#doing what i can to preserve my mental health in this current environment

[yes-no-maybe-soo]

I desperately want to be manhandled by Sylus, thrown down atop his bed, his full massive weight pressing down on me, not an inch separating our warm bodies, his big nose buried in the crook of my neck, his hot breaths flush against my sensitive skin, his sonorous growls and grunts hitting my ear as he slowly grinds against me, his lips biting and sucking and then kissing my neck and throat, before moving on to plant kisses all over my face, while he murmurs words of praise desire and worship in his deep sultry voice...

[richarlotte]

The Sunday Morning Reset.

Health and wellness are two of my passions and priorities. As you enter your twenties, begin school or a new career, deal with interpersonal relationships, and learn how to mature into an adult, it’s important that you find time to take care of yourself. Burning out is a real issue, and it can be hard to come back from a serious burnout. You could be completely mentally healthy, experience a series of setbacks, or go through a brief period of physical/mental health troubles and find that it’s hard for you to get yourself out of a downward spiral. If you work or stress yourself out to the point of exhaustion, you’ll find that your body will force you to take a break. Prioritize your mental health, protect your wellbeing, and zealously preserve your mind, body, and soul. Never overextend yourself and be sure that you release your worries before resting.

It’s important to have a few hours to yourself at the start of each week so that you can mentally prepare yourself for what’s to come. I choose to do my mental reset on Sunday mornings; I pray and walk to the house as the sun rises, go to my favorite spot on campus (the rooftop), make an iced matcha, write in my journal and planner, and then meet everyone for breakfast downstairs. It’s a small time commitment, but I feel refreshed and ready to take on the week. You don’t need to spend money or do lavish activities; you need to block out some time where you can be in peace and prepare yourself for whatever will come to you. This activity is especially useful if you’re already in a high-stress environment because you can use it to step away from chaos and evaluate your options so that you can make the best choice. It’s not selfish to focus on yourself, look for ways to better enjoy your life, or improve how you feel about the world at large.

TL;DR: self care also involves self improvement. Take the time to find ways to improve both yourself and the life you’re currently living.

[divination1330]

Gonna ramble about fandom on this account, because who cares. Warning, really long post

I’ve liked the (mostly created by the fandom due to a lack of material) ship between Shiro and Adam for ages. Like, ever since I found out about it. And it’s for one huge reason. I am going to try and focus on source material and what I know about space, because my headcannons are all over the place.

I’ve wanted to be an astronaut my entire life, and having someone in my life who would stick out loving me through that dream is probably my greatest hope.

I’ve also got someone in my life who is like that. Who matches me for my talent and my heart but overall doesn’t have any aspirations like mine. They want to settle down and just have a mechanical engineering job that pays enough and that they enjoy (and a lot of pets). Their extracurriculars aren’t high stakes, they aren’t chasing grades for their future, but they still push themselves. They still demand the best from themselves that they can, and I do the same thing.

We’ve never had unhealthy competition. We’ve always tried to push each other and lean into each other’s ambitions and interests, but they have supported me in this dream without any doubt. They’re fully expecting to have to deal with the stress of me going to space.

I also never want to put them through that. My current aspirations already take me away from them so much. What will that do to my partner and my best friend in the years to come? Will I want them to move on, find someone who actually has their feet on the ground?

I like the fact that there was a breaking point between Shiro and Adam, despite how it seems like Adam was the closest person to Shiro. We hear nothing about Shiro having a family outside of mentoring Keith, and possibly his work with the Holts, if you want to count that. Adam is still the only person to call Shiro by his first name, and they were nearly married. From the photo in the background they flew together as well. As an aviator that drives me up the wall. The protective instinct that I’ve seen pilots have for each other, and the reckless streak, is so interesting (that’s an entire other topic about what the personalities of pilots means for Voltron, and for Shiro in particular).

You bet your ass Adam was at the end of his rope. I like to see him as a parallel to Haggar in the same way Shiro was a parallel to Zarkon. Haggar’s search for knowledge corrupted her and tore her apart. She was selfish in doing so. She refused to let the people she loved die, and let it drive her to insanity. Adam was a teacher, not a scientist. His job was about sharing knowledge. What did Adam do when someone he cared about endangered their life in a way higher than the risks that they had ever taken on together?

When he realized that Shiro was inevitably going to an environment that speeds up muscular atrophy and osteoporosis for a long term mission with a minimal crew and is extremely taxing on mental health, which from the scraps we know about Shiro’s illness and personality is probably highly dangerous on several accounts, he let go.

