There are times that I need to brake on some topics The chemo has me feeling almost sea sick. I still have some humor, life experience and every day stuff.
So unless I fall into the well of yo momma memes, this is the last post on this subject.. Steal them as I need to clear cloud storage space. They are high on my list to remove for the space in my cloud storage
I lose more readers on this category than any other I post about. Try to get that it’s a joke and doesn’t represent who I am, other than I thought some were perfect.
It used to be getting a fast car or a bigger house. The signs are always there. When you make money, you spend it just as easily.
Some want to be a Rocket Builder as a side job and is pulling off stuff NASA would only now be in planning meetings for.
Other, with a Musk type mood and wanting to have a dick measuring contest to see who makes that better rocket.
In this case, it’s one to Musk just for not doing this now. I know some or his blew up in the past, but this race to the moon is a new (actual) line of news and gets going before I’m gone.
Bezos can just blow up many millions of rocket pieces for nothing and build another one. That is called F/U Money, when there ain’t nothing left to spend it on.
Anywho: Here’s and Excerpt:
OAN Staff Lillian Mann 2:10 PM – Friday, May 29, 2026
Jeff Bezos’s “Blue Origin” rocket erupted in a massive explosion during a launchpad test after a hot-fire test went wrong, sending smoke flames and debris soaring miles into the sky.
Nearby homes shook as a bright orange plume erupted above the launch pad, billowing into the night sky over Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Thursday.
Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin, was conducting a routine prelaunch static fire test when the vehicle exploded.
The heavy-lift New Glenn rocket was reportedly being prepared for its fourth overall flight in early June, which was scheduled to deploy a batch of 48 Amazon Project Kuiper low Earth orbit (LEO) internet satellites.
An un-crewed Blue Origin New Glenn rocket exploded on a Florida launchpad during a test, erupting into a massive fireball.
“All personnel are accounted for and safe,” Bezos said on X. “It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it. Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it.”
The satellites are designed to compete with billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink network — by providing high-speed, space-based internet service to users around the world, according to Reuters.
The 322-foot-tall New Glenn rocket has launched three times previously and is classified as a heavy-lift launch vehicle, capable of carrying massive payloads typically ranging between 20 and 50 metric tons, as Blue Origin aims to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets.
All personnel are accounted for and safe. It’s too early to know the root cause but we’re already working to find it. Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying. It’s worth it. — Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 29, 2026
I spent most of my life prior to the Internet. I worked in the tech industry so I was able to get on it earlier than most, but that didn’t change my regular life.
I never had to worry about social media either. You could just not Answer the phone, or call someone back. When you broke up, it was over.
I could get to anywhere I wanted with a piece of paper with instructions on it, and a (dime)/quarter to call a home phone since we didn’t have cell phones. All my friends could get there too, and we all got there on time, and at the same time. 
That means I also write in cursive, and can drive stick. The first car I had was so old I had to learn how to double clutch to downshift.
We learned to read the weather by observing the wind, the sun, the title patterns, and observe nature.
I had to look up stuff in an encyclopedia, or find a book using the card catalogue system to write term papers.
So if they drop EMP, I’ll be just fine. As for Gen X, why, Z, millennials, and the rest of the people after boomers, they’re effed.
The post-conversation spiral happens when you leave a social interaction and can’t stop overthinking whether you totally screwed it up.
My brain was doing it again.
I’d had a lovely time getting to know a potential new friend. We had a lot in common. We were both single moms, both about the same age, and both working in mental health careers. She got my references. She seemed to understand my life. And the dinner meetup was, well, fun.
So why was my brain picking apart every little thing I had said and done?
You idiot. I can’t believe you said that.
Why did I share that story? Did I trauma dump?
She said she wanted to hang out again… but she was probably just being polite.
Even though I make my living writing about introversion, social anxiety, and socializing, I had fallen headlong into a common pitfall: the dreaded post-conversation spiral.
What Is the Post-Conversation Spiral?
You might think the social anxiety problem ends when the conversation ends. But for a lot of people, that’s when the second half begins: the mental replay, the shame, the “evidence gathering,” and the imagined judgment.
Psychologists call this post-event rumination or post-event processing. It’s when you replay a social situation in your mind, focusing on what you think you did wrong. Instead of remembering the interaction as a whole, your mind zooms in on a sentence you wish you had phrased differently, a pause that felt too long, or a facial expression you couldn’t quite interpret.
Research has found that the more socially anxious someone is, the more likely they are to ruminate after a social event. In other words, the post-conversation spiral is not just a bad habit or a personal weakness. It’s a real part of the social anxiety cycle.
And unfortunately, it makes anxiety worse.
Why Your Brain Does This
Social anxiety makes you focus on yourself. Instead of simply being present and enjoying another person’s company, part of your attention turns inward.
Then, when you replay the conversation through the lens of fear, you’re not reviewing it neutrally. You’re acting like a detective searching for clues that confirm your anxiety while overlooking the evidence that everything went fine. A small awkward moment starts to feel like proof that the whole interaction went terribly.
This is one reason the spiral feels so convincing. It seems like you’re gathering facts, but really, you’re gathering anxious interpretations.
And even if you would never be diagnosed with an official social anxiety disorder, you may still know the feeling of coming home from an otherwise pleasant interaction and suddenly wondering whether you totally screwed it all up.
Why ‘Just Stop Thinking About It’ Doesn’t Work
If you’ve ever tried to force yourself to stop replaying a conversation, you already know that doesn’t work. Sometimes the harder you try not to think about something, the louder it becomes. You tell yourself, “Stop thinking about that weird thing you said,” and now the weird thing you said is the only thing available for your brain to think about.
A better approach is not to fight the anxious thoughts, but to change how you respond to them.
The goal is not to convince yourself that every conversation went perfectly. That would be unrealistic, and your brain probably wouldn’t believe it anyway. The goal is to become a little more balanced and a little less self-punishing.
How to Stop the Post-Conversation Spiral
Here are six science-backed things that can help:
1. Name what’s happening.
The first step is to recognize the spiral for what it is. You might say to yourself, “This is post-event rumination,” or, “My brain is replaying the conversation because I feel socially anxious right now.”
That creates some distance. Instead of treating every thought as a proven fact, you take a step back and begin to see it as part of an anxiety pattern.
There’s a difference between “She thought I was weird” and “I’m having the thought that she thought I was weird.” The second version does not make the worry completely disappear, but it does give you more room to question it.
