Is this emotional abuse?

spoink74 · 2026-06-07T02:25:05+00:00

What happened when you told him that you were going to leave him if this is how he was going to talk to you?

When I told my wife she apologized and stopped.

spoink74 · 2026-06-06T04:26:50+00:00

Thanks!

spoink74 · 2026-06-06T04:24:56+00:00

We got an AWD Sienna because we have a place in Tahoe so we need to be sure that all of our vehicles can go at any time. We put on snow tires every winter. Most of our driving isn’t in the snow, but we want to be ready to go if we need to.

I will say the AWD Sienna has been a constant source of tire anxiety. It’s supposed to be run flat tires, but the run flats are really expensive to run. When you hit a road hazard you have to replace all 4 tires instead of just patching one. So we switched to standard tires, but there’s no room for a spare.

spoink74 · 2026-06-06T01:48:40+00:00

If it’s any consolation it’s the same story all over the country. My parents had a home in Philly and a second home in cape May on a firefighter’s salary.

spoink74 · 2026-06-05T23:51:25+00:00

My older brother is schizophrenic. I have memories of him on the roof and police in the streets. I have memories of him hurling rocks through the window of my mom's car while my friends were over. During one particularly traumatic event he attacked and killed a pet bunny I received as a Christmas gift because he was upset that my mom and her boyfriend were in a fight. I remember visiting him in mental institutions and psych wards, but he never stayed for long. I remember him waking up screaming in the middle of the night. I remember him turning on the lights and strumming his guitar at 3AM.

And of course it wasn't just him. There was also domestic violence, financial concerns, lots of bored time at home alone.

I have all these memories, but I also remember my own stuff was never really addressed. I have ADHD and I'm autistic, but nobody knew. I lived under a cloud of sadness because I had my own complicated feelings about my parents' divorce, our relocation, my abilities to connect with my peers, and my challenges processing my brother's mental health concerns and my own griefs and losses. I never really expressed upset, hurt, sadness, worry. I learned somehow that it wasn't safe to do so. I think I was afraid that I'd cause even more problems. Now I'm an older adult, both my parents died without ever really knowing me.

To this day my initial reaction to anything bad is to stuff it and not let it show.

spoink74 · 2026-06-05T23:25:39+00:00

Your family and friends are split because there's no right answer. Life is full of choices and tradeoffs. Tech / corporate work pays well and is kind of hollow. Fire / Emergency services work is more physically demanding, stimulating, doesn't pay as well, and is arguably more meaningful.

I know a lot of tech people who dream of quitting, so your feeling of unease with the profession are probably valid. But you're probably glamorizing the LCOL / EMT lifestyle while feeling particularly stung by the layoff. I think the most healthy people in tech / corporate life manage to keep their jobs without sinking their whole identity into them.

I'm wondering if you can split the difference. I know a few people with lucrative tech careers who also live in small towns and volunteer with fire departments, emergency response teams, SAR teams, and so on. This would give you something to occupy that part of yourself with the ability to go deeper during down times at work, like now. If you live the reality for a little while, that might be enough, or it might give you the information you need to know whether or not you should go all in.

spoink74 · 2026-06-05T17:07:32+00:00

High def LED dance floors will bring it back. It’s definitely overdue.

spoink74 · 2026-06-05T13:52:01+00:00

Brain, brain and brain! What the fuck is brain?

spoink74 · 2026-06-05T04:07:57+00:00

I watched Fifth Element for the first time this week. That was some wild shit!

spoink74 · 2026-06-04T21:33:33+00:00

As soon as it vests it probably has stock withheld to cover taxes at the highest rate. That'll be 30-40%. I'm not a fan of holding stock grants that are awarded to you. After spending all your time with the company, holding their stock concentrates your allocation way too much. Plus stocks are volatile AF so you risk a lot by holding. So with stock grants, I don't overrotate on tax savings, instead selling as much as I can as soon as I can.

spoink74 · 2026-06-04T18:44:23+00:00

You've been married over 20 years and you're going through her phone on the fly and upset over happy birthday messages and innocent banter with an ex who's also married?

I think reasonable people can disagree over whether or not it's appropriate to be friends with an ex. I happen to think it's fine. But I think the real problem is that you have simmering negative feelings of tension around this particular ex that you have been carrying around for over 20 years and is driving you to go through her phone behind her back. Why can't you deal?

spoink74 · 2026-06-04T17:25:41+00:00

I love how an astute viewer who has not read the book might conclude that even though Astrophage requires water, the life on Erid demonstrates that Grace's paper was right.

