#don't at me there are several examples for all of these

[dailymanners]

I am about going to gripe about something that's been really annoying me lately.

First let me start with a disclaimer that I am speaking generally here. Of course both the U.S. and Europe are both massive and diverse places containing hundreds of millions of people, and a lot of regional differences. Neither the U.S. or Europe are a monolith (although a lot of people on the internet speak of both places as a monolith, which I wish people would stop doing, since neither are).

I could be wrong about this, since I don't live in the U.S., and haven't visited everywhere in Europe. But between where I have visited in the U.S., and where I have visited / lived in Europe, and from what I know from my friends in the U.S. and friends in other European countries, I get the feeling that overall the U.S. has stricter disability access laws than a lot of places in Europe do, especially in regard to building codes.

Of course there are exceptions, I know New York city is abhorrently hostile in its design towards anyone elderly and/or disabled. Although when I visited New York city it really just felt on par with a lot of major European cities with how abhorrently inaccessible it was.

One example of this is that recently I saw a Reddit discussion where a USAmerican vacationing in France was surprised at how many staircases didn't have handrails, because according to this man handrails are required by law in the U.S.

The comments were all Europeans having an absolute field day with this. Pretty much all of the comments were some variation of "I can't believe Americans are too stupid and lazy to use the stairs without a handrail 🤣🤣🤣 what's wrong with you fat lazy stupid Americans that you can't even use stairs without a handrail 🤣🤣🤣 thank GOD I was born in Europe where I was just taught how to walk up and down the stairs on my own and don't need a handrail like a lazy fat stupid American 🤣🤣🤣"

A few people tried to gently point out that this was about accessibility for elderly and disabled people, and it's not cool to laugh at building codes that are about accessibility, but those commenters were usually shut down with some variation of "yeah well in MY European country if someone is disabled or becomes elderly we either move to a more accessible building or we modify our home to be more accessible, we don't sit around whining like a bunch of Americans that our building isn't already accessible 🙄"

Which is, such a cruel way to talk about accessibility. Why wouldn't disabled and elderly people deserve the same access to a building as anyone else? Are elderly and disabled people not allowed to visit friends and family? Anyone could get hit by a car today, and after that struggle with going up and down stairs without the use of a handrail for the next several months, years, possibly the rest of your life. It's so easy to feel smug when you can easily trot up and down the stairs without a handrail, but so cruel to be unwilling to consider anyone who struggles with stairs should maybe be allowed access to the same places as you.

Honestly when I go on vacation abroad with my elderly + disabled mother, it's often easier to go to the U.S. with her than other places in Europe, because the U.S. does tend to be more accessible (in my experience, and except for New York city ofc) making going around to different public places with my mom generally a lot easier than somewhere like France or the Netherlands.

It's also part of the reason a lot of retired people in Iceland end up having to move abroad to live out their retirement. Of course the main reason for that is usually that the cost of living here is so ridiculously high most people can't afford the cost of living on a pension. However for some the fact that Iceland is just not very accessible is part of that.

Out of all the things you could clown on the U.S. about, why you gotta go for accessibility of all things? It's disgustingly ableist and ageist, and I have to wonder if these people actually just hate disabled people / accessible design, and are using the U.S. as an excuse to hate on disabled people and accessible design.

[reinstarnation]

when i tell any doc what level of pain i'm in I tell them "i will only take medication for it at a 7 on my scale. The traditional one doesn't account for chronic pain and how i'm forced to work and exist through high levels of pain to live."

my pain scale is:

1- i don't even notice it. background noise kind of pain. || example: small scratch/paper cut

2- still dont notice it most of the time. if the part that hurts is moved/touched/etc. i will notice it. || ex: larger scratch on my finger when i'm bending it.

3- i do notice it ambiently, may feel like stiffness or tightness. || ex: my ankles when i stand up after rest and they don't want to work right for like 5 minutes.

4- i am noticing it. i can recognise it hurts ambiently. starting to get distracting. || ex: sore throat when i'm not swallowing.

