i had a meet n greet with the anaesthesiologist for my top surgery and he said it’s his favourite procedure to work on because everyone who wants it is just so truly happy to be there, and i can’t stop thinking about this career that is 99% attending to various sadnesses miseries and woes and 1% having funny little dudes in dangerfield buttonups throwing themselves on the operating table like YEEHAW LET’S GOOOO

as the anesthesiologist was wheeling me into the OR, i grabbed the nurse's hand as we passed her, and i said, "I'LL BE RIGHT BACK, I'VE GOT TO GET SOMETHING OFF MY CHEST."

my journey to the OR was temporarily delayed because said anesthesiologist was bent at the waist, in hysterics, and took several minutes to collect himself.

* * *

Edit 10/13/22, since this post has broken containment:

Being trans is awesome, but transphobia sucks. If you are trans and need support, you can reach out to:

If you are not in need of support but want to help trans folx, I encourage you to donate your money, time, or other resources to one of the following organizations:

I made a baby blanket for a pregnant woman at work and I went back and forth about it like “is this weird? To like hand make something for someone when we’re like friendly acquaintances not like bffs. God why are you so fucking awkward.” Anyway I gave it to her and she said she loved it and in the back of my head I’m like yea she’s nice and probably just humoring the weirdo. Well she texted me a picture this weekend of a scrunchy faced newborn at the hospital wrapped in the blanket I made her. And I’m like. Wow. She loved it so much she took it with her! To the hospital! To give birth! She wrapped her newborn it! I am just so filled with love and joy right now.

People will love the things you make them. Because you thought of them and you cared.

A tiny northern girl tries to play with a puppy. A small bells is sewn on the girl’s clothes so that parents can hear where the child is. 

(Source)

i think this photo is from Mongolia but I can’t find the original source. but that video makes me think of my favorite picture of all time:

tbh it doesn't rly hurt teenagers to incorrectly id as ace like... what's the worst than could happen? they don't have sex till they're older?? lol

"ohh but it'll take them longer to realize they're actually gay" i know my experiences aren't universal but like. if i wasn't ready to face my lesbianism then i was Not Ready, you could've eliminated every other label in existence and i still wouldn't have accepted it. if anything, the ability to try out different labels helped me learn about myself, explore the community, and accept that maybe not being straight wasn't so bad.

also lots of people identify as bi before realizing they are gay, lots of people identify as gay before realizing they're bi, lots of people identify as gay before realizing they're trans, etc etc etc!!! exploring and getting it wrong is a necessary part of the process!!! why is it so different for aroace identities?????

"pasta only fills you up with empty calories" have you considered that it also fills me with love

love and warmth and happiness and most importantly pasta

pasta rant. pasta fills you with strength and diet culture is based in junk science

I did sports in college and the day before every tournament we'd go to Olive garden and eat as much pasta as possible. carb loading.

and literally every year the freshmen were like "you want us to eat carbs? Bc this was peak diet culture days. And yeah bc carbs make you strong the next day. You can do high intensity anerobic exercise for a long ass time after eating carbs. it was like having pasta superpowers

We'd be bringing sugary drinks to competition to keep up the energy and getting burgers and milkshakes after to recover. And all that was healthy af

You need protein to repair damaged muscles, and fats to break down vitamins and give you energy so anything that tells you any of the macros are bad for you? It's eating disorder shit, macros are literally the 3 nutrients your body needs in large quantities to survive. and sugar? That's the shit you need when you need energy Right Now.

One of the most horrifying conversations that I've ever heard, was when my (then under ten) niece and nephew told my mum that pasta, potatoes and rice were all unhealthy foods and that she shouldn't be making them dinner with them. Because they were Bad For You.

Apparently the school they were in at the time had told them All About The Evils Of Carbs. And how they should be avoiding them all.

Carb loading has it's place definitely (I used to do it a lot pre-days where I knew I was going to be doing it a lot of heavy lifting for work). But honestly so does just eating carbs.

