Takk fyrir komuna. @geirhildur - Tumblr Blog

we got a full redbox and now we're playing go fish with the redbox movies

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

a redbox makes a wonderful addition to your patio

fishmech

for those wondering why they're free to take now, it's because the company that made those "chicken soup for the soul" books bought them a few years ago and then completely collapsed so bad they couldn't afford to dispose of or even take the blu rays and dvds out of their kiosks all over.

so any of them is free game because they're all located on other business' property and they usually don't want to have to pay to get rid of them either. so asking the store manager usually gets you the ok to pull it out and keep it.

chirasul

there was a period of time right after their bankruptcy where you could put in any debit or credit card and it would spit out movies without charging you. you could even put in like an expired or deactivated card, or a visa gift card with a $0 balance, didnt matter, they'd just start spitting discs out. a lotta people raided redboxes for movies for a couple months, with some people doing what me and my brother and my dad did here, taking the whole box and signs and marquees as well. because managers sure as hell don't want a big abandoned piece of trash on their sidewalk disappointing customers. BUT they're also often too cheap to pay someone to remove it. so they just sit there.

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.

remember: the rules are made up. act like you belong there and you can get away with anything. this applies to your own life

inadvertently-biblical

AYESHA HARRIS as DR. PARKER ELLIS

THE PITT - 8:00 P.M.

tinkerbitch69

Are they ‘trauma dumping’ or are they just discussing their life experience and you are such an asshole that you can’t stand to be confronted with information that makes you uncomfortable for 0.005 seconds???

boomer-mythology-destroyer

frontmansdefender

RIP to the legend

silvermoon424

This goose fucking rocks and had a crazy life!

I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:

He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.

Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.

Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.

When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.

Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.

Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.

As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.

His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."

Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.

Before and after his death, Thomas has been celebrated as an icon of the LGBTQ+ community for obvious reasons.

necrosonatica

its so funny watching people veer so far to the left that they start reinventing things like race science, segregation, purity politics, censorship, misogyny, bioessentialism, anti-theism, nationalism, lynch mobs, capital punishment and group punishment, etc.

and by funny I mean fucking terrifying but I have to laugh otherwise I'll spiral.

starlightomatic

twobeesornottwobees

To anyone worried this might be them:

(I'm holding your hand while i say this)

You might be right.

You might have opinions that you feel have veered off into unacceptable territory. You might have come to feminism with a "fuck all men, we should start treating them like shit, see how they like it" mentality. You might have come to anti-christian nationalism with a "christianity is so patriarchal and imperialistic, anyone who practices it hates me and i hate them" mentality. You might have come to environmentalism with a "there are too many people on this planet, we need a new plague" mentality.

You might have noticed your opinions slipping further and further into radicalization but you might also feel like you started on that path from a genuinely good place and you've had only the best of intentions.

But (and this is the part you need to internalize), it is not too late to course correct.

Whenever I worry that my desire to make a better world has led me to accept opinions, beliefs, rhetoric etc. that I don't actually agree with, I take a step back and ask myself three questions:

First, am I assuming that other people are not people in the exact same way that I'm a person?

The root of all evil is the incredibly tempting tendency to treat other people like they're not exactly as much of a person as you are. So take a beat and ask yourself if you're treating them like they are.

(This can go in both directions by the way! Treating someone like they're less than a person is obviously harmful and dehumanizing but treating them like they're more than a person can lead to objectification, tokenization, and more. Not good stuff.)

Second, am I thinking from a place of love or hate?

The saying "you have to love the oppressed more than you hate the oppressor" will untangle you from so many impossible ethical dilemmas, I promise you.

And third, am I putting my anger somewhere useful?

This is actually a two part question because the first step is asking yourself, "Am I directing my anger towards the person or institution I am actually mad at?" If the answer is no, then you are effectively yelling at a Walmart employee about how evil the Walmart corporation is and expecting them to be able to do something about that.

