#this is my experience as a canadian

[somethinginmybones]

im in a snowy city, hmu if your have further questions!!

- there are different types of snows! Sticky (to make snowballs and snowmen), powdered (like it says, a bit powdery, you can't make anything with it, but it's really soft), slushy (when it rains after, or in springtime when it melts)

- the first snow usually doesn't stay. It covers the ground for a few days, for a week or two sometimes, but it usually melts until the real cold as arrived. when it's cold outside for real (under 0 °C almost every day ) the snow builds up and stays all winter long

- the first snow is always really pretty and.fun and makes me giddy (even if I know it probably won't stay). The first layer can be pretty thin, so not a winter wonderland but still very pretty!!

- when it's cold, sometimes it doesn't snow, but it does frost! So the grass, the cars, the roads: everything gets whiter and really cold (and sometimes, slippery!)

- sledding: it's been a while since my last sled with an actual sled! There are these things called crazy carpets (or roll-up sled) that you can sled with sitting down or face first. When you go face first, there are always risks (once I ended up with a bloody nose because I slid off the sled face first into ice)! Other then that, depending on the slipe, it's a crazy adrenaline rush that makes you want to laugh, and then you use up all you energy to climb up the mountain again (or, sometimes when its a place you paid for, there are treadmills that take you to the top)

- important to note that if you use you car, you always need to defrost and wipe down the snow from the windows. If you take the bus, it's never on time and you freeze your ass up waiting for it. A really good snowstorm can be very dangerous, but that's a whoooole other experience

- obviously, downsides of the cold: being fucking cold The wind can bite at every ounce of skin that is exposed and also, toes freeze up really fucking fast. For me, it's usually the reason I need to stop doing a winter activity (skating, sledding, skiing though that shit is expensive)

- another downside: snow gets EVERYWHERE. Oh, you wanted to walk in a snow bank in your cutesy little winter boots? Guess what? Snow in your boots. Snow in your socks. Snow in your jeans. Someone threw a snowball at the back of your head? Snow in your collar, snow in the back of your shirt. And the worse part? It melts and leaves you fucking wet and cold

- BUT. If you're having a good enough time? None of that will matter for a moment. Wanted make a snow angel even though you weren't dressed for it? The cold will feel like an embrace. It's refreshing. Makes you feel alive

I put all the things I could think of on the spot that could be interesting! Hope it helps!!

OMG I ALMOST WAS ASLEEP AND REALIZED I NEED ACTUALLY SO MUCH INFO ABOUT SNOW

Plz y’all I’ve seen snow like twice in my entire life I need the lore. How long until it sticks to the ground? How quickly does it turn into a winter wonderland? Sledding, what’s the tea? What are the downsides? Etc etc tell me anything else I should know

Please give me all the info so I do right by y’all 🥹🥹

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[booolloyd]

i feel like my animalistic instincts appear a lot more when im angry. it doesnt usually happen a lot with my other emotions but when i get angry its so raw and makes me want to actually claw someones organs out. idk if this is just me tho!

[loud-trash-arcade]

I haven’t seen anything about it on here yet so I’ll start

Remember today is national truth and reconciliation day! It’s about learning about what happened to indigenous peoples in residential schools, im Canadian so this is a big thing because we had a lot of residential school and the last one only shut down in 1996!

So remember to honour what happened to those indigenous people and to respect and treat everyone how you want to be treated, wear an orange shirt or pin a piece of leather to your clothing (that’s what we do here idk if it’s worldwide) every child matters! 

(Also if I said something incorrect pls correct me I’m a teenager and this is just what I know)

Edit: just realized I didn’t explain why, the indigenous children were kidnapped from their family’s, taken to catholic schools, and forced to assimilate with the white people, they wanted to erase their culture and make them Christian. These children experienced all forms of abuse and things children should never have to witness. If you want to learn more a google search can tell you a lot

[hybbat]

I think a lot of my bafflement at hearing other people's experiences comes from just fully failing to comprehend the depth of the US's religiosity and how different it actually is from my slice of canada.

