outlandish

It's over IMO. Sounds like it's time to let go of her, and move on, in order for both of you to grow as individuals. You're both young, she probably needs to experience other loves, you're saying in love in the past tense, you're probably attached to a person she isn't anymore, and it sounds like you don't even live in the same place. If you do decide to end it, make very sure of your decision, and when you do it, be decisive about it, no waffling.

I propose that there are different stages to Financial Independence: Stage 0: Dependent. No financial independence, completely dependent on a provider for livelihood. Examples include children, developmentally challenged being cared for by social systems, prisoners. Stage 1: Employee. Participating in the workforce and economy as an employee, earning own livelihood via wage/salary/commissions. At this stage you are completely able to provide for yourself and your dependents' livelihood, via your earnings. You work for a company, you are an employee. Stage 2: Self-Employed. Solo entrepreneur/consultant/business owner. You own your business, you call your own shots and control the direction of your enterprise. You have multiple clients, and no employees. Stage 3: Employer. You own a business that employs others. You're running the show, but your business has some independence and possibility of portability from you. Your business is probably incorporated. Stage 4: Investor. You own property, stock, intellectual property and are able to survive purely and permanently off of passive revenue sources such as rents, dividends, royalties. There are grey areas between these stages; a young adult living at home and working part time, going to school might be between 0 and 1. They stages are not necessarily linear; a common pattern is to be Stage 1 almost their entire life, but be buying stocks and bonds on the side, and retire at stage 4. One stage isn't "better" than another; Stage 4 isn't necessarily the goal for instance. What do you think of this as a model? I just made this up, so I'm probably missing things.

^ this! And as @Knock said, be consistent.

I support this! Chronic (so when your body has become used to it) coffee drinking correlates with lower rates of depression and much lower rates of suicide, and a host of other health benefits. It's worth questioning the conventional narrative around places like this that coffee is a naughty habit. When you do start drinking it, pay attention to how it works for you, if you like it or not. You can avoid the problems with breath and teeth yellowing by brushing your teeth in the morning after you have your cup. It's a good habit to brush your teeth in the morning anyways.

@F A B do you have that expression in Italian? It's a sad waste, too bad they couldn't make butter out of it to give to the hungry and still get their point across.

Don't cry over spilt milk

Yes inevitability is a good descriptor. It's like "of course, of course, how could it be any other way?".. It always surprises me how much variation there is in sensitivity to psychedelics. We're all wired a bit different!

Thanks for sharing @dimitri! Isn't it amazing that it is possible to experience this!? Also, that's a huge dose, especially for vaporization. I imagine you must have lost some of the vapour along the way, or else you must have a very high natural tolerance.

@MM1988 I would be really surprised if your HR was at 140 for the whole trip. It was probably just that high when you were measuring, partially because you were freaking out about it a bit. I find my heart races on LSD when I start paying attention to it, and this causes a feedback cycle. This is mostly just conjecture, but I believe LSD reaches a dose saturation point where it no longer increases HR and BP beyond a certain safe point, whereas the heavy stimulants like cocaine keep pushing your system further and further into more dangerous territory as the dose increases. But maybe more importantly is that cocaine ends up being chronically consumed at high doses, and this chronic stress ends up being really hard on the heart. LSD on the other hand is more like once every week or two at the most, so it's not chronically stressing your heart. I'm a leery of micro dosing LSD for this reason, I think it could potentially present a risk to heart health. We don't really know if it's safe for the heart to regularly micro dose psychedelics like LSD, and there are a few reasons it could be dangerous. Personally, I avoid micro dosing LSD etc.

Well put

I've taken a peek or two outside the matrix .. I'm very satisfied with what reality is, it's a great game. Bring it on, bring it on!

Getting so sick of the incel/red pill shit on this forum. Guess what? Looks are an even bigger factor in women's sexual success. Welcome to the human condition. Now go deal with it.

Agreed with what Leo said - you want to keep it simple, just say you're flattered but not interested. This is the kindest thing you could do to yourself and the guy. You won't get tangled in complexity, he gets the message clearly and knows he can move on.

@Amun PM me with a confirmation tomorrow and I'll do it.

