Arthur of Camelot

need more queer books in your life? mad at all the book bans? wish you could read books about people actually like you?

the Queer Books Database is a free, online searchable database that lists queer rep in over 2,500 fiction and 500 non-fiction books! you can filter by age, genre, year, and specific identity–including race, disability, mental illness, and neurodivergence

here’s some ideas of what you can search for:

• a legal thriller featuring a bisexual transgender woman or a sci-fi with a disabled black gay man
  
• Young Adult, Middle Grade, and Children’s books in both fiction and non-fiction titles
  
• classic queer lit from 1872 to 1956 (Carmilla to Giovanni’s Room)
• biographies of famous historical and modern activists, musicians, athletes, immigrants, and writers
• supportive spiritual texts and guidance from community leaders (filter by fifteen different religions!)
  
• representation for LGBT identities under the “plus,” characters of color, fat rep, neurodivergence, older characters, questioning and closeted characters, religious identity, disabled characters–and more!

rot-gospel:

annoying news aside, i do love it when something happens and everybody Logs The Fuck On. its like the nasa control center but for posting

(via penandinkprincess)

mythology-void:

nooksickle:

IM CRYING WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME

(via sorrelchestnut)

devilishdescent:

A bread is one of the most vulnerable animals on earth of all time. It can die in a number of different ways, which include being smashed, being old, being rottened, being crumpled up, getting too hot, having water put on it, and having water not on it but being in the air a lot (the water (mist)). The bread’s favorite way to die is being eaten, but the world is a complicated place, and it does not care for what the bread wants, and so it dies in a variety of ways which are not the preference of the bread.

Humans are considered the bread’s natural predator, and also, are the bread’s mommy (make/give birth to the bread). Humans are a large species of ant or plant or ele phant with two grasping appendages which they use to give birth to the bread. They also have one hole which eats the bread, and some other holes, which the bread is not allowed near, generally.

Some bread can go in the fridge. Some bread has fruit in it. Scientists don’t know why, as putting fruit in the bread is considered yucky, and scientists have difficulty imagining an organism that likes yucky things.

There is the anteater, which is an organism that likes yucky things, but scientists do not need to imagine it, because it is real.

(via needlesslycryptic)

mothmanfucker2:

If I had a nickel for every time someone organised a creative writing event and banned all central motifs of the main topic, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice

(via rebornfromsea)

tornadocountrymp3:

i think there should be two nighttimes. one for sleeping and a second one for being awake but at night. and then only one daytime because daytime doesn’t matter as much except for the birds

(via stonesense)

esuterunokitsune:

mist-the-wannabe-linguist:

buttercupmelodies:

kingscrown666:

Story prompt:

You have a superpower that keeps you safe: whenever you are in danger, time freezes.

You could be asleep, or in the middle of a conversation, or watching a movie. Time would stop and give you a chance to leave the area, and as soon as you were out of danger, time would immediately start up again

You walk in front of a bus and time stops until you exit its path. Someone tries to mug you, but suddenly you’re gone; down the street and around the corner, so even when he turns around he can’t see you, and therefore can’t come after you.

One day you’re watching tv at home and everything freezes. You look around, but you’re alone. You get up and walk out of your apartment - the unnatural quiet, and the immobile dust motes suspended in the shaft of light from the window at the end of the hall tells you the danger still has not passed. You leave the building and the city is motionless. You walk down the street, then you go a few blocks, and before you know it you’ve traversed several neighborhoods, but nothing changes

After what feels like hours of walking, time still hasn’t resumed, which means the danger still hasn’t passed

So what the hell is going on??

idea: a nuclear bomb is about to be dropped.

my first thought

After a very long time (you’d say multiple hours, but you can’t estimate it well. There’s nothing to estimate it by.) walking in random directions, it finally clicks. This isn’t something that happened to you, it was going to destroy the whole city at least. You can’t check your phone for news, because that requires a current to be transmitting information, so that’s not an option. But you can open doors. And bars in the area are sure to have a tv. If any news about this came before time stopped, the screen is likely to still be stuck on that transmission. You know it’s a low chance, but you have nothing else to try.

Keep reading

(via rebornfromsea)

mayakern:

captain-kit-adventuress:

mayakern:

fatphobiabusters:

lesbian-moon-gf:

notpedeka:

lesbian-moon-gf:

Trying not to say horrible things. But skinny indie designers who charge a fat tax….

