also don’t forget that placebo work even when you know it’s placebo

This right here. I’ve had problems with pain relief medicine simply not working since I was a child. A couple years back I started drinking caraway seed tea whenever a headache was JUST going away, and even tho I know dang well that caraway seeds do jack sh*t against pain, my body now somehow associates the taste with “ok, headache time is over” and I can drink that stuff to MAKE headaches go away.

100% placebo, 100% aware about it - still works.

PS: why caraway seeds? Because it is the least likely “tea” you can be offered in everyday context. If I had used something as common as charmomile or green tea, I think the effect wouldn’t have had a lasting effect.

Ohhh nice! Thank you for the link ^^

Just to add another factor to the ongoing discussion: artistic talent isn’t uniform and never was. Just because only/mostly “immature” art survived from a certain century of human history, doesn’t mean that there literally was no realistic art present at the time. Since you mentioned the statues already…

These are from the same era (around 200 BC), but as you may have guessed, made by different artists =P The statue is called The Dying Gaul by the way.

As for painting examples, I guess the Rothschild Canticles^[1] book illustrations represent best what most people nowadays would call medieval art. Not exactly realistic, a little goofy … perspective? Never heard of it. Proportions? Who cares. And who needs shading anyway?! As long as you can still distinguish a human from a cupcake, it’s “eh good enough”.

I guess that was also what you meant by “immature” art, because it is the same art style as those goofy weird pictures of knights fighting giant snails and rabbits riding cattle into battle and the like.^[2]

That book is dated to be around 1500–1520 so it would be easy to assume that people at the start of the 15th century didn’t have a realistic art style yet. But you know what else was made in that same era?

The Mona Lisa (1503–1506).

One dorky meme-esque style, and one realistic, modest and easy-on-the-eyes style in the same century, probably even the same decade. But they were used by different artists.

Now you might be thinking that those art styles might have been intended for their respective purpose or something along the lines: that the goofy, simple art style was used for nothing but amusing little pictures, and the more realistic style was for “proper” art, because noone in their right mind would spend 100+ hours painting highly detailed nonsense just for sh*ts and giggles, right?

May I introduce you to Joseph Ducreux?^[3]

I guess most of you will have seen that meme by now, but this is a real painting made by a real artist - and it is far from the only one. Ducreux created an entire series of similar self-portraits in … unusual poses and situations.

… so yes, at least that one guy DID indeed spend dozens if not hundreds of hours (plus material costs) painting amusing nonsense for his own entertainement. He was, in a way, the victorian era equivalent of a shitposter (and I mean that in a good sense!)

Long story short: one can’t just claim that “they didn’t have X art style in Y century” because the truth is much more facetted than that. It is way more likely that each and every era of human history has had people with insane talent who were able to create art as realistic as possible with whatever tools their lifetime had to offer, and also a bunch of “eh good enough” art or stuff that was deliberately stylized for fun. How we percieve said art today depends mainly on what artworks have survived up until now, and/or how popular the surviving art is. (Everyone and their grandma knows about the Mona Lisa, but how many of y’all knew about the Rothschild Canticles?)

If we don’t know about any realistic art from a certain period of time, it doesn’t automatically mean that there was no realistic art. It may have been lost, forgotten or it exists but it’s just not popular enough to be well-known.

Oh…yeah, that does look a lot closer to it. Thanks for pointing it out ^^ I’m going to edit the post.

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That’s an interesting zero-effort way to farm clicks… I guess coming up with some actual clickbait to boost engagement was too much work?

Eat them dry while maintaining eye contact to assert dominance.

Do they at least keep the monstie element / color change this time? TBH I was severely disappointed in MonHun Stories when I learned that they removed the only gameplay feature that kept gameplay interesting after the main story.

Hyrule, preferably the version from Breath of the Wild. I mean, yes there is the whole Ganon thing and one shouldn’t go too close to the castle, but the rest of the kingdom is pretty chill, and apparently you can make an easy living by just lazy foraging in the countryside, or by selling a handful of acorns and bugs at random stables, or by growing a grand total of eight pumpkins.

I’ll take a life as a homeless but well-fed drifter on horseback anytime over … this. gestures vaguely at the current state of the world

My personal pet peeve is pre-installed, un-removable software and apps. My current mobile phone for example has apps that link to twitter, facebook, amazon etc. none of which I will ever use, but you can somehow not delete them. Why do I need to have that virtual junk in my phone?

When I had to move out (long, unpleasant story) I had the opportunity to get a nice, cozy appartement with low rent almost immediatly, but during the interview it turned out that they didn’t allow pets and wouldn’t budge, so it wasn’t an option for me and I politely declined.

They still tried to pressure me into signing the rental contract - calling me multiple times a day to ask whether I wanted to rethink my former decision again, eventually giving me a 24 hour deadline and demanding that I sign ASAP or they would pick someone else. That was the point I told them to go F- themselves as I was NOT going to leave my 13 year old tomcat behind or surrender him to a shelter. They didn’t take it well. (…and suddenly they claimed that noone else wanted the appartement and that they desperately needed someone to move in very soon yadda yadda … so much for “we’re going to pick someone else if you don’t sign today”.)

Best decision I’ve made that year. The landlord I have now is a super chill dude and I still have my spoiled furry little bastard with me. I’d rather have lived on the street than leaving a four-legged family member behind.

No idea what became of the other appartement but I pity the people who will have to put up with that passive-aggressive nonsense for lack of alternatives.

Movies:

• Kubo and the Two Strings. Some of the story elements are a bit too obvious, but the overall story is charming and the art style (stop motion with puppet-like characters) is just plain cool.

