Psychic Space Squid

When I did one of those tests to help you pick your major as a teen, I ended up getting sociology and anthropology ranking really high and I didn't understand why. The fact that now a decade later I wish I could put niche internet communities in a lab and study them for a job may be connected.

I think the only way to properly understand Dutch politics is by looking at how comedians in the early 80s started a fictional political party to lampoon then-current far-right populism that got a substantial unironic following

One thing I'm prone to, I think a side effect of the brain-body disconnect I have due to dyspraxia, is that I'm prone to what I call General Physical Misery. I'm grumpy and irritable and feel terrible and only after I've eaten or slept or untensed my muscles I realize something was physically wrong.

Having a discussion about what it means to be a Catholic. To me, (Dutch), anyone who is baptized into the Catholic church and has not de-registered is a catholic, but my bf (Polish) insists that in addition, you need to hold certain beliefs about the role of the pope and such to be Catholic.

It's a very interesting contrast between growing up in a Catholic area in a country where Catholics have to coexist with protestants and the church has lost a large amount of power, and growing up in a country where Catholicism is hegemonic and loss of church influence more recent.

The weirdest culture shock I've had when moving to Poland from the Netherlands is how high they like to turn up the temperature in stores and houses. When my bf and I lived in NL I thought it was a him thing but no, in winter they just turn the indoor temperature up that high.

The talk of a multipolar world is often framed as "smaller nations should get the freedom to self determination without intervention from the US imperial core" but in practice it results in "Russia and China should get to carve out their own imperial spheres without US intervention"

Absolutely fascinated by linguistic silly zones. It's well known by now Dutch is in the English LSZ. I actually think it's an improvement over how I view Dutch as a native speaker, which is a boring language for work meetings, not for poetry. Being English's clown cousin is an improvement.

Yes, it's trans women who are the threat to women's sports, and not the fact that in the vast majority of sports the top athletes in the women's division are not paid enough to live off their sport.

Imagine going through Olympic level training, good enough for you to place in the medals, and still needing a day job while your male counterparts can focus on their athletic achievements 24/7.

Yes, it's trans women who are the threat to women's sports, and not the fact that in the vast majority of sports the top athletes in the women's division are not paid enough to live off their sport.

"Words mean things" is such a bad copout because it's not even true. It would be really nice if language mapped unambiguously onto the world, unfortunately it does not.

Youtube is trying to recommend me a video titled "pick me girl tiktoks that make my blood boil" and I'm just like why are you collecting these? Why are you downloading these videos, curating them and editing them together in a compilation? That's an awful lot of effort to get yourself mad.

At that point the women on tiktok that say stuff that makes you mad aren't even the problem. At that point it's you getting you mad.

Stuff I'm surprised the Federation in Star Trek is not woke about, like they have a space utopia but they still have weird attitudes about: - Euthanasia - Nudity - Non-monogamy

Like I know it's very European of me, but if the Klingons have an assisted suicide ritual, the correct procedure is for them to file a form, maybe meet with a councillor to determine if this is really the best course of action and then do the ritual, not immediately start a murder trial.

One of my favorite/least favorite phenomena is people not recognizing their fetish as a fetish that is particular to them and think it's a universal aspect of human psychology.

The shift from "just learn how to code!" as 2010s career advice to "don't learn to code, the market is oversaturated" as 2020s career advice really gives away that all along it was about structural problems with labor that aren't magically solved if everyone just makes good personal choices.

In either case, people shouldn't have to be forced to only make optimal financial decisions all the time. It shouldn't be the case that a stable financial situation requires 10s across the board on every decision, with the constant threat that one step out of line leads to destitution.

The shift from "just learn how to code!" as 2010s career advice to "don't learn to code, the market is oversaturated" as 2020s career advice really gives away that all along it was about structural problems with labor that aren't magically solved if everyone just makes good personal choices.

The current state of the Dems is that if politics is like playing chess, they're still at the chess board while the GOP is beating people in the room with a baseball bat, and they're convinced that there's some combination of chess moves that will defeat the guy beating people with a bat.

If you don't ban a cheater from monopoly game night then the rules cease to matter. If you don't enforce breaches of laws in politics because the people who break those laws are rich and powerful, laws lose the power they gain from the social contract and revert to being ink on paper.

The current state of the Dems is that if politics is like playing chess, they're still at the chess board while the GOP is beating people in the room with a baseball bat, and they're convinced that there's some combination of chess moves that will defeat the guy beating people with a bat.

Yes, smashing the board and then your opponent's skull is not a legal chess move. No, there's no way to maneuver the rooks and bishops to enforce that rule. Even if you get checkmate that doesn't do anything because the guy with the baseball bat isn't even pretending to abide by the rules of chess.