2. Pinpoint the specific moment you’re stuck on.
Ask yourself: What moment keeps coming back to me? Once you identify the specific worry, it becomes easier to examine.
“The whole night was terrible” is hard to work with. “I’m worried I talked too much about my divorce” is something you can actually think through.
3. Ask what evidence you actually have.
This is where cognitive restructuring can help. Cognitive restructuring is a technique often used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that helps you examine whether your thoughts are accurate, exaggerated, or incomplete.
Ask yourself:
What evidence do I have that my worry is true?
What evidence do I have that it might not be true?
Is there another possible explanation?
What would I think if a friend told me they had done the same thing?
For example, maybe your new friend got quiet after you told a personal story about your divorce. Your anxious brain decides, “She was uncomfortable and now she regrets meeting me.”
But there are other possibilities. Maybe she was thinking about what you said. Maybe she related to it. Maybe she was tired. Maybe she didn’t know how to respond in the moment. Maybe the pause felt much longer to you than it did to her.
The point is not to force a positive interpretation. The point is to stop treating the most painful interpretation as the only one.
4. Check your expectations.
If you’re socially anxious, you probably hold yourself to a standard you would never apply to anyone else. You expect yourself to be warm, interesting, funny, appropriate, relaxed, responsive, emotionally available, and perfectly articulate all at once. No awkward pauses, no clumsy wording, and no signs of nervousness.
People say odd things. They interrupt without meaning to. They tell stories that don’t land exactly the way they hoped.
A more realistic standard might sound like:
Did I show up?
Was I kind?
Did I listen?
Did I make an effort to connect?
Did the other person seem comfortable overall?
If the answer is mostly yes, the conversation does not need to be put on trial.
5. Make a plan only if a plan is needed.
Sometimes rumination is trying to point you toward something useful. Maybe you want to send a simple text saying, “I had a nice time tonight.” Maybe you genuinely said something that came out wrong and you want to clarify it. In those cases, take one concrete action.
But notice the difference between action and rumination. Action sounds like, “I’ll text her and say I enjoyed dinner.” Rumination sounds like, “What if she thought I was desperate when I said we should hang out again, and maybe I should wait three days, but what if waiting three days seems cold, and what if she only said yes because she felt sorry for me?”
When there is something to do, do it. When there is nothing to do, the task is learning to sit with the uncertainty without feeding it.
6. Use mindfulness as a way to return to your life.
Mindfulness does not mean you have to become perfectly calm. It can be as simple as noticing the replay and gently returning to what is happening right now.
Imagine the rumination as background noise. It can be there without getting all of your attention. You can be washing dishes and notice, “There’s that thought again.” You can be reading in bed and notice, “My brain is replaying dinner again.”
Then bring your attention back to the dish, the book, the room you’re in, or the next small thing you need to do.
Let the Conversation Be Good Enough
I’m trying to remind myself that maybe I did say something imperfectly at dinner. Maybe there was a moment or two that felt awkward. Maybe I could have asked a better question or not overexplained so much.
But maybe that’s also just what happens when two humans are getting to know each other.
The post-conversation spiral wants us to believe we have to perform perfectly in order for someone to like us. We must never be awkward, never overshare, never be too quiet, and never say the wrong thing.
But real relationships don’t work that way. People usually don’t decide whether they like you based on one sentence or one clumsy moment.
So the next time your brain starts obsessively replaying a conversation, you don’t have to fight it. You also don’t have to believe everything it says. Pause and ask, “Am I reflecting, or am I ruminating?”
I’ll put a portion of the article right below this with a full link if you care to read.
Marvel was great because it was good guys beating the bad guys. It wasn’t a dissertation on how to be woke, queer, tranny or any other thing but a hero.
They got into a situation that seemed unwinnable and create a solution to overcome the evil of the world or universe and win.
It started out with defeating the Nazi’s. Who doesn’t like that story? The real heroes were men who overcame. That is what life is about, not seeing how woke you can be.
The audience were a bunch of geeky white guys in their parents basements believing they could be Ironman or Captain America, not BLM, flaming fags, and for sure they know there is no girl who is going to kick ass on a bad guy. It is fantasy where you imagine you are saving the world, not trying to make it gay. This is just a different them on the Bud Light story
Now, the story:
(ZeroHedge)—The saga of woke comics is the saga of woke America. Much like video games, comics and superhero movies were ignored by conservative movements as “meaningless kids stuff” until recently, which is part of the reason why those industries were so easily invaded by leftists and used to indoctrinate millions of children and teens a decade ago.
Culture is more important than politics. This is obvious. It’s a fact that leftists have understood for generations and one that conservatives have foolishly dismissed. Only in the past few years has there been a shift; at least, the progressive rampage through America’s various media institutions has been stalled and slightly reversed.
But, the most captured platforms are not going to change anytime soon, even in the face of financial decline and mass layoffs.
Disney and Marvel have recently announced a shake-up of the comics division, with over a thousand layoffs this year (after moderate layoffs over the past few years), and new executive leadership. Far-left DEI advocate Dan Buckley is on the way out. This change is being presented as a retirement, though some skeptics argue he is being forced out as part of the company’s restructuring.
Buckley replacement is not much better, however. TV Chief Brad Winderbaum is taking over as Marvel President and his track record on Marvel TV series includes some of the biggest woke failures in streaming history – Ms. Marvel (Muslim Pakistani representation), She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (feminist/meta take, which he defends as a strong performer despite critical failure), Ironheart (feminism and BLM propaganda), Echo, Agatha All Along, Wonder Man (prominent LGBT elements).
Marvel Comics, a subsidiary of Disney, has been at the forefront of far-left propaganda in content for many years, and their woke concepts are usually ported directly into Disney’s movies and streaming series. Everything from gay and trans X-Men to black Spider-Man, to female gender swaps of popular male characters have become the norm. And, books sales have flatlined in response.
Don’t get me started on Darwin vs Creationism. These guys don’t even know who is alive or extinct. It’s why I have problems with The Origin of the Species being believable
Two marsupial species scientists believed had vanished more than 6,000 years ago have been discovered alive in the remote rainforests of Western New Guinea.
