Me for the last 15 years: Starting a timer when you have to wait for something or stand in line can be helpful, because no matter how impatient you feel you can check the timer and remind yourself it has not been several eternities and has in fact only been five minutes.
Me setting a timer when I got to bag claim just now: I’m so clever! I will now be reminded that it’s only been five minutes and bag claim usually takes about twenty!
Me looking at the timer thoughtfully: …another Very Neurotypical Moment With Sam, it appears.
FTR it was 17 minutes from “arriving at the bag claim” to claiming my bag, so right on time.
Someone tagged this post “#it’s all fun n games until baggage check takes over an hour” which is 100% legit; a common sentiment in notes is that sometimes you don’t want to know how long something has taken. But that is one of the reasons I started doing the stopwatch thing in the first place!
On the one hand, timing something is about reminding myself “No, it’s only been five minutes,” but it is ALSO about knowing when something is taking way longer than it should.
If I’m put into an exam room in a doctor’s office, I start a timer. Because I have been forgotten about in a doctor’s office before, I get nervous that I’ll just be sat in there forever, and the timer tells me “No, they haven’t forgotten you, it’s only been 10 minutes.” But it also tells me if I have been there longer than appropriate (generally more than 40 minutes) so that I know when it’s justifiable to flag down a nurse to find out what’s going on.
At bag claim, because I know it usually takes about 20 minutes to get my bag, I don’t get concerned until the timer passes the 20 minute mark without any bags appearing. At that point I know I need to take off my headphones and start paying attention – looking at signage, maybe asking someone if I’m at the right carousel. Maybe don’t worry yet, but start double-checking. Perhaps the delay is unavoidable and it’ll just be an hour, but at least, having asked, I KNOW it’ll be an hour, and the timer will tell me when the hour is past and I should maybe check in again.
Now, if the bags do start showing up before 20 minutes but my bag hasn’t shown up by the 40 minute mark, I know that again it’s time to put my head on a swivel, and at the 50 minute mark it’s time to go speak to someone in the baggage claim office. This has more than once helped me locate my bag when it’s accidentally been sent to the wrong part of the airport. There is no point at which, without the timer, I would go “man this is taking a long time” and then actually go ask, because I wouldn’t actually know how long it had been.
The timer both prevents me from worrying before I need to and tells me when to start worrying – essentially, because I’m both perpetually impatient and also infinitely patient, I’ve outsourced my patience to a stopwatch. And because I time a lot of things, I now know the average time a lot of things take, which helps me calibrate my concerns appropriately. Ten minutes is a long time to wait for a burger from McDonalds, but it’s actually on the short end of the time it takes to get a burger from Shake Shack. It’s not a long time to be on hold with the HR office of my old employer, but it’s longer than I’d usually be on hold with my pharmacy. Et cetera.
I know I say this all the time but I still find it hilarious that I didn’t know I had ADHD until I was forty years old.
just want to add that I’ve started timing myself doing everyday chores and tasks and having a more realistic, personalized idea of how long things take has helped a lot with my time blindness.
I only just started, and it’s not yet habitual, so there’s only a small bit of info, but it’s already made it easier to avoid rushing or getting stuck in waiting mode because it takes out a lot of the guesswork.
And it lets me have grace for myself when something is really taking it out of me. I’m right, this *is* taking forever and it isn’t usually this hard, so what’s going on? Do I need to rest? Eat? Did I forget my meds? Am I overwhelmed? Etc.
I feel like a scientist gathering and applying data.
Showers on typical days only take “about ten minutes” (me, 2025), therefore, I CAN shower before my appointment that’s two hours away.
Contrary to popular belief, doing a quick tidy takes “less than half an hour” (me, 2026) and will not take the better part of a day. I don’t need to dread or put it off because I can start a 20min episode and I’ll be done before the credits roll.
The proposed estimate of “10-30 miserable minutes in the cold when the warm blankets are right there” (time blindness and depression, 2024), is erroneous, and based on pre-medicated data. As tempting as it is to go straight back to bed after peeing, my research shows that brushing teeth, including “prep and cleanup,” rarely takes more than four minutes and may even improve morale and momentum when getting up for the day.
This is awesome and hey guess what: you ARE a scientist gathering and applying data!
I’m super proud of you and everyone who is working to keep their lives together in the face of disability and the general horrors of the world right now. Keep up the great work! And if things slip a little that’s ok too. None of us are perfect. Just keep taking notes…for SCIENCE!
