Thank you. I have a kid I work with that looooves space. To him, dwarf planets and regular planets are equally interesting. When we watch space videos that point out Pluto in some way, he’s just confused. Like a video about the 8 planets ending in a frowning Pluto.

The kid: “Why is Pluto sad?”

Me: “Well, bud, some grown ups are silly. They grew up thinking of Pluto as a planet and they don’t like that its status changed.”

But to him, Pluto has no reason to be “sad.” It’s got Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris to be friends with! But nobody makes a big deal over them (if they even are aware of their existence at all. This boy has single-handedly educated many of my coworkers about them.)

Point is, grown ups - let it go! Scientific reclassification doesn’t mean Pluto was ejected from the solar system or something. It’s still there and it’s still loved. It just plays with different friends now.

When I was very young, before I was able to read, I would see images in my mind associated with spoken words. Sometimes they were the literal thing that was being said, but other times the images were more abstract.

With Snickers, I pictured “sneakers.” But it was for more than the sound being similar - I thought the pattern on the bottom of the candy bar resembled the pattern on the bottom of shoes. So it all made sense in little-me’s brain.

That’s the case for me. The last game I’ve “completed” was a game where I can play through multiple different scenarios (Surviving Mars.) I have completed about half the mystery scenarios, and I love being able to replay it and have it be new all over again.

I know compliments we’ve received aren’t necessarily the answer, but it’s hard to think of anything that could top when a former coworker had a baby and told me, "I hope she grows up to be just like you."

Me waking up on a Satuday:

It’s interesting to me how Red Bull/Monster fans describe their experiences with the other brand. I say that as a Monster fan that literally gagged the first time I had a Red Bull.

But similar to your concession about the White Monster flavor, I would give props to the Red/Blue editions of Red Bull. When I gave them a try, I was prepared to have a similar reaction as I did with the original, but I was pleasantly surprised.

It’s good to find common ground. :)

Is there a way to filter YT searches for that?

I saw that part first and immediately thought, “Wow, yes, it must be annoying for ads for jewelry to be embedded in your work.” Then I saw the sleep apnea garbage. Until reading the additional info, I was ready to ask, “Which ad?” The way it’s worded sounds like sponsored content.

Also, all the people using ad blockers must also be blocking each other’s comments. Because hot damn, there’s a lot of people saying the same thing. I think OP gets the message, y’all.

I don’t know how common it is today, but I know when I was growing up there was a ton of pressure on us to know what we wanted to do forever by the time we were in high school. It was so bad that I went into a depressive shut-down, with weeks of barely eating or talking to anyone. Adults would try to reassure me with, “Nobody knows what they want to do by your age,” yet simultaneously I was told, “You need to go to college so you don’t flip burgers forever.” College comes along with needing to declare a major, which means deciding what you want to focus on despite being so young. So I don’t need to know, but I do need to know? Very, very confusing.

The school system has been failing for a long time. I saw the writing on the wall in the early 00s and wanted nothing to do with a system that seemed to be more about extracting money and wasting time than anything else. Thankfully, like you, I love learning! I never stopped picking up skills and challenging my mind, and in a world of emergent AI it’s become more important than ever to keep exercising one’s brain.

In the end, I’d say you’re probably less alone than you feel. A lot of people who seem confident about what they plan to do are either doing what they’re told, or taking on a “fake it til you make it” mentality. Check back on them in ten years and see how many of them actually stuck to their plan - it will be surprising. A lot changes in one’s 20s. Friends drift apart (physically and psychologically) as they begin their independent journey through life.

I get the impression that I don’t need to tell you not to fall for social media where people only show their best selves, but it bears noting. Comparing one’s self to others is a surefire way to make one feel bad about themselves, and social media exacerbates that trend. As you see friends going on and doing things, try to remember the old phrase, “The grass is always greener on the other side.” Some of them are hiding their struggles, and may secretly envy you and your decisions, even if they don’t tell you so.

Anyway, just keep up learning topics that interest you. The idea of a “dream job” is propaganda, and by admitting it doesn’t exist for you, you help show it for the bullshit idea it is. Not everyone dreams of working. Not everyone should dream of working. There’s nothing wrong with finding a job that supports you (which I do recommend, as you really never know what can happen) while finding meaning and fulfillment from things that don’t make you money.

Funny, I’m the exact opposite. My feet need to be covered when I sleep. The rest of me, not so much. When I lived in a van in Florida, sometimes it was too hot for a full blanket. I’d just take a towel, throw it over my feet, and sleep like that. Perfect comfort.

That’s so bad for a child’s development. A computer can’t guide a kid’s hand to practice fine motor skills. It can’t impart social skills to help kids interact with each other. It can’t help kids revolve conflicts with each other, or handle behaviors that require a human touch. Imagine a couple kids fighting because they can’t share - what’s a computer gonna do? A kid can just ignore its instructions. What’s to stop a kid from physically attacking a robo-nanny or whatever fresh hell gets developed in this field?