The discovery was detailed in studies published in Records of the Australian Museum, according to a March 6 press release from the museum obtained by PEOPLE. Researchers identified living pygmy long-fingered possums (Dactylonax kambuayai) and the ring-tailed glider (Tous ayamaruensis) in the rainforests on the Vogelkop Peninsula of New Guinea. The animals are now considered Lazarus species, or part of the Lazarus taxon, a group of animals that have been found living after they were thought extinct and previously known only from fossils.
“The discovery of one Lazarus taxon, even if thought to have become extinct recently, is an exceptional discovery,” said lead researcher Professor Tim Flannery, an Australian Museum Distinguished Visiting Fellow. “The discovery of two species, thought to have been extinct for thousands of years, is remarkable.”
The newly released novel, Yesteryear, by Caro Claire Burke, features a tradwife who gets transported back to the 19th century to live a truly trad life. Deeply humbled by her experience, the tradwife desires to return to the present day, replete with the luxuries afforded to her by the feminists she disdains. Already a New York Times bestseller, the novel is set to be adapted for film by Anne Hathaway.
It takes little imagination to anticipate how the film adaptation will go: Much like the dystopian vision of The Handmaid’s Tale, it will amount to a scolding for those lacking gratitude for feminism. The implicit message is exactly what feminists have always insisted: conservative women who embrace domesticity are either frauds, victims, or too dim to know the difference.
I’ve been writing about feminism for more than a decade. The main opposition is almost always the same: tedious clichés and skimpy narratives. I’m told that I want women to be subjected to vile men with no way to escape or that I don’t think women should work or vote. And then, there is some effort to remind me how I have personally benefited from feminism — usually because of my doctorate, or public voice. These tired arguments, gracing comment boxes, social media, and a wide array of publications, are repetitive, unthinking, self-righteous.
Few realize that these exhausted sound bites were established decades ago to protect feminism from criticism. Media, academia, and vocal influencers pushed these talking points deeply into the culture. They’ve become so entrenched that they’ve scarcely needed adjusting from outside pressure and remain so dominant that Hollywood can bank on them. This novel and soon-to-be-movie will follow the same playbook.
What is not generally grasped is that, despite its self-assured bravado, feminism is actually a fragile ideology. Because it is not based on a solid foundation of truth, it can only survive through power, so it relies on perception, PR, and political force. In the face of decades of its corrosive effects, it can’t draw from scientific studies or even principled arguments to defend itself. All it has is a broad defensive perimeter of clichés and a tidy narrative of protection. Western women and men have been unwittingly supplying it for decades, allowing feminism to expand unchecked.
The effect has been that most people genuinely believe they are protecting something good, buying into the largely fictional narrative that feminism “is just about helping women.” Few realize its connection to the havoc now on display in the culture.
What Is Feminism?
In its simplest form, feminism is the belief in two things: Men are contemptible, and women should be just like them.
This definition isn’t a one-off found in some obscure, unknown feminist. Rather, it can be seen in the work of every major feminist leader for the last 200 years: Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Kate Millett, and Gloria Steinem. What is their biggest enemy? The patriarchy. And what do they want? To have the power they believe the patriarchy has.
These two ideas — men are contemptible, and women should be just like them — have been cemented together to form the bedrock of western women’s views on sex and marriage, resulting in highly destructive consequences: an ever-widening gap between men and women and steep decline in marriages, women’s battle with their fertility and bodies, increased abortions, the birth dearth, the push for same-sex marriage, surrogacy, gender fluidity and the trans movement, and the rise of anxiety and depression.
Between 5 different doctors appointments, 2 procedures under anesthesia and so many blood draws that they used all my veins on both arms, I gathered these for those who care.
Profiles of Valor: Armed Forces Day – I always thank anyone in uniform or that has a hat from a previous war (especially Viet Nam) for their services. I include the Police, firemen, EMS, ICE, and anyone who thanklessly helps the public, especially liberals who hate them (and don’t know why, other than they were told to)
Honda reported its first annual loss since becoming a publicly listed company in 1957. The $2.7B drop comes months after the Japanese carmaker scaled back its electric vehicle plans in the US. (See the scrapped models.) – no free government handout, no one buys them. Gas price goes up, people buy Hemi’s
(Note: this is an update. Will B. Done pointed out that the links didn’t work, so I fixed them so you can click and enjoy)
I’ve written this blog since August of 2005. It was originally meant for my job in analyst relations, but took a turn when I retired in 2011. It’s morphed into any number of things from humor, sarcasm, anti-Covid Jab and my ramblings on life.
I start Chemotherapy next week, so it’s going to slow down considerably, although I’ll post from time to time. I’ve scheduled some posts so it will look like I’m continuing as I suffer through the poison they will be putting in me. You’ll read something every day this week, but I’m not collecting headlines. I hope to be back, I just know I won’t have any energy
I want to say that I’ve enjoyed the 10’s of thousands of comments, and different groups of readers.
I mostly wrote it as it is my favorite form of communication. If you read anything about me, you know I’m introverted so small talk isn’t my greatest strength.
I pulled the list of top posts. It’s funny to me that my most successful post is Euphemisms for Stupid, which was number one on Google for over 10 years in that category.
As I look at the list, I see various stages of my life and different careers. I see family, pets and co-workers. I’m especially proud of My Dad. It’s the post, On Behalf of the President of the United States.
I wish you all the best and a longer life than me.
It’s not over, but for sure will not be as consistent.
If anyone wants to guest post, send it to me simonize@protonmail.com and I’ll try to put it up and give you credit.
It wouldn’t be my first choice to promote cancer awareness, but it’s quite a feat nevertheless.
ALERT: Man gets lit on fire as he pulls a police car with his pen-s in an attempt to raise awareness for prostate cancer.
John Stephenson, 50, is a strong man who, using a rope attached to his genitals, became the first person to pull a car, a 2-ton French police vehicle, with… pic.twitter.com/XgWEHFNopg
Are there more important stories we could be covering? Sure, I guess. Iran is still a thing. Trump is going to China. Democrats are being all a noun and a verb and a “raaaaaacism” over redistricting. Plus, generally speaking, when we here at the Louder with Crowder Dot Com website write about testicles, it involves a dude whipping them out in the girls’ bathroom and Democrats supporting them doing so. It’s nice to have someone put their balls to good use for a change.
John Stephenson, a 50-year-old kickboxer, shattered a glass ceiling, becoming the first bloke to pull a two-ton car with nothing but his dong WHILE set on fire. Technically, he didn’t use his entire one-eyed trouser snake, piece of pork, wife’s best friend, his Percy or his cock (he’s British, so I’m biting off of the Monty Python song). He just used his nuts. He also set himself on fire too. Why? Good question.
