The Quiet Strength You Don’t See in Military Marriages

He’s been deployed since October, and at this point it feels like our normal life.

There wasn’t a huge emotional unraveling when he left. Of course we miss him, but we adjusted quickly. We set a strict budget, figured out our schedules, and committed to talking every single day. Not long dramatic calls. Just consistent ones. We talk about the kids, what broke that day, what we ate, what is coming up that week. It feels steady and familiar.

I handle everything at home. The bills, the kids, the pets, the school schedules. I always have, so that part did not change much. The house still runs the way it always has. What changed is the physical absence. The small shared responsibilities that used to feel automatic.

The trash is mine now. The weeds too. Oil changes used to be his thing, and now I schedule them and sit in the waiting room alone. It is not overwhelming. It just reminds me he is not here. When something breaks, I video call him and hold the phone up so he can see what I am looking at. Sometimes he can walk me through it. Sometimes I end up calling someone anyway. Either way, we figure it out.

I send him practical things when he needs them. A new phone case. Sunscreen. Small items he realizes he forgot. It is not romantic, but it is caring. It is how we take care of each other right now.

We are both very faithful and very committed. That has never been shaky. We trust each other. We stay in contact. There is a calmness between us that I am grateful for. It does not feel dramatic. It feels disciplined and intentional.

The kids have handled it better than most people would expect. They are calm. Sometimes they say they miss him. Sometimes they draw him pictures or send him videos of what they are doing. Then they move on with their day. They are not overly emotional, but they are aware he is gone.

Our family routine is mostly the same, with small changes because they are growing up. My son is almost a teenager and now showers in the morning instead of at night. My daughter is learning how to take better care of her skin, and so is my son. Sunscreen, lotion, healthier food. Those things have always mattered in our house, but the conversations are a little more detailed now. They are learning how to take care of their bodies in new ways.

He is missing a year of them growing. That part is hard to think about. Kids change quickly at this age. But he is in a non combat location, and we are allowed to visit him on base in June. He will be home in July. Having those dates helps. It makes this feel temporary instead of open ended.

We are not falling apart. We are not overly emotional. We are simply doing what needs to be done while staying connected to each other.

It is not flashy strength. But it is real.

(4our Records)

Never once in my 3 years of having progress have I ever actually gotten road side assistance. I PAY FOR IT. I SURE AS FUCK PAY FOR IT!!!! But they send people and they cancel the order and then they send new ppl and those ppl cancel the order and repeat until progressive says there’s none within two hours to come help. WHY DO I PAY FOR THIS!?

WHY ARE THEY ALLOWED TO DENY ME FOR A BATTERY JUMP!?

Heard today: “If conservatives have to choose between democracy and conservatism they will always pick conservatism.”

I wish I disagreed with this.

Being a progressive person means admitting that you have been racist,antisemitism, homophobic, Ableism,xenophobic,that you need to improve on yourself and your politics.

Welcome to the 42th episode of Jayface Radio. Featured in the mix: Farius, John Grand, Nestora, Rospy, and more.
Watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av8eyLaN3L8

1001Tracklists: https://www.1001tracklists.com/tracklist/1zxhy6r1/jayface-jayface-radio-42-2026-03-10.html

Official website: https://jayface.com/

Pathfinder Project - One Wish (Tarby Cover) | Progressive Metal

Tarby’s Everfree album is an underrated classic of pony music. The prog metal artists always manage to show just how creative and expressive this fandom can be. For its eleventh anniversary, Pathfinder Project took up Tarby’s mantle and covered one of its flagship songs. Settle in for 10 minutes of this one-man band performing his version of One Wish!

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As Parents, We Should Allow Our Children to Express Themselves

I’ve always allowed my kids to have a say in their clothing, and honestly I think more parents should understand why that matters.

My son has pretty much stayed consistent in what he likes since he started choosing his own clothes around age 3. Jeans, a T-shirt, basically what his dad wears, sometimes shorts.

My daughter has changed a lot more over the years. When she was little she loved princess dresses, pink clothes, and frilly things. Around 9 she went through a more hippie style phase with crop tops and skirts. Now she prefers what people call “boy clothes” like army style pants and loose shirts.

