Neurotic Outsiders Puns

A selection of the idle rich.

919 - He allegedly accrued gambling debts excessing 14$ million then dipped from the city. He was a friend to night shift concierge, and gave him business tips (for all they were worth).

918 – owned several Rolls-Royces. Old Money. Elite and Erudite. Wife was a women of high expectations in every regard. I managed never to slip up when helping them – not that they would have been classless enough to lose their temper.

917 – Hobby Farmer bf Arts Patron gf.

916 – Was probably a classy escort, also owned a rolls, conducted photoshoots in the apartment with snooty European models. Very secretive, concerned with stalkers and drone flights near her windows. Pedantic and neurotic about deliveries (do not knock, leave them on the table outside). Only saw her in person once and she was very glamorous, otherwise existed as a breathy voice on the other end of the phone line. I did whatever she asked me to do!

915 – Apparently very wealthy. They left the country during the pandemic to conduct european business. Bruna and Thiago, their housekeeper and handyman were dating, but split in a well publicised argument, then both remained working in the building. Thiago covered her car in orange paint and earned himself an AVO. My coworker and I celebrated NYE 2019 on the roof above this apartment. had the best view of the fireworks in town.

914 – Mostly vacant except for one middle aged guy. Seemed on one occasion to be a bit of a tool, he reminded me of unlikeable law students I have known.

913 – Irish couple but not sure if north or south. Probably northern. Detached and snobby. He was a climate denier judging by the literature inside his apartment. They ordered crate loads of wine every week.

912 – Patrick Bateman collared aesthetic. Many arguments in the basement with him over parking spaces. “Tell John to go fuck himself,” he would say. neighbor in Question being another of Australia’s richest men. Two people with a net worth of close to 100 million (idk tbh) arguing over a single car space. Selfish and stubborn, perhaps explaining why he became a millionaire. Exquisite car collection, mclarens, ferrraris, jaguar E types. One of the richest and most immature men I have ever come across.

911 -He happened to have the same name as a somewhat famous diplomat. When I mentioned this to him, he told me he had heard it hundreds of times and became dissapointed. His wife had a breakdown in the concierge lobby once when we were discussing

Hey all!

I own a 7-month old puppy named Scout who is a border collie/golden retriever mix according to everyone's best guess. He's pretty high energy, crazy smart, and obsessive about certain things.

I live in a 2.5 bedroom house with 3 cats, and one of the cats can't jump high, so there's always cat food in the kitchen. Scout knows he's not allowed in the kitchen or supposed to eat the cat food, but he has an obsessive drive to do so. I've been working on this for 2 months and it's like an endless loop of me telling him to get out of the kitchen, him running out, then him running back in. When I can't keep my eyes on his every move, I have a baby gate blocking access, but there's no latch and he just pulls the door open and walks in. So that's part of the reason why I can't leave him outside his crate.

A few weeks ago, he started a new behavior of barking and howling while in his crate when he feels like he wants attention. I know he doesn't have to go to the bathroom because he has just gone. He also doesn't bark or howl in his crate when I leave the house.

I try to ignore it, because often he'll stop after 15 minutes, but my roommate is a light sleeper and I know it's bothering her.

Last night was the worst. He would not stop barking, in his crate or out of it. I alternated between him in his crate and him in my room with the door closed, and since the door was closed, he would bark. Basically, he wants all access to the house, especially the cat food.

I know he's still a puppy and has a lot of energy, and I take him to doggy daycare when I can (2-3x a week) and the dogpark on my days off. But last night was the first time in months when I was seriously at my wit's end, especially on behalf of my roommate. I finally let him have free roam of the house out of exhaustion and frustration and he ruined my laptop charging cord.

What do I do?

Prior to airing the Chicago episode of Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain posted the following:

I spend a lot of my life — maybe even most of my life these days — in hotels. And it can be a grim and dispiriting feeling, waking up, at first unsure of where you are, what language they’re speaking outside. The room looks much the same as other rooms. TV. Coffee maker on the desk. Complimentary fruit basket rotting on the table. The familiar suitcase.

All too often, particularly in America, I’ll walk to the window and draw back the curtains, looking to remind myself where I might be-and it doesn’t help at all. The featureless, anonymous skyline that greets me is much the same as the previous city’s and the city before that.

