The joke is that “franca” = French. Though etymologically the phrase is from Italian, the root of “franca” is the same root that gives us the word “French.”

It’s always a good day to remember Rush Limbaugh is dead ❤️ 🌈

Your brain made it up.

Well, yeah, but our brains make up every color. Our experiences of color are nothing more than a facet of our brains’ interpretations of light information. It’s all in our heads.

I have no answers, but I sympathize. I’ve always wanted to ride a train across the country, but damn the prices are ridiculous. When I did make a cross-country trip a few years back (specifically so I could see the country and go through states I’d never been to before), I compared prices and decided to drive instead. The price of a train vs the price of fuel made the decision for me. Such a shame. But at least the road trip was worth it!

Got my harmonica and my bindle. Time to live the dream.

No wonder toddlers are always doing the most dangerous shit

You realize money is required for more than material goods, right? Experiences take money. Museums, live events, transportation, lodging (even if just a tent), all need money. In some places, accessing parks and beaches require money. None of these things are desires for material goods, but desires for experiences - experiences that make life more fulfilling. Experiences that can enrich the spirit, or provide opportunities for bonding with others.

I can get behind anti-consumerism, but to be unable to partake in enjoying nature or exploring our culture, just because we’re poor, is to deny us access to a crucial part of our humanity.

The bathrooms outside the lobby in my work building take this automatic crap a step further, with automatic soap machines. It’s hit or miss if any given one will have soap at all. (Thankfully, we have another sink inside my work itself that employees can use, but guests are fucked.)

Then when they do dispense soap, it’s the foam shit. So it looks like the sink just spit into my hands. Lovely.

He’ll continue aging and eventually lose his muscles. But then he’ll have some nice, little titties. So that’s something.

Even if the vehicle traffic didn’t meet some imaginary quota, that says nothing of the pedestrian traffic. Just another signal of our car-centric society.

With kanji, as well as not knowing what it means, you have no information of how it’s pronounced.

An impossible joke in kanji:

Granted, I never lived in any other era of human history, but I imagine our fractured society plays a huge role in why so many of us feel this way (because you are absolutely not alone in this experience.) We used to stay in close-knit communities, which forced us to hold our ties to each other, but we now have the entire globe to connect with. Consider how dating sites proliferate the idea that we can pick people the way we pick items in a grocery store - check one out, put it back on the shelf, put another in your cart, return another at a later date. It’s a pretty messed up way to think about other humans, but unfortunately a lot of people have internalized that this is a normal way to treat others.

When this happens enough, it’s easy to end up feeling disposable. It’s important to remind yourself that it’s not about you per se, but about how others treat each other. Being loyal is an underrated trait nowadays, made all the harder when you’ve gone through experiences where people take advantage of it.

I would love to offer solid advice on the matter, but unfortunately I often feel the same way. The best I can offer is the knowledge that you likely aren’t doing anything in particular to bring this on yourself - it’s a massive societal issue. Not the greatest hope, I know, but you are far from alone. I think it’s important that we recognize that loyal people are out there. It’s just hard to know how loyal someone is until the chips are down.

Have you watched any of Alyssa Grenfell’s videos on Youtube? She’s a former Mormon who makes videos about it from her perspective. I knew the church was fucked up, but the rabbit hole is so much deeper than I expected.

It’s not as simple as “they’re stupid” (which they are.) It’s a symptom of their in-group vs out-group thinking pattern. They don’t think the differences between other countries matter, because they’re all “others” as far as they’re concerned. So they paint foreigners with the same brush and leave it at that.

As to why “Mexican” in used in particular, I think other commenters make a good point about Mexico being the most prominent Spanish-speaking country to people in the US. They don’t see as many people from Spain, so that’s off their radar. If my upbringing in a racist area is anything to go by, “Mexican” became the default long ago.

Funny enough, I used to write the dates on the CDs I burned. If I go dig out my collection, I could probably find the last one I made. My guess off-hand is that it was around 2008-2009, since that was the last time I had a car that didn’t have a way to hook an iPod/phone to the radio.

True, but they can tell when their card is put back in the wrong pocket, or upside down, or other tiny clues that hint of someone messing with their stuff. Kids sometimes think parents know more than they do, or “have eyes in the back of their head,” simply because kids don’t pay attention to the same details their parents might. Their parents can deduce what happened from clues, clues that the kids don’t realize they left.

A very careful child might get away with it, but if their parents are equally careful they’ll probably notice something is amiss. I guess it all comes down to “your mileage may vary.”

At my first real job, I used to hang my coat on one particular coat hanger because it was the only one of its color. I chose it because it was easy for me to spot my coat when the hangers were crowded.

Now, I had a coworker who… I’m not quite sure what was going on with his brain. He jumped to weird conclusions all the time and flat-out made up things that he seemed to truly believe were real.

One day he randomly started arguing with me that the coat hanger I used was green. Uh, okay? Then he claimed that I had claimed it was yellow, and that I was wrong. I never made any such claim (and if I were pressed to it, I would’ve called it chartreuse.) Yet he was insistent that we had fought about it before, for some strange reason, and went on gloating about being right. It was utterly bizarre.

I let it go. He’s the same person who decided that “magic erasers” (for cleaning surfaces) must work by having paint in them. No amount of logic about that budged his opinion, and I knew no amount of reality would budge him on the coat hanger color.

So, sure dude, you win the imaginary argument. Congrats. Would you like an imaginary cookie?

some people don’t get high their first times.

Thank you for mentioning this. I didn’t try weed until my mid-20s and it took years of intermittent trying before I actually felt high. I’d never heard that this could happen, so I just got upset thinking I’d never be able to understand what the big appeal of weed was. Only in my late 20s, at a friend’s party where I’d already gotten pretty buzzed on alcohol, did a hit of a pipe make me finally feel something.

I don’t know if it finally clicked because of lowered inhibitions due to the alcohol, or if my brain had to build up to feeling an effect, or what, but weed’s worked as intended ever since. I will add that I’m the type of person that has been asked throughout my teenage years, “What are you smoking? And can I have a hit?” despite being 100% sober until my 20s. Maybe having an already-weird brain had something to do with it?

So yeah, OP, be prepared to discover that you might not feel anything from weed at all. It doesn’t seem to be terribly common, but it is definitely possible that nothing happens the first few tries. That doesn’t mean it will never happen, though.

I remember asking to borrow my parents’ newspaper so I could use my silly putty to make copies of pictures.

Also reading comics, and reusing the newspaper so I could make papier mâche (or other crafts) out of it. I learned to weave by using strips of newspaper to make a mat.

I know compliments we’ve received aren’t necessarily the answer, but it’s hard to think of anything that could top when a former coworker had a baby and told me, "I hope she grows up to be just like you."