Popping my sternum in public is the highlight of existing some days. It’s loud, and alarming.

I learned I could do it a decade back but it takes a super specific position that took me many more years to work out so I could do it on demand. Feels amazing.

My hyper-flexibility is probably to blame for it, but it’s super fun :)

Those cats look just like my pair, right down to the size difference.

Super cute judgement :)

Is I/O in this context input/output? I’ve seen it used this way before but I’m not super techie so no clue.

In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

• most languages need to reform in large ways due to being at least partially tonal/inflection based (such as a rise in inflection to indicate a question). All languages need to add an additional conveyance mechanism to account for the loss of tone and inflection to indicate feeling, and anything else speech patterns normally convey, as suddenly all language works like texting
• people suddenly suck at talking in exactly the same ways they suck at writing, because they have to pick the right conjunction or homophone. Good luck two us all
• directional blinder hats would be a thing almost immediately (something that shields the light but has a covered hole in front to selectively open however wide you need, probably with hand controls and color filters and shit)
• light pollution dies down to facilitate conversation, but dark sky areas have to shutter their projects due to conversational twinkling (sad outcome :( )
• indoor light gets dimmer to facilitate conversation. 60 more stubbed toes happen every month
• sunglasses become the new unplugged headphones
• someone develops filtering goggles that cut the specific human communication wavelengths for people with epilepsy. They are a big hit with commuters and parents
• since people can no longer talk but it sounds like all else remains the same, someone would develop a translation device that does “blinks to speech” for blind and epileptic people, who could maintain use of the auditory old language and still function fine in society (good outcome, yay!) (I considered how they communicate back, but there’s no reason their light thing wouldn’t work so this is fine)
• more people opt to have their outer eyelids removed so they can eavesdrop on conversation while looking like they are sleeping (weird outcome, but it is a surgery that exists and divers sometimes elect to get it done to avoid wearing a mask. Inner eyelid is left in place, can’t tell from outside, but you can see through it apparently)
• private conversations become much more difficult, which forces everyone to act nicer in public, which reduces the amount of time people can be shitty, which in turn makes everyone nicer (yay happy outcomes!)
• it gets a lot harder to hide that you are watching porn or kinky boning when the blinking light gives away the… dialogue. Blackout curtain and door light stopper sales skyrocket literally overnight
• people rarely go missing in the woods or in wrecks. Everyone has a beacon every night, and there are huge social awareness campaigns to use your light this way. An international help pulse is developed so no matter where a person gets lost, they can blink for aid. 1km is quite far, meaning they would light up the area around them, especially multiple people blinking in unison. A project is launched to have satellites scan the night-facing surface looking for the pulse pattern, and is wildly successful. There is a brief trend among young teens to cry wolf, until the bills for wasting global resources start rolling in
• lots of famous people suddenly find themselves jobless, as singing is no longer a career. Since light pulses are completely sensually unrelated to music, instrumental music makes a big comeback, as do poetry recitations and stage plays. All the weirdo instruments from over the course of history are resurrected (best attempt) to add variety to the cultural landscape once filled with voices
• television and movies lose cultural significance as they lose the ability to tell many of the stories they do now (blinky light gives away your location in horror, ruins ambiance for romance, interrupts action sequences, etc. it’s just not amazing for the current form of visual entertainment)
• translation becomes a lot easier, as the effects of accents and dialects diminish. The light pulses can easily be read by software and translated to a different pattern (human speech sounds are so so much harder to parse)
• people have an easier time learning other languages now that everyone shares the same blinks framework; no pronunciation difficulties, just new patterns
• animals mostly very much dislike humans, and find us quite alarming. The blinking doesn’t help. Animals trained to respond to verbal cues have to be retrained to understand the blinks are an attempt to communicate something to them. Many animals now have problems in their homes due to the change (very sad outcome :( )

Some cats also respond to valerian root, carrots (fresh or dried) and chlorine (like when you bring home wet pool clothes). I had one who reacted the same way to all three of those and catnip, but not silvervine.

Do you use them or are they collectors items?

I had a pantry moth infestation as a result of inheriting birds. No matter what you do if you buy seed you will get moths again and again. It was pretty fucking bad at its worst… at night I would spray a paper plate with cooking spray and just swat them down with it next to the light. Highly effective.

But then I stumbled across trichogramma wasps. And it was literally life changing.

