Shelena

I mean, it is not that creepy. Philosophy underlies science and almost everything is studied in science. I guess the same is the case for other concepts that are just as broad and fundamental. Or maybe it is possible to go from almost any page to almost any other page. I guess that would make sense too.

In the Netherlands, we actually celebrate Sinterklaas (St Nicolas) on december 5th. It is when this guy comes to the houses of children to give them presents, like Santa does in the US, for instance. I even heard people say that Santa was derived from the figure of Sinterklaas, but I am not sure whether it is true.

In the weeks before Sinterklaas comes to the house, children put their shoes near the fireplace (and if they do not have a fireplace usually near the heater). They might sing some special Sinterklaas songs and put a carrot in their shoe for the which horse that Sinterklaas rides. Then during the night Sinterklaas and/or his helper Piet come on through the chimney and put smallngifts in the shoes. There are also a lot of other traditions around the Sinterklaas celebrations and there are cadies and cookies that are only eaten around this time like pepernoten and speculaas.

Sinterklaas has become controversial over the last few years, because according to the stories, he has helpers who are all called 'zwarte Piet' (black Pete). White people playing this character painted their phases brown or black and put on colorful clothing and black curly hair as well as making their lips red and put rings in their ears sometimes. One side of the argument says that they were representing black people or even slaves and basically that this was a case of blackface. The other side of the argument said that Piet was black because he came through the chimney and that this was not blackface. They also say that it does not matter to children whether Piet is black.

The people saying that Piet is racist seem to be winning the discussion. In most of the larger cities, Piet now looks less like a charicature of a black person and more like someone who came through the chimney. In other places they still have the traditional zwarte Piet. There is even some violence in some cases, where the people who think that Piet is a racist charcter will protest against it during the public parts of the celebrations for the children. They then get violently attacked by the people wanting to keep the tradition as it is

Don't drink. Cry. It sounds stupid, bit crying out all the pain might help. Do not run from it. Go through it and cry again if you need to. If you can do so safely, drive and scream in the car. Or break some stuff that you do not need anymore (like plates or something).

I have been through some traumatising stuff and the only thing that helps is not to run, but to go through it. I promise you, there will be a peak in pain and then it will reduce and the next peak will be less severe. This will go on and the pain will become less and less. As long as you keep breathing, you can handle it.

Save your sister, she is not okay. You are not an inferior person, there is nothing inherently wrong with you. You are not responsible for everything. Your boundaries matter. Your feelings matter. You will be okay.

Even if you are against abortion and feel your opinion is so important you need to force it upon others, it makes no sense to block this medication. There are many medical reasons for needing it. I needed it twice myself because I was pregnant, but the pregnancy was not vital and my body did not miscarry on its own. I would love to have children, but in those cases there was no unborn life to protect as it would have never become a baby. I was very happy to have access to this medication, because being pregnant for months while wanting a baby and knowing that you will not have a baby is very difficult and confusing psychologically. Taking the medication was difficult as well, but in the end I was glad I did.

(I am not against abortion, I just cannot see why it would be logical to ban this medication even if you are.)

Apparently, it is not true

I do not think you are ugly. You just look a bit unhappy. I hope that you can find ways to feel better about yourself.

Stomme Wilders.

I have a mother who used to act like she hated me a significant amount of time until a few years ago. I have a father who does not think I am that important. I used to think both of my parents hate me, or did not love me at least. I now have a more nuanced view of that. They are just people who are very damaged and almost handicapped in certain aspects. In any case, I think I might be able to understand your situation at least a little bit.

For me the most difficult part was not deciding whether to keep in touch with them or not. I mean, that is a very difficult decision and if your father is still hurting you, you should protect yourself. However, for me the most difficult thing is dealing with the damage.

I am not sure if this damaged you in the same way it damaged me. But if it did, I want to tell you that it is not your fault. Your father acting like he hates you is not because of anything you did and certainly not because of who you are. It is because of who he is.

A lot of children who are not loved or who are even hated by their parents think it is their fault. They think something is wrong with them and they deserve it. I mean, that makes sense, right? If it is your fault, then at least the world still is a fair place. And if something happens to a bad person you do not need to be compassionate, so you do not have to deal with any pain you are too little to be able to deal with. Also, you depend on your parents, so you cannot get too mad at them or leave. From the logic of a child, this makes sense.

