As a nonbinary person it feels uncomfortable when strangers perceive my partner and I as a straight couple,
But it’s hilarious to me when they perceive us as father and son.
“Does he have his own luggage?” the agent behind the check-in desk asks brightly, making eye contact with my partner.
“Just carry-on,” I say as I slide my driver’s license across the counter toward her. Confusion dawns on her face. She glances up at me briefly before printing my boarding pass in silence.
“A soap making booth!” I exclaim. I’ve been to the renaissance faire a dozen times but I’ve never visited this shop. “Let’s make soap!”
“First you have to ask your Responsible Adult for five dollars,” says the vendor in a measured, singsong voice, and wags her index finger at me.
I look around, confused. Who is she talking about? Does she mean the young man trailing behind me? I turn back to her.
“I have five dollars …”
“Well you still have to ask him,” she smiles sweetly.
As I open my mouth to ask why, I suddenly realize she has misjudged my age by at least two decades.
“I’m older than he is,” is all I can think of to say.
“Would you like a children’s menu?”
“Sure, and if you’re taking drink orders, I could also go for a Corona.”
MONEY. WE WANT MONEY. MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY. WE CAN DO SO MUCH WITH IT. WE HAVE ACCESS TO DEALS YOU COULD NEVER. MONEY
That aside.
I’m only going to talk about food items but if your food bank takes personal items, a lot of times diapers, feminine hygiene products, etc, are very very welcome.
1) Canned chicken and beef
looooooove this stuff. It’s expensive, it lasts forever, it tastes good and it can be used a variety of ways. This stuff is fucking catnip to food banks, it’s so hard for us to provide proteins.
2) Fancy nut butters
Peanut butter is a standby for food banks as a shelf-stable inexpensive protein, but if we have a family with a kid with a peanut allergy that’s not going to work. Non-peanut butters are expensive and it’s something we hardly ever see donated. (we also like peanut butter, but that’s easier for us to buy ourselves than non-peanut butters)
3) Canned or packaged tuna
You may notice a trend here in shelf-stable proteins. And yeah. That’s basically it, so I’m not going to keep harping on it. But this stuff is a godsend.
4) Easy breakfast things for kids (Granola bars, instant oatmeal, and the like)
Whatever Donald Trump tells you, most people who get food from food banks are actually working their asses off and so they have to leave Obama to raise their baby or whatever, and they don’t have a lot of time in the morning. Things like this that kids can make for themselves are expensive. (Another trend you may be noticing–donate shit that costs a lot of money. That helps us more than all the shitty green bean cans in the world) But they are so helpful for busy working families where the parents may not have a set schedule and sometimes little Amanda is making her own breakfast before she runs off to school. Don’t let kids go to school hungry.
5) Shelf-stable juice
This is one people never think of! But if you show up with a bunch of (preferably reduced sugar stuff) bottles of juice at my door, oh man, you are gonna get so many check mark and okay hand emoticons. This stuff is great for kids, and it doesn’t require refrigeration until it’s opened, so it works great for food drives.
But seriously, give money
And it’s way better food, too, anything you get prepackaged has A TON of sugar and/or salt in it…collecting cans may be more exciting than writing a check, but if the point is to help people, the check is going to get a lot more done
Yoooooo heads up for those of you with kids, I know this time of year schools start holding canned food drives so keep this in mind if you’re able to give.
collecting cans may be more exciting than writing a check, but if the point is to help people, the check is going to get a lot more done .
hint: the point should be to help people.
Also, please consider setting this as a scheduled post for June/July. A lot of food insecure families with children rely on school lunch to make ends meet, and that’s obviously not an option during summer vacation. Lots of people give during November and December, but summer is a lean time for food banks. Which is a shame, cuz fresh produce is at a boom during that time of year, so not only would summer donations boost how many people the food banks can help, it would boost the quality of the help they provide.
