I suppose I should be happy about figuring this out a few years ago, because I still have time left, but I can’t help feeling regret and loss over all the decades I lost trying to make other people happy. Time for me now.

Did you time travel here from the 80s?

So it’s only discriminatory if it’s being perpetrated by the government?

Yes, I have a friend who is extremely progressive but is still very much a slut shamer. She really looks down with disgust on women who like sex or have more boyfriends than she deems acceptable.

She also shows bigotry against other groups of people. Although she would never in a million years look down on someone because of their skin colour, she absolutely takes on a tribalistic Us vs Them mentality for other reasons. An example is the war in Ukraine started by Russia. Did Russia start it? Yes. Is Putin evil? Yes. Are there many Russians who support this war? Yes. BUT… not every Russian person in the world is inherently evil, not all of them want this, many are victims trapped in a system that will literally throw them out the god damned window if they dissent. And my friend absolutely fucking hates Russians. All of them. No empathy about the nightmare situation so many of them are stuck in. It has gotten so bad that she has literally started to hate her chickens that are a Russian breed. She has started assigning negative human traits to them and is insisting that they are negative and bad because they are Russian chickens. It’s honestly getting ridiculous.

Willingly: 2 weeks, fasting. I was really sick and desperately trying to find something, anything, to make me feel better.

Unwillingly: 4 days. No money for food.

https://youtu.be/LMxTFqPET5I

I got video a couple of days ago of a wasp plucking a fly off a horse’s leg and flying away with it. Wild stuff!

Generally a young a beautiful free spirit (usually a woman) with an eccentric and quirky personality who “saves” the protagonist of a story by being fun and interesting and showing them life is worth living. Think Holly Go Lightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Had severe chronic health problems starting from late teenagehood. When you are too sick to stand up for more than 10 minutes at a time, dating is out of the question. By the time my health turned around enough to where I was reliably semi functional I was just too old to start from scratch, and with age comes a certain level of just not giving a shit any more. I feel like I dodged a bullet honestly.

Disturbed, The Sound of Silence

That man is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I can’t stand Adam Sandler movies. Exceptions: The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates.

Independent book sellers. Sounds weird, why would they give books away for free? I have a friend who sells books online and buys huge lots of books to resell, many of which are not resellable due to condition or oversaturation in the market. I have gotten a truly obscene amount of free books from her because of this. Lots of sellers have books they want to unload and often have to resort to throwing them away.

But how well can she take a flying bed post to the head?

This is exactly what happens to me when I ask questions in more academic communities. My advice to you is to keep asking anyway. The world has legions of people who need to feel big by making other people feel small. Don’t ever let that get in the way of asking things you want to ask or doing things you want to do.

I would actually live to see some sort of comedy sketch do this with one of those giant radio collars from the 1970s lol

Oh my God, you’re bringing back so many memories LOL

Ok, this doesn’t answer your question, but is that an ICQ icon?? God I haven’t seen that thing in a bazillion years.

Seems like there’s something in Uranus. A giant stick perhaps?

I can only speak for myself, but there is more to this than just fear of death. It is my eyes being forcibly opened to how evil and stupid so many people are. I’ve always known there was evil in the world, I’ve always known that from time to time evil comes into power and does an enormous amount of damage, but I never in a million years could have guessed how widespread and common evil really is. People I love, and who I thought loved me are showing their true colours, as are people I have known for decades. I can’t help but look back on my life and think “Was all this fake? The good times, the memories, was it all just bullshit? Were you evil the whole fucking time??” If we were in Germany in the 40s, these are the people who would have sold me out to the Nazis.

Being born on this planet and living through a time like this is like being six years old and arriving at an amazing looking birthday party with balloons and cake and presents and pony rides, only to find out that the cake has been poisoned, the ponies are being beaten with a whip, and your best friend is trying to stab you to death with the cake knife because he wants your balloon. Being at a party with people like that kind of spoils the whole experience.

Being surrounded by evil and stupidity, being betrayed by the ones you love, it makes me feel like all the good times and memories are just an illusion and there is nothing for me here. No point to any of it. So my mental health suffers, just like OP’s mental health suffers. I can’t see a way out of this. What has been seen cannot be unseen. What has been realized cannot be unrealized. So, it isn’t the fear of death that is getting to me. It’s living in this fucking nightmare.