I think I see what you’re trying to say, and I don’t necessarily disagree with everything, but based entirely on this one comment (which may not be indicative of how you generally communicate) I have to wonder if the communication issues you see stem at least partially from your own over-articulation of thoughts and use of “fluffy” language.

I think this bit highlights what I’m trying to say best:

are virtually never taught if not en passant and indirectly This statement feels like it’s saying the same proposition three times, but if I dig into it it is saying three things, but in a confusing manner. I think it would have been better served by replacing “if not” with something simpler like “or taught” to more easily connect the first idea with the other two in the reader’s mind. I probably would have replaced it all with “are taught incidentally at best,” which I think captures the meaning you are trying to convey in terms that are easier for anyone to understand.

I don’t say this to try to bring you down. I just find beauty in seeing a concept existing in one’s mind, unbounded by the world, given a vessel structured by the words of language not to constrain or limit that idea, but to focus it into something that can be shared and understood with others. The vast majority of the time I see that vessel be too loose without giving proper shape to the idea it wants to convey. Yours is one of the very few internet comments I see that does the opposite, where it feels forced into a shape that’s too rigid. That makes me want to say something, because the mind that does that is a mind I think could learn from stepping back a little, rather than being told to force itself forward.

This is as much me challenging myself to understand what bugged me about your comment as it is a comment on your comment, and for talking about giving shape to thoughts I don’t think I did a super job of it.

I do think that humans are one of the only creatures capable of overcoming the difficulty in communication between minds because we are one of the only creatures capable of complex language to do that stuff I said earlier. But it is a skill that is difficult and requires a lot of time and effort to learn or teach. I do think communication is highly valued, or at least a lot of frustration espoused about a lack of communication, but modern society does make it difficult to work up the effort and acquire the resources to develop that skill.

Yes, but given the context clue of “I’m seeing a lot of comments telling you how to feel, to “be okay with it,” which I think is lame,” which do you think I meant?

Maybe it depends on how you define the two terms, but I disagree, or at least what you’re saying wasn’t my intent. I think understanding emotions is the primary way to deal with them, but I added the bit about channeling it because sometimes understanding isn’t enough and something more needs to be done. In my mind controlling an emotion means exerting willpower to push down or replace an emotion that arises, while channeling entails a greater degree of acceptance of the emotion and then purposefully putting it toward something productive.

In the context of this scenario, demanding acceptance when the present emotion is probably some mix of disgust, confusion, and fear summed up as “I don’t like it” is a form of emotional control that isn’t healthy. After understanding what emotions are in the mix and (hopefully) why those emotions are present, there are productive and healthy ways to deal with them without trying to force them to change. Confusion has the most obvious way to “channel” it by researching polyamory to be less confused. You may say that that’s not really channeling, and I agree that it can be a vague term, but without that confusion (or by rejecting it) I doubt there would be curiosity to learn, which would hamper a healthy response. I feel pretty deep in the weeds at this point, but I hope that clarifies what I’m trying to say a little.

Basically, to use definitions from Merriam-Webster, to control is to “to exercise restraining or directing influence over” emotions, while to channel is to “to convey or direct [emotions] into or through a channel” toward something productive. The first isn’t a healthy coping mechanism in the long run, the second is if done right.

I’m seeing a lot of comments telling you how to feel, to “be okay with it,” which I think is lame. Feelings aren’t something to be controlled, only understood and maybe channeled toward something. When a couple of my good friends began a polyamorous relationship, it really weirded me out, but eventually I came to accept that it worked for them, even though it would not work for me.

My advice is to first understand why you don’t like it. Give it some personal thought, then do some reading on what polyamory is and how it can or cannot work to compare and contrast with the thoughts you had going into the situation. In the process, you will not only gain better ways of understanding and expressing your own feelings and concerns, you’ll also have learned useful advice and guidelines to share with your daughter.

Then sit down with your daughter and share your more refined understanding of your feelings and how they lead to your approval/disapproval of her polyamory and share the guidelines you found to keep such a relationship healthy should she decide to pursue it. I think the middlingly fortunate reality is that she is reaching an age where she will do what she wants, whether it is behind or in front of your back. At least she’ll know that you tried to understand.

Dandadan is very pretty, but Redline uses no effects or CGI. It was one of the last animated movies to be completely hand drawn using traditional animation. The reason it looks like “cheap effects” is because over 100,000 hand-drawn frames were made for it over a seven year production period to push the animation to the absolute limit. Please reconsider.

Speaking as a US citizen, I would like to move closer to the corporatist (not corporatocratic) models of countries like Sweden, Norway, and Germany. Capitalism and the economic strength that investment can bring tempered by strong unions at the national level to ensure that workers get good working and living conditions, with the government serving as a meeting grounds to hash out details. From my understanding Swedish law even mandates that worker unions have a place in government.

To me it seems ideal because it’s feasible. Corporations are already entrenched in the US government, the only missing pieces are unions large enough to be involved at the same level. I think we were on track to have that 50-60 years ago when unions like the UMWA represented over 400,000 workers by themselves, but unions have slowly been eroded over the decades. I think it would be easier to rebuild American unions and demand that corporations be kept in check than it would be to overhaul the current economic/political system into something entirely new.

I’m glad that you enjoyed it, but listening to the audiobook was one of the most aggravating reading experiences I’ve had. There were cool bits, but every chapter or two my eyes would glaze over for a minute as Wil Wheaton read off a list of things from the 80’s for a paragraph or two, interrupting whatever flow the book had going on at the time to cram ‘memberberries down my throat. I prefer the movie because I can look at the ‘memberberry references without them interrupting the other cool bits.

I enjoyed it for the most part, but the scene that’s always stuck with me is when Antonio Banderas’s character learns to speak the Viking language. Hearing the way he said “I listened” made me want to listen more to see what I could learn.

It’s an argument on the internet, there are never really winners. It seemed like backtracking because saying that a dissenting response is “actually the type of thing I’m talking about” carries an implication that the person responding misunderstood you, rather than acknowledging the possibility that you did not clearly/fully communicate your thoughts. As far as I and I assume the person you responded to could tell, that wasn’t “actually the type of thing” you were talking about. Backtracking may have been the wrong term, but there was a level of condescension in your comment that was so close to being sincere that it rubbed me the wrong way. Combine that with me half-disagreeing with you and that made for a response with some snark at the front. I am a little sorry for that. Also, why would you write “because of your own life experiences and emotions?” Unless the discussion is focused on something related to how people become the way they are, that statement has about as much meaning as “this is an aspen. You can tell it’s an aspen because of the way it is.” All it says is that you assume there is something wrong with the person rather than actually say anything about what that person has said or done. At worst it’s empty words and at best it’s an empty ad hominem.

Nice backtracking on “some other event,” that’s better than what 90% of the internet would do!

I still think it’s fine to use external dates for self improvement. I’m not very religious, but I love lent specifically because it’s a socially encouraged time to change a habit that lasts nearly the two months it takes to make a new habit or break an old one.

One year it was soda because I drank a few cans a week, since then I very rarely have any in the house. Last year I gave up meat, which is something I would never have pushed myself to do on my own.

It’s just a lot easier to test a change when it’s not permanent. There’s certainly an argument to be made that a full year of change at new years is too long to successfully commit to, but that doesn’t mean the whole thing should be discounted.

I’m a big fan of contronyms, words with two opposite meanings. I first learned looking for a word to describe the change in “literally” from meaning, well, the literal meaning of something to also the figurative meaning.

Another good one is dust. You can dust your house to remove dust, but you can also dust a cake with powdered sugar.

I interpreted “old reddit vibes” to be more about there being an actual discourse on posts more than being about the subject matter of the posts. If you look at the comments on reddit, they all just agree with each other because they’re the most popular opinions so they get the most upvotes. The thing I like about here is that I can still read that popular comment, but there are few enough total comments that scrolling down a bit leads to discussions that would have been buried in downvotes there. But since they didn’t define “old reddit vibes” I could be misinterpreting as easily as you!

If you haven’t read it, this blog post greatly increased my appreciation for mechanical watches: https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

This begs the question “why did enough people start accepting that it was valuable?”

I listened to the soundtrack for about 4 years before getting around to watching the movie. Very fun. For how slow the build-up is, Playtime is Over is one of my favorite workout songs, always gets the endorphins running.

Caffeine has a metabolic half life of 6-12 hours. This means that after a 24 hour period, there could be 1/4 of the original caffeine amount you drank in your system. If you drink the same amount of caffeine again at that point, now after a 24 hour period you ‘ll have up to 1/4 of that 1.25 amount in your system. If you consume caffeine daily, this can lead to an accumulation of caffeine that your body adjusts to always being there, becoming the new baseline normal. This would feel fine until you stop, at which point the caffeine your body expects to be there is gone, and it needs to take time readjusting to that absence. That leads to withdrawal symptoms.

Oh nice, I just replayed The Last Autumn since the trees are changing color, just waiting on the first snowfall to play the main game. Let me know if there’s anything especially challenging you want advice on!

I’d like to point out that you have only talked about hope without personal action to support a statement about hope as a whole. A better term for that would be wishful thinking. While I agree that not acting while hoping for change is foolish, I believe acting on hope can drive a person to perform beyond what would normally be achievable.

If the world is truly hopeless, then why would anybody put any effort into saving it? It seems to me that at least some level of hope for a better world or life would be a prerequisite toward making that world or life a reality.

I couldn’t figure out the spoiler tags or I’d have left it up. I played it out on my DS so I got the full experience. If I remember correctly even if there wasn’t dialogue you’d still get a short cutscene of the gang eating ice cream after a long day of fighting stuff, which (for a middle schooler at least) really built up a connection by the end of the game.

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