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maybe the best realisation I had as a kid was I did NOT want to be a veterinarian bc, sure I’d be around animals, but around HURT or SICK animals, ehhhhhhh
I considered medicine at one point. I have an aunt who works in anesthesia and she let me shadow her for a day. I got to be in the room when a man got open heart surgery.
Fascinating as hell, but I decided it was not for me. Even though I did nothing but stand there out of the way I was stressed out to the extreme. No way could I ever keep my cool doing a job like that.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a research doctor – no working with patients, just lab work doing the science to figure things out to further medical science.
And then I took college chemistry and discovered that me and laboratories do not mix.
Switched over to a Writing Major and never looked back.
I used to think organic chemistry is the coolest thing ever. Then I actually studied chemistry and found that I, as well, do NOT mix with labs. I’m like, ridiculously clumsy. And hate when stuff stops making sense and everyone is like ‘eh, close enough’. Luckily, I could still escape into quantum chemistry XD
I was super slow and careful and methodical in the lab… and nothing worked. Everyone else was slopping together their titrations and getting textbook results, and my slow and steady setup got no results at all. I ended up repeating the experiment three times, staying two hours after everyone else left, and still nothing.
I was in tears by the time the professor told me to call it quits for the day. I left and never came back. Dropped the class, in part because I was utterly humiliated at breaking down over a fucking titration.
I was always clumsy too, and having my lab coat dangle so far at my wrists (I had thin wrists) meant that I would always catch it on stuff and knock it over. They never scheduled enough time for labs anyway (tended to always go overtime) and having to come in at least 2 days later to spend at least 2 hours testing the purity of the compound in unscheduled lab time was ridiculous.
Spent 4 years as an ambulance volunteer/EMT. Got the funny anecdotes and the recurring nightmares all without a single GSW or assault victim. Sign me up for the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
That must have been hard choice to face, but was probably the right one. Sadly, veterinarian’s have one of the highest rates of depression in suicide of any profession. Given the compassionate nature of people drawn to that work followed by what they have to deal with and do every day, it seems like a nightmare and dream at once.
A big contributing factor to that is also, to be blunt, a lot of pet owners. While I’d like to think they’re a minority, there’s no shortage of people who view their animals as just replaceable. Not their own living beings, more like a car. So once the cost of care approaches the cost of a shiny new cat, why keep this one?
Then there are the owners who just refuse to make changes. They’re set in old care methods their family always did, that today is pretty much universally known to be a bad idea. Like outdoor cats (Not to start the argument that always happens when this is brought up, please.) or using a lot of popular and cheap brands of kibble foods that have become increasingly less nutritious over the years from poor regulation. Or “I’m a vegan, and this vegan cat food is legally sold in stores, so it must be perfectly fine! There must be some other reason these kittens have all gone blind!”
I’ve never quite understood how a vegan could ethically justify owning a pet in the first place. And if they absolutely have to, why get a cat, an obligate carnivore? Geez, if you’re not comfortable feeding your pet meat, then get a bird or a rabbit or something that can thrive on an all-plant diet.
Vegetarian and vegan are significantly different things. Vegans strive to avoid any and all animal-derived products. Given that, I find it a little hard to justify keeping an animal for companionship. Especially since domesticated animals are essentially human artifacts, created through generations of selective breeding, much of that selection not in the animals’ own best interest.
Humans aren’t obligate carnivores, are we? If we know cats are, then there’s no moral dilemma in the first place. Forcing a cat to also be vegetarian is animal abuse and anyone who does it deserves to also die of malnutrition.
Whether or not you’re an obligate carnivore as a human seems to actually depend somewhat on your environment and your health conditions? The most common food allergies in humans are to plant-based proteins, and if you are afflicted with that it may not be safe to eat an all-plant diet. Similarly, in latitudes far enough away from the equator it may be difficult or impossible to get enough vitamin D from sunlight, as I recently learned when my doctor discovered that my frequent violent muscle spasms were due to critically low vitamin D levels despite my best efforts. There are effectively 0 plant-based sources of vitamin D (outside of mushrooms if you deliberately leave them out in sufficient sunlight for many hours before consuming them which is unreasonable for most people). Any vitamin D supplements are going to be derived from animals.
All-plant diets can be extremely dangerous to humans given the right combination of not-uncommon circumstances. Which is extremely distressing to me, as I can’t go without meat or at least animal products and yet I have a high level of empathy towards animals (thanks in part to my autism) (but then I also have developed a similar level of empathy towards plants which is woof).
The way I’ve coped with this dilemma is just acknowledging that… all creatures need to eat to survive. We all deserve life. And it is inevitable that we will become food when we die (for the worms and other decomposers, unless we get cremated), which is something I have made peace with and find oddly exciting – to contribute to the cycle of life in such a way. What matters is treating all living creatures with respect during the time they live and only consuming in reasonable moderation.
No humans are obligate carnivores in anything like the sense that cats are. We’re omnivores. Mostly we can subsist on strictly vegetarian diets if we’re careful, but eating only meat would also be bad for us, unlike for cats.
Some of it is also a poor relationship between vets and owners. You sometimes get vets that insist on expensive care when a cheap solution is possible in rural and poor areas (eg. amputation of parts of a cat’s tail vs expensive and time consuming reconstruction). My sister has a cat that recently had some kidney issues (infection with high toxins, possibly crystal related) and the first vet she went to see was insistent that it was diabetes and that he would die within 24hrs if he didn’t get expensive care. She asked another vet (sending over the bloodwork) and she recommended giving him a lot of intravenous fluids to flush his system. That is what my sister did (home health care nurse, so she could do it herself with the equipment) and he is perfectly fine with no diabetes now. She might have put him down if she had gone by what the first vet said (due to the claim of kidney failure from diabetes) even though he had really turned a corner in the half a day he was there getting fluids. Paying for the expensive meds on the off chance he might survive on top of paying for the vet visit (and it wasn’t even the actual problem) vs food and gas for her family didn’t leave her much of a choice. Even for human medical services, without free medical care, you have to know your audience and what they can afford. It isn’t unusual for vets or doctors to ignore trying the cheap possible solution first, instead aiming to do expensive tests or medications that are outside of the person’s budget.
