5434a
1yr ago
I don't find much use in longform private emotional introspection but I do find it helpful to keep a record of any significant actions I've taken. It's useful for reference and for finding any patterns that could provide a benefit in making plans and adapting routines, whether it's charting exercise or recording work I've done around my home.
It's all kept in OneNote along with a plethora of other notes, drafts, saved documents, cuttings and the like. Before I started using OneNote I used various handwritten to-do lists for actions combined with minimally organised digital files for anything more demanding. Having everything available in a single trivially editable digital format is significantly more versatile so now I only use paper to-do lists for short term items and information.
5434a
1yr ago
Is there any neuro/psychological significance to habitual and unaffected non-symmetrical facial expressions? I don't mean stroke symptoms, I mean things like smirks instead of smiles, single eyebrow raises, sneers, head tilts etc.
Asking because it occured to me that I find it an engaging and attractive characteristic while on the other hand finding symmetrical expressions more open and genuine, or at least less nuanced. Wondering if there's something like a left brain right brain factor or if it's just learned behaviour and unconscious imitation.
5434a
1yr ago
Microsoft dependence is a drawback for sure but since I'm using the OS already it's a minor negative. Where it shows up the most for me is the disparity between integration with Edge and the Office suite vs Firefox.
Did you export straight into Obsidian? Or was it more involved than that? Is there anything major that you miss beyond little QoL features like calculation? I might start a new page of notes in preparation for adding it to my to-do list.
5434a
1yr ago
All those algorithms and they don't have voice print registration? Seems like it should be a simple update.
5434a
1yr ago
Early 40s here. My friends don't have any divorces that I'm aware of but not many marriages either. There's a broad spread of wife'n'kids, stable long term'n'kids, "blended" families, DINK, field players, single with benefits (<-- I'm here)/dissatisfied daters, and the occasional jaded MGHisOW or resigned celibate.
Looking around I'd say, barring one or two outliers, we're mostly where we deserve to be. The responsible and personable people are mostly in stable LTRs and the irresponsible or unpersonable people are either biding time waiting for a better offer that they don't want to acknowledge probably isn't going to come along, or don't care enough to adapt just to fulfill external expectations, or both (<-).
5434a
1yr ago
Wasn't he supposed to be under close observation on account of that very foreseeable risk? The guards being bribed to turn a blind eye, conveniently forget to confiscate potential makeshift ligatures, and loudly announce they're taking a sudoku puzzle to the bathroom doesn't look too dissimilar to corrupt officials ending his life. If you can accept that his lawyers bribed the guards then you can accept that the guards were amenable to bribes from anyone else. From his POV he can kill himself at any time, he's not going anywhere, so why the urgency? With billions of dollars and a black book of high level connections I'd think he could take a punt on mitigating his punishment to tolerable levels - IIRC he'd done so before. He wasn't a penniless benzo addict in withdrawal facing life in a Siberian labour camp.
5434a
1yr ago
I'd like to read your write up of the geothermal material that you had to leave out. Any chance of a supplementary post?
You sound like you're getting "don't be irritating" muddled up with "talk to anyone and make them feel comfortable" and given your ruminations it appears the result is something that achieves neither.
Know why you're there. It's not for chitchat. Your grandfather might have been amiable and personable but that's no good if he's occupying the staff with rambling stories, holding up the queue and never getting to the point. A basic "hello, how are you, I'm fine too thanks" are all you need before you get down to business, whether that's stating your problem, placing your order, paying your bill or packing your shopping. If you feel rude not chatting then keep any chitchat superficial and connected to your purpose, eg "thought I'd try making [recipe] for a change" or "hopefully this choice will [achieve task]", not "hey haven't seen you here in a couple of weeks, where did you disappear to?". Also don't wait until you're at the front to get your shit together. You're at the bank to pay a bill, did you bring the bill and the money? You're on the phone to cancel your card, did you collect your account details before calling? You're at the bar to order, do you know what you want? Leaving aside blatant troublemakers like drunks and thieves the annoying customers are the ones who manage to both act over-familiar or over-confident while also performing as if they've never done this transaction before.
In the special circumstances where I've had a need to be charming (like phoning a call centre to ask for an anticipated but entirely justified fee to be waived) I stay polite, organised/timely, non-demanding (I'll phrase it as requesting a rare favour, not as a demand I'll escalate to their manager or as a threat that they'll lose a customer) and gracious.
