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talias-magical-mind

HEY EVERYBODY

I just lost the game.

talias-magical-mind

Goddammit Past Mitchy, I hate you.

talias-magical-mind

What the fuck PastPast Mitchy, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?

talias-magical-mind

Wow, past Talia was a dick

ultrafacts

Source

Video of Tama

Follow Ultrafacts for more facts

majikkant-deactivated20180504

The picture in the background of the second one

pizzaismylifepizzaisking

Tama is boss

ultrafacts

cat-fandom

THE TRAINS HAVE CARTOON TAMAS ON THEM

ultrafacts

Sad update everyone, Tama recently passed away… An estimated 3,000 people, including railway officials, attended Tama the cat’s funeral on Sunday, days after she died of heart failure aged 16. [x]

retro-geek-deactivated20220412

For those who haven’t read articles about it, the local shrine elevated her to a god. She’s now the Eternal Stationmaster and patron god of the station.

karinanotcinerina

Beautiful.

system-fail-ure-deactivated2021

Now I’m crying thanks

sapphic-matriarchy

and a new cat was hired right?

clarenecessities

yep! her name is Nitama (essentially ”second tama” or “tama II”) and she served under Tama as an apprentice before being appointed her deputy

she works very hard

beasti

Everytime this crosses my dash, I reblog. It is the law.

lafayettelabaguette

Law

tooiconic

I’m crying at 11pm over train cats

sighinastorm

Nitama, already now a mature cat (born 2010), has a protege named Yontama (fourth Tama, b. 2016). There is no information available for either the physical befellment or tragic self-disgrace which has removed Santama from contention.

^Nitama majestic, and below with Yontama

Yontama.

linkislost

a legacy

bemusedlybespectacled

okay but actually what happened to santama (or sun-tama-tama, which is her name because it’s a pun on santama) was that she was basically sent to train for the position in okayama and they liked her so much they refused to send her back

kindaoffkilter

“Sun-tama-tama” (a pun off of “Santama”, lit. “third Tama”) was a calico cat sent for training in Okayama. Sun-tama-tama was considered as a candidate for Tama’s successor, but the Okayama Public Relations representative who had been caring for Sun-tama-tama refused to give the cat up writing, “I will not let go of this child, she will stay in Okayama.” [25]

As of September 2018, Sun-tama-tama is working as the stationmaster in Naka-ku, Okayama and appears occasionally on Tama’s Twitter account.

cryoverkiltmilk

Every time I see this post there’s new info and it gets better

memes-and-relatableschemes

The way he stuffs them in his mouth 💀

memes-and-relatableschemes

Mood

spookyoubliette

kabaks

i just started the young pope and i know fuck all about catholicism but i gotta say. lenny has the most potent bde

kabaks

i am SCREAMING

notdannyphantom

rlymax-deactivated20140421

help I’ve fallen and am perfectly capable of getting up but refuse to

obligatory-regal-name

sodapoplio

innblooom

Be whoever it is you want to be. Be your absolute raw self. Show your flaws, show people that you are just human and will make mistakes and those who wish to stay will stay no matter what. You are exactly who you are supposed to be, you are exactly the result of everything you’ve ever lived through. If someone tries to make you feel ashamed for that, they are not worthy of the good that you have to offer.

jackymedan

forebidden

twitter @isxee

systlin

My maternal grandmother (who is awful) has bounced between a few religions over the years, all in various flavors of fundamentalist Christianity.

Forty years or so ago, she settled on the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Who combine all the shitty things about several sects into one morass of awfulness.

This was a formative experience for my mother, who hates them with a burning passion and who is a member of several ex-Jehovah’s Witness websites where people go to vent.

And even after she broke away as soon as she was out of her mom’s house, they sent people to try to ‘bring her back into the fellowship’. Some of these people showed up at my parent’s wedding, to try to convince her that it would never last with a non Jehovah’s Witness husband. Dad, apparently, threatened to throw them headfirst out a second story window.

I’m fairly certain she’s actually cursed a few elders.

But, anyway, I distinctly remember her gathering me and my brother and sister around her when we were kids, and saying, very seriously,

“I don’t care if you three grow up to be gay, or transgender. I don’t care if you decide to flip burgers all your life, so long as you’re happy at it. I don’t care if you choose to worship trees, Ancient Egyptian gods, or nothing at all. But,” and she paused here for emphasis. “If you ever decide to become Jehovah’s Witnesses, I’m going to feel as if I’ve failed as a parent. So keep that in mind.”

