You know what’s wild? This is the first time I’ve ever heard of men doing roller derby. I mean, I’m not surprised that men do it, I’m just surprised that I’ve gone my whole life up to this point and never heard of/encountered/or met men that do roller derby. Are all-male teams common in the sport?

Shortly after entering adulthood, I lost a close friend. He was still in college at the time, a talented, friendly, bright light snuffed far too early. He was well loved and his funeral was so packed that it was standing room only. One attendee described it as “the most depressing class reunion ever.”

His loss has never left me.

Right before I got the phone call telling me the news, I had been feeling extremely down about myself. I was crossing my work parking lot (which I had to do regularly as part of my job) without looking up for moving cars, thinking that if I got hit, it wouldn’t have mattered.

But that same day, my phone rang. It was a mutual friend, and through obvious tears and a quavering voice, she told me, “John is dead!”

With that, everything changed.

I’ll never forget how much it hurt to lose somebody so important to me. The idea of purposely putting my friends through that has kept me going more times than I can count. I have to remind myself, even in my darkest, most self-hating moments, that I’m more important to others than I realize. I can’t imagine John would have known just how much of an impact he had made on others, but I saw the proof. I felt the pain. I love my friends and family too much to entertain the thought of making them attend my funeral. And so I push on, but with one change:

I now make a point to explicitly tell my friends how much they matter to me.

It’s been years since I’ve crossed the Canada/USA border, so things may be different today. But when I went, the Canada side was more concerned about smuggled weapons, while the USA side was more concerned about smuggled drugs. Still, it doesn’t take much to trigger a border patrol search.

Apparently if you go from New Brunswick in the morning, spend the day driving through Maine/New Hampshire/Vermont, and cross into Quebec the next day, that’s suspicious enough to get detained for several hours and to have your entire car searched at the border. To me it just made sense to do a straight line drive through those states, since staying inside Canada between those two points would have been a much longer, more convoluted route. Silly me, being logical about my route without considering how others break international law.

“Time to lie in bed and do nothing for a few hours” ?

I’ve mentioned this before in other threads that seek a women-centric Lemmy option, but there was at least one secret community on Reddit like that. Invitees’ post histories were vetted before an invite was sent, both to find women specifically, but also to prevent trolls.

I don’t know exactly how they did it, all I know is that I got an invite one day and found the most open, comforting community I’d ever seen online. It was a place where we could talk about anything from silly stories that made us smile, to complaining about specific issues with bras, all without fear of trolls hijacking the thread, or turning an ordinary thing for us into something sexual.

I miss it.

It’s called “being an ally,” and it’s far more productive than faking outrage and borderline-doxxing people we disagree with.

Here we are 16 or 17-year-old girls showing up to these random college guys house.

Oh man. It’s scary how normal this is treated. I remember having friends with “older boyfriends” and I always felt really weirded out by it. Yet when you’re a kid (or teen, in this case) and your friends act like it’s normal to want adult boyfriends, you’re put in a really awkward position. I wasn’t able to fully articulate or even comprehend everything fucked up about it at the time, but as an adult looking back, holy shit. There’s an entire hidden social ecosystem where being groomed is not only considered normal, but can be seen as enviable by peers.

One time as a kid, a friend lent me her glasses (I never needed glasses, but I always liked them) and I went to climb a tree. In the tree, looking down, the glasses made it seem like I was much closer to the ground than I was.

So I jumped.

It was extremely stupid. There was a point during the fall when I felt like I should’ve reached the ground already, but I hadn’t. In the end I was fine, the glasses were fine, and my friend thought it was funny. But wow, that could’ve gone disasterously wrong.

That’s what you get for not buying the very latest edition of the textbook. /s

Seriously though, you’re clearly trying to actually comprehend the material, but even the professor was too checked out? I wish I were surprised, but that’s just upsetting. Nobody takes responsibility for education anymore, not the instructors, not the administration, and none but maybe a handful of students who get zero support from either of the above. I’ve learned more from reading on the internet for free than I have from any classroom. But learning for free on one’s own doesn’t give someone a fancy paper that attracts employers. Gotta spend money to make money, yet again.

You’re right. The illiteracy is everywhere. It’s a very troubling sign.

I wonder, were there any other points in history, post-literacy, where a significant amount of people went to school yet still lacked literacy skills? If it has happened, would it even be recorded? Or is this aspect of modern society truly novel?

It’d be nice to know how such a situation would’ve been rectified in the past, but I get the feeling the solution would be the same thing I’ve been calling for since my own childhood - a comprehensive public educational system with a focus on critical thinking.

