Mario creepypasta fundamentally doesn’t work because you know what Mario would actually do if we saw some dimension-warping hundred-handed cosmic horror? He wouldn’t lose his mind; he’d take one look at that Shin Megami Tensei looking fucker, pull out his dorky little mushroom-shaped cell phone, hit the fourth number down on his contact list, and go “hey, Kirby, I think-a one-a your boys got lost”.
“Or he’d just fight it himself” no, he would not, for two reasons:
This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Mario’s central plot structure. Mario always gets his ass beat in his initial encounter with an outside context problem, then spends the bulk of the game going around gathering allies and kicking the legs out from under the outside context problem’s support structure.
This sort of thing clearly falls into another protagonist’s idiom, and Mario is a union man – he’s not going to scab on Kirby. Perish the thought!
my dark twisted secret is i always use my turn signals whenever possible because i believe they were included in vehicles for a reason. i’m a bit of a freak this way. a weirdo
many funny and true things going on in the notes. but also
what the hell is going on up there.
met a guy in the airforce in germany was from Boston and he told me in Boston they call using your turn signal “giving information to the enemy”
Very Silly Concept: a show called “Accessibility Nightmares” but it’s structured exactly like Kitchen Nightmares. An accessibility specialist goes to different establishments and helps them make their businesses more accessible.
The accessibility specialist asks why the door at the top of the small set of stairs has a wheelchair symbol on it. The owner replies that’s the accessible bathroom. The camera zooms in on the specialist as they process this information.
ALT
A customer with a service dog comes in to a restaurant. The hostess tells them they don’t allow dogs. The accessibly specialist looks over at the hostess like
ALT
And there are web accessibility episodes too. The accessibility specialist stares at the white text on the light pink background of the home page like
ALT
The specialist asks why not a single product picture has alt text, and the business owner says “Well I mean, it’s makeup, why would a blind person be shopping for makeup?” The specialist just
ALT
The specialist asks the web designer how a screen reader user is supposed to complete the captcha portion of the password reset process when there is no audio alternative. The designer admits they don’t know.
#this post has 10k notes to me
When you left this tag three days ago, I thought “that’s so sweet, but no. No way this concept is even close to that popular.”
[ID: Four pictures of Gordon Ramsay in various states of confusion. /end ID]
fuck it, i never ever do those “reblog for X, this one really works!” posts, but this one doesn’t have any of that BS, this is just straight up wishing us good things; and then the comment doesn’t even say any of that either. Zero claims on this post, all positive vibes
May you end this week feeling ever more certain of a future you’ll love
May you end this week feeling ever more certain of a future you’ll love
It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.
I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.
How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?
Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.
HOLY SHIT THEY EAT CAPSAICIN FOR FUN
YOU GUYS I HEARD A HUMAN ONCE ATE AN AIRPLANE.
A HUMAN CAN KEEP FIGHTING FOR HOURS EVEN AFTER YOU SHOOT IT
humans are a proud warrior race with a pantheon of bloody gods: Ram-Bo, Schwarzenegger, etc.
REMOVING A LIMB WILL NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD.
WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE
WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY
THE HUMAN MOUTH HAS OVER THIRTY OUTCROPS OF BONE AND POWERFUL JAW MUSCLES.
HUMAN BITES CAN BE FATALLY INFECTIOUS EVEN TO OTHER HUMANS
WARNING: HUMANS CAN AND WILL USE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. SEE CLASSIFIED DATA LABELED J. CHAN.
HUMANS CAN PROJECT BIOWEAPONS FROM ALMOST EVERY ORIFICE ON THEIR BODY. DO NOT INHALE
OH GOD THE HUMANS FIGURED OUT DOOR HANDLES OH GOD OH GOD
More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness - but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.
(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)
Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:
Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you - and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.
Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.
We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty - humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits - but they’re highly functional.
Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves - and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.
In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.
Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place.
We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps.
And by god, we will eat anything.
We use borderline toxic peppers to season our food.
We expose ourselves to potentially lethal solar radiation in the pursuit of darkening our skin.
