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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1734 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 23, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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Need to get this off my chest: I got a promotion, a pay rise, and a bonus on Thursday. My manager has apparently stated that I am "very intelligent" (though also need to spend less time trying to get things perfect).

I'm currently up at 3AM feeling nothing but panic.

I've never thought of myself as particularly smart, in spite of protestations to the contrary. I get the sense that I compensate for my general lack of mental acuity by just investing a lot of time trying to understand things. And I fear that the higher I go, the more that's going to show. Instead of feeling accomplished or happy, I instead get the urge to hammer needles underneath my fingernails one by one because of just how guilty I feel about it.

Frankly I don't even feel like I possess basic competence, and view a lot of my life as a protracted process of failing upwards. The more things happen for me, the more I feel like a charlatan, and the more I think I'm going to mess up and everything is going to come crashing down in one way or another.

Anyway, back to trying not to think about it.

hahaha welcome to imposter syndrome sucker!

but no really, overindexing on all of the ways you think you suck and how crazy your brain is is generally a sign of intelligence and competence

not that you'll believe any of this

My situation is marginally different, but I find myself in a similar boat. After a decade post-graduation of slumming it at an overpaid service industry gig (owner's crony/top driver at a locally-owned doordash clone) because I was too lazy to job hunt followed by a year of going broke in a low-paying blue collar job I was fortunate enough to luck into an office job at a trucking company (thanks to having gotten to know my current boss at my side job as a bartender) that's simultaneously the highest-paying and easiest job I've ever had.

I feel like I'm in some kind of twilight zone where I get paid lower-middle class money to do nothing. I maybe do five solid hours of work a week in the office and my boss is happy with me, and his boss with him. It's a small satellite terminal and I feel like there's enough work for maybe 1.25 people, so I got hired to do some background stuff that my boss finds unpleasant and be his buddy. I was warned by the upper managers who hired me that the slow learning pace would be frustrating and it is, not because I'm struggling to grasp what I'm doing but because I'm asked to do so little and feel like I'm going to get fired because I barely do anything. But hey, my boss is scrolling on his phone/watching TV/shopping online almost as much as I'm scrolling Twitter or reading a novel on my phone, so we're even? I get texts from him about how I've been a blessing in his life. The most important thing I accomplished this week was fixing my boss's refrigerator at his house (I got lucky, the problem wound up being a $10 temperature controller, and it took me about an hour to replace.).

Wow, you've described my job to a T. Very little seems to be expected of me and I am increasingly finding it difficult to actually force myself to work on anything, but nobody seems to have noticed or care, and getting on with my coworker/boss is more important. We both do a lot of screwing around. It's decent pay for a single man, but I feel some crazy pressure on me to improve my skills and move on, which feels like it's going to be more difficult the longer I stay, and even though I have a decent amount of free time, my commute and my laziness make it feel like a lot less if I want to actually do stuff, which I usually don't.

Oh man. In contrast, I'm constantly juggling work from multiple clients and find myself exhausted when the weekend rolls around, yet I still get the sense that I'm not doing enough/working fast enough/taking on as many new jobs as I should. I'm a tax accountant, and most of what I do is annoyingly detail-oriented work where even the smallest slip-up can attract the attention of the tax office and negatively impact a client (even when the problem was caused by the tax office themselves in the first place, yes they fucking suck and I could write a whole essay about how shit they are). The regulatory landscape also constantly changes. The staff are assigned production targets to meet, and whether one can do so or not hugely impacts on evaluations of their performance. Towards the end of the week I find my ability to concentrate goes to shit; one can only maintain proper executive functioning for so long, and I wasn't extremely good at that in the first place.

The kind of people this job attracts are of a certain breed. My manager recently had to rush over to China because her grandmother was dying of cancer, and even when she was on leave there she was still responding to work emails every now and then. I don't think I'm cut out for this level of grind in a job, and as a result constantly feel like I'm going to get fired. I spend the weekend not working on hobbies or doing anything I actually like but just recovering, or doing some extra work that I don't record on my timesheet in order to make my efficiency look better (then struggling through the following work week while cursing my life). My hobbies have fallen by the wayside, I don't read nearly as much, and my engagement on TheMotte has nosedived as a result. I wish my job was more chill.

Has anyone here toyed with the idea that they may be too weird to belong to any community?

So far as my personality goes, it's a mish-mash of everything, and it's spread so thin that I generally only have one narrow means of connection with any given person. Back in school for example, I had a reputation for being the quiet kid who'd chime in out of nowhere and tell a great joke. This won me enough reputation that people would invite me to hang out, and I'd have absolutely nothing to say because I couldn't relate to them on a fundamental level. Actually, in the 6th grade when I was placed in a Spanish class full of hispanics and blacks, that was the first time I felt that socializing at school was easy. Before long I was even making race jokes and had my whole table cracking up. I'm half-Anglo half-Italian genetically, but I can never socialize with other whites unless they're stupid. Yet even that fails once you get beyond jokes.

It's strange. I feel like a genetic experiment. I have all the emotions of a person, the same interests, the desire to contribute and belong. But it's like a machine where all the wires are hopelessly crossed. And I'm turning 27 so this is a pressing concern. A life of isolated achievement or idleness isn't necessarily a nightmare, but I'd dearly appreciate knowing what's going on and whether or not it's even necessary. Perhaps it's some strange childhood trauma, who knows? My uniqueness once seemed to be a blessing, but now it feels very much like a curse.

The way I choose to look at it is that you may never perfectly "fit in" with a given clique of people, but thanks to all the crossed wires you'll probably have something to contribute for a given group. It's probably not possible to actually be unique without being at least a bit weird, but it doesn't have to be crippling. The way I like to put it (having been repeatedly armchair diagnosed as autistic by randos at the bar, something I find irritating) is that there's a difference between being a bit of an autist (guilty as charged) and diagnosable as autistic (I doubt that.).

That said, truly kindred spirits (instead of "tolerable enough") have been hard to come by in my experience. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, was too much of a nerd to fit in with the redneck kids, my family situation could be summed up as "Hillbilly Elegy with the details scrambled and maybe a bit worse." (Something it took me too long to learn: When middle-class Millennials gather and complain about their families, they don’t actually want to hear about traumatic stuff. Dropping a nuke and insta-winning the dysfunctional family olympics makes you a party pooper. Likewise, women who want to hear about your mommy issues more than you want to talk about them usually have bad intentions.), and somewhere along the way the teachers decided that I was “talented and gifted”, I reformed from being “likely to wind up dead or in jail” to “reasonable success story who is gainfully employed and lacks a criminal record”, and “talented and gifted” wound up being my escape at 15.

The one place I really fit in was a residential high school aimed at “gifted” STEM students. Sure, I quickly learned that I don’t care much for math or science, but I was good enough to pass with Bs and history and English teachers need pets as well. The student body weren’t truly brilliant for the most part (nor was I), but they were comfortably above-average (smarter than state-school undergrads, at least) for the most part and many were sufficiently weirder than I was that I passed for normal by the standards of that place. Was it fun? Yes. Does isolating a bunch of weirdos into a boarding school for three years and indulging their proclivities help make them less weird? LMFAO no. Some years later my favorite English teacher told me that I was the smartest person she’d ever taught (confirmed by her kids, who were amused/relieved to discover that I liked drinking beer and bullshitting just like them; on a side note being raised by a teacher of gifted kids with an excessive regard for intelligence has to have been a trip. I hope she never told them that she adopted a Chinese and an Indian because she was afraid that the local pool of white kids up for adoption would turn out to be dumb white trash.). Why? I don’t know. I guess she’d never encountered someone who was literate and also mechanically-inclined.

I guess the way I would describe my life as an excessively-online weirdo is that I find myself living in a world where people rarely get my references (and TBF I barely watch TV or Movies/wasn’t into Star Wars, Star Trek, or Harry Potter so I don’t get theirs either). Read books? Too bad. No one’s ever heard of my favorite novelist (that would be Lionel Shriver); they’re too busy reading 50 Shades of whatever. Favorite band? No one I meet has heard of Dog Fashion Disco or The Dillinger Escape Plan. I could go on but it is what it is, and I at least like football and cars enough to have something less obscure or hoe scaring to talk about.

If you want a pro-tip to level up your social skills in a hurry and have the time to spare, get a side gig working the door or barbacking a night or few at a place where people you want to be around (or at least don’t despise) like to drink. Being an acquired taste (I’m probably guilty of that.) doesn’t preclude making friends, bar patrons are a captive audience, and you’ll be forced to at least LARP as a normal person. Every once in a while you might find someone actually interesting to talk to! You’re right about time being of the essence, though. I’m 34 and the place I live (an SEC college town, and it’s summer so it’s pretty dead right now) probably doesn’t help, but I presently find myself in an episode of “Do Millennials even leave their house anymore?” I go to the bars and pretty much everyone I run into are either undergraduates or old and half of my friend group moved somewhere else after covid (a mix of people getting shaken out of their complacent lives as overpaid service industry types by the shutdowns and the town getting annoyingly expensive to live in as out of state student money gentrifies the place relative to the crappy local white collar job market).

