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Three days up, three days down: DAY ONE

The morning sun scorches my skin through the large window beside my bed. The sun burns; burns through my skin, makes its way to my brain, tipping it to a boiling point, like a fire devouring my gloom, destroying all my attempts to resist waking up. And just like that my mood shifts. The slumpy slumber is broken with heat and sweat. I feel the sun is magick! I feel ready. I feel up. The world feels bearable. The world makes sense again. The world feels kind. The world feels beautiful. The world feels wonderful. I feel motivated. I feel upbeat. I care about the world again.

I prance up and glide through my room, metaphorically of course. I look around and I see all the pending to-do things that have been piling up for the last three days. My double bed only has a small spot clean to fit my crouched body to rest, there are a few wrappers and too much of crumbs from my stressful binge eats, a few packets of cigarettes, a few sweat-reeking clothes, my journal and an array of academic books, notebooks and story books and my laptop, scattered around. The dishes in the sink have become a stinky hill of metal and glass. The bathroom rack is a hay short of all my used clothes falling into the mud-footprint-stained floors. I pour a dollop of cat food into the bowls for my cats. I only wash my coffee mug and a spoon to make my morning coffee. I savour it, each sip with a puff of smoke. My procrastinating for half an hour delays my mental to-do list for the day, but better late than never, right? I want to daydream because it’s such a good day because I’ve found a good song to groove to because I feel amazing and I want to enjoy this moment; yet I push and put on my chores playlist and scrub my heart out, scrubbing the dishes to perfection, taking a minute and a half for each item, scrubbing hard water stains, scrubbing through fungi, and making sure they smell good and are up to the proper hygienic standards. Twenty minutes pass by as I realise that my gown is damped from water splashes and that’s exactly when I think “I need to clean the iron silted taps!” Hence, I do what I do best, go take a smoke break as my gown dries up from the fan fuelled wind.

The music switches to indie-rock and I almost fall back into dreamland, BUT I can’t rest. I cannot daydream in peace on a garbage of a bed. My routine is easy and I am efficient, at least sometimes. But the hardest part of making a bed, is changing bedsheets. I am very particular about it. While removing the dirty bedsheet, the dust should not fall back into the mattress; the way to prevent this is to tuck out the corners carefully and then folding the bedsheet in from four corners and then lifting it off the mattress. My neurotic brain perfects the act with every change. Now, when it comes to placing a new bedsheet, I want the sheet aligned properly without creases like they have it in hotels. This particularity of how things should be, do not bother me today, I do not hate it today, I enjoy it today and pat myself for being almost a ‘perfectionist’.

Now what shall I do? After the thorough sweep and mop of the entire furniture-less apartment, I do feel tired but I also need to catch up to three days’ worth of productivity. I end up deciding to do more chores, sort the laundry, dust a bit and arrange the things back at their right place. Today, I am convicted to go home; my parents have been wanting to talk to me and spend some time for a while now.

I completed my post graduation in 2021 and thought I wouldn't have to look back at academia ever again. End of last year I got diagnosed with ADHD and ASD. Although the doctor refused to treat me for it, it made sense that I am neurodivergent. I had been craving the structure of student life for the last two years so I took the leap and applied for a MBA program. It's a pretty chill degree after hardcore Physics for 5 years. I had always been told I'm smart and academically prone to excellence. I always took it with a grain of salt. I know my worth is not all hard work. A lot of it is privilege. I stand wham in the middle of the wheel of power and powerlessness after all. Mentally ill, lower middle class faggot with no generational wealth but a pretty surname, a suburban upbringing and a fluent vocabulary in Inglis. Talk about centrists, eh?