5- ouchy. This is my base pain level daily. I can function here. If i stay here i can do most of the things I want to on top of what I need to. || ex: mild period cramps/ week 3 after a scrape when the skin is still tender but i don't have too many scabs.

6- ouchy. this is where pain starts getting distracting. I can still function but I may adjust myself to try and accommodate pain here. || ex: post-workout pains, pain after walking for an hour with no breaks. average period cramp pain

7- i am taking medication now. this is annoying but i can power through it. I usually hit this level about halfway through my shifts at work during the school year. Usually my ability to work is a bit compromised and I might take more frequent smaller breaks. || ex: sinus headache, accidentally closed a door on your hand, week 2 after a large scrape where the scab keeps you from moving right.

8- this is the point where I start being able to not function right. My coworkers notice when i hit this point. If i am here for more than like an hour I can't do anything after work. If I'm here for longer then I'm still feeling it the next day. I get to this point regularly. || ex: week 1 after a scrape where the wound is scabbing and still leaking plasma so you can't keep it covered for very long, week 2 post-surgery (me referencing my gallbladder removal. and I subbed at a school after that.)

9- this is where I take double the amount of medication at level 7. level 7 is 2 extra strength (500mg) acetaminophen (so 1000mg of meds). level 9 is 2000mg of megs, 4 pills. usually that doesn't hit it nearly as much as i hope. I feel this pain more often than people are supposed to. || ex- dislocating my knee (which is a regular injury for me), week 1 post surgery still in the hospital, had to work extra areas in my 8 hour shift without overtime.

10- i am considering going to urgent care about this. I got here when the rock my gallbladder made STARTED lodging itself into the connection to the liver in april 2023. I STILL WAS TRYING TO EXIST SEMI-NORMALLY HERE. I was starting to get a little delirious with pain but denial is one hell of a drug.

and since my baseline is 5, which is like a 3 on the traditional pain scale.

11- Can't function normally. may be able to do some activities. severely limited. || ex: day 2 post surgery when they started making me get up and walk to prevent blood clots and i needed people to help me do that.

12- can't function at all. bedrest yay. can still eat and go use the restroom but will want help with that.

13- actively wishing for death to relieve me from this hell. can't move. can't breathe. can't eat. god forbid i have to pee. || ex: immediate post surgery. I woke up from anesthesia sobbing.

looking at chronic pain/illness scales i always get a little stumped on "it stops me from doing work/daily activities" as a descriptor because what if i'm just a wimp who cant handle a 2 yknow. what if i'm just a baby who doesnt know true pain.

[howlsofbloodhounds]

regarding Dust's depiction in the fandom.

i’m not sure if i’m the right person to speak on this, especially since my diagnosis has changed multiple times. at first, i was told i had hallucinatory delusional disorder—only to later be told that diagnosis doesn’t even formally exist. another psychiatrist changed it to bipolar II, and eventually, all of that was scrapped. i’m still in the process of trying to find real answers.

My therapist just told me that I don't even have delusions, just very extreme intrusive thoughts and severe depersonalization.

what i do experience is intense dissociation, and what could be described as “hearing voices,” though it’s not exactly a sound. it’s something between a thought and an external voice. sometimes i can hear a direction, or distinct tones like different people speaking, but what they’re saying rarely makes sense. it’s like fragments of a conversation, but the context is missing.

for me, what’s pushed me into dangerous territory hasn’t necessarily been the voices themselves, but the nightmares that come with them—and how much i’ve overanalyzed what they seemed to be telling me. trauma plays a huge role in how that spirals. i won’t go into it here, but it’s a big part of the picture.

that’s why i’d really love to see a more layered depiction of Dust. i actually have my own fanfic where i try to explore these kinds of things, but looking back, i worry that in trying to vent through him, i might’ve accidentally written something that came off as ableist. it’s hard to toe that line when you’re writing from pain.

i think what i want—more than anything—from portrayals of Dust is for his symptoms to go beyond just “hallucinating Papyrus.” i want to see the paranoia, the delusions, the intrusive thoughts, the nightmares, the flashbacks. the dissociation. the disorganized thinking and speech. the whole picture of what it feels like when your mind isn’t a safe place anymore.

right now, i’m still going through a diagnostic process. i’m crossing my fingers that i don’t get hit with another heavily stigmatized label—and honestly, that whatever i have is something treatable. but more and more, i feel like it all traces back to trauma. i relate to Dust so deeply it almost scares me sometimes, he has so much potential.