Fast forward nineteen or so years. We grow up, I take to actively worshipping trees. Mom is Very Proud of this. Sister is a biologist living in sin with her boyfriend, brother is a physics student living in sin with his girlfriend, I’m married to the closest thing to an agnostic Christian I’ve ever met, and we’ve happily not spoken to Grandma for years.

And on Sunday morning at some unholy hour of the fucking day, there’s a knock on the door, and lo and behold there are three young men at the door with copies of the Watchtower.

My husband, seeing the twitch in my eyelid as we peek out the upstairs window, somewhat blearily, pats my shoulder.

“I’ve got this.” He says, grinning. I know that grin. That’s the Evil Grin.

And then he goes and pulls his old Slipknot shirt out of the drawer, and I know Dis Gunna Be Good.

Long story short, he invited them in for tea and corrected them on everything they tried to tell him for forty five minutes, citing verse back to them and telling them how they fucked it up. He got out the Bible at one point. He started lecturing like a damned theology professor.

By the time they left they looked actively terrified.

It was glorious.

scavengerridley

Natalie Portman being confused by the fact that you have to say “hi” to someone before starting a conversation in France got me like ?????

jmenfoot

“I feel there’s a lot of rules of politeness and codes of behavior there you have to follow. […] A friend of mine taught me that when you go in some place you have to say “bonjour” before you say anything else, then you have to wait two seconds before you say something else. So if you go into a store you can’t be like “do you have this in another size,” or they’ll think you’re super rude and then they’ll be rude to you.” [X]

there-is-irony-everywhere

#wait you don’t do this is other countries??

emilievitnux

So that’s it guys. French are not rude, we just don’t like it when people don’t say “Hello” or “Hi” when they start a conversation.

Don’t everyone say “Hi” before they ask something to someone? What’s next? Saying please is also a french thing or others countries does that too?

vintagegalpal

Canada is similar. We say sorry and please. The Hello thing seems strange, but it actually makes sense.

mayitbeaneveningstar-deactivate

Bro, this threw me for a loop when I moved up north. Like in the southern United States you say “Hi, how are you?” And then make a few seconds of small talk before you ask your question or order your food and when I went to Connecticut they were like “What do you want?” Without any hello or anything. In other places they just STARE at you waiting on you to place your order and gtfo.

I laid my hand over my chest the first time, and the only way to describe my look was “aghast” before I said “Good lord!” My husband said it’s the most southern thing he’s seen me do. He thought it was hilarious. But…. Like??? That’s rude as fuck??????? Don’t y'all say say “Hello” before throwing your demands at someone??

bye9000-deactivated20170123

maybe this is why everyone thinks new yorkers are rude

darkseid-deactivated20190806

this is absolutely why ppl think new englanders r rude. no one has any fucking manners

vmprsm

african culture, at least in ghana, demands you greet a person before you ask them something. if youre in an open market they may even ignore you if you dont.

fluffmugger

We do this in Australia as well. If you just started straight off saying “yeah I want XXXX” we’d think you’re rude as all fuck. You say hi, then make your request. It’s basic acknowledgement of the other person as a person rather than some random request-filling machine.

xparrot

Huh. Speaking as a New Englander, I usually go with “Excuse me,” but sometimes “hi” or “hey,” but with no pause – it’ll be, “Excuse me, hi, I was looking for X?” From my POV, it seems rude to get too chatty and waste some stranger’s time; I assume they have better things to do than make small talk with me, so I just get my request out there so they can answer me and get back to whatever needs doing. I always thank folks for their help afterwards, if that helps?

