ever engage with a media you really really liked and thought you were going to become obsessed with but it doesn’t quite lodge itself into your brain at the correct angle and you can just brush fingertips with the version of yourself from the alternate reality where it completely corrupted your every waking thought
Why are so many of you so comfortable with attacking complete strangers on the internet
If you wouldn’t approach a random stranger on the street and say those kinds of things to them, but you feel completely comfortable saying those kinds of things to a perfect stranger on the internet (behind the safety of a screen free of consequences for your words), maybe you need to take a good long look in the mirror and revaluate your life.
If the only thing stopping you from verbally attacking strangers or just being unnecessarily mean is the threat of consequences, and not the fact that they are another human being with feelings, then perhaps you should consider why that is and what that says about you.
Every once in a while, Kickstarter throws me a link to a totally random project. Believe it or not, this one was after an update for an aromantic anthology.
For my gizmologist and hobby-scientist friends: Have you ever wanted a gizmo of your very own? This one can even make other gizmos! :D I love nerds so much. It's not even a product type suited to my creativity, but I enjoyed the hell out of browsing just for the fun of it. Reminds me of geeking out with friends at Uni High.
Have you ever wished you could just pay someone to scratch your back and play with your hair? Like a massage but lighter and softer? Well, it turns out you can, and I totally did it.
A little known fact about me is that I love ASMR. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, and it basically means that when you hear or see certain things, you get a pleasant tingling sensation in the back of your brain that can even give you chills. If you’re not well versed in ASMR, you probably just think of it as that weird whispering thing people do into a microphone, or worse than that you associate it with unpleasant mouth or eating sounds.
Well, I’m happy to report not all ASMR is like that. Certainly not the kind I like, anyway. For me, I have always liked the ASMR videos of people pretending to do your makeup or skincare, where they dote on you and give you a pampering session and are a comforting presence. But I also like the ones where they actually use a real person and do things like scratch their back, tickle their arms, play with their hair, trace their face. It sounds like a strange thing to watch, but it’s really easy to imagine yourself as that person, and it’s weirdly relaxing.
And I’m certainly not alone in this, because if you look at the comments of these videos, you’ll see so many people saying things like, “I wish that were me,” “how do I get someone to do this to me,” “I wish I could just pay someone to do this for an hour.” It turns out a lot of people would love to have someone touch them nicely in a soft, comforting way! Who knew?
So, there I was, watching one of these videos on Tik Tok from Soft Touch ASMR, when I noticed that the caption of the video said that you could book an appointment with her. Someone was finally doing the thing everyone had been asking for for so long! Where in the world could this possibly be located?! California. Of course it’d be across the country from me. Tragic.
Then, I saw that she travels and does pop up events in other major cities. And she had one coming up in Chicago. Well, now there’s a drive I can do. Is it five hours? Yeah. Did I book an appointment anyways? Oh yeah.
Julie was so sweet and friendly, and I had an amazing experience with her. Before our session began, she asked me if there were any specific triggers I wanted her to focus on, and I mentioned I really wanted the back scratching with the claws I’ve seen in her videos:
Julie gave me the most relaxing hour ever, with tons of light touches, tickly scratching all over my back, arms, and shoulders, combing my hair softly, I was seriously in heaven. I had to try really hard not to completely fall asleep and miss everything.
It was such a calming escape, I started to wish I had booked the 90 minute experience instead of the 50 minute. I really thought that by the end, I would be totally touched-out and that it maybe wouldn’t even feel good anymore, but I was completely wrong and I was dreading it being over. I also determined I needed this treatment like, every single day from here on out. It really was so nice.
So, even though it was definitely a splurge and a five hour drive away, I am so glad I went and had such a unique, relaxing, awesome experience. It was only after I went all the way to Chicago that I learned she was doing a pop-up in Indianapolis and Columbus later that week, but I wasn’t that upset about it since I love Chicago anyways and had a fun time visiting there regardless.
Would you enjoy this kind of experience? Do you like ASMR videos? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
July 28th, 2025: I'm back from SDCC! It was a lot of fun, thank you to everyone who came by to say hi! I was looking for Star Trek pyjamas, but nobody had any to sell me. My one SDCC disappointment!
