I have a neighbor in her late 80s who I have lived next to for the past 4 years since I bought this house, that I have to re-introduce myself to every time she spots me outside. She remembers that I am her neighbor but cannot remember my name (unless she's talking to my partner, in which case she does remember my name but not his).
She has a truly ancient tiny dog whose pastimes include shitting on my driveway and picking fence fights with Fenris. Occasionally she will ask me to do his nails and he's actually wonderful for them so it takes like 3 minutes tops. She also will usually hand me whatever bill she has in her wallet for it- sometimes it's a 1, once it was a 50, usually it's like 5 bucks.
Now I have tried refusing her money and even gave the 50 back and wouldn't accept it. I then came home to the $50 bill taped to my back door the next day after work. So, you know, I'm kind of stuck accepting whatever she tries to give me because she WILL tape the money to my house somewhere otherwise.
(Once she gave one of her granddaughters a gift that required batteries and was distraught that it didn't come with any. Knocked on my door to ask if I had any. I haven't used my spare batteries in ages so I just gave her a whole pack. Refused to let her pay for them. Three days later a pack of batteries plus ten bucks was taped to my door. So this is not an uncommon occurance.)
Anyway this time she didn't have any money to pay because we're all fucking broke as shit on this block and she was really upset because his nails were starting to curl and once again I did them in like 3 minutes and when she apologized for not being able to pay me I just waved her off and told her not to worry about it.
I came home on Monday to my backyard being totally cleared of winter debris and the growing collection of winter dog shit as well as my fence repaired in two of the places that broke when the tree fell on it. I texted her adult son whose number I have and he confirmed he did it because he was happy that I helped his mom out with her dog. I tried to explain that it really does not take a lot to do the dog's nails but he similarly refused to hear it and said he'd be back in a few days to finish fixing the fence.
Idk why I thought he would be different from his mother. But I guess I get free fence repairs for the price of doing an old lady's dog's nails once every couple weeks to months.
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i am well aware of the absolutely fucked up things eating disorders do to people’s brains, and i am sympathetic, but I still think acknowledging publicly that these celebrities are promoting looking emaciated on death’s door is important. Can you imagine being 13 and seeing this shit? Every celebrity event looks like a thinspo board, it’s awful.
People talk about women's bodies far too much; this is true. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be addressing the elephant in the room of insane weight loss and eds. it isnt fucking normal or healthy
I'm gonna zoom out real quick and then back in to make a point here.
When we look at celebrities with eating disorders, we are confronted by two conflicting realities:
1) we know all the ways that the film industry has enforced eating disordered behavior among performers regardless of age, gender, or embodied risk, and ultimately every celebrity with an eating disorder is ultimately a victim of the industry, as are the people in the audience.
2) these celebrities have undue influence in our society and they often go on to actively push disordered eating behaviors firmly into the public eye where they go on to kill thousands. At best, this means these celebrities are collaborators in the film industry's behavior and, at worst, it makes them perpetrators. Regardless, they have some level of culpability for their actions.
I think that this is a question we never really successfully confront: what do we do with/to/about the victims who are also perpetrators of the violence they are victimized by? How do we acknowledge BOTH their status as a pre-existing victim, regardless of what they do with themselves after, and as someone who is presently making choices that endanger others?
It's a question I expect we're going to have to think about a lot in the coming while, across a lot of different realms of life. But eating disorders feel like such a clear cut example of how difficult this question really is. How do we intervene with victims of eating disorder culture who are so far gone from their own maltreatment that they are unable to see the harm done to others in their name and by their hand?
I think OP is spot on that we need to learn to talk about all this more. It's not easy to talkabout things this loaded, and that can contribute to the silence and the lack of vocabulary to express the violence being inflicted on us, a secondary victimization we all often suffer through in silence. It also means that when we DO speak on the subject, we are often limited by existing language, much of which is tainted by moral judgement and eating disordered cultural implications themselves. I think a lot about Lin Farley when she coined the term sexual harassment and how much more nuanced my own understanding of behaviors like that became when the phrase was taught to me.
January 26, 2018 – Lin Farley was a journalist and an instructor at Cornell University when she coined the term “sexual harassment” to summa
The more we talk about what eating disorders can do to us, what factors contribute to the culture of starvation and erasure, the acts we take to self-police and to police others in our communities, the easier it will become to challenge, interrogate, and change these very same toxic behaviors and environments.
It starts with trying to thread the needle here, you know? How can I talk about this thing in a way that acknowledges that me and the latest Ozempic celeb representative both have the same deconditioning, malnutrition, even a lot of the same health risks (yes, even with the financial gap, amazing what starving yourself can do to erode the wealth gap in healthcare), but we are all the same not having the same experience of our actions, influences, and needs. How do we acknowledge the full spectrum of victimization by these social trends without pardoning those who play a dual role? And when and why does it matter that we do so?
