Not my nails, obvs.
Some (beginner-focused) tips for painting your nails:
Lighter colors and solid colors are easier to work with. Pick a good color or few, you don’t need to start too fancy.
Don’t shake nail polish, that can mess it up. Roll it slowly if you ever need to mix.
Don’t just do the coloration and call it a day, put clear nail polish on first, and put it over the color. That will protect your nails.
Consider getting nail polish remover when you get your nail polish, mistakes are easy.
Put your nails down on a flat surface, clean your nails (maybe with that nail polish remover?), and apply the clear base coat (doesn’t need to be perfect). Stroke from the base of the nail to the top, until the nail is covered. It might get on your skin, that’s normal, anything on your skin can be dealt with at the end. Let it dry, like you would any other kind of base coat.
Now that it’s dry, do like what you did with your clear polish for colors. Base to tip, going from the center outwards. If you can still see through after it’s covered, wait for it to dry a little, then do another layer.
Then apply your top coat to make smooth, shiny, and somewhat protected painted nails. Wait for it all to dry (very important), which could as long as normal working hours + commute. Don’t mess it up. If you do, you might have to restart on some nails.
Now that it’s dry the polish on your skin should act sorta like glue, where you can just peel it off, but if it’s stubborn you could use a cotton swab with nail polish remover to carefully remove it (don’t let it touch your nails!).
Now you should have nice smooth nails.
Join our public Matrix server!
https://rentry.co/tracha#tracha-rooms
As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.
Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It’s for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.
Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.
So, how do you approach astrology? I have a lot of people in my life who believe in it, in more than a pop-faith way. It seems a lot of queer people are really into it. And i find it fascinating in the way that belief systems are systems and systems are really cool. But, how do i interact with this? Especially when people apply this totalizing idealist belief structure to me (e.g. my day was bad and they say its because mercury is in retrograde). Like, i dont want to offend people, but also like i dont like people applying this shit to me, and it rubs me the wrong way when e.g. scheduling doesnt work out for our group game night and its blamed on planets. Like, no, its because of the scheduling of everyones jobs, which in turn are due to the arbitrary (or nonarbitrary) decisions of management, etc. etc.
So does anyone have tactics for navigating social interactions with people who are deep into this? I dont want to go off on them, i dont want to deny them their faith, but i dont want their belief structures applied to me, and i dont feel terribly welcome when they are applied to the group as a whole because then its like idk its just difficult and alienating when im the only one who doesnt hold a faith structure within a group.
Most often people who use astrology this way are just looking for a way to assert a feeling of pattern and recognizability to what cannot be controlled. You may not be able to assert control over the universe, but you can assert that there is meaning to it, and so while scheduling conflicts (in this example) are out of your control, you can control whether you see this as an arbitrary coincidence or as the result of chartable and “predictable” as a way to wrestle a sense of non-existent control. This is pretty true of all belief systems.
Now as to your question: people will always apply their belief systems to you. It is how they structure their world. Just like you will always apply your belief systems to the world around you and the people you know. Even if your belief systems aren’t spiritual or religious. If you are friends with a Christian, they will apply their understanding of God and sin to you. If you are friends with a believer in karma, they will apply that to you. Astrology believers will apply astrology to you. Marxists will apply their material/dialectic analysis to you. Feminists will apply their understanding of gender-based oppression to you. Trans people will apply their belief in the social structure of gender and cisnormativity’s hegemonic strangelehold on you.
That’s a part of being in relationship with other people: they will at all times apply their belief system to you as they apply it to the world at large as they attempt to understand the universe around them. And you will do the same right back. You either accept that other people order their reality differently than you, or you stop being friends with people whose belief system is too incompatible for you to spend time with them. You may have a relationship where you could ask them to not speak to you about their belief systems, and depending on how important those belief systems are they may be okay with that. But they’ll not stop applying to it you either way, because that’s how they make sense of the world, just like you wouldn’t stop applying your belief systems to others even if you were okay about keeping it to yourself for their comfort.
Ok while i dont like this it makes a lot of sense, thank you. I hadnt thought about my application of materialism to other people and my application of my faith to other people. I guess this makes sense, and like you say is just part of interfacing with other people. Its just frustrating. Thanks for laying this out for me
Not the point of your post but mercury is always in fucking retrograde. Planet means wanderer because they were weird ass stars that moved around unlike most of the rest. The ancients didnt know why the drifted across the sky or even weirder why they sometimes went backwards. Anyway, its cause we’re all orbiting the sun. Mercury is close so it moves very quickly around the sun, so its the one that ends up in apparent retrograde the most often.
I looked it up. It happens three to four times for a year, usually for 3 weeks at a time. So like, 20% of days most years.
It’s also an optical illusion caused by relative changes in perspective, so it’s really hard to justify it meaning anything.
It’s bullshit. But lots of people, including myself believe in some bullshit. Handle it with the care and nuance you would handle any belief your friend holds that you disagree with, or don’t. There’s no right or wrong way to go about disagreements about things like this with your friends, as long as you keep it respectful.
I just try to ignore stuff like this as much as I can.
yt
this song often comes to mind, but I usually just play along. ig it could be kind of alienating to some people, but idgaf so its fine. plus they should be impressed at my delivery. i may not be able to freestyle well, but i can spit decently.
if they seem open to actually talking spirituality i’ll bring up santa muerte, but it can be equally uncomfortable.
If youre trying to make a comment about astrology or how i interface with it through social structures it was not communicated; I dont undersrand what your comment means.
Edit: oh i just saw your edit, its a song. Ill give it a listen but tbh im still a little confused… Could you elaborate?
I mean basically, just be yourself. if there’s spiritual stuff that you’re interested get into it and share that or just play along with astrology if you aren’t interested in pushing against hegemonic monotheism. I like to challenge people and push a polytheistic worldview, but I’m also comfortable with not being accepted so it isn’t for everyone.
I mean, i avoid “being myself” quite a bit, cause it makes other people uncomfortable and they shouldnt be made uncomfortable… I express interest in astrology sometimes but mostly just stay quiet about it. I guess thats all i can do? Im not about to go off about my worldview, like you say thats not conducive to an aligned social interaction, and tbh im just now finally making some true friends and i dont want to alienate them.
I’ve had to rebuild my social circles a bunch of times in my life (my family moved around a lot and I’ve kept up the tradition as an adult) so I’d rather just put it all out there so I can find people I click with sooner. To each their own tho.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: