Ooh fantastic, I will have a look through there for sure - go raibh maith agat!

So I am autistic and my interests tend to get quite stuck on one thing. I think mine started with Derry Girls lol which I needed the political context for so started reading books about the troubles. Then I heard Sinead O’Connors song Famine which is better than any history lesson I ever did at school and that led me to digging further into the history of Ireland!

One of the things that kept coming up was the erasure of the Irish language which really pissed me off 😡😅 I enjoy creative writing and learning different communication styles it’s all very close to my heart (I know I sound articulate here but I can struggle quite a bit with my verbal communication!). I don’t like the idea of people limiting that for others! I find the Irish language very interesting historically and it sounds so beautiful. I like the roots of words and phrases - even though I’m not religious haha and a lot of it is based around religion of course.

Things like tà bròn orm being the sadness is on me - as opposed to I AM sad really speak to me. The well wishes of the greetings/farewells. Slàinte - health, slàn - safely, etc.

I love learning the direct translations and deeper meanings behind the words. I think it’s a very poetic language.

The dialects absolutely 😅 Picked up on that through Duolingo giving different pronunciations for the same words!? Even different phrases!? Conas atà tú was what I knew for how are you but all of a sudden that was wrong and the answer they were looking for was Cad é mar atá tù? And some dialects still use mh = w for certain words whereas others don’t! Maidin mhaith - some say “ma” some say “wa”!?

Northern accent is brilliant but definitely harder to understand for a lot of people (my mum needs subtitles for Derry Girls 😅). All the accents are so lovely haha. Are you still living in Ireland yourself?

Of course I have seen and listen to kneecap! I love music that uses English/Irish interchangeably! Fun way to pick up on the language.

If you read all of this go raibh maith agat as léamh 😅

Yeah this is what I’ve observed too. It’s very, very strange to see the messaging around these things change. For extra context I’m autistic and have mental health issues myself. People confuse me in general lol.

I feel like I’ve watched things go from “no, no, we don’t talk about those things, sweep it under the rug, everything is fine” to “reach out! Speak to someone! Believe victims! It’s ok not to be ok! #mentalhealth #noshame” and then in recent years we’ve developed the term “trauma dumping” which appears even to apply to friends.

It feels a little like we went “speak up, reach out…ah fuck, no no stop now”. I actually find it quite concerning.

And then people wonder why others are turning to AI companions. I don’t personally but it does make sense to me when the social game is as confusing as it is especially around mental health or even quite minor stuff things can get the “trauma dump” label. I even remember seeing a couple of people say you shouldn’t trauma dump on your THERAPIST 😅😅😅

How are you is the most confusing question a person can ask 🙃 like, really or generic answer? It can be a very lonely question, that one.

Yep. And even then, our desktop computer was upstairs - which was out of the way, nothing up there except my sister’s bedroom and a living room that wasn’t really used - so arguably that was too isolated lol. We weren’t allowed laptops until we finished high school! Even my friend who did have a laptop wasn’t allowed it in her bedroom.

The internet was also restricted to go off at 9pm because I was staying up on msn and Myspace all night otherwise 😅

Neurodivergent? I am lol and this resonates. I write a lot more now that I have an ereader (that can also be a notebook!) I get it out rather than my phone sometimes and there’s less distraction on it. It’s either read, write or browse the bookstore 😅

I still hold my fingers in the L shape like I was taught as a kid to figure it out a lot of the time!

Haha as a lesbian, same. I prefer none or very little for both myself and in an attraction sense. But that’s just a preference and it’s no different than idk, preferring blondes over brunettes or something. And just like I wouldn’t point out someone blonde for being blonde instead of brunette, I wouldn’t with body hair 😅 there’s no shame in it just because some people have preferences!

The other thing is it just seems so ridiculous to me because of all the things, you really don’t see someones armpits very much 😂 like it’s really not a big deal either way but it’s not even something that is in your face. I can’t say I notice peoples armpits on a regular basis, y’know?

I don’t think it’s the removal of body hair that is seen as “new”. It’s the way it’s ridiculed like in this post when there’s a tiny bit of stubble lol and it’s worth mentioning.

Though I wouldn’t say that’s new either, it’s just more and more widespread the wider the communication methods have become. But this isn’t “new” even in the modern world for Hollywood, it’s online now with the wider reach but this stuff has existed for as long as we’ve been photographing celebrities lol.

The thing is body hair has a purpose but aesthetics has taken over that. I don’t think it’s weird either way to keep it or shave/wax it. Everyone has it because it’s the way the human body is designed and like everything else on our bodies, we get to choose what to do with it 🤷‍♀️

Ah okay yeah, I barely use steam these days. Can’t remember the last time I bought anything there, I just occasionally play very old games I already have on there haha.

