OpenStars

Kotor also encouraged replays with all options so that you could try the variety of romance situations:-).

Believe it or not, but the "we gave them sandwiches sometimes" statement has also been put forth as an argument for why slavery was not so bad. FOR REAL!

Some have even been proposing - unironically mind you - that we return to using it!? (To be clear, I mean slavery, not offering anyone sandwiches. In fact, anyone offering free sandwiches should just be sent to jail. I am not making that up either, it's a real thing somehow!?!? Despite what the Bible has to say about it, the "Bible-belt" states are making it illegal to offer food or water to the homeless😔)

Apparently they do not realize the truth that slavery has already been brought back -> there are more black people behind bars today than ever existed as slaves, and not always for "crimes" but sometimes trumped up charges in order to meet a quota, or minor offenses that a white person would be let off with a warning for (yes, many actual criminals too so hard to know the reality of the scope of the issues involved when so many falsehoods are mixed in along with the truths).

Anyone who would make that claim unironically is indeed really fucking dumb. Plus it's mean so they must be an absolute shithole person to even think that way in the first place.

Regexps are awesome! And also not at the same time:-P. 🎉 Congrats👏!:-)

Third time's the charm? :-P

you can’t teach something that is fake.

Uh... I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you can though. Here's a little example:

Africa is a shithole country. White people were kind to accept the slaves that Africans themselves provided, and civilized them. They even gave them sammiches sometimes!

There problem solved: now little Timmy doesn't have to feel guilty about being the oppressor anymore! :-P Next week we'll cover how chaining native Americans to (active) hot stoves in >100 degree temps in the desert will help teach them the true meaning of Christianity...

Next up, sipping on orphan tears.

Eventually you will also come to the question often expressed in the popular phrase: is it better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all? i.e., even as you retreat from hostile forces, what are you advancing towards, that is worthwhile? I am not very knowledgeable about this - most of my own advances irl have failed, though I do not really regret any of them, as each decision was made only with the knowledge that I had at the time, even if I have learned & changed & grown since.

The reason I bring it up is to help illuminate how boundaries need to be set even upon the very setting of boundaries (how meta!:-P). In the limit (I mean in the mathematical sense), the ultimate safety is achieved by walling off everyone and everything so that it cannot affect you in any way - I have heard that concept expressed as an analogy where someone builds a castle, and thereafter basically suffocates inside, walled off entirely from the world, both the bad but also the good from it.

At some point you (& me, and each of us, possibly uniquely for each situation even) will need to find the appropriate balance point b/t avoiding toxic people, vs. allowing contact with imperfect humans. If we cannot forgive them, at some level we cannot forgive the faults within ourselves, and that would be the ultimate tragedy - if we could not even stand to be around our very own selves! That said, it is an advanced concept, b/c for instance it does not mean that we should re-establish contact, or to not break away contact, from a toxic person. If anything rather, it is the ultimate severing of their "hold" over us, where we know that we will be okay regardless of what they do, even if we remain in contact with them (which would need to be decided on a case-by-case basis ofc, b/c the more contact we have with them, the more they influence us even if we fight tooth & nail against that).

Doesn't that sound nice, in theory? Sigh... I have literally no idea what it means though, in practice:-P. We, like them, are all just bumbling around in the dark, trying in our own way to do the best we know how. The difference is that at least you are making the attempt to illuminate the situation - and that will make a HUGE difference in the outcome!

Then this might help: remember that even as you try to set boundaries between yourself and others, you can set boundaries within yourself as well. e.g., you could watch a movie depicting a fictional narrative of a not-good-faith event, and decide to at least attempt to not be triggered, or at least quite as much. You cannot control the world, but you control your response to it, and you deserve to be happy:-). Though you need to find the route to get to it - even in spite of others attempting to ruin it for everyone around them, to become as unhappy as they are.:-(

I guess you already said this, sorta, in that when people act that way, you respond to increase your happiness by getting away from that source of toxicity. But I mean something deeper, which you may also already be doing, in terms of setting the boundaries within yourself, to not feel unhappiness about their actions.

To me, the key is always good-faith.

Abso-frigging-lutely. Even the dumbest person, or maybe someone with a bad memory, but who is trying can eventually be trained, or else constrained, whereas a malicious actor can do everything "right", until they get what they wanted all along and then cause the highest magnitude of harm.

I like how you are approaching it intentionally, which demonstrates awareness and intent to make things better for yourself, and also others as you plan ahead for what is most important.

We ALL are that way. :-D

I thought some of the older ones, like 2000, were more secure, with ability to access on-chip security features. So ofc they threw all that out in favor of 10, the final OS that would come as a subscription service, meaning that you'd never need to buy one again. And then they threw that out too, in favor of the next one... and on and on it goes:-P.

I absolutely hate Windows:-(.