When a grocery store goes out of business, people usually find another. When a gas station closes, people drive a bit further.

Do pharmacies fall into that same category, or is there a point where losing one starts affecting a community in ways that aren't obvious at first?

I wonder what people think about it, specially if you've lived somewhere that lost its only nearby pharmacy.

Im honestly not sure if this is the best title for this kind of trend but I don’t have a better idea. Basically what I’m looking for is art that uses its medium of choice to enhance the story/meaning/whatever so much so that it would be difficult to adapt it in any other way.

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once’s use of filming styles and genres.

House of Leaves’s rearranging of words on the page and complex reading order.

Undertale’s framing of the player’s abilities and potential detachment with the world as the backstory of the antagonist.

Those are just some examples I could think of, if that helps clarify what I mean. Doesn’t need to be just stuff with stories.

Forrest Gump is now on Delta flights and I am currently watching it. Holy cow it holds up and is such a reflection of the stories my parents told me about their youths. It came out in 1994. My kid is now older than I was when the movie came out. What events would be in the movie if Forrest Gump came out today and was set in 2026? How would Forrest even be characterized as this oblivious observer of history?

I read a lot of U.S. history, but while I was reading the latest book, the author went on a short tangent to talk about the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and it dawned on me that the history of France is much more complicated than that of the U.S. So I wondered: which country’s history is the most complex and would be the most difficult for a novice to learn and understand?

Germany’s seems very confusing, with all the various city-states then the Holy Roman Empire. Turkiye’s seems also pretty complex, but it seems to pale in comparison to China. Then there are the nations of Africa, which were torn apart by colonialism, in some cases at the expense of their own history (which was overwritten by colonial powers).

Which country’s history would be the most difficult for a novice to learn & understand?

For those who have quit their jobs, moved away and started fresh somewhere new; What were you looking for? Did you find it? Was it worth? What did you learn? Would you do it again? What advice would you have given yourself at the time?

I'm curious to learn from others who have done this or anything in the same spirit.

Hey, first post here, fyi, I'm much into drugs community, like researching a lot about this subject. I know this may sounds silly for some but these 2 are regularly close to each other is terms of danger in most popular studies, also when you look the stats of death/ harm per users, obviously the risk profile varies a lot but there is a fight, not an obvious most dangerous one like alcohol - cannabis.

Also I know it varies a lot depending on the consumption, but considering on average, trying to exclude the danger linked to selection bias of consumers, what would you say is the most dangerous one. I also know that cocaine is mostly acute risk while tobacco mostly chronic, would like to have an interesting debate on this, don't hesitate to research on psychonautwiki, go see the 2 David Nutt studies. Also, if you have any insight we don't hear so much on these substance, history, culture or anything don't hesitate.

Bonus : Would you hold the same opinion about Alcohol ? Where would you compare it to these two ?

Hi, I’m Argentine, but I’m not that big of a soccer fan. Still, I keep seeing nothing but hateful comments directed at all Argentines. I know there are bad things happening, and that some people might have a reason to hate.

But ever since the World Cup started, Reddit and Twitter have become really unbearable. Several subreddits I used to visit often are now slagging off the entire population, calling them racists, Nazis, and a lot of other things.

I just hope all this is temporary and that once it’s over, things will calm down again.

It scares me a little to think that people might start excluding others just because of their nationality. There have already been online friends from other countries who I used to talk to about playing games—now they hate me because they say I’m just like all Argentines. If this keeps growing, I’m afraid of the kind of exclusion that will result.

I wanna start writing stories online , get feedback to work on a published work eventually

I have a passion of writing but i also have a goal of being famous

To what extent can i make it big, regardless of my nationality ?

Is that something to worry about? When would enough be enough in your opinion?

Seems like everyone tints their car windows, but not really house windows. Is there a reason it's not a common thing being advertised?

Please don’t try to guess what inspired this thought experiment. I’m interested only in how you define “sacrifice.”

Imagine you voluntarily choose to endure unimaginable suffering and die in order to save all of humanity.
You know with absolute certainty that you will return to life three days later.

Would you consider your choice a genuine sacrifice?
If yes, what exactly did you sacrifice?
If no, what do you believe is required for something to truly be called a sacrifice?

UPD: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAskReddit/s/1YIrkbN9ru

I like making bone jewelry and other bone related things. I want to get into taxidermy later in life but don't have the room in a 1 bedroom low income apartment. I'm also interested in making bone framed mirrors. But what I'm wondering is.

How did you make money? Did you manage to make a form of income and how? Also any tips on how to keep up supplies and other things I could make in a small apartment

I recently wrote this as a personal reflection on human nature, friendship, and the idea that not every relationship between a man and a woman has to involve romantic or ulterior motives.

