Not sure who I'm writing this for or who but will share it anyway

can I maybe humanise piper Perri a bit?

Well post this scene she had a kid. Split with the dad. Got into a new relationship. 25 years old.

She left said 21 month old son in the care of her boyfriend. Returns to find the child hospitalised with multiple suspicious injuries and severe internal head trauma.

She started a gofundme to pay for his treatment. Trolled of course because porn star. The largest contributor was funnily enough an adult site.

Son didn't make it. She requested his organs be donated so he could live on in other people. His death meant three other kids had longer / better lives.

The boyfriend went to court. Gave conflicting reasons as to how the injuries occurred during interviews then settled on the old fell down the stairs response. The cause of death noted as shaken baby syndrome.

That's what I see when I see this meme. A mother whose kid was killed but had the grace and heart to use her son's passing to help other kids live. One day these kids will see the meme and not realise they're alive because of the choices of that woman.

She had sex on camera with some black guys in a taboo scene which plays on the white male insecurity fetish, which we now use as a shortcut to mean being taken advantage of. Weird, huh.

Anyway. Julienne, I hope you're doing well.

I spent a bit of time going through your post history to get an understanding of your background

In short I think your life experiences mean you've lost all trust in men. Not just your direct experiences but what you've observed in others.

As a result you enter each interaction assuming the worst. Every male social worker you engage with will confirm this pattern because that's what you're looking for. The - ah fuck here we go again - feeling.

For them, and I don't expect you to have empathy for them, this is what they live - the outcomes of other mens behaviours. But - they were there and they tried. That is something.

You have changed quite a lot of your original post.

Yeah there were dumb kids in my class too.

"OK so she must've bleached the full head then done the green side first, then the black side. Man her scalp must be itchy as fuck. What did I used to use to stop the burn? Coconut oil? Yeah that's right. Smelt like Malibu for a week or so, and had to throw out that set of pillow cases. Man that sucks, I loved those pillow cases, perfect for winter. I wonder if you can still get them?"

Asked a girl out on a date. She invited me over to watch a movie with her at her parents house (we were in our late teens). I arrived; her recently deceased family dog and incredibly distressed mother were both in the kitchen. Dog was a really big golden retriever that had been euthanized, and the mom had bought him home? Not sure why? Maybe to bury in the back yard or something? Idk

Anyway I offered to leave but she was insistent that we watch the movie together, which we did, on the couch, with her mom crying in the next room. Halfway through the movie the mom screams he's still alive, he's still alive. Go into the kitchen, she'd gone to move the body and it had expelled air and made some noise. I had to explain, with my best year 12 biology, what had happened. Five minutes of this woman losing her shit with grief out of her beloved companion dying.

Girl insisted we watch the last 10 minutes of the movie, it finishes with us watching in silence, I get up to leave and said something stupid like hey I'd love to do this again sometime and she says "I have a boyfriend"

I'm like alright well that's that then and didn't put in any more effort. Stupid me, she was hot and I really liked her. Being a dipshit I wrote a song about it, using the three guitar chords I knew, which takes me to act ii.....

....five years later, I'm at a party, exchanging worst first date stories with friends and fellow partygoers including a cute blonde. I wait my turn, tell the story, she laughs her arse off and then goads me into singing the song, accompanying myself poorly on the guitar. I absolutely fucking nail it, everyone is in stitches, sit down next to her and the night goes from there. We end up leaving the party for a walk down to the local beach, made out on the beach, things get frisky, jump in a cab back to my house, in bed together, have drunken sex....which results in a broken condom. She lives literally the other side of town so we have to wait till (a) I'm sober enough to drive and (b) pharmacy is open to get a plan b, then have the most awkward drive back to her house. Get there, offer to walk her to the door, she says no, kisses me goodbye in the car, then texts me...to say she has a boyfriend.

I live in Australia

The homicide rate here is 0.86 deaths per 100k people per year

Of those, approx 66% are male.

The suicide rate is 12.3 deaths per 100k per year.

Of those, 75% are male.

The statistics are similar in most Western countries.

Pause for a second and think about the last time that you heard that mentioned either in casual conversation or in the news media.

It is not spoken about.

Not the most manipulative but

Keep a log of the birthdays, hobbies and names of spouses and children of colleagues, managers, team members and customers.

I learnt this from a guy who did executive search. People remember you, when you remember what is important to them.

When I've lead teams it's one of the first things I find out - note down when someone says "yeah Gary that's my hubby, he's super into gaming"

• Gary (husband.)
• likes gaming

When you're a manager, your teams families, partners and friends know your name. Reciprocating that - learning who is important to them - is really important.

The devices that you describe are incompatible with a standard that has been mature for 50 years.

The 3.5mm jack is everywhere, it is the standard. USB C is incredibly recent.

Put it this way, if you were to walk into a store and pick up any given electronic product with audio output, would you expect it to have an audio jack, or a USB C connector?