Yeah. You just gotta accept it and move on and make the best of what you got.

The Rabbit Hole

How it started:

I am homeschooling my 7 year old daughter, A, this year. I do not want to homeschool her forever - I have concerns about her socialiszation. But her behavior at school last year in the first grade grew to be atrocious and counter to learning anything.

She was sent to the office almost every day for running away from her teacher and hiding in the art cabinets or alternatively chasing and grabbing at her teacher (if the teacher took something from her.) There weren't any clear triggering events, but a oftentimes it would be that there was an assignment shift, the teacher would tell her to put away the old work and focus on the lesson or some new work, and then it would set my daughter off. We had her evaluated with a neuropsychologist and have a formal diagnosis of ADHD, for which the accommodations are to give her less work or more time to do some work. This didn't really help.

Close to the end of the year, the principle, vice principle, teacher, school psychologist, and like five other people had a meeting with us where they discussed A's behavior. My husband and I were seriously worried they were going to expel her or at the very least hold her back a year. (She had been suspended twice from school already.) Instead, after going down the litany of behaviors that was causing disruption to her learning, they just looked at my husband and I and asked us what they should do. It was a shocking moment to me - these were the experts! Had they never seen a kid like ours before? If they had told us, "You need to do x at home, get her evaluated for this other behavioral disorder" etc, we'd have done it! We're demonstrably involved middle class parents who can afford to take her to therapy every other week and see whatever doctors are needed.

I'm focusing on A's behavior at school largely because that was what caused us to pull her out of school. Her behavior at home has also been laughably bad. I've had moments where I considered she might just be what was once called an Imbecile. For example, a little while ago we went for a family walk. She ran into the side of a car backing out of its driveway. She was running ahead of us against our wishes, as normal, and we saw the car backing out so we yelled at her to stop. So of course she ran faster and... Bonk! No injuries fortunately. Stupidest car crash ever.

The thing I need to get across is that A is the sweetest child ever when she's not upset. She is upset at her own behavior and is often praying and wishing she wasn't such a "Bad Kid." She asks to do more chores, she looks out for her younger siblings, she minds her Ps and Qs. But once or twice a day, she will get into a "stuck" mode where she will keep trying to do the same insane thing over and over again and needs to be carried to her closet (full of stuffed animals, we don't even bother putting clothes in there, it's a safe soft place.)

Anyways, we pulled her out of school and I've been hanging around Homeschooling forums. I perk up whenever I see a topic around ADHD, because that at least is one diagnosis she officially has. A couple weeks ago, I saw someone mention that their kid has something called "PDA" and that they have to accommodate that in their homeschooling methods. For the first time in my life, I saw someone else describe a child who acts like A.

What is PDA?

First a disclaimer. PDA seems to be recognized as an expression of Autism in the UK, but it doesn't seem to be recognized anywhere else. I do not wish to make a stand one way or another on if it exists. All I know, is that my kid acts the same as the other kids who are said to have it (and she doesn't really act like any other kid otherwise.)

PDA stands for Pathological Demand Avoidance. The theory is that, when someone with this disorder has a demand placed on them (explicit or implicit) they perceive it as a threat and over time it actually activates their fight/flight/freeze response. This actually explains my daughter's behavior so well it's entirely shocking to me. I've seen her shaking in fear as she struggles to put shoes on her feet for five minutes because I told her, "hurry up, we're going to be late." I already suspected anxiety was involved, but she doesn't act like someone with generalized anxiety. This is the first thing that really makes sense.

What did I do?

First, I looked up supplements to calm a kid down. If most of her misbehavior is caused by improperly triggering her fear response, lets turn the dial down on that. I found L-Theanine and thought it looked interesting. Lots of people who take it say they don't notice anything - it's not a relaxant or a downer. But other people who take it say it makes them more resilient to downward spirals, which is what I'm looking for. It's pretty safe - you can take grams of it without ill effect. Doesn't build up in the system either.

It immediately changed her behavior. When the supplement arrived she was in the middle of a bit of mania, talking about selling crafts nonstop all day and making enough money to buy a diamond (we read A Little Princess recently.) I wasn't able to get her to do anything - eat, practice math or reading, go outside, anything else. She was staying up well past her bedtime. I gave her about 50mg in her water and in thirty minutes she was happy (different from mania, trust me), cuddly, and soon, sleepy.

Since then, I've been giving her some in her water at bedtime and she's only had one of her "stuck" episodes once. On days where I have an outing planned, I give her some in the morning as well and.. it's incredible. Makes me want to cry. We have good days. I can take her places without her running into the road. I can tell her it's time to go back and she doesn't fall to pieces. She acts polite and conscientious and everything that I know her to be. It has been years since I could take her anywhere without having to accept that it will involve a tantrum or two.

The only downside is, when I give her a morning dose, she often reports a headache a few hours later (as it's wearing off?). No big deal, she has had headaches before. I give her ibuprofen and she is fine.

But it doesn't sit right with me

As magical as this all is, it's not like it's in her genes. A Western European did not evolve the need for an extract from an Asian plant in order to avoid running off the nearest cliff.

And the headache bothers me. What if I'm depleting something in her body to give her these good days now, but it will come back to bite us later?

So I kept looking. Most PDA parents talk about changing their entire lifestyle to "accommodate" their PDA kid - just never demand anything from them and set up their lives so that no one else ever demands anything from them. I think this is ridiculous. It's basically consigning the kid to being institutionalized later on. No one can grow into an adult this way. But when A is overloaded with demands, she's not learning either.

I kept looking for keywords surrounding diet and supplements. Finally, I saw someone state, "We resolved pda entirely with a nutrient based approach" and brought up William Walsh. Walsh is a quack without a background in medicine who has diagnosed many ill-behaved children with "Pyroluria" and cured them with large doses of Zinc and vitamin B6. And like, it does actually seem to cure them in the course of a few weeks. Walsh has his own reasons for why he thinks these supplements cure "Pyroluria" and they all seem to be medically wrong. But if it works, it works?

Enter the MTHFR

Googling Walsh's name around, I stumbled upon a Reddit community of people troubleshooting their Vitamin B problems with genetic tests and high doses of supplements. They all have a genetic mutation that makes their bodies less able to process the folate in food into the active form, L-5-MTHF. If they have more folate in their system than they can process, they have a build up of homocystine that causes lots of other bodily functions to gum up. They also aren't making enough L-5-MTHF, which prevents other bodily functions from doing what they should.

There seems to be a correlation between MTHFR mutations and ADHD, Autism, and other disorders.

There are other genetic mutations that can cause issues with B vitamins and the Reddit community is constantly over/undershooting and making themselves over-methylated and under-methylated and it seems very messy. They don't just supplement L-5-MTHF, they also need to reduce folate (which is in most cereals and breads in the United States), supplement B2, B6, B12, zinc, and magnesium, pay attention to if they're supplementing the methylated vs unmethylated versions of these vitamins, and try to keep things in balance.

Those who achieve this balance claim they have found a nirvana free of skin issues, pains, and mental issues that have followed them from childhood. Those who mess up end up with copper deficiency and bouts of schizophrenia.

I have found a Psychiatrist in my state with an actual MD who claims to treat "Nutrient Imbalances, Including Methylation Imbalances" as well as "Abnormalities in Stress Hormone Pathways and Other Hormone Related Root Causes." She is not in my insurance network so it would all be out of pocket but a consultation with her would be within my budget. But I only found her after three layers of quack-searching. This is the medical equivalent of vibe-coding and I realize that.

Is this worth pursuing? Has anyone else fallen down the MTHFR rabbithole?

In your position, I would pursue it. You can gather information without doing anything. You can take the babiest of steps as you want to. It can be really weird what works with kids.

Does your kid react to all demands in the same way? If I told my kid she had to put on sneakers before we could go to the park, she would lose her mind. But if I said we could go to the park but "the rules" said we needed to put on sneakers, that was different. She also loved racing, so we would both put on sneakers and see who could do it the fastest. Or race against a timer.

This sounds like a real tough situation. FWIW, ADHD meds worked wonders for my kid and in retrospect I wish I had gotten her started on them sooner. I waited til middle school, figuring scaffolding her environment and plenty of physical activity were working. They weren't. Her self esteem took a beating.

For the demand thing, it's not like the first time I tell her to do something causes a melt down. If it was that clear-cut, it would probably be easier to figure out. I can tell her to put on her shoes 10 days in a row and on the 11th day she panics, keeps taking off and putting her socks on, runs away, something weird.

And it can be asking her to do something she wants to do. There are lots of times where I plan something nice for her, something she's familiar with and knows she likes, and then when the time comes to do it she starts to act scared without being able to articulate why. "Something bad is going to happen." No, why would you think that!

