I found a wounded squirrel lying on a walk path a few years back. I first thought it was already dead but upon closer inspection it was still breathing. I didn’t see any visible injuries so I have no idea what had happened to it.

I carried it into the forest, placed it on a stump and crushed its head with a large stick. It was as quick as it can be and I think I did the right thing but god damn I felt shitty about it for multiple days after. Red squirrels are my favorite wild animals around here. I just hate having to be the one who has to make the decision to end a life. I don’t feel like it’s mine to make.

I have an old pet gerbil too and I often wonder what I’d do if something happened all of a sudden and it was obvious it’s in a lot of pain and needs to be put down quickly. The quick way is to just slam it onto the ground at full force but holy fuck I don’t even want to think about having to do that. The alternative is a fabric bag tied around my truck’s exhaust but those are some really uncomfortable final minutes. An enclosed container and a bottle of nitrogen would be the ideal method I believe. That leads to loss of consciousness and suffocation without the sense of suffocating (which is triggered by excess carbon dioxide).

In my truck I carry a hatchet for just this reason. A friend had to strangle a dying racoon once because they didn’t have anything to hit it with.

Are you saying you just drill at an angle so you come into the joist at the corner or even at the side of the board?

Not OP but I build stuff for a living - including 3 decks this year. The joist is a little less than 2 inches wide (48mm) so in a spot like this I place the screws about an inch to an inch and a half from the end of the board and drive it in at an angle. That way I pretty much hit the corner of the joist but as the screw goes deeper it digs deep into the solid centre wood of the joist. It just holds the end of the board down. There’s another set of screws on the next joist - the board doesn’t get to move sideways either way. Sometimes there is only half an inch of joist for the deck plank to rest onto. That’s perfectly fine.

In this case compromise means going somewhere neither of us is enthusiastic about. For me the value of eating out is that I don’t need to cook myself - a sushi buffet achieves that, and the food is good. Going to a nicer restaurant means it costs more, I need to wait longer and usually I get a smaller portion of food and the quality of it is the same at best. It’s simply just a worse experience for me personally. So since I’m not enjoying myself either way we may just as well go somewhere she wants to so at least one of us is having fun.

And you’re right - they have been bad relationships. We haven’t had anything in common. Last time though I did lay the cards on the table from the very beginning and 9 years later when she finally had enough she at least couldn’t say that she didn’t know or that I had changed. She did know.

If there is to be a new romantic relationship for me in the future I might just give it a try with a guy instead. It’s at least conceivable that things haven’t worked out in the past for the simple reason that I’ve been trying to shove myself into a mould I don’t fit into. I’m a peculiar, eccentric person and it takes a certain kind of individual to get along with me. It seems that people either like me a lot or not at all.

Excuse my cynicism. I’m not proud of it but it is what it is.

I am bitter and it was my intention though I wouldn’t go as far as to generalize that all women are like that as it’s obviously not the case.

However, these are all different questions. What’s an appropriate restaurant for a first date is different from where I’d personally like to eat which is different from which place I would choose for us to eat together.

I don’t think a sushi buffet or BK is an appropriate place for a first date. Those are where I go to refuel myself and it’s as romantic as visiting the gas station. That’s why I end up choosing a more appropriate place but that place is in fact not where I want to go - it’s where I assume she wants to go. This is pretty much my experience of most things in relationships. I try my best to please her and am left completely unsatisfied myself.

Hell - maybe I should just turn this into a shit test. Next time I get to choose I tell her I want to go cook sausages by a camp fire. If she doesn’t then she can go find someone else. I’m tired of this shit.

Vehicles with a manual transmission similarly start engine braking the moment you lift your foot off the accelerator but I never attributed any sense of motion sickness to that, though the braking force likely is lesser.

The way I’ve always understood this is that since passengers usually sit in the rear they’re looking out the side windows and that scenery flying by so fast is what causes that motion sickness and it doesn’t happen to the driver or front-seat passenger so much because they’re looking forward through the windshield.

6mm is way too much for treated lumber. The wood is wet when new and it shrinks as it dries. If you start with 6mm gaps you end up with 10mm gaps in few months which both look ugly and allow stuff to fall under the deck. The width of a carpenter’s knife blade is plenty which is roughly 3mm. Then you end up with 6mm gaps once it has dried out.

“I get to choose” as in I have to try and guess where she wants to go. If it was up to me it’s either Burger King or a sushi buffet.

…which is a completely different argument than what you started with. You’re blatantly moving the goalposts.

Only by being yourself you can find people who like you for who you are rather than who you pretend to be. Nobody can beat you at being you but you can only be the second best at pretending to be someone else.

I take that to mean that if you are weird then embrace it. That attracts other similarly weird people and those are the best kind. There’s no point in being liked for being someone you’re not so why pretend.

In this particular case autism has lots to do with it.

If you say so.

I don’t see how irrationality would follow from the belief that there is no ultimate meaning to any of this. What matters is this moment right now. The rest of it is just a story I’m telling myself.

I’ll make a wild guess that you too came here from reddit. That makes you one of those people. We’re all just redditors telling ourself a comforting story about how we’re better than those people over there.

The question presupposes the thing you ask me to inspect and I reject the premise. There is no reason to any of this. It just is.

Passive income doesn’t exist.

Roughly 5 million USD invested into stock market is enough to live a comfortable middle-class life off the interest.

Investing in low cost, highly diversified ETF index funds. I’m currently earning roughly 3 to 4 month’s wage per year passively from interests though it’s all invested back into the fund.

You said you’re young so this especially applies to you. Time in the market > Timing the market.

I’d almost extend this to any kinds of trickery about what people are putting into their mouths. The consequences can be lethal at worst.

A bit unrelated but at a previous work place the guys there put viagra into another guy’s food as a joke where as I would’ve considered that borderline assault.

I’d pretty much go as far as to claim that ketchup is only good with fries and even there it’s still outmatched by mayo.

I have the same one but with added grip for furious writing.

It’s self-vulcanizing tape.

The “break” from sitting in my case means working