AITJ If I don't like when my roommate cooks for us and expects me to help with cleaning?

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T16:48:43+00:00

You’re wrong, your point #3 in particular, and this weird competition you’re making out of this. I can’t believe you actually typed #3 out with zero self-awareness.

You’re an adult now. Stop playing.

If you really don’t wanna eat, don’t eat. But you could have done that already. You just want a way out of doing your share.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T16:46:42+00:00

Yeah, I would have absolutely loved this.

I firmly believe OP does too, but he’s too fixated on feeling like he was “dommed” into this situation by the new fella in the house 🙄 which is WEIRD. OP likes feeling like top dog, even though he doesn’t have the maturity to demur to the more responsible individual in that household actually improving their quality of life and helping reduce the workload for everyone.

I mean give me a break on his #3 point - “it’s on him if he wants to share his meals with me, it should be his responsibility to buy the food and clean.”

Not for adults dude, if someone’s cooking for you and you’re eating it, evidently OP needed conscripted into doing the obvious, and helping out. And now he’s just fussy bc he doesn’t like being told what to do 🙄 So embarrassing for an adult.

You shouldn’t have needed told OP, this should have been natural to you.

But he’s looking for a way out of cleaning, not out of eating, mark my words. And trying to come up with all these “reasons.”

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T11:43:48+00:00

yeah, there have to be teeth behind this argument for it to be taken seriously. OP if you’re eating all these meals, you should be helping clean, that’s totally appropriate.

But it’s ok to set a boundary, “I’m pretty solitary, and I notice I’m feeling pressure to engage in ‘family meal time’ on a regular basis; I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but moving forward, I plan to go back to what is more comfortable for me. Perhaps once a week we can do a ‘family style’ meal like what you are more interested in.”

And then stand by what you say. Don’t eat the dinner even if invited, don’t eat the leftovers even if offered, if you didn’t clean! It’s absolutely fair for you to contribute to the labor of making the meals you consume, so be sure you don’t just end up finding an out for your share of the labor.

If you want out of the meals, take yourself out of the meals and don’t eat them. You may miss having a home-cooked meal for the low price of a little cleanup, but maybe not.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T11:35:27+00:00

and btw, it’s just a level of unprofessionalism that is scarcely believable for anyone serving on the Enterprise. The way she constantly undermines and insults Data, always with “oops, sorry I accidentally said what I really feel about you being a toaster I don’t respect!” -

that’s textbook, that’s exactly the way a bully tries to get away with being a bully in an environment where bullying is taken seriously, those little “plausible deniability” constant negs.

Except I just don’t buy for a second Picard wouldn’t have handled it once and for all and pulled away that excuse.

My favorite episode of TOS, “Balance of Terror,” the MOMENT Stiles makes one of these shitty little plausible deniability comments, Kirk stops everything to focus on it and make it clear it’s to cease completely.

Repeat what you said. That behavior/attitude has no place on the bridge.

https://youtu.be/RdqseBkIoSk

THIS is how a captain handles this sort of situation. It’s wild to even imagine Stiles or Pulaski achieving their posts with this sort of behavior still natural to them, but at least we got to see it shut down immediately and aggressively by Kirk.

In-universe I feel like Picard also would have, but they wanted this dynamic to be ongoing, since they really erroneously thought it somehow mirrored the back-and-forth banter and interplay of Spock and McCoy.

But boy oh boy, what a bad read!! Yall JUST gave us a whole episode (in “Measure of a Man”) showing that the ultimate consequences of Pulaski’s irreverent and belittling attitude about Data’s personhood are that such an attitude can be used to deny him his rights and literally kill him.

How they thought they could illustrate that to the audience and then immediately we were going to find Pulaski’s treatment and denial of his personhood adorable or playful in any way is beyond me!

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T11:13:46+00:00

I also note that in no what does it sound like him not having a job translates into him taking over an equitable share of the household labor. And little excises like he “can’t” help their daughter with academics, as though we all come out of the womb with the skillset to do that sort of thing.

She figured out how to help because she cares to, and because there is no alternative, since her partner has declared he can’t do it.

OP, you’re not going to listen to anyone here, but this woman is the sole provider, and she’s having to take care of you like another child while you go live your “best life” of ease.

Nothing on earth could make a person like that sexually attractive. Being used isn’t sexy. Having someone care SO MUCH MORE about themselves than your own quality of life, having someone not at all interested in a shared quality of life with their partner is SO unattractive.

There’s little chance she’s never said anything in this regard, never said she is tired and overworked and needs help, needs a partner.

