That not everyone secretly wanted to be a woman.
Well, not the women, obviously, because they’re already women.
Lucky bastards.
I’m still not entirely convinced tbh. I mean women are cute and just great and men are…
Men can be great too, and being a man has lots of perks (beyond even those imposed by patriarchy). Look for allies and you will find them in all gender flavours.
oh for sure. Wasn’t being serious, dysphoria is there and makes me basically think of existing as a man as hell and finding out that’s not everyone was interesting to say the least.
I remember one day realizing it was odd that my dad would hug my mom but my mom would never hug him back. She would just stand there and let him hug her. Yeah he was an abusive husband and I was very happy for her when she finally left him after over a decade!
Knee pain. Everyone told me it was normal growing pains, until one little league coach notice I run weird. Queue years of doctors and specialists and tests and scans and surgeries, and now I’m a 40 something guy with advanced arthritis that could have been much much worse if left untreated.
way to go attentive little league coach!
also wtf parents?
“Well it’s not hurting me so it can’t be that bad.”
My parents took me to see doctors, who told them it was just growing pains and suggested I exercise more to lose weight. I saw three specialists and had a bunch of xrays before anyone noticed the shady spots on my cartilage. Osteochondritis Dissecans occurs in 15-30 people out of 100,000, and most of the primary care doctors I’ve had in my life had never heard of it.
I can’t blame my parents for that. I can blame them for a lot of things, but they did their best.
Being unable to think of something without a prompt.
I guess most people can just remember things without sticky notes and calendars.
What are you, an LLM?
I might be. Give me a topic and I’ll spew out all sorts of obscure trivia, but until you mention it, I don’t know that any of it exists.
Is that a challenge? Tell me what you know about Living Card Games without looking it up!
So, “Living” card games doesn’t mean anything to me, but you did trigger card games in general, which could take me a while. I’ve probably spent a majority of my waking life playing Magic, Poker, Hearthstone, Silver, Smash up, and various other card games. Most recently, I’m obsessed with Balatro.
That being said…
Are you about to open a Pandoras box by making me look up Living Card Games?
Mate, if you’re into CCGs, you really missed out by not getting into LCGs! Android:Netrunner, a remake of the original Netrunner from the 90s is the absolute GOAT CG out there with a close second being the Doomtown:Reloaded (which I helped design). Basically it was CGs without the luck/gambling. Just get all the cards and make exactly all the decks you want.
Unfortunately Netrunner and Doomtown run out of steam half a decade ago, but they’re still developed by their fans, but usually the only way to play them consistently is online in places such as Jinteki.net. There’s a few others still in production, but iirc they’re co-operative ones, like Arkham Horror
Lol I played Wizard 101 with my kids. I had the most amazing solo life/balance deck.
I was maining the most jank exile /chess deck you’ve ever seen. I called it homeless kasparov
I really like netrunner but I can’t find anyone to play with (I prefer in person opponents). It is also the first thing that comes to mind when I think of living card games.
I call myself mlm: mediocre language model
Hopefully not engaging in Multi Level Marketing
I teach you some words, and then you teach some words to your friends, and they teach some words to their friends…
Genuinely. This is sadly how my memory works. It’s gotten better since I had a partner who I would talk to everyday with the inane question, “so how was your day?”
Then suddenly I had to learn how to summarize recent aspects of my life.
And then you’re like, “shit, that happened to me today? shouldn’t I be angry about that?”i have approximate knowledge of many things; accessing it without the right trigger may take a while though.
i know i know something but i have accepted that my brain will often only grant me access days later in a completely unrelated situation 🤷🏼♂️
You ADHD? I was almost 40 before I learned about inattentive type ADHD. As far as I knew, ADHD was spastic kids that couldn’t sit still. Since I was more of the daydream and fall asleep type, I never would have thought I was part of that crowd.
Pretty sure, yes.
I’m over 40 and i’ve had this and many other symptoms my entire life.
