this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

typhlonectes:

253430f1ccfbce9b8e568b66a243c27321c14e6d

Tags:

#1 – 2. I don’t know‚ why can’t you #3 – 5. fast-food restaurants (and also grocery stores) #no you don’t have to pay‚ and it weirds us out when you ask our permission to use the restroom #you *do* have to ask for water because we’re supposed to check that you’re filling your cup with water and not soda #although the probability of getting an employee who doesn’t give a shit about that is fairly high #(many people buy bottled water from us and I look down on them) #(there is a water fountain (with cups!) Right There) #really almost any non-tiny store and some of the tiny ones will have public bathrooms #6. masks are a solution to many of life’s problems #(let’s face it‚ it’s ragweed season‚ the air wasn’t going to be breathable anyway) #(also I do hear vehicle electrification is gaining a good foothold) #(including the buses) #7. I don’t live in cities because they exist in a state of constant sensory overload #good luck re-designing that #no‚ really‚ I wish you luck #(in the cities I’ve visited‚ though‚ the things I listed above were still true) #(is this‚ like‚ an America thing?) #(no that can’t be right‚ the American cities I’ve visited weren’t like this and also this guy’s username is albertvancouver) #(what the hell is going on out in Vancouver) #(maybe move to Kitchener‚ you poor thing) #(you already have right-of-abode there) #(life doesn’t have to be like this) #tag rambles #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #our home and cherished land #autism #venting cw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #scrupulosity cw? #illness tw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

strongermonster:

71a884c01be71928ca5878524498126e07aa0aec

the joke writes itself huh

Tags:

#oh my god #adventures in human capitalism #covid19 #vaccines #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick? #(ftr the NYT pirates say that the ”terrific news” is that the bivalent boosters reduce your risk of getting Long COVID)

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

brin-bellway:

thejochiang:

deductioneers:

Amass Fuck-You Money

Goals: amass fuckyou money

Forever reblog the mother goddess

(status: I acknowledge that this is psychological damage from an extended period of financial hardship during formative years, but I nonetheless mostly endorse it)

Hmm. I seem to be having a bunch of thoughts and feelings about this.

There seems to be a…maybe “divide” is too strong a word, I don’t know. But…like, I called it “fuck-you money vs fuck-me money” in a post a while back. Even when the actions are the same, there’s this psychological difference in how people can approach it.

When I see FIRE people, they always frame it in terms of *freedom*. (It’s right there in the acronym: Financially *Independent*, Retiring Early.) But to me, it strikes me as being a thing about *safety*. “Enough money that you can run your household solely off the interest from your investments” can protect you from a lot of different problems, and *that’s* why the idea appeals to me.

A few weeks ago I saw some distant acquaintance-of-an-acquaintance on Tumblr (I don’t recall who) advising a young person with a high-paying job and relatively low expenses (Silicon Valley programmer, I think, or something like that) to go on some trips and enjoy themself, because they weren’t going to have this much disposable income again until their forties if not later. And it felt like a very weird framing to me, because…the way I see it, if future-me doesn’t have money to spare, then neither do I. I don’t have spare money unless I can afford to feed myself, and I can’t truly afford to feed myself unless I can afford to feed *all* of my selves.

16-year-old me got to eat because 7-year-old me’s dad put away some “”extra””, and eventually that “”extra”” was all he had left. Where is 33-year-old me getting *her* food from?

Because if the source isn’t me, then I don’t trust it to come through for her. I want to do all I can to make sure that, no matter who is or is not willing to employ her or for how much, 33-year-old me (and 44-year-old me, and 55-year-old me…) is fed and housed and so forth.

—

(This was going to be a tag ramble, but then I thought it should probably stay with the post if somebody reblogs it to respond or something. I’m just going to leave it in tag format.)