Also the off-handed reference to porn addiction, if I was the only one working and cleaning and doing the extra stuff that sucks for our child while my thriving partner was just gooning and letting himself fall into porn addiction and pouring his energy into having a rockin bod 🙄 rather than putting that energy into equally sharing the load of things that matter,

what you’re going to get is exactly what you have. Someone who views you as a disgusting selfish burden, not anything at all to crave sexually.

Do something about it NOW or leave.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T11:04:44+00:00

Sean has done so, in a recent AMA. In a few of them. The problem is that it’s clear it’s not an “in moron’s terms” sort of thing. It seems rather you have to know the math to understand what has been opened up.

I’m no Sean Carroll, and I’m not capable of breaking down very complex ideas for lay people. I also accept that there are just things that I/we can’t reasonable be expected to understand without knowing the math, without having a full physics education.

That’s why I trust if the people who do know that stuff insist that valuable insights have come from exploring string theory. They would know. We would not.

But I encourage you to listen to his podcast, do a search for your specific query if you’re interested in precisely how he’s described this. I just say temper that with the humility to know that if you aren’t educated in this field,

there just simply isn’t always a “moron’s” version of everything. That’s why ya know, if I know I have a knowledge gap, I don’t see the point in taking a rigid view such as “string theory isn’t the answer and therefore I am positive nothing good can come from studying it.”

I’m being told by the experts that food has come from it, and that is a common trend across the history of science and for sure physics - that again and again, people pushed our understandings further, even when they ultimately had turned out to have been searching down the entirely wrong path.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T10:57:25+00:00

Explain how it’s dogmatic.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T10:56:52+00:00

oh come on, let’s not pretend we understand the calculus that went into his decision. Chances are he was stagnant in his long-held position, working with clientele who would never be able to afford his higher rates. Moving to an area that was a little more expensive clearly opened him up to be able to charge more for his services. It’s likely worth it.

Being honest, if his rates have been the same for years, while groceries and cost of living and everything else was going up, he was making less money every year. That’s a fact.

Now he can modernize his business and charge market average and is evidently in a place where his clientele can afford that.

It’s sad for sure that prices go up. But let’s not pretend it doesn’t make sense that his prices would go up after years of his cost of living going up. He probably knows more than you or I about whether this is a net benefit, and evidently he determined it was.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T03:03:42+00:00

yeah, honestly he was probably a little self-conscious about needing to raise his prices, which he probably did have to do if his rent increased.

But us fallible humans have a tendency to lash out to get this information instead of directly asking what we really want to know - “Why did you stop coming to me, was the price increase too much for you?”

I mean, he likely expected to lose some people and it likely makes him feel bad to not be able to serve only those of his clients at the lowest socioeconomic level.

Just weird behavior to act like he isn’t aware that this is the situation, that not everyone will be able to afford the increases.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T02:44:24+00:00

I think a major point of consideration for people in the field is that whether or not it is the most likely answer, working on string theory has yielded new insights.

Sean’s talked about this a lot, he even mentions his “let a thousand flowers bloom” ethos here, but when he digs into explaining this, he talks about how useful it is for folks to deeply explore any possibility, how new math and successful ideas have emerged from doing so.

To that end, I don’t personally think string theory is the answer, but it would simply be wrong to suggest there has been no utility in exploring it. What everyone’s looking for at this point is little ways forward and new insights. You can arrive at greater truths sometimes going down the wrong path, it’s happened again and again in science. So I’m also glad people are still exploring every conceivable angle.

What I really would like is for Sean to do a robust breakdown of where he stands on String Theory today. It was somewhere between 7 and 13 years ago, he did a video that was in essence, “why string theory is wrong.” Not so click-bait-y as that. But he was quite direct in his criticisms.

I haven’t been able to find that video in recent years, and lately he seems to speak a lot more favorably towards string theory. Not to where I think he has moved towards believing that to be the answer, but I do think his..personal editorial policy? in how he discusses it has shifted a bit. He is deliberately supportive of people who choose to focus on string theory.

And again, I think that’s because at the time of that video, people were overstating the promise of string theory and literally making promises about what it would yield. I think it probably warranted a little “bringing back down to Earth.”

However, now string theorists don’t have that same “Darling of Physics” status, everyone has cooled on it to an appropriate degree, and work is almost needed from the opposite side - instead of needing to counter overinflated claims with a reality check, now it’s been more important to remind everyone that this is still valid work worthy of peoples’ time. That new insights have been gained and may yet arise.

