trying on a metaphor
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
styofa doing anything
blake kathryn
Jules of Nature
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$LAYYYTER
ellievsbear
Monterey Bay Aquarium
occasionally subtle
Cosmic Funnies
art blog(derogatory)
Andulka
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Peter Solarz
DEAR READER
RMH
sheepfilms
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
will byers stan first human second
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@keep-calm-and-survive
Movement nudge, hand mobility! 🙌
X
1) do this even if you're under 40. seriously. I definitely should have been doing something like this for years and I only turned 40 a month and a half ago
2) if you're like me just now trying this going "oh god i've only done 15 and i think my hands are cramping" start lower than 30 and increase by 5 once whatever number you're doing no longer makes your hand cramp up. I can manage about 15 per exercise at the moment.
do you take a werewolf boyfriend to the vet or the doctor. this is too complicated
Context: she had babies with a werewolf and isn’t sure where to take them either.
she had babies with a what
He died :(
Raising kids alone is stressful enough without them being part wolf.
So in the unlikely event that anyone finds themselves in this situation…. Take them to the Vet whenever possible. Veterinarians have the same base medical knowledge as human doctors, but their expertise and available equipment cover a wider variety of anatomical makeups, as well as some crucial skills like ‘don’t get bitten or scratched’ and ‘corral and capture runaway patients’
Laying on your left-hand side may make for slower pill absorption.
oh wow! hey if you take pills check this out. new medicine taking meta just dropped.
according to these models, out of the 4 tested postures, the best position to digest pills is laying on your right side. standing upright has a similar time to laying in your back at twice as much as laying on the right side, and laying on the left side is the slowest by far.
laying on right side: pill dissolves in around 10 minutes.
standing: pill dissolves in 23 minutes. laying on the back has a similar time.
laying on left side: pill dissolves in up to 100 minutes.
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0096877
definitely worth a lot more research.
if you want your medicine to kick in fast, try laying on your right side! if you want your medicine to kick in slower, try laying on your left side.
This makes sense! I learned from a doc that if you have gas pain or nausea, you turn on your left side to make it easier for your stomach to send stuff through. The goal in turning left is to NOT absorb, but to release.
Turning on your right can make nausea/gas pain worse because it has to fight gravity to exit your stomach/body. So, yeah, lying on your right would make things absorb faster because it's going into the stomach lining, which is the point.
Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey
I was going to reblog this anyway for the useful info but the last addition fucking sent me
think I've been mildly cursed by a witch
for years now my laptop charger has reliably broken every 6 months. admittedly i keep replacing it with the cheapest possible generics, but I've tried differed brands and ALWAYS, 6 months in Death knocks impatiently at my door, its skeletal hand outstretched demanding yet another goddamn power cable. the only feasible explanation is i pissed off a witch. the alternative is that i'm the problem, which seems unikely
the witch is called enshittification
excellent so is this like a rumpelstiltskin situation or
Humor aside. Don't buy another USB-C laptop charger. Buy a USB-C power adapter rated for the same power needs as the laptop, Anker makes high quality ones. Then you can easily replace the cable if it wears out.
The power adapter is the expensive part, the cable is cheap, but the cable is always going to fray first. Plus, you can buy a braided cable, or a right-angle cable which are less likely to break in the same way depending on how you use your laptop, and you can get whatever length of cable is convenient for you.
holy shit you've circumvented the witch's curse. yeah it's the same cable that gives out on me. replaceable parts that so fucking sexy. I'm assuming I just buy one that's the same wattage (65W) as my laptop needs? damn that witch is gonna be PISSED
You can buy one stronger than your laptops needs if you want. Devices these days are smart enough at power management to only take what they need, so a 100w charger won't brick your laptop or anything, but 65w will work perfect.
The only other thing is that not all USB-C cables are created equally. The form factor is standardized, the insides are not, some shitty, cheap, cables are only rated for data not power, or for low power needs. You can search for charging cable to make sure you get one intended for power transfer.
This witches curse effected me for years on end before I discovered this. I'm happy to foil their efforts once more.