This is not a problem in Chicago.

You wake up in Chicago, pull back the curtain and you KNOW where you are. You could be nowhere else. You are in a big, brash, muscular, broad shouldered motherfuckin’ city. A metropolis, completely non-neurotic, ever-moving, big hearted but cold blooded machine with millions of moving parts — a beast that will, if disrespected or not taken seriously, roll over you without remorse.

It is, also, as I like to point out frequently, one of America’s last great NO BULLSHIT zones. Pomposity, pretentiousness, putting on airs of any kind, douchery and lack of a sense of humor will not get you far in Chicago. It is a trait shared with Glasgow — another city I love with a similar working class ethos and history. But those looking for a “Chicago Show” on this week’s PARTS UNKNOWN will likely be disappointed. There are no Italian beef scenes, no hot dogs, no Chicago blues, and there sure as shit ain’t no deep dish pizza. We’ve done all those things — on those other shows. And we might well do them again someday.

I like Chicago. So, any excuse to come back, for me, is a good one. It’s not a “fair” show, it’s not comprehensive, it’s not the “best” of the city, or what you need to know or any of those things. If you’re gonna cry that I “missed” an iconic feature of Chicago life — or that there are better Italian restaurants than Topo Gigio, then you missed the point and can move right on over to Travel Channel where somebody is pretending to like deep dish pizza right now.

This is a show that grew out of my interest and affection for the Ale House in Chicago’s Old Town, and its proprietor, Bruce Cameron Elliot.

Ever since reading on the Twitter feed of the late great Roger Ebert that he read Bruce’s blog “ Geriatric G

This thread will disappear into obscurity very quickly, but I hope it reaches a few people before it goes.

Based on recent interactions with people outside of this reddit, I think it's clear that a lot of social media makes assumptions about Lovecraft that aren't realistic. Yes Lovecraft was racist, and I'm not defending that, but he wasn't most other things people say about him, and I'd like to address that here. It's okay to hate him for his opinions, and it's okay to dislike his style, but it's not at all honest or realistic to paint him as a caricature with no human qualities (except the most loathsome).

Misconception #1: Lovecraft was a recluse

It's true that Lovecraft was a highly sheltered child, and it's true that he was depressed and reclusive as a teenager, but for most of his life he was quite active. He was strolling around his city, petting and naming a huge number of neighborhood cats, meeting his pen pals whenever he could, and enjoying his passion of traveling. He traveled everywhere along the east coast, from Florida to Quebec, and his letters are filled with fond memories of beautiful views and joyful meetings with other families. Only a person who visits and admires various places could describe the scenery and architecture in his stories so lovingly.

Misconception #2: Lovecraft had no friends

This one confounds me the most, because Lovecraft's "Mythos" wouldn't be popular today if it weren't for his large circle of friends, both near and far away. Lovecraft enjoyed meeting and writing to a wide variety of people, including those with opinions different from his own. He was friends with Christians, mystics, atheists, liberals, conservatives, urbanites, country folk, journalists, sculptors, chemists, sportsmen, teenagers, elders, women, and even people who argued passionately against his opinions. Lovecraft's philosophy was to emphasize the best in other people, and he would enjoy their company as long as they were civil and capable of interesting conversations. Even when Robert E. Howard would occasionally rant at Lovecraft, Lovecraft would usually respond with calm intellectual argumentation and try to mend any misunderstandings.

Now, this doesn't change the fact that Lovecraft was still an odd guy. Apparently he never laughed (and he was proud of that), and he was somewhat stiff while conversing with others face to face, and I have no clue how he interacted with non-white people, but he was described as a fair and mild-ma

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

God, where do I even start with this.

I'm going to use fake names to protect the identities of people involved. There's currently an ongoing investigation.

I live in the UK. When I finished university, I wasn't too sure what I wanted to do with myself. I spent 2 years in an admin/logistics graduate role, just generally finding my feet and paying for a place to live. The COVID lockdowns came and went, and I found that remote working really agreed with me - I hated the commute, and didn't like the office environment; I'm a socially anxious person by nature and other people can easily make me nervous, so having that free space and security in remote working was really welcome while it lasted.

