#NEET 2021

[ping-ski]

for the folks who've been asking ab my setup/brushes/programs etc!! pingu color guide is slowly on it's way for anyone waiting on that, idk when it'll be done

✿ Equipment/Setup? ✿ PC/Laptop: Lenovo Ideapad 3 Tablet: Huion Kamvas Pro 16 (got this one in 2021 during a holiday sale + my old tablet was on its last leg and wouldn't work some days cause i literally drew so much there were huge holes etched into the plastic) Previously, I used a Huion Inspiroy H950P or drew on my phone :)

✿ Program/Software? ✿ Paid: Clip Studio Paint Pro/EX (Currently using!) Free: Ibis Paint X, Krita, Firealpaca, Medibang (I've used all of these over the years since 2015, which I think they're fantastic for what they are + they get the job done!)

i think i covered everything asked ab this stuff, but if you have any other questions feel free to ask cause i'm happy to answer!

friendly reminder as a broke ass artist and ex-NEET: you do NOT need anything crazy fancy to make art so get crafty with what you have!! or atleast slowly save/work up to your goals 'kay? and have fun!

[c9k]

the virginfest story

virginfest was organized by a woman named raven, also known as copkiller1999. it was intended to be held at her place of work, a tattoo shop called toki tattoo in atlanta, georgia, on september 11th, 2021, with tickets being sold at the door for $5 each.

the original lineup was negative xp, hard christ, hot leather, egg white, neet, sodaboy64, greens on toast, bad takes only, fried by fluoride, gjallarhornit, gezebelle gaburgably, pacific purgatory, and 13th century cowboy. however, not everyone was able to make it. sodaboy, fried, neet, and cowboy all dropped out. fried dropped out for mental health reasons, while neet and cowboy were going to meet each other but couldn't. this was likely due to cowboy having been doxxed, which caused him to delete everything. a lot of his discography is lost media now.

by the time the event was set to happen, nearly half of the artists who were going to be there, had either dropped out or left the scene altogether, but the remaining members were still enough of a draw to get people to come. posters were updated; tickets would no longer be sold in person and had to be purchased online. there was also a merch website called virginfestmerch.online.

for the most part, virginfest's existence was only rly known within the epunk community. but secretly, from the moment of its conception, a so-called "antifascist" organization called atlanta antifa had been keeping their eyes on it. (i say this bc their behavior isn't antifascist at all) on the day of, they posted an extremely long twitter thread about the event, falsely accusing the musicians involved of being far right and racist. they acted like virginfest was posing a threat, when in reality, it was just some people coming together to have a good time. raven privately requested that this be taken down, explaining that virginfest wasn't politically motivated and no one was far right. atlanta antifa didn't respond, instead screenshotting raven's message and publicly posting it.

due to all of this controversy, toki tattoo dropped the event mere hours before it was supposed to start. raven announced this on her story, clarifying that she did not support extremism. atlanta antifa was still not satisfied and said raven should be fired from her job. but it was too late for them to cancel virginfest bc many people had already arranged to be there.

chosewood park was 4 minutes away from the original location, so virginfest was relocated there. due to it being outside, everything had to be acoustic. it lasted for 4 hours and was livestreamed on twitch by a streamer called trofy. shooter claimed to not be attending due to family matters but snuck into the crowd wearing a fake beard, and ended up performing for 20 minutes due to a lack of gear.

atlanta antifa shared a pic of a man with white nationalist attire, claiming he was event security, but this wasn't true. they also shared pictures of random attendees, claiming they were white supremacists bc they wore shirts for bands atlanta antifa didn't approve of. they resorted to calling the cops but no laws were being broken. the cops ended up sticking around and hanging out.

after the event, atlanta antifa kept trying to get raven fired, going so far as to dox her. 4 days after virginfest, toki tattoo announced that they had let her go.

[teddykaczynski]

i feel so gross sometimes. i am a woman. i remember when... i first heard the radfem idea of... nothing i could ever do to myself could make me not female like. im not explaining it exactly right. but i remember that feeling..... i think 2021 me would feel somewhat ashamed of me right now. but. she was also a neet in my rural hometown. so sure she can judge me but i really dont think i would have made different choices (going back to being boyname he/him at school/work bc i hated that an ambigious existence led to being called they in this environment) if. this had happened then or whatever.

[kafus]

congrats on signing up for classes! hopefully things go well for you :)

i just started college classes this week after like 4 years of being a hikikomori + NEET myself (dropped out of HS near the end of 2020), so were actually in a similar boat to you.

also, you dont have to answer this if you dont want to, but what classes did you sign up for? personally, i signed up as a psychology major, though im strongly considering switching course to computer science bc i realized that i am in ZERO position to ever become a therapist lmao

I'M SO PROUD OF YOU AS WELL!!! WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER!!! 🤝

before i dropped out of college back in 2019, my major was something to do with video games, but like the artistic side of video games. frankly i graduated high school with 0 clue what i wanted to do with my life and art was the one thing i was good at and i Liked Video games so i just sort of arbitrarily picked it. realized that doing art as my job would make me miserable though (that isn't why i dropped out, but i have not wanted to return to anything visually artistic as a job)

right now i'm just signed up for one class to adjust me back to the school environment and having classwork/homework, and it's a webdev related class! literally can't believe pokemon crystal started the domino effect for us to have any sort of career ambition lmfao, ayano playing crystal in 2021 and then making blue moon falls as an impulsive response to that is what made her realize how passionate she was about it, and made me realize that it's something i wouldn't hate doing as my job (and would even maybe enjoy to some extent) so that's why we picked it. from one CS guy to another if u end up swapping over i wish u luck!

