Things be wildin' these days.
WHERE DO YOU STAND
reblog if you fully and intentionally are referring to aspec people as well when you use the word queer to refer to the community
my partner once said, "if you have to explain your sexuality to straight people, you're probably queer"
When I’m out with Deaf friends, I put my hearing aid in my purse. It removes any ability to hear, but far more importantly, it removes the ambiguity that often haunts me.
In a restaurant, we point to the menu and gesture with the wait staff. The servers taking the order respond with gestures too. They pantomime “drinks?” and tell us they learned a bit of signs in kindergarten. Looking a little embarrassed, they sign “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day” in the middle of asking our salad dressing choice. We smile and gently redirect them to the menu. My friends are pros at this routine and ordering is easy ― delightful even. The contrast with how it feels to be out with my hearing husband is stunning.
Once my friends and I have ordered, we sign up a storm, talking about everything and shy about nothing. What would be the point? People are staring anyway. Our language is lavish, our faces alive. My friends discuss the food, but for me, the food is unimportant. I’m feasting on the smorgasbord of communication ― the luxury of chatting in a language that I not only understand 100% but that is a pleasure in and of itself. Taking nothing for granted, I bask in it all, and everything goes swimmingly.
Until I accidentally say the word “soup” out loud.
Pointing at the menu, I let the word slip out to the server. And our delightful meal goes straight downhill. Suddenly, the wait staff’s mouths start flapping; the beautiful, reaching, visual parts of their brains go dead, as if switched off.
“Whadda payu dictorom danu?” the server’s mouth seems to say. “Buddica taluca mariney?”
“No, I’m Deaf,” I say. A friend taps the server and, pointing to her coffee, pantomimes milking a cow. But the damage is done. The server has moved to stand next to me and, with laser-focus, looks only at me. Her pen at the ready, her mouth moves like a fish. With stunning speed, the beauty of the previous interactions ― the pantomiming, the pointing, the cooperative taking of our order ― has disappeared. “Duwanaa disser wida coffee anmik? Or widabeeaw fayuh-mow?”
Austin “Awti” Andrews (who’s a child of Deaf adults, often written as CODA) describes a similar situation.
“Everything was going so well,” he says. “The waiter was gesturing, it was terrific. And then I just said one word, and pow!! It’s like a bullet of stupidity shot straight into the waiter’s head,” he explains by signing a bullet in slow motion, zipping through the air and hitting the waiter’s forehead. Powwwww.
Hearing people might be shocked by this, but Deaf people laugh uproariously, cathartically.
“Damn! All I did was say one word!” I say to my friends. “But why do you do that?” they ask, looking at me with consternation and pity. “Why don’t you just turn your voice off, for once and for all?” they say.
Hearing people would probably think I’m the lucky one ― the success story ― because I can talk. But I agree with my friends.
In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal claimed the tree work is simply an annual ritual at this time of year. “We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention. In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season,” they wrote. “We support the WGA and SAG’s right to demonstrate and are working to provide some shade coverage. We continue to openly communicate with the labor leaders on-site to work together during this time.”
If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.
This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:
If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I'm not hearing about that, so... Tree law!
The Studios: *speak*
Botanists and other Tree Experts:
Update and confirmation of Imminent Tree Law:
He mentions later in the thread that not only do they not trim the trees annually, they’re trimmed at best once every 18 years. Supposed to be every five, and only in dormancy, which even my layman’s ass knows about tree trimming.
And yes, Universal can probably eat the fine. But it’s gonna be a whopper even if the trees survive (which is as mentioned kinda unlikely), California is a triple damage state for tree law, and it may increase dramatically if there were nesting birds in the trees.
All this to be a Captain Planet filler villain to some writers. And yes, it’s currently just the writers officially picketing there; SAG-AFTRA recommended against it for petty bullshit like this and the suddenly necessary sidewalk construction.
I asked my dad— a retired arborist—about TREE LAW and he just kinda blinked and said (i paraphrase because Dad Tangents, amirite?):
"Worst and best case I ever saw was a guy who was caught in the act of cutting down a C&C tree by two Department of Urban Forestry supervisors while they were randomly driving around on a Saturday. Not only did he have to deal with the cops showing up and months of paperwork and bureaucracy, but he also had to pay the fines AND cover the cost of the tree removal + stumping + buying a new tree + planting the new tree + wages for the regular crew plus the extra workers they needed to get the jobs done. That tree ended up costing him upwards of $35K, and that was over 20 years ago."
