I think one of the most profound forms of love is “I’ll try that, for you. I may not like it, but I’ll try it.”
It’s a confused middle-aged man in a pottery class, whose daughter is helping him with his clay’s plasticity. It’s a kid scrunching up their brow while listening to their mom’s favorite music, trying to figure out why she likes it. It’s a girlfriend who says “Yes, I’ll go with you” and her girlfriend cheering and buying a second ticket for a con. It’s a friend half dragging another friend through an aquarium, the one being dragged laughing and calling out “Wait, wait, I know we’re here for the exhibit, but I haven’t been here! Slow down!”
It’s being willing to spend some of your time trying something new because it makes someone you love happy.
using tumblr mobile and seeing people talk about a desktop layout change is like hearing a timer suddenly start ticking down. I am safe for now but I hear the danger
It would be fun to write a ghost story about a protagonist that disbelieves in the paranormal so hard that it stop existing around them.
They pick a soaking wet teenaged girl ghost in their cab and take her home. They pull up to the house and ghost girl looks longingly out before resigning herself to be sent back to the roadside.
Protagonist is just like, “so that’s $14.50.”
The ghost is surprised, she’s still there. She fumbles for cash but she didn’t die with any.
Does she feel oddly warmer than normal?
The seat more solid against her skin?
The protagonist sighs, “of course.”
They couldn’t just leave a teenage girl out there on the side of the road in the middle of the night, something bad could have happened to her. But he still had bills to pay.
“Come on. This is your parent’s house right? I’ll walk you in.”
For the first time in twenty years the ghost opens the car door and steps out onto the sidewalk.
The protagonist knocks on the front door and her parents, use to the midnight visits, wearyily open the door.
She starts to cry and hugs her parents tight. Apologizing for sneaking out. Babbling about what happened to her. How her friends had egged her into going deeper into the woods. How they had gotten separated. She’d fallen into a river.
Her parents are crying too. She finally made it home. They finally had confirmation of what happened to her. No body had been found so they were never truly sure.
The protagonist awkwardly interrupts, “so there’s still the matter of her cab fair…”
They don’t want to be insensitive but they need to get going and bills don’t pay themselves.
Eagerly her father rummages around in the pockets of his coat hanging by the door and pushing a twenty dollar bill into the protagonist’s hand. He knows it’s more than enough.
They thank the protagonist for bring her home, “keep the change,” they tell him.
As the protagonist gets in their cab and drives away the ghost can feel herself slipping away from life once more. But not back to the river and woods, waiting endlessly for someone to pull over and offer her a ride.
Her unfinished business is complete.
She’s moving on.
To somewhere warm and bright, she can feel it.
Her parents press final kisses to her cheeks as she starts to go. Through tears they whisper, I love you’s.
She’s finally at rest and there are no more stories of vanishing girls picked up off the backwoods roads
Bless you OP for going “It would be fun if someone wrote this” and then writing it. FLAWLESS.
also if you wanna combat the “women in the past only crossdressed because of misogyny!” you have GOTTA read chapter 11 in Transgender Warriors where leslie feinberg does such a good job constructing an argument against this kind of radfem reductionism
“"No wonder you’ve passed as a man! This is such an anti-woman society,” a lesbian friend told me. To her, females passing as males are simply trying to escape women’s oppression- period. She believes that once true equality is achieved in society, humankind will be genderless. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t predict human behavior in the distant future. But I know what she’s thinking- if we can build a more just society, people like me will cease to exist. She assumes that I am simply a product of oppression. Gee, thanks so much.“
"First, let’s talk about who can pass as another sex. My same friend reminds me periodically that she too might have passed as a men a century ago to escape women’s oppression. She stares right past my gender expression as she speaks. […] I don’t want to burst her bubble. Everyone deserves untrammeled dreams. But I want to tell her that, in the dead of winter, if she was bundled up against the cold, with a hood or hat covering her head, some man in a deli might call her "sir.” But could she pass as male on a board ship, sleeping with and sharing common facilities with her fellow sailors for decades and not be discovered? Of course, hundreds of thousands of women have dreamed of escaping the economic and social inequities of their lives, but how many could live as a man for a decade or a lifetime? While a woman could throw on men’s clothing and pass as a man for safety on dark roadways, could she pass as a man at an inn where men slept together in the same beds? Could she maintain her identity in daylight? Pass the scrutiny of co-workers? Would she really feel safer and more free? How could females have lived and been accepted as men without hormones or surgery? They must have been masculine; they must have been trans-gendered. If they were not, how could they pass? We don’t know how each of the thousands who passed from female to male over the centuries would define themselves today- whether as transgender or transsexual or drag or any other modern definition. The point is that their gender expression allowed them to transition. I just don’t believe that the debate about why “women pass as men” can be understood only in the light of women’s, or of lesbian and gay, oppression. It has to be viewed in the context of trans history in order to make sense.“
"Look at George Sand, the nineteenth-century novelist. It’s true that she could not have published without a male nom de plume at that time. But if that’s all there was to her identity, why did she wear men’s clothing? Why was she attacked for masculine behavior? And if it was just a question of lesbian oppression, what was she doing in bed with Chopin? If passing from female to male is simply motivated by the need to escape lesbian oppression, then why have females who have passed as males chosen other men as lovers?”
