Here are the 2024 vaccine recommendation schedules. They’ve already been wiped from the cdc site. Save them and share widely, especially to your friends with kids.

Hi!!! One of my parents got meningitis when I was a kid.

They were in the hospital for nearly a month, the rest of us were all placed in medical quarantine, there were several points we thought they were gonna die, and even though they survived, it was a SUPER close call and they lost about two years of memories from the ensuing brain damage.

Like… a two-uear-long cookie-cutter pocket of thoughts and memories went missing right out of their brain. It’s an inflammation of the brain that cooks it alive.

I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THERE WAS A VACCINE.

I WILL BE GETTING IT.

my county is going to be doing some FUCKED UP SHIT to the music program. we currently have:

-string orchestra

-full orchestra

-jazz band

-symphonic band

-competition marching band

-regular marching band

-saxophone ensemble

-percussion ensemble

-brass quintet

-coming soon??? folk music ensemble

THE BOARD OF ED WILL BE CUTTING ORCHESTRA AND BAND DOWN. WE WILL NO LONGER HAVE A SEPARATE PERCUSSION/BAND CLASS, IT WILL BE TOGETHER. the 1 on 20 instruction will become 1 on 50. the chorus will be one full group that is a semester class, and show choir (dancing/singing) will no longer be offered.

ORCHESTRA IS EITHER GOING TO BE A FALL SEMESTER CLASS OR NOT A CLASS OFFERED AT ALL.

they have decided that the arts are not important enough to keep in school. students will need to choose between having ap classes that look good on a resume, or being in music.

please. i'm not asking for money. spread the fucking word. if you care about music AT ALL than you should be fucking reblogging this. i know my mutuals care. i don't care if you're in my county or even in my state or country. this is an injustice that genuinely needs to be spread. the state of maryland is fucked for good.

as good of a time as any to share my list of activities I do during what i like to call Scheduled Soul Maintenence to avoid burnout

Reminder to myself

🚨

HEADS UP: The U.S. Postal Service quietly changed how postmarks work.

Mail is no longer automatically postmarked with the date you drop it off. Instead, the postmark now reflects the date it’s first processed by an automated sorting facility — which can be days later.

If you mail something right at a deadline, the official postmark could be later than your drop-off date and may be considered late.

If mailing date matters to you, go inside the post office and request a hand-stamped postmark.

This will invalidate votes too

Shun.

Shame. Shame. Shame...

Tips and ideas for how to respond when someone is being rude to you

For personal reasons I won't get into, I have a history of just freezing when some is rude / hostile / aggressive / condescending / patronizing / etc. It's obviously not something I'm happy about at all, most people who freeze or fawn aren't happy about it and would change it if they could.

One day I confided in my co-worker, a middle aged woman in her 50's, that this is something I struggle with. Considering how confident and assertive she always struck me as, I was shocked when she told me this is also something she's struggled with.

The advice she gave me is to just memorize and practice a few broad statements or reactions that you can pull out of your pocket so to speak when someone is being rude or disrespectful to you. It's not easy if you're someone who's been conditioned to freeze or fawn, but practice helps. Practice saying these things when you're alone. Put up a sticky note next to your bed or on your bathroom mirror with these phrases and practice them when you see them. Practice saying these with a partner or trusted friend, role-play scenarios where you might need to use these phrases.

Here's a few phrases that have worked for me. The nice thing about them is that they tend to shut down the situation rather than escalating, while still letting the aggressor know that you don't find their behavior acceptable.

"Are you okay?"

This works well in professional settings, because it's not like your work place's residential bully can run to HR about you asking if they're okay (but they might if you try to retaliate and give them a taste of their own medicine). However, it still effectively sends the message "I think there's something wrong with your behavior and don't accept it". It's also not likely the response they're expecting, so it'll likely throw them off and prevent further verbal aggression.

"Could you repeat that for me? I didn't catch what you said."

