what’s the phenomenon where 1.5-4.5 drinks makes me a dramatically better person in terms of temperament, mood, and overall perception of life.

My oil painting of an Uncrustable

To confirm, this “100% AI generated” passage is the opening of chapter 5 from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Did it ever dawn on the geniuses at Pinterest that AI content completely destroys the entire fucking point I can’t wait to plan a baby shower with things that don’t exist. I can’t wait to be inspired by an impossible house. Check out this kitchen that’s misleading etc etc

Matt Kahn, real

“Sitting with your feelings” means when you feel something , sadness, anger, jealousy, whatever emotion, instead of immediately distracting yourself, numbing it, or reacting, you just let yourself feel it without running from it. You notice it, you acknowledge it, you question it, ask yourself where it’s coming from. You don’t grab your phone, pick a fight, or eat a whole bag of chips or a big bowl of ice cream to avoid it. You just stay present with the discomfort until you understand it better. It sounds simple but most people have never done it even once.

Simone Weil, what a line

There is rumination (repetitive, circular, goes nowhere) There is self-examination leading to new understanding, self-awareness, and change. They are not the same things. They are impossible to confuse. One leads to stagnation, one leads to growth. Skilled psychotherapy is the latter, never the former. It’s beyond me why some people seem so deeply invested in pretending they are the same thing. It is a false starting assumption. If you reason logically from a false starting assumption, the conclusion will also be false.

The most attractive thing a person can do is isolate for a long time and emerge with something impressive. Music, writing, sculpture, whatever it is: shows competence, passing the marshmallow test, inner dialogue, patience, commitment, bravery in the face of potential failure

Nope. Ending celebrity culture is a must. I like Chappell Roan more and more every day. It’s insane that so many people believe she’s obliged to be constantly open to strangers because she likes to make music and perform.

if you’re “career driven” grow up. become hanging out driven. goofin off driven

Stop making blueberries bigger. Stop it. They are big enough. They were fine to begin with. We don't need jumbo or gigantic or giga blueberries. They're fine already.

I get yelled at for saying this but for many hundreds of years people went to university not to get diplomas or be employable but because immersion in the humanities was considered foundational to a good life, and school must return to its original purpose: the joy of learning.

Asked a student today @uaustinorg whether she preferred Plato or Aristotle. She replied: “I think Plato is easier to read, but harder to understand. Aristotle is easier to understand, but harder to read.” I thought that was an exceptionally astute response.

Otto Kernberg explains narcissistic personality disorder as a defense mechanism: Kernberg is a 96-year-old Austrian-born American psychoanalyst, professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, and the most-cited psychoanalyst in the world. His work helped shape how narcissistic personality disorder is defined in the DSM. He describes narcissistic personality disorder as one of the severe personality disorders—but one that operates differently from the others. Beneath the surface, these individuals have a borderline personality organization: a fragmented self-concept, unstable views of others, and an internal struggle between idealized and persecutory experiences. But rather than live in that chaos, they construct what Kernberg calls a "pathological grandiose self." "It is constituted by a combination of ideal aspects of the self, ideal aspects of others that have been incorporated as if one possessed them, and ideal aspirations of the self as if one had achieved them." In other words, the person absorbs the qualities they admire in others and treats their own aspirations as already achieved—building an internal world of grandiosity and self-sufficiency. The cost? Everyone else gets devalued. "Others are devalued; 'we don't need them, we are fine, I'm just great by myself, I don't need anybody else.'" Kernberg explains that the outside world then gets divided into three categories: depreciated, worthless people; those who are great and must be admired so their qualities can be absorbed; and potential enemies who must be fought off. This structure creates an illusion of stability. On the surface, the person appears integrated and secure—far more composed than others with severe personality disorders. But underneath the self-satisfaction and grandiosity lies "an incapacity to love others, and an internal sense of grandiosity and emptiness at the same time." There is no genuine mutuality in their relationships. They need admiration constantly but cannot reciprocate. In therapy, this dynamic plays out directly with the therapist. Kernberg describes a long-term power struggle: "They have to show their superiority to the therapist and keep themselves superior to the therapist because the only alternative is then if they would need the therapist, it means that the therapist is superior to them and they would feel immediately inferiorized and humiliated." The therapeutic work involves gradually clarifying and resolving this superiority-inferiority battle, which then reveals what was always underneath: "the underlying borderline structure against which the narcissistic structure was a defense"—the severe splits between idealized and persecutory relationships that the grandiose self was built to hide. The narcissistic personality, in Kernberg's framework, is not the core problem. It is the solution the psyche constructed to avoid an even more painful one.

baptists: “i believe the bible is literal” also baptists: “jesus meant grape juice”

Does anyone know her number

The Boomer-style “cling to power, wealth, and comfort until death” is basically the inverse of the socially adaptive elder role that existed in most societies for basically all of human history. It's literally inhuman.

Here are 100 basic philosophical facts, which go underappreciated in light of the focus on controversial topics