Ah, okay. Hope you like Rocko’s Modern Life!

Agreed, I don’t see it as passive-aggressive, I see it as using proper punctuation. I’m an oldie, though, and most of the people I text know what I mean when I type. If someone were to react negatively to putting a period in a text, I’d implore them to talk to me about it instead of assuming motive that isn’t there. Then if that doesn’t help, well, guess we won’t be texting each other anymore. I don’t have the time or energy to play silly misinterpretation games with someone who can’t communicate like an adult.

My work has a DoorDash account and uses it exclusively. When management decides to order food for us, it has to go through DoorDash.

The other week I was told they’d buy lunch for my team. Thing is, we all have different dietary needs. I was told to pick something for lunch, and when I did I was told, “Oh that restaurant doesn’t use DoorDash. Pick somewhere else. Also it’s a $10 limit.”

Oookay. My lunch being at an earlier time than many in my team, a lot of places that I would order from aren’t open yet. I don’t do fast food, which limits my choices further. Then you can’t put custom information in your order (like, “the #14 sandwich, but with no cheese”) which right out of the gate means a lot of options are out of reach. The $10 limit was also ridiculous, as food prices have been rising higher and now even the most basic things will be around $12 minimum. Navigating the site alone was a headache on top of it all, as it isn’t intuitive for someone with dietary restrictions. I eventually gave up and told my manager, “I know this was intended as a treat for us, but this is too stressful for me to try to do while I’m also working.”

Thankfully, someone else already knew of an option that would work for me, so I went with that. It sucks that although my work place is trying to be inclusive, being limited to DoorDash (and a $10 price ceiling) makes that incredibly difficult. I’d rather just be given the $10 and be done with it.

Okay, who put a camera in my apartment?

Its happening because people’s brains are ‘adapting’ to the short form, brainrot mode of modern social media.

This is what I feared way back when Twitter first gained popularity. I couldn’t get into it, because the short character limit made it impossible to explain pretty much anything.

Anyway, I’m with you on this. If you’ve got something important or novel to share, it’s probably going to take some explanation to convey it. Short-form social media leads to shallow conversations. I like depth, I like exploring others’ perspectives, and it takes more than 160 characters (or whatever the limits are now) to really reach some subjects.

I say this as someone with unmedicated ADHD - modern people’s attention spans are depressing. I still love watching documentaries that are 2+ hours long, even when YouTube tries to push for 30-second clips of garbage. Thank goodness for Lemmy and Mastodon, offering us the chance to really dive deep into conversations that most social media want to clip short.

Nah. It’s not subjective. It’s the result of fucking imbeciles that don’t read.

But isn’t that what makes it subjective? Subjective means its meaning is “subject” to the reader’s interpretation. It isn’t objective, which is when the meaning exists outside such frames of reference.

That is, ending a text with a period isn’t a(n objective) rule that always means a particular tone. Instead, it’s a (subjective) understanding made by certain readers (who may be making assumptions that the texter didn’t intend.)

I can see that, I should’ve clarified that I meant American English speakers. I hear some of the most godawful Spanish pronunciations from fellow American English speakers. It’s like they’re not even trying. Perhaps it’s related to learning how to read the language alongside speaking, but even so we’re taught pronunciation rules.

I will concede, something in my brain processes language differently. On the one hand, I need English speakers to repeat themselves more frequently (despite being a native speaker.) Phone calls are hell, and captions on shows/movies go a long way toward my comprehension of the dialogue. On the other hand, people my age aren’t “supposed” to hear some of the subtle differences in novel foreign sounds that I pick up on. I know not everyone hears things the way I do, so if I’m being too harsh on people who can’t help it, I apologize.

Haha, I do think the “raising pitch around strangers” thing is a sort of protective behavior. Like a cuteness reflex of sorts, trying to show that I mean no harm and hope none will come to me. That’s what I figure, at least. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of women subconsciously do the same thing.

Around family, I’m not sure. It’s possible it’s a throwback to being a kid and being told my voice was “whiny.” Or it could be a side-effect of the deeper voices around me being louder, so I talk that way to make my voice clearer in the mess. I wish I knew, but that’s what I reason it probably is.

(I know you were probably joking, but autistic brains gonna autist.)

The attempted return wasn’t fucked up, but the break-up was. I’ve alluded to this event in past posts, but haven’t told the context of the story. So I guess I’ll share. Buckle in, this is going to be a ride.