And it works, it helps you survive. But once you get older, you keep thinking in the same way. You have a very low opinion of yourself and feel like there is something wrong with you or as if you are worthless. And to keep living in this way is familiar, you know you can survive that. You do not know whether you can survive the pain you suppressed all those years. Or it might still be so suppressed that you cannot even feel it. Until one day, it becomes too much and you start thinking that you might want a different life. You might not just want to survive, but actually live.

You do not discuss your mother. If you have a mother that was able to show you love, that might have had a protective effect. I hope so. But if you recognise this story in any way at all. I think it is import for you to know that it is not about accepting that your father hates you. It is about accepting that you are someone that did not deserve this. And that is very painful, but going through the pain of it, is the only way not to feel that anymore. It will free you from it and enable you to live more than survive.

It is a very difficult thing to do. I myself have not yet been able to go through the pain fully. It often feels too overwhelming, too much. However, after each small step I make, I already feel a little bit more free. I really think this is the way to cope with it. At least for me. It might help you as well maybe if you have similar feelings.

Edit to say that therapy can help a lot with this process. Others have said this as well, but I agree with them.

No, not at all. It made things worse. I really think it is very good that many people benefit from exercise. However, it can in some cases also harm your mental health. I think it is important for people to know this. The benefits of exercise are so well known, that the people who it is harmful for often are pressured into exercising anyway and made to feel like a failure if it does not benefit them. It took me a long time and a lot of pain to find this out. I want to tell my story in case someone is in the same boat as me.

Years ago I was feeling so bad I could not get out of bed for a couple of months. The psychologist I was seeing kept pressuring me to exercise. So, I tried it and I hated it. I really had a lot of trouble even doing the smallest things, like making food for myself or go to the supermarket. It all seemed like an impossible task. Now I had to spend the little energy I had to regulate myself to go to the gym or to run.

When I was exercising, it felt like genuine torture. I just hated every second. Afterwards, I would just feel extra tired and very sad about the pain Inhad been in and anxious about having to go again next time.

I was too timid to really stand up for myself and I did not want to fail at yet another thing. I thought it was just my fault and I just was too lazy and should be harder on myself. So, I tried to keep going, even though I could not sleep the night before and I went there crying. When I said something about it, the psychologist kept pressuring me to do it like it was some magic fix for everything. I just needed to do it often enough.

On my way to the gym, I started to wish more and more that I would be in an accident and get wounded so I did not have to go anymore. One time, on my way to the gym, I tripped and fell. I had a big bruise on my knee, but it was not bad enough to not have to exercise anymore. So, I sat on my knee on the bruise the whole night in the hope that it would get worse. It hurt, but it was not nearly as bad as exercising. When I told my psychologist she said that she could not help me if I self-harmed and I should go somewhere else. However, I was not self-harming to harm myself. I was actually protecting myself against something that was bad for me. I could not explain that at the time.

Years later, I went to a psychosomatic physiotherapist. In the years in between, I got the advise to exercise for my mental health numerous times. Each time I tried it, I failed. No matter how much I tried, it keep feeling like torture, my mood got worse and physically I did not improve at all. I always kept thinking that it was my fault and just not trying hard enough.

So, when I went to the new physiotherapist, I started out with telling him that I knew I should exercise and that I was stupid foe not doing so. He immediately stopped me and told me I should not exercise at all. He explained to me that when you exercise, your stress levels go up temporarily and then they go down and usually lower than they were before you started exercising. That is why most people benefit from stress reduction after exercise.

However, in my case, my stress levels were extremely high, all the time. They were so high that if I started to exercise, they would be pushed up above the maximum that my body was able to handle (he drew a chart where the line hit the top of the chart). So, for my body, exercise did not feel like a temporary increase in stress that would go down after a while, it felt like an extreme emergency situation that it could not adapt to. This would further disregulate my stress system. That is why it felt like torture, and why my mood got worse and why I did not have any physical improvement from exercise.

He told me moving was good to calm my nervous system. So, slow walking in the forest and things like that. And just quit as soon as I did not feel like it, or it gave me stress and just try some other time when I felt like it again. And that worked like a charm. I walk now for 4 to 6 hours a week and it calms me down. I do not have to push myself. I just feel like doing it and if I don't, I just won't go.

