hey so uhhhh when are we kicking this spoiled fucking child out of the office
holy shit
welcome to hell! welcome to hell!
um is this fucking recent
yeah were in day 22 of the shutdown, this post was made 2-3 days ago
Wow we are going to die!!
haha we’re in danger!
Day 24. Joshua Trees have been chopped down, national park toilets are biohazard zones, and their trashcans look like dumps. Food goes uninspected, beer is having to be dumped because microbreweries can’t get licensing for new batches, critical research is being abandoned because it can’t be tended, and people have gotten guns onto international flights. Fuck this shit!
Imagine being the asshole who determined an 11 year old is evil because:
They didn’t cry as a baby.
They have no friends.
Their guardian, who is a verbally abusive drunkard, says they’re a bully but has no proof, all because other kids don’t like this child.
The pet of another kid ended up dead the day after this child argued with said kid.
This child went into a dark cave with 2 other children who ‘were never quite the same afterward’. Said children who had a history of getting into ‘arguments’ with this child.
Stole a yo-yo from another kid.
This child is excited to learn and possibly make something of themself and was too obvious about it and that was creepy to the adult in question.
This child can talk to snakes thereby making them related somehow, to an old person people think is evil.
Tom Riddle may have done some questionable things by age 10/11, but he was a kid. Wanna know what I had done by age 11?
Stole $100 from my sperm donor because he annoyed me and I wanted ice cream.(He technically stole that from his disabled client so don’t feel bad for him. He went to jail for it.)
Slammed a friend’s head in between two doors and then violently shut the doors because we got into a fight and I wanted to hurt her like she hurt me.
Said homophobic shit because that’s what the church was spouting about people all the time and I only knew the words as insults, not meanings.
Beat the shit out of a kid who threw a basketball in my face to try and get a laugh from his friends.
Shoved a kid’s head through a fence because he laughed at me for being fat.
Cheated on various school tests multiple times without hesitation because I didn’t want to study, and then lied about it.
Stole another kid’s skateboard and broke it because I didn’t like how he looked at me.
Stole a girl’s public library book for an entire school year, so she rang up a huge debt with the library, and got in trouble with her parents who grounded her for months and took away all her privileges. And then slipped it into her bag on the last day of school, partially destroyed to get her in more trouble. Why? Because she spent the first week of school making everyone laugh at the fact that I lived in a project and was too poor for more than 1 uniform that had to be hand-washed every night that week so I didn’t go to school dirty.
Stole a kid’s book from a store because I wanted it and had no money to get it myself.
Am I an evil person? No. Did I have to learn some harsh ass lessons to not become a n evil person? Yes. Did someone actually decide to pull me aside and explain why I was in the wrong instead of burning what meager possessions I had as a poor child, thinking that would show me my actions are wrong? Yes.
Dumbledore had the opportunity to set Tom to rights the proper way and he didn’t.
When people argue that he was Tom’s teacher and it’s not his job to help Tom, I have to wonder what the hell is wrong with them? My teacher saw me struggling and my trash attitude and actions and worked with my mom to get some shit fixed. She talked to my parental figure and they made certain I got help. This woman literally offered me the job of cleaning her house to pay for my senior trip which she was going on as well! She gave wisdom when it was needed. She listened to my problems.
Teachers are literally supposed to help their students. And they’re supposed to pay attention to see if something is wrong, and try to help if they can. Dumbledore knew something was wrong. He chose to do nothing but treat the problem child with distrust instead of thinking of him as a work in progress. Tom could have been shown basic kindness and could have been turned on a better path.
He was not evil when Dumbledore met him, but what Dumbledore learned beforehand, after literally getting a woman drunk, and then what he saw in person, cemented the idea of Tom Riddle being beyond saving.
Who the hell is Albus Dumbledore even decide if someone’s not worth saving?
I guess I had so completely absorbed the prevailing wisdom that I expected people in bankruptcy to look scruffy or shifty or generally disreputable. But what struck me was that they looked so normal.