He decided he cared about someone enough to let them go and preserve his own sanity, because he could never control them. You bet that hurt. He wouldn’t hold on to someone and do horrible things to try to work against someone’s own autonomy.

(PS: I’m really interested in Shiro’s personality in regards to being something uncontrollable. He’s the guardian of the air, to his knowledge his life is incredibly fragile, he’s the definition of astronauts being medical experiments and extremophiles, he’s a model student, he’s going to be young forever until he isn’t and he’ll lose everything that makes him part of the garrison, he’s a born leader and an incredible strategist, he’s built his own family from people he met at a military school, he commits insubordination, he’s the garrisons youngest pilot of a long-term mission, he decided to mentor a kid who stole his car, he managed to become a symbol of hope to the blades while in what could have been his lowest moments, he’s faced with a kid pulling his rank to make a decision and immediately makes it a team effort, you’ll never catch him taking a break, what?)

That’s what I think is the illustration of the very start of the difference between Zarkon and Shiro. Zarkon nearly tore reality apart and refused to let Haggar go at the expense of so much. Before Shiro ever went to space, he was on both sides of that decision, in a way. Would he stay because someone who had such an impact on him loved him, or would he continue with his mission because he might be the only one who can do this.

Zarkon abandoned his team and his service to Voltron for someone he loved beyond anything. Haggar abandoned everything in her search for knowledge, believing that Zarkon would do anything to save her.

Shiro and Adam both serve the morals of the Garrison, what has become their home. They both study flight, and engineering, and what lies beyond the atmosphere. They have been there for each other since what seems like the start. Adam looked at all the risks and knew he could never try to make a decision for Shiro, but he also wasn’t able to stand by and watch while he hurt himself. Shiro looked at his options and believed that he was the only one able to pilot the Kerberos mission the farthest manned mission the Garrison had ever conducted. They let each other go because they loved each other. They loved each other because of those same reasons in the first place. They wouldn’t be who they are without those traits, those values.

At the end of the day, Adam dies because of those same values. He defended Earth, and probably did the exact same thing Shiro would have done. They were just both like that. Selfless, and very aware of what Earth means.

But what if he made it?

How would that pan out?

I can say this. Through all of it, my partner feels like the only person who truly gets all of this. The ambition, the sacrifices, the strain. I also hide stuff from them when I don’t want them to become too worried, at least till it blows over. Especially with flight involved, or space accidents. I’ve cried on their shoulder about some of this, and they also feel like my only haven some days.

Shiro comes back, and the one person who gets him is fighting the same fight Shiro is. Adam is in danger and taking the same risks Shiro is, and the problem is he isn’t special, not like the paladins, and now the universe really is at stake. What decisions would Shiro make? Especially since they broke up? How much have they both changed?

What if Shiro has to choose between his universe and the universe

And what does he do in the wake of losing his body, his illness, and nearly his mind. He’s lost a limb all over again. His tormentor is his savior, and also someone who lost everything so long ago. He’s coming back home after at least six years, and he can only really remember two, but is it really home? He’s not dying anymore, and now he really has to think about surviving the war and having a life. He’s not expendable anymore, and he’s not in the feild with the paladins he swore to protect. As an Admiral no less, and pilot of a sentient war ship. He lost Black, and gained Atlas.

Who is he going to? Everyone depends on him, everyone has expectations for him.

Who wouldn’t understand all of the things that happened, but understands him. Would he even deserve that person anymore

What does Adam think? Here’s someone who changed his life, through friendship and love and death, who’s now back. The sky was their graveyard, and now it’s their battleground. And he knows more than anyone about them. He knows the way they fly, fight, strategize, everything. At least, the way they did it before they disappeared. How are they still alive? Have they changed? Is he even remotely in their orbit anymore? Does he deserve to be?

At the end of the day, I think Adam would be the only one to see Shiro for who he really is during those last months of the war on Earth. A man with the universe on his shoulders, who is more unsure of his place in it than ever. I also think Adam would be the first person to help him let it go. After all, they used to do everything together. Garrison classes, flying, work, why not this?