I’ve pulled a car with my testicles before and I’ve pulled a car on fire – so I thought why not combine the both, but this time do it with my penis.
Rest assured, everything is still intact! Stephen says that while “it did hurt quite a bit,” but he likes to set challenges and this was something no one has done before. He did the research.
“Moderate” Democrat Abigail Spanberger Considers Tax On Gym Memberships And Streaming Services, Among Other Ideas
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger is facing backlash after refusing to rule out new taxes on everyday services like gym memberships and streaming subscriptions, according to the Daily Mail.
During an interview with 8News, the Virginia governor was asked whether she would sign legislation expanding the state’s sales tax to cover a long list of services. Rather than rejecting the idea outright, Spanberger said any proposal that seems “reasonable” should at least be part of the conversation as lawmakers search for new sources of revenue.
Tax everything that moves and restrict people from having a life.
And then there is Zohan Mamadini. Let’s not overlook that he has a huge spread in Uganda. There is a muslim governor at the place the planes were flown into the towers 2 decades ago. Ironic, isn’t it?
Her priority is maintaining a safe space for illegal aliens and refugees. And if that interferes with the safety of vulnerable legal residents, including seniors, so be it.
None of this is a surprise. Often referred to as the Mamdani of the West during her campaign, Wilson never tried to hide her far-left world view. She once told supporters, “Yes, I am a socialist. … I’m fine with being called a socialist.”
Wilson’s indifference to the well-being of an elderly city resident reveals something about her character. Last week, she laughed at the prospect of wealthy taxpayers fleeing the city. “Bye” she said with a big grin on her face.
Seattle was already a city in decline before Wilson took office. Something tells me it’s about to get a lot worse.
Study Shows Some Humans Are Evolving To Be ‘Foxier’ – one thing is for sure, they are better than American girls in attitude alone. Feminism ruins females, and no amount of good looks makes you want to listen to them and their entitled, striving for likes online attitude.
I was one of the first Facebook accounts. When I figured out it was people putting on a false face to show you how good their life is was a lie, I had my doubts. When people whom I thought I’d gotten out of my life wanted to reconnect, I eliminated it. Now, I don’t have to be reminded of birthdays, wasted time online, and have re-disconnected with those I don’t want to talk to. There are people in my family I don’t want to see anymore, either in person or online.
I had Twitter (X) until it became a time suck, and I also retired and didn’t need it. I quit before Musk bought it when it was a cesspool of hate and censorship.
So mostly, I stay away from it to make my life better, free up my time, and keep my past in the past.
I worked in the tech industry for 3.5 decades, and I know how bad Meta, Google, Microsoft, and the rest of them are. My life is immensely better without that distraction. I knew those people, and I knew they were bad actors. I know how much they sell your personal life if you are on these platforms, so my spam is way down.
I use my blog as my social media outreach. Some read it, most don’t. I put a lot of stuff about my life on these pages about who I am, and that is enough.
For me, being an introvert, it has been a blessing. Unwanted people are out of my life digitally, and I don’t have to think about those who I thought I’d parted ways with once already.
Brits poorer than Mississippians – yes, they would be the 51st state in poverty if they were part of the US. It’s stuff like this that makes my stomach turn when Europe trashes the USA. They have no idea who they really are other than the likes of the formerly Great Britain. I know this won’t stop the America bashing, but at least there are facts out there
NFL Reporter Crissy Froyd Fired From USA Today After Criticizing Dianna Russini for Mike Vrabel Photos – It’s not like we believe the sideline reporters are there for their football knowledge. Which one of them ever played the sport. They are decorations and submission to the whold equality experiment failure. Give me a guy who had to play the game and can do a better job of explaining why a team is performing or failing. If they just want to show cute girls, pan to the cheerleaders. We’ll be happy to look at them. Get rid of the catty girls and give them a different job.
New Major Study Finds Europeans Got Smarter – This explains Rome 2000 years ago vs Africa today. You have to count the USA as Europeans becuase that is where most of them came from (except the 13% from Africa)
I was working in the finance division of Burdines Department Stores when the IBM-PC was announced. I had been working with a System 34 and immediately saw my future. This was around 1981.
The head of our DP department said there would be no need for PC’s because you couldn’t do anything with them. So I left
Within months, I was working for the largest Independent PC store in the country and balls-deep into the world of PCs.
It was the biggest open door to opportunity that I’ve seen in my whole life. I knew there was a huge future, and I was about to get in on the ground floor at the very beginning. I started with CPM on Apple II and DOS 1.0 on the PC.
They weren’t ubiquitous back then. I learned more by fixing them and figuring out why they crashed than almost everyone I knew.
The other decision I view as one of my best is to not take the COVID-19 jab. While everyone pressured me to get it, I held my ground. To this day, I don’t regret it and never have to worry about what they put into it. You can never get un-jabbed.
A Fraudulent Impeachment – It’s amazing the depths the left will stoop to to smear someone who is in their way. They act like the mafia when they want to take someone out. I’m amazed that Trump was as tough as was, holding his ground and not putting up with their shit. They did everything possible to destroy him, but failed. (note: this link got taken down. Some funny business is going on, so you know it’s true)
Golf
Do White People Even Play Golf? – It’s the same shit as regular advertising. You’d think there were no white husbands anymore either. Fortunately, this one is a get woke, go broke FAFO that’s not going well for Nike.
Well, right now, the Middle East is off my list. I think the reason why is obvious.
After reading the stories of Chris Kyle (An American Sniper) and Lone Survivor, I’m not too hip on Afghanistan. The amenities there seem a bit lacking, as is the hospitality of the tribesmen.
On a more serious note, I don’t really want to go back to Europe. I traveled there on business and vacation for decades. I’m married to a Scandinavian, so I’ve been there more times than I wanted to go.
Travel used to be a lot more fun and good until about 9/11. After that, going through airports sucks.
When I used to go to an office in Paris, London, Milan, or Cannes (and many other cities, depending on the job), the people were a lot nicer. Now, the American bashing has taken its toll on me.
Even my wife is tired of her relatives talking so much shit about the US and the American people. She doesn’t go as much as she’s fed up also, just not as much as me.
The next time an introvert in your life needs alone time, remember it’s not personal. They need solitude because that’s how they’re wired.
