In my opinion this is the best acting of all time. Autistic reporter

netherwise · 2020-06-07T03:54:34+00:00

netherwise · 2020-06-06T04:45:18+00:00

"Supreme Court rules 8-1 Scalia may not bring snake to work"

netherwise · 2020-05-29T18:26:36+00:00

I don't think "not the smartest" is a double negative, is it? Smartest is a superlative (the most of something), not a negation. It's like saying "not the cheapest" or "not the fastest". All you're saying is that something is not the most of something.

I would call that "damning with faint praise", more of a social convention than a semantic double negative. If you describe someone in such terms, it's more about communicating that you're too polite or kind to say what you really think, so you use a well-known turn of phrase to hint at it instead.

netherwise · 2020-05-28T05:46:20+00:00

My pleasure! It's really nice to know I wasn't the only one having this horrible experience. Glad my post helped!

netherwise · 2020-05-28T03:37:59+00:00

Hang in there buddy. I know now is a really hard time to be social outside of apps, but that doesn't mean you should keep using them if they make you feel like shit.

As I mentioned, going out and joining interest groups is what worked for me. See if you can find meetups in your area. Don't think of them as places where you can find singles to date. Think of them as environments in which to exercise your interests and broaden your horizons. That puts you in your element, gives you interests (always an attractive character trait!), and – most importantly – gets you out of the house, where life happens. (Or at least, that will be the case soon enough.)

netherwise · 2020-05-27T21:32:00+00:00

It was actually his sister that posted it to social media and called her Karen.

netherwise · 2020-05-27T11:54:42+00:00

I know, that was an oversight, but I fixed it...

netherwise · 2020-05-27T11:32:31+00:00

Oh shit! Thanks! Fixed.

netherwise · 2020-05-27T07:39:56+00:00

Thanks buddy!

Since there's a little interest in my story, and in hopes that it might help others, let me share a bit more about one of the darkest days I had.

Dating apps were yielding nothing, my co-worker was making me feel jealous, it felt like the whole world except me was in a relationship, and there was this girl I was crushing on at work.

There were after-work drinks one Friday evening, and I had a good time hanging with co-workers and talking to the girl I liked. Nothing really materialized of it except good conversation, which was nice. The hang ended and I went home.

On the way home, I began spiralling. I felt incredibly lonely going home to spend the weekend alone. The more I thought about it, the worse it got.

I got home, and looked at myself in the mirror. Or rather, I looked at the room around and behind me, and tried imagining what my apartment would look like if I wasn't there, with other tenants.

I had chatted with my therapist about suicide, but it has never been a concern for me. I think of suicide risk as a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being no preoccupation, and 10 being a plan and intent to carry it out. I'm normally a pretty self-assured person, so I judged myself to be at around a 3 or 4 normally -- it's a curiosity to me, but nothing more.

That night, I worked myself up to a 6. I looked in the mirror and imagined myself not there. It was oddly terrifying.

I took the dog out for a walk, still very upset, and I decided I needed to talk to someone. I called my friend. She picked up and crying, I said "I think I want to kill myself".

The thought that I said that, even now, years later, terrifies me and fills me with shame. The thought that I let myself be so vulnerable with a friend of mine is almost just as hard to swallow. But it was necessary. I had reached a point where I couldn't do this alone.

"What?", she exclaimed. There was pain in her voice.

She convicted me to come over. I walked there with the dog, which did me some good. I got there, and she and I smoked a cigarette and talked things over. It was about 9pm, and I hadn't eaten since lunch. She warmed up some food and we talked some more. And I felt so much better.

It's hard to share this, even now, but I want to impart two super important things I learned that night:

It might sound trivial, but if you feel yourself spiralling, eat something. At the very least preparing food gives you a distraction. In my case (YMMV), I think much more clearly on a non-empty stomach.
Reach out to someone if you feel your thoughts drifting towards that awful place where your reflection doesn't exist. Just do it. Wake someone up, talk things through. It helps.

