I can see the concern, as a trans and nonbinary person, about the phrasing of the headline. Casual readers will totally think the actual guidance says “if you fuck up a person’s pronouns, you go to jail” or whatever.

But not the guidance itself. We need more protections against intentional, malicious misgendering as verbal harassment. Which is usually less “she said— oops, they said—“ and more stuff like “(female coworker) put has pronouns in her signature? I thought she was a REAL WOMAN”

(The second being a real example from a friends work place. Funny thing is, friend is stealth trans and the coworker being misgendered is cis, but i digress)

But yeah all that aside I think the real context is misgendering when someone needs the bathroom, e.g. “you’re in the wrong bathroom” type comments. Where we really need stronger protections.

So a perspective I haven’t seen here yet: in many places, Starbucks is the only suitable third space left. I.e. place that is not work/school or home. I have non-Starbucks cafes nearby, but due to astronomical and increasing rent for all the independent cafes in walking distance, they are in smaller buildings and they can’t afford to have people sitting for hours on laptops using the WiFi/talking to friends/reading a book. I still support my local cafes for food and coffee, or really short meetings with folks, but if I need to get out of the house and spend time in public where I’m not obligated to speedrun my coffee, Starbucks is The Choice.

And that’s why i might be inside of a Starbucks while hating capitalism. Because capitalism made Starbucks the only corporation able to afford proper cafe space.

(There is a library nearby, yes, but not with good space for sitting down and working on a laptop. And even having THAT Is a massive privilege)

(Also I actually do have a MacBook that I do my personal stuff on, because of various bits of software i need that are OS specific, which is annoying as heck but i got used to my work mac anyways and then found a nice one used… so yeah.)

We’re not talking about hair colour though, this is obviously reducing a pic of some friends to “haha big booba small booba”. That’s kind of textbook objectification.

I have a few conditions that affect my spoon usage, like autism/ADHD and mild chronic fatigue. But I’m also pregnant, which means every day I put N+1 spoons into the “avoid nausea” drawer, and there’s a steadily increasing multiplier on any activity that means I have to walk places. Lately being vertical too long costs a bit o spoon.

All this to say that yesterday my husband sent me this comic and I immediately replied “that’s me”.

(A good percentage of his messages to me consist of Foxes in Love comics, and they are ALWAYS incredibly accurate)

I’d be down but I require my own personal bucket of thumb drives

On top of echoing what others have said-- you need a dumb sewing machine, and that socks are best darned by hand-- I’ll give you some advice for finding a sewing machine workhorse. Long post ahead!

Do not get a new one. Get an old one from wherever people sell used stuff near you (For me that’s gumtree/preloved). I’ll be honest, I don’t know when the quality drop off started decades-wise, but at some point they stopped building last-forever workhorses and planned obsolescence showed up. I think anything pre-80s is safe, and the good thing is if it’s still around and working after 40-50 years, it will likely continue to do so another 40-50 with proper maintenance and possibly without.

Here’s what you want to look for in your vintage sewing machine, apologies if you already know some of this:

• a straight stitch setting, which I don’t know why I’m mentioning because literally every machine since dinosaurs does a straight stitch. But, this is what you’ll use for non-stretch sewing. The length of the stitch can usually be adjusted.
• a zig zag stitch. This might come in the form of a dial you can use to adjust the “width” of the stitch, so you can have a narrow zig zag or a wide one. Honestly, you might find both the dial-adjust kind and a machine that just has the zig zag as a thing to select. I’d always go with an adjustable one. Zig zags are how you get stretch.
• If you’re lucky, your machine will have a weird little hooked blade near where the needle goes. This is a threadcutter. It is second only to automatic threaders when it comes to “funny doohickeys they put on sewing machines”. But you’re way more likely to find a threadcutter.
• in general, a machine will be heavy (they had metal parts in the good old days), will have it’s own motor and cable (you can find some old old singers with motor attachments, but I can’t vouch for them), and it might be ugly on the outside, dented/scratched/etc, but it should function relatively well when you test it.