I took a new, better-paying role in the same sector in October, only to find that all the things I hated about office working were multiplied tenfold in the new place. I started looking for new opportunities - my head was really getting into a bad place, and I felt burnt out and tired. I go on Indeed and start applying for remote-only roles wherever I can find them. I'm quite IT literate, and figured I'd take a shot at applying for some entry level IT roles as well.

Lo and behold - 2 weeks later, a seeming answer to my prayers. I get a phone call.

"Hi Mike! I really liked your CV. My name is Grant, I'm the ops manager for a newly-started charity. Would you still be interested in the IT support role we advertised?"

Hell yeah, I thought. I agreed to do an interview on zoom with them, which all seemed fairly normal and straightforward. Two 20-something guys in casual dress, Grant and Ronnie. It was all friendly enough. Asked me the sort of questions you'd expect, standard fare interview stuff. They mentioned they'd been having issues connecting their domain to the website they wanted to set up. I said I'd probably be able to fix that and they basically lost their minds. I was asked by Ronnie, verbatim, "The kids we work with sometimes turn off their microsoft teams and we can't stop them. Do you know how they're doing that?"

I guess I should've had an inkling there was something weird going on at that point. What sort of 20-year old doesn't know how to close a program? Sadly I had some rose-tinted blinders on because of how eager I was to take a fully remote position.

I get a call 2 hours after the interview. They tell me thanks for applying, but they needed someone with immediate availability (I had a week's notice to give). I was bummed out, but figured oh well

I've been thinking about boundaries and the whole idea seemed bizarre to me, I was puzzled as apparently everyone else understands them. I came to that conclusion when reading articles on boundaries - in my perception, nobody feels the necessity to thoroughly explain or define the concept, as if it was obvious and a word that even kids use.

Boundaries suddenly made sense when I noted that English is not my native language, I was raised in Poland, and the Polish speak of the concept using different wording.

Culturally, we do not speak of boundaries, we speak of self-respect or the lack of thereof. The difference can be illustrated as below:

• You should not tolerate his belittling or shaming remarks. You need to have some boundaries.
• You’re way too permissive of his belittling or shaming remarks. You need to respect yourself more.

Technically it's just language/cultural differences... But I have to be Narcissistic here, the choice of words that we culturally use is better. Drawing a boundary is just setting some rules, having self-respect is much more than that. "Self-respect" is a word that by itself contains many lessons and implications -- and points to the nature of the problem. If you love abusers, you don't respect yourself and clearly something's wrong with you.

What is more, my culture is far more knowledgeable when it comes to Pathological Narcissism - not everyone studies psychology or knows what’s a personality disorder, but the majority grasps the principle of it very well.

Throughout 12 years of education, as a part of the literature course, Polish kids are obliged to read and interpret works that include:

• The myth of Oedipus
• The myth of Narcissus. I had to write essays on Narcissism about 3 times
• Dostoyevsky

And that’s just on top of our national literature which contains many hidden gems filled with lessons on NPD, written by authors who lived long before Freud was born. We have a 500 page story about a man who during the year of 1878, had spent an equivalent of today’s 1.758.338,40$, a quarter of his entire fortune, to impress a vain girl from the higher classes of nobility. The title is “The Doll” by Bolesław Prus. Spoiler: she didn’t really give a fuck about the poor guy.

Dostoyevsky is #1 on Pathological Narcissism, but Polish literature is not inferior to Russian))) Unfortunately, I have to admit that Russians have got more to be proud of in terms of numbers. It makes sense that Russia is many times bigger and t

Do your worst!

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

Feel free to replace "game" with "Life" here, they're interchangeable:

There are two kinds of problems you'll encounter in game; those you can control, and those you can't control. We have a habit as players to not realize this distinction, and then just sit there suffering pointlessly over the things in the 2nd category(things we can't control). This is actually a core element of that suffering. If you take that away, you literally suffer less, because it means accepting that, and dropping it, and directing your attention to something else. Right? A few examples of things you can't control:

• Someone on your team doing badly.
• Facing a smurf on the enemy team.
• Someone on your team losing it and deciding to grief or troll.
• Your entire team arguing in chat.
• Hard stomps/Team gaps/Major throws by some team mates late game

You'll often see posts on these subjects, with the person asking "What can I do about this?" This is the resistance, the aversion, to these things. When we experience something negative, we don't want that thing to keep happening by nature. We push, fight, struggle against it. And this can work when the problem has a real solution. But when it doesn't, it's actually in that pushing, fighting, struggling, that contains a lot of the suffering-- not the bad thing in and of itself. This can be confusing, so I'll restate it: It's in the conditioned, automatic, behavioral/attitude response, that directly causes suffering from things you can't control, not the things you can't control themselves.

