I forget how old I was, but at some point as a kid I had this really big marble, and as dumb kids sometimes do, I kept sticking it in my mouth for no reason. Eventually I accidentally half-swallowed it and it was big enough to completely block my throat. I couldn't breathe or make a sound, and I don't think anyone else was even home at the time anyway. I legit thought I was gonna die, as much as I could process that as a kid, but I somehow managed to cough the marble up after a few seconds. I distinctly remember thinking to myself "okay don't do that again," and then absently sticking the marble back in mouth a minute later anyway.

Probably Ted the Caver for me. I feel like a lot of creepypastas go way overboard in trying to pull the rug out from under you in a gotcha moment or straight up just making an OC don't steal, but I always thought the more grounded and minimalist creepypastas did a better job.

I feel like that quote is better interpreted as "you haven't failed until/unless you give up." There is also value to "don't go into something without committing to it," but damn not everything has to be a fucking job.

I used to get frustrated with people very easily, and honestly I still do, but I've gotten much better at keeping my cool. I can't think of any specific moment or anything that brought me here, but at some point I realized that getting angry and blowing up at somebody just doesn't do anybody any good. Like even looking at it from a completely selfish perspective, shouting at somebody over an annoyance isn't going to help me with anything at all, and in fact it's likely to just make the situation worse. It's been long enough that I don't really even feel tempted to anymore.

Another thing is like... I used to lean much more conservative until I eventually realized that it's just rather self-destructive. I never bought into the more extreme stuff like believing certain ethnicities are inherently, genetically inferior to others, but to put it simply for a while I was convinced that things like feminism and environmentalism were going to "take stuff away from me." Not even on some grand scale of like destroying western civilization or whatever people like to say these days, but just that I as an individual would be less likely to succeed and get rich or whatever.

I was more libertarian-ish in college, and I think it was all the battles for net neutrality around 2013-2015 or so that finally got me to realize that a complete lack of government oversight would be untenable for anyone who isn't already wealthy. From there, especially as the online right started getting louder and crazier, I started to figure out that the same people who'd been "warning" me and other sad nerds like me about feminism and whatever were the only ones who were actually trying to force people to do anything. Most people just want to exist, man. They're not trying to push some agenda on everyone else, they just wanna live their damn lives.

As for the environmentalism bit, yeah I only ever "doubted" climate change because I thought trying to prevent it was gonna stop me from getting rich and having a fancy car and shit. I always knew it was real, I just wanted to not care and be all belligerent about it. And no, of course I didn't have a plan for how I was gonna get rich lmao, I was a dumb, selfish kid. ~~Now I know I'll never get rich no matter what I do and we're all gonna die in a climate disaster anyway, so whatever lol.~~

I dunno how much I can say any of this guides or inspires me, but I do feel like I've become a better person at least, somehow.

Any christian rock song that doesn't specifically namedrop god is actually fantasy rock. Indistinguishable from like DragonForce.

I don’t buy the idea that disintegrating my molecules and reconstructing new ones is tantamount to murder or suicide.

I definitely don't think teleportation in science fiction is meant to be killing the person using it and making a clone of them. Like unless a story is specifically about that, I don't think any given sci-fi author is trying to set up some sinister background plot where everyone is unknowingly killing themselves all the time.

But I do still have to wonder if that's how it would end up working out in real life. Sure all our cells have died and been replaced since we were born, but that typically doesn't happen with all your cells at the same time lol. imo it's probably less about cells and more about like... Consciousness or "the soul" or whatever, I don't know. Whatever it is, I accept that teleporters in fiction have some way to store and transport it, whether it's stated in the narrative or not. But in real life I have no idea how we'd be able to tell if such a thing could even work.

Sadly yeah. Even in most of the edits you can still see his logo on the mug.

Damn I guess I misremembered. The Thanksgiving thing is a video he did, and despite it being like 90 minutes long I've gotten it as an ad on other videos. Haven't watched the fuckin thing and I don't plan to. Idk why I thought the sign had that slogan, but I feel like the video title used the same "change my mind" thing.

Hey I looked at like the first five posts sorted by new, there was nothing else I could do.

The Jedi in the time of the prequels were evil because they decided to become cops who were more interested in upholding order than justice. Luke ate fascists for breakfast.

Hell sometimes even when it does. There are some with really shitty locks and I've seen people just rip them open anyway and then blame the person inside for not locking it. It's me, I'm the person inside.

So nice of insurance companies to decide that our teeth, eyes, and minds aren't part of our bodies.