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Checkout - Caroline Bird

Some of you need to the learn the value of a honest day's work. Others need to the value of a good scam.

This is the corner of Tumblr where in the same week, people from here were arrested for stabbing a landlord because he was going to evict them after living rent free for a year and for massive financial fraud. I think scams might be a little overvalued around here.

If Pikachu were real, it would not be a very pleasant animal. An enormous mouse that shocks you like an electric eel. I would run from these beasts

How is anyone supposed to be normal after that. G-d looked back at me for a minute

we've been living in this apartment for two months now, and while we've observed most of our new neighbours (my slavic Windowsill Watcher Grandmother gene already activated), I don't think they had the chance to see us often enough to recognise us yet.

I do know, however, from my observations, that the tiny funny dog upstairs is called Gucio. I've passed him once or twice during his walk and heard his owners use the name - and, while both the dog and his owners are oblivious to our existence, Gucio became an apt topic of discussion in our house. you know, we hear barking, ha, that's Gucio, he must be home alone again! or there's a stick left by the building door, that must have been brought by Gucio and he was forced to abandon it before entering! a household name, really.

yesterday as I was leaving to go to the store, walking down the narrow staircase, there he is! tiny funny looking dog, slightly startled by me suddenly appearing on the floor he just reached on his tiny funny looking legs.

"good morning Gucio!" I say joyfully, the most natural thing in the world.

well. remember that Gucio doesn't really know me. so he looks at me in the most flabbergasted way a dog can look at a person. he is positively aghast. agog! not sure how aware dogs are of their own names but he seemed genuinely puzzled at the apparent stretch of social convention.

and as I try to contain my laughter, I see his owner standing on the stairs below. the woman is sort of awkwardly frozen, speechless, and she looks at me.

"you... know each other?" she asks.

is that not the funniest way to phrase it. is this not the funniest question she could have asked. ma'am do you know my dog? you went to school together perhaps? you've met? do tell, are you old friends? maybe you worked together? you know each other, my dog and you? this dog? you know him? he knows you? he never mentioned you I'm afraid

@shinyangelwombatknight said:

Yeah, my experience appears to be unusual internationally lol. For anyone in the science or humanities faculty, my university requires 2 majors. Three is in fact rare though; I believe it is only allowed with special permission.

The company that hired me seemed to be under the impression that good grades in math qualified me for this lol. I didn't explicitly apply for it and was technically hired as a software developer but they put me on a data science project. I did have an interest in it although I didn't think I was qualified so that was just lucky lol. And then the project ended and they moved me to dev work.

Hmm, difficult question. I think it is used for a very wide range of things, and so you have a lot of options for things you could go into. Like you could work in chemistry research or a bank or make video games, you know? Computers are everywhere.

And I guess certain kinds of specialization may be valued in industry but it's probably for more obscure skills — they would love an expert in Cobol but probably don't care that much about you being the ultimate nerd of Java. They would probably prefer adaptability because a lot of shit changes and you gotta learn the new thing fast.

But the true variety within a job probably differs based on the individual job. My experience so far has been fairly restricted in areas. Like, I work at a consulting company so we have all these different clients — telecommunications companies and banks and government agencies — but it still feels like I'd be doing basically the same thing at any of them. But it's still like: they're all corporate-type. A startup or something is probably different.

I'm not sure how much of it is "the field" vs "my job specifically" vs "professional job that is not studying/academia" lol.

But like, if I'm having a mental breakdown, I can just. take leave. Not arbitrarily long but pretty plentiful. I could take a week off from my degree but time wouldn't stop for me, I'd just have more work when I get back. When I take a week off from work they do not expect me to be at the same point as though I never did.

And maybe more a "my job specifically" thing because I have heard of others that are higher-pressure...but I, or at worst by consensus my teammates, determine how much time I need to do something. Like, explicitly, we sit in a meeting and they ask "how long would you need for this" and it's still up for adjustment as you work. Even if I am taking unreasonably long to do it, their usual reaction will be "are you having trouble do you need someone to help you" which idk if is a little passive-aggressive but is in fact a real offer. Probably if I did it too much they might intervene but they allow decent leeway. I can usually catch up from small periods of badbrains before it becomes noticeable.

I was trying to find out if Kermit was eligible to be pope and I found a blog that says he's the perfect example of a catholic priest

What do you expect? He's a man of the cloth

God damn you that's perfect

slowly and subtly doxx yourself with a series of posts like "ahh i love opening my window and smelling the sea," and "i wish the nearest paintball place was closer than 25 miles... :("

i've been accused of promulgating various notions

guilty baby you know i did that shit

My name is David Ward. I am in Eskew.

city song - daughers / I am in Eskew / parties paranoia violence - olivia sparrow / advertisements for architecture - bernard tschumi

my brother in christ-

Morgan Nikola-Wren

Something that I've heard a few times listening to the stories of non-Japanese who grew up in Japan is that those who grew up in small towns experienced less bullying as kids than those who grew up in cities. It's like, in a small town you go to school with basically the same set of kids the whole time, and they get used to having a foreigner around. It stops being "whoa check out the foreign kid, she's weird and different", and just becomes "oh that's Emiri, I've known her forever". Also probably helps that all the kids' parents are more likely to know each other (and to know the only foreign couple in town).

My impression is that in larger schools with more churn, the bullying/exclusion is often worse.

I was going to say that this is a counterpoint to common ideas about rural communities being insular and regressive and urban communities being progressive, but I'm not sure it really is. It's more interesting than that, because it seems more like a virtue in parochialism itself. If you grow up in a small and relatively insular town, your norms are not the norms of "your nation", they are the norms of your town, and if there happens to be a foreign couple there there might as well be a foreign couple in every town in Japan. Naive parochialism can be a safeguard against the more cultivated forms of ingroup policing that emerge in genuinely more diverse environments.

I think there might be something similar going on with, say, the way trans people were sometimes talked about in the media 70 years ago ("young man becomes gorgeous dame with new medical procedure") and the way they're often talked about now.

RIP