Just a dude

@xxxrandomman64xxx

Howdy. I'm Random. Like, as a name, an alias, not the adjective. Welcome to my blog where I sometimes reblog things.

15.6K posts

fluoresensitives

Do not waste your tears over fascists. "He was somebody's this, he was somebody's that". Michael Brown was someone's son, and so was Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Emmett Till. Sandra Bland was someone's daughter, and so was Breonna Taylor, while she slept. Sonya Massey, too, was someone's baby girl. Latasha Harlins was someone's baby. Martin Luther King Jr was somebody's son, husband and father, and yet the FBI killed him. Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba. Hind Rajab, someone's baby. Khaled Nabhan, and his granddaughter, soul of his soul. Refaat Alareer. And on and on and on, every martyr, every Black and Palestinian person whose been told over and over again how cheap our blood is, how NOTHING our life is. I do not weep over the death of white supremacist, I fucking cheer. One less of them means a Black or brown child can live another day.

sonicguillotine-deactivated2025

so we have a conversational safeword in my group of friends and it’s great, idk why more people don’t do this. whenever someone wants a subject to be dropped immediately no questions asked we just say “spleen” and we stop immediately and it’s a really good way to avoid crossing the line between teasing friends and genuinely upsetting them by accident, or stopping debates from turning into actual arguments

the-hopeful-lark

Wait but no this is actually a brilliant idea.

imakegoodlifechoices

When I was a little baby high school student, I used to do the Living Chessboard at our local Renaissance Faire. We always used “forsooth” to indicate if someone was actually injured and needed to quickly end a choreographed fight. It was also very useful when doing little street improvisations because if someone tried to stop you, you could say “forsooth good sir, I must leave.” and they knew you couldn’t do a scene right then. We all used it in real life too, to say “no really” and it was amazing because there was a word used in a casual setting that meant “I’m not playing, I need you do listen to me.” So if someone tried to pick me up or tickle me, I could say “forsooth stop.” And I was instantly obeyed. I had “forsooth” long before I learned what a safeword was, and having a non-sexual safeword for everyday use amongst a circle of friends was the best thing ever. It made me feel very safe and listened to, even as a tiny 14 year old. Because let’s be honest, 14 year old me was teeny tiny and adorable and it’s easy to coo at kids when they say “no don’t pick me up!” but to have a word that every single person respected to mean “whatever I say after this MUST be listened to” was amazing. It gave me a definitive voice when it would have been easy to dismiss me.

So basically having platonic safewords is awesome and I’m all for it.

i think a big part of expanding your intellectual curiosity and trying to learn new things about the world is to abandon the shame of not knowing things. don't blame "the US school system" (which US school system????), don't blame your teachers, don't blame society, but embrace the fact that you are going to be learning new things constantly, throughout your life. practice saying "i really need to read about that" or "does anyone know of any good sources to learn about xyz?" or "hold on i gotta go check wikipedia/a world map/the dictionary/the news." every single day, there will be something you don't know already. that something doesn't have to be embarrassing. instead it can be an opportunity to learn something new

shame makes you shut down, and dig in your heels, and refuse to engage. curiosity takes practice, it takes conscious effort, and it takes patience. including patience with yourself

wizardarchetypes

When I was a museum curator and when I was a state park naturalist, people constantly apologized to me before they asked a question. All day, every day. “Sorry, this may be a stupid question—“

Every single time, I said, “if you don’t ask questions, I don’t get paid! Please, ask me more.” Much of my job was about reassuring people’s curiosity and creating a safe space in which it was okay to not know things.

I noticed in these jobs that we teach shame. When children asked questions, parents often apologized to me in front of the children. “Sorry. Thank you for taking the time.”

We grow up learning it’s embarrassing to ask questions, even in settings where someone is being paid to answer them. But it’s up to you to move on. It’s so important to move past this. Only you can make the choice to do so.

One of the most important things I learned in my own training was to admit when I don’t know something. It’s crucial that an educator can say, “I don’t know the answer to that question! Let’s look it up together.”

I was the curator of a museum about marine biology, and every week, someone asked me something about the ocean I couldn’t answer. I always thanked the visitor for giving me a chance to learn something new.

The more you say, “I don’t know,” the easier it becomes to say. And then the world transforms from an intimidating mystery to a grand adventure. How lucky we are to never know everything! How amazing that we can spend the rest of our lives being surprised and challenged!

marajadestarkiller

“I try not to make fun of people for admitting they don’t know things. Because for each thing ‘everyone knows’ by the time they’re adults, every day there are, on average, 10,000 people in the US hearing about it for the first time. If I make fun of people, I train them not to tell me when they have those moments. And I miss out on the fun.”

