u/PM_40

We all are at different levels of estrangement or NC/VLC with our family of origin (it rarely sticks to one or both parents, the dysfunction is systemic and what role you play in family).

My question is do you fear that sharing your 15 year history and multiple step by step reasons for estrangement can be used to manipulate you.

For each failure they can easily say "we shouldn't have done that, you deserve better, we are sorry", or gaslight you by saying something like "this is not what happened, this happened".

I think estrangement letter is like you giving them lifetime ammunition to manipulate you so that they can restore access, authority and obligations.

If they respect boundaries and respect distance for several years then you can start accepting that they have changed or at least accepted a changed relationship status.

I want to get started on QA Automation as soon as possible. Are there online courses that teach automation. Topics I want to learn

- Programming

- Web fundamentals enough to be able to learn to automate and understand what is going on

- Selenium

If I want to learn to automate user actions do I need to learn anything else.

Job security across most white collar jobs has tanked and as AI gets integrated there will likely be a need for less people to do the same jobs. Yes if demand increases for tech (and other white collar services) then the same number of people can be employed but if that doesn't happen I see unemployment increasing over the next 5-7 years. In such an uncertain environment how are people trying to achieve big goals such as getting married and buying a house. Isn't that a huge risk ? Is it I will sell a house if I lose a job and get divorced. Serious question, in need of serious philosophy.

My brother did love marriage at 29. My mom was hugely disappointed is an understatement. I was brainwashed against love marriage by mom from 27 to 33.5. Then arranged marriage was pushed on me when I was on work permit with no guarantee of PR (35-37) by both my brother and mom. I expressed hesitation that I need PR first, but they pushed the process "it takes time to find a girl". I was bullied by girls family (my brother's friends relatives) in arranaged marriage meeting for not owning a house on work permit in presence of my family. I had recurring memories and PTSD like symptoms for many years. For 4 years every call with my mother was to seek accountability and advocacy against systemic harm from their community. Nothing happened. My brother knew I was seeking therapy to understand what happened but used to give false analogies to minimize harm and gaslight me. Some of the false analogies

- it's culture to bully guy in arranaged marriage meeting (he himself did love marriage outside community)

- the person bullying you was like talkative Uncle X, a quirky personality

- Comparing arranged marriage bullying to Google CEO US Senator hearing

- Comparing bullying experience to minor nuisance like bad drivers in traffic, rude coworkers. The list is endless.

After 4.5 years of begging for accountability, I decided I am not going to get justice. I decided to set boundaries

- stopped attending marriage ceremonies and other family events of my family of origin

- didn't meet my brother and my mom when they came to my city (my mom traveled from Asia to North America)

- didn't meet other relatives when they came to my city after recently immigrating through marriage

- stopped being an advisory source from community members of my family of origin

- stopped initiating calls to my siblings

- stopped picking up calls from my brother and only limited calls from my mom.

Now after doing all this they had a change of hearts and now my mom and brother gathered the courage to ask bully to apologize, and he has reluctantly agreed to apologize.

I am in double mind whether to accept apology. On one hand this will allow my brother and my mom to clean their slate at least partially.

I know my relationship with community of origin and to a large extent with my family had been permanently altered. I cannot unsee what I have already seen.

I have been through hell and back. I intend to keep my brother and my mom on limited contact for the same period they didn't advocate for me (4 years). If they behave I will start to gradually rebuild trust.

Should I accept apology from bully ?

I watch some of his videos and find him authentic like a maverick intellectual who is not trying to be an intellectual he just is, he is intellectualism personified. He doesn't have fancy degrees, doesn't look very rich, doesn't have a bombastic voice. Something about his nerdy mannerisms just appears authentic. I think people should aim to be well rounded in their thinking like Cory Doctorow. This guy oozes intelligence and broad knowledge.

This is partly advice and partly a question so I am also looking for feedback. I think focusing solely on money as a criteria for work is a gateway to a meaningless purposeless career. We spend 40% of our waking hours at work and prioritizing money over fit is a recipe for burnout and unfulfilling/boring career path. Every career related sub is full of burnout stories. The majority of people dislike their jobs.

