Shortly after entering adulthood, I lost a close friend. He was still in college at the time, a talented, friendly, bright light snuffed far too early. He was well loved and his funeral was so packed that it was standing room only. One attendee described it as “the most depressing class reunion ever.”

His loss has never left me.

Right before I got the phone call telling me the news, I had been feeling extremely down about myself. I was crossing my work parking lot (which I had to do regularly as part of my job) without looking up for moving cars, thinking that if I got hit, it wouldn’t have mattered.

But that same day, my phone rang. It was a mutual friend, and through obvious tears and a quavering voice, she told me, “John is dead!”

With that, everything changed.

I’ll never forget how much it hurt to lose somebody so important to me. The idea of purposely putting my friends through that has kept me going more times than I can count. I have to remind myself, even in my darkest, most self-hating moments, that I’m more important to others than I realize. I can’t imagine John would have known just how much of an impact he had made on others, but I saw the proof. I felt the pain. I love my friends and family too much to entertain the thought of making them attend my funeral. And so I push on, but with one change:

I now make a point to explicitly tell my friends how much they matter to me.

Sites still add them because it makes them money at the expense of your privacy.

You can also consider it a form of advertising for the platforms. The buttons not only suggest for the user that they should use an indicated platform, but give them an immediate way to engage with it as well. It’s manipulation, all the way down.

Cardinal Pizzaballa

That cannot be his real name.

Looks it up

Huh, TIL.

Or just about fighting each other and it’s all about drama because they don’t have the apparent ability to just simply talk to each other.

Classic sitcom formula. I never got into a lot of the “family” shows in the 90s, because almost every plot revolved around someone being a poor communicator - and that’s it. Person A can’t talk about event/topic Y, and now Person B assumes reason Z and the entire episode and all its hijinks only exist because of it. Everything could’ve been avoided if Person A and Person B actually talked things through, like healthy, sane people who actually want to avoid conflict. But writers couldn’t think of a way to both model proper communication and create a compelling storyline, so here we are.

When that show was popular, I had a boyfriend that didn’t seem able to handle the idea of us liking different things. I never cared for zombies, but I’d heard good things about The Walking Dead and gave it a try. I pushed myself to watch the entire first season before deciding, “Nope, I can’t.”

But when I told that boyfriend? Apparently I “didn’t watch it enough.” When I told him I didn’t care for zombie stories, he insisted, “But it’s not about zombies! It’s about the people.” Uhh yeah, it’s about people in a world with zombies. I could watch a million shows about “people” that don’t involve zombies, so why would I keep watching this one that I already don’t like?

It makes me happy to see others shit on Friends.

When it first aired, my mom was a fan and it would regularly be on in the living room, which was the crossroads of my childhood house - you had to go through it to get anywhere else. Which meant that Friends was impossible to ignore. Walking by, the highest praise I could conjure was, “Wow, that laugh track is doing a lot of heavy lifting.”

At the time of its popularity, I never heard anyone else dislike it. When the show ended, I felt alone in not being sad about it. Since then, I can’t tell if people look back on it with nostalgia or if they are truly still amused by the bland, low-fruit, celebration of stupidity that makes up most of that show’s humor.

The theme song was good though.

if that was the correct explanation then we would expect to see (1) people in countries where it’s worse having even fewer children, which we don’t see, and (2) people in countries where it’s better having more children, which we also don’t see.

That’s not how things work. In fact, that’s practically the opposite of how things work. Increased access to educational opportunities for women is strongly correlated with lowered fertility rates. It’s a well-known pattern. Or another way to frame it, is that poorly-educated women are more likely to have more children.

Part of the pattern is missing from this picture too - before this baby bust, was the baby boom, and before the baby boom, child mortality was a lot higher. A lot of medical advancements took place around the middle of the 20th century, which resulted in more children surviving to adulthood. Prior to this, people typically had many children because so many of them wouldn’t survive. It takes time for a society to adjust to higher life expectancies, resulting in a period where people continue to have many children just like their own parents did, despite no longer needing to.

