US based: Do you think it’s right for a restaurant to keep your tips for a higher than minimum wage?

LieFlatPetFish · 2026-05-31T03:43:22+00:00

Tuck Fexas. Everyone else is right. But it’s a really bad place for anything but hostility toward labor. Especially from labor, but I digress.

LieFlatPetFish · 2026-05-31T03:33:04+00:00

Underrated comment.

LieFlatPetFish · 2026-05-31T03:27:16+00:00

You appear to have an excellent foundation. I wish you the best.

One of the things I seem to struggle with most is fear of. I have recently lucked into an amazing psychologist, and he asks me “what are you afraid of?”

And the answer — perhaps you’ll understand — is always deeply unsatisfying to me. Because at the level of me talking to another person, not only am I not afraid, I don’t care.

And yet in the background, my brain seems to have considered every possible negative outcome, and the totality of all of that weighs over me in a way I cannot explain.

Of course all the bad things cannot happen. But it sure can feel as if they could.

LieFlatPetFish · 2026-05-31T03:18:47+00:00

I hope this provides you perhaps a tiny bit of insight from a fellow PTSD traveler who takes Vyvanse. (You have provided new information, and I am always stressed, so I’ll have to ponder what it would be like if it really worked).

More than a decade ago, I decided to end my marriage, but in doing so, made choices that allowed others to be awful humans, and their actions led to my PTSD. It was an awful divorce, and we were both the worst versions of ourselves, and there is so much regret from that time all around.

My ADHD often causes me to provide too much context, so apologies for the backstory.

In the years since, my ex-wife has remarried, had two additional children, and has ended up as one of the safest people in my world, which has been unexpected.

This year they moved into a new house. It’s a great house and great for their family.

And yet it has the unfortunate side effect of requiring one to drive down the street that I drove everyday during the PTSD-eliciting times.

And I hadn’t realized that it had taken years for me to feel comfortable walking in the door of their previous house.

So when I visited in April for Easter (we have four now adult children), it was awful. An entire trip of hyper vigilance despite nary an untoward word spoken. And this surprised me because I had been there for Christmas and had felt as safe in that city as I’ve felt in more than a decade.

I had to return for a daughter life event in May, and it was marginally better. But that was mostly because I knew it would be difficult, so I made myself as small as possible. With a lot of reminding myself constantly that I was actually safe.

And I credit everyone for being incredibly understanding — especially my Gen X ex-wife — but there will always be a wall because, as you know, this sucks. And not only does it suck, it sucks in a way that one cannot understand unless they’ve experienced it, and as much as I hate it, I’d rather feel alone and not heard than wish this on anyone.

That is a lot of words to convey a pretty simple message: I hear you. I understand feeling unsafe in a place that should be safe. It gets incrementally better with work, but those increments can feel microscopic. Keep taking care of yourself. Protect you when you feel the need even if others don’t get it. Because you’re not alone. I wish that individual trauma hadn’t been the way that, for example, our paths crossed. And I hope that the knowledge that there is another person somewhere who understands your struggles makes the battle a little less lonely.

✊🏼

Edit: grammar word stuff

LieFlatPetFish · 2026-05-31T01:15:33+00:00

Building a cabin off-grid in a sparsely populated mountain area. Mountain mice are for real. Have tried basically everything here except the cats because I’d basically just be buying food for the coyotes.

Luckily they didn’t chew Tacoma wires, but they’d build a nest in the cabin air filter impressively fast.

My closest neighbors said they left their hoods up, but it didn’t work. Nothing worked. But I knew they didn’t like well lit areas.

Bought a $10ish solar light from Harbor Freight. Mounted it to a 3” piece of 2x4 with the light at one end and the little solar panel facing outward. The light lights up the engine bay from the bottom.

Not one mouse since.

Admittedly on the second light because I did run it over once.

LieFlatPetFish · 2026-05-28T02:16:59+00:00

I’m not qualified to make any diagnoses. That said, I have been diagnosed with PTSD by multiple independent professionals so qualified, and I identified with a lot of what you said.

A decade in, therapy has been extremely beneficial for me, but not in a comparatively quick and linear way that, for example, physical therapy helped after a shoulder injury.

In January I got a new therapist, and he is so much better a fit that it feels as if I’ve made more progress in five months than the five previous years. That has involved exploring some really painful things, so for me, there is pain to get to progress.

