the funniest and most tragic moment in steven universe is the scene that implies that Pearl pulls bitches like a professional dog walker but doesn't know how phones work so her place on earth is being a life-changing futch fling for every dyke on the east coast there's probably a gay bar in maryland where they talk about the twiggy bird chick that eats milf pussy like it's the last edible thing on earth and they dont even know about the city full of thousand year old neon lesbian amazons who are pent up 24/7 from The War and leaving room for jesus cause they're always hanging out with their softboy nephew who might be the second coming of christ

this whole ouroboros thing keeps coming back to bite me in the ass

alancummingreally I wore this suit to the Met gala centuries ago in protest at being told to shut up and keep out of politics during the Iraq war, but I think today its message is even more prescient and vital.

The quote is by the great Audre Lord and the suit was designed by Stephen Cirona.

let's get ✨vulnerable✨

Hell Yeah

My genius remains unrealised

Every so often this gets another wave of notes, and I will mention “Ah, my snost is getting snotes.”

When I see a video of a cat minding its own business with nothing else going on I unmute immediately cause I know that mf is about to make a funny noise

pushed over by ghosts! sad

I love it when the CEO is in stuff

There are too many guys who look like this. I thought this was Adam Savage or Alton Brown or Adam Conover, until I realized this is probably a fourth guy

He's so unique his name doesn't even start with A. He's a bearded white guy with a whole different letter! Diversity!

There does seem to be significant overlap in morphology, behavior, and ecological niche, but is it enough to justify grouping into a new taxonomical Type of Guy?

The research is ongoing...

Yeah we can probably consider the incongruous letter to be a minor mutation that distinguishes him but he's still part of the same breed. Like a murder of crows with one albino crow.

#I thought two of those guys were the same guy#okay - I thought these were a total of two guys - the first two were one guy and the second two were another guy#it turns out there are FOUR guys?!?

One more and they can open a burger place

consider: teenagers aren’t apathetic about everything they’re just used to you shitting all over whatever they show excitement about

Teen: *gets a job*

“I GOT THE JOB!”

Parents: Well, when I was your age, I already had 5 jobs and was supporting my family

Teen: *gets all A’s*

“I worked really hard!”

Parents: Well, of course you did, this is the expectation, not a celebration.

probably why so many teens take to social media where they can enthusiastically share their interests and achievements and get positive feedback that their parents never gave

A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK

This hit hard

I remember once, when I was in my early 20s, I was an afternoon supervisor at my job, and I worked with mostly teenagers, and the one day this one kid, who was like 15, was bored so I suggested he could clean out the fridge. He did and when he was done I said he did a good job.

After that, this kid was cleaning out the fridge at least once a week, and I was like, “why are you always cleaning the fridge?” Like, I didn’t mind, but it seemed odd. And he said, “one time I cleaned the fridge and you said I did a good job. I wanted to make you proud of me again.”

Literally, I changed the entire way I interacted with teenagers after that. I actually got a package of glitter stars and I would stick them on their nametags when they did a good job, and they loved it.

My manager had commented on how hard these kids work and I said, “they’re starved for positive feedback. They go to school all day then come to work all evening and no one appreciates it because it’s expected of them, but they’re still kids. They need positive feedback from adults in their lives.”

Like, everyone likes feeling appreciated. Everyone likes being complimented and having their efforts be noticed. Another coworker (who was a mother of teenage children), hated that I did this, and said they were too old to be rewarded with stickers, but like… it wasn’t about the stickers. The stickers were just a symbol that their effort was noticed and appreciated. I was just lucky that I learned this at a time when I was still young enough to remember what it was like to be a teenager. I was only 2 years out of highschool at that point and highschool is fucking hard. People forget this as they get older, but ask anyone and almost no one would ever want to go back and do it again, but they expect kids to suck it up because they’re young so they should be able to do school full time, plus homework, and work, and maintain a healthy social life, and sleep, and spend time with family, and do chores and help out at home, and worry about college and relationships and everything else, and then just get shit on all the time and treated like they’re lazy and entitled. And then they wonder why teenagers are apathetic.

For a german exam I had to argue against an article that was essentially „kids these days, they don’t care about anything and are constantly on their phones“ and really it was the easiest essay I‘ve ever written.

Teens don’t talk to adults bc adults only ask „so, how‘s school“ to then interrupt them two sentences in. And because they can’t engage in a conversation about buying houses and working in a bank. I would’ve loved to talk about philosophy and politics and history with family the way I did with friends and in class but because I was young no one took what I had to say seriously.

And no, teens aren’t always on their phone. They’re on their phone when they’re bored. You think I‘m on social media when I‘m with my friends? When I‘m talking about something I‘m interested in?

