When I was in third or fourth grade, we had to take a swimming test for a badge in sports class. Basically you had to prove you can swim for a certain time, jump into the water and dive. If you got the badge, you could attach it to your swim suit to show you can swim in deep water.

I had no problem with the swimming and jumping, but then came the diving. The poolwater was heavily clorinated and it hurt my eyes. I usually wore goggles, however the teacher decided that we weren’t allowed goggles for the test. We had to dive for a ring. I remember being above the ring, going down, but then I couldn’t find it. Due to the chlorine I couldn’t open my eyes and I searched the ground with my hands. Eventually I was out of breath and had to go up again. The teacher said that I had failed the test because I couldn’t bring the ring back up, even though it was clear that I was able to dive and stay under water for a long time. I never got that badge. I’m not sure why, I think I could have redone the test in a swimming class outside of school, but my parents never cared to sign me up because ultimately the badge wasn’t that important.

I’m still a bit mad because I feel like I should have been allowed goggles in such a heavily chlorinated pool.

There are rules to handle foreign names in a language with declinsion. I don’t see why you can’t use those.

Besides, most inflected languages I know will handle names differently from other nouns. Definitely true in German, but also Italian. E.g. you say “Faccio una foto del duomo.” (I’m taking a picture of the dome.) but “Faccio una foto di Mike.” (I’m taking a picture of Mike.)

The only language where this doesn’t work that I know of would be Latin, which is why people in the past latinized names.

We never had different names in language classes and the idea is so weird to me. My name is my name, I don’t introduce myself with a different name when I go to Italy or Spain.

About two days without food, a bit more if I remember correctly, and around one day without water.

I had to have a knee surgery with general anesthesia, so I wasn’t allowed to eat several hours before and couldn’t drink either. Due to the timing of the surgery the last time I would have been allowed to drink was like 1 am, but I’m a morning person and was anxious so I went to bed at my normal 10pm and also ate and drank at my normal 7-8pm or so. Or maybe I had to stop eating earlier, I don’t remember exactly.

Anyway, the surgery happened, my parents picked me up and took me home. My mother had one of her many many meltdowns. They hadn’t brought me snacks or drinks to the hospital and she just mocked me that I couldn’t hold it together for the 1 hour ride home. We get home, I hobbled to my bed. My mother refused to bring me food or drinks and forbid my father from bringing me anything. I could come to the kitchen and sit at the table “like a normal person” if I wanted to eat. In the evening my spineles POS father at least brought me a bottle of water, much to my mother’s dismay.

The next day I managed to hobble to the table, so I was allowed to eat and drink.

This wasn’t entirely new, my parents had a habit of locking me up in my room without food or water for an entire day when I was little. They never thought that was a big deal. My mother even told me after the surgery that she wouldn’t bring me food to not “enable my spoiled behaviour” and that it was a good chance to finally lose some weight. (I was just slightly overweight, maybe 80kg at 172).

In case you’re wondering: yes, I’ve been no contact with my family for years.

I’m jealous.

There was a very annoying radio ad for a musli brand when I was a child. I decided then that I would never buy their product ever. I’m 40 now and can proudly say that I still go out of my way to not buy any products from that company and to the best of my knowledge I’ve never eaten their products.

I get that the idea is to create recognition, but if it’s too annoying you won’t get a “Ah, I’ve heard that name I’ll go for this one” from me but a “Oh, that’s the annoying one, I’ll avoid it.”

Never. I have a very rare first Name and the combination with my last Name is unique. I also have cut contact with my abusive family so I don’t want them to find me.

I liked dating platforms way back in the days when you could make your own page, had large text fields to describe yourself and could filter by age, location and maybe a few other important things like smoking or wanting kids. Years later I tried the apps and it was just frustrating and nothing else. There wasn’t even really space to describe yourself or show your character.

I’m not talking about friend groups, just groups that are open to the public. Friend groups are OK in whatever constellation you wish.

Your choir has a good reason to be men only, since that creates a certain sound.

It gets tricky when the point of the group or club is something not related to gender. I don’t think an all-female board game club that is open to the public but only lets women join would be OK. Personally I think you can have your meetings for only people of your gender when you organize them only for yourself. But as soon as you do something publicly, you don’t get to say “everybody can come except group X” without a good reason.

That goes for men and women, I’m also not a fan of “xy only for girls” clubs without a good reason.

Gender exclusive groups are OK when there is a legitimate reason. Unfortunately it just so happens that women-exclusive groups have a legitimate reason very often, which is usually “I don’t want to be hit on in every activity I do”.

Why are there women only career events? Because many women experience going to “normal” career events, have nice conversations, thinking they made a good business connection just to be asked out on a date and ghosted when they decline. They don’t get the same benefits out of “normal” events as men do.

Why are there women only gyms? Because women want to do sports without being hit on regularly.

