Yes. They still suck because I hate tomato flavor and texture. The only way I tolerate it is in things like Bolognese, but there’s enough other flavor to override the core tomato flavor.

On another note, I would really appreciate if my saying “I dislike A” was just once not met with the attitude of “surely you just haven’t done A right”.

Like, I’m not even saying don’t say what you were going to. Just… Don’t insist it’s my fault? You could’ve just said, “that sucks, but I found that with tomatoes quality makes a huge difference - maybe if you can get your hands on high-quality ones it’s worth trying again” and it would just feel so much different.

Sorry for going off on you a little, I’m sure there was no I’ll intent on your side, but it’s reactions like yours that always make me very hesitant to even talk about food with new people. Which is kinda sad, because food can be a very awesome topic of conversation.

Not trying to rain on your parade, but I have yet to find anything positive about tomatoes at all 😅 they taste bad, have this really gross skin that weirds me out texture-wise, and inside is full of glibber.

That being said, in general your advice is sound - I can’t eat shrimp because of the texture, but I love the flavor. Ground small enough so I don’t have to feel it against my teethe when chewing and I’m a happy camper!

I’m lucky enough that I can get myself to try almost everything at least once - but if I don’t like it after that I will refuse to eat it without remorse. I think the second part for me made trying more stuff easier, because the trying was my way to give myself permission not to like it?

Only thing I really couldn’t bring myself to try is chicken feet. I was a bit disappointed since lots of people were raving about it, but still - I genuinely tried. That’s enough for me!

For me having an official diagnosis first gave me words to research what was wrong with me since I had no clue.

Second, after thorough research it made me give myself permission to work with me and not against me - I wasn’t lazy or anything, I just genuinely was disabled. Having a diagnosis was my shield when someone called me that, and it was so fucking necessary as a late-diagnosef woman. Especially when it came to family to get them off my back.

In my case no medication, but the internal permission to cut myself some slack and figure out in what weird ways my brain works.

Edit: that was supposed to be a reply to someone - it’s been a long day 😅 @Agent641@lemmy.world

You’re quite new to the internet aren’t you? There’s tons of people trashing artwork made in Photoshop. Earlier today I saw a comic and everyone complained about how it shouldn’t have been made.

Not liking art is common on the internet. The difference between ai generated and human-created is that humans usually have an intention when they create. AI just… Creates.

In this case my interest was piqued why the subject matter, because it seemed to promise an interesting story. More interesting than memes are usually the stories behind the pictures used, and they often come from very different places.

This one had nothing. And that’s why the interest vanished. Not because it was AI or because I want to deny I had a feeling at first - simply because my expectations for a good story were disappointed.

Do with this what you want, if you want to keep trying to twist this into AI hate, you do you - I’ve explained myself and I’m not going to reply again :)

It was interesting… Not as a picture, but because the stuff depicted is so unusual. What was the story behind it?

…turns out there’s none. It’s just AI-generated. Very few pictures are interesting/awe-inducing as a picture, most of them fascinate because of the story they present a glimpse of. For me that’s the heart of pictures. And AI pictures are missing that.

So yeah, knowing it’s AI-generated instantly makes me uninterested in the vast majority of cases.

If you measure empathy by understanding other people, I’m a lot closer to 1 than to 100. But if you measure empathy as “feels the vibe of the room, but has no clue if they caused it or someone is angry and doesn’t know how to react if they had the knowledge anyway” then I’m above 90, probably.

I’m not saying you’re assessment of yourself is wrong - I obviously don’t know you. But I’m saying that just because you don’t understand why people are upset doesn’t necessarily mean you are not empathetic. It was a huge revelation for me when I got that.

I’m not sure if what you describe is really an inability to get the big picture or the lack of available information to really base decisions on.

For me it’s hard to make that kind of decisions because other people can’t plan well and their estimates are notoriously wrong and forget to take into account a lot of things.

