fuck 'em over with your kindness

replace one word in your username with boop tell me in the tags what it is

‘My cat Max’ by Irina ♡

This is Money Snake. She only appears every 312 years. 

If you reblog her picture within the next twenty-five seconds you will have good luck and fortune for the rest of your life. 

(Hello I take the context out of posts)

I hope I was in time

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

So for my grad seminar I just read an article on how museums make us loose the physically of objects. Their “thingness”. And I didn’t get it like why would you need to touch the object that promotes so much risk. But now… I get it

Super fucked up that I can’t be a master-level expert in knitting AND woodworking AND silversmithing AND embroidery AND soap making AND spinning AND -

“Who would ever want to be immortal? Can you imagine the loneliness, knowing that there’s no one else like you, cursed to outlive -” shut up!! Some of us have shit to do and aren’t cowards!!

As someone who took etiquette lessons, politeness is an incredibly effective tool for disarming bigots. You can either force them to reconsider their words/actions by directly and calmly confronting their behavior (by using the rules of society in your favor), or you can dip entirely while they appear to be in the wrong.

Both options are great.

Because the thing is, when bigots pick fights, they are 100% counting on you to get louder than them. Or meaner. They want you to react emotionally and provide fodder for their 'You're Too Emotionally Immature To Understand' cannon.

What they aren't expecting you to do is say one of the following phrases in a polite, concerned tone:

For those of you who'd are spiteful and/or dealing with Fundamentalists/Evangelicals/generally shitty Christians:

And my all time favorite:

"It sounds to me like there are some seriously dark and angry forces at work in your heart."

(Nothing stops a Christian bigot in their tracks faster than implying the Devil is causing their bigotry. But you MUST be calm, polite, and gentle with your tone and wording. It is absolutely fair to twist the rules and play them at their own game, but you gotta play hard.)

TLDR: It's much faster to use etiquette, politeness, and rhetoric reversal when eviscerating idiots online and in person, because they aren't expecting you to weaponize their behaviors back in their direction. Don't get angry, get spitefully polite! :)

mark's back monday

There was a paint store I worked at like 10 years ago, and from context I learned that there had recently been a change in management. By "from context," I mean something like half to 3/4 of cranky customers would say something along the lines of "this never happened back when Mike ran the place."

I was less familiar with the inner workings of retail than I am now, so I assumed it was the ol' it's-different-so-it-sucks thing going on. Yeah, we were always out of stock of our best products, but what could we do about it? The warehouses only sent us so much. And how could we know what the customer bought a month ago? It wasn't like we kept records. Oh, and I sure as heck didn't have the ability to negotiate contractor discounts, what were they trying to pull? I was a cashier, who also mixed paint because sometimes I was the only person onsite. The best I could do was give them a 25% discount if they paid for a store membership. The boss was always trying to get me to sell those memberships, too. Sometimes I did.

Anyway, a few months in I went to another store in the city to fill in for somebody's planned vacation. Guess who ran that place?

It was good ol' Mike.

(I knew the manager's name was Michael, but I didn't make the connection until I walked in and the entire goddamn atmosphere was different, like walking past a church when a wedding's going on.)

Now, I wasn't a bad retail employee. I was at times inflexible because of who I am, but I made an effort to treat everyone like that goddamn paint store visit would be the highlight of their day, so long as they agreed to see me as a human rather than a meat-powered color-mixing program. Perhaps this was why, when Mike saw me saying, "no, I'm sorry, I don't have the authority to do that," he took over for me and had me listen to him do the pitch. And then he brought me to the back to show me the price books.

Turns out, I _did_ have the authority to offer contractor discounts. Starting at fucking 40% off. He showed me the button in the POS system. And we'd still make a profit. (Paint markup is INSANE.) Because as Mike explained to me, membership cards don't keep people coming back. Special treatment does. Doesn't matter if it's a family of four who buys a gallon of paint every five years, or a contractor spending six figures per fiscal quarter - when people remember what a difference you made for them, they tell people.

It wasn't just money. He tracked the colors people bought, every single person, every single name, down to where in the house they'd put it, so that if they came back a decade later he could give them the exact same color to freshen up their den. He showed me the tracking sheets he made. He wrote notes in the margins when people gave him feedback - the Smiths didn't like colors this dark, for example, so next time he'd recommend a lighter shade.

And he showed me the warehouse order forms he used to restock. Weird coincidence - the brand of paint the other store always ran out of was the one with the worst profit margin.

People weren't upset at Mike leaving because they were afraid of change. They were upset because Mike gave a shit.

If my "usual" store (I use quotes because I eventually managed to get swapped over to the other one) put up a sign that said "Mike's Back," I guaran-fucking-tee there would have been an actual celebration.

(When I went back, I actually found Mike's old tracking sheets from when he'd been the manager. His replacement had made about three more... then apparently decided they were too much trouble. That store had the 2nd highest membership sales in the city the following fiscal year; Mike's had the fourth. The fiscal year after that, Mike's was the third, and the other store didn't make the list because it closed down.)

This kid is going places

Give 'em the ol razzle dazzle

Obviously the cartwheel is ICONIC but I also can't get over all of the other kids flocking to the ball like the "Mine" seagulls.

Big huge fan of the way people eyes soften when looking at people they love it’s like they can’t help but let their guard down and open their hearts up

he's actually grown up quite a bit, you know? // nancy's different. she's different than the other girls.

How it started vs How it's going Jujutsu Kaisen Season 2 OPs

Since so many of you all liked the light in my other Good Omens drawing, more sunset fluff for you✨

• You and I, shinin' together •

I love them, I love this fandom, I love all of you✨

‘Crenaia, the Nymph of the Dargle’ by Frederic Leighton, c. 1880.