erin (she/her)

Apologies! I couldn’t see any pronouns from the image so defaulted to gender nonspecific they. Edited.

Regardless of your opinion on whether dude has become genderless or not (I also use dude for my friends of any gender), the word is a gendered term that has become ubiquitous. If someone doesn’t want me to use “dude” referring to them, I won’t. It’s not good to assume, so until I know that someone doesn’t mind, I’m not going to use gendered terms contrary to their gender. I wouldn’t call a man “sis” or “girl” the same way I would women I’m friends with, unless I know that doesn’t make them uncomfortable. I wouldn’t call a woman “bro” or “guy” the same way I would men I’m friends with unless I checked. All of those terms are gender nonspecific for me, but they might make someone who doesn’t have my lived experience uncomfortable.

The user’s pronouns were in her username, OP’s client just doesn’t display additional lines.

I recommend sticking to gender nonspecific instead of defaulting to masculine.

It did. OP’s client doesn’t display it. It’s pure miscommunication.

What are you on about? There are plenty of great sources of protein that aren’t meat, and I have friends that have been vegan for decades and are healthy, some of which are in incredibly good shape. Also, you’re not even right about the “recover from a single steak” thing, because our bodies stop processing meat properly after enough time having not eaten it, and too much too soon can make you sick. Additionally, I never claimed to be vegan! Weird takes all around.

They appear to have deleted their comment, this is what it said:

And the common trend of vegans becoming really sickly only to recover after a single steak means nothing to you?

Then agian, you are eating eggs so you aren’t REALLY going Vegan, there’s still plenty of protein in there.

Oh trust me, I believe you. Especially using modern set theory and not the Principia Mathematica.

This isn’t a rigorous mathematic proof that would prove that it holds true in every case. You aren’t wrong, but this is a colloquial definition of proof, not a mathematical proof.

I’m not vegan, I’m vegetarian, but I don’t need any supplements to be just fine. I know plenty of vegans who are happy and healthy without supplements. It isn’t that hard to find sources elsewhere in your diet. I’ve never understood the malnutrition argument, when we’ve known that you can be perfectly healthy (and statistically healthier than otherwise) when eating vegan. You can’t just eat salads and expect to be okay, but doesn’t that sound like such a bland diet anyways? I prefer making stir fries, burritos, stews, and other mixed dishes where I can hit all the macro and micro nutrients my body needs. I’m very healthy and haven’t eaten meat or animal products outside of humanely sourced eggs (my friend has chickens) for years.

I’m not religious, but I grew up in a religious home. It’s worth noting that “everything happens for a reason” and “God has a plan for everything” are not in the Bible and are not doctrine, as far as I remember. These are platitudes people with a poor understanding of their religion say, but not actually part of the belief system. This pastor likely has a more nuanced, and possibly more painful, view of this event through the lens of their belief.

Fascinating. I do have a lot of childhood trauma, though I wouldn’t consider it “early” childhood. And I do misplace things often, though that might be more due to ADHD or my general scatterbrained forgetfulness.

Thank you for your genuine curiosity! I like talking about things like this, and it’s nice to not be confronted by people telling me I’m wrong about my own mind. As far as my fiancée, we do collaborate using music as well! I’m a musician and play dozens of instruments, all of which I hang around our house among her drawings and paintings. We like to mix her animation and my music.

Jesus Christ. Take it down a notch, if you want anyone to take you seriously. Perpetuating a cycle of violence leads to lasting resentment and hatred. Sometimes violence is necessary to make voices heard, but that’s from the oppressed against the violence of their oppressors. Violence should never be used to control.

Surely this will not cause religious friction. I can see no flaws with this plan.

Solving a problem of violence with even greater violence seems to be shortsighted at best, and would probably cause more unforeseen future issues. I’m no expert, but surely there must be some nuanced position in between “cheer them on like a cage match” and “total authoritarian control over two peoples.” It just seems so reactionary and extreme to say “oh just forcibly disarm them and make them be nice to each other. With force.” It won’t cure decades of cultural friction and religious tension, and seems a bad precedent to set. On whose authority would this coalition act? They have the absolute power to dissolve two states? Could they do this to anyone they dislike? Where is the line?