“Fat tax” with indie labels is actually a hard call to judge. I say this as a size 22 seamstress. I understand the frustration at not being able to afford all the pretty things, IF they even come in your size.

That being said, the same piece of fabric that will make 1 dress for me, will make 2 size 8 dresses in the same style. If I’m making the dresses to sell, how can I sell the size 22 for the same cost as a single size 8 when it uses twice the material?

Large labels partially set prices by the average cost of a large amount of materials. Indie designers don’t have the luxury of spreading costs out over 50,000 almost identical pieces.

Sure, some of them are just gatekeeping bitches who don’t want their designs associated with fat people. But plenty just don’t have the profit margin to even prices out and not overcharge smaller customers.

If you want to design to fit everyone from a size 0-30, well, it just won’t work. If you just scale that size 0 dress up to fit a size 30 around, it will be 18 feet long with armholes you could drive a car through. You have to entirely re-design your patterns every few sizes.

I really, really, REALLY love to tear people up about the horrible designs, lack of selection, and nasty fabric choices designers make for large people. Larger prices for larger clothes pisses me off a lot of the time, but in the end I understand it. I don’t understand why they think we all should wear polyester all the time though.

“how can I sell the size 22 for the same cost as a single size 8 when it uses twice the material?”

the same way you’d sell a size 8 dress as the same price as a size 2 when is uses twice the material….

Whenever a person defends charging fat people more for every basic necessity on the planet, especially clothing, I remember that @mayakern sells all of her clothing for the same price no matter the size.

She’s an indie artist who even goes the extra mile and manufactures her clothing ethically. The difference between her and a skinny indie designer? Maya Kern values her fat customers and being size inclusive.

Her clothing isn’t cheap, yes, and she recently had to up her prices. The reason why? Ethical manufacturing from overseas, the price increase because of tariffs, good quality fabric, and her quality assurance measures. Most of these factors, like ethical manufacturing, aren’t even being done by other indie designers, let alone designers who charge a fat tax. Her clothing is better quality, more ethical, and designed better for fat body types than even the clothes of mainstream stores. Her clothes before the tariffs were the same price as the clothes at Torrid, and yet she was providing a far better and more ethical product while not having any of the resources that companies like Torrid have access to.

If she can be a successful indie designer while doing all of that and making sure her products look good on fat body types while being the same price for every size, then I don’t think being an indie designer is an excuse. The fatphobia of the fashion industry—indie and mainstream—has always been intentional.

-Mod Worthy

ooh boy i’ve been summoned! first of all, thank you so much for the kind words, i really appreciate it 🧡

second of all, the fat tax is more complicated than it seems.

for home sewists, especially hobby sewists, increased fabric costs DO matter more than for businesses that work with a factory. especially for things like wedding gowns that often use fancy fabrics and laces that require a lot of hand embellishments or are entirely handmade.

but let’s use the example of twice the fabric: for a smaller size, let’s assume we’re using 3 yards of simple fabric for $10 per yard. let’s add another $5 for thread and fixings. and let’s say it’s a relatively simple skirt that takes 5 hours to sew. to keep things simple, this sewist charges $15/hr for labor. so your cost is (3x10) + 5 + (5x15), or $110. multiply that by 2.5 to charge customers at wholesale cost, that’s $275.

now for a “double the size” plus size garment, we’re using 6 yards and spending $10 on fixings (which don’t exactly double in real life, it’s more complicated than that). labor time remains the same. so we have (6x10) + 10 + (5x15), or $145. then for wholesale cost that becomes $362.5

you can see here that while the initial costs to the sewist only differ by $35, thanks to the way typical wholesale is calculated, there is now a difference of $87.5. so what does the home sewist do? do they charge normal wholesale, do they calculate their “normal” price for a smaller garment and just tack the additional $35 on at the end instead of charging wholesale on it, do they try to average costs between sizes, or do they entirely eat the additional cost?

i don’t know! i’m not a home sewist. but this is a very abridged version of real home sewist math.