Yeah i love a few Nintendo classic titles but $$$ 😭 kinda a good thing that I don’t like the direction they’re taking pokemon because it removes the temptation to upgrade to the switch 2. Not sure I’ll bother unless I somehow get free money to throw around haha.

Nice! Are you Irish yourself? Yeah I started with Duolingo which I still use - I’ve looked at Sionnach but I don’t love the interface though I like the concept. I used duocards for a while too. I think they both have different methods of learning than Duolingo but neither quite has the easy, smooth interface yet! Also did a local online class for a couple of months but the teacher wasn’t very engaging unfortunately so I didn’t carry on 😭 I want to get some 1:1 tutoring at some stage, I think that’s the best way but obviously $$$ 🙄

I have a coworker and friend who is Irish (but not fluent in Irish) and I love getting to practice it with her and leaving her notes in the office in Irish haha. I think getting to use it is the key which is why I’d like a tutor. I’m Australian so no “need” for it here, I just enjoy it and find Ireland fascinating.

Yup my kobo libra colour. It was pretty pricey but well worth it. Had a Kindle for about a decade or so before that so it was a big upgrade.

Love that it’s easy to borrow from the local library on it (couldn’t do that on Kindle where I’m from) or yeah, books from anywhere. I quite like the colour e-ink, I don’t read much in it but the occasional illustrations in books is cool to be able to see in colour.

I do annotate a fair bit so the different coloured highlighters help there too.

And I love having the notebooks. I’ve been writing creatively so much more now that I have it. I missed handwriting but I have so many physical notebooks I would buy and then not use or use once or twice lol. Having the kobo with me all the time is great because I have all my notebooks on it for different things. It’s helped my productivity a lot!

There’s only one thing that I came across recently that I wish I could do and haven’t found a way. I transferred some of my typed poetry to my kobo and I wish there was a way I could throw it in with my handwritten notebooks rather so I could keep editing there rather than having to switch to the pdf version in the other section. But that’s really only a pretty minor thing in terms of e-readers!

Yup. Autistic and noise cancelling headphones help me in all kinds of environments I wouldn’t be able to deal with otherwise. Including the airport!

I still need to find some good NC earbuds though. The Bose quiet comfort are fantastic but unfortunately known to stop working repeatedly (I’m about to get my 6th pair replaced through warranty over about 18 months!)

I’ve been learning Irish for a few months now - incredibly difficult language but fascinating.

Also getting back into poetry and learning different techniques around writing. Not sure I always like some of the very rigid “rules” but it’s interesting to learn. I’ve never been particularly technical with my writing but it has opened my mind to trying new styles.

Yeah indies usually have pretty decent demos! I actually haven’t even looked at the switch store lately but I don’t remember the bigger titles having demos?

And idk where everyone else is but the big games here (Australia) are still what I consider expensive (USD$45 minimum without a sale). Typical price is around USD$60. Even on sale they don’t get much below that for the big stuff - zelda, pokemon, Mario, animal crossing, etc. Curious how comparable that is to elsewhere.

True. Just depends on device and how committed people are to doing that lol. As a casual gamer (PC barely ever anymore and Nintendo switch, then I have emulators with a bunch of Nintendo classics) I wouldn’t bother. I don’t even know how to do that for a Nintendo switch.

So yeah it’s an option but in terms of the discussion about Gen z people not shelling out for video games, I think part of the decline has been from casual users who aren’t either shelling out $ and aren’t interested in enough to pirate 😅 I’m a millennial.

I assume to pirate and transfer to a Nintendo switch (I don’t have 2, just the original) there’s an initial set up cost?

I tend to stick to the emulator my brother got me with all our 90s(ish) childhood games lol. I don’t know if those exist yet for more modern games - or at least not at the cost of the classics!

So then protect the cards without excessive restrictions that aren’t put on other cards. Freedom of movement is a human right so to restrict someone’s essential payment method state to state seems like a breach of that.

So if these machines are skimming all cards numbers/pins then surely the answer is to restrict everyone’s cards, credit, debit, everything to their own state?

Why is it your logic that only the poor people need to be restricted because other people are stealing from them? Where’s the logic in going after the victims of fraud?

Ah of course it’s the poor that are ruining your country - that makes sense 🙄

CAN you call him?

I’m autistic and I don’t think I fall into this way of talking but I do know that autistic people have been saying that they are getting flagged as AI more often than non autistic people. It’s only anecdotal but it will be interesting to see if it is really happening!

My question is do people have supervisors that they never see (in a meeting, even on video?) or talk to on the phone? I know a lot is done through text based communication now but I didn’t realize there are people who ONLY have text based comms with their bosses.