dandelion

dandelion , 17 days ago

Agreeing with everyone else, Potentilla indica seems likely. The fruits taste watery, not desirable but not toxic.

dandelion , 2 months ago

I recommend a gaff from origami customs, as they don't charge for making your gaff to custom measurements, and they have a free gaff program.

EDIT: Origami Customs is based out of Canada and they ship internationally. Since I don't see any of their in-person free gaff programs partners in Austria, your best bet will be their online free gaff program through Point of Pride, here are their requirements:

We have only two requirements in an effort to be as inclusive as possible:

• You identify as transgender (MTF, genderqueer, non-binary, genderfluid, gender non-conforming, and every other non-cis identity assigned male at birth within the trans umbrella.)
• You cannot afford to purchase femme shapewear, or you cannot safely obtain femme shapewear.

We accept all requests for support, and applications are open year-round. Once you complete your application, your request will be added to our waitlist. Shipping is discrete and 100% free, and we ship internationally to 90+ countries and counting.

Point of Pride sources their gaffs from Origami Customs. You have to take measurements, fill out an application on this Google Form, and they will contact you when it's ready to ship. They do ship internationally for free.

I think the main "catch" is that there is a wait-list and presumably a long wait time. Even buying a gaff directly from Origami Customs I placed my order in December 2023 and it didn't ship until March 2024. I suspect it will be a much, much longer wait for a free gaff through Point of Pride.

dandelion , 2 months ago

exactly; there will always be piracy as long as piracy is needed, a post-piracy world is a utopia, even in the worst dystopia people find ways to "pirate"

dandelion , 2 months ago

It was 2003, and I was listening to Where is the Love by Black Eyed Peas. Almost too much cringe mixed in to experience the nostalgia.

dandelion , 2 months ago

Harvested some asparagus and solomon's seal shoots the other day, they were delicious. Dogwoods are leafing out and some early iris blooms are opening. Most daffodils have lost their petals. My fava beans don't look so great, I think I planted them in too much woodchip mulch. They have flowers, though. I was debating fertilizing them with urine - any thoughts? I generally avoid fertilizing legumes, but the thick woodchip mulch might be an exception?

dandelion , 2 months ago

Nice, any thoughts about fertilizing fava beans in particular? I have heard that nitrogen fertilizers cause poor yields for legumes. Maybe it's poor yields either way at this point, so I might as well try 😅

dandelion , 2 months ago

nice, thank you!

dandelion , 2 months ago

Yet Caitlyn Jenner isn't exactly using her money to help the trans cause... It requires more than just money, there has to be a political movement and adherents to that movement who have the money and other relevant resources to effect change.

dandelion , 2 months ago

Sorry, perhaps I positioned myself as more contradicting what you said when I meant for it to be more like a "yes, and" situation. I agree with your point about money, I was just thinking of all the other factors and got a little too excited XD

dandelion , 2 months ago

Implying money is power isn't urging assimilationism, why are you so quick to accuse them? Money is crucial to funding militant movements, these are not separate tactics.

dandelion , 2 months ago

hey no worries, maybe later if you're feeling up for it we can chat more - I'm especially interested in any sources you have about the transfeminine horse archers, I'm having trouble finding anything about it from searching online.

dandelion , 2 months ago

so cool, thanks for sharing - I wonder if there was anything more specifically about the use of hormones? Just wondering how that might have been working in ancient contexts (I can only imagine a few ways it might work, such as by trying to isolate hormones from urine and then taking those orally.)

dandelion , 2 months ago

not sure what to take from what you are saying, do you mean they didn't have hormones, or ... that they drank horse urine (like, are you assuming context from the fact Premarin was derived from horses?)

dandelion , 2 months ago

interesting, I would definitely love to read about it if you ever find that!

thanks for introducing me to that wikipedia page, it was definitely interesting to me <3

dandelion , 2 months ago

no worries; if you're ever interested, I personally really enjoyed Susan Stryker's Transgender History!

dandelion , 2 months ago

I get why people are so freaked out about voting third party, especially when mass political actions like voting don't seem to handle nuance well. So advocating a simple slogan like "vote third party" might be irresponsible, but people seem almost irrationally afraid of third party voting in contexts where it should be entirely rational to vote third party.

For example, in a swing state it's clearly useful to vote for the Lesser Evil (in recent U.S. elections that would be the Democrats, of course). But in states where there is a supermajority and there is almost no chance the state will flip, for example California which will certainly go to the Democrats or Arkansas which will go Republican, voting third party becomes helpful because it might enable the third party to receive federal funding.

There are various objections I have considered to this strategy, the one I think that comes up immediately is that if you vote third party it takes a vote that might otherwise contribute to changing the status of a state as stronghold or swing state, basically those margins matter and you should always be pushing the margin even if not likely to make a difference (just on the slim chance it does make a difference).

In that instance I think it's just a matter of weighing the good: does the good from voting for the third party justify the slight risk of not being part of an unexpected shift in votes? This is clearly contextual, see recent upsets in Georgia (who went to Biden in 2020) and Pennsylvania (who went to Trump in 2016). I think the responsibility is on the voter to research their state demographics and those probabilities and make a decision. If you want to do less work, sure, just vote for the Lesser Evil.

