For now absolutely. He’s been a real gift to IL. But I would be all in on a Pritzker/AOC ‘28 or ‘32 ticket.

I really wasn’t attracted to my now husband at all when we met. I remember also really disliking his smell (not BO, just regular pheromones or whatever).

11 years later we are extremely happily married and he’s sexy as fuck. His appearance hasn’t changed (except that he’s actually a little overweight now and looks a decade older) but every day he’s just hotter and hotter. Not like a “I just love him so much on the inside.” Like I genuinely perceive him to be extremely physically attractive (and equally good to smell) and look back on early days with complete confusion.

n=1 so grain of salt and whatnot, but I’d say if you’re vibing enough to make this a question worth asking then it’s probably worth giving it a shot to see if attraction develops

Edit: Please don’t actually tell them you’re not attracted to them though. That’s weird and unnecessary. You don’t need to lie either, just don’t comment on their appearance until/unless you start to notice those little things that have grown on you.

I’m 4/5 typically but I will get flashes of level 1 gore. Not randomly or frequently (thankfully), but like if I am reminded of a particular kind of injury I find very distressing I will see it very vividly for just a moment. Not fun.

My dreams are also really vivid.

Please introduce me to the woman who is doing IVF without first learning about cycle tracking and timed intercourse.

The idea that someone undergoing IVF has not yet tried everything else first is extremely bizarre. It’s wildly expensive and extremely hard on your physical and mental health.

This makes me want to go back on Reddit just to see what r/infertility and r/IVF have to say.

(I say this as I am currently prepping for my 5th freeze-all IVF cycle to make embryos I can’t even put in my own uterus because a doctor did a thing that left me infertile following a miscarriage years ago. Nobody wants to go through this shit. We do it because it’s the next least-worst thing on the list of things to try.)

The ascend power from Tears of the Kingdom. Not so much in my literal real life, but any time someone in a show/movie is being chased or is trapped somewhere or even just stuck in an awkward situation I expect them to just fly through the ceiling and leave all their pursuers with question marks over their heads.

I actually totally agree. All people should begin worthy of our respect simply because we are humans, and our language should reflect that. Where the break is for me is that (again, for me) honorifics and similar terms imply hierarchical respect or deference, and that’s where the “earned respect” comes in. My respect for you as an equal is yours to lose; my respect for you as superior is yours to earn. In my language community, regular old please and thank you communicate the first kind, while honorifics convey the second.

I am also midwestern, and I have a problem with both miss and ma’am. The entire fact that there are two of them (and just the one for men) implies that age determines some portion of a woman’s societal value.

So as a fellow midwesterner, I’m not sure I agree with the idea that this is fully regionalized rather than a vaguer community-based (your church, your town, your parents’ profession, your school system…). I do hear that you want to be authentic to your own values and upbringing and completely appreciate that. But I’d consider whether the point of politeness terms and honorifics is to make you, the speaker, feel like you’re doing the right thing or about making your addressee feel seen and valued. If it’s the second, then you might consider whether it’s worth developing a new way of showing respect that can feel equally authentic in contexts where you may be unintentionally be making others uncomfortable.

Most decent people don’t want the second kind of respect. I know for me it makes me feel icky thinking that someone has muted themselves because they’re afraid of making me angry. Mind you I don’t think poorly of anyone who says it, ever, because they’re just doing what they were taught and trying to be polite.

Strong agree. I do not want to be shown deference if I’m not in an explicit position of authority and I do now want to shown respect if I haven’t earned it. (I also resent being asked to show deference or respect when it isn’t merited.) General politeness, like please and thank you, goes a long way toward demonstrating that you respect the person as an equal, which feels much more respectful to me than imposing some kind of arbitrary implied hierarchy of unearned respect between strangers.

I feel this way too. I know nearly who calls me ma’am is intending to be courteous and I don’t hold it against them. That said, knowing they are well intended doesn’t make me less uncomfortable.

Also the idea of sir being the term of respect for all men and even boys but ma’am being for “older” women adds some baked in unavoidable sexism, no matters how genuinely-not-actually-sexiest the speaker is. There are just necessary built in assumptions about the addressee when you have to choose between ma’am and miss (or similar). The implication is that societal value of women, and not men, is age-determined. The former often makes a woman feel undesirably old and the latter often makes her feel infantalized. It’s the same as the Mr./Mrs./Miss situation, where moving just to Mr. and Ms. alleviates that tension a bit. No clear answer for sir and ma’am honorifics though.

Quentin is an incredible character in the show. Infuriating at times, immature, whiny, selfish, but in ways that are relatable. Everyone is immature, whiny, and selfish to some degree. Quentin’s story in the show is about getting out of his own fucking head and finding health and happiness in feeling connected to other people. His story as the MC is explicitly about him appreciating that he is not in fact the main character, and that’s a good thing.

Corollary of that is that the show ends up being a truly ensemble cast story, which is really refreshing. Plus Eliot and Margo are perfection.

For LGBTQ+ specifically, Todd from Bojack Horseman. He’s asexual, and he just kind of…is asexual. It’s a major plot line of character development as he figures himself out, but the asexuality isn’t a gimmick or hook. We care about Todd and this matters a lot to him, so we care about it too. It happens to be him exploring his (a)sexuality, but it could have been anything.