(The rules of etiquette are strange. People say New Englanders are rude and cold, but once during an unexpected snowstorm here in Seattle, my car got stuck and I was standing by the side of the road at a busy intersection in the snow for half an hour waiting for my housemate to come pick me up, and not a single person stopped. Back in Massachusetts, every other car on the road would’ve been pulling up to check to see if I was okay, if my phone was working, did I need a lift, etc.)

survivablyso

No but this was the first thing my cousin told me in France? you never ever ever start a conversation with anyone, not even like “Nice weather today, huh?” without saying Bonjour first. You HAVE to greet them or, just like Ghana, they’ll ignore the shit out of you, you rude little fucker

(And “excuse me” or “pardon me” doesn’t cut it. you still have to open with bonjour)

[and I can’t speak for New England but coming from Chicago and then moving Out West where the culture is VERY influenced by the South and DETERMINED to think of themselves as small town folk… I HATE when I have to make small talk before ordering food??? Like, if it’s a coffee shop that’s pretty much empty I’ll chit chat for a few seconds, but I’m still not going to make inane conversation about the weather unless the weather is extreme.

In a big city it is rude as fuck to waste my time making small talk with me when we are not even friends or neighbors??? I am here to get shit done. There are four other people in line behind me, and I don’t want to waste their time. I am here, I HAVE MY ORDER ALREADY DECIDED BY THE TIME I GET TO THE FRONT BECAUSE I AM NOT A CAVE WOMAN, and I am being polite by saying both Please and Thank You and not wasting other people’s daylight.]

teapotsahoy

I live in a small northern city, and I feel it would be rude to engage someone in more than maaaaaybe a sentence of small talk before placing my order. In addition to feeling I was wasting their time, I’d feel like I was demanding emotional labour (small-talk is emotional labour for *me*) that they weren’t being paid to give.

giandujakiss-deactivated2021081

so bizarre. New Yorker here. Saying hi, how are you, etc before these kinds of commercial interactions is what’s rude to me - because ffs, there are people in line behind you, we have lives, move it along. It’s really just a dramatic cultural difference - but borne of a real practical necessity.

feminismandhappiness

Oh my god saying ‘hi’ takes less than A SINGLE SECOND YOU ARE NOT WASTING ANYBODY’S TIME In Spain you have to say hello to people before you talk to them even people who work in retail deserve that bare minimum courtesy hello??

animatedamerican

Transplanted New Yorker here, and the feeling here is: people who work in retail deserve the bare minimum courtesy you would afford anyone else, which is to not waste their time. You maybe say a half-second “hi” and/or possibly “excuse me” to be sure you have their attention, then you get to the point as quickly and concisely as possible. You don’t wait to get a “hi” back, you probably don’t ask “how are you”, you definitely don’t talk about the weather. You smile and keep your tone of voice courteous-to-friendly, you say please, you thank them when you’re done, and you do. not. waste. their. time.

Except ”time” is really only shorthand for the concept: you don’t intrude on their lives more than you have to. NY is a very very crowded city which allows for very little personal space, so New Yorkers have developed a form of courtesy that involves minimizing our unavoidable intrusions on each other. Which is why we hold doors without making eye contact, and why we tend to feel that in any interaction with a stranger, it’s actively rude to do anything but get to the point immediately.

dalniente

Interesting discussion of regional differences in conversational convention. But the amount of “my way is the right way; everyone else is super rude and also wrong” going on in this post is giving me hives.

Hey. Listen. "Polite” and “rude” are relative concepts. Something you were taught was rude may not be seen as rude elsewhere, and might even be the polite thing to do. Conversely, something you might have been taught was polite might be seen as rude elsewhere. Saying “no one has any manners” about a group of people whose culture and, by extension, whose conversational expectations work differently than yours is really arrogant.

yamitamiko

In the US the thumbs up means good job or great. In France and Germany it means one, they start counting with the thumb instead of the index finger. In Greece it’s an obscene sexual gesture.

This guy I knew in college worked with the campus d/Deaf/HoH group and told a story about the dinner they had to welcome everyone in. They were trying to tell this little old lady what one of the dishes was, something casserole I forget what kind, and she was getting really flustered. Finally they figured out they were speaking to her in ASL and she was from South Africa. The ASL sign for whatever it was (spinach maybe?) in South African Sign means sex. They were offering this little old lady a sex casserole.

There’s an Italian toast ‘chin chin’, mimicking the sound of the glasses clinking together. It becomes hilarious when Japanese folks are around since in Japanese chin means penis.

