You know what, I really should revisit my building-pirate-radios-in-the-garage-at-10pm phase from when I was 15-19. That was a good phase.

HOW HAVE I NEVER NOTICED THIS

LAYTON USES TU FOR FUTURE LUKE BUT SWITCHES TO VOUS THE SECOND CLIVE'S IDENTITY IS REVEALED.

Tu and vous both mean you but Tu implies closeness : in the entirety of Unwound Future, Layton only ever uses Tu with Flora, the Lukes and Claire

as a kid in utah, i remember really clearly that touch typing was a thing schools started teaching you as early as second grade, but my friends in arizona just. didn't ever learn and some of them are now teaching themselves to as adults. so now im kind of curious...

(It doesn't matter if their lessons actually stuck for you, I'm just curious if they even tried lol. feel free to also add in tags when they started teaching you and/or what general area of the country you live if you're comfortable!)

would LOVE to know full details to the culture difference bestie when you've got the time because I'm kinda just a sucker for that. also. were we too nice for you tell me more about that

here we gooooo here's a rundown of the top things that were really jarring to me as a brit in america!

kinda dumb that i feel the need to say this but ive been burned before: americans, if you're going to send me shit about this list, please first reread what you've typed and ask yourself 'am i addressing this person as an actual real life adult that not only has experienced both countries she speaks about but also has perfectly functioning social skills that allow her to navigate what is and isn't a culture difference, or am i talking to her like a condescending little prick?' this includes messages like 'americans aren't actually ___, we're just ___ which clearly went over your head as a silly foreigner :)' do u understand how condescending messages like that are as the person who was there? this list is me saying what was strange to me AS A BRIT IN AMERICA. it is a comparison, not an objective statement of something ive decided is a fact about your culture. im not writing this so people can try and like. educate me on all the things i missed because america was just soooo complex. okay? stunning

you guys were SO nice like i think the best way i can contextualise this for an american is that the first time i felt actually comfortable (not that i was uncomfortable otherwise but i mean in a social sense) was when we were in new york city. no one looked at me no one wanted to talk to me people were shouting and being rude to each other it was just like home <3 the way americans are friendly is just so intense and it took me a good while to stop being so bowled over by it. like if you met someone one time they'd try and hug you and i found that very very strange

americans generally talk about their feelings a lot more and i dont even mean just from the people i interacted with bc that very well might have been because i just got on well with them so we were talking honestly, but even on commercials and things you guys talk about mental illnesses and such like it's a grocery shop whereas in england there's still very much a stiff upper lip culture about that kind of thing

you guys do speak louder. like objectively even 'quiet' americans were louder than most brits and would be glared at in public if we were in england just bc of the volume they were speaking at. you also inflect more. again i think this is another thing that boils down to americans being very bright and intense while the english are renowned for not wanting anyone to look at them ever. like a bug under a rock

FREE REFILLS!! i have not shut up about this but if you order a coffee somewhere then you have in fact ordered UNLIMITED COFFEE. the first time a waitress leaned over me to fill my coffee up i flinched away from her bc i was like what in god's name are you doing

if you try and make a hot drink in america then you are taking your life in your hands. you have to filter the water, find whatever apparatus this specific house uses to boil water, remind yourself that americans have a vendetta against milk so you have to use creamer which is 'exactly like milk' but 'you wouldnt drink it like milk' so what the fuck is going on there, and then by the time everything's done you want to go out back to curl up and die like an old dog. dont get me started on tea

one thing i thought was cute is that you guys say 'come get in the AC' the same way we would say 'come get out of the rain' like that's such a cute little human thing i think

AC itself is such a godsend but me not being used to it was kind of baffling to americans. boom's brother asked me what my ideal AC temp was at home and i just. looked at him bc i didnt even know where to start with that

it took me WEEKS to stop trying to get in the driver's side of the car

american ignorance is a very real very frustrating thing. 'whats that thing they do in europe-' idk bc ive never been to all of europe. 'when i went to europe-' where in europe. it is a continent. i got asked if we have fireworks in europe. bonfire night is older than the founding of america. there's just a genuine belief amongst americans that they're not even AWARE of (because it would be smart, nice americans that i genuinely liked saying these things) that america is the most elite country in the world and is the only place to have certain things

speaking of the european thing with americans, the fact that 'travelling to europe' is typically a bragging right over there and is seen as quite an upper class thing is very interesting. a lot of the times people would be bragging TO ME and it would go over my head bc id be like 'well anyone can go to spain'. i feel like shagaluf would give americans an aneurysm

the sheer size of america never truly registered with me until i was there like i cannot wrap my head around it. the uk can fit in lake michigan 4 times. you guys have cargo ships on lakes. the roads just go straight for miles and miles and miles. you have every environment and weather possible. literally obsessed

capitalism is actually way more intense in america. like yeah it makes sense america is thee capitalist country but i guess i thought because i was coming from a western capitalist country myself that it wouldnt change much. but like. billboards on roads. adverts while you pump gas. there is someone selling u something everywhere u look

tipping was so hard 😭 i knowwww it's necessary i understand the econ behind it all but i was so stressed all the time because of it 😭

