I’ve noticed there are fewer butterflies just in the past few years.
Also bees. There aren’t as many bees.
Also far fewer fireflies.
seriously!!!
Used to be even 10-15 years ago there would be patches of sidewalk next to gardens that sometimes you couldn’t walk on once in a while because they were just covered in butterflies sunning themselves between trips to the flowers.
Like there were times I would walk past some spots and it’d be like a movie with this wave of small butterflies that would fly up, disturbed by my passing.
Used to see lots of fireflies, too.
Now it’s a rare treat to see multiple butterflies at once, and lightning bugs are much fewer and far between.
It’s sad.
Oh, huh, it’s past me…
Oh…
She’s only 18 years old! She doesn’t know the ways of the plants. She doesn’t know that her meadow will look like a lightning bug rave and there will be clouds of butterflies and 4 species of bumble bees.
She doesn’t even know yet that its name is the Meadow…
griffin mcelroy is so funny because youll see clips of him talking and its always either something like “my names sprite pepsi and im abstinence until i DIE” or its something like “that was the last conversation you ever had with your sister. when someone leaves your life those exits are not made equal. some are beautiful and poetic and satisfying, others are abrupt and unfair, but most are just unremarkable.” and theres no in between
This is such an important and genuinely terrifying post. I could completely go off on the rise of anti-science, but for now I’ll just add: it isn’t just boomers that get deceived. This is a warning to all of us.
Pay ATTENTION to what you are being told. If you think you cannot be deceived, you leave yourself open to deception. Question, doubt, research research research. Learn about your personal biases, dig up any subconscious cognitive dissonance. Keep an eye on your mind.
It needs to be stressed that biases, not a lack of intelligence, is very much the issue here. Being aware of the need to fact check yourself is key: Intelligence won’t protect you from bad or unhealthy mental states, or keep you safe from cults of any sort. Intelligence will just make it easier for you to rationalize and attempt to justify the malformed tools you’ve taken/been given to yourself and others. You need to be wise enough to challenge yourself.
As a cult survivor, this is lethally accurate.
Maybe digital algorithms shouldn’t decide the thoughts we think
Fun fact: ace people can wear clothing which can be interpreted as sexual despite being ace.
like
Just because someone has skin showing doesn’t mean they want to have sex. Thinking like that is…kinda just really weird
It’s not just weird, it’s a part of rape culture. The idea that someone’s clothing implies they’re seeking sex has been used to justify sexual assault. Don’t perpetuate that shit, with ace people or anyone else.
The Gaza Strip is one of two places in the entire worldthat is categorized as Phase 5 (the highest phase) on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification scale.
So even if you think it isn’t enough, remember that donating even as little as $1.35 helps! It’s $1.35 they wouldn’t have had otherwise. So donate if you can. 🇵🇸
Since the minimum is so low, this is a great place to put the last of a prepaid card, don’t just give it back to the card company by tossing it with money still on it! Even a dollar can do good!
okay context for the non-italians. long story short: it’s pretty much impossible from an engineering perspective. there are very strong and swirly currents that make it not feasible to just build a bridge where the coasts are the closest - it would have to be built in a spot where the distance between the coasts is wider, a little too much for a bridge possibly, but also, like, outside of the cities, which means it would still be quicker for people to step on the ferry than drive all the way to the bridge. the ferry is quick, cheap, also they’ve introduced sustainable non-polluting boats, so, literally no one in either sicily or calabria wants a useless bridge, even if it could be built safely.
on top of that… it’s a seismic area. you really don’t want to make engineering experiments there.
governments have tried to figure out a way to build that bridge at least from the 60s, afaik, but engineers have just come to the conclusion that nope.
also: people in sicily and calabria have reason to believe that if a project like that gets given the green light, it will end up fattening the pockets of corrupted politicians and mafia groups.
pretty straightforward right? yeah… NOPE!
the italian right has been waving the proposal of building that bridge for decades. every once in a while, when you think you’re free, BAM the right-wing politician genius of the moment comes up with the law proposal to build the bridge. it used to be berlusconi, now berlusconi is dead, recently it’s been salvini. they propose to build the bridge, the left says “what the fuck”, and the right goes see!! the left doesn’t want progress and development for the country!! they want the country to languish and die!!