#this post probably partly inspired by my first anniversary of non-freelance employment   #which is coming up soon   #I think I will celebrate by scheduling the dental checkup I have been putting off for ~3 years because I didn’t feel I could afford it   #(yes government healthcare does not cover dental)   #(OHIP has some very weird-looking exceptions)   #(this is probably the result of some kind of complicated political negotiation that I’m not sure I want to know the details of)   #anyway a dental checkup seems like a good compromise between celebratory and practical   #(and [practical celebrations are easier to enjoy]/[I find myself drawn to practical gifts these days anyway including gifts I buy for myself])   #((that safety thing manifests here especially))   #((the things I dream of buying these days are always things that protect you from something))   #((checkups that protect you from tooth damage and electric cars that protect you from rising oil prices and solar-powered phone chargers that protect you from power outages))   #((this I am much less sure I endorse))   #((I mean I think it is good to want practical things but it would also probably be good if I felt safe enough to want a few non-practical things too))   #(((sometimes on especially bad brain days I can’t even bring myself to play Flight Rising)))   #(((that is currently the most common cause of my FR hiatuses)))   #(((it used to be the most common cause was that I felt like playing some other game instead)))

#I will put this in the tags though: #I was reading my Tumblr archive recently and *damn* 2014!me was having a hard time #she didn’t talk about it much in public but occasionally she couldn’t quite hold it in anymore and it leaked out into a post #I felt very sorry for her #basically what I’m saying is #hi 2022!me #I hope you’re in a good enough position that you can feel sorry for me rather than going ”yeah I still know that feel” #(but if so please do still provide for farther-future!us) #(just with a healthier frame of mind) #(maybe buy solar chargers *and* video games)

Hi, 2018!me.

I won’t lie to you: I do still know that feel. Things haven’t really changed much for us financially: still a slow bleeding kept at bay by unpredictable one-time cash infusions, still with a-home-in-good-repair being a cherished but distant dream. Still taking some gigs at $1.30/hour, though only the especially easy ones now. We graduated last year, and the diploma’s been *exactly* as much of a waste of time and resources as we feared it would be, though I have not quite lost hope altogether. I have made only $309 in deposits to my retirement fund, in the time since I was you.

Financially, we still don’t have the stability and security that we long for.

*Non*-financially, though, our position has improved. We’ve made new friends, and even mostly managed to keep the old, and (in addition to the non-practicality-related aspects) they’ve taught us (and we them) many useful things. I’m in better shape now: not *great* shape, but on a good day I can run for half an hour straight (almost two miles!), and even on moderately bad days I can do twenty minutes. I still work at the restaurant, but I’m allowed to mask at work now (I know, right, we thought that would *never* happen, didn’t even dare hope for it), and we were–by, admittedly, a terrifyingly narrow margin–not fucked over by the travesty that set the precedent that workplaces allow employees to mask.

(If this were two-way communication, I’d have opened with advice on getting higher-grade and more durable masks while they’re still easy to come by, so that the margin won’t be so terrifyingly narrow. But it isn’t, and I will have to content myself with knowing that it worked out for us in the end.)

(It didn’t work out, for a lot of people. A lot of people, in a lot of ways, are worse off now than they were in 2018. I do not live in as flourishing a world as we would hope.

But we, personally, were fortunate in this regard: we rose through the cracks of the problems that hit everyone, and that actually ended up counteracting a lot of the problems that were specific to us. It’s where most of the one-time cash infusions came from; it’s why I haven’t been sick–not *really* sick, not anything bad enough to make me wish I were unconscious–in over three and a half of the four years that separate us.)

((common-cold-induced depression isn’t normal, BTW. you know that weird non-depressive cold we had in December of 2017? yeah, that’s just what colds are like for normal people. sure does explain a lot about why people are Like That.))

Anyway. Our safety hasn’t improved as much as we were hoping, but it *has* improved. We’ve been through storms, but we’ve weathered them. (I even successfully handled not having a functioning toilet for five days! I’d prepared a contingency plan for that, and it paid off!)

