Welcome to my den

Thicc crocodile passing on your timeline🐊

will be thinking about this probably for the rest of the week

[Video description–

Construction works, including stamping of designs on concrete flooring, and also the cutting of tiles to fit around tricky obstructions such as light switches and an octagonal column.

End video description.]

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I WANT THAT ANGLE TOOL SO BAD

“Unskilled labor” my ass

When I was drunk one night and watching the Jellyfish livestream, I reached out to the Monterey Bay Aquarium with a dumb question about their jellyfish... And they actually emailed me back.

(yes, these are actually my own screenshots, I am in tears laughing)

DO YOUR ANIMAL EXPERTS HAVE TO UNTANGLE THE JELLYFISH

AND THE ANSWER IS FUCKING YES, THE JELLIES GET TANGLED SOMETIMES LMAO

"No winter maintenance. The bridge can be slippery."

I like saying "I'll allow it" only in contexts where I have no power or authority

one of the best ways i’ve found to combat that inherent depressive pessimism without veering into toxic positivity territory is simply the phrase “i’m open to the possibility”

this particularly works with anything negative i’ve forecasted. “i woke up feeling like shit today, so my day is gonna suck” isn’t a particularly helpful thought, but “it’s a great day to be alive!!!!!” feels hollow and insincere when i have a pounding headache & am running on three hours of sleep

instead i’ll tell myself, “i really don’t feel good right now, but i’m open to the possibility that coffee and breakfast might perk me up a bit.” or “i’m in a lot of pain today, but i’m open to the possibility that my workday might still have fun parts despite that”

sometimes, when your impulse is to slam the door on anything good, but you’re not exactly up to going out & hunting it down yourself, leaving the door open just a crack makes all the difference

This helped me today hope it helps someone else too

Another comic based on a favorite post of mine, because what can I say? I love posts

Original post by @cryptotheism

Idk who needs to hear this but bisexuality includes trans people. Not "it can" include trans people or it "sometimes" includes trans people. It does. It always has. Any bisexual who says there's doesn't is just a transphobe and doesn't fucking represent what we're about.

'Pansexuality is like bisexuality, except it includes trans people' was one of the biggest brainrot takes of the mid 2010s on this hellsite, truly.

I'm gonna need you to do that thing you wanted to do, try to get it done by the end of the day

this is from a "manipulation advice" video and it's just so fucking funny to me. why didn't I think of responding to insults like this

I can’t remember where I got the information now, but apparently if you stare silently for at least 4 seconds it triggers a feeling of rejection which I don’t have to tell you is uncomfortable and makes most people backpedal pretty quickly and awkwardly.

Immediately going concerned/extremely polite always throws people off their game, it's beautiful.

The Quiet Stare Of Disappointment is also super effective, indeed .

My sister and I were walking across a car park.

Random bloke: Maybe if you walked more you wouldn’t be so fat

My sister stops dead, stares him in the eye and goes: Is everything alright at home?

I’ve never seen a man’s face turn to horror so fast

We just walked to her car and drove off

The silent stare is so effective. I learned about it in social psychology in undergrad, and have often used it to great effect. Probably the best example is when I went to sign the papers on the car I was buying—I had already worked out a price and my trade-in with the salesmen the day before—and they decided they were going to take $1000 off the value of my trade-in. (I want to emphasize that I was buying a 10+ year old car; I ended up paying $8k total.)

"No," I said. "That doesn't work for me. If you're unwilling to honor the deal we made, I'm not buying a car from you."

Well, they talk for a living. So they talked. Here I am, a young woman on my own, and these two men at the dealership are giving me all the reasons they couldn't possibly honor the deal we made yesterday.

So I sat. I didn't say a word. I just stared at them.

They kept talking, trying to get a reaction out of me. After about 10 seconds, they abandoned all pretense of logical arguments and started hammering pathos. They weren't even buying my old car from me for the dealership; it was a personal favor for which they were using their own hard-earned money to help this poor guy at church who just got out of rehab and his house burned down and his children exploded and his dog left him for another man, etc etc

I didn't say a word. I just stared at them.

They began falling apart. They continued trying to hustle me, but their confidence left them. I think they might have been sweating.

Within five minutes they caved and signed the papers for our original deal.

I have been told for years I am intimidating, and by people who had never even seen me angry. Just in general, intimidating. This absolutely baffled me until a friend one day pointed at me and said — “This! Right now! You’re being intimidating!”

Friends, I was staring silently at someone while inwardly flailing desperately to come up with a response to something they’d said that wasn’t overly rude but also was holding my ground. In my mind, I was being hellishly awkward. I couldn’t summon any charm, I couldn’t figure out a sentence to string together. Silence spooled out horrifyingly between us as I got farther and farther away from being articulate and became more and more flustered by this failure to respond. From the outside, I guess, I just looked like a stone cold bitch waiting for them to get their shit together, lol.

I still don’t think I’m intimidating but you know I’ll take it.

a huge part of appearing intimidating is simply being obviously willing to no bluff just walk away

conveying wordlessly their unimportance

...Wait, so I can just do the Mom Look on full-grown people? The look I give my five-year-old when he starts to do something he knows he shouldn't... I can do that to normal adults when they do something THEY know they shouldn't?!

Goddamn, I'm gonna have to try that!

