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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Probably an attachment style test. Attachment theory is empirically valid, and knowing your attachment style can help you understand relationship patterns: communication, behaviors, emotional needs, etc.

    After that, the love languages are a good start to a conversation. Essentially they can help you figure out how you prefer to be cared for, and how you tend to show that you care. The categories themselves are arbitrary, and they’re based on observations by a baptist minister who offered relationship counseling. He’s not a licensed mental health professional, and the love languages aren’t empirically based. One issue I have with his book is that he claims that men tend to have “physical touch” as their love language, and that women should have more sex with their husbands to help them feel loved.

    The Big Five personality traits are the most valid of the popular personality tests, but I didn’t feel like they helped me understand myself more.



  • I’ve been using Splitwise for years with my friends and my partner. It has a “simplify group debts” feature that gets everyone paid in as few transactions as possible. If Adam owes Eve $5 and Eve owes Seth $5, Splitwise just tells Adam to pay Seth. I pay for premium, which has some nice features like currency conversion and receipt scanning. Regardless of which app you use, I have a couple tips.

    First, discuss ahead of time which expenses you’ll be adding to the group expenses. On a cabin trip last summer, one friend brought $100+ worth of liquor, but only one or two people drank it. Several of us were annoyed at having to pay him back for something we didn’t use.

    Second, at the end of your trip you’ll “settle up” by having the people who paid less reimburse the people who paid more. Wait a few days after the trip for everyone to add any final expenses. Sometimes people settle up prematurely, and then someone realizes they forgot to add a dinner that they paid for. This makes it confusing and creates a bunch of extra Venmo transactions. Just wait.




  • I’m the only one I know who thought it was just okay. McDonough described it as a “fable” which is fitting, and thus I thought it could have been a 20-minute film. The screenwriting felt like he was trying to make In Bruges 2. The back-and-forth banter always seemed to go 2 exchanges too long. And I thought Barry Keoghan’s village idiot character was in poor taste. I know I’m not being very generous here, but these are the things that stood out to me.