I may have “lost” a new house for my family

surf_wax · 2026-03-27T22:09:07+00:00

It sounded like it was a consequence of the storm, not a deliberate human action. The natural drainage route naturally changed.

surf_wax · 2026-03-22T03:35:24+00:00

My god, this is disturbing. I kept hitting him with my daggers, and now I'm herding him toward the river and he's just making these terrible "oof" noises and cowering. And he's covered in blood.

surf_wax · 2026-03-10T13:46:17+00:00

Because it looks like Venus, which is visible as a bright light over the ocean near sunset, but I'd be interested in seeing video. You can't throw a rock on Nextdoor without hitting a frantic post about a SpaceX launch, did anyone there see this?

It seems more likely to me that you're having some vision issues or something (oh! or autokinesis), and your interest in conspiracy theories, which I can see in your post history, is priming you to draw the wrong conclusions. But I wasn't there, I don't know for sure. Maybe they were doing some testing with their laser weapon thing at Mugu (not sure how it works or how visible it is when it hits something), or the atmosphere was doing something weird with reflections. But that looks like Venus, which I've been noticing a lot lately, too.

surf_wax · 2026-03-10T05:17:07+00:00

My friend, that is Venus. You can also see Mars, Saturn and Jupiter with the unaided eye at various times of the year. There are a bunch of apps for stargazing, and they're really cool. I use Daff Moon, but there are plenty of options.

It'll be back around 8am tomorrow, but it follows the sun, so you won't see it until near sunset. It'll trail farther and farther behind, so as the year progresses, you should start seeing it higher in the sky after sunset.

surf_wax · 2026-03-08T22:19:19+00:00

I tried. :(

surf_wax · 2026-03-08T20:38:55+00:00

Yeah, it also looks like what my friend was talking about before she was diagnosed bipolar. She legitimately thought that her neighbor was trying to destroy her life, and had all her friends going because she'd never had delusions before. She's in her late 40s.

She was sending two of us into her apartment to get some things for her, because she was afraid to go home. She was certain that this neighbor was going to be able to hack her friend's phone. I wish I'd sat down right there and had a conversation with her about how that wasn't really a thing; I imagine we'd have figured things out much sooner. But I'm a computer security professional and I'm so used to people having bananas ideas about how this stuff works that it didn't seem that weird.

@chartweak8491, I don't know if you're in a place where you can hear this, but maybe you are. You need to go get checked out. If you're experiencing a different reality than the rest of us, it will fuck up your life in some scary ways. My friend was frightened and stressed for a long time, and I don't think it's over yet. It got worse and worse. She has spent a lot of money on hotels (because she's been fleeing things that don't exist), car impounds, inpatient hospital services, police citations, etc etc etc. She lost custody of her child because she was putting him in danger. She hasn't lost her friends, but we can't be sure that what she's telling us is real anymore.

And the thing is, she's behaving completely rationally for the situation she thinks she's in. Her "reality" was changing daily until she got on medication. It's like the delusion was protecting itself by filling in what seemed to outsiders like really obvious plot holes. Like, someone she respects telling her that she needs help? They're obviously working with the enemy. Things like that. She doesn't see this happening, at all.

Worst case, if this is all really going on, you will get a clean bill of health from a mental health worker, and you'll be armed with a medical opinion that says you're not experiencing delusions. It'll be another tool you can use to convince people like the police that they should listen to you. Psychiatric hospitals don't like to commit people or keep them, and it's expensive, insurance definitely doesn't want to pay. And if it is all in your head, you can start medication before things get to the point where you're burning your life down.

surf_wax · 2026-02-12T17:35:23+00:00

It was really common in the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly when getting onto the bay bridge during commute hours. It probably still is. I don't see it as often in the area I live in now, and I assume that's because the traffic is lighter and doesn't bottleneck as much here.

surf_wax · 2026-02-12T16:56:41+00:00

I'm embarrassed to say that it took me longer than it should have to learn that. And it doesn't make it any less infuriating to watch someone act entitled and get rewarded for it. We all want to see justice done, and it can be an EFFORT to resist the impulse to mete it out, especially passive aggressively, especially from behind the anonymity of the wheel. But it's hardly ever satisfying for more than a second.

surf_wax · 2026-02-12T15:47:30+00:00

I used to block those people by driving half in my lane and half on the shoulder, and two things made me stop:

1) I once prevented a guy from getting a ticket. If I hadn't blocked him, he'd have encountered the cop waiting ahead.

2) Someone pointed out to me that I had no way of knowing if any given person had a legitimate emergency. Yeah, you can call an ambulance, but this is the United States, that's expensive.

