man call me crazy or whatever but i'm not very thrilled with the fact that the takeaway that all of y'all are getting from the titanic submarine crisis happening right now is

"People able to spend exorbitantly for some tourist trip thing deserve to die a horrific and torturous death via suffocation after spending 96 hours in mounting dread and awareness of that oncoming reality, all inside a 20 foot long windowless iron casket lost at sea"

and how it isn't

"There is no way in fucking hell that it should be legal to take people into such high-risk environments with zero regulations and shoddy work which almost certainly factored if not is the cause of this crisis to begin with, and the problem isn't that people will spend lots of money on dumb shit, it's that there are companies allowed to prey on that with no oversight"

𝐹𝐴𝑇𝐻𝐸𝑅 𝐴𝑁𝐷 𝑆𝑂𝑁 || Andrew & Philip↪Philip & Charles↪Charles & William↪William & George

Princess Anne and Prince George being besties while watching a fly-past of aircraft during Trooping the Colour, on 17 June 2023 🥰

Princess Anne and Prince George chatting while watching the Trooping the Colour fly-past, on 17 June 2023 🥰

UPS has reached an agreement with the Teamsters union to equip its iconic brown delivery trucks with air conditioning for the first time for new units.

The agreement, announced by UPS on Tuesday, comes as the delivery giant and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters negotiate the terms of a new contract for more than 330,000 U.S. employees. (source)

Unions work, unionize.

William calling Sophie ‘aunt’

“This is my aunt.”

I love this, especially because it’s so easy to forget that she is 🥹

Bad News: Our boss locked the keys inside the building.

Good News: We didn’t have to wait around for a locksmith.

Bad News: My boss finds it very concerning that I know how to pick locks, and tried to unlock my Tragic Backstory™. I was too embarrassed to admit that the reason I learned was because, at thirteen, I figured that was the kind of skill that would impress cute girls.

Good News: A cute girl saw me do it.

Bad News: It was Maggie, and since she’s already seen me fall out of several trees, cry because I saw a fawn that was just too damn small, and knows I can ride a unicycle, she’ll never think I’m cool no matter what I do. It’s too late. She knows.

There are million dollar blockbuster movies that were less entertaining than the rollercoaster this post just took me on. 

As a Brit, I think it's worth noting that our entire infrastructure, such as houses, buildings, churches, schools, universities, etc. are built to KEEP HEAT IN!

So when it gets hot (it's around 30C) right now, it stays and builds and we have no way to get rid of it. For example, most places don't have AC, and if they do it's only in selected areas or for the wealthy.

Yea our building lol🫠... i had a bad attack last heatwave, i ended up being sick, had vertigo & collapsing several times even though i was drinking lots, taking electrolytes, in the coolest room, had fans & ice packs 🫠

It was kinda scary bc i've been totally ok when abroad in MUCH hotter countries & usually can manage heat fine-ish.

Maybe AC will become more common here if it continues to get hotter but idk its expensive.

we were the liminal kids. alive before the internet, just long enough we remember when things really were different.

when i work in preschools, the hand signal kids make for phone is a flat palm, their fingers like brackets. i still make the pinky-and-thumb octave stretch when i "pick up" to respond to them.

the symbol to save a file is a floppy disc. the other day while cleaning out my parents' house, i found a collection of over a hundred CDs, my mom's handwriting on each of them. first day of kindergarten. playlist for beach trip '94. i don't have a device that can play any of these anymore - none of my electronics are compatible. there are pieces of my childhood buried under these, and i cannot access them. but they do exist, which feels special.

my siblings and i recently spent hours digitizing our family's photos as a present for my mom's birthday. there's a year where the pictures just. stop. cameras on phones got to be too good. it didn't make sense to keep getting them developed. and there are a quite a few years that are lost to us. when we were younger, mementos were lost to floods. and again, while i was in middle school, google drive wasn't "a thing". somewhere out there, there are lost memories on dead laptops. which is to say - i lost it to the flood twice, kind of.

when i teach undergrad, i always feel kind of slapped-in-the-face. they're over 18, and they don't remember a classroom without laptops. i remember when my school put in the first smartboard, and how it was a huge privilege. i used the word walkman once, and had to explain myself. we are only separated by a decade. it feels like we are separated by so much more than that.

and something about ... being half-in half-out of the world after. it marks you. i don't know why. but "real adults" see us as lost children, even though many of us are old enough to have a mortgage. my little sister grew up with more access to the internet than i did - and she's only got 4 years of difference. i know how to write cursive, and i actually think it's good practice for kids to learn too - it helps their motor development. but i also know they have to be able to touch-type way faster than was ever required from me.

in between, i guess. i still like to hand-write most things, even though typing is way faster and more accessible for me. i still wear a pj shirt from when i was like 18. i don't really understand how to operate my parents' smart tv. the other day when i got seriously injured, i used hey siri to call my brother. but if you asked me - honestly, i prefer calling to texting. a life in anachronisms. in being a little out-of-phase. never quite in synchronicity.

I imagine that the last generation to really feel this way, to really feel a before-and-after kind of world, was at the last turn of the century, which had 3 huge, life-changing inventions happen all at once.

In 1890, everybody rode horses, used candles to see at night, and communicated through letters.

By the 1920s (only 30 years later!), everybody had automobiles (or access to another form of 'self-driving' transportation like busses or trams) and nobody had horses. Nearly everyone had electricity in their houses. Nearly everyone had a telephone, or access to one.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine growing up, being taught by your parents all about how to ride horses and care for them and hitch them to a wagon, only to...not ever use that knowledge as an adult, because you have a car? Can you imagine learning how to make candles, finally getting good enough at it to be useful to your family as a teenager, only to flick a switch to turn on a light bulb as an adult?

I feel like that last huge change in technology is the same thing we are going through. I know how to read a paper map. I will never need to use this knowledge. But it's still in there; including the many patient hours my mother spent teaching me, and a lot of fond memories I have of her doing it. I know how to research a topic in a paper library, with actual books. Pretty sure I will never do that again. I memorize phone numbers, 'just in case'. In case what? The automobile (smartphone) gets un-invented? But I hold that knowledge in my head. It's there. It's part of me.

I wish I could speak to my great-great-grandmother, who had her first baby in 1900. To ask her, if what Millennials now are going through is what it was like for her Centennial generation. The absolute whiplash, from one way of life to another.

Kids born in 1890 knew how to make candles, and kids born in 1920 could not fathom why you would need to know this.

y'all wanna see a horror story in 2 pictures?

I have to kill