I trust you, because if anybody knows a thing or two about people who like to sniff assholes, it’d be someone named Fartographer.

My neighbor has several security cameras in front, covering the parking lot, the sidewalk in front of the building, and the unit entry doors. We live in apartments. Our doors are clustered in the same area, so anything that can see his door can also see my door and our other neighbors’ doors.

I absolutely hate it. I can’t even throw the goddamn trash out without feeling watched.

Indeed. I didn’t intend to deny that. The phrase just got me thinking, and I realized that “normal health” is hard to even imagine. It would require so many things to be different. The chronic stress alone must be destroying us.

I’m from the US. I live in a country with health care too expensive to stay on top of. Where it’s normal to skip routine check-ups because they would cost too much (if you can even get a day off work in the first place.) Our jobs either do not offer vacation time, or limit any time off to something like 2 weeks or less per year. Most areas are unwalkable, while in others, any adult who rides a bike is assumed to have had a DUI (that is, people assume they lost their driving privileges. Why else no car?) Nothing about my environment is healthy.

Ergo,

I have no idea what “normal health” means.

If they’d said ““All” 90s kids were born in the 80s,” yeah, that would be gate-keepy. However, they used “mostly,” which leaves room for outliers. If you remember the 90s, you can still fit the bill.

Which means like it or not, you’re one of us. 🙃

I just want to say, this is the first time I’ve seen/heard the 2030s referred to as simply “the 30s” in a casual sentence. It still feels weird. But eh, that’s life. I still remember “2002” feeling like a far-off future.

I realized recently that teenage-me was right about a lot of things I believed about the future, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it.

It’s like my anxiety is doing a victory dance on my hope’s grave.

At first, the censorship in that article annoyed me. But after thinking about it, it’s hilarious that people can write and publish an article entirely about somebody’s penis, yet they still see the need to censor words like “dick” and “sexual.” As if somebody who chooses to read about someone’s penis is going to be offended by such words, or the article writer has to pRoTeCt tHe cHiLdReN somehow (???)

I just can’t get over how stupid our modern dystopia is.

Is a 20 year old not allowed to make decisions on who they are sexually or romantically attracted to?

To be fair, is that a decision anyone can make? That is, we can’t usually control whether or not we’re attracted to someone.

But to your point, yeah, what consenting adults do should be nobody else’s business. We can acknowledge that we wouldn’t personally want such a relationship for ourselves without taking away others’ autonomy.

As to OP, it sounds like they personally didn’t want the relationship, in which case it doesn’t matter how bad the 18 year old wanted it. Nobody’s obligated to take part in a romantic/sexual relationship they don’t want to have, no matter how desperate the other party is for it.

Some woman shop for/wear “men’s” clothes, either because they shop for the men in their life, or for themselves because the standards are more sensible (even if not perfect) compared to women’s sizing. In other situations, we wear “men’s” cut clothes because it’s the default - like when a workplace gives everyone a free T-shirt. 9 times out of 10, it’s probably a cut designed for men - even if the workplace has a majority of women (as was the case when I worked in a nursing home.)

At least for pants, a lot of men’s pants sizes usually go off a band + length measurement, which is a ratio that women’s clothes don’t offer at all. T-shirts can be bad either way, but I once grabbed two (“women’s”) shirts off the same rack in a store and both fit me perfectly - one was Small, the other was Extra Large. I’ve never seen that bad of a difference when trying on “men’s” clothes, and that’s part of why I prefer to buy from the men’s section. It’s more sensible.

So yeah, vanity sizing hurts everyone. But unless you do shop for both men’s and women’s clothes, it’s hard to appreciate just how awful vanity sizing is for women in particular.

Lemmy needs a community for A Bra That Fits. It’s hard to express just how bad the bra-sizing problem is in the US. It goes far and beyond vanity sizing. I don’t even bother with US sizes anymore. Not only do the sizes mean next-to-nothing, but most stores only carry up to about ~ 44 DDD. Which means that many people who require different sizes end up wearing what’s available - even if it doesn’t fit right. When I measure myself and plug it into a bra sizing calculator, I end up with something even specialty lingerie shops don’t carry. But that’s not a problem for Victoria’s Secret or whatever - they’ll attempt to push whatever they have in stock, even if its sizing makes no sense, because their end goal is to make a sale - not to actually help you.