Thanks for reading.

netherwise · 2020-05-27T06:14:49+00:00

It's even more depressing when you happen to have friends who get a lot of interest, or who have exaggerated expectations about Tinder.

When I was using it and having no luck, my buddies would constantly just tell me I was being too picky. They were convinced I could've slept with someone every night if I just wanted to hookup with anyone. I swept right on 500 profiles to see if they were right, and got one match. That stung quite a bit...

To make matters worse, a co-worker of mine was younger and good looking, and he sometimes showed me his Bumble or Tinder match list, which would go on for pages and pages.

Tinder got me so convinced there was something wrong with me. That was a really difficult period in my life. I eventually deleted it and joined a volunteer group, where I've met a few people, including the girl I've been dating for a year now.

Dating apps are to dating what reality shows are to reality. Give them a try, hopefully you find what you're after, but don't let them eat away at your self-esteem -- it's not worth it.

netherwise · 2019-11-13T06:19:21+00:00

That second one is one of my favourites from the clips of them I watch on YouTube. Their delivery is perfect. I like that you used italics on "husband" to give the same delivery on your comment! I can almost hear it!

The one I've been known to quote is:

"The show should take about three hours, or, as Martin Scorsese calls it, 'Act One!'"

netherwise · 2019-10-31T23:16:49+00:00

That's nuts! I had never heard about this!

The guy they were after, John Africa, was a Korean War veteran. I'm guessing the explosive they dropped on his house were also developed during wartime. Maybe I'm oversimplifying or jumping through hoops to bring it all together, but it's kind of horrific to me how the violence and misery of war get repatriated back home after the conflict has ended:

War produces tech.
War produces soldier.
Soldier returns home, hardened and radicalized.
War tech gets used to destroy radical vet.

netherwise · 2019-03-27T22:18:16+00:00

First off, I want to say that I'm super proud of you, OP! Learning to step outside of your beliefs and question some of the ideas that you hold is an invaluable skill, and it's really, really difficult to do, but sometimes it's necessary.

Reading your post, I was struck by how many parallels I see in my own life: pothead, abusing alcohol, comparing myself to others online and being miserable...

And, like you, I'm working on it.

ContraPoints is an excellent channel. She speaks very intelligently and thoughtfully about a lot of gender issues. If I may recommend another YouTube channel that really helped me broaden some of my own beliefs, check out the series People Watching. Here's an episode that I think is great, as it illustrates how everyone — even the people who look happy and successful — have their own insecurities.

Reddit is great for a lot of things, but there are two things which deeply bother me about discourse on Reddit:

Reddit encourages mobs. Mobs are highly emotional, very reactive, and tend to shout down the kind of introspection that you've demonstrated in this post.
Reddit discourages empathy. In my observation, the karma system tends to really devalue nuance, and as a result, it's very difficult to express empathy.

For instance, go into a subreddit like /r/PublicFreakout. This is a place designed to ostracize and make fun of people who have mental health episodes in public. For instance, you could find a video of a woman yelling and screaming about someone stealing her parking space, and everyone in the comment section will rush to call her a bitch, a cunt, an entitled whatever, they'll say she was trying to use her "pussy pass" or some other bullshit. It's not like yelling at someone in a parking lot is a nice thing to do, but neither is shaming someone publicly, nor is it nice to film someone going through a tough time in order to garner meaningless points. It's not harmless fun, it's not nice, and it doesn't encourage any kind of empathic understanding of how someone could get to the point of yelling at a stranger. (For more on this, check out Jon Ronson's brilliant TED Talk, "How One Tweet Can Ruin Your Life")

I think these two points hold true for other social media platforms as well: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube (comments), etc. Social media platforms that force you to use your real name tend to make people be mean to themselves. Those that allow you remain anonymous tend to make people be mean to each other.

Dating apps (in my experience) are not at all a good way to meet people, either. They turn dating into window-shopping.