My aunt was a vet tech before she retired so I was able to shadow her at work when I was young, and thus eliminated veterinary miscellany as a potential career path fairly early on. I love animals but I’m not exactly into animal dentistry.
One of the techs let me take home a cat knuckle from a declawing procedure in a sample bottle, though. That was a big hit at show and tell.
Gene editing is remarkably accessible and unregulated (basically as long as you’re small scale and not mucking about with pathogens or humans, nobody cares). Between that and Machine Learning this is a golden age for being a mad scientist.
Needs to be done sometimes. I had a cat who’s front claws were infected and we were told it was lose the claws or lose the paw. The other side was done to maintain his balance, but his back claws were fine and were untouched. So while it shouldn’t be done just because, there are sometimes medical reasons to declaw a cat.
Yeah, that’s fine because it’s a medical necessity.
Declawing a cat is like chopping all your fingers and toes off at the last knuckle. It’s something you better have a damn good reason for, and “so it won’t scratch the furniture” isn’t one.
My grandmother was the first woman allowed into the veterinary program at Cornell. She would be horrified by all the animal cruelty based in ignorance that goes on today, not to mention the over breeding
Weirdly enough, I had the opposite reaction. I LOVED being around sick or injured things as a kid, because it was this fascinating little glimpse into how the body worked. Unfortunately this does not lead to good bedside manner, so I’m also not a doctor. I became a clinical researcher instead.
“Take it apart and see how it works” is a perfectly fine mindset to have, when you’re talking about mechanical contrivances.
I don’t have the stomach for surgery, so I perform my perturbed science experiments on machines. At least an engine’s family can’t sue you for malpractice if you put something back in the wrong way around!
I had a similar realization. My dream growing up was to be a psych professor, I always knew I wanted to study psychology but I don’t have the patience to be a clinician nor the discipline for tedium to be a researcher (taking notes and doing paperwork? Ick!), but I’ve always been drawn to performance and lecturing, I had plenty of classmates who told me I explained things better than the teachers sometimes since I always had a knack for efficiently isolating what specifically isn’t being understood and how to rephrase it for clarity.
So, when I got to college I studied psychology and was a few years into my degree (although not as many credits as my years should have been, I was five years into a four year degree and still had the credits of a Junior, college is a scam) when I learned that most professors only have a couple classes a week and the rest of the time is office hours, paperwork, and research (some schools won’t have as much priority placed on research, but it’s still not enough time actually professing for my taste). I briefly considered going into k-12 teaching, but with my anger issues I wouldn’t last long before I blew up and cussed out a kid (which I understand is a no-no). I briefly intended to change my major to game design planning to publish 3rd party supplements for TTRPGs, but the game design 1 professor was a genuinely terrible teacher who’s horrible practices caused me to lose my temper publicly for the first time since high school and thus I burned all my bridges with the department (seriously, who TF thinks subjecting 101-level students to “the realities of the field” irrespective of their actual plans for employment IN the field is even remotely a good idea, teach the GD fundamentals FIRST, idiot). So I decided to finish out my psych degree while working part time, got a job doing delivery, cut my courses to half time, then had a class that was assigning 8-hours worth of homework every day and had to choose between dropping out and quitting my job. Considering I really liked my job, it paid better than anything I could get with my degree in this terrible hellscape of a job market, and I wasn’t enthused by the idea of piling on more and more debt for the foreseeable future until I could finally finish my degree (I’d probably still be a student now, half a decade later, if I’d made that call), I chose to drop out and start working full time.
The company has been getting progressively worse and worse over time, but I’m not worried about losing my employment any time soon and I’m still paid better than any other job I could get while still having enough free time and money to indulge my hobbies, so it’s safe to say I made the right call. My only regret is that I went to college at all. Granted I doubt I would have been able to handle going directly into employment after high school, emotionally, and the company I work for now didn’t open until a few years after I graduated, but I do wish I had found a way to not put myself in so much debt for a degree that I didn’t finish and would have been worthless even if I had.
I had no idea what I wanted to do. Went into engineering finally because I had the grades for it, I was accepted at a good uni for it, and I didn’t get accepted for any of the architectural programs I applied for (and I only applied for those at the suggestion of my mom because I was good at math and art). Two years in, I HATED it. I was bored; I wasn’t enjoying myself at all; I was okay at it to pull mostly B’s but not good enough to be considered a “good engineer”. Tried to drop it, but my mom guilted me into completing the degree because sunk-cost fallacy. Got a job (eventually), hated it. Did it for 7 years because what else could I do – I couldn’t afford to go back to school for what I finally figured out I wanted, which was psychology. I’ve made peace now, because I discovered there were more aspects to engineering than just design, and I found a position as a contract administrator that actually suited me better. Now I’m a project manager for construction projects, and in a much happier place, mentally. If I could do it all over again, though, knowing what I know now, I probably would’ve gone into psych.
TLDR, don’t let your parents dictate your studies, no matter how much they pressure you.
She’s also worried about being Jack the Ripper (ie, psychosis).
If she is bipolar, it’s probably bipolar type 2 which is more depressive episodes than mania. And the mania could potentially go unnoticed depending on severity.
I’m not saying she is for sure bipolar; just that; as someone who is bipolar she comes across that way to me.
I feel like I should say something, but don’t really know what to say. However, I know you like anime and music so here is a song by an Argentinian band that sings in English and has a Japanese aesthetic. It’s not their best work, but it seems perhaps tangentially related to what you are talking about (maybe). I hope you are doing well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID-g6__6X_w&list=RDLIBTaYT4-I0&index=3
For true course correction, I like to get the boundaries to pass each other, so that my spectrum has “too low” on one end, “too high” on the other, and in the middle is “simultaneously too high and too low”.
i’m sure there’s techniques to calm down, but honestly, other than being risky and like gambling or so at a casino while youre hyped up/buzzed, i can’t rly haven’t seen many cases where ppl make a ‘bad’ decision while being euphoric (tho even when i’m excited/amped up i still kinda have my ‘guard up’ /don’t rly make ‘spontaneous’ /spure of the moment decisions)
I guess that’s where the “too” comes in. You find a high or low that’s stable enough for you. I still get depressed on my antidepressants but I’m stable enough to not spiral and just handle it
You’d think. But there’s a potential mental trap there, not unlike Two-Face’s issue, where eventually you’d probably find yourself save-scumming every decision, no matter how trivial. Constantly seeking the “optimal” choice, whether one truly exists or not. Until any illusion of “free will” was gone.
