Sophie @sophie@mastodon.online

how do y'all (if you do it) remove leg hair? I have been trying using a safety razor for like half a year and have realized that I am not the kind of person who can use one without getting cuts, and I don't want to use a cartridge razor because of the cost + environmental impacts, same deal with hair removal cream. any suggestions?

Sadie seems sooo happy to be having a cuddle sometimes.

Threats against Māori women not taken seriously, says Wellington city councillor.

Tamatha Paul points to the racism endured by Labour Party minister Nanaia Mahuta and Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

“The institutions just tell them to go to the police, as if that has ever been a safe or reliable pathway for us,” she says. “I don’t feel like threats against Māori women are ever taken seriously until it’s too late.”

https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/129303363/threats-against-mori-women-not-taken-seriously-says-city-councillor

It's funny to me when people say things like "womyn" instead of "woman" to get the man out, because etymologically, "woman" is a corruption of a word meaning "wife man". So the "wo" part of "woman" means "wife", which I'd think would be the more objectionable part of the word.

When I think about climate change, I think about the Great Stink.

By 1830, London was the largest, richest city in the world. But the city's waste management systems had not changed appreciably since medieval times. Most human waste was handled quite simply: it was just dumped into the River Thames.

The result was a slow-growing crisis that lasted three decades. Cholera outbreaks (from drinking tainted water, though nobody understood that then) periodically wracked the city, killing tens of thousands. The stench from the river gradually grew worse and worse, making life in riverside districts increasingly intolerable. The government was too hesitant to take dramatic action, though; it tried instead to mitigate the problem, by pouring lime into the river to cut the stench.

It all came to a head in the summer of 1858. A dry spell caused the level of the river to drop, leaving the banks coated with mounds of what the newspapers delicately called "impure matter." The stench was so bad that it became known as "the Great Stink." Parliament, whose halls were right on the river, could not conduct business. The smell in the chambers was so strong that all the curtains were soaked in chloride of lime to try and block it. (It didn't work.)

Parliament was now faced with a simple, stark choice: do something to clean up the river, or move itself out of London altogether. Members seriously discussed relocating to Oxford and St. Albans, but in the end, they decided to act. Municipal engineer Joseph Bazalgette was authorized to build a network of new sewers, at the then-staggering cost of £3 million, to be paid for by taxing every London household three pennies for the next 40 years.

Bazalgette's sewers solved the problem. They solved it so well they're still in use today. But democratic government had to be dragged kicking and screaming into making them happen. Only when the problem made their own lives intolerable did they finally act.

How all this relates to climate change, I shall leave as an exercise for the reader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink

Cat has mostly been sleeping her way through Sunday #CatsOfMastodon #MastoCats #fedicats

When we're constantly losing pieces of our culture to DRM and proprietary services having their plugs pulled, it's nice to see something like this happening, even once.

https://www.kotaku.com.au/2022/07/acmi-acquisition-untitled-goose-game/

yo holy shit Dead Cells added a ton of accessibility and assist features
- UI tweaks / graphics tweaks
- color filters
- you can give yourself extra lives
- you can adjust trap damage and turn on an auto-attack to reduce how many inputs are necessary to play
- a TON of control tweaks

AND they said they won't disable achievements if you turn any of the assist features on: "We are not going to make it possible for people to play the game and then take achievements away from them."

fuck YES. this RULES.

Young magpie - still a bit fluffy and a clumsy flier - on the bird feeder

MoH, CDC and the likes from day 1 had mask-wearing advice badly wrong.

It's simple really, just wear an n95 mask - even if it's not mandatory in your setting. If no one else does, that's less ideal - but you wrap some level of protection around yourself at least.

Finished the frog and his sweater!

The knit was pretty fast, before I knit another one, I want to try a different pattern and finish the pair of socks on my needles.

#knitting

Good evening 😍 Hope I’m not boring you all with the frequent pics of Otago Harbour, but it really is stunning 😆

Sleepy cat…

I am once again issuing the PSA: Whether you're into the idea or not, replacing "Christ" with "X" in words such as "Christian" or "Christmas" is not an act of disrespect/negation. X stands in for Χ from Χρῑστός and is known to have been used for that for literally hundreds of years. Think of it like referring to MLK Jr. or JFK, except with brevity being a lot more important over the centuries because, you know, handwriting.

#Ōtepoti is glowing this evening 😍

The sun has just gone down behind the hill on the shortest day of the year! Since it’s been sunny all day, I now know the minimum fine day production of my solar panels- just over 7 kWh (there’s still a little coming through). In midsummer I get over 20 on a good day 🌞🌞🌞 #solstice