BellyPurpledGerbil

Take the money and run

Nobody in this goddamned world has ever heard the term "preventative" I swear to God.

You don't brush your teeth when you start getting cavities. You brush to prevent them.

You don't install seatbelts after you've been ejected from your car. You get a car that already has seatbelts and airbags.

Vaccines, healthy foods, routine hardware maintenance (cars, computers, etc), exercise and stretches... You're supposed to do and get things BEFORE you have the problems they solve.

We really really need to get into the habit, as a species, of trying to prevent bad things before they happen.

I know that fascist morons are taking over America but won't somebody PLEASE think of the Teslas!

You can't logically argue your way out of bigotry. They don't care whether they're actually correct or not about trans issues. They already wanted to harm us and remove us from society where possible, and will find any reason to do so. See: the bathroom debates.

I'd rather people just stood up for us at all than act like they need to make good points in order for us to exist. You're all playing kickball and we're the ball.

Wanna dogpile onto this comment to add that we can't even automate robots to mow lawns by themselves. The ones you can buy that do any part of the job well at all require GPS, and also require manual intervention or remote piloting for even getting the bot back to its charging station. I work for a corporation that automates machinery like this and sells it to the US government, which advertises its products as automated or crewless, but actually requires somebody at the helm of a software suite to manually adjust and operate the bots at any given moment during their operations. How the hell are people expecting cars and planes to automatically get you to your destination? Imagine your "crewless" vehicle being piloted by some dude in an office somewhere in your country instead of someone actually being at the wheel. Does that make any kind of sense? Would you trust the delay in instructions? What happens when your vehicle can't receive any outside connections?

Some level of complex "Autonomous" everything, from now until the foreseeable future, will always have a human in the pilot seat. 100% automation is impossible for us right now with our current level of technology.

The reason is more than just that the last few % points of automating is the most difficult hurdle, though I really agree with that part. It's that automation can't account for improvising, adapting, innovating. Automation can't do on-demand problem solving. Space probes on the Moon and Mars can't unflip themselves when they get stuck. Programmed machines can only do what they're programmed to do. We're beyond anything somewhat complex getting 100% automated any time soon.

Accounting? Helpdesk support? Labor that is repetitive and doesn't require much ingenuity will get automated fast.

Heavy machinery? Art? Transportation? Medical care? We're 100+ years a way from completely unmanned complex tasks. People eat up the sci-fi marketing garbage without really interacting with or testing the claims being made.

This made me start uncontrollably weeping. Not for the performances by the trans representatives, but because all I have been seeing for the last 8 years is a downward spiral of our dehumanization. Then to see this number of Republican reps change their vote in a really unexpected place... This was really important. All we can hope for is that they don't backslide. I don't dare hope that this means any of their hearts have truly changed.

I'm an eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegirl

Capitalism

There are too many people on the Internet (and likely also generally the world) who don't know how successful sex strikes have historically been, and it shows.

I'm not a therapist or any variety of professional on the topic. I will tell you it sounds unhelpful to remove emotions. I know there are similar practices in things like Stoicism. But many people take those practices to extremes. You don't sound like you're doing anything like 100% extreme about emotional suppression but you are probably overdoing it like 80% extreme. If that makes sense.

Emotions are useful. They're informational reactions to the world around us. I'm an extremely emotional person (big happies, big mads, big sads, etc) and sometimes letting that loose is a huge problem. I can make myself physically sick if I don't regulate my emotions and reactions. But I learned and practiced how to feel my emotions and then let them pass, rather than trying to stomp them out entirely. Which never really works. Suppression just pushes the problems to your future self. It's not a relief or release.

So I guess I'm trying to say, you're not at all wrong for what you're trying to accomplish. But I think you're probably not going to succeed or improve (in the way that you want) going about it the way you have been. I'd recommend finding counselors who understand how to teach effective emotional regulation techniques, or practice meditation.

I think I'm about to take liberties with the term "strategic play." But I'll tell this regardless.

I have a friend who is only hyper competitive when playing games, especially board games. In the moment, he wants to win so badly that he will do anything to win. He manipulates, gaslights, he's dangerously intelligent and he's good at making it seem like he's just playing casually. And then once the game is over? He doesn't care at all whether he won or lost. It's infuriating sometimes.

Thanks to also being an extremely competitive person, I saw through it pretty quickly the first few games I ever played with him. But nobody else does. It seemed like nobody ever tried to win by comparison. So when he and I are in the same game, I know I'm going to lose. And he'll use the other people at the table even if I can see it happening. Even if I made comments about it mid-game, nobody would believe me.

So I got petty. I couldn't beat him at the manipulation game. Instead, I turned him into a meme. When he ever looked like he was behind, and someone noticed, I'd say in a light-hearted conspiratorial way, "[his name] is always ahead." Repeated it whenever he would take the lead and eventually when he won the game. "You see? [His name] is always ahead."

It caught like wildfire. Our other friends started using the catchphrase, even in games where I wasn't there. People started using attack cards on him more often. They'd be less friendly with him about trading. People would snub him even when he was so far behind there was no catching up. The day I realized how much it got to him, was one day he told me how much that phrase impacted his ability to play games with friends. It ruined a lot of his fun. Sometimes new friends who didn't even play with us that often would use it. I didn't realize how much damage it caused. All I wanted was for people to be more wary of his manipulation tactics. But instead I took something fun from a good friend and made it miserable.

So I haven't said it for years since. But our other friends still remember and will say the phrase from time to time. He's always ahead.

I'm the only girl