Pretend, for a moment, that you’re an 18-year-old teenager from a family living below the poverty line.
One day, you make a silly mistake and get a ticket for it. Nothing major - maybe you rode the subway without a ticket or smoked too close to the entrance of a building. Maybe you were loitering. Either way, one thing is for sure: you definitely don’t have the money to pay the ticket.
So you don’t.
Eventually, you miss the deadline to pay your ticket, and you get a letter in the mail that says you have to go to court. But your life is chaotic, and a court date for a missed ticket is the least of your concerns. Your family moves constantly, which disrupts your life and puts you behind in school. You have one disabled parent and one parent who is always working, leaving you to raise your younger siblings by yourself. You have no means of transportation. There is rarely any food in the cupboards. The utilities are constantly getting shut off. The week that you were supposed to go to court, your family gets another eviction notice, your cousin ends up in the hospital, and your parent finds out that their disability payments are being reduced.
So you miss your court date.
Since you missed the court date, you automatically lose your case - now you have no hope of arguing your way out of the ticket, which you still can’t afford to pay. You can do community service hours instead of paying, but you don’t have time to do that, now that you have to work part-time and odd jobs on top of everything else to keep your parents off the streets and your siblings out of foster care. You know that you probably won’t finish high school on time, let alone fulfill your hours. You might be able to explain your circumstances to the judge, but you have no idea how to go about doing that now that you’ve missed your court date, your literacy skills are years behind thanks to your constant game of school roulette, and even though legal help is available to you, you don’t know how to access it or if you can afford to do so. But that’s still the least of your concerns - since you missed your court date, the judge has also charged you with failure to appear.
Which means you now have an active warrant out for your arrest.
And just like that, you’re now a part of the criminal justice system. A silly mistake that a middle-class teenager could have solved with Mommy and Daddy’s chequebook in a single afternoon has caused you weeks or months of stress and headaches over a process you don’t fully understand, and has ended in criminal charges. Instead of having a funny story to tell over dinner when you come home from college next Thanksgiving, you are now facing additional fines (that you still can’t pay), the possibility of a couple of nights in jail, the possible suspension of your driver’s license, and the possibility of being taken into custody any time you interact with the police. The next time your parent comes home drunk and violent, or someone breaks into the house, you think twice about calling the cops - you now have to decide if every emergency is “worth” the possibility of being hauled off to jail. And in the meantime, the circumstances that caused that first mistake haven’t gone away - you still don’t have the money to pay for the subway, you are still more likely to live in a house filled with smokers, you still can’t afford quit-smoking aids, you still live in a chaotic household that deeply affects your mental health, and you still don’t understand the legal system or who you’re supposed to talk to for information and resources.
So while those other teenagers get to go through life believing that they were “good kids who sometimes made silly mistakes”, you now get to go through life thinking of yourself as a criminal. And that might be the most damaging thing of all.
When I worked with homeless teenagers and young adults, I saw this process play out again and again and again and again. The kids often considered themselves “criminals” or “bad kids” because they had arrest warrants and criminal records, but few of them had ever actually committed a serious or violent crime - the vast majority were simply unlucky kids who did something stupid and didn’t have the skills or resources (or wealthy parents) required to get them off the hook. I had classmates in my upper-middle-class high school who did far worse things with far fewer consequences, because Mommy was a lawyer or Daddy was an RCMP officer, and some of those kids grew up to be lawyers or police officers themselves. The kids I worked with never got that opportunity. Second chances cost money, and the difference between a “crime” and a “mistake” has less to do with the offense, and more to do with the circumstances you were born into.
So when we’re talking about crime, punishment and who is “worthy” of being helped, maybe keep that in mind.
it builds itself up like OKAY WE FOUND THESE DEVASTATING RESULTS
and then you go in to look and you find it had a sample size of 40
and then you’re like okay, what was the fantastic difference between these 40 people when sleeping with and without a dog
and the article is like
…so you get through it and you’re like you’re trying to tell me you think this is substantial in any capacity, this 40 sample size 3% difference ass bullshit??????????? you fucking shitforbrick bad at math fake ass science losers?
so i was talking to my dad about guardians of the galaxy and when i mentioned chris pratt my dad sighs and says “I dont know how parents could be mean enough to name their child after a fried rodent” and i sat there looking really confused and he just whispered “crisp rat.”
How I Teach Men Not To Talk Over Me: from one feminist to another, when basic respect is lagging and conversations are impossible
I’ve done this to several men, and they catch on rather quickly. You’ll be able to have a conversation right then and there, and it works long term too - they might’ve forgot their manners by the time you talk to them again, but by repeating this, they’ll eventually learn to let you talk without you having to do this at the start of every convo. Source: I have a very stubborn older brother, who eventually learned too.
