Mildly Confused

Call me Cactus, I'm an individual who doesn't know what they're doing. Expect no coherency. I ride horses, and deal with animals everyday and it probably shows. I'm also a writer. She/They

[syn4k]

ROCK TIME uhhh ace please?

[cactusprisms]

Fuck yes

[cactusprisms]

how do I pin posts

[sibyllance]

Apparently someone got their car stuck on the light rail tracks at Mt. Baker. For those unfamiliar this is 35 feet up in the air

[justhavetofeelthewaves]

Driver Blocks Trains On Elevated Tracks at Mount Baker Station

On Tuesday evening, a driver managed to drive their car on the light rail tracks from MLK Way & Walden St to Mount Baker station. The 70-yea

Lord

[metrotransitposter]

hey you can’t park there

[drarry]

Imagine being the gays at a pride event in 2004 living their lives when someone grabs the microphone and announces to the room that Ronald Reagan was pronounced dead. Can you even imagine the hype, the celebration, the pure elation

[drarry]

This is the Pride Month that It will happen. I feel it in my gay bones

[broken-horn-of-equius]

[teaboot]

My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying

[teaboot]

Well-to-do finance manager with tidy shoes: "Why hello, sweetheart. Can you say 'hi'? Aren't you cute. Are you on a trip with your mom?"

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

4 year old me, suddenly paying attention: Finally, A Person Of Intellect

[draconym]

As someone who goes outside a lot at work, I am often ensorcelled by fancy gear. I love insulated metal bottles and backpacks with five hundred pockets and a sternum strap. I snatch them up when I find them in thrift stores and on freecycle.

However: mad respect to my coworker who has been using these as his backpack and water bottle for years:

[victusinveritas]

Please go learn how time works.

[enbaluka-tokyo-drift]

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[notaplaceofhonour]

will never not be mad about gig economy apps making a 4 star rating mean “unacceptable quality”

[notaplaceofhonour]

Doordash will suspend you below 4.2 stars.

Uber drivers can be suspended at 4.6 stars.

Lyft drivers risk suspension under 4.8 stars.

Even for apps where they don’t have a publicly stated minimum, their algorithms will bury you.

4 stars does not mean 4 stars. It means 1.4 stars.

If you give a person a 4 star rating, to these companies, you are not saying “I was mostly satisfied with the service, but there’s always room for improvement”—which is what 4 stars should mean—you are voting for them to be fired.

[notaplaceofhonour]

Genuinely, do not ever give people 4 star ratings on gig service apps for any reason that is not a safety issue where their continuation on the app could seriously hurt people.

If someone gives you “just OK” service where you don’t want to give them 5 stars, but you don’t actively hate their existence and hope they die, just don’t rate them.

[nothorses]

Seattle Central College is trying to close the only public wood tech college in the state of Washington, which is one of if not the only avenue into woodworking trades for people who usually aren't hired to be trained on-site: queer, trans, neurodivergent and disabled students, and women. Which is exactly what most of the students in the program are.

The reason according to the college is that they want to sell the building to fix the school's budget; they also claim the wood tech college has a severe budget deficit, but they've failed to follow through on any promises to try to fix that (including hiring a permanent dean, so the school has someone to advocate for them... which they haven't had in at least a decade).

The reason according to some students & staff is that Seattle College's VP has a grudge against the lead carpentry instructor & has been trying to get her program shut down for years to get rid of her.

Students are trying to make some noise about it, in hopes that the college backs down and they can work towards the long-term fixes Seattle College keeps failing to follow through on.

Why the future of a popular Seattle carpentry program is under threat

The future is unclear for one of the Puget Sound region’s only comprehensive training programs for carpentry and boatbuilding.

If you can sign this little petition & share this around, it'd help the school out a ton!

It shows the school they're going to get pushback, which has changed their mind about this in the past.

Sign the Petition

Save Wood Technology Center's 90 year Legacy

[nothorses]

It would be really cool if we could help get this to 1k!

There are less than 200 students at the wood tech college, so makes a really big impact when anyone else signs and shows that people outside of just students really care about this.

There were like 230 signatures when I first posted this- I'm really grateful to everyone who's already helped out. It means a lot!

[softnfuzzybelly]

I was a student here and it led me to a place in my local union. It would be really cool if it didn't get shut down especially due to interpersonal drama.

