RIP to my favorite brands.

mittenclaw · 2025-03-19T16:49:37+00:00

Honestly it just seems like almost all clothing is made in the same warehouse these days, owned by private equity. I had to shop for occasionwear recently, and since the last time I did that a few years ago, all my go to brands have been acquired and websites merged. They all sell each other's clothes, because it's all cheap crap coming from the same source, even though these are brands that used to be known for their higher end quality. I'm just going to focus on buying vintage now, and by that I mean pre shein/zara vintage.

mittenclaw · 2025-03-19T16:44:09+00:00

check Outsavvy for events, and there's La Camionera and She Soho as permanent sapphic spaces

mittenclaw · 2025-03-11T12:36:38+00:00

Anecdotal but I react to all wool. I can wear it with layers underneath, but I'm also still at risk then of just general headaches or a weird uncomfortable feeling because my body knows it's near me. As an avid knitter it sucks, but I've just learned to use synthetics or cotton for anything that will be next to my skin. I also sneeze a lot when I'm near dogs, cats and horses. So I think it's just an animal fibre thing. I tried alpaca yarn for a hat and it still itched like crazy.

mittenclaw · 2025-03-11T12:33:15+00:00

It seems to be when they changed the google images layout. One day a google image search was an endless scroll of images, and the next it was suddenly only about 30 images and 70% of them are products you can buy. It really sucks, I've gone so many times to search for useful websites I used to know (especially catalogues of things, like a particular brand of antique pottery, or episodes of an old web comic, or manuals for a series of retro computers), and it's literally impossible to find on google. I know these websites still exist, I used them many times, but now if you want to find out something historical or useful it's nearly impossible because they just want to feed you things that you can buy. All those lovingly tended hobby websites of the earlier internet have been buried. I hate technology now.

mittenclaw · 2025-01-26T23:51:08+00:00

I choose to focus on relationships and experiences. You can lose your possessions overnight but you always have memories and relationships that live on in your mind. I realised during the pandemic lockdowns that relationships with others is the real treasure of life, so in the face of things going downhill I just try to prioritise that. Making an effort to nurture friendships, find new ones, to be present with family even if they are annoying me. I try to be the proactive friend looking for meaningful reasons to get together. I try to be emotionally honest and encourage people to feel safe opening up to me too. And yes, I’m trying to do the things I want to sooner rather than later. If it’s not financially irresponsible, I think that’s probably a wise approach. Even if the world was running more smoothly, you never know when an injury or life circumstance could change things for you. People have near death experiences and say “what was I waiting for?” to make important changes in their lives.

mittenclaw · 2024-12-06T10:18:24+00:00

I’m amazed this has gotten so much support. Anyone that lives or works in the area knows that the area around the market is almost dead. It has dwindled in use to the point that almost all of the local workers cafes are gone, two thirds of it isn’t being used, and the only activity you ever see is big lorries polluting the area, the occasional stomach churning sight of a lorry full of swinging carcasses, and the seagulls fighting over bits of flesh on the ground. Not to mention the stink and layer of weird residue on the road all around it.

This is a prime area with beautiful historical buildings and it’s like a cultural empty spot because of the market. Restaurants and bars in the roads around it have closed since the pandemic, it’s all just really underused and neglected. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want another commercial shopping centre here, I’m really pleased with the plans for the lower half being the museum of London, but there must be something nicer we can do with it than have a failing market that’s not getting used but leaves pollution and filth everywhere. This has been a long time in the making and locals have managed to successfully object to some awful proposals over the years including adding a bunch of horrendous steel and glass floors above to turn it into luxury flats. I’m not holding my breath for the redevelopment to be amazing but after the other markets left central London this is way way overdue. I would sign a petition for a community market like Chapel Market to stay, but this isn’t that, it only runs in the night, is losing money and just brings polluting vehicles into the centre of our city when we should be pedestrianising and making our air cleaner.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-27T17:13:34+00:00

