Sure would be a pity if they dropped it.

Dirk Gently

Statues tend to be quite heavy.

The bondulance can wait, I’m having a stroke.

These stories have a kind of surreal quality, like a Kafka novel. They feel fake because it’s difficult to imagine how a person could be this delusional. We explain our experience by generating an internal narrative and this woman’s narrative diverged from reality a very great deal while she watched fox news and then came crashing back in the form of a giant legal bill and an unemployed husband. Could have been much worse.

Anything that comes into contact with people’s sensory experience quickly becomes completely irrational. We have drugs that are legal and doing huge harm and drugs that are illegal that are medicinal. People tell themselves they can taste the difference between red wine and white wine. That they can hear the difference between one speaker cable and another. Can we just admit that we are making all of this stuff up and focus on something more worthwhile?

It’s an acceptable price to pay because this will surely end the supply of drugs to America. They’ll give up the huge profits after this. Americans will stop taking drugs and the problem will go away so we can refocus on what we were doing before. What was that? Oh yeah, prosecuting the Epstein villains.

On Mondays my daughter visits and she noticed how many cats there are in my street so she started bringing cat treats. Now I have a rotation of about eight cats that regularly greet me as I leave or arrive. They know my car and the sound of the front door. It’s added a surprising amount of joy to my life.

Holy shit, reading these symptoms feels like burnout is very common. I’ve heard people talking about autistic burnout with people in their 30-40s. I think men in particular can lose their shit in this decade and it’s often referred to as a midlife crisis but is it a biological thing or is the workplace a hostile space?

Thinking and planning don’t appear to have been his forte. Shinzo Abe’s assassin essentially did what you have described and was successful despite dreadful marksmanship.

Why did you give the author a fake name?

It’s the highest honour.

I want to ban everything conservatives and corporations love. All drugs legal except alcohol, ban billionaires, ban lobbying, keep doing that until their heads explode.

We know that social media is designed to be addictive and needs to be regulated the same way any addictive or dangerous substance or activity should be. Harm reduction and education is the best way in general.

Nice catch lol

Sensitive people are vulnerable to trauma, that often goes with the neurodivergent territory. We have sensory issues that overwhelm us, noise, mood, physical environment. We also take longer to come to maturity and that is interpreted as a failing by ignorant people. What we actually require is space and compassion while we develop the skills to manage out in the world. There are many scientists, engineers, musicians and artists who are neurodivergent and were probably considered ‘weird’ as kids but went on to create great works of art or solve intractable problems in science. You cannot do this without being sensitive to very small details. What we have is precious but misunderstood and fragile. Some people are lucky and end up in a nurturing environment, others have to fight more to get their due. Some fall in that fight, as evidenced by the abnormal representation of neurodivergent men in prison. Our life outcomes are inferior on average and that is the real crime. My life outcomes would be way worse if not for a few instrumental characters who showed me a different way. I’m determined my daughter doesn’t go through the same things I did. If she tells me that she cannot summon the motivation to do homework I tell her I’m proud that she tried. If she’s late and disorganised we laugh about it. That is what I needed as a child. Now I’m compelled to accept that these people were ignorant and I shouldn’t condemn them. To that I say fuck no. Ignorance has never been a legitimate legal defence so why do I need to give a fuck about their plight?

They would be #1 if it weren’t for Lance Armstrong and his doping antics.

I would imagine it is the same situation everywhere. Does anybody know of a nation that builds on time? Failing that, a big project that didn’t overrun? The only example I can think of is soviet rearmament during Barbarossa. You could argue they produced the t34 tank in time to save Moscow. There must be more recent examples that our governments could learn from.

Unless the government is directly managing the project and they are also sufficiently competent to do so, we will always be at the mercy of shady contractors.

The other thing to keep in mind is that whatever you feel right now is temporary. That doesn’t mean how you feel is invalid, just that life is constant change. By the sounds of it your relationship with parents is bad. That is one framing. On the other hand you have a benefactor who is caring for you and believes in you.

The inner monologue of a depressive person is often their harshest critic. That’s the point of meditation, we become sensitive to the automatic generation of thoughts as they come into consciousness. We can be aware of the thoughts without necessarily following them to the conclusion that we are useless, not deserving of respect, our situation is hopeless, etc.

Coming out of depression is a chicken and egg conundrum. We have to believe in ourselves to do it but the reason we are depressed is because we don’t believe in ourselves. That is the challenge. Just know it is possible to do and many people have done it before you. Depression, substance use, unemployment, relationship dysfunction are all symptoms of untreated autism, adhd and many other ‘disorders’. Neurodivergent people are often treated very poorly by society at large and that is a point of shame for them, not us. Maybe I’m a little further down that path than you are but it remains a huge source of resentment that I must work on. We cannot be truly compassionate with ourselves until we are compassionate with others.

You don’t have to follow other people’s advice. Everyone has to find their own path to recovery because everyone has their own unique set of challenges. The important thing is to try something and see if it works. If it doesn’t, think about why, gradually you will home in on the things that work for you. There has been long stretches of time when I have been incapable of self care and I still work on it. For me the critical element was self awareness. Whatever small amount I have cultivated has been extremely liberating. It used to be inconceivable to laugh at myself and I look back on that time and barely recognise myself, it feels surreal sometimes. Diagnosed ADHD at 47, by the way.

Boom, roasted