— xkcd #1053, “Ten Thousand”

i think a big part of expanding your intellectual curiosity and trying to learn new things about the world is to abandon the shame of not knowing things. don't blame "the US school system" (which US school system????), don't blame your teachers, don't blame society, but embrace the fact that you are going to be learning new things constantly, throughout your life. practice saying "i really need to read about that" or "does anyone know of any good sources to learn about xyz?" or "hold on i gotta go check wikipedia/a world map/the dictionary/the news." every single day, there will be something you don't know already. that something doesn't have to be embarrassing. instead it can be an opportunity to learn something new

shame makes you shut down, and dig in your heels, and refuse to engage. curiosity takes practice, it takes conscious effort, and it takes patience. including patience with yourself

wizardarchetypes

When I was a museum curator and when I was a state park naturalist, people constantly apologized to me before they asked a question. All day, every day. “Sorry, this may be a stupid question—“

Every single time, I said, “if you don’t ask questions, I don’t get paid! Please, ask me more.” Much of my job was about reassuring people’s curiosity and creating a safe space in which it was okay to not know things.

I noticed in these jobs that we teach shame. When children asked questions, parents often apologized to me in front of the children. “Sorry. Thank you for taking the time.”

We grow up learning it’s embarrassing to ask questions, even in settings where someone is being paid to answer them. But it’s up to you to move on. It’s so important to move past this. Only you can make the choice to do so.

One of the most important things I learned in my own training was to admit when I don’t know something. It’s crucial that an educator can say, “I don’t know the answer to that question! Let’s look it up together.”

I was the curator of a museum about marine biology, and every week, someone asked me something about the ocean I couldn’t answer. I always thanked the visitor for giving me a chance to learn something new.

The more you say, “I don’t know,” the easier it becomes to say. And then the world transforms from an intimidating mystery to a grand adventure. How lucky we are to never know everything! How amazing that we can spend the rest of our lives being surprised and challenged!

marajadestarkiller

“I try not to make fun of people for admitting they don’t know things. Because for each thing ‘everyone knows’ by the time they’re adults, every day there are, on average, 10,000 people in the US hearing about it for the first time. If I make fun of people, I train them not to tell me when they have those moments. And I miss out on the fun.”

— xkcd #1053, “Ten Thousand”

VACCINATE YA KIDS FFS

The other thing about measles is that it resets your body’s memory of other diseases. So all those times you’ve gotten sick? Your body’s memory cells no longer remember those illnesses, so even if you get the same type of illness again your body will react like it’s the first time you’ve been sick.

It’s so much worse than “just a disease”.

Measles does WHAT

Holy fuck

What the fuck what the fuck what the fUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK

antivaxxers also, in part, helped sabotaged the human lyme disease vaccine for lyme disease caused by borrelia burgdorferi infection (until 2016 the only known species of lyme disease causing bacteria in the USA). In 1998, the first lyme disease vaccine for the strain of the bacteria prevalent in the USA licensed. It passed clinical trials and was shown to be safe and effective; it was between 76 and 92% effective at preventing lyme disease with 3 injections. Antivaxxers proceeded to abuse the adverse affect reporting system, often complaining of arthritis, and this caused media and general hysteria about the vaccine. if you remember the flu vaccine hysteria around the swine flu epidemic, it was kind of like that. despite double-blind trials conducted both before and after licensing, that was unable to support their claims and instead displaying that the vaccine was safe and effective, the damage was done, and the vaccine was shelved in the USA. you can get a lyme disease vaccine in Europe, but Europe has a different strain of the bacteria that causes lyme disease.

Lyme disease can become very serious, it can infect the nervous system and cause neurological problems especially in young children who are often bitten on the head or the neck, undiagnosed it can cause chronic health issues that mimic other diseases. Without safe prophylactic measures beyond trying to minimize contact w ticks, this has driven people who have had lyme disease, have chronic effects from mass-disseminated lyme disease infection, or people who believe they have chronic lyme disease to go to quack doctors and undergo unsafe, unapproved medical treatment in an attempt to stop suffering.

This would not be happening on the scale that it is if antivaxxers didn’t straight up execute a supervillain plot to sabotage the lyme disease vaccine. the vaccine was licensed in december 1998, which was the year andrew wakefield published his fraudulent research on the MMR vaccine

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/5/7/17314716/lyme-disease-vaccine-history-effectiveness

https://www.niaid.nih.gov/diseases-conditions/lyme-disease-vaccines

these people are fucking dangerous beyond compare

edited for clarity

localvoidcreature62

Horrible job everyone

FROM THIS

fangirlinginleatherboots

Being 30 is fun. I was discussing anime with a teen at work and asked her how much of bnha she had watched. She had trouble answering and wasn't sure how to approach it. I said "better question was who was your husbando" and she turned bright red before mumbling an answer. They never expect me to know how deep their love of anime boys runs....

fangirlinginleatherboots

One time she said she used to be into BL and another employee down the hall asked what BL was and I yelled back "ITS YAOI" which reduced the teen to yelling "ITS SOFTCORE! SOFT CORE!!" So I yelled back "ITS SOFTCORE YAOI" anyway I get why dads are like that now

strictlyfavorites

💯

The little girl in me is screaming in delight🥹

silver-tongues-blog

My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It hurts really, really, really bad.

