breast movement varies from annoyance to uncomfortable
As a teenager and young woman, not being able to find a good super supportive sports bra for my weird size was one of the reasons I stopped trying to exercise.
I still hold my boobs automatically when taking the stairs or when I run somewhere. Otherwise it hurts and feels like my breasts are being torn away from my body.
Thanks for your comment, it made me realize I mixed two things together. What I referred to is not really propaganda. It is lived experience. If you have not seen one person who successfully changed something and everyone who tried had to bear immense consequences - not just them but their loved ones - your motivation to try approaches zero. You get taught it’s not worth it. You’re powerless, and to be fair, it is rather true.
And yes, life in Russia is, for the most part, decent. You have a job. You have access to education, movies, you can build a family, buy an apartment, start a business. You can have fun. It’s not a free life with endless possibilities, there are suppressions, no free elections, all that jazz. But your everyday life is pretty ok. Why give that up for the pursuit of some higher ideal like freedom, especially when you get told over and over again that it will bring nothing good and no change. Yeah it sucks that other people die but it’s not you, and if you would so much as go outside with a piece of paper saying “No War”, your life as you know it is fucked, and the people who suffer won’t be any better off either. Solidarity is not worth the price of your sacrificing yourself and your loved ones. Basically, the struggle and pain isn’t big enough, there is still something left to lose.
Maybe I would call it self made propaganda, but this is just a gut feeling, not a real term.
It’s twins actually, Lulu and Nana. The gene editing might have increased their cognitive function.
I don’t know why, but I cannot bring myself to condemn the editing.
In our school in Germany there was an observation: students who do well in math usually have somewhat worse grades in statistics. While students who were bad at math often did better in statistics.
In grade 12 and 13 it went like algebra, statistics, geometry, geometry (per semester). Basically, you either got A B+ A A, or D B- D D.
Writing this down I realize they should absolutely make a statistical analysis on these results.
Are you friends with Dave?
It’s interesting you point that out. It seems it shows the grip of Reddit and Lemmy as well. Since I am not in the US I am not in touch with their regular news outlets and media. I’ve never seen the Dem shooter before. Somehow he wasn’t that talked about.
Bottom left is the Trump shooter, bottom right the alleged Kirk shooter. No clue who the upper left dude is
The articles on that are a fascinating read, thank you!
In my opinion, watching TV was a better experience and healthier and better, including for - but not limited to - children.
(I’ll preface this by saying I am referring to German TV, where you would get one break of commercial ads of 5-8 minutes within a show of 30 minutes, and two such breaks within a show of 60 minutes. I know in the US you get more, shorter commercial breaks. I think that makes the argument a bit stronger; however, I think it still applies to US TV as well.)
First off, you needed discipline. You want to watch that one show that airs at 3:10? You better be at home at 3:10 then. You had to make plans and keep this scheduled like an appointment, or plan to record it and program a VHS recorder.
Second, you also had to focus. No rewinding. If you miss it, you’ll have missed it. Stay focused. No phone scrolling, no attention span shortening, no second screen. You better focus your attention.
Third, you don’t binge watch. I love binge watching as much as the next person. But is it good for you? Cliffhangers are there for a reason. Having this excitement and thrill be resolved within seconds by starting the next episode takes away from the experience. Already knowing that you could just click on “play” any time you want takes something away from having to wait, waiting to know, thinking about it, imagining scenarios how something will play out in your head.
You get your daily or weekly dose of dopamine from this show, and that’s it. You don’t go on a bender. You are also automatically limiting your screen time. Especially for kids I think that is an important point. You can watch peppa pig endlessly on youtube, until you’re absolutely sick of it, or until your parents put an end to it. But if there is just one episode of pokemon a day, that’s it. You gotta wait until tomorrow. There’s nothing you can do.
Let’s even say you watch multiple shows in a row. Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Art Attack, Galileo, The Simpsons. Every show gives you something else. Another plot, other emotions, other characters. You have to follow different storylines or have some non-fiction program points. That’s more diverse than watching 5 hours of handmaid’s tale or breaking bad in a row.
And even ads. Ads allow you to zap. Allow you to release this thrill that we now do with scrolling. But it, again, is self limited - you better be back in time before the commercials end. Who of us has not had days where they spent more time looking at trailers and thumbnails on Netflix etc than they spend watching an actual movie or show.
I have to add that I absolutely love your point about isolation and watching alone. I will absolutely add this the next time I am arguing that TV was better for our brains, kids, health, and sociality.
I even feel like when people from the same household are watching the same show, they now prefer to watch it alone in their rooms at their own comfort and pace. How sad is that? Is it more comfortable? Yeah sure, maybe. But TV was more social. Having to be quiet for the sake of the others. Waiting to ask “wait what did he say I didn’t get it” until there is a good time and waiting to reply until there is a good time again. This is effort. This is socializing. This is community. Using quotes from the show you watched as inside jokes.
Man I really miss TV.
You live in Germany don’t you
We have friends with a similar age gap, she is I think 36 and he is 56 now. Their son is 3.5. He also has grown up kids not much younger than his wife. The kid was planned.
