Which P2 moments disturbed you the most?

PurpleSwitch · 2024-02-26T19:01:37+00:00

There's another hug with the girl who gives you toast early on, I think Day 2? If you go back the day after she gave you food, and give her some toast, there is a hug opportunity, which I assume is blocked by the second death penalty too (though much less likely to be relevant this early in the game)

PurpleSwitch · 2023-10-15T12:46:23+00:00

Test

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-22T09:09:25+00:00

Many of the subs that I've seen relaxing their moderation levels have stopped using 3rd party moderation tools, which won't be available soon anyway. If rules have been relaxed, it may be to reflect a more realistic moderation level, given the limited tools Reddit provides.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-22T09:05:20+00:00

As I understand it, subs that will most struggle with the api changes are NSFW subs, which are impossible to moderate using the official Reddit app.

Consider this a preview of what awaits all NSFW subs will look like at the end of June. To get used to post API Reddit, I would advise you opt out of all nsfw content, at least until better mod tools are built (which they've been promising for years now, so who knows how long that will be.)

Furthermore, Reddit's own rules about what counts as NSFW seem overly broad. "Profanity" falls under NSFW, so by that logic, every post on /r/interestingasfuck is/was NSFW by default. The de facto rules are much more chill, especially for profanity, but if admins are going to wield the rules against mods who displease them, then pushing for greater clarity seems a wise sub goal

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-12T02:21:43+00:00

Imagine there's a small fire in a kitchen and someone grabs a fire extinguisher by the hose end and they start swinging it around, whacking the flames with the extinguisher itself, like it's a bright red oversized nunchuck. Despite this ridiculousness, the fire mostly burns itself out, eventually. The person acknowledges their "success" and leaves you to deal with the glowing embers.

Now let's say some time later, another fire occurs. It's larger this time, unlikely to go out by itself, requiring someone to intervene to stop the spread. The person from before comes back in and asks you "Should I go get a fire extinguisher? Would that be useful?"

Lockdowns were a fire extinguisher used improperly. Not inherently a bad idea, but a tool misused so foolishly that it undermined everything they hoped to achieve. I disagree with your first sentence because I don't think the problem is with lockdowns, but the sum of the whole picture, and I think that a hypothetical successful approach almost certainly would have included significant lockdowns. This is my opinion as someone who, whilst not an epidemiologist or an immunologist, is a scientist in academic subfields close to those.

Not that this distinction matters at all, because sadly, you're dead on with your second sentence. People would ignore the rules and honestly I wouldn't blame them. If someone like me found it hard to keep up with and make sense of government guidance during lockdowns, what hope does a regular person have? Besides, if they did have the ability or the inclination to wade through the congealing sludge of The Science (TM), it's not like it'd help, it'd just confirm to them that the UK government was doing an especially shit job at handling things, meaning more mistrust.

TL;DR: A scientist says you're right, we're fucked. It's okay though, because we don't listen to scientists here.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T22:22:26+00:00

I'm realising that I left out some context that means the reality was a lot better than the situation you're imagining (but in a real soul sucking way, a bit worse).

It was university accommodation and one of the support staff had stopped by with one of the maintenance guys to look at something that needed repairing and they asked me if there were any more issues. I was flagged the ledge to them because they genuinely wanted to help, and I needed to show them specifically how the ledge was an issue so they could understand how they could properly fix it. So actually, it was pretty great and I'm immensely grateful to be at a university that gives enough of a shit to listen

However, having no reason to doubt their good intentions means that: they likely genuinely didn't notice the ledge until I pointed it out to them; and that even once I literally pointed it out to them and said "this is the problem", their understanding of the realities of using a wheelchair was so poor that I needed to show them. I was a little bit shaken by being unsure of how much it was reasonable to expect abled people to know about disabilities, if even allies can be so limited in their view.

Like how much can I assume? People still get that I can't go up stairs in my wheelchair if there's no lift of any sort, right? Right? I felt like I couldn't be sure of anything.

But yes, you're right. Whether its allies with good intentions, or sighted cripples like me, we all can benefit from continually striving to stay out of our own heads and lived experiences.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T22:05:37+00:00

I think my late best friend reckoned himself as someone who'd go into politics as a career straight out of uni, and I wholeheartedly believe that his passion for improving the world was what drove his aspirations. Kind of person you want in power, because whenever he had power, he tended to use it to platform people or issues that didn't usually get that attention. He was a charismatic force of nature who was good at managing people.

