I GOT A FUCKING RAISE THE POTATO WORKED WTF

This potato works. Every. Fucking. Time.

Then bring me luck

the day after I posted this last time I was notified that I was selected for a really cool mentorship gig and got an unrelated glowing review at work

"I'm a comedian so I can go lower"

KING.

There's a kind of person who will insist that when they say words, their meaning is always solely a question of what they intended. I used to be one of them.

The persective is: there is enough of a knowable consensus for what words mean and what the rules are for combining words into richer meanings, so if I did my part to encode my meaning in words, then

..or if not your "fault", then at least self-inflicted - the result of something that you ought to fix in your cognition.

But.

Sometimes "but I didn't mean it that way, it's not my fault it was interpreted like that!" has the same logical shape as "but I didn't mean for that piano to fall on him, it's not my fault he didn't have the awareness or ability to move out of the way!" Not everyone can process words the way you need them to be processed to not have them hit wrongly. And sometimes the relevant lack of knowledge or interpretation skill is discernible in advance.

And as I said about intent and predictability: you cannot make a choice with known results and then say you didn't intend those results. You cannot see a person walking below and drop the piano anyway and then say you didn't mean it. And if you choose to not look, that's just willful negligence.

The more we can predict what someone's interpretation will be, the less we can claim that our intended meaning is just what we want it to be.

can attest that this shit will fuck you up so bad, including when the person tries to fall back on 'well i'm bad at communication, so i have no responsibility whatsoever for what i communicate. you have to have infinite patience with me, and always assume that i didn't mean the shitty thing i just directly communicated to you as long as i claim that's not what i meant. you have to play charades until one of us can fumble across a ridiculous assbackward explanation for why the intended sentiment was actually totally innocuous, and if you don't you're a mean hypercritical bad friend who refuses to take anything i say in good faith. really if anything you're the one who's gaslighting me :/'

i went through a year and a half of brutal gaslighting like this, and it is genuinely fucking frightening to me to look back at arguments near the end of our friendship and see myself saying 'okay it sounded like you just said [bigoted as fuck cliche they'd just said word for word in context that fully backed it up], but i know that's not what you mean so i'll give you the benefit of the doubt.' and it is sickening and infuriating remembering their sheer relief at realizing i'd bought it, that they were off the hook.

fucking never again, man. take responsibility for what you just said, and also for being honest with yourself and the other person to evaluate when it WAS what you meant instead of scrambling ad-hoc for an acceptable cover story.

i will trek a long, slow way into the desert to establish communication with someone when i've committed to understanding what they have to say. i refuse to walk the entire thing so you don't have to get your feet dusty, and i refuse to accept a canteen full of salt instead of water for the journey back.

i am at this point very certain that i am legitimately, actually cursed. the only degree to which this is metaphorical is that there's not a word for it that doesn't imply supernatural means, instead of ones that can be explained by science but haven't been yet.

not cursed as in 'witch cast a spell on my bloodline out of pettiness,' but cursed as in '13th century villager unearthed a cave full of pretty glowing rocks into the water supply and now half the children in the village are born with congenital abnormalities from that day forward'

Which is why it’s important to not be mean.

Their cult teaches them that the world is full of scary monster people who hate them for being so good and loved by god. If you swear at them and call them names or get in their face you’re just doing the cults work for it.

I’m not saying you have to listen to their presentation or try to debate them (and really getting into a debate without thoroughly understanding what they’re being taught will just make things worse)… I am just saying to be polite and say no thank you like if they were trying to hand you a flyer for something you don’t care about.

It’s easier for them to see the world outside their bubble as less scary if they see everyday people just going about their business and being as nice to them as you are to everyone else. This goes doubly for anyone who happens to dress modestly, not swear, and not drink or smoke because whatever you believe, they’ll see you as a “good” person who happens to strangely have no interest in their “message”, and that might be enough to get some curious about the possibility of themselves living in the real world.

It’s sometimes hard to be nice to people who seem to represent something you dislike. Just remember these “elders” are sheltered young men, some of which are getting their first real contact with people of other/no faiths.

They are not your enemy. They are victims.