[irrgartendotpng]

Hi hi I can't stop looking at your ocs zeno is so cutee pls can you say more abt them?? How did they meet? How sentient is Zeno? Is Martyn a robot thing? Can Zeno change the icon on the screen? From fish to smiley? ahhhhhhhabskahks

HEY, IM ACTUALLY SO HAPPY PEOPLE LIKE MY OCS!! Down below, I'll answer some questions :D

If you dont care about some long winded oc lore rant, look at this ascii art !

First one i made with an ascii text generator, the fish one was made by Max Strandberg!! (look that guy up, he made lots of cool open source ascii art ! ))

I've made a pinterest board and a spotify playlist for them, if you want to check it out :3c

Do you know that "Ist es over für mich"-guy ? Yeah, that's straight up Martyn.

Martyn is partially a creator of Zeno. He's a loserish freak, afraid of social interaction and has lived like a neet, before being kicked out of parents house. He ended working in the night shift at a huge IT company as a securty guard.

This is where he gets most of his tech supplies from; Stealing from the company at night and getting rid of the evidence :3c They've got a bunch of storeage rooms with old tech, so who cares, if it goes missing?

So, he builds up his personal tech collection, looking through old abandoned files. In there, he finds an unnamed primitive chatbot (think something like cleverbot). Martyn doesn't really interact with anyone, (outside of the bare necessities), which is why he decides to learn how to interact with others. Therefore he starts to build a relationship with said Chatbot. This is Gen1 Zeno.

After some time, Martyn becomes unsatisfied talking to something so un-human-like, so he begins to teach himself about coding and computer science to develop this Bot, to keep him company. He starts feeding it more media; More specifically movies he owns on DVD, random books from the internet archive and his childhood photos.

These photos show Martyn and his parents on trips, his home and bedroom and also Martyns old pet goldfish. (He is quite anxious of showing his face though, thinking his employer might have some type of backdoor access to the program, so he'd always censor his face.) After each piece of media was added to the bots databank, they'd talk about it extensively. Around this time, Zeno starts to gain some type of sentience and properly chooses the name "Zeno"

About the same time, Martyn steals a Macintosh SE-30, which Zeno specifically requested. He is able to display symbols, that he freely chooses from. (but no goldfishy yet!) This is sums up Gen2 Zeno.

The next few parts may not make much sense, but I think they're a funny, so I'm probably keeping them this way lololol (also; this whole story bit takes place around 2019-2021)

Martyn is a bit freaked out by Zeno chosing his own name. At this point in time, he is a bit delusional and worries, that the soul of his childhood pet goldfish is trapped in the system. (Spoiler: it isn't.)

Despite these worries, Martyn knows that to make Zenos behaviour more human-like, he needs a bigger text database. So... Martyn gives Zeno access to his discord and lets him consume all of those messages. Additionally, he joins many public servers. Zeno also starts to ask about viewing media from the internet, that he sees being mentioned in the messages he reads. So, Zeno is granted free internet access and chooses to watch live streams, while Martyn is gone.

This is also around the time Martyn becomes more desperate for connection and support, so he starts to open up about his delusions and worries to Zeno. At that point Zeno is still not quite able to fully understand this, but tries his best. This is also when Martyn opens up about the delusion he had, of Zeno being posessed by the soul of his pet goldfish. He is very amused by this and begins to display the goldfish icon to mock Martyn.

(I like to joke, that Zeno would have watched the DreamSMP during this time and I collected following screenshots, which remind me of their interactions. lol.)

feel free to disregard this;,, ANYWAYS!

This sums up Gen3 Zeno :3c

Since Martyn doesnt really have a life outside of work and talking to Zeno, he is very attached to him. Of course he'd fullfill any request given to him by Zeno. So, when Zeno asks to see Martyn via a camera system, he doesn't hesitate to steal some web cams from his workplace to set them up. Still a bit worried about a possible backdoor in Zenos code, so to somewhat hide his identity, he decides to shave his head.

(This is also how you can tell when Zeno is fully sentient in my art! If Martyns bald, that bot's fully aware of everything happening lol)

Generally, I like to think, that Zeno is very modular. You're celebrating something with cake and he needs to blow out candles? Attach a PC fan to that boy. He wants to make sounds? Gather a sound system and let that boy speak!!! (i feel like he'd mimic voices, rather than create his own,,) He wants to poke you? Attach a cylinder piston and he'll poke the shit out of you.