You can know this for yourself because once you stop pushing and fighting and struggling, and just accept that sometimes you'll face duo boosters, sometimes your game will implode at 8 minutes and your team won't even ff at 15 despite it being 2 - 24, or your Draven will lose his mind and decide no one is winning because he suffers from psychological problems, the negative thoughts and emotions that you get lost in from these events will actually decrease.

These things are simply things that happen. And something very interesting happens when you simply accept that there's nothing you could have done to stop this. This is just a blip in the grand scheme of your season. Why waste a second more of thought than is absolutely necessary on these events? Aren't there more important things to think about? About our progress as players? About what we value, whether it's having fun, or reaching a certain rank,

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

Hi! I wanted to share my journey with you. I began losing hair 10 years ago and had no idea why. I was 19 years old. I had recently come off the pill and had a toxic overload due to substance abuse. I also have hereditary DHT sensitivity, which I didn't realize until later. I cleaned up my act and got really into natural health and refused to take any synthetic drugs. So I tried absolutely every treatment and diet and supplement imaginable.

It's been an enormous source of guilt and shame for me. I was angry at myself that this was happening and that I couldn't fix it. I felt like damaged goods, an outsider. I used to have extremely thick beautiful red hair. Now ten years later I've lost 60-70% and it's finally visually apparent that I'm losing my hair. The next step from here is a topper, which I don't want.

I've had an aversion to minox because of the side effects and having to be on it indefinitely. But I've just started it and I'm happy to say that I have because of the mental health issues associated with hair loss. I've been tracking my diet and counting hairs and it's made me completely neurotic and depressed to the point of ruining relationships and not wanting to leave the house. I looked into lectin sensitivity, leaky gut, autoimmune conditions, I tried elimination diets... it got to the point where I didn't want to eat because I thought whatever food it was might somehow contribute to hair loss. And I'm just so done living like that.

I'm sure many of you can relate, which is why I wanted to share because I now know that it's not my fault. It's been a difficult journey but it has taught me so much. I did try spironolactone but it didn't work for me. My cycles are 35-40 days long, low estrogen, but my weight is normal for my height and stature, meaning I have lean PCOS and a hypersensitivity to DHT (because androgens are normal on lab work).

I'm nervous about the dread shed but I'm going to stick it out because I'm feeling very confident about it. I'll post progress updates as they occur. Thanks for reading :)

https://reddit.com/link/s3p477/video/qxw55ygcpmb81/player

Base Set Tier List

Expansion Tier List

Total playtime was 185 hours (a lot of those were afk), and I only found one sloth. I’m not doing sloth, Tier 3 Bee already made me want to die, and I’m too tired to do zombie fly. I wanted to do a write-up with all this useless knowledge while it may be relevant still.

These tier lists are all relative and subject to my own bias. Each tier is based around the tier of the pet, as a pet’s value is largely based on when it is first available. You can win with any pet in the game, evidently, but some are just more effective than others. This game is all about maximizing efficiency and stats. Base set is much more straight forward than expansion, the expansion has some different synergies to play around with which make it more interesting but more difficult to win.

General Strategy
You unlock a new tier of pets every 2 turns (Turn 1-2: Tier 1, Turn 3-4: Tier 2 Turn 5-6: Tier 3 and so on). When you level up a pet, you get an additional pet of the next highest tier in your shop. So, if you are able to level one of your pets on turn 3, you’ll get an early Tier 3 pet option. Same for turns 5/7/9 and doing so every time lets you roll for a power spike that can snowball into a win. Especially rolling a Tier 6 on turn 9 and finding some chocolates to level it up early can carry a run.

