Im Fine

Jesus was fond of telling his followers not to worry about how they’d afford food tomorrow because God would provide. But Jesus told them this while handing out free bread and encouraging them to help people who were in need, making them the outlet through which God would provide for others

My mother was a waitress, we live in an area that has a lot of Christians and people would often stiff her on tips. Instead they’d leave a pamphlet with quotes from Jesus saying not to worry because God would provide

Jesus’ message was never that God would magically put food on people’s tables. God would provide opportunities to help each other, like the boat captains offering to help the dying man. That only works if people actually help each other

basically, there's been an ants' nest near a vent shaft of this abandoned Soviet bunker for decades. the nest spilled over into the bunker itself at some point once it was abandoned and there was no way for the ants to make their way back up to the nest, no queen but a constant supply of new colony members raining down from above, and no source of food in the bunker other than the corpses of their fellow ants.

fast forward to some scientists looking for bats that stumble on what's basically a post-apocalyptic ant society. they go "holy fuck" start studying, and observe that, all things considered, the ants still pretty much act like regular ants doing regular ant things.

fast forward some more, and the scientists feel like they have enough data from observing the colony as-is, so they decide to try an experiment. they put a little walkway between the bunker colony and the og colony in the vent shaft so the bunker colony members have the option of leaving and rejoining the og colony.

spoiler alert: every single ant in the bunker immediately nopes the fuck back to the colony in the vent shaft. within days the bunker is completely empty. the scientists leave the walkway in place so when more ants inevitably fall back down the vent shaft they can just climb back up instead of starting up the cycle anew.

Fox in court garments, with one of the darkened blades that give the Black Knives their name. 

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Trying to relearn rendering after taking such a long break from it was a struggle, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it again. And in the interim, my anatomy, perspective, and composition improved hugely.

If anyone can help, please do! Even if it's just a reblog, if we manage to get her story out there, there will be those who can donate! Every little thing counts.

Listen to what the other person has to say about the topic.

Ask a question about what they said. Asking them to clarify or explain something you don’t understand is great, but any question will do. All else fails, ask them to explain what they like about some part of the topic.

Listen to their responses and go back to step 2.

Do this until 5-15 minutes has passed, then change the subject to a topic of your interest, unless you are actually interested in learning more on this subject, in which case, go on for as long as you like.

Sometimes, they will say something like “I’m sorry to blather on about [topic].” This is an attempt at a conversational dismount. You can either say “no, it was fascinating, thanks” and then bring up your own topic, or you can say “no, it’s fascinating, please keep going” if you want to keep hearing about their topic. Note the tense difference (past -> moving on, present -> keep going).

There are at least two reasons I can think of off the top of my head, why you might want to be able to have engaging and polite conversations about uninteresting subjects.

First, in a professional setting, the ability to network with other professionals can often determine whether you have/get/keep a job, how you are treated at that job, and how well your performance is recognized within that job. For people like myself, who lack the innate ability to socialize competently or learn socialization skills by watching, the leads to a lot of problems. We have trouble getting hired because we’re seen as self-absorbed. We tend to get fired because we’re seen as idsinterested in our work environment. We have difficulty being recognized for our contributions because our lack of social skills causes others to think negatively of us, overestimate our mistakes, and underestimate our successes.

Having a script to help us perform this very necessarily yet intensely esoteric piece of socialization, that is simultaneously expected of us, and yet, that is never taught to us directly, can make a difference in whether we can actually make money and pay for our own lives. Even for those of us who do not/cannot work, the ability to socialize in this manner with peopel who have any degree of conditional authority over you can determine whether they approve your requests for aid, help you receive the medical treatment you need, etc.

This is, of course, fucking obscene, but it’s also a fact of life. As such, scripts like this can, in a very real way, be a matter of life and death.

But in a much less catastrophic sense, they’re also just helpful for building and maintaining relationships.

Your friends and partners are not going to0 be clones of yourself. They’ll have different interests from you, and some of the time those interests will be so different that you just don’t care about them at all. but you still care about your friends and partners. It would be rude, or even cruel, to refuse to talk to them about the things they love. This creates a sense of shame and alienation that can spell the end of an otherwise happy, healthy relationship.

By having a script you can rely on for those circumstances, you can still show interest in and bond with your friends/family/partners about subjects you don’t personally care about, rather than having to walk away from them any time they start talking about the nuances of daemon assignment and culture in the His Dark Materials series and how the latest adaptation, for TV, is incomprehensibly frustrating for just straight up ignoring one of the single most central parts of the novels by throwing out basic considerations on how daemons work.

Shaina West aka The Samurider, is a British-Ghanaian self taught stunt-woman and martial artist.

…. Woooow its true!!!! Congratulations to Ms Shaina West!!!!!!!!

Her overall story is inspirational as she was in a motorcycle accident and hospitalized, losing her job and her boyfriend in the process. She taught herself martial arts after she recovered and became a stunt actress and is now one of the Black Widows.