hello doctor lecter

So you know those news stories about how Millennials don’t buy enough breakfast cereal or paperback books or homes or whatever the hell that Boomers are complaining that “kids these days” don’t spend money on?  And y’all are like “LOL, no cash my pal”?  

I think there’s something more insidious going on.  You see, they thought they had you.  Forget the Saturday morning cartoons of my childhood, they had Disney Channel and Nickelodeon feeding you ads all day long.  Your generation got advertising in your schools.  Your parents took you to prosperity doctrine spewing MegaChurches (it’s Mega so it’s gotta impress the kids, right?).  

They thought you were going to be their generation of super-consumers.  

You are generations distant from the great depression, and the 1979 energy crisis.  Boomers want to pretend that the 2008 housing bubble wouldn’t affect the little kids.  And plus, we had grown past the era of Yankee thrift and hippie DIY frugality.  Right?  And there was no mopey Kurt Cobain glamorizing thrift-store flannel shirts.  You guys were going to out-consume the Boomer generation.  They were sure of it.

Those think pieces?  They’re Boomer disappointment that you have found value in something other than your place as a mindless consumer.

And yeah, I’m not going to pretend that y’all have more cash than you do.  It was fucking idiotic to think they were going to raise a consumer generation without having to pay them the money they would need to buy even life’s necessities.  And I could write a book about how my generation was complicit in destroying the old values around work and loyalty that left your generation screwed.  Really, I’m genuinely sorry for the mistakes we made.

Do you have any fucking idea how easy it is, in customer-service speak, to respect someone’s gender?

I mean, I’ve had super awkward situations where I have to say things like ‘I’m sorry, that name isn’t coming up in our system. Is there another name…“ And without fail they provide their deadname and I plug it in and I say ‘Ok, that came up, do you want me to fix that in our system?” And they say ‘Yes’ and then I ADD IT AS A SYNOMYMOUS NAME. Same as I would for someone recently married or divorced. The end.

I have never experienced a situation in which I have felt motivated to ask someone’s pronouns.

I have had situations in which I have thought to myself ‘I have no idea if this person is ‘sir’ or ‘ma'am’ and instead have gone ‘Next patient please?’ or ‘I can help who’s next’ or ‘I can help you now’ while looking directly at them.

I have had situations where I’ve gone ‘I’m like 90% certain that I’ve been given a record with this person’s deadname because this name does not match at all the gender presentation of the person I’m looking at’ And I say ‘Ok, can you spell your last name for me? Ok, spell your first name? And your date of birth?’

and then I quietly write ‘preferred name [the name they just spelled] on the top of thier record.

THIS IS NOT HARD.

It’s also invasive, none of their business–again, this is a one shot interaction with someone you will never see again–and dangerous. Even if you aren’t put in danger by it, you may still have to choose “do I actively agree to be misgendered, or do I out myself to this random stranger and everyone in earshot?”

If you force an introvert into a social gathering they don’t feel comfortable with/don’t want to go to you are responsible for their good time.

You have to include them in conversations or go sit with them when they have no one to talk to.

Because if you can’t do that, don’t make them come. Don’t force them in a situation where they feel alone and helpless and leave them floundering. 

ches

1. Port Elizabeth (South Africa)

2. Unknown

3. Nairobi (Kenya)

4. Pretoria (South Africa)

5. Aburi Botanical Gardens (Ghana)

6. Cape Town (South Africa)

7. Pretoria (South Africa)

8. Harare (Zimbabwe)

9. Windhoek (Namibia)

10. Windhoek (Namibia)

To @kushandwizdom this is a rather unfair portrayal of Africa as a whole since half of these are literally just South Africa.  So Instead to add to this post and better dispel the myth of Africa as the vast wasteland of poverty most people think, I found a much more mixed collection of pics from various countries.

Luanda, Angola

Agadir, Morocco

Lagos, Nigeria

Cairo, Egypt

Port Louis, Mauritius

Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire

Algiers, Algeria

Tripoli, Libya

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Tunis, Tunisia

So round. Such fluff.

Smol and angry

look at this shit

In the wild capybaras live in large groups so naturally a female capybara will take care of not only her own offspring, but all of the other offspring in the group. So capybaras are super great mothers who will adopt pretty much anything and take care of it.

Lots of places that rescue different animals will give a group of baby animals to a capybara to raise if they have one.

Like puppies

Ducks

Deer

Emus

here, i’ll start