The people appearing before that judge came in all colors, sizes, and ages. A number of men wore ill-fitting suits, two or three of them with bolero ties, and nearly everyone dressed up for the day. They looked like they were on their way to church. An older couple held onto each other as they walked carefully down the aisle and found a seat. A young mother gently jiggled her keys for the baby in her lap. Everyone was quiet, speaking in hushed tones or not at all. Lawyers – at least I thought they were lawyers – seemed to herd people from one place to another.
I didn’t stay long. I felt as if I knew everyone in that courtroom, and I wanted out of there. It was like staring at a car crash, a car crash involving people you knew.
Later, our data would confirm what I had seen in San Antonio that day. The people seeking the judge’s decree were once solidly middle-class. They had gone to college, found good jobs, gotten married, and bought homes. Now they were flat busted, standing in front of that judge and all the world, ready to give up nearly everything they owned just to get some relief from the bill collectors.
As the data continued to come in, the story got scarier. San Antonio was no exception: all around the country, the overwhelming majority of people filing for bankruptcy were regular families who had hit hard times. Over time we learned that nearly 90 percent were declaring bankruptcy for one of three reasons: a job loss, a medical problem, or a family breakup (typically divorce, sometimes the death of a husband or wife). By the time these families arrived in the bankruptcy court, they had pretty much run out of options. Dad had lost his job or Mom had gotten cancer, and they had been battling for financial survival for a year or longer. They had no savings, no pension plan, and no homes or cars that weren’t already smothered by mortgages. Many owed at least a full year’s income in credit card debt alone. They owed so much that even if they never bought another thing – even if Dad got his job back tomorrow and Mom had a miraculous recovery – the mountain of debt would keep growing on its own, fueled by penalties and compounding interest rates that doubled their debts every few years. By the time they came before a bankruptcy judge, they were so deep in debt that being flat broke – owning nothing, but free from debt – looked like a huge step up and worth a deep personal embarrassment.
Worse yet, the number of bankrupt families was climbing. In the early 1980s, when my partners and I first started collecting data, the number of families annually filing for bankruptcy topped a quarter of a million. True, a recession had hobbled the nation’s economy and squeezed a lot of families, but as the 1980s wore on and the economy recovered, the number of bankruptcies unexpectedly doubled. Suddenly, there was a lot of talk about how Americans had lost their sense of right and wrong, how people were buying piles of stuff they didn’t actually need and then running away when the bills came due. Banks complained loudly about unpaid credit card bills. The word deadbeat got tossed around a lot. It seemed that people filing for bankruptcy weren’t just financial failures – they had also committed an unforgivable sin.
Part of me still wanted to buy the deadbeat story because it was so comforting. But somewhere along the way, while collecting all those bits of data, I came to know who these people were.
In one of our studies, we asked people to explain in their own words why they filed for bankruptcy. I figured that most of them would probably tell stories that made them look good or that relieved them of guilt.
I still remember sitting down with the first stack of questionnaires. As I started reading, I’m sure I wore my most jaded, squinty-eyed expression.
The comments hit me like a physical blow. They were filled with self-loathing. One man had written just three words to explain why he was in bankruptcy:
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
When writing about their lives, people blamed themselves for taking out a mortgage they didn’t understand. They blamed themselves for their failure to realize their jobs weren’t secure. They blamed themselves for their misplaced trust in no-good husbands and cheating wives. It was blindingly obvious to me that most people saw bankruptcy as a profound personal failure, a sign that they were losers through and through.
Some of the stories were detailed and sad, describing the death of a child or what it meant to be laid off after thirty-three years with the same company. Others stripped a world of pain down to the bare facts:
Wife died of cancer. Left $65,000 in medical bills after insurance. Lack of full-time work – worked five part-time jobs to meet rent, utilities, phone, food, and insurance.
They thought they were safe – safe in their jobs and their lives and their love – but they weren’t.
I ran my fingers over one of the papers, thinking about a woman who had tried to explain how her life had become such a disaster. A turn here, a turn there, and her life might have been very different.
Divorce, an unhappy second marriage, a serious illness, no job. A turn here, a turn there, and my life might have been very different, too.