In my undergrad, I raw dogged my depression, possible neurodivergence, anxiety, OCD and whatever else doctors fancy I am afflicted with. It obviously caused my grades to fall majorly. The only time in my life when I wasn't at the top percentile. Today while finishing admission process for the MBA, I applied for a scholarship awarded based on merit and I was told I don't qualify because my bachelor's marks were low. I have a decade long academic performance data to draw from and I don't qualify because one year when I contemplated jumping off the train on my way back home from class every single day, I slacked a little, prioritised healing over hieroglyphs on a piece of paper. Because for the first time in 20 fucking years on Earth, I listened to my body and did my best and not the best I was supposed to do. I don't mind not qualifying for a scholarship. My point is that merit which seems like such a well defined term is not based on any rules. It's whatever the one determining it chooses it means. How can you quantify anything when you pick and choose your input data?

Merit is a scam, a buzzword made up to pander to the status quo. When UC people get handouts, it's called scholarships and grants. When marginalized castes, religions, genders get the same scholarships and grants, we're called beggars, exploiters cheating people off their hard earned money with “emotional blackmail”. We're called out for monetising our identities as though our identities exist only for the consumption, romanticisation and distortion by the oppressor groups.

This is a PSA. If you're a minority, you're not void of merit. You just aren't the ones we'd like to give a boost in life. You were meant to never do great things and if you somehow manage to still do something with this wilfully broken system, well the least we can do is make it horribly, cruelly, unnecessarily difficult.

Hot and Sour Dumpling Soup for the middle class Indian.

What makes a good recipe? Everything and nothing. To me, it's one that keeps things simple with just the right ingredients, easing the load on my neurodivergent brain. That's why this dumpling soup is the perfect blend of elegance and ease – a quasi-fancy creation for when you're motivated to MAKE something but dread the fear of failure.

(⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)

Ingredients:

• Ginger and garlic, chopped.

• Veggies (carrots, beans, or frozen vegetables), one gree chili (split in half)

• Button mushrooms for umami flavor (optional)

• Salt, sugar, soy sauce, red chili sauce, and vinegar (adjust to taste)

• Dumplings (momos from your locality is the way to go, but I'll also provide a short and easy homemade method)

• Cornflour and pepper powder slurry (cornflour mixed with water to thicken the soup)

-a pinch of MSG (optional)

-coriander stems (optional)

Instructions:

1. In a pot, sauté the ginger and garlic until fragrant.

2. Add button mushrooms and cook until lightly browned, then add the rest of the veggies and cook them until they're slightly tender.

3. Pour in water or vegetable broth to cover the veggies, and let it simmer for 5-6 minutes on medium high flame.

4. Season the soup with salt, sugar, soy sauce, red chili sauce, and vinegar. Taste and adjust the seasonings according to your preference. Add the coriander stems too and simmer for 3-4 minutes.

5. Carefully taste test the soup to ensure the flavor is to your liking before adding the cornflour and pepper powder slurry. Adjust the seasonings if needed.

6. Gradually add the cornflour and pepper powder slurry while stirring the soup until it reaches your desired thickness.

7. Once the soup is at the desired consistency, you can add the dumplings and warm them up.

8. Optionally, you can garnish the soup with julienne-cut veggies for a fancier presentation.

I bought Momos from my locality for Rs 45, which turned out great match for this soup. Alternatively, here's a simple chicken dumpling preparation.

Instructions for Wrappers

Ingredients: – 2 cups all-purpose flour – ½ teaspoon salt – ½ cup warm water

Instructions: 1. Mix flour and salt in a bowl. 2. Gradually add warm water and knead into a dough. Coat it with vegetable oil. 3. Cover and let it rest for 30 minutes. 4. Roll the dough thin, then cut into squares. Alternatively, make a long log and cut it into small pieces, then roll it into circles.

For stuffing: – 500g ground chicken – 2 cloves garlic, minced – 1-inch piece of ginger, grated – onions, finely chopped – 1 tablespoon soy sauce – 1 tablespoon oil – Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. In a bowl, mix the ground chicken, minced garlic, grated ginger, chopped onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, and pepper until well combined.