Oddly enough, that’s a major plot in X-Men right now. Mister Sinister figured out how to do that, then his “save file” got stolen, and now he’s dealing with… CONSEQUENCES.
Rick: “Save your place like in a video game, but in real life. So that way you can go try stuff and then go back to your save point- Yes, Morty, I saw it on Futurama.”
I remember this one episode of a show I watched growing up. Rocket Power.
In it, there was an episode where all 4 main characters got sick. However, Sam, the resident Squid/New Guy, was known for having a lot of sicknesses. So when he got the flu, he was able to get over it easily. The others, who normally stayed healthy were in danger of being sick for much much longer.
I bring this up because Ruth is adept at navigating her own self sabatoge and understanding how ber mood might manipulate certain perceptions.
Dorothy… isn’t.
So sometbing that might be easy enough to set aside for a moment through muscle memory, isn’t really something Dorothy’s had practice with since she’s been fairly confident in herself for a long long time.
It always felt like the whatever doubts she’s had in her head was something along the lines of “Can I do this” which was alot easier to dismiss, but now the doubt in her head is “Should I do this?” Or “Is it right for me to do this?” Which is something she’ll wrestle with a lot more.
The only other time I’ve seen Dorothy think about if there’s a course action that’s right for her to take was when she found out Amazi-girls identity.
Difficult skill to figure out. Still trying to work it out myself. Wish I could have learned it when I was going to college but most of my introspective thoughts back then were either “I want to die,” or “Hey, how long have I been thinking ‘I want to die’ for, that’s a scary thing I should probably be looking into, huh?”
i remember being a teenager and every bad day was solved by an early night. tomorrow would be better. Every sadness or madness could be moved past. And kinda had to be because I didn’t, it turns out, have great emotional regulation models. I was Just Happy I Guess!
in uni I hit an emotional wall and I couldn’t anymore. Things were bad and they were not getting better. I wasn’t Just Happy and nothing worked. But this is just how Everyone Else Is. I was weird in my happy and now I was Normal.
(spoiler alert I was Not Normal in several respects)
This is quite different but also strikes that chord.
Just wanted to say that I think I know what you mean, and it is unreal how much it sucks. It’s so weird to look back at a version of myself that is at once nostalgic and unrecognizable. There’s a grief to it. Who was that kid who never felt like this, and where did they go? Is it wrong to resent them for never being forced to learn skills and resilience that I desperately need right now but feel too battered to build?
It feels hypocritical, somehow, because I was the one people leaned on. The Good Listener. But it’s easier to help someone else untangle the knots in their head than to help yourself. Something about perspective, or an extra pair of hands. When being alright is a personality trait, it feels so frustrating to not be alright.
Now I got to know how painful all this situation is. There’s no solution for this Dorothy’s problem, after all. Like: how could someone so persistent give up a dream?
Her ultimate goal is to help as many people as possible. She doesn’t have to give up her dream necessarily, just find a different path to it. Ruth will hopefully be her telescope, so she can see that new path.
there’s def alternative goals/career she could pursue, like being the ceo of a charity instead or so, or even switching to a medical career to try to cure cancer
I feel it’s more like: what does someone who is incredibly motivated, but focused on a single goal do when they realize that goal was probably never actually what they wanted?
Ruth is not really giving advice (at least, not yet). She’s just describing Dorothy’s mind-set.
A more long-winded version would be: Dorothy has never been into introspection. She has lofty dreams, and she pushes for them, and she has never allowed herself to doubt that she’s following the correct path. Now, though, she’s doubting it all, quite possibly for the first time in her entire life. And because she’s never spent time on introspection, she has no way to know whether or not her doubts are valid.
Like don’t make critical decisions when you’re too depressed or too excited? Gotta admit tho, sometimes that can be really hard if you’re a neurodivergent.
she is repeating what dorothy said to her on halloween. though i’m not sure how much time has passed between her getting the acceptance letter and then turning it down (well even if she didn’t officially write back, i imagine even yale would have some kinda time limit/take it as a refusal if she didn’t respond by next term)
It’s really unfair.. if male, after you became rich by doubtful means, sexually harassed women, been caught doing drugs, let your rich daddy get you out of military service, you obviously lied and don’t give a shot for democracy and you still get elected first by a political party and then a huge part of the voters.
And here is Dorothy, thinking she cannot afford any mistake in her life bc a woman has to be flawless to get elected.
ngl, while i believe everyone has the right to vote of course, knowing how some teens acted at 18-19, i def would not want a bunch of freshly turned adults to be a huge majority in picking the next president because they easily could’ve been emotional manipulated or brainwashed to support/be ok with someone terrible/propaganda or so (not that there aren’t also 30 year olds that also don’t know any better XP)
I dunno, I don’t think the 20 somethings these days are any more brainwashed than the 45+ crowd. If anything they are probably a fair bit more immunized to it thanks to the internet existing. It may not seem that way at times because obviously the internet has it’s own issues and we highlight them, but in general the best counter to brainwashing is just exposure to conflicting opinions, which is rather easy to come by these days.
Honestly hard to say. I always had the mentality that the younger generation learns off the mistakes of the older generation and improve themselves, but i keep getting proven wrong. Tech feels like a good example here. I’m 38 and work in IT. It makes sense to me that those older than me would be less skilled on average with computers, because they have less exposure to tech. And those younger than me on average would be very used to tech, because they’ve grown up carrying computers around with them everywhere (from laptops to phones to tablets, etc).
Having helped plenty of people younger *and* older than me with their devices (I work University tech support, both students and staff), it’s very clear that there are plenty of people a lot younger than me who are as clueless about tech as those older than me. Most just know enough to know what they need to know to survive and then that’s it. The moment something deviates from that they go straight to being clueless about it.
So yeah, i think your initial statement is the accurate one here. The 20 somethings and the 45’s, on average, are basically on similar levels when it comes to intelligence. It’s just they’ll be a little smarter in some areas, and a little dumber in others.
