The lyrics on Spotify play along/highlight as the song plays so you can read along in time with the song.

This is actually a vital accommodation for the hard of hearing and partially Deaf because we can often hear/feel the beat and sometimes the melody, but we don’t know exactly where in the song were up to because the tune of all the versus sounds the same, or vocal breaks of “ooooooh, lalala” can be mistaken for the start of a new line of lyrics.

So if you’re just reading along with a static page of lyrics, it takes a lot of mental energy to figure out what’s happening with the song, especially if it’s a new song you’re discovering.

We’ve had static lyric sheets for decades, you’d unfold the sleeve in your record and try to read along as you listened, never 100% sure you were doing it right unless a fully hearing friend was there to point at the words and be your version of the bouncing ball.

So to have this technology that almost completely solves this problem for a vulnerable community… Then to put it behind a pay wall despite the fact that Deaf people are more likely to be underemployed and socially disadvantaged than the general hearing populous is just callous.

Our experience of music is fundamentally different to hearing people, and yet Spotify will charge us the same rate for a sub par experience.

Yes and no, if you scambait hard enough your number can eventually be added to a blacklist for larger scam organisations that bought your data for use in multiple scam attempts.

In my experience that has really cut down on the calls.

In 2020 the department of human services accidentally posted my personal phone number on a list of support services for people experiencing housing or food insecurity. This number was then circulated by every major news source in my state. I couldn’t change my number at the time because I had no legal ID (still don’t… Can’t figure out how to get ID without ID, but I have a new number now at least) at first I didn’t really notice the ratio of spam calls to genuine calls for the wrong number (ie, people calling my number because they needed housing/food) . I just remember getting 40+ calls a day at many stages.

But as the actual number for the food relief service was circulated, I eventually stopped getting genuine calls and I was getting 3-5 scam calls every single day.

After a year of scam baiting, I was getting 2 a week.

Now, I’ll do something online that requires sharing my current number, within a few hours I get a scam call because my data has been sold, but I bait the heck out of that first call and I usually don’t receive any further calls which suggest my number was blacklisted by a larger scam organisation, and I won’t be hassled until my data is sold again as a new item.

It’s hard to avoid getting your number on scam lists when the largest health insurance company, and the second largest telecommunications company in my country both had major data breaches where millions of customers identifying information was accessed and sold to scammers…

Nah, I’m just a person with leaky tits.

You do anyway without piercings.

The nipple isn’t technically one hole, it’s kind of like a porous sponge. After all, mammary glands are just mutated sweat glands, it’s a series of holes connected to a series of ducts.

So a lot of people find when lactating that it can spurt in crazy directions from unexpected parts of the nipple.

The number of times I find myself plugging the iron in behind the TV and then holding an old Amazon box against the wall and juggling my pants while I iron because I’m in a rush and that’s the available outlet plug and space.

That’s fine, that’s what we want you to do.

We use the purely platonic conversation to get a sense of what level of compatibility there might be. Something physical, something more, what are we feeling.

Sometimes the companionship of a conversation is enough and we’re both happy to say “this was a lovely chat, bye, have a nice day”

But occasionally… “thanks for chatting to me, hey I don’t suppose you’d want to come over one day and check out the recreation prop kittyhawk my brother and I are building? I’m stuck in the shop alone on Saturday if you’d like to keep me company and tell me more about old airplanes.”

The first pride was pretty wrathful.

The female condom has two rigid rings, one in the sealed end that sits under the cervix, and one at the open end.

The ring at the open end is designed to hold the condom open and give the penetrating partner a nice big safe target to make sure the penis/toy/whatever goes inside the condom and not accidentally between the condom and the vaginal wall. This ring also provides some minor protection to parts of the vulva due to its size.

The internal ring is much smaller by comparison, and is not that much larger than a diva cup. The internal ring of a female condom is a similar size to a “soft cup” menstrual cup, it’s a little bit smaller than a contraceptive diaphragm.

If it has 3.5 stars on Google, and 90% of the bad reviews are from people with white sounding names complaining of poor service… You’re in for some fucking delicious food from a proper family owned Chinese restaurant!

Dogs aren’t cops, dogs are brainwashed by cops. Dogs are essentially trafficked victims of police. The dog just wants to be a good boy, it’s not the dog’s fault the pigs have been teaching it to nark on bullshit.

Exactly! I have a genetic illness that caused congenital deformities and injuries and disability later in life, starting around my teens thanks to puberty.