2. Lay out the wrappers on a clean surface. Place a small spoonful of the chicken mixture in the center of each wrapper.

3. Moisten the edges of the wrapper with water and fold it in half. Press the edges firmly to seal the dumpling.

4. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the dumplings. Cook them for about 3-5 minutes or until they float to the surface. Alternatively, you can steam or pan-fry the dumplings if you prefer.

When I moved away from home to a new city at the age of 21, I had no real life skills. I knew how to make black tea (don't ask me about steep time, that'll be another blog someday when I have picked up tea as my next hyper fixation) and maggi. And honestly none of them were very good. One day I wanted to eat fried maggi because baby steps. So I purchased some onions and a 30 rupee serrated knife from the store. I didn't know what it mattered if it's serrated or not, I just found the cheapest thing and grabbed it. The next morning, my roommate bought some bread and some butter and I thought to myself, time to add another dish to my ever growing list of culinary prowess – buttered bread. Revolutionary, I know! I learnt so fast that serrated knives cannot double as butter knives. This led to a well set up rabbit hole dive into knife physics. Well, I don't know if that's the official name but that's what we're calling it.

When we think of a knife, the first visual that comes to mind is a stainless metal blade with one side tapered down to a sharp edge while the opposite side remains dull, ending in a handle made of wood, aluminum, titanium, bone, carbon fiber, stainless steel, resin, etc. Otherwise known as a regular kitchen knife. By definition, sharpness is the cutting ability of an edge. So, basically the sharper something is the better it is at cutting. So what does that mean to me? Jack {redacted}. So, down went the rabbit hole and I found a blog that explained sharpness in terms of force. And it made sense. Finer the point, higher the pressure – force per unit area. Extend the point linearly in one direction and you have the outline of an edge. So the same knife will apply more pressure on it's pointy side than the duller side. That means that sharpness depends on not just the edge thickness, but also the force applied to do the cutting, and the weight of the blade and the handle.

Once we have understood what makes a sharp knife, we need to understand what to do with it. Chop and slice are the 2 most basic things we do with a knife. And it all begins with a cut. A cut begins with a crack – the cutting edge of the blade makes a crack in the object you wish to cut. We then apply a force to drive the knife further down into the crack in the object. The edge concentrates this force due to its lower surface area and that's why you can slide down with a sharp knife easily while you'd have to put a lot more effort (force) trying to achieve the same with a duller knife.

Another thing to realise is that the cut that the knife's cutting edge makes is a smaller volume than what the non-cutting edge can fit into. This is why it's best when the taper to the cutting edge is really gradual in a knife as opposed to an axe, where your application requires more hacking than cutting. The thickness of the non cutting edge is also of interest. The taper has an optimal angle ranging from 17-22 degrees. This way you're not breaking the object along the initial cut line when your blade moves down beyond the cutting edge. You're using the rest of your blade to gently coax the two sides of the cut away from each other.

Another important factor is weight. Heavier your knife, less force you have to apply to achieve a similar result as with a lightweight knife. You can just let it slide down and thank Gravity for being just right on your home planet. However, a heavier knife will exhaust your wrists faster. So here comes something every idealist dreads – the tradeoff! Do we want a knife which will be easy on our shoulders and forearms or do we want easy on the wrist? Fortunately, finding a balance is possible.

Even though the physics of a perfect knife is absolute, the perfect knife might vary from person to person depending on their preferences, height of the person, height of the surface where they're cutting, posture, technique, objects they're cutting, a whole plethora of materials they might be biased towards. For example, for me the perfect knife to cut onions with is when the knife is in another person's hand and I'm nowhere near the kitchen.

First of all, a lovely welcome to Talk Is Artes. I am Artes Blackheart and I have lots of opinions. And here I will talk about stuff, because I talk a lot. And y'all will listen to me. Because of course you will.

I'm gonna be talking about Oppenheimer today, and of course there are going to be spoilers. Duh.