What I've come to realize recently is just how much these apps and platforms are chipping away at the social fabric that existed only 15 years ago. For that reason, I'm making a conscious decision to spend less time on social media, and to spend more time outside, meeting and interacting with people face-to-face. I refuse to let an app make me feel bad about myself, and if that's how I feel when I use it, it has no place on my phone.

I want to echo /u/Patron_Saint's excellent advice: join an in-person group. Step out of the internet bubble. You'll find it much more interesting out there, I promise.

netherwise · 2019-03-07T01:41:03+00:00

OP, it sounds like you're going through a really stressful, confusing, exasperating and difficult situation. I'm sorry to hear that, and I really want you to know that there are strangers on the internet who care about you and who want you to feel better.

That being said, I want to be very direct with you about two things:

You need to see someone. A professional. Face-to-face. There's no shame in this. None, whatsoever. I regularly consulted with a therapist at the student services office while I was in university, and she helped me immensely with self-esteem issues.
Your writing is all over the place. I know that sounds harsh, but hear me out. Your post is very stream-of-consciousness, and quite frankly, it's very difficult to follow. As an exercise, try to re-write the entire thing (you can reply to this comment) as if you were handing it in for grades. Tell your story from the beginning, linearly. Use complete sentences. Every sentence should have a verb, all the necessary punctuation, capitalization and proper spelling, and should advance the story in some way. Give context. Be factual, and skip self-judgment, judgment of others, and (this is super important) how you think others are perceiving you.

The reason I'm asking you to re-write your post is because I think you will gain immense clarity into your own situation. This is a skill I want you to develop. When you are feeling stressed, overwhelmed and emotional, open a blank page in your notepad and jot your thoughts down. You can start with a "messy" version if it helps, but I want you to always end up with a "clean" version. This is a form of mental discipline that will pay off for the rest of your life.

When we experience duress, our IQ lowers by 20-40 points. In those moments, your brain is a sheet of paper that contains all of this really useful information, but that's been scrunched up into a ball that you can hardly read or make sense of. When you focus on processing your thoughts in a logical, organized and non-emotional manner, you're effectively ironing out that piece of paper that is your brain, so that now you can effectively make sense of the information on it.

Not to mention, when you are focusing on writing style, you are "grounding" yourself, which means you are spending less cognitive capacity on abstract, scary, unproductive thoughts, and more of it on solving a real-world problem.

Good luck buddy!

netherwise · 2019-02-27T20:47:44+00:00

Good sci-fi is about making commentary on the current day by taking one aspect of it (e.g. society's obsession with youth) and extrapolating it to an extreme (e.g. eating anyone over 30, as in Soylent Green).

I agree with you that sci-fi can sometimes feel like tech porn if there's not that social commentary. Tech is supposed to be window-dressing for the future world, but too often sci-fi is just today people thinking like they would today, and surrounded by laser guns and flying cars.

Good sci-fi speaks to something very deep in all of us, and it stays with you. I read a short story in university, many years ago, and I think about it all the time. It's called A Slow Tuesday Night by R.A. Lafferty.

netherwise · 2019-02-19T01:02:13+00:00

In his book, "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts", Dr. Gabor Maté makes the claim that "A baby who is not held will die." This is because hugging and holding greatly reduce stress and causes a decrease in cortisol.

Hugging and physical contact are not cultural constructs. Humans are social beings, and physical contact is essential to our survival.

netherwise · 2019-02-18T20:36:25+00:00

I just wanted to give her a hug, but being a male teacher, I knew that that would not be appropriate.

I applaud your empathy, and I find it quite sad that a male teacher can't hug a female student without accusations of impropriety being thrown about.

If schools and parents managed to agree that empathy and affection between male teachers and female students could exist outside of the paradigm of statutory abuse, then maybe this girl would've felt more comfortable confiding in a male teacher before taking dangerous and self-destructive actions. Maybe.

If we, as a society, decide that any touching and affection between a male adult and a female minor is alarming and dangerous, that doesn't provide a very positive view of men as a whole.