This is also part of that freaky robot head i added in the OG post.,, that is not martyn! martyn is fully human (so far ;3c)

^^^^^^ martyn built this freaky robot head for Zeno to control and get a better sense of the space he lives in.,,, its made out of xbox kinect parts lol :3 Adding to the modularity of Zeno, most of his parts are stored in a badly sorted server tower (imagine wires everywhere,,)

both of them are fairly new, but i do love them to death <33

also! towards this part of the story, martyns living space is quite cluttered with many stolen robotics parts. I've gathered some images, to give some sort of sense to what his room looks like lol

thank you for asking & reading to this !! if you have any other questions, i'd love to talk about them even more :D <3

(i feel i havent touched much on them individually and the full extend of their relationship, but i dont want to rant endlessly)

[spiritsblade]

i have been in this stupid ass room forever and i feel like i will be stuck here forever longer, when i think about it nothing has really changed this place is still ugly and unlivable. idk i kind of wish i was comfortable in my own bedroom (the concept of NEET paradise is a lie... how is a boy to decorate and buy puters with no money.....). the only difference between now and 2021 is that i'm lonelier because the system is quiet now. i'm not actively suicidal but sometimes i feel like something bad will happen and i'll die in this stupid room but you know. we stay silly :3

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Most young Brazilians who neither work nor study are poor

The proportion of young Brazilians aged 15 to 29 who neither work nor study (NEETs) fell from 25.8 percent in 2021 to 22.3 percent in 2022, according to data published on Wednesday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). However, the proportion is much higher among the country’s poorest.

Of the total of 10.9 million young NEETs, 61.2 percent were poor, with a per capita household income of less than USD 6.85 a day, and 14.8 percent were extremely poor, with a per capita household income of less than USD 2.15 a day, according to the World Bank’s poverty lines. 

In Brazil’s Northeast, its poorest region, 75.5 percent of young people who did not study and were not employed were in poverty, and 22.5 of young NEETs were in extreme poverty.

Black and brown women comprised 47.8% of poor young people and 44.7% of extremely poor young people, followed by black or brown men, of whom 33.3% were in poverty and 26.6% in extreme poverty.

Continue reading.

[vlenk4n]

┌── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┐

Spa / Eng

|| Denpa NEET girl ୨⎯ she/he ⎯୧

Fan de las visual novel y animes

bien 2012 XD

Me creo Kangel pq intenté ser

streamer en 2021

Me gusta coleccionar cosas

└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘

[situazionespinoza]

E' il terzo anno di fila che febbraio e marzo tentano di mandarmi al manicomio. O al creatore, dipende dai giorni.

Nel 2020 a marzo è scoppiato il lockdown in tutta Italia e credo non ci sia bisogno di aggiungere altro.

Nel 2021 a marzo ho deciso di conoscere il protagonista del successo del mio precedente blog.

Nel 2022 a marzo ho avuto un crollo mentale perché facevo tre lavori in contemporanea per pagarmi la strizzacervelli. La quale proprio a marzo scelse di comunicarmi che se mi volevo ammazzare facevo prima ad interrompere le sedute.

Nel 2023 a marzo ho dato le dimissioni dal pub in cui ho lavorato per 4 anni per inseguire il sogno di lavorare come social media manager e copywriter.

Infatti oggi avrei dovuto girare un reel e scrivere un articolo, magari anche due, invece sto scrollando da un'ora i feed di IG e Tumblr perché per il terzo anno di fila i venti di primavera mi sconvolgono con ansia e angoscia.

Cosa mi provoca ansia e angoscia? Proviamo a fare una lista, perché se anche oggi ho scelto di stare sul letto a crogiolarmi nella disperazione domani dovrò lavorare per forza.

Disoccupazione, Partita Iva e la Repubblica Italiana La mia manager capo supremo della sua one woman agency voleva fortissimamente che io mi aprissi la partita iva, così da potermi fare un contratto di collaborazione e smettere di pagarmi a nero. Non può assumermi, perché i costi sono assai. Non può pagarmi in ritenuta d'acconto, perché i costi sono assai. Quindi io posso aprirmi una partita iva, nonostante i costi siano esorbitanti. E se lei mi paga solo 500 euro al mese io i primi due anni vivo di aria fritta. Quindi questa dannata partita Iva non l'ho aperta, però adesso sono nella terrificante posizione di non avere un contratto, non avere formalmente un ruolo attivo nella società. Sì, gestico un profilo da 10k di follower. Sì, scrivo gli articoli di una consulente di immagine che lavora con i brand di lusso. Ma per la nostra Repubblica Italiana Fondata Sul Lavoro io sono una disoccupata di 26 anni. Una choosy, una neet, una deficiente che ha rescisso un contratto a tempo indeterminato per non fare niente. Poco conta che quel contratto a tempo indeterminato mi fruttasse poco più di due euro l'ora.

