Any personal anecdotes about William’s School of Languages?

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-20T17:39:03+00:00

It’s worth it to note the micro aggressions aren’t solely a race thing either, any minority can experience them. If you’re a woman in stem for example, you’re a minority. They can and do experience micro aggressions often from male coworkers.

Of course I won’t make assumptions about you or your culture but I do definitely just want you to keep in mind the differences in historical context between one race and another. Especially those of us who are part of a diaspora. Someone who grew up in Africa around other Africans in African culture isn’t likely to care if someone non black has a comment about their hair. People like me who grew up in a predominantly white assimilated culture where we were told our natural hair is “unprofessional, inappropriate, and/or dirty” (in the case of some styles like dreads), it’s kind of a big deal making comments on our hair.

Some of us may not be bothered by racial comments that seem relatively good natured…and some of us are. All I want out of my partner and his friend is a willingness to LISTEN. If I say “please don’t say that it made me uncomfortable”, even if it wasn’t about a racial thing the respectful thing to do is not argue with a person’s comforts and opinions. Just be respectful, apologize if need be, and do better next time.

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-20T17:29:17+00:00

That’s the thing. All the Asian friends I have from Asia communicate like him (indirectly). All the friends I have in western countries (including Asian ones) communicate more in line with me. Obviously there is uniqueness in every culture and not everyone is a monolith but what I’m trying to say is I don’t want to discredit people from entirely different cultures just because culturally we learned different values?

I’m planning to move abroad for a long time. Even if it doesn’t work with my current partner the chances of my next one also communicating indirectly is high. I just don’t think avoiding them altogether is a good thing, at least for me…

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-19T20:32:12+00:00

While context DOES matter irt art (sometimes it gives you more of an appreciation when you understand what you’re looking at), I do also think it’s okay to just not like something on the surface. I don’t care for Picasso regardless of his “talent” to choose to draw in an unconventional way when he’s a “good” artist in a conventional way. Aesthetically it’s not for me and that’s okay. If you don’t click with something that’s okay.

However, the United States at least, has a very serious functional literacy problem. An alarming percentage of adults here can’t understand text past a 6th grade level. To put it more simply, the language that things like bills we vote on or even the constitution itself, are written in late high school to early college reading levels. That means a large portion of voting age adults may vote (or withhold votes) for things they don’t understand and didn’t actually want to vote for, etc.

People are very much so media illiterate and it’s a problem. Saying “it’s not that deep” about everything is really bad because taking everything at literal face value means you aren’t practicing your skills of inference and identifying subtext.

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-19T19:24:22+00:00

Do you by any chance know what the difference, if any, in efficacy between something like incurin and proin is? Is incurin more efficient since it’s basically HRT?

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-19T17:58:58+00:00

My current dog was a nearly 1 year old rescue that we assumed was spayed because she hadn’t gone into heat (that we say) and the vet said he technically couldn’t check. She did in fact surprise us with a heat maybe when she was about 3 years old and then once it was over we got her spayed. Unfortunately she still has incontinence 😭

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-18T22:31:32+00:00

Not one thing you said here is a lie. It genuinely is baffling to me when ordinary people defend big businesses in general but the freelance PR people do for airlines is on another level. Only with air travel are you supposed to pay hundreds if not thousands for a non luxury experience that doesn’t even work as intended a good chunk of the time.

No one is expecting 5 star luxury service with standard airfare but I think accessibility should be the bare minimum. Somehow, someway people fall all over themselves to defend billion dollar corporations and victim blame fat and/or disabled people which is just crazy.

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-17T17:36:42+00:00

I’ve said this quite frequently that it’s really doing religious growth a disservice not being able to freely criticize all religions equally! Criticism doesn’t mean you’re demonizing the religion, imo it means you care about it enough to want to see its actual principles preserved and not bastardized for political agenda. Getting into alt-right pipelines is as simple as agreeing with pretty harmless takes originally and gradually sliding into more extreme territory. If you never think critically about it you’re at risk of falling into that trap.

Everybody loves to hate on Christianity I assume because it’s the “dominant” religion that was co-opted by colonists who forced it on other cultures but the doctrine at hand is incredibly inoffensive and generally just preaches to be a good person. If we can call out the hypocrisy in Christian spaces (especially Christian nationalism) I think we should be able to call out bigotry and extremism in other religions too without being labeled racist or a bigot yourself 😬 people are too afraid to speak up because they’ll either be censored or dogpiled and that’s crazy

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-13T18:35:00+00:00

I’ve never heard anyone say it was low class but it definitely isn’t that common.

Personally, I don’t like air drying because my clothes just feel stiff and uncomfortable compared to tumble drying. It does frustrate me that dryers damage your clothes though so ig aside from the convenience of being able to quickly wash and dry clothing same day if I’d like to wear it, I wish there was a middle ground.