We risk hearing loss for the opportunity to see our favorite musicians live.
We have a game where two people get into an enclosed area and hit each other until time runs out/one of them pass out
We willingly jump out of planes with only a flimsy piece of cloth to prevent us from splattering against the ground.
Our response to natural disasters is to just rebuild our buildings in the exact same places.
We climb mountains and risk freezing to death for bragging rights
We invented dogs. We took our one time predators and completely domesticated them.
On a planet full of lions, tigers and bears, we managed to advance further and faster than any other species on the planet.
Klingons and Krogan and Orcs ain’t got shit on us
We drink ethanol (in concentrations high enough to be used as an effective as microbicide or a solvent!) for the express purpose of achieving blood toxicity and disrupting normal brain function… AS A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY!
On the same subject, we also deliberately incinerate assorted substances and then inhale the particulate-heavy smoke and vapor resulting for the same effect. EVEN IN THE FACE OF SAID SUBSTANCES BEING CARCINOGENIC, BECAUSE WE JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
Humans do not have biological castes. Kill their commander and another will take its place. Soldiers left alone on a planet will start farming and manufacturing to survive. Farmers and manufacturers will take up arms and kill you if pressed. Just because two humans look different doesn’t mean they cannot do each other’s jobs.
Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.
Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow.
The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.
Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.
We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it.
Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel.
They lack radio receptors and cannot be brought into compliance with right-thought simply by broadcasting to them. Even after we learned how to translate it into sound-waves one of their hatchlings drove the Great Authority mad by responding to every demand with a single question: “Why?”
there was a time in my life where I painstakingly trained myself out of using “likes” and “ums” for public speaking, and then when I started learning about like basic linguistics and shit I realized that fillers are completely normal and useful parts of language and now I use them even in text all the time. I feel like if anyone suggested that I should remove them from my speech at this point I would genuinely just be like “alright well you’re not ready to engage with the topic I’m discussing yet.”
until you stop needing communication & language to be just one specific way for you to view it as skillful, authoritative, persuasive, educated, etc. then you aren’t prepared to engage in deeper conversations about language. if you can’t handle “likes” and “y'know?"s then you certainly won’t be able to handle the ways in which multilingual speakers can use one language’s grammar while speaking in another, you won’t be able to handle AAC, you won’t be able to handle discussions with people with verbal tics or stutters… like you’re not going to be able to engage with a lot of language and therefore your understanding of language is not going to be enough, currently, to really get into studying the ways in which power interacts with language or analyzing creative writing on a granular level of phrasing, word choice, punctuation, spacing
the uncommon allergy haver to anticapitalist pipeline
in January 2023, companies became required to label sesame on all products it was present in, and undergo rigorous cleaning procedures to prevent sesame contamination, after it was declared the 9th “major” food allergen in the United States.
so, instead of considering this a mandate to give a single shit about people with sesame allergies, almost all American companies decided to just add sesame flour to all their relevant products. because apparently that was cheaper.
it’s almost impossible for me to find hot dog and hamburger buns without sesame now. and I am one of the lucky ones. I’m someone who just so happened to notice the label updates, not get caught unawares and have a severe allergic reaction. I’m someone lucky enough to be surrounded by multiple choices of supermarkets, and someone with the incredible privilege to have parents who’ll help me search the shelves, and cover those costs that my allergies rack up. not everyone with allergies/other intolerances has all or any of those privileges to begin with.
most food allergies will never be prevalent enough that under capitalism, it will be profitable to give them the level of accommodation that they deserve. I speak from experience with a wide portfolio of hypersensitivity quirks when I say that the rarer the food allergy, the worse it gets.
and here’s the thing: I can live without hamburger buns, with only superficial decreases in my quality of life. but sesame isn’t my only rare allergy, and ever since this legislation hit, I’ve been lying awake at night, afraid of what I might lose access to next.
I’ve been lying awake at night wondering what I’ll have to do to live, to obtain enough safe food to survive, if any of my other allergies get this same treatment. and I reiterate. I am one of the privlidged ones.
what these companies have done is completely legal. what these companies did has also cut off up to over a million people from what were previously safe, affordable staples of their diets. a system that has any incentive not to accommodate the dietary needs of any population is not a system that can be allowed to exist. this is the uncommon allergy haver to angry, fuming anticapitalist pipeline.
