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@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

ShaulaEvans

@[email protected]

artist & friend of artists. human & friend of humans. thinker. feeler. timeless international woman of mystery.

Support: https://ko-fi.com/shaula

Posts + DMs delete after 1 week.

https://justmytoots.com/@[email protected]

My posts are licensed CC-BY-NC-ND - see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I am a big fan of Jujubes / Chinese Red Dates / Ziziphus jujuba / 红枣 / Hong Zao (the fruit, not the candy of the same name). I like to snack on them before bed (they have a mildly soporific effect), I use them in tea, and I put them in dishes like soup and congee.

They're a wonderful, health-supporting food. I was curious about the latest research on them and came across this. Great reading

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10814260/

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

What is one book that positively shaped who you are as a person and how did it influence you? At what point in your life did you read it?

Fiction, non-fiction, graphic novel, audiobook: however you define "book" for yourself is fine with me.

@bookstodon

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

@gsymon I am familiar with Wilfrend Owen and I deeply love Dulce et Decorum Est, but I had never comes across Strange Meeting. What a powerful poem.

Here's the link to a text version, in case that's helpful for anyone reading the thread:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47395/strange-meeting

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

@gsymon I did my last two years of high school on scholarship at a private school that had recently added girls but had started as a boys' military academy.

On Remembrance Day, the headmaster read out the names of all of the students who had died in World War I. And their ages. The same ages as the classmates sitting all around me.

It was heartbreaking. The memory has never left me.

@ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar ChrisMayLA6 , to random

The Resolution Foundation has been (again) looking at the plight of unpaid carers & has concluded that many are unable to work because of their caring responsibilities, and the time (often over 35 hours a week) it takes up.

As a full time carer, this all sounds pretty familiar (although luckily I am financially cushioned by my university pension), and again emphasises the manner in which society just doesn't really 'see' this vital support network.


https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/feb/08/full-time-unpaid-carers-support-resolution-foundation-report

ShaulaEvans ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

@TalktoBeverley @falcennial @ChrisMayLA6 @ChrisMayLA6 In my experience, likewise, no one cares for the carers. I have been a full-time carer, with zero family or community support.

When I talked to a social worker in palliative care about how badly I was burning out, she suggested I join a knitting group. I didn't need an ugly sweater, I needed someone else to clean my bathroom or cook a meal or do a load of laundry, even just once.

It was years ago and I am still dealing with the burnout.

ShaulaEvans ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

@ChrisMayLA6 I'm so sorry that you and your wife are going through this -- and at the same time, I'm glad for your wife that you can be there for her.

I hope your have lots of ongoing love and support for both of you, and that your (plural) quality of life is as high as possible.

ShaulaEvans ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

@ChrisMayLA6 @TalktoBeverley @falcennial I'm so sorry you both face that, too.

I try to appreciate and credit people's good intentions but so much unsolicited advice lands as covert violence.

I more greatly and easily appreciate people who stay in their lane, credit me with authority in my own life, and check in before they offer advice as non-experts.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to Loneliness Corps

I'm at roughly five years and 11 months of living in isolation without human touch. It's been years since I even made eye contact with another human. [I do not want unsolicited advice on any of this, thank you.]

I'm coming up fast on my 6th anniversary. I feel like this year I ought to do something to mark the occasion.

If you are living in any degree of isolation, what do you do on your own to observe your milestones? Ta!

Loneliness Corps

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

"The Torment Nexus is useful when you use it appropriately."

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Hey, Fedi. I have a favour to ask you. Help me help a friend. (Not financial!)

I have a friend who is all about cool bug facts. They're going through an intense patch in their life, so I would like to send them some bug facts to cheer them up. But this is really their thing, so basic search engine results aren't going to new to them.

If there is a cool bug fact that you genuinely love yourself, could you tell me? I'll save them to share with my friend over time.

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

Thank you for these cool replies -- I'm so glad I asked!

I'm trying to get to bed so I will reply properly tomorrow.

And my friend is okay -- not in distress, just a full plate at the moment. No cause for alarm. xo

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

I love you, nerds of Fedi. These replies are amazing. Thank you so much!

Also, um, RIP my mentions. lol

I am now on work deadlines so I'll be slow on replies. I'm sorry!

I do not have a Soundcloud because it's a disaster of a company, but I do have an audiobook catalogue. If audiobooks are your thing, check it out. (And if you'd like the link to my very spicy audiobooks, let me know, and I'll DM it to you when I catch up!)

https://adaraastin.ck.page/223e08bb72

3/n

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I've just been reading up on fire extinguisher maintenance.

...and I wish I had known these things years ago.