(in the meanwhile taxpayers’ euros go into paying commissions that need to figure out how to build the bridge, ignoring that there’s been a billion commissions over almost a century that have all come to the conclusion that nope.)
(also remember what i said about corrupted politicians and mafia groups? well try to guess the reason it’s the right-wing parties that keep insisting on building this fucking bridge.)
it’s become a total national joke. mention the bridge on the strait to an italian, they’ll laugh as they go through the 5 stages of italian political grief.
Literally heard a convo at the library where a guy was telling a girl that he’s an omega and the girl telling him that she’s a beta, and my mind just did not automatically connect the context to fraternity pledge classes at all and I just whispered to myself “what the fuck?? What the fuck??”
fireflies honestly make me cry a little. out of gratitude and wonder. thank goodness we live in a world with bioluminescence. thank goodness we live in a world where it can fly.
Housekeepers and Janitors Need Praise As Unsung but Very Much Important
Remember when the NRA told doctors to “stay in their lane” RE gun violence and #thisismylane trended as a result?
One of the tweets I saw was a surgeon who’d taken a picture of her OR, having just finished surgery on a young man who’d been shot. Blood. Everywhere.
This bloke retweeted her, mentioning that he worked as a cleaner in a hospital and had had to clean up stuff like this and worse.
Surgeon replied to him (and went up *greatly* in my estimation) and, despite living in different countries, thanked him for his hard work.
I can’t find the tweets sadly, but hers went something like;
“Without a clean and sterile operating room to work in, my team, our skills and the best medicines in the world are next to useless. You are doing invaluable work, without which my work would be impossible.”
WITHOUT PEOPLE DOING THE CLEANING, SOCIETY WOULD GRIND TO A HALT WITHIN DAYS
It has been literal years but every time I see Martin’s tweets posted somewhere and his word is shared as truth while her post is not shared it sort of reiterates the fact that we trust men to speak about feminism more than we believe women who experience it.
Reading her account of how their boss treated her blows me away. Men are so emboldened that they will literally admit to illegal discrimination casually and face no consequences.
In all the years of seeing this post I’ve never seen a link to her side. Didn’t even know she’d written one.
Adding screenshots of her post. His whole post is there without needing a link. Hers should be, too.
Also, she posted this is 2017! It’s fucking 2020 and I’ve seen his side of this for years, but it took 3 years for her side to make its way to my dash…
I’ve reblogged his story at least twice; it’s time for Nicole’s.
This is such an important and genuinely terrifying post. I could completely go off on the rise of anti-science, but for now I’ll just add: it isn’t just boomers that get deceived. This is a warning to all of us.
Pay ATTENTION to what you are being told. If you think you cannot be deceived, you leave yourself open to deception. Question, doubt, research research research. Learn about your personal biases, dig up any subconscious cognitive dissonance. Keep an eye on your mind.
It needs to be stressed that biases, not a lack of intelligence, is very much the issue here. Being aware of the need to fact check yourself is key: Intelligence won’t protect you from bad or unhealthy mental states, or keep you safe from cults of any sort. Intelligence will just make it easier for you to rationalize and attempt to justify the malformed tools you’ve taken/been given to yourself and others. You need to be wise enough to challenge yourself.
And then we can move on and discuss more important things.
Okay?
Here goes…
Nicolas Cage is an incredible actor who is very bad with money so he has to act in terrible movies because otherwise they will repossess his dinosaur skull collection.
But even when he is in terrible movies with terrible writing he refuses to phone in his performances. And sometimes when you are acting your ass off while saying some of the dumbest dialogue ever conceived it can give the appearance the acting is the issue rather than the writing and story.
Hayden Christensen knows that feeling all too well.
So next time you see Nic Cage in a B movie acting a fool, just know he probably bought some new shrunken heads and forgot to pay the mortgage on his volcano island.
Good for this person. This is exactly what you do. Screw the job.
I had a job that made me work an all nighter, 30 hours straight, over Thanksgiving. I resigned that Monday and it was one of the most satisfying decisions I’ve ever made.
Please pay attention to all the manipulation tactics this boss uses, because they’re pulling out every trick in the book.
