I saw a post that was like “mutuals =/= friends” like whoa okay I always thought of mutuals as low key friends but that’s fine let’s make people more insecure of their relationships than they already are
Bruhs, if we are mutuals you are 100% at least low-key level friend to me.
“Do you have that book?” a patron asks. You reply, “I’m sorry, could you be more specific?” “The book,” is the only answer you get. This happens with three more patrons today. “I’m sorry,” you say to them all, “I don’t know what book you’re talking about.” The book. The book. The Book. Should you know The Book? Should you have The Book?
An elderly couple comes in every morning for the newspaper. Nobody remembers a time that they didn’t. They have always been elderly. There’s a faint foul smell in the library when they’re in.
There is a branch on the system map that you’ve never heard anyone talk about. You’ve never seen books with their branch sticker come in and you’ve never sent books to them. You asked a co-worker about it once, but they just smiled and asked how much shelf reading you got done that day. You tried to find it once, but kept finding yourself in the same grocery store parking lot over and over.
You weed for hours. There are no fewer books on the shelves. You weed for days. There is still no room for the new books that have come in. You weed for months. You feel like you’ve withdrawn a lot of these books already. You know you threw this stained, tattered, moldy copy of Bleak House in recycling a while ago. You weed for years. You weed forever.
(You never weed books on witchcraft. In fact, you put ten brand new ones on the shelf yesterday. They have already disappeared.)
One day the elderly couple doesn’t come in. The library has a much fouler smell that usual during the time they’re regularly in.
You go through a box of donations and at the very bottom you find a copy of Ramona Quimby, Age 8. You loved that book as a child, and it looks like the same edition. You open it to check the publishing date and there is your name and childhood phone number written in purple crayola marker in your 8-year-old self’s handwriting. You did not grow up around here. Your family is not close.
You go through a box of donations and at the very bottom you find a book with a photo used as a bookmark. You take it out to let the patron know they left it in there next time they come in. The photo is of a child at the beach and you would swear that it was a picture of you, but you have no memory of that swimsuit and no memory of that beach. The patron does not return.
You go through a box of donations and at the very bottom you find a book written in a language you can’t identify. You pass it around to your coworkers, and none of them know either. You upload a picture of the cover to reverse google image search and there are no matches. You open the book to double check for copyright information and you don’t know how you missed it until now but there is your your name and childhood phone number written in purple crayola marker in your 8-year-old self’s handwriting.
“Do you have that book?” a patron asks. You reply, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what book you’re talking about,” even though this time you get the nagging feeling that you do.
it would be so cool if my parent was a giant cell phone
Black Mirror
Story time: Two days ago a woman ran into my local Starbucks, in tears, holding up a smartphone and saying, “Can someone please help me? My father is dying!” One of the baristas was able to help her get a video chat working in time for her to say goodbye to her father while she could see his face, and he could see hers. This technology, that people are constantly shitting on, that people keep saying is disconnecting us, made that possible. I don’t know who she was, but I felt connected to her then. I think we all did, everyone who was there. I’m sad for her loss, and I’m also glad that the technology exists that let her see her dad one more time, even though she couldn’t physically go to him.
So if people could stop complaining about communication technology, which actually, surprise, facilitatescommunication, that would be great.
When the Ninth Doctor first asked Rose to travel through time with him and refused, the Doctor accepted that and moved on. He traveled through space and time, saving the universe, all lonely for years thinking “I wish Rose could have been here.” Eventually, he goes back to a few seconds after he left Rose and says “By the way, did I mention it also travels in time?”
Rose never knew how long the Doctor waited for her.
I think this makes sense. In the episode Rose you see all those photos of Nine at the assassination of Kennedy and at the Titanic (on his own). But also in that episode he’s checking his reflection in the mirror like he’s seeing it for the first time, so he can’t have been long regenerated. So maybe he does all that stuff in the time before he comes back and says “Did I mention, it also travels in time?”
which makes that line even more powerful because this time he would really want her to say yes, because he knows what it’s like without her.
What’s interesting are the events the Doctor (theoretically) chose to visit during that time between when Rose (theoretically) first said no, and when he returned to extend the invitation a second time. Nine was photographed/drawn near the Titanic, Krakatoa, and the Kennedy assassination. All horrible catastrophes with tragic loss of life, all catastrophes that caused profound change in human history, catastrophes that (if Pompeii and Bowie Base One are anything to go by), would likely qualify as fixed points in time.
This leads me to believe that the Doctor was nearly in the throes a Time Lord Victorious breakdown as a result of the Time War and Rose’s rejection. He was dancing around the edges of these fixed points, likely looking for a way to save lives and prove to himself that he wasn’t a vile person. To prove to himself he could make a difference.
To prove to himself that he’s worthy of having someone brave and clever like Rose as a companion.
And Nine (obviously) doesn’t save Kennedy’s life or stop the eruption of Krakatoa, but in the episode “Rose” we find out he DOES save one family originally scheduled to travel on the Titanic by convincing them to delay their trip. A small measure of redemption.
Enough so that the Doctor summons the courage to return to that dark London sidewalk and casually lean out the door of his TARDIS like no time had passed at all, like he hadn’t been scrabbling in the wake of Rose’s rejection. And then he said the words he’d practiced alone in his console room dozens of times, with the exact amount of calculated swagger he’d rehearsed: “By the way, did I mention it also travels in time?”
1) they expensive bruh 2) none of us kno the dif btwn a fucking diamond and some fancy ass glass ur capitalist rock hierarchy has no control over us
3) mostly mined with slave labor
4) Diamonds have no intrinsic value and are only expensive because of the global diamond monopoly held by the De Beers Company that has been scamming people for decades into believing diamonds were a rare and precious commodity.
5) there are so many other gorgeous stones for a fraction of the cost without any of the above drawbacks
6) dude if I have to choose between useless hunk of rock and food you know I will always pick food
7) People tend to see diamond wearers as pretentious and flashy and/or flaunting wealth that others may not have.
8) Diamonds go with so little, they’re actually horrible accessories, in my opinion.
9) Diamonds are the hardest substance on the face of the earth, so if I buy diamonds, it will only be in the context of a weapon hard enough to smash every bone in your body.
10) Dude there are weeks I can’t afford a bus ticket let alone a diamond
11) Normal diamond jewellery doesn’t have much resale value anyway.
12) Short of grabbing one of those diamond microscope things few people can tell on a casual glance if your jewellery is diamond, crystal, or glass. So what’s the point.
