You can be angry about things but still make the conscious decision not to be cruel. When we remind each other to be kind, we’re not saying don’t be mad. There’s a lot of stuff to be mad about right now. But you can still be a kind and patient person. You don’t have to be mean to other people. You can choose.
So, today, a woman came into our shop. It was a woman I’ve only heard my parents refer to as ‘the Deaf Lady’. My mum had told her about me, explained that I was doing Sign Language, and come to find me on a day she knew I was working.
But today, she didn’t need her lawnmower repaired. In fact, she hadn’t touched it since it had been, and as far as she knew everything was fine.
She’d come in to sign to me.
She waved hello, and instantly explained that my mum had told her I would be in today. I asked her how she was, and the smile that she had on her face was the biggest I’ve ever seen.
And we spent about an hour in my family’s little shop, talking about everything. She told me about her life, about how she’d lived in the same house for 60 years.
She’d been born deaf, and been a Brownie, but never a Guide, because of the War… she’s now 86.
She had some amazing stories to tell, and twice she cried. One of those times was remembering her youth, and the other was when she was explaining to me that her husband had died around 20 years ago, and how he’d been the last person she’d known that could communicate with her.
She’s been alone for 20 years, living in a silent world, unable to communicate with anyone for the most part. The most interaction she has is when she writes things down for people, but she’s struggled to make any recent friends, and her family is long gone.
Now someone explain to me what’s wrong with every school teaching a certain amount of Sign Language, and for colleges to offer it more freely and frequently. People should be encouraged to learn BSL, because otherwise we’re cutting ourselves off from talking to around 8 million people or so (in the UK alone).
That’s millions of people who are no less important than you are, who have their own stories to tell, and the same need for communication as anyone else on this tiny little planet.
J. cried today because it was the first time for a long time that anyone has asked her for her name, or listened to her stories.
She’s also coming back into work tomorrow, to sign with me, and help me practice. But also – because we’re only human – for the company.
Every school should offer the native sign language of their region.
Normalize and celebrate language in all its modes, and the cultures that go with it.
Or if offering a class isn’t possible because of funding, at least teach some in.. English or other language class or something.
Fun fact: anytime you hear a story that boils down to “and then some ABSOLUTE FOOL sued this totally innocent megacorporation for assloads of money AND WON! Can you believe it? Ridiculous. Some people, right?” 99 times out of 100, the corporation super fucked up, the plaintiff 100% deserved that money,.and you’ve just been fed corporate propaganda.
“Hot Coffee Lady” had to get skin grafts and was at least the 11th customer to be hospitalized. The coffee served to her was in violation of a court order requiring McDonald’s to sell their coffee at a safe temperature.
The “warning: contents hot” label is a passive-aggressive move by McDonalds because they implemented it at the same time that they finally complied with legal requirements to serve safe beverages.
Every time you see “warning contents hot” and roll your eyes because of course it’s hot, you’re assuming that you and McDonald’s agree on the definition of “hot.”
What’s more, you assume you’ve always agreed, which is the baseline for assuming that the lady who sued had unrealistic expectations.
Yeah. I don’t remember the corporate policy for McDonalds coffee temperature at the time, but i do remember that it was *near boiling.*
Your Starbucks? Not near boiling. Not likely to make you need massive reconstructive surgery on your hoo hah if you spill it in your lap.
Also, please remember exactly how much BS someone would have to go through to get that verdict. Generally speaking, someone has been seriously injured or killed. They have to prove that the company was negligent or knowingly refused to fix an issue. This isn’t like airing something on Fox News – there are actual standards of proof that have to be met. Even so, most consumer lawsuits against corporations do not achieve large awards. When they do, consider how severe the damage must have been. The MCD lady only wanted them to pay her damn medical bills (think about how much medical care costs in the U.S.); McDonalds refused. Toyota eventually had to pay a massive settlement (after being sued multiple times) for issues with the gas pedal causing sudden massive acceleration. Do you honestly believe they would have just fixed it on their own? Toyota lied to regulators and blamed it on “driver error” – because sometimes you just hit the gas really hard when you meant to hit the brake… (see https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/toyota-reaches-12-billion-settlement-to-end-criminal-probe/2014/03/19/5738a3c4-af69-11e3-9627-c65021d6d572_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ab92a7e6b655)
Don’t let them fool you into thinking that people are getting hurt by a company’s product just because they’re stupid.
Corporations have no qualms about lying and defaming people they have hurt to avoid being held accountable.
disabled people shouldn’t have to explain their illnesses to you.
this may seem obvious, but it’s apparently not. i have a chronic, “invisible” illness. i use braces and wheelchairs and crutches and other accommodations that help me be able to get out, save energy for tomorrow.
people judge. i’ve had people glare when i stand up from my wheelchair. i’ve had people make a fuss when i wear a brace that’s different from yesterday’s. had people question the authenticity of my illness. had able-bodied people go on for hours about how i’m not disabled, want attention, want drugs.
no ill person should go through this. i am a person, i am ill. get over it. don’t question other people’s abilities. i shouldn’t have to carry around my doctor’s notes in order to be validated in my pain.
The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.
Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.
Checkmate, nihilism.
This is a powerful positive message..
I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientifically sound.
There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something – i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese – the learned helplessness goes away.
No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something – which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.
Knit a sock.
If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.
when you find an academic source that’s perfect for your paper but it’s behind a pay wall
Deciding to cite it anyway base on the abstract, knowing your professor probably won’t go through and look up every source in works cited
if you guys want to read academic papers but they’re behind a paywall, get the chrome extension Unpaywall. when you visit a site that requires you pay for their journal to view the article, the extension will look for other open access sites that will show you the article for free, and it’s all completely legal. all that money goes to the publisher, the writer of the paper gets none of it. https://unpaywall.org
If you can find out an author’s name, contact them. They may be willing to email it to you.For free.
Me practicing this housewife thing for when I drop out of uni
Hey so I just feel the need to add this. NEVER deep fry in a shallow pot. What happened here is this person put frozen fries in hot oil, and the hot oil will nearly double in size when you drop something cold in it. Then it overflows out of the pot and you have a grease fire. You should never have oil more than about a third of the way up the pot.
Reblogging because even I didn’t officially know this.
For some reason I thought he was dropping like 5 pieces of pasta into a pot of water and it was like that gif of Homer Simpson setting a bowl of cereal on fire
i dont know when it happened but somewhere along the way “shipping” got a new meaning for younger folk that seems to translate to “i want these people together for real asap”. i think the media had something to do with it. but guys.
guys.
shipping absolutely Does Not mean demanding anything from people/creators. shipping isn’t about expecting and waiting for the day it will certainly happen. it is not a direct translation to Happen Or Die.
shipping means you like the idea of two (or more) people together. you like the concept. you find it fun to imagine the dynamics. you even create fanon content of it (fic, art, edits). it’s all in your head and it’s Fine that way.
is it nice to have a ship become canon? oh my god, yes. but that’s not what shipping is about and yall need to take a step back and breathe because being a jerk to people aint gonna change their mind about ships.
ifesbob 