grasshopperpurp

I still talk with my parents from time to time. My brother does the same - but less. For me, it's a sense of, They didn't mean to be the way they were. They just were severely undeveloped people, who were reactionary and fearful. I also recognize how hard being a parent is - especially when you're in a marriage that brings out the worst in each other.

I know that cutting them off completely would be very painful for them, so, I put up with some BS from time to time just shield them from that pain. I'm in a good place, so they don't disturb my peace too much, but I have to be mindful about it.

Lots of loaded words in the comments, and hallucination probably takes some of us to places that aren't helpful, but understanding the limits of our perception and understanding gives us better context. Even if we don't understand the limits, it's helpful to know that our reality and reality are separate things. If we don't know we have blind spots, we won't know to check them.

Yep, exactly. Around here we have a bunch of mockingbirds and blue jays, and you'll here the mockingbirds adopt some of the harsher sounds of the blue jays, but they usually surround them with melodic trills. It makes for a pretty dynamic contrast - reminds me of a Jazz solo.

I've worked in various retail jobs. Most customers range from kind to inoffensive. The negative experiences from the exceptions stand out and occupy more headspace.

If you (general - not you) think you could improve how you treat people, please work on improving, but most people here are probably fine and have nothing to feel guilty about.

I agree. I think you cheat this some - depending on the medium - by separating time spent creating with time spent editing. In myself, I've noticed that editing can reinvigorate the creative process, but if I'd been creative earlier, the burst of creativity spurred by editing is short-lived, and I'm often ready for a nap when I'm done.

>What could he possibly dream about at the end?

Balance. Not to be flippant, and I also enjoy AB's work, but no one thing or set of things is never the answer to sustainable peace of mind.

Ironically, one thing that made AB's character so appealing was his balance of ex-junkie hardness and childlike wonder.

There's a great Velvet Underground song, I Found a Reason, with the lyric, 'Oh, I do believe / If you don't like things you leave / For some place you've never gone before.' That place isn't necessarily a 'place.' No one ever does everything. You will die with meat still left on the bone. Take comfort in that.

Very much my pleasure!

You probably have, but if you haven't heard 'All Your Goodies are Gone' from the Parliament album, Up for the Downstroke, it's special - even by George Clinton's standards.

Agree with you, though, it's hard to imagine modern music without the influence of Parliament and Funkadelic.

Isn't it also about the amount of harm or benefit for each?

The articles I saw (years ago) claimed that vaping was a gateway to smoking, but the data showed that vaping just replaced smoking for teens. That is, once e-cigs became available, the same amount of teens were doing one or the other, but more were using e-cigs than cigarettes. So, if the amount of teens doing one or the other remained stable, but e-cig use largely replaced cigarette use, I think you have to consider the teens using the e-cigs. If you removed e-cigs as an option, would they smoke cigarettes or abstain altogether? It seems to me that they'd be more likely (as a group) to smoke cigarettes.

Disclaimer: I switched from smoking to vaping in 2013 and haven't smoked a cigarette since. I use unflavored e-liquid for a few reasons, but, as I understand it, inhaling flavorings meant to be ingested is the primary health risk with vaping. Last I checked, this issue was still under debate.

I guess it depends. Older stuff that makes it through the years tends to be better quality than the stuff that doesn't make it, so you have less stuff to sort through. If time and effort are big concerns, then that approach makes some sense.

But, people are always making great stuff if you care to look for it. Some of it is even popular and doesn't take much searching.

From "My two cents" on, I disagree with everything you've said. I think it's all in your head.

Some text to complement the videos.

