i've been waiting forever

name: petal. age: adult. pronouns: she/her. antigonist. sometimes fandoms, sometimes politics. mostly a reblog blog

[just-another-cat-blog]

pride month!!!

[lemonsharks]

Is that a miette?

[jeanjauthor]

Pride for you!  Pride for a thousand years!!

[lost-and-cursed]

you COME OUT to miette? you come out to her as queer? oh! oh! pride for mother! pride for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

[fvckw4d]

one of the most fucked up things about the stupid puppygirl essay is after all of the online queer community's naked fantasizing about bdsm dynamics and submission as nurturing and found family and marxism and all this mishmash of human connection and leftism and Be Kind to Each Other, right, of caring for each other, of mutual aid and revolution and trading in power dynamics and rewriting them, is this punk? Is it punk to be kind? Its clear that this is all fantasy. Its costume. Its posturing. The actual line they draw is the line everyone always draws, no matter their politics, which is what if someone is too fucking useless for your polycule commune. What if this isnt fun anymore. Then they ask the question they were always going to ask—what is the exact amount your messed up brain and crippled body is worth, in dollars, per minute, to play house with?

It turns out, Money is still God around here. Its always been god around here.

[fvckw4d]

I know tara knight is an inflammatory grifter who churns out low quality slop. The problem I have is, despite the huge amount of backlash, there were a lot of positive responses, and even though a lot of them were also reactionary grifters that churn out low-effort slop, some of them were not, and i think it says something that the entire essay is just an exercise in creating a strawman, a "Useless Toxic Puppygirl" that ultimately exists to sell people on the idea that the real victims of a dynamic like this are always the people who can turn the disabled person with no money out of the house. And a lot of people's response was to conjure up reasons why this was actually really deep commentary on toxic relationships or whatever the fuck.

This is a problem more widespread than one dumbass essay. The queer community—especially the flavor that relishes in being kinky and leftist and edgy and radical—likes to position itself as accepting of disabled people and an answer to marginalization and social rejection, a solution to the way the Useless and Uncomfortable are discarded from society, but a lot of them have no answer to the simple problem of "what if someone is not good at labor?" or "what if someone is unpleasant to be around for any reason?" Thats when everyone starts pulling out the spreadsheets. Are you sure you can't work. Are your abusers that bad. Do you know where the local homeless shelter is.

[catmorlandleaguette]

still find it abysmal after the puppygirl article how many people are comfortable saying they think "I do not consent to having a disabled partner" isn't like a ridiculous and horribly ableist thing to say.

I support people with disabilities! as long as their condition doesn't actually affect them or my life at all and they earn their keep. I'm very progressive btw ^_^

[inprogresspokemon]

Named: ? (Rock/Fire)

#??? - On rare occasion, an Eevee can be affected by more than one environmental factor, and reacts to grow into a new, rare evolution. Influenced by heat and volcanic minerals, Eevee that make their homes near active volcanoes may evolve into this friendly Rock/Fire-type Pokémon. Protected by thick, stone-like hides, these Eeveelutions are powered by the thermal energy generated internally by their molten cores. The intense heat within causes glowing fissures to form across their rocky exteriors, creating unique patterns that shift as old cracks heal and new ones emerge from battle. They may lose pieces of their rocky armor after a particularly intense fight; when this occurs, they can draw magma from their cores and rapidly cool it into fresh stone, replacing the lost sections. Despite their tough appearance, these Pokémon are known for their warm and easygoing nature, rarely seeking conflict with others; however, the lava coursing beneath their rocky shells requires careful control, making them challenging companions to keep indoors. Exposure to large amounts of water rapidly cools their molten cores, causing their bodies to stiffen as the lava hardens. Afterward, they must spend time rebuilding their internal heat before they can regain their full strength and agility.

Other dual-type Eeveelutions

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Follow for more Dual-Typed Eeveelutions!

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[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

After school care pulled me aside about my child dropping an f-bomb “without remorse” and I put on my concerned face and nodded a bunch.

Apparently he was building something with a younger kid “who really looks up to him and is just starting to make friends” and said “Hey, you’re really fucking good at this.” which is, in my estimation, really a parenting victory.

