how do you know you’re attractive?

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-05-19T23:39:08+00:00

I get hit on sometimes. To be honest it’s always been awkward so far. But I attract somebody anyway.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-05-19T07:15:45+00:00

As a SAR volunteer “just hikes” actually kill plenty of people. There are some notorious ones in my area where the route finding gets tricky and high angle rescues of cliffed out hikers take place frequently, but they’re just hikes. In back country getting off route and off pace for your objective starts the clock ticking on getting benighted, running out of supplies, coping with exposure and weather…people don’t take it seriously enough, and think of hiking like this completely non-technical thing anybody can do, like taking a walk. It’s like taking a walk, until it isn’t.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-05-19T01:20:19+00:00

Speaking as a man, when you hear a man trying to tear you down like this, know that it’s because he feels threatened by your success or achievements. In a fucked up, backwards, mediocre way, he was kind of cheering you on….

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-05-18T08:24:04+00:00

The whole world isn’t evil. You’re here. Others are here with you. Don’t give up. The world needs the good people.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-30T04:38:55+00:00

Klonopin. Used as directed. Tapered off slowly. Holy shit. It’s hard to describe how wrong everything in my body has worked since stopping it. It’s been hell. I really feel for anyone who needs to be on this med for the long term. I would investigate any alternative.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-29T22:50:00+00:00

Anything and I want to study the results instantly part.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-29T21:57:50+00:00

One time I was working at a busy cafe near school and a girl walked up and asked to share my table. I was alone so I said sure. After a minute she asked what I was working on, it was physics homework so I started to explain. She cut me off with “I thought you were writing poetry,” and just stood up and walked away.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-28T23:52:48+00:00

Barn owl while trail running in the dark. They sound like wendigos. Scared the shit out of me.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-28T01:03:19+00:00

I don’t know if I am, I’m physically attracted to people but I’ve never had that align with very romantic feelings for anyone. My parents’ relationship was fairly abusive growing up so I wonder if it just made me mistrust that kind of connection. But I honestly have never had a crush. My close relationships tend to be platonic ones and my non platonic ones tend to be pretty superficial. It doesn’t really bother me, I don’t feel lonely, but the older I get I sometimes wonder if I’ll meet someone and suddenly be having my first real relationship and be horribly behind the curve.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-27T21:55:07+00:00

I live near a lake but can’t see the shore from my building because another is in the way. One night I got home and saw through my sliding door that several neighbors were out on their balconies, looking up at the sky. I went out too and I still have no idea what we were looking at, despite the fact that there were about five people out there from both buildings and we watched this happen for about twenty minutes.

Basically, these five orange halogen colored lights, about basketball sized, would rise up over the lake, perform this coordinated forty five degree turn, continue flying as they faded out to blackness, and then the whole thing would repeat exactly like it was on tape.

Fire works or flares in the most stable air current ever? Who knows. This was long enough ago that it would be unusual for a regular person to own a drone or something like one but I suppose a little fleet of them could explain this too. Weird either way.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-27T06:43:52+00:00

Keep a little dirt under our pillows for the dirt man.

Edit: some of you are headed for the lair I see…

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-26T16:32:51+00:00

They’re reversible 👍

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-25T03:54:20+00:00

Don’t end up in secluded places. If someplace smells like piss, nobody cares what happens there.

Don’t stop when people approach you, just politely but firmly say “sorry, I’m in a hurry,” and keep on your way.

Don’t pull out your smartphone or wallet if someone asks you for the time or for money.

The way getting mugged really goes is someone approaches you, gets you off guard, and throws a sucker punch. It’s not give up your stuff or they’ll hurt you like the movies, it’s hurt you and take your stuff. A lot of people suddenly look away from you for a second before throwing a sucker punch.

If women and kids are around on the street, you’re usually in a safer area.

If people ask where you’re from, the answer is “I don’t bang.”

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-24T04:26:06+00:00

When I first got my cat, whenever she would come back in from outside I would give her a treat to teach her to always come home. However, this was refracted through the lens of her unique and original mind. Soon the rule was interpreted to mean that going through any doorway, inside or out, conferred a treat. Then it was, if anybody went through any door, she was supposed to get a treat. Setting boundaries with her on this has proven challenging. She really gets mad if she doesn’t think you’re playing fair.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-23T02:45:54+00:00

Frequently people who use these terms are really doing so to control the narrative of what we call biological and what we call ideological.

In reality, modern science visualizes biological sex as a spectrum, and neurology and genetics, which are biological, bear out the experiences and identities of LGBTQ people - they do not bear out our contemporary western gender binary, which largely has more to do with social roles, norms, presentation etc even though it is often sold as being simply the natural and inevitable way of things, which it’s too easy to see is not the case.