If you haven't inspected your fire extinguishers yet this year, now is a good time.

https://www.nfpa.org/news-blogs-and-articles/blogs/2020/10/30/guide-to-fire-extinguisher-itm

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I keep discovering yet again that I thought I had followed someone ages ago but it turns out that they are just boosted into my TL so much that I see them regularly.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

One of the best ways I have ever found to cope with stress and worry is to focus on what I can address not just for myself but for others with the resources and opportunities I have in any given moment.

I start by checking in with myself and asking, "Okay, what can I do?"

This has come to deeply inform who I am.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Whether or not you use CW and how you use them if you do reveals a lot about how you really feel about consent.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I am in my element as a human card catalogue.

I have been organizing, cross-filing and cross-linking things at work today, and it brings me incredible joy.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Why does today feel like a Saturday???

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to Loneliness Corps

A friend sent me this Covid Policy Statement (from a church in Vancouver, Canada) and I feel so seen that I'm in tears. It's well written and relatively comprehensive. It is also an astonishing example of care and compassion combined with science to inform an approach to covid.

I'm sharing it here for the many Fedi friends who may be heartened by it or find it useful.

https://www.stmargaretscedarcottage.ca/why-are-we-still-masking.html

Loneliness Corps

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I can see that my mute and block buttons are going to be getting a good workout in 2026.

*As usual.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Friends, we're all increasingly overwhelmed as a baseline (except for some luckily privileged people and/or sociopaths). That means when we are acutely overwhelmed, it is tough.

Please give grace to yourself & others to the extent you can.

Please take care of the small animal that is your body.

Please let go of anything that's not necessary (you probably already have, I know).

Please reach out, please offer help, as/when you can.

I hope we can get each other through somehow.

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

By the way, the idea of one's body as a small animal is something I picked up from Mary Oliver's poem Wild Geese. I love both the concept and the poem very much.

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

(continued)

2/n

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

</end poem> 3/n

https://www.poetry.com/poem/123017/wild-geese

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Logged into work today for the first time in 2026, discovered my boss still has her out of office message set on her email, so I addressed a few time sensitive things (that will prevent big headaches for me later in the week) and logged back out!

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Thinking about the year my mom got my dad a filing cabinet for Christmas (which he really wanted), but she wanted to surprise him...

..so she put the big Tupperware bowl on top, after the baking was all done, wrapped it in silver paper, and disguised it was R2D2.

He truly had no idea what it was until he opened it. 😂

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I see way too many stories on my TL that go: "I went to this event and I was the only one masking and I felt unsafe. It was awful. Hahahaha."

I would like to see more stories that go: "I got into a situation, I assessed that it was unsafe, and therefore I left."

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Thinking, randomly, about how nice it would be if people put CW and/or sensitive media flags when posting photos of people unmasked indoors around others, and how at this time of your it would make my timeline non-stop CW-d posts.

I know it will never happen. But a girl can dream.

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

Before a rando barges in to demand I justify why anyone would CW photos of people unmasked in groups indoors...

because covid isn't over, because everyone is potentially one infection away from destroying your life, because the reminder that no one cares about doing harm to themselves or others is morally injurious, because eugenics deserves a content warning.

I dunno. Pick any reason you like.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Ava DuVernay's debut film Middle of Nowhere is on Netflix but leaving soon.

If you enjoy her current work and/or are a fan of indie film, it's worth watching while it's available.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I've just gone down a fascinating rabbit hole (as one does)!

In The Vengeance of An, a character mentions that someone else habitually chews on bitter herbs, because people in the North do that to stay warm.

So I looked it up (of course!) and there’s growing evidence that some bitter compounds can stimulate thermogenesis, the process by which your body generates heat and burns calories. This is so cool! 1/n

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Currently reading: EWG's Guide to Safer Cell Phone Use

It contains a lot of safety tips I already knew and a few that I didn't. It's always good to brush up on how to use tools safely.

https://act.ewg.org/nrfMs7W5QU6qMaHkaV4lMg2

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

It only just occurred to me that the English and French words garage come from the French verb garer which also gives us the French word "gare" for train station (as in La Gare du Nord).

I have been staring at these words all my life. I have no idea why this decided to click tonight. (Except that I was thinking about the Italian word parcheggio.)

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

RE: https://mastodon.social/@variety_feed/115744014646939102

This is great news, as I enjoyed season one.

S1 is not a full story, it really sets up a longer form multi-season telling, so I'm glad I'll get to find out what happens next.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

EWG's "7 ways to detox your home" is a great list of practical, actionable ways to make your home a healthier environment.

My big related challenged for 2026 are: keep dust down with my new vacuum, and find moments in the day to open the windows and let fresh air in. (Tough in the cold/high PPM air quality of winter and the heat/ozone/wildfire smoke of summer, but I'll look for the sweet spots.)

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2024/01/7-ways-detox-your-home-and-keep-it-clean-year-round

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I want to talk about "tropes in aggregate". It's a great concept!

