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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • “Hey, I need to use my lunch break to get away from work things/have some quiet down time. Give me a break and I’ll be better for the afternoon.” Subjects you don’t want to discuss: “Oooh, that doesn’t seem like a topic appropriate for work. What about [thing you are comfortable discussing, work thing].”

    I highly recommend becoming very willing to spend time discussing one personal thing so they feel like they’re making a connection. I use my pets, but you can use a sports team as some others suggest, or a hobby you don’t mind sharing, like your progress on painting minis/knitting that sweater/book you’re reading/ latest album from favorite musician. Extroverts want a connection, give them a little and redirect to that thing when they probe.

    If your boss persists in bothering you at lunch, ask if you should clock in since this is a work discussion, or if it’s really your personal time to use as you wish.

    If they persist in bringing up wildly inappropriate topics like sex, say that you’re uncomfortable. Make it obvious they’re being weird at work. saying “I don’t like discussing my sexual preferences at work”, or similar, loud enough for others in the breakroom to hear should make them uncomfortable. if that doesn’t get you anywhere, there are protections in the US for some things. go to HR, explain you’ve tried explicitly telling them not to talk to you about whatever inappropriate topic, and it’s continuing. Call out that you’re feeling harassed by them continuing to bring up this subject that is not work related. HR might want to try a mediated discussion about it; 1 is reasonable, multiple is not.

    if it gets to where you need HR and are worried about your legal rights, find a local worker’s rights lawyer to provide advice. they should be able to tell you what is reasonable effort from the company to fix the situation. be prepared to lose your job if it gets this far.

    you shouldn’t have to discuss sex at work as small talk. it can come up in some jobs (medicine, sex work) but shouldn’t be in most workplaces, and there are protections from this kind of harassment in the US.



  • my grandparents have passed away now, but when i knew them they were unfailingly polite in public.

    in private, Grandma had reservations about japanese people. i gave her leeway. Pearl Harbor was bombed on her birthday, and Grandpa went to Iwo Jima. i still felt i could bring a japanese boyfriend around, and as long as i was happy, he’d be treated right. Grandpa didn’t even suggest reservations. he took everyone as an individual worthy of respect until their behavior suggested differently.

    my parents are in their 60s now, but i don’t have contact with them for other reasons. the last time i looked at my mom’s twitter i thought she had been hacked, the MAGA rhetoric she was spewing was so awful. not hacked, just an asshole.


  • you mean the thing where people, often women, have spent decades trying to expose the abuse happening in private homes, and trying to get it addressed?

    because that’s what happened. women’s voices, speaking about marital rape and domestic abuse. getting the political power to change laws, to make it illegal, and give domestic victims the means to escape. it also surfaced the child abuse, again. it’s just not been buried again yet.




  • I had ferrets for a while. they liked to steal and hide things. you learn to check under the couch weekly just so you don’t find things by smell. and hope it’s not somehow inside the couch.

    mostly it was the one guy, who preferred his chips and sweets, but knew his sister liked other things. she didn’t eat tomatoes or apples or fruit, but he’d carry that stinky orange down stairs for her, lips peeled back so he didn’t have to taste it too much.


  • not the OP you replied to, but someone else who loves the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book.

    I think 5 days is ambitious. but a lot of what the exercises are doing is training you to see a different way. so it’s not impossible.

    someone neurodivergent may struggle to get what the exercises are trying to teach or to reach the point they’re aiming for, so it might take them longer. those more inclined to pick it up faster probably aren’t going to need the exercises in the book; it’s already natural to them.

    as we grow up, we learn “this is what a tree looks like, this is a dog looks like, this is what a car looks like”, etc etc. the way we see a new car then goes through that filter of “this is what a car looks like”. those filters are great for quickly identifying things and generally being a human in the world, so you don’t get hit by a car while you’re still figuring out if it is a car.

    but those filters get in the way of drawing accurately. your eyes aren’t literally filtering anything; that’s all in your brain. so you need to learn to stop that part of your brain when you draw. that’s the biggest part of being able to draw decently. the rest is technical skill you get with practice.

    I’d still recommend the original OP look for an artist collaborator, since children’s books need the illustrations to be as strong as the writing. there’s no way to get there in just 5 days.






  • I too am a new to Linux person. I started with mint, as the most like what I’m used to. I like seeing that there are options I might like better, along with why I, personally, might prefer them. as well as why mint didn’t rate high. and I like that it’s not just spitting out the creator’s favorite distro.

    some people get decision paralysis, i get your recommendation. but you’ll also lose some people if you just give them the Linux that’s easiest and closest to what they already know, instead of highlighting how it’s flexible and customizable. we need both methods of recommending a distro.

    there’s plenty of beginner guides telling me to start with mint. I like this picker that considers my interests. looks like I might be trying OpenSuse in the future.


  • then the correct answer from the Dr should’ve been a referral to a gyno, not “that shouldn’t be treated yet in my medical opinion”.

    and she may not have realized it was perimenopause when she went to the Dr. fatigue and migraines alone could easily sap libido and be completely unrelated to anything “down there”.



  • in my experience, there’s not even as much consistency therapist to therapist, psychiatrist to psychiatrist, as there is in the rest of the medical field.

    I love my psychiatrist, but what I love is that she’s very much about staying up to date and knowing what she’s prescribing, and probing to see if it’s working (I am a terrible judge the worse off I am. no, really, it’s fine, I can just wake up a little earlier and add a panic attack to my morning routine, don’t change my drugs. huh…ok, since we upped the dose, I haven’t had a panic attack, I guess that was a good idea.)


  • I like this. in my family, I figured it out at about 3 or 4, promptly told the 2 year old, and broke the reality to the next two before they could even start to believe there was a real Santa.

    instead, Santa was the spirit of Christmas, so any of us could be Santa if we gave presents with no expectation of recognition or a return gift. much more Secret Santa than magical man leaving presents.

    this did lead to several years where the youngest would give away all their toys, only to then reclaim them after presents were opened. generosity isn’t an easy concept for the pre-schoolers.


  • I use onenote at work for all my notes. tabs and individual pages let me organize things so nothing is too long to scroll and find what I need. I can put text, screenshot, and hyperlink (to another part of one note or outside link), and a link to a pdf or excel file. I can add check boxes to whichever line items.

    once I’ve got a nice set of notes, I can share either the entire notebook, the section, or just that page with the next person. or if they’re a bit of a luddite, I can print it out and maintain format (mostly). the most recent version broke emailing a page, but if you’re still running an older version of one note, it embeds it, with formatting, without being a pdf.

    got something you need to paste in all the time? I’ve got one page where each text box is one copy/paste comment. clicking the header automatically selects all the text in just that box.

    like OP, I tend to use one note at home for D&D, but if I can find something just as good I’m happy to try it. work leaves me with MS Office.