Why I am bad at German, and never learning Finnish.
- English: A dog
- Swedish: What
- English: The dog
- English: Two dogs
- Swedish:
- Swedish:
- Swedish: En hund, hunden
- Swedish: … hundar, hundarna
- German:
- English: No, go away
- Swedish: No one invited you
- German: Der Hund
- English: I said go away
- German: Ein Hund, zwei Hunde
- Swedish: Stop it
- German: Den Hund, einen Hund, dem Hund, einem Hund, des Hundes, eines Hundes, den Hunden, der Hunden
- Finnish: Sup
- English: NO
- Swedish: NO
- German: NO
- Finnish:
- English:
- German:
- Swedish:
- Finnish: Koira, koiran, koiraa, koiran again, koirassa, koirasta, koiraan, koiralla, koiralta, koiralle, koirana, koiraksi, koiratta, koirineen, koirin
- German:
- Swedish:
- Finnish:
- English:
- Finnish: And now the plural forms
Realizations
I’m starting to suspect that a big part of becoming a grown-up is learning to distinguish between the things you’ve done that you should or should not be embarrassed about.
It is reassuring to remember that firstly, everyone has done stupid shit; secondly, the people who haven’t are boring as fuck; and thirdly, now that you’re grown-up enough to know where you fucked up, you can try to avoid doing those things again in the future.
Adulthood: both more and less interesting than I expected it to be.
are you shitting me
HE ACTUALLY ROLE PLAYS HIS OWN ROLEs oh GOD
YES. I FOUND A VERSION NOT FROM FUCKING 9GAG. I CAN FINALLY REBLOG. YES.
It’s… so… beautiful… ಥ_ಥ
Twitter, you just made up for everything about you that I have every complained about.
Using naughty words on the internet
I am a person who loves social media. I spend altogether too much time on Facebook and Twitter, I love it when brilliant new things pop up on my Tumblr dashboard, and I stuck around on Google+ just a bit longer than was entirely reasonable. I like the idea of having shared virtual spaces where it’s just as easy to kick back with your friends as it is to listen in on the conversations of strangers you secretly admire. And I’m not the only one. I read somewhere recently that there’s now more content on the internet relating to social media than to porn. That’s right, people prefer sharing evidence that Benedict Cumberbatch looks like an otter to watching strangers have sex with each other.
Oh, humanity. We’ve come so far.
The point is, we like sharing with each other. Each of us who spends time online enjoys, to some extent, the process of crafting a persona, of seeking out friends, of liking and being liked. The internet makes it so easy to casually throw out ideas and see what gets thrown back.
More than that, being online now is practically a necessity. I’ve been warned several times that it’s not enough just to check your privacy settings and avoid drunk-tweeting; you should also try to purchase domains in your name so they can’t be used to slander your reputation. Young professionals (depending on the industry) are advised to have not just references and a resume, but also a LinkedIn account, a professional Twitter, and a blog. It’s not enough to just be on the Internet nowadays. You also have to be visible there.
This might be good advice, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to balance the need for visibility and the need for management. I love having an online presence. It’s not just a time-killer, it’s genuinely rewarding. But at the same time we’re being told to make ourselves visible, we’re told to fear that something posted casually now could bite us in the butt in a year - or a decade. And of course, if said butt gets bitten, we’re told we have only ourselves to blame.
Some of my friends are optimists. One, who aspires to a public career, once told me he has no fear of party pics depicting same-sex make-outs. After all, “Everyone’s done it. What do you mean, you haven’t? What are you, some sort of homophobe?” And maybe he’s right - maybe there is safety in numbers, at least for things as harmless as a sloppy kiss on the dance floor.
On the other hand, it doesn’t take much to damage a carefully crafted reputation. And while numbers can be safe, they can also be dangerous - just look at what happens when Reddit gets mobilized. Or when a woman has the audacity to post a photo of herself on her blog. It doesn’t take that many people to fill an inbox with hate mail.
This brings me ‘round to the title of this post. Just now, on Facebook, I posted this link to a harmless post on men’s fashion. As soon as it was up, I thought about taking it down again - because my commentary (“If you can do this without looking like a sloppy asshole, congratulations! You have levelled up in your ability to dress yourself.”) included a naughty word.
I kept it up. My Facebook has good privacy settings, and I’m not worried that anyone I already know will be shocked by my potty mouth. I’m more concerned that someday a future employer might Google me and decide I’m not hiring material because I use variants of “fuck” as noun, adjective, verb, adverb, and interjection - sometimes all in the same sentence. Or because I think women should be able to get abortions when they need them, and say so publicly. Or because, I don’t know, I said a client’s Twitter presence was laughably bad.
I mean, okay, I probably wouldn’t want to work anywhere that uptight. But the economy’s still not great, and we can’t all afford to be picky.
I hope that as our internet-savvy generation steps up, we also become more willing to cut people slack for what they say online. Sadly, I don’t think it will happen. That leaves a lot of us, myself included, in a position where it feels like the only safe option is to walk the line, and be simultaneously visible and inoffensive. Unfortunately, trying to be visible and inoffensive at the same time also means being as dull as a dull thing in a dull suit.
Trying to be visible and inoffensive is not a comfortable line to walk.
Travelling Legally: Cutting Canadian journalism
It’s 5 am as I write this. I was woken up at 4:30 by stifling heat (serves me right, thinking I could turn the A/C off at night), and while checking Twitter before heading back to sleep, I saw that the Ottawa Citizen is cutting a fifth of its editorial jobs and getting rid of its Sunday edition….
A post about the most recent cuts to Canadian journalism, posted at my travel blog.
“You went through a phase where every film you were in you were taking your clothes off.”
(Source: matafari, via thingsthatneverwere)
