It also frustrates me how restaurants in international airports only follow the local “meal schedule.” If everyone were in the same timezone all day, then okay, I can see why you’d only offer breakfast before 10am. But that isn’t the case in an international airport. Why are all the dinner places closed? (Rhetorical question - I know the answer is “$$$”)

But if you’ve been flying for hours, jetlagged from changing timezones, and you still need to catch a connecting flight, you may be ready for dinner/supper. It sucks when you want a more substantial meal, but the only options are eggy breakfast sandwiches and doughnuts.

It just makes more sense to offer options for any time of day in a place that’s open 24 hours, where you know the people you intend to serve will be on different meal schedules from what the locals might follow.

And that includes allowing people to buy/drink beer. But alas, those damn blue laws supersede all of that.

Oof, yeah, same. There’s too much cringe.

I also can’t stand fight scenes. They’re way too intense. The best I can do is zone out when they happen and at the end ask whoever’s watching with me, “Who won?”

It’s sad how terms get co-opted. I get it’s part of the progression of language, but it still sucks.

I soak up the feelings of those around me, but it’s not some hippie woo-woo thing. I don’t think it’s “special,” just uncontrollable empathy. I love watching game shows because I take in the excitement and happiness of the crowd/players. On the flip side, if I see someone crying, it’s hard to stay neutral, because I feel their pain without trying to.

Is it a normal human reaction? Absolutely. Do most people experience it as strongly as I do? I have no evidence either way. It could be more extreme for me, but it could also be normal - just boiling down to differences in emotional regulation.

Either way, I guess I’ll be using the old, unambiguous term “empathic.” It still works, after all, and doesn’t carry the baggage of the newer term.

Sometimes I cry happy tears when I hear kids having a grand old time playing at playgrounds. That sort of pure joy is so far from my grown-up experiences, it’s like my brain can’t process it anymore.

Search for low-income housing.

Receive ads for $100,000 condos.

Yeah, just rub it in, why doncha

I love to make a positive impression on the world. I love to empower children, give comfort to those around me, to volunteer my energy and talents for a greater good.

But in the back of my mind, sometimes there’s a little voice that reminds me, “Whatever good you put into the world, your mom can vicariously claim to have created. This will never not be true, because she is responsible for your existence.”

And I hate it. I learned what not to be by observing her. I learned how hypocrites are able to function, how some people are able to override reality with their “feelings,” and how manipulators manage to get their way. Credit goes where it’s due, for sure, but she really shouldn’t be proud of the things she taught me. I became who I am in spite of her, not because of her.

I came to the same conclusion. I know how my mom reacts to news she doesn’t like - she defaults to denial. My memory has always been stronger than hers, so there’s no shortage of incidents that I remember, that she has long forgotten. (The tree remembers what the axe forgot, after all.) If I were to attempt to bring things up, she’d deny such things ever happened. Instead of me having catharsis and her having self-recognition, I’d be put in a defensive position and she’d say I’m exaggerating or making things up. Which is to say, attempting to have a serious talk with her always makes me feel worse.

Thankfully, I have siblings, and they remember what our childhood was like. We have all given up on trying to get our mom to see the light. Instead, we have a secret group chat where we can vent as needed.

This is why I love Lemmy. There’s a recognition that we’re all imperfect beings stuck in this crazy thing called “life” together. It only makes sense to support each other.

my existence is technically “illegal” lol

Small community Lemmy, you’re one of those commenters that I feel like I kinda know (even though I totally don’t. But I seem to upvote you a lot, so you’re recognizable in a good way.) I just want to say, I think this is a really cool fact about you. It’s like you were born a badass.

The only things that could make it cooler would be if you were born with your middle fingers raised, or your first words were, “Fuck the system” (in any language.)

Thank you for the clarification. I agree 100%!

Not once have people channeled negative emotions into action or art. It’s impossible.

Except, no? Art is about expressing one’s self. There’s tons of art out there inspired by negative emotions. Anger-fueled protest songs, Emily Dickinson’s poems about death, countless paintings created to express a people’s or an individual’s plight, the list goes on.

Being positive is definitely better for one’s health, but to say negative emotions have never and could never be used to create art is absurd.

Edit: Or was your comment sarcasm? I truly cannot tell anymore.

More and more of that cheap tacky plastic crap littering front lawns.

The inflatable decorations are my pet-hate. If you don’t keep them running 24/7, they look like a bunch of garbage strewn across the lawn.

