#yes this is based on real experience

[dramatic-dolphin]

Oh man, I am waaay on the other side of the "pronounce names correctly" debate. Not because I don't think you should, in general, attempt to pronounce names correctly, I do. But I'm trying to get people to stop trying to pronounce my name correctly.

I happen to have a name that's (for foreigners) Hungarian on Hard Mode. I'm talking umlauts, digraphs with y, just all the good phonemes that don't exist in most other languages. I've spent a lot of time abroad with people from various parts of the world, and I can tell you from hard empirical data: nobody can say it. And I'm cool with it! I just tell them the English equivalent and it's fine.

Mostly. Some people, especially those who are trying to be culturally sensitive, have a Really Hard Time™️ accepting that a) they are not getting it right b) continue to not get it right despite asking me to demonstrate over and over. And I appreciated it at first! How thoughtful, this attempt to engage with my culture. Cue several months of unsuccessful attempts, at the end of which they were (mostly jokingly) accusing me of faking it. Almost verbatim: "if we recorded you saying your own name and played it back to you, you would say it's incorrect".

(I get it though, the pop sci explanation that I've never bothered to fact check is that as you grow up, you're more attuned to characteristic frequencies of your mother tongue, so when another language comes along with different frequencies, you are quite literally incapable of distinguishing them. So their attempts may sound the same to them, but it sure doesn't to me. I tell them I have this with "bet" and "bat", and that sometimes puts an end to it.)

So yeah, attempt to pronounce everyone's name correctly. Unless they have asked you multiple times not to.

YES YES YES. sometimes you don't want to hear your name butchered over and over and again. like it can be funny when the entertainment is the hungarian gyöngyi and the czech přemysl trying to pronounce each other's name (actual thing that happened at an event my mom was at, everyone thought it was hilarious), but like. at some point it gets TIRING.

god do i hate those people who are like "well at the introduction i wouldn't stop trying until i could pronounce their name correctly!!" newsflash you were not pronouncing it correctly unless you also did a deepdive into the phonology of the language right there. what actually happened was that scene went on for so long and got so awkward they said "haha yeah that's correct!" to stop you from trying again. PLEASE stop. it is very awkward.

the pop sci explanation is sorrrrt of right, you're not really ever incapable of distinguishing phonemes, or phonologists would be out of a job! but your brain does become attuned to the subtleties that are important in your language and discards other phoneme differences that aren't used in your language because who even needs that. it's possible to learn to speak a language like a native and understand all the subtle differences so deeply that they come as instinct. it just takes a LOT of work.

(but- learning your native language took even more work. you're at an 8yr old's level of umderstanding in the language you're learning? well, how long do you think it took the 8yr old?)

also, relatedly, if someone - usually someone who's chinese in my experience - tells you their name, and then adds "but you can call me [english name/name in another language]!" it tends to be because they LIKE being called that name and possibly even prefer it to you butchering their name. they understand that you will butcher their name, because the language - which may or may not be chinese - is notoriously hard for outsiders.

[hanzajesthanza]

also i realize i'm saying all these noble and beautiful things about the channel from the purest depths of my heart. but actually i'm also just doing this because i fucking love the witcher books and it pisses me off that people don't know about them that much in english and i can only go for so long (seven years) with people not knowing that there are books. or that the witcher is from the 90s. or polish.

[symbiotic-slime]

happy disability pride month I hope everyone who has ever said “just wait until you get older” in response to someone telling them about their condition dies

[werewolf-garfield]

[lifeisabitch-butimcute]

“luci how do Jamie’s parents feel about their daughter being in a throuple with their informally adopted daughter and another girl” asked no one. WELL. personally I think they’re the allies of all time and are simply happy that jamie is happy. jim jam has always had a lot of love to give so when she called to tell them that Remus was now an Official Girlfriend I think they said sick let us know if she has any dietary restrictions for when you all come over for dinner next weekend. Effie thinks Remus is a cutie patootie and Monty is happy to have someone to talk to about his garden because Remus loves that shit 🙂‍↕️

[afniel]

Realizing that I went and wrote a bunch of intentionally aro relationships and my partner was like, "Idk, it seemed like normal relationships to me," and I was like, "I mean yeah it's not that different from ours, I guess, I was kind of going for 45° off from 'normal' romance," and they're like, "Okay, but ours is also pretty much like that," and I'm like, "Yeah, true," and now I'm like, damn hold up, are we both some kinda arospec and THIS is how we figure it out? Because I wrote a long-ass fic about intentionally queer-coded (among other things) robots? Life is weird, man.

Like I've been prone to extreme long-term crushes on a very few (mostly unattainable) people over the years, but I wouldn't have known what to do with them even if they worked out, and cough my ex was not even one of them. I just kind of assumed I was failing to feel a thing I was totally supposed to feel, there, and quite a lot of that relationship emotionally was me going, "Okay, I care like This, but I think I'm supposed to care like That? I'm pretty sure he cares That way. I'm not sure I do, but I mean, there's really only one way*, so maybe I'm just misreading this and actually I do care like That, I'm just bad at it."

*This was me being very incorrect, it turns out. There's all kinds of ways to love someone. It's a very inadequate and nonspecific word.