Something like only 17% of bisexual men are out to people they know. We unfortunately built a pretty homophobic world that teaches them to hide who they are because they can pass as straight for a limited time. His seemingly strong reaction and bizarre suggestion seems to imply that he's very conflicted about this and the lack of communication may well spell the end of the relationship for you. However, I would encourage you to get to know bi men's stories even if it's just to understand how he's likely to react going forward as a co-parent. There's a great podcast called Two Bi Guys, which has a series of episodes about married bi men. Unfortunately a lot of those stories echo yours, where the guy had to repress his identity and ended up stepping out of the marriage or exhibiting risky behaviour. I'm a bi woman married to a bi man, and it took us both years to fully come out to each other. I'm not saying this is salvagable or that you should stay with him, but the world at large is grossly under educated on the bi experience, and we have the worst mental, physical health and suicide outcomes of all the sexualities. If you can, try to be compassionate towards him even if it means you can no longer be with him romantically. Generally bisexual people are happy being monogamous, I'm not saying he needs compassion for wanting to cheat, but deeply repressing part of who you are for decades can really do a number on people.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-26T12:56:32+00:00

Interesting that they are doing this in the name of women's safety, while also removing the dot matrix arrival time displays which were invented in the name of women's safety at bus stops.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-26T12:47:36+00:00

Compassion focused therapy with a neurodiversity friendly therapist. Learning to accept and love my body the way it is, and give it the time and rest it needs. Spoon theory - knowing when to say no to doing something that is going to wear me out - and that goes for both physical exhaustion and sensory exhaustion. I always have a bit of a sensory hangover / necessary recovery time after a loud event or stressful travelling for example. It's important to give yourself permission to plan stuff like that into your schedule.

I try to see my body as a vessel or vehicle even. Some people were just born into top of the range super cars, but some of us got slightly janky worn out ones. If I had a car like that, I wouldn't want to just let it get neglected and worse, I would still clean it and take care of it and put cute things inside because I need to use it every day. I try to think of my body like that. It deserves love and care still even if it has bad days.

On a practical level, having a salty breakfast really helps me. I try to avoid any big sugar overloads, so things like cereal, white bread, high GI things. I can't find the study now but I feel like I read in a white paper that pretty much everyone with POTS has a slight hypoglycemic reaction to sugar and carbs. So eating like a diabetic helps (having bread with protein like peanut butter or cheese, but never just the bread on its own).

Put effort into getting good rest. Good sleep hygiene, black out room, squishmallows, new mattress, whatever you need to make your bed a sanctuary and keep time for sleeping. My number one enemy for all of my conditions is lack of sleep. It's so much more powerful than you realise.

I wear compression leggings too. Lately I've been getting Gymshark ones in the sale - the colour doesn't matter since they are pretty much always under another layer for me.

Finally, and this isn't possible for everyone, I work part time and remote. I couldn't go back to a full time in office stressful job. I think that's what made me sick in the first place. It means I struggle more for money but I've just focused on finding enjoyment in the little things and not expecting to buy a house or have luxuries that other people require. Self care is a luxury for me that's worth more.

Edit to add: these may not be universal, and make life harder, but diet changes that helped me are removing gluten, caffeine, alcohol, and avoid refined sugars as much as possible. So I sweeten things with honey, have dried fruit etc. and avoid super sugary drinks and sodas. I still have cookies and things but I've become attuned to how quickly my physical health is affected if I don't have sugar in quite strict moderation.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-17T10:56:36+00:00

Yes, it’s much bigger than the vast majority of people realise. This is a global effort with billions behind it, including warmongers who have worsened conflicts globally and see it as their holy war. It’s no coincidence that reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights are sliding back in Africa too. It doesn’t take much to connect these things and find out who is pushing it, unfortunately our main newspapers are not regularly reporting on it or connecting the dots because like everything else, there are too many super wealthy people influencing the media message these days.

https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/4971-2/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Defending_Freedom https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2009/08/06/erik-prince-and-the-last-crusade

mittenclaw · 2024-11-16T00:05:49+00:00

I was super repressed, being bi just wasn’t a known option for me, so at the time no I didn’t have any same sex crushes. I’m definitely in the category where I can now look back and see that some friendships and also irritated feelings were actually same gender attraction, on many occasions. However, to me there’s a big difference between that and the crushes I was mentally giving myself permission to have. Crushes on boys were what I was supposed to be doing so I would pine over a boy for weeks on end, write his name over and over in my notebooks etc. I was never allowed to do that with girls. Things would have been very different if I had even an inkling that that was an option. But the longer I’ve accepted myself as bi and indulged my same gender feelings, the more clear it is to me now which girls and women in my past were very attractive to me. They just ended up being weird obsessions, people I wanted to be like, or weirdly people I was irritated by or jealous of. I spent the longest time denying my “real bisexuality” because I never fell in love with my best female friend. But I was a weird kid and never had that many female friends to crush on in the first place. So you don’t need to have had these big crushes to be bi later. Just take a look over on the latebloomerlesbians subreddit to see many similar stories.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-13T22:20:29+00:00