YOUR STARBUCKS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN OURS

i knew i was going to have to change the way i spoke in america bc of obvious things (my accent isnt The British Accent that americans recognise, i use a lot of slang etc) but it surprised me just how much i had to change. like by the end of it i wasnt using any slang and i was enunciating every letter because i was just so tired of saying something just for boom to have to literally translate bc like? it was no fault of theirs or mine or even the person i was talking to but it just made me feel Weird and Odd and most surprising of all was that it made me feel stupid? and i guess that's bc i get a lot of shit for my accent over here too so im oversensitive to it but ive never properly felt more like a foreigner in a different country than i did trying to talk to americans

sarcasm. im just. like the running joke is that americans dont get sarcasm and id have actually preferred that i think bc what instead happened is you guys have AMERICAN sarcasm and it just. made no fucking sense to me at all. i literally did not get american humour even slightly it was probably my biggest thing when i was over there like i literally felt like entire conversations were going over my head. british humour is very dry so not only did i not get american humour but sometimes MY humour would be misinterpreted as well and the entire thing was just very strange lol

RIGHT ON RED????? RED MEANS STOP???? WHAT ARE YOU DOING????

2024 reads / storygraph

Walking In Two Worlds & The Everlasting Road

YA sff set in the near future where an opensource augmented reality is commonly used like social media, and there’s also a completely virtual fantasy game version

follows an Anishinaabe girl who who’s the top player in the VR game, and is constantly fighting to keep her place against the misogynist neo-nazi group in second place

as well as her real life, dealing with being a shy and self-conscious teen growing up on the Rez, and her brother having cancer

and a Uyghur boy who’s moved to her community from China after finding acceptance in an online community (even when he doesn’t agree with their more extreme views) - but when he gets to know Bugz, he has to decide who truly deserves his loyalty

great mix of sff and culture, the future while also very real community traumas of the past (and present)

Do you think they neuter mutants at the facility

you sent this ask to the wrong blog ❤️ the pafl confessions blog is here ❤️live laugh love

I think I cried harder today over my dad's jackets than I did at his deathbed. That was a miserable time of course, a memory that will likely be seared into my brain until I die, but I cried... I think a normal amount, all things considered. More than I ever usually do of course, but I typically don't cry At All. All this free crying is certainly surreal.

The jackets, though. I was put in charge of doing his laundry, because we don't want to pack up dirty clothes. I was expecting it to be unpleasant bc my dad's dirty clothes - gross. But really, it was much more unpleasant in that... those were his. It felt wrong to touch them. Felt wrong to treat his jackets as gross. Because they were just his jackets. They weren't even in the hamper. And then I was remembering him wearing them, and then I was crying. Again. And again. Weeping over these damn jackets.

Then I found a shirt on his bed that still smelled like him. It smelled like a Hug From Dad. And that set me off crying even harder.

In total, I think I cried like 6 times within 40 minutes. It took me that long to finish sorting the damn clothes bc I just. Was a wreck. Like, what are you supposed to do when you're living life like normal, vaguely hopeful bc you're taking steps to secure your own happiness, and then 4 days later you're sorting your dad's laundry because he fucking died. Suddenly. Without a goodbye.

And you have to worry about his lack of a will (even under an ideal situation, only 2 heirs and no conflicts between us, probate's a fucking Bitch), and arranging the funeral, and prepping his obituary, and picking out pictures, and writing a speech bc you want to talk at his funeral, of Course you want to talk at his funeral, but even just thinking about anecdotes you could share has you crying yet again.

I've cried more times in the past 3 days than likely the entirety of last YEAR. And that's WITH my cat, and uncle, and family friend dying. Those all hurt, my uncle most of all, & I was real fucked up over it. But this? This was my Dad. Likely the person I'd have named 2nd closest to me in my life, second only to my sister. He wasn't perfect, but he did so much for me throughout my entire life. All he wanted was to raise us to be happy and independent. And he accomplished it, we're getting by without him, but we still wanted several more decades with him. He was only 57. We should've gotten several more decades with him.

