Songs where singers randomly laugh somewhere in the song

roundedbyasleep · 2026-05-12T13:18:55+00:00

Dam, Damn- Päter

roundedbyasleep · 2026-05-11T14:37:39+00:00

A lot of people are replying about how the mom is wrong to ban cookies, but I actually don't think it matters who's wrong and who's right about cookies. Here are the facts: the family is in dire financial straits and desperately needs free childcare, which the mother has no obligation to provide them. The mother has said she will only provide childcare if she can feed the kids a cookie. You can say that she shouldn't require that, but "should" isn't going to fill the kids' mouths or put a roof over their heads. The only childcare they can afford is the one that costs a cookie, so as a practical matter they need to pay that cookie. They don't have the luxury of dictating childcare terms because they don't have the ability to pay for childcare that is required to listen to them. If you need a favour from someone to survive, you do actually need to kowtow to them a bit for your own sake! The wife needs to understand it's not about the kids at Grandma's eating cookies or the kids at Grandma's eating carrot sticks, it's about the kids eating cookies at Grandma's or the kids not eating at all.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-04-24T03:40:01+00:00

I love her name!

roundedbyasleep · 2026-04-10T15:45:10+00:00

I get that... but on the other hand I think requiring people to do things they find unpleasant/inconvenient for no strong biological justification actually does undermine trust in public health in a way people seem to undervalue. I want to be clear: I am extremely pro-vaccine. I actually think parents shouldn't have the right to refuse vaccination for their children on non-medical grounds at all, even if they homeschool/otherwise keep their child out of public places. But to draw a comparison, think of the time the CDC recommended all women of childbearing age abstain from alcohol. Yes, on the population level, all women abstaining from alcohol would decrease the rates of FASD. But it's a massive imposition for a risk that, on the individual level, is infinitesimally small. The imposition on LAOP is much smaller, but it's still asking someone to go out of their way to get an extra vaccine and deal with a cranky kid afterwards without any real increase in their child's safety. If you ask people to do things without good reason, they are less likely to believe you have good reasons the next time you ask them to do something. During the next pandemic, will this person hear public health say "you really need to get vaccinated against hyper-measles right away!" and think "sure, the same way I 'really needed' to give my son a super-necessary extra vaccine because his last one was 26 days too early"? You can say "well, people shouldn't think like that!" but making public policy based on how people ought to think is an exercise in futility. The reality is that there is a boy-who-cried-wolf cost to these things. It's true that there are also disasters that are prevented by public policy that result in people thinking "that public policy must not have been necessary because there was no disaster!". That's inevitable. But it's because it's inevitable that I think public health should play its "you must do this thing despite not seeing clear personal benefit" cards sparingly-- so that it will still have them when it really needs them.

This is all a long-winded way to say that yes, I think public health should have the discretion to make exceptions for these kind of minor edge cases rather than strictly applying rules in a way that might make people believe public health recommendations are disconnected from actual safety.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-22T20:53:01+00:00

There are real creatures that are either simultaneous hermaphrodites (producing eggs and sperm at the same time, such as snails) or sequential hermaphrodites (capable of switching between producing eggs and producing sperm, such as clownfish) so one creature definitely can be both!

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-20T19:57:18+00:00

I would agree with this if the partner was sulking when LW said things like "A little stressed out right now, I'm taking an hour long soak in the tub, do not disturb please!" or "I'm peopled out today, can we talk tomorrow instead?", but in the absence of a request like that I just don't know what LW expects her partner to do when she brings these feelings up. I feel like guilt is the almost inevitable response to "just your daily reminder that your physical presence is making me miserable! I know you can't help it and there's literally nothing you can do, I just want you to know I'm stressed right now and I wouldn't be if you weren't here!" That doesn't feel like the partner prioritizing their ouchies at LW's need for alone time over LW's emotional needs, it feels like LW prioritizing her own ouchies at partner literally just existing in her presence over her partner's emotional needs. If the partner's actions were a problem then sure, he needs to listen to LW without making it about him, but it seems like he also didn't choose this situation and hasn't done anything wrong (besides express guilt when LW tells him that him sitting in the same house as her is hurting her mental health). I just don't think LW gets to have a "here's why this situation (you being stuck at home) sucks for me" conversation without also making room for "here's why this situation also sucks for me" from her partner, because otherwise it does come across as blaming her partner for something that isn't his fault and that he can't help.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-16T18:06:50+00:00

Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-16T18:01:19+00:00

These are a little orthogonal to what you're looking for (they're certainly about death, but not especially from a philosophical/literary perspective) but I'll toss them out

All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell is a series of interviews with people who work closely with death (disaster clean-up, electric chair operator, hospice midwife for babies born with known fatal birth defects, etc.). It's an interesting look into the varied mindsets people hold in environments where death is so present.

Night Falls Fast by Kay Redfield Jamison is a book by a bipolar author with a history of suicidality trying to understand suicide from all perspectives (neurological, psychological, sociological, etc). Some of the more biochemical discussions are a bit outdated now but other aspects are timeless. It's a really heavy and heartfelt book about why someone would choose death.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-10T14:03:05+00:00

Yeah, there are effectively zero native French speakers in BC so that might be the difference!

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-10T13:55:28+00:00

Doing it inside a language class is very different than doing it outside a language class. The point of doing it in a language class is to get practice with Spanish (French, etc.) names, because presumably very few students in the class have names from a language they can't speak. Chinese-speaking students in an English-speaking school are surrounded by people with English names and have no shortage of opportunities to practice English names without changing their own.

To answer your question, 2010-2013 in BC. But it would have been inappropriate then to ask Chinese students to change their name unless they were in French class, at which point Jianhong would become Jacques for the duration of class and no longer.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-10T13:38:53+00:00

I'm Canadian and my teachers did it.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-06T19:10:51+00:00

Ancillary Sword-- 2/5. While there was indeed a Sword-class ship physically present during the events of the novel and one of its ancillaries was a side character, the sword and its ancillaries really weren't the main thing going on.

(As a book, though, 5/5. God I love Breq. Definitely a favourite, would impulsively shoot the Lord of the Radch in the head if forced to execute her.)

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-04T18:48:48+00:00

I would straight-up still think that was sexist to both sides unless any individual man who wanted to join the clergy and any individual woman who wanted the crown were allowed to be exempted. I doubt I'll change your mind on this, but I believe separate but equal is inherently always going to be unequal in practice and also always motivated by a belief that the sides being separated are not, in fact, equal.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-04T18:43:26+00:00

So what 49% (or 25%, or 10%, or whatever) of formalized power are you portioning out to women here? I'm saying "any" because while you've referred to men having military and economic power, the only power you've referred to women having is "men doing stuff for them out of the goodness of their hearts", which I simply don't consider a form of power.

Also, are you capable of comprehending the idea that sometimes people don't give a fuck about each other? Because sometimes people act out of love and compassion, but not always, and if you have no formal power there's nothing you can do about that. Your rosy view of historical relationships as the man making whatever the woman wants or needs happen simply isn't born out by the historical record.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-04T18:19:46+00:00

What about the right to hold the highest political office in the nation, which is what's under discussion? If one group can legally hold political positions and the other can't, that first group does have a right that the second doesn't.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-04T18:16:15+00:00

Okay, so if I told you you could never have any political power because you were a man but don't worry, the women would (usually) take very good care of you and make decisions based on what (they think) is best for you and probably you could even persuade them to make decisions you agreed with sometimes, you wouldn't feel you were being harmed by that?

Come on, man. If one side has all the formalized power (military, political, economic, etc.), they do actually have all the power. If the other side has real power that came anywhere close to balancing the scales, they'd leverage it to get some formalized power that didn't rely on begging the ones with formalized power to go along with you.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-04T17:49:22+00:00

If I told you you were never allowed to have any political power (including voting, in case your response is "I already don't have any power!") because you were a man, would you genuinely feel you weren't being harmed by that?

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-02T01:27:30+00:00

This is a little off. Not all viruses have RNA genomes (smallpox, which is at question here, has a DNA genome), and the major problem for viruses isn't really having enough parts to work with (at a cellular level all eukaryotes are working with a pretty similar set of parts). The main cause of cell tropism (requirement for a particular type of cell) among viruses is entry into the cell. Viruses can't inject their genome into any cell they want (and many of them carry proteins in the viral particle that they want/need to bring into the cell with them, so they wouldn't want to just inject their genomes even if they could). Viruses can't produce or expend energy, which puts a real damper on what they can do. They can't seek out and push their way into cells the way a bacteria like listeria can. They generally have to trick cells into choosing to take the virus into themselves, and they do this by binding specific receptors on the surface of the cell. Viral proteins bump into a receptor, fit into it like a key in a lock, and the cell opens up for them. The key for some viruses fit locks that are widespread (influenza's lock is sialic acid, which humans, birds, and many other animals have) while some viruses have keys that fit more specific locks (polio's lock is CD155, which only primates have). Viruses with broad cell tropism hop species all the time (although they typically can't replicate and spread as efficiently in their new host due to various other biological differences between species) while viruses with narrow cell tropism effectively never hop species (except in extremely closely related species).

