reply via reblog

Blogs Wanted!

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

asexualityexists:

As some of you may know, I have links to other asexual blogs and asexual-identifying individuals on several pages of my blog. However, many of those blogs are no longer active, and I’m looking to replace them.

If you identify as:

  • asexual
  • demisexual
  • grey-asexual
  • aromantic
  • demiromantic
  • grey-romantic
  • heteroromantic
  • homoromantic
  • biromantic
  • panromantic
  • any combination of the above, (asexuality-related identity I may have left out)

and are willing to answer questions/be listed as a resource, please let me know! Message me with how you identify, and I’ll add your blog to the appropriate page.

I’d also like to add blogs of individuals on the asexual spectrum with kinks/fetishes. They seem to be few and far between (or, at least, I haven’t come across many) but I’d still like to include some kind of resource for other aces.

Anyways, I’m always looking to update resources, and I’d really appreciate your help!

Thanks a bunch!

Are you checking reblogs, or does it have to be an ask?

>>I’d also like to add blogs of individuals on the asexual spectrum with kinks/fetishes. They seem to be few and far between (or, at least, I haven’t come across many) but I’d still like to include some kind of resource for other aces.<<

I think we generally stay pretty quiet. Fear, maybe, of how people will react. Embarrassment. I know I personally have always had a kind of instinctive sense of privacy about this (ask me about the Girl Scouts and the yo-yo sometime), even before I realised it was a sexual thing. (And I do consider it a sexual thing. I’ve seen several kinky aces say they don’t, but that’s not how I see it. I just don’t think it’s sexual in a way that precludes me being ace. I am not sexually attracted to anyone; what I am attracted to doesn’t matter ace-identity-wise.)

Thing is, it’s…I’m not sure what would be the best word here. Comforting? Powerful? To know you’re not the only one, that there are other people like you out there. And in order to know that, somebody’s got to speak up.

At first, the previous paragraph didn’t quite outweigh the one before it, and I nearly didn’t reblog this. Then I saw a post of that Shel Silverstein poem. I don’t think it was supposed to be a sign–the universe generally doesn’t work that way, in my experience–but I choose to interpret it as one.

So. This is me, being a hypnosis fetishist. I exist.

(I’m also aromantic, but those aren’t very hard to come by.)

{{archivist’s note: the Girl Scouts and the yo-yo}}

Tags:

#asexuality #kind of nervous about making this post #helps that as it happens this is the third time this week #(not *closeted* exactly) #(just shy) #(also not actually entirely comfortable with the term ‘fetishist’) #(I think L’s got some good points about ‘paraphile’) #(but it’s useful for communication) #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #but it gets lonely being surrounded by them all the time #I do wonder if there are others #surely there must be #(culture tells you what’s restful) #(brain wiring tells you that ‘restful’ and ‘sexually satisfying’ are the same thing) #tag rambles

allamaraine asked: Kira + art

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

sophiagratia:

The first two things that come to mind:

  • a flock of flightless birds
  • once i wrote a story in which kira shoots a fresco

So we are more or less doomed, here. I haven’t thought about this much before, but here are my impressions at a first attempt.

Art for Kira is, first, about ruin. About damage, and loss. That is what violent occupations do to art. This is her first concept of art: stolen paintings and sculptures, damaged buildings, a campaign of disinformation about Bajoran achievements in the arts.

Then art must be, later, about recovery, about salvage. What can be restored, recovered, unburied.

Kira doesn’t have much in the way of an aesthetic sensibility, or at least that’s what she would claim. She forms strong attachments to art objects, and articulating why, or what it is about the object’s aesthetic features that draws her to it, is less interesting to her than the fact of the object and the fact of her attachment.

Perhaps she begins with a disdain for ‘pure decoration,’ prizing only art that has a use: prayer mandalas, for example. But perhaps with time she starts to see that the useful/decorative binary doesn’t hold up. What if something is useful because of the feeling it provokes? What if, like her prayer mandala, a useful object is also decorative? These simple questions occur to her relatively late in life, and the result is that she develops a reverence for the very fact of objects that provoke them.

She will never be a collector, but she will learn that to stand before a beautiful thing in contemplation of it is a worthwhile act – and it is an act that demands that the work of art be referred to itself, and not to any gesture of possession or mastery. She will for this reason prefer museums to private possessions, and temples to museums.

