hermestoldmeurgay

Latest Posts by hermestoldmeurgay

Reblog if you want one of these in your ask box:

•A compliment

•A story

•Why you follow me

•A cute message

•One thing you want to tell me

•One thing you want to know about me

my problem is, i dont give a damn when random folks say this shit to me because there are no emotional stakes -- i have no clue who the fuck u are and vice versa so i dont give a damn telling u to fuck off all the way to the deepest depths of the ocean.

its when ur friends and family says this shit to u.

because u know most of the time, they're trying to understand. they're not TRYING to be transphobic, meaning their intention is not to make me feel badly about my identity nor my decision to medically transition. it still makes a pit drop in my stomach every time i have to defend myself in a gods-be-damned debate about my personal autonomy; and i have no idea how to tell friends and family and people i love that they're pushing a negative stereotype without realizing while also begging for the eradication of discrimination and oppression within their own marginalized communities -- essentially acting hypocritical without meaning to because they don't fucking know any better which is why they're talking to me about it.

i love teaching. i love informing people and having discussions and learning from anyone i can, even kids -- i guess im just tired of being a walking example to teach people about how to interact with queer or disabled folks. im a normal human being who's grown and who's made their own decisions for the past decade.

people have invented so many different ways of rephrasing "don't transition" to sound plausibly progressive enough to bystanders that they'll think trans people are over-dramatic for reacting negatively to it.

medical transition is permanent so you should really consider it thoroughly and put off trying it unless you know for sure. yes, just keep second guessing yourself. 6 months, 3 years, 20 years...

you might not like how you look. other people might not like how you look. you might not look cis. don't you want to be desirable? do you want to risk feeling worse and more insecure? you look so good now! we think you're so hot right now, and you wouldn't want to change your body and make it not hot to us, right?

you are so valid if you don't transition. you don't need to transition. no one needs to transition. it's just cosmetic, it's just aesthetic, it's all optional and means nothing at all. (no, of course this is unrelated to arguments used for insurance not covering transition, or doctors denying care.)

why do you even want to transition? are you trying to look cis? are you trying to adhere to beauty standards? are you doing this to look hot? that's regressive and outdated and assimilationist. (if you want us to take your politics seriously, you shouldn't transition)

it's a waste of resources/privileged/bourgeois to transition. it's kind of morally suspect that you would transition and still ask for help ever in your life. why should we support someone who's transitioning if they're obviously not oppressed anyway.

DIY HRT is too dangerous. you could hurt your body. you could get arrested. your life will probably end if you take HRT. if you can't access HRT legally, you just shouldn't take it. not for transphobic reasons!! just for your own sake <3

like when will it end

In case anyone finds it helpful because mobility aids are horrifically expensive and inaccessible…

And for those people who have access to mobility devices but might benefit from a second chair they can abuse without risking expensive damage…

Erik Kondo has made a website, Open Source Innovations, that details plans for DIY wheelchairs. These wheelchairs can be made from common materials like wood, plastic, and pvc. They are lightweight and can be custom fit to the user allowing from the same degree of movement you would get from a custom chair. And they are durable and easily repairable. (he has been stress testing his latest design by dropping it down stairs, dropping it out of a car, launching it across a driveway, and throwing it off a deck). Its 12lbs and I think he said its was in the $200 ish range for parts.

He also is working on cheap, open source, accessible designs for beach chairs, off road chairs, motorized attachments (think smart drive), and so on. Plus he skateboards in his wheelchair. Cool dude, helpful info, pass it on.

i cannot keep having the same conversations--

a writing competition i was going to participate in again this year has announced that they now allow AI generated content to be submitted

their reasoning being that "we couldn't ban it even if we wanted to, every writer already uses it anyway"

"Every writer"?

come on

Someone here could make a post like "kicking a baby is never ok", and one of you nuance-snorting enlightened intellectuals would barge in like "but what if it's a genetically bioengineered chimera baby who has been spliced with the DNA of a football, who will get rubber bone cancer if they don't get kicked around regularly. you can't ever just make a generalised blanket term statement ever that doesn't consider every single outlier possibility that may hypothetically exist. uwu."

i remember the heat like i remember my own name.

i live in florida now, mind u, so im not unfamiliar with the heat but...it's a different kind of heat.