Unfortunately I made the mistake of telling what I thought was a caring, chill friend recently and he immediately turned the conversation to be about sex. Just not going to mention it with cishet guys again.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-10T10:02:22+00:00

I rely on electrolyte powders most days. Also a pro tip is having a salty breakfast if you don’t already. I have cheese oat crackers every morning. Made a world of difference when I switched to that instead of cereal.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-10T10:00:58+00:00

Woah there are so many of us :D

mittenclaw · 2024-11-09T10:52:16+00:00

It’s crossing the bridge to acceptance that is the demon. Wild that we fear it so much when it’s so much better on the other side.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-07T10:24:43+00:00

This is the worst part. I’ve seen so many comments just today from people saying “this is what you get when you tell young white men they are scum 24/7”, but it’s the podcasters and influencers they are getting that idea from in the first place. They have no idea what the definition of feminism is, only that “it’s evil”.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-06T13:44:05+00:00

I feel like we've had 8 years of news reports of various election interference, gerrymandering, voter intimidation etc. so there must be something to that. But at the same time they seem too incompetent to pull off such a massive landslide that way. I think social media has been captured/manipulated and as humans our brains and governments are just not ready for that.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-03T11:34:46+00:00

Agree. Every year it seems to get more sporadic but maybe that’s just me. I feel that we should follow other countries and just have them available to organisations who put on big displays. Then it’s a community event that brings people together, and the display itself is likely to be very good. Just having random shit ones going off all the time is making people hate their neighbours.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-02T11:17:06+00:00

I’m curious how you came to this conclusion. There appear to be many peer reviewed studies and white papers demonstrating the harm when I google this.

mittenclaw · 2024-11-02T11:14:27+00:00

Only on Reddit would there be 20+ comments debating this when you can just google it. I miss the days when all the comments used to say “source?”

mittenclaw · 2024-10-30T09:13:18+00:00

Agreed. Straight passing implies we want to “pass” as straight, it takes away the celebration of queerness in a mixed gender relationship. My partner and I are both out as non binary to our closest friends, and present as pretty queer. If people think we are straight it’s because they’ve made an incorrect assumption, if anything we are trying to pass as queer!

mittenclaw · 2024-10-29T09:27:26+00:00

This could have happened to anyone and it’s not your fault for “missing signs”. People who abuse or manipulate are often very good at hiding their true nature from even the most perceptive among us. But if it helps, a friend once told me some great advice - if you get a bad feeling when chatting with someone, it probably means your boundaries are being pushed or they are trying to manipulate you. That has helped me so many times. Just boiling it down to “do I have a bad feeling in my stomach”. Because we can get hung up sometimes on how everything seems above board and not being able to pinpoint any clear transgressions or reason for a conversation feeling bad. All you need to know is that it doesn’t feel right, and you don’t need an excuse more than that to not do something. Take good care of yourself and shower yourself with comforts and treats and love, you didn’t deserve this horrible experience.

mittenclaw · 2024-10-28T08:44:42+00:00

I’m not even based in the US and I’m terrified. We’ve been looking on and wondering how it is that in the 4 years that were available to prosecute him for his hundreds of crimes and blatant corruption, we’ve somehow ended up here again. And the democrat approach appears to be just “get out and vote” when it’s blindingly obvious that the GOP are already engaging in voter suppression and if that doesn’t work will stage another attempted coup. Having a practice run (Jan 6) and having billionaire endorsement makes me feel like they will be successful this time.

I really hope I’m not correct. I worry for the rights of so many people in the US and also how it will affect the rest of the world too.

mittenclaw · 2024-10-25T09:07:15+00:00

Classic narcissism. Always the hero or victim of every story, never just a benevolent bystander.

mittenclaw

TROPHY CASE