Abed Nadir in Community is one of the best examples IMO of doing diversity in tv right. He is autistic, and that fact is central not just to his character but to making the whole show work. Being autistic creates jokes, it’s never the joke itself. (He’s also not precious or off-limits. Abed IS the butt of some jokes, but not his autism.) He is arguably the audience surrogate despite (because of?) so much of his “deal” being how he doesn’t relate to people like everyone else. In general no one feels sorry for him (and when someone does they look like the asshole by the end of the episode). He has a lot of classic, stereotypical ASD traits, but they are treated like personality traits. He’s a shining example of why identity-first language feels important for a lot of people: he is a complex and fleshed-out whole person as he is. If you took away his autism he’d be flat and boring and unrelatable, a completely different character.

Abed and Todd both kind of just exist very authentically in their worlds. No one (character or writer) is asking you to feel a particular way about them, just to appreciate them for who they are like any other character. If we care about the world and the character, we’ll care about what matters to them.

Unironically worth much more of my attention than the article. I need more elephants in jeans. Are there equivalent donkeys in jeans? If not, let’s call out the rampant media bias and do something about it (specifically making more images of animals wearing jeans).

I’m a developmental psychologist, and the biggest thing is people just not knowing what “psychologist” means.

The tl;dr here is:

Most psychologists aren’t therapists. Most therapists aren’t psychologists. If you’re looking for quality mental health care, don’t revere the “doctor.”

A “psychologist” refers to someone with a PhD in psychology (or someone who does psychological research within an interdisciplinary field, like education or human development). Critically, a psychologist is a researcher (and often an educator at the college+ level). Psychology is a massive field, and the most common subfields are cognitive, developmental, social, clinical, and neurobio.

A “clinical psychologist” is a research psychologist is the particular subfield of clinical psychology. Along with research, clinical psychologists usually learn clinical psychotherapy practices and then may (or may not) choose to incorporate offering therapy into their career. A similar path is the “PsyD” (doctor of psychology) which also falls under the “psychologist” heading. Like a clinical psych PhD, a PsyD has had advanced training in research and practice, but the balance of the degree leans much more toward practice. People who opt for a PsyD rather than PhD usually plan to pursue a fully clinical career, but are qualified to do research as well.

A “therapist” is someone who is trained and licensed to provide clinical psychotherapy. Most therapists in the US have a master’s degree in social work (or a few others, like counseling psychology), specialized clinical training in one or more areas or treatments, and additional state licensure requirements. Clinical and counseling psychologists (with PhDs) can act as therapists if they get and maintain licenses, but this is a small fraction of therapists. PsyDs make up another chunk, but the majority do not have a terminal PhD/PsyD.

As a psychologist, I don’t say this because I think my PhD makes me better than someone with an MSW — the reverse! I hear people get advice to not see a therapist if they are “just” a social worker without a PhD. Meanwhile people come up to my dumbass self and think I am qualified to act as a therapist or like I know anything about clinical or abnormal psychology. Like, wanna know how 2-year-olds and 12-year-olds use nonverbal signals like shrugs to facilitate conversational interaction differently from each other and from adults? No? Then I am not the person you’re looking for. Go talk to that extremely knowledgeable and well-trained person with an MA.

…Meanwhile a “psychiatrist” is a whole other thing. They have an MD and can prescribe medication. Very rarely they may also offer psychotherapy, but that’s hard to make happen in the US a healthcare system.

I thought it was the Shakers who were fully celibate, not the Quakers. I’m reading through the Quakers’ wiki page now and not seeing anything about views on sex/procreation. Any suggestions where to find more about that?

I’m not trying to challenge you, I’d just like to learn more if I’ve missed something here.

Finally playing Dave the Diver after getting recommendations from everyone I know since it came out. “Dive for fish and make sushi.” Seemed pleasant enough but I didn’t get why people talked about it in the same tone as like, Stardew Valley.

I get it now.

It may not be the original idiom, but it’s definitely something people say. If the core expressions are “(I) take the lead” and “(you) follow my lead,” that lends itself easily to a merge: you take my lead. It’s not as common as the originals but it’s definitely out there. It will stick around because it’s really easy to unambiguously infer what it means in context.

I kinda agree. Knitting is the go-to for this advice, which makes sense. It gets crazy expensive crazy fast. But starting out with shitty yarn and needles makes the whole thing miserable. Same with a lot of other crafting and baking. Using low quality materials results in an unsatisfying product, and low quality tools make for an unsatisfying learning process.

I generally recommend letting yourself buy something nice-but-not-luxury that you’re excited about, but keeping those initial investments really limited in scope. Buy one nice(ish) pair of needles and just enough nice(ish) yarn to make a specific project. You don’t want to go broke for something you end up hating, but you do want to be able to know whether you hate the actual hobby or you just hate doing that hobby badly.

The choice is “help people from systematically disadvantaged groups” or “don’t.” I’d argue that the “don’t” would be the easier choice.

Extend to gender, ethnicity, LGBTQ, whatever…the key is the “systematically.” We can’t assess relative (dis)advantage at an individual level, but we can recognize it at a systemic level and develop programs that counter it systemically.

I’d say X is more like “disproportionately and systematically disadvantaging people of color.”