ZDL

Maybe make the decision to not to let others live in your head today. You make your head full of your happy thoughts.

That's a good trick too. When you start feeling that you're being "mean" or that people are being gross to you or whatever, reflect a moment on something you like. Ideally something you like doing.

those I can mostly handle as ex-military, former wrestler, badass chick 💪

I'm not ex-military, nor a former wrestler, nor a particularly badass chick. But my father was a Chief Warrant Officer/RSM and he taught me a few things I've used to my advantage in altercations. (This included basic knife usage.) So, with you here all the way sister: make unwelcome advances uncomfortable the other way!

I’m ace/aro, not very social, and somewhere on the autism spectrum, and getting hit on at work is nothing but wildly uncomfortable.

It's wildly uncomfortable for those of us classified as "oversexed" by their prudish coworkers too. It's that whole "consent" thing that so many people have such a basic problem with. 😥

He rushed out after but it legit wasn’t personal.

He has to learn the bitter lesson that being attracted in one direction doesn't mean being attracted the other. Yeah, I'd feel a bit bad for hurting a decent, super nice guy, but if I'm not interested I'm just straight-up not interested.

(You sound really nice, mind, for actually caring. By now I'm long past that point.)

How do I deal with feeling like crap about other people being gross? Or risking their all to be turned down by someone doing a job? I know how to be strong and upfront and honest, to do the work to be clear about my intentions, even if I’m nice about it, but I don’t have a clue how to feel better about it…

You have a lesson to learn like the nice kid had to learn.

You're going to hurt people. Sometimes (hopefully most times) without intending to and without malice. You can't stop caring; that way lies madness. But you have to learn to just understand and accept that you are not responsible for how other people feel. And that's a particularly hard lesson for women to learn because we've been brought up all our lives, in most cases, to be the "caring" and "nurturing" ones.

Some people are going to smash their face into a brick wall. That's on them. If they do it on accident, or because they didn't know brick walls hurt, be sympathetic and help them out if it's applicable. But if they smash their face into a brick wall because they're too stupid to link that to pain, that's on them, not you. And if they smash their face into a brick wall repeatedly because "this time will be different" that is again on them, not you. You just have to accept the fact their feelings are theirs and not your responsibility.

And it's fucking hard. (Tough as I talk I sometimes feel bad too even today.)

But you know what? Talking it out here or with your friends who 'get' you (especially with the added complexity of aro/ace) is definitely a good thing. Wounded birds flocking helps all.

Just need a sense of history. The AI sector has scammed over and over and over and over again. This upcoming "AI Winter" will be the sixth.

Oh, and you need to just pay a bit of attention when you use the damned thing:

This was from two days ago (2025-06-07), so not an "old model". Looking at what ai already is and we're seeing fundamental problems in counting.

You know, that thing you likely learned so long ago you don't even remember having had to learn it.

Men are not houses. They cannot be "unique fix'er'upper opportunities". They are not "projects" and we are not "building engineers". My sisters, this is a critical lesson to learn in life, and it's never too late to learn it. When you do learn it, the only thing you lose are your chains!

If men want to be fixed, well, they can fix themselves or they can find themselves fixed by other means! ✂ 🤣

Wow! Thank you for being so civilized with this. It's not something I see in this group every day.

Weirdly I've not seen a glut of AI "art" in China, so this cycle must have gone really quickly.

Also lefty-loosy, righty-tighty, or if you want to translate from the Spanish expression "la derecha oprime y la izquierda libera" ("the right oppresses and the left liberates") that's sage advice too.

Yes. It is all a scam and the people cheerleading it are either in on it or one of the "useful idiots" (to paraphrase Lenin's purported catchphrase) that all scams need to continue.

And you think these "smart people" can't be taken in by such an obvious scam? Madoff ran his really obvious scam for seventeen years before he got caught out. It turns out the "smartest people in the room" aren't quite as smart as they thought.

I wear make-up maybe twice a year at Big Events™ only. Any other day I just use soap and water and keep my skin as clear as possible. It's very liberating, including of the pocketbook.

Yeah, the pressure vanished when I hit the big four-oh. (It had been slacking off for the decade before it.)

One thing that ticks me off to this day is I could not find a doctor willing to do a tubal ligation if I hadn't already procreated and didn't have a life-threatening condition that called for it.

The same medical establishment that will give men a whole lot less of a hassle if they want vasectomies without procreating first.

Same here. I've ended relationships with people I otherwise adored over their inability to accept this choice.

Marriage. Procreation.

That's two.