Sure, I’ll bite. My parents recently bought a new house. Every bedroom ceiling fan has a pattern etched into the plaster above it. This one’s my favorite.

Your stomach microbiome is plants

Which is why I spend a solid 3 hours a day facing the sun with my mouth held wide open. Gotta let my tummy plants photosynthesize somehow.

Granted, I never lived in any other era of human history, but I imagine our fractured society plays a huge role in why so many of us feel this way (because you are absolutely not alone in this experience.) We used to stay in close-knit communities, which forced us to hold our ties to each other, but we now have the entire globe to connect with. Consider how dating sites proliferate the idea that we can pick people the way we pick items in a grocery store - check one out, put it back on the shelf, put another in your cart, return another at a later date. It’s a pretty messed up way to think about other humans, but unfortunately a lot of people have internalized that this is a normal way to treat others.

When this happens enough, it’s easy to end up feeling disposable. It’s important to remind yourself that it’s not about you per se, but about how others treat each other. Being loyal is an underrated trait nowadays, made all the harder when you’ve gone through experiences where people take advantage of it.

I would love to offer solid advice on the matter, but unfortunately I often feel the same way. The best I can offer is the knowledge that you likely aren’t doing anything in particular to bring this on yourself - it’s a massive societal issue. Not the greatest hope, I know, but you are far from alone. I think it’s important that we recognize that loyal people are out there. It’s just hard to know how loyal someone is until the chips are down.

The protests include rallies, at least all the No Kings ones I’ve been to. They have speakers for community organizations, unions, and local politicians or people running for local offices who make it publicly known that they are standing up against Trump’s madness. There are calls to action, to mobilize with local groups and to call existing representatives to make our voices heard.

They don’t bring out the guillotines, no, but it’s more than just people standing around being angry.

Anyone who wants to speak at an event or make a different call to action can easily find a way to address the crowd. Bring up your idea with the organizers at your local events, make your case for including Twitter/Amazon/etc boycotts, and see where it goes. These things aren’t put together by the untouchable “elites” or celebrities you can’t easily get ahold of, they’re organized by ordinary people just like you. That makes them relatively easy situations where you can be the change you want to see. Don’t let our conditioned disempowerment hold you back from making your case. Your idea sounds solid, why not give it a shot?

If they went to local protests, they’d meet those other leftists. Networking absolutely occurs at these events.

Yep. I left Reddit during the initial API crisis. I’ve left jobs because of my principles, even without backup jobs ready. There are tons of places I won’t shop (including Amazon), and it makes finding things I need difficult sometimes. I’ve also been vegan for over 20 years.

My mom’s the opposite. I grew up seeing her hypocrisy, and it upset me. She’d outright tell me, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Such a rich lesson for a young mind! I realized that a lot of people become hypocrites by repeating what others say without critical thought, and it turned me into a skeptic. So many people jump on the emotional bandwagon (see any hot button political topic for reference), but then later after hearing someone else confidently spout an opinion on it, they will stand with the opposite conclusion. If they’d stopped and thought the first time they heard about it, before opening their mouths about it, they wouldn’t come off hypocritical later on. But the distressing part is less that they changed their opinion, but that they still haven’t put any critical thought into why they hold it - it’s all just repeating others’ words. Which is why if a topic is brand new to me, I will refuse to take a side in it until I research it and come to my own conclusions. There are enough parrots repeating propaganda thoughtlessly, we have to be very careful with whom we trust.

My principles uphold the person I am. I came to them on my own, often going against the tide I grew up in. To me, the hardest part about having principles isn’t upholding them, but in dealing with those that can’t believe you actually have them. So many people seem to float on seemingly without a real sense of self, swayed more by those around them than by any sort of inner compass. I can’t fathom being like that, and those people apparently can’t fathom being like me.

All the more reason Lemmy is such a good place to be. We might not all hold the same principles, but at least many of us seem to have them.

I’d also like to note the seeming overlap of Lemmy’s populace with neurodivergence, which can coincide with, well, being a principled weirdo like me. ;)

2016 was an interesting year for me. I had an odd week of coincidences that appeared like a hypomanic episode that never happened before and never repeated again. The biggest one being that I was dating a guy who had just told me that his lifelong dream was to meet his favorite band. That week, I won a radio contest that got us tickets to a concert with a meet-and-greet at a tiny venue with that same band.

The episode prompted me to finally see a psych for the depression I’d been dealing with for most of my life. It started me on anti-depressants, which have massively improved my quality of life.

But the biggest thing was that the episode included a day of absolute clarity. I was driving and thinking, as I’m prone to do, when out of the blue everything just made sense. I could see in my head how everything was connected to everything else, and it was intense. But I’m a skeptic, and I needed to know that I was still grounded in reality, so I pulled over into a parking lot and called a friend. I asked him to help me make sure I was still making sense and I wasn’t going off the deep end. He’s a deeply rational guy, known to recognize bullshit, and yet as I talked on and on about the many puzzle pieces that now seemed to fit together, he remarked that yes, I was still making sense.

Key to it was the feeling that it was a sort of enlightenment, the same kind that religious folks might feel after years of meditation, or that some people experience through psychedelic drugs. There was a strong sense that I was not alone in that sensation, that many others had felt it before and that when they did, they had the same epiphany that we were connected directly. The sense of peace was incredible. I don’t believe in a god and that moment did not change that, but I did come away with a new respect for those who take their faith seriously and sincerely (that is, not like the christians in the US that use it to spread hate, but rather like the monks who give up everything to pursue their spiritual journeys.) I could feel the immensity of the universe, and see in my mind’s eye an infinite web that brought everything together. I could mentally travel that web from point to point, seeing all different perspectives at the same time. It was wild, and hasn’t happened again since.

