I would also like to have no advertising.

Familiarity breeds trust. They aren’t trying to sell you insurance. They are trying to get you to think of their name when you shop for insurance. They want you to see Progressive and think, “Yeah, that’s a company I’ve heard of.” If you were choosing between two brands equivalent, and you had never heard of one of them, most people will pick the one they have heard of. That’s why 90% of insurance commercials are just repeating the name of the company and words like “trust” or “value”.

He conquered the kings of men, and turned the dwarf lords to greed and wrath. He built Barad-dur and obliterated Numenor. He caused the separation of Valinor from the rest of Arda. He killed Gil-Galad and Elendil, and triggered the Elves leaving Arda forever.

If not for the hobbits, Sauron would have been unstoppable.

Ross Perot never had a real shot. The ruling parties would not have permitted it.

Even worse. You’re buying a house? That’s incredibly stressful and fraught with perils that the average person will experience less than once in their lives. You don’t start with the loan, you start with the open house that had the sex swing.

There are absolutely more Jewish voters in PA than there are people who abstained in protest over the Palestinian genocide. Michigan has a more concentrated Arab population, but you’re right that they aren’t why Harris lost.

Thats sucks that they do that to you, and I know that pain you feel when it happens.

But I’m going to ask you a question I wish someone had asked me a long time ago: Have you considered that maybe you’re boring? There’s no shame in that, no judgement intended.

You have interests, and they are interesting to you. The vast majority of people would not find anything about you interesting, and you’re blessed with a family that loves you enough to ask how you are. Your response is to start with a home loan? Is your house project super interesting? Are you putting in a fireman’s pole or a hot tub? The minutiae of reflooring a rumpus room is fascinating to the person who owns the rumpus room and exactly no one else.

Your sister asked what’s going on in your life because she’s curious about you. You can tell the same story in a way that relates it to her experience by starting with emotions.

“How am I? I’m stressed, but really excited. This house project has been driving me nuts, but I will be so glad when it’s over. I could actually use your opinion on a paint color, because I want to have a splash of something fun, but everybody is saying to go neutral for resale value. What do you think?”

It’s the same conversation topic, but it’s not about the project anymore. It’s about you and how you’re feeling and how she can relate to you.

Think about the story you’re going to tell, and try to think about your audience. I built a home automation server and was really excited about all the cool things I can do with it. When I geek out about it, though, people run for the hills. So when people ask what I’m into, I skip right to the good stuff.

You know why people love magic tricks? Because they don’t know the details. Their minds fill in the gaps of their knowledge with actual magic. The cardinal rule of magicians is to never reveal the secret. If you show them that you palmed the coin and forced the card and the girl’s legs are curled up under the base of the box, they lose interest before you’re done speaking.

Telling someone about the details of your interests is like explaining how to do a magic trick they’ve never seen before. When you got into your interests, you didn’t start with “How do I get a home loan to do this?” You got interested in the magic part, and then worked backwards to figure it out.

I don’t mean to harp on that example, because I know that was just one example that one time. But you’re describing a common behavior pattern that so many people don’t even realize they fall into. Ask a kid about Pokemon, and they will dive into their favorites, and why this one is better than that one unless you get a shiny egg, and I got a shiny once but when it hatched it was just another Pidgey so I sold it to a friend who has a sister that just started out and he gives her all the shinies he doesn’t care about because she just likes having more Pokemon.

They will never mention how much fun it is to keep fighting elemental sentient animal slaves that ejaculate from balls you keep in your pockets to do battle for you.

Edit your stories like a journalist writes an article. Grab them with a headline, and frontload the interesting bullet points. The longer into the story you get, the more detail you can share, but expect your audience to lose interest two paragraphs in. If someone stops listening before the juicy bits, you’ve told it wrong.

Maybe you didn’t need to read all this. Maybe you’re not boring, and your family really is entirely responsible for not giving a shit about you. Acknowledging that you could become a better storyteller doesn’t absolve them of their apathy towards you. But I know I have a habit of being boring, and I wish someone had given me this advice years ago.

There’s a lot of fake everything.

I recently saw a pair of AITA posts with nearly identical stories, just with the genders reversed. It was a transparent attempt to gather data on gender differences when it comes to relationship advice.

Nothing is real. These are just words on a screen.

Only if he could find an anchor of some sort.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

Just to be fair to both sides, Elon is a piece of shit with a punchable face. I’m not advocating for violence, because I don’t believe that solves anything. But I understand why someone might feel compelled in his presence to smack him round a little, and I wouldn’t leave a comfy chair to stop them.

CE is Clear Entry. If you want to hit 2 x 4, but accidentally press 2 x 44, you can press the CE button before pressing = to clear the 44 but not the “2 x” part.

C will clear all of it so you can start over at the beginning.

Pressing CE twice may or may not clear entries in reverse order, depending on you calculator model.

I don’t think $200k is enough. That’s a lot of sleepless nights just from the itching. It would need to be enough money to afford to run my air-conditioning year round, on top of the mental anguish.

Do I have to keep it on during sex?

It always bugged me that the liar participates in explaining the rules. That, and they never explaing that saying “It’s a piece of cake” is the reason she falls down to those creepy grabby hands.

As a kid, I always assumed she went through the wrong door despite solving the riddle because the rules of the game were explained by a liar, and that they were both liars.

Those things are all deliberately awful because it’s more profitable that way.

You’re correct about the federal charges. There’s also the possibility that he pre-emptively and secretly pardoned himself for all future crimes while President. There’s a legal argument to be made that he cannot do that, but it’s never been tested before, and I would not expect the SCOTUS to side with justice in that case. It’s maddening that they haven’t prosecuted him for his many many crimes already.

He can’t actually pardon himself, because he was conviced by New York.

It helps to find joy that does not require a thrill.

You really expect me to believe that some aRcHiTeCt designed your house? Were you there?

Infinity is a mathematical absolute. It can be bounded conceptually, but the set of numbers is unlimited. Absolute power can by bounded conceptually (omniscience is knowing everything, omnipresence is being everywhere always) but the power is unlimited within those bounds. You can think of those as infinite knowledge, or infinite presence. Infinity breaks traditional logic the same way it breaks basic math.

So just as

infinity + 1 = infinity

{all known things by an omniscient being} + some new unknown = {all known things by an omniscient being}

Now, if you wanted to disprove something, the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient creator is inconsistent with the concept of free will. At the moment of creation, the being would be fully and solely responsible for all things that have happened, are happening now, and will ever happen. I don’t like the idea that we can all absolve ourselves of guilt or responsibility by claiming “God’s plan” and the just wank on while other people suffer unimaginable horror. Believing in God is an abdication of your place in the world, even if your faith guides you to do good works.