I found the best way to walk through a crowd of geese is to avoid eye contact at all costs. Pretend it's an empty field and you'll most likely be safe.
It's like an extreme sport but without the price tag. Although I would not walk through a crowd of geese if babies are present, no matter how cute, fluffy and snuggly they look.
As with many travelers in Australia, we both had work/holiday visa's that allowed us to stay in Australia for 1-2 years. This wonderful comment was thrown at me within the first week of arriving at a hostel in Sydney.
Fortunately they left a month or two later but I still avoided them when they did still live there.
Amazing. Layers of ignorance for an already dumb thing to say.
I'm a person of colour who has a white step parent and has grown up in Canada in a fairly mixed area.
My family history would have started in India but my parents were born in South America and migrated up to North America (both Canada and the US) where my sister and I were born. I grew up "white." My voice, appearance and behaviour are "white." I was born and raised Canadian. I'm far from proud of this country where I have spent my life but I will identify myself as a Canadian. My family history had been thoroughly white washed and erased.
I say all this because for all this history I have behind me, it means nothing to most people.
The majority of Indian people here will look at me one way until I speak and then promptly ignore me because I'm not "Indian."
West Indian people want to be my best friend until they find out I've never visited any West Indian country. Then I'll be treated as an idiot for not embracing a culture I have no real knowledge of and have not been immersed in.
Then there are the white people... No matter how white I act, I will never be "white" enough. I'll always be the colour of my skin. I could look, act and behave as awful as a white cop and still not be on the same level.
In fact, I have a "friend" who is a cop. He's not really my friend, more of an acquaintance I've known for 10+ years through another more decent friend. This guy is just fucking awful and every molecule in his body is racist and vile. He looks at me, arms full of tattoos and tells me I'd be a perfect "UC." Undercover Cop. My only value to him is to be used to incriminate fellow people of colour. I'm just not a person or anything close to equal. Always something less.
I've never really had a place where I felt I belonged while growing up. Hated for being me from multiple angles for reasons beyond my control while doing nothing harmful to anyone. There are good people out there who treat me as a person first but they are few and far between.
Another quick story, I once had a Dutch guy in Australia tell me that his last name Hoffmeister means "House Master." You know, from the times when they used to own slaves. Thanks for telling me that to my face, you absolute weirdo.
I love Robins. They are brave little birds who love to hop/fly slightly ahead of you so they can stare you down. They give off a "Keep walking this way and you gon' get stabbed" vibe. It's an all bark no bite situation, so you're not actually in any real danger.
I really like the idea of regenerative land use.
I managed to learn quite a bit about living soil when I created a terrarium. Understanding the role of each part in an enclosed ecosystem really reframed what I thought a garden should look and act like.
I was able to build a garden last year and I've kept a focus on trying to build a good home for the life living within the soil.
Keeping a cover crop such as clover really helped keep moisture in the soil. By mid summer, I was able to skip days watering my garden because the soil remained so moist. That constant moisture is great for any bacteria or fungi living in the soil. Also great for worms and isopods since they require high humidity as well.
I also chopped up any waste from trimming back some plants and threw it back in there as food for what's living in the soil. Chopping the waste up also sped up it's decomposition so it didn't sit around for long.
Last Fall I also took some leaves from the trees and made a layer on top of the soil. I thought it would be a good idea to add a protective layer before the snow came. As a bonus, the extra leafy goodness would be broken down in the spring to be added back into the soil. I couldn't find any information about doing something like that online but I figured trying to recreate forest-like conditions would be beneficial for the soil.
With a focus on what's in the soil, I'm hoping that above ground becomes the delicious bonus. I am allowing some native plants to grow alongside my crops to attract a variety of pollinators which seemed to work well last year.
This year is only my second year with my garden so I'm still observing, learning and adapting things. I've recently noticed some native chickweed growing will be watching to see how it acts this year as ground cover alongside my clover.
Judging from the stories of autistic women who are in my life, as well as stories I've read online, there seems to also be the issue of being heard or taken seriously when attempting to get diagnosed or treated. This is on top of societal or gendered expectations which makes masking that much more of a challenge to maintain.
One of my closest friends had to stop seeing their therapist because she would leave her sessions crying and was only able to improve her mental health by refusing to visit that therapist again. Another really close friend had a doctor that kept prescribing the same medication to her even after stating multiple times at multiple visits that the medication was causing her suicidal thoughts.
In comparison, as a male myself, I was able to walk in, tell them why I thought I had ADHD and later autism and was able to walk about with prescriptions or a plan of action within the same visit.
I do think the the video spoke broadly enough that it could be informative about autism in general and could have added a bit more context to align the title with the video content.
After finally getting fed up, I went on a 10 month campaign against mamagement calling out all the sexism, racism, poor management and absolute disrespectful treatment of apprentices and contractors. I made it very clear that the work culture was awful in every way.
I got predictably fired but I secretly was working with corporate to deal with the the awful HR manager who was enabling this work culture.
Without going into much details, After my company fired me, I put in a complaint to the government labour board over a wrongful termination case. A month later after my submitting my case to the labour board, the HR manager was forced into early retirement. A month after that I settled out of court and got my severance plus a little extra to cover lawyer fees.
My coworkers knew, most got upset at me for challenging authority, some respectfully supported me at an arms length and even fewer people actually supported me.
What was undercover hate wasn't very hidden by the end of my time there. Although I doubt they fully knew how much I couldn't stand them. I still had to maintain the peace somehow.
I used to work in the trades. I was surrounded by straight-acting men. There's nothing more gay than a group of straight-acting men.
Unfortunately it's the creepy, repressed kind of gay that would make a tolerate person's skin crawl.
I feel awful for their wives and children.
I've been playing a lot of Caves of Qud recently and it has an interesting mechanic that I think is absolutely great for newer players.
You are offered to start a classic game which is the standard one life, perma-death you expect from a rogue-like game. Or you can choose the Roleplay game where you can make a checkpoint at the last settlement you visited. This means that if you die on an outting, you will roll back to the last time you visited a settlement without losing all your progress.
This could be easily be implemented into Pixel Dungeon since every new zone has a trader which could act as a checkpoint.
This allows for the feeling of progress and also allows newer players to experience and learn the deeper zones and levels of the game without the risk of losing everything and starting over after every death.
I'm a huge fan of this since Caves of Qud is such a deeply complex game and there's so much to learn and explore.
I always find it interesting when someone states they don't enjoy an activity and one of the first responses are to subtly guilt the commenter for not enjoying an activity.
I've been losing interest in movies for the past 15-20 years and being guilted into enjoy something I no longer enjoy for someone else's expense does not sound like fun.
Fortunately there are plenty of activities to do together. As you mentioned, cooking together sounds great to me. So does walking in nature. I especially love playing music for each other because I love hearing what other people listen to.
Humans are wonderfully complex and there's plenty in the world to for us to enjoy.
I'm glad to see more posts recently with a push towards regenerative farming practices. In the past when I talked about it, I was either largely ignored or got a lot or push back to continue with modern, standard practices dependant on chemicals or fertilisers.
In my opinion, understanding the importance of what lives in the soil, what their roles are in their ecosystem and how to cater to those living organisms is all very important to growing crops.
I've had a lot of trouble finding decent or reliable information online about regenerative farming. I've taken a lot of inspiration from what little I've learned from indigenous cultures that I've been exposed to in my life and have been fumbling my way around experimenting with my garden over the past couple years.
The article mentions how some people find regenerative farms look messy. I think the wild, natural look makes everything seem more beautiful. With diverse crops and crop cover, it brings more pollinators and more life to my little garden in this suburban wasteland of cut grass lawns and driveways.