Hi,

I'm not being false-modest. I'm actually dumb.

I can tell by the initial interactions I have with people. Within 10 minutes of meeting someone, they'll point out how something dumb manifested... and I'm usually in the room when they say it and I'm usually the one who did the dumb thing and it somehow comes out that I did dumb thing... awkward silence... fumbling words/take backs to try and "save" it.

I wish people wouldn't try to take it back. It's like I should be ashamed I'm dumb. I don't think I'm dumb, I just think that I think differently (and I also don't know a lot of things).

I have my own narration. Instead of trying to "save" the situation, I wish people would ask me my narrative/thought process. If I bring it up without being asked, it sounds like I'm trying to make excuses for myself, or I dig a bigger hole because I expose how even more dumb I am?

It's weird. I know I'm dumb, I just don't know when I'm doing something dumb.

Do you know how hard it is going through life not really knowing why you're dumb or when you'll be doing something dumb?

Anyway. What's a dumb thing you've done?

As a young person, I signed up for my first credit card less than two years ago. Now I have six.

Almost all of them I signed up for their bonuses (usually small, as I wanted to start out with no annual fee cards with good cashback, and I had little credit history at first). Two of them had fees. The first, a hilton card, allowed my partner and I to spend many nights of our cross country move to the west coast to be in comfortable hotels in the center of their respective cities, including free breakfasts, as well as allowed me to use airport lounges on a few flights for the first time.

I am a grad student who makes $2600 a month...there is no way I would ever be able to afford staying in some of those places, nor could I ever justify paying for an airport lounge. Needless to say, i got incredible value out of a card that cost me 100 bucks for the first year that I have since downgraded to the no annual fee version.

Another card was the American Airlines Aviator Card with Barclays. To get a sign-up bonus of 60,000 points (worth little more than a domestic round-trip for two people) and a companion pass, I used my card once and paid the annual fee of a hundred bucks.

I know the credit card companies are hoping that I don't pay off my balance, or that I keep the card and pay the fee, or that I will be afraid that my credit score will drop (which it hasn't), or any number of things could go wrong such that they can make a buck off of me. But it turns out, in the age of the internet, information symmetry means that it is pretty easy to play the game in such a right way such that you benefit the most. I don't take risks (like manufactured spending), and I wait several months between getting a new card. And so far it has worked well for me.

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What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

A duet is a musical composition for two performers in which the performers have equal importance to the piece, often a composition involving two singers or two pianists.

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Asked mainly because:

1. I'm 14, so I've only been seriously politically engaged/active for a few months at best (for context, here I am not knowing that voter suppression is even a thing literally 6 months ago, go a few more months back and I'm not sure if I even know Biden is a candidate)

2. In r/politicalcompass (a sub I probably frequent too much) people often posted their 'political journeys' showing how their political beliefs have changed but:

• there's not enough context for you to know what has changed and whyou they have changed

• These changes often happen in a span of 5 years, which seems pretty unlikely (the part about your political beliefs changing is mostly aimed at 40+people who have seen enough change in the world (although from what I've heard from you, barely) to change your political opinions

• It's literally a sub trying to boil down political opinions into a square/cube, so what else could I possibly expect.

First post on Tildes (though I've commented some before). I'm a mod on one of the "beta" sites, and have been for almost four years now.

I don't follow any of the other sites really, and certainly not Meta, so the whole Monica scandal kinda happened without me noticing. After the fallout (or amidst, I guess), Shog9 and several other community managers that I liked were fired, with seemingly no notice or cause.

Then after that, there seemed to be a push to create a "mod council" to create standards for behavior and for removal and reinstatement of moderators.

But the whole thing has seemed so needless, everything could have been cleared up with a few heartfelt announcements (and/or apologies), and the executive team at SE has just been so damn opaque about everything.

Then, to top things off for me personally, the community leaders were explicit in stating that the votes for members of the mod council would not be treated as binding, so what's the point? They can just be a rubber stamp at that point if they're not freely elected. The new moderator rules are "abide by the council-approved rules and whatever the community managers say." The new moderator rules also say "moderators will be removed and reinstated per the council-approved procedure for doing so, except when SE doesn't want to use that policy."

The mod council vote was non-binding, and then SE is making it a point to clearly state that the rules approved by the council don't matter.

It's this last bit that is coming as too much of an insult for me. I've told my fellow moderators that I'm not planning on signing the agreement. I don't understand why there has to be such an adversarial relationship here when I'm volunteering my time.

I don't want to leave, but everything is just rubbing me the wrong way. Please someone help me understand how I'm wrong. I just can't understand the way things have been publicly announced.