men carrying water jugs over to the local mercado to refill for their homes, sometimes making five or more trips to do so, because sometimes the running water in the favelas either stops working or runs dirty, and the sweating from the weather is not a scent u want ur house to be filled with. families walking around the city covering themselves with parasols and cobertorinhos to buy groceries and whatnot. children running down to the river to bathe and swim not necessarily just for fun but because that was the only way to cool down. women hanging up wet clothes to dry between as varandas das ruas, sitting shirtless on their balconies because inside is almost hotter. our seasons are different from North America's because they are switched around, so "winter" hits in June/July/August for us -- it's very similar to florida though, in the sense that we pretty much have two seasons -- summer and less summer. i have vivid memories of running down to the beach with my cousins in my father's hometown of Iguape, just outside of São Paulo, naked as the day we were born and jumping into the sea to feel the cool relief away from the blazing heat.

this heat has killed over 48,000 people (source link) from 2000-2018, and climate change is only going to make it worse. in 2023, the country recorded its hottest temperature ever at 44.8°C -- that is 112.6°F. in g20climaterisks.org's article recounts a study done about climate change and its impact in Brasil in a projected 2050-2100 timeline - the study predicts heat wave/heat-related excess deaths will increase by 854%. when Gomes da Silva describes the feeling of being able to breathe again, it is no exaggeration.

green roofs have been around since the 60s, its nothing new. in fact, as Cassiano said, what would be considered the Brasilian "1%" has already planned and built homes with green roofs and has been doing so for quite a while. it has taken this long to get to a point where it's semi-accessible to the general public, and it does not cost as much to us in the US as it does to those in Brasil -- this is an amazing development but there is still more work to be done. for example, this spring is odd to floridians since it feels like its fucking July, but thats because florida's in a fucking drought right now -- there have been 17 wildfires as of April 22nd, only one of which that was contained (and only 70% contained at that). green roofs wouldnt kill the problem entirely, but i would really like to see this or some version of this in the United States while i'm still living.

Pictured: Luis Cassiano is the founder of Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit that teaches favela residents in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, how to build their own green roofs as a way to beat the heat. He's photographed at his house, which has a green roof.

Article

"Cassiano is the founder of Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit that teaches favela residents how to build their own green roofs as a way to beat the heat without overloading electrical grids or spending money on fans and air conditioners. He came across the concept over a decade ago while researching how to make his own home bearable during a particularly scorching summer in Rio.

A method that's been around for thousands of years and that was perfected in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, green roofs weren't uncommon in more affluent neighborhoods when Cassiano first heard about them. But in Rio's more than 1,000 low-income favelas, their high cost and heavy weight meant they weren't even considered a possibility.

That is, until Cassiano decided to team up with a civil engineer who was looking at green roofs as part of his doctoral thesis to figure out a way to make them both safe and affordable for favela residents. Over the next 10 years, his nonprofit was born and green roofs started popping up around the Parque Arará community, on everything from homes and day care centers, to bus stops and food trucks.

When Gomes da Silva heard the story of Teto Verde Favela, he decided then and there that he wanted his home to be the group's next project, not just to cool his own home, but to spread the word to his neighbors about how green roofs could benefit their community and others like it.

Pictured: Jessica Tapre repairs a green roof in a bus stop in Benfica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Relief for a heat island

Like many low-income urban communities, Parque Arará is considered a heat island, an area without greenery that is more likely to suffer from extreme heat. A 2015 study from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro showed a 36-degree difference in land surface temperatures between the city's warmest neighborhoods and nearby vegetated areas. It also found that land surface temperatures in Rio's heat islands had increased by 3 degrees over the previous decade.

That kind of extreme heat can weigh heavily on human health, causing increased rates of dehydration and heat stroke; exacerbating chronic health conditions, like respiratory disorders; impacting brain function; and, ultimately, leading to death.

But with green roofs, less heat is absorbed than with other low-cost roofing materials common in favelas, such as asbestos tiles and corrugated steel sheets, which conduct extreme heat. The sustainable infrastructure also allows for evapotranspiration, a process in which plant roots absorb water and release it as vapor through their leaves, cooling the air in a similar way as sweating does for humans.

The plant-covered roofs can also dampen noise pollution, improve building energy efficiency, prevent flooding by reducing storm water runoff and ease anxiety.

"Just being able to see the greenery is good for mental health," says Marcelo Kozmhinsky, an agronomic engineer in Recife who specializes in sustainable landscaping. "Green roofs have so many positive effects on overall well-being and can be built to so many different specifications. There really are endless possibilities.""

Pictured: Summer heat has been known to melt water tanks during the summer in Rio, which runs from December to March. Pictured is the water tank at Luis Cassiano's house. He covered the tank with bidim, a lightweight material conducive for plantings that will keep things cool.

