I don’t know who needs to hear this, but going to thrift stores and buying all the usable sheets and t-shirts and jeans and then cutting them up to make rag rugs or yarn or whatever for your shabby chic/cottagecore aesthetic isn’t solar punk.

It’s gentrification.

You are taking resources away from people who need them so that you can pretend to live a less consumptive lifestyle. You are cosplaying sustainability.

The whole fucking point of rag rugs etc. was that you made use of textiles you already had that could no longer be used for their intended purpose, and you extended the lifecycle of the item by turning it into something else useful instead of throwing it in the garbage. When you buy clothing that still has use *as clothing* just to cut it into rags to make a rug, you’re *speeding up* the consumption of materials. You’re shortening the lifecycle. You are consuming MORE.

And you’re doing it by buying up resources that marginalized people need. Those thrift store sheets would look so much better on somebody’s fucking bed, but since you wanted that Little House on the Prairie vibe, someone is sleeping on a bare mattress now whilst trying to save their pennies to go to fucking Wal-Mart for bedsheets. And that denim throw pillow probably looks adorable on your sofa, but somebody needed a pair of sturdy jeans for that job they’re trying to get, and now there’s nothing available.

But sure, your house looks cute. I guess that’s important.

If you do want to work with secondhand materials- put a message round to friends. I have a cashmere jumper I got for free because a friend was going to throw it out. Just 20 minutes of knitting some custom elbow patches and sewing them on and I had a jumper for free that would have cost £150 new and was headed for the trash.

When I was a teenager my brother saved all his jeans for me and I made them into a quilt- it's got a lot of heft to it so works similarly to a weighted blanket (I didn't know what they were when I made it!).

A friend of my mum is an interior designer. She gives me offcuts.

Get the word out there among friends, in your community, even through things like Craigslist. People hate throwing away a pair of jeans over a crotch hole, or a sheet with a blood stain, or a tablecloth with a cigarette burn.

This... especially if you are thin and buying plus size clothes for this purpose or to make them into your own clothing garments. Taking in some thing that’s a size or two too big is one thing but people who are small, extra small, medium etc. purposefully buying up items that are 3X or above just to shrink them into something you want to wear? Ngl that's really fucked up given how hard access to decent clothing can be for people of size.

If there’s like 40 giant T-shirts at a thrift store, one probably won’t be that big of a deal but still, consider the pool you are drawing from and how you can do better.

There’s no second hand goods shortage

I volunteered in a thrift store for a while, and the volume of donations was vastly more than the store could handle. We picked out maybe twenty percent (I’m guessing here) of the clothes and linen and sent the rest on to places that sold it cheap, or in markets overseas (a complex issue in itself), or broke it down for rags, buttons, etc. So I’m pretty sure that if you go buy ALL the sheets they have on the shelves, by the end of the day those shelves will be filled with things of maybe slightly lower quality.

Here’s a quote from a 2020 US article:

As for plus sized clothing, there are some issues surrounding supply of women’s plus size clothes. I’ve never seen a shortage of bigger men’s sizes, though. So if you want to cut up a shirt into a minidress? Maybe grab it from the men’s section.

Sure, it’s best if you can refashion something damaged, something that would have ended up as rags or in landfill. This is absolutely true. Rag rugs and t-shirt yarn are a great way to use up things that you can’t donate because they’re too stained or stretched or torn. But right now, due to a combination of COVID and fast fashion, donation centres are drowning in product they can’t sell, to the point where storage has become an issue.

So go ahead and make your rag rug or your thrift flip. Buy a sheet and turn it into a dress. Support charity shops. You’re not the problem here.

Habits, Tics, Stims, Compulsions, and Behaviors

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You do. You feel no ill effects aside from maybe disappointment at having to stop. You tap your foot often. This is a habit.

You are tapping your foot, whether you want to or not. Someone asks you to stop. You can’t. If you try to it feels like holding in a sneeze and the pressure builds up. It might come out in a different, even less controllable action. This is a tic.

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You do, but immediately feel worse physically or emotionally. It was a way for you to express yourself and how you feel. You may feel pressure. This is a stim.

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You can’t, because if you do something bad will happen, possibly some specific bad thing. You know it’s irrational, but not doing it gives you anxiety. This is a compulsion.

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You can’t, because if you do this specific bad thing will happen. It is not irrational to you, although it is to others. This is an erratic/disorganized behavior.

