#they still ask me about these systems

[corntired]

I cant anymore

At work client received a link to a webpage we've coded for them, on a test domain. Same thing we've done literal tens of times before. Tens of times they've gotten a similar link. Link was something like http://domain.test.com/landingpage

Client got mad because the webpage didnt work for them. Sent a screenshot. Link visible on the screenshot? http://domain.test.com/landingpage/file:/C:/ProgramData...

Somehow, they managed to paste a path to a local file from their system into the link. Which obviously would break the link to a webpage. Because there is nothing on the server under that link/path.

And got mad at us. Because the webpage wasnt working.

I just. I cant.

[inkskinned]

you were raised in comparison.

it wasn't always obvious (well. except for the times that it was), but you internalized it young. you had to eat what you didn't like, other people are going hungry, and you should be grateful. you had to suck it up and walk on the twisted ankle, it wasn't broken, you were just being a baby. you were never actually suffering, people obviously had it worse than you did.

you had a roof over your head - imagine! with the way you behaved, with how you talked back to your parents? you're lucky they didn't kick you out on your ass. they had friends who had to deal with that. hell, you have friends who had to deal with that. and how dare you imply your father isn't there for you - just because he doesn't ever actually talk to you and just because he's completely emotionally checked out of your life doesn't mean you're not fucking lucky. think about your cousins, who don't even get to speak to their dad. so what if yours has a mean streak; is aggressive and rude. at least you have a father to be rude to you.

you really think you're hurting? you were raised in a home! you had access to clean water! you never so much as came close to experiencing a real problem. sure, okay. you have this "mental illness" thing, but teenagers are always depressed, right. it's a phase, you'll move on with your life.

what do you mean you feel burnt out at work. what do you mean you mean you never "formed healthy coping mechanisms?" we raised you better than that. you were supposed to just shoulder through things. to hold yourself to high expectations. "burning out" is for people with real jobs and real stress. burnout is for people who have sick kids and people who have high-paying jobs and people who are actually experiencing something difficult. recently you almost cried because you couldn't find your fucking car keys. you just have lost your sense of gratitude, and honestly, we're kind of hurt. we tell you we love you, isn't that enough? if you want us to stick around, you need to be better about proving it. you need to shut up about how your mental health is ruined.

it could be worse! what if you were actually experiencing executive dysfunction. if you were really actually sick, would you even be able to look at things on the internet about it? you just spend too much time on webMD. you just like to freak yourself out and feel like you belong to something. you just like playing the victim. this is always how you have been - you've always been so fucking dramatic. you have no idea how good you have it - you're too fucking sensitive.

you were like, maybe too good of a kid. unwilling to make a real fuss. and the whole time - the little points, the little validations - they went unnoticed. it isn't that you were looking for love, specifically - more like you'd just wanted any one person to actually listen. that was all you'd really need. you just needed to be witnessed. it wasn't that you couldn't withstand the burden, but you did want to know that anyone was watching. these days, you are so accustomed to the idea of comparison - you don't even think you belong in your own communities. someone always fits better than you do. you're always the outlier. they made these places safe, and then you go in, and you are just not... quite the same way that would actually-fit.

you watch the little white ocean of your numbness lap at your ankles. the tide has been coming in for a while, you need to do something about it. what you want to do is take a nap. what you want to do is develop some kind of time machine - it's not like you want your life to stop, not completely, but it would really nice if you could just get everything to freeze, just for a little while, just until you're finished resting. but at least you're not the worst you've been. at least you have anything. you're so fucking lucky. do you have any concept of the amount of global suffering?

a little ant dies at the side of your kitchen sink. you look at its strange chitinous body and think - if you could just somehow convince yourself it is enough, it will finally be enough and you can be happy. no changes will have to be made. you just need to remember what you could lose. what is still precious to you.

you can't stop staring at the ant. you could be an ant instead of a person, that is how lucky you are. it's just - you didn't know the name of the ant, did you. it's just - ants spend their whole life working, and never complain. never pull the car over to weep.

it's just - when it died, it curled up into a tight little ball.

something kind of uncomfortable: you do that when you sleep.

