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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   660 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 30, 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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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What are your go-to strategies for making small talk with "normies"? I was working alone with someone high-ranking for a couple hours with lots of downtime and she asked me about my hobbies. Without thinking too much I answered truthfully (foreign languages, science/math/history). I might be overthinking it, but I think most of my hobbies being essentially studying left a weird impression.

Talk with them how the world is going to hell and agree with them. This is what everyone is thinking, they just differ about the reasons.

Talk about kids. I assume you don't have kids, but you can talk/ask about theirs. If you can mention being an aunt/uncle in relevant ways, then you've made a good conversation.

If they don't have kids, then they probably have a pet that they treat like a kid and you can talk about dogs/cats.

A long time back, I'd once met a lady I'd intended to marry. We'd found this image generator that claimed to show what the kids of any given couple might look like. I can't vouch for its veracity, but we thought our baby would look very cute.

At one point, we hadn't been careful enough while fooling around. This lead to an accidental pregnancy, and almost as quickly a miscarriage. We were, I must admit, relieved at that time. We weren't at a point in our lives when we could afford to have children.

Aqouta's post below reminded me of that. Knowing I would very much regret it, I still fired up ChatGPT, found a picture of us as a couple, and asked it to show me what it would look like if we were a family. The end output has almost brought me to tears. If there's a lesson to be learnt here, let bygones be bygones, and don't give yourself unnecessary psychic damage. Especially if you do so knowing full well that it was never to be. I'm going to pour myself a very stiff drink.

(As imaginary children go, entirely fantasized by the product of matrix multiplications, I think they were gorgeous and I could have loved them)

In the end, the drink didn't do enough, so I did what I usually do and wrote another essay.

Time for an Ulcerative Colitis and medical billing update! Paging @Throwaway05 and @self_made_human.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I have been diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, a couple of years back, but that finding out in advance how much treatment was going to cost was nearly impossible. My colonoscopy to diagnose the disease cost me about 1500 dollars out of pocket. My doctor then put me on Velsipity, which was not covered by my insurance, but did have 2 years supply covered free by the drug company. My drug company did in fact approve the drug and add it to their formulary list, a couple of months ago. Just in time for my doctor to decide it wasn’t actually really stopping the progression of my disease, so we had to look for another drug to try. So it goes.

But before that I needed another colonoscopy! Again, no one could tell me how much it was going to cost me. It ended up costing me about 2,900 dollars out of pocket this time. Why the difference? Well because the first one was coded to my insurance company as routine, while this one is diagnostic. Nothing was different about the procedure at all. Diagnosis? My Ulcerative Colitis has progressed from mild to moderate to moderate to severe. So, my doctor decided we were going to try Tremfya, a biologic medication.

If you anticipated my next question was “How much is this going to cost me?” Then have a cookie or three! And if you correctly anticipated the answer was “I don’t know” then take the whole box. I can’t eat them now anyway. Tremfya is on my insurance companies list, but it has a whole bunch of caveats attached to it. They only cover so many doses; they only cover it from certain pharmacies they only cover it after you’ve tried other medications.

The drug manufacturer has a payment program, which may help people cover the out-of-pocket costs. Up to 20,000 dollars a year. Which sounds pretty helpful! But there is a twist. For Tremfya, your first 3 loading doses need to be delivered by slow infusion, which means you either need to go to a medical facility, or have a nurse come out and hook you up to a drip. Once again this will have a cost attached to it separate from the cost of the drug itself. I’m told having a nurse come out is by far the cheaper option. So, I pick that and see the Tremfya program may also cover up to 2,000 dollars for infusion costs per annum as well.

Note the important words there, however. May. It is not guaranteed, and the drug company can stop it at any point for any reason. So, I talked to the specialist pharmacy that is contracted to come out and do my infusion. How much will I have to pay? If you guessed the answer was “I don’t know” then you are to my shock, wrong for once. They said 40 dollars per infusion. Which sounds downright reasonable!

