Everything I write ends up turning into an exercise in imagining a world wherein every single person puts other people first because I see it happen often enough to know it’s within the realm of possibility
I am a flight attendant. (I feel the need to specify this because the last time one of my work-related posts left my little neighborhood on here, many people forgot how context clues work.) Last week, a flight I was working had one of the strangest delays I’ve ever seen. The flight from Philly to Detroit generally takes about 1.5 to 2 hours. We were roughly 30 minutes from Detroit when the plane ran out of gas and we had to make a pit stop in the middle of Ohio. (Other things happened that led to us running out of gas but they aren’t important.)
The plane was full. Almost 100 people, everyone tired from a long day of traveling, which is already a stressful experience. And now we’re all stuck in the middle of Ohio, a place no one ever wants to be, with no clue as to when we might finally reach our destination. I had already done the drink service and essentially worked a 1.5 hour flight, which is tiring, and the passengers are all tired as well. Everyone’s hot and sweaty and uncomfortable, squished together in a huge metal tube, baking in the sun. All of the ingredients were there to make this a shitty day. We ended up sitting on the ground for another hour and a half before we could fly the last 30 minutes. A 2 hour flight turned into 4. And it was one of the best flights I’ve ever worked.
Sitting the closest to my jumpseat in the back row of the plane were: a customer service rep for my airline on her way to a funeral; an 11 year old unaccompanied minor (kid flying alone); a 20 year old auditioning for a radio show; and a young new dad traveling for the first time with his infant daughter. Even before we’d left Philly, there was a little sense of comraderie, the kind you get whenever you’re sharing an experience as a group. But the moment it became apparent that our “pit stop” was going to take much longer than anticipated, we suddenly became a group of survivors in some apocalypse movie–but instead of getting suspicious of each other, we played games and passed out pretzels.
When I tell yall we literally had some of the most fun I’ve ever had on a flight…the 11 year old girl was a chatterbox and funny as hell. At one point I gave her the phone and she started telling jokes over the intercom. The customer service rep took care of her while I helped the other passengers. We found out about the 20 year old’s audition, and I gave him the phone next so he could practice his intros. We all took turn holding the baby (8 months and so well behaved!) and of course every mom gave the dad some advice. My other flight attendant and I quizzed everyone on the safety demo, with anyone who remembered the answers winning extra snacks. There were two people celebrating birthdays, so we all sang and clapped. 100 people (loudly, and very badly) singing happy birthday for two strangers. A woman in first class had an emotional support dog, and we all took turns holding him too.
I’d already done a beverage service on our way to Detroit, but the pilots said the route given to us would add another hour to our flight, so I decided to do a second one. Except, only three rows in, the captain made an announcement: he’d worked his magic and gotten us some short cuts. We would now be landing in Detroit in 15 minutes. I now had to do a full beverage service in about 10 minutes (this is impossible). I don’t know what my face looked like, but the passengers must have been able to tell. They all leapt into action. Two of them went down the aisle collecting drink orders, and then carried drinks to the others as I poured like I was in the fast and furious series, if they were about pouring soda instead of stealing cars. We got everyone served within 7 minutes. When we landed, everyone cheered. We knew each other’s names. Many people had exchanged numbers. I know a handful had plans to carpool.
At the end of that trip, I was talking to my roommate (also a flight attendant) and mentioned the 1.5 hour onboard delay. He said “God, that must have sucked.” He was shocked when I said it really, really didn’t.
One of my favourite pop culture useless pieces of information that I know is the fact that trends in horror movies can tell you about the general fears of the world at any given time in cinematic history.
Sorta!
1940s - You have people still alive that remember Jack the Ripper, you have the Axeman of New Orleans and two world wars. The classics are being made for shock escapism and dark stalkers are also popular (usually trusting people turning out to be the enemy).
1950s - post-nuclear bomb. Giant monsters, or unknown blobs are the trend.
1970s/1980s - modern era begins, and serial killers are becoming known and prominent. Slasher films are the trend. The Cold War also drives the fear of invasion, so a few alien films come out in this time.
1990s - a horror movie lull, and lull in wars and disturbances.
2000s - fear of invasions and biological warfare. Zombie movies become the trend.
Here you go! It’s just a random article, but it’s a fun starting point. It outlines the ideas better than what I did above. Fears, politics etc all play a role.
I love desire paths. There’s something so wonderous about seeing an echo of humanity. Depending on it’s location, a desire path can mean so many different things.
In a city, like the pic above, they represent rebellion, and efficiency. The messiness of humanity. We like to imagine we’re oh so logical and neat so we design our cities to be logical and neat an then real humans literally trample on that idea. The ego required to think you can design something perfect that checks every box. Life is all about compromise and patching stuff when some new problem arises. Though people have certainly tried! Ohio state univeristy let students carve their desire paths, and then paved them over. It looks pretty artsy.
Some people will try to discourage desire paths, but this is almost always going to fail.
Eventually, people just have to accept them. Humans are too dang stubborn.
Certain desire paths are just adorable. A 0.5 second time saver. You just can’t design for maximum efficiency, humans will always find shortcuts!
