[VD: A TikTok titled "My 10 favorite (inexpensive) holiday gift ideas for the blind & visually impaired." The first clip shows a person pointing up at the title as they voice-over: "These are my ten most favourite gifts for the blind and visually impaired".

The following items are demonstrated in the video and described in the voice-over:

1. Assorted bump dots - Various kinds of stickers with protruding dots on them that can be put onto appliances to make them more tactile.

2. Pocket money brailler - A device that allows you to imprint braille onto paper notes, indicating their value.

3. Liquid level indicator - A device hung on the edge of a container with metal prongs that detect when liquid has reached it.

4. Braille Pop-It - A pop-it with the alphabet in braille on each bubble.

5. Tactile Rubik's cube - A rubik's cube with unique textures for each color.

6. Braille color clothing tags - Tags with braille to indicate what colour a piece of clothing is.

7. Signature guide - A card with a rectangular slit in it to guide the user when writing their signature.

8. Low vision playing cards - Cards with very large and colorful numbers on them.

9. Pop-A-Cell - A plastic card with 6 bubbles you can indent to practice braille characters.

10. Talking keychain clock - A clock that says the time aloud when you press a button.

End VD.]

rbing again to boost my description! please make sure to rb this with a description! its a bit painfully ironic to see a video about blind people without a description... yknow, so visually impaired people can access it

You've been kidnapped but the main character of the last TV show you watched is coming to rescue you.

Who’s rescuing you?

protect em dashes.

protect “not x, not y, but z” format.

protect short sentence stacking as a stylistic choice.

protect fanfic writers—who are kind enough to share their works with people to read for free—from ai witch hunts, speculations and accusations.

“don’t like don’t read” also applies to any fic that is ai-generated and any fic you think is ai-generated by the way. if you don’t like what you’re reading for any reason, you can always stop reading and exit the fic at any point. but harassment is never ever justified. no matter if you think you’ve found a noble excuse to do it. and also…

witch hunts, speculations and accusations harm the writing community as much as ai does. if not more. I don’t want to see another innocent writer get driven away from the community because someone decides to harass and accuse them for using ai just because their fic happens to have “ai telltales” — the same telltales ai got from having been trained on millions of human-made works to mimic how real humans actually write.

I think cis women should be allowed to get top surgery even if its not for a medical reason like breast reduction or cancer. I think they should be able to get it even if they're completely cisgender. Some women are just sick of dealing with them and would be much much happier never needing to wear a bra again

Shiftshaper

Day 1 of infiltrating the crew.

One of them got too far from the group. Paralysed him and took his form.

Returned to the ship. Everyone keeps asking me where my pants are.

Day 2 of infiltrating the crew.

We have taken off. I have explained that one of the 'native lichens' made me allergic to pants. The rest of the crew seems to accept this.

Day 3 of infiltrating the crew.

I have been helping out around the ship while learning its secrets. And also trying to figure out where my quarters are supposed to be. Got it right fourth time. Managed to talk my way out of three awkward encounters.

Fourth one, not so much. I think I'm dating Crewman Eloise now.

Day 4 of infiltrating the crew.

Brought Eloise some breakfast and used my cunning skills to pump her for information.

So successful that I contrived to bring everyone else breakfast. I am a genius.

Day 5 of infiltrating the crew.

The captain keeps asking for Crewman Vitsie. They are obviously incompetent and lazy and have not responded. Captain sounds very irate. Perhaps I should find Vitsie and eat him to improve crew morale.

Day 6 of infiltrating the crew.

... I'm Crewman Vitsie. Got yelled at by the captain. Grovelled handsomely and explained that I am incompetent and lazy. I think I got away with it.

Day 7 of infiltrating the crew.

Space pirates. Why is it always space pirates?

Replicated one of them, infiltrated the ship, ate their captain. Very greasy.

Swapped back to my Vitsie disguise and pretended I snuck on board and shot the captain.

Luckily nobody asked about why I now weigh 50% more

Day 8 of infiltrating the crew.