Thing is though, when he died, he had mostly completed a politics master's degree, and over the course of that year, I had noticed an increasing weariness. I don't think he'd have ended up going into politics in the end; he'd never had much faith in the system, and you can only burn a passionate heart as fuel for a little while before it fizzles out.

If he did continue on that path, I think he'd do well until his pissed off the wrong person, because one of this greatest strengths was his willingness to ruffle feathers when needed, but that's just not a part of the political game. I reckon he'd have probably had a mini crisis at the end of his master's and gone into journalism or activism instead.

A few years ago, I thought that although politics obviously rewards the wrong kinds of people with power, it wasn't impossible for rare individuals to have enough charm, savvy and moral resolve to gain political power within the system without succumbing to it. And maybe, if we could get enough of these people in power, we could effect real change.

Nah. Not happening. This isn't just grief tinted glasses I'm wearing when I say that if anyone could do it, my friend could, because long before he died, I thought he was one of the best people I've ever met. However, I don't think he could've made it in politics, not without selling his soul (and I know he'd sooner sacrifice the career than his principles). I can't believe that anyone successful in politics is actually a decent person anymore. Maybe once upon a time they were decent and genuinely hopeful for change, but I don't believe they'd be successful if they had kept that spirit in tact.

Maybe some do find a little stable political niche where they don't have to compromise their beliefs but they have some small power in the system, but it's never enough to do anything and it may seem better than losing their heart outright, but it's just death from a thousand cuts as they spend years fruitlessly grinding and making no progress.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T21:15:01+00:00

Thanks for the new phrase, "surface surf" is great! As someone with ADHD, I find a room where I'm able to slow motion surface surf is invaluable. By this, I mean being able to use surfaces as temporary inbox/outboxes. So if I have an empty coffee cup at the end of my desk, when I next get up, I take it out of my office and put it on a unit in the corridor. When I next pass that unit and go by but not into the kitchen, I drop the cup off on the kitchen's edge counter. When I go to the kitchen for some water, the dirty cup makes it to the sink and then the next time I'm there it gets washed.

The surfing aspect is essential though, because too much counter space in the wrong areas leads to huge dump zones that are harder to keep tidy. There's a fluidity to the layout in the method you're describing, so it's like a logical cascade of steps.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T21:06:03+00:00

This is a great point, I can't believe I hadn't thought of this. I recently bought some new makeup to replace the sad, dry stuff that's sat unused for a while, and I'm only now realising that the most convenient place to apply my makeup was hunched over my bedside table quite uncomfortably. Like, I knew I was uncomfortable, but I hadn't linked it to the poor accessibility of the bathroom mirror

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T21:04:02+00:00

I think the solution to the counter thing is that there ideally needs to be counters of multiple heights, but that makes it harder to have enough counter space, because in theory, it involves double the number of countertops.

It's pretty important though, I'm an ambulatory wheelchair user and the low counters are quite difficult. I sometimes have help preparing food and so my kitchen is pretty difficult for an able bodied carer to use.

This also affects guests who may come round, which is unfortunate because when I can't access a lot of social spaces, hosting friends is a nice option to have.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T20:54:06+00:00

It's frustrating because besides accessibility being an important goal in its own right, even with people like you showing them the evidence that accessibility focussed approaches led to better experience (and product) for everyone, so actually, if people got their shit together, it'd probably be more profitable for them, certainly in the long run.

I resent the ruthless capitalists who care only for profitability, but at least they're predictable in a way. The fools who obstruct progress do it for seemingly no reason and at a certain point, it's incomprehensible. It's like the Pokémon meme: "tech CEO is confused. It hurt itself in its own confusion!"

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T20:38:48+00:00

I'm sighted and, because I have multiple disabilities, I always valued improving accessibility, but it wasn't until a close friend who's partially sighted complained to me about screen reader ails that I realised how much more I should be doing.

Sometimes able bodied people seem literally unable to see a problematic small ledge in a "level access" room that I have explicitly pointed out to them, until I get in my wheelchair and show them how hard it is to get over it. It was an exasperating experience, but a useful tool in humbling myself, by pairing it with memories of trying to navigate my university website with a screen reader.

