megane-kun

For those people like me thinking “WTF is a worry stone?”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worry_stone

Worry stones are smooth, polished gemstones, usually in the shape of an oval with a thumb-sized indentation, used for relaxation or anxiety relief.

Something one would fidget with when worried, I suppose.

I reacted to a comment to a meme about parents having the power and the right to withhold what their children’s privileges relating to some trauma I’ve got.

The comment I replied to went:

We take away what each kid values the most. Works well. If they complain or don’t stop whatever got them in trouble we start adding days.

In hindsight, taking the context, it’s kinda reasonable, but I was triggered by the “what each kid values the most” remembering a painful part of my childhood, which lead me to be way less open to my mother.

I commented:

Wouldn’t that end up with a kid who values nothing, not even their own life?

My mom used a similar technique to get me to do what she wants me to do, and I ended up, well, the way I am right now. I hide a lot of things from her, and if necessary, only pretend to show interest in things I don’t give a damn about just to have a semblance of a personality. Worse, even if I‌ die right after this comment, I wouldn’t mind one bit.

Admittedly, that last part is totally unnecessary.

That response became my most controversial and downvoted for understandable reasons.

Saglit lang! Sino po sila? (A moment please! Who are they?)

Lol! Yes!! That’s exactly it! I never really thought much about it until this post. It’s one of those things people just do, without thinking much about it.

some cultures need visitors to declare themselves human when knocking at your door.

I didn’t think that much about it until this post. People here, me included, basically call out “(I’m a) human!” while knocking on the door.

That last paragraph of yours just made things click for me.

I’ve been wondering what kind of government will potentially do this. While it’s a pretty good idea in general, I don’t think any government will be able to shoulder the costs while earning the ire of the companies (media companies, etc.).

I mean, yeah, I also dislike having to restrict access, but I’ve just accepted it as a fact that such an institution must face. The decision on those restrictions would fall on the library/archives institution, so long as they are not running afoul of laws. So, I guess in the US, it’d be on the Library of Congress or in the case of the UK, the British Library.

Of course, it doesn’t do a thing to address your concerns, which as far as I am concerned, is very valid. And this is why I think piracy should exist, to keep such institutions honest. Sure, the national library here won’t allow me to research xyz, but other sources exists.

In a more philosophical POV, such institutions existing along with other entities (pirates, or what have you) allows for a check, and provides future historians a means of verifying information.

To be clear, I also fundamentally disagree on the concept of restricting access to information. And I think a lot of librarians and archivists agree with both of us. But for such an institution with such a service to exist, restricting access might be an evil they’re forced to accept.

I guess, to be honest, I don’t think such an institution will be allowed to exist, even with such restrictions in place.

EDIT: Typos and minor changes.

This would have been the job of the national archives and/or the national library.

Where I live, the government has a law stipulating that one copy every published material has to be submitted to the national library. I suppose a similar law exists for a lot of other countries, and extending this law to non-print media (like movies and TV shows) shouldn’t be controversial.

Regarding material deemed harmful and/or illegal, I think it should still be collected, but access would be restricted. If need be, access could be restricted to “premises-only” like what is done in a lot of university libraries.

Having this online library of material doesn’t have to mean that pirates have to be stamped out. I think this works best with the pirates keeping the government-sponsored media library honest.

However, what I think would be more plausible is an offline library of all the media that country has produced, with limited off-premises access afforded to researchers and others. That much, I think, would be allowed by the real powers that be.

I’m glad it somehow helped you IRL. Best of luck to you!

I know myself enough that I’m likely to let that absolute power absolutely corrupt me and hence, make things absolutely worse for everyone around me.

I’m not that good of a person to be able to be sure that I won’t abuse that power, nor am I wise enough to know what to do in order to use that power for the good of everyone. Worse, I’d fall under the delusion that I’m the only person with the will and power to able to do good, and that my ideals are the only ones that count.

So, unfortunately, no. I must decline.

Touché! I didn’t expect this. What are the nipples made of? Are they lactating? Just for display? Also, are they erogenous?

I wish that no life in the entire universe has and will ever attain civilization.

And I forgot that large loads can go by the back entrance. XD

It’s probably has enough to accommodate 48" (with enough training), or even more.

I overthought this and wondered if a 48" thing can really go all the way in, but I was surprised to know that “The average erect penis is longer than the average vagina. ” and that it’s not really possible to ‘break through’ the cervix and go further.

Even ignoring girth, it’d probably be very painful for her (without training, I suppose) if someone just rams their 40" into her.