This one is most effective for people you believe to actually have a conscious and might regret what they said if they actually thought about it a little more. I find that often when I do this one, when people repeat the rude/snippy/patronizing/etc thing they either shamefully stumble over their words and show some remorse, or they change altogether what they say. In the off chance they don't regret what they said and end up repeating exactly what they said, this at least buys you some time to think of a better reaction since you're no longer caught off guard by a sudden rude and snippy remark.

"Can you explain what you mean by that?"

Similar logic to the last one. Often when people are being rude/snippy/patronizing/etc they're caught up in their own emotions in that moment and didn't think it through. This is a polite and civil way of putting their rude behavior in the spotlight and making them reconsider what they said. The other advantage to this one is that in case you did misread their intentions and they meant no harm by what they said or did, this gives them an opportunity to clarify that, instead of you just feeling bad over a statement or actions they actually had no ill intentions with.

If anyone has any further examples of reactions / responses / statements that have worked for them, I'd love to hear about them. I'm new to studying the art of how to civilly yet effectively shut down bad behavior from others, so I'm always open to hearing more suggestions.

Here's another one I recently learned from a friend when I was griping to her about things like, co-workers who are redpill/MRA types and always trying weasel their agenda into casual and unrelated conversations to impose their views on me, or co-workers who strongly feel their home country is superior to my home country so they try to weasel how much better their home country is and how awful mine is into unrelated conversations. You are actually allowed to just say:

"I am not interested in having this conversation."

Yes, you are actually allowed to just say that. No, it's not particularly rude especially if the other person is trying to impose a topic or conversation on you that you don't want to have.

I say not particularly rude instead of not rude at all because of course the chances are not zero that they'll still take offense and find it rude. But this is one of the more professional and efficient ways of shutting down a conversation that you find inappropriate and just don't want to have.

If they don't respect this, just keep repeating yourself until they stop. And if they still don't respect it, then you have grounds to go to your manager / HR about them not respecting your boundaries and repeatedly imposing a conversation on you that you made it clear multiple times that you do not want to have. That is of course, if you do have a good HR department and/or manager who you think will actually care and handle it properly and professionally. If not, I'm sorry and I hope you can find a new job soon.

If your job requires emailing at all, I've also picked up a few methods for responding to rude emails.

In my current job I strictly work B2B (business to business) and before this job had only worked retail and food service. I thought when I broke into office work that I was finally done with, well, the types of things you deal with in public facing customer service roles (the constant rudeness, dehumanization, unnecessary hostility, etc you know) but unfortunately after nearly two years sending and receiving emails in a B2B setting I regret to inform you that people are still rude dehumanizing jerks even when you are both professionals at work representing your own respective companies.

So, here's a few firm yet professional replies I've picked up.

If you are emailing with a supplier (as in a situation where *you* are the client) obviously you still need them to function at your job so you still need to be professional and remain on good terms with them, but unfortunately with the way things work when you are the client you do get a little more leeway in being firm and standing up for yourself. My go-to response when a supplier is being out of line rude / unprofessional / disrespectful is:

"Unfortunately I have to express disappointment at the lack of professional tone in your email."

Every time I've used this with a supplier I get an apology and a change of tone from thereon. You don't want to escalate the aggressive tone in a work related email, that never ends well, once they drag you down to their level there's no coming back from the fact that you just normalized the aggressive and unprofessional tone of your email communications with this supplier, so you want to keep the "high ground" so to speak. When you keep on the high ground instead you can shift the tone back to professional and courteous, which obviously makes your job easier.

However, you're still not letting them off the hook or just letting it slide with expressing your disappointment, and it's also good to be (professionally) putting your foot down and calling out the behavior so they don't get the idea that they can throw tantrums at you again in the future in a professional setting.

Handling rude and unprofessional emails from clients is obviously more tricky, because depending on what industry you're in the power dynamics are typically shifted more in their favor, so you have to watch your tone a little more.

I'm lucky enough that at my job I'm not only part of a union, but I have a boss who takes my side when clients are being unreasonable and unprofessional, so I can get away with a:

"Let's keep the tone of our communications professional, shall we?"

