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100%. This is one of those skills that comes so naturally once acquired that people tend to forget that we had to learn them in the first place. "But it's so obvious!" to you. It's much easier to recognize that ice is a form of water once you've seen it melt.

i hate when i send someone a meme in another language and they're like "uhm... translate? 😒" fucker i sent you a meme where 90% of the words have an english cognate and/or you don't need to know what they're saying to find it funny. can you at least TRY

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i have some purely anecdotal advice for people who struggle with nightmares. i used to have nightmares quite a lot. at some point, when i was a kid, i got afraid of going to sleep because there was such a high chance i'd end up in a literal nightmare. at the time, i did not know that this is a problem you can get help with, so i ended up trying and failing different ways to deal with it. and i ended up beating the nightmares. considering not everyone has proper access to health care, i thought i might share my winning tactic in case it could help somebody else.

it starts with the hyperspecific feeling you get during nightmares. i've asked quite a lot of people, and so far they all agree that there is a specific sense of utter doom that washes over you when the nightmare starts. it's unlike anything you feel in normal waking life, right? if you don't know what i'm talking about, try and reflect on what you felt during your nightmare directly after you've woken up from one. i feel quite confident that you'll be able to pin it down.

NOW. i think you might see where this is going. that nightmare-feel is going to be your tell. it will likely take some practice, but next time you feel the nightmare-feels, call them out! identify them for what they are and what it means! you're having a nightmare!

for some, this may be enough. what you just achieved is generally considered the first step towards lucid dreaming. most people don't reach the second step (on their first try) because the first step wakes them up automatically. if that's you, fantastic!

if that's not you, there is still plenty of hope. first of all, you're lucid dreaming right now. you can try to exert some control over your dream/nightmare. if you notice that you don't have as much control (yet) or you just want out now, then shake yourself from left to right vigorously. as some of your dream-movements are transferred to your sleeping body, you'll quickly rock yourself awake.

personally, i instinctively went from recognize nightmare-tell -> shake myself tf awake at first. it was good enough. by now, though, i turn my nightmares into jokes. it has come to a point where my standard dreams are no longer nightmares but rather a parody of nightmares. it doesn't even require any effort or conscious redirection anymore. i sometimes, and I'm getting teary-eyed as i write this knowing how my past self would feel about this, i sometimes LAUGH myself awake.

#nightmares #nightmare #lucid dreaming #anecdotal advice

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In the Netherlands, many houses have their curtains wide open during the day. Even net curtains are pushed to the side. I only learned this was a cultural difference when I first visited Germany and everyone had some form of curtains or blinds closed at all times. It's especially noticeable after dusk, when the Dutch streets are illuminated by indoor lights and the German streets feel dark by contrast.

And I only learned that, by extension, it is considered rude to stare into Dutch people's houses when a friend who was raised outside the Netherlands came over and started extensively commenting on all the things he observed through people's windows. I had scarcely felt so awkward.

why are french people rude?

Ah well, the safest explanation when an entire country’s people are stereotyped as rude is that they have their own culture with different criteria for politeness than the ones you are used to. It’s probably easier for Americans to forget this than for the rest of the world, because they consume less foreign media than the rest of us (from literature in translation to foreign films) and are less exposed to aspects of foreign cultures that could inform them about different norms of politeness (online interactions happen in their own language and follow their own (anglo) social codes.) With this insular worldview it’s easy to take it for granted that American good manners are universal. They are not!

A very common gripe against American tourists in Paris is that they talk so loudly in public spaces, which is definitely rude here but I assume that in the US, people just have a different threshold for what constitutes ‘loud’ (I wonder if it is due to being used to having more space than Europeans). I also remember a discussion I had with one of my translation professors about the American concept of ‘active listening’ and how negatively it is perceived in France. It may be that in the US it is polite to make ‘listening noises’ at regular intervals while someone is speaking to you, ‘uh huh’, ‘right’, ‘yeah’, ‘really?’, and that you would perceive someone who just stands there silently as disinterested or thinking about something else. In France it is more polite to shut up and listen (with the occasional nod or ‘mmh’) and it’s rather seen as annoying and rude to make a bunch of useless noise while someone is speaking.

There are of course countless examples like that. The infamous rude waiters in Parisian cafés probably seem a lot more rude and cold to people who have a different food culture… People from other cultures might consider a waiter terrible at his job if he doesn’t frequently check on them to make sure they don’t wait for anything, but the idea that a meal is a pleasant experience rather than just a way to feed yourself (esp when eating out) means we like having time to chat and just enjoy our table for a while, so we don’t mind as much waiting to order or for the next course. French people would typically hate if an overzealous waiter took the initiative to bring the note once we’re done with our meal so we don’t have to wait for it, as it would be interpreted as “you’re done, now get out of my restaurant.”

The level of formality required to be seen as polite is quite high in France, which might contribute to French people being seen as rude by people with a more casual culture. To continue with waiters, even in casual cafés they will address clients with the formal you and conversely, and won’t pretend to be your friend (the fact that we don’t have the American tip culture also means they don’t feel the need to ingratiate themselves to you.) I remember being alarmed when a waitress in New York introduced herself and asked how I was doing. “She’s giving me her first name? What… am I supposed to with it? Use it?” It gave me some insight on why Americans might consider French waiters rude or sullen! It might also be more accepted outside of France to customise your dish—my brother worked as a waiter and often had to say “That won’t be possible” about alterations to a dish that he knew wouldn’t fly with the chef, to foreign tourists who were stunned and angry to hear that, and probably brought home a negative opinion of French waiters. In France where the sentiment in most restaurants is more “respect the chef’s skill” than “the customer is king”, people are more likely to be apologetic if they ask for alterations (beyond basic stuff) as you can quickly be seen as rude, even by the people you are eating with. 