True. But also: if you work in tech support, you are dealing mostly with people who don’t think tech is fun, so they don’t put in the time to learn it all; they just learn enough to coexist with it day-to-day.
Sorry for the confusion. Not my point at all. I’m saying there can be an false assumption that some people are ‘better at computers’ just because they’re younger, and this isn’t necessarily true. Both young people and old people have varying levels of skills and knowledge not tied to their age.
This then tied back into the two previous post’s points, going back to the assumption that younger people are more easier to manipulate than the older generation, and how that isn’t necessarily true either. Both the younger and older populations will have varying ways that can be manipulated and can resist resist manipulation.
Yeah, it’s really hard to look around at older people and younger ones and think “Yeah, those kids really are easy to manipulate. Good thing the old ones resist that.”
What’s probably true is that the young kids are more willing to reach for drastic change and the olds are more tied to the status quo – for good or ill in both cases.
I’m pretty sure the current turmoil is the opposite, that for Dorothy to have any influence in DC and if she wanted to do the job of being president she would haft to be the biggest piece of shit isntead of a bleeding heart. She’s also afraid she might have been on her way to being that because she didn’t question her motives having one of the highest postions in the country until now.
What would Ruth’s head look like if she shaved it, like Sinead O’Connor?
With that flat top and severely pointed chin, I’ll wager she’d look like an upside-down dreidel.
I am reminded of when my sister lectured me to follow advice her therapist gave her. But we’ve dealt with the same stress in different ways forever. And therapy is more detective work and improv than scripted solutions to all the problems. Except for CBT.
This is actually good advice, Ruth (i did not expect there would be anything other than self-deprecation).
It’s extremely hard to take your own feelings into account (you *should* do that!) when you have trouble with how your feelings affect you – e.g. heightened emotional responses like Rejection Sensitivity that often comes with ADHD.
I tend to overgeneralize my feelings: i performed badly in my language class today, felt insecure about it, brain jumped to “I WILL LOSE MY JOB BECAUSE I REALLY SUCK AT LEARNING THIS LANGUAGE (that i actually work in)“. a) if i had performed as well today as i did two weeks ago, my general assessment would have been informed by higher confidence, b) i rationally know i’m not gonna lose my job about it even if i *am* bad at it (which i am probably not).
Sometimes i listen to my lows (or highs, but mostly lows) too much – and sometimes i overcompensate in the other direction, telling myself that there is no reason to be overly emotional about it, and accidentally ignore a feeling that actually needs to tell me something i *should* listen to.
It’s a narrow line.
This last sentence describes way too many key turning points in my life.
For the record, my “course corrections” have not led me to any metaphorical Tahitis.
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Porque no los dos?
maybe the best realisation I had as a kid was I did NOT want to be a veterinarian bc, sure I’d be around animals, but around HURT or SICK animals, ehhhhhhh
Why I never wanted to go into the medical field (animals or people) and preferred plants.
I considered medicine at one point. I have an aunt who works in anesthesia and she let me shadow her for a day. I got to be in the room when a man got open heart surgery.
Fascinating as hell, but I decided it was not for me. Even though I did nothing but stand there out of the way I was stressed out to the extreme. No way could I ever keep my cool doing a job like that.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a research doctor – no working with patients, just lab work doing the science to figure things out to further medical science.
And then I took college chemistry and discovered that me and laboratories do not mix.
Switched over to a Writing Major and never looked back.
I used to think organic chemistry is the coolest thing ever. Then I actually studied chemistry and found that I, as well, do NOT mix with labs. I’m like, ridiculously clumsy. And hate when stuff stops making sense and everyone is like ‘eh, close enough’. Luckily, I could still escape into quantum chemistry XD
I was super slow and careful and methodical in the lab… and nothing worked. Everyone else was slopping together their titrations and getting textbook results, and my slow and steady setup got no results at all. I ended up repeating the experiment three times, staying two hours after everyone else left, and still nothing.
I was in tears by the time the professor told me to call it quits for the day. I left and never came back. Dropped the class, in part because I was utterly humiliated at breaking down over a fucking titration.
I was always clumsy too, and having my lab coat dangle so far at my wrists (I had thin wrists) meant that I would always catch it on stuff and knock it over. They never scheduled enough time for labs anyway (tended to always go overtime) and having to come in at least 2 days later to spend at least 2 hours testing the purity of the compound in unscheduled lab time was ridiculous.
Spent 4 years as an ambulance volunteer/EMT. Got the funny anecdotes and the recurring nightmares all without a single GSW or assault victim. Sign me up for the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
I’ve worked in nursing homes before, predominately in memory care
The emotional stress almost killed me
Bless anyone who works memory care. The local staff were so good with my m-i-l. But it breaks your heart to watch people slowly die.
That must have been hard choice to face, but was probably the right one. Sadly, veterinarian’s have one of the highest rates of depression in suicide of any profession. Given the compassionate nature of people drawn to that work followed by what they have to deal with and do every day, it seems like a nightmare and dream at once.
A big contributing factor to that is also, to be blunt, a lot of pet owners. While I’d like to think they’re a minority, there’s no shortage of people who view their animals as just replaceable. Not their own living beings, more like a car. So once the cost of care approaches the cost of a shiny new cat, why keep this one?
Then there are the owners who just refuse to make changes. They’re set in old care methods their family always did, that today is pretty much universally known to be a bad idea. Like outdoor cats (Not to start the argument that always happens when this is brought up, please.) or using a lot of popular and cheap brands of kibble foods that have become increasingly less nutritious over the years from poor regulation. Or “I’m a vegan, and this vegan cat food is legally sold in stores, so it must be perfectly fine! There must be some other reason these kittens have all gone blind!”
It really takes a toll, man.
I’ve never quite understood how a vegan could ethically justify owning a pet in the first place. And if they absolutely have to, why get a cat, an obligate carnivore? Geez, if you’re not comfortable feeding your pet meat, then get a bird or a rabbit or something that can thrive on an all-plant diet.
I’m a vegetarian, but I wouldn’t force this on other humans, let alone my cat. I resolve this ethical dilemma by mostly not thinking about it.
Birds are omnivorous. The wild-bird food I use included mealworms, something else I try not to think about.
“I resolve this ethical dilemma by mostly not thinking about it.”