LIFE HACK UNLOCKED
having a process for people who have done morally horrific things to make amends, rejoin community, and do right going forward is actually fundamentally crucial for the left. having a clear and accessible pathway for people to be socially (if not interpersonally) forgiven is how you get people radicalized against capitalism and imperialism and white supremacy and patriarchy. its how you turn "these people think i am a bad person" into "these people think something and someone coerced or forced me into doing bad things, and these people want to help me do something about that."
if you want more revolutionaries, you must have a system to turn guilty, traumatized, angry bystanders and collaborators into revolutionaries. and I say a system and process because its not "oh the drone operator said they were sorry and felt bad so its all good now :)" there is no shortcut here. but it is absolutely necessary. no revolution is comprised of morally pure people. in many cases, the most devoted revolutionaries are the ones who know exactly what it is like on the other side.
#'coerced or forced' is a little too unnuanced for me you are accountable for your actions#but yes everyone needs to have an opportunity to get better#even if that person wasn't coerced or forced in any way actually. yes even then.
to explain what i mean by "coerced":
i think doing things that are morally bad is also bad for the individual. people shouldn't be forced to do things in general, but its especially bad to force someone to do something morally bad. its also bad to coerce them into doing that. and its quite horrific for a system to embed within someone a worldview which habitually leads them to do bad things, and a social system which incentivizes people to do bad things.
this post is in part inspired by reading the book Dirty Work which talks about moral injury & people (largely marginalized people) who do work that is seen as morally "dirty" in society. and specifically the chapter on people who work with drones for the US military (in a variety of ways). one of the major figures was a woman who grew up in poverty and was terrified of dying that way, went to join the military to get to see the world, and ended up working a job requiring her to watch hours and hours of drone footage, including hours of people living their lives, their gruesome deaths, and their families trying to collect their body parts in the aftermath. she recounts how much this weighed on her psychologically and morally, but not only her fear of poverty but also being court-martialed or otherwise subject to punishment if she spoke out or did anything, and her anger at protestors who seemed to be largely middle-class women who directed their protests at individual workers like her. she eventually did become a whistle-blower and says she experienced backlash from the left as well as the right because of her job.
now, this was a difficult read for me. it can be frustrating to read a whole chapter on the suffering of drone operators when so many people in the US don't give the beginning of a fuck about the people who have been getting bombed for years. the trauma of entire countries doesn't outweigh the trauma of a single US soldier. how can we talk about her anger at women protesting drone warfare because it hurts her feelings when we are still having to protest drone warfare that destroys entire families?
and yet. i think that reaction is partially an attempt to avoid the discomfort of how fucked the situation is holistically. the woman clearly had internalized plenty of dehumanizing, imperialistic, racist, and likely Orientalist beliefs and values. but this was hardly something she consciously chose. its easy to say "never join the US military" when you are someone who 1. already had the time and chance to develop a sense of how evil the US military is (not everyone necessarily does) 2. was not and is not in the position of being 17 and worried you'll die of a fentanyl overdose in the next five years like multiple of your classmates and desperate for any opportunity out.
does it make her decision better morally? i don't think so. but why was it a decision she had to make? why did she have so few options? why did things feel so desperate? why did a certain decision seem better and more accessible than others? if we are going up the line of responsibility here, the reason this harmful, morally bad action took place at all is because of the system of US imperialism and capitalism.
the problem is, that answer does not give us A Person To Punish. which we, as people socialized into a worldview of punitive justice, have been taught to want. transformative justice isn't just switching to A Person To Fix, its directing our energy towards social change and collective thinking and acting. that doesn't ignore the individual, but it always sees the individual through a social lens. the ultimate goal is a system which incentivizes the morals we want to see just as much as the current one incentives individualism and authoritarianism and puritanism and imperialism.
i think the perspective that we are coerced, by social systems like imperialism, patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, etc. into acting immorally and harming others and ourselves, more naturally invites people to see their own racism, sexism, orientalism, classism, etc. as both morally bad and yet not a sign they are bad. it directly counters the idea that saying "the thing you did is racist" means "YOU are racist and EVIL and CONSCIOUSLY DESPISE PEOPLE OF COLOR"*; the point is that the thing you did is racist, and if you don't want to do racist things, then you have to unlearn the shit you were socialized into believing. "coerced" keeps in mind that there are people who benefit from keeping this status quo. if racism is evil, and white supremacist culture means everyone has internalized racist beliefs, that doesn't mean everyone is evil. it means we have all been coerced into participating in evil, and we are demanding an end to that coercion; that is (one form of) accountability.
this perspective can't exist alone, either. it must be paired with a devotion to the victims of these systems. this is why it is a process. the back-and-forth has to be put into action to get a balanced solution. what is best is what practically creates system change, and having process for (again, social) forgiveness is a practical necessity.