Captain mentioned he knew I was a shiftshaper. Now hiding in an airduct. I'm not crying. That's... just... OK I might be crying. Eloise was going to put on a movie and I was really looking forward to it.

Day 9 of infiltrating the crew.

Captain has been yelling into an airvent for the last hour. They say they figured it out immediately.

Turns out Vitsie was an asshole, and they just liked me better.

NGL, feeling kind of proud.

Captain says since I saved the ship from greasy space pirates, they'll call it even if I promise not to eat any more crew.

Asked if that includes Robins from Engineering. Captains says Robins included because he's the only one who knows how to fix the toilets.

This is reasonable.

Day 10 of infiltrating the crew.

Watched "The Thing" with Eloise. Didn't sleep all night. That was terrifying!

Guys maybe someday I'll finish and post fanfiction again. That was a fun time. When I was doing that.

I almost fell for a phone scam today. The moral of this story is that it doesn't matter how smart you are, there is a scam out there that could very well GET YOU in the right circumstances.

For me today, those circumstances were: Several days of being underslept. Over-stressed. Forgot to take my ADHD meds this morning. Already dealing with the harried mental state of day-before-travel stress. A personal panic trigger of missing appointments because I forgot about them.

We all know by now that the IRS will not call you on the phone. The jury duty people also will not call you on the phone, and this was the crucial piece of information that I did not have cold hard confirmation of today. Here is what happened, so that you can be equipped in case these fuckers call you:

Man with an American accent tells me he's from my city's courthouse. He tells me I missed jury duty summons yesterday and that now I'm in Trouble for contempt of court and failure to appear for jury duty. I protested that I hadn't gotten a notification for jury duty, he talked over me and said scary things about getting law enforcement involved unless I went to pay some fines and talk to the judge Right Now Today. He told me that I legally wasn't allowed to hang up the phone or put it on mute. He told me that I was under a "gag order" and I couldn't tell anyone about this except law enforcement or immediate family members. He already knew my address. He had official-sounding case numbers which he made me write down and repeat back to him. He had official addresses of where I needed to go and what I needed to do: Take the cash for my "fines" to a kiosk where I would pay them and receive a "voucher" that i would then take to the courthouse where I would supposedly speak to a judge. He told me again that if I hung up the phone before I got to the courthouse, it would be taken as obstruction or failure to comply or intent to flee and he would notify the police. He told me that if I went to sort it out with the judge, it might be waived and my money would be refunded.

I have not gotten jury duty summons for a WHILE -- since before the pandemic -- and I had been idly thinking recently that maybe I was due for one. So I heard all this and my panic button about Forgetting/Missing An Appointment got hit dead-on.

I panicked, I was upset and frantic, I was not thinking clearly. This is how they fucking get you.

Honestly, thank god he wanted me to take cash to a different location instead of giving him any financial information over the phone. Thank GOD for that, because it gave my nervous system 30 minutes or so to calm down and my higher brain functions to come back online so that I could notice that there were simply too many red flags in one interaction. I did go to my bank, I did withdraw quite a lot of money in cash.

The address he gave me to go to next was for a gas station. When I expressed confusion, the scammer had smooth explanations, and before I'd even parked, he'd texted me some glossy "official" looking infographics on how to use the kiosk and why the """government""" had started doing payments this way (supposedly a COVID measure, and because the funds were 'safer' or something). The kiosk, these infographic images said, was run by a company called BTC Tech, which they claimed was "Bailing Institute & Technologies". You will notice that that does not match the acronym. The infographic was full of grammatical errors, and thank god he had me sit there in my car and read the whole thing out loud "to make sure i understood it" so that I could hear myself vocally trip over every single one of those grammatical errors and think "Wow, this is weird, it wasn't proofread?"

He sent me a QR code for the ""kiosk"" which had a familiar logo on it. He had persistently asked me for my ETA to the next location, and he was pressuring me to get out of the car and go inside to the kiosk, and it was at this point that I started lying and said, "Sure, hang on one second, i have a pebble in my shoe or something I need to fix first" while I was googling "Bitcoin logo" to verify.

