siren in the forest

but then I realised that same challenge would be infinitely more funny with folks who have atypical or horror OCs

Sometimes you make it anyways, but that doesn't mean you should have to.

There were a few times, where half the workers were out sick at a job I had. Something like the flu or a cold went and hit a bunch of us, I assume it was transmitted via the air. If we went to work, and got the other half of the staff sick, then there would have been no workers.

A few of us, returned still suffering symptoms once we thought we weren't contagious though.

Admittedly, I'm not sure if I had the same thing as them because including me, only like 4 people lost their voice during that time. I couldn't be loud enough for my job for a week. After a few days, I could get whispers out, but I had a job where I already had trouble being heard without having my voice damaged by sickness, and it was a requirement to communicate. So I was out for a week, I wasn't the only one, and the other workers probably had a hell of a week. I felt a bit bad, but I couldn't do my job in that state. And even if I hadn't lost my voice, I was still sick, likely contagious, I felt like absulute shit. So I called out. Honestly it wasn't till I came back that anyone told me other had been out sick. The managers didn't try and pressure anyone to make it in despite knowing workloads were practically doubled for those who were left.

Admittedly, this was after covid so I might have been just lucky that my time there started after they were far more aware of people needing actually stay home sick. But I'll always be glad that they were reasonable about sick days.

Because I remember being in school and people being less reasonable about them. Like, you had more than like 8 sick days a year and you could fail the grade type of unreasonable. Well, unexcused absences. But I didn't have someone in my house with a car so I ever got to get doctor notes when I was sick. The only time my family considered bringing me to a hospital when I stayed home sick was because I had a fever of 104.? °F I've always had a lower than average body temp, as does the rest of my family, so our fevers start a bit earlier. It's like what 2 degrees above your average is a fever? Uh 98.6 to 100.4 is 1.8 I think. So yeah about 2 degrees reaches a low grade.

I'm usually at 97.4 ish so 104 is 6 degrees above my normal. Lol i can see why my family was worried now. Luckily with a whole lot of medicine my fever fell by like a degree or 2 in a day. I still had a fever for another day I two but I didn't have a severe one for very long.

God's I remember needing to note down my own sick days to keep count so I could pass the year. And I did go in sick more often to school than work. Because I had no way to get excused absences.

But then i realized the “conspiracy” version of the theory was that the internet death was orchestrated by a single shadowy organization and not, just, everything breaking because every major tech company is independently making the same bad decisions.

You know how if you get a phone call from number you don’t recognize you just automatically assume it’s spam? And it’s not any 1 group’s fault, it’s the result of perverse structural incentives and lack of accountability?

Very few popular posts blow up all at one time. Most of them will get waves of notes over time — like today I’m getting a bunch of notes on a post that first blew up several months ago. Every once in a while my notes spike and I have to go see which of my popular posts is making the rounds again.

And some don’t blow up at all for ages, and then get popular out of nowhere. Like, the original “this idiot hasn’t seen Goncharov” post was quietly circulating around Tumblr for years before the Goncharov “thing” happened. Never Gonna Give You Up was a perfectly ordinary 80s pop song from 1987 until 2006.

Boris "professional idiot" Johnson wanted to build an island airport in the immediate area.

it's fucking visible

You weren't kidding they've been trying to get the masts off for 5 years and keep getting foiled because there's probably bombs leaking out of her

i am not being metaphorical, i work in a garden center, stop buying plants 'to bring in the bees and butterflies' and then immediately poisoning every caterpillar that dares to consume a single leaf

Like. I’ve always sorta understood that things grow moldy or stale or sour or such if left out, but I never really internalized it in a meaningful way.

But now I’m just like.

Yeah. The hungering dust. There exists omnivorous dust in the air that will eat my food if I don’t.

Those bagels have been sitting there for a week. Are we going to eat them soon or are we leaving them for the hungering dust?

Pizza’s been sitting out on the counter for an hour. Everyone’s enjoying the pizza, but if we don’t want “everyone” to include the hungering dust then we should probably put it away soon.

That’s just. That’s how food works to me now. There exists an invisible predator in the air that hungers for your yummies, and it will not hesitate to eat your food if you don’t make the effort to protect and preserve it. And eat what can’t be preserved before the dust can.

“go bad”, it just gets eaten

by something else first