a lot of pieces of media will show characters catching fireflies with just their bare hands. in some cases they will just land on the persons fingers. to gently be placed inside of a jar..
for people who live in areas who donât have fireflies, i want you to know that is not made up or exaggerated for those scenes. fireflies are really like that. they are slow and not cautious at all. while camping i would just walk up to one flying in the air and grab it. and it would sit on my hands like âoh ok.â they are my friends.
also i think itâs funny when fireflies are portrayed as round light bulb-ish shapes. they are skinny.
also their butts are yellow even when not lit up. theyâre not just all black until suddenly lighting up yellow! they always got little yellow asses!
they are such friends
fireflies our beloveds <3
Thought people might appreciate this video I got of a firefly that landed on my momâs ring and sat there flashing for about a good minute or two. They really are just like that
Iâve had to let a couple people know that fireflies are in fact real.
If youâre one of todays lucky ten thousand, iâm happy for you. The world is a marvelous place <3
What surprises me always is not that they are real but how shockingly bright they are. Thatâs a whole ass LED. How does he power it? What a beautiful boy
Moving from Brooklyn to a woody area within The Hamptons in the early 90s meant being exposed to Very Starry Skies and especially fireflies. They really did land on me, blinking or just shining brighter. They tickled. It really was incredibly easy to imagine cryptids in my backyard.
For those curious about how fireflies work: this artlcleâs pretty good. Tl:dr; the light comes from a controlled reaction of enzymes with oxygen, mostly. The boys fly around flash-signalling âI GOT SEX HERE!â and the girls, down in the grass, flash back âBRING SOME OF THAT DOWN HERE!â And then (ideally) sex happens. (We have to assume that fireflies who run into people along the way later remark with mild annoyance about how awful the traffic was tonght.)
Unfortunately we donât have them in Ireland. Itâs a pity. I miss them sometimes.
Notice: not only do your friends actually like you, they secretly like you twice as much as they let on
An experience that made me feel much more assured in my friendships was at college, a friend and myself were talking about a third friend of ours and how cool and knowledgeable and smart she is and how we feel like we could never be that cool. The next day I was working with a professor on some paper presentations we were about to have and when I came out of the staff room I was informed that these two aforementioned friends were having the same discussion about me. And it turns out we spent a lot of time thinking about our friends who aren’t currently in the room and gushing over how cool and smart and talented they are without being able to say all of it to their face.
Your friends secretly love you a lot more than they already express, just like you love them so intensely that saying it all to their faces would sound clumsy to your own ears. It’s true though
[Image ID: a twitter thread of 31+ tweets spanning 10 images, dated 22nd May 2017.
Image 1: a tweet by Dr. Paul (@/DrPnygard) that reads On this day in 1967, a show featuring a kindly man in a cardigan & blue sneakers debute- [tweet cuts off]. Included is a photo of Mr Rogers, a white American man with bushy dark eyebrows and greying straight hair, looking over his shoulder while seated obscured by a colourful red object.
This tweet is replied to by Anthony Breznican (@/Breznican) who’s 31-tweets-long thread begins by saying 50 years … I have a story to tell about this man.