“I’m not your boss, I’m your friend”
“Other people will be hurt by this and it’s your fault and I’m going to tell them all that”
Mocking language
Jobs are important too
“Be a team player”
“We’re your family too”
Talking as if this is a thing you must do
“We all make sacrifices”
Undermining your authority
“You caused all of this, really”
Accusing you of being “unprofessional”
“Look at the money you cost us”
“Just laugh it off and come back to work”
This is like a 101 course in how employers use guilt trips to coerce you into putting up with their bullshit. This is precisely why you should never trust those employers who insist that they’re “like a family.” They are not. It’s just a ruse so that your boss can neg you into putting your job ahead of your actual life.
A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity. A Kids Cancer Charity ……….
The Trump crime Syndicate
trump and his family stole from a kids’ cancer charity.
grabbing like 80 percent of the lesbians I know by the shoulders and saying listen. listen. you have to stop categorizing everyone and everything into Women (Good) and Men (Bad). you might not think you’re doing it, but you are. it’s very clear from the ways in which you talk about trans men and bi women and your experience with gender and your difficulties in the dating scene that on some subconscious level, you think that moral purity is directly proportional to how much Man Stuff somebody has in their life. that contact with men and male-associated cultural byproducts will give you Boy Cooties. it won’t. but I can tell you think it does, and so do all of your trans friends, and it makes us all uncomfortable. so cut it out
hey and also–no, bro, listen. listen. stop associating Women (Passive) and Men (Aggressive). I can tell you’re doing that too. and then these two categorization modes get stuck together, and you wind up with Women/Passive/Good and Men/Aggressive/Bad, and that’s why you believe there’s such a thing as a “top shortage” and why you can’t quite convince yourself to try going on T and why you’re too scared to initiate sex with your girlfriend of four months. please be normal
This Disabled Pride Month, shout-out to those who have trouble talking, no matter what that looks like for you. The semi-verbal and semi-speaking. The non-verbal and non-speaking. Those with stutters. Those who get word salad. Those have trouble processing language. Those who have a very limited vocabulary. Those who lose speech. The selectively mute. Those who have been mocked for their voice or difficulty speaking. Those who can’t stand the sound of their own voice and get too distressed by it to speak. Those whose throats have been damaged. Those who find their dissociation makes it harder to speak. Those whose echolalia or tics or whatever else interrupts their speech. Those who struggle to understand or piece together sentences. Anyone else who experiences any sort of difficulty or inability with speech for whatever reason. And if any of this sounds like nonsensical spit-balling. Guess who’s having a time of it today and just hoping to hell this post is coherent lol. I hope we all have a great day in which we’re not pressured to go past our limits or pretend to be normal and don’t get mocked or sneered at or anything. I hope we can all just be.
Someone is not very happy about the recent slander of the ball pit. He would like to inform you there is also a bounce house, and he will not be pleased with insults towards either.
People love to go “ in the Soviet Union they picked your job for you 😭” yeah cunt that’s what we’re doin now too except they make you bark like a dog for three weeks straight first getting denied everywhere you wanna work until you end up somewhere you dont like anyway. Let’s just cut out that middle man why don’t we
nothing more humiliating than misusing a word because i was remembering its etymological origin and not its contemporary meaning. like damn i guess this would’ve been really useful 700 years ago.
I hate being told “you need to work on your forgetfulness/memory issues”…
hate being told “stop hiding behind your disability”
hate being told “you can do so much more if you push yourself”
when the disability does disabling.
sometimes, I just can’t remember or I can’t do things, and that’s ok, it doesn’t make me useless or stupid and I wish my family specifically my mother treated me better about this stuff. I’m tired.
hey, to those that relate to this post:
you are not useless because you forgot things or can’t physically do things/don’t know how to do them. we live in an extremely ableist society and we are expected to do everything from the start. you matter and I matter too. disability rights include those who have a hard time managing task or can’t do things at all and need extra help.
“The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I’m not a trannie or a fag so I don’t care, just give ‘em the medicine they need.”
“This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility.”
One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.
