Broomsticks and Paddles

@broomsticksandpaddles / broomsticksandpaddles.tumblr.com

student occupational therapist at University of Manitoba, former Team Canada Quidditch and paddling coach, uOttawa kinesiology graduate. this blog appreciates feminism, science, jellyfish, superheroes, and attractive people. queer, she/her pronouns.
Avatar

Concept - Your smartphone breaks. You can take it to any appropriately skilled person to have it fixed. It has been designed for easy disassembly and repair. The parts are available and standardized. You are not forced to buy a new one or spend extreme prices for a replacement part. Planned obsolescence doesn’t exist and things are designed to last a long time - to be upgradable and customizable without needing to invest in an entirely new unit every year. 

Avatar

ok so there’s a game me and my friends play called “don’t get me started” and basically someone gives another person a random topic and they have to go on an angry rant about it and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us at parties and car rides so I highly recommend playing sometimes with your friends

Avatar
blueandbluer

I love this idea. We used to do things like this in Improv.

Related game: “THINK ABOUT IT.” You’re given a random topic, and your job is to build it into an epic conspiracy theory, the crazier the better. You end your rant with a serious face and the command that your listeners “Think about it.” 

Another related game: Illuninati. Similar to Think About It except you are given 2 completely different topics and you have to connect them to each other in a wild conspiracy rant

Rb to safe an awkward hang out

Avatar

fuck yall and your bad boys. wheres my bad girls. wheres my secretive and mysterious love interest. wheres my outcast gf. wheres my cat rescuing, leather wearing, motorcycle riding wife???

HERE SHE IS

Avatar

even if the fraud was like 5% it wouldn’t compare to rich people cheating the system by trillions lmao

Avatar
anarchapella

Also, SNAP “fraud” is like exchanging some of your stamps for cash to buy necessities you can’t buy with stamps, like soap or deodorant or tampons

TBH even if one hundred percent of people on food stamps were committing food stamp fraud I’d still be in favor of keeping the program around

Hey I wanna talk about this.

I work at a drug addiction counseling center. A ton of my clients have, at one time or another, sold their food stamps. This is basically exactly what the GOP is afraid of, right? Drug addicts selling their food stamps.

I have learned, now, to ask them WHY they sold their food stamps. Here is an incomplete list of the answers:

- I need tampons, and you can’t buy them with foodstamps

- See above RE: toilet paper

- I was living in a hotel with no kitchen then. I had to buy pre-prepared food

- The homeless shelter won’t let me keep food in my locker or room, so I have to buy pre-prepared food (Yes, really)

- I had to make rent

- My sister had to make rent

- My son had to make rent

- I needed co-pays to get my medication or I’ll die

- I needed co-pays to get my medication or I’ll loose control of my mental health

But the absolute most common form of food stamp fraud I see? Giving away food stamps to other family members who get no food stamps or insufficient food stamps to feed their families. I see that every month. People glassy eyed and hungry because they gave away their food to their adult kids, their grand kids, cousins, siblings etc.

So, is food stamp fraud rampant? In some places, yes. And I’m not about to chastise people for it.

Avatar
Avatar
glumshoe

Pillow 1: beneath my head

Pillow 2: between my knees

Pillow 3: the huggin’ pillow

Pillow 4: against my back to anchor me to this plane of reality

pillows 5-8 do not have formalized roles but are able to arrange themselves into a nest as needed

Avatar
Avatar
captainlatin

I fucking hate languages.

The Greeks had this word, right, we have no idea where it came from, it just kinda popped up out of nowhere, and it could mean either apples, cheeks, or boobs. Problem is it looked and sounded *exactly* like another, unrelated word which could mean sheep, goat, or any animal in general really, which must have got confusing if you were a farmer talking about your livestock, but anyway…

Then the Romans, having stolen practically everything else from the Greeks, thought they’d nick this word too, because Latin isn’t confusing enough without throwing in a bunch of loan words. And they adopted it to mean a pumpkin.

Then the English came along and were all like “when in Rome”, and stole it, where it became our word ‘melon’. Which has now come back to mean boobs.

How do you like them apples.

Avatar
alivannarose

I fucking love languages.

In case anyone doubts the veracity of this:

[ source ]

Calling boobs ‘melons’ literally transcends culture, time, and language.

Avatar

Fuuuuuuuuuuck thank you I’m just gonna put this in my pocket to use for the rest of my life.

Avatar
laurabwrites

[Twitter thread from Alexandra Erin:

“But dark humor can help people cope with life!” Sure. There’s such a thing as gallows humor. But are you the one on the gallows?

If the person on the gallows makes a grim joke, that’s gallows humor. If someone in the crowd makes a joke, that’s part of the execution.]

Avatar

if you read in a frog paper “specimen was released in the field immediately after capture” chances are very good that what it actually means is

“i dropped the damn frog and despite the fact that we fell all over each other no one could recapture it”

sometimes when i am sad i go read through the tags on this post, because they are 70% other biologists saying things like “AND ALSO FUCK FIELD MICE” and “THAT CRAB ALMOST BROKE MY FINGER” and I am reassured that I am not the only one who has bobbled a wood frog right into their cleavage.

plus six or seven people who just….can’t figure out what a frog paper could possibly be. (guys it’s…a scientific paper. about frogs.)

and this one

which made me laugh despairingly because i mean

bro you don’t even know.

what is the code entomologists use for “i stepped on it, i’m so sorry, it was dark out and the specimen was very small”

“Impromptu dissection was performed under less-than-optimal lighting conditions.”

‘impromptu dissection’ is an alarming phrase in any context and i thank you for it

[ID: screenshot of a library of papers marked ‘Masters Research’. The nineteen displayed are all, indeed, about frogs.]

You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.