No official diagnose though; but this 160 questions-test for example says i’m pretty high up there: https://www.adxs.org/en
I’m also the daydream and fall asleep type ☺️
Undiagnosed adults club!
You can actually train for this!
You can train yourself to become more attuned to your interoception. This will make it easier to identify internal prompts like anxiety or hunger. In fact, a friend of mine was studying to become a psychotherapist and last year had me serve as a guinea pig for interoception interventions. In summary, if you find mindfulness practices that involve your body and your own thoughts, you’ll be more attuned to your interoception. Things like active meditations can help a lot. You can check out evidence-based and peer-reviewed programs like Healthy Minds.
You can train yourself not just to notice your interoception, but also to use interoception to build habits. I suspect this is what the people who do not use external prompts (like stickies) do: they have habits that kick in with not-so-evident prompts. They could be using something called an ‘action prompt’ or an ‘internal prompt’. I’m using the language of Tiny Habits because it’s helpful in this context.
Tiny Habits can teach you how to create habits of all kinds, whether you use external, action, or internal prompts. Tiny Habits prefers prompts that are actions (e.g. “After I put the toothbrush down then I will pick up the dental floss”). But internal prompts are perfectly viable (e.g. “When I feel the heat on my skin and the tension in my jaw, I will describe my inner emotions to myself as if I was listening to a good friend”).
You can understand cues and habits more in depth with contextual behavior analysis. CBA or a qualified professional can help us notice when we struggle to pay attention because of conditions like ADHD or anxiety. Something else that CBA can reveal is that, sometimes, we struggle to pay attention because we haven’t developed the mental information highways that can make our thoughts flow freely. Things like relational frame training can help us build those highways faster. Another option is to learn to think visibly (Harvard’s Project Zero) about our everyday life, so that we build dense information highways that we can later use in daily life.
Of course, the fact is that plenty of humans use external prompts deliberately to help them coordinate and remember things. There’s a reason Scrum boards and Kanban are so popular. There’s a reason calendar apps and Getting Things Done are so popular. There’s a reason many societies have daily, weekly, or yearly rituals. You’re among friends :)
We are normal, it’s the others who are weird
This is me to a large degree. Give me a cue and a whole encyclopedia is at your fingertips. Just say think of something and I’m at a loss.
Singing to me the song of my people. Where you all at?!
Omg, this is me. I thought I was alone. I love all you people in this thread, FAM!
Same
I don’t know if this counts, but when I was little I’d go to friends houses, then later in high school to my first serious girlfriends house, and I remember their families were like… loving? I loved spending time at my girlfriends house especially, hanging out with her Mom and her Dad even if my gf wasn’t there. They were so nice, and you could tell had genuine affection for their children (and to some degree, me). I miss you Mr. and Mrs. Miller!
That’s me. I had no idea other families were affectionate and said crazy stuff like, “I love you.” My god, they even hug.
To this day I struggle with affection, even though I love it. If you touch me unexpectedly I’ll involuntarily flinch. I don’t mind, at all, but I still jerk and can’t help it.
I think my family was the same but I turned out cuddly, maybe the difference was the cats?
Heh that was my experience too. But I grew up with a single parent who spent all his time working, so most people’s childhoods weren’t spent climbing 5 floors of scaffolding for fun
Met my partner and was astounded by her loving family
Excruciating period pain that would leave me fainting and vomiting every. Single. Time.
“Every girl goes through this” said the doctor, convincing my parents that I was just “dramatic”.
Turns out I had huge polyps growing out of control! Left scarring in my uterus and high-risk when pregnant.
Dealt with that hell every fucking month since I was 11 until I got onto birth control in my 20s.
Poor you! It must have been terribly frustrating that the doctor wouldn’t take you seriously. Seems to be a frequent thing women go through in the medical world. Hope you’re okay now.
Thank you.
Birth control was my savior and actively allowed me enjoy life again. 💕
Amazing! I wish it worked for my GF but that gave her (we found out very late), terrible side effects.
