#Anyway agriculture and Management practices is my SHIT and I enjoy thinking about it

[one-little-nerd-stayed-home]

Among other fic Ideas that will likely never see the light of day as actual fics, I’m thinking about Tali & the Quarians taking on the monolithic task of translating the fragmented 3-400 year old farming information from Rannoch into their present situation.

Like trying to fill in the gaps with experience from growing plants on the flotilla, (in a sterile environment!!!) and introducing plants grown on their ships to Rannoch's environment and trying to implement more current knowledge from other planets and cultures.

And the Quarians are a key part of the lifecycle of many of the plants on Rannoch! How did their abrupt removal from the ecosystem affect things? How long would it take to recover after that long??

Do the Geth help? Do they have more specific information stored in their servers or was agriculture automated by a different process? And even if the Geth do have info stored the ecosystems of Rannoch have to be wildly different now that the Quarians have been gone so long....

Like idk man it has potential. On the one hand its a wolves returning to Yellowstone scenario except its been 400 years, but on the other hand they could accidentally introduce invasive species and plant diseases and pests. And the ecosystem has changed so they'd be dealing with wildly different weather patterns and shit....

[dreamlanders]

i think you are blurring the lines between symbolism and propaganda .. toontown cogs r metaphorical characters who laugh at and imitate the capitalistic dull buisness man type imagery.. if anything, toontown is anti capitalist propaganda for how the cogs are villainized throughout the game for their actions . besides, its a little disrespectful to compare real life colonization to a video game like toontown.. i definetly dont think people who enjoy making content abt cogs or anything deserve that kind of slack

lmao ok so heres the thing

im korean right, and as all koreans do, i have MANY family members who have experienced imperialist oppression under both the japanese and the united states’ neoimperialist project. i know a lot of americans or non-asians in general dont really get taught about this, so im gonna summarize this quickly because im not getting into the absolute horror of it all on my goddamn toontown blog

japan annexes korea in 1910 and violently exploits korean land and labor for 35 years, and along the way they attempt to systematically destroy korean culture, language, and history, down to banning the korean language outright and slaughtering native dogs. as is often the case with the imperialist narrative they adopt a false pretense of “modernizing” the “backwards” koreans. anyway they lose ww2 and we all know how that goes, so south korea is under new management from the united states, who installs or backs a long string of authoritarian dictators who wipe out hundreds of villages in jeju island and shoot protestors post korean war. again, a very rough summary

where im going with this is that with my family history in mind (because all of my grandparents lived through the japanese occupation and korean war and have the stories to prove it), i approach a lot of media asking questions about imperialism and exploitation. yeah including the kids mmo, because theres plenty of things that coincide with these in, admittedly, toned down ways (its a kids game)

clash cogs’ motivation is, as far as im aware, to use toontown’s resources for profit by means of fuel. this reminded me of the way korea suffered under japanese occupation, during which koreans were kidnapped by the government and used as unpaid labor for mining and for manufacturing by companies like mitsubishi, on top of the agricultural exploitation and the theft of korean natural resources for both japanese demand and profit

the rewritten cogs have a slightly different motivation, with the same endgoal. by trying to “convert” toons to coggish practices and trying to get them to stop being toony, its an act of cultural destruction. being toony is part of toon culture, using jellybeans for money and hosting parties and doing slapstick comedy are all important parts of toon culture. the chairman is trying to destroy this. this is what sticks out to me the most, because the colonizing bastards tried to beat the culture out of koreans as a whole, and this is whats always been emphasized in the family stories. you think my grandparents know japanese for the fun of it? no, because they were quite literally forbidden from participating in their own cultural practices because someone thought that their culture was superior to ours.

its disrespectful to compare the lived experiences of my fucking flesh and blood to media i consume? disrespectful to who, anon? to fucking who?

anyway i never said toontown was pro capitalist propaganda what the actual fuck. first off symbolism is often present in propagandistic media pieces, but also more to the point, since i would not call toontown propaganda: no shit theyre representative of capitalists, but the problem with capitalism is that it allows for a system of violent colonialism, exploitation, and displacement in the name of profit, and its natural for this to be evident in media focusing on capitalism. and i said this last time, but i dont have a single goddamn problem with people who like the cogs, but 1. im just a little frustrated 2. yall gotta stop making them the good guys and unironically hoping the chairman wins.

