#i've had the same youtube account for a decade now so i definitely have a history of a BUNCH of dumb comments

[werewolf4vampire]

oughh getting that urge to remake all my accounts

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

Happy anniversary!

I'm hoping for some advice. I just feel so lost and bored with my life. I'm almost 32. I've had the same job (accountant/payroll specialist for an accounting firm) for almost 10 years. I spend so much of my time just sitting at my desk with no work to do, so I've been watching shows on my phone and coming on this hell-site to pass the time. I feel like life is just so negative and pointless. Everything has some kind of draw-back. I really wish someone could tell me what I'm supposed to be doing in my life. I get bored pretty easily. I need multiple things going at a time. Even watching a tv show, I almost always have my phone, computer or tablet going too, doing something. I've been asking myself the same question for over a decade: what do I want? I still have no freaking clue.

I feel like I'm caught in a circle. I don't have many friends because I don't go out much and when I do go anywhere I feel like I have nothing to contribute to conversations because 90% of my life is watching tv. I've never been on a date. I've been on a couple dating websites, but only ugly (sorry, but it's true) and creepy guys have sent me messages. I don't know. That probably doesn't really tell you anything to give advice on, but I typed it out, so I'll still send it.

Hey there! Fellow single 31 year old here that also works in the finance world! I definitely go through phases my self of why haven’t you accomplished this yet, you should be happier because xyz, etc. This is gonna sound really dumb but getting out of that mindset comes down to two things for me.

First thing is what are my goals? I’m not talking the stereotypical ones of get married, have kids, a house, yada yada. Is there anywhere you want to travel to someday? See a musician in concert? Try a new restaurant? Learn to play an instrument? Bake a cake from scratch? Run a 5K? The big goals are great. But so are the little ones. I have sooo many little goals in life and they give me things to strive for or look forward to a week from now and twenty years from now. Life gets a little bleak when you stop allowing yourself to have those things in mind. The little stuff is something you can work on today and see real results. For me goals give me excitement and sometimes my goal is to binge watch a show over the weekend and there’s nothing wrong with that! And if you feel like watching TV is all you do well you know what? Expand on that! Maybe make that a hobby by trying to do a reaction video on YouTube. Learn how to edit, how to share, etc. That’s just one super simple way of making a new goal from something you already do. Just try to get out of your comfort zone a smidge and good things can happen.

And maybe as you try those little things you’ll find you need more stimulation during the day because a toxic work environment can wreck havoc on your personal life too. Maybe it’s time for a career change even.

The second thing, and this one takes serious effort to change is…

Stop being mean to yourself. You are ONLY 31. You got a loooot of life ahead of you. Life does not happen on a timetable and there is no such thing as being “too late” to do things. Honestly you could be 80 years old and I’d say the same thing. You don’t need a man to make you happy. You can make you happy and if a guy comes along, great, that’s a bonus but you right now are just as valid as every other person out there. People with houses, kids, spouses, the people always bragging about their lives, they don’t have that shit figured out anymore than you or I do. We’re all just going with it. I’m not sure if any of this is helpful or not but I hope maybe something stood out for you! 🧡

[wrenseyeview]

Alright no, actually I'm not done, this is apparently a week for pontificating. Several states in the US try year after year to pass anti-abortion legislation. In a recent poll, abortion laws ranked second lowest after only gun control on the political priority list of Evanglical Christians, the group most politically concerned in the US with abortion in the last several decades, and even years ago many people in that group would make exceptions for themselves when it came down to it. Heterosexual couples with left political leanings and women working outside the home still statistically see severely unequal distribution of household labor to the women. "Sure he knows feminist theory, but does he do the dishes?" If I asked what the American south's opinion on women's rights and place in society was, is there actually an answer? You can come up with one, based on general stereotypes, recent legislation, historical and demographic trends, even what a lot of vocal people say they believe in any direction. Does any of that reliably predict what any individual, or family, or majority of a town either says they believe if asked or implements in practice (these are not necessarily the same)? No. Individuals are not statistics, and the broader those statistics get, the less predictive they are on an individual basis because the spectrum included grows. This is especially relevant if what we're actually looking at is a very limited body of surviving historical record and secondhand literature, not modern statistics with large pools of data. And especially if we're looking at say, law codes or literature, those are definitely not necessarily indicative of all or even most of the society represented in the text. People lie, a lot, to others and themselves, sometimes without even meaning or knowing it. Sometimes this lie may reflect an ideal of a given person, like when a politican (assuming for a moment they weren't bribed) tries to legislate by what they think is moral. Is this indicative of what their society actually believes or does? What about if the society says and largely believes and historical record seems to demonstrate by simple law alone that it's a democracy operating by majority vote of everyone? Surely then! (Electoral college who? Voter what now?) In Viking age society, it was by accounts an offense severe enough to warrant a duel to the death to call someone ergi, generally translated as unmanly, with connotations of submissive gay man (or overly sexual woman, but that's not talked about so much, huh). So. How much did this happen? If you talked to any random medieval Scandinavian do you think they gave a fuck about gay people? Maybe. But do you know that for a fact? Why do you think so? I've lived in multiple states that tried to legislate trans people out of bathrooms. Never once had a problem in one though. (I do have the nominal privilege of consistently passing, this isn't to say it doesn't happen at all by any means. But also not everyone, or even the majority of people, are this particular flavor of asshole.) All this so far to say, it is very simplistic and I daresay inaccurate to make any sweeping generalizations about people or what daily life would be like, even if laws or records provide some insight. Of course these things impact people and can have incredibly dangerous consequences (politics is important, obviously), but it's not the same as the average person saying it to your face amd acting on the same principle. Circling laboriously back to the original point, my overall thesis on Crawford is that he limits himself to textual evidence to the point of having blinders on about it in the interest of idealistic "objectivity", with a side helping of not acknowledging his own base assumptions. The base assumption thing ties in largely in this video but also in some other bits from either other youtube videos or his twitter. In general, while he's remarkably tight-lipped about any politics (frankly refreshing, honestly), he is open about his desire to be in tbe mountains, left

alone. (Also fair, I'm forever one more tech spying on you story from also just walking into the mountains, I feel that.) He also has the cowboy affectation, talks about his grandfather having similar common sense salt of the earth sayings that inspired his cowboy's Havamal translation, and... talks about how the pinnacle of Viking age masculinity is the lone warrior, adventurer, assertive, relying on his own wits and luck, getting into quick-draw single combat duels for his honor and riding into the wild frontier of -- wait where was this going? (Did you know A Lot of cowboys were gay and POC?) You know the kind of person that tends to assume their worldview is the objective default everyman? Yeah. (To reiterate, I really do actually like his content and have nothing against him as a person. Just also recognize that no one is actually free of bias.)

So this is actually really interesting because I largely like what he's saying here but it's also illustrative of why I disagree with him on some points.

Presenting information as objectively as possible is a highly commendable goal and a valuable service, and I'm glad he does this so much with his channel and books.

It is also functionally impossible for any person to be 100% objective, particularly regarding matters of historical and literary interpretation. Everyone brings biases to the table, and imo it better serves the goal of presenting objective information to also state potential biases alongside it, so the audience may poke at where the bias may impact the content. I'd put this in a similar vein as declaring potential conflicts of interest or funding sources on research papers, for example.

A particularly relevant example is the woman that in the last few years translated the Odyssey and found several places where prior men had introduced their own assumptions or softenings into their translations (https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/11/20/16651634/odyssey-emily-wilson-translation-first-woman-english). Fascinating read, and it makes me wonder what has been taken for granted in the most common translations of the eddas and sagas. Or, you know, everyone buried with a sword was a man right?