Damn the perceived world sounds cool as hell

To most people, anything less than 10%, in any context, is basically “insignificant, not even worth your attention.”

The idea that Asians could be “only” 4% of the US population, and yet you still see a couple Asian people every day of your life, is deeply counterintuitive to most people. People don’t truly grasp that they pass by hundreds if not thousands of strangers every day and about 1 in 25 of them are going to be Asian.

Anyway. I was painting the wall when it hit. My friend heard me make a noise and asked what was wrong—I explained that I had just fallen through several portals. I realized that painting the wall fulfilled my entire hierarchy of needs, and was absolutely sure that I was on track to escaping the cycle of samsara if I just kept at it a little longer. I was thwarted on my journey towards nirvana only by the fact that I ran out of paint.

Seeking a surrogate act of humble service through which I might be redeemed and made human, I turned to unwashed dishes in the sink and took up the holy weapon of the sponge. I was partway through cleaning the blender when it REALLY hit.

You ever clean a blender? It’s a shockingly intimate act. They are complex tools. One of the most complicated denizens of the kitchen. Glass and steel and rubber and plastic. Fuck! They’ve got gaskets. You can’t just scrub ‘em and rinse them down like any other piece of shit dish. You’ve got to dissemble them piece by piece, groove by sensitive groove, taking care to lavish the spinning blades with cautious attention. There’s something sensual about it. Something strangely vulnerable.

As I stood there, turning the pieces over in my hands, I thought about all the things we ask of blenders. They don’t have an easy job. They are hard laborers taking on a thankless task. I have used them so roughly in my haste for high-density smoothies, pushing them to their limits and occasionally breaking them. I remembered the smell of acrid smoke and decaying rubber that filled the kitchen in the break room the last time I tried to make a smoothie at work—the motor overtaxed and melted, the gasket cracked and brittle. Strawberry slurry leaked out of it like the blood of a slain animal.

Was this blender built to last? Or was it doomed to an early grave in some distant landfill by the genetic disorder of planned obsolescence? I didn’t know, and was far too high to make an educated guess. But I knew that whatever care and tenderness and empathy I put into it, the more respect for the partnership of man and machine, the better it would perform for me.

This thought filled me with a surge of affection. However long its lifespan, I wanted it to be filled with dignity and love and understanding. I thought: I bet no one has hugged this blender before. And so I lifted it from its base.

-gotta have eat first

-gotta sleep enough first

(seriously so many days i’m like “i have all afternoon I’ma Do a Thing” and then i just kinda buzz around and do Nothing and think “WHY” and then i’m like “oh yeah i’m really fuckening tired”)

-gotta be Excited About It (ADHD brain only does things if they’re Literally the Most Interesting Thing Happening Right Now) (so like, hype yourself up to work on a project, or think about how happy you’ll be with a cleaner room/all those chores done)

-gotta have small, doable first step (like, “get cloth from fabric drawer” or “open google docs”

-FUCK distractions (computer is in drawer, phone is Off)

-Engage the Senses (if task needs Brain, play vague background Music, if task needs No Brain, listen to audiobook/podcast)

-maybe set time limit so i don’t get lost??? e.g. i have a little egg timer that i use because the ticking isn’t distracting but is enough to remind me that Time is a Thing that is Passing Right Now

-gotta have Self Awareness and Thinky about the Moment (get into the habit of Consciously Noticing what you’re doing at the moment, so you’re more likely to go “wait, this isn’t what i wanted to be doing” and be able to redirect)

-be willing to redirect and try to do something else if whatever you want to do Just Isn’t Happening

-DON’T beat yourself up for only doing part of something, or failing entirely- all that does is make your brain associate “trying to do stuff” with “well that SUCKED”. Which means you don’t want to try again. Tell urself u did good for trying, and if it didn’t work, try again later, or figure out why it didn’t work and try a different way. Reward yourself for trying

make a genome?

