Notes on being myself

as posted by a suspiciously majestic queer ace transgender woman in her 40s.

[rebeccafinn]

[reikacchan]

don't give up

[foldingfittedsheets]

I went on an adventure today to return a pillow to IKEA with my coworker Astrid.

We were having a nice day and got stuck in traffic coming home. On the way her phone rang and she was driving so she declined the call with a sigh. “I feel so bad for him,” she said.

“You know that number?”

She did. It turns out her phone number had previously belonged to a woman named Serena. The man calling was her dad. He had Alzheimer’s and didn’t remember his daughter was dead, so he just called the number he knew was hers.

I was stricken to hear this. “Do you talk to him?”

“Yeah. Sometimes he thinks I’m her and we talk. I have a notebook with facts I’ve learned about her so I can connect with him better. Sometimes he knows I’m not her and I say I’m her friend.”

I struggled with the beauty and humanity of this for a moment. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know; I just call him Dad.”

We sat in silence and I was overwhelmed with feelings. That she was so kind and thoughtful about this random connection. A man who called and spoke to her with love for the daughter he missed.

"One time," she added, "he called me just after I had a difficult day with my mom. I knew Serena and her mom had a rocky relationship so I talked to him about my frustrations with my own mother and he gave the following advice: ‘Everyone fails sometimes, even parents; what's important is to communicate with our loved ones, even when it's difficult.’

“I have never forgotten that advice and it healed a portion of my heart."

[catcrumb]

[everythingfox]

Peekaboo

(via)

[nevver]

Internal IBM document, 1979 (via Fabricio Teixeira)

[gulistan-blog]

㋡🥀

moon bridge in china.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[x-cl-br]

mmmmm marlboro lumch

[nem23]

[cecilias-cool-stuff]

Never stop hating

[miggylol]

Surprise! Tumblr just got turned into an epic fantasy RPG, just like [your favorite appropriate media franchise]. And the Tumblr RPG's plot needs to have all of its characters covered, in roles both large and small.

That means that you are assigned to a stereotypical RPG role inside our new fantasy world. Spin this wheel to find out what you are now doing for a living.

How well suited are you for your new role?

Noooooo this doesn't sound fun :(

Not what I would have picked for myself, but... I'll make it work

Eh. Could be better, but could be a lot worse

Okay, I can work with this!

I WAS BORN TO PLAY THIS ROLE

Voting ended onFeb 3, 2025

[raibura]

Is this crazy

Yes

No

Voting ended onFeb 1, 2025

[rebeccafinn]

It's most likely a matter of custom AND accessibility.

If you criticize this, you might be an asshole. Ask your doctor if being online is for you.

[ripleylacross]

Percy is Very Shaped.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

Make steampunk and wasteland style charms with screws

[nineties-effect]

[yodaprod]

[commodorez]

If I may ask, do you know and or have you used Videotext? I am currently reading about it and I find this subject very fascinating ^^

If you're referring to Teletext, I have not... not in the way most folks have. I understand it's a kind of bidirectional proto-internet service with special symbols. The bulk of the user base is/was in the UK and France, as I understand it, so the terminals that understand it natively mostly were used there. I would ask the French vintage computing community for more info if you're trying to get into that whole subject.

The other way Teletext is still used that I'm more familiar with is a method of unidirectional subtitles for television broadcast. OP47/Teletext is only used in a few places like Europe and Oceania. As a result, it provides the subtitles with independently selectable background and text colors, and sometimes people format those files incorrectly and put black text on a black background. This method is done in contrast to open subtitles (text burned into the video), DVB subs (seen mostly in Europe and Asia), and Closed Captioning seen mostly in the Americas.

[rebeccafinn]

Check with the Spanish retro communities too, they had Teletext here and was widely used.