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ahollowyear:

sgramajo:

curlicuecal:

yamitamiko:

nientedal:

animatedamerican:

feminismandhappiness:

giandujakiss:

teapotsahoy:

survivablyso:

xparrot:

fluffmugger:

vmprsm:

darkseid:

freebismuth:

moonsandstarsandmagic:

vintagegalpal:

emilievitnux:

there-is-irony-everywhere:

jmenfoot:

scavengerridley:

Natalie Portman being confused by the fact that you have to say “hi” to someone before starting a conversation in France got me like ?????

“I feel there’s a lot of rules of politeness and codes of behavior there you have to follow. […] A friend of mine taught me that when you go in some place you have to say “bonjour” before you say anything else, then you have to wait two seconds before you say something else. So if you go into a store you can’t be like “do you have this in another size,” or they’ll think you’re super rude and then they’ll be rude to you.” [X]

#wait you don’t do this is other countries??

So that’s it guys. French are not rude, we just don’t like it when people don’t say “Hello” or “Hi” when they start a conversation. 

Don’t everyone say “Hi” before they ask something to someone? What’s next? Saying please is also a french thing or others countries does that too? 

Canada is similar. We say sorry and please. The Hello thing seems strange, but it actually makes sense.

Bro, this threw me for a loop when I moved up north. Like in the southern United States you say “Hi, how are you?” And then make a few seconds of small talk before you ask your question or order your food and when I went to Connecticut they were like “What do you want?” Without any hello or anything. In other places they just STARE at you waiting on you to place your order and gtfo.

I laid my hand over my chest the first time, and the only way to describe my look was “aghast” before I said “Good lord!” My husband said it’s the most southern thing he’s seen me do. He thought it was hilarious. But…. Like??? That’s rude as fuck??????? Don’t y'all say say “Hello” before throwing your demands at someone??

maybe this is why everyone thinks new yorkers are rude

this is absolutely why ppl think new englanders r rude. no one has any fucking manners

african culture, at least in ghana, demands you greet a person before you ask them something. if youre in an open market they may even ignore you if you dont.

We do this in Australia as well. If you just started straight off saying “yeah I want XXXX” we’d think you’re rude as all fuck.  You say hi, then make your request.  It’s basic acknowledgement of the other person as a person rather than some random request-filling machine.

Huh. Speaking as a New Englander, I usually go with “Excuse me,” but sometimes “hi” or “hey,” but with no pause – it’ll be, “Excuse me, hi, I was looking for X?” From my POV, it seems rude to get too chatty and waste some stranger’s time; I assume they have better things to do than make small talk with me, so I just get my request out there so they can answer me and get back to whatever needs doing. I always thank folks for their help afterwards, if that helps?

(The rules of etiquette are strange. People say New Englanders are rude and cold, but once during an unexpected snowstorm here in Seattle, my car got stuck and I was standing by the side of the road at a busy intersection in the snow for half an hour waiting for my housemate to come pick me up, and not a single person stopped. Back in Massachusetts, every other car on the road would’ve been pulling up to check to see if I was okay, if my phone was working, did I need a lift, etc.)

No but this was the first thing my cousin told me in France? you never ever ever start a conversation with anyone, not even like “Nice weather today, huh?” without saying Bonjour first. You HAVE to greet them or, just like Ghana, they’ll ignore the shit out of you, you rude little fucker

(And “excuse me” or “pardon me” doesn’t cut it. you still have to open with bonjour)

[and I can’t speak for New England but coming from Chicago and then moving Out West where the culture is VERY influenced by the South and DETERMINED to think of themselves as small town folk… I HATE when I have to make small talk before ordering food??? Like, if it’s a coffee shop that’s pretty much empty I’ll chit chat for a few seconds, but I’m still not going to make inane conversation about the weather unless the weather is extreme.

In a big city it is rude as fuck to waste my time making small talk with me when we are not even friends or neighbors??? I am here to get shit done. There are four other people in line behind me, and I don’t want to waste their time. I am here, I HAVE MY ORDER ALREADY DECIDED BY THE TIME I GET TO THE FRONT BECAUSE I AM NOT A CAVE WOMAN, and I am being polite by saying both Please and Thank You and not wasting other people’s daylight.]

I live in a small northern city, and I feel it would be rude to engage someone in more than maaaaaybe a sentence of small talk before placing my order. In addition to feeling I was wasting their time, I’d feel like I was demanding emotional labour (small-talk is emotional labour for *me*) that they weren’t being paid to give.

so bizarre.  New Yorker here.  Saying hi, how are you, etc before these kinds of commercial interactions is what’s rude to me - because ffs, there are people in line behind you, we have lives, move it along.  It’s really just a dramatic cultural difference - but borne of a real practical necessity.