A lightweight solution

But the several layers required for traditional green roofs — each with its own purpose, like insulation or drainage — can make them quite heavy.

For favelas like Parque Arará, that can be a problem.

"When the elite build, they plan," says Cassiano. "They already consider putting green roofs on new buildings, and old buildings are built to code. But not in the favela. Everything here is low-cost and goes up any way it can."

Without the oversight of engineers or architects, and made with everything from wood scraps and daub, to bricks and cinder blocks, construction in favelas can't necessarily bear the weight of all the layers of a conventional green roof.

That's where the bidim comes in. Lightweight and conducive to plant growth — the roofs are hydroponic, so no soil is needed — it was the perfect material to make green roofs possible in Parque Arará. (Cassiano reiterates that safety comes first with any green roof he helps build. An engineer or architect is always consulted before Teto Verde Favela starts a project.)

And it was cheap. Because of the bidim and the vinyl sheets used as waterproof screening (as opposed to the traditional asphalt blanket), Cassiano's green roofs cost just 5 Brazilian reais, or $1, per square foot. A conventional green roof can cost as much as 53 Brazilian reais, or $11, for the same amount of space.

"It's about making something that has such important health and social benefits possible for everyone," says Ananda Stroke, an environmental engineering student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who volunteers with Teto Verde Favela. "Everyone deserves to have access to green roofs, especially people who live in heat islands. They're the ones who need them the most." ...

It hasn't been long since Cassiano and the volunteers helped put the green roof on his house, but he can already feel the difference. It's similar, says Gomes da Silva, to the green roof-covered moto-taxi stand where he sometimes waits for a ride.

"It used to be unbearable when it was really hot out," he says. "But now it's cool enough that I can relax. Now I can breathe again."

-via NPR, January 25, 2025

ik its not a curse or swear word but tell me something, as a floridian/east coast inhabitant:

bastard sounds great in an irish accent. if an irish person calls you a 'daft bastard' it just feels right

the welsh have the monopoly on things ending in hell. fuckin hell and bloody hell hit different in a welsh accent. its like music to my ears

the scots have piss and shite for sure. "its pishin it doon out there" "this is a load of shite" absolute poetry

if i may speak for the english i think we do penis related words very well. dickhead, knobhead, twat, etc.

and for all the shit we give them, you gotta admit that no one can deliver a 'goddamn' quite like an american. theres a certain weight to it that you just cant achieve in other accents. when an american says goddamn you know shit just got real

“Free Palestine. Genocide is not welcome here. You have blood on your hands.”

Pro-Palestine activists confronted the Israeli ambassador to South Korea, Rafael Harpaz, whilst he was having dinner at a restaurant in Seoul.

All Zionists should be treated like this. No place for genocidal ghouls. Kick them out!

(source)

Virginia Giuffre has passed away yesterday. May she rest in peace.

AP News

Virginia Giuffre, who accused Britain's Prince Andrew in Epstein sex trafficking scandal, has died

The woman who accused Britain’s Prince Andrew and other influential men of sexually exploiting her as a teenager trafficked by financier Jef

The crux of the anti trans movement is a war on bodily autonomy. They don't want you to have any agency over what you look like, how you dress, who you date, whether to have kids, etc.

They want total control over you. Not just trans people. Not just queer people. You. Everyone.

Trans people are just a scapegoat. They want total control over everyone's self expression. They want the right to mold you into their perfect little cog in their dehumanizing machine.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility. Our rights are your rights. Our destruction is your destruction.

crash as many cybertrucks and teslas as i can

If you could become immortal and invulnerable for 30 minutes once every month (it has to be all at once, you can't chop the time into smaller segments and use minutes separately), what fuckery would you commit?

the fact that we are firmly in a time where conservatives are like "the actual founding fathers, who were slaveowners, were not racist enough for my taste" is wild

"Intersex"

Are you also being vigilant about propaganda made by people who agree with you?

this. im so sick of it ppl hearing ab how i grew up with two somewhat-upper-middle-class parents and how everything was paid for and assuming that that meant my childhood was trauma-free. first off, i fucking didn't - i had to move away from my biological mother and my siblings when i was young. yes i understand my situation was much better than most of my friends' growing up, yes i understand that my life would be much different than right now if my stepmother had not adopted me, yes i understand the volume of opportunities for me now vs the opportunities i may have had if i had stayed in brasil - but you dont seem to understand that there's more to parenting than material coverage. i shouldn't have to go in depth about the emotional and psychological neglect and abuse i experienced in that household to some random person who tells me how lucky i am to have lived with someone who has the biggest white savior complex i've ever seen in my life. even my fucking father shames me for this, talm bout "we only have so much time on this earth for you to come around" well maybe i never will come around papai how about that?? maybe you'll never get back that relationship we had because u refuse to acknowledge the bullshit ur wife put me through - ur only son, ur blood.