When she wore hippie clothing, some adults sexualized her. Now that her choices are considered “boyish,” she faces a different type of judgment. It’s all sad, but I let her make her decisions no matter what. I explain that what others think doesn’t matter and never will. Humanity can be cruel and unfair without reason. She even had a conversation with teachers at school who told her a dress showing her shoulders was sexual. She calmly told them that her shoulders aren’t sexual and that it isn’t her problem, it’s theirs. She is eleven.

Kids expressing themselves through clothing is not about sexualization. If a child wears something because they likes it, they’re practicing autonomy, comfort, and self-expression. The real issue isn’t the child or the parent. The problem is adults who impose a sexual lens on innocent choices. The problem also includes parents, often other moms, who criticize mothers for letting their children explore their identity. That criticism itself is harmful and unnecessary.

Kids should be able to express themselves without people labeling them or sexualizing them. If a girl wears a crop top because she likes it, that does not mean she is trying to be sexual. She’s a child wearing clothes she feels comfortable in.

Sexualizing girls at a young age is a serious issue, and it’s something many deal with well into adulthood. I didn’t actually start dressing how I wanted until my 20s. Even though my mother let me make choices, I constantly wore long sleeves, pants, or skirts covering every inch because of society. Did that save me? No. I was still sexualized as a girl and as an adult.

In my 20s, I decided enough was enough. I started wearing what I wanted, crop tops, shorts, skirts, because that’s what felt right for me. I want my children to understand that what they wear should always be their choice, and that they have the right to express themselves without shame or sexualization.

The real issue isn’t the child or the parent allowing expression. The issue is the adults who look at children and immediately interpret their clothing through a sexual lens.

Child development research actually supports giving kids choices like this.

Psychologists consistently show that giving children small areas of autonomy helps build identity, confidence, and decision-making skills. Allowing kids to choose things like clothing gives them a safe space to practice independence and responsibility while still within parental guidance.

Research on child autonomy also shows that children begin developing personal agency very early, and learning to make choices about their own lives is a key part of healthy development. Even very young children demonstrate the ability to make decisions and reflect on their preferences.

Clothing is also one of the first ways children express identity. Studies show that self-expression through clothing can improve confidence, social development, and a child’s sense of individuality.

In other words, letting kids have some control over what they wear isn’t lazy parenting. It’s developmentally healthy.

What I don’t understand is why some parents feel the need to control every aspect of their child’s appearance and then criticize other mothers for doing things differently.

Why are mothers attacking other mothers over something as normal as letting kids explore who they are?

Children should be able to choose their hobbies, their interests, and yes, even their clothes within reasonable boundaries. When people start making assumptions about a child’s identity or sexualizing their clothing choices, that says far more about the adult making the comment than it does about the child.

Kids aren’t the problem.

Letting children express themselves isn’t the problem.

The problem is a culture that looks at children and immediately tries to assign adult meaning to their choices.

The real problem isn’t what children choose to wear—it’s when adults interpret it through a sexual lens. Research from the American Psychological Association shows that sexualization happens when a child’s value or attention is reduced to sexual appeal, or when adults impose sexual meaning on a child’s behavior or appearance. Clothing choices by children, including things like crop tops or skirts, are usually just self-expression, comfort, or following trends. Studies consistently emphasize that the sexualization of children is a reflection of adult perceptions, not the child’s intentions or choices. Allowing kids to make decisions about their own clothing within age-appropriate boundaries is healthy development and helps them build confidence, autonomy, and a sense of identity.

Friendly reminder that memory is fallible and it’s important to fact check important details, particularly if you are using them in arguments with other people. For some reason, I had it in my head that Trump partly ran on reducing U.S. military interference in the Middle East back in 2015-2016. Probably because other aspects of his policy are isolationist and because I know he was very proud of himself for setting up the exit of U.S. soldiers from Afghanistan (which was executed quite poorly by Biden). Also, I was a teen back in 2016, so my understanding of the issue was limited

but no, a date-limited internet search proves me wrong. Trump was very critical of US involvement in the Middle East, but consistently supports some kind of U.S. involvement in the Middle East - usually the sort that he is still advocating for today, send in the guns, force regime change then send in the U.S. businesses to claim the resources.