So, if you're a science nerd like me, you cannot walk out of an Oppenheimer without saying, “wow”. The movie, in a very rudimentary form is a love letter to the physics of the early 20th century, talking about quantum physics and radioactivity, arguably the phenomena that breathed new life into physics, thought for so long to be a closed subject; and the people behind it, Einstein, Szilard, Fermi, Bohr, Heisenberg and the man himself, J. Robert Oppenheimer. It truly felt like the Avengers' Endgame for science nerds (totally didn't steal that from a friend, love you Darshna). In essence, it's a story about the science, the bomb, the politics, the physics and the egos. I wish I could have finished that sentence with “and the man himself”. And there lies my problem with the movie.

Because I am a terrible movie reviewer, I am going to refer to a scene at the right end of the movie. Robert Downey Jr. in his role as Lewis Strauss gives one of his signature monologues where he speaks about how he knew what kind of a person Oppenheimer really was, all along, and the fact that Oppenheimer, will just become a martyr in his story. I think this monologue sums up exactly how Nolan saw Oppenheimer, a person whose achievements can warrant nothing but martyrdom, someone whose achievements far encompassed his flaws.

Nolan's Oppenheimer, played by the flawless Cilian Murphy is Oppie, the father of the Atom Bomb, beloved by his immediate peers, considered the greatest scientific mind of his time, yet someone who is despised by people who were shadowed by his cult of personality, someone who is way too trusting, except for the time he is the polar opposite, but most importantly, someone, whose flaws don't feature on the silver screen, where his flaws are depicted as the whims of a master craftsman. Oppie can't admit to being Communist, Oppie can't commit to Jean and in essence, Oppie can't commit to where he stands on the destruction his greatest creation has caused. Yet, he gets away with all of it with the charisma that only Tommy Shelby possesses, and the hallucinations and flashbacks that only a Nolan protagonist goes through. But first, you need context. It's time to talk about the bomb.

An invention that awes and scares to this very day, an invention that will always be at the forefront of world politics, an invention that truly has, to an extent, prevented global conflict. A weapon that gives humanity the power to end its own race, a power befitting of the gods. Prometheus stole from the gods and gave humanity fire, and Oppenheimer gave humanity the fire that would blaze across the world, wrapping it in fear and mutually assured destruction. Nolan crafts a masterful story, like only he can, crafting the magnum opus of his work, through Oppenheimer, following him through his appointment as the Director of the Manhattan Project and his creation of the Los Alamos facility. Oppenheimer is almost considered a Messiah at Los Alamos, controlling every little detail, and crafting the deadliest weapon known to man. The music and cinematography is regal, to say the least. Everything leading upto the test detonation of the bomb (Project Trinity) is crafted to absolute perfection, as we have come to expect from Christopher Nolan. The soundplay, the lighting, the angles during the detonation cannot be put into words by my writing. And, oh, the detonation, itself, there is nothing you can do but stare open-mouthed at the screen at the magnanimity of the blast. It is cinema, as it is meant to be; something that captivates, something that holds your heart hostage, something that blows up every sense in your body.

The successful bombs are then carted away, ready to take the lives of more than 250,000 Japanese people. And we are left with a scene of Oppenheimer standing at the boundary of the Los Alamos facility, alone in the sunlight, having crafted his masterpiece. The bomb is then detonated and here is where Oppenheimer's dilemmas and my problems with the movie begin. Nolan's Oppenheimer can go through the major panic attacks having visions of dead Japanese soldiers yet having the American bravado to say “We don't know what the results of the bomb are, but I'm sure the Japanese didn't like it”. There is something about Oppenheimer that I feel that the movie couldn't resolve, for as much as Nolan likes black vs white characters, his writing of characters unfortunately rests in the gray. Be it Teller and his relationship, as well as the entire debacle on the Super Bomb (hydrogen bomb for you nerds), or his relationship with his own wife, a lot is left to be a desired about how he really feels about things. And Nolan keeps doing this, yes we see a lot of science and we see a lot of really cool Easter eggs that will make you unnecessarily proud of yourself when you spot them, but it's just, if his characters had a little more depth than going into flashbacks about events, maybe just maybe we could see Oppenheimer the way Nolan wanted us to.