I love spending time alone. There’s nothing better than being at home in my comfy clothes, reading a good book, or watching a show while munching on snacks. This doesn’t mean I don’t crave time with “my people” — those I laugh with and share my day with. But when I don’t get enough alone time, I start to feel tired, cranky, and overstimulated, even if I’ve enjoyed being with the people I love.
Sometimes when I need alone time, the people in my life feel hurt. They feel rejected, but that’s not what it means. I need little periods of solitude to recharge my energy and feel like myself again.
Why do introverts need alone time? Why does socializing exhaust us, even when we’re having fun? Recent research offers some interesting insights. I delve deeper into these findings in my book, The Secret Lives of Introverts.
The Curious Connection Between Introverts and Rewards
When writing my book, I spoke with Colin DeYoung, a psychology professor at the University of Minnesota who had published a paper on introversion. He explained that one reason introverts need alone time is related to how we respond to rewards.
No, I’m not talking about the gold stars you might have earned in grade school (though it could be argued that stickers are indeed a reward for kids). For adults, rewards can be things like money, social status, social connections, food, and even sex. When you get promoted at work or convince an attractive stranger to give you their phone number, you’re receiving a reward. Hurray!
Of course, introverts also value things like money, relationships, and food. However, researchers believe that introverts are wired to respond differently to rewards than extroverts. Compared to our more outgoing counterparts, we “quiet ones” are simply less motivated and energized by these same rewards. It’s as if extroverts see big, juicy steaks everywhere, while introverts see overcooked hamburgers.
In fact, as any introvert can confirm, sometimes those “rewards” aren’t just less appealing — they can actually be tiring and annoying, like a big party. This brings me to another reason why introverts need alone time: We react differently to stimulation.
An Extrovert and an Introvert Go to a Party
Take, for example, two friends at a house party — one an extrovert, the other an introvert. They’re crammed into a crowded room where loud music blares from huge speakers. Everyone is practically shouting to be heard over the din. There are a dozen conversations happening simultaneously, with just as many things demanding their attention.
For the extrovert, this level of stimulation might feel just right. He sees potential rewards everywhere — an attractive stranger across the room, opportunities to deepen old relationships, and the chance to make new friends. Most importantly, tonight offers a chance to boost his social status within his friend group, especially if he plays his cards right.
So, the extrovert feels energized and excited to be at the party. In fact, he’s so motivated that he stays late into the night. He’s exhausted the next day and needs time to recover — after all, partying is hard work. But to him, the energy spent was well worth it.
Now, back to our introvert. See him over there, hunkered down in the corner? For him, the environment feels overwhelming. It’s too loud, there are too many things happening at once, and the crowd creates a dizzying buzz of activity. Sure, he wants to make friends, fit in, and be liked, but these rewards just aren’t as tantalizing to him. It feels like he would have to expend a lot of energy for something he’s only mildly interested in to begin with.
So, the introvert heads home early to watch a movie with his roommate. In his own apartment, with just one other person, the level of stimulation feels just right. He exchanges some texts with a woman he met a few weeks ago in one of his classes. Like the extrovert, he too wants friends and a romantic partner. However, he finds it too tiring to deal with the noise and socializing at a big party to make those connections.
The Dopamine Difference
Chemically, there’s a good reason the introvert in the above scenario feels overwhelmed, and it relates to a neurotransmitter called dopamine. This chemical, found in the brain, is often referred to as the “feel good” chemical because it regulates our pleasure and reward centers.
One of its roles is to make us notice potential rewards and motivate us to pursue them. For example, dopamine alerts the extrovert to the attractive stranger at the party and fuels his motivation to come up with a cheesy pick-up line.
Another important function of dopamine is reducing our cost of effort. Socializing requires energy because it involves paying attention, listening, thinking, speaking, and moderating our emotional reactions. Technically, socializing is tiring for everyone, including extroverts. However, dopamine helps make it less exhausting for them.
According to DeYoung, extroverts have a more active dopamine reward system. As a result, they can better tolerate — and often push through — the tiredness that inevitably comes with socializing. Much of the time, they don’t experience the same level of mental and physical fatigue that introverts do, thanks to dopamine.
It’s called the “introvert” hangover, not the “extrovert” hangover for a reason.
A New Theory of Introverts and Dopamine
In her 2002 book, The Introvert Advantage, Dr. Marti Olsen Laney speculated that introverts may be more sensitive to dopamine. In other words, we “quiet ones” might need less of it to feel good. Too much, she wrote, could leave us feeling overstimulated.
Science has come a long way since then. When I caught up with DeYoung again, he told me that theory had since been disproven. In fact, scientists now think it’s the opposite.
In fact, DeYoung told me, extroverts are the ones who are more sensitive to dopamine. For example, if introverts and extroverts are given the same drug that affects dopamine, extroverts tend to have a stronger response and become more motivated by similar stimuli later on.
It’s not that dopamine itself makes introverts feel overstimulated. Rather, when introverts do overstimulating things, like going to a party, they may not get as much dopamine release. Extroverts, on the other hand, may get a much bigger dopamine hit from those same activities.
“Without the sense of reward, the extra focus, and the sense of being ‘worth the effort’ that dopamine initiates,” DeYoung told me, “the introverts simply find the activities overwhelming and/or tiring instead.”
Extroverts Place More Significance on People
Finally, a study found that extroverts might simply find humans more interesting than introverts do. This finding aligns with the idea that introverts are less motivated to seek social rewards.
In this study, researchers observed a diverse group of individuals and recorded their brain’s electrical activity using an EEG. As participants were shown pictures of both objects and people, the researchers measured their brains’ P300 activity. This activity happens quickly in response to sudden changes around us and gets its name because it occurs within 300 milliseconds.
Interestingly, researchers found that extroverts showed the P300 response primarily when viewing images of faces, whereas introverts only exhibited this response after viewing objects. Essentially, extroverts’ brains became more active when looking at people.
This doesn’t mean that introverts hate people (though, admittedly, the human race can get on my nerves occasionally). Researchers still don’t fully understand introversion. However, these findings suggest that extroverts might simply place more importance on social interactions than introverts do.
So, the next time an introvert in your life needs alone time, remember that it’s not personal. Introverts need alone time because their brains are wired that way. It isn’t necessarily a reflection of how they feel about you or your relationship.
As for me, you can find me at home tonight. Preferably with the whole place to myself, that is.
