No it was Japan. (I’m from Germany.)

I was 17 and it was before smartphones and I somehow imagined people in Tokyo and Kyoto would know English but they didn’t. And then I tried to explain what I wanted or where I wanted to go with gestures and they tried to explain back with gestures but it was a catastrophe. None of us understood each other.

I am so sorry because at some point a cook in a soba restaurant kept asking me “Soba?” and I didn’t know what soba was and it was day 10 out of 14 and I was at my nerve’s end so I yelled back in German “I don’t know what you want I don’t know what your soba is just give me that soup that I am pointing at!”

It’s been 15 years and this still keeps me up at night 😭 I’'m so sorry soba guy. Yelling at you legit is in the top 5 things I would do differently if I could relive my life.

(I was also still processing my first break up and it was hot af and my boobs had grown humongous which earned me a lot of stares abroad and all of this added to me feeling lost and frustrated.)

do not expect anybody to speak english

Can I add: also don’t expect that your body language and gestures are going to be the same. Had to learn this the hard way

I buy CDs for the booklets (and am massively disappointed if there is none)

It is not about being rich or super rich. It is about climbing the hierarchy being an exploitative act in itself. If you dream of creating your own business you will - you have to, basically by default - do this by exploiting other people on the way up. Your success and you becoming “mildly rich” is always built on the backs of others.

Edit: just to be clear, I am fully aware that in the greater scheme of things, a person earning 30k or even 300k is not the enemy of someone earning 25k. Obviously we need to get rid of pervertedly excessive wealth. Having 300k-30k-25k hating on each other distracts from the bigger problem.

But at the end of the day, and I say this with as little moral judgement as possible, as soon as one person controls another one’s salary and undercuts it for their own profit, we are in a system in which success is achieved via exploitation. And this is the case in 99.9% of work environments.

Meat is way too cheap anyway.

This is why I hate that they are focussing on Döner and are even asking for a Dönerpreisbremse. For all I care, discuss falafels, french fries, anything that has no meat in it. I’m not a vegan or vegetarian but it is hilarious to complain that a meat based dish should still be the “easily affordable” fast food for everyone. In 2024. Come on.

Yeah that’s kinda mean. I have a certain phobia and I hate it so much when I am being vulnerable and let people in on it and then they try to talk me out of it or say “x is not that bad!” Or talk about it or joke or even think it’s cool to expose me to it like they are a fucking therapist. Ok, you just didn’t want to know the jello secret, that’s not exactly a crippling phobia, but it’s still a mean move.

If it is a consolation to you, there is vegan jello.

I personally find gelatin a great way to use up more of the animal, and it’s not bugs or anything like that, if you eat pork or beef that’s really an ok product imo. It’s not even offal. Bones also have other usage in cuisine, but in case you don’t want to know I’ll leave that out.

Anyway, back to vegan jello. It’s made with agar agar, which is basically a polymer extracted from algae, instead of gelatine. Tastes good! Highly recommend.

What on earth are theater beans?!

Apart from one young teenager I knew who really wanted to become a tax consultant - all kids I’ve ever met, be it while I was small myself or while I was tutoring or parenting - want to have “simple” jobs, hands on jobs. Ask kids on the playground and you will hear vet, doctor, and astronaut said along with trash truck driver, waiter, and cleaning lady.

It always breaks my heart that these kids grow up and learn that society gives a crap about certain jobs, be it their low social status and appreciation for their work or their pay. Sure, interests also change when you grow up, but I bet if working conditions, social appreciation and pay were right, we would have much more people happily and freely choosing “low life jobs”.

PS as far as I know the teenager now has a career as a blogger focussing on queer issues with his bf in Berlin, he didn’t become a tax consultant after all.

It was you, wasn’t it

Oh and the Russians have had people killed outside Russia when they felt the need to so you’re not really safe anywhere once you’re on their hit list.

Well to be fair, I’d argue that’s not an argument. People are willing to go to prison and die for their beliefs (case and point Navalny). So what is your own destiny or death when you can save your family, friends, and country from this dictator. I’m sure you would find a willing kamikaze assassin.

There are far, far more nukes in the world than defense systems for nuclear missiles. If one person “presses the button”, everyone else will, and maybe 1% of all nuclear missiles will be caught.

Yeah there have been “news just hit!” articles for years and years and years about how he has terminal cancer or parkinsons or anything else and is about to die soon. That his face is bloated because of steroids because of some cancer treatment or whatever. (Somehow no one ever attributes it to an overuse of fillers.) And the first 5 articles you might fall for it, but after the sixth article like that and in something like year 8 you kinda realize that these news have no substantial claim. Fool me five times, shame on you. Fool me six times shame on me.

How about don’t have kids so you can work more and more flexible hours on demand in aspiration of a fabricated idea of a career

Fuck me that’s the best counter point I have heard so far. Thanks!

(In case you really work at a NICU: thank you so much for your work.)

Only the parallel experience will fully submerge you into the lore!

That’s what David Lynch said

It might be helpful if you finished one book first before you start another.

I would argue - again, as you said, no morale here - it is a very tactical move.