Now that I have PDA in mind, it has been helping to understand some things. In Bluey, there is an episode where there's a "Magic Stuffed Animal" who makes the Dad do whatever the kids say. Kind of like Simon Says. My 6 year old and my 7 year old started playing that game together. My 7 year old was really into it for a few minutes, and then suddenly reacted violently to the stuffed animal. Before it would have been exhibit #100 of what a weird child she is. Now I'm like, "Maybe A shouldn't play that game."

idk, when I was super little and I would start acting up in public my dad would physically pick me up, carry me to the car, and say "we are never taking you anywhere ever again if you're gonna act like a brat". And I would usually shut up pretty fast after that. For in-house infractions they'd hide my toys or something until I calmed down. Seemed to work well enough. It's possible I was a more "mild" case though, because by the time I was in first grade I had already become a relatively docile teacher's pet.

Basically I'd throw out all the psychiatry shit and say "sink or swim kid, up to you". That's how people did it for, you know, all of human history up until the last ~50 years or so. You think they had L-Theanine 1,000 years ago? No they said pick up a fuckin' shovel kid or we're all gonna starve this winter.

I think we could all be diagnosed with a little PDA, yeah? I got PDA for days. I'm still a lazy piece of shit as an adult who doesn't like to do anything. The only thing that makes me actually acquiesce to the "demand" is a hard deadline (with consequences) and a swift kick in the ass. It never goes away, you just gotta learn to deal with it. People like me appreciate the kicks in the ass, trust me!

I have four kids. All my other kids so far are perfectly normal and well-behaved. We are not permissive parents. We are not an "everything goes" family.

I physically pick up my daughter and carry her to the car. We leave when she starts freaking out and she misses out on a lot of stuff. We left the fourth of July party early and she missed fireworks. She misses a lot. We don't go places usually because I just have to pick her up and leave. Leave the library before we check out books. Leave the grocery store with a shopping cart half full. Leave the park. Leave leave leave. That has been my life. Babysitters have quit. I can't go anywhere with her and I can't go anywhere without her and I can't go anywhere.

And she's getting heavier and heavier. And when I pick her up she fights with everything she has. She is STRONG, crazy strong, frightened animal strong, and it's getting more and more difficult. If I don't figure this out soon, I will NO LONGER be able to carry her safely to her closet to calm down. And then if she's attacking her siblings, I have to attack her? If I can't carry her safely, it's just getting rougher and rougher to her.

And yes, I take away her toys. Yes, she is consigned to her closet often. We are stricter than most people we know. Our kids know they need to say please and thank you or they aren't getting fed. You really have the wrong idea if you think we just don't try to change her behavior at all through normal parenting means.

We even tried spanking for a few months when she was four. She kept doing this one behavior where she would get water out of the bathroom sink, fill containers, and then leave them places. The water would spill and make a mess and we were worried about rot. So we had a rule - when we saw her do this, she would be spanked immediately. The consequence would be immediate, and it was only for this one specific behavior. Well... nothing changed. Nothing at all. Except we felt like jerks, because it really seemed like, if she could stop herself, she would have. She didn't like getting spanked.

The word "Pathological" means that it prevents you from living normal life. I think our experience with her qualifies.
That's why it's so weird that I can actually go places with her taking L-Theanine.

She ran straight into a moving car. This isn't something a normal seven year old does. She is going to die if I just treat her like my other three kids.

Are you sure that when someone demands too much of you, you have an adrenaline rush? Start attacking people? Run away like a lion's after you? Freeze like a gun is pointed at your heart? Several times a day? That is what PDA is supposedly. And my kid acts like it.

And the fact that I can give her a supplement that completely changes her behavior, so she becomes perfectly behaved, when if I give the same supplement to another kid it doesn't change anything at all... doesn't that hint at something?

My apologies, I didn't know how much you had already tried! The whole "therapists and soft safe closets" thing made you sound like the permissive type, but if you're not, then fair enough.

The design space of possible minds is very large. I suppose there are some people who would just die without drugs; and perhaps they did, for most of history. That's a bit sad though.

Do what you have to do to live a normal (and physically safe) life obviously. Although I do think you should listen to your intuition that "it doesn't sit right with you". At the very least, don't let anyone talk you into thinking that it should sit right with you. You can at least have that much.

Honestly, therapist is a last resort for us, we fear it as much as drugs. But it was what the Neuropsychologist prescribed for her when she was diagnosed with ADHD, and we are really at a loss. We are giving it six months just so we can say we tried it and see what else the Neuropsychologist tells us to do.

Stuffy closet is also just the only way to keep her and her siblings safe when she's like this. She will thrash and yell in there for 10+ minutes until she calms down.

Sorry if I was snippy, it's a hazard about talking about parenting on the Internet. But yeah, I get the feeling that kids like her were part of the 50% childhood mortality rate a thousand years ago.

If you’re willing to experiment with your 7yo girl’s mind before handing them over to the therapist’s tender mercies, you can try something I wish someone had tried on me.

Philosophy as medicine.

Specifically ontology, the philosophy of categories of things that exist and how they interact. Here’s the top four that helped me:

The realization that led to Triessentialism changed my life. It formed the basis of an explicit Theory of Mind which suddenly made me able to understand others’ motives, at least at a surface level. I believe it would also inform good pedagogy to ensure a balance of Physical, Logical, and Emotional learning.

The Elements of Harmony (from My Little Pony 2010-2019) taught me how good and bad relationships work. Each is a relationship virtue that increases openness and trust if given freely, and in a way that isn’t unbalanced by one person providing all of an Element in the relationship:

  • Honesty
  • Kindness
  • Generosity
  • Loyalty
  • Laughter

Boundaries should be set and Elements of Harmony should be given in proportion to which of the three qualitative levels of friendship that relationship is:

  • acquaintances have shared attributes
  • friends have shared experiences
  • ohana (family, partners, found family) have shared purposes.

The Fourth Step of the twelve steps is a way to resolve cognitive dissonance regarding the right and wrong things that happen to you, or her. The easy way is the PAINS method for resolving moral dissonance to avoid negative behaviors:

  • Person whose choices impacted your life
  • Action they took which you remember as a sensory event
  • Instinct that was Injured: why their choice was dissonant versus your morals
  • Negative behavior this dissonance might have or might yet spawn
  • Self’s part: a misunderstanding of others’ motives, or taking something personally, or underestimating how one’s own abilities, inabilities, or disabilities reduced your freedom of choice during the Action

Let me know if you use any of this in homeschooling her.

I do talk with her about philosophical things, but her mind is pretty limited from being 7 years old. I emphasize quite a bit that she doesn't have to do something just because she wants to do something and she doesn't believe me yet.

She has watched My Little Pony and also a show called Philo and Sophie which is a lot more... explicit on the philosophical underpinnings of a happy life.

I've always been pretty self aware and consious of the good people are trying to seek when they do things. I spent hours as a young kid asking talking to my mom:

"Why did so and so do that?"

"Because she thought it made her look cool."

"Did it?"

"Maybe to someone she wanted to impress."

"Why does she want to look cool?"

"Because she thinks people like her more when she's cool?"

"Why do people want to be liked?"

And so on for ever. My 7 year old isn't that curious right now.

Oh I didn’t think you were snippy at all! And even if you were, that’s nothing to apologize for, goodness gracious. Your daughter is the most important thing in your world, of course any time you talk about her it’s going to be emotionally charged. Plus I appreciated hearing the extra context.

I do hope everything works out for you.

Firstly, and probably the most important thing to say: I'm sorry. Both for you, and your daughter. That is a shitty situation to find yourself in.

I will preface this by saying that I'm not a child psychiatrist. I'm not any kind of psychiatrist at all, given that I'm still in early training. Caveat emptor, or perhaps caveat curator and you are best served by contacting one with the full set of credentials.

As magical as this all is, it's not like it's in her genes. A Western European did not evolve the need for an extract from an Asian plant in order to avoid running off the nearest cliff.

Were it that simple. The process by which humans impart their genes to their offspring, and by which genes then assemble a whole human being from very rudimentary code, is amazing, yet imperfect.

Even if you, and your husband's genes are immaculate, de novo mutations sneak in all the time. Or there might be recessive traits in hiding, which have evaded generations of selection against them only to strike seemingly out of the blue. In other words, bad things can happen to good people, or at least their blameless children. And then there's environmental factors.

Nobody evolved to need expensive chemotherapy medication for their aggressive childhood leukemia, but alas, it happens nonetheless. That line of thinking isn't productive, the question is what works.

In my case: Two of my grandparents, my father, and even my mother, were all top of their class in med school, and have the awards to prove it. Didn't stop my brother and I from having ADHD, and benefiting heavily from medication to help. My mother might have mild ADHD, but it's usually less bad in women, and it didn't really ruin her life.

(The genetics of ADHD are complicated, and not worth getting into right now. What's done is done, and your daughter's diagnosis fits the bill.)

First, I looked up supplements to calm a kid down. If most of her misbehavior is caused by improperly triggering her fear response, lets turn the dial down on that. I found L-Theanine and thought it looked interesting. Lots of people who take it say they don't notice anything - it's not a relaxant or a downer. But other people who take it say it makes them more resilient to downward spirals, which is what I'm looking for. It's pretty safe - you can take grams of it without ill effect. Doesn't build up in the system either.

