Speak, friend, and enter.

I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I'm feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.

All the book really does is [I'm pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I've read no more than 5 pages] "discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help."

But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I'm compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it's saved my life at least a few times now.

sorry to put your tags on blast on this insane breach containment post I have since muted, but you're right and you should say it.

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.

To them, the difference between selling glasses and getting a customer to sign up for contacts is like the difference between selling a video game and getting a player to get a monthly subscription.  And failing that their next big sell is for frames that cost twice to three times as much, but have little to no frame (and thus almost look like you aren’t wearing glasses at all) and are fragile as all hell (and thus are likely to break and have to be replaced).

They can’t rely solely on our prescription getting heavier or otherwise changing to the point that we have to buy a new pair every year. They want to push you to buy their product every time that you visit the optometrist and then some more in between.

You can buy prescription glasses and even prescription sunglasses online for a fraction of the cost as they will force you to pay in stores.

The only thing you need is your prescription, and your pupil distance, which you can just measure at home

Firmoo.com

Eyebuydirect.com

I forget the other ones but these are the two I've used. Firmoo always has a lot of coupons and buy one get one free deals.

If you buy them online, you can get prescription sunglasses for $30. If there's a buy one get one sale, you can get two pairs of prescription sunglasses for $30. And they don't have to be the same prescription. You but yourself prescription sunglasses for $30, and you can get somebody else a pair of prescription sunglasses for free. Or just a backup set if something happens to the first one!

Seriously!

You do not need to be spending $60 on glasses!! Buy them online!!!

just make sure your PD (pupillary distance) is on your prescription (this doesnt change so it can be an old one)

firmoo also supply all the frame dimensions online so you can compare them to your current ones to know if the size will fit your face properly!!

the most i have ever paid for a pair of glasses for them incl frames + lenses + lens thinning + anti-glare and anti-scratch + shipping was about $100NZD total (~$58USD). seriously. PLEASE stop spending hundreds just to see because luxottica has a monopoly on the industry (watch below)

And this forces you to decide whether your autonomy matters to you more than the approval of the group - while they'll still act like you're on thin ice either way, if you give in at this point they know you're theirs forever, because now they've established a foothold, you've shown a moral weakness, which they will brand you with so it can be used against you in the future ("hey RICE-addict here doesn't want help break into the city records office") to force you to double-down and isolate you further.

I refer, of course, to the time Buzz Aldrin (age 72 at the time) cold-cocked a moon landing conspiracy theorist straight in his smug face after being accused of being a coward, liar, and thief.

Yes, someone was indeed dumb enough to tell a man so unafraid of death that he was willing to go into the void on a fragile explosive rocket, a coward.

Said dumbass was filming this confrontation as some sort of proof of moon fraud, but has instead captured this glorious moment of near-cosmic justice for us to loop for all time.

Washington Post is paywalling the article but it looks like Taylor Farms — a consumer bagged salad brand that also supplies produce to grocers and fast food chains like Taco Bell, Walmart, McDonald's, Chipotle, Burger King, KFC, and Meijer —may be at least one of the sources of the current cyclosporiasis outbreak.

Discovered last year I couldn’t look at my 2015 MacBook Air without it triggering nausea and migraines, and figured the screen died. Have been getting by on my phone, but concluded I really need a laptop again.

Saved up, realised I could afford a brand new MacBook Neo, and got one.

-And I couldn’t spend more than five minutes looking at the screen without massive eye strain, nausea, vertigo, and if I pushed it, I-need-to-lie-down-in-a-dark-room-for-hours migraines.

Looking up MacBook and Eyestrain explained what is going on. The liquid retina displays that Apple currently has uses Pulse Width Modulation or PWM. In order to give the screens a deeper depth of colour and contrast, PWM flickers between several hundred to thousand times a second.

And there is currently no way to turn it off. There are settings and apps to reduce it, but there is no way to stop the screen from flickering. Checked Apple forums, called Apple Support, and the time I could look at the screen kept shrinking. Got the laptop Tuesday, returned it Friday, today is Sunday and I’m still dealing with a vertigo migraine.

For MacBooks, it seems to vary on the computer model and the software it uses. In retrospect, the issue with my MacBook Air started after a major software update.

And it’s not just an Apple thing. Current Windows and Android screens do the same thing. There’s even a Reddit for people who are sensitive to PWM flickers to help find computers and screens that won’t trigger eyestrain and headaches.

So, yeah. This week has been a learning experience. But for those who are prone to headaches and migraines, this may be something to be aware of, cause I was not.