Meeting other people’s friends groups (as you described meeting your partner’s friends) is a great way to shortcut that awkwardness. Its not just that someone else has done the hard work of filtering folks out, but that people are just on better form when with friends. Part of the problem of making friends in random social events is most people are either a bit awkward or putting on a social ‘mask’, which makes it harder to actually identify the people you’d like once you got past that.

My wife social circle has a bunch of people who entered as someone’s partner for a whole, but stayed friends with us after they broke up (even if there was a delicate period post-split where we hung out with them both, but never together).

It’s not weird to think about the other paths you could have gone down. But I would avoiding feeling too much regret. If something genuinely seems interesting to you, make it part of your current life, even just as a hobby or side project. Remembering that we are more than just our current selves is important for not getting swallowed by the grind.

If it’s feeling envy about the better life some alternate you has, try to keep in mind that nothing is simple. Although other choices might seem appealing in abstract, maybe they’d also lead to more problems. Sure, you could have been a doctor, but maybe the stress would have driven you to burnout and opiate addiction (69% of doctors misuse prescription substances).

I’d also say, that as I get older, I feel like I hit different “Save Points” that prevent to much regret. I chose to study philosophy instead of law, which means I’m a lot less rich than I might have been, but I would trade my weird, chilled friends from uni for the bunch of competitive over achievers I would have been “friends” with if I’d gone down that route. I met my spouse during a stressful period in my life, completing a degree for a profession I no longer work in. I could see that whole period of study as a complete waste of time, but if I’d never met the person I married the my life would be incomparably poorer.

I probably agree, but I’m not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean that people who are in a disadvantaged group in a society are more sensitive to language that is biased against their group? So women notice (and can be offended) by phrases like “you throw like a girl” while men might not care, or even notice, that it’s sexist.

Or do you mean people in disadvantaged groups are, in general better at detecting bias in language? So, poor people are better at spotting politic bias in reporting?

Do you think emotional abuse is more common from immigrant parents? I feel like I see a lot of comments about the stress and pressure that immigrant parents put on their kids, but it’s not something I know anything about.

If so, why do you think it’s like that? Is it just that families that immigrant are often in difficult financial situations, without lots of social support so the parents are super stressed? Or that the kinds of people who are willing to immigrate are aspirational and so demand a lot of their children? Or is partly that their way if parenting would be normal back where they grew up, but for its difficult for their kids growing up in a society with different standards and expectations around childhood?

It’s the case for all dishwashers I know about. It’s not that weird if you think about it. When people wash dishes by hand, they often wash a bunch of dishes in the same basin, with the water becoming increasingly dirty. Depending on how dirty and how much they care, they’ll change the water occasionally. Then they’ll give everything a rinse in clean water to get rid of soap. (obvs people do dishes on a variety of ways, but this is pretty common in western cultures.)

Dishwashers are the same, spray the same hot soapy water over the dishes for a while, until it’s dirty and most of the solids have been removed. Then drain and wash again with clean water. The soapy stage is about removing dirt, but the sanitising comes afterwards with the hot rinse and drying.

And the single video that isn’t a “Sponsored” ad is still from Red Bull, and basically an ad.

You might have an intresting point here, but o don’t really understand what you’re saying. Can you explain a bit more?

Can you share a link?

Yup, just read the other post. No one picked stupid cat. Really weird behavior OP.

Edit: also, reading the reponses here, people don’t care or pick smart cat. Just like in the other post…

What’s with these new accounts suddenly posting dozens of generic, overwritten and preppy posts in a few hours. It seems like an almost inhuman pattern…

Depressing. ai bots flooding my feed today, check the post history

I’d say, they’re like digging your own latrine. A totally effective solution, as long as you’re physically able and your needs aren’t exceptional.

I’d say it’s more like, wanting a car is like wanting your own septic tank rather than a connection to municipal sewers. In an urban area it would be an insane waste of space to have individual septic tanks. But in the country the cost of building and maintaining infrastructure for just one household would be incredibly wasteful.

I think people should learn sign lanaguve causes it’s cool. But if it’s really for at-home, antigovernemnt planning, why not just put your phone in the other room, or the fridge? Sure, it’s a minor inconvenience to take it out your pocket, but that’s basically nothing compared to spending a few years being fluent enough in sign to hatch plans.

