The sound you’re hearing is me screaming in intense jealousy. Both of your trip and the outfit! LLAP

That presupposes though that a shapeshifter would need to see their own reflection to judge the look. If you have developed over millennia the ability to change your appearance at a molecular level, or physically speaking thereabouts, you probably have developed the ability to judge the look without having to look at it. You would be a rock who knew how to become Michelangelo’s David.

I’d be amazed to hear that chameleons practice at a puddle before they try to blend in with the jungle. But I was sick a lot when they taught biology in school.

You have to consider a few things here. You’re not the only one with social anxiety at that event. Your reaction is not to go in the first place (my MO as well) or to sit quietly hoping it shall pass with haste. Others talk too much. School reunions are such a rich vein for neurosis because you’re guaranteed to be judged by your peers. Peers who knew you very well when you weren’t a more well put together person yet. Few people behave like themselves there. So if the woman says she cheated a million times lol, her neurons may be on the fritz as well because she’s more thinking about how she dunked Sharon’s head in the toilet in freshman year or whatever. And that memory is haunting. And she’s sitting just over there! WHY HASN’T SHE SAID ANYTHING? … So you need to have a salt shaker handy for anything you hear.

Also, some people like attention and will say anything to get it. People like to construct a public persona around their worst character traits, the ones they’re unable to change. It’s like they’re putting a cool leather jacket on, aviator shades too. To distract themselves from their inner monolog, which very well might be telling them what a piece of shit they are.

And cheating is common. In my social group I know of a handful of cases. Drunk and horny, sober and crushing - the motivations are on a scale. In some relationships these secrets never get revealed, in others they’ve made the bond stronger, others have broken up. I would say very few people brag about it but hey, we contain multitudes. Some people end up in an unhealthy game of hurt oneup(wo)manship. Relationships are hard fucking work.

It is also a different picture when you have children with your partner. The willingness to forgive infractions increases for the good of the children.

And while centuries of indoctrination of monogamy and loyalty to your spouse can make this hard to accept: some people make open relationships work. I think it’s more often than not the last stepping stone to disaster but if you can make it work, vaya con dios. I have a hard time with it but I’m trying not to judge.

None of this needs to change how you feel about cheating though.

I’m sorry about your mom’s illness.

What I’m reading here in this thread is that you haven’t found the right therapist yet. And us jokers on the internet cannot fill that void for you.

We all have to live with bad memories. Regardless of quality if we were to enter a pissing contest to see whose suffering is greatest. You’re not living with yours, they keep you as a pet. I would go so far as saying being an obsessive goodie has not worked for you either. So look for a different therapist. At the very least another channel for you pent up regret. You can of course still be nice to the people around you. But you gotta give yourself a break from trying to outshine your average saint.

Without wading into the therapeutic too much, is there a way to move your PC, maybe to the bedroom. Or to set your partner up with wireless headphones.

I would say it isn’t so important to put a label on either of you as it is to find a workable solution. So frame your approach in these terms, make a schedule for headphone time, don’t engage in the at home therapy. Other than that, look for somebody who knows both of you better than me or anybody else here. The advice is probably going to be better.

How long have you been together? How long since you moved in together?

Scale is the factor here. You could say that small places can benefit from a sort of benevolent authoritarianism. I’m thinking Singapore, Liechtenstein, Monaco. None of them are bigger than a postage stamp and the population will go along with it. The bigger the country, the more injustices authoritarianism accumulates, the harder it is to keep people in line, the more suppressive it becomes.

Ideally, democracy trumps everything. It is the only system that has the built-in power to cancel itself. It needs all the people to be aware and to participate accordingly. It’s not perfect. It’s not always fair either. But I’d rather live in a system that can decide to end itself than in a system that would try to end me if I wanted to be critical about it.

In terms of communism, as dreamt up by Marx and Engels, you can only turn a completely capitalist economy into a communist one. This has never been achieved, shortcuts have been taken. All communist states in existence have either turned authoritarian or to dust. So in my view, there aren’t many communist movements left in the world. They may use the word but either M&E wouldn’t like them or they don’t really have a lot of support behind them. No support, no money. Capitalists have a lot of money. People with a lot of money tend to have the ear of their leaders. If an investor is interested it’ll be real hard to go for an employee-owned model (excluding models with free publicly traded shares). If investors are not interested, the business may be failing and employee ownership is the last hurrah before the end. Capitalism tends to come up on top.

European-Americans

Why only those?

need better leadership role models to show them that education and hard work

Compulsory education in the US is straddled with numerous problems. Underfunding is maybe the biggest one. The fact that schools need to be converted into bullet proof bunkers doesn’t help. Standardized tests are not a foolproof way to assess people’s aptitudes. The curriculum in some states leaves a lot to be desired. A defective system cannot produce perfect students. And we’re not even talking about the insane for-profit higher education system that gives people debt for life. The system produces undereducated leadership role models. The good people tend to find other areas to work in. You cannot demand new role models without a complete, well-funded overhaul of the entire education system.

Hard work can be helpful to get ahead in life. But it’s no guarantor of success. It’s more luck or inherited wealth that get you ahead. You seem to adhere to the good old American dream idea, rags to riches stuff. It’s a mirage. Like the melting pot theory or manifest destiny it deserves to be deposited on the trash heap of history. There was probably more truth to the dream when rent/mortgage was a fifth of your average paycheck when it’s now most of your average paycheck. That is if you still have a home. Times have changed, ideas are still catching up.

— not violence, promiscuity, and criminality — are the right ways to get ahead.

