Joel's Scattered Thoughts

[byjove]

why did elementary and middle school teachers get so mad when you finished your work early and did silent reading? I was an A/B student and some of them would be so pissed when I finished my test within 15 minutes and whipped out my N. D. Wilson novel or whatever

[raisinbrant]

This!! What was I supposed to do, stare at the wall??

[byjove]

Everybody knows elementary and middle school students need to pretend to be slaving away at math problems for the full 8 hour school day to prepare them for the torture of adult employment.

[fangirl-overload13]

When asked teachers would say it's because it makes the other kids feel bad

Boo fucking hoo

The constant bullying made me feel bad but nothing was ever done about that was it teacher? Let the other kids take the full hour to take the exam, I'm done in 30 and got the answers correct so just let me sit here and read quietly, I've earned it!

[the-haiku-bot]

When asked teachers would

say it’s because it makes the

other kids feel bad

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[hoping-for-novelty]

I think it's bad to accuse people of being "anti-intellectual" when they criticize a specific academic field, especially when they have specific, constrained criticisms. Yes, even when the criticisms are wrong

Academic fields can be wrong, often in ways that are pretty obvious to outsiders. Do not become the kind of idiot who defends Freud

[mercifulmother]

– Animorphs: The Reunion, K.A. Applegate

[rainecreatesstuff]

this is such a tiny detail but. i'm so in love with how unafraid the phm movie was of making grace cry. like. idk, it's 2026, it's not unheard of for men to cry in films but. often it's this big built-up moment where wow he has truly finally been broken down and destroyed and.

in phm, grace just. he cries. he cries because he's alone and sad and scared and he's saying goodbye to two people who must have been his friends but he can't remember. he cries because he's stressed. he cries because his best friend is sending him home and he didn't think he'd ever get to go back. he cries because his best friend is asleep and he doesn't know if he'll ever wake up. he cries because he's found a way to save not only one but two worlds. he cries because he has to give up going home to save his best friend. he cries because he did save him.

idk.

ryland grace cries, frequently, and he is brave. he is brave and a hero and the story's beloved protagonist and he cries about damn near everything.

it makes me very happy to see.

[herainsorcia]

[fox-bright]

That is DIABOLICAL museum design, A++, no notes

[thecrumbez]

Happy Pride Month to those two women dancing together in the foreground of the boat scene in Godzilla (1954).

I’m sorry your romantic foibles were overshadowed by a big ass atomic lizard thing.

[erratic-dragon-fruit]

out of the tags with you

[crabussy]

hi gang. reminder that we are some of the best sweaters in the animal kingdom (second only to equines) allowing us to stay cool and keep moving in hot weather. we have 10 times the density of sweat glands compared to other great apes.

we are ALSO insanely good at smelling rain (specifically geosmin, found in the soil and activated by rain) with the ability to smell 10 parts per trillion. this is speculated to have helped our ancestors survive!

we ALSO have absolutely batshit diets compared to most other animals. caffeine and chocolate are completely toxic to most animals but we can eat it without even feeling sick. even avocados are severely toxic to many animals to the point where it can be fatal to eat, but humans love it!!!

we are ALSO some of the best endurance runners ON EARTH out of ANY other species. we can beat horses in endurance running. you know, the animals that gradually evolved away most of their toes in order to be the best runners?? yeahhh.

and to top it all off. our lifespan is unusually long for our species' weight/mass. in many cases, the bigger a species is, the longer its average lifespan (e.g. domestic mice live for 1-3 years, bowhead whales can live over 200) but we're very small for how long our average lifespan is. big cats like tigers live around 14-15 years, brown bears 25 years, yet here we are expected to live around 75-85 years. that is NUTS.

humans as a species are so extremely cool. it's not just our intellect that makes us amazing. we may not be the fastest or the strongest in the animal kingdom but we're super cool in many other ways. next time you sweat you can go wow!!! humans are so cool I'm able to keep moving because of my absolutely insane number of sweat glands! thank you evolution!

[yvesdot]

I have seen a young lady with her table loaded with volumes loaded of fictitious trash, poring day after day and night after night over highly wrought scenes and skillfully portrayed pictures of romance, until her cheeks grew pale, her eyes became wild and reckless, and her mind wandered and was lost — the light of intelligence passed behind a cloud, and her soul was forever benighted. She was insane, incurably insane from reading novels.

-- an anonymous pastor in 1864, on the greatest threat to young women

[earhartsease]

okay huge shoutout to our not jewish belovèd who was messaging someone jewish and wrote "RIP me" but then changed it to "may my memory be a blessing" - this is genius and we think it needs to catch on

[costumersupportdept]

i am going to add this to my "drama monarch" file cabinet of gender neutral yet still hilarious changes to phrases, as it feels like it lives in the same world.

[markovchaingang]

RULES FOR DATING MY DAUGHTER:

my daughter cannot, through action or inaction, harm a human or allow a human to come to harm

a daughter at rest or in constant motion remains at rest or in constant motion unless acted upon by another force

daughters are never created or destroyed, only transformed

always treat every daughter as loaded, even if you know she isn't

you do not talk about my daughter

[abalidoth]

6. If x and y are my daughters, then there exists a set that has x and y as elements.

7. You can fold my daughter through any two points.

8. I have exactly one daughter parallel to a given line passing through a given point.

[inthefallofasparrow]

9. If my daughter is hung on the wall in the first act, then in the following one she must be fired. Otherwise don't put her there.