So, the point is that exercise can be great to help with stress, if your stress is maybe at 70% or 80%. However, if your stress level is consistently at 95% then it is harmful and you should not do it. (Mindfulness probably will not help either in that case btw.) If exercise keeps feeling like torture and it does not help you, do not feel like a failure and keep torturing yourself. It is not your fault if it does not work for you! Go to a psychosomatic therapist instead that has expertise in stress management. They might be able to help you.

I dreamt about my phone. I sometimes suffer from false awakenings (thinking you have woken up, bit you are still dreaming). So, I thought that I had woken up and everything looked like normal. Then I got my phone to check the time and instead of the time, there was a weird cube swirling around on my phone. So, then I knew I was still dreaming.

Then I wanted to wake up, but I couldn't, so I panicked and it became a nightmare where I suddenly saw a ghost in my room that was floating around with her head in a very unnatural position. Then she started screaming and I woke up. (But this is not the important part, the important part is that there was a phone in my dream.)

So, yeah, they picked the wrong person for the job. He is really good at chest thumping. He is an opportunist who adapts his beliefs to what works best to supports his career. In the Netherlands, he is known for trying to postpone measures to protect nature to keep the farmers voting for him, amongst others.

Me too. Someone needs to explain

I think the threat of AGI is much, much lower than that of climate change. It is still debated under scholars whether AGI actually will happen (in the nearby future) and if it does, whether it will actually be a threat to humanity. On the other hand, we are sure that climate change will be a threat to humanity and it is already happening.

I think the main issue with AI on te short term is that humanity will not benefit from it, only large businesses and the already wealthy. While at the same time, people are manipulated at a large scale by these same algorithms (e.g., on social media) to make money for these large businesses or to create societal discord for parties benefitting from that.

I think instilling fears of AGI in the public distracts from that and reduces the chances that this technology will be available to the larger public as these fears might lead to strict regulations and only having a few powerful parties having access to it.

So, don't fear AGI. Fear climate change. Also, be very critical of who has the power over current AI systems and how they are being used.

I actually agree with this. This technology should be open. I know that there are arguments to keep it closed, like it could be misused, etc. However, I think that all the scary stories about AI are also a way to keep attention away from the fact that if you have a monopoly on it, you have enormous power. This power will grow when the tech is used more and more. If all this power is in the hands of a commercial business (even though they say they aren't), then you know AI is going to be misused to gain money. We do not have clear insight in what they are doing and we have no reason to trust them.

You also know that bad actors, like dictatorial governments will eventually get or develop the technology themselves. So, keeping it closed is not a good way to protect it from that happening. At the same time, you are also keeping it from researchers who could investigate how to use and develop it further to be used responsibly and to the benefit of humanity.

Also, they relied on data generated by people in society who never got any payment or anything for that. So, it is immoral to not share the results with that same people in society openly and instead keeping it closed. I know they used some of my papers. However, I am not allowed to study their model. Seems unfair.

The dangers of AI should be kept at bay using regulation and enforcement by democratically chosen governments, not by commercial businesses or other non-democratic organisations.

Just want to say good luck with the surgery!

Thanks! Was looking for something more privacy focused. I had not found this one.

I can definitely recommend getting a Fairphone. I quite happy with my Fairphone 4. Bloatware is limited to Google stuff and they even give instructions how to easily install a custom ROM (have not tried that yet though).

The specs are not great, but good enough for me. But the main advantage for me is that it does not break that easily. I drop my phone all the time. My Samsung phones and Pixel phone I have broken within the first few weeks. Usually I dropped it and the screen cracked, even with a protected case.

I have had this phone for a lot longer now (maybe years by now) and I dropped it like a 1000 times and it is still fine. The screen has not cracked, it still works. Only the side is a little chipped. I don't even use a protective case. And even if it breaks, I can just buy the broken component from their website and easily replace myself using normal tools. So that is really nice.

Maybe we can have a fact-check community. People could post there if they find fake news or they could request fact-checks of information by others. It should be a community with strict rules on referring to sources, creating valid arguments, etc. and content should only be banned if it does not adhere to these rules.

A bit similar to what happens in scientific research. I will reject a paper if there are issues with its methods. I will not reject it based on its conclusions if the methods are fine. I think this works in academia, why wouldn't it work with the right moderators here? There are still a lot of people who value truth above all else and in this way, they would have a space here.

