A few years ago, mid pandemic, I started collecting ancient coins. I was really passionate about it even thinking about finding ways to make it a small after-hours job or such, but I’ve since run into a few walls and have subsequently lost my drive. For example, I wanted to take very high resolution pictures of the coins and then compose a catalog of sorts, but while I have all the gear that I need (camera with a macro lens) my shots keep coming out wrong and I’ve since kind of given up on the idea altogether.

My entire life is one long succession of passionately started projects that got abandoned either midway or after heavy setbacks. If I ever find one that brings me lasting happiness, I’ll gladly share it, but for now I’m just as much on the lookout as you are.

That’s nothing, quarks have a fucking flavor

Most flightless birds compensate by being badass at fighting on ground level. If you’ve ever seen a rooster fuck up a jackdaw you’ll know what I mean.

Fuck prions and the horse they rode in on. They’re not even alive, so you can’t kill them. No vaccine, no cure, and thoroughly cooking your food is still no guaranteed way to get rid of them.

Nature’s silent assassins, and they take their sweet time doing it too. By the time you first notice it’s already far too late.

Thanks for the links, very interesting indeed!

I posit that the human mind is made up of dozens, or perhaps even hundreds/thousands “smaller agents” that work together to create consciousness as an emergent property of the whole, which makes it impossible to isolate and say “this, THIS right here IS concsciousness”. That does not mean each of those has their own personality, per sé.

Physical destruction. It’s the only way to be 100% sure.

It resides on the MB itself in a separate chip, so no, although there are probably tools to make it possible.

Pluto will always be a planet to me, and you’ll pry that definition from my cold, dead hands!

Well, I do still have the pieces, and you can clearly see the silver has crystallized inside (which is both a sign of authenticity and an explanation for its brittleness) so I’m keeping it as a metallurgical curiosity rather than a piece of history.

Yeah, I hated myself for that. Still do. It kinda stopped my interest in ancient coin collecting altogether because now I feel like an unworthy loser who shouldn’t be near any such artifacts in the first place.

If I was my own boss I’d have fired me.

Not a fossil but I managed to drop and shatter a denarius of Tiberius (tribute penny) and I’m pretty sure I went through all the same facial expressions. Fuck.

I was once banned from some forums for being “too weird to fit in”. It was a forum for a forming WoW guild prior to its launch in 2004. I remember that it somehow crushed my quirky personality, and I became a bit of a drudge as a result.

Although I still game, and sometimes online, I’ve never since tried to actually fit in with any group, and have mostly stopped communicating when gaming at all. No voicechat, only chat, and even that very limited. I guess you could say the single experience changed my outlook and enjoyment of online gaming forever.

I can’t speak for others, but some people… just… don’t. I’m one of them. Perpetual impostor syndrome for almost a full decade at the same company.

I might simply genuinely be incompetent but too nice to fire, I dunno.

Ground News is a pretty good starting point for someone who wants to get into actuality, especially politics. The bias meter just explains for each article whether it’s from a right-, left- or center-leaning organisation, which usually comes with the attached strings you might expect.

By offering the articles from several different sources and clarifying where these sources lie on the left-right axis, you can easily see how some subjects in news are downright manipulated/being lied about by certain publications, just because they omit the most important data or skew it in a way to fit their narrative.

Such a classic.

I don’t think parent poster meant to espouse nihilism. Rather just acceptance. You can still find meaning in living day to day if worrying about the future becomes debilitating.

I can’t even smoke weed anymore without having a near panic attack.

Funny, it’s the exact opposite for me. I get panic attacks when I run out.

Allegedly the only way to get rid of imposter syndrome is to just… do your work/stuff until it goes away.

I’ve been at the same job for 9 years, but I don’t feel any more capable than at the start. I still have no idea what I’m doing while being sure others are constantly judging me. Any day my manager will take me apart to put me on a PIP or outright fire me. I’ve “known” this for years, and I’m as convinced as ever that it will happen eventually, soon even.

Not disagreeing, but what does that help the thousands who will still lose their jobs regardless?