dancerandfighter

[dancerandfighter]

Throwback Thursday: It was 5 years ago when we were celebrating award season for The Shape Of Water, and I got to live my dream of being in an old musical dance number (dressed as an Amphibian Man, of course) with the amazing Sally Hawkins.

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Today I met happiness

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Kinda horrified at all the people talking about using scratched up non-stick pans and not realising that Teflon and other coatings are so very carcinogenic. PFAS (carcinogenic forever chemicals) build up in your body like lead or mercury.

^ Don't fucking use this ^

I need young people and the older ones too apparently, to invest in at least one good thick based stainless steel pan. It's better for cooking and it won't give you cancer.

Stainless steel pan? You can scrub that shit with a steel scourer... If stuff won't come off? You can soak it in a laundry active oxygen cleaner for an hour or two and it will come right off, then rinse with clean water and you're golden. You want to whisk your eggs in the pan? Literally no downside, but in a non-stick pan you get CANCER flakes.

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When it was discovered that Zalim (ironically meaning, cruel) was in the company of two very young cubs, those at Ranthambore feared the worst: that, as an adult male, he would kill them. Instead, he surprised naturalists with his “motherly” behavior when he took in his twin daughters following the death of their mother.

At this time, science stated that tigers were only as social as mothers and cubs could go and that tiger fathers rarely interacted with their offspring. Zalim changed that when he was witnessed, month after month, caring for his daughters and teaching them how to hunt. Their relationship eventually ceased when the two girls were shifted to Sariska Tiger Reserve and Zalim went on to father another litter with the then-dominant tigress Sundari, the so-called Lady of the Lakes. When she too mysteriously disappeared, Zalim unsurprisingly took care of their cubs as well.

Ranthambore National Park, India Photograph taken via camera trap

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Happy pride month to my dad. When I came out as bi to him, this man googled what it ment, look at me and said "ohh. Yeah. You get that from me. You'd have far more siblings of I only shaged women." And went right back to his work emails.

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Shel Silverstein predicting ChatGPT in 1981

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“Asking for a friend” by Cedric Smith

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i’m screaming

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One sad side effect of big box stores is that you just don’t get lifelong hyper fixation guy access like you used to.

Like yeah I can go to Menards and buy a door.

But it used to be I could go to the door store, and speak to a man whose sole passion in life was doors and who would talk about the history of door insulation patterns over the last 50 years without stopping to breathe.

That man is gonna find me the BEST door option for me.

Seriously my neighborhood had one of these. They were across the street from the lighting shop owned by the guy who could tell you the exact date, off the top of his head, that your property got electrical wiring based on your address.

Now these guys rarely get to own a shop, make a good living, and sell the very finest doors for decades. They’re relegated to Reddit posts which are informative but ultimately do not replace door guy having a door shop.

I don’t want to talk to some miserable, underpaid 20 year old who was in plumbing last week and in doors this week and doesn’t know a hammer from a hanger.

I want my door guy back.

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somewhere out there right now is a kid with curly hair being raised by people who have wavy hair at best and those people are giving them 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner and telling them to dry brush it. and that kid is gonna spend all of middle school and high school hating their hair and moping over the flat iron. they're being told right now that if they don't dry-brush their curl pattern into oblivion every morning it means they're unkempt and gross even though they naturally have the kind of ringlets that a thousand bridezillas would commit horrible murders for every june. it's happening right now it's an absolute epidemic and a tragedy every time

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When I am appointed to represent a child, my first action is to separate them from their parents and tell them the following things:

1. I am their attorney. I do not work for their parent or the judge or the cops. I don’t care what any of those people want.

2. My job is to listen to them and try and make what they want happen in court. (At this point I make a joke about how most people want me to get them out of trouble but if someone wanted to be in trouble I would do my best.)

3. What they tell me is confidential. It goes nowhere unless they agree to it. (If old enough, I talk to them about mandatory reporters, and how I’m a mandatory non reporter.)

