Yeah feel like maybe 60-70% of my therapy sessions involve talking about socioeconomic factors behind my problems and I've never felt like my therapist downplayed that

That tracks with my experience. I visited Japan but knew minimal Japanese (pretty much just 有り難う御座います) and everyone was very friendly and helpful, and seemed pleased the limit of my Japanese was at least something polite.

I feel like one difference is a friendly Mandarin speaker would be less likely to try to correct me if I made a mistake and more likely to try to just interpret what I'm trying to say. I wonder if some of that comes from the possibility of misunderstandings from a tonal language.

The traditional toxic redditor stereotype never struck me as particularly overweight.

The less pleasant portions of the community have a pretty long history of hating fat people, and the last few years I was there I noticed a bit of a trend toward somewhat puritanical outlooks on indulgent food or general alcohol use. Still anecdotal, but this corroborated with my (ill-advised) decision to attend a reddit meet up. Not a lot of fat people there.

My guess is that though many were not overweight, they didn't have much else going for them. It was easier to insult someone being overweight than being broke or single or too online because it was the one that didn't apply to them.

I'm a Mandarin learner and there are some things in Mandarin that feel really intuitive for me, and other things that I really struggle to wrap my head around.

Tones are tricky but when speaking I've found I can really rely heavily on context to get me through a lot of it. Culturally Mandarin speakers are pretty forgiving, most of them just seem excited I'm giving it my best shot. Not sure if it's the same for Japanese speakers.

If the answer is anything other than Long John Silvers then you don't have enough game to get beyond the first date.

Most religions tend to involve a deity that is either alive, resurrected, or concepts like death don't really apply to them.

Tiamat in ancient Mesopotamian faith is sort of a creator deity, though her death is responsible for creation. The storm god Marduk kills her, splits her corpse in two with one half being the sky, the other the Earth and her tears the source of the Tigris and Euphrates. Tiamat's spouse and general Qingu is also killed by Marduk and his blood is used in the creation of mankind. So in a sense Marduk is more of the creation deity here who is very much alive.

But you can't really get anything from a dead god so there isn't much record of people worshipping Tiamat, at least not quite like they did Marduk.

It makes sense really, why would I pray or present offerings to something that can't listen when there's plenty of living deities whose favor I could try to earn to bring rain to my crops or give me healthy sons?

I can't believe they just put the source code out there like this

It's actually amazing how quickly it killed my usage of the site. I deleted my account years ago but still lurked every now and then. Now I literally can't go back, I won't download the app and the new site layout is pretty much unusable for me.

There's people who won't like me saying this, but I put a pin in the revolution talk to work on what's immediate.

Like you, I've tried local groups and found they tend to have small, disconnected local chapters and actions sometimes have questionable efficacy.

I think some of this comes from being so focused on "the revolution". I get it, groups like PSL don't want to get bogged down becoming a band-aid organization. They want to get rid of the broken system, not be a food bank in a system designed to make people hungry. I've done the reading so I understand where they're coming from here.

But then I attend meetings with groups that have about 10 regular attendees who mostly seem to tell each other to read more theory and paint a lot of banners. They get frustrated that the revolution didn't come after the latest sit-in, call each other every political science term in the book, and break off to form an even smaller, less effective group.

What I'm trying now are advocacy groups for specific causes I care about. They more often seem to include members of impacted communities and have a better idea of their needs.

I've worked with people who read Capital annually and I can't get them to show up to an action on time or to get through it without calling a mentally ill unhoused person a reactionary.

I've worked with people who haven't skimmed the manifesto but work every week getting food for their communities.

The latter are much better to work with.

Ideal conditions would mean organizers are all super politically literate and active, but I agree with you that you can't expect every member of a movement to read stuff like this as a prerequisite to organizing. Cadre members? Of course they should read. But the fascists aren't making general members read hefty political tomes.

It bothers me maybe once a week to think that I'll probably never go to space.

Figuring out what to do when a friend needs money.

If you asked me when I was younger I think I would have either said I won't loan friends money at all in order to preserve the friendship, or maybe something more altruistic like that I wouldn't loan someone money, just give it to them. I had an idealistic view of what my adult friendships would look like where they either don't end up in bad situations, or if they do it's because they make bad choices and the consequences are their own.

But as an adult I have had friends who needed money I can't afford to just give away, but if I don't help them then they may lose their home. Often the amount they've asked for isn't the end of it, after all if I cover one month of someone's rent that doesn't necessarily mean their circumstances have improved over the course of a month.

I've had to set boundaries, accept losses and say no to people I care about who need my help much more than I ever thought I would.

Buy a classical guitar.

I've been eyeing them for about ten years now but I don't play enough guitar to justify the cost just yet. At some point I'll probably just wake up one morning and buy one and play it plenty and wonder why I waited so long.

I wish I could somehow convey to whoever is collecting data on me that this is a thing I like.

Like there's all these entities trying to collect data on me to figure out how to sell me stuff and I want them to know the fact that Aldi lets cashiers sit down positively influences my decision to shop there. If other grocery stores adopted this I would prefer them over stores that do not.

I've been eyeing a Cordoba C9 or Yamaha GC12C for awhile. Kind of figure I'd save it to treat myself, celebrate a promotion or something.

I thought about getting something more affordable like you've described just to scratch the itch, and maybe that'd be better than depriving myself this long. But I guess having a luxury to look forward to has a positive psychological effect on me.

Depending on the model you probably got a great deal on that Takamine too

I try to keep in mind when I'm feeling annoyance or resentment for something that happened when I was younger, that it's also entirely possible I'm thinking about a different version of that person than what exists today. The same way I've grown it's entirely possible that unpleasant people I once knew have grown as well. It gives me an opportunity to let go of a few mild grudges I've held onto over the years.

However this is also the primary reason I don't have a Facebook. It can occasionally either torpedo this idea by showing me the person who I once knew to be a prick remains a prick, or someone who I once thought highly of has become awful.

She was my friend's cousin, we met my freshman year in high school and just hit it off right away.

Dated until junior year and broke up, which in high school felt like an eternity.

It was an immature sort of love between two very young people who were both years away from even beginning to figure out who they really were. We grew in completely different directions and our inexperience made us both pretty bad partners at times. But it was still love nonetheless, and the first time I had experienced it.

Late 2000s but close!

I stuck it out with old.reddit for awhile. I deleted my account because too I would get halfway through writing a reply to things and say "nah not worth it".

But without old reddit I won't even bother lurking.

Reddit became sort of unusable. The community has changed a lot and I felt like I didn't really know the site anymore.

I originally wasn't going to find a replacement and spent a few years without one, but I found myself lurking Lemmy more and more so I made an account. Not sure if it will stick though.