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[starry-bi-sky]

new Danyal al Ghul au just dropped! --or at least some art of it did. I call it the "Stillborn? No, no, still born" au (or stillborn just for short)

it's based off a batfam comment I saw that mentioned in the early comics Bruce knew about Talia's pregnancy and was ecstatic to be a father. So much so that Talia feared he'd give up being Batman for it, so when she gave birth she put the baby (Damian) on a doorstep and (seemingly) told Bruce that the baby was stillborn.

I saw it, thought "mm, tasty!" and thought what if that baby was Danny instead of Damian? By default I was thinking of making him a few years older, however, it works just as well with demon twins. I need to think it over. Meet Daniel Brown! 14 year old foster kid whose been with the Fentons for the last two years! He has SO many issues haha. hah. lmfao even.

Danny's theme song is literally just "Good Kid" from the Percy Jackson musical, to sum him up.

[rexonalapis]

it is very telling that average genshin players cannot comprehend seeing an actual mature, qualified leader that is actually good at taking her job seriously after meeting archons who either is still childish, clowning whimsically, or straight up incompetent.

[wynandcore]

Scars. ooohhh Scars.

[septimusmoonlight]

You doing ok?

hi

[bananonbinary]

as a certified Diagnosed Autist(TM) i cannot stress enough that i am not only pro- self-diagnosis, but also pretty anti- legal medical diagnosis. it is, at best, a cruel hoop we have to jump through so privileged people will deign to give us what we need. don't fucking do that shit unless you have to, it was disgustingly expensive, fucking humiliating, infantilizing, and dehumanizing, and would probably actively cause problems in my life if i didn't have some really good allistic (-passing) people in my corner and also wasn't so fucking disabled that it mostly doesn't matter.

literally get that diagnosis if you need it for job/school accessibility shit or SSI or whatever, and otherwise dont tell the government SHIT about yourself. there is zero good reason for them to want that information. that's between you and the people you want in your life.

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Imagine you're Mr. Wu and your weird gay daughter runs away in tears after destroying some unespecified object while yelling about you ruining her life. Because you told her you'd be moving to another state. This is the last time you see your daughter in half a year, and when she comes back, she comes back... wrong. She's wearing a light leather armor, a fur-lined cape, and a green flower crown. She has two long scars, one alongside her spine and the other along her chest, the tissue around them covered in burn scars. Doctors say she shouldn't have survived. Doctors say she didn't. Yet she's right here, in front of you, hospital gown clinging to her small, fragile, trembling frame. She fidgets with her hands. Getting her to stay still has always been difficult, but now it seems impossible. She won't let go of her phone. She's always texting her two friends. When you take it away, she gets anxious. You always knew those damn phones cause kids to act weird, but your kid having a panic attack seems too extreme, even for her. Then again, she's always been odd. Nowadays, she wakes up crying and screaming almost every night, and you realize she's been stealing her phone from your bedside drawer every night to text her friends, returning it before you wake up. You catch her once and decide to give her that damn phone back. It's the only thing that calms her down, as if she were a baby with a pacifier. She spends her last weeks in LA clinging to her friends, having sleepovers and playing her weird board games with them. Everytime they drop her back at her house, there's an excessive amount of hugs and tears. But the moments when they call her, or when she leaves to meet with them, or when they show up at their door to pick her up... those are the only moments in which you see her happy. One of her friends, the rude and disobedient one, came back with a big scar on her face. She's been acting a lot nicer, though. The other one too. She acts a great deal more adult now. You doesn't know what happened or where your daughter went. She won't tell you. But you can tell this friendship is the only thing keeping her afloat right now. Maybe you know, deep down, that no one else would understand.

And then you decide to move anyway because fuck her amirite

[can-of-slorgs]

The other researchers are also here! (magical edition!)