donate $100 to palestinian relief efforts or buy the equivalent amount in esim cards for gazans and post the receipt on your public blog if you want to have me answer any more of these kinds of asks. this aint a discourse blog put up or shut up

[mentalvapors]

Kevin Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Back at it again. Geez, when I started my tumblr (back in 2014 I think) I had the intention to update it regularly, every week maybe. But I lost track of it, like already one week after I started it. I feel bad for not updating it. One of my biggest regrets in life is probably that I never had a diary, because my memory just keeps getting worse and worse at the moment, and when I talk to people they are able recall so many thing from their past and I don't even know how to do simple math I learned in 4th grade. I cannot remember a single event from 4th grade or elementary school in general.

Okay this is just me thinking things right now, but I also feel like the reason why I never had a diary or never bothered to write blog entries is because I'm not a creative writer. And I'm not smart and I have no skills whatsoever and it's even worse when I write English sentences. And some people actually have personality and talent to make the most trivial things sound interesting. And I just feel like a brain dead person slamming my phalanges furiously on a keyboard. But should I feel bad about it? Pretty much everyone shares their opinions on thoughts about everything on the internet nowadays. I should not care about how bland I sound to other people.

I really wanted to gather some thoughts why university didn't work out for me. I feel like I never … I tried to think about the reason why I failed, but most of the time I was in sad mode and blamed myself for everything, which always ended in a result that was not authentic to the truth and therefor not downright acceptable. And so I  never came to a real conclusion. I will try to think about it now, because I don't feel too depressed, so it should be fine, right? Right?

So first of all, going to university was mistake to begin with. It could have worked out, but the circumstances at that time were not optimal. In fact they were terrible. So it was kind of foolish to think I could pull that off, but there was also nobody who convinced me I couldn't.

A huge factor that made it hard for me to survive university was that every semester I felt some kind of anxiety because I didn’t know what was going to happen. Grades, classes, other students and just choosing things was very overwhelming. Very, very overwhelming. On some days I was just crying like the whole day, because I didn’t know what actually happens when I’m done with university. How to move on? I’ve always been a directionless wanderer, who didn’t know what he wanted to do in life. I just started university and it already felt pointless, like it would go nowhere and nevertheless I was moving on. One year passed, two years, three... and nothing changed. I collected a lot of credits (oh well... not enough for my creditors though) and still I couldn't figure out “why am I doing this?”.

My major was area studies and I wasn’t really enjoying it. I just felt lost and once again overwhelmed. This whole course of studies was missing a clear structure. Which was also the point of it: “Just go ahead and choose the things you have the most interest in”, like that kind of decree completely works against my own nature. I desperately need someone to tell me what to do. So helplessly I chose the most nonsense courses I could find. I signed up for Japanese class and it was so hard. The first semester examination I got only a fourteen, oops. I literally struggled so bad and nearly getting nothing accomplished the whole year and that’s why I ended up dropping that course and felt really bad. But I wanted to try it again, so I took the next semester very very light with only two classes, so of course that extended my university existence by some time. So many frustrating things happened during that time and to my minor, which was agricultural sciences. The readings ended up being not what I was looking for and the schedule really worked against my major.

Also some of the professors were really strict and set up their individual rules. For instance the Japanese teacher was incredibly strict. You could not miss her lessons and you could not be late. And at this time I really struggled with depression and I was crying and begging this woman I was like „I love this class, I’m trying so hard, please give me another chance next year“ and she said that it was OK and that I can be part of the class again, but a year later she was like „I changed my mind, get out“ and that was the point, where I started to give up and stopped trying, like, at all. But sometimes I would get a professor that I like and I would only have them for one semester, a lot of times I tried to take multiple classes with that person if the subject fulfilled credits for the same requirement, even though the class would not help to get a clear structure in my major. Like I took a lot of Mongolian classes. How would that help me with my Japanese Major? I don't know.

In addition I didn’t have an easy time making friends there. That’s another thing that can kinda be frustrating about university life to me. You see a lot of people who take one or two classes that you take as well and you kinda never see the same people. You develop relationships with people that are in the same class but after the semester; they’re gone. That was a big hurdle for me to jump through. I did not get used to it and I didn’t kinda like how everything felt so temporary.

