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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • This is actually one of the most mentally damaging parts of my youth, but before Facebook or 9gag or whatever meme-sharing places were prominent, back way when, there was a portal in similar vein but in our language and as such, not international, so the damage wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, in a sense, but I doubt it’d have been a meme if the entirety of the world’s memes were fighting for the same spots in the feeds or whatever.

    Anyway, took me a long time to identify this as a source of some quirks I had, but I’m fine with it nowadays so here you go:

    I went to a music college and was an aspiring musician. Before college, we had a local band that we were able to gig with and it was fun for a time. Then I left for college, which was 600km away, so that couldn’t continue.

    In search of a new band, I initially made the mistake of just posting an ad in a big musician forum (back when we had really busy forums as opposed to centralized social medias 🥴) looking for opportunities. I was, and still am, a metal singer, though back then I could only really growl and scream.

    Well, as it turns out, I had undiagnosed and thus unmedicated/unmanaged adhd, so I went a bit overboard and probably went too in length with it. Classic oversharing.

    I still, to this day, can’t really tell you what was so funny about it, but a screencap of that ad circulated in the meme site we had back then, garnering over 10k reactions (I think they were different kind of emoticons there, and this was before standardized emojis, but anyways, some sort of explicit input), being in the top10 of memes for a week or so I think…

    Luckily the image I attached was from stage and I had my long hair cover my face, so I didn’t really see it in my everyday life, but Jesus was that humiliating to the 16 or so year old me. And I was just getting into the college stuff like parties and all that.

    Later, years after, my roommate told me they did it, the fucking rat 😂

    Anyway, I guess the funny part was the growling teen acting as if they were already a professional in the ad and writing an essay for the ad. I wish I had it saved somewhere, or someone did, but no luck there. Haven’t seen it in over a decade, nearly two, so I bet I’d know what was wrong with it if I had the chance now, but alas, no such luck.

    But that did put me off from a few band interviews for lead singer position and postponed my progress in that regard a lot. We did go on to record albums later with several bands, but I always was very inhibited sort of, really scared to get myself out there, so I always pushed back on any ad campaigns or promo pushes or whatever and we never did break big with any of them.

    I’m fine now and worked through those problems in therapy as an adult, but, well, that’s my story.

    For a second, I was a local meme, luckily not recognizable from it for anyone other than those who knew me.

    I’m so glad we didn’t have social media back then, at least not in the same form as today 😬



  • Yeah, had I the potential to do the same, I’d grab the chance in a heartbeat. It’s both much more lucrative as well as comfortable, allowing working from home or in midst of traveling, or whatever. The flexibility alone would be enough to convince me. Assuming they have the audience already and not just jumping in cold.

    They’ll probably make at least tenfold the money I’ll be making in my entire lifetime, in a couple of years. Certainly more than academics would.

    People here worried about the long term? As if getting a phd and working in academics would ever bring them the money they’ll likely make in a couple of years. If anything, this is the move to make if one is concerned about the long term, especially financially. They’ll be able to retire, probably very early, unlike your average academic.

    Anyone making this very choice, I.e being smart enough for a phd but choosing something else, will have thought about the future and all that comes with it. With sensible investing and whatever, they’ll probably be sailing towards a very comfortable life.

    Why would anyone think choosing the phd would be the more long-term sensible choice? Academics is the same as being a nurse or a teacher: it’s a passion choice. Not a smart choice. Not everything has to be smart either. But it’s certainly going to be so much more future-proof in general.


  • Just to add a view from someone living in a progressive-ish country:

    Religion and differences of religion have never played a big part in my relations with anyone, nor am I aware it has affected anyone else towards me. There are very few fundamentalists here, so nobody seems to care all that much what you believe or don’t believe.

    It’s strange that someone would worry about this. I’m agnostic rather than atheist, but most of my family are very deeply into religion. And my partner is priest by profession. Never has that played a role in our relations, and we do very openly talk about all this occasionally too. They are not trying to convert me, and I’m not trying to convert them. And if nobody wants to convert anyone, there’s very little friction. All it takes is some understanding and empathy, and probably the humility to accept that any of us might be wrong, even one themselves. So nobody’s preaching to anyone, yet we can talk about these things very smoothly and openly if need be, like in regards to children and upbringing etc.

    Disagreeing is healthy. Talking is healthy. Getting offended is not. Neither is trying to force anyone into anything, or even worse, unwarrantedly expecting something from someone.

    So religion has played exactly zero part in this or anything else at least in my personal relations, or those who I know. I don’t think religion has anything to do with children either. Upbringing can be colorful and include everyone’s opinions and views, and the unique stuff just requires some open conversation and compromises from all parties, which is true for everything in life anyway.


