I had a therapy session today. She asked me what I liked about being alive and I said tea, fags and fat arses. She thought I was taking the piss. I'm wondering if I should show her this place, but I'm not sure that'd help matters.

>>465738

In a small way, you were taking the piss though, y'know? If you're being really honest with yourself. It's just that like me, you use that dry sarcastic manner of expression as a way of expressing what you really mean, and most of the time people don't get it.

What you really mean is what other people would describe using a phrase like "life's simple pleasures" or something like that. If you said that they'd probably get where you're coming from, but that's not how your brain works, everything you say has to be witty, doesn't it.

Fucking hard life being like this honestly innit.

>>465739
>and most of the time people don't get it

Not him but everyone would get that even if it's flippant. I don't think you can talk about the big questions without it being flippant because it's all a load of bollocks isn't it. There was even that song I tried to shill to you lot about the other side of it.

His therapist was probably trying to be serious and got hurt though. The people who go into the therapy profession ask daft questions about what you like about being alive like life is a fucking soap opera. It's why they're therapists rather than psychiatrists. It's like a bird asked me once when I was younger what I was afraid of, I thought about it for awhile but on asking a mate about it and getting laughed at I realised she was just some insufferably pretentious actress trying to be deep.

>>465739

I was being painfully honest. We had already discussed the fact that my core depressive symptoms are anhedonia and emotional blunting. I can't remember the last time I went on holiday, because I take no pleasure from being on a sunny beach or walking around a European capital. I've lost three close relatives in the last four years; I wasn't sad when they died and I wasn't pleased when I inherited money from them, because I felt nothing about them as people and I don't know how to spend the money I've already got. If I was being subconsciously wry, it's quite obviously a coping mechanism for the otherwise very bleak and monotone reality of my life with chronic depression.

More broadly - and I know that this will sound a bit gammony - her reaction is discriminatory against northern blokes in a way that wouldn't be acceptable against any other group. If I was a they/them or an Afghan refugee or a yoot from da endz, she'd be falling over herself to try and understand my cultural background and relate to me on my own terms. It'd obviously be completely unacceptable to suggest that they're being obstructive or difficult just for talking about their own life in their own words, but there's something wrong with me if I don't adapt my own communication style to fit a stereotypical kind of therapeutic interaction. I feel that rather than being treated as a man with a psychiatric diagnosis, I'm treated as if I'm just a defective woman.

>>465745
>If I was a they/them or an Afghan refugee or a yoot from da endz, she'd be falling over herself to try and understand my cultural background
>It'd obviously be completely unacceptable to suggest that they're being obstructive or difficult
No she wouldn't and no it would not. If you're old enough for hole and ciggies then you're too old to be acting so self-pitying over an imagined privilegeotherrs have. I'm sympathetic to the idea that a lot of therapists are too "nice" in a way that makes getting into darker topics difficult, or when you do do it can feel like talking to a well meaning teaching assistant. But don't act like a gay Somalian telling her "I like sucking cock and chewing khat" would have gotten a much better reaction.

Anyway, credit for being so honest even if it went down like a bag of spanners and even though it's probably too late, you can always do what I did and ask for a male therapist.

>>465745

>If I was being subconsciously wry, it's quite obviously a coping mechanism for the otherwise very bleak and monotone reality of my life with chronic depression.

>her reaction is discriminatory against northern blokes

>I feel that rather than being treated as a man with a psychiatric diagnosis, I'm treated as if I'm just a defective woman.

These things all go hand in hand really, kind of exactly what I was getting at. It's the way we deal with it. The stereotypical self-deprecation of Northern humour exists for a reason. It probably gets bundled up under the definition of poisonous manliarity and what have you, but exposes the hypocrisy behind that epithet.

I don't really have much constructive to add other than I want to tell you I understand, man.

>>465747

Maybe I'm being a soft cunt, I just get irked by the hypocrisy of "This is a safe space, you can say whatever is on your mind, there are no wrong answers here..." "no, not like that".

>>465752

Cheers m8.

>>465739
>In a small way, you were taking the piss though, y'know? If you're being really honest with yourself. It's just that like me, you use that dry sarcastic manner of expression as a way of expressing what you really mean, and most of the time people don't get it.
She's supposed to be a therapist, if she can't meet clients where they are she needs to get another job. It doesn't apply to otherlad but I bet a large percentage of men in therapy use humour to broach serious topics they're not comfortable going at directly.

