I’m having a bad day, but kitty cats make me smile, so give him a pat for me. And a hug.

Learn why the Japanese like squid.

Even if you didn’t mean to coin an euphemism, I love this new euphemism.

This is when you use the kiteh as your pillow. (It’s a massage pillow; it vibrates and kneads.)

or nail Polish

I didn’t read that as you intended initially.

Yep.

::rant incoming::

Their psyops game is horrendously effective, and it makes me furious.

And because it’s so effective, it makes sense for them to continue it, to continue to fracture the English-speaking world.

(It’s also cheap compared to manufacturing weapons…get a bunch of laptops, hire a bunch of trolls for a slightly-better-than-average wage in some local currency doing a job that ISN’T hard labor, which probably seems cushy. Put them in a room, and have them do a script. Very cheap compared to actually designing and manufacturing real weapons, or doing real logistics for war, etc. Cheap and effective = huge incentive for continuing indefinitely.)

The goal I’ve noticed is to make no place online safe. Poison everything. Texts in this particular case, make PoC in America and elsewhere apt to vent and lash out because of the pressure, but also they also poison forums, social media of any and all stripes, etc. Divide and conquer, anyone, everyone, everywhere.

Have a hobby? They’ll slide into the hobby discussion sites and start flame wars.

(I saw this happen a lot on Reddit’s Star Trek sub. Why was that sub a target? My suspicion is that it’s because Star Trek is a comfort show for a lot of people over generations and across nationalities in the West, and also acts as a way to promote Western values of tolerance and thoughtfulness and curiosity, so they want to poison the comforting retreat people go to when they can’t stand the overt hopelessness of the political or news subs.)

It happens with all sorts of loves and hobbies too. Have a favorite team, a favorite book, a favorite movie and want to just geek out over it? They slide into that and start shit.

And it’s really insidious sometimes…they’ll take an already-hot topic and start up a new thread with wording that makes them look clueless but not aggressive. So because they’re not obviously an asshole, people hop in giving them the benefit of the doubt and the flame war on (whatever topic specific to that interest) ignites again.

Unless the mods know how to spot that and moderate (which is fairly rare)…but even if that happens, the problem there is that if the mods do their jobs, a true clueless newbie coming in won’t know the history of this or that topic and will accidentally get hit by a sudden banhammer without knowing why…which in its way also starts shit, because the real person caught in the net gets their feelings hurt. So it’s a catch-22…bad mods, and an online social space is easily manipulated to become a cesspool, but good mods sometimes also accidentally catch a real person in their net…so shit STILL goes down and poisons the well.

Nations doing psyops shit online play both sides, too. So they won’t always start shit by posting a far-right viewpoint…they’ll choose a lefty viewpoint too, it costs them nothing to lie, but they’ll speckle it in with enough “tinder” that flames still ignite. Or they’ll have multiple accounts responding to each other.

The only reason I notice this, btw, is because I was a geek in fandoms BEFORE this sort of manipulation started, so I remember what a “legit” forum SHOULD look like. Like, there were always trolls and people with shitty social skills…but it was a very different type of trolling than this psyops shit we see now, because real people with real egos and desires and motivations were behind it. It had a different rise and fall, a different pattern. I guess it was more like real life–with allowances that people will say things anonymously that they’d never say face to face?

Younger folks who have never known a “good” and sane discussion forum think the toxicity and hopelessness online everywhere in every topic is NORMAL. But it’s not.

(When Lemmy was unknown, it was more like the forums of old, but now it’s on various antagonists’ radar there’s been an uptick of bad actors starting shit in comments.)

I read that as Miette and did a melodramatic voiceover in my head.

I finally realized this guy’s name reminds me of some in house menswear brand at Sears or K-Mart or some other department store that suffered and wheezed and whimpered before going out of business.

In the tech sector you can run into caste-ism (is that the correct word?), where Indians who are “lower” caste can be looked over when applying to jobs if the one going through resumes or making hiring decisions is Indian themselves and a “higher” or at least “different” caste, and can identify at a glance what caste the applicant is by their surname.

It’s apparently popping up enough that it’s on the radar as a discrimination problem in California, which has a big tech sector and I suppose a large enough population in some areas of Indian immigrants for this to start being a problem.

It surprised me at first that anyone was concerned about it–but then I realized…yeah, you kinda want to nip that one in the bud. Given all the existing classism/racism in the US, we hardly need a new one to throw into the mix. And it’s really dumb/disappointing to me that someone might come here from India hoping to start a new life and obviously have to deal with racism already because that never won’t NOT be a thing–only to ALSO run face first into caste-ism from fellow immigrants who drag that crap over with them. What a crappy catch-22, you know? So it seems to me that it’s good that some folk have awareness that it’s a thing to watch out for.