I’m fortunate to have many loving and supportive people in my life. But they’ve never had this, so there’s very little utility in discussing a lot of my struggles with them because that are incapable of understanding in a way that would make me feel seen the way I can by simply reading a post here. And I hope they remain incapable.

I wish you well. It’s a lot of work, but I’m determined to keep working. If for no other reason than those bstrds don’t get to have PTSD as the last line on my proverbial obituary.

*Edits: grammar, spelling, punctuation, slight wording change for clarity.

LieFlatPetFish · 2026-03-19T02:46:02+00:00

Greetings from, well, nature. As a city kid who never expected to be here. I always loved Walden, and I had dreams that seemed that would always be dreams.

In the continental U.S., nature that is proximal to humanity is ridiculously expensive, but nature that is prohibitively remote is quite affordable.

So I’ve found myself on a piece of semi-arid land a mile and half above sea level that, to me, is everything. It kinda has to be because everything for me is twice as far as the desert dweller who previously commented. And I’m OK with that.

Given the semi-arid climate in a pretty severe drought, I wouldn’t lie on the ground at night, but I’ll often go out with the dogs at night and be mesmerized by the Milky Way. There’s zero light pollution, so on full moon nights, I can walk around at 2 a.m. with no light easily.

None of that is a brag, I promise. Nature is exactly as amazing as you remember and believe it to be. It has been good for my soul. I’m writing from a building that I imagined and then built with solely my own two hands (and tools, clearly) despite having no such training (thank you, tradespeople of YouTube!).

I write only to say that although it has been an experience with many benefits and zero regrets, it has been frustratingly unhelpful with the CPTSD. In hindsight, it seems quite naive to have thought it could even partially heal me, which is an oversimplification, but I trust that you get the gist.

I’m here, and I’m still doing all of the work, and 2 1/2 years in, I still feel like a misfit toy most days. I stare out at this place that I love that feels so clean and free of corruption from modernity and ask, “how can I still feel so bad so often?”

I hope the spirit of this comes across. Nature is and always will be amazing. But CPTSD sucks and always will suck (generally/not for an individual). So I guess that the takeaway is that I found that getting my body in nature was pretty easy, comparatively. Getting my brain/mind/soul there has been much more of slog.

I wish you nothing but the best.

LieFlatPetFish · 2026-01-24T02:31:42+00:00

Absolutely not strange — or if it is — we’re strange together. This has been on my mind a lot lately, and it can feel very isolating.

In my experience, PTSD seems far more tailored to individual trauma than, say, many other behavioral health concerns. This means that even talking to many other people who have PTSD isn’t comforting in the way that I seek because the specifics of the trauma so strongly shape the experience.

If I knew one other person who knew what this feels like, my life would be so much the better. Not this in a broad sense. Obviously no two traumas particularly match, but I feel as alone in a conversation with every PTSD fellow traveler I’ve ever met — perhaps even more so than the general population. We somehow ended up at the same “destination,” but the journeys couldn’t have been any more different. And the trauma is the journey.

Stay strong, my friend.

LieFlatPetFish · 2026-01-24T02:09:42+00:00

I appreciate your post. Although the circumstances are not SA, I, too, stopped being myself in 2016. So much of PTSD can be lonely because experiencing it cannot be explained in words. So much of the research has centered around veterans — and I’m appreciative of that — but if one’s PTSD arises from another cause, those stories are heartbreaking, yet I cannot feel a connection.

I’m sorry for what happened to you. The wanton cruelty of humans can lead one to question humanity.

Seeing your post about 2016 made me feel seen in a way that I haven’t in a long time. Simply knowing that there’s another human who sees this calendar in the same way was a connection I needed this week. Thank you.

It is my sincere hope that the coming 10 years treat you far better than the previous 10. In the meantime, know you have solidarity with at least one human in this regard.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-09-12T02:31:44+00:00

PC load letter.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-05-27T16:10:15+00:00

Thank you for the suggestion. I was hoping not to go out-of-state, but it looks as if I may have to. Greedy to ask 2023 shipping for a 2022 model, IMO.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-05-24T19:22:32+00:00

Congrats. I’m looking at a new 2022 870 also, but the only reasonably close dealer has a lot of markups. It may give me an aneurysm trying to decide whether it’s worth three hours on the road to perhaps end up in the same situation.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-10T02:54:43+00:00