[Image description: two screenshots of tumblr tags, reading:
“also pea protein. mcdicks just added pea protein without any proper warning so if you got a legume allergy, don’t eat their buns.”
“did you know pea protein and pea flour is a thing. i didn’t. but i sure found out quick after i ate frozen nuggets and when i got gravy from a restaurant. now i have to check fucking everything because i’ve also found pea protein in ice cream of all things.” End description.]
thank you @butchwelddone and @insidejupiter respectively for these psas. signal boosting here for all my fellow legume-allergic folks, stay safe (and stay away from McDonalds buns)
My dad has a cow milk allergy, my sibling has a coconut allergy, one of our close friends is allergic to most spices, wheat, and soy. If we’re lucky, we can find a product that any two of them can eat. Almost anything that calls itself “allergy free” is loaded with coconut.
Also! Fifteen years or so ago, all the whipped toppings went from being dairy free to advertising how they were “made with real cream!” Not to mention various other foods that followed the trend, and really screwed everyone over for having cow’s milk and whatever original milk alternative they used to cut costs both in everything.
So, yeah. For-profit food my belothed.
USAmerican corn-allergy-haver here l love you all and I think we should burn it all down.
By the way the practical [miserable] advice is to cook most things from scratch for yourself and to eat out rarely and only at restaurants you’ve completely vetted.
The advice that fucking nobody ever tells you about and that is why I literally went back to school to get a degree in nutrition is
If you suffer from a food allergy that cuts you off from bread and cereal products in the US you probably need to supplement your diet with vitamins because the primary source of folate in the American diet is fortified cereals and a severe folate deficiency is basically a form of anemia.
You can supplement this with vitamins but :) if you have :) grain allergies :) make sure :) that your allergens :) aren’t used :) as fillers in :) the vitamins :) :) :) :)
Either you can take folate/folic acid on its own or you can take half a daily prenatal vitamin to meet the RDA for folate.
I have wheat, corn, and sesame allergies. I eat out about once a month and have to bring my own food to weddings, conferences, and anything else that will take me away from my own kitchen. I don’t go to theme parks because there’s nothing I can eat there. Backpacking and camping are difficult because pre-made camping foods contain my allergens and it’s hard to carry foods that I know I can eat. If I go out to eat with friends no I don’t I go out to have a cup of coffee - oh, is artificial creamer all you’ve got? nah it’s got cornstarch in it, that’s fine, I’ll just drink it black that’s okay oh wait all you’ve got is decaf that’s fine I’ll just have water OH you are using eco-friendly corn plastic cups well that’s okay I am at least here being with people I’ll eat when I get home. I am not on at least three medications my doctor recommended because corn is part of the product and I can’t afford to have the meds made at a compounding pharmacy. Corn is in all of these things because it is RIDICULOUSLY cheap which is at least partially as a result of subsidies and is also at least partially as a result of the scaling economics of monocrops for agribusiness.
It is ten dollars cheaper to get 21 ounces more mac and cheese *shipped from canada* than it is to buy one of the pre-made foods that I can actually eat.
You may say “oh, well that’s because that’s the weenie organic brand that uses artisinal cheddar, of course it’s more expensive than kraft” and I would have to say:
THE WEENIE ORGANIC BRAND ALSO DOESN’T PUT FUCKING CORN IN EVERYTHING.
Anyway. This has done extremely normal things to my ability to feed myself, maintain my health, and socialize as well as my desire to do arson.
shoutout to the trader joe’s cashier who asked me if i was lactose intolerant and then called someone to get me a different shredded cheese because the almond milk one i’d picked inexplicably also has cow milk in it. who the fuck is this product even for
i have an allergy to aloe vera and i’m like 10x more likely to get allergic reactions from skincare products labelled “hypoallergenic” than i am to other things. because apparently to companies “hypoallergenic” = “~natural~” and “natural” = “let’s just throw some aloe in there for no god damned reason”
and it’s luckily not a life threatening allergy but i once got an itchy mouth because i didn’t think to check the label of my god damned mouthwash for aloe. because who the fuck would think to put aloe in mouthwash
Stop trying to clearly distance yourself from abusers by calling them narcissists or sociopaths or psychos. It’s time to face the facts and swallow the harsh truth that literally everyone has the potential to do harm - not just a specific subset of mentally ill people.