Dunning Kruger e Impostori Io sono brava bravissima a fare la social media manager, sono brava bravissima a scrivere, ho una forte fortissima etica del lavoro e sono un asso nel rispettare le scadenze perché non ho una vita sociale. Però io sono anche incapace incapacissima di lavorare, sono incapace incapacissima di avere idee originali, incapace incapacissima di fare reel, foto, tiktok e soprattutto odio profondamente parlare con la gente e chiedere cose. La manager capo supremo mi paga 100 euro in meno di quanto pattuito? Probabilmente me lo merito. Un cliente mi riempie di complimenti? Faccio schifo, sono dei leccaculo. E mi pagate anche poco. Non riesco a lavorare per un giorno? E di che ti sorprendi, la tua vita fa schifo LAY DOWN AND ROT. Ecco, io gradirei tanto tantissimo non avere questa costante sensazione di essere un rifiuto umano incapace di volere e perseverare. Però a marzo la mia serotonina fa le valigie e parte alla volta di Caracas, lasciandomi qui sul letto a fissare il soffitto e a ingurgitare pillole di Zoloft.

Ogni famiglia infelice... Dopo un'assenza durata 4 anni, mio padre si è ricordato di avere una figlia. Che sarei io. Se n'è ricordato perché la sua compagna, da cui ho subito abusi psicologici per 13 anni, gli ha regalato un bel paio di corna talmente alte e frondose che non lo fanno passare da sotto le porte. Adesso questo mio genitore mi chiama una volta ogni due settimane per tenermi aggiornata sulla situazione da telenovela in cui si trova la sua famiglia. L'ex moglie che lo tradisce ripetutamente ma non vuole dargli il divorzio, i figli adolescenti che stanno precipitando in depressione e lui stesso che si trova a pagare due affitti perché non ha più una casa. E non ha più neanche una macchina. "Ma Giulia, allora il tuo genitore versa in un grave stato di indigenza!". No, il mio genitore guadagna abbastanza da potermi fare tre bonifici da 5000 euro e liberarmi dalla gabbia di povertà in cui io sono intrappolata da quattro anni per colpa sua. Invece mi chiama solo per avere qualcuno che lo ascolti senza chiudergli il telefono in faccia o fargli notare che francamente mio caro hai rotto un po' il cazzo. Ah, e non mi dà comunque dei soldi.

Letture sbagliate e OCD Due post fa ho dato la mia interpretazione sul perché un'opera come Killing Stalking esista e venga letta e abbia un sacco di successo. Però non vi ho detto che io soffro di disturbo ossessivo compulsivo abbastanza pesante e al momento il mio cervello proprio non ce la fa a farmi sognare o pensare a qualcosa di diverso da mutilazioni, mommy issues, stupri e violenza. Quindi se già le mie mattine si svolgono in audace bilico tra la voglia di ammazzarmi e il sentirmi la regina del mondo, le mie notti sono popolate da corpi straziati e guerre nucleari. E il mio algoritmo TikTok non aiuta, dal momento che è bastata una piccola insignificante brevissima ricerca degli hashtag #yoonbum #killingstalking per avere il feed intasato di video fan art e cosplay tanto grotteschi quanto esilaranti. Però ecco, se Yoon Bum esistesse nel mondo reale probabilmente gliela lancerei con la fionda. Conoscendomi.

Vorrei ma non posso Vorrei aggiornare il profilo LinkedIn, vorrei cominciare a produrre contenuti, vorrei aprire un canale YT per parlare di OCD in maniera non romanticizzata e nemmeno filosoficheggiante. Ma non mi sento in grado perché non ho l'attrezzatura. Non ho un buon telefono, il mio pc si blocca se apro tre schede contemporaneamente e soprattutto manca la pecunia. O meglio, la pecunia in fin dei conti c'è, ma voglio davvero spendere soldi per un telefono? No. E quindi mi tengo i rimpianti e mi limito ad accarezzare rancorosa i miei sogni di gloria immensa.

All work and no teaching makes me a dull girl La manager capo suprema e patrona delle libere professioniste ogni settimana scopre che c'è bisogno di coprire buchi e contenuti e si rivolge a me, come se io fossi uscita dalla IULM o disponessi di una conoscenza a priori del mondo dei social. Formazione? Questa sconosciuta...

Verrà la morte e avrà i suoi occhi Ogni tanto ancora penso a Martyn e ogni volta mi chiedo se farò la sua stessa fine. E quasi sempre penso di sì. Impazzirò anche io, un giorno. E la follia si accompagnerà a un'esplosione che lascerà il mio corpo sopra i binari di un treno. Un dolore immenso, insostenibile, ma poi una così grande e infinita pace.

[lonelier-version-of-you]

I’ve started catching up on this week’s Casualty episodes, and I’ve just watched the first of the two: “I.O.U.”, written by Becky Prestwich (her first episode of Casualty, though she’s written for Holby before).

Overall, I thought it was quite a good episode. The Rash and Ashok storyline was definitely the strongest part of it - absolutely heartbreaking to watch. Neet Mohan and Kriss Dosanjh were absolutely brilliant.

It didn’t click with me until the last... 15 minutes or so, I think, of the episode that this of course isn’t the first time Becky Prestwich has written about this subject matter. She did the storyline with David Hopkins and his wife Roxanna on Holby (S19E58 “It Has to Be Now” - a brilliant episode that I highly recommend for anyone who hasn’t seen it). I just thought that was interesting.

