I think 14 year old me would be most disappointed that I’m no longer catholic. She’d probably be a mix of angry and excited that I’m trans. Shocked and confused when I explain to her that her parents’ marriage is really really bad and she’s going to need therapy for the way her dad treats her. Then she’s going to be kinda pissed when I tell her that her dad is right about her needing to do better in school, it’s just that he shouldn’t be yelling at her until she self harms about it. She’ll be proud I’m still friends with her friends and that I got out of Ohio to somewhere cool.

Oh then she’s going to be incredibly disappointed I married someone with tattoos, especially since I’ll call her a classist little shit about it, and that I never had kids.

Ah yes, the “acid and meditation will fix all my problems” instead of “acid and meditation will sit me down and force me to confront some of my problems”. Such a simple mistake but so many make it

Full agreement. I think another reason the debate bro caught on was that it makes for better content, even before the modern content economy.

Back in the day when the archetypal internet debates were atheists and science educators vs creationists, you could see it just as effectively. Nobody wanted to watch someone on their side go in with an open mind, open to being convinced and for both sides to come to a position entirely based on the evidence. Hell, I still don’t like that because one side has reproducible evidence and the other failed to indoctrinate me as a teenager.

A lot of modern bad faith debate tactics come back to creationists, with the infamous Gish gallop named after a creationist. And from there the opposition had to learn to play the game. Debate, not as a neutral shared pursuit of truth, the clash of thesis, antithesis, and evidence to distill an agreeable and defensible synthesis, but rather as a verbal gladiatorial contest.

The pro evolution side split with the death of new atheism, they’re on all sides now. A lot of the more committed debaters went right for varied reasons, and we wound up in a position where we needed stuff like the alt right playbook to teach how to argue against the dishonest.

And on the other side of the equation you have the internet rationalist movement, who are infamously bad at the “this sounds like bullshit” test among other flaws. They strive to accept any debate with an open mind, and find themselves a good example of why you need to keep some biases that while you’re open to changing, you’re gonna need strong evidence for.

Oh well then, please feel free to take some stuff before burning it as compensation for your troubles.

I was in my mid 20s at the time lol, so it may be that I was young. But I was also actively practicing CBT at the time and trying to fix my mind.

I’ve never had a trip that was unproductively bad, but I’ve also never had a trip that was easy and all fun (n is in the single digits though). All of them fit somewhere in the “challenging” category where a portion of it was very unpleasant, but ultimately constructive.

My worst was before I started the CBT and was with my now ex around the beginning of the end of the relationship. It was mostly trying to show me that we’d grown incompatible. The lessons of the rest were either similar “hey you’re deliberately ignoring something with someone in your life who you happen to be tripping with”, or “here’s some bullshit you’ve been on and it’s time to confront it and actually change.”

Those trips aren’t easy, and they aren’t necessarily relaxing. They’re more comparable to an emotional marathon or some other physical challenge made emotional. And I think part of what’s vital is I go in accepting that I can change and part of my goal is change. The suck is necessary to achieve the goal. A big part of how they worked was actually forcing me to face shit. The only way out was through, and by the end a self destructive behavior or thought pattern was firmly something I didn’t want to participate in anymore.

So yeah I guess learning meditation techniques and how to hamper panic attacks and channel the energy they come with into useful and constructive energy is probably the crux of it though. My cbt was largely focused on that and breaking the destructive habits I learned from cptsd.

Oh also sex on the come up was always nice.

That’s why I just self administered CBT and dropped acid a few times

I probably should drop acid again to help internalize healing I’ve done for shit that happened since then

Like, thinking that was done to them or…

Because ngl reading those docs does sound fascinating, but not in any way healing

0 I burned all my capacity for that by the end of college.

Back in high school and early in college I’d have at least one night a month where I was to anxious to sleep. Then engineering school got hard and I got sleepless nights to do schoolwork.

These days I’m visibly off if my wife has nightmares or I snored too much (she kicks me when I snore)

I think it’s irresponsible and reprehensible to ever stop trying

Exactly. If there were 30 greens in the house of Representatives and 10 green senators, suddenly they’d be able to actually push policies. And to get there they’d need to demonstrate electability in smaller elections.

I’m a fan of Nader, I’m sad he was never president. But if he couldn’t even come in second place in the best third party run since the whigs collapsed it’s time to stop focusing on the presidency and start trying something else.

That’s part of why I like the symbol of the DDR. Sure hammers and compasses are outdated, but they’re easy symbols for labor still vital, and instead of a sickle there’s sheaths of wheat

That’s a compass (math kind not navigation kind) not a sextant. A sextant would be more likely to represent the mercantile class than knowledge workers. But yeah I love their symbol because it really shines as a symbol for German communism by including a tool associated with engineers.

Partly, but also because they’re chauvinistic about their religion and think Catholics aren’t Christian. Even at their best they practice sola scriptura and disagree with Catholics on interpretation, therefore they assume Catholics don’t actually understand the bible. Meanwhile Catholics look at them confused as to how anyone can read that thing, reject all context snd traditional interpretation, and come away believing every word is literally true and that they have an unerring understanding of it, much less without the graduate degree in the topic priests need.

Ope, as someone hard of hearing, I’m sorry y’all don’t have community. It makes sense why we make them so often and y’all don’t, but it’s sad to see you don’t have something similar

Oh hey, I’m like that. You just be awkward and amicable, pretend you’re boring but cool with whatever and people will just tell you all sorts of wild shit that’s going on.

It’s funny because I’ve been the boring lady at jobs solely because I don’t get involved in drama and I keep the scandalous parts of my life private

“Do it or you keep getting it”

Yeah American evangelicals don’t think any Catholics understand the Bible.

And people used to just do that unannounced.

Yeah I’ve spent quite my fair share of time in that area lol

We have a guest bedroom. If I’m snoring too much or her insomnia is too bad she moves to the other one for the night. She usually starts by kicking me to stop the snoring and only moves if it doesn’t stop.

For the past year we’ve been in a studio temporarily and we both miss it so much.