Ok But, This Was Around 13 Years Ago So My Parents Would Have Been Around 68 Years Old. They’d Been

ok but, this was around 13 years ago so my parents would have been around 68 years old. They’d been to Maritzburg to visit my gran, and they got home and my mom was complaining about my dad, how, when they’d had a flat tyre and he was messing with it putting in the jack to change the wheel - he said to my mom “just lift the car for a moment”. So she did that, and he got the jack in, and then she was complaining about how he’d just casually ask her to lift the car, but...

okay this reminded me of the strongest human being (I use that label with some reservation) I have ever met and I still think about him like once a week because about 4 years ago on Thanksgiving night my sister, cousin, and I were going to pick up a friend about a 40 minute drive from home, and I got lost and tried to turn around on a little gravel pull-off on the side of the road, but my front tires got stuck in the snow.

we were in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, and the only sign of life was a single, completely dark house across the road from us.

We all did our best to push the car out, and we’re strong people, but we couldn’t make it budge. Cold and stuck, we climbed back and wondered what to do. A car full of men pulled over beside us and asked if we needed help, but getting out of our locked car on a backroad at night with strange men felt like a bad idea, so we said a tow was coming and waved them along. We did that twice before finally deciding our only option was to accept the next offer for help and just risk it,

when a man came out of the house across the street.

He’d clearly been watching us and figured out why we’d been lying to people, which really surprised me & he said “it’s okay, you can stay in your car and keep the doors locked. Just start backing up when I say so.”

I had the window cracked and told him “it’s too stuck. There’s no way we’re getting out. Could you call a tow?”

And he said “just back up when I say so.”

So he walked around the front of the car, squatted, and said “okay back up,”

and I did, and

he lifted

the front of the car Into The Air. Off its front wheels, and we backed up while he essentially wheel-barrowed us back onto the road.

And we were honest to god yelling. We couldn’t help it. We just yelled until all four wheels were back on the ground and he was waving us off while we thanked him.

And then I looked at my sister and cousin & said “he REALLY told us we can KEEP our doors locked as if THAT WOULD’VE FUCKING STOPPED HIM!!!! As if he couldn’t have just RIPPED EM OFF THE HINGES.”

I later looked up the weight of my car, and it’s 3200 pounds without anything or anyone in it.

This haunts me.

Old Web Revival community

I’ve always had a mild fixation on the fact that when I was a child, there was this website I adored and went on almost every other day. Bored.com. It was amazing. Games, links to the most interesting things ever, jokes, puzzles, everything a child could ask for. Today its nothing but bullshit flash games with no replay value. Bored.com was my first experience with a web directory, a list of recommended links.

Did you know back when there were only a few thousand websites, search engines didn’t exist? You opened a web directory, multiple web directories, to search for websites you would find interesting or relevant. You’d make your own website with your own web directory. What do we have now? Praying that google’s bullshit SEO algorithms show you the interesting stuff from your keyword search? Themed social media accounts subject to the rules of companies trying to make money?

I think most of us learned from Tumblr that when website rules suddenly change, you can lose thousands of posts that were adored. If your favorite artist owned their own website, no other person but them could ever delete that art. If YOU owned your own website, which can be absolutely free, none of your posts would ever be subject to any rules besides country laws.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to have websites dedicated to all of your interests, a page dedicated to every interest you’ve ever had to explain to people why they should watch your favorite obscure musical? Do you just think websites should be found because of relevance instead of how much a company paid to make you see their website? Do you agree that its kind of bullshit that theres hundreds of thousands of websites that haven’t been seen in years?

Come join the discord server and forum. We’d love to have you, and we accept all levels of experience.

Discord Server + Forum

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psyxe

8 years ago

aww nasa has a page for space technology terms you can use in science fiction

nerds

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psyxe

9 years ago

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psyxe

8 years ago

Dorm room bingo

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psyxe

6 years ago

I think what probably gets me deeply into my feelings about this “JKR should have just made her students Of Color to start with, she can’t ret-con and pretend she did it right the first time” is that I grew up with Anne Rice and Anne McCaffery, two female fantasy writers who hated headcanons and fandom and sued people for deviating from their original vision or doing any kinds of derivative works without their express contractual permission.

I feel like people who get irritated with her about defending black!Hermione don’t appreciate how much healthier JKR’s attitude toward the inclusivity movement in her fandom is than theirs was. Or Moffat’s is. Or Gatiss’s. Or Whedon’s. Or Green’s. Or even, until very recently, Lucas’s.

She’s not a PCR, but goddamn, at least she’s passing us the milk rather than pissing in our cornflakes.

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psyxe

4 years ago