Right, and you get why this is impossible for most people? That was my original point. Most people, even if they want to do this, can’t. It’s unaffordable.

The point is that your suggestion that someone is free to do this is just very much not the case.

Ok, but if your plan is to live solo forever and not interact with society, you’d basically need to pay for it upfront. That means you need a lot of money all at once, otherwise you’ll still need income, which limits the ability you have to be separate from society.

Yes I know, I’ve looked at them. That’s how I know they are quite expensive.

They’re free to go live in the wilderness, with no roads, no fire department, no water or electricity, no services whatever, and find out how much they’re actually benefiting from our collective.

Where?

This is what I want to do, but I can’t afford to buy land on which to do it (and not just any land is useful for this either, it needs to be capable of supporting people before you can count it). Land enough to support a small homestead isn’t cheap, and zoning/local laws often restricts what you can do on it. So for example you may buy land, but not be allowed to drill a well, even if you have the means and knowledge to do so. Or if you buy land you can afford, you may not be allowed to build a permanent structure on it at all.

You’ll get kicked out (and possibly fined) of both state and national parks in the US if they find you “permanently camping”, which they are likely to do since there are frequently people out there. The only other option is squatting on private property. If you get caught before whatever time passes for squatters laws to take effect, you lose everything you’ve built up.

I mean don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind paying for things I’ll never use because it makes society as a whole better. All I’m saying is opting out of living in a society is nearly impossible for most people even if they are ok with not having all the stuff society funds like roads and fire control.

This one seems more fitting.

Depends heavily on the comedy for me. I have an entire folder of stand up specials, and I really enjoy a lot of it, but I lean heavily away from political and broad social commentary, and toward personal/anecdotal and more nuanced stuff.

I want my comedy to be silly, not offensive. If you are going to be making racial/minority stereotype jokes, they better be about your own experience as that race or minority. That’s the one and only way they even could be funny (tho most still aren’t). If you are going to punch down or across, not interested. If you hit yourself, or punch up and get a fist full of shit for doing it, it might be worth watching!

There’s a HUGE amount of really shit standup out there, though. Punching down, shock comedy (especially shit like rape jokes, sexism, etc), that sort of thing. It’s a shame really because you have to wade through it to find good stuff. There’s also an absolutely absurd amount of totally vapid brainrot comedy that could also go extinct, imo, but at least it’s not actively harming anyone, I guess.

Strong smells, especially campfire. Cannot stand the smell of campfire. Gives me headaches and makes me super sneezy.

I don’t have AC, and it’s legal to have campfires in town in private yards, which means I have the joy of being uncomfortable nearly every nice night for half the year. If I open windows for the nice breeze, my house stinks of smoke, if I keep the windows closed, it stays hot. Can’t win because people are selfish af.

People should not be allowed to burn shit in town, regardless of the fire spread risk. It negatively impacts other people who have zero say. I don’t have asthma, but if I did I’d probably just die living here.

And nobody else thinks it’s a problem because they LIKE having fires now and then. It’s the same mentality of not putting limits on rich people because they wouldn’t want limits on themselves if they get rich.

You mean we could have seen these memes before?

My local thrift shops are packed with books for stupid cheap. A wide variety, too.

Maybe try that and have a happy medium? Not buying something new, but saving something from a landfill.

Everything has to be stretchy, or so loose as to never restrict movement. This naturally means my clothing is a softer texture as well, so lovely bonus.

No necklines that touch my neck. I can do v neck and tank tops, but not crew or turtle neck. Similarly, pants have to flare from knee down, no skinny or boot cut, and shirt sleeves have to be loose everywhere but the wrist.

Socks have to be knee socks. Can’t stand any other kind. They have to have the same overall feel, but can be different colors and stuff. However I only wear socks and shoes when I absolutely have to. I strongly prefer being barefoot (even in snow for short periods like getting the mail), or wearing flip flops if I won’t lose toes to cold.

Same here. Or if I have no choice, I’ll have several instances of overwhelm where I freeze and process just enough to continue, get flustered, and just skip looking at anything at all I don’t need. Tunnel vision is a major cope. And even stuff I do need, and specifically came for, often gets left behind because I just can’t.

I wish I could get groceries delivered, but there aren’t any services in my area (close by, but I’d have to get them delivered to a delivery locker site for a huge fee, and at that point I may as well just do the shopping myself). That’s the biggest instance of this for me. I genuinely hate grocery shopping.

Try using a middleman, like Rumpelstiltskin.

Your debt holders don’t want first born, because that just increases their obligations, but someone will give you a fair market trade for them that you can use as payment, or service in lieu of payment!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_Corn

I’m very very amused that this is called “field of corn”. I mean of course it is, but that’s just very dryly funny to me.

I have aphantasia as well but I do actually have something sort of like a memory palace… kinda. It should be completely useless when I’m awake, but isn’t. I have a dream town, and every place I’ve dreamed about more than three times in the last ~20 years is there in a surprisingly consistent and exceptionally vivid way, like logging into a mmorpg, but spawning in random places. If not for it being easily recognizable as “my town”, I’d struggle to tell it from waking reality because that’s the only other time I experience “sight”. It’s genuinely unsettling sometimes, when my brain makes a new place, to not know if I was dreaming. Maybe that’s why I revisit places until they feel comfortable and familiar and get incorporated into the town.

I say it isn’t completely useless because I use spacial memory to “go places” when awake. I can’t see it, but I know what’s there if I go there, the same way I can mentally count the windows, and know what’s around them, in my house without visually touring the house; I think about where I go to open windows on a nice day, and count the stops.

I can’t put things into the town purposely. Locations or objects, unfortunately. Everything has to already be there if I want to make use of it. But if I can find a useful thing on my spacial tour, I can make note of where I found it, or move it to somewhere more useful. Like the finding the windows exercise, but, to continue your example, I happen to recall that next to window 3 is a Christmas cactus with pink heart-shaped flower buds, and I choose to ”move it” it to the 7th window of my tour. (And yes, if I make note that I’ve moved something, it does stay there when I dream, so that’s really neat)

Genuinely not that useful for things people probably normally use a memory palace sort of thing for, like short-term memories, (finding useful objects is difficult, and sometimes requires a lot of in-dream exploring, which takes actual time) but somewhat useful for certain long-term things, like numbers or recipes. And as a bonus, when I forget something, I’ll often stumble across it in my town and be reminded. Like the recipe for my mom’s cheesecake is the literal ingredients just sitting on the counter in the pocket floor she lives in (she’s a nightmare I had often enough to join the town’s residents, but I shoved her in an impossible floor so I can avoid her). I put that recipe there because I like to modify it, and I often forget what the base recipe is. It’s not written down in the normal sense because I’ll lose it, but it’s simple enough for a representation like that to be easy to hold onto.

But I’ve had similar frustrating experiences with people telling me to visualize things for whatever reason. Like nope, my internal computer is GUI-free. Text output only, with a screen reader. Not even multiple voices, which I hear is a thing most people can do, just the one default reader voice.

On the subject of not being able to visualize people, if there’s someone you haven’t seen in a long time, do you falsely match other people up with the description? For example, my mom died when I was 23, and I’m almost 40 now. It’s been so long that I genuinely don’t remember what she looks like unless I’m looking at a photo. But I know her general description, and when I see other women who fit the description I -feel- that they look just like her even though they usually don’t, actually.

Brian?

My friend has done this, and says “not remotely worth the effort, unless you want survival skills”.

I’m so so so glad I don’t have this problem.

I definitely lose most stuff the second I set it down, but never things like drink or food.

Car rides when I’m not driving are super hit or miss for me for this one.

Mid-conversation I’ll start drifting off in random thoughts starting from who knows where, and by the time I snap out of it it’s been so long it’s awkward to resume a conversation.

How do you explain that you spent the last 45 minutes planning out exactly how to repurpose parking garages across the country as hydroponics farms (because of the slope, strong building support that can handle a lot of water, and wiring for lights) when public transit or ride share takes over, when the prior conversation was about beer/breweries? While driving through the plains of Kansas.

It’s barely in the realm of possible to explain, because you start to explain and then the other person goes “how on Earth did you get to that from there, while here” and then you stop and think about it and entirely forget why you were retracing your steps in the first place…

Edit to add pic and re-word for clarity.

Took a really long time after “nevermore” to learn more words, but I’m pumped it happened anyway!

I wonder if that holds for childbirth despite the chemical cocktail that floods the brain to cause exactly that memory lapse…