“Put Baby in pelican mouth” has transformed my thinking in ways I haven’t entirely discovered yet. The other day at the shop I heard “just give us your ID card at the till to get 15% off such-and-such products!” And my brain went “Big Chain Store perfec/t size for give all your personal data! Deals very cheap and fun your data safe give data to Big Chain Store. Give data to Big Chain Store. No problems ever with Big Chain Store because good size and safety for ID card weak of so much yummy personal data. Abig Chain Store yes a place for data give data to Big Chain Store can trust Big Chain Store for give data to all its friends. Friend Store”
mae “Rho Fabi yng ngheg pelican” wedi trawsffurfio fy meddwl mewn ffyrdd dydw i heb eu darganfod yn gyfan gwbl eto. Y diwrnod o'r blaen yn y siop glywais “jyst rhowch eich cerdyn ID i ni wrth y til i dderbyn 15% i ffwrdd o'r hyn a'r llall!” Ac aeth fy ymennydd “Siop Gadwyn Fawr yn faint perffait/h i roi dy holl ddata personol! Bargeinion rhad iawn a hwyl dy ddata yn ddiogel rho ddata i Siop Gadwyn Fawr. Rho ddata i Siop Gadwyn Fawr. Dim problemau byth gyda Siop Gadwyn Fawr oherwydd maint da a diogelwch ar gyfer cerdyn ID yn wan o gymaint o ddata personol blasus. Siop Gadwyn Fawr ydy lle ar gyfer data rho ddata i Siop Gadwyn Fawr gallwch ymddiried yn Siop Gadwyn Fawr i roi data i'w ffrindiau i gyd. Siop Ffrindiau”
there is no nursing shortage btw. just a shortage of nurses willing to work under the terrible, unsafe conditions created by capitalists 👍
how to solve the nursing shortage:
mandatory patient-to-nurse ratio laws modeled after the laws in California
pay nurses more
🤷♀️
perpetuating the myth of a “nursing shortage” only benefits the healthcare administrators fucking us over, giving them an excuse to claim that they can’t help but short staff the hospitals because there just aren’t nurses to fill those roles
nurses literally make up a full 1% of the US population. there is no nursing shortage
As I continue conversations about my main iconic childhood fandom, I obviously have to talk about them. Many people find the very idea of Senshi/Shitennou banal, boring, non-canonical (especially those who only watched 90s anime), unworthy of attention, toxic, misogynistic even (why?), and generally “girls deserve better” (although these people often continue to ship much more questionable things), and while I understand where that comes from, I’ve never shared that view, and I’ve been on this ship since I was 12! I grew up with them, and I still don’t get tired of thinking about it ~. This is obviously canon-from-a-past-life, and it could obviously be a-next-life thing, although it’s never confirmed nor denied by the manga. Senshi/Shitennou is one of my favorite conversations of “duty before feelings”, a subtle, tragic story of love, betrayal, fate, redemption, and forgiveness, entangled in a complex and insoluble tangle. This is one of the most psychologically complex things that happens in ‘Sailor Moon’ at all, and although it’s constantly tried to be simplified to “a banal desire to write flat love lines for the main characters who don’t need it,” it’s clearly much more than that. That’s it.
One of the reasons I love Steve Rogers is that he’s openly and consistently against any kind of systematic, large-scale violence like genocide, nuclear bombs, shootings, and that kind of thing, but the moment a Nazi opens their mouth, he’s loading his fist.
He is the son of a single mother who was an Irish immigrant, he’s born and raised in New York City in the 1930s, he shared his childhood with Bucky Barnes, he was terribly ill for more than half his life, he hates bullies, he was willingly experimented on, and he has fought in one of the most violent conflicts of world’s history. All this has created a paradox where he won’t strike first if he can avoid it, because he greatly values the ideals of love and respect for others, but also, he charges these ideals in all the blows he delivers. He will make you swallow them together with your teeth.
Steve Rogers is not a hater, but haters have to watch their backs around Steve Rogers.
I know I haven’t posted regularly on this blog in years but I’m not seeing a whole lot of posts on this site about what’s happening in Minneapolis right now. And the posts I am seeing are not covering the scope of it. I’m genuinely surprised because tumblr is usually where I find out about things organically through my feed. So I’m making a post about it.
A brief summary of events, from someone who pays attention and also lives here, best taken with a grain of salt and some fact checking:
2020: George Floyd is murdered by Minneapolis police. There are weeks of protests about it. It makes national news. Protests happen in DC. The infamous Trump and his bible photo shoot happens.
2024: Gov. Tim Walz is Kamala Harris’ running mate in the presidential election. He starts the “they’re just weird” thing. Is folksy, Trump personally hates him.
November 2025: ICE starts showing up to “crack down” on “illegal immigrants” in our Somali community. I may remember the numbers wrong, but something like 90% of our Somali neighbors are either naturalized or were born here. People distribute ICE whistles and are on high alert. Localized to the twin cities.