I would really love to see a massive change in how we talk about disordered eating behavior, and how openly we do that talking.
Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.
It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.
I've been meaning to make a post talking about my stroke because y'all got bits and pieces of the recovery but I never actually told the story of HOW it went down and the thing is the type of stroke I had is usually the type young people have and since having mine i've now heard multiple stories of people under 40 having very similar strokes and the scary thing is, is that they didn't get help right away. Because you're young and healthy and sure you feel weird but it'll pass right? but it doesn't, and it gets worse, and by the time you get to the hospital (some people literally take days to go) the deficits are worse and recovery is harder.
so here's a super long post about strokes in general, and mine in particular/what I went through.
So for strokes the signs are abbreviated BE FAST. Balance loss, Eyesight changes, Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, -> Time to call 911.
Had I known those MAYBE I would have figured it out but my symptoms were a little mixed. I was reading (fanfic!) in bed because it was a sunday morning and i had nothing pressing to do and suddenly got dizzy. I put my laptop aside because my eyes were blurring (Eyesight changes - symptom #1), and laid down, thinking it would pass, it didn't, it's a little vague how it progressed because I'd been having headaches and neckpain for about 3 weeks leading up to it so I was like 'idk is this a migraine?' (headaches can be a stroke symptom so symptom #2) but i got nauseous and eventually got up and to my utmost surprise I immediately fell over as if I was the drunkest of frat bros. The room literally spun before my eyes as I fell to the floor (Balance loss - symptom #3). I have had some Nights and I had never been that unsteady before. I crawled my way to the bathroom, threw up (nausea - not a common stroke symptom) , took 800mg of ibuprofen, and crawled back to bed.
if you know anything about ibuprofen you might know it's a mild blood thinner and that's a high dose. I may have inadvertently helped myself with that one. I was just feeling like shit and thinking 'idk this might help'
At this point I still thought we were still in Normal Land. Sure, it was a weird morning, but Surely There Was A Reason. (Yes There Was) Anyway, as I'm lying there willing my body to stop suffering I realize my arm is going numb (stroke symptom #4) and I switch positions, because weird, but it doesn't go away, and I gave it a good little while. I'm on a medication that can make my limbs tingle but it usually just does it to my fingers and it dissipates quickly but this wasn't dissipating, and then I realized one of my legs was also going numb. Then one side of my face is going numb.
(at the time I did not look in the mirror but I had a drooping eyelid - symptom #5)
Those all seem bad. I grab my computer and google 'when to go to the hospital for dizzyness' as that felt like the worst of my problems. and indeed the list I found highlighted that if you are also experiencing loss of balance, blurred vision, nausea, and limb numbness, you should see a doctor. That seems like far too many symptoms to be having all to be listed. I grab my phone (thankfully plugged in and by my bed), and start layering on more clothing because it's about 10 degrees out and i'm in a pajama dress. The very nice man at 911 talks with me and sends an ambulance, I tell him I don't think I can get out the front door of my building on my own and he asks if I can get to MY apartment door to which I say yes and he assures me that's fine they will have keys to my building.
(I have been since informed they love to chop down doors but no, I could get that far)
I wait by my door laying down on the ground and they arrive pretty quickly. They see to me in the hallway, which is more of a lobby in my building and the only place with room for me to lie down (I cannot stand unassisted at this point) they ask me a bunch of questions, take vitals, and ask me where I would like to be taken. Me, having never had to go to the fucking hospital in an emergency before, simply go 'wherever is close' because I again, I am having a stroke and do not have the wherewithal to think through these things.
A big firefighter helps me down the stairs (it's only a half flight and I still almost did not make it) and we get underway.
At the hospital they wheel me into triage and I mostly lie there gratefully and answer some questions and respond to some tests (grip strength, following a pen with my eyes, that sort of thing) and then I hear what is great when you've been at urgent care for two hours but what is Very Bad when you just arrived in an ambulance and that's 'She's next'. I jumped the line for a CT scan and an MRI. I was there less than ten minutes before I was actively being scanned. honestly closer to five.
my active symptoms seem to have been worse than some of the stories I've heard, not being able to walk AT ALL in particular, although some other are pretty equal (Footless Jo on youtube had a stroke around the same time I did of the same type and has discussed hers, she delayed going in despite the severity for a variety of reasons and it sounds like her recovery has been difficult) My recovery was pretty easy because i was actively being cared for and on blood thinners right away. I was pretty out of it in the beginning, but I was only in the hospital for 6 days and then in a rehab for another 4 to relearn how to walk and balance, then i was released unto the world and just spent time going to physical therapy and recovering for awhile. I was out of work for about 8 weeks total. I basically had the best outcome for a stroke. I recovered almost fully back to 100% (I'm about 2% less sure footed than I used to be, but it's rarely noticeable), my face still feels a little weird but has markedly improved so I live in hope it will eventually get back to normal. It massively sucked. But strokes can fuck you up for life and I came out a weird medical story to tell and have to take some extra medication now/precautions to take (i cannot do certain types of yoga, no weightlifting, no push ups, no going on rollercoasters.... things that could strain my neck essentially) but overall I escaped very lucky.