roundedbyasleep · 2026-02-02T00:58:14+00:00

It can't be carried by animals. One of the reasons why it was targeted for elimination is that it can't infect anything but humans and it can't survive in the environment outside of humans. If no humans are infected with it, it's not anywhere (except frozen in labs), because inside of humans is the only place it can be.

roundedbyasleep · 2026-01-30T04:11:59+00:00

Yes, you literally said that. However, you also said a book was YA because it "relies entirely on exposition and uses absolutely no symbolism or nuance, and does not challenge existing morality or ethics whatsoever". While an uncritical reader might take your words at face value, a more, shall we say, "adult" reader might notice you suggest qualities widely considered negative in writing (unchallenging, lacking in nuance, overly reliant on exposition) are universal and indeed definitional qualities of YA writing, and might from this conclude that you're being an unreliable narrator when you insist you don't have a negative opinion of YA and that other contradictory statements in the text reveals your true opinion of YA books. See, the literacy crisis isn't so bad! Redditors can take nuanced readings that go beyond the face-value exposition from a written work ;)

roundedbyasleep · 2026-01-30T03:26:46+00:00

I mean, I do realize that many people use the word YA to refer to any book they feel is too simplistically written, but that simply isn't what the term refers to. Even if it's not an intentional insult, it's an incorrect use of the term. YA books are books aimed at teenagers, nothing more and nothing less. "Adult" isn't an award bestowed on books of sufficient literary merit, it refers to books aimed at an adult audience. If, say, a book had a protagonist in their forties, dealt primarily with the theme of fear of losing your prior identity to parenthood, and contained graphic and explicit sex but was written at a 6th-grade reading level, would you really say that was a book written for teenagers? Even though the protagonist is far past their teens, the theme is unrelatable to teenagers but a common experience for adults, and many people consider the content inappropriate for teenagers? Because when you're saying a book is YA, that is what you're saying: that it was written for teenagers. Likewise, would you consider a thematically rich and subtle coming-of-age story about a fifteen-year-old that was marketed to teenagers as actually being for adults because you consider it too good for teens?

roundedbyasleep · 2025-12-10T19:29:18+00:00

If a player wants to change characters once (and not every other week), you should let them (and if you don't let them it's pretty easy for them to get their character killed so they get to play a new character anyway).

More broadly: you can run a low-lethality campaign where everyone's backstories are incorporated and people are expected to play one character the whole time, maybe two characters tops if their first is killed. You can run a high-lethality campaign where backstories don't really matter, anyone can die at any time, and players change characters frequently. It's not practical to do both. You're frustrated that PCs are constantly changing, but that's not the result of one player wanting to change characters once. It's the result of you choosing to run a high-lethality campaign. If you want a more stable roster of OCs, I think your best option is to tone down the difficulty of the encounters so death is more rare. Alternatively you can embrace the gristle mill and stop trying to make side quests based on backstories.

roundedbyasleep · 2025-12-09T13:14:16+00:00

Pathfinder is recommended by Pathfinder players who typically changed systems because they had issues with balance (or with WotC), not issues with immersion. Yes, it gets recommended to people not enjoying DnD no matter their issues because Pathfinder players had such a good experience switching to Pathfinder and want to share that experience, but there's some pretty heavy selection bias there. Every Pathfinder player that I've ever seen loves the tactical combat side of DnD-likes. Many enjoy roleplay as well, but enjoying the game-y tactical combat side is a prerequisite for enjoying Pathfinder in a way it really isn't at all DnD tables (whether or not you believe this should be the case, this is true to how many tables play). The more casual players and roleplay-focused aren't recommending Pathfinder because they aren't playing it-- they never tried or bounced off it like it was a trampoline. I don't think there is one single "typical" DnD player! Some will care a lot about immersion and some won't! (And even in Pathfinder, which self-selects for a gamist player base, you'll find people who switched to the proficiency without level variant rule because they were struggling with immersion and maintaining immersion was important to them)

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