The movie eventually became a tale of how Oppenheimer built the bomb to Oppenheimer vs Strauss. Nolan's Batman-esque protagonist vs Nolan's carefully crafted Batman-esque hero has to go through a shattering and scathing closed trial about his AEC security clearance, having already been ostracized about his role with launching the bomb once the Germans had already surrendered, facing betrayals, and criticism on his position, regarding the hydrogen bomb, or the Super, as is affectionately called in the movie, and in here, lies another of Oppie's dilemmas. Oppie is unsure in 1945, but in 1949, he is conflicted more still, and therein lies the the problem. I think his role and dilemmas can be best described in the scene where he meets President Truman after the Japan bombings, where he admits to feeling like having blood in his hands. Truman hands him his handkerchief and tells him to wipe it off, and tells him that history is going to remember that he dropped the bomb and not Oppenheimer. Herein lies the conundrum, Oppenheimer thinks that he is Los Alamos, and ultimately he is the bomb, personified. Yet, history will remember otherwise. This is why I am extremely happy that a movie with him as the focus was made, Oppenheimer is a complex character, and even though a lot of his flaws were overlooked, the Father of the Atomic Bomb deserves the attention of a world so perilously close to war and conflict. A message as to what science and what people can accomplish if they set their minds to it.

I love you all. Stay hydrated.

The 12th episode of the 4th season of Young Sheldon, a sitcom about the brilliant prodigy of physics, finds the hotshots of science teaming up with the unlikely, not-a-scientific-bone-in-her-Texan-body Meemaw (Sheldon's maternal grandmother) for her crochet skills : to create a porous sleeve to suspend a sphere in a buffer solution. Of course even as a physicist I have no idea which exact experiment this is, but that's an exploration for another day. We often think of science as this detached set of observations and rules floating around in a vacuum but that's not the case. Science is regular. It's a set of regular, everyday phenomenon, observations and conclusions derived thereon.

Archaeologists theorize that early humans across Asia and Europe would sew fur and skin clothing with needles made of antlers and threads made of animal sinew. An art with such humble beginnings has found its way into every moment of our lives. Thirty seven thousand years after the first human sewed themselves a piece of clothing to fight off hyperthermia on a cold winter night in Europe, another performed a simple suture on an open gash on a human shoulder in Egypt, saving another life. Humanity has since trekked a long way to develop a wide variety of stitches – for a wide varity of applications. Clothing and surgery are probably the biggest industries that uses the skill of sewing but related industries like taxidermy, book binding, fashion accessories, soft toys, beddings, upholstery also use some particular sewing methods. Whether it is a continuous stitch, discontinuous or a combination of two, all of the places they belong in, all the pieces of flesh or fabric they hold together is determined by one simple thing: tensile strength.

The “pulling force” that each stitch applies on the stitched medium and the thread needs to find the perfect balance. Tight stitches will lead to puckers – a bane we've moulded into a boon and created the perfectly easy way to create texture in fabrics. Embrace the pucker further and you end up with ruffles! How ingenious! Stitches when too loose will barely hold your fabrics together. Yet again, we found a way to make lemonade out of the metaphorical sewing lemons and invented the basting stitch! Finding the perfect tension while hand sewing is like the story of Goldilocks- it takes time, practice and observation to find the tension that’s just right. The main way to regulate the tension in your thread is to observe the way it feels when you pull on it by pressing your thumb of the fabric+thread junction. Another way of regulating the tension is to find the right length of thread. I find waxed thread that just reaches above my shoulder to be the perfect length for book binding, unwaxed polyester thread that reaches just till my shoulders to be the right length for hemming and joining stitches, embroidery thread that reached right beyond my forearm to be the right length for embroidery. A simple continuous stitch can hold a teddy bear from spilling it's stuffing and a human from spilling their guts. Many would call this a morbid juxtaposition but I find beauty in it. Sewing is often overlooked as an art form, or maybe it is overtook by its prettier sibling, crocheting in recent years. The true skill in sewing is to learn to make “tension” obey your instructions.

