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It's very endearing to me how many people are willing to keep an eye on a video feed so they can push a button and let a fish in the Netherlands get to the other side of a dam.

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Budgeting Tips!

I’ve gotten pretty good at saving money over the years, here are my tips!

Look into minimalism. I put this first because if you are someone who feels trapped in a cycle of spending money on clothes and things you don’t need (like I once was) you need to consider a way of life that requires less unnecessary spending and focusses on improving your character and life as a whole. It can be hard to even begin saving when you have a strong urge to buy the latest trends and trinkets, but it is possible to break out of the cycle, and easier if you watch some motivating videos. here are some of my favs (no sponsors!):

Minimalism: What I Stopped Buying!

Konmari your life

The Art of Letting Go | The Minimalists | TEDxFargo

Never spend more than you earn. This is easier for some and harder for some but is the most crucial part of saving because you need money left over each week to save. If you’re jobless at the moment, or spending heavily, you need to cut down your spending so its below the amount coming in.

Put your budget in a spreadsheet. I put my weekly budget in an excel document with all my expenses (bus fare, phone service, food and other) and earnings (student loan payments, extra work) and see what can be left over.

Decide how much you want to save, and how much you want to spend from your left over money. lets say you earn $150 per week and must spend $50 on utilities. You have $100 left over to spend and save. If you want to get to your savings goal fast, you should save more than you spend. If you’re relaxed about saving and just want to put away a small amount, you can adjust the ratio accordingly.

Transfer your saving amount into your savings account immediately  after you get paid. Let’s say you want to save $60 per week and have $40 left to spend on food, experiences and miscellaneous items. Transfer that $60 into your savings account when you get paid and leave the $40 + utility amount ($50) in you spendings.

Pay for utilities as soon as possible. Pay your service provider load your transport money onto your transport card, put the petrol in your car etc when you get paid, if possible. This leaves you with only your extra $40 spending money in your account, so you know how much you can spend from it throughout the week.  

Have Fun! Saving is easiest when you enjoy it (duh!) so try to focus on the satisfaction of a rising bank account, and the reason you’re saving whether it be travel, study, safety, or just to get into the good habit.

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Boundaries, Agreements, and Rules, oh my!

TikvaWolf.com

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Hey if you own a business I need you to repeat after me:

I will not let my web developer manage my domain registration.

My domains are my responsibility and they cannot be handed to a contractor.

If I do not control my domains, I do not control my website.

If my domain is paid for on somebody else's credit card, it isn't really mine.

I will read every contract carefully and abide by its terms.

If the terms of a contract are not agreeable to me, I will amend them until the contractor and I both agree to and are aware of the terms.

I will pay my contractors in a timely fashion.

I will not burn bridges with my contractors.

I will pay for domain registration myself, and will never grant anyone else complete control over my domain.

I will not let my web developer manage my domain registration.

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genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital

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If there was a way to run SUPER MEGA AD BLOCKER on this website I fucking would

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I was today years old when I learned that when you type "otp: true" in AO3 search results it filters out fics with additional ships, leaving only the fics where your otp is the main ship

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products are so bad now that i have to do approximately 8 hours of research before i buy anything

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For those of you lying on your resumes about being proficient in Microsoft Office, time to actually get those skills. Jobs exams are becoming more popular. Companies are testing you to make sure you actually know your shit.

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Oo speaking of stationary...y'all wanna hear the actual best ADHD hack I've ever figured out??

You know these things?

Big fuck off pad of paper that's like the size of a small TV? They're usually intended for teachers and offices and such, but you can buy one for relatively cheap and then hang it up on your wall in a place where it's hard to ignore, and then write all your important shit on it. I used to use mine for writing down doctor's appointments and my shifts at work and my budget and things I needed to buy, whatever I needed to remember, and it was a life-saver.

It's also massive so it's harder for your brain to blend it into the background, you don't have to worry about something getting erased like you would with a dry erase board, and tbh it's just really fun to write on them. And you can put little doodles in or get some fun marker colors or stickers to cross things off, you don't have to find new sheets of paper and juggle pins like you would with a cork board, it makes remembering things fun instead of stressful, I genuinely cannot recommend it enough, this thing was the only reason I managed to survive despite having unmedicated and undiagnosed ADHD. I'm planning on buying another when my fiancé and I move and I'm going to put it in the living room by the door so we both can use it and remind each other of things.

They are a little pricey sometimes but the pages are big enough I rarely needed more than one a month, so imo they are so very worth the price tag. If you try it I hope it helps, they really were the only reason I got shit done when I was using it and I miss having one so bad. 100/10 cannot reccomend enough.

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I spend a fair amount of time teaching women to kick men in the balls, and I’ve learned that this activity tends to generate controversy. Here, according to actual adults who have actually said these things to me, are some reasons you should not kick a guy in the balls:

1. It will make him angry.

I should hope so. I’m not sending him a friend request. If I kick him hard enough, there’s a good chance I’ll render him unable to act upon his anger. That’s my goal. His feelings are his problem.

2. It will make him hurt you worse.

Statistics say otherwise. And anyway, he’s already demonstrated his desire to hurt me. Why should I give him carte blanche to decide how much he’s going to hurt me? I’d rather be an active participant in that decision-making process.