But here we are now. Playing investigators to his life, digging into all his shit, trying to find documents and take inventory of all his things, and learning Many things about him in the process. In his lockbox of sensitive documents, like his SSN and birth certificate and all that stuff, we found an old letter. About a decade old now, written in my hand. Right at the very top, we found that he'd kept the letter I wrote to him telling him frankly about my struggles and the things I wanted him to do better. He kept it. He tried to take it to heart. He looked at it again, sometime more recently than all the rest of the documents. That was on top.

His love for us is evident everywhere. The pictures he has hanging up all over the place, majority of them with us in them. The old fathers day cards placed on display in his bedroom bookshelf. The gifts we gave him, even stupid little knick knacks, placed around his apartment with pride. I wish we'd taken more videos of him. I don't want to forget the sound of his voice. I don't want to forget his smell either, the smell of a Hug From Dad, but I still tossed that shirt into the wash even though it felt like saying yet another goodbye.

It's the suddenness that hurts the most, I think. We were planning on having him help me finally get my license this year. My final words to him, the last thing he would've seen from me, were messages asking up on whether he'd called his car insurance company to make sure there wouldn't be problems. I should've called him more. I don't know if I'm going to learn from this.

I cut my 2 weeks off early to have time to grieve and to work on things for the funeral and settling the estate. The last thing I'd wanna do right now is selling fucking bubble tea in a job I already decided to leave. So here I am without a job, though with potentially two life insurance policy payouts to come. Inheriting half his 401k. Inheriting couches, knickknacks, keepsakes, paintings, art pieces, maybe even his guitar and other furniture if we can figure out what to do about space (I don't have room for this furniture, I don't know if I even have room for the couches, but God do I want to keep so much of this furniture). It has me even considering keeping one of his guns, just one. A tiny little revolver, it sits so comfortably in my hand. I don't even want to use it for anything. I just want to have it, keep it stored in a drawer with its ammo kept separate. I don't like guns, but this is a part of him. He loved collecting guns. He was about as responsible with them as someone can be, keeping them locked in a lockbox and impressing upon his children the importance of gun safety (I've known the basic gun safety rules ever since I was a little kid. Of course, of course, of course.) It reminds me of him. It's horrifically easy to have a gun in Indiana. I apparently don't even need a permit to carry anymore. (I have no intention to ever carry this in public.)

It's all a cycle. Business, grief, thoughts about my future. Round and round, like the most nauseating carousel in existence. I don't know how I'm still so functional. My skills with compartmentalization have been my lifesaver.

And im just thinking about the story my dad's best friend shared today. About a friend of theirs who lost her father. She reached out after hearing about my dad to share his words with her: "it's okay to grieve, but don't make his death your life".

He explicitly referenced himself in this, saying if he were to die suddenly that he wouldn't want us to define ourselves by it. Grief is expected, but he wants us to be able to move on. He's always wanted us to establish ourselves and make ourselves happy. He wouldn't want to be a weight holding us back from that.

So every time I start to feel guilty for thinking about having nicer furniture or using his life insurance payout to fund the rest of my college, I remind myself of that. Thinking about the material isn't a bad thing. I'm only human. And in the end, he'd Want me to be thinking about it. He never intended to die, certainly not without warning like this, so he would've only encouraged me being pragmatic about it all.

He only ever wanted us to be happy. So I need to do what I can to live up to that.

I love him. I miss him already.

Dude im gonna be twenty in like. Half a year

What the actual fuck

it’s honestly pissing me off how much o and otis call themselves (and other people call them) sex therapists in sex education

I know Sex Education has always been a bit bright and not quite real in its setting, but series 4 has really taken that to the extreme. This new college is just not believable as a real learning environment for teenagers and it's completely taking me out of the show.

Like, yes the diversity and commitment to being green is great, but it's just not real. The holier than thou attitude also seriously rubs me up the wrong way (using paper is ILLEGAL unless apparently you're in art class; if you don't cycle to school, you clearly just need to be told that your car is bad for the environment).

Where are the teachers? Where's the adult oversight? Where are the classrooms? How does this place afford tablets for every pupil and seemingly unlimited space for all these special rooms? This is a fantasy setting, not a real college. Moordale, while heightened, at least felt like a real environment.