Now you could say “Well, but that’s a problem of some men not sticking to the rules. Just enforce the rules.” But the problem is, the rules aren’t being enforced, women aren’t taken seriously or just told to suck it up, that’s part of life. You’re in a public space so it’s OK for a man to ask you out. To which the women’s reaction is: “Well, then I’d rather do X in a private space where there aren’t any men who could hit on me.”

As long as there are struggles that men face exclusively it’s totally ok to have men only groups. The problem:

1. men do not face the problem of being put in uncomfortable situations by women almost anywhere they go, so they have less topics or activities where they feel like they need a men’s only group. For most topics/activities men can go to a mixed-gender group and have the same experience as they would in a male-only group. Women can’t.

2. a lot of men’s groups do not form around “we want to address a typical male problem” but “we have prejudices about women being bad at x” or “we just hate women”.

And lastly historically the reason why women wanted to join male-only groups was because those groups were often used to make decisions and policies. Business is being made in golf clubs and was made in “gentlemen’s clubs”. Women wanting to join those wasn’t about playing golf. Sure, we can have a women’s club to play golf. It was about being left out of the informal decision making process, the deal making. In my personal experience women are more likely to discuss work matters at work with everybody and at any “women only” outing with colleagues work was hardly a topic. Whereas when it happened that men went drinking with “just the boys” the next day important decisions had been made and suddenly Mark was in charge of the new project. Just my personal experience and I’m not saying it can’t happen the other way around in female dominated fields.

Because women’s shelters need to exist even if men are domestically abused too and never in my fucking life have I heard anyone suggest a battered men’s shelter might even maybe be a good idea.

I don’t know where you live but men’s shelters are a thing. At least I know about them in Germany, the US has them, too. A large problem for men’s shelters (and why there aren’t as many as women’s shelters) is that they want to have only male staff (just like women’s shelters employ only women as staff), but there are less men going into social work. Also, men’s shelters don’t get the publicity women’s shelters get, so that is definitely a thing that should change. Men talking about being abused by women should be made more normal and I think it would help if there were more stories in the media about men fleeing from abuse and going to a men’s shelter. That would make the concept more widely known.

I kind of like “Closed for the week” “Go away and don’t bother me, I’m closed this week due to bleeding.” :D

I love Qobus. I heard they also pay the artists more fairly. It’s just unfortunate that some big artists are still missing. And from what I can see subscriptions only work via the Google Play store.

A common one in German is Erdbeerwoche (strawberry week).

The debate had actually been going on for a while between Fraktur and Antiqua. In the past Fraktur was used to write German, while Antiqua was used for Latin. The debate is known as the “Antiqua-Fraktur-Streit” and was going on in Germany since the 18th century. In the late 19th century it became very heated when several movements tried to make their preferred font the standard in the wake of standardizations for spelling. During the Weimar republic both were taught in schools, Antiqua for Latin and Fraktur for German.

Now you’d think someone like Hitler would love a classical German font, but Hitler found the usage of Fraktur “backward-looking” and the artsy, ornate style of Fraktur not fitting for the new age of technology and strong Aryans. They even prohibited the usage of Fraktur in some publications.

It’s actually pretty hilarious that Fraktur is associated with Nazis now when Hitler was pretty outspoken about hating it and tried very hard to abolish it.

I switched careers from logistics (office) to IT a couple of years ago. Logistics was notoriously badly paid and it was hard to find a job that’s not temporary for a year amd then they throw you out. Everybody kept telling us for years to go to IT, because that’s where the money and the non-temporary contracts are… But that’s only true for people who’ve worked there for decades.

It really does feel like no field is left where you can have a stable career. Accounting, sales, hospital, no matter where you ask, it’s temp contracts and shitty wages.

I’m German and when I was in elementary school in the 90s we learned about the Nazi regime. An old woman visited our class to talk about what is was like for her as a child under Hitler. I remember that she said some people just disappeared and noone really knew why. There were rumours about prisons or labor camps but noone knew for sure what happened to the people who disappeared. She only learned about the concentration camps after the war was over.

I bet in a decade or so we will learn about all the horrors that are really going on right now.

Relationsships with several people have been around in a lot of cultures all over the world. Harems have existed through all time periods. The main problem in the past was ensuring paternity so it was usually one man with several women. The bible has several examples of men taking multiple women, in many islamic societies taking multiple wives is ok, in Nepal one woman could have several men.

Of course relationships have mostly been formed by economic necessities, not considerations of sexual preference. A woman might have several husbands in a place where living conditions are rough and it takes a lot of manpower for one household. A man may have many wives where men often die from wars and the women need to be taken care of. If these rules are kept for hundreds or even thousands of years, can you still call them a phase?

Besides you must not forget that the western view on history has been heavily shaped by christian values. Obvious proof that people were homo-/bisexual in the past was reinterpreted, the same goes for any form of open/poly relationship. “They were roommates” has become a meme for a reason.

I could name you at least 10 off the top of my head in the city I live in.

You know they don’t want to do that. If they did, people would ask questions like “How come my 40$ homemade Spaghetti with fresh spinach sauce lists soylecithin, yeast extract and xanthan gum as ingredients?”