Sampson

“The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't the search for meaning; is to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you will be dead.” Mr. Peanutbutter

“I've learned that life is one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Flanders was dead” H. J. Simpson

There’s a good simple video here to explain how our brains evolved and how it absolutely is perfectly normal for our brains to think this way, so you’re absolutely not alone in this and not unnormal @DennisNedry. Even feeling bad that you “have know right to feel that way is worse” is part of our evolutionary survival instinct of needing to fit in to a tribe and compare yourself with that tribe. Please don’t think you’re unnormal, you’re not. This is unfortunately how the human brain is wired to work. But the more you are conscious of it, the more you can hopefully recognise the patterns and try to get talk about it and get help.

It’s a lot more common to feel that way than you realise. It’s certainly not unnornal. I also fully empathise with the weighing down of responsibility and deadlines, bureaucracy and regulations and having people care about you can get really on top of you. Remember that the human brain evolved to see threats and discomfort because it helped us survive. Survival of the fittest and evolution has nothing to do about feeling good, in fact often quite the opposite, being forever on edge gives creatures more chance of seeing threats and surviving. Anxiety and depression is in many ways are evolutionary traits. It’s always worth remembering that humans are just a type of monkey and our brains are just monkey brains which survived because they were successful at hunting and gathering and surviving threatening creatures in the wild. That is still true in this weird terraformed world we’ve created with houses and jobs and central heating. And please don’t think “I have no right to feel this way when you read what others are going through”. Our brains aren’t as simple as that, your feelings are no less real just because of other people’s feelings. This thread is the best on this forum. Sometimes you just need somewhere to vent and write how you’re feeling the pressure of day to day life. It’s hard being a human being. Our brains are literally wired for anxiety and depression, because being wired to be hyper aware of threats kept us alive for millions of years. Sadly this is still true when the threats are the daily trudge of deadlines, bureaucracy and responsibilities.

The next few months will sure be a rocky road with Russia-Ukraine really intensifying again. Does feel like the most insecure/the most genuine chance of WW3 since probably the Cuban missile crisis right now.

I obviously don’t have the same harrowing experience as you, so I’m not comparing it, but I think to a much lesser extent this is how adult life of general feels to me. I’m not really convinced the good parts of adult life really outweigh the bad parts of life. But I only keep going really because it’s all there is and I have friends and family who I don’t want to hurt and just try to distract myself with stuff like playing board games, going to dinner with family and friends or doing stuff round the house just to quiet the chatting doommongering voice in my brain. I totally understand why so many with mental health issues want to isolate themselves from their loved ones in a way. I saw someone in here a couple of months ago saying “maybe privilege is just having people you care about to lose”. I dunno, probably not helpful to you, but something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I carry on but I’m not really convinced life is actually enjoyable and doesn’t just feel like when you’re grinding away in a computer game rpg for the most part.

I completely agree. Catchphrase especially looks so fake and manufactured, like something from the Truman Show, but I wouldn’t blame the players over the producers.

Because they’re told to by producers and won’t pass the audition if they don’t . If you’ve ever watched Catchphrase you’ll see on that one people act incredibly unnaturally happy, almost in a ceeepy way where they put on these over exaggerated smiles and laughs. They’re told to do that in the auditions and screened to see if they can.

I don’t think this is true at all tbf. From what I understand countries like Monaco and Luxembourg are countries that don’t for example. Both countries have populations made up of primarily of immigrants and non-citizens, who are just residents and are generally treated more favourably than citizens who are born there if anything as they are the ones who bring the money into those countries. Obvious reason is because they’re wealthy white immigrants for the most part. Pretty sure wealthy white immigrants are treated better than the natives in plenty of countries tbh. Also plenty of indigenous minorities are discriminated against despite being citizens. There’s loads of debates about how Australians treat aborigines, how Russia treats Tartars or how Sweden treats Sami people for example despite the fact, these people actually are more “authentic” native citizens for want of a better term. Plenty who are born and raised in Northern Ireland have massive issues with how their treated by the uk government if you want to get controversial.

Come on, that’s absurd. We’re talking about billionaires here not a self employed middle class person. They have property worth tens of millions with no mortgage regardless of what their pay is. Elon Musk and Jeff Besos would not be “as poor as the rest of us” if you shut down Amazon and Tesla ffs.

How many homeless people do you think have passports and therefore could prove they are British citizens for starters? I can imagine a large amount of homeless Brits have zero ID and that is one of the reasons they can’t open a bank account or get a job too. It’s all well and good making these statements but what you are saying in practice actually means is setting up a level of bureaucracy for some kind of proof of citizenship when helping homeless people which sounds like a horrific idea for me and is probably only to cause way more problems than it solves.

Remember Mickey Adams hyping up Nicholas Priet as one for the future. There was Tomi Petrescu as well. Don’t know ever happened to them In terms of players who didn’t just play one of two games, Kerrea Gilbert was good for us in our League One winning season and just a young player, seemed to drop into the non league quite soon after though.