I work with kids with difficult behaviors. There are ethical boundaries we need to be aware of. Will a robo-nanny be imparted with those rules? How accountable would it be if it did something ethically questionable? What will it be trained on - actual knowledge of children’s psychology (in which case, using a robot at all should be discounted right off, as children thrive on human interaction)? Or will it be trained on what parents/teachers have already been doing, which would inevitably result in being trained on outdated techniques that don’t follow updates in science? If a robot thinks spanking, isolation, or withholding food is okay, that’d be extremely troubling. There’s so much that could go wrong, and knowing this tech isn’t being designed with ethics in mind makes this whole endeavor terrifying.

Are parents going to be comfortable with their kids being alone in a room without an adult? A group of kids could simply band together to lock the robot in a closet or something and let chaos reign. They could figure out how to power it down, or throw things at it until it stops functioning. A kid having a tantrum can be a powerful force, potentially injuring other children in the act, and I highly doubt a robot alone could handle that situation effectively. Where I work it can take a team of adults with blocking pads, and coordination with even more adults to clear other students from the area. Sometimes those other kids are playing games and don’t want to leave, and it takes a trusted adult to convince them that yeah, no, we need to move now. Which brings us to the relationship the teachers have with the students, and how it is crucial to gaining what’s called “instructional control,” which basically means, “this kid will listen to your instructions.” Can a robot foster that? Do we want a robot to be able to foster that? I don’t like the idea of kids personifying machines to that extent, and we’re quickly learning how damaging (literally, it can cause brain damage) that can be for young minds.

I could go on and on, but suffice to say this whole topic is an ethical clusterfuck.

It’s the computer equivalent of, “That’s it, I’m calling your parents” and picking up a phone.

I technically have a LinkedIn account, but haven’t so much as visited it in nearly a decade. Everything on it is long out of date, save for my name. The listed home town and job history aren’t relevant to where I am and what I do today.

Despite that, I got a new job last year. Like you, I used a typical job-finding site… sort of. I searched on there, but didn’t find the job I have - rather, a recruiter for this company reached out to me. Not sure if that info is good news or bad news for you, but it worked out for me, even without an active LinkedIn page.

Same boat. I work with small kids, oblivious to politics, full of hope for the future because that’s how they should feel. I clock in and lose myself in their version of the world for 8 hours a day. It’s no wonder why I’m actually happier at work than at home these days.

Me: texts every so often, putting thought into each message.

Friend: responds with “thumbs up” or reactions, but no words.

Me, after the 15th time this happens: ”Well I guess we’re done talking to each other.”

I find myself scrolling here less because of all the doomerism and bad news. It’s just exhausting to be bombarded with it all day.

It’s true and I hate it

“Maybe you feel the need to compensate, but that doesn’t mean everyone does.”

For real though, that’s bizarre. It’s okay to not perform at 100% all the time, that’s how you fast track to burn-out. Thank goodness my workplace isn’t of the “grind employees until they’re dust” mentality. Last time I showed signs of work stress, my boss actually sat with me to plan out some mental health days for the coming months.

I usually don’t bring up things I don’t get or care to get because inevitably someone chimes in to start elaborating about the topic anyway. Like they missed the part where I said, “I don’t care.”

One thing I don’t care to get is actors/celebrity stuff. I have a touch of face-blindness as well as ADHD, so I haven’t seen as many films as most people seem to have watched. When people bring up an actor and I tell them, “I don’t know them and I don’t care,” it’s like they feel compelled to start listing things the person was in regardless. Then I’m subject to a list of movies, none of which I’ve ever seen, all while they keep trying to trigger a memory in my brain that doesn’t exist. No matter how many times I say, “I don’t watch a lot of movies” or “I struggle to recognize novel faces,” the same thing seems to happen 10 out of 10 times such a topic arises. It’s so weird. I just want to move onto another topic. I don’t know, I don’t care, and nothing you say is going to spark recognition of some rando celebrity. Just let it go.

The main celebrities I’ll be aware of are those who voice act. I’m an adult, but honestly I prefer animation. I can recognize a voice in a cartoon. Ah but the celebrity-fans don’t usually recognize voice actors. Funny that. Maybe I should turn the tides next time by talking about Frank Welker’s animal voices or something.

There’s one of these in a shopping center around me. I flip it off every time I see it.

I mean, I deliberately drive near it, stop, roll down my window, put my arm out, and flip it off very intentionally.

I don’t care if it knows me. I’ve made no secret of my hatred for authoritarianism throughout my life. I’ve gone to more protests than I can count. Besides, if authorities really wanted to do something to me, they’d readily make things up anyway. They don’t need an excuse, so I might as well express myself.

This shit is dystopian as fuck and every time I see it or it blasts out its message about us being watched, it boils my blood.

Fuck it all. This is not okay.