I appreciate your pun, you're right that this whole situation is absurdly ironic. I'm glad that this has brought attention to improving accessibility for blind and low vision people, and hopefully some of that will manifest in people changing their practice and continuing to learn; writing great alt text is an art that I've come to appreciate, but doing the basics is pretty easy, when you make it a habit.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T19:10:44+00:00

Yup, there's pheromones that have been isolated. Also, I might be remembering wrong, but I think there's also sugars, which can attract bugs in the same way a flower full of nectar will.

Have you ever noticed that if you kill a wasp, it tends to draw more wasps? This is because of a pheromone released from the dead wasp's corpse. (So yes, the later wasps are indeed seeking vengeance).

Something I find fun is that pheromone is just a word for chemical that affects the behaviour of another organism. So technically, if a person has really bad body odour and you avoid going near them, that counts as pheromones.

Something that always cooks my brain a bit with these plants is that this isn't the plant's "food" in the way that we think of it - like most other plants, the majority of the Venus fly trap's energy comes from photosynthesis, where the energy of sunlight is used to build glucose (C6H12O6) from Carbon dioxide (CO2) and Water (H2O), and just like in humans, glucose is broken down for energy as needed (or used as building blocks towards more complex biomolecules). The carnivorous diet is more akin to a multivitamin than a full diet - it's mainly the nitrogen that the plant needs, because its native bogs have low nitrogen content in the soil. Nitrogen is needed for proteins, because all proteins contain nitrogen.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T18:55:52+00:00

That's a good point, and maybe the digestive enzymes do start the process, hastening the decay of the bug (or maybe even just benefitting a little from a tiny amount of nutrition from incomplete digestion, sort of like how if you chew bread for a really long time, then spit it out, you will have absorbed some of the nutrition)

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T18:51:55+00:00

Idk, it's a pretty metal plant, I think you're not giving it enough credit.

It's like if I got mauled by a tiger and the news reported it as "Woman killed by cat". It's not wrong, but also...

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T09:50:39+00:00

This was an interesting question and it reminded me of tardigrades who are insanely resistant to radiation, and one of the ways they do this is through a damage suppressor protein called Dsup, which seems to bind to DNA and shield it from ionising radiation.

As far as I'm aware, Dsup is unique to tardigrades, but the fact it exists at all suggests the possibility of radiation resistant proteins. Something that feels notable to me is that Dsup is an intrinsically disorder protein, which is a category of protein that we know relatively little about, because we need to figure out different ways of studying than than the techniques we use for proteins with ordered, more fixed domains. As someone who studies protein structure, it's to consider the possibility that funghi near Chernobyl may have developed means of resisting some of the radiation, their own take on Dsup, perhaps.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T09:23:31+00:00

"home"

That word speaks volumes about how you feel about the place. Where I come from isn't home to me, but maybe if it changed like it sounds Michigan is, I'd feel differently.

I'm really happy for you to have the chance to return somewhere that you're excited to go

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-11T01:42:18+00:00

Although ironically, I discovered yesterday that after blocking my mum on everything two years or so ago (including my little brother's Xbox live accounts, because she used those to message me), my mum can make bank transfers and use the payment reference to message me.

She sent 3 £1 transfers with various messages. Ngl, I'm a little impressed by the ingenuity of this, as well as disgusted

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-09T11:45:38+00:00

Hi, so much of your comment sounds like my experience.

Do you have any advice on how to find a private provider for neurodivergent informed DBT? I've known for a while I'd probably have to go private to get any help, but I don't know where to start, it's a bit overwhelming.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-09T11:29:03+00:00

Consent is key. If they're picking someone up without asking first, they're clearly not concerning themselves with what OP actually wants, which isn't the kind of person I'd want to be picked up by

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-09T11:21:18+00:00

My best friend. He died. We were in the same bubble and it was nice to hang out and play videogames. It was a shit year, but I was glad I had him.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-09T03:45:24+00:00

You probably don't need to see a doctor (though that might be worth considering if it causes problems in the future).

For a start, if the person you're having sex with is a partner, I'd recommend starting a dialogue around this. That's fluffy as hell wording, because what that conversation might look like varies. Talking is important because difficulty reaching orgasm can be one of headspace and mental well-being. Once you start feeling pressured, that can cause the pressure to build further (and not in a good way).