Sometimes I don't know if I'm actually bisexual or simply have low self esteem and I'm grateful for any attention.

Been awhile since I've heard any mention of TED talks. Good.

>>467072
Do you just snog other lasses at parties or go further?

I think we need to establish a formal policy if we leave a gap between post numbers and quotes, or put them directly on the line below. I hate to sound snobbish about imageboard etiquette but back in my day leaving the gap was normal procedure and I don't like change. It'd also rule it out as a deliberate variation to stop people trying to identify your posts.

A dating app for restaurants. Hear me out. Take the UI for dating apps and make it about matching users to restaurants. Customers can choose to set their preferences (cuisines, cost, location, eat-in/collect/delivery) and then they swipe through various recommendations:

Left for ‘not now’
Right to be taken to the menu
Click on a top right drop down to favourite or ban forever

They'll also be some wanky algorithm trying to improve recommendations based on what you like, your rating for the meal and what you bought. The countryside will be a more challenging market but the app would also be open to bars and pubs along with users before able to freely select ‘new here’ to find out what’s opened recently in the area to try.

Then it either goes bust or it’s a hit and the owner spends investor money on a heroic amount of ket before filling the app with bots and calling Starmer a carpet-bagger-enabler.

>>468525
Would it also set you up on a date with someone else who wants to go to the same restaurant so you don't have to go on your own? If so, I will pay you whatever you need to make this exist.

It's impossible to say "my cocaine" without sounding like you're saying "Michael Caine" in Michael Caine's voice.

A few days ago I saw a dead fox floating in a canal, I think it was a young one that I'd seen running about for a few months. It was tame and even surprised me once running passed me with another fox. Poor bugger must've fell in and then been unable to find a way to lift himself out of the water before the cold got to him. It reminds me of a similar situation a few weeks back where someone's dog got out at the train station and ran onto the line. It tried to jump to the other side but couldn't make the jump so it just slowly walked along the tracks while people on either side tried to encourage it to come over so they could pull it up.

My point isn't really that there's some symbolism to all of this that I'm getting at, it's just that messed up things happen in the world and we never talk about it. Especially as a bloke you just dispassionately acknowledge it and then move on.

>>469741

I must have seen about a dozen roadkill badgers and foxes and rabbits and so on today. Must be because it's early spring, so a lot of young ones that haven't learned to avoid the roads yet are running about, but what struck me is just how grisly and nasty it can be. Giant smears of blood running fifty feet along the road until it reaches a mangled and virtually unrecognisable heap of a corpse. The sort of thing you'd see on gore sites, death completely lacking in dignity.

I've always cared more about how badly we treat our wildlife neighbours than "the environment" in an abstract sense, and it makes me angry sometimes. We just have no respect for the fact that they live here too. Even with global warming, we only care because it'll start to cause problems by us. I don't understand how we are collectively so callous.

I remembered this video and it made me wonder how different we could make sex through virtual or augmented reality:

This feels like something people thought more about in the 80s with various emerging developments in virtual reality and also from the film Demolition Man but what do you two think might be good? I feel like I'm a bit prudish on this in that I can't imagine sex without a defined physical form or getting my VR fanny smashed. I'd also be uncomfortable if it's not my own physical image doing the shagging, like I wouldn't want find out after I put on my VR headset that I've become Tony from accounting.

Maybe this is the sort of thing that lends itself more to solo or casual encounters over the internet. An advancement on how know you could set a vibrator (or fleshlight) to the internet and give .gs the access to let us give you a good seeing to. Anyway, let us know your thoughts on technosex.

>>470458
>please sign in to confirm your age
Guess I'm not watching that one then.

Virtual hyper-sex should be outlawed.

>>470458
Sex only really gets different if you change the arousal triggers. Abstracting that can happen but there needs to be something linked to the human physical at the root of it, at least for the majority of people.

>>470459
Oh we've got just the cube for you then.

>>470460
Oh I don't know, what about sex while falling from the sky like a eagle? I bet that would wake you up in the morning if your partner decided to surprise you.

>>470461
You'd either be panicking about imminent death or you'd just ignore it and focus on the fucking because you know it's not real.

>>470458

VRChat is absolutely infested with furverts.

