Mentally beaming hug vibes your way, aricchi

My wife (who is not Chinese) mentions she gets calls in Chinese about immigration status, and I can't imagine how stressful that has to be just to hear it. What do you mean I Nebulously Fucked Up My Paperwork Somehow and May Be Deported? I'd worry about that even WITHOUT a phone call!!

I cuss out "idiots" as much as the next person but the concept of "intelligence" or "IQ" is soooo fake. But it does make people who are very sure they are the smartest little smarty-pants in the room feel very smug about themselves.

Not an ounce of empathy for those who do get scammed by it. Or even an attempt to think about who WOULD be scammed by it. The elderly. People who don't speak the language very well.

Perhaps appropriate to the topic, as a translator, I have to think about "how to translate the same stock phrase multiple ways" all the time forever 😅

Yes. Yeah. Yup. Un-huh. Yea. Mhm. Yep. Ye. Yepperino!

Thanks. Thank you. I appreciate that. Oh, thank you! Thank you so much. Good looking out. I can't thank you enough. Love ya, babe!

Sorry. I'm sorry. I apologize. My bad. My fault. Oh, shit, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I'm so, so sorry.

Stories don't need to have a point to exist, but what makes them rewarding is their ability to stick with us. A process that shortcuts an understanding of that ability, whether it's beautiful prose, playful language, subtleties of a character, or w/e is just shortchanging everyone to make a buck.