For My Internet Impaired Mother

[scoutology]

#crysobbing

[goth-queen]

[anxietyproblem]

[onlytiktoks]

[the-big-mood]

At Toba aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes

[chryza]

literally in tears at this video....such good helpers......

[lilyblisslys]

if I ever tell you “lmk what you think if you read/play/watch it!” I am firmly inviting you to send me a play by play minute by minute cataloguing of your thoughts about The Thing

[loveridden1999]

doing things at the right age is literally a made up concept. you can start/pursue anything at any age. btw.

[loveridden1999]

remember remember

[solarpunkfool]

What if we win?

What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?

What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?

What if the rainforest ADVANCES?

What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?

What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?

What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?

What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?

What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?

What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?

What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?

What if we win?

How would you win?

[aetherograph]

And we've won a lot already, mind you.

The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.

Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.

It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.

We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.

People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.

Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.

Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.

We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.

In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.

When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.

When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.

When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!

We fixed it.

We CAN fix it and we ARE fixing it and we DID fix it.

[overmocha1068]

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

It's still far from our reach.

But it's there.

[hope-for-the-planet]

Believing that things can get better is not blind hope or optimism--it is based on hard data that many things have consistently gotten better over the arc of history.

In addition to all that was mentioned above:

The likelihood of dying in infancy or childhood--or losing a child--has plummeted just in my lifetime. The likelihood of dying in a natural disaster is the lowest in recorded human history. Yes, even with the uptick in natural disaster intensity from climate change!

Humans alive right now are more likely to have access to healthcare, electricity, education, birth control, clean water, and nutritious food than at any other point in human history. There are so many diseases we can treat now that were a death sentence for 90% of human history.

This is not by accident. This is because generations of humans put in work to make life better for their communities.

Some of our solutions had the side effect of creating other problems--better access to electricity that ultimately made people's lives easier and safer led to pollution and climate change, for example--but we are tackling those knock on problems too. Our generation's solutions to our current problems will probably create their own less-bad side effects for the humans after us to deal with.

Is it silly and naive to believe we might actually be able to make things better? Not at all. We have many times before. We are doing it right now.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

You know that powder that you can sprinkle in paint to clump it up for disposal? They need something like that for egg. There should be a product so that, when you're stumbling around tired and hungry and just trying to make breakfast and you accidentally knock your egg holder onto the floor with your elbow and fourteen eggs all fall down and break open in the most spectacularly splashy way imaginable, filling the entire narrow walkway between your kitchen benches in a torrent of goo akin to that hallway of blood in the shining, that you can simply sprinkle a powder on them to clump them up and sweep them safely into the bin before mopping, instead of sitting there, breakfastless, on your knees, both fists full of the gooeyest paper towels that you've ever held, eyes tearing up as you contemplate the callous indifference of God.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

They should also start selling boxes of teabags that don't have One Leaky Bag in them so that when you've finally got all the egg cleaned up and a non-egg-based breakfast is heating in the microwave and you decide to bring the day back under your control with a relaxing cup of peppermint tea you don't end up with an unexpected mouthful of flaky bullshit

[gpedia]

so... good day today?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I've now eaten some food and feel a lot better actually

[transiting]

don’t make other people’s decisions for them. apply for the job you don’t think you’ll get. let them decide if you have the skills they’re looking for. tell that person you like them even though you think they’re out of your league. let them decide if they like you. stop trying to predict and control everything. bring what you have to the table. let the rest go.

[gcballet]

Corporal Carrot, the Watch's youngest member, often struck people as simple. And he was. He was incredibly simple, but in the same way that a sword is simple, or an ambush is simple. He was also possibly the most linear thinker in the history of the universe.

He'd been waiting by the bedside of an old man, who'd quite enjoyed the company right up until just a few seconds ago, whereupon he'd passed on to whatever reward was due him. And now it was time for Carrot to take out his note-book.

'Now I know you saw something, sir,' he said. 'You were there.'

WELL, YES, said Death. I HAVE TO BE, YOU KNOW. BUT THIS IS VERY IRREGULAR

'You see, sir,' said Corporal Carrot, 'as I understand the law, you are an Accessory After The Fact. Or possibly Before The Fact.'

YOUNG MAN, I AM THE FACT.

'And I am an officer of the Law,' said Corporal Carrot. 'There's got to be a law, you know.'