I've started playing a new mental game when I'm walking in a crowded area of picturing what would happen and what my plan would be if everyone around me went insane and started trying to kill me. Obviously I don't expect to get far but depending on where I am I could probably knock a few down before they get me on the ground and have me.

Never thought about that before. I reckon how everyone seems to walk on the right in this country has finally gotten to me.

>>470637
Have you done the one where you imagine how many kids you could defend yourself against? Most people say about 30 but I reckon it's closer to 6 or 7.

Ever since I was a kid I used to imagine that someone was about to lean out of a passing car and shoot me up, for no real reason. The thought still happens occasionally.
I also used to wonder if there were invisible people everywhere, just screaming at me trying to communicate. Haven't thought about that one for years.

I ate too many sweets while trying my hand at low-light photography and gave myself the kind of stomach ache I don't think I've experienced since I was in primary school.

Ten years ago there were dozens of magazine websites that would have published that as a headline; halcyon days...

>>470638
Nah you're selling yourself short on that. You have to remember that they're small enough that you can easily do crowd control on them by throwing bodies around without even getting into intimidation or kids being clueless fighters.

I used to work with children so I know what I'm talking about. Even 30 is too pessimistic if you ask me, that's just over a class of children, maybe 60 would be more accurate as at that point the sheer weight of them gets too much and they'll crush you.

>I also used to wonder if there were invisible people everywhere, just screaming at me trying to communicate. Haven't thought about that one for years.

Shadow people?

>>470648
Did you have a good poo?

>>470649

I reckon it's mainly about cardio. After knocking out 30 or 40 kids, I'd be pretty gassed.

>>470649
>Did you have a good poo?
What? Why would I? I don't think I want to know what I'd need to eat to completely reregulate my shit-schedule.

>>470650
I always factor in morale for these mass-fighting hypotheticals. It’s like fighting 100 duck-sized horses: once you’ve kicked the shit out of two or three of them, I am confident the rest would scatter and you’d win by default.

>>470652
Full size horses will panic at the sound of leaves falling, they're flightier than deer (which have the advantage of living in forests and therefore having learned from experience that leaves won't hurt them). Any number of duck size horses would scatter at the mere sight of a toddler. But I wonder why you went with duck size horses rather than ducks?

>>470649
>fight 6-7 kids
>Nah you're selling yourself short on that. You have to remember..

What would it take for 6-7 kids to win?

>>470653
It’s a famous hypothetical question: would you rather fight one horse-sized duck, or 100 duck-sized horses?

>>470655
That question is too vague, horses and ducks are very different shapes. A duck as tall as a horse or as wide as a horse? I imagine, wing tip to tip, many ducks are wider than many horses. That would mean a duck "the size of a horse" is potentially just a normal duck. So width and height are both arbitrary. Mass makes more sense but a duck with the same mass (while maintaining the same density) as a horse would be something like 250x as tall as a normal duck and would probably collapse under its own weight or immediately asphyxiate in our atmosphere. So I choose that and my weapon of choice is steamed Chinese pancakes.

>>470656

Okay how about instead of size we say equivalent mass.

>>470654
They can just run away and let time do its work. Maybe come back in 20 years when they've all got tracksuits, pit bulls and confusing tiktok memes.

>>470655
No fucking way am I choosing a horse-sized duck. Imagine seeing a horse-sized shoebill but it's also a compulsive rapist.

The question would be better if it was fighting a gorilla or a chimpanzee. A gorilla is probably a bigger threat but it's also not looking to eat you so you might be able to make like a goose and chase it.

>>470658
They're still both going to immediately die of or be incapacitated by complications due to having evolved to survive at a particular size. The bigger something is, the amount of muscle needed to move and pump blood around is on an exponential curve not a straight line. Horses have huge hearts relative to their total mass, birds have tiny ones. Even if the basic of oxygen absorbtion into alveoli is somehow unaffected, the giant duck is going to collapse unable to hold up its own weight as, simultaneously, its heart fails to move blood around its veins. The horses on the other hand, with massive hearts for their new size, will have massively overpressured circulation and die squirting blood out their eyes. Maybe. I could well be wrong about the specifics but we know that both dogs and humans have a plethora of often fatal problems when we're maybe 0.5x too big or small, changing an animal by 250x (ducks are about 2kg, horses average 500kg) doesn't seem workable.