[nayters]

[elodieunderglass]

You 🫵 person in Europe who’s finding it unseasonably hot and you suddenly don’t know what to wear on, like, a hot train.

You’re going to go on Vinted or eBay and put in “made in Italy”, “moda Italia” or (translation of same.) add the search term “silk top.”

What you want are tops that consist of these really thin jersey vest tops with a floaty pure silk layer over them. You’re looking to spend £8-20. You might need to specify “floaty” or “lagenlook.”

There will usually be a healthy secondhand collection of these online. Try to get a pure silk overlayer if you can - some of them are silk blended with viscose.

You’ll probably find the designs kinda mid or old-lady-ish. Don’t worry too much about this. They’ll actually look pretty cool on, and everyone will be jealous of your freedom from suffering.

These tops will keep you much cooler than skimpier ones.

[elodieunderglass]

Have the reviews had time to come in? Do you get it now?

[victusinveritas]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I think ao3 is literally the only site where no censorship means no censorship. you can post the most vile things on there — things that will get taken down on any other platforms — and ao3 will protect you, your works, and your rights to create whatever you want, however you want.

and no, this isn’t me saying “write that messed up, disgusting thing” because while, yes, write it if it’s what you want (I myself enjoy writing dark fics, something I believe would be considered “vile” to a lot of people), this is me saying in a world of censorship and capitalism, ao3 really is a treasure.

everybody say thank you ao3

[ifuckinglovedinosaurssomuchjesus]

The WWD'25 T. rex has a very specific energy...

[bananonbinary]

i think in general it is very easy to conceptualize a company or organization as 'having opinions,' in no small part because they themselves actively promote that, but in reality the customer service and public outreach is done by tons of random people with their own random perspectives.

which results in cases like this, where tumblr as a website may be hostile to trans women, but the majority of the people you try to talk to about it are NOT, and the company isn't on paper, so it becomes much, much harder to address the problem. if you call someone and say 'hey tumblr's sexist,' and that person, as the current voice of tumblr, goes 'well hang on, i'm not sexist, so i think the company probably isn't either,' then no one will get anywhere.

it's the same problem with like, when i call social security about my disability benefits, the individual i speak to isn't an asshole. doesn't change the fact that the aggregate of all their policies and standards results in an extremely dehumanizing experience. what it DOES do is obfuscate who or what is to blame for the problem. when something is made up of so many moving parts, any single part can easily wash their hands of the problem until somehow no one at all is taking responsibility. systems suck.

[bananonbinary]

like this isn't a bug, its a feature of large companies. they explicitly talk about it* in my business ethics classes (ugh) that i'm taking right now. the higher-ups dont want to be responsible for the behavior of the random front-line workers, and the front-line workers ''shouldn't'' be held responsible for the way the company presents itself. it results in zero accountability anywhere, a shambling mass of processes that are mostly working to their own end. many of which sprung up on their own with very little human input or forethought at all.

the point is that reform needs to keep all this in mind to be successful, it's a very difficult beast to combat, and mostly requires a lot of very slow and boring victories. a lot of 'this specific process fucking sucks, can we replace it with a better one,' one at a time, until the aggregate is less bad.

*they talk about the many ways you can't blame various people for things 'the company' does. they then turn around and say the company can't be blamed for individual employees. they do NOT state the obvious conclusion that no one can be blamed for anything. it's all very transparent.

[bananonbinary]

thinking about this again bc of pride month, and yeah, it still really really sucks that "tumblr is a hostile environment to lgbt+ people in general, and trans women in specific" is true at the same time as "tumblr as a company purports to be super inclusive and looooves trans women."

like i dont know the solution here, other than continuing to demand transparency and accountability so we can SEE who, specifically, is behind every transphobic moderation decision, and why there aren't any working checks in place. is it a company wide culture, or just a few very very influential assholes? or is it actually a passive process driven by many smaller biases that seem minor on their own, but all add up to outright hostility, like the social security thing? we can't know for sure, even if we suspect, because they won't admit the problem actually exists. because SURELY The Company is its own entity that is consistent with the values stated in their press releases! you wouldn't call poor sweet Tumblr The Company mean names, would you?

[kitstacean]

The Company is really like, an ecosystem of decisions. Ecological thinking and ecological solutions apply.

[bananonbinary]

oh i like that, that's a good framework

[catchymemes]