LittleForest

Courage is not the absence of fear But rather the knowledge that something else is more important Tomorrow is more important Wake up for it

[thundergrace]

I...I don't know????

[thundergrace]

[thundergrace]

[sarah-maclean-completist]

🧵

[only-tiktoks]

[shyolet]

i know all about allistic people. they really love loud sudden noises and bad textures

[loki-zen]

dude it’s People With Allism

[zeitghost]

person who is trapped inside an allistic body here. i really like having no pressure on top of me and not being particularly interested in any one specific thing

[shyolet]

you are so brave for sharing your story 💜💜💜

[insomniac-arrest]

late night cashiers at 24-hour convenience stores are the holders of our greatest secrets and most intimate selves

[insomniac-arrest]

not my mom, not my partner, not God himself has seen me no-make up in line to buy a choco-pop and panty liners while on the brink of a heart felt meltdown

no one has given me the empty stare of complete indifference that fills my anxious nerves with relief

there is nothing like the sweet freedom of complete nihilism experienced at a 7/11 at 2am, God lives in church, the randomness of the unfeeling universe lives at aisle 9 of CVS 

[insomniac-arrest]

did y’all ever see the comic someone made of this?

It was cool

[coolxatu]

[volvereparcas]

Hot take though

my wife worked on an oil rig in Wyoming out of high school because there aren’t a lot of jobs that pay that well for someone without access to college. She was a driller and then a supervisor after the crew supervisor was killed during their shift. She saw multiple people die and loose limbs and she got pretty bad ptsd from watching a friend get decapitated by a chain that went loose and catching his head in her hands.

Shifts are often 20+ hours at a time with an 8-10 hour break between shifts for at least two weeks at a time and then a week off. Rigs are normally understaffed which make it worse and a lot of people on rigs turn to drug use just to be able to stay awake during their shifts. But it’s a job that pays a lot in rural and low income communities for people who don’t have a lot of options. A lot of people go in knowing they’ll maybe die but at least their families won’t have to work afterwards because of life insurance policies from the companies they work for.

I know this post was probably just meant as a joke post the whole thing with Joe Biden and fracking but like sometimes it shows that people who post these things don’t know a ton about what they’re talking about. It remains one of the most lethal jobs worldwide. Switching from oil/natural gas to sustainable energy sources will take time to transition and right now we have millions working in drilling with odds stacked against them. Republicans don’t care about oil workers’ lives because they can be used to make a profit and the left hates them because of a career they didn’t have a lot of choice in choosing.

The oil field is like the military where largely low income and marginalized individuals get preyed upon by an organization that doesn’t care if they live or die. Fracking and drilling being bad for the planet and needing an end and oil workers being worthy of concern because their lives are treated as disposable are two ideas that can coexist.

[squeeful]

class solidarity must extend to ALL workers, not just workers of sectors you approve of.

[antique-scarecrow]

“The oil field is like the military, where largely low income and marginalized individuals get preyed upon by an organization that doesn’t care if they live or die”

[ankle-beez]

[jenna-darck]

they did very much immediatly make a crypto after that one tho

[bufferingyoutubevideo]

The QR code takes you to an Instagram video of the fart gun from dispicable me

So the minions are still on our side actually

[depsidase]

[vonbaghager]

cosmo wanda i wish every time i’m forced to see an unskippable ad or a popup the ceo and stockholders of the company for that ad felt a hammer impacting one of their joints with a severity that increased every single time i saw one of them

[vonbaghager]

Feeling this again rn and apparently so are like 2k more of you

[hyen-agender]

[eternallovers65]

Here's some more weird shit that robert pattinson said and i was forced to know

Bonus:

Who would've guessed???

[pumpkinylink]

Do non-americans realize that the United States is literally just a bunch of countries in a trench coat that agreed to be semi-nice to each other in order to sneak into the Big Boy Club? Because let’s be honest that’s just what the USA is

The rest of the world: So… you’re a big country?

The states, standing on each other’s shoulders: Y- yes,,,

I love how everyone who’s reblogged this hasn’t added anything on or tagged anything on it. They’re all just like “Yeah. That’s it. That’s the entire United States summed up in one post-”

[words-writ-in-starlight]

#oh my god is THAT why you guys are so weird

Yeah 100%

Don’t let these tags die omfg

[shieldmaiden19]

10/10 can confirm

[aces-to-apples]

absolutely bonkers that my own tags have crossed my dash like this more than fifteen reblogs after i wrote them

[deerladydisdain]

I moved to another state. 30 minutes away. My family acts like I betrayed them and can’t understand my life choices. It’s completely different way of life, especially during covid. Completely different country.

