lilsunnybee

I understand Xanax, but why Adderall and Provigil? Both of those are stimulants, and if anything they would only increase the anxious tension you are already feeling. Maybe you meant Ativan? Not sure about the modafinil though.

Are you dealing with EDS as a significant symptom in addition to anxiety? ADHD?

Melatonin is already easily and cheaply available on any pharmacy or grocery store shelf in the US. Regulation of many older drugs still classed as 'supplements' is in fact very lax.

Automation increases the benefits of owning capital over providing labor, in ever growing proportions. The less people are needed to provide labor, and have any resources distributed to them at all, the more fruits accrue solely to capital-holders.

Workers capacity to fill those desires for people with capital is limited though. At what point does the majority of un-capitaled humanity become irrelevant?

Adam Carolla is sort of a huge douche though.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/adam-carolla-gay-mafia...

http://www.nerdyfeminist.com/2012/06/douche-bag-of-day-adam-...

You don't have to look very hard to find plenty of other examples.

I'm not usually one to argue for broader safety regulations, but the fear behind the restrictions / banning sales aren't entirely off the wall.

I mean look at The Mandala Set that Zen Magnets sells? http://zenmagnets.com/the-mandala-set/

How small are those spheres exactly? They look like toys, or candy. Small children love to swallow things, especially small round non-pointy things, and someone's kid dying or merely getting serious lifelong intestinal damage from swallowing small powerful magnets (like neodymium magnets are), due to intestinal pinching, is no joke. It doesn't matter to a kid if the original product came with a warning label or consent form or not.

Muscle cars, whiskey, full-size swords, chemicals don't look like toys, and aren't as likely to be played with by especially small children. Small separated magnets, especially any that happened to fall and roll across the floor out of sight, seem like a greater risk to me.

As long as all the profits are actually going to be used to help people, it doesn't count as exploitative i don't think. Though going to a foundation ... i don't know. A lot of charity money can go to paying salaries, and that doesn't always mean equal good is being done.

Panhandlers aren't always homeless. I don't think this is really news to anyone though is it?

If the woman was really homeless, she couldn't have made use of the spaghetti dinner fixings anyways; she likely wouldn't have any good place to boil the water or prepare the meal; even hotplates are disallowed at most shelters, due to the fire hazard.

It's much better if you can ask someone if there are any particular items they need, or better yet stop by a local shelter and inquire there as to items that most need to be donated.

If i were that woman i would have said "thank you so much ... but" and let your wife down easy. But even for the genuinely homeless fending for yourself on the streets doesn't leave everyone equally grateful.

Teenagers bullied into suicide must have a whole lot of serious stuff to apologize for, to kill themselves so early on! /s

You're not alone. I happen to subscribe to the same fanciful notion myself, even though it is in no way rational.

I've had about 3 or 4 serious suicide attempts before, and a number of smaller ones. Even in the more serious attempts, the ones that landed me in critical care, necessitated blood transfusions, etc., in the end i'd always wake up. I'd black out, and then always wake up in the hospital, someone having found me in time by chance and such.

Based on sparse personal evidence, probably a bit of narcissism, possibly mild psychosis, and survivorship bias, i have concluded i am possibly immortal, at least to myself, and that life-ending attempts might be pointless, or at the very least i should be very careful in the future to limit injury in the case of my surviving.

Not sure where aging would fit into that cosmology, at least that which i have experienced for myself, or what would happen if i do become frail from old age. Old age and death for others could be explained by timelines diverging, but for myself i have no idea. I'm open to suggestions though! ;-) I still think everyone is real, just that you and everyone else exist in your own realities and timelines that converge and diverge from my own based on positive and negative personal affinities and orbits.

I don't know if you have experienced this for yourself, but my conclusions on personal realities, timelines, and affinities were partly based on qualitative experiences of convergence and divergence in my own universe. People already seemingly closely aligned to me enter my personal life and sphere by chance, and often only become more and more closely aligned the longer they stay, while they influence me as well. Divergent individuals exit just as randomly yet commonly, or stay at the periphery.