Oh my god saying ‘hi’ takes less than A SINGLE SECOND YOU ARE NOT WASTING ANYBODY’S TIME In Spain you have to say hello to people before you talk to them even people who work in retail deserve that bare minimum courtesy hello??

Transplanted New Yorker here, and the feeling here is: people who work in retail deserve the bare minimum courtesy you would afford anyone else, which is to not waste their time.  You maybe say a half-second “hi” and/or possibly “excuse me” to be sure you have their attention, then you get to the point as quickly and concisely as possible.  You don’t wait to get a “hi” back, you probably don’t ask “how are you”, you definitely don’t talk about the weather.  You smile and keep your tone of voice courteous-to-friendly, you say please, you thank them when you’re done, and you do. not. waste. their. time.

Except ”time” is really only shorthand for the concept:  you don’t intrude on their lives more than you have to.  NY is a very very crowded city which allows for very little personal space, so New Yorkers have developed a form of courtesy that involves minimizing our unavoidable intrusions on each other.  Which is why we hold doors without making eye contact, and why we tend to feel that in any interaction with a stranger, it’s actively rude to do anything but get to the point immediately.

Interesting discussion of regional differences in conversational convention.  But the amount of “my way is the right way; everyone else is super rude and also wrong” going on in this post is giving me hives.  

Hey.  Listen.  "Polite” and “rude” are relative concepts.  Something you were taught was rude may not be seen as rude elsewhere, and might even be the polite thing to do.  Conversely, something you might have been taught was polite might be seen as rude elsewhere.  Saying “no one has any manners” about a group of people whose culture and, by extension, whose conversational expectations work differently than yours is really arrogant. 

In the US the thumbs up means good job or great. In France and Germany it means one, they start counting with the thumb instead of the index finger. In Greece it’s an obscene sexual gesture.

This guy I knew in college worked with the campus d/Deaf/HoH group and told a story about the dinner they had to welcome everyone in. They were trying to tell this little old lady what one of the dishes was, something casserole I forget what kind, and she was getting really flustered. Finally they figured out they were speaking to her in ASL and she was from South Africa. The ASL sign for whatever it was (spinach maybe?) in South African Sign means sex. They were offering this little old lady a sex casserole.

There’s an Italian toast ‘chin chin’, mimicking the sound of the glasses clinking together. It becomes hilarious when Japanese folks are around since in Japanese chin means penis.

As for the South, I will bet you anything that how we have conversations at the register stemmed from the homestead days when a farmer would come in to town maybe once a month and this would be the only time they’d get to talk to someone they didn’t live with. I like talking with customers! If I can get them to smile then it’s a victory and I have a better day for it. It only becomes emotional labor if they’re an outright ass or are sexually harassing me. But in the big crammed city of New York it makes sense to take the get your shit and get out approach, people have a subway to catch. Out here I had to drive myself anyway since it’s fifteen minutes to the edge of town from where I live, so what does it matter if I spend an extra minute at the register?

It’s important to be aware of the differences and ultimately there’s a degree of ‘when in Rome’ that has to happen. Someone who moves from Greece to the US is going to be startled by the amount of thumbs up but ultimately they’re going to have to adjust. Someone from the US is probably going to be shocked that telling someone they did a good job was taken as an insult and they similarly are going to have to adjust. Mom’s a damn Yankee transplant and said it was weird moving to the South and having cashiers younger than her daughter call her dear, but that’s just what we do. Sweetheart, darling, honey, sugar, they don’t have overtly romantic/sexual connotations here. As long as there’s not a leer attached to it if a guy calls me ‘sugar’ when I’m at work it doesn’t parse as a flirt because it’s not one, it parses the same as if he called me ‘miss’. But when a busload of Californians came through it took me three people to realize that ‘baby’ was not flirting, it was just California. NOTHING is universal.

This is the biggest place I’ve ever worked so it took some getting used to, like any skill, but even being socially awkward it’s easy to tell what scripts to follow. Test the waters, if they don’t respond then okay this is a move them through kind of person, be quick and efficient and to the point, feel good when they smile at ‘last question I promise, do you want your receipt’. If they do then pull out the five small talk scripts, get a smile, feel good when they laugh at the cat small talk script.

It’s also important to note that claiming your culture’s way of doing polite right is a fantastic way to fall into some really bigoted nonsense. In Puerto Rico the personal bubble is much smaller than in the US proper, like RIGHT at your elbow close. I had a cashier who was super uncomfortable because our steward was getting in her personal space constantly and he was pissed off because he was trying to HELP her with moving orders why is she mad at him? Once I sat them down and explained the difference they both had this aw shit moment because from their own standpoints they were being polite and from the others’ standpoints they were being rude. After that they were fine, when he got a little too close she’d say ‘whoa man my bubble’ and he’d laugh and shake is head and step back.