It’s hard and he is passing on having another child for age reasons (see below), but their son is great and none of them regret the decision. The dad’s back and knee are bad, so running after their Duracell powered son who looks like Finn from Adventure Time (that hair! Dude is set for life, he’ll make bank as a hair modell) can get difficult. But they manage and are active and a very cute and happy family. Having a kid is always hard and stressful, unless you are a tiktok influencer, then it is the easiest thing you’ve done because it comes so naturally to you /s
As for it “feeling strange”: from my own life experience, things only feel strange if you allow them to feel strange. Everything can be awkward and weird and strange and whatever, or you just decide this is your life and only you get to decide what is and what is not strange.
As for my friends, I think nothing about anything in their life feels weird. She literally lived with her now husband and his son for a while. It was fine. His kids are cool with the younger sibling. They get to choose what is normal. They chose that this is. Their family is. This is their family and their normality.
To add: Having two little kids vs one little kid is a whole different level. He has first hand experience in that, so I don’t think not wanting another kid means he regrets it. Not at all. I think he just realizes that this would be not double as hard but quadruple as hard and he won’t be able to do that. My husband is 35 and cannot imagine having a second child for similar reasons. He just doesn’t have the energy level for another small being - and it will be more than double the energy required, while he couldn’t give an extra 50% even if he wanted to.
So the question is really, how do you feel about it? Do you two have some energy left? Are you ok with taking on the majority of the physical work? Even if your partner is doing fine physically now, he might decline sooner than you think, unexpectedly.
I might add, bluntly: you have already decided that it is ok for you that the likely (if not ideal) outcome of your relationship is that your husband dies much before you. You will likely be a young widow. It might also be that he lives to 100 and you die in a freak accident after reading this. I’m not telling you anything new here. This is just to remind you of your choice and your thoughts on this when you decided to commit to each other. Because a lot of people point out that your kid might not have a dad for long. (Which, yeah, other people lose their parents at a young age too, but having it be more likely is another thing, although, does this mean sick/disabled people with a shortened life span should not have kids either, and then we are in eugenics territory or the antinatalists chime in.)
Anyway, I’ll get a lot of hate in the comments (honestly taking this question to lemmy where a lot of antinatalists are hanging out is crazy) but in my opinion - which must be totally valuable to you lol - I’d go for it. Even if it is hard and you reach your limits, this is such a short time of intense chaos in your life. And then you’ll have a kid. You’ll have experienced this crazy thing. And love and support don’t care for your age. Hugs and kisses are just as heartfelt. Your kid will be just as much of their own person, no matter what age their parents were. We all don’t have a perfect family. But as I mentioned above, normal is what you define is normal. And a perfect and ideal family is whatever you decide it is.
Thank you for reading all of this.
That, my friend, was the shower thought that followed the original shower thought
Congrats, you perfectly missed the point of the message you replied to.
Maybe your nephew gets the iPad all the time and that messed up his frustration tolerance. Ok. You might have a closer inside to how he is parented. When you see someone outside with a kid on an iPad you cannot know these things about them. Whatever it looks like to you, you’re judging strangers based on a one point observation.
I know this sounds very “duh” but I had an epiphany when I realized that the reason I hated advice and tips for parenting was that I didn’t see my kid as a child, I saw her as a person. And just like I would be offended if my partner took some rando’s advice on “women” to deal with me, I get subconsciously defensive when my daughter is treated like a kid that comes with a handbook. There are 5 ticks for this behavior in this age and one of them will work. Fuck that. It doesn’t and it doesn’t need to and it shouldn’t be expected to. She’s an individual, there is no manual for that.
She’s turning 4 soon btw - and I love her to bits with her chaotic insanity. I feel as if it’s not like she doesn’t fit into a box or likes to think outside the box - she just dismantles the box, it is non-existent to her. She is actually very social, popular and follows rules well in kindergarten. Despite her answer to that theory of mind question about where the doll is being “there’s multiple dolls” which spins into a Lynchian tale about parallel dolls
I mean, the dick punch was really unnecessary but I am glad that other families experience… Weirdness, I guess. And exclusion of a parent.
I can’t count how often I read and heard the advice to “just present your kid with two options to choose from”.
My kid, even before she became verbal, always wanted option C when presented with two options.
“Do you want this hat or this cap?” “Neither”
“Do you want this blue pants or these red sweatpants?” “I want… a green… dress” we don’t even have a green dress.
“Shall we go to the zoo today or do you want to go to the playground with Anna?” “I want to go on the trampoline” .
Thank you so much!! I wish I had more stuff to post but I’ll try 🫠 I think the guilt tripping is working
Kudos to your friend going through with a reduction to pursue her passion!
In my case, I have a very small band width, so I cannot shop in regular stores. (In my city, there is exactly one shop that has my size.) As a teen and young woman, I simply didn’t have the money to even consider a 50€ sports bra, let alone a 100€+ one. And since the selection is super limited, I didn’t even find one in my size that would - no matter the money - give enough support for comfort.
Funnily enough, regular wired bras with cups still ended up giving better support than any sports bra I could find. But they still only work so well. (And I, by far, wasn’t as passionate about sports as to get a reduction, or spend my limited bra money on a semi working, ugly sports bra.)