The Ontarian government has announced plans to start covering dental care in a couple of years (a long enough delay that I’ve decided it’s still worth paying for a checkup this year, though I may skip next year). Our parents’ pensions will start trickling in next year, with the bigger ones starting in 2025. I still have a couple more ideas for how to break into an accounting career, and I still have the option of changing tacks and making a living in an unrelated field.

In the time since I was you, I have bought both a solar panel and a video game.

One way or another, we’ll get through this.

Remember, I love you.

Tags:

#reply via reblog #oh look an update #adventures in human capitalism #adventures in University Land #in which Brin has a job #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #covid19 #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #venting cw? #bragging cw? #kind of both

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

mistergandalf:

one of my favorite lotr facts is that gondorians speak sindarin as a first language and yet when faramir was talking to frodo and sam about cirith ungol he was like “we don’t know what’s in there.” like faramir. cirith ungol is sindarin for “pass of the spider.” do the math

mistergandalf:

some of my favorite tags on this post

tumblr_inline_npevmbonbr1rzbkxn_400
tumblr_inline_npevm2acl61rzbkxn_250
tumblr_inline_npevm3tklb1rzbkxn_400
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tumblr_inline_npevm4rrwa1rzbkxn_400
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theelvenkingshalls:

Don’t forget that Frodo also speaks Sindarin, which makes this even worse.

Faramir: Hey, don’t go up the Spider Stairs.

Frodo: Why? What’s up the Spider Stairs?

Faramir: We don’t know, Frodo. We just don’t know.

jumpingjacktrash:

to be fair, you’d assume the name means “there’s a lot of spiders here,” not, “there is one spider the size of a draft horse here.” so you go up expecting to have to shoo a lot of skeeter eaters out of your tent, and instead you have to figure out how to rope and shoe godzillarantula.

ceescedasticity:

Hmmm…They do live in a world where godzillarantulas feature prominently in mythology and history (Ungoliant plunged the world into darkness, scared the crap out of Sauron’s old boss, etc) and existed within the last century in Mirkwood. Assuming they ever talk to anyone who’s been to Mirkwood. They… probably know they were giant spiders in Mirkwood pretty recently? It’s hard to figure out how much anyone in Middle-earth has been talking to anyone else when we didn’t actually see it.

On the other hand – what if it’s the giant evil spiders’ prominence in history/mythology that’s causing trouble? What if lots of evil/nasty things/places get called “spider” just to indicate how nasty and evil they are, rather than any association with literal spiders, and it’s just… overloaded? Maybe the bad part of town in Minas Tirith is the Spider District. Maybe every tavern trying to be edgy calls itself the Spiderweb.

Actually spider/Ungoliant references could be really appealing to Gondorians trying to be edgy. They’re dark and evil! Plunged the world into darkness! But they AREN’T involved in the war they’re actually fighting, they aren’t directly associated with Sauron at all, so getting too interested in them would be creepy without being potentially treasonous. Because no one’s ACTUALLY going to worship those dangerous but not epic spiders up in Mirkwood, and no one’s heard anything from any proper spawn of Ungoliant in ages and ages.

In fact, spider/Ungoliant references might be appealing to ORCS trying to express that something is nasty and creepy! Nobody likes Ungoliant.

Maybe Faramir’s been to fourteen different Spider Caves across Ithilien, and half of them he didn’t even see regular spiders in, they’re just dark and damp and may have had orcs at some point, or something, and at some point in history someone got spooked. So you know, it’s POSSIBLE Spider Pass has something to do with spiders? But really it just means people don’t like it.