In your drawer full of random electric cables, how many have 3.5mm plugs in them vs usb a, micro, mini, or some propriety plug? And how many could you plug into a device and just...work?

So why do you accept devices that don't have this standard?? It is beyond me.

I'm kinda baffled that we're a decade deep into this and people are still hung up on the fact that despite knowing their figurehead is an asshat, genuinely good people can have the level of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously support what they believe he represents, while also ignoring his actions.

There are societal divisions to the very bedrock of the USA - Trump is a symptom, not the condition.

Younger than 45

Oh OK that actually makes sense.

45 year olds and above are digital immigrants. In short, they had an off-line childhood and an online adulthood. They have different speech and writing patterns to you because they learnt and communicated in a different way to you.

Assuming you're under 45, this won't make sense, because you've never experienced a world which doesn't have this sort of interaction. You're a digital native, digital tech has always been there.

In twenty years time, children born or educated after the advent of chat gpt will have the same problem understanding you. The way you write, post and interact will seem clunky and old fashioned. It's already happening - we're having to adapt the way we interact, in order to be able to 'be understood' by AI.

The wonderful thing about humanity, tho, is that we do adapt and adopt! Consider this - everyone over the age of 50 had to learn something completely new to them in order to be able to communicate with you via email, sms or messaging app. They used to just talk, or write letters. Sharing media was a physical act. Yet here they are using the same texh as you. Awesome.

Theres a video on youtube of romesh ranganathan, a successful Sri Lankan British comic who is fucking hilarious, successful and famous. Talented, clever, funny guy.

He says "I have an utter prick living inside my head and he talks to me a all the time.....hes a fucking asshole"

Same voice as op

Even when you're doing something of growth it finds a reason. Like op, training himself to be better in muay Thai and only comparing himself to those younger, faster and fitter than him. How could you possibly win that comparison.

The rise of feminism has seen the steady devaluation of the contribution of men in those areas of society where they should be most active. Rather than celebrate and recognise what's right, the focus is on attacking what's wrong.

The majority of men are lonely, isolated and uncared for. Many feel unvalued, unsafe and vulnerable. There is less community support for men than there has been in the past, less institutional support, and a continued decline in the tolerance of men being in shared places. The minimisation of value in societal roles is yet another way that men are cut off.

This seems to escape the vision of feminism. There is always claim of ideological alignment, where the empowerment of women directly benefits men, but when it comes to any form of concrete action that helps men that need help, or celebrates men that contribute - it's nowhere to be seen.

Men kill themselves. They kill themselves. In their thousands. Leaving cratered families, trauma, guilt from the survivors, many of whom are female. Because they feel valueless, helpless and can't see a purpose to going on.

Accountability goes both ways. In demanding support from men, feminism must support men.

you're not missing anything, you paid attention in chemistry.

Call a spade a spade, society doesn't give a rats arse about vulnerable men of any age or in any demographic.

Wore a maroon coloured hoodie

The dude who asked me this also stared fixedly at the crotch of my board shorts and asked me "where's your package, man?" upon me exiting climbing out of a (cold) plunge pool

I clearly looked confused, so he says "where's your piece?"

Dude clearly spent a fair amount of his time cataloguing the outlines of flaccid penises through boardshorts for whatever fucking reason.

I was offended, ish, till I heard the growers vs show-ers thing. Mine retracts while not in use, it's quite convenient.

I mean...isnt it self evident?

Marriages are relationships.

There are good and bad relationships, and relationships that are sometimes good and sometimes bad.

People usually complain when it's bad and don't usually mention when it's good.

In the long term, some of the things that make the relationship good stop, and some of the things that make the relationship bad get worse. Marriage doesn't allow for an easy exit hence more people stay married, unhappy.

Give it 15 years, then check in on the op

A fair day's work = a fair day's pay

If you do more work you should get more pay.

If you do less work you should get less pay.

If you are paid less for doing the same amount of work, or if you do more work for the same amount of pay, then you're no longer getting a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

Wage theft is serious business and it's kind of insidious.

"hey I need you to stay on a couple hours after" then you're paid the same amount as normal - wage theft

"you can't leave till the next shift gets here" and you're not paid for the time you wait - wage theft

"your wage is 25 an hour, that's 200 a day, the hours are nine till five but most people do 8 till 6" - wage theft (the actual wage is 20 an hour)

"if there's a dine and dash it comes from your paycheck" - wage theft

"you start at 12.50 an hour then go up to 25 after three months." then at 2 months 3 weeks "sorry it didn't work out, goodbye" - wage theft

Wage thieves usually target people that don't know they're being taken advantage of. Often people desparate for work, or not highly skilled, or just naive, or trusting. Hence it is (in my mind) predatory.

Fwiw time theft is the other side of the coin.

There's very, very little else out there aside from their own website that I can find.

This is a strong clue

Oh, the huge manatee!

I'm just baffled. It seems unnecessarily cruel.