Shortly after entering adulthood, I lost a close friend. He was still in college at the time, a talented, friendly, bright light snuffed far too early. He was well loved and his funeral was so packed that it was standing room only. One attendee described it as “the most depressing class reunion ever.”

His loss has never left me.

Right before I got the phone call telling me the news, I had been feeling extremely down about myself. I was crossing my work parking lot (which I had to do regularly as part of my job) without looking up for moving cars, thinking that if I got hit, it wouldn’t have mattered.

But that same day, my phone rang. It was a mutual friend, and through obvious tears and a quavering voice, she told me, “John is dead!”

With that, everything changed.

I’ll never forget how much it hurt to lose somebody so important to me. The idea of purposely putting my friends through that has kept me going more times than I can count. I have to remind myself, even in my darkest, most self-hating moments, that I’m more important to others than I realize. I can’t imagine John would have known just how much of an impact he had made on others, but I saw the proof. I felt the pain. I love my friends and family too much to entertain the thought of making them attend my funeral. And so I push on, but with one change:

I now make a point to explicitly tell my friends how much they matter to me.

Way to absolutely miss the point.

I don’t need to be or decide it and it’s not my opinion: the language community is the ultimate authority of their language. Their collective choices establish observable conventions. Linguistics is dedicated to that approach.

A not-insignificant amount of women think using the term “female” is derogatory. Women who feel that way are part of the “language community.” You’re talking like we’re some outsider group, whose use of English is less valid than yours.

Language has conventional, established meanings.

Language is alive - it evolves, it changes. As well, English famously doesn’t have an established body to define meanings. Rather, English words are based on common usage. Women commonly experience the usage of “female” in a derogatory sense. We didn’t designate it this way - all we’re doing is pointing out that it’s used in this way. Just because you don’t feel a derogatory sense from a given word doesn’t mean those that experience it that way are wrong.

If you had gone out to research the usage of “female,” including how people perceive it in different contexts, you’d see just how many anglophones disagree with you. But those people would probably, by and large, be those who’ve experienced that word in a derogatory way - in other words, they’d be women. So how about we stop acting like this is a semantics issue and get to the point you’re really saying, which is that women’s experiences and opinions are somehow worth less than yours.

If it were an ordinary sentence used in casual conversation, sure. But for a news headline, it makes sense to put the most important information at the beginning.

It’s been years since I’ve crossed the Canada/USA border, so things may be different today. But when I went, the Canada side was more concerned about smuggled weapons, while the USA side was more concerned about smuggled drugs. Still, it doesn’t take much to trigger a border patrol search.

Apparently if you go from New Brunswick in the morning, spend the day driving through Maine/New Hampshire/Vermont, and cross into Quebec the next day, that’s suspicious enough to get detained for several hours and to have your entire car searched at the border. To me it just made sense to do a straight line drive through those states, since staying inside Canada between those two points would have been a much longer, more convoluted route. Silly me, being logical about my route without considering how others break international law.

What makes you the ultimate authority on what terms a woman can consider “derogatory”? Where do you get the power to decide what words other people should use to describe their own feelings? What makes your opinion about it more valid than those of others?

Have you considered that the same word can make two different people feel two different ways? Unless you’ve got the power to know exactly what another person is feeling, there is nothing that makes your thoughts more valid than the thoughts of others in this matter. Doubling down that “derogatory” isn’t the right word to use gives the impression that you don’t believe “female” actually feels derogatory to a lot of women. Gotta wonder why that might be.

Croatia definitely blocks it better. Argentina still has lots of access to the Atlantic, and blocking Bolivia is a team effort between Chile and Peru.

Yet Croatia’s geography is basically a “Fuck you in particular,” practically going out of the way just to block Bosnia & Herzegovina. Chile doesn’t try anywhere near that hard.

I’ve mentioned this before in other threads that seek a women-centric Lemmy option, but there was at least one secret community on Reddit like that. Invitees’ post histories were vetted before an invite was sent, both to find women specifically, but also to prevent trolls.

I don’t know exactly how they did it, all I know is that I got an invite one day and found the most open, comforting community I’d ever seen online. It was a place where we could talk about anything from silly stories that made us smile, to complaining about specific issues with bras, all without fear of trolls hijacking the thread, or turning an ordinary thing for us into something sexual.

I miss it.

It’s called “being an ally,” and it’s far more productive than faking outrage and borderline-doxxing people we disagree with.

How about that roller coaster race level on DKC2? If you don’t go backwards as soon as the race starts, you miss that sweet speed boost.

Bonus points for your appropriate username

Here we are 16 or 17-year-old girls showing up to these random college guys house.

Oh man. It’s scary how normal this is treated. I remember having friends with “older boyfriends” and I always felt really weirded out by it. Yet when you’re a kid (or teen, in this case) and your friends act like it’s normal to want adult boyfriends, you’re put in a really awkward position. I wasn’t able to fully articulate or even comprehend everything fucked up about it at the time, but as an adult looking back, holy shit. There’s an entire hidden social ecosystem where being groomed is not only considered normal, but can be seen as enviable by peers.

One time as a kid, a friend lent me her glasses (I never needed glasses, but I always liked them) and I went to climb a tree. In the tree, looking down, the glasses made it seem like I was much closer to the ground than I was.

So I jumped.

It was extremely stupid. There was a point during the fall when I felt like I should’ve reached the ground already, but I hadn’t. In the end I was fine, the glasses were fine, and my friend thought it was funny. But wow, that could’ve gone disasterously wrong.

That’s what you get for not buying the very latest edition of the textbook. /s

Seriously though, you’re clearly trying to actually comprehend the material, but even the professor was too checked out? I wish I were surprised, but that’s just upsetting. Nobody takes responsibility for education anymore, not the instructors, not the administration, and none but maybe a handful of students who get zero support from either of the above. I’ve learned more from reading on the internet for free than I have from any classroom. But learning for free on one’s own doesn’t give someone a fancy paper that attracts employers. Gotta spend money to make money, yet again.

You’re right. The illiteracy is everywhere. It’s a very troubling sign.

I wonder, were there any other points in history, post-literacy, where a significant amount of people went to school yet still lacked literacy skills? If it has happened, would it even be recorded? Or is this aspect of modern society truly novel?

It’d be nice to know how such a situation would’ve been rectified in the past, but I get the feeling the solution would be the same thing I’ve been calling for since my own childhood - a comprehensive public educational system with a focus on critical thinking.

They probably didn’t link it by default because of Rule 4. However, I think there should be an exception when other users ask for links. (Maybe the rule should be, “No unsolicited self promotion”?)

For the record, I would also like to see this rant.

When search engines started putting lists of videos in response to every query, I fumed. Trying to find a solution to the game issue you’re having? Here, scan through this 10 minute video and hope you come across the part that discusses your specific issue! Oh, it didn’t actually talk about the thing you need? Lol well at least you watched some ads.

I think next time I have a game issue, I’ll be asking about it here on Lemmy. Yeah, the audience isn’t as big as on Reddit, but we’ll never know the depth of the knowledge fellow Lemmings have to offer if we never ask.

It’s all pathetic. Devoting one’s time to following someone around just to downvote them is a pathetic way to live. It’s not less pathetic if they comment - the lack of comments is just something I’ve observed.

No need to apologize! That’s a cool self-fact. :)

I’ve heard that from others (and thought that) before, too. But I’ve come to believe there are simply some sad, little trolls on here that are either too cowardly or lazy to comment. It’s pathetic.

It’s such a shame when people downvote factual things, simply because they don’t like to hear them.

In this case it’s especially poignant, since the topic is about a person that censors and/or punishes people who say things they don’t like.