the present tense made him nervous

i think when it comes to knowledge gaps (especially on tumblr) its easy to get insecure about not knowing everything. but the real secret is that you can get away with not knowing everything if you just dont insert yourself into conversations you dont understand with blind confidence. the internet also gives you the privilege of 1) googling/wikipediaing shit before you say it, and 2) not volunteering how little you know. you dont actually have to enter the conversation just to say how little you know. part of the stereotype of dipshit stupid american on here is that americans will say full chestedly that they dont know which continent tchad is in and then go out of their way to justify it with their lack of education. when no one asked them to say either thing. and even if someone did ask, you are never under any obligation to actually answer.

whenever people say shit like “i couldn’t be polyamorous, i’m so jealous and possessive. if my partner even LOOKS at another girl/guy i’m gonna kick them out of a window” i’m like well you should probably be working on that. like even if you don’t end up doing polyamory it’s probably good to not be like that

spending time with ppl who love u will save u

honestly being around people who are not uncomfortable with you having feelings and desires makes the people who were uncomfortable so much worse in retrospect

like. oh! you were just evil

herb guy encouraging you to continue with your story but doesnt have much to say: minteresting....

Do you think the Jack of all trades and the master of one explored each others bodies

Something that peeves me whenever I see another post going around with some variation on "autistic people take things literally which means we are the only people who communicate Clearly and Directly" is that - for any given statement, there is not one singular, agreed on, universal Literal Interpretation. If there was, none of this would be a problem!

The nature of language is that there's always some degree of interpretability. Words have several different meanings, often overlapping, and there's nuance of context, cultural references, and so on.

Faced with a statement, most people will quickly come up with an interpretation that to them makes the most sense. But if you asked a roomful of people to explain in detail their interpretations, everyone's would probably be a little different, even for a pretty simple statement. Regardless of whether those people are autistic! Everyone conceptualizes the world a little differently, and everyone has a unique personal history of all the language they've encountered, and these things effect our interpretations.

In order for communication to be workable, given this slosh in interpretability, there's another couple of processes that go on. As conversation goes on, people reassess if their initial interpretation matches up with additional context. If it doesn't, they revise it, or ask clarifying questions. And on the flipside of this process, the other person in conversation is tracking if your reactions make sense with *their* understanding of what they're trying to convey to you, and offering context or rephrasing things if it seems you're out of alignment.

These processes are social skillsets that are, like most social skillsets, not ever directly articulated or explained. Many people are bad at one or both. Sometimes you encounter someone who is really, notably good at it - the vaunted "good listener", who puts in the effort to really understand what you're trying to say, or that really excellent teacher who engages with you back and forth until you really get it. But a lot of the time, it's a sort of passive social friction - people just not getting each other.

Sometimes, you encounter someone whose brain works so much like yours that talking to them feels almost effortless - you just get each other. But that's a pretty rare occurrence for anyone. More often, as you get to know someone, you start to understand the shape of the way they interpret things and learn to account for it, so over time it's easier to make sense to each other.

It's honestly not uncommon in society for people to aggregate in groups of people who interpret things similarly, and who are thus easier to talk to, rather than actually building the skills of communicating across interpretation gaps. Particularly egregious are those groups of men who talk about Women as an incomprehensible monolith, but it turns up to a greater or lesser degree on a lot of levels.

I suspect this is the root of a lot of parenting problems - people who have never built this communication skillset, and relied on choosing friends who make sense to them without a lot of effort, and who are then totally unprepared to interact with a child who interprets things in ways they don't expect.

Obviously I can't speak to The Universal Typical Experience, not least because it doesn't exist. But in general I would posit that:

Most people, give or take a few assholes, are not trying to say things that are confusing. Most people think they are communicating clearly, because the first interpretation *they* would come up with on hearing one of their own sentences is the correct interpretation.

Many people are not very good at accounting for different ways people could interpret things they're saying. However, it is normal and polite social behavior to be somewhat flexible about this and forgiving of misunderstandings. If people are being shitty to you about not understanding them, they are assholes. And I wouldn't assume that the rest of the communication they have with everyone else they know goes totally smoothly for them.

I suspect there is a bit of an unfortunate feedback loop, where people have bad experiences when someone gets mad at them for not getting something, and learn to hide when they're confused. Which then leads to larger, more complicated misunderstandings, which other different people get upset at them about, because those people think they should have asked for clarification in the first place.

Truly you can't win with everyone. No one can win with everyone. There is no monolith of "neurotypical communication" which resolves all these contradictions - all those people you're lumping in together under "neurotypical" have just as much trouble with each other.

It's so nice being on tumblr because you don't even have to make your own post but people would still follow you anyways if you're good at rebloging posts they like

today's bug thing is this beetle cardigan by dr.beetle on instagram!

saw this house the other day!

no i don't want you to redirect me to your app i want to look at recipe

i am not going to a secondary location with you one of us dies here

A Victorian puzzle purse for a special someone's birthday 💌 ✨

See it unfolding here

new set of prints!! these will be available at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art's Dog Ear Festival this upcoming weekend (april 4-6) as part of the pop-up print market. i myself will not be at the festival but the slate of events looks soooo cool and i love BIMA, highly recommend checking it out!

listen: cheating at baseball is like a whole second sport. as long as baseball has existed, people have been cheating at it

look at this shit.

oh so the Yankees made their bats thicker and hit 20 runs bc of it and the league is just like yeah they're allowed to do that?? this whole time apparently it's been perfectly legal to just change the bats to make it easier and no one tried it until right now?? 150 years this sport has been around and suddenly someone had a bright idea??

look at this shit man

some real ace quotes from this AP article here