Image 2: A lot of people are sharing this quote after the heartbreak in Manchester. It’s also the 50th anniversary of Mr Roger’s Neighborhood. 1/
The tweet includes a black-and-white photo of Mr Rogers smiling to camera with the following quote added: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.- You will always find people who are helping.’” -Mr Rogers
Fred Rogers was from Pittsburgh, my hometown, and my generation grew up loving this man, who taught us to be kind above all. 2/
Image 3: Fred Rogers was the real thing. That gentle soul? It was no act. 3/
As I got older, I lost touch with the show, which kept running through 2001. But in college, one day, I rediscovered it… 4/
I was having a hard time. The future seemed dark. I was struggling, lonely, dealing with a lot of broken pieces and not adjusting well. 5/
I went to Pitt and devoted everything I had to the school paper, hoping that would propel me into some kind of worthwhile future. 6/
Image 4: It was easy to feel hopeless. One span was especially bad. Walking out of the dorm, I heard familiar music: 🎶 Won’t you be my neighbor… 7/
The TV was playing in an empty common room. Mr Rogers was there, asking me what I do with the mad I feel. (l had lots to spare. still do) 8/
It feels silly to say - it felt silly then - but I stood mesmerized. His show felt like a cool hand on a hot head. I left feeling better. 9/
Days later, I get in the elevator at the paper to ride down to the lobby. The doors open. Mr Rogers is standing there. For real. 10/
Image 5: I can’t believe it. I get in and he nods at me. I do back. I think he could sense a geek-out coming. But I kept it together. 11/
Almost. 12/
The doors open, he lets me go out first. I go, but turn around. “Mr Rogers… I don’t mean to bother you. But I wanted to say thanks! 13/
He smiles, but this has to happen to him every 10 feet. ‘Did you grow up as one of my neighbors? I felt like crying. Yeah. I was. 14/
Image 6: Opens his arms, lifting his satchel for a hug. “It’s good to see you again neighbor: I got to hug Mr Rogers, y'all! 15/
I pull it together. We’re walking out and I mention liking Johnny Costa (he was the piano player on the show.) We made more small talk. 16/
As he went out the door, I said (in a kind of rambling gush) that I’d stumbled on the show again recently, when I really needed it. 17/
So I just said, “Thanks for that.” Mr Rogers nodded. He paused. He undid his scarf. He motioned to the window, & sat down on the ledge. 18/
Image 7: This is what set Mr Rogers apart. No one else would’ve done this. He goes, “Do you want to tell me what was upsetting you? 19/
So I sat. I told him my grandfather had just died He was one of the few good things I had. I felt adrift. Brokenhearted. 20/
I like to think I didn’t go on and on, but pretty soon he was telling me about his grandfather & a boat the old man bought him as a kid. 21/
Mr Rogers asked how long ago Pap had died. It was a couple months. His grandfather was obviously gone decades. 22/
Image 8: He still wished the old man was here. Wished he still had the boat. You’ll never stop missing the people you love, Mr Rogers said. 23/
The grandfather gave Mr Rogers the row boat as reward for something. I forget what. Grades, or graduation. Something important. 24/
He didn’t have either now, but he had that work ethic, that knowledge that the old man encouraged with his gift. 25/
“Those things never go away,” Mr. Rogers said. I’m sure my eyes looked like stewed tomatoes. 26/
Image 9: Finally, I said thank you. And apologized if I made him late for an appointment. “Sometimes you’re right where you need to be,” he said. 27/
Mr Rogers was there for me then. So here’s this story, on the 50th anniversary of his show, for anyone who needs him now 28/
I never saw him again. But that “helper” quote? That’s authentic. That is who he was. For real. 29/
Image 10: When Mr. Rogers died in 2003, I sat at my computer with tears in my eyes. But I wasn’t crying over the death of a celebrity 30/
I was mourning the loss of a neighbor. 31/end
/end ID]
‘You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you, and I like you just the way you are.’
I remember hearing that, as a little kid, and not being able to believe it. And he kept saying it anyway.
Decades later, after much of my own therapy to undo the learning that led to a pre-school kid not believing that she was lovable just the way she was, I was watching an episode. I don’t remember what prompted me to seek it out, but I do remember bursting into tears when I heard that again.
Because it felt a little easier to believe. And because I realized, as an adult, how important it was to hear that as a kid. Repeatedly. Even if I couldn’t believe it. As a kid, I couldn’t trust that he meant it. As an adult, it was so clear that he did. And I was so grateful that he had planned those seeds. They took awhile to germinate, and still need constant tending. And I’m so grateful that was modeled somewhere for me.
I could function in a society that had an actual nightlife that isn’t synonymous with just clubbing. Where are the night markets what if I want to go to the library at midnight
When I was a little boy, the Japanese military attacked Pearl Harbor. It was a surprise attack, and thousands of U.S. servicemembers perished. As a nation, we were stunned. And we vowed to strike back. Revenge was understandably on everyone’s mind, including many Americans of Japanese descent who opposed the emperor and were peaceful and law-abiding U.S. citizens and residents.
In its zeal to exact that revenge, however, the U.S. government overreacted, out of fear and bigotry. They targeted everyone who happened to look like the people who had carried out the attack. Those of us who had done nothing wrong were forced to pay the consequences for the decisions of others far away and disconnected from us. We were interned for years, in open-air prisons, while America went off to fight Japan, Germany and Italy.
It’s so important that we carry the lessons of the past through to today. Merely because one group commits atrocities and acts with depravity does not mean vast hundreds of thousands or even millions of others should be lumped together with them and made to suffer. We must never paint with the brush of justice and retaliation too broadly, or the toll of human suffering will rise immeasurably.
ALT
