wizard fucker

a woman will be 28 or whatever and all the 24 year olds are in shock like “no fucking way I seriously couldn’t tell. you don’t look near death at all”

You are a bug in bug hell but your spider torturer so fucking bad at their job that the devil himself has to grab you with his gay pitchfork and help them

This has no right being this fucking funny

I need this guy to understand that I Don't Forgive Him, and that he's Going To Hell

two dads and one adopted girl

 “hi welcome to mcdonalds what can i get for you?”

“yeah can i get a deluxe quarter pounder with cheese?”

“absolutely, do you want the meal or just the sandwich?’

“uuuuuh hold on”

*fishes something out of my pocket*

“mikey what do i do?”

“get the fries. youll need the energy in the coming days”

*stuffs it back in my pocket*

“uhh yes please  the meal would be great”

“no matter how badly you think you’re doing it, someone else has done it a lot worse and been fine” is applicable to a wide, wide range of things and i say it to myself all the time

"bigger idiots than me have done it" is a phrase I live by

You guys rlly don't realise how much knowledge is still not committed to the internet. I find books all the time with stuff that is impossible to find through a search engine- most people do not put their magnum opus research online for free and the more niche a skill is the less likely you are to have people who will leak those books online. (Nevermind all the books written prior to the internet that have knowledge that is not considered "relevant" enough to digitise).

Whenever people say that we r growing up with all the world's knowledge at our fingertips...it's not necessarily true. Is the amount of knowledge online potentially infinite? Yes. Is it all knowledge? No. You will be surprised at the niche things you can discover at a local archive or library.

Natalie Portman being confused by the fact that you have to say “hi” to someone before starting a conversation in France got me like ?????

“I feel there’s a lot of rules of politeness and codes of behavior there you have to follow. […] A friend of mine taught me that when you go in some place you have to say “bonjour” before you say anything else, then you have to wait two seconds before you say something else. So if you go into a store you can’t be like “do you have this in another size,” or they’ll think you’re super rude and then they’ll be rude to you.” [X]

#wait you don’t do this is other countries??

So that’s it guys. French are not rude, we just don’t like it when people don’t say “Hello” or “Hi” when they start a conversation. 

Don’t everyone say “Hi” before they ask something to someone? What’s next? Saying please is also a french thing or others countries does that too? 

Canada is similar. We say sorry and please. The Hello thing seems strange, but it actually makes sense.

Bro, this threw me for a loop when I moved up north. Like in the southern United States you say “Hi, how are you?” And then make a few seconds of small talk before you ask your question or order your food and when I went to Connecticut they were like “What do you want?” Without any hello or anything. In other places they just STARE at you waiting on you to place your order and gtfo.

I laid my hand over my chest the first time, and the only way to describe my look was “aghast” before I said “Good lord!” My husband said it’s the most southern thing he’s seen me do. He thought it was hilarious. But…. Like??? That’s rude as fuck??????? Don’t y'all say say “Hello” before throwing your demands at someone??

maybe this is why everyone thinks new yorkers are rude

this is absolutely why ppl think new englanders r rude. no one has any fucking manners

african culture, at least in ghana, demands you greet a person before you ask them something. if youre in an open market they may even ignore you if you dont.

We do this in Australia as well. If you just started straight off saying “yeah I want XXXX” we’d think you’re rude as all fuck.  You say hi, then make your request.  It’s basic acknowledgement of the other person as a person rather than some random request-filling machine.

Huh. Speaking as a New Englander, I usually go with “Excuse me,” but sometimes “hi” or “hey,” but with no pause – it’ll be, “Excuse me, hi, I was looking for X?” From my POV, it seems rude to get too chatty and waste some stranger’s time; I assume they have better things to do than make small talk with me, so I just get my request out there so they can answer me and get back to whatever needs doing. I always thank folks for their help afterwards, if that helps?

(The rules of etiquette are strange. People say New Englanders are rude and cold, but once during an unexpected snowstorm here in Seattle, my car got stuck and I was standing by the side of the road at a busy intersection in the snow for half an hour waiting for my housemate to come pick me up, and not a single person stopped. Back in Massachusetts, every other car on the road would’ve been pulling up to check to see if I was okay, if my phone was working, did I need a lift, etc.)

