Warning: my mind is like a ping-pong table. Expect no order in what I post or reblog, and huge splurges of a single subject followed by complete coldness towards that same subject. Happily Catholic and in love with Jesus.
I think this has been a long time coming, but I’ve finally decided it’s best for me if I stop using Tumblr permanently. I won’t be relocating to some other site, either—I’ve going to withdraw from social media as much as possible. So this is likely the last y’all will hear from me.
I’m going to log in for a few more days (let’s say three), to give time for more individual goodbyes, if anyone wants one, then I’m off. I don’t think I’ll deactivate my blog; there’s a whole history there, and a lot of content I never put anywhere else, drabbles and heacanons and the like. If I end up needing to delete it because I can’t stay away, I’ll post an advance warning.
So, this is goodbye to all my Internet friends and followers. I feel like this is the past where I should give some big speech, but I’m just drawing a blank. Writing one would feel inauthentic, and I don’t want that. I guess all I’ll say is, thanks to everyone for all the support over the years, and God bless y’all!
For the second time in as many years, the Senate Education Committee’s chairman and other lawmakers are trying to pass a paid maternity leave bill for teachers.
Part of Sen. Adam Pugh’s education agenda, SB 364 would require districts to provide 12 weeks of paid maternity leave for teachers, the bill and Pugh’s education agenda come as the House has already passed its own education plan that does not include a maternity leave requirement for teachers.
“I honestly can’t think of a more pro-life thing that we can do in this body than support moms who just had a baby,” Pugh (R-Edmond) said in a committee hearing Feb. 14. “When I start to look at what most civilized nations around the world are doing, they’re doing significantly more than 12 weeks.”
If passed, the legislation would put Oklahoma ahead of many other states regarding teacher benefits.
While teachers qualify for the Family and Medical Leave Act, a national law passed by Congress in 1993 that requires employers to provide employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year, only 13 states and the District of Columbia have paid parental leave laws, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank. Oklahoma is not one of those states currently.
For teachers specifically, an Education Week article from August indicates that only a “handful” of states provide paid maternity leave for teachers.
Of the states that border Oklahoma, only Missouri and Colorado have paid parental leave laws for teachers. Arkansas, Kansas and New Mexico governors have all signed executive orders providing parental leave to employees of state agencies, but those orders do not apply to teachers.
the movie really undersells the fact that frodo spent half a year planning to make his departure from the shire as inconspicuous as possible and merry and pippin and sam saw him doing that, figured out he was leaving the shire and that it had something to do with bilbo’s ring, and then spent nearly as long preparing to go with him. icons
worth nothing to people who havent read the books: they didnt tell him they were planning to come with him until the very last minute when he’s finally about to spill the beans, and merry’s just kind of ”yo frodo you have the worst poker face in the shire and you constantly walk around saying shit like ”oughhh i do wonder if i shall ever look down this path again oughhwh woe” out loud for everyone to hear” and frodo just sits there like
AND and. frodo’s like don’t try to stop me from leaving!! i must go!! and the girlies are like SILLY BILLY we mean to go with you!! and he’s like NO NO you don’t get it i’m probably gonna DIE!! and they’re like no no YOU don’t get it we KNOW!! you think we’d let you march off to your doom alone??
okay but don’t forget fredegar “fatty” bolger…the one hobbit who was like “I see you’re going on some sort of quest…have fun with that, I’ll stay here and housesit” and then the freaking NAZGÛL come visit while he’s housesitting
Me, ready to remind everyone about Fatty Bolger: I knew there was a reason Adib and I are friends.
But seriously, my boy Fredegar volunteered to deal with nosy Brandybucks and MAYBE Lobelia, and ended up with a Nazgûl drop in and then got thrown in jail for resisting Saruman.
he wore Frodo’s clothes for this which probably made no difference given the data the Nazgul had to work with but it sure does show his commitment to the body doubling bit
When your primary community is online, the normal incentives we have to get along with a diverse group of people are no longer in play. The whole idea of manners is that you are signaling to your neighbors that you are not insane, that you are safe, that you are willing and able to assist them if there’s a problem, and you hope they will do the same for you. In a small community, whether it is a workplace, a church, a small town, an apartment building, or a subway car, you are expected to maintain a certain level of politeness and care for other people, because we are social creatures who get spooked in large groups and want to rely on some kind of script for how to behave in ways that won’t get us kicked out of the group. We smile wordlessly, we say “hello,” we don’t blare loud music, we step outside to smoke, we call when someone has died, we hold open doors, we intervene if someone seems uncomfortable, and if we have a real issue with someone, we are forced to confront them about it directly, while trying to be honest, direct, and professional. There are alternatives if we think someone is really harmful, like reporting to the police, or a whisper vine where the people who need to know about their behavior know it. But in general, you cannot get away with spreading lies about someone - or cutting someone off, or being really rude, or refusing to do the small things that allow us to assure each other that we’re all fine - without seeing, in an IMMEDIATE, physical sense, the consequences. Something as small as littering will show in our environment. Someone flipping you off unsettles you, even if they’re a stranger. And they can see your reaction. They can see the reaction of the people around you, or those of their friends, who might say, “Hey, knock it off.” There’s basically a shared need to make the space into a strong network, one that helps as many of its inhabitants as possible, where they are safe and where everyone has a stake in not going apeshit, if only because there are people in the vicinity who might punch them for being awful.
We don’t get any of that on social media. We can delete people very quickly from our lives without them even knowing. We don’t have to face their families, or their disappointed faces when they find out they’ve upset us. We don’t have to even deal with our conflicted feelings as much because we don’t have to be reminded of it. If someone annoys us, we can take a video of them, upload it, and immediately get tons of positive feedback from people who don’t know the person involved, don’t care what will happen if they laugh at them, and will make YOU feel great for being antisocial and cruel to a neighbor. Because it’s not happening in front of them. It’s at a distance. It makes you feel like a reporter instead of a fellow citizen. And gradually what happens in this isolated, digitized world becomes more important than what is happening in front of you. You don’t really “NEED” the people around you, you feel, to survive, so why should you treat them kindly? Why should you compromise on your own preferences, why should you try to reach an agreement that will make everyone feel like they had an input in a difficult situation? You are used to tailoring your own experience, and it’s fine to take what is happening in a small town and turn it into content that the entire globe can pick apart without having to live with the fallout.
tl;dr touching grass is so good for you because it reminds you that you are a person who needs others and you can’t get in the habit of modding your life to avoid any difficulties because that will just make you stale and unable to grow and make living in the physical presence of people unbearable because everyone is playing to social media instead of looking into someone else’s eyes beside them
“Every dehumanizing ideology succumbs to the same temptation: to see the undesirable other as a non-person, and thus disposable. In this distorted light, the disposal of the unwanted person becomes not only morally permissible, but meritorious, a praiseworthy act. I have come to recognize that there is never a safe way to draw a dividing line between “human being” and “person.” That line, even when drawn with the best of intentions and the loftiest ideals, leads to the gravest evil.”
