I found it easier after understanding that everyone else is also struggling, everybody feels like they don’t have their shit together, and everybody needs help. There might be a few people who claim they have it all figured out, they are not the ones I want to take advice from because they are full of shit (often they are some guru type and/or just want your money).

Also helps to realize that a lot of people feel bad because things are bleak - we struggle with climate change, alienation at work, being disrooted, at the brink of yet another war … it’s objectively hard to live during these times. The only thing that makes it easier is talking to each other. A woman visited me yesterday, told me about her problems with her health and her main problem seemed to be that she feels unproductive and too tired to get the things done she believes she should be able to do. After telling her that on most days I was pleased with myself for simply getting up, feeding the cat and brushing my teeth, and that I know so many more people who tell me they feel like this, she was visibly relieved, and I was as well.

So when we talk to each other it helps to realize there’s nothing wrong with us personally - we are not failing at being a person, we are just reacting to the best of our abilities to an onslaught of trouble around us. Plus, when we talk to each other we often find out how we can help each other out in very practical ways - like sharing resources, supporting each other with our different strengths, ganging up together against the hardship. Community is how we can survive the hard times!

So is there someone in your life you can ask for help? Are you thinking about enlisting professional help like a doctor or therapist? What do you need right now?

Who the fuck cares how others are dressing?

I’m German and terrified. I find it difficult to grasp that the playbook that was used in Nazi Germany is right there to compare, how the whole thing happened has been taught in schools to several generations in a row, there’s memorial places to visit - the whole wealth of information is there so it doesn’t happen again!!

And here we are, and it is happening again - in what seems an even more overt way than old Adolf ever dared to pull off. They just built a concentration camp in Florida and are loudly bragging about it. People are randomly being kidnapped from the street, based not even on their immigration status but their skin color, by groups of unidentified thugs. All while the media - even international media - still seem to be unable to call “Fascism” to what is happening.

I would have hoped that us being the eternal Nazis would at least have a deterring effect on other people to not fall into the same trap.

The problem with most manifestos is that every second word is more than 10 characters long. Why? Can you not write what you want to say in as few words as possible, and in a way it even can be understood by people whose native language is not English? Come on, give me an ELI5 please, I want to fight AI but I don’t want to have to wade through word salad to do so.

A lot of fermented stuff like bread, cheese, wine and beer most likely started as “stuff forgotten in a pot” - not very complicated. In case of bread you need: two stones for milling the grain, a pot to mix it with water and store it, and then a fire to bake it. Not medieval tech, but way earlier.

Beer has been known since at least the bronze age, there are recipes known today, but the initial stage was, yet again, mill some grain, mix with water, forget in a pot.

Wine: forget some fruit in a pot.

Source: Reading history, plus my ADHD brain keeps forgetting stuff in the kitchen. I accidentally invented soda one of these days, because sometimes the forgotten stuff gets fizzy, too (you do need to invent the hermetically closing jar for that though, open clay pot doesn’t work in that case)!

Btw one of my crazier theories (although I’m not the only person considering it) is that it wasn’t us domesticating the world, but that we were domesticated by yeast. So it was inevitable that we kept producing vessels and feeding the fungus with sugar in ever more refined ways. Fungus wants to grow.

What is an address broker?

Thinking about AI trying to fix my brain cured my depression, thanks.

I’ll judge you for any holiday destination that you travel to for anything but visiting family. Did you make your own country so ugly you have to go somewhere where it’s still nice, causing the place to become a resort desert? Can’t afford booze in your own country so you have to annoy the locals by ambling along their beaches in drunk shrimp mode? Want to explore the latest ‘cool’ city making rent unaffordable for locals in the process? Just stay at home and make sure it’s a place you don’t want to run away from.

Wow aren’t you a genius armchair psychologist to learn enough about people’s mental state in only one post - are you aware how condescending that sounds?

the transient nature of everything; the only constant is change, and it is inevitable

Thank you for your thorough reply, I’ve been checking the DBT page and there’s a lot of good stuff there!