That act of contemplation is itself an act of recovery, of restoration and unburial. And for this reason, she will work hard to see that Bajor’s art finds public homes, that art objects are returned to the places that first housed them, and that any space – a temple, a museum, a library archive – devoted to art objects will be freely accessible to anyone, so that those recuperative acts of contemplation belong to anyone, to everyone.

This is a good post, I like this post, the fic you actually linked is new to me and looks interesting, but I would also like to know what fic you intended to link. It doesn’t look to be this one, what with the “Oparu” in the author’s-name section.

Tags:

#Star Trek #DS9 #Kira Nerys #I deleted the first version of this post because it was reblogged from Llin #and Sophie is less likely to see and respond to my question if I don’t reblog it directly from her

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triplash asked: I’ve free bled by proxy (not having products and lol not leaving the house for that) i have no strong feels on it? I dont like it that much personally but just because its messy and i dont even like being sweaty so theres that, how do you feel about it so far?

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

slepaulica:

brin-bellway:

slepaulica:

triplash:

fucksteelydan:

ahhh no that’s the worst!!! when you need the products but you gotta just sit here and be anxious…
this far I feel pretty good tbh I’m not looking or anything I’m just letting it happen. I guess it’s alright since I want it, like, I more or less planned it. it’s just good not to have anything in the way you know???
 freedom!!!!

FREEDOM

I am also super interested in moon cups and also cloth pads? 

Tampons are a pretty happy event for me because i can just put in and forget about it for ages /10 but leekage & cost, hence moon cup interest! But i have major leekage/other irrational fears on it, even thoguh my friends all love it! 

Cloth pads interest me as I don’t ever desire to use pads unless leekage reasons, but occasionally use panty liners just to protect nice underwear during period times 

but i feel super icky about the whole washing process but yeah we’ll see aha! 

Are you planing on washing off free bleeding completely from undies or having spesific free bleeding undies? (or no undies?!) 

i use cloth pads and here’s how i deal with them:

when i need to change them (which isn’t that often because you can put as many liners in them as you want, and three will last me about 24 hours even with heavy bleeding — they’re really absorbant) but when I change them, I just put the dirty one into the washing machine.

i don’t necessarily start a load, but i leave the lid open so that nothing mildews and just toss them in there to be ready for the next load of laundry.

and then that’s it. at some point when i’m not in excruciating pain i’ll put some other clothes in to fill up the washing machine, run it like i normally do, and then hang them up to dry.

if it’s a good period and i’m not in too much pain, i can get completely caught up on my laundry that week. if it’s a bad period, they may sit there for a few days, but they dry (i don’t care if my menstrual pads get menstrual stains on them so this isn’t an issue) and they dont smell noticeably, and they get washed eventually and they’re fine.

i always wash at 60°C to kill bacteria and any fungal spores that might be lurking. (we’ve had ringworm with the cats, so i pretty much have to wash everything at a high temperature to stay on top of it).

Anyway, I do this because it’s easy and for me it is the least gross way of dealing with it. I know a lot of people recommend keeping a little bucket by the loo filled with water to soak them in, but that water will give off the worst smell you have ever smelled within like an hour, so you have to change the water more often that you’ll be in the mood to when your ovaries are tying themselves into knots and you can barely move, and the water gets slimey and gross — even if you’re changing it multiple times a day, and sometimes i just cannot deal with handwashing them.

the only reason to do the bucket thing is to keep them from staining, but i just accept that my menstrual pads will be stained just like my period panties (would be) stained (if they were not already black).

they make cloth tampons too. i haven’t tried them. they’re pretty easy to make though (if you crochet or knit), just make sure you use unbleached cotton, not acryllic (which is not very absorbent and it is plastic and the reason i use cloth pads is that i’m really sensitive down there and i get diaper rash for plastic pads and commercial tampons make my cramps worse, and it’s a very sensitive part of the body and i don’t want it absorbing dyes, or getting scratched (by certain types of fibre), and you might have similar concerns.)

