Ooh, thanks for this link. I’m not a podcast person, but I have a friend who would love this

I have a disability that gives me quite a lot of pain, and my 1-10 pain scale doesn’t actually go up to 10; I will never say I’m at a 10/10 pain, because that’s saying it’s the worst it could ever be, which is asking for trouble

Lmao

When I was a teenager, I promised myself that if nothing improved by the time I was 20, I would allow myself the escape of suicide — fuck anyone who would begrudge me that. The bar wasn’t “things have to be fully better”; there just needed to be a non-zero improvement to prove that improvement was possible.

Ironically, this pledge probably saved my life, because it meant that I could tell myself “not yet” when I was in a crisis and at risk of harming myself. Fortunately, by the time I had reached 20, I had experienced some fairly significant improvements, and whilst my mental health was still rocky, there were parts of me that genuinely wanted to live.

My post-20 life has been messy, because I literally never expected to get this far. It sort of feels like a bonus level in a video game. It’s pretty surreal.

Enough about me though, I want to hear a bit about you, if you’re willing to share. What’s something that gives you zest for life? Something that fuels the hope that I’m feeling from your comment?

I feel you. Having to grieve the person you could’ve been is one the tragedies of having been forced to survive rather than live. The most difficult part of healing is somehow forging a new life in which you can thrive.

That’s something that I’ve been struggling with lately. If I structure my life around who I am right now, then the result is a routine of misery where I don’t chase anything of joy. However, if I try to build a life for the person I would like to be, I find I don’t fit inside that world, and I crumble — demoralised by overambitious burnout. The tension between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be is a tightrope that I need to somehow balance on if I want to make progress.

Solidarity, friend. You deserve better than what you have had.

I agree with much of what you say, but I was confused because the judge blocking the executive order isn’t the same as trying to make the administration do a thing; it’s more like telling the people at the NIH “ignore what that guy just said, business as usual (for now, at least)”. If that’s the case, I’m unclear on why things are still blocked up at the NIH. Because of this, I took the radical step of reading the linked article.

In many ways, it didn’t help; I suppose it makes sense that one of the harms of someone willfully breaking the rules is that it becomes harder to discern what those rules actually are (were?). However, one of the lawyers quoted in the article suggests that the NIH officials who are currently carrying out the blocked order may be in contempt of court. This makes sense to me, based on the understanding I outlined above. But wait, there’s more.

After the block continued to be de facto in place despite being blocked de jure, the judge issued another ruling to try to force the Trump administration to rescind the order. This is concerning because as you highlight, this Judge has no recourse to enforce this judgement. Whereas before, the blocking of the order was the Judge speaking to the NIH officials, those top officials have seemingly gone “no, we’re not listening to you, we’re listening to him”. As I have said, they may be in contempt of court by doing this, but that’s not relevant when we’re looking at urgently ensuring that years of research isn’t ruined by this. By issuing a new ruling to try to force Trump to rescind the order, the judge has been forced to step outside of normal procedure in a way where they’re doomed to fail; it’s fairly obvious that Trump will go “no, make me”, and then fuck knows what the judge is going to do.

I think the judge knows this too, but what the fuck can they do (in their role as a judge) in this situation? Oh man, it’s so fucked.

Pectinase’ll dissolve the pith if you’re a particular kind of weird, lazy nerd

I’m more likely to have conversations. I tended to lurk pretty deep in threads on Reddit, or on niche hobby communities, but that vibe is much more available here.

There seems to be more good faith discussions here. I see more people apologising, or responding well to being called out. I realise this is largely a function of size of the site, and thus this nice energy is likely fleeting, but I am heartened by it nonetheless; people like us will always exist, and there will always be a place for us (even if we need to make it ourselves).

I like that comments are disabled on that video. Talk about setting an example

I am unsurprised to see that this loser was on kiwifarms (a site that does organised harassment of their victims (often trans people))

It’s a particular shade of paint. It’s widespread enough in the UK that multiple brands do their own version of Magnolia. It’s often what’s used when people don’t want to have to decide what colour to paint, or in council housing, and it’s increasingly common in private rentals.

You should do a version with a smiley face

That doesn’t look like any cheddar I’ve ever seen

The way that I often hear it described is the spark that blew up the powder keg that was Europe at the time. Obviously a spark alone would do very little without the gunpowder there to be ignited, so there’re definitely different levels of causation, but I think there is a sense in which the assassination can be seen as a causative element

Yeah, that is fairly consistent with how I’ve been feeling. It’s tricky because you have a huge backlog of things on the hypothetical to-do list.

I’m reminded of an essay I read concerning complex systems and how complexity grows in functional software — the essay used the phrase “habitability” to convey the idea of software that is functional and usable even as it grows. In practice, this means nailing down your core functional requirements and starting with that, adding more features in a modular manner that aims to avoid messing up that core functionality.

What this looks like applied to my agenda problem is that my backlog is weeks if not months of work for multiple people to get on top of, and I can’t pause my life in the interim. Even getting a thorough list of the tasks in the backlog is too overwhelming a task for me at present, in part because new tasks keep coming from just existing. In the past when I have felt swamped like this, I did a big blitz through and got my life in order, but the backlog blob is too large to do that. Realistically, if I can’t give myself a proper clean slate like I usually would, I need to give myself a virtual clean slate so I can at the very least stop adding to the backlog.

I know this is what I need to do, but it’s very easy to become too overwhelmed to do anything. I know what I need to do, I just need to have the fortitude to start small and ignore the backlog for a while. Tell you what, I’m going to try and set a super basic agenda thing up today or tomorrow, so I can capture incoming tasks or notes. I’m going to try and tackle this like I would a software project, which means trying my best to avoid unnecessary complexity, like often happens when I try to consider the backlog blob. Watch this space, I guess :P

Thanks for the prod. I know you didn’t say much and I mostly talked myself into this, but sometimes that’s what’s needed when you’re wise enough to give great advice to yourself, but foolish enough to not take aforementioned great advice.

Moissanite is extra sparkly compared to diamonds too

Just chipping in to second the recommendation for ACT. I haven’t have ACT delivered by a therapist (yet?), but I have had a heckton of other therapy (mostly Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which seems to be what they offer by default). CBT helped in some ways, but I found it pretty lacking in many others, especially in areas where my life circumstances were just objectively shit (disability and living with shitty family at the time, for example). I’ve been reading through one or two of the ACT books lately, and I find the approach refreshing compared to other therapy I’ve got experience with.

I have known some wonderful people who have helped me to grow into a person I don’t entirely hate. Most of the time, I’m depressed, but I feel privileged to know people who remind me of things that are worth fighting for.

The best thing that Truss gave us was the Lettuce that will go down in historyl

Hello, fellow human!

I hope your day has been full of the various human things, such as eating, and sleeping. Certainly I have been enjoying those things; as a human, I get plenty of sleep and food and other human things.