now let’s get into fat clothes math with manufacturing! i’ve worked with a few factories at varying operating sizes and they do not all operate the same, but in general there are two major processes i’ve seen for how garments get made/charged for when working with a factory:

first, when making sublimated garments (like my printed polyester skirts), you get a design minimum. that means you HAVE to order a set amount of garments in a particular design and garment style, regardless of size. this is because instead of printing a large roll of fabric, the factory is custom printing every individual garment.

working in this style, the difference in cost between my smallest and largest sizes has, at most, been like $1. i charge wholesale costs (2.5 x cost) for my clothes and frankly i would rather eat the extra $2.50 than make my customers feel shitty about themselves. i’m sure there are many people with MBAs who would laugh at me for this decision but my peace of mind and ethics cost more than $2.50 per skirt. except i’m not eating $2.50 because even tho that’s how business math works, that is not a real cost. at most i am eating $1 per garment.

an addendum, but with this sort of sublimation, especially with smaller factories, there can be an additional hurdle for plus sizes: the literal actual width of the fabric printer. depending on how much fabric a garment uses (and our skirts use a LOT of fabric), there will come a time when the garment will get Too Big to fit right side up on the fabric and will have to be rotated, often completely sideways. and sometimes even then, especially for longer garments, there may be not way to make the garment fit on the fabric At All. you can move up to a bigger fabric printer, but then that little factory either has to outsource to an outside factory (which will then charge the original factory more than cost because they need to make money too) or they have to buy new equipment or find ways to modify the garment, which then cause it to not look the same on straight and plus sizes.

the second style of garment manufacturing gives you a set amount of fabric you have to consume per fabric type. this is what happens for roll printed fabric, dyed fabric, or textiles like plaid. the factory will create or buy a certain yardage for a particular fabric and you have to use all of it, minus what they set aside to fix errors. for us, that minimum is 600 yards. so for instance, my cozy sets use 2 fabric colors. i have to use 600 yards of each color. for my cotton collections, we roll print 600 yards of a single design and then split that yardage up into dresses, skirts, and shirts.

now here’s where sizing math and the fat tax get fun and funky! see, in this situation, making plus sizes saves you money. even if i am required to use those 600 yards, i am not required to make any set amount of garments. but i am still charged by the piece! so let’s say i take those 600 yards of cotton and i make 300 shirts, all in smaller sizes. lets say i am charged $40 per shirt. that’s $12,000. but wait! let’s say i use 300 yards of that fabric to make plus sizes. assuming double the fabric consumption (which isn’t exactly correct), i am now making 150 straight size shirts and 75 plus size shirts, for a total of 225 shirts. let’s be extremely generous and say the factory charges me an additional $1 for a plus size shirt (the reality is literal pennies). that’s 40x150 ($6000) for the straight size shirts and 41x75 ($3075) for the plus size shirts, for a total of $9075.

you can see in these two manufacturing examples that the increased fabric cost is basically negligible or actually helps to decrease the cost of a production order.

in my mind, the fat tax really boils down to two main things:

1. for home sewists, they are buying fabric that was created by a factory and then sold to a shop at a wholesale cost, which then marked up the fabric price for sale to consumers. they are paying for products that have already been marked up MINIMUM twice, assuming the factory sells directly to the retailer and not to a brand that THEN sells to a retailer. the fewer materials you use, the more expensive they are proportionally. a factory that makes their own fabric basically charges their customers cost + labor + their markup and they are making fabric in such bulk that the difference between 3 yards and 6 is basically negligible. at least for me using ethical labor, my largest expense will always be labor.
2. for larger retailers, the fat tax comes from corporate greed, from charging for that extra (at most) $1, and also from a “lost sales” perspective. if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve already seen the issue with decreasing production cost by including plus sizes and therefor making fewer garments: decreasing the over all number of garments you make also decreases the potential profit you can make. those 300 straight size shirts costs $12k, but sold at a wholesale margin, they can generate up to $30k in sales, or $18k in profit. conversely, the $9075 order can only generate a potential $22,687.5 in sales, or $13,612.5 in profit. that is, unless you make the plus size clothing cost more to even out the perceived “loss.”

this post is very long and it is way past my bedtime but i hope y'all find this interesting and informative. making and selling things is weird!

i think the heart of the emotional issue of the fat tax is fatness being seen as a deviation from the norm when, in fact, it is often the norm. fat people are often an after thought, if we are thought of at all. so it’s easy seeing a major retailer charge more for plus sizes and an indie designer similarly charging more and think they’re doing the same thing for the same reasons, when what’s going on underneath is vastly different.