Maybe the reason kids are so distant and always on their phone during family parties and the like is because you‘re failing to engage and include them.

Whoop there it is

When you respect kids, they really respond and learn from you. But if you treat kids like “theyre just a kid, what do they know??” then you’ll never find out.

As a Disneyland Cast Member, I’ll add my own experience onto this –

Very frequently, when I first speak to a child while I’m at work, they’ll kind of withdraw and act uncomfortable and shy. Their parents will then rather frequently tell them to not be shy and try to coax them to talk to me – whenever that happens, I always, without fail, politely dissuade the parents from pressuring them.

“I’m a stranger,” I’ll tell the kid’s parents. “I don’t blame them for not talking to me – if they were anywhere else, they’d have the right idea, to not immediately trust me.”

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen that same kid – simply after hearing their initial reaction being validated, instead of reproached – immediately open up to me after that. I also cannot tell you how many times that child and I would go on to start a friggin’ marathon conversation, and I got to hear all about how great their day was or what their favorite Disney movies were or what rides they liked and didn’t like or how much they like a certain Disney character or song…all from me validating that initial feeling and showing genuine interest in what they had to say.

This isn’t just young children, either. I will always remember being positioned outside the Animation Academy one day and starting up a conversation with a young lady, perhaps 12 or 13, who joined the line with her father a full 25 minutes before the class was supposed to start. Now keep in mind, we do a drawing class every 30 minutes: there was no one else in line at that point, and no one else joined the girl and her father in line for a full fifteen minutes. So I could tell pretty quickly that this girl was very emotionally invested in getting a good spot for the drawing class: a conclusion all the more bolstered by the fact that she had a notebook under her arm. I asked her if she was an artist – she said yes, but seemed uncomfortable at the question, so I skipped even asking her if I could see her work, instead admitting that I myself wasn’t very good at art, but that I’m trying to get better and that I love the history of Disney animation. On the screens around us was video footage of different Disney concept art and animation reels, so I pointed one of them out (for Snow White) and asked if she knew the story behind the making of the movie. Upon confirming that she didn’t, I proceeded to get down on the floor so I could sit next to her and her father and dramatically tell the whole story of how “Uncle Walt” created the first full-length animated motion picture, even though everyone and their mother thought he was an idiot for even trying, and how the film ended up becoming the first Hollywood blockbuster. After the story was over, the girl’s father said that his daughter really wanted to be an animator when she grew up, and she finally felt comfortable enough to open her notebook and show me some of her artwork. It was wonderful! Every sketch had such character and you could tell how much work she put into it! And I could tell how much telling her that – and sharing that moment with her, where we got to connect over something we both really enjoyed – had meant. And after the class was over, she sought me out to show me what she and her father had drawn – and sure enough, hers was great! (Her father’s was too, really. XD)

People, kids and teens included, love sharing what they love and how they feel with others. You just have to give them the chance to show it.

A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!

-~-

I feel like I am obliged to add one more thing: don’t ever think that the kids won’t feel your unspoken judgements cause they do!

I felt always like a ‘problem’ in my family, until I was about sixteen, I got this teacher who was litterally the first to tell I was worthy. He changed my life up till this day.

Also how do grown ups imagine how ‘we’ will ever learn to engage in conversations with adults properly if you don’t teach us?

This post is

Everything

I told one of my new coworkers (who is 26) that he was doing really well and that I was proud of him and his progress. I thought he was going to start crying for how quietly he said “really?”. 

Positive feedback makes the biggest difference to everything.

I used to have a coworker who only spoke Burmese. She knew a few words in English, but literally it was like “hey Susu, can you clean the cooler for me?” “Yes yes, I clean, I clean.” She’d moved to the US in her late 30s and never really got the hang of English. (I don’t say this to make fun of her. She was a refugee fleeing a brutal and bloody war in Myanmar and her broken English was a sign of deep determination and tragedy. I say it because the language barrier, and the extent of it, is important to what happened next.)

She was shy, and kind of withdrawn, and extremely slow—it took this woman an hour to do a sink of dishes that took me 30 minutes and I was considered not particularly fast—but she was absolutely dogged. She would do her job and get it done.

So this one day I realized we had all kinds of “hey, great job!” cards on our little recognition board thing for almost the whole crew, but none for Susu, because “she won’t understand anyway.” So I threw a couple of simple sentences into a translation app and spent like half an hour very painstakingly drawing these sentences in Burmese characters (and drawing is really what it was—I felt like I was four years old and holding a pencil for the first time again) and gave her the card. She kind of glanced and it and went “oh thank you” and then did this massive double-take and raised it in front of her face and read it, and read it again, and then just about hollered “OH THANK YOU THANK YOU” and I showed her where she could pin it on the recognition board if she wanted. She chose to take it home instead, which, totally fair.