None of the people I had contact with in my Japanese course did graduate by the way. All of them are still stuck somewhere. Some of them still have to pass Japanese class I (out of IV) and it has been four years since we signed up for it. Ideally you should be done with the whole thing in three years. So probably even if I managed to finish all of my major and minor courses, I would not be done with Japanese class yet, cause it's so damn hard and my creditor would get mad at me and I had cancel university either way.

So I was clueless and not doing very well and the worst part was probably that there is a lot of pressure in society (and creditors, student loan companies etc.) where they tell you „Okay you have to graduate from university in three years. Do it right. Know exactly what you want!“ and for a lot of people, including myself, this is not a realistic goal. It’s just not easy. I think it’s realistic if you fail something. I think perfection and expectation of perfection in society is really bizarre. The other thing I realized during this time was, unlike you’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer or in that sort of profession, you get a university degree and that’s awesome but how much practically do you use that degree? I wish I would have chosen something like business studies, because I think ��� just having more of an understanding of topics like that, would have been helpful throughout my life, especially more than the area studies.

So these are some aspects that turned university into my personal nightmare, but the truth or a big part of it is, that university just felt inconvenient. I'm a lazy piece of shit; I never felt the need to study for any exam, but spoiler: in university you won't survive without it. You need to know how to study. Studying is actually a skill, I didn't know that, now I learned the hard way.

So all I have for now is my shattered university past, a scary student loan debt mountain haunting me every night and also no job. Unemployed for over a year now. I don't know if this will ever change. The worst part of it is I feel like I'm not doing enough to get out of this misery. In fact I do nothing. I want to change but like 90% of my time I have no faith and feel hopeless and that nothing will ever work out for me.

I need to get a whole load of things off my chest first in order to move one. Also I need to find the English setting for my good friend OpenOffice because right now everything is red underlined and it's low key driving me crazy. (…) All right, I found it. Also I'm not gonna grammar correct or spellcheck anything. It's just lines I write down to remind myself of a few things and I have to get this all out before I forget it. So screw editing it!

The last few days I started to do shit I usually hate doing. It's not like I'm a messy person, but cleaning my room felt suddenly more important than ever before. I also stitched up my curtains, even though I was okay with them being way too long for years. And I built two shelves, because we had a few old planks in our yard and my walls were so empty, they felt like prison cell walls to me, so I thought “yes of course SHELVES”. They look fantastic and I'm proud of myself because I made something useful, but they remind my that I spend my time not the way I'm supposed to. They make me feel bad every time I look at them and I look at them a lot, cause they're hanging on my wall.

Yesterday I set up autumn decorations even though it is kinda too early. I also already did some of the Halloween decorations. I always get into a spooky mood, as soon as the weather gets colder, because it feels like authentically fall. I have to wear sweaters or long sleeves because I'm so cold all the time.

Also I found a keyboard in the room of the guy that lived with us, but who is dead now and I remembered how I have always wanted to learn to play piano. But I don't know if I would be very good at it. I feel like the older I get the less focus I have with things. And I also feel just like I don't ever really sit down and like do anything.

Anyway, the dead guy's name was Lutz and he died in April because of cancer. He and my mom shared the rent for the house we live in, so fifty percent of the rent fee is missing since he died. Our landlord is really mad, because he wants the money from us now and we do not have it and Lutz's family doesn't want to pay off his debts either. It's a pretty dire situation and my mom's lawyer sucks and gradually makes our dilemma worse and worse and she doesn't realize it. I don't know what comes next, my mom never talks about these things and a part of me also doesn't want to know. I'm dealing with a lot of things myself and I wish I could close my eyes and vanish from the surface of this planet forever. Just like the Avatar did. The cool one, not that James Cameron Pocahontas plagiarism. But I'm afraid this is not how it works. Suicide would be an option. But I'm just too much of a coward.

To give up or to not give up on life. Fighting the desire to just lie down and die gets harder each day. It already has been hard for a long time now. I know people get homeless. Maybe I am in that exact position right now. I never thought about it. But maybe there is a high chance that it'll happen to me next, unless I do something, even if it already might be too late. I know I can't change the mind of my mom, she will stay here, in this building, until she gets thrown out under legal authority. And I knew about this since a long time and I definitely already could have done something about it as well, like trying harder to find a new place and job, but … depression … and I chose not to. That's just the reality situation.