No but this was the first thing my cousin told me in France? you never ever ever start a conversation with anyone, not even like “Nice weather today, huh?” without saying Bonjour first. You HAVE to greet them or, just like Ghana, they’ll ignore the shit out of you, you rude little fucker

(And “excuse me” or “pardon me” doesn’t cut it. you still have to open with bonjour)

[and I can’t speak for New England but coming from Chicago and then moving Out West where the culture is VERY influenced by the South and DETERMINED to think of themselves as small town folk… I HATE when I have to make small talk before ordering food??? Like, if it’s a coffee shop that’s pretty much empty I’ll chit chat for a few seconds, but I’m still not going to make inane conversation about the weather unless the weather is extreme.

In a big city it is rude as fuck to waste my time making small talk with me when we are not even friends or neighbors??? I am here to get shit done. There are four other people in line behind me, and I don’t want to waste their time. I am here, I HAVE MY ORDER ALREADY DECIDED BY THE TIME I GET TO THE FRONT BECAUSE I AM NOT A CAVE WOMAN, and I am being polite by saying both Please and Thank You and not wasting other people’s daylight.]

I live in a small northern city, and I feel it would be rude to engage someone in more than maaaaaybe a sentence of small talk before placing my order. In addition to feeling I was wasting their time, I’d feel like I was demanding emotional labour (small-talk is emotional labour for *me*) that they weren’t being paid to give.

so bizarre.  New Yorker here.  Saying hi, how are you, etc before these kinds of commercial interactions is what’s rude to me - because ffs, there are people in line behind you, we have lives, move it along.  It’s really just a dramatic cultural difference - but borne of a real practical necessity.

Oh my god saying ‘hi’ takes less than A SINGLE SECOND YOU ARE NOT WASTING ANYBODY’S TIME In Spain you have to say hello to people before you talk to them even people who work in retail deserve that bare minimum courtesy hello??

Transplanted New Yorker here, and the feeling here is: people who work in retail deserve the bare minimum courtesy you would afford anyone else, which is to not waste their time.  You maybe say a half-second “hi” and/or possibly “excuse me” to be sure you have their attention, then you get to the point as quickly and concisely as possible.  You don’t wait to get a “hi” back, you probably don’t ask “how are you”, you definitely don’t talk about the weather.  You smile and keep your tone of voice courteous-to-friendly, you say please, you thank them when you’re done, and you do. not. waste. their. time.

Except ”time” is really only shorthand for the concept:  you don’t intrude on their lives more than you have to.  NY is a very very crowded city which allows for very little personal space, so New Yorkers have developed a form of courtesy that involves minimizing our unavoidable intrusions on each other.  Which is why we hold doors without making eye contact, and why we tend to feel that in any interaction with a stranger, it’s actively rude to do anything but get to the point immediately.

Interesting discussion of regional differences in conversational convention.  But the amount of “my way is the right way; everyone else is super rude and also wrong” going on in this post is giving me hives.  

Hey.  Listen.  "Polite” and “rude” are relative concepts.  Something you were taught was rude may not be seen as rude elsewhere, and might even be the polite thing to do.  Conversely, something you might have been taught was polite might be seen as rude elsewhere.  Saying “no one has any manners” about a group of people whose culture and, by extension, whose conversational expectations work differently than yours is really arrogant. 

In the US the thumbs up means good job or great. In France and Germany it means one, they start counting with the thumb instead of the index finger. In Greece it’s an obscene sexual gesture.

This guy I knew in college worked with the campus d/Deaf/HoH group and told a story about the dinner they had to welcome everyone in. They were trying to tell this little old lady what one of the dishes was, something casserole I forget what kind, and she was getting really flustered. Finally they figured out they were speaking to her in ASL and she was from South Africa. The ASL sign for whatever it was (spinach maybe?) in South African Sign means sex. They were offering this little old lady a sex casserole.

There’s an Italian toast ‘chin chin’, mimicking the sound of the glasses clinking together. It becomes hilarious when Japanese folks are around since in Japanese chin means penis.

