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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • It’s difficult to say, really. It’s a form of acceptance. Accepting that you are who you are, taking things at face value rather than second-guessing everything you hear. I’ve got a decent head on my shoulders and feel more confident in my own abilities.

    It wasn’t until I decided to call in sick from work last September. It was not a great winter to get through and taking a long, hard look at myself, my environment and my past was a very painful process.

    I’ve been pretty aware of the fact that I was in need of psychological help since somewhere around 2018. Since then I’ve taken one step, in 2018, but didn’t follow through. I muddled my way through my last year of college, graduated, worked at a small publisher for about 3 years before moving to my current employer, moved, had a lot of personal stuff going on…

    The step I took last September, to basically hit the brakes, was a turning point for me. But it took until the end of February to actually feel like I was on my way back up.

    So in short: it’s pretty much all about confidence. Once you’ve accepted yourself for who you are, you’ll no longer feel like a burden to others. You’ll most likely also realize that people don’t often judge you without telling you stuff. After you’ve had an interaction, there is no need to wonder ‘oh I wonder what they’ll think of me, what will they think of me saying this or that’. Your overthinking will slow down a bit.

    Couple of caveats:

    • I am very aware of the priviliges I have gotten along my life and I understand not everyone can just call in sick for a year and get full medical support from their jobs, or be able to just freewheel through college;
    • I am still a long ways from where I need to be and I’m starting both therapy with a psychologist and something called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in group form.

  • I have a colleague who actually behaves in a way that I recognized right away. It is something I used to do a lot; talking like I was a burden on others, like the time people spent with me was time lost for them.

    It takes finding out a root cause to stop this. Me, I’m a perfectionist. This manifests through me being a people pleaser: I hold myself to really high social standards and expect others to also set the bar high for me. I really don’t like it when people are disappointed by my actions, so that causes me to apologize more than necessary.

    I’ve taken stock of my life the last six months and made a lot of progress on this front.

    The best thing she can do to change her behavior is acknowledging she has an issue to begin with. As long is she is happy with her current behavior and you are not, the only thing you can do is explore why she feels the need to be like this and see if she can alter her behavior without distancing herself from who she is.




  • I feel like he doesn’t really understand most of what is happening but he just says the first thing that comes to mind when he hears stuff.

    This is something happening in Europe as well though, you’ve probably noticed it if you follow Dutch politics. There are these people who just yell out stuff that sounds pretty good but once action has to be taken, they find out it’s never as simple as they’d imagined it to be. The end result is they get nothing done and their disillusioned voters are too stubborn to admit that they were susceptible to populism.








  • I am in the hopeful side. Maybe an ASI can quickly analyze our issues and interfere. ASI might spit out any plans to improve everyone’s life but if the people in power ignore all of the advice because they’ll no longer be in power, nothing will really change except now there’s an ASI using huge amounts of electricity.

    Considering how everything’s going, I honestly think an ASI won’t make anything worse happen than the current state of affairs.


  • Until humanity unites there is no ‘we’ who can do anything. We are currently too busy polarising, fighting and reinforcing poverty. If AGI ever arrives, it’ll most likely be weaponised or used to make rich people richer.

    If ASI runs out of control, we can only hope it’ll be a nice god and doesn’t immediately see humans are a disease and try to kill us off.

    It’s, at this point, hubris to assume AGI/ASI wants anything to do with us.



  • I think most defensive midfielders have committed fouls they aren’t necessarily proud of. What you don’t see in the image is that the ball is actually quite close. This was not an attack on Alonso per se, although it was not at all a clean attempt either.

    Thing is, with football you have the kind of player that just doesn’t play with finesse and relies on being tough in duels, no backing down. De Jong was one of those.

    These days, especially with VAR, you see a lot more deliberate kicks to Achilles tendons, knees, thighs, that get awarded direct reds. De Jong should’ve had a red card that day. But a red somewhere in your career shouldn’t mean you can never work in football again.