1. SOMETHING IS EATING MY GARDEN. I don't know what; my guess is either a) moose (we know there's a cow-calf pair hanging around; we've caught them occasionally on the driveway game camera), or b) a porcupine. Which would never have been on my radar as something that would eat a garden if I hadn't seen it in the backyard a week or two ago, absolutely going to town munching on raspberry bushes and fireweed. I feel like the way that the garden is getting decimated is consistent with something low to the ground that's pulling down pea vines and similar, and also doesn't eat too much in one go. But after we put up loose wire fencing around one of the beds, it apparently got into it anyway and ate a bunch of my lettuce and some of the remaining pea vines. Porcupines can both climb and dig, so it's possible a motivated one could get over loose fencing pretty easily - but the damage pattern this time could also have been something leaning over and eating from the top. I CAN'T TELL, but it is really annoying because it's taken out nearly all my peas and a bunch of the salad stuff. I picked some broccoli tonight even though I didn't need to use it yet, because my broccoli heads are just about fully crowned and I'm going to be incredibly annoyed if I wake up tomorrow to find that they've been devastated as well.
2. I got to pet puppies today! One of the people in my TTRPG game group has a dog (a Great Dane) that had puppies, ELEVEN of them - the 101 Dalmation jokes write themselves - and invited us over after gaming to pet them if we wanted to. They're about 3 weeks old, eyes open and toddling, but still potato shaped and incredibly soft and pleasant to hold. Puppies. <3 (I miss having a dog, although I don't want a Great Dane for a number of reasons. Handling someone else's puppies is delightful, though.)
The Desert Links Compendium is a collection of links assembled to encourage learning about and appreciation for the ecology, history, and cultural heritage of deserts and drylands, with a focus on the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Mojave Deserts.
“…unfortunately the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it owing to the nature of the laws as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on but we know what’s really involved: dirty books are fun. that’s all there is to it. but you can’t get up in a court and say that I suppose”
“…unfortunately the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it owing to the nature of the laws as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on but we know what’s really involved: dirty books are fun. that’s all there is to it. but you can’t get up in a court and say that I suppose”
Fact checking my next chapter of The Daring Young Man and what the fuck do you mean Gotham is estimated to have 10-15 million people living in it “at minimum”, Google.
The whole State of New Jersey only has 8.5.
No wonder everyone’ in Gotham is insane. They’re all stuck on this island living on top of each other like tinned sardines squashed inside of a cursed dumpster fire.
I feel like that number has to include evil robots and whatever mole-people live under the city
… you know what. I’ll allow that.
Real-life New York City has nine million. The suburbs at least double that depending on which counties you include.
I’m aware of that, but compared to NYC, Gotham is depicted as tiny on most maps.
Granted it depends on which timeline you’re in. I could see this being a reasonable size if it’s part of mainland New Jersey. But the one I was using as a reference has the more recent iteration showing Gotham as a series of small islands grouped together, and that source listed the population at 25 million.
And I can’t help but feel there’s a Spiders Georg meme in there somewhere like, “The island of Gotham has a population of 25 million’ factoid actually just statistical error. Bruce Wayne who has a revolving door policy for wayward orphans should not have been counted in the local census.
Fact checking my next chapter of The Daring Young Man and what the fuck do you mean Gotham is estimated to have 10-15 million people living in it “at minimum”, Google.
The whole State of New Jersey only has 8.5.
No wonder everyone’ in Gotham is insane. They’re all stuck on this island living on top of each other like tinned sardines squashed inside of a cursed dumpster fire.
I feel like that number has to include evil robots and whatever mole-people live under the city
Fact checking my next chapter of The Daring Young Man and what the fuck do you mean Gotham is estimated to have 10-15 million people living in it “at minimum”, Google.
The whole State of New Jersey only has 8.5.
No wonder everyone’ in Gotham is insane. They’re all stuck on this island living on top of each other like tinned sardines squashed inside of a cursed dumpster fire.
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Have you ever wished you could just pay someone to scratch your back and play with your hair? Like a massage but lighter and softer? Well, it turns out you can, and I totally did it.(based in LA & poppin’ up all over!) #asmrmassage #asmrspa #softtouch #asmrtok #fyp #inpersonasmr #asmrtreatment #asmrrelax #asmrbackscratching #asmrtracing #asmrhairplay #asmr #asmrtingles #asmrsleep
(link in bio / softtouchasmr.com) Soft Touch is LA’s 1st & only ASMR Spa for gals, trans & non-binary pals
#softtouch #asmrmassage #fyp #asmrtok #asmrspa #asmrirl #asmr #asmrbackscratching
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