Hey Humans

i’m reposting this from a deactivated account but many links were broken or uk-based, so i’ve verified links and resources ~ og post ~ please let me know if anything needs to be added/updated

suicide & crisis hotline: call or text 988 (800-273-8255)

trans lifeline: 877-565-8860

depression hotline: 866-903-3787

eating disorders helpline: 800-931-2237

rape and sexual assault: 800-656-4673

domestic violence hotline: 800-799-7233 or text “START” to 88788

child abuse hotline: 800-422-4453 or text “HELP” to 800-422-4453

grief support: griefshare.org or text “HELLO” to 741741

runaway safeline: 1-800-786-2929

after abortion hotline/pro-voice: text exhale pro-voice at 617-749-2948

trevor project

men just love to run their fucking mouth about what women do or do not want without even once considering consulting any actual women on the matter

(No, I will not tell you her discipline. I don't roll like that and I don't need fuckos harassing a teenage girl over her ancle's blog.)

She didn't quite qualify for Olympics-level. Pretty close, though; she took a pretty terrible injury last year that should have ended her career right then, and the fact she had a final season at all is frankly more impressive to me than any Olympics qualifier could have been.

Do you know what she practiced in?

Shorts over a plain leotard.

Do you know how much it affected her performance?

Not at all.

Do you know what she told me she hated most about her gym uniform?

The fucking sequins.

The leotard is so thin that the sequins poke through it when you're moving. It hurts.

But girls gotta be all glittery and shiny and show their asses while the boys are in shorts and tanks. The same shorts and tanks the girls wear for practice.

The Rodeo Rule: you only have to do it for the first time once.

The Rohan Rule: if you are at a social function full of new people and you want to be liked, find someone doing important work like setup or food prep and offer to help.

The Tutorial Mode Rule: to navigate an unfamiliar situation where you fear you will mess up an interaction, preface the interaction by mentioning that you've never done this before, and let them know if you have a specific concern or question.

The Rocket Science Rule: most new things you want to try seem very complicated but are simple when taken step by step.

The [X] Will Remember That Rule: if you need to make small talk with the same person on a regular basis, try to save one fact or current event in their life from a given conversation and bring it up next time you talk.

Dunkin to the right

Here I am

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

I see this reaction a lot, and I gotta say, it always makes me a little sad. Whenever the conversation of exploitation of labor comes up, inevitably someone finds themselves struggling with the guilt of “It is so important to me not to contribute to exploitation but I cannot do this thing myself and need someone else to do it for me, so how do I even approach that?”

Exploitation isn’t in the hiring of a service worker. Exploitation is in the respect you show them for their ability to perform the service you need from them.

I have been on a cleaning service staff before, and also been someone who hired a cleaning service, and I can tell you for sure that a lot of cleaning crews (especially worker owned ones) absolutely LOVE their clients and are genuinely happy to be able to make their lives better. The clients they don’t like? Those are the ones who disrespect the workers.

When I was involved with a cleaning service, we had everything from little old ladies living alone to McMasions with five cars as clients, and I can assure you that whenever there was someone who clearly hired us because they were overwhelmed or unable to keep their space clean, those were the households where you put a little more elbow grease in and did a deep clean even when it wasn’t paid for, because you could see how much these people were trying and struggling, and they were always so kind and generous and often embarrassed when talking to you about the job.

I only hired a service a couple if times in my life, but whenever I did, I worked with the same people as often as I could, tipped as well as I could afford, and tried to be the kind of client I would want to have, and that’s how I often ended up with my baseboards cleaned too, or my fridge scrubbed and organized or a restorative clean done in a high use room even when that wasn’t what I had scheduled or paid for.

I’ve heard the same thing from all manner of service workers over the years. Many of us like our jobs! We enjoy the work. It’s the customers that can do a number on you.

They’ve gotta eat too.

You are putting money in their pocket. That is not a bad thing.

Listen, let me tell you, okay?

Shortly before I got laid off, I went for a pedicure at my favorite place for the first time in over two years. I’d decided to switch places because it’s a 30-mile-round-trip drive and I wanted something closer to home, but I’d been deeply disappointed by local options, so back to my original spa I went.

Over two years.

I WALKED IN THE DOOR AND THE OWNER GREETED ME BY NAME.

This is a busy place. She sees several hundred people a week.

I didn’t ask, but I’m pretty sure I know why she remembers me, and do you know what I think it is?

1) I’m polite

2) I tip well

3) on the occasions when I’ve seen someone in there decide to get racist over most of the staff being Vietnamese, I give them hell because I know the staff can’t and also I’m white so, sadly, they’re more likely to actually be embarrassed if I do it.

Am I exploiting my pedicure tech? I guess that depends on your definition of exploitation. I have terrible feet (thanks, family) and I appreciate the work of someone trained to deal with the calluses from my weird gait and the toenail that likes to grow into my foot. I make sure they know I appreciate it, both verbally and financially. Is that exploitation?

.

also like. if you’re paying the cleaning service enough to cover a decent wage for the cleaning staff’s time plus a share of the cleaning supplies and admin staff pay and whatnot (which you probably are) and you’re treating the cleaning staff like people? it is still possible to likely that the cleaning staff are being exploited. by the cleaning service.

that’s not on you. that’s on whoever is pocketing the profits that should’ve been part of the cost of labor, or pocketing the profits that should’ve been part of the cost of health and safety measures, or.

anyway write your legislators about making minimum wage a living wage with annual cost-of-living increases, and about stronger labor protections, with enough higher fines for noncompliance that paying the fines will cost employers more than it’ll cost employers to pay and protect its staff properly

something needs to change here

this is urgent

I don’t know how to do it

death is the ultimate metaphor for drastic change. it’s a general specific. whatever your problems are, it is very likely that dead people don’t have to deal with them. a real solution to your problems may demand a very narrow range of action that’s likely to be out of reach at this moment, but death is sold on every street corner, so it feels like a more realistic fantasy than happiness.

you don’t really want to die per se but it’s also not completely random chemicals swamping your brain for no reason. you want the pain to stop, you want to be somewhere else, you want to be someone else. it’s urgent. you don’t know how to do it. the end is not the end but a means that feels within your reach right now.

This post talks about a new DM feature in youtube. What it fails to mention is that as part of this new feature is that when you send someone a link to a video, and they open it in the youtube app, they will see who sent them the link. Specifically, your channel name.

If your google account name is your real name, so is your channel name by default.

This means the new default behavior is that everyone you send a youtube link to will see your full name if they open it in the mobile app.

To turn this off:

Go to your youtube app settings

Go to Privacy

Turn off "Channel visibility for shared links"

I am a raccoon biologist and one of the few people in the state allowed to take in captive bred raccoons that had been possessed illegally. The raccoon in the photos is Moonshine, but she is currently at the animal sanctuary where I work as I had been quarantining multiple new intakes from an abuse case. I still have two males (Rum Tum Tugger and Electra) left in my home enclosure as we are getting them neutered and then hopefully sending them to an AZA accredited zoo.

A fashionable femme and a stud in front of a car in 1950s Buffalo, New York.