Though on occasion a desire path can actually be the least efficient way…especially if you’re superstitious.
In a wilder area, such as below, they show us the curiosity of humans. A desire path somewhere natural often tells you there’s something interesting just ahead. (Though remember some ecosystems are fragile and will suffer if trampled! Stick to paths in these sorts of areas)
And how about desire stairs? I always think these look so cool. We get see humans determination to climb, to traverse every kind of terrain.
And for something really crazy…a desire path used for centuries will create a ‘holloway’
All of these pics are off the Desirepath subreddit, check them out for more examples! And many thanks to the users who submitted these photos.
I always wondered if these had a name. Now I know. :)
I am both in awe of their rhythm and if fear dor their ankles. *chef’s kiss*
I learned how to dance something similar to this in the third grade. in Cambodia it’s called the Pestle Dance, and it is WAY slower than this, and it is still REALLY hard to do the turny bits without getting your ankles banged up. it was my least favorite dance to learn because it hurts like a bitch when your foot gets caught. that is god-tierlevels of talent.
I‘m so happy to see traditional Filipino dances being hyped up here! I grew up watching these dances everywhere and have even seen diaspora kids dance hip hop ON TOP of doing the tinikling dance
Tinikling irog ko ❤️ this is one of those things that’s simple in theory but actually really really hard to do and these kids are amazing
full offense but none of you would have ever survived fanfiction.net in 2009
remember when writers had to be all like: “omg omg lemon starts HERE”
y’all are lucky that ao3 has tags andfilters you can set
Sometimes shit was marked “lemon” and it’d just be them making out, and sometimes they’d just start pissing on each other
No rules, no laws, you took your life into your hands opening fics
A/N: this contains SLASH, that means TWO MEN, if that makes you uncomfy, DON’T READ!
A/N: please don’t sue me, o anime overlords, I’m not making any money off of this! I’m just a broke student! I don’t have any money!
A/N: I totally wrote this while high off 10 Red Bulls wheeeeeee!!!!!
A/N: COMMENT if you want me to continue the next chappy!!!
No, no, no
remember when there’d be interactions with the author and the characters?
InuYasha: I don’t get why I have to be here for this
A/N: Because it was in your contract!!1!1 *revs chainsaw*
god those were lawless times.
…I’m fucking SWEATING
this is literally giving me flashbacks
Flash forward to 2022 and there are people who read all 100 tags, the spoilery summary, the initial fic note AND the new update note reiterating not JUST possibly triggering content but chapter-specific warnings about content—
AND THEY STILL COMPLAIN IN THE COMMENTS
Physician, heal thyself
And never time travel to the early aughts. You’re weak and would not survive the winter.
I feel called out here.
My crime: Japanese.
But in my defense, the English word translations either didn’t feel right or didn’t have the oomph.
I always hire my guests to help me with ‘chores’ (if they’re willing!), the kind of task that’s fun at first but less fun when you have to keep going for hours (burning all the broom bushes in the pasture, picking many kg of berries to make syrup, carrying a mountain of logs into the wood shed and building stable log piles so they don’t come cascading down later…) And every time I’m amazed by the way humans can make the most tedious tasks genuinely fun through… group dynamics? just the way people start interacting and bonding with each other when everyone is focused on the same repetitive physical activity. It’s hard to find examples because it’s always so specific to each situation; but I mean things like
people spontaneously specialising and developing a feeling of expertise and pride in their subtrade, no matter how silly (putting away firewood involved one Log Selecter outside going back and forth delivering logs to two Pile Builders who piled them up in the shed, and each rapidly created their own well-oiled System and became convinced it would be hard to replace them now that they had mastered their craft)
new vocabulary being coined and immediately adopted (the Pile Builders came up with nicknames for logs of different lengths and shapes so they could ‘order’ them from the Log Selecter more efficiently—”I’ve got a One-Armed Bandit here, I need another one to fit next to it, but with an ‘arm’ on the other side” “Here” “The arm is on the same side!” “Just turn it around and the arm will be on the other side”)
songs emerging almost by themselves (a song about fishing mussels was repurposed into a song about picking plums; a whole new song was invented to encourage weirdly-shaped logs to fit in with the others as we tried to fill all the gaps)
stories being told. Weaving a trivial task into a complex imaginary plot and context to make it more entertaining and meaningful
the extremely human compulsion to write down our knowledge to share it with future generations (I was told to take note of the best & quickest knot to tie up foliage when making tree hay, for the benefit of whoever does it next summer)
beliefs as to the Right Way To Do Things quickly solidifying into myths or superstitions, as we forget what drove us to do things this way in the first place, but trust that we had good reasons so now it’s the Way It’s Done
I always tell people to help only if they feel like it and we can stop anytime and I’ll finish later by myself, but what usually happens instead is that they want to come back at the same time next year to do this exact chore again because of how they’ve made it theirs in just a few days (or in one afternoon!) Give a group of humans a banal task and while they’re at it they will come up with a whole new inside slang, a few work songs and a handful of founding texts and myths, until it feels special and important. I love seeing the way these miniature folklores just emanate from people doing things together.
