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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I’ll add to the chorus. No, by definition this isn’t gas lighting, but the behaviour is extreme and no less concerning. I’ll not try to give amateur psychological diagnosis over the internet like some here are apparently willing to do, but you don’t need that to know that she’s acting in a really fucked up way.

    I wouldn’t say you were “in the wrong” for missing her text, I mean, you missed it, it’s not like you chose to do that, but I can see why from her perspective it felt temporarily frightening and it made her angry to be put in that situation (I’m assuming she was just frightened and that that’s justified where you guys live, because where I am, her request is strange in the first place and getting mad about it not being fulfilled is ludicrous). How she’s dealt with those unpleasant, but temporary emotions that had a perfectly reasonable explanation and resulted in no actual harm is unreasonable, unfair and ridiculous.

    The questions themselves are as manipulative as they are pointless. “What would you tell my mother?” I hardly think that’s a particularly important consideration “she’s been kidnapped” probably, since that’s what’s happened in this scenario, the question is not asked to get an answer, it’s asked to maximise guilt because she thinks it’s your fault if some psychopath kidnaps her. The subsequent questions likewise are selfish questions to ask because realistic answers are implicitly unacceptable, she just wanted debasement and contrition. If the CCTV is broken then the police, who would be the ones investigating this, would have their investigation compromised, there’d be little you or anyone could do about that hence asking because she wants some kind of super hero saves the princess type of answer or for you to have no answer so she can pounce. She’s extracting false or unrealistic promises on purpose as a kind of emotional salve. The worst and most concerning of all is the request that you kill someone for her, this is real life, not John Wick. I can only assume and hope that she doesn’t really actually believe you’d do any of this nor really want it and it’s just part of this stupid punishment where you’ve got to promise the moon over and over until she feels you’ve made an idiot if yourself for long enough. If she really is sincere about that request and wants to bring it up again in any serious capacity that really would be time to leave because the fact that she has a manipulative streak and is now apparently murderous as well raises a lot red flags, but most likely she was never serious to begin with and this will likely not be something that comes up particularly often. This was up to you but frankly I would have stopped the game of make believe at that point and not actually made a promise to kill people on her behalf even if it’s all non-specific fantasy, it’s not a prospect that should be entertained on any level. The thing about the cat was just funny and honestly would have been kind of sweet if it wasn’t for everything that came before. It is evident from the order of questions and the fact that you had answers to everything at that point that she was reaching for a “gotcha” to prove you don’t think about things because you’re somehow inconsiderate.

    This response to an everyday wrinkle in the fabric of life is something to keep an eye on because if she cannot deal with being temporarily made to endure bad feelings on occasion without having to make you pay then this is going to happen to you a lot and the things you’re accused of or indirectly implied to be responsible for will be long and absurd. Let her cool off on this specific incident and if after there’s been time to reflect, she still brings it up again with the same manipulative and guilt tripping approach I’d suggest to her that maybe it’s not working out. If this single incident has shaken her faith in you so badly maybe she could take some responsibility for her own safety since apparently nothing you say will convince her that you’ll be of any use in that regard.


  • Yeh that definitely sucks they’ve rigged it up in a way that’s unusual for this type of work and also forces you in to this situation. Redirecting is good and probably your best option, canny and sensitive people will notice you doing this and take it for the hint that it is but dense or uncaring people will probably carry on steering things in to places you don’t want to go. If you’re forced to eat with them then yes redirecting the conversation will work up to a point but it is a subtle skill to do so non-obviously. It’s hard to advise specifically what to say like a script, though I would say if you just totally ignore the question altogether and switch topic very bluntly it’s going to come across strange and prompt confusion and questioning. You’ll need to somehow maintain the initial thread of their topic as lip service and then turn off down an unrelated avenue fairly smoothly. It’s what politicians do professionally. Reading the other responses to your post I think they’ve got some really good ideas on how to deal with this if you really get forced in to conversing against your will. It’s a subtle art of contributing basically nothing and rephrasing their same question back to them. I think another commenter suggested something along the lines of “I don’t know much about that what about you?” and similarly bland and useless resonses. This is friendly enough not to piss anyone off and lame enough to be totally uninteresting which hopefully invites little follow up. If they continue on their original track, you can combine this with seguing to another topic.

    I didn’t suggest this to you initially because it doesn’t sound like your natural style and I think advice is best if it allows the recipient to handle things mostly in their own way while helping to avoid pitfalls in doing so. I guess you’ll have to navigate this daily frustration in a way a little outside of your comfort zone by carefully appearing to engage whilst really not and hopefully they’ll find you so boring they don’t bother anymore. Hopefully you don’t mind this giving the impression that you’re a boring person to the remaining 50% of your peers that don’t bother you so much but sometimes it’s a necessary evil.


