Nepenthe

Nepenthe , 1 month ago

Well yeah, of course the problem here would be child support and not divorce is functionally impossible in Missouri.

Nepenthe , 1 month ago

That was very nearly my exact same thought. Maybe not for curious children with carrot-sized fingers, but for adults, how convenient! Business competitor's body won't quite fit in your fancy frunk? Just while away on your phone for about 10 minutes, let the cat do its magic, and off go the legs! Travel-sized!

Nepenthe , 2 months ago

From the US: I'm over 30 and this is the first time I've heard surrogacy referred to as human trafficking. And now I need to sit and think.

It's always felt a little bit creepy to me, but I've also never wanted kids and the idea of pregnancy for any reason would be traumatic. So I'm starting out heavily biased. I think if you take the money out, it no longer counts....?

But the idea would be so out of left field that it would mostly be dismissed out of hand, probably even by most women.

Nepenthe , 2 months ago

Middle-age would be in your 40s-50s. Not to diss my dead relatives too hard, but you're thinking of old fucks that would have any solid opinion on that. In a handful of years, the music middle aged men will be up in arms about is *NSYNC.

Nepenthe , 2 months ago

Remember, if the thick cloud emitted by the egg only drifts upwards, it's probably no good.

No, this graphic really is solid advice for people to know, but damn if it could have been designed with a little more forethought. Imagine, for instance, if the reader is yellow/blue colorblind. They could make a guess at what's happening, but they may not quite be sure. Arrows are doing 99% of the lifting, here.

Nepenthe , 2 months ago

Christ, do you understand how big this could be if anyone would let it? (they won't)

Even a ton of "more environmentally friendly" textiles are as bad if not somehow worse than their already destructive counterparts. I ran the numbers once in an argument and a recyclable shopping bag requires a little over 70 uses just to break even with the comparable pollution it took to make it, but most people who even use them throw them out after less than 20.

God, I wish it said anything about how resilient it is as clothing in comparison to regular leather. I've known about the making of lab-grown ghost hearts and stuff through a similar method for a while now, but this never even occurred to me. I know next to nothing about bacteria, clearly.

Sadly, there's still too much money in doing anything else, I'd bet. So many companies put too much effort into PR, greenwashing and general slavery to want to move over, and this would affect more industries than one.

Nepenthe , 2 months ago

Things like, say, an increased need for vitamin D supplements in colder climates, because you need sunlight to manufacture vitamin D to make serotonin and the increased melanin blocks what little sun is available way up north? Sure. That one is a difference off the top of my head that people really just don't think about.

Kidney function is provably not one of them and never was, so you're gonna have to fuck off with that. I usually make a conscious, concerted effort to be a better person than I was on reddit, but you already admitted in another comment that you don't know shit about medicine and you seem bothered in the opposite direction regardless.

So with the possibility of this topic being your emotional support knowledge base out of the picture, the only horse you logically seem to have in this is that seeing ethnic minorities demand that we stop allowing them to die by reason of nothing annoys you to have to listen to.

If that's not the case, I might be a bit quieter and rephrase everything you said forever, because it does not look like you want it to look. If it IS the case, get the fuck off my platform.

Nepenthe , 2 months ago

A lot of people you read about who grew to be leaders in their field by some ridiculous age like 25, spoke fluently in 5 different languages, etc. etc. did so because they had three things: dedicated one-on-one tutors, an appreciable collection of slaves and/or other general servants to free up their personal time, and enough family wealth to pay for both from the time they could walk.

Mozart was composing as a toddler, but he also came from a wealthy family of musicians that taught him basically nothing else. Ever. That was the one thing. He hyper-specialized in music and socially he was the guy that got bored and did cartwheels and meowed in public. If Mozart was in your position, with the kind of loving care and finances most students have today, he would have been the kid in class who beatboxes over the teacher.

I'm actually still coming to terms with this myself. with mixed success. I've always loved art, but I've never been where I want to be. I've been making strides again, but the further I take it, the more it becomes apparent that 90% of the problems I've ever had with it were not me, they were because no one ever bothered to teach me. And I'm pissed about the decades I lost simply because child me was never shown concepts that would have changed everything.

Do not judge your own accomplishments on the same scale as someone who had ample time to devote to their studies because their family had house slaves doing everything you have to do by yourself.

Nepenthe , 2 months ago

On the one hand, I feel really proud that I got under your skin so much that mine is the only contribution you've ever replied to in the 7 months that whole account has even existed. Someone just clearly isn't having a good day if that's the one thing that set off a professional lurker.

