Thanks for this, really enjoyed it :)

KenM? You made your way to the lemmyverse?

Butter! Never woulda considered that one. I do most of your others though. Also fish sauce, or hoisin, I really like adding a spoonful of red miso.

My more surprising one is a slice of American cheese on top - sounds wrong but it’s killer.

That’s fair, it’s not my interpretation though. It’s been a while and I don’t remember the specifics well by now, but I definitely came away feeling like he was an egocentric asshole just in it for the attention. To be fair, a far more interesting and useful egocentric asshole than most! But I ended up not liking him…as in, I don’t just have some complaints about unpolished moments, I would actually choose not to hang out with him if given the chance. And I came to that opinion after starting off absolutely smitten with the guy.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me it’s the way I viewed him with hope and admiration, then later discovered he’s just yet one more self-obsessed asshole media personality. It’s rare anymore that I switch off the cynicism the world has beaten into me and allow myself to just assume the best about some media figure. And doing so leaves one vulnerable - finding out later that this was naive and foolish really hardens that cynicism. This stings in a way that just assuming he was a piece of shit from the start doesn’t.

Thanks so much, this is exactly what I was looking for.

I also know exactly what you mean - weirdly, maybe the most potentially harmful thing about cannabis is the way it makes doing nothing tolerable and even enjoyable. I think overuse does lead to a lot of very stunted life trajectories and ultimately unfulfilling time spent on earth for many people. Certainly did for me in my youth. Of course there are the rare folks like my buddy who smokes daily for decades on end and does more stuff than I do.

In myself I’ve noticed that it makes me much more shy and less willing to engage with others when under the influence. Oddly enough I can sometimes be more productive with it, though, because the right dose tends to quiet my otherwise kind of scattered attention and I’ll work on just one thing rather than 4 at once (badly). I write software for a living and a small dose actually helps me just grind out some boring code that needs to get written. But like you said it limits depth so it’s not good for thinking about project structure and decision making. And at higher doses it does leave me very content with doing very little - at least in the moment.

Anyway. I’ll keep my eye on it, thanks for relating your experience!

Would you be willing to elaborate on the negative effects you observed that led to your decision to drop it? I gave up alcohol this year - I’ve slowly been adding in cannabis lately and want to watch for issues with overuse and such.

You may have ideas in mind about what kind of person they’ll be, in terms of interests, personality, etc. This can be really strong because it may come from deep subconscious wants, and you may not even realize it, but it’ll come out in your behavior. Nudging toward this activity, away from this one - that kind of thing. Be really careful with this - your kid will tell you who they are, and it can be super damaging if you don’t listen.

You can shape values, and you can show them your enthusiasm for what you think is cool, but stop short of trying to shape what they like and who they are. Accept and get excited about the things they’re into and they’ll always want to share with you and keep you involved as they get older. Enthusiasm and passion are so much more important and useful in life than liking this thing over that thing, but it can be hard to let go of your implicit ideas about their future personality.

We very much expected kind of a tomboy-ish, or at least mixed interest girl. Rough and tumble, daredevil, etc. Not at all - she is the most classically feminine, pink-loving, only-interested-in-dolls little kid you can imagine.

Hey, thanks, that’s a useful (and probably fairly accurate) distinction and I’m happy to find that a positive shift in my viewpoint, if minor. The corruption might be a really big problem or it might be one guy who’s an aberration for being wildly outside the court’s norms, really unclear on that part. But I needed a solid reminder that it’s not quite yet another ruined and hypocritical institution we once held dear.

Great comment, sincerely - completely nails it. My only nitpick (and only delivered cuz you clearly care) is I don’t think it should be called terrorism.

Terrorism, as hate-fueled and damaging as it is, at least has an ethos, an organizing principle, a (generally twisted, but coherent) morality. These monsters have nothing so human to stand behind. As you know, it’s nothing more complicated than “fuck every life on earth but mine, for no reason more compelling than that I want even more stuff”. Terrorists actually compare favorably against that.

Any suggestions for someone with a parent who openly acknowledges that he’s having cognitive changes / difficulties? I get the sense he’s experiencing precisely this kind of pre-dementia decline. He’s on Medicare, FWIW. I just assumed nothing was realistically available (thanks, US healthcare system for the deep sense of futility), but would love to be wrong.

Thing is, when you’re drinking as much as you are, you can’t really trust how you’re feeling as being really how you feel. Alcohol has such an influence on mood / outlook / general emotional state that I’d argue you don’t really know how you feel right now. The insidious part is that all the emotions feel just as genuine as sober feelings, even though they’re being shaped so heavily by outside chemicals.

I’m not arguing that if you take some time off you’ll magically discover you’re just super happy or something, I’m not naive. But you can’t really trust your emotional state when it’s this heavily manipulated. For me, problems feel much bigger and more hopeless when I drink regularly. There’s also an anxiety that comes with heavy use that’s near universal, and I don’t have that feeling at all sober, just flat out isn’t there. Take 30 days and find out how you really feel, and pay attention to how those feelings change as you get some distance - you at least owe yourself that. You don’t have to make some huge “never again” commitment. Just take the time to really dry out and see what your emotions are like from there. You’ve got nothing to lose by doing so, it’s just a few weeks.

Oh, ETA - like you my hangover symptoms were always super mild and that definitely contributed to overdoing it. I really only get severe fatigue and low motivation, but even that was absent for years. Plus I was internally doing some stupid macho “I can handle this when others can’t” type shit, not sure if you’ve let that seep into your identity as well.

Just anecdotally, I noticed that more junior team members were FAR more willing to ask me for help with something after we were pulled back to the office. That can be mitigated with thoughtful collaboration efforts when operating fully remote, but I didn’t even know they needed help until they could just pop by my desk and ask for something. And they started doing it frequently.

But to be clear, I greatly prefer full remote for myself and again, thoughtful approaches to team management can solve or mitigate a bunch of the remote work downsides, probably.

I really can’t understand how you could read it that way, when the last phrase is “or will they simply forget Trump given time”. The poster sure seemed to go out of their way to not describe a preferred outcome but just to wonder how this turns out, how his supporters will respond, and how much their response even matters. If they’re questioning whether those people’s reaction even matters, does that sound like advocating on their behalf?

I understand interpretation of written text is always a little ambiguous, but jumping to “you’re saying Trump should go free so his supporters aren’t sad?!” - nearly your direct words - just feels like either a very intentional misreading or just the briefest possible look at what the poster wrote. It just isn’t there at all and you came across weird and hostile.

They never took that position at all, deliberately said so even. Quit with that antagonistic, unnecessarily hostile Reddit-style garbage.

Oh boy I’ve got one! Bonus, it ticks a 4th box - convenient!

Not sure where you’re located and there are different brands, so you’ll have to investigate for yourself. But the Tasty Bite brand microwaveable Indian pouches to me manage to hit each of these dimensions. They’re cheap (-ish, I wanna say $4 per meal?), healthy (probably high in sodium, but if you look at the ingredients list it’s all just food - not weird processed and/or synthetic crap), microwaveable and totally delicious. Granted, it’s delicious for a microwaved meal…can’t exactly compete with a properly prepared Indian dish. But it’s easily the best microwaved food I’ve ever eaten.

And they’re vegetarian and sometimes vegan so a small win on the critter ethics too! Can’t recommend em enough unless you mean REAL cheap or you’re used to eating home cooked Indian dishes on the regular.