Just Me and Whatever

25, Australia. Look, she's trying her best.

[movie-gifs]

THE BIRDCAGE — 1996, dir. Mike Nichols

[ravioliet]

"why can't they just be friends?" not in the homophobic sense, but in the "in your need to center romance in everything you are missing the whole point of the media in question" sense

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

graffiti discourse is so stupid why the hell would I give a shit if people spraypaint their names or do some cool paintings under a bridge

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

sorry didn't realize the bridge has to be plain beige concrete. that was a load bearing plain beige concrete if anyone tags it the whole bridge collapses

[thatpinkkwitch]

i just heard the phrase “if you wouldn’t trust their advice, don’t trust their criticism” for the first time and i don’t think i’ve ever needed to hear anything more

[dhia-dreaming]

And once I was told "if you don't agree with their actions, why do you seek their approval"

[i-survived-that]

ID: A youtube comment with 11 likes by Niceone, it says "I've lived 46 years without knowing this. How nice of life to save some of the best bites for later." End ID.

Normally, people tend to get frustrated, even jokingly, if they miss out on something. This comment was on a song from 1974 and it made me smile quite much. Simply appreciative. Like a dessert after dinner.

[phinarei]

It is genuinely mind blowing to me just how many Tumblr posts have changed my life for the better and taught me to be happier. Not all of the thoughts originate on Tumblr, but the way people collect and frame them has literally changed my brain chemistry.

[cherryjams]

‘Hands weaving magnetic-core memory, IBM, Poughkeepsie, New York,’ 1956. Photograph by Ansel Adams.

[bladespark]

My mother used to make computer cores as a "work from home" side business. As a child I got spending money via un-winding the ones that failed testing so that the magnetic center could be re-used. I got between $0.05 and $0.25 per core depending. Mom got more for the finished ones, of course, though I don't know how much. Her sister was an expert, and did the more complicated kind, some of which ended up in satellites and/or were used by NASA!

They were all done by hand using a kind of treadle-operated frame with a little (crochet!) hook to pull the wires around the cores. The people making them were mostly housewives who did this as a side-job in the 80s and 90s. I don't know if it's still done that way anywhere in the USA today, but the history of computing and space exploration is littered with "women's work" like this.

[mordredsheart]

snow white goth-coded not because of the hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow, but because her best friends are seven weird dudes in the metal scene

[nat-20s]

HATE when you can't stand someone who is literally harmless. Like oh I'm the bitch here. I'm 100% in the wrong but nonetheless fuuuccckkk this guy

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

after a suicide attempt in 2016

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

“When Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anything at all? All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and your mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I don’t know. Further north, I’d guess. The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think she’s up. He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey. Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. He’s holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, they’d fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly. Damned if I didn’t get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says. Your mother stands behind him saying he’s pure USDA crazy. Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand out there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. She’s got a hanker for plums and ain’t nothing else gonna do. It’s when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddy’s truck, and the nectar runs down your chin. And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody-who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. That’s how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You don’t earn it. It’s given.”

excerpt from Cherry by Mary Karr, context being after a suicide attempt at age 13

[elfwreck]

Some context: Texas and Arkansas share a corner border. Now, Texas is FECKING HUGE and there are many, many parts of Texas that cannot visit Arkansas overnight, but there are parts where it’s no trouble at all.

However, those places of Texas that are close to Arkansas, do not include “close to Fort Smith, Arkansas.”

The closest Texas gets to Fort Smith is about 185 miles (about 300km), at “a little closer than Texarkana.” (Dallas, fwiw, is about 275 miles/450km from Fort Smith.)

So the dad in this story drove at least SEVEN HOURS round trip, to pick up a bushel of plums for his little girl, in the hope that some almost-out-of-season fruit would convince her to go on living.

[v-lagopus]

Okay.

It’s bigger than this.

According to Wikipedia, the poet Mary Karr was born in 1955 and grew up in Groves, Texas and “lived there until she moved to Los Angeles in 1972.” So she would have been there when she was 13 and attempted suicide.

According to Google Maps, the shortest driving distance between Groves, TX and Fort Smith, AR is 439 miles (or 706 km for metric using folks).

That’s almost 8 hours of driving.

Almost 16 hours roundtrip.

(I assume he broke every speed limit he could.)

That’s how much this man loved his daughter.

May we all be worthy of such love.

May we all be capable of giving such love.

May we all have people in our lives with which we can share this love.

[golvio]

You don’t have to be worthy. To the people who truly matter, you deserve it solely for existing. “You don’t earn it. It’s given.”

[nanalineni]

I love how varied and universally weird the circumstances for making lifelong friendships are. Here's this guy I accidentally messaged once and I could not imagine my life without them now. Here's this girl I was so scared of when I met her, I would kill for her and remind her to rest on the regular. Here's this other guy we have so much in common we used to joke we were the same person in different timelines. It took us years to meet in person and I attended his wedding. There are also people who entered my life in absolutely unremarkable ways but changed it forever for the better. It's wonderful how easy it is to find people to love.

[nanalineni]

This is the best post I have ever written, read the notes and be blessed by loving your friends magic

[orpheusilver]

man with loophole fetish facing criminal charges gets off on a technicality

[depsidase]

[raindropcascade]

@isuggesteatingtherich

[akindplace]

do you guys remember when we googled something and we would get results that were actually related to the things we searched

[delphinidin4]

[zegalba]

camouflaged owls

[aearyn]

[ministarfruit]

I love this text post so I drew it

[orcboxer]

it's meee I'm your guardian angel hiiiiii 😇 okay🙏 so. in about six months, you're gonna die of starvation. 🥺 and if I don't protect you, I will get: #fired! 🫢 and that is No Good 🙅‍♀️ hahaaa So. 🙏 I looked into causes of starvation, and it turns out: Your death is totally preventable! 😯 Uh oh! 😆 There's more than enough food to sustain you without interfering with anyone else's survival, but you're not allowed to have it! 🤨 Whaaat? 🤷‍♀️ Apparently, your death is premeditated by thousands of things called "shareholders." So. 🙏 I've been killing people,

[dcartcorner]

i'm fine, actually