These are all great points, but the "are you okay?" answer is not just a tool to 'own' someone, it genuinely helps me in another way

That person is very probably not Mad At You, strangers are very rarely Mad At You, they don't know you. They are probably having a bad day and you are just some guy that happens to be there

'are you okay', reminds me that they are probably not a horrid rude person 24/7, they are probably having a bad day. And hopefully it reminds them too

I'm never saying it to shame someone into changing their behaviour, I'm genuinely asking because they probably are not okay

I'm going to say that this isn't just helpful with rude strangers

When my kid was small and acting up I would stop and ask "are you okay?" Because I assumed if they were behaving badly there was a reason and there usually was and they didn't know how better to articulate it

Now they are a teenager it's still helpful

And if me or my husband is being dick it's not usual behaviour and "are you okay?" Is helpful

Hell my teenager uses it on me

I was having a very bad mental health day the other day and it was making me irritable and frustrated and I was being kinda a bitch because I was overwhelmed and we had this convo:

Teenager: are you okay?

Me: *angrily* no

Teenager: can I help?

Me: no

Teenager: should I leave you alone?

Me: yes

And then they left me alone

And then after I calmed down I apologised and made sure they knew they hadn't done anything wrong and I wasn't irritated at them

Communication is good

Columbug…Buglumbo…idk anyway he’s a moth

Ok guys! Just a little heads up for those who might not know but there is a common scam going on and you have to be careful because they will ask you to add a discord and steal your account to scam more people and then if they can, steal your bank data!!

They'll send a text like this one below vvv

I've been scammed that way and would like to spread the word so it doesn't happen to anyone else.

Report them and block them if you receive this message, don't ever answer !

If you're not comfy right now, please do whatever it may take to get yourself more comfortable. If you're hungry, please eat. If you're tired, please rest. If there's something you want that only you can do for yourself, then push yourself to build up the strength you need to get it done. Listening to what your body is telling you, and taking whatever steps are needed to feel better is always worth that time and effort. Ideally, I hope you get to spend as much of your life as possible in a state of being comfortable

Jacob Anderson talking about the icons that shaped his Louis — Grace Jones & Eartha Kitt (Part ll)

Hello person having transgender thoughts but convinced they aren't trans because they don't have the requisite amount of dysphoria they think they need

Hi I transitioned without even thinking I had dysphoria. Like later in hindsight I can go "oh that's probably what it was" but for the first year of my transition I was straight up like "I like being a guy but I like being a girl WAY more" and you can do that!! There is no prerequisite amount of suffering needed to make yourself happier.

Gonna include these tags cuz they're good

So I was at SDCC this year, and I passed a stall in the ladies' and heard someone sobbing inside. Just bawling, fully melting down. My-dog-just-died levels of crying. And I've spent a lot of time in therapy trying to learn better boundaries around helping people, but I'm not made of stone, so I stopped outside the stall door and asked, "Are you okay?"

The woman's breath caught, and she said, "Yeah, I'm fine," in the least fine voice I have ever heard.

So I walked away. Made it all the way to the sinks. Washed my hands. And turned around and went back because nope, not fine, not okay.

"Look, I don't want to be a dick, and you don't have to tell me what's going on, but is there anything that would help? I've got water, ibuprofen, and safety pins, and I could find other stuff."

"No, no, it's fine. I have those too."

"...okay."

I made it to the sinks again. She went back to sobbing like her heart was being torn out one strand of muscle at a time.

An older woman sidled up to me. "Did she tell you anything?"

"Nope. I offered her water and ibuprofen, too."

"Oh! I've got snacks. Maybe that'll help."

"Worth a shot. Oh, hey, I think I have some of my business cards for my Etsy shop in here—I could write my number on one if she needs help later."

"I've got a pen!"

We hurried back to the stall, offered the snacks, and were rebuffed. Finally we slid the card and the pen under the stall door, explained that we were both mom friends/teachers/etc. and trying to help-not-creep, and reluctantly fucked off. I personally felt like shit about it, but I had places to be and I felt like I was close to overstepping the crying woman's boundaries if I hadn't already done so. And if I'd made her feel unsafe, well, she could toss the card.

The following morning, I got a text from an unknown number.

She identified herself as "Rose from the bathroom" and explained that she'd had a hell of a day, with multiple people being cruel to her, seemingly for no good reason. She'd hit her breaking point and fled to the bathroom to cry it out ... at which point two strangers had rocked up, checked on her multiple times, and generally done the dance of most social mammals when a member of their group is in unexplained distress. The two of us had, more or less accidentally, restored her faith in humanity by being worried apes at her. 18 hours later, she was having a much better time, and a lot of it was due to the two of us shoving things under her door.

Anyway, turns out we live about 20 minutes apart, and we're going to meet up for tea after we've recovered from con exhaustion.

So if you ever feel like humans in general and/or fandom humans in particular are irredeemable shits, remember that sometimes the same species who'll ruin your con day will try to slide trail mix and ibuprofen under your stall door in case it helps.

I still don't know what Rose looks like, btw (although apparently she knows what I look like—I mentioned I was in cosplay and she said she'd seen me around). I don't know whether she's cis or trans. So next time you hear someone bitching about trans women in the ladies', feel free to tell them that it never once crossed anybody's mind to ask. If you're crying in the bathroom, you're my sister.

Maybe take the trail mix, though. We apes worry about one another.

unfortunately a lot of the corny self help advice turns out to be true but the thing is you have to come to those conclusions yourself otherwise it just sounds dismissive and dumb