Challenge #03082-H174: A Random Act of Kindness
He sought out, not Waithvine, but the kobold he traveled with. The young man, finding them along the trail, carried with him a basket of fresh fruit, fresh breads, dried meat, and sweet-filled pastries. Once he saw her, looking to the three travelers, the bugbear, the kobold, and the elf, the youth held out the basket to her, bowed and said softly, “Thank you.” For he never forgot how she undid his bindings, and stopped him from ending his own life that terrible, lonely, night. – Anon Guest
At last. He had found her. Beeyo checked the Basket of Preservation to be certain everything inside was intact. The spellwork was still secure. Everything in there was as fresh as the day it had been placed there. This was important. They say, “No good deed goes unpunished,” but because of her impact, no good deed should go unrewarded.
On a dark night, a terrible night, so many years ago… Back when she was only known as Thief… a Kobold had crept past a boy in chains, and stopped to stare. Beeyo hadn’t had a name, then. Property didn’t often get names. He hadn’t cringed, hadn’t feared for his life. In fact, he had been trying to saw his wrists away with a moderately sharp rock. The only escape he had been capable of at the time.
Until a monster turned her lockpicks to his shackles, gave him a leaking waterskin and half a hub of stale bread and whispered, “Run.” That night had changed his life. A pair of kind hands had changed his life. Made it one day longer. A Cleric formed the next pair of kind hands, taking in a lost and starving child and altering his path. Change for the better. Beeyo had never forgotten the monster that chose not to be monstrous, and paid the favour forward.
[Check the source to see the full story]
(Source: peakd.com)
Via @Cyn_McNally at Twitter.
This image is going to appear here a lot in the runup to the midterms.
Are you of voting age? Go get registered. Are you registered already? CHECK it online – because states with Republican majorities have being seeing a big upsurge in other-party-registered voters being quietly deregistered so that they’re voiceless when they turn up at the polls. And keep checking. The people doing this crap are sneaky.
This is not a year for taking anything for granted: not a year for believing the polls: not a year for letting other people worry about it: not a year for allowing the seemingly unending flow of crap to wear you down. This year we all get to suit up and stop being what Tom Paine called “summer soldiers”, “sunshine patriots”, the ones who exercise the franchise when it’s easy, when nothing vital is on the line. Time to stand up and exercise the local mall-scale form of heroism, capes or not (I’m a no-cape type myself: E has a point).
Get registered and avoid the October rush. Help friends get registered too. It’s too easy to think “One more vote won’t make a difference”. And it’s not true.
Get it sorted now. Don’t wait. Please.
In the US, the gold standard for info about registering, checking your registration, and finding your polling place is the NASS’s Can I Vote website, formerly canivote.org (which still redirects, FWIW); or vote.gov. In both cases, you will select your state, and then be linked to you to your state’s Secretary of State, which is the statewide office that manages voter registrations. This happens because how voter registrations are managed varies from state to state, not because the internet wants to make your life hard.
Are there alternatives to the NASS? Sure, but I’m suspicious of third-party voter registration websites, and I think you should be, too—especially if the website doesn’t say who funds and runs the website right there on the front page. How do you actually know that your registration is actually being submitted, and submitted correctly? You don’t. You especially don’t if you go through a third-party website that has a vested interest that they’re not being upfront about—do you think that a secretly Republican SuperPAC-funded website is going to submit your Democratic Party-aligned registration correctly? Because I bet it won’t. My recommendation is that you just go through official government channels; and also that after you register, you save or print whatever online confirmation you get, and keep it until you get your voter registration card in the mail.
In the three states I’ve lived in, you can also register in person at the DMV, at the local public library, at your local town or city hall, or at other local and state government offices, though under some circumstances, you can only register in person in the county in which you live. This time of year, there are also often voter registration drives in malls, at community centers, and at schools. Public colleges and universities often will have voter registration information readily available. You can try to search on Google for “where to register to vote in person near me”, which may be helpful, in this instance, or you can just call ringing up your local library (they’re more likely to pick up the phone than the DMV).
In most states, you must be registered 2-4 weeks before the election, which means we are getting very, very close to most states’ deadlines. Please register, and please check your registration! If you’ve already done it, do it again!
(via pancake-angst)
Challenge #01986-E162: Inner Beautification — Steemit
As a child of the depression, Cynthia hated waste. She never got more than she needed in the first place, and did her utmost to make sure it got used to its fullest extent. She’d watch the world change around her from endorsing ‘waste not, want not’ to laughing at her frugal lifestyle to endorsing 'reduce, re-use, and recycle’. Which was basically 'waste not, want not’ in another hat.
And she watched as a group of alleged craftspeople covered a bus shelter in their knitting. Which was very wasteful. So she approached them and asked, “Why are you doing that?”
“We’re getting rid of our SABLE and turning this eyesore into a work of art,” said one of them. “It’s called 'yarn bombing’. It’s the latest thing.”
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uh actually dont? yell at hets for using words like datemate and partner?
because there is always a chance that one of them is a closeted trans person and they’re trying to not misgender them while also not outing them
and normalizing gender-neutral language makes doing that safer anyway
normalizing gender-neutral language for romantic or sexual partners also lessens the strain on closeted LGBPA people in same gender relationships
normalizing gender-neutral language for spouses/partners/datemates/SOs/etc even for cishets is helpful to everyone, ESPECIALLY queer people
Normalise gender-neutral language. Make it No Big Deal. When people choke on it, remind them that you have good manners and carry on as if it is still no big deal.
If they rant about it, keep asking nice, innocent questions until they out themselves as a bigot, or catch themselves and start to think.
You too can change the world.
(via chaoswolf1982)