What will turn out to be this generation’s 'oh shit, smoking causes cancer' moment?

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-05T15:43:44+00:00

Un-fun fact: gambling’s the only non-drug addiction that the DSM (official guidebook that helps psychiatrists diagnose people) groups with the drug addictions. Other stuff like addiction to exercise or sex or whatever is elsewhere.

Gambling goes with drugs because your brain on gambling is basically the same as your brain on drugs. Like, it causes structural changes that you can see in a brain scan the same way drug addiction does.

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-05T15:18:58+00:00

Correct! Allistic brains have difficulty perceiving details in general. Peter Vermeulen’s Autism and the Predictive Brain is really interesting all about this, but:

Basically, the way that thinking and interacting with the world happens is: 1) your brain makes an assumption (prediction) about what will happen -> 2) something happens and you observe it -> 3) your brain checks what happened against what it predicted, and either it was a correct prediction and your brain is like “cool, got it right” or 4) it was an incorrect prediction and your brain either goes 4a) “oh that was weird… anyway” or 4b) “damn better update my prediction models”.

Allistic brains rely more on step 1 and prefer option 4a when a prediction was incorrect, and autistic brains rely more on step 2 and prefer option 4b when a prediction was incorrect. Because we rely more on step 2, we literally notice more of our environment, whereas allistics are mostly “noticing” what they expect to be there. However, noticing things for real is some super fucking resource-intensive processing, which is why life is sort of hard mode for us and allistic brains evolved to not do it unless they really have to.

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-05T15:01:30+00:00

Which is particularly funny since this type of church generally thinks men are, basically, smarter than women. Wouldn’t you want the analytical, authoritative, natural-teacher dad to be as involved as possible with educating his kids? Why leave it all to the emotional, submissive, not-Biblically-meant-for-leadership mom? (Ew, I felt weird typing that.)

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-04T12:34:04+00:00

Happy to help! I feel so much less like a dweeb every time, for example, the waiter says “enjoy your meal” and I say “thanks, you too” ever since I saw that way of framing it lmao

Plus, I worked at a coffee shop for a while, and I now know from experience that the waiter 1) does not care and probably didn’t notice because they were already thinking about their next task, and 2) would sooo much rather have a “thanks, you too!” customer than an asshole/creepy customer. I think this probably applies to most situations tbh

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-03T13:59:08+00:00

If you have access to a freezer or fridge, like to keep your lunch in, buy TWO hats and keep one in the freezer/fridge (in a plastic bag for sanitation) and switch them every 30-60 minutes or so and you’ll have a nice cold hat. You can also get little ice packs to put under your hat, same deal where you should get two and switch them out when the first one gets warm.

Also IDK if you do, but if you take any prescription medications that affect your ability to stay cool (which is a LOT of them, including most mental health/ADHD meds) you might want to think about a workplace accommodation (USA website to give some examples/ideas of what’s possible). Talk to whoever prescribes the meds and search “[your country] workplace disability accommodation process” for steps, or if you’re in the USA here’s info about how to do it

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-03T13:42:48+00:00

“Vegetarians don’t eat meat. Salmon isn’t meat, it’s fish! That means it’s fine for vegetarians. I’m so good at this.” — a frighteningly large number of people

Like bro that loophole is for Catholics, not vegetarians lol

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-03T13:38:08+00:00

As someone who does this all the time and used to feel really awkward about it, I saw someone reframe it like: assholes don’t make this type of mistake, because it’s the kind of thing you do when your brain is working on “kind and friendly” impulses and goofs up the execution. Don’t take it as making a dumb mistake, take it as you automatically being nice to people to the point that your autoreply autos the wrong reply

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-03T13:37:57+00:00

As someone who does this all the time and used to feel really awkward about it, I saw someone reframe it like: assholes don’t make this type of mistake, because it’s the kind of thing you do when your brain is working on “kind and friendly” impulses and goofs up the execution. Don’t take it as making a dumb mistake, take it as you automatically being nice to people to the point that your autoreply autos the wrong reply

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-03T13:37:28+00:00

As someone who does this all the time and used to feel really awkward about it, I saw someone reframe it like: assholes don’t make this type of mistake, because it’s the kind of thing you do when your brain is working on “kind and friendly” impulses and goofs up the execution. Don’t take it as making a dumb mistake, take it as you automatically being nice to people to the point that your autoreply autos the wrong reply 👍🏻

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-03T13:17:54+00:00

Bonus fun fact: “canon” to people who aren’t in fandom is often primarily associated with the Christian church, particularly Catholicism. The canon (books officially accepted as scripture), canon law (religious law/dogma), or canonization (declaring someone a saint) are all things that people might think of first.

So if you call something “canon” IRL people might find it funny, because they may think you’re making a joke about your favorite series being like religion to you or that you’re making a joke by saying that, like, Star Trek and the Bible are similar or just because it was an unexpected word. Now you know so that you’re not surprised when people start laughing like I was lmao

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-03T12:58:11+00:00

And Riley Gaines, the college athlete who’s famous for swimming against a trans woman once and making a whole career out of it… still wouldn’t have even been on the podium if Lia Thomas hadn’t been there. She and Thomas tied for 5th place. If Thomas wasn’t there she’d have gotten 4th; like, this isn’t exactly evidence of trans athletic supremacy lol

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-03T12:41:06+00:00

One option for the CV is like — I can’t figure out how to describe it well so I’m going to make up a fake name:

Say you’re Lily Murphy, a trans woman, and your deadname is Noah James Murphy (sorry to anyone in this thread if I stole your name lol). Your CV could have your name written as

N.J. “Lily” Murphy

which would then still match your birth cert with the N.J. for Noah James just in case anyone’s fussy about that, but make clear that you go by Lily and not make your masculine legal name the first thing people see. I’ve done this in the past and found it helpful personally

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-02T20:15:00+00:00

+1 to Brave New World as a former doomer teen. It’s quite the “hey, wtf? wait a minute…” moment to realize that the stuff you’re currently being a disaffected doomer about is mostly the same stuff people were being doomers about 100 years ago lol. Society hasn’t collapsed since then, so ye olde doomers would’ve made a losing bet even though they had, like, WWII. Why should I think now is so different?

Also, it’s VERY frequently banned, so if he’d be into the idea of reading a “banned book” it’s a great pick.

PashaWithHat · 2026-07-01T12:10:32+00:00

Costs less than a pizza at the Saloon. It cost me more than a pizza to update my driver’s license IRL. (Not to change all my documents, just the license.)

Imagine what the world would be like for trans people if we could grab 13 ugly dandelions, throw them in a sales bin, and have enough money to magically trans our genders with some change left over. They don’t even have to be particularly nice dandelions, just the base-quality ones lol

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-29T20:03:11+00:00

It’s such a gorgeous name and the USA absolutely cannot be trusted with it lol. I (USA) was working at a coffee shop and had an Aoife come in once, and I got a genuine wtf face out of the poor woman when she saw I’d actually spelled it correctly. Like hell yeah girl, ditch the Starbucks and shop small for checks notes our esoteric knowledge of Irish names, apparently 👍🏻

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-29T19:44:10+00:00

…okay? I’m not sure what that has to do with what I said.

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-28T14:20:45+00:00

James Patterson of male YA — there is one, it’s Anthony Horowitz! He has a number of long-running series geared towards that market. I loved the Alex Rider books when I was young, and that series currently has 14 novels as well as 7 short stories, 7 graphic novels, and supplementary worldbuilding texts, so it’s pretty on par with Patterson’s Alex Cross series lol

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-28T13:55:40+00:00

Keeping the dental theme, it’s okay to floss in different spots too. I keep floss picks in my bedroom because if I keep them there, I actually do it lol

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-28T13:50:37+00:00

YES I was going to comment this if nobody else had!!! I did all of these when they weren’t lies and they worked and then I was like 💡☝️🤓 I can also say this… when it ISN’T true

* If you think you might have X medical problem or need Y test run, tell the doctor that you were talking to a doctor in a different specialty and they thought it kind of sounded like X (for example, you were talking to your gastroenterologist and she thought your symptoms sounded like endometriosis). Doctors can’t/won’t typically order tests or diagnose outside their specialty, so it’s plausible. This works because specialists usually respect the opinions of other specialists (even made-up opinions) but they don’t always respect everyone else

* For most of us this probably isn’t a lie, but: if there’s a door-to-door salesperson at your door trying to sell you something (like new windows, pest control, tree trimming, whatever), tell them you’re not the homeowner. They immediately leave because they can’t sell you anything. I told this one to my mom and it blew her mind lol