Synchronicity seems to be a strong signal of some kind, one which ebbs and flows, surrounding strong events and turning points like a force field.

Full voluntary disclosure necessitates me telling you i've been deemed ill and delusional in a clinical environment quite a few times, even though to me it was merely for making obvious connections and inferences establishment types seemed to deliberately neglect making, to preserve their own seeming sanity, sense of self, and sense of place.

I'm more measured and careful about how much i let ride on any non-grounded inferences and notions i have, and you might want to do the same (if you don't already!) It's important to validate common notions of reality in public or during interactions, and only deviate in ways that won't put you at odds with other people you wish to keep in your life, and also don't threaten your own safety, any standing you wish to preserve, legality, etc.

Psychologists often call this "double bookkeeping", but for those of us who still happen to believe judged-delusional personal notions still have a good chance of being true, it's simply a compromise and a necessary one to be able to navigate safely in the world.

A cautionary tale on the dangers of lack of "insight", as perceived from this timeline:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/30/god-knows-where...

And the always entertaining, Was Jesus Bipolar?:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/anonymous/2013/05/was-jesus-bipola...

Diverging from expectations doesn't mean you don't have good ideas, or maybe know some deeper truths, though you should always be aware of how others do / are going to perceive you.

The New Yorker has a pretty strong history of publishing often fascinating, thought-provoking stories.

A journalist from Slate did a piece recently pointing out some of the standouts, since The New Yorker and it's archives are temporarily free until October i think.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/07/22/new_yorker_on...

> Maybe the monks got the idea from him.

Not really possible since these are centuries-old traditions in many monasteries.

Any of us would commit suicide under the right circumstances. It looks weak and selfish when you have never had to walk in that person's shoes, but if you ever get there yourself, to lose all joy and humor, to be in seemingly constant pain and misery, to have all of your hope and faith dwindle to nothing, with no help in sight, only then can you really fully understand what it's like seeing no other way out.

If you want to help prevent suicide, rather than limiting methods and consigning many people to continued torment and suffering, how about advocate for improving some of the societal problems that contribute to people losing all hope?

Poverty is a huge driver, along with inadequate physical and mental healthcare. Homelessness, or being faced with it, is demoralizing and inspires hopelessness. Some of the hardest-to-remedy but most hard-hitting issues are always going to be domestic physical, sexual and emotional abuse and bullying.

How about we try to improve other peoples lives and quality-of-life rather than sealing off the exits and trapping them in it? If we are ever going to have a truly compassionate society we need legalized assisted euthanasia, available to everyone after a waiting period, confidential counseling and a finite period of treatment. We all need to be honest with ourselves, stop the judgements, and provide the same options that we would want available if we were in somebody else's shoes.

I agree with the other replier that expressed doubt as to whether things are really any different anywhere else. Your life might involve other elements, but for the vast vast majority of humanity, work/career/income is a very significant, necessary foundation for anything else to be possible. Without work you are left to wither and die, with either no or very very limited resources provided to you.

This is quite evident in how we treat the disabled when they are judged unable to work; serious disability in the US with no work history? Try living on the maximum $674 per month SSI payment(1), with no guaranteed section 8 housing (wait list is closed in many states for years at a time), and let's see how good of a life you can live, with no family support, trust funds, or anything like that.

That's not even taking into account the countless perennial homeless people that we let languish on the streets, because we'd never pay to have them accurately diagnosed, or directly allocate any funds so that they aren't living a life of abject poverty, filth, and neglect.

But of course suicide is still illegal for everyone, disability or not, abject poverty or not, likelihood of improved quality of life or not. We pay lip service to being a moral, caring society, saying you shouldn't ever kill yourself because there are other options, but then again we'd never break out our checkbook or trouble ourselves to ensure those options actually exist. Such societal realities would look despicable if they weren't so peachy by comparison to much much worse atrocities humans have committed throughout history.