• Kirikou and the Sorceress. Wonderfully weird with an interesting story

• Triplets of Belleville. The entire movie is “told” without words, except for a single sentence right at the start and one right at the end.

Games:

• Terranigma (SNES). Main characters revives / creates an entire world that was doomed ages ago. It’s kind of bittersweet when you’re done reviving the continents, plants and animals and then the humans start f*cking stuff up. Great music and visuals too, despite being 16-Bit style

• Ōkami. One of my all-time favorites but due to minimal marketing, not many people are aware that this game even exists. Charming art style and interesting gameplay concept.

Ohh okay. I really misunderstood your point then, but thank you for clarifying ;)

I’ve talked my way into jobs I can’t do, then failed badly

Failing at something is not the end of the world. Sure it sucks at first, and possible setbacks in life aren’t exactly cool either, but you DO sound like someone who refuses to stay down whenever life decided to knock you down, and that is something not everyone can do. That requires an inner strength and determination that a lot of people simply can’t muster.

And you know what? Your idea of working in the social sector sounds like an excellent goal - it IS a hard job with little pay, but since you fought your way up from the bottom already, you have a completely different, deeper insight into related issues than someone who knows homelessness and its struggles only from a textbook. You will be able to understand clients in similar situations on a completely different level, and they in turn might be more inclined to trust your advice. You might be able to actually help people that simply fall through the cracks elsewhere.

Good luck, friend. May your spark never fade.

The thing that really scares me though is the way the problems change at the higher levels.

In case you find yourself in the situation, tell your employer. It may sound awkward to them at first that someone wouldn’t want to be promoted, but in the end it is in their best interest to keep employees who ARE good at doing their jobs, instead of creating a situation where the same employee is suddenly no longer able to do a good job. This is no shallow talk by the way, but a well-documented, scientifically proven effect called the Peter Principle (which basically boils down to “everyone gets promoted until they reach the point of maximum incompetence and then get stuck in that position”)

We as a society are trained to percieve “climbing the corporate ladder” as the main/only goal of working jobs with a hierarchy, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with staying at the level you’re comfortable at. ;)

Good luck. It’s not an easy feat to consistendly walk that fine line without burning out, especially in the holiday season … take care.

Exactly … there would not even have been a shortage if everyone just kept shopping the normal amount instead of trying to hoard stuff. Especially for TP it was completely unneccessary unless your entire family planned to shit themselves eight times a day for weeks on end, yet people acted as if their lives depended on it (and even stole rolls from the public toilets, bought paper towels as backup and the like).

Another delicious “FU” moment, that I was sadly not personally present for but got told in great detail, was when one customer tried to return 100-something packs of TP for a refund after the first wave of Covid was almost over. Turns out he and some buddies had the genius idea to buy “one pack per person” multiple times each day for a couple of weeks (he had a giant bundle of receipts so we know when the packs were bought) and then resell the TP online for profit, but noone bought it… and since TP is a “hygiene article”, we don’t take those back for safety reasons, just like underwear, swimsuits and everything else that is meant to come in contact with human bodies. He was so furious that he started throwing things, screaming about how “we ruined him and will pay for it”, and threatening employees to the point that police had to be called to remove him.

Not the shop security, but actual police. A report was filed and a shop ban issued.

Because of toilet paper.

Cashier here. I managed to outwardly stay friendly and nice during the first wave of Covid, even tho at least 70% of our customers had managed to turn into the most insufferable nuisances in the history of mankind. It was especially exhausting when they started to bulk-buy toilet paper and literally everyone had some sort of super lame excuse why they NEEEEEEED eight packs at once and why we definitely SHOULD make an exception to the “one pack per customer” rule specifically for them.

If you have the same old discussion fourhundredandeightyseven times a day, it gets old pretty fast. But you can’t just tell them to STFU without risking your job, soo … well. It was simply exhausting.

One day I had a proper Karen at the register, who tried to tell me that she was buying the second pack for her poor old neightbor lady which allegedly had a broken hip and couldn’t walk to the store herself (you know, because if you have a broken hip you DEFINITELY stay at home instead of the hospital and definitely also use the toilet yourself, no issues here …) and she simply refused to leave the register. I was honestly contemplating whether I should call security and have her removed when the guy behind her looked at me and said:

“Well, that lady definitely needs twice as much toilet paper as others … because judging by the amount of shit that just came out of her mouth, she’s got assholes on both ends.”

It took all of my remainig willpower to not laugh. Imagine the “Biggus Dickus” scene from the Life of Brian for a mental image of how hard I tried to keep a straight face. Karen got red, huffend and left without buying either pack, and that delightfully snarky guy has been my favorite customer ever since. I might or might not sometimes “accidentally” swipe my own tag across the scanner to give him an employee discount…

The mosquitoes are dead.

“Fun” Fact: that chart isn’t even a joke - it is actually, factually, pretty accurate. You can get a prison sentence of up to 3 years for that particular gesture.

Gemäß § 86a Absatz 1 und 2 StGB ist es nicht erlaubt, nationalsozialistische Symbole, Grußformeln oder Parolen zu verwenden. Der Hitlergruß wird […] mit bis zu drei Jahren Freiheitsstrafe geahndet

…on the other hand, it is a wonderful piece of irony that a joke about Germans turns out to be a non-joke in disguise, lol. German humor is no laughing matter, after all!

=P

Exactly this. Put any one species into a tiny depressing enclosure with way too many strangers and way too little food, and they will fight and establish a pecking order eventually. This has nothing to do with how the same species would behave in the wild and with enough resources to live comfortably, and the author realized that mistake years ago and is since trying to correct it.

But I guess the entire “alpha male” thing is just too popular with certain people … ahem.