*to be clear, this is what people often feel when they are told they did smth racist; that is itself a racist reaction, but one that people do have & i try to think about how practically to get people to get over that reaction & focus on the actual issue at hand
i 100% agree with all of this. to be clear, my tags weren't meant to deny anything about how society is coercive and systematically pushes people into doing bad things. only that i still think the choice to get better needs to be accessible even to people who could have chosen better, for one reason or another. (whether someone is allowed to be accepted should not be predicated on whether they were 'enough of a victim,' whatever that means.) and we shouldn't conclude that no one is responsible for their actions--they are. but society as a whole is responsible for the coercion and violence done against them, and the solution to that responsibility is not punishment, but restoration.
Conservative beauty standards are back with a vengeance which means it's especially important to go out this summer with bellies out and bodies unshaved. Also be unapologetically disabled with mobility aids and wearable medical devices and stim toys and ear defenders and all that stuff. You need it. People need to see it. Everyone needs to be reminded that life is unquestioningly more enjoyable when you're not living inside an arbitrary set of rules created by people who are offended by all the wrong things.
holy shit okay may have found a game-changer for web searches...with duckduckgo it's easy to turn off the ai features permanently, but regardless of engine there's the increasing problem of the search results themselves leading mostly to ai-generated articles on random ghost websites that say a lot without any information, and then the information they do give is contradictory or otherwise just wrong. this is especially a problem for me when trying to search for, e.g., a current list of the best products in a certain category.
finally searched for a solution and there IS in fact a giant hand-curated list of sites containing this content. it can be imported to ublock origin on desktop or mobile, and even can be used on iOS via the ublacklist extension in the safari app. it's updated regularly, and importing via the link as described should allow those updates to go into effect automatically.
i've only tested it a little bit, but after importing the list and repeating my duckduckgo search for backpack recommendations, my top results now lead to websites that appear to be linked to actual organizations in some form, with an "about us" page and the name of a founder and everything. the text is still often a bit wordy and SEO-optimized, but it now has actual recommendations that are relevant to the query. BIG IF TRUE???
please do not start talking about The Definition Of Art on this post, or Whether Human Creations Have Souls. i am very tired.
once I added this it took me 15 minutes to find a backpack that met my needs and order it with free shipping. I feel reborn
saw this on twitter and wanted to save it here
Image transcript:
Thriving: "I got this"
Calm and steady with minor mood fluctuations
Able to take things in stride
Consistent performance
Able to take feedback and to adjust to changes or plans
Able to focus
Able to communicate effectively
Normal sleep patterns and appetite
Surviving: "Something isn't right"
Nervousness, sadness, increased mood fluctuations
Inconsistent performance
More easily overwhelmed or irritated
Increased need for control and difficulty adjusting to changes
Trouble sleeping or eating
Activities and relationships you used to enjoy seem less interesting or even stressful
Muscle tension, low energy, headaches
Struggling: "I can't keep this up"
Persistent fear, panic, anxiety, anger, pervasive sadness, hopelessness
Exhaustion
Poor performance and difficulty making decisions or concentrating
Avoiding interaction with coworkers, family and friends
Fatigue, aches and pains
Restless, disturbed sleep
Self-medicating with substances, food, or other numbing activities
In Crisis: "I can't survive this"
Disabling distress and loss of function
Panic attacks
Nightmares or flashbacks
Unable to fall or stay asleep
Intrusive thoughts
Thoughts of self-harm or suicide
Easily enraged or aggressive
Careless mistakes and inability to focus
Feeling numb, lost, or out of control
Withdrawal from relationships
Dependence on substances, food, or other numbing activities to cope
End transcript.
Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."
And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.
This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?
"It's red on the inside?"
Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.
"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."
And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.
If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.
Yep.
https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.
If you’d asked me six months ago how to get better at something, I’d probably have pointed you to how to do hard things. I still think this is a good approach and you should do it, but I now think it’s the wrong starting point and I’ve been undervaluing small insights. [...]