From an early age my relationship with work was distorted because I found myself trapped in the gap between two pathways. I was obviously capable of work, with the right treatment and support I had a lot of potential. But I was disabled, and I required expensive supports and medical intervention, and under the public healthcare system there reaches a point of disability and limitations in capacity that you are written off by the system. Shoved in a residential group home, given a pension below the poverty line, and expected not to try. (genuinely, we’re expected not to try, if someone on a disability pension works a job, they can loose their pension, which is many cases is also tied to housing and access to medical services)

I’d flip between the two systems, I’d have a great few months with regular access to treatment, I’d get a job plan from the dole office, I’d sit through work readiness courses, I’d be getting healthier and looking forward to working and being a good little contributor to society. Then I’d hit a waiting list for my medical care, my health would slip, I’d be re-assessed by the welfare department and deemed too disabled to work, my job plan would be shredded and I’d get a pension support plan. Then I’d get to the top of the wait list, resume treatment, and get back to getting to work.

I didn’t start a “real job” until I was 24, it was a call centre gig and I near killed myself trying to do it.

It wasn’t even hard. It was a true 9-5 (no overtime, no bullshit) and you mentally didn’t need to bring any of it home with you. It was easy for me, but my body decided it was too much. My health suffered and it took years to fully recover, with me barely pulling myself together here and there for gig work in between being bounced on and off the disability pension system.

The whole endeavour was far more expensive to tax payers than a system like UBI. Processing my case 70 times because the disability support, and employment support eligibility requirements are so strict and the lines between streams so black and white took a lot of administrative resources.

I’ve been in my current industry for 10 years this November. I work part time, 12-20 hours a week depending on my health. I’m highly successful in my field because I’m working within my body and mind’s means and playing to my strengths. I’m a whole person with a life outside work and I bring that range of experiences to my job, enriching what I bring to my organisation - which is good, because my job is a mutual exchange between me and my employer, it’s not exploitive towards me the worker, which further prevents burn out for me.

But we exist within the capitalist system of funding and our wages are set by the department of health and human services. I make $34,000AUD a year and it’s not enough to survive.

But if I work any harder my body will not survive.

I’m asking to do what I can do for my community, while living a safe existence… Not being forced to choose between litteraly breaking my back working for someone else’s greedy profit, or starving in a tent (though realistically, a lot of people are doing both)

Why would anyone want to go to Christian heaven when the bible explicitly tells us that our childhood pets won’t even be there because apparently they don’t have souls.

Like, what the fuck? If I can’t have drugs or sex, hanging out with my old pet was the only thing heaven had going for it, but it doesn’t even have that! Sounds like hell to me.

I keep having this glitch where I’m stuck in the opening scene with the jojo cubicle. I’m supposed to get a letter telling me I’ve inherited a farm but that hasn’t happened yet, anyone else got this bug?

I understand where he’s coming from, but he’s also explaining it poorly and using it to be a defensive dick.

I have the same issue when writing “could’ve”, I default to “could of” because of some silly childhood habit, and despite knowing better I still write “could of” out of habit all the time, and I don’t pick up on it when proof reading because they are spoken the same way.

He’s talking about the accent of his internal monologue/ sub vocalisations when reading.

In my accent, “than” and “then” sound completely different, but in some accents they’re practically homophones.

When you cross that with someone who is a phonetic writer, or has language disabilities like dyslexia, you end up writing the more commonly used word. When proof reading you don’t realise your mistake because the voice in your head reads those two words the exact same way, and if you’re dyslexic you’re not going to know it’s wrong from looking at it.

I’ve read it 6 times and it all makes perfect sense, reading it again is only going to help me find the remaining mistakes because of a luck based numbers game.

it takes me 40 minutes to proof read a 25 word email if it’s important enough, because I know myself, I have found errors after that long.

That’s why I do sometimes get frustrated when kind well meaning people correct my grammar and spelling. It’s helpful and I do appreciate it, but it’s not that I don’t “know” the correct grammar, or why my grammar was wrong, it’s that no one game through with a neon sign to highlight where the error was and I genuinely can’t see it until it’s pointed out to me, or even if I know there’s an error, I really, genuinely, do not care anymore. That’s not because I take no pride in my literacy, it’s the opposite…

There’s nothing worse than spending 8 times longer proof reading a comment than you spent drafting it. And your pour over it and really apply yourself to finding the errors. You find 40 mistakes the first time you read it, another 10 the next time, 3 the next. You find no mistakes the next 2 times you re-read it, you ask a friend to read it, so they skim it quickly say “it’s fine”. Then you hit “post” and you immediately spot another mistake so you quickly edit it, silly me, how did I not see that before posting!? Then someone replies to it and you go back to refresh yourself on what it was you wrote so you can better have a discussion and you spot another error in your original comment! How did that error slip through so many checks! Better re-re-re-re-re-re-read it again now while I’m already editing it.

Then a well meaning person says “by the way, it’s “than” not “then”.” which is a completely neutral and polite post, but considering I’ve spent hours thinking about all the mistakes in the comment, I’ve spent longer than most people spend on proof reading, I hear you trying to help, but all I’m feeling is the world calling me an illiterate idiot after I’ve finished exhausting myself doing practical things to improve my literacy.

These spell check comments make me angry, not at the person trying to help me learn. But angry at myself for being a fucking moron, for wasting years of my life working twice as hard to achieve half as much, with my best being better than my best ever was and still in some instances being seen as having not tried at all.