But I really need to get on with looking for a job now (the hardest thing though is to overcome my “little” procrastination thing whenever I'm about to do it). Two years of therapy gave me enough time to reflect and figure out what I possibly could do and maybe I really can do two or three things, besides lying in bed all day. The biggest issue right now is my low self-esteem. If you never had a real job in your whole life, you will obviously have a hard time to believe in your own abilities. This is what I got criticized for when I worked as Concierge last summer “Sorry, you're too insecure about your actions” and at job interviews I get told “You don't really convince me that you want this job”. And yeah how can I convince anyone I'm able to do something I never did before without straight up lying to their face? I guess if I want to apply for job, I need to put on a mask made of confidence and lies.

My psychiatrist once told me, that my only chance to get a job is social connections (his social connections). I already talked about how I became “friends” with my therapist some time ago. His intentions didn't feel honest to me and everyone else saw this, like, big red flag and yelled at me, to give up on this attachment, but I am weak and I don't have anyone else I can talk to. I gave him another chance and he invited me and said that we should travel to Thailand together. And I was against it, honestly, like from the beginning. But you know, he is a manipulative piece of shit and I really wanted to see Thailand, because I probably wouldn't get another chance like this, in my whole life. So I thought: how horrible can it be to fly to Thailand for two weeks, with your psychiatrist? Turns out it can be pretty horrible. He was watching me all the time, he was watching what I was eating, when I was messaging on Whatsapp. I never had two minutes for myself, he even came into the bathroom while I was changing, he was telling me what to do, when to cross the street, he dictated absolutely everything. So on day three I called him out and he said “Okay then let's fly back home” and of course I know he wanted me to beg him to stay here and that I would do better and follow his orders, cause he pays for everything. But I said “Fine, let's fly back home” and we walked to the travel agency in Thailand and the lady at the counter said a ticket back home today would be around 8,000$ each. He told the lady that we need to talk and would come back in an hour, if we still consider to book the tickets, but I didn't want to take anymore of his crap. So he had to book the tickets and I didn't talk to him the whole 24 hours we needed to get back to Germany, he tried to discuss this situation the whole time, even tried to convince me to travel with him again; this time to the Netherlands for the weekend because “It'll work out better than Thailand”. There is so much more stuff that happened, but I'm not going to elaborate more, at this point I'm so tired of all of this. I'm just glad I finally wrote it down and decided that this friendship was not good for me. Better late than never.

Oh and the worst part is, I also feel like I didn't make any progress in this two years of therapy. I didn't achieve anything, I just wasted time. I'm so annoyed and mad at myself.

All that stress I had the last few months or maybe years and the frustration and the anger I feel every day, caused my autoimmune disease to flare up again.

Short backstory: I noticed a bald patch in my beard area in 2015 and one year later it spread on my head and it was just awful. I had the worst time back then, my dog died, my relationship went to shit, I lost my job as Concierge, I felt like university was going nowhere and my hair started to fall out and it was not a cute look. I had a plum sized spot on the left side, the right side and on top of my head and two spots that molted into one big spot at the back. I went to a dermatologist, he said it's called Alopecia Areata and he told me to put some ointment on it and I did. But nothing changed. I was really desperate, I had a mental break down, including ugly crying in the shower, shaving my head, mental hospital, the whole program. I had a hard time to accept the “bald truth”.

On Youtube I found a channel, run by a girl named Stella, who made several videos about her struggle with Alopecia Areata (she wasn't the only one btw, but she was the first one who seemed genuine and did not try to sell some fake products. There are so many people on the internet, who use other people’s desperation to make themselves richer, it's crazy). In one of her videos she described how she overcame this disease with the help of the AIP diet and I was so amazed. She had all of her hair back and the solution is a diet? I was crying my eyes out for month and it's that simple? Sign me up I thought as I looked a few things up on the internet and basically AIP diet means just allowed to eat warm water. Doesn't actually matter if it's warm or not. No, but seriously almost every food is forbidden on AIP. No bread, rice, potatoes, eggs, diary, sugar, tomatoes, nuts, alcohol, fruits, nothing. All you can eat is meat and green stuff. I started in November and it was exhausting from the beginning. I felt hungry all the time and was craving for something sweet. It's funny how I can go without sugar right now for days, but when you're not allowed to have it, it's all you want. But I was missing coffee the most.