One small tip for charming workers is to let them be the expert. It's like the opposite of mansplaining. Ask for their input on a product/service. If you're not sure about something own up to it, it gives them the opportunity to demonstrate their own expertise and value.
All this might be different in USA where depending on the context you might have the unspoken threat/promise of tips altering the dynamic. I've never worked a tip job so I can't speak about that.
Edit: I think you've fallen into the binary thinking that if you fail to create a rapport the only other possible perception is that you were irritating. So you end up trying to force a rapport, which in turn serves to be awkward and counterproductive. The solution is to stop worrying about being special and memorable (whether good or bad) and accept being normal and unremarkable. TLDR reduce your ego to the appropriate scale.
5434a
1yr ago
If there are people here who believe trans men aren't actually men, I kindly ask that they also provide the criteria for distinguishing men from non-men.
Here's some shared foundational rationality. No matter what a man is or does he cannot - in the logic of transexuality too - be or become a transman. And vice versa for the complementary sex and gender presentation. It's paradoxical. Therefore a transman cannot be a man, and a transwoman cannot be a woman. Only a woman can become a transman. Only a man can become a transwoman. Therefore transwomen aren't women, transmen aren't men, and this accords with the logic of transexuality. They are, charitably, transexual men and transexual women for which I can accept the novel and less ambiguous labels of transwomen and transmen respectively.
Winning, or even arguing the trans-are-actually terminology war for the trans side serves to void its own logos and, if you'll forgive the irony, to argue against it is to bravely support transexuals.
To be explicit, if a transwoman can be a woman then it must subsequently render either the word transwoman or the word woman empty of any meaningful significance. With only net negative meaning to be attained the struggle to claim membership of the pre-existing categories is not only moot but actively counterproductive. If womanhood is meaningless there's no rationale for pursuing it.
Please note, I am not anti-trans actions. I am anti-trans rationale. Adults have been free to change their name, their wardrobe and undergo any elective medical procedures they can afford for decades and while I might not endorse those choices I have no issue tolerating them on the basis that my own choices are tolerated. What I cannot tolerate is being expected to unquestioningly accept a glaringly unignorable contradiction. After that's acknowledged we could get into any broader concerns that may be more based in prejudice than reason.
5434a
1yr ago
Despite my preference for understatement I love the look of https://mrjoneswatches.com. Realistically if I were shopping for a watch I'd probably go to a high street clothes shop and choose something that costs £20 and looks like a Swiss railway clock but more muted.
5434a
1yr ago
For the first one, the classic dark wool topcoat. Peacoat if you want shorter, overcoat if you want longer. It probably won't be adequate for -18 but on comparatively warmer days you can supplement it with hats, gloves and scarves (and more underlayers) which allow you to dress it up or down. Mine has been adequate for -10 with the extras while being comfortable up to +15 with only a t-shirt underneath. For -18 I'd be looking at Scandinavian military surplus parkas or something along those lines.
5434a
1yr ago
You accuse me of word games and then game my words. Explain how a man can become a transman.
5434a
1yr ago
I don't understand the relation to sublimation so I'll just give you the last two times I can remember shedding tears that weren't due to cutting onions.
-The one line comment on /r/4chan "foot fags unite and take over" hit me with enough mounting waves of laughter to tip me over the edge.
-For something more sombre, watching the group stage of the world cup reminded me of the Danish player basically dropping dead on the pitch last year at the Euros. Awful.
5434a
1yr ago
Agreed that it's difficult to properly judge a comment without its context. @ZorbaTHut can the janitor page posts be tweaked to include their parent comment?
I believe there are a number of software devs here. Are there any Linux / C / embedded devs here that would be willing to mentor or offer some signposting for a (near) total beginner on writing what ought to be a simple single function program? By which I don't mean "make a mobile app", I mean "read this one function call from a piece of hardware and print the value to the terminal".
I've gathered a few of the concepts but I don't have enough knowledge to grasp whether they're the right way to approach the matter and whether I'm focusing on the relevant level of abstraction.
Edit: Help is being provided. Thank you Motters.
5434a
1yr ago
I'm definitely not writing a driver, just trying to read (physically read, with my eyes) one value from an existing driver. I've got someone helping me now and fingers crossed I can use an existing library / script that I missed to get me what I need. Looks like I overshot the mark and ended up in the kernel zone.