Obviously you weren’t genuinely proposing this as a real solution, but reactionary takes like that just dilute the discussion and inflame emotions.

What others have found interesting in the past is how I conceptualize spaces around me, especially when imagining things like my DnD campaign that I run. I don’t see things in my head visually, but more have a general special sense of them. I don’t need to visualize my foot or my hand to know where it is. I don’t need to visualize the wall of my room that I’m very familiar with; even with my eyes closed I know my relative position in the space and can find the light switch in the dark, or the fan. It’s the same for my spacial reasoning. I can navigate the world perfectly fine, or conceptualize a fictional DnD battle, not visually, but more like through touch, though that’s not exactly the sensation. I cannot rotate the proverbial cube in my mind, but I can conceive of what another face might feel like, and, if it’s not too TMI, I have a very good mental map of my fiancée’s body, and could draw her accurately, even if I can’t see her.

No, certainly not. It’s a condition known as aphantasia, and isn’t something that can be cured with practice. I have a lifetime of practice in conceptualizing in a different way though. I don’t feel that I’m missing out on anything really, just experiencing the world differently. I didn’t even know that I was any different than most until I was an adult, and a friend of mine made me realize it.

Someone with aphantasia might be able to learn how to conceptualize in a different way, but I don’t think you can train what’s not there, any more than a blind person could train themselves to see. There isn’t a lot of study into it though, and I’ve found it difficult to get solid information on my condition, so perhaps there’s more to learn. Why, for example, do I have a very vivid imagination of sounds? I can imagine an entire song in all of its different instruments as if I could hear it, but I can’t even conceive even a little bit of what it means to see something in my head.

I’ve had it explained to me very often by people with varying degrees of sincerity or understanding, and I still don’t quite get it. Is it like dreaming, or like a hallucination, or like an image you can’t really see but still know is there? It’s foreign to me, and no description I’ve heard makes it clear. I dream quite clearly and in color, but that’s like I’m there experiencing it in person. I’d love to learn more about aphantasia, especially since my fiancée has the opposite, hyperphantasia, and it would be nice to more easily collaborate as artists.

I love reading, and I love writing and storytelling. I think books can be for anyone. I wouldn’t let a difference in perception preclude you from enjoying an entire form of media, entertainment, and information. For me, audiobooks work best to hold my attention, as I struggle to sit and read words in front of me without keeping myself busy. It’s not a fit for everyone, and not everyone will like reading, but I think it’s a very simple joy that so many people have had hammered out of them by bad parents, bad teachers, or bad education systems that taught them to dread or hate books and reading. I got back into reading as an adult, and it’s one of the most fulfilling parts of my day.

I can do that too. You’re misunderstanding the concept. I’m perfectly capable of drawing, eyes closed or not (though it’s much harder eyes closed, obviously). I do digital art. I just conceptualize things differently. I don’t have a mental image, it’s more like a knowledge of what shapes go together to make certain forms. I build things piece by piece from fundamental shapes that I analytically know make certain objects or creatures, but I don’t have an image of what it is until I have actually put it down in paper.

I don’t know if I worded that in a way that makes sense, as I’ve always struggled with explaining how I conceptualize to people that have an ability I don’t. I know what shapes make up a dog, but I can’t see the dog, if that makes any sense.

It really fucked me up when I realized that “picture this” wasn’t an entirely figurative saying, and everyone else does actually see stuff in their “mind’s eye.”

Authoritarian doesn’t mean exercising authority. Banning slavery did exercise authority, of the law, over slave owners, but it was anti-authoritarian. It took power, and authority, condensed wrongly in the hands of a few and, in theory, distributed it to the many, however effective it actually was.