you know what to do.
(via skymurdock)
In light of threats to the National Park Service on Twitter, follow @AltUSNatParkSer on twitter for more of the National Park Service’s unexpected rebellion.
Also:
@RogueNASA
Salute the #RogueRangers
Guys, it’s a stampede:
Don’t forget @ScienceMarchDC
FUCK IT UP!!!!!
i haven’t checked any of these sources so like grain of salt but you know what? guys? this is just the best.
(via chromatographic)
We are all born with a tattoo on our wrist, it reads the first sentence spoken to you by your soulmate. Your sentence: “Hey!”
Edward Castle has truly and utterly given up on his soulmate. When you’ve got at least 25 people a day shouting “Hey!” at you, even putting the effort to look for your soulmate is completely pointless.
The cursive “Hey!” lies on his skin like a curse, or so he’s always thought. His best mate’s sentence was the name of his now wife of 3 years, and his sister’s was “You’re hired!” (that made for a very awkward conversation, which left his sister without a job, but that’s a whole other story.)
Edward’s daily commute is hell for him, as the multitude of people yelling “Hey!” at him (most likely to get him to move) put him on edge, because what if he really did end up meeting his soulmate on the train to his 9am Psych lecture? Lecture….
“Oh shit. Lecture. That thing I’m currently sitting in.” he thought to himself, just as his professor excused the class. At this stage, it was pretty normal for him to lose focus during the Mandarin lecture, but if anything that was really his fault for adding a 5pm elective on his one full day of lectures.
Exhausted and done with the day, Edward rummaged in his bag for his MetroCard (which his Foreign Affairs professor would be returning to him at 2pm on Friday, it seemed) when his Creative Writing task flew onto the concrete of the street, just barely missing a puddle of unidentifiable liquid.
“What does your soulmate tattoo mean to you?”
The question stood out like a sore thumb, and frankly, he had been putting the task off since he received it (the very first lecture). But now it was due tomorrow.
“Shit. Off to Wanda’s 24/7 then.” Edward proclaimed to nobody in particular, feet already guiding him down the path he’d walked a million times over, the stresses of either mountains of assignments or exams clouding his thoughts until he stepped into the familiar place, which always seemed to smell of burnt coffee and familiar faces working behind the counter.
As he stepped in, the scent of the burnt coffee welcomely filled his lungs, but Wanda (the spritely ninety-something year old woman who’d been running the diner since her late thirties) had put all of her new staff on the same shift for a change, most likely by accident (she hated people not being able to see a familiar face when they walked in). Wordlessly, Edward took a booth in the surprisingly calm diner, pulling out his laptop and notes before any of the waiters had even processed his arrival.
“Hey!” a chirpy voice jabbered.
“Strong.” Edward replied curtly. After a few short seconds,
“…The strongest coffee you can get me, please. I’m gonna be a while.” he blurted out, not really caring about how he was addressing this seemingly nice waiter at this stage.
“Well, that certainly makes more sense.” the waiter responded. After another fleeting second of this waiter not moving, Edward looked up.
He did not expect to be met with a singular word tattooed on a much more masculine wrist than he was expecting, not that he minded in the slightest.
“Strong.”
(via writing-prompt-s)
The Future of the Left is Female -
This is flat-out the best article I’ve read so far about the Women’s March. Four for you, NYMag, you go.
[video]
[video]
“Are you gonna let politics ruin a friendship?”
Yes tf I am
People talk about politics as if it’s this isolated, abstract concept that only matters at election time. Somebody’s politics is their world view. It’s whether they think certain human beings deserve rights. It’s how they think the world should be. And if somebody thinks that the world should be colder, meaner, less accepting and downright hostile to people that are different to them, then sure as fuck is the friendship over.
(via the-hogfather)
It occurs to me that as much as “humans are the scary ones” fits sometimes, if you look at it another way, humans might seem like the absurdly friendly or curious ones.
I mean, who looked at an elephant, gigantic creature thoroughly capable of killing someone if it has to, and thought “I’m gonna ride on that thing!”?
And put a human near any canine predator and there’s a strong chance of said human yelling “PUPPY!” and initiating playful interaction with it.
And what about the people who look at whales, bigger than basically everything else, and decide “I’m gonna swim with our splashy danger friends!”
Heck, for all we know, humans might run into the scariest, toughest aliens out there and say “Heck with it. I’m gonna hug ‘em.”
“Why?!”
“I dunno. I gotta hug ‘em.”
And it’s like the first friendly interaction the species has had in forever so suddenly humanity has a bunch of big scary friends.