[bluecrowne]

every single fucking time one of those articles of “things europeans find weird about america” complains that sales tax isn’t included

states set the sales tax!!! it’s literally different across state lines!!! american retailers can’t add it bc they’d have to account for 50 different prices!!!!!!!

[capriceandwhimsy]

It gets even more insane! California’s clean air standards for cars and other such things are so much higher than everyone else’s! So if a car manufacturer in Detroit wants to sell their damn cars in California, they need to build their cars to California clean air standards. But retooling an assembly line and car design to have some cars meet California clean air standards, while building others to other clean air standards is a lot of work, so car manufacturers all over the country have to build all their cars to California clean air standards.

Which is why California went into an uproar earlier this year when the Federal Government tried to argue that states can’t set their own environmental guidelines! “Fuck you!” says California, “we remember Los Angeles in the 80s, how bad the smog gets, go pollute your own damn air over in your own damn state where there isn’t a thermal inversion layer to trap all the smog down near ground level!”

“But you’re making it soooo haaaaaard to sell our cars everywhere else!” they whine.

“Fuck you!” California shouts. “And while we’re at it, we don’t give a shit what you say, Mister President, we’re gonna open our damn states when we’re good and ready, and our friends Nevada, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington State agree! Also, we’ve decided to legalize weed!”

“But the Federal Government says it’s illegal!” shouts the other states.

“Fuck you, we make the drug laws in our state, and we say toke up!”

“Now, hang on!” shouts the Federal government. “You can legalize weed in your state, but all banks are federal agencies, so if your weed dispensaries set up bank accounts, those accounts have money from illegal practices in it and are subject to seizure by the federal government!”

“FINE!” shouts California. “Hey, weed guys, you can keep selling weed, but you can only deal in cash!”

“How the fuck is that supposed to work!?”

“I DON’T FUCKING KNOW, TAKE IT UP WITH DC!”

“By the way, if you’re gay married elsewhere, we won’t recognize it,” mutters Texas.

“OH FUCK YOUUUUUUU!” 

And so it goes and so it goes…

[quousque]

“What’s sales tax?” says Montana. “What’s road maintainence?” “also what’s a speed limit?”

[finnglas]

*gestures at Florida* Oh also, the reason Florida is “so weird” is only PARTIALLY because people who live here are bonkers – it’s also because Florida state laws around privacy do not include the details of arrests! So in other states, when you’re arrested, it can just show up in the registrar like “25 yo man arrested 04/30/20” but in Florida they can (and do) print the details of why they were arrested: “25 yo man arrested 4/30/20 for riding an alligator through town while naked and smoking weed.” I promises you the other states have PLENTY of weirdos, they just don’t get their dirty laundry gleefully aired in the local news.

[stardustyheart]

No, definitely not :D

[ohblessit]

We probably shouldn’t even bring up gun laws, should we?

[kleenexwoman]

Things you can’t take across various state lines without a legal problem:

Fireworks

Firewood

Fresh fruit

Marijuana

Human remains

Cans or bottles that you return for a coin deposit

[majorenglishesquire]

Car edition:

There’s the emissions thing, yes. But also!!

The tint on my windows that is perfectly legal in the southern state where I live is illegal in the midwestern state of my birth. I’d have to rent a car if I went there or risk being ticketed.

When moving, your driver’s license does not carry over to different states. Every state has their own driving test and I would have to learn how to parallel park if I moved (it wasn’t tested here and I have done it exactly once). I can drive in other states if I’m traveling and licensed in my state, but basically once I change my address, I don’t retain the right to drive as a licensed vehicle operator until I have that state’s license. I could just… keep a state address, retain my license and plates, and continue paying state fees for licensing and registration, if I don’t mind having my mail forwarded. I know someone who has done this for over a decade.

License plate requirements are different in each state. Some states have hundreds of vanity plate options with various colors and pictures, but you can only have letters and numbers. In other states you can have special characters on plates. When choosing a custom plate number, some states have banned various spellings of words from their vanity plate options.

30 of 50 states also require license plates to be posted on both the front and back of your car. You can’t see the rest of us coming 🤷‍♀️

In a few (or a couple?) states, you can’t pump your own gas at a gas station.

In like a dozen or more states, you can’t sell cars at a brick-and-mortar dealership on Sundays!!

By the way, that California emissions standards thing? There’s also something like it that applies to upholstered furniture. As a state, California also sets the standard for nationwide compliance for flame retardants in your friggin couch.

[alex51324]

Another thing that varies hugely from state to state is liquor laws.  The drinking age (21) is nationwide because they tied it to…I wanna say “highway funding”?  (Something like that, anyway–there’s some specific high-ticket item that states can’t get federal money for if they make their drinking age any lower.)  