So, I go ahead and book the first treatment. The nurse comes, she is very nice, gets a vein on the first try and we spend 2 hours filling out multitudes of forms. I don’t immediately die or go into anaphylactic shock as some of the dire warnings on the medication indicate so I’ll count that as a victory. But now the time has come to pay the piper. I log into my insurance portal a couple of days later and I see the charges for the drug and infusion costs are pending. I wait a few more days with bated breath and then I am both unhappy and happy. For my cost for the drug itself was 0 dollars!

Let’s go back and look at the breakdown. A single dose of the drug was billed to my insurance company for 17,000 dollars. Normally I’d have to pay 20%. But my insurance company very kindly registered me for the Tremfya manufacturer program and that reduced my OOP to zero. Great. But that is 3400 dollars from that 20,000 dollar pot, for one dose. So let's put a pin in that.

Now let’s revisit the infusion cost. This is not for the drug, this is for the cost of having a nurse come out and administer it (and I was told it is much cheaper than having to go to a medical facility). Just close your eyes for a moment and guess how much the initial bill is. Got it?

Well, it is 35,000 dollars. My insurance company negotiated a discount to only 15,000 dollars. So I am billed around 3000 dollars out of pocket. Except the pharmacy had said after checking with my insurance I would only have to pay 40 dollars per infusion. So what gives? Well we have to go back to the OOP maximum! Because the insurance company administered the Tremfya program and got the money from them directly, the 3,400 odd dollars for that didn’t go towards my OOP maximum, because I didn't pay anything. So I am on the hook for the co-insurance here, not just the 40 dollar co-pay.

So, I looked up this on some UC forums and discovered this is indeed a thing. Many people have to force their insurance company to let them apply for the program on their own, because if you do that, it counts towards your OOP maximum. As you are billed, pay the balance and then get re-imbursed. So, while it looks like the insurance company is trying to help you, it actually screws you over. I call my insurance company and after two escalations and some back and forth they agree to apply the amount to my OOP maximum. This plus the previous colonoscopy costs means I now don't have to pay co-insurance costs for the rest of the year. Just co-pays.

I guess I'll worry about next year when I get there though at least I'll just be on 17,000 dollars a dose pen injectors by then. I'll hit my OOP max 3 doses in, which should be covered by the Tremfya fund.

Also don’t get me started on what the difference is between Annual Maximum Out-of-Pocket and Total Yearly Out-of-Pocket Maximum which are two entirely different figures and are very unclear as to the difference.

The Tremfya does appear to be working, for anyone in a similar situation. Although improvement in UC is measured in months and half-steps so we will see where I am in a while. Velsiptity did nothing but I also had no major side effects.

I'm not sure the NHS is better than the US system, but it's certainly less stressful and complicated from the point of view of the end user. Slower and less efficient though most likely.

Not to derail this but I had thought you had Crohn's, not UC. Of the two, UC seems preferable (in that it does not run the length of the digestive tract) but of course both seem extremely uncomfortable. I'm continually amazed at the US healthcare system and I think one of the many benefits of living in Japan is this kind of situation. I could probably get a colonoscopy in less than a week if I needed to, and would be charged a few hundred bucks at most after insurance. In any case you have my sympathies.

Sorry about that man. Don't have time for much of a comment here but I also have severe ulcerative colitis (have had it for years) and bad insurance.

Semaglutide has been quite effective for treating me. It's better than Humira (my previous drug), and its total price is cheaper for me than my Humira copay. Maybe it's placebo, I don't know, but it's working.

Huh, i'll look into that, thanks! Humira is on my list if Trenfya fails as it stands, but which drug works for which person seems very scattershot.

I appreciate you taking the time to reply!

  1. Congrats that it seems to be helping.

  2. I am on vacation and absolutely obliterated right now but I'll respond because I don't want to forget about this.

  3. U.S. system is bonkers, it has its advantages but it is still bonkers. Lots of wealthy companies invest in not paying or making things as confusing as possible.

  4. For the most part doctors are employed cogs who have no control, authority, or influence (these days). Usually your contract gives up your right to be in charge of coding and shit. We have enough to do unfortunately and limited ability to help so we don't know and can't do much. Understanding billing is a full time job.