There’s my youngest brother, but he’s already with his family, and is the one in charge of cooking over there. I’m with my mom, who is really needing the help, and so yeah! I also told my mom to just stop hosting because it’s increasingly not worth it, but she’s stubborn and told me it’s always been this way, and will be that way until she draws her final breath.

Now, if I can only convince the others (the ones coming over) to just bring some food so that there’s a lot less need to cook here.

I read that SCP (again?) and more than the similarities (endless staircases is perhaps one of those common nightmares), I find the timing a bit strange. I am for sure wasn’t aware of SCP back then (circa 2007), but IIRC, the time that SCP was written is roughly the same time I was those dreams.

I don’t think I can write a continuation to SCP-087, but a short story based on the common elements of that recurring dream series is doable. Difficult, but doable. But first, I must recall more detail from those dreams!

Stress.

Stress about all the money spent on a midnight feast that we’re too sleepy and tired to enjoy (our Christmas meal here is at 12mn, it cannot start earlier), the gifts and decorations, and the electricity of all the RGB lights strung around to make our family to be “with the community spirit”. Stress about not having the energy to be able to smile and be cheerful all the time, or else you’d be the subject of dinner conversations, how you’re not “making an effort to spread the holiday spirit”. And worst of all, the stress of not being able to sleep and rest due to all the merrymaking, singing, and overall noisemaking (fireworks tend to be fired at random here, and increasing in frequency as it draws closer to the end of December).

I used to look forward to the food, the seasonal food, and the feasting. But now that I’ve got to prepare all that food, taste it, make adjustments based on who is going to be coming for the Christmas dinner, it’s just draining.

What is supposed to be a season to be merry, to be hopeful, and all that good cheer, has become the very cause of all the sorry hopelessness and drear.

I don’t know about it being the weirdest, but a recurring dream from my late teens to the early 20’s has been seared into my memory that goes like this:

The way the dream starts varies, but a common version is me being asked to explore a staircase that was yet to be fully explored. Some versions has me go up, the others go down, and yet still others has me trying both. In some versions, I was sent with a team, the members of which succumbed to thirst, hunger, and fatigue as the expedition seemed to have no end. Sometimes, we (or I) discover that we’ve been going around “in circles” as we encounter the corpse of someone from our team who has earlier died, or I (in the versions I was alone) come across equipment I have abandoned way earlier.

In later versions, this has evolved into me (either starting with a team, but has since been whittled into just me) discovering an actual end to the staircase: a vast expanse of nothing but darkness. In there, I encounter some people (how they got there varies, some through the same staircase, the others through other means, and yet still others don’t know how). I somehow convinced them to join me in exploring the darkness. To do this, we arranged ourselves in a circle, facing outwards with arms linked. That way, we wouldn’t lose a person. We try to go off on a direction and explore the darkness that way. As we encounter more people willing to join us, they add themselves into the circular chain. It goes on and on, seemingly without end. The dark expanse just goes on and on forever.

In still later versions, this dark expanse is replaced by a huge subterranean cavern. Gone is the staircase, and I just dropped into the bottommost cavern. The same sequence of events as with the “dark expanse” version happens, but now, we can actually see where we’re going and there’s no need for forming a human circular chain.

In one late, and rare, version of this dream, we come across a well-lighted cavern whose center lies a shining stalagmite. We couldn’t approach the stalagmite, however, and just made that as a reference point in further explorations.

This recurring dream has become more and more rare as I grew older. I sometimes wonder what it all means, and why the dream changed over time. It seemed to have to do with my mental state at that time, but some things didn’t make sense. It’s also quite coherent as dreams go, which is probably why I still remember it years after.

Sea or lake view from the mountains. Even better if I can also have a view of a lake/seaside town on the shore.

This is not a judgement of the musical genre and I think it’s way more profound and expressive than the average commodified pop music we have. However, I remember making a report about the history of music (for an arts appreciation class in college) and I ended the report with some Japanoise (a genre of noise music) like this one:

https://youtu.be/L7p_C9OlN40

The teacher was really delighted, but my classmates were like “WTF?”

EDIT: Reworded some confusing sentence construction

Born and raised Catholic, drifted towards atheism as I thought that if the tenets of the religion I was brought up in is true, I should be punished for eternity (and then pondered if suicide is a lighter sin than being who I am), and then questioned why that’s necessarily the case.

Later on, I drifted towards agnosticism as I began to question my own beliefs, and more importantly, why I was having those beliefs.

None of that was ever known to a lot of people, though, and I present myself as a non-practicing Catholic.