That people were shallow. That people would peak at different times in their lives. For some, the peak was high school.
I learned that I had to try harder to be more successful than those I went to school with. To not stand still at that point in life, but to learn and grow and to unlock my fullest potential. I set my standards to be better than those I went to school with. That came to fruition.
Mostly, I learned to never look back. I closed that chapter in my life, and the best thing about it was leaving. I needed to move on in life and do more.
What Do Americans Consider Immoral? – Republicans and Democrats differ sharply on whether abortion, homosexuality and the death penalty are morally wrong
I’ve been a huge Olympics fan since 64 in Tokyo. I suffered through John Carlos and Tommie Smith in Mexico City in 68 and the terrorists in Munich in 72. I started watching during the Cold War, so the whole US vs. the USSR was going on.
I was always a track fan, especially the sprints and hurdles. I tend to miss the field events unless there was a spectacular athlete like Duplantis in the pole vault at present. I’d pick the 200 over the 100 as there is more going on with a turn involved than who can go the fastest in a straight line.
I swim for exercise, having been on swim teams as a kid. Unlike track, I like the distance events. I never miss a chance to see Katy Ledecky swim. I know her career is coming to a close sometime soon, so seeing greatness is a pleasure.
I enjoy the other events to a varying degree, but have less patience for a lot of the events.
I watched surprisingly little of the Winter Olympics this year. While I have in the past, I lost interest this year.
The real answer is almost everything. From the minute you are born, you live a different life from everyone else.
So the real answer is life. It shapes everyone differently, from the experiences to how we handle them. Even Identical twins have separate lives.
Unless you could do everything at the same time with the same person and have the same response, you are different.
That is comforting to me, because I don’t want what anyone else has. My life is mine.
On a side note, have you ever looked at a group of people together? How is it that we have that many people and not a one of them is the same? Different eyes, nose, ears, chin, size, shape, coloring, and the list goes on.
I could bring God into this conversation, but I know a lot of you have different views, so I’ll just leave it at this. Go ahead and try to find 2 people who are the same, or even close.
Either a mountain or a church. I’m most at home when I”m in the mountains, which is strange since I grew up at the beach. Tourists ruined that for me.
I long for the quiet and peacefulness, and the weather in the summer.
No one is going to remember me for anything, so a church might want them to consider eternity and make a decision to dedicate their life to God instead of ruin it like most do.
Azat tweeted, “A halal butcher in Zurich, Switzerland has sold 3.1 tons of pork labeled as veal to Muslim customers, who haven’t noticed any difference for three years.” – This is funny as shit.
It was a little slow this week. AOC is on Ketamine, but she’s insignificant. The media hates Trump, and especially that he’s kicking major ass over in Iran. No one knows that he exposed that the Chinese defense system is a paper tiger, and he cut off most of their oil. The fact is, the media wake up and go to sleep hating him so they are piss ants also.
Since we are having to deal with Iran, it exposes this week’s winner, who caused the problem.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth called out former President Barack Obama on Thursday, accusing him of helping to finance Iran’s military with “pallets of American cash.”
“Many of the Iranian military factories and bases that we’re systematically destroying were paid for by the pallets of American cash that Barack Obama flew into Tehran under the Iran deal,” Hegseth said.
Critics have long condemned Obama for empowering the state sponsor of terrorism in 2016 with a $1.7 billion cash payout.
That’s right. Remember the piles of cash that he delivered to Iran? Remember the deal that allowed them to develop a nuclear program. It was a total asshole move. Only someone who hated America would do something like that.
So for that, Obama is the Asshole of the Week. This whole thing and the October massacre of Israelites by the Palestinians would have never happened without him
“Over 10,000 enemy targets destroyed, over 150 naval vessels sunk, underground facilities destroyed, defense industrial base in shambles. Not only do they no longer have a Navy, they no longer have a Navy commander,” Hegseth declared.
Many of those targets were funded by the Obama administration, according to Hegseth.
“You might call it an inconvenient truth,” the secretary quipped.
In 2016, the Obama regime secretly airlifted $1.7 billion in cash to Iran, including $400 million delivered on pallets in a single unmarked cargo plane. The payment was alleged to be part of a $1.7 billion settlement resolving a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal from the Shah’s era. The cash was physically flown to Iran because U.S. and international sanctions blocked normal financial transfers.
The $400 million cash transfer occurred on January 17, 2016, the same day Iran released four American prisoners, fueling accusations that it amounted to ransom. Obama officials stated the payment was not a quid pro quo but admitted the timing was used as leverage to ensure the prisoners’ release. The remaining $1.3 billion in cash was delivered in two subsequent shipments on January 22 and February 5, 2016.
Just in: He’s even a bigger asshole by doing this:
🚨I’m still trying to process what just happened.
The highest ranking US intelligence official, just released smoking gun docs proving that Obama and his underlings committed treason/sedition.
Meaning Trump was right about everything, the news is fake, and the Deep State is… pic.twitter.com/lVqWIC3qFM
Aside from the fact that there is a God, this is an easy one.
No one gives a shit about you, really. Not long after you die, people don’t even think of you, other than in a story. Two generations after you die, virtually no one remembers you or anything you did.
Think of all the people who have come and gone in your life. You don’t think about 90% of them. Who remembers every kid in elementary school? How about the kids on the street you grew up on. When did you speak with them last? Did they initiate the conversation?
Most people overestimate their importance, especially to others. Your spouse will likely even get remarried if you die.
This works for me on a lot of levels, though. I have eliminated a lot of people from my life who weren’t making it any better. That’s a thing that is best for introverts, though.
This fact has been my best friend in a lot of instances. I even got rid of Facebook because too many people wanted back in my life that I thought I’d gotten rid of.
Did Ralph Baric at UNC Create SARS-CoV-2? – If he didn’t, he sure as hell had something to do with it because they also created the Moderna version of the jab. I lived near their, it other than basketball, there was a lof of shit associated with that school (and Duke)
I used to worry about other people’s feelings, and I wound up doing a lot of stuff that I didn’t want to do. I found out later that they didn’t really care and felt expendable. They would have been ok if I was there or not, so I wasted a lot of time.
Now, I’ll make exceptions for some of my family, but I say no a lot. Sometimes, my goal is that I just don’t want to do what they want to. When I found out they didn’t really care, and I wasn’t hurting anyone’s feelings, I am just fine saying no to almost anything and everything.