Demographically, it simply does not make sense to look at how incredibly common and normal abuse is and blame it on rare personality disorders as opposed to our twisted social norms reducing children to parental property and treating authoritarian parenting as morally and socially good.
A minority of ill parents would not be able to create and maintain the current situation.
Human trafficking was legal until 158 years ago. The vast majority of the human traffickers were not mentally ill.
There are police officers who beat handcuffed people and still insist that they’re the good guys. The vast majority of them are not mentally ill.
There are rich CEOs who profit from people’s deaths by charging ridiculous prices for lifesaving medications. The vast majority of them are not mentally ill.
There are parents who genuinely believe that they’re doing God’s work by beating their children for talking back, even though there are countless studies proving that spanking is abuse and not a single shred of evidence of any good results. The vast majority of those parents are not mentally ill.
as always whenever people in positions of power do things the system doesn’t want to bother justifying it uses mental illness as a scapegoat
What we’ve gotta understand is that “the modern Internet is abolishing spaces for adults” and “the modern Internet is abolishing space for children” are compatible phenomena. Neither group is being favoured: the modern Internet is abolishing spaces for adults (i.e., because grown-up topics aren’t advertiser friendly) and the modern Internet is abolishing spaces for children (i.e., because online communities which consist principally of people who have no money are hard to sell things to). The Internet that contemporary corporate interests are trying to build isn’t a space for anyone – it’s the digital equivalent of an Ikea showroom.
Like, when I say that the greater part of contemporary social media is fundamentally hostile to human life, I’m not indulging in hyperbole or constructing an ironic metaphor. I mean that 100% literally.
navy blue was literally named for its use in the BRITISH ROYAL NAVY in the mid-1700’s
maroon is literally an evolution of french marron, meaning chestnut. its a brownish red. like a chestnut.
like, the kids making these memes need to take a fucking elective that isnt a sport. do teenage boys still think that “art is for fags” or something? learn colors, you sound stupid!!!!
This is like hilarious but also stop being pretentious, it’s a perfectly fair comparison to make. Navy blue = a darker and more desaturated blue and maroon = a darker and more desaturated red. The modifier “navy” is so disconnected enough from its roots that it makes sense for it to assume a new contextual meaning. Sure, the name comes from the British navy using it, but what we’re talking about is how it modifies a color.
i do not care how pretentious i sound, this joke is picking the lowest-hanging fruit ive ever seen. its LAZY.
it comes across as “haha look at this funny r/showerthoughts post i saw!!! so relatable, am i right fellow non-artists?”
itsa low effort joke aimed at people who could not be paid to give a shit about trying any artistic medium, but lose their mind over a notebook sketch someone does in 15 minutes and scream “I WISH I COULD DRAW LIKE YOU” as if it doesnt take years of practice; like the artist was born with an “artistic gene” or some bullshit
all i ask is that people try just a little bit more to not sound dumb when theyre trying to be funny
This guy thinks it’s an insult to artists where as I’m pretty sure a sizable amount of the notes on this post are artists saying ‘’YEAH THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!! NAVY RED!!’’
if you don’t know the name origin of every single color ever then you aren’t an artist
and mustard is navy yellow
the navy trifecta: navy blue, maroon, and mustard. this leads into a gateway to a whole new color spectrum: the navy color wheel
do you have any tips or guidelines for writing in a way that's screen reader accesible? like what kinds of things are hard for a screen reader to read? i normally type in all lowercase with no apostrophes and a lot of acronyms and i'm considering changing that if it makes my stuff more accessible. thank you!