The reason I do the bucket thing is because there are two flights of stairs between my bathroom and laundry room, and since I change the pad right before bed, when I’m not planning to go back down, I don’t want to bother with four flights of stairs (there and back) for a single pad. I never change the water during a period, but I put a bunch of liquid hand soap in and rinse the pad first if it’s particularly bloody, and the smell isn’t that strong even if you don’t get around to laundry for a while. (But then, I don’t actually mind the scent of menstrual blood, so I might be remembering it as better than it is just because I didn’t care. The bucket having a lid might help somewhat as well.) I use a disposable glove when fishing them out to throw in the wash after. (Conveniently, there is a sink right next to the dryer to dump out the old water.)

(Also, they may or may not stain more otherwise, but they definitely still stain.)

hm, maybe soapy water would be better than regular tap water.

our tap water stinks on sulphur anyway, and while i don’t generally mind the smell of menstrual blood all that much, this was something…much worse. it smelled like a rat died of cholera in that bucket and then decomposed for a week. it was really really horrible. not normal “i’m bleeding” smell.

for me, the loo is about a metre or so from the bathroom so it is not a long walk.

does the soap help prevent water slimies?

Not having tried non-soapy water, I can’t compare it, but there is some sliminess.

I seem to recall that the last time we were talking about coping with slimy things (I think it was raw meat that time), we had the following exchange:

Me: Yeah, it’s pretty gross with bare hands, so I use disposable gloves and it’s fine.

You: I don’t like glove-texture either, so that wouldn’t help me any.

I expect it will go the same way this time.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #menstruation #blood

triplash asked: I’ve free bled by proxy (not having products and lol not leaving the house for that) i have no strong feels on it? I dont like it that much personally but just because its messy and i dont even like being sweaty so theres that, how do you feel about it so far?

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

slepaulica:

triplash:

fucksteelydan:

ahhh no that’s the worst!!! when you need the products but you gotta just sit here and be anxious…
this far I feel pretty good tbh I’m not looking or anything I’m just letting it happen. I guess it’s alright since I want it, like, I more or less planned it. it’s just good not to have anything in the way you know???
 freedom!!!!

FREEDOM

I am also super interested in moon cups and also cloth pads? 

Tampons are a pretty happy event for me because i can just put in and forget about it for ages /10 but leekage & cost, hence moon cup interest! But i have major leekage/other irrational fears on it, even thoguh my friends all love it! 

Cloth pads interest me as I don’t ever desire to use pads unless leekage reasons, but occasionally use panty liners just to protect nice underwear during period times 

but i feel super icky about the whole washing process but yeah we’ll see aha! 

Are you planing on washing off free bleeding completely from undies or having spesific free bleeding undies? (or no undies?!) 

i use cloth pads and here’s how i deal with them:

when i need to change them (which isn’t that often because you can put as many liners in them as you want, and three will last me about 24 hours even with heavy bleeding — they’re really absorbant) but when I change them, I just put the dirty one into the washing machine.

i don’t necessarily start a load, but i leave the lid open so that nothing mildews and just toss them in there to be ready for the next load of laundry.

and then that’s it. at some point when i’m not in excruciating pain i’ll put some other clothes in to fill up the washing machine, run it like i normally do, and then hang them up to dry.

if it’s a good period and i’m not in too much pain, i can get completely caught up on my laundry that week. if it’s a bad period, they may sit there for a few days, but they dry (i don’t care if my menstrual pads get menstrual stains on them so this isn’t an issue) and they dont smell noticeably, and they get washed eventually and they’re fine.

i always wash at 60°C to kill bacteria and any fungal spores that might be lurking. (we’ve had ringworm with the cats, so i pretty much have to wash everything at a high temperature to stay on top of it).

Anyway, I do this because it’s easy and for me it is the least gross way of dealing with it. I know a lot of people recommend keeping a little bucket by the loo filled with water to soak them in, but that water will give off the worst smell you have ever smelled within like an hour, so you have to change the water more often that you’ll be in the mood to when your ovaries are tying themselves into knots and you can barely move, and the water gets slimey and gross — even if you’re changing it multiple times a day, and sometimes i just cannot deal with handwashing them.

the only reason to do the bucket thing is to keep them from staining, but i just accept that my menstrual pads will be stained just like my period panties (would be) stained (if they were not already black).

they make cloth tampons too. i haven’t tried them. they’re pretty easy to make though (if you crochet or knit), just make sure you use unbleached cotton, not acryllic (which is not very absorbent and it is plastic and the reason i use cloth pads is that i’m really sensitive down there and i get diaper rash for plastic pads and commercial tampons make my cramps worse, and it’s a very sensitive part of the body and i don’t want it absorbing dyes, or getting scratched (by certain types of fibre), and you might have similar concerns.)

