home of the brave

Anonymous asked: (2/2 I guess) And saying things like “there are affordable areas even in the Bay” is kind of an odd thing to try and placate somebody with when the prices even of empty land in the Bay Area are SO high compared to almost all other areas of the country – especially those areas where there’s a high concentration of households living in or near poverty. Property prices in most parts of the non-urban US are super low VS. the largely-unattainable, sanctified Bay Area. Have you actually compared?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

abilitiesconsideredunnatural:

theunitofcaring:

(I did not get the first part of this ask.) 

Yes, I have actually compared. For many people, living in the Bay is a reasonable financial choice, even if they don’t have much money or if they want to donate a lot. In most parts of the U.S. I could not live with roommates, because places where I worked wouldn’t be so near the places where my friends worked, and I would need to own a car, and I still might pay less than I pay now but probably not so much less as to come out ahead taking the car into account. 

Our house in El Cerrito, 10 min walk from the BART, was $550/bedroom. I do not think I’d end up spending dramatically less than $550 on housing+car anywhere I lived, and I do not think it’s unreasonable to tell people “there are affordable parts of the Bay” when what I mean is “there are $550/mo parts of the Bay where you do not need to own a car”. It was a nice safe neighborhood where I frequently went for walks at night, too.

Moving to the Bay is not an option for everyone! But if you’re thinking of it as sanctified and unattainable I think you are looking at prices in like, SF and Berkeley proper.

That works out to both cheaper than my hard limit price is and cheaper than the rock bottom student price here. And I cheated by inheriting a car but I still have running costs.

I live in an expensive part of Australia but not Sydney level horrible. And our public transport is terrible here- it’s comparitively functional in Sydney and Melbourne but those are expensive or 3 hour commute afaict.

*updates*

International price comparisons are tricky, though.

Like, from what I’ve heard of Australian prices, they tend to spend about the same amount of minimum-wage-time-units for stuff as Americans do, but their minimum wage is much higher. As long as you’re paying for local goods with local labour, it generally works out, but it makes things confusing when you’re trying to compare (or, god forbid, move) between countries.

(I could definitely be wrong, though, I’m mostly going off of numbers I’ve overheard from friends)

(Personally, as of 2016 my household’s average per-person per-month housing+transport cost was…*checks spreadsheet, feeds results into calculator*…about CAD$290. Alternatively: USD$217*, 25.4 minimum-wage-hours*. But we’re in an unusually good position, and I think a lot of people in our area are paying more like twice that much.)

*Using 2016 rates, to match the time period of the spreadsheet.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #home of the brave #Australia #trying to sound reasonably friendly; not sure if successful

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

kaylapocalypse:

wunkolo:

I had a dream I was able to time travel and I went like 10, 20, 100, 1000, 2000 years into the future but the instant I went to 4,000 I got stuck in a time dilation jail set up by the American government in the year 3,877 in which anyone that tried to time travel back or forth across May 23, 3877 while on Earth would end up stuck in this time dilation chamber trap to stop time travelers but like it was so crazy and mismanaged because it was legit capturing like every single time traveler ever and the place had only been open for 12 minutes and was already getting overpopulated with nonstop multiple recursive instances of this one other guy trying to break previous versions of himself out of this god damn time traveler jail

that is fucking hysterical and absolutely sounds like something the American Government would set up. 

Tags:

#I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #story ideas I will never write #time travel #home of the brave

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Banana Ripeness Tiers

guardians-of-the-food:

How do y’all eat your bananas?
1-5 anything else is gonna be baked or ice cream or smoothiefied

 

ainawgsd:

1-6. 7 or 8 maybe if I had a strong craving. Anything past that is inedible unless mashed and used as an ingredient in something

 

bilbo-swwaggins:

Noah fence but 1-5 is unripe you ignorant fucks

 

faun-songs:

4-7, 8 is pressing it.

 

absua:

White culture is eating unripe bananas.

 

artgroupie:

1-5?! i don’t go anywhere near under 8 unless it’s my only choice. ideal is 9-12

 

valsdas:

“8 is pressing it” i am… disgusted.gif

 

poison-liker:

i exclusively eat unripened bananas, on pizza

 

zephronias:

8,9,19. You all are weak.

 

captaindibbzy:

5 to 10 is my ideal.

 

xserpx:

8-11. They’re only good when they start getting little brown spots.

 

apprenticebard:

6-11. 9 is ideal.

