Asklemmy

(It's weird to call it "falling in love", because it's more like a childish and annoying infatuation, but anyway...)

I'm already terrible at socializing, but it's especially difficult for me to create genuine friendships with women because I can't help thinking of them as "possible future partners" (or some bullshit like that) and feel "jealous" when I see them talking to other men. It's stupid, a really stupid and annoying felling.

I know there is something in me that I need to change, but I don't know what, and I need some assistance.

I would like to feel more comfortable with my singleness and reserve my feelings for someone who can really reciprocate, while forging more non-romantic relationships with other people.

When friends give me free food or drinks, I usually tip the full cost of what I was given. So if you gave me an $8 drink, I would tip you $8.

This still benefits me in that I don't have to pay that $8 plus another tip, but I'm wondering if there's an expectation or standard that would save me some $

Sometimes this one place gives me $20 of food before closing when I only intended to spend $5 so the upsell kinda hurts

Decent sleep, diet, exercise etc. would be the basics, so mentioning them first, so that specific info on it would be discussed.
Like any specific exercise that you think would be useful for most people etc, that's not really popular or so?

On exercise, I think light neck exercises and stretches are cool. Do be careful.

Tech stuff:

1. Generally, Firefox with uBo is awesome on all devices. Some of the extra filters make it more cool.
2. RSS feeds are awesome.
   RSS-Bridge helps to get feeds for websites that don't offer one.
   
   Google news feeds can be obtained as RSS feeds too
   

   https://news.google.com/rss/search?q Also other operators like when:24h can be used

Android:

1. Pipepipe and Newpipe have options to use WebM format. It saves data and space. Quite cool.
2. Skipsilence(Fast forward during silence) option - Pipepipe and Newpipe have it. AntennaPod(for podcasts)
   MPV script with a similar feature: https://codeberg.org/ferreum/mpv-skipsilence
3. Activity Manager - A foss app that allows to create launchable activities. Can be useful to access and create shortcuts to Android/data folder.
4. Aard2 is a cool foss Android dictionary app
5. Markor is a foss Android app for text document and markdown
6. Seal on Android helps to download yt playlists and since it uses yt-dlp, it can be used on many other websites too. Have used it to listen to Dessalines' audiobooks when I'm offline. They're cool.
7. Sayboard - foss voice to text keyboard
8. OCR - foss OCR app using Tesseract (Thanks for the recommendation/reminder by jk43)

PC/Laptop:

1. In laptops, touchpad gestures are quite cool
2. Pdf Arranger is quite good for combining or separating pdfs.
3. In Word or other document editors, there maybe a option to display non-printing characters. Useful to see if too many spaces or tabs are the reason for some formatting issue.
4. For slides, using notes and narrator view is nice. SlideMaster settings too. I've only used Powerpoint for it, but Libreoffice likely has similar stuff.

Have heard about jxl being useful for reducing image file sizes. Haven't used it much as there is no widespread support. But if you store a lot of jpg images and want to save space, it maybe nice.

General:

1. Recently have seen a video about the 5 why root cause analysis, which talked about a logic tree to find root causes and that was nice. Obvious, but nice to hear about.
2. Libretext and Openstax are quite cool for open textbooks on things.

Please do share some things that you find useful.
Any exercises, resources, websites, file formats, apps, techniques etc. that you find useful and think that most/more people would find use with?

Thanks in advance.

I never had a social life, either romantic or platonic, and I'm wondering if anyone else has gone from 0 social life to an active one past college. Like I wasted college just going to classes and I graduated already. Thoughts?

This has never happened to me before, but I was scrolling Uber Eats (even though I can't afford to get anything) and I saw a vegan Biscoff cheesecake and immediately smelled the sweet scent of Biscoff for a second. It wasn't like I just imagined how it smells like, I actually (at least mentally) "smelled" it as if it was there, and it made me consider if I was genuinely smelling something real (physically present) at the same time coincidentally but that makes no sense. The smell is very specific and I haven't had anything with Biscoff for quite a while and there is nothing around that would smell like it. I've never thought I had synesthesia (blending of senses/experiencing one sense as another) before but could this be a form of it?

I've read that olfactory response (smelling) sense memory is one of the strongest forms of sense memories, deeply ingrained in our subconscious. Smelling something familiar can trigger powerful memories and bring up emotions or even forgotten parts of your life. So maybe it can work in reverse as well, where seeing something familiar that you have a strong olfactory sense memory associated with (particularly a pleasurable one), maybe combined with taste memory (though it's notable I smelled it, not taste), could trigger such an intense reminder that it activates the actual memory of the smell as if it were really there?

