Brighter than Sunflowers

Not all those who wander are lost -JRR Tolkien Baden. They. This blog is kind of a mix of everything from humour to fandom to activism. I also run a second blog about the history of the newsboy strike of 1899, which can be found here if you're interested. Enjoy!

[depsidase]

[byjove]

Movie about a depressed and rather morbid autistic man planning to commit suicide and picking up a number of odd jobs in an effort to raise enough money to meticulously plan and prepay for his funeral so his mother doesn’t have to worry about it after he is gone. He begins to connect with people and enjoy life for the first time while working part time as a greeter in the funeral home, helping an eccentric old lady organize her basement, walking 7 dogs and maintaining a feral cat colony for a guy with a broken foot, playing a number of bit parts in local ads and stocking the shelves at the convenience store at night. In the end, he has befriended many of his neighbors and he decides he does not want to die and goes back to school to become a funeral director instead.

[byjove]

He is popular at his funeral home gig because he keeps accidentally saying things that are very reassuring and death positive. Because he wants to die. He eventually donates his funeral fund to the old lady’s granddaughter after her sudden death so she does not have to sell her grandmother’s prized possessions to pay for her funeral.

[byjove]

The old lady gifts him one of her ceramic cats at the beginning of the film which he reluctantly accepts out of politeness. Near the end of the film, he adopts a friendly cat from the cat colony that looks remarkably like the ceramic cat and names it after her, signaling his commitment to surviving and caring for his cat the way the old woman lived for her ceramic collection.

[podcastenthusiast]

Not my posts but an interesting thought.

[beatrice-otter]

[image description: screengrab of a series of tweets from @ rootsworks: “When I was in college, part of our university’s graduation requirements had a community service component that they called service learning.

One of my service learning classes involved work at a local homeless community center, helping people write resumes and cleaning bathrooms.

Our instructor told us to expect to see the bathrooms trashed a lot–like you will clean the bathroom and immediately someone will wreck it.

And it’s not because they disrespect your work or don’t value having access to clean bathrooms or whatever, but because of control.

When you feel like you have no control over your life or your environment, your brain is going to want to assert control however it can.

Which results in trashed bathrooms.  It’s control exercised over the one small part of your environment that you still have the power to affect.

I see kids on tumblr using the language of social justice as cudgels on people who actually do care about and listen to them

or holding the creators within their communities to an impossibly high standard that they never apply to mainstream media properties.

I just see trashed bathrooms. ‘These are the people my voice will reach,’ they rationalize, ‘so these are the people I’ll hurt.’

But the guiding principles of social justice are aimed at correcting and dismantling systems.  Stop using them to dismantle people.”]

[neonshroudedgraves]

Bluesky asks Texas users to verify their ages, citing new app store law

"Why do you need age verification on a site where everyone is 38?"

[stevishabitat]

idk who on earth could possibly need to hear this, but do NOT, under ANY circumstances, give out your SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER to ANY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

☝️☝️☝️

[byjove]

There was a trend in the 40s and 50s (not sure if it predates that or if there are places that still do it) where you could get your child’s baby shoes cast in bronze or dipped in bronze and use them as keepsakes or have them mounted as bookends. Better than the resin slop of the modern day in my opinion. My great grandma had my grandpa’s baby shoes made into bookends ends because she loved him very much and he was her only child and it is honestly really cute. My mom got her dad’s baby shoe bookends when she moved out and they were in my living room my entire childhood, she had explained how they were grandpa’s shoes covered in bronze and I thought that was cool.

Then I went to an art museum and saw bronze busts of people and my tiny child brain thought the person’s dismembered head and shoulders were in there…

[0rln]

Haha! Not where I thought this was going 😃😭🙏

[byjove]

My parents didn’t either but it is a core childhood memory for me. I was 3-5 and it was a bust of Abraham Lincoln. I was so disturbed and upset that I asked my dad to pick me up and I buried my face in his shoulder. My parents didn’t connect the dots and just thought I was frightened of Abe Lincoln.

[sivavakkiyar]

100 year anniversary of the Scopes Verdict! (July 21st)

[chasm-side]

My therapist, who specializes in adults with ADHD, recently told me that all of her clients need a three day crash period after a big life change. Finish the semester? Crash. Change jobs? Crash. Go on a really cool, really relaxing vacation? Crash the moment you get home.

