Get them on the real stuff, there’s plenty of it. The couch thing is known to be made up and is just misinformation now (well, always was).

He certainly seems like someone who might fuck a couch because he’s fucking weird, so keep the jokes about it coming, but the book excerpt was fake

Checking in from NZ, sounds familiar to me

With peaceful violence

I’m also not a fan of the dark souls games, something compelled me to give Sekiro a try and it’s now one of my all time favourites…

Counterpoint - almost all jobs will have elements of this type of stressful fuckery. Use it as a learning experience, and do your best to navigate the constraints while maintaining professionalism and value to your employer.

It’s a balance; if it’s truly soul destroying then your health and happiness is more important, get out. However, the more you learn how to deal with this, the less likely you are to burn out in other jobs when they get shit like this. Not so that you can just suck it up and grind away for awful bosses, but so that you can give yourself the maximum options for you, and stress less while going through it.

You already seem to have the right mindset about trying to do this right, so the one thing I’ll say is this: everything in writing, straight away. It’s easy to get too relaxed about this when it’s all going smoothly, but then something catches you out and it’s too late (eg already been told not to bring it up again).

This part will feel awkward, but to protect yourself, you need to send your boss an email summarising your conversation and your understanding of the outcome (not updating). Frame it as a “I hear you, and I apologise for my previous insistence” if it helps smooth things over, but just make sure it outlines your previous queries and suggestions and their response to you. It’s the only way to cover your own butt in these situations, and it’s a great habit to get into after every conversation that has decisions or changes etc. Put it in writing as a summary: you can refer back to it later and it let’s the other person know you understood their position / instruction

Yeah, definitely more about the tone and narrative for me, so I’d go with that plan and see it through!

If you have the option, I would suggest going to a Dr before assuming anything is the only plausible explanation.

Personally, I found out about my neck / posture issues (even though outwardly I have decent looking posture so I never assumed it would be that), got some excercises from a physio and a completely different pillow, and that combo drastically reduced my headaches

Ahhh I wanted to love it, it’s one of my favourite scifi concepts explored really well, but I wish the big plot points at the end were told in the opposite order. Feel like it would have hit way harder, for me anyway

TW: suicide

Similar happened to me about 15 years ago, and it still bothers me. Mine was out of the blue though, nobody had shared anything remotely violent or gory in the team. One guy decides to share a ‘funny’ video with a subject line of ‘always search your detainees’ or something. A guy gets seated in a room by a cop, asks for some water, cop leaves, guy sits for a moment, then pulls out a handgun and shoots himself in the head. I had headphones on and still remember the sound of his last ‘exhale’ after dying. Fucked me up for a while.

In short, don’t stand for this shit. It’s no joke how much it can affect you if you aren’t desensitised already, especially if you aren’t expecting it.

I only get half of the references in it, but it’s enough… Big feels, every time.

It was my first real Sci fi book haha. Definitely a struggle but I was hooked once I started grasping even a sense of what was going on in the conceptory at the beginning.

From there, I understood what I understood, and let the other concepts flow over me in a way. Sometimes they’d click once I was a few chapters deeper and something that was discussed earlier came into effect and I’d go back and re read, other things made more sense when I read the whole thing again years later.

Reading it, I definitely didn’t get the full intended effect that someone with more knowledge would have, but it still managed to stick with me for decades now and absolutely shaped my Sci fi tastes

Not quite what you’re after but I absolutely love Diaspora by Greg Egan.

It’s a different take on the same issues you’re asking about (not at first, but it’s not really a spoiler to say that it explores them whether or not it’s as necessary as your examples state), a take that leans more into different forms of existence rather than supporting our current existence in a different environment (but touches on aspects of that too, kind of). It’s mega-multi-generational while also not being that at all, depending on perspective.

Not quite what you’re asking, but I once fell asleep on a long haul flight listening to a Cinematic Orchestra album with some very comfy headphones.

I woke up to a little filler / ambient track that is mostly silence with a ship’s fog horn blown a few times… The cabin was dark, most people were asleep or quietly watching movies, and my half asleep brain forgot I was wearing headphones. I went from confused to creeping panic about what this horn meant and why no on else was reacting to it until I finally woke up properly

The universe is, and we are.

Oh hell yes

I haven’t heard this, how did the pandemic inform one way or another on flat earthers?

The suspense is killing me…

While it’s cool to show concern for someone who might need to hear some words of encouragement for getting help (well, minus the scare tactics of a dead relative story), you seem to have conflated this poster’s description of the ‘pattern’ a night out drinking can take with a ‘pattern’ of problem drinking every day, or far too often at least.

What they described is perfectly familiar to me, someone who drank to a level of bad hangover on occasion when I was young and having dumb fun with friends. As I got older, that type of fun got less important and the amount I drink came down to a drink or two, rarely, when I can afford a nice whisky or something.

Basically, someone recognising how a night of social drinking can turn into a hangover isn’t necessarily the cry for help you seem to have read it as

YES It was a Dodge Viper game, as in that was the only car available I think. And there was a button to either crush the car more or maybe launch it into the air? I’m pretty sure that’s how I managed to crumple it into a ball with wheels just like you. 15 to 20 years ago sounds right

Hey, just letting you know, I think you’ve maybe mixed up two conversations? That’s the only way I can see this making any sense, so you might want to re-read the conversation and make some edits that don’t accuse people of supporting child prostitution when that hasn’t been brought up at all.