As for the South, I will bet you anything that how we have conversations at the register stemmed from the homestead days when a farmer would come in to town maybe once a month and this would be the only time they’d get to talk to someone they didn’t live with. I like talking with customers! If I can get them to smile then it’s a victory and I have a better day for it. It only becomes emotional labor if they’re an outright ass or are sexually harassing me. But in the big crammed city of New York it makes sense to take the get your shit and get out approach, people have a subway to catch. Out here I had to drive myself anyway since it’s fifteen minutes to the edge of town from where I live, so what does it matter if I spend an extra minute at the register?

It’s important to be aware of the differences and ultimately there’s a degree of ‘when in Rome’ that has to happen. Someone who moves from Greece to the US is going to be startled by the amount of thumbs up but ultimately they’re going to have to adjust. Someone from the US is probably going to be shocked that telling someone they did a good job was taken as an insult and they similarly are going to have to adjust. Mom’s a damn Yankee transplant and said it was weird moving to the South and having cashiers younger than her daughter call her dear, but that’s just what we do. Sweetheart, darling, honey, sugar, they don’t have overtly romantic/sexual connotations here. As long as there’s not a leer attached to it if a guy calls me ‘sugar’ when I’m at work it doesn’t parse as a flirt because it’s not one, it parses the same as if he called me ‘miss’. But when a busload of Californians came through it took me three people to realize that ‘baby’ was not flirting, it was just California. NOTHING is universal.

This is the biggest place I’ve ever worked so it took some getting used to, like any skill, but even being socially awkward it’s easy to tell what scripts to follow. Test the waters, if they don’t respond then okay this is a move them through kind of person, be quick and efficient and to the point, feel good when they smile at ‘last question I promise, do you want your receipt’. If they do then pull out the five small talk scripts, get a smile, feel good when they laugh at the cat small talk script.

It’s also important to note that claiming your culture’s way of doing polite right is a fantastic way to fall into some really bigoted nonsense. In Puerto Rico the personal bubble is much smaller than in the US proper, like RIGHT at your elbow close. I had a cashier who was super uncomfortable because our steward was getting in her personal space constantly and he was pissed off because he was trying to HELP her with moving orders why is she mad at him? Once I sat them down and explained the difference they both had this aw shit moment because from their own standpoints they were being polite and from the others’ standpoints they were being rude. After that they were fine, when he got a little too close she’d say ‘whoa man my bubble’ and he’d laugh and shake is head and step back.

Lots of non-white cultures have things like that, particularly since white America has serious problems with sexualizing ANY physical contact to the point we’re all touch starved. The normal speaking voice is at a higher volume or it’s more acceptable to show your emotions or gesture when you speak. None of this is WRONG, but when people star getting into ‘my culture is the only right culture’ then guess who comes out on top? It ain’t the little guy.

curlicuecal

One of my labmates was from Poland, and she had a tendency to come off as kind of abrupt and brusk, verging on mean. In particular, when she was providing feedback on a presentation or paper she could come across as SUPER cutting. Which was not her intention! From the way she would explain it, we had a running joke in the lab, “it sounds nicer in Polish.”

And this is actually true; there are scientific articles comparing the cultural contexts for communication! It’s really neat.

So in (most parts of) America, we equate indirectness with politeness. “Excuse me, would it be possible for you to perhaps pass me that salt, if you don’t mind?” The more roundabout you are, the more we consider that a signal of social courtesy.

In Poland, not only is indirectness viewed as rudely wasting the listener’s time, but directness is viewed as communicating intimacy and friendliness. “Give me the salt.”

…It sounds nicer in Polish. :)

sgramajo

Omg I love this

ahollowyear

The Effects of Capital, Labor, and Class on Local Etiquette Across International Boundaries

fuckyeahfluiddynamics

On a surface much hotter than their boiling point, droplets can surf on a layer of their own vapor due to the Leidenfrost effect. Recent research has shown that textured surfaces like ratchets can create corrals, traps, and mazes for such droplets. Here, researchers manipulate the propulsion of Leidenfrost drops using non-parallel grooves instead. When placed between two non-parallel plates, the droplet is squeezed by side forces perpendicular to the walls, with the resultant force in the direction where the gap widens. In most states, friction forms an opposition to this squeeze, but for Leidenfrost droplets that frictional force is negligible. Instead, the squeezing from the plates launches droplets toward the wider end of the groove, allowing researchers to design repellers (top) and traps (bottom) for the fast-moving drops. (Image credits: C. Luo et al., source)