Maybe having two people so intrinsically intertwined, who chose each other for who knows what reasons, and chose the universe because they loved each other, was the only way to reverse ten thousand years of war from one selfish decision. Maybe it took two people accepting they could never change each other, and would never want to, in order to change everything

Yeah, sucker for space context to Voltron and extremely dynamic relationships. Fun fact, took me and my partner years to date each other after I first asked them out. We were best friends for ages before they responded by asking me out after my initial ask years before.

Well, this is a fandom account now I guess. Get ready for the brain rot

[dosomethingplease83]

I can’t see green anarchism as anything other than a eugenicist ideology. Eugenics is not one of its *goals*, but it will do eugenics as a side-effect, where disabled/chronically ill people are collateral damage. You can’t get rid of modern medicine and sanitation without applying “survival of the fittest” to people. You’d be signing the death warrant for diabetics, asthmatics, people with severe allergies, and other common conditions. Most people with mental health conditions won’t just *get better* if capitalism were to suddenly end; if they could no longer access their medications, they’d likely self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, or kill themselves, or at least be miserable. You’d also be harming people with non-lethal disabilities, like being deaf/HoH or low vision/visually impaired, because hearing aids and eyeglasses don’t grow on trees. Many of these disabilities are genetic/inherited.

Getting rid of modern medicine and sanitation will genetically select for people who can/are more likely to survive without them, that’s why it’s eugenics. It’s not about *intentions*, it’s about *cause and effect*.

Also, I never said that capitalists had our best interests at heart. What they’re doing is also eugenics, both because they are making the world less habitable (especially in places that *just happen* to be populated with black and brown people) and because the elimination of social programs/safety nets harms and kills disabled people.

Also, historically, capitalists and fascists have been the ones to carry out eugenics programs because capitalists and fascists (influenced by capitalist and fascist “philosophers”) were in power at the time. If green anarchists had the same amount of power, they would be doing the eugenics.

We don’t need to have capitalism to keep disabled people alive. In fact, capitalism often harms disabled people. It prices people out of treatment/cures (especially since disabled people tend to be poorer), especially in poorer countries. It treats disabled people who need caregivers, especially the elderly, as cash cows. It makes “death with dignity”/elective euthanasia for hospice patients impossible to be ethical, because depending on how expensive you are to keep alive, you will be pressured to choose euthanasia if your needs are expensive and hospice care if the hospice can make more money off of you.

What we need is a system that preserves our modern practice of medicine (or improves it!) without being exploitative of people or the environment. Capitalism is not the answer, and neither is anarchism. Most people would suggest socialism or communism. Most medical innovations are already publicly funded/subsidized anyway.

In any case, even if green anarchism was the best answer and even if eugenics against disabled people was okay, nobody is going to choose that because everybody knows somebody who would die almost immediately under green anarchism, and many more who would suffer greatly. For me, my diabetic uncle and cousin would die, my cousin’s daughter would die the next time she gets stung by a bee, my grandpa would die from kidney failure, my dad would be nearly deaf, my mother and I would slowly go blind from the progression of astigmatism (which progresses more rapidly if you don’t wear glasses or if your prescription is too weak), my aunt would die once her current pacemaker runs out of batteries, and my other uncle would suffer and potentially die without his seizure medication. And so, so many women I know would die in childbirth.

We don’t throw disabled people under the bus.

Very funny to me that DSA / jacobin / verso book brigade and various other toothless mainstream leftists are trying to "sound the alarm" on mineral extraction, an issue anarchists, specifically green / anticiv / anprim / nihilist anarchist have been writing about for years for free on anarchist library dot org.

Ten years ago we were getting called "crazy" "anti-worker" "anti-progress" by these same people for critiquing extractivism, for opposing mining, for opposing "green energy." Now they're cashing in on climate anxiety and frankly, gentrifying anarchist positions against extraction by repositioning these critiques from a democratic socialist perspective, removing the radical anti-civ roots from which these ideas were born.

I have to say a book that is questioning the logic of electric cars in 2025 is too little, too late. I think that if in 2015 you were too caught up in Bernieism to understand that we're not going to techno-solutionism our way out of a toxic planet I really dont give a fuck about what you have to say in 2025.

