latenightnoir @ latenightnoir @lemmy.world

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606

Joined

12 mo. ago

Yep. It's mostly all smoke and mirrors meant to make the worker feel better for getting a chump-change raise and taking on more responsibilities.

Disclaimer: I am not a sociologist or a linguist, so everything listed below is purely based on my amateurish observations.

As most people around my age in Romania (Millennials), I studied English as my "primary" secondary language all throughout primary, grade, and high school. I also studied French, but that one didn't stick to me quite as much (I kinda' blame the teaching methods involved for this one, because I've slowly been reforming that skill by using French subtitles, but anyway).

What I've noticed with most of my generational peers is that we speak "Romglish" when interacting with each other (not universally applicable). It's a very dynamic mix of both, for example: "Dammit, am uitat să mark it down în document, dar I'll cover it până la următoarea ședință."

From what I've seen, the tendency is to use the most poignant words or structures from both on a case-by-case basis - for example, when cursing, I've noticed that most people use English when they want something short and sharp, and Romanian when they want to flood their interlocutor with "well-wishes." We also tend to favour Romanian when we really want to dig into someone, as Romanian curse words feel heavier than English ones. Romanian also has more variants for interjectional structures (I think) - when a "God damn it..." would be used, we use "futu-i morții mă-sii," "băga-mi-aș" (with or without "pula"/"picioarele"), "Dumnezeii mă-sii," "mama naibii," "pula mea" (or "pana mea" as a lite variant), etc.

When talking tech, Romanian is mostly used to structure the ideas, while English is used to express the subject and related characteristics. It just "feels" more natural to use English for specialty subjects, as English techy words just sound more accurate and pragmatic.

In terms of dirty talk during sexy times, Romanian sounds weird/funny and kinda' breaks the mood, so I think most bilingual people favour English (if they talk dirty at all) - this is rather speculative, as we don't often talk about sex with eachother around here, but that seemed to be the consensus among the few people with whom I broached the subject.

When being intimate/vulnerable with eachother, we usually switch to Romanian, as it feels more personal and contains several structures which have more nuanced meanings than English - this may be a tired example, but "mi-e dor de tine" (which roughly translates to "I miss you") is contextually more loaded with melodramatism, as it's a mix of missing, yearning and craving, all wrapped together.

We still struggle with the accent - most English teachers back in the day favoured the English (I hope you Brits give me top marks for this ;) ;) ) accent over the American one, but few actually managed to reproduce it faithfully, so our accents are very specifically Romanian - they sound sort of Slavic, but we don't modulate our vowels as much, and our consonants are significantly harder. It's a blocky accent, for lack of a better word. Mine is a weird mix of English and American, with a bit of Romanian, Scottish and Irish thrown in there (mostly around consonants, and when capping off words - I use a lot of hard "r"s).

Speaking personally, my primary languages are Romanian and English, and they're both native - started speaking English at about the same time as I did Romanian (~1 year old) thanks to having access to undubbed Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, etc. back in the 90s, and I was relatively conversant in both by the time I reached kindergarten age. We also had a lot of bilingual kindergartens back in the day, and so was the one which I attended.

As a result, I also think in "Romglish," although English is somewhat more melodic to my ear, so I tend to favour it when expressing feelings, or when expressing complex ideas related to philosophy, tech, etc. When I talk to myself, however, I mostly use English, as I favour it over Romanian in general.

In my most vulnerable state, I use Romanian more frequently than English because it sounds a bit more personal, more intimate when used to express deep love or sadness, as mentioned above.

In general, however, I just use whatever's shortest to pronounce (syllable count): "am o idee" instead of "I have an idea," "just a sec" instead of "stai o secundă," "got it" instead of "am înțeles," etc.

Very late edit, because it may be relevant: most Boomers HATE us for this, with reasoning based on language purity (yeah...).

For me, it's the sheer scale of celestial bodies.

Our Sun is humongous. UY Scuti's radius is 1700 times larger - 185300 times larger than the Earth's. And then there's TON 618, which has a mass 66 billion times larger than our Sun's.

And even those are barely grains of sand when compared to solar and galactic structures... It is humbling, to say the least.

Edit 2: I deleted the previous edit, because my first observation is correct (scale is maintained when going from comparing radii to comparing diameters...), which is why I have an Arts degree.

Thank you! I physically recoiled from the first post I saw!

This may be one of those memetic SCPs, because my brain feels really funny after reading that. And not in a good way...

Thanks, Microsoft, you're a peach...

Well, to be fair, I never had the idea of sticking pizza toppings with glue... That's some next level Gordian Knot stuff, right there!

That doesn't mean he isn't a Nazi, just that he's an extra crummy one.

I only ever had one, and he died of old age! But he sure tried his best to clock out early!

I remember about three months in, I came home from school only to find him suspended from the top of his cage by his right hind leg. Rushed him to the vet, got minor PTSD when the doc tied his stump and told us "the rest of it will fall off soon," and we threw that cage away the instant we got back home.

