Thank them for fulfilling a need… And let them go. Their job is done. The task, complete.

I guess they could also jump on the opportunity to pitch a pyramid scheme, too.

There’s nothing to lose by trying as long as you accept that the worst case scenario is they’re still not part of your life.

Maintaining relationships is hard. They’re likely minimally social these days as well. Somewhere around your age is where many people suddenly feel lonely. It’s a tough lesson on the concept of “friends of proximity”. That’s usually a negative term, but, quite frankly, I believe all friends are friends of proximity. If you change proximity (new job, differetlnt school, drop a hobby, move, etc), you have to work harder to stay in each other’s orbits. Shortened tangent: this is something I’m at peace with now. Instead of putting asterisks next to everyone that’s a work friend or hobby friend, they’re just friends. I don’t know when that friendship will end, so I focus on enjoying the current relationship.

The point I’m coming to is that, while I understand this is a unique situation for you, it’s a common general feeling. That will make it tough to rejoin social circles that likely don’t exist anymore. But, if you do manage to meet up, have at it. Enjoy it. Perhaps there are other people in your orbit that can be reevaluated as a friend. Maybe you can find something to do with them, even if it’s just a very basic hangout after work or something. I find many people are hesitant because they also think of these friendships as temporary, but hopefully you can get a feel for options and feedback. I know your post was about old friends, but I’m hoping they’re not your only option.

And please, please, do not take social media posts as their daily diary. It’s so hard to accept, but every day they’re not posting, they’re just as bored and alone as everyone else scrolling. Social media is the high lights reel. So much of it is projection.

What’s the minimum torque and power that you use to delineate between toy and machine? What were the specs on the original? Not your desktop toy, but the original.

I can stop any household fan with my hand. That doesn’t mean they’re not real machines. Scale of a device has nothing to do with whether it’s design is real or not. Is a mechanical watch not a real machine because Big Ben is so much bigger? Is a motorized bicycle not a real machine because trucks exist? That steam engine is absolutely a steam engine. It uses mechanical principles to induce motion. Being weak doesn’t disqualify it. Alter the jets, raise the temperature, link 10 of them together, whatever and you’ll have something more difficult to stop.

It’s obviously hard to know how my childhood would have been had my parents divorced, but my main “benefit” from them staying together is that I saw who I didn’t want to be. That’s not much. It soured my views on marriage, which only got worse when my long-term partner’s parents started pushing for it. Both my now-in-laws were remarried, telling me how important marriage was, while also having a relationship with each other as contentious as my own parents. (Eventually, I had 8 friends get married in one year and the whole thing clicked for me with much, much healthier examples)

Would life have been worse with split parents? Who knows. No way of telling. Lose some negativity, potentially add a ton of instability.

I can’t recommend one way or the other. I only ask you consider your own mental health and attitude and how it affects your family’s home life. But the one thing I can say pretty confidently (and of course don’t know if you do this): as frustrating as shit gets, do not trash talk your spouse to your kids. And if you’re really trying to explain to them why your spouse is hurting you, you better be as innocent as you portray yourself. I took my dad’s words to heart and despised my mom through my teen years, only to come around in my 20s and realized it was my dad who was the mean one. The stories didn’t add up. I mean, he literally complained to me once (after I saw the truth) that my mom withheld sex for 2 years for some bullshit set of reasons that included everything except himself. It was pretty clear at that point she had no interest in the miserable old man he became, along with him watching political “news” all day, complaining about dinner not being done, not cleaning, etc.

Kids see everything. They aren’t naive forever.

Are they commonly out there with elad and tungsten? Lead is cheap and super heavy so it makes sense for a sales perspective, but I guess I’d naively believe they’d be a toxic tangle companies wouldn’t want to be part of given how stele is good enough. Tungsten, on the other hand, is certainly heavy, but I’d guess the value of the material and the difficulty of machining it would preclude it from a sales sense.

It happens to me at night because not only does it have to be quite dark, I audio need to be dork dark adapted. Your pupil is part of your dark adaption and widens in a mater of seconds. However, your receptors also get doped with rhodopsin, which takes up to 20 minutes to full replenish (blue/uv light bleachers rhodopsin). It’s like being able to lower the F-stop on a camera like normal, but taking 20 minutes to raise the ISO

It varies. If you have this all the time, I’d suspect your sleep duration is not aligned with your sleep cycles. I’ll be more confused if I had dreamy sleep, I’ll be more confused if I wake from REM or deep, and I’ll be very confused if I awake from a dreamy sleep during REM or deep. I don’t think I forget I’m human, but it can take a second to adjust to not having a dream reality. I’m definitely, often enough, entirely confused as to where I am for a moment.

However, this effect is lessened when I awake from light sleep. It feels more natural. There’s a lingering sleepy feeling, but it somehow feels like I’m well rested, even if it’s a short sleep. Sleep cycles are typically 90 minutes (light-rem-deep-rem-light). 6 hours isn’t great, but waking is acceptable. 7.5 is good enough for me. 9 is too much commitment to test.

Ironically, when I drink until bedtime, I can sometimes wake instantly if the timing is right. However, it’s like a low power mode. I’m alert, but lazy. Like I just blinked away my entire sleep. Alcohol tends to prevent REM and disrupt deep sleep.

I like T/W/F more than T/Th/F but I still rather Thursday over Wendedsday

Across the river is the smaller city, Montnonfungibletoken

I agree, it’s probably out of character, but I could see it as a either a trade or a hazing ritual with blackmail material

I say “delve” often in technical breakdowns when writing. I never say it out loud because my hands will tell you we’re digging down into a topic. I use em dashes too, when digressing into an important fact that needs to be mentioned but not expanded upon. It comes from textbooks, not plagiarised LLM gable. Call me assumptive, but I’d expect ley has a higher rate of similar-minded people than other platforms - people that have properly studied textbooks at some point.

You can probably tell I’m human because I usuallyiss a typo somewhere in my post where I hit backspace instead of “M” at the lead of a word, causing two words to questionably mash together. Autocorrect can’t help with those. But that’s what an LLM would say if it knew it’s secrecy was in jeopardy

I think you might be getting false positives on LLM ID, but you’re justified in being skeptical. The Slop is everywhere, no reason to think we’re hidden

Mussolini is who first got described to me as fascist as well. 10 years old, 5th grade. Also similarly, it really took my own effort to separate multiple, shall I say, un-American government descriptors because they were all pumped together as evil. Fascism, dictatorship, communism, and a bit of socialism due to the Nazi’s true party name.

Surprisingly, nationalism just never fell into the mix in school. That’s just patriotism for other countries, right? Right?

And then the popes edited it further.

Not sure what a mayo buddy is, but I take it Angel is male and your buddies aren’t close to any Hispanic communities, didn’t watch Dexter, and don’t know St Michael’s title. And while not named as “Angel” but playing angels, didn’t see Dogma or Good Fortune

A person with a clock knows the time. A person with two does not.

Son of a bitch (unmarried woman) / bastard (born outside of wedlock). Both are pretty casual at this point in my American region. My grandmother meant it if she said it, though. But this all turned around, possibly nationally, in 2015 with the release Nathaniel Rateliffe’s hit single, SOB.

At least it’s short term. “Have a good rest of your day. I don’t give a shit about your tomorrow though”

Downvoting your comment because it’s hard to see my screen outside in the sun