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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • Yeah in the city I grew up in, I can find my way like a taxi driver, it’s exciting when I get lost because it doesn’t happen much, and my kids used to think it was funny that once we had been to a venue somewhere by car (like a gym meet in another city) I could always get there again without looking at a map or address, I HATE the audio navigation while driving, would rather wander, I’m not easily turned around on city streets, I am well oriented in the world but

    Out in the wild? Useless. I had a friend though who was so good at knowing which way she was facing, you could blindfold her and spin her (like for pun the tail on the donkey game ) and she would walk always in the right direction, could feel where north/south were even while blind.


  • I can parallel park fine (but am kinda old and used to have to) and was not dyslexic or anything - I think part of my problem with that puzzle was that you can take a p and flip it to be a b or q or d, the whole idea of them starting out as mirror or not didn’t compute somehow, lost between my eyes and brain.

    Maps, yes, it used to mess up my life but no more, now that you can rotate them. I used to take paper maps and lay them on the ground with north pointing north and could not easily read MapQuest on my work computer because my desk faced south. If I had to navigate while my ex was driving he would laugh at me for holding the map sideways or upside down but it was much easier to read upside down words than a map that was upside down in relationship to the world.




  • Oh, holy crap, I have the same. I was looking at a Scientific American print magazine a long time ago and in the back there were 2 quizzes. One said take these letters and make as many words as you can, and I knocked that out of the park, so easy. The other was a series of images of pairs of 3d models - like the ball-and-stick things used to show molecules. They said some are mirror images and some are the same, and they were rotated in different ways. Basically said find which are mirrors and which aren’t, how many can you find in 5 minutes.

    None. Not in any amount of minutes. I looked at them for an hour, until I was crying, my brain would not see it. I also can’t read maps unless they are facing the same way as I am, oriented with the actual world, but that must be common because phones do show them that way now.


  • Rain here is a summer thing and that is wonderful, cools everything off, beautiful lightning and rainbows.

    Rain in the winter is nonsense. It is so cold and you get wet and even more cold. Although - winter rain is not windy or sideways like summer storms so an umbrella does avail. But yes. Cold rain sucks.


  • 85 is not bad at all unless you have to work in the sun.

    I am on a special interest forum, been a member for a long time and it’s got people around the world. A lady in Sweden said she was absolutely dying from the heat, could not sleep, because it was 23 degrees. Our AC is set to 78F most of the time and I am cool at that temp, but she would melt?

    It really has to be what you grew up with. A real winter would kill me, I don’t know how people deal with it. Putting on clothes, taking off clothes, never really being warm, short daylight, hot food immediately getting cold because the cold air steals its heat, car won’t start but standing at bus stop so freezing then the bus uncomfortable because you are bundled up, WTF Winter People? What is it you like, or do you just like winter like we have here, the Swedish summer weather?



  • I can’t whistle so always called my kids with a trill sound (like a loud Spanish RR, not Arabic ululation) and it is also my recall sound for the dogs. But I really can’t whistle. Can sort of make a sound but it’s laughably mockably wimpy.

    Can’t catch at all either, can throw reasonably accurately most of the time but an object coming at me never goes where my hands think it should. I am shamed by my penultimate daughter, who despite nearsightedness worse even than mine was, and a strong drive to be non-athletic, can pluck anything out of the air, has both lighting fast reflexes and intuitive hand eye coordination. But it doesn’t really affect me other than occasional embarrassment - I just pick whatever it is up off the floor after it hits me.



  • I don’t make these anymore, and when we did, had to ask someone with better nerves to open them. But I had a friend who had a great story about the canned biscuits. She went shopping and was waiting in the car, for her husband to finish shopping at a different store. Got sleepy, leaned her seat way back and went to sleep. Windows down, and it’s hot here. She wakes to a loud pop, thinks it’s a gunshot - feels her head, it’s all gooey, she thinks she has been shot and is in so much shock she has no pain. It was the biscuits. They exploded and got in her hair.



  • I do recognize how lucky I am now, to be able to see and hear and read and dance, to be living on a world with such a beautiful sky, with the biological equipment to be able to perceive it! To have no chronic pain but to have occasional crippling migraines that give me perspective on how I don’t have chronic pain.

    No idea what gives you the impression I don’t know this? Do you believe all life is suffering?


  • I do not subscribe to the All Life is Suffering idea. Personally enjoy being physically embodied so much. My kids seem glad to exist too. We are the universe looking back at itself, it’s just so wonderful to get any time at all here to experience this.

    I would never argue for everyone to have babies, at all. You have your own life, do what you want. But I don’t at all agree with extinction of all life because “suffering”. Yes that is part of life but it’s not all of it, not nearly.


  • The fuck? Is this a real story? My husband tosses the cats 2-3 of those when he gets up, they still eat normally and never ask me for them. And one of them is a motherfucker who will try to steal the salmon or chicken if we cook either of those, and the other will tear into the dog food bag if we don’t decant it into a stronger container. They do request catnip at teatime if I’m home. The cabinet door doesn’t even close all the way, they really and truly don’t care, they leave it alone. I’ve never had a cat react that way to those treats.


  • Kids these days. They are nicer than when I was in school, and mine and their peers got much better education than I did (though that has declined again, there are like 20 consecutive years of kids who were better served by the school system that are just now young adults).

    The rise of renewable energy marching on.

    The drop in the birth rate. Not because I’m anti-natal, but because it seems like nature is working, that’s a much gentler means of reducing population than most.

    The fact that insect life cycles are so short. The insect apocalypse is to me the most dire and frightening thing happening, but if we can address it at least the rebound wouldn’t take as long as with other creatures.