There are a few standouts in Western Europe and elsewhere, where it seems people actually take issue with poverty, neglect, and misery, but that is far from common worldwide, where indifference and schadenfreude are the norm.

Sorry for the rant.

Edit: forgot the citation

(1) http://www.disabilitybenefitscenter.org/disability_benefits....

It is simply a matter of degree rather than a fundamental difference however.

Don't want to double-reply, but i really feel a reply i made to a post stemming from this one also applies here quite strongly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8120459

You can be afraid of the unknown and an uncertain fate without being sure of your damnation. Being sure of your own salvation is almost just as bad, especially when it's to the exclusion of anyone elses, when your good works and virtue might pale in comparison to others supposedly going to hell. It's also very arrogant, prideful and foolhardy, and a wellspring of hatred, condemnation, violence, war throughout history.

There's so much mystery around our existence, consciousness, suffering, that after we die what must happen is either we achieve eternal paradise, or eternal suffering and agony; also by the way i know for sure i'm going to paradise, and you're going to hell unless you believe the same things i do.

Such a reasonable philosophy. /s

Living in fear is a wretched state though, yet many many religious doctrines are based in fear, condemnation, hate, for anyone outside of their church or religion.

If you believe that victims of suicide are consigned to hellfire for all eternity, you might as well go to their funerals and preach to all of the friends and family who loved them that their loved one will suffer eternally from now on. Victims of rape, violence, neglect, abuse, poverty, other types of trauma, people with serious mental disorders, or anyone who wasn't lucky enough to survive their first suicide attempts (i've survived at least 4 myself), don't get any more chances and deserve to suffer, because God is always just and fair.

To many of us that have decided to reject religion, such a seemingly at-odds message (God is just and fair, but life is unfair, and some people just don't get second chances) is despicable and insane. It's people trying to assuage their own fear of the unknown, and guilt for their wrongdoings, by subscribing to a cosmology that of course they will be forgiven for their crimes and attain everlasting happiness and utopia, but everyone else is damned. A number of religions, and sects within religions, maintain exclusivity for their beliefs about who gets into heaven and who doesn't, yet adherents always believe there can be no doubt that they themselves are correct and everybody else is wrong.

I choose to believe that if God exists, He/She/They are at least as just and fair, compassionate and loving and forgiving, as the best human has ever been. If we devote ourselves to good deeds and works, not judging and condemning our fellow man, nor resting on our laurels and often arbitrary convictions, then we are more likely to find favor from any judge weighing the value of our lives and deeds, and the trajectory of our hearts.

The correct way to handle behavior that you think might be manipulative? Have boundaries and rules. Limit call times to a reasonable limit, or if the person seems to be done talking about anything substantial, move towards concluding the conversation. If somebody is just going around in circles with stories or thoughts, cut through that mess with a directed question. Try to get to the heart of any issues that might be at play. Don't let yourself be played (by upholding boundaries and limits), but don't label or dismiss people out of hand either.

If they had BPD (borderline personality disorder), in all likelihood they were not acting manipulative at all, and were just very often in distress and experiencing very strong, dysregulated feelings and emotions. BPD people being "manipulative" is a negative and inaccurate stigma, based on misunderstanding. It is also highly harmful, as people are told to always hold in their emotions, always be wary of trying to be "manipulative", or reveal their true feelings to anyone. Since Borderline people likely went through significant trauma in childhood, contributing to the disorder, they are being made to suffer a second round of emotional abuse and/or neglect due to ignorance and people not getting their facts straight.

People with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), or ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) might exaggerate feelings to get attention or something else from you. Though if you were on a suicide hotline, ASPD people would have no reason for calling if not genuinely in distress, and i doubt you were encountering that many NPD people.

Is it that hard to believe that some people might actually be commonly dealing with very strong emotions and impulses they can't control? It's really unfair of you to label others emotions as fake and attention-seeking, when you really have very little data to go on as to whether that's the case or not.

