That’s cool about “rare” in Dutch. It’s the same in Spanish. “Qué raro” means “How weird.” So that’s a false friend for English, but an accurate one between Spanish and Dutch!

Considering that their roofs tend to look like this, that’s a very reasonable understanding. Pizza Huts look like they’re wearing a hat!

If you check the Mod Log (accessible through the button under the comment with 3 vertical dots), apparently that user has a history of using ableist slurs, uncivility, and telling users to kill themselves.

If someone like that is complaining about the culture here, the rest of us must be doing something right.

One of the programs I use at work had an overhaul recently. I wanted to find some notes from a previous day and couldn’t figure out how. I asked someone to help and they told me to click some symbol in the corner of the page. I didn’t even know it was supposed to be a button, hovering over it doesn’t say what it does. It looked kind of like [ iii ] which tells me absolutely nothing about its functionality.

The overhaul was supposed to make things easier.

We’re a bunch of autists who either don’t know, or know very well because we learned it through trauma.

I’ll remember their hair more than any other feature. All it takes it a hair cut sometimes and a person becomes a stranger.

Does this guy have a wife? Is he going to hurt me? Is he just using me?

I probably wouldn’t be in a relationship with a guy if these were my worries during sex. But, there are other considerations that happen regardless of relationship status.

There’s an inherent difference in being the “receiver,” a type of intimacy that only comes from having somebody else physically inside your own body. Things can get sore, especially if the guy treats sex like an Olympic event that he needs to keep on going for a long time. (Or if he has his own issues with orgasming from penetration, which is surprisingly common these days. “Death grip” where a man becomes accustomed to the tightness of his own hand, or a reliance on viewing porn in order to cum, seem to be all over the place.)

I enjoy penetrative sex, but my body needs a break sometimes. Things can start to get uncomfortable after going on for 20 minutes. I don’t think most straight guys are aware of the physical stress of being penetrated. It can be fun, in small doses, but if we regularly get to the point where I feel sore inside, it can become something aversive. Honestly I’d rather be with a guy who cums too quickly than a guy who can “keep going on and on,” because it sucks to always be the one to put an end to sexy times.

Oh, this is awesome. I remember a post recently about wanting more community activities on Lemmy, and /r/Place was one of the things I said I’d missed the most.

For those who want to participate and can’t figure it out (since there’s no instructions) -

• Follow the link to http://canvas.fediverse.events/
• Ignore the immediate pop-up - it’s not important for contributing to the artwork. Just click the X and move on.
• Look at the bottom of the page, it should say, “You are not logged in” with a Login button. Click that button, follow the instructions. Don’t worry, it will not ask you for your password - it will ask for your full Fediverse handle (including the @lemmy.instance part) and it will send you a code instead.
• Check the inbox of whatever username you entered to find a message with a 5-digit code. Go back to the Canvas page and put in the code.
• Click the “approve” button that pops up next.
• After that, you should be logged in. Now you can contribute! Find a spot you want to add to, pick a color from the bottom row, and go for it! Note that if you leave the page idle for a bit, you may be asked to connect again.

There’s a cool-down counter in the bottom left of 30 seconds, after which you’ll earn another pixel to place. You can have up to 6 pixels ready to go. Once you have 6 pixels, the countdown disappears until you place one. If you lose connection or have to sign in again, it will save the pixels you accumulated. In writing this post I went through the process again to make sure I got it right, and I still had 6 pixels to use when I reconnected.

There’s also an Undo button that appears immediately after placing a pixel, but it only lasts for a few seconds. If you accidentally click a pixel onto the image when you’re just trying to scroll around, that button is your friend.

Note: I am not affiliated with this project in any way. I’m just sharing what I learned because it wasn’t intuitive and I figure others might need a little help getting started.

Edit: Corrected the cool-down time.

Is that the new, “If you do it, you’ll go blind”?

That movie is so relatable

Aspiration depends on position in a word in English and doesn’t hold any semantic or grammatical meaning, but in other languages, an aspirated consonant can completely change the meaning of a word.

It reminds me of how Hindi/Urdu use v and w. Which sound is produced depends on where it is in a word, but to native speakers, both v and w may sound the same. That’s why Hindustani ESL speakers tend to switch between the two in ways that don’t make sense to native English speakers.

