I just wanna draw them being all soft n stuff okay? :'( <333
you guys wanna see the most accurate and blasphemous representation of the words ‘catholic shaming’?
happy easter, everyone
you know Easter is just around the corner cause this post is making rounds again
It’s that time of the year again
Hi there I’m looking for a honest and loving sugar baby companion here and I will be paying sweetly $800 dm +13133640399 WhatsApp
This is the funniest thing that has happened to this post
you guys wanna see the most accurate and blasphemous representation of the words ‘catholic shaming’?
happy easter, everyone
you know Easter is just around the corner cause this post is making rounds again
It’s that time of the year again
Hi there I’m looking for a honest and loving sugar baby companion here and I will be paying sweetly $800 dm +13133640399 WhatsApp
This is the funniest thing that has happened to this post
Little Merlin comic from a textpost.
(Will remove if op asks!)
Goddamn. Okay
Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn't keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn't playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.
There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.
As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.
A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye.
He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?" "I don't want to bother anyone."
Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.
Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.
"Olly-olly-oxen-free." The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says "Come on in, wherever you are. It's a new game." And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.
— Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten"
in a rare moment of "huh i can maybe contribute to this", i was reminded of this exerpt from Tim Kreider's We Learn Nothing, a collection of his essays.
this one was written about a deceased friend of his, Skelly, who was known to spin tales about his life to hide the shameful parts from others. at his funeral, when all the secrets inevitably started to unfold, Kreider writes:
The worst part, for me, is imagining how alone he was. This is the most poisonous thing that secrets do to us—they isolate us from everyone around us and make us feel even lonelier than we already are. I wish he could’ve somehow brought himself to talk to us. I sometimes fantasize about how I would’ve reacted—what I would’ve said to him, how I would’ve tried to help. As Kevin once complained, “I wish he coulda just told us so we could’ve mocked him for it!” But not everybody gets to be free. Some have to stand guard at their own prisons for life. Some secrets we must take with us, as the melodramatic old idiom has it, to the grave.
So that’s what they’re calling it nowadays…
Started watching Merlin
average merlin episode
on a very slightly more serious note I actually have a ton of opinions about toddler toys, since it's kind of my job to have opinions about that stuff, and one of my most fervently-held opinions is "take the batteries out of that godforsaken thing or so help me"
please just give your kid some blocks. please, as a professional, I am begging you to give your kid blocks. normal blocks.
Absolutely I can.
A toddler's job is to learn about the world around them and their own bodies. They're learning things like cause and effect, how to manipulate objects, basic physics. They're learning what the things around them are. They're learning how social interaction works and their role in their very small world (typically, the family unit). They're figuring out how to use their own senses and voluntary control of their bodies to learn more.
I will give "lights and noise" toys some credit in that they are very good at teaching cause and effect. If you press the button, the lights and noise happen. That's great. But they don't teach anything else, though. They don't promote imaginative/pretend play. They don't promote language development. They don't promote interactive play.
Let me give you some examples. A really important milestone in play skills is when kids start pretending objects are different objects. Like pretending a block is a phone. They'll pick the block up, tap at it, swipe at it, hold it to their ear and babble into it. But if you give a kid one those god-awful toy phones that sings songs and talks when you press a button, you don't actually get that kind of play. They're not pretending to use it as a phone. They're just pressing the buttons to make stuff happen. It's only cause and effect. Even if the kid does start acting as if the toy is a phone - such as by pretending to answer it - it's not the same kind of pretend play. It's arguably not pretend play at all. Because, for all intents and purposes, it is a phone. A toddler doesn't understand the finer points of telecommunications. It's an object that looks like a phone and lights up and makes noise when they touch it like a phone. They know it's different from mommy's phone, but they don't really understand that it's not actually a phone.
Anecdotally speaking, I've also noticed that kids are way less likely to play interactively with these toy phones than they are with toys they pretend are phones. One thing I use in my work is a set of bean bags covered in different fabrics for sensory play. Kids often pretend these are phones. When kids pretend these beans are phones, they will often give me one and take another, and we'll pretend to talk to each other. Or they'll "answer" the phone and then hand it to me, and we'll take turns. I almost never see kids do this with those toy phones.
Another example is cars that make noise - cars that produce their own engine or horn sounds, fire trucks or police cars with siren noises, etc. Kids will play with these in more typical ways - rolling them back and forth or along tracks, putting toy people in them, etc. But because the car is making noise, the kid isn't. Those noises are called environmental sounds, and they're an important aspect of language development. A lot of kids learn to make those sounds before they start using real words, because they're more concrete and less abstract. It's easier to connect an object or animal to the sound it makes than to connect it to an arbitrary sound. (also, a lot of these sounds are easier to produce at younger ages than the correct word. "wee-woo" is easier to say than "fire truck.") If the toy is silent, then the kid is more likely to produce the sounds themselves. If the toy is making noise by itself - then why should the kid do it? What's the point? So you lose an opportunity for language development. And if you're playing with the kid interactively with a toy like this and you're trying to model these sounds and words, the kid isn't paying attention to you. They can barely even hear you over the noise of the toy. Kids that young aren't as good at attention management. They're going to struggle to ignore a loud or intense stimulus, like an ear-splitting siren on a toy fire truck, in order to pay attention to the subtler stimulus of speech at a normal volume. So you're also losing an opportunity for interaction.