[heroofpenamstan]

—OC PROFILES: JOANNE & MICHAEL

tagged by the lovelies: @shallow-gravy​, @shellibisshe​, @belorage​, @honeysides​, @strafethesesinners​, @faithchel​, @blissfulalchemist​! thank you, dears! x since i’m tragically late to the party as per usual, not going to be tagging anyone since i assume most of my mutuals have done it, but if you want to go right ahead and tag me too so i can see! :”)) also, fair warning: 80% of the questions i answered at ungodly hours overmedicated on paracetamol and it shows because re-reading this in the morning was a Yikes

GENERAL

name: joanne burton alias(es): jo, annie ( mike exclusive ), burton, dep, jr. deputy, rook, traitor, sinner, wrath/pain in the ass ( john exclusive ), rabbit ( jacob exclusive ), heinous fucking bitch—( also john exclusive ), black widow ( new dawn au ) gender: cis. female age: 29 birth: 30th october, 1988 place of birth: meridian, idaho spoken languages: english; may or may not recite some hebrew lines over the holidays sexual preference: bisexual occupation(s): junior deputy of hope county, montana/menace to all cultists everywhere ( in a certain radius of said hope county, montana, anyway )

APPEARANCE

eye colour: brown hair colour: black height: 157cm ( 5′2 ), or approximately 7′11 when balancing on michael’s shoulders to peer inside john’s windows scars: split right eyebrow ( thanks, jake ), minor cuts and incorrectly healed bruises and gashes, scarred bullet wound on left hip ( you’re welcome, jake )

FAVOURITE

colour: orange or yellow or cyan, or whatever is more stupidly eye-catching and not at all fit for her current environment song: i’ve been thinking by handsome boy modeling school food: various stir-fries, fruits and protein ( or anything that she claims to be “healthy” when, truly, bitch is one step away from living off of instant noodles and canned pineapple and cigarette buds from dutch’s stash ) drink: beerherbal teas and infusions

HAVE THEY

passed university: no, but passing the police academy was already a pleasant enough surprise for her had sex: today? no. two weeks ago? probably had sex in public: probably said two weeks ago gotten pregnant/ someone else pregnant: yes, but we don’t talk about it kissed a boy: yes ( derogatory ) kissed a girl: yes ( affectionate ) gotten tattoos: yes, loads: most were practice scribbles for her ex-girlfriend, and the only true meaningful one she possesses is lydia, scrawled into her pinky in remembrance. otherwise, john seed do not even engage with that rusty ass tattoo gun— gotten piercings: yes, loads multiplied; if there’s a place for a piercing in her ears, she has them. also, an old septum piercing she hasn’t worn in a hot second been in love: yes, loads squared ( girl rents out her heart on the weekdays and cries about the scratches she notices on saturday, but still repeats it all over again come monday; falling in love for her is easy, but actually loving someone and getting over her self-loathing to do so is a whole different ball game ) stayed up for more than 24 hours: she’s probably on hour 31 as we speak ( someone knock her out pls )

ARE THEY

a virgin: whitehorse has heard enough horror stories in the break room between her and joey to last him a lifetime a cuddler: closeted cuddler, yes a kisser: most definitely; woman has to play up her natural assets scared easily: her response time is too lagged for that jealous easily: depends; she’s more jealous of what she should have/could have/would have had in a general sense than being jealous of a particular person or a thing trustworthy: in her own way, yes dominant: disgustingly so submissive: not in this lifetime in love: very much so single: very much so part 2

RANDOM QUESTIONS (tw for self harm/suicide mention)

have they harmed themselves: yes, but it’s more by means of unintentional yet severe substance abuse thought of suicide: not as often as one would assume; joanne has a very strong sense of self-preservation, but tends to run from her bleak reality by means of one harmful way or the other attempted suicide: once or twice during her lowest points in life wanted to kill someone: on the daily have/had a job: girl had juggled three part-time jobs; there is nothing she fears anymore have any fears: ( see above ) to fall back into old bad habits, loss of control, death, failure, a bad future, poverty, being abandoned and forgotten, long stays at a hospital, the judges, the bliss, the power of john’s hair gel

FAMILY

sibling(s): micah burton ( older brother ) parent(s): abigail burton née belman ( mother ); jim burton ( father ) children: asher seed ( daughter in new dawn au ) significant other: jacob seed ( circumstantial lover/”could do without” mentor/#prisonwife #prisonhusband #imkidding #kinda ) pets: boomer for the cuddles, cheesecake for the throttles ( bitch naturally attracts the judges but will forget her dog 101 and run away like what does she think will happen then?? )