Violence? Agreed. Crime? Also agreed. Promiscuity? You’d have to define that first. And I have an inkling I may not agree with you once you have.

Fundamentally, you could make a caveat even for violence and crime under certain circumstances. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To the Brits George Washington was a violent criminal. Violence is baked into the birth of a nation, along with the prolonged history of slavery and segregation.

I also think that former criminals can be valuable role models. It depends on many factors, e.g. have they paid what we call the debt to society? Have they atoned? Etc. But if I’m not mistaken you’re looking more at financial fraud and maybe sexual misconduct - don’t have a clue why those two popped up first in my head - and I would say that disqualifies perpetrators from being leadership role models. People who vote for people like that to get into positions of power anyway are a real thorn in my sight as well.

So I find bits of your statement that I can warm up to. Overall, I think it’s a bit populist for my taste. I disagree with some of the assumptions I think you’ve made. And it does nothing to address any underlying problems as I see them.

The movements of people since time immemorial does not adhere to the arbitrary political lines we’ve drawn between nations today. Both France and England have seen large scale immigration by the Romans, various old Germanic people, then the Vikings. All these people have killed and fucked each other. Attributing DNA to an area is partially a statistical likelihood, so there’s a margin for error. Except in geographically and/or historically isolated areas, we’re all more blended than anything else. That makes the race theory of the late 19th century seem so utterly ludicrous today but we can’t quite completely get it out of our heads either.

Because they are a rebellious bunch. But it doesn’t matter because in one belief the whole country seems united. And that is to ignore all the pleas of train operators to stand on both sides of the escalators to prevent long lines and crowding on the platforms. We’re having none of that sensible crap.

There is a tendency to walk on the left in Japan as well. I wouldn’t call it a rule but a vibe. For a society that is rigidly built on rules and conventions, they are remarkably flexible when it comes to tolerating people who swim against the stream. Not wanting to cause a fuss overrides a New Yorker outburst of the “Hey, I’m walking here!” variety. IMO they also insist less on the right of way or other car traffic rules when behind the wheel.

I’m no expert. Stop reading here if that’s not good enough.

My understanding is that in cathode ray screens, the old-style non-flat types, heat would make a difference. In LCD and LED screens, so little heat is produced by showing images, it is probably negligible. One of them, I forgot which type, does black by just turning the light off in that spot. So the type of screen used probably matters here.

You can see massive ad screens even in hot places. Now, there may be insulation in use and/or A/C. My guess would be if they can operate a huge ass screen in 100F 40C weather to get me to buy shit, the combined energy costs cannot be exorbitant. And my guess is further that’s mostly to prevent the hardware from melting in the sun, whether the screen is on or off.

Taxes are unpopular necessary tools in the governmental toolbox. They are often marketed to the people as temporary necessities. And then the weeds of time grow over these intentions, people forget, and they’re here to stay.

Germans still pay a sparkling wine tax. It was introduced to be able to increase military funding before WW1. They have since gone from a monarchy to a republic to a murderous dictatorship to an occupied territory to two republics side by side (at least in name, the east got rid of the tax) to a unified republic. Guess what survived for more than a century?

That’s some cool stable genius shit!

This sounds like a weird person at best or the prelude to a scam, stalking, or social engineering at worst. You stick with your standards and don’t doxx yourself to passive aggressive douchebags, however insistent they may be.

YMMV. There is no universal answer to this question. None of us separate the artist entirely from the work and thus our enjoyment of it. I think of it in video game terms. Every artist has a power bar. They can get hit a couple of times and can still be tolerated when they’re in the yellow. But once we’re in the red zone and the character starts getting translucent or is flashing I’m out. This is all very subjective though.

Marylin Manson went red for me and I scrubbed the songs I liked from my playlists. Michael Jackson also. But I continue to listen to The Smiths/Morrissey in spite of Morrissey’s politics. I still enjoy Pink Floyd although Walters and Gilmore are profoundly unlikable characters and Walter’s politics rub me the wrong way a lot of the time.

In the age of streaming, there isn’t a lot of money going to the artist. You’re not really supporting them financially if you enjoy their music in spite of any a-holery, moral or criminal, they may have committed. If you get something out of it, continue to do so. If it feels yucky then I’m gonna guess one more hit is putting the character in the red. And if you paid for the music/album, the “damage” is already done.

I’m glad I was never a big fan of Kanye’s œuvre so I don’t have to wrestle with this question about him. I think he would have done enough to drain his power bar thrice over and thus it’s game over for me. I wish he had more well meaning people around him who could help him to protect himself from himself.

As a general vibe in life, I try not to punch down. Antivax kids through no fault of their own are at a disadvantage in life (and make life for immunocompromised folks harder). Wondering if they’d be okay with a cootie shot as a question seems snarky and punching down to me.

You could not answer this question categorically anyway. It would depend on the age, how much autonomy they already have over their body, and to how much RFK junioring they’ve been subjected. So the answer is care and individual attention for each kid, not a generalization.

I don’t know where you get the idea I suggested we hunt them down from. But I think you’ve correctly picked up on my critical opinion on this question.

These kids have a bad enough lot in life by being born to and probably being negatively influenced by irresponsible parents. They probably deserve more care and individual attention than a throwaway question like this.

Were you dancing at the time?

I imagine it’s not as easy in terms of producing the template video to match your body type (and maybe agility) and then to set up the projection just at the right distance. Conventional wisdom might also say that you learn dance moves better by copying others and that’s why you get floor to ceiling mirrors in dance studios.

Bluesky is merely a stepping stone between Xwitter and Mastodon. Facebook can just die with them boomers.