It’s funny that for me the transient nature of everything is as much comfort as it is reason for concern and discomfort - I’ve always wanted some kind of ‘static’ situation or find ‘the right way of understanding life’, and it took me a while to come to terms with the fact that everything changes all the time, that there never will be a standstill, or arrival at some final truth, or a place where one can rest and trust everything will always stay the same. I guess this desire for things to ‘stay the same’ is also part of the autism, I call it ‘sticky thoughts’. I’m still learning to embrace that everything is and always will be moving and I slowly ease into just being more curious and feeling comfortable with letting stuff happen and not panic about it.

Or is he?

That does it for me on some days, and by the amount of likes it seems to be quite a common thing. If only I could channel the spite and rage away from the internet into real life. Found a nice motorway bridge and thought about hanging up some protest banner - but then people would read it and that’s all. Need to accumulate more rage before acting, maybe until I’m angry enough to put up a strongly worded protest banner.

Huh, I wonder what wrote this stupid article on this not at all fishy fucking website. /s

We didn’t want to spend much money in Porto city and wanted more privacy than in a hostel. The “window” (didn’t have glass, just a metal grid) was on boardwalk height, perfect for drunkards to pee into the room from outside. We repaired the bed to the best of our abilities when it fell apart during the night. The “bathroom” was probably the most luxurious feature: a corner of the room, separated by a curtain. It kind of matched the rest of the city.

“I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing.”

“I hope I am not for the killing, Anselmo was thinking. I think that after the war there will have to be some great penance done for the killing. If we no longer have religion after the war then I think there must be some form of civic penance organized that all may be cleansed from the killing or else we will never have a true and human basis for living. The killing is necessary, I know, but still the doing of it is very bad for a man and I think that, after all this is over and we have won the war, there must be a penance of some kind for the cleansing of us all.”

The question reminded me of “For whom the bell tolls”. It’s rather strange that during all these months whenever I get bored and grab a book it’s about one of the various wars of last century. I can’t help but read all of them with an eerie feeling of anticipation. Remarque’s “The Night of Lisbon” hit especially hard, but this one is a tower of a book as well and I had totally forgotten how deep it is. If Hemingway was alive today, would he get involved in some conflict elsewhere? Should more of us be on the way to Gaza, or at least involved in a general strike to force them to stop this nonsensical warmongering? Even not being in the US settling into business as usual makes me feel like a fascist, every day the feeling gets a little stronger. Non-violent protest would be my weapon of choice and always has been, but if I’m ever forced into hiding for who I am? Might just get really creative out of pure spite.

Some kids will test your boundaries. They don’t mean to upset you, they just want to be sure the rules are the rules. Just stay firm, keep repeating. I had to put the 2yo kid of a friend in ‘timeout’ (put in another room and briefly close the door, explaining why) because he was testing out my boundaries by throwing my stuff on the floor. This can get worse when they are tired, to the point where they want everything and nothing till they pass out - this particular toddler stood next to my bed, complaining about everything (especially the lack of mother’s milk!), not wanting to enter while I was just repeating my invitation to join me. In the end he fell asleep standing. No problem, I then lifted him onto the bed where he took his nap.

I think a lot of us still grew up in situations that were escalated into some kind of conflict by the grown ups around us, and we somehow carry the idea that when our kid doesn’t show the desired behavior we have to become louder, more threatening, come up with punishment … It’s not what I see working well in real life. As a grown up your job is to be the rock, the source of calm, the unbothered person, the voice of reason (I know, it’s so hard!). And repeat, repeat, repeat. The toddler will not understand immediately that throwing stuff is a bad idea, so you tell them, and tell them again, and again … but always keeping your cool. In a couple of years they will have grown out of being a gremlin, you know that and they don’t. The toddler phase is intense, seems to last forever, but is actually very short! I find it useful to explain everything in words even to very small children. They understand more words than they are able to say. Letting them know why they can’t have or do something shows respect and consideration and can avoid a screaming match.

Putting a toddler in bed and let them wake up with someone else is not an easy situation for them, it was probably a bit of a no-win. I know I’d freak out waking up in a strange house without my usual person!

I was leftie before I was techie. If you don’t know anything around tech and computers you wouldn’t know what to do. Even as a fairly tech-adjacent professional it took me quite a while.

Then again, I only became a real leftie again after kicking all the corpos out of my computer.

Tech used to be (and still is) obscured by heavy gatekeeping. We who understand a little more like to joke about those who don’t, and I guess we’ll have to stop that if we really want to unite the left. Don’t ridicule, explain. The person might never have had a chance to learn the concept.