I have no clue what I'm doing

how long are radio stations gonna say “80s, 90s, and today!” We’ve entered the third decade of “today”

I work at an oldies station. Every six months we sit down look around the table and someone goes "Y'know, we could start adding '90s to the mix. It's within our format." We all nod and no one plays anything produced after 1989 because time stopped here sometime around 2003, and no one wants to be the one responsible for whatever consequences come from breaking that fragile illusion.

not to be boring, but I’m boring

There’s a reason for that, and it’s Napster and iTunes. People could suddenly buy and listen to whatever music they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. Starting around 2003, we were no longer all forced by media conglomerates to listen to the same few songs anymore, endlessly repeated on the radio till we were sick of them.

So our taste scattered, in a way that I find really beautiful. The long tail was born. The rise of the indie musician began. The 1,000 true fans theory (briefly) become a possibility, and record labels lost their chokehold grip on both artists and listeners. But! Also! Collective nostalgia also froze at that point. After 2003, we only culturally shared the experience of a song or two a year, and often we did that for a reason external to the song itself -- like a dance or a controversy or the rise of a new platform (“Gangnam Style,” “WAP,” “Old Town Road”). The songs that we have in common now, we no longer have in common because we are forced to listen to them four hundred times a month by record labels, radio stations, and MTV, but for other reasons. The advent of truly open personal choice in music was also the end of collective music culture. And that’s why time stopped in 2003.

i saw a man at work the other day wearing a shirt that said "i was normal 2 pomeranians ago" with pictures of his pomeranians on it. important to note he had his pomeranians in his cart

artists rendition (i forgot to add the poms on his shirt but you get the gist)

Every time someone makes an artist's rendition of a weird little guy they saw in public instead of recording them without consent, an angel gets it's wings.

So last week was the hottest week in human record, which is a big yikes. Hearing this kind of news can really make you feel hopeless about the climate situation and I just wanted to remind people that clean energy is available and is on the rise.

Solar and wind energy is actually less costly than oil and gas in most parts of the world.

The transition to renewable energy is in progress and we can see it through and curb climate change within our lifetimes. Any argument you hear about how renewables aren’t going to cut it as an energy source is just oil and gas propaganda.

283,000 likes………giant meteor strike the earth rn holy shit. oh my god.

"maybe it's not your pussy" is such a funny phrase and also correct. People wonder why chores are so hard and it's like, friends we used to have a whole intergenerational team on this and now Grandma is locked in a beige box. Cooking is hard.

Adulting advice: if you think you can’t do a thing because you tried it as a child or teenager and you sucked really badly: try it again.

You may not notice it, but as an adult you continue gaining motor skills, insight, problem solving skills and above all patience and resilience in the face of failure. Also puberty can be a nightmare. For some of us it’s just harder to do things when we’re full of insecurities, low impulse control and focus, heightened emotions, etc. A thing that was hard for 15 year old you might not be hard for 25 or 35 or 45 years old you.

I thought I was the absolute worst at sowing because I tried to learn it in my teenage years and failed spectacularly at the most basic tasks. Turns out I just didn’t have the patience and focus for it yet. I tried it again recently and it didn’t take long at all to learn how to make my own clothes. (And oh my, being able to make any outfit I want in any fabric is a queer superpower.)

It really sucks that we’re told quite early in life what our talents are and we end up assuming that there are some things we’re just not good at, when the truth is that learning as an adult is just completely different from learning as a child.

Oh man, since I’ve been like… 32+ ? So many things have gotten easier.

It’s not something anyone tells you. In fact, I think with our youth-obsessed culture, there’s a tendency to think that you’re going to peak young. Generally, this just isn’t true.

A lot of the improvement feels, like the OP says, kind of effortless. It’s me going back to cooking after not cooking for six years and suddenly, oops I’m pretty damn good at it. Why? I wasn’t cooking in the meantime, I wasn’t practicing. (I didn’t even have a stove.)

But other mental qualities were developing that make everything easier. My executive function, decision-making, motor skills, etc. are all better than they were, through completing thousands of other tasks. I can think, know, and focus better.