– A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren, pg. 34 - pg. 36
(Bolding mine)
I don’t want to derail this too hard. And I am terrifyingly, shakingly conscious that I live in the UK, with its mildly-socialist leanings and socialised healthcare and council houses for homeless families, and I know in my head that even if the locusts come for everything I have, if I just stay on this particular piece of land, I will be able to keep the baby alive -
I don’t want to derail too hard, but when people ask “why aren’t young people getting houses and babies” and so on: look at this post, the raw terror of this post. The reality of the locusts. The facial markings on the face of the wolf at the door.
Young people today, like the people of the Great Depression and the World-Wars-In-The-Arena-Of-Combat, know that these things can be taken away. Just. Wiped off the map.
A turn here, a turn there, and your life is over and your game is done, and you have to stand there in your shame, having lost everything.
So the response to that is: have nothing, and you can’t lose everything.
I can see the appeal.
But I wonder how deep in our hearts this nihilism can get. What its impacts will be. How can we plan for the future of the planet, when our brains can only focus on the £300 on our credit card, and panic.
What did this do to us? The children of the bankruptcy. The kids raised in this religion. can we make ourselves okay.
The most lingering comment I ever heard someone make about Millennials was an older man I was talking to about the way we think about finances–when he dreamed about being a millionaire as a young man, he talked about yachts and mansions and trips to the Bahamas; when I did, I talked about living debt-free and being able to buy dinner out without looking at my monthly budget. He heard me out, took me seriously.
And at the end of it all, he nodded and looked at me and asked, “Do you know who you remind me of?”
And I said no, no I didn’t, and he nodded some more.
“My mother. She grew up just before the Depression hit, and she saw people lose everything left and right. And whenever she talked about finances, she sounded just like you.” He paused for a moment, and said, “I never really thought about what growing up like that would do to a generation.”
He still brings that conversation up, years later. He hasn’t made a single derisive comment about Millennials since.
^ This hit me hard.
This is how I feel about my student loans, honestly. I’m very fortunate to have a job that pays the bills and a partner so I don’t have to pay the bills on my own, but staring down that number makes me feel like there’s no point in even trying. I don’t want to buy a house, because what if I have to move and the market crashes again? I refuse to put anything on credit beyond what I can pay off in full each month, unless it’s a true emergency (like a “the cat needs medical treatment” kind of emergency). It’s a good thing I don’t want kids, because I could never afford them. My dad talks about saving for retirement and I laugh, because barring some kind of miracle, I’ll still be paying those loans off at that age.
I was always told growing up that going to school was the way to a stable future. And in some ways it has helped.
but
It’s a hell of a price. Literally. And I know very well that the stability I do have could evaporate in an instant, like those people in bankruptcy court.
It’s not just
Millennials. GenX here–I’ve been out of work for almost two years. I was fired for no reason at my job of 13 years three weeks after being promoted. The only reason I am alive is because I qualified for Medicaid. The only reason I am not homeless is because I got a mortgage reduction a few years ago, and even with it, my parents have had to pay my mortgage payment for most of the last year due to health issues. I’ve been paying the bills by selling dolls on evilbay, and a handful of freelance design gigs.
I remember vividly sitting on the floor as I packed up my desk, crying uncontrollably, because I thought I was safe. I thought I was finally safe.
You know all those dream posts that talk about things like a little cabin in the woods with goats and chickens, or a shack in the desert somewhere with a mostly-repaired Vespa and a plastic swimming pool, or a yurt or a hobbit-hole or a converted bus or just a freaking hole in the ground with wifi where you can wrap yourself in blankets and never come out?
I’ve seen several posts like this, usually with comments, people adding their variation on the theme.
A place that is small and simple, but ours. A place that is small and simple enough to be afforded. A place that is small and simple enough that it might not be taken away by the vicissitudes of fortune, that even in even-more-reduced circumstances we might manage to hang onto it, or have it overlooked.
A cottage, hidden in the woods, magical and moss-covered and so well-camouflaged that someone could walk right past it, never knowing it is there. A yurt, which can be taken down in a couple hours and moved to a new place. A shack built of scrap and ingenuity, dismissed as so much garbage by anyone who might otherwise consider it worth taking. A hobbit-hole, where one can go to ground and be forgotten by the world. A place built with the work of one’s own hands, not just for how much of the price can be paid in work instead of dollars, but for the way such an act of creation answers “take the house away, who are you?” with “I’m the person who built the house.”