Also some food banks like to have a stash of pet food if needed!
just a reminder - do NOT boycott streaming services or not watch new things. the unions have not called for one for a reason. for one, it affects residual payments, which as minimal as those currently are, actors are still getting them during this time, and for two, studios will use lack of viewership as an excuse to cancel shows because you are showing them there is no demand. it deeply affects the industry the writers and actors stand to come back to once the strike is over
Also: going to these places puts pressure and demand on the company. Demand they can’t meet without actors and writers. That puts stress on them, and stress is good.
^^^^ive been looking for a rb with this addition because YES. if a customer wants a burger and there is no cook to make it, that puts pressure on the owner to pay the cook what they want so the customer will still give them money. if there is no customer, the owner has no reason for the cook to make burgers
Stop watching IF AND ONLY IF the unions call for a boycott. For the time being since they haven’t, streaming the shows actually helps. You’re not crossing a picket line to watch because that picket line does not exist unless a boycott is called for.
[ID: a link preview of a stock image coffee table with a laptop with the facebook logo on the screen with text on top that says ‘anyone who used facebook in the last 16 years can now get settlement money. here’s how.“ end ID]
Time Sensitive- Apply before August 25th, 2023 (8/25/23)!
Filing a claim takes less than ten minutes, and can be done HERE
Excerpt from article:
Anyone in the U.S. who used Facebook in the last 16 years can now collect a piece of a $725 million settlement by parent company Meta tied to privacy violations — as long as they fill out a claim on a website set up to pay out money to the social network’s users.
The settlement stems from multiple lawsuits that were brought against Facebook by users who claimed that the company improperly shared their data with third-party sources such as advertisers and data brokers. The litigation began after Facebook was embroiled in a privacy scandal in 2018 with Cambridge Analytica, which scraped user data from the site as part of an effort to profile voters.
Meta denied any liability or wrongdoing under the settlement, according to the recently created class-action website. However, the agreement means that U.S. residents who used Facebook between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022, can file a monetary claim as long as they do so before August 25, 2023.
Please reblog to signal boost this! As many people as possible should know about this to make their claim, if you don’t do anything you don’t get anything. It takes less than ten minutes to file and pick your payment option including pay/pal and ven/mo .
“Hot Reading” is a term from con artistry. It refers to tricking someone after you’ve done some background research on them that allows you to target your pitch more effectively. I.e. I’m a charismatic preacher who knows you’re gonna come to my show, so I look at your Facebook to see that you had a recent death in the family, who I will pretend to conjure onstage.
Conversely, “cold reading” is when you don’t prepare at all, using common tactics and lowest-common-denominator techniques. If I’m that same charismatic preacher, I channel a grandparent, because statistically you’ll have at least one dead grandparent.
A “Hard Read” is not a con artist term. That’s from fighting games. It refers to knowing an opponent so well, that you are able to predict what option they will perform next, i.e. beating someone at rock paper scissors because you know what they’ll choose next.
Apparently Serbia, and especially Belgrade, has a huge problem with air pollution.
Ms. Francine Pickup, Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Serbia, explained that: “It is estimated that cities are the source of as much as 75% of total CO2 emissions in the world, of which the largest percentage comes from traffic and cooling and heating in buildings”. She later continued to explain that 59% of the Serbian population lives in urban areas and that the number is constantly increasing. Because the population density is so high, creating green areas and planting trees – which represent natural air purification in urban areas– is a complex goal to achieve, as there is a lack of free areas for landscaping.
The microalgae replace two 10-year-old trees or 200 square meters of lawn. The function of the LIQUID 3 is practically an imitation of it. Both trees and grass perform photosynthesis and bind carbon dioxide. However, the advantage of microalgae is that it is 10 to 50 times more efficient than trees. The team behind LIQUID 3 has stated that their goal is not to replace forests or tree planting plans but to use this system to fill those urban pockets where there is no space for planting trees. In conditions of intense pollution, such as Belgrade, many trees cannot survive, while algae do not have a problem with the great levels of pollution.