YOU WANT ME TO... ER... GRASS SOMEONE UP? DROP A DIME ON SOMEONE? SING LIKE A PIGEON? NO. NO ONE KILLED MR SLUMBER. I CAN'T HELP YOU THERE.

'Oh, I don't know, sir,' said Carrot. 'I think you have,"

DAMN.

Death watched Carrot leave, ducking his head as he went down the narrow stairs of the hovel.

NOW THEN, WHERE WAS I...

'Excuse me,' said the wizened old man in the bed. 'I happen to be 107, you know. I haven't got all day.'

AH, YES. CORRECT.

Death sharpened his scythe. It was the first time he'd ever helped the police with their inquiries. Still, everyone had a job to do.

Theatre of Cruelty (1993), Terry Pratchett

Underacknowledged moment where a pre-Men At Arms Carrot stakes out a deathbed to get a witness statement from Death

[ot3]

as a hard rule anything you see that's screenshotted from a facebook content aggregator of any kind is complete bullshit and in the off chance it isn't you're always better off finding the original source of that information and screenshotting/linking back to that instead so people do not ever get tricked into thinking facebook content aggregators are anything other than clickfarming blights upon the digital landscape. theyre the kudzu of posting.

[kitkatpancakestack]

sidewalk art I walked by today. there is love out there.

[handweavers]

when people love you and want to help you and be there for you it is actually the greatest kindness to both of you to let them do it. when people tell you they love you and want to help you, you need to let them. if not for yourself then for them. allow them to share their love with you even if it feels strange and bad to admit to needing or wanting anything

[chimaerakitten]

Look if a garment is like. Wool or silk. And it’s like, don’t put me in the fucking wash. I’m like yeah of course ma’am I shall lightly dab you with a damp cloth and air you out so you don’t get stinky. But when a polyester garment is like “hand wash only” I’m like who the FUCK do you think you are. You’re plastic. Get in the drum.

[xiaq]

Absolutely wild to me how sometimes you don't even realize the way you'd been taught to perceive things as a kid was kinda fucked up, actually, until decades later.

Example:

As a kid, I constantly lived in fear of damaging shit in my parent's house. The walls. The floors (especially the floors. The wood was beautiful. Shiny. But so easy to scratch). The cabinets.

As a sixteen-year-old, I once took my car to the dealership after work and paid a very dear sum of $250 ($10/hr cashier salary) to fix a slight scratch in the paint because I knew if my father saw it there would be hell to pay. It didn't matter that I parked far out, like I'd been taught, and someone scratched it anyway. It was my fault. I failed in my duties as a steward of my vehicle.

Every time I scratched a rim on a curb while parallel parking or got a door ding or, god forbid, didn't wash and vacuum that car every weekend, it was treated like some sort of moral failing.

Last year, when my husband and I first moved into our house, he scraped the side of our car when parking in our (Very Narrow) garage. When he told me, my first instinct was to be afraid for him. Like something terrible was going to happen to him because of this mistake. I urgently reassured him that it was okay, it was an accident, I wasn't mad. Baffled, he was like, "Yeah? I know? Like, thank you for the reassurance, but I'm only a little annoyed, I'm not upset. It's just a car." And I had to take several minutes to process that. It's...just a car.

We keep the car tidy. We maintain it. But we wash it maybe 4x a year. We only vacuum it after dirty road trips or when the dog hair starts to get annoying. It has scrapes and dings and the leather seats have stains. But that's ok. Because it's just a car.

This morning, I realized that a small rock had gotten embedded in the felt foot on one of our bar stools. Neither of us had noticed. There are now scratches on our beautiful hardwood floor. My immediate response was fear accompanied by a heavy measure of paralyzing guilt. "I'm so sorry," I told my husband, "I should have noticed. I'll figure out how to fix it, I swear. I can probably sand down that section and match the stain and--"

"Whoa, hey," he said. "It was an accident. And it's fine. Floors are going to get damaged. They're floors. We live here. There was damage in places before we even bought the house, remember? It's not a big deal. It's just a floor." Right. It's just a floor. Right.

My husband's mom is visiting and this afternoon, as I was sitting in the kitchen looking at the scratches on the floor, I offhandedly asked her if my husband had ever broken or damaged anything as a kid. "Of course," she said. Household items. A TV. A wrecked car during his teen years. I asked how she punished him.

"Why would I punish him for things like that?" she said. "They were all accidents."

Right. Of course. Right.

[pfaugh]

[pankendev]

my human vaporizing machine continues to mistify people