cobysev

when I went to France I wanted the opportunity to practise it.

My wife’s biggest frustration in France was that she wanted to practice her French, but everyone picked up on her American accent and immediately switched to English. She rarely got more than a sentence out.

My experience being stationed in Germany with the US military, about 30 mins from the French border:

A coworker of mine complained about his visit to Paris because every single French person he tried to speak to either ignored him, turned their nose up at him, or was just rude to him. He only spoke English and they all seemed offended when he tried to get their attention in English.

My wife and I took several years of French in high school, and whereas neither of us could hold a proper conversation, we knew enough to ask directions, order from a menu, or request help.

Every time we started off a conversation in French, the French people would immediately switch to English and help us out. They were very kind to us.

We learned that if you make an effort to speak their language, most French people are very helpful. But if you just assume they’ll speak English, they’re likely to be offended and won’t help you out.

One time in Berlin, my wife tried to speak German to a guy at a tourist shop and he immediately switched into French. Apparently, my wife has a heavy French accent to her German. She was able to finish the conversation in French.

I officially feel old now. I know Lisa Kudrow from the TV show Friends. It blows my mind to see someone reference her in a modern voice acting role instead of her most well-known acting role.

I literally just switched from Sync to Voyager on Android last night. So far, I’m enjoying Voyager much more.

Sync was fine, but the developer only pops in once in a great while, then he ghosts for months (or even years). Getting any problems resolved means waiting until he happens to show up again, then hoping he notices your specific complaint.

I managed to get .webm content to display in the app by catching him right before he posted a major update a couple years ago. But he hasn’t responded to any other issues I’ve posted about since.

Ken Cheng is a satire account, poking fun at the ridiculous “business first, personal welfare second” bootlickers on LinkedIn.

The fact that people can’t tell if he’s satirizing or being serious is kind of a sad glimpse into our capitalist society today.

Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!

Bill Nye the science guy!

I have that intro song as my phone’s ringtone. It was always a joyful day when my teachers would pull out the TV on a cart and play an episode of Bill Nye.

It’s been 2 hours. He ded.

I just posted a review for a game that kind of fits this theme. MiSide, a game that looks like a dating sim, but has dark psychological horrors hidden within.

Melon Husk?

I have learned that if your relationship takes serious work and you have fights, its not worth it and it will fail.

I actually learned the opposite in my experiences. When I tried to avoid fights and keep the peace, my relationships always failed. But when I stopped being a “yes man” and spoke up about important subjects of conflict, it gave us time to discuss, and I found my bond with my significant other to be much stronger afterward.

Yes, sometimes it would start with a fight, but we learned how to argue like mature, responsible adults and not bicker like children. It might get passionate and angry, but we always apologized for the elevated emotion when we calmed down. We always made sure to fight about the conflicting situation and not directly attack the person. Sometimes this was a learned behavior through trial and error; we’d have to apologize after the fact for getting angry at the person and not the situation. But after a while, we learned how to argue productively.

Nowadays, my spouse and I don’t get into real fights anymore. We might have heated discussions, but we don’t yell and scream at each other. We acknowledge good points on both sides, even if it’s contradictory to our viewpoint in the discussion. We point out where feelings got hurt during the debate and we’re both quick to apologize for letting emotions get away from us in the heat of the moment. Again, keeping the debate focused on the topic of disagreement and not on attacking each other has helped us to be productive in our arguments.

And because we’ve learned this advanced way of debating and arguing, we can speak openly with one another without fear of ruining our relationship over a disagreement. We accept that we don’t have to agree on everything, and we do our best to state our case on the things we feel we need to be in agreement about.

In my experience, putting in the serious work and learning how to have healthy disagreements, even if they’re not perfect every time, has only made my relationships better. If I never got into a fight with my spouse, they’d probably always get their way and walk all over me, and I’d never be happy in my relationships.

I cracked the code. I married my best friend. Now I get to hang out with my best friend every single day!

I also had a rule that I would live with them for at least 1 year before committing to a proposal. I had to know in advance that I could live with this person, at their best AND worst every single day, before I would even consider marriage.

So many marriages fell apart during the pandemic because so many people had to be trapped in their house with their spouse all day and quickly learned that they didn’t really like spending time with them. But not me and my spouse; it was the normal routine for us, but more of it!

Personally, we like to spend time near each other, but not necessarily doing the exact same things together. It’s important to have different hobbies that the other can respect, but not necessarily be all-in with you. Because doing the same things with a partner every day can get exhausting.

For instance, my wife spends 90% of her awake time playing mobile games on her phone. I love to spend time indulging in hobbies online. We’ll both sit in the same room together all day, but be engaged in our own things.

When we want to do something together, we’ll both agree to switch to that. For example, we both love watching movies and binging TV shows. So when one of us moves to the couch, that’s usually a sign that they’re up for watching something and we’ll both decide on what to watch together.

It also helps to not be solely interested in someone for their looks. Looks fade, and unless you find a personality under those looks that meshes well with yours, you’ll eventually find yourself frustrated and trapped with someone you don’t get along with. Looks are a bonus; no relationship should be focused solely on that, unless you mutually agree in advance that the relationship is meant to be a fling based on looks and passionate desire. Which can be beautiful in its own way, but may not lead to marriage.

We used these ToughBooks on deployments in the US military about 20 years ago. One of the guys in my unit tested it by slowly driving a Humvee over it. It still worked. Screen was a little cracked, though.

Nope, this is loss.

Is this commentary on the game’s anti-corporation story, or about Microsoft shutting down this game’s studio after this highly successful release? Or both?

I mean, Disney put out a casting call several years ago for little people to fill the dwarf roles for a live action Snow White. But Peter Dinklage balked at it, claiming that it was oppressive to cast little people just because they’re little and not giving them serious acting roles based on skill or merit.

However, a lot of little people in Hollywood got mad at Peter Dinklage for ruining job opportunities for them, because they’re rarely cast for anything else and they had no problem taking the roles based solely on their height.

But it was too late; Disney pulled the casting to avoid controversy and now we’re stuck with this CGI abomination to replace little people in this film.

Here you go, I added some pixels to your post:

I never considered Dr Pepper as a person because they made a big deal about how it doesn’t have a period in the name, like an actual doctor title would. So it’s always just been a brand name to me.

But I’m a bit neurotic about nitpicky details like that.

Ugh… I’m in that first category. I have no idea who Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter are.

I can’t believe he’s still going! They put him in hospice 19 months ago and he’s still ticking! Normally, they kick you out of hospice after a month or so if you haven’t passed away yet, but he’s a former president so I’m sure they’re letting him stay as long as he needs.