I’ll wipe your ass if you wipe mine.

I mentally multiply all votes by ℹ anyway.

They are all over Europe. I have three or four within walking distance. And they can hold some amazingly large items, too.

They are now putting laughing gas in energy drinks, as I found out recently. It’s also in whipped creme which might be one reason people are all over it.
I’m loving it. So much better than CO2. Also makes for good social commentary.

OBEY

Maybe I’m missing something here, but plenty of folks - blue collar workers, technicians, engineers - have away jobs where they work in different places for weeks or months at a time, and there are landlords who specialize in providing this clientele with bare-bones furnished apartments. I’ve been there, too - in fact, one year during the pandemic, I had spent just a bit more than half of my time working and living in a place away from home.

• Language is by far the most important door opener, so put in one hour of learning every day for at least a year.
• Mingle to get out of your comfort zone: Go to after-work parties and flea markets, take public transit. Use hobbyist/ meet-up apps. Read/ watch the local news.
• Don’t expect to be invited, especially not to people’s homes. People might also be uncomfortable being invited to your home. Meeting in a public place is almost always the better option, unless you’ve gotten to know someone really well.
• Irony/ sarcasm don’t translate very well between cultures.
• Europe has some lousy weather, so get watertight coats and waterproof your shoes and backpacks.
• Take it slow.
• Also: Enjoy it! Europe is a fantastic little place at the crossroads between Asia and Africa and I would never want to leave.

Breakup version:
Rachel and I are dating again.
Well, not each other, but still…

There are many forums like that, especially if you’re not limited to one language. Most of the ones I frequent have been around for 10 or 20 years or more, but kind of fly under the radar. ilxor being a very good example. AFAIK, the latter also adds only one new user per day. I’d say that’s a good thing, even though I had to apply several times.

No, it’s Ocho!

The number of people who will get the reference can be counted on one hand, probably.

Yeah but it is, though. Plus the psychological pressure from social media/ FOMO, plus enshittification everywhere, plus the constant undercurrent of wages and job opportunities eroding away from us due to inflation and upper-class greed.
People were happy when mobile phones entered the scene and became affordable. It didn’t take long for employers to use them for asking tasks of us during off-time for profit maximization, though. Not to mention the constant feeling of being spied on and experiencing the gathered data being used for being bombarded with creepily targetted ads.
I’m sorry for today’s youth, growing up thinking this is all perfectly normal and nothing can be done about it.

One of my family members paid something like 60 € to see Michael Jackson in the 90s. I still remember how back then, I thought “what an outrageous price tag.”

Counterpoint: I still vividly remember a guy ripping a fart in class more than 20 years ago. Maybe because we’ve been writing a test and, up until that point, the classroom had been deadly silent before bursting into laughter.
Or maybe because he did it again, a couple of days later.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face by a gorilla.

The Fartisan

I need to sleep I can’t get no sleep

I’ve not bought anything from Amazon for close to 3 years when I was handed a gift card out of the blue. It took me no less than three hours to shop for 5 pretty standard items because on every page I clicked, my screen was entirely filled with ridiculously trashy products, annoyingly unrelated products, upselling BS and useless AI-generated reviews. And then I had to uncheck the fucking subscriptions they snuck in. How does anyone bear with this, I wonder?

♫ It’s true that all the men you knew were dealers who said they were through

being dealers every time you gave them shelter

I know that kind of man, it’s hard to hold the hand of anyone

who’s reaching for the sky just to surrender ♪

(originally by Leonard Cohen, of course)

I have a feeling that a few steps are missing between trololo and Monty Python… right? guys? Geez, I’m getting old.