Early game (Turns 1-4), try to maximize stats and pair as many pets as possible so you can level them up and look for pets to start building your team around. You can invest in literally anything, but a pet with the ability to buff itself will grow faster than one without.

Mid game the focus is on building your team. Garlic armor is essential for getting wins. Try to get your carry pet as big as possible and find other pets that buff/synergize with it. Sell pets that have served their purpose in favor of other pets that will scale better.

Late game is when your team is essentially finalized. You are too invested in most of the pets to sell them, so you are just rolling for level ups, food, and stat upgrades. Prioritize getting melon armor on your big pets, and steak on your smaller pets. Mushroom is goo

Update from https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8tlob6/serious_question_that_has_bothered_me_for_a_while/

This is an extremely neurotic post, I’m extremely aware of that, and I’m looking for people to tell me to calm down and stfu. Basically looking for advice / reassurance.

Moved to Seattle, big tech SWE job, financially well off. Spent ~1.5 years at home with parents during the pandemic. Spend the ~1.5 years before that working, getting used to life outside of college and living alone (lived with parents during college and commuted)

All the regret of not doing things when I was younger and I deeply regret not having had sex, or having any romantic experience at this age.

Listening to a lot of people it seems like a lot of my friends are in committed relationships, and that a lot of women at this age are looking for something long term towards marriage. I’m absolutely not ready for marriage, I’ve never been in a relationship (outside of 9th grade), and I’ve been a fiercely independent person my whole life.

I have plenty of money at this age due to living at home, and big tech job, but I can never get the time back, and I feel like I missed out on a ton of stuff and don’t have the stories that lots of other people do.

I’ve been on two dates since moving (one bad, one good but not physically attracted), but seem to have next to zero luck with dating apps despite being regarded as very attractive (except… I’m short, which seems to be more of a big deal online than irl I think).

Fundamentally my issues can be sorted in that I didn’t want to have sex for the first time with someone I wasn’t pursuing a committed relationship with, and I didn’t want a committed relationship at the time. I also set myself arbitrary rules about not hooking up with people from dating apps in the past. A lot of this was driven by arbitrary mental rules, and worries about number of sex partners before marriage (dumb, I know).

Now I’m to the point where I’ll probably end up dropping all my (dumb arbitrary) rules, I’m trying to date, and I’m incredibly nervous about it because at this age everyone kinda expects you know what you’re doing. I come off as a very normal, smart, not awkward guy despite being a bit of a tech nerd. I can easily hold multi hour conversations with people I don’t know well on various topics etc, never been

tldr: for people who got a TOPIK 6 in the past, what are some specific ways you are trying to study Korean nowadays that you think helps to improve your fluency?

Context: gotten TOPIK 6 multiple times, first in 2018. Do best at reading (gotten 98 like three times, but never will get a 100 sadly) and then listening (usually like a 94, always zone out some), whereas writing I never really practice enough (because I actually hate the TOPIK) and usually get like 60. I try and read the newspaper every day, was at like hanja level three at one point (though certainly regressed some because I went to grad school in Korea and didn't look at it much), and have lot of meaningful relationships that are in Korean-only, though I'm also very much a 집순이 which has only been made worse by COVID.

All that being said, I really feel light years/lifetimes away from pretty fluent/professionally fluent to native-like fluency (which is what I guess I consider actual fluency). For example, I was doing some freelance translating the other day (Korean to English) and found someone else's translation of the same thing I was doing. The other version was leaps and bounds better than mine, seemingly catching every nuance of the language from a layman's perspective. That specific example is 90% due to translating being a profession (one I'm not trained in) but it's also about your fluency in Korean at a certain level. I could give a million other examples but I think it makes sense.

I know the obvious way forward is "immersion/tons of exposure to native materials" but I was just curious if there are specific activities/hobbies/exercises people are doing that they feel help them progress in their Korean (and help them break out of plateaus). Some things I am doing (won't say everything) that I feel help me:

> Like I already said, I try and read the newspaper every day (get a paper copy of 한겨례, I'm actually a tree-hugger/super annoying environment nut in almost all aspects of life except for this), and try to look up/make notes of stuff I don't understand. The paper copy helps me a lot to not get distracted and makes taking notes easy, and I pretty much always look through most of it because, otherwise, I feel guilty about wasting paper (but I'm also a neurotic as already said, so maybe this tip is only good for other tree-huggers. )

> I am slowly working my way through the Asia Publishers: Modern Korean Literature set, which is quite nice because each book gives you Kor

Would like outsider opinions on a situation. (Identifying information altered/blurred for privacy.)

