take figures out of their boxes btw. sew patches on your favorite jacket. go to bed with your favorite plushes. wear the pants you usually save for special occasions. draw something cool on your wall. put a sticker on your laptop. dye your hair and pierce your lips. glass is meant to break, metal is meant to rust. items are meant to be used. that’s how the world knows that somebody loved them.
Actually your society is the freaks for shooting everything that moves and burning half your “nature reserves” every year so that upperclass dandies can eat leaded pheasant. North Americans are the well adjusted ones here, your country has become a desolate suburban lawn in island form
my opinion as an american is that we spend way too much time trying to save african megafauna and nowhere near enough time making fun of the english for turning an entire island–which was once a hazelnut food forest–into a goddamn lawn.
bill bryson once actually wrote down in a whole book and got published that the english were superb gardeners and i about threw the book out the window i was that outraged. the english!!! the fucking ENGLISH. them? that’s who you want to laud? the english
the
THERE ARE A GRAND FUCKING TOTAL OF ZERO STAPLE CROPS ORIGINALLY OR EVEN PRIMARILY CULTIVATED BY THE ENGLISH. NONE OF THEM. NOT POTATOES NOT WHEAT NOT TURNIPS NOT RYE. THEY GNAWED THEIR ISLAND DOWN TO A NUB FOR NOTHING. THE WOLVES AND BEARS ALL GONE FOR NOTHING. THE WILDCATS AND BIRDS AND MUSTELIDS AND INSECTS, GONE IN THEIR THOUSANDS, FOR NOTHING. FOR SOME SHEEP. FOR
THEIR MAIN AGRICULTURAL EXPORT IS FAMINE
anyway the english approach to agriculture, biodiversity, and environmentalism is roughly on par with a dog’s approach to someone else’s homework and everywhere in the world that has inherited their cack-fisted disdain for nature has suffered immensely. i can’t overstate enough how bad things have been and still are.
please make fun of them. it’s the least they fucking deserve.
[Image ID: a screenshot of somebody’s tags that read:
cultural differences: first year of Uni our American friend asked us about wildlife to be weary of and we were like “??, this is the UK. The most dangerous thing is a fox and yet you’re more likely to be attacked by a squirrel or a cow.” And he was so stumped and was like “okay maybe not in the city but when you go camping? We’re in Scotland. Scotland has bears” and we were like “No? We hunted all of our major predators to extinction. No more bears or wolves. God is that something you usually have to worry about while camping?” And he was like “yeah, we’ve got mountain lions where I’m from,” as if that were a normal thing to say while we’re all ?!?!. Anyway. America wildin’.
She loves her worms more than any other toy. She plays with them loads and carries them around the house
At night the worms have to go in a box so that she doesn’t wake me up playing with them. So every evening before bed I gather up the worms, put them in their box and have Maggie say goodnight to them.
I have a listing for $1 on Etsy, and thought I’d use it as an example of how much the fees are.
This customer got a 10% discount on $1, paying $0.90. I stopped sending these discounts but Etsy doesn’t let you deactivate them, so they still work for buyers who have them.
They paid shipping which was $4.68 and sales tax which was $0.35, in total paying $5.93. Shipping and sales tax do not go to the seller as profit. I will need to pay that $4.68 for shipping to the postal service.
So we have $0.90.
Out of $0.90, Etsy takes 3.0% of the order total, plus $0.25 for credit card processing ($0.43)
Then on top of that, they take 6.5% of item total in Etsy fees ($0.06)
And finally, a shipping fee of 6.5% of what the customer paid for shipping ($0.30)
In total Etsy took $0.79. So the remaining profit to me is $0.11
Now, most listings you will see will be more than $1 obviously. But the percentages and fees will be the same.
As you can hopefully see, sellers are incentivized to raise their prices to counteract these fees. This is why I have made an effort to move to Shopify, although most buyers continue to prefer Etsy.
And by the way, no hard feelings to anyone who does prefer Etsy! I completely understand and acknowledge that for some buyers, especially international and EU/UK buyers, it is a necessity because Etsy handles VAT and other import fees. I also understand that Etsy provides peace of mind: providing refunds in certain circumstances, as well as shop reviews.
I hope this is informative for any buyers or sellers out there.
