I quit doing Christmas a dozen years ago, and I've never been happier. I'm an anti-capitalistic athiest...I don't give a Fuck One about keeping Jeebus in Crimmis, and I am just not real big on spending hundreds of dollars buying things for people that I think they might like (but probably won't) just because it happens to be the fourth week of December again. That shit's bonkers and is for the fucking birds.

Hell naw. You keep your $40 and buy yourself something you want or need, I'll do the same, and you and I will just moosh calendars and share time and a meal together without propping up capitalism.

I first dated online in 1999, and the first woman I dated I ended up marrying and having two kids with, though we divorced in 2017.

I still date online these days, and I prefer it. It allows me to know a little about a person before I waste any time chatting them up, and the things I need to know are things they generally put on their profile. Things like their sexuality (since I am non-binary), their political leaning (I'm socialist), their relationship orientation (I'm polyamorous), whether our values match...you know...important shit. And those early conversations before we ever meet in person are low-key enough that I feel more comfortable with them IRL, something that helps me as an autistic person.

Or...and hear me out...maybe instead we blast AI data centers with these Jewish space lasers I keep hearing about and leave the land to return to nature? Just spitballin'.

Nearly half price, which means I'm twice as likely to buy it now!

In other news, two times zero is zero.

I'll never understand why some polyam people feel the need to move at the same speed as their partner. It's not a contest. If a partner tells you they are uncomfortable with you moving at the speed you're moving with someone new, then they certainly have a right to feel how they feel, but they don't have a right to expect you to modify how you relate with another person in order to appease their discomfort.

You chose to do so with Cheddar, which was your own decision to make. That being said, if I were Swiss and found out that you were the sort of person who would allow your nesting partner's emotions to hold weight in the relationship you share with me, then I don't know that I'd be comfortable being partners with you. No one who isn't part of my relationship will ever have the right to make decisions regarding that relationship, and I won't ever be partnered with anyone who will make decisions about my relationship with them based on their other partner's jealousy. That is a very firm boundary of mine.

It is okay to acknowledge a partner's feelings and work with them to help them feel better while still holding to your boundaries. If you had done that, then you wouldn't have felt the need to retaliate the way you did due to your own jealousy once the tables were turned.

Both of you would do well with a more secure attachment style. Go read Polysecure by Jessica Fern together.

...you know, adult education classes exist to teach you how to read. How the fuck is releasing crickets at an event for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people "straightphobia"?

First, you take a run at La Fours with a sock full of nickels. I'd do it, but I pulled my back out humping your mom last night, NOOGE.

Are these the kids got hit hardest by the pandemic lockdowns?

The prevalent theory among my colleagues is that it was something about the age these students were during virtual learning (ages 9-11) that may have been the deciding factor in why they are comparably so much worse behaved that any class of students before or after them, but I couldn't say.

I enjoy teaching, or at least, transferring knowledge and experience, I'll do it to pretty much anyone who sits still long enough,

Samesies. I love teaching, but sometimes I really dislike "being a teacher" because of the lack of support or any attempt at understanding what actually goes on inside the classroom day-to-day by admins, parents, or community members. I am good with mentoring a couple students each year and going them overcome their issues. But I don't have the capacity to do it for all 50+ kids who are making it impossible for the other 120 to learn.

Good luck, and I hope things get better for the kids and teachers everywhere.

Thanks, preesh.

[x] doubt

Sorry, where did you get your two education degrees from again, and how many years have you been teaching?

You mentioned class sizes of 30+ this year, were they that large in the past? That size class is way too large and lends itself to chaos as it is hard to keep them all engaged.

I am new to this school, but the teachers at the school who had 8th graders last year have confirmed their class sizes last year were the same, but the student's were not nearly as unruly. The 7th grade teachers who had my students last year have some classes in the 30s this year and last year, and they have confirmed that this group of 8th graders were also hell on wheels last year, but that their 7th graders this year are much more well-behaved.

