Renting: Read up on local tenant/landlord laws before you rent. When moving in, ask for a walkthrough with a landlord and note everything that is wrong, take pictures of everything (including a newspaper) and email it to them. Before moving out, ask the landlord what you will need to do to get your security deposit back. Get a cheap can of spackle and fill and smooth any minor holes you made (it's not always required but it's easy) but mainly don't leave anything that isn't considered wear and tear. Do a walk-through with the landlord when you leave, take pictures of everything, send it to them. Follow any steps required by law, such as returning the keys on time and providing a forwarding address. If the landlord tries to take your security deposit or charge you for damages or cleaning, reference the laws, pictures, and conversation, and ask them to reconsider. If you do everything right you may still have to go to court for some reason or another, but you will be well prepared and confident. You can also often have free 30 minute consultations with lawyers; ask your employer if they provide assistance.
Tips for a Better Life
401–410 of 488 posts
Re: Tips for a Better Life
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternatively, realize that repressing that urge to be an alpha male because that's the current high-brow societal pressure is isomorphic to being a gay guy in the closet ;)
You clearly have zero idea what it is to be a true "alpha" male. The societal stigma you alluded to is levied on toxic assholes.
I would contend that there's a great amount of collateral damage, and that 'toxic assholes' are those least (genuinely) susceptible to social pressure.
Re: Tips for a Better Life
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the same boat, and I don't know anybody who still uses CDs. Maybe my 60+ year old uncle? If I received a CD as a gift, I wouldn't even have a way to play it, and haven't for almost a decade. I think my car has a CD player?
Hello! I'm in my twenties. I listen to music from vinyls, CDs and tapes. I also like to watch my VHS cassettes. Nice to meet you. (now that you know about me, you cannot say you don't know about anybody who still uses CDs)
Well there you have it :P Do enough of your friends do the same? It was just interesting to see this so high on your list hah
Re: Tips for a Better Life
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing that I appreciate about Catholicism is that it attempts to be a much more rigorous and academic approach to faith when compared to the more "evangelical" strains of Christianity popular in the US. The Reformation did some good with pointing out that religion doesn't need to be a solely academic pursuit, but some branches went to far and seem to have interpreted that as "there is nothing academic worth pursu…
No, not really. This is kind of a "converts mistake," in that they assume that the religion they convert to is only the educated, attractive apologists that won them over. The popular church venerates Padre Pio and really believes he could bilocate, manifested stigmata, and that you can pray to him for healing. Happens with orthodoxy too, a lot of people get a rude awakening when they actually go into a Orthodox chur…
Yes, very odd for a religion based on the premise their founder is literally God incarnate, could work miracles, levitated into the sky, walked through walls, said his followers will do even greater things, and can secure his followers eternal life. Pretty inexplicable why they have all these other nutty beliefs about members of his movement. I see where you are coming from.
Re: Tips for a Better Life
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tip 13 should just be tip 1 applied to recipes. Searching reddit for recipes can yield ones that many people have actually tried and feel like opining on. The downside of Reddit opinions is that it heavily weighs the enthusiasts' point of view, not the once-in-a-while dabbler. You might get a solution that's grander, more expensive, or more complex than your needs. Someone might swear by a vacuum cleaner or pot roast…
I find reddit to be tue worst of both worlds in many ways. For the handful of areas I'm qualified to judge, it seems to me that you get the enthusiasts' view, but neither the dabbler's nor the professional's view. The typical reddit pot roast recipe has more bells and whistles and yet it isn't nearly as good as mine.
I really agree with this. In areas you are an expert in you quickly learn that reddit is the land of the enthusiast or the expert beginner across all fields. It feels like a lot of people on there internalize the mainstream advice, but not the fundamentals or reasoning behind the advice. What I really want is somewhere where I can find the true expert/professional recommendations and advice. Curious if anyone knows of great places like that online for things like cooking, programming, technology, music production, etc.
