love these two!!
my mom took this nearly 10 years ago. she was outside and just happened to have her camera when some newlyweds went by on a bicycle for two
Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai; Tada Never Falls In Love - Episode 7
“Yosemite“ by | Neil Bennette
“One leak will sink a ship, and one sin will destroy a sinner.” – John Bunyan
requested by @mercumeme
"At the words of institution, the bread and the wine surrender totally and so become the Body and Blood of Christ. How well do you surrender when you receive them?"
By the way, the way that No Child Left Behind impacts the trade worker shortage in the US is because in about 2002 shop classes, home ec classes, auto classes, etc, had their funding diverted into teaching kids how to pass standardized tests so that the schools could continue to pay teachers and keep the library open.
It’s hard to figure out that you might be interested in plumbing as a career when you’ve spent twelve years learning how to pass multiple choice tests and having ceramics and band as the only available electives.
This is one place where I actually WILL do the generational thing and say that Millennials and Gen Z got completely fucked in a way that older generations didn’t.
It’s actually really fucking hard to repair a cabinet when you’ve never had a shop class. It’s really goddamned difficult to learn everything about car maintenance on your own through youtube videos instead of in a semester of auto shop. It’s really goddamned difficult to figure out you want to be a plumber or an electrician or a welder when you are eighteen years old, have been taught to pass tests and cajoled into applying for college, and you’ve never handled an air compressor or used a socket wrench.
I try to keep my blog politics-free as much as possible. But on this topic I *wholeheartedly* agree with the OP.
For the last 20 years, education hasn’t been about developing skills. It’s about passing a damn multiple choice test and don’t get me started on the sheer stigma that so many places on be a trade worker (plumber, electrician, mechanic, HVAC etc).
Holy jeez seeing some of the tonka toys these guys and gals fresh outta high school can afford to drive around like it’s nothing, little to no debt and well on their way to getting a starter home and being financially successful versus where my college-educated ass was at the same time with my debt load and income or lack thereof.
Do trades work long hours, come home dirty and put in a lot of sweat? Absolutely. Is a lot of it glamorous recognition? Can’t say it is, no. Does it pay the bills and give you a means to secure your future without going the price of the average American starter home in debt and not relying on handouts and being set for life? Absolutely.
I’m not saying trades are for everyone. Yes, STEM fields are critical and the world needs its doctors, rocket scientists and engineers but to go almost triple digit in debt for an BA in psychology? :: sheepishly raises hand :: no!
I think one piece of advice that has done so much damage is the notion of “follow your dreams”. Mike Rowe made a speech on it, feel free to Google it at your leisure. I’m not saying don’t have your passion but make it a hobby, volunteer. Be sure above all else you have an occupation that takes care of you, your family and your future. Chase opportunity, not passion and you need a well-rounded education to help you get started on those opportunities. Taking a tests tells us nothing.
Mike Roe also has a foundation, I forget the name, but you can apply to it and it will help pay for trade school or another way of learning how to do a trade. You could Google Mike Roe Foundation and probably find it easily. It’s not for everyone but it’s helped many young kids get through trade school
I come from a family of tradesmen. I went to college for STEM/ medicine.
They’re way better off than I am 3 years out of college. They have no debt. They have plenty of income. I regret going to school a lot (especially with the insanity of covid lockdowns).
Regardless, don’t be afraid to learn a trade or homeschool your kids so they can learn instead of being put through nonsense tests
♡ Your daily dose of cat memes ᓚᘏᗢ ♡
"Ascending Dragon"
This is a picture I took of Namego Valley, deep in the mountains of Nara Prefecture. This place is located in a very remote location and is called one of the most beautiful spots in Japan by those in the know. There are deciduous forests along the dark green coniferous mountain ridges, and during the fall foliage season, the scenery looks like a dragon ascending to the heavens. This view, which appears quietly only during the few days of the best-conditioned fall season every year, is truly a beautiful art created by nature.
“Bring back slut shaming” is a movement that has been around for years. And the more I see our culture change, the more I sort of see where they are coming from.
Now. I don’t think we need to mock and ridicule sex workers. Not in the slightest. But we need to demean their work. We need to go back to getting the ick at the idea of sex work. Men need to go back to not wanting to sleep with a sex worker. Women need to go back to having morals and valuing their own bodies enough not to get into sex work.
Sex work is not glamorous or empowering. It’s just a glorified sex trafficking business. Most women who are prostitutes are forced into it by pimps. And now there are people on onlyfans making it a career and glamorizing it. All this does is create more pimps, more perverts and more deranged sex pests of both male and female gender.
Sex workers defend the sex trade by lifting it up as a get rich quick scheme. It’s not cute to sell your body ladies. It’s gross. It’s unsanitary. It’s inviting all sorts of unwanted attention, humiliation and even diseases. And it’s fueling girls younger and younger to want this get rich quick crap. You telling everyone how you made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling your crotch online only makes impressionable girls want to do the same. After all you say it’s easy money.
Younger and younger kids are exposed to sex. From the classrooms to online they see you and they see what you are doing. Sex work being glorified is the reason these kids are becoming adults and having sex drives earlier and earlier. Onlyfans and cam girls/boys are contributing to the sexualization of minors. Imagine having a daughter want to sell her body and tell me you’d be proud.
Also I have less and less sympathy when sex workers get up in arms about being objectified. Your line of work makes you an object and nothing more. People paying for your body don’t care about the person, the human being that you are. They only care about your sexual organs. So when you are treated like nothing but a sex object, no one is to blame but yourself. Sex work is not a gentle line of work.
Sex workers are typically feminists who want to be seen as more than sexual beings. Yet you set women back to only being sexual beings by selling your body to men who just see women as sex. You are causing women everywhere to be subjected to men and women who can get sex at the click of a button on their phones. People are so sexually charged that it’s sometimes all that others think about. Sec work, porn and other such things defend peoples absolutely twisted view of sex. It creates people who feel they are owed sex and sexual gratification. It fuels rape, porn addiction and other sex crimes.
Sex work fuels pedophilia. Men want younger and younger looking women because some sex workers online want to look like young teens to fit a fantasy. They act and do things children would do for payment. And with children wanting to now buy make up and skin care they look more like adults. This fuels child sex trafficking and pedophiles. It all goes back to sex work.
The best thing you can do for a sex worker is tell them how awful and disgusting their line of work is. The best thing you can do to protect sex workers is getting them out of it. Sex work is not and will never be real work. The quicker we illegalize it and make things like pornhub and onlyfans relics of the past, the quicker society can heal.