They probably didn’t link it by default because of Rule 4. However, I think there should be an exception when other users ask for links. (Maybe the rule should be, “No unsolicited self promotion”?)

For the record, I would also like to see this rant.

When search engines started putting lists of videos in response to every query, I fumed. Trying to find a solution to the game issue you’re having? Here, scan through this 10 minute video and hope you come across the part that discusses your specific issue! Oh, it didn’t actually talk about the thing you need? Lol well at least you watched some ads.

I think next time I have a game issue, I’ll be asking about it here on Lemmy. Yeah, the audience isn’t as big as on Reddit, but we’ll never know the depth of the knowledge fellow Lemmings have to offer if we never ask.

I bought my PS4 at the very beginning of Covid, specifically because I was anticipating quarantining and I figured if the PS5 had just dropped, it was the right time to look for used PS4s.

he willingly reads more than most adults I know.

I love this. Not just for the obvious (“kid likes reading”) but because we live in a society of “TL;DR” and it never made much sense to me. Even with ADHD, I prefer long-form messages and social media that doesn’t have a character limit. The rise of “TL;DR” seems to be mainstream, which likely means neurotypicals… it’s really ironic, isn’t it? Those who supposedly have “normal” attention spans can’t bother to read through more than a paragraph sometimes. Yet, those of us who supposedly have an “attention deficit” will pour over articles, books, Wikipedia pages, and more for hours or days on end. We clearly have the capacity to pay attention, even if much of the modern world sucks at grabbing and maintaining it.

Be careful with that phrase. Being glad for aspects of one’s disability seems to trigger some folks, and the response can be hit or miss. Some days, you mention a thing you’re glad that your ADHD gives you, and people dog-pile you for daring to find a silver lining in your own life.

I get where they’re coming from, since there are a lot of folks out there that don’t understand what ADHD is. But they forget that there’s a world of difference between someone without ADHD dismissing struggles by claiming someone has “superpowers,” and someone with ADHD who chooses to celebrate their unique strengths.

Sorry, tangent. I’m just trying to look out for you because I’ve seen the Lemmy community jump on people for less.

I’d like to note that users here are adults, a lot of whom didn’t get ADHD support as children. Some of us weren’t diagnosed until adulthood. Others of us were diagnosed, but had parents who “don’t believe in” insert-scientific-fact-here. Many of us are behind in life now due to a lack of support during crucial years. These memes aren’t an end-all, be-all of ADHD, but a way for all of us to find humor in our predicaments.

As someone who had parents in denial, I hope it brings you comfort to know that acknowledging and supporting your child is giving him a huge leg-up compared to many of us here. You won’t mislabel your kid as “lazy” and burden him with poor self-esteem about it, the way many of us were treated. Add in the benefits of tech, like having programmable timers, alarms, and reminders, and your kid already has tons more support than many of us did growing up.

You’re doing good, Mom/Dad/Parent. You’re providing your kid with the what he needs to do better than the generation before him. That is progress, and that is awesome.

“Thingy,” “that thing,” “thingamabob,” and “whatchacallit” are all valid ways that myself, my friends, and my family refer to items. Sometimes there’s an adjective or relative descriptor used to clarify, like “that spiky thing,” or “the blue thingy next to the TV.”

Do you also sometimes go through the alphabet when trying to find a word? Usually if I can figure out what sound/letter starts the word I’m looking for, I can find the rest of it.

Bullshit. I grew up on a diet of depression and alienation. At no point was I ever tempted to worship a bully.

I watched my classmates with their toxic social hierarchy game, where people only rose in stature by stepping on others, and decided early on that I didn’t want to play. It’s better to be alone than be part of… that.

The revolution will not be televised.

The downvotes prove your point. This topic needs more discussion, but most of the times when women bring this up, their comments get downvoted to hell. It’s quite a “gotcha” for someone to ask to see “examples” when most of the examples we’ve come across or created will be buried or have since been deleted.

Alternative question - for those that don’t believe this is an issue, when is the last time you came across a post on Lemmy that is specifically for/about women or women’s issues (especially one posted from a woman’s perspective)? Or even better, go ahead and make such a post. Watch how fast the downvotes come.

I expect this comment to be downvoted the same way as the parent comment was, the same way that past posts I’ve made and read about women’s issues have been downvoted on Lemmy. If men want this place to be inclusive for women, they have to do their part to support us - not downvoting our concerns, simply because they don’t experience the same issues, is the absolute bare minimum. Otherwise, why would we keep posting/commenting about our issues when doing so invites a downvote cascade?