u/Suitable-Reason9057

I love chokers but I constantly have a strong sense of insecurity when being in public. Partially I'm paranoid about physical violence (am from Slovakia but live in Netherlands) but more than that it's just a feeling that I can't shake and describe. It is not social anxiety tho, I mostly solved this problem years ago. The best way I can describe it is that I'm afraid that people will think of me differently than who I actually am - an inaccurate understanding. Worse or better, doesn't matter, but inaccurate. This is stupid to be worried about cuz people do it all the time and I mostly don't care, but this single object is causing me so much friction and I don't know why. I am all for live and let live and as I said don't really care about what people think of me, but this is an exception. Does anyone have any tips on what to do about this? It's been like this for years and exposure or getting used to the public didn't change anything. Maybe my autistic brain has some glitch idk

I personally love mountains, lakes and desolate places and have been mesmerized by countries like Iceland or even the US, but I find it increasingly difficult to find that feeling of being amazed by something I've already seen so much of and such a variety of landscapes.

The best thing about solo travel is that there are no performative reactions and emotions, which gives us a more introspective headspace to realize what we actually feel about a place not picked for tourist purposes, but actual personal exploration of our own niches and travel desires. But this exact thing is what makes me realize that I no longer feel excited when picking where to go, even if it's a landscape I love, because I know that I won't be "surprised" anymore. How can I personally find the beauty in everything again even if I've seen it a thousand times?

I'm 21 from Slovakia, studying for my BA in the Netherlands and wanna do MA degree in Norway, and I heard often that it's somewhat hard to make friends among Norwegians. I am learning Norwegian (I want to live in the country after my studies, probably), and I also like nature and weekend trips to the mountains and skiing etc, but I don't know what the cultural niche is in Norway as what people actually do in their free time so I can maybe join? What is the acceptable and respectful path for someone to integrate and participate in society?

Btw I think Trondheim is a more likely long-term place for me but Oslo for the studies and there is more stuff to start and learn to get around

I was born in 2005, so I'm 21 now, and I relate increasingly more to the "emo" subculture of the 2000s, around 2005ish. I found out that I feel so much envy for that era and that's probably not healthy. I started using the internet very early in 2008 and surprisingly remember quite a lot from the vibe, but I was obviously too young to engage with anything, and in the 2010s I sorta grew up in the aftershadow of that emo culture as seen across the internet. It got "revived" in the 2020s on Tiktok but that was mostly queer oriented and lot of femboys and colors and scene vibes (I'm bi btw, but I don't have colored hair and post it on the internet), it was no longer the "bad teen example in a black hoodie" I saw in my school textbooks that I secretly understood and disregarded the school-projected stereotypes.

I'm not American, I'm from Europe (Austria) so I never experienced the mall culture either. I recently visited a dying mall in Montana and it felt like walking through the ruins of Rome. I felt nostalgic for a time I'm too young to remember, a greater civilization. I don't want to get blinded by an idealistic image of something I never experienced, but this is how I feel about it.

The thing is tho that it is the only thing that I somewhat relate to. I was always a loner and introvert, my classmates bullied me in PE class and I just lived at home with my music and on youtube. I never found anyone who I would match with (friend-wise), and when I browse old 20 year old DeviantArt photos of people with jet black hair, I have this unexplainable feeling that I would be exactly like that if I was born a decade earlier. All I want now is to just take my car and drive to the middle of nowhere and do nothing but look at nature and listen to some music while I try to comprehend the existentialist nature of our meaningless reality without anyone telling me what to think and what to do.

While I don't like a single song from MCR (I'm more of a Linkin Park guy but I have a very diverse music taste) and don't have those hairstyles and wear those clothes, I am after the vibe, not the aesthetic, or at least the image I have of it in my head. I don't want to "become emo", I already am myself and don't need to cling to another identity. I just want to know what space is there for people like me, somewhere. I see emo as the last subculture before everything moved completely online and shattered into microgenres, and I just want a piece of it back, even tho I never engaged with it in its prime. Sorry for this long ass post, but noone cares anyway.

We use the term "AI", but with the increasing possibility of the emergence of a self-aware sentient species (either from a single AI or some other meta process), should we have a new name for it? And should it be us to name it or let it choose its own name, like when we named ourselves Homo sapiens?

If a single AGI reaches the state, should we use it's model name instead or indeed create a new taxonomical species? How would it even fit into the existing system?

"Silicon sapiens" seems to be the only serious attempt, with its flaw of fixating on a single material too much. But maybe it doesn't make sense to fit AI into taxonomy when it didn't directly evolve, but was created. What are your thoughts on this?