math_denial

I'm so glad US private tech corporations tell me what to think.

I lost 30kg in the past and the only thing that worked was lots and lots of exercise. The Internet meme is that exercise is useless for weight loss and you should diet: well, I like food, and exercise allows me a more free diet. This is my experience to counter the inevitable: "It's 99% diet, don"t bother woth exercise".

Should tha baker have the right to refuse baking a gay wedding cake or some group has the power to decide what rights another group has? As a gay man the LGBT groups keep declining in the quality of their fights and, having survived their own usefulness, they invent fights that inevitably clash with others liberties and belief. No, I do need that cake, there are other bakeries.

Thank you for this anecdote. I think I have a pinched nerve in the neck, very painful and my anxiety and panic attacks started together with the pain but were unrelated, linked more with university workload. My totally unsupported and unscientific opinion is that the inflammation of the nerve make impossible for my nervous system to relax, hence the anxiety.

I think the success stories are mostly self-selection: parents who care enough about education to enroll their children in an alternative system will have children who care more. Anecdotical data: in my non-US state everyone (admittedly 3 people) who went to Montessori schools were 3 years behind in every subject as compared to public schools and mostly they did fine with some help, but the difference between who did better or worse was, as you pointed, inherent personality that was completely independent from the education they received.

libertarian on social issues

I'm not from the US but looking from far away the left seems quite authoritarian on social issues, it's just a different kind of authoritarianism.

authoritarian on economic issues

This is quite strange from an Europe prospective. In Europe the Democrats would be classified as economically center right, free market and all that.

Comments generally inform me about the content value and most of the time are even more interesting that the article, especially with the modern habit of writing 5 paragraphs of flowery prose where in the past we would have had a single informative sentence. So yes, most of the time I just read the title and the comments.

You should not die. But you don’t have an inaliable[sic] right to thrive in your country.

The most disgustingly american thing ever said.

I've done this in the past, for example when choosing college: do I study Chemistry that I intuitively understand or do I study Physics that will be a challenge? I chose Physics and I will always regret it: there's something to be said in favor of training your strengths instead of mitigate your weaknesses.

I have yet to start a career and I'm already at that point. The things I'm passionate about are just not monetizable or you need to be the 0.00000001% (without counting luck and connections) to make some profit.

It happens to me when I have to study something new. I wasted so much time trying to find the perfect note-taking method, the perfect memorization method, debating digital vs paper notes, spaced repetition, blah blah blah. I find myself thinking that doing a slovenly job at learning would have been more productive that spending so much time "learning how to learn" to use the buzzwords du jour.

I find much more toxic all this comments that dismiss the importance of the environment - intended as everything not genetic, socioeconomic status, for example - and basically suggest that if you can't fix yourself is your fault. I've met really a lot of people who cannot afford to live off grid: they have responsibilities, people that depend on them, rent to pay and so on. Even if not rich, going off grid is definitely a privilege, one that I wish I had.

I've lost 40 kg (88 lbs) just by exercising: never counted calories, lots of pizzas and whatever. When people say "you can't exercise out of a bad diet" my first question is "What do you mean by "exercise?". And then you discover that exercise in their mind is 30 minutes of brisk walking, 3 days a week and nothing more. That's not exercising, that a sedentary lifestyle.

I agree. If I could rewind time I would do Medicine, at least my work would have some positive value instead of being neutral at best.

Maybe in the US is different but where I am the self reported preparation times for medical exams are lower than that of a Physics/Math/Engineering exam: if I recall correctly Physics was at the top, then Math, then various Engineering disciplines (but not all, maybe CE was an exception), then Medicine.

Edit: Obviously things change in the actual job.

I agree. Whenever someone has tried this approach with me the result has always been me shutting down and avoiding to confide in that person. I am already tough in myself, that's why I always feel like a failure, I don't need this kind of stupid anime protagonist motivational speech bullshit.

I must one of the few people that loved the grammatical-translation method and hated the "communicative" method. I had to learn English in a "communicative-centric" fashion and it was a torment: it was all memorizing useless sentences like "What is your name?" "What is your favorite color?" and then recite back with the teachers and classmates. After 11 years I couldn't even read Harry Potter while after 2 years of Latin Grammar I could read whatever author I was pleased with and had no more need to mentally translate.

There's also the fascination with the forbidden. I've met many people that started smoking as teenagers because it made them "transgressive".

Give the possibility of having comments in chronological order.

Seems you're overconfident that therapy and drugs aren't the solution to mental health problems

And seems like mental health professionals are overconfident that their methods work. And the evidence that they do is weak, especially for the talk therapy.

it depends where in Europe. Where I live at least 70% of high-schooler were driven to school.

Sometimes I tutor high-schoolers in math and physics. I love it and if it payed better I would do it full time.

And use some temporary email if possible so you can't use the "I firgot my password request".

Do you have any evidence rich people care about the descendents of poor people?

No, but people care about their descendants, rich or poor.

The fact that something is a social construct does not mean that it is not important and has not rules by which the members of said society have to live by. Money and democracy are social constructs too.

Why am I struggling?

Why is everything becoming more difficult every day?

Why did I go from top of the class to bottom? Were all my previous successes all flukes? Have I always been this stupid?

Where is all my energy gone? Where is all my hope?

Is this the right path? Is it of my choice or have I been conditioned to pursue it?

Is there a role for me in this world? Am I just a side character in my own life?

Where can I find some guidance? Philosophy, Religion, Science, History?

Is there something wrong with me? Why haven't I been able to connect with people? Do I want to connect with people in the first place?

I failed everything in my life. Good! Now I can kill myself.

This kind of reframing have never succeeded with me, they only make me want to jump faster because of everything that I will never be.

Staring at a phone doing what? Swiping to refresh on social media for hours and hours at a time?

Yes, for the technologically-not-literate people that I know, Internet = social media, and they totally spend every waking hour refresh the page to see "what's new". I used to do that on reddit.

check email, you read news articles, you look at posts from friends on fb or instagram, you interact with people in a comments section, you take or share pictures, you have music or video essays playing to help you focus on work, you message coworkers, coordinate a meetup in a group chat, among other things.

Half of this thing are mental garbage, the other half are FOMO and outrage economy, so not doing them may result in a positive outcome.

The comment was talking about what it is being made fun of, that has no bearing of what it is not.

Sometimes complaining means acknowledging that a problem exists even if you don't know the solution. Pointing out problems is valuable too. On the other and the people[1] who "opt out of cynicism" generally want to live in the "best of the possible world" where problems just disappear if don't look at them.

[1] that I've met and interacted with, of course there's a sampling bias.