Once upon a time, I had a terrible boyfriend. I was around 19 or 20 when we got together, and he’d pretty much seduced me from afar - around 1000 miles (1600 km) in fact. He was a musician and came from another country, complete with an accent that I melted for. I hadn’t yet known about psychopaths and manipulative behavior from partners, but in retrospect, a lot of things became obvious.

I’d had big plans to vandwell, had already purchased a high-top van older than myself, and was renovating the back to make it more of a living space. I still had a lot of work to do, but not enough money to complete it. Nonetheless, the boyfriend convinced me to move to his city and stay with him while I worked on it. This meant leaving almost all of my family behind. I did have a relative in the state I was going to - but she lived hours away. Nonetheless, I looked forward to visiting her sometime.

After the move, I quickly realized that something was off with this guy. He couldn’t follow my thought process at all, nor could I follow his. I distinctly felt as if our brains were wired backwards from each other. We had spent time together before - our big bond was road trips. We’d spent weeks together traveling around the east coast states, as well as a few parts of Canada. But as is common for abusers, moving in with them signals a change. The mask comes off, and boundaries begin to get pushed.

He was a thief. Although I liked how he’d steal cable and make it freely accessible to everyone in his apartment building (because fuck cable companies, and it’s cool to help neighbors), I gave pause when he stole milk crates to use in my van. Okay, I figured, a big supermarket can handle a couple missing crates. But then he started offering other stolen things. One thing I needed was somewhere to put a spare tire. One day he told me there’s a van in the nearby neighborhood with a spare tire holder on the back. “It’d be really easy for me to remove it and put it on your van,” he told me.

But I told him, to paraphrase, “Absolutely not!” He was shocked. Apparently he thought it would be a romantic gesture. Yeah, no, something was definitely wrong here.

The man started getting upset over the stupidest shit. He didn’t like that I was vegan. One time he tried to riddle me with, “If you could save a million animals, or save me, which would you choose?” When I refused to answer such a clearly-baited question, he broke down crying and screaming that the answer was obvious. He also developed a strong opinion on how I handle my periods, of all things. I was using a diva cup at the time (for those that don’t know, it’s a little, reusable silicone cup, inserted like a tampon and washed between uses.) Apparently he didn’t like that and tried to insist I use normal pads and tampons. I told him that the moment he starts bleeding out of his genitals, he can decide how to handle it.

Anyway, everything came to a head one night in June. His band was having a huge celebration. It was his birthday weekend, one member of the band got engaged, and two (married) members were celebrating an anniversary.

Unfortunately, I was not in the celebratory spirit. I had been unsuccessful in getting a job since arriving, my money was almost all gone, and to top it all off, my aunt had just died. Remember that family member I said I looked forward to visiting? I was never going to get to see her.

He was well aware of all of this. Still, he begged me to join him. He bragged about all the free drinks he’d be getting, so I figured at leas I’d get some drinks out of it.

Lol, no. Of course not.

The selfish prick didn’t offer me a drop. In fact, he straight-up ignored me. He and his friends had said to me to just “forget the bad stuff and have fun,” but I can’t do that? I ended up in the women’s bathroom for a while, trying to regulate myself. When I came back out, I found that fucker in the middle of the crowd, getting a lap dance from the woman who was celebrating her wedding anniversary.

I snapped. I shoved him and yelled at him, because what the ever-loving fuck. Naturally, he and all his friends took issue, so I was all alone. I went over to a quiet spot to cry, where a tone-deaf random girl asked if she could take my picture. Yeah, no, what a ridiculous question.

But the night got worse. See, that guy was my ride to the venue. When the night was winding down, I went to the guy and told him as such. He gave me $4 and said, “Take a bus.” I was new to the area, didn’t yet have a smart phone (they were still new at the time), and penniless aside from those $4 in my pocket. I didn’t know where I was nor how to get back to my van.

I ended up wandering the streets from 2am-5am, waiting at random bus stops so I could ask the bus drivers questions. I eventually figured out that I needed a particular bus, then a transfer to a second bus. By the time the bus I needed arrived, the sky was a vivid magenta, and ladies in scrubs filled the bus stop, ready to commute to the hospital on the mainland for their morning shifts. I joined the throng, kept awake solely by my panic, paying attention to every single stop lest I miss the one I need and end up without enough money for both another bus and a transfer.

Around 6am, I was at the bus terminal, sitting on the curb as homeless people slept on all the benches. At this point I was so tired, I was starting to go numb. Eventually I did make the second bus, got to my van, pulled into a farther parking lot (so as not to be near that guy’s apartment) and slept for what felt like forever.

And that, my friends, is the story of the worst night of my life.