I think my revised belief is that if you are stuck at how to get better at something, spend a little while assuming there’s just some trick to it you’ve missed. You can try to generate the trick yourself, but it’s probably easier to learn it by observing someone else being good at the thing, asking them some questions, and seeing if you have any lightbulb moment.
My fiance played the clarinet when he was in school. When he was first learning to play, he rented an instrument from the school to learn on. He was the last chair clarinet, had been for years, because he could not make notes that required the register key. For years, they kept making him do embrature exercises and he started to get a few notes, with lots of effort. Eventually he had to get private lessons to stay in band.
Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.
When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.
He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.
Sometimes you don't need to brute force a problem. Sometimes your clarinet is just broken.
Not quite sure why the clarinet addition got me crying, but here you go people: just in case, let's get you some new pads.
How to tell someone's feelings about urbanism in 1 easy step
Ask them their opinion on Dutch Cycling infrastructure
Also probably check to see what their opinion on North American Car Dependence is and if they are normal about dense housing
You are right @autisticwreckingball the 15 minute city is a good starting point to see if someone is at least inclined towards urbanism because of how it is such a simple and basic good concept
@backsetx Then it's a great time for me to explain Dutch cycling infrastructure for you. Dutch cycling infrastructure is infrastructure where bikes are given priority and separation from cars is placed at a high importance. It is does by building separated lanes and bike streets. Here are some photos of it below
Adding on because I did not know this:
This is a good quick description of what I am talking about so I will reblog it for more people to see it
there is apparently a sizeable contingent of "walkable city" proponents who start frothing at the mouth and vocally supporting eugenics if you dare mention that many disabled and elderly and pregnant people need personal vehicles to get anywhere at all in a reasonable timeframe and that "paratransit" has always been a cruel joke.
this is why "15-minute city" is better terminology: if a person can't get there on foot in 15 minutes due to physical limitations, they should be able to drive there in (well under) 15 minutes instead, and this will be straightforward to accomplish because there will be quintuple the amenities and drastically fewer people on the slower, safer roads.
there will still be personal vehicles in a well-designed 15-minute city!!! you just won't be driving from the suburb part to the doctor part across 30 minutes of freeway traffic!
i am saying this because there are a lot of disabled folks who have entirely reasonable reservations about "walkable cities" not because of the name, but because there are some extremely vocal eugenicists out there who think if you can't bike then you simply don't belong anywhere in their walkable utopia.
Thank you for the addendum. I'm always hesitant when I see bike infrastructure because I'm not athletic, if I got on a bicycle it would require frequent breaks and varying speeds. If you put me on a road for bikes I would likely cause a traffic jam and a lot of angry folks within arm's reach.
There's a reason that transportation has developed the way it has. Bicycles, enclosed vehicles that can seat 2-5 people, busses that can transport 30+, they all have reasons to exist, and ignoring those reasons in favor of pushing one single transit method isn't the way to change things.
a lot of people are asking how i finally got medicated for my sleep disorder. the truth is i had a sleep study done in 2020 but due to my inability to sleep i only slept a single hour and they said i didn’t have sleep apnea and recommended no further testing and i just accepted it bc i didn’t know what else to do.
yet insomnia has been my longest lifelong disabling condition. i have often gone more than 70 hours with no sleep, and when i finally ‘crash’ i may only sleep 5 hours between 70 hour no-sleep periods.
this issue began when i was a toddler and i have memories of being as young as 4 years old and regularly sneaking downstairs in the night to watch tv bc sleep was hopeless & no routine or discipline helped. i have lost jobs, friendships, and more over my sleep disorder.
it came to a head this spring when i’d been awake nearly 80 hours for the second time in a month and i realized i was going to fail out of grad school and lose my visa if i didn’t find a way to sleep. and i tried everything. i often sleep better outside camping so one night i was so desperate that i walked an hour to a soccer pitch (closest grassy space to my place in dublin) and tried to sleep on the ground there.
so knowing my attempts with a sleep specialist had gone nowhere i went to my psychiatrist for a crisis appointment while in the middle of an insomnia episode. he asked me what type of treatment i was open to, and i told him anything. i’d do anything. he discussed several non-medication options and several medication options. i’d already tried all the non-med plans, and most anti-anxiety meds (especially antihistamine classes) hadn’t worked.