So yeah, respect Tree Law or pay out the bootyhole.
BTW for anyone too lazy to do the math a wage of $125 a day works out to about $15/hour for an 8-hour workday so..... someone in 1923 definitely had a vision of the future
can’t get over when famous gangster lucky luciano was like “hey lansky seems like quite a hassle getting all those nazis offa your terf you want us to help ya out” and meyer “Left Russia Because of Pogroms and Became A Gangster In The US” lansky was like “no. no getting to beat the shit out of nazis is reward enough for us. sorry lucky this one’s personal don’t worry about it”
here’s a quote from a New York Times article abt it
also bonus quote from that article
“quick question about the punching, judge perlman: how about murder instead”
everybody says that “the government” enlisted these mobsters to beat up nazis, but like. no. no that didn’t happen? judge nathan perlman illegally called up a man who could have him shot dead at a minute to say “hey. i’ve scoured the fucking law books tryna find a way to get these fucking nazis out of here, but my legal means have unfortunately run out. so-” and meyer fucking lansky was like “ah say no more boss lemme call a buncha friends and we’ll get this sorted out real quick don’t even bother paying me.“
can you imagine that phone call. like genuinely. how am i supposed to continue living my normal life knowing this happened. people who loooove talking about punching nazis, taKE FUCKING NOTES
this is my favorite Meyer Lansky story.
my second favorite Meyer Lansky story is about the time, many years later, that he was at a meeting of mafia heads and one of them started bragging about how his son was following him into the family business.
Meyer Lansky said “That’s nice. My son works for NASA.”
"YA books are brain rotting at any age" okay I know booktok is annoying but please get offline
For real though I may make jokes but YA is great and an absolutely valuable resource for tweens/teens and isn't completely represented by the love triangle romances it's become associated with (which tbh who cares if it does have that). YA includes Holes by Louis Sachar, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. And y'know I grew up reading a bunch of Sarah Dessen books, the Flowers in the Attic series, Thirteen Reasons Why, Twilight, Maximum Ride, etc etc and even though I probably wouldn't recommend those books now, they nurtured a love of reading that followed me afterwards!!! I'm grateful that people eventually realized that there is a tumultuous period between childhood and adulthood and gave that period of life a space in literature
Hey, PSA for my fellow disabled people: UPS workers are trying to negotiate a new contract, and it looks like it's leading to a strike soon. Now, I am absolutely all for this, they need safe working conditions and should strike if need be, but for us?
Please contact your doctors and make sure you're prepared in any way possible. This will affect many of you, whether that's through med deliveries, oxygen tanks, or other one-use supplies. If you live in America, try to get in contact with an insurance case worker for resources and advice if you're able.
Stay safe, and hope that the precaution isn't necessary.
One of my meds has to be delivered overnight UPS premiere gold refrigerated… time to call up the company and get this sorted.
I fully support the strike, because I’ve been following the development and the conditions they work under are truly egregious (I don’t know why OSHA hasn’t cracked down honestly), but I’ve also literally seen the drivers about to collapse in the heat. But it makes me furious how fragile our medical supply system is that one strike like this could literally be putting so many people in grave danger. That’s on the medical supply and shipping companies, not the UPS workers OR the medical providers.
imagine you saw an alien spacecraft and your first reaction was to critique its flat color palette and unimaginative lines
The Truth is Out There and It Has Bad Aesthetics
Because context actually makes the already great headline even greater:
“I know this is horrible,” del Toro continues. “You sound like a complete lunatic, but I saw a UFO. I didn’t want to see a UFO. It was horribly designed. I was with a friend. We bought a six-pack. We didn’t consume it, and there was a place called Cerro del Cuatro, “Mountain of the Four,” on the periphery of Guadalajara. We said, ‘Let’s go to the highway.’ We sit down to watch the stars and have the beer and talk. We were the only guys by the freeway. And we saw a light on the horizon going super-fast, not linear. And I said, ‘Honk and flash the lights.’ And we started honking.”
