What I’ve really noticed more recently is that at times the tantrum is mostly performative. Like they’re not deeply and gravely upset, they’re just acting it out.

Literally yes. They’re testing the boundaries of what they can do and seeing what the results of different types of behavior are.

Well yeah, but it makes me tired and food fixes it.

I used to think the sound of cicadas was the sound of sunlight, because it always seemed louder the brighter it was.

I definitely gain energy in a colloquial sense from food when I’m hungry.

Like, if I haven’t eaten much that day, I’ll want to nap around 16/17, then I’ll be alert and energetic again if I eat dinner instead of napping.

I know you’re not supposed to diagnose historical figures, but Kant is like the textbook definition of autistic. He made the rule that he would smoke one pipeful of tobacco a day, and lamented for years that he couldn’t find a bigger pipe. His moral philosophy also demonstrates the kind of rigid thinking that is characteristic of autism.

I just also searched for that meme and gave up, but lo!

notable difficult language

If it helps, this is relative. If you learn one tonal language, others are then easier to learn.

It’s probably actually an eyebrow/beard hair unless you really pissed someone off.

Ehh. If it’s a clump of hair, absolutely. If it’s one hair, we live in an imperfect world and it happens- please don’t waste food instead of just pulling the hair out.

It’s basic chivalry

It’s been a decade or more since I did it, but I wasn’t very frequently sick at the time, nor am I now. I do get more severely sick than my husband now, but he’s an overweight omnivore and I’m an underweight vegan, so I assume it’s more related to that. Itchy nostrils sound awful, but I’ve never had them.

I can fit quarters and €2 coins in my nostrils. I used to have a drunkenness level that would prompt me to assert this at parties or bars, and then I’d obviously show people.

Nobody wants their coins back after that, but it’s not very lucrative and I shudder to think now about the diseases I tempted.

I find confrontation pretty difficult, and I force myself to be direct and assertive about my needs and wants with my husband, because he deserves it. A common mistake I made in previous relationships was bottling up things I didn’t like, but that leads to resentment every time. I understand the value of communicating openly with him, even if it feels like I’m not being “chill” enough and he is receptive to it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not hard.

My husband has a similar problem with talking about his preferences, because he was always taught that they’re secondary to his partner’s. He finds it difficult to tell me that he wants to spend time on solo activities, but I encourage him to practice his hobbies. Even though he knows I’m happy for him to decompress however works for him and to engage in the things that bring him joy, he still struggles against himself to do it, for us.

I make decisions differently because of our marriage (I have pretty significant executive dysfunction, so these might not sound like struggles to others, but they certainly have been for me)- where I previously might have just eaten lentils in a lean month, I now push myself to work more to support us. Where I used to write papers in a 48 hour frantic dash, now I start earlier and make sure I can allot breaks for meals with him and a regular sleep schedule (we live in basically a studio apartment, so keeping the computer on makes it hard for him to sleep). Where I would have left laundry hanging on the drying rack basically until I wore it again, I now force myself to put it away as soon as it’s dry (again because of the space issue).

I don’t think the marriage certificate itself caused these changes, but knowing that we’re in it for the long haul changed how I think about my relationship with my husband. I realized that I needed to work on myself to become the partner he deserves, but other people might be able to get to that mindset without the permanence of marriage. I just wasn’t and didn’t realize it until it changed.

Each of those changes is a positive one imo, even without considering their effects on our marriage, and we’re both improved for having married each other. That’s not even addressing the joy of being able to fully relax with the knowledge that your partner loves, accepts, and supports you, and will stay with you, even if things get difficult.

People are talking about how smartphones didn’t have those features at first, but I just carried around a 2 language dictionary when I was traveling before cellphones were a thing. I’m not sure if they’re exactly the same everywhere, but I also always found reading an atlas/map to transfer pretty easily from one country to another (across North America and Europe, so there could be much greater variation in the world than I saw).

It sounds harder and it was, but only a little. You already knew how to read maps and at least you didn’t have to worry about a battery.

You love to see an Octavia Butler reference

I’m interested in etymology and grammar, so I would have been on the bleeding edge of social science, but yes

We’ve got friends who are about to have their second kid, and they’re going a little nuts because they want to socialize a lot more than they are, but can only hang out at like 10:30 am.

I asked them why they don’t just make friends with other parents in the area (they moved to a kid friendly neighborhood with a bunch of young families), and they kind of made a face and didn’t answer.

But like, why not? It seems like the perfect topic to bond over and you can watch the kids together, giving you plenty of time to hang out.

Good management is just good people skills. If you don’t have them, intentionally defanging your speech/correspondence helps prevent blowups. Unfortunately for people working under managers with bad people skills, this doesn’t actually make up for and mostly just highlights their managers’ deficits.

Tl;dr: management speak is intentionally harmless in and of itself, but is an obvious symptom of bad management.

I’m pretty sure it’s The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, here’s an excerpt with the kangaroo story.

Butler, who was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy

It’s always nice when you don’t have to feel mixed emotions about someone