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I was in my late 20's when I realized Portugal is in Europe. I was deep in my teaching career before this belated discovery

home sick in bed, tell me a story 🥺🥺🥺

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My friend comes out as a trans man to his friends and gets a promotion and a pay raise LITERALLY the next day

Technically one had nothing to do with the other, but he's claiming it as a blessing from the male privilege gods

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Trying to decide if Jane's friend Helen was also a vampire or died to one. Either way she's definitely the reason Jake resisted Bertha's call

Jane Eyre but the mad-wife-locked-in-the-attic is a vampire. you agree

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hell is full. heaven is full. god created a new holding space for souls called hurgle and the only thibg to do here is this infinitely expading jigsaw puzzle of a finely detailed pigeon. we are just slowwwwwly creating little tufts of feathers for eternity . yesterday , greg found a corner piece

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Miss me with that "5 years" I just bought Skyrim

the best time to consume media is like 5 years after its peak popularity

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I could be bad at lesbian signals but I never picked up on it being a symbol. On me, keys on belt loop always seemed to say "ask her, she probably works here"

i just can't get into the keyless carabiner in belt loop thing like i don't want to be a dick about something that's ultimately innocent and harmless but it just feels like it's missing the point a little bit you know. like the carabiner only became a lesbian symbol because the things that were usually attached to it (like keys and tools) communicated a sort of practicality and self-sufficiency that's historically been seen as going against feminine gender norms, connecting to the way lesbianism itself has been seen as going against those same norms. so when you wear the carabiner empty you're gesturing towards the kind of practical, self-sufficient women whose keys and tools made the carabiner into the symbol it is today, but the gesture feels empty because yours serves no purpose

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Oh the slow burn of when I get to light Aunt Lettie on fire

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The best part is reading the comments and guessing if the vague ones are about gulls or guys

gulls are proof that a) there is a god and b) that god enjoys the pain and suffering of birders

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In a moment of bored impulse, I downloaded the dating game MeChat. It's not GOOD, but it's hilarious for a few very specific parallels with reality. MY reality, anyway. Specifically stemming from #adhd. Absolutely no realism in the game itself

Parallel 1: People Pleasing. Because I'm given multiple choice, it's easy to pick the choices my date would want from me. Plus I get the immediate dopamine reward for being a chameleon when my fictional date is pleased by my choice

Parallel 2: Unintended Woohoo. Because of said people pleasing, the first date very quickly progressed to getting nekkid. Unenthusiastically speedrunning the rest of my fake date because I can't extract myself from accidental smexytimes, huzzah

Parallel 3: Avoiding Texts. I have 224 unread texts (from known senders) in real life. MeChat is at 14 and counting 🙄

I'm MILDLY invested in a few stories, but I think I'd rather be doing something else. Anything else.

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Like, it was a sexual act but not a sexual REASON. Like "hey can you help me out with something real quick" "sure thing buddy 👍"

AND LET'S ALSO MENTION that I'm Ace, and was having the same "I shall perform A Sex" that I've had with so many actual lovers. Complete with the slight discomfort of "am I actually doing this? I guess I'm actually doing this" performative sex

... ever have that thing where you wake up from a dream of you performing cunnilingus on a purely platonic friend who's currently not talking to you? In your grandparent's living room? No me neither

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... ever have that thing where you wake up from a dream of you performing cunnilingus on a purely platonic friend who's currently not talking to you? In your grandparent's living room? No me neither

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It's my very first larp. Done so many flavors of nerd shit over the years but somehow never did that one

The spy skill "cyphers & forgeries" suggests you learn real-world code breaking because you'll be doing shit live at the events. I've never done ANY code shit before. I was even homeschooled, so I missed out on the box-and-dots shit everyone did in middle school

But I wants it precious.

So now I have personal code alphabet that pulls from greek, cyrillic, hebrew, arabic, runic, and pidgin alphabets, with inspiration off hiragana/katakana's thing of consonant/vowel syllables and a few other bits thrown in. I can't do it fast yet but it's tied enough to shit I know that I don't need to refer back much. It's brilliant. I'm brilliant. I'm going to have WAY too much fun with this

It's that thing where you get a totally normal amount of excited about something. So excited you make a new alphabet. You know how it is

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It's that thing where you get a totally normal amount of excited about something. So excited you make a new alphabet. You know how it is

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MOTHER. FUCKER. I spent actual hours across the last ten years trying to find this goddamn thing again when I could have just SCROLLED?

@skittles-the-sarcastic I actually made it lol

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"But little baby Dionysus wasn't ready to be born yet, so Zeus picked him up and sewed him into his thigh."

"he WHAT"

"You haven't covered this in science class yet? Guys have a secondary thigh womb. Obviously they don't typically use it, which is why it's secondary. But Dionysus's mom'd burned up, so Zeus needed to keep him in his thigh womb until he finished gestating."

Why You Should Pay Attention In Class, Feat. Dad and Dr. Puck

Gather ‘Round everyone, it’s time for another installment of Family Lore!