I think part of why I have trouble explaining pain to the doctor is when they ask about the pain scale I always think “Well, if someone threw me down a flight of stairs right now or punched me a few times, it would definitely hurt a lot more” so I end up saying a low number. I was reading an article that said that “10” is the most commonly reported number and that is baffling to me. When I woke up from surgery with an 8" incision in my body and I could hardly even speak, I was in the most horrific pain of my life but I said “6” because I thought “Well, if you hit me in the stomach, it would be worse.”

I searched and searched for the post this graphic was from, and the OP deactivated, but I kept the graphic, because my BFF does the same thing, uses her imagination to come up with the worst pain she can imagine and pegs her “10″ there, and so is like, well, I’m conscious, so this must be a 5, and then the doctors don’t take her seriously. (And she then does things like driving herself to the hospital while in the process of giving birth. Probably should have called an ambulance for that one!)

So I found this and sent it to her. Because this is what they want to know: how badly is this pain affecting you? Not on a scale of “nothing” to “how I’d imagine it’d feel if bears were eating my still-living guts while I was on fire”.

I hate reposting stuff, but I’ll never find that post again and OP is deactivated, so, here’s a repost. I can delete this later, i just wanted to get it to you and I can’t embed images in a chat or an ask.

This is possibly why it took several weeks to diagnose my fractured spine.

Pain Scale transcription:

10 - I am in bed and I can’t move due to my pain. I need someone to take me to the emergency room because of my pain.

9 - My pain is all that I can think about. I can barely move or talk because of my pain.

8 - My pain is so severe that it is difficult to think of anything else. Talking and listening are difficult.

7 - I am in pain all the time. It keeps me from doing most activities.

6 - I think about my pain all of the time. I give up many activities because of my pain.

5 - I think about my pain most of the time. I cannot do some of the activities I need to do each day because of the pain.

4 - I am constantly aware of my pain but can continue most activities.

3 - My pain bothers me but I can ignore it most of the time.

2 - I have a low level of pain. I am aware of my pain only when I pay attention to it.

1 - My pain is hardly noticeable.

0 - I have no pain.

It’s also really important to get this kind of scale to people who have chronic pain, because chronic pain drastically lowers your perception of how “bad” any kind of pain actually is, and yet something like this pain scale is extremely user friendly.

For example, if someone asked me how much pain I’m in at any given time, I’d say hardly any, and yet I’m apparently at a chronic 2.5, and it only goes up from there depending on the day.

There’s also a similarly useful “Fatigue Scale”

I haven’t been below a 5 on this scale for 4 years

Here’s the fatigue scale

Fatigue scale image desc:

10: can barely move; can’t talk

9: can barely move; can talk

8: can move, but can’t do much more than watch TV

7: can watch TV and play a game on my phone simultaneously

6: can do work on my computer lying in bed

5: can get around the house, but definitely couldn’t go out

4: can run a light errand

3: can get in my 10,000 steps, making my fitbit happy

2: can do three or more activities in a single day

1: going clubbing!

See also the Mental Health Pain Scale by Graceful Patient:

Mental Health Pain Scale transcription:

MILD

1 - Everything is a-okay! There is absolutely nothing wrong. You’re probably cuddling a fluffy kitten right now. Enjoy!

2 - You’re a bit frustrated or disappointed, but you’re easily distracted and cheered up with a little effort.

3 - Things are bothering you, but you’re coping. You might be overtired or hungry. The emotional equivalent of a headache.

MODERATE

4 - Today is a bad day (or a few bad days). You still have the skills to get through it, but be gentle with yourself. Use self-care strategies.

5 - Your mental health is starting to impact on your everyday life. Easy things are becoming difficult. You should talk to your doctor.

6 - You can’t do things the way you usually do them due to your mental health. Impulsive and compulsive thoughts may be hard to cope with.

SEVERE

7 - You’re avoiding things that make you more distressed, but that will make it worse. You should definitely seek help. This is serious.

8 - You can’t hide your struggles any more. You may have issues sleeping, eating, having fun, socialising, and work/study. Your mental health is affecting almost all parts of your life.

