Daphne really jumped at the chance to teach Niles to dance. And when his date cancelled she immediately asked to go with him and was afraid of being "too forward".

Not of crossing a line, but being too forward. It's a pretty specific phrase.

Then she wore her favorite dress (as we see later when she's in therapy) and referred to him as a date. She's the one who wanted to tango. She's the one who upped the stakes when they were talking.

Of course she distanced herself after it. She's seeing Joe. She thinks Niles has no interest in her.

It was just as much a fantasy for her as it was for him.

@azeki

They both want each other, both want the other to be happy, and both think that they can’t make the other happy.

Daphne is so eager to take what she believes is her only shot to go on a date with Niles and leans into it as hard as she can. She wanted to keep dancing and he was the one to decide to leave.

“Yeah, Niles, let’s act like we’re in love” even though everyone knows he just split with his wife.

And how giddy was she to call him Niles?? Not Dr. Crane, but Niles.

Someone can’t wrap their heads around the fact that I am asexual aromantic and bisexual/biromantic. No, I’m not romantically or sexually attracted to men and women, but I am open to dating both men and women (and possibly having sex), I’ve also asked out (boys and girls when I was in high school) and men and women before in the past despite being aro ace as well. My interest in both sexes does not erase my asexual and aromantic identity. Queerness is not black and white.

we are in the midst of a friday ass thursday. keep your wits about you.

You know, that Mythbusters post legitimately changed my life. Before seeing it, I had exponentially more guilt and stress about not being able to sleep, which of course, further exacerbated my inability to sleep.

Now, every time I wake up about three am, knowing I have to get up at 6.45, instead of stressing and panicking about how my day is going to be sleep deprived and miserable, I just tell myself 'Time to activate Mythbusters Protocol' and lie there with my eyes closed safe in the knowledge that I am measurably reducing later feelings of exhaustion.

And when this happens, about 70% of the time the reduction of guilt and stress means I actually do fall back asleep, so all in all instead of getting only three or four hours sleep, I get five to six and a half.

Which y'know, major improvement in health and energy.

On a related note, that post also opened up the world of naps for me. I used to think that napping was mostly pointless for me, because I'm pretty much incapable of falling fully asleep in the middle of the day. But when I redefined naps to include "lying down with my eyes shut for an hour," even if I just spent the whole time brainstorming fanfiction, that was often enough to get me from "exhausted and running on 4 hours of sleep" to energized and refreshed

The post (?) as found on Reddit with bonus explanatory Reddit comment.

Getting an F in sex and a D in boobs.... I'm gonna fail my gender assignment....

DO NOT LET SOCIAL MEDIA TURN YOU INTO AN AMERICAN

As an American: Seriously, please don’t

ALT

ok well i don't

"Americanization" is a real phenomenon, and how non-Americans should be cautious of it is taught in different countries at school. It's taught in Greece and people from other countries told me their elementary or middle school teachers (using the American grades, to make it make sense to the majority on the site) talked to them about it.

It's common sense here, except for USians, so I'll analyze it a bit more for the dominant demographic here. In a globalized setting, the most dominant culture affects the others and sets the trends. The way our language works, how we think, our levels of politeness and intimacy, and our levels of respect. (flash news, they are going down 😂)

I don't want to imply that there is nothing good in the US. There are plenty of positives in the country. It's just that for the rest of the cultures online it's a constant daily fight to not forget our roots, with the degree US media and brands have permeated our lives. In Greece at least we watch more US American media than Greek media nowadays, and many of our shows are rip-offs of USian ones, with little adaptation to Greek reality and culture.

And to demonstrate the amount of this exposure, a 22-year-old Greek asked me the other day "if something happens we call 911, right?" This might have literally cost them their life, in a dangerous situation! Because all the movies and songs they consumed (not an unusual thing for the Greek youth) were what they knew. And I found a similar comment in this comment thread.

Lots of Americans in the notes failing to understand this post. It's not about not liking the US. It's not about you feeling ashamed or guilty for being American. It's not about you.

It's about American media drowning out native language media all over the world, and workplaces requiring the English language in your repertoire more and more. It's about proper translations and foreign language dubbing of films disappearing because "everyone speaks/should speak English anyway." All of this is leading to the deterioration of native speaker groups of languages worldwide.

In my country, Dutch language courses can't find enough people who want to study the language, while English language courses are overflowing with people who want to study the language. There is even widespread distaste for the Dutch language for being crude or sounding rough or what have you. That's our native language!!! That is our culture in its purest form!!! That is knowledge we inherit from our parents as they did from theirs!!! That is how we learned fairytales and folk stories and myths!!! That is the language that shapes our communication and our way of thinking!!! To hate your native language is to hate yourself at the deepest level.

And yet it's so normalised. Droves of foreigners living in the Netherlands will never learn a word of Dutch, because "everyone speaks English anyway." We are the world's leaders in non-native understanding of English, but it comes at a cost. A grave cost we will continue to pay.

If you're looking to support your non-American friends in any way that is not performatively shouting "I hate being an American" into the void, first of all, unlearn that hatred of yourself and your culture. You are of no help self-flagellating, and there is a difference between holding your country accountable for its issues, and denying yourself your culture because your country is doing and has done bad things.

