The Water Lily ~ Hand-colored Lithograph ~ Nathaniel Currier (American, 1813-1888)

I know this is the Anti Small Talk Website but small talk is one of the most effective social glues out there for getting to know people and forming friendships with them.

When I was just starting out at a job right after college I had a coworker who I thought was the nicest person alive and after a few weeks I realized this was just because she consistently asked other people things like, "How ya doing? Whatcha having for lunch? Got any weekend plans? Seen any good movies lately?" instead of politely ignoring everyone around her.

Me: oh yeah, if you think school photography is hard now, try imagining doing this with film.

The new girl: what’s film?

Me: … film. Like… film that goes in a film camera.

New girl: what’s that mean?

Me: … before cameras were digital.

New girl: how did you do it before digital?

Me:… with film? I haven’t had enough coffee for this conversation

u literally cannot have some sort of kneejerk panicked guiltspiral reaction to learning u hurt someone u cannot start playing out ur imaginary canceled callout metoo moment anytime a loved one thinks uve done something wrong 9/10 people are only communicating that to u bc they want 1) their hurt validated 2) a promise to at least try not to hurt them the same way again 3) a hug not some fucking malicious attempt to destroy ur life

When I was a kid my aunt gave me my sign name in NGT, and I love how she composed it because it's pretty much a pun on both the way my spoken name sounds and who I am as a person. So it looks a little like the words for "sun" ("zon") and "yes" ("ja") put together, evidently based on the similarity to "Sonja". But instead of just combining those two words, or even simply fingerspelling my name which would have roughly given the same effect, she spliced the two. It starts out with a fingerspelled s, then instead of spelling the o, there is a modified sign for sun (facing the viewer, rather than the signer), followed by a fingerspelled n. The closest way I can describe the vibe for hearing people is it looks like this:

s☀️n

This is already objectively great of course, but it gets better. The second syllable starts with the swoop for the finger j. Instead of simply tacking a finger a to the back of it, it then switches into the sign for "yes", but with an additional wiggle, because well, I hardly ever did sit still.

"nobody is judging you" wrong, my mother is seemingly always judging every single stranger she sees

Zonnige treinreis naar Utrecht, please fix me zonnige treinreis naar Utrecht

making simple chinese bamboo fan by 长安的一世长安