Something that blows my mind is realising how much of our understanding of sex and attraction is socially constructed. For example, there are plenty of documented cultures where women’s breasts don’t have the erotic connotation we attach to them. The thing that really threw me off was learning about some people who don’t kiss as a show of affection — I found this a surreal concept, because in terms of romantic interactions with a partner, I’m fairly meh about sex, but I’m a big fan of kissing/making out; There’s a sense in which I obviously know that preference towards kissing is likely not an evolved trait, but more sociocultural, but it feels so intuitive that something so visceral isn’t necessarily an innate trait.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying “did we evolve to like butts, though?”. Evolutionary biology, the field that would consider questions like these, is unavoidably pretty heavy on the speculation side — given that humans have evolved to be such social creatures, we can’t really separate out the sociocultural aspects of development from the genetic side, and that makes asking evolutionary questions on large timescales to be a tricky endeavour.

Edit: This isn’t to say that asking these questions is pointless to do. I appreciated your question precisely because it’s the kind of thing that cooks my brain (and I enjoy that)

As 3D printers become increasingly commonplace, I have noticed various ways of accessing a 3D printer without having to own one — my local library has one nowadays

If you ever have a partner, friend or family member who does sewing/knitting/similar, you should tag along with them on a fabric/yarn shopping trip; I bet you’d have a lot of fun. Some people are just more tactile, and leaning into that isn’t harmful and can help a lot of fun

“I was lowkey hopping a commenter might suggest avoidance”

I’m proud of you for having the self-awareness to recognise your avoidant instincts and taking steps to counter that (i.e. by asking for advice from people). That might not feel like a victory, given that you were hoping people would give you “permission” to lean into the avoidance, but I’m familiar with the kind of hope you describe: it’s a shameful kind of hope, because deep down, you know that people aren’t going to advise you to ghost her, and that indulging your avoidant instincts probably aren’t productive — the shame comes from the tension between knowing what you should do, and your wish to instead take the avoidant path, which I imagine has served you well over the years as a go-to coping strategy, albeit a maladaptive one.

The tension between who we feel capable of being vs. who we’d like to be is quite uncomfortable, but it certainly shouldn’t be shameful. Building up healthier skills and habits is a marathon, and it does not require perfection. I hope that you are able to find the strength to take the approach that you understand to be the best, even though that will mean defying your instincts. It will feel clunky, and uncomfortable, but that’s just the discomfort of growth.

I hope you’re able to recognise that asking for advice here isn’t a sign of failure, but a show of your strong resolve to improve — I’ve found that asking for advice when we already low-key know the correct approach is a way of holding ourselves accountable: you want to communicate clearly and healthily; you also want to curl up so small that you can hide from this girl rather than talking to her. This conflict exists because for whatever reason, you’ve recognised that your people pleasing tendencies don’t serve you or the people in your life very well. Regardless of how you proceed from here, I’m proud of the steps you’ve already taken to improve yourself. I say this as someone else who had to learn these skills as an adult due to messy family stuff. It’s bloody awkward, and stressful, and it takes a long time; that’s why recognising the small steps forward is good

I possibly disagree — I’m a part time wheelchair user (as well as other disability related devices/aids) and I’m always fascinated by how dynamic and relative the concept of “accessibility” is, even if we’re only considering the perspective of one person. For example, for me, using my wheelchair often means trading one kind of pain for another, and depending on specific circumstances, that might not be worth it. Being disabled often forces you to get creative in hacking together many different solutions, balancing the tradeoffs such that the “cost” of using one tool is accounted for by the benefits of another. I wish I could recall some specific examples to share with you, but I have seen friends be incredibly inventive in using regular items in a context that makes them into accessibility devices, if that makes sense.

This is all to say that expensive hardware, learning curves, unpleasant tradeoffs like friction of wearing — all of these things are core to my experience of most accessibility devices I’ve ever used. For any prospective accessibility device, the key question is “given the various costs and inconveniences, are the benefits of this thing worth it?”. Even without knowing much about this specific device, I would wager that for some disabled people, it absolutely would be net helpful.

That being said, you raise a good point, in that “accessibility” is often used as marketing hype, and in its worst form, this looks like disabled people’s experiences being exploited to develop and sell a product that doesn’t actually care about being accessible, so long as it has the appearance of such for investors. I’m not saying that’s what this product is doing, but certainly I am primed to be wary of stuff like this.

