Growing Pains

Imagine if you met someone who can't eat watermelon. Not that they're allergic or unable somehow, but they just haven't figured out how to do that. So you're like "what the hell do you mean? it works just like eating anything else, you open your mouth, sink your teeth in, take a bite and chew. If you can bite, chew and swallow, you should be able to eat a watermelon."

And they agree that yes, they do know how to eat, in theory. The problem is the watermelon. Surely, if they figured out where to start, they'd figure out how to do it, but they have no clue how to get started with it.

This goes back and forth. No, it's not an emotional issue, they're not afraid of the watermelon. They can eat any other fruit, other sweet things, and other watery things ("it's watery?" they ask you). Is it the colour? Do they have a problem eating things that are green on the outside and red on the inside?

"It's red on the inside?"

Wait, they've never seen the inside? At this point you have to ask them how, exactly, they eat the watermelon. So to demonstrate, they take a whole, round, uncut watermelon, and try to bite straight into it. Even if they could bite through the crust, there's no way to get human jaws around it.

"Oh, you're supposed to cut it first. You cut the crust open and only chew through the insides."

And they had no idea. All their life this person has had no idea how to eat a watermelon, despite of being told again and again and again that it's easy, it's ridiculous to struggle with something so simple, there's no way that someone just can't eat a watermelon, how can you even mange to be bad at something as fucking simple as eating watermelon.

If someone can't do something after being repeatedly told to "just do it", there might be some key component missing that one side has no idea about, and the other side assumed was so obvious it goes without mention.

Yep.

https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/how-to-do-everything had a nice list of additional examples like this, with (non-)obvious major insights with regard to opening stitched bags, cleaning your bathroom floor, using a search engine, catching a ball, pinging somebody, proving a theorem, playing sudoku, passing as “normal”, improving your writing, generating novel ideas, and solving your problem.

My fiance played the clarinet when he was in school. When he was first learning to play, he rented an instrument from the school to learn on. He was the last chair clarinet, had been for years, because he could not make notes that required the register key. For years, they kept making him do embrature exercises and he started to get a few notes, with lots of effort. Eventually he had to get private lessons to stay in band.

Every time he tells me this story, his frustration by this point in the story, years later, is evident. He still sounds frustrated by it, despite all the time that passed. Teachers had been giving him crap for years because he hadn't been making much progress with the instrument.

When he got to the private instructor, she acknowledged his frustration, and asked him to try to play for her. He did, and she saw all he was doing. She then did something no one else had done before. She asked him to put his mouthpiece on a different clarinet and try to play the same notes. Like magic, it worked. She looked at the clarinet he had been using and found that the school's clarinet needed it's pads replaced.

He went from last chair to first chair nearly overnight, having been taught far more techniques than typically taught at that age just to overcome the broken instrument preventing him from making noise.

Sometimes you don't need to brute force a problem. Sometimes your clarinet is just broken.

Not quite sure why the clarinet addition got me crying, but here you go people: just in case, let's get you some new pads.

good dynamic: character who’s too deeply rooted to a fault + character who’s never been able to form roots anywhere before

yeahyeaheyaheyeahyeahyeahyeah

ok everyone else shut up this is the only one that matters

Will the 11 remaining staff members figure out the mature content filter going rogue or do we think this is it

the thing is that childhood doesn't just end when you turn 18 or when you turn 21. it's going to end dozens of times over. your childhood pet will die. actors you loved in movies you watched as a kid will die. your grandparents will die, and then your parents will die. it's going to end dozens and dozens of times and all you can do is let it. all you can do is stand in the middle of the grocery store and stare at freezers full of microwave pizza because you've suddenly been seized by the memory of what it felt like to have a pizza party on the last day of school before summer break. which is another ending in and of itself

