Okay the funniest thing about this is that everyone’s saying I’m taking away his space by putting things in the window

He has this entire one right next to it with a blankie and he uses it exclusively for people watching. He really only goes to the other window when he decides to be A Menace

Also his name is Banjo

He as a stroller

Omg there been updates!!

RE: last reblog - moving back in with my mom is the exact example me and my brother had to use on my mom to get her to stop talking shit about homeless people. We both would have been homeless if not for being able to move back in with her and cited several examples of why someone might not be able to move back in with a parent/family and end up homeless, like that hadn't even occurred to her that your family might not be able to help you. She had made up some perfect little story of why someone deserved to be homeless actually and then just wholesale applied it across the board. To my mom's credit, she changed her mind, mostly, but it took both of her kids whose opinions she trusts getting a little mad to do it.

While we're on the topic, I hate hate hate the "well there are services" people. These people are out of touch completely. There are services, in theory, but a lot of times, they don't materialize. I was able to get SNAP, WIC and health insurance easily through DHS, and food through the food bank, when I needed it, but everything else is a crapshoot and a nightmare. Every time I've needed to reach out to "resources" that supposedly exist I have genuinely needed there's yearslong waitlists or "oh there's nothing in your area" or "nothing right now call every day at exactly 9am to see if theres an opening" Nobody will help you navigate anything, nobody will explain anything. And I had advantages - I'm clean and sober, I had kids which qualified me and prioritized me for resources, I'm intelligent used to doing things like filling out paperwork and dealing with people on the phone. Not everyone is that lucky. And I still had to fall back on living with my mom to not be homeless until I could figure shit out.

Edit to add: this is in a very blue state with a far more robust "safety net" than many other states in the US fwiw and I *still* could not get access to resources that were supposedly available.

Daily fucking reminder that Luigi Mangione is innocent, completely and fully. He has been convicted of no crime. He has had no fair trial. He is a SUSPECT. Luigi Mangione is entirely innocent and everyone needs to stop parroting this insidious propaganda that he “committed” the crime he is only SUSPECTED of. He is not a murderer. He is not a criminal. He is an innocent man.

Put this out about Luigi Mangione.

oh i'm going to misusle and straight up fuckle this knowledge so badly

People are trying to bring back 1880s-era anti-ASL sentiment. Worst timeline.

You'd be surprised how often I'm told there is no interpreter at an event, there are no captions at an event, and they act like I'm asking for something absurd.

This isn't a performative dance routine interpreting what is going on.

But hey, deafies, we're woke now because we require interpreters.

This is all absolutely true. Also, to add, many deaf people receive a much worse education because the schools are unwilling/unable to invest in proper education for deaf people. So there are deaf people out there who struggle to read English because the structure of English is completely different than the structure of Sign Languages.

Also, Sign Language is NOT international. Signing in London is different that Ireland, or Paris, Toronto, Mexico, New Zealand, India-- some of the signing may be similar or even related but they are all different languages. So if you see several interpreters at an event or a news broadcast or en EU summit, and they are doing different signs, this is why.

And for the idiots who still don't comprehend that for many people English is a second language, even signers who were born in an English speaking country-- and still argue 'you get captions what's the problem' - Have you ever watched the auto-craptions on the news or a live event, or even a film on Amazon that they couldn't bother to get a human to properly provide subs? Yeah. A good percentage of the time, it's just word salad that means absolutely nothing. You're likely to just get a pile of words that may or may not have to do with anything going on in what you are trying to watch.

Some time, put on the news with no captions or sound. Put on a film or show you have never seen before, and try to lipread what is being said. Try to figure out what the plot or context is from just the actor's faces. Just try to engage when the only queues you have are facial expressions and movement on the screen-- if you can even see them talk at all, a lot of films and shows are shot over a shoulder with the back of someone's head.

Wear ear-plugs when you are out having a coffee with a friend and try to figure out what your friend is even saying. No music, no nothing-- just earplugs and trying to figure it out.

Do all of this for a week and then tell me that craptions are enough. Then tell me we don't need interpreters. After two days, you're going to be angry and frustrated because you don't know what the fuck is going on.

Interpreters do more than just tell you the exact words. They INTERPRET English language and put it into sign. They aren't just randomly throwing around their hands and looking silly. And they do it on the fly, live, as something is going. A good majority of the times, Interpreters have no idea what is going to be said. In those moments they are hearing something in English (or French, Spanish, what have you), figuring out what the best way to sign these words back to a sign-user base, and they have to do it all in seconds. It's a LOT of work.

So if you are at an event or you see two or even more signers who keep switching off after half an hour or an hour, know that the money is NOT being wasted having multiple interpreters there. They are not being lazy. They are doing a whole helluva lot, and their brains and hands and faces occasionally need a break.

So if you are hiring interpreters for an event, don't be surprised if they say you'll need to pay more to have several interpreters there. The interpreters are incredibly skilled, and they work bloody hard. If they tell you they need more than one, don't have a fit at them and try to talk them into just having one interpreter, thinking you can pay less. Understand that they work their arses off, and it's a very intense job that requires a lot of brain power and body power. So please, PLEASE be kind to interpreters.

And for chrissake, STOP DOING THIS. STOP DOING THIS. STOP FUCKING DOING THIS.

Seconding all of this, but also to get more specific on the first point:

ASL (American Sign Language) is not only different from BSL (British Sign Language), they're not even in the same language family. Similarly, LSM (Mexican Sign Language) is different from LSE (Spanish Sign Language), and there are other regional sign languages in Spanish speaking South America.