The reason I do the bucket thing is because there are two flights of stairs between my bathroom and laundry room, and since I change the pad right before bed, when I’m not planning to go back down, I don’t want to bother with four flights of stairs (there and back) for a single pad. I never change the water during a period, but I put a bunch of liquid hand soap in and rinse the pad first if it’s particularly bloody, and the smell isn’t that strong even if you don’t get around to laundry for a while. (But then, I don’t actually mind the scent of menstrual blood, so I might be remembering it as better than it is just because I didn’t care. The bucket having a lid might help somewhat as well.) I use a disposable glove when fishing them out to throw in the wash after. (Conveniently, there is a sink right next to the dryer to dump out the old water.)

(Also, they may or may not stain more otherwise, but they definitely still stain.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #menstruation #blood

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Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

this egg fucking froze because our fridge is too cold

 

o-bellaciao:

Why would you keep the eggs on the fridge?

 

alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

we keep our eggs in the fridge…so they don’t denature? do you not refrigerate your eggs?

 

nanner:

Because of the way our eggs are processed and the prevalence of salmonella in american chickens, americans have to fridge their eggs.

http://io9.com/americans-why-do-you-keep-refrigerating-your-eggs-1465309529

 

colorschanging:

Wait, they don’t refrigerate eggs in other countries?

 

ladyoflate:

wait what people in other countries dont refrigerate eggs???

 

wewishyouamurphychristmas:

wait a second eggs in other countries aren’t refrigerated?????????

 

agathaheterodyne:

Waht.

 

slepaulica:

yeah, we don’t refrigerate them here. they keep like a month or two, even in summer, just crack it into a cup in case it’s accidentally taken you too long to use those eggs, give it a whiff, if it smells okay you’re good to go even if it’s really old.  don’t use the float test — that turns up a lot of false positives and sometimes you end up throwing away perfectly good eggs, which is not cheap. just turn your eggs upside down every now and then to help keep them fresh and yeah.

also chicken eggs do not look anything like those things you see on american tv shows. they have brown shells and the yolks are orange.

 

triplash:

Americans refrigerate their eggs..

America..

 

slepaulica:

if you read the link though, there’s actually a reason for why they have to do it, a reason that doesn’t apply anywhere else in the world.

 

slepaulica:

we should organise a charity drive to mail european eggs to americans. we can send them uht milk too, i read on the internet that they only have the kind of milk that has to be refrigerated

Canadians refrigerate eggs too. And re: colour, every Canadian grocery store I have ever been in carried multiple brands of eggs, some of which were white and some which were brown. (We usually buy the brown: the last time I bought white it was because we realised at the last moment we were out of eggs and Mom sent me to the white-egg-only convenience store to get a dozen to tide us over.)

Who told you Americans don’t have UHT milk? I don’t know about big ones, but there are definitely single-serving ones that I think are intended for kids’ lunches. I used to go through multiple single-serving boxes* of Parmelat chocolate milk a day when I was a kid.

(Come to think of it, did they say “no room-temperature milk” or “no UHT milk”? Because while I’ve drunk well over a thousand cartons* of milk (all bought in America) that appear to fit with the definition of “UHT milk” I just looked up, I had never heard the term before.)

*The Canadian term for this is the genericised trademark “tetra pak”, but since I’m talking about my experiences as an American in America I figured I ought to use the terminology I would’ve used at the time, despite its relative lack of precision.

P.S. Maybe I should look into the possibility of larger tetras of milk, considering I just had refrigerated milk go lumpy nine days before its sell-by date (beating the previous record of six days). Bagged milk sounds like a neat idea, but it’s terrible for preservation, and the manufacturers won’t even admit it.

Tags:

#food #regional differences #reply via reblog

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

slepaulica:

brin-bellway replied to your post:There should be a google maps game where you get a…
Yes! I was just talking yesterday about coping mechanisms for a bad sense of direction, and I think something like that would be helpful for me. (I’d do terribly at first, yes, but it would encourage me to study and show me how I was progressing.)