<3

im laughing so hard because no matter what song you listen to 

spiderman dances to the beat

no matter what song ive been testing it and lauing my ass off for an hour

hey guys do you want to circulate the heirloom dancing spiderman again i feel like we could stand to do that

so bECAUSE OF THE UPDATE I WENT OUTSIDE AND STARTED SCREAMING AT 12AM SO NATURALLY SOMEONE THOUGHT I WAS BEING MURDERED AND CALLED THE POLICE AND WHEN THEY GOT HERE I HAD TO GIVE THEM MY EXPLANATION FOR SCREAMING AT 12AM SO I JUST SAID HOMESTUCK AND ONE OF THE COPS EYES SUDDENLY GOT REALLY BIG AND THEN HE SAID “IT UPDATED??!?” AND THEN HE READ THE UPDATE ON HIS PHONE I HAVE A GROWN POLICE MAN SITTING IN MY DRIVEWAY CRYING AND CURSING AT HUSSIE UNDER HIS BREATH HIS PARTER GAVE HIM A SHOCK BLANKET OH MY GOD 

if female top nudity weren't viewed as inherently sexually explicit. oh brother. I would be letting those puppies hang like you wouldn't believe

the thing is I would be okay with being viewed as sexually attractive while topless. like a shirtless cis man can be a considered a hunk beefcake eye candy etc but it's not by nature r-rated. usamerican society at large is able to understand that toplessness can be sexually appealing but is not in itself a sexual act when a man does it. if I could be just casually topless on a hot day or something without the little flashing light over my head saying think of the CHILDREN I would be getting minoan with it

for no reason whatsoever here’s a reminder that if you consider yourself a leftist/punk/abolitionist/anarchist/radical in any sort of way and get called into jury duty, you are to become the most square person on earth during the jury questionnaire!!!

don’t be that guy who says fuck the police in the jury questionnaire! that just gets you sent home! if you want to generate change, interact with the case and use your jury vote for good! ESPECIALLY if it’s a high profile case!

Remember, when you're on the jury, a good "that cop's story didn't add up" will sway a lot more Chads and Karens than "fuck the police."

how it feels to escape the 18-24 age bracket

op's tags are too important to leave off

can't believe @pangur-and-grim is putting such raunchy filth as *checks notes* Tiny Puppy on my dash

I've had that happen with a few recent posts now, it's really odd

This is a sbahj reference if that wasn't clear lmao happy homestuck day

You can go to any frat party and find this couple as long as your group meets the ratio requirements

what the fuck are they even wearing, her outfit is like if leather fetishists liked jeans instead and he looks like his clothes don't fit properly and he got dipped in coffee by a frost giant

You just made these outfits sound way more awesome than they are

my hottest take

Counter point, those machines can make me a peach sprite.

guys did you know the tech in that nefangled machine revolutionized preemie healthcare

yeah the guy who invented them made incredibly precise infusion pumps (as opposed to gravity fed ivs) which not only meant they could give medications to teeny tiny babies safely, it's also used for insulin pumps and portable dialysis machines. the key element is that it's a peristaltic pump so the liquid stays in sterile tubing for safety

(unholy drink cloaca uses it to dispense precise amounts of flavored sugar syrup)

I take immense schadenfreude in Elon Musk spending $25 million to try to influence an election in Wisconsin only for the candidate he was backing to lose by a larger margin than was predicted before Musk got into the race. Like how tf do you dump that much money into a state supreme court election and get not only nothing out of it but LESS than nothing. That's a truly impressive level of failure. I'm watching Elon become the most hated man in America like the Sickos yes hahaha yes comic

The latest news out of DC is that everyone in the federal government, up to and including all the MAGA ghouls cannot fucking stand Elon Musk

lol. lmao, even

You know what my favorite thing about the Pokemon TCG is? The attack names:

And my all-time favorite:

Pokemon Heritage Post

WAIT I HAVE SOMETHING TO SHOW

I collect fake pokemon cards, badly translated to Spanish… I have this excadrill card with the attack “straight slash”. Well. That’s the original name anyways.

In my card, however,