Moofy
User ID: 1350
Moofy
7mo ago
Can anyone here who had an overall happy experience during their primary and secondary schooling comment as to what your experience was like? What type of schools did you attend? How were your relationships with your teachers and peers? How involved were your parents in your schooling?
Moofy
7mo ago
I've gone solo hiking in brown bear country and have come across solo women doing the same thing. They were motivated by a sense of adventure and wanting to see beautiful parts of nature and were willing to travel very far to do it. That being said, when these women came across me, a lone solo guy in his 30s, they were quite willing to join with me and hike out together.
Moofy
7mo ago
It depends on the individual. For me, going on long solo walks in nature is my favorite way of de-stressing and having introspective time. Hiking with others doesn't lower my stress and doesn't give me the unbroken mental space for self-reflection.
Get an Italian Hoagie somewhere. Carmen's is in walking distance from the convention center so that's convenient, but there's usually a line. There are dozens of hoagie places which do something similar which can be easily searched for.
If you're looking to dine, then Cuba Libre, Zahav or Buddakan are all solid choices in Old City, as is White Dog in U City and Gran Caffe L'Aquila near Rittenhouse.
Moofy
1yr ago
After poking around in the rules of the Dems and the GOP it appears that the Democrats will have a meeting of the national committee, and the new nominee will be selected by a majority vote of the committee, one person, one vote. The Republicans will do the same, but members representing each state will receive the same amount of votes their state had during the convention. The replacement will be selected by a majority vote.
In neither case is it a rule that the Vice Presidential nominee will automatically assume the Presidential nomination.
Moofy
1yr ago
I believe Obama said that the UK would go to the 'back of the queue' for any trade deals, not taking a trade deal off of the table, but making it clear that the promises of some Brexiteers that the UK could just seamlessly move from the EU into a free trade agreement with the US were unrealistic.
Moofy
1yr ago
Being a Metafilter exile, from my experience a lack of downvotes serves to push would-be downvotes to become upvotes for the nearest antagonistic reply. This has the effect of giving upvotes to whoever can write an opposing comment the quickest, regardless of the logic of the response.
Moofy
1yr ago
I've kept a regular handwritten journal for the past 8 years. I started doing it while entering sobriety, initially as a way to track cravings and triggers, but eventually as a way to track thought/emotional patterns, self-narrative, and as a reference for the important events of my life. I had a viciously negative inner voice for years that manifested with self-destructive behaviors. By writing my daily thoughts and behaviors onto the page was I able to view my experiences with a different perspective and write counter-narratives to the negative voices. Countering the negative self talk wasn't easy because I believed the negativity was right, but eventually the positive counter-narratives and affirmations became reflexive when any negative self talk came about and I lost the negativity.
Nowadays when I am brought into an emotional state of intense anxiety or panic, I reference my journals to see how I'd been triggered similarly in the past and see how the prior events played out while also gleaning any coping mechanisms that were effective. Similarly for depression.
My journals are some of my most important possessions. I find that when I go back and read my journals, I like myself a lot more than on a regular day and have much more compassion for myself and what I struggle through regularly. There were days when I used the journal as motivation, wanting to go out and do things that were worthy of writing down and that I would enjoy reading in the future. The journal also encourages me to treat every day as a different experience and to break up the mundane routines as much as possible. Finally, they're an archive of all the stuff I've done, and as I get older, it's nice to be able to go to the journals and get dates for certain events and place them all in a time line, as it becomes all to easy to forget.
Moofy
1yr ago
We're at the point where reporting in the msm assumes that Trump will just suspend elections somehow. This report from PBS Newshour is about Trump using the word 'vermin' in a recent speech. In this report the words 'Dangerous Rhetoric' were overlaid over an image of Trump, and the meat of the report was an interview with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor from NYU. Right off the bat her comparison was with You Know Who, and she then argues that rhetoric is symptomatic of sections of the Republican party wanting to move to authoritarianism and suspending elections. The mechanism for this happening is up to the viewer's speculation.
Moofy
1yr ago
I have saved every one of these emails that I've received over my 15 years at my current company and plan on to replying to each on my last day.
Moofy
1yr ago
The steps on the escalation ladder from "US/Israel War with Hezbollah" to "US War With Iran" to "US Assassination of the Iranian Leadership" aren't as proximal and rapid as you are making them seem.
Moofy
1yr ago
If I'm Iran, I take this gambit. Make the Americans spend blood and treasure openly defending Israel, actively alienate them from their Arab allies and force the US government into yet another unpopular war in the Middle East.
Moofy
1yr ago
Whenever we hear a story of a lad engaging in some atrocity in a fantasy realm, I remind my wife that 'little boys have a little evil in them' (and then omit how many times I myself have exterminated whole species in Stellaris).
Moofy
1yr ago
Very much so. A precocious interest during my teen years, a few courses in undergrad, and continued curiosity afterward. However, after I started using psychedelics I had a appreciation of how the Dharmic religions and Taoism may all be reactions to the same transcendent experience.
