orgrinrt

And switch it towards absurdism and especially Camus towards the end. Having the “…but it is, or can be, actually good” angle really helps adapting that mindset to real life action and motivation.

I’d think it this way: Get the training anyway, hold off buying if that’s morally (and understandably so) difficult.

If shit hits the fan before you get one and/or it’s otherwise too late, there’ll be chances of obtaining one in the middle of the shitstorm one way or another. Maybe someone friendly has one, but never got around to proper training? Good thing you did. You can help out and try your best to utilise it as morally but also as professionally and efficiently as you can.

Slightly more long term, you can assist training others, if using one on live targets still feels objectionable (and rightly so!) to you.

Learning the craft and proper handling will not go to waste, if it starts looking even worse than it does now.

It can be good, too, to help others use the things more safely and otherwise properly. May save lives. And you need not take any, not in defense or otherwise, if that’s important to you.

Little Fume Itchy-Nose and She’s a Jobby-Sniffer

I’m not sure I understand what you mean? Seems very natural to me, especially if you already talk as a habit. Do you mean how do you preface the question or smooth into it or something?

What do you normally talk about? I mean, I don’t think you need to make this more complicated than it is. If you do talk already, I think it follows you’d naturally want to know more of each other? So you’d ask. How more natural can it really get?

Edit: you know what, this is my suggestion: stop overthinking it. You don’t need to make science of it and consciously think about engagement and all that, just go with the flow. You want to know something, you’ll have to eventually just ask. That’s as natural as it gets. Just keep talking and it’ll all come if the interest is mutual

Edit2: actually sorry about going on tangents and making this long, but I have to say I never thought asking questions wasn’t natural, but I have adhd and had that unmedicated and unmanaged for most of my youth. So I always just talked and talked and had fun knowing more and more, and part of that is asking questions, or that’s how I think about it. People seem very glad they get to talk about things, a lot of people don’t really get the opportunity enough I guess. I had fun and a lot of people around me and never was alone or without company if I wanted some, be it just normal casual friend stuff or romantic or sexual or whatever. I think a big part of that was the naive and unfiltered interest and questions I just had about everything and the lack of awareness about if that might be weird. ADHD just made me go and go and do and do and I never thought any of it was unnatural, and nobody ever mentioned something in that vein either. I bet some people found that annoying or rude or whatever, but those people wouldn’t have stayed in my life either way, so I guess, even thinking about it medicated and the adhd managed, in hindsight, it wouldn’t have mattered one bit.

This is all just to say that there isn’t just one good way of approaching things especially socially. I had a bunch of luck thanks to the adhd impulsivity and lack of any deeper self-awareness about social stuff, so it came naturally to me, but that same mindset can be achieved and kind of “clicked” consciously too. But that’s not the point. The point is, just go and do things, if it works it works, if not, it never would’ve worked either way, and something else will come up and work. Things have a way of working out without conscious input.

Oh wow, this part of the wiki is either just a perfect match or a sign of trolling:

Fumito Ichinose and Shesa Jobisnifa, both anesthesia specialists from Boston who conducted a study on the effects of hydrogen sulfide gas, or "sewer gas," on mice…

Fumito and Jobisnifa working with fumes, sniffing

Late 20s, but since I have almost always, other than my army service, had very long hair, it wasn’t so noticeable. I wore and still wear messy buns most of the time, which hides the crown as a side effect. I did however immediately get with a doctor when I first started really getting bothered by it, especially the forehead hairline, and got a combo of minoxidil, finasteride and ketokonazol (or however you spell that) going, after a while of testing different things. I still use them to this day, and surprisingly, I’ve gained some of my forehead line back (although sparse still) and almost entirely stopped the thinning at the crown. My family from both my mother’s and father’s side is just full of bald or perpetually sort of balding men, so I feel lucky that I somehow got myself to do something about it before it was too late. The doc says it’s almost impossible to fully regain if it gets too far, and the longer it has progressed, the less likely it is to get it halting the progress at the very least, so boy am I glad I actually did something about it.

However, now nearing my mid 30s, it’s not the still visible but tolerable sparseness that bothers me, but the coarseness and rigidity of the constantly multiplying grey hairs. I guess universe just doesn’t want me to have a beautiful, lush head of hair. Doesn’t seem to want that for very many men, really.

But for some younger ones browsing this thread, I’d suggest talking to a doctor about this, especially if long hair is important to you or a distinct part of your identity and/or self-image. There are things that really can work at varying levels for different people, and sooner you get the routine going, the less you’ll regret not acting fast enough.

Yes this makes sense, the 20 below the lower 00 above 30 at the point of year is illuminating! Compared to stares, where it’s above the lower 00 already! At and after the unnamed point before deal’s we just let you guess the value, which makes perfect sense. It’s Neates after all. You can use the 0.05 as a hint!

Me neither, just commenting on the general disparity between other western countries and the US in most of issues that concern some sort of a moral choice. I have to assume at some point they were equally leaning towards (at least a decoy of a semblance of) common good, as it (as fragile and grayscale as it is) has generally been in the developed west outside of US. Not saying it’s perfect anywhere, but I think we do have to concede that things are, and have been, way more weird and concerning in the US in the past 30 years. Maybe more, but that’s what I have experience with and insight into.

But I believe people can have empathy outside of own experiences. All it takes is some tendency towards curiosity and enough imagination to actually be able to make sense of something as abstract as assuming someone else’s point of view. And empathy besides, which is a little bit of a harder concept and probably requires some inherent traits acquired at birth(?), compassion certainly should be possible for anyone. You can rationally realize others’ troubles without understanding it completely. That just requires caring past one’s own self.

