Venting thread

[Travis B.]

Btw, why do you think that it is air quality? Is it visibly smoggy outside (where then opening your windows wouldn't help)?

I can't imagine that opening windows would do much else.

(I know a guy who works in some industry or other that uses oxygen tanks, and he has a story about his employer investigating losses of their oxygen tank reserves - they found that workers would take drags of highly oxygenated air as a hangover cure, and ended up writing it off as a cost of doing business.)

Does that count as "recreational use of oxygen"? Will they at some point make oxygen a scheduled substance?

[Raphael]

I need to stop worrying about what I could have done differently 21 years ago I need to stop worrying about what I could have done differently 21 years ago I need to stop worrying about what I could have done differently 21 years ago...

[Ares Land]

I need to stop worrying about what I could have done differently 21 years ago I need to stop worrying about what I could have done differently 21 years ago I need to stop worrying about what I could have done differently 21 years ago...

I feel for you, man. I get that from time to time and it really sucks.

That's really armchair psychology, and of course I can't tell if that applies in any way in your case, but I found out my brain does that when there's some sort of pressing present day problem it refuses to consider. (Stupid brain.)

[Raphael]

Thank you. Actually, I wonder whether running into some pressing present day problem might improve my situation in that respect, though.

[MacAnDàil]

Consider that major sources of indoor air pollution include things such as formaldehyde-phenol resins used in particle board.

Great!

The practical solution is to open windows, but that isn't so practical when it's 30 degrees out. I assume at this point that the only long-term solution is to get rich, buy land, and hire a good architect.

I think it's important to take into consideration the others in society: on the one hand, the major companies that pollute should take others into account and, on the other hand, those suffering should realise that there thousands of other sufferers that can be their allies to solve the problems together.

[Vijay]

God, why am I so angry/on edge/venty right now?

Oh right, probably because I always am whenever I see something about natural language processing. Siiiiiigh.

[MacAnDàil]

Well, I'm often annoyed at the moment and it's mostly because of historical and scientific denial, especially vaccine science denial. Especially due to it coming from my mum, who I often otherwise agree with.

[Travis B.]

I am frustrated with Quad SPI interfacing with a flash ROM on my STM32F746 DISCOVERY board, as no matter what I do it does not want to work, even though I have found other people's code examples (albeit in C or C++ whereas I am working in Forth) which supposedly work that I am going off of.

[Nortaneous]

Consider that major sources of indoor air pollution include things such as formaldehyde-phenol resins used in particle board.

Great!

The practical solution is to open windows, but that isn't so practical when it's 30 degrees out. I assume at this point that the only long-term solution is to get rich, buy land, and hire a good architect.

I think it's important to take into consideration the others in society: on the one hand, the major companies that pollute should take others into account and, on the other hand, those suffering should realise that there thousands of other sufferers that can be their allies to solve the problems together.

Great! Instead of opening a window, I can... personally end the use of formaldehyde-phenol resins, and convince the landlord to replace all the particleboard, in less time than it'll take me to reach the point where it'll make financial sense for me to buy a house?

Air pollution certainly has nothing to do with it - I live on several acres and can't even see my neighbors' porches from mine. The closest thing we have to heavy industry within a mile is a golf course. Water pollution is a general concern, but I'm on well water and I have a distillation tank. (The region where I live doesn't have potable municipal tap water, so it's a reasonable thing to have.)

Come to think of it, it could just be mold. The house was not in great condition when I signed the lease, and although the landlord cleared out the worst of it and I went over everything at move-in, I haven't been doing as much upkeep as I probably should've been. Blasting out the dining room with frankincense can't hurt, at least.

[Ares Land]

Well, I'm often annoyed at the moment and it's mostly because of historical and scientific denial, especially vaccine science denial. Especially due to it coming from my mum, who I often otherwise agree with.

I feel your pain. I get that from my parents too (though I generally disagree with them). I even heard antivax nonsense from nurses.

What helps me relax is that I'm pretty sure that when faced with the actual choice, even the most rabid antivaxxers will get those shots.

What doesn't help me relax and, in fact, enrages me: there are no vaccines anyway. There are, however, a lot more cops outside.

[linguistcat]

The problem I face re: the COVID vaccines isn't that my parents deny they work or even that people should get them eventually, but that they were tested using fetal stem cells, and my parents are becoming more and more conservative in their Catholicism as they age. So until there is a vaccine that was not (and I'm not keeping my hopes up, since using fetal cell lines to test vaccines is extremely useful), they refuse to get vaccinated.

