Suspect your daughter may be downplaying things a bit here…

She got the top result possible. Students who achieve First with honours (sometimes written as 1:1) have to be even better than excellent across their entire degree.

Some years nobody on a particular course will do this well, because it is reserved for the exceptional.

BEES.

But Beehaws would work too.

Beezers?

YES & YES.

So in ordinary moronland, just back from voting on a metre-long ballot comprising 6 Fascists (mercifully unpopular), 3 NazBols (could fool some), 3 Tankies (quite popular) & 11 assorted others.

Now slinging Jagermeïster & have already mistaken some supposed local hotshot from the arts for a locum parish priest. He’s ever so slightly regretting having asked why I thought he looked familiar.

Gonna regale us with tales from the front?

STOP MAKING ME LIKE YOU SO MUCH ALREADY!!

Which symphony?

Wildly impressed at the homegrown cures.

Anyhow, assume this week’s Witching Hour has struck, as my notifications tell me I missed a reply before it was deleted.

Come rail at us if you need to. Am a reasonably ordinary moron if that helps!!

Something about this feels like the makings of a short story, or collection of them even. Could be a way to divert yourself from rampaging round social media?

If mostly due to hormonal fluctuations, maybe your doctor can tweak them a little to give you a smoother ride?

There’s been… stuff.

Otherwise, reasonable inroads on neglected household cleaning & even a tiny bit of admin.

Vis the Xanax/alprazolam, have sometimes found that benzodiazapines taken to manage situations I find threatening (irrationally or otherwise), make my head fight the drug as it gravely fears any diminution in excessive vigilance.

Similar may be true of your collie? Probably a stronger dose will sedate her enough, but could make her more frantic than ever.

Accordingly, consider giving her the alprazolam once the perceived threat has passed. This could let her unwind faster & also to come to associate perceived threats as something to notice, but which she can relax about once they’ve passed on.

Once upon a time I had the belief that such people were merely lacking information. Maybe that they were a little lacking in empathy, but that their positions were primarily a matter of poor exposure to ideas.

I now that though for some that is true, for the overwhelming majority it is not. They back authoritarian views in full understanding of what that entails for their fellow humans, and they like it.

How able are you to evade political violence should it come to your area? Could you get involved with mutual support/defense groups, or form one? People like your team member get away with a lot within civil society, but come asunder should stuff kick off and norms come under strain.

Meantime, be good to yourself. You’re far from alone.

Do you think, maybe, that even if HRT wouldn’t touch the deepest stuff, that it would ease some matters and give you a bit more space?

It hurts to hear your friend is abusive toward you. I hope you can find ways to be as supportive toward yourself as you have been toward others - I get that the idea isn’t always so comfortable if there’s a lot of heavy history, but tending to yourself is the best way to tend to everything around you.

Similar situation here but with clothes moths & carpet beetles. Also very keen to avoid harming the spiders.

Was just vacuuming before getting out the diatomaceous, & noticed far fewer than normal, and last winter there were notably fewer of the big house spiders coming indoors to mate.

If conditions cannot be guaranteed, the court can uphold his appeal and deny the order.

Whether or not that ruling would in turn be appealed by the US DoJ to the UK Supreme Court is moot. Ditto chance of success if it is. Between impinging on the right to freedom of expression & the horrors of the US penal system, extradition is likely illegal under UK human rights law.

Thank you. You’re so sweet. We’re both ok as it goes, just respectively entering the increased vulnerabilities of our circumstances in light of growing older.

Their ability to somehow keep on trucking is endlessly fascinating & terrifying & inspiring to me, and yet they never once query my total flailing. Magic levels of rolling with stuff on their part!!

Apologies - rewrote my comment as I went & in that rewriting managed to entirely remove useful context pointers.

TER == Trans Exclusive Reactionary.

Here’s hoping they prevail & that they inspire others either way.

Do like the slogan on that banner.

Some level of melancholy interwoven with frustration.

Which has persisted for a few months now due to a fun mix of physical health woes which initial tests have yet to uncover anything about + ADHD meds abruptly ceasing to work with all that that entails + likely moderate dissociation.

Then had a very old friend, who is ostensibly the love of my life, spout stuff suggestive that they’ve bought into TER ideology. For now am giving the benefit of the doubt, encouraging them to read other perspectives & to seriously examine the likely consequences of their friends’ views on the safety & wellbeing of all, but I’ve a feeling they’ve either rejected sense already or are unwilling to examine their beliefs and that this therefore is the end of the line for us. Most of all, am frustrated that I lack the mental or emotional energy to walk someone through trans-inclusive feminist thought & practice.

Meantime an ex that I have a great platonic relationship with was moderately injured in an accident recently, further setting back their chances of getting their home into a safe state, which in turn impacts their chances of a good recovery. Am not in a state to physically assist myself just now, and their sense of things interferes with their ability to accept let alone seek assistance from elsewhere. More positively, they do seem at last to have developed some sense that things have got wildly out of control & accordingly am seeing some signs that they’re becoming less resistant to the idea of accepting help.

Rest of it is a bit heavy.

What’s been ok? Reading anarcha-femininst stuff, watching a documentary series about an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, which is a blatant recruitment drive thing but am a sucker for many aspects of the show, and getting talking to a really lovely couple outside a local pub last Friday.

That likely explains things. Thank you! Am here via Memmy.

Cheers. That worked. What a spooky coincidence! Can’t think why it would have been blocked.

The word it translates to is not visible for me in your comment.

Could be that it got censored out somehow - there’s a double space between “as” and “which”.

Forgot to ramble earlier, so have this scant link instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_stone#Dry_stone_walls