I was thinking more Brighton where house prices are basically London prices but it’s probably reasonable outside of Brighton. Dorset and Kent are nice but I think would be too rural to live for me personally. I think that’s where Hamoshire and Sussex strike the nice balance as they have decently sized cities and towns as well. As much as I appreciate the culture and people of the north and midlands, once you’ve been gentrified by the south coast, it’s hard to go back

Lived in Hampshire for many years and wouldnt live anywhere else in the uk at this point I think. Has both sections of 2 of the countries biggest and nicest national parks in the South Downs and New Forest if you like nature. 2 medium sized sized cities in Southampton and Portsmouth for stuff to do and jobs as well as one of the countries most beautiful (architecture wise) and oldest and most historic cities in Winchester (I think it’s one of the few counties with 3 cities). Plenty of islands around the south coast if you like island hopping. Cheaper house prices and rent than Devon, Cornwall, Sussex etc. as south coast countries go too.

Match of the Day still gets more viewers than 90% of live matches - for the record only 10 PL live matches reached 3million viewers last season (which was actually the most in a season on record) whereas MOTD regularly gets that. Last weekend it still got over 3miion views. This idea that it’s on its last legs doesn’t actually match up to viewing habits. Just because some forever online people don’t watch it anymore because they watch it on YouTube, it’s still a large watched programme and will continue for a long time yet. https://www.barb.co.uk/viewing-data/most-viewed-programmes/

I wouldn’t take a couple of cynical posters on here to be “plenty of our fanbase”. Every Leicester fan in real life I’ve ever spoken to loves the man.

Works the other way too though. Got to say I find that centrists and moderates thinking everyone on the left thinks that “anyone who doesn’t share their trope is a fascist” is much more common trope than the actual people left of centre thinking anyone who doesn’t share their views is a fascist/stupid these days. The centrists and moderates constantly talking down to the left and inferring they are stupid and calling them people who won’t listen and meltdown is definitely a much more common in political discourse these days than people on the left actually accusing others of being stupid or fascists.

This just strikes me as standard “enlightened centrist” rhetoric personally. Trump isn’t offering nuanced arguments on immigration saying we aren’t building the infrastructure or integrating so need to reduce numbers while still accounting for population ageing and demographic change. He’s literally saying “America for Americans”, saying immigrants eat pets and saying he’s going to bring about mass deportation. Call me a delusional lefty all you like, but I can’t see how whipping up hate against immigrants by saying the eat people’s pets is something “moderates” should be wooed by and how that is somehow the left’s fault that they are if they are pushing back against that kind of thing. The idea that Trump is the moderate vote and the Democrats are somehow less moderate and more divorced from reality than Trump like that I think is a strange argument about where you want a “moderate” position to lie. The left absolutely should be pushing back against that kind of rhetoric if you want the moderate and centre ground to stay at a reasonable place.

Genuinely can’t get my head round why people keep parroting this argument, as Putin will be gleeful Trump won tonight. Everything Trump has said on Ukraine and Putin points to not only would Putin still have done it, but the financial support from Ukraine would be much less under Trump as it woulld be “Americans first”. Trump is not on the side of Ukraine in this ffs, he’s made that quite openly clear. Putin was already at war in the crimea and Trump did nothing. And all Trump will do is avert funding from Ukraine and let Putin take Ukraine. Trump wants to “make peace” by appeasing Putin and helping Ukraine to surrender and leaving Europe on its own. He doesn’t give a shit about Europe, that’s what “American first” means, this is not a good result for us as Europeans at all.

In a way it could bring UK back closer to the EU. If UK joins the EU in supporting Ukraine “in defence of European values”. We’ll see though. I’m not sure how much UK and EU can realistically find Ukraine on their own sadly.

There’s definitely a trend of the “enlightened centrist” or the “I’m a lefty but” who always defend right wing views and attack the left in many ways over the past decade or so. Rogan and Musk are both definitely part of that. The political centre has been moving gradually to the right since the 1980s in the west really. The right seem to generally much better at the “I’m actually a centrist” shtick to help push the needle further and further right.

Yeah don’t listen to the naysayers, encourage her to go for it for sure. Plus, let’s face it, people often poo poo the soft benefits of university as being wish washy nonsense, but as a parent you just want to see your children happy. Having a secure income can be a part of that but it’s only really a small part as a parent (and let’s be honest, with technology development there’s very few jobs we know will still be viable jobs in 20-30 years time). Plenty who go to university even if they don’t “use their degree” for work still find it helps them become independent as a young adult, make friends, interact with people and ideas they wouldn’t have otherwise etc. Plus let’s be honest, it’s can be hard for young people to move out of home and feel that independence without going to uni these days.

I can’t get my head round the appeal of Elon Musk. Whenever I hear him speak I just think he sounds extremely awkward and a dreadful public speaker, almost Truss-esque. Yet a scary number of people seem to hang on his every word and consider him a genius.

There isn’t. You don’t pay back your student loan until you earn over a certain amount. It doesn’t really saddle anyone with a debt that forces them to work as if you never work you don’t pay a penny back, it’s just an income tax masquerading as a loan.

This is why I took up board gaming as a hobby. As well as a great way to make friends as an adult (a horrendously hard thing to do in general), playing board games is one of the few times when I just feel totally content with life , not interacting with technology or the modern world and not thinking about anything other than enjoying myself and enjoying spending time with other people