Lucci

it took me so long to realize that "orz" looks like a little guy lying on the floor in despair

CNN

Texas school administrator told teachers to include Holocaust books with 'opposing' views when explaining new state law

A school district superintendent in North Texas apologized Thursday night after one of the district's administrators told teachers that if t

"The Holocaust is a privileged genocide" 😑

More and more I feel like people who “don’t like small talk” because it’s meaningless are the way they are not because they’re pretentious, but because they simply have no clue how to interact with people successfully and in a way that respects their boundaries and makes them comfortable.  Some people I know have this really bad habit of just being like “Small talk is meaningless so just tell me about your deepest feelings.  Are you happy in life?”  That is a wildly uncomfortable question for most people to answer and the point of small talk is to steer the conversation there gradually and in a way that allows them to deflect if they don’t want to go there.  Like, ideally small talk can go like this:

“What are you up to today?

Nothing, just chilling.

Are you off work then?

Yeah, I always have Saturdays off.

Oh that’s cool.  I wish my job let me do that.  What do you do?

I’m a [insert job here].

Oh that’s cool!  Do you like it?”

Boom, you’ve very quickly led up to a large, meaningful topic, asking them if they’re satisfied with a major part of their life, by both of you elaborating on information they’ve already willingly provided, and in a way that allows them to backpedal or steer elsewhere if they’re getting uncomfortable with the direction by allowing multiple other exit routes (for example if they were uncomfortable with the focus being on themselves, they could say “I’m a [insert job here].  What about you?” and suddenly now the focus is on you.)  And they can also choose to answer in a way that’s still distant and polite for comfort (like “eh, it pays the bills.  What about you?”), or meaningful for a genuine connection (like “it’s very fulfilling, I love XYZ” or “the monotony gets to me, I need mental stimulation”)

Small talk is not meaningless.  People don’t talk about the weather or sports because they’re just so deeply passionate about those topics or don’t have anything meaningful to say.  It’s testing the waters to find common ground to open up a bigger conversation without the risk of wildly barreling past whatever boundaries the person has.  Which I think is honestly why people sometimes get uncomfortable around people who aggressively skip small talk, because they’re violating unspoken social rules in a way neither of them usually can fully verbalize, and the person who “hates small talk” interprets this as failing to make a connection because they’re more intellectual than everyone else, or interested in different things, or just too cerebral for the common man to understand.

lol this rules, some dude down in Alabama is waging a one man war against "wake boats" by drilling holes in them. Locals have dubbed him "no wake Jake" and almost fifty of them have formed a committee urging him to run for sheriff. Oh yeah, and he dresses like this while he's sneaking around sinking boats.

BASED ON A TWITTER INTERACTION ME AND MY FRIENDS HAD!

This is my first time posting on tumblr ...

Latinx? Latino/a? Hispanic?

What’s the difference between Hispanic, Latino, Latinx and Latine?

People often want to know which term — Hispanic, Latino or Latinx — is the most respectful. But it really depends on the person and context.

“Hispanic” refers to any of the peoples in the Americas and Spain who speak Spanish or are descended from Spanish-speaking communities. It was coined in the 1970s by the U.S. Census Bureau to offer a pan-ethnic name for peoples such as Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans and others, whose social, economic and political needs were often ignored.

According to UC Berkeley's Cristina Mora, before the term “Hispanic” was adopted, the census enumerators would often check off people such as Mexican Americans as “White” on the census forms.

In contrast to Hispanic, the term Latino describes any person with ancestry in Latin America, a politically defined region usually unified by the predominance of Romance languages. This definition usually includes Portuguese-speaking Brazil and French-speaking Haiti, but excludes Spain.

But what about Latinx??

For some, the pronunciation of the word is cryptic: la-TEENGKS? LA-tin-EX? For others, it represents a kind of language imperialism by imposing a new English word onto a Spanish word and rendering it unpronounceable.

Latinx is essentially a non-binary form of Latino or Latina. The suffix “-x” replaces the “-o” or “-a” corresponding to masculine or feminine, allowing the word to resist the gender binary. (In Spanish-speaking countries, the term Latine with the suffix “-e” is circulating as an alternative to the -o/a binary.)

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I think most non-Jews don't know/understand American synagogues are under siege, having to pay huge amounts for security, both to have armed guards, but also installing bulletproof windows and doors and putting up anti-ramming barriers. It's getting really bad out there and I never see anyone who isn't Jewish talking about it.

IF YOU ARE UNMARRIED, DON’T HAVE KIDS, AND HATE YOUR PARENTS PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HAVE A FUCKING WILL

this has been a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood probate lawyer