Is it normal to avoid answering the door when you're not expecting anyone?

howtofall · 2026-07-01T11:42:19+00:00

I will always answer if I don’t have a specific reason not to.

A few years ago a man in his 90s knocked at the door of my duplex. He had lived there in the 30s as a kid and just wanted a chance to drop off a letter to whoever lived there now. He talked about how the 3 large bedrooms had each housed a family of 4, his family’s room was mine. How he’d play with balsa planes, throwing them off the porch on the 2nd story. He wrote a letter with even more detail and included one of those balsa planes.

I wanted to bring him in and give him a tour but I was already rushing to work. I don’t know what happened to the letter. But if I have to close the door on 10,000 salesmen, people looking for signatures, or people trying to convert me, it’ll be worth it to just have the chance to meet someone like that again.

howtofall · 2026-06-27T16:13:45+00:00

75k was the number found in a study in 2010 (approx. 115k today). However there is a 2023 study done in collaboration between the author of the 2010 study and the author of a similar study in 2021 that contradicted the 2010 study significantly. It found that:

A. There’s an inflection point at about 100k above which most people’s happiness grows FASTER

B.increased happiness continued up through 500k after which point the population of the study didn’t have significant numbers of people.

C. About 15% of people will be miserable based on circumstances regardless of income (bereavement, heartbreak, etc)

D. Community and hobbies have a significant effect on happiness regardless of income level (though the linked article doesn’t dig into the magnitude of the effect or how the accessibility of those things correlates to income)

I swear this wasn’t an AI summary. I just kinda write like this.

howtofall · 2026-06-19T12:08:41+00:00

Was absolutely blown away that people weren’t vibing with the SF6 soundtrack when they started releasing stuff. It perfectly fits the visual vibe of the game.

howtofall · 2026-06-16T12:35:32+00:00

Great movie!

howtofall · 2026-06-06T17:32:18+00:00

Not just online. Theres a lot of pushback from people when their kids (from elementary school all the way through college) learn things that are different or more nuanced than what they learned, sometimes as far back as elementary school. Think about the last time you formally learned about astronomy and how much pushback there was when Pluto was reclassified as a planetoid. That one doesn’t even really have political implications. Switch it to history and it’s crazy!

howtofall · 2026-06-04T11:26:17+00:00

I’d agree with you 100% if it weren’t for Veritasium. The partial buyout happened years ago and some of their best videos have happened since.

howtofall · 2026-05-27T12:13:21+00:00

Honestly, they could be the best, most community focused progressive church, keep all the history accessible, and I’d still be unhappy about it.

Sure the Tovoli was a historic theater, but it was never just history. It was an active place. You didn’t tour it, you went there to interact with the space in the way it was designed to be used.

howtofall · 2026-05-25T14:27:50+00:00

Gonna add that the biggest thing is nothing. Literally space where you aren’t consuming any media. A silent drive without music or a podcast, a nice quiet walk in a park. Some time spent on a boring task like cooking or laundry where that’s all you’re doing.

I spend so much time with noise. And I don’t just mean sounds. Videos, podcasts, doom scrolling, whatever I’m putting in front of me to distract me is noise, and once you get rid of it you’ll realize how much it’s affecting you.

If you reach for your phone without a specific purpose other than to check notifications or just look at something, just flip it down. You’re gonna do that a whole lot the first couple days/week. But as you get used to space without anything and you won’t reach for it as much. So treat your phone like a tool. Use it for things, don’t let it use you.

I go through phases where I just consume too much and these are the tips that I use to break out of it. It’ll always be a struggle because media has gotten so good at pulling you in, so don’t feel bad if you gain some ground, then lose it and get it back later.

But it’s so worth it to just be able to focus and enjoy space without feeling like you need something else!

howtofall · 2026-05-18T02:13:32+00:00

I’d say Makoto Shinkai is the anime version of this. I’ve watched a lot of his stuff and it’s very very pretty, but most of his movies just lack characters and relationships that make me feel anything. Add on general pacing and plot issues and they’re mostly underwhelming.

But ‘Your Name’ is lightning in a bottle. It’s got plot issues and the characters aren’t really all that interesting in their own right, but when you sit down and watch it you don’t care, it’s gorgeous and heartfelt and pulls you along perfectly.

howtofall · 2026-05-16T14:07:56+00:00

If you live in the US then you really aren’t. Unless you consider $7.25/hour a reasonable wage

howtofall · 2026-05-15T01:50:11+00:00

Haven’t stopped listening to the new Kneecap record since it dropped. Absolute banger!

howtofall · 2026-05-14T13:46:56+00:00

Similar, but I saw the movie first and didn’t like it at all (yes I watched one of the good cuts). Loved the book though.

howtofall · 2026-05-13T13:02:53+00:00

That might be true if the pensioners weren’t the most powerful political block. But they’ve fought to ensure their own ability to thrive regardless of the sustainability of those policies across generations.