The project is designed to be multifunctional. LIQUID3 is also a bench, it has chargers for mobile phones, as well as a solar panel, thanks to which the bench has lighting during the night.
Dr. Ivan Spasojevic also explained that “the Institute used single-celled freshwater algae, which exist in ponds and lakes in Serbia and can grow in tap water, and are resistant to high and low temperatures. The system does not require special maintenance – it is enough to remove the biomass created by dividing algae, which can be used as an excellent fertilizer, in a month and a half, pour new water and minerals, and the algae continue to grow indefinitely. This project aims to popularize and expand the use of microalgae in Serbia, because they can be used in wastewater treatment, as compost for green areas, for the production of biomass and biofuels, as well as for air purification from exhaust gases from the factories”.
This sounds like it is an incredible innovation for clean air and helping the environment, especially in big cities. And as we’ve seen in the news lately, Air Quality needs all the help it can get!
Therefore… I vote that we GLAMORIZE and ROMANTICIZE these things!
#Aesthetic photos.
Seeing if they can be a DIY Green-Screen, for those who want that kind of thing.
Waxing poetic about the beauty of the green-glass structures.
Stories and/or Art about Pond Fairies taking the opportunity to be Living It Up in the Big City!
Talking about how this vibrant green “Pop of Color” really livens up the concrete-grey cityscape!
Give these things some POSITIVE PR!
.
Because a lot of how we conceptualize beauty is cultural. And there’s likely to be a certain knee-jerk reaction to the idea of “"replacing our beautiful trees with weird, gross tanks if pond-scum.”
So let’s find and praise the beauty of these things. So that people will know that we *want* them, as well as seeing the need.
Just sos you knows, AO3 is down under a DDOS attack right now. They’ve been coming back in little blips and then disappearing again. It’s been several hours. (For reference, it’s currently 3 p.m. eastern, July 10, 2023.)
The culprit (as with a few other DDOS attacks recently) is Anonymous Sudan, a group that is likely Russian, not Sudanese. The ‘reason’ they gave–that AO3 is “full of disgusting smuts and other LGBTQ+ and NSFW things,” is thin and probably not completely legit, though still legitimately concerning.
DDOS protection is expensive especially for a high traffic site like ao3. And it’s uniquely vulnerable as an independent site without ads or other corporate support. SPECIFICALLY targeted bc of its queer works and yet ppl will still complain every time they ask for donations lmao
So, again, when AO3 comes back online, please don’t go hard with refreshing all your tabs. Please do remember to download fics you love early and often as you continue in your whole ~reading journey~. And please do support AO3 through a dono or becoming a donating member, if it is possible for you to do so.
You know when someone goes through your blog on a mass like-spree for a fandom? I love those like, 19 notifications in a row. it’s like “Ah, I see you’re well into a fixation. God bless.”
So Mattel came out with different Barbie body types a couple years ago, right? There’s your normal body, but there’s also Curvy, Petite, and Tall now.
Around the same time, they came out with the Made to Move body, which has a ton more articulation than your normal Barbie.
Customizers love the Made to Move body, because hey, a lot more fun positions to put a doll in for photographing. But now Mattel has started making the Made to Move dolls with the additional body types from above. We’ve gotten a Curvy Made to Move doll so far, afaik.
This Queen Elizabeth doll, though? Is the first time there’s been a Petite Made to Move body released by Mattel. So customizers were buying it up not out of any care about Queen Elizabeth — but they were buying it to pop her head right off and use the new body for other dolls!
The thing i like the most about tumblr is learning tiny details about communities i would otherwise not even be aware of. thank you for this info
I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.
-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a
~*Spiritual Experience*~
I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.
Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.
He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only BARELY enough space for the fireworks and certainly none for his truck.
So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand. This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.
He begins, and this is crucial to what happens next, by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it unsecured on his lawn.