GENERAL

name: michael scott-hughes alias(es): mike, mikey, mickey ( mary may exlusive ), mike the bike/fall’s end’s bicycle, resistance’s poster boy, manwhore, cassanova, the archangel ( joseph exclusive ), the antichrist ( also joseph exclusive ), war dog, hughes boy ( fairgrave exclusive ) gender: cis. male age: 30 birth: 6th july, 1988 place of birth: fall’s end, montana spoken languages: english, russian, basic chinese mandarin and turkish sexual preference: pansexual occupation(s): residential shady, shady man ( international arm’s dealer, most recently demoted to local resistance leader and occasional general goods store co-owner )

APPEARANCE

eye colour: green hair colour: brown height: 181cm ( 5′11 ), and 6ft on tinder jkjk man’s confident enough to not grasp for that extra inch, unlike someone ( john ) scars: heavily burnt left hand ( from trying to fish out his ex girlfriend’s boiling corpse r.i.p. to that steaming puss— ), gash on his right temple, nicely healed gun wound on left shoulder, not so nicely healed amputated right hand ( man’s not having the best time in my canon, is he ), various incorrectly healed cuts and bruises

FAVOURITE

colour: green and rustics song: wild world by yusuf/cat stevens food: unlike the faker above, michael actually likes to cook and eat healthy meals, so anything from salads to veggies to oatmeal to soups will do ( and meat; man’s been a vegetarian for a grand total of 4 days in his entire life ( or 14, if you count the time he got abducted to john’s bunker womp )) drink: sugary drinkswhiskey, fresh juices, “water can be so, so sexy, annie—”

HAVE THEY

passed university: no, though michael really busted his ass to self-educate on subjects that will be beneficial to his line of work had sex: we stopped keeping tabs and numbers nearly ten years ago had sex in public: we stopped blinking at these types of shenanigans nearly ten years ago too gotten pregnant/ someone else pregnant: yes? no? maybe? ( mike’s too afraid to even think about it, but hopes he hasn’t fathered any babies any time soon ) kissed a boy: yes ( affectionate ) kissed a girl: yes ( affectionate² ) gotten tattoos: yes: the sword of damocles on his left inner forearm, intertwined snakes running across his right ribs, a tiny smiley face on his ass lord save him gotten piercings: yes, and everyone hated his attempt to revive the 90s with his lil earring like c’mon you already have a reputation of being a sleaze— been in love: yes, but surprisingly not as many times as one may think ( truthfully, three times: mary may, lana, joanne mary may again ) stayed up for more than 24 hours: sometimes it just cannot be helped

ARE THEY

a virgin: maybe in a past life as an amoeba a cuddler: yes ( try to escape his hold during a summer night i’ll give you 5 bucks if you can break the deadlock ) a kisser: he just exists to smooch at this point scared easily: truthfully, he’s quite desensitized as is, so it’s really hard to truly rock him jealous easily: no; though he might get a bit petty and bitter if someone mentions merle and mary may becuase, like, c’mon, mary—merle briggs? trustworthy: one of his better traits, but past events have shown that boy tends to lose some of his morals for love dominant: yes submissive: yes part 2 man will accommodate and switch it up in love: often single: loosely, often

RANDOM QUESTIONS (tw for self harm/suicide mention)

have they harmed themselves: michael has bad mental health trips stemming from having a lot of insecurities as a child; these may evolve into bad habits and pure recklessness on his part to prove his worth thought of suicide: these thoughts don’t come often, but when they do, it’s harder for him than most to shake them off and recover attempted suicide: once, during the boiling pit incident wanted to kill someone: yes, but it comes more from need than want usually have/had a job: yes, though no retail until he was 30 and stuck providing hope county with slugs and bullets have any fears: loneliness, rejection, abandonment, repercussions and consequences, not being good enough, powerlessness, loss, the angel pit, the process of dying

FAMILY

sibling(s): none, but: jackson hughes ( uncle ) parent(s): jessica hughes née scott ( mother ), david hughes ( father ) girl i have his whole family tree drawn up like you wouldn’t believe children: andrew hughes ( son in new dawn au and maybe canon ) significant other: mary may fairgrave ( childhood sweetheart/awkward ex/once in a rare cosmic event fuck buddy/volatile lovers ) pets: peaches loves him she doesn’t; she just wants to chew on his hair

[jorisjurgen]

Not-quite coming clean about some things:

My first decree is that i am one of like, 10 people who ship qilby and shinonome. (Not in a passionate way where I hate ppl who don't. It's just a fact about me.)

