chat

Guess I didn't clean my kale well enough. The woke mind virus putting bugs in our vegetables now.

If you are able-bodied, and have the financial means, consider joining a BJJ or boxing/kickboxing/muay thai gym. The recent zionist mob violence - along with the neonazi/proud boy violence seen a couple years back - has driven home the point that we keep us safe. We cannot expect the fascist police to keep us safe, nor should we. As part of learning to fight you will learn how to move. Learning how to move is important to being able to evade the cops when they try to grab you, and to keep your balance and footing when the cops are shoving your line. Also, learning to fight is fun. A lot of people describe it as feeling like you're a kid again, roughhousing with your friends (if that is an experience you had).

Some details so you know what to expect:

Training for most fight sports can be split into two categories: technique, and sparring. In the technique portion the instructor will show you some move or strike then everybody practices with a partner at low resistance as the instructor roves the area observing and correcting. Sparring, in contrast, is simulated real fighting. You and your partner will attempt to apply the moves you know to each other with significant resistance. The amount of resistance varies; in striking sports, you rarely use more than 25-50% power because you don't want to hurt your partner. In grappling sports like BJJ it is more common to use 80% or higher levels of resistance due to the reduced risk of injury & concussion. The general consensus is you cannot learn to fight by learning technique alone. If you do not spar, you do not know how to fight because you have not been tested in anything resembling the crucible of the real world. Sparring is what separates actually effective martial arts from "fake" martial arts that claim their moves are "too deadly" to be practiced against a resisting opponent or some other such nonsense.

BJJ is the most accessible of all fight sports due to the low risk of concussion, compared with striking-based fight sports (for obvious reasons). In BJJ you spend a lot of time learning to fight a single person once you have both fallen to the ground. As we saw in the zionist violence, this is not entirely useful because once you've fallen to the ground the fascist's friends will surround you and beat you. However, BJJ does teach how to get back up once you've fallen down with somebody on top of you and also how to keep your balance so you don't fall down in the first place. Thus it is mostly valuable for learning how to move, since you're unlikely to be locked in a 1:1 struggle in the sort of scenarios we are worried about.

Striking based sports are most useful for learning how to block the fascists' attempts to punch or kick you. It's questionable whether it would be worth it to actually strike somebody, but knowing how to absorb or block a shot is a nice skill indeed. If nothing else a good leg kick will make them think twice about coming near you.

To set expectations, you will take at least two years to become basically competent at any of these sports, if attending class 2-3 times per week for 2 hours at a time. By competent I mean you will be able to easily ragdoll almost any newcomer to the gym unless they are physically large & muscular or have significant background in wrestling or other physical sports like football. 99% of people you encounter in the real world will not have any training whatsoever.

Two years is a long time. The best time to have started training was two years ago. The second best time is now.

Youtube has been serving me videos of these gadgets that are like "personal AI assistants" for people who want to carry around an extra device that is just chatGPT with a voice prompt. It's a super weird niche because we already have phones that do the same thing. It just seems like maybe they're just kickstarter scams for gadget nerds who are bricked up over AI.

Anyways, every time I see one of these things, my cursed brain goes immediately to "god, what if I was dating someone and they had just gotten this thing after having preordered the kickstarter 6 months ago. Now they're trying to find every possible excuse to use it in order to justify getting it."

We're at a restaurant and he's like, "what are the best qualities in a carbonara," or whatever.

Please help me escape this mental prison. Why am I doing this to myself?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15124124

I think it is this https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Invertebrates/Cecropia-Moth

Ate raw tobacco leaf because I wanted to know what it tastes like. It does not taste good, so glad I know that now. Anyway turns out raw tobacco leaves contain a lot of nicotine and are considered "very poisonous". I have 0 tolerance to nicotine. It was just a small piece of the leaf but I'm almost definitely going to be nic sick for a while. Called poison control and they confirmed with me the point at which I should visit a hospital.

I have some hope in the knowledge that the few times I've smoked nicotine containing products I felt absolutely nothing even at high doses. I pray this means nicotine doesn't affect me as strongly as it does the average person and I don't get nic sick.

I already feel weird so probably not. I mostly just wanted to vent my misfortunes but if anyone has advice I'd be happy to listen lmao.

Edit: looks like I'm gonna be alright, I feel very strange but it's been over an hour and no nausea so I think I'm ok

it’s so incredibly back. this is super informal and like it 4x’d expected turnout. People are steadily trickling in. The tide shift is real. I haven’t felt hope like this since 2020

So I'm posting this less as a rant and more as a lesson learned. You don't need to expend any emotional labour to make me feel better.