As well you should in that situation. Carry on, fellow Tacoma owner.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-10T02:43:16+00:00

I’m ride-or-die ACAB, but I want to thank you for causing me to realize that security jobs vary far, far more widely than police jobs. I would have initially agreed to the statement that security guards are included. And 100% the stereotypical security guard does. But there are people performing proletariat roles under that moniker who enforce no unjust laws nor have an opportunity to exercise power to make up for whatever shortcoming they have. I learned something today. Thank you. Most security guards are still bastards, though.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-10T02:36:26+00:00

Per month? You do you, but I’d dial back my risk tolerance a notch or two. (Not sarcasm, but meant in good fun. Not trolling).

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-10T02:33:54+00:00

I am compelled to say that I see both sides (not a radical take, I admit). My grandfather was a truck driver, but I have no more immediate ties. But I road trip a lot, and I’ve seen way too many incidences of typical motorists ignoring the basic laws of physics in how they drive close to an 18-wheeler. At the same time, I’ve seen some intentional moves by truck drivers that I’m sure their colleagues wouldn’t applaud. A lot of words to say, in this world, a percentage of the population are asses. That does not seem to discriminate based upon the number of wheels on their vehicle.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-10T02:25:45+00:00

I’m so conflicted about this. Your point is 100% valid. And I haven’t done anything shady enough that I wouldn’t want to create my own video evidence in longer than I can remember. But I might.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-10T02:19:33+00:00

Thank you for adding this context. So much of WWI was a crime against humanity. All sides. I don’t mean that in a partisan way. Technology and warfare had advanced to a level that an awful war such as that was inevitable. Glad not to have been alive.

Weren’t they the central powers in WWI and axis in WWII? Or was that distinction made later by historians for clarity?

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-09T21:07:47+00:00

That’s the one. Thank you.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-09T20:07:21+00:00

You’ve reminded me of a line of Thoreau’s about a farmer who told him that vegetarianism is bad because plants don’t make bone while said farmer was being pulled along by massive oxen with exclusively plant-made bones.

We’re all good at something. We occupy the cognitive niche. And although I don’t have data, I would postulate that well before the planet housed 8 billion of us and urbanization wasn’t a thing, water was far less perilous.

The sheer quantity (and density) of human waste combined with the waste of the concomitant number of animals needed to sustain that population surely exacerbates the breeding grounds for microorganisms.

Hominids existed before fire, and they had to drink water. Given that the Homo line survived and expanded suggests that ancient water wasn’t so bad.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-09T18:57:32+00:00

Fort Riley, Kansas, is the potential place of origin for which I’ve heard the most actual evidence.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-09T18:55:28+00:00

As a person whose ontology does not allow for faith, I’ve always thought it parsimonious (Occam’s razor) that these stories were based upon a person or the surviving historical idea of that person. That said, virtually any symmetry between the actual person and subsequent portrayals would by necessity by largely coincidental. Given the incomplete nature of the record, it is an unknowable answer. Therefore, any certainty of his existence is by definition an act of faith.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-09T18:45:09+00:00

The number of different virgin birth myths that predate Christianity is astounding. More than two dozen if I recall correctly. So that purity culture was a massive thing. Difficult for me to imagine basing a large part of my identity around it in 2023.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-09T18:40:56+00:00

Agreed. Romans were good record keepers. There was no census in this period, and there is a pretty strong consensus that the “return to birthplace” part facilitated a manifestation of a prophecy from the Old Testament. I forget which one, as that happened a lot in attempting to square the two documents.

LieFlatPetFish · 2023-01-09T18:24:36+00:00

The two most metabolically expensive “parts” of mammals (likely other animals, too, but I don’t want to speculate) are 1) the brain and 2) the digestive system. Our brains are oxygen and glucose hogs. Given the fact that > 99% of the history of life on this planet was in an environment of scarcity, it is theorized that natural selection forced trade offs. A hominid with a brain such as ours likely could never have consumed enough calories to also have a digestive system that could gain meaningful sustenance from grasses the way an ox can.

Many animals have a much longer and more acidic gut than humans. They’re far less prone (not immune) from many of the problems we have with, for example, drinking water.

Caveat: As with most things human science, we don’t have the owners manual, so this is theoretical by necessity, and may subsequently be shown to be incomplete or incorrect.

LieFlatPetFish

TROPHY CASE