But also, like....I thought about this all through my quesadilla and it's just really sad? Is this like Incel Logic: Hobby Edition, where you're either born perfect and flawless or you're a permanent shit failure and therefore whichever way the coin falls, you never have to work at anything? Like Big Education is a trillion dollar industry now, and really society is divided up Airbender style and you just didn't get the CalArts gene?

There's only one kind of person I can see falling for this weak-ass angle, and it's the kind of person who's never taken up any recreation for more than 1-2 days in their whole life because they don't start out amazing at it and you can't fail at anything if you never do shit. And honestly, I'm kinda bummed out that you have to live like that. You know you can just look up tutorials for anything these days.

Nepenthe , 3 months ago

It probably takes me that long just to wash and rinse my hair.

Nepenthe , 3 months ago

True. Problem is, I would consider the question still valid on the basis that not every embryo successfully implants.

IVF can up the odds of success by using multiple embryos at the same time in the hopes that at least one of them will work, which is why people who go for IVF sometimes end up having quadruplets and such.

So every time one or more IVF attempts fail, what, they have to inform the government their 7th child in a row has died? Every post-coital period, do I hedge my bets?

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

I had to scroll back up just because she's so pretty. That's a quality cat, right there, and she knows it.
11/10 would kiss on her lil forehead.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

Definitely south of you, since for me as a kid the frost would kick in from October and you couldn't expect snow until very late November/early December on through February. By then, it could snow, but in my experience it was mostly turning to sleet. Christmas was always white and we always got a couple feet.

Not enough to dig tunnels in like my mom used to do in Chicago. The mountains to the east protect us from the worst of it. But enough to make one snowman after another, all with the initial base larger than a 10yr old is tall, until we were all too frozen to stay outside. We could go sledding. We could build protective snowball forts if we took the time.

I haven't seen the snow for 14 years, and both those times were technically one state north. One of those, even, was so pitiful we settled for a medium turtle on my end and what my brother touted as the world's smallest snowman balanced in his open hand.

My aunt has denied climate change my entire life up until 6 years ago when I finally got her to admit something may be odd. We were out in the parking lot, about to pick up my Xmas present in mid-December. It was 75F.

I don't hear the birds like I used to.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

It's really a mix of both. More heavily the way the site has been for years because people love drama more than anything else. If you want the sweet serotonin of karma, you've gotta be simultaneously the funniest, meanest, and most jaded person in the room, and everyone is jockeying for that position.

It just breeds assholes by design. I've noticed my own behavior has changed, too, since leaving that place, although partially that's because I just didn't want to be like that anymore.

But it really has been noticeably affected since the protests. I was originally trying to stay for one single sub I was in, because they were the kindest, calmest community I'd met since back when forums were a thing.

Just the best group, for reasons none of us really understood and some of us kept trying to find psychological commonalities to explain. Truly 98% of them were people I'd chill with irl and I still know a few on discord. And also here. If you're reading this, hello!

But the migration away was enough to completely alter the atmosphere imo. A lot of the more conscientious users left for other pastures, leaving behind those that were more neutral or even openly hostile about the protests.

There began to be fights and insults thrown where before this, any aggression had been unusual. The posts took a turn that reflected that feeling and I really stopped bothering with the place after a few months. I'm still a bit sad about it and there are things that I miss, but there just wasn't enough to hold me anymore. It seemed to increasingly echo every other part of the site.

For the moment, this place is quieter but better. We still get dumb shit every now and then, but it's not to the same degree and hopefully never will be. As above, I blame the demographic. We've grouped all the people with stubborn morals into a little room and it turns out they have things in common. I do miss a couple people I used to see everywhere all the time when kbin first ramped up, but we run in different circles and they've gotten lost in the crowd.

And yes, btw, I am also going to name you one of my favorite users to see around. You seem as kind as you are prolific.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

My dad would have been a boomer. Guy did have the advantage of entering the workforce during a time when it was still not only possible but even normal to expect to hold the same job for decades, but that and a kid who cared about him were about all he ever had to his name. And then he lost the job too.

He fought hard as shit, but with zero legs up and several of them permanently down, he never managed anything resembling the life he (or anyone else) hoped for, and after he died, the palliative nurse told his remaining family he was better off.

