Waldelfe

joined 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 19 points 22 hours ago

There's a mobile phone repair shop next to where we live. Everything in the window is faded from the sun. In 6 years of living here I have not seen it open or someone inside even once.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Can't be good for the quality. I already get a lot of errors in my native language: the correct translation to my native language is not accepted and the "correct translation according to Duolingo" is grammatically wrong. So I keep getting errors for not using wrong grammar in my own mother language. This is going to keep getting so much worse and I have to wonder, if I'm even learning the correct grammar in the foreign language.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was a project manager for a pretty large project last year at my job. I really tried my best to shield the developers from all the bullshit. We had a very difficult customer who changed their mind almost twice a week about things, demanded meetings about the progress 2-3 times a week, didn't understand that the requested changes won't be in the testsystem within a day of mentioning them (not even sending us a proper change request in writing, just mentioning them in a meeting) and so on. Not to mention talking with the higher-ups who got nervous when the customer kept complaining and explaining to them that we/the devs are working as fast as possible and that the customer is being unreasonable.

The worst part about that role was not the utterly irrational customer but our own colleagues in development. They unloaded all their frustration about the project on me. I tried to handle it, in a way it's part of the job. I got shit on by the customer for not meeting their unreasonable demands and ridiculous timelines, got shit on by upper management because this project with this very important customer is having trouble, had to defend myself AND the rest of the team by showing that the customer doesn't know what they want. Just to then turn around and get screamed at by a dev because he's sick of having to go to our 1/2-hour-a-week meeting and also how come there's been four change requests already. He told me I wasn't doing my job, because all he wants is to implement the requirements as planned half a year ago but I kept sending change requests instead of doing my job as a project manager and shielding him from this shit. Wouldn't believe me that if the customer had his way, he'd be getting four change requests per week.

Yeah, I'm pissed and also currently looking for a new job. And no way am I ever doing this shit job again, where you're just everybody's doormat and get yelled at by customers, bosses and your own team alike.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Not even censoring, also outright stealing for karma farming. I've had perfectly normal photos being criticized as not within the rules for bullshit reasons. An alcoholic drink aggressively marketed in two "variations" for men in women in pointlessly gendered was taken down with the bullshit excuse, that men and women have different metabolisms so it wasn't pointless. A week later there was a post about this drink with a lot of upvotes and my exact photo from our local supermarket. It was posted by one of the very active accounts. Mods are taking down promising content in some subs just to post it themselves.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

The straight-A student who could have gotten into any course at any university with her grades ended up getting a degree in art history and works at a museum now. She was never much into art in school, mostly focussed on chemistry actually and thought about studying medicine or biochemistry when we graduated.

Another straight-A student never left our 900-inhabitants village. Everybody thought he'd surely make it big, study medicine or engineering or something like that and work for a big company. He's working at the small local bank.

On the other hand, one of the girls who was always very anti-school and didn't care much for grades (I don't actually know how good her grades were, but definitely not among the top students) is a lawyer at a large law firm now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Yeah, that's the other thing. I was a teenager in the 90s and just walking up to someone in public to hit on them or flirting with people who are working was seen as weird back then too. You met people through hobbies, school, parties or clubs.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 days ago (11 children)

"Approaching in public" can mean so many different things. What most women have a problem with is being approached in a situation where the man has some form of power over her. For example a cashier or server has to be friendly and smile or she will risk her job. Being approached is uncomfortable, because too many men don't understand it when the no comes with a smile. They are also in a position of power, because they can complain about her or make a scene and get her in trouble.

In this case the TSA agent has some form of power over her and could give her trouble if she refuses. She has no way of knowing if a "no" will be met with understanding or with him holding her up, being insistent, keeping her from passing. That's what makes it especially uncomfortable.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)
  1. Breaking Bad. I liked it at the beginning, but it had too much violence for me. Or more specifically, violence being done as a crutch. Yeah, I get it, the character is ruthless and brutal yadayada. Lots of fake blood. Can we get back to the story?

  2. A lot of the most popular Anime. I found One Piece pretty boring after the first few episodes. Same goes for Naruto. I do like Anime, but I mostly stick with shorter series that conclude the story in 20-30 episodes.

  3. Black Mirror. The first couple of episodes were great, the rest was mostly the same with slight variations.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I feel like there is also a pathologization of being single. I was a teenager in the late 90s/early 2000s, so before most of social media. I'm also from a village where most people knew each other.

There were a couple of nerdy, shy guys who never had a girlfriend by the time of graduation. I only had one boyfriend at 16 for 2 month before his friend told me he was only dating me as a dare. I was "ugly" and "not a real girl" because I didn't wear makeup and mostly wore jeans and Tshirts. Stupid village kids.

Anyway, similar things happened to the nerdy guys. But no one started crying about all men/women being awful and no one became an incel. Several girls and boys in my class never dated by the time we graduated and that just wasn't a big deal. Nowadays everybody's being told there's something wrong with them if they've never had a partner by age 17.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

*male anger. Angry women are still emotional and hysterical.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I feel you. I'm allergy to all nuts (that are tested for) and soy. Dairy, eggs and nuts sounds like a shitty combination because a lot of the vegan stuff is nut-based.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

I meow to find my husband and he will meow back.

