https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hswHOEQfj8&t=50s

Meh, I’m like really heavy, dangerously so even, and my many health problems (which don’t help with the physical attractiveness) originate from that. So no, I’m ugly and fat and in many, many regards I’m a loser. But I have other things going for me.

GF wants into this discussion, this is her words:

I wouldn’t call him the fattest, ugliest, looser nerd, but he is definitely fat and doesn’t conform to any classic ideal of male beauty. Instead, he is very gentle, loving and tender and makes me feel like a goddess. He also does what he said he would do: he is interested in me, not just because he has to ask, he actually wants to know what I think and feel. And he is not afraid to tell me his feelings, honest and vulnerable, even if they are actually embarrassing and he may even be ashamed of them. He wants to connect with me emotionally, honest and with his whole heart.

So I guess I’m making up for it with inner beauty and that’s precisely why I commented here:

I had already given up on love, I was a 40 years old, depressed, fat nerd with a career going nowhere. Really not physically attractive at all. I’ve been where so many of these Anons are. But through my significant other and the ones before her, I learned that you really don’t need to be tall, fit and conventionally attractive to find love.

“Just” respect your partner, be open, be honest, be gentle, be caring and be interested, really interested in what she thinks and does and feels.

For me the hardest part was lowering my defenses and being vulnerable with her, telling her even the things that I thought she would find unmanly or disgusting, everything I was and am still ashamed of. And sometimes it’s really hard to actually listen, to not just hear but listen, to not let her voice be drowned out in the multitude of voices from inside and outside your own head and things and media and events happening around you every day. I’ve really had to learn (and am still learning) to come to a calm focus and practice active listening. It’s not easy, but I do it because I love her, and she’s given me the mental stability and something to look forward to that has helped me start not only my weight loss journey, but also continue to work at becoming a better person, better listener and the man I want to be for her.

I’m far from perfect, I still mess things up, my weight loss progresses painfully slow, my mental health still has pretty bad days and I’ve fucked up listening again this week, just like last week. But I’ll be damned if I give up again. And she’s so incredibly supportive and appreciative, that I’m still wondering sometimes what the hell she sees in me and how I deserve someone so wonderful.

Yeah well Kevin did weigh 257 pounds and is a successful director, producer, writer and actor… I’m north of 400 and none of those things. But I got other things going for me, so I’m okay with being a fat ugly loser, I’m winning what’s important to me.

My Škoda Fabia has - in less than a year - hit the brakes twice in situations where it shouldn’t. Granted, both times someone in front slowed down to leave the lane, so it’s not “phantom” breaking, but the situation was completely safe for me, not though, for the people driving behind me. Cruise control is slowly regaining my trust, but those incidents left me alert. Normal reduction of speed is working fine though.

Zut alors! Vastly outclassed by France, Scheiße!

In my experience: He’s emotionally available, interested in her and her experience, actually listening, gentle and honest.

I’m about the fattest, ugliest, loser nerd around and if I can be in a relationship with a succesful, beautiful, adventurous woman, so can anon.

More importantly, with a pitbull it’s mostly about training and handling. But snakes - even the intelligent ones - are very different from dogs. They are way more controlled by instinct and are natural predators of monkeys and young great apes. They are not intelligent in the same way mammals are, their internal machinery can at any point in time simply click with the wrong situation and that toddler is gone.

Sure, their fundamentalist, militant beliefs are not rooted in any intelligent reading of their scripture, but, in my opinion, just like humans can not evolve out of our ancestry (humans are apes, are monkeys, are primates, are mammals, are chordates) movements cannot escape the roots of their religion. And they constitute a vast, but for it’s size relatively homogeneous, culturally distinct sect of Christianity. So let’s not create a “true scotsman” here, just because they don’t abide by your (or my) interpretation of their faith doesn’t mean they aren’t Christians, similar differences in belief exist in many religious sects in many different religions. And at least they violently “claim” to be Christians and will defend that position with vigor. Something apparent in all the big american sects that, from the outside, seeem to have little to nothing to do with the teachings in the New Testament. Like Mormonism.

