensure your school remains a safe place for all our children and doesn't subject them to the cruel and dangerous practice of forcibly outing them. Taking child-first approach would be more in line with the guidance regarding teenage pregnancy: schools are not obliged to report a pregnancy to the young person’s parents but rather the young person is encouraged to inform their parents themselves (https://www.pathwayslearningcentre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Teenage-Pregnancy-Guidance-for-Schools.pdf)
The government has an open consultation on this guidance that ends soon, at the beginning of March. Please add your response in the consultation as to why your school will not be following the guidance, specifically that it will cost lives and subject children to abuse that could have been prevented.
<optional extra paragraph, only include if you are willing to discuss further with the head teacher>
If you would like to discuss this matter further, or look at the other problematic areas of the guidance, please let me know and I will be happy to provide further information and evidence, either in person or in writing.
<end extra paragraph>
I hope for a future where all children are provided equal opportunities to learn and grow no matter their gender identity.
Respectfully,
<Sign your name here>
Links
Guidance document itself: Gender Questioning Children - non-statutory guidance
Gov consultation: https://consult.education.gov.uk/equalities-political-impartiality-anti-bullying-team/gender-questioning-children-proposed-guidance/
Gov press release: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/parent-first-approach-at-the-core-of-new-guidance-on-gender-questioning-children