If either party actually disagreed on principle, we would have heard someone criticize the war on principle and not on breaking procedural norms or not planning the war well enough. Virtually every critique I have seen from elected officials, at least before this explicitly genocidal statement here, is some form of those two. “This war was poorly planned” is only a sidenote observation from someone actually opposed to a war of aggression. It’s the most milquetoast opposition you can give to claim you were always against it when things go wrong. No way in hell am I going to accept that they were powerless to stop him when no one will even clearly lay out the actual reasons why this is wrong.

We know that actions speak louder than words, but if we want to give anyone else in our government the benefit of the doubt we’re gonna have to figure out what comes next after words.

Yes someone needs to warn the Iranians that this administration doesn’t always negotiate in good faith, they’re clearly not aware of that possibility.

A friend once texted me that she really liked my writing and said “It sounds like you”, with “sounds” italicized. It was like she was just focusing on my writing and hadn’t even thought through that using “like you” as unambiguously complimentary is a bigger compliment towards me than towards my writing.

Instead, billionaires are surrounded by people who they can’t trust. Sycophants everywhere, who don’t care about who you are as a person, but what you can do for them. You’re less likely to have people calling you out for things, but you also won’t get much affirmation for the genuinely good things about your personality.

This is a really good observation and makes perfect sense when you say it out loud.

In any way, Kent stepping down from the position is just an opportunity for the US to insert someone who is more class conscious, is more willing to bat for US policy, and will fall in line with the status quo no matter what imperialist vassal state is benefiting from the US’s attempts of capital accumulation.

I’m extremely skeptical “more willing to bat for US policy” means anything beyond “isn’t actively worried about being a fall guy”. Admittedly I hadn’t heard his name before today though, so maybe I just lack the imagination to picture someone in his position today being unwilling to “fall in line with the status quo” before this letter.

I was really passionate about math for years, and I spent most of my free time on it. When I got to grad school and I had to do it to survive my passion dried up. I think it became harder to have fun when I knew I wouldn’t be free to put a project down if I wanted to, and when math stopped being fun I stopped being good at it.

I passed all my coursework and exams but I burned out before finishing my dissertation and dropped out seven years into my phd program. It’s six years later and I still barely touch it. I passed qualifying exams in algebraic topology and today if you asked me to compute a homology group I’d be clueless.

I’m not going to discount that monetizing your passions works for some people, but the experience of finding out you’re not one of those people is soul-crushing.

Iran, for its part, has rejected the possibility of any ceasefire until U.S. and Israeli ‌strikes end

Does this need to be said? Should I have expected otherwise?

There should be an AI helper to pet and play with my cat, that way all I need to do is buy food and pay vet bills and clean the litter.

I do play some video games and I guess this is nice, but what I really enjoy is listening to music. When am I gonna get an AI helper to listen to songs for me so I can get that done in peaceful silence instead?

I think it’s disingenuous to say those two murders turned public opinion when those two murders were a direct result of public opinion already turning. Everyone has grown up immersed in propaganda, it’s not helpful to shame people for shedding that too late.

I loved that game, art style is beautiful.

Removed by mod

I think I had this comic saved like twenty years ago and I also don’t remember where I found it.

Before I lost my sense of smell I was absurdly sensitive to ranch. If my ex opened a ranch dip in the apartment I would be dry-heaving very quickly. When I was a kid I would sometimes move seats eating lunch at school because other kids had ranch doritos. Not having to deal with that anymore was a rare positive to come out of my awful experience with covid.

I can enjoy coldcuts and cheeses, but they’ll make me sick if they’re not extremely fresh. In some cases they already smell and taste like they’ve gone rancid fresh off the slicer.

Pancreatitic sepsis fucked my tastebuds, my hospital stay was extended a full week because I couldn’t keep down foods other than sweets. They actually restarted me on the feeding tube because of that. When I went off the NPO and got to eat again for the first time I asked for a spicy sandwich from Chick-Fil-A, I’m pretty sure it was just an ordinary spicy sandwich but in that moment it tasted like the spiciest thing I had ever eaten in my entire life. I don’t like the taste of water anymore, which is miserable.

Ever since I had pancreatitic sepsis I hate the taste of water, it’s so frustrating. I mostly drink a few specific zero-sugar sodas now, I wish the prebiotic sodas weren’t so expensive because they would be the best solution.

I think it’s increasingly easier to feel empathy for a killer the more steps there are between them and the trigger. I personally find it much more jarring when someone can just fully turn off empathy when given context. A lot of the time what you’re talking about goes hand-in-hand with dehumanizing the impoverished, that’s the one I can’t fathom.

The reason I’m inclined to turn to online dating is because the real me is someone whose dream life would be spending most of his days sitting around with a good friend playing with cats. It’s not like I have no solo interests at all, they’re just not ones that can invite a connection by doing them in public. Sometimes I read math, I have papers on the arXiv on category theory and categorical homotopy theory, but I’m out of academia right now so that’s not a way to connect with real people.

I absolutely love talking to people and forming connections, but just with one other person at a time, otherwise I get behind the conversation and go into deep introversion. I like getting to listen to someone tell their stories and talk about themselves. One of my favorite activities is reading books out loud with a friend. I don’t know how to go out into the real world and just do that with one other person. Online I can, and have made some wonderful connections. It’s just that dating apps specifically look like a nightmare.

If I were really into hiking or whatever I would be all about living that out. Unfortunately, the person I am is someone who would be doing activities as a means to socialize, rather than the other way around. Doing those things would very much not be the real me. It’s not easy to live a solitary life for an extended period and not dream about more, and those dreams start to feel like an ulterior motive if I’m seeking out new connections.

I don’t think at all about what “top” should mean in a dating pool, it hadn’t even crossed my mind, so I’m not sure why you’re bringing that up. I don’t care about whether I find someone in a top percentile of anything, I just want to find someone who is empathetic and who I connect with.

I’m going to start dating again sometime soon, so this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot.

I hate that if I go on an app and make a contact, the ostensible purpose will be to date. When that’s the purpose, at some point an evaluation will have to be made. Either that purpose is met or it isn’t. You could have a conversation about being friends or considering your options, but I’m sure starting that conversation feels awkward and hurtful. It would feel like downgrading them from the original intent behind meeting.

Not starting that conversation could be delaying the dreams of two people though, so there would be a time crunch to make a decision before I might be ready. It feels like this will inevitably end up with throwing aside people who could be great to have as friends.

A connection shouldn’t be a decision, it should be something that happens. I’d rather just hang out with someone with the expectation that we’re hoping to be friends, and if there is a connection we’ll see it in each other sooner or later. Unfortunately for me, striking up conversations with single women to be friends with while having the thought of going further in the back of my mind might as well be the definition of creeper behavior.

Like 10-15 years ago I took a screenshot from my pokemon game. I named my ditto “children” and then put it in the daycare center, so that when I went to pick him up the daycare lady says “If you want your children back, it will be $5000”.

As someone who had never watched the movie “Taken”, it was kind of unsettling to login to reddit the next day to find like five messages in my inbox saying some form of “I don’t know who you are but I will find you and I will kill you”.

Probably doesn’t fit the intent but thankfully those are the only examples I have.

I genuinely do appreciate you saying this, because I felt pretty bad about myself and logged off for a while.