The two most basic stitches to play around with (specially if you're learning to sew by hand for the first time in your life) are : * Straight stitch / run stitch – lay your material down. Use your needle as though it were a dolphin jumping in and out of the waves of the ocean, only your fabric is the ocean. You will soon recognise that this is not the best way to stitch fabrics that unravel at the ends. That's when you experiment with different hems (Check out French hems). * Back stitch – again, lay your material down. Use your needle dolphin to go into the fabric and come up for air. Once you're up, backflip to the exact middle of your last dive and come up for air again. And there you have it, a continuous stitch that is a little more secure.

(Tell you a secret, back stitches are one of the strongest hand sewn stitches to exist! It doesn't unravel easily and is easy to repair.)

There's a lot more to sewing than meets the eye. Once you know how to sew you'll have to learn posture and lighting to work in. If you're taking up sewing as a hobby, remember it is an art and it deserves your respect.

They are everywhere. They are overwhelming. They are inclusive. They occupy all the place in the world, yet, when we try to take over a single iota of space, they brand us as groomers, political ideologists or whatever the latest buzzword of the day is. Why do they have to be everywhere, in such high numbers, all the time? How come they get to live such easy lives, not having to be plagued by any idea of the very fact that they were born as they were meant to be, and that their identity correlated exactly to what society tells them to be? If we are indeed so free, why the hell is there no space for us, a space where we don't need to hide from eyes that look us up and down, staring into our fucking souls, a space where you are called slurs in hushed conversations. Why? Why do politicians ask for our heads when we just ask for our identity? Why do we have to give so many explanations just for our existence? Everything sucks here and I fucking hate it.

#filmreview

contains spoilers

When it comes to comic book movies, DC had the edge long before Marvel came into the scene, and that status is continuing.

You liked Flash? You should go back and watch Flashpoint Paradox (2013). Yes a movie released ten years prior is still the best Flash representation on screen.

By the time Marvel gets to the point of resetting their universe to keep milking more money, DC comic movie universes will reset multiple times. TBH Justice League Dark: Apokolips War (2020) did reset the animated universe that started with Justice League War (2014). We are venturing into the modern territory of the comic books with New 52. They are calling it Tomorrowverse (lmao okay), and they started it with Superman: Man of Tomorrow (2020).

I mean the movie has not much to talk about tbh, it is an american animated movie. They have been using the same template since the nineties. But there is a very nice feeling I get by seeing the same art. It is soothing.

It introduces a new villain called Mongul(seems racists but okay) from the planet Warworld. He kidnaps Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and the green Martian to run a simulation programme a la Monsters inc to power his planet as it runs on fear. And he uses Martian’s mind to trap the superheroes into weird timelines and scenarios. Wonder Woman becomes a gunslinger in the wild west goldrush era. Batman becomes a mercenary right out of a medieval RPG. And Superman is a CIA agent during cold war era.

What happens is, they jump around different timelines and eventually figures things out and kicks ass. I mean, it is a superhero movie. There is not much heroes’ journey, whatever happens, happens outside the eyes of the audience as well.

It was actually fun seeing them forget about their power and try to figure stuff out. Once they did though, The fight was extremely one sided. Hence the ending of the story gets boring. Everything till then was just very fun to watch. Owing to that, the movie doesn’t really have a nice climax, and with all the build up, it was a disappointment to see no return for that build up.