so he decided we should try seropia (seroquel in the u.s., generic name Quetiapine). it’s an anti-psychotic sometimes rx’d for sleep as an off-label use.
he told me to try 20 mg and go up to 30 or down to 10 as needed. first night i slept nineteen hours without waking up once, woke up completely disoriented and dehydrated LOL. so i immediately went down to 10 mg. it has been life changing. i take it every night between 20:00 and 21:30 and i’m usually asleep by 23:00. i usually sleep 8-10 hours and don’t have too much of a ‘hangover’ in the morning.
i’ve suffered chronic nightmares but it hasn’t made them worse at all. mostly i just have very vivid dreams. also if someone calls me while i’m asleep i can have a completely normal conversation with them but may not remember it in the morning haha. apparently once took an important phone call from a friend at 1 am and i said to her “by the way you woke me up from my seropia sleep so i probably won’t remember this tomorrow, so text me to remind me.” sure enough she texted me and i didn’t remember. after nearly sending a sleep-email one night i’ve started sleeping with my phone in another room, which is better sleep hygiene anyway for me personally.
anyway all that said, if you’re not making any headway with a sleep specialist or GP, you might try a psychiatric approach.
ofc i’ve had terrible experiences with psychs and it’s never perfect. but it’s a route that worked for me this time bc i have a good psych. so if you find a psych you trust (or already have one managing your other meds) it’s worth a shot.
seropia does have a minor risk of interacting with my other meds (lamotrigine & fluvoxamine) but i’ve luckily had no issues. a few people have tried to scare me due to the connection between taking sleep medication longterm and heart disease, but the fact is chronic insomnia is proven to be extremely dangerous for cardiovascular health so this is the better route for me, personally!
i’m still adjusting to the fact that i get to simply sleep at night now.
i also didn’t realize how many of my famous all-day naps were related to this alone. i assumed they were tangled up in my other conditions, but i barely nap at all anymore.
don’t get me wrong. i’m still usually tired & in pain from my other diagnoses but i’m nevertheless overall functioning in a way i never thought possible.
anyway i’m pretty private these days about my disabilities and treatments etc. but this has simply changed my life so much that i wanted to answer y’all’s questions.
me hanging out with black people in the summer: “aye, yall don’t forget to put on sunscreen”
them:
@flipflibberinflippinghell
Use the Walgreens Brand which is pretty cheap and it does wonders and doesn’t leave me with a white cast. And I’m dark as hell so I hate looking ashy but not all sunscreens are made equally and it’s one of the better ones I’ve used.
Wait cocoa/shea butter and coconut oil don’t protect you from the sun we really do need sunscreen??
Yea fam. All that “we don’t need sunscreen” shit is a myth. Combine that with the fact that most dermatologists don’t know how to spot skin cancer in Black people and it’s a nasty combination.
Yeah, it’s harder for us to get it but when we do it’s deadly. I know two people who died of skin cancer, both were Black.
“While incidence of melanoma is higher in the Caucasian population, a July 2016 study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology showed it is more deadly in people of color. African American patients were most likely to be diagnosed with melanoma in its later stages than any other group in the study, and they also had the worst prognosis and the lowest overall survival rate.”
- https://www.skincancer.org/prevention/skin-cancer-and-skin-of-color
Sorry about the link, I’m on mobile. But this is from August 2016, which I know isn’t the most recent but it’s still SUPER IMPORTANT. Y’all please wear sunscreen. With Google it’s even easy to find smaller, Black-owned brands.
https://blackgirlsunscreen.com/ is Black-owned!
I’m gonna second the rec for Black Girl Sunscreen, it’s affordable, Black owned, and immediately melts into the skin without leaving any gross white cast.
If someone is doing something that is thoughtless and not so considerate, but not malicious or in any way intentional, be patient when you address it to them especially if it's the first time you're bringing it to their attention.
If, for example, your neighbor has their T.V. turned up too loud, or if a stranger has a bag hanging on the back of their chair that is in your way and/or in your personal space, you are certainly allowed to address this, but be polite and patient if this is the first time you're bringing it to this person's attention.