Someone who says they don’t care if dudes wear dresses and makeup is a better ally than someone who says they’re a safe space for women and non-binary people. I am not joking.
yeah I went to a gay bar recently with my husband tumblr user beemovieerotica, and a VERY confused capital S Southerner straight man in cargo shorts and a trucker hat showed up
apparently he (who through my drunken memory I remember only as Earl) liked some woman, and she told him that he wasn’t cultured enough and needed to attend his first drag show (she also flaked on him)
Now I’m reasonably androgynous and was wearing makeup, a short leather skirt, and black heeled boots, but still when this guy came up to me when I was standing off alone and asked “So. Do you come here often?” with a very earnest expression, I thought. Surely not. This guy doesn’t think I’m a straight woman does he????
Anyway I start talking with this guy and he has no idea what the fuck is going on but he is just a very kind and earnest dude and asked a lot of questions (while asking if it was alright if he asked those questions). I track down my husband and friends and I’m like y'all. We need to make sure that Earl has a Good Fucking Time tonight.
Man was completely out of his depth. At one point they put on a puppy auction to raise money for Pride, that started with a 6 ft drag queen in all her glory leading a leather pup out on a leash to the tune of that damned RSPCA “in the arms of the angels” song
We look at Earl. Nervous. He squints, laughs, and then goes “I was wondering why people were dressed like that!” He turned to me and asked “So they’re like dogs?” And I said yeah pretty much. And he just chuckled and went “Yeah I thought so with the tails! Never seen this before!”
When the first drag king came out, Earl looked at me wide eyed and went “There’s a dude version too?!” And I said yeah they’re called drag kings. And he said, low, “Drag kings.”
During one of the queens performances, he frowned, shook his head and told me, “Your legs are better than hers.” in a tone that implied he thought there was some travesty taking place and I should also be getting paid
When he found out I was there with my husband (and that I am not a woman) he profusely apologized and said “I’m so sorry, it’s dark in here and I thought you were a hot chick! I wouldn’t have said nothing if I knew you had a husband, I’m so sorry about that.”
When beemovie invited me to the dance floor with him later and I still had a drink in my hand, Earl said “Oh don’t worry about that I can hold your drink, you get on out there and shake your ass with your husband!” Then before we left, Earl bought me drinks for “Putting up with me all night and answering everything. Y'all helped me have a great time tonight.”
like. You gotta recognize there’s going to people who have never had interacted outside of their of their own community. This includes you. And just because your community is familiar with all the right vocabulary and how to correctly say something, it doesn’t mean they’re actually going to support you. If someone like Earl shows up, confused and out of their depth but kind and curious and earnest, you gotta have patience and truck through the small things, so when he goes back to his friends and his coworkers and they snicker asking how the drag show was, he can genuinely talk about how included we tried to make him feel and that he had a great time
The person matters more than the language
I will reblog this EVERY TIME.
Sanitized language is a tool of oppression, always has been and always will be.
And yes, I get being pissed off by slurs. I do. But in the times we are living in right now, we really need to all pivot our priorities to safety.
“Earl” will talk to all his Busch drinking, tractor-pulling, gun toting, conservative voting friends about the nice and friendly and harmless trannies he met, and they will understand him.
They do not know what gender non-conforming, trans-femme/masc, demiboy, agender genderqueer bisexual lesbians are, and quite frankly, they do not need to.
What we need from Earl and his friends is for them to feel neutrally enough about us to not become violent with us, and to spread the idea that violence against us is not necessary or warranted. They are simply not going to do that in a language that is not their own.
surely it’s not just me who finds those fucking “be nice, I’m in charge of the pills” pins you sometimes see doctors and nurses wearing in pretty bad taste right? like the *point* is a stand against being mistreated by patients but like…yea you are in charge of the pills and can arbitrarily deny care to people, not really sure why that’s something to gloat about? like the number of stories especially of black women being totally denied painkillers in hospital and stuff because the nurses were assholes it’s like….maybe you can have your snarky pins when you’re not in the position to medically torture someone? idk
like you get people rushing to defend it like “you don’t know what it’s like working in a hospital” but like…i do sure as hell know what it’s like being mistreated by medical professionals. I’m not even getting paid to be here. it’s kinda fucking evil when you think about it for more than a second.
been mainlining mythbusters episodes while i work on art stuff and this bit where they attempt to test sneakily entering a building through the air ducts caught me deliriously off guard
There’s a lot of religious imagery in the cult of the lambs fandom, which is great and all, but do you know what we need more of? RELIGIOUS GUILT.