Ahh, the way I resolve 90% of my ethical dilemmas!
It’s extraordinary effective. Too bad we can’t tell Dorothy.
Vegetarian and vegan are significantly different things. Vegans strive to avoid any and all animal-derived products. Given that, I find it a little hard to justify keeping an animal for companionship. Especially since domesticated animals are essentially human artifacts, created through generations of selective breeding, much of that selection not in the animals’ own best interest.
Humans aren’t obligate carnivores, are we? If we know cats are, then there’s no moral dilemma in the first place. Forcing a cat to also be vegetarian is animal abuse and anyone who does it deserves to also die of malnutrition.
Whether or not you’re an obligate carnivore as a human seems to actually depend somewhat on your environment and your health conditions? The most common food allergies in humans are to plant-based proteins, and if you are afflicted with that it may not be safe to eat an all-plant diet. Similarly, in latitudes far enough away from the equator it may be difficult or impossible to get enough vitamin D from sunlight, as I recently learned when my doctor discovered that my frequent violent muscle spasms were due to critically low vitamin D levels despite my best efforts. There are effectively 0 plant-based sources of vitamin D (outside of mushrooms if you deliberately leave them out in sufficient sunlight for many hours before consuming them which is unreasonable for most people). Any vitamin D supplements are going to be derived from animals.
All-plant diets can be extremely dangerous to humans given the right combination of not-uncommon circumstances. Which is extremely distressing to me, as I can’t go without meat or at least animal products and yet I have a high level of empathy towards animals (thanks in part to my autism) (but then I also have developed a similar level of empathy towards plants which is woof).
The way I’ve coped with this dilemma is just acknowledging that… all creatures need to eat to survive. We all deserve life. And it is inevitable that we will become food when we die (for the worms and other decomposers, unless we get cremated), which is something I have made peace with and find oddly exciting – to contribute to the cycle of life in such a way. What matters is treating all living creatures with respect during the time they live and only consuming in reasonable moderation.
No humans are obligate carnivores in anything like the sense that cats are. We’re omnivores. Mostly we can subsist on strictly vegetarian diets if we’re careful, but eating only meat would also be bad for us, unlike for cats.
Some of it is also a poor relationship between vets and owners. You sometimes get vets that insist on expensive care when a cheap solution is possible in rural and poor areas (eg. amputation of parts of a cat’s tail vs expensive and time consuming reconstruction). My sister has a cat that recently had some kidney issues (infection with high toxins, possibly crystal related) and the first vet she went to see was insistent that it was diabetes and that he would die within 24hrs if he didn’t get expensive care. She asked another vet (sending over the bloodwork) and she recommended giving him a lot of intravenous fluids to flush his system. That is what my sister did (home health care nurse, so she could do it herself with the equipment) and he is perfectly fine with no diabetes now. She might have put him down if she had gone by what the first vet said (due to the claim of kidney failure from diabetes) even though he had really turned a corner in the half a day he was there getting fluids. Paying for the expensive meds on the off chance he might survive on top of paying for the vet visit (and it wasn’t even the actual problem) vs food and gas for her family didn’t leave her much of a choice. Even for human medical services, without free medical care, you have to know your audience and what they can afford. It isn’t unusual for vets or doctors to ignore trying the cheap possible solution first, instead aiming to do expensive tests or medications that are outside of the person’s budget.
My aunt was a vet tech before she retired so I was able to shadow her at work when I was young, and thus eliminated veterinary miscellany as a potential career path fairly early on. I love animals but I’m not exactly into animal dentistry.
One of the techs let me take home a cat knuckle from a declawing procedure in a sample bottle, though. That was a big hit at show and tell.
Declawing is a horrible practice.
Did you ever come across those hen’s teeth everyone always talks about?
You can make hens grow teeth, but you have to edit their DNA to remove the bits that say ‘don’t grow teeth’
Gene editing is remarkably accessible and unregulated (basically as long as you’re small scale and not mucking about with pathogens or humans, nobody cares). Between that and Machine Learning this is a golden age for being a mad scientist.
Declawing is animal abuse… I agree with you there.
Needs to be done sometimes. I had a cat who’s front claws were infected and we were told it was lose the claws or lose the paw. The other side was done to maintain his balance, but his back claws were fine and were untouched. So while it shouldn’t be done just because, there are sometimes medical reasons to declaw a cat.
I mean that’s basically an amputation at that point
Pretty much. Just like amputation, you shouldn’t do it just because furniture or just because but they can be medically necessary.
True, but even with a medically necessary amputation, removing as little tissue as possible seems like a good idea to me.
Yeah, that’s fine because it’s a medical necessity.
Declawing a cat is like chopping all your fingers and toes off at the last knuckle. It’s something you better have a damn good reason for, and “so it won’t scratch the furniture” isn’t one.
My grandmother was the first woman allowed into the veterinary program at Cornell. She would be horrified by all the animal cruelty based in ignorance that goes on today, not to mention the over breeding
Weirdly enough, I had the opposite reaction. I LOVED being around sick or injured things as a kid, because it was this fascinating little glimpse into how the body worked. Unfortunately this does not lead to good bedside manner, so I’m also not a doctor. I became a clinical researcher instead.
“Take it apart and see how it works” is a perfectly fine mindset to have, when you’re talking about mechanical contrivances.
I don’t have the stomach for surgery, so I perform my perturbed science experiments on machines. At least an engine’s family can’t sue you for malpractice if you put something back in the wrong way around!
This is exactly why I’m an engineer. Lots of the sciencey stuff and none of the moral conundrums!
I had a similar realization. My dream growing up was to be a psych professor, I always knew I wanted to study psychology but I don’t have the patience to be a clinician nor the discipline for tedium to be a researcher (taking notes and doing paperwork? Ick!), but I’ve always been drawn to performance and lecturing, I had plenty of classmates who told me I explained things better than the teachers sometimes since I always had a knack for efficiently isolating what specifically isn’t being understood and how to rephrase it for clarity.
