If the media can report on Trump’s incoherent rantings and make that sound like anything more than hot garbage, then they can absolutely do the same for protesters with varying causes, who are nowhere near as incoherent.

Wait are you saying you think Quebec is a country or that you don’t know where Canada is? I guess the username is appropriate either way.

But how do they know which email that might be? Do they even know which of my accounts are for business or personal use? If I send an email from my business email to a bunch of friends and relatives to plan a party, will Google assume those are subscribers and pull my party-planning content from my email and put that info… somewhere… on my business page? I don’t want them reading any of my emails, ever.

The email from Google was laughable in that it contained almost no info on how this process is supposed to work. All it means to me is that I don’t have control over my own content. This should have been opt-in instead of opt-out.

And crop dusting, ffs. Spraying actual chemicals on our food is totally fine for these people.

And they’ll slap on a sticker that says “lowest price!” to gaslight you.

I think at this point MS Word automatically recommends a hyphen after any number + quantifier combo. One time it wanted me to correct “three armed guards” to “three-armed guards” which would have changed the meaning considerably.

The number of times MS autocorrect suggests incorrect changes to grammar is laughably high, and most people just blindly follow the suggestions.

How would it help to leave? Lots of cowards have already done so. Have you ever considered that maybe it’s because so many progressives are leaving that now we don’t have the numbers you want to see when we protest? That the people who would have been protesting are already gone?

I’m fully willing to die fighting fascism in this stupid civil war, but it isn’t a war until we get some governors and coast guard on board. Until that point, anyone who does anything violent is just a ‘lone terrorist’ and will probably be disappeared to El Salvador.

Leaving is not speaking out. Leaving is not fighting. It is only for your own survival, and it leaves the rest of us with less to fight with and less to fight for.

Restaurant work is not typically salaried unless you’re the manager. I’d say that one might be an outlier. This is the first time I’ve heard anyone refer to hourly wages as independent work.

Find a Mormon. They will be ecstatic to do this for free. Of course all the social events will be church related and they will certainly try their best to convert you… But harassing people into participating is what they’re best at.

I think this might be the best time to start having these conversations: when things are getting bad for almost everyone, and there is so much governmental upheaval that changing the economic system becomes a lot less disruptive than it would be during good times. It’s only going to become more and more clear that capitalism is failing.

My favorite economic system so far is a land value tax with UBI. I still don’t know exactly how businesses would operate, but this system would eliminate the parasitic generational wealth siphoned from hoarding property and housing. It would also allow for people to not work if they’re unable to.

I’m sure it’s probably just delusional hopium that we could ever get through the threat of fascism and come out of it with a better system than what we had, but that’s about all I got left right now. The rest is just doom.

Leaving federal buildings empty, so musk and his goons can go in and do damage without any resistance? A shutdown will not stop musk since he is not a government employee.

I just found out you can get into some local museums for free on the first full weekend of the month if you have one of three specific bank cards. I think Thursdays are free for anyone, but that can be hard to arrange if you have a 9-5 job or want to take the kids.

My colon hurts just looking at them. Lol

Slightly unrelated, but last time I vomited during a flight they refused to take the bag and throw it away. I had to sit there for 6 hours, holding an uncloseable plastic bag full of my own vomit. Next to other passengers. Like, I get that it’s technically some kind of hazard waste that flight attendants shouldn’t have to handle, but the alternative is me potentially accidentally spilling it on or near other passengers. I had to carry it off the plane with me like it was my carry-on. It was absolutely ridiculous.

Look, communicating awkwardly doesn’t make you a horrible person. I think part of it is you have a confidence problem. It sounds like you always cowtow to your coworkers’ reactions, even going so far as apologizing when you haven’t objectively done anything wrong (your responses don’t seem that weird, but maybe it is the way you say things). It seems odd to me that anyone would be offended by an offer to go home early, unless you’re making it seem like you specifically don’t want them to be around.

At the end of the day, your coworkers are just people with their own issues and imperfections. They are probably not experts at communication either, so don’t treat them as such. I would not take any social cues from coworker 1.

You may not be able to change the dynamic at work, so my advice is to find a way to socialize outside of work (with people who actually like & respect you!). That way you won’t have to rely on your workplace for those needs.

How is that post borderline insane? It’s a lot of unnecessary detail, but outgrowing your high school mates is a pretty common thing that people sometimes don’t know how to handle.

I understand where you’re coming from, completely. It definitely feels like being silenced (again, because let’s face it, this shit is mentally throwing us right back into childhood when our needs and feelings were ignored). I understand that desperate feeling of needing to be heard. But we’re adults now, and the people at work aren’t your parents. There’s nothing obligating them to listen. Even my spouse needs time where I’m not ranting about politics. An hour a day is all he can do right now, and this is someone who cares about how I feel. But this isn’t a rejection of my feelings.

One thing I’ve personally had to realize is that the stuff about politics isn’t actually you. You have to find a way to have a degree of separation between the political and your actual core. I know it looks like they’re the same thing right now. But think about what you really want to accomplish, think about what kind of culture you want to create at work. Do you want everyone to be as upset as you are? Would that make a good working environment? If you want others to be more compassionate, I think coming from a place of compassion yourself might work better. Right now it sounds like you’re treating people in ways you probably wouldn’t want others treating you. You can still be true to yourself, your ideals, and values without being quite so forceful. For some reason beyond my immediate comprehension, demonstrating the intensity of your feelings doesn’t translate into people caring - it’s rather the opposite.

This was a really hard lesson for me and took a few weeks to fully understand and think through. I hope you have someone likeminded in your life you can talk to outside of work. If you don’t, please consider trying to find a new friend. You need someone who already understands, who you don’t need to convince, to blow off steam with. Good luck.

No, those are different things. Intrusive thoughts are your brain telling you terrible things like you suck at your work or your hobbies, you’re worthless, your friends don’t actually like you, and hey remember that time you did a cringey thing in front of people? They’re not true, and you’re not intentionally having these thoughts, but your brain can’t easily rationalize them away. It’s usually something that builds up over a lifetime so that you don’t even realize it’s happening. Thats how so many people get stuck believing the intrusive thoughts.

Yeah I saw a Bloomberg headline this week that said the price of eggs will probably never come back down. If they had published that three months ago, maybe people wouldn’t have based their vote around that.

Don’t go to Facebook first! We need to start normalizing ways to organize outside of those giant corpo-fascist sites.