It helps me wrap my mind around it to think of how English has two different ways of pronouncing L - there’s “light” L at the beginning of words (love, listen, like.) Then there’s “dark” L used at the end or sometimes in the middle (full, ball, visible.) The word “little” provides an example of both types (and if you pronounce it with a glottal stop for the “tt”, such as in a Cockney accent, the word is basically “light L, glottal stop, dark L.”)

Of course, aspiration itself also works as a way to understand it, since aspirated sounds make a difference in Hindustani, but English spelling treats them interchangeably. However, that difference is too hard for many of us to distinguish, so I find that comparing L sounds is easier for English speakers to recognize as a comparison.

The more I learn other languages, the more annoyed I get at the Great Vowel Shift in English. We could’ve been aligned with so many other languages, but no, we just had to be different.

It’s wild, since English has such a vast vowel inventory that we can pronounce a lot of words in other languages, but since we read letters differently, many people end up with accents that don’t need to exist. Consider people pronouncing Spanish words with English vowels, even though all standard Spanish vowel sounds are already part of the standard English repertoire.

Which makes it funny when I hear fellow English speakers knock on French spelling. At least I can reasonably assume what a written French word is supposed to sound like. English doesn’t give us that luxury.

“Apples, I love not”

It’s funny how learning different grammar can change the way you think. I read this and think, “Ah yes, perfectly normal Japanese word order. Topic first, with verb + negation at the end.”

I have to be careful when I talk sometimes, because my mental grammar structure is all over the place now.

Or ‘left’, which can mean remaining (“I only have three left”) or departing (“They left.”)

I remember learning Spanish in school. Discovering the difference between “dejar” and “irse” drove this home for me. Dejar - to leave [a thing somewhere.] Irse - to leave [a place.] (“Salir” also works for the latter meaning, but it can mean more of “to go out.”)

“Ella se fue y dejó el libro en la mesa.” (“She left and left the book on the table.”)

Speaking of “driving (a point) home,” I’d say one of the weirdest/most interesting quirks of English is how many idioms we rely on.

Depends on what I’m doing. It’s usually one voice, but if I’m trying to think through something or if my ADHD is turned up, I get what I call “the committee.” For thinking through something, different perspectives all chime in, and I like to imagine it like some kind of round table debate. I “talk” with myself through ideas, and sometimes I change my mind about what I do because ultimately I know the most sensible talking point is the right one.

If my ADHD is behind it, though, then it’s more like a room full of people all pointing out different things at the same time. One’s complaining that the noise outside is too loud. Another’s distracted by the birds out the window. Another voice is debating what I should eat next (even if I’m not hungry.) Yet another is trying to remember the lyrics to a random song. Then the “responsible adult” of the group is trying to get everyone else to STFU and focus on the task at hand.

I find that caffeine goes a long way in getting the committee to chill and listen to each other. It’s not too surprising that stimulants get them all in line, but it’s still interesting to experience.

I always liked the community events Reddit did. I wish we could do something like /r/place. I guess the next best (low-tech) thing is starting with a blank image file, adding a line, and uploading it for the next person to add a line, so on and so forth. Make some kind of collaborative artwork where everyone contributes a bit. Whether it becomes a graffiti wall, a collection of memes, or nothing but multi-colored dicks, I know I’d have fun.

Meanwhile, at my parents’ old house, I had painted a bedroom so each wall represented a different season, complete with a mural of a colorful tree losing leaves for the autumn side (since it’s my favorite season.)

When a couple bought it last year, they fell in love with it. My old “seasons” room is being turned into a nursery. My mom recently shared a post by the buyer with me, where she said something along the lines of, “Spending our first summer in our dream house!”

Thank goodness no “flippers” ever got their hands on it.

You can hear the zulu one in the opening lines of The Lion King song Circle of Life.

“Nants ingonyama bagithi baba.” literally means “hear comes the lion, father”

Okay, this part blew my mind. I knew such terms were used around the world for parents, but that connection to The Lion King is still really cool to learn.

Wait until you hear about Dawn and Don.

I grew up in a part of the country that pronounces them differently. Moving out of that zone, I finally understood why a teacher I had (with the first name “Dawn”) hated her name.