If you want to be one thousand percent sure that what you’re writing is accessible, a good strategy is to pretend you’re sending an email to your superior and adjust your spelling and punctuation (not the actual text content) to fit that, but most coherent plain text that doesn’t have typos is screen reader accessible. If you’re really dedicated, most devices have built in screen reader/text to speech functions if you want to test it out.
I’ve never ran into trouble with text that’s all lowercase, but a lack of proper punctuation can mess up the pronunciation of a word/phrase or make the sentence confusing. Forgetting a period is fine but it’s important to include apostrophes and dashes where they’re needed.
Some popular acronyms get read by screen readers properly or don’t need any context like LOL or LMAO but the vast majority of them sound like gibberish to anyone using a screen reader. When I need to use an acronym for something, I will type out the full phrase next to the first appearance of the acronym so its future use has context. For example if I’m writing a post about Cerebral Visual Impairment or CVI, I will type the full term and then refer to it as just CVI for the rest of the text. I hope this helps!
Note: I only have experience with TalkBack and NVDA so if people who use other programs want to chime in about what breaks their readers, go ahead!
Going to tag on to this that if you use scene breaks, stick to the traditional three marks (*** or — are good; dashes preferred because they’re very short for a screenreader to read). There is nothing worse than having a screen reader take that deep breath of processing-an-overlong-sentence and then launch into fifty-two consecutive DASH DASH DASH DASH DASHes because an author decided to try and cover an entire extra-width monitor screen with their scene break marks. Have mercy, please.
Edit: OH! OH! I REMEMBERED THE OTHER THING! Please don’t put spaces between letters for aesthetics (like typing A E S T H E T I C S). That is… very hard to parse with my ears, especially for long words/sentences.
Also: zalgo text is visually hilarious when used well but generally not handled gracefully by my screen reader, so please oh please compromise by putting a plain text translation right next to it? (Please DON’T put it as a footnote. I don’t want to go the whole chapter not knowing what was said.) That font can be hard to parse even with human-eyes, so your other readers will appreciate it, too.
(By zalgo text I mean things like t̶͙̮̽̆̍̓̓̍̓̃̏͌͂͐̒̑͗̅͑̿̿̉̇̈́̄̃̊͘̕͜͝͠͠ȟ̸̢͓̟͇͈͉̣̺͓̜̬̝̝͇̖̤̲̠̠͈͉͖͚͙̭̮̣̈́̀̒̒̄̽̅̓́̔̚̚͝͝i̷̟͉̹̜̠͈̘̠͇̤̪̹͈͖̦̠̤͆̾̔͑̈́͌͗̏͗̓̈́͆̃̅͐̿̏́̑̉̋̓̚͘̕͠͠ṣ̸̡̛̳̰̰̝̖͕̳̙̩̯̾̈́̌͛͗̋̐͜͜͝)
some people think writers are so eloquent and good with words, but the reality is that we can sit there with our fingers on the keyboard going, “what’s the word for non-sunlight lighting? Like, fake lighting?” and for ten minutes, all our brain will supply is “unofficial”, and we know that’s not the right word, but it’s the only word we can come up with…until finally it’s like our face got smashed into a brick wall and we remember the word we want is “artificial”.
I couldn’t remember the word “doorknob” ten minutes ago.
ok but the onelook thesaurus will save your life, i literally could not live without this website
REBLOG TO SAVE A WRITER’S LIFE
REBLOGGING, THIS IS AWESOME FOR TTRPG GAMEMASTERS TOO
If you scroll past this I am going to assume your name is Dan Howell.
I couldn’t not reblog…
i bet you everything i own that he’s seen this but we will never know bc he is the only person on earth who can’t reblog it. (unless he likes it bc he’s a sneaky cunt can anyone confirm?)
I’m not Dan Howell so I’m gonna reblog
i love that half the people who reblogged this don’t even know who dan howell is
I’m a survivor of the terror attacks who lived 4 blocks east of the World Trade Center. I lost my home that day, spent years homeless and destitute, and I carry a Zadroga Act diagnosis of 9/11-connected PTSD. If anyone who’s doing this RP needs character coaching or if you need help with authentic scenarios, I’m available for consulting services at reasonable rates. DM me here or leave your number on the men’s room wall at any leather bar and it’ll get to me in 24 hours. Happy 9/11 y'all, and remember fireworks are unsafe and illegal in most jurisdictions.