  • You’ll likely run in to a little bit of trouble because you’re having to make explicit what would have been better for them to have inferred and when it’s made explicit like that, it will come across as very weird to people and they’ll probably have some trouble not taking it personally (even if they shouldn’t).

    Some understanding of the general tenor of how this group talks would make for better ways to communicate what you want to say but as general advice, your proposed ways of addressing this seem like they’re on the right track in spirit but you’re phrasing them in ways that imply a note of contempt.

    This is probably because you really do harbour some contempt for these guys given the way you described them, like calling them childish for example. If you actually want to express some of that animosity then your suggestions are probably fine but if you’re concerned about the “right” way to set these boundaries you might want to try and keep it neutral. This is also good if you don’t want to earn their contempt either which is probably advisable even if you don’t like them very much since you have to work with them and if they feel offended and hold a grudge it could risk spilling over in to the actual work.

    I like your idea of saying outright that you’re not a talkative person, hopefully they’ll feel a little guilty about having forced you in to having to say that and will not try to drag you in to the conversation so much from then on. The additional bits around that concept don’t seem advisable, you don’t have to chastise them for not realising you don’t want to talk, that’s likely to be unproductive, the point is you don’t want to talk. Similarly the “and I hope you respect that” addition is good for being firm but also comes across a little aggressive, best deployed only if you’ve already made your wishes explicit and they’re clearly not respecting that.

    Eating elsewhere, if that’s an option is great, it you can already opt for that do it, you can avoid even having to bring anything up and the physical separation makes questioning you about it really inconvenient. If they ask you about it later that’s when you can say you need time to unwind and that’s also by far the most socially acceptable and understandable reason that people are less likely to take personally. I don’t know if you resent the idea that your reasons have to be socially acceptable to these guys or should have to be massaged to avoid them taking things personally, but ask yourself this: do you want to teach them a lesson and demonstrate your contempt for them, or do you want to just be left alone to work and to continue to work effectively with them? Pragmatism over principle would make sense here.

    If it gets to the point where you have to actually say to another adult, in a work environment, “leave me alone” then odds are it probably won’t even work and your coworkers are complete idiots that need to be fired. However if that’s really the case, saying that, even if it doesn’t work is probably good since at that point things are probably going to escalate and at least no one can say you did or said anything inappropriate.

    In short, take the easiest route if possible and just eat somewhere else at lunch and redirect the conversation back to work if they keep talking to you during work. If you end up somehow having absolutely no other remaining options but to explicitly tell them you don’t want to talk be careful to communicate in a way so you only express this simple desire and don’t imply some sort of judgement or contempt towards them. Try to be nice about it.


  • I guess it doesn’t help you to say it now, but this was a terrible way to deal with a slight nuisance from what has to be a small group of stupid people. This has the potential to cause far greater intrusion and judgement from your coworkers than your lack of marriage and kids ever would have done, and this especially with a crowd that love gossip. You’ve potentially handed them the juiciest gossip they’ll likely ever get and given how dull the workplace can be, they’ll be milking it for years if they find out.

    I think you’re pretty much in it for the long haul now, which will take work to maintain, and also depending on how long you work at this place with these guys, you better hope your unusually youthful appearance stays at a consistent 18 years behind your real age and doesn’t hit a sudden inflection point where it suddenly all catches up because that’ll be tough to account for.










  • I guess I never checked, but I assumed that all the other solutions I’ve been using to stream video to the Chromecast were performing a reencode on the fly to meet Chromecast spec. If so, then hopefully this must be how Plex does it too and so hopefully as long as the horsepower is there it can take whatever size or quality source I have available and feed it to.the Chromecast at the Chromecast’s best available spec. I wouldn’t swear to it but I think I’ve done that with 4k material and VLC, with the outcome would have been 1080p at the appropriate bitrate for the Chromecast.





  • I’m still confused exactly what the circumstances would be where this worked as the attacker intended. Would simply having the infected liblzma version on the system create the vulnerability or does something have to happen to invoke it and then what? What’s he chain of events that would have happened had this worked perfectly and gone undetected? I tried to read some of the more detailed analysis but the stuff went way over my head.

    Also, what about Mac OS? Can the package create any vulnerability there if installed via homebrew as it’s reported to have done in some cases? Or is that environment also not right for it to work?