But we really need to get people to stop saying terrifying things like "pasta only fills you up with empty calories"

Because OP is right, it fills you with love and warmth (and most importantly pasta).

But it also fills you with energy. And, if you are still growing, it fuels your growth.

Now a new study looking at 400,000 youths from 88 countries around the world suggests such bans are making a difference in reducing youth violence. It marks the first systematic assessment of whether an association exists between a ban on corporal punishment and the frequency in which adolescents get into fights. 

[F]or both boys and girls, [prof. Elizabeth Gershoff] said, “We found [spanking] linked to more aggression, more delinquent behavior, more mental health problems, worse relationships with parents, and putting the children at higher risk for physical abuse from their parents.”

“People often ask: Why didn’t you look for positive aspects?” she continued. “My answer is: We did, and there were none. We see consistently that the more children are spanked, the more behavioral problems they have in the years ahead.”

Once again worth emphasizing that this is pretty much the exact opposite of what authoritarians said would happen

Similarly:

…the entire town of Dauphin was given unconditional cash payments, creating a macro-level community data set. As a result, the real median household income in Dauphin rose from $24,758 (2014 CAD) in 1971 to $39,382 (2014 CAD) in 1976.

…

The results are clear. After the unconditional payments began, there was “a change in violent crime that amounts to 350 fewer violent crimes per 100,000 people compared to other towns.” Dauphin’s violent crime levels averaged 600 per 100,000 people so “[t]he magnitude of the effect is quite large.” Further, the total number of crimes dropped “to 1,400 fewer total crimes per 100,000 people” compared to an overall crime rate that “averaged about 8,000 per 100,000 people.” There was also a substantial drop in property crimes.

80 Examples of Fandom Antiblackness

Imagine all of these things being a possibility every single time you log in to your 'escape'!

To my Black readers: You are VALID! You are not sensitive, not 'overreacting', and you had every right to be hurt by the way you've been treated. These are not isolated events! And if people won't stop being racist, they should continue to feel uncomfortable for being so!

To my nonBlack readers: You are not an ally for NOT doing these things, but for STANDING AND SPEAKING UP when they do.

(So APPARENTLY Tumblr won't let you zoom in on Desktop, but I put the lists in the Image Description! Sorry 😬 i did not know Tumblr doesn't allow zoom in on desktop. It's easier to zoom in on mobile.)

I must not click on rage bait. Clicking is the algorithm-killer. Clicking is the little-death that brings more rage bait articles. I will face my rage bait. I will permit it to pass my for you page and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the external eye to see my algorithm. Where the rage bait has gone there will be nothing. Only I and Muppet gifs will remain.

ykno the thing about poetry is that 99% of it is bullshit and the other 1% will cut you like a material knife, and for every person that 1% is a different section of the whole. this is probably true about all art.

I have too much personal life experience of sudden dramatic one-time quick fixes to not believe they're real. People can tell me "there's no magic bullet solution to anything, you'll just have to keep trudging through the repetitive drudgery until it stops feeling bad and starts giving results" all they want, but the truth is that this has never worked for me. The reason why my problem-solving method focuses almost entirely in finding some sort of a serendipitous miracle solution is because that's the only kind of thing that makes things work for me.

I'm not reluctant to do things the hard way because I'm lazy and think things should come to me for free with no effort. I am perfectly capable of doing hard work. I just know my life well enough to know that doing things the hard way doesn't fucking work.

Actually I'm not done yet so allow me to elaborate. Here's a list of things that didn't work:

Easy solutions that actually worked:

In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent: “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

Nimbus Publishing and Vagrant Press Goose Lane Editions Breakwater Books Ltd. The Acorn Press Bouton d'or Acadie Canada Council for the Arts | Conseil des arts du Canada

When I was 15 I spent a month working on an archeological dig.  I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports?  What’s your favorite subject?   And I told him, no I don’t play any sports.  I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.  

And he went WOW.  That’s amazing!  And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.” 

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them.  I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life.  Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them.  I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them. 