However, those high rates don’t last. People adjust to the new health expectations, leading the next generation to have fewer children than the one before.

Add in other factors of a prosperous state, such as educational opportunities and access to comprehensive healthcare (which would include birth control), and it makes sense that “countries where it’s worse” would have more children, and “countries where it’s better” would have fewer. (Check the link above for more explanation. It goes into way more detail.)

My mind wanders with ease, that’s the problem. My mind wanders whether it’s an appropriate situation or not, both when I need to focus on something (like during a film or a presentation) and when I need to NOT be focusing on something (like when I’m trying to fall asleep.) I suffer from insomnia because of it.

On numerous occasions, people have suggested meditation to me as a way to practice “clearing” thoughts from the mind. They may admit it “takes practice,” but they assume everyone can do it, which makes it all the more frustrating when your brain seems incapable of shutting up. It’s like the “I know you’re depressed, but have you tried being happy?” of ADHD.

Have you spoken specifically to a dermatologist?

Also, my condolences for all the crap you have had to deal with. That is: the original infestations, the continuing trauma, and the potentially-mean responses of people who don’t understand. I am but an internet stranger, but I feel you, and wish you luck on overcoming your struggles.

I used to feel bad every time I saw a newly-opened small business that had closed.

It’s still sad sometimes. However, ever since I worked in a few small businesses, I got to see just how batshit some small business owners are.

Now when I look at a “new” small business that just closed, I can’t help but suspect that a power-tripping owner probably fucked it all up through their own arrogance.

Meditation helps with this.

I know you mean well, but it bothers me whenever people say this. “Just clear your mind” - says the person who thinks everyone’s mind works like theirs. I’m tired of being told that the solution to the thing I can’t do, is to try to do the thing I can’t do.

I was with you for the first sentence, but you lost me at “witty dint.”

Here we are 16 or 17-year-old girls showing up to these random college guys house.

Oh man. It’s scary how normal this is treated. I remember having friends with “older boyfriends” and I always felt really weirded out by it. Yet when you’re a kid (or teen, in this case) and your friends act like it’s normal to want adult boyfriends, you’re put in a really awkward position. I wasn’t able to fully articulate or even comprehend everything fucked up about it at the time, but as an adult looking back, holy shit. There’s an entire hidden social ecosystem where being groomed is not only considered normal, but can be seen as enviable by peers.

One time as a kid, a friend lent me her glasses (I never needed glasses, but I always liked them) and I went to climb a tree. In the tree, looking down, the glasses made it seem like I was much closer to the ground than I was.

So I jumped.

It was extremely stupid. There was a point during the fall when I felt like I should’ve reached the ground already, but I hadn’t. In the end I was fine, the glasses were fine, and my friend thought it was funny. But wow, that could’ve gone disasterously wrong.

Sounds like my family’s last trip to Six Flags.

You’re all right. The title of “morally-worst laugh of the day” went to Elon Musk already. As usual.

I’d rather they hang somewhere within rock-throwing distance, but that sounds good too.

It might have been easier to learn about if shows didn’t censor it out from the start. How are people supposed to talk about something if it’s deliberately removed? It’s like people went, “Americans don’t already know about this food, so let’s make sure they don’t learn about its existence.”

I remember 1997 on The Simpsons, when Marge wanted to open a franchise. One of the options (which her rivals took) sold pita. I was a kid, and this was the first time I had ever heard of pita and tahini. They were simply described as “pocket bread” and “flavor sauce.” The introduction of new foreign food items didn’t upset or confuse the audience.

It’s simply bizarre that riceballs are treated like some particularly incomprehensible thing.

Also, research may have taken longer (and involved trips to the library), but anyone who wanted to learn about something in the 90s still could’ve done it. It wasn’t pre-literate, just pre-internet.

“Conveniently placed shrub” became a running gag in my 4th grade friend group because of this.

I never saw the movie and don’t know the context, but I wanted to see the gif so I looked it up. Is this the one?