Lots of non-white cultures have things like that, particularly since white America has serious problems with sexualizing ANY physical contact to the point we’re all touch starved. The normal speaking voice is at a higher volume or it’s more acceptable to show your emotions or gesture when you speak. None of this is WRONG, but when people star getting into ‘my culture is the only right culture’ then guess who comes out on top? It ain’t the little guy.

One of my labmates was from Poland, and she had a tendency to come off as kind of abrupt and brusk, verging on mean. In particular, when she was providing feedback on a presentation or paper she could come across as SUPER cutting. Which was not her intention! From the way she would explain it, we had a running joke in the lab, “it sounds nicer in Polish.”

And this is actually true; there are scientific articles comparing the cultural contexts for communication! It’s really neat.

So in (most parts of) America, we equate indirectness with politeness. “Excuse me, would it be possible for you to perhaps pass me that salt, if you don’t mind?” The more roundabout you are, the more we consider that a signal of social courtesy.

In Poland, not only is indirectness viewed as rudely wasting the listener’s time, but directness is viewed as communicating intimacy and friendliness. “Give me the salt.”

…It sounds nicer in Polish. :)

Omg I love this

The Effects of Capital, Labor, and Class on Local Etiquette Across International Boundaries

(via booksquaredash)

damselwrites:

White

also: pale; blanched; sallow; pallid; waxen; spectral; translucent; albino; 

Grey

also: dust; stone; pepper;  

Black

also:  coal; slate; dusky; ebon; shadow; murky; 

Tan

also: flesh; khaki; cream; tawny; 

Brown

also:  henna; russet; sepia; chestnut; cocoa; drab; bronze; 

Red

also: terracotta ; rouge; carmine;  fire-engine; ruddy

Orange

also:  pumpkin ; rust ; 

Yellow

also: sunny; amber; saffron; hay; straw; platinum; 

Green

also: viridescent; grass; jade; forest; 

Blue

also: turquoise; cyan; ultramarine; royal; aqua; aquamarine;

Purple

also: berry;  amaranthine;

Pink

also: flushed; candy; cherry blossom; petal pink ; 

—– source: http://ingridsundberg.com/

—–additional synonyms added by me

(via booksquaredash)

dnd-maps-n-stuff:

hawkeabelas:

meonlyred:

corseque:

deweydecimalchickens:

breadofthewild:

mushroomancy:

occams-lazer:

mushroomancy:

mushroomancy:

roll20: Make an account to play the game

Orcpub: For hosting and editing your character sheet

DND Wiki: Homebrew things, races, classes, misc

Players Handbook: Rules how to play how to make a character, all basic information for playing a game

Discord: to talk during and about the game

Mythweavers: another character sheet editor

Homebrewery: homebrew creation tool. Uses basic coding language to great effect.

If anyone wants to join just join the discord server and post your character

http://autorolltables.github.io/#

can randomly generate just about ANYTHING. awesome for dms

Tabletop Audio: background music and sound effects for the ambience.

PCGen - a character creation program that handles all the tricky and tedious parts of building characters, including NPCs.

d20pfsrd.com - all the free information you would ever need to play Pathfinder, an alternative to D&D

DiceCloud: Interactive character sheet that can be edit and shared with yourself or others easily. Pulled up anywhere with internet connection on PC, Mac, or mobile device. Use it to also mark down health, death saving throws, spell slots, experience, and more on the fly. 

DnDMagic: List all spells currently available from Player’s Handbook and Elemental Evil. 

5th Edition Spellbook app: Make spellbooks for all your characters, manage spells, prepare spells. Keep track of Spell Save DC, and Spell Attack bonus on your mobile device. 

Squire - Another character creation and management app. Contains most of the basic info and spells already, with options to create spells, items, classes/subclasses, etc. This is the free version, but pro has more options for DMs, including initiative order control.

RPG Generator - An app that randomly generates things from NPC appearances to criminal gangs. It’s free and a great on the fly DM tool.

(via skwerlly-squirrel)

embyrr922:

marauders4evr:

Ahem.

It’s called the Zinger Chair.

Here’s a picture of it:

It’s an electric wheelchair that’s controlled by the levers on the sides (so yes, you do need two hands to operate it, just like a manual). It’s only 40 pounds and can be folded down to fit into any trunk. The creators/managers all seem to be wheelchair users. I personally talked to one on the phone who told me the features he uses.

You don’t understand, I’ve been in New York City for almost four months now and it’s been incredible and in that time, I’ve wheeled my manual chair about 300 miles (there are times I’m going up to 40 blocks a day) and I am so sore and so bruised and so tired and it’s going to s n o w soon and even though the city won’t get nearly as much snow as upstate, it’s still not going to be fun, but I’ve always been afraid to get a big, bulky, electric chair because I don’t want to:

A.) Completely give up my autonomy.

