Any answer in any scope is fair game: can be something very minor or something quite significant. It can be very domain-specific or very general.

Also the goal of the thread isn’t to judge people for their mistakes but more just highlight some common errors in hopes of bringing more awareness to them.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Starting with childhood, there are always some things that come naturally to us, and others that don't.

Some are great at physical activities but have a hard time with numbers. Some are great at telling jokes, but terrible at writing. Some have a wonderful memory for paths and locations but cannot remember faces. Some can easily navigate social situations, but have terrible grades.

What about you? What has always been easier for you? Conversely, what has always been your Achilles' heel?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I won't give a preamble for this one like I normally do in my ask topics, as I don't want to prime anyone's responses. Feel free to interpret the question however you like, and answer with whatever you feel is relevant.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As I mentioned in the screenless day thread

I was at Cloud Mountain in the woods between Seattle and Portland. This was my 3rd retreat there, and the longest that I've sat - the previous two that I attended were 2 days and 5 days respectively.

There were two teachers on the retreat, fully ordained Buddhist nuns in the Thai Forest tradition of Theravada Buddhism. Ayya Santacitta and Ayya Santussika were both wonderful.

I spent 8-10 hours a day meditating, split between sitting and walking meditation. Other than that, I ate 2 or 3 really tasty vegetarian meals a day, skipping dinner on the last few days (Buddhist monastics were doing intermittent fasting way before it was cool - only eating between sunrise and mid-day). Dinner is always served, soup and bread, but the monks don't eat, and some retreatants skip it as well. And...not much else. Eat, meditate, sleep, repeat.

It was very well done with respect to covid safety - we all wore masks and social distanced. Everyone on the retreat was vaccinated (and this retreat center is making it a requirement starting in September). They took a vote at the beginning that gave us the option of removing our masks since everyone was vaccinated, but the vote to take them off had to be unanimous and it wasn't, so we all continued to wear them while indoors.

ping: @kfwyre and @cfabbro

I feel like we’re constantly talking about how the last year and a half was the “lost year” and that no one did anything all year. But is there something you managed to do that makes you happy, proud, etc?

My wife and I spent the last few months building an outdoor tortoise enclosure for our pet Russian tortoise, Tortoro. We moved him outside a few weeks ago and he’s much more active and inquisitive.

Taking the time to build him a larger, outdoor enclosure that was designed to maximize his happiness was a nice respite from the stress of the world.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

There are very serious articles about young adolescents being radicalized into fascist movements and personal testimonials of such in YouTube, along with many videos, most commonly by leftists about how this works and very rarely a guess at what to do about it.

There are also often memes about young people entering politics, like this video or this video assuming that and then satirizing how young, presumably privileged people when it comes to social matters (because otherwise bad personal experiences will inform your beliefs and this will be more than a poorly done intellectual exercise to you) flip flop between every political belief like it's nothing, alongside memes satirizing how young conservatives are introduced to their politics by edited clips of what are supposedly SJWs out of context and how farcically (distressingly) ridiculous it is to be introduced to your beliefs by these videos, especially when these sometimes real but extreme regardless examples of the left's presumed irrationality are much less harmful than the conservative extremes.

A lot of this talk and memes concerns or satirizes radicalization of people after they've been politicized and occasionally in the case of the serious articles, what to do with it. But I feel this focuses more on the consequences, which is fine, but not everything worth looking at.

So back to the title question, how do you think someone/people should be politicized?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I never considered myself an introvert or shy. I’ve always been comfortable talking with strangers, whether that was in my college class or just sparking up a conversation with someone next to me in line.

I haven’t talked to a stranger irl since the pandemic started and I’m running scenarios in my brain about how I would talk to someone when I just met them. And every situation I’m going through I’m being awkward and uncomfortable.

I can talk to my family and my cousins, who are essentially my only friends, just fine but that’s different since there’s already an established way of communication there.

I just feel like I’m gonna be so rusty at talking to people, which is a shame because I’ve spent years learning how to talk to strangers in a certain way to make them comfortable and to very easily have a conversation. And I feel like I lost all of that now.

From Wikipedia:

A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.

For obvious reasons, it is much easier to identify biases in others than ourselves. Nevertheless, some of us went through practices (such as psychotherapy), experiences, and introspection that allowed us to put our biases in check. So, instead of scrutinizing the behavior of others (something that comes naturally to us, especially on the internet), here I ask you to exercise some self-criticism. What intellectual tendencies you have that obsessively repeat themselves in different contexts?

I should note that cognitive biases do not always lead to bad outcomes or falsehoods, as stated in Wikipedia:

Although it may seem like such misperceptions would be aberrations, biases can help humans find commonalities and shortcuts to assist in the navigation of common situations in life.[5]

On this thread, I am deliberately not asking about political bias or anything of the sort, including all the juicy controversial subjects surrounding it. Anything that often leads to uncivil discussion should be considered out of bounds.

For inspiration, look at this list (you don't need to identify a named bias, though... a subjective description of something you believe to be a form of bias is enough).