The more civilians die, the less there is support for the war to go on. Yes, some do feel more radicalized (“now I have nothing left to lose”) but I have come to learn that a majority feels just demoralized (“how many more need to die until this is stopped?”).

(Please note: whatever you or I think we would feel in that situation is irrelevant, you can’t know unless you are in this very conflict right now, and also - any kind of thinking and feeling and emotion is valid. Both and everything in between makes sense.)

The more civilians die or are harmed/attacked, the less the public feels safe. They aren’t because they know they are as much a target as a brigade. They know their enemy is ruthless. After over two years of constant fear and panic and death around you, you might very well start to disagree with a hardline position (“fight until Ukraine is free and Russia is defeated”). I’ve heard from much more refugees than I would have ever expected that they just want the conflict to end, yes, with losses on the Ukrainian side, with compromises that are not fair, but that they just want it to stop. Zelensky is losing popularity by the day because he has created that public image of someone who is not willing to compromise at any cost. Now imagine how amazing it must feel to Putin that people are mad that Zelensky cancelled the presidential election. It is obvious from the outside that holding an election, let alone changing a president in the middle of a war is insanity. For a lot of people, it is angering, since they don’t feel like the war will ever realistically stop with Zelensky in power.

The other effect of targeting civilians like that is of course that you drive them out of the country. You create a refugee crisis. You destabilize Europe, look at Germany, we constantly bitch about tOo MaNy RefUGeeS. It creates tension, it creates a financial drain, people don’t want to support the war with missiles anymore. It has already cost “their country” (i.e. Germany etc) too much.

So, yes, “only” 29 people have been confirmed dead so far. But the damage this missile created is much, much bigger than “just” 29 deaths. In some ways, this incredibly vicious tactic is brilliant.

I see where you come from and I agree - things like homeschooling should not be legal. A society should absolutely be involved in raising children and help to fulfill everyone’s potential.

I think the idea is that the children get exposed to other people and ways of thinking and not JUST the things their parents decide for them. Otherwise it’ll be indoctrination -better or worse- but the kids won’t think for themselves.

Well said, but in that case it doesn’t matter whether your parents are smart or dumb. You should always be exposed to other people and encouraged to get out of your small oyster. Especially in a social sense; I live in Germany and after 4th grade we get separated in different high schools (for low, middle, and high achievers). I can tell you that we as teenagers very often start living in our bubble where we only meet people with somewhat of the same education. I am very grateful to have kept my best friend from elementary because she exposes me to her friends who are from a very different social class than me. Their lives, problem solving approaches, and ways of thinking are so vastly different from what I am used to that I always feel like a fish out of the water.

But to be clear:

Smart kids come from dumb parents when the parent isn’t involved as much in the child’s upbringing.

To me this does read like dumb parents can only raise smart kids if they keep out of their lives. And while I see why the conclusion “dumb parent raises dumb child” comes about, this is a very dangerous oversimplification. Yes, it has nothing (or little) to do with eugenics. But with language like this the way is paved to shame people that we perceive as dumb to be unfit parents. And while social programs as you mentioned would be the obvious way to tackle such nuanced issues, that kind of reasoning can quickly lead to a perception that only smart people (the “right people”) should be having kids. Because it seems like the easier, more straightforward solution (which it obviously isn’t, but that is how populist speech works).

As for the movie - the problem with the dude in the opening sequence is not that he is low class or dumb. The problem is that he is an inconsiderate asshole (who is, btw, not too present in his children’s lives).

How exactly do you want to define dumbness to begin with? A low IQ? So at what IQ should people have children, where is the cutoff? Are people who are street smart but bad in school and IQ tests dumb? Are these who have no street smarts at all but ace in school dumb? Are people who do not agree with your political reasoning dumb? (Like, I hate Trump with all my passion, but I would not say he is dumb. He is an awful and troubled human being but he is definitely not dumb in an IQ kind of sense.)

I don’t like to take Forest Gump as an example as he is not real (and since I don’t really like that movie) but it might fit here; would he be a dumb or a smart person? Is he fit to be a parent?

I think it is obvious that a good parent is a caring, loving, open person, not necessarily one that is smart or can teach their child how to live. This is what society should be for. But arguments like “dumb people raise dumb children unless they aren’t involved” are really just a step away from treating anyone who is not in the right 50% of the bell curve as an idiot who is undeserving of procreation. Which is why I found the statement above problematic.

Ok, but what you are saying translates to if the parents are not smart enough they should better not be involved in their own children’s upbringing for their sake. That’s an awful take.

someone visiting your culture from a very different culture

It’s not even such a different culture but I’ll share this anyway. When my husband (then boyfriend) came to visit me in Germany I complained about a loud construction on the street and that there are always constructions everywhere. To which he replied “fuck that’s great, they actually do take care of potholes and the infrastructure?! Why are you complaining? In Russia they just let everything broken and no one even attempts to fix anything ever.” Since that day I haven’t taken any maintenance work for granted.

I’ve recently told this to a stranger at the bus stop that I happened to chat with, after we were bitching about the substitute bus always deviating from the schedule. I’m pretty proud to say it made her day and she didn’t mind at all that the bus came seven minutes late anymore.