>>470661

What if we pretend it's the result of millions of years of evolution under precisely the correct kind of adaptation pressure that would result in a duck of the equivalent mass of a horse, and vice versa, and all the physiological changes required to make that viable while still recognisably and unquestionably being a duck and a horse.

>>470662
They would no longer be ducks or horses. Their whole morphology would have changed to support their new size, even if, appearance-wise, they're identical, they'd have different bone mass, muscle mass, reaction speeds, strength, flexibility and all sorts. By that point we've come so far from the initial hypothetical that it's hardly relevant.

>>470663
What if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck?

>>470664
Presumably that's a witch.

>>470664

A hyperreal simulacrum of a duck and so on and so on.

>>470663

So would you rather fight one of an animal that is physiologically an entirely unique species but which happens to be of equivalent mass to a horse and outwardly resemble a duck, or multiple of an animal that is physiologically an entirely unique species but which happens to be of equivalent mass to a duck and outwardly resemble a horse?

Bring Northern Irish and racist is like living in a muck heap and complaining about someone wearing too much aftershave.

Last night I made an impulse purchase of a multipack of 'American' cream cakes from Lidl. They were on that regular America week they do so I felt compelled to get myself something nice and I couldn't remember what Twinkies are like. Needless to say I soon rediscovered that they're vile disappointing things, but I still ate most of them while watching telly.

Feeling shame that I was ruining my diet and that I will never get to a healthy weight, I threw the two I had left into the bin like I do if I ever end up with cigarettes. But I didn't cut them up or leave them outside on a public bin for the homeless. Just now I fished them out from the bottom of the bin and I feel absolutely fucking disgusted with myself.

>>470855
>I fished them out from the bottom of the bin and I feel absolutely fucking disgusted with myself.
Hahahah saw it coming, we've all done it mate don't worry about it. What I will say though is that you haven't failed your entire diet and will always be fat, you've just tripped yourself a bit. Can very well get up again and keep going, it doesn't have to be defeat.

I like twinkies for their squishey texture and colouring. The worst part for me is the strange tasting oil that lingers in your mouth for a while after eating.

I recently had a few American confectionaries given to me. Butterfinger is okay but for the crispy, shardlike texture of its filling. Hershey's are said to taste like vomit which I didn't notice until the the chocolate warmed up then bam sick in my mouth. Not just any sick but concentated essence of vomit.
I simply can not believe people eat this.

The other stuff was so thick with sugars and syrups they felt like my tongue was burning and my teeth could shatter. Poppets, I think, American malteaser.

Fucking horrendous people would eat like that. I would absolutely try an authentic American Mcdonalds but would have to be only 1, never again no matter what. I could imagine dying in there what with all the crap they put in their foods.
A proper American burger must be great.

>>470861
I've eaten in various American fast food places, a long time ago now admittedly but I don't remember them tasting any better or worse, it's only the portion sizes that were distinctly different.

I was already arsed to cook tonight so you bastards inspired me to get a Maccies. It's my first (and likely only) one this month so I don't think it'll hurt that much in the end. They didn't have the Biscoff McFlurry in though, so I had to get Oreo.

Oreos are fucking shit. Why does anyone like Oreos.

On reflection, we really should do something about highly processed food. It really is just as bad as cigarettes through being designed to hijack our reward system but it's everywhere around us all the time to the level that supermarkets are designed around forces it into your face when you walk around.

>>470869
The shocking thing is that fast food in the US is worse than elsewhere but it's a lot more economical. If you want good American fast food then I suggest going to Japan where the food matches the pictures.

>>470870
I reckon it's like coca-cola where it's pure sugar water that doesn't even taste nice but you have it anyway because of cultural conditioning.

>>470873

When you think about it honestly it's amazing we got to the point of banning smoking indoors, and all the advertising, not to mention all the drugs we actually made illegal. All of that was a relatively recent, post-war change from hundreds of years of complete free for all. Whenever you think about history, consciously remind yourself, they were all off their tits, because I don't think it can be under-appreciated the effect that must have had. You had cocaine in your cough syrup for fuck's sake.

These days you have to ID people for Monster energy drinks.

I am feeling pleased with my efforts. 15 whole days without any sweets. This mightn't sound like much, but during the first quarter of this year I was making runs to the shops just to buy bags of doughnuts or packs biscuits almost every day, so I'm considerably better off than that.