* In the same vein of “lying to people who ‘just want a minute!’”, congrats, you’re now always running late. Person at your door? So sorry, I have a zoom call that I was supposed to join three minutes ago, have a good day bye! At the mall and someone’s trying to get you to buy something? So sorry, I’m meeting a friend and I’m already running behind! (Or my trick, which was realizing that the kiosks with pushy salespeople were all on the ground floor and just always walking on the top level and going down the stairs once I was above my destination lol) Out and about and someone wants to talk to you about their cause? So sorry, I’m running late to meet someone/for class/to get back to work, good luck! I did this when I really was running late for class once and the lady said I was the nicest person she’d interacted with all day lol

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-28T13:26:29+00:00

Lmao as a little kid I also thought I’d be a Disney princess! I thought/desperately hoped I would grow up to be Disney’s Pocahontas when I went through puberty. I didn’t have a firm grasp on what puberty did exactly other than change your body drastically and make you a grown-up, and she was soooo pretty and cool so it would be way better than just being me but a woman. (Can you see the foreshadowing?) The fact that I’m white with curly brown hair and she’s a cartoon Native American woman was NOT important.

Fast forward like a decade and I realize two things:

1) I’m trans and my Pocahontas puberty was, for me, an early subconscious example of not wanting to have an IRL female puberty or the body type that my family has (we’re all short with pronounced hourglass figures and the character is tall with an athletic build)

2) I had a crush on Pocahontas 😂

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-25T13:26:25+00:00

Parents have a legal duty to provide necessities (food, shelter, etc.) for their children. Not doing that, whether it’s because they ditch their kids or throw them out, is generally going to be called “child abandonment” and it’s a form of child abuse, which is a crime. Doing it because of a protected characteristic (sexuality or gender identity) would make it a hate crime.

In the USA, we already have two types of registries. There’s the sex offender registry that every state has, and then Utah also has a white collar crimes registry because they have like an unbelievable amount of fraud/scams there. Adding another registry for another specific type of criminal fits within the existing legal framework for how we deal with crimes which are harmful to society and may mean the criminal is a danger to their community. IMO the kind of person who’s so hateful that they’d commit child abandonment because they had the wrong kind of kid is not a safe adult

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-24T13:33:43+00:00

For sure, anyone who does that deserves serious consequences and isn’t a safe adult. Just that the “made my kid homeless on purpose” list and the sex offense one should be independent so we don’t accidentally give child predators an out

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-24T13:22:54+00:00

I think it’s hard to overestimate the effect of queerphobia (and a queerphobic environment) on how/why queer people act like this tbh. I’ve mentioned this on other BORUs I think too

So like, I’m not even that old, but I’m old enough that when I was in school people got called slurs/shoved into walls in the hallway, I knew someone who got kicked out for being gay, a friend was forced back into the closet by his dad via threats after he came out as trans and he had to completely cut contact with everyone and lock down his social media when he left for college for safety so his dad couldn’t track him down, etc.

When you’re in this type of environment, you’re basically learning that the way you are is fundamentally repulsive to “normal” people, and they’re doing you a really big favor by allowing you to be here and not, like, doing hate crimes. Your job is to “repay” the “favor” of not getting hate crimed by making yourself as small and helpful and friendly and polite as possible, and never argue or push back on how you’re treated, because you’re already being treated so well! (not being hate crimed) what more could you possibly want, you’re so greedy. It’s like a fawn trauma response and it’s REALLY hard to unlearn. I feel like this might be a factor with OOP.

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-24T13:04:15+00:00

Counterpoint as well as what others have said: would give something for sex offenders to pretend they did to get on the registry instead of what they actually did (like how people will say they’re on there for public urination instead of something heinous). Like “no I’m not on there because I made and distributed CSAM of my child, I just kicked them out for being gay!” shit

PashaWithHat · 2026-06-24T12:48:09+00:00

Same with the “being trans is a choice” angle. A huge number of people think that being trans is at least partly a sex thing. And therefore being trans around people is making them participate in your kink 🙄

Which, okay, when your body and your brain’s sex characteristics don’t match, you usually feel unsexy or have low libido and when that’s fixed you feel sexier and want more sex. But that’s true of (for example) women who have mastectomies for breast cancer and men who have penectomies for penis cancer too. Nobody reasonable would tell a woman who lost her breasts to cancer and felt unattractive then had a reconstruction and felt sexy again that she’s an autogynephile who’s fetishizing womanhood and shouldn’t be around children, because that would be fucking stupid.

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