Dear Mods, due to the contentious nature of the subject, please feel free to act more aggressively on this topic than you currently do.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

You're guaranteed to have at least the same level of comfort and subsistence you currently have. Anyone in the present that depends on you financially will be taken care of. Other than that there are no guarantees whatsoever. You cannot go back. It's definitely a gamble. Can you resist the curiosity?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my own attention lately, and I'm curious to hear others' thoughts. I don't want to prime the thread, but I'll probably type up some of my own considerations in a comment later.

Any and all comments/experiences are welcome, especially those from people with ADHD or other similar conditions that impact executive functioning.

• Are you happy with your ability to manage your attention and focus?
• Do you feel like you're in control of your attention? Is it something you have to manage?
• Do you feel as if anything has changed over time?
• How would you describe your attention/focus to someone who experiences theirs in a different way from you?

Those are simply guiding questions to get the ball rolling, but I don't want to limit the conversation to just them. Really I'm interested in hearing anything anyone is wanting to share about their relationship with attention and focus.

(Also, how open are you to being dissuaded from it? I'm always open to new information, so if you're concerned about me embarrassing myself in public with these ideas, enlighten me, by all means.)

Two examples come to mind for me.

• Astrology. I don't think the positions of the stars have any actual bearing on people's destinies, but there are definite traits that seem common to the individual signs, across cultures and eras. Perhaps there's a natural cycle of some sort that affects our collective psychology or even biochemistry and we misattribute zodiac stereotypes because it happens to align with the celestial "movements"?

• Graphology. The notion that particular characteristics or tendencies could be expressed in something like handwriting doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Our minds physically express many things in our body language, and I could see how handwriting might essentially be an extension of that, or another translation.

Of course, this could just be self-selection and delusion, but these are likely complex issues and there's still quite a lot we do not understand.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Intro

A while ago, we held a LGBT Q&A panel that allowed people to ask questions to LGBT people that they might have been afraid to ask otherwise. I think this was incredibly valuable, and I would like to try a slightly less structured and topical version of the thread.

This thread is for questions about any topic that you're worried might come across as insensitive or invasive or uncomfortable or whatever -- questions that might get responded to negatively if you were to ask them elsewhere. Ask a question that you tend to keep to yourself, for whatever reason.

My hope is that people can ask some questions in good faith and get answers in good faith. In order to do that though, I do think it's important that we have some norms in place:

Ground Rules

Anyone can ask questions or provide answers or both. This topic is not a panel but a Tildes-wide discussion.

Askers

Ask a genuine question that you want a genuine answer to. Feel free to ask informational questions, experiential questions, and opinion questions. They will be afforded the principle of charity, but also understand that this is not a thread for hot takes or passive aggressive shots or anything like that.

Follow-up questions are allowed and encouraged.

To keep threads organized, post a new top-level comment for each separate question, unless your questions are all related to the same topic and work better as one comment.

Answerers

Give genuine answers to the questions given. The goal of the thread is education and understanding. Even (and especially) if a question is difficult, frustrating, or off-putting, I think one of the best things you can articulate is why it is that way for you as a way of helping others understand your experience and perspective.

All

Please abide by this principle: if your words have the potential to cut, then please have the courtesy of using some anaesthetic. If you know you're entering into potentially inflammatory territory, please go out of your way to soften sharpness and defang your words. The last thing I want this thread to be is a set of escalations or inflection points.

If you're worried your question might look provocative, openly state your intention and give some background for why you want to ask, to show that you're acting in good faith and willing to listen to answers. If you're worried your answer might slam on someone, openly state your intention and give some background for why this is a topic that elicits such strong feelings from you.

If a question or answer does cross lines or occurs in bad faith, please label it as malice.

If you do not want to see this topic in your thread for any reason, please use the ignore post feature.

I am hoping that we can have some very thoughtful, compelling, and insightful conversation here, and, based on what I know of the Tildes community and our last attempt at a thread like this, I have full faith that we can achieve that.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Asking mainly because we generally view this period as a rock-bottom, but nostalgia seems to be as good as natural, so what do you think people in 5, 10, 15+ years will remember overly fondly about the present?

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

For some reason I don't really have much issues with most things if I'm by myself, but when there's someone else (either irl or online) venting about the issue at hand, another issue or their own issues in a super negative way it always brings me down so hard.

Like, if I were watching the news and there was something about a murder or something on, I would watch and think "that's bad" but move on pretty quickly, but if you check for comments on the news online it's all super misanthropic and pessimistic shit about how the world being a vile place, etc, and funnily enough that's the thing that triggers far more of a reaction that the issue at hand itself.

Similarly, if I read all sorts of comments of people online about stuff like "hope being a joke", "life being a piece of shit", "humanity being a disease", etc, I feel all anxious and hopeless until it eventually just fades from my attention or if I see someone argue the opposite.

I've also always heard people in school complain about this or that, and I just... do it and shut up about it? Sure, I complain too sometimes, but overall I don't really got bogged down into a swamp of darkness like that.

This is really making me want to severely cut my internet usage since it's like this on an almost daily basis, though I'm not really in the position to do this atm since I don't have a job, education or anything else so this is like my main source of socializing. But I'm definitely going to go through with it once I get back into the flow of things.

Does anyone else have this problem?