1. When they interrupt you, stop talking. Don’t try to raise your voice or battle them. Be completely quiet and wait.
2. Ignore everythingthey’re saying. Do not actually listen - just wait until they shut up. Don’t make a point of anything they say, do not answer to anything they say, do not refer to anything they say here. Literally do not listen a single word. Let them rant as long as they want.
3. When they finally shut up and wait for your reaction, say: ”I wasn’t done talking.”
4. Start over whatever you were saying when they interrupted you. I don’t care if it was a 10-minute explanation of rocket science. Start. Over. Repeat you original thought, but do not add anything related to what they just said while talking over you. That gives them the idea that it’s okay to interrupt you, you’ll still listen and pay attention and they’ll get their point clear without having to listen to yours. (It’s especially funny when you get done and they expect you to keep going talking about whatever they talked over you. The face when it sinks in that you didn’t listen a single word is glorious.)
5. If they interrupt you again, return to step 1. If you find yourself repeating the cycle over 3 times, tell them: ”you’re not letting me speak. Either you listen and wait for your turn, or our conversation ends here.” If they try to make excuses, laugh it off or keep interrupting, end the conversation. Prove them that if they wont let you speak, they’re not worth your time.
Why does this work? First, because sometimes talking over is internalized and men don’t actually notice they’re doing it. Being vocally called out makes them realize it and pay attention to it - especially if it happens more than once. Secondly, by refusing to aknowledge anything they say when they interrupt you, they’ll soon realize they will not get their own point across if they keep doing that. Peoole and especially men have the need to be heard and paid attention to when they talk - when you make it clear that by talking over you, they will not have your attention, they’ll learn to wait until you’re done, because they know that’s when you will be paying attention and actually listening.
Go my darlings. Have some actual conversations where your point of view is just as valid as his. Demand the basic respect of being heard. You can actually have some interesting conversations with men when they’re forced to listen too, when being louder is not going to make them feel like they’re dominating the conversation or winning the argument.
i just had the funniest experience in vr chat, i joined a random server and the one i joined had Japanese people so i waddled around in my goofy club penguin avatar that i have saved, after a while a guy walks up to me and clones my avatar so were both penguins then another guy shows up and clone my avatar
now keep in mind there only speaking Japanese i don’t know what they are saying, then another guy joins in, so i got a group of three penguin friends
we just waddle around and goof about, the one of them tries to talk to me, but not only do i not have a mic i also don’t speak Japanese, they figure out i don’t speak Japanese and start listing various places, they get the part of being European right, and after listing a lot of places they ask if im from the UK and when i nod they all just start cheering. after hanging out for a while one of them gets real close to me and whispers…
Human: “It must be a dreary existence, unable to love, to eat, to sleep, to laugh… I feel sorry for you.” Robot: “I can laugh. I have a sense of humor, you know.” Human: “Really? I’ve never heard you laugh before.” Robot: “I’ve never heard you say anything funny.”
Hello 911 I’d like to report a violation of the First Law of Robotics, this robot just straight up murdered a human
Most companies are probably going to continue their regular food safety procedures, but a few things you can do to reduce some personal risk:
Buy hard, solid veggies and fruits (apples, melons) or ones with rinds (bananas are probably fine). Scrub the peel/rind thoroughly with soap and water before consumption.
The more solid and dense the meat, the less likely it is for contamination to spread very far. Buy your meat in solid cuts, NOT GROUND. Especially not ground chicken rn, salmonella bad.
Cook things thoroughly. Follow guidelines for the internal temperatures meat is supposed to reach and stick to those guidelines. Use a meat thermometer. Make your steaks well done for a while.
I’d stay away from shellfish as a whole if I were you. The diseases you can get from it are some of the nastier ones. No sushi for a while, too. If you have fish, make sure it was frozen following anti-parasitic guidelines and cook thoroughly.
AVOID LEAFY GREENS. This is where we’ve been seeing the most outbreaks lately, so be very careful.
The pregnant, elderly, immunocompromised, and the very young are the ones most at risk in an outbreak. If you are in one of these groups, be extremely cautious and avoid soft cheeses and prepackaged deli meats. Check on friends and family in these groups. Report symptoms of foodborne illness to a doctor so they can report to the state health depts that are still running.
Even with these in mind, remember that most outbreaks of foodborne illness are due to things like improper cooking and storage. Stay safe out there, folks 💙