If horses were obligate carnivores, they probably wouldn’t have been as readily domesticated. It’s cheaper to feed a plant-eater than a meat-eater. Dogs are omnivores, for example, because human scraps are often plant-based so it was an advantage to be able to eat more plants than a wolf might have.

And if horses weren’t domesticated, that would have changed the development of technology and warfare massively. We might have still had the wheel from the potter’s wheel, but things like carts and chariots might not have developed and spread like they did if one of the main animals to pull carts was not domesticated.

The way the horse and stirrup changed warfare also would have made ancient war very different, as there’d be no sudden incursions of horse-mounted warriors invading various regions at various times so I bet a lot of national borders in the modern day would be quite different.

I think the “mind’s eye” is also partly a “skill” thing.

I remember distinctly as a child doing a great deal of “work” developing my mind’s eye. I didn’t have TV at home, so I read a lot, and that necessitated me being able to take text on paper and make mind’s-eye models of what the things on the page might actually look like (often without any visual references at all)…and I recall the early ones were definitely vague and fuzzy.

As I got older and did this more, and was exposed to more visual images of different things, my ability to visualize (and “hear”) with detail got better, as with any skill.

I suspect folks who have the ability to use their mind’s eye, but who haven’t been pushed into (or interested in) developing it might not realize what a “trained” mind’s eye can do because they haven’t developed that skill.

But I do think there are some people with legit aphantasia who don’t even have the weak, untrained mind’s eye that most people start out with.

What I’ve noticed is while there’s absolutely corruption at high levels in America, amongst the rich, there’s almost no situation where (say) you have to sneakily hand over an extra $20 at the DMV to get your driver’s license. Or slip your nurse at the hospital an extra $50 to make sure she cares for you appropriately. Or get a lavish gift for teacher so you can get the grade you need to get into the right school.

I mean, here or there people can try that stuff, but it’s still a legit scandal if it happens, it’s not baked into society.

Whereas that sort of casual greasing-of-hands with an extra $5 here, extra $20 there $50 there at every single level even amongst not-rich folks can supposedly be common in heavily corrupted societies.

Yeah, there’s corruption–but it’s pretty over-our-heads for everyday stuff. It’s not baked into everyday interactions we have if we go down the street to the grocery store, or want to get a Passport done.

In North America and Europe for some reason people refer to elders by their first name? We would never in 1000 years think of doing something like that, it’s considered extremely rude. We either use their surname (like Mr.X) or Uncle/Auntie.

In America at least, this is a change in the past 100 years for us, too. If you look at older American media–TV shows, books–you’ll start to see depictions of children calling older people/neighbors “Mr. Lastname” or “Mrs. Lastname” and such. Like, if you watch some American black and white shows with kids in it, you’ll see “appropriate child behavior” of that era modeled, and it’s pretty heavily focused on kids being cute and obedient and chirping “Hello Mr. Smith!” or whatever at the mailman, and absolutely not using first names casually with adults or adults in authority. Heck, I think even older episodes of Sesame Street modeled it, and Mr. Rogers.

I realize there’s no reason for non-Americans to be up to date with older American media, but there was absolutely a time within living memory when calling an older adult by their first name casually was pretty rude. I was born in the 1980s, and the shift away from being overly formal with older adults kinda happened somewhere around there because I remember both the “old” and the “new” being modeled around me.

I’m not sure all the cultural reasons behind the shift–there’s probably a reason for it, I’m just not educated enough in that realm to know what it is for certain.

Or maybe I’m slightly too young. Perhaps someone from Gen X will understand what was going on there better, they would’ve been slightly older than me and have better memories of that period.

I still have tons of trauma from growing up in that environment, but the freedom immediately after I cut them out was astounding.

I can indulge my hobbies without getting vitriol. I don’t come home to someone calling me stupid or threatening violence.

I’m not as “successful” as someone without my upbringing might have been–a lot of traits that make someone successful were broken in me early since I have a strong response to stress of any sort (I react automatically as if ANY stress is a survival thing of life or death and my defense mechanism to flee pops in which screws things up), and my life experience has shown me that other people are chaotic and untrustworthy and that it’s unlikely I’ll get any reward for toeing their lines or rules, but on the other hand, I also broke the cycle of abuse that my other family members who didn’t spend a lot of reflective time picking apart their trauma still continue on with.

