How does your lack of ability to connect manifest?

Do you feel connected to characters in books or movies/do their hardships affect you?

Are you doing any kind of exercises to change patterns around thinking/relating?

How do you feel NPD hurts you?

Last one, don’t answer if you don’t want, but what caused you to seek out professional help?

Continuing to plot out the book I hope I’m writing. And hang out with the family. And clean. And get rid of more crap. Ooh, and a friend’s birthday dinner tomorrow ❤️

Hopefully my ratio of writing to the other stuff is decent.

Me neither. Part of that came from watching him for a while.

I wish one of those steps ahead had been a successful prosecution.

Reason.com is a publication that’s been around for years, decidedly libertarian lean. No idea what that means for it in current political context. I used to see people from Reason on Bill Maher’s show as non-Republican conservative-ish voices.

Or his cadre of evil clowns.

Just was at the grocery store. Was joking around with cashier, he and the bag boy talked about the ad playing over the loudspeakers about avocados from Mexico. They seemed nice. He finishes ringing me up and I groan. He says he’s really looking forward to prices coming down in the next four years. I started laughing at him, saying that’s not how tariffs work and that we’re all fucked.

What a wonderful day in the neighborhood.

women can’t marry older than 25? What kind of bass ackwards handmaid’s tale bullshit is that?

Japanese instructors in college would tell us how older unmarried women would be referred to as ‘Christmas Cakes’–no one wanted one after the 25th. Although they were happy that had been a changing attitude.

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Why do you think they want everyone uneducated and saddled with more kids than they want/can afford?

I’m willing to bet there’s millions of women who didn’t vote/voted for the male candidate in part due to internalized misogyny.

Yeah, a lot has been said about why the ‘Democrats’ failed; sure they were/are imperfect.

Where are the articles bemoaning our stupid and/or mean citizens who have no curiosity and think being obstinate will work like a time machine? I’m frustrated to hell with apathy of my countrymen.

The people who will be in power around him might well get rid of him themselves for all the use they want. He’s getting them to power. Vance and Musk and Thiel and whoever the fuck else don’t care about Trump. They want power.

Book recommendation: Persepolis. It’s a graphic novel autobiography of a girl who lived through the Iranian revolution and eventually moved to Paris. It’s a very accessible read.

We went to one of the several trunk or treats in our town. I chose one of the less busy ones so my kid could understand what the massive downtown one would be like if she wanted to do that. We waited in line from trunk to trunk for a whole hour, got meh candy, got to get inside emergency vehicles (that was cool), got to see a lot of other people’s costumes (also really fun), but mostly it was waiting. Standing mostly still. And then the advertised time came for it to be over, even as people were still waiting in line, tables and cars all broke down and started leaving us in a sad, barren lot. We went trick or treating for the main event after all, and got excellent candy, saw all kinds of cool houses as we actively walked with a friend for as long as we wanted.

Designed by tokidoki 😑 what even is this timeline.

And, federally, it’s still half that ($7.25). Cheers!

For a brief recap of just the Soviet Union part, this is a fun little song.

S

I listen to a podcast by a licensed therapist (Dr Laura Anderson, Sunday School Dropouts) who specializes in helping people recover from religious trauma, and honestly, she does argue that high control religion works a lot like the dynamics of abusive personal relationships. She also notes that when people are used to being shamed/coerced/guilted/etc for religious reasons, they’re more likely to accept abusive behaviors in personal relationships as well–it’s already normal stuff. And most of the arguments I’ve heard in favor of preserving child marriages comes from religious folks asking “what happens when a 15 year old gets pregnant, the baby needs both a father and a mother!” Instead of wanting to use investigation or nuance, child marriages are a quick fix to always complicated situations.