You’re right that interactions are not hugs, but they create friendships with people with whom it is both socially acceptable and emotionally healthy to hug. If you don’t hug your friends, you’re missing out in life.

Essentially what you said, but I’d like to phrase it the way a counselor said it to me when I was under a lot of stress at work. Stress is the gap between our expectation and reality. Say you expect to be/produce/achieve/whatever 100%, but you are only capable of achieving 80%. The stress you experience is that 20% gap. Change your expectations to meet your reality and that stress will be resolved.

Now, it may still be that others might still want or expect that 20% from you, but that’s their problem and their stress. If you cannot produce it anyway (which created your stress in the first place), existing in the stress-gap clearly won’t make you able to do it anyway.

My father exactly. He’s Asian, so I think he feels more removed from the situation, but he worked in the US for over a decade before retiring back here. He’s still 100% pro-Trump, even though we are feeling the negative effects of his tariffs (“He has to put tariffs, he had no choice, look at their economy”), and he even admits things like Good thing I retired before Trump became president otherwise I probably couldn’t get a work visa now. My dad would vote Trump if he could vote.

Not medical advice, but a suggestion of easy things to ask your doctor to check for if you have insomnia, and inexpensive to address if they are the culprit: taking taking B12 and D supplements gave me (back?) my ability to sleep. I’ve never slept better in my life.

Hmm, I see what you’re putting down. I may have to revise my thoughts on the matter. Thanks.

While I agree those ladies were a bunch of loonies, I don’t think the test is supposed to be predictive (this is how you will be), rather descriptive (this is how you are).

Although I’ve had this same argument with people over the function of dictionaries being descriptive (this is how words are used) rather than prescriptive (this is how you should use words).

FYI, the wait for processing is now years-long, due to the large influx of applications and the lack of foresight to increase staffing to manage that. Also, if you don’t already have the documentation to prove who your grandfather is, his citizenship, and who you are in relation to him, archives across the country have been inundated with requests for this kind of genealogical information, and they, too, are under-resource to handle it. (And not only so, but arts, culture, and heritage institutions have had budget slashed all across the country, so there are actually fewer people now to handle these requests.)

Exec was committing fraud and self-enrichment thru work. Snitched to the board with evidence, they did nothing. One even told me he wasn’t concerned. Noped outta there and snitched to the government instead.

Telling a conservative they’re incorrect is oppression to them.

Modern trucks are just emotional support vehicles for the egoistically challenged.

I can’t wait to find out how they will blame the woke left for this very thing they were warned about.

I am not a programmer, but related to a few. My cousin said his workplace actively evaluates people on token usage, where more is better. He has refined his prompts to burn as many tokens as possible.

Another relative said they only hire seniors now, and use AI for junior work. I told him there will be no more seniors in five years, doing things that way. Well, that’s a problem for later.

These situations objectively suck. One thing that’s stuck with me is asking: will this still matter in 10 years?

It doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to deal with it, but it does mean “this, too, shall pass”, and you’ll still be okay on the other side of it.

Personally, I am very pleased with my Max Lumi (which has been superseded by other models). It was quite expensive, though, but I can say I have used it very often for five years and expect many more of it, still. However, because of its size, I don’t often bring it out with me. I primarily use it for studying at home.

But if you don’t need the largest size (13"), the smaller ones are less expensive. If I were to replace mine, I’d probably go for a 10" one. I think that seems the right balance of size for writing notes and portability.

I don’t know exactly what you mean by “comparable”. They’re both e-ink tablets. If you’d like actual comparison, may I suggest checking out MyDeepGuide: https://www.mydeepguide.com/articles/categories/e-ink-devices (also search for him on youtube).

This dude started reviewing a few e-ink tablets, and then he became THE guy for reviewing e-ink tablets.

You may be pleased to learn about he 13. 3" Boox Tab X. I got it’s predecessor (Max Lumi) specifically for PDFs. https://shop.boox.com/en-ca/products/tabxc

You can install other reading applications, like Kindle, Kobo, Libby, Hoopla, etc to greatly expand your reading selection.

I didn’t know who Jenny McCarthy was when I started watching The Masked Singer. I don’t keep up with a lot of pop culture, so I thought she was probably an actress who’d just been on shows hadn’t seen before. (I didn’t know Robin Thicke or Nicole Scherzinger were either, at first. And I often don’t know who the celebrity contestants are, too.) Then one time a contestant thanked her for her work… and so I wondered and searched online.

Ken Jeong is a comedian, but he was a medical doctor first and he continues to work enough as an MD to keep his credentials. How can stand to sit at the same table as her? Especially when it was COVID and people were literally dying by the millions. (That’s when I first saw the show.) I suppose the money is good enough for him to put aside his medical credentials and Hippocratic oath aside when he’s not actually practising.

You may be interested to read about the scheme of intellectual and ethical development by William Perry. This website has it discussed only in terms of cognitive development, but I think you’ll see how it directly correlates to ethical development: https://neurolaunch.com/perrys-theory-of-cognitive-development/

I loved opening flip phones with a flick of the wrist, and the physical action of ending a call by closing it.