After that, Crunchy (rough translation) had the whole apartment to himself, and he sure liked to run right in front of you as you were walking! Would have rather broken my neck than step on the little fella (which I nearly did a couple of times - the neck part, not the stepping on him part).

But he was very loving and cute, he'd climb up either mum or myself while we were watching movies or playing vidya, he'd nestle above the collar bone, and sleep there for hours. Even my cat loved him to bits, they used to sleep together under my bed. He'd help himself to popcorn, chips, fried eggs, cereal (because of course he was allowed on the table, equal rights), and he once bathed in my soup.

This.

Imagine you're in a relationship with someone who's been through so much suffering in the past, that they now hurt/abuse you (doesn't matter what type of trauma or abuse it is for this example), either as a defence mechanism, or as a control mechanism, or as a preemptive strike type deal.

You have no way of changing/helping them because they do not want to let you in.

Even in this scenario, where we may be able to empathise, the "why" doesn't matter. What matters is that, at the end of the day, they're abusing you.

If you ask me, Musk doing the Nazi salute is even more clear cut than this. We all know exactly who Nazis were, are, and will be, what's behind that one gesture. Even if it were performed by a kid with no context of the world, it's still a Nazi salute. The intent doesn't matter, because the meaning has been defined waay before the performer's intent even comes into play.

And even if he claims that "because he's a Fascist" (which he is) wasn't the intent behind it, that should only make him, the Tech Bro of Tech Bros, the man with enough resources to friggin' buy half the schools, libraries and teachers in the world, look that much more stupid, ignorant, insensitive, immature, and stupid (yes, I said that twice).

Edit: another, personal example would be my reticence to make the peace symbol because it was so heavily co-opted by Nixon. I'm not saying he managed to fully corrupt it, but he did manage to leave an indelible fecal stain on it as I see it.

Oh, thank you! Didn't know about this!

And teeth may have* developed from scales (no joke!) ;)

Edit: added * as a result of the information below (thank you, again!)

This, and all the more nowadays, because anything progressive has been intrinsically linked to a change of the Status Quo. And those trillions of fun bucks in the mattress (as well as their self-importance and self-perceived relevance) must be protected from those pesky Socialists!

Yep, totally no biggie that Fascism's now thoroughly rooted in a Superpower nation and that millions of people are, yet again, being persecuted because rich douchebags think themselves kings. Just a regular Tuesday.

Melatonin helps me sort of "enforce" a bed time. Whenever I realise I'm itchin' for a binge, I pop 5mg of melatonin and I'm dozy within 30-45 minutes. And it's not the full system shutdown you get with sleeping pills, it just brings about that organic "need to sleep now, will continue tomorrow" feeling.

Also, aging "helps." I'm in my mid 30s and have noticed that my bed time has become progressively earlier - used to pull 6 hours of sleep (usually 2AM-8AM) without issues in my late 20s, now I feel almost hungover if I don't get my 8 hours and/or wake up after 8AM, and need to compensate with naps for about a week.

I haven't needed to wake up earlier than 7AM regularly for over a decade, though, so YMMV with these specifics. But I still do recommend giving melatonin a shot. The only caveat I have for it is that it may mess with your blood sugar levels, so 100% consult a physician beforehand if you have such issues.

You're right, he's a very complex asshole, indeed!

Because he's an insecure and greedy child.

Imho, the most important trait a good manager can have is humility - by this I mean they don't let that management position go to their head and realise that everyone's in the same pot, they have the capacity to admit when they're in the weeds in terms of knowledge and are not afraid to ask for clarifications or to let someone else take the wheel in specialty aspects (and not as an excuse to stay ignorant), and that they're not the most important person in the team, the entire team is.

Besides that, transparency in all things, empathy (we're all people with people stuff going on in the background), honesty, diplomacy, genuine curiosity, a capacity to see the forest for the trees, the courage to put their foot down when absolutely needed (mostly to defend the team), accountability, doesn't micromanage but instead encourages their teammates to develop both their skills and confidence in their skills.

As I see it, a management position should exist to help the team, not lead it. People usually know what they're doing (most of the time even better than the manager), so the manager should ensure that they're working on providing things which are in lesser supply within the team (eg. can function as a spokesperson, simplifies the processes in order to remove needless time sinks, can ideally act as a quasi-therapist for all things work related, keeps track of the big picture, helps structure the workload in a rational manner, etc.).

Edit: oh, and this is a personal favourite of mine, is not afraid of saying that the ship's sinking when it is. Again, working for what's best for their teammates.

Beg pardon, but it's UHssured... d'uh...

This is why it's essential, now more than ever, to keep these words and notions alive, let the truth be an act of rebellion in itself.

Life is meaningless without diversity, and it is up to each and every one of us to protect it.