Tldr: basically there are owners and workers. (this is of course leaving out all of the people who can’t or don’t work or work outside of wage labor but that is not what we are focusing on right now). In an ideal world there would not be people who “profit” off of the labor of others.

That is not to say people cannot work together make each other’s lives better and enrich each other, but it wouldn’t be in a owner/worker relationship, it would be in a co-worker/community relationship. If your friends own a business and make the lion’s share of the profit while employees who enable them to do their work only get a small share of the value created by their labor, they may be trying to help but they are still exploiting their employees for profit. A truly equitable company would need to have all workers treated equitably and no profit be generated for shareholders. This is 100% possible but it’s definitely not the standard model people are taught.

I believe what people mean when they say there is no such thing as a good billionaire is, it is impossible to create that much personal wealth without exploiting others and, furthermore, amassing that large an amount of extracted wealth is inherently harmful to the exploited workers on such a level as to be undeniably evil. You cannot gain that much wealth without explicitly and intentionally stealing from those who created it. Even people who work hard, who could be argued are the only reason that wealth is generated, (thinking of Taylor Swift here) if they were truly good people they would see the profits that are being made by the Enterprise that they spearhead and know that it would be impossible without the people who work with them and support them to create that wealth and that it should be distributed as equally as possible between all involved. If they are keeping such a large portion that they become a billionaire, they are inherently evil, regardless of if that wealth could have been created without them.

I suppose there could be some argument for a theoretical company that was so profitable that all employees involved in creating the value reached billionaire status, but I have a hard time imagining any business that could create that amount of wealth without their business being exploitative in some way, even if all parties involved in that business directly are paid equally. An example of this might be a investment brokerage. People who invest in the stock market and get rich doing so are not employers directly but they are indirectly, through the stock market, siphoning the value of exploited workers from corporate profits.

This topic is of course a ethical and idealistic one. Expecting everyday people who have invested in the stock market through their 401k to not use the wealth that they receive from those investments to live comfortable lives In their retirement would be ridiculous in our current system. In an ideal world that wouldn’t be necessary, people would be guaranteed food, housing, and healthcare for the entirety of their old age and retirement without requiring the explicit exploitation of wage labor, but there must be a division in our consciousness between what an ideal person in an ideal world would do and what an an evil person in our current world does and that it is the gray in between those two extremes that makes up the vast majority of the current population.

One last point to consider is that developing class consciousness is something that needs to be taught and learned and understood and that the current societal expectations and norms that we have instilled in us from a very young age need to be broken down internally before people are able to recognize how much harm the current system does. I guarantee that the people who profit the most off of their employees believe wholeheartedly that they are doing good by creating jobs for people who otherwise would have had nothing without the company that has been provided by their ownership. Getting people who benefit the most from our current system to see how harmful their “good fortune” is to others will be a daunting and thankless task and will take decades.

At a time or total?

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Owens-Corning-R13-Thermafiber-Fire-and-Sound-Guard-Plus-Mineral-Wool-Insulation-Batt-15-in-x-47-in-1310109/319880476

This is the kind of thing I would suggest, it’s designed to be soundproofing, fire retardant home insulation. This is literally the exact thing you would put in-between your joists before drywall if you were trying to insulate an interior wall for sound.

There’s a product called green fiber that is a blown-in cellulose insulation that’s been treated with fire retardant you could use if the walls have already been drywalled, I’ve used that in all of the interior walls of my home when I was remodeling to try and deaden sound and have added privacy throughout the home. My basement, which I turned into a mother-in-law apartment, is so private I can’t hear my basement neighbor when they have their video games blasting through a surround sound stereo set with a subwoofer. I can feel the floor shake but, unless I am standing right next to a vent, I can’t hear anything.