My goal is to avoid crowds and people whenever possible now
I learned way more from mistakes than I did from successes. I expected them. Having to re-do something, or being embarrassed for saying or doing the wrong thing, were lessons I never forgot. For the record, I consider losing the same thing as a mistake. I hate to lose at anything. If I do, I make sure it only happens once in a row,.
Life is a great teacher. When you get old like me, you’ve been through a lot. School can’t teach you much other than how to learn, or some facts to memorize. Having to survive is a lesson that I get every day. Hell, I’m grateful every day I wake up now.
It seems that despite women preaching for decades that they don’t need a man and that they’re “above them,” now, when they look to find a partner, there’s not one to be found. Funny how that works, eh? There are tons of videos out on social media showing women and their current plight in “finding a man,” but one particular video seems to really capture the sheer breaking point a lot of ladies have reached. Let’s break it down.
In the clip, the woman is literally in tears, ranting from, of course, her vehicle, where she painfully describes feeling overwhelmed by the toll modern dating has taken on her. She claims that she cares more about the men she dates than they seem to care about her. She says she’s mad. No, not mad. FUMING. No, not fuming. On literal fire.
After screwing men over from the time they were boys in school, to putting them in the friendzone because they weren’t the ideal 666 man, now girls are paying the price. No one wants to put up with their shit and feelings of entitlement anymore.
Guys just want peace and a supportive partner. Girls want the next best thing that will make them look better or improve their status, either on social media or in life. Life has become a Facebook page, trying to get likes and adoration.
Imagine if guys were nice to you always, buying you drinks or complimenting you. After a while, you think you are special. Sure, they wanted some action, but at least they tried, and I promise there were some good guys you tossed away. You can only be shut down so many times before you give up and stop trying.
But regardless of the specifics, the fact is that the dominant message for eons now has been that women don’t need men. Their independence was paramount, traditional relationship structures were dismissed as outdated, and masculinity itself was frequently portrayed as something disposable or problematic.
Yet the desire for partnership, stability, and connection clearly didn’t completely disappear… and now, both men and women are left out in the cold.
NOW YOU KNOW
Push men out of the culture long enough, and eventually the real ones stop showing up. Here are the comments:
“Modern dating: where everyone wants love, but nobody wants the responsibility that comes with it.”
“It’s really hard out there. Feminism F’d everything up.”
“Seems like such a catch…”
“I guarantee she has like 30+ good men in the friend zone.”
“We’re watching a woman reach her breaking point in real-time, and the scariest part? Millions of people are looking in the mirror and seeing the same exhaustion.”
Relationships have been against men for years. They demeaned boys in school because they couldn’t sit still. The mean girls grouped together to diss any guy who wasn’t the star of the sports team. Guys have to put themselves out there and mostly get rejected. If you get married, Divorce courts take at least half of what you own, including the kids, who almost always go with the wife. Why would you want that deal?
Dating is a joke. The story that women can have it all is a lie that feminists have told girls. Fuck around until you are ready to settle down. Get a career and put family on hold. Live the party life, drink and date, keep upgrading boyfriends as you throw away great marriage men. It all changes when you wake up older one day, childless, and the men can now date younger girls who don’t have the attitude of this twunt.
Guys are tired of this shit from entitled females. The truth is that every girl has a vagina. They are everywhere, and not a one of them is the golden one. Girls are giving it away to everyone. No man wants a used bicycle, and the girls are letting all the best men take a ride. They think that just because they slept with a 9 or a 10, that this is their potential. They tossed out the 7’s or less, who were better men that would have taken care of them.
The reality is that they were never above a 6 without makeup, and it’s downhill for them after 30.
A lot of guys just said fuck it, and live their lives without the hassle.
Woke Media Struggles To Explain Why Gen Z Men Are Turning Against Feminism
The progressive left operates on the assumption that generational indoctrination is cumulative – That is to say, they think that through time and indoctrination, they will eventually lay claim to the minds of 100% of the population. Each new generation is supposed to be more “woke” than the last. However, this is not how society or individual psychology works.
Movements of “progress” crash in flames all the time, often because they turn out to be regressive rather than progressive. And once the smoke clears and the social experiment is dead, the public will usually go back to what worked best in the past.
Leftists thought they had the future in the bag with Gen Z. After all, this is the generation hit hardest with woke propaganda. No other generation has been so overwhelmed with LGBT brainwashing, anti-white racism and multiculturalism, socialist Utopian fantasy, moral relativism and anti-masculinity.
Young women have been convinced that abandoning femininity, rejecting their biological destiny and competing with men is “true freedom.” Third-wave feminism teaches women that their ultimate goal in life is to achieve power by any means necessary. It’s a dangerous delusion that relies on men to remain completely and utterly passive.
Gen Z men have been taught from an early age that they are inherently evil monsters that must be subdued and caged (figuratively or literally). They are warned that they will become “Incels”; dangerous landmines just waiting to explode unless they embrace feminism.
They are conditioned to see traditional manhood as a “social construct” that will ultimately end in a bullet riddled rain of toxic masculinity. They are told that the very root of their future happiness and sanity depends on leftist women accepting them as viable, docile and “safe”.
In other words, leftist women have positioned themselves as the arbiters of society by declaring they they will be the people who decide what manhood should be. It’s an interesting narrative. It is specifically designed to give progressives total power over the one thing that could destroy their socialist empire: Strong men who wake up one day and realize they are being treated unjustly and that the system does not work.
Ross Kemp made an entire docuseries on inceldom after watching Adolescence.
Female social circles tend to function on collectivist terms: The group determines membership through a series of struggle sessions and shame tests to ensure that new members submit to their control. Male groups determine membership by merit – Who is most useful, the hardest working, the most intelligent, the most able to move the group’s success forward.
Woke ideology is a vehicle for building a society using effeminate group structures. Most men are held back within such a system and left to rot, never fulfilling their roles because they are seen as threats to the power dynamics of the collective.
According to recent surveys, Gen Z is abandoning this feminist paradigm at record pace. In 2019 in the US, just one third of Americans surveyed agreed that traditional gender roles were becoming more popular. In 2026, that number rose to 40%; among Gen Z the number spikes to 61%.
The woke media is struggling to understand what is happening and trying to figure out how they can shame Zoomer men into coming back to the progressive fold. As Esquire Magazine asks:
“What the hell is going on with Gen Z?”