3. Groin kicks aren’t really that devastating; I’ve seen lots of guys get hit in the balls and it hardly fazed them.

This response (almost universally from men) is so common I’ve come to think of it as “groinsplaining”—you can see it many of the YouTube comments in the videos linked above. These people rarely volunteer to demonstrate their own iron balls in a real kicking situation, but they confidently assert that men in general can shrug off all kinds of damage to the groin. All I can say is, I’ve seen two-year-olds take down grown men via the groin, and toddlers don’t even have any training. I do. I like my odds.

4. We shouldn’t be teaching people how to kick men in the balls; we should be teaching men not to do anything that would make us have to kick them in the balls.

Hey, that’s a great idea! Do you have a detailed, research-based plan for teaching all men everywhere to behave themselves all the time? And do you have funding for your efforts, and buy-in from politicians and community leaders, and a network of trained, experienced instructors who can effect this change? If not, better get started on your grant proposal. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here teaching people how to kick guys in the balls. That’s what I do.

5. Telling people they should kick an assailant in the balls is the same as telling victims who didn’t kick their assailant in the balls that they did something wrong.

No, it isn’t. It’s a practical way to reduce the number of future victims by giving them more viable options to disrupt and survive an assault.

Fact: We have the power to damage the bodies of men who try to hurt us. You’re saying we shouldn’t let people use that power. I’m offering people more choices; you’re trying to take them away.

6. Kicking a guy in the balls just makes the world a more violent place.

Maybe, in the short term. But if it stops him from killing someone, or putting them in the hospital, isn’t that a net win for non-violence? The Dalai Lama thinks so.

One in four women will have good reason to kick a guy in the balls at some point in her life. Luckily, it’s not rocket science. Anyone can do it! And ball-kicking’s efficacy is beyond dispute, as the men of MMA so nobly helped us illustrate here. Gentlemen, if any of you are reading this, and conscious: Cheers, and get well soon (the non-wife-beaters among you, anyway).

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Radical workers in China are seeking out texts about working class struggles in other parts of the world. So libcom.org is taking part in an exciting new project to translate key texts about workers’ struggles and radical politics from English into Chinese. These translations will be published online in our Chinese language section, as well as on websites in China, and will be printed in China and circulated to Chinese reading groups whose members have expressed interest in these topics. Depending on length, articles cost between US$40-240 to translate. Some have been done already (see our Chinese language section), but we really need donations to fund the rest. Among the texts due for translation are ones about the mass struggles in Italy in the 60s and 70s, the struggles in Gurgaon, India today, struggles specific to working class women, and practical guides to organising in the workplace and the community. libcom.org is a leading web resource for working class people seeking to improve our lives, our working conditions and our communities. We have news of campaigns around the world, and have a huge archive of over 20,000 texts on the workers’ movement, including an extensive section with histories of strikes, uprisings and revolutions. Workers in China are fighting back against the employers, and winning. So please give us a small donation to help radicals in the country access more materials and information to assist them. libcom.org/cn

Help spread the word!

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Fact #1: laser sights don’t help your aim; they’re highly inaccurate at any range longer than a couple dozen yards and only good for rapid target acquisition

Fact #2: absolutely every precision shooter knows this

Fact #3: almost nobody else knows this because movies have erroneously taught people that snipers paint a red dot on the target’s chest before they shoot them

Fact #4: any nazi who notices a red dot on their chest while giving a speech is going to immediately stop talking and get off the stage, probably while shitting themself

Fact #5: laser pointers are cheap, legal, and easy to conceal, and unless there’s smoke or dust or something in the air, theres no way to know where it’s coming from

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Today I went to see the new XMen movie, for the second time. I was with my sister, in my wheelchair, waiting for our popcorn. We were the only people standing there, so we started up a chat with the girl behind the counter, who had also seen XMen already. It was friendly.

When we realized the dispenser was out of straws, an older 40-ish woman came out of the back room to fill it. She walked past me in my wheelchair and said, in a most infantilizing voice, “Are you excited for your movie?!” and then reached out and stroked my shoulder and did this weird sort of jazz fingers thing on my arm, then said, “I bet you are!” and kept walking.

Here’s the thing: When one of you comes to my ask box about this kind of behavior, I am full of advice. But when it actually happens to me, I freeze. I gritted my teeth and didn’t say a word until we were in our seats, when told my sister, who hadn’t seen it happen and was appalled to find out. I could still feel the woman’s fingers on my arm, like an after-taste I couldn’t shake. I could feel her for awhile after that. I felt fidgety and wired from it.

And humiliated. And I beat myself up for not saying something. For being able to be an advocate here, in this space, or for others, but not for myself. For letting her think this was okay. For letting her walk away thinking, “What a sweet little girl,” about me, a 38 year old grown-ass woman, who is not a child just because I am in a wheelchair.

And you know what? If I was a child? Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t touch disabled people without their consent. Don’t touch children without their consent. Don’t touch people, any people, without their consent! And don’t infantilize people because they have a disability. Don’t talk to me in that voice because you see me in a wheelchair and think I have the mental capacity of a four year old. Don’t talk to grown adults with developmental disabilities in that voice either. Don’t talk to actual fucking four year olds in that voice.

Just. Fucking. Don’t.