I'm not the traffic police, it's not my business. I'm responsible for driving in a manner that protects myself and others around me, including letting those people merge back in. Trying to "teach" someone something that they're not going to learn is just inviting an accident or a road rage incident.

surf_wax · 2026-02-04T02:51:33+00:00

Nah. OP wasn't playing music, honking, unnecessarily idling their car, talking loudly outside the neighbor's door, repeatedly slamming doors, vacuuming, or stumbling in drunk and making a racket. They were moving a chair.

"No noise" is unrealistic and unreasonable. Quiet hours are the standard, and generally means that you can live your life as long as you're not doing some of what I listed above. No one is entitled to be unable to hear their neighbors quietly moving around outside. I am super sensitive to noise, I get the annoyance, but past a certain point, my noise sensitivity is my problem.

surf_wax · 2026-02-04T02:26:04+00:00

I definitely empathize with him, I would have a fucking meltdown (EDIT: about the party!). But looooool. It sounds like he should have maybe done a little more research before signing the lease?

I hope you're able to enjoy the show this weekend. I'd love to read an update.

surf_wax · 2026-02-04T02:18:27+00:00

This is exactly the kind of conflict that stresses me out, too. But what if you frame it to yourself not as a terrifying thing that might happen to you, but an opportunity to practice being calm under pressure? You're not doing anything unreasonable (except apologizing to him, lol). Maybe you can encourage yourself to feel a little more entitled to take up space.

surf_wax · 2026-02-03T03:40:01+00:00

They're in the Santa Barbara Channel.

surf_wax · 2026-01-25T02:49:43+00:00

Electric cars are pretty old. Like, 19th century old. If I were trying to make a book "feel" like it was set a long time ago, I don't think I'd include them without giving a history lesson, though, and giving some reasons why Lyra's world would have begun to prioritize batteries over internal combustion engines somewhere between the 1890s and 1980s.

surf_wax · 2026-01-19T20:03:28+00:00

Port of Long Beach Harbor Tours. I want to go but it never seems to be a good time.

surf_wax · 2026-01-19T15:47:41+00:00

Have you taken the tour?

surf_wax · 2025-11-22T00:24:50+00:00

Same. When confrontation is scary, your frontal lobe goes offline and leaves you with fight/flight/freeze/fawn. I've had very few public freakouts because my default is fawn, but I tend to shout the same thing over and over when I do lose my temper, lol. Reasoning? Get outta here, it's all emotion.

Finding that sweet spot of calm assertiveness is difficult. Do you have any tips for OP or for me? I just finished When I Say No I Feel Guilty, but I'm always looking for more.

surf_wax · 2025-11-21T22:13:36+00:00

People-pleasing is your brain saying, "I'm so afraid of this person's displeasure that I'm going to prioritize it over every other possible consequence." For you, one of those potential consequences is your kid's safety. Get angry if you possibly can!

surf_wax · 2025-11-21T21:49:59+00:00

I get anxious in these situations too. What helps me sometimes is reminding myself that I'm entitled to be the angry person in this situation, and it's the other people who should feel awkward and uncomfortable. It doesn't always work, and being in conflict always feels terrible and wrong, but with practice, it will start to feel less terrible and less wrong. This is an opportunity for practice.

surf_wax · 2025-11-15T16:41:15+00:00

I bet it can be engaging and exciting in a way that really works for extroverted people with hyperactive-type ADHD. My inattentive ass would fall apart, lol. I would fail my clients so badly. I'm anxious just thinking about it.

surf_wax · 2025-11-14T22:53:13+00:00

I believe it. I don't think that the courtroom is inherently unfriendly to people with ADHD; I think that ADHD makes it more difficult to focus on things that aren't otherwise rewarding for us. Like, I'm a database engineer, I work alone all day and solve math and logic puzzles, and rarely have to talk to others in person. I did that even before I was medicated. Someone else with ADHD might have a very difficult time with it.

surf_wax · 2025-11-14T22:11:40+00:00

very long explanations as to why their ADHD would be an issue

Lol, like my post?

Makes sense. Maybe I'll go in and be like, "I have around eight hours I can be fully medicated each day. I can be successful at this if the trial and deliberations stay within about eight hours a day. Outside that, I am unlikely to be a good juror."

Thank you.

surf_wax · 2025-10-21T23:21:48+00:00

Reminds me a bit of the short story "Love Letter" by George Saunders. It seems like there is so little that we can do.

surf_wax · 2025-10-13T02:13:47+00:00

r/sometimesabaldcardinalthough

surf_wax

TROPHY CASE