I wonder if work just.. got harder in the 2000s, comparatively.

So like... ok. I haven't researched this and I'm mostly thinking out loud, so forgive me.

I entered the working world in 2005. I had a few odd jobs for a few years and then finally just bit the bullet in 2009, got a job at a grocery storeas an inventory clerk. My job was to count surplus items in the backroom and update the counts. Additional responsibilities included helping stock the front end. I left that job in less than a year.

A friend of mine now works at the same chain, different location, same job title, in 2022. But where I shared that title with two other people, he's the only one with that job title. Additionally, there are less stockpersons, and he is often called out to the floor to help them, which impedes his primary job function. He is also expected to clean bathrooms and some other maintenance things that I cant imagine doing as an inventory clerk.

And I thought maybe it was just that his location is understaffed, but looking back on the past few years where I was expected to do everything (be the front end, the dispatcher, the manufacturer, the teacher, trainer, janitor, delivery driver, account handler... christ, how did I do all this?) I'm looking at the issue with fresh eyes.

I hear sometimes about the 'slim down,' where a lot of companies took on a trend of hiring less people than they need to cut down on the cost of labor, and I look at how fast a person can burn out at a job. And how many jobs are considered 'high pressure sales' when they dont need to be.

Like I'm looking at the possibility of starting a business and I'm looking at the jobs I've had that burned me out and why. And it's almost always been 'I was always juggling responsibilities because we needed more staff'.

Like it seemed like I was doing everything, but getting paid the same.

And I think about that backroom job, where occasionally i would have to help out the stockers on big days, but mostly my job was one function.

It's not like that anymore, is it?

So when I hear someone bemoan that 'no one wants to work anymore' I just think... y'know, work ain't what it used to be. When you're working the work of 3.5 people because someone at corporate decided it was right and good to hire less people than they need because it saves them 20$ per hour per store, but you still dint get your bonus because shrinks too high or they didnt make the amount of money they thought they would or you gave too many coupons ONCE. And it's like they're actively trying to chase people away, and then threaten you with automation but they do t make work attractive enough for people to show...

Work dont want no one anymore.

Oh damn, the notes on this. Apparently it's not my imagination and y'all have lived some horror stories.

I feel like we should be able to do something about this. Like we should be able to say 'no' to lean staffing and we should have a say in what our responsibilities are.

I'm thinking about all the times i should have just straight up said something. Like I think I had it in my head that if I took on all the responsibilities in the shop, eventually I would be rewarded with higher pay. But it doesnt work like that anymore. The reward for digging the best hole is a bigger shovel.

That's no way to live, though. And I just put up with it like it was normal to be so tired at the end of the day that I couldnt move. Maybe I should have just said 'no, you do it' when they started making me work outside my title.

Because that took a serious toll on my mental health.

i know so many people have said it but

UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONSUNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONSUNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONSUNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONSUNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONSUNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS UNIONS

I HAVE A UNION JOB AND LET ME TELL YOU SOME THINGS

It is part time, contract, hourly, full remote. Because it's union? They have to offer me a minimum of 25 hours a week. If I *voluntarily* go under, that is on me, but they ALWAYS offer me up to that. If I ask for the hours, they HAVE to give them.

Overtime doesn't trigger until 40 hrs/wk... but any time spent on emails, spreadsheets, my timesheet, ANY admin task that's more than 15 min? I can bill for that. ALL training, meetings, etc? I bill for that.

I get holiday pay. Seperate from vacation, sick leave, personal time; if it's a federal or state holiday I *automatically* get 5 hours of pay for that day. Period. Unlimited. I got paid 5 hours to do nothing on MLK day and presidents day, no questions asked, nothing taken away from my other pay.

I get sick leave, vacation leave, "personal" leave (anything that isn't the former two -- like, "my friend had an accident and I need to drive them home"). I get health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance. I get access to the credit union. I get access to job search help if my position gets dissolved / I get laid off!

