little kids are so fucking funny man. had a kid that couldn’t be any older than like 8 or so come up to me today asking where our dinosaur books where, and when i tried to gently redirect them downstairs (where our kids section is) they very matter-of-fairly informed me that they’d already read every book down there and are ready to learn about the “secret, grown-up only dinosaurs” now

I can't lie, I find it very odd that posts cautioning people against donating to individual* campaigns and promoting the idea of supporting mutual aid efforts and community kitchens in Gaza can rack up 10k+ notes--while a post promoting a community kitchen (that I can personally vouch for) struggles to get 1k notes, and has barely pulled in a couple hundred dollars over the past week.

I actively try to avoid using guilting tactics in fundraising, but this is weird to me. It's like people are using these posts as an excuse not to do things they already didn't want to do anyway, rather than actually taking their recommendations on board...

*In my experience, these campaigns often support large extended families + their neighbours

MAQMAP is a community kitchen aiming to support families in the Mawasi Al-Qarara area.

Mohammed is planning to distribute food parcels, each containing one liter of vegetable oil, one kilo of sugar, one kilo of rice, one kilo of lentils, one kilo of pasta, and a can of sauce, to the 70+ families in Mawasi Al-Qarara camp later this week.

Thank you so much for all of your help so far. Any money that you can spare would really help to keep this initiative going in the coming weeks.

The organisers have begun to purchase and hand out food parcels! For the next parcels, they plan to supplement the flour and other essentials with fruits and vegetables. Not only starvation but also malnourishment are killing people in Gaza.

ALT

ALT

ALT

Thank you!!

With your help, MAQMAP has made more than 70 packages of the most essential food items to deliver to families in the camp, as well as delivering cash assistance to orphaned children. The next set of packages will go out tomorrow, inshallah.

We need your help to keep this initiative going!

🫓 Donate here 🥕

i would be a kittypet all the way in the warrior cats universe. if i heard a bunch of guys were in the woods killing each other for survival and they think i'm the lame one for getting mediocre banquets i would be like you guys are stupidd and then when the thunderclan medicine cat comes by my fenced lot to pick yarrow i would be like what are doing and shes like medicine so my clanmates don't die and i'm like wow you guys really have it that rough. and she keeps encountering me and one day i'm like why don't you come inside there's plenty of kibble and she averts her eyes shyly and is like ...no that would be against starclan and i'd go To have a little kibble? and she's like You know what i mean. and i do. 5 moons later she is getting adopted by my people and visions of her ancestors still haunt her and she is from time to time like Did I do the right thing...? how could i be so selfish...? and i'm like my toy mouse squeaks

pentiment + act i

So I had a hysterectomy today (hooray!) and I brought along my stuffed orca, Shamu, as a comfort object. And everyone i interacted with during my pre-op was like "Oh! Who's this?" so I was telling them all about him, how he's been with me since I was 9 and gone on every single vacation and road trip, and they were telling me about their own stuffed buddies (one lady said she still has hers after 40 years!) and all of this while I was signing consent forms and providing a list of the things I'd brought with me, you know, small talk.

So then a nurse comes over and goes "Okay, I've got some stickers I'll put on your things so we know they're yours" and I'm like "OK cool" so she puts a sticker on my coat and stickers on my bags of clothes and then she turns to Shamu and I'm like "oh I guess he gets a sticker too"

But no. She pulls out a hospital bracelet that's an exact copy of mine and slaps it on his tail, like so:

And i was delighted by this, so I took a picture to send to my friends, who were equally delighted, and were cracking me up with their reactions (like so:)

Anyway, they take me back and put me under, and when I awake groggily a few hours later it takes me a minute to get my bearings, so I don't notice Shamu at first. But then I realize he's tucked up next to me in the gurney, so I grab him, and my hand touches gauze.

And I'm like "huh?" so I look at him and I realize

They gave my fucking orca a hysterectomy

medieval monks categorically present what i would describe as the great dilemma facing the modern fujo: inherently charged with tragic repressed homoeroticism, yet universally burdened with the worlds funniest and least sexy haircut

the contrast embodied by the well-trod and beloved figure of the sexy lesbian nun provides an otherwise rare example of yuri shipper's privilege

to anyone in the areas impacted by the wildfire smoke, my #1 biggest piece of advice as someone whos been dealing with wildfire smoke in the NW united states for years, is build yourself a Corsi-Rosenthal Cube

they perform as well as expensive HEPA air cleaners, and are comparatively VERY inexpensive. all you need is a box fan, 4 air filters, a piece of cardboard, and some duct tape!!!!