Supposedly I had a great-grandfather who ate one entirely black banana every day, and who lived into his nineties, so I don’t think the overripe ones will hurt me, but after a certain point they taste weird. So once you get to 12, you have to make banana bread.

 

tchtchtchtchtch:

6 is the perfect sweet spot where it’s a nice vibrant yellow and perfectly ripe and doesn’t have any brown yet. So, that if I can, otherwise as close to it as possible.

 

another-normal-anomaly:

3-7, unripe bananas for the win. Also as per upthread I would be fascinated to find out if this is correlated with a) race or b) national origin. I mean, enjoyment of capsaicin and enjoyment of lots and lots of sugar are both correlated with national origin IIRC, so maybe banana preference is too.

Ideal banana: 11

Good banana: 10, 12, 13

Tolerable-but-I’d-rather-not banana: 9, 14, 15

Inedible banana: 8 and below

If it still has even the faintest trace of green, it’s not ripe enough.

—

Race: White*

National origin: United States (northeast)

Enjoyment of capsaicin: no

Enjoyment of lots and lots of sugar: not nearly as much as I used to, maybe just one “lot”

—

*Your mileage may vary. Some terms and conditions may apply. Your whiteness may be revoked at any time without notice.

Tags:

#food #survey #reply via reblog #(tbh ”is Brin white” has much the same answer as ”is Brin queer”) #(nobody can agree on the object-level answer but everyone agrees that I’m low-status) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #(tangentially) #racism cw? #home of the brave

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

queer-sunshine-femme:

kaijutegu:

kaijutegu:

I’m so impressed with the Shedd Aquarium right now. Starting July 1 (and going for… forever), they’re giving free admission to families and individuals with EBT cards, essentially removing one of the biggest barriers to access for a lot of people. Taking a family of four to the Shedd and just getting basic admission costs almost a hundred dollars (and that’s the basic admission with a Chicago resident discount). For many families, that’s an impossible luxury- but now so many more folks are going to be able to visit.

A little more on this- the Shedd is doing this as part of the Museums for All program, which is actually pretty fantastic. I’d not heard of this initiative before, which is a damn shame because it’s good. Institutions are required to not just offer free/reduced admission (admission is either free with EBT/WIC or up to $3), but they also require that the participating institutions train sales and front line staff appropriately to ensure good customer service to individuals and families seeking to take advantage of the Museums for All program. Nobody gets shamed for visiting, there’s no special line or anything. The museums that participate also don’t require local residence or anything- EBT cardholders from any state are able to visit any of these institutions for free or reduced admission. 

Here’s a list of participating institutions. I’d love it if this gets spread around because the school year’s ending soon, and these are fun, safe places to be for kids and adults alike. (And on a practical note- with the exception of the zoos and other outdoor things, all of these places are going to have air conditioning. Perfect for hot days, y’know?) 

:0

Tags:

#PSA #home of the brave #pleased to see that the American museum I went to most recently is on this list #the Ecotarium’s a nice place #(or was as of November 2015 anyway) #(it’s been a while since I travelled for reasons other than exploiting cost-of-living differences to stock up on cheap food)

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defectivealtruist:

somervta:

eronthebender:

boomerbuzzard:

notchicken:

I hate the internet. I hate how this poem doesn’t need to be finished but it has 13.9k retweets and 21.1k likes. Everyone knows how this poem ends and I hate it

Violets are Blue

Michael Jackson sang Thriller

tumblr_inline_ont430etsc1tu6wix_400

😂😂😂😂😂😂

…can someone please explain these to me?

the punchlines are “george bush did 9/11” and “ted cruz is the zodiac killer”

…wait, I thought the first one was something along the lines of “take your dick out for 9/11“. Why mention Harambe otherwise?

(Michael Jackson is probably irrelevant, just an excuse to put “thriller” in, but so many entities could be described as “in heaven” that I figured there must be some reason to choose Harambe specifically.)

—

I actually had to infer that the second picture was of Ted Cruz:

“What rhymes with ‘thriller’? Killer–ah, this is a Zodiac Killer joke, which means that must be Ted Cruz.”

The political news I get is so overwhelmingly text-based that even if I weren’t faceblind, I probably still wouldn’t know Ted Cruz on sight.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #nsfw text? #poetry #me circa early autumn 2016: ”oh so that’s what Donald Trump’s voice sounds like.” #I did recognise Bush though! #politics mention

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

uss-edsall:

Washington State (not DC) is the only state in the union where you can legally have a fistfight with somebody (with police as referees) to settle your differences

 

metal-queer-solid:

That should be a law all across the country.

