So, I hadn’t realised I do this, but yeah…

Being trapped in a country that descends in to rampant transphobia

Tell them they’re so fun, you want to pay them to be your penpal, and you’ll send them a picture of $50

Pixelfed.social is the flagship instance run by the developer. Personally, I’d recommend a vernissage instance though, at least if you want an experience more like flickr and less like instagram.

Yep, very familiar :)

I have aphantasia!

I learned (am learning) Spanish later in life and it has actually been quite interesting because of this. I have aphantasia, so no mental images either, and I’ve always described my thinking and thoughts as being about the concepts and ideas of words, with the words something that I can summon if I need to.

And learning Spanish via translation and memorisation was really painful, and honestly, not enjoyable. I eventually stumbled across the comprehensible input method, which doesn’t try and translate your target language to another language. It just builds up from scratch, you learn from simple words and sentences, with strong visual support and repetition etc, getting more complex the more exposure to the language you get. And this method clicked with me. I’m only at B1 or so with Spanish, but I can listen to a native speaker and understand them, but if you asked me what they said, I would have to then convert what I heard to English after the fact.

I’ve often said that it worked because both English and Spanish attach words to the behind the scenes concepts, and I’m mapping to that.

Yep, you got me! That must be exactly what it means!

No one.

This analogy started to feel particularly accurate for my own experience when I started learning a second language. I realised that I wasn’t learning what one word meant in another language, but instead, attaching the two words to a deeper idea/concept. It means that I’d often understand what I was hearing, but even when I was listening in my new language, I didn’t automatically have the translation to my native language (English).

And my thoughts/internal experience is like that. I can pull the words out to describe the thing, but the actual thought itself, the concept that I’m using the word to describe is where I would say my thoughts naturally sit

I’d say that’s a pretty reasonable summary. I mean, I can think about the future and the past of course, and I can stress about them both too, but none of that takes the form of a dialogue, nor does it have any sense of participants. There’s just my thoughts, in the moment, about the future and what might happen.

I don’t have one…

Amazing!

Well, I learned something new today :)

Wait, windows ships with Dolphin these days?

Curly hair is great for people that love beauty routines and self care sessions!

It’s not so great for people who don’t

True, but those other forms aren’t tied to wars and economic disparity in the same way, so kicking nationalism to the kerb would still be a win.

It’s because if I just ignore my hair, it turns to knotty frizz that takes hours to deknot. And I can’t brush my hair unless I’m in the shower washing it. Which means I have to wash it 2 or 3 times a week. And every time I wash it, I can’t dry it with a towel. I have to either use a hair dryer for 20 minutes, or wear a towel on my head for an hour, and then let it air dry for another 30 minutes or so after that.

I don’t do skin care, I don’t do makeup, I don’t do my nails, yet my fucking hair… My skin, face and nails are fine despite me ignoring them. Sure, they might look better with a bit of attention, but they function just fine even when I don’t put any time in to them. But I have to have a routine for my hair, because the only other option is cutting it all off

That’s why I resent my hair.

Opting out and getting dull and scraggly as a result is the type of opting out I want

I’m one of those people with curly hair that hates it. I hate it, because I can’t opt out of dealing with it.

That out of the way, products for curly hair are designed to assist in caring for curly hair.

Products that are designed to straighten hair, or intensify curls will state that explicitly for all the ambiguous wording issues you’ve mentioned

I’d be ok with just getting rid of nationalism… Nothing wrong with identity, but nationalism fosters an us vs them mentality that fucks over people in most of the world.

Can I say I’d change them all by getting rid of the concept altogether?