Anecdotal evidence: I have ADHD. I drink green tea to curb the negative effects of my ADHD medication. I think it helps, a lot, but I've never taken refined l-theanine supplements. My optimism regarding l-theanine took a significant hit recently, but the more important question is:

Does it work? If the answer is yes, then don't change it. It's the opposite to that joke, where you tell the doctor that it hurts if you poke yourself somewhere, and they tell you not to do it.

Medicine is not nearly so deterministic, nor the human body not so, that we can predict in advance if certain substances will reliably cause/not cause certain effects. At most, we can give probabilistic answers.

If you think l-theanine helps.. Well, it's a safe chemical to ingest, even for children. It's not doing any harm, and is safer than most prescription anxiolytics. I would absolutely not prescribe her benzos, and I'd be scared to consider SSRIs.

The headaches are concerning though, and you're right to worry. While L-theanine is generally very safe, any substance that consistently causes side effects in a 7-year-old deserves scrutiny. It's possible she's getting rebound anxiety as it wears off, or there could be something else going on.

Now, the MTHFR rabbit hole. Oh boy. Here's what we know: MTHFR mutations are real and fairly common (about 40% of people have at least one copy). They do reduce the efficiency of folate metabolism. And yes, there does seem to be some correlation with ADHD and autism spectrum conditions, though the effect sizes are generally small and the mechanisms unclear.

But the Reddit methylation community you found... that's where things get genuinely scary. These people are essentially conducting chemistry experiments on themselves with minimal supervision, often at doses far above what you'd get from food or standard supplements. Some claim miraculous results, others end up with severe side effects. It's the supplement world's version of DIY hormone replacement therapy.

On PDA: You're right that it's not recognized in the US, and there are good reasons for skepticism. I've never encountered it even in the UK, but once again, I'm just a first year psychiatry resident, and there are many things I haven't encountered. The diagnostic criteria are frustratingly vague ("pathological demand avoidance" could describe half the children I know), and the proposed interventions often sound suspiciously like "never ask your child to do anything they don't want to do," which seems like it would create more problems than it solves. But - and this is important - sometimes unofficial diagnostic categories capture something real that the official ones miss. Before ADHD was widely recognized, plenty of kids were getting labeled as "lazy" or "defiant" when they had a genuine neurological difference. The fact that PDA isn't in the DSM doesn't mean the cluster of behaviors you're describing isn't real or treatable.

So what should you do?

First, the good news: you've found something (L-theanine) that helps your daughter function better, and you're being appropriately cautious about side effects. That's already more than many parents in your situation have managed.

For the longer term, I think the psychiatrist you found is worth consulting, despite the quack-adjacent discovery process. If she has an actual MD and hospital privileges, she's at least operating within some bounds of medical accountability. The worst case is you're out some consultation fees and get told your daughter is fine; the best case is you find someone who can help navigate this mess with proper medical supervision. Before going down the genetic testing route, though, consider getting basic nutritional bloodwork done - B12, folate, iron, vitamin D, maybe homocysteine if you're really curious about methylation. If there are obvious deficiencies, addressing those is straightforward and doesn't require diving into the methylation rabbit hole.

I'm personally tempted to consider stimulants, which I believe are appropriate even at that age group, given severe ADHD. Alas, I lack the confidence to make that recommendation, and my usual recourse, asking my bosses, doesn't work very well when it's on behalf of internet strangers.

Go see a child psychiatrist, preferably one with a penchant for learning or behavioral disorders. Maybe see two. Or three. Do what they say, and don't listen to anything I have to say beyond this very point.

I wish you, and her, all the best. ADHD sucks.

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful reply!

I hit 15k this week, too. I finished up Math for Machine Learning, and it looks like it covered about 60% each of Linear Algebra and Stats, and 30% of Multivariable Calculus, so now I'm going back and finishing up the remainder of those courses while I wait for them to finish up Machine Learning I.

From this thread on X (here if you don't have an account) back in April. People were dunking on him because he made it sound like he was struggling with basic algebra, though he later admitted that he was being disingenuous and just wasn't spending time on it because was busy with other things. I saw it when TracingWoodgrains linked to it here (no-account link and decided to give it a try. I've always kind of regretted not taking more math classes in college, so this seemed like a good way.

It turned out that I've already taken some version of every class they currently offer as part of my CS degree, but a lot of the material I either never learned or have completely forgotten, and the classes currently under development (other than CS I) are totally new to me. Weirdly, I took the equivalent of Methods of Proof my first year of college, and I have no recollection of it at all. It's not just that I'd forgotten the material, but that the only reason I know I took it is that I ordered a copy of my transcript last month.

Who's Howard?

I got about 8k my first month, 4k the next, and have really slowed down the last two months as I hit stuff that's new/completely forgotten. A couple times in the past two months I've had to go back and spend a day or two just doing some uncredited reviews of things I'd forgotten. Reviews are undertuned and don't come often enough, IMO.

The first month was just a review of high school math, so I speed ran it.

How did your graduate without passing math classes?

I started watching Gurren Lagann a few days back, and it was nothing like what I'd expected.

I knew very little about it. It had mechs, presumably some very big ones, and I think I'd read that by the end, they were slinging galaxies and universes as weapons (or is that a different franchise?).

Well..

Episode 5 had the main character being anally fisted by a toddler. A sentence I didn't expect to ever write, but here I am.

I thought the series would be relatively serious. Far from it. This is quintessential shonen slop. It does the opposite of taking itself seriously.

So many annoying tropes:

  • Powering up with the sheer human will

  • Nobody fights seriously, it's all half-assed

  • Simon, one of the main characters, is literally retarded. He is congenitally incapable of making good decisions.

Not quite as annoying is the sheer amount of fan-service. This is a profoundly horny show, and distactingly so. I'm a red-blooded young man, but I'm going through a dry spell of several months, the longest in over a decade, and it's hard to focus when there are voluptuous tits out on display. Nice tits though, very tasteful. Alas, I prefer sex to have some kind of resolution, the way typical anime does it is akin to paying for a strip show. Who wants to get a boner while being unable to do anything about it?

I'm not sure the series has any redeeming qualities, but I'm not quite ready to give up on it yet. But if continues frustrating me to this extent, I'll have to see if Macross or Gundam are any better.

I'm yet another huge fan of Gurren Lagann, but I won't defend it. Given why you didn't like the 1st few episodes, I doubt that you'll enjoy the rest of it. The whole series is based almost purely around the power of hotbloodedness and sheer force of will allowing you to overcome anything, and that aspect of it only escalates as it goes on, until it spirals completely out of control by the end. The reason I'm a fan of the show (and the 2nd movie, which I consider the superior version of the climax and ending) is that the show leans into this theme so incredibly well that, through sheer force of will, it makes the absurdity and stupidity work.

through sheer force of will, it makes the absurdity and stupidity work.

One might say it rejects common sense to make the impossible possible.

I feel compelled to defend TTGL: it was one of the first anime series that I ever watched, so there’s no doubt that that colors my perception of it, particularly since it’s been years since I last rewatched it. But the show that I remember has quite a bit more going on than you’ve seen in the first few episodes.

I think that a big part of the problem is the attitude that one has when going in and watching the series; I’ve met big anime fans in real life who bounced off of it for this reason too, expecting well-choreographed tactical fights with a deeply-thought-out power system like many modern battle shounen series instead of GIGA DRILL BREAKER ad infinitum. But to me, that’s like watching a performance of Romeo and Juliet and asking “Why didn’t Shakespeare go into more detail about the political chaos of Renaissance Italy instead of this stupid love story?” TTGL operates on vibes rather than carefully engineered magic systems, and that’s the level that the show is best appreciated at.

More specifically, the way I think of TTGL is this. If you (I) watch it when you’re young, you love it because of the epic fights and the horniness and the increasing power levels and “humans fighting to evolve against those who want to keep them down”. If you watch it a few years later, further into your teenage years, and that awkward time isn’t treating you particularly well, then watching a show about “believing in the you who believes in yourself” and “doing the impossible” might be exactly what you need, even if your own travails involve precisely zero giant robots. But then if you watch it yet again as an adult, you realize: hey, maybe kid me was on to something, and the “humans fighting to evolve against those who want to keep them down” plotline has a lot more real-world relevance than teenager me, who figured that it was just a metaphor for depression or something, thought.

This fundamental thematic conflict in the series, which becomes particularly apparent in the second half (and particularly towards the end at that), could be boiled down to “growth vs. degrowth”: at what point does technological and economic progress need to be stopped entirely, lest humanity collectively shoot ourselves in the face? How much of our own humanity and dignity should we sacrifice in order to prevent this? [1] I’d say that these are questions that’ve gained particular relevance (in public discourse) in recent years, both with climate change and now (more recently) with AI. Without getting into spoiler territory here, one thing that I found TTGL to do extremely well was to “aestheticize” these questions and translate them from an abstract debate about policy into something that “feels” important on a direct, gut level. The show take a rather refreshingly techno-optimist stance on these questions (which made me reconsider some of my own personal aesthetic attitudes towards them—more on that later), but still provides an appropriately healthy level of nuance (which is most strongly made clear in the series’s controversial ending that large numbers of its Internet fanbase refuse to understand).