  5. I support attempts to fix or simplify things as long as you don't throw the baby out with the bath water but 90% the first step is cut doctor salaries and I'm out.

Thanks for responding! I wouldn't support cutting doctors salaries I don't think. Not that I am in charge of that sort of thing anyway! I also don't think it is the doctors job to be able to know all the costs. But I think it should probably be someone's job (probably at the insurance companies end) so that patients have transparency up front. It's hard to know what treatment to choose without knowledge of the costs as well as the benefits.

Enjoy your vacation!

Health systems do sometimes try and figure this stuff out and help patients but its complicated because insurance companies make a full time job out of causing issues here - one of the classic is the way that COPD/Asthma inhalers change every year because insurance companies change what they will pay all the time.

The insurance company has no desire to clear things up with their staff for the obvious reasons.

With respect to diseases like this you will absolutely get the best possible care in the U.S. because no socialized system will spend the money involved. It will just cost you an arm and a leg in the process.

Firstly, my condolences, UC is a shitty disease (the pun is not entirely intended).

If you expect actual advice, my ability to help is rather limited. Maybe a year or so back, when this was a topic I'd been branding into my brain, I could have told you something useful. As it is, some of the drugs you've mentioned are brand new, and unheard of in UK practice. I have very little reason to look at biologics, and trust me, the names are just as abstruse to me as they are to you.

Given what you've told me, it seems your doctor thinks the cheap/easy options like aminosalicylates or corticosteroids are no longer effective. I don't know how much of the impetus behind the additional colonoscopy's was to stage the disease and how much was to screen for or exclude colon cancer.

The NHS probably would have been simpler and easier. If I'm being thankful for the few benefits the system has, wrangling insurance is something I'm mercifully reprieved from worrying about. You would have had a harder time getting the specific biologic you're on, but I'm not sure how significant the differences are between them. We're not so backward that you wouldn't have had an equivalent at hand.

Have you considered the feasibility of going to Mexico for treatment? I'm talking out of my ass here, and I can't imagine it would be easy to go there on a regular basis. It may or may not be cheaper.

If you expect actual advice, my ability to help is rather limited

Oh not so much advice, just tagging you in on a kind of NHS related post. Colonoscopy is both as you said to stage the disease and because she worried about colon cancer, as UC increases the risk and I'm in my 50's and a meat eater.

Luckily while I am partially retired, I am reasonably well off so a few thousand dollars will not break my bank. Mainly I just dislike how up in the air everything is, as to what something will cost at least ballpark.

I'd say some of the burden the NHS takes off patients compared to the US it puts onto medical staff. And my brethren in Scotland are not exactly renowned for their physical or mental health so I am sure you have your hands full as it is.

Neither patients nor I have to worry about insurance, so that's a relief!

The NHS is well past its prime. I would say it's undergoing a slow-motion collapse. If you show up to the ER with a condition that is liable to kill you in a few minutes or hours, you'll probably be seen to very quickly. Everything else takes its sweet time. Something like a routine colonoscopy might take months to get an appointment for. The wait lists are just too long.

I'm not at an age where I have to worry about significant medical expenses, but later down the line, one must confront the choice between cheap/quick/quality. The NHS errs on the side of the former.

I'm not at an age where I have to worry about significant medical expenses, but later down the line, one must confront the choice between cheap/quick/quality. The NHS errs on the side of the former.

It does. Which is why in the US I had like 5 people call me (pharmacist, nurse, Drug company rep, pharmacy tech, doctors office) before my infusion, all that cost disease money over here is at least employing people!

I seem to have lost the ability to focus on a book for more than 30 minutes in the last month, which is concerning. Maybe this is just an ebb in the tidal process that is my relationship with reading, but this time it feels different. It's not so much a lack of time, but feeling like I should be doing something else (working, running, or texting mainly). Sometimes this feeling is valid, but mainly reading is for time when I don't have the energy to do these things (run, work, or be social).

What can I do about this? Or do I just need to chill?

Have you changed the types of books you read? Sometimes I feel reading is a sloge compared to my youth, but then I remember that I have traded Animorphs for Wuthering Heights and while there are fewer cliffhangersthat keep me reading past bedtime I do get more out of it.