I suspect the powers of capitalism (aided by the internet/shopping online) have convinced most stores not to carry sizes that aren’t mainstream. Yes, this even applies to boutique shops that supposedly cater to larger sizes. They don’t want to keep stock that isn’t likely to move, which means tons of people like me end up getting completely shafted. I could spend hours researching places, making calls, traveling across the state to find these places, find the one or two bras in the entire building that actually fit me, just to end up with a material that makes me itch or has an ugly style that only a grandma would wear. (Sexy lingerie? For massive titties? LOL good luck finding that.) My only real option is to bra shop online, using British sizes, and fucking pray that everything will work out all right.

On top of that, bras are expensive. Prices vary with sales and all, but I’d say about $50 is average for one. Add in the scarcity aspect and the varying quality levels (that I can’t afford to be picky about), and I’m lucky to own 2-3 bras that fit at any given time. I have to hand-wash and thoroughly dry my bra most nights so I can wear it again the next day without risking a yeast infection. It absolutely sucks and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.

I recently downloaded a mod for a game from a custom content creator who hosted their own webpage. I experienced issues, so I went to see if there was a support page of common issues. Instead, their “support” was a link to their Discord server.

Which means instead of an FAQ page, or an email account that they could respond to in their own time, this person preferred to moderate a live chatroom where people ask the same questions over and over again? On the one hand, as a user of their cc, it’s reassuring to have someone who worked on the content there to live-answer any questions. I got my problem solved quickly, so the user experience is definitely positive. On the other hand, I would’ve thought keeping up essentially a “customer support” Discord to be far more tedious and frustrating than maintaining other common alternatives.

I just can’t imagine having the time and energy to stay on top of a Discord where everyone is upset and you have to repeat yourself constantly. It sounds like a living Hell.

That sounds normal to me, but it’s worth noting that when we were under Covid lockdown, I didn’t understand how so many people freaked out about it. I’ve always been sucky at social interactions and pretty much always felt lonely as a baseline. It’s like I’d been training for lockdown my entire life. Seeing others lose their minds trying to live the way I’ve always lived was quite awkward.

Which means for many people, your/my standards for social contact are way too infrequent. I don’t know what an average measurement would be, but it’s clear that our “normal” can’t be most people’s “normal.”

Wholesome ending.

Though, I am a bit confused by

I skipped a few years in highschool

Did your high school have more than 4 years? When I think of “a few,” I think “at least 3,” but skipping 3 out of 4 years doesn’t sound right.

I knew what you meant to say, and now I’m left wondering how clumsy my fingers must be if I can accurately read a typo where 75% of the letters are wrong.

Being a cat would be nice, but I’d be happy just to have half their self-advocacy skills.

Me: “Um, hey, I am sorry to bother you, but could you scootch your chair a teeny bit? I need to get to the table behind you. Okay, a bit more. Just a smiiiidge more.” Holds breath and squeezes by. “Okay, thank you! Sorry again for bothering you.”

Meanwhile,

Cat: Pounces onto pillow at 5am “Wake up, bitch. It’s time for my breakfast. Now I’m going to meow repeatedly into your face until you comply with my demands.”

Did a chatbot design this? If they want people to read what they write, the very first step should be to make sure it’s in a color scheme that doesn’t strain people’s eyes. What even is this?

OP’s first mistake was thinking they could find a picture of typical female bullying. Boy bullies may use their physical force, but most girl bullies use psychological force. They use words to tear into you, they manipulate people with lies about you, they create drama that drives friendships apart and socially isolates their target. There are no physical bruises to show for it, all the planning takes place inside their heads, and the closest thing to “evidence” is boiled down to “she said/she said.” If she’s got more friends to back up her lies (and she does, because she socially isolated you) she could easily turn the tables and accuse you of starting shit with her. And she will be believed. Because she’s done it before - character assassination is her specialty, and she’s targeted you enough that school admin prejudicially expects you to lie.

Anyway, you’re probably not going to find a picture of that. Even if you do, you likely won’t recognize it as “bullying” because it’ll just look like girls talking.

Policy depends on location, but for some places offering your receipt is 100% voluntary. I wouldn’t deny showing my receipt at Costco (where it’s been standard practice long before self-checkout came around and, though I don’t have a copy of the agreement handy, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were part of the agreement when you sign up for a club card.) But when I worked at a certain home improvement store, they hired outside security to check receipts. When one of the security guards was ignored by a customer and they asked him again, the customer complained. Subsequently, the security guard got fired. That’s how I learned that the policy is “ask once, and let them go if they don’t respond the first time.” AKA security theater.

The time saved is my payment.

This point seems to get missed on all these “I don’t work here” arguments. Yeah, I don’t work here, so I’d like to be in and out quickly so I can spend my precious free time for things I actually like to do. If “time is money” anyway, then what’s the difference? I’d rather scan my own things, skip the chitchat, and reclaim the personal time I would’ve spent waiting.