so a very long time ago, my dad worked with an arson investigator

this guy was often one of the first people on the scene following a suspected arson, once emergency services had done what they needed to do. at times, there were also civilians on the periphery. often, they were freaking out, and understandably so; their home or workplace had just, quite literally, gone up in smoke

this investigator wouldn’t try to calm them down. he wouldn’t comfort them or be a shoulder to cry on.

instead, he’d walk up to the person most visibly losing their shit, hand them a fire extinguisher, and say “hey, can you keep an eye out for any other fires, and if you see one, can you put it out with this?”

of course, there was no actual risk of another fire. he wouldn’t be on the scene investigating if there was even a chance that the fire wasn’t completely put out. but the bystander didn’t need to know that

because that person, without fail, would immediately pull it together, take the fire extinguisher, and stand guard. they were, at least temporarily, calm enough for this investigator to do this job

my dad has told me the parable of the fire extinguisher a hundred times, and i think about it a lot. i think about what it says about people and crises. i think about what it says about the grounding power of having a purpose. and i think about the importance of letting someone help me through something, even if that help is just going to be another casserole to throw into the freezer, because useless or not, that fire extinguisher might be the only thing holding them together

Grumble grumble…

i have been having a fantastic time watching sean terrorise random people on twitter today

My boyfriend edited this one picture of a seal with huge wet eyes so that it had a super tiny head and it was so funny that several days later it’s all I can think about when my brain isn’t preoccupied

"Block this ad" isn't good enough, I need a feature that directly tells the company "this was so shit that it lowered my opinion of your product"

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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

hi guys! discord is doing a survey on how people would like ai to be integrated into discord. take it and say fuck no to every question. when you get to "in general, how do you feel about discord inegrating ai features?", respond that you would actively get everyone you know off of discord and wouldn't pay for nitro or other shop items if they added ai features.