And above all "Borderline people are not manipulative!" I wish i could shout that from the mountaintops, but i can't and most people don't care to listen anyways. You're inaccurately and likely prematurely applying the wrong label, and should give even regulars and even people you think you know well the benefit of the doubt.

No that can't be true. I don't have a mobile phone currently and surely have sent more than 50 messages from a gmail address which has never been linked. And i'm sure plenty of other users, especially children and teens, use gmail addresses without ever linking to a phone number for two-step verification as well.

I think they mean 6% of the email addresses used for fraudulent transactions were outlook.com addresses, at least in the data they were analyzing. 6% of fraud perpetrators use outlook.com is a much different statistic than 6% of outlook.com users commit fraud.

The book itself would probably be the best source for detailed descriptions of the different regions. It has to be available as an e-book too. Worth buying if you'd like to learn more about general cultural regions and boundaries in the US, or pirating if you don't have the funds. Just remember that even 3 decades ago it had some inaccuracies, many of which are pointed out in this thread. But it is a good primer, not very long, and a light, entertaining read, in my opinion.

Personally i would hardly consider Tampa and Orlando as Dixie. Slightly conservative? certainly. Though not Southern and more an odd mish-mash of liberal and conservative, mostly pro-development, but with an odd pro-environmental strain in the Tampa area. Gainesville, FL is an odd duck miniature city-state: half-Southern, half-hippie values, similar to Athens, GA.

Definitely. Even in larger versions in the map, are there any that clearly distinguish state lines and major cities? Omitting this information makes it hard to examine these regions from a cultural perspective.

Austin seems to qualify as a separate city-state though, rather than being representative of Greater Texas as a whole.

I read it a few years back. It provides pretty detailed and interesting explanations for naming certain cultural regions and drawing divisions the way they are. But even in '81, and especially now, there are a lot more aberrations than Garreau sees fit to point out. Myself, and others, have highlighted some of these unacknowledged aberrations elsewhere in the thread. Some aberrations might be large enough to even designate new "Nations". But for someone living outside the US, or anyone else unfamiliar with the general cultural differences and boundaries within the US, the book would still be worth reading and learning from even today, even if it paints in broad strokes.

And Brooklyn, with all the hipsters and many other people who couldn't afford to live in Manhattan, is also Foundry, same as upper Manhattan? Denver/Boulder and SLC hardly have much in common with the rest of the Empty Quarter either. I have another reply in this thread explaining more about that. And where does Las Vegas fit in? Nevada as a state is very liberal in some ways, much more so than other states in the Empty Quarter.

Also Denver/Boulder and SLC on the US side are not exactly low population density.

Lived in the Denver metro area and it definitely couldn't be considered to have that much in common with most of the rest of "The Empty Quarter", besides a cultural preference for rugged individualism and limited government interference in personal affairs.

Denver has an impressive light rail system, and Denver / Boulder are responsible for Colorado being one of two states first in legalizing Marijuana and the first in allowing public sales (though Washington state shouldn't be far behind once regulations are finalized). Polyamory doesn't have much public acceptance but is fairly common in the area. Programs and policies concerning homelessness are very progressive compared to most anywhere else in the US.

Denver/Boulder metro area, and to a lesser extent other communities along the Colorado Front Range, have much more in common culturally with SLC than Grand Junction, CO (the state's western capital) or any of the rest of the supposed "Empty Quarter". Peter Warden's Mormonia (if including Denver), being completely surrounded by the Nomadic West, is a more accurate division, though the name is a little inaccurate and not especially representative (at least half of SLC isn't mormon, and neither is most of the Colorado Front Range, though Colorado Springs is very evangelical).

If Joel Garreau still thinks Denver/Boulder and SLC are "Empty Quarter", and at least not aberrations, he doesn't understand the culture very well. It's almost as bad as placing most of NYC within "The Foundry".