So you telling me venus doesn’t look like a cheesy pizza?

Damn that reminds me how I felt like things ought to, have to, must and will absolutely change with the pandemic. Lo and behold, 6 years later, we’re back to the same old shit.

I assumed we’d realize that we went too fast and too far. That we need to work together to get over this, cooperate, help one another. That there are things that matter more than corporations. I naively assumed that in times of global crises like this, we would get closer together and put aside all that shenanigangs. Slow down and realize that if we just tune it down nature will come back, the planet will heal.

Obviously, quite the opposite happened society wise, and even in terms of medical policy we are back where we started.

We are currently having Covid. How we know? We still use home test kits. When I told people we tested positive today they are so surprised that we even tested. They are even more surprised I am keeping my daughter home since she has no symptoms but a cough.

Everyone is surprised that I wear a mask when I pick my healthy daughter up from kindergarten when I have a cold and my spouse can’t pick her up. People are surprised I am cancelling a dentist appointment last minute because I have the flu and conjunctivitis. People are back to going to work with a flu. For fucks sake.

As someone who’s actually had this problem (in an urban area) and actually solved it

That’s honestly quite remarkable

Idk wtf 🌚 means

I am so, so sorry about your loss. I’m glad to hear that you were able to feel a beacon of hope last year, and that this painting was a way for you to cling on to it and feel it a little longer. I hope you find a way to keep holding on to it, and through that hope find the courage to not give up and try to support change instead whenever you can and have the strength and energy to do so. But I can’t even imagine how hard that must be. And most of all, carry the love you had for your mom in your heart despite the grief, and the disgust and hate for the system that led to her demise quicker than it had to be.

I hope you don’t mind if I save that picture of yours.

Making an AI meme of Luigi as a Saint is one thing.

Making a painting and having it casually displayed in your room is a whole other level.

Also, I can’t believe it’s already been a year.

I have to admit it did a lot for me and I can’t believe I am saying that. But I literally just looked at this map for two minutes, trying to figure out what it was that caught me off guard.

Maybe inverting made South Korea look less like a peninsula “down there, hanging”, and more like something “up there, that people want to climb”?

Maybe it’s because I am not used to seeing this orientation and it’s refreshing and hence I look at it more closely than subconsciously thinking “meh I know what countries there are and what’s depicted”?

Like, this shouldn’t make sense, it should not make a difference, why does it make a difference to me, I don’t get it.

Jane Goodall was still alive when this article came out. It’s nice to know she probably read about that, if not saw this live, before her demise.

I remember I asked my husband in all seriousness to please kill me. Not in the heat of the moment, I actually meant it.

I don’t remember the pain. I guess it must have been bad but I cannot even imagine what it felt like or where it was located.

A rectovaginal fistula is fun too. Imagine having a mix of period blood and poop exiting your vagina.

Did you just… write an erotica piece about Trump and Clinton?

Never had these but I’ve heard they’re good

Cooked tomatoes are amazing. Raw tomatoes are disgusting.

Ok your comment sounds a lot like what I am experiencing, now you got me interested in reading the whole article after all.

Please go on

The funny thing is - I think I was rather made to feel inferior. There was always that notion that I might fail because German is not my actual mother tongue. I was really good in school and got super bored in elementary. So my mom went to the principal to discuss whether I could at least for math join the higher grades or even skip a grade. This is when my school realized - based on my mother’s heavy accent - that I had a migrational background and put me into a special ed after school program. It was degrading.

Right now our child is being raised bi(and a half)lingual. And while it is superficially considered great that she is being raised bilingual, we are also practically facing a lot of cynical behavior.

We were asked to speak German to her when she started kindergarten/preschool at 3 years old (which is actually not recommended to preserve the home language) so that she would have a faster time adjusting. Simultaneously, we are being told to avoid German at all cost and push her Russian much more by other groups, with the suggestion to make her learn how to write and read Russian at least a year before she starts school and not read German at all. We can’t do it right no matter what.

She has a birth date that would qualify her to register for school a year earlier (she would regularly go a year earlier if we hadn’t moved to another federal state), and it is already pretty clear they won’t let her because they “want to make sure her German is good enough for school”. She excels in both languages btw and is well above average in terms of expression and vocabulary, as we were told by her kindergarten teachers, yet still - we get the default answer that she will likely not be able to start school early because of her knowing Russian along with German.

So, no, in everyday life, I feel disadvantaged. It also highly depends on what language combo you look at. German and English? German and Spanish? Nice, wow, how amazing! German and Russian? German and Arabic? Ooof you will probably have difficulties in school, poor you. I’m not even going to start with the casual racism here.

I grew up with Russian and German and I cannot put it into words, but as a kid I was 100% certain that this helped me with math. It is almost like - I subconsciously knew I could approach something (like something I wanted to express) from two very different ways (two different languages), this translated to the way I approached a math problem.

I haven’t had a single drink since I got pregnant.

Kid is 4 now. I am still sober. I planned on quitting and was cutting it down when TTC, only having some drinks on New Year’s. But I had so many relapses in the previous years. I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to stay sober throughout pregnancy, let alone motherhood.

It was the easiest thing to not have a drink during pregnancy, and it is still rather easy now. Even in dark, theoretically tempting times, it is so easy to say no. And I am incredibly proud. It is a miracle I made it out alive, let alone happily and free from fucking alcohol.

Don’t forget the pesticides that are so fucked up that the farmers end up infertile

I can’t buy non organic bananas, I feel like I am castrating someone. But realistically probably organic also isn’t that much better.

Sewing, mending, repairing clothes. I am really bad at it. Also knitting. I will never be able to understand wtf I am seeing.