This is the shape of our dreams.
Things small enough to be ours.
18 years were were poor, but we were fine. We couldn’t afford going to the movies every weekend or getting clothes every year for Christmas, or getting a new pair of shoes once a year, or getting produce for the whole week. But we lived in a small apartment in a project, where all the usual bills were included in the rent which hadn’t changed the entire time we were there. $200 a month for 4 people(6 with an illegal extra 2 for a time). No matter how much water or electricity was used, the rent remained the same every damn month.
Then the bad things happened. Step-dad had a seizure and then a another stroke, that landed him the hospital, and Amazon fired him because of it. No income from him now. I was the stay-at-home maid/babysitter so no income from me. All that was left was mom’s disability. Then we got evicted because step-dad got involved in another person’s business and that person, to be spiteful, falsely reported us. Instead of listening, the manager of the establishment just told us to get out. Suddenly we weren’t fine anymore.
It’s been 2 years. We spent 1 year with our cousin who had an assload of room for us, but my mom, sister, and I had to share a room. It was awkward. We couldn’t do much with no transportation. Step-dad not being able to get a legal job again because of epileptic issues. Mom being disabled ten times over. And it was a strain even if we had food and heating.
And now we’ve been in this dump for the last year where we have no heat, no doors save from front and back, where we have to limit water usage, and where there’s no insulation. The walls are just sheetrock. The kitchen and bathroom aren’t finished and you can look into the other room through the floor/ceiling because they’re connected. We have no stove/oven. The circuit box fucks up constantly. We never have enough food by Week 3 of the new month. We have no transportation and this dump resides hours away from civilization in every direction.
We are not fine. Things hadn’t been great before, but they were decent. We could live like that for years and be fine. And now we struggle and it’s like how are we going to get by? Mom taking online surveys get her odd amounts of gift cards helps a bit, but they aren’t much to get by on.
Poverty is not always the poorly clothed beggar in the street, who hasn’t bathed in weeks. You wouldn’t know by looking at me that I’m incredibly poor. And that’s the point.
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ive been thinking and honest to god: i think i would actually join a girl gang if the offer came. like a legitimate, hierarchical, “let’s carry knives under our skirts and beat up men” gang. fuck college
bringing back the sukeban girl gangs from the 70’s that wore long skirts against teen sexualization and fucked things up for the patriarchy
and this was no “5 girls in a small town” who made the news—this was yakuza level shit. 20,000 girls getting into gang fights and shoplifting and getting pissed off that only men were allowed to be rough and violent and angry
but I would like to point out this is not just about this money, this is not just about the wall, this shutdown and this protesting against the wall is a statement against trump’s white supremacy.
The reason people are fighting it is because the fear-mongering alone is damaging to relations between people. It’s a statement of hate, and to reduce it to just a cost thing is to ignore why trump wants the wall in the first place
this isn’t representative of the people, this is a representation of the white supremacists that govern our country despite not winning the people’s vote.
they continue to make laws and structures that terrorize people
In fact, pretty much everything the GOP does is against the will of the people.
Most Americans support Obamacare, yet the GOP has repeatedly tried to overturn it.
Most support Net Neutrality, yet the GOP overturned it.
Even most gun owners believe we need better gun control regulations and don’t belong to the NRA, yet the GOP is busy sucking the NRA’s collective dicks.
When polled, most Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of most of the social welfare programs that the GOP devotes their time to trying to abolish.
Most support Mueller’s investigation, yet we all know how Trump and co. feel about that shit.
Most were opposed to the tax cuts and think we should do something about global warming.
And like you said, most Americans don’t want Trump’s fucking wall and want him to stop holding the country hostage to get it. Numerous news articles from people ACTUALLY living in these so-called besieged border towns have basically said we don’t want this wall nor do we need this wall.
If any of you were holding onto the idea that we live in a democracy, you should really let go of it.
This is why Pelosi knows she can’t cave in at any cost. If Trump wins this, it sets a precedent that any president, no matter which party, will use to hold the country hostage in order to get their way. It has to end here or it will never end.