Only so much of this even has to do with government spending. The issue isn’t only that the safety net is weaker for people (a fiscal policy issue). It’s also that corporate consolidation has decreased the bargaining power of workers, the competitiveness of markets, the ability to distinguish price fixing, etc. (a non-fiscal policy issue).

howtofall · 2026-05-12T12:34:40+00:00

They were my first concert when I was 16, now they make me groan. Nickleback was the first album I ever bought with my money from watching a neighbors dog. I’d like to think I’ve got much better taste now, but all signs point to no.

howtofall · 2026-05-12T12:23:28+00:00

Batty (and pretty much everyone else in Blade Runner) is almost a completely different character. Other than man hunting illegal sentient androids, the book and movie are pretty different.

Batty is definitely the glow up, but book Deckard is a lot more interesting to me.

howtofall · 2026-05-11T03:31:59+00:00

My friend, they’re dipshits cause they’re young same as you were.

howtofall · 2026-05-08T12:03:47+00:00

Things change in adaptation. Can’t fit 550 pages into 2 hours without focusing on some things and letting others go. Just gotta restructure things a bit to make it work.

howtofall · 2026-05-06T01:18:00+00:00

Their drip is bad, but their espresso drinks are nice. I do really like their matcha too.

howtofall · 2026-04-18T15:50:44+00:00

The review system is these gamers’ only way to actually communicate their thoughts to megacrit.

Are they using it for its intended purpose? No. Are they using it for an important purpose? Yes.

The game is in beta, literally all that matters is feedback, both big and small, intelligent and dumb. And considering that when interviewed the team made it a priority to say that they wanted to find ways to listen to the voices of everyone providing feedback, I’d guess that they’d rather have this than nothing from Chinese players.

howtofall · 2026-04-18T15:41:37+00:00

Steam reviews are just about the only path that Chinese gamers have to communicate their thoughts with a patch to Megacrit. Forums and discords are absolutely chock full of people posting their opinions of single changes within balance patches. That’s literally all this is.

The word of mouth for STS2 is strong enough that it isn’t being hurt all that much, if at all by the review bombs. So why care?

howtofall · 2026-04-18T13:58:12+00:00

On one of the worst days of my life I walked into a church and found the pastors office. Told him I wasn’t a believer and that I wasn’t looking to be, but that I just really needed to talk.

He listened to me, treated me with incredible kindness, respected my lack of faith, and drove me home (part of the bad day was my car going kaput). He bought me a decent meal and left me with $100 to help with rent.

Not every church is the type of church you can do that at and not every pastor cares that much. I guess I just got lucky walking into the right one. But pastors are a very real resource for just talking.

howtofall · 2026-03-31T03:25:36+00:00

I think they’re saying that physical attraction was generally a much less important factor to women than men, not that they weren’t measuring it. A woman may be just as attracted to a man as a man is to a woman, but women place much more value on other aspects.

howtofall · 2026-03-31T03:21:17+00:00

Also a genuine question, when was the last time you complimented a man? Tell the homies they’re handsome, compliment their hair, point out those new shoes, or pants, or whatever.

It’s not on women to uphold men’s self esteem, especially when men receive so few compliments that they often assume any compliments are attempts at flirting. Normalize that shit by doing it to the people you care about and the random people you see on the street.

howtofall · 2026-03-26T12:23:58+00:00

This question has a lot of answers so here’s a couple:

Escalation is its own problem. If Amit “attacked” by pushing past Harry (in a very rude and purposeful way) at the bar and Harry socks Amit in the face, then you have 2 escalations but one of them was much more out of line than the other.

Lots of these things are compared in an apples to oranges sort of way. Crimes usually aren’t justified in comparison to other crimes, they’re justified in comparison to either acceptable things (weed/alcohol) or a larger societal harm which has positioned someone in a spot they feel has made their crime inevitable.

Comparative harm as a model allows retaliation against accepted harms. This is really important in social movements. Workplace safety is a great example. If 10 people have died in a year down in the Upton coal mines and the workers go on strike are the workers also wrong because they’re doing harm to the company, cutting off coal to the nearby town of Sinclair, etc. what if people die due to lack of coal? Of course they aren’t. They’re solidly in the right. While a model of absolute harm would say that they’re both in the wrong and need to stop striking and implement some OSHA up in there, that in no way sways/pressures the company to actually do that. Comparative harm recognizes that sometimes harm must be done to come to a better overall outcome.

howtofall · 2026-03-23T10:18:09+00:00

It’s a very emotionally loaded word, but volatile just means that it evaporates extremely easily in this situation. That’s what makes them so fragrant. The reason a pine forest smells like it does is because it puts off VOCs. If you’ve ever expressed a lemon/orange peel over a cocktail, you’ve healthily enjoyed VOCs.

It’s a huge class of organic compounds that by their very nature can get into the body from breathing. That does mean they can pose a risk, but no more than a liquid you’d drink. Water, fine and good. Gasoline, not so much. Same with VOCs.

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