Also, I may have partial anosmia (hyposmia), where I have difficulty smelling things, so that could play a role?

for those who find this hard to read, it’s like my dad. he grew up in peru but by the border between peru and brazil, so he picked up portuguese.

these 2 sentences have me thinking:

1. I cannot change what others think about me or do, I can only change how to react to it.

2. It’s not my fault, but it is my problem to deal with.

we had a merger and my department met our new manager. He seemed empathetic and approachable, asking us to stay at our current positions and work together.

I've been considering a change for some time because I don't get along with some coworkers, even though most are fine, but these 3 suck the life out of me.

So I sent this new manager an application that was rejected the next day:

"mr. X doesn't want to consider your application."

He didn't even read it. He seemed so approachable and friendly... this line seems specifically written to make me feel bad, or maybe I'm very thin skinned?

An adult would accept it and move on, but I'm so thin skinned I keep ruminating about it. I want to change how I react to this and other setbacks in life, but I feel powerless.

"It’s not my fault, but it is my problem to deal with"

I'm on the spectrum. I can hold a job, pay rent and healthcare, max my 401k..., but some of my coworkers find me robotic and rude and feel offended if I want to concentrate on my duties instead of talking to them, simply because if I don't do my job I'll be fired.

Not all of my coworkers are like this, but some simply don't see that I do the same they do, except gossiping and bantering, which I find a waste of time.

They feel offended because I like to keep to myself.

It is not fair and I hate it, but it is, apparently, my problem to deal with.

Except that I don't know how to deal with it. And I don't want to deal with it, because it is unfair that what others think and talk about you makes your career more difficult.

I didn't expect this post to be this long.

Wikipedia defines common sense as "knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument"

Try to avoid using this topic to express niche or unpopular opinions (they're a dime a dozen) but instead consider provable intuitive facts.

This quote captures a rule I'd like to live my life, and by extension my career by. I'd like to have a job where every day looks different because you respond to whatever eventualities arise. What is a good way to find these?

I'm not asking for specific job positions (although feel free to suggest some) because I imagine such positions exist in most fields — I'm rather asking for ways to find these/filter for these in a given field.

Like, if its collapsed, do I file? Do I even have to?

I am most certainly going to pay my state tax, but then what? What about stuff like my social security funds?

(I am asking for others because we're at that point now I suppose)

Last weekend I was at Transmediale in Berlin, a pathetic spectacle of a crumbling media art/media critique/techno-political conference. Nonetheless, one of the talks by Silvio Lorusso was quite good and it was investigating, among other things, the hidden labor within video calls, the affective consequences of having to be on camera within your domestic space and other consequences of "zoom culture".

This made me think that in some political spaces there's a strong sentiment against using webcams, while in others, holding similar values, there's a strong sentiment against keeping the webcam off.

I believe the first position is mainly stemming from the trauma and discomfort of remote work, where the context of the workplace and your employer extraction of labor make some demands around webcams illegitimate, or extractive. This might not apply to the political context, but the trauma or simply the habit of being hostile towards the webcam demands is still there.

Let me summarize briefly the arguments from both sides:

Against webcams:

• webcams demand you to be presentable and make your space presentable. It's extra labor, especially for women.
• webcams highlight differences in lifestyle and privilege among the participants
• webcams have mild to serious impacts on people with different forms of body and gender dysphoria, alienating people even before they join the space. Also, they distract narcissists from the call.
• for specific activities, visual cues of the reactions of participants might impact the formulation of arguments by specific people, especially if insecure or shy. With the webcam off, you might not be able to read the room but sometimes it's a good thing.

In favor of webcams:

• they create intimacy and a stronger sense of presence. We can debate if this is a good thing at work overall, but it's obviously a good thing in political spaces. There's no collective action without this. they help you read the room and enrich communication, at least for those who are good at doing it.
• they help us position and frame the other person. Probably this should be a "neutral" point, because it enables both positive and negative biases. It depends on your beliefs and if you think that "unbiased=good" or "unbiased=bad".

I would like to hear from you how political organizations you've been have handled this discussion, if they did. How you feel about it. Also, I would like to hear if anybody experienced specific practices around turning the webcam on or off for specific activities, which to me seems an under-explored area, both for production purposes or political purposes.