So as I mentioned last month, my oldest friend came to visit. We used to be super close. I do feel that I owe him a lot as he helped me out of my shell when I was a teenager. His dad is more a father to me than my actual dad. All this changed when he became a massive reactionary since as his life took him from guy with an actual job to a member of the bourgeoisie. His opinions on a whole host of things has become super shitty, which is super tragic as he was a half decent guy when he was a lib.

As he left to go to the airport, he told me that he loves me and that we're family. He said he'll always be a resource that he can rely on if things go shitty, which honestly is good as I don't talk to my family anymore. I think he really enjoyed the time spent together.

The thing is, I had to shelve a lot of my needs and boundaries to spend time with him. I didn't realise this before, but I don't have any single friend or acquaintance casually say r-slurs or other unkind neurodivergent labels around. And no other person who I meet has real problems blasting past my well explained boundaries. "Please don't talk about health stuff around me", then goes on anti-vaxx rants every day. "I don't want to hear you talk about trans people", and he proceeds to talk about every bad experience he's had with a gender queer person since 2002 every single fucking day. I even shelved my feelings with veganism and covid consciousmess: ya I masked around him and ate my veg meals alone, but it sucks to be with someone on the other side so much.

Don't bother trying to console me on this, because I knew it would be this way before we met. I tried to help him out: him complaining about service workers not giving a good attitude just made him look like an asshole, and of course it just led to pointless bickering. I've expressed multiple times that I have no interest in Joe Rogan, but he keeps trying to sneak him in or berate me for not listen. Bro, I don't enjoy your podcast. So when we hang out and a after we part, I just feel physically sick. There's no what this is sustainable.

Sorry comrades. I wish I had the personality to get angry immediately and chew someone out on the spot. My way has always been to ponder on what happened and choose the correct words, and this is what I'll do in this situation.

I'll just mention that my friend does testosterone/steroids (is there a difference?). He's also heavily involved in a fuck ton of pseudoscience. There's absolutely zero chance that he'll turn away from that, as he'll have to give up all the new income that he's receiving from it.

Everything reminds me of them—everything. It sounds ridiculous but just about every fucking thing reminds me of them. My friends remind me of them. I’m so tired of being in pain.

I don’t know where to fucking go or what I’m going to fucking do. I want to get a car or something first and my driver’s license but that will take forever, if it will even happen. And then I have to fucking start over from scratch somewhere else.

This is so fucking cruel. My life is completely fucked. It’s either this fucking bleak option, keep waking up in pain and get addicted to fucking heroin, or work up the courage to kill myself.

“Moving on” isn’t an option because anyone who tells me that is a stupid piece of shit who has no idea what it’s like to be me.

I hate this I hate this I FUCKING HATE THIS. I’m going to die all because I was emotionally fucked from an early age. I was damned from the fucking moment I was born. I can’t live with this fucking shame and this fucking bullshit.

Please help I don't wanna die there's so much I have to do I can't go grey yet

I was listening to the most current episode of the Trillbilly Workers Party podcast, and Terence mentioned a good point that I've never been able to articulate. He was talking about how libs chalk a lot of stuff up to "racism", which isn't wrong on its face, but he was talking about how that only gets you halfway there. There's more to the racism accusation. Some racists advocate for subjugating minorities, and others advocate for killing minorities (his example). What makes the difference? Obviously, it's what they can extract from the people they opress

It got me thinking that maybe that would be an avenue to walk libs all the way to a better point with some of their glib sayings they use on repeat.

"History will remember/judge"

History is written by the victors, and if you let them win without a fight, this is a hollow saying.

"The whole world is watching"

Really? A quarter don't care, half actively cheer it on, and the rest are people that already agree with you.

"They vote against their best interests"

Why isn't there someone presenting something to vote for that is in their interests? Nobody is listening to the grievances that are legit, left or right of center

And my favorite #resist.

What are libs on the ground actually doing to resist? They've had almost a decade to triangulate a good strategy.

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has had any luck walking people further down the path that their "Gliberalisms" have started.

Maybe it's not worth it anymore. Maybe it's just a conclusion they have to make on their own.

So what are your plans for May Day 2024?

I am thinking we will go visit a Red memorial and watch the ceremony there, then maybe some marching and singing with comrades.

I think I might have an issue, this cant be normal right?

Every time a car passes by my window I want to scream because the noise disrupts my concentration. It's seriously tiring me out, they're not even loud or something like that.

It's the same with other noises but cars in particular (cause they pass by every 20 minutes). Its not something that would normally bother me this much :/

All the right-wing reactionary weirdos in my area are all the same guy. Old, bearded, white, "Realtors". Every single one of them. I'm convinced that becoming a Realtor is a sign of your desperate attempt to escape the class shift from petite-bourgeois to proletariat. Getting your license isn't that hard, from my understanding.