I guess the issue with those types of actions is that it leads to consequences that the people currently in power would be happy with. If people can just stop paying taxes on mass when they don’t like the government it pretty much gives permission for it as a political protest from now on.

I’m not saying that it is definitely a bad idea to give the public a veto on any government policy they don’t like, but it certainly promotes small government. Part of the point of government spending is spending money on things that some people don’t want, whether that’s ‘obamacare’ or the Pentagon. A government that was worried about avoiding any sizable tax strike would never be able to spend money on anyrhing but the most basic and widely accepted expenses. Even “law and order” which is often one of the few roles libertarians support spending on isn’t widely accepted anymore with ‘defund the police’.

Secondly, although part of a strike or protest is about causing disruption as a stick to put pressure on agreeing to demands, part of it is also on performing “costly displays”. Posting memes may raise awareness for an issue, but its unlikely to sway people to your side as literally setting yourself on fire. One is easy, one is horrific, and when someone does something ‘costly’ it let’s people see how much this matters to them. And asking me to not pay my taxes isn’t a big ask, it benefits me (in the short term at least), while with a labour strike you are usually sacrificing pay to make a point, which shows how important it is to you.

I guess if that was the fundamental nature of reality, then stuff would be exactly as it is.

Well, my close friends and I felt similar when we were young. Now we’re middle aged and realised we had a mix of undiagnosed neurodiversity, and are now are now on doctor-prescribed cannabis and/or stimulants.

I know that if my adhd meds were stopped, I’d have to go back to self-medicating with booze, weed and street drugs. But having access to reliable clean stimulants that help me do the stuff I want to do, have hobbies and keep a steady job and long-term relationships, has been life transforming. I’ve had a jar of weed in my drawer for over a year, because I’ve gone from smoking weed everyday to once every few months. And it’s not because I think weed is bad, or not fun, but just because my life is so much more rich and satisfying and busy (in a good way) that I don’t need to get baked to make it manageable.

Edit: didn’t mean for that sound preachy. There’s no problem with not being ‘sober’ of it works for you. But if there’s some underlying issue that the intoxicants help you deal with, I just wanted to share that it can be amazing if you can sort the issue out rather than mask it. But there’s always space for a delicious cocktail, some fragrant bud or taking some mushrooms at a rave in the deep forest.

This. Winning the peace prize doesn’t mean you’re a saint, it means you’ve further world peace. Most things in politics are so complex and involve so many different actors and factions that it’s impossible to really boil stuff down and know whether the motivations are ‘worthy’. Most peace is achieved by international arrangements that make it more attractive for decision-makers to choose peace over war, often for very selfish reasons.

I was completely opposed to anyone winning one for the recent change in Isreal / Palestine, because until we see the fallout from it I’m skeptical any meaningful peace has been achieved. If Russia remove all their troops, and Ukraine is at peace, and Isreal are no longer genociding, then sure give him the peace prize. That’s the point of awards and shit, to make it tempting to do good even when it doesn’t immediately benefit you personally.

It’s an understandable reaction, but it’s not ideal or effective. In fact, depression and apathy is one of the key mechanisms of keeping a group oppressed.

Fighting to maintain power is costly and risky, but if someone can make people give up hope and stop struggling, then they can do what they want to them.

I read some piece of advice a while back (on lemmy I think) about when to talk, “Does it need said? Does it need said right now? Does it need said by you?” and it really stuck with me.

I’m definitely a talker, and my friends and family will talk all day. But I know my partner can find it a bit much, so having a basic rule has been surprisingly helpful. I might want to tell him about the intresting thing that I read, but does he really want to hear that? We might need to talk about something important but stressful, maybe bringing it up just before bed isn’t the best idea?

It is all pretty obvious stuff, but I spent three decades only really spending time with people who talked all the time too. I didn’t need to worry about bringing something up at the wrong time, because if I did, they would immediately say “oh I don’t want to talk about that because…” and explain or change the subject. I didn’t worry about a conversation being uninteresting, because if it was we’d quickly tangent into something that worked for us both.