The main idea is that human beings are capable of both incredible kindness and horrifying cruelty, but we are also capable of transcending our instincts. I wanted to argue that genuine friendship can exist without romantic attraction, personal gain, or some hidden motive behind it.

I would really appreciate some honest feedback. Does this work as a philosophical piece? Are the ideas actually interesting and coherent, or does it come across as me trying too hard to sound deep? I am especially interested in criticism regarding the writing, structure, repetition, and whether the conclusion feels earned.

The full text:

Here I am once again, speaking about a subject I suspect I will never truly stop discussing: what it means to be human.

I have always believed, and I will stand by this belief until the day I die, that human beings are capable of being both the most beautiful and angelic creatures in existence, and some of the most terrifying and monstrous. That is the paradox of humanity.

And, honestly, I have grown tired of people who insist on searching for some profound meaning behind every single action, as though nothing can ever simply be what it is. Not everything needs to be dissected through social media quotations or grand theories about human nature. Sometimes, an action is simply an action. Nothing more. This obsession with assigning hidden and profound motives to everything has led people to overanalyse even the most ordinary human interactions.

Human beings are, by nature, drawn towards connection and belonging. It is an instinct deeply rooted within us, and it has given rise to some of the most complex and beautiful things in existence. But I want to speak specifically about friendship, because I genuinely believe it to be one of the most beautiful expressions of humanity.

What makes friendship so beautiful? Unlike romantic relationships, it is not necessarily founded upon attraction. Nor is it bound by blood or family. It can be built upon something as simple as mutual respect, honesty, compassion, and kindness.

You can meet someone who is neither your family nor your romantic partner, someone you were under no obligation to meet at all, and somehow, despite everything, form a genuine bond with them. To me, that is one of the purest forms of human connection.

This is why, when people insist that every friendship must conceal some ulterior motive, whether romantic interest, personal gain, or some hidden desire, I believe they fundamentally misunderstand what friendship can be. They reduce something beautiful and sincere to a cynical explanation simply because they cannot imagine a human connection existing without some hidden intention behind it.

The same applies to friendships between men and women. The claim that men and women cannot be friends simply because of what is supposedly “human instinct” is an incredibly simplistic view of human nature. We do not live in the Stone Age, nor are we beings completely enslaved to our instincts. Human beings are capable of building relationships that transcend instinct.

And I do not want anything from you. I am not secretly in love with you, nor am I hiding some ulterior motive behind our friendship. If I were, then why would I continue to maintain this friendship? You are free to think that I am strange, or to consider me an exception, but the belief that genuine friendship is impossible simply because two people are of different genders is not an absolute truth. It is merely a cynical view of human relationships, and in my opinion, it is far from being a universal rule.

Perhaps the most ironic thing about humanity is that we pride ourselves on our ability to think, reflect, and rise above our instincts, only to turn around and reduce ourselves to those very instincts. We seem incapable of believing that someone might choose to remain beside another person not because they want something from them, nor because they expect anything in return, but simply because they value their presence.

As though noble intentions have become suspicious, while the constant search for hidden self-interest has become a sign of intelligence. But not everything innocent is naïve, and not everything complicated is profound. Sometimes, the simplest explanation is the truest one.

Perhaps one of humanity's greatest tragedies is that we so often ruin beautiful things by trying endlessly to explain them. We meet someone, feel comfortable around them, share our thoughts and our time, and then begin questioning the true reason behind it all, as though a feeling cannot be genuine unless we dissect it completely.

Eventually, we stop simply living our relationships. We judge them, doubt them, and search for hidden motives behind them, until we lose sight of the simplest truth: that one human being may choose another, not out of greed, fear, or desire for something in return, but simply because their presence alone was enough to make the world feel a little less lonely.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful things about humanity is that, despite all our instincts, our selfishness, and our constant tendency to seek our own interests, we are still capable of choosing another person without wanting anything from them.

We are capable of staying without expecting anything in return. Of caring without an ulterior motive. Of finding value in another person's existence without needing to explain it.

And perhaps that is one of the truest victories a human being can achieve over themselves.

End text

I am not necessarily looking for people to agree with my conclusion. I would genuinely like to know whether the philosophical argument itself holds up and what could be improved.

I thought everyone ate it like a typewriter: row by row, left to right.

Then I saw someone just bite into the middle of the cob, rotated it 45 degrees, took another random bite, and left patchy craters everywhere.

So settle this for me. What is your method

- Left to right, row by row.

- Continuous spinning around the cob.

- Cutting the kernels off with a knife first.

- Random bites with zero strategy.

I’ve been thinking about how much of modern life has lost its edges.

Before smartphones became the default interface for everything, many activities had a clear beginning and end. You went somewhere, did a thing, and came back. You made a trip to the bank to deposit a cheque. You went to the newsagent to buy a monthly magazine. The newspaper arrived in the morning. The post came through the front door, you sorted it, and then it was dealt with.

