23
votes
What’s something you’ve been mulling over recently?
Doesn’t have to be a complete thought or a full conclusion about anything — just something your brain has been chewing on and processing recently.
Doesn’t have to be a complete thought or a full conclusion about anything — just something your brain has been chewing on and processing recently.
My mother as a person. She passed away recently, and absent the physical person grounding my thoughts of her in the present I as easily think of the person she was when I was a child as the person she was ten years ago or one year ago. She was an immensely impressive woman, with plaudits and certifications, community recognition and friends galore. She was a mover and shaker, a community organizer, fighting in the civil rights movement, the disability rights movement, the gay rights movement.
She was also farmer's daughter, and came from a rural household where she was physically abused. Her father hit her in the face hard enough to knock out all four of her upper front teeth, and her mother was sick for much of her life and died before my mom reached 18. This perhaps left her less than well prepared to raise a child, even one she planned for and went out of her way to have. Her thoughts about the power dynamic between a child and their parent were ones of absolute inherent authority over them, which really didn't match those of the place and time in which she was actually raising a child or my opinions on the matter.
Our relationship was adversarial for a very long time. It wasn't until she accepted me as a fellow adult that she showed any sort of respect for me. Loyalty? Always. Love? Maybe. Respect? I had to fight for it. I had to show that I was worthy of it. And I eventually did, and claimed my spot as an adult, but it took 35 years for her to recognize me as having done things right.
And I loved her, and looked up to her, and will always be motivated by her memory, but under the surface of glossy, professional, cosmopolitan femininity was a hard woman. And maybe she had to be, to get through the things she did, but those hard things now echo in me. And I'm more able to consider the full arc of it now that she's gone.
The fact that 74% of republicans still don't believe Biden won fairly.
DeSantis found 20 illegal voters in 2022 (this does not include Derick Chauvin, who has not been charged with voting for Trump incorrectly in Florida.)
The Heritage Foundation found 17 convicted voters in 2020
Trump always planned to dispute the election result
Yet 74% of Republicans believe "The Big Lie" based on... zero evidence.
It would be laughable if it didn't have serious ramifications for democracy in USA.
Worth noting that this was probably due to ignorance not fraud:
Whenever I think about voter fraud, I'm reminded of the difference between systematic error and measurement error. Sure, you could design an electoral system such that voter fraud is technically impossible, but what's the point of excluding maybe a few hundred fraudulent votes in a state election if that same system prevents tens of thousands of people from voting? It's like throwing our your cm-increment ruler for a mm-increment ruler attached to an inflatable tube man.
Well, the point is, maybe those thousands would vote for the other side.
They believe it because once enough believe it they can pull a coup.
I'm not sure exactly how to word this but I feel like there's far more options of toothpaste than there really needs to be. At my local wal-mart there's a quarter of an isle dedicated just to toothpase. I wouldn't be surprised if toothpaste manufacturers create an excess of effectively identical kinds of toothpaste just to make people think they need highly specialized formulas.
Perhaps I am a sucker, but I actually have some toothpaste brand loyalty: Sensodyne Repair & Protect. Specifically, the Canadian version contains something they call NovaMin which I believe is banned in the USA. Completely fixed my sensitive teeth and the effects last even if I swap out now and then.
It's not banned, there's a toothpaste sold explicitly here that has NovaMin, but it's one that is fluoride-free, unfortunately. I've seen in it in a few brands, actually, usually under the name nanohydroxyapatite. It's all on GSK for not using it in the US Sensodyne formulations, since I've had Irish, Turkish, and now Indian-market Repair and Protect that all have NovaMin.
Luckily it's relatively easy to buy foreign market Sensodyne online, so that's how I get a hold of it here, but I'm at a loss as to why it's not used aside from some crunchy granola type in toothpastes.
Haha! This made me smile, as recently I've decided to start rotating through the hundreds of different variations of Colgate. Gotta do something to keep life minty-fresh as I push into my forties!