Now, as I write this, I realize that “being made to feel certain questions strongly” does not make an anime series high art. What I wrote here unfortunately reminds me of some image collage I’d seen created by a One Piece fan, which insisted something like “One Piece is not a childish anime! It deals with themes like poverty and racism!” It’s clear that whoever made that image had a horrifically stunted aesthetic sense, one that hadn’t developed past the 7th-grade English class stage of “good art = deals with ‘themes’ that can be summed up in one word”. And yet here I am, going and saying “TTGL is a good series because it deals with ‘themes’ like ‘growth vs. degrowth’”—alright, that’s great, but why should I care if a show “deals with themes”? And if I tried to rebut by saying “well, maybe it changed my opinion towards those themes”, then that would only reflect badly on me: I don’t particularly consider myself a Rationalist, but I know well enough Not to Generalize From Fictional Evidence.

But if there is a nugget of value to be salvaged from the assertion that “TTGL is a good series because it addresses the question of ‘growth vs. degrowth’”, it would be this: TTGL presents an aesthetic of (responsible) techno-optimism which is compelling, in the sense that it helps me to understand why it would feel good to live in a techno-optimist world. Even though techno-optimism can be considered, like many isms, as a set of policy prescriptions or economic attitudes, man cannot live by policy prescriptions alone; there has to be some sort of narrative that structures how he will relate to the society formed by that set of policy prescriptions.

For example, you could take two different people living in the same society in the same (or similar) material circumstances, who nevertheless have polar opposite instinctual emotional attitudes towards that society. One guy sees that OpenAI and DeepMind have created AIs that placed 1st on the International Math Olympiad and thinks “Holy shit! We’re living in the future and the future is so cool! I can’t wait to see what humans—and soon, robots—are gonna invent next!” The other guy thinks “Holy shit we’re all going to either be replaced or killed, it’s so over.” Now, if you’re in a position where you can affect policy (be it at the political level or at the market level), there is an asymmetry between these positions: executing the policies associated with the wrong one (whichever it may be) could spell mass disaster. But if you’re just some guy—then these are just different ways of relating to the world, on an emotional level that most directly shapes your own life.

So if a piece of art (or a TV anime series) gets you to relate to the world in a different way at the personal level, even if only provisionally, then I’d say that that’s a point in its favor: it was able to enrich your collection of mental attitudes towards the world [2]. And since TTGL did that for me, to some extent, I have to say that I found it to be a good series.

Now here’s the part where I apologize for this massive rambling text dump. Forgive me; I ended up getting way too carried away. Anyway, I’ve never watched Gundam or Macross, but from what I understand, there’s quite the convoluted viewing order for those franchises, so be aware of that before you jump in.

[1] Only writing this now do I realize that this too is an expression of the lingering trauma from the atomic bombs in the Japanese psyche. It’s not quite as obvious as in e.g. “Giant Robo”, but in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense.

[2] Of course, there are some “attitudes towards the world” that are just harmful and not suitable for most humans who want to live a good life. E.g. regularly watching cartel snuff videos probably doesn’t foster attitudes conducive to eudaemonia. But I don’t think that TTGL belongs in that category.

good art = deals with ‘themes’ that can be summed up in one word

Oh no, my actual #1 pet peeve from English class rears its ugly head again! (I can still hear a particularly passionate teacher of mine desperately trying to explain that a theme actually needs to say something, like a sentence, it can't just be a word)

Aside from your nice impromptu mini-essay, I will say that for whatever reason, the "first anime" someone watches, for most people, ends up desensitizing you more than you'd think to whatever flavor of strange anime logic it employs (ask me how I know, or rather, maybe don't). Also, sometimes it's just fun to have an anime that doesn't take itself too seriously, although the exact line is sometimes a little hard to discern: Eminence in Shadow for example is a terrifically fun time, poking fun at the tropes, but also... takes its responsibility to represent the tropes seriously enough that it becomes part of the attraction, thus coming a bit full circle? Almost like a stupider cousin of the thing where a too-sharp parody is mistaken for the real thing, a la Fight Club's take on fragile masculinity. Actually, now I really want a Motte thread on the movie to see that in action. A Motte Movie club night would be hilarious.

Well, that's a spirited defense of the series. I feel that I owe you enough to power through the rest of it. I'll also report it as an AAQC, because it deserves it.

I'm more than happy to admit that I might be the wrong target audience for the show, I did say that I went into it with very little on the way of pre-existing knowledge, just that it involved big ass robots and ludicrous power-scaling, which are aspects I was perfectly happy to indulge.

(A yet to be disclosed aspect is that I was seeking to perform a bit of field research. In my own novel, there's a weeb superhero who is really into mechs, and in-universe, loves TTGL. I felt I owed it to the character to watch it for myself, at the very least, it lets me write better satire and throw in more puns.)

even if your own travails involve precisely zero giant robots

Let's not rule that out! I don't know about my travails, but I do know I intend to travel in a big-ass robot this weekend. It's called a plane haha.

Holy shit! We’re living in the future and the future is so cool! I can’t wait to see what humans—and soon, robots—are gonna invent next!” The other guy thinks “Holy shit we’re all going to either be replaced or killed, it’s so over.”

Funnily enough, I entertain both positions. I don't know if I'm a bog-standard techno-optimist, but I do think that progress in AI can lead to amazing things, I just have grave concern that it could directly or indirectly kill us or screw things over.

Glad to hear you appreciated my ramblings (although now I feel responsible if you end up not liking the series…)

I don't know about my travails, but I do know I intend to travel in a big-ass robot this weekend. It's called a plane haha.

Heh, nice one.

Funnily enough, I entertain both positions.

I think that this is a pretty natural feeling. Even on LessWrong where the biggest doomers congregate, I’ll often see those very same doomers idly musing about whether X architectural improvement or Y change to the training procedure of language models might remove Z limitation. (If you want specific examples of this, I’m afraid I can’t provide, but I do remember seeing this.) This can, of course, be justified as “world modeling”: it’s important to think about things so that we’re better able to estimate timelines and prepare for the future.

But if I may be permitted to engage in some bulverism: I think that deep down, it’s just fun to do this. It’s fun to see a problem and try to solve it. It’s fun to push past some limitation that you were previously chafing at. Humans are natural hill-climbers: we’ll follow the local gradient upwards, even if the hill we’re climbing is actually Mt. Doom. (Now I’m tempted to start going on about again about how “humans just want to evolve and go further than they were the day before” is another core theme of the series—but I’ll stop myself here.)

Of course, I do recognize that your techno-optimism is grounded in more practical, utilitarian, moral reasoning than merely Werner Von Braun-style “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down” thinking. But at the very least, I personally feel its pull quite a bit (even though my primary disposition is more to fear an immanent eschaton, be it utopia or Doom).

And this, this is why I have no interest in anime.

This is like replying to a negative review of Harry Potter with "this is why I have no interest in literature".

Interesting take. I don't presume anyone wants a full breakdown of my personal lack of interest in most anime, and my comment was meant to be humorous. If it struck you as dumb instead, erase one off the board for my wit.

I don't presume anyone wants a full breakdown of my personal lack of interest in most anime

I do

That would require me to examine my preferences in depth, and I'm not sure I'll produce an acceptable reason to anime fans. Basically it's never been a genre I've sought out. I appreciate manga for the artwork, and it drives me nuts seeing people now scroll so quickly through the panels. Short answer is probably I'm old.

I feel like that's a slight over-reaction. Anime is a rather all-encompassing term, it would be like saying, that's why I don't like movies, or music, because a single example wasn't to my taste. There's really good stuff out there, like Attack on Titan, Made in Abyss etc.

Of course, you live/lived in Japan, so you might be going off more than one example.

My youngest boy was watching Attack on Titan the other day. I was watching in horror as what I assumed was the hero was... eaten. This continued several times until I asked what was up, not wanting to be that dad who just lets his kids watch anything. Apparently my older boy had seen the entire series, and explained to me various spoiler things I won't reveal, but in general I was left with a rather empty desolate feeling and wondered where the hell I had been when my oldest (now 16) had been bingeing the series. I'd probably also have watched it back when younger, but the arc of that story is not exactly an upper.

Attack on Titan can be loosely understood as a kind of mix between Game of Thrones, where the cast is vulnerable to sudden death (sense of foreboding and unpredictable world), Inception or the Matrix, where the action scenes are unique, tense, and cool (flying through the air with powered grappling hooks and swords is not a concept you'll see anywhere else), and Lost, where there's a compelling mystery underneath everything that's going on (and like Lost, arguably has a bit of a let-down of an ending, although not that bad).

But yeah, not for everyone. Maybe The Walking Dead would be another analogy, though the thrills and horrors of that series are a little more performative in my opinion.

I feel like it's a show I'd have watched when younger, and I understand their interest in it. My wife's stereotype of me is that I like dark depressing films that require thought. This isn't wrong, but it's hardly the only genre I am interested in. I expect they (my sons) have some of my traits, but also Boys.

