if you want to ask a bisexual or asexual person about their sexual history to verify that they’re queer, but you don’t want them to take it the wrong way, try this useful communication technique:
give them twenty dollars and go away.
As a bi person, I can attest to the beneficiality of this method.
As an asexual, I concur as well
This works with pansexuals too, btw.
Tbh, I would be tempted just to make more yakisoba tomorrow, since there’s also plenty of sauce left. But Mr. Picky Eater is on the way back now, and that’s just too sweet for him in a savory dish.
May end up just using different seasoning for some quick noodles anyway.
And the rest of that sauce should hold quite a while in the fridge.
Tonight’s delight: Some chicken yakisoba, thrown together with odds and ends of veggies and some frozen precooked chicken bits.
(Also GF spaghetti, because that was the best thing I had. Not classic, but it’s not a bad choice. One of those easy dishes great for using whatever you’ve got, anyway.)
I forgot to put any aonori on top before starting to chow down on that bowl, so just imagine some dry parsley looking stuff on top 😉 Nice touch, but delicious without.
That ended up being more vegetable prep than I had planned for. (Bagged cole slaw mix is handy if you can get it. Not really a thing here.) But, there should be plenty of veggies left for some other dish for both of us to eat tomorrow!
As bad as I always am at judging amounts, I only used half the vegetables I cut up for the noodles. And that made two pretty big bowls worth, which was about twice as much as planned 🙄 With a pretty high proportion of veggies–harder to see there with it heavy on the cabbage.
Not about to complain, though, because yummy noodles. The second bowl may not be hot out of the pan, but hey.
Here’s something that happens to ADHD children a lot: Getting pushed beyond their limits by accident. Here’s how it works and why it’s so bad.
Child says, “I can’t do this.”
Adult (teacher or parent) does not believe it, because Adult has seen Child do things that Adult considers more difficult, and Child is too young to properly articulate why the task is difficult.
Adult decides that the problem is something other than true inability, like laziness, lack of self-confidence, stubbornness, or lack of motivation.
Adult applies motivation in the form of harsher and harsher scoldings and punishments. Child becomes horribly distressed by these punishments. Finally, the negative emotions produce a wave of adrenaline that temporarily repairs the neurotransmitter deficits caused by ADHD, and Child manages to do the task, nearly dropping from relief when it’s finally done.
The lesson Adult takes away is that Child was able to do it all along, the task was quite reasonable, and Child just wasn’t trying hard enough. Now, surely Child has mastered the task and learned the value of simply following instructions the first time.
The lessons Child takes away? Well, it varies, but it might be:
-How to do the task while in a state of extreme panic, which does NOT easily translate into doing the task when calm.
-Using emergency fight-or-flight overdrive to deal with normal daily problems is reasonable and even expected.
-It’s not acceptable to refuse tasks, no matter how difficult or potentially harmful.
-Asking for help does not result in getting useful help.
I’m now in my 30’s, trying to overcome chronic depression, and one major barrier is that, thanks to the constant unreasonable demands placed on me as a child, I never had the chance to develop actual healthy techniques for getting stuff done. At 19, I finally learned to write without panic, but I still need to rely on my adrenaline addiction for simple things like making phone calls, tidying the house, and paying bills. Sometimes, I do mean things to myself to generate the adrenaline rush, because there’s no one else around to punish me.
But hey, at least I didn’t get those terrible drugs, right? That might have had nasty side effects.
There’s a lot of overlap between ADHD traits and autism traits. Whether you meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, too, I have no idea (because I’m a random person on the Internet), but you might find ADHD resources helpful in figuring out your life challenges.
A lot of “help” for executive function skills comes from neurotypicals who are naturally good at it and lack insight into people who aren’t, which makes it spectacularly useless to the people who actually need it.
Well shit this explains so much about me
OK, what I was trying to comment on that chat post like a dunce.
Have to add that I was in college relying hard on Pell grants and work study, when the Clinton administration expanded eligibility for all need-based federal aid to include higher income brackets.
Doesn’t sound like a bad thing, right? Yeah, if you also increase the funding to cover at least double the number of students suddenly eligible for what little non-loan aid exists. Including the number of work study jobs/hours available.
Fast forward 20+ years of further slashed educational funding and skyrocketing costs, and I can only imagine what it must be like by now.
The situation was rough enough then, and that was one of the reasons I ended up crashing out. Trying to make up the sudden gap by working my ass off even more. At a state university within commuting distance. (Where I ended up largely because it was almost doable with the aid I could get starting out.)