Now, many of those activities have become frictionless, but also continuous. Banking, news, messages, shopping, entertainment and work are always available, all in the same place, at all hours. Nothing fully starts, and nothing fully finishes. It just drip-drips into the day.

You might once have had a scheduled weekly phone call with a friend. Now you exchange fragments of messages indefinitely. People arranged to meet at a specific time and place because there was no easy way to cancel at the last minute. You had to turn up where you said you would be.

You heard a song on the radio, waited for it to be released, then went out and bought the single. The anticipation, the journey and the object itself were part of the experience. Now an album appears at midnight and you watch a progress bar move from 0 to 100%.

Even using the internet used to be a bounded activity. You went into the room with the computer, dialled in, browsed for a while, and logged off. The internet was somewhere you went. Now it is the atmosphere around everything.

The same pattern appears in smaller ways. A cigarette has a beginning and an end; vaping can continue almost indefinitely. A television programme aired at a particular time, and millions of people watched the same episode together. Now everyone binges different shows at different speeds, often while also looking at another screen.

Obviously, many of these changes are convenient, and I’m not arguing that depositing cheques in person was inherently better. But I wonder whether all that friction also created useful boundaries. It divided the day into distinct activities and gave ordinary experiences a sense of occasion, completion and rhythm.

And if those cues have disappeared, what has the impact been?

Have we become worse at sustaining attention because fewer activities now ask us to remain inside one clearly defined task? Is it harder to sit down and read a chapter of a book, reconcile a bank statement, write a letter, cook a meal or watch a film without checking something else?

Did stopping cues once help us feel satisfied? Finishing the newspaper, reaching the end of a television episode, completing the weekly shop or returning from the bank all gave a small sense of closure. What happens when news never ends, shopping never closes, messages never stop arriving and entertainment automatically plays the next thing?

Has the loss of structure changed our relationship with boredom? In the past, there were unavoidable gaps between activities: waiting for a bus, standing in a queue, sitting alone in a café. Now those moments are immediately filled. Have we lost some ability to tolerate stillness, think freely or let our attention settle?

Has it affected memory? Are experiences less distinct because fewer of them happen at a particular time, in a particular place, with a clear beginning and end?

Has it changed friendship and commitment? Does continuous low-level contact create genuine closeness, or has it replaced more deliberate forms of connection? Are plans treated as more provisional because everyone remains reachable and able to rearrange them until the last minute?

Has it weakened shared culture? When people watched the same programme on the same evening, read the morning paper or waited for the same record release, there was a common rhythm. Now we consume different things, on demand, at different speeds. Have we gained choice but lost synchronisation?

Has it also changed our sense of time? When every activity happens through the same device, in the same posture, in the same place, do work, leisure, errands and social life begin to feel psychologically interchangeable?

Maybe the problem with modern life is not simply that we spend too much time on our phones. Maybe it is that we have lost the cues that tell us "this is beginning. This is what I am doing now. This is finished."

What social or psychological changes do you think have resulted from the loss of these boundaries? What stopping and starting cues do you miss, and have you found ways to recreate them?

I mean things so deep that average person would be shocked to finally learn.

Why passion is more stronger than reason? We all know that by following reason and logic we can get better results and we can achieve great success but we don't care about that. Imagine a thought experiment, a labour comes home and he has 8 hours for himself but he chooses comfort, comedy, tv shows and anything for comfort rather than learning new skill and getting more knowledge, yes there is an economic reason behind that but not always even privileged people don't choose reason, we often see that privileged people are more lazy and grit less. So now question is, why is that? Is Nietzsche right? Passion vs reason as he mentioned in birth of tragedy.

I see men and women bashing each other online all day. It makes me sad because it just shows how egotiscal and prideful humans are in general in my opinion. And this is why we are a species that can never live in harmony with each other. What do you think?

With Conor McGregor being back in the news, I’ve been thinking about something. First of all, I’m not trying to defend his actions in any way. If the allegations and incidents are true, he has done terrible things like sexual assault, violence, substance abuse, and other harmful behavior. None of that should be excused. But it makes me wonder: do we believe people are capable of genuinely changing? If someone truly takes responsibility, gets help, stays sober, and spends years trying to become a better person, should there ever be room for redemption? Or are some people permanently defined by the worst things they’ve done?

I completely understand that victims may carry trauma for the rest of their lives, and nothing can erase that. Accountability is essential. But if society believes someone can never change, no matter what they do, what incentive is there for them to actually improve? Doesn’t that risk pushing people further into the same destructive behavior?
Where do we draw the line between accountability and the belief that people can grow? What is the goal? Punishment forever, or the possibility of rehabilitation?

I’m genuinely curious how other people think about this.