You and I are on the same page about wanting to see more depictions beyond hallucinations, although I was of course thinking of wanting to see more of those depictions with Killer.

Unfortunately, it’s very common in this fandom for Killer’s own psychosis to be ignored, overlooked, or just not know about—which is one reason why the common depiction of Killer making fun of Dust’s hallucinations doesn’t make any sense, given Killer hallucinates too.

And he has various forms of hallucinations, from vivid and real, to shadowy figures that watch him or attempt to reach out and touch him. He has full on and back forth conversations with “Chara” despite them not being real, when asked where Chara is he points directly at his own head—“it’s all in your head” is a common phrase associated with Killer.

He has flashbacks, hears multiple voices in his head in different ways—voices from flashbacks, the internal voices he relies on to make any choices on his own—he dissociates heavily, he experiences black out amnesia with Stage 4 and loses control over his own body. He struggles to tell what is and isn’t real thanks to the constant Resets, he constantly feels like he’s being watched by Chara.

He views himself as just something with Sans’ face. He often is showing having back and forth conversations internally and externally as if he’s watching himself argue with himself, his internal conflict is so severe that he sometimes even verbalizes it—which often comes out in confused, contradictory statements, especially when asked anything about himself. When asked how he’s feeling, he answers like “I’m fi—I don’t know. …I’m okay.”

And that’s just one example of it, the entire first page of the Something New comics shows his fragmented thought processes pretty clearly. He shows a deep awareness that something about him has changed, that he’s not the same as he was, but he doesn’t why and he doesn’t seem to know how to stop it.

He seems to struggle a lot with distressing cognitive dissonance, such as killing because he wants to feel something but knowing it doesn’t actually make him feel anything—seemingly believing he only exists because someone else wanted him to. [“Killer Sans exists because of you.”] Feeling more like a role or script than an actual person living a life.

All of this comes from both trauma, and externally induced dissociation + coercion, manipulation. This is a man who doesn’t know who or what he is anymore.

Both Murder and Killer are characters where their mind has become a deeply unsafe place, but for different reasons. For Murder it’s trauma and mental illness, for Killer it’s because of intense prolonged external control and manipulation—and as a result, he is suffering from trauma and mental illness. Even Killer’s own body has become his enemy.

[namu-the-orca]

Why have orcas never attacked humans in the wild, but other dolphins have? If interactions with orcas were as common as interactions with bottlenose dolphins, would there be incidents?

That's an interesting question!

First of all it's important to note that killer whales have shown negative behaviour/attacks towards humans in the wild. Most famously, Californian surfer Hans Kretschmer was bitten by a killer whale in 1972. The original news article is down, but he is interviewed in this more recent article.

It is probably the only known documented incident of a wild killer whale biting a human. However, quite some other, albeit less direct, cases of aggression have been reported. Antarctic killer whales have tried to tip people off ice floes, or wash them out of their boat, reported in both 1910 and 2010 coincidentally (when the Frozen Planet crew in their zodiac apparently were the target of a wave-washing attack). Cetacean researcher Bernd Würsig was attacked in 1989 by one of the Peninsula Valdes killer whales. He was observing sea lions from 200 metres away, hoping to photograph a hunt, when a killer whale beached to grab him and only missed him by a metre. And of course there's numerous incidents of killer whale damaging boats, not just the recent ones off Iberia, but also going back several decades.

However, attacks are not nearly as numerous or physical as those documented for wild (bottlenose) dolphins. I think number of encounters certainly plays a role there. Bottlenoses can live very close to shore in warm waters, so ideal places where people bathe and swim. Bottlenoses are highly sociable but live in much looser societies, meaning solitary animals may happen more frequently, and then look to humans for companionship. I believe most attacks come from such solitary animals, that are (too) accustomed to humans. Add to that that bottlenose dolphins are quite a sexually aggressive species too. They can be boisterous and rough when demanding attention, especially with a frail human. However, bottlenoses are not the only "culprits" - through personal communication I've heard of quite some stories of other species being rough with or injuring people who swam with them, or viewed them from a boat.

