I’m 4/5 typically but I will get flashes of level 1 gore. Not randomly or frequently (thankfully), but like if I am reminded of a particular kind of injury I find very distressing I will see it very vividly for just a moment. Not fun.
My dreams are also really vivid.
The ascend power from Tears of the Kingdom. Not so much in my literal real life, but any time someone in a show/movie is being chased or is trapped somewhere or even just stuck in an awkward situation I expect them to just fly through the ceiling and leave all their pursuers with question marks over their heads.
Seconding this plea to ignore anyone telling you to force or withhold food. The whole “they’ll eat it when they’re hungry enough” may apply to many picky eaters, but if someone (kid or adult) eats an extremely limited or unusual diet like you’re describing in the comments, there is a good chance it may be ARFID. It’s an eating/feeding disorder that often goes along with autism or sensory processing disorders, but can be separate. Critically, the “tried and true” parenting strategies for breaking picky eaters will exacerbate the problem. Of course the answer also isn’t “let them eat McDonald’s all day and stop worrying,” but there are a lot of strategies for supporting someone (especially kids) to expand their list of safe foods in a low-risk high-reward way.
Like the commenter above me said, everyone who has/had ”issues with food” is going to have an entirely different list of what they can and can’t eat and a different set of strategies that worked or backfired for them. The only general advice I have that I think applies across the board is: lower the pressure. If someone only eats 2 or 5 or 10 things, every interaction with food is already very high stakes and takes up a lot of brain space. You’re probably not going to be able to make specific foods less scary, but you can make the environment safer. Never make an unsafe food the only option, don’t let them see how worried you are, don’t (like my mom did) tell them “scientists found that if you eat more than one hot dog a month you get cancer” or “if you don’t eat vegetables you’ll die before you turn 20.” And maybe counterintuitively, don’t act overly surprised or excited when they are curious about a new food, aren’t afraid of something, like a food now that they insisted they didn’t like, etc. Just go with it as a win for you both. Let them see that what happens when they can eat more food is just…they can eat more food. No drama. (Exception if they are already excited and you are following their lead.)
Resources like NEDA (in the like above) can point you toward some places to start and connect you with other parents and professionals who can offer more contextualized and specific advice. You might also look at the r/ARFID subreddit. It’s mostly adults supporting each other but there’s a lot of wisdom for concerned caregivers and loved ones as well.
I actually totally agree. All people should begin worthy of our respect simply because we are humans, and our language should reflect that. Where the break is for me is that (again, for me) honorifics and similar terms imply hierarchical respect or deference, and that’s where the “earned respect” comes in. My respect for you as an equal is yours to lose; my respect for you as superior is yours to earn. In my language community, regular old please and thank you communicate the first kind, while honorifics convey the second.
I am also midwestern, and I have a problem with both miss and ma’am. The entire fact that there are two of them (and just the one for men) implies that age determines some portion of a woman’s societal value.
So as a fellow midwesterner, I’m not sure I agree with the idea that this is fully regionalized rather than a vaguer community-based (your church, your town, your parents’ profession, your school system…). I do hear that you want to be authentic to your own values and upbringing and completely appreciate that. But I’d consider whether the point of politeness terms and honorifics is to make you, the speaker, feel like you’re doing the right thing or about making your addressee feel seen and valued. If it’s the second, then you might consider whether it’s worth developing a new way of showing respect that can feel equally authentic in contexts where you may be unintentionally be making others uncomfortable.
Most decent people don’t want the second kind of respect. I know for me it makes me feel icky thinking that someone has muted themselves because they’re afraid of making me angry. Mind you I don’t think poorly of anyone who says it, ever, because they’re just doing what they were taught and trying to be polite.
Strong agree. I do not want to be shown deference if I’m not in an explicit position of authority and I do now want to shown respect if I haven’t earned it. (I also resent being asked to show deference or respect when it isn’t merited.) General politeness, like please and thank you, goes a long way toward demonstrating that you respect the person as an equal, which feels much more respectful to me than imposing some kind of arbitrary implied hierarchy of unearned respect between strangers.
I feel this way too. I know nearly who calls me ma’am is intending to be courteous and I don’t hold it against them. That said, knowing they are well intended doesn’t make me less uncomfortable.
Also the idea of sir being the term of respect for all men and even boys but ma’am being for “older” women adds some baked in unavoidable sexism, no matters how genuinely-not-actually-sexiest the speaker is. There are just necessary built in assumptions about the addressee when you have to choose between ma’am and miss (or similar). The implication is that societal value of women, and not men, is age-determined. The former often makes a woman feel undesirably old and the latter often makes her feel infantalized. It’s the same as the Mr./Mrs./Miss situation, where moving just to Mr. and Ms. alleviates that tension a bit. No clear answer for sir and ma’am honorifics though.