The core idea is that a single incident of a trope may not be problematic in itself, but the pattern of the frequency of the trope across media and time can become a problem. (Hence the name.)

I'll give an example in the next post (so as not to derail my own discussion). 1/n

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesInAggregate

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

Circa 2013, I learned about the idea of tropes in aggregate back when the Bechdel-Wallace test was the hot topic du jour in online screenwriting circles.

I'm going to expand on this in the next post but I want to state clearly that this is an example to support a different point, and I do not want to litigate the test itself. (I did that to death over a decade ago.) Keep your Bechdel Test Big Feelings out of my mentions, please.

https://bechdeltest.com/

2/n

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

The test famously asks if media includes a scene in which two women have a conversation about anything other than a man.

A film can fail this test and be good, even be "feminist', etc. It's not about individual media pieces.

The point is that overall media representations of women de-center women in favor of men. Women are not shown as leads. Female characters are not shown with their own goals. (And yeah, good luck to any other genders, too.)

Again, not here to fight about this test! 3/n

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

Going back to the idea of "tropes in aggregate", the issue is not about a single incidence of a trope, it's about the pattern that emerges of the scale & frequency of the trope across media.

(Tangential to my point: in media, tropes in aggregate often come up in mis/under/representation of marginalized people: whose stories get told authentically or not, whose POV is depicted or not, and who gets pushed further to the margins.)

But this is a thread about patterns, not media representation. 4/n

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

Many people do not grasp the different between criticizing tropes in aggregate as a way to examine trends in an industry (or other context) versus criticizing individual incidents of the trope.

Thus a typical convo goes like this:

A: About the Bechdel Test--

B: But my favourite film fails that test. I love that movie. It's great. It's feminist even. So your test is stupid! You're a monster!!!

A: Sigh

(Where "A" = "me". lol)

[I'm getting closer to my actual point!] 6/n

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

I am fascinated by patterns. So the idea of tropes in aggregate really speaks to me.

I love the broader idea that incidents of a specific event or behaviour may be fin in themselves but the pattern of those things over time can add up to point out a problematic trend or be a problem in itself.

I think of this as a "tropes in aggregate problem".

(There is like a better and more widespread term for this. If you know of one from your own discipline, I'd love to learn it!) 7/n

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I was once in a show where I had a solo in which I serenaded another member of the cast.

I am 5'2". He was 6'6". This is a blocking challenge.

We started with me seated on a stump, him sitting at my feet with his head in my lap.

By the time we hit the big finale, I was standing on the stump and he was standing next to me -- still taller, but in roughly the same frame.

I've been cast opposite some tall men in my day and this was a standout blocking solution.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I got to tell someone today how much I believe in the incredible project they are working on.

What a joy and a privilege it is to get to do that.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

My success rate for getting people to connect with me on Signal is quite high.

However in most cases, we start out where I am their only contact on Signal.

...so they don't notice that they haven't enabled notifications...

...which certainly slows down the conversation.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

I have been shocked at the number of people in the past week who are intelligent, informed, caring people I respect, who also know me well & know generally where on stand on things, who casually mentioned to me that they use ChatGPT.

Like that's okay.

Like I'd be okay with it.

Like I'd let it slide.

It's been a big week for starting some remedial education.

*I'm not in this for catharsis. I want to set people up to succeed & make positive changes.

But I'm still shocked it happened at all.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

What if, and I know this is wild but hear me out, what if we all agreed as a foundational idea that in most cases most people will not present their exhaustive thoughts on a given subject in a single 500 character post.

What if we did that.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

Talking with science friends lately, they have independently volunteered that their big environmental toxin concerns are PFAS & microplastics.

What they're doing:

  1. (RO) filtered water
  2. Reduce / eliminate plastic
  3. Eliminate processed foods / make whole foods from scratch
  4. Eliminate obvious PFAS vectors (like Teflon)

Most of us can't do all of this perfectly, but many of us can do some of this at least some of the time. It's worth doing what you can. 1/n

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar ShaulaEvans , to random

In years past, I have sometimes put together a little something for online friends who are alone or struggling for the holidays: watch parties at different times of day, short one-on-one anonymous calls via Signal, etc.

I may or may not do something similar this year. The holidays are getting harder each year, it depends on how I'm feeling (and what my freelance obligations are).

If anyone is interested I might try this year. I'm tired of sitting alone in the dark.

I'll keep you all posted.

ShaulaEvans OP ,
@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us avatar

Holidays or no, I am happy to give away audiobooks to anyone who could use a soothing voice.

  1. Pick a title.
  2. Choose between Audible US and Audible UK.
  3. DM me the details.
  4. You get a free audiobook. No questions asked. That easy.

Here's a link to my romance catalogue. If you'd like my higher heat books, I can DM you that link, too.

You deserve treats. Open offer, I'm happy to help in this small way.

https://adaraastin.ck.page/223e08bb72