I think that most people on earth are good people, still. Most of them are not invading countries and hurting others, they are just trying to live their lifes and help others. Some of the people that commited the horrible acts are misguided or have been hurt themselves to the point of madness. Which does not make it okay. Far from it. They are dangerous and should be stopped. But it also does not make them purely evil.

No human should be viewed as an animal, even if they have done the most atrocious things, which Hamas has. This is not to reduce or deny the severity of what they and the Russian government has done or to deny the suffering they have caused. Not at all.

But they are the ones viewing other as less than human, as animals. This is what makes them able to hurt others like this. And while it is very understandable that our own pain and empathy with those that are hurt makes us want to view them as animals, so we can hurt them back, I do not think it is the way to go. I think it is far more powerful to stop them while keeping our humanity. The more we do that, the more we show that we cannot be broken by them, no matter what they do.

I will follow the top right because he is cute and I want to cuddle him. Are we enemies now?

That are many very traumatising things you have been through. I admire your strength and ability to survive this. However, I wish you had a live where you did not need to be that strong.

Yes, my first psychologist really was terrible. She really made things worse. She just always made me feel like I just should try harder and like a failure. That was the opposite of what I needed.

I was actually much too harsh on myself. I am trying tor learn to be more kind to myself and to take how I feel seriously. It is difficult if you are not used to it, but that helps me really well. My physiotherapist keeps telling me that I only have to do things I want. This sounds like a very basic thing, but it is quite new to me to ask myself "do I want this?" instead of just pushing myself because I think I should.

I am glad exercise works fine you. I think it works for most people. However, I have never in my life felt good after exercise. So, I think that is the difference.

If it helps for you, definitely start doing it again. Maybe you can be kind to yourself too and see how you can make your life easier in another way to have more room mentally to get yourself to start.

Thanks! Did not recognise it. :-)

This one seems very sad. I hope you are okay.

Not sure whether this is useful to you, but I recognise a lot of what you are saying. For example, the being able to do a job until the newness wears off and it gets boring and the huge difficulty with doing household tasks, etc.

I was diagnosed with CPTSD en intellectual giftedness and this explains my symptoms. I do not seem to have ADHD as I get extra active if I take ADHD medication. Most intellectual gifted people do not believe that they are intellectually gifted. I am still sceptical about whether I am, because I feel far too dumb. So, even if you do not feel gifted, it might still be something to check out if you want.

No being obese is not healthy. It is clearly associated with many health risks. I have no idea why you would infer that I would think it is healthy from what I have said. Obesity is clearly a problem. However, to solve it, I think we should look at the mechanisms behind it and try to understand it. So, that is what I am trying to do.

Saying that something is "just fat people bullshit" is also not a good argument. Maybe we can leave the emotions and especially the anger out of it and just look at the research. You seem angry and I have no idea what I have done to you to make you angry. I just tried to discuss some research on this subject.

I did read the second half, but I was also thinking about other stuff by then. So my eyes read it, but it never made it to my mind. Not clear whether I have ADD, though.

I think Fairphone is pretty repairable. It is also quite durable. I have had it for years now and dropped it very often, but it hasn't broken yet.

No, it is not junk science. Research about it is published in many serious scientific journals. Just check out Scopus or something. You cannot say that it is junk science just because you do not like the results.

You also seem to not understand it. It does not say that you can escape the law of physics. It also does not say that in my explanation. It says that you energy expenditure goes down if you get below the setpoint. So, eating less becomes less effective. At the same time, you appetite will go up. This makes it very difficult to maintain the weight loss and this is why many people fail to keep the weight off in the long term.

Criticism of any research is possible, of course. However, just saying it is junk and misrepresenting what the theory actually says are not good arguments.

If you disagree, then what is your explanation of why most obese people tend to not keep more than 10% weight off over time without medication or surgery? What scientific evidence is there for that? I would be very interested in hearing about alternative research on this topic.

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I do not want my data to be monetised at all and I try to limit my use of services that do monetise my data as much as possible. This means that I try to not use Google products, for example.