So by the measure of “not being an abusive asshat”, I’ve been successful. And it sounds like that’s a low bar, but when your early experiences ONLY have examples of neglectful or abusive asshats, it takes a lot to walk away from it and not do the same thing you watched and learned from as you grew up. You basically have to be contrary to everyone and everything in your world to break free, and it’s hard since humans aren’t wired like that, they’re wired to conform.

So yeah. I’m not in the most wonderful place ever, but I think things would be IMMEASURABLY harder if I had to deal with my flaws now AND, on top of that, abusive and neglectful family dragging me down too. And I’ve had some wins, mainly that I’m not a cruel person.

Wow. I read the article and the guy doing it also did to other women, including the stalker’s own underage relative. Luckily, the sisters were able to get him sent to prison.

But one of the things that really pisses me off is that the ex-boyfriend of one of the sisters sent MORE images to the stalker.

Like, the stalker already had some, and this fuckwad sent him MORE.

And he got off the hook because he said he was sorry and was only doing it to “gain the stalker’s trust”.

Basically, he supposedly didn’t do it out of malice (just overwhelming monumental stupidity…which I don’t believe, I think he just got lucky by saying sorry and by the laws in the books worded in such a way that BAD intent was necessary for it to be a crime). They settled with him in court later on, but the idea that someone could send a stalker nudes of their GF/ex-gf and get out of it by acting like it wasn’t a malicious act but “only trying to help” is infuriating. That loophole definitely needs to be closed.

I stepped away and thought of more things–so a response to my own reply, heh.

As for learning where to draw the line…you need to take a pragmatic approach to your own past responses to things. Stop and look at them with clear eyes, pretend you are a scientist analyzing data both good and bad, and don’t cherry-pick your data, look at both sides of what happened…how many of your recent responses go overboard with “fight” in a way that doesn’t give a clear benefit or align with your ethics? (And how many likewise do “fawn”?)

Like, fighting just to fight drives people away so that’s not a benefit as you lose community and support, and fighting with (say) a customer service person you’ll never see again for $2.00 turns you into a Karen and wastes time so that’s not a benefit.

But haggling on the purchase of a house or a car might actually be a financial benefit (so long as you don’t turn it on the underlings and place it where it belongs and don’t go overboard with being mean just to be mean).

So look at your recent responses. How many fight for “bad” reasons that are small or petty or waste your own time, how many fight for “good” reasons?

Likewise, how many of your reactions people-please in ways that help you keep friends you actually want to keep, and how many start to be detrimental to you because people are starting to abuse your new habit of people-pleasing?

To learn where the line in your life is for either response, you need to look at what YOU’VE recently done, and figure out if that’s the person you want to be, if the benefits/detriments make sense.

For example (example pulled out of my ass), if you go out with friends and pay for stuff for everyone SOMETIMES, that is one thing. If you NEVER do it because you’re angry they’re taking advantage of you…well, if you never do it, how could you be paying for everything “all the time”? How could that even be possible? Sure, the anger is there, but is it based in reality? Might be you’re just angry to be angry–and it’s good to look at that. Fact-check emotions against reality to re-calibrate and see what’s going on.

But by the same measure, if you over-correct because you feel bad about being an asshole in the past and you desperately don’t want to be that person…you might be paying for everything all the time…which actually IS unfair to you, and if you examine a situation and find you’ve over-corrected and this is happening, an appropriate balance might be to scale it back. But you want to CHECK and look at your pattern across time to see if that’s going on.

(Patterns across time tell you more than isolating one event out of context.)

You’ll probably find instances where you FEEL one way and want to fight/fawn/(freeze/flee), but to continue to grow you probably need to stop and look at your recent patterns and fact-check your emotions against what really happened.

For me, since learning to “fight” was a part of my journey away from “flee/freeze”, I tend to reserve “fighting” for situations where either A) I’ll get genuinely financially fucked if I don’t (not just a dollar here or there, but something that’ll affect food/rent/real-life survival stuff), or B) I’m interacting with a community and there’s toxic folks coming in. Sometimes a community with toxic people simply need someone to stand up and call it out to counter the bystander effect, then people will rally behind you.

Also, a note: When you draw a boundary, even if it’s a very rational and reasonable one, it is not uncommon for SOMEONE to get upset by it. This is not the same as everyone getting mad at you because you’re constantly an asshole. Again, the proof is in the pattern…if no matter what you do people seem constantly angry at you, that’s probably you. But if that reaction to you has stopped, but a few people get upset if you actively set a boundary on something–that’s human nature. There are OTHER people out there who definitely want to take advantage of everyone around them, and that’s sometimes you, so if you set any sort of boundary at all no matter how rational that’ll still be “too much” for them.

