Check out Crucial Conversations!

If you do, I think you’d benefit from Starting With Heart and Mastering Your Stories. If you do choose to reply, you could Create Safety by creating a common purpose.

You can also learn to notice your thoughts and impulses so that you can choose more freely.

Mindfulness can help. Defusion exercises can help. Acceptance exercises can help.

Let me know if you have questions!

Pesto!

Amazing!

As with many things, it’s important to ask what things mean to others.

In addition, if you trust the other person, you can also open up about your concerns.

Sometimes, others can give you reassurance. And sometimes they can’t. Both possibilities are something we need to be open to.

It’s important to accept whatever is brought to the table and, based on that, choose what kind of person you’d like to be.

I have an uncle who designed his signature before he learned to write in cursive. When he was a child he just practiced until he found a scribble that looked nice and chose it. That’s what he uses even today, decades later.

His signature doesn’t resemble his printed or cursive name at all. However, if you look at it it fits right in with the weird signatures that people choose to do.

no real benefit

I suppose the benefits don’t seem that great. Though I wonder…

Implementing dates in software is not trivial. A more sane calendar system would reduce production costs in the long run.

Heck, even increasing predictability by having the same weekdays for the same dates would reduce human mistakes of all kinds! I say that because in Lean and Agile, one of the consistent findings is that reducing variability in production processes of all kinds reduces mistakes and increases efficiency.

Imagine not having to take out your calendar every time you’re planning dates. Amazing.

Finally, imagine the greatest benefit of them all: calling September the seventh month, October the eighth, November the ninth, and December the tenth. I always say that if my job was designing a calendar and I showed my boss a calendar where “September is the ninth month”, I wouldn’t last long in that job.

Another comment said you can safely assume he’s your boyfriend. Before I did that, I’d want to have a clear and explicit conversation about exclusivity (do you two want to have it or not?).

As to your broader question, sure the label to the relationship might help in clarifying expectations.

But more important is what kind of person you want to be to him and vice versa. Years from now, if you were to look back on what kind of person you were in this period, what would you like to see? Kindness? Exploration? Consistency? Honesty? Playfulness?

Wait coffee is bad? I thought it made lots of people live longer and stuff

Edit: Checked it out and Wikipedia, the purest source of knowledge, broadly redeems coffee’s health effects

I’ve been having caffeine for about a decade, around 400mg a day. It has changed my brain, so tapering slowly seems like the only sustainable solution.

If I go cold turkey I’m just too miserable and cognitively incapable. I think my sweet spot is around 5% reductions every 4-7 days.

Just wanted to let you know that maybe your target reductions could be even smaller.

If 5% every couple of days is too slow, I’ve heard people doing up to 15% every couple of days. Of course, the only way for you to know what works for you is testing it.

I remember some years ago I was traveling in a city that I didn’t know and I heard two people in front of me talking passionately about Game of Thrones. We happened to be on the same path, so I just heard the conversation for a bit before I decided to join or not.

They sounded like good friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. They’d jump back and forth from GoT to very basic questions like “Hey, speaking of brothers, is your brother still dating her?”

Who would wanna spoil that beautiful moment by interrupting it? Moi ✌️😎 Why? I was alone in the city, they seemed cool, and I’d leave them alone if it felt awkward.

It turned out to be alright, because I had GoT fresh in my mind and because my very basic questions about them were also a way for them to catch up.

We walked and talked for hours, before I decided I’d leave them to do their thing.

When I look back to that memory, I’m glad I decided to join them.

I agree that sometimes “everything is politics” might lead to unsavory conversations. My goal is not to defend that.

I think our goal in places like Lemmy is to communicate and understand each other, and, because of it (in the best of cases), live better lives.

How could “everything is politics” possibly lead to better lives? We may learn how our everyday actions —so-called “apolitical” actions— actually ripple out in ways that we actually care about.

For example, we may stop buying Awful Corp.'s bread and instead buy from our local bakery. We may stop assuming protein in our diet means misery-filled and climate-unfriendly meat and instead eat more healthy lentils, beans, and pea protein. We may stop buying purebred dogs from suffering-inducing puppy mills and instead adopt dogs. We may stop being brutal with ourselves because we didn’t turn out as the media says we should’ve turned out and instead hold ourselves wholly and kindly while we ourselves choose what kind of life we want.

Saying “everything is politics” opens up a door. We walk into a room in which we can choose. We can choose what kinds of stories we want more of and what kinds of stories we want less of.

Sometimes we cannot do anything about the things that hurt, but we can hold them in our hands as precious, fully aware of what it means to be human. Other times we can indeed get closer to the things we care about, and we can take steps toward it, confident that we are living lives worth living.

To understand why there’s so much politics, it’s worth taking a step back. Lots of people in Lemmy understand that politics is simply how political goods are distributed.