Quentin is an incredible character in the show. Infuriating at times, immature, whiny, selfish, but in ways that are relatable. Everyone is immature, whiny, and selfish to some degree. Quentin’s story in the show is about getting out of his own fucking head and finding health and happiness in feeling connected to other people. His story as the MC is explicitly about him appreciating that he is not in fact the main character, and that’s a good thing.
Corollary of that is that the show ends up being a truly ensemble cast story, which is really refreshing. Plus Eliot and Margo are perfection.
For LGBTQ+ specifically, Todd from Bojack Horseman. He’s asexual, and he just kind of…is asexual. It’s a major plot line of character development as he figures himself out, but the asexuality isn’t a gimmick or hook. We care about Todd and this matters a lot to him, so we care about it too. It happens to be him exploring his (a)sexuality, but it could have been anything.
Abed Nadir in Community is one of the best examples IMO of doing diversity in tv right. He is autistic, and that fact is central not just to his character but to making the whole show work. Being autistic creates jokes, it’s never the joke itself. (He’s also not precious or off-limits. Abed IS the butt of some jokes, but not his autism.) He is arguably the audience surrogate despite (because of?) so much of his “deal” being how he doesn’t relate to people like everyone else. In general no one feels sorry for him (and when someone does they look like the asshole by the end of the episode). He has a lot of classic, stereotypical ASD traits, but they are treated like personality traits. He’s a shining example of why identity-first language feels important for a lot of people: he is a complex and fleshed-out whole person as he is. If you took away his autism he’d be flat and boring and unrelatable, a completely different character.
Abed and Todd both kind of just exist very authentically in their worlds. No one (character or writer) is asking you to feel a particular way about them, just to appreciate them for who they are like any other character. If we care about the world and the character, we’ll care about what matters to them.
I’m a developmental psychologist, and the biggest thing is people just not knowing what “psychologist” means.
The tl;dr here is:
Most psychologists aren’t therapists. Most therapists aren’t psychologists. If you’re looking for quality mental health care, don’t revere the “doctor.”
A “psychologist” refers to someone with a PhD in psychology (or someone who does psychological research within an interdisciplinary field, like education or human development). Critically, a psychologist is a researcher (and often an educator at the college+ level). Psychology is a massive field, and the most common subfields are cognitive, developmental, social, clinical, and neurobio.
A “clinical psychologist” is a research psychologist is the particular subfield of clinical psychology. Along with research, clinical psychologists usually learn clinical psychotherapy practices and then may (or may not) choose to incorporate offering therapy into their career. A similar path is the “PsyD” (doctor of psychology) which also falls under the “psychologist” heading. Like a clinical psych PhD, a PsyD has had advanced training in research and practice, but the balance of the degree leans much more toward practice. People who opt for a PsyD rather than PhD usually plan to pursue a fully clinical career, but are qualified to do research as well.
A “therapist” is someone who is trained and licensed to provide clinical psychotherapy. Most therapists in the US have a master’s degree in social work (or a few others, like counseling psychology), specialized clinical training in one or more areas or treatments, and additional state licensure requirements. Clinical and counseling psychologists (with PhDs) can act as therapists if they get and maintain licenses, but this is a small fraction of therapists. PsyDs make up another chunk, but the majority do not have a terminal PhD/PsyD.
As a psychologist, I don’t say this because I think my PhD makes me better than someone with an MSW — the reverse! I hear people get advice to not see a therapist if they are “just” a social worker without a PhD. Meanwhile people come up to my dumbass self and think I am qualified to act as a therapist or like I know anything about clinical or abnormal psychology. Like, wanna know how 2-year-olds and 12-year-olds use nonverbal signals like shrugs to facilitate conversational interaction differently from each other and from adults? No? Then I am not the person you’re looking for. Go talk to that extremely knowledgeable and well-trained person with an MA.
…Meanwhile a “psychiatrist” is a whole other thing. They have an MD and can prescribe medication. Very rarely they may also offer psychotherapy, but that’s hard to make happen in the US a healthcare system.
I spent longer than I want to admit trying to make a pun with AI as “the elephant in the room” to talk to about to my students about which ways of using LLMs are unacceptable/acceptable/encouraged on the first day of class. I couldn’t do any better than AI-lephant. I even asked chat GPT for help. Very disappointing.
It may not be the original idiom, but it’s definitely something people say. If the core expressions are “(I) take the lead” and “(you) follow my lead,” that lends itself easily to a merge: you take my lead. It’s not as common as the originals but it’s definitely out there. It will stick around because it’s really easy to unambiguously infer what it means in context.
