That’s a perfect example of its ambiguousness; I read that as “the number below [this question]” and assumed I had to cross out enough zeros to make it 1,000,000.

Oh, I didn’t mean it was a primal instinct; just that it seems to be a common cultural one.

I definitely feel you, though; it’s very much not mine, either.

I used to be in the same camp (and it’s still not for me) but it started to make more sense to me when I realized it’s kind of been a thing we’ve been doing for a while.

There’s the well known Papi, in Spanish, but, even as far back as the 1930s in The Grapes of Wrath, you have Pa Joad refer to Ma Joad as “Ma”. Even in The Year without a Santa Clause (for a more modern but still older reference), Santa refers to Mrs. Clause as “Ma”.

The idea of using these titles for anyone other than my own parents was not something that’s intuitive to me, at all, but clearly it’s a thing humans have been doing for (at least) a century. Not all those examples are in sexual contexts but I imagine that a nickname you have for your partner isn’t not going to end up continuing into the bedroom, at least not for everyone.

In that context, it started to make more sense to my brain.

Honestly, that was the biggest difference for me, when I switched.

A bunch of my issues I’d had on Windows just went away, overnight. And, sure, I ran into other problems; but I would’ve on Windows, too, except I can usually resolve them on Linux.

My machine is so much more usable, just on a daily basis; and I’ve learned so much more about my computer naturally since I switched.