PolarKraken

"Dark Pathways" indeed, really telling on themselves lmao

I'm so sorry :(

This happened to my wife, FWIW, from an old horrible partner (abusive too, v cool). Her outbreaks got milder over time to where now they're a minor inconvenience at most. And they don't get in our way, so to speak.

Even though, yes, some folks are now preemptively and permanently out of your dating pool, I'd argue that a lot of the people self-excluding in that way have done you a favor.

Love is strong stuff! I can imagine how low you feel about this, but I hope you allow space for it to improve over time and you don't give up on having a sex life or romantic partners. You're worthy of love, this dumb (and seriously common) disease can't change that :)

Lmao that line got me too. I guess it was meant to sound inspiring or something? I feel like that "format" aims to sound high-minded and wise but boy, did not work here at all.

(Full disclosure if I ever get a chance to go to space in any capacity, damn you all AND the planet, I'm goin)

Gotta say, Larson knew his ants.

I swear even before this stuff I've noticed quality slipping. The same kinda cost-cutting that makes simple things like packaging work less well than it did when I was a kid (how often does a bag of something's zipper just rip off and make it impossible to close the thing??)...I could swear I'm starting to see that cost squeeze hit the quality of the products. Finding bones in chicken more often, various grossness in deli meat more often. To say nothing of the reports of nasty conditions at plants that keep coming up.

Maybe it's all the children working the meat packing plants these days, I've always said children make terrible butchers! Should be exciting to see how much more interesting all our food products get in coming years.

All jokes aside, I recently went in on a quarter cow with a friend, from a local rancher. Not an option for everyone, I realize, but I'm starting to buy more locally. I hate to be doom and gloom, but the institutions keeping us safe are being dismantled, visibly, in front of us. And they were not exactly thriving before, either.

Wow, what a write-up, this is lovely.

I've also been in a lot of the situations you're describing and ultimately became the person providing shelter and stability for others, too (of course it's far more complex than such a simple statement, as you know).

We've never made those arrangements permanent, it's always been phases of some years where people who've needed it most have come and then gone when they're ready. To be clear we've never kicked anyone out, nor (many years earlier) have I been kicked out, nothing like that. I just suspect the genetics in my family make it very difficult for us to be told how to live by another for long, no matter how reasonably or gently, lol.

For instance my pops having to ultimately be subject to my rules (I just mean in the ways you described) was eventually too much for him and he made the necessary steps to move on, and the relationship stayed healthy.

Like you said there's lots of different ways to do things and the most important part is that everyone's dignity is preserved, and everyone involved is prioritizing each other person as best they can in addition to their own needs, which is hard to do.

I'd be open, perhaps, to a more unconventional long-term arrangement with several of the family members in my life (including chosen family), especially as the world gets harder and harder, but I'm also content to be a temporary place of calm and respite for folks as I can.

And like you said, the mutual give and take that's involved is everything. With the right people, anyway - I have to acknowledge there's a broad swathe of folks I'd never want to live closely with and who I expect would be largely uninterested in compromising and prioritizing the well-being of others. Quite unfortunate for folks who grow up surrounded by too much of that.

Yeah, but I'm still glad to see those over the sprawling parking lot retail district approach we've been using everywhere for decades in the US. Maybe we'll do a better job on the revision when the ones you described start to fail lol, one can dream!

Also gives a solid advantage to the small mom and pop over the soulless profit machine, I like this idea :)

Grift. It's all scam, all the time.

It's funny, this kinda stuff reminds me of the best parts of the (largely bygone) punk rock and hacker subcultures. Feels like almost the specific overlap between the two. And lately it feels like there's been more and more of that, like the condition of the world is causing those ethos to reawaken, to recapitulate their evergreen salience, maybe even to combine.

Probably projecting a bit, to be fair. I feel I've internally stayed an old punk rocker and hacker, and feel those old flames reigniting, despite the indignities and compromises that come with middle age and spending eventual adulthood trying to survive in corporate America. Not so punk after all, lmao

Edit: minor grammar

:(

Yep, this is what's going on. As is usual with Trump, there's no actual ideology or goal, it's all scam all the time. When you can unilaterally announce at any moment of any day that you are about to grenade the global economy, that's going to have a guaranteed response from the markets. Predictable as the fuckin sunrise. Especially because everyone rightly knows Trump truly doesn't give a shit about the consequences and absolutely might just do it.

Then he says some wildly different shit a different day, with again 100% predictable market movements (even announcing on Truth Social ahead of time to buy, which is truly beyond the pale), and everyone he knows gets even richer, again. That grift will wear out and stop working and he'll switch to something else.

And again, and again, and again. All scam, all the time. I mean, plebes like us are aware of multiple concurrent grifts the guy is using the presidency for. Imagine what we don't know about! It's kleptocracy of the highest order.