I think one should choose a career whose output makes you feel like you made a difference: teacher, professor, researcher, therapist, healthcare worker. But it doesn't have to be only that: does making flashy dashboards make you feel proud you should do that, if building awesome software that wows the customer is your goal, go for it. At the end of the day you should have feelings of accomplishment. Any career that gives you that and allows you enough money to be middle class and pursue some hobbies and vacations will lead to a lot less burnout.

Some exceptions: you have family debt, illness in family or come from a poor financial situation, I totally understand you prioritizing financial security above all. Some of you are high IQ, want to go into highest paying jobs and retire by 40, this post isn't for you either. What I am saying my approach is suitable for the rest.

I have been living in Canada for 10+ years and just thought about Holi and Diwali.

I was searching for cracking chocolates and AI returned chocolate bombs in India.

I realized I haven't celebrated Diwali by bursting crackers. We celebrate Canada Day by fireworks but it's organized and centralized not bursting crackers at home. I realized how as a kid I used to be afraid of chocolate bombs and some brave elders would burst those and I would close my ears to not hurt my ears due to bombs noise. It was risky but also quite fun 😊.

Do Indian parents and older siblings use parental/familial authority as a lever for their own self-interested agenda ? The more I think about how many (not all) Indian parents and older sibling operate they don't seem like very nice people. They use their parental and familial authority to make you do certain things that are often in their interests at the expense of your best interest.

For example:

- if you talk about quitting your low paying dead end IT job to study for some exams they would oppose you.

- if you show any inkling or hint of not going through arranged marriage process they would subtle threaten/warn you that you are acting in a manner that they don't approve of

- they would often try to use your presence, physical and emotional labor in a way that makes them look good, improves their life.

Basically there is always an element of subtle pressure/force to guide you in a direction they think is correct (and in a manner that benefits them) and strong disapproval when you seem to go your own way.

Indian men in particular are seen as family resources and instrument that Indian families can always exploit and utilize.

Indian family use the lever of familial authority to treat you like an instrument for their own ends.

They rarely ask you: what do you like, what do you want to do ? They rarely help you explore your interests?

(This is common in developed countries parenting)

They assume your interests and goals matches their interests and goals and when they don't they will discourage you.

In short if you friends behaved like this you would call them controlling and hostile.

They never question whether their "guidance" is flawed and whether it would be better if they let their adult children make their own decisions and act as a support instead of trying to micromanage every aspects of their life.

There are two possibilities: either they traits are learned behavior or they are genuinely not good people (due to either nature or nurture).

Please correct me if I have blind spots ?

I feel so jealous that I didn't discover this hobby earlier. 65-70% of Omnibuses are OOP. Even if I had discovered 5 years ago I would have slowly started collecting. Now it seems the ship has sailed for people not wanting to overpay more than the retail price.

I don't ask for much. I just want the best runs of: Spiderman, Batman (more extensive likely all after 1986), Superman, Thor, Iron-man, Doctor Strange, He-Man, Scrooge McDuck, Captain America, Green Lantern, Green Arrow and one shot of few others :-).

Maybe the solution is to get a higher paying job, I cannot change the past but I can most likely change the future. This hobby also motivates me to settle down and buy a house where I can house the Omnis, LMAO 😂.

Does anyone in the 35 to 65 range find that your whole life you were shaped by either

- lack of opportunities in your home country/home town

- your own lack of clarity on what to do with your career and life

- by expectations of people around you

You never stopped and asked yourself if what you are doing is what you want.

I suspect lot of outwardly successful (or doing okay) people feel hollow in their lives because they always did what was expected on them and never explored what they liked what they wanted to do etc.

Tech stacks and your skills become outdated overnight, each company and each location has its own characteristics. From example same job can be great role in one location and risky bet in another location. Apart from SWE all jobs are like that. Very location, company and time period specific.

It's not like being a doctor or lawyer or accountant that you can do one job throughout your life. It's an exciting industry but comes with a high cost to your personal life.

The above question is more deep than it seems on the surface. Some reasons that come to my mind

1.) Love of reading comics, childhood nostalgia, resonate with a comic character. You want to be able to re-read your favorite comics on demand.

2.) Love of comics artwork in general. Fear of missing out on Omnibuses (looking at you scalpers) that you may like but you don't want to miss your chance to grab it in case you like it.

