I always choose based on personality, or let them choose for themselves if they’re especially chatty.

Some examples:

• Screech, male cat, got him after weaning and the only things he could vocalise were variations of screeches. So, Screech. Also worked well with the fact that he had a full black coat, so you’d always hear him first.

• Mimi, female cat. Found by one of my former coworkers next to an apartment building stairway, asked her what she’d like to be called. She said: “meeee…” in the cutest, squeakiest way imaginable. I asked and what else. “Meeee…” again, so that was that. She ended up earning it, she was exuberantly inquisitive and playful.

• Maia, female cat. It was the most feminine name to also have a sort of benevolent but tired aristocratic aloofness. She was always bothered by your unrequested presence, always complaining with a bored chain smoker’s croon of “mmmmaaawwwww…” She also obsessively groomed every living thing she had in her proximity, including a chicken (the only one dumb enough to not run away) and a hamster.

• Lord, male dog. He was fucking majestic, looked like a miniature lion with black, white and copper stripes (about as large as a Golden Retriever). And he owned that name, always lording over the place. Ironically, got poisoned by an envious neighbor (I’m serious).

• Ralph, the (happy) exception, male dog. So, this guy, had been my brother since I turned 10. First time I met him, he was slobbering. And he was a German Shepherd / Alsacian mix, these guys don’t usually drool a lot afaik. But my guy was dripping. So, naturally, I wanted to call him Spit. I mean… naturally! Luckily, mum intervened with this one and declared him Ralph, because it was the friendliest* German name she could think of at the time. And he wore it well, he was always vivacious, but calculated.

As long as I’m the first one through, the rest is set dressing.

Moon.

Oh, I type out a full list every time on my phone, check it about 3-4 times when starting, then I get cocky as “of course I remember what’s on the list, I read it 5 minutes ago…” and proceed to forget about that one thing.

I usually forget to buy something while grocery shopping, whether it be in person, or ordering. There’s no pattern behind it, the items are completely unrelated to a theme (eg. coffee, soap, mouthwash, bread, milk, eggs, potatoes, salt, etc.) as far as I can tell, I just forget to buy something.

As a guy who used to have long hair, this. If it’s long enough, you could also tuck it underneath your shirt collar in a pinch.

Disclaimer: I’m midway through my coffee, so I apologise if this ends up meandering toward a point.

First off, I’m sorry you’re going through depression, it’s draining and it sure seems to have done a number on you.

Secondly, yeah, it’s a pretty bad sign… But it’s a bad sign which can serve as a wake-up call, depending on how you look at it and how you choose to react.

I can understand how frustrated and spent one can feel while going through it. It drains not only social batteries, but emotional ones as well, making it really easy to lash out at others out of pain. Your example seems to fit. But there are other ways to go about it. I know it’s hard to make an extra push when all you seem to be doing is pushing that boulder uphill all day long, but you have to realise that, unless your friends are toxic and abusive (which they don’t seem to be from what you’ve offered) thus basically one of the reasons which keep you stuck in depression, they’re not to blame for it (and if they are, you should be reconsidering your friendship with them in the first place).

As such, it’s unfair to react aggressively toward them for trying to socialise with you. They’re just trying to do what friends do, to connect and be with you. In this case specifically, it sounds to me that you had an expectation about how your friends should approach these attempts at interacting with you, but you’ve not said anything about communicating it to your friends before reacting to a perceived disrespect of said expectation. What your friend did is a pretty natural and normal reaction when faced with random hostility from others. They are not obligated to just sit there and take it because you’re friends, it’s quite the opposite of what a friendship is supposed to be.

So, now it’s up to you to choose how to deal with it. If you’d want to try to salvage the friendship and maintain it from now on, my advice for this would be really taking some time for yourself for a week or two, disconnect from socials and try to do some digging around how you’re feeling and why, to put things in perspective for yourself. And keep it contained, give yourself a set deadline, because isolation and depression are best friends…

Before that, though, I’d recommend writing out a short and sincere apology letter to the one who blocked you. If you have no way of otherwise reaching out to her digitally, make it a physical letter and actually deliver it. Tell her how you’ve been feeling - be honest and open about it, really - and inform her of your planning to take some time for yourself and be specific about the amount. Even if you’ll end up needing more time for yourself, it’s better to communicate an extension than to leave it vague from the start.

The most important aspect of the above is not expecting a reconciliation. Apologise for the sake of it if you do feel inclined to apologise, but your friend is now fully within her right to decide for herself whether or not she wants to give you a second chance. And regardless of what happens with this friendship, try to keep in mind what I said about people not being to blame for how depression makes us feel, and I mean with everyone. Again, if they’re toxic, the priority should be establishing boundaries and increasing the distance between you, but that’s a different situation.

