Saippuakauppias is the same word either way you read it. It’s finnish and means a soap salesman.

I don’t consider this NSFW content. I just know some people feel uneasy at the mere sight of blood so I just wanted to give them a heads up before clicking the thumbnail. Now I realize though, that some apps probably expand the images automatically.

He bit you too? That sneaky bastard.

You don’t owe anyone an explanation. You can just say that you’re not coming and leave it at that. You can tell them that you have your reasons and you wish not to talk about it but don’t lie. That just makes you the asshole.

Propaganda is not a term I’d personally use. Makes it sound more systematic than I believe it is. I’m sure that on every social media platform there are also the state-level actors wanting to put their thumb on the scale but how I see it is that there’s simply this Overton window of acceptable speech and views on each platform and it’s mostly set up by the loud minority of “activists” on that platform. People grow accustomed to encountering their views there and it becomes normalized and creates the illusion that this is a commonly held view among the userbase there independent of whether it really is. People quickly learn that expressing certain sentiment reliably gets them praise and approval whereas others result in them being attacked and ostracized. This then leads to an echo chamber where that small minority with the most extreme views basically holds the rest of the platform as hostage. If one tries to bring in nuance it tends to get viewed as opposition and that person gets labeled as the other. This leads them to then just self-censoring, remaining silent or simply parroting the same cliches even if they don’t agree on the details. It is in a way exploitation of loneliness because group membership is what it ultimately boils down to: if you want to be accepted to the group then here’s the stack of views you’re to agree with - please sign below or get the fuck out.

Wait and let time take care of that.

Needing to look older isn’t something you need to do unless you’re an actor or a 16 year old trying to buy beer.

Some number of years in my teens browsing mostly /b/.

Looking back it’s interesting to see how much the company you spend your time in makes you become like them. It pretty successfully radicalized me into many stereotypical right-wing beliefs. Then when Trump got elected I over-corrected to the other extreme. I’ve since settled somewhere in the middle and now it’s curious to see this exact same influence on other people I hang with. I was under the illusion that the thoughts and beliefs were mine but they weren’t. I simply adopted the views of the group wholesale. Then I discarded them all and did the exact same thing again from the other extreme. We’re so gullible.

People complaining about it online.

In this case compromise means going somewhere neither of us is enthusiastic about. For me the value of eating out is that I don’t need to cook myself - a sushi buffet achieves that, and the food is good. Going to a nicer restaurant means it costs more, I need to wait longer and usually I get a smaller portion of food and the quality of it is the same at best. It’s simply just a worse experience for me personally. So since I’m not enjoying myself either way we may just as well go somewhere she wants to so at least one of us is having fun.

And you’re right - they have been bad relationships. We haven’t had anything in common. Last time though I did lay the cards on the table from the very beginning and 9 years later when she finally had enough she at least couldn’t say that she didn’t know or that I had changed. She did know.

If there is to be a new romantic relationship for me in the future I might just give it a try with a guy instead. It’s at least conceivable that things haven’t worked out in the past for the simple reason that I’ve been trying to shove myself into a mould I don’t fit into. I’m a peculiar, eccentric person and it takes a certain kind of individual to get along with me. It seems that people either like me a lot or not at all.

Excuse my cynicism. I’m not proud of it but it is what it is.

I am bitter and it was my intention though I wouldn’t go as far as to generalize that all women are like that as it’s obviously not the case.

However, these are all different questions. What’s an appropriate restaurant for a first date is different from where I’d personally like to eat which is different from which place I would choose for us to eat together.

I don’t think a sushi buffet or BK is an appropriate place for a first date. Those are where I go to refuel myself and it’s as romantic as visiting the gas station. That’s why I end up choosing a more appropriate place but that place is in fact not where I want to go - it’s where I assume she wants to go. This is pretty much my experience of most things in relationships. I try my best to please her and am left completely unsatisfied myself.

Hell - maybe I should just turn this into a shit test. Next time I get to choose I tell her I want to go cook sausages by a camp fire. If she doesn’t then she can go find someone else. I’m tired of this shit.

Vehicles with a manual transmission similarly start engine braking the moment you lift your foot off the accelerator but I never attributed any sense of motion sickness to that, though the braking force likely is lesser.

The way I’ve always understood this is that since passengers usually sit in the rear they’re looking out the side windows and that scenery flying by so fast is what causes that motion sickness and it doesn’t happen to the driver or front-seat passenger so much because they’re looking forward through the windshield.

“I get to choose” as in I have to try and guess where she wants to go. If it was up to me it’s either Burger King or a sushi buffet.

…which is a completely different argument than what you started with. You’re blatantly moving the goalposts.

Only by being yourself you can find people who like you for who you are rather than who you pretend to be. Nobody can beat you at being you but you can only be the second best at pretending to be someone else.

I take that to mean that if you are weird then embrace it. That attracts other similarly weird people and those are the best kind. There’s no point in being liked for being someone you’re not so why pretend.

In this particular case autism has lots to do with it.

If you say so.

I don’t see how irrationality would follow from the belief that there is no ultimate meaning to any of this. What matters is this moment right now. The rest of it is just a story I’m telling myself.

I’ll make a wild guess that you too came here from reddit. That makes you one of those people. We’re all just redditors telling ourself a comforting story about how we’re better than those people over there.

The question presupposes the thing you ask me to inspect and I reject the premise. There is no reason to any of this. It just is.

Passive income doesn’t exist.

Roughly 5 million USD invested into stock market is enough to live a comfortable middle-class life off the interest.