"marriage is the ONLY way to get these protections" "there is NO WAY to hack a legal arrangement to cover everything that marriage grants" "kiddos you don't remember what it was like before we could get married, we finally got rights because we could get married" Okay But You Recognize Why That's Bad, Right. Like that is really, really bad that you have to enter a specific type of relationship to get legal rights. That is A Problem. You recognize that that is Not A Good Thing, Right
just really mourning a sense of natural secure connectedness to, well, anyone at all today/lately. and ultimately it's like, well, lord knows people haven't felt connected to you in the past, kiddo, so very arguably you're just reaping what you've sown… and in any event maybe the entire notion of 'natural' is as overrated in a social context as it is in food/gender/&c contexts, and i just need to accept that the path forward involves a lot of awkward attempts at (re)connection, and that it's unavoidably going to be a very unhappy road for me because of how miserable any interaction that isn't Overtly! Positive! immediately makes me feel, because [RSD/chronic post–social rejection stress disorder/however you like to frame the Sudden Disproportionate Flood of Misery phenomenon].
it's just hard because usually the slow, laborious, only-intermittently-rewarded slog is how it works at, like, the edges of your comfort zone, you know? but unfortunately my entire social comfort zone has turned into edges, even the loadbearing bits, and whether or not that's entirely ""my"" ""fault"" (often not a particularly good way to look at two-way social streets in any event: self-righteous isolation isn't gonna keep you warm!), it's unquestionably going to require some active effort from me to improve. just, you know, the eternal cruel irony that things so often require more work precisely when you're already operating at a deficit…
i'm a big fan of the concept of using monogramming services for non-monogram purposes, as per the example (from alex mill) on the left:
and in a similar vein, i recently saw the pair of pants on the right (from urban outfitters house brand iets frans), and thought immediately to myself, wow, i really hope the butt pocket says THEN…
a groove-billed ani doodle digital / photoshop 2025
Cutie… patootie... agouti? You might know the capybara, but what about its distant cousin the red-rumped agouti (Dasyprocta leporina)? This wide-ranging mammal can be found in forests throughout northern South America including Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela. Though smaller than its more famous relative, this hefty rodent can weigh up to 13 lbs (5.9 kg). It dines on a diet of fruit, nuts, and seeds. Like a squirrel, the agouti will bury surplus food to save for a later date. But sometimes this critter forgets to come back for its stash, spreading seeds throughout its habitat as a result.
Photo: Robin Gwen Agarwal, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist
Gute Sheep/gutefår. Värmland, Sweden (April 24, 2020).