All it said was “thank you for your hard work, you’re very reliable.”

Everything changed after that. She started using her limited English more, picking up new words here and there (rather amusingly, ours was a multilingual kitchen but she didn’t know which words belonged to which language, and you really haven’t lived until you’ve seen a tiny Burmese woman slap a fryer and say “Oy vay this thing, yeah! Pendejo!” I mean yes, completely valid emotion about that fucking fryer, but when this is how you’re discovering she’s picked up both Spanish and Yiddish and thinks both of them are English, lemme tell you, that sure is an Emotion), enthusiastically participating in things.

She was in her forties.

Nobody but her children had spoken a word to her in Burmese since she left home.

People just want to be known. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

ok!!! :]

This is one of my favourite posts. I use these strategies a lot with my students, and by the second week, I can usually get half the class to engage in the discussion, even online.

The most important part is that just saying that you appreciate them Diane work for all kids and teenagers. Sometimes you have to be willing to actually show that.

consider: teenagers aren’t apathetic about everything they’re just used to you shitting all over whatever they show excitement about

this post has a million to me, but also, as a teenager, this is true. we’re expected to just.. do these things, but without anything motivating us other than “you’ll understand why it’s important eventually”, how are we expected to grasp that we should?

It drives me fucking insane how even when people say “hey don’t be fatphobic and don’t hide behind ‘health concerns’ to do so. Fat isn’t inherently unhealthy” people line up out the goddamn door to go “yeah!! There’s a difference between being fat and being obese!” Fuck off !!!! First of all I’ve been considered “morbidly obese” (god what a dehumanizing term) for nearly my whole life despite living a healthy lifestyle, but even if I hadn’t, even if I were completely immobilized and disabled due to my fatness, even if it were “my fault” according to those arguments — I’d still be deserving of respect

like. Do you hear yourself right now? Do you think this is kind? Fat people aren’t stupid. They know that they’re fat, they don’t need to be “guided towards” anything. Nobody needs to be “given empathy” for the state of their fucking body. Fat people don’t need the pity or approval of thin people. Not to mention the term “reasonable bmi”. You think it’s unreasonable for me to exist? Jesus Christ

If that doesn't have potential for some fairytale nonsense, I don't know what does.

In the right wintry conditions, an ice bridge forms between the Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait. Theoretically, this is the only place where you can walk from Russia to the United States (and vice versa), however travel between one Diomede to the other is strictly forbidden.

On the West side sits Russia’s Big Diomede with a population of 0. The smaller Little Diomede to the East has a small population of 82 (as of 2021).

[Source]

A bridge between Today and Yesterday, you say? Only there at the right time of year, with a certain amount of luck?

That absolutely has the makings of a quest destination.

The reason Big Diomede (Imaqłiq) has a population of zero today is because the USSR forcefully relocated the native Iñupiat population to the mainland during the Cold War. People had traditionally travelled back and forth between the islands, families were broken apart and given no way to communicate post relocation. Efforts to reconnect families were made in the 1990s and 2010s, but most people on both sides have lost their Native language through forced assimilation under both Soviet and American education systems.

There are so many different shades of white light bulbs, I am so overwhelmed walking down the light bulb aisle, and then I'm never happy with the one I choose, no matter which one I choose, I get it home and I put it in and I'm like, ugh, I don't like THAT white

Color temperature range charts may be useful when going to try the next option (i kept a list of "nopes" in my wallet until i discovered I want shaded reading lamps, bathroom and kitchen lights all between 3800-4200 and everywhere else not above 3200 nor below 2800. YMMV, I enjoy warmer tone colors but not too warm or I'll get sleepy/depressed).

Different temp-colors for different areas/tasks.

Omg but this is so helpful, I am so glad I am not the only person just completely bewildered by how many different tones are being labeled with a single word! This will help me so much!!!! Thank you!!!!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33962875/chapters/92107600#workskin

new types of queer

Pyroamory - Being romantically attracted to fire

Triskaidekaphilia - Being sexually attracted to the number 13

Necrofeminine - Self explanatory

Phylosexual - Being sexually attracted to every species within an entire phylum, or to the phylums themselves

Aphelioromantic - Experiencing romantic attraction exclusively at the farthest point away from the sun along the eccentric orbit of one's celestial body

Seismogamous - Wife is an earthquake

how it feels to wash your hair and brush your teeth and have clean clothes on

ooooo you wanna take a shower so bad