catreadingabook

I’d imagine it’s the things that still kinda make it as headlines today, but don’t get much coverage anymore because everyone is used to it by now.

“By the way, this weekend’s mass shootings led to 10 deaths and 29 injuries total, a little more than last week. Parents, remember to bundle up your kids this fall semester with the latest BulletBlocker Youth Jacket, 10% off if you order today! Now back to the news you actually wanted to hear about: the former U.S. President allegedly commits even more crimes…”

🎶 oh, I can so just sit here and cry 🎶

but fr what worked well for me was blocking, deleting, getting rid of (or stuffing into a rarely used closet) anything that reminded me of them, then distracting myself 24/7 long enough to later process my emotions with a little bit of distance from the event itself - not to block out the feelings but to just avoid ruminating on them.

Mostly the point was buying time to provide my monkey brain with hard proof that I can survive without that person, that way it stops shooting me up with the Bad Chemicals every time I think of them.

That isn’t the defining characteristic, though [ETA: under the conventional understanding of the word, at least - apologies for appearing to ask you for clarification only to then argue with you about it]. There is already a word for that and it’s called entitlement. What distinguishes an incel is the added belief that there is something wrong with people who have romantic or sexual preferences that the incel disagrees with (as long as the preference is limited to consenting adults).

Personally my main gripe is with the implication that a person, who simply wants someone with traits that the person doesn’t have him/herself, is therefore entitled in a way that puts them in the wrong. To hopefully illustrate why that’s weird: I tend to be romantically interested in those bleeding-heart optimist types even though my own philosophy is relatively pragmatic. I admire that characteristic in others but have no intention of adopting it myself. It isn’t obvious that this fact, on its own, makes me an incel, even if optimism is more rare, desirable, or difficult to maintain.

I think the discussion would be clearer if you defined what you think incel beliefs are? The typical description I know of is, “Members of my preferred gender refuse to have sex with me because there is something wrong with them, and it’s their fault that I’m lonely.” It looks like here the assumed definition is, “I’m happy being alone unless someone extremely desirable comes along,” which imo is the opposite of incel behavior.

The reason you are getting called an incel here is likely because, by characterizing the latter opinion as something wrong with “so many” women when it is merely a lack of interest in dating most men, you start to come dangerously close to expressing the former opinion yourself.

Politicians don’t care (enough to make a meaningful change) as long as most people still vote for them.

Corporations don’t care as long as most people still buy their stuff.

Most people don’t care as long as their own personal choices won’t solve the problem.

Guess we can try again in another 60 million years or so?

As with most social media, I think the voting system makes it worse. There is always an element of “playing to the audience,” in that the easiest way to get validation (votes, boosts, replies) is to make sure everyone thinks you’re morally or intellectually superior over the person you’re talking to, whereas an actual normal conversation would be focused on the exchange of new ideas and perspectives.

Stronger moderation could help, and filtering the less civil communities could help, but I suspect it’s just a natural consequence of having a built-in validation system that applies to every post and comment everywhere. As engagement in the fediverse grows overall, I could see it getting worse mainly because of more ‘vote-seeking’ behavior.

It isn’t commercial labor when an adult does their own chores (I think), as it’s more related to the people in a household maintaining their own home. It likely wouldn’t be labor for a child for the same reasons, though I’m not sure.

But it could start to look like labor when it’s something that produces commercial value, for example, it’s more like a ‘chore’ to water the vegetable garden in the backyard, but it’s more like ‘labor’ to tend to 20 acres of farmland.

Excessive chores, though, could be prevented under child abuse law rather than child labor law, depending on how it’s enforced. Doing all the household work voluntarily for no reason other than it’s fun? Almost certainly legal. No video games until you clean the dishes? Probably legal. No food until you sweep, mop, dust, and shine every surface in the house? Probably abuse.

Before I left, I remember it being really bad. People were abusing therapyspeak without any regard for what the terms actually mean. Like, “my bf keeps violating my boundaries by not buying me gifts,” “NTA your mom is parentifying you by asking you to clean the dishes,” “divorce your wife of 7 years because she neglects you by asking for an hour alone every day.”

Arguably both ‘extremes’ can become an excuse for inaction, pessimists may think “why even try if it probably won’t help” while optimists may think “it’ll resolve itself / look at the bright side.” Similarly, both can be strategies for coping with disappointment. And can become a tiny bit delusional.

But at least optimists live in blissful ignorance lol. I think people underestimate an optimist’s ability to see problems as just solutions waiting to happen.

I’m confused maybe. I’ve heard of gas stoves, but how does a gas oven work?

When a console game finally releases a PC port and the title screen still says “Press Start,” you know the keys are going to be completely unhinged like, “I” to open your inventory. “C” is yes, and “V” is no, except in the escape menu, where “Enter” is yes and “Backspace” is extra-yes. Left-click to either attack or walk forward, depending on how your character is feeling.

A sizable portion of the population would convince themselves that the sky is green, if that was their party’s official position.

And a sizable portion of politicians, of a certain moral character, would take the official position that the sky is green if someone paid them enough.

On an unrelated note, I wonder which party is heavily sponsored by the oil and gas industry?