Hate to break it to you, but this is my 6th year teaching 8th graders and my 18th overall, everything from elementary school through college, and I know more than you...namely, how these 8th graders this year are very, very different from any other group of students any of the 8th grade teachers this year have ever experienced.

I am autistic as well. I am not joking. More details.

I've been teaching for 18 years. Every year before this one, things have gone relatively well. They talk a little, I quiet them down, we have a lesson, time is embedded in it for group work, and I tell them I'd like 85% of their conversation to be about the assignment. Most kids are decent. A few are superb. Some do jack shit and I struggle all year to get them to do anything. And about 5% of the students cause problems and make it harder for their classmates to learn, but they get dealt with.

Not this year. Four classes of 30+, and in all six classes a full third of the 8th grade students can't see beyond two seconds from now. My shit is getting stolen, students leave their binder in their locker when they're supposed to bring it to every single class in the building, and their entire purpose in any given moment is to say/do/destroy whatever they can to create laughs/anger/shock in someone else, who could as easily be right in front of them as they could be on the opposite end of the room. A third. Of each class. And it is relentless. The teacher next door to me had her interactive TV display destroyed by a kid yesterday...the screen is completely shattered.

Every teacher that shares these kids is having the exact same issues across the board. So we are presenting a united front and shutting it the fuck down.

It's mostly uber-lit (though inaccurate) plastic animal skeleton season.

On the cuckstool, no less. I feel sorry for his wife, her bull was so disgusted he couldn't finish.

The one thing that requires zero effort is shutting the motherfucking hell UP during a lesson, but my 8th grade students can't seem to make it happen, so I separated their desks yesterday afternoon and pointed all of them forward, and they'll no longer be engaging in group work.

Edit: Because we have a bunch of Dunning-Krugers in this comment thread, I will clarify.

I've been teaching for 18 years. This is my 6th year teaching 8th grade. I have four classes with more than 30 students, and a full third of the students in all six classes won't stop talking. This is not an incompetent first-year teacher saying this. This is not a jaded, about-to-retire teacher saying this. This is not just a paycheck for me. It is my vocation and I take it seriously. I earned a Bachelor's in education and a Master's in math education; my K12 students generally love my classes because I am knowledgeable and make math fun to learn, and I always get the highest evaluation scores for the undergraduate classes with students regularly saying "I always used to struggle with/be afraid of/hate math, but [teacher] helped me get my first A/B ever in a math class."

The entire school...from the teachers to the administrators...knows what I know about this group of 8th graders, that the behavior of one-third of them is beyond the pale. None of us has had a set of students like these before, and none of us has a great solution. So we are just going to take away all privileges and give them back slowly over time once they've shown that they have earned them.

It's not just that they talk to much. It is that it is a third of every class, that they make it impossible to teach the two-thirds who are capable of being decent students on any given day, that they take pride and literal pleasure in being disruptions, that they have little shame or humility and thus no impetus to allow their teachers to teach, that phone calls home are fruitless, that we have little recourse as far as the administration is concerned and have to keep them in class, that I am autistic with auditory processing disorder and can't understand what a kid right in front of me is saying even with me putting my ear right next to their mouth and them repeating their question three times...

So please save armchair teachering because you really, really don't know what you're talking about.

I'd love to get these for my HP Reverb G2, but with this headset being discontinued, I'll probably wait to see what the new non-Mera hotness is after the holiday buying season dies down.

You are literally shaming the bodies of people who have small penises, something that they cannot control which is not any indication of their character.

Body shaming isn't necessary. We can shame people for things that are within their ability to control.

[x-posted to aboringdystopia]

My parents each smoked two packs a day inside the house for the entire 20 years I lived with them, and my mom had a massive heart attack and died at age 63. I carry a lot of trauma around all that, so I have a boundary about being around people who smoke anything, really. I should have exercised it that day, but my boundaries were sort of flimsy then.