(The problem with this theory is we never actually SAW anyone overusing spider references. But it’s plausible they would!)

wordswithkittywitch:

“The average spider on Middle Earth is the size of a dinner plate” is a statistical error. The average spider on Middle Earth is smaller than a coin. Cirith Ungol (lit: Spiders Gorge), which contains a spider larger than a horse, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

iwilltrytobereasonable:

OH MY GOD

superstressedspidergirl:

@dendritic-trees

theleakypen:

Come for the Tolkien linguistics, stay for the Spiders Georg reference

roach-works:

this map, by jonathan hull, shows all the places in the USA named after the devil or hell. assuming big giant awful spiders were a common thing in middle earth, it’s likely that there were a shit ton of Spider Stairways.

be1335bf53a1819534a3d4003c0b0dc7f936d847

you don’t wander into Devil’s Lick assuming that satan himself is gonna give you a rimjob. you presumably also don’t head up Spider Stairs assuming an arachnid the size of a cottage is gonna try and eat your friend.

gallusrostromegalus:

FUN FACT: A huge portion of the “Devil’s [OBJECT]” names in Wyoming are from a poor bastard called John Coulter, who was probably the first white man to see Yellowstone! He saw it because he got seperated from the Lewis and Clark expidition on their way back east, decided that with winter coming on, he should head south to stay ahead of the weather, rather than east to try to catch up with the party, and instead got lost inside the Yellowstone caldera, the COLDEST fucking part of Wyoming, with its scalding, posionous geysers, earthquakes, massive packs of wolves that weren’t afraid of people yet, and temperatures hitting as low as Negative 40, and naturally assumed that he had somehow taken a wrong turn into the Nnth Circle of Hell.

He lived, managed to get out of the caldera, took extensive notes on the landscape, eventunally met up with some Blackfoot tribesmen who gave him a horse and directions to the nearest european settlement, and he left, naming every single notable feature after hell or the Devil, because Wyoming is clearly His Infernal Country.

So as far as Frodo knows, “Spiders Pass” was just named by a particularly disgruntled and arachnophobic field cartographer.

Tags:

#that one post with the thing #it got better #Middle Earth #language #names #spiders #Spiders Georg #maps #geography #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #hell cw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

lasrina:

emmikay:

Also, interesting note on Lucy’s condition. Stoker is actually subverting what was a common trope in that time period.

It was a common for characters in novels to fall ill, often from tuberculosis, which had similar symptoms as what Lucy is experiencing- paleness, loss of energy, difficulty breathing. A victorian reader would quickly recognise these symptoms, and the trope they are suggesting.

But in this case, nope, it’s not that rascally consumption this time, Lucy’s got a case of the vampires, lads.

#technically #TECHNICALLY #it IS consumption (via @beradan)

Tags:

#Dracula #vampires #puns #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

seat-safety-switch:

Solar panels are getting cheap. If you’re like me, then this is all the incentive you need to think about buying solar panels. Sure, there’s a lot of other points that appeal: reducing your dependency on fossil fuels, not leaving free money on the ground, sticking your middle finger in the general direction of the power company. The core rationales for me, though: cheap and new toy. Also, the power company cut me off a few weeks ago. It’d be nice to charge my phone without having to go to the library.

Of course, I don’t exactly own an intact-enough house upon which to put heavy solar panels on the roof of. And, legally, the landlord’s next of kin could figure out where he went to and seize the house along with my panels. So the next best thing was to tek-screw them into the roof of an old Dodge Caravan that I found in the airport parking lot. Insurance doesn’t even blink paying out for thefts from there, and to be honest, anyone with a 1993 Caravan who also engages in long-term international air travel is up to something anyway.

Once the immobilized Caravan had been hooked to my house’s electrical system through a series of illegal and highly dangerous male-male extension cords, I was in business. The sun beat down upon the van, and started to fill up my crappy old phone battery. Excellent!

Unfortunately, that’s where things started to go wrong. You see, my yard is already full of broken cars, which left me with no room for the Caravan. As such, I parked the stricken Dodge in the alley, and had to run the extension cords back from it to my home. The natural place for these cords was underground. With a copious amount of swearing, I pushed them through the trenches that the phone company had abandoned when they fled my neighbourhood.