But what I’m really good at it seeing the bigger picture in the sense of knowing the interdependences between things. If I see a requirement I don’t just follow it point by point. I think about what how it fits into the whole and where things can go wrong and ask if people have considered that. (90% of time the answer is no)

So I consider seeing the big picture and the details my strength, but like you I struggle to plan ahead long-term or estimate things because I don’t feel confident with the amount of information available to make such guesses.

I was thinking of getting my next desktop from them. Can you elaborate?

Seven in German handwriting has an additional line.

Not gonna lie, you sound as if you think controlling parents are in the right, the way you say they should have access.

That’s a resounding fuck no from me.

It doesn’t matter if kids fuck up or not. If they do, like your son, they hopefully learn a valuable lesson that apparently they have been spared before, for whatever reason. Maybe they never really had to put effort in studying in high school before - I saw a lot of that in my friends at college, they completely underestimated that college is harder than high school.

Or maybe they never learned to get shit done without parents nagging. Especially in that case they need to learn, for you will not always be there to nag. Helicopter parenting is a sign of lacking confidence in your kid’s abilities. And even if the kids are fucking up, mistakes must be made in order to learn.

It’s not your life, but your kids life, and your kid needs to live it. Let them. Support them if you can and they need help, but don’t enable them - if they keep fucking up, let them unfuck it themselves are the third time. Otherwise you’ll do your kid a disservice and make them unable to deal with life.

And I’m not saying don’t help them if they ask for help, like when they can’t figure something out on their own. Help them help themselves as much as possible and try not to fix everything for them.

You controlling the grades is trying to fix it for your son. How will he ever get work done later on his own? Many neurodivergent people don’t do well in-office or in a job setting in general. In a home office setting or if you are your own boss the skill to self-motivate is even more important.

Yes. My younger sister was always objectively better than I had been, and while my family was not as blatant as yours (seriously! What they do to you almost amounts to abuse if you ask me!) they subtly acted similar. Not expecting me to do well on my own, I was never fast or good enough… Yep, been there.

However! I’ve grown up and found my way, and my sister and I are closer than ever. She, too, hated this dynamic. And she told me that actually it was me who enabled her. You see, when I learned something new I was excited and got home and talked about. And she listened and learned. She has a better talent for math and numbers, but in the end when she learned something in school she basically already knew it because I taught her.

And I hated going to places alone, so once when I was in tenth grade I dragged my seventh grade sister to a film club for English movies. The teacher said he didn’t think she can keep up but she was welcome to try - and she did. She told me years later that for her there were no limits because of age or assumed ability. I asked, she was allowed to try, and she innocently just picked things up. She said this for her drove home the point of “doesn’t hurt to ask” and that this opened so many doors for her.

Objectively she is still “better” than I am. Very successful with a straight career, earns more too. But that’s not important. We’re still learning from each other and together, and we do our best to lift each other up. And she knows what it’s like to grow up in a toxic family, so she gets me.

I guess my point is that life is not a competition. And the “problem” in your situation is not you nor your abilities. It’s your parents favoritism and sabotaging and disparaging you. You are not your sister. And that’s normal and great. You’re different people with different strengths and different ambitions. You will find your way. No matter if it’s writing or something else. Don’t put that much stock in what you’re parents say and demand.

A good GPA doesn’t guarantee a good job or a good life. What counts is if you like your life, because you have to live through it.

The guitar cat got me.

Can you control the time when a calendar notif hits? Could changing that time help?

Except some agents go against explicit instructions and delete the prod database. You know your argument doesn’t hold, we’ve all seen the news.

Sticks may be something that he has been hit with before - or maybe it’s the position above his head of something that scares him. You never know what a former stray experienced.

In my experience toy type matters a lot too. My current cat goes crazy over feathers at a rope that you can whirl around with a stick - I guess the sound the feathers make trigger her hunting instincts? Our other cat gets scared of that but hes always been sensitive to noise.

He loves those little snakes that are attached to sticks with a rope though. Leaves the feather cat completely cold. Catnip was meh for ours, but both lost their shit with Valerian, totally drugged up for five minutes (then the effect wears off and the cats won’t feel the same even with fresh scent). Where I live it gets used to help people sleep so we buy a whole bunch at a pharmacy, fill it into an airtight container (that shit stinks, it could make me vomit) and marinate cloth toys in their that we give them every now and then.

