As a fellow American, we really don’t need any help looking bad at the moment, so you can stop now.

Holy shit. That was amazing!

Not in my family. Us women were expected to be the cooks, cleaners, everything. Every family get-together the men would just sit and talk and the boys would go out to play, and the older women would do the cooking, then come make the girls do the dishes.

My sister and I finally called them out on it, and to their credit they did try and make the boys help with the clean-up… although they never did that great of a job, because they’d never been taught how.

Spoiler: it’s not

If you want a great rundown on the history and craziness of English, may I recommend this video? It does a pretty good breakdown of how our language got to be such a mess.

Yup. Until recently we had a bad habit of giving other creatures tests geared towards mammals and then, when the reptile or insect or whatever didn’t ‘do well’ (because duh) our scientists declared that obviously meant they were stupid.

Like snakes were thought of as really dumb because they wouldn’t solve a maze to get to a piece of food like rats would.

Now, snakes can go sometimes a year without needing to eat, so of course they looked at the maze and said ‘Um, why should I go through all that effort, again? Eh, think I’ll take a nap instead.’

When scientists got smart enough to offer them a comfy dark place to take a nap as a reward, suddenly they were solving the mazes as fast as rats did.

(Of course intelligence does vary. Kingsnakes, for instance, obviously have a timeshare on the single orange braincell.)

5 & 6. Wonder if 6 followed my great-grandmother over from Minnesota?

Wow. When I saw the article I figured it would be bad, but that’s even worse than I expected lol

What is it with these idiots trying to re-brand racism and reinvent phrenology every few decades? Are they stupid enough to believe they’re the first to think of shit like this, or are they hoping we’re dumb enough to fall for it this time around?

So, are you wanting practical basics, esoterics, or both?

Practical:

1. What that other person said about debt is and isn’t good advice. Without debt you can’t build credit and without credit you can’t get big things like houses, mortgages, etc. More and more of society seems to rely on credit scores to judge a person’s worth, too. Which is concerning, but this is the world we live in, not the world we wish it was, so… On the other hand, with debt it’s easy to get into a ‘pay later’ or ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’ mentality and get yourself into a bad position. So, better advice would be: never take on large debts unless you absolutely have to. Get a credit card, buy one or two things with it a month, and pay it off every month. That way you can build credit safely.

(Obviously ignore this advice if you’re rich.)

2. Learn basics. I was taught cooking, cleaning, how to properly do laundry, basic electrical wiring, basic home repairs (attach things to studs, how to patch drywall, etc), and sewing. All of this has come in handy once I got my own place. Learning simple car stuff like changing oil, changing tires, and perhaps redoing spark plugs and belts can help you too, especially if you want to save money on car maintenance.

3. On a related note to that, cars, houses, and boats are all basically giant pits you toss money into. (That’s why people often take on debt to get new cars; a lot of the expensive maintenance is covered under warranty.)

4. Be careful with student debt. An education is important, but you can be stuck with that debt for a very long time, and owing that much in an uncertain economy like we have can be dangerous. So plan your education well.

5. With the understanding that there are some things people call ‘hobbies’ that are just them being gross (ogling little anime girls because they’re ’really 700 years old so it’s fine!’ comes to mind), in general enjoy your hobbies and don’t be ashamed of them. If, say, you like doing drag, and one of your friends says nasty things about it, that person is not your friend and you don’t need to feel ashamed of your hobby to make them feel better. If it makes you happy and doesn’t harm anyone, then just have fun. But, in counterpoint to that, don’t fall into your hobby so hard that you start gatekeeping and being an ass about it, or ruining your health about it. Remember, other people are in the hobby to have fun too, so who cares if so-and-so’s drag wig is a little basic or messy?

6. I hope you know this already, but it’s astonishing how many people don’t: bathe every day. And wear at least moderately clean clothes. No-one likes stinky people and it’s easy to become inured to your own smell.

Esoteric:

1. Like that other person said, read. Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, Richard Feynman… plenty of people have put amazingly good thoughts down on paper. I especially like Pratchett’s definition of sin.

