I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Any who, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car (OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!), she piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (“Wooooosh” she says, making a wave gesture with her hand)
Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favorite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.
Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.
He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, bodily takes them out of her hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with a intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says “you need chocolate.” She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolates and putting them in her pile.
He keeps asking her “why are you doing this?” She responds “Do you like Harry Potter?“ and throws a copy of the new Cursed Child on the pile too.
Finally she’s done and I ring her up for a crazy amount of money. She pays and asks me to please give the kid a few bags for his stuff. While I’m bagging up her merchandise the kid hugs her. We’re both telling her how amazing she is and what an awesome thing she’s done. She turns to both of us and says probably one of the most profound, unscripted things I’ve ever had someone say:
“It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.”
The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: “My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.”
I’ve bagged up all her stuff and at this point am super awkward and feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. Then she turns to me and says: I wish I could have bangs like that but my darn hair is just too curly.“ And leaves.
And that is the story of the best customer I’ve ever had. Be kind to somebody today.
Y’all really want to get turned into a ficus tree today, don’t you? You just woke up and thought “I no longer want to be human, how can I best achieve my goal of becoming vegetation and/or spiders?”
Do not garner the attention of the fae. They are second only to Zeus as the Happy Fun Balls of Fuck No Don’t Do That. Leave them alone.
The guy who invented the theory that vaccines cause autism had his medical license revoked for it
thats ridiculous
they took it away because he came up with a seemingly plausible theory?
They took it away because other scientists have been unable to reproduce his results, his results were made up, he didn’t even get approved by an ethics committee, and now he’s risking the health and lives of a whole bunch of people
It’s crazy how this one person, in a study of only twelve children, gained so much traction in the world. He put this lie out there—and it was a lie, not just interpreting data incorrectly—and now it doesn’t even matter that he’s been proven totally false. Years of effort to reestablish the truth can’t undo the lie once it’s out there in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people believe that lie, and actual children are getting sick and dying because of it.
This is a really troubling aspect of how human minds work, and it’s something conservative politicians take advantage of on a regular basis. If you just say that “well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does“ is provide abortions, it doesn’t matter how often people recite the objective truth that abortions are a tiny fraction of Planned Parenthood services. You can say the truth 1000 times for every one time the lie is repeated, and thousands of people will still trust the lie.
I’d never heard this before, and it’s actually really helpful information to have, so thanks. Here is a scientific article by the American Academy of Pediatrics explaining the flaws in Wakefield’s research and briefly summarizing four studies that refuted the fraudulent claims. Here is an article by the editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal calling him a fraud in no uncertain terms. Here is the first part of a nine-part investigative journalistic series, published in the BMJ, uncovering his fraud. And the General Medical Council conclusions that stripped Wakefield of his clinical credentials can be found here.
I’m honestly so mad right now reading about this guy. People are dying of measles right now because vaccinations fell off so sharply, and those deaths can be laid at the door of this man.
This man is a mass murderer
VACCINATE YOUR KIDS. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR NOT VACCINATING HEALTHY CHILDREN.
NONE.
Your regular reminder that the entire anti-vaxx movement is founded and predicated on hatred and devaluation for autistic people and autistic lives. Never forget this, and remember to talk about it when you’re talking about anti-vaxxers.
I always highly recommend the book “The Panic Virus” which covers all of this, with far more patience and sympathy than I am capable of for anti-vaxxers.
Which somehow still works even though someone in production got confused and REMOVED ALL SPOT’S INTERNAL DIALOGUE EXCEPT WHAT APPEARS IN THAT LAST PANEL.
The problem is that even if Trump loses all of the people who support him still exist and are still out there creating the social climate that allowed him to get this far in the first place.
Someone put it into words. It’s terrifying.
The best analogy for this situation that I’ve heard:
Imagine that you and four of your friends are trying to decide on something to do. Three of you vote to go to the movies, and the other two vote to kill a puppy. Even though you ultimately end up going to the movies, you still have to deal with the fact that two of your friends are 100% down with killing a puppy.
PSA: I know that you think you want to spend hundreds of dollars to go to Vermont to see the foliage. I'm here to tell you that you will pay hundreds of dollars to go to Vermont to get rained on. And the natives will be laughing at you if you complain. But in the REALLY fancy hotels, they'll wait till you're away from the front desk to do it.