They are stingless, self-fertile (all female due to a bacterial infection, if you give them antibiotics they produce males again!), egg parasitic wasps, about the size of a grain of sand. They lay their eggs inside the host species eggs and their young consume the host egg. Once they hatch you never see them again. Tiny dots. You order them 15k or so at a time (depending on website and country probably? but they should be pretty widely available) and if you release them outside as intended, they kill off 95% of the target species (they prefer what they hatch from, which is usually moth eggs, but they can parasitize tons of pest insects). Indoors they can wipe out pest eggs. Then they die off because they are obligate egg parasites. No host eggs, no more wasps.

You need to release them for several waves to be sure, due to moth life cycles taking many months to complete, but they are cheap af (I paid $12 USD/15,000, ordered them every 3 months for 1.5 yrs, zero moths after) Zero work, and no chemicals.

I tell everyone who has birds about them now. I gifted the local bird rescue a 2-year delivery schedule, and made sure to tell everyone about it so they could pass the info along to any adoptees who might be turned off by the moth problem down the line and decide against adopting the bird(s)

I would hope that by the time something like this launched to the general public, it would be a service rather than an expected purchase. Like self-driving-flying taxis.

It doesn’t make sense to have everyone owning their own when they will probably be largely autonomous to avoid issues with individuals driving them (not that everyone owning a car makes sense either, but I digress), so the maintenance shouldn’t be an issue either.

Easily the rest of your life!

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That’s because none of it (the good stuff) was accurate and we are all very sad about that…

So we need to eat the rich is what you said.

I’m on board.

Don’t correct me. I’m not listening anymore.

I haven’t had quite that interaction, but I’m equally blasé about it. It’s literally just part of life.

“In the past year have you had thoughts of suicide?”

broad gesture if you haven’t you probably aren’t paying attention… but I’m apathetic, not active. Not that it would matter because when I was actively suicidal it took 6 fucking months to be seen by you chucklefucks…

They always get that concerned face and I have to reassure -them-… like no it’s fine this is just normal for me…? I live with chronic pain, I live with chronic poor-ness, it’s just chronic life (and not the fun drug kind, even). I’m not into it, but I’m not actively thinking about doing anything about it, either. Doesn’t mean I want to be resuscitated if shit happens, tho… and I don’t… (any more chronic issues would be probably one too many, and then I’d get active…) I even know exactly what probably painless method I’d go with, because suffering is dumb. And it’s something I can act on quite literally any time I want with zero effort on my part other than going to the store, so that I’m still here is a great sign!

My current doc (Va changes my doctors every couple years) was the absolute first, out of dozens of people I’ve told that to, who was like “ummm… that’s actively bad… so what is your mental health plan? (Told her I don’t have one, other than suck it up) I’m going to give you an open-ended referral to some outside groups who may be more able to help you, especially on short notice… I get why you don’t trust our mental health… so if you ever want that, just send me a message and I’ll put in the referral for you. Also here’s a list of non-profits that aren’t directly affiliated who may be better suited to help you…”

Fwiw, whatever it is in your life that causes these things, I hope they stay at or below active-planning level. If you ever want someone totally random to vent to, my DMs are open, and I’ll reply with commiseration rather than gaslighting you about things not being that bad, because… well I get how pointless that would be 😜

According to this link (idk how accurate it is, and it’s from 2018), it’s been in place for over 75 years. It’s affectionately referred to as the “constitution-free zone”.

https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2018/03/23/two-thirds-of-americans-live-in-the-constitution-free-zone

It’s worse than that… nearly 2/3 of the total population is under border jurisdiction. But it’s 100 miles, not nearly double that…

I’m going to watch it anyway, so there.

But as a brain cleanse, try little Emma. It’s not amazing, but it’s cute as hell. Itty bitty humans smaller than sentient racist livestock.

They looked cute at the time 🤷🏻 and I didn’t know they would be that bad… I knew they were temporary, though…

I got 5 dermal anchors back when I was 18. They have been nothing but problems. I’m down to 3, 2 having been ripped out this past year… I’ll let the other three reject whenever they decide to do so (I’ve been preventing rejection for almost 20 years and I’m tired of it). I’d have to pay to get them removed, which I’m not doing.

Don’t get dermal anchors.

The trick I’ve found over years of people-Ing as the person working is to always end with a statement that can either be turned back with ”you too!” without being awkward, or warrants something other than an autopilot response.

Thanks for stopping in, have a great night

Enjoy your meal and if you need anything just let me/us know

Don’t forget to tell your friends about us, and have a great day

Etc.

That way it’s totally fine for them to autopilot the pleasantries and they won’t feel cringey after.

Definitely mine too. It doesn’t even run faster than 1x… which is sucky slow but my own fault for having too many livestock animals to support my ~60 pawns… (peaceful gets very out of control if you let it) but now I have an outpost mod and as soon as all my kids are adults, most of them are gone.