That’s not necessarily a sign that you’ve “back slid”, it’s just that 20-30% of people are shitty people no matter what.

I also grew up in an abusive home–but I had a freeze/flee response to conflict.

So, there are several “defense” tactics when it comes to conflict. Fight, which you grew up with. Freeze (do nothing and hope they don’t notice you), Flee (leave the situation), and Fawn (people-pleasing).

When people say not to be a people-pleaser, they are generally talking to people who have an oversized urge to please as their defensive tactic. If you are a person where “fight” is your go-to, toning it down so you can properly interact with people isn’t a bad thing. It’s what YOU needed to do for YOU to gain necessary social skills.

But other people out there have “Fawn” as their defense mechanism. That is to say, whenever there’s conflict, they try to placate other people as their technique to de-escalate. And this becomes a situation FOR THEM where they erode their own boundaries trying to please other people whenever in conflict. It becomes a problem when other people take advantage of them because they tend to fawn and give other people things too much, and it causes harm in their life where work/spouses/friends abuse their placating nature. At that point, people who “fawn” need to try to do what you did with your fight response, and set more boundaries and say “no” more often without placating.

A good portion of “general advice” on the internet does not point out that “context matters”. But it really does, the patterns and personality and past of the person taking advice matters, and when it comes to someone who grew up in an abusive home learning how to master their defense mechanisms, different people will need different advice.

If you were truly as belligerent as you say before, I’d be honestly surprised if you over-corrected to the point of people-pleasing becoming a detriment, as it’s extremely hard to shake these things. They almost seem to be inborn personality traits that are ramped up into extremes if one is in an abusive situation. I have a friend who had a journey similar to yours, with a “fight” defense mechanism mode, and he’s done a TON of work breaking the “fight” response, but you can still catch him in moments where he goes into “asshole mode”.

And I’m the same, I’ve grown and improved, but I still default to “freeze” or “flee” in conflict situations that are especially stressful. (My growth has been embracing a “fight” response when necessary, and also a “fawn” response when necessary.) Him and I made opposite journeys…I learned to be more aggressive because it was necessary, and he toned his aggression down (because it was necessary to avoid driving away people he loved).

Also, the “it’s species they know” thing is often exactly the problem: there are species on one continent that look exactly like a species on another continent, but one of them is edible and the other is deadly.

Yeah, I’ve heard this is a thing with some immigrants with East Asian background. There’s a species of mushroom in Asia that is totally edible, but its look-alike in North America is deadly.

So every year there’s a handful of people who accidentally poison themselves, because they didn’t do research on local mushrooms (or the info that’s available is in English and they’re not all that fluent in the language.)

Are you familiar with Atlassian in particular? They are a software company whose customers are generally other software companies.

So yeah, sure, Australia has cities and overinflated property market. But the point is more the geographic distance from other English-speaking nations. Or so I assume.

Atlassian specifically does a HUGE chunk of their business with clients and companies in the US. And if they started forcing their US-based people (or Europe, or wherever) to return to office, it could result in a clusterfuck of losing their overseas employees to places that do still allow remote work, which would be a big headache to fix because if it got bad enough they’d have to start flying people from Australia (presumably where corporate headquarters are) to start figuring out how the hell to recover from that. And I’ve worked for software places that had to abruptly send people to their offices in other nations because shit went wrong on the ground and phone calls weren’t fixing it.

(I’ve had aussie co-workers and clients…inevitably, one side or the other has to stay late or come in early to get a live phone call done. The time zones are so far apart between Australia and the US time zones. It’s REALLY easy to struggle with that if something is going wrong on one side or another.)

When you’re separated geographically so far from a BIG chunk of your market, it’s downright dumb to rock the boat by forcing employees to choose “you, or remote work”. Especially when Atlassian is a “known” name and looks good in a resume. So the CEO probably recognizes that and has no interest in being dumb like that. There’d be a risk of losing your current employees with all their knowledge and replacing them employees who aren’t skilled/good enough to get a remote job.

So, sure, Australia I’m sure does have cities and markets just as big and messy as anywhere. But Atlassian in particular is a software company that does a LOT of remote overseas work–it makes a lot of sense they would not want to push employees back into the office. The geographic distance between their Australian offices and their employees in Europe and America could make things get messy if things went out of control. There’s a vested interest here that is probably different than other corporations.

I mean, System Shock is old enough that even on Windows you probably had to futz around with it to get it working, lol.

It really sounds like I’ve been sleeping on recent Linux compatibility then. I remember back in the days of Wine it seemed more a PITA than was worth it.

Thanks so much for the in-depth response!