This is incredible because it is super difficult to visualise how much 6 feet actually is and most people don’t bother to try
HOLY SHIT ok first of all that is a brilliant use of technology, and second, that activated my flight response bigtime and i bet it convinced people to evacuate that weren’t gonna, which would’ve saved lives. so good job folks, worth the effort.
Why can’t she share that protective shield spell that she clearly casted on herself at least?
So (according to the concept art book) as the Fellowship travels deeper into Middle Earth, the places they pass through become inspired by progressively older periods of history. The farther along you are in the story, the more ancient the design influences
We begin in The Shire: which feels so familiar because, with its tea-kettles and cozy fireplaces, it’s inspired by the relatively recent era of rural England in the 1800s
But when we leave Hobbiton, we also leave that familiar 1800s-England aesthetic behind and start going farther back in time.
Bree is based on late 1600s English architecture
Rohan is even farther back, based on old anglo-saxon era architecture (400s-700s? ce)
Gondor is way back, and no longer the familiar English or Anglo-Saxon: its design comes from classical Greek and Roman architecture
And far far FAR back is Mordor. It’s a land of tents and huts: prehistoric, primitive, primeval. Cavemen times
And the heart of Mordor is a barren lifeless hellscape of volcanic rock…like a relic from the ages when the world was still being formed, and life didn’t yet exist
And then they finally reach Mount Doom, which one artist described as
“where the ring was made, which represents, in a sense, the moment of creation itself”
I’ve watched the movies a few times and love them so much so I can’t believe I actually missed this!
Note that this is in contrast to the books, in which Morder is portrayed as a regimented, industrialized society. It’s interesting that later fantasy writers decided to run with the “orcs as primative barbarians” trope to such an extent that it was retroactively introduced into adaptations of Tolkien’s original works.
look…………….. write as much shitty fic as you want. nobody can stop you. you’re learning constantly and it’s better to write hackneyed implausible ridiculousness than it is to not write at all out of fear of fucking up. you’re good
There was an experiment a professor did. I think it was pottery students. He did an experiment of “quality” vs “quantity”. One half of the class he told; you have to make as many pots as possible. Good pots, bad pots, shitty pots, whatever. The more pots you make, the higher your grade.
The other half of the class were told, “you can make only one pot”. But that pot had to be perfect. The quality had to be high; the highest quality pot would get the best mark.
But when it came to the grading, they noticed something weird.
All the best quality pots were in the ‘quantity’ group.
The guys who were literally churning out pots, trying to make as many as possible, not concentrating on the quality. But every pot they made, made them better at making pots. By the end of the month (I think it was a month) - they had some pretty awesome pots coming out, because they enjoying finding all the ways and all the things they could do to make all their pots. Where as the ‘quality’ guys had spent their time reading up on pots, and technique, and researching and planning; which was all great but they’d had no further practice at actually making pots.
The best way to get really good at something, the only way to be really good at something, is to make lots of shitty attempts at that thing several of which will fail. If all you create are perfect things then you won’t improve, because how can you improve on perfect?
tl:dr MAKE YOUR SHITTY POTS.
As someone who has actually made a fuckton of shitty pots, I can confirm this is true.
However, I just want to make an addendum to this story that creativity is hard. It’s very easy to say “just make tons of attempts and (eventually) you’ll get better!” It’s very difficult to live this, especially because improvement is very difficult to see when you’re in the middle of it.
AND it is not this smooth curve of Pot 36 being better than Pot 35. Sometimes Pot 35 is a drastic leap forward and Pot 36 is so misshapen that it doesn’t make it off the wheel.
This is okay.
There is this cultural push that improvement is only a linear process and if you fail in any way you’re not worthy to continue on and should give up (or some shit like that).
How do you get around this? You separate quality from what you’re trying to make.
I bet you that most successful creators, if you actually dug down into their process, were not aiming for perfection or even something they considered “finished.” They were aiming for the truest implementation of their idea they could make, and a product that most closely achieved what they wanted to achieve. Which isn’t perfection, it’s success.
This is also why people have different drafts - because you learn something each time !! And you improve it to be better.
Several people have asked me if I thought the Raven Queen would consider Angus her grandson! No relationship in this family is typical, but I think Her Majesty gets along great with anyone who isn’t skittish around death, and that absolutely includes Literal Homicide Detective Angus McDonald.