10. When two or more daughters are offered for a phenomenon, the simplest daughter is preferable.

11. Any sufficiently advanced daughter is indistinguishable from magic.

12. Without a clear indicator of intent, it is utterly impossible to parody my daughter without someone mistaking it for the genuine article.

13. My daughter is nine-tenths of the law.

[bee-a-ts]

the bi/pan alliance and the aro/ace alliance in my city did the funniest possible thing for pride today

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

This phrase has already entered my vocabulary re: media criticism where like. The viewer has a concrete view of what they expect a story to be based on the tropes and cliches they're used to seeing together, and when that doesn't happen, they judge it as a failed depiction of what they assumed it was going to be instead of judging it as what it actually is.

"This show is problematic because the hero didn't kill the villain at the end": When does he steal the bread?

"These two characters who were close friends throughout the series don't kiss at the end! What the fuck?": When does he steal the bread?

"This feels like it's missing a conclusion! Like, the protagonist does bad stuff and because of a critical decision he makes as a result of his major character flaws, meets tragedy in the end! Where's the part where he learns better and brings is love back from the dead and becomes a good guy and gets a happy ending?": When does he steal the fucking bread??

[thetetra]

I heard this out as "When criticizing something, you must judge it for what it is, not what it isn't"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#this is why so many of us urge people to get a wider diet of stories

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I always get jumpscared when somebody mentions me. I'm like what do you mean I didn't vanish from your mind the moment your eyes were off my post.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

[thesweetiepienovels]

“No one is coming to save you.” I disagree ! I believe many people made up of many small moments come to save pieces of you , even if just briefly. The mentor who believed in you . The friend who said they’re proud of you. The family member that makes you laugh . The random person who held the door for you out of nothing but kindness. The teacher who took extra time to help you understand. The person who smiled at you when you walked into a store. The little kid who looks up to you. The person who randomly complimented you. Being “saved” isn’t about being whisked away and all your hardships gone, it’s about the people and things that remind you life is not all hardships, it is kindness, love, gentleness, softness, care, thoughtfulness. It is many moments made up of your lifetime that keeps you going and showing you the world is still beautiful, and will always be. Despite.

[everyday-cutephoto]

[kittybroker]

Tasty little hash brown treat now only $0.99!

[silky-selkie]

Don’t make me put your ass in the sealbarrow

[homunculus-argument]

The fun thing about finnish is that the way you ask for things in a polite way has been in-baked into the suffixes you use, so you don't have to use many words when few do trick. Like asking someone "could you give me [-]" is "voisitko antaa" in written and some variation of "voisiksä antaa" in spoken dialects*, but instead of asking "could you", the polite polite way to ask is "haluaisitko", not as can you, but would you want to. The tone distinction is so clear that asking someone "could you [do thing]" instead of "would you want to [do thing]" is less of a polite request and more of instruction - someone's gotta do it, and the task is being assigned to you.

On the other hand, dropping out the conditional out of the question turns the tone into a passive-aggressive threat. If someone tells you "stop that" as an imperative, "lopeta", that's a command. Asking in conditional, could you stop that, "voisitko lopettaa" is a polite request. "Haluaisitko lopettaa", would you like to stop that, is so polite that depending on the tone it might be sarcastic politeness that indicates hostility.

But asking someone "do you want to stop that", "haluatko lopettaa tuon" is a matter of "do you want to stop doing that voluntarily, or do you want me to stop you." By physical force, if necessary.

* the different form varies depending on what first and second person pronouns are used in the specific dialect. This is a whole another rabbit hole so for shortcut I'm doing the examples in the southern finnish dialect that I have grown up speaking

[kuivamustekala]

Since I use it a bunch in my speech, I also want to shout out "viitsisitkö antaa". I don't think there's a proper english word to translate it with, but the closest approximation of the meaning is "could you be bothered to give me" - however while the tone of the translation could easily be read as passive aggressive, if you're just saying it politely, it moreso has this tone of, like... "if you would be so inclined I'd appreciate it".

Which sounds like pretty dramatic appeasement behaviour when I write it out like that but it's also just a nice, polite request, pretty much on par with the "haluaisitko".

[kevytmaitohorsma]

One more option is to state "you wouldn't have x" (ei sulla ois x:ää) and that's somehow interpreted as a polite request

But the one thing we don't have is "please". The word doesn't exist here.

[homunculus-argument]

You can certainly say "you wouldn't happen to have a [thing] that I could borrow?" in english, too, but I do like how in finnish, the latter half of the sentence is not stated out loud, just implied. You don't word that question like that unless you're asking whether you could borrow it. Which also gives the other person the opportunity to soft launch a "no" by pretending to not notice the implied part. So a conversation can go two ways, it's either:

"Hey wou wouldn't happen to have a hammer?" [Can I borrow your hammer?] "Yeah, what do you need it for?" [You can. What are you working on?]

Or it can go like this:

"Hey wou wouldn't happen to have a hammer?" [Can I borrow your hammer?] "I do own one, yes." [I am ignoring your implied request. Whatever you want to borrow it for, I don't want to let you.] "Can I borrow it?" [I am ignoring your implied rejection. I need to borrow it.] "What do you need it for?" [I will not let you have it unless I know what you want to do and approve of it.]

I don't know how much of this kind of thing is just finnish culture, though, and how much of it is just how neurotypical people universally talk. But the implication waltz is definitely a big part of finnish conversation style.