But everything else varies from state to state–stuff like the maximum amount of alcohol that can be included in one drink at a bar, and whether they sell beer in the grocery stores, and what kind of alcohol you can buy on Sundays, and sometimes states will throw in some wacky restrictions just to make life interesting.  (Like, in my state, up until very recently, a store couldn’t sell both six-packs of beer and cases, only one or the other.  And if I remember correctly, only the six-packs could be sold out of a refrigerator; cases had to be room temp.)

And, you know, there’s no border process for crossing into another state–a lot of times, the state line is barely even marked.  You drive across an invisible line, and all of the sudden you can’t figure out how you’re supposed to buy a beer.  

[runawaymarbles]

And that’s not even getting into COUNTIES: the person up there who mentioned sales tax? There’s not fifty different sales taxes, there’s thousands. Because cities and counties ALSO throw in their sales tax on top of the state ones. The sales tax where I live is like 3% higher than that of the people who live 8 miles north.

I used to live in a county that made it illegal to smoke cigarettes if you’re under 21. The county line went through the local grocery store. When I lived there, I could have smoked on one side of the building but not the other.

[vonbaghager]

cosmo wanda i wish every time i’m forced to see an unskippable ad or a popup the ceo and stockholders of the company for that ad felt a hammer impacting one of their joints with a severity that increased every single time i saw one of them

[thingsworthsaving]

“As far as words go, ‘crying’ is louder and ‘weeping’ is wetter. When people explain the difference between the two to English-language learners they say that weeping is more formal, can sound archaic in everyday speech. You can hear this in their past tenses—the plainness of ‘cried’, the velvet cloak of ‘wept’. I remember arguing once with a teacher who insisted ‘dreamt’ was incorrect, dreamed the only proper option. She was wrong, of course, in both philological and moral ways, and ever since I’ve felt a peculiar attachment to the t’s of the past: weep, wept, sleep, slept, leave, left. There’s a finality there, a quiet completion, of which ’d’ has never dreamt.”

— Heather Christle, from The Crying Book

[nervoussquidward]

[speciose2]

[Tweet from @/fozmeadows: "human gender and sexuality are very much like animal taxonomy, in that both look structured and simple on the surface, but once you start investigating, it turns out there's actually no such thing as a fish despite the fact that we all know what a fish is, and that's okay"]

[crystaltoa]

Women want me, fish fear me, but since neither of those things technically exist I guess that’s not much of an achievement.

[ms-demeanor]

Seriously fuck apple hardware and their hinges that break monitor cables and their butterfly keys and their 24-step battery replacement process that involves *removing your goddamned speakers* to replace the battery.

Fuck. That.

Fuck their specialized Apple screwdrivers

And their bullshit expensive replacement parts.

Two weeks ago I added RAM to my new laptop and it took about four minutes.

I just now replaced the fan on my old laptop while I was on a call with a vendor.

Both of those things used the same phillips-head screwdriver that I got in a pack of three for a dollar fifty at daiso. And I didn't have to *use a hairdryer to soften the adhesive on my speakers* to access either of those parts, let alone a part as basic and as likely to fail as a fucking battery. Hell, I opened up my new laptop and found out that there's a spot for me to put in a second SSD with a similarly small amount of effort.

But while I'm here:

Fuck modern cars. Fuck the engine covers with breakable pins that make it a pain in the ass to do anything more than checking the oil. Fuck the use of tablets as an interface for dealing with the car. Fuck proprietary RFID key fobs and fuck tire monitoring systems that'll make you fail a smog check.

Fuck cheaply made clothing that won't last more than a couple dozen wears but is so thin and flimsy that it also can't handle being mended.

Fuck printers that require a subscription for ink every three months even if you aren't out of ink, because they'll say you're out of ink because they disable the cartridges after a certain time no matter how much or how little you've printed.

Fuck printers generally, they're such cheap and horrible pieces of garbage at the consumer level that it's usually less expensive to buy a new printer than it is to replace cartridges, and it's usually cheap to replace the rollers but the printer is such shit that your odds of snapping off some fiddly piece of plastic garbage are about 50/50 even if you do know what you're doing.

Fuck all of this shit. You should be able to fix what you own, and if you can't or don't want to learn how to, you should at least have the option to try without becoming a professional.

I keep seeing that post about wanting packaged delivered slower by happier, safer, better-paid workers and first of all: Fuck yes. But also: I want clunkier, heavier technology that is easier to fix.

If I needed a laptop that could fit into a manila envelope I would get a fucking tablet, what I need is a laptop that has some actual computing power and that I can swap the hard drive on in less than forty minutes.

