sonya
1yr ago
I've come to view the physical pain of suicide as a feature rather than a bug due to its deterrent effect. You have to really, really want it, and I think that's a good thing. But ODing on fentanyl seems... well, not fun, but better than most other methods.
sonya
1yr ago
In some ways it's a higher lift to jump through the bureaucratic hoops to get the state to sanction your death, in some ways it's a higher to off yourself personally. But you don't have a principal-agent problem if you're the one killing yourself. Besides, that option can't be legislated away. Not sure how I'd feel if it could.
sonya
1yr ago
I ponied up for a SimpleHuman trash can — though not an automated one — which felt outrageously expensive at like $150 but the mess-limiting design and build quality turned out to be soooooo worth it. I assume the automatic-lid cans are also good.
sonya
1yr ago
Your English is actually quite decent, there are many native speakers who write worse than you. Some of them significantly worse. You could 100% pass for a native speaker online if you didn't mention that you're not.
sonya
1yr ago
The Crimean War: A History by Orlando Figes — good so far but it also puts me to sleep quickly so progress is slow. I'm still in the "context for the conflict" beginning section.
The portion of his fanbase that posts on Kanye-related subreddits is very displeased with this latest bout of iconoclasm. [Edit: Actually /r/westsubever seems pretty adamant about sticking with the music.] However, I'm curious about the non-Reddit-posting demographic of Kanye fans. I'm not sure whether they're tuned into this issue nor whether they're bothered. I guess I'm basically echoing you: "It's a shame we don't have a way to see what the median person thinks about this."
Perhaps a decent proxy — some comments from theshaderoom's latest Kanye post (celebrity gossip Insta focused on black culture, predominantly black commentariat):
Y’all are not understanding that this guy is trying to build his own empire,but he can’t if he is still in contracts with all them labels and companies! This is all planed
131 likes ^
He’s getting out of his contracts and y’all don’t see the genius in this lmao.
1,707 likes ^
They ain’t move like this when he said slavery was a choice but I guess
1,160 likes ^
Nobody lifted a finger when he was talking about black people though
1,871 likes ^
I think he ending his relationships with the companies but y’all gon spin shit how y’all wanna 🥴🤷
138 likes ^
He used the system to make his money. Now using the platform they gave him to speak uncomfortable truths. The man is a genius. He is already a billionaire he’ll be fine.
57 likes ^
it’s funny when he was saying all this shit against black people (“slavery was a choice”) ain’t nobody end they relationship with him but the moment he speak Jews in the industry and they wrong doings, they ready to clean house with him. It just shows how much they don’t gaf about anybody but them.
3,990 likes ^
sonya
1yr ago
Estrogen has pretty profound cognitive effects (though of course hormones aren't literally everything). For example, transitioning MTFs often describe feeling way more emotional, crying more often, etc., while transitioning FTMs describe the same thing in reverse.
Anecdotally, from the perspective of a cis woman who doesn't have a problem with trans women*, the ones I'm familiar with read to me as nerdy girls in terms of affect and personality.
*my own problems with transness / gender ideology / whatever are all about <18yo children transitioning — the adult trans people I know don't bother me (regardless of when they themselves began transition, which I rarely even know)
sonya
1yr ago
He blogged about it, naturally. Ctrl+F "divorce" for the relevant bits. Here's one:
My wife filed for divorce in the spring, but you should know that I believe she did the right thing, ultimately, because continuing in this ferocious pain after ten years was destroying both of us. It is a relatively amicable split, one that even our priests had suggested was finally the right thing. But even relatively amicable splits are terrible, and I beg your prayers for us all.
There may be other divorce-relevant posts in his archive but since I'm not a regular reader of Dreher, I don't recall.
sonya
1yr ago
I have no idea how to hire an escort.
I mean, if you were so inclined, it wouldn't be hard to find out. You can literally Google it
sonya
1yr ago
having used all of these methods, IMO the bidet is the clear winner. it's not even close
sonya
1yr ago
These lines of argumentation kinda strike me as arguing that monogamy doesn't real because people cheat. Like, sure, the map is not the territory, but that's not a good reason to throw out the map.