The last point being to say, test out your machine before you buy! It might not run perfectly the way the person has it set up, especially if this is just someone selling grandma’s old machine, but there are some tests you can do. You’ll want to bring your own thread, a new needle (these fit pretty universally AFAIK), and two pieces of fabric: stretchy and not-stretchy (woven).

Fit the new needle, wind a bobbin (or have one you brought), thread the machine yourself, put the bobbin in and try sewing a straight stitch on the woven fabric. You might end up with some weird stitches (looser on one side of the fabric for example) but this is probably that the tension isn’t set exactly right for that fabric and not an indication of a bad machine. If you’re getting big wads of the thread on the underside and/or the machine is jamming, it might be an indication of something dubious with the machine, but it’s also likely something is threaded wrong or the bobbin is having a bad day. Honestly, I’d err on the side of “the machine is dirty or it’s user error” if the machine is sewing, but poorly.

Next you’ll want to try sewing on the stretchy fabric. See if you can set a zig zag stitch, and see how easily the machine feeds through the fabric under the needle. I’m out of my depth here on why, but some machines just feel better on stretch fabric than woven and others are the opposite. I’ll note here that I think you’ll be fine testing slightly stretchy fabric with the same needle you used for woven, but when sewing for stuff you want to last, you’ll want to use a ballpoint or stretch needle. (Stretch needle comes out for any fabric with a lycra/spandex content over 5%. Ballpoint is anything knit (not woven essentially) but that isn’t too spandex heavy.)

So assuming you find a good machine, I recommend getting it serviced as soon as you have it in your possession. It likely needs to be oiled and cleaned, and there are professionals who do great jobs at this, and they might even give you pointers on how best to keep your machine clean and happy.

Once machine is home from the sewing doctors, go forth and sew! Keep it clean of fuzz and loose threads and occasionally take it back to be serviced (I can’t say how often because It Depends). Also, heavier material like denim = needle with a higher number in front of it on the pack. With the right needle, you’ll be surprised what you can sew through.

Also, welcome to the hell of “I don’t want to use polyester thread because plastic is a scourge but my machine hates cotton thread very much.” I swear every machine hates cotton. Good luck.

Also also, because I am a creature of hyperfixations, you mentioned FOSS and sewing in the same sentence so I’m obligated to link you to freesewing.org. FOS sewing patterns that scale, theoretically, to any size!

I’ve got a few projects in the works, one of which was graciously donated by universal entropy over the weekend! The normal projects are fixing up a very overgrown back garden and redoing basically every surface of our soon-to-be main bedroom. The “spontaneous” project gifted by reality is redoing the inner mechanism of our toilet, along with fixing one of the seals.

More details on the garden: I’ve just been pruning stuff WAY back for months whenever I can. Despite the slow progress, it’s definitely a huge improvement. My goal is to have the back garden (or back yard as my American heritage calls it) ready for planting a proper food oasis in Spring. So far, I’ve got the flat space for garden beds cleared, as there was a truly massive hedge covering most of the garden. I’ve also pulled up some paving tiles and started removing gravel from the main walkway. More space to plant without these silly rocks. I hate gravel.

On the bedroom: My wood floors have been “acclimatising” for like, months, which concerns me a bit… hopefully no warping! I pulled the old baseboards/skirting boards off the wall ages ago (and then spent forever filling the holes and gaps underneath with plaster) in preparation for painting the walls a lovely azure colour, and it’s just been fighting to get the time to actually paint the dang walls. We haven’t even done the base coat yet, but maybe this weekend. I just started a new 4 day work week job, so hopefully that extra day becomes a DIY day properly.

The dreaded toilet: On Friday we woke up to no water because a main pipe burst in town. And then when we got water back, the toilet’s fill valve decided to compensate for lost time by never stopping filling. Doesn’t matter how high the float goes, it just doesn’t stop. We’ve also had issues before with the toilet seal leaking, so we’re killing two birds with one stone by fixing the seal as we replace the fill valve. Fingers crossed. Right now the two birds are killing us instead.

I absolutely love this! I have a passionate loathing for furniture that’s made to break instead of last, and I think it’s pretty radical to take things made from typically “cheaper” materials like MDF and still repair them.

I’m currently typing this from atop a desk that has some nasty peeling veneers on top of particleboard, maybe this will inspire me to fix it!