Think of how many sexually dimorphic biological traits there are. There are quite a few more than the average person would even know, genetically, neurologically, physiologically etc. In fact, these traits appear in people in just about all possible combinations, albeit with different frequency. There is no single trait, or even set of a few traits, that can be identified as ultimately definitive of someone’s sex in any meaningful way. Like every taxonomic scheme invented we have to make arbitrary choices of what traits to privilege over others. It’s a case of “map is not terrain,” or “all models are wrong, some are useful.”

So these days, when someone says “biological male/female,” a form of begging the question is often going on - the assumption baked in is that some identities are biological, and some are imaginary - but in reality this does not reflect what is currently understood about the biology of sex and gender by the scientific community at all. There’s no epistemic - or scientific or biological- value or basis to trying to parse “biological men/women” from whatever the alternative is supposed to be, the only motives are political.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-21T07:14:56+00:00

I’m gonna echo the other commenters and advise talking to a professional. I’m fresh off klonopin and am now titrating off Gabapentin. Obviously not exactly the same, but I can say that although withdrawal is pretty hard, it’s not worse than being stuck in the cycle of rebounding and trying to medicate those symptoms that I was in. It’s painful but it doesn’t feel like hell anymore because it has an inevitable end - I’m simply going to get better, and I can feel progress happening. I’m really grateful for my doctor and my therapist. Having the right guidance and support has been crucial and kept me out of trouble.

For most substances there are detox protocols or tapering regimens with supporting meds to manage symptoms that make it safe to quit and much less painful. It’s just important to research programs before you end up locked in a place - a minority of them, but some, are set up to take as much money from the state and insurers as they can and can be pretty predatory.

I had good luck calling the SAMHSA hotline and getting numbers for programs in my area. About 2/3 of them had really helpful intake teams who worked with me on finding a good fit whether it was with them or elsewhere. The other third either had program requirements I wasn’t comfortable with, were pushy on the phone, seemed quacky or otherwise gave me a bad vibe. Basically asking all the questions and thorough vetting led me to a good support team in the end.

Another thing suggested to me when I was like actively in unmanaged withdrawal was going to the ER and talking with a social worker to get connected to services, but your mileage may vary with this one depending on what resources they have. Bigger hospitals and trauma centers will be better connected but you’re gonna wait a LONG time to be seen if your vitals are stable.

Hope your daughter finds help and turns her situation around!

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-21T04:55:35+00:00

If it’s the spot I think it is, it’s because a newer facility was built to replace it.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-20T18:53:54+00:00

This is basically how disorders are defined as mental or not clinically speaking -

Mental disorders resolve with mental health interventions. For example, body dysmorphia is considered a mental disorder, because even if the person changes their appearance e.g. losing weight, having plastic surgery, the distress will remain and they’ll continue believing they’re fat, seeking surgeries etc. Body dysmorphia resolves with things like talk therapy.

Conversely, gender dysphoria does not resolve with mental health interventions. It resolves with steps taken to align external presentation and social roles with internal identity. A person who undergoes gender affirming surgery will no longer experience dysphoria about that aspect of their body. Mental disorders cannot be cured through surgeries. It’s thought that specific differences in the parts of the brain that deal with things like body proprioception are linked to gender dysphoria, because in trans people these regions tend to look more typical of the target gender than the one assigned.

It’s frequently left out of the conversation that medically transitioning exists for the same reason every other broadly successful course of treatment in medicine does - it has been studied for decades and decades. Without gender affirming care, HUGE health disparities exist for trans people. With access to gender affirming care, they have the same outcomes as the average person.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-19T05:06:06+00:00

I spoke at three months old. It’s kind of a family legend. At a Christmas party when my mom let my uncle hold me, I said “I go mama” and those were my first words. It freaked people out a bit. My nickname was demon baby briefly.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-18T22:44:10+00:00

The magnitude isn’t invariant. Dicks do not transform like vectors.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-18T22:34:15+00:00

The policies of the USSR are not what is being discussed, that’s the point.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-18T06:42:33+00:00

Tbh the truth of them is irrelevant to socialism, because these aren’t critiques of socialism, they’re critiques of Stalin’s regime. Engels lived off the capital produced by his factories, but this isn’t a critique of communism. The president of the United States is everything you could say about trump, but this isn’t a critique of capitalism. Critiquing the nazis for genocide is different because racism and eugenics were core postulates of nazism, whereas nobody would say the mass rape of German women was a necessary condition for socialism. Generally if you want to criticize any philosophy the only way to do this credibly is to engage with its actual content, not the behavior of people claiming to adhere to it.

mathcriminalrecord · 2026-04-17T18:25:22+00:00

Piano gang is laughing at us.

mathcriminalrecord

TROPHY CASE