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11 votes
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All of Europe is talking about the pandemic
9 votes -
Christmas in danger as Santa's Lapland home feels pandemic chill – flocks of tourists who usually start to make merry in Rovaniemi at this time of year cannot enter the country
5 votes -
Behold the flower box indicators: Unusual metrics for determining a team’s health
8 votes -
The Knowledge Project Ep. #94: Chamath Palihapitiya: Understanding Yourself
4 votes -
Making friends during a pandemic is tough. Two college students created a website to help.
8 votes -
What retiree phone-bankers taught me about loving work
4 votes -
Elderly and homeless: America’s next housing crisis
11 votes -
Going undercover on a racist dating site
31 votes -
The three sides of risk
6 votes -
How do you switch to a four-day week? The pros and cons
6 votes -
“I feel that the future I’ve been working towards my whole life is gone now” — What United States college students have to say about the coronavirus
15 votes -
Stephen Krashen on Second Language Acquisition (SLA), reading and research
5 votes -
Americans - What is a "pep rally"?
5 votes -
Self-storage and the dream of infinite space
3 votes -
The newly legal process for turning human corpses to soil
9 votes -
Thousands of DC renters are evicted every year. Do they all know to show up to court?
10 votes -
Teenage girl becomes Finland's PM for the day – Aava Murto is taking over for the day as part of a campaign for girls' digital rights
12 votes -
Why do women still change their names?
25 votes -
What is a 'cool' birthday gift for a fifteen year old girl?
Hey folks, since I'm completely out of the loop regarding trends but totally interested in being a 'cool uncle', I am asking you (maybe people having kids around this age) for help! What is a...
Hey folks,
since I'm completely out of the loop regarding trends but totally interested in being a 'cool uncle', I am asking you (maybe people having kids around this age) for help!
What is a 'good' present for a 15 year old girl?
I don't know much about her interests or activities and since she is quite new to the family, I haven't had the chance to talk to her.
Is there anything 'universal' today that might work? 😅
Thanks for your thoughts and discussion.
21 votes -
Meet 'Lady Ninja,' the 67-year-old who beat up a man attacking her friend — and saved her life
9 votes -
Friends and loss
If applicable: how & why have your lost friends? I'll start. One: I was terrible and certainly deserved some alienation. Though, I mostly self-pariahed. Beyond that, though... I worked with...
If applicable: how & why have your lost friends?
I'll start. One: I was terrible and certainly deserved some alienation. Though, I mostly self-pariahed. Beyond that, though... I worked with friends and they sucked so bad it was hard to continue liking them.
Well, how 'bout you??
13 votes -
Misguided things our parents did
I'd like to hear your stories of things your parents did with good intentions that went wrong. This is mine. When I was very young – old enough that I can remember it, but young enough that I...
I'd like to hear your stories of things your parents did with good intentions that went wrong. This is mine.
When I was very young – old enough that I can remember it, but young enough that I wasn't going to school full time yet – my mother would volunteer at a local nursing home. I never met my maternal grandmother. I think she died a year or two before I was born. I have a vague memory of meeting my maternal grandfather, and there are photos of it, but he died when I was still quite young. Maybe 4 or 5. I don't believe either of my grandparents were in ill health before their deaths. But I think that their deaths affected my mother and she wanted to help other elderly people, so she started volunteering at the nursing home.
I have 2 older brothers who by this time were in school most of the day, leaving my mother and me at home alone. I think she also got bored of doing housework and wanted to do something useful with her time. (I can't say I blame her!) I suspect she also thought that the residents of the nursing home would enjoy interacting with a child, even if it wasn't their own grandchild. So she took me with her. I think she wanted me to learn to value elderly people and to learn to value community service.
Unfortunately, she failed miserably. What I learned was that old people are scary as fuck and I didn't want to be anywhere near them. You this was a nursing home. This was not an "old folks home" where they play canasta, have dances, and engage in elderly hanky panky. This was end-of-life care for people dying of cancer, and the now-preventable diseases like polio. The entire place reeked of vomit, and the old people were hard of hearing and weird. They were almost always in a bed or wheelchair, and usually in hospital gowns. There were often sounds of screaming from other rooms where some patient was in terrible pain from whatever ailment they suffered.
The residents were all old and gray haired except for one. He was a young man. He had to be younger than my mother who would have been in her early 30s. He was probably 20-ish years old. His hair was not gray - it was dark black and close cut with electric clippers, though not quite a crew cut. He was always in a hospital gown and always in a wheelchair that had an IV pole on it (though I don't recall there ever being anything hanging from it). And while he looked normal, he had some sort of mental deficit where he could only grunt and moan. I would often see him loudly moaning and gesticulating as if trying to point at something to say, "give me that," or "take me over there."