It would of course benefit them if they had the experience. I’ve often, when speaking of such hard and heavy topics, gone on a similar tangent. Perspective, at the end of the day, is the thing everyone ought to have. Experiencing the things yourself is one way, but I think just reading about others struggles and thoughts is a great way to gain that as well. If someone lacks any and all traits required to care about others, then I suppose the perspective evades them until they experience it themselves (this is so common in right-wing politics (doesn’t even have to be far right, even very liberal right falls for this constantly!) even in extremely progressive countries such as mine), but I have to believe there are other ways.

This often comes up with depression and anxiety and outside of the more serious things, just general bad mindsets. A lot of people are having a hard time adjusting to the world as it is today, and that’s so understandable. But when people wonder why Im seemingly able to find light, joy and happiness, hope even, while being generally aware of all this, I don’t really know what else to say, other than tell them I spent several years on the edge of suicide, fighting against these things that were driving me down the ledge. Without going to the specifics, I just always try to give them the understanding that the perspective gained from that, surviving it, finding the way forward, it just helps navigating the struggles to find a little bit of light in everything. But was I somehow less empathetic to the people going through clinical depression before I did myself? No. I was fully aware how horrifying and desperate it can get, I just didn’t really know how it felt, but I was able to imagine a lot of it. And a lot of people, I’ve found, are the same. Most of them, even, though that’s just anecdotal. Maybe people like that tend to herd towards others like that, dunno.

But as sad as it is, it’s so common to see the less empathetic or compassionate people drive hard for certain policies, until the policy kicks them in their own knees via their family or friends or whatever, and suddenly they drive against it. It didn’t matter that someone was suffering from it. It had to be someone they knew, before that suffering mattered. As with e.g the depression, a public figure can be a strong opponent of mental health and just promoting the most awkward stuff like not being stressed by eating an apple and going for a jog or whatever. While those too have merits in general, thats just not even close to answering a lot of the cases where that simply isn’t enough, or even possible, or even good at all. Calling everyone soft and losers with no spine. Then when their own child gets diagnosed after a long while of publicly calling even them, their own blood, losers in need of strong leaders and happy thoughts, suddenly it’s a real thing and mental health is an actual concept that isn’t just hippies feeling down or whatever.

Anyway, don’t know where I’m going with this. I agree with you, but I guess I had some words wanting to get out of my head along similar lines.

I’ve no knowledge of US stores and all that, but as a general rule, I’d be extremely suspicious of anyone offering so much cheaper gas as a rule. Also, free flights? There’s something rotten almost always, when the deals sound almost too good. There are no free lunches (in capitalist societies at least).

You’d like to think some sort of empathy, compassion and solidarity at the very least.

But I guess those are traits the US has very effectively diminished from generation to generation.

I’d probably dedicate some days each week to friends or family, to have more active contact before it’s late, but be shamelessly selfish the other days and spend them trying to finish some of my hobby projects and finally finishing The Witcher 3 if possible.

That’s going to be rough to those currently on my daily agenda, like partner and kid, but I’ve given so much to them, and so little to others I care about, that the balance has to be leaning towards the latter.

Not sure if I actually could do that though. But that’s what I’d hope I’d be able to push for.

Ah, that old pattern. Damn. I recognize it and see it way too much around. Luckily not much in my inner circles, but spaces I can’t avoid like work for example. It’s starting to eat up on me.

This is one of those weirdly specific pet peeves I have. For the life of me I can not get into the headspace where that is the outcome of the whole chain of logic and intuition that goes into having that stance, and, more importantly, holding to it despite ample chances, throughout tens of years, to change your mind or act differently. At 50, I see you’re still lashing out in this pattern? But why, man, why?

Surely it ought to feel good to see others doing the right thing, so it wouldn’t feel as bad for yourself to do the wrong thing. Assuming you can’t just stop doing it (Many habits are extremely hard to kick, so that’s entirely human and understandable, not faulting anyone for that). But this way, the total amount of good is better when it’s only you doing the wrong thing, so you can just be the margin of error, sort of? Have less of a negative impact overall. Be implicitly slightly better yourself, by this grace of others. Or at least you should end up feeling that way, or something along those lines, right? Or at the very least, feel just nothing, be entirely oblivious to the whole thing. That’d be human and understandable too. It’s a habit. You don’t necessarily think about those. You just do them.

But to lash out for that? Be conscious enough to realize this all, but instead of any other kind of understandable human way, you, of all things, lash out to those doing the different thing. I just can’t figure it out. Why? I suppose it could be a subconscious coping mechanism to shield one’s self from the fact that they are not doing the right thing, but it feels off that it would come out aggressive or you know combative some way. At others, at least. I get that you might feel bad, and “guilty”, sort of, but surely nobody’s mind goes from “I feel guilty” to “it’s your fault I’m feeling guilty”? Ugh.

I find my lack of perspective often very anxiousness-inducing. I can emphatise with such a wide range of lives and beings and situations, but there are so many I simply can’t, often similar to this specific thing. Makes me nervous about me potentially being selfish or stubborn because I can’t see it. This is one of those things. Makes me sweat, almost. Always reminds me of the “are we the baddies?” meme. Am I partially some sort of a sociopath since I just can’t grasp that mindset? What if I don’t even really emphatise with anyone, I just think I do, but what if it feels different for those that really do it? What if I am a psychopath, goddamnit, this really gets me spiraling 🥲