I'll be here thinking "yeah we have differences but we have the same religious groups and watch most of the same media some people genuinely have to be reminded there's a difference at all so I understand americans for the most part. I can interact with americans without even realizing theyre american until brands come up." And then I hear a story about how someone's whole social circle openly ask when they're going to have children and got angry when they said they didn't have a partner, and wonder "who the hell is socially innept enough to say that and why did this person take it at all seriously like its normal? Or does this person live in the heart of texas or something and not allowed to watch disney movies to learn basic generic lessons about respecting other people?"

And then inevitably unimaginable numbers of people from all over that country chime in with the exact same experience from all sides and I have to wrap my head around this thing I've never heard a real person ever dare to say lest they be seen as a nosey weirdo religious freak is in fact the norm people are fighting against less than an hour away from me.

[indelen]

Given that in the books series Lockwood's last name is probably a reference to the narrator burdened by supernatural experiences in "Wuthering Heights",

And given that Kipps's last name is probably a reference to the narrator burdened by supernatural experiences in "The Woman in Black",

I submit to the approval of the Tumblr Midnight Society that Celia Lockwood's maiden name should be Celia Harker.

[just-wublrful]

not to be obnoxious on main but classic literature is not global literature. it's western literature at best

[shironezuninja]

If I were DP, Wyvda, Upcnl, Daxf, & Clwpcrpiv would be dead right now.

[olive-garden-hoe]

Being a child of immigrants and/or spending extended amounts of time in countries outside of the one your family immigrated to is so confusing sometimes, especially with shows. Like, I don’t know what other people have seen or not seen. For example: I watched a LOT of Slugterra bc it was on the Teletoons network (Quebec network), but I’ve met like 3 ppl who remember it. Same with the TinTin movie, Astérix and Obelix, In the Night Garden, Detentionaire, Fangbone, Jimmy two shoes, the deep, are you afraid of the dark, Dragon hunters, etc. Also, having watched many of them in French (which I am very bad at, especially when I was a kid which was when I watched these programs), I have a rlly hard time explaining what actually happens and I only remember stills or the name in French instead of English. Anyways this makes it all sound like a fever dream to my USAmerican friends, i.e. “you know that show where it’s all like puppet 2D animation and the guy is running from his zombie school detention?” Or “remember that show where a bunch of people in weird costumes made noises and there were tiny people who marched outside their home?” Or “what do you mean you don’t remember the show about the big guy and the little guy on floating islands slaying dragons, one of which farted to fly?”

Anyways gotta love being second gen

[sparksinthenight]

This is a true story, not a work of fiction. This is the story of an overdose I encountered and what I we all did to help.

So this story begins as so many do with me standing at the bus stop outside of my university, waiting for the bus. The day was cold, but not colder than usual for late November. Cold enough for it to hurt so much if you were outside all day, but not cold enough to kill you. The snow was falling slowly, making the world seem soft. 

There was a shelter made of metal and glass at the bus stop. A metal frame and glass walls. There were no benches or chairs in the shelter. There used to be but they got taken down, so all we have now to sit on is the concrete floor. I was outside this shelter, but I noticed that there were two men inside of it. I didn't pay much attention to them. 

Until I heard a voice from the shelter. It was a loud voice, yet strangely meek all the same. One of the men was asking all of us at the bus stop if we had naloxone (this is also known as narcan to those who don't know). This is a medicine that stabilizes people who overdosed, so that they can stay alive until they get the medical care they need at the hospital. At first I thought nothing was wrong, maybe he forgot his own kit somewhere. So I replied that I was sorry but I didn't have any. 

But I quickly realized that maybe he needed it, maybe someone was having an overdose. I asked the man if he needed the naloxone, telling him that I knew where to get some, and he showed me what was happening inside the shelter. Inside the shelter, there was an unconscious man lying on the ground, who was clearly overdosing. 

I didn't feel any emotions at all. It was like my brain was on autopilot. I was acting entirely on instinct. I gave the conscious man my cellphone and told him to dial 911, the emergency number where I live. The man was trying to do CPR on the unconscious person but it was clear that he didn't know how to do CPR. I urged him again to call 911 and told him I was going to get naloxone. 

I ran into my university, I ran up the stairs, and I walked as fast as I could through the school, until I reached the student union building. Inside the student union building there was an information event going on about harm reduction, aka how to help people struggling with addiction. I thought that there would be some naloxone kits there. That they were probably distributing naloxone kits to people who came to the event. 

