Just discovered this.

Has anyone gotten this feeling before? For a long time my life was forced to go in a direction I didn't want it to but I had no choice but to passively accept and deal with where I was being lead. So I think it might be a learnt behavior. I know this isn't a relationship_advice thing but it feels relevant. (Fyi I am not a vulnerable girl being exploited, but perhaps advice applicable to them might help me too)

I grew up in (foreign) country A but then moved back to my home country (B) with my parents. I plan to move back to country A eventually because I feel 100% at home in the culture there, but am just a bit unsure about the timing. The problem is that I'd like to get into dating (I'm 21) and country A has a really low amount of people of my type, whereas the country I'm originally from (B) has plenty (but I only feel 70-80% at home here). So I'm thinking I might postpone my move back to country A where this won't really be possible until in a couple of years when I'm more happy to settle down. I wanted to ask you older folks if you think this is a wise idea.

I have Special Interests (pixel-perfect UIs, the overall 'feel' of software, old computers, obsolete media like floppies, useless machines, etc.) that my brain finds extremely stimulating and rewarding and I'm able to devote hours to creating things that scratch these itches. Unfortunately neither the job market, nor anyone else actually, sees beauty there where I see it and so they will not value it (that includes financially). Meanwhile, there are other things like machine learning or cell biology that my brain is also very well equipped for but I don't spend time learning them because they don't draw me to them the way my SIs do (I have ADHD so the stimulation level of activities is quite decisive). This is a handicap because it leaves me fixated on several irrelevant things which I did not choose. How do you guys deal with this?

I'm a student looking for a part time job to make some money. Since I'm a native speaker of two languages, I thought translating might be nice since it fills quite a unique niche where

1. the job can be done wholly on a computer, ie. remotely, giving me freedom, but
2. the job is not technical in nature, but rather very intuition-heavy, giving the logical part of my brain time to rest after studying for my engineering degree.

Translating really does feel like doing art in comparison to eg. programming, and I find it genuinely relaxing. The problem is that translators are increasingly being replaced by AI and this will continue in the future, meaning it will be hard for me to get a job in this field. So I wanted to ask you if you can think of any other jobs I could try that fill this niche – remote but intuitive. Any ideas?

When I take Ritalin, I need to take an initial dose of 15-20mg for it to be effective (and then taper it down every 50 minutes otherwise I get jittery). But when I was on Concerta, 18mg was not enough, even though it is roughly the same dosage. Is the Concerta dosage not comparable to that of the Ritalin as it is spread out over a longer period? I know 30mg of Ritalin would be way too much for me – but does that necessarily mean that 36mg of Concerta would too?

(For the sake of intuition, 1/√0=0)

Edit: eg. the Apple ads

This is brilliant. It saves you from having to channel suggestions through MEPs. If a suggestion gets enough signatures they have to consider it.

Any ideas? I'm 21 so not too many bills to pay. I just need something that will give me the financial freedom to move around and hopefully some time left over.

I spent a long time in the UK and currently live in Czechia.

In the UK if you stood in a group conversation and weren't saying anything, people tried to involve you and asked you questions. In Czechia, unless you said something, you would be ignored*. I know this is kind of an odd thing to consider but I've determined it's the one thing that decides if I'm able to find actual close friends in a society. Because I've spent several years here (am Czech) and although I've made acquaintances I've never met anyone who was more interested to get to know me than I was to get to know them. This has left me feeling lonely.

So in order to know where else I'd fit in, I'd be curious to know how this hypothetical situation would play out in your country. I know the dividing line must be somewhere between UK and CZ but don't know where. When I visited Eastern Germany and spoke German it was only marginally better than Czechia.

*So when trying to make conversation, all the effort had to come from your side (which gets tiring). In the UK you could feel that the other person was trying to help carry the conversation too. And actually, I've found this happens when non native speakers switch to English too (eg. when Erasmus people came)

I either have an exciting plan, or when that fails, no plan (I resign). Since the exciting plans usually fail, I end up living on autopilot.

I really struggle making things in life move. There's too many simultaneous Big Tasks* whose logistics I need to keep track of that I can’t hold them all in my head at once (I can only focus on one Big Task at once). Especially when most tasks are timelines where you need to wait for responses, compose emails, search for things (there might be none – what then?) etc. and where you need to think about the order of the tasks in the timeline so that you save time. Not to forget remembering to notice if people haven’t replied to your e-mail and having to either remind them or come up with a Plan B (this usually leaves you stumped because you now can't get the thing you started the whole journey for). There's so many steps to keep track of and you can't even write them down because the amount of steps keeps changing.

*Finding the next place to rent, booking a dentist for my hurting tooth, planning journeys (what is the Plan B if the journey is too expensive?)

The cluelessness and dread of having to come up with a Plan B is why I hate searching for things. Having to come up with a Plan B is so disorienting. And it's the opposite of stimulating: you've put in a ton of effort and gotten nowhere. How do you all deal with it?

I imagine some of these agencies didn't exist before 2010, meaning they got staffed under the Tories. I know viewing the Tories as purely bad is a very simplistic way of looking at things, but when Boris was partying in Downing street and clearly resigning on his duties to protect the public, how come this level of resignation didn't seep into these govt. agencies? From the articles below it seems that even after 14 years fhey still have teeth. Are they independent enough to escape influence from the Cabinet?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/20/the-big-tech-firms-want-an-ai-monopoly-but-the-uk-watchdog-can-bring-them-to-heel https://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/news/national/24470785.data-watchdog-reprimands-school-facial-recognition-canteen-payments/

From the book Plurality chapter 2-2