Even besides the exploitative instances that I allude to, you’re right to draw attention to existing products on the market. It’s possible that some disabled people struggle to make use of devices that would be “good enough” for most (and maybe these people are who this new device is aimed at helping), but with accessibility stuff, it’s far too easy for well-meaning people to jump to making new gadgets or tools, instead of meaningfully examining why the existing “good enough” solutions are inaccessible for some. A specific example that’s coming to mind is someone I met who had a super high tech prosthetic limb that was so hilariously impractical compared to her existing options that this new one literally never got used. She said that it’s a shame that such an expensive bit of kit is made functionally useless by much more basic designs, but she’s learned that excited engineers are rarely receptive to being told about the practical problems with their new devices.

TL;DR: i think your instinct to be cautious about invoking accessibility is wise, though my own caution comes from a different context

Edit: I watched the video and I feel less dubious of this device after learning that this particular project arose following an email from someone who was mute and would find something like this useful. It helps that CharaChorder’s chording keyboards are established (albeit super niche) products, and this project is less about a fancy new device, and more like “chording keyboards like ours allows for faster typing than any other method, with training. Maybe this means it could be an effective text-to-speech input method. Let’s find out”.

I have a little crease line between my eyebrows from furrowing my brow (when squinting, or thinking hard, or frowning grumpily). I used to feel insecure about it, especially because I have vague memories of family telling a child-me that frowning so much would make ages related wrinkles worse if I didn’t stop while my skin was young. (In hindsight, it is hella fucked up that a child was stressing about this)

I have come to terms with my little frowny line now, and even feel somewhat fond of it, for how “me” it is. An ex-partner helped me reach this conclusion by telling me that he found the frown line cute because of how it reminded him of my thinky-face (or my stubbornly grumpy face). At the time, the comment didn’t impact me much, because of course someone who was in love with me would find my idiosyncratic facial expressions endearing, but it eventually clicked that it’s not that these aspects are objectively cute or not, but rather that they are so intensely idiosyncratic.

I can relate to, and respect the grumpy lady at the DMV. When you know yourself well enough, it can be quite fun to play with one’s personal “brand”

For this sentiment to be coming from a parent of one of the hostages is significant though. I’ve heard from friends who have lived in Israel that the media landscape is quite homogeneous, and that Israelis face a huge amount of suppression and social stigma if they speak up in favour of Palestinians (as opposed to criticizing Netanyahu for not ensuring the return of the hostages).

I appreciate you calling out this kind of stuff. It seems like in this instance, OP was just joking, but I’m deeply nervous at how many people are genuinely believing and propagating eco-fascist rhetoric nowadays.

But not a toxic one, because otherwise licking would be bad.

I respect people who are the scared white parrot, but as a goth girl, it’s a lot of pressure to be expected to be the one shouting at people all the time

This is a really sweet comment that’s brightened my day while also being practical advice

Could a dog even throw a stone?

Edit: I actually think this makes the proverb better, now that I think about it.

Actors are hella exploited too. Sure, someone who is living in a multi-million dollar home is likely to have “made it” such that they’re able to shield themselves from much of the exploitation that most actors face, but actors aren’t responsible for the industry being predatory. In many cases, they’re the saps that fell for the bait (I say this as someone with a few friends who are actors, who struggle to pay basic bills).

I have a tea strainer thing like this(this particular image is a Walmart one apparently). I also have one of the sturdy, in cup ones, which I like for tea where it doesn’t get bitter from oversteeping (such as Redbush)

I’m not sure I’m politically knowledgeable to know what a liberal is

(This is a joke, and I don’t need anyone to explain it to me. The thing I struggle with is discerning whether the people I’m talking to at any given point know what a liberal is)

For many, I imagine it’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back

This is my people. By that, I mean “nerdy leftists who are pretty self-aware in their absurdity, but it can be very hard to tell from the outside, so they are often very cringe to people who aren’t of the same story”. It’s silly, and I love it

Yeah, I do agree with you. However I do like Doctorow’s pithy, 3 step formulation, which lends itself to the stricter definition. But he does also say that he may have coined it, but it’s not his word, so go nuts

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“Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It’s not just a way to say “things are getting worse”, though, of course, it’s fine with me if you want to use it that way. […] But in case you want to be more precise, let’s examine how enshittification works. It’s a three-stage process: first, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, there is a fourth stage: they die.” ^[1]

It’s very silly, I enjoy it, as an occasional tourist to Tumblr

Containerized software is huge in the sciences for reproducible research. Or at least it will/should be (speaking as someone adjacent to bioinformatics and genomics)