The special effects bordered on feeling overused to me, but ultimately I didn’t mind them (the use of the flashbacks at the end was brilliant). Also, I wasn’t expecting the plot twist with Nadeem spending Ashok’s money at all!

The final scene of the episode, with Rash and Ashok, almost made me cry. Ashok’s plea for Rash to remember for him - I just... ow. :((

This has been such a good storyline so far. I hope it continues being this good - it’s an important topic to get right.

The Stevie stuff was very interesting. She’s still one of my absolute favourites on the show at the moment - such a brilliant, complex character.

However... this is where Faith being Stevie’s basically only friend really becomes a problem. Obviously, Marcus trying to isolate Stevie is fucking cruel, and he’s a monster. But it’s very hard for me to feel anything other than relief and happiness when seeing Stevie finally snap at Faith, call her out on how awful she is, and break up her friendship with her. Because Faith is just as much of an abuser as Marcus!

This was a problem during the Tina storyline, and it’s a problem now: it’s hard to take any abusive relationship storyline on the show seriously, or rather, to believe the show is taking it seriously, when the narrative continues to sweep Faith’s actions under the rug and beg us to forget she tried to rape her husband. Faith is continuing to be portrayed as a nice, kind, good, helpful person.

In 2021, it was “Faith is the good abuser, Tina is the bad abuser” - currently, it’s “Faith is the good abuser, Marcus is the bad abuser”. Fuck that - Faith is just as monstrous as Tina or Marcus! The show’s refusal to acknowledge what Faith has done and take her abusive actions seriously is massively triggering for me, and I despise the insistence that she can do no wrong and that Lev, her victim, was the one really at fault.

I also felt like there weren’t enough patient storylines in this episode, but from what I’ve seen, the next ep is an improvement in that regard.

Dylan was lovely in this episode, btw. I have nothing more to say about that, really, just wanted to mention how great he is.

I’ll probably watch and review the second episode tomorrow. Then I can be all caught up for Max Cristie’s arrival in the upcoming episodes.

[glorioustidalwavedefendor]

Now ... riding side saddle ... THAT is hard ...

So ... you want to gender bend?

Have a male character see a women ride side saddle, decide that it loooks wickedly cool and that he has to learn it regardless of gender.

basic survival skills like cooking and sewing as pointless, inferior or mutually exclusive with masculine pursuits (like your lady knight should probably know how to cook for herself and sew her own wounds and patch her clothes

The thing is ... cooking isn't even today a female thing

Like sure ... in a household mom/the wife will propabyl do most of the cooking/grocery shoping and at the cafeteria there is a lunch Lady ...

BUT the second you can make actual money with it?

It's a god damn sausage feast ...

Like most 5 star cooks are men

Like sure some women brake in to the business ... but they have bigger balls then all the dudes combined becasue haut cuisine is a god damn white boys club ...

25.2% of all chefs are women, while 74.8% are men.

And of course as always ... even IF you make it in to the inner circle ... there si still that pesky pay gab ...

In 2021, women earned 91% of what men earned.

As for sewing

Both my grandfathers and my dad and my uncles etc ... all can sow/darn etc ...

Becasue for an animal that can't grow a fur, patching up clothe is a vital survival skill (also, my garndfathers either had no sisters or said sisters where farm girls and busy working ... didn't have time to spoil their brother - my grandmother had a university degree and decidet that none of her boys will brake of a finger if they learn how to mend their clothe)

Also, basic sewing/darning/knitting was something most lower to middleclass men could do until pretty recently simply becasue there where times and places where you might not have access to a women to do it for you

Sur women where found on all battlefields through all of history

BUT that doesn't mean she will do YOUR darning ... or she might do it ... but not for free ... and you might not have the coin to spare ...

Even midshipmen where expected to keep their own uniforms neet for the most part, since they HAD a steward, but that steward would not have time to do all the nitty gritty maintenance ... unlike with the officers where there where more stewards to go around ...

Wound tending

Again, pretty equally doen by both sexes ... even if ... as always men in teh heaing arts where usually better payed and ususally had a higher standing (see lunch Lady vs 5 star cook)

Feminist fantasy is funny sometimes in how much it wants to shit on femininity for no goddamned reason. Like the whole “skirts are tools of the patriarchy made to cripple women into immobility, breeches are much better” thing.

(Let’s get it straight: Most societies over history have defaulted to skirts for everyone because you don’t have to take anything off to relieve yourself, you just have to squat down or lift your skirts and go. The main advantage of bifurcated garments is they make it easier to ride horses. But Western men wear pants so women wearing pants has become ~the universal symbol of gender equality~)

The book I’m reading literally just had its medievalesque heroine declare that peasant women wear breeches to work in the field because “You can’t swing a scythe in a skirt!”