So back in the late 60′s  dad was getting his undergraduate at Cal Poly, because Dad was an early proto-nerd  (like really, he wrote a bunch of the groundwork for the thing that would eventually become the internet), and Cal Poly had one of the first comp sci programs in the country.   Also, it was like 10 miles from home, so he didn’t have to move out. However, because this was undergrad, dad had to take a bunch of non-major courses, so he decided to do geology because he’d been good at identifying rocks in boy scouts.

The course was taught by  gentleman named Dr. Puck, yes really, who was a brilliant geologist, but teaching a bunch of somewhat uninterested just-out-of-high-school kids about rocks can wear on you, even if you aren’t some sort of deranged fey creature.  So he tried his best to make it interesting, and Dad and most of the other kids had a fairly interesting time.

HOWEVER

Dad recounts that there were two girls in class who spent the entire time blowing off lecture, talking and generally being a distracting nuisance, until they heard that a quiz was coming up, then they’d pester and bully anyone for notes, usually Dad.  This went on for about three months and virtually everyone in class was grinding their teeth at these two, but Dad in particular, who did not appreciate being accosted in the hall by these two, who would alternately offer sexual favors for his notes, or threaten to start rumors about him if he didn’t help them study.  Puck knew some shit was up, but dad wasn’t eager to start legal action in his first semester, not to mention it was the 60′s and rampant patriarchy would have meant nobody would have believed him.

One Day, Dr. Puck organized a field for the class to the Santa Cruz Mountains, which are full of all manner of interesting geology things, most notably, fossils.  Really stinking cool ones.  Everyone is having a nice time hiking through the hills, looking at all the picturesque geology, when they round a corner and see a Big Goddamn RIB, just sticking out of the side of the trail.  Everyone goes OOOOOOH appreciatively, and Puck explains that this is an ancient Whale that UC Santa Cruz was digging up, but he knew someone in their geo department, so he got the goods on the site.

He then explains, in grand gestures and with the sort of vivacity that only people of Fey ancestry can muster, how this used to be an ancient seabed, but due to the magic Natural Geologic Process of Continental drift and Uplift, this whale was now some 2000 feet above sea level.  He spent a good twenty minutes telling the tale, while everyone took notes.

Almost everyone.

Literally the moment after Puck finished, one of the girls finally noticed the GIANT FUCKING RIB and asked him “But Dr. Puck- how did  whale get all the way up here?”

Puck, somehow, did not explode, but instead stood up to his full five-feet-and-one-and-one half-inches and explained in his most deadpan, eloquent lecture voice. “This is a Great Flying Whale of the Cretaceous Period.”  He gestured at the Rib.  “They used to migrate here to Santa Cruz to breed, from their winter grounds in Hawaii, and would build magnificent nests out of kelp.”

Dad recalls stuffing his notes into his mouth to keep from laughing.  His more silver-tongued classmates began to chip in.

“Didn’t they used to eat Stegosaurs?  Just swooped down and gobbled them up.”  a student asked, trying not to snicker.

“Indeed!  They were far from the gentle giants we have today!” Puck agreed.  “Teeth the size of your arm, and long sticky tongues to catch smaller prey with.”

“How did they fly?” Asked another, ready to hear a choice piece of bullshit.

“Oh, gravity was much weaker back then, so they could ‘swim’ through the air with only the aid of a few helium bladders.”  he nodded sagely.  “Yes, and when they fossilized, the bladders were preserved.  Santa Cruz has some of the finest Helium mines in the world thanks to these magnificent beasts.”

“Wow.”  Muttered one of the girls, scribbling notes furiously.  Dad unwaded the parper from his mouth, ready to drive the nail into the coffin. “Is this going to be on the test?” He asked, sweetly.

“Oh yes.”  Puck nodded gravely.

Sure enough, two weeks later, there was a test, and at the very bottom was the following:

“EXTRA CREDIT: explain everything innacurate/wrong about The Great Flying Whales Of The Cretaceous Period.  One Point per Idea that makes me Laugh.”

And that’s how Dad walked out of geology with 106% and the invaluable knowledge that people will believe ANYTHING if you speak with enough conviction.

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In my teens and twenties I flew home every summer wearing my bulkiest clothes to save room in the suitcase, meaning I flew home every summer in big jangly Tripp pants. Did I get pulled aside for an extra pat down every time? Yes. Was this an issue easily solvable by leaving 15 minutes early or wearing yoga pants? Also yes. Me and my other goth friends are... remarkably unworried about our disproportionate scrutiny. The cis white ones, anyway.

Saw someone saying that TSA/airline rules disproportionately affect women who have to take a lot of makeup with them when they travel and I'm trying to decide if my feelings of "I mean, I GUESSSS???" are based on anything valid or if it's just a reactionary impulse to a new idea

Like. Idk. I guess that's true but "women with makeup" are neither the first people I think of when I think of the harm of TSA/airline rules nor do I think that's like. The big priority to focus on idk

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Boy howdy let me tell you the "actions to results" timeline of having enough fiber for the first time in your life is swift.