Welcome one and Yall

You are not going to pass a skillcheck against a rip current once it has you.

Waves will not bow to your physical prowess no matter how impressive.

Shock does not care that you used to be on your school swim team.

If you hit your head, being good at swimming isn't going to turn you face-up while you're unconscious.

Tempted to actually put this on spotify so I can secretly stream it at work...

i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening

Ollie: Not

Me: Are you sure?

Ollie:

“You’re killing me,” I said. “I can’t take any more of that!”

Now serious, she said it was clear to her that none of that stuff about Mary’s clothes mattered, at least if her clothes weren’t the point. What mattered most about the image was that Mary was holding her diploma and smiling. “But,” she wondered, “do I say, Mary has a huge smile on her face as she shows her diploma or Mary has an exuberant smile or showing her teeth in a smile and her eyes are crinkled at the edges?”

It’s simple. Mary has a huge smile on her face is the best one. It’s the don’t-second-guess-yourself option."

Smiling matters because it's an indicator of emotion. The quality of the teeth only matter if it's relevant to the joke. Striped shirt only matters if the text describes it as polka dots and that's the point.

"A photo of an orange cat stretched out in the sun on a window ledge", for example, gives me the subject matter immediately - it's a photo of a cat - and the detail descends from there. Anything else in the image is coincidence or unnecessary; the photo was taken of the cat, and anything else in the frame is unimportant. The reason why the image exists should be in the first two lines - and comedic timing still works in alt text form! "A photo of an orange cat stretched out in the sun on a window ledge. A second cat is falling off a cat tree in the background." still gives that moment of realization that a build up to a joke usually would.

(Defining if it's a real thing or an illustration or a movie scene or whatever is also pretty important for context - "an illustration of a dead dove" is pretty different from "a photograph of a dead dove".)

"A sunny room with a large window and a park outside with children playing in it. There is a wide, sunny windowsill with plants on it and a cat lying next to them, looking outside" describes the same hypothetical image, but the order of it changes the importance; while it would work to establish a scene in fiction (well, clumsily worded fiction, at least) it's missing the point as alt text - the cat's the reason the photo was taken, but everything else gets described first!

I am also totally blind, and frankly do not care what kind of shirt someone is wearing unless it is relevant to the surrounding post. Tell me what's relevant, keep it as brief as possible.

My parents threw away all of these things (even the vacuum cleaners and the dryer) when they got too dirty to function, because no one even told them THAT they could be cleaned. Cost them thousands of dollars over the years.

All I'm saying is that cleaning is not intuitive, and not knowing how to clean is not a moral failing, but it is something you can learn.

I like this video because it does a great job of introducing the basic foundations of house cleaning (and because he doesn't use bleach, which is a common allergy in addition to being awful to inhale). He also talks a little about how to clean a vacuum. And why you shouldn't put grease from your pots and pans down the sink drain. I also love that he mentions that different houses and different people have different needs and different versions of what clean and cleaning looks like.

This is another video from the same guy about cleaning and depression. This advice, especially at the beginning, can feel really really difficult and oppressive to hear. However, I find that it's generally pretty solid. But I'm autistic and so is he, so that gets a massive Your Mileage May Vary stamp on it.

I have a favorite part of this video. It's from 10:52 to 12:36. I think we could all use to hear that. There's a HEFTY pause after that one. I promise the narration does come back.

This is a pair of videos about how to correctly load and use a dish washer.

The first one is a quick 1 minute 30 second overview on loading. I can't find the exact video I'm looking for, so consider this a substitute for that. If I can find the one I'm looking for, I'll swap it in.

Here's a blog post about scrubbing brushes and how to clean them.

And a video for all cleaning tools, including scrub brushes. This video does use bleach. I'll try to find some alternatives to that.

How to clean a top loader (without the removable agitator thing). This should be done every 1-3 months depending on you unit, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

How to clean a top loader (with the removable agitator thing). This should be done every month, or every time you wash really soiled clothes.

This video is for pet owners.

These carpet brushes are a LIFE SAVER if you have dogs. This thing allows me to go from vacuuming about 4 square feet before my vacuum is full to vacuuming half the living room (I don't vacuum often enough. You should vacuum weekly, and I just can't.). I have to unclog the vacuum less often. It fluffs up some of the flat spots in the carpet. And I also use the brush to shampoo my rugs in the spring.

A spot cleaner (or a carpet cleaner with a spot cleaner attachment) is another life saver, ESPECIALLY if you can afford to splurge on a heated one. I see them at Goodwill or at yard sales occasionally, and they're worth picking up. The shark one in the video is great too.

It's America's Housekeeping Book (1941). Available for free download on the Internet Archive. (Large PDF file at the link here).

The LISTS y'all. The step by step lists. The emphasis on efficiency and arranging spaces for the least resistance possible. The basic concept of "take a tray or basket into a room when you are tidying up so you can put things that belong elsewhere on it and take them out LATER in ONE GO".

I’m making this post on the behalf of Hamza and his family, who are currently suffering in Gaza.

In Gaza, people’s incomes have been severely impacted for the past three years. Please consider helping my friend Hamza and his family — which includes several children— afford food and proper medical care as prices continue to be high and unstable.

(15+15=30

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But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when that 2 minutes seems exhausting.  Doing ten minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when 30 minutes of cardio sounds impossible.  Changing my clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible.  Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because I don’t have the energy to go anywhere.