Luckily, I and my husband are both adults and both have our own views and religious beliefs, none of which would stop us from getting the vaccine were any available in our area.

[Linguoboy]

Nothing like reading Boomers discussing the latest high-profile sexual harassment allegations to ruin your whole day.

ETA: Ended up having a really weird encountre with one of them. The context here is a Friends-Only Facebook post by someone we are each independently friends with. When I responded to one of this guy's comments, he replied, "I don't know you and you don't know me. So I won't respond to your posts. Don't respond to mine." Now, if he had asked, I probably would have agreed, but just the fact that he demanded it raised my hackles so I said, "It's your choice not to respond to my public comments. I don't feel obligated to make the same choice." I expected him to block me. Instead, he private messaged me to tell me that he considered my behaviour "harassment". I was like, you do realise that taking this private so you can berate me out of the view of anyone else is way more creepy and harassing, don't you?

But I honestly doubt he does. I think he's probably of a generation and background that believe that confronting someone in private to spare them "embarrassment" is the proper thing to do. And it gave me pause to consider just how much harassment and intimidation has been perpetuated over the years by "keeping things private". There's a time and a place for that, and it's generally when it's someone you know and you have a certain amount of trust in them (and even then it carries risks). This wasn't it. (But because it's all on the Internet, now I at least have receipts.)

[Ares Land]

Nothing like reading Boomers discussing the latest high-profile sexual harassment allegations to ruin your whole day.

ETA: (...)

Extraordinarily depressing, isn't it?

If I may depress you further: it's not just the Boomers either, and those people genuinely feel harassed. They do feel like they're the targets of the thought police.

Optimistic scenario: those of us who have never been on the giving or receiving end of racism, sexism or sexual assault tend to underestimate how often that shit happens. The recent development of systematically calling it out can feel weird. (Personally, I kind of felt offended by the 'men are trash' slogan. Then friends started to get divorces and some of the dirt came out and dear lord and honestly the trash defied my imagination.)
Pessimistic, and I'm afraid, realistic scenario: the twinges of a guilty conscience are probably a factor.

Work-related vent: once again people failed at project management, and I was called upon to save their asses. I can sort of accept that saving clueless people's ass is my true calling in life; I rather resent receiving ten emails and four phone calls to make sure said asses would indeed be saved. I mean, I've been saving the asses of endless hordes of developers and project managers for fifteen years now; show some professional respect.

[Linguoboy]

Nothing like reading Boomers discussing the latest high-profile sexual harassment allegations to ruin your whole day.

Extraordinarily depressing, isn't it?

If I may depress you further: it's not just the Boomers either, and those people genuinely feel harassed. They do feel like they're the targets of the thought police.

Since I do really go in for generational theory, "Boomer" for me is as much a mindset as anything. I started off my day yesterday with a free-for-all in one of my library groups concerning the announcement that the Seuss estate will stop publishing several of his books with distasteful racial imagery. There were people younger than me complaining about "cancel culture" and people much older saying "about damn time".

Optimistic scenario: those of us who have never been on the giving or receiving end of racism, sexism or sexual assault tend to underestimate how often that shit happens....Pessimistic, and I'm afraid, realistic scenario: the twinges of a guilty conscience are probably a factor.

Yeah, I really feel like who your immediate sympathies lie with in a case like this tells me a lot of what I need to know about you as a person. If you're vociferously defending the powerful person and calling the accusers liars, then that tells me you've almost certainly abused your power in the past and are worried it's going to bite you in the ass one day. (That's only amplified in a case like this where the accused is a bully and a scumbag to boot. The first opinion piece I read was basically "Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.")

What I find even more depressing is that a lot of these people have been targets of sexual assault and have simply normalised it. Several of the defenders in this case were women. They talked about being "complimented" by receiving powerful male attention. Some seemed to imply that these women should just suck it up like they've had to. And several of the men are gay so I know they've been harassed before because, IME, gay men's grasp of informed consent (especially among that generation) is generally abysmal. But again, this is framed as "awkward flirting" so that they don't have to deal with the more troubling implications.

Personally, I kind of felt offended by the 'men are trash' slogan.

I'll tell you who didn't, and that's us non-Boomer men who date men. We've been saying this for years. It's spawned a bunch of memes (many involving possums), but my favourite so far is, "Do you like men? No, but I'm attracted to them anyway."

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Personally, I kind of felt offended by the 'men are trash' slogan.

I'll tell you who didn't, and that's us non-Boomer men who date men. We've been saying this for years. It's spawned a bunch of memes (many involving possums), but my favourite so far is, "Do you like men? No, but I'm attracted to them anyway."