A long ugly slide from Reagan to here in so many ways, yeah.
federal government: alright we’re going to grant you this much money for student aid
federal government: but part of this student aid requires you getting a job
federal government: and we’re going to act like there absolutely is a job available for you
federal government: because there are enough student jobs for everyone right?
if you ever have the time, I recommend everyone reading up on “plains indian sign language” that existed from canada to mexico as a form of accessible lingua franca for all nations to be able to communicate with one another. when discussing native communities and activism, so many speak to the pain of losing our oral languages, but we so often forget about this vital thread that tied so many of us together
This is apparently some sort of Chilean harvestman and it’s an incredible little monster with mighty bladed thighs and a xenomorph crest??
Pachyloidellus goliath! Its back legs are probably spiky to deter predators rather than attack. Its actual mouthparts (the little nubbins on the other end) are too small and weak to break skin. Its diet doesn’t get more ambitious than small insects and worms.
I’ll be the first to admit I thoroughly enjoy all the “holy shit, Australia” posts that circulate around here but I feel like there’s a very important caveat when it comes to the discussion of swooping season that no one seems to mention.
For those not aware, swooping season is when the magpies start to nest and turn into mini dive-bombers comprised of talons, feathers and spite. It’s not fun. I bled heavily after a particularly vicious swoop when I was a kid, and I’m definitely not the only one.
But here’s the thing: swooping is not an innate behaviour. It’s a learned one. I realised this the moment I moved out of home and began my decade long (entirely unintentional) habit of moving to a different suburb every two years.
I’ve met a lot of wildlife, walking everywhere as I do. And I’ve met a lot of magpies – hella intelligent creatures that are probably thinking “what the fuck is this chick doing” every time I say hi to them as I walk past.
When I first moved out of home, I automatically started taking notes on areas I saw magpies in preparation for swooping season. It was just the done thing. It wasn’t until September came and went and the magpies in my area continued their quizzical but otherwise completely non-aggressive behaviour that it started to twig with me.
The next few years of moving around solidified my suspicions.
Anytime I lived close to a school or in an area with a high concentration of families with young kids, the magpies would swoop. Any suburb (usually inner city) with a high concentration of childless households and/or share-houses: no swooping to be seen.
And it’s any goddamn wonder.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve yelled at kids for messing with wildlife. I grew up in the outer suburbs, so there was no shortage of mini-assholes with an empathy shortage. Australian kids will poke anything they can reach with a stick, and throw rocks at everything else. Including birds nests.
Magpies are intelligent as hell, and they remember shit for GENERATIONS. Some human-shaped fucker throwing rocks at them and their nests? That’s something that’d stick.
So anytime you read one of those “lol the birds try to kill us here” posts, remember: it’s not the birds that started that shit – it was the asshole humans.
Adding on to the fact that magpies are super intelligent:
In primary school there were these really huge gum trees in which a family of magpies took up residence one year.
(an important thing to note is that I grew up in the country with A LOT of magpies -that were basically like relatives for the amount of time they spent on the veranda- and never encountered any swooping)
So one morning walking in to school I noticed that all the kids ahead of me were giving the really huge gum trees a wide berth, with other kids shouting warnings from the buildings. Being an airy-headed little kid, I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were actually saying, so I just kept walking straight under the trees.
Nothing happened.
I got to the buildings and asked why everyone was making a big fuss about the trees, and one of my friends just pointed back the way I came and said “the birds!”
And sure enough, any of the other kids that tried to walk under the trees got immediately swooped and chased to what the magpies thought was a good distance from their nests.
Magpies not only remember humans that are mean to them, but they recognise humans that have been given the seal of approval by other magpies.
For the last 40+ years there’s been a rapidly growing family of magpies at my grandparents house.
The lady next door would feed them every morning and they would do that beautiful warble. After she died my grandad started feeding them. Everyday.
They come to the same place everyday and wait for him, he used to take my sister and I as kids to help him feed the magpies and it was honestly a highlight of our visits. He still does it with our younger cousins.
They’ve never swooped anyone in the family, they scare off cats that try and get in my grandmas garden and they sing for my grandparents everyday.
Last year my grandad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He sometimes forgets what he’s doing and what he was saying and repeats conversations over and over.
Sometimes he’s late to feed the magpies, and they wait. It’s kinda like they know. They’ll come right up to the house and gently tap on the window to remind him, and he’s so happy to see them and feed them.
Magpies are beautiful birds, and anyone that thinks otherwise is probably a dick to them.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
You must be logged in to post a comment.