A quick guide for trans people who are using/ forced to use the disabled toilet due to transphobic bullshit in the UK when you wouldn’t otherwise need to do so. From a transgender wheelchair user who has given this topic a lot of thought.
Remember you are a guest in this space. I don’t know a single person who would rather you shit yourself or get assaulted than use the disabled toilet, but please remember that these toilets are built and designed for disabled people after a huge amount of campaigning and activism.
Don’t touch or move things you don’t need to. If you’re not familiar with how things work or why they are where they are just leave it be. The position of a bin might not mean anything to you but it could be really important to a wheelchair user who needs to change their tampon. Don’t touch things like grab rails either – while they’re fairly tough and you’re unlikely to cause any damage it’s not impossible and if you don’t touch it, you can’t break it.
Related, but important enough to have its own point: please don’t touch the red cord. Do not tie it up, do not wrap it around anything, don’t tuck it behind a bin. Don’t touch it (The only exception to this is to untie a cord that’s been tied up) If the cord doesn’t fall freely to the floor it could prevent a disabled person calling for help in an emergency. If you’re worried about accidentally pulling it there’s almost always at least one reset button in there with you. Press that and it cancels the alarm.
If possible allow other people waiting to go first. A lot of disabilities, both visible and less apparent, can cause problems with incontinence, urgency or pain that make it difficult for someone to wait to use the toilet. If there’s someone else in the queue and you are able to do so, offering to let them go first might really help them out.
If you want to get a radar key, get it from disability rights UK or give a small donation to a disability charity (again only if you’re able to). I’ve seen a couple of trans orgs giving away free radar keys and it’s unclear how they are being sourced. Knockoffs are common but only “real” RADAR keys are from Disability Rights UK and any profits help fund their charity work. Bear in mind that most disabled people also have to pay for these keys which are about £5. (Disability Rights UK say their keys are to be sold to disabled people or organisations only, this is a legal thing they have to say about VAT relief. There is no real way of following up how disabled someone who buys a radar key is because you don’t need to claim any benefits to be eligible for VAT relief and keys are a low value item that isn’t worth anyone looking into when things like adapted cars exist. Be gay, do crime, support disabled people having rights.)
Know the difference between a standard accessible toilet and a changing places toilet. Don’t use a changing places toilet if there is any other safe option. These have a different symbol and are bigger and fitted with extra equipment for severely disabled people and our carers. That equipment is more sensitive than anything you’ll find in a standard accessible toilet so if you do find yourself in one touch nothing. Especially don’t move the hoist (lifting equipment) as it can cause it to run out of power and make the whole space functionally useless if it’s not in the right space on the track. (To be fair this is an unlikely scenario as there aren’t that many of these toilets, but just in case)
Don’t suggest renaming accessible toilets. They’re primarily there for disabled people who can’t use an alternative, and disabled people will be looking for an accessible toilet. For most spaces you can look for an accessible toilet and have a good chance of finding a gender neutral space, but that doesn’t work the other way around. Calling it an “inclusive toilet” or “gender neutral toilet” tells me absolutely nothing about whether my wheelchair will fit.
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here's another idea for a poll! I think this will have some interesting results. this sentence is here to pad out this paragraph so people who don't read posts will be more likely to accidentally miss these instructions. if you're reading this, please select option eleven. here's another sentence to make this block of text look longer. anyway here's my fun poll idea!
My partner made this comic, and it is beautiful and amazing, and you’re all missing out by not seeing the original on paper because it’s even prettier there!