It seems like a silly thing to take issue with, especially since I wouldn't have such an issue with a new school-set show that worked like this, but with such an established show, it throws me right out of the expected tone and rules of the world as they've been built until now.

Weirdly, and I don't think this was all the new setting's fault, I also just… didn't care about what was hapenning? I'm literally one episode in and I found it a slog to finish it. Season 3 I ended up binge-watching despite my better judgement because it was such compulsive viewing. This one just felt contrived and unreal.

I know it's setting up plot threads for later (Will Ruby get in with the cool crowd? Will Maeve come back? Will Eric get baptised? Will Adam get a job?), but I don't even feel compelled to find out the answers. I probably will keep watching, but I'm so disappointed so far.

Look, I'm not saying that the entirety of the Galvan race would be gamers. That would be ludicrous. I'm simply saying that if they found out about the existence of video games as well as how to program them,

Damn if only they didn't have tadpole children otherwise they'd totally have iPad toddlers smh smh- no doubt on Galvan Prime (or whatever edition of planet they're on if you don't retcon it's destruction in the Highbreed arc) they'd already found an interest in many variations of video games, even if predominantly it's not socially acceptable in most galvan cultures to be an adult in full pursuit of a gamer, not that there isn't a market for it because expectations breeds exceptions.

Because of the majority of galvan intellects steer towards the sciences, galvan video game developers probably tend to target younger fresh-out-of-the-pond adolescents with educational games, a combination of fun and learning. But these are galvans we're talking about, so no Mario Teaches Typing or Leap Frog levels of baby smarts games, more like Brain Training and significantly more difficult than what you get here. It's not to say 'fun for fun's sake' games don't exist, just that these are really the only games that early learning galvan really get until they have control over their own financial responsibilities.

I'm not saying that galvan who prefer more entertaining games later in life are unintelligent, but I am saying that Blukic and Driba seem the type to game for fun-

So there’s this kid I work with who screams and kicks people for 20+ minutes straight because they don’t want to do a single worksheet. I don’t blame the kid though; there are absolutely zero expectations at home and all they eat is sugar, which can’t be good for their mood. I’ve been trying to think of ways for all the kids there to engage in healthier behaviors; but I’m specifically focusing on the ones with dire conditions (such as refusing to drink water, not eating enough, or harming people (which will put them in danger as an adult)).

Today I put a letters puzzle on a different kid’s desk to keep them occupied and this kid just walked over and did it because they’re a perfectionist and need everything in its place. Maybe I can put the letters puzzle on their desk to lure them there and then replace it with worksheets once they’re finished (to ease the transition), and that way I don’t have to physically carry an 80 pound child to their desk multiple times a day, and said kid doesn’t have to endure me carrying them. Ohhhhhhhhh my god that might work

Now I need to find a way to get them to drink water and eat more nutritious food. I can try the chart thing but idk if it’ll work on this kid. I can’t use candy as an incentive because they don’t like candy…

hmmmmmm

Everyone can obviously feel how they want to feel about it but I've always felt the paths the drew crew decide on in the finale are reflective of their arcs

i knew it'd been like... a series of years that i've seen your infj posts. whyyyyy didn't yoou just lock him up when you were dating this year!? the angsssttt. rooting for you tho xx k byee

yeahh it's also totally at least 50% my fault we're not together.

The good news is that since 2018 we became very good friends, and if it doesn't work, at least I've had some really good years of friendship. Plus, we put effort into being friends despite the things that have happened between us, so I feel like unless he hits my pet cat with a car, we'll always be friends.

And I didn't lock him down because I knew he was moving to Thailand. Even though he wanted to. (am i insane)

But yeah, I'm a woman approaching 30. I want someone who wants to be where I am. Or is at least very sure about me (he might have been, idk) but I currently have a great job, I would've followed him otherwise. Plus his job is only a 1 year-long post, whereas I'm a bit more stably employed. And I think I was just hurt he was moving so far? I want kids also, and in my family it famously gets harder to give birth past 30.. I just thought he couldn't feel as strongly about me if he was moving to Thailand (even though he asked to be together multiple times, god am I an idiot?), and my time is ticking since I really love and want kids.

Make sure the therapy is actually therapy and not ABA in disguise. You want your kid to get therapy, not training on how to mask

At my work we have a kids workshop once a month for kids 5-14 to learn how to use basic tools and put together a little project and one of my coworkers told me today that she wishes we had one of those for adults too because she can't figure out how to use a drill

And it's been a while since I was a teacher and I'm not really looking for a side hustle but---