[firstroseofspring]

b’elanna vs her mother at similar ages, plus some sketches!

[fipindustries]

one frustrating aspect about being me is that people sometimes want to do something nice to me, or they want to make up to me for something they did, or they want to give me a gift or do something special.

and every time they ask i ask for the same thing over and over. consume this piece of media for me. it can be something i made or some work that holds a lot of significance to me, or an experience i want to share or a board game i want to play with them.

and for whatever fucking reason time and time again this seems like an impossible request to ask. they sound so eager to please and they swear up and down that they are willing to do anything and i just ask them "read this book for me" "watch this show with me" "play this game with me" they imediatly hesitate and start hedging, and begin a long lethany of explanations for why it simply cannot be done until the next four months or whatever. and im always internally like "well, i guess you werent willing to do *literally anything* like you just said"

i really dont get it. i always make a point, if commit to read something or watch something because someone else asked, to do it as soon as possible and i always come back with a long list of thoughts and observations and analisis. (which i almost never get in return, i can count myself lucky if i get a "it was really cool!" and that is it) because this thing meant a lot to them so i want to give them my full investment. it doesnt even cost me that much. it wasnt this titanic effort like it seems to be for others. i make a point not to ask for expensive gifts or for things that would take a lot of physical effort i really dont understand why this is so much to ask of others.

[xylophone888]

thinking about how rincewind went from thinking that the world must abide by some unknown rules cause how can it not (his whole "trees don't talk" thing despite trees very noticeably talking both to him and others) to being able to accept literally anything as normal and expected (shapeshifting kangaroos? space travel on a flimsy wooden plane-rocket-wtf else thing? a huge magical sentient supercomputer? ok idc whats for lunch)

[dykedvonte]

love seeing your takes on mouthwashing and how sane they are. everything's so black or white. I like how you acknowledge curlys abuse under jimmy (which I honestly didn't quite notice when I first watched a playthrough. should rewatch w this in mind) and how that very much doesn't "forgive" his inaction towards Anya and Her abuse under jimmy. I think what happens to him despite all his issues (bc he clearly wasn't OK 😊✌🏼) is very much karmic. I really did hurt huh

I hate the take that what happened to him is karmic as becoming disabled and being tortured is like not in any way an equal consequence for not taking more action against Jimmy. It is a consequence as is the whole game for everyone but it’s one that is very much established as being undeserved and extreme as everyone else’s but Jimmy’s fate.

Thank you for liking my takes but I also try to point out that this exact sort of framing of the events and what happened to Curly is bad especially if you are gonna factor in his own abuse into the equation of his inaction/ineffective acts. It’s like “saying yeah he deserved the abuse he was already going through to escalate because he didn’t do enough” which is like not a message the game tries to deliver at all. It’s like the game shows that abusers escalate

Karma and punishment are not concepts that I think should be directly tied to Curly’s fate especially since during the game and even in discussion he takes on too many consequences of someone else’s actions. Like this framing is the direct thing I describe taking the discussion away from Jimmy, P.E and the factors that created the environment in the first place.

[iamthepulta]

I think I'm slowly getting a picture of a narrative. This is tricky though. If I had uh- known what the fuck I was doing six months ago, I would've titled the presentation, "Alum mining, trade, and metallurgy from Bronze Age to Present" and called it a day.

The lax definition of alum's chemistry also makes it really hard to pin down. It ranges from hydrous to anhydrous (impure and pure) aluminum sulfate salt to aluminum clay. Civilizations until the Roman era just kind of pointed at white shit, called it alum, licked it to see if it was sour (not salt) and tossed it in the chemical vat.

There were also specific locales for the good shit. So instead of saying 'alunite', you'd say 'alum from the Hittites', or 'alum from Egypt'. One could be used for tanning, but the other was used for a fancy blue glaze (cobalt-clay). You could also produce alum from alunite, like on the isle of Lesbos (Sappho historical romance novel with alum when??)