Re: Tips for a Better Life
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do almost everything myself--a byproduct of being raised poor--and I never know what I'm doing. I watch some youtube videos, buy a fancy new tool, and away I go. I've had a couple epic failures but overall I've found that the more things you learn to do yourself the faster and easier it gets to pick up any new thing.
I'll add that learning some basic skills can save hassle as well. A few weeks ago a hinge broke on my bathroom door. The door dropped and was wedged on the floor so it couldn't be opened or closed. My wife's answer if I wasn't here, would have been to call someone and wait a week for them to come, while just dealing with a broken bathroom door. Maybe if you are on your own thats no big deal, but what if it was a exte…
Exactly, having a professional do it not only is more expensive, but can be more time consuming and annoying.
Re: Tips for a Better Life
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I definitely agree with this. My pet peeve is just when people assume you're not doing something because of the label, not because you actually just don't enjoy the thing.
Yeees, but the problem Jtsummers mentions is that often the label gets “internalized as a quality of themselves”, so especially men sometimes thing that it’s their own preference, when they just never had the right space to discover the joy of dance. I think that dance is actually a very universal human thing and that there’s a strange alienation from dance and our bodies going on in western culture, especially for m…
> I think that dance is actually a very universal human thing and that there’s a strange alienation from dance and our bodies going on in western culture, especially for men.
This is kind of what I mean. Humans are very diverse, and I don't think dance is actually a universal thing. (You could probably argue it overall as a species, but not for every individual.)
Because of this, too often the attitude is "well you WOULD like dancing if you just loosened up and stopped worrying about what people think!". I'm sure that's true for some people, but definitely not all.
I realize, based on your last paragraph, that you're not the type of person to try to force someone into dancing. It's just similar to the line of reasoning I've encountered when other people can't seem to understand that I don't like it. It's like they can't compute the idea that it's just not something I enjoy. So many people seem to assume that the only possible reason is "a label you've internalized as a quality of yourself", and it comes off as condescending.
Re: Tips for a Better Life
#408> You do not live in a video game. There are no pop-up warnings if you’re about to do something foolish, or if you’ve been going in the wrong direction for too long. In the good old times most video games weren't like that. It's a pity that those times are gone, to the point video games are now used as such a comparison point!
Not sure how old your good times, but relatively recently I played an indie game that first gave me a very subtle footgun without any warning, pressed me to use it and when I did the wrong thing, sent me in the wrong direction for the rest of the game. It was quite some hell.
Re: Tips for a Better Life
#409> 48. Keep your identity small. “I’m not the kind of person who does things like that” is not an explanation, it’s a trap. It prevents nerds from working out and men from dancing. This is one I've been trying to emphasize with a few friends for a while. The act of labeling yourself is the act of restricting yourself to what you think fits that label. And unless that makes you happy , it's probably not what you really…
I find it interesting, that you can (and should) use this as a hack for good qualities: "I AM the kind of person who doesn't lie". Cultivating such a stance makes it easier to do the better thing in challenging situations.
Re: Tips for a Better Life
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really, I was just responding to the prior. They drove the pseudo-rationalist line. I do think there is a toxic culture in rationalism, but I tend to blame it on neoliberal economic reductionism, or libertarianism. I don't think rationalism per se is at the root of it, pseudo-rationalism, what would that even be? purported rationalism but actually.. over-arching asocialism? self interest? Anyway, I saw religiosity as…
There's more than one counter-case to rationalism. Atheists, liberals, Democrats, progressives can all be irrational or pseudo-rational. What would pseudo-rationalism even be? Purported rationalism, yes, but the rationalism would be just a smokescreen for positions that are not rationally derived and therefore not addressable by means of rational argument. I don't understand why you think asocialism or self-interest…
"What would pseudo-rationalism even be? Purported rationalism, yes, but the rationalism would be just a smokescreen for positions that are not rationally derived and therefore not addressable by means of rational argument."
The fundamental question of philosophy: how do you tell a rationally derived belief from an irrationally derived belief?