What’s worse is then I’m reading my comment for the 700th time trying to find where I’ve used “then” where I should have used “than” and even though I know now what mistake I’m looking for, I can’t see it!

I’ve gone so far as to ctrl+F “of” in a 6 page report from work because a co-worker was running out the door to grab something for an event, made a comment about me needing to change “of to have” in the report but couldn’t remember what page just that she noticed it, and off she went.

I’d already read this thing well over 50 times. I went through one by fucking one to try and find where I had written “could of”, but I could not find it.

Whatever, it was no longer worth it. I printed them off, and I’ve grabbed a random bunch of pages to start folding the booklets and as I’ve grabbed it, directly above my thumb, clear as day, bright as sun, fucking “could of”.

Did I go back and print off another batch of copies now that I’d found it? Yes (felt guilty the whole time, what a waste of paper)

The worse part, my co-worker comes back, we finish setting up, we’re putting booklets on guests chairs and my cooworker flicks through one and says “aw, you didn’t get a chance to fix the “could’ of” mistake.” because it turns out there were 2 instances that I’d missed while going through it word by word. Of course as soon as she said it, I could see it. In my defence she’d only spotted the one, not the original 2 in the copy I gave her for proofing…or the original 20 in the copy I proofed myself.

So after all that, when someone who doesn’t know me corrects my spelling, I’m grateful, but I don’t care, I’m burnt out on fixing it, I cared too hard too much in the hours I was proof reading it before you got here, and I know it’s incorrect, and I know self improvement is important, but come back in a week when I’m not angry and frustrated at myself and this text.

Food I cook is starting to taste more and more like my mother’s cooking. Moving out of home I always assumed my mums poor cooking was down to technique, boiling the brussel sprouts, steaming the peas until they were grey, water frying everything. As soon as I learned to cook properly it was amazing how much flavour everything had. Letting things brown fully, using oil, not overcooking everything.

But recently, no amount of skill can save the sad veggies sold in store.

It makes the hyperprocessed foods even more appealing when there’s nothing you can affordably do to improve the simple produce and staples. When potatos cost the same as Pringle’s, calorie for calorie (and they do, ) it’s easy to see why “just eat beans, rice, and in season produce” isn’t helpful advice - yes it’s frugal, but it’s depressing, and not as easy as it used to be. Why waste money on already rotting food that tastes bland when the same money can buy me a more nutrient dense food that lasts longer and tastes better?

I’ve got a few things growing on the 2m concrete slab my landlord calls a back yard, it helps having home grown spring onion, parsley and pea shoots to dress up a dish.

I’m a terrible gardener, I can’t even get mint to take. “grow your own” is thrown around too readily when people complain about produce quality. It’s not always an option, there is a physical skill, a cognitive skill, and resource requirements.

It doesn’t depend on knowing the type of snake though.

Every hospital I’ve ever heard of have detection kits that can tell them exactly what anti-venom you need without needing to get closer to the snake that bit you.

You can bring the snake in, but that’s just going to delay your care as a bunch of untrained doctors and nurses try to figure out what to do with a venomous snake in their emergency room.

There’s less than 5 snake bite deaths a year, and most of those are due to delayed care, none are due to “didn’t know the snake”

Australian Magpies aren’t corvids, they’re butcherbirds, unrelated to the European magpie.

They’re cute, but they’re definitely dicks.

Having had a defecography this is very similar to the encouragement the radiologist gave me…

You ever feel hungry but you’re not sure what to eat so you stare blankly into the fridge hoping something takes your fancy, but you’re not really craving anything because you never really get cravings. But you are hungry, so you want to eat something, so you have a choice, you can grab a protein shake because it’s quick, easy, and a pragmatic solution, but that gets boring when that’s always your “go to” when you’re hungry. Or you could order a decadent meal to enjoy, since you’re not really craving anything so you might as well set yourself up for a pleasurable experience.

Now replace being hungry with being horny.

You’re horny, but you don’t have any attraction to any options, and you never have. You could go for the pragmatic approach with masturbation. Or you could find someone that you think is a great person in all the important (non sexual) ways, and have sex with them because sex with fun people is fun, even if there’s nothing about that person (or any person) who flicks the sexual attraction switch.

Yeah, as a kinky asexual myself, it seems like she hasn’t been very open in communicating her relationship to kink. Especially when your partner is allosexual, it’s so important to explain why you like to participate in kinky activities as an asexual and where your boundaries begin and end.

For allosexual people, sex and kinks have a venn diagram that’s basically a circle, and failing to communicate the extent of your interest in kinks as an asexual is just setting the entire relationship up to fail because you’re inevitably going to have mismatching expectations from kink play unless you make sure you’re both on the same page before you start.

His confusion is completely understandable, as is her identity as a kinky asexual. They just need to talk to each other.