Type 2 runs rampant on both sides of my family. I’ve had symptoms since I was a kid, and have been tested almost every year as an adult. However, my test results have always been in the healthy range, so I guess I’m not diabetic, at least not yet.

It’s strange to read through the comments and see all the symptoms and recognize them in myself.

Granted, I think the only diagnostic tool most care providers in the USA look at is the A1C number. I’ve asked many questions over the years: could my symptoms be caused by something else, is it possible that A1C numbers might not be a reliable indicator for some people, and things like that. Basically get told not to worry about it.

Either way, I still get tested each year.

My nose is more sensitive than average to certain types of foul smells mostly in the poop and rotting organic material categories but also things like mouse / rodent urine, skunks, and cigarette smoke. Oh joy.

Mostly it makes me feel like I’m going crazy because I smell these things when nobody else seems to notice leading me to wonder if I’m just hallucinating the smell. But sometimes I put it to good use by being the early warning system of skunks in the area and sometimes I’m the first to notice when the milk is starting to go bad.

I’m not ADHD, at least not diagnosed, but the one that gets me is I’ll be coming in from outdoors thinking about the 12 little things I need to do right now (go pee, get tea started, clean dog bowls, put away the cups, fold the blanket, close blinds, and so on) and then next thing I hear is someone calling my name “can you come hold this for me while I …” and suddenly that list I’ve meticulously curated and held in my short term memory for the past 10 minutes is just gone and now who knows when I’ll get around to checking if I need to put ketchup on the grocery list cause fuck if I’ll remember to do it any time soon.

Heartburn / acid indigestion. Racing thoughts. Back pain. Severe thunderstorms. Just to name a few things.

Well, that was my answer before I read the other comments and see that most other people have interpreted the question differently than myself.

I do that, less for the immediate dopamine and more for the sake of creating a log/record so that when I inevitably forget what I accomplished yesterday/last week/back in August, I can look that shit up for a mega dopamine hit when I realize I was a lot more productive than I thought.

Sounds deep if you don’t think about it too much, but it’s a false equivalence.

Goodbye horses. I’m flying over you.

Oh. Oh, oh-oh

This is reason #8,334,901 I keep my partner around.

If I forget the name of the Chinese place we ate at in that little mountain town back in 2012 after the check engine light came on in the Cavalier so we had to pull off to see what was wrong and then realized we should get food while we’re there, I can just call it the China Wok and he’ll find the urge to correct me with the real actual name to be completely irresistible. And in that way, the drive to correct me and always be right means I don’t have to remember shit.

It weighs heavily on me, to say the least. It’s nearly impossible to have an even slightly tangentially political conversation with them that doesn’t leave me deeply disturbed and/or infuriated, so I pretty much avoid it altogether. Now the deepest conversation I allow is “how’s the weather” and “what are you having for dinner tonight?”, and that’s sad.

But it’s absolutely the case that engaging with them on political stuff is destructive to my psyche. And even worse, they have a way of turning otherwise entirely non-political topics into something political. These are not the people who raised me or the values they raised me with. And there’s no real logical consistency to any of it other than it’s definitely going to be in agreement with whatever the latest opinions are on Fox News and Facebook.

As a kid, the only particularly “conservative” view point they shared was on immigration. They absolutely believed the whole “Mexicans are taking our jobs” bullshit. I remember even asking them why they aren’t mad at their bosses for giving their jobs to the “Mexicans” and never getting a satisfactory answer for why that was given a pass.

And then from that one little common thread, the rest of the conservative/Republican agenda has wormed its way in. So, naturally as the conservative agenda morphed into a more fascist agenda, so have my parents’ beliefs. With age and health related mental declines, these ideals have become more cemented. These are people who will never forget or forgive Democrats for NAFTA, but also believe that Republicans wanted universal healthcare for all yet Democrats gave us Obamacare instead. They grew up growing and selling weed to make ends meet, and yet still believe it should be illegal and people deserve to be in jail for it. They have a gay kid but believe gay marriage is wrong, because the Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman, and the government shouldn’t be involved at all.

They honestly buy into the idea that police officers and pastors are infallible. If someone is arrested, it’s because they are guilty of something. No pastor would ever sexually abuse a child, they are a pastor after all. If the president says something is true, it must be true. And again, none of this is how they raised me or the ideals they expressed when I was growing up, so it’s definitely like living in some kind of bizarre reality that’s tough to come to terms with.