My dentist put me on prescription toothpaste (Fluoridex) at my last appointment. It has a higher level of fluoride than over-the-counter toothpaste. I'm curious to see if it'll actually slow tooth decay, since I have genetically bad teeth.
Big Toothpaste is just trying to squeeze us.
If you ever come across a practice that doesn't make much sense, it's because it's an attempt to make you spend more money on something.
There's a ton of different toothpastes to encourage you to try the different kinds they offer. You'll also notice that they promote them by showing off a big dollop of it on a toothbrush - which is something like 4-5 times more than you should actually be using.
Laundry detergent does the same thing, but in an even more underhanded way. Right now you can buy a bottle of Tide that has enough liquid for 64 loads of laundry for $12.99 at Target, but the measuring cup that it comes with has a huge base that makes it extremely difficult to get to the 1 load mark. And that's only if you bothered to read the instructions on the bottle to begin with - if you do the instinctual thing, you'll probably fill the cup and use 6-7 loads worth. But don't worry, if you want to get your money's worth, you can buy pre-measured Tide Pods - 61 loads for $21.49.
Nihilism. I’m coming through a dark time in my life, in which every core belief i have hs been challenged. I have lost much of what i considered valuable, and now I am older with narrowing prospects to rebuild. And the world around me is on fire and any day subject to political fascist takeover. And I have gout.
There appears to be no point to amy of it. “Survival” is an impossible goal, we’re all going to die. “Accumulation of pleasures” is a consolation that is no longer possible for me personally anymore. Peace and joy feel like fabrications to avoid reality, which is in fact just chaos and illusion.
Black Sabbath understood.
What is it with gout. It always seems to rear its ugly head during your darkest times. As if you didn't have enough going on. Life is shit? Here. Have utterly excruciating pain in your lower vicinity of your limb. Feel like life is pointless? Now you also can't move an inch or apply a hair of pressure. Luckily these days they have amazing medication. Back in the day, they used to tell you to consume colchicine until you started throwing up. Fun times.
I'm sorry you are going through shit times. It's hard losing just one pillar of support (family, job, house & health) losing multiple at the same time is something I hope I never have to experience.
I live in a big tech region and work remotely for a big tech company located here, and I'm paid the standard rate for the high cost of living in this city. Lately I've been considering the possibility of relocating to another place the company does business in, where my expenses would be ~40% lower.
There are other benefits of that move, like being closer to family, but the main advantage is what a huge shot in the arm it would be for my finances at my current income level. I'm pretty sure my employer would levy a "compensation adjustment" if they knew I was moving, which would make the whole idea pointless. So I've been mulling over the legality and ethics of various degrees of disclosure, and trying to gauge if there's any way to make it work. It seems obvious to me as a remote worker that as long as my performance is consistent, it shouldn't matter one whit to the company where I live or what the cost of living is there. There are some issues around income tax withholding that are legitimate obstacles, but apart from those it feels like this should be doable somehow.
I haven't spoken with my manager about this yet. I think I will soon, but I'm hesitant to let the cat out of the bag until I've considered every angle of this.
Failure to disclose a move like that would get both you and your employer in trouble with state taxation authorities, as they would be levying and remitting state taxes as appropriate for your previous home. Each state is different regarding residency and tax requirements, but when you get caught there'll be a whole pile of pain waiting for you.
If it is within the same state, would there be any issue on the tax front? I don’t think any government smaller than state has payroll taxes.
It's less common, but I don't want to make a categorical rejection. For instance, NYC has it's own payroll laws, but you're right that it's not the standard.
I've been in the same boat. I'm unhappy about my living situation here in Berlin, but it feels positively impossible to solve the problem due to a combination of lack of availability and insane rent prices.
Been traveling around to find an alternative, but I really don't want to move anywhere, I love this town. However, financially it makes less and less sense to stay each year.
It's kind of giving me a lot of stress, really not sure what to do next, although my employer is really open to the full-time remote work idea.