Does google maps have street view where you live? Maybe you could make your own game (not coding something, just loading google maps and wandering around with a goal in mind) where you put yourself down somewhere in the city (near home to start) and have to find your way home?

Level 1: start a block away from your house, different direction each time. google maps will have you facing in a random direction probably. try to find your way home.
Level 2: start a couple blocks from home. same goal: try to get home.
gradually proceeding to about as far as you’d reasonably end up walking, then move on to:
starting from home, walk until you find the nearest [place]. time yourself and try to beat previous times if that works for you. don’t time yourself if that’ll make it worse. different place each time.
example places: the grocery store, the library, the gas station, the park, the movie theatre, the river (if you have one), the pond (if you have one), where your friend lives, your favourite tree (if you have one. i do; it’s one of the ones downtown. i say hi to it every time i see it.), your favourite restaurant, a restaurant that is near home, the hill (if you have one), the train station, the nearest tram stop, the ice creamery. any place that is meaningful to you really.
another thing you can do (level: hard): find the nearest tram stop for a tram you’ve taken before and try to trace out its route.
—
+ it actually might be possible to take a screenshot of your neighbourhood on satellite view on google maps, photoshop the street names out, print off a bunch of copies, and work from there with a pencil. you’d have to grade them yourself though.
+ another thing you could do: take a camera with you and take a photo every ten steps while you go somewhere. then later you could look at the pictures of the story of how to get somewhere. i used to do this for my girlfriend before google maps did street view in my city. it was pretty fun. we had “going downtown to pay rent” and “going to my favourite restaurant” and “going for a walk with the cat”. and then we’d look at them on skype together.

Street view? I wish. They haven’t even updated the satellite view since spring 2006. My driveway has the previous owner’s car in it, and my dentist’s office is an empty lot.

I’m okay with the stuff within walking distance (except the housing development, but I only go there for trick-or-treating (so it would still be useful one night a year)). Trouble is, I’ve been learning to drive (no public transit pick-ups and few stores within walking distance, so I pretty much have to) and realising that even after being driven around this county often for over six years, my knowledge of the parts outside my village consists of a bunch of disconnected pockets a few blocks long. I’ll know when I’m close to, say, the grocery store, and I’ll know when I’m close to the computer repair shop, but how to get from one to the other? No idea.

(Actually, they might have street view in the city proper. Let’s check a couple example places.

Walmart: yes, image taken April 2009. Grocery store: yes, image taken August 2011. This might be a workable idea after all.)

Tags:

#fun with Google Maps #useful things #reply via reblog

Sex Repulsion

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

faustianfantasy:

ace-muslim:

faustianfantasy:

-Snipped for length- {{archivist’s note: link to unsnipped version of OP}}

It is so very easy to be confused about Asexuality because it is about finding something that isn’t there, it is again defined by a lack of something. Sex repulsion on the other hand is very intensely defined by the presence of something, it is defined by a feeling that is not only easy to find and understand, but one that is pretty hard to ignore. The sense of repulsion that we as sex-repulsed people feel makes it pretty easy for us to identify as sex-repulsed, provided we have access to that terminology. In my experience, it is much easier to notice an active negative emotional association than an absent sexual orientation. So, I think that sex-repulsed people are led to think that it is less important to talk about.

Compared to the often long and confusing process of identifying anywhere on the Asexual spectrum, noticing that sex is something that you don’t like seems less interesting. And why exactly should we talk about something that most people are perfectly capable of discovering on their own?

I think this is a really interesting commentary. In one of my comments on Sciatrix’s post at the Asexual Agenda, I wrote:

One thing that I’ve come to realize about myself is that as an aromantic asexual, I have basically no positive preference for any gender, not even in terms of aesthetic attraction, but my aversion is definitely strongest in regard to men (I’m a cis woman) so that it’s kind of a “negative preference”, and that does affect when I think about having even a queerplatonic relationship and what kinds of people I might or might not want to have it with. It’s very curious.

I thought of this again when reading faustianfantasy’s argument that sex-aversion or repulsion is a presence of feeling whereas asexuality in itself is an absence.

To explore this a bit further, I didn’t know about the concept of asexuality until I was 31; I knew what I was, but I thought it was just something about me, not that it was an actual sexual orientation that others shared.

