I’m German and I worked in an office with managers and engineers who had a background in construction or related jobs. There is a very strong attitude of “We didn’t need that bullshit back when I was an apprentice.” There is a lot of scoffing at people who wear saftey gear and follow the rules. Corners are being cut and safety rules ignored because “we didn’t need all that bullshit back then and losing a finger or two is just part of the job”.

Some German news articles mention that the company in charge of the project had a bad track record when it comes to following safety regulations and the very same construction site had to be stopped before due to broken bolts in the bridge.

Adrian Paul in The Highlander TV Series.

The University where I studied switched from Linux to Windows because to many people complained that it was “too hard”. Even the computers in the library that were just for searching books aka 90% of the time just using the browser were switched from Linux to Windows because the students complained. I now work in a job where most of our customers are public institutions and you won’t even get our IT department to let go of decade old outdated software. Too many old people who will throw a hissy fit if anything suddenly looks different from what they’ve been used to for 30 years.

My contract also won’t be renewed. My bosses reason that he explicitly told me is: I don’t fit in because I ask too many questions like “Why don’t we use better alternatives for X software.” We do “project planning” with email-chains and Excel sheets. No, we can’t have any project planning tools, because this is what the 60-year old colleagues have been doing since their first day 43 years ago. If it was good enough for them back then it’s good enough for you now. That’s just how we do it here, since you can’t get used to it we’re letting you go. Etc pp, you get the idea. And the people in the IT department are the same! Never change a running system, it’s worked for 40 years now, no need to try something new.

There’s just no way you’ll get a public institution to switch to open source. Everybody over 50 will scream bloody murder about having to change how they work and it’ll be changed back in no time.

So in the future we won’t just have job-ads for non-existing jobs, it’ll also be possible to have job interviews for non-existing jobs.

I graduated with my first master degree in 2014 before AI. Now I’m studying again in a different field and it’s so shocking how many will use AI. I had to do a group project with a guy who openly admitted to using Chat GPT to write all his chapters. I tried to argue with him. His stance was “Who cares, it works. Writing all those paragraphs by myself is too tedious.” At least I could convince him to change the wording enough to not flag it. But it’s so shocking how lazy people have become.

Just keep telling her she’s awesome. Don’t focus on the legs, just tell her all the things you love about her. And if she directly asks you about them, don’t make it a big deal. Just say “I don’t care, you’re beautiful.” For me the best thing my husband did was to counter the constant onslaught of beauty standards over media by telling me every day what he loves about me and how cool he thinks I am.

A pocket knife and a houseplant in a pot.

No, it didn’t cover anything, it was really just the lines for the character. I don’t think you could cover much under it other than a very tiny tattoo.

Maybe not quite as dumb as others here, but I once saw a woman in a sauna who had a GIANT 女 (woman) on her back. It went from the shoulders to the ass. I get finding Chinese characters cool and wanting them tattooed, but why on earth would you just tattoo “woman” instead of something meaningful and why so large it covers your entire back?

If they only mimic me and have some knowledge based on what is on my phone/online, they probably don’t speak the same foreign languages as I on the same level. So I could authenticate myself by proving that I speak those languages.

That’s not true everywhere, my city has a pretty good meetup scene for various hobbies. However the amount of people who sell their useless courses as “meetup, but I will ask for a 20€ fee from everyone” or shady “we will talk about investing/crypto…” groups has gone up.

Tom Cruise I just don’t like anything about him

Will Smith, because he’s annoyed me in every role after Prince of Bel Air

I’m forty, so a different generation than your parents, but I still grew up and had my first dating experiences before the internet. Online dating wasn’t really a thing here until I was in my early twenties.

At least where I grew up the guys who randomly approached girls to ask them out were seen as creepy even back in the 90s. I and everyone I knew met partners through activities like sports clubs, parties, bars etc. (I’m not from the US, so people from my school started going to bars pretty early). While there wasn’t a big discourse around men approaching women in public (or none that reached my little town), we did have some guys in town who’d just walk up to girls on the street and ask them out and the consensus was that they were weird and should be avoided.

I met all my partners so far through activities. My first boyfriend was a regular at the same student café and we ended up sitting next to each other during quiz night. I met guys I had dates with in uni - sitting next to each other during lectures and talking about the Prof, going to the same presentation or cooking night etc. None of them “approached me” in the sense of coming up to me and asking “can I have your number” with zero context. We chatted, had an interesting conversation. At the end we exchanged contact information to meet for a coffee, usually without any expectation of it being a date. When coffee went well, someone would ask the other out on a proper date. No approaching, no deciding within a few seconds wether you want to date someone. Just casually getting to know each other before asking for more.

I also met my husband that way. We went to the same event, talked, had a lot in common. We met the next day to continue a discussion about a certain topic we were both interested in. That’s when things started getting flirty and by the end we made plans to meet for a real date. I don’t even remember who asked whom, we were both heavily flirting with each by the time we talked about seeing each other again so it was very obvious the next meeting would be a date. He didn’t ask me out out of nowhere or hit on me, we were just getting to know new people and eventually we started flirted somewhere along the line.

I’m a bi woman and have always preferred women. But I ended up falling in love with a wonderful man who is now my husband. I’m currently really grateful for that. Loving a woman in this climate would be so stressful. I’m very scared for my trans best friend though.

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.

NRW. Rheinland, um genau zu sein. Hier gibt es auch seeehr viele “Wir haben das schon immer so gemacht”-Leute.

You know what the worst thing is? He wasn’t the only one by far. Later at a different company another Teamleader told me I have to go out to eat with everybody. When I said the restaurant isn’t save for me (lots of nuts on the menu), he just said I HAVE to come and that’s what the Epipen is there for. I complained to HR and the HR lady asked why I don’t just do a therapy against allergies. Told me about some esoteric bullshit that’s supposed to cure all allergies and advised me to do that so I can better fit in with the company culture.

Just looking at the people around me (mostly colleagues, I’m not friends with this kind of people) it’s no surprise, when just about anything triggers them to vote AfD. Some actual examples:

“We have a vegetarian day at the cafeteria now. Stupid Greens forcing me to not eat meat one day a week. I’m going to vote AfD next election.”

“They built a new bicycle lane on my way to work. Now I’m forced to stick to the speed limit because of all the bicyclists on MY road blocking me. It’s a straight street, I should be able to go 80 even though it’s inner city. I’ve always been going 80 there! Stupid Greens, I’m going to vote AfD next election.”

“Supplier X stopped issuing their bikini model calendar. Everything is forbidden nowadays! Noone ever cared for bikini model calenders, but the Greens want to forbid every little piece of fun. Stupid woke culture. I’m going to vote AfD.”

And let’s not forget that one boss who told me that my life-threatening nut allergy was woke nonsense, because back in his day “everybody just ate what’s on the table and noone died, but nowadays everybody has to feel special by making up things they won’t eat.”

They just want to go back to 1950s culture, when gay people, trans people, allergies, ADHD, autism, veganism, climate change and anything other than straight white dudes and straight white housewives “didn’t exist”, because how dare the world be more complex than a Rosamunde Pilcher movie.

I have no trust in the current coalition to make that happen…

That’s what people have been saying for years and yet the AfD is already the second strongest in the last election…