Anyway, after one month of AIP I recognized some white hair on my left patch, and a week later a few pigmented hairs. On Christmas all of my patches had small pigmented hairs growing in (except my beard, which is only thin white hairs until today) and I'm having the worst grammar right now. It's 1 a.m. Anyway during that time I felt amazing, the bald patches were still recognizable, but I felt relieved that my hair came back and I wouldn't go bald.

By march I had all my hair back and I gave a lot of credit to the diet, but also stopped the diet the same month, because although I got all my hair back, I realized that I could not live with all these restrictions forever. The AIP diet was not designed for people with AA. It was made to figure out what kind of food causes your inflammatory, but it's impossible to tell when you have AA. You can't take a bite of a tomato and be like “Oh yeah I feel it, this makes my hair fall out”. Even though a lot people in these self help groups write things like “Oh. My. Gosh. I was just drinking a cup of milk and suddenly my whole scalp was itchy”. Yeah girl, because you wanted it to be itchy. You are desperate and want to find the cause and you want it to stop. And all of this happens, even if your are not aware of it. And blaming certain kinds of food is easy, but dumb. It worked for me, but just because I thought it does. For 4 months I ate vegetables and meat on max, because Stella said it helped, she had proof and I saw it, so I thought it would help me too.

April was again a really hard time for me. My therapist was playing games, my family stressed me out, Lutz died, still no job, my personal financial crisis. And then one day I felt a smooth spot behind my right ear as I was sitting in a train and I was like “Oh god, please no, god no no no no no...”. . I recognized a tiny spot at the back of my head before, but I was hoping it was nothing, I didn't want it to be true, now with a second patch I realized Alopecia is back to haunt me.But this time I wanted it to be different. I would not let it take control of my actions again. So I made an appointment at a hairdresser and I was surprised he never heard of AA before as I told him what was going on on my head. As he was shaving the back of my head he pointed out that there actually a few more spots than expected. I accepted it. There's nothing I can do about anyway.

I revisited Stella's Youtube channel and she posted a video update. Her Alopecia came back as well, even though she was still following the AIP diet. So there was no doubt left, that the diet had little to do with the regrowth of my hair. Stella's video and her blog was again so inspirational.

The cure for Alopecia is: there is no cure. It's your emotions. It's sadness, it's anger and stress. This is easy and hard to accept at the same time. I'm still not a hundred percent sure if I can accept this as the one truth. At the moment all of the spots are on the backside of my head, which is good. I mean they are there; but at least I can't see them. The one behind my right ear is as big as my ear right now. And it worries me tbh. Last year I documented the progress of the spots and took pictures every week. Because I was so excited to see my hair grow and I wanted to see the proof that it really happens. I don't know if I should do this again. Stella said the best way to deal with this situation is simply “to not give a shit”.

And that might be true. But I know, currently it is impossible for me to reach this peace of mind. Everything's a mess right now and I feel like I can't do life and no matter how less I care about my hair, bald spots will spread nevertheless. I have to change my environment first, before I can move on mentally. And this will be frustrating. Searching for a job, having job interviews with bald spots all over my head, probably getting rejected because of it, getting more bald spots, it will be hell but I guess... it is what it is.

It's hard when you’re in a dark place and when your family sucks, and you're like in that mind set where everything is awful. Just taking that one little step up uphill is the hardest part. Maybe writing all of this down finally is a sign that I wildly succeeded and that I can keep going. Or maybe it was just another reason for me to procrastinate again. Who knows?

Well I wish I could end this post on a high note. It's 3am right now and  there was an episode of “Married... with children” on TV and it was about Kelly being the first female Bundy with a job and she worked at a diner. They made it look like being a waitress is the easiest thing in the world, but Kelly was totally overwhelmed by everything and it was just too real. Too relatable. On her first day as a waitress “Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves” was playing in the background and I will remember this on my first day of work and it'll empower me to try my best, like Kelly Bundy did. You know, be the best Kelly Bundy you can be.