The UFO, says del Toro, “Went from 1,000 meters away [to much closer] in less than a second — and it was so crappy. It was a flying saucer, so clichéd, with lights [blinking]. It’s so sad: I wish I could reveal they’re not what you think they are. They are what you think they are. And the fear we felt was so primal. I have never been that scared in my life. We jumped in the car, drove really fast. It was following us, and then I looked back and it was gone.”
(x)
the same man that made a movie about making giant robots to fight aliens SAW SOME ALIENS, INSULTED THEIR AESTHETIC, and RAN AWAY SCREAMING
“there is intelligent life out there but it’s really fuckin tacky”
Not even remotely kidding when I say that if you don’t fuck with the LGBTQIA+ community, I do not and will not fuck with you. Big ass love to all the queer folks out there. If you’re on my blog, you’re in a safe place.
Clark Kent’s birthday canonically being February 29th is hysterical to me. Not because it’s meant to jokingly explain away how Superman is a timeless character, but because it implies Martha and Jonathan Kent found an alien baby in a cornfield, and when pressed to choose a birthday for their new baby, they gave him the most difficult birthday possible.
clark is clearly not a newborn and they're just going "well he is a leap day baby we don't really know how old he is! you know how newborns are, we lost track of time, the kitchen calendar got ruined by water when the upstairs shower leaked! he could be 1, he could be 2!"
wait i'm not done.
this man is an ALIEN. he meets Batman AS AN ALIEN BEING. imagine knowing Superman for like, a year or so, enough that this friendship is solidifying, and his age/birthday comes up (maybe because he insisted on getting something small for Bruce's more publicly known birthday!) and this adult alien who is NOT BEYOND pulling petty shit when it's harmless and funny, says with a straight face and no explanation, that he's six years old. what is bruce supposed to do with that? maybe kryptonians age differently! clark could draw it out for a while, letting Bruce think he's younger than Robin! and Bruce wouldn't have a good reason to disbelieve it unless he like, went digging for Clark's high school records or something (which he MIGHT do but then maybe he's trying to respect a little of the privacy of the one friend he managed to make, pre-intense paranoia days).
and then it was just a leap day joke
AND THEN KON SHOWS UP AND IS LIKE
"I'm six!"
AND BRUCE IS LIKE
"i'm not fucking falling for that again."
Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this
This is a scheduled post for two days before the anniversary of the moon landing. Please get your moon themed items and foods sorted now in anticipation.
I’ve got my moon landing dress from the 50th anniversary on deck!
The difference between a strike and a boycott is the focus of what is being withheald
In a strike the supply is being withheald because the workers aren’t producing whatever it is. It works by having the masses demand what the companies cannot produce and therefore, if the company wants to continue providing whatever it is in order to continue making money, they have to listen to worker demands
In a boycott the demand is being withheald because the masses aren’t buying or engaging with whatever it is. It works because companies, obviously, need to actually sell things in order to function. The point is to make the company change something about a product in order to appeal to the masses again
That’s why you shouldn’t boycott when a strike is on (unless the union says so) because it kind of cancels out the strike. If there is no demand then witholding supply is meaningless - again, unless the union says so, since that means they factored it into their industrial action plan and believe it would be beneficial
I know people want to help but the reaction to call for a boycott whenever there’s a strike just kind of…… doesn’t
Anonymous asked:
if every statue in washington d.c. came alive at the same time (night at the museum style), who would win in a free-for-all fight to the death?
depends on if abe linky gets his chair or not
ABCDEFGHI KLMNO RSTUVW Y
21/26
Whoa, hang on now, are we including nonhuman sculptures? Would they have to fight, say, Uncle Beazley (a triceratops)? Or abstract sculptures? Also, Lincoln may be large, but consider there's a lot of generals in the statuary of D.C. Some of them are armed, even; I know they gave Joan of Arc a sword!
@national-park-service-official Technically this is within your purview.
For someone so sweet and cheerful he sure is comitted to driving people nuts. I am on the verge of chewing on my phone here!
I remember someone saying "mad scientists in fiction aren't scientists because there's never a control group"
I think if you've created an elixir that turns people into goat men you have sort have gone past the need for a control group. The control group is not going to placebo themselves into goat men. You can probably not run the control group, and safely assume that none of them would have turned into goat men. That said, having a control group for that would make the mad scientist seem extra crazy and be really really funny, especially if he was carefully testing them for goat like features from the dyed water they drank instead of the elixir
seeing AI covers of a character from a tv show on my dash so im gonna say it