I feel the pain a little differently; despair, thy name is homosexuality.

[Vijay]

I don't really mind "men are trash" for myself all that much (it's not like it does anything to me), but I have a friend who's a male victim of rape, from both men and women, so it is triggering for him.

[Ares Land]

What I find even more depressing is that a lot of these people have been targets of sexual assault and have simply normalised it.

Come to think of it, I have been a target three times in my life (in all cases, nothing to write home about, really; nobody was hurt except the offenders' pride) and my reaction has generally been, well not quite denial, but dismissal. ('Eh, just some nutter' or 'Eh, X's always been awkward.')

It took me some time to realize the implications of those experiences (again, awkward, but no harm done) and what it must be like for more vulnerable targets... Maybe I'm exceptionally clueless.

I'll tell you who didn't, and that's us non-Boomer men who date men. We've been saying this for years. It's spawned a bunch of memes (many involving possums), but my favourite so far is, "Do you like men? No, but I'm attracted to them anyway."

That makes a lot of sense. Again, yeah, cluelessness. (I may be exceptional in that respect, but it looks like more straight men really are that clueless).

[Linguoboy]

Come to think of it, I have been a target three times in my life (in all cases, nothing to write home about, really; nobody was hurt except the offenders' pride) and my reaction has generally been, well not quite denial, but dismissal. ('Eh, just some nutter' or 'Eh, X's always been awkward.')

I have a great deal of sympathy for any target of sexual assault who "just went alone with it" because the first couple of times it happened to me I was too stunned to react appropriately. The very first time, I was so caught off guard, I didn't even realise what was going on. I actually remember asking myself, "Does he realise his hand is in my crotch?" It seems so dumb now but the idea that a near stranger would just reach out and grab my genitals in broad daylight without the slightest encouragement from me was not something I'd ever considered could happen.

Other times--at a party, at a gay bar--I felt trapped by social conventions, by a need to not "look like the asshole". Of course, assaulters know all about the power of social pressure and they turn it to their advantage. And I've dealt with minimisation from friends and acquaintances when I've tried to talk about these incidents--being told, for instance, that being in a certain area of a gay bar at a certain time confers blanket consent to sexual activity. The idea that anybody should be able to withdraw consent to any kind of sexual activity at any time for any reason doesn't seem to me like it should be a radical concept at all, but to some gay men it still is.

[malloc]

Over the past two weeks, my neck has been hurting and since last week, I have been having vertigo and headaches on and off. I have felt some hints of numbness in my limbs as well, although that could simply be the cold. Honestly not sure how to proceed since my insurance only covers checkups once per year. The most likely cause of such symptoms is a brain tumor or other neurological condition. There seems little point in seeing the doctor for that because such things are rarely treatable and financially crippling when they are. My only hope is waiting to see if things improve on their own.

[Pabappa]

Ive been talking with someone much younger than you who has the very same model of thinking .... given any situation, he always has a reason why the worst possible thing must be about to happen, to him in particular. He lives on the other side of the world, and I have an irregular sleep schedule, so often I was one of the few other people awake when he was on the chat.

After a few weeks of communicating with him in much the same manner everyone else did, i changed tack and told him in the softest, gentlest manner that the problem he was worried about that day simply did not exist, and that I would refuse to give him any help or even any advice for a problem that he did not need to deal with. He said very little in response. I went to bed that night thinking I might well wake up to find out I had been banned from the community, and that I would resign myself to that, figuring I had done the right thing regardless of others' reactions.

When I went back to the chat, I realized my comments had changed the entire situation, and that several people agreed with me but had been afraid to speak up ... in any case, we still talk, though I have not seen him bring up his daily life problems with us since that night.

Now, Im not saying your medical issues don't exist. Clearly, they do exist. What doesnt exist is the world you live in where everything that possibly can go wrong, will, and if not, something even worse will happen.

People say the important thing to distinguish is between the problems you cannot solve and the problems you can. But before that, you have to first distinguish between the problems that exist and the problems your mind creates.

Have you looked for mental health help yet?

I wish I could just pull a magic trick like I did before and solve the problem precisely by not solving it, but in this case, your medical symptoms definitely are real, and it would be foolish to ignore them. I can only say that, of all the people in the United States right now, there must surely a million others in your situation, and I don't believe that all of them are unable to get medical help. I would at the very least call your doctor and ask what you can do right now ... don't rely on us for help when you can get help from someone better able to handle the situation.

I wish you the best.
--Soap ~ Pabappa