As someone who has taken his share of heroic doses, as well as microdosed for years on end, I have mixed feelings about the whole experience. I went into the experience of psychedelic use as an atheist, and came out having a suspicion that there may be a karmic cycle of birth and rebirth; also that there may be a transcendent cosmic consciousness from which we all come and all return to. There is a horror in having this suspicion that I may be reborn again, that all of my attachments to my family, friends and self will be ripped from my consciousness and I will be left alone, with nothing before going through the whole cycle again. There is also a horror in suspecting that since the cosmic consciousness that we all may stem from is indistinguishable from ourselves that I may eventually experience all the suffering in the universe. There were times while using when I had an awareness of the Earth as an organic entity and felt a sense of terror at all the suffering and destruction that occurred within this entity. The shift in perspective that I experienced when having used also made me more aware of the transience of all things and sorrowful in their passing. Psychedelics can amplify horrors that you scarcely knew to exist and then you cannot un-forget them.
All that being said, they have improved my life considerably. They (paired with therapy) helped me overcome substance abuse. They helped me overcome self-alienation and self-hatred and develop self-compassion. But the experience isn't without its downsides, and shouldn't be entered into lightly.
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EDIT: One more thing, I know that the Myers-Briggs is just astrology for boys, but before the whole psychedelics/therapy thing I was invariably an INTP, and the years since I always test as an INFP.
Moofy
1yr ago
I returned to my regular group yoga practice after being absent for 10 months. I was a regular practitioner for 7 years, and the practice came to a halt in the lead-up to the birth of my son. Aside from the expected improvements in my flexibility and relief from minor aches, the most notable effect is a greater ability to focus.
I found that I was rather scatterbrained and overwhelmed with the tasks that I faced while doing WFH and taking care of my home and an infant at the same time. However, the practice of mindfulness and the 'moving meditation' that I engage in during my yoga sessions has made it easier for me to organize my thoughts.
During the months after the birth of my son, I didn't bother to engage in solo mindfulness/fitness practices (aside from walking) because the temptation to do work/housework became overwhelming. It's nice having returned to the community that I've practiced with for so long; just a few casual daily conversations with others (who aren't coworkers) outside of the home does wonders for my mood.
Finally, I want to note that having a kid has done more to strengthen my legs than all my prior yoga practices combined; chair pose is no longer a pose I dread.
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Discogs to find other works and collaborations by producers, musicians and labels that I like.
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Collecting entire discographies has allowed me to find hidden gems and collaborations with artists that I didn't know previously.
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Shazam.
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Maroofy has assisted me in finding songs that are sonically similar to ones I already like. It's a gem for finding stuff with <100 YouTube views.
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The YouTube algo, which is worse than it was in 2015 or 2016 but still delivers gems on occasion. Finding full DJ sets on YouTube also has introduced me to tracks and artists that I'd never would have gotten into otherwise.
I discovered the band that I've listened to the most in the past 10 years by just by hitting the random article link on Wikipedia. Also, I spent a substantial amount of time on /mu/ during the pandemic, and wasn't introduced to a single artist that I liked through the wisdom of that community.
Moofy
1yr ago
I was a hospice volunteer and they tend to do a good job at connecting volunteers with people who have no kin or are estranged from their kin. The problem is, those people need to be on hospice to receive the benefit of the volunteers, and there could certainly be benefits for those not just on death's door.
Moofy
1yr ago
The reality of age segregation becomes blatant if you spend any time in a nursing home and see the residents living in an eternal present punctuated by episodes of The Price is Right, feuds with other residents, and rounds of meds. Those residents with families who visited them regularly had something to look forward to and experiences with people who weren't just acquaintances who lived on the same floor. I volunteered in one for a while in my 30s and the residents would often go out of their way to get my attention, chatting and having the attention of someone younger made them happier. The perspectives that the young and the old can give each other are invigorating to both cohorts. Keeping the old away from the young makes aging an unknown to the young, and thence something to be feared.
I will note that I truly felt sad for those in the home without any family to visit them. Volunteers would be assigned to specific patients, but many people had no one and it just looked to be a lonely existence.
As is pointed out by others here, it's all about framing. I frame this as:
-Blue pill: You join a death cult that will commit suicide unless half of all people join them.
-Red pill: You don't join this death cult.
Those blue-pillers are going to live or die in circumstances outside of my control, but the one thing I can control is my ability to save my own life. Perhaps another reframing is that instead of making the choice for myself, I am making it for another person. By selecting blue for this other person, I am willing to wager their life on an unknown outcome, and by selecting red I am guaranteed to save one life that would not be saved otherwise. I suspect that the calculus of this decision changes when the life of someone else is being wagered instead of one's own, but the difference is between having compassion for others and having compassion for one's self.
In the US public schools I attended, we were restricted to eating lunch in the cafeteria. We were only granted liberty to leave the campus for lunch during our senior year. In suburban/rural districts most students are bussed and walking home and back within a 45 minute period isn't practicable (and at many schools, walking isn't an option at all).
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