u/Hyphz

I currently have a vented indirect feed hot water cylinder which is leaking into flats below, I have had several plumbers over to give quotes for replacing it.

However there is an odd variation in the advice being given. One of the plumbers also offered to install a cut-off valve that would prevent the cold water tank feeding the boiler and then the hot water tank, which would allow me to keep the cold water on without water getting into the leaky cylinder. However when I mentioned it to one of the others they said this was dangerous and illegal because the law requires the boiler to be able to feed back into the cold water tank (and have a vent at the other end) to reduce any risk of pressure building up.

Can anyone clarify which is right?

… they both did nothing.

If you consider that:
a) Caine’s speech about “not having fun” was honest, and that “uh, wait” was him reconsidering at the last moment as the VA suggested, and
b) Caine wasn’t actually deleted;

then nothing Kinger did in Ep8 changed anything - Caine was going to reconsider anyway.

A while ago I watched I Saw The TV Glow, and I very much connected with many of the things the protagonist talks about. The feeling that the experiences you really want are not accessible and so there's nothing to strive for, the feeling of seeing so little of the world, the feeling of "there must be somewhere else where I can being someone better, someone beautiful" and so on. Unfortunately I can't exactly recommend the conclusion it came to, but still.

And then I looked online and spoke to the friend who recommended it to me and they said it was intended to be, and quite clearly, about being transgender.

I can never quite get that. Like, I feel all those things, but I have no reason to think that if I had been born a girl, it would be any different. Trying to present as a woman now certainly would have nothing to do with it. I do feel envious of pretty girls, but I feel envious of handsome men too, and many women I know (cis and trans) also feel envious of all the same people, so again just gender alone makes no difference.

Yet nobody seems to be accepting or acknowledging this possibility, of having a dysphoria that's not based on gender. At best it's dimly ignored. At worst I've been accused of drawing an equivalence between trans people and general fantasists, which I do not intend, and although I feel this way myself I do respect and do not judge anyone else who decides for themselves that they are transgender. I don't know if general dysphoria just can't be discussed because of the danger of sounding threatening to trans people, or if it's just ignored because there is no work-around, but it just leaves me feeling very frozen out when I see things that resonate with my feelings exactly but then attribute it to something that I don't connect with them at all.

There seem to be >!three abstractions in the tent!< with Kinger.

Presumably they are >!Jax, Kaufmo and Ribbit.!<

Two of those would >!have needed to be pulled out of the cellar.!<

But even though they were doing that.. >!THEY DIDN’T PULL QUEENIE OUT!<!!!??!

I have now seen notable parts of the leaks, although I have not watched them all through. My cinema tickets are still booked.

I think the twist, and maybe even the "takeaway message" was supposed to be this: >!All of the cast members in real life have already solved the problems that defined them in the circus, and they presumably had done even when the series began. Through all the series, the characters we have known were only snapshots of them at some of their lowest points.!<

Now that is actually a really original idea. I think that this is the actual ending twist that Goose has said nobody predicted, and could be an uplifting twist except for two problems:

1. >!all of these are exactly the kind of success fantasies that most young people think are out of reach at the moment, and they've all happened off-camera. Ragatha is getting articles written about her being a "rising star in real estate", Zooble opened a bar that somehow survived COVID lockdown, Jax has even stopped being homeless.!< Granted Goose didn't really have a lot of choice about this one because >!it would not exactly be an uplifting ending for Ragatha to be a regular office clerk and Zooble to be going through a bankruptcy, but it kills the message for people who (rightly or wrongly) don't expect themselves to be special or things to be likely to fall into place for them.!<

2. more simply, >!there is no explanation as to why the characters are now OK with being trapped in a circus with no effect on the real world. The main thing seems to be that Caine isn't forcing them on adventures any more.!<

I think this is actually symptomatic of a general problem with fiction at the moment, where >!many people's outlook on the future for ordinary people is so bleak that any attempt to do a generally abstract happy ending comes across as patronising and trite for anyone who engaged with a character.!<

I was very interested by Dr K’s video on self objectification. I know that it is most classically associated with women as the targets of sexual objectification. But I think that it is much, much more common nowadays to the extent that it is being sought out extensively.

Consider:

* Many popular YouTubers represent themselves as doing basically one thing all the time. And many people who want to be YouTubers see it is an opportunity to get paid to do their favourite thing all the time.

* Many themed superheroes have a single theme and trait running through everything they do, and are presented as powerful and successful.

* Many characters in video games, especially hero shooters and fighting games, likewise have a single theme that encapsulates everything about them. And game developers seem to be constantly wrestling with the issue of how to enable players to have the experience of playing one of these characters with freedom without the experience of regularly getting their character’s head kicked in.

The sad truth would appear to be that most people think they are objectified by the system they are part of, work or school, regardless. So if they have to be objectified, they’d rather be objectified about something they like. And anything outside of their objectification is far more likely to be something negative than not.

So it doesn’t seem surprising that self objectification is endemic when it has been presented as something successful and desirable for so long.

Regarding the latest video about lowering expectations but keeping standards, I can see the logic behind what's being said, but there's a big dark side to lowering expectations which wasn't quite mentioned.

That is that at the point when expectations go below goals for pretty much everything, passive suicidal ideation follows very quickly. If you never expect anything you want to happen, to happen, then what's the point? Most people in this position don't actually kill themselves in some grand way but they do just kind of stop caring and trying and potentially bring on an earlier death by uncaring behaviour.

And I think this is a lot more common than people think it is. A lot of responses to suicidal ideation tend to revolve around some major event or some ongoing pain. But at the brief time where I actually looked at A Certain Forum For Suicidal People That Must Not Be Named, while some people were in ongoing negative situations or had recently been hit my major negative events, most weren't. They were just meh, never expected anything to get better, and saw no reason to wait for what was going to happen anyway. "Anything I do now is just a footnote in an already complete story." was a resonant quote.

Notice I didn't mention what Dr.K called "standards" above because he described them as what you're prepared to accept or compromise on. But a compromise requires both parties to get something in exchange, not for one party to just settle for less. If you aren't getting the main thing you want anywhere, that's not a compromise.

So what is a response if expectations have naturally lowered themselves to that extent?

I’ve seen a large number of polemic articles laying into “looksmaxing” as a trend, calling the community “narcissistic young men”. But although the term “looksmaxing” might come from the Manosphere, the intent - to try and look as good as one can - seems entirely reasonable and positive. The same applies to the use of the term “mogging”. It just means the same as being outshone. Doing both of these have been absolutely expected of women for decades, even centuries; and while it may have been said that was unfair, there has never been a popular view that those who participate in it are somehow toxic.

So why is this idea resisted so hard? That same resistance results in the actual toxic part of the Manosphere coming up with all kinds of bizarre conspiracy theories to explain why, so it has a fairly heavy negative effect.

I originally posted this in AskSocialScience but was told it could not be answered with cited sources, which given all the stuff about the “male loneliness epidemic”, seems like an odd publication gap.