My (hearing) kid is studying ASL and when there was a Deaf contestant on British Bake Off he said that he really didn't recognize the BSL signing. But we traveled to Peru last summer and saw some people signing at a restaurant, and he said he recognized a few signs of LSP, even as he could tell it was a different language.

When you start to understand how much signed languages are full and complete languages with specific grammar and structure, you realize why captioning is not an equivalent to interpretation.

"Why would deaf people need interpretation in a language that's their first language? Can't they just read a fast moving faux-phonetic transcript of a speech made in their second language."

Clown-ass behavior.

I don't see people talking about this so today is the 110th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in where the factory owners locked working women and girls inside to "eliminate the risk of theft" (in reality it was too keep them from taking breaks), which resulted in the gruesome deaths of 123 mostly immigrant women and girls and 23 men, many of whom jumped to their deaths from the ninth floor either in a panicked attempt to escape or in order to die quickly. There were reports that some of the workers were on fire already as they jumped.

The eighth floor of the building was able to telephone the tenth floor to warn them about the fire, but the factory on the ninth floor where these women and girls labored had no such communication and such warning.

The factory owners were criminally charged with manslaughter for actions that contributed to the mass deaths but acquitted. However, this tragedy led to mass sympathy to the labor movement, and unions spurred on safety regulations that passed in New York state and eventually the entire country, and activists were able to reduce child labor in the process.

This tragedy is a reminder that has been forgotten in the 110 years since: every safety regulation-- every scrap of paperwork contributing to the hundreds of pages of red tape people like to complain about--every word of it was written in the blood of a laborer.

111th anniversary

They were discouraged from breaks because they were actively trying to unionize, and bosses felt that keeping them from unsupervised contact would prevent them from joining the garment workers' union.

This is why unions are important. This is why today, right now, the biggest companies in America are trying to squash unionization of their laborers and why those workers are fighting so hard to unionize.

@tikkunolamorgtfo did a great write-up a few years ago about the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and I highly recommend reading it (and anything else you can about the fire). It is painfully relevant still and it's incredibly important women's, Jewish, immigrants', and workers' history.

#most of the girls working there were either jewish immmigrants or southern italian immigrants #two of the more exploited immigrant groups at the turn of the century particularly in nyc but elsewhere too #the labor history element of it can't be overemphasized tbh (x)

Woah , my garage dog has arrived ,

linus takes a trip to the nether. birthday gift to my sister

a collection of my favorite tweets regarding the Ever Given in the Suez Canal

happy 1st bday to... this.

I personally am declaring this to be a new International Holiday 

Happy 2nd anniversary to the Suez Canal blockage!

Ever Given Week, 22 March to 29 March (observed)

22 March - Ever Given Eve. Many celebrate by completing some small task they’ve been putting off, symbolically clearing blockages in their own lives.

23 March - Blockage Day! The main celebration. The exchanging of memes.

24 to 28 March - Hilarity ensues. Memes continue to circulate. The best are saved for next year’s observances.

29 March - Clearance Day. Festivities wind down. A more solemn occasion.

just wanted to share the National Down Syndrome Society’s message for this year’s World Down Syndrome Day (21st March) 💛💙

Image and video description–

The image is a textpost that reads:

This #WorldDownSyndromeDay, we've joined forces with @‌coordown and other international Down syndrome organizations to spread the powerful message: No Decision Without Us. [flexed biceps emoji] People with disabilities deserve a seat at the table where decisions are made about their lives, their futures, and their rights. Let's work together toward a world where every voice is valued. #NoDecisionWithoutUs #WDSD25

‌

The text accompanies a video posted by @ ndssorg on TikTok.

The video shows people with various disabilities forcefully requesting that they not be left out of the decision-making process when the decisions affect them directly. The persons with disabilities shown include:

The video draws to a close with Sophia storming into the room at the start of the video wearing an outfit of her own choice: a leather jacket, a black bustier top, a choker necklace and a purple tulle skirt. The whole sequence ends with the cast raising their fists in the air in a show of united strength.

End description.

ill be real the "poly people are uglyyy" thing just feels like cope? like theyre in a polycule. they have directly proven that multiple people find them hot enough to want to be in a relationship, often sexual, with. you have what? one single Monogamous Jessica, and you're terrified she'll leave you as soon as she sees a rooster with bigger tail feathers?

we have a winner folks, @some-stars got it in one

At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields

At the risk of sounding like an effete intellectual, I do actually think you should be allowed to just take college courses indefinitely

technically you can, if you don't care about degrees.

Free Harvard courses. Free Courses from Stanford. Free Courses from MIT. Free courses from Yale. Free courses from Princeton.

Free courses on Coursera.

Free Courses on EDx Free Courses on Alison

For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.

When searching, the phrases you're looking for are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or you can do a general search of say, "free online college courses." Oh, and so you don't get surprised like I did, have an avoid: Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian site and not a valid MOOC place. Sign up with them and you will get things like THIS IS WHY THE LEFT IS TURNING YOUR KIDS TRANS AND GAY in your inbox.

@yourunderwaterskies I wanted to say thank you so much for adding these links, seriously, they've been life-changingly helpful to me-

And I also wanted to mention that humanitarian organisations have free courses too, like the Red Cross on international humanitarian law.

"they took pluto from you" "they took dinosaurs from you" "they took neptune from you" grow a second personality trait and stop getting upset that our understanding of the world has grown since you were in 3rd grade

The dinosaur one always gets to me because dinosaurs with feathers have been a thing that was proposed back in the 90s and gradually expanded on uninterupted ever since So if you claim that they are "ruining your childhood" then you either never actually cared that much about them...or you're pushing 40

these are the people who turn conservative in their 60s, out of the blue. this is why it always seems to happen overnight. they know just enough to say the approximate right things at approximately the right times.