(06-01-2026, 03:06 AM)Knows Wrote: Just get a couple cats or something. Learn to play an instrument. Instead of eating yourself.
For crowds? Stay away from them. Or turn the tables and learn to eat the crowd if pushed.    

You are a child trying to advise an adult. Go in peace.

(06-01-2026, 03:06 AM)Knows Wrote: Just get a couple cats or something.

I find cats to be exceptionally selfish, and somewhat spiteful, for something with a brain just a little smaller than a tennis ball.

They are also carriers of leptospirosis, which I blame as a possible cause for the stillbirth of my first grandchild.

So, no cats.

Quote:Learn to play an instrument.

I play a number of instruments.

Quote:Instead of eating yourself.

Becoming a haggis?

Quote:For crowds? Stay away from them. Or turn the tables and learn to eat the crowd if pushed.    

I am slightly Asperger's, and so am quite happy to be on my own, but avoiding crowds is not a way to optimize income. It is best to be social.

(05-31-2026, 09:17 AM)Astyanax Wrote: Wise words.

By the way, an excellent way of preparing for the worst is dealing with the merely terrible. Practical training in survival skills, if you catch my drift. Life lessons.

I've seen far too much terrible in this world, Astyanax.

And it hurts.

Not that I don't accept the premise of the argument...

(04-25-2026, 04:12 AM)LightAngel Wrote: Yes, it is hard to trust people online.

Not because I'm overly cautious, but because the internet is a mix of everything, real people, fake accounts, bots, personas, and people who aren't showing their true selves.

Some have a genuine presence you can feel.

Some feel empty, scripted, or not human at all.

And some are real people, but they hide behind masks so you can't sense who they actually are.

So I take my time. 

I pay attention to the energy, and the way someone shows up over time.

Trust online isn't impossible, it just requires discernment, because not everyone you meet is a real person in the way you expect.

I have been binge watching YouTube TV which gets into many independent Podcasters. Many are totally fake and some are dead on in which what they are saying can be indenpendently verified as factually correct and true. All of my watching has led to me to the Christian Ethiopian Bible, which is is the sacred text of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. That led to Jacques Mercier. 

In brief according to the Ethiopian bible, as a baby we were born on earth without sin and we have free will to either walk the light or dark path. We also can speak direct to God instead of having to go through a priest. Sure got me to chage my thinking as I was always  thinking much in mainstream religion doesnt make sense. The above has sealed it for me

Thanks

(05-31-2026, 11:34 AM)Astyanax Wrote: 'In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.' – Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human.

I’m good, I like me!

I’m never lonely, too busy to be!

(06-02-2026, 05:54 AM)andy06shake Wrote: I've seen far too much terrible in this world, Astyanax.

And it hurts.

Not that I don't accept the premise of the argument...

I’m sorry if your lot has been harder to bear than anyone might reasonably expect, Andy. We all have our share. Pain is part of the price we pay for our lives, which (in most cases) are immeasurably safer and more comfortable than the lives of previous generations, even in the world’s unhappiest and most deprived places.

I think we fare better when we face up to the inevitability of sickness, pain and death, doing our best to avoid gratuitously adding to others’ travails while coping courageously with our own.

I’m not religious, but I remember well a hymn we were taught at school. The first verse went

Father, hear the prayer we offer
Not for ease that prayer shall be
But for strength that we may ever
Live our lives courageously

It’s a bold inversion of the Twenty-Third Psalm; you can read the rest of it here. And – the religious aspect aside – I have always felt the sentiments it expresses are valid and true. I’ve tried my whole life to live up to them. But this kind of attitude, taking responsibility for oneself, is out of fashion now. We don’t want to hear about those brave, self-confident souls who face up to their troubles and deal with them. We’re all sensitive and hurting and full of complaints, and we don’t care who knows it. We blame the world for doing us down. It’s all a conspiracy!

I’ve seen and experienced personally a great many terrible and painful things, including poverty, cruel and violent treatment as a child, frequent rejection and a debilitating neurosis when I was growing up. I’ve lived through civil war, the loss of friends to political violence, a failed revolution and a successful one. I have failed many times at many things. Now and then I have stared Death in the face. I am, in particular, rather familiar with the nasty sensation of having semiautomatic weapons pointed at me. Yet I know that life has dealt with me gently, on the whole, for all that. However poorly I think things are going for me, it takes me no effort at all to realise that others have had it much worse than I. And when I see the courage with which some face up to repeated blows and find the strength to carry on, I realise what a coward I am compared to them.

I may not be religious, but I’m deeply thankful that I’ve lived the life I’ve had. And I am firmly convinced that, by facing up, doing my best and making do, I am of more service to my fellow beings than I would be if I allowed the awfulness of life and the untrustworthiness of humanity to dominate my thinking.

(06-02-2026, 01:08 PM)KTemplar Wrote: I’m good, I like me!

Really? All of you? That’s rather disturbing to contemplate.
 

Quote:I’m never lonely, too busy to be!

I expect you would be busy, since you’ve got to do every last thing for yourself! Poor you.

(04-25-2026, 04:12 AM)LightAngel Wrote: Yes, it is hard to trust people online.

Not because I'm overly cautious, but because the internet is a mix of everything, real people, fake accounts, bots, personas, and people who aren't showing their true selves.

Some have a genuine presence you can feel.

Some feel empty, scripted, or not human at all.

And some are real people, but they hide behind masks so you can't sense who they actually are.

So I take my time. 

I pay attention to the energy, and the way someone shows up over time.

Trust online isn't impossible, it just requires discernment, because not everyone you meet is a real person in the way you expect.

I think it's safe to say that I've definitely shown my true self at UM.  I created a lot of backlash and had a few who seriously despised me but one need not be nice and popular to be "real"

(06-02-2026, 10:57 PM)Astyanax Wrote: I’m sorry if your lot has been harder to bear than anyone might reasonably expect, Andy. We all have our share. Pain is part of the price we pay for our lives, which (in most cases) are immeasurably safer and more comfortable than the lives of previous generations, even in the world’s unhappiest and most deprived places.

You play the cards you are dealt in the best manner you know how, Astyanax.

My life is a bed of roses compared to some other poor sods.

Life is pain, speckled with fleeting moments of happiness. 

But i think most of us have all grown quite partial to existence, given the alternative.

Life is what we choose to make it.

https://www.getyarn.io/video/23a0ceb3-6b...7fbb5525f0

Dr Smith, Lost in Space....

Oops.  Didn't work...Oh, the pain, the pain.....