So yeah. Fact check is important. It’s better to know you are wrong than to spread misinformation

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon

I Pink Floyd materializzano nel concept-album più filosofico e universale di sempre la ricerca del lato oscuro della luna, un viaggio tra sperimentazioni, morte e alienazioni nato dal genio illuminato di Roger Waters e concretizzato in studio con il resto della band coadiuvata attivamente dall’ingegnoso tecnico del suono Alan Parsons.

The Dark Side Of The Moon va letto anche nei numeri e che…

Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon

28/02/26

“A Return to Jesus”

I was raised in a Protestant Christian world. Every Sunday, we went to church, then we’d visit my grandparents (Dad’s side for lunch, Mom’s side for dinner), and we’d go home, talking about the lessons we’d learned from that day’s sermon during the thirty-minute drive home. At night, every night, I’d recite the “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” prayer, and at the end, I’d list every person I wanted to pray for - my parents, my siblings, my extended family, my friends, my dog. But I was just a child, doing as I was told, no choice in the matter, going through the motions of being Christian without really understanding what I was signing up for, and what I was doing.

During my teen years, after some humming and hawing about how I felt regarding God and religion in general, I decided I wanted a deeper relationship with the Lord. I started going back to church, found a community that on the surface seemed welcoming and kind, and started to dig my roots in there. I sang for the worship team. I was an active member of the Youth Group Leadership Team and doused myself in all things Jesus.

But life shifted. I got a boyfriend. I was nearing graduation. Life was coming at me fast and I was on the precipice of adulthood. And then the church hurt me. My youth pastor, a man I looked up to and trusted, showed his true colours and said some nasty things to me. I was on a mission trip to Haiti, which was the most morally complicated thing I’ve ever participated in (I could write a whole BOOK about that experience), and my heart was broken for the people there and what I saw, and no one in my group seemed to care. They only wanted to preach and cause inconvenience, not actually make things better for these people. It was then that I realized that the whole trip was nothing more than a display of superiority, of whiteness. A twisted, fucked-up evangelicism. And then my youth pastor overheard me confiding in a friend about losing my virginity and trying to sort out the conflicting feelings in my heart, and this 35 year old man (to an 18 year old GIRL) condemned me in front of everyone. I’ve never felt more alone.

When I got home, I refused to go back to that church and swore off all religion. I was tired of being chastised for being myself. I equated the actions of this man and this travel group to being a stand-in or representatives of God. As if they spoke for Him.

For years, I called myself “non-religious”, or just “spiritual”. I wouldn’t commit myself to any one thing. I dabbled in folk magic, in pagan mythology, learned a lot about plants and tarot and meditation. I got really into spell jars and incense and birth charts. I tried worshipping other deities, switched from one to another when it stopped feeling right, but I noticed that I could never stick to anything. I’d pledge myself to Persephone and then promptly forget. Then, I’d call out to Hecate and not remember to keep up a relationship with her. All the while, I was thinking: “Gosh, this was so much easier with Jesus.” And part of that was probably because I had grown up with Jesus, I had read the bible, I knew the story, the lore, but now there was all these gods, all these pantheons with confusing, often differing accounts of what went down, and nothing added up for me. It was fun and interesting to learn those things, and I’m glad that I had that journey, but I think there was a reason why it never stuck for me.

