Meeting other people’s friends groups (as you described meeting your partner’s friends) is a great way to shortcut that awkwardness. Its not just that someone else has done the hard work of filtering folks out, but that people are just on better form when with friends. Part of the problem of making friends in random social events is most people are either a bit awkward or putting on a social ‘mask’, which makes it harder to actually identify the people you’d like once you got past that.

My wife social circle has a bunch of people who entered as someone’s partner for a whole, but stayed friends with us after they broke up (even if there was a delicate period post-split where we hung out with them both, but never together).

It’s not weird to think about the other paths you could have gone down. But I would avoiding feeling too much regret. If something genuinely seems interesting to you, make it part of your current life, even just as a hobby or side project. Remembering that we are more than just our current selves is important for not getting swallowed by the grind.

If it’s feeling envy about the better life some alternate you has, try to keep in mind that nothing is simple. Although other choices might seem appealing in abstract, maybe they’d also lead to more problems. Sure, you could have been a doctor, but maybe the stress would have driven you to burnout and opiate addiction (69% of doctors misuse prescription substances).

I’d also say, that as I get older, I feel like I hit different “Save Points” that prevent to much regret. I chose to study philosophy instead of law, which means I’m a lot less rich than I might have been, but I would trade my weird, chilled friends from uni for the bunch of competitive over achievers I would have been “friends” with if I’d gone down that route. I met my spouse during a stressful period in my life, completing a degree for a profession I no longer work in. I could see that whole period of study as a complete waste of time, but if I’d never met the person I married the my life would be incomparably poorer.

Wow, that site is unhinged. Also, that article feels like it’s been heavily rewritten by AI, if not pure ai slop. Normally I enjoy crazy paranoid rants about demonic symbolism on cereal boxes, or whatever, but that article was shallow and vacuous.

I probably agree, but I’m not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean that people who are in a disadvantaged group in a society are more sensitive to language that is biased against their group? So women notice (and can be offended) by phrases like “you throw like a girl” while men might not care, or even notice, that it’s sexist.

Or do you mean people in disadvantaged groups are, in general better at detecting bias in language? So, poor people are better at spotting politic bias in reporting?

Do you think emotional abuse is more common from immigrant parents? I feel like I see a lot of comments about the stress and pressure that immigrant parents put on their kids, but it’s not something I know anything about.

If so, why do you think it’s like that? Is it just that families that immigrant are often in difficult financial situations, without lots of social support so the parents are super stressed? Or that the kinds of people who are willing to immigrate are aspirational and so demand a lot of their children? Or is partly that their way if parenting would be normal back where they grew up, but for its difficult for their kids growing up in a society with different standards and expectations around childhood?

Thanks for the reminder, I had genuinely forgotten this morning. Why is it so hard?

There’s lots of architectural guidance, building codes, etc. normally linked to number of people in the household. But it’s all pretty damn relative, both culturally and individually.

When I lived in the city, I was pretty comfortable with a small appartment, because I spent a lot of time out of my home in cultural spaces. Now I live in the country, and in city-terms our house is gigantic for just the two of us. Netherthless, we’re continuing to convert old out buildings into more space because the demands on our home are much higher and we have lots of unused space.

Not only do we live there, but we’ve got jobs that involve a lot of remote working, and it’s also a building site/workshop as we renovate and make our own fixtures and furniture. Plus, because it’s more remote, we want guest bedrooms and extra space so that guests can come and stay for a while without feeling cramped. Then we’ve got animals, who bring their own clutter, and we also want to create a guesthouse that we can rent to tourists. Even without those extra requirements, we choose to sleep in adjacent, but seperate, bedrooms because we have sleep issues. And I know that is a crazy luxury that we wouldn’t have been able to afford in the city, but when space is cheap, there’s no real reason not to.

I know that my example is pretty extreme, but everyone’s needs are different. I have friends who basically live in one room and love that, because everything is within easy reach and they don’t want to have guests. But I know it would be depressing and claustrophobic for others. Sharing an apartment with four adult strangers is a different experience from a family home with four children.

I think there can be rules (you can’t claim something is a bedroom if it’s smaller than 6sqm) but there isn’t a one size fits all solution.

It’s the case for all dishwashers I know about. It’s not that weird if you think about it. When people wash dishes by hand, they often wash a bunch of dishes in the same basin, with the water becoming increasingly dirty. Depending on how dirty and how much they care, they’ll change the water occasionally. Then they’ll give everything a rinse in clean water to get rid of soap. (obvs people do dishes on a variety of ways, but this is pretty common in western cultures.)

Dishwashers are the same, spray the same hot soapy water over the dishes for a while, until it’s dirty and most of the solids have been removed. Then drain and wash again with clean water. The soapy stage is about removing dirt, but the sanitising comes afterwards with the hot rinse and drying.