As for the South, I will bet you anything that how we have conversations at the register stemmed from the homestead days when a farmer would come in to town maybe once a month and this would be the only time they’d get to talk to someone they didn’t live with. I like talking with customers! If I can get them to smile then it’s a victory and I have a better day for it. It only becomes emotional labor if they’re an outright ass or are sexually harassing me. But in the big crammed city of New York it makes sense to take the get your shit and get out approach, people have a subway to catch. Out here I had to drive myself anyway since it’s fifteen minutes to the edge of town from where I live, so what does it matter if I spend an extra minute at the register?

It’s important to be aware of the differences and ultimately there’s a degree of ‘when in Rome’ that has to happen. Someone who moves from Greece to the US is going to be startled by the amount of thumbs up but ultimately they’re going to have to adjust. Someone from the US is probably going to be shocked that telling someone they did a good job was taken as an insult and they similarly are going to have to adjust. Mom’s a damn Yankee transplant and said it was weird moving to the South and having cashiers younger than her daughter call her dear, but that’s just what we do. Sweetheart, darling, honey, sugar, they don’t have overtly romantic/sexual connotations here. As long as there’s not a leer attached to it if a guy calls me ‘sugar’ when I’m at work it doesn’t parse as a flirt because it’s not one, it parses the same as if he called me ‘miss’. But when a busload of Californians came through it took me three people to realize that ‘baby’ was not flirting, it was just California. NOTHING is universal.

This is the biggest place I’ve ever worked so it took some getting used to, like any skill, but even being socially awkward it’s easy to tell what scripts to follow. Test the waters, if they don’t respond then okay this is a move them through kind of person, be quick and efficient and to the point, feel good when they smile at ‘last question I promise, do you want your receipt’. If they do then pull out the five small talk scripts, get a smile, feel good when they laugh at the cat small talk script.

It’s also important to note that claiming your culture’s way of doing polite right is a fantastic way to fall into some really bigoted nonsense. In Puerto Rico the personal bubble is much smaller than in the US proper, like RIGHT at your elbow close. I had a cashier who was super uncomfortable because our steward was getting in her personal space constantly and he was pissed off because he was trying to HELP her with moving orders why is she mad at him? Once I sat them down and explained the difference they both had this aw shit moment because from their own standpoints they were being polite and from the others’ standpoints they were being rude. After that they were fine, when he got a little too close she’d say ‘whoa man my bubble’ and he’d laugh and shake is head and step back.

Lots of non-white cultures have things like that, particularly since white America has serious problems with sexualizing ANY physical contact to the point we’re all touch starved. The normal speaking voice is at a higher volume or it’s more acceptable to show your emotions or gesture when you speak. None of this is WRONG, but when people star getting into ‘my culture is the only right culture’ then guess who comes out on top? It ain’t the little guy.

One of my labmates was from Poland, and she had a tendency to come off as kind of abrupt and brusk, verging on mean. In particular, when she was providing feedback on a presentation or paper she could come across as SUPER cutting. Which was not her intention! From the way she would explain it, we had a running joke in the lab, “it sounds nicer in Polish.”

And this is actually true; there are scientific articles comparing the cultural contexts for communication! It’s really neat.

So in (most parts of) America, we equate indirectness with politeness. “Excuse me, would it be possible for you to perhaps pass me that salt, if you don’t mind?” The more roundabout you are, the more we consider that a signal of social courtesy.

In Poland, not only is indirectness viewed as rudely wasting the listener’s time, but directness is viewed as communicating intimacy and friendliness. “Give me the salt.”

…It sounds nicer in Polish. :)

Omg I love this

The Effects of Capital, Labor, and Class on Local Etiquette Across International Boundaries

Chekhov wrote it before Camus

Carrie said it before both of them

So I just got my hands on some of the letters written to writers pitching stories for Star Trek: DS9 and it’s pretty cool…

I wonder how many Dax or Odo gets pregnant pitches they received per season previous to issuing that statement for season 5.