The cellphone I had five years ago had a smaller screen and a thicker case, but I could replace the battery with my thumb as the only tool, and with some effort (less than it would require now) I could replace the whole screen. I don't need a seven inch screen and four cameras on the back and a thin, lightweight case, the phone that was the size of my palm and half an inch thick was fine and LOOK I know a lot of the components have become smaller; why did we move to slimmer cases instead of keeping the thicker ones that anyone could crack open to swap in a SIM or replace the battery? You could have BIGGER batteries, with longer lifespans if you still had thicker cases and smaller screens and then maybe this piece of shit phone would fit in any single pocket on my clothing instead of hanging halfway out and trying to make a dive onto the ground every time I stand up.

I don't like the attitude of "stuff in the old days used to just WORK" - in some ways it's true, in some ways it isn't. Cars in the old days certainly did NOT just used to work. But it used to be a fuck of a lot easier to get into an engine and *fix it* without having to get an entire collection of vehicle-specific tools and half a computer science degree. Printers have never, in the existence of printers, "just worked" but they didn't stop printing because of a programmed date on a chip in the fucking cartridge.

A lot of hardware from today is fine. SSDs are pretty great, and there are new manufactured hard drives that I know are going to last thirty years, just like the 40MB drive from 1987 that a customer brought into my shop a few years ago.

There are people out there who are making good stuff.

But it's so fucking frustrating the way that it feels like you have to fight to find something that isn't just the absolute shittiest piece of garbage. The amount of stuff out there that is flimsy, likely to fail, and only-user-serviceable-if-the-user-is-already-technically-proficient is really, really upsetting.

[alone-to-dance-deactivated20240]

This just hit me. I’m so Southern my family has a matriarch and no one in the family knows for sure how old she is. We all also got into a heated debate about the existence of her glass eye (still not confirmed). She’s in her 90s- we think- beat cancer, outlived two husbands, had seven children and has outlived three of them, survived The Great Depression, and either her dad or her grandfather was a full blooded Cherokee Indian… possibly the tribe’s leader but no one really knows for sure.

She also once lit into my dad’s school bus driver, cussing him black and blue about how he treated the kids and didn’t realize she had a butcher’s knife in her hand until he RAN away. She didn’t have any more trouble out of him.

[whitebeltwriter]

…I wish to know how and why this just occured to you, please

[alone-to-dance-deactivated20240]

I had an eloquent reason but really what it boils down to is I think Mamaw is a cryptid. The running joke in the family is that Mamaw will be at the end of the world with the twinkies and the cockroaches.

I’m not sure it’s a joke anymore, I think it’s a premonition.

[alone-to-dance-deactivated20240]

Two years ago one of my cousins wanted to bring her wife to thanksgiving and Joe was all “ew no way” and Mamaw stood her ass up and said “Who the hell do you think you are, saying who is and isn’t welcome in my house? This ain’t your house- you get out! I say who is welcome and YOU is not welcome. Now SCAT!” while slapping at him and then sat back down and asked my cousin if her wife ate catfish. Joe tried to come back in and she popped the tennis balls off her walker and threw them at him until he left

[alone-to-dance-deactivated20240]

No matter how old Mamaw gets, her hair is still solid black. She still hasn’t gone gray and she’s never once died her hair. Her kids all have heads full of gray hair, and my father- her grandson- is starting to go gray. Mamaw? Nothing. I swear she looks exactly the same as she did when I was a kid.

[alone-to-dance-deactivated20240]

Mamaw got Covid-19. She presented with symptoms and was rushed to the ER with a dangerously high fever and next to no oxygen. The doctors took note of her age (she’s apparently 93 as best she can guess) and her vitals and, well, Mamaw wasn’t gonna make it past Monday.

By Sunday night the fever was gone and she was complaining that the hospital didn’t get WWE and she was gonna “miss my wrasslin shows!”.

She was home and completely fine by Tuesday. By Wednesday she was calling up the anti-maskers in our family just to call them idiots and hang up.

[karmaneko3]

Gods above, your Mamaw would scare Cthulu into submission.

[alone-to-dance-deactivated20240]

Mamaw would probably fish Cthulhu out of the sea and fry him up along with the catfish

[severeannoyance]

I’m so pleased that terrifying cryptid matriarch is a thing that transcends cultures; my family had my tiny terrifying Chinese grandmother, who never saw the north side of 4'10" her entire life.

She could make a cop cry at 50 paces.

She did this repeatedly, possibly because she thought it was pretty good entertainment. One time, she intimidated an entire police station by sitting calmly in the waiting room and knitting.

She fucked with customs officials as a sort of sport. We never knew her real age because she definitely shaved some years off her age when entering the country. She had no concept of the law applying to her. We do know she was well over 100 when she died, though. Probably more.

Last time she broke her hip, she spent the whole way to the hospital flagrantly hitting on all the paramedics, regardless of gender.

I’m pretty sure that when she died, she scolded Death for being late.