I've been thinking a lot about the consequences of not having a "normal" affect; I don't like using the word "normal", but I can't think of a better term for the concept. By normal affect, I mean having very basic, foundational responses and beliefs about human interaction. I have a hard time coming up with examples because they are so basic, but one is not thinking that everyone hates you the second you walk away from them. For most of life, I didn't have any of them, but over the last few months, I've been slowly developing them.
And all the confusing and weird interactions I had with people made so much more sense. Many people had told me I was hard to read or approach, and it always kinda pissed me off. It felt like they were just demanding that I change for them, which isn't entirely wrong, but misses a lot of context. They could tell that I wasn't "normal" but nothing more; they could tell I was "off", but not in what way, let alone how I could change it. So they stated it as best as they could. Its just been really changing how I see people and my own past actions. It doesn't make me regret any decisions, because I really had none of it, but it does provide a better understanding of other people.
From my experience I think it's more about people wants to understand you rather than change you so they understand. There's a lot of attractiveness in not being "normal" it's just how you perceive it.
It's super hot right now in California. It's the hottest heat wave ever. And we're only going to see ever hotter heat waves.
Naturally, it's hard to resist mulling over climate change, carbon emissions, and the inexorable human march of increasing consumption — as a basic feature of human nature beyond capitalism, communism, or whatever.
I see a lot of people in my fairly affluent but liberal social network lash out about corporations, oil companies, Republicans, and the usual subjects. But they'll very regularly fly first-class ("check out my personal seat pod on this plane!") or at least business to NYC/LA/Miami/Puerto Vallarta/etc. to dine and party, driving everywhere, their new impulse luxury car purchase ("decided to pick up another Mercedes"), and showing off their latest yuppie impulse purchase (new outfit, Peloton, smart workout mirror, massage chair, etc.).
I think of the wealthy ex-hippies in affluent Californian urban and suburban enclaves who fight density in their neighborhoods. I also think of all the supposedly environmentally-conscious people at Burning Man and their massive automobile caravan — the emissions generated by tens of thousands of people driving their cars and trucks into the middle of a desert, hauling all that gear. I also think of Oakland where the not-so-affluent worship at the temple of car culture.
I don't think it's necessarily the fault of corporations or oil corporations. If it weren't them, there'd be others willing to manufacture and sell.
There's only us. If we can consume, then we will consume.
I don't have a car. I ride an e-bike with panniers everywhere. I'm eating a pescatarian diet. I'm avoiding excessive flying: maybe one economy-class fight a year. But I'm also a weirdo and total outlier. It feels like a lonely fight.
Sometimes I wonder if we do deserve extinction.
I think about this Matrix quote a lot.
What is the bodies response to a virus? The body raises its temperature.
It's been super hot in the UK this summer too, and for longer stretches than I remember before. What used to be long weekends of heat turned into weeks and fortnights this year.
I think it is a dire path we're currently on, but I think change will only come when industry feels its impact. As far as I'm aware, consumer use and emissions is orders of magnitude smaller than that of industry, and industry has one motivator, almost across the board. I think we'll see real change once the impact really starts to affect the bottom line. Once the effect of carbon emissions really hurt the shareholder's dividends, then industry will have a motivation to change that I just can't see happening any other way; it feels like even legislation won't be able to solve the problem, because we no longer have any governing body with a broad enough scope to actually place restrictions on how multinationals do business, and I just can't see a global agreement to restrict them.
I know I'm falling into exactly the trap you described, and I may well be ignorant to how much effect the individual can have; I guess it feels like even if everyone lived like you all it would be doing would be kicking the can a small bit down the road.
One thing that I often come back to, though, is why exist? Why live at all? We are life, and with life comes meaning. Sure, it might be our base instinct to consume and expand, but if we accept that, why do we try and fight so hard against it? I wholeheartedly believe in leaving a world for future generations, but if we have to destroy our quality of life to do so, why are we doing it at all?
