Play around with this for a bit: https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement?income=50000&initialBalance=0&expenses=20000&annualPct=5&withdrawalRate=4

Consider spending 30k yearly when you’re earning 50k. You can retire in about 20 years if you keep to that. You really gotta keep to it though, spending 40k means you’d have to work almost 40 years instead.

Now compare that to spending 30k when making 100k. Now you can retire in 9 years. Even if you have to spend literally twice as much time+effort doing so, you end up with more of your life leftover.

This is not to say that you should take a job you hate, but rather to say that making more money does make your life better, but only up to a point. If you find a job that you genuinely enjoy, great do that. If you’re picking between different things you dislike, translate it back into years instead of trying to understand it in made up funny money numbers. And when you get there, stop.

It was lying right there

OOP was an oopsie.

There’s a significant emotional and mental difference between giving $100 to buy mosquito nets and directly helping resolve a topical conflict within a tribe you’re a part of. A lot of effort (on both sides) goes into bridging that gap.

So yes, absolutely do the good things you can at a distance. But also don’t be disappointed when that doesn’t make you feel better.

(And yes, I wasn’t very clear about that in my original point. Good job and thank you for making+helping me clarify)

Humanity is now cursed with knowing every bit of horror that happens all around the globe. 200 years ago you might only find out about atrocities months or years after they happened, if at all. It was much clearer then that there was literally nothing you could do about them. Nowadays if you want to throw your life away you can just buy a plane ticket to Ukraine. So now we’re being much more regularly faced with terrible things we’re not prepared to deal with happening somewhere.

And the truth is still that there is not really anything significant we can do. If it was happening in our backyard we might fight, but there’s only so many backyards and only so much room for foolishly selfless people to lay down their lives.

The weirdness you’re feeling is not a moral failing, but rather the strangeness of a world we’re not built for. As much as I and you might feel for any given fight or issue, the 99% of them are not our business, and it’s not morally expected of us to get involved. Lots of religions and moral frameworks and feelings say otherwise. Forget them.

So that it’s easy to see that there’s a little bit of snow on it as it melts and know it might be slippery.

It’s going to be a really shit 4 years. There could be a point of no return anytime along that based on a variety of issues, but IMO the most likely point of no return is if/when Trump moves to take a third term in '28. If that happens it’s clearly dead no hope.

For a first step you can get away with just add, commit, push, and pull. Maybe reset, but tbh using git like svn at first is fine.

Next branch, checkout and merge. At this point show, log, bisect and blame also start to be useful.

I’m not a fan of stash, and would instead recommend reflog and cherry-pick as the first two advanced commands to learn. Then rebase and squash.

In fact we do know that there’s someone else in the room - otherwise who is the old man talking to?

For people organizing protests and taking part in them, Maybe to Likely.

For people just posting things online, Very unlikely. They’ll have their hands full with all the immigrants and protesters first, and there’s far too many people who have said something leftist online.

If only it were so simple

No way he’s 62

Mostly, they don’t

Let’s not idolize ourselves as homewrecker

Looks like a w to me.

Much of the advice in this thread is either “Do xyz and you’ll have better chances!” or “It’s ok to be unattractive, it doesn’t mean you’re bad! Feel better!”. But that doesn’t answer your question.

It hurts, a lot, to not have intimacy for extended periods. It can burn, it can ache, and it can be a slow, subtle sort of pain. It can give rise to bitterness, as you call out, and to anger, sadness, listlessness, frustration.

Why don’t you want to be bitter? It’s a painful thing that is happening to you. That feeling isn’t wrong, it’s telling you something. If you feel a lot of pain and then suddenly stop feeling pain, that is very bad - it usually means you’re dying or your nerves are damaged. There’s no quick fix or silver bullet that will allow you to hold this like an old stoic, it’s just a lot of work.

There’s three places you can intervene: thoughts, words, and actions.

Thoughts are where this starts. If you don’t have bitter thoughts you won’t have bitter speech or actions. When you have bitter thoughts, just let them be. Don’t spiral - feeling bitter about intimacy isn’t great, but feeling bad about feeling bitter strengthens both, and it feeds itself from there. When you notice yourself spiraling or wallowing, just stop. Find a distraction or will yourself better or whatever, just don’t let it feed itself. Meditation might help if this mental action is difficult. If you can find a positive channel for these emotions (which is quite hard to find), use it!

Speech is the first layer where this can affect others, but it’s significantly lower stakes than actions. Generally, be conscientious. People can’t willingly un-know things so be careful with what you share. Don’t vent unless someone willingly signs up for it (which you can ask friends to do!). Don’t put this out like it’s a problem for someone else to fix or the worst thing that ever happened. It sucks, but it is manageable - you are managing it. When you make mistakes, point and call them. Say out loud “I did/said xyz, that was a mistake because abc, sorry, next time I’ll do/say mno instead.” This helps make a memory for you and others so you actually fix things and opens the door for feedback.

Actions will hopefully only come into this positively. Do the things that make good thoughts and speech easier. Learn to recognize how frustration and anger and bitterness feel in your body so that you can better notice+control them in the moment, and so that you can physically release that tension/sensation. If you feel urges to hurt others or yourself seek therapy.

It sucks. It hurts a lot in ways that many don’t understand or sympathize with. And it is itself a significant barrier to intimacy. I haven’t figured it all out myself, but I hope this helps. Good luck.

That depends a lot on the sort of women he’s approaching. If he’s mostly approaching strangers he probably still won’t get a different real answer - if they’re brushing him off like this there’s a reason and “please be honest” isn’t going to change it.

This might work with an already good friend that he asked out, but that doesn’t seem to be the situation described.

Zork zork zork zork zork zork

I don’t have to have feelings about something to value it.

Where this isn’t true, it’s extremely effective propaganda

Like a pizza fresh out the oven - gooey and even sticky on one side, crusty on the other