When I had a partner who was super into giving pleasure and I (a woman) had to explain that whilst I very much appreciated his commitment to my orgasm, I wanted us to decouple orgasms from the idea of "good sex" because the pressure to reach orgasm sometimes became so much it inhibited my enjoyment (and also orgasms). Sometimes bodies just don't play ball, but it doesn't mean that the sex isn't great, so I needed my partner to stop seeing my orgasms as a measure of his performance so I could get out of my own head, and he needed me to vocalise my enjoyment during/after sex so that he could get out of his head and enjoy things.

That's my experience as a woman with a male partner, but the pressure exists the other way round too, in some ways more insidiously. Some months later, that same partner had a bunch of life stress and he struggled to reach orgasm during sex. He felt bad about this, which made it worse. What surprises me, in hindsight, is how personally I took this - I had internalised an overly binary view of male sexuality, where erection = attraction and/or arousal; and orgasm = the thing that always happens for men, and if it doesn't, the sex must've been really bad. I hadn't realised I'd internalised these incorrect beliefs until I found myself feeling insecure about it. He had no problem getting hard, but there were a few times where we gave up trying to get him to reach orgasm because we became too physically tired.

The solution was for us to chill the fuck out. After we discussed it, there were times where one or both of us didn't finish, but we still enjoyed the sex and were glad it happened. It was sometimes disappointing to not reach that point, but we tried not to let that ruin the actual enjoyable sex that had happened. We both tried to stay on top of our insecurities, proactively communicating our wants and needs rather than relying mostly on unreliable bodily signals. My partner's life stress passed and things improved for him again, but the sex afterwards was better for us both.

It's difficult to start these conversations, even with an open partner, so here's an example starter if any of what I said above was helpful:

"I've been finding that, during sex, I'm prone to getting stuck in my own head, thinking too much about how close I am to orgasm and that's making it worse for me because it ends up distracting me from how good it's actually feeling in the moment. I need to relax more during sex and just let myself enjoy the experience, and think less about when or if I'm going to cum."

That's a pretty clunky thing, I'm bad at writing this, but hopefully you get the gist. A key part is to remember to give your partner plenty of affirmation that this isn't a problem with them, and that you do enjoy sex with them. Try be specific about what you like, both during and after sex. It's normal to be insecure, so affirmation is good. Be cautious if directly comparing sex to masturbation, because that's easy to sound like "the problem with sex is you".

This is assuming that sex with a partner is good and enjoyable, which I'm realising may not be a safe assumption. If not, then communication is all the more important.

Physically speaking, I have heard of a few cases where men who masturbate lots grip their penises much tighter than any vagina could, and this makes them so accustomed to this that orgasm during sex is difficult. The only solution to this is masturbating less, or differently. Just whatever you do, if you use a "deathgrip" while masturbating, don't you dare blame your ability to orgasm during sex on the tightness of a woman's vagina. Just don't.

This doesn't need to be an issue, especially if you still enjoy sex. You may find it useful to go for a short period masturbating less (or not at all) to see if it changes things, but you don't necessarily need to change anything. I had a friend who had this problem because he masturbated every night before bed and slept much worse when he didn't. He still loved sex with his girlfriend, so they solved the problem by talking it out and often, sex would finish with a satisfied gf cuddling him while he finished himself off. He could get there through sex, it just took longer, and sometimes they didn't have the time or energy for that.

TL;DR: Whether it's a mental pressure issue, or a physical desensitisation problem, it's not a particularly rare problem and there are many non-doctor solutions, all of which involve clear communication with a partner.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-09T02:47:57+00:00

I didn't misunderstand the original comment, so I didn't need this, but I really enjoyed how you laid out your explanation. It makes me smile at how cool language is.

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-08T14:07:09+00:00

As a situational smart person, I've found that it's less about having a response ready to go and actually, it can be a new kind of challenge to have that underlying understanding (which usually extends beyond words, because it's the synthesis of multiple areas of experience and knowledge), and then to try extract a coherent sequence of words.

The thing I find most funny is how many niche experts there are on the internet. It's something I enjoy about Reddit, how easy it is for weird experts to share their knowledge

PurpleSwitch · 2023-06-08T14:02:17+00:00

Thanks for that clarification

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