When I confessed my feelings (which I'd been sitting on for a year) to my partner, their reaction wasn't to be particularly romantic about it. In fact they told me they'd help me move to California if I wanted to. And after I got over my initial confusion of being kissed on the forehead (which is also not super romantic as a gesture and I couldn't decide how to even read that so I kinda skipped over even trying for a while), I was thinking, Awesome, that is a yes. They have promised to assist me with difficult stuff, and said nothing at all about emotions, because that's not a big deal anyway. The important thing is that I can rely on them and vice versa. Cool. We are basically together forever now. Which ended up being true. I just never moved out and now it's like 13 years later, go figure. But that's not what I think actually passes for reciprocating feelings for most people? Worked great for me though.

Anyway I feel like I have accidentally learned something about myself, lol. I guess romance is okay I guess, like it's not repulsive, but seriously, it's WAY more satisfying to me to guess someone else's Quiplash answer because you know they know you would think it's fucking funny, and you do, and because you think it's funny and you're well aware they know your type of humor and you know theirs and that you wouldn't expect them to use "cum" as an answer because that's not usually how they roll, so of course that is the only answer they can possibly give, which is instantly evident to both of you with no conversation whatsoever on the topic. When you got just one brain cell and it's quantum entangled with their just one brain cell so you have a lot of null discussions where nobody has to say anything but it's fully understood anyway, that's The Dream, if you ask me. And like I don't really think that's romantic by the usual definition. You can have that with friends and family, too. But that is what it turns out I prioritize in relationships, which I'm starting to feel like isn't what the majority of people are here for?

TFW it's hard to tell because I've been assuming I'm totally alloromantic so everything I experience must be typical totally alloromantic stuff too, but I'm starting to think it isn't maybe? But how do I even tell, this is like being colorblind, lmao.

[free-luigi-mangione]

Hey, darling. How are you?? I just saw your post complaining about reddit and it just rang a bell !!! It is soooo annoying how people there keep trying to creat theories about his life, his family and his relationships... I know we do that here too, but it seems to me that there they take it to the next level, you know??

i'm not gonna defend what we do here but honestly we're much more civil compared to them

[bectoshi]

good morning team.. currently typing this on my way to an island trip with friends for a few days. How you get the girl will resume later this week and expect something for oikawas birthday 🫡 i may be away but ill still try and cook something up

[ssruis]

[mazu-art]

Boys going for a run or something

Based off a true event!

[kintatsujo]

I kind of generally have a dislike of almost all comics villains that are trying to be Darkseid because they often have that vibe of your older cousin coming in when you and your sib are hanging out with his little sibs, seeing what y'all are doing, and deciding that he doesn't like that you're having fun so he introduces a villain to the play session that derails every plot point and forces all attention and control onto himself.

Darkseid is forgiven for this sort of shit because DC made the correct choice of pitting him against superheroes who can actually handle him, but a lot of these other dudes just completely take over the story even when it doesn't make sense. I remember the whole time the 90s xmen got taken over by Apokalypse I was over here, as a child, wondering why the fuck Professor X's magic space girlfriend hadn't shown up with a warship or something.

(Because honestly? It's boring watching these dudes roll over everyone, I genuinely want to see a fight between a dude like that and a whole ass warfleet please.)

Idk you have to be really careful about introducing greater context villains to a story even before you get to whatever their motivations are, what makes Darkseid great is the fact that he loses, actually, not that he wins.

[moonmoonthecrabking]

"chaotic bisexual-" i don't find this particularly encourages me to read the book, actually. i might anyway, because of the concept (and in a partial hope to prove my preconceptions wrong), but i think that a mistake was made somewhere in the marketing stage

[gothamghostwhispers]

…. I found a spell that summons the most handsome ghost in a 5 mile radius…

Fuck it

salve pulchellus puer huc habeo caseum pro

[mygeekcorner]

Cause sometimes they are - for whatever reason - stuck to the inside of the carton and when you them try to lift them out they crack and you have egg all over your hands

I usually give them all a little poke to see that they wiggle and aren't going to break on me prematurely

[whyamiherewhosummonedme]

To elaborate some on how current machine learning algorithms inherently amplify bias, they are programmed to find patterns and repeat them. What they do not have, however, is reasoning for it. As it works now, AI will see that a disproportionate amount of the poor population in southeastern states is African-American and extrapolate from that fact. There is no understanding of the long history of oppression that caused this dynamic, only a recognition of its existence. This becomes a serious issue when you try to apply AI predictions to the real world, as you end up with the worst possible racial profiling. This is already a problem that has ruined hundreds of lives, with Palantir's machine learning software used by ICE to mark potential illegal immigrants - all of which were poor, working-class Latino families, and who were almost entirely released and aquitted because there was little to no actual proof, only the computer's profiling based on trends without taking into account the cultural nuances that lead to those trends.

AI can be useful. But you have to remember that it isn't thinking for itself. In its current form, it's pretty much a glorified search engine that, rather than giving you preexisting results, mashes them together to make one itself. It will always amplify biases, whether they be based on race, age, sex, disability, or more, and that is not a bug but the core of its very programming. Maybe in the future, we can create an AI that can indeed take external factors into account to fight this kind of inherent bias, but we don't have it now and everyone who uses or comes into contact with AI need to be aware of how exactly it works.

This is why it is so important to be critical and double check everything you generate using image generators and text-based AI.