Killer whales generally live in colder waters and further offshore. Small chance of meeting one when going for a swim in the shallows. It seems solitary killer whales also happen much less frequently, and when they do, they rarely end up seeking human companionship. One notable exception is of course the young killer whale Luna. He did seek out extensive human contact for a long time. I don't believe people swam with him, but there was also no documented aggression from him as far as I know. Perhaps this is due to the generally calmer nature of killer whales, but it's hard to say with just one example.

So I think it is a combination of factors. Mostly the much greater number of interaction people have with (smaller) dolphins vs killer whales. I think in part also due to differences in behaviour/levels of aggression. And maybe people also act more stupid around smaller dolphins? Because those are always portrayed as so friendly, and cute, and of course this wild animal wants a full body hug from me! While for killer whales people (hopefully) have a little more respect.

Interesting topic for sure, if anyone wants to pitch in!

[firestorm09890]

Penny stardewvalley makes me so sad because she's SO sensitive to, like, basically everything you tell her (telling her that you can't stand children while two children are nearby is a pretty lousy move but -1500 friendship?? being a jerk to other characters' faces typically loses you about 50 points, and if you choose the option labeled "creepy" and ask Leah for a kiss in her 2 heart event she physically hits you and kicks you out of her house but that's only -100 friendship…) and so if you want to befriend her it's a whole lot of lying and tiptoeing around her feelings (2 hearts: George was right but saying that makes her feel bad. 6 hearts: her food sucks but even if you try to be polite about it she feels like a failure; only a bald-faced lie pleases her. 8 hearts: saying you don't want to be tied down with a family loses you a little bit of friendship and she's only happy if you say you want kids) and I can't help but think she's a product of her environment. She lives in a trailer with only her mother, who gets drunk every night and has something of a temper. Penny's like a skittish rescue animal who won’t even come out from hiding under something unless you leave her lots of treats

[bikananjarrus]

can i say something. i've seen quite a bit of agreement that gilroy should've just made it a show about rebellion, since it seems like that's what he really wanted to do in the first place and, despite the other issues with the season, it at least succeeded in that area. except i don't think andor s2 was that successful as a show about rebellion either.

[cosmogyros]

That moment when you have to let people be wrong about you because correcting them would make you seem like an unbearable show-off

I was at a bookstore with a friend the other day and I was looking at a book in German that I was interested in buying, but then I saw that it was a translation and had originally been written in French

I commented idly to my friend "Sometimes I don't buy a book because it's a translation and I always prefer to read in the original language when possible" and she said in an agreeing-with-me way, "Yeah it would make more sense to read it in English"

and I realized she assumed I meant English when I said "original language"

but I couldn't bring myself to say "Yeah, or French or Dutch or Spanish or Italian or Portuguese or one of the other languages I read..." because like. who says that kind of thing.

[light-wrath-paradise]

*remembers Dungeon Meshi* The Winged Lion

[treezxu]

We need to start treating bad writing like bad art and im not kidding

[longagoitwastuesday]

Gushing about Gojo and Megumi and how they are or could have been everything to me I forgot to mention that I really really really love Yuuji. Like, a lot

[alltimefail-sims]

Getting online when T Sw**t does literally anything...

Every tag. Every fandom. Fanfic titles. Retconned characters (this character is a sw***ie, this character is this song coded, this ship is so that song coded and so on). Fan Edits out the ass. Audio clips, lyric quotes, hot takes on Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr/YouTube/TikTok. A cruel, unending slew of exposure you did not ask for lmfao

[thedreadpoetroberts]

You can be really smart and still have a learning disability.

You can be really smart and still have a learning disability.

You can be really smart and still have a learning disability.