Next time tip the scales in your favor with a more positive approach. Little less coelaCAN’Th, little more coelacCANth.

To be honest, there’s a big part of me that wishes I could have just woken up from a coma that I entered in 1989. How different would my life be right now and how righteous would my mullet be?

Since I see at least one or two comments questioning things:

For me, it’s a matter of consent and autonomy.

Even if it’s something you know for certain I would be interested in seeing, does it really have to be right this second? If you asked me whether I wanted to see it right now on your phone, would you honestly be totally okay with me saying no, and even if so, is there a chance I’d be concerned it would offend/upset you if I said no?

Most of the time, I just don’t like being pressured into doing stuff, even if it’s stuff I like. And also, if I’m doing other things, it’s probably because I need or want to do those other things rather than watch a video with your phone’s poor quality speakers, on your small screen that’s way too far away, in your shaky hands, and in your hot breath zone.

And also, is this really an issue that’s gender / masculinity specific? Based on my personal experience, it’s mostly children who do this. And then next in line are adult women younger than 50. But the adult women thing is not so much of an outlier that I’d call this a feminine/woman thing.

In my household, when we have a video we want to force upon others, we share the link or cast it to the TV like old geezers.

I think there are far too many gremlins in my home for there to be any space for aliens.

A gallon of mayonnaise, 32 pack of Degree deodorant, and check to see if the chocolate covered peanut butter filled pretzel bites things are back in stock, please.

I like Linux, use(d) various flavors of it, and have had experience with / exposure to it for over 20 years. But no, I’ve never had a remotely flawless experience with it on a desktop or laptop environment. Wish I could offer more help or encouragement, but figured I’d at least chime in with some emotional support by affirming that you are not alone in that experience.

I would recommend Linux to technologically adept people (ex: tech professionals, computer science students) and only indirectly to less technically proficient people in the form of suggesting something like a Steam Deck for portable PC gaming to someone who might be interested.

But for an aging parent or my best friend’s kids? No. Sometimes I already feel like I’m a free on-call 24/7 IT support tech for friends and family, and that’s with mostly Windows and Android devices that pretty much just work the way folks expect (even if that way is broken/crumby/irritating/etc).

Hopefully this won’t get me too much negative reaction: I’m not a proud pirate. I’d rather not pirate at all. I’m kind of ashamed that it’s come to this.

There were a few solid years where I literally did not do it and felt no desire to, back when streaming was new, and there were only a few serious players. I’d love to return to that era, but I know it will never exist again.

So now, I and other members of my family, pay a ridiculous amount of money for a rotating suite of services, trying to do things the right way, and still, there are way too many times when we can’t find anything we want to watch on any of those services and/or the thing we wanted to watch is not available on any of those services.

Finally broke down and just said fuck it. I tried to support this mess as best I could in hopes it would get better, but fully knowing it wouldn’t. When it definitely did not get better I said no more.

If you go the qbittorrent route, my piece of advice is to always check the settings after any updates.

It was maybe around 8 or 9 years ago, but after one of the updates, all my settings got wiped and set back to defaults I assume.

I didn’t notice until I ended up getting a nastygram from my ISP.

It’s never happened since, but needless to say I always double check now.

For me personally, I’m not sure I’d bother unless it was a medical necessity. And I definitely don’t want to be one of those much older guys who has the musculature of a 26-year old bodybuilder. I find it unattractive and off-putting, so if it is under my control, I wouldn’t want to look like that or have to live the type of lifestyle required to arrive there and maintain it. On the other hand, I don’t want to be the type of guy who would benefit from it but not get treatment because of shame, lots of that going on, too.

Biggest thing for me, having known a number of cis men getting treatment, is that it really needs to be medically supervised. I know it’s anecdotal, but it seems like side effects are very common, and there are a lot of very serious potential health problems that can occur.

On average, I find the less precise my predictions, the more accurate they become and the more precise my predictions, the less accurate they become.

So rather than predict that I’m 54.3% accurate, I’ll just say it’s probably roughly half the time at a minimum.

It’s like dun-dun dun dun-dun-dun dun dun dun-dun. DUHN-DUHN DUHN-DUHN-DUHN-DUHN DUHN DUHN DUHN-DUHN.