Everyone here needs to chill.

I knew another doctor with ADHD who would take stimulants so he could engage in recreational reading. I found this rather perverse, but I suppose if you're trying to familiarize yourself with continental philosophy, it might help.

Just chill.

You need to chill in general.

Welp, 9 week visit went poorly, we're probably going to have another miscarriage, we'll know for sure in a couple weeks. I looked up the odds, seems like there is only like a 30% chance the problem is some kind of chromosomal thing that makes us totally inviable.

We found out a couple weeks ago my sister is expecting her second in January, they would have been similar ages. We're going to another baby shower in a couple weeks. This really sucks.

That sucks indeed. Sympathies.

When we just considered having children, the doc told us it wouldn't work out. Just plain not biologically in the cards for her. So we considered one life choice taken away from us, but what can you do, shrug and embrace the irresponsible lifestyle. And then the doc turned out to have been wrong. Life finds a way, it seems. And then, all my wife's fretting and panic nonwithstanding, the pregnancy went off without a major hitch, and we got a fairly healthy kid out of it. And now we are a highly dysfunctional family that barely scrapes by and I don't want to even think about the issues the kid will have in her teenage years.

Children go not to the most deserving, or the best prepared, or the most suitable, or those who most want them. Life isn't fair, and deals out kisses and gut punches almost entirely at random, as far as we mere humans can perceive.

How do you intend to deal with it?

I'm sorry. That is not an easy position to be in. Your wife might know all the things that a shrink or gynecologist might say, but they seem hollow or unhelpful when you try to apply them to yourself.

If I can say something somewhat hopeful, what basis do you have to claim 30% odds of there being a genetic abnormality? You frame it as one that's present in either your or or partner, as fetuses can get them de novo even if the parents are alright.

It's been a while since I brushed up on my chromosomes, but my understanding is that only ~5% of couples experiencing repeated miscarriages have an underlying chromosomal problem. I presume those are balanced reciprocal translocations, Robertsonian ones and so on.

Have you guys been karyotyped? Did one of the doctors specifically relay this to you, or is this something you've been trying to figure out yourself? Ask your wife for more details, I expect they've been giving her a far more detailed debrief than you've received, or at least she understood more of it by virtue of medical training.

In the absence of more information, I'd be very averse to ascribing your difficulties to such. Even if that's the case, there's reason to hope that IVF would help! Something like PGT-SR would help identify viable embryos that have dodged the bullet. IVF is expensive, but I expect the two of you can afford it. I wish you guys well, and hopefully you come out of this with the happy family you deserve.

I'm sorry, I went through this with my first wife a few times. Including a placental abruption at 37 weeks that was devastating and 3 miscarriages at sub 10 weeks. We ended up with 3 healthy kids before she passed, so I suppose the try again advice is still the go to. At times it really is just a crap shoot.

I'm sorry, man. We had our first pregnancy self terminate early and while I wasn't affected much, my wife took it really hard.

Aren't early miscarriages really common? I thought like a 1/5 of known pregnancies miscarried in the first trimester and some 30-50% of all pregnancies.

Are you sure two early miscarriages really puts you in 30% chance of being unviable with eachother? It sounds high.

Do chromosomal things make people unviable with each other where both partners would be fine if they had some different partner? I don't know much about pregnancy.

Unfortunately, no. Just one person having them can be a deal-breaker. There are rare mutations where chromosomes are malformed, and during the process of recombination when embryos form, they just don't pair up right. It would be exceedingly unlikely to find someone with the same kind of defect, such that this goes off without a hitch.

It's still not the end of the world. IVF usually helps find the embryos that would be viable.

I'm so sorry to hear this!

Lost and overwhelmed.

My wife (20 years) and and have been having marital difficulties, I believe she's depressed and has become involved in some online extremist communities. Her online 'persona' had been bleeding through in real life more and more.

Yesterday being the netadmin for my own network I undertook a block of many of the apps and sites.