It still has a bit of a "customer service" tone to it, it still gives you the high ground (again, you don't want to sink down to their level and normalize rude / petty / hostile interactions with this client, it will make your job harder and more stressful if you do) but it does still address the behavior and let them know you're not just letting it slide.

There's also principles of verbal self defense that you can learn, if the rudeness problem is chronic, systemic, or verging on abusive.

Two books I've used: The Gentle Art Of Verbal Self Defense by Dr. Elgin, and The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Dr Pat Evans . Personally I find Dr Evans book more accessible, but both have good tips and skills you can learn.

Check with your library!

I work cybersecurity, this is like half my job.

the whole vaccine deal tbh

antidepressants

Yes these are all the work of wizards

I overheard a woman at my job say "Your whole personality revolves around what you hate instead of what you love and thats an awful way to live." to the resident vocal Maga in the breakroom.

He was stunned into silence for at least 60 seconds so that was nice.

the amount of vitriolic replies to this post makes me want to analyze why people react so angrily to having an unhealthy behavior being pointed out to them.

You cannot grow without accepting the problem

Everybody STOP having a crisis, it’s now tea time

Pause all dread an catastrophe to have a cuppa and some cookies for the next 15-30 minutes

This is a wizard spell

autumntides

10h

"In the instance an employer makes an illegal request for a photograph as part of a job application, you may submit a complaint to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission." Successful violation fee collections are paid partially to the one who suffered the violation, which in many cases exceeds a year of work at these shit jobs. There's only two weak points to a corporation, and those are in the budget and in the supply chain. Hit them where it hurts.

Fucking word.

Learn your rights!

AUTO REBLOG IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS THE 1ST TIME AROUND.  It is important to KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.

Had a minute at work to look it up, and I did find the title!

source

#O Ancestors! I cry. What is your wisdom for times like these?#Start a garden and have a cuppa. says my great-grandmother who went through the depression#Lie your ass off to the government and have a cuppa. says my great-great grandfather who escaped the potato famine#Keep your humours in balance and have a cuppa. says my ancestor who survived the bubonic plague#Bring tribe together so many make strong and have cuppa. says my neanderthal ancestor#BITE THEM BITE THEM BITE THEM. Says my small arboreal ancestor. ALSO LITTLE TREAT.#Thank you for your wisdom ancestors. I say and turn on the kettle. - gallusrostromegalus

How serendipitous to discover that my tags have passed Peer Review just as I have sat down with a cuppa :)

I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Apparently there was some kind of race scheduled at a local park or something so I've been trying to avoid the main trail but a little while ago when I had to cross near it I overheard the following shouted exchange

And goddamn if that didn't rewire my brain a little bit.

Last place is still a place, baby.

I know of a trail racing company that gives the slowest racer who finishes every race a DFL award: Dead Fucking Last. I was a little taken aback by this until I had it explained to me that those last-place finishers are pretty much uniformly people for whom finishing at all was an accomplishment: people undergoing cancer treatments, absolute beginners, runners in their eighties, extremely pregnant people, you get the idea. Moreover, what you see as this person crosses the finish line is all these sporty trail racers, many of whom finished the race literal hours earlier, cheering their hearts out because they respect that, yes, DFL is still a place, baby.

In Alaskan mushing races, the last finisher is given the Red Lantern for their perseverance and/or the Widow’s Lamp because their arrival means everyone made it home.

“We didn’t have all this autism when I was a kid”

Yea, you had changelings and demonic possession and “brats” and “back talk”, and kids that were “not all there”, your aunt who’s “crazy”, and your second cousin no one ever talks about cuz he’s “special”, and if you’re fucking lucky, your elder uncle who lives a nice quiet life with his 70 lego sets and writes grocery stores about changing the light bulbs cuz they’re too harsh.

not to put this user on blast, but ohmygod this may be the funniest thing i’ve ever seen 😭😭