*Now, I do want to add a quick disclaimer here: I still do the “witchy” stuff. Filling a glass jar with wishes and gratitude, and adding cinnamon, rosemary, a bay leaf, and lighting a candle (in my eyes) in simply a visual prayer. Jesus used visual symbolism A LOT to get his point across, like how in the last supper he said that bread = body of Christ and wine = blood of Christ. In my eyes, it’s one and the same, and as long as I’m not harming anyone, I don’t see any reason to condemn it. I also still read tarot cards, but now I take the messages as messages from the Holy Spirit and my Angels. I meditate in God’s presence. The only thing I don’t do is worship any other god or pantheon, other than MY God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
**Second disclaimer: I believe ALL religions/religious beliefs are valid. At the end of the day, I believe that these are all fractal reflections of my Lord, like the many facets of a diamond. There is only one energy, one “being” that created this universe, our world, and everything in it, but we know that God sent many prophets to the Earth to speak for Him. Who is to say He didn’t come down to earth in the form of Krishna, Buddha, Mohammed? I believe there is a lot that we still don’t know and will never know about God and how He (or She) operates. I also don’t really think that God has a gender, but for the sake of ease of language, I use male terminology. The bible uses both feminine and masculine language (and actually mentions female anatomy in its references to God a lot more than you’d think). But yeah, I think it’s just believe what you want to believe and whatever feels good and right to you.

Back to the actual essay…

I spent a long time shunning religion. Shunning the church. Scoffing at bible verses that my relatives and co-workers posted on Facebook. Turning my nose up to people who spoke to me about Jesus. I felt offended by Christianity. And then Trump happened and MAGA took over America and it felt like every Christian was backing him and rooting for this evil and it just felt SO contradictory to what I knew about Jesus.

And I started to realize that maybe the issue was never God, faith, or Christianity. The problem was people. Closed-minded, hateful people who can exist in any religion, any country; people who hide behind Jesus and use God’s name in vain to justify their disgusting behaviour, their treatment of minorities, immigrants, women. Those people are NOT Christian. Those people are frauds. They believe themselves to be greater than God. They sneer at Jesus’ teachings. They go to church every Sunday and let the pastor who owns a sports car and a beachfront mansion, preach to them about loving thy neighbour, and how in God they can be made new. They pray for themselves, and then prey on the weak, the poor, and the vulnerable.

All they worship is money, status, and their own fragile egos. They stand for everything that Jesus is against. They harp on the Old Testament as if Jesus didn’t abolish the old system and set up a new one. They neglect the people that need help the most and then set up fake charities for tax breaks. They refuse the people that Jesus would have broken bread with. And I tell you if Jesus, a man who was historically and factually NOT WHITE, were to come down to this Earth today, the fundamentalist Christians would crucify him all over again.

It’s through this understanding that I came back to Jesus. It made my skin itch and crawl seeing how they use Jesus’ name in vain, how they use God to justify their sins. Out of spite, I started to read the bible again, starting with Matthew, and as I read Jesus’ teachings it became evident to me just how wrong and mislead MAGA Christians are. They don’t just take Jesus’ words and twist them. They completely dismiss them. I’d be surprised if anyone of them have actually read any of the New Testament.

Now, my faith is stronger than ever.

And I fully believe that you cannot love God and hate the gays, support ICE, vote for Trump or agree with Trump.

That’s all that’s on my mind for today! :)

So viel zum angeblichen Apartheidstaat Israel!
Die wahren Rassisten sind andere.

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Also continuing from my last post on trump messing up safety rules for nuclear is something that haunts me about the damage trump, musk, and other fascists are doing on a whole other level, one I don’t often see commented on in leftist spaces.

One I wish there would be, because many of us who are progressives/on the left are letting the fascists lay claim to entire spaces (and arguably the future itself, to science, to technology, to media, to politics/statecraft, to many other things) by accepting the idea that somehow, technology, human development and growth, civilization of any form, space exploration, nuclear power, or even in the extreme literally any speculative idea that isn’t centered around bioessentialism and “nature” or that is a construct of some sort is somehow inherently “theirs” or “their tools.”

And it’s like… that makes me deeply sad because we cannot let this happen. We cannot be “oh everything is corrupt so we need to return to prehistoric society” or “we need to live like the Amish (which, btw, is a thoroughly constructed and well-crafted conservative propaganda industry in and of itself and a high-control group but that’s a discussion for another time)” or “anything past X date is Too Bad For Us.”