i have an undergrad degree in accounting, and a dual mba-masters of accounting. i have had to learn the ins and outs of cost accounting to graduate as both an undergrad and a masters candidate. i have been an accountant as a career. i was about to sit the cpa exam before i got sick and burnt out. this shit is second nature for me.

so please listen when i say maya kern gets it exactly right, and that’s just using the simplest explanations for costing, and not some of the hellaciously complicated formulas that can occur when you get to large corporations that manufature products, or resell manufactured products.

large companies buying fabric does not work like home sewists buying fabric, and fat customers are often a huge cost savings in that arena because of the differences in how large companies can buy patterns/fabric essentially at cost or even at a discount. not only that, there are are circumstances where garments for fat people aren’t even “losing” sales depending on the customer demographic, the buying habits of those customers, and how marginal costing is done. most costing calculations reflect less of an economic reality than maya kern suggests (for large companies only, not indie designers like her) than a series of somewhat fudged transactions which ensure profitability on paper, which then translates–eventually–into massive profits for shareholders. 99% of the time in large corporate settings, the fat tax on garments isn’t even necessary unless you’re greedy.

i wish this post had room to talk about how companies use accounting fudgery to siphon money out of the economy (read: out of the average person’s pockets), but we’d be here until next week. so all that fat tax nonsense often adds up to is…more money for rich people, less for the rest of us.

they’re using fat people to hide their corporate greed. maya kern doesn’t, because she’s not greedy and treats fat people like human beings. so if you can, she’s a great small business to support.

thank you for the addition, i appreciate the extra information! while i do run a business i am very much not educated in business, so the additional insight is super interesting!

(via rebornfromsea)

anexperimentallife:

anexperimentallife:

When Mussolini created fascism, it was designed to be the merging of corporate and government power into an authoritarian regime. While labor unions were OSTENSIBLY independent, the regime was actually hostile to any union not controlled by or directly serving the regime. (Much like the US regime is hostile to most unions other than, say, police unions.)

This is why US politicians don’t like you learning what fascism is–because everyone who studied the rise of fascism in the early twentieth century could see exactly what course the US has been on for several decades now.

One of the most blatant advances of fascism in the US (although not the only one) was the passage Citizens United into law, which allows corporations to make unlimited political contributions. The Republicans who introduced and supported the bill insisted that “corporations ARE people,” that “money IS speech,” and claimed that not passing it would have “a chilling effect on free speech.” (Those are actual quotations.)

(via rebornfromsea)

massachusetts-official:

ralfmaximus:

von-felden:

memewhore:

Fools, she is force choking the lobster.

I find your lack of faith disturbing, crustacean

Official Post of Massachusetts

(via sorrelchestnut)

closet-keys:

closet-keys:

drug dependence is real, but sometimes people use this to further this idea that it means those drugs are a categorical harm in all contexts. sometimes you are already experiencing the thing that they warn would happen if you take drugs and then stop later. sometimes the worst case scenario is already your life before the drugs, and people will still try to present it like a scary consequence to avoid through abstaining from the medication that would alleviate it.

like I’ve had chronic insomnia for most of my life. I cannot sleep at night without drugging myself. is this great? no, it sucks. but this was the case before I got access to the drugs, too! and yes I tried everything anyone recommended about sleep, trust me.

people warned me like, “if you take those, you won’t be able to sleep without them.” …I literally already could not sleep. I couldn’t sleep without them before I had them. I can’t sleep without them now. nothing has changed except now I have access to drugs that allow me to sleep.

at a certain point you just need to make peace with the idea that some people need drugs to survive. sorry if it makes you uncomfortable, but that’s just how it goes.

#I initially thought this was about currently illegal drugs or nonprescription drugs and I was still like yup #then I realize this is about MEDICATION #either way

100%. I phrased it the way I did (using the word “drugs” instead of “prescription medication”) because this applies no matter what the current state of criminalization is of a given substance.

people use drugs to survive. we will continue to do that no matter how stigmatized or criminalized it is, because the other option is not surviving.

I firmly believe that disability justice requires decriminalization of all drugs and complete bodily autonomy over what substances we decide to take or forgo.

(via rebornfromsea)