Andrea Zanin

F**k: An Irreverent History of the F-word by Rufus Lodge

#CurrentlyReading

Thanks for coming! What a delightful afternoon :D

They were much better the second time around! The dark, slightly nutty-bitter flour really added a kick of flavour to the cookies. This recipe is a keeper. And the pairing totally worked, it's like they were made for each other. 😋🫖🍪

...which I topped with Japanese flake salt & a blend of Canadian West Coast sea salt, cacao powder & coarse caramel sugar, a gift from Faraway Best Ex. I baked a test batch last week, screwed it up, learned, and baked batch #2 just before my guests arrived so they could eat them fresh from the oven.

Today I served a fun pairing! After tasting it through my tea advent calendar in December, I tracked down a bag of Jin Jun Mei, a delicious Chinese black tea with pronounced chocolatey notes. To go with it, I tried a new recipe for chocolate chip cookies made with dark rye flour...

... Antifragile (pointer, indigo), all Mooncat, and one by Mizhse (thumb, charcoal). Love how the rainbow linear effect pops in bright light!

#manicure #extremityfetish In honour of this week's blood moon, it felt appropriate to use Mooncat's Blood Moon polish (ring finger, burgundy). From there I decided to build a dark-coloured linear holographic skittle, so: Cruel Mirage (pinky, black), Monster Under Your Head (middle, green)...

Besides, it's hypocritical: one early display of his disgustingness was when he mocked a disabled reporter. But now it's OK and righteous to turn around and do the same thing? That's not how this works. You want to be one of the good guys? Then actually be a good guy.

Like the man is an execrable person, a malevolent ghoul, a rapist and pedophile, one of the most morally bankrupt individuals ever to ascend to country leadership, and he chooses physical ugliness. Plenty of material there, no need to go "aha! An excuse to make fun of disability!"

He's a terrible human being. If you really must mock his appearance, maybe focus on the orange skin, cuz he actively chooses that—it's not a colour found in nature. But like... I know some really good people who have bowel issues. How do you think they feel hearing people laugh about adult diapers?

I don't give a single shriveled shit about the Scrotum-in-Chief's feelings, & I'll celebrate with great enthusiasm when he expires, but it's gross watching people mock him for being incontinent, having a rash, whatever. All you're doing is showing you think illness & disability are fine to laugh at.

LOL I promise I am not gaseous

I'm very curious what a fully sublimated homosexual or bisexual would be. I don't have a partner and I read a lot of books. How many books do I have to read to be fully sublimated? Inquiring minds want to know!!

If you're doomscrolling, guess what? So far there are 51 kākāpō chicks hatched and thriving this season, the same number of birds as we had in TOTAL in the 90s! Only one chick has died and there are still fertile eggs waiting to hatch!

Oooh YES thank you, excellent rec! I will add it to my get-it list!

Urban Truth Collective: Straight Talk About The Joy Of Cities In An Age Of Disinformation — Streetsblog USA The Three Tenors of Urbanism explain their latest effort: The Urban Truth Collective.

PLEASE HELP US SHARE THIS: “We’ve let the lies be far too successful, and that’s significantly hurt our cities. No more.”

It’s our blunt NEW @usa.streetsblog.org op-ed sharing why we’ve created @urbantruth.bsky.social. SPOILER: We need to call out the lies and tell the truth much more persuasively!

I do love a cannibalism book. Hmmm...

A picture of PEW poll on global attitude survey, saying the % who rate the morality and ethics of people in their country as good vs bad, where the US has the worst rankings and Canada the best

Americans: we live in a fallen state—embroiled by sin, cheating, lying, and evil. You cannot trust anyone, not even those who claim to know you best

Canadians: I love my neighbors and my friends!

Clearly I need to visit Pompeii

Haha nice! Well I am glad you're here, with apologies to your wallet. 😂 Those are beautiful jewelry pieces, happy belated! 🥳

Hm. Well, again, in my experience, it wasn't presented as therapeutic in any way. It was just about providing extra intellectual challenge for kids who were in a higher capacity bracket than the standard classroom and were understimulated. I don't think divergence needs to require treatment.

I don't know enough about the landscape here to even speculate. So I will get my hands on a couple of the books and see how they land with me. Not really sure what to expect here. I will report back with whatever I find out! /fin

Well in my experience it wasn't treated as a diagnosis at all. And I'm not sure I would see it as such even now, and it doesn't seem to be approached that way in most of what I can find online about it. More like a set of traits, I think, but I'm just starting to explore so have no clarity yet.

I wasn't expecting that. With the enormous cultural conversation about neurodiversity going on these days, new books on autism and ADHD seem to be emerging every ten minutes. But for giftedness: crickets. I am very curious what is going on with that.

So, of course, I got curious about it and went searching for books on the topic - my primary tool for learning about any topic that piques my interest (which is why I have nearly 2,000 books eeep). Turns out there are, like, six books about giftedness, and three of them were written 25+ years ago??

And of course, when you pursue higher levels of schooling (grad school etc.), you're no longer especially exceptional, cuz the path kinda selects for bright folks, so you don't stand out. All this to say, the notion that giftedness might be relevant to me *now* is kinda novel.

"Gifted" didn't mean something especially formal, or if it did, I was never made privy to it. It felt more like "we better do something to keep this insatiable kid amused so, uh, here's some extra homework." And after elementary school I was just grouped with the bright kids and that was it.

This tracks with my sense that I'm probably some kind of neurodivergent, but the struggles and traits my autistic and ADHD pals talk about don't resonate for me. I was put in various gifted programs as a kid, too, but we weren't really talking about neurodiversity in the 80s.

A little while ago I came across this Venn diagram of common traits within autism, ADHD and giftedness. Turns out that my own traits cluster heavily under giftedness, with a couple of tendrils into autism and almost none in ADHD. 🧵