no joke in it

i know since writers and actors are already striking thats gonna take up most of the news space on social media but like. ups has until july 31st to meet the teamster's demands and if not then theyre going on the biggest strike against a single corporation since the early 1900s. the uaw (auto manufacturers union) contract is up this fall, and i believe the alu (amazon labor union) is as well. there's a huge possibility that they might strike as well, depending on how long the ups strike lasts.

im seeing a lot of talk about hollywood going down but i want to see more talk about labor rights and working class solidarity across the board... like A Lot of shit is about to go down

What we can get, is several unions striking at once, and more unions supporting them - refusing to cross picket lines, while otherwise doing their jobs.

Writers' and Actors' strikes can effectively shut down the entertainment industries - there'll be a gap before that's obvious (because studios can still broadcast/stream projects that are complete) but it doesn't take long for them to push into panic mode if they can't do any new production.

A distribution strike, like UPS, can shut down a whole lot of mainstream businesses. The corporate shills will try to talk about the tiny fragment of a percentage of their work that relates to medical emergencies; they will NOT be talking about how much money they're saving using UPS instead of private couriers. They won't be talking about how, if these workers are providing such a necessary and vital service, why aren't they being paid more?

The idea of the United Auto Workers striking fills me with glee, because omg we do. not. need. as many cars as we have; we don't need replacement cars every three or five years; barring weird accidents, almost nobody needs a new car THIS year... but wow a few weeks of shutdown would send car manufacturers into screaming fits because they're conditioned to think that every quarter is supposed to have increased sales based on the previous one. They really don't want to think about "the US has 332 million people and 287 million cars, so, more than 1 car per household, and that's... probably enough? For a while, anyway."

They don't want to think, "Maybe we could reduce production, increase production time, add more safety features, add more safety features for the workers, because HEY THERE ARE ENOUGH CARS; we should be doing maintenance, not growth--"

Nope. So I hope they strike.

What they're asking for:

reinstatement of a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that was eliminated during the Great Recession

stronger job security;

the end of a grow-in (tiered) pay system that has members earning different wages and benefits

I can do this. I am a dude! I am a hunky dude! I’m a badass hunky dude!

No the fuck you do not.

Unless I book in advance and take a terribly-timed train, in which case sure, there’s a $5 fare.

Life of Faith was a "Christian alternative" to American Girl in the early 00s. (These spring up from time to time. Most of them only last a few years with a very niche market. I think, at the time, they had because people were flipping out about American Girl partnering with Girls Inc to fund after-school science programs and stuff, because Girls Inc was - according to the conservatives - "A pro-abortion, pro-lesbian organization".) The dolls were based around the Elsie Dinsmore books and it's all . . . big fluffy dresses on a plantation in the antebellum South. With all that that entails.

It was pretty fucking bad.

With that in mind, this is perhaps the funniest toy defect I have ever seen.

WHAT

okay yes it is fair to say that elsie dinsmore books are bad because they're christian novels set in the antebellum south. and that is 110% true. but that does not convey how fucking bonkers they are. elsie is a Good Christian Girl who wants nothing more than a good spanking from her daddy. she and her daddy are so obsessed with obedience that even my most conservative homeschool group's most conservative homemaker mom said "they seem a little overboard on the focus on obedience." like when the james dobson contingent says that, you know it's excessive. elsie grows to marriagable age and becomes betrothed to her father's best friend who is however many decades her senior, and she thinks that is all beautiful and good except she will simply be inconsolable being taken from her daddy's kisses. i'm pretty sure somebody brings up that it will now be elsie's husband's responsibility to dole out spankings for naughty behavior. they go on their honeymoon and suddenly the book turns into anti-mormon diatribes?

if martha finley was alive today she'd be too busy dominating certain dead dove-associated tags on ao3 to ever publish any of this

the reason i own several of these books is because a friend decided that they were too dangerous to release to a thrift store and the young impressionable minds that might find them there