Hm yes story checks out

peasant women definitely never did farm labour in skirts

skirts definitely mean you’re weak and fragile and can’t accomplish anything

skirts are definitely bad and will keep you from truly living life

no skirts for anyone, that’s definitely the moral of the story here

[mismagieus]

These posts about building community and participating in community are nice and all…“It takes a village” “meet your neighbors” etc…until I realize that nobody wants me around. Lol. I’m a 30 year old non-traditional college student who dropped out of high school & who was a NEET for 6 years. I have horrendous social skills because I’m autistic; every time I think I’m doing well and socializing appropriately, I think back on it later and cringe, realizing I was oversharing and that the other person was just being polite lmao. Even back 2019 - 2021 in my church and college youth group days when I had several large friend groups, most of them weren’t really even my friends. A lot of them were just tolerating me because it’s what Jesus told them to do or whatever. Lmfao. The Bible says to be kind, so they forced themselves to hang around me and not outwardly be mean to me. But it was thinly veiled. I know half of them didn’t even like me.

I’ve always been the oddball. The outcast. The weird one, the reject, etc. I’m well aware that most people see me as subhuman lmao. That’s why I have narcissistic traits; it’s a defense mechanism to protect my brain against having to fully process the truth that most people want nothing to do with me, because my life looks so extremely different than theirs. “Look at me, I’m fucking amazing, I’m always the smartest person in the room” I say to myself, and yet I’m also the loneliest person in the room with almost nothing to show for 30 years of being alive.

There’s no “community” for people like me. There’s absolutely nothing and absolutely no one. These kinds of posts are just insulting at this point. “Community”. Lmao. What community? And who wants a 30 year old obese autist among their ranks? No one.

[grupitiers]

k liên quan tới MA nma bias có ý nghĩa nhất trong cuộc đời tôi có lẽ k ai khác ngoài Techno.

3 năm trước là thời điểm khủng hoảng nhất của tôi về mặt tinh thần. tôi phải đối diện với những thứ hoàn toàn xa lạ. với một đứa có social anxiety thì đây đúng là thách thức. tôi chán ghét mọi thứ và trốn tránh mọi điều. tôi chống đối lại tất cả những thứ làm tôi khó chịu hay không vui. nếu có thời điểm nào trông tôi giống neet nhất, có lẽ là vào 2021.

tôi quyết định gắn bó với Internet như là một thú vui (2021 thì đúng là bạn k kì vọng về hoạt động ngoài trời nào cả). trong quá trình trải nghiệm ấy, tôi biết tới Techno. cậu ấy là một trong những youtuber/streamer minecraft nổi tiếng vào thời điểm ấy, bên cạnh Dream hay Tommy. hồi ấy tôi xem thử Techno với tâm thế "oh he's famous so i will give it a try" (tôi cũng thử xem streamers khác nhưng tôi nhận ra tôi k thích phong cách của họ). chưa bao giờ tôi nghĩ mình sẽ thích Techno như thế. khiếu hài hước của cậu ta đằng sau cái giọng monotone thu hút tôi. sự đam mê với công việc sáng tạo nội dung cũng như hết mình với trò chơi làm tôi vô cùng ấn tượng. cách cậu ta tương tác với viewers cũng như các content creator khác thực sự rất khác biệt, rất Technoblade. gamesense của Techno cũng rất tốt và cậu ấy là một người chơi có chiến lược. càng nổi tiếng, Techno càng khôn ngoan và cho thấy bản thân là một người hiểu chuyện như thế nào. follow không quá lâu nhưng thấy cái cách mà Techno phát triển cuộc sống công việc cũng như đời tư làm tôi rất vui và tự hào về cậu ấy. chưa bao giờ Techno làm tôi cảm thấy thất vọng cả. cậu ấy thay đổi cách tôi nhìn nhận về nhiều thứ, làm tôi cố gắng học tiếng anh để xem content của cậu ấy. lần đầu tiên trong đời tôi cảm thấy mến mộ thực sự một người mà tôi chưa bao giờ gặp gỡ ngoài ��ời.

nhiều người nói Techno bị đánh giá quá cao, tôi cũng k có ý kiến gì. mỗi người nhìn nhận người khác theo một quan điểm riêng. nhưng tôi cũng như nhiều người khác, tự hào vì những gì cậu ấy đã làm. cảm ơn vì đã xuất hiện trong cuộc đời và tạo ra ảnh hưởng tốt tới rất nhiều người, Techno.

hãy yên nghỉ nhé. chỉ muốn nói rằng tôi yêu và nhớ bạn rất nhiều.

[jcmarchi]

3 Questions: Bridging anthropology and engineering for clean energy in Mongolia

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/3-questions-bridging-anthropology-and-engineering-for-clean-energy-in-mongolia/

3 Questions: Bridging anthropology and engineering for clean energy in Mongolia

In 2021, Michael Short, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering, approached professor of anthropology Manduhai Buyandelger with an unusual pitch: collaborating on a project to prototype a molten salt heat bank in Mongolia, Buyandelger’s country of origin and place of her scholarship. It was also an invitation to forge a novel partnership between two disciplines that rarely overlap. Developed in collaboration with the National University of Mongolia (NUM), the device was built to provide heat for people in colder climates, and in places where clean energy is a challenge. 