They aren't being sent out to actually convert people, they are being sent out hoping that they will be harassed and treated poorly so they view those outside the cult as dangerous and evil and stick to the safety of the familiar group.

You being mean to some teenager isn't sticking it to anyone, you're doing exactly what their church elders want to happen.

PLEASE READ THIS.

Please read this.

Don't do the church's work for them.

If you're kind to enough of them, they put you on a block list.

They were such sweet kids, they'd turn up at my door with the thatch of raspberries out front and try to share their word with me, and I'm me, so, I fed them.

Then it was one of the wee 'elder's' birthday, so I made him a cake, and all the little lads came, and they asked about my books and board games and CCGs, I was just a nice frumpy middle aged Jewish lady, I was no threat, so I fed them and made them cakes and took them to the local gaming store and listened when they talked.

One loved yu-gi-oh cards, and it turns out, one of the other wee lads, we'll he loved him back, so I got them in touch with some resources so they had support and a different way to pay for college, they're still together 15 years later, they have dogs, they send me ecards on their birthday. No-one figured out I'd.helped them, I was just the nice lady who made them tea and listened when people were slamming doors.

The next one really wanted to be an artist, so I left out art books and resources, my eldest shared their coptic markers, they draw comic books now, no idea why his folks were insisting he needed to be a dentist, but, he's not a Mormon anymore, (not a Jew either before anyone makes any counter conversion claims).

The first 2 lads were the only dramatic ones, the rest went back into the network but, like Hugh of Borg, they spread the word, sometimes I'd get Mormons from other cities come and make the journey to break bread at my Sabbath table and be seen.

I still think very fondly of that time.

Many of those boys still email me now and then.

Most of them aren't Mormons anymore.

Someone higher up spotted the pattern and suddenly no more Mormons at my door.

I was blacklisted, for kindness.

So there you go, if you don't want Mormons at your door, just love those kids for a couple of years, feed them, help them, and eventually, no more will be allowed to visit

i would like to do an ask meme

RB for the largest sample size this site has ever seen

Rhododendrons, Smoky Mountains, Tennessee [OC][1200x1688] - Author: Dhamena on Reddit

we are gonna be vacuuming up this post for the next five years

It almost looked like they threw a fish upwards into water (the shadowiness of their hand) & it swam off causing a splash of glitter.

The nature of the immigrant is any food they make is inauthentic, neither "authentic" food from their homeland nor "authentic" food from where they live. This is of course, not xenophobic in the slightest.

I think about this every time I see someone pretentiously going on about where a food ackshually came from because immigrants are never fucking good enough. If you do this I fucking hate you. Apologize to every immigrant immediately or face my wrath.

I promise your culinary experiences will only improve if you start to consider immigrant foodways as valuable traditions in their own right. Immigrants devising ways to make food they like using what they find available in their new homes is one of the greatest examples of how humans express love through food.

I don't usually post my art on this blog, but I've had a fairly stressful few weeks drawing for fandom stuff and doing work, so I'm putting this here because I think it's nice and it was the last warm-up I finished recently and I want to see my art on my dash

Song inspo: Le bal des chats

I know this makes the anti-voting fandom big mad but this is only happening because Murphy was re-elected by a thin margin in November 2021, bucking a 40 year trend of Democratic governors losing re-election in NJ, because enough people voted for him

Remember, people who have a victim complex about voting:

Only the most miserable people on the planet are obsessed with bone structure. Terfs. Incels. Racists probablty. Whoever still thinks that the weird skull shape astrology- no wait I did remember the word. Phrenology. Whoever still thinks that phrenology has any scientific value. Nobody who's enjoying their life goes out of their way to turn the framework of your meatsuit into an inescapable prison.

Future archeologists aren't going to look at my implausibly well-preserved carcass and go "this is a female skeleton", and call it a day. They're going to look at it and go "hmm, this isn't the standard early 2000s era cadaver amount of microplastics. This mf was eating macroplastics."

DO NOT LET SOCIAL MEDIA TURN YOU INTO AN AMERICAN

As an American: Seriously, please don’t

ok well i don't

"Americanization" is a real phenomenon, and how non-Americans should be cautious of it is taught in different countries at school. It's taught in Greece and people from other countries told me their elementary or middle school teachers (using the American grades, to make it make sense to the majority on the site) talked to them about it.