So, when I got to college I studied psychology and was a few years into my degree (although not as many credits as my years should have been, I was five years into a four year degree and still had the credits of a Junior, college is a scam) when I learned that most professors only have a couple classes a week and the rest of the time is office hours, paperwork, and research (some schools won’t have as much priority placed on research, but it’s still not enough time actually professing for my taste). I briefly considered going into k-12 teaching, but with my anger issues I wouldn’t last long before I blew up and cussed out a kid (which I understand is a no-no). I briefly intended to change my major to game design planning to publish 3rd party supplements for TTRPGs, but the game design 1 professor was a genuinely terrible teacher who’s horrible practices caused me to lose my temper publicly for the first time since high school and thus I burned all my bridges with the department (seriously, who TF thinks subjecting 101-level students to “the realities of the field” irrespective of their actual plans for employment IN the field is even remotely a good idea, teach the GD fundamentals FIRST, idiot). So I decided to finish out my psych degree while working part time, got a job doing delivery, cut my courses to half time, then had a class that was assigning 8-hours worth of homework every day and had to choose between dropping out and quitting my job. Considering I really liked my job, it paid better than anything I could get with my degree in this terrible hellscape of a job market, and I wasn’t enthused by the idea of piling on more and more debt for the foreseeable future until I could finally finish my degree (I’d probably still be a student now, half a decade later, if I’d made that call), I chose to drop out and start working full time.
The company has been getting progressively worse and worse over time, but I’m not worried about losing my employment any time soon and I’m still paid better than any other job I could get while still having enough free time and money to indulge my hobbies, so it’s safe to say I made the right call. My only regret is that I went to college at all. Granted I doubt I would have been able to handle going directly into employment after high school, emotionally, and the company I work for now didn’t open until a few years after I graduated, but I do wish I had found a way to not put myself in so much debt for a degree that I didn’t finish and would have been worthless even if I had.
I had no idea what I wanted to do. Went into engineering finally because I had the grades for it, I was accepted at a good uni for it, and I didn’t get accepted for any of the architectural programs I applied for (and I only applied for those at the suggestion of my mom because I was good at math and art). Two years in, I HATED it. I was bored; I wasn’t enjoying myself at all; I was okay at it to pull mostly B’s but not good enough to be considered a “good engineer”. Tried to drop it, but my mom guilted me into completing the degree because sunk-cost fallacy. Got a job (eventually), hated it. Did it for 7 years because what else could I do – I couldn’t afford to go back to school for what I finally figured out I wanted, which was psychology. I’ve made peace now, because I discovered there were more aspects to engineering than just design, and I found a position as a contract administrator that actually suited me better. Now I’m a project manager for construction projects, and in a much happier place, mentally. If I could do it all over again, though, knowing what I know now, I probably would’ve gone into psych.
TLDR, don’t let your parents dictate your studies, no matter how much they pressure you.
Dorothy: Thanks Ruth, that was very perceptive.
Ruth: If you ever tell anybody I’m capable of being good at this job then femurs etc.
Ruth manages to give good advice by talking about her own situation.
Ruth’s problem is that she wants to know which is which just so that she can reliably set on the self-sabotage course.
Damn good distinction to figure out.
To Thine Own Self Be TRUE
They can’t tell you what to do when you’ve gone guru.
Damn, this is very deliberately a mirror of their conversation on Halloween.
………… oh.
Link, for those interested:
dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/advice/
Though the relevant quote is at https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/jack-2/
Specifically panel 4.
I think Ruth is bipolar.
Literally, not “oh, she seems so bipolar” the way people say it meaninglessly.
I think she’s actually bipolar; like me.
https://redd.it/11ygw7s
She’s only shown mania on antidepressants, though. That doesn’t make someone bipolar.
Anti-depressants can cause mania in many people with bipolar.
She’s also shown being very irritable, with that changing somewhat with medication.
Notice her specific use of the word mania and depression here:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/jack-2/
She’s also worried about being Jack the Ripper (ie, psychosis).
If she is bipolar, it’s probably bipolar type 2 which is more depressive episodes than mania. And the mania could potentially go unnoticed depending on severity.
I’m not saying she is for sure bipolar; just that; as someone who is bipolar she comes across that way to me.
That’s probably a good omen, right
Great catch. I love literary parallel.
Dorothy breaks the door knob off her door in 5 days.
Sierra wondering how the fuck she’s going to get a fresh change of clothes now.
Joyce getting wall-scaling lessons from Sal so she can enter through the window to get some more laundry to
drydo.…fuck.
…yeah.
. . . Same.
Not when too high or too low… For some of us NDs it can be very hard to get to that Goldilocks zone.
I feel like I should say something, but don’t really know what to say. However, I know you like anime and music so here is a song by an Argentinian band that sings in English and has a Japanese aesthetic. It’s not their best work, but it seems perhaps tangentially related to what you are talking about (maybe). I hope you are doing well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID-g6__6X_w&list=RDLIBTaYT4-I0&index=3
I’m as well as I can be without Ritalin. Been making due, got lots of coding done. Also, thank you, I appreciate this. 🥲
Now to go walk in the rain… to a McDonalds.
For true course correction, I like to get the boundaries to pass each other, so that my spectrum has “too low” on one end, “too high” on the other, and in the middle is “simultaneously too high and too low”.
i’m sure there’s techniques to calm down, but honestly, other than being risky and like gambling or so at a casino while youre hyped up/buzzed, i can’t rly haven’t seen many cases where ppl make a ‘bad’ decision while being euphoric (tho even when i’m excited/amped up i still kinda have my ‘guard up’ /don’t rly make ‘spontaneous’ /spure of the moment decisions)
I don’t personally identify as ND, but I’m bipolar and I am intimately familiar with this feeling
I guess that’s where the “too” comes in. You find a high or low that’s stable enough for you. I still get depressed on my antidepressants but I’m stable enough to not spiral and just handle it
Very affirming. Thanks. 🥲
She should just follow the Ruth method and find a well meaning patsy to damage control the mess after you do whatever.
Don’t mom me! I’m already like my own mom. I’m like two of my own moms! So I got them drunk.
There’s been hints that Dorothy suffers depression.
I’ve heard that smart individuals who overwork themselves often do struggle with that.
Life would be so much easier if quicksaving was a thing. Make a save, see where a path goes, and reload if it doesn’t pan out.
You’d think. But there’s a potential mental trap there, not unlike Two-Face’s issue, where eventually you’d probably find yourself save-scumming every decision, no matter how trivial. Constantly seeking the “optimal” choice, whether one truly exists or not. Until any illusion of “free will” was gone.