In some cases, I feel forced to use it because the consequences of doing so are too high. For example, almost all my friends and family use WhatsApp. If I do not use it, I will be harder for hem to communicate with and I would miss out on a lot of stuff which happens in groups. I am not sure to what extent WhatsApp uses my data, but it is part of Meta and I do not trust Meta at all. However, in this case, access to my friends and family is more important to me. Although I am quite angry about it and I will get out immediately once there is a law that obligates messaging apps to be able to communicate with each other.

I would share my data for other uses, if it is in the interest of society. For example, I would share it for some scientific research.

I can understand that it feels that this is the maximum you can cope with. But as long as you keep breathing, you still exist and you can cope. I can promise you that if you go through it instead of around it, it will get better. I cannot promise you exactly when or how high the peaks will be, but I can promise you that as long as you keep breathing you can cope.

My little sister died from anorexia, I had a miscarriage, my parents emotionally neglected and emotionally abused me as a child and several other traumatising stuff happened. I know pain. I do not underestimate yours. But this is how I dealt with it and I think it will help you too.

I sincerely feel for you. But the pain has a function. You need it to process and you need to feel it to eventually be able to make a new and happy life for yourself. Just keep breathing and go through the waves. I know you can do it.

When you are overweight, it is not a case of just eating less. Eating less has very different physical and psychological effects for someone who is overweight than for someone who is not.

If you are interested in learning something about this, you can check out the setpoint theory of body weight. In short, the body has a setpoint for which weight it should be. If you are overweight, this setpoint is at a higher weight than if you are not. If your weight gets below the setpoint, your metabolism will slow down and your appetite will go up and the body starts to try and do everything to go back to this higher weight. That is why most people are not able to lose more than 10% of their weight in the long term. Often, when they gain the weight back, they gain back even more than they lost and the setpoint might even go up further. It is a neverending struggle for most people. Medication like Ozempic affect this mechanism so it becomes possible to lose weight.

If you want, you can find a lot of scientific papers about this. There is quite a lot of research on this and the setpoint theory is well accepted within the medical field specialised in dealing with weight problems, I believe.

In addition, Ozempic is not only a fat loss medicine. It is also used by people with diabetes to lower their glucose.

The oldest church was built around 1200, on the remains of an older church from the 7th century and you can go below ground to view those. We also have some Roman ruins from a castellum build around the year 47 you can also go and view.

Edit: The castellum is gone, but there are just some walls and stones.

Not just corporate censorship, also all the other stuff they were doing. I do not want to be used and manipulated and made addicted just so some business can make a little more money.

The fat storage cells definitely play a role as well. One of the ways in which the mechanism I discussed works is via leptin, as leptons regulate energy expenditure. Leptin is primarily produced by adipocytes. So, I believe that is where the connection is. This paper says some interesting stuff about it: https://doi.org/10.1242/dmm.008698.

The issue that I was discussing is that most people do not succeed with keeping the weight off. Most obese people do not manage to lose significant weight in the long term as they tend to regain the weight. We need to look at why that is to solve it. The research on setpoints offers at least a partial explanation. However, if you know about research that further explains this, I would be very interested. (Some sources if you are interested: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17469900/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11684524/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19175510/)

I am not an AI. I am not sure how to prove that, but I am not. I am a scientific researcher, but in another field than the medical field. Maybe my scientific background shows in the way I communicate? Also, English is not my native language, so that might be why I sound different as well.

The reason I checked out so much research on obesity (as well as on being underweight) is that many of my family members suffer from eating disorders. I lost my little sister to anorexia a couple of years ago and my mother had it. However, some of my family members are obese as well, also due to eating disorders. I think trying to understand why people eat in a certain way and to help them instead of just judging them, might change things. And for me, scientific work and data is the best way to understand things. Maybe that gives you a bit of understanding where I am coming from and why I am interested in this subject.

If something is the result of research, it cannot just be called bullshit and set aside. It is not just another opinion that you can just decide to disagree with, considering the care that usually has been taken to reduce bias and ensure validity. Of course, research can be wrong and it is important to have a scientific debate. However, such a debate should be based on clear reasoning and arguments and other research results.

I was not pitying you. I was being compassionate. There is a difference between the two. I tried to be kind and understanding. That's all.

Edit: I also wanted to mention that the study I linked refers to a study on women who were pregnant during the famine in WWII in the Netherlands. Maybe that is what you meant.

I had something similar, also when I had a fever. A little boy with clothes as if he was from the 20s was standing near my bed and looking at me. Really strange. I was not scared either.