But. Within all this. You have the Babylonians primarily using it as a tanning agent and wool-dyeing. The Egyptians used it as a glaze, for pottery, and medicinal/metallurgical uses. Apparently blue beads were making it all the way to China and Scandinavia at this time? The Romans took the metallurgical uses and cranked that up to 11. After the fall of Rome, the Arabs used alum for all the above and Germany was also using it metallurgically, but my research ends here right now.

In the present, alum is still used as a mordant (dyeing agent), but is more often used as a water treatment flocculant (filtering impurities). It's also more rigorously defined as either ammonium, potassium, or sodium hydrous aluminum sulfate. Whether we still mine it is unclear?? It doesn't seem to be the case: we mine aluminum, get aluminum oxide, which either goes to Iceland to be made into pure aluminum, or is sold separately and then added to Na2(SO4) to make alum.

It doesn't really pack the same punch I wanted it to with clothing though, because it's not really used for that. Chromium sulfate is now the primary mordant if you're doing chromium tanning, which is environmentally bad and kind of like nuking a hide to make it tan fast. I guess I can track down where the chromium is coming from, and how they make that.

This isn't even getting involved in plastic production, or rayon, or nylon, or the history of fast fashion and petroleum. I think the end line of this will have to be something vague and unspecific, like "disregarding the non-renewable resources that go into <I want to say artistic, but they're not artistic. The proper term is probably female-driven industries lol> fundamental human tools can lead us to overlook industries that have just as much impact - economically and socially - on geopolitics."

... I can already see the first question on that being, "what are some other non-renewable resources you think have been overlooked?" :') ahh, idk. I've been reading for 30hr. I'm going to go to sleep. I'll run away from the podium or smthg.

to do: I should reread Al-Razi with alum in mind... the translator is not Levey, so I have to chemically check all the names she gives minerals. But I distinctly remember alum coming up several times and tripping me up.

Also chromium sulfate manufacturing/mining; saving this chrome/ferric reference because I haven't seen them written altogether anywhere else.

[snapcracklepop-myjoints]

do u have a reccomendation for what form of shorthand to learn first. deeply interested-- i saw ur reply on that one post and then u seem cool so i just followed u and figured i would ask here

hello !!! thank you for asking !!!!!!!!!! and im so sorry this is so long lol

If you want my biased personal recommendation, I would suggest Pitman New Era. That's what I use, and I think its the best balance of efficiency vs difficulty to learn, and I like that the learning curve is such that, as you learn, you apply more rules that simplify the writing process more (meaning that earlier practice is still legible, if far less efficient). This compared to other forms (like Gregg) where, as you learn, youre just kind of generally suffering and trying to get your brain to memorise things and differentiate very similar looking strokes. I find Pitman also lends itself well to using in conjunction with other "standard" writing styles so you can take notes that are enough in "standard" writing to be skimmable while using enough shorthand to be much faster to write, basically maninmising writeing AND reading speed. [example below]

You can skip to the end for resources for Pitman and shorthand in general if this answer is sufficient :)

If you want a horrifically long, massively autistic answer that breaks down the three most popular/common styles, then thats what the rest of the post is !! It is so fucking long I am so sorry

Horrifically Long Answer:

I'm answering on the assumption that you would be learning for use with english. If you want to learn shorthand for another language there are a variety of options however I am less versed in them :( I'm also assuming you're asking out of personal interest rather than vocational, since certain jobs will recommend or require you learn certain styles of shorthand and it would be best to defer to that.

The most popular methods are Gregg, the various forms of Pitman (this is what I use), and Teeline. Gregg and Pitman are phonemic while Teeline is alphabetical. There are also a huge number of other, less popular forms of shorthand (as well as shorthand systems which are popular in/made for other languages). If you're interested in learning about these, check out the subreddit listed at the end of this post under "resources".