Today while she was collecting our 4 children from vacation bible school, I saw she had left her laptop open. She'd been very secretive with it recently. I snooped.

She's been sending bitcoin to someone in control of an @aol.com address apparently believing she's arranging an in person meeting with Elon Musk, who she says in her email she has been in contact with for a while. They're expecting 10k for a meeting with Elon.

She's refusing to see a therapist alone or with me, she's refused to see a psychiatrist.

Anyone encountered anything like this?

Any suggestions?

Prepare your divorce, both legally and in the practical sense of how you'll take care of your kids when she's not around anymore etc. Maybe you'll get lucky and manage to drag her out of this for good, but if not, or if she relapses, you'll sleep better knowing that Plan B is in place and you needn't stick out a detereorating situation out of uncertainty regarding the alternative.

How is her parenting in these times? How is yours? How old are the kids?

I spoke to an attorney last week. It was sad and depressing. I completed the documention exercises he recommended before I blocked the the extremist content from the network. This is a non-perfered option.

There are areas for improvement. 2 years ago, she insisted on homeschooling. I'm reenrolling the children for the start of school in the fall. It's challenging, I work full-time, I've not been to the office in several weeks. I may switch to a full remote work plan. 12, 10, 8, 6

That's rough. I wish you good luck.

At least fall isn't far, and your kids are grown out of the most care-intensive ages and (mostly, I suppose?) not into teenage rebellion yet.

Do you have any nearby relatives or friends who might help you out when needed?

She's refusing to see a therapist alone or with me, she's refused to see a psychiatrist.

If you have the capacity, you might consider talking to a therapist for yourself, partially because this is a lot to deal with, and partially because they may be more familiar with resources and ideas that may be helpful to her.

It probably isn't much, but you have my sympathies and prayers, anonymous internet friend.

I've been meeting with our pastor weekly for several weeks now.

Today during the crisis intervention counseling she agreed to both individual therapy / psychiatric care beginning tomorrow, and couples / marital counseling at a TBD date.

Oh, dear lord. You have my deep sympathies.

I've helped out from the tech side with some elder fraud victims that had a similarish pathway, though the marital relationship and legal side is going to be wildly different. That said, while the FBI really only categorizes 'elder fraud', there's a pretty wide variety of both subclinical mental health episodes and simple unfamiliarity that gets abused pretty heavily by the same scammers.

From the tech side, the most urgent thing is to figure out your security environment. Even if there ends up being no organic problem, people in this sort of mode are incredibly vulnerable to scams and grifters, and I would not be surprised to find that bitcoin bit is not the first of its kind, several types of attack make 10k USD liability the low end of risk (who wants to get banned by Chexsystems!), and some scam victims react to the perceived time pressure of a helper pulling them away from their scammers by going full-in. Keep and take a very good look at your recent transaction history. If either of you are using debit cards routinely, change that as soon as you can. Some banks or credit card processors will have options to reduce the credit limit on your cards, and most will have it for other transaction types. You may be able to request international transaction blocks, and some banks will have a Trusted Contact Designation (though this is intended for elder care situations, so may not be viable even if present). Check that your credit score is frozen. If possible, implement an ACH debit block and only whitelist services you absolutely need. Make and keep good records of financial transactions that is not dependent on continual access to the financial services in question. Ideally you'd want to separate finances, with automated transfers, but that's... a hard pull even for elder fraud cases; I wouldn't expect it to be possible here.

While rare, I have seen scammer trick people into installing keyloggers and/or RATs -- ideally you'd want to get her a clean machine, but checking running services, monitoring outbound network traffic, and the normal security checks are probably going to be more doable here. If you're willing (and your router supports it), it's a good time to move away from a default any any outbound firewall rule, but that's more to make you the more annoying target than to actually block attackers. If you're not doing a ton of LAN traffic, consider switching your wifi to a guest network and turning on guest network isolation, or implementing strict VLAN limits, for similar reasons. Keep an eye out for 'free' VPNs, if you've blocked websites; they can be amazingly sketchy.

Social side is harder, in a lot of ways.