While something like a loud T.V. or someone's bag in your way and/or in your personal space are annoying and something you're certainly allowed to politely address if it's bothering you, it's more likely than not that the other person had no idea this was bothering you and would be happy to turn down the T.V. or move their bag if you politely bring it to their attention. Human beings aren't infallible machines, as such we're all prone to accidentally doing something that is bothersome to another person, so it certainly doesn't call for a hostile or aggressive response to what is likely an honest mistake.
If it becomes a repeat issue from the same person even after it's been politely addressed, or seems like it could be malicious or intentional, such as your neighbor actually turns up the T.V. even louder after you politely ask them to turn it down, then you can dial up the assertiveness within reason and/or get help from someone who can back you up (such as other neighbors who are also bothered by the sound).
But first, always give people the benefit of the doubt that they're making an honest mistake and had no idea they were bothering you.
Besides, people are more likely to respond positively to someone who addresses something patiently and politely. If a neighbor comes pounding on your door and screams and cusses at you for watching T.V. loudly when this is the first time it was brought to your attention and you didn't even know they could hear it, or if someone takes your bag off the back of your chair and dumps it on the floor because it was in their way when you couldn't even tell it was in anyone's way, a lot of people might get spiteful or aggressive themselves as a defensive response to feeling attacked. If, however, it is addressed politely they're more likely to respond politely in return.
Not only all of the above, but consider also: it's not uncommon that those situations of simple attrition, when well-defused, become positive moments. For example, that one time that a fellow student came to ask me to keep my singing down because she was studying, and I was very embarrassed and apologetic, but from that moment afterwards we were on friendly terms. She had reason to resent me, but it was better in every way that she solved the situation how she did it, because instead of an enemy she gained an ally. Meanwhile, the guy who immediately went ballistic at me and my wife that our washing machine was too loud, even though it was the same model as his and everyone else's as they were provided by the apartments, and he was so, so nasty about it that… after that event, we may have spitefully ran the washing machine right until 9.59 pm when quiet hours started at 10 pm, so that if he chose to escalate the complaints to the apartments (which we later learned he did indeed do), he wouldn't even have an argument in his favor (the apartment management folks were only confused by his angry complaint).
Petty of us? For sure, but the difference between the girl and this guy is this: the girl came with a problem, and asked if we could find a solution; the guy came with a problem, and what exactly did he want? Just to complain and be angry. If he'd been polite and explained what exactly was his issue, we could have found a solution, but, as things happened, why compromise with a random angry guy demanding that we... not do our laundry??
Keep this in mind when that person might be you, calm down first, think about the issue, and if you come to the conclusion that you have to confront the person, try to give that benefit of the doubt. Anyway, your goal should be to find a solution, not to vent and yell.
My personal practice is, "be nice first. You can always be mean later, but be nice first. Because the opposite doesn't work."
A few years ago while trying to find ways to commit suicide as painlessly as possible, I came across a PDF of Dr. Paul Quinnett's The Forever Decision. Thinking it might go into actual methods of suicide (I read an article once that actually did that and was trying to find it again) I started to read it, and I think I only got about two pages in before I was crying too much to actually see the words.
I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I'm feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.
All the book really does is [I'm pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I've read no more than 5 pages] "discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help."
But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I'm compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it's saved my life at least a few times now.
It's intentionally legal to copy and redistribute this book to keep it as accessible as possible, and it's very easy to find, but here's a link for it anyways.
genuinely they have probably saved people.
they HAVE saved people actually i’m 100% sure of that. i’ve learned about so many recalls i would’ve had no idea about otherwise !!!! from the bottom of all of our hearts thank you mamoru
aw shucks, thank YOU! what a pick me up!
when I was younger, I got food poisoning. I was supposed to recover from it, but I wound up with a bunch of nasty medical conditions instead. I never imagined I would become disabled from food.
so I am really glad I have been able to help spread the word every now and then about food safety and recalls, since it hopefully means a few less people going through what I have.
while I have your attention, I do not post every recall, even just for the US, so here are a few of the links I use!
recalls.gov/recent.html <- aggregate of official government recall links for the US! food, drugs, products, child safety seats, motor vehicles, and tires! (half the feeds are broken half the time, but hey, it works™! check the FDA enforcement reports for a more complete list of recalls, especially drug recalls!)
recalls for canada <- recalls for canada!