Oddly enough, that’s a major plot in X-Men right now. Mister Sinister figured out how to do that, then his “save file” got stolen, and now he’s dealing with… CONSEQUENCES.
Life is Strange is the first thing that comes to mind here, although if I’m being honest Undertale probably handled it better
Rick: “Save your place like in a video game, but in real life. So that way you can go try stuff and then go back to your save point- Yes, Morty, I saw it on Futurama.”
I remember this one episode of a show I watched growing up. Rocket Power.
In it, there was an episode where all 4 main characters got sick. However, Sam, the resident Squid/New Guy, was known for having a lot of sicknesses. So when he got the flu, he was able to get over it easily. The others, who normally stayed healthy were in danger of being sick for much much longer.
I bring this up because Ruth is adept at navigating her own self sabatoge and understanding how ber mood might manipulate certain perceptions.
Dorothy… isn’t.
So sometbing that might be easy enough to set aside for a moment through muscle memory, isn’t really something Dorothy’s had practice with since she’s been fairly confident in herself for a long long time.
Holy shit I remember that episode now! Childhood memory unlock, thanks bruh!!!
It always felt like the whatever doubts she’s had in her head was something along the lines of “Can I do this” which was alot easier to dismiss, but now the doubt in her head is “Should I do this?” Or “Is it right for me to do this?” Which is something she’ll wrestle with a lot more.
The only other time I’ve seen Dorothy think about if there’s a course action that’s right for her to take was when she found out Amazi-girls identity.
This is an excellent observation
Today’s reddit post is nothing much, just some goofy thing about Asher: https://www.reddit.com/r/dumbingofage/comments/11y6eer/dumbing_of_age_headcannon_growing_up_asher_was_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
What is Ruth quoting here?
Dorothy’s advice to her, last Halloween.
Sometimes I feel like its a coin flip
“I give myself very good advice — but I very seldom follow it.” — Alice, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland
Ruth can give pretty good advice – it’s too bad she’s not so good at giving advice to herself but who is?
Many, many people find it easier to give advice than to take it.
It’s easier to spot other people’s flaws than your own. Same for good points. Other people see the things you can’t see in a mirror.
sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective, i remember ppl in relationships in school always asking the single ppl their thoughts on things
Panel 6: Sounds like exactly the mindset that has proven effective at getting into the oval office for years!
…. If anyone needs me I’ll be in the corner curled up in a ball and rocking back and forth.
Difficult skill to figure out. Still trying to work it out myself. Wish I could have learned it when I was going to college but most of my introspective thoughts back then were either “I want to die,” or “Hey, how long have I been thinking ‘I want to die’ for, that’s a scary thing I should probably be looking into, huh?”
honestly i am just super here for seeing Ruth be genuinely really good at her job. that’s some A+ advice right there.
She taking advice Dorothy gave her and giving it back in context. Which Dorothy may have just realized in the last panel.
(See panel 4 of https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/05-this-was-halloween/jack-2/ )
i remember being a teenager and every bad day was solved by an early night. tomorrow would be better. Every sadness or madness could be moved past. And kinda had to be because I didn’t, it turns out, have great emotional regulation models. I was Just Happy I Guess!
in uni I hit an emotional wall and I couldn’t anymore. Things were bad and they were not getting better. I wasn’t Just Happy and nothing worked. But this is just how Everyone Else Is. I was weird in my happy and now I was Normal.
(spoiler alert I was Not Normal in several respects)
This is quite different but also strikes that chord.
Just wanted to say that I think I know what you mean, and it is unreal how much it sucks. It’s so weird to look back at a version of myself that is at once nostalgic and unrecognizable. There’s a grief to it. Who was that kid who never felt like this, and where did they go? Is it wrong to resent them for never being forced to learn skills and resilience that I desperately need right now but feel too battered to build?
It feels hypocritical, somehow, because I was the one people leaned on. The Good Listener. But it’s easier to help someone else untangle the knots in their head than to help yourself. Something about perspective, or an extra pair of hands. When being alright is a personality trait, it feels so frustrating to not be alright.
adulting is hard. some things bother you/last quite a while, and then there are others you just wake up and are suddenly ‘over it’, depending
Shocker, Ruth is the perfect person to understand all this innately and also have no idea what to do about it
Anyone who has been in therapy as much as she has would and still not know the answer…
Now I got to know how painful all this situation is. There’s no solution for this Dorothy’s problem, after all. Like: how could someone so persistent give up a dream?
Her ultimate goal is to help as many people as possible. She doesn’t have to give up her dream necessarily, just find a different path to it. Ruth will hopefully be her telescope, so she can see that new path.
there’s def alternative goals/career she could pursue, like being the ceo of a charity instead or so, or even switching to a medical career to try to cure cancer
I feel it’s more like: what does someone who is incredibly motivated, but focused on a single goal do when they realize that goal was probably never actually what they wanted?
So who is going to tell Dorothy that she doesn’t have to (can’t) decide whether she’ll be president *right now*?
She can’t afford a single slip-up, so therefore must do everything perfectly and tick all the boxes. Because that’s how it works.
/s
Maybe it’s because I’m posting this at 1:45 a.m., or my autism, but I’m not sure I understand what Ruth’s advice in this strip means.
Ruth is not really giving advice (at least, not yet). She’s just describing Dorothy’s mind-set.
A more long-winded version would be: Dorothy has never been into introspection. She has lofty dreams, and she pushes for them, and she has never allowed herself to doubt that she’s following the correct path. Now, though, she’s doubting it all, quite possibly for the first time in her entire life. And because she’s never spent time on introspection, she has no way to know whether or not her doubts are valid.
since you seem to get it, maybe you can help me out: I have no idea how to parse “sort” in this context. Does it just mean “decide”?
More like “tell which is which”.
Thanks.
Like don’t make critical decisions when you’re too depressed or too excited? Gotta admit tho, sometimes that can be really hard if you’re a neurodivergent.
she is repeating what dorothy said to her on halloween. though i’m not sure how much time has passed between her getting the acceptance letter and then turning it down (well even if she didn’t officially write back, i imagine even yale would have some kinda time limit/take it as a refusal if she didn’t respond by next term)
Thanks to everyone who replied. For whatever reason, my brain was having trouble figuring out what Ruth was saying here.