I heard that you said to another anon that we are fucks. I'm not a fuck, I'm really more of a crap or maybe a shit. Please don't stereotype us anons, it's rude.
This is Dendrocephalus proeliator, the rare fairy shrimp that I co-discovered in 2019. This is a mature male in a ¼ teaspoon. They are found only in certain soils in central Florida and they refuse to hatch unless they have their special soil chemistry intact
I hope you don’t mind I doodled your fairy shrimp?
It’s such a blessing to have somebody who backs you when your identity is challenged.
I am so grateful for the people who have shown me the incredible strength of their own confidence, and for those who believed me when I told them who I am.
#TransVisibility
Trans People 🤝 Dinosaurs
Knowing who they are even if people are Ignorant about it
I had a blind professor, last semester, and I swung through his office to make up an exam. It was a while before I knew he was in there because he was sitting with the lights off. I finally went in, apologized, and took the exam by the light of a nearby window (which was fine). Forty-five minutes into dead silence he panicked and yelled in this booming voiced, “WAIT, YOU CAN SEE!!!” before diving across his desk to turn on the lights. I’m sure he was embarrassed but I thought it was endearing and it highlighted a large aspect of disabled life that I hadn’t previously considered.
Sort of relatedly I once had professor who was deaf, but she had learned to read lips and speak so she could communicate easily with hearing people who didn’t know sign language. One day she had gotten off topic and was talking a little about her personal life, so that one of the students said “Oh, I know, I grew up in Brooklyn too.”
She stared at him for a long time and then said “How do you know I’m from Brooklyn?”
And he said “You have a Brooklyn accent.”
She said “I do?” and the whole class nodded, and then she burst out laughing and said “I had no idea! The school where I learned to speak was in Brooklyn. I learned by moving my mouth and tongue the way my teachers did. So I guess it makes sense that I have their accent, I just never thought about it.”
My moms a sign language interpreter, and she’s signed with people from all over the US. According to her, when she signs with people from the south they sign with a “drawl.” They have slower hand movements and exaggerate certain parts of the sign. People from the Midwest sign very fast and people from the south sign very slow.
So we were at a restaurant once and my mom started interpreting for someone who was trying to order and she was like “oh you’re from the south!”
And they were like “how did you know that?”
And she said “you sign with a drawl.” And they were really surprised that it came through that much.
It’s really interesting that even when not speaking verbally accents and heritage come through.
okay, you know what? Running away shouldn’t be a crime. It shouldn’t be dangerous, either. Any kid should be able to leave their parents if they want, for any reason. No I’m not kidding.
“But Rue, where will these kids stay? Do you want them on the streets?”
of course not. In an ideal world, a kids would have multiple adults other than their parents they could look to for care, but I recognize that that will never be a reality for every single child. So: youth shelters, if they have nowhere else to go. There should be clean, warm shelters where anyone under 18 can stay for as long as they need, no questions asked. (And of course shelters that aren’t just for kids, but we’re talking about youth rights right now)
“But Rue,” I hear you say, “what if some moody teenager runs away after an argument?”
First of all, I’d rather a thousand moody teenagers run away than one abused child be trapped. Second, so what if one does? A kid needs time away from their parents, so they leave. The vast majority of them will get some time to cool down and then go back home, and if they don’t want to go back, period? Then nine times out of ten, they have a good reason. (Because yes, as hard as it is for you to believe, kids are humans who have common sense.)
“Okay, but what about the one time out of ten the kid doesn’t have a good reason?”
Then the kid doesn’t have a good reason. It doesn’t change anything. If someone wants to break up with their partner because of something stupid, you wouldn’t say they legally shouldn’t be able to. (And if you would, then you’re just a bad person.) No one should have to be in a relationship, romantic or otherwise, that they don’t want to be in.
ALT
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