I absolutely did care when I was a single mom just barely getting by, and the state and federal self-employment taxes took such huge bites out of my income. Often, I couldn’t pay them and still eat and pay rent, so I racked up interest charges and penalties.

The self-employment tax system in the USA is royally fucked for people who can hardly support themselves even without it.

Oh, that’s very interesting. I never knew what the mechanism was. I never really learned if it had a specific name. It was just something I finally figured out for myself after a lot of grief with no answers from the doctors.

You’re correct, and things like celery powder do contain nitrites. These workarounds have never caused me any problems, but I’m sure people vary. I can eat regular bacon every once in a while and be fine, it’s only after a few days buildup that I start the Big Itch (followed by the big hives.) Everyone has to work out their own tolerances.

And if all else fails, Bill Burr has a short lotion seminar for white people. https://youtu.be/RiH-_ZUILk0

Another possibility that I had to discover for myself is a sensitivity to nitrites such as you find in bacon and deli meats. Or sulfates in wine. These are not allergies, and benedryl won’t help, although prednisone will make it temporarily go away. I had to just stop eating those foods, although now they’re offering more “uncured” meats, which don’t bother me.

I’ve been buying glasses online for decades, and have never had a problem with quality. Or really any problem at all. I’ve used EyeBuyDirect, Zenni, and others, and have always been happy. In fact, I would much rather buy glasses online than in person.

Most of them have clever websites that let you virtually try on the frames and get an accurate view of how they will look. The frames are just fine, and the lenses are cut correctly and polished. My grandmother and my aunt were both opticians, and I have been wearing glasses since I was a kid, so I know a little about quality.

I have an illness that can sometimes cause a big spike of adrenaline when I overdo things. I can hear it then, and it’s a sign that I need to lie down and do some kind of meditation to get my stress level down. Conversely, when I’m meditating, and get really relaxed, I can also hear it, but it’s a very different sensation.

It’s not a social faux pas, it’s a severe mental health condition, but I have some fear of becoming a hoarder. My partner and I have several of the risk factors, so I keep trying to get rid of stuff.

I never travel with black clothes, because I never travel, and don’t own any black clothes, because I never wear black, or attend funerals.

I like reaction videos. If you don’t like them, don’t watch them, this isn’t complicated. I think football is stupid, but lots of people love it. It’s a big ol world, and it’s full of people with nervous systems all firing in different ways. Stop yucking other people’s yums.

Some of us are homebound with various disabilities. Some of us are too ill or too medicated to deal with actual social interaction. Reactions offer a parasocial experience that helps stave off loneliness. Lots of things that seem “stupid” turn out to be helpful for disabled people.

I think it’s cruel to put up with this kind of behavior and use her disability as a reason to excuse it. Basically, you’re enabling her when you could be a true friend by giving her the feedback she needs to possibly one day change her shitty attitude. There’s nothing wrong with telling her that you choose to avoid people who say things like that. Maybe she will eventually change. And maybe she won’t.

Most of the popular ones. Especially Game of Thrones. As soon as the incestuous couple threw the little boy off the tower, I was outta there. I’m so tired of shows about horrible people doing horrible things.

This sounds like an example of the “crab bucket mentality.” It’s very common, especially among groups who have experienced trauma such as poverty, war, or racism.

You can absolutely live your own life, and learn the things you’re interested in. Still, it’s good to keep some compassion for your family members. They probably do love you and want you to be happy. They might just be frightened of you stepping outside their reality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

I’ve had my Galaxy Tab for a couple of years, and it’s just fine. I mainly use it as a tablet, rather than folding it all the time, but it seems like it is holding up.

My great grandmother used to put out saucers of Coke to kill mice. She believed it worked because rodents can’t burp. I have no idea whether any of this is true.

Like most parents, my mom was uncomfortable talking to me about sex, but unlike most other parents, she recognized her discomfort as her problem and she did her best to work around it. She didn’t want me to have the same hangups. Fortunately, this was the 1970s, and she had a lot of resources available. There were lots of books about sex, and she gave me some, and left others around the house for me to read when I wanted.

At the time, I don’t think there was any specific law against allowing your kid to look at, say Playboy magazine, much less more explicit material. You’d probably get prosecuted for it now, which is reasonable. At that time, Playboy was still fairly softcore, just air-brushed breasts and gauzy drapes. And there were “nudist” or “natural” publications, with people having sex out in nature without the photo tricks used today, so you really couldn’t see much. I was allowed to look at those for a while, although I think the adults felt ishy about it, and soon put those away.

In this capitalist hellscape, I think it’s almost impossible to hire anyone to do anything without exploiting them. I’m fairly convinced that the whole “opioid crisis” is really just a chronic pain crisis, brought about by our system that works people to death; nearly everyone over the age of 40 has incurred some kind of permanent physical or emotional damage while working. There are degrees of exploitation, of course, but I’m not sure we can put sex work in a special category based on exploitation alone.

Most older gospel is wonderful. Here’s a song by an artist you’ve probably never heard of, because she only released this one single. She had a gorgeous, rich gospel voice, and the record company was all set to promote her as the next Janice Joplin. But she feared the music business would corrupt her soul, so pop music lost a brilliant voice. She’s dead now. I like to imagine her cranking out great albums in heaven.

https://youtu.be/Q2G1F8urLtE

I think our brains can only do so much major cognitive work at a time. Playing from your soul, and feeling big feelings, these things override the ability to maintain social control over your facial expression. Perhaps keeping emotions off our faces is a skill that evolved more recently than having emotions, and thus it’s the first to go when we’re concentrating on other things.

I’m really glad you at least partially qualified what you mean by forgiveness. Or at least what you do not mean by it. The type of forgiveness I think you’re trying to suggest is more of an internal process. It’s not really about the other person at all. For example, there are some family members of murder victims who say they have forgiven the killer. They are not saying the killer deserves to go free. They’re just saying they don’t want to carry that hatred through the rest of their lives. By that definition, I don’t think any of us know what we might be able to let go of.