Both Esquire Magazine and The New York Times have recently lamented new data showing an unusual spike in support for traditional male/female roles in society among Gen Z males. Perhaps the most interesting data point comes from a recent survey out of King’s College London which polled a total of 23,000 adults across 29 countries worldwide. It indicates that 57% of Zoomer men agree that women’s rights have gone too far – to the point that men are being discriminated against.
The media, of course, acts as if this view is absurd even though it is entirely accurate. For the past decade in the US (until Donald Trump’s return to the White House) DEI initiatives in corporations, colleges and within many government institutions were deliberately designed to treat straight white men as second class citizens regardless of their qualifications.
They used to call it conspiracy theory, but numerous successful lawsuits have been filed against these institutions after years of rigging the system against men in favor of “equality of outcome” over equality of opportunity.
When it comes to relationships in the modern west, women have been given carte blanche through the “MeToo” Movement to act as destructive, promiscuous and unhinged as they please under the protection of the feminist zero accountability clause. If anything goes wrong they can simply blame men, and for a long time everyone was expected to automatically believe them.
Esquire engages in this same refusal to question women; blaming “podcasts” and the “male loneliness epidemic” for the rise in traditional views among Gen Z. They will not consider the possibility that this trend is caused by blowback from the trespasses of militant feminist ideology. Feminists can do no wrong. Esquire notes:
“The study doesn’t get into the why of respondents’ answers, but one guess is that this is the result of a generation raised on podcasts. Around every corner on the Internet, members of the so-called manosphere lurk, assuring young men that their failures and setbacks are not their fault. In fact, they are the persecuted ones; the world would be better off if women were subservient to guys. Progress, they seem to think, has gone too far…”
The “manosphere” did nothing more than point out the inconsistencies of the feminist movement and warn about the clear social decline that feminism has caused for men and women alike. Progress for the political left requires that men continue to sacrifice for the collective while never gaining any individual benefits in return.
The imbalance of society in scrambling to appease narcissistic women has radicalized an entire generation of men. Esquire notes:
“What’s most interesting is how divided Gen Z men and Gen Z women are on gender roles in relationships. Which makes a ton of sense, because if you haven’t heard, Gen Z women are facing a nightmare of a dating scene. In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Christine Emba claims that it’s not just app burnout or incels—at least, no more so than in my generation. Instead, there is a fundamental disconnect between what straight young men and women want from one another…”
Thirty-one percent of Gen Z men now agree that a wife should always obey her husband (compare this to 18% of Baby Boomers). 59% of Gen Z men say that men are expected to do too much to support equality. In every category, Gen Z greatly surpasses aging Baby Boomers on traditional values.
Big changes are coming in the form of a masculinity-driven cultural reckoning. Perhaps it’s because feminism flew too close the sun and got burned. They got a taste of power and went insane, once again confirming the theory that women should never be in charge. No matriarchy in history has produced anything of historical or technological significance. Biology and natural law recoils at the idea of a female-centric society.
Feminists try to use scare tactics, like the theory of the “male loneliness epidemic”, as a means to frighten men back into line. However, surveys also show that by 2030 nearly half of all women 25-44 are projected to become single and childless.
The truth is, feminists no longer hold the power of social rejection; it’s men who make that determination, and they are walking away from the woke system. What feminists should be more concerned about is the female loneliness epidemic that is looming for them in the near future.
For the preliminaries, I’d like to point out the rot at Duke University.
Twenty years ago this month, the infamous Duke Lacrosse Case exploded on the Duke University campus, with three members of the university’s lacrosse team falsely accused of raping and assaulting a black stripper. It took more than a year to exonerate those young men, but only after the false charges had ruined lives and exposed elite higher education in the US.
The Duke boys didn’t do anything different than a lot of college kids, but Duke got exposed for how they treated their students. members of the Duke University faculty and administration who took part in framing innocent people for a crime that did not happen. And hovering over all of the wreckage was a combination of national and local media whose reporters—with some heroic exceptions—followed a false narrative until it drove them right over a cliff.
If you have lived in the Triangle in NC, loyalties run deep, but most people hate Duke. They went woke and the quality of a degree there isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
Next comes Tim Walz. Ever since Obama, they wanted a VP who was more stupid than the presidential candidate so as not to threaten him. It’s hard to be more stupid than Kamala, yet here we are.
The Justice Department, which has indicted almost 100 people for fraud schemes in Minnesota, has estimated the scale of fraud to have potentially exceeded $9 billion since 2018.
Feeding Our Future looted taxpayers for an alleged $250 million. Walz and his liberal media allies at the Minneapolis Star Tribune claimed that a state court ordered the state Education Department to resume payments to this criminal enterprise. The court denies this.
But your winner is a man who does not understand God, yet is willing to open his mouth to be an asshole about it.
James Talaricobarely had time to savor his primary win over Rep. Jasmine Crockett before the Republican opposition research machine started doing what it does best. Within hours of the Associated Press calling the race, an avalanche of old tweets and video clips had already begun circulating – and Republicans are practically giddy.
The first batch of video ammunition came courtesy of Senate Republicans, who surfaced a clip of Talarico invoking Scripture to defend gender ideology. “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary,” he said in the footage.
He also said, “Trans children are God’s children, made in God’s own image. There’s nothing wrong with them, nothing at all. They are perfect, they are beautiful, and they are sacred. Bullying children is immoral. It’s a sin, a special kind of sin.”
He separately described Jesus as a “radical feminist.”
Some things you should just not go there on. God is at the top of the list, especially if you have no belief or idea who he is.
Iranian targets are being decimated by U.S. forces, paving the way for continued delivery of overwhelming American military firepower. pic.twitter.com/wQUER9cXWw
Tell me more about yourself, or show me what you learned recently (speak in a foreign language). It is especially painful in a social icebreaker. I know they don’t really care.
I feel like I’m a trained monkey on display when I get this question. Most people get nothing really. Tell me what you’ve been up to? Do a trick for me. Entertain me with what you can do. That’s when I change the subject
If I know the person, I might share something I’ve done, but without details. Most people bore you with details that aren’t significant to the story. Only my inner circle will get to know my feelings or what I really do.
I also tend to listen more to men. Females have a hard time telling a story without adding details that aren’t relevant and distract from the story. It’s why male comedians are funnier. Listen to Richard Pryor or Robin Williams. They are always funnier than, say Amy Schumer or any of her ilk.
Delusions of Adequacy 