My wife went through something similar. Took until she was in her 30s and we were pursuing IVF for someone to take her seriously and actually do the investigation to realize she had crazy scarring from endometriosis causing all kinds of issues.
It’s insane to me how much the modern medical community seems to normalize or straight up ignore this shit, like you said.
I realize we could have pushed harder, but when multiple doctors tell you “yeah, some women just experience periods differently, here’s 500mg Naproxen to help you through” you tend to believe it.
My pop history theory is that it’s a latent cultural memory of the Biblical tradition. Remember how Eve was cursed with the pain of childbirth after giving Adam the fruit? Western culture has a history of seeing women’s pain as a result of this ancient curse. Now, I imagine few doctors today are explicitly thinking about the Garden of Eden when diagnosing patients, but the cultural memory remains, if greatly diluted and distorted.
I’m so sorry. I hope that the two of you are doing well.
It’s an actual tragedy how women’s health is dealt with. They get brushed off because “women have been giving birth for hundreds of thousands of years!”, ignoring that it’s the number one thing that kills women!! So our reproductive health and concerns are ignored while the ability to reproduce is put onto a pedestal.
I fucking hate it.
alot of doctors are jaded asf, even to the point of laughing you out of thier office. i think women are often ignored for symptoms of pain.
Sucks when doctors just assume things, it can cost lives.
It’s barbaric. They assume that if you’re girl/woman, most problems are basically “female hysteria”!
Not even “it could be [blank], you might want to keep an eye on that and report back if it doesn’t go away.” Nope! Diagnosis: dramatic.
And women die from this shit. Or become disabled / handicapped. Or it affects their long-term future if they want children. It’s awful.
Some people did a thing with a specially configured tens machine where the woman would turn it the levels up and up until it was at the level of their normal period pain and then the man would go through the same levels stages and be gasping and writhing before it got there.
Turns out men have been massively underestimating period pain for centuries.
That said, some women experienced far, far higher levels than normal and were encouraged to take that data to a non-dismissive healthcare professional.
As a dude, I want to believe that it’s less than it is because that’s just wholly unreasonable that women have to put up with that.
They’re were a lot of men who insisted on immediate medical attention who got told that their partners had tried that and absolutely nothing would come of it.
Hey, I know this is random, but was the pain, like, in the lower abdomen and like… Not really a muscle cramp, but deeper?And did physical activty make it better or worse? Asking for a friend. 👀
Pain was deep, ye. Can’t answer the question about physical activity because it rendered me unable to do any! But, yes, exerting any kind of physical effort seemed to make it worse.
I would lie on the cold bathroom floor every month with a heating pad / hot water bottle on my stomach, but it gave little relief through the simultaneous hot flashes and cold sweats.
Two things that actually helped somewhat if I could catch it hours before it started were: eating bananas (I suspect potassium helped with cramping), and, weirdly… drinking pickle juice. Idk what that was about, but it worked.
But have “your friend” get checked for endometriosis and PCOS!!! That shit can actually escape your uterus and scar up / destroy your other organs!!! No joke!!!
She might just do that because your experience sounds very similar to her “stories.” She also can’t move when it happens and is left pretty hobbled until it passes, but moving makes it worse… So I’ve heard. 👀
Reading.
Or rather, how so many people seem fear and avoid it, or can’t do it. Something like 21% of adults in the US are illiterate, and the majority – 54% – read at or below a 6th grade level.
I’ve been a sight reader probably since I was about six years old. I absolutely cannot look at any words legibly written in my native language and not understand them. You couldn’t force me to look at words written in English and not digest them if you held a gun to my head. I fear no wall of text, no matter how tall it is.
It takes some effort to wrap your head around the notion that not only can most people not do this, but statistically speaking most or at least a plurality of people have to struggle or exert conscious effort to read and many of them are loathe to do so. And roughly one in five people simply can’t. This did not sink in for me when I was younger.
I can’t imagine having to live my life that way. You nerds have seen how much bullshit I write in a day; I’d go absolutely bats.
