This is terrible but today when I was playing volleyball outside with some friends one of their children (18 months) was sort of ambling around on his stumpy little toddler legs and so we were all trying to be careful and like not spike the ball onto the baby but then he wandered over to his father, who picked him up bc dad reflexes, and then the ball got passed over to the dad and he sort of had a no thoughts moment and instinctively used his child to smack the volleyball over to the next person. Like he just swung the kid and used his legs like a baseball bat. I’m never going to forget his face of premature regret mid baby-manuever right when he realized what he was doing AND the instant he realized his wife saw it happen. Anyway the baby was fine he didn’t make contact with the ball all that hard and he was just mad his dad wouldn’t use him as a club again but I had to sit down because I laughed so hard I cried.
I love lying to kids. It’s so fun. My coworker’s daughter said she speaks 2 languages and I said I spoke 17,000 and she narrowed her eyes at me and was like “… no you don’t” and it was the cutest thing.
The last time I saw her I told her I was a “half-magician” that can only do 50% of a trick, and I showed her how I can tear a piece of paper in two but can’t make it come back together, and she got soooo annoyed with me. Absolutely adorable. Lying to children is the best
If you’ve ever wondered why people in Hawai'i hate tourists, try to wrap your mind around the fact that there are CURRENTLY, RIGHT NOW, tourists sipping martinis and looking at fish within swimming range of the fresh corpses of local people who couldn’t escape the overnight destruction of their entire town.
Try to comprehend that there are fully functional, high capacity boats passing through the waters in front of an area full of survivors who are stranded and in need of supplies, refusing to help. They are hosting snorkeling tours.
Really think about, try your best to actually picture over two thousand people unhoused and in need of shelter, with nothing but the clothes on their backs and nothing to return to. Understand that the island, stolen land, is littered with hotels full of air conditioned of rooms with beds and showers and toilets, each fully equipped to host hundreds of families for weeks, turning these people away because they’re booked up with tourists who refuse to leave.
And understand that these tourists were offered free transport to return home or be hosted on other islands. Free. Courtesy of local tax dollars. 4,000 wealthy tourists were offered free flights shelter on Oahu and begged to leave the island, BEFORE the survivors were given shelter.
And enough still insisted on remaining and carrying out their vacations that people are left without shelter and resources while they enjoy “their stay in paradise”.
In case this gains any traction, I NEED people to understand that this is not an invitation for mainlanders to get on a soapbox and start telling each other whether or not or how to visit Hawai'i. The tourism situation is complex and difficult and you don’t get it if you haven’t lived through it at minimum wage. You don’t fully understand the complexities and you will not. And you are liable to do more harm by trying to dictate rules and ethics of visiting the islands to each other.
If you want to help, listen to local people. Seek out and boost what they’re saying. Send each other local sources of information. Research from local sources. DO NOT take this crisis as an opportunity to insert your views and speak for us.
why aren’t there more mysteries that take place in nursing homes & retirement communities. i want to watch a group of deranged retirees-cum-amateur-detectives combine their powers of:
decades of life experience
boredom-fueled busybody shamelessness
access to the most gossipy next-door-neighbors in existence
“I am too old to be arrested and/or give a shit” attitude
and solve crimes. this should be an enormous subgenre.
flattered that my tags passed peer review:
#their sidekick/Watson/pet hacker is a 15 year old grandkid who hangs out with gram gram on the weekends. her only power is that she has above average search engine skills and flexible knees–which is completely sufficient to round out the group’s skill set.
#they involve her in heist style operations. on the rare occasion she gets caught housebreaking she explains her grandma locked herself out of the condo and asked for help getting in. then this sweet slightly addled old lady shows up and explains she got the address mixed up, it’s so confusing when you’re old & all the houses look alike and oh she’s so sorry to have caused so much trouble!……and meanwhile the teenager is rolling her eyes bc she’s aware gram gram was a highly successful career criminal & con artist for 50 years.
ANYway gimme a 80+-year-old con-artist-turned-amateur-sleuth who loves getting older because people are less suspicious of little old ladies (#this all takes place in florida naturally)
because of the many, many comments, i have now read all of the Thursday Murder Club books. I am pleased to report they are DELIGHTFUL.
if you like charming/stubborn old ladies and grumpy/shy old men who solve (and commit) crimes for fun–here you go!