  • Just wanted to recommend Luanti (formerly Minetest). Got the whole family playing at the same time eventually, and so I spun a server we can always join individually or together. It’s been really fun, didn’t think I’d like the genre, but it’s pretty zen when it needs to be, yet can have action and exploration too. Especially when trying to watch over and guard the little ones that get a little panicky at times and don’t have the best eye-hand coordination with a keyboard and a touchpad.


  • Anecdotal, and not a woman personally, but I’ve had a similar experience from days long gone; ultimately we ended up trying out different toys and the sucking sort of vibrator with lower settings was what got her past the “block”, but it was via masturbation. We’d only move it to our together time after she got comfortable with the sensation and desensitized, as she described it. In our part of the world the main brand name for this kind of toy was “satisfyer”, not sure if that is global though.

    After a while it all just clicked and it became something more familiar to me too, with fingers and tongue (though she did still prefer sucking over licking, which for me as a young man back then was new, but very much a priceless enlightenment and a much appreciated skill I later had time to hone more) ultimately joining in and it all becoming something more familiar to my less experienced younger self.

    What I’ve learnt since though, is that everyone is so wildly different, that just simply masturbating together, or learning to, if the other party/parties aren’t experienced there, has been key to lasting mutual satisfaction. And people and their needs/wants change over time, that’s also important to keep in mind. And masturbation is the thing that naturally reflects that. Just talk, talk, talk, and then experiment. Try and keep an open mind, and try to be accommodating. Change and new things take time. Try your best not to get frustrated or load too much expectations into the process. And try and understand the other party/parties are the ones having a harder time coming to terms with the fact that they could not meet your initial expectations. They have a lot of pressure due to this, though it’ll ultimately be mutually beneficial.

    Also I’ve noted that it’s so easy to fall prey to thinking that you’re the one giving or somehow “improving” their life here, but this is, in fact, your need that needs to get satisfied. You want her to feel things she does not currently. It’s not a bad thing, this is how life is when you share it with someone, but do not think you are being the giving party here. This is your need, which she either chooses to accommodate and figure out together, or not. And you might best start accepting that this experiment might not lead anywhere, and that you might have to change your expectations accordingly.


  • As a young(er), morbidly curious and then still fairly naive dumbass, I went and clicked on some questionable link on a Reddit thread, and was introduced to something known as “Funky Town”.

    That shit set me straight pretty well, been avoiding everything even remotely suspiciously feeling it might be or explicitly is gore-related, but the imagery alone still haunts me to this day, not to mention all the other stuff like imagining how any of the people involved must feel, both emotionally and physically.

    I debated mentioning this by name for a fair bit, but I think this thread is specifically for this kind of thing, so I’ll leave it. Anyone clicking here is expecting horrifying things, so it won’t catch anyone off guard. But I STRONGLY RECOMMEND NOBODY GOES LOOKING FOR THIS SPECIFIC THING. You will not get it out from behind your eyes. Seriously.


  • Yours is a somewhat more cynical way of writing it down, but the underlying mindset is one I share.

    I prefer to see it as not expecting anything from anyone, rather than expecting them to disappoint you. It’s basically the same, but doesn’t feel as cynical.

    It truly changes your life though, no matter how you see it. I can’t remember myself having been, in real life, angry or disappointed in people in great many years. Life is just so much better without those feelings, which seems obvious, but you can’t really emphasis that enough still.

    It took me years of self-reflecting and “finding myself” in the process of overcoming a years-long bout of clinical depression. It’s not easy, but I do believe everyone can find that mindset, given enough effort and perseverance. Sisu.



  • The latter is actually a good point. I had almost forgotten how constant and combative reddit was at times with the far-right peeps and incels and whatnot. At the time it had become so normal, one didn’t even think about it. Maybe offer alternative ideas (= argue) a while or just ignore, but now that you mention it, I don’t think there has been many situations like that here, for me at least. Not to say that the enlightened centrists aren’t very much the same in practice, and those I face here every now and then. They just aren’t nearly as bad in substance.




  • Yeah, the two aren’t equivalent and the original has more conditions than the new one, so without context this just doesn’t make sense in this example.

    A is “” only when B is also “”, otherwise we return f()

    In the new one we simply say that regardless of what B is, we’ll just call f(), entirely skipping the case where B == “”.

    Probably this specific condition checking was moved to the inner scope of f(), but this example does not tell us (who don’t know the context) that. Or maybe the check is redundant, but that also isn’t signaled in any way.

    Or then maybe I’m just oblivious to the optimization, in which case I can see why the maintainer would take their time figuring that out. It’s not anything obvious based on that alone, at least to me, and I would say I have some experience in this field.

    Edit: But yeah this is basically just semantics, I’m sure they gave apt description in the PR, so the context would be explained there and none of this really matters. I just like to ruminate about little things like this for some reason. Didn’t mean to imply they didn’t do a good PR, just that this specific example was either confusing or confused.