Nostalgia isn’t only a hell of a drug, but it’s a hell of an addiction too. Chasing times when you last felt good or when you felt things were right. Getting in touch with old flames that you forgot that there were reasons you moved on from, until you read the painful endings as to why those connections died.
Having those rose-tinted shades aren’t always good for you.
well what better to predict the future by helping to make it
like i mean ideas and concepts (when they havent been done yet), are not gonna be liked no matter how much you try to convince
so what better to do an idea to test it than actually think about it a lot and a lot
Owning a mistake disarms anyone’s ability to be mad at you almost every time. Way more effective than trying to talk your way out of it.
Losing my temper has paid off maybe once in life.
I’ve traveled to 50 countries and lived in three. People are basically good, but the media shouters will try very hard to convince you otherwise.
Currently, there are a fair amount of people trying to convince us that Iran is the enemy. Yes, their culture has its issues. But it doesn’t really work when the 5 Iranians I personally know are some of the nicest people you will meet.
Our differences are far smaller than the things that unify us.
I haven’t been to that many and I won’t say I’ve been to the other end of the spectrum. But, having been to other corners of the square, I’ve found that people are the same. There are wildly different cultural norms that can certainly be misconstrued as rude or invasive, but damn, the baseline human experience is so common.
We all think we need more money. We all know lots of people worse off. We all know several better off. We all celebrate births, marriages, and deaths. We all feed our guests to excess (not you, whichever Scandinavian country it is that makes guests wait in the other room while you have dinner). We all make liquor from anise.
The thing I’ve noticed is people who don’t have much, don’t really care if everyone around is the same. When they see others who are better off, suddenly they become dissatisfied.
It is same for everyone not just poor (instagram exists)
Moreover, we were like this even in 2000 BC
Always get it in writing.
And the corollary, read the damned writing.
People are tribal and incredibly cruel
Life is essentially a sandbox video game. There’s no right way to play the game and you don’t have to do what others are doing - you can do your own thing. If you do what everyone else does you get what everyone else has. Do you want that? I don’t.
More specifically, life is a rogue-like. You get what you get and have to try to make the most of it. You might beat a very difficult stage and get a shot reward for it and that’s just the luck of the roll. Some will get lucky with a legendary that makes their run very easy. You likely won’t and still need to carry on even if you get an anti-synergy. No one is coming to help, this is for you to do.
More specifically, Binding of Isaac really resonated with me and I think I took away a lot of life lessons.
You don’t get to choose what happens to you in life, but you get to choose how you feel about it.
Life is short, just enjoy every bit you can.
And if you don’t feel like you can choose your reactions, get therapy.
Stoicism is good
There are three rules that I live by:
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Never get less than twelve hours sleep
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Never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city
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and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body.
Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese.
12 hours? I am getting 9 hours and already feel like I have little time after work
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We’re all idiots.
Choice is an illusion. So is destiny.
Never trust a fart.
High ambition is over rated. Those that hustle have the same mentality as a cat chasing its own tail, they can never arrive. All there is is now.
As a white man, even when I’ve got it rough, my life is 20 times easier than if I was anything else. Women can’t even walk down the street without at least the thought a man they walk by might suddenly rape them. A black man can’t walk down the street without worrying about a cop deciding it’s their day to die. Meanwhile, I can walk down the street and not worry about a damn thing other than my heart rate.
It pains me daily that I can’t fix it. It pains me more that men that look just like me have done those awful things and will do those awful things and I’m looked down on by everyone that isn’t a straight white man because of it. And I’m still better off than the vast majority of folks, even though I have trouble paying rent most months.
So, the life lesson I’ve learned? Don’t leave the apartment. Seems to work pretty well for me.
Real heart wrenching moment realizing women fearing being murdered on their walk home is a euphemism for being raped. They’d rather describe being stabbed and mugged.
The assertion that women can’t even walk down the street without thinking that a man they pass might suddenly rape them is an extraordinary generalisation. Of course, women have legitimate reasons to be conscious of their personal safety, and sexual violence is a serious problem. But there’s a difference between acknowledging that reality and suggesting that women live in a constant state of fear whenever they leave the house. You’re presenting an extreme scenario as though it’s the universal female experience.
And the suggestion that your life is 20 times easier simply because you’re a straight white man is equally hyperbolic. Privilege isn’t a mathematical equation, and disadvantage isn’t experienced exclusively by women or ethnic minorities. Male suicide rates, loneliness, social isolation and the difficulties many men face in forming meaningful relationships are serious issues too. Men can experience profound disadvantage, vulnerability and suffering. Those things don’t disappear because they happen to be white.
None of this is to deny that women experience sexual violence, that racism exists, or that certain groups face systemic disadvantages. They do, and acknowledging those realities matters. But recognising one group’s difficulties shouldn’t require exaggerating them, diminishing another group’s struggles, or engaging in a competition over who has the hardest existence.
I also find the self-flagellation rather tiresome. You aren’t personally responsible for every terrible thing committed by another man who happens to share your skin colour. You don’t need to feel guilty for existing, nor do you need to apologise for advantages you didn’t consciously create. What you can do is recognise them, avoid dismissing other people’s experiences, and treat people as individuals.
And perhaps most importantly, stop confusing having privilege in certain respects with having an easy life. Struggling to pay your rent is a genuine hardship. Male loneliness and mental health are genuine problems. You can acknowledge those things while still recognising that other people face obstacles you don’t.
The answer isn’t to stay in your apartment. It’s to stop treating social inequality as either a reason for personal guilt or a competition in comparative misery.
Being aware of it is the first step to actually helping a little bit. e.g. I’ll cross to the other side of the street if I am walking past a woman at night, but even just not being a total arsehole puts you in the top 50% of the male population.
you don’t have to follow the law. you just have to not get caught.
break the law enough and you can break bigger laws without getting caught.
break enough bigger laws and you can just buy or threaten yourself out of jail.
laws, like door locks, keep the honest honest.
Small talk is actually really easy. Just ask questions and then questions about what you heard. Hopefully they’ll be good at conversation and ask you as well, but it’s okay to be a little one sided.
Regarding pets, enjoy the time you have together and save the mourning for when they’re six feet under. I was sad about the aging of my dog, but realized that to her, humans are basically immortal constants of love and comfort. Looking at it that way made me feel a bit better.
Speaking of addictive thought processes, maladaptive daydreaming. I’ve half joked about it over on [email protected], but it really is addictive. Recently I realized it’s not healthy to reject reality and substitute my own. Even if my reality has mechs and this one doesn’t :(
Mechs ftw.
I dig giant robots!
You dig giant robots!
We dig giant robots!
Chicks dig giant robots!