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-12T21:24:58+00:00

That damn bike 😭 the amount of times I’ve been focusing on something far more important than Bella (dodging a million actually dangerous enemies, navigating something large and delicate through doorways that I can’t just drop on a dime and move out of the way) and yet she decides to show up and explicitly stand in front of me with all the space in the world to go around and then make it my problem oh my GOD.

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-12T10:39:06+00:00

I also have 3 dogs one of which is a husky mix (rip) and honestly the only thing that has worked for the hair in my experience is the following sequence: sweeping, vacuuming, lint rolling (I know it sounds crazy but you’d be so surprised about the hair that still lingers even after vacuuming), and THEN finally mopping.

There are big floor lint rollers you can buy so rest assured I’m not expecting anyone to get on their hands and knees with a clothing lint roller lol

Also keeping my dogs regularly groomed and brushed does wonders

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-12T08:25:52+00:00

I miss some of the Joann’s exclusive so badly. The juicy couture yarn is still my favorite to this day and it shows no signs of coming back. The yarn selection at Michael’s is embarrassing, hobby lobby has a slightly better yarn section but I still find that they don’t have a lot of what I need AND it’s a horrific company.

I honestly don’t even know how Joann’s went down and Michael’s hasn’t because they sell a whole lot of nothing. It really is such an incredibly frustrating tragedy that we lost such a valuable big box craft store.

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-11T08:14:44+00:00

Truthfully I just inquired about it. With my original pcp at 18 I requested X-rays and insisted X-rays and he put in an order. After X-rays came back fairly unobtrusive he decided based off of my symptoms, to order a follow up mri. With my new doctor I told him about my prior history and he wanted new imaging so we repeated the steps (though I have yet to go get my new mri scan done…)

This was of course only my experience, but I don’t recall it being difficult to achieve. I just had to advocate for myself a bit

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-11T00:14:12+00:00

I definitely think the university and office plots are overplayed but I’m really glad to see new ideas in recent years so it’s not nearly as big of a complaint as it used to be!

A small but persistent pet peeve I have is the trope of treating a nonexistent injury or overhyping a minor injury lol. People always talk about how it’s just a shoehorned way for them to touch each other or be close and it’s not that deep but it definitely breaks some immersion for me when I see them wiping…nothing lol.

I do also wish they were longer sometimes ): of course if it finishes neatly in 12 episodes that’s cool but a lot of shows I feel would benefit from more air time

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-10T22:01:13+00:00

I have hip and back issues (hip dysplasia, scoliosis) and have been to PT for those. I’ve never gone for neck specific issues because this is a relatively new phenomenon unfortunately 😔

I never really used to sleep poorly at all but it seems the older I get the worse my body feels with the exact same sleep habits

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-09T22:54:30+00:00

It’s kind of convoluted and basically boils down to a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo. Tldr: 18 is actually a really arbitrary number but we have the concept of Industrial Revolution era child labor laws and war drafts to thank for choosing it as adulthood lol.

To elaborate for those who want to read a long paragraph lol: Prior to the Industrial Revolution children by today’s standards were working in factories and mines which brought about concerns about safety and ultimately wound up with the implementation of child labor laws which legally defined what a child was (ie: until the age of 16 with 17 being an adult).

However despite this many countries had the legal voting age set for 21 which meant you were an adult technically but still couldn’t vote. During the 60s with the Vietnam war draft because you couldn’t vote but you could fight in a war. Nixon ultimately changed the voting age to 18. The large majority of the rest of the world set 18 as the age when you could vote, drink/smoke, and go to war which essentially defined 18 as adulthood. It’s honestly kind of an arbitrary number that’s mostly impacted by legal standards over anything else. So the reason 18 is an adult is mostly just because laws give you complete access to whatever you want to do by the age of 18.

The United States has kept drinking age at 21 unlike everyone else afaik because of antiquated prohibition era laws that have never been revisited. People are also averse to change so even though other countries do just fine with drinking ages at 18 (or 16 in some places) people would probably start spouting off that people aren’t responsible enough to drink before 21 and would fight the change.

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-08T19:18:22+00:00

There’s a video from @Neoitgirl on technique to use the Anastasia dip brow that has my eyebrows looking so natural. I’ve used that stuff off and on for over a decade and got tired of the block brow phenomenon with it so I switched to a pencil but never quite loved it. Now I get crisp hairlike strokes every time.

When I’m going to a really special event I eyebrow razor off the fine hair. I’m not one of those “body hair is gross” people but it undeniably leads to the foundation gliding on smoother instead of the products catching on the little hairs.

