Just like you, except different.
I’ll call it now - speak to that guy in a few years and he’ll be one of those, “I used to be vegan, but I stopped because I couldn’t stay healthy” people. He may even double-down and say that nobody can be healthy while vegan, because he personally couldn’t do it.
I’ve met plenty of those over my 20+ years of veganism. Learning about nutrition to make sure you get a balanced diet isn’t that hard - resources are everywhere. Honestly, such skills should be practiced by everyone, whether vegan or not. A lot of people don’t realize how unbalanced their diets are until they go to a doctor’s check-up in their 30s and get a surprising blood test result.
I was an extremely picky eater as a kid. The funny thing is how I became less picky after I went vegan (in my teens.) It tracks with how we lose taste sensitivity as we age - children have more taste buds than adults. It serves them because a lot of things that can be harmful are bitter (poisons are often bitter) or sour (spoiled food goes sour), and for a small child a small amount can be more dangerous than for an adult.
Anyway, as others have said, it's a combination of texture, smell, and taste. Being a "super taster" isn't as fun as it sounds - it means a smaller amount of flavor can seem stronger for you, and can easily become overwhelming. I still prefer bland foods sometimes for that reason. Light seasoning can go a long way. Texture can be awful or amazing, sometimes I crave a food not for its taste, but for its texture. As I noted in another comment, mushrooms have a texture that repels me. Eggplant also has a texture I struggle to tolerate, but I put up with it when somebody prepares something for me with it (occasionally people prepare vegan foods to help me feel included, but they don't usually know my texture issues and I don't want to be rude.) Hell, half of what drove me to veganism was texture, smell, and taste-based - a lot of animal products have textures, smells, and tastes that I couldn't tolerate when I was a kid and made to eat them.
Eggs smell awful, and the fat from meats have a texture that was too much for me. I remember sitting at the dinner table and cutting all the "fat" from my meats just to isolate a single square to eat... but my parents made me sit there and told me to eat the whole thing, even if we sat at the dinner table for hours. I never liked bacon, and I know the internet hates me for that (well, they already hate me for being vegan, but still), since it's pretty much all fat even if it's crispy. The smell does it no help, either. A lot of people enjoy the smell of cooking meat, but I never did. The closest thing would be chicken, but ever since I had pet birds, it became awful, too - ever smell a bird up close? They smell like warm chicken. Once that smell became associated with my pets, whom I lost too soon (they were only two years old, victims to teflon poisoning) I only think of them. Giving up meat was part of my closure after they died - it brought me a peace that I needed, and has continued giving it ever since.
Please be kind to so-called "picky eaters." Their sensory experiences are outside of their control. Don't do like my parents did and try to force it, as that helps nobody. If you want to introduce a picky kid to a new food, be gentle and start slow. That's how we do it at my job (working with autistic children, some which have extremely restricted diets that don't provide proper nutrition.) It starts with tolerating it being on their plate, then progresses over time to them touching it, then to putting it to their lips, and only after all that do we encourage them to try a piece. It can take months. But if it's something they absolutely won't tolerate near them, just try something else - there can be very valid reasons they don't want a particular food, but thankfully there are a lot of options out there.
High five, same here! Ever since I was a kid, if my family was making eggs, I'd hide in my room with the door closed to keep the smell from coming in. It's nasty and overwhelming.
Then there's mushrooms, that smell like dirt when they cook and have the texture of rubber. The only way I can tolerate them is if they're finely chopped into tiny pieces and surrounded by other, better foods (like in a spring roll.) Chunks of mushroom are an absolute no-go, and I will pick them out if I am served them. It makes me feel bad, because I hate wasting food. On the flip side, local restaurants sometimes remember me by how I add "no mushroom" and "no egg" to all my orders.
The Magic School Bus is still fun, btw. Check the new version if you haven't seen it yet - it's got all updated science.
I heard, "Wrapped up like a douche," which always went well with misunderstanding the lyric after it, "Another rumor in the night." (Correct line is "Another runner in the night.")
Username does not check out
When I was younger, my parents got a small pop-up pool. It wasn't long before the "NO DIVING - SHALLOW WATER" sticker that came with it ended up on the toilet.
My guess is they mean “a conscience,” but they used a terrible word choice. One doesn’t need an inner-monologue in order to have a conscience.
I had a job where I was made to “look busy” by carrying around a clipboard. I pretended to look at shelves as if I were writing down product information, but I was actually doodling and writing down story ideas.
Prior to that, I would legit look up product information, so that I could better inform the customers who asked me questions. But management didn’t like seeing me standing at a computer and told me to stop. Ah well, malicious compliance it is.
“I wasn’t drinking, of course, but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea,”
Riiiiight. The excuse of college kids caught in an embarrassing scenario, that's totally legit reasoning.
I bought two big batches of toilet paper from Costco last December. Considering it's August and I'm still in the first batch (and near the end of it), I'm happy to say my initial calculation of "a year's worth of toilet paper" is holding up!
And the toilet's clogged. Now where are you gonna hide away and procrastinate?
All it needs is some rainbows coming off the sides of the ledges, like a wall of floating nyan cats.
When I worked at a place with such a rewards program, the amount of people who put in their number/signed up for rewards was included in our performance metric. It’s so fucked up, because it impacted how many hours we were given. Never mind that if someone only works part time their numbers will naturally be lower than those who work full time, making it a self-perpetuating cycle for those who want to move up to full time.
Anyway, point is - if the cashier cares, it’s because a messed up system is compelling them to. Which is why instead of saying I don’t have an account (which will prompt them to ask me to sign up), I just use Jenny’s number.
Wearing a skirt implies consent.
I'm amazed it has to be said, but no, wearing a skirt does not imply consent for anyone to look up it. The fuck kind of rapist thinking is that?
Edit: ITT people with poor reading comprehension skills. “Rapist thinking” doesn’t mean “looking = raping,” it means “the way rapists think.” As in, rapists also think that the clothing someone wears “implies consent” for their actions.
If you’re using the same reasoning as a rapist to justify looking up a woman’s skirt, and you don’t see what’s wrong with that, I worry for the women around you. Be better.
You gotta put a \ before the asterisk to cancel out the mark-up, like this: *
(I used a second \ to cancel out the usual effect in the example. Fun fact, that cancellation is why the "shrug emoticon" sometimes loses an arm.)
I don’t expect anything anymore, that’s why I stopped speaking out. People ask how I’m doing and I just keep it light, because there is nothing that can be done on an individual level when the issues that drag down life are systemic (unless everyone bands together to revolt, but I’m not holding my breath on that.)
- Jump
Reddit keeps pushing on being a closed platform, now rolling out mandatory logging for old.reddit.com - worth pushing for the fediverse again?
If you check the Mod Log (accessible through the button under the comment with 3 vertical dots), apparently that user has a history of using ableist slurs, uncivility, and telling users to kill themselves.
If someone like that is complaining about the culture here, the rest of us must be doing something right.
If only I could afford the $200 co-pay per visit. Some of us are too poor to afford mental health.
I remember when American Idol came out - far less trashy than reality shows, though still not my thing. I was in middle school and when the topic came up, the people who said they watched it “watched ironically,” that they don’t really care, they just “like to make fun of the bad singers.”
I would think, “But that’s worse than watching it sincerely. That’s just being a jerk.” I felt bad for the people who got embarrassed on national TV, the idea of watching a show just to laugh at someone is so mean-spirited.