I want to see the lamb read the scriptures over and over and over to ingrain them into their brain. I want to see them freak out and get on their knees when they believe they’ve done someone wrong, and PRAY for repentance. I want to see them talk to the one who waits and thank him over and over again and say they’re not worthy and they need to do better and better and better. They feel at any moment that they do not act righteously in his name that they have to fix it. They don’t deserve a second chance, to be chosen. I want to see them doubt him and question him and then snap themselves out of it, so when they were betrayed they felt shocked, but deep down they knew.
I understand the point of cotl is more of “you aren’t above the law, YOU ARE the law” and that the lamb was more unwilling if anything.
but isn’t that just it? Rug-burned scraped knees praying for forgiveness because you were given a second chance, as painful as it is, but the fact you were salvaged at all. That you want to be worthy of the love and prove that it wasn’t mistaken, you did everything right. An unwilling participant, but who else loved you? Who else cared for you? God loves you, but not enough to save you. And that’s why you must free him, that at last you can rest.
The lamb was so blinded by their guilt, seen as perhaps love, that for a moment, even a second,
For context this was in response to someone saying their cybertruck was heavy duty
oh no no NO no no I am sorry my dear @thebirdtm you are NOT underselling one of the most seminal pieces of television of my entire childhood like that on MY watch.
“How is claiming they drowned a Hilux possibly underselling it” GREAT question.
To start with a little disclaimer, Top Gear’s Hilux did not start off, as in the video above, in pristine condition. It started off with nigh-on 300k kms (for you yankees, that’s about 8.4 million Boeing 737 wingspans) and a condition to match.
And it’s only once careless driving around town yielded zilch in given shits…
(look, I found a local newspaper picturing it being driven around!)
…that they decided to drown it. Now, the underselling part: if you told me that they drowned a pickup the first place my mind would go to would be “driving it through a river a bit too deep for it, perhaps as deep as its height, until it stalls and then tugging it back out. You will concede that’s rather different from tying it down on the seashore with the second highest tide in the world…
…and leaving it there until it engulfs the whole truck…
…only for the ropes to snap…
…and for the truck to be lost to the tides for FIVE HOURS.
(and for those wondering, yes, just as promised, well within an hour and the mandatory limits of basic tools and no spare parts, up the mechanic made the thing fire and away the presenter drove it - I must imagine doing a number on his clothes in the process.)
Oh also I would have mentioned the caravan.
Or at least the wrecking ball.
But hey, at least the fire was mentioned.
Still, I feel it’s criminal to leave out how they celebrated it surviving all it did: by parking it at the top of a 23 story building for all to see! :)
Wait NO-
Well, that was uncalled for. Given what it survived, it deserved to rest in a museum instead of being unceremoniously cleared out with the other chunks of public housing that buried it.
Or at least, given that buried it wasn’t…
…to be tumbled down from the rubble utop which it sat…
…and be fueled up.
"be fueled up”, pfft, what for?, I hear you say. And you are right.
Look at that thing, you say.
Let’s be serious now, however pretty of a story it would be that’s not a truck that will do anything remotely in the ballpark of firing up, let alone running.
And again, you are right.
The battery was disconnected.
Sorted that, tho
“You can’t be serious.” Oh darling I sure can! “Well the presenters can’t then” no no, I assure you, it lived. Go see it for yourself! It’s at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieau, England!
I grew up watching Top Gear and it shaped me in many ways. My adoration of old Toyota Hiluxes is one of them.
The best part is that when they drove it into the studio, the presenters admitted that the entire thing was being held together by the body work: the chassis was snapped in half. But it still ran.
Their final conclusion was that they could, of course, keep torturing this truck until it was finally destroyed, but they figured any truck that could survive a building demolishment deserved to be put up on a plinth.
The most hilarious part is that Toyota ended up using the footage from Top Gear for one of its commercials and calling the Top Gear hosts “European Automotive Experts.” Instead of, you know, a bunch of idiots with a poky little motoring show (lol).
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