5434a
1yr ago
My intuition is that autogynephilic men often want to transfer the kind of direct sexual desire that women receive to themselves, and they pursue that by attempting to transform into a woman in some kind of semiotic signifier-signalled double switch around. The resulting sexual desire comes from men/masculinity, which at one level of argument would render it homosexual. It's inherently complex and so it depends if and where you slice it into parts (homo/hetero) or if you sum the parts (man-loving-himself-as-a-woman, or -as-he-himself-loves-women, or etc).
5434a
1yr ago
Day trading isn't passive income, it's capital risk that you actively manage every day in the hope that you'll do better than an index fund. Real passive income would be something like buying the rights to a Christmas pop hit. You could then transform that to active income if you started promoting the record to induce more licensing and increased royalties, and hopefully the improved return would be worth more than if you spent the same time working more hours at your regular job.
Alternatively you could go for speculation (buy and hold assets), management (buy and rent out assets), gambling (stake capital on a binary outcome), banking (loan capital and charge interest, or trade capital for collateral), or bootstrap investing (create a business). There's very little that qualifies as truly passive.
It's corny but if you're a complete beginner try out Rich Dad Poor Dad for a basic introduction to financial literacy and avoid any memes about day trading, options, crypto and forex. It's probably a bit out of date now and not without its critics but it's a decent primer for further reading. MrMoneyMustache is (was?) the blogging era's inheritor of Rich Dad's paperback popularity but he always seemed to have at least as strong a focus on cutting costs against increasing income. Of course both of them could be said to have made a lot their money from writing, which is simply another bootstrap.
The point I'm getting at is that the stock market isn't the only option for passive income, and depending how you approach it it isn't even passive. But really what is?
5434a
1yr ago
No disagreement, hence the caveats and the link to the wiki with its criticisms section. I read it once years and years ago. Glad it prompted some links to better resources as that one was the only book I could think of that wasn't the standard "come back after maxing out your tax efficient wrapped index traded funds".
5434a
1yr ago
I was going to mention the same video as a welcome change from the Pollyanna-isms.
I'm only a casual Youtube user but it's clear that they set up an aggressive automod for comments a few years ago and I assume people have begun conforming to the unwritten rules in order to have their comments posted instead of being shadow-banned. I suppose it was necessary and probably a net improvement, it gets a bit uncanny though when I watch the videos from SoftWhiteUnderbelly interviewing the by turns desperate and criminal denizens of LA's Skid Row and then read the comments and see they're full of glib praise and hollow platitudes for pimps, addicts and proud gang bangers (in both senses of the term).
5434a
1yr ago
I read up a little about it a couple of years ago. It was only internet searches and wiki/blog reading so no specific sources to point to. Eventually I ended up searching for "attachment theory criticisms" which yielded much more interesting material. Maybe it's my dismissive avoidance speaking but I can't avoid being a little dismissive of the theory. As you noted below it often seems like another formalisation of Forer statements: they're not untrue but they're not particularly insightful or explanatory either, and the theory fails to account for other competing factors.
The only benefit I've gained from my reading was having an additional framework to interpret my brief relationship with a woman I met shortly after, and which disproved the academic theory that an avoidant person like me would be gratified by anxious attention. Nope. The lowlight was her accusing me of being deliberately hurtful for not reaching out to her for a whole week after we'd broken up.
Adults with [anxious] attachment style often project their anxieties onto otherwise benign social interactions
-wikipedia
Bingo.
As to changing oneself, I'm not sure it's aiming at the right target. My avoidance of greater intimacy with the woman I mentioned before was because she was not a suitable person for greater intimacy. Why twist myself out of shape to pretend otherwise or alienate her with that explanation? I think it's wiser to cut losses and keep looking for better prospects. If these women you're meeting are genuinely good prospects that you regret pushing away attachment theory might however provide a framework for addressing the issue and making your behaviour legible to them, but that's outside my experience. I have a feeling it would either backfire or go very well depending on your compatability, which is useful in itself. Broaching the topic would likely benefit from some tact and discretion though.
while I do have friends, my relationships with them are rather shallow. There's really no one in my life with whom I feel I have a really close, emotionally intimate personal relationship
I was watching Vice's video on the story of Afroman's Because I Got High last night and he said something that resonated: a lot of really cool things can happen when you're alone. Sure that's not everything but it's not to be dismissed - if you understand and accept yourself you probably won't have a pressing need for someone else to understand you, and at the same time it makes it easier to be understood when the time comes.