And I remember reading on a website for learning English that the polite answer to “How are you?” is “I’m fine, thank you!” because it’s rude to burden someone you aren’t close to with your problems. In my corner of the French countryside the polite thing to do is to complain about some minor trouble, because saying everything is going great is perceived negatively, as boasting, and also as a standoffish reply that kind of shuts down the conversation, while grumbling about some problem everyone can relate to will keep it going. (French people love grumbling as a positive bonding activity!)

Basically, before you settle on the conclusion that people from a different place are collectively rude, consider that if you travel there and scrupulously follow your own culture’s social code of good manners, you might be completely unaware that you are being perceived as obnoxious, rude or unfriendly yourself simply because your behaviour clashes with what is expected by locals.

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it's so fucking frustrating to be in college and know everyone uses chatgpt and to be tempted by it constantly while also knowing intellectually that it doesn't work and it's a bad idea. like, i hang out in the library a lot, and i see people using chatgpt on assignments almost every day. and i know it isn't a good way to learn, because it's not really "artificial intelligence" so much as it is an auto text generator. and it gives you wrong information or badly worded sentences all the time. but every week i stare down assignments i don't want to do and i think man. if only i could type this prompt into a text generator and have it done in 10 minutes flat. and i know it wouldn't work. it wouldn't synthesize information from the text the way professors want, it wouldn't know how to answer questions, it just spits out vaguely related words for a couple paragraphs. but knowing my classmates get their work done in 10 minutes flat with it while i fight every ounce of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in my body is infuriating.

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Taylor Swift is to white women what Rick & Morty is to white men

this is the best album release of all time because where else are you going to get unironic takes like this and then even get a few hundred people to agree with it

#in that they stir a rather ill-informed subset of fans into thinking that #their popular media is a niche misunderstood & highly intellectual work of countercultural art

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anybody need a glomping? glomping? anyone want a glomping?

taylor was a gifted writer from the start but she’s only gotten more and more honest and vulnerable in her music especially in the last few albums and we’re really getting to see her explore different parts of herself as a storyteller and come into her own in so many ways while being at the height of music stardom she is one of a kind

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please elaborate on the "It's compatible with Christian thought"

absolutely incredible shit going on in circles of the internet I don’t even know about

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not beating the hungies allegations

to me charlie puth doesn’t exist outside of these tweets

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it's soooooo fun to live in an age of rapidly increasing geopolitical and social complexity and tension while media literacy is tanking and disinformation is easier to spread and create than ever before ❤️ absolutely no way this is going to end horribly

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i think the point they're trying to make though is that large breasts aren't inherently sexual and that desexualisation should therefore not denote smaller breasts. the original artwork may have included large breasts for sexual reasons but that does not mean that the large breasts themselves are the problem.

My redesign hot take is that if you’re aiming to “desexualize” a female character, don’t make her boobs smaller. You’re implying a lot here.

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sometimes i wonder if we wouldnt have been better off advocating for a shift in language that excludes gendered pronouns altogether. there's plenty of languages that already do that. and why the fuck is my gender so important that it needs to be acknowledged every other sentence when im being referred to anyway? why give gender the power to be the ONE signifier of a person beyond their name? it's stupid.

#gender #pronouns #disclaimer: i grew up with a regional dialect that uses ungendered pronouns for all. so i might be biased lol

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tbh i respect people standing by their principles in not using ChatGPT or other LLM chatbots, esp when it comes to work, education and creative endeavours. HOWEVER, i do also think it's unwise to remain wholly alienated from such emerging tech. and that has nothing to do with learning to recognize generated content– that's a game of cat and mouse we're bound to lose.

it has all to do with the very real prospect that AI will become a part of our everyday lives. and how will you know how to vote on regulatory propositions political parties put forward if you're not intimately familiar with the limitations and dangers of LLMs? how will you compete in a job market that will start to demand/expect the use of AI to increase productivity if you do not know yourself when and how to use such a tool, what it can and cannot be trusted to do? how will you teach kids/students/work trainee to handle AI if you have no idea how to do so yourself?

you can dig your heels in and refuse to partake, but that will only hamper your ability to be part of the public conversation– and you already are a part of that conversation!

instead i suggest you use it for things that don't really matter. use it as a toy rather than a tool. look something up using your regular resources and only then check what ChatGPT makes of it. whatever you do, avoiding it altogether is not the answer.

#ai #llm #chatgpt

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I was worried about Bit, but he seems to be okay, he's just hanging out in his little Play pen.

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Most DIY stores carry N95 masks! They might look a bit different, but they have the same purpose & function (block small particles– be they viruses or sawdust –from entering your airways). If you're ever in a pinch and don't have access to reference material such as this map, then the local DIY store is probably your best bet.

weather’s getting nicer, people will be more careless and congregate in large groups

protect yourself and others from not just covid, but dust and pollen too! double whammy!

find a local mask bloc here for free n94/95 masks

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Most DIY stores carry N95 masks! They might look a bit different, but they have the same purpose & function. If you're ever in a pinch and don't have access to references such as this map, then the local DIY store might be your best bet.

weather’s getting nicer, people will be more careless and congregate in large groups

protect yourself and others from not just covid, but dust and pollen too! double whammy!

find a local mask bloc here for free n94/95 masks

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