if im not gonna take that shit from my father what the hell do u think im gonna say to u?

quite a while ago my stepmother texted me once to tell me i should be ashamed of myself and that the family absolutely would be because i reposted something along the lines of Luigi Mangione being innocent and the shooter being generally morally correct on my instagram story that was linked to my facebook account from 3 years ago that i forgot about. she told me that she didn't want to see something like that on my instagram story anymore because murder is wrong no matter what context it's in. i told her that she has absolutely no interest in understanding my view on the situation so i wouldn't be apologizing nor taking the post down, and i de-linked my instagram page from my facebook before deleting that account and that app.

now, i will share my thoughts about that conversation to all of you because she cant find me here i need to get it out of my head and off my chest.

if she were a normal human being who respected the opinions of her family, these are the statements and questions i would pose to her:

1. she has told me that she would kill a man to protect me, my father and our dogs, so her logic would put her in the exact same scenario the shooter/Mangione is in at this very moment - on trial for a life sentence or in hiding from the law for premeditated first degree.

2. UnitedHealthcare is notoriously known for denying claims for terminally ill patients for years, to the point where they had the highest claim denial in 2023 - 1/3rd of their claims were denied that year. UHC is arguably the biggest fucking health insurance provider in the world, u do the math of 1/3rd of 49 million people. the life of one wealthy white man, who yes had a family and a board of directors that he had to listen to, in comparison to 16,331,700 other lives, other people with families and jobs just like him - acting as though this is to be seen as anything else but a message about the system is simply defending the system.

3. sure Brian Thompson could've just been trying to do his job, or he could've been unaware of just how many people he was screwing over regularly - anything is possible so i'll give the naysayers that. misinformation and ignorance are common in wealthy white people, a fact with which im sure we're all familiar. however, the Orange Cheeto and his gang of greasy fat potato chips have already proven within four months of his second presidency that in this world, money can get you absolutely anything if you offer it to the right people.

does it not stand to reason, then, that as a white man in charge of one of the biggest moneymakers on the planet, Brian Thompson could have used his position to ensure that his company wasn't using artificial intelligence to deny claims automatically? does it not stand to reason that, just as the military under the UCMJ can deny and refuse an unlawful order, this man could have refused to listen to whichever "higher-up" who "ordered" him to deny all these claims?

finally, she's an intelligent woman - if Luigi Mangione was really the shooter, you mean to tell me that he decided to 3D print his gun, do the shooting and leave the monopoly money and bullet casings there, but NOT leave the manifesto "found" in his backpack (which the police literally took away from the scene of the crime and brought back before finding any of the above mentioned items in it)? you're telling me after murdering one of the most important (pfft) men in the world, the dude went n chilled at mickey d's like i do on my godsbedamned lunch hour?

PLEASE be fuckin fr, anyone can see from a mile away how the government is basically trying and failing to make this innocent man's trial into a Broadway-level production to distract society from the actual world-destroying laws and bills they're trying to put into place, and if u cant see that congrats the pigs have u fooled and they're going to eat YOU, not the other way around.

anyway thanks ma for opening this tangent to tumblr dot com bye

i hope whoever actually shot that CEO is having a good day.

mercury, mars, venus, the void, enigma, grunge alt punk, gardening (not the planting kind), late night drives, trapeze lines, bruises and sprains, switchblades and tattoos, foxes and bears, knuckle cracking, bomber jackets and converse/vans, sharp baring teeth, loud breathless laughter that puts a stitch in ur side, cosmic horror, microexpressions, black and gold red and blue, strawberries, jerky movements, caravans and wagons.

woulda tagged @captain0fcrows if they hadn't done it already so @yrfemmehusband + whoever else would like to participate

making a reblog game.

what's your gender/personality, described only in non gendered words?

I'll go first, dirty cigs, shots, animal bones, the desert, and wasps.

@catcvtz, @witchyboy13, @anomymous1, @sparky4577, @evry1h8s-me, @motorvehiclecollision, @boughtmender, @enarealsh, uhhhhhh, and anyone else who wants to.

anybody know an artist who does bumper stickers PLEASE dm me

Free bumper sticker design for any Floridians who want it