B.) Have a 500 pound electric chair run out of power and have to figure out how the heck I’m getting it and me home.

But this chair, this chair, lads…

This chair can get me all the way from my apartment down the island to Times Square and into Amorino for the world’s best waffles/gelato/hot chocolate before it even considers running out of power. And it only takes 3 hours to fully charge AND if for some reason, something happens, it can be folded up and put into any NYC cab and I’m just so, so, excited. NYC is filled with so many hills that I’ll now be able to go up/down without straining myself. I’ll be able to take the M5 down Riverside and still get to the center of the island without heaving and huffing and sweating. I just really, really, hope it all works out!

Note: Absolutely none of this is sponsored. I’m just really excited about this wheelchair. The Amorino part isn’t sponsored either but seriously, you should all go to Amorino at some point in your lives, I should stop going to Amorino because at this point, I go once a week and that is what we call Unhealthy. But I don’t care because life is short and Amorino is good. And so is this wheelchair (hopefully).

Here’s a link to the zinger chair website.

(via valkyrievega)

theshitpostcalligrapher:

fairykukla:

theshitpostcalligrapher:

thebibliosphere:

teal-deer:

theshitpostcalligrapher:

legally-a-bastard:

theshitpostcalligrapher:

theshitpostcalligrapher:

theshitpostcalligrapher:

theshitpostcalligrapher:

just spent a few dollars on a plague masque pattern, let’s see if i have enough leftover leather to make one proper 

turns out i did! even have a bit of scrap left over, if i can figure out what to do with it i might sell some smaller leather items on the store 

I got the pattern from here btw, the artist only charged eight bucks

update: holes all punched, sewing commencing 

guess who stayed up all night again!!!! : ) 

Oooooo where did u get the glass? It’s so pretty :o

I have a box of miscellaneous cheap sunglasses i’ve picked up over the years so I just clipped the frames and scavenged the lenses out of this pair of reflective ones 

Reblogging for plague mask pattern (alas I don’t have any stiff leather)

I would totally wear this with my vintage 50s dresses and recreate the “sexy plague mask” art that’s going around right now if I had any materials and or sewing skills haha

well it’s not my goth 50s cocktail dress (I’ll do another shoot with that one i think) but I’ve done a test shoot of the first outfit! What do you think, Joy?

Gloves. You need gloves.

oh i have leather gloves! i just couldn’t wear em for this because i needed to take the picture. also in other news my parents have kindly dropped off some supplies to my hobbit hole (food, etc) which means they had a chance to also drop off my pokin’ staff 

i bought it at last year’s pirate fest because I’d sprained my ankle in the parking lot on the morning of day two. 

need

(via gallusrostromegalus)

prismatic-bell:

ryanlewisandclark:

prismatic-bell:

ryanlewisandclark:

ryanlewisandclark:

For my little sister to get a new service dog that can actually accommodate her needs, it’s going to cost $10,500.

American “Healthcare” is a fucking crime against humanity.

I’m having to watch my little sister decide what parts of her life aren’t that important so she can take care of her current service dog until she (the dog) passes, and then get another service dog.

That means possibly months of being unable to do everyday human things like walk from her bed to the bathroom, make herself food, play with her niece and nephew.

Every one of those activities is legitimately dangerous for my sister to perform without active heart rate monitoring and assistance. And her service dog is sick enough that an alert was missed and my sister passed out yesterday for the first time since she got Ellie the service dog. Four years without serious incident. Gone.

I don’t know how to make shit like this real for other people. If your activism ignores disability, if your world view doesn’t include people with chronic illnesses, you can get right the fuck away from me.

I’m playing zero fucking games about this shit anymore. I will be openly hostile in future to anyone trying to defend the healthcare system as it currently stands. I’m not coming for Doctors on principle, but anyone supporting the current system as the continuing future can get fucked up the ass by a rust covered cactus. This is in-fucking-human.

Hey OP.

This is a real and valid point and something a lot of folks don’t realize about service dogs.

But your sister, specifically….do you think perhaps we could crowdfund the money for her new service animal? That’s no way to live. If all of my followers donated $2 each she’d have her new animal with some left over.

This isn’t the way healthcare should be. But maybe for at least one person we can help RIGHT NOW.

She set up a GoFundMe.

Sarah’s new service dog prospect organized by Sarah Stroop

My current service dog, Ellie, has been diagnosed with aggressive Lymphoma and while we … Sarah Stroop needs your support for Sarah’s new se

gofundme.com

Well then!

Okay, guys, you know the drill. I’ll throw mine in on payday. In the meantime, let’s do everything we can to get this girl a dog! Her life literally depends on it. REBLOG (likes do nothing), donate a few bucks if you can, spread it far and wide.

(via gallusrostromegalus)