I stopped being so upset by it once I started examining social systems and propaganda. If you’ve been conditioned your whole life to think of women as weaker and smaller and someone to be protected to maintain your “manly state”, someone who doesn’t fit that mold is a threat to your subconscious sense of self worth. Same for women who don’t want to date shorter men, “if I’m not the property of someone who’s the biggest and the strongest, I’m worth less to this society.”
‘Society’ thinks men who are smaller than their woman are weak, and that the woman must be defective or she’d be with someone who ‘fits’ better. They’re dead wrong, but that’s the unexamined subconscious judgement that our society has conditioned into people. It’s easy to be less upset with individual people when you realize they just haven’t had the space to examine the abusive systems they’re forced to exist within.

Yay! I’m glad it helped. X) As to the faces, I use Gboard and there’s a ASCII art library in the list of emoji/gif options. It’s quite entertaining. (⁠_{⁠￣⁠³⁠￣⁠)⁠} ⊂⁠(⁠・⁠﹏⁠・⁠⊂⁠) ᕦ⁠(⁠ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ⁠)⁠ᕤ (⁠ノ⁠｀⁠Д⁠´⁠)⁠ノ⁠彡⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

TLDR: be happy to be alone, truly and genuinely. then it won’t matter if you find a partner, but you will be able to choose them with a clear mind if you do.

I’m basically a complete flip of you physically but I had the same problem for a loooooooooong time. I’m a tall, strong, heavy woman, and all i kept hearing was “you’re beautiful, I just don’t want someone taller/stronger/heavier than me”. I totally get it, I didn’t want to be taller/stronger/heavier than my partner either. But I’m like Fezzik- “it’s not my fault I’m the biggest and the strongest, I don’t even exercise”. except I did do cardio to try to slim down, I’m just built to survive famine I guess. ¯⁠\⁠(⁠◉⁠‿⁠◉⁠)⁠/⁠¯

What I didn’t understand was the ones who said they just wanted to be friends, because i just wasn’t their type, but would happily be fuck buddies, so long as we kept it hush hush. ಠ⁠ಗ⁠ಠ

Anyway, eventually after a bunch of very bad attempts at relationships where I took way more BS than I should have because I was just that hungry for affection, I decided I was just better off being single forever. I couldn’t seem to find a decent person who was attracted to me both physically and intellectually, so I decided to just stop looking. Not just stop looking, stop wanting. I actively wanted to be single for the rest of my life, in large part because I was just tired of the pain of being lonely. Like, “Jesus titty fucking Christ, we’re gonna cry ourselves to sleep because we’re SOOOO sad we’re alone AGAIN?! FFS, JUST STAHP!” So I stopped wanting a partner. I found I had so much more time and energy to do the things I was passionate about when I wasn’t futzing with all that stuff. I became the queen of getting shit done, remodeled my house myself, landscaped my yard, built a garden, went to the gym regularly, did weight lifting till I maxed out all the leg machines at the gym, and got close to maxing some of the upper body ones too. I was happy being single. I WANTED to be single. I craved my free time, the peace i found in solitude was better by orders of magnitude than any of the toxic relationships I’d clung to in the past.

After about two and a half years of that, a long time friend/ acquaintance started coming to me for massage ( I’m a deep tissue massage therapist with a focus on injury recovery and pain relief) and we would just talk throughout the sessions. Politics, philosophy, movies, anime, music, goals, food… Just everything. Eventually, after we’d just spent two more hours talking in the car after the two hours talking in the session, he said “Sooo… you know I’m flirting with you sometimes, right?” I turned him down. I said, more or less, “I’m happy single, I’ve had such a garbage time dating that I can’t pretend I’m not a decent part of the problem. I value our friendship and don’t want to hurt your feelings, and I’m not NOT attracted to you, I just don’t want to date ever again.” He was completely chill, said “no worries, no is no even if you’re attracted to me too. if you ever change your mind, let me know.” And he dropped it, never brought it up again… And fuck if that wasn’t the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. We kept being friends and talking and spending time together, talking about goals and wants and life plans and we found that our wants and goals in life were so in line it was uncanny. Importantly, neither of us wanted to get married, neither of us wanted kids, neither of us wanted to live with a partner ever again… It seemed like I could keep my peace, my space, my autonomy, AND have a partner who cared about my mind and emotions while also finding me wildly attractive. So we talked about what dating would look like and agreed to try it. It’s been 2.5 years so far and I’ve never been happier in a relationship. I still think if we stopped being romantically involved I’d probably prefer to go back to staying single, but I’m happy with him as a partner.

I tell you the whole story, kinda long and rambling as it is, because I don’t think I could have found a happy relationship if I had continued to want one with the same frantic energy as I had previously. I don’t think I would have been a person who could be as open and honest as I was with who I was if I’d still wanted a partner when we started to really get to know each other. I don’t think I was a whole person when I was looking for my “other half” and I don’t know if you can really find a good match if you’re not a whole entire person on your own. If I could distill the idea down to it’s core, I think it would be: be happy to be alone, truly and genuinely. then it won’t matter if you find a partner, but you will be able to choose them with a clear mind if you do.

Crunchy peanut butter and low sugar strawberry jam (it’s more tart is all, DGAF about the sugar content) mixed together, use as a dip for pretzels. Only done it with crunchy pretzels but might be fire with fresh hot pretzels.

Hi Utah!

Thanks!

It’s the best look!

Awww, thank you!!!

Like a handful of other people in the comments I never dress up or wear makeup, it’s black pants and a t-shirt for me. It’s usually a graphic t-shirt that is silly so if someone’s like “oh cute t-shirt” sure, that’s fine. But if they’re talking to me specifically cute feels infantilizing. I’m a 33-Year-Old woman, I either look fine, nice, beautiful, or like a deranged raccoon holding a knife.

I’m currently on an autism diagnosis waiting list cuz there’s just not that many adult autism services in my area so maybe it might be that too ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

That! My Boo has the hardest time figuring out if I’ve listened to a song or not because he tells me the name of the song and the artist and I go “I don’t fucking know dude”, so he tells me some of the lyrics, and I go ¯⁠\⁠(⁠◉⁠‿⁠◉⁠)⁠/⁠¯, so he plays me the song and within the first two notes I’m like “oh yeah I’ve heard this a billion times” 🤦‍♀️

https://screening.mhanational.org/screening-tools/adhd/ This seems like a useful test to me for getting a better idea if you should talk to a psychiatrist or not. It’s ups and downs getting diagnosed, especially as an adult. I had one psychiatrist give me their full test and questionnaire and decided I was borderline but wouldn’t diagnose me or prescribe anything, (I was already on a med that helped but not any of the controlled ones) The next psychiatrist I went to a few years later didn’t even have me do the test, we had an in person appointment, (which I was late to) and after we’d talked for about 20 minutes I asked “so, when do we schedule the ADHD assessment?” He said “Oh, no, we don’t need to do one, you very clearly have ADHD.” XD Honestly though I learned more about it from the experiences of people on social media who had it than I ever learned from a doctor. I’d start with searching ADHD hashtags and see if you resonate with other people’s experiences.

I have ADHD and I find I have lots of difficulties with auditory processing in high noise floor situations. Also got my hearing checked because I couldn’t understand people in loud spaces. Turns out ADHD brains just don’t handle processing all that noise well. If I understand it correctly it’s because we need to process everything at the same level instead of some things being easy to leave on autopilot. Might not be your case but it sounded familiar so, that’s my two bits.

Showers/tubs should have a access panel on the other side of the wall the faucet is on so you can get at the plumbing. Mine didn’t (also 1960’s house) so I cut an access hole and got one of those spring loaded wall hole covers that are designed to allow wall access without cutting every time.

Well my sisters and I don’t have that kind of equipment, so no.

… Am… Am I understanding correctly that your mother told you and you brother , regularly, to eat dick shaped vegetables so you could grow a long shlong?