Often they have failed businesses they are propping up with their Realtor day job. You'll find them worming around in public comment on municipal zoning code. Sometimes they come in different flavors, maybe they're the right wing 2A style, perhaps they're a Christian Evangelical brand, or they're a disgruntled "veteran" (gotta check their credentials on that stuff) motif. I have one in town who is all three, a figurative scoop of Neapolitan style reactionary garbage (all three flavors in one tub!).

The way capitalism squeezes these people, often forces them into this little Realtor mold. This isn't some profound analysis, but I bet if we did some qualitative investigating, we'd find they're all very similar.

Like do kids get made fun of for watching PragerU child indoctrination content, are they embarrassed that other kids get to watch "good shows", does it never get brought up, does it divide classmates politically earlier in life, or like what?

So I came across this: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/18/five-of-the-best-books-to-understand-modern-china and the headline piqued my interest but the books all seem of a rather particular slant. I am a fan of reading from a series of broad perspectives when trying to understand huge things and it's obviously a bit farcial to suppose the lives of 1.4 billion people are gripped by terror and pain in a country that somehow still chugs along.

Since of everywhere on lemmy I think I'm likely to get some pretty interesting recommendations here, if we can do it without igniting the china good/bad flame war what books would you recommend to give insight into "understanding modern china". That is phenomenally broad and vague so I'm keen to see anything from histories to fiction.

edit: thank you all for your opinions, I will endeavour to check most of them out and communicate my thoughts on them later. I'm especially interested in what the lives of boring arse people are like in different sectors of society (e.g. migrant underclass, party bureaucrate, officer worker, house wife, farmer etc) , if anything like that comes to mind.

Quickly please the plane is about to take off.

Also trans stuff is cool.

Fuck me. I went under the bathroom to twin a joist and the corner sill plate is totally gone. I can see straight through the siding to the outside.

It's bad folks.

Why is the universal children's instrument also universally horrible? Got right out of bed and instantly started playing it.

If you ever feel hopeless, just remember that in the course of time barely longer than a few years things have gone from a situation where being critical of the system and using the term capitalism would get you derision and you'd be marked as some sort of radical communist and people would shut off to your message while hurling red scare bullshit at you.

These days everyone shits on things like capitalism and imperialism.

They even name it directly.

The best part of it is that what used to signify very specific in-group values is now so widespread that it's incredibly common to find average "I hate the system" sentiment that is framed by using terms like capitalism.

Average people do not use the term "rat race" anymore, unless they are boomers. People just call it out directly. People rarely use terms like "the 1%" unless they're turbolibs like AOC who are trying to euphemise their message to garner votes.

Out in the wild, I have trouble identifying who is genuinely based and a comrade these days because everyone is out there openly shitting on capitalism directly on the regular. It's like the irl version of queerbaiting that happens in the media except it's comradebaiting and instead of it having cynical motivations it's really, really encouraging.

This stuff is completely normalised these days. Over the course of a few short decades the mainstream discourse has gone from "Globalisation bad" to "The 1% is bad" to "Actually it's just capitalism and it plain sucks".

This isn't some ephemeral fashion trend either - this is something that has gradually gathered momentum and it's a long-standing undercurrent in society.

If this can happen with a dirty word like capitalism or socialism, where decades upon decades of red scare indoctrination can simply be swept away in a matter of years, then take heart because it means that change is possible and that it's happening in real-time. The same thing is happening with decades of post-9/11 islamaphobia - I know it's part of discourse in places like this one to use terms like inshallah, mashallah, and alhamdulillah but this is not the only pocket of the world where Arab and Muslim cultures are being embraced.

Things are changing very rapidly and there's no sign of this pace letting up.

¡Venceremos! 💪

Folks, it's no good

The dating apps, folks, we all hate them. They're no good. No good!

This loneliness thing? It's a problem. More and more folks are saying it

Depression? Get rid of it, I say

It isn't all grey marching frowning guys and beating up ethnic minorities and suppressing art. People who show you personally great kindness, who make jokes, who enjoy music and good food - they find fascism compatible. Just endless numbers of seemingly nice things can happily coexist with and violently defend fascism. The juxtaposition will never stop sending me for a loop.

make post in local community looking to form a TTRPG group from burner account

include [LGBTQ+ friendly] in title

thirty downvotes, account locked from making new posts

mfw

July 1st, 2023. I’ll tell you guys about that day some other time.

And yes, I’m talking about that them. I really want to tell you their name, just because it’s a really cool name, but I know better (there are times when I think to myself something like Wow, their name is ______, I’m painfully in love with someone named _____). I wish I could show you the photo of them burning an American flag on the day Trump was inaugurated, years that feel like forever before I met them—or just a photo of them, because they’re insanely beautiful. But I’ll just call them ______, that’s actually easier than the clunky phrase I was using to refer to them—thanks Markdown, you piece of fucking shit.