Teeline:

I know much less about Teeline, so I'll go into it less, but basically it is a "spelling-based" shorthand system -- that is, it is based off the standard spelling of words. It replaces latin letters which different forms that are faster to write and can be connected more efficiently, while removing extraneous letters from words. It is simpler to learn, in part because it is spelling-based, and also because it has fewer rules which further consolidate and shorten word forms. Due to this, it is ultimately much slower to write than the other two systems mentioned here (although you can still get up to good speeds !!). Like the other shorthand systems, you can learn to a more basic extent, or learn more advanced theory to maximise its capability and speed. Teeline is very standard for journalism and overall quite popular for professional use, however it is still in copyright and so there are far fewer resources available online. If you are interested in taking classes, however, I would assume those are available.

Teeline TL;DR: alphabetical, simplest to learn but less efficient, popular, still in copyright so fewer resources.

examples of Teeline:

[images sourced from wiki]

Pitman and Gregg: Phonemic Systems and Regional Accents:

As mentioned, Gregg and Pitman are phonemic. If you dont have any practice with phonemic writing systems, you might have luck starting out with shavian just to practice. also because shavian is fun :) (its one of the writing systems in my header !) Im saying this partly because I want more people to learn shavian and partly because I learned Shavian long before I learned Pitman and found that having that practice was helpful. In particular, if you have any accent other than RP, its helpful for figuring out either which vowel sounds and phonetic spellings are relevant to your accent and your pronunciation, or, should you choose to go a "standard" (RP) route, how certain words should be spelled despite how you may pronounce them. Using a "standard" RP approach can be helpful if you want people to more easily be able to read your writing or want to "match" the dictionary, but someone well versed in shorthand should be able to figure it out no matter what, and if its just for your personal use I'd suggest just going by your own regional pronunciations.

Pitman:

Pitman was an early shorthand system developed in the early to mid 1800s. It used to be the most popular shorthand system, however nowadays has been eclipsed in popularity by Teeline and/or Gregg, depending on the country and occupational context. However, it remains popular among enthusiasts and there are significant amount of resources available for learners and practitioners.

The main thing to know with Pitman is that words are built using different strokes for each consonant sound, and symbols attached to these consonants to mark vowels. These consonant sounds are differentiated by shape as well as line thickness. Voiced and unvoiced pairs of consonants (eg., T and D, C and G, S and Z, etc.) are designated using the same strokes, with the voiced consonant of the pair being thicker than the other. This line variation is something which is normally achieved with a pencil, though I mostly use fountain pens to write and so I use flex nibs to achieve the same effect.

Vowels are marked with certain dots or dashes placed along corresponding consonant markings, For increased writing speed, most vowel markings can also be left off in Pitman, and instead where on the line the first stroke begins serves to signal the first vowel.

Pitman uses short forms (also called "logograms" or "grammalogues," depending on the version and book you use) which are abbreviated forms of commonly used words (see picture below for a few examples). Different versions of Pitman have different numbers of grammalogues.

With Pitman, efficiency is increased through a combination of memorising various short forms and implementing rules which simplify strokes. (Examples of these can be seen in the picture below. probably need to click to be able to actually see anything rip) This allows you to have certain "levels" of complexity, where as you learn more complex rules you increase in efficiency, but you can also eschew some of those rules if they are too complex for you without sacrificing legibility to you or proficient practitioners. Probably someone somewhere on reddit has something to say about that but tbh who gives a fuck. You can do whatever you want forever. Its known to be very common for people to come up with their own personal shortcuts and variations in whatever shorthand system they use, and imo sometimes that just means looking at a rule and going "well thats stupid👍" and ignoring it. Pitman can seem really intimidating, however just remember that you can ignore rules for as long as you want until they are less intimidating to learn and apply.