But in short; am I justified in feeling violated or this situation should’ve been handled differently? Or was it handled appropriately and I’m overreacting?

I have a very very rough group this year. Yelling at adults, swearing, flipping desks etc. I have a chronic illness that is exasperated by the stress and I’m interviewing and leaving teaching. So I’ve been out way more than usual.

I used to be a daily sub for almost 3 years before my own classroom for almost 20 years. I know what it’s like to have no info or inadequate info, again rough group.

I was out one day, previously scheduled. I left lots of info and materials and directions very neatly organized and labeled. My sub was my usual. He’s a retired teacher and salt of the Earth. So he left everything in the same neurotic way LOL.

Following morning, I’m in a car accident. No sub to be found so colleagues cover. I pass along info to use leftover stuff from prior day (I always leave way too much).

I get many messages there are no plans or rosters etc. I know prior sub left them. I write an email explaining I’m really sorry and do best I can.

Return to work, I cannot find them anywhere. Turns out one of my colleagues didn’t like the wording I used in my notes to my usual/trusted sub, took them essentially messing everyone else up.

Gave them to superintendent of the district instead of talking to me. My principal meets me for a heated conversation. Offending line includes; Sansa is very low, has severe anxiety if sits there and doesn’t disrupt others leave them be.

I want the sub to be successful, I don’t want kids to be uncomfortable so I write short bursts. I can’t always “spin” positively a kid throws chairs. I trust my usual sub and colleagues to treat info confidentially.

I feel really violated by this colleague. They also didn’t return my supporting docs of answer keys and rosters. I feel like they stole my materials and I can’t help but feel violated. I don’t even know how to describe it.

I feel like they should’ve talked with me, talked with the union if they felt really uncomfortable, but going straight to the superintendent? Now I feel really paranoid around my colleagues.

They’re on standbi

When Halo Infinite first launched the public multiplayer beta, I was stoked. I found out while I was in the office and immediately went back home to download it as soon as my lunch break came. When I finally arrived back home, the download had completed, and I immediately fired it up.

The 3 hours I played that night were some of the most fun I'd had in a long time. Mechanics were solid, maps were great, and the weapons sandbox was spectacular. Still is, really. Then come over time, I noticed the XP creep, the lackluster battle pass, and the very specific challenges. However, considering I loved the game so much, I had already committed myself to completing all the weekly challenges and getting all the weekly bonuses.

Now, weekly challenges usually aren't that hard to grind out, I was able to do all of them within 3 days last week, and got a pretty cool skin to boot.

This week it took five days. For a Nameplate. Not even a nameplate that comes with a matching emblem. JUST the nameplate.

That's 5 days, WITH challenge swaps, because some of the most basic missions for this weekly challenge were the most ass-ended neurotic shit one could think of. But I did them. I did all the weekly challenges, save for 4, so I would have something to do tonight. Four challenges that, at the time, I thought would be easy to grind out, most of which just involve winning specific game modes.

Four missions turned into eight hours.

EIGHT. FUCKING. HOURS.

The missions were as follows:

Win a Strongholds Match in PvP, Win CTF matches in PvP (3 matches), Get Warthog Turret kills (10), Win PvP matches.

These were my challenges after challenge swaps. Sounds pretty easy right?

Well it would have been, granted the game didn't go out of its way to place me in 7 SLAYER MATCHES IN A ROW, before FINALLY matching me in a CTF lobby, in which my teammates threw the game. It did the same shit for strongholds too. Keep in mind both of these game modes were the most common I would run into, right up until the point that these challenges became important for me to complete. But I suffered through, lobby after lobby, people continuously throwing the match just because they wanted to play team deathmatch instead of the objective, and finally, at 2:00 a.m. today, I completed all of my challenges. I am finally rejoicing, thinking I can just clean up this last ultimate challenge, claim my prize, and go to bed-

Win 17 PvP matches.