>It is impossible to conclude with a balance sheet of plusses and minusses which would add up to a final decision on the creole origins issue. To my mind, there is enough persuasive evidence in these data to suggest that AAVE did have some creole roots. The very fact that copula absence is widespread both in AAVE and in mesolectal creoles, but not in White Englishes outside of the American South (where it can be argued that Whites adopted the speech patterns of Blacks) strongly suggests that at lest some of the predecessors of modern AAVE arose from a restructuring process similar to that which produced the English-based creoles.The fact that the constraint hierarchy for following grammatical environment is so similar across the vareties shown in table 16 further reinforces this conclusion.43 The fact that AAVE varieties which might be considered closer to their creole origins on historical grounds (18th century varieties, Samaná) also behave more like creole varieties in some respects (for instance in permitting some deletion of first person am and/or in permitting some degree of past tense copula absence) is also a plus for the creole origins hypothesis.

https://web.stanford.edu/~rickford/papers/CreoleOriginsOfAAV...

Iirc Allen Watts likened obsessively thinking about yourself to two monitors facing each other (highlighting the discordant feedback).

While I still have cringe-moments when I remember things I've done (as a kid, 10 years ago, whenever), I try to remember that I am what I'm doing. For me, it puts legs on the concept of remaining in the present. Whatever self others ascribe to me, that's fine, but I don't have live by those expectations. When I'm folding clothes, brushing my teeth, writing something, taking care of the dogs, etc., I'm no more or less than what I'm doing. It eases my mind and lets me focus on the given task. With practice, I don't have to think of it as much. It becomes the natural way to approach things, but there are still times when I have to remind myself.

Yes, it also presents goals that seem out of reach - and likely are out of reach. "Don't be a fat slob. Look like a model." If the focus is on building a sustainable, healthy lifestyle, people are more likely to see that as attainable.

Most sustainable ways to be healthy are not as easy to monetize as quick "fixes" like pills and shakes. Don't drink sugar or artificially sweetened products (I haven't kept up on the more recent artificial sweeteners, so maybe they're not as bad - idk). Eat more vegetables and less processed food. Get some exercise - even if it's just walking.

It's good for people to understand that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes and that your goal should be whatever size/shape is healthy for you. This is more of a range than an exact size/shape.

So, yeah, shaming, presenting unrealistic goals, selling bs products/fixes, it's mostly all bad, and it's good for people to push back against these ads and the POV's they create.

Yeah, we call it COLA (cost of living adjustment), and we get a bump every couple of years or so.

Subbed that pod. Thanks for the rec!

And thanks to the OP for posting the article. This will stay with me.

It's healthy to acknowledge when something has made you angry and/or sad. It's healthy to spend some time grappling with the reasons for your feelings, but I get the sense that the author has probably spent too long in a negative state. This is not healthy. You can argue it's justified, and, depending on your angle, it is. But, you can justify a lot of things that aren't good for you.

Trust your anger is dubious advice. If you apply the necessary disclaimers, it's fine, but, again, I don't get the sense that the author is balanced in this area.

It doesn't matter how right you are when you're hurting yourself. You're the only one who lives your life, the only one experiencing your feelings. The worse you feel, the worse you feel, and that's it. It can be helpful to let negative emotions drive you, but if you don't walk a razor's edge, those negative emotions will consume the things that make the effort worthwhile.

Life is a gift. Hardships are interference. At times, you have to deal with interference to get back to enjoying the gift. Maybe you're dealing with the interference on behalf of someone else so that they can better enjoy life - noble, for sure. But, the interference can be so ubiquitous that we center our lives around the interference, and here is where we lose the plot. Perspective allows you to see which interferences you need to deal with and which you can look through. Imo we're not really evolved to deal with the world we've built for ourselves, so it takes a good deal of reflection to gain a working perspective. Without that reflection, life can seem like a train of tragedies.

More of a rant than I meant, but take care of yourself. Take care of how you feel and see the world. No one can do it for you, and you're the one who has to feel the way you feel.

>Put another way, they basically want to take control of the company and create a new management structure that supplants the existing one.

Why do you think unions exist?

I've been doing the same. Are there any resources you've found particularly helpful? As a true beginner, the Music Matters YT channel does a great job of giving enough of the Why's without going so deep as to completely lose me.

https://youtube.com/c/MusicMattersGB

Any pattern of thoughts that has been grouped into a discipline, whether religious or secular, can - imo - be viewed as a best effort by a group or individual that was then adopted by the group. That doesn't mean they're equal, but I think it's helpful framing.