I don't want to share too much personal stuff, which i personally think in my probably stupid opinion, makes this post entirely pointless. I have a lot of i guess weird or extreme opinions or beliefs. I've never really expected people to believe in my beliefs, just to understand how I view the world. It often times feels like it is too much, to keep hoping that others will attempt to understand. Thankfully i have a few people who seem to understand for now. I am very left leaning. I think, i've been told im both far right and far left i don't know anymore. i've been told im capitalist, anarchist, communist, socialist and a whole bunch of other ist's and ism's i don't remember. And i've struggled up and down with whether or not im intelligent or not. I used to think i was a moron, and with trump, the fact most people don't read and i was just an average reader in school i guess i come off as. im not sure what word im looking for. I guess i come off as rude sometimes. But i know at least what a tarriff is. But the more i view the world. The i feel better not looking on social media. Not looking as much to replies on posts, not really engaging with anyone other than those i know somewhat well already that can deal with me, and are open enough to tell me when im too much to deal with and they need time away.

When it comes to sharing my ideas for solutions to problems in the world, with lots of people, i seem to get lots of pushback, i can understnad on some of my ideas, but some of them are ideas lots of people have too.

I don't really want to share those more far left ideas i have, but i wonder if maybe i should shut up and stop sharing anything because i hear sometimes my ideas are just damaging progress or something. The thing is, im not surprised by 2024-2025. It feels more like events were already set there to begin with, and i knew this the whole time but i didn't want to admit these things. i think a lot of people didn't want to admit this was possible and thats part of why we're here. And that is one opinion i've lost friends and people over. Is the truth something that we just can't handle anymore? Am i just totally wrong and stupid? I don't know anymore. I'm not even sure im looking for an answer. And probably, there is no answer or answers to these thoughts.

Apparently, some schools in the U.S. didn't teach phonics until recently (2014).

Did anyone here learn phonics in school?

In my case, did think about exercising the legs more and have started a bit.

What kind of things could a person carry to sell and how if they ever had to forcibly leave?

I read diamonds are worthless second hand.

Solid gold seems legit but not sure if coins or jeweler is best.

I saw something about getting gold chains to trade individual links in a emergency.

Are there any other good tips?

It costs over a thousand USD to take some ocean liners.

What are alternative ways that are cheaper, and how would one go about it?

(No planes)

For context, I know someone who went from China to California by freight ship in the 1990s by bribing the captain with beer and their cooking skills.

I was thinking some transparent filler maybe, and grinding/polishing it down? There's some varnish on the wood anyway.

The basket occasionally went in the dishwasher which cleaned the surface, but the well gunked grease has been building up.

Tried soaking the basket in soap and hot water. Scrubbing with a soft sponge. And then running the dishwasher multiple times but it only got a small part of the grease out.

I used to believe he was an aggressive racist man who tried to keep black players out of the league as violently as possible, giving rise to media like Soundgarden's Ty Cobb

But I'm now reading through his Wikipedia article, and I can't quite work him out.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ty_Cobb

He's definitely aggressive, and has a "hard-headed fuck-you-all" attitude to life. It looks like the racist allegations against him might have just been slander caused by another player (Schmidt).

There's one altercation he has with a cement worker whose work he ruined by stepping in it, and then escalated into something more.... but as far as I can see that's it.

He just seems like a good player who's a bit heavy handed and loud mouthed, and fights anyone who he perceives does him wrong, regardless of background or skin color.

There's one story that made me giggle a bit:

Cobb climbed into the stands and attacked Lucker, who it turned out was handicapped (he had lost all of one hand and three fingers on his other hand in an industrial accident).

Some onlookers shouted at him to stop because the man had no hands, to which Cobb reportedly retorted, "I don't care if he got no feet!"

According to Russo, the crowd cheered Cobb on in the fight. Though extremely rare in the 21st century, attacking fans was not so unusual an activity in the early years of baseball.

I across this interesting page on Wikipedia called "Characters With Narcissistic Personality Disorder" and I was very surprised by the characters that will included. I never thought of Patrick Bateman or Bender as having NPD before. There are some obvious ones like the Wicked Witch from Snow White and Gaston from Beauty And The Beast but are there any others.

how much could minor shoplifting add to the economy if: 

• it was only targeting businesses that ship their profits offshore and/or avoid paying local taxes;
• the shoplifted items were items that were going to be purchased; and
• monetary savings redistributed to local businesses?