RASFF <- food recalls and safety alerts for the EU!
food safety news <- news about food safety in the US, canada, and around the world!
I was poisoned <- see where people have gotten food poisoning near you, and report your own! (worldwide!)
thanks for reading, stay safe and take care!
that last reblog has me musing on healthy friendships between adults and minors. i’ve seen a lot of good posts about how to spot predatory behavior, but i haven’t seen many about what healthy behavior looks like. & i know i have some younger people following me for various fandoms, so
signs of a healthy friendship w/ an adult:
they don’t do the obvious predatory things; they don’t send you sexual content or ask you sexual questions, they don’t tell you that you don’t “seem” like a minor, they don’t start inappropriate conversations
they don’t do the less obvious predatory things; they don’t ask you to keep secrets or try to isolate you from others or ask inappropriate favors or use you as a key source of emotional support*
you’d be comfortable with your parents seeing your conversations (or, if you can’t trust your parents, you’d be comfortable with a trusted adult seeing your conversations)
they’d be comfortable with your interactions being shown to people; they don’t ask you to ‘hide’ anything
they set clear boundaries; they tell you when they’re not comfortable offering guidance, when they’re uncomfortable with a conversation in general, etc.
they respect YOUR boundaries; they drop or redirect conversations when asked, they don’t ask for invasive details about trauma or your living situation, etc
you aren’t nervous about telling them when you’re uncomfortable - or at least, you aren’t more nervous than you are with anyone else. some ppl have anxiety disorders or struggle to articulate discomfort, i get it
on that note, you shouldn’t feel more anxious or nervous around them than you do around other trusted adults.
you don’t need to have a Reason for the nervousness - sometimes a person’s intensity or conversational style is just stressful. the same might happen w/ peers your age. a beneficial friendship shouldn’t make you feel consistently tense/on edge, even if the other party hasn’t done anything “wrong”
(people don’t need to Commit A Transgression for you to want to stop interacting with them. if they’re not making your life better, you don’t need to keep them in your life.)
your friendship is based around mutual interests - fandoms you enjoy, creative work you’re doing, hobbies you share, etc. you both have an equal interest in the things you talk about, & your conversations focus on common ground between you
you’d be comfortable with them interacting with others in your life - peers your age and trusted adults.
they are respectful of you as a person; they act with appropriate awareness of your age, but they don’t condescend to you or tell you they wish you were older or treat you like an infant they’re in charge of babysitting. basically, they aren’t an asshole.
if they are comfortable being asked for emotional support or guidance (not all adults are!), they offer advice and support from the perspective of a mentor, rather than the type of support you’d expect from a peer your age. they’ll also tell you when they don’t feel like they can give helpful advice (see: boundaries)
there are other healthy signs; these are just some basics
please note that it is possible for friendships to have some of these elements while still being unhealthy. this is not a checklist for a Guarantee Of Healthy Dynamics And Stability. it is, however, a good place to start if you’re not sure what an okay friendship with an adult looks like.
*the emotional support thing is complex: there’s nothing wrong with comforting an older friend who’s sad or grieving or having mental health struggles. but you Shouldn’t be a person they’re Relying Upon for support - they shouldn’t be leaning on you for constant help managing their feelings/struggles.
this is bc adults and adolescents tend to be in very different places where emotional processing is concerned. an adult will find more helpful emotional support from other adults, similar to how you might find more relatable emotional support from your peers than from adults. it’s bc of where different people are developmentally
(also, like, an 18 year old and a 17 year old are very similar developmentally. a 30 year old and a 17 year old are not. how much older they are makes a difference.)
an adult who depends heavily on you for support isn’t Necessarily doing so with predatory intent. but they Are making the choice to ask an adolescent to be partially responsible for their emotional wellbeing.
you’ll see a lot of people talk abt the trauma of being the emotional support system for their parent(s) growing up (and might have experienced it yourself); similar dynamics are at play here.
there are also codependent relationship dynamics that are unhealthy Even When both involved parties are adults. some adults may purposefully look for codependent support from minors because they’re aware you haven’t had as much life experience with setting boundaries, saying no, & recognizing unhealthy demands. which is predatory; not all predatory behavior is sexual.