It's common sense here, except for USians, so I'll analyze it a bit more for the dominant demographic here. In a globalized setting, the most dominant culture affects the others and sets the trends. The way our language works, how we think, our levels of politeness and intimacy, and our levels of respect. (flash news, they are going down 😂)

I don't want to imply that there is nothing good in the US. There are plenty of positives in the country. It's just that for the rest of the cultures online it's a constant daily fight to not forget our roots, with the degree US media and brands have permeated our lives. In Greece at least we watch more US American media than Greek media nowadays, and many of our shows are rip-offs of USian ones, with little adaptation to Greek reality and culture.

And to demonstrate the amount of this exposure, a 22-year-old Greek asked me the other day "if something happens we call 911, right?" This might have literally cost them their life, in a dangerous situation! Because all the movies and songs they consumed (not an unusual thing for the Greek youth) were what they knew. And I found a similar comment in this comment thread.

Lots of Americans in the notes failing to understand this post. It's not about not liking the US. It's not about you feeling ashamed or guilty for being American. It's not about you.

It's about American media drowning out native language media all over the world, and workplaces requiring the English language in your repertoire more and more. It's about proper translations and foreign language dubbing of films disappearing because "everyone speaks/should speak English anyway." All of this is leading to the deterioration of native speaker groups of languages worldwide.

In my country, Dutch language courses can't find enough people who want to study the language, while English language courses are overflowing with people who want to study the language. There is even widespread distaste for the Dutch language for being crude or sounding rough or what have you. That's our native language!!! That is our culture in its purest form!!! That is knowledge we inherit from our parents as they did from theirs!!! That is how we learned fairytales and folk stories and myths!!! That is the language that shapes our communication and our way of thinking!!! To hate your native language is to hate yourself at the deepest level.

And yet it's so normalised. Droves of foreigners living in the Netherlands will never learn a word of Dutch, because "everyone speaks English anyway." We are the world's leaders in non-native understanding of English, but it comes at a cost. A grave cost we will continue to pay.

If you're looking to support your non-American friends in any way that is not performatively shouting "I hate being an American" into the void, first of all, unlearn that hatred of yourself and your culture. You are of no help self-flagellating, and there is a difference between holding your country accountable for its issues, and denying yourself your culture because your country is doing and has done bad things.

(I am not going to get into arguments about whether or not US American culture exists. It does, and if you think differently you are welcome to change your mind.)

Secondly, learn about other countries. Learn a bit of Chinese. Take an interest in the Italian political system. Ask your friends about their countries' folklore. Watch documentaries about art from Nigeria. Absorb information that is not fed to you by American media.

And thirdly, quit expecting your non-American friends to communicate in a way that appeals to you. The French and Dutch will always seem rude to you because our way of communicating is far more direct than the way you communicate. People from other cultures may seem vague to you because their way of communicating is far more indirect, and you're not used to that either. Quit being frustrated when you don't get what we mean exactly. Quit assuming we mean the absolute worst thing you could imagine just because you didn't get what we meant the first time. Ask us to explain if you need us to, and learn to accept that we are different from you.

We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.

This is a big problem in other English speaking countries. I live in the UK, in England no less, and there was a point in my childhood where my brain would bring up 911 as the emergency number. And on top of having our culture's stomped on we have people making fun of the way we do things and justifying it as "well you deserve it because you're English" like the backwater underfunded poverty stricken areas people mock have ever had any power. There's an Americanisation of food, and culture, an import of social justice issues as the American understanding of things is superimposed over our own history by kids who mean well but have learned all their vocabulary from Americans. We share many things but these issues are not the same and treating them as the same can be detrimental to the change people want to bring. (For example our most diverse prime minister's have all been Conservative, and the last one to bring up God while in office was "left wing" Labour. Even the colours of left and right political parties are different here.) Poverty is experienced differently. Class is experienced differently. Race is experienced differently. Racism is experienced differently.

And half the time if you even talk about it you have god damn 19 year olds hopping up and down screaming like toddlers because you're not doing it right for their needs.