[slytherverse]

i say this in all seriousness, a great way to resist the broad cultural shift of devaluing curiosity and critical thinking is to play my favorite game, Hey What Is That Thing

you play it while walking around with friends and if you see something and don't know what it is or wonder why its there, you stop and point and say Hey What Is That Thing. and everyone speculates about it. googling it is allowed but preferably after spending several minutes guessing or asking a passerby about it

weird structures, ambiguous signs, unfamiliar car modifications, anything that you can't immediately understand its function. eight times out of ten, someone in the group actually knows, and now you know!

a few examples from me and my friends the past few weeks: "why is there a piece of plywood sticking out of that pond in a way that looks intentional?" (its a ramp so squirrels that fall in to the pond can climb out) • "my boss keeps insisting i take a vacation of nine days or more, thats so specific" (you work at a bank, banks make employees take vacation in long chunks so if youre stealing or committing fraud, itll be more obvious) • "why does this brick wall have random wooden blocks in it" (theres actually several reasons why this could be but we asked and it was so you could nail stuff to the wall) • "most of these old factories we drive past have tinted windows, was that just for style?" (fun fact the factory owners realized that blue light keeps people awake, much like screen light does now, so they tinted the windows blue to keep workers alert and make them work longer hours)

been playing this game for a long time and ive learned (and taught) a fuckton about zoning laws, local history, utilities (did you know you can just go to your local water treatment plant and ask for a tour and if they have a spare intern theyll just give you a tour!!!) and a whole lot of fun trivia. and now suddenly you're paying more attention when youre walking around, thinking about the reasons behind every design choice in the place you live that used to just be background noise. and it fuckin rules.

[xiaq]

Absolutely wild to me how sometimes you don't even realize the way you'd been taught to perceive things as a kid was kinda fucked up, actually, until decades later.

Example:

As a kid, I constantly lived in fear of damaging shit in my parent's house. The walls. The floors (especially the floors. The wood was beautiful. Shiny. But so easy to scratch). The cabinets.

As a sixteen-year-old, I once took my car to the dealership after work and paid a very dear sum of $250 ($10/hr cashier salary) to fix a slight scratch in the paint because I knew if my father saw it there would be hell to pay. It didn't matter that I parked far out, like I'd been taught, and someone scratched it anyway. It was my fault. I failed in my duties as a steward of my vehicle.

Every time I scratched a rim on a curb while parallel parking or got a door ding or, god forbid, didn't wash and vacuum that car every weekend, it was treated like some sort of moral failing.

Last year, when my husband and I first moved into our house, he scraped the side of our car when parking in our (Very Narrow) garage. When he told me, my first instinct was to be afraid for him. Like something terrible was going to happen to him because of this mistake. I urgently reassured him that it was okay, it was an accident, I wasn't mad. Baffled, he was like, "Yeah? I know? Like, thank you for the reassurance, but I'm only a little annoyed, I'm not upset. It's just a car." And I had to take several minutes to process that. It's...just a car.

We keep the car tidy. We maintain it. But we wash it maybe 4x a year. We only vacuum it after dirty road trips or when the dog hair starts to get annoying. It has scrapes and dings and the leather seats have stains. But that's ok. Because it's just a car.

This morning, I realized that a small rock had gotten embedded in the felt foot on one of our bar stools. Neither of us had noticed. There are now scratches on our beautiful hardwood floor. My immediate response was fear accompanied by a heavy measure of paralyzing guilt. "I'm so sorry," I told my husband, "I should have noticed. I'll figure out how to fix it, I swear. I can probably sand down that section and match the stain and--"

"Whoa, hey," he said. "It was an accident. And it's fine. Floors are going to get damaged. They're floors. We live here. There was damage in places before we even bought the house, remember? It's not a big deal. It's just a floor." Right. It's just a floor. Right.

My husband's mom is visiting and this afternoon, as I was sitting in the kitchen looking at the scratches on the floor, I offhandedly asked her if my husband had ever broken or damaged anything as a kid. "Of course," she said. Household items. A TV. A wrecked car during his teen years. I asked how she punished him.

"Why would I punish him for things like that?" she said. "They were all accidents."

Right. Of course. Right.

[neverendingford]

.