 

You know those euphemistic words like "muck up" for "fuck up", "shite" for "shit", or "unalive" for "suicide" that people use to circumvent the rules of major platforms like YouTube and Tiktok? I just thought about how people are starting to use them on other platforms and in real live out of habit. But they only make sense in this very specific context, that a majority of communication takes place on privately owned, strictly regulated internet platforms that ban certain words.

If for whatever reason the details of how the platforms worked get lost (and they might, because it's so centralised that all it takes is for a handful of major companies to go under and take all the content they host with them), it'll be difficult to retroactively figure out what the culture of the 2020s looked like and where all those weird words suddenly came from.

 

Mascha Kaléko was born in 1907 as the daughter of a Russian father and an Austrian mother. The family fled from the persecution of Jews in Galicia to Germany in 1918. Mascha spend her teenage years in Berlin. In 1928 she marries the philologist Saul Kaléko. In 1934 she meets and falls in love with the Jewish composer Chemjo Vinaver and starts a four year long affair until her divorce from Saul in 1938.

Chemjo and Mascha flee to New York where she continues to write poetry in German, her mother language. By the time she wrote this poem she already lived in New York, where she suffered from loneliness and the fact that she could not get her German poetry published.

3
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

Ein Mensch wird "Pessimist" geschmäht,

Der düster in die Zukunft späht.

Doch scheint dies Urteil wohl zu hart:

Die Zukunft ist's, die düster starrt!

A man as "Pessimist" is flouted

Who sees the future gloom'ly clouded.

However this judgement too harsh appears:

It is the future that bleakly stares.

(I tried to translate it in a way that makes it rhyme in English. )

 

So I am currently rewatching Stargate SG1 and thinking about certain things that always rub me the wrong way when watching or reading SciFi. Now, I know that Stargate in particular doesn't really take itself too seriously and shouldn't be scrutinized too much. It's also a bit older. But there are still some things that even modern SciFi-Worlds featuring outer space and aliens have or lack, that always slightly rub me the wrong way. I would love to hear your opinion.

  1. Lack of any form of camera surveillance technology

I mean, come on, the Goa'uld couldn't figure out a way to install their equivalent of cameras all over their battle ships in order to monitor it? They have forms of video/picture transmitting technology. Star Trek also seems to lack any form of video surveillance. (I'm not up to date with the newest series.) Yes, I get that having a crew member physically go to a cargo bay and check out the situation is better for dramatic purposes. But it always rubs me the wrong way that they have to do that. I would just love to see a SciFi-Series set in space where all space ships are equipped with proper camera technology. Not just some vague "sensor" that tells the crew "something is wrong, but you will still have to physically go there and see it for yourself". I want the captain of a space ship to have access to the 200,000 cameras strategically placed all over the ship to monitor it.

  1. Languages

I have studied linguistics, learned several foreign languages and lived in a foreign country for a while, so my perspective is influenced by that. I always find it weird when everybody "just talks English". Yes, I get that it's easier to write stories in which all characters can just freely interact with each other. But it's always so weird to me when an explorer comes to a foreign planet and everybody just talks their language. At least make up an explanation for it! "We found this translator device in the space ship that crashed on earth". There you go. I love the Stargate Movie where Daniel Jackson figures out how to communicate with the people on Abydos. During the series most worlds will just speak English, with some random words in other languages thrown in. As someone interested in linguistics I love Stargate for how much it features deciphering languages, though I still find it weird when they go to another world and everybody just speaks English.

  1. Humanoid aliens

Especially with modern CGI I would just love to shows get more creative when it comes to alien races. We don't need a person in a costume anymore. Every once in a while you will have that weird alien pop up, but all in all I feel like there's still a lot of potential. Also changes in Human physiology due to different environmental conditions on foreign planets.

That being said, I would also like to mention some SciFi-titles that in my mind stand out for being very creative in this regard:

  • The writing of Julie Czerneda is very creative when it comes to alien species. She was a biologist and uses her knowledge to create a wide variety of alien life forms
  • The forever war (Without spoiling the end, so I'll leave it at that. Just liked it as a creative take on an alien race so different it's incomprehensible to us)
  • I very much appreciate Douglas Adams for the babel fish.
  • I also liked The expanse for including the development of a Belter language and changes in human physiology due to different gravity.

What do you think? Do you know any good examples of SciFi-Worldbuilding, that solve some common inconsistencies?

(Edited because it looked weird :P) Also, I rembered one more thing: I have two serious food allergies and I always cringe when I see characters take some random food from an alien civilisation and eat. It's especially bad right now while rewatching Stargate. SG1 just keeps happily eating and drinking anything that is offered and there are so many scenes of them eating without asking much. Maybe it's just because I can't even do that in my own society and am so used to always asking "What is in it? Can I eat it?" Although some shows have good solutions like standard nutrient packs in a military context or food replicators that create any food you want.

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