>When I hear people say "it killed my libido" I always think about the fact that hyper-sexuality can be a trauma response, and if your body is healing the hyper-sexuality is most likely also reduced.
That ... feels like an edge case, for a very narrow set of circumstances (history + one of several possible responses to that history).
Anti-depressants seem to have a clear effect on dopamine pathways that better explain what's going on here. I have been on several that have this effect very visibly (at least Cymbalta): whenever I'm close to climax (whether from sex or masturbation) there is a mental block against pushing through to that release.
Fortunately, there are many that avoid this effect now, notably Zoloft, Trintellix, and Wellbutrin.
Edit: Okay what the heck just happened? This comment went dead (flagkilled?), despite being good faith and productive, as best I can tell. I would really appreciate feedback on what I did wrong, from anyone who can still see it. I did it on a semi-throwaway account for (what should be) obvious reasons.
Yes? I had ChatGPT generate erotic literature for me about fantasy scenarios, but it oddly refused to depict actual sex during them, because they involved a workplace, and it didn't like the "problematic power imbalances". I was like, really? That's where (and why) you draw the line?
Good points, I appreciate the perspective! But, as someone probably on the spectrum, I still feel like the point about "NT people can't talk about facts" holds up.
Like, if someone replies, "I need the money etc" why can't NTs better clarify what they mean? For example, "Okay but why this company/role/specialty" as opposed to <alternative>?" If someone lacks the self-awareness to narrow down what they're looking for in a case like that, and just writes off the interviewee as deficient somehow, I'm happy to label the interviewer as being bad at "talking about facts".
I've had a case where I got a similar kind of prompt, and I asked a clarifying question to better get at what he was looking for, and he replied, "Just, whatever you interpret that to mean."
Like, what? You're the one asking the question, and you don't know what you want out of it? You'll knowingly let the interviewee "interpret" it, in a possibly incorrect way?
There was a reddit thread I'll try to find where they were asked "What's your favorite drink" and they replied "water" to which the follow-up was "come on, you can do better than that". A lot of commenters said, "oh yeah obviously that was an attempt to get you to see if you can intelligently defend your preference" or whatever. Okay, but the interviewer can also clarify what they're looking for!
Is it really (always) a bona fide occupational qualification to be able to guess the wishes of someone who's making no effort to express them on their own end?
It's not rocket science. What is the purpose of the interview? For the company, to find out if you are a good fit for them. The questions must be interpreted in that context.
That you need money is not interesting information to them, that will be true for (almost?) all other applicants too. So when they ask: 'why do you want this job?' they mean 'why do you want THIS job?' so they actually do literally say word-for-word what they mean. So you answer with stuff like why you might like the job, or why it is a good career step for you, or why your skills make you a good fit.
That's not responding to the point in my comment, which was about whether NTs are actually deft in communication about facts, as claimed.
If what you describe were the only issue, it would, at most, be a minor hiccup while the interviewer clarifies what they actually want in the answer -- i.e. are they validating that you have reasonable expectations about what you can get out of the job? Or that you have relevant qualifications? Both?[1]
If they're utterly stymied or write off the applicant on the basis of that answer, then yeah, that would validate the point that they're bad at "talking about facts!" Ditto for the other two examples, like where they interviewer refuses a chance to clarify, and leaves it open to guessing the secret desideratum.
Also, FWIW, it's kind of generous of you to discount the possibility that they're looking for indicators that you're desperate for work that they can't ask for directly.
[1] Note that another reply gives a different "obvious" interpretation, the confrontational "Why should we care?"
To be fair being able to understand which facts matter in which situation and which are irrelevant can be a very important aspect of some jobs.
I mean before replying “I need the money" etc. one should consider if that’s not obvious and why would the interviewer care about the information. It’s not particularly subjective.
> who's making no effort
Having to always be very literal and explicit is not very efficient though. That person might prefer spending their time doing something else.
You're missing the same point as in the other reply. The issue is not whether you can conceivably derive some other reasonable interpretation of the question. The issue is whether a NT interviewer is deft enough at communication so as to make this just a minor hiccup. If they're so flabbergasted by that kind of reply, and just shut down that that point, then yeah, I'm sorry, they just suck at asking for what they want, or are trying to weasel out of owning the real question.
(Edit: Or, even better, why not, like migrate to a question that heads off the misinterpretation in the first place e.g. "Why do you feel this role is a good match for you?" I think you know why.)
Remember, everyday communication constantly has (far-more-obvious) misinterpretations that, in hindsight, with sufficient logical strength, one party could have avoided entirely. Those who are actually good at communication, at "talking about facts", can easily identify the mismatch and narrow down what they want. This remains true regardless of how obvious a thing one party missed.
