Well, you’re reading it wrong. It’s latin, like magna cum laude. It basically means “with.”

But how do they know which email that might be? Do they even know which of my accounts are for business or personal use? If I send an email from my business email to a bunch of friends and relatives to plan a party, will Google assume those are subscribers and pull my party-planning content from my email and put that info… somewhere… on my business page? I don’t want them reading any of my emails, ever.

The email from Google was laughable in that it contained almost no info on how this process is supposed to work. All it means to me is that I don’t have control over my own content. This should have been opt-in instead of opt-out.

Restaurant work is not typically salaried unless you’re the manager. I’d say that one might be an outlier. This is the first time I’ve heard anyone refer to hourly wages as independent work.

Find a Mormon. They will be ecstatic to do this for free. Of course all the social events will be church related and they will certainly try their best to convert you… But harassing people into participating is what they’re best at.

I just found out you can get into some local museums for free on the first full weekend of the month if you have one of three specific bank cards. I think Thursdays are free for anyone, but that can be hard to arrange if you have a 9-5 job or want to take the kids.

OP did say that in this particular instance, and I may have missed that on first read. But this advice is all over the place generally, and I’ve frequently received this advice IRL, with no caveats or context, so it’s not always a matter of “keep scrolling.”

I’m not doing what that article is talking about. I guess instead of reminding people that there are a lot of neurodivergent people not working remotely, I should have just silenced myself. I mean, why even have a thread like this at all if the advice works for some people?

That one is pretty useless if you have an hourly job. Oh, I’ll just leave the store whenever I want and won’t get fired, hmm? And the infuriating thing will still be there when I get back.

If this is real, please get help before you hurt someone. This is not normal behavior. Your perceptions are not matching up with reality, and it sounds like you have a hard time controlling yourself in these situations.

Well the first thing you gotta do is quit listening to society! Seriously, cut that out. Who cares if you don’t conform? There are at least dozens of us who don’t, and I’m at the point where I’m ready to take a stand and tell them I’m just as valid as they are. And so are you. Don’t let everyone else tell you who you are. Live the way you want to live. And find the other weirdos. Just one friend could make a huge difference.

Yeah I feel like volunteering and community action is a few steps down the line. As for how to find people who can hear you out - they do exist. To be honest I answered a local reddit post looking for friends. I think her post mentioned she was struggling with mental health issues. It’s important to be open about that from the start. Maybe I got lucky, but we turned out to have so much in common. We started taking long walks once a week. Not too much of a commitment, but I had something to look forward to every week. And yeah, there was some trauma dumping from both of us at times. It’s far less embarrassing when there’s a back and forth, and we found we could relate to a lot of each other’s experiences.

It may seem counterintuitive that you need to find someone who is also struggling. It’s much easier for us to have compassion for someone else, even if our situations are the same. But eventually you’ll realize that if your depressed friend deserves your compassion then so do you.

And so what if you have to try this a few times to find the right person or it doesn’t pan out? At least you tried something and got some fresh air.

Eh, this is something you can probably change. In the last few years I’ve done a lot of processing work and am trying to make more intentional choices for myself rather than living the way other people want me to. Now when I meet new people it reminds me that I actually quite like my life and wouldn’t want to trade it for theirs.

I understand where you’re coming from, completely. It definitely feels like being silenced (again, because let’s face it, this shit is mentally throwing us right back into childhood when our needs and feelings were ignored). I understand that desperate feeling of needing to be heard. But we’re adults now, and the people at work aren’t your parents. There’s nothing obligating them to listen. Even my spouse needs time where I’m not ranting about politics. An hour a day is all he can do right now, and this is someone who cares about how I feel. But this isn’t a rejection of my feelings.

One thing I’ve personally had to realize is that the stuff about politics isn’t actually you. You have to find a way to have a degree of separation between the political and your actual core. I know it looks like they’re the same thing right now. But think about what you really want to accomplish, think about what kind of culture you want to create at work. Do you want everyone to be as upset as you are? Would that make a good working environment? If you want others to be more compassionate, I think coming from a place of compassion yourself might work better. Right now it sounds like you’re treating people in ways you probably wouldn’t want others treating you. You can still be true to yourself, your ideals, and values without being quite so forceful. For some reason beyond my immediate comprehension, demonstrating the intensity of your feelings doesn’t translate into people caring - it’s rather the opposite.

This was a really hard lesson for me and took a few weeks to fully understand and think through. I hope you have someone likeminded in your life you can talk to outside of work. If you don’t, please consider trying to find a new friend. You need someone who already understands, who you don’t need to convince, to blow off steam with. Good luck.

One time it snowed a foot or two in Seattle. I had a set of studded tires on a little Toyota Tercel and I swear I was the only fucker driving around. Uphill, downhill, cruising down the lumpy hard-packed freeway, didn’t have any problems. Besides, if you get stuck in a Tercel you can just lift the whole rear of the car out of the snow with a second person. I really miss that car.

That’s odd. I read most of The Myth of Normal and did not get anything like what you’re saying from it. In fact, Mate mostly blamed “the system” for keeping people traumatized. I would have stopped reading immediately if he’d said anything like “children are too sensitive.” Are you sure this Barkley isn’t mischaracterizing Mate? Did Mate later change his stance about everything? Based on his book, I can’t imagine why he would ever say the things you describe.

I guess not everybody is as smart as you. Congratulations or something.

Did you have a fever? Could be a bit of delirium.

This might not be what you want to hear, but you’re right. People will come and go from your life in ways you don’t have any control over. The only person who will never leave you is you. So, be a friend to yourself! You don’t have to be your only friend, but once you have a solid foundation of being ok with just yourself, you won’t need to depend on others as much. You’ll be better able to enjoy their company without worrying about being abandoned. It won’t hurt as much when friends leave, whether it’s intentional or just a result of changing circumstances. Of course, this is not an easy thing to just do. As others have recommended, a therapist could possibly help you with this.

I’ve been in the same situation you describe, and it’s taken more than a decade (and me having a complete breakdown and him still not leaving me even though I was a complete mess) for me to finally believe it. I’m guessing you may have had someone in your childhood who told you they cared about you, but their actions later revealed they actually didn’t. Exploring those feelings - the real abandonment you did experience - can help you heal and separate current and future experiences from the past.

Yeah the problem with scrolling is that it’s designed to keep you scrolling. You could put on a TV show instead. Either you’ll get sucked in and watch it or you’ll get bored and want to do something else. As long as you don’t get stuck scrolling, you can decide what you’d rather do.

But why do we need to recreate “real life?” Don’t we already do this relatively well in books, TV, and movies? People keep saying we won’t use AI to replace creative writing, but this (and propaganda, making bot conversations seem like real people) are the only use cases for this kind of data. LLMs don’t need to improve their conversation skills. What they really need is to stop hallucinating, and this kind of data won’t help with that.

What people misunderstand about the tax brackets is that your entire income doesn’t get moved to a higher bracket. It’s only the income in excess of it.

So for example, let’s say you had $50,000 of taxable income in 2024 as a single filer, you’d pay 10% on that first $11,600 and 12% on the chunk of income between $11,601 and $47,150. Then you’d pay 22% on the remaining $2,850 that falls into the next tax bracket. The total bill would be about $6,053 — about 12% of your taxable income — even though your highest bracket is 22%. And this example doesn’t take into account the standard deduction.

Bottom line, this won’t save people as much as they think it will. Usually the person in the example simply complains “I’m paying 22%” because it always feels like the paycheck isn’t enough.