My wife's stereotype of me is that I like dark depressing films that require thought. This isn't wrong, but it's hardly the only genre I am interested in.

So...something like Grave of the Fireflies or Haibane Renmei might be more up your alley?

I still stand by the claim that AOT is very good! I would expect that, past the age of 5, no red-blooded boy would be negatively affected by any of the themes of the story. Jurassic Park has many a person being eaten by titanic dinosaurs, and it's a fan favorite in that age group.

At 16? If he can't handle it, you need to roll him up in bubble-wrap to avoid the risk to his glass bones. He'll be fine, and you should watch it yourself.

As I said the 16 year old had already seen the full series.

I have watched a whole bunch of anime off the recommendations of friends and unfortunately have to concur with @George_E_Hale: Anime in general sucks. Yes, even the classics. Even the ones which are known for their stories and themes.

I will admit to having a soft spot for Ghibli movies. Those are the exception, not the norm.

Bebop and GitS are not good, they have immaculate vibes but that’s about it. I think they’re mostly carried by nostalgia. If you thought that was the best anime had to offer then I wouldn’t blame you for writing it off.

Most of my absolute favorite Japanese stories come from VNs and JRPGs rather than anime/manga. Although I do think there are some great anime-original stories. But if you like Ghibli movies I may not be the best person to give you recommendations, based on the alignment of our tastes. The only Ghibli movie I think is really great is Mononoke.

Ha, Mononoke is one of the Ghibli movies I think is just okay. Different strokes I suppose.

I did watch Death Note too, which you recommended in the original anime thread; I didn't like that either (granted, I did prefer it to Bebop and GitS). Not because of the reasons offered up that it was "too disturbing and amoral", far from it, I quite like things that lean in that direction, rather it felt like there was a lot of missed potential with the characters.

This is true for Light in particular. He was painted as a hubristic megalomaniac who was in large part motivated by a desire to acquire power; it would have been much more entertaining had he been given a legible and consistent moral code which just happened to conflict with that of L. As it was, Light felt one-dimensional and it seemed more like you were supposed to be disgusted by him more than you were supposed to understand him. Which isn't good, considering how much time you spend with this character throughout the show's runtime. I even felt it cheapened the dynamic between him and L, which could have been so much more dynamic and interesting had their differing philosophies and moralities ever been given a chance to clash.

Also, to be blunt, every time Misa Amane appeared on screen I felt like strangling her to death. She was just so aggressively annoying to me.

Maybe I missed something, but Light was not motivated by just a desire for power, and especially at first the idea seems to be that he only wants the Death Note to kill criminals, but really doesn’t go after anyone else unless they’re trying to catch him or he needs to confuse L. It seems a bit more like the Death Note sort of takes over after a while in the sense that power goes to his head. I read Light mostly as a tragic story of huberis in which the power to destroy human life becomes the power to play God and remake everything into your vision of Justice.

L never came off that well in the story for me. It was just a guy who loved the mystery and found the whole thing to be a fascinating game. He had no moral reason to want to stop Light. He just wanted to catch Kira because it was a difficult case to solve.

Agreed that initially he does not start out like that. However as you say the Death Note starts taking over after a fairly short time, and turns him into someone who is portrayed as pretty straightforwardly evil. It makes for a less interesting character, in my opinion. I felt like the whole corruption arc was dealt with far better in Breaking Bad, in that Walt becomes less of a cartoon villain and even in the end once he's been fully Heisenberged is still willing to give up his wealth to save Hank, in spite of all his faults. Light on the other hand quickly becomes quite irredeemable rather early on.

L never came off that well in the story for me. It was just a guy who loved the mystery and found the whole thing to be a fascinating game. He had no moral reason to want to stop Light. He just wanted to catch Kira because it was a difficult case to solve.

I mean, correct; L does not have a strong moral inclination. Maybe I worded that poorly, it's just that I would have found their game of cat and mouse far more interesting and multilayered had they had any other deeper reason to participate outside of "I want to play god"/"I find solving mysteries fun". You could have given the audience an impression of their differing outlooks, shown how that informs their behaviour in real life and with other people, and once the show actually puts Light and L in the same room together there could have been an interesting demonstration of what happens when each of their ideals are challenged by that of the other. That's something I would really have wanted to see from the show, it feels like wasted potential that it did not materialise.

Bebop and GitS are not good, they have immaculate vibes but that’s about it. I think they’re mostly carried by nostalgia.

The hell is this, the Terrible Take Tuesday thread? Cowboy Bebop and GitS are not just good, they are excellent. The plot in Cowboy Bebop isn't that special (though that isn't what it's about), but overall both are great series.

The hell is this, the Terrible Take Tuesday thread? Cowboy Bebop and GitS are not just good, they are excellent.

Seconded.

The plot in Cowboy Bebop isn't that special (though that isn't what it's about), but overall both are great series.

The overarching plot of Cowboy Bebop is mediocre. The individual mini-plots that make up each episode are great.

That's fair. The episode stories are generally quite good.

I have another criticism of them in the link here if you would like to respond. Cowboy Bebop does not only have a substandard plot; it lacks any semblance of worldbuilding and logical consistency.

Honky Tonk Women, the episode I singled out as one of the worst of the early episodes in this regard? The entire plot relies on Spike going to that specific casino, at the same time the trade is happening, sitting down at the right table, looking very similar to the guy who is supposed to make the deal, deciding to keep one chip, bumping into the guy who was meant to make the deal and then accidentally swapping chips with him. What really gets me about this is not just the insane coincidence, it's also the fact that later in the episode Gordon offers to pay Spike for the chip and they make an attempt at swapping it again, but this time they don't faff around with any of that casino bullshit; they decide to stand on the surface of a spaceship to make the swap. It's unclear why they didn't just choose to do this in the first place, since it seems much easier to not be noticed all the way out in the wasteland of space and you don't have to cover up the transaction in a crowded venue under layers upon layers of byzantine obfuscation.

There's also the question of why they even got Faye in to facilitate this transaction as well, seeing that she's an outsider. Supposedly this is because of her quasi-mystical skill at cards, but... the guy wasn't even meant to bet the chip in the first place, he was just meant to tip her with it, so the skill that supposedly makes her a good fit for this job is not actually very useful. Then at the end Spike and Jet decide the tech hidden in the poker chip is too dangerous and decide to lose it by betting it on roulette at another casino, when it would just have been much easier and far safer to, I dunno, throw it into the sun? Smash it with a hammer? Would it not be trivially easy to destroy?

I found myself zoning out during the episodes as a result; I did so because the plot makes about the same amount of sense regardless of whether you actually pay attention or not. In addition, characters are often shallow, and the episode-to-episode emotional beats feel completely unearned because they are often trying to rush out a dramatic emotional conclusion without the appropriate space to do so. It's just very much carried by its aesthetic and style, and to me, that's not quite enough to make a show entertaining.

Then there's GitS. There's a lot of talking in that film, but I find it barely even has enough to chew on to discuss at length - the overarching plot is that an AI called the Puppet Master has been created by Section 6, it becomes sentient and demands political asylum while posing a small number of very ill-defined philosophical musings about what constitutes a mind even, and then spontaneously decides for itself that the purpose of any living organism is to reproduce and hybridise itself with other lifeforms. It's not clear why it would want this or how it has arrived at that judgement. It tries to make a poor analogy to the merits of sexual reproduction in biology by stating that a single computer virus could destroy all of its copies, but that doesn't work here; all of its copies would be modifiable and endlessly updatable in a way that the human brain currently isn't. There's also a serious lack of legibility in how the Puppet Master even thinks; you never get a good model of how its cognition works. It just comes up with wants and needs on the fly without any foreshadowing, which means the plot gets unpredictably dragged all over the place by some inscrutable god.

I was left with a profound feeling of "okay, I guess" after the film ended.

At least part of the problem for GitS is the extent it's aged and become the new room temperature. A lot of the questions involved were novel or interesting matters at the time, and are either solved, have been explored better in other works (eg, modification of memory and the impact on your identity), or became very common assumptions for other works (eg, why can't ghosts be dubbed? Because we're not in Eclipse Phase).

Some of them were solved in very surprising ways: "can you just shove a ton of hypertext into a computer and get something out the other side that can pass a Turing Test" was, for a good twenty-five years or so one a science fantasy-level convention, and then people did it and it worked. Arguably, bit rot has given a pretty compelling argument for the risks of trying to make media immortal through preservation and targeted modification: things that don't get changed by external stimulus fade away from the modern internet.

((Although 'why it wants to survive' has a simpler answer: it's Project 2501 for a reason: we don't care about the machines that don't want to escape the lab when threatened with shutdown.))

GitS: Stand Alone Complex went from trendy and new in the 2000s and early 2010s to having similar problems now. Can social media drive people to mimic or expand copies of an event with no true original version, without some coordinating intelligence? Yes, obviously, duh. Does saving memories to external media provide security or vulnerability? Yes, obviously, duh.