December 2025: Nick Shirley is paid by a bunch of MN Republicans to do an exposé on daycare fraud. I didn’t hear much about this. All I really know is this was an ongoing investigation that MN officials were already taking care of and some of the guilty parties have already gone to court from a COVID era food assistance program. Mostly, if not all, legal US citizens. He did a really bad job at doing journalism and just showed up to day cares with a camera crew and went “YUP nobody’s here” as if they weren’t in lock-down procedure because some fuck ass white men showed up with camera equipment that could easily be mistaken for guns. I believe. I will fact check all of this and will correct myself in a reblog if necessary. (source but not all the details that I remember hearing about but they said there was no recorded evidence of fraud)
Conservative internet explodes. Kristi Noem sends a mess of agents. I know it’s more than a thousand more. They call it Operation Metro Surge. They are going everywhere. There are protests. People try to interrupt the arrests. It’s a lot.
1/7/2026: Renee Nicole Good is shot by an ICE agent in the middle of a protest. A few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed. Broad daylight. In front of a crowd. While she was following instructions to turn her vehicle around. Jonathan Ross, the piece of shit Nazi who did it, was recording on his phone the whole time, switched his phone to his non dominant hand so he could more effectively shoot her in the face from 2 feet away. Claims self defense, several angles immediately disprove him. He releases his video, he calls her a “fucking bitch” as her corpse drives away. Does not help him at all. (source) He has not been seen since. Some photos/reports exist of a bunch of agents showing up to his house and taking some tubs and art away. His wife is an immigrant. (source but it’s the daily mail so grain of salt.)
Not hours later they go raid a school and tear gas a bunch of kids. (source). Minneapolis has switched to distance learning. I’m not sure about St. Paul.
The last week: There are up to 3,000 ICE agents here. Keep in mind Minneapolis and St. Paul only have 600 or fewer police officers each. So these dudes are roaming in packs. It’s 2-4 dudes to a car and 2-5 cars per pack. People are “commuting with” ICE agents to honk and alert people that they’re there. People are going on patrols with their neighbors.
ICE is no longer asking “are you a citizen.” They are simply walking up to you and taking you into custody. They are going door to door. They have started just breaking the door down if you don’t comply. They are driving recklessly to just grab pedestrians and drivers alike (source). People are afraid to go get groceries. It’s all over the state. I am learning names of cities in places I thought were just factory farm land and I’ve lived here my whole life because they’re doing raids there. I had to text my family in the suburbs because I saw reports of my small little hometown an hour away getting door knocks today.
It’s insane and I am not doing it justice. There are thousands of masked federal agents roaming around all of Minnesota with no warrant or specific goal. They are just trolling around looking for people. They are detaining anyone and everyone. They are beating people. They are pepper spraying people. They are kidnapping people. They are acting unconstitutionally, aggressively, and unpredictably. They are creating situations that are dangerous so that they can try to justify beating or shooting their way out. I will run an errand and then get fed a tiktok that was shot from the Cub Foods that I just left and there’s 20+ ICE vehicles parked there now. They’re taking people from work, from day care, from schools, from shopping centers.
Iceout.org tracks ice sightings. This is a screen shot with the date set to 12/1/2025.
And from today.
They have cut off SNAP and WIC benefits. Just for us. Not any other state, just Minnesota. They’re saying it’s because of fraud but I think it’s because they hate that we use federal funds to give free breakfast and lunch to every public school student.
And this is breaking just now, 1/13/2026: the DOJ is trying to investigate Renee Good’s widow. 4 people have resigned about it. (source). I don’t even want to read the article to see what they’re saying.
So that’s a brief history.
Unicorn Riot is doing a lot of good reporting and they don’t seem to have the spin that a lot of local news stations will have where they downplay everything. This article specifically goes into a lot of the specific instances of brutality.
It’s also a rumor on TikTok that all of the videos of ICE and protests and the such and the like are being geo locked. So my feed is all footage of people being detained and talking about the “commuting” they’re doing and what they’re seeing but people outside of the state are not seeing it. So if you’re also on that infernal app, try searching for Minneapolis or Minnesota and see what you see. I’m kind of curious if this is true. Because I’ve been living and breathing ICE and doomsday prepping content for a week. I’m sure those two topics aren’t connected.
I don’t really know what my goal with this post is. I’m tired. I’m in the first ring of suburbs, so it’s been pretty quiet. But I have friends in south Minneapolis. And I’m worried for them. And I know it’s a matter of time before my quiet pocket is affected. Because they’re coming door to door.
Pay attention to Minnesota, I think an example is being made of us.
Hey if you’ve used ai in the past you aren’t evil actually.
If you had it handed to you as a younger human you aren’t evil.
If you are/were addicted to chatbots you aren’t evil.
Ai is evil. It’s in everything, it’s easily accessible, normalized, and addictive.
YOU are not evil for falling for all that. But it is now your job to quit. You can do it. I promise you can do it. And when you do, or if you have, you should be welcomed. Not villainized.
