If you can remember anything more about that I’d be really interested, as langauge reform is a big interest of mine. As far as I’m aware, there’s been no successful langauge reform in Britain, and even the few attempts (George Bernard Shaw’s simplified spelling society and a labour MP in the 50s who failed to pass a bill in Parliament) were all for simplyfing and regularising English spelling (so that ‘give’ would become ‘giv’, because it doesn’t rhyme with five, hive, dive, etc) not re-Latinizing anything.

The last significant change in English spelling I can think of was when Webster introduced his “American” spelling in the 19th century and changed ‘honour’, ‘centre’, etc to their US versions.

I totally agree that this is something that happens naturally, and probably shouldn’t be interfered with by a government. When it has been successful, it has been about giving permission for official langauge to reflect current usage. Telling people they must write ‘hav’ instead of ‘have’ is not going to work because even if it’s illogical it’s such a high frequency word that it is minimal effort to add, and then ignore, the ‘e’. But allowing school children to start writing ‘thru’ instead of ‘through’ might actually work.

Managed to get to the stage with my job, where I just kinda resent having to go to work because I’d rather be doing other things, as opposed to deeply hating it because I’m freaking out constantly. This is a big step for me, I had to leave my last career after crashing and burning, due undiagnosed ADHD. Had a couple of years off getting myself sorted out and correctly medicated, and started back in a new role, but with a genuine question about whether I could have a professional career again.

The first couple of years were really hard, just so stressful and I needed to see a therapist at points to keep going. But I did, and now in my 3rd year I’ve hit a very manageable level of stress that seems normal and bearable. Interestingly, this isn’t because I finally started being organised and stopped leaving things to the last minute. Nope, I just embraced my terrible work habits, stopped beating myself up about them, and changed my expectations for work so that paperwork was minimized and doing all my prep at the last minute was fine. Much less mentally horrific for me and, despite ‘lowering my standards’ the quality of my work probably increased, because I was doing what I could actually achieve not pushing to do something amazing that never materialised.

Quite right! Never trust the English! But what do you mean, they “keep intentionally fucking with their dialect”? All languages, dialects, sociolects, etc are constantly changing in different ways, do you feel like the dialects of England change more than other? Or that they do it more purposefully?

Ahh, I didn’t know that Americans* called dictionaries ‘lexicons’. In most forms of English I’ve heard, and in the field of linguistics, ‘lexicon’ is the complete set of vocabulary in a language, or subject. A dictionary is an alphabetical list of a lexicon, often with definitions.

*I’m presuming it’s Americans because mirriam webster lists the dictionary definition first, while OED and Cambridge only list that as archaic usage.

Yeah, but it isn’t impressive avoiding a letter if you can use any word you want, and it doesnt matter what it means. “Without employing the second most frequent letter of English.” would make sense or “the vowel which is commonly listed first” or some sort of thing. I suspect they just didn’t know what lexicon meant and thought it sounded smart.

In what sense is it the first letter of the English lexicon? Lexicon ≠ alphabet

Just started playing this again for the first time in years. Trying out the texture upgrades from tfix, and they seem pretty good. Still feels very retro!

I generally play at least one of the Ultima games every year, mostly the late 80s and early 90s ones.

You don’t need to actively kill people off unless you’re in a rush. Just let climate change render parts of the world uninhabitable while enforcing strict border control, and make sure your population don’t have access to decent healthcare and vaccinations so that prevmtable diseases reduce the local numbers.

Something I’ve tried to do is figure out a safe departure time rationally, then set a timer for 15 minutes before. Knowinf that I don’t have to remember or think or judge whetjer its getting late has been really helpful for escaping that endless clock-checking stress.

TBIs are awful. That sleep thing sounds horrible but at least you can still communicate. Hope you’re surviving okay.

I drink quite a lot of caffeine (four or five strong coffees most days) and i’ve not had any problems, or noticed much of a difference on terms of ‘over caffinated’ symptoms compared to pre-Methylphenidate.

In fact, the one time I tried to cut back on coffee (I’d been really ill for a week and had stopped drinking coffee, so I decided to not restart the habit) I found that without coffee my medication didn’t seem as effective. After two weeks of no caffeine I wasnt feeling caffeine withdrawals, I wasn’t tired in the morning or craving coffee, but I just felt like i was on too low a dose for my ADHD. My attention, focus, willpower were all back to being a struggle. Then I read somewhere online saying that this could happen, and that caffeine increased the effects of the meds. For some people, I guess that means that too much coffee would lead to an overly strong dose. But for me, I’d much rather have a couple of cups of coffee than have to move to a higher dose of Ritalin. So I started having coffee again and things went back to normal.