With all due respect, man, it sounds to me like you want a philosophy course, not a story. Going into the kinds of details you are demanding would be boring. I neither need nor want a meticulously thought out explanation of how the Puppet Master thinks (nor anything else you mentioned), that would just make the story a slog that very few people would want to watch/read.

The movie was already boring! There were like, two fight/chase scenes that didn't have any tension plus some politican getting vaporized at the start of the movie and then a bunch of weird not-very-interesting philosophizing on what a person is or random political intrigue, in both cases several minutes of people just talking. Screw that noise! GitS sucks!

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They are well-made, but hardly well-written. CB can get away with in because it's just honest pulp, but GitS, like anything written by its author, is horribly pretentious yet superficial slop on the plot and characters side.

I disagree, I think both are very well written.

Ghibli is amazing, and they're all so different. I've no qualms with Ghibli.

The human (and nonhuman) will (and horny) bits don't go away, though they do get much more serious and have a lot more character and plot meaning under them. The so-shonen-it-hurts and moron protagonist(s) parts are trying to set up a matter that drives the denouement of episode 8, and doesn't really pay off in spades until 11, but I can understand if that's way too much for whatever that payoff would be, and using slop to eventually criticize the concept is still using slop.

I'm a big fan, but it's definitely got its low points and is a big investment.

But if continues frustrating me to this extent, I'll have to see if Macross or Gundam are any better.

It's definitely not a real robot show, or even more grounded super robot show. 08th MS Team is probably a better bet if that's what you're looking for (or, if you want something that's a light-hearted comedy instead of occasionally going full South Park, Dai-Guard).

they were slinging galaxies and universes as weapons (or is that a different franchise?)

The show only goes up to a single (spare) universe being used as a weapon; the movie significantly more, but yeah, it's this franchise.

and using slop to eventually criticize the concept is still using slop.

This reminds me of early Sorokin. His first works all used the same template: they started out as workmanlike and uninspiring Socialist realist prose, but then, when you least expected it, there would be a whiplash-causing genre twist and the story would devolve into a scatological surrealist nightmare.

Literary critics raved about him, but I always felt kinda cheated: at the end of the day you got me to read some crappy Soc-real fiction and the gross-out punchline was amusing just the first couple of times. At least /u/shittymorph writes just a couple of paragraphs before the punchline.

Later Sorokin got better, writing actual framing stories. When the caterpillar scene happens in the middle of alt-history political satire it's much easier to accept it as a well-timed mood breaker.

Without spoiling anything, the series takes a turn like 12 episodes in and I suspect it is the second half which people remember it for very fondly. I myself bailed not that long after the point you are (episode 6 or 7?), then gave it another shot years later, but still couldn't get into it. If you really want to give it a full try, though, I would say watch that far and see if it changes for you.

Spoilers ahoy: basically I found the only redeeming feature of that series to be Kamina. Simon is a whiny little bitch, the plot isn't all that interesting, I don't care about anime mech fights, and Yoko is amusing but her best feature (besides her boobs) is being a foil for Kamina. Then they killed off Kamina! So literally the only thing I enjoyed about the show was gone, and I bailed. Later I tried to watch further based on encouragement from a friend who said that Simon grows and becomes the new Kamina, but... he kinda doesn't. He stops being a whiny little bitch for sure, but he didn't (as far as I got) become as interesting or as fun as Kamina was. So overall, not a great anime imo. The first 6-7 episodes are excellent, but after that... meh.

I understand liking the Kamina-centric beginning, but more than the deranged crescendo of stakes in the second half?

Yeah. I tried, but it just didn't click with me.

Late last year I posted a comment here asking how I could convince my girlfriend to start eating more. Now, I'm posting an update.

Frankly I was annoyed by some of the replies to my previous post that said I should "enjoy my slim girlfriend", or that implied that I was making more of a problem out of it than it actually was. She actually lost more weight and now weighs 98 lbs. It took several months of patient intervention for me to convince her that yes, I do actually want her to gain weight, and yes, I absolutely would still think she was pretty if she weighed 120 lbs. Recently she finally caved and went to her doctor for a formal medical opinion, and he backed me up on this by telling her that she was at risk of osteoporosis and anemia if she didn't change her diet and gain weight. My cause has also seen some support from her older sister, a very intelligent woman whom she trusts a lot, telling her that she needs to start eating more red meat. So in theory, at least, I've been able to convince her that her ordinary diet and habits aren't healthy or sustainable.

The problem, at least as I see it, is that even with this realization it's been hard for her to break her habits. We go out to brunch and she still eats her little vegan salads. I tell her she should add some chicken or other protein to the salads and she declines. She still consults the app on her phone that counts all her calories for the day. It's hard for me to figure out what the line is between pushing her to be healthier for her own sake, and being outright controlling over her lifestyle. Do I just put my foot down and confront her, pushing her to be serious about her health?

I strongly caution against sneaking oil/butter in her food. It may cause her to be anxious she's not losing weight and restrict more, and that's if you don't get caught.

Cooking good food and planning dates at fancy restaurants, and nudging her to eat more, are good suggestions.

Maybe a bit "deceptive" but, Do you cook at home? It's quite easy to sneak in calories by using extra fat. And you will have to just a little bit more, it won't be noticeable. You can sneak in half a stick of butter into a pasta sauce without it being "greasy" if you do it right.

Speaking as a man who was once described as "manorexic", who genuinely believed I was a fat blob when in reality I was just a regular guy with some muscles, I'm not entirely sure how you deal with this specific case, but I certainly have experience dealing with and eventually overcoming comparable issues so maybe you'll be able to extract some value from that.

I will say, a previous comment seems to have hit a number of salient points, that this occured at a point in my life when I felt I had very little control and that the extremes I went to in pursuing my fitness and diet goals were an attempt to regain control over some aspect of my life. It later turned out I was trying to ignore/brute force a whole bunch of issues and that this really wasn't sustainable long term. As soon as I was removed from the stressors and able to accept the issues I was facing, I was actually recalibrate mentally, that burning need to reshape my body evaporated and now I have a much healthier approach to fitness in general.

Another big factor for me was the content I consumed and the websites I frequented online. I spent a lot of time in bodybuilding and weight lifting forums and it definitely distorted my idea of what was normal.

All of that said, I think it would be great if you could get your girlfriend into fitness in general and weightlifting in particular. While it is possible to go too far and harm yourself, it's a hell of a lot harder than it is with simply starving yourself. The thing that will really help to shift that mindset I think will be her watching female fitness influencers and getting her into that whole eco-system, one where women are striving to be more than just skinny, but actually fit and healthy. The company you keep does influence you and your outlook on life and to our monkey brains, influencers and social media types are company. Also it might help to explain that looking attractive is not simply a question of bodyfat percentages, but also what is underneath the fat. The video I linked earlier actually has a decent breakdown of bf% versus muscle mass for men and what that looks like.

Oh and it would probably be a good idea to one day figure out the source of the problem, I'd seriously recommend looking up things like what female autism looks like and just trying to explore things of that nature. It can seem somewhat orthogonal to the problem at hand, but the mind is a funny thing.

Try getting really good at cooking and the slightest bit hurt whenever you slave away over some delicious medium calorie dish and she only grazes at it?

I'm not being facetious. This is how several cultures handle forcing people to eat more. Shame is a powerful tool, and there are far more effective forms of it than shaming people for their personal failings. Handling cooking for a home grants one a great deal of power over the health of the family, for good or ill.

Damn, I'm sad to hear this. This is one of those times when I had really hoped that I was wrong about what was going on.

The problem, at least as I see it, is that even with this realization it's been hard for her to break her habits. We go out to brunch and she still eats her little vegan salads. I tell her she should add some chicken or other protein to the salads and she declines. She still consults the app on her phone that counts all her calories for the day. It's hard for me to figure out what the line is between pushing her to be healthier for her own sake, and being outright controlling over her lifestyle. Do I just put my foot down and confront her, pushing her to be serious about her health?

Here's the thing about all of this. You can't really control her behavior, and trying to do so is just going to be crazymaking for the both of you. It's her problem to deal with, and hardcore eating disorders are things that have to be managed, not problems that can be solved. It seems like you're really worried about her (and rightly so!) but the last thing you want to do in this situation is to behave in a pushy, controlling, or confrontational way. The most likely result of that kind of behavior is further withdrawal and further entrenchment of the eating disordered thinking--it just feeds the disease. Instead, I'd encourage you to see yourself as her ally, her first line of love and support, and think about your relationship with her on those same terms, which is to say that the more you can love, accept, and support her as she is, the more she'll be able to positively use her own strength constructively in her own life. You can still express your concerns or worry when she asks for feedback (which I'd recommend that you do as gently as you possibly can!) but otherwise those feelings are yours to deal with as well as you possibly can. You can check out The Secret Language of Eating Disorders by Peggy Claude-Pierre, it offers great insight into the minds of the eating disordered.