When I thought about myself previously, I tended to define it as “not interested in sex” or “non-sexual”. I never singled out lack of sexual attraction as the distinctive characteristic. I suppose this is similar to how many allosexuals may conflate sexual orientation and sexuality.

Thanks to the reductionism of the asexual community, I’ve started to be able to tease apart the different aspects of my “not interested in sex”, determining which parts are due to lack of sexual attraction, which parts are due to not having a sex drive, which parts are due to being aromantic, and also which parts are due to being sex-averse (and there may be other aspects that I haven’t yet separated out!).

What I’m saying in my comment excerpted above is that I’ve got an absence on so many aspects (asexual, aromantic, non-libidoist) that my sex-aversion seems to literally be the only presence or preference that I have.

But I feel like it’s really difficult to try to feel my way around by what I strongly don’t like when everything about sexuality seems to be defined by what you do like (this of course gets back into positive and negative definitions of asexuality and the role of doubt and absence).

From my perspective, then, sex-aversion isn’t really any less confusing than asexuality itself and that’s why I’ve focused more on what I perceive as some societal pressures against talking about sex-aversion, because to me that seems the more obvious explanation for the relative lack of discussion. Obviously, others will have different perspectives.

Oh, I completely agree with what you’ve said about the pressures against writing about it, I might have been a little too quick on moving past that. But I do understand and agree, writing and posting the thing was difficult, and I imagine if I were more aware of the bigger Asexual community I probably wouldn’t have.

I’ve also thought about your last paragraph, I didn’t mean to imply that sex aversion/repulsion was any less confusing to think about or rationalize, it confuses me to think about quite a bit honestly. And I do believe that there is more to it that we just haven’t developed the language to discuss yet.

What I meant that it is more obvious to notice, I haven’t heard of anyone having a revelation about their repulsion besides having a name to ascribe it. And with so much of the discussion in the Ace community being about how to recognize various aspects of your sexuality, that might have discouraged discussion. If we somehow manage to apply the reductionism to sex-aversion, I will be as happy as anyone to have a chance to understand more deeply.

I haven’t heard of anyone having a revelation about their repulsion besides having a name to ascribe it.

I did. I would have been much better off throughout childhood and adolescence if the idea had existed in the cultural milieu that thinking sex is squicky could be both permanent (a valid opinion held by mature people, not just young children) and effortless (not a vow of chastity that took large quantities of willpower to uphold). Those were the two closest concepts to repulsion I was given, the first with a time limit, and it didn’t occur to me to look outside that before getting to know the asexual community and their ideas.

Once I hit puberty, I had two options: take the abovementioned vow, or accept the “inevitability” of wanting sex (which I was not willing to do; it seemed too not-me). So I ended up wasting a lot of effort on chastity that would’ve maintained itself just fine on its own. (Well, there are the kink fantasies, but the only reason I tried to suppress those is because I was worried they’d be a gateway to having vanilla intercourse. Now that I know that isn’t true, I’m fine with it.)

(Needless to say, I can’t identify with the common young asexual’s narrative of “wanting to want sex” at all. Or the “but abstinence is easy, why are you making such a fuss over it” one, for that matter, though in that case it’s much harder to tell what was different that caused those people to take that path while I took this one.)

Tags:

#asexuality #reply via reblog #possible TMI

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

shortformblog:

Be safe, everyone. The Weather Channel is on it. 

 

duessa:

I can feel this storm system in my bones and I’m nOT HAPPY ABOUT IT.

 

rosalarian:

Oh yaaaaay look what I get to drive through on my way to a show todaaaaaaaay.

 

darthmama:

I get to drive from one end of high into the middle of it?  For a crappy birthday I don’t want to go to?  With 4 boys and a hubby that’s all pissy?

FML….

 

eponymous-rose:

Be careful with this one! It’s late in the season for a tornado outbreak, but the SPC doesn’t break out that high-risk contour for just anything. The environment is primed for extremely fast-moving thunderstorms and long-track, long-lived major tornadoes (EF2+). If you’re within that “MDT” band, you’ve got about a 10% chance of seeing an EF2-EF5 tornado within 25 miles of you, which is the highest probability of significant tornadoes you can get. You’ve got a 30% chance of seeing any sort of tornado in that area, which is also incredibly high (remember how small tornadoes are, relatively speaking—these storms are likely to be cyclic and produce multiple tornadoes). Large hail is more likely to be a problem in Illinois than further east. Damaging non-tornadic winds are likely all the way out to central PA.