2. Learn history, and not just the basic ‘approved’ things taught in schools. For example, our school ‘neglected’ to teach about the Tulsa Race Massacre, or the brutal Union fights in West Virginia. I’ve found, for good summaries of more ancient history, Overly Sarcastic Productions does a pretty good job. It’s impossible to know where you are going until you know where we have been. And of course that old adage ‘those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it’ is very true. See: the US right now.

3. Learn what a cult looks like and avoid them like the plague. Doesn’t matter how lonely you are, how much ‘esoteric knowledge’ they offer, they will destroy your life and probably your family’s lives as well.

Grief is love.

It may sound weird, but there are people who can literally ‘feel the presence of God’.

Not sure what it is, if it’s some kind of weird chemical thing that creates the feeling, or perhaps a twist of the mind. But the ones I’ve talked to mention ‘feeling it in their heart’ and such.

To them it’s very real and it profoundly weirds them out that some people can’t feel it. And, in typical human fashion, they tend to assume those people aren’t trying hard enough/doing it right/are fundamentally broken.

I mean, maybe, but in my case I’m sure a good part of it was neither of my parents were good cooks lol

If I didn’t watch them make it, it was pretty hard to tell if the veggies were canned or not; they boiled fresh veggies to the same consistency as the canned ones.

For women it’s a two-way street. Yes, it gets you more jobs and more friends, but it definitely also gets the creeps lined up around the block. Plus, some of those friends and jobs only happened because someone wanted to bang you, and that gets dangerous fast.

Source: one of my friends in high school had looks that I literally saw stop traffic. But hoooly shit did guys especially seem to think her looks were an open invitation, and most of them weren’t subtle about it either.

Short answer: NO. Because ‘white’ is not a culture, and because ‘white’ people were, and sometimes still are, racist assholes.

Long answer: So the reason black people (in the US especially) have an aggregate conglomerate group identity is because they were brought over as slaves, seperated from all their family, and basically had their own cultures beaten out of them. They had to rebuild their cultural identity from scratch.

‘Asians’ tend to not have a bloc group identity except when they get together as a bloc to stand up to white people being assholes (again, yay racism). Individual cultures did, in the past, have insular cultural communities (again speaking mostly US-centric) because ‘white’ people in the US didn’t want ‘those icky non-whites’ living near them (to the point of codifying it into law in many cases). They had to create their own communities in specific ‘permitted’ locations, based on nationality (hence the development of ‘Chinatowns’ and such).

‘White’ people, on the other hand, moved to the US voluntarily and were able to keep their cultures intact and plop them wherever they felt like. So it’s disingenuous at best and outright racist and belittling at worst to claim a ‘white’ identity because ‘black people get to do it’, completely ignoring the fact that black people only do it because people labeling themselves ‘white’ forced them into it.

Edit: adding to this, it is possible for ‘white’ people to have a cultural identity. For example, my family all came from Sweden, and for quite a while found comfort in hanging out with fellow transplants from the home country while we learned the language, found jobs, and such.

As a result my ancestors built Swedish halls, held Swedish festivals, and so on—in fact we still do today, to celebrate our heritage. But we are celebrating Swedish heritage.

Unless you’re on .ml, where they censor all swear words

Hmmm, yes, no doubt it’s the women’s height requirements that are to blame, since you have such a sterling personality.

Don’t know if I’ll ever swap out my Traveler for the custom character in overworld, but this new gameplay looks interesting at least

So that’s a completely different conversation. One that I think the US should have, mind you, since I agree that it’s wildly unsafe.

But my point is that if your car can’t pass inspection, it shouldn’t be on the road, and it definitely shouldn’t be racing, on-track or no.

The one held in my city is pretty reasonable. And if they’re not passing inspections to race on a track then they shouldn’t be racing on the street either.

Y’all are assholes who do asshole things.

That maim people.

And kill people.

All the time.

Seriously why do y’all do this? You can rent time on tracks for cheap!