Despite it being so brief, the few hours I spent in that state have impacted me to this day. Some things that used to bother me didn’t annoy me anymore. Finding patience became much easier. It also became easier to understand and connect to people.

One more weird thing that started that week and never stopped - I developed the uncanny ability to spot four-leaf clovers. I can’t count how many I’ve discovered in the ten years since, but if there’s a four-leafer in a patch that I walk by and all I do is scan it in my periphery, I will stop, reach down, and either point it out or pluck it to give to whoever I’m with. It’s like they jump out to me. It’s fun having a strange talent that makes people happy.

Have you watched any of Alyssa Grenfell’s videos on Youtube? She’s a former Mormon who makes videos about it from her perspective. I knew the church was fucked up, but the rabbit hole is so much deeper than I expected.

It’s not as simple as “they’re stupid” (which they are.) It’s a symptom of their in-group vs out-group thinking pattern. They don’t think the differences between other countries matter, because they’re all “others” as far as they’re concerned. So they paint foreigners with the same brush and leave it at that.

As to why “Mexican” in used in particular, I think other commenters make a good point about Mexico being the most prominent Spanish-speaking country to people in the US. They don’t see as many people from Spain, so that’s off their radar. If my upbringing in a racist area is anything to go by, “Mexican” became the default long ago.

Make America Great(ly depressed) Again

Thank you. I have a kid I work with that looooves space. To him, dwarf planets and regular planets are equally interesting. When we watch space videos that point out Pluto in some way, he’s just confused. Like a video about the 8 planets ending in a frowning Pluto.

The kid: “Why is Pluto sad?”

Me: “Well, bud, some grown ups are silly. They grew up thinking of Pluto as a planet and they don’t like that its status changed.”

But to him, Pluto has no reason to be “sad.” It’s got Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris to be friends with! But nobody makes a big deal over them (if they even are aware of their existence at all. This boy has single-handedly educated many of my coworkers about them.)

Point is, grown ups - let it go! Scientific reclassification doesn’t mean Pluto was ejected from the solar system or something. It’s still there and it’s still loved. It just plays with different friends now.

I was just talking to a coworker yesterday about this. We have some very creative kids where I work, and my coworker was working with a five year old who loves drawing Spiderman. The coworker said something about not being able to draw. I pointed out the kid and mentioned that he’s only been drawing for, what, 3-4 years max? He practices the skill and naturally isn’t perfect, but it all starts with picking up a pencil (or marker, or crayon) and making that first effort.

It may be crude at first, but as the kid shows, it’s not the quality that matters - it’s the desire to create. If you feel that whim, all you have to do is follow it.

True, but they can tell when their card is put back in the wrong pocket, or upside down, or other tiny clues that hint of someone messing with their stuff. Kids sometimes think parents know more than they do, or “have eyes in the back of their head,” simply because kids don’t pay attention to the same details their parents might. Their parents can deduce what happened from clues, clues that the kids don’t realize they left.

A very careful child might get away with it, but if their parents are equally careful they’ll probably notice something is amiss. I guess it all comes down to “your mileage may vary.”

Yeah, we’d just skip from July 3rd to July 5th. If February can occasionally take an extra day, surely July can spare a day here or there.

At my first real job, I used to hang my coat on one particular coat hanger because it was the only one of its color. I chose it because it was easy for me to spot my coat when the hangers were crowded.

Now, I had a coworker who… I’m not quite sure what was going on with his brain. He jumped to weird conclusions all the time and flat-out made up things that he seemed to truly believe were real.

One day he randomly started arguing with me that the coat hanger I used was green. Uh, okay? Then he claimed that I had claimed it was yellow, and that I was wrong. I never made any such claim (and if I were pressed to it, I would’ve called it chartreuse.) Yet he was insistent that we had fought about it before, for some strange reason, and went on gloating about being right. It was utterly bizarre.

I let it go. He’s the same person who decided that “magic erasers” (for cleaning surfaces) must work by having paint in them. No amount of logic about that budged his opinion, and I knew no amount of reality would budge him on the coat hanger color.

So, sure dude, you win the imaginary argument. Congrats. Would you like an imaginary cookie?

A friend of mine did a similar thing when people at work assumed she spoke Spanish. She was from Pakistan and didn’t know a word of Spanish. After like the fifth person did it, she responded back in Urdu just to fuck with them.

That’s the case for me. The last game I’ve “completed” was a game where I can play through multiple different scenarios (Surviving Mars.) I have completed about half the mystery scenarios, and I love being able to replay it and have it be new all over again.

Hmm, we might watch the same YouTuber.

Didn’t King of the Hill do an episode about the change in cheerleading?

some people don’t get high their first times.

Thank you for mentioning this. I didn’t try weed until my mid-20s and it took years of intermittent trying before I actually felt high. I’d never heard that this could happen, so I just got upset thinking I’d never be able to understand what the big appeal of weed was. Only in my late 20s, at a friend’s party where I’d already gotten pretty buzzed on alcohol, did a hit of a pipe make me finally feel something.

I don’t know if it finally clicked because of lowered inhibitions due to the alcohol, or if my brain had to build up to feeling an effect, or what, but weed’s worked as intended ever since. I will add that I’m the type of person that has been asked throughout my teenage years, “What are you smoking? And can I have a hit?” despite being 100% sober until my 20s. Maybe having an already-weird brain had something to do with it?

So yeah, OP, be prepared to discover that you might not feel anything from weed at all. It doesn’t seem to be terribly common, but it is definitely possible that nothing happens the first few tries. That doesn’t mean it will never happen, though.