The one bright side to this place was that there was a woman in a red and white striped uniform who pushed around a cart full of every type of candy imaginable! I wanted so much to get a peanut butter cup or a chocolate bar from her, but no. Her candy was strictly off-limits to me. (I don't know whether it was cost or health that made my mother refuse to ever let me have a piece of candy.)
I'm pretty sure my mother was trying to teach me the value of both old people and volunteering to help our community. But as a ~4 year old, it was too much. It instead taught me that getting old meant pain, suffering, and eventually death, and that old people are scary as fuck. I didn't want to get old or be around old people. (I eventually got over it and now am nearing being an old person myself. 😉)
20 votes -
The world's first happiness museum opens in Denmark – the Nordic country is consistently ranked among the planet's happiest
7 votes -
Amazon's internal records show that it deceived the public on rising injury rates among its warehouse workers
12 votes -
On the infestation of small-souled bugmen
12 votes -
An investigation into the concept of "lifestyle"
8 votes -
How to let someone down?
for those still committed to monogamous relationships: if you've been in a situation where you're talking with a few people that could be romantic interests, how do you let them know it's not...
for those still committed to monogamous relationships: if you've been in a situation where you're talking with a few people that could be romantic interests, how do you let them know it's not gonna happen once you've found the (current) one ?
9 votes -
I built a tiny home office… then I lost my job
9 votes -
Living in Sri Lanka during the end of the civil war, I saw how life goes on, surrounded by death
12 votes -
Here’s what one week of online school is like for my seven- and five-year-old kids, explained in a comic
17 votes -
Bridging the gap: Thoughts on racism from a White mother of Black children
16 votes -
Denmark confronts sexual harassment at work – more than 1,600 women have signed an open letter alleging the problem is rife in Danish media
7 votes -
The rat tribe: Meet the million migrant workers living beneath Beijing's streets
7 votes -
Kulning – The often high-pitched herding calls of the Nordic fäbod culture; a group of labor songs developed out of needs rather than musical expression
9 votes -
Are there any aspects of your mental life that you know/suspect to be idiosyncratic?
As it is only possible to know what it is like to be yourself, it could be that you perceive the world in a completely different way than is typical and have no idea that that is the case. Hence...
As it is only possible to know what it is like to be yourself, it could be that you perceive the world in a completely different way than is typical and have no idea that that is the case. Hence the existence of invisible disabilities such as face blindness or double vision, conditions such as synesthesia and aphantasia, etc. I am curious if anyone here experiences any such mental/perceptual phenomenon that could possibly be unique to you/atypical. Or if you experience one of the above it would be very interesting to hear about as well!
Some examples of what I'm going for:
- a YouTuber/blogger I follow claims their internal monologue takes the form of a humming or buzzing following the cadence and intonation, but not the sounds, of speech.
- my personal inner monologue is usually more of a "dialogue", as in a discussion between me and 1+ imaginary participants (usually someone I know IRL or a character from a book). Although I don't perceive "them" as a separate entity I can't really predict what "they" will say. (feel free to comment if you experience this as well! I only suspect this is weird because mental vocalization is typically referred to as monologue but maybe this is totally normal?)
- I'm pretty sure I experience emotions at a much shallower level than most. When I was very young I actually considered the possibility that I was a robot constructed by my parents, based on some Twilight Zone episode. I would say 95% of the time I don't really feel any emotion and when I do, it feels much less intense than it seems to be for most people judging by their behavior.
- When I'm reading particularly dense text or have spent some time memorizing things, there is sometimes a certain sensation in my head, which, while I wouldn't really call it tiredness or exhaustion, does compel me to stop studying or whatever I'm doing. It's almost analogous to muscle soreness?
22 votes -
He fought wildfires while imprisoned. California reported him to ICE for deportation
9 votes -
On the use of a life
14 votes -
The battle over dyslexia: It was once a widely accepted way of explaining why some children struggled to read and write. But some experts have begun to question the existence of dyslexia itself.
19 votes -
How law enforcement taught me to dehumanize
3 votes -
Parents who work in childcare are trapped in an unsustainable system
8 votes -
How the QAnon conspiracy is growing in the UK and spilling over into anti-vaccine and 5G protests
13 votes -
"I barely have anything left to give": For parents of kids with autism, the unique challenges presented by the isolation of the coronavirus pandemic have sometimes been overwhelming
7 votes -
Dwindling ranks and declining public trust plague police agencies amid summer of protests
8 votes -
Hanlon's razor
6 votes -
How to recognize the warning signs of a project crisis
7 votes -
Remembering my father
11 votes -
Tips for those who work with teams in different countries and companies
4 votes -
From protesting police to becoming a cop himself
9 votes -
How police are using 'super recognizers' to track criminals
9 votes