(this series is also fun and poignant and contains senior citizens embracing modern values & the changing world & and basically living their best lives at 70/80+. and it’s great.)
i just started watching fullmetal alchemist and i hate this little girl and her dog i hope they both get fused into one entity and then get mercy killed
as a teen I was such an expert gaslighter it’s insane
one time a friend sent me a prank file saying it was an Ocarina of Times rom hack. It shut down my computer while we were on Skype. Now the thing is, my connection was shite and I was known to disconnect out of nowhere already. When I got back up, instead of acting angry or anything I thanked him and said that it was fucking amazing. I even shared screen and it showed a completely black screen because of course, I’m a black cat with technologies and it wasn’t the first time either. The guy was trying to convince me I was pranked so fucking hard and I was like “…no???? It’s literally just a game?????” and he ended up opening the file himself to see what was up, shutting down his computer
Just had a mutual I really respect on tiktok tell me mocking the Texans who suffered badly or died in the blizzard in 2021 is fine because fuck Texas and I truly might delete that app. I can’t deal. I knew more trans and queer folks in Denton Texas than I do in the blue state I’m in now, there were queer art markets constantly and a lot of diversity and compassion for the poor in a way that doesn’t exist in my liberal fucking city and all I ever hear is how Texans deserve to suffer, as if there aren’t thousands protesting constantly and participating in mutual aid and doing their best to survive in a deeply gerrymandered fascist state. Homeless people died, disabled and poor people who couldn’t prepare died. My partner and I lived in a food desert with no access to buyable water and no running water for eight days and I guess we fucking deserved it because she was born there and I got literally abandoned by my ex roommate at the start of covid and left with nothing there!!! Fuck all Texans no matter what!!! This is a rational and compassionate way to think!!!!
So this person doubled down and made my feelings about “white people finding anything to be upset about” so I’m gonna say this:
If you’re openly celebrating the suffering of the average Joe and Jill and Jam in fash southern states, you’re celebrating the suffering of thousands of people of color particularly black folks subject to extremely racist gerrymandering and profiling, the suffering of thousands of queer and trans folks who are fighting to survive under politicians who are trying to outlaw their existence, the suffering of disabled folks who are ignored out of existence or worse, the suffering of the impoverished who are intentionally left to die in mass climate events.
I don’t care how much you hate Florida or Texas. I’m from Virginia and live in New Mexico and Texas was still one of the most diverse places I lived with a ton of passionate folks fighting against fascism.
If you’re ready to throw out every citizen who is trapped under fascist rule, particularly the ones the fascists WANT gone, then congratulations! You’re supporting fascism! DeSantis isn’t harmed one bit by yall laughing at disasters in Florida but the poor folks who can’t leave absolutely can see you calling them stupid idiots who deserve their suffering 🤗
Just the other day I was chatting with an older woman about this exact thing. She’s retired so she enjoys going on almost-daily walks around her neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods. Well she told me that it was really weird that in the newer constructions where the younger families live, EVERYONE has their blinds closed all the time. In fact she can tell a younger family lives in a house based on the simple fact of whether or not their blinds are closed in the middle of a sunny day. It’s to the point where she can’t even tell if they’re even HOME and available for a visit to welcome them to the neighborhood!
When she said that, I realized that I do that too when I live in a more publicly visible apartment. I told her that I think it’s because of the internet. Younger people feel like we’re constantly being watched, observed, and JUDGED for merely existing. So when we’re home, we just want to be alone, unbothered, and unobserved because it’s the one place we can control that. She was very surprised to hear that I felt like that and she was VERY concerned for us young folk (and to be honest after talking with her I became pretty concerned too…)
People from her generation will have their blinds open all day, hang out on their front porch, and randomly visit/enjoy random visits from neighbors and strangers. If a stranger knocks on my door it’s scary and if they want to stay and chat? It’s a huge inconvenience and it feels super awkward and weird and I’m stuck wondering why exactly they’re talking to me, when just a few decades ago welcoming someone new to the neighborhood was just what you did! In fact to not do so was rude!
It made me really worried that as the Panopticon sinks its teeth deeper into our psyches, we are losing the very essence of what makes us human and got us this far as a species: community. I find that being on the internet for hours a day tends to almost trick my brain into thinking “I’ve been social all day, my social need is full” when in reality I’ve only talked to one, maybe two people I know from my real life all day, and only for short bursts, not REAL conversation.
I find it hard to have the energy to invite friends to hang out, and when I want to I feel like I’m a big inconvenience for asking them to take a break from their busy lives for me (not that they would ever say that’s the case, but it’s this nagging feeling internally). I feel like while we used to be a series of large islands of local community, our islands splintered apart and started drifting away from each other. Now your island is just you, your immediate family, and maybe a couple close friends. Those living physically closest to you feel like they’re miles away and unreachable, to the point where you might as well not even bother.
I guess I just have one question for you: Do you know the names of your next door neighbors?
That makes me think about how the rate of paranoia of being watched must be so much higher now than it used to be and must only be increasing, which is very concerning,,