5434a
1yr ago
I'm only an armchair psychologist but I suppose what I mean is that maybe attachment theory isn't necessarily meant to change you, maybe it's merits are in providing a means to explain to a potential partner why you might tend to behave in contradictory ways. If it's useful the use is putting it into practice as an aid to allow the other person to better relate to your individual characteristics. Would you want your partner to contort their inner self into a palatable presentation for your benefit (unhealthy, disingenuous) or simply describe their inner self and let you make a closer inspection for what it actually is?
A theory that says your childhood attachment figures left you with formative emotional insecurities doesn't grant any ability to jump back in time and change it, only the ability to recognise and acknowledge it. Your challenge is how to address those insecurities: face on, or remaining evasive. I might be mistaken having never had therapy but my previous reading around therapists is that they work, often frustratingly, by holding back from prescriptively telling you what to do or how to change yourself and instead concentrate on exploring the issues and, pardon the cliche, raising your awareness. I'm not a therapist and you sound like you're already adequately aware of the problem. So my prescription is to face up to it and next time find a (sensitive, measured) way to let the person know who you really are regardless of what exactly might have made you that way. What other options are there?
If you need a low stakes run look for an opportunity to try talking around the topic with your platonic friends that you have similar issues with and see how that goes. Don't bottle it up and wait until you're already post-closeness self-distanced from a good woman and then ruining it by going zero to a hundred. Sharing adversity is often how we progress from shallow relationships to something more meaningful, but it won't work if it precipitates into an intense emotional purging.
TLDR The diagnosis is insecurity. The objective is security. The route is slow, progressive vulnerability. I don't think you can fix it with more reading and planning, if you're here you're probably a compulsive reader already. It's necessarily a two-party problem, so treat it as an opportunity to know people and be known a little better.
Since you mention rail, engineering achievement, and an itinerary of London-Paris you might want to have a look at the newly opened Elizabeth Line while you're in London, then take the Eurostar to France.
In the UK the expectation is that classical tickets are easy and cheap to get and popular music act tickets are hard and expensive, involving queuing online to be disappointed when a Viagogo bot clears them out in the first ten seconds of going on sale. Have a look at Printworks and Fabric for clubbing in London.
If you're travelling from York to London you could look into stopping in at Bradford or Leicester for a curry. Bradford is in Yorkshire, Leicester is about half way between York and London.
For London sights I'd include the Tower of London if only for the crown jewels, the British Museum for all the other historic relics we've looted/preserved, and the Tate and the Tate Modern for visual art although you will probably find broadly comparable or superior collections of those at any of the other stops on your tour. There's also Shakespeare at The Globe, or Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap at the West End if you want a more middle-brow piece of popular British theatre.
I'd strongly recommend seeing one of Gunter Van Hagen's BodyWorlds exhibitions. I saw the permanent exhibition in Amsterdam.
5434a
1yr ago
The simpler explanation would be that trans women attracted more scrutiny
Yes, but I think cross sex exogenous hormones play a significant role here. I remember reading a piece by a trans man about his partner complaining that since beginning receiving testosterone he'd become more terse and less expansive about his emotional experiences. Isn't it plausible that trans men in receipt of testosterone become more stereotypically masculine, either bottling up their emotions and/or more likely simply experiencing a significantly reduced valence of emotions, while trans women experience the opposite where their exposure to oestrogen manifests in the stereotypically feminine behaviour of feeling strong emotions and coping with those emotions by proactively sharing them for inspection and validation. It's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease technician's attention. Yes that's sexist but in this subject talking about sex-isms is unavoidable.
A one-off action that I would strongly suggest and which shouldn't take much effort to do is to minimise the potential for mess to develop. A sink full of dirty dishes is a lot easier to tackle if you only have 4 dishes available instead of 12. If the bin is always overflowing get a smaller bin. If you have 6 dirty tea towels get rid of half of them. Don't have open shelves brimming with knickknacks.
Beyond hiring a cleaner or living alone there's either conflict with no guarantee of resolution, or accepting a choice between coming to terms with doing the chores or coming to terms with the chores going undone. Right now you're getting the worst outcome by doing the chores while bristling that they're going undone. You can either enforce your expectations or adjust them, whichever path you take you'll have to trade something away.
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