Setting aside fundamentalists, people are using combinations of these disciplines to make sense of life. Epiphanies which are liberating to me may be terrifying or unimportant to you and vice versa. The need to conform can be helpful on a societal level (particularly from a bird's-eye view) and harmful on an individual level. At some point, the individual harm affects enough individuals that there is a noticeable backlash, and we see some form of reorganization of beliefs.

Most people aren't built for serious thought. Maybe someone has a better idea than I do how it breaks down on the nature/nature scale, but the average person will always be more concerned with the signaling aspects of a given belief than the belief itself. As a human trying to survive or thrive, you increase your margin for error by squeezing into a group. How you choose the group or if it's chosen for you will again depend on some combination of internal and external factors.

Whether we like it or not, we're building this thing together, and it's to our benefit to be curious and compassionate about the beliefs of others. It doesn't mean converting or losing your religion, but if I understand what motivates you, I can propose comprises that work for both parties. Of cours, there will always be assholes who must have everything their way, but don't be cynical. Most people are capable of compromise, just as most people are capable of love and hope.

Speaking of games that are much quicker in electronic format, the Star Realms app works great for me, and it's my GF's favorite game. She plays it every day.

Same experience with Rocket League. A few years ago, I had a couple months between jobs, and my brother was in a similar spot, so we'd hang out and play Rocket League a fair amount. I slowly got better, but I only improved significantly after some time away from the game. Now, we might play once every few weeks or once every few months. Takes a bit to knock off the rust, but once we get going, I almost always notice some unexpected improvement - dribbling, positioning, and transitions from ball to car cam are the areas that seem to improve the most. Love the game, but it's not high on my list of areas I want to improve, and I'd definitely improve more with shorter breaks (days instead of weeks or months) and more time playing.

On a daily basis, I see mockingbirds chasing off crows. Sometimes they come out of a tree, so I assume those scenarios usually involve crows messing with nests. Other times mockingbirds will chase off crows as they're apparently passing through. Never seen a crow fight back, and they fly away (sometimes not far) as if they're saying, Alright, alright, I'm going. Typically, it's just a single mockingbird, so it's not as though the crow is being overwhelmed, but, like the eagle in your example, it's probably just not worth the energy/potential injury.

We have a lot of blue jays, too, and even though they're notoriously territorial, I can't remember seeing a blue jay/crow altercation. Maybe their reputation precedes them? I don't have any real guesses.

I believe that's a Brian Eno quote (about VU).

This is how I view it. There's a Publix just down the street from my work, and I always use self-checkout there, but when we're shopping for home (full cart), we don't even consider it an option. I don't think Publix checks your cart or anything, so it's not about that. Last time we went shopping, there wasn't a bagger, and we didn't mind, so that's not it either. I think it's just that it's a lot quicker for them to scan your items, and you don't have to pay extra attention to make sure you've scanned everything.

Related, Publix is one of the South's top selling points. It's easily the best grocery store I've used. Up until I moved to Florida and experienced Publix, all grocery stores felt more or less the same.

Very fair. I don't think you can remove compensation. But, I think the post still had some good thoughts and good aims. They need some tweaking. Your post highlighted an area that needs tweaking, and mine tried to build on both posts.

Imo flip these "punishment" jobs into "reward" jobs. As it is, we give the jobs no one wants to people who don't have any other options - or are struggling to exercise their options. We use them as boogeyman for kids when we remind them how important school is.

If everyone is taken care of, these jobs should come with some extra benefits - both socially and financially. Remember all those bs commercials thanking essential workers toward the beginning of Covid? What if society really appreciated its essential workers and compensated them like it did?

Cleaning toilets is somewhat unpleasant, but there's immediate feedback on your performance (the before and after is clear), and people should appreciate the people that keep them clean. There should be an understood, and spoken, sense of "Thank you" for the people keeping them clean.