White men get offended if you talk about Black Lives Matter.
White men get offended if you talk about feminism.
White men get offended if you talk about rape culture.
White men get offended if you talk about islamophobia.
White men get offended if you don’t feel like talking to them or if you don’t agree with them.
White men get offended if you ask for trigger warnings.
White men get offended if someone chooses to stay seated.
White men get offended if a woman doesn’t want to shave her legs.
White men get offended because I’m not saying “most white men…”
The same white men: “fuck man everyone gets offended so easily these days, get a grip!”
This is literally so funny I’m
Oh, so because I’m white and male I’m all of a sudden some horrible person? Aye, a lot of white males can be disks, but the only thing from this that would apply to me, is the fact it didn’t say “most white males”….. Discrimination and hate won’t be stopped with more discrimination and hate
White men get offended when you list things that offend white men.
“After asserting that its immigrants are “rapists” and “murderers” and insisting that the country will pay for the border wall he plans to build, it’s fair to say Donald Trump isn’t the most popular man in Mexico.
The sense of dislike between the presidential nominee and one of his country’s most important neighbours was extended further on Friday by the release of the latest Letras Libres magazine…”
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has been suspended for the rest of his term after allegations that he tried to stop same-sex marriages in the state by ordering judges in the state to act against the 2015 Supreme Court marriage equality decision. Get this, Moore was removed from his bench once before in 2003 for a Ten Commandments controversy.
The attorney for Betty Shelby, the Tulsa, Oklahoma, police officer charged with first-degree manslaughter for fatally shooting Terence Crutcher has a new excuse for why Shelby fired her weapon at Crutcher. Attorney Scott Wood said Shelby experienced something called “auditory exclusion.”
Update: So is auditory exclusion, aka temporary hearing loss, a real thing?
We spoke to health experts and learned that under high stress scenarios, some people can experience reduced hearing or deafness when faced with a perceived threat. But it’s not particularly common.
Can you believe that How To Get Away With Murder is a real show?
A show about a canonically bisexual, mentally ill, dark skinned black woman in a position of power (who frequently is seen with her natural hair and makeupless) teaching a group of students - including another dark skinned black woman, a gay sinnamon roll, a Haitian black boy, a Mexican American hardcore feminist, and a straight white boy who actually treats women with respect and admiration - how to stay the fuck out of prison while weaving in stories and messages about:
- transmisogyny
- how HIV is not a death sentence
- adoption
- white people bringing up race when it suits them
- being a r*pe bystander
- sexual assault and abuse
- white male rage (when white men are mad that poc have something the white man doesn’t)
and let’s not forget these awesome tidbits:
- literally an entire episode about society sex shaming women
- “let the slut shaming begin” - actual words said as an entire courtroom hears about a sexual encounter a woman had with a man
- “he’s innocent and black”
- a woc calling out another woc for excusing racism
- “you’re a misogynistic ass”
- a white man being told by a black woman that he is automatically favored by the justice system because he’s a white man
- calling out classism
- a man flat out refusing to have sex with a woman because she’s drunk (i mean yeah they do have sex anyway but she was really persistent and had absolutely no regrets the following day and they started a relationship so it’s not a bad thing)
and some more little tidbits:
- an amazing soundtrack
- “oh what fun to kill someone and end up in jail”
- everyone is super hot
- “stop being a little bitch baby”
- nice, healthy, fleshed out relationships
- plot twists in every episode
i mean yeah, people get killed a lot but that’s not important
Shocking. I mean, the book was such a light and airy affair.
Though A Monster Calls is about a child and a talking tree, it’s more layered, emotional, and powerful than most movies starring adults. The film is a tale of loss, filled with life lessons anyone, children included, will find challenging and heartbreaking.
Hi so please vote Hillary so trans people can stay on hormones and go to the bathroom.
It would be nice if you could save your shows of write-in candidate bravado for a year when trans people aren’t being openly attacked and attacks on them literally aren’t part of the Republican platform.
I mean Bernie gave Hillary his endorsement and if he’s obviously gonna vote for her and not himself or a third party I think it’s time to vote for Hillary to not wreck a bunch of people’s lives for the sake of a spiteful political gesture.