There are 3 "main" versions of Pitman: the original system, Pitman New Era, and Pitman 2000. New Era has the most complex system of rules and abbreviations, while 2000 simplified many of these and got rid of most of the abbreviations. I personally use New Era, in part because I was able to access more resources for this, but largely because I found the increased number of rules and abbreviations to be better in the long run. If you are willing to invest more time and effort into learning a more complicated system, with the tradeoff that it will be faster and easier once you are proficient, you should learn New Era. The main benefit of 2000 is that the rules are simplified. I would say, however, that the downsizing of the list of abbreviations is not a benefit. While it in theory requires you to memorise more individual symbols, in practice these abbreviations are commonly used enough that they can become automatic with very little practice. If you decide to learn 2000, I would suggest taking he time to go through the list of abbreviations from New Era and, if not learning all of them, picking out the ones you think you are likely to use with semi-regularity. If you compile them into a cheat sheet and hand it next to your desk, they should be easy to practice using and become memorised really quickly. I myself dont have every abbreviation memorised, but instead focused on ones i use regularly, and often go through the list again to pick out new ones to learn and add to my lexicon as I think they may be used.

Pitman TL;DR: phonemic, differentiates strokes through line thickness, rules can be applied or discarded as best suits your practice without sacrificing readability. Increased speed and efficiency is achieved through extra short forms for commonly used words, and rules which simplify strokes.

examples of Pitman:

[first image mine, other two images sourced from Long Live Pitman's (website, linked below), and wiki]

Gregg:

Gregg is a very popular form of shorthand which utilises round, smooth strokes with the intent of increasing writing efficiency and legibility.

Where Pitman uses variation in line thickness to differentiate between strokes, Gregg uses line length. Both consonants and vowels are marked with designated strokes (compared to Teeline, which has vowel strokes but tends to omit them where possible, and Pitman, which adds vowel marking to consonant strokes or signals vowels through figure placement), and vowels are largely kept in-line. With Gregg, efficiency is achieved through the use of short forms, prefixes, and suffixes; "phrasing", (wherein certain phrases, such as "I may be," "one of the most," "by the," etc. are combined into a single stroke); as well as through the more efficient way in which strokes are joined together into words.

Left-handed people sometimes write Gregg from right to left.

Like Pitman, there are a number of different versions of Gregg, however Gregg seems to have significantly more versions and significantly less consensus around which version is best or why. I am not the best person to give advice on which one is best or information on the different types, so if you decide to go with Gregg I'd suggest checking out the subreddit or some of the other resources linked below for information on that.

examples of Gregg:

[Images sourced from wiki and gregg-shorthand.com]

Comparisons:

I would say that one of the main things to consider if choosing between Gregg and Pitman is which you think is more intuitive to read and write for you. Which sounds obvious lol but like. as an example. I struggle with spatial awareness and stuff like estimating lengths so for me Gregg is not a good option since it differentiates certain consonants through their length and I would have a hard time writing those consistently or easily reading them. Pitman is easier for me in that regard, as well as since it is more "choppy" (for lack of better word) which makes it much easier for me to recognise certain words without having to break them down, as well as making it easier for me to break them down to read them should I need to. On the other hand, some people find Gregg to be easier since its much "smoother" and flowier to write, which can be much faster and more intuitive for some.

Compared to Pitman, Gregg has significantly fewer rules to learn, making it in theory simpler, however, due to the way it is written, it requires significantly more practice to be able to consistently properly write and tell apart certain letters, words, and phrases. Once you are proficient in this, it is by far more efficient, however Gregg is very difficult to use while you are still figuring it out. Pitman, on the other hand, has significantly more rules, however you can continue to easily use it as you learn these rules and add them into your practice. The downside of this is that once you are fully proficient, it is less efficient than full proficiency Gregg. Essentially, the main difficulty with learning Gregg is telling apart different strokes and writing them so that they can be differentiated, while the main difficulty with Pitman is in learning the rules.

I havent talked much about Teeline because honestly I know far less about it, because it is so much harder to find resources on, and honestly because I'm a bit of an old man and personally prefer the older styles lol. Its popular for a reason, though !