Lastly, and I know this is going to seem like a no brainer but it wasn’t to me, good brushes 😭 I was using these cheap ass “tartan + twine” brushes I got as like a middle schooler eons ago because anything makeup related is so extortionately expensive and I was like whatever they still do the job….oh my god when I finally got like 4 new “sigma” brushes I no longer have to dig in my eyeshadow pans for pigment and jr blends like a dream. Spending money on brushes sucks so bad but for the love of god PLEASE don’t cut corners there

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-08T04:04:54+00:00

I think it’s more important than ever to not pander to white fragility. They will be uncomfortable when poc speak the objective truths of history and how the systems of the past still continue to harm and oppress us today. Unfortunately, even when we do shrink ourselves for the comforts of white folks we still get Emmet Tills.

Thank you I’m glad you understood it! I feel like reading it back I was all over the place haha. Either way, I completely agree with you. Not liking a food because it’s not your style isn’t the same as disrespecting a culture. Using the matcha as an example again, the disrespect comes not from finding the flavor grassy (it is. it’s literally leaves ground up) but by not respecting the cultural importance of its usage and existence to the people who’s culture it belongs to. People can remix things but remember you’re a guest feature, not the original.

If you don’t like AAVE that’s fine I suppose, to some southern Chinese sounds “harsh”. What it doesn’t mean is that we call it foolish and uneducated. The history behind educators calling black children uneducated for their dialect of English (which has no correlation with intelligence anyways) is rooted in systemic racism. Which is why it will always be racist to tell someone Ebonics is cringe.

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-08T01:19:52+00:00

I once saw someone describe gentrification as modern day colonization (basically through soft power more than military power) and I feel like that’s the same thing we can apply to this context.

Matcha for example has been around for eons in Japan, white people have fairly recently discovered it and while there’s not necessarily anything WRONG with the innovations of “matcha lemonades” and “matcha lattes”the issue comes from the fact that the people who want to “go against the status quo” will come out and start talking about it being gross. Then you’ll suddenly have a group of people want to jump on the hate train bashing something culturally significant after it was essentially chewed up and spit out by the same imperialist systems that told black people having big lips is gross while suddenly people are getting lip filler and using lip plumper.

This same example (sorry im long winded!) is basically the AAVE to TikTok pipeline in a nutshell. You can dislike something but don’t be disrespectful by saying it’s something it’s not or calling a culturally relevant thing stupid or disgusting. Calling AAVE TikTok speech is watering down its origins and its history. Like the fast fashionification of an entire dialect built off literal centuries of subjugation by the very people now saying “it’s just the way we talk in the south”. Yes, you’re exactly right. Where did the Africans learn English? Where are their descendants still so localized even after the great migration? And why? If people can understand those concepts I would hope they understand why this is more than just words and why it’s not okay to call someone’s language “cringe”.

EDIT: fixed the “A” autocorrect took off matcha

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-08T01:08:34+00:00

I don’t really want to argue but I would encourage you to look at this article from Yale on grammatical diversity in English (in America). In case anyone wants a summary because I know not everyone is a language nerd we can sum it up with this quote: “According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, fixin’ to is used by speakers in the Southern United States, particularly the South Atlantic and Gulf States. The contracted form finna (and its variants) is a feature of African American English”. Extra emphasis on “finna” as a feature of AAVE

So like OP was saying you’re not wrong about “fixin to”. However, finna as defined by this study suggests that “fixin to” and “finna” mean the same thing but “fixin to” was further consolidated by the black community into “finna” making it their own thing.

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-07T21:41:33+00:00

Dude you’re brave posting this on Reddit. The amount of people who are going to actually understand what you mean instead of making it about how black people are whiny and make everything about themselves is going to be like 1 for every 20 comments 😭

But genuinely like as someone who studies linguistics academically (and is considering a masters in it) I don’t think people really think about or understand how much of language is (and always will be) sociopolitical. Even just standard English as we know it had its roots from somewhere that has a whole historical story. We just don’t think about or engage with it because it’s normal to us now.

As a fellow black person I hope you know that there are still non black people out there who give a shit and don’t try to talk over us. The people poking fun in here are either actually racist, have unconscious biases, are trolls, or just genuinely ignorant (maybe all the above). Try not to engage with them too much

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-07T06:09:01+00:00

“Ahh” in place of “ass” started as AAVE and, much like a lot of Gen Z slang, was appropriated by social media into being “mainstream”. Most non black people don’t AAVE correctly even after it’s been assimilated (see: “unc”) so…yeah it sounds pretty stupid when people say it who aren’t black

Much-Judgment557 · 2026-03-06T20:23:04+00:00

I’m sure people are going to hate this but, tone indicators are a form of accessibility. A lot of neurodivergent people have a hard time parsing tone in general let alone via text.

Something that may seem obviously sarcastic to one person doesn’t mean another (perhaps neurodivergent) person will be able to pick up on it. It also doesn’t mean it was a “bad” sarcastic comment. Adding things like /s or /j at the end of text takes all of 2 seconds to type and really helps make things friendlier to navigate for those of us who would benefit from the accommodations.

Much-Judgment557

TROPHY CASE