As a kid I kept asking librarians why libraries were so empty of people if they had so many books and it took me years to understand the sadness in her shrug.
That stat is wild, reading is such a foundational skill in today’s world.
My goodness, I am so much like you.
I’ve been using a book tracker app since the iPhone 4s (2011) just to keep track of what I buy - I don’t track anything else - because even way back then I had trouble remembering if I had a book or if I had just browsed it elsewhere.
In 2018, various functions (search, sort, stats, etc.) took a permanent dirt nap just as I was nearing the 3K number of entries. And these are just the books I own.
The size of the DB backup file has nearly doubled since then.
Now granted, a number of books I get need to go straight into storage before I can even read them, as I have not yet built my library. It’s already gone through several redesigns to stay ahead of the size of my collection, and right now I’m looking at movable library storage stacks - the kind that roll on miniature railway tracks and have wheel-like dogs at their ends that a person turns to easily move them back and forth (opening and closing an access corridor between the stacks for access to the books). I’m hoping to eventually have almost half a linear kilometre of shelving in my library once it’s built.
I cannot imagine the horror of being even semi-illiterate, much less fully illiterate. I absolutely love reading.
That sounds completely awesome and seems like a fulfilling goal to have in life! Please make sure though to set up some type of arrangement for if something happens to you with such a large and incredible collection like that. I’ve been involved with estate sales and have seen personal loved ones just completely overwhelmed with the amount of things to process after a relative’s death. Getting rid of things just isn’t on the table sometimes, things will sit and rot because of love and loss.
That 3k+ of books could completely transform a public library and continue to touch the minds of generations to come if you set it up properly now (and won’t be a future burden on a loved one).
As someone with deep roots in the sciences, and good access to the latest data and evidence surrounding anthropogenic climate change, I seriously doubt that there will be much civilization left by the time I shuffle off this mortal coil. All indications used to point towards widespread economic, societal, and ecological collapse in the latter half of this century, well past my effective lifespan, but recent (and strong!) evidence has moved that up considerably to not much past 2035. So no, I am not worried in the least about “burdening” anyone with my collection. I seriously doubt that there will be anyone left who will care. The few who remain will be too obsessed with surviving another day to give two shits about books. I just want to live long enough to read most of them in relative comfort.
It takes some effort to wrap your head around the notion that not only can most people not do this, but statistically speaking most or at least a plurality of people have to struggle or exert conscious effort to read and many of them are loathe to do so. And roughly one in five people simply can’t. This did not sink in for me when I was younger.
what do you mean people look at words and don’t process them automatically? Is there like, research on this i can read or something? I don’t think i believe you.
I though people were just stupid, and chose not to.
Literacy is a skill that needs to be taught. If it isn’t taught, or is taught poorly, well…
i mean obviously, but unless you aren’t teaching kids how to read/write in school, the amount of complete ignorance you would need to expend in your adult life to backslide so far on something so ingrained into your brain structure is genuinely impressive.
Not everyone has tics they must surpress while in public.
Why is there no helpful suggestion under this comment? I have multiple tics too and I want someone to tell me “just sprinkle some cinnamon on your ass and they will go away!”
Have you tried sprinkling cinnamon on your ass?
It hurt to learn this
This was a really recent realization for me. I am one of the people who can voluntarily activate the tensor tympani muscles in my ears to create a low level rumbling sound. I recently tried explaining this to someone else and they still think I am making it up.
Oh…? That has a name? Thanks!
Is this not normal?! I can also wiggle my ears, I know that’s weird though.
Yeah, my Dad used to do this to entertain kids, so I worked at it until I could too. It wasn’t easy to learn but real easy to do
You are not alone! I have always been able to do that too. It still doesn’t help with the tinnitus I’ve had since I was 4 or 5 though.
What was a revelation to me was the idea that everyone was only sleeping 3 or 4 hours a night. I thought I was perfectly normal in not sleeping for normal time spans. And despite the drugs and cpap machine I’m prescribed, I still can only sleep 5 or 6 hours now and often less. But I often am able to get to REM sleep now.
