That’s pretty good. Someone needs to go through and add a bunch of citations, though. Wikipedia standards and all.

Yeah I can’t do it either. I took a break after the election, but here I am again. lol I do find it hard to empathize with people that just don’t care about anything.

Bullies get positive feelings for themselves by making others suffer. Who they target with this isn’t too different from how a predator selects prey–choose the vulnerable.

Your sister, for one reason or another, is vulnerable, meaning the bully is less likely to suffer any consequences for picking on her than if they picked on someone else. That “someone else” could have more friends willing to stick up for them and fight back, they could have a really sharp wit and be able to verbally humiliate the bully if they wanted, they could be huge and practice MMA, being able to physically knock all her teeth out with one swing, they could be a teacher’s favorite and able to go to an authority figure to get backup and inflict consequences that way. All sorts of possibilities.

But one way or another, your sister has been selected due to having fewer plausible defenses than any of the potential alternatives.

Best way to resolve that is to bolster her defenses in some way or another, so the bully picks a different, more vulnerable target. Making the bully actually stop bullying everyone isn’t very likely, though. As someone else pointed out, the bully is most likely suffering a lot themselves, and participating in bullying is how they themselves are surviving their own difficult circumstances. The easiest fix would probably be the “sharp wit” route, as verbally tearing into someone in a humorous way is a learnable skill. Otherwise a physical intimidation route, where your sister or another makes them afraid for their teeth remaining in their mouth if the bullying continues.

To answer your direct question, yes, jealously could be a part of it. There isn’t much use in wondering about it, though, there’s no real solutions to be found down this line of thinking, that I’m aware of.

Everyone on the internet gets a different experience, it’s all custom tailored by algorithms to whatever they engage with. I do think it’s gotten a lot harder in recent years, at least partially due to algorithms prioritizing the most divisive content, but some people put a lot of effort into consciously avoiding it. We even see it here on Lemmy, with people asking how to avoid political content, not subbing to any communities that go into politics (which lets be real, is quite a lot of them, including all news communities) and blocking users for bringing up politics. These are the type that probably subscribe to the tech forums, but hate every conversation about Elon. They probably don’t have strong opinions on him either way, because they hate hearing about him and don’t trust most of what they do hear.

Then there’s real life versions too, people that just go to work, engage in whatever their hobbies are, and probably don’t make friends with anyone too interested in current events due to not really liking it.

Some people just like their heads in the sand. Ignorance is bliss and all that.

Just gotta say, that Colorado law is ridiculous. I’m all for good conditions for farm animals, but 1 sq ft per chicken isn’t helping. A single square foot is about the size of a chicken. The thing is still in “a cage”, that cage is just formed of other chickens now.

I wonder if lobbyists got to them to water down the law.

Small…? That’s a lot of H2O that got separated and would really like to turn back into its more stable form.

Now that I think about it, we made an awful lot of gas from what was liquid a second ago, we’re going to get an explosion from the gas expansion no matter what we do. I think it’ll be pretty damn big though. The expanding gas is going to cool very rapidly due to whichever gas law that was too, so it’d be like a really cold explosion I suppose.

If an edible variety has any lookalikes that similar that can be found in your climate zone, you need to steer clear from it. This isn’t the case for all varieties and all areas though. General mushroom foraging may be dangerous, but certain species can be safely selected, due to not having lookalikes you need to be worried about.

Which these are requires learning specific to your local area though. The skills do not transfer to other regions, and everything you know would need to be reconfirmed if you moved anywhere new.

Swing voters. And yeah, people that consume news probably aren’t going to be swing. It’s more often going to be people that don’t watch news, read articles, etc.

Yeah, I think people need to recognize that this arms Kuwait, Tunisia, Lithuania, Oman, Netherlands, Chad, Yemen, Bulgaria, Tajikistan, Rwanda and Cameroon all with nuclear weapons. (Ranks 91-100 if we just go by number of military personnel, active and reserve, an imperfect but very convenient way to measure.)

If I’m not mistaken, two of those countries are currently involved in conflict. (Yemeni Civil War and Rwanda involved in Congo)

Just fyi, the Israelis use their own Merkava main battle tanks, not the Abrams. If I remember right, it’s more heavily armored, with a shorter cruising range.

There is one pretty clear data point that demonstrates their existence, that being people that voted for both Biden and Trump. And yes, I have met some swing voters, they’re folks that are usually not very into politics, but do vote. I find it silly to not believe in something that we have data on, at any rate. Nor do I think it’s very productive to focus in on any singular factor when multiple factors go into an equation.

You don’t need to make guesses based on your own experiences, a quick googling of “swing voters” will pull up a bunch of data-driven approaches at analyzing them.

One aspect that doesn’t get discussed enough is how effective their grassroots in predominantly young, male hobby spaces has become.

20 years ago, if you weren’t that interested in politics, you wouldn’t get much of it. Currently though, it has thoroughly infiltrated spaces like athletics and gaming. This was not an accident. They have a strong ground game, it just operates in spaces we’re unaccustomed to thinking about in reference to politics.

Thank you for the response. Offering advice beyond where you already are is a little outside my pay grade, so I’ve nothing more to offer unfortunately. Maybe this extra detail can help others hone in with their own thoughts, though.

If you don’t have access to medication, the only thing I can think of is exercise. When you feel an episode coming on, perhaps it’s possible for you to manufacture a dose of brain juice for yourself by stimulating some natural release.

If you’re not the jog-a-mile or 50 pushups type, perhaps something like yoga, dancing, swimming or tai chi could work.

I doubt you’ll get the same degree of effect as a prescription, but it might be worth a shot at least.

One question. It’s clear that you’re trying to better yourself and heal, by making conscious effort and taking concrete steps towards trying to be a healthier person.

Are your “broken” partners also making similar efforts and taking clear, measurable steps towards healing, or do they tend to be more set in their negative behaviors?

I see, thank you for the detail.

I don’t think day 2 actually requires an apology, it’s pretty clear that yesterday was probably busy. The whole advantage of SMS is the messages can be chronologically separated, maybe I like to go through them in the mornings or something.

Day 3, sure I can see wanting to apologize there.

According to the White House, El Salvador’s government received $6m (£4.62m) to take the detainees

Ahhh, that’s the part I was missing. I thought the Central American govts caved awfully fast after initially protesting the deportations. This is going to get ugly, if they’re basically being turned into a revenue-stream. El Salv will need to ensure they make a profit of some sort on that 6m.

… he’s a Mennonite, lot of them won’t even use the internal combustion engine. It’s one of those low-tech sects of Christianity like Amish.