Just like Christianity, Judaism and Islam are still abrahamic religions, those new american sects will always remain christian in their roots.

For this sect, Christian trappings have fused with the American Civil Religion, the Red Scare and the “Lost Cause”-myth. In this worldview, the defeat in a holy war (American Civil War) facilitated the struggle between evil, socialist, secular, globalist, minority-loving, weak liberalism and the good, pious, capitalist, nationalist, exceptionalist, (mostly white) red-blooded conservatism.

This might actually constitute a new kind of religion, but it is heavily blanketed in pseudo-christian trappings and lots of old-testament fire and brimstone. And this mind-virus relies on the widespread christian beliefs in the US to spread into new hosts. A lack of (objective, comparative) religious education with, at the same time, a deeply religious habitat is the fertile ground that allows this to spread. What you or me would interpret as a “correct” (or “less wrong”) christian faith, if followed culturally or blindly and without haven given it enough thought, actually aides in the spread of this militant, nationalistic, chauvinist movement that has infected the US and is (imho) at the root of Reaganism, the Tea-Party and the entire Maga-Movement. It has been mutating and getting more malignant for a while now and I honestly have no idea how this could ever be excised from the US.

Planned ignoring is used for problematic behavior. If a child cries, the first thing you have to assess is if they are hurt. Crying when you are hurt is NOT problematic behavior.

Ignoring a crying child without a simple health check that would have found a broken bone is willfully negligent at best and definitely not standard protocol.

That’s how it’s phrased in many other languages, german for example.

Upset? No. More like a little uncomfortable. Partly because I’m an idealist who always hopes for the best and most moral and peaceful solutions. Partly because it makes me uncomfortable how little I am angered by this. Sure I absolutely do not want proles to go and kill the bourgeoisie… but I guess it’s not… I don’t feel the need to condemn this. Sometimes things are just… shrug

But it’s really just a little uncomfortable, like a sock not quite fitting my foot.

I am far FAR more uncomfortable with someone calling this the good but small beginning of an overdue purge.

The few precious moments of shared class consciousness.

Covered doctors and specialists… out of network… people on Reddit kept telling me my socialised universal multi-payer healthcare by statutory health insurance, would mean I could not see the doctor I wanted and would wait forever for services. And sure, for everything that’s not immediately necessary I do wait some time. But for all things acute I can go to any general practitioner who will either provide immediate help or forward me to a specialist for immediate help. No matter where in my country I am, no matter which hospital, GP or specialist I go to, everything important is covered. And I pay less per month for it than Americans do.

You saw them fall into the ravine, but did you see the body? HAS ANYONE SEEN THE BODY?

His american colleagues sometimes poke fun at my cousins branch for only working 35 hours a week, taking long vacations and having lots of state mandated holidays throughout the year. When they hire someone new they sometimes comment on how lazy the german colleagues are…

Then they point them towards the numbers and the fact that the german branch is constantly setting the productivity records. They’ve been outperforming the americans by more than 10% for years.

ZSK - Antifascista we always need more, proud, dangerous, commited antifascists.

For me, this song is an example of a bold, counter rightwing-populism narrative. We need more strong and proud narratives on the left, to tell people they can feel important, powerful, accepted and part of something important - on the morally correct side of history.

Trump survives assassination: “God wants him to live!”

Trump dies in assassination: “Satan sent his demons to kill his foe!”

Isn’t it great how their believes always tell them they are right and good and others are wrong and evil?

If you count the election as the biggest possible poll, that let’s you infer which way the non-voters would have gone.

And if you are a non-voter, that means you have declared the eventual outcome as your preferred outcome, since you did not vote otherwise.

couldn’t be bothered to give a shit

Which means they chose this too. The only people without any culpability are the ones who voted for Harris or who for many reasons were not able to vote.

Doesn’t mean that the people who did not vote are as much at fault as the ones voting for Trump, but they share part of the blame.

Americans HAVE their country, this is what they want, this is what they voted for. Stop treating Americans as if this is something pressed upon them. They chose this. Now they will live with the consequences.