Didn't really need to verify because when I went inside, the only "kiosk" looking thing was an ATM looking thing that had "BITCOIN" written on it in very loud letters. Which brings us to one of two admittedly hilarious interactions, wherein i was standing there in front of the fucking bitcoin machine with my eyes narrowed going, "This is for Bitcoin" several times while he said "No no no no it's not, it's not bitcoin, it's BTC tech" and I kept saying "Well but it says Bitcoin on it in big letters." "No no, it's just a multi-currency system, it's for the courthouse, you have to get the voucher." "Ok but it's fucking BITCOIN, this feels like a scam, I don't think the government uses BITCOIN."

I walked out. I went back to my car. I told him that I wasn't comfortable, and that I needed to call the courthouse to verify with them what the charges were, or I needed to go in person to the courthouse to check what was up. He told me if I hung up, I'd be arrested, and if I stepped foot on government property, I'd be arrested.

It was at this point that I utilized a weapon which in many cases is very dangerous and unethical to use but hey, it's perfect for situations like this: White Lady* Tears. This is exactly the situation they're MEANT for -- buying yourself time to think when a man is strongarming you into meek obedience and fear. (* I am nonbinary but he didn't need to know that.)

Anyway I pretended to cry and told him i felt nauseous and that i was going to be sick and i was just uwu so fwightened and upset and uwu uwu uwu sob sob i felt like he was getting mad at me and it was so scawy oh woe oh no -- while this happened he texted me an arrest warrant that had one of my old roommates' names on it instead of mine, but that EPIC FUMBLE didn't even matter because the whole time I am frantically googling on my phone "jury duty scam" and finding a Reddit page from a guy who posted about the exact same thing happening to him.

I hung up. I called the courthouse, got patched through to the jury pool department, and as soon as the guy picked up, I said, "Hi, my name is Alex, I just got a call saying that I missed jury duty--" and before I could even finish the sentence, the guy said, "That was a scam, we will NEVER call you." I said thank god thank god oh fuck thank god, which brings me to the second hilarious moment of this escapade, where the jury duty guy cheerfully said, "But if you have a couple thousand dollars on you, you can come over and give them to me if you want!" which did make me burst out laughing. Thank you, jury duty guy, for that much-needed moment of levity. I hope you're having a good day.

You are not immune to social engineering. I am 36 years old, highly intelligent, educated, and VERY tech-savvy, and those fuckers STILL caught me at just the right moment and with just the right hook that it triggered panic and desperation and shame and guilt and overrode my critical thinking skills for a solid 30 minutes. If it happened to me, it could happen to you. BE FUCKING VIGILANT. THE IRS WILL NEVER CALL YOU, AND JURY DUTY WILL NEVER CALL YOU.

In hindsight, I'm actually glad that it played out the way it did. For one thing, as a life lesson, that was a pretty cheap one -- all that it cost me was about an hour of my life (including the time it took to go back to the bank and deposit the money I'd withdrawn, gossip extensively to the bank teller about what happened, and get home) and some grey hairs.

For another thing, that fucker spent all that time on the phone with me and didn't get my money. I snatched his smug asshole victory right out of his mouth at the last second and wasted his time -- time that he otherwise ould have spent scamming someone who might not have gotten over their panic in time.

I actually wish that I'd kept him on the phone longer, tbh. If I'd been less rattled, I bet I could have strung him along for another hour or two. Better he spend it with me than with someone else.

JURY DUTY WILL NOT CALL YOU ON THE PHONE.

Rescue professional here:

If you need rescuing or help, DON’T FUCKING MOVE. You are so much easier to find when you stay put.

Credits: @foxes-in-love

Your most important survival skill is asking for help

Goddamn preach this

"Your most important survival skill is asking for help." THIS, it makes me so damn pissed off when parents try and normalize that asking for help is a taboo thing!

This feels important to reblog

Dude, all the evidence shows that we as a species put the majority of our Evolution Points/Character Creation Points into things like cooperation and interdependence. We are nothing without each other.