Just overheard two teenaged boys at the front door of their friend’s house. One was on the phone and gently said, “Oh, did you just wake up?” And the other one yelled “OPEN UP, FUCKNUGGET!” while slamming his hand on the door. I gotta say I love the friendship dynamic

I can’t believe I forgot to mention that the guy who lived there answered the door while wrapped up in his blanket, and it was way past noon at the time, which really sold the entire interaction as a whole

Counter Strike: Global Offensive

this guys videos are fucking incredible i really want everyone to watch them

this man is like midas but with knives instead of gold, he can make anything a knife, sicssor knives ,ice knives, cardboard knives, tiny knives if it can be made into a knife he will do it, and if he cant, he will do it anyway because fuck you

This doesn’t even have the best one. One time he made a knife out of ravioli then proceeded to use the knife made out of ravioli to cut up cheese and tomatoes and basil and shit then took the ravioli knife that he had used to cut up his other ingredients and cooked said knife with those ingredients and ate the fucking knife!

nah, his best one? he made a knife out of smoke.

You know how to sharpen smoke? this guy does.

Let’s not forget everything else in his videos.

Fun family story: when my aunt was marrying her wife everyone was really excited but also dreading it because my aunt is known for her insanely long speeches so everyone knew her vows would be like 9 hours long so when it came time for her to say her vows she had a shit ton of cue cards in her hands and even her wife started groaning and my aunt took a deep inhale and then unravelled all the cue cards which were taped together and they all just read ‘HOT DAMN’ in giant letters and those were my aunts vows.

And now since I officially have permission to use this photo

GET FUCKED

Day 27 watch out I’m coming!

.

Adults are valid too

Reblog this fat happy boy for a good night sleep tonight

Nothing bad happens if you don’t! Just a cute good luck charm

He brings no harm, only good fortune and good dreams

A global fast-track travel method, and it's being used to kill.

What if it was used to bring food anywhere in the world within an hour?

What if it was used to rescue people anywhere in the world from natural disasters, flying in and saving as many people from floods or hurricanes or tsunamis as possible immediately?

What if it was used as a global library, delivering books all around the world?

What if it was used as a way to bring in supplies to build housing or hospitals wherever needed?

Just imagine how the world would look, immediately changed by a global network of mutual aid.

But no. Instead it is being used to kill more people off, completely unnecessarily. You can't claim it's to defend America when its express purpose is to bring weapons anywhere in the world the USA wishes to invade.

I started with asking an innocent question

The answers were unanimously “no” but the explanations were a bit puzzling

That sounded made up so I doggedly persevered

I understand that there is conceivably one.

The answers offered several admissible distinctions:

I knew that!

I did not know that

the more explanations I read, the less I understood the sun as a concept

???

eventually, my unflinching investigation of the sun brought me to this page and it was like, this is not what I asked but finally an answer that makes sense:

“Ten-year-olds are the most frightening people on the planet. I think we all remember being ten, where making eye contact during recess meant you were going to have a Pokemon battle, and the winner got to keep the loser’s lunch money.

“But as an adult, seeing the kids who are off on their Pokemon journeys, swaggering along, ready to fight anybody and everybody they meet, up to and including God, it really hits you. These children will fight you, and when they win, your best bet is to just throw twenty dollars on the ground and flee in the other direction.

“The worst ones are the ones with six Pokeballs on their belt. You’re like, I possess one elderly Snubbull, and for all I know, you’ve got a Rayquaza in one of those balls. 

“And sometimes, you hear stories. Like, ‘a ten-year-old boy dismantled Team Rocket’. Or ‘a ten-year-old girl dismantled two terrorist organizations and then tamed the primal manifestations of earth and sea’. I think you could tell me a ten-year-old did anything, and I wouldn’t question it. 

“To be honest, I think the Pokemon Leagues are just there to keep those kids occupied so they don’t just take over.”

So this is the material John Mulaney performs in the pokemon world

bi women are allowed to talk about their attraction to men without adding qualifiers.

if you see a bisexual woman being excited about her male crush/partner and feel tempted to say anything that isn’t positive leave her alone.

thinking about this dynamic

cannot stress how badly i needed all of these images together on a post

glad we're all in agreement

@honeyed-simmy​

this is that post i was referring to in my taz art

untitled, jenna anderson // driving, not washing, richard siken // sweet william, dir. brooks reynolds (2019) // eid al-adha, yasmin belkhyr // burning car, yasmin sison // perfect, shira erlichman // turn into ashes, ph. eliseo zubiri.

source: x

cute couple things i’ve seen on campus this semester that make me want a stupid boyfriend

LGBTQ+ Lifetime Membership Cards from QueerWorld

I WANT