9 - You’re at a critical point. You aren’t functioning any more. You need urgent help. You may be a risk to yourself or others if left untreated.

10 - The worst mental and emotional distress possible. You can no longer care for yourself. You can’t imagine things getting any worse. Contact a crisis line immediately.

These are so important! SO SO IMPORTANT SHARE THIS AND SAVE IT TO SHOW YOUR DOCTORS!

iknowitwontwork

what is the first thing that comes to ur mind when u think of the person u rb'd this from?

#summer nights #the glow of white from a laptop screen #laughing at dumb jokes #the unexpected

waitingforthesunrise

Obsessed with the characters who stay light hearted and joyous but who have stolen it from the darkness. There is blood under their fingernails — there is pain under their eyes — there is hurt in their timeline and they have felt every blow. But they have refused to let it take their joy, their sun, their kindness, their heart. This. This is mine. This is the thing no one gets to touch. The people who are unbeatable simply because they will always look up from the ground with blood on their lip and a light in their eyes. And nothing can ever cut out the light in their chest. Nothing can touch their rebellious, boundless belief that the universe has a sense of humor. I stay silly, I stay open, I stay alive and alive and I lived when the whole world said otherwise. the dandelion in the pavement. The vine on the wall. I lived and I loved the inherent brokenness of a once whole thing and it was me, I was the thing that is whole no longer. I gave flowers to the darkness. I gave my soul to the light.

Wait what the fuck

reminder that 30 isn’t old, it’s very normal to not accomplish everything in your 20s, and that it is never too late to learn that thing you’ve always wanted to learn. you’re always growing. that’s a good thing.

unexpectedyarns

Who the hell accomplishes everything in their 20s? Who made that a thing?

I was 48 when I started my apprenticeship to become a tattoo artist. I was 50 when I married the love of my life.

You’ve got time.

I needed this right now. I’ve got time!!!

unapologeticallyapologetic

To anyone who needs to hear this, my aunt called my mom last year in tears and, as she talked about how things are going, she admitted that she didn’t know she could be so happy, and she didn’t know how good life could be.

She is 72. After a very rough go of things, she is now with someone who cherishes her (met him three years ago!), goes on bucket-list road trips multiple times a year, founded two nonprofits to help people who have been through similar struggles, and feels fulfilled.

30 isn’t too late. Neither is 40, nor 50, nor even 70.

silverwasafukintrainwreck

if you’re still alive, it’s not too late!

japanese game dev in the 90s: hey dude can you make some music for our game about anime girls getting fucked sloppy style

guy who's about to push the PC-98 sound card to its absolute limit and create the most heartachingly beautiful music you've ever heard: Yeah okay

oh holy shit

Huh

Yes it’s very important for solidarity with workers but, and maybe this is an unpopular opinion, workers should have solidarity with poor customers. Like ignore shoplifting, be sensitive when ppl are using EBT cards, that kinda thing.

If you work retail and you worry about shoplifters I beg you to remember how little money you’re being paid to do this

dont-pray-for-my-sins

and also no matter what your boss says to you, someone shoplifting will not cause your wages to be docked. if it DOES, then you can get in contact with a labor attourney, who will proceed to light up like a kid at christmas because they (and you) are about to get a big fat payday. that shit is ridiculously illegal.

Remember kids, the largest form of theft in this country is wage theft, and it's not because of poor people trying to get by.

"transandrophobia isn't real bc men aren't oppressed for being men, only for other marginalizations they face"

okay well i am a brown disabled trans masc person and i'm telling you i DO experience oppression on the basic of being what ppl perceive as me "being a man."

what is it when Black men are treated like violent, scary criminals? it's racism, yes, but it's also a specific form of racism that applies especially to Black MEN.

what is it when Indigenous men are expected to be "noble s*vages" in a way that is distinct from the way Indigenous women and nonbinary ppl are categorized?

what is it when disabled men are explicitly harmed for being weak or "not real men?" what is it called? is it JUST ableism? if so, why does gender continuously play a part in the harm?

what is it when trans men are assaulted or killed for not being "man enough?" what do we get to call transphobia that we, specifically, face for being masculine?

what about my fellow Black and brown trans dudes who hesitated to transition for fear of being fucking killed by cops? or are they just imagining it too?

why is it that when WE acknowledge our pain and oppression, we're suddenly just men and apparently aren't smart enough to know our own experiences? why do you get to tell me these things aren't real?

y'all will really talk about how patriarchy hurts everyone and then turn around and tell afab ppl whose genders you think are too privileged to sit down and be quiet. as if we didn't hear that from everyone else in our lives since birth. as if this isn't aimed at us SPECIFICALLY bc we're not the group YOU think deserves safety and respect. fuck you.

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