Man Ruth is really good at this counseling thing
It’s almost like it’s her job or something
It’s really unfair.. if male, after you became rich by doubtful means, sexually harassed women, been caught doing drugs, let your rich daddy get you out of military service, you obviously lied and don’t give a shot for democracy and you still get elected first by a political party and then a huge part of the voters.
And here is Dorothy, thinking she cannot afford any mistake in her life bc a woman has to be flawless to get elected.
ngl, while i believe everyone has the right to vote of course, knowing how some teens acted at 18-19, i def would not want a bunch of freshly turned adults to be a huge majority in picking the next president because they easily could’ve been emotional manipulated or brainwashed to support/be ok with someone terrible/propaganda or so (not that there aren’t also 30 year olds that also don’t know any better XP)
I dunno, I don’t think the 20 somethings these days are any more brainwashed than the 45+ crowd. If anything they are probably a fair bit more immunized to it thanks to the internet existing. It may not seem that way at times because obviously the internet has it’s own issues and we highlight them, but in general the best counter to brainwashing is just exposure to conflicting opinions, which is rather easy to come by these days.
Honestly hard to say. I always had the mentality that the younger generation learns off the mistakes of the older generation and improve themselves, but i keep getting proven wrong. Tech feels like a good example here. I’m 38 and work in IT. It makes sense to me that those older than me would be less skilled on average with computers, because they have less exposure to tech. And those younger than me on average would be very used to tech, because they’ve grown up carrying computers around with them everywhere (from laptops to phones to tablets, etc).
Having helped plenty of people younger *and* older than me with their devices (I work University tech support, both students and staff), it’s very clear that there are plenty of people a lot younger than me who are as clueless about tech as those older than me. Most just know enough to know what they need to know to survive and then that’s it. The moment something deviates from that they go straight to being clueless about it.
So yeah, i think your initial statement is the accurate one here. The 20 somethings and the 45’s, on average, are basically on similar levels when it comes to intelligence. It’s just they’ll be a little smarter in some areas, and a little dumber in others.
Those younger than you are plenty used to computers – but not to programming. They’re used to black boxes.
True. But also: if you work in tech support, you are dealing mostly with people who don’t think tech is fun, so they don’t put in the time to learn it all; they just learn enough to coexist with it day-to-day.
You’re an expert, and most people aren’t? I don’t really understand what point you were trying to make, sorry.
Sorry for the confusion. Not my point at all. I’m saying there can be an false assumption that some people are ‘better at computers’ just because they’re younger, and this isn’t necessarily true. Both young people and old people have varying levels of skills and knowledge not tied to their age.
This then tied back into the two previous post’s points, going back to the assumption that younger people are more easier to manipulate than the older generation, and how that isn’t necessarily true either. Both the younger and older populations will have varying ways that can be manipulated and can resist resist manipulation.
Hope that makes more sense.
Yeah, it’s really hard to look around at older people and younger ones and think “Yeah, those kids really are easy to manipulate. Good thing the old ones resist that.”
What’s probably true is that the young kids are more willing to reach for drastic change and the olds are more tied to the status quo – for good or ill in both cases.
Same could be said about older people, or people who are in the workforce, or people who don’t meditate, or men, or women…
what does “a huge majority” mean, like percentagewise.
And then still mostly not get elected.
I’m pretty sure the current turmoil is the opposite, that for Dorothy to have any influence in DC and if she wanted to do the job of being president she would haft to be the biggest piece of shit isntead of a bleeding heart. She’s also afraid she might have been on her way to being that because she didn’t question her motives having one of the highest postions in the country until now.
It also helps to be rich to start with. Or at least “rich”.
And to be willing to run on ramping up fear and hatred – which whatever Dorothy’s faults, I can’t see her being willing to do.
Man, I just want to give both of them a hug and tell them that things are gonna be okay.
I just sincerely hope this interaction does not harm Ruth. I trust she never swallowed the whole “Dorothy is Ms Perfect” thing.
Ruth is immune to dotty’s perfectionism.
At worst, Ruth might get turned on by her slow slide into despair.
At worst? Ruth/Dorothy would inevitably lead us to a glorious Ruth/Amber pairing!!
I’m not sure I follow your reasoning, but I admire your destination
I’ll draw you a map:
Dorothy -> Danny -> Amber
Dorothy -> Walky -> Amber
Dorothy -> Ruth -> ?
What would Ruth’s head look like if she shaved it, like Sinead O’Connor?
With that flat top and severely pointed chin, I’ll wager she’d look like an upside-down dreidel.
I am reminded of when my sister lectured me to follow advice her therapist gave her. But we’ve dealt with the same stress in different ways forever. And therapy is more detective work and improv than scripted solutions to all the problems. Except for CBT.
Hmmm… I don’t think therapists are supposed to give advice, but a shocking number of them wind up doing it anyway.
My therapist gave me homework even. Write down 10 things you enjoy
Poor Dotty. I hope this ends well… somehow. I’d like to see her relax a little and work on being happy.
I just realized Dorothy has the same mentality as Naruto.
This is actually good advice, Ruth (i did not expect there would be anything other than self-deprecation).
It’s extremely hard to take your own feelings into account (you *should* do that!) when you have trouble with how your feelings affect you – e.g. heightened emotional responses like Rejection Sensitivity that often comes with ADHD.
I tend to overgeneralize my feelings: i performed badly in my language class today, felt insecure about it, brain jumped to “I WILL LOSE MY JOB BECAUSE I REALLY SUCK AT LEARNING THIS LANGUAGE (that i actually work in)“. a) if i had performed as well today as i did two weeks ago, my general assessment would have been informed by higher confidence, b) i rationally know i’m not gonna lose my job about it even if i *am* bad at it (which i am probably not).
Sometimes i listen to my lows (or highs, but mostly lows) too much – and sometimes i overcompensate in the other direction, telling myself that there is no reason to be overly emotional about it, and accidentally ignore a feeling that actually needs to tell me something i *should* listen to.
It’s a narrow line.
This last sentence describes way too many key turning points in my life.
For the record, my “course corrections” have not led me to any metaphorical Tahitis.