In my culture, many of the things that are considered "bad" I would say I align with in terms of my values. I'd say I'm Iucky to live in a pretty "stage green" corner of the world. Here are some examples: Judging people based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and so on Excess displays of wealth, status Public displays of anger Spanking or hitting your children Sexual harassment, cat-calling women and so on Smoking Using plastic bags, straws, disposable packaging Driving a bigger car/truck etc than you really need Burning fossil fuels unnecessarily in general Wasting food, clothes, possessions Watching TV Leading a physically unhealthy lifestyle, diet and so on

I tell my children the truth of what I believe, which is that we don't really know what happens when you die, but we might find out once we do. I explain that it's possible that we just stop being, or that there might be something else after death, or something else entirely. But regardless, at some point everyone will die, so it's important to live your life. And once someone dies, their life was still real.

I don't see a way to do that, nor do I see a way to delete my own account. Perhaps other mods know how to do this? Optionally I could suspend your account if you would like.

@winterknight ^ nice Furthermore, who is it that is being fooled by this illusion?

Seems like there's conflicting research on the calcium thing, so it's probably inconclusive at this point. A single datapoint doesn't say anything generally, but I've had a bone scan done and I have very good bone density, so I'm not personally concerned about calcium at this point.

You won't "be at the top" if you're not judging. Do you really think loosing 10 pounds makes you a better person than someone else? So loose the weight if it makes you feel good. It's probably healthier. But don't let it go to your head, not something to get hung up on.

@WelcometoReality yes that's what I meant by "psychosomatic thing". I agree that it's probably something like that, but we can't jump to conclusions or diagnose someone from just a few words posted over the internet. Shin says "my heart was starting to contract." and "It really does not feel like a medical condition, it's more like an energetic happening." - which I take his word for, but still I think it's important he be super sure it's not a medical issue. It wouldn't hurt to get his heart checked if there's any doubt.

We're all assuming this is a psychosomatic thing - which was my first assumption too, but have you considered that this might be a medical issue? It might be worth getting your heart checked out and so on.

*Room acoustics* are really important. Something Leo absolutely nails in his videos, and which a lot of amateurs overlook when they shoot videos. If you pay attention to the sound in his videos, it's really clear, free from reverbs and echoes of the room he's in. Not sure if he's acoustically treated his recording booth, or if he just has a lot of sound-absorbing stuff in his room (bookshelves, sofas, curtains, and so on help with reflections), but either way, his recordings are very acoustically neutral, which is a good thing for intelligibility and clarity. If you're doing a youtube channel or something, pay attention to that. It will make more difference than having an expensive kick ass mic. If you have a great mic in a shit room, you'll just be picking up muddy acoustics in greater clarity.

No! The trap is thinking that knowledge is the be all end all, and that there's nothing beyond logical understanding and so on. Knowledge is important, but going beyond knowledge, differentiation, reasoning is also important. It's not one or the other, it's both. edit: put in another way: each stage of spiral dynamics builds on the last, it doesn't discard it's foundation.

@ShaharA which of the studies that I linked to has questionable research? If you check out Dr. Greger's site, pretty much all of the health benefits I've posted about are backed up by what he reports on coffee, and he is a guy who is super diligent and sensitive to industry biased research. I *have* made serious research about the other side, this is why I continue to post this position on here. In fact, 7 years ago I was a lot like you and began phasing out coffee in my life because I had a puritanical idea about needing to not have the chronic habit. However, when I really dug into it, it became obvious that the anti coffee side didn't really have anything to back it up, and that there are little to no negative long term health consequences associated with moderate coffee drinking. On the contrary there are piles of benefits as shown by legitimate medical research. On top of that, I realized that I really enjoy drinking coffee, and that the idea that coffee is "bad" really comes down to a puritanical outlook with no basis in reality. I've gone from long periods of no coffee or tea, up to 5 cups a day, and back down again many times, so I'm well aware of how it affects my system. I've now settled on drinking 2 cups a day all before noon. Sometimes I just have one, sometimes 3 if life gets in the way of sleep and I need to push through. Of course if a person doesn't like how it feels in their body, or mind, it's their prerogative to decide not to drink it. But it's puritanical to tell people that they shouldn't drink coffee, because counter intuitively it's good for you, it's not hard to quit - much easier than alcohol or tobacco for example - and many people thrive on having that extra push in their system.