Awesome to hear! It’s easier said than done (like always) because I think sometimes we don’t even realize when we’re doing it.

In the first year of COVID my position got eliminated at the company I’d worked at for 16 years. I’d had different positions within the company, but that place was basically my entire career until then.

That shock to the system, coupled with the fact that several months later I realized I was the same person with the same loved ones, finally flipped some switch in my brain that I didn’t even realize was there. Then the next job I got was fucking horrible and served to weld that switch in its new position, lol.

So now I have a good job with good coworkers, and I appreciate that fact every day, but that’s not going to erode the healthy boundaries and mental compartmentalization.

MacOS is literally certified UNIX though.

I’m not a Mac user at all, and I’m lucky enough to be able to run Linux full time at work, but it seems like macs should be alright in many cases.

What has been working for me is not trying to make software my life or my identity. I don’t get home from work just to work on my side project, or my app, or my Arch install, or even watch videos about coding and shit. I hang out at my pond, play with my pets, play with my son, chill with my wife, work on the yard, or just watch/play something that catches my interest.

It’s like we all have a unique user’s manual for our unique bodies and minds, but we don’t get a copy of it and have to do some reverse engineering to figure out what works. Then you have to have the compassion and empathy for yourself to do the things that increase your happiness instead of doing the things that you’re “supposed” to do.

An interesting way to hear this without endangering yourself is to be near transmission lines in a light rain. Some go over a local park near me, and it’s wild how well you can hear it sometimes.

Putting everybody in a hotel room doesn’t let you display them all simultaneously like a herd of animals.

Lucky for her, god CAN melt steel beams!

You should join this cool new cult with me.

The night time is the right time! The night time is the right time!

I’m sure some people here are old enough to get that reference.

Civil asset forfeiture used to be all the rage in outrage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States

Yeah I’m not down for this RotK EE IRL bullshit.

Yeah, my friends who still lend us their trucks are literally farmers, lol.

Yeah that’s the worst kind of dream for me: the mundane realistic ones. It’s usually some combination of plausible anxiety-inducing real world issues, and of course the false memories.

I hear there’s also a high profile politician with some money to spend on “the one.”

Bill Hicks taking on a new identity where he makes his money from advertising. Could you imagine?

An interesting data point in this discussion is to look at the list of countries in order of population density and see just how far down the list the US is.

We have a lot of people, some big cities, some major institutions, and a huge economy, but we also have a LOT of space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density

I don’t consider “a dude might have existed 2000 years ago and built an enduring reputation” to be very compelling. Especially not while living in a world where everybody around me has instant access to the whole of human knowledge and yet so many stay disconnected from reality.

I mean if he wanted to, he could materialize in front of every single one of us like Doctor Manhattan to give us reassurance and a taste of being in the presence of his light. He knows what each of us needs in order to be brought into the faith. Yet, he presents us with a world indistinguishable from one where he doesn’t exist, and he has gifted us with these incredible conscious intelligent minds, and his main rule of existence is that we don’t use that intelligence to explore the world he’s given us and instead rely on some ancient translated and edited texts.

The infinitely merciful and infinitely just thing seems to me like a simple logical contradiction along the lines of asking whether God can create a stone so big that he himself cannot lift it. Isn’t the whole point of showing mercy that you let somebody off the hook instead of making them submit to what would otherwise be just?

Funny how God seems so much like a shitty human ruler personality, but combined with the ultimate power fantasy. Gee I wonder how that happened.

So do you just play on Xbox where you can jump between titles and have it save your game state?

“I love you more than you can understand, but I will use my unlimited cosmic power to hide from you, and I will never interact with you or help nudge all the diverging religions in the right direction. The fate of your immortal soul, your worth as a human being, and your relationship with me will depend on whether you think I exist and kiss my ass despite me using my aforementioned unlimited cosmic power to hide my very existence from you.”

Many humans: ooh I love a good mystery!

It’s like the ultimate rich deadbeat dad who you never get to see. The Elon Musk of the supernatural world, if you will.

Fox News for the next month if Harris said anything close to this:

Replenishment through forced birth rather than supporting families.