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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Yeah, I gave advice on some smaller / niche, topics. I didn’t delete the whole thing, only my most upvoted and/or most recent comments (I went all the way to december 2022, and every comment with more than 20 upvotes). Replaced it all with a link to my kbin.

    It was kind of sad reading all the replies that were like “we should put this comment in the FAQ / this is the best comment / this covers everything”. I was very throughout and loved speading what I learned, and it pains me a little the few times I lurked in those communities since moving to kbin and see lots of unanswered pleads for advice or straight up terrible advice being given…


  • My grandma took care of me from the moment I was two months old till I was old enough to travel on my own and cook my own food, and even after that we would continue meeting for lunch every week. My mom and dad were present in my life and loving parents but divorced when I was really young and both had to work and travel a lot, through it all, I’d always had her.
    At the time of the story, my dear grandma was slowly dying in her struggle with depression. In-patient treatment had done little to nothing, she was on several psychiatric medications, no dice.

    In the middle of this I had an interview scheduled for an internship in a field I really cared about and for the life of me, I couldn’t find the room the interview was being held at in that laberynth of a faculty building. I would go to where the receptionist told me and find nothing, Id ask teachers and no one knew the place I was headed to. Id open random doors and got into offices where people would rush me out. The clock was ticking and I felt incredibly stupid at not being able to find the stupid room. The building wasn’t even that large.

    And all of a sudden it was too much and I just… broke down sobbing and couldnt stop, everything was too much. Must have been ugly crying for half an hour straight. My eyes were so puffy I could barely even see anymore.
    What I wont forget about that time is how many of the 17 - 18 year-old students approached me that day: offered me water, or to show me the bathroom, asked if I needed a phone to call anyone. One girl even hugged me while I continued crying my hear out and helped me email the person I was supposed to meet that day to tell them I had a personal emergency, while she heard out everything that was going on with me and tried her best to assure me everything would turn out fine.
    On my way home, people on the public transport would offer me seats, or ask if I was alright.

    Sounds like small things, but in the world we live in sometimes its easy to believe nobody gives a shit anymore.
    I did get that internship, the following week. And continue to be in that field of work.




  • Paul Ekman had this “theory of basic emotions” that were supposedly universal for humans and had their set of “innate” gestures for each one.
    For his original works, he travelled to some secluded communities and registered that the expressions for “happiness / fear / anger / disgust / sadness / surprise” were supposedly shared among human kind.
    Why do I say supposedly? Because a lot of Ekman’s theory was disproved (for example, he claimed each emotion had an area of the brain dedicated to it, or at least some unique structure, which fMRI studies are not finding to be true, even if there is a lot we still don’t know on human emotion). There’s also claims that he contamined his data when he went to these secluded communities, and influenced (probably unknowingly) his results to make everyone’s expressions match the ones he expected for each emotion.

    So… are there universal expresions of emotion? Not an easy answer. The physical responses more linked to survival probably are (say fight/ flight in response to fear, startle in response to surprise). The more social ones? don’t know, some may be heavily influenced by culture. You would have to make a study on very young, blind babies from different cultures or something of the sort which would not be easy. Also there’s the thing that babies cannot tell you what emotion they are experimenting, even if you can asume some (loud noise and baby is crying probably equals fear, BUT the baby can’t confirm it, which is a methodological problem for some Scientists).

    If this interests you, Ledoux has some great approachable work on the “survival circuits” of the brain that explain emotion in a way comparable to animals and linked to their evolutional value.



  • I do think protests achieved so much. They made a lot of noise, put spez’s terrible handling of the situation under the spotlight right before IPO.
    And honestly, even if spez doesn’t go back on the API pricing (which he probably won’t), having subreddits protesting and fleeing to the fediverse puts the writing on the wall for other shitty platforms (current or to come).
    Back when Elon started destroying twitter I did not get how mastodon worked, but I do see myself working around it now I figured out kbin (although Im not on twitter all that much to justify switching right now), can imagine is the case for anyone fleeing to the fediverse.



  • Sounds like burnout.
    Don’t have any advice cause Im not doing so great myself, but maybe set some small goals for yourself that look more achieaveable and enjoyable. Set a few hours to rest and do whatever without needing to feel productive, set some days to go out and do something different, some museum you never visited, or if there is some kind of event in your city like live music or whatever. Some times it will not be your thing, other times you may discover something new you like, at any case it gives you things to talk about and discuss with your SO and peers.






  • Negociation 101: ask for more than you actually expect to get (within reason, you don’t want people to think you are a joke).
    They ask for backpay not really expecting for backpay, just to give them wiggle room to settle in court for better rights from that moment on.
    Last and only time I had to sue someone (and won) my lawyer told me what the usual result of cases like mine is, then we asked for that and like, 20% extra. Then on the mediation we “negociated” for the amount we were really expecting to get.
    (This is all personal speculation, Im not a mod, clearing that up just in case).