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

I absolutely failed at doing this:

[machine-saint]

we justifiably give Biden a lot of shit but I think "at least 3" is the funniest possible response to some right wing dipshit asking you how many genders there are

[madnessofmen]

wait it gets better

[strawberry-seal77]

he's ready

[oidial]

you mihght hate me Xx//IH8Animatrz//xX but i wont hate tyou. get drawed.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I have no idea whether this is true, it seems way too stupid to be real and I have to assume it's made up, but I'm sharing because it has the vibe of something that would happen in a cartoon from the 90s that has characters burn a hole in a door by bouncing a laser pen beam between two mirrors

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Person who wrote this scene would write about websites with security like this.

[stellacartography]

That's Joseph Cox from 404 media. The article has limited information but they're seeking more and their journalists will be trying to replicate it. This was meta's own ai chatbot that helped the hackers change the email. One of the accounts was the Barack Obama White House Account. Another was Sephora.

Link to the article

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I'm trying so hard to suspend disbelief on this fuck of a life but every day I suspect more and more that we are living in a cartoon

[thepromiscuousfinger]

[so-i-did-this-thing]

Been seeing a lot of folks talk about bugout bags where the context seems to be fleeing a Knock from secret police or something, and I want to gently suggest folks consider more likely reasons to bug out (wildfires, crumbling infrastructure leading to gas leaks, etc).

Make sure your bag can get you through scenarios where you are part of a mass evacuation, rather than you clandestinely leaving in the middle of the night to escape brownshirts.

I feel like thinking in this context will help folks prepare better and think beyond fleeing to the nearest border as their prime objective.

I don't like giving this regime more power than it actually has, so it is helpful to me to think about what I would do in specific scenarios. Planning for those gives me much more concrete action items, reduces my panic, and ends up preparing me better for unknown situations.

A lot of us have real fear of this regime rn, and escaping a Knock is a realistic concern.

But I feel like a lot of white, cishet, middle class folks are in oppression cosplay mode rn, and their brains aren't in a practical space for what the more likely impact to their lives is going to be.

If preparing for a Knock isn't also going to prepare you for facing sitting in traffic for 12 hours with no hotel plans because you need to evacuate a natural disaster on short notice, you should think a bit more about your risk factors and resiliency.

Vague prepping for "When shit hits the fan" means you are going to forget key items. Come up with some specific scenarios to run through and see how your kit would perform.

[covington-shenanigans]

@thatdisasterauthor might have suggestions on this? (sorry about the tag if this is intrusive, ignore at your whim)

[thatdisasterauthor]

Always down for disaster advice related tags!

And yeah, I agree with @so-i-did-this-thing in a lot of ways. A natural disaster (or a man-made one) are A LOT more likely to present an immediate threat to most people right now. Especially because of this administration threatening to dismantle basically every disaster protection we've got from FEMA to NOAA. We are starting down the barrel of, at the very least, a wildfire season with an absolutely crippled wildland firefighting force. (And wildland firefighting resources respond to a lot of other non-fire disasters as well.)

Be prepared for a Knock, especially if you're in any sort of marginalized group, but also be aware that knock might be someone telling you to fucking run because there's a fire roaring towards you.

[banesidhe]

If it helps, at least in California, a lot of law enforcement agencies are now using what’s called a “hi-lo” siren tone to get people’s attention and indicate they are announcing evacuation orders. It is very distinct from a regular police siren, and will hopefully quell some of the panic of the cops showing up at your door during a natural disaster. (also most California agencies that I know of will absolutely not help ICE with their warrants. In fact they usually resent them stirring up trouble).

An example of the hi-lo tone:

[thatdisasterauthor]

Oh, fascinating! I'll have to look into that more.

[littlethingwithfeathers]

As someone who lives in an area that is prone to tornadoes, ice storms, flooding, fires, AND hurricanes, bug-out bags are an excellent idea but ONLY if you prep appropriately and practice with them. The best piece of advice I have seen in terms of where to start is "decide what you want the bag to help you do and work out from there." This much is obvious: Leave the house quickly with everything I need. But... If so, how long do you plan on being gone? Under what circumstances? Natural Disaster? Fleeing political unrest? Are you driving? Walking? Where are you going? A hotel? A friend's?