Then you move onto the actual question, "Am I putting my anger somewhere useful?" If the extent of your civic engagement is getting into fights on social media, I can assure you the answer is no.

So for example...

Let's say you are a girl in your early-mid 20s. You learned about feminism from your friends and maybe a teacher or professor or two and you've accepted the fact that patriarchy is real and harmful to women but you find yourself repeatedly thinking "Ugh, I wish all men could just fuck off and die. I should be able to treat them exactly as terribly as women have been treated since the beginning of time."

This is an understandable thought. I see how you got there. Misogyny is incredibly exhausting to deal with, many men have done exactly zero work to become less misogynistic, and living your life with the crushing weight of "a significant portion of the world's population do not think of me as a full and autonomous person" is very very difficult.

So what do we do about it? What is our response.

Here is where we pause and ask the questions.

First, am I assuming that other people are not people in the exact same way that I am a person?

Am I treating "men" like a monolith in the same way that misogynists treat "women" like a monolith? Yes? Okay then what's the reality? (Hint: it is always more complex than you first think).

For me, the reality is that "men" includes my best friend from college who loves me and the world so much he's spent 12 years learning about feminism and gender theory just so he could be a better person, a better friend. It includes Brennan Lee Mulligan (and Lou Wilson and Zac Oyama and more) who prove to me that it is possible to be a public figure without promoting toxic masculinity. It includes my favorite professor who still checks in on me and my career, even years after I stopped being his student. It includes trans men I want to celebrate and love, both for their trans-ness and their maleness. It includes so many men whom I love and who love me. Which brings us to....

Second, am I thinking from a place of love or hate?

When I have the knee-jerk thought "I wish all men would just fuck off and die" what am I actually saying? I'm saying I wish the world were safer and kinder and better for women. I'm saying I want women to live the lives they want to live, regardless of whatever a hateful man might think about it. I'm saying I want a higher quality of life for women.

And so....

Third, am I putting my anger somewhere useful?

Do I actually think all men should die? Do I think men should be violently eradicated from the planet?

No, that's ridiculous and not useful at all and certainly not coming from a place of love.

So instead I'll ask myself "How can I make my anger work for me?"

Well, what do women need to have a higher quality of life? They need to be paid a fair wage, they need access to high-quality health care, they need subsidized childcare and birth control and abortions and education. So those are the things I will fight for. Those are the things I will talk about.

Boom, I have turned hatred for misogyny into love for women, love for the world. And I have given myself useful and productive motivation to make the world a better place. Dope. We're doing great.

jack-the-fool

Rocky: Grace say Hail Mary archives have all Human media yet Rocky still cannot find classic film Goncharov for movie night statment.

Grace: ....What?

Rocky: Grace not know own earth greatest mafia movie ever made question?

Grace: .......

Grace: What?

h4nifah

this idealistic self-optimised fully healed completely emotionally regulated and stable person with zero negative qualities or behaviours that people imagine you can become after a certain amount of healing or therapy literally doesn’t exist

yellow-cat

actually hate that the bodys response to anything is nausea. ate too much? nauseous. ate too little? nauseous. an imaginary threat got you scared? be nauseous. on your period? you guessed it. sawed into your hand and need to go to the emergency room? perhaps throwing up into your open wound will be of help

kosmogrl

sorry I didn’t show up it was because umm.. you see, I was busy. maybe another time??

fwizard

thehappysmiler

favorites

unforth

sic-semper-hominibus

duckingwriting

This thread lives rent free in my brain. And randomly came across my FB feed so of course I had to dig it up out of my Tumblr to share what fb shared.