However, Jensen Ackles is always fun. He voices Batman, and I have been a fan since Supernatural. I really think he is well suited to be Batman. This version of Batman was much nicer to have as well.

I like trashy animated movies, and this movie was fun. So what it didn’t deliver on the climax? Rest of it was fun.

Everything will be alright.

Not a day goes by, when I don't feel alien in this skin that is supposed to be mine. This skin doesn't belong in places set by those in power. This skin has to prove its purpose and capabilities to simply exist. The moment you acknowledge it, you condemn yourself to a life of tyranny and suffering.

Everything will be alright.

Your identity becomes such a pretense, you cannot realise where it started, you cannot understand what is real. Questioning becomes so frequent you question your entire existence when you breathe freely for a single second. How can you live with someone else, when you can't live with yourself? Were you ever meant to belong anywhere?

Everything will be alright.

I have heard myself asking “am I temporary to everyone; permanent to myself or permanent to everyone; temporary to myself” Motionless, you feel the rot curling up on your skin, desperate to break free. The world is moving so fucking fast, people are changing so goddamn fast, things are exchanging so terribly fast “there's not enough time, or I'm just wasting my time”, you shout into winds, that will lead where you want to go.

Everything will be alright.

You may not consider yourself to be very good or directionless in your pursuit, but its okay, youre still learning. Trained to be a hardened old soul, your heart is still a cherubin, untouched, and it dares to dream. You are seen, you are loved. Yes, they hurl abuses of confusion and faux disgust, but they never could see the beauty you were able to see in yourself. You've got the whole world in your pocket, child.

Everything will be alright.

First of all, what do you mean by community blog?

A blog which is community owned and operated. Non-Profit. Exists purely for the sake of providing a safe space to write for the community.

What Community?

The Queer community. Focusing on the trans experience of their world.

How do you know who is queer?

We don’t. That’s why we will always stay invite based. We invited queer people we know. Next onwards, users get to decide who you let in. You will be inviting people in. We trust your judgement.

Do the members need to maintain a tone or something?

Nope. Unless you put in your legal name, who will know it is you? Use that anonymity wisely. Maybe make seventeen blogs for all seventeen of your personalities with different languages, dialects, and word associations. The sky is the limit. I always wanted to start a mysterious blog where I’ll talk only in binaries and morse code. Maybe I’ll do that now once I’m free.

What is your vision for the blog?

None. The community members get to decide that. We are a facilitator. We had the knowhow, so we did it. You are the writer, dream up a vision and make other writers agree with you.

What about hosting costs?

It’s currently about INR 3500 to host all services minus the human labour cost. We are on a 2 CPU + 2 GB RAM system. with 60 gb of storage. We have 1000 GB Bandwidth for data. We host on digital ocean, and we pay for extra protection. The cost is expected to go up when we need more storage. We also intend to host a image sharing service later if there is a demand. That will drive up the cost as well.

How will you pay for it?

So far we are paying for it out of our pockets. But we have some ideas. We are also publishing books, and profits from that will be diverted to maintain the blog. We also intend to sell merchandise to recoup some of the costs as well. And beyond that we will open up subscriptions and donations. We are setting up another website which would be https://daxayoni.com to collect funds if people want to pay a small amount each month. However, https://daxayoni.com/ will never post any article from https://daxayoni.blog. The other website exists to aggregate all our official publications.

How about the writers?

Glad you asked. All the blogs have web monetisations enabled. Web monetisation ensures everytime someone visits your blog you get paid a little amount of money. it’s on it’s early days so not a lot of users, but this is being proposed as being a web standard. Once that happens, you can get paid without ads. You can be an early adopter with us to ensure your own right to get paid for your honest work. We are also not google searchable or trackable, we also have no trackers beyond as stated in the privacy policy. We also can’t see anything about a user except their username, the physical space their content is consuming, and their public blogs. That’s it.

That’s it?