Why is it that every time I google something like "Are olives poisonous to cats" the top results are always like "Fun fact: Cats are carnivores! This means that they eat meat. There is no reason to include olives in a cat's diet. You should feed your cat cat food, which is dry or wet food especially designed for cats. You can purchase this at a store." like is there a single person alive on the planet who's googled "Are blueberry muffins safe for cats" because they're planning on switching their cat to a muffin-only diet??? No, I'm asking because the little bastard somehow popped open the packet while I was putting away the groceries and dragged one under the couch before I could react and now I need to know if I should call the after-hours vet. "Cats should not eat spaghetti." NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!!!! "Try to keep human food away from cats." i live in a studio apartment with a completely silent and permanently hungry apex predator who has the intelligence of a toddler and the desperate Machiavellian cunning of a creature who spent his formative months on the streets. He can already open doors and he is this 👌 close to learning how to open the microwave. He is stronger than me and covered in knives. So im gonna do my best but for the moment i just need you to tell me whether this yoghurt is going to kill my son y/n
I've been using the pet poison hotline's poison list cause it has a search function. It also tells you whether something is mildly, moderately, or severely toxic which can be very handy! It doesn't contain like everything but it might be a good place to start, it also includes plants for fellow houseplant lovers <3
Explore Pet Poison Helpline®s vast knowledge on poisons by reviewing our pet poison list. Explore our top 10 poison and holiday poison lists
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although if we ARE talking about passive aggression my technique is generally (and I have had a LOT OF PRACTICE developing it lmao) is to interpret what I think they're implying and then say "are you asking me to (x)?" in a very polite tone with a friendly (sincere! not mocking!) smile. I find that this often 1. ceases the tiresome cycle of ignoring passive aggressive behavior -> behavior escalates -> ignore it -> it escalates, and on and on that you get if you simply ignore it, 2. lets the person know that in the future they can just fucking ask you directly for god's sake, and very importantly 3. although I strive not to sound condescending when I do this, it is inescapably and obviously something that I learned to say when talking to toddlers. the people I use this with the most (mostly older female relatives but not infrequently on men as well) will often catch a hint of that and sort of realize that their method of approaching me was childish, not in a derogatory sense, but in the sense that they don't need to try to get me to do stuff in the way they got used to working in the past. they can do it differently.
obviously how effective this is varies wildly based on the relationship, or lack thereof, that you have with the other person. but I find it effective with people who are In Your Life but don't meaningfully have any control over you. quite often it DOES result in increased directness in the future, especially if it's something I end up doing fairly often. and it's not rude; I'm just politely seeking clarification about what is being communicated. it makes the person have to think about what effect they were expecting their behavior to have on my behavior, and then just... tell me straightforwardly. but without escalating the situation or making the person feel 'called out' most of the time.
its very simple but I so much more often see people say "always ignore passive aggressive communication" and while I think that's absolutely a good approach much of the time, especially especially from strangers. it is not especially EFFECTIVE at helping them change how they're approaching communicating with you in the future. in my experience. so. I prefer to use my method when I determine that it might be effective.
She frequently makes requests by telling me what I want, eg "oh wouldn't you like to.." "don't you think it's be nice if..."
It used to drive me up the wall, but now as an adult with better understanding of what's happening I say "Actually I'm fine with x, but I'd be happy to do y if that's what you want?"
One day she actually asked me, "Why is it so important to you that I say that y is what I want?"
and i got to say "Well I don't like being told what I want. I have enough life experience to know my own desires and limitations, and I can advocate for them when I need to. However your opinions do matter to me and I want to take them into account. It's much less stressful for me to do so when I'm not guessing what's in your mind."
And folks, she Actually Listened.
Later that day she wanted something that ended up not being possible, but because she said so directly I was able to help her find a different way to achieve the same goal!
She still slips up, of course, but it was so good to see her Understand.
I love thissssss. yes I have had similar experiences modeling this behavior for older female relatives. I think a lot of them got real used to having to be indirect to get their needs met and it becomes maladaptive but they get stuck.
sometimes people experiencing psychosis and/or mania will come up to you on the street and talk in confusing or upsetting ways. your job is to either have a regular human-to-human conversation with that person or politely leave. your job is not to call 911. do not call 911. you might kill that person if you call 911.
I don't even have the energy to screenshot and respond to your tags- what the actual fuck is wrong with you? "the cops are scared and rightfully so" "mental health calls are the scariest for cops" OH so this isn't about the safety of psychotic & manic people this is about piggy feelings?
and no, actually, this is not USA specific and no, actually, people from other countries should not ignore this post. police violence and sanism weren't invented in the US and they are certainly not unique to here. if you (or anyone) thinks that this bullshit doesn't happen elsewhere then you are not listening.
This is legitimately useful reframing. A while ago I started replacing the word "cop" in my vocabulary with "a man with a gun." It really puts things into perspective.
This homeless person is making me uncomfortable. Should I call [a man with a gun]?
My neighbor is having a loud party. Should I get [a man with a gun] involved?
There are some teenagers skateboarding. Do you think [a man with a gun] would get rid of them for me?
It makes it very clear what you're saying. I can call a man with a gun to threaten or hurt someone mildly inconveniencing me. You're not calling the cops, you're calling A MAN WITH A GUN into a situation that does not warrant a firearm handled by a volatile lunatic who will not be held accountable for his actions.
The editing of this video is hysterical and genius- they switch between so many editing styles to reflect exactly what kind of thing they're going for in each segment its GREAT.
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idk if this is an usamerican thing or not but it always blows my mind as a small european country resident that yall have many names and types of apples???? what do you mean its not just red yellow or green??? why is it so complicated??? who is granny smith????
If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.
1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.
2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.
3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.
4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.
5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.
Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.
Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.
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