And then, once you have your things together... PRACTICE. Practice using your fire starter. Practice walking with the pack on. How far can you reasonably go? Practice setting up the tarps or rain-fly. Play around with your multitool. Go through the first aid kid and actually look at the supplies. In short, nothing should still have the tags on it. Bug-out bags are excellent, but you've really got to put in more effort than a shopping list. Interrogate why you want the bag, and then practice with it.

[nihilisticspacequeer]

If you function best with a concrete list to start from, there is an excellent set of suggestions here:

Get Yourself a Go Bag

It’s the go bag!

Which can then of course be modified to whatever your personal needs may be. This list may seem daunting at first, but most of what's on here is probably something you already own and just by shifting where you store it in your house (ie. putting it in The Bag instead of the cabinet), you're making progress towards the go bag

Like everyone above has said, though, a shopping list will not get you very far, and you need to practice with these things and understand why you want them and how you would use them in the types of emergencies you are likely to encounter in your area

[so-i-did-this-thing]

Margaret has great insights, and one of the packing points she brings up is your go bag will likely contain several other modular kits, like your everyday carry and your portable med kit. You just shift those kits to your go bag.

Thinking in chunks like this also helps make sure you're covered in various scenarios. As a trans person, I am going to make sure my HRT is already in a bag that I can move to my go bag.

And for a lot of us who have recently fled red states or otherwise moved for Life Reasons - make sure you have paper maps (honestly, everyone should have them) and whatever else you need to get around an area you are not familiar with!

[afeelgoodblog]

Fantastic idea

[durnesque-esque]

Article about it here. 

[nougatto-archived]

what’s important to note and missing from the “headline” tweet is that they simultaneously constructed additional good public transit to the public transit already in the city (bus rapid transit, train stations). Just removing highway alone isn’t going to make traffic better, the bigger part of the story is that they improved public transportation. And the current mayor wants to do more - cyclist lanes and reinstate a tram system

edit: someone’s noted that the current [2022] mayor is backtracking on support for public transportation. so. anyway love undated articles talking about good things from the 2000s

[segamascott]

[thesophistiicate]

if you want to experience life more deeply you have to find more beauty. stop training yourself to dismiss, to mock, to assume the worst all the time — when you do this you build walls between yourself and the world. and after a while you stop feeling the warmth of it entirely.

beauty requires openness. it asks you to let things reach you, to soften enough to be moved. it’s not naive to see beauty everywhere—it’s a skill, a form of intelligence, a kind of quiet bravery. because it is so much easier to critique than to create, to detach than to engage, to dismiss than to love.

let yourself be affected. let yourself find things beautiful and let that be enough. life is not asking you to be cool, sitting on the sidelines and nitpicking everything. it’s asking you to see life and experience it fully.

[flowerbleedme]

My incredibly bleak philosophy of compassion is that we should all pity each other horribly and practice an according amount of kindness.

[flowerbleedme]

I asked for a pastry at the coffee shop. When I raised my card up to pay, he simply said "you're good." and waved it away. I wondered why. I wondered what made him think I deserved to have my order be free. Sparing me those two dollars.

Sitting down at the table, I remembered the scars on my arm. The universal signifier of "This Kid Needs Help." Maybe his kindness was only out of pity. He saw those and assumed there was some great misery and wanted to offer me some relief. It's generally good to be kind to people who are hurting. But I wasn't hurting that bad.

The thing is, there is some great misery. People generally aren't doing that great. There is a great misery within me and within him and within everyone, and some people notice the pain, some people express it, others don't. But we all suffer from something.

It doesn't matter if someone seems to deserve some relief. Everyone needs it. Everyone is suffering constantly. Some more than others, but still. This Kid Needs Help applies to everyone.

Thirty minutes later, I went to get a second pastry, intending to pay and leave a tip this time. It was the same cashier. As he reached to grab it for me, I saw scars on his arm.

But it doesn't really matter. He'd deserve a tip anyway. Because it's never just us hurting.

[directionlesshotdog]

It has been pride month for 8 hours and I’ve already seen 5 posts about either killing straight people or asking them if they’re sure they’re straight.

It sure is fun being transhet during pride month and getting to spend the entire month having your existence written off as like that of an outsider.

[banchie]

i've been phasing the phrase 'google it' out of my vocabulary and going back to 'look it up'. fuck you youve lost your generic trademark privileges