For a moment I could only think of the inked kind of stamps and thought, "Wait, people stamp pictures onto money? And they did that with Elvis? I've never seen Elvis on a dollar, how have I missed that?"

Then I remembered postage stamps exist.

Regardless, I'm still down for stamping a picture of Dolly onto bills.

Yes, those are certainly all words.

to make yourselves weaker.

Considering that reliance on AI weakens people's critical thinking skills, I'm curious what your reasoning is here.

Okay okay, message received. I’ll just stick to being upset at fundamentalist Christians for indoctrinating children, inhibiting their ability to develop critical thinking skills, sowing hatred and fear, and for holding disproportionate power in politics that drags back science and cultural progress for everyone.

I’m not the OP, I’m not the one talking about child-marriage. Thus why I’m basing my distaste for fundies on the things I said above.

I'm sure there were plenty of other bullets, and I have no intention of minimizing that. I can only imagine the horror of going through male puberty when you don't feel male. That must be a hell unto itself.

"friendzoning"

Ugh, I hate that term with a burning passion.

Learned to fly a plane.

Haven't done shit with that skill, but 5-year-old-me was one of those kids that excitedly pointed out an airplane every time I saw one.

I think young-me would be blown away by my crafting skills, too. Goes to show what a lifetime of practice can do.

Oh, and solving a Rubik's cube. That seemed like sorcery to me as a kid.

That's not even getting into the fact that using my imagination (to embed teaching skills into play time) is part of my job. If there's anything I'm proud of, it's becoming the adult/teacher that I wished I had when I was a kid. I don't think my 5-year-old self would've appreciated what that means, but she would've been happy to know that being adult doesn't mean letting go of being playful.

My intuition is fantastic, I trust my gut on everything because it's never let me down. I think it's amazing how countless generations before me were able to hone this instinct to become what it is today. Those that ignored these feelings ended up paying for it with their lives, while those who listened managed to pass on their genes, eventually passing the trait to those of us here today.

Which is why when I get a bad feeling about something, I sometimes imagine a crowd of my foremothers/forefathers standing there going, "GO! GET OUT! NOW!" as if they can see the danger that I can't.

As to neurodivergence, I've spent a lot of time learning to know myself. I wouldn't be surprised if being different from most folks causes a lot of us to self-reflect. For me, that self-reflection includes evaluating what I feel and why I might be feeling it. Having different mental filters for stimuli, I know for a fact that I consciously recognize things that most people don't - usually little visual details, or background sounds. Surely, there's far more that my subconscious brain is picking up on that I am not consciously aware of. So when I overwhelmingly get the sensation that something is wrong, I react - usually either by investigating what is causing it (if I'm stuck somewhere, like at work), or by leaving the situation (if I'm in a public place that I can freely leave.)

(Slight tangent) Sometimes I think of us as "the canaries in the coalmine" so to speak. With our different sensory experiences, we might be the first people to notice distressing stimuli, but that doesn't mean we're the only ones affected. For example, how background traffic noise increases stress levels - everyone can feel the effect, sometimes without knowing why. But usually it's us neurodivergent folk that are the first to say, "My god, it's way too loud here!" And we're right. If it's too loud for us, it's probably too loud for others too - they just don't consciously realize it yet.

I had a coworker like this. Always asking me for advice, then going out and doing the opposite. At every turn, she asked me what she should do, and at every turn, she did something else.

She ended up cheating on her husband by going after an ex who had just got out of prison. It was at that point where I (metaphorically) threw my hands in the air and was done. I'm not going to keep wasting my energy trying to help someone who insists on ignoring me and making stupid decisions all the time. She clearly had her mind already made up, there's no need to drag me into it.

You're absolutely right. I didn't have that kind of insight at 19, but I've learned to recognize people like that in the years since. Which is great, because I definitely don't have the patience for that nonsense anymore.

I like finding movies on hotel cable. Many of the movies I saw when young weren't from going to the theater, but rather from walking through the living room after someone else put something on, or by flipping through the channels and landing on something that captured my interest. It's hard to get that experience nowadays. I'm more likely to get analysis paralysis from seeing all the films out there and end up rewatching the entirety of Futurama for the 200th time instead.

My fridge doesn’t have an ice machine. However, it does make a hum reminiscent of Hypnotoad. I’ll be lying in bed and picturing:

If the modern representation of trans individuals were around when I was little, I probably would've wanted to transition. I grew up with boys, got along better playing with boys, and as a result always felt a little weird that I wasn't one of them.

It was fine until puberty, when suddenly all the boys forgot that "friendship" exists and started seeing me as someone to date. It was as if the concept of platonic friendship was no longer an option. Quite a few years went by where I didn't do anything different, but suddenly I was called "a tease" and told I was "leading them on." Meanwhile, I still saw them the same as I always did. If I had been male, things could've continued the way they always had. The way people treat you differently once you start to grow boobs is bullshit.*

As an adult, I don't care either way about gender (I consider myself agendered.) It's still a shame that so many guys can't tolerate platonic friendship with a woman.

*Except for my AMAB sisters. I imagine that experience was/is/will be freeing. It probably helps that you don't have to experience it at the same time that all the boys around you are experiencing their own sexual awakening, making many of them see you (their one and only female friend) as their default love interest when you have yet to develop any such desires yourself. It's not as fun as it sounds, y'all dodged a (barrage of) bullet(s).

Good chances he approached her first.

This is true. I know someone with a legal first name that's two words. He's a kid I work with. His parents made a point that his name isn't one or the other, it's both, and we are to address him as such.

To my understanding (as a non-tech person who consumes tech-related media), name fields are commonly culturally biased. Usually it impacts last names, which can vary in size and layout across the world, sometimes including hyphens (which some systems don't like either.) Super short or long names also run into problems. Not everyone has one first name, one middle name, and one last name, but a lot of systems aren't designed to handle that kind of variation.

I was watching a nature documentary last week. Rattlesnakes are some kinky motherfuckers. When the male approached the female to mate, the first thing she did was smack his head around with her tail. Then when it was time for copulation, she wrapped her tail around the male's penis and dragged him by it to their mating spot.

I once dated a guy who was an extreme sub, who really wanted me to put him in a dog cage while I went off to work (I didn't do it, I wasn't ready for that level of kink at the time.) I think he would've been down for a rattlesnake-style mating ritual.

For real, take pictures with your friends while you can. I was friends with a guy throughout high school. But then he passed away suddenly at age 22. Only then did I realize we didn't have a single picture of us together. It was a horrible gut-punch.

It seems like such a silly thing sometimes, but you never know what might happen, or what life might throw at you. You don't want to end up without a picture when it's too late to get one. :(

I knew a girl who had been "homeschooled" by her super Christian mom. Thankfully, the indoctrination didn't take, she was intelligent, but wasn't given the education she deserved. Moreover, she developed anxiety and would take ages to leave the house for planned events. Turns out that by babying her and never pushing her boundaries, she never learned that critical inner-push that all of us who've ever woken up and been like, "Ughhh, I don't want to go to school/work today" have spent years overcoming. That sense of, "Well, I've gotta do it, so let's just get up and get it done" didn't develop, as she was allowed to just stay in or sleep or whatever instead of learning to tolerate the discomfort.

It always bugged me when parents treat their offspring as if they'll forever be children, instead of treating them as future adults. These stories are the inevitably outcome of that.

Smart Sharon, but Poor Towelie. I never thought I could feel bad for a fictional towel until that episode.