So in addition to all the good food we're being given by way of M92, apparently Liu Chang is going to be playing a support role in the upcoming republican drama Hua Deng Qi. While we know pretty much nothing about his character (though given his track record my money is on villain, romantic rival, or both) I am lighting the Aesthetic Liu Chang Fan beacons because for once the person they have doing the styling Understands Him.

More food for you (screenshots from the teaser)

I designed a set of convertible floor cushions that turn into a footrest!

They can be buttoned together in a stack (footrest mode), buttoned together in a square (big floor cushion mode), or used individually (cushions mode).

I started off with this big 1-metre square foam floor cushion, which I liked but was hard to store when not in use.

I wanted to keep the option of a big floor cushion without it having to just lurk behind the sofa. At the same time, I wanted an extra footrest. So I decided to find a way to make the cushion convertible in some way.

For a while I toyed with having it fold up like a monopoly board. But I couldn't come up with a way to construct and secure the cover without bulky zips everywhere.

So then I considered just making four separate cushions that could be secured together in different configurations. For a while my best idea was to have something like a belt or strap, which could either go around the circumference of the 2x2 floor layout, or around the stack. But I didn't like the idea of having to deal with that band as a loose separate item.

@cassolotl had the genius idea to use loops to chain up the sides to keep the cushions together in a stack. I was doubtful at first because it didn't solve the problem of attaching them together in the floor layout. But then I figured out that adding buttons in the right place relative to the loops would make it possible to secure all three configurations. Which I'll demonstrate at the end of the post!

So the first step was cutting the big cushion down into four equal pieces. Well, the first-first step was trimming it down to clean up the section that was destroyed by my rabbit, who liked to burrow against the cushion and somehow managed to shred the foam *through* the cover.

I cut the foam with a hand saw, which was quite easy and satisfying.

Then making the cushion covers. I made strips of straight-cut binding and tucked loops into the corners while I sewed together the side pieces of the cover.

I decided to add piping to the top for aesthetics and structure. I've never done piping before but it wasn't too bad to get the hang of.

Because I dislike both zips and buttons (not specifically sewing with them, but just generally coming into contact with them in life) I decided not to bother making any closure on the underside of the cushions. Instead I just made the bottom piece of the cover in two triangles with a diagonal opening across the middle. A bit of strategic reinforcement stitching at the corners got the balance between making it possible to insert the cushions without the flaps flapping around too much.

Now for the details of the loop/button system. Each loop is positioned halfway up the height of the cover, at the corner. Each cover has two loops, at diagonally opposite corners. The loops extend 10cm, which is the exact thickness of the cushion foam.

Exactly 10cm to the right of each loop, I sewed on a big wooden button, also halfway up the height of the cushion.

For separate cushions mode, each loop is simply wrapped over its own neighbouring button to keep it from waving around or catching on things.

For big floor cushion mode, the cushions are butted together with their loop-corners touching each other around the perimeter of the square.

At each connection point, the loops from *both* cushions are wrapped around the button exposed on the perimeter. This holds all of the cushions together around the outside, and friction keeps them from slipping around in the middle.

For footrest mode, the loops are chained up through each other - the bottom cushion's loop is wrapped around the second cushion's loop, which wraps around the third cushion's loop, which wraps around the top loop.

Then, the top loop wraps around its own button to secure the chain.

I'm seriously SO proud of this system. It's so versatile and all three modes work perfectly!!!

Me trying to say something to my partner about some cool fanart I just saw on my dash.

Him: back up back up, what the FUCK is Mouse Effect.

Lizardsex I love you...

The burning question of course is whether everyone is mice, or just the humans. Like are the salarians little frogs or is it Mice and Mice With Blue Tentacles???

sorry im absolutely too floored by the fact you just called me 'lizardsex' to give you an answer

... I see now your name is probably Lizards Exposed and not in fact Lizard Sex Posed.

This exact phenomenon is why there’s now a hyphen in my url.

is this niche piece of media really that popular or is my one mutual really going through something: a tale of tumblr