As one of those neurodivergent kids, my mom explicitly laid all the blame on me whenever she felt embarrassed in public. I was removed from activities countless times without any clear understanding of why - all I knew was I wasn’t allowed to do fun things. There was no accommodation for sensory issues, no space provided for me to self-regulate, no understanding that I was having a difficult time and needed support - just labels thrown at me for “being difficult”, as if by merely existing, I was a problem.

Every child deserves to participate in enriching activities regardless of their neurotype. By removing neurodiverse kids (and not returning after they calm down) or outright keeping them away from such events, they may internalize the idea that who they are is not acceptable. Parents, there are resources available today that didn’t exist in the 90s. There is no reason to raise your neurodiverse kid the way we used to be raised. If you don’t know what to do with your kid and you haven’t already done so, get help. Please.

Indeed, I was never a “typical teen.” I always felt older than I was, and I’ve never fit in well with those my age. I came to most of my current religious and political philosophies in middle school, after I realized the beliefs I was raised in didn’t make sense and I plunged into self-discovery and research.

One of my mottos since that time is “question everything” (which lines up with the decision to pick this username.) Over the years, I’ve met people at various stages of that journey, including some who may never even begin it. I’ve learned, I’ve grown, and yet I’ve found that a lot of the conclusions I came to on topics long ago have only strengthened with more information. I saw fascism in my school admin, and 20+ year later, I know for sure that it was all part of the same big picture we see today. I saw corruption, I saw manipulation, I saw reasons not to trust anyone who expected blind authority. I was told I was “overreacting” by people who couldn’t see what I saw, and it’s hard to reconcile the normally-positive “having been right” with the negative of, well, gestures around.

I am not the same person I was as a teen, even if those core beliefs remain. For example, I’ve come to embrace polyamory, to understand and accept those with drug abuse issues, and have learned a lot about social situations (I may have been quick on figuring out a lot of things, but my social skills perpetually lag behind. Yay autism.)

The key thing that helped across the board was when I decided to refrain from taking sides on any major issues until after I’ve researched it thoroughly. Too many people react impulsively to new ideas, often against them, only to later on embrace them. I saw it in many of the adults that were around me, adults who heard a biased headline and drew wild assumptions based on it. But when the thing ended up actually being beneficial, they never acknowledged their past stance - they just quietly ignored it and acted like being pro-whatever is how they’d been all along. I told myself I never wanted to become such a hypocrite, and the best way I’ve found to avoid it is to take in information and consider all sides of it prior to forming and expressing an opinion on it.

I know that’s not “normal,” though I do wish it was. But yeah, I can understand how “having the same beliefs as teenage-me did” is more likely to be a sign of stagnation. However, self-reflection is practically a daily task in my life. If some of my beliefs haven’t changed since my teenage years, it’s because they’re still solid today.

Indeed. I didn’t intend to deny that. The phrase just got me thinking, and I realized that “normal health” is hard to even imagine. It would require so many things to be different. The chronic stress alone must be destroying us.

I’m from the US. I live in a country with health care too expensive to stay on top of. Where it’s normal to skip routine check-ups because they would cost too much (if you can even get a day off work in the first place.) Our jobs either do not offer vacation time, or limit any time off to something like 2 weeks or less per year. Most areas are unwalkable, while in others, any adult who rides a bike is assumed to have had a DUI (that is, people assume they lost their driving privileges. Why else no car?) Nothing about my environment is healthy.

Ergo,

I have no idea what “normal health” means.

If they’d said ““All” 90s kids were born in the 80s,” yeah, that would be gate-keepy. However, they used “mostly,” which leaves room for outliers. If you remember the 90s, you can still fit the bill.

Which means like it or not, you’re one of us. 🙃

I just want to say, this is the first time I’ve seen/heard the 2030s referred to as simply “the 30s” in a casual sentence. It still feels weird. But eh, that’s life. I still remember “2002” feeling like a far-off future.

I realized recently that teenage-me was right about a lot of things I believed about the future, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it.

It’s like my anxiety is doing a victory dance on my hope’s grave.

At first, the censorship in that article annoyed me. But after thinking about it, it’s hilarious that people can write and publish an article entirely about somebody’s penis, yet they still see the need to censor words like “dick” and “sexual.” As if somebody who chooses to read about someone’s penis is going to be offended by such words, or the article writer has to pRoTeCt tHe cHiLdReN somehow (???)

I just can’t get over how stupid our modern dystopia is.