If you're a longtime follower you should know this, cuz me and Eggs (yes the person who got me into Kingdom Hearts and then damaged my mental health to the point I composed two musical pieces about them on my artblog ("hydrogen sulfide" and "loveletter"). Ronik lore 101. I can say this freely because Egg nuked their internet presence one day and hasn't been spotted online in 2-3 years. Which still drives me fucking bananas. Not enough to write a third musical piece about how much I miss them though. I still kinda associate qilby and shinonome with them so I'll probably never get too deep into these characters sadly. I wish I could.) would post about this ship literally all the time, mostly me as their,,, minion and yes-man, or whatever, man.

I am saying all of this to ease you into some other, heavier shit, because I don't actually feel strongly enough about qilby for this post to be about him - i am merely using that guy as a launching pad for what i am about to say:

Please pay attention

I literally post anime twincest on main. I have a thing for shipcest because I like codependency. I do it in all my current main fandoms. I don't like coercive/abusive/minor x adult shipcest because I don't like my comfort characters being taken advantage of by their family members. I like the corruption of a normal relationship, and it is one of the other reasons I was never a hardcore qilnonome(? Fuckin idk man me and egg never came up with a name for it) shipper: there is no "pre-mental illness pre-ship" state for me to look at, and be horrified about what the characters have become.

I am saying this for the following reasons:

Occam's razor.

Someday, I disappoint you severely.

If you want to ask me what I mean, you probably already know the answer.

I have held my beliefs for 3-5 years now, maybe more, and they will not change. (Believe me, I tried really hard to change them.)

I am not currently planning on speaking about these beliefs, but someday I will.

My beliefs include unposted content, including 18+ content.

I will not speak of these beliefs in any community/discord I currently participate in, or try to push my agendas onto people and make them uncomfortable — but I will speak of it on my twitter, on this blog, and my art blog.

If I do start to speak of these beliefs, I will post about the tags you may mute in advance. I have had them chosen for a very long time now.

I will not rethink my decision, because trying to hide things is very damaging to my mental health. I think an environment where you're afraid of saying the wrong thing is damaging to both people who are like me, and people who hate people like me, but ehh,,

I won't feel particularly upset if this causes some big artists to stop interacting with me, because I am not interested in social climbing. My role in this community is translation, media preservation, analysis — while creation of fic and art is my passion. Please don't get between me, my role, and my passions.

You may unfollow me. You can do it now, or you can do it in the future. But I do ask you not to make it a problem for me through hate mail. My only motivation is to have fun and #be myself.

Honestly at this point i know that being completely open about my ships will someday be necessary for my sanity, the same way it was necessary to come out to my mom, or starting to be more open about the deep seated traumas,,,

I cang be looking at the empty page and thinking how to write my evil confession, and be terrified like "fuuuck people are going to hate me, people are going to doxx me", because of the things some popular wakfu blogs post.

[mrhenvs3000-20]

A moment to make sense of nature interpretation

As an interpreter, I know for certain that nature interpretation makes a better world. I know that it is needed to build a better relationship with nature. We have learned when looking at history that humans before us had a better relationship with nature than we do currently. We saw the Group of Seven and how they traveled Canada to paint its environment. They felt at peace painting and traveling throughout the land. They showed people what’s out there and encouraged them to travel and explore nature. When we build a relationship with nature, we will care more about preserving it and not destroying it for a better future. Therefore, nature interpretation is certainly needed for a better future.

One idea that was discussed in this week’s lecture that I found very interesting and goes along with what I know for certain, is that nature interpretation involves many other disciplines, such as science, history and art. It’s the glue that brings everything together. It could use science to interpret nature, for example, how bees pollinate and help nature thrive. It can use art with paintings of natural scenery. It could use technology to bring us close to dangerous animals and how they live. Nature interpretation is very important in this respect.  

I still, however, wonder if technology is helpful in nature interpretation. We learned about technology and its impact on nature interpretation. After all the readings and research that I came across, I still think it can go both ways. It all depends on us, humans, and how we use technology towards nature. Technology could keep us inside our homes and take us away from going out to nature and enjoying it or it could inspire us to go out and travel and experience nature by seeing pictures or videos on our phones or TVs.

A nice illustration of how nature and technology could be hand in hand and work together. An interesting read if you are interested. Retrieved from: https://givingcompass.org/article/how-technology-and-nature-can-to-work-together-to-feed-a-growing-population/

I find inspiration being out in nature. Whenever I go camping with friends and family, I like to take walks in the forