Getting up every day and choosing in each instance to be not just shitty, but a nazi

These people are getting up every morning and all they see are comments downplaying and explaining why it shouldn’t be taken literally. They turn on their favorite ‘news’ station which ignores the obvious and latches onto sensationalized nothingburgers and conjecture. Reality to them is an entirely different thing. They can’t see the forest for the trees. Everyone around them is telling them not to look. They step in a little too far and get caught in the undertow.

But this far right bullshit is happening all over the world, started happening as soon as everyone wound up with a phone in their pocket, and it often gets traced back to Russian interference and influence.

And the dumber it sounds, the more credence it gets, because it drives the other half up the fucking wall. Beetles are what’s causing the Canada wildfires, hurricane machines, Haitians eating cats and dogs, normal ass people are not letting these things become things organically

Given enough time person might look at their dad less like the asshole and more like the victim of a scam perpetrated by the real asshole, but life is tricky like that

Go to a hardware store, buy multiple packs of microfiber so you have multiple colors, assign a color to a specific task (blue = bathroom, grey = kitchen, orange = car detailing) and liberate yourselves from paper towels.

If you wash them in cool water with little detergent and some vinegar, dry on low without fabric softener, they’ll remain absorbent and streak-free for a long ass time. As they go bad (burned from wiping down a hot oven top etc), cut them in half and use them for rags for ‘greasy jobs’ (you’ll know which is which because they’re cut in half)

I’ve been getting better at making small but meaningful changes to my life by recognizing that a lot of it is simply habit/routine, making an earnest effort at thinking of ways in which I can modify them, and making an earnest effort at applying them.

Very generally: Think of something I do that I might want to curb, think of why that thing is what I do, think of things I could do that would impede on my ability to do those things, and implement those changes.

Couple specifics:

I’m fond of beer. I don’t binge or anything but if it’s in the fridge I’m probably gonna grab one every couple of hours, and that’s not too healthy and kind of a waste of money, so now, when I buy beer I just toss a couple cans in the fridge and put the rest in the cabinet above the fridge. If I run out I’ll toss a couple in the next day. Now I drink a lot less because I’m not gonna drink warm beer and when I open the fridge I see the scarcity and tend to just shut the fridge and walk away.

I’m an introvert and I love reading about things and events, non-fiction crap, walking around on Wikipedia and stuff. It drives my wife up the wall when I’m doing and I don’t blame her because I’m bad at listening when I’m not giving my full undivided attention, so I removed all my phone chargers except for the one in the bedroom. Now, I just set my alarms and plug in the phone, walk into the other room, get out of that headspace, and engage my wife in conversation.

It’s kind of fun like 3D jigsaw puzzles but I’d honestly rather not be fixing things so much. We got this new place, inspection turned out fine, but turns out previous owner didn’t find a single stud and used 1" screws on everything in the drywall. Had to redo all the closet shelves, hang closet doors, you name it lol

I think the half of the dash and the entire center console on a G37 was about the trickiest thing. Center console lid has a little gear-driven mechanism and you need to flip the entire console upside down to fix, but I needed to stop everything and go to the dealership for a little plastic cog.

But we’re in the middle of moving into a new place and our dishwasher was leaking so I pulled the entire ‘tub’ yesterday and inside front panel off to see if fitment was an issue, mostly wasting time while a couch was scheduled to be delivered, so I stopped the dishwasher project to assemble the couch (power reclining thing), then had to put the entire thing back together afterword (one of those Maytag ‘chopper’ models with a built in food disposal thing). But to pull the tub I had to remove the heater blower and chop chop thing and the control board and the water jets and all that… And then I realized a new dishwasher is like 500 bucks lol

I wouldn’t call it a skill but I’m really mechanically decent (3D puzzles and Rube Goldberg aptitude, that kind of thing), and my visual memory is really good, so I have the uncanny ability to tear apart household appliances, do something else for hours or days, then return and slap it all back together about as quickly with no leftover mystery screws. I just look at the shit all strewn about, and can somehow recall the very last thing I was holding and work backwords

Purely anecdotal but I tend to avoid any sensitive hardware purchases off of Amazon because they suck at packaging things a lot of times and I’ve had more than a few DOA components because they just tossed the box into an even larger box then apparently yeeted it down a flight of stairs

Edit: I should add that I live 10 minutes from a Microcenter which plays a large part in my overall pickiness, but that said, when I’m looking for something sensitive to handling and needs to be purchased online I stick to computer hardware retailers solely because they love packing peanuts and bubble wrap as much as the components love them