Wait, that’s not normal?
Seems so.
It’s more that most people don’t figure out how to tense those muscles independantly of the rest of the neck
So THAT’S how you describe it!
I use to control it before, but since I’m on some other medecine, it start to have its own will. It happen to me unvoluntary like every 5 or 10s. That’s SO FUCKING ANNOYING !!!
When I first read this one, I thought it sounded crazy. Then I realized I know what you mean and am able to do it.
Maybe it’s normal and it’s just the description that doesnt click with people? Anyone in the comments who thinks they can’t do it?
Fellow rumbler rejoice!
As I kid I thought it activated some kind of telekinetic or telepathic power so i’d keep doing it and gesturing at ping pong balls or candle flames
So sad to learn that it has nothing to do with psychic powers
Just to clarify, since I don’t know if my experience is what you all are describing: this sounds kind of like what I hear if I start a yawn. Is the rumbling sound just for a second or can you make it indefinitely? And can you also make a short click or series of clicks?
I can get those sounds if I tense up some muscle(s) that you would also use to start a deliberate yawn. The clicks are easy to make, with less tension, and the rumble happens with more tension and it’s only for about a second or so. Also I definitely hear the rumble during a yawn. Does that sound like what you mean or am I describing something completely different?
That sounds like what I can do. Both the rumble and the clicks/ear popping.
Yep, the same sound as when you yawn. I can make it happen without yawning. Honestly, I can only make it for 5-10 seconds before I get “tired”.
Regarding clicks …I’ve no idea what that one is.
When you yawn sometimes you hear a little clicking noise in your ear canals, it’s earwax coming into contact briefly and separating, you can do it voluntarily similar to rumbling but I need to open my jaw a little for that effect
Rumble and clicks are separate, but the yawn activates all of those muscles so you get them together
It’s easiest to just rumble, but I need to open my jaw a little to click
'Knew about the rumble; 'just did the clicks for the first time (thanks to the tip about opening my jaw).
Wait, not everyone can do that?! What the fuck?!
I can do this as well, as can one of my siblings and my father so I assume there is a generic component. Used to call it “ear clicking” since it is audible to others if they put their ear to yours in a quiet environment.
I figured out that was the name when googling about it some years ago.
Is it just a click or also the described rumbling. Because I don’t hear a rumbling but I do make the clicks when I notice that my ears need to adjust to the air pressure.
If you hold it tense you get a rumble as described but the first time I tense it will make a little click. If I keep applying tension and release eventually it will stop clicking and just I’ll just hear the rumble and it will take a bit to “reset” to where it clicks again.
Humans are weird.
Edit: I quick kagi search turns up a Reddit thread saying the clicking is caused by “Voluntary Opening of the Eustachian Tubes” which is equalizing the pressure in my ears. That sorta explains why it stops clicking after a bit.
If I use the muscles that I use to get the click very carefully I get the rumble too :)
I never noticed it before and now this will be really distracting unless I forget about ASAP.
Did you listen to a podcast when you found out? 😏
Of two German dudes? 😅
it was also on No Such Thing As A Fish recently
I don’t remember where I was made aware of it, but it was probably this. I used to listen to NSTAAF regularly. This fact probably just got buried in the back of my head until it had the opportunity to come out now.
name drop but I know Andy IRL, nice guy.
That’s not surprising to me at all. He seems like he would be.
You aren’t alone. I can do it too.
Can do that low rushing type of sound as well.
Long, skinny stools. Turns out it was because of a precancerous blockage.
They’re called bar stools smh
/jk
Hope you’re doing ok now!
Reading.
When I got to high school I started taking book out from the library there. Over three years I took out about a dozen books that had never been read; they’d just been sitting on the shelves for years.
When I was a kid I noticed most books hadn’t been checked out by more than 2 or 3 people. At one branch they’d just stamp the back inner cover of the paperback, no checkout slip and I asked “What happens when you run out of space to stamp?” and she just laughed sadly
Two things.