If you can't get her to a therapist or a psychiatrist, at least try to evaluate what she's looking for. You're not going to be able to make an evaluation of depression vs bipolar disorder versus impulse control versus a thousand other options, so try to resist the urge to think in DSM terms. But you can probably find out if she's looking for a big payout, or political power, or recognition by the powerful, or something more esoteric (I've seen two cases where the victim had a One Weird Trick they really wanted to apply to bigger scales).

Genuinely believing clearly wrong things doesn't necessarily mean an organic cause and some (even some very smart!) people just get tricked, but if she can't be persuaded away from any of it or strongly resists checking or validating claims of the scammer, that does point that direction.

It's probably overly optimistic, but I think you've mentioned your wife is a full-time housemaker, and recently became a stay-at-home-mom after having a more conventional career. Rarely this sorta attraction toward scams can show up as a mirror to the typical breadwinner mid-life-crisis sorta behavior, where a housewife (or househusband) is looking for a ton of meaning in life. That's still not great, anymore than the 40-year-old in a bad toupee driving a convertible into a wall is! And sometimes it's combined with organic problems. But sometimes there's options to negotiate in this space: it's hard to get people in this sphere from wanting to do something, but you might be able to persuade on what that something is with stupid questions, or by suggesting that smaller-scale investments that require a lot of her efforts will be more renumerative.

At the other side of things... don't fixate on it, but seriously evaluate how prepared you are for a potential divorce, and evaluate if she's making preparations. I don't know enough of that class of problems from the parents side, but I do know it's one plausible motivation for very poor risk assessment for investments.

I can't speak on the radicalization side without more information, and you've got a million valid reasons to not want to go into that publicly.

I spoke to an attorney last week. It was sad and depressing. I completed the documention exercises he recommended before I blocked the the extremist content from the network. This is a non-perfered option.

Being a suspicious sysdmin I was already viewing flows in real time with ntop. I'm blocking tor, outbound VPN from the VLAN her devices are on and also run several domain block lists in DNS. I also trap and force all DNS though my DNS servers and use a block list to block all the well know DNS over https servers. Opnsense firewall.

After I confronted her with the emails and transactions she agreed to go to a crisis counseling service. She now agreed to engage with a therapist / psychiatrist. She goes back tomorrow. She says she knew it was a scam but sent the money anyway because they were nice to her. I don't understand.

White well-being / nowhiteguilt.org is the bailey I'm sure you can imagine the motte.

I'm sorry this is happening for a start. I'm sure this must be very stressful for you. I suppose the main question is whether if you explain it to her does she recognize she is being scammed? Or is this a delusion and she really believes that she is talking to Elon even when you point out it is a scam?

If she's depressed then she might fall for a scam easier, but it's still different than if it is a full blown delusion. Is there perhaps a trusted pastor or faith leader (as you mention bible school) that you might be able to call upon? If she doesn't want to engage with conventional medical/therapy perhaps that is an alternative? Either through faith-based marriage counselling or even just them coming round for a cup of tea for a chat in a more informal way?

I'll know in a bit. She's out at the moment.

She's been very resistant to any sort of help. She's refused to speak to our pastor either alone or with me and has refused all suggestions of counseling, therapy or psychiatry. I've been speaking with our pastor regularly in person in addition to frequent texts and emails.

Speaking to her nurse practitioner today, the NP recommended taking her to the walk in psychiatric service at our hospital. I anticipate she'll refuse.

If she persists in the delusion that she's been speaking to Elon Musk after being advised of the scam, I thought I'd see if our local PD would assist in having her sectioned. I've already left a message with the detective regarding the scam.

Ok, are you in the UK or the US? If the UK, you might be able to enlist the help of the local adult social care department as a halfway house between psychiatric treatment and therapy. We used to offer just chat sessions to people suffering stress et al. But disconnecting even from a trusted pastor sounds worrying, so social services may not be an option either as that will need voluntary engagement.

Is there a trusted family member of hers who might be able to get through to her? If it were my wife, I'd be going to her brother and her cousin she is very close with for example. Not quite an intervention perhaps, but a display that multiple people she trusts are worried.