Various freelance / project based work would probably come close. I know that jobs with short deadlines and big changes of focus have been manageable, while I’ve never lasted long with regular week after week of ongoing or repetitive tasks. Stuff like theatre / arts projects, or even some types of construction involves working really hard for a couple of weeks until something is achieved, and then doing something different.

My current job teaching at a university almost hits the sweet spot, because I only ever work six weeks before some sort of holiday, and there’s big vacations in between semesters. But coordiating the same class over a 12 week semester, even with a half term week off in the middle, is a big challenge to my willpower. About halfway through I start to check out and everything starts to fall apart.

Those are really intresting studies. It’s quite something to think about my cycle of getting bored and starting a new hobby or trying something different as an essential life skill of a nomadic forager. Not like those slow, obsessive types, who lag behind trying to pick a bush to the bone before moving on.

In the nomadic tribe, those with the mutation had better social standing and nourishment. In the sedentary tribe, those with the same mutation were malnourished, distracted, and regarded as unreliable by their peers.

This is pretty depressing, and believable.

You might have an intresting point here, but o don’t really understand what you’re saying. Can you explain a bit more?

It’s hard! And tbh, when I do manage to stick at a hobby for a longer time it often starts to horrify me. Like, why I have I spent so long doing this thing that doesn’t matter?

But tips that help me:

Keeping stimulated about it, watching YouTube about it, reading about it. It’s easy to do when I’m excited about it, and that way I’m constantly being bombarded with reminders that I care.

Having friends or people to join in with. If I have to go to something or finish something, having another person to keep me on track and from just moving on to something else is great

Setting manageable goals - I often go back and forth from “I want this to be my whole life” and “why am I’m wasting my life on this”. Aiming for a specific goal means there’s a point that I can choose to stop or set a further goal, rather than just a vague endless pressure to do the hobby.

But it really depends on what it is, specific advice for crafting, sport, games or whatever will be different. What do you want to do? And what about it excites you?

Can you share a link?

Yup, just read the other post. No one picked stupid cat. Really weird behavior OP.

Edit: also, reading the reponses here, people don’t care or pick smart cat. Just like in the other post…

This is a really good answer. Even terrible parents generally ‘love’ their children. Some believe that means giving everything they want and never saying “no”, others believe that by bullying their kids they’re “making them strong”. And some genuinely love their kids, but less than they love their career or football.

Fortunately most parents really do want to do right by the kids, and have a more sane idea of what love means. But they might not always express that love in the way the child needs or understands, for a variety of reasons.

I think your absolutely right that people shouldn’t call a question stupid in c/nostupidquestions. But they can and should criticise a question for being a rant disguised as a question (eg. “Why are X people so stupid?”). More borderline is a questions that maybe meant in good faith but seems to have so many problematic assumptions built-in, that it’s difficult to even engage with fairly. It might not be a stupid question, but it’s been phrased in a way that makes so many wrong assumptions, that answering it becomes an unnecessarily difficult chore.

I saw your question about veganism, and I can imagine some people took it as way of poking vegans. Vegans get a lot of hassle online, and are often asked to justify this or that, so asking “why don’t they eat roadkill” (in so many words) could be seen as not coming from a genuine place of curiosity. I’m not saying your question wasn’t genuine, but I can imagine that other people thought so.

I do think your question falls into the “too many dumb assumptions”. There were responses along the lines of “vegans don’t eat meat, so of course they don’t eat meat that has died naturally”. And you responded with “I meant the philosophy not the diet”. If that’s true, then it was a “badly phrased” question, not a “stupid” one.

Nostupidquestions is meant to be a place to ask questions that you feel like you should know, or everyone else seems to know. If you ask confusing or misleading questions, it’s reasonable for people to respond with “that’s not what veganism means” or whatever. But I do 100% think people shouldn’t say it’s a stupid question (although, having read through the thread I don’t see anyone saying that to you…)

I basically agree with you. But I will say that there’s increasing research on the role of emotions in adhd that suggests that we are prone to having more extreme reactions. Everyone remembers the cringe moments but maybe we get more embarrassed about smaller things, and they stick in our mind. Similarly, everyone has difficulty moving on from something that enraged them but people have different thresholds for what throws them into that heightened state.

If I saw someone wearing a helmet, with cap strapped on somewhere, I’d understand. It’s practical, and it’s pretty clear that your planning to wear it when you remove the helmet, you’re not trying to make some sort of statement. Go for it! (as long as your cap strap is reliable…)

Unless I’m burned out, lying horizontal on my couch, using the smallest possible gesture to continue doomscrolling.

When I lived alone I ended up airbnbing my spare room. It was sometimes stressful, but it meant my house was constantly tidy. As soon it was just me the entire house would sink in to madness.