“How Can I Help You” by Laura Sims. Serial killer disguised as a small town librarian. Anyone how likes libraries will recognize and enjoy.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/how-can-i-help-you-laura-sims/19108763?ean=9780593543719&next=t
The other thing is that when you’re a reader you get a skewed view of the world. You hang out with other readers and talk about books, and grow up thinking that everyone knows who Sylvia Plath was.
When I was much younger: that normal people could see much further than me.
One of my oldest memories is going into a McDonald’s for the first time with glasses; I stopped and read the entire menu, because I couldn’t believe normal people could read it as soon as you walked in. I always had to get up to the counter to make it out.
I got a lot better in school after that!
A woman I used to know said when she got glasses for the first time, she was amazed at being able to discern leaves on trees from further than a couple meters.
O my god. This is so relatable. I was 14 or so when a girl in my class told me I need contact lenses because I couldn’t read the school board unless I sat in the front (spoiler, I sat in the back).
And I was like nahh. Then I got a checkup and I was already at like -2. Then I wore lenses for years and I absolutely hated them. They stick to my eyes. Then only at like 18 I got glasses (not cool to teenage me) and I never switched back.
Maybe they should give children check ups, at least once in their life lol.
Child abuse. I thought it was normal to threaten children with violence for noncompliance. I thought it was normal to be afraid to misbehave or be suboptimal in school at the threat of violence.
Sharing socks. My family used to have a sock basket next to our shoes. You didn’t own your own socks, you just grab a pair when you need them.
I mentioned “the sock basket” offhand to a friend in elementary school and she thought it was crazy. That’s when I learned that not every family has a community sock basket. Looking it up though, I find a couple reddit threads from people with the same experience (and people replying that it’s weird) 🤷♀️Don’t you have different sized feet?
This was the first thing I thought of. I wonder what percentage of households consist of members who all have the same foot size? That’s got to be abnormal. What, do the 5 year olds suddenly sprout size-12 feet? They don’t wear socks before then?
This story sounds utterly suspicious.
~50% of men probably wear a size 9-11 shoe
That’s a “Large” sock
Man with a size 8 shoe could probably still wear a “Large” sock and be fine.
~75% of women wear a size 7-9
Women with 6 or 6.5 should still be able to wear a 7-9 sized sock.
Families have genetically similar feet
I know from my experience, my father, my brother, and I all wear the same size. We all had different preferences and our own socks, but I could have easily worn their socks.
It seems easy, until you walk a mile in their socks.
Yeah it’s definitely more reasonable than maybe it seems.
As kids we had pretty similarly sized feet. And I don’t think I noticed if the socks I was wearing were too big or too small anyway, even now I have some socks that are bigger or smaller than others.
And my parents had their own socks, so the sock basket was just for me and the sibs.
We used to do it as well at least for me and my brothers. We all got the same white tube socks so they went in the same basket by our laundry
We had a sock basket when I was a kid!
wait that’s not normal?
My daughters share school socks, because they are all the same colour and shape. So I guess this concept isn’t too unreasonable to do it on a whole family level.
This is unintentionally how we do it. We split up the socks after cleaning them but like a day later mom is wearing the oldest ones socks and the oldest one is wearing dads socks, and the little one has one sock from the older brother and another he found under the couch buried in dog hair.
Same same.
Not even sure how that would work with the different sizes we had in my family
Well, the feeling of one side of your hip being out of place. Then twisting slightly to snap it back.
It’s hip displasia.
Is this a thing for knees? Every once in a while, my knees just pop out of their sockets. It’s incredibly painful, and I have to move them back by hand. I went to a doctor when I was like 18 though, and they took an x-ray, and couldn’t find anything
I suppose so, but I’m not a doctor
https://radiopaedia.org/articles/trochlear-dysplasia
For the hip there’s also not a (as an adult) treatment, rather taking care to keep it in place and strengthen your muscles.
Displasia literally means “out of place”? Nifty.
