HelloThere

What I remind myself is that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It’s perfectly OK to say that after a long day your brain is soup and you just want to chill for the evening.

It’s also fine to say that your tired, but will come out for one or two and then leave, and then do just that. Obviously if you find yourself having a better time and enjoying it you can stay out.

I find that adults respect other adults more if you are upfront about your own boundaries. You also don’t need to make excuses, try to have the confidence to be straight forward and say you’re tired and will skip this one, or whatever.

I thought the weenis was a dance?

Yeah, I basically see it as purposeful relaxing, like having a long bath.

YMMV but I’ve found meditation helps.

Sit somewhere quiet, close your eyes and focus on slowing down your breathing and try to feel your heart rate slow. After a minute or two, then try to think of nothing, or listen for the quietest sound you can hear and focus on that (a ticking clock in another room, someone else breathing, etc).

Now this is where it may be different for you. I was diagnosed with adhd has a kid and what I’m describing next is with that in mind. Basically all day my brain feels like it’s full of bees, sometimes less active, other times it’s a deafening buzz.

After a few further minutes of focusing on that quite sound, I’ll find individual things randomly pop in to my head, rather than a bunch all at once. Each time this happens I focus on what that thing is, and how it makes me feel. If for example I get angry, I let myself feel that, I don’t try and stuff it down, but I don’t let it overwhelm me. If I start to feel overwhelmed, I go back to the beginning and focus on slowing down my breathing.

In effect I’m trying to observe, and experience, that emotion simultaneously. This helps me do two things, first and foremost, I have much better - and healthier - control of my emotions during negative experiences (e.g. high stress), and can keep myself calm. Second, it allows me to go back to those emotions after the fact, and spend time working out why that experience led to that emotional response.

For frustration, sure, you can wail on a punching bag while blasting Hammer Smashed Face (which is very good in the moment), but I’ve found that that didn’t help me handle my emotions any better, it just meant I took out that repressed anger on other things. Which, sure, is probably better than nothing, but doesn’t help it you don’t have access to a punching bag.

https://stacker.com/business-economy/30-victories-workers-rights-won-organized-labor-over-years

Here’s a half decent starting point.

Riot.

Mark is just a name for wrestling fans. There’s some connection to terms used by workers in carnivals in the early 1900s, but these days is largely ironic.

/c/squaredcircle is great, if you’re a filthy mark.

I’m not sure what country you’re in - in the UK there is a charity called “Citizens Advice” which, as the name suggests, can help you with legal, financial, and housing issues. They aren’t a type of benefit, but they know the law and your rights and will give correct advice and provide advocacy and support if required, is there anything equivalent to this where you live?

A 20 year deal, with no power produced until 2028?

Either MS really do know something we don’t, or this bubble has grained a layer of strontium.

Be the change you want to see.

The lack of PsyX cards is upsetting.

Romeo and Juliet is a comedy, not a tragedy.

Two teenagers thinking their first crush is worth literally killing themselves in the dumbest scenario imaginable, I mean come on!

It’s an old, bad, joke on the two definitions of revolting.

And they smell bad too!

I don’t want to be all old man yells at cloud, but back in my day popular games were played a lot because they were primarily enjoyable for the story, the achievement of completing a particular level or boss, playing against friends, etc. And sure, you’d have the odd bad parent trying to claim their kid was addicted to Counterstrike 1.6, but it was broadly speaking nonsense. The vast majority of games were offline, or had very limited online modes built around direct competition with other players (FPS, sports games, etc), and publishers would get all their money from the initial sale, with only a few games having expansion packs, most notable The Sims.

But in the early 2010s a few things changed:

• broadband internet became ubiquitous in markets with high levels of existing gamers
• distribution of games swapped from physical media to downloads
• ‘everyone’ had a pretty powerful computer in their pocket making it much more accessible
• a bunch of people in the industry started reading about positive psychology - the idea that you can create habits through rewards - and apply them to video games to increase playtime
• those mechanics turned out to be very powerful in driving particular user behaviours, and started to be targeted at monetisation models - and so we got loot boxes, etc

So we went from a situation where video games were fun for the same reasons traditional games, or sports, are fun, to one where many video games include a lot of gambling mechanics in their core gameplay loops - loot boxes being the obvious one, but any lottery-based mechanic where you spend real money counts - in an industry with no relevant regulation, nor age limitation.

It is definitely possible for people to get addicted to these mechanics, the same way people can get addicted to casino games, or betting on horse racing, especially when for some games that is literally what the developer wants.

Well fuck me, we finally agree on something 😁

Everything in the UK since about May 2015.

I can understand Apple refusing to do repairs under warranty, or even invalidating a warranty, if someone has broken their phone after digging around inside without knowing what they are doing, but bricking a phone the person owns through a software lock is absolutely insane and stinks of attempts at service capture and fighting right to repair laws.

Yet another reason I’ll never give them a penny.

Fairphone gang rise up!

I agree with most of this, but this bit

If your employees are serving customers, let them take frequent 10 minute breaks to use their phone or be away from humans.

Is comically absurd.

GenZ are not the first people to have things they’d rather be doing than work, or to be tired due to human interaction. The latter is called emotional labour and has been a thing across all service industries for literally a hundred plus years.

I’m not saying that people don’t need breaks, everyone does, especially in jobs which are physically/mentally tiring, but to say people need frequent breaks solely to check their phone is derisible.