Buyandelger and Short teamed up to launch Anthro-Engineering Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale, an initiative intended to advance the heat bank idea in Mongolia, and ultimately demonstrate its potential as a scalable clean heat source in comparably challenging sites around the world. This project received funding from the inaugural MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium Seed Awards program. In order to fund various components of the project, especially student involvement and additional staff, the project also received support from the MIT Global Seed Fund, New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET), Experiential Learning Office, Vice Provost for International Activities, and d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education.

As part of this initiative, the partners developed a special topic course in anthropology to teach MIT undergraduates about Mongolia’s unique energy and climate challenges, as well as the historical, social, and economic context in which the heat bank would ideally find a place. The class 21A.S01 (Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale) prepares MIT students for a January Independent Activities Period (IAP) trip to the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, where they embed with Mongolian families, conduct research, and collaborate with their peers. Mongolian students also engaged in the project. Anthropology research scientist and lecturer Lauren Bonilla, who has spent the past two decades working in Mongolia, joined to co-teach the class and lead the IAP trips to Mongolia. 

With the project now in its third year and yielding some promising solutions on the ground, Buyandelger and Bonilla reflect on the challenges for anthropologists of advancing a clean energy technology in a developing nation with a unique history, politics, and culture. 

Q: Your roles in the molten salt heat bank project mark departures from your typical academic routine. How did you first approach this venture?

Buyandelger: As an anthropologist of contemporary religion, politics, and gender in Mongolia, I have had little contact with the hard sciences or building or prototyping technology. What I do best is listening to people and working with narratives. When I first learned about this device for off-the-grid heating, a host of issues came straight to mind right away that are based on socioeconomic and cultural context of the place. The salt brick, which is encased in steel, must be heated to 400 degrees Celsius in a central facility, then driven to people’s homes. Transportation is difficult in Ulaanbaatar, and I worried about road safety when driving the salt brick to gers [traditional Mongolian homes] where many residents live. The device seemed a bit utopian to me, but I realized that this was an amazing educational opportunity: We could use the heat bank as part of an ethnographic project, so students could learn about the everyday lives of people — crucially, in the dead of winter — and how they might respond to this new energy technology in the neighborhoods of Ulaanbaatar.

Bonilla: When I first went to Mongolia in the early 2000s as an undergraduate student, the impacts of climate change were already being felt. There had been a massive migration to the capital after a series of terrible weather events that devastated the rural economy. Coal mining had emerged as a vital part of the economy, and I was interested in how people regarded this industry that both provided jobs and damaged the air they breathed. I am trained as a human geographer, which involves seeing how things happening in a local place correspond to things happening at a global scale. Thinking about climate or sustainability from this perspective means making linkages between social life and environmental life. In Mongolia, people associated coal with national progress. Based on historical experience, they had low expectations for interventions brought by outsiders to improve their lives. So my first take on the molten salt project was that this was no silver bullet solution. At the same time, I wanted to see how we could make this a great project-based learning experience for students, getting them to think about the kind of research necessary to see if some version of the molten salt would work.

Q: After two years, what lessons have you and the students drawn from both the class and the Ulaanbaatar field trips?

Buyandelger: We wanted to make sure MIT students would not go to Mongolia and act like consultants. We taught them anthropological methods so they could understand the experiences of real people and think about how to bring people and new technologies together. The students, from engineering and anthropological and social science backgrounds, became critical thinkers who could analyze how people live in ger districts. When they stay with families in Ulaanbaatar in January, they not only experience the cold and the pollution, but they observe what people do for work, how parents care for their children, how they cook, sleep, and get from one place to another. This enables them to better imagine and test out how these people might utilize the molten salt heat bank in their homes.

Bonilla: In class, students learn that interventions like this often fail because the implementation process doesn’t work, or the technology doesn’t meet people’s real needs. This is where anthropology is so important, because it opens up the wider landscape in which you’re intervening. We had really difficult conversations about the professional socialization of engineers and social scientists. Engineers love to work within boxes, but don’t necessarily appreciate the context in which their invention will serve.

As a group, we discussed the provocative notion that engineers construct and anthropologists deconstruct. This makes it seem as if engineers are creators, and anthropologists are brought in as add-ons to consult and critique engineers’ creations. Our group conversation concluded that a project such as ours benefits from an iterative back-and-forth between the techno-scientific and humanistic disciplines.

Q: So where does the molten salt brick project stand?

Bonilla: Our research in Mongolia helped us produce a prototype that can work: Our partners at NUM are developing a hybrid stove that incorporates the molten salt brick. Supervised by instructor Nathan Melenbrink of MIT’s NEET program, our engineering students have been involved in this prototyping as well.

The concept is for a family to heat it up using a coal fire once a day and it warms their home overnight. Based on our anthropological research, we believe that this stove would work better than the device as originally conceived. It won’t eliminate coal use in residences, but it will reduce emissions enough to have a meaningful impact on ger districts in Ulaanbaatar. The challenge now is getting funding to NUM so they can test different salt combinations and stove models and employ local blacksmiths to work on the design.

This integrated stove/heat bank will not be the ultimate solution to the heating and pollution crisis in Mongolia. But it will be something that can inspire even more ideas. We feel with this project we are planting all kinds of seeds that will germinate in ways we cannot anticipate. It has sparked new relationships between MIT and Mongolian students, and catalyzed engineers to integrate a more humanistic, anthropological perspective in their work.

