AstralWeekends

Indeed, was quite a shock! This was in the US, state of Nebraska, about 15 years ago.

Thanks for the kind words. 0/10 experience, do not recommend.

It really is gut-wrenchingly hard! I have lots of good mementos of him and (sorry if this is creepy) have kept his ashes. I went on a months-long roadtrip/move earlier this year and his urn was along for the ride. He hated the car, lol.

In my case, I only stayed for one night and left the next day. It was an acute ward, meaning that it was intended for people having immediate mental health crisis. The hospital and staff were all fine. I had gone in for an evaluation at my doctor's recommendation in the morning. I spoke with a doctor there, who brought a police officer into the room at the end of our conversation, who told me I could either check myself into the hospital or spend the night in jail. I opted for the more comfortable of the two options. To be released the next day, I had to convince the doctors that I wasn't an active threat to myself or others.

The experience overall did further damage to my mental health and trust in the medical system. At the time, I was having thoughts of suicide without the intention of acting on them; they were just becoming more intrusive. I was honest about this with the hospital staff and I believe now that was a mistake. This was many years ago and I am in a healthier place these days, but it took awhile to get here and I doubt I'll ever speak as honestly with a mental health professional again.

• The night I had to put down my cat (he was the best boy).
• Dealing with the aftermath of a family member's suicide.
• The day my twin first moved far away from me.
• The death of my grandmother.
• The time I was hospitalized against my will for a mental health issue.
• The first panic attack I experienced and the subsequent fallout.

All said, I have lived a pretty lucky life and am a successful person (by my account). But even so, life is full of this type of stuff for pretty much everyone. Fun question, OP!

For all I know, the food coming out of the kitchen is being prepared by an automated assembly line maintained by robots and a group of cosmic turtles. Is that God? Some might say so... 🐢

Tough to choose, but I think it would be interesting to see what the heck was going on with the dancing plague of 1518.

If your soup or sauce sparks a little bit next time, you'll know, lol.

DRM? More like DOC!

Thinking of it a bit differently, have you considered you might not be sensitive enough? There's some real benefits to living with a healthy dose of sensitivity; for one, it is part of a healthy response to situations that could be physically harmful to you. Best of luck out there :)

I have been using Calyx for the past few months, which is a 1 year pre-paid connection through the T-Mobile network for $750 the first year. No data caps, have used it in the Southwest, South Central, and Midwest parts of the country with fairly good results. I measure up/down occasionally and get anywhere from 30Mbps - 250 Mbps up / 1 - 25 Mbps down. Lots of variety in the signal based on location and time of day, which is my main complaint, but it should be expected with a mobile data connection. Not fancy, but I go through a lot of data at my job and generally don't have much problems streaming video.

To be honest, I will probably try to switch over to a fiber connection when my year is up because I'm not longer working from the road, but it really hasn't been the worst solution by far.

I find myself having conflicting thoughts about defederation in general.

Much of mainstream social media these days leads to isolation of ideologically-opposed communities from one another and pushes together more like-minded communities ("echo chamber"). I think that's a bad thing.

I don't find Hexbear's culture a good fit for me, and though I share many of the same political sentiments, that's why I'm using lemm.ee and not hexbear.

I would not enjoy it if a large group of alt-righters suddenly federated with us and became a very vocal presence, even if a large number of their users were often polite, because I am so strongly opposed to those politics.

How to balance between an "all or none" approach and avoid perpetuating an echo chamber? I'd say continue bolstering controls for individual users to decide and federate widely for now. The more visibility the instances have among each other, the more overall awareness there will be in the user base of which communities are truly bad actors vs. large, vocal, and a little immature.

(Well, I must say, you mentioned you're not a native English speaker, but you could fool anyone because your English is crazy good - what is your native language?)

I agree, it's a real strength and something you can learn to control and use when you need it. It has definitely led to burnout situations for me in the past. For me, I think that comes from wanting to meet the expectations I feel I've set, but I've struggled to differentiate between expectations that I'm setting for myself vs. what others actually expect. My entire life I've worked harder than needed, most likely. Does this sound familiar to you? It's definitely led to some success for me that I don't feel is really deserved, but I'm learning to be a little more grateful for it these days :)