There’s a huge element of this, also, which is enabled by emotional capacity and maturity, which is even harder to describe. It’s easier for me to do things like tell the truth because I can actually understand the truth of how I feel and I am more likely to have the confidence to say it. It’s easier to make the right decisions, to weigh all the factors. Especially for me since I was really not consistently good at this in my teens and 20s (I was possibly more impulsive and risk-seeking than many people, but that just makes the contrast more apparent.)

The other thing to consider is that when you are a teen/child, you’re being taught things often in a very specific way that’s been determined by someone else. My dad, for example, wanted me to understand how engines worked, so he explained them to me while we both looked under the hood of his various cars or trucks. I learned absolutely zero things by doing this.

When I was 21, I decided I wanted to know, so I learned how engines worked from an educational website with animations and quizzes. And of course, I was able to learn it. It’s not that complicated. I was never unable to learn it, I was just not able to learn it that way.

YES.

And for the record: I don’t wanna shit on teens and young adults here or to discourage teens from trying complicated things. Everyone is different and not every teen is as much of a distracted and easily discouraged mess as I was. And as you say: a lot of why things are often harder for teens is because they’re not given the space to choose what they want to learn and how they want to learn.

Also, everyone at every age is allowed to make tons of bad decisions and mistakes and fail at tons of things or do things they enjoy without ever becoming good at it. 

My favorite part is when the kitty runs to the window and looks out like “the outside stuff????? It is inside?????”

i

i had to

Y’all this is a great video to study to observe the body language of a very happy but also very excited cat.  Lots of people see videos of excited cats doing things like climb rock climbing walls or get on small boats and think they are angry or scared, when they aren’t.  Here’s a good example of happy excitement and tension in a cat where the cat’s pleasure is easy to see.  The cat’s tail is lashing and its ears are going backward and forward like crazy, but the cat is not angry, it is merely off its shits because snow is just incredible.  This is a wildly playful cat which might play-attack a hand or other animal because it is so excited, but not out of anger.  Note the zoomies at the end to burn off some of that energy!

Think about it. When we humans do something fun and very physical, our bodies are often tense, at the ready, and a lot of our body language does look kind of aggressive or even scared. Cats are the same!  Animals at play or investigating new things often show some tension, but tension is not the same as anger or fear!

CGI animators should unionize next. normally, their jobs would be too precarious to strike, since studios would replace them without a second thought, but if it's part of this larger general film strike, they might finally have meaningful power to better their working conditions

if CGI animators unionized, it would kill the MCU. straight up. the the entire business model is built on exploiting CGI animators

THEY ARE TRYING!!!!! SIGN THE PETITION TO GET THE DISNEY ANIMATORS' UNION RECOGNIZED

this petition is from IATSE (union), btw! it actually has credibility, unlike most change.org/etc petitions! please sign it!!

just painted an onion on a cutting board and i think it’s the peak of my artistic career

look at her…

she gets stronger!

the full painting is finally complete!

This is giving me emotions that I myself do not fully understand

Maybe you're just tearing up because someone has been cutting onions

just painted an onion on a cutting board and i think it’s the peak of my artistic career

look at her…

she gets stronger!

the full painting is finally complete!

This is giving me emotions that I myself do not fully understand

Maybe you're just tearing up because someone has been cutting onions

El putoQUEEEEEEÉ?

This was my barbenheimer

We’re all goin here right

Imagine if play was something encouraged in adults, places to run and jump and climb because it's fun

I never know what the machines do at the gym, but i will clamber to the top of the tower to slide into a ball pit

I am 100% certain I would be in better physical condition if adults were allowed to play in ways that focus on fun and aren't competitive.

WHAT IS GOING ON.