The reconnect is much more brief.

Years later, after many more ups and downs (which perhaps I’ll write about sometime), I was beginning my foray into polyamory. I made an account on a dating website. Lo and behold, who reached out to me? That same guy. He asked to meet. I said something along the lines of “Lmao not a chance in hell” and blocked his ass.

Since then, I haven’t seen nor heard from him. Sadly, he still haunts occasional nightmares.

tradition

Where? 😍

Oh, it’s just Christmas again. Nvm

That’s funny. My accent in Spanish is… interesting. I learned the language as a teen, amidst meeting people online from all around the world. So my accent has become an interesting mishmash of sources, none of which sound English.

Side note, I can’t stand how English-speakers pronounce Spanish words. All of the Spanish vowel sounds are all right there in English! I understand that Rs, Ds, Bs, Vs, and even Js might be difficult for English-speakers to pick up, but I don’t understand why English-speakers don’t use Spanish vowels correctly. It boggles my mind.

Not an accent, but my girlfriend absolutely raises the pitch of her voice on phone calls and when meeting strangers.

I get it, I’ve noticed my own pitch changing based on circumstances. I (also a woman) raise my pitch with strangers too. It’s like a subconscious “please be kind to me” sort of thing. Yet with my family, which is mostly men/boys, my voice goes lower. I don’t think about it at the time, it just happens.

It slightly bugs me that the U in “YOURSELF” isn’t also rainbow. A hidden message of “BE YOU” makes much more sense than “BE YO.”

Unless that’s the point, like a meme I’m simply out of the loop for.

There are some (admittingly, crap quality) 90-ish minute clips of straight-up old school Nickelodeon on Youtube. The only ads are the ones that originally aired. It’s like nostalgia soup for me, and it’s pretty clear these are just clips someone set a VCR to record, stored for decades, and then transferred to the internet. Which again, makes for crap quality, but it warms my heart to think that some of this could’ve been lost footage if not for some random tapes some kid in the 90s recorded then forgot about for many years.

Btw, Pete & Pete still slaps.

“Bugs” even refers to errors on computers. Funny how the pedants don’t go into computer forums and berate the coders for using “bug” incorrectly.

To build on this, this usage is called a non-count noun. Less beer, less water, less air, less sand, etc. all refer to non-countable quantities of some substance. Beer could be counted, if referred to by some metric (“one glass of beer,” “24 ounces of beer”), same as “a bottle of water,” “one tank of air,” “a truckload of sand.”

Which is all to say that you’re right. “Less beer” makes far more sense than “fewer beer.”

I have a coworker who has ground rules like that for her kids. She says they’re allowed to swear around her, provided that it isn’t excessive. However, she instills boundaries on it. No swearing at school, with extended family (who might disagree with her choices), and some other rules. She emphasizes that the context is important, and as long as the kids respect those rules, they won’t be in trouble for it.

Sometimes I debate on making a comment, and sometimes I simply don’t have the energy to complete one. But sometimes, I think, “every comment grows Lemmy a little bit more” and decide, fuck it, I’ll say something. People might like it, people might not like it, but you never know what can grow from such a little spark.

I appreciate Lemmy in this regard. We live in a world with many voices trying to drown out each other for a bit of public attention. It’s enough to make some people think their own thoughts aren’t worthy and to stay silent, discounting their potential contributions. Having a platform that’s low-stakes, where people aren’t chasing internet fame, gives many of us an opportunity to express ourselves for the sake of expressing ourselves. Having this outlet is vital for many of us. I’m glad to be a part of this community, and it is truly a community. I have no idea if anyone recognizes me, but I definitely recognize other frequent commenters. It’s almost like we’re neighbors, not in physical proximity, but with a shared gathering space to meet and share our thoughts.

And I love that.

And here I figured the popularity of online porn made most people ambidextrous masturbators. I mean, if a righty uses a mouse in their right hand…

I never thought I’d say this, but going to work actually makes me happy. I work with autistic and disabled children, and man, they give me life. Helping them learn and grow, seeing them pick up and apply new skills, hearing their unique observations, and witnessing their creativity all bring joy to my day.

I’m currently waiting for my first learner of the day to arrive, and I know that when he gets here he’ll be making the most joyful squeals as he plays with his favorite ball. His smile is like caffeine mixed with sunshine, energizing me every morning even on the hardest days.

Don’t get me wrong, this job has its challenges, but the fulfillment I get from working with this population is immeasurable. It took many years of crappy jobs with crappy management before I got here, and I’m glad to say I think I finally found the job where I belong.