At the end of the day, all cats are different and trial and error is best. Also, if you found a cheap toy that works, stock up - often it’s not easy to get replacements once they break.

Wait you wouldn’t take your cat? After a week of you rarely being available you consider not being home at all for two days and a night?

I would strongly recommend against that. I’m worried that this may cause behavioral issues with the cat getting bored, depressed, feeling caged…

Possible consequences could be urinating outside the litterbox, willfully scratching your furniture/walls and more.

I’m not sure if with your work and travel habits a pet would be a good choice. Maybe one that doesn’t need social interaction?

I would advise against. A house is not a good place for a cat to be alone, and 40h per week is a lot. We have an old cat (17) and my roommate is at home all day and our cat still is super needy for attention.

There may be more aloof cats, but from my experience with cats they are most likely the exception and your cat would likely be understimulated.

Also, most cats do not handle traveling well. It is possible to train them but that works best when they are young and young cats should never be alone in a house for 40h/ week. My mom has taken in cats from an animal rescue organization where the owner was out for long hours too and she got depressed and overate so badly she had lifelong issues, even when she was with my mom and lost weight again. She also was incredibly anxious about my mom leaving her and would get stressed out if she had to be alone.

Despite what you may hear, cats are social animals and need interaction. If you are away from home 40h/week (and that’s not counting going to work), it’s better to get a bonded pair so they can play and interact. In rare cases you may find an old grumpy cat that will be fine - but you will probably never have a close bond with that kind of cat, and often they are used to going outside.

If you do, good on you! Most men don’t.

The thing is, if men don’t change, it will annoy you. But for women it may very well kill them. You’re seeing the problem and understanding it, yet you blame women for trying to survive.

They don’t say “All men are predators” because they want to be petty and pay men back for how they talk about women. They live by this because anything else puts them in harms way. I’m pretty sure most women would love to not have to live by that saying. Most women would love to be safe enough to abandon this. But they aren’t.

And here you are, yelling at them for trying to survive and keep themselves and each other save, because it bothers you that you get associated with bad men.

I don’t know, I feel like survival might be more important than someone feeling judged wrongly (even if the judgement truly is wrong).

If men want women to stop having to say “All men are predators”, they need to remove the survival need behind that line.

All these lines have a reason behind it, and as long as “All women are whores” gets shrugged off as locker room talk, or excused as he had a bad relationship experience, this aggressive mindset often leads to women trying to leave a relationship they’re unhappy in getting harmed or killed.

If men want women to not see them all as predators they need to keep their bros in check. As well as end the toxic macho culture that regard women as owing men sex when men are nice to them or as their possession once they’re in a relationship.

If a country elects someone who says “Grab them by the pussy” and there are men - “good” men - that meme this, that’s not ok. Yet it happened and it’s no wonder women feel threatened underneath a government like this.

It’s not in the women’s power to stop this. Good men need to finally start fighting the bad apples if they don’t want to be mistrusted as a survival strategy.

Most men I talked to are more upset about being lumped in with the bad apples, when in reality you should be upset how your mothers, sisters, girlfriends, daughters are constantly living in fear and can’t move through any space in life without preemptive measures.

The same does not hold true around men.

The longer a woman lives, the more men she comes in contact with, and the statistical likelihood of meeting a dangerous man goes up.

You say “all men are predators” is discriminatory, but for a lot of women it is the only way to drive the point home to their daughters, who may hear “you have to be careful around strangers” and then let their guard down when a predator plays the long game.

Also, children are often sexually abused by family members or friends. So careful around strangers is not sufficient.

Does it suck to hear “All men are predators” if you’re a good one? Sure. But at the same time, people have no issues claiming all brown guys are terrorists or illegals. Or women are gold diggers. Or whores.

Humans always generalize. It’s just (white) men having been on top of the food chain in the modern society for so long that they feel things are being taken away from them when other groups demand true fairness and equal treatment.