In case you can’t tell, I’m passionate about rationality and critical thinking.

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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: September 22nd, 2024

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  • I’m saving your comment because this was my exact experience, too, and I’m glad to see this silver lining occurred for others.

    These people truly are mentally children, running around playing grown-up. Meanwhile, when I was an actual child, I was expected to be held to the same standards as grown-ups by Boomer parents (and as you likely know, autism + adults not explaining their social expectations = very difficult childhood.)

    It’s been a trip to see high-level government absolutely sucking at skills that I struggled with for ages, skills that I have been made to feel bad about for lacking. I work harder any day that I go out into public, even if it’s my day off, than any of these privileged losers ever seem to. I have to be extremely mindful of myself - my posture, my tone of voice, my volume, my face (can’t have resting bitch face), on top of whatever other tasks I have to do, every second of every minute that I’m around other people. I’m also expected to be aware of and mindful of the feelings of those around me, so I have to also accurately rate their posture, tone, etc. Fail any of these things, and anything I say or do has a chance of being misinterpreted poorly. It’s fucking exhausting, and I wish there were more understanding and acceptance that allowed us to relax.

    These are part of a whole set of skills - situational awareness, social awareness, self awareness - that the modern GOP appears to completely lack. They were raised without needing to apply them, and we can see evidence of their privileged backgrounds whenever they pull some tone-deaf stunt and still expect approval. Whenever I’m feeling down, I can remind myself that I may not be perfect, but at least I’m not as out-of-touch as they are.


  • Getting apologies would be nice, but it starts with acceptance. Right now, if a Trump voter can accept that they messed up or were led astray, and they can be convinced to join the resistance, that’s all I care about. I care less about hearing an “I’m sorry” than I do about having more people on the streets today - actions speak louder than words, and to turn down someone who’s joined our side over something as petty as “Have you apologized yet?” would do little more than push people away.

    We need a united front right now, and just as former Trump voters have to suck up the bad feelings of having contributed to this mess, we have to hold off on purity-testing our fellow protesters and accept that to fight the oligarchs, it takes all of us, regardless of our feelings toward each other.


  • 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.







  • For real. The fact that all of these are just more Republican lies is extremely disappointing:

    “She’s committed to banning fracking, phasing out internal combustion engines, and rolling out the most progressive Green New Deal yet,” another section of the Progress 2028 plan reads.

    “will support a nationwide gun buy-back program that will take dangerous weapons off our streets"

    “Let’s remove barriers for undocumented immigrants who are undocumented!” one ad states, adding, “Access to affordable housing, driver licenses, and fair wages creates a stronger America for everyone.”

    Republicans are so detached from the American people that they think these ideas would scare us. It’s no surprise they suck at parody, but by putting these words into Harris’s mouth they run the ironic risk of pushing undecided Independents or seemingly-ignored Progressives to vote for her.





  • The poster above you didn’t put the entire article. Their post was merely the snippet from the end of it.

    Earlier on, the article stated:

    The Atlantic is a heterodox place, staffed by freethinkers, and for some of us, Kamala Harris’s policy views are too centrist, while for others they’re too liberal.

    In other words, this endorsement is the decision of more than one person. It isn’t contradictory for different people to want different things. The whole point was that multiple people have found multiple reasons to come to the same conclusion.

    But the article isn’t behind a paywall, and the link is right there. In the search to make sense of an extracted quote, the original source is a good place to start.