“Finally, if so many females have passed as men only to escape women’s oppression, then why have so many males passed as women? While it is biologically easier for a female to pass as a young boy than for a male to pass as a woman, there are many, many examples in the modern era of those who passed from male to female.”
“We have not always been forced to pass, to go underground, in order to work and live. We have a right to live openly and proudly. When we are denied those rights, we are the ones who suffer that oppression. But when our lives are suppressed, everyone is denied an understanding of the rich diversity of sex and gender expression and experience that exist in human society. I have lived as a man because I could not survive openly as a transgendered person. Yes, I am oppressed in this society, but I am not merely product of oppression. That is a phrase that renders all our trans identities meaningless. Passing means having to hide your identity in fear, in order to live. Being forced to pass is a recent historical development. It is passing that is a product of oppression.”
Why are all the good people staying out of Hawai‘i?
The US Navy has contaminated water with cancer-causing jet fuel and covered it up just as schools and farmers raise concern.
Food and water are expensive because tourists overrun grocery stores — with some areas now having to ration and tourists getting priority.
The cost of living sky-rockets. Airbnb kills good hotel jobs and moves money offshore, and homelessness rises with over 50% being Native Hawai‘ians.
Social media of tourists harassing endangered animals, destroying reefs and cultural sites, and treating locals rudely are increasing anti-tourist sentiment.
Suffering under contamination, colonization, capitalism, and ongoing pandemics, revolutionary groups grow as Hawai‘ians beg tourists to pause visits.
Hawai‘i is a soverign kingdom occupied by the US and colonized after rich businessmen overthrew the Queen by threatening to murder her people. The people are tired of being exploited and gaslit.
A cat who helps his deaf owner by alerting her to sounds around the house has won a national award. Zebby, a two-year-old black and white cat from Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, was named Cats Protection’s National Cat of the Year. He supports his owner Genevieve Moss, 66, by tapping her to alert her to noises like the phone or doorbell ringing. Ms Moss said she “can’t imagine life without Zebby” and is “over the moon”.
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His owner said: “I am so proud of Zebby for showing the world how intuitive and caring cats can be, and what a positive effect they can have on people’s lives. "Without my hearing aid, I can’t hear anything, but now I have Zebby to help me. "He’ll come and tap me when the phone is ringing, and then I can pop my hearing aid and speaker on and take the call. "In the night, if there’s an unusual noise he will bat me on my head to wake me up and let me know.” Zebby even helps Ms Moss by picking up the mail from the doormat and carrying it to her room in his mouth, or bringing in her slippers. “Zebby is very special, I’ve never known a cat quite like him,” she added. “He loves to be around me, wherever I am, he’s not far behind. "We’ve got a very close bond and I wouldn’t want to cope without him. "Living on my own and being deaf means life could be lonely, but not with Zebby around, he’s my hero.” The cat won a trophy and prize package, which included a £200 pet store voucher.
Hello everybody with summer fast approaching here is your regular reminder that:
Everyone needs to wear sunscreen
SPF 50 is pretty much the best protection you can get, an SPF higher than that will have the same effect
Melanin does not protect you from skin cancer
Tanning is caused by exposure to ultraviolet radiation
Spending the majority of your life receiving regular large doses of UV radiation without any skin protection is a good way to get skin cancer
Don’t use tanning beds, and don’t go sun tanning
Wear your fucking sunscreen
Okay, people are clowning in the replies, so let’s try this again:
Sunburn is an uncomfortable short term problem caused by being out in the sun for too long without sunscreen. Some people are more susceptible to it than others. Melanin does protect you from sunburn, so people with dark skin are less likely to get burned, but also sometimes people just have a natural resistance to sunburn (or lack of resistance) - I’m white as hell, and literally the only time in my life I’ve gotten a sunburn was when I spent a whole day outside in a swimsuit without putting on sunscreen when I was a kid, and all I got was a minor burn across my shoulders. Never experienced that whole ‘peeling’ thing y’all are talking about, sounds super gross and uncomfortable tho. Rip to all the rest of you but i’m different.
Skin cancer is fucking cancer. It has nothing to do with sunburn, apart from both being caused by a lot of unprotected sun exposure. If you have skin, you are at risk of getting skin cancer. I have little to no risk of getting sunburn, but I still wear sunscreen, because I am protecting myself from fucking skin cancer.
If someone is basically immune to sunburn, then that’s awesome, but we still need to use just as much sunscreen as everyone else. Because we can still get skin cancer. Immunity to sunburn is not a sign that you can go easy on the sunscreen. And honestly, if you’ve got dark skin, you should probably be extra paranoid about applying sunscreen, because the majority of information on recognizing skin cancer is meant specifically for recognizing it on white skin. If you’re black/brown, it will probably take you longer to be diagnosed if you get skin cancer. And cancer is one of those things that you want diagnosed and treated very quickly, so you should be extra motivated to not get skin cancer in the first place.
Everyone needs to wear sunscreen. Wear your fucking sun screen.
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