It feels like if we genuinely put our minds to it, we could reverse climate change. If humanity decided it's purpose was to bring the world back to a stable existence and everyone got behind that, I'm sure we could come up with super efficient ways to capture carbon and to radiate heat away from our planet. It feels like, in the grand scheme of things, we're pretty close to molecular construction, maybe only decades or centuries away. If we can control matter at a subatomic level, we can process waste such that it's just more raw material. Maybe we can create and pump ozone into the upper atmosphere. Maybe we can cool oceans and reform ice. Maybe we can trap energy and use it to turn the inside of mountains into molten rock, trapping that thermal energy away.
I guess it gets me wondering: if humans consume, how do we design a world built for humans to consume in a sustainable manner? I wouldn't be surprised if we see a shift away from profit and maximising personal wealth as our primary motivators within my lifetime, or at least within the lifetimes of a few generations to come. The big question becomes: if I have access to what I need to survive, what do I prioritise?
As of late, guitar amps. I've been researching them for months now. Turns out there's a lot of overlap between the hifi community and the guitar community. Mostly in dated and unfounded opinions, but also people buying things that other folks said were good, then the buyer convinces themselves they like it too. This is particularly true for tube amps vs solid state amps. It's easy to get wrapped up in other people's opinions and have them become your opinion.
Guitar amps really run a huge price range, and it's easy to find something that people rave online about (and, often, complain endlessly about too).
Yesterday I went out and played a bunch of amps and found the one for me. But it feels like sacrilege to have found a lighter, cheaper, perfect-for-me digital replica of an amp when so many people think they just fall short. I thought it was splendid. I also played others that I expected to love, and some were great, but they just didn't get me excited in the same way.
So it's been a good learning experience and reinforced my inclination to trust my own consumer research and my gut. It also helped me solidify my personal 90-95% buying philosophy: if I can buy something that is 90-95% as good as the best version but for half the price, then is the last 5-10% worth it? For me, not usually.
Artillery. Mortars, rockets and shells. Why is NATO stuff so much better? How much of the performance gulf between NATO and Warsaw Pact artillery is due to design and quality, and how much is due to training and ability?
What numbnuts ever settled on the design for those flimsy plastic CD cases? Those were crap.
The reason for the second one was almost certainly the cheapest thing they could get away with and successfully open/shut 5ish times
How to (in some semblance of order)...
If you find out, let me know haha. Me & my friends have often tossed around the idea of moving out of our respective cities and trying to find someplace cheap enough to all be neighbors. As we get older, the idea becomes less joking and more appealing, as does the idea of gardening.
If you can, see if there’s a nearby community garden in need of volunteers. It’s a great way to (literally) get your hands dirty and learn about gardening without sinking a bunch of money into your own setup. I absolutely love the one where I volunteer and hang out a few times a month.
How to have really, really uncomfortable discussions online. I've tried this before and it didn't end well. But basically, I hold an ethical position that is somehow not nearly as widely held in my political sphere as I would expect. And there might be multiple reasons for that. Among them are mundane things like misunderstandings, or spicy things like massive amounts of cognitive dissonance from others. Or maybe I hold a hateful position against a certain (unspecified) demographic. Or people in my political sphere hold opinions that are harmful to me. But in order to figure out which it is, I'd have to state my opinions. Which, if my model of the opposition is correct, will result in my stance being massively misinterpreted until it resembles almost cartoonish malice.
Anyway, that. And how to bootstrap pre-industrial society as quickly, cleanly and harmlessly as possible into a as modern as possible society using either (a) me and a backpack of stuff of my choosing or (b) me and an assortment of a few dozen experts, travelling back in time to e.g. ancient rome. Very fun to think about and get lost in. Much more pleasant thought than the first one too. What do I bring? Or which experts do I choose? How do I convince rulers to invest resources into what I propose? A telegraph system for the roman republic sounds like a good choice for example. To what degree do I focus on industrial/military/theoretical/societal ideas?
On your second point, there was a piece of fiction, possibly from Reddit, where a bunch of U.S. Marines went back to Rome. The biggest impact would’ve been from any potatoes they brought over, due to the ease of growth and the caloric density. So jam some potatoes in your pack.
Besides that, a working model steam engine and a binder of drawings and technical information on various topics.
Your limiting factor for harmlessly is probably going to be energy. Biomass only works up to a point for steam engines, so you’d need to find a way to produce electricity early-ish. Initially from hydropower and maybe wind, but you’d probably move to nuclear at some point (probably starting with a primitive CANDU type design, no enrichment needed, and heavy water can be produced relatively simply using distillation and/or the GS process).
You’re right, this is fun!
Glad you like it. I see our specialties creeping in, you with a nuclear reactor for ancient rome (dude, I'm not touching that one with a 10 ft pole!) and me with telegraphs. (Which naturally lead into computers, but telegraphs is the part I'm reasonably certain I could pull off.) Maybe I could figure out relays, electron tubes or even simple (macro-scale) transistors, which would help administration of Rome tremendously. But only at an appropriate scale do they become viable.
A small steam engine is a good idea. Also some good strong magnets, because I believe it could be difficult to make them if you can't find magnetite. And power will be difficult without magnets.
Otherwise dynamite would be a damn revolution. Relatively simple to make, at least on a simple scale. I believe a setup involving lead ore roasting for sulfur dioxide, add water to make sulfuric acid. Add nitrates from animal waste, and you've got a nitric acid and sulfuric acid mixture. Add cellulose for gun cotton (harmful I suppose) or add glycerol and fancy sand for dynamite. Mining and infrastructure just got a lot easier.
As for literature: You're thinking of Rome Sweet Rome. That should get you googling if you're interested in reading it again. There's also the book "How To Invent Everything", which gets a wholehearted recommendation from me. It's a fun read.
Another interesting person to bring along is a blacksmith (if your target civilization hasn't figured that part out already), a mechanical engineer and a machinist. Building a lathe will be very important to bootstrapping a lot of precision manufacturing, and it's not something that you can just do with some theoretical knowledge, this is skilled labor. And precision manufacturing you need for everything from steam engines to nuclear reactors to relays. You'll probably want to bring a material scientist too, if only because you want to make proper steel. Your machinist will be very sad if he has to use wrought iron inserts to machine cast iron. He'll be much more happy if he can use tool steel to machine mild steel.
For power I was actually thinking solar could be somewhat viable. Maybe not as photovoltaics, but in the Mediterranean, thermal solar might work. It's simple enough, I believe, so it could serve as a simple and clean bootstrapping step. Mirrors are glass, silver and basic chemistry; absorber tubes need to be somewhat pressure resistant and black, which isn't too difficult a requirement.
It's also very fun to think about the ways you'd get to redo the tech we apply today. IT for example sits on a mountain of ill-designed systems that we wouldn't build the same way twice.
And another extremely interesting aspect, at least in my opinion, is the part where the order in which you introduce technologies affects stuff. Introduce PV arrays before steam power? Well, guess we'll realize all those experience gains for PV that make them economically dominant right now before we do the same for steam. That's a game changer. Put radios before compasses and exploration of the oceans changes radically. Computers before aircraft would change the face of warfare in such interesting ways.
Oh, and another thought: because you're "building tall and not wide" (i.e. a relatively small, quickly advancing society), can we maybe afford to use fossil fuels at the scales we need, because we'll outgrow them quickly enough? The total fossil fuels consumption wasn't even really concerning until the 80s or so. So if you've got that budget to work with, to feed the industrial needs of what is essentially a city state, you might just outdevelop climate change, if that makes sense. Like, we had industrial-scale worldwide coal burning for decades and it didn't do any real harm to the climate. We could industrialize the entire roman empire at its maximum extent and it wouldn't really change things much. To turn e.g. Rome into an industrial center wouldn't really affect the budget much. The question becomes, how do you ensure you can get off that train once it's left the station? You'd need to convince a lot of people to spend extra money to do things cleanly, when there's no real reason to do things cleanly. I guess nuclear reactors might have a good basis here, if the initial investment can be made low enough. PV and grid-scale wind certainly sit on too high a mountain of technological development to be made viable in quick order. Or maybe that's possible and with a few key insights those can be done. Don't really know.
Certainly you'd be on my team, if only to see if you ghoulify yourself. ;)
While reading this - there's a lot going through my mind wrt. the topic we discussed here. One of them is trains: I think you can bypass the wool spinning bottleneck to industrialization in that blog post by going for trains directly. Once you built a rail line up and down the boot of italy, demand will surely follow. Problem is: How? Develop steam engines until you can build trains? Or can you go electric immediately? I'd reckon the investment to build even a single electrified rail line is too great for the roman economy even if you had dictatorial powers, much less if you had to convince someone to fund it. Also leaves open how you're going to electrify it. Regardless, trains are a super important milestone that shouldn't be neglected - just maybe not the first milestone.
Can you strap a CANDU reactor onto a train?
Also, if we're willing to abandon harmlessness, I'd bet Rome would be quite willing to invest in the required tooling (including precision manufacturing and the required energy source) if you promised them modern firearms. The explosives, as outline previously, wouldn't be a huge problem - it's all about that precision manufacturing. But exactly that precision manufacturing is what you need to bootstrap industrialization.
Been thinking a lot about how being suicidal but not brave enough to kill myself has ruined my life.
I wish I had either offed myself the first time I got close to attempting it, or never thought about it all. I am in this half-alive, half-dead state where I am not making any progress in my life. I still feel like shit all the time and don't wanna do anything, and I wish I could just do stuff with my full motivation (which has happened a couple of times so I know what it feels like).
I've also reached a point where I'm empathetic enough to think about the impact of my suicide on others and it's preventing me from ending it. However, my mere existence is also a burden on the people around me and I'm pretty sure most of them would be happier if I was never born.
Anyway, I need to get out of this decade-long purgatory. And sadly, it doesn't seem like I will be taking the easy way out. I wish I had a drug that would just make me work harder,
I don't really think my family would be relieved by my death. They would be better off in my hypothetical non-existence in another timeline. My family is why I feel obligated to live.
I don't really know if I wanna die. It's just that I don't want a reason to be alive.
I mentioned in another comment that my only way out of this is bags of money. When I imagine being rich, it's mostly just me being free to lay down and rot without any responsibilities. Sadly, even with bags of money I still don't think I will be completely free to lay down and rot. I can only do so most of the time, which I guess is good enough. In terms of making my own luck, I really don't think that's very likely where I am. There's a large geopolitical weight on me that I can't shrug off.
I have one way out though. It's risky but until it works out I will just have to suffer through it.
Thank you sharing your perspective on this. I think someone else in a similar situation would be impacted quite positively by it.
I hope you're able to find some level of comfort.
I'm sure you're aware there's a list of hotlines and resources at Suicide.org for you or anyone else who may be struggling with thoughts of suicide.
Thank you.
Hotlines don't really help. This situation isn't one where I can get comfort by talking to someone. It's a chronic problem.
The only thing that can get me out of my situation is bags of money.
Recently and for a good few years: I think I'm bi/pansexual, but don't know how to be this? Do I have to come out? I don't feel like I'm in the closet, but also don't feel the need to broadcast it. I haven't dated or had sex with anybody and, while I want the connection with somebody and experience the full range of normal attraction, I'm also not interested in dating if that makes sense? It's just this internal debate that's been banging around with questions like "What does it mean? Does it mean anything?" I guess the weird thing is putting the pieces together felt like it should've been a moment, but it simply wasn't. I've wanted to say something but there's not really a situation where "I can be attracted to anybody who is attracted to me" is really relevant in my day to day life.
I've had LGBT conversations with people in a few different types of circumstances. Maybe this framing will help you think about your own plans for conversations.
The first is with close friends. These were mostly earlier in my experience when I was more confused and were of the form of "What even is a gender anyway?" or "I know you're asexual and aromantic. I think I might be too. How did you know?"
The second is with family that I wasn't super close with, but they needed to know because they'd be upset if I didn't tell them (and I didn't want to damage those relationships by keeping something this important to me from them despite me not really thinking they needed to know just yet). This is where my stereotypical coming out conversations happened.
The third set probably won't apply to you, but I'm including it for completeness's sake. This is the broad category of "I need you to do something different". For me, this was telling people a new name and pronouns to use for me. For you, that might be something like telling your mom who's been endlessly trying to set you up with someone to broaden their horizons to include cute men and women, instead of just the one (or the like, I don't know your life).
The fourth set is this post. I don't usually scream the fact that I'm queer from the rooftops, but at the same time, it isn't a secret. If there's a circumstance where it's relevant and doesn't feel like I'm oversharing, I will. For example, I ended up partially outing myself in my second week at my last job because I had an anecdote about a disagreement with a grandparent that only made sense in a queer context.
Basically, you're only in the closet if you think you are. If you don't feel a need to tell everyone, you shouldn't feel obligated to. Just because the people that do are the easiest to find doesn't mean that everyone does. If you're looking for an excuse to start this sort of conversation, pride jewelry is a common marker of you being someone who it's safe to have this sort of conversation with.
I guess the main takeaway is I only need to advertise it if I feel the need to? I'm not really one for labels anyway, but I do think knowing how to describe myself is important.
The reason I wound up thinking so much about it is I felt I had come out even if I didn't need to. My family would probably be "Oh, he's dating a dude, whatever" if I show up with a man to a family dinner, and it doesn't really change anything else in my life, I guess.
Pretty much. If you don't think it's a big deal, it's not a big deal.
I have some super generic advice for people who find themselves unhappy with being straight. Frankly it's so generic that it could apply to just about anything, but it's especially helpful in these cases.
Don't worry about being Gay, Bi, Pan, or anything else. You are you; your sexuality may be a part of it, but it's a relatively small part when you consider the many vast dimensions that make up your being. While you might need some time to understand your sexuality, always keep in mind that you're doing so for the sake of you as a whole person.
My realization that I was bi/pan sounds a lot like yours, although I was already dating somebody seriously when I put two-and-two together. I felt it was important to tell my partner because we share just about everything, but I didn't have a "coming out" moment. I have a note in many of my profiles online, but it's never the first thing I mention. Many of my close friends know, but there's really no reason for my family (parents and siblings) to know. Unless, of course, I started dating somebody who wasn't a cis-straight man, I suppose.
How useless and non-fuctional I am in mornings, still, more than 15 years after moving across the world. I think my body clock is just permanently set to my birthplace or something, but I shouldn't be getting up for work when it's still dark out.
You might want to talk to a doctor about this; it could be signs of sleep apnea.
I’ve recently been hired to my dream job as a cloud engineer, but I’m so out of the loop on the recent standards and coding practices it’s incredibly discouraging. I’ve been thinking about whether or not it was a good career choice to accept the job before I was ready.
Does your team support you? I made a big career move and it's been hard because all of the experts on the team (except one) quit in the last couple of years. It's a new domain that's harder to move forward in than web dev - and the only person that's consistently around to help me quit the team a year ago.
They do, there’s only about 5 of us in the US, but it’s an incredibly competitive market and I’ve been given an opportunity that not a lot of people get. I have a really good team and boss, and my boss is really trying to push me to learn new things to be competitive and knowledgeable in the field. I’m just afraid I’m not progressing as much as they’re expecting and it’s incredibly discouraging.
Have you asked them what their expectations are?