Because first, that’s not even going to guarantee “no fascism ever,” since ecofash exist and since a whole lot of fascists yearn for The Beforetimes of their given choice (the pre-Enlightenment, the 1920s-40s, the 1950s, just pick one and you’ll find a fascist practically glowing about how wonderful that golden age was) to the degree that one of the points of Ur-Fascism ITSELF is “return to a lost golden age.”

Second, buying into those narratives often plays right into the hand of other equally harmful interests: bioessentialism can easily lead one down the path to homophobia or TERFery or “people shouldn’t use medical devices or advances” ableism. Prioritizing “nature” or “the spirits” or whatever above what we can already objectively know via the collective effort of all of us in the earth sciences etc sets us back, not returns us on a path to knowledge (as well as makes us vulnerable to whatever grifter claims to be more in touch with it than you). Being anti-nuclear (or anti-electric/anti-solar/anti-wind etc) can make you parrot fossil fuel propaganda without even knowing. Being “we can’t and shouldn’t explore beyond X” essentially limits us to not even knowing anything but our own communities and inner worlds exist, much less go through ANY process of negotiating what it means to understand beyond those.

Third, that makes it far more likely for fascists to have successes because they can promise that they are the new future (which is a problem/risk in general with left future messaging that is often negative, shaming, anti-whatever, even if it’s true and important, that the fascists’ will sound better to some people.) Which is an absolute tragedy because there’s PLENTY of ways science, technology, the accumulated knowledge and effort of other humans, media, politics/statecraft, exploration of this planet and beyond, logistics, etc can be done and can support leftist ideals or at least progressive ideals (or more likely, we can at least begin to try to get control and turn the ship in that direction, it won’t likely be instant)

Basically just ranting here but it’s like, don’t let these assholes grab the toolboxes and then be “oh well, that’s the master’s tools now and we have to do something different.” Instead, stand up and fight (or stay/sneak in and quietly fix, whatever) and be “nope, YOU assholes stole OUR tools, we’re taking them back now before you sell them for return price and leave us all with nothing.”

Quick Answer

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Understanding Workout Plateaus: Why They Happen and How Muscle Adaptation Plays a Role

A workout plateau happens when your performance or muscle gains stall despite consistent effort. This is largely due to muscle adaptation—your muscles become efficient at handling the same stress over time, leading to diminished returns. In simple terms, your body says, “I’ve got this,” and stops growing or getting stronger.

Experts define plateau as a period where training results stagnate for several weeks or even months. According to a study published in

Sports Medicine

, plateaus can last anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks depending on the individual and training variables.

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I am begging so called progressives to stop putting “white” in front of your offensive statements as if that makes them any less offensive.

(KabelKiste Berlin)

one benefit of shopping local - I just got handed an ICE signal whistle and cards with mutual aid info while standing in line at local coffee shop. Community is hard to find in the U.S., but my local stores have walls full of flyers and donation drives and classes and close or limit hours in support of economic blackouts and hang pride flags in their windows in a state that still has laws against gay marriage on the books

I don’t think it’s useful to look at CEO pay when discussing publicly-traded companies. They make very little in comparison to major shareholders. It is much more pertinent and compelling to talk about billions rather than millions, and this gets to the heart of the issue, ownership.

The CEO thing is misdirection because a CEO technically occupies a proletarian class position, so it leads to the wrong questions. While that money can instantly lead to a personal bourgeois class position when invested, the person involved isn’t as relevant as the job position itself. They are labor aristocrats, employed by shareholders to perform a service essential to the shareholders’ income. Discussing CEO pay leads to questions like “how much money do they deserve?” “how much work do CEOs really do?” when shareholders are doing nothing and making a thousand times as much money, purely via ownership.

I’m far less concerned about how much the person in the corner office is paid, than the person who is not in the office at all.

Half of communists online: “…and this is why ukraine is a nazi state and Zelensky is literally the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler”

Me: “Maybe EU censorship laws aren’t so bad…”

Other half: “…capitalism has alienated us from our livelihood and ruined our lives in the pursuit of short-term profit for the elites”

Me: “Oh sweet this is pretty neat! I wonder what else they got to say!”

Other half: