Random Fact: They Did A Study On Courtship And Mating Behavior Of American Alligators At The St. Augustine

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

The rollercoaster of losing your health. Analyzing the film The Zone of Interest. An unusual con artist. Calculating love versus genetics. Recalling a dark childhood. All that—and more—in our first Top 5 of 2024!

Read all the stories here.

every time you leave the house w some aspect of your physical appearance challenging norms but honoring yourself, you get a little firmer in your conviction that you have the right to exist and be a body however tf you want

pure heroine has had me in a chokehold since 2013

.........and my device is faulty haha 😂😂

A recent cartoon for New Scientist

“Let me say this thing about us, the hopeless romantics: we’re the most real kind of people. People may say we’re out of world; they may say we persuade perfection and fairy tales, but that’s simply not true. Hopeless romantics are the kind of people who find happiness appreciating the smallest things and the simplest touch of a hand. We’re the people who fall in love with long nights, the freezing air and the beating of our hearts. We love to write poetry, even if we don’t seem to find the right words for it. People may say we want too much, but that’s simply because they don’t dare enough to dream and see the actual beauty of romance. Romance is so much more than ‘I love you’s and kissing in the streets. Being a hopeless romantic means finding something to hope for, something good and kind of wonderful. It’s the kind of courage everyone expect to have, but most of them cannot find. Hopeless romantics are vulnerable yet strong people who allows themselves to create the most unexpected scenarios in their heads, the ones that thinks the tomorrow can be the greatest days of their lives. In a world full of ceticism, broken words and cold shoulders, I want to be something lightful, a softer soul, a hopeless romantic. And let me say this: I’m not afraid of wanting a little bit more.”

— an infp hopeless romantic that wants to love, and to be loved.

Your future self is hating you for the poor decisions you’re making today.

Thank you, /r/ProgrammerHumor, I love you endlessly.

Redditors competing to make the worst volume sliders possible...

The thing about being neurodivergent coded in a way is funny for me because I don't actually know if I'm neurodivergent or not. I even got myself diagnosed and the results I got were ambigious. I'm always wary to call myself Autistic or with ADHD because I don't want to use a label that doesn't apply to me, and I also don't want to harm or upset people who actually have a form of neurodivergence and know it.

I should probably not call myself anything for now, and check in with the person who diagnosed me to ask about the results again.