I kinda agree. Knitting is the go-to for this advice, which makes sense. It gets crazy expensive crazy fast. But starting out with shitty yarn and needles makes the whole thing miserable. Same with a lot of other crafting and baking. Using low quality materials results in an unsatisfying product, and low quality tools make for an unsatisfying learning process.
I generally recommend letting yourself buy something nice-but-not-luxury that you’re excited about, but keeping those initial investments really limited in scope. Buy one nice(ish) pair of needles and just enough nice(ish) yarn to make a specific project. You don’t want to go broke for something you end up hating, but you do want to be able to know whether you hate the actual hobby or you just hate doing that hobby badly.
It’s more of a persistent thing than a series of examples, but a moment that comes to mind is earlier this year teaching a kind of broad social sciences class. I was trying to make a point about something or other and the psychology of capitalism and asked who had ever consciously chosen to stop studying or working to go to sleep or watch tv or otherwise be unproductive. Everybody raised their hands. Ok now who has felt guilty about doing that? No one. Not a single hand. I was astounded.
And in my millennial mind my first thought is of course “wtf are these kids doing at this elite college if they don’t hate themselves properly?” Second thought is “oh cool, these kids don’t hate themselves.”
But following up on what they thought that meant as far as the material we were talking about, it became a conversation about evolving pressures. For me, the concept of “self-care” in college was really the same as “laziness,” which is obviously not great. For them, “self-care” is as much a responsibility as homework, but not necessarily in a good way. There’s a social responsibility to be a certain kind of anti-capitalist while still succeeding in a capitalist system. I had a student say she felt more guilty about breaking her streak on her mindfulness app than getting a bad grade because she didn’t work hard enough.
But at the same time, they truly HAVE to get excellent grades. I might think grade inflation is a huge problem and that they should consider an A- to be a good grade, but the reality is that A- might be the reason they don’t get into law or med school. It’s not like that A- means they don’t deserve or can’t succeed on med school, but it might mean they’ll never get the chance. Do I stand on principle and grade like grades are supposed to mean something, or do I give them what they need to have the future they want?
What about using AI ethically and constructively? I was told I wasn’t going to have a calculator in my pocket by idiots. I’m not going to do that to a new generation. What does it feel like to have to pack extracurriculars to get a post-bac internship even more than they did to get into college? What does it mean to come of age in the era of BLM, COVID, and Trump instead of 9/11, don’t ask don’t tell, and the Great Recession?
It’s just not the same experience. I can’t be. That’s not a problem, but it’s a challenge.
Ironically, understanding the lived experiences of college students.
I’m a professor now, graduated from college in 2010. I actually work at the same school I went to, and I often still feel completely out of touch with what my students actually need and how they approach their education. I have to put real work into connecting with students to meet them where they’re at and create classes they will get something out of. Fortunately I really love that aspect of my job. Most professors don’t give a shit and just assume college is the same now as it was 10-20 years ago.
One of the biggest cliche revisionist histories I know of is “Jack of all trades, master of none; often much better than master of one.” It’s an interesting one because it’s been retconned twice.
You’ll hear people respond to first line by saying “um actually the second line of the poem totally changes the meaning.” Yes, it did change the meaning when it was added in the 21st century, 400-500 years later.
Then you’ll hear people one step closer to accuracy who correct “Jack of all trades” by reminding the speaker that it’s not a compliment because it ends with “master of none.” Except the master of none bit wasn’t used until the 18th century, and the second revision with the couplet may actually closer in meaning to the original!
The original, simple phrase “jack of all trades” was first used in that form in the 16th century, possibly as a reference to Shakespeare, and definitely as a phrase that was intentionally ambiguous about whether it should be interpreted as a compliment or insult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_of_all_trades?wprov=sfti1#Origins
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Local news anchor once ended a segment saying something was “a phallus” instead of a “fallacy. Understandably but hilarious.
In linguistics and psychology “nonce” words are fake words invented for a specific purpose (like to use as stimuli in an experiment). They have no meaning but should sound like plausible words for the language phonetically. In English some commonly used ones are “blicket” and “wug.” Ironically “wug” is so commonly used there’s actually a formalized “wug test” for morphological development.
I actually used to use this wrong, thinking “nonce” was a variation on “nonsense,” but it’s actually from the same origin as the cryptographic nonce: it’s a one-time-use word. So while they are often nonsensical (like basically all of the Jabberwocky poem) they can also be perfectly sensible and comprehensible, just with a one-time specific context of use.
(Also I’ve never heard nonce used as an insult of any kind. Is it a British thing?)
Also: stopcockstopcock stop. Cock. Stopcock
Very handy and widely applicable.
Though you’d lose the equally useful “pop pop”.