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Cake day: March 7th, 2025

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  • Frankly I’m surprised having children these days is even happening. In the past, you lived close to your job, you could afford to have one parent at home or you might be able to hire a housekeeper or a nanny, you lived close to your kin, you could kick your kids outside in the morning and call them back in the evening.

    Our modern world is not really tailored to having kids. No financial incentive really addresses this. For example…

    Having a decent standard of life and the amenities most people want to give their children often requires both parents to work. And if you work, you probably live some distance away from both your job and the daycare, and so the the daily dash to take your kids to daycare and get them home before the daycare closes, plus the commute to and from work, is a stressful race you need to run every fucking day. Having to drag your tired, hungry toddler with you to the supermarket to do your grocery shopping is harrowing. Leave your kids in the car as you used to do in the 80’s? Lol nope, someone’s gonna report you, you bad parent!

    Even our best cities are not walkable or safe for kids, so you can’t let them out by themselves or someone’s gonna report you. Communities are fragmented so your friends, colleagues and relatives live far away, so most of the time the responsibility for the kid is solely on parents, whose time is stretched thin as it is, and is going to get strected even thinner as more and more societies expect adult children to care for their elderly parents as well.

    So kids are a lot of daily stress even before we even address how vexing small children can be by themselves. And contrary to the past, parents don’t get any material benefit from having kids. We don’t need their labour at the farm or in the family business (and indeed child labour is rightly frowned on these days), we can’t count on the kids to support us on our old age since they probably need to move away for work anyway. Reading the news about rising graduate unemployment, it even seems like we don’t have much use for those kids even after we put them through years of expensive schooling.

    So why do it? You need to be fucking dedicated to the idea of having children if you still take the plunge. Parents, I salute you, but I’m not surprised more and more people are opting out.


  • the_eyestalk@lemmy.ziptoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldYou guys have to end it
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    2 months ago

    Funnily enough, I have a few friends who really think like this. Personally, having driven manual for 20 years before I switched to electric a year ago, I don’t see it, apart from a certain comfortable nostalgia. Automatic is better in cities and it’s a lot easier for kids to learn. Handbrake starts on hills? What a weird thing to be nostalgic about.

    I suspect it’s just these people think handling the gearstick makes them special. It’s the one thing they can be smug about,completely discounting the fact that any old idiot can learn to drive manual if they just practice a bit. Reminds me of my grandpa who insisted that it’s better to chop down trees with an axe and a handsaw, instead of using these modern chainsaws. He was a stubborn old dude.


  • I went to professional thai massage therapy recommended by my colleagues. I had extreme reservations because of… well, you know, it’s a thai massage. But my colleagues swore that the salon was legit, very professional, articulate staff, no sexual component included, very relaxing, does wonders for your neck. So what the hell, as a desk jockey my neck hurts all the time, I’ll give it a try.

    Cautiously, I booked a neck and shoulder massage online. When I turned up, there was no receptionist, just a harried-looking middle-aged thai lady who spoke not a word of any language comprehensible to me. She hustled me into a bare room with a forlorn massage table in the middlle, and told me via Google Translate to remove my clothes.

    Startled to obedience, I removed my button-up shirt and approached the table. This did not go down well with the lady, who prodded me with a bony finger and indicated that t-shirt and trousers should go too. I tried to point out that I had booked a neck and shoulders massage but to no avail. CLOTHES OFF SIR nagged the phone screen.

    So there I was, in my embarrassing tighty whities shivering in a cold room, wishing I had worn my “Sounds GAY I’m in” boxers, undoubtedly about to be ravished by an increasingly annoyed thai lady who kept prodding and poking me towards the table.

    I’ll not go into details about what happened, except it was not in any way what I was expecting. She mauled me with a strength of dozen bears, cracking my joints, pulverizing my buttocks. She turned my unwilling chubby body into such contortions that I had to squeeze my sphincter shut as if my life depended on it, in order not to rip out a series of massive farts. I’ll give her that there indeed was no happy ending, but it was an hour of absolute agony and I when I finally limped out, tears in my eyes, belt undone and my shirt buttons crooked, I felt like I had been waterboarded by CIA for weeks.

    I don’t think I need to say that it was the first and last massage in my life.