[ID: pictures of a letter, the first image being of the top of the letter, with a title reading “PITCH LETTER” in all caps in the top center, “Star Trek Deep Space Nine” in the text it appears as in the title sequence and silhouette of the station in the top left corner, and in the top right corner, text reads

“To: Writer coming in to pitch for Deep Space Nine

From: The Writing Staff

Date: May 22, 1996″

The letter starts:

“As we go into our fifth season, here are some thoughts on new story directions we’d like to pursue.”

In the next image, the letter continues:

“THE DEFIANT This small warship is now a key element of our show. We have enough standing sets to tell almost any kind of “ship-based” story, and we’d like to take advantage of it. This could involve going through the wormhole exploring the Gamma Quandrant or more “mission-oriented” stories given to us by Starfleet Command. (a note on the Gamma Quadrant: remember that although the Dominion is a powerful and hostile empire in this quadrant, SPACE IS BIG and there are many areas that are beyond the Dominion’s reach and that no one has explored.

USE THE SETTING The station isn’t going anywhere, so anything that you’ve seen on screen is going to have continuing repercussions for our people to deal with. Use the backstory – we love to see Kai Winn, GUL DUKAT, and especially GARAK (but they’re expensive, so don’t just use them for a brief scene).

SCIENCE MYSTERIES We want our people to encounter bizarre space anomalies planets with strange properties, space-time distortions, etc. We need more weird stuff! But remember, these stores need to involve our people on more than just a “how are we going to TECH our way out of this?” level. Think of TNG’s final episode, where the science mystery allowed us to look at the relationships between our main characters from a new perspective.

BOTTLE SHOWS Stories that take place exclusively on the station (or on the Defiant) with no new sets. are always welcome. These show s depend on developing complex themes and detailed character work (such as the first season’s “Duet”). “

The letter continues in the next image:

“WHAT WE’RE NOT LOOKING FOR

– Time travel stories. We have plenty.

– “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” stories involving paranoia around the shapeshifters among us. We’ve got it covered.

– Quark romance stories.

– Stories that bring back TNG, Original Series, or Voyager characters to DS9.

– Dax or Odo getting pregnant.

– Nog at the Academy.

– Stories about Tom Riker.”

The image in the reblog is a close up on the section of the letter reading “Odo getting pregnant” /End ID]

Sorry it’s early but you really can’t use fanfiction terms in a non fanfiction context like if someone is trying to sell me a book to read and they tell me there’s an enemy to lovers I would be annoyed because why are you spoiling the story lol

sorry op this is kind of a tangent but this is why i hate how booktok has not only affected how ppl talk about their fave stories, but how it's basically gnawed its way into how publishing companies promote books. it basically encourages authors to build their entire story entirely around marketable tropes so that they turn more of a profit

"it has enemies to lovers!" "it has friends to lovers!" "this is a slow burn!" WHAT IS THE PLOT??? what makes your story unique?? why should i read it??? describing your story entirely in tropes and fanfiction terms makes your story sound extremely uninteresting lmfao.

Fanfiction is for when you want to read familiar characters in a setting where you already know what's going to happen. I care about this coffee shop au because I already love these characters and just want to see them in fun familiar situations

Books are original content for new stories new characters in new situations. Why should I care if it takes place in a coffee shop? Give me a reason to love these characters!

fanfiction tropes categorise and thus distinguish derivative (literally, not derogatorily) stories from one another—these are all stories about the same characters, but this one is a coffee shop au fic, and this one is a slow burn enemies to lovers fic. as these have the same starting premise, these tropes now distinguish the stories from one another.

With original fiction, fanfiction tropes no longer serve to differentiate between the same starting point—Book A and Book B do not have the same cast of characters. Telling me Book A is an enemies to lovers story does not compare and contrast it against Book B which is advertising with some other tropes, it just tells me Book A is exactly like Book C and Book D which are also enemies to lovers... but as all I know is a list of tropes and not what makes these stories unique, i cannot tell the difference between Book A and Book D, so why should I read Book A if it's just like Book D?

In Japanese, they don’t say “moon,” they say “tsuki,” which literally translates to “moon,” and I think that’s how language works.

Hey its been at least 9 years anything changed?

nope! all quiet on the linguistic front. i am a girl now though