There's also the problem that "lights and noise" toys are only designed to be played with one way. As much as I've talked about "typical play" here, the best kinds of toys can be played with in multiple ways. That promotes creativity and problem solving, and it accommodates neurodivergent kids and kids who just like to play differently.
For example, I have a little puzzle set with animals. The "correct" way to play with this is to put the animals into the correct spots. A bunch of kids would rather just play with the animal pieces as if they were figurines. Other kids don't care too much about the pieces, but they like pointing to and labeling the pictures on the puzzle board. Some kids like to bang the pieces together, because wooden pieces make a fun noise when you do that. Other kids like to line the pieces up or sort them. Some kids like taking the pieces out of the bag I store them in and then dumping the bag out. Some of my kids don't give a shit about the animals or the puzzle at all, but they like when I put the pieces on my head and then tuck my chin to make them fall down. But most importantly - many kids like to do more than one of these, depending on their mood. All of these things are totally valid ways to play with my puzzle. All of them work on important developmental skills.
It's normal for toddlers to go through phases where they're more interested in particular kinds of play behaviors. These are called "schemas." One example of a schema is when kids go through that phase where their favorite game is to throw things down. (Kids go through schemas at different times, but this is a really common one around 18mo.) They'll throw stuff off their high chair or out of their stroller or car seat. They want you, the adult, to pick it back up and give them the chance to do it again. They're not being "bad." They're discovering movement and gravity. (It's technically called a trajectory schema.)
A great toy is one that can be used in multiple different schemas and at multiple stages of development. That's why things like blocks, shape sorters, toy cars that don't make noise, nesting cups, and toy versions of real objects that don't make noise (toy food, baby dolls, toy animals, etc) are great. And it's just one more reason why "lights and noise" toys are awful.
And just as a final point, because this a common myth I spend a ton of time correcting - toys that talk to a toddler are not educational. Older kids, like age 5+, can learn from toys that talk. But a toddler is still learning how language works. Toys that talk are too abstracted. I see a lot of parents buying this godforsaken thing for their kids. If you've never seen it before, it's a touch-activated book. As the child touches pictures, the book produces the word. Parents think this helps the kid learn new words. This is not how kids learn to talk. To that baby, the noise the book is making is barely more significant than the noise of a slot machine. And actually, slot machines are a good analogy for lights-and-noise toys. Lots of flashing lights and noises and fun colors to draw and keep your attention, but no real substance.
On second thought, one more last point. I work with developmentally delayed kids and that colors my perspective on things. Toys like this might not be perfectly ideal for typically-developing kids, but they might not necessarily be a problem, either. Tons of typically developing kids play with these toys every day, and they're fine. These toys aren't going to give a kid developmental problems. But when you have a kid who already has developmental problems, moving away from lights-and-noise toys to more developmentally appropriate toys can make a huge difference. I see it happen every single day.
Characters being compared to dogs always use terriers or pitbulls or something for their metaphors. “They grab on and they don’t let go” “They keep worrying at it until it’s dead” etc.
Anyway, I want to see collies used as metaphors. Albert Payson Terhune style. “He was like an attack dog–making slash-and-run attacks, cutting them up worse every time, never staying in range long enough to get hurt but circling back over and over.”
@animatedamerican yes EXCELLENT.
“He was like a bloodhound–not actually that violent at all, but his reputation did the work for him.”
“He was like a corgi: by all signs unaware that a fight was even happening, just enthusiastic and delighted to be involved.”
“He was like a labrador– so known for being friendly and having a soft mouth that everyone forgot that he was actually quite large and had teeth.”
“He was like a poodle - much smarter than you’d expect for someone with such flamboyant hair ”
“He was like an Irish Wolfhound - he could do more damage being friendly than most people could do in a blind rage.”
If your book has a map I will admire it and I will still be confused cos I'm shit with maps
the differences between crocodiles and alligators in case u were not aware
Both are friends.
But how about gharial and caiman?
here comes the rest of the family
The gang’s all here
The difference between a crocodile and an alligator is if you see it in a while or later
Returning home
Lol
I'm sorry but it's absolutely vital that we use his direct quotes on this:
Feather River Bulletin, Quincy, California, March 20, 1924
HAPPY HUNDRED YEARS TO THIS JOKE