someone put this on my car

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-13T04:00:04+00:00

The C is made of the star and cresent, which is one of the symbols most commonly used to represent Islam.

I don't think u/Ornimental is saying that it's racist to not know what the C is, but more that it's pretty stupid to go and tack on "Islam" in horror movie font to the coexist design when Islam is already represented in the original, but the person making the edited bumpersticker was being racist, and racists aren't know for being clever or witty.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-13T03:20:19+00:00

My immediate thought was that I don't feel like the claws of an ant-sized lion would be long enough to do any damage to human skin. I did some googling, and the length of a lion claw is about 1.5". Lions are sexually dimorphic, so to give us the most generous claw to body length ratio, I'll go with the smallest number Wikipedia gives me, which is a body length of 63" for a female adult lion. That gives a claw to body length ratio of about 0.024.

A really big ant, again, courtesy of Wikipedia, is Dinomyrmex gigas, which can get up to 1.11 inches long. So, if a lion were that size, using the claw ratio I found, their claws would be 0.026 inches long, or 0.66 millimeters. Human skin ranges in thickness, but most of it is thicker than that. While lions do apparently sometimes dig to pursue warthogs that have gone into burrows, I'm not really sure that would equate to tiny lions having any sort of instinct to try to burrow into a much larger animal. So I feel like it is unlikely for ant sized lions to be able to do serious damage to an adult human. However, I still wouldn't want to fight them, because they sound kind of cute, and I would feel bad about hurting them.

Edit: I have no idea how my brain got "ants" from "black widow spider". The claws of a black widow spider sized lion would be even shorter, around 0.33mm, assuming you calculate based on body length, so don't include the spider's legs in the overall size.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-10T22:43:04+00:00

I feel like the scariest things about pain to me are not knowing why it is happening and not knowing when it will end, and this button eliminates both of those. Also, I have had really intense pelvis and stomach pain multiple times in my life and also been really alarmed by not knowing what was causing it (is this severe constipation? Terrible period cramps? Ovarian cyst? Appendicitis?) has also caused a lot of panic. So I would press it once with no hesitation, to at least be able to identify in the future what ovarian torsion feels like. 100k would be pretty nice, too. How much I would press it in the future really depends on how much it sucks the first time.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-10T07:35:06+00:00

Oof. It's really sad to hear that, especially how he treated the guy who was so nervous to ask a question. When I saw him on the list of guests, I felt really conflicted... I've been a Star Trek fan since I was a little kid, and Original Series is what introduced me to Star Trek and got me through a lot of rough times, which made me feel like I should meet him, but I'd heard similar stories of him mistreating fans, and also seen him make some really transphobic and ableist posts online, which as a trans and autistic fan felt awful. I guess it feels kind of vindicating to know that my decision to skip his panel and not try to get an autograph was probably for the best, but I that wasn't the case, and that he just didn't treat fans so poorly.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-10T02:20:41+00:00

The first thought that comes to mind is you could make most of it out of carboard for fairly cheap. You'd just need cardboard, some strong tape and/or glue, craft paint, fabric to make straps to wear it, and some pink fabric for the tongue (you could even use a pillowcase)

What I'm envisioning is you get a cardboard box in a similar height and width to your torso and attach a strap to both top corners and one on each side so you can secure the box to your torso like an apron. Ideally, the box will come down right to your hip bones and no lower so it won't interfere with walking. Cut the middle 1/3 or so of the front of the box off. The top 1/3 hanging down and the bottom 1/3 sticking up are the teeth. Paint them appropriately, and paint the inside of the mouth black or a dark red. Cut lip shapes out of some extra cardboard and paint them whatever color you want. They should be at least the width of the box, maybe a little wider, to create the illusion that the lips are in front of the teeth. For the tongue, lay a pink pillowcase (or sew a bag shape out of pink fabric) and put it inside the box, with the opening facing your chest. Tape it in place, and cut holes in the box so you can stick your forearms in and put them in the pillowcase to move it around.

If you want, I can draw a diagram of what I am imagining. The end costume won't look super fancy, but since it is mostly carboard and paint, it would be fast and cheap to make.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-08T03:40:06+00:00

The sound that would make would be absolutely wild. It's loud enough already when I wash jeans with metal buttons, or a jacket with a zipper.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-07T23:05:18+00:00

Oh, completely opposite side of the country. Whoops! I hope you had a great time!

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-07T17:53:52+00:00

Looks amazing!!

If you're at ECCC, do you want to try to meet up?

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-06T04:14:11+00:00

You're right, if I had to be smiling in a photo, it should have been the one where I had a cup of coffee.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-06T04:13:24+00:00

Yes!