I was worried for a moment that the information event was over, but it wasn't. I told the girl at the desk that someone was having an overdose at the bus stop outside and I needed a naloxone kit. She told me she didn't know if she had any. She searched briefly, and found none. But she told me that in the student groups room they probably had naloxone kits. 

I asked her where the student groups room was, and she went with me to the room, which was behind a glass door on the other side of the cafeteria next to us. There I explained my situation again to the two girls at the administrative desk. They got out a naloxone kit. I told them that I didn't know how to use it, so one of the two girls at the administration desk came with me. 

We ran through the school, and then to the bus stop. It was difficult, running all this way, because I was somewhat out of shape. But I'm really glad that we did run, because it means we got there quicker. 

Once we got there, we saw two ambulances parked on the road beside the bus stop, their lights flashing. We also saw a small crowd of paramedics and security guards around the unconscious man. The unconscious man was lying on the ground outside the shelter now. There were paramedics kneeling over him and an oxygen mask over his face. 

The security guards told me and the other lady to not to come too close, and they thanked us for getting naloxone. They said that our naloxone wasn't needed, they had their own naloxone kits and everything else that they needed. But that they appreciated what we did and that we did a great job. 

The lady from the student groups administrative desk told me that things seemed under control, and she took the naloxone kit and started walking back towards the student union building. I thanked her for her help twice and saw her off. 

The man who was with the unconscious man before, the man who I gave my phone to so he could call 911, he was in the shelter. He gestured to me from inside the shelter and held my phone up. I went around the back of the shelter, the two of us looking at and gesturing to each other, and I went to the entrance of the shelter. He passed me my phone and said thank you. I said you're welcome. 

There wasn't anything else for me to do, so I walked to the next bus stop a few blocks down the road. I was thanking God for sending the paramedics and praying to God to save the man's life. I kept praying while I was on the bus. 

I resolved to keep a naloxone kit with me in my backpack from now on. Where I live, in Canada, naloxone kits are free at the pharmacy. One kit lasts two years. I resolved to go to my pharmacy when I got the chance and get a naloxone kit to keep with me whenever I go out. You never know when you'll be in a situation such as this one. You never know when you might see someone overdosing. Maybe next time I won't be lucky enough to be beside a university or another building in which there's naloxone kits available. 

I resolved to also watch some videos teaching me how to use naloxone so that I know how to use the kit and how to administer the medicine if I am in a situation like this again. I have learned how to use naloxone one time before, but I forgot how to use it and I need a reminder. 

I will close by saying this. Nobody deserves to die from an overdose. And nobody can be blamed for being addicted. A wise woman who had a difficult road to recovery from drugs once said that addiction starts and ends with pain. Everyone has a different reason why they became addicted. Everyone has a different pain they were trying to hide from, or a different naivety that lead them down this path. But people who struggle with addiction need help, support, kindness, compassion, and resources. They need medical help, mental health help, and a better situation. The last thing they need or deserve is judgement. 

Please pray for the people who struggle with addiction, and the people who are at risk of it. 

[baura-bear]

i love autism because it means i get to email back and forth about wwii media with my grandpa and that i convinced my mom and her bf to watch masters of the air. (we're gonna watch bofb together over the holidays)

[gaycinema]

just finished season 1 of the terror. the doomed arctic exploration old man yaoi goes crazy

[janederscore]

i think its pretty cool that we live in a society where my loftiest dream is "live in a studio apartment with my girlfriends and not be food insecure" and even that feels crushingly unobtainable

[despazito]

Being second generation half Russian in Canada is like a weird purgatory bc of course i reap all the benefit of white privilege and pass as just another white Canadian mf yet ppl still treat your country of origin as some crazy foreign boogeyman and regurgitate insane propaganda, but if your parents retained their communist moral compass (75% of them turned into materialistic consoomers the moment the country opened up) you also just feel this immense cognitive disconnect from the west and Canadian ideology. It's like an identity in here ...

[aesthenisia]

close enough! welcome back Y2K

[timothylawrence]

Pros and cons traveling as a hijabi are wild on one hand tsa will make me nearly cry every time but also every time I sit on a plane no one sits next to me !!!