What I don't understand is the kind of blind dogmatism that refuses to acknowledge that there even could be reasons to vote third party, and that doing so is wrong a priori.

dandelion , 2 months ago

I'm not sure how much solace we should take from inauthentic political posturing, but we should certainly try to use being a political football to our advantage (since we can't help that we've been victimized this way, but we can try to make something of the national spotlight being put on us).

To that end I think it's beneficial for us to raise our standards and demand more than just words from politicians claiming to be supportive allies. Biden wants to be seen as supporting trans folks? Well, we demand the VA cover gender affirming surgeries. That's a specific transphobic VA policy that needs to be overturned, and Biden can show he's an ally by doing something about it.

dandelion , 2 months ago

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply we shouldn't still appreciate when the president of the United States calls trans people the "fabric of our nation", I think the words themselves are undeniably good.

I was only trying to say we shouldn't shut down criticism of those acts as realpolitik, especially if as a community we can possibly leverage that kind of criticism to help accomplish our own political ends.

It is bizarre to me that the UK has somehow slid even further right than the U.S. in some ways, considering the U.S. is somewhat known for that political brand (where our "left" is still right of the conservative Christian Democratic party in Germany).

dandelion , 3 months ago

No, unfortunately she did not finish Parable of the Trickster before her death. :-(

dandelion , 3 months ago

I tend to be a slow reader and it can take me a long time to finish a book, but Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Cormac McCarthy's The Road are two books that gripped me such that I basically spent every waking moment reading the book until I finished (I think in both cases I finished the books in less than 24 hours).

dandelion , 3 months ago

I don't think anyone has recommended the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson yet.

dandelion , 3 months ago

I've read both Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, and while you can tell the general arc she was going for with the next book (and can imagine the broad strokes of what would happen next), I never felt there was a lack of closure for the story.

They are emotionally difficult books to read, so it's also hard to recommend them to people, but I would encourage you to not let the lack of a third book prevent you from reading the first two, they are worth reading on their own merits. The Parable of the Talents especially has significance to the situation in the U.S., as some say it predicted Trump.

dandelion , 3 months ago

Definitely worth reading, I remember it being better than the first book.

dandelion , 3 months ago

That's an interesting perspective, as I have always felt insecure for being a slow reader. I feel like people in my world see it as a sign of being less intelligent, and while I would like to think slower reading helps with my comprehension, I also just feel like it's not much of a choice for me (I mean, the alternative to slow reading for me would be something other than reading, like scanning; it seems people who can read faster than me are somehow also more competent or intelligent).

dandelion , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

That seems like a wholesome perspective, thanks for sharing it!

People lie because they want people to think they are smart.

I remember when I was a kid, I was amazed by my grandmother who could finish a whole novel in a few sittings across a day or two when she would come and stay with us. I once mustered up the courage to ask her how she learned to read so quickly, and she explained that she doesn't actually read every word, but just scans for major plot points. I felt silly, and unsure how to respond - it seemed to me she wasn't reading, but I didn't want to imply that. lol

She wasn't trying to appear smart, I think she just didn't want to suffer the boring parts, so she scanned ahead to the juicy bits. That's such an interesting and different way of approaching reading than I have, I've only recently started to skip an introduction or preface if it didn't seem crucial to the book, something I would have previously considered antisocial or rougish, haha.

dandelion , 3 months ago

All good points! I have the same tendency to pick up and drop books based on mood and what's going on in my life. I recently just picked back up Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoir which I had abandoned years ago after reading roughly the first half. Picking it back up, I enjoyed it so thoroughly I became a bit avid in my reading and finished the rest of the book in a week or so (which is rather fast paced for me).

I like the metaphor of reading being like listening to the radio. I often feel guilty for dropping books or not powering through (there are many, many books I have read the first quarter or so of and shelved with the intention to finish another time). Probably healthier to have a more free and less "driven" mindset towards reading books.

Sometimes I drop a book because I enjoy it so much I don't want it to end, I want it to always be there and to relish it later. This is a bit silly - there are always other books, but I also will forget the plot over time and eventually the book will be enough like new that I can enjoy re-reading it.

dandelion , 3 months ago

Yes! I do think it's usually physical books, and books I have grown overly attached to reading, where I can't bring myself to finish them.

Asimov's Foundation trilogy comes to mind, I had a physical copy that had the whole trilogy as one book, and just as the third book was coming to a climax I quit reading it and shelved it. It's been so long I barely remember the plot now, lol.

dandelion , 3 months ago

I might be too ignorant to put this in the proper context, but what do you make of the so-called Beefsteak Nazis (i.e. leftists who joined the Nazis)? Not to say the Nazis were in any way authentically leftist, but they did use leftist rhetoric (see Strasserism) to get left-wing, working class support.

dandelion , 3 months ago

Yeah, I wouldn't imagine the communists and socialists brought Hitler to power, lol - though it sounds like I need to educate myself more. Do you have any primer you would recommend on this topic?

dandelion , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I'm using an ancient Nexus tablet with the Android app "MoonReader" (one of the only apps I have paid for); I would prefer a different setup, to use a FOSS app or not use a tablet, but most physical ereaders seem to have issues with PDFs, no?

I would want something I can just load files on (no walled garden); I currently use syncthing to transfer books to my tablet.

dandelion , 3 months ago

on duckduckgo I use site:reddit.com and the results will only include links to reddit, I find it better than Reddit's search (duh)