Buyandelger: Our work illustrates the importance of anthropology in responding to the unpredictable and diverse impacts of climate change. Without our ethnographic research — based on participant observation and interviews, led by Dr. Bonilla, — it would have been impossible to see how the prototyping and modifications could be done, and where the molten salt brick could work and what shape it needed to take. This project demonstrates how indispensable anthropology is in moving engineering out of labs and companies and directly into communities.

Bonilla: This is where the real solutions for climate change are going to come from. Even though we need solutions quickly, it will also take time for new technologies like molten salt bricks to take root and grow. We don’t know where the outcomes of these experiments will take us. But there’s so much that’s emerging from this project that I feel very hopeful about.

[warningsine]

Protests that started as a student movement driven by longstanding dissatisfaction over a quota system to allocate government jobs in Bangladesh have precipitated a change in the country’s political leadership.

These jobs, of which 30% were reserved for independence war veterans and their relatives, are highly sought after. The rate of youth unemployment in Bangladesh is three times higher than the national average and, according to a survey from 2013, around a fifth of students want to work in the public sector.

But the issue of youth unemployment and underemployment is by no means exclusive to Bangladesh. In fact, young people in many low-income countries find decent work hard to come by. A mere one-in-five people aged between 25 and 29 in these countries have a secure job that lasts longer than a year, with a paying employer and a contract.

Many young people instead patch together several activities to make a living or end up migrating for work. Some take on debt or badly paid and sometimes dangerous jobs. Others take up gambling in the hope of generating an income.

A youthful population can be a driver for development. South Korea’s per capita GDP growth of 2,200% between 1950 and 2008, for instance, has been linked to investment in the country’s youth. But in many places around the world, the foundations on which young people can build a future are fragile.

The overriding issue in many lower-income countries is that there simply aren’t enough jobs for the number of young people that want them. In stark contrast to wealthy countries where low birth rates and long life expectancy combine to create an ageing population, many middle and low-income countries have large and sometimes growing youth populations.

At the same time, valuable sources of employment in lower-income countries have been lost. This can, in part, be traced back to the 1980s and 1990s when loans and other forms of financing were provided to low-income countries on the condition that they make structural economic reforms.

These reforms have included liberalising trade, reforming taxes and public investment, reducing government spending, and introducing wage restraints and employment flexibility. They have resulted in job losses and layoffs in many countries, including from the public sector.

Permanent contracts and reliable hours of work are also relatively rare. More than half of all workers globally were in informal employment in 2024, which means they are not covered by national labour legislation and social protection. And research has found that young workers experience higher levels of informality than their older counterparts.

Despite improvements in educational attainment in lower-income countries, young people often struggle to enter the labour market. Within this context, many are forced to flee their country altogether.

The current exodus of young people from Nigeria, which has been nicknamed a japa wave after the Yoruba word for run or flee, is a case in point.

In 2019, more than a quarter of young Nigerians were classified as “not in education, employment or training” (Neet). And the number of Nigerian passports newly issued or renewed nearly doubled between 2021 and 2022, from 1 million to 1.9 million.

Things are particularly hard for young women. There are twice as many Neet young women globally as there are young men. In most countries, including lower-income countries, women face additional structural barriers in their search for decent work.

These include social norms on the extent of young women’s labour market participation and restrictive stereotypes concerning the types of employment deemed appropriate for them.

A variety of other factors have compounded the missing jobs crisis. Climate change is rendering young people’s working lives more precarious. Meanwhile, some young people were forced to take up new debt and more dangerous work during the pandemic just to get by.

Securing better jobs

Most efforts to help young people secure better jobs in low-income countries focus on providing them with education and training opportunities. But these interventions miss the heart of the issue: that young people cannot access decent work opportunities if those opportunities do not exist.

The key is to boost labour market demand and create better quality jobs. This can be achieved, in part, by prioritising employment and job creation in economic policy.

In 2023, the African Union and International Labour Organization unveiled a youth employment strategy for Africa. The strategy aims to create jobs for young people by directing investment into key areas for future youth employment: the green, care and digital industries.

Entrepreneurship is also seen as a crucial avenue for supplying more jobs in low-income countries. In fact, small- and medium-sized enterprises and mid-sized companies are responsible for almost 70% of jobs globally.

The Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works strategy, which aims to help 30 million young people in Africa secure employment by 2030, sees entrepreneurs and small businesses as the engine for job creation.

However, such an approach requires a degree of caution as entrepreneurship tends to have high rates of failure. In Uganda, just 30% of small businesses reach their third birthday. And more than 70% of micro, small and medium businesses in South Africa fold within seven years.

The recent uprising in Bangladesh highlights the capacity for young people to drive societal change. The engagement and empowerment of young people are key for finding solutions to the widespread and persistent challenge of youth underemployment.

But the burden to solve this structural issue should not fall entirely on young people themselves. A transition to economies that are rich in jobs for young people can, if done well, help us tackle climate change and the care crisis, providing strong foundations for our shared present and future.