Wet dreams? Though when I’m sick, congestion seems to disappear when I sleep (only to return after I wake up.) So if that’s normal and if wet dreams have some kind of decongestant property, we may never know.

Don’t worry, some of us are keeping the astronomy spirit alive in the younger generation. There’s a 5 year old kid I work with who can name tons of celestial objects that my coworkers have never heard of. It makes for fun inside jokes/references. Sometimes when we’re with another person, he’ll compare our distances to each other and say, “You’re Alpha Centauri A, I’m Alpha Centauri B, and he/she’s Proxima Centauri.”

One doesn’t have to be internationally important to not want their audio recorded in their own private space.

The laptop I have now has its own camera cover, but when I had a laptop that didn’t have it, I was able to buy little slider stickers to put over it. I don’t want to link any particular website, but if you look up “laptop camera slider sticker” you can easily find them.

I hope they like me talking to myself in funny voices and belting out songs at the top of my lungs, because that’s all the audio they’ll get out of me.

“It” from South Park might as well be a reality.

Hard agree. But I’m autistic, and as far back as I can remember, I’ve avoided social interactions. My mom talks about how I happily played by myself as a toddler. I also remember a neighbor kid who seemed to call constantly to ask to play, and I turned her down over and again. (She eventually back-stabbed me, so don’t feel too bad for her.)

Some people legit like to be around others. Some people can’t stand the thought of spending time alone at all. Everyone’s built differently. For me, it takes a special kind of person to make me want to socialize with them (almost always other neuro-divergent folks, where I can “remove the mask” so to speak.)

A few months ago I decided to listen to a few albums I used to be obsessed with as a teen. I just… didn’t feel anything anymore. The music used to vibe with my teenage angsty energy, but being in my 30s now it just doesn’t hit the same.

Meanwhile, I still rock out to classic rock and oldies from before my time. I was just singing Steve Miller Band and The Beatles on my way home from work - no radio, just felt like singing.

Though some stuff I listened to in my youth is more relevant now than ever. Songs written during the Bush era criticizing politics are as cathartic to scream out as they used to be…

Androgen insensitivity syndrome is fascinating. Plenty of people with it grow up female and have no idea their genes are different, until they reached puberty and never get their period.

Born in the late 80s, making me a 90s kid.

My siblings, neighbors, and I would play in the woods behind our neighborhood. There were trails and a creek that flowed through it. My older brothers and their friends would build bridges over the water (which vandals would destroy, so they rebuilt several times.) My parents allowed me to go play there as long as I didn’t go alone. There was evidence of past generations playing in the same place, like platforms from old tree houses that had mostly fallen apart and strings along the tree line from old cup+string “phones” that kids in the past used to communicate. I’d also pick wild blueberries and climb trees. My siblings would fish and just chill.

We were among the last families to give their kids such freedom. One of our neighbor families had early “helicopter parents,” so the kids lived very different childhoods from us. I remember other parents talking about that family, almost always disparagingly about how the kids were always stuck at home and were being raised on video games. It was like most adults saw adventuring outdoors with other kids as a typical way to spend childhood. I learned to navigate on my own, walking and bike riding around town without any way to contact my parents for hours on end. It was normal, it was expected, it was even seen as important for a child’s budding independence.

Some kids would use payphones to make prank calls. There was one trail behind a park where somebody left a bunch of porn magazines, because it seems every town had a random “porn mag” patch somewhere. It was the first time I saw adult content, and I remember us kids treating it like it was funny.

I spent a lot of my childhood outdoors. My first kiss was on a nature trail in my home town. There was even a tire swing that the boy pushed me on, before we walked to the edge of the inlet for that first kiss moment.

When indoors, I played NES and SNES games. My family also played board games and my siblings and I made up our own creative games to play together. Car rides were great, too, with plenty of time to stare out the window and let my mind wander. At one point my mom bought a van and it came with a heavy-ass TV for the back, but my parents got rid of it. It only played VHS tapes and although at first I thought it would’ve been so cool to have a TV in the vehicle, I look back on it now and am glad that we didn’t keep it. Even when we drove for 25 hours to get to Florida, I didn’t miss having a screen. I brought books, a portable CD player, and toys, then spent most of the time gazing outside anyway. I remember seeing the full moon in the sky and thinking about how cool it was that it was always there, no matter where I went…

Thanks for the walk down memory lane. I often think about the shitty parts of my childhood, so it’s nice to remember the parts that didn’t suck. I’m really glad I got to enjoy the outdoors as much as I did, without being treated like a delinquent for having a childhood that mirrored all the generations of children that came before me.

I’d rather switch to a different mode.

Yeah, I’m conflicted about oral. It can be a lot of fun at first, but at a certain point it just gets… too wet. Uncomfortably wet. Need-to-sit-on-a-towel-now wet.

I love this because I’m pretty sure it’s why I (female) was able to beat my (male) ex at certain mini-games. Gotta rub the stick button back and forth really quickly? Oh honey, you have no chance against me.

We can pick almost any 12 year old in a developed country and know a lot about them. They go to school (unless they’re home schooled), they don’t yet have a job (though they might babysit or run a lemonade stand), and they’re at or near puberty, complete with all the things that come with it. Some may be further along than others, but they are more or less going through the same stage of life. None of them are getting married or taking an early retirement or what-have-you.

After a certain age, those similarities disappear. Although we were all on the same page as each other once upon a time, by 40 our paths have diverged in such extreme ways that looking at others of the same age can be surprising.

If you’re not old enough to relate, that’s fine, but it’d be silly to dismiss the experiences of others just because you’re not there yet. I’m not 40 yet, but I’ve seen enough by my mid-30s to understand what this post is trying to capture.

That bugs me, too. For images, at least, Lemmy can host just fine. It just takes an extra step to copy the image or link and add it to the post. Considering that Reddit blocks a lot of VPNs, hosting the image here means better visibility (for the many people here who use VPNs.)

Besides, who wants to give Reddit the extra views? I sure don’t.

This is one of the biggest reasons I never got into makeup. I remember being a teen and hearing people ask women, “Are you okay?” when they didn’t do their full makeup routine. I thought, “Man, it’s got to hurt to feel like having a natural face means something’s wrong with you. I’d rather go into the world how I am and have that be accepted as normal.”

The damn things pick up on every tiny, insignificant noise in the background, too. You don’t have to say anything and sometimes it’ll go, “Sorry, I didn’t get that.” No shit, I didn’t say anything, someone simply slammed a car door shut outside.

Good luck to all the parents who try to navigate those menus while their kids are around…

Damn Florida. I got burned on the bottom of my foot when one of my sandals broke halfway through a beach walk in Florida. It absolutely sucked.

but girl horny feels so different

I’m so curious what feels different about “boy horny” vs “girl horny.” If you’re comfortable doing so, I’d be interested in hearing some elaboration on what ways the two experiences differ, in your perspective. (Other trans individuals feel free to chime in!)

I imagine they mean that it’s not something we have a choice in deciding. There’s no literal vote for it, those running health care facilities and making staffing decisions don’t care what we think. It’s not even like other decisions where we can do research and make ethical choices. If all the hospitals do the same thing and we need urgent medical care, it’s not like we can say, “Oh, I’m not going to that hospital because they won’t treat their staff right.”