(I am not going to get into arguments about whether or not US American culture exists. It does, and if you think differently you are welcome to change your mind.)

Secondly, learn about other countries. Learn a bit of Chinese. Take an interest in the Italian political system. Ask your friends about their countries' folklore. Watch documentaries about art from Nigeria. Absorb information that is not fed to you by American media.

And thirdly, quit expecting your non-American friends to communicate in a way that appeals to you. The French and Dutch will always seem rude to you because our way of communicating is far more direct than the way you communicate. People from other cultures may seem vague to you because their way of communicating is far more indirect, and you're not used to that either. Quit being frustrated when you don't get what we mean exactly. Quit assuming we mean the absolute worst thing you could imagine just because you didn't get what we meant the first time. Ask us to explain if you need us to, and learn to accept that we are different from you.

We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.

We are already adapting to your culture 100% of the time we are online. It's your responsibility to adapt to us, too. At least do your friends the courtesy of learning about and adapting to them.

Also like people who say "just leave tumblr if you don't want to see american stuff" it's fucking everywhere it's not just online, it's offline too, our politicians keep trying to copy the USA, your tarrifs bankrupted small sellers all over Europe, your proxy wars and ability to just stop wars with a phone call also influence us, in south america Venezuela is currently risking being bombed to distract people from the fact that your president is a paedophile.

Emerican Johnson once had a good video (which I can't find any more) about how he moved from being a capitalist into a socialist, which involved leaving the USA and then realising that people outside of the USA can't choose to ignore politics from the USA because of how much it affects everyone.

There's a good video by Jack Saint on cultural cringe, and how even unintentionally when there's a culture which is considered modern (like it fills the cinemas) it can make your own culture seem boring and shitty meaning you go towards the other culture and abandon your own history and sometimes even language. Like an interesting example of this is how 'white walls' are considered cool in Indian social media because of how there's so many people from the USA who have just plain white walls for their videos, rather than traditional Indian house designs. Especially because IKEA is expensive and out of reach for most people in India, so having a plain painted white wall with IKEA furniture is actually a status symbol!

There's been so many times I've tried to get through to a bunch of people from the US the sheer amount of stuff we can't avoid. But I think the indoctrination which people in the USA do go through has been made quite clear in some of the recent videos from Evan Edinger, where he can point out where the absolute nonsense he's recieved in his comments is mentally from, as he grew up in the USA but once he lived in another country he realised all the wool which had been pulled over his eyes.

Many people from the USA when confronted with the truth seem even unable to unwilling to actually listen to people from outside the USA. They just get angry and combative. Like arguments like "We have problems inside too!" Like yeah of course you do, we know, we can show you paths to help. "Why are you attacking us, there's lots of POC in the USA" do you think there's only white people outside of the usa? do you think there's only white people even in Europe or something? Very racist argument to make. "I'm not listening to an X" if the place someone comes from means you won't listen to them, never mind the xenophobia it just makes you look like a child if you say an argument is based on who someone is rather than what it says.

I let myself rest and now I'm daydreaming about academia and academic research and writing again

Guys I'm getting some very mixed messaging here

academia perfec t size to put human in to learn! inside very good and learn human get smart put human in academia. put human in academia. no problems ever in academia because no stress and support for human mind in big human head. academia yes a place for human put human in academia can trust college for giveing good brain to human. friend college.

Just in case anyone hasn't caught on -

The reason AI programs like Gemini are programmed to encourage you to let it make basic life choices for you like what restaurant you should eat at is because they intend to monetize your patronage.

It's just a matter of time before the AI stops offering you the most highly rated option in the area or whatever aligns most closely to what you requested (If it's even doing that now) and instead only recommends restaurants that have paid the company for that privilege.

Restaurants that won't pay Google to recommend them to AI users are going to become functionally invisible, whereas those who are willing to purchase what amounts to targeted advertisements laundered through an AI "friend" will get new customers regardless of their quality.

Basic rule: If you aren't paying for something, that means you're the product.

Google Maps already does this, preferring more distant sponsored results over closer non-sponsored ones. All the claims that these algorithms make the same choices you would make if you just had the time and energy to research them are totally false. They make the choices that lead to profitable results for the companies that program them, with a user interface that gaslights you into thinking it was your idea all along.

You can see this at work already in Google Play store-- you search for an app, and the only time the app you're looking for is the top result is when the company behind the app has paid for the privilege-- in which case you'll see it twice.

You can also see this at work on Amazon, when searching by exact product name can sometimes put your result on the second or third page, while you scroll through alternatives that Amazon wants to sell you.

Etsy is also deeply terrible for this

i dont want to be in a fandom that critisizes the choices of fictional characters like they are human beings. i want to see THEORY and ANALYSIS and STORY STRUCTURE and CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!! I WANT PARALLELS AND MOTIFS AND VISUAL CUES!!! They're not REAL they are TOOLS so stop acting like they are people who made bad choices and should be punished. of course they made bad choices!!! that shit is funny and cool to watch!!