I haven't put too much thought into it, and I am definitely not qualified to talk on design of anything (although I do like flags), so this isn't super well thought out or anything. I was on the wikipedia page for pride flags recently, and I have to say... I really don't think many of these actually look any good. The only one I can say I actually like is the 6-stripe rainbow flag. My feelings on the other flags range from not liking certain color choices to personally finding some designs just kinda shit.
This is probably just me, but I really don't like the use of pastel (I think? Again, not an art guy) in flags, or the use of color gradients (I'm so sorry bears, bigender people, gay men, lesbians, and transgender people). Maybe I'm just too used to how flags for countries and regions look, idk.
Some flags I feel a little more ambivalent about, like the asexual flag (might be a bit biased there though), the intersex flag (I wish the colors were different, but at least the design's different from everyone else? I guess?), and maybe genderqueer (although whenever I look at that flag I think of Sierra Leone's flag for some reason).
I think the progressive pride flag is terrible. Putting the intersex circle into the triangle on the hoist side of the flag does not help. I know its an American flag but you don't have to put one of every single thing you're trying to symbolize onto the flag.
For those of you who have bothered to read my incoherent, overly negative, and probably uninformed ranting, I'm so sorry for the wall of text, I tried to break it up a little.
Huh! I really love the bisexual and pansexual flags and their colors. I may be biased because I identify as bi/pan, but I really do dig ‘em.
I actually quite like the bi flag, I think the colors are pretty nice and the choice to not go for a traditional tricolor and instead split the flag into two sections of two-fifths and one section of one-fifth is interesting. When I actually see the flag waving about in the wild though, something seems off I guess? Like in this picture there's nothing that stands out as bad, but there's just something doesn't feel quite right flag-wise for me. Maybe I'm just overly picky about flags lol
Also 2:3 is the superior flag ratio :p
Aww, I personally love the Pride flags and think they look great, but I’m happy you shared your thoughts nonetheless. I can definitely see why people would be put off by them aesthetically.
I think the ace flag has an awesome color scheme (I’m not ace myself but I just love purple and black/gray together), and I think the lesbian sunset flag in particular is beautiful (again, I’m not lesbian either — basically I just look at everyone else’s flags with envy 😆).
Honestly, I think I would like the designs of most of these if they were something other than flags. When I stick some of the flags I complained about into the online flag waver, I guess they don't 'pop' off the background of the sky as much as some of my favorite flags? Again, I'd be much more supportive of most of these if they were like logos or emblems or whatever, but I can't really get behind them as something to stick on a flagpole and wave around. If you put the designs on a pin or patch or something similar, I'd like em much more.
Except the progressive pride flag... I really can't bring myself to like anything about the design. It's got too many colors, and, as a flag that isn't regional like the Philadelphia flag, and instead is supposed to be a more universal flag, the inclusion of the brown and black POC stripes strikes me as odd.
Oh man, this is a great comment. It makes me really mad that I didn't take my Adderall this morning, because I am having an impossible time sitting down and writing out the comment I want to write. What you're getting at touches on so many interesting aspects of queer history and internet trends and how they intersect. Things like changes in societal views of the queer community from being a catch-all outgroup to an in-group, the overall trend away from nuance in online spaces, the way globalization impacts symbols, or why the queer community places so much emphasis on symbols. Hopefully, I can sit down sometime after remembering my meds and try to flesh them out. Fingers crossed that my comment and listing some topic ideas will inspire someone else to think about them and write their own comment with their own views/thoughts on them.
No pressure obviously, but I’m pretty interested in what you have to say!
I've seen people be made out to be jerks for that opinion, but I'm in the same camp (I think): I thought the rainbow flag was the all-inclusive symbol?
Maybe @Micycle_the_Bichael can put this better than I did, but I think it's definitely a change in how discourse has been approached, but I'll go a step further and say it's an interesting point where progressive messaging has decided not to leave something to nuance.
I've never seen the intersex flag, I really like it!