So yes, I get it, you can derive a better interpretation. That's beside the (original) point about, why can't you ask for what you really want? Why would you say something like, "[uhhh, oh crap, I have no self-awareness...] Just, whatever you interpret the question to mean"?
And, as with the other commenter, it's kind of funny that you're discounting the possibility that an NT would ever be in a position where they can't/don't want to ask the question they really want to, and are in a position of power to expect the interviewee to volunteer it. ("Yes I'm desperate enough to really need the money and make up some story about how I really like your company/line of work to cover it.")
I partially heat my 900sqft SFH mining monero... since [compared to resistive space heater usage-offset] there is no additional energy usage, it's effectively free crypto.
Of course this means you can only earn half of the year. Mine ejects its heat under desk toes.
I ... can actually sympathize with that, even as I don't try to scam people (at least, I don't think I do). It can be infuriating to see others get what they want in a way that's "what??? Why does that work?" It can feel like the real rules are being deliberately concealed from you, and you are just fighting back by using the hacks that you think everyone else is.
I remember having this feeling hit me hard when I read the part of the Richard Feynman book when he calls a woman a selfish wh--- and that results in her adamantly wanting to sleep with him.[1]
If you can shuck the siren's call of the mob, you can sympathize with the incel and MGTOW crowd who felt they weren't taught the right model.
I've kind of taken it on as a life motto: "No cheat codes." If there's something that magically works, it deserves to be exposed so everyone can use it, and also learn why it works. That is, everyone deserves the same hack. Yes, even when it costs my information monopoly.
>One reason people were looking for ways to lose money was that, in the U.S., there's a hard income cutoff for a health insurance subsidy at $48,560 for individuals (higher for larger households; $100,400 for a family of four). ... That means if an individual buying ACA insurance was going to earn $55k, they'd be better off reducing their income by $6440 and getting under the $48,560 subsidy ceiling than they are earning $55k.
I had the opposite problem for the 2022 tax year: I turned out that, with investment losses and no earned income, my adjusted income was below the poverty line, which ... means your ACA healthcare subsidy is cut off entirely!
The "logic" there (from reading discussions of the cutoff) is that, "well, if you're below the poverty line, you should be on Medicaid and not on the ACA exchanges at all, silly!" Okay, but if you have wildly varying income, and a high income from previous years, you don't know that you'll be "in poverty" this year, and won't qualify because of the past year.
I was tempted to update my taxes to claim phantom income from my imaginary cash-based business, which would then get me the subsidy, but that feels ick.
(Which, I know, being retired on crypto, I also feel ick about taking the subsidies to begin with, but that's a different issue.)
> The "logic" there (from reading discussions of the cutoff) is that, "well, if you're below the poverty line, you should be on Medicaid and not on the ACA exchanges at all, silly!" Okay, but if you have wildly varying income, and a high income from previous years, you don't know that you'll be "in poverty" this year, and won't qualify because of the past year.
This wasn't setup this way because it was thought to be a good design, but as a political compromise. At the time, it was seen as important to keep the headline cost of the bill below some arbitrary threshold and for it to be revenue neutral (the wisdom of this is questionable in hindsight since the moderate Dems that supported the bill mostly got wiped out anyway and it never got any Republican support). Medicaid is cheaper for the government than ACA subsidies (at least for low income people given the way the subsidies are structured), partly because the government has a lot of negotiating power and partly because Medicaid is stingy.
This was made worse when the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government couldn't make receiving existing Medicaid funding conditional on Medicaid expansion (Medicaid is partially funded by the federal government, but the program is administered by individual states) so whether the Medicaid expansion is even available to you largely depends on whether your state is run by Democrats or Republicans (with a few notable exceptions).
I would consider just taking the medicaid for a year.
Medicaid can actually be very good quality healthcare, if you're located say, near a very good research hospital in a city with a structural oversupply of medical care due to having a lot of med schools.
I'd rather have medicaid living next to a high quality (non profit) health system, than "nice" insurance living in a shithole. All the insurance in the world can't materialize doctors that aren't there
> I would consider just taking the Medicaid for a year.
ACA subsidy eligibility may be annual, but Medicaid eligibility is based on current monthly income, and if you have a change that makes you ineligible, you lose it. You can’t just decide to “take Medicaid for a year” because you aren’t subsidy-eligible based on prior-year income.
So? Isn't losing medicaid an ACA qualifying event? Your income goes up, you lose the medicaid but now qualify for ACA.