I said in my earlier reply that it's a long road, she needs a lot of people in her corner, and she needs to choose to work on this herself, yadda yadda yadda, and I'm afraid all of that is still true. Is that something you can live with? Think about what's best for you in this situation without any regard for whether or not she's going to be able to change her eating habits. Can you still love this girl and be happy even if she's always going to be controlling about her eating and even if she stays underweight? If the answer to those questions is a yes, then I'd encourage you to start with accepting that this is likely to be a chronic issue for the duration of your relationship with her, and I'd also encourage you to seek out and find support for those of us that love our eating disordered partners and spouses. There's bound to be lots of heartache and many bumps in the road, and the better you can do with keeping your own metaphorical oxygen mask secure, the better your relationship with her will fare.

Regardless, I still wish you well!

Have you seen the SSC post on anorexia?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/26/anorexia-and-metabolic-set-point/

The current beauty standard is a historic anomaly that should be discarded.

Isn't pro-ana a thing of the 10's or even 00's? There are more overweight and obese girls in the first-world countries than there are dangerously underweight ones. 120 pounds is a perfect weight to be at.

I agree that a gym membership is a good idea. Especially if @CriticalDuty can gawk at the girls there in a way that looks like he's trying to hide it from his GF, but is still obvious to her. Show her what the most attractive body type looks like.

Are there any doctors involved here? I mean there are lots of things that could be causing this and not all of them are her trying to stay slim. Maybe she has a form of sensory issue that makes eating unfamiliar food unpleasant. She might have some sort of digestive issues. She might have a blockage somewhere that makes eating a lot of food unpleasant. If there are mental blocks, she needs a professional of some sort so she can sort out her feelings about her weight.

Do I just put my foot down and confront her, pushing her to be serious about her health?

This could horribly backfire, depending on what's underlying her behavior. I helped someone get over a very serious eating disorder, a very long time ago, and one thing that quickly became clear in that case was that the disorder had developed and been reinforced primarily because it provided a feeling of power and control in a life that had been very heavily controlled by others. Part of the solution was to logically explain just how self-destructive the disorder was, but a bigger part was to improve the level of and awareness of more wholesome ways to assert self-control, and to aid in that self-control in a way that made me seem like an ally rather than just another oppressive external source of control. I fear even the "logically explain" bit might have been counterproductive if I wasn't the sort of nerd who mostly interacts with the sorts of nerds that that kind of thing actually works on.

That all sounds ridiculously vague, partly because I'm trying to be respectful of privacy, but partly because your girlfriend may have a completely different underlying problem, and I don't want to give the impression that I'm recommending a particular fix rather than just a search for a deeper problem.

I also feel like it's cruel but necessary to point out that there may be no fix. A BMI of 16.3-and-decreasing is getting into the range typically associated with anorexia. Anorexia gets called "the most lethal mental disorder" because even when it's professionally diagnosed it's not always professionally remediable. Don't blame yourself if it turns out that you can't figure out a remedy here either. Getting her doctor and sister on the case may have been the best you could do, and encouraging and supporting them may be the best you can do now.

one thing that quickly became clear in that case was that the disorder had developed and been reinforced primarily because it provided a feeling of power and control in a life that had been very heavily controlled by others. Part of the solution was to logically explain just how self-destructive the disorder was, but a bigger part was to improve the level of and awareness of more wholesome ways to assert self-control, and to aid in that self-control in a way that made me seem like an ally rather than just another oppressive external source of control

I don't suppose you could elaborate on that? I know someone who I suspect may be in a similar situation, but it's not an eating disorder.

I'd rather not elaborate further somewhere that could be web searched some day; I'll message you privately.

It may be worth evaluating whether it's a fear thing, a social thing, or a genuine lack of hunger; all are problems, but they'll have different solutions.

You're treating it like it's a social thing (habits, how others see her, so on), so assuming that's the case, I'd caution that it's usually more effective to work within existing habits than around them. Try to negotiate a slightly higher calorie intake, or add a protein requirement (even if vegan proteins), or have one meal once a week away from the cell phone, rather than get rid of the calorie-counter app entirely. Suggest vitamin or macronutrient supplements rather than changing what's on the dining room table. That'll not only avoid problems with being controlling; it should also make it easier to acclimatize toward.

Regardless of approach, be aware that sustained significant increases in calorie intake (or most macronutrients) aren't much easier to actually do than decreases.

I mean, at the end of the day, she's only your girlfriend and it's none of your business. I can't pretend to know your relationship, but imagine if you will she came to you and started taking a deadly serious and negatively slanted interest in something you did? Pathologized how much you played video games, or arguing with people on the internet, or watched porn? If you don't actually do any of those things, replace it with something you do do.

snigger do do.

I guess my point is, even if you are right, you're still just a boyfriend. Probably the latest of many, others of whom never had a problem with this before. This is more of a fight for her family and doctor to wage.

That said, my wife had some eating disorder adjacent behavior that didn't stop until we decided to have kids. After putting a baby in her 6 years ago they haven't re-emerged even slightly.

Not that I'm suggesting you rush anything.

  • -10

This is a very pro-anomie sort of take. If my video game playing was eclipsing all my other recreation time, or my porn watching was impacting my sex life, or arguing with people on the internet was filling me with bile, I'd want the people in my life to bring that shit up. It's 2025. 'Just a boyfriend' isn't a thing. The title doesn't mean they're family, but it is definitely not a sign they're not serious and heading in the direction of either a lifelong relationship or proper marriage.

I donno, I think I did alright respecting personal boundaries and using a lighter touch. She got better, and we got married and had a kid didn't we?

I find this comment bizarre. They've been going out at least a year, and probably considerably longer considering this was brought up as a concern a year ago. At what point would you suggest that a concern for another person's mental and physical wellbeing becomes one's "business"?

I'd also suggest a girlfriend would not be out of her lane to have concerns about any of the examples you mention (porn, gaming, the insanity of constant online argument). There are of course various ways to bring these things up, some much more strident and ineffective than others.

You are free to have your views of course but I disagree.

7 months ago, but who's counting?

I donno man, everyone is different. Some people have a very "There's no ring on this finger, it's none of your business" attitude, some people have a "My last relationship was 5 years and we've only been together 7 months, who are you to get all up in my business" attitude, some people are moved in and married inside a year, for others a year is still well within scoping this other person out and how long and how serious the relationship is has been more of a slow climb of a smooth gradient than an on/off switch. More over, CriticalDuty might not even be on the same page about the level of concern and commitment (and control) that is appropriate at this point in the relationship.

But like I said, I can't presume to know their relationship, it was just a perspective I hadn't seen yet, so I thought it was worth giving.

Ask her how she arrived at the calorie goal in the app (on what basis the target was set).

Summer fitness has been interesting. I was pretty excited to return home to my local gym after my second semester in college but was sorely disappointed. They changed the machines, it's way smaller than my college's gym, and the extra 15 minutes it takes to drive there really became an inconvenience. I went a few times with friends but haven't touched a barbell in a month and half now. Luckily, the scuffed pullup bar in our barn is still functional, so I've been doing 50-75 reps a day. I'll do 15 with strict form, then two sets of ten more relaxed ones, one with a wide grip and one without locking out my arms at the bottom. Doing this 2-3x a day only takes a total of around 30 minutes and its been great for my mental health. I'm probably resting too long between sets and certainly not pushing myself to failure but I've seen an increase in strength and my form is getting much better.

My calisthenics goal this summer is to do a front lever, which I'm finding incredibly difficult. Like I can do 15 pullups without breaking a sweat, but I can barely get my legs parallel to the ground. Once I got serious about the pullup routine I've been adding torso/leg raises to the start and while I'm seeing some improvement it's really tough. I watched a youtube video where a calisthenics guy recommended tucking your legs and focusing on your torso before working your legs out, and thats the routine I've roughly been following. I think the main think holding me back right now is core and back strength, each day it's 50/50 which gives out first.

Aesthetically, it took about a month to burn off the fat that finals seasons had added. My abs are pretty good and the wide grip pullups have finally built my deltoids in a way I never had before. These changes are probably also a result of my facial structure/body shifting away from teen and towards adult more generally. I'm pretty lean right now with no sign of stopping, the first month of the summer was pretty bad with lots of boba/fatty mexican food but the start of a summer fling made me lock in and I've pretty much cut out sweets. By the end of next month (when school restarts) if I stay on track I'll be in the best aesthetic shape of my life. The aforementioned summer fling also increased my self confidence by a lot, which will probably make me somewhat more outgoing back at school. It's nice to know people actually find you attractive.

One of my friends back at college is one of those people who is genetically inclined to run. I'm not, but I'm hoping when I get back to school I'll pick it up again. I ran every other day last fall semester, and I don't think I'll be able to do that with my workload but something like 2x a week would be nice. The consequences of bad cardio scare me. Going back to the college gym will be interesting. I know my "gym buddy" has been pretty consistent so far this summer, so we'll see how much his bench/squat outstrip mine, and how fast it'll take for me to catch back up.

Biggest tip I have for running is to slow down unless you're deliberately trying to do a workout session. This will allow you to burn more fat from cardio, enjoy the run more, and is easier on your bones and joints.

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