When I read the submission title here I immediately wondered if it was Sabine again and, well, there she was.
514 karma · joined April 8, 2019
Imagine somebody planted a virus on your desktop, or just sneakily RDP-ed into your session and took control over your mouse and keyboard, like kids were joking on each other in computer classes back in the days. Now your mouse runs amok and keyboard types whatever, and you're sitting powerless and screaming at the screen because nothing is done and your day is ruined.
It's a shallow analogy, but in principle if you don't control your attention strongly enough, it gets hijacked by whatever your brain is trained to prioritize "subconsciously". And then once your attention is hijacked and you can't control it, you can only take the backseat and react, because the "virus" is already in your system. That's why and how clickbait titles or "outrage porn" or "reaction youtube videos" work, ditto for tiktok, instagram et cetera.
Unless you proactively and consciously keep running the firewall/antivirus of "why am I doing this right now and what do I get out of this?", your mind will be infected, that's an axiom.
From my observations I find it very ironic that for people who have stronger firewalls there will always be more sophisticated viruses and attack vectors. Don't get outraged at your phone every day? No problem, your next visit to a high profile restaurant will get to you once they stop making your favorite dish the way you liked, or city council orders demolition of an old building you find beautiful, or your favorite producer of high-end bike gears goes bankrupt just when you were to buy some hardware from them, or you maybe waited for a model update of a car you wanted to buy and this year they totally ruined it. Political or economical systems? State of climate, culture, some industry? Oh, there's so much of it. It can be of any complexity, the axiom remains.
Keeping your cool and your tolerance to insignificant things high enough also eats at your runtime resources, if you live among other humans and not like somewhere alone in the mountains after renouncing all earthly pleasures. So it's inevitable to drop it once in a while. Triviality of what will trigger it next time is, thus, entirely arbitrary.
Some people, like you, in their "default" state can control their behavior to a degree that allows them to choose the "loudness" of their reactions to external stimuli. Perhaps you can still be technically angered by something minuscule, but at least you're able to choose to not react and refocus your attention onto something else. Therefore, it might be said that you have the ability to reflect upon your feelings and behavior in perceived real time and adjust them to some degree. It's like you're an external observer to a state machine of yourself, or you're running a reflective feedback loop always on, or that you can actually give the taxi driver of your brain actual directions that they would follow. Which, I certainly agree, is quite practical and useful, liberating even.
In my earlier comment I tried to imply that for many people what you experience as normal may be borderline impossible, therefore getting angry at a phone is "normal". It is that they may be not able to target their reactions with any precision that you're used to. I think you can find evidence of that pretty much everywhere.
Changes like those mentioned by the author of the article may evoke emotions because people are people and run on emotions. Imagine how your favorite screwdriver or kitchen knife one day receives an automated remote software update and changes its handle shape or blade length, wouldn't that at least surprise you even a little bit? And what if changes were not to your liking and you couldn't get your favorite device back to a state in which you liked it far more?
That aside, I feel like if the author loved updating to never versions of iOS as much as they said without paying attention to the upcoming new features, then they probably shouldn't be that surprised by them.
Are you some kind of arbiter of bodies and lives of others? If not, what's your business with that?
But WHY do you consider it fair to compare her condition to others’?
You don’t know what’s going on in her mind, you have absolutely no idea how agonizing a mental state can be. Yet you judge her as she’s perceiving things and feeling feelings just like you or anybody else. But that is not the case.
The sad thing about suffering is that if you don’t encounter it before a certain individual threshold amount, it’s very easy to dismiss. For some people, encouraging them to stay here is just another pain point that you can’t even begin to fathom that you’re advocating to add to their struggle with existence.
How about pausing and thinking for a second, what a real, tangible and not “socially feel-good” compassion would mean in such cases?
That you don’t have or see one doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
> how does one unlearn "poverty mentality"?
Acquire things and then lose them, repeatedly. Literally throw money at the problem.
One can start with more expensive consumables and luxury items, as simple as food and wine (not to mention that more expensive quality produce more often than not means healthier diet), clothing (better fabrics feel nicer on skin, better fits make you look better and improve your public image if you care about it) and cosmetic items (bodily sensations are very important for mental health, who would've thought?).
Essentially you want to gradually get into "better" lifestyle and bigger spending just to show yourself it's not actually a problem, which in turn relaxes you towards seeking better opportunities and bigger earnings. Once you feel that spending more here and there can make you feel significantly better, something clicks in your monkey brain and changes your perception of what money can actually buy for you and why you would want to risk to get more of it, and that in turn changes your behavior. Just try to be self-aware about it and refrain from forbidding yourself to feel better because it's "unnecessary".
What I don't understand though is why are "they" doing it, tightening things up for laypeople. It's not like most people in Europe are rampant criminals and money launderers, or even rich. Real criminals use different multiple schemes too. Why does government there want more control, exactly? What they don't see yet, but want to see that bad? I don't get what's the point, but maybe I'm just not very bright.
First I wanted to write that good luck suing you government, and even if you win, getting your money in several years… Maybe…
> personally paid by the government employee responsible
… but then I continued to read, and I’m sorry but if you think any government would be willing to do that, you might be mistaken or even delusional.
The sad truth is that as a layperson you can’t do much about it, if anything at all. And no government will be willing to let you hold it accountable in any way for even the smallest amount of money, let alone millions like you suggest.
There’s the rest of the world out there, where these guys are nowhere near irrelevant.
How companies work, how humans interact, how users behave -- I don't see how that'll change anytime soon at all.
Why can I tap the largest bar so much that it can become as small as others in the end?
Why can't bars just auto-resize when I scroll the page horizontally?
You're the designer here, so it's up to you to shape user experience to deliver your point. Instead you allow users to ruin it for themselves and don't even try to control the narrative of the page. Sorry, don't know what you wanted to do here but I don't think it's working.
Comparing a product to what it was like decades ago and declaring it good is not the same as discussing it on merit and as is.
1. Jacques Selosse Initial Brut
2. Franck Pascal Harmonie Demi-Sec
3. Gaston Chiquet Demi-Sec Tradition
4. Larmandier-Bernier Terre de Vertus Premier Cru Extra Sec
Maybe throw in some Gimmonet, Laherte and Bedel there, but still!