So yeah, July 1st was the last day I saw them. The fight that was the last time they would ever talk to me was July 16th. Their birthday.

It’s April 25th. Soon it will be—uhhh—10 months. I think I started counting at 3 or 4 or 5 months—it had to be after they unfriended me on Facebook in November, because that’s when the last breath of hope left my lungs. That’s probably when I started counting.

If the Voyager probes could think and feel (this happens to be the premise of a pretty awesome Russian doom metal album) it would be something like this. Just counting as the immeasurable distance becomes a bit more immeasurable.

I like to think it fucking means something that almost a year later I still feel this pain in my chest. I like to think maybe it fucking means something that I still see their old photos everywhere I go in this fucking city where I almost found them.

Who do you love, or who did you love, more than anything? It could be a parent, a grandparent, a sibling, a spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, a dog or a cat, a childhood friend, a stuffed animal—anyone or anything. Think of a happy memory—you almost certainly have one but if you don’t that’s OK and you’ll find out why in just a minute.

Now that I think of it, is it normal to have happy memories? Even just one. I think a lot about that scene in Blade Runner 2049—if you don’t know what I’m talking about watch the fucking movie, it’s awesome.

Because I ~~have~~ had none of those things, before I met ______.

I never loved my parents. I never felt anything for any of the people I was told were my family. I actually hated or vaguely disliked them. I remember when I was like 10 or something, my older half-brother almost died because he got in a fight and got stabbed, and I wanted him to die, probably because he was a source of derision between my parents as long as I’d been alive.

My probably earliest memory is of my father screaming his fucking head off at me, only 4 or 5 years old probably, in his powder blue custom car that was kinda like a VW Bug, because I wouldn’t smile for a picture. I had won some sort of contest thingie and he had worked so hard to help me with it and they wanted to take my picture for the newspaper because this was the ‘90s and I refused to smile for the photo and I guess they didn’t like that.

I wonder why I didn’t want to smile for that photo.

I also remember more than once locking my parents out of the house. I was a very smart little fucker before I just started checking out only a couple years into grade school. I waited for both of them to be outside at the same time and then wham!, wham!, wham!, I locked all the fucking doors.

I’m pretty sure it had something to do with my parents’ divorce when I was like 9 years old.

It was around that same time that my father almost died of several heart attacks. I think I was only scared of my mother, and the Bakersfield, CA tweakers that were “her side of the family.” (Later on my mother would kinda try to encourage me to be myself and rebel against my father’s stupid fucking weird shit like not letting me wear skinny jeans, but idk).

And then I was homeschooled thru middle and high school. That fucked me up so hard and I don’t even remember 90% of those fucking years.

But I’m veering off-script, so to speak.

The happiest memories of my entire life are memories of them—them inviting me on a drive to Vancouver, WA to pick up insulation, and then falling asleep next to me, in the car, while they were showing me videos on YouTube. Hearing their favorite song for the first time (The Last Lost Continent by La Dispute) on a longish drive on the freeway (I fucking loved driving places with them) to their plug’s house to pick up for me. Telling them over the phone that I got them a tiny spoon for their tiny spoon collection and hearing them go Yyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaay like a happy 7 year old.

The thing that hurts the most—the thing that feels like such a hard punch in the gut—is that I will never know them. I didn’t cry when my mother died but I’ve cried thinking about things they’ve told me about their life, and none of that fucking matters. I’ve never cared so much about someone. And now they’re gone.

I’ve moved on in a way because I’m not going to try contacting them anymore—I know that I either make them uncomfortable, or they hate me.

But I still haven’t let go and I don’t believe I will. Nobody understands when I say they really were that special to me.

I know there was a time when they actually liked being friends with me, before I fucked everything up. They even used to give me hugs. And then I became clingy, obsessive, and weird. They only got to know the real me on a few occasions, and then I became a fucking weirdo.

I hate that I don’t even get to know if they’re OK. Last I heard of them, was about them having a seizure while they were hanging out with a mutual friend a couple months ago. Someone stole their car and basically totaled it by burning the clutch out and I don’t know if they had it repaired, or whatever.

And I have to live with the shame—that I’m the one who makes them so uncomfortable that they don’t post on Reddit anymore because I followed their account (and they were OK with this before, but I understand)—that I don’t get to be friends with them anymore.

I hold onto this little shred of hope that maybe one day I’ll see them again. I don’t think that’s going to happen, and the world feels so bleak.

There’s some other things I wanted to say but this has gotten really fucking long and I haven’t slept and I had to lobotomize myself with 200mg of seroquel a minute ago.

Im like 95% sure I don't since my symptoms don't seem that extreme, I'm pretty young and as far as im aware i dont have any family history of brain tumours but I should probably maybe get it checked out just in case it's something else