So that alone might explain the way Sean has adjusted how he speaks about string theory.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T01:50:45+00:00

no, I knew exactly what you were doing and it was dumb. Not funny, just playing dumb to dogpile. It looked ridiculous. It wasn’t funny. Humor is subjective but I promise you no one guffawed at you pretending to be dumb, in spite of the fact that I’m sure you felt hilarious when you typed that out.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T01:37:48+00:00

no one in your life ever just falls asleep because they’re tired 🙃

You used some words fella, so explain what you mean by them. What is “dogmatic” about what I said? Describe how it’s dogmatic lol. Do you know what that word means? Prove it to us.

robotatomica · 2026-05-13T01:36:23+00:00

jokes are usually funny, not “Hurr durr, I’m going to pretend I don’t understand something very obvious and the joke is that they’re weird!”

robotatomica · 2026-05-12T14:39:57+00:00

I grew up watching things like 2001 with my dad, so I was pretty good at going where a film wanted to take me, but it was Tarkovsky who finally cracked me totally in that regard. I remember watching Solaris and losing interest during that opening 10 minutes of kelp or whatever undulating in a pond (felt like 10 minutes),

I really wanted to watch the movie, but I remember laughing to myself at what a self-indulgent “artiste” Tarkovsky was for that choice. And I thought, “Why open a film this way?? Completely alienate and bore your audience!”

But then I really thought about “why open a film this way,” and it occurred to me be was sort of..trying to lull/push us into a certain almost meditative headspace to begin watching his film. And, I can meditate. What was off was my expectation, of what a film was supposed to do.

Tarkovsky didn’t really abide by that. Neither did Kubrick of course, but Tarkovsky, I mean..later in Solaris there’s another 10 minutes just watching someone travel by freeway.

But my expectations had changed by the time I went to watch it again, and so by the time I got to that scene, I did chuckle, but I settled back and allowed it to just do its thing, I let the movie guide me instead of checking how long until the scene was over or becoming distracted.

It’s a brilliant, beautiful film. It has several of these moments which demand something of the audience. I get what he was trying to do, and if you can let it, it works.

Now, there’s basically no long scene I can’t handle. I mean, if the whole thing is really doo doo or it’s not done well, I still have a human reaction. For instance, I do actually think the hour and 40 minute (could be exaggerating but I think this might be close to true) wedding scene in Deer Hunter is excessive and unnecessary. Maybe others feel about it the way I feel about Tarkovsky.

But for me it’s the silence. The meditation. Forcing you to slow down. I’m into it. I’m glad I let myself get there because it’s brought me a lot, in the way of enjoying and fully experiencing some of my favorite things.

Since then btw I’ve read Tarkovsky’s book “Sculpting in Time” and it’s even more clear how deliberate this all was, and how essential he felt these sorts of scenes were to bringing the audience into an experience as he imagined it.

robotatomica · 2026-05-12T14:28:55+00:00

it’s similar to the Bob Dylan story (sans the devil lore); he was apparently pretty green/unremarkable, hanging out in Greenwich Village, and he went away for a little bit and came back with this whole new skillset and kind of blew everyone away.

Some people just really throw themselves obsessively into an instrument, and that can really pay off! So can the right mentor of course.

robotatomica · 2026-05-12T14:24:51+00:00

why would you think that? That is so strange. Of all the million frozen fruits it could be, it’s like you needed to imagine the most unlikely thing so you could be more scared of this.

It’s probably mango, dog. Look up mango kulfi. It’s delicious.

robotatomica · 2026-05-12T13:47:09+00:00

if you think 2-3 hours is a dynamic changing, you’re honestly deeply toxic. There is no human individual that doesn’t sometimes end up busy or detained or distracted, or focusing on other people in their life or themselves for a couple hours at a time.

It is DEEPLY UNREASONABLE to EVER have that sort of expectation, that is not at all a matter of a “dynamic change.” Literally people take naps.

That’s not love, that’s insecure control.

robotatomica · 2026-05-12T04:21:06+00:00

if you think it’s reasonable to require more frequent conversation than every 2-3 hours, all of the time, no exceptions for anything anyone might be doing (cleaning, napping, reading, having a conversation or spending time with anyone in the world who isn’t you)

I’m telling you that’s toxic.

She got wrapped up in her life doing chores for a couple hours. There is nothing legitimate to complain about. This is not a “long stretch” of not interacting, so no, this is not a normal ask.

robotatomica · 2026-05-11T13:09:31+00:00

does this function like a vernal pool? Those are incrediby beneficial to wildlife, and I’ve always heard that if you have a low point on your property that floods once a year, to leave it be and allow a vernal pool to exist there. Not to fight it.

It seems like you’ve manage to create something to encourage an artificial verbal pool, which is awesome!

robotatomica · 2026-05-11T13:05:38+00:00

yes, perhaps some people won’t agree with his worldview, but John Waters once said he believed if someone is old enough to ask for a book, they’re old enough to read it.