Keep in mind that a tornado watch is a heads-up to let you know that tornadic conditions are likely (ideally, they’re supposed to be issued at least 6 hours before a tornado hits), whereas a tornado warning means there is a tornado on the ground right now.

Contrary to a lot of the Great Plains, many of the regions under fire today have basements in most houses. If you get a tornado warning that covers your area, grab your family and pets and get as far underground as you can—failing that, keep as many walls between yourself and the outside as you can. If you have no basement, get in your bathtub and drag a mattress in with you to act as a shield. Treat the tornado like someone coming by to shoot up your house from the street, and take shelter accordingly: the debris is what you have to worry about.

Don’t waste time opening windows; it makes no difference. If you’re already in a car and can’t outrun the storm (moving at right angles to the tornado if it’s on the ground), get out of the car and flatten yourself in a ditch. These storms are fast-moving, so the odds of flooding are lower than they would be otherwise, and keeping low reduces your odds of being hit by debris. Make sure your car isn’t blocking traffic. Stay the hell away from highway underpasses/overpasses.

If you’re at home and a tornado warning hits DO NOT FUCKING LEAVE YOUR HOME. Don’t get in your car and try to outrun the storm. I don’t care what the TV meteorologist is telling you to do. They’re not trained for this sort of situation. Exactly that sort of exodus, prompted by a TV announcement, happened in Oklahoma this past May and the resulting traffic jam resulted in many deaths. You should also avoid large, open spaces like school gyms as shelter.

Don’t stormchase. Don’t gawk. There are lots of major cities in the path of this system, and the more people there are on the road, the harder it’ll be for emergency vehicles to do their thing.

If you have any questions, throw them my way. I do this for a living. In the meantime, watch this page for updates. There are already several tornadic storms on the ground, moving at about 65 mph.

 

brin-bellway:

I note that despite the American map depicting everything south of Toronto (which includes me) as red-zone, Environment Canada’s alerts make no mention of tornadoes. I’ll keep an eye on it: if they change their mind, I can always go cower in my basement.

 

eponymous-rose:

The shading in the above picture just refers to the chance of any severe weather (i.e., tornadoes, high winds, hail). The map for tornado probability is here. Most of Southern Ontario has wind warnings out in advance of this storm, because that’s what the main threat is likely to be, but right at the southern tip (Sarnia, Windsor, London), there’s a severe thunderstorm watch with a possibility of tornadoes referenced in the text. So they’re keeping an eye on it! 

Ah, I see. Green is a much more comforting colour than red.

(Thanks for the prompting to put the lawn chairs and decorative solar light in the shed for the winter. Hopefully the rest of the backyard won’t get blown about too badly.)

Tags:

#weather #reply via reblog #decorative solar lights are so much cheaper than useful ones #(which I guess makes sense as they’re much dimmer)

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

annstreetstudio:

 

nenya-kanadka:

jazzypom:

aradiaofthemegidos:

attackonaang:

pockyxmocky:

now you know how people with glasses see.

WOAH is this how it really is?

YES THIS IS VERY ACCURATE

This is my life. Am tempted to get laser surgery down the road.

Pretty much, yep. Though you learn to focus on the bit in the middle (sometimes to the detriment of peripheral vision). 

I haven’t needed new glasses in…oh, at least six or seven years. But back when my vision was actively deteriorating and I was replacing my glasses* regularly, I always insisted (and still would) on buying the largest lenses they had. Why anyone with inferior-in-all-respects unassisted vision would do otherwise**, I don’t know. Get large lenses and wear them as far up the nose as they can go and you cover almost your entire field of vision. Only my peripherals remain at -5.5, and I get the impression peripherals are supposed to be blurry anyway. And you don’t even have to attempt to cope with contacts.

*It was usually cheaper to replace the whole thing than to change out the lenses, plus my head was still growing.

**And clearly a lot of them do, since the glasses in the store are overwhelmingly small- or medium-lensed.

Tags:

#glasses