My other thought is that race is a "thick" concept that bundles various things together — phenotype, ethnicity, culture (sometimes including nationality), and the emergent socioeconomic connotations of combinations thereof.
sonya
1yr ago
Based God (rapper Lil B) (who also has a KnowYourMeme page lol) is an example that predates the wider popularization of "based" and was definitely a reference to freebasing. I think this origin was quickly obscured as the term began to spread though.
sonya
1yr ago
I read a bunch of Ask A Manager when I first started getting "real" jobs which was really helpful for calibrating what's normal and how to behave in an office, that kind of thing.
sonya
1yr ago
I got an Aeropress and enjoyed it for a few weeks... but since then I've been too lazy to use it since my husband brews a pot every morning. The quality difference doesn't matter enough to me to make up for the minor hassle.
sonya
1yr ago
I've been there, it's frustrating. I didn't figure out any "one weird trick" personally, I just gradually got better at forcing myself to buckle down. I still procrastinate a lot but I do also get done what I need to get done. Shorter-term deadlines where I'm accountable to a colleague are helpful. If someone is relying on me to do X at N time, I'm much more motivated than if it's a "finish this eventually" situation.
This service is often recommended, probably worth a try: https://www.focusmate.com/
sonya
1yr ago
I'm sorry, what an awful experience 🤮 I haven't been in that exact situation but some like it. It is upsetting to be disrespected in such a violating manner and to feel vulnerable to perverts while out and about. I don't have any advice, just commiseration.
sonya
1yr ago
I comment very sporadically for this reason — effortposting takes too much time and, well, effort! Even when I do comment, it's usually just a brief thought. The Motte is an entertainment + procrastination venue for me, and my substantive effort is reserved for things like my actual job or personal creative projects. I do try to contribute by promoting the community elsewhere on occasion.
Is it just a matter of exercising my writers-muscles?
In general yes, the way to get better at anything is to practice. I work as a writer and I've gotten a lot faster over the years (though I'm still not particularly fast, nor prolific, in the overall distribution of writers).
Is it my method of commenting, is there some more efficient way to comment? Do other people put hours into posts with any amount of substance? [...] Is most everything on here peoples' first edit?
It varies. Some people are indeed investing hours into their posts and going through multiple rounds of edits. Others have the enviable combination of logorrhea and natural eloquence.
sonya
1yr ago
The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch — it's a little too comprehensive for my taste, and thus a bit of a slog, but interesting enough that I'm going to finish it. Broad theme: Once the universal hold of European Catholicism is broken, various polities discover through successive rounds of bloodshed that it's no longer practical to have One True State Religion.
sonya
1yr ago
Mine is more of a newsletter with a website — but I suppose most are these days. Here it is: https://www.sonyasupposedly.com/
I like the hosting platform Ghost a lot, but Substack is probably better if you don't have an established audience yet.
Just empirically, people are not allowed to use their land however they like. There are innumerable restrictions, which is basically what this whole fight is about — which possible set of restrictions is optimal. The answer to that varies based on one's vantage point. "Do whatever you want" is not on the table because we live in a society, etc. It would be cool if Ancapistan existed but it doesn't because it's game-theoretically untenable.
Why do we have to be so soft on homeowners?
Because there are a lot of them and they vote in their own interests, and otherwise advocate for themselves, to a greater extent than opposing demographics. Insofar as this changes, preferential treatment of homeowners will also change.
I assume you already know this so possibly I'm being obtuse about what you were actually asking, or it was a rhetorical question?
We don't extend this level of hand-holding and thought about compensating business owners or owners of large amounts of stocks. Those things can rapidly lose their value as well and consist of a large part of individuals assets.
This isn't strictly true, for example there are assets you can't buy unless you're an accredited investor.
sonya
1yr ago
If they can just coerce me to only do what they will allow, then owning property becomes completely useless.
But like, they can. Nonetheless, people choose to own property, because it still affords greater freedom to do [whatever] than renting. The set of things you're allowed to do when you're renting is smaller than the set of things you're allowed to do as a landowner / homeowner. This remains true even though the latter set does not contain "literally anything conceivable."
sonya
1yr ago
Idk where you live, but as far as I know, almost everywhere has a building code, at least in the US. I suppose a sufficiently rural area might offer more leeway.
sonya
1yr ago
Mentally ill people rummaging through garbage early in the morning or other problems occur even in expensive areas.
Not in the suburbs! I know OP was focused on city living, but still, I want to put a good word in for my preferred environment. Source: I live in a suburb, not even a particularly expensive one (by Bay Area standards anyway), and it's blissfully isolated from all manner of city problems, including a wide swathe of undesirables undertaking undesirable behavior. One perk of the car-centric setup is that you need to minimally have your shit together to own a car, and it wouldn't be practical to live here without one. (For whatever reason the hooligans who steal vehicles don't penetrate here often — perhaps it's not a particularly lucrative environment for thievery?)
The problem isn't biting, it's biting hard when the target is inappropriate. You want to train a soft mouth. Yelp and act injured / upset whenever she bites hard enough to hurt you.
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