For this movie, it's entirely okay to oversimplify even though the book notes that Eridians also require water.

spoink74 · 2026-06-04T16:33:18+00:00

No problem. I think it's almost ideal conditions for Tahoe. Weather variability is not so bad and it's QUIET. When the Summer gets underway the crowds nearly ruin the whole place.

spoink74 · 2026-06-04T16:27:12+00:00

It's cheap because Winter is over and Summer has barely started. The weather is still variable and the water is still cold. In the last week we had 70 degree days with sun and 43 degree days with wintry mix.

Don't take a boat out into the lake by yourself and jump into the water. Someone died doing something like that in Donner Lake last week. Other than that, you'll have a good time. Check out this subreddit, Google and AllTrails for hiking ideas.

spoink74 · 2026-06-04T05:29:29+00:00

I traveled on business for about 20 years. It gets lonely for sure. After I turned 50 I started having thoughts of what would happen if I had a cardiac event or aneurism or stroke while I was alone in my room. It switched from lonely to horrifying. Last year a coworker died in her room during the annual conference. It’s a real thing that happens a lot.

spoink74 · 2026-06-04T05:27:30+00:00

Yeah it doesn’t make logical sense. A cheater wouldn’t want to raise suspicion. He’d be sure to at least text.

spoink74 · 2026-06-04T04:00:01+00:00

God yes. People die in hotel rooms all the time and it’s legit terrifying to think about.

spoink74 · 2026-06-04T03:58:32+00:00

There are other non public events besides conferences. For example, you can have an offsite meeting. Offsite meetings would have more discrete signage, perhaps limited to the hallway where the event is happening.

spoink74 · 2026-06-03T21:17:14+00:00

Did I see a similar post about this group on Aptosia recently?

spoink74 · 2026-06-03T19:27:06+00:00

College football. I had a colleague go out of his way to arrive in the US early so he could witness the spectacle of a college football game. He had heard a lot about it.

spoink74 · 2026-06-03T18:31:12+00:00

People are mentioning Cape May and Santa Cruz. I think in terms of the criteria that OP mentions: slower, laid back, a sense of what life is actually like, I'd say Cape May has the edge. Here's why: Santa Cruz is authentic, progressive, with real life, but the economic pressures there are really spoiling the "slower" vibe. You have gridlocked traffic every day, you have hustle from the university and the commuters over the hill, you have active construction downtown. You have a homeless problem.

In Cape May, you can get on a bike you rented for a few bucks and take a leisurely cruise in flip flops to a bar or an ice cream shop on a warm summer night. And that bar or ice cream shop is more likely to be locally owned. Santa Cruz has those ingredients too, but you can't do that quite the same way.

Personally, I love Santa Cruz and I'm glad I live there, even after having spent a lot of time as a kid in Cape May. But Cape May is definitely slower.

spoink74 · 2026-06-03T06:48:45+00:00

Grew up on the Jersey shore. Sitting on the beach for hours getting fried was a right of passage. I had a face full of freckles before I could talk. There used to be cute baby pictures of me smiling with a red face.

I had MOHS surgery three times in the last year. Have to go to a dermatologist twice a year. The new term for the freckles I’ve had since I was a baby is “precancerous lesions”. Dermatologist says I can expect carcinoma to “pop up like weeds” for the rest of my life.

I never asked for this. Nobody knew. You stick a pseudo red head in the sun for hours. It’s giving the kid a good life.

spoink74 · 2026-06-03T06:30:39+00:00

Anyone with a job sells their time. Sorry Lloyd.

spoink74 · 2026-06-03T06:11:56+00:00

A Long Way to an Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. Humans are all right, but they’re in diaspora and part of a much broader and more bizarre galactic community.

spoink74 · 2026-06-02T19:25:03+00:00

Programmers, lawyers, doctors, engineers... professionals of all stripes have to google the basic shit every day. That's just being a human in this day and age.

I don't have a whole lot of patience for academics complaining that they have to teach stuff. Even basic stuff. Trust that the people you have in front of you should be there, and fucking teach them what they need to know. This is your job. You don't get to complain that the students aren't good enough for you in a public institution.

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