Perspective -> feeling - > actions. I don't think this is a particularly difficult issue to navigate, but it would require a shift in perspective.

Yep, exactly.

I work for USPS now, and it's great to make enough money outside a managerial role to not have to worry about promotions. The vast majority of clerks, carriers, and drivers have no interest in management.

I didn't downvote you fwiw.

But, she would consistently recount the things she'd done - like multiple times throughout the day - and frame it as though it was impressive.

She also acted like she was hustling all the time - kind of like someone moving their arms faster to make it seem like they're running faster. So, if you just glanced over, you'd notice frenetic movement and might assume she was working harder than everyone else. I might have been working at a quicker rate, but without the exaggerated movements, it was less obvious.

In my early 20s, and during the recession, I worked at a gas station. I also bought a house, so even though I didn't like the job or plan to be there long, I was trying to get promoted (entry-level managers made almost twice as much as entry-level associates, factoring in OT and bonuses).

I was seen as a great worker, because I worked when I was supposed to, but I had a terrible time getting promoted. No one at my particular station was getting promoted, so I assumed it was just a long process. The gas station was also hiring a lot of managers from outside the company - people who had more lucrative and prestigious jobs, which were the casualties of the recession.

One day, though, a new, young, single-mother started with the same job (associate) I had, and I watched her get promoted within a month or two. She was a fine worker, nothing wrong with her, but she was not a better worker than I was.

I do think that being a single mom expedited her promotion. You couldn't talk to her for more than a minute without learning her backstory and hearing about how much she loves her son. I think management saw her as an easy person to root for, and I can't really fault them for that. But, she also played the game much better than I did. When she worked, you knew she was working. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, she'd make sure everyone knew how much she was busting her ass. At the time, being young and naive, I thought it was extremely distasteful and painfully corny. I didn't understand the concept that management really only pays attention when you give them reason to. Either you're fucking up or fucking off, and they need to correct you; or you're shining your own spotlight on what you've done and how impressive it is. Only experienced and thoughtful managers will properly value good workers who don't make a show of it.

She was also more gregarious than I was, and it'd be disingenuous to share this anecdote without noting that. I think it's part of my bigger point, though. I wanted to make more money so that I could live more comfortably, but she needed to, and the ways we played the game reflected that.

I think the style of lying is definitely part of it, but I do think the details matter. I was talking with a Trump supporter (I held my nose and voted for Biden, as I did for Clinton in 2016). He was pretty heated, because a lady he flirts with at work let him know that she was a hardcore Democrat and that she didn't think anyone should vote for Trump. It was toward the end of a long day, so I wasn't sure if I was up for the conversation, but he's a pretty decent guy, so I engaged, and we had a solid chat.

I made a point that seemed to resonate with him - Biden represents high-level corruption, the kind of slick corruption that maintains stability and is relatively predictable. Trump, though, represents a mob style of corruption - or the kind of corruption you see from dictators in developing nations. If it benefits him in the short-term, and he can do it, he will. Chess vs Checkers. Some people prefer the latter, and it seems some view it as a more honest type of corruption, but for most people, stability is important.

I've noticed a lot of Right-leaning people would also like to see some form of ranked voting, so I think it's the political parties (both of them) rather than the people holding things back.

I think you bring up key issues in your closing paragraph, but the implementation of Globalization is what really hurt the middle class in the US. Whenever people lose a proper balance, they will suffer, and I think most everyone can agree that the US did a particularly poor job of ensuring balance - probably not by accident.

Anyway, I feel for people who are troubled by the result of the election. I was in their shoes in 2016, and I can relate to some of their concerns. If we start from a place of understanding/trying to understand, we can build systems that work for everyone. If we allow the two-party system to perpetuate artificial divides, progress will be much slower, and we'll take more false steps. The loudest are typically the worst of us. We can't fall into the trap of using them as stand-ins for the other side. This was much more ranty than I intended, but I hope it makes sense.