That’s it. if you wanna know more you can always reach out to us. suggest us an ideal email for support in our Instagram post. Or just dm us there.

Members can invite their friends to be a part of the blog.

We intend to build this space as a safe space for expression. This is a platform built for personal privacy as well. Thus we can’t gatekeep by sending a form or asking personal details. Hence, Invitation will be handled by community members. We can’t allow free registrations as queer online spaces are often targeted by capitalist means of subjugation.

To invite a new user,

1. Log in to your blog. You can invite only after being logged in.

2. Click the page looking icon on the top right hand side of the page to go to your personal page. From where you can create new blogs or add posts, or pin posts.

3. In top right hand side again your name should be visible with a down arrow beside it. Click on that.

4. The fourth menu option should be Invite People. Click on that.

5. In the next page, you’ll have an option saying: “Maximum Number of Uses:”

6. Click the box below/next to it and select a value between 1 to 100 uses.

7. There should also be another option saying: “Expire After:”

8. Click the box below/next to it and select a value between 30 minutes to 1 week.

9. Now click on Generate.

All done, you’re now with a nice invite link. now forward it to the people you want to see here.

N.B. DO NOT CREATE A LINK THAT EXPIRES “NEVER” AND HAS “UNLIMITED” USES.

It's one of those dumb August nights again Not a wind in the sky, and the power's out I thought about you again today It isnt something you do. Is your memory of mine just a wisp of smoke? Sweet as the honey I taste, but overshadowed nonetheless? I am your cigarette butt You kiss me like your life depends on it Every breath Every kiss is one It delights you, it refreshes you As i burn Burn bright at your lips But when i can burn no more You throw my ashes away I truly am your spectator in the lowlights I know you love me, whatever that confounded idea of love you have in your mind I hate you for making me love you so deeply. I hate you for leaving me here with these people who won't let me sleep any more. If I could just close my eyes the world would disappear and I could stop hurting. I want to sleep. Make those people down stairs leave me alone and let me sleep. They gave me drugs to sleep once when I first knew, and in disbelief called them liars. They gave me more drugs to keep me calm and awake as I faced your body And saw it engulfed by flames and ashes spilled from fingers to the winds on this mountain we both once called home, in more innocent times.

There are no drugs now to numb the pain Sleep which beckons me deeper into oblivion has been withdrawn by constant company and chatter that goes on around me. I do not truly hear it, or understand it as I sit and stare at the macabre forced smiles. Their smiles and consoling words, like blades some blades are funny some cause history And history is every second in time. but the others, they have this tendency they lurk in the shadows a phantom of a shadow you don't know if you have them or if you need them or that it is a part of you. Where are you I wonder, will you still come for me? I would go happily just now, Even though the vital and living hands of so many try to hold me to this place, I would fly to you my love just to feel your embrace. I have read too much poetry of late. Perhaps I should share with you... Maybe you would find me there Just like we used to.

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I'm sorry I haven't created a den in the aisle of that la la land in your mind It is hard for me to tend to your tense pretense of the boujee of your kind I cannot smile and nod when you set yourself up with the premise for my punchline

by Mariyam Saigal

Convince me with a song To long for what you want me to long Sell me myself Everybody take your pound of flesh

Convince me with a song To hope for what you want me to hope for Buy me my time Everybody go ahead and dine

Convince me with a song To wait for what you want me to wait for Love me more than myself Nobody waits this long for help

by Mariyam Saigal

feels like crossing paths with a troll under the shade of a post that generalizes my gender's position in the world as nothing but a tool You say the main purpose of a woman's life is to have children and wish you were aborted You'd rather give benefit of doubt to Andrew Tate than to all the women he hurt You'd rather believe Eve was “made” for Adam than believe they are one being seperated by loneliness

When the padestel we built for people isn't strong enough to hold their humanity and they fall We must not strangle them with the garland of fantasy, frame them, hang them with the accusation of not being “woman enough”