What I didn’t expect was that the presence of electrical current inside the trenches would soon attract a backhoe. My lights all blinked out, and I came outside to find a group of confused construction workers who had accidentally dug up my previously perfectly good extension cords. It’s for the best, anyway: sooner or later I would have forgotten to unplug the van before moving it, and then we’d have a fire on our hands. The water company cut me off, too.

Tags:

#unreality cw #storytime #I’m aware that OP is fictional‚ but in all seriousness: #you do not have to resort to a fancy five-digits-expense fixed-address solar setup to charge your phone #a Ryno Tuff 21W camping solar panel costs ninety-five CAD‚ weighs one pound‚ and #can keep *several* phones charged if you rotate them out regularly #there also exist pocket-sized power banks with integrated solar panels‚ which are nice-to-have though I wouldn’t bet my life on the quality #(plus you shouldn’t leave a lithium battery baking in the sun repeatedly anyway‚ because it’ll eventually swell up and burst into flames) #(I have a solar power bank but I’d only use that panel if I were caught without my main panel) #(thus far I’ve never been that desperate‚ so I’ve just been using it as a regular power bank) #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #PSA #tag rambles #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

headspace-hotel:

a490e1cb07b2689bb96abd7d44630293ae0c664c
cde345b6f3df9b2230b1dabdcda3910ae2ff15d7
4ac720566ef8b7a53ebf983e2b4ee8641a6c92a8
ac79d74e6d487d4e42b55b9f0cf0aec3ec86bad2
b79d135fec963e390219350eaa64a11c910e7dad
0c097015e9c283430066f9d5287148e50b35053c
c8b5203e316e3a54bc883d2441921d58bf81c9b4
6e21691d2ed77352e038862fc6831e90728fc36c

“Dragon,” poem assembled using quotations from Wikipedia articles

Tags:

#poetry #apocalypse cw #death tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #I don’t know what I think about this poem’s message but I like the composition #gives it a montage effect

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

beast-glatisant:

beast-glatisant:

the only reason I want to visit Australia is to confirm whether “we’re not here to fuck spiders” is in fact a real saying really in use or if Australians on the Internet have united in the world’s most dedicated prank to get foreigners to use ridiculous phrases

Australians DIVIDED in the notes:

  • “oh it’s a southern thing”
  • “oh it’s a northern thing”
  • “it’s a rural thing”
  • “it’s a Sydney thing”
  • “it’s not a thing”
  • “it’s a real thing and super common and my father said it to me every night as a bedtime mantra”
  • “it wasn’t a real thing but after lying to foreigners about it often enough it became a real unironic saying”
  • “lying to foreigners is the only reality Australians know”
  • “some of us are here to fuck spiders”

Tags:

#Australia #language #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #spiders #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

thcgay:

clodiuspulcher:

bauliya:

bauliya:

everyone’s like wehhhhh why doesn’t doctor house gets suuuueeed! like my man. literally every patient he sees is someone that’s been trying to find a diagnosis for ages. i could live with a little medical malpractice if it were coming from someone ready to break into my home to look for allergens and not simply half heartedly listen to me before suggesting I lose weight and take ages of back and forth arguing to order a single test

“it’s medical malpractice” have u ever been a doctor? most medicine is malpractice. let the man limp around chewing vicodin doing 50 invasive tests please

Once Taub (derogatory) derisively said about a patient with unexplained chronic pain “7 doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him, what does that mean?” and House replied without even thinking “it means they’re idiots” and proceed to work his ass off to diagnose the patient Taub wanted to write off as a faker or something. If a doctor had said that when that patient was ME, I wouldn’t dream of suing them in a million years

f2595ba210e994c64eeac12ad8e31ebf23b32f70

Tags:

#House #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #((this amusement not to be taken as expressing an opinion regarding the statement itself)) #high context jokes #medical cw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #discourse cw?