I know it probably sounds like I'm shilling a lot for Pitman, however thats just because its what I use and know the most about, as well as because it is what works best for my unique considerations. Most people would probably be more likely to recommend Gregg (for a number of very good reasons !), however when I was first deciding which shorthand system to learn I saw very few people making the points that were most relevant to me (eg, that pitman can be used AS you learn, whereas Gregg is more of a "its useless until you actually have it down" situation, that Gregg is really difficult if you struggle with differentiating lengths, etc) so I feel the need to mention them

TL;DR: Everything:

Ultimately you should use whatever you think is best for you :) I'd say Teeline is your best bet if you are in journalism, or want something easier. Gregg is best if you want something popular, smoother to write, and extremely fast, and are willing and able to put in significant amounts of consistent work and practice to master it. Pitman is best if you want something you can use as you learn, and that's somewhere in between Teeline and Gregg in terms of difficulty and efficiency. If you wanted, you could probably learn Teeline as well as either Pitman or Gregg, but learning both Pitman and Gregg would be much more difficult.

Other:

I take all my notes by hand, generally using a mix of palmer method cursive and pitman shorthand to do so, however, I also have to write a lot of papers, and when I do, I get frustrated at having to type out whole words I normally write in shorthand. This is kind of the curse of shorthand, you get really annoyed having to type out "because". To deal with this, while typing in a word processor, I use an alphabetic shorthand I've come up with over time. I basically input a bunch of auto-replacements into my spellcheck, so that I can have shortcuts for commonly used words set up. so basically i can write: "here, . cnstrctn ` ntnl idntty served to lgtmse the ntn stte" and it will autocorrect to "here, the construction of national identity served to legitimise the nation state". Highly recommend this if you do a lot of writing, especially if a lot of the same topics and words come up a lot. Use whatever shortened versions feel intuitive for you, instead of something you've consciously + intentionally constructed, otherwise youre more likely to forget them or have them get mixed up.

Resources:

stenophile.com has a huge number of shorthand resources linked, particularly for Gregg and Pitman. If you end up choosing either of these I'd suggest starting here to find instruction books.

this website can transliterate into Pitman and Gregg, DEK and Stolze-Schrey (two German shorthand systems), and Sütterlinschrift (a historical German script)(also in my header !)

r/fastwriting is run by a very nice very dedicated man who posts a huge amount of content and resources on various shorthand methods, including lesser known ones. If you decide you want to learn/learn about a different shorthand system, he's the guy to talk to. This subreddit differs from r/shorthand or system-specific subreddits like r/greggshorthand, as those are more discussion-based for learners and practitioners, while r/fastwriting is better for research and being autistic. R/shorthand does have a number of resources listed for more popular shorthand systems, and is a good place to go for advice while learning.

Teeline:

blog with a few free resources

Pitman:

Pitman New Era Instructor and Dictionary. These are what I largely used to learn.

Long Live Pitman's: a website dedicated to Pitman, full of good information for beginning learners.

if you learn Pitman, as mentioned the line variation can be accomplished with a pencil, however if you want to get a bit fancy with it while staying on a budget, Fountain Pen Revolution carries a number of cheap yet reliable fountain pens with flex nibs, such as the FPR Indus or Himalaya. I'd suggest the steel flex rather than the ultra-flex for shorthand unless you have a lighter hand or have practiced with a flex pen before. I've also heard good things about the Noodler's Ahab pen but honestly find its very temperamental, needs tweaking (not ideal if youre a fp beginner) and just not as good. Both FPR and Noodler's pens are made of bioresin and must be kept away from solvents like isopropyl alcohol !!!

Gregg:

Gregg Phrasebook. Short guide to phraseology for Gregg

Gregg-shorthand.com: seems like a good place to start for learning Gregg. Answers some beginner's questions, and provides learning aids and reading material (transliterated into Gregg)

r/greggshorthand

greggshorthand.gibhub.io: a more in depth website with a number of book pdfs and lessons for various forms of Gregg.