 

the-one-true-nugget:

Fuck. Yes.

 

suicidalnautilus:

@jooshbag ?

 

jooshbag:

This is tied to an archaic law that isn’t enforced anymore.

 

type-one-conservative:

So if you beat the shit out of someone they won’t do anything?

 

gyrosneverdie:

Oh no this is still enforced, and in fact we actually Have a few vigilante superheroes 

Phoenix Jones 1

Like Phoenix Jones who actually patrol the streets and challenge criminals, the police usually get called, and they watch as Phoenix Jones pummels them because Phoenix Jones is actually an MMA fighter. 

 

creative-classpect:

I gasped and my eyes got so wide after reading this

That man is AWESOME

 

bogleech:

Phoenix Jones 2

Apparently for about three years he had an actual superhero team of people with military, medical and martial artist backgrounds he personally trained and equipped, but eventually disbanded. He didn’t give specifics, but said that some of them were “the wrong kind of people” and were too dangerous. There are really for real things that happened.

Also someone tried to be an “arch nemesis” to him named Rex Velvet, some nerd wearing an eyepatch and a fake mustache who didn’t hurt anybody but made surprisingly polished, melodramatic and goofy callout videos from an abandoned warehouse and presumably pulled some annoying pranks.

 

defectivealtruist:

holy shit watch the video

Tags:

#what the fuck #this…seems to be real? #or have been real anyway #I did some Googling and there’s a lot of news articles from 2011 – 2015 #not clear whether he’s still active

mistytpednaem asked: bad luck brian, bee movie, we are number one

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

itsbenedict:

  • Bad Luck Brian: Have you ever had a string of ridiculously bad luck?

Have I ever told the story of why I’m terrified of bees? Like, the conventional wisdom is that they don’t bother you if you leave them alone, sure, but… when I was five, I was playing out in the yard, and I got stung, and BOY that hurt. And my mom gave me the standard wisdom to reassure me- and also dropped a factoid that most people only get stung once in their whole lives, so I’m all set now because that’s how probability works for sure.

SO later that same day, Mom takes me to watch my cousin’s baseball game. And even though I was five, I could already tell that baseball was incredibly boring to watch, so I wandered off to the field nearby to pick dandelions, and GAAAAAH I stepped on a bee and got stung again. I feel shocked and betrayed and also I feel a lot of pain from a bee sting on my foot. Mom marvels at the unfortunate coincidence, and reassures me, and we go home.

And then I get out of the car, and walk across the lawn to the front door of our house, and BAM. THIRD TIME IS THE CHARM, THE HAT TRICK, LIGHTNING STRIKES THRICE, A FUCKING BEE STINGS ME AGAIN

i haven’t trusted those little yellow fucks since

  • Bee Movie: What’s your weirdest ship?

since perinaldo, my life has never known peace. the following day, snake people started manifesting in my house.

But no yeah I don’t tend to really ship stuff unless it’s obviously canon or whatever. The closest thing to a crack ship I have is like… there’s discourse around Mei and Junkrat from Overwatch, and frankly yeah, those two would never get along- and most of the girls in that series I can’t see going for Jamison. There’s a couple plausible Junkships, I think- Sombra, Lucio, and D.Va all seem like they’d gravitate to his wild attitude.

i didn’t ship junkrat and d.va but then i saw this comic and now,

now...hooboy...now i like it
  • We Are Number One: If you were a fictional character, would you be a villain?

short answer: YES

less short answer: i would go all in on the mad scientist supervillain aesthetic, but my evil schemes to take over the world would never be that evil, because i don’t want to be a dick, right? i’m thinking like a Dr. Doofenshmirtz situation. probably the heroes vanquish me at the end of season 1 and then i fall into that “becomes the team’s weird uncle” role

(or at least it would seem that way until the series finale where it turns out i’ve been preparing a scheme all along and manage to usurp the new big bad’s power source, OH SHIT, WHAT UP KIDS, BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THE GUY NAMED BENEDICT BETRAYIN Y’ALL, GAHAHAHAHAHA)

Tags:

#bees #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(”BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THE GUY NAMED BENEDICT BETRAYIN Y’ALL”) #home of the brave