And this is useful to me, I didn't know the "n" was silent. But otherwise his name is very intuitive to say. People don't really have an excuse

"Un-uhlaive? UN-UHLAIVE? Ma'am, that man has been killed. He has been MUHDUHED. To DEATH."

cruelty is so easy. youre not special for choosing it

"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."

-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

"Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundaneness of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It’s easy to understand why people do bad things. It’s like “yeah, ok, you’re selfish and scared and cruel, I get it”. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard." - Brennan Lee Mulligan

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

- Simone Weil

as a child being told "the moon controls the tides" with no additional explanation was like. oh okay. you want me to believe in magic? you're talking about magic right now? okay. fine

sorry. only semi-related but i simply wasn't ready for "the sun is a distant gorilla". thank you NASA

“Oh boo hoo you shouldn’t ask your friends for favors we’re all adults”

I just spent three hours pulling up carpet and staples for a friend’s home renovation and we all did nothing but chat and joke and have wonderful conversation the whole time.

Helping somebody move or renovate or giving them a ride to the airport is functionally the same as going mini-golfing or playing a board game: it’s an activity that you do that is made more fun by having good company, and which provides something to talk about when the conversation lulls.

this strike won them a 5% pay increase and the right to talk during lunch, in case you needed a reminder that if capital had its way your worklife would be entirely dystopian

DEAN WINCHESTER in one random episode per day ‣ 241/327 11.02 FORM AND VOID

not to be controversial but i hope ur having a nice day and if u aren’t i hope it gets better

Black coffee enjoyers fighting the longest war known to man

Having rewatched Pirates of the Carribean several times, I have noticed something interesting. Will Turner is often the only survivor of massive shipwrecks, like the one that killed his mother or the one with the kraken. Other times even when hes alone he survives drowning in ways he really has no right to, like the destruction of the Interceptor. He just often conveniently finds a perfect sized piece of driftwood or something. Remember what Calypso said? About him having a “touch of destiny?” I think that the sea could never kill him, will always cradle him and protect him, because all along he was destined to be the captain of the Flying Dutchman. The sea could no more kill him than a human could cut off their own arm.

#gonna mentally pair this with that post about how elizabeth heralds death #every man she kisses shortly afterwards dies at sea #and she sees the ghostly black pearl as a girl when no one else does #and at the start of the story elizabeth - the sea’s own psychopomp - sees will floating past and sounds the alarm to save him #and she falls in love with the one man the sea will never kill (@aethersea​)

i love them forever

been going insane over Bruce in his eating dome for 24 hrs now

There is so much story telling here. A person got this pacific parrotlet named it Bruce which in and of itself is amazing but then this person went here my little bird friend a raspbebe for you to enjoy and Bruce said hell yeah and went cataclysmicly and irreversible ape shit ham on that berry. And that probably happened more than once. So instead of never again allowing this little dinosaur the joy of the succulent flesh of the delectable raspberry they went what can we do for our little baby boy. and then boom they got some kind of cake cover type deal and cut a door into it so that Bruce would Not Be Trapped in a fruit prison (altho truely it is the berries who are trapped in there with Bruce but none the less) and so he may go to his pent house and freak it as crazily as his little bird heart desires.

Anyway i love pets they are each distinct little guys who are carred for by the funniest ape to ever exist bc we love animal so much

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.

SAD WET BEAST

Matariki kāinga hokinga

Ngā whetū kei runga, Te whenua kei raro, Ko au kei waenganui

Te kāinga ukaipō kei muri Te kāinga whakatū kei mua Ko au kei waenganui

Ka karanga tōku tūrangawaewae Ka karanga tōku ngākau Ko au kei waenganui

Kei hea, kī hea, mā hea te hokinga?

-----

The stars above The land below And me, in between

The home I come from behind me The home I build in front of me An me, in between

My homeland calls My heart calls And me, in between

Where is, where to, by which means, returning?