If you need to get a cell phone plan in your name, US Mobile has a 2-gig/mo cell phone plan for $10/mo. My partner and I moved to them a couple months ago and are spending $28 for 2 lines at 10gb/mo, down from $144 for an unlimited plan with T-Mobile. USM is very upfront with their pricing and I’m a fan. (I do have a promo code I can share, but I’m honestly not recommending it for the kickback.)

Would you even call it…. uplifting?

^(I’ll see myself out.)^

Route as well. Depends largely on if I’m talking about routing Internet traffic or Route 66, though.

Even without attribution or ever reading this quote before, I just knew it had to be Sir Terry Pratchett and I was right.

That man was unmatchable in his wit and wisdom and how he packaged life lessons on simply being good people into entertaining stories. The world is lesser without him.

Probably because they realized everyone still called it that because no one thinks of what “Max” is without the “HBO” label. I just wonder how their user research failed so badly in the rebrand to “Max.”

My cat and my cell phone

Congrats!

I’m sorry you’re dealing with so many stressful things at once.

I just recently learned about some causes of vertigo along with a super quick thing to try to relieve it, and I thought I would share it under the chance it might provide some relief to at least one of the awful things. It came from a newsletter by a chiropractor I saw who many years ago. I know some chiropractors are quacks, but this one was incredible at recognizing patterns and was able to provide me extreme pain relief mostly just from simple stretches he taught me, so I have high respect for what he shares.

What are the causes I find that trigger vertigo?

1. Tight suboccipital muscles at the base of the skull.
2. Blocked sinus cavities not draining, backing up mucous and fluid into the middle ear cavity.
3. Fluid imbalances in the inner ear due to NSAIDS and antihistamines being used in excess.
4. Tight jaw muscles causing abnormal tracking of the jaw when opening and closing the mouth.
5. Very rotated fixated first cervical vertebrate pinching off the eustachian tube of the middle ear that is responsible for allowing drainage to occur to the back of the throat.

Then he provides this 1m video with a tapping technique that tracks 20 seconds.

Doesn’t speak to the sleeplessness and I’m not a medical professional. I’m just a concerned stranger who recently gained knowledge that could maybe be helpful to you?

I mean there’s all this *gestures vaguely*, but if I zoom into just my personal life, it’s been pretty good?

I adopted an amazing kitty on Jan 4. I’m still grieving the loss of my soul cat last year but the new girl has been a great gift in my life.

My job is very seasonal and 2025 was the most calm season of all 8 seasons I’ve done it. I work on software creation and support season, so most calm = the best season ever.

Then I went on medical leave to yeet my uterus and confirmed that I had adenomyosis, so pretty psyched to see how much this reduces my pain after I finish recovering.

So even with the shit show going on in the world, life goes on at the micro level and so far 2025 is shaking out better than ‘24.

Yeah… her being in a higher position does add complexity. But you also have the coworker whose photo you were specifically talking about to back you up, right?

If one of the guys who reports to me told me this, I’d probably give them the same advice as I gave you, but add an offer talk to her for him. (But tbf I’ve received enough feedback to know I’m not exactly an average manager.)

You’re compassionate enough to know that you’re in the 1% on this and don’t seem resentful about that, so I’m sure people in your workplace see that in you. I don’t think talking about this is inherently “complaining,” as you put it, and how you present it could help a lot.

I keep a framework about giving feedback in my back pocket to use and share all the time, and I can’t help but share it here. It recommends formatting the feedback in 4 steps (with an example of what you might say for each part):

• Context (I was looking at photos with X, discussing examples of the poor photography practices resulting in subpar photos when Y came in and heard part of our conversation)
• Observation (I believe Y misconstrued our conversation to be about the people in the photos, not the photography issues, because she gave me feedback to not speak about coworker’s looks and didn’t give me a chance to explain that’s not what we were doing)
• Results (I am feeling afraid that Y may be misjudging my actions and that is causing me to withdraw from interacting with her)
• Next Steps (I want to resolve this so I don’t feel awkward around Y and to ensure my reputation isn’t negatively impacted; I’ve considered [these approaches] and would like your input on how to move forward)

It’s from a training called Radical Candor and they call it CORE, but c’mon, it’s CORNS! 🌽 I hope it might help you!

This sucks. Your coworker misjudged a situation and seems to be unfairly misjudging you because of it. I can understand why that would create tension and discomfort.

Can you try to talk to her about it? Approach her and ask if you can have a few minutes of her time. Then try to explain that you didn’t mean any offense because you were talking about the low quality of the photography, not about the people in it and it didn’t occur that someone might take it to be about the people. After her reaction it clicked that it could look/sound that way, but that was genuinely not the intent or your thought process at all.

Heck, you could also take a good selfie and a bad selfie (or internet examples of this) and show her those as an example to highlight that the same subject in different settings can look starkly different, and that was what you were commenting on, not the subjects themselves. Hopefully that would clear it up.