Being born in a lucky generation makes it easier, but it doesn't guarantee one has it easy. It's not an age group, it's a behavior. Not that we aren't already in the Find Out stage, for that to matter. But the fewer people under the impression all the bad people are going to die out, the better.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

Oh no. Kinda seems like we should be funneling money into welfare, huh. Maybe something livable so those that can't find or maintain employment aren't digging in the trash? Bad times for anyone who expected perpetual growth.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

This. This was the moment that I found out that the eldest of gen Alpha, the babies after the babies who can only be so young as to be entirely theoretical like they were when we collectively decided on the name, are thirteen now.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

It is santa. You think my own parents would just lie to me for over 30 years!? To hand the credit to someone imaginary? Doesn't make a shred of sense.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

11yr old me would have disagreed

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

Right? At that point, if you're making drama out of it, you're either pirating on misguided principle alone because you're Ayn Rand's petulant zombie, or you didn't have that money to burn anyway. Your account is at zero.

Here I was, thinking it would be some insane hike like a $12 game jumping to $50, for "pirate it, then" to even be a meaningful response. No. It's a $2 increase from...the equivalent price of chicken nuggets.

This was a painfully slow day at the newsroom.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

He could theoretically whip up a mob, if things were bad enough and enough people decided they were bored. Crowds attract bigger crowds, but it really doesn't even take a large one to become a physical threat worthy of law enforcement in the....apparently depressingly likely event of.

Though I hesitate to think best case was the intended phrasing here.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

Crows can hunt in packs, and they're known to mob enemies. They'll even distract otters while another crow sneaks up and takes all their fish.

I would think it stranger if the goings-on of a tiny, flaccid, xenophobic asshole crow screaming crow racisms under some tree by itself didn't pique the interest of others.

Also, gtfo of my notifications, Enduring. (Pls do not gtfo of my notifs, it's always amusing to run into you out and about. Hope you guys are feeling any type of better)

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

Not even solely relegated to old people, either, unless the fediverse thinks 30-40 is old. We had one woman come by our shit little dollar store about 20 minutes after we'd closed. So, long enough for us to start counting out, cleaning, etc., but not long enough to go home yet.

Noticed the door was locked. Noticed those of us not still busy were hanging out and chatting while we waited, surreptitiously watching this person. Visibly read the store hours. Tried the lock again.

Started prying open the door while we all stared in horror, ended up breaking it, then threw a whole fit to boot because we couldn't sell her anything with all the tills in the back room and we kept trying to kick her out for some reason.

She wasn't even high. She was just that entitled, because very often for suburban moms, the rules don't apply if you don't let them.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

The manager of that store was the same one who, to name just a few occasions:

• Disregarded safety and climbed up the boxes herself when doing truck, resulting in a large container being dislodged from the top and landing directly on an employee's face, breaking his nose. She begged him not to tell, and he really should have. While I can't say that she 100% wouldn't have paid him off, he was also just really nice.
• Made fun of another employee's weekly pay in front of all their coworkers. It was only in the double digits because they'd had the flu for weeks.
• When a customer bought a candy bar, stood there in line and ate the entire thing, then immediately demanded a full refund because they "didn't like it," forced me to complete that refund because the customer is always right.
• Calmed a different customer over the holiday rush by publicly and very loudly threatening to fire me. The complaint had been quite simply that I (quote) "wasn't smiling enough" and this must have ruined this person's entire holiday spirit. Unbeknownst to the customer but fully known to my boss, I had just cremated my brother two weeks ago. The PTSD from that year's rush is just barely starting to fade twelve years later.

In short, the manager of this particular store would do whatever action was the cruelest to others with the least amount of effort on her part, but then fall all over herself to brown nose A Customer.

No, I'm not aware she was made to pay for the door. She very likely would have been allowed to shop if she physically could have.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

Oh no, it's much funnier with about 10 years and 200 miles between me and that moment, I assure you. In a faintly bitter way, but I'm willing to entertain.

Nepenthe , 5 months ago

Otherwise known as: "what if everyone's abusive ex ran the government?"

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

Fable does this too. At least the third one. I'd married a beggar with the honest intention of lifting up one of my kingdom's most socially aware instead of settling for some brainless, peacocking noble, and all he did with his time on the throne was become a national embarrassment on the same old street corner.

So. Remembering the existence of this "Henry VIII" achievement that I'd thought I was never gonna bother getting. I took my beloved beggar-king down to the treasury, positioned him at the very top of the overflowing pile of gold he always seemed to forget we had, and shot him in the head. And then I started thinking about that achievement.

There were a lot of NPCs that really did bug me.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

I was just thinking the same thing. More than the usual amount of love went into that one, and most people probably wouldn't even stop to notice. The subtle fade-out at the top. That is some pleasing vomit.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

So much for that "stay in school" speech...

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

Relevant Dr. Glaucomflecken

Nepenthe , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Originally it was, with a more guilt-trippy headline, but like with most propaganda people like this come up with, I fail to see the problem.

