https://brilliant.org/wiki/proof-of-divisibility-rules/

The 7 and 13 rules are pretty cool too.

Yep. If the sun of the numbers is divisible by 3, the number is divisible by three.

Works great for 6 too, as if it’s divisible by 3 and even, the number is divisible by 6.

And 9 is the same thing, but the sum has to be divisible by 9 (e.g. 12384 is divisible by 9 because the sum of the digits is 18, which is divisible by 9)

There’s also good rules for 4 and 8 as well. If the last 2 digits are divisible by 4, the whole number is (e.g. 127924 is divisible by 4 because 24 is) and if the last 3 numbers are divisible by 8, the whole number is (e.g. 12709832 is divisible by 8 because 832 is.)

To be clear, you can. Being in their presence for half a day wouldn’t cause you to fall over dead. You aren’t incapable of doing it.

What you mean is that you won’t. You are refusing to do it. You aren’t incapable, you just really don’t want to.

And look, I get it. It’s easier to tell yourself that spending a few hours with someone you don’t like is literally impossible. That way, you can’t be faulted for not doing it. You wouldn’t be responsible for your own faults or failures if the things that would fix it were literally impossible. It’s a comforting lie.

But just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it so. You are, in fact, capable of spending a small handful of hours with someone you don’t like. Your world won’t end, and afterwards you can go back to sitting on your bed, playing vidya and jerking off. But you’ll go back to that one step closer to self improvement.

The question is, what choice are you going to make. And make no mistake, it is a choice. Your hand isn’t forced. And whichever way you go, that was your decision. Not something the world forced on you.

Okay, there’s a lot there to examine, but let’s go with the drivers license.

Why would you rather hang yourself than go back to that instructor? Just because they have a BMW? Because they annoyed you on a personal level?

It’s not like you’re going to marry them. They’re someone you’ll see for maybe a dozen hours in your entire life. After which, you’ll have a drivers license that has the potential to vastly improve your life.

Can you not withstand a dozen hours discomfort? That’s not that many in the grand scheme to achieve a goal you set for yourself.

Your comment about people being obnoxious, dumb, and too old is, at the most charitable, hyper local. This is something that you can work towards changing. There are clear, easily defined steps that will work you to that goal.

It will be hard, but it’s clearly accomplishable if you put in the work.

You say you do enough, and I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.

What hard things are you currently doing? And about how many hours a week does it represent?

Platypus, my brother in Christ, do you hear how you talk out of both sides of your mouth?

You’d be sad if you had to hang out with people, because you hate that, but you’d be sad if you are alone because you hate that.

It’s not your circumstances making you sad. It’s you. It’s your refusal to engage with your problems because you’d rather languish in your depression.

There’s nothing on earth that could fall into your lap that would make you happy. The world could bend to your will in every way, and you’d still be miserable because the thing making you miserable isn’t external.

You have the power to make 2025 better than 2024. It won’t be easy, and you’ll have to do a lot of things you don’t like doing. That’s life. That’s being an adult. Doing the hard things you don’t want to do to make life better for yourself and the people around you.

And you can do it. But you never will so long as you keep lying to yourself by saying there’s “nothing you can do about it.” There is. You just have to take the first step.

Everyone’s life is messy. That’s the human condition.

And you say that nothing changes, but at the same time refuse to change. How can anything change if you don’t?

The things you are doing now are making you miserable, so why keep doing them? The choices you’re making now are making you miserable, so why not try and make different choices.

This isn’t a “change the entirety of who you are right now” thing. It’s a slow change of small decisions.

What if, tomorrow, instead of going to McDonald’s (or whatever fast food you have), you went and sat at a local bar and chatted with people. Even for just an hour.

“I’d hate that,” I hear you say. So? People do things they don’t want to all the time. That’s life. You can’t do something hard for one hour a week? You can’t stretch yourself, even the tiniest bit?

And maybe if you do that for a few months, you get to know someone at that bar. Maybe they invite you to another thing going on in town. Maybe as you develop friends, you start to realize that having relationships with people isn’t as impossible as you’ve built it up in your head to be.

But if you keep choosing McDonalds, nothing will change. If you choose just one hour a week at the local pub, something might. That’s not “changing who you are.” It’s not ego death for God’s sake. It’s one hour a week at a local bar.

So why not take the chance? What do you have to lose?

You say it’s “your reality” and “what you have seen,” but what do you mean by that? Are they just platitudes?

You’ve never seen anyone change? You’ve never seen anyone work hard at something and improve?

You say, “if I had been born somewhere else,” but do you think there’s a single place on earth that doesn’t have someone who feels the exact same way you do? I promise you that from the richest suburb in America to the poorest straw hut in Africa, there are people who think that the reason they don’t have love is because of their circumstances and that the whole world is against them.

So what makes you different from them? Why would you succeed if you’d grown up in those places instead of where you are, even when others don’t? Why haven’t you succeeded growing up where you are, even if others have?

Once again, I promise I’m not trying to be a dick. I just want to understand you.

It seems that you’re operating under the belief that being a good person means you deserve a romantic relationship, or that being a bad person should disqualify someone from having a relationship, but that’s flawed logic.

That belief is as well founded as believing that, because you are a good person, you should be good at the guitar, and that bad people shouldn’t be able to be good at the guitar.

The only real factor that determines guitar skill is the amount of work you put in to it, and the same holds true for relationships. If you don’t put the work in, you won’t have a relationship. And anyone who tells you relationships aren’t hard work is lying to you.

On a separate note, you frame self improvement as “becoming someone else,” but understand that it’s not like you’re a different person. Habits aren’t who you are. Beliefs aren’t who you are. Hobbies and proclivities aren’t who you are. You are who you are. And that’s true if you’re the person who chooses to self improve, or the one who doesn’t. You’re you either way, for better or for worse.

You’ve implied elsewhere that you don’t believe that you can change. That the way you are is the deterministic result of your life up til this point. Is that an accurate representation of your position?

If so, other than because you feel like it’s true, what evidence do you have? Have you tried making an active effort to change? Do you even want to?

I’m genuinely not trying to be a dick. I just wonder if the reality is that you want to change, but that that’s terrifying, and it’s more “comfortable” to tell yourself that it’s impossible, so it wouldn’t matter if you tried anyway.

And look, I’m sympathetic to the feeling that it’s “safer” and “easier” to be miserable where you are than it is to try and do something else. The “potential unknown misery” is always scarier than the misery that you’re living with now, and especially when you’re battling depression, it’s easy to just cave and fall back into the same rut that you keep walking.

I’m just asking that you really consider the idea that you can’t change, and examine why you believe that. I imagine that, under scrutiny, you’ll find it based in fear, not facts.

Tbf, the bill targets “retail stores,” not specifically Walmart.