Aim for alliances with at least half the top militaries. If one is going to be gunning for us, I want their peers to have our back.

To that end, pick an island location with a strong command of shipping lanes, both to offer access to allies and to boost our economy. The invincible force field will help enforce this while we get set up. Offer temporarily invincible military bases to our allies - give them more reason to back us up, and hopefully jumpstart our military readiness.

Otherwise I’d go utopian like @Tonava said - entice the best and the brightest, and have them play to their strengths, aiming to have a robust, well-educated populace.

Thanks for this, I hadn’t seen this one!

Ugh, that is a shitty situation - wish I knew better how to help you get out of it! No judgement either - from what I understand, all of this is pretty common in these sorts of relationships. And yeah, depression makes everything far harder than it seems like it should be.

Like others have said, this is absolutely a situation where professional help is warranted. I know it might be tricky to figure out a regular schedule with one, but I think it’d be worth reaching out - I strongly suspect most would be flexible with a situation like yours, especially as it doesn’t sound uncommon (meaning they may well already have a process in place for helping people in your situation).

As for the separation anxiety issue: I wonder if you might be able to adjust your tolerance? Sleep a little farther away in the house and see how that goes, and once that’s feeling comfortable, sleep on the opposite end, then try a little farther again? I have no idea of that would work, but it’s one more thing that might give you some control.

(I’m also here to just vent to, if you need it! Hearing about a situation like yours has me wanting to fix it, but I can also just listen!)

Man, she just sounds parasitic. That really sucks. I don’t know anything about therapy or helping people with bad relationships or anything, but it also sounds like she’s isolated you pretty effectively, which I know is a common tactic for people like this.

You said you don’t have the skills to live independently - are you talking about day to day skills, like laundry and cooking; or are you talking more about being employable away from your family?

As I recall, he also apologized for the slap down, which seems like it often helps with getting cancelled

Ugh, that was the scene I kept thinking of when it all came out

Plenty of people have told you already that she sounds toxic, that you should cut ties, etc. I don’t disagree, but if you do want a rebuttal:

What value does she provide to society now? And what value would she provide if, say, she was injured in such a way that she couldn’t work anymore? What about when she retires? Does she think she should be culled in either of those cases?

Society works better when people know their loved ones are safe, regardless of their ability to contribute. Because when society doesn’t take care of the less able, their loved ones have to; often at the expense of society.

Narcissists and people who struggle with empathy often miss that this is in their own self interest, because they often have trouble seeing that most people won’t participate much in a society that doesn’t help their loved ones.

Also seems like it’d be a lot harder to modify or extend later

I don’t mind imperfections while they work out the kinks. I dislike dismantling industries in favor of something that doesn’t work yet.

Yeah, I’m the wrong person to ask. I’m 43, have a massive Lego collection, and play games in my spare time (what the kids leave for my wife and I).

(Edit) You should Google “AFOL” groups - Adult Fans Of Lego are all over the place. And even if you don’t end up joining any, they have some impressive builds!

6-7 isn’t gone yet, my 6 and 8 year olds still giggle about it. The school banned it though, which may have extended its longevity.

Man, when our toddlers would grunt and groan standing up…

My mom has a scheduled video conference call with my siblings and I every few weeks, so we stay in pretty good contact that way. We also all get along pretty well. Family is spread out halfway across the States, so getting together in person is a bit tricky.

I see my sister who lives nearby every few months (generally when our parents come through), and one brother roughly once a year; other brother is farther away and harder to get together with.

Cousins, aunts, and uncles are rarer, even though they’re closer. Think the last time I saw any of them was at a funeral.

Could, sure - this was a fast example off the top of my head; someone else in the thread used “Great” as a better example.

But even here, while “Yay” could be seen as sarcastic, “Yay.” looks even more so

I hadn’t heard of this before, but I think I can see how they’re getting there. With no punctuation, you have to infer the emotional detail from the context. If you add a period, it can be perceived as specifying that you’re using a flatter, less excited tone.

Compare:

Grandma’s coming this weekend

                     Yay

To this:

Grandma’s coming this weekend

                     Yay.

On top of that, these kids are used to using emoticons and such to indicate a variety of emotional shadings, rather than just an exclamation mark - so deliberately specifying the flattest, least interested emotional load could very well read as just waiting for the conversation to be over.

Did it? I’m not able to read the article that far

People keep talking about divided media and a lack of shared shows - did nobody else see all the KPop Demon Hunter outfits last Halloween? I swear it was about 20% of the outfits at my kids’ school. Nobody seeing the Stranger Things merch in stores for the new season?

There’s still new shows most people see, and some are good ones - but the media landscape changed. Used to be, in the US, you had CBS, NBC, ABC, etc. The difference is now it’s Netflix, Disney, Paramount, and so on. The quality mix is still pretty much what it was, but you’ve got to go to where they’ve moved to - YouTube doesn’t have much professionally done content.

As for 67, that just seems like what memes have always been to me. The Beans meme here was random too, but no less meaningful for it.

So nothing would really change for them, right?

They’d get UBI, but it wouldn’t cover their lifestyle. So they’d still be working to support that, no? And UBI would just mean they have a safety net?

And not only did he see for himself, he wrote up and published his results.

In our case, it’s a sign that my kids struggle with extra-long noodles. We’re letting them get used to scooping with a fork before worrying about much longer strands.