One chal

thanks to u/ULoophant for asking me some questions about emptiness…. ;)

This is a method that has been handed down through countless sages. What is required is a car (it doesn’t have to be a Mustang but I am certain using a Ford Mustang can only help) and a comfortable place to sit and observe. This exercise can also be done without the car physically being in your presence. If you know what a car is, this method will work.

Sit comfortably and look at your Ford Mustang. Do you see something that inherently exists? If you answer “yes” stop the exercise and Google the word “inherent.” Return to the exercise and look again for something that exists inherently. Given some time to stop, slow down, and really “look,” what do you see? You may see one object with the label of “car.” Or, from another perspective, you may see some tires, an engine, hoses, wires, seats, steering wheel, etc. Ok. Now, look closely at the tire. You may see one object labeled “tire.” Or, from another perspective, you may see a metal “rim,” some rubber, some paint, some bolts, etc. Ok. Now, is that all you see of these component parts? Look closer. Do you see the ancient chariot maker who perfected the rim and passed his knowledge down? Do you see the rubber tree farm, the man who invented vulcanization, the countless tire designs that have existed over the last century? Do you see the factory worker pouring metal into molds designed by teams of other people? Look closely; what else do you see? Do you see the roads and highways that exist only in conjunction with the idea of a car? Roads that have evolved not for chariots but for whatever versions of cars that exist at this moment. Roads that change by humans who think about volumes of cars in aggregate and speeds of cars which vary and evolve over time. Do you see the DOT workers and the bridge builders and the teachers of those bridge builders, and the teacher’s mothers and fathers?

Continue this exercise for one hour, one day, one month, and one year. You will NEVER be able to stop finding previous causes and conditions. Nothing at all is inherent. Nothing exists on it’s own, everything has constituent parts. We label the car as a car for convenience. But a “car” with inherent “car-ness” does not exist.

Are you enlightened yet? No? Ok. Let’s address that in the same fashion. Who are you? (Oh shit here comes this bullshit again!) Wait, hear me out. Did YOU teach yourself language? The letters you use to write your name - are

Exactly 1.5 years ago, I started meditating seriously. Even before that I used to meditate 10-15 mins a day casually (I skipped days frequently)

I fell into the most horrific depression. From outside I had it all - amazing friends, money, jacked body, hot girls, solid educational profile and I was very ambitious. But on the inside, I was contemplating suicide on a daily basis. Something didn't feel right at all. I was a neurotic mess, anxious, moody and fearful of everything.

Everything went out of control. I started smoking and eating shit. Was not very focused on the gym and my education, stopped driving because my anxiety was killing me, friends left me while I was at my lowest, had 2 FWBs and they left because I put on weight and my face was filled with acne.

One day, accidentally, I came across Taoism. Started reading about it more and bumped into Zen Buddhism. Some Buddhists quotes and sayings helped me to get a grip over reality. I was still struggling but thankfully, I had a super successful and cool older friend in my apartment who is a big proponent of meditation. He's a neurosurgeon who's pushing 40+, he still lifts weights, eats clean and looks like he's in his 30s. He's a very helpful guy and he's been through so much shit. I talked to him about my situation and he suggests that I meditate. He's also very well versed in yoga, so he gave me some tips and guidance as well.

He's the role model for many guys in my apartment. He rides motorcycles, has a Porsche and travels regularly. He told me that he has been through this situation and that lifting + meditation helped him overcome the situation. He gave me his gym routine and forced me to hit the gym again.

Now, after a year of meditating 1 hour a day, these are the benefits I've experienced.

• Better gains at the gym - My mind muscle connection is insane now. I'm a powerlifter and while doing the main 4, I can visualise the muscles getting activated. Everyone knows mind muscle connection = gains

• Zero anxiety - It feels like I have some gap between my mind and myself. Almost depersonalised but in a good way.

• I became way more reserved. I don't know why this happened, but the need to talk reduced and I only spoke when I had something meaningful to say

• General appreciation of life. I was content and in a peaceful state always.

• A belief in higher power/God/Universe - A feeling that everything will be alright. Increased optimism, hope and self confidence.

• Less

Pilot on me!!