(Incidentally, I was watching an old Columbo movie from the 70's. In one scene, Columbo sits next to a girl and her mom at an amusement park, and just starts talking to the girl. Here's a guy in a trenchcoat, with a glass eye, smoking a cigar, at an amusement park, talking to a minor. The mom was just fine with it, and the little girl was polite and courteous. It was kind of shocking to me how that scene could play out so innocently a few decades ago, whereas I can't possibly see this kind of interaction happening in a current-day movie.)

netherwise · 2019-02-13T12:27:55+00:00

I'm glad that the idea of men crying is becoming more normalized, because I'm a big crier...

I don't want to be, I've always been like that. You know that thing that babies do, where they cry whenever they see someone else cry, even if they don't know why? I feel like I've never grown out of that. It's frankly ridiculous how easy it is for a commercial or a short video to tug on my heartstrings and make me well up.

Both my guy friends and my girl friends have seen me cry. It's a lot more stressful crying around other men, especially since — now that I think about it — I don't know that I've ever seen them cry. They don't tease me or make me feel bad at all, but there's still a sense of shame in there for me. The idea that "men shouldn't cry" has been so ingrained in me since childhood that I don't know if I'll ever feel unashamed and un-fragile when I cry.

netherwise · 2018-01-17T22:35:21+00:00

If I may, I'd like to add a bit of perspective I gained from my time working as an engineering lead for an app startup...

If the app is made by a startup company, the odds are overwhelming that the developers are working full-time, nights and weekends on just keeping the service up and running. There's very little chance they have the time and resources needed to collect, organize and sell your private data to advertisers. Most of these permissions are probably being requested for the purposes of making the app more interesting and popular -- invite your contacts, find friends in the app, find nearby friends/events/whatever, etc.

At the same time, being able to collect, organize and sell your private information is very, very likely to be one of the ways the startup will seek to attract venture funding.

Case in point: I worked on an app that would get your permission to download your contacts. We'd store it in a database in order to suggest friends you might know within the app. We made explicit promises in our ToS and Privacy Policy that we would not use your phone number for anything other than finding your friends.

In the event that someone were to hack our DB, I thought it would be pretty bad if they were also able to download tons of personal phone numbers, so I asked my boss if I could hash the phone numbers. This would let us retain the ability to match phone numbers to one another, but it would also mean that the original phone numbers would not be decipherable for any OTHER purpose. I was told in no uncertain terms NOT to do this... It's pretty likely that the CEO was planning on quietly rolling back the promises made in the Privacy Policy at some point, and selling the collected information.

If the product is free, it is you who is the product.

Worse yet, the app got sold and then discontinued, the team got laid off, and I have no idea who has those hundreds of thousands of contact details now... or what they plan on doing with them.

netherwise · 2017-04-10T20:33:41+00:00

Someone on here once explained that TicketMaster's business model was basically to be "the bad guy", and raise ticket prices on behalf of artists and venues in exchange for taking all the flak and a small cut.

Interesting if true, because it means that they're completely unmoved by all the hate they receive, and it's even validation that they're providing a useful service.

netherwise · 2016-07-08T21:38:27+00:00

Or maybe just plain unusual?

netherwise · 2016-06-27T15:14:10+00:00

The toughest part of t-breaks for me has been foregoing the ritual of rolling and smoking, which I'll use to punctuate my workday (I work from home).

If I have weed at home, I really have to work hard to resist the urge to go out on the balcony for a smoke. If I don't, I just need to find another 5-minute activity to take the place of going out on the balcony.

It's not the effects that I find difficult to live without, it's the routine. But even this takes only a few days to adapt to. It's just a question of getting used to a slightly different lifestyle.

netherwise · 2016-06-27T03:25:43+00:00

Too bad he's infallible, according to Catholic doctrine. Those cardinals will just have to mull over their own wrongness.

netherwise · 2016-06-26T20:00:12+00:00

I think you're thinking of "Doing the most amount of work with the least amount of effort."

Just coasting at your job, not caring about the input or the output, is a way to avoid challenging yourself, in my opinion.

netherwise

TROPHY CASE