3.) They look great on a shelf and you enjoy looking at it the same way someone might look at their Ferrari with pride. You want to possess comics because just looking at it gives you comfort.

4.) Bragging rights among other comic nerds/neighbors/friends whom you let in your home.

5.) Keeping a repository for your kids/nephew etc or for your own retirement.One person who custom binds their Omnis said it was mankind's repository.

6.) Investment and the belief hobby should fund itself. That is selling OOP copies to fund your hobby.

7.) Anything else.

Would you rather have a big house and small library or vice versa ? LMAO 😂.

In a love marriage you negotiate directly with the person whom you have to live with. You can reject or get rejected, you can take it on your chin and move on. Most men are capable of handling rejections because the Indian education and job system teaches you to handle rejection and move on, we have been fed the diet of failure from the time we are 10 years old. Most Indian men know how to recover from failure and adapt, it's literally in our DNA.

However, when Indian parents brainwash their son against love marriage they limit one of the few options available for Indian men. When the same obedient and foolish sons get into arranged marriage market the first question they are asked is how much you make not by the girl but by her uncle or parents, second question is how much financial assets you have. Here you are inherently playing a rigged game where rules are bent against you. For men who leave India they can marry non Indian and totally avoid biased Indian judiciary, even this option is prematurely closed by Indian parents through the above mentioned brainwashing. Indian parents are still teaching outdated scripts from the time when Indian men used to get dowry (a fair transaction for taking life time financial responsibility of a stranger who is not earning anything) and laws were not so biased and anti-men. Even Indian universities and friends don't know much about the arranged marriage system you discover it through trial and error.

Spoiler Alert: Superman for All Seasons

I was reading Superman for All Seasons on a random Sunday. Initially I was thinking this looks cartoony and old school. I had read Secret Origin by Jeff Johns earlier which had more modern art.

While I was reading Superman for all Seasons it felt entertaining but nothing unexpected. Then I finished it and felt sad for Superman for next 2-3 days. How in spite his Superpower he couldn't save his friend. I was touched by the comic in ways I didn't anticipate. How Superman is so powerful yet he is loved by his family and friends like a normal son/friend. How Superman also struggles with fitting in a big city but he still does the right thing. I feel like I already learned so much from it and will be reading it again.

My only cost was searching for the book on my smartphone local library app and walking 8 mins to library on a slow weekend. I am new to comic books but I am blown away by how much more joy and learning can I gather from this forgotten medium. Many people don't realize that you can also order books you don't find in your local library from other libraries using Interlibrary loan at zero cost.

Somehow schools don't seem to encourage it anymore as it is considered old school (no pun intended). Likely their teacher never read a comic book in life.

I see so many people claiming on Reddit they have not written a single line of code in 6 months. AI isn't going to get any worse it will become more and more integrated. I see one skilled developer can do the job of two developers now. Why is CS enrollment not decreasing by 50% to match the number of available jobs ? I think it should decrease even more considering the layoffs in the last 3-4 years.

Basically the title. The whole Omnibus space seems mismanaged, under-marketed and under-resourced. You can find part 2 and part 3 of the series readily but origin story is missing for more than a year now. I found several posts on Reddit complaining about missing Irredeemable in the last 3 years. They did a Kickstarter 3 years ago to raise 10k and managed to raise 300k. Why don't they do more Kickstarter every few years ? It is a hobby that don't require you to be a millionaire. Why cannot we have nice things.

There are so many lists floating around top 10 Batman/Spiderman/Superman, Top 71 DC Comic etc. How many Omnibuses did you read till you identified this is my favorite?

My gut feeling is personal favorite would be quite different than what is recommended on these websites and there is no way to find without reading a bunch and spending a lot.

I work at a for-profit tech company. Company has been growing at around 10-20% in staff each year for many years but management is not keen on giving bonuses. My manager mentioned only 10% of developers received bonuses. I have received 3-5% raise each year for several years and zero bonuses.

Is this common patterns for tech companies in Canada ?

Why is dowry banned in India but reverse dowry (house demand) not banned in India ?

Suppose you could take X number of Omnibuses how many would you take with yourself on Island because you love them and cannot part with them.

Edit 1: Adding more context, you will spend rest of life on an island. You can do everything but buy no more Omnibuses.