Also, always keep in mind that human beings absolutely suck at mind reading, so you’ll need to communicate expectations from the start. You really don’t need to feel bad about setting expectations, because relationships are a two-player game at a minimum and the other person can always choose their own reaction. But it’s important that you contextualise yourself for them, tell them what works and what doesn’t work for you, what you need and don’t need, the works. And it’s 100% ok if you need some space, or some time to yourself, or you’re not in the mood to chat right then and there, or you have other things going, but it’s essential that you communicate that. The only type of bad texter is the texter who doesn’t communicate their pattern (or lack thereof). A short “can’t talk now, will drop a line when able” is more than enough to call a break.

As a side note, the other end isn’t much better in terms of maintaining relationships, and I’m referring to the vanishing act. That’s the one I used to pull back in my early twenties when dragging myself through depression, I’d just vanish off social media and would not respond to anyone for months. They even used to joke that they were placing bets on whether or not I was still alive “this time,” which is just as cruel a thing to do to people who are invested in your wellbeing…

You messed up. And it’s ok that you did, seriously. It’s how we calibrate ourselves to the world around us. The important thing is what we learn from messing up and how we apply the lesson moving forward.

I genuinely hope you’ll be able to find some inner peace and clarity! And don’t hesitate to ask strangers for their perspective, seriously. If you’re not clear about an aspect of what you’re going through, drop a post on one of the mental health boards, or relationship advice communities. And try to be honest about it with yourself first and foremost, give yourself some grace and compassion. Human life is a collective learning experience, literally not a single person who has ever lived on this planet has ever had it all figured out.

Just don’t, y’know… like, doxx yourself, or something:)) And try to take everything with a grain of salt, actually think about how much sense one piece of advice makes when taken in the context of who you know yourself to be.

Some things off the top of my head would be the more dance-y contemporary side of Synthwave - something like Occams Laser - With You, or maybe more toward the Electronica side of things, like Birdy Nam Nam - Defiant Order. Daft Punk also work as a sort of Euro Disco kinda’ distant cousin, too. At least these are the more upbeat proxies I know.

There’s always Darkwave (The Neon Droid - Braindance), but it’s like going from mild Indie to Nu Metal, so YMMV.

As a side note and potential rabbit hole, the first thing which popped into my head when skimming through that playlist was The Birthday Massacre - Science. I don’t think they fall under Synthwave, but I find they do a wonderful job at incorporating the “synth” part into their unique voice!

Edit: oh and give The Octopus Project a try! The Mythical E.L.C., for instance. Bit different, but very peppy and fun!

You’re very welcome! Genuinely glad I wasn’t too far off the mark!:))

Ooh, those aspects are well beyond my capacity for comprehension or visualisation! I feel like an ant watching nuclear explosions.

From what I’ve managed to find, they seem to be on the same wavelength, yes! There is a lot of melancholy and nostalgia in “mi-e dor de tine,” it’s an ardent longing to interact with that person, or to simply have their presence around again. And it’s not just related to people, it’s used whenever referring to someone or something which generated profound satisfaction in us, like food, activities, music, etc. And I’ve noticed that few people use it outside of its intended emotional context (like “awesome” became a generalised superlative for “good” when it initially meant “awe-inspiring”).

As for the number of speakers, I didn’t manage to find a lot of concrete or up-to-date information (although I am researching this halfway through my morning coffee, so I may have missed something), but Wikipedia (with this article from 2013 being cited as a source) states that about a quarter to a third of all Romanians spoke English a decade ago.

Anecdotally, I’d say that number has remained relatively unchanged, as while more people have been exposed to English in one way or another, we’ve also seen a significant uptick in emigration during the same period. Plus we’ve started dubbing a lot of cartoons in Romanian, which I suspect has contributed to fewer children picking it up early on.

As an addition to my initial comment, in which I focused specifically on people who have Romanian as their primary language, we also have significant portions of the population who speak Hungarian, Ukrainian and Roma as their primary languages, accounting for about 9% of the population (again, the numbers are taken from the sources listed above, so I take them with a grain of salt in terms of absolute accuracy).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wouldn’t go so far as calling it a work of art, but I remember this one time in 9th or 10th grade when our Plastic Arts (technically a general overview of art history and practical exercises for techniques, practically it was just painting whatever, in various shapes and sizes) teacher had us paint religious iconography on slabs of wood. Saints, to be more specific.

I won’t touch upon how utterly pissed my mother was at having to hunt down an ~A4 sized plank within a week (this was before the prevalence of Hyperstores). The thing just came out looking… wrong… It was supposed to be St. George, I believe, and it came out looking like an emaciated and woefully distraught Gandalf the Grey with a spotlight shining in from behind.

I remember this one being extra-bad because, besides basically having had no real training in painting throughout grade school, the subject matter in itself spoke nothing to me. I wasn’t absolutely horrible, as I used to do a lot of sketching and developed a relatively neat hand by that time, but I was thoroughly within the “exorcise your trauma through drawing biomechanical mutilations” phase of my artistic development, let’s call it.

It was also the first time when being creative felt like a horrid chore.

Edit: there is no evidence of said work, because I threw it away the instant I got home. As an agnostic, I get the feeling both God and St. George would have agreed with me…