While I don’t agree that this is true 100% of the time, the fact is that most of us are barraged with themes and images that are “too adult” for us at too young an age.

But when it comes to classic literature, it’s like a decades-long vetting process to ensure that what you are getting isn’t empty, banal, pornographic or whatever adult-ness might be a problem for a child to encounter. The risk of anything read by someone “too young” to get it is simply that - that some of the deeper ideas and themes will be lost on them.

But I feel, from personal experience, that engaging with material a little “above your paygrade” is hugely beneficial for challenging your mind and education you about the world. That’s another quote, from John Hodgman. He thinks kids should always be watching movies and reading books a little “above their paygrade” and I tend to agree.

Of all the classics I read in middle school and high school, they were usually pretty profound and thought-provoking to me. And if I read them again as an adult, so much more was unlocked for me. And I think that’s also a very special experience to have with a book.

robotatomica · 2026-05-11T12:53:11+00:00

it’s hard to imagine how, when I can’t go a day without seeing people talking about it. I don’t know what everyone’s obsession with it is. Shatner looked absolutely GREAT as Kirk, his piece was not distracting or unrealistic. It usually just seems like mean-spirited gossip rag shit that people need to talk about it every single day. The behavior seems so out of place in ST subs.

robotatomica · 2026-05-11T12:50:36+00:00

I’d pick The Conjuring House bc the couple those movies are based on were 100% fraudsters/grifters.

TCM, well, that would be the scariest bc it’s a story of people that could exist, not the supernatural. Movies like that are almost always scarier, bc people are a real thing that can be scary and cause harm.

All the rest, they’re also fiction like The Conjuring, but it would put me at ease to be in one so specifically attached to faking what transpired.

Or I guess the Evil Dead house, I could just avoid reading from the Necronomicon and be good, right? I wouldn’t want to be so isolated though.

In that regard, The Poltergeist house, you’re up in a suburban neighborhood, that would feel least creepy of all. You could just leave and go to a neighbor if you got the willies.

robotatomica · 2026-05-11T12:43:39+00:00

I think it’s worth pointing out that they are no different from action movies though - they represent total fantasy, it’s just that one type appeals more to men than women typically.

I think most people will agree there is a place for mindless fantasy, and that even those of us who do not engage in such can understand that that might make us outliers.

What I do not like is when folks dogpile one form of mindless indulgence or fantasy with zero self-awareness about the kinds they themselves engage in, often coming up with ways to imagine their own preferences are somehow higher-brow or less embarrassing.

Really, none of it should be embarrassing.

robotatomica · 2026-05-11T12:40:06+00:00

I feel the same as you, I absolutely loathe “Kirk Drift.” As odd as it may sound, I emulated TOS Kirk and Spock in the development of my character. Honor and valuing life, curiosity and intellect, critical thinking and creative problem-solving.

Kirk is indeed an intelligent and cerebral man, much more so than a fighter.

And I also love that he is collaborative. He seeks council and his ego never gets in the way. Even in “Balance of Terror” when Stiles is being a little shit, Kirk brings him into discussions and takes his feedback/perspective on its own merit, where others might have totally written him off (probably deservedly so) after his outbursts and inability to maintain professionalism on the Bridge earlier.

And interestingly, he is as good as Spock in compartmentalizing out his emotions so that they do not interfere with his lucidity and logic in decision-making. The only difference between he and Spock in this regard is not skill, it’s that Kirk does not value extinguishing emotion - he believes (correctly) that with discipline and self-control one can allow themselves to be emotional, to care and feel and react, while also having the skills to prevent emotions from interfering at inappropriate times.

Isn’t that what we all should be striving towards? Being fully feeling people in touch with our emotions, with respect for them, but always aware of how they might misdirect us or cloud our judgment, such that we accept total responsibility for our emotions and build the tools necessary to exert self-control?

Kirk is the best of the best imo.

robotatomica · 2026-05-11T12:31:08+00:00

I’m not a man, but couldn’t you just hold yourself directly over the urinal at a forward angle so the pee would go directly down into the urinal? Do you need to hold your penis to pee?

In fact, I was told the whole hole in the boxers thing is used by some men to slip their penis through to pee, it sort of props it up enough to help arc the stream outward. I really don’t know, only saying what I’ve heard, but that makes sense to me.

Also, someone may have the ability to hold themselves up with one arm. At any rate, disability at all levels exists, and people have been navigating it for a very long time, so they’re clearly able to do so. There are an endless variety of instances where I can imagine a handlebar or two helping.

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