It costs about $80/month in union dues, but I MORE than get that back in terms of benefits and peace of mind, and it's automatically deducted from my paycheck.

U N I O N S.

as we are living through a new resurgence in unions, after they were systematically decimated for decades, people might ask ‘how do i join a union?’ or ‘how do i unionize my workplace?’. the IWW isn’t a union union in the sense that it will automatically give you benefits like the above. BUT it is the single best place to start if you want to begin unionizing your workplace, connecting with other workers (including prisoners), and generally learn about unions and the international labor struggle.

https://www.iww.org

Whenever unions being destroyed comes up, some asshat's always like "but the duuuues" like, STFU. I'd HAPPILY pay the dues to not be fuckin exploited.

The slim down has affected everything. It's why most of the movie theaters around me are nasty, the retail stores are always a trainwreck, and you constantly have long wait times at restaurants and grocery stores. It's the captains, NOT the crew.

We were waiting for tires at Walmart, and they'd called someone to a section on intercom a buncha times and some ol fart customer was so offended "Why don't they send a MANAGER there???" WOMAN. It's WALMART. They do not hire the goddamn people! I get unreasonably pissed about this cuz too many people have no idea what work is actually like now and make dumbass complaints and harass workers, bitching at the wrong thing.

Food service has gotten way worse thank staffing slim downs, ghost kitchens and online ordering. Seriously, look up the ghost kitchens. Tons of big chains try to pass off hokey "local" sounding food on grub hub and door dash that comes straight outta IHOP and Applebee's. It leaves the people working those restaurants effectively running numerous restaraunts of the same kitchen for single restaraunt pay. Ghost Kitchens have come under serious litigation in Houston specifically for having such poorly maintained spaces, workers have gotten seriously hurt.

It is so fucked how we're conditioned into saying yes to everything till you end up doing 5 people's work under the false promise of a better future. It burned my careers and bridges to the ground. Don't make my mistakes. I'm hopeful that GenZ and the rest of the up and comers will continue to take less bullshit at work and justifiably cry on TikTok behind the service counter cuz work is NOT working.

More Perfect Union is an excellent YouTube channel doing fantastic labor journalism that I can't recommend enough.

So, "lean staffing" was mentioned above. Not only do I hate the practice, I hate the term... calling it "lean" implies that what you cut away was fat. That it was healthier for it. But what you cut was SLACK. And slack is what allows lines to tighten without breaking. I call it "taut" staffing. A taut line is a line under strain. Strain too long, and it breaks. Increase the tension and it breaks. A taut line is one that cannot absorb changes.

english's pronunciation rules are absolute bullshit poopoo made up crap but one of my favorite side effects of this in written english specifically is like. altering the spelling of a word in such a way that it's technically pronounced the same. but reads very differently when your eyes go over it in written form. and that sort of dissonance between the proper spelling and the altered spelling producing the same basic sounds in your brain creates an unprecedented level of comedy.

ingredience. creacher. both of these are pronounced essentially exactly the same but the altered spellings are just hilarious for some stupid reason. the english language is a disaster but at least whatever is wrong with it is REALLY funny.

pakige 📦

I need a Thank u Mr Terry tag

#thank you mr terry#thinking something isn't doing it and doing is all people see#and deep down it means that when the ugly thought reared its head to be realized#you stood up in front of that ugly hurtful thought and said 'sit down'

Pardon me, but I needed to read your tags tonight.

l'waxana troi had the hardest game in the entire galaxy. name a smoother pickup line i'll wait

Why are people acting like another Trump administration couldn't possibly have any lasting consequences, when we're still dealing with the aftermath of the Reagan administration now.

hi i’m mr normal human man. i am from famous earth city new orleans! i love baseball and root beer and big books about american history. i am very close with my beloved son, and nothing makes me happier than helping out in my father’s restaurant when i’ve got a little time off work! family is the most important thing in the world :) my best friend is a sexually perverted brain slug that has followed me across three different lifetimes like an incorrectly imprinted duckling