Imagine your parents giving you the chance to be born and grow up in actual Heaven, having never been at the mercy of...gestures vaguely at everything....and that's supposed to be bad parenting.

That's apparently the evil option. The good parenting option is the one with all the murder and starvation and the constant risk of sin and therefore hell. You're giving your child the opportunity to go to hell if you have it here, instead of just automatically sending it to heaven like you could.

I want the best for my child.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

Only people I like, which is none of them

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

Fantastic. That had to be so painful for the rest of the party to watch.

May I also have a D&D story and/or perhaps a picture of some woodworking about which you are proud? Or one which you have at least failed at hard enough to be funny?

I love listening to people talk about their hobbies. I may not understand a third of it, but the passionate energy someone gets when they're all excited is contagious

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

It's not especially surprising to hear. Women are raised their whole lives to play emotional support with everyone.

Which is also why all their friends invariably turn into unrequited love: they're just treating their guy friend identically to how they treat their women friends, but the guy's never received the basic decency of consideration unless it was romantic.

But men are trained to problem solve whatever they can't stuff down and ignore, aren't they? And from what I've heard, hanging out generally prohibits anything emotionally heavy?

They're logically in the same position you are. I would find it hard to believe at least one person among them doesn't relate. It would make more sense to me to wonder if they just...have no idea how to be supportive. A distressing number of grown men can't even put a name to their feelings beyond "sad" and "pissed off."

What do they do if you just..tell them you feel like that? A friend who doesn't care to address what you're going through or to rectify that kind of relationship disconnect when it's brought up isn't really a friend. Maybe an acquaintance at best.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Imagine any of this rhetoric was used for issues like black women and their sky high mortality rate during childbirth, lack of attention towards Asian hate crimes, ignoring of natives women murders, or police brutality towards black men. That we have other things to deal with so it’s all on them to fix it.

Historically speaking, it is.

I think ideally, waiting around for The Correct Group to fix a known problem is insane and pointless as fuck. And you're right, both on paper and with a morality any non-sociopathic 2nd grader should be able to manage.

I also think there's a substantial bitterness among women that does deserve to be there. We've been left to fix every problem we have more or less by ourselves, and had to pay dearly for every inch of it. I say, as we visibly stand here losing ground again.

Women weren't allowed to vote? Couldn't serve in the army? Hold jobs? We protested til we could.

We had no public bathrooms, forcibly leasing us to a set vicinity from our own home? We made two associations about it, men destroyed a model bathroom by driving a cab through it, and the idea only finally took hold because of cholera.

Couldn't divorce? We murdered abusive husbands we couldn't escape and continued lobbying. Same with controlling our own money.

Couldn't wear pants? We wore them anyway, often in the face of sustained verbal and physical abuse, until men just got used to us wearing different clothing.

Every women's scholarship was left behind by a woman who didn't get a scholarship, found success anyway, and left a ladder for others who needed it. Men aren't doing this nearly as often for reasons I don't understand.

The first battered women's shelters in Japan? Started by women. Australia, Germany, Italy? The UK and the US? All women. The first in the US was a random storefront with an apartment in the back that a handful of women repurposed. It was initially run entirely on donations they got from selling crafts. The police didn't appreciate it and rarely if ever lifted a hand except to show a dangerous amount of indifference to threats.

On its face, it's venomous to see a problem and tell someone to just deal with it themselves. In reality, we have done all of this ourselves, always with significant pushback.

This is where we are when the other half of the planet swears up and down they can't do exactly the thing that we did. Yes, you can. If you need shelters, so did we and we opened them. We were forced to stand up for ourselves if we wanted anything fixed, and we did so.

Now, whenever this comes up, men want us to fix their problems for them too. Especially egregious since a lot of times, they're the ones society takes at all seriously. They're the ones with the funding, not that that was ever a valid excuse for us. We can barely get y'all to treat us like fellow humans if we stick y'all in prison for it and even that isn't helping, but your work is still being laid at our feet.

Every time we so much as suggest men compliment and support each other, they snap straight to whining and explaining it would really feel better if it came from women and what if someone thinks they're gay. THEN BE GAY.

I don't think I can begin to describe how frustrating that is, and the kind of bitter anger that it breeds. Nothing is stopping you.

I'll admit, as dismissive as it looks, part of me was reading the head comment and going, "so why don't you just....start a group? There's clearly a niche, surely they aren't the only one in that entire state going through this."

We care. Sometimes brutally. It's not like we can't relate to what that's like, you know? But you're not, as a class, less capable than we were. It isn't whether we morally should, it's the constant allegation that men's problems MUST belong to us and no one else. Along with also our problems, also usually courtesy of the same men.

