New from our founder, Heather Corinna, a guide for those sexual times that wind up more “ow” than “oooh.”
It’s remarkably easy to hurt ourselves in the pursuit of feeling good. From genital abrasions to broken skin to pulled muscles to infections to allergic reactions, even fractures or breaks, exploring our bodies and their capacities sexually can sometimes mean finding out what’s past a bodies’ limits. We can think there was enough lube, but who among us (cough) hasn’t found out at least once that there wasn’t? We can forget that when it feels to us like we couldn’t possibly get enough of something, our body parts may have an entirely different and considerably threshold (um). Heck, you can hurt yourself just getting a date a glass of water (says my once-broken toe, bitterly).
For whatever reason (probably a combination of ableism, totally inhumane sexual ideals and maybe some leftover stuff from our DNA way back when we lived a wilder existence), if and when people get hurt during sex, they often feel ashamed or embarrassed, like they have ruined something. Getting hurt in our bodies is as acceptable an experience as feeling good in them. It’s not “weak” to get hurt, and it doesn’t mean anyone failed at anything, it just means we’re living in the body of a mere mortal, not a sexual superhero. So, if some kind of sex injury happens to you or a partner, don’t get hung up in negative feelings about it. Instead, turn your attention to yourself or whoever got hurt. Not only might you or they need physical care, caring for ourselves and each other in attentive, tender ways is only likely to enhance our sexual experiences and the ways we connect to ourselves or one another through them. This kind of care, much like general sexual aftercare, can be something that is a highlight of a sexual experience, even when something painful or bummerful happened which that care is centered around.
This simple guide covers the most common sexual injuries for people in the age group we serve, what needs to be done when and after they have happened, and how you can best prevent them. Read F*c&!ng First Aid: A Quick Guide to Common Sex Injuries over at Scarleteen.
to all my researchers, students and people in general who love learning: if you don't know this already, i'm about to give you a game changer
connectedpapers
the basic rundown is: you use the search bar to enter a topic, scientific paper name or DOI. the website then offers you a list of papers on the topic, and you choose the one you're looking for/most relevant one. from here, it makes a tree diagram of related papers that are clustered based on topic relatability and colour-coded by time they were produced!
for example: here i search "human B12"
i go ahead and choose the first paper, meaning my graph will be based around it and start from the topics of "b12 levels" and "fraility syndrome"
here is the graph output! you can scroll through all the papers included on the left, and clicking on each one shows you it's position on the chart + will pull up details on the paper on the right hand column (title, authors, citations, abstract/summary and links where the paper can be found)
you get a few free graphs a month before you have to sign up, and i think the free version gives you up to 5 a month. there are paid versions but it really depends how often you need to use this kinda thing.
I would like to address something that has come up several times since I relaunched my computer recommendation blog two weeks ago. Part of the reason that I started @okay-computer and that I continue to host my computer-buying-guide is that it is part of my job to buy computers every day.
I am extremely conversant with pricing trends and specification norms for computers, because literally I quoted seven different laptops with different specs at different price-points *today* and I will do more of the same on Monday.
Now, I am holding your face in my hands. I am breathing in sync with you. We are communicating. We are on the same page. Listen.
Computer manufacturers don't expect users to store things locally so it is no longer standard to get a terabyte of storage in a regular desktop or laptop. You're lucky if you can find one with a 512gb ssd that doesn't have an obnoxious markup because of it.
If you think that the norm is for computers to come with 1tb of storage as a matter of course, you are seeing things from a narrow perspective that is out of step with most of the hardware out there.
I went from a standard expectation of a 1tb hdd five years ago to expecting to get a computer with a 1tb hdd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd to expecting to get a computer that came with a 256gb ssd that we would pull and replace with a 1tb ssd, to just having the 256gb ssd come standard and and only seeking out more storage if the customer specifically requested it because otherwise they don't want to pay for more storage.
Computer manufacturers consider any storage above 256gb to be a premium feature these days.
Look, here's a search for Lenovo Laptops with 16GB RAM (what I would consider the minimum in today's market) and a Win11 home license (not because I prefer that, but to exclude chromebooks and business machines). Here are the storage options that come up for those specs:
You will see that the majority of the options come with less than a terabyte of storage. You CAN get plenty of options with 1tb, but the point of Okay-Computer is to get computers with reasonable specs in an affordable price range. These days, that mostly means half a terabyte of storage (because I can't bring myself to *recommend* less than that but since most people carry stuff in their personal cloud these days, it's overkill for a lot of people)
All things being equal, 500gb more increases the price of this laptop by $150:
It brings this one up by $130:
This one costs $80 more to go from 256 to 512 and there isn't an option for 1TB.
For the last three decades storage has been getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, to the point that storage was basically a negligible cost when HDDs were still the standard. With the change to SSDs that cost increased significantly and, while it has come down, we have not reached the cheap, large storage as-a-standard on laptops stage; this is partially because storage is now SO cheap that people want to entice you into paying a few dollars a month to use huge amounts of THEIR storage instead of carrying everything you own in your laptop.
You will note that 1tb ssds cost you a lot less than the markup to pay for a 1tb ssd instead of a 500gb ssd
In fact it can be LESS EXPENSIVE to get a 1tb ssd than a 500gb ssd.
This is because computer manufacturers are, generally speaking, kind of shitty and do not care about you.
I stridently recommend getting as much storage as you can on your computer. If you can't get the storage you want up front, I recommend upgrading your storage.
But also: in the current market (December 2024), you should not expect to find desktops or laptops in the low-mid range pricing tier with more than 512gb of storage. Sometimes you'll get lucky, but you shouldn't be expecting it - if you need more storage and you need an inexpensive computer, you need to expect to upgrade that component yourself.
So, if you're looking at a computer I linked and saying "32GB of RAM and an i7 processor but only 500GB of storage? What kind of nonsense is that?" Then I would like to present you with one of the computers I had to quote today:
A three thousand dollar macbook with the most recent apple silicon (the m4 released like three weeks ago) and 48 FUCKING GIGABYTES OF RAM with a 512gb ssd.
You can't even upgrade that SSD! That's an apple that drive isn't going fucking anywhere! (don't buy apple, apple is shit)
The norms have shifted! It sucks, but you have to be aware of these kinds of things if you want to pay a decent price for a computer and know what you're getting into.
hbo max blocks screenshots even when I use the snipping tool AND firefox AND ublock which is a fucking first. i will never understand streaming services blocking the ability to take screenshots thats literally free advertising for your show right there. HOW THE HELL IS SOMEBODY GONNA PIRATE YOUR SHOW THROUGH SCREENSHOTS. JACKASS
How do you do pixel art animation? What program do you use? These are so beautiful and I really wanna learn! Thank you!
I wrote a free post about my process here, hope you find it useful 🙏
Ppl: “Glaze and nightshade all your art!!”
Also ppl: * does not mention that you need to have a fucking NVIDIA GPU and running nightshade on one image takes at best 20 minutes*
Like the online version of glaze/nightshade requires an account. And last time i checked they arent accepting new accounts because of the high pressure.
Like i make my art on my ipad. My MacBook is from 2014. If i tried to download and run nightshade on my decade old macbook and go throufg 10+ years of artworks i might as well just set it on fire.
here's the story. i know expressvpn has been recommended in some 🏴☠️ how-to posts but it is not trustworthy. the parent company, kape technologies, not only used to distribute malate but has ties to multiple state surveillance agencies. and be careful where you look for info about good vpns, because kape technologies owns a bunch of "vpn review" sites too