It's true of literally all of her clients. She works with a lot of them to put systems in place so that their crashes are only three days. This includes the high-powered execs who travel regularly for work. It does not matter how successful or high functioning they are - they have ADHD, and crashing is just part of the process of living with it.

I'm sharing this with all you ADHD friends out there, just in case you (like me) start shaming yourself if your crash lasts more than one day. It turns out three days is kind of the best case scenario. Be kind to yourselves!

[This post has been edited to change "crashout" to "crash". It was causing confusion and/or offense, especially to people who thought I was referring to "crashout" as the term exists in AAVE (also being appropriated into gen z speak right now). I'm sorry about that. Please reblog this version of the post in the future!]

[sanguine-humor]

phm is decently popular in japan and i mostly see this when i check twitter and see accounts posting pictures of handmade rocky plushies that are so fucking round looking it brings a tear to my eye

[sanguine-humor]

he keeps me sane

[goldensunset]

>‘this thing is too generic and tropey’

>look inside

>forefather of that genre

[firestorm09890]

[frankbelloriley]

[zillanovikov]

every year I post this meme and every year people get more mad at me than they did the previous year

[anverdenuru]

And every summer I get reminded that we have only a single choice if we want to survive

[hadesisqueer]

Two World Cup finalists from opposing teams in this fucking picture, this sport isn't real

[hadesisqueer]

Context for anyone who is wondering: Lamine Yamal's parents won an UNICEF raffle for a charity photoshoot in which Barça players posed with kids, and 5 month old Lamine happened to get 20yo Messi. Which is like. Literally insane

[joyflameball]

[sawed-on-shotgun]

unfortunate truth of reality is that oftentimes 15 year olds will say/do/believe some stupid bullshit because they are 15 but telling them that they believe that because they are 15 is probably the most counterproductive thing in the entire universe

[i-am-the-oyster]

[hypokeimena]

all those posts that are like "why am i researching currency debasement in the 1860s for a fanfiction no one is going to care" are full of shit, i just DNFd a fic for being obviously incorrect about the history of plumbing

[hypokeimena]

my people have found me.

[hypokeimena]

just got a double whammy of the most annoying comments i get on this post back to back in my notes (1. this is going to give authors anxiety!!! 2. but you CAN get tenure by 35!!!), so everyone say bye bye post for another several months

[hypokeimena]

post unlocked because i just dnf'd the project hail mary book due to andy weir's 'rocky thinks in base six' inconsistencies.

if rocky thinks and estimates in base six round numbers and then converts to base ten for ryan gosling's sake (established early!! basically one of the first things ryan gosling works out!), then he would not suggest that they jump from 80 to 86 when rounding up for safety, because neither of those are base six round numbers. he would suggest jumping to a safety allowance of 84 (220 in base six) or 90 (230 in base six).

[thevioletsunflower]

He also uses the term "major fifth" (not a real interval, you mean "perfect fifth") and miscalculates Rocky's travel time to get to Tau Ceti (the math only works out if Rocky arrives at full speed when the text explicitly mentions him slowing down at the halfway point). Not to mention the scene where both Dubois and Shapiro are said to be sitting immediately to Yao's right.

So. You know. Your fic doesn't have to be perfect, even professional writers make stupid mistakes.

[hydro-homies]

Imagine being the only person alive who can say this

[nevercure]

buzz aldrin and neil armstrong liked to do a thing where they’d tell unfunny jokes at parties about being on the moon and when people were confused they’d go “guess you had to have been there”

[wizardarchetypes]

i was at an event last night in california and i went to the bar to order wine bc wine was like, a thing, and i looked at the menu and saw i was completely out of my depth bc idk any wine names, so i turned to my right and there was a man in a gorgeous suit standing at the bar beside me and i said “do you know anything about wine?” and he said “a little, yes!” i told him i liked white and dry wines and asked if he’d order for me. he asked the server for two glasses and had one poured for each of us and then he clinked his glass on mine but he didn’t take a sip, he just watched me taste mine and then he asked what i thought and i said “it’s pretty good, but like i said, i wouldn’t know.” he laughed and told me to have a good time & i walked away. fifteen minutes later i found out he’s the winemaker.

[girlypop-shitto]

[a-french-guardsman]

Me when I'm a dead knight effigy but I keep smiling through eternity because I know I'm serving major cunt

[a-french-guardsman]

Update: I have found the full effigy and it's even crazier actually