This approach would take some humility to concede some to her perception of you doing something wrong because doing so might soften her up enough to actually listen to you, but I want to clarify that I don’t think you did anything wrong (and FWIW, I’m a woman).

Do you need to do this? No. But it’s clearly eating at you, and this is a way that might put it to bed. And if she doubles down and gets worse, then you know you really should put distance in how you interact with this person.

Like the other commenter said, it might be worth mentioning to your manager first though, especially if you have a good relationship there. Doing so covers several bases:

1. If she was spiteful enough to report you for what she perceived to be happening, you have the real version out there.
2. Your manager may have a recommendation on how to approach her better than what I said since they actually know each other.
3. Your manager may recommend not reaching out, for whatever reason. One possibility, maybe this coworker is known to stir the pot and this could be another example. Sometimes there are performance things spoken about only at the manager level.

I wish you luck and peace in moving on from this. It’s stressful to be accused of something you haven’t done because of a misunderstanding (I’ve been there).

Awwww, my childhood family cat, Boots, did this.

Oh man, that makes me think back to college when I got an eyebrow piercing. I did it because I liked the looks but also as a social experiment, wondering how people’s reactions to me might change.

I expected the worst, but I found that it actually seemed to make most people approach me easier.

I think the lesson is that doing things that are highly visible draw attention. Some will be good, some might be bad, but it’s a conversation starter either way!

I used to use em dashes all the time and now I find myself rethinking my writing styles because of people like you and it’s obnoxious.

Yeah… definitely could be the slippery slope we both see. Especially since comics and gym/workout/nutrition type videos likely target a more male demographic.

I mentioned my partner got those, then he actually subscribed to The Dadvocate. Now that I’m thinking about it I think he’s mentioned occasionally seeing Jordan Peterson pop up in his Shorts feed when he watches a ton in a row. He gives them a thumbs down and says not to show him that content, so maybe he’s the one keeping the worse content at bay.

The worst thing though is that when those do pop up in his feed, they are some of Peterson’s few normal or even good takes (which we hate to admit that anything Jordan Peterson has to say might be good. But even a broken clock…). My partner still shuts that shit down because he knows there isn’t a good ending to that path.

Yeah, they started showing up for my (male) partner a while back. I got really nervous that they were going to be the start of a slippery slope into some serious misogynistic content, and I’ve been monitoring that for probably a year now. Thankfully that doesn’t seem to have been the case so far!

There are many women out there who have gone so far as to be on the misandry side of things, and at least the two content creators we’ve named are calling that out. It’s valid and many of their points are solid. But it still seems like the algorithm would use them as a first step towards misogynistic content so it’s had me a little on edge.

Ah her. She has a bad habit of doing react videos that are just her posting other people’s content while she just makes faces and nods at it and doesn’t add any meaningful commentary. I personally think that’s a shitty kind of content creator as they’re ultimately making money off of someone else’s work. And she occasionally has had a pretty bad take. I think The Dadvocate is much better in this particular genre of content personally.

there is ZERO way to indicate to others that information.

Ah, you’re getting to a challenge that women have faced forever: “If I reject this man, will he decide to attack or kill me?” (Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4,5, 6)

Or just in general the concept that’s been named “Schrodingers Rapist.”

It would be a whole lot safer for many people if there was an automatic way to see into someone’s soul to know what they are like and what they are capable of. Are they a rapist? Do they have the potential to be? Will they reject me violently? Will they publicly humiliate me?

None of us can know those things. The best we can do is to try to establish strong social skills and pattern recognition, and work to avoid the situations that put us in danger (whether physical, social, or emotional). It’s hard and there’s no silver bullet.

While you want to put the onus on women to minimize the risk of a man being publicly humiliated, you’re ignoring the realities that women are dealing with the exact same kind of uncertainties (except statistically speaking, with much worse outcomes). There isn’t an easy answer here and it’s not one that falls on just one gender to resolve.

The Dadvocate? Sounds like the YouTuber you’re describing.

I don’t think laughing at someone is an acceptable response to any person being respectful to another person, and your assumption that I am saying that from my comment shows more about you than me.

Anyone who would laugh at another person just because of how they look or how much money they appear to have is a flawed, unkind person.

Anyone who approaches another person and doesn’t respect if they set physical or verbal boundaries showing they don’t want to be approached is also flawed and either socially unaware/challenged or themselves unkind. And sometimes an easy way to get one of those people to go away is to laugh at them.

It’s unlikely for a cold approach to anyone asking for a date to be successful. Unlike 80 years ago, people aren’t looking for their first romantic connection to turn into life-long marriage; they actually want to have an established rapport with a person before the first date. So if someone just asks another person out with no lead up, or in certain settings, sometimes that will be so disconnected from social realities as to be absurd.

Anyway, regardless of the social intricacies of appropriate places to approach and/or ask out another, believing that women (or men) are a monolith who all will react the same way in a given situation is out of touch, disrespectful, and points to a lot of deep-seated sexism. I hope you can work that out before you pass it onto your son or he’s likely to have a much harder time finding a relationship.