What are political goods? Anything that people value: material resources, labor, ideas, attention, significance, etc…

So, if attention and significance are political goods, can you come up with a single thing that is not a political good and therefore isn’t political?

That sounds positive. For us to see what you see, can you elaborate?

I had the opposite of you: I went from believing in mysticism and magic to being a materialist. All it took was talking to a friend and exploring our views.

Another one is believing in linear causality. I used to have hard stances on all kinds of subjects, but then I learned about Cynefin and functional contextualism. Now I am pragmatic.

I can’t read the article because it’s behind a paywall, so I’ll ask here: What information was handed over specifically? The IP address of when the account was created? The payment details? Unencrypted data? Login information? Device data? Something else?

Yes! Like this: https://lar5.com/cube/

I assume you’re talking about how Smith is used by neoclassical economists to justify made up stuff.

For example, the idea of the invisible hand as a way of portraying perfect competition.

Or his depiction of capitalism as a way of coordinating production without central authority: this is often used to legitimize inequality and environmental irresponsibility.

But if we want to truly understand Smith, I think we have to look beyond that.

Unfortunately, Smith has been made a caricature. Who made him into a caricature? Neoclassical economists in the 19th century and neoliberal or neoconservative figures in the 20th and 21st century. These other economists wanted to make capitalism sweeter-sounding. They wanted to make economics a tool for indoctrination.

For example, his invisible hand idea comes up ONCE in Wealth of Nations. Yet this image was co-opted by people who do pro-capitalism indoctrination. When made a caricature, the invisible hand is an excellent rhetorical device to portray how supposedly perfect capitalism is.

Another example is how Adam Smith actually advocates for industrial policies to build a nation’s industrial capacity. But these parts of Smith’s work are conveniently ignored by those who want elites to extract and hoard wealth (instead of investing in a whole nation).

More broadly, Smith is the opposite of neoclassical economists in many ways. In my view, the most striking difference between both of them is curiosity. Smith looked at the world and tried to understand its mechanisms. On the other hand, neoclassical economists close their eyes and make up mechanisms.

An example of this is the concept of perfect competition. This concept is loved by capitalist indoctrinators. So much so that it is the fairy tale that is taught to economist toddlers. It’s a weird sort of utopia for neoclassical economists. There’s no friction, no time, no complexity.

You might think Smith is responsible for this absurd fairy tale, but I’d say he is decidedly not. For example, he discusses price dynamics not in terms of perfect equilibrium, but in terms of turbulent equalization. Another example is that he discusses competition not as a silly dance between capitalists, but as a battle to reduce costs (at all costs).

This is not to say that Smith nailed everything. For example, he missed something about the nature of profits. He did notice that profits are directly related to production costs, including labor. But he did not recognize that the profit-wage ratio was historically determined in the way that Marx did.

How could we interpret all of this?

The way I see it, Smith laid the groundwork for future economists. Smith was the shoulders that future economists —proper economists— stood on.

Unfortunately, he has also been co-opted by capitalist indoctrinators. But if these indoctrinators actually read Smith and the economists that he directly inspired, I’m sure economics would be much more of a science and less of a religion.

If you want to experience diversity in human experiences and landscapes, Samsara.

Sorry for the late response. I hope you have had time to process things and to learn a bit more about who you’d like to be now that you have a new path before you.

Why do those exercises resonate with me? Because they seem effective for me. Sometimes I stop suffering altogether and can face difficult situations more flexibly. Sometimes the exercises punch me in the gut… and then I can face difficult situations more flexibly.

I also know about Coherence Therapy, and I think the experiential exercises are exploiting the same mechanisms. In effect, you’re transforming schemas deeply, instead of simply trying to change by building new ones (while the old ones are still powerfully guiding your behavior). If you’re curious, we can talk about Coherence Therapy’s mechanisms and how ACT can exploit them.

The take-away is that experiential exercises like the object one are taking advantage of your memory, your sensory apparatus, and your meaning-making capacity to make it easier for you to accept tough situations and choose who you’d like to be.

As to exercises for guilt, I’d suggest something strange.

First, I’d suggest the objects exercise or similar defusion exercises. That way, you can think flexibly beyond “I’m guilty”. Then, I’d suggest acceptance exercises like the wider view or the acceptance through perspective. That way, it becomes easier to experience that guilt without it tripping you up. I’d do self exercises like the acceptance through perspective. That way, you can build a sense of self that is greater than “I’m a guilty person”. Finally, I’d do values exercises such as values writing, drawing on sweetness, or flipping the pain. That way, you learn from your guilt and orient your life towards what you value.

So, if you notice, I’m suggesting the same exercises as before, but I’m directing them towards the guilt itself.

You can think of ACT as a toolset. A very effective one. And you can use its tools in different contexts. It’s just a matter of doing precisely that.

I hope ACT and mindfulness can help!

As always, feel free to ask :)

Amazing