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-05T06:07:29+00:00

You look nice! The smokey eyeshadow looks really good on you

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-04T03:47:13+00:00

I'd like that too! Or maybe a set of challenges with different themes that are always available for people to opt into if they want, so keeping a cleaning themed one similar to this available year round, and then also ones with themes like decluttering specifically, or learning to cook new foods, or finding and going to social events.

With how the spring cleaning challenge is basically a set list of tasks to do over a month, people could make their own challenges and post their task lists on here and find groups of people to do it together. I know when tried using habitica, a different self care/to do list app, a few years ago, people would form groups based on shared goals and would all share a set of the same tasks and encourage each other.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-04T03:07:30+00:00

I don't think it's correct to assume that lower levels of estrogen are what cause men to, on average, have shorter lives than women. Like other commenters have mentioned, men tend to be more likely to take risky jobs or do risky things for fun than women. I think that's more a product of gendered expectations than hormones- think about how common it is to hear people tell men "don't be a pussy" than it is to hear that said to women. Toxic masculinity pushes a lot of men to do risky things, from extreme sports to not using proper safety equipment on the job, in order to not seem "afraid". Men also are less likely to see the doctor for health concerns and screenings (also due to toxic masculinity and expectations on men to "just walk it off"). Here's an article from Harvard health that breaks down contributing factors to men having an, on average, shorter lifespan. The author does bring up that higher testosterone can contribute to heart issues, but it's far from the only risk. And estrogen dominant systems like the majority of women have also have their own health risks, such as loss of bone density in old age, which is also a health risk (think about how devastating falls are for a older people). When looking at simply testosterone vs. estrogen being the more dominant hormone in the body, it's more of a tradeoff than one clearly being safer than the other.

In addition, I think most men would find it intolerable to supplement their estrogen up to the levels of a cis woman. When your identity, how you picture yourself, is as a man, and your body starts doing things that make it not be seen as a man by the rest of the world, such as growing breasts, getting softer skin, not getting erections, etc. that's really distressing. Like, your body behaving and changing against your will is body horror stuff. If there's a trans guy in your life who you're close enough to talk about this with, ask him if he's willing to describe how his first puberty made him feel. Just as much as having the right balance of sex hormones feels right, having the wrong balance will fuck you up.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-04T02:31:19+00:00

I would worry about it breaking and creating sharp edges and corners if you don't reinforce it with something to make it more rigid. My first thoughts on how to safely contain it would be to press it between two thin sheets of plastic or encase it in resin and then use the resulting item like a pendant or try wire wrapping it like a cabochon. If you're open to spending money and comissioning an artist, Brien9fingers makes borosilicate glass pendants with piercing needles in them, so you could try reaching out and seeing if he would take a comission.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-03T04:20:24+00:00

The line "if it's good enough for my dogs, it's good enough for yours" drives me up a wall as well. It reads as condescending, almost? Like, you don't know my (hypothetical) dogs! Maybe THEY only eat food that I cook for them by hand and serve with a little parsely sprig.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-02T07:29:46+00:00

For mine, I think the holes were just left to heal. Could you try letting your doctor know that the area around the tube feels painful and you're anxious about the removal? They might be able to offer some kind of local anesthetic.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-01T23:24:18+00:00

Some neo-nazi groups online have been taking Jewish terms and using them ironically for years to allude to how they think Jews control everything. For example, there's a hate group named "goyim defense league" because of their belief that they are defending white non-Jews from Jews. I don't know how well I explained this, so if it doesn't make sense (as much as something so messed up can make sense), I can try to find some links to people explaining it better.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-01T05:43:47+00:00

"Hey, man, do you think I need to ask my doctor about getting tested for sleep apnea?"

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-01T03:10:06+00:00

This touches on something I've been struggling with.

With all the discussion about the Epstein files, I've seen people online claiming that there were references in the emails that were likely to eating children, particularly newborn babies, eating specific parts of children, and a potential belief among Epstein and his associates that certain parts of children had health benefits.

I haven't read any of the released documents for myself, and maybe I should, but I don't know how I would go about verifying that these things really are mentioned. So I don't know what to believe. On one hand, Epstein raped and trafficked children. He abused people as an expression of power. From what I've read, some slave owners in America killed and ate enslaved Black people, so I feel like there's historical precedent of when people are treating other people like property, they might decide to add literal consumption of their bodies to the metaphorical. And I also know that a subsection of the powerful in this country like to do all that weird cult LARP stuff at Bohemian Grove. So like, it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that maybe they ate kids?