This was never the kind of thread to be writing shit like this. Certainly not suicide, I have a military buddy who's the last one standing out of his entire squad, that all committed suicide, and he won't goddamn go to therapy.

But the experience, as always, of begging men to do anything at all to fix any issue they are having is. Maddening.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

Well. That will teach me not to scroll before reading the article. Thought everyone was real chill about strip searching Belgian kids for some reason.

What the fuck, by the way. What are they even trying to accomplish aside from A Racism? The kid's parents being refugees, they still retain indefinite residency with an option for citizenship down the line.

The child itself would be growing up there for at least a few years and could do the same once they hit adulthood. They're still able to reunite with family like the Foreigners' Office is complaining about.

I could see closing a loophole for anchor babies even if I don't entirely approve of such, but this is brazenly, solely Palestinians?

Nepenthe , 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Which seems to be what they're taking advantage of here. Palestinians currently fall under Jordan's nationality laws, which dictate that

Individuals born to a Jordanian father are automatically Jordanian nationals at birth regardless of birthplace. The status is not transferrable by descent to children of Jordanian mothers unless the fathers are stateless or their nationalities are unknown. For nationality purposes, Palestinian fathers are never recognized as stateless whether they hold citizenship of any state or not.

From my limited understanding, purely because they are the children of Palestinian refugees, Belgium can't make them stateless.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

Are you suggesting that Belgium may counter-rule that any adult stepping foot in their borders automatically loses Jordanian nationality, in direct opposition to the latter country's own internationally recognized laws and to the immediate detriment of Belgium?

.....Sure, that might as well happen. Nothing else makes any sense on this goddamn planet.

"Fuck you!" foreign country forcibly claims you as a citizen Wait, I think I just reinvented colonization

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

Ok. Mini-rant because I can't contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I've been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.

Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I'm quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they're the type that only hates what they make because they're the one who made it.

Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you're Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don't even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn't what you saw in your head (it never is).

Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what's in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand -- this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.

When you've got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you're able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.

Barring that, my second choice is singing.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

Unless they were born or raised with empathy, which is an obvious no, nothing bad happens to them if they're terrible. A ton of enjoyable things happen, even.

At that point, you're weighing the opportunity to do whatever you feel like at no consequence against doing what other people tell you to do for none of your own benefit (the only measurement that matters). Technically at a moderate cost to the one reigning themselves in. Under the looming threat of nothing if you do not comply.

I know the question was purely rhetorical and born out of the same frustration that I have. But I wish we'd drop this weird notion the more humanitarian of us seem to default to, like people who do this shit just haven't had the golden rule properly explained to them yet. They know. And they've figured out it's currently a farce.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

If it were always women doing it and predictably always women throwing a fit when abuse were talked about? Yeah. Next question.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

No, a burrito to the face is physical abuse. Being verbally and physically abused every day of your job is not how jobs are supposed to work, and viewing things like that as silly small things to be affected by is itself pretty damaging.

If I lean across the counter and punch you in the head, you're allowed to have some kind of feeling about that. Especially in a setting that heavily discourages and may even punish defending yourself, the way retail often does.

Convincing yourself it's fine because the world is cruel keeps the world cruel. More importantly, it keeps you from considering you deserve anything other than cruelty. We need to care about each other.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

While it is funny, I don't think that the punishment for her in this article will really amount to much. If she had the kind of empathy necessary to relate that experience with what she put others through, she wouldn't have done it in the first place.

Whatever customers like herself that she comes across, I think it's a 50/50 whether she spends her time doing nothing but exacerbating problems and causing regular scenes or siding with "her people" and breaking rules, stealing, etc. out of spite.

Agree with MrShankles it has to be under threat of breaking probation to even work. Ultimately, she needs more reform than just receiving identical abuse in turn.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

In that case, I also choose NZ, 802 years ago.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

Almost never had the pleasure, but I believe one of the main tipoffs that you're dreaming is whatever text you're looking at will be illegible. And they are expecting coding to happen.

Though the more interesting screw up is there exists any CEO anywhere that honestly believes I'm not going to use this for porn.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

do any of these corpos ever think

No.

Nepenthe , 6 months ago

I am so absolutely not doing that, no. Maybe it's a whole pound of free cocaine. Maybe god finally smiled on me and it's a very ill-planned potato chip bomb like that experiment where you use a whole potato to power a light bulb. Probably it's some kid's lost gravel collection.

Whatever it is, it's not going to be something whoever had the can last was dying for anyone to have and I don't get paid enough to care.