No wonder. Artie is straight-up adorable.

Yeah, given that that account got deleted not long after that (if it’s the one I’m thinking of) then it quite probably was a bot…

Most insults are some attempt to link an aspect of a person or their behaviour with a negatively perceived thing. Most powerful insults also include breaking some form of social taboo.

Thus we have mild insults like “your argument is…” “weak-sauce” which associate the argument with the (presumably undesirable) sauce of insufficient strength; “shit” which is mild taboo but so widely used and conventional that it doesn’t hit hard; “loose stool-water, arse-gravy of the worst kind” which is both a bit taboo and reasonably novel (but wordy and pretentious).

If you’re trying to find insults that are going to impact someone, you have to find things that are upsetting / undesirable or them, so that association with that negative thing is bad and they want to avoid it. This is tricky if they have a different worldview, because what is offputting to you might be fine to them (eg. religious people insulting behaviour as ‘sinful’ or ‘satanic’ doesn’t really land for non-believers).

This is extra tricky if you don’t agree with what they find disgusting, because when you use something that disgusts them as an insult you are reinforcing the idea that it IS something to be disgusted by. Making fun of Trump’s ‘Lady-hands’ or ‘micropenis’ might be hurtful to him (or his supporters) but it also telling men that traditional masculine features and penis size are the qualities of real men. But that’s the problem, you can’t use someone’s beliefs against them while also challenging those beliefs as wrong.

So you can just accept that insults are problematic, and continue to call people ‘retarded fags’ because you know that has a negative association to them, ignoring the innocent minorities also hurt by that language. Or you can find things that are universally seen as bad and undesirable (mostly varistions on bodily functions) or that don’t really hurt the stereotyped group (“you’re whining like a little baby” is less problematic than “like a woman on the rag” or “like a little removed”). But these generally aren’t as impactful…

Thanks! That’s pretty much what I do. As I said in my reply to shneancy, it’s made a lot harder by my neurodivergent partner having serious communication issues around the topic. So it isn’t even to get feedback, but they’re the one who love aggressive sex.

I have experimented with some stuff on myself to get a gauge of how hard is too hard. But tbh, I don’t really enjoy getting slapped in face or choked so, it’s hard to guess what’s the correct level for someone else!

I’m familiar with that in principle, and it’s a great system. But my partner is shockingly bad at communicating during sex (they’re on the spectrum). I’ve tried to talk about safe words, or even just any indication that something is not working for them. But they refuse, partly saying “that it’s pretty obvious when I am enjoying something or not” (it is not, or at least not to me). But I suspect the real reason is that they have quite poor body awareness in general (often injure themselves with exercise because they weren’t aware that something was hurting them) and that trying to monitor their own safety is tiring and unfun. But they’re also not super expressive during sex, so I can’t reliably pick up on cues.

We’ve been together a long time, and I think we’ve found things that work for us, but it’s pretty stressful trying to ‘play rough’ without a real feedback mechanism (and I have gotten it wrong and gone ‘too far’ and they’ve been very upset with me). I’ve tried talking about it, and even had a period of refusing to do anything like that at all hoping it would force them to agree to some sort of save-word system. But it didn’t, they just seemed decreasingly satisfied with sex, so I gave in and went back to guessing what’s okay…

Good call! It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, partly because of comments from other ADHD people. We do some bdsm adjacent (I don’t really know where the line is…) stuff cause be partner likes to be treated rough. I guess it helps keep me focussed, cause there’s more variety and stuff to do, but it also leads to a lot of meta thinking and second guessing “was that too much? Was that too soft? How long have they been in that position and is that going to actually harm their neck…”

Maybe being in a sub role would be kinda relaxing because of the lack of control / responsibility, but I prefer the Dom/top role, and my partner is 100% the other way. I do think it’s easier when there’s more novelty in general, just being somewhere different or my partner wearing some new outfit I find hot helps. But making stuff different everyday would soon get exhausting, while changing my imagination is quick and easy.

That’s absolutely true. If your comment had said “That can be a trauma response that manifests in some NDs lvining in an NT world. It’s not always innate.” I wouldn’t have replied.

There are a depressing number of people who make very absolute claims that all the problems of neurodiversity come from the world not being designed for them. While I understand why it sometimes feels like that, it’s absolutely not true for many people with ASD, ADHD, etc.

I have to actively keep myself focussed on sex by fantasizing some scene or story to myself. Just actually having sex isn’t enough, not because I’m not into it or not enjoying it. It’s just that if I don’t fill my mind with something sexy it’s going to get full with chores, or dinner options, or the way the bed squeaks… And then I’m completely out the moment.