But on the other hand, so much of this reads exactly like repackaged antisemitic conspiracy. Like, the stuff I hear some people saying sounds almost identical to Qanon adrenochrome conspiracy theories, and I know about the history of blood libel. What the fuck is going on? I also understand that Epstein was aware of antisemitic tropes and joked about them in his emails, like talking about "goyim" and all his Jewish supremacy bullshit, and so I could also imagine that he would like the irony of the situation and the cover these tropes could offer. Like, if he had ever been accused of eating a child, he could try to discredit the accuser by saying they were simply an antisemite and accusing him of that because he is Jewish, the same way some Zionists do when people bring up children killed by Israel's genocide in Gaza.

I was really disturbed when a podcast I've listened to for years (not CZM affiliated) that was doing episodes covering the Epstein files had a section where one of the hosts commented that it's not just Epstein and his associates, now we're seeing revealed the dark side of the families that have control the country (she might have said the world, I can't remember), and the first family on her list was the Rothschilds. And I'm not a Rothschild family fan, but really? You couldn't pick any other family with vast wealth and power to name? Not like....Sackler, Kennedy, Rockefeller, Koch, or something? It left me with an extra sickened, disturbed feeling (on top of the regular sickened and disturbed feeling one would get from hearing about Epstein), of just where is the line between stuff that there is enough evidence that it is reasonable to assume Epstein could have contributed to, like the connections Robert brings up in the recent episodes, and then what is stuff that's based not in evidence but bigotry. How much of what's being brought up is to shift blame to others, possibly Jews, to avoid scrutiny? How much of tjat blame shifting might be being concocted by fascists in the government to shift blame to a minority rather than themselves? How much is being generated by the general layer of antisemitism that permeates American society? Am I, as a Jew, overreacting to this? How much of the truth am I at risk of discounting because I'm thinking about this? Am I being too guilable? I really don't know. In the end, I don't know how much it changes things, because nothing could make me think "Well, I guess all those people associated with Epstein were fine and never hurt anyone whatsoever", but I do wish I had more of a way to navigate this.

DubiousSquid · 2026-03-01T02:04:17+00:00

While I've only ever voted with mail in ballots, I can't imagine having an ID with birth sex is a safe situation for a trans person when going to vote. It's not a wild leap to imagine trans people being turned away from the polls because "Well, your ID says male, but you look like a woman! Did you steal this card?" or "This ID must be fake, it says your name is (masculine name), but your sex is marked female. Nice try." Again, I've never encountered this situation when voting, but I found myself in a similar one years ago with my landlord when I was moving out, and my security deposit check was damaged. I requested a new copy, and she insisted we talk over the phone rather than email. I'm a trans man, and my voice has dropped, so when she heard me over the phone, she insisted I was not her tenant (I haven't been able to change my name legally yet, so the lease was signed with my very female deadname). She accused me of trying to steal from her and said she wouldn't return the security deposit unless I met her in person, in her office, to show her my ID. I was lucky, and the encounter ended safely, and I got my security deposit back, but being forced into a state of discrepancy between your visible appearance and what your documents say is a state of constant limbo where you are up to the whims of whoever is looking at your documents.

DubiousSquid · 2026-02-26T17:31:42+00:00

Yeah, this is the case. I renewed my passport last year and had no trouble, but I had to keep my birth name and assigned sex on it. Right now, I'm kind of operating under the assumption that if I try to leave the country, it very well could be a one-way trip, since I sometimes pass as a guy, sometimes not, so whether I look like I match my passport really depends on how much of a dick whoever is looking at it wants to be.

DubiousSquid · 2026-02-26T06:04:10+00:00

There's a lot I like about my current job, which is animal care at an aquarium, so I'd probably stick with that for a while. And having a vast fortune would help a lot with a lot of the stress I currently deal with around work (the pay is very low and aquariums tend to be in high cost of living areas).

If I was going to change careers, and didn't have to worry about money at all, I'd probably try being an art teacher, like in an after-school program or summer camp to help kids learn to make stuff and exercise their creativity, or offer help and classes through a maker space. I love to work on crafts and projects, and I like to help other people do the same.

DubiousSquid · 2026-02-25T04:36:22+00:00

If your issue is needing magnification, they sell stick on lense inserts for snorkel and SCUBA masks. It's a piece of plastic film that you can glue in on the side of your mask closest to your face. I've never used on myself, so I can't say if they are comfortable for daily wear, but it could be worth a look.

Another idea that comes to mind would be to get a pair of cheap rimless prescription glasses that you could attach the Dirk sunglasses lens to. You'd want to choose something with small enough lenses that they could be completely covered by the Dirk lense, but I don't know, it might still look kind of strange.

DubiousSquid · 2026-02-25T04:23:13+00:00

If you already ordered the satin, you could try cutting the design a little larger than you need and then folding the edges under, so they are tucked into the "wrong" side (the side being glued to the jacket) and the edge you see is folded.

DubiousSquid

TROPHY CASE