Doctor Fancy Pants of the Secret Legs

So btw my attitude to Tweets is apparently like my attitude to adjectives: why use 1 when you could use 5? I live in a richly verbal world

I don’t understand it. You make “likes” private, and remove blocking. What the actual fuck. Come find me where the skies are blue, I’m docfancy. Might take me a while to get my feet under me, but it’d be good to see you there. Be safe, be wise, be kind. -Doc out 🌸

But removing the ability to block people is just another way of saying, “I don’t care about harassment,” and “I don’t think people should get to set boundaries online.” It takes away agency. We all need to be able to limit the feed, to choose who and what we engage with.

I loved that my most viral thread is the one about sea sponge tampons, and it involved the word “clacker”. If that is my legacy to the world, I am *delighted*. And probably when I finally get my blog back up and running, I’ll share those posts here.

I loved finding a voice for issues that make me passionate and angry, and finding a way to articulate it so that other people can feel heard and seen. I loved that I could be open and vulnerable and complete strangers could say, “hey, me too,” and everyone would feel less alone.

So at some point I’ll be fucking off. Which fucking sucks, I love all the people I’ve found here. I loved posting funny science shit and having it shared publicly so everyone could be entertained and get hysterical.

And I write long-ass threads and that’s trickier on that interface at the moment. But taking away the ability to block people is just fucked. It. Is. Fucked. Up. And the bullshit I’ve been dealing with online? I need to be able to fucking block people.

I’ve been meaning to bounce across to Bsky for a while. I keep not doing it because I’m a creature of habit and the horrific hell of the last couple of years has already made it hard enough for me to get back to who I was before. To just be myself, online. Without being scared.

🧵THREAD: CNN's hit piece on Kamala Harris's positions on trans issues changed the course of the Presidential campaign, but it ignored a massive point and sent right-wing media into a frenzy over nothing. Here's why it's all smoke and mirrors:

Which is annoying, because “I would like some downtime” doesn’t mean “there’s nothing else I have to do.” Stuff keeps needing to be done, and right now it just ain’t happening. Like. Moving. Also not happening. Bloody hell. Good thing puppy is sleepy.

I mean this is one hell of a crash — physical energy, mood, pain symptoms — and, look, there have been some triggers the last few days. Feels like I’ve been hit by the proverbial truck.

Submitted draft of a report I was working on yesterday, and since it’s been basically alternating “monitor/train/supervise puppy” and “write report” for a few weeks, I was looking forward to some downtime. And now I feel like a puppet with its strings cut.

Anyways, that was my sleep-deprived morning ramble; as a reward for getting through it, here’s a video of my puppy doing ZOOMIES. His name is Manny. He is a purebred Australian Land Shark. Stay curious, ask good questions, -Doc out 👩‍🔬

So “it is very safe” isn’t a guarantee of safety; more “shitty outcome unlikely,” and sometimes, “here’s what we do to keep risk low.” We can invest more cognitive energy in grasping a complex situation so that — after a while — a sensible assessment becomes near-instinctive.

People ask me “is scuba diving safe?” and I will generally say, yeah, these days, it’s bloody safe. …as long as you dive within your training and experience, with a buddy and well-maintained equipment. To me that’s *assumed.* There are redundancies and failsafes and protocols.