Yes BUT. This specific desk is in a library so a parent that needs to use a library computer can do their work and have a little ease in managing their kiddo. In a library environment this is less productivity culture bullshit and more 'oh this is a fantastic solution to a difficult situation library staff see 8 times a day'. Is it still productivity culture bullshit because this parent may not have affordable childcare or internet available to them? Yes. Am I glad it exists in a library environment to fill a demonstrated need? Hell yeah.

and keeps library staff from having to act as babysitters...

dear GOD we could use a couple of these. we keep crayons and coloring books on hand for the ones old enough for that, but the wee ones squirming and fussing in laps while the parents are fighting with job applications or convincing gmail’s current 2-step verification to let them in so they can print off a return label (both of which i have seen)? this would be SO NICE.

library groups have been loving this & are spreading the word & actively trying to purchase/create similar things in different systems

Goethe-Institut did a web series a while back aimed at new arrivals in Germany and I like how it make sure to teach people that a lot of Germans are rude af

like, this is a genuine scene from an ep:

#Ok but for a second there I was like #this is a bit exaggerated #it’s not that rude to say hi to strangers #just a bit weird #but then I realised #the rude person is probably meant to be the one ignoring the ‘hi' 

Well she’s obviously doing it wrong. You got to mumble “Guten Tag” in no one’s actual direction upon entering the waiting room. Then you don’t speak a word (you gotta grab a magazine though, because if you’re on your mobile people will find that asocial) until the doctor calls you and when you get back to retrieve your jacket you mumble “Auf Wiedersehen”.

If you say “Guten Tag” while sitting down it’s either because you’re passive-aggressively shaming the person you’re talking to for not saying “Guten Tag” (which is of course highly respectable, but weird if they did say it) or worse: 

You’re trying to make small-talk.

See also: when entering a crowded bus, tram, subway or train, you do not say a single word. You look for an empty bench. If there are none, you will have a neighbour. You stop at an empty spot and mumble something like “tschulli-ng” or “s-nch-frei?” to the person occupying the other spot on the bench. You nod in an upward direction. They reply a mumbled “türlich” while vaguely looking somewhere near your face and moving their bag if neccessary. You sit down, nod gratefully, and keep your mouth shut for the rest of the ride. Neither of you wanted this. You wanted freedom. Don’t bother each other.

If an entire bench in front of you becomes available at the next stop, though, it is not the polite thing to free your neighbour and yourself up. No, you stay right where you are. The silent stranger next to you is your silent stranger now.

Welcome to Germany. This is how we express love.

None of these people are joking.

And if you’re the one sitting at the window and you want to get off at the next stop, you begin to loudly rustle with your bag whatever, because that way you can signal the other person that you need them to get up without having to speak to them.

Like man I get scared of interacting with people but this just takes it to a whole new level.

and today i learn that i socialize in public like a german

It’s nice to be reminded sometimes that Dutch culture and German culture were one and the same for a really long time and in many ways they still are XD

Though here the other person probably wouldn’t actually shove a literal magazine in front of their face. They’d probably say “hello” back in a super confused voice while doing their level best to nonverbally express their confusion that you tried to interact with them in the first place and please don’t do that again.

I’m having trouble deciding between moving to Germany immediately or never going there ever.

Visit Sweden, spend at least 30 minutes in public there, then move to Germany and soak up the friendly social atmosphere.

(seriously. I’m Dutch, autistic, and an introvert and I sighed with relief when I returned from a trip to Sweden because thank fuck, here there are actual people engaging in verbal communication in public spaces. The constant quiet in Sweden freaked me out. Me. Who normally has to fight urges not to commit bloody murder on public transport because why do people have to make noise all the time. I was relieved to be overhearing 3 conversations and 2 phone calls at once because at least it was better than deadly silence. In Sweden the above image series would’ve ended not with a single raised magazine but with an entire waiting room full of people staring at the person who spoke in public like they’d personally kicked open the gates of hell and unleashed the armies of chaos.)

Anyway my point is Germans are actually quite friendly, they just don’t like small talk. Same mostly goes for Dutch people. And if anyone tries to convince you that we’re standoffish, visit our northern neighbors and bear witness.

This is fascinating. They need to teach this shit to American travelers, because this is probably why Europeans find Americans so obnoxious and we find them rude. The cultures could not be more different.

Entirely true. I remember seeing a post on Quora that was like “Europeans, what do you not understand about Americans” and one of the answers was a German saying we’re creepy because we smile all the time. Meanwhile I absolutely could not fathom inflicting my RBF on a stranger.

so I watched scream 1996…