That said, in my secondhand experience across multiple states I won't name, the medicaid office probably won't actually find out or do anything before 12 months are up.
Also, a few states are starting to officially enact "continuous eligibility" and intentionally not check your income for 12 months -- mostly for children[1] right now, but some states for adults[2] too.
A reminder to anyone reading that there is no actual "opposite problem" to yours (which I'm very disturbed to hear about, hope things work out).
For now, there is no income level cut off for ACA premium subsidies, just a limit that says you should never spend more than 8.3% of your AGI (more or less) on health insurance (more or less).
I had a friend in that situation one year. He reported some imaginary income that brought him up over that limit. Paid the tax on it, received the subsidy, and was able to continue with his existing ACA healthcare plan (and doctors, and etc).
Oh wow, good to know about other people who went that route. I was also considering getting a friend to pay me "consulting fees" for their business, and then I'd silently gift back the money ... but, as above, ick.
Well, remember, any time you have cutoffs like that, you can introduce the kind of welfare traps and discontinuities that the article focuses on. But yes, Congress definitely wasn't even asking "wait, do we want the subsides for high NW, choose-your-income people?"
This. Even if you could buy the house outright for cash, it still would have made sense to get one of those mortgages, base on that (reasonable even at the time) expectation that risk free rates would swamp that value soon enough, and, no surprise, here we are!
I was pondering that tradeoff myself two years ago, having retired early from crypto. The only issue is, to get the 2.5% you had to show Fannie Mae-acceptable regular income. Which is still possible: the FIRE people have a system for putting your money in a trust that pays it right back to you[1], then waiting two months to establish a history, and then you dissolve the trust once the mortgage is finalized and you've closed and moved in.
Same, kinda. Wasn't denied, but would have to pay a huge risk premium over conventional, regardless of how much I put up as a down payment, like the home's collateral value didn't matter. Earlier post:
I don't think you're disagreeing with the core point. By guaranteeing (some) mortgages, and setting standards for what mortgages it guarantees, Fannie et al have the effect of being a buyer for all those mortgages, even if it's private investors actually buying them. And since they are such preferential terms, such agencies effectively create an artificial class of lower-rate mortgages whose interest rates you can't get even if you reduce the risk by other means.
Correct, I'm not exactly disagreeing, but just explaining how it actually works.
Actually, in many cases, Fannie and Freddie (known as the GSEs) literally do buy the mortgages, through a program known as the cash window [1]. Some of these they hold in portfolio, but others they sell to the private market. But the GSEs aren't technically part of the government. They are specially chartered publicly traded companies, which are currently controlled by the government agency FHFA (confusingly completely distinct from the FHA) since going into conservatorship in 2008, as a result of the subprime crisis.
In any case, it's important to note that the GSEs are profitable businesses, not part of the welfare state. They are able to guarantee conforming loans because
- the underwriting criteria actually accurate reflect risk of default and loss
- risk is shared with the loan servicer and for higher loan-to-value mortgages, private mortgage insurers.
I yap on about this because it's actually a pretty fascinating bit of public policy and financial engineering, with the result of extending massive, long-term, fixed-rate, affordable loans to regular-ass people (with a free borrower option to terminate the interest costs through prepayment, to boot!) AND create an asset class for investors that is almost as liquid and riskless as treasury bonds. The liquidity of that secondary market is what allows rates to be so low, compared to custom-underwritten products geither lent from a bank's own portfolio or securitized into private-label mortgage-backed securities. The biggest bit of controversy I know of is that it tends to fuel home price growth, benefiting propery owners over those who buy in later.
Same situation myself[0] except credit score 775, and I could get a mortgage, but, no matter what % the down payment, the interest rate wouldn't be below 5%, at a time when conventionals that were Fannie-flippable were getting under 3. (This situation exists because Fannie buys without consideration for long-term interest rates or the impact of a higher down payment after some threshold.)
That ... feels like an edge case, for a very narrow set of circumstances (history + one of several possible responses to that history).
Anti-depressants seem to have a clear effect on dopamine pathways that better explain what's going on here. I have been on several that have this effect very visibly (at least Cymbalta): whenever I'm close to climax (whether from sex or masturbation) there is a mental block against pushing through to that release.
Fortunately, there are many that avoid this effect now, notably Zoloft, Trintellix, and Wellbutrin.
Edit: Okay what the heck just happened? This comment went dead (flagkilled?), despite being good faith and productive, as best I can tell. I would really appreciate feedback on what I did wrong, from anyone who can still see it. I did it on a semi-throwaway account for (what should be) obvious reasons.