Having said that, you know the situation better than me, but I have seen spouses sectioning their sick wives/husbands result in the end of the marriage multiple times, so just make sure to think through your options. This is a legitimately tough thing to go through so make sure you are also looking after your own health. If you're engaged with your pastor at least you have some kind of outlet.

Good luck seems inadequate, but I will wish it anyway.

US.

After confronting her with the email and the screenshots of the transactions she agreed to go to a crisis counseling walk in service. They saw us right away, she was much more amenable to seeing a therapist / psychiatrist after talking through things with the crisis counselor. She goes back tomorrow.

I'd reached out to her brother several weeks ago. Unfortunately they were estranged when we ment and married. Didn't really reconcile until ~14 years ago, and we've only seen him in person once in the last 12 years.

I was really very surprised how supportive and engaged the local police department was when I reached out about options, thankfully I did not need to go down that path. Small town life.

She now says she knew it was a scam and sent the money anyway because they were nice to her and it was part fantasy. Though the money and bitcoin was very real and not fantasy.

I've a friend who's a psychiatrist in the UK. He and my wife did A&E rotations together in Ireland. He and I are talking tomorrow.

I really appreciate your advice, thank you.

I love this site.

I don't contribute even remotely the same level of thoughtful and well-considered effortposts that many do, I disagree with shit tons of bad takes (that are almost always well-argued) and in some cases I just nod with awe at not only the intellect (by which I mean an ability to read, remember, and consolidate massive amounts of text, both discrete and historical) on display here at times. Fuck the haters.

Thanks to all for making my online experience richer, regardless of the timbre of your political sensitivities and whether they skew differently from my own.

Also happy birthday to that one Mottizen (you know who you are)!

This site is one of the few forums that doesn't make me constantly go "Why the fuck is everyone a bunch of retards who are violently opposed to even trying to get facts correct or using their brain?"... Like sure, there are idiots also here but not to the massively overwhelming extent that is the norm pretty much everywhere else. And I'm not even talking about anything politically related.

Yeah, same. The Motte is very comfy.

Dude, you contribute enough that I remember your name. That puts you in a pretty select group, I barely remember 10 posters from here and I went to HS with one of them and regularly text another. I really enjoy your travelogues and I'm happy you're part of this place.

Kind of you to say, thanks.

I'm just a lurker, but I'm very happy this place exists. It provides a model for how I should behave in other communities as well.

Hey I was thinking of posting something similar. I really like this place and I’m glad it seems to be flourishing and getting good new folks.

Huh you preempted my post, I was coming here to essentially say the same thing:

On the rare occasions I wade back into reddit these days, I'm reminded how much lower quality the discourse there is in general. Arguing to win is the default, instead of arguing to understand. People will happily and uncharitably pounce on any minor mistake or misunderstanding they can in order to get a rhetorical edge. I've gotten old enough at this point that I just don't care anymore, as soon as I get the impression that someone is arguing to win I just nope out and let them have it.

There were no "golden days" of reddit either (aside from when TheMotte was there lol), I've been on reddit essentially since the very beginning and although it's had its ups and downs it's never reached the heights of TheMotte.

So yeah, this place is amazing, and I hope you guys keep doing what you do.

On the rare occasions I wade back into reddit these days, I'm reminded how much lower quality the discourse there is in general. Arguing to win is the default, instead of arguing to understand. People will happily and uncharitably pounce on any minor mistake or misunderstanding they can in order to get a rhetorical edge.

It's not just reddit. Photography forums, musician forums and pretty much anything else that isn't either super strictly moderated or deals with super technical topics so that most users are far to the right of the bell curve.

I love it too. It's probably the only online forum I participate in at this point; I've been spoiled rotten to the point I can barely enjoy any of the rest.

Though I wish I had more energy to effort-post. I used to make big posts full of citations and dense argumentation more before and get into spirited disagreements and butt heads with users but I feel like my contributions have been rather lacking as of late. Life gets in the way I guess.

I'm kind of the same. I don't effort post, but I enjoy being here and the people here.

I like that even the ones I disagree with are at least speaking my language.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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