notemily

I like this one

natnormalatall

roald dahl was antisemitic and misogynistic. george orwell was openly homophobic. edgar allan poe married his 13 year old cousin. dr seuss cheated on his wife (and was racist as well as antisemitic!). hp lovecraft was racist as fuck. anyways they’re fucking dead it’s not like you’re enabling their behaviors in the afterlife or something. then again I think they bleed into the books so uh keep an eye out for that

the difference between these old white guys and jk rowling is that the former group is all dead. jk rowling is alive and using your money to oppress trans people

lastoneout

this is my entire stance on the "american food is bad" discourse summed up

thebeatleshermajestydotmp3

Listen man, its a work week, you just got done your shift at the dollar store, youre in a rural area and the local waffle house is a 35 minute drive away and driving from the waffle house back home will be another 45 minutes, so what youre gonna do is youre gonna pick these four bad boys up from the dry goods aisle, drive home, cook some Carolina long grain rice with a little bouillon cube stirred into the cooking water, and in a separate skillet, youre gonna add a tsp of veggie oil or if youre lucky some butter and cook down some of that garlic. Then add a little extra oil and if you have spinach or any hearty greens, youre gonna throw them in your skillet with some salt and cook them down, if not thats okay. But youre also gonna transfer your rice from the pot into the skillet with your garlic (and veggies if youre lucky) and stirfry that rice for a minute or so. The bouillon cube didnt quite season your rice to your liking, so youre gonna throw a little extra pinch of salt. Perfect. Then youre gonna turn off the flame and add parmesan to taste. You take a look in your fridge and you see that you have a little parsley left from the last time you were able to clock out early enough to stop in at the local Food Lion and its still in good condition. Youre gonna wash that parsley, dry it, give it a quick chop, and finish your fake risotto with it and a couple splashes of lemon juice.

You have some rice left over so you know whats for dinner tomorrow night and you can sleep soundly. Country girls make fucking do.

ungezieferwerden

i’ll defend iodised salt and jarred garlic (like hot tip tho microplane that garlic instead of mincing if you’ve got whole bulbs or cloves) but like we are not doing craft parmesan

like what is going on there

lastoneout

Looks like the bare-bones essential ingredients for cheese?? Idk what the issue is here, basically every single kind of cheese starts as milk, salt, bacteria cultures, and some sort of enzyme to form curds. The anticaking agent is just to keep the cheese from clumping together as basically any powder is prone to do. Table salt has an anticacking agent in it, pretty sure baking soda does to. Shit ain't that out there.

As for the allergen warnings, those probably have more to do with shared factory space than anything actually in the product itself.

Like I get it if you didn't know much about the cheese making process but there is nothing that strikes me as particularly odd or gross or problematic about it?? Hell, for funsies I went to check my fridge and here's the ingredients list of real, actual, imported from Italy parmesan:

Sorry, it's a little hard to read cuz the package got torn open, but that says "raw cow's milk, animal rennet, salt, enzymes". It doesn't have the anti-caking agent bcs it's a solid hunk of cheese, and it doesn't list bacteria cultures despite bacteria absolutely being part of the process used to make this(look it up), but that's the only real substantial difference!

But, for good measure, here's the rest of the cheese I had on hand:

We've got cheddar, fresh mozzarella, and another kind of parm, and all of them have basically the EXACT SAME ingredients list! Milk, salt, some sort of enzyme, and rennet, or vinegar, or bacteria cultures.

So idk man if you wanna argue that shaky cheese is bad for some other reason feel free, though if you say it's bad bcs it's "cheap" you're gonna earn a side-eye from me, but I grew up too poor to afford any other kind of parmesan except under very rare circumstances and I will defend the shaky, shelf-stable stuff to my dying breath.

It's cheese. It's literally just cheese. And I can cook delicious food with it no problem.

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

Another reason to be afraid of starfish: they have a special tissue called catch collagen, which can solidify at will. They use it to grab hold of clams and yank them apart persistently with no effort frozen in place while the clam has to squeeze together with all its force. Eventually the clam is exhausted and releases, and the starfish oozes its gut inside to eat it :) Also, starfish are persistence hunters and they can see you.

so i was NOT prepared or interested in learning starfish are persistence hunters