“Commander, we must update the code of conduct to include the humans.”
“Why? Are they more aggressive than we anticipated?”
“It seems to be the opposite Commander. Just this morning a crewman nearly lost their hand when attempting to stroke an unidentified feline on an unknown world. Their reaction to the attack was to call the creature a “mean kitty” and vow to win it over. Upon inquiry it seems they bond so readily with creatures outside their species that they have the capacity to feel sympathy for an alien creature they have never seen before simply because it appears distressed. I hate to say this commander but we must install a rule to prevent them from endangering their own lives when interacting with the galaxy’s fauna.”
“I see what you mean. So be it, from now on no crewman is allowed to touch unknown animals without permission from a superior officer. And send a message to supplies about acquiring one of these “puppies” so that their desire to touch furred predators can be safely sated.Ehehehe I love this! Every time someone adds a short story to my post it gets like 90% cuter and more epic
Lets be honest, the humans would ignore the hell outta that rule whenever alone.
“So I hear that you’ve just recruited a human for your ship.”
“Yes, it’s the first time that I’ve worked with these species, but they come highly recommended. Say, you’ve worked with a few, what tips can you give me? I’d hate to have some kind of cultural misunderstanding if it’s avoidable.”
“The first rule of working with humans is never leave them unsupervised.”
“Wait, what?”
“I’m serious. Don’t do it. Things. Happen.”
“But wait, I thought that I heard you highly recommended that every crew should have at least one on board?”
“Absolutely, and I stand by that. Humans are excellent innovators, and are psychologically very resilient. If you have a crisis, then a human that has bonded wth your crew properly can be invaluable. Treat your human well and you should get the best out of them as a crew member. Their ability to get on with almost any species is legendary.”
“But Toks, didn’t you just say…”
“The trouble is that they will potentially try to bond with anything. If you leave them unsupervised, you have no idea what kind of trouble they can get themselves into. It was sheer luck that the Fanzorians thought that it was funny that the human picked up the Crown Prince to coo at him.”
“Crown Prince Horram, Scourge of Pixia?”
“The very same. Surprisingly good sense of humour. But don’t even get me started on that one time with the Dunlip. Al-Human wanted to know if they could keep it. As a pet.”
“A Dunlip? You mean the 3 metre tall apex predators from Jowun?”
“Yup. Don’t leave your humans unsupervised.”
“I’ll uh, take that under advisement.”
“Seriously. Get a supply of safe animals for the humans to bond with or they will make their own. I mean, they will try to befriend anything they come across anyway, but without any permanent pets they can get… creative. Don’t even get me started on the time one of them taped a knife to one of our auto-cleaners and named it Stabby.
Three weeks in and when we finally caught the wretched thing, half the humans on crew tried to revolt about us “killing” Stabby by removing the knife.
“How… how did you resolve that sir?”
“Glaxcol made a toy knife out of insulation rubber and strapped that on instead. Quite a creative solution, I suppose.”
“And that sated the humans?
“Worse.”
“Worse?”
“They thought it was so funny they made a second one, strapped false eyes on springs to both and held mock battles. Then decided Stabby and Knifey were in love and now none of them will allow the others to stage fights between them any more.”Stabby is an omniversal constant.
Oh my gods, we’re the Steve Irwins of the universe.
this is my fave thing.
it can’t even be safe to assume humans would only attach themselves to only fuzzy, furry things.
reptilian and even insectoid creatures are just as likely to be randomly selected as “this is a thing i love” by a human.
“Excuse me, captain? Human-Rob requests that we … bring aboard … a Kilarn.”
“A Kilarn? The giant poisonous and highly aggressive insectoid predator? Am I hearing you correctly?”
“…. Yes ser.”
“For the love of- WHY?”
“I asked the same thing, to which they replied “he’s trying his best” in a distressed tone of voice.“
*captain sighs and holds head in hands*
(via the-hogfather)
“
I got pregnant three years ago. I was 22, it was a brand-new relationship, but I was adamant that I was having a baby. I’ve always taken motherhood very seriously. I was abused — the product of people who shouldn’t have had kids — then adopted. I felt so strongly that this was the most important job of my life.
I wasn’t at risk of genetic defects, so during the anatomy scan it didn’t even occur to me that they were looking for abnormalities. Me, my boyfriend, and my parents all went to the appointment, and when they said I was having a girl, my mom jumped up and down hollering as if she were at a football game. My boyfriend cried.