i think it took us maybe a half hour to put ours together, if that, and we replace the filters every 3 months. it's really made a HUGE difference, both when the air quality is bad, but also with our allergies

Saw these easy to read instructions on Twitter. Stay safe 💚

When your genocidal warmongering colonialist imperialistic buff butch milf wolf mom wants you to join your home country’s military industrial complex but you’re too busy being artdeco steampunk fenty beauty mogul diplomat goddess with a buff latino-adjacent boytoy who has a situationship with a sad eastern European 90’s heroine-chic machine herald Czech hunter twink boyfriend

Sevika + Smoking

it’s so funny to see a star trek character go through absolutely mortal peril and then lay down on a practically a slab made of the most scratchy hotel chair material at the end of the day

babe are you okay 🥺? you haven’t been sleeping well on the weirdly tough geometric patterned bed with your iridescent blanket or our wedge shaped pillows lately

I like to collect headlines that read like a time traveler’s last desperate gambit at fixing reality

I'm trying to figure out a good way to say "you really should actually learn the basics of small talk" with sounding like I'm biased against autistic people.

So here's the thing:

I see a lot of neurodivergent people talk about small talk as this baffling and meaningless waste of time that neurotypicals do for some unknown reason, and as an autistic person in an industry that is extremely based on building relationships and engaging with others, I've actually found a few really key important pieces to small talk.

1. Small talk can make interactions feel less mercenary or transactional. Having even brief exchanges about something beyond the reason that you're interacting can make it feel less like the only goal of the interaction. Especially for relationships that are not fully transactional (e.g., coworkers), this can help build a relationship with them.

2. Small talk can be a way to find commonalities and help bridge cultural or power divides. Recently I was on a call with a couple of Indian colleagues, and while we were waiting for everyone else to join I asked them where they lived in India. They didn't expect that I had heard of it, but I knew it because my dad had traveled there for work every couple months for a year or so, so we could chat about it briefly. Even for a couple of minutes, we were able to connect on this unexpected commonality. If I hadn't had that connection, I would have been able to learn about somewhere, helping narrow the privilege gap of them being expected to know more about where I live than I am about where they live.

3. Small talk can show knowledge about a person, which both builds connections and indicates that you see their life as important enough to remember about. The stereotypical "How's the wife?/How are the kids?" shows that you know the person has a wife/kids and have enough interest in their life to even ask.

4. Small talk can ease tension and reduce pressure from others, especially in a professional setting if more junior members are expected to speak. Especially for junior staff members, it can be difficult to be the first person to talk and break the silence, so engaging in small talk beforehand allows for a lower-pressure transition from silence to whatever the presentation is about.

5. Small talk provides a low-risk way to identify commonalities. While conversations about religion, politics, etc. may lead to tension or discomfort, even if they bring out commonalities, small talk is specifically structured to minimize tension while still providing the opportunity to learn more about each other. A conversation about the weather can reveal that you both like hiking when it's nice out; a conversation about the weekend can reveal that you both have family in the same state.

Small talk in many cases is signaling, a way to indicate certain things to people. It's a more indirect version of it than many autistic people like, but it is one.

But, you cry, I don't know how to do small talk!

Small talk actually has some pretty clear guidelines, even if they are often unspoken.

• You are generally always safe starting with a question.
• Weather, traffic/travel, and non-political events are generally a safe bet, because those are commonalities even if you are in different locations. "It was so nice out here this weekend. What's the weather like near you?" "I got stuck in that big traffic mess on my way here. Did you get caught in that?"
• If you have some knowledge about that person, use that to inform further questions. I knew my coworkers lived in India, so I asked where in India. If I had just known that they didn't live in the same country as me, I could have asked where they lived.
• Let them offer information about their family before you ask about it. Family can be complicated, and if you wait for them to offer that will indicate what sort of information they are comfortable sharing. You can then mirror their language (e.g., if they mention a wife then you can ask how their wife is doing, if they mention a partner then you can ask how the partner is doing). If "how are they doing" feels too personal, language like "what are they up to these days?" can be a bit more neutral and feel less invasive. If you're really not sure, feel free to avoid questions about family altogether.
• When asking about where someone is from, don't ask "where are you from originally?" unless you know for a fact that they are not from where you are. Instead, you can ask things like, "Did you grow up around here?" which is a more neutral phrasing. This is especially common for the area where I live where a huge percentage of people are transplants (including me) and so people who actually grew up in the area are a bit of a rarity.
• Politics, religion, and money are generally not good starting points for small talk
• Weather, traffic/commutes, non-political events, and weekends/time off are generally safe bets