If people are jumping to the idea they should call 911 rather than whatever it is in their country, That's A Problem and people should say so.

--An American

We actually have it set up in Australia so that if you forget it's 000 here and dial 911 instead, it will still connect you to the emergency centre. That's how much of a problem if was.

I've had to put actual effort into making sure my child, who lives in the UK, learns to speak its own language and not what Americans speak. Its mad I had to put limits on American media consumption. I never had to do that with ANY other countries media. Not even the dominance of RP in English media did as much damage as American media did. As if its not hard enough trying to keep regional dialects alive. Theres kids growing up with American accents ffs! (And yes you could criticise the parents and screen time but this aint happening with other accents. I think that's important to recognise)

And I am forever having to remind people what country they live in whenever politics come up. Its not uncommon for people to *only* know American politics and not even realise it. They have just learned thats "the way things are". And the same with law! Trying to tell their own solicitors to do things the "proper" (american) way! Brits walking around talking about their constitutional rights! First amendment! Its fucking ridiculous! People thinking "oh I know my rights" and woops now you're arrested because you can't actually talk to the police like that and your silence can actually be used against you.

I've seen multiple British poc be torn apart online for discussing their lived experiences, and even other British poc back up that harassment because they've been taught to think about things the American way, so the American racists attacking British poc must be right! Trying to discuss any non-american race politics (for the benefit of the fucking opressed) is always inevitably derailed because how dare we not fit the whole worlds experiences into the tiny boxes americans can relate too. Which in turn just destroys people's ability to educate and give people the vocabulary they need, which then deprives people of the understanding and connection they need to process and deal with their oppression.

Thankfully things have changed in the past few years but there was a time it was almost impossible to find (free) educational resources for BSL because well, why learn that when you can learn ASL?

Even when trying to engage with other languages and cultures, its ruined by American culture. My kid abandoned its language studies for years because it just could not deal with the demand of having to not only learn a new language but also learn American to use apps like duolingo. How discouraging for a young child to be told over and over that they are wrong for using the correct, very common but not American word.

And it just permeates everything. I lost my native dialect to classism and fought so hard to get it back. And yet I have to keep diluting it online so I can just talk about things else everything I post will be derailed by americans cooing over the silly little brit using weird words instead of like. Enaging with what I say in a meaningful way. Or I'll get threatened with doxxing by some bratty teenagers because I used a BRITISH colloquialism that coincidentally occurred in an American dialect and they just can't get their heads round the fact america doesn't own everything.

And yeah the 911 thing is a fucking problem. I've encountered near zero little kids these days who will remember 999 first no matter how much the adults around them try to help them.

So I used to work in schools teaching basic First Aid. Whenever I ran a session there would inevitably be one kid who would shout 911 instead of 000. A handful of times a kid would say 999, but that was because they’d just watched Operation Ouch. Kind of understandable since when I first started at that job Bluey didn’t exist yet and most kids shows were American.  I now teach First Aid to adults and the fact that people say “Sometimes you just think 911 because of all the American television we get” absolutely infuriates me on a gutteral level. 

I had a friend from uni who had such a thick American accent I swore she was actually American. Turned out she came from a country town and just watched a lot of American TV. My parents would jump on me the minute I started to use the American word for things when I was a kid and now I will use the Australian word instead of the American word because fuck you, you can learn to understand my dialect now. I am so thankful Bluey exists and that Americans are learning Australian words, because seeing the articles and tweets of parents being upset their kids are talking like Australians make me perversely happy. Americanisation is a thing and it is vile and I fucking hate it.

I also spend a lot of time in (non-tumblr) role-playing spaces. You can just tell when a writer is American and hasn’t sought to learn about other cultures and think about how the culture of their character may affect word choices. When I can see a post/app/whatever that’s supposed to be from a character who would not use the same words refer to their mother as “mom” or use other American terms.... I want to scream. 

Other cultures exist! Americans do not own everything! You don’t have to be the centre of the universe the whole fucking time!

me: there's a lot of shit adam does and believes that reminds me of my ex. i guess at least there wasn't the ableism though--

me: remembers the time he called me 'low-functioning,' in those words, while trying to be coy about it

me: ah. :^)