I was home alone when I got a call from the genetic specialist who told me that the tests were positive for trisomy 13. I thought that was Down syndrome and thought, Okay, I can do that. But then she started apologizing: “I’m so sorry, these babies usually miscarry. It’s a miracle she’s made it this far.” I said I didn’t understand, and she explained that my baby could pass any day, be still-born, or die soon after. I Googled “trisomy 13” and saw horrific pictures of babies without noses or mouths. I sat there and sobbed while I held my belly apologizing to her over and over and over again. I called my mom and said, “My baby’s going to die. My baby’s going to die.”
The doctor cleared her schedule and saw me later that day. She said: “You need to make a decision. You’re already 23 weeks and the state of Ohio has restrictions that impact your options.” She explained I could terminate or carry the pregnancy to its extent. At the time, 24 weeks was the cutoff for abortion in Ohio or else you had to travel to another state. [In December 2016, Republican governor John Kasich signed a law that reduced this cutoff to 20 weeks.] We only had days to decide, and even then there were waiting lists and the expense was horrendous. I had never felt so alone.
The counselor said my baby wasn’t in pain and there was no risk to either of our lives if we continued the pregnancy. I thought, Let’s try to make some memories while we can. I really enjoyed being pregnant. I loved having this purpose, and I thought as long as she’s not suffering, I think that her being here with us right now is the best we can do. And so … we tried.
At 29 weeks, my ankles and legs got extremely swollen. I was disassociating and became lightheaded, so I left work. I started cramping and ended up in the hospital. There were so many tests, which ultimately concluded that this was an emergency situation. [Jessica was at risk of having a seizure, and potentially dying, if labor wasn’t induced.] I wasn’t thinking, I’m terminating this pregnancy in order to save my life, but that’s what my paperwork said.
The doctor was very clear. He said, “You need to decide whether you want to induce now or come back in a week and get your blood pressure checked again — and I will induce you then.” I lived 45 minutes away from any hospital, on a farm without neighbors. It was a bitterly cold January. He was afraid I’d have a seizure and not get to them in time. That worried me, too.
But I knew that if I was induced, there was no chance my daughter would survive. Even if I carried her to term, her survival rate was very low, less than 5 percent. Another decision I had to make was telling the doctors that I did not want them to resuscitate the baby.
I was in labor for 32 hours.
I declined to have her monitored during labor because I didn’t want to sit there listening to her pass away. So they’d periodically come in and quietly listen for a heartbeat. The last time, at 1 a.m., they couldn’t hear it. I made them bring my family back into the room, and about a half an hour later it was time. She was born after three pushes, and at just two and a half pounds. Her heart was still beating, but she didn’t cry or breathe or make any sort of sound. There was mention of oxygen, but I said, “Please, just let her go.” They put her on my chest, and my boyfriend came and cut the cord.
She stayed alive for two and a half hours. They called it when her heart stopped.
When I made the decision to “voluntarily” induce, I felt like I was picking myself over my child. I wouldn’t wish that on the most evil person on Earth. A funeral director arrived with a huge white cloth. He said, “I have to cover her face so people don’t know when I’m walking down the hall [with such a small body].” I handed her over, and that was the last time that I saw her. I didn’t want a casket on display at the funeral; that tiny box would have been way too much. I collected her ashes a week later.
Many people don’t understand why this experience reinforced my pro-choice beliefs. Now more than ever, I firmly believe: No conditions. No restrictions. I can’t imagine being in that situation and being denied the dignity of making a choice. That little bit of control was so empowering. Nobody just wakes up after being pregnant for over 20 weeks and says, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
When Trump said those things about late-term abortion during the debate, I was so angry. What must the rest of the world think of us? I have friends in the U.K. and Canada saying, “What the hell? You can have 30 guns but you can’t have a dignified, comfortable abortion?”
And while we’re getting abortions and making painful decisions about our bodies, Trump is fucking tweeting.
” — Jessica, who had an abortion after 24 weeks, rural Ohio, What Abortion Looks Like In America Right Now (via gorandomshesaid)(Source: quigonejinn, via the-hogfather)
Let’s give credit where credit is due: Women’s March organizers Tamika Mallory, Bob Bland, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour
i find the lack of notes disturbing.
don’t ever let the fact that women of color had a huge hand in organizing the biggest worldwide protest in global history be erased
i think it’s also important to remember that this diverse, talented group was not assembled till after the first all-white group of organizers got read the hell out for their erasure and appropriation.
WOC shouldn’t have had to fight to be included. WOC should have been at the table from day one.
(via ifeelbetterer)