4. I will give them lots of advice because I’ve been doing court for a while and I know a lot about it, and they don’t. It’s all really complicated, and if they don’t understand what’s happening it’s my job to help them figure it out.

5. They will make the decisions. (At this point I usually have to reassure them that I’ll help, I’ll speak for them in front of the judge, and I’ve got their back. It’s scary to have an adult say you’re in charge, most of the time.)

6. I tell them I know it’s absolutely wild to have some stranger come in here and say “hey, you can trust me!” and that I get if they don’t believe everything right away, because I plan to show them through my actions and my words that I’ll fight for them.

7. But nonetheless, I will treat them like a person who can make decisions, because they are living their life and I am not.

I do not:

Pretend to be cool.

Try to be their BFF.

Overwhelm them with detail.

Let their parents in the room until the kid asks for them. (I provide openings for this, and ask if the kid wants their parent to help them remember and understand.)

I want to emphasize I went into this job knowing nothing about how to interact with vulnerable populations, especially children. The training was minimal, and my role means that I can literally walk into a facility and get an unmonitored visit with a minor client one on one.

In my years of practice I have never felt threatened by a child, even one that was “violent” and “unstable.” It turns out just saying “hi, I think you’re a person with thoughts” is wildly successful? Now people treat me like I have special Child Whisperer powers. My powers are that I ask the child what’s up and I’m not scared to say things that are objectively awkward. I know nothing about anything.

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I know that some British people take umbrage at Americans calling the Great British Bake Off relaxing, but it's just because GBBO is such a different kind of stressful from American baking shows.

American baking shows will be called something like "Cupcake Knife Fight", there's horror movie lighting everywhere and dramatic stings every 5 seconds. All of the contestants are shit talking each other and fist fighting over the one single deep fryer provided by production. It will show the judges all whispering to each other at their super villain table overlooking the whole kitchen, and one will be like, "Oh my god. Everyone look at Brenda right now. She's straight tanking it." And it will cut to Brenda, who is running around covered in flour and crying and also bleeding for some reason. Then you get a clip from an interview with one of the contestants, and they're like, "I really need to win this. Without this award money, I'm gonna need to close my restaurant, sell my dad, and live out of my car. AGAIN." Then the giant digital doomsday clock overhead lets out a horrid klaxon, the judges tell half of them that their cupcakes taste disgusting, and one of them gets eliminated and sent to walk down the dramatically-lit shame hallway never to be seen again.

Meanwhile GBBO is in a lovely, brightly colored tent, there are delightful and friendly hosts/jesters there to keep everyone entertained, and all of the B Roll is of like... a bumblebee going into a flower, or a lamb running in a field. And yes, there will be moments where someone will mess up their timing or something, and they'll be looking at their bake through the oven door like, "oh gosh I don't think this will rise in time!" Then they stand up to find Paul Hollywood directly behind them ominously. His creepy whitewalker eyes will glow white, and he'll say something like "the 12th of June. 2035. Drowning." And his eyes will go back to normal and he'll walk away. Then the baker gives a playful grimace to the camera and says "that didnt sound great, did it?". Cut to a sweet looking older woman sipping tea on a stool and she says "oo I do hope that Prue enjoys the taste of my sugary, sticky baps!". Then, at the end, someone gets a gold star for doing good, and the loser of the episode gets in the middle of a giant group hug. You see all of them at the end of the series at a giant carnival with their families and the post credits informs you that all of the contestants have become a Partridge Family-style traveling band and stayed friends forever.

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collection of some of my favourite derek guy (dieworkwear on twitter/the menswear guy) tweets

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my favorite thing about navigating fanfiction is finding a really good one and being all “oh boy this was good, I hope they have more!” and literally every other story they’ve ever written was for like Miami Vice 

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The spirit of Diogenes is alive and well

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Did a brand new kind of bowling shot today

we called it the "trust the Force Luke" shot or the "through God all things are possible" shot