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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2023

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  • Except a 401k gets taxed on withdrawals, potentially at a higher tax rate than you were paying when you invested some or even most of it. Also, we can’t invest our whole salary into a 401k, as there’s a hard limit on contributions. Whereas a business never gets taxed on the assets they invested in to offset their profits (except maybe state/local property tax, but then they get to deduct that from federal tax…), plus they get to deduct the depreciation of said asset for years going forward.


  • If she says she’s on birth control but you haven’t seen it, dont believe her. If she pressures you not to use a condom, don’t consent.

    Don’t marry someone before you’ve known them well for a few years. Don’t ignore red flags, such as them telling you that they see other people as pawns or them pressuring you to empty your 401k to put it into their financial/realestate schemes.

    If your partner doesn’t treat you with kindness and respect right now, then they are never going to, no matter how many times they say they will if you would only just do this or be that - nothing will ever be good enough for that kind of person, period, full stop. And, no, they won’t change, no matter how much you do, and no matter how much you love them.

    Do learn what “love bombing” is. Then find out if someone is grossly irresponsible with money or hiding a severe alcohol problem before you move in with them.

    There are a lot of people in this world who will take advantage of your kindness and naivety, if you let them, so be mindful of how people treat you and those around them before you make commitments to them.

    Not everyone is awful.

    Edit to add: don’t ignore your friends or family telling you that they think your relationship is unhealthy, or that the person is mistreating you or others, or may be taking advantage of you. Even if you don’t have much respect for the person telling you this, stop and listen and reflect, because red flags don’t stand out to you when you’re wearing rosy tinted glasses.





  • The people who are that severely damaged by drugs* are a small percentage. I’ve only seen a handful who got that bad because of drugs (I’m a professional in the field). Most addicts can benefit from appropriate care and could become functional members of society again if they had proper support - which our system grossly lacks.

    *Most cases of persistent psychosis aren’t drug-induced; most of those throwing feces have psychosis from some other cause, which can also be treated with varying levels of success. Drug-induced psychosis is most of the time transient, and subsides as the drug wears off.



  • Private browser mode in many browsers disables plugins by default, and also doesn’t do anything to stop trackers or data collection. All private mode does is keep your activity private from others who also have access to your device (e.g. family members, roommates), by not saving browser history/cookies/etc.

    Also, VPN’s can be helpful, but there are ways to “fingerprint” individual users behind VPN’s by how they move their mouse and click speed and what websites they visit etc… I imagine plugins like AdNauseum could help with that. It’s a clever idea, I’ll have to check it out - thanks!



  • I hear what you’re saying, and were it a college or professional team I probably would agree, but for high schoolers that’s harder. At that age, their very identity and self-worth are dependent on peer acceptance. Not to mention any shy kids who might have felt powerless to speak up. We also don’t know that they didn’t try; one or some may have tried and been shut down by peer pressure. My guess is one idiot thought it’d be funny, convinced a few more, and pressured the rest. “It’s just a prank bro” or somesuch.

    That the coach didn’t put an immediate stop to it is definitely an issue.



  • People kept asking why it was taking so long to bring charges at all - this is why. Yes, the crimes are obvious and some were even committed in public view, but if you’re going after high level government officials - if you’re going after a former president of the United States - you better make sure you have every last detail in order. For crimes of such magnitude, you can’t risk the case getting dismissed or overturned based on a frivolous detail or a minor oversight or a technicality. It has to be iron-clad and air-tight, with every ‘i’ dotted and every ‘t’ crossed.

    Trump isn’t some common thief or vandal. He’s not just a crime boss or a corrupt politician. He’s a history-altering, would-be dictator who tried to stage a coup to overthrow our government. There is no room for error.


  • Eh… I see where you’re coming from, and I’m generally against homeschooling as well. For various reasons, I wish I hadn’t been and wouldn’t do so for my child.

    That said, I’m inclined to disagree. It only promotes what the parents put into it - which, yes, often is a lot of religion, but it isn’t intrinsic to the practice. The religious component I suspect is where you get the stunting of open-mindedness and critical thinking ideas, but fwiw I and several of my siblings have since left the faith for atheism, and even those who still participate in religion are mostly rather progressive. I do fully recognize that I and my siblings are probably the exception in this regard, so in those aspects I think your opinion generally represents the actual outcomes of homeschooling as it exists in the US, and probably is not that unpopular outside of homeschooling circles - but I would reiterate that I don’t think it’s intrinsic to homeschooling; rather, I think it’s a result of who in the US tends to choose to homeschool.

    As for the idea that it stunts communal empathy, I’m a little bit baffled. I work in a mental hospital, one of my sisters has spent a year volunteering at orphanages in Ghana, one of my cousins (who was also homeschooled) runs a rural mission hospital in Bangladesh, etc… My observation is that most homeschooling families are rather pro-social and fully embrace the concepts of community and communal support of one another (even if they have eaten the socialism-is-bad propaganda; their rationale then is just that charity should come from the community itself rather than being subject to government mandate and bureaucratic inefficiency), so I’m curious what gives you that idea.


  • As someone who was homeschooled and now holds a master’s degree, I will proudly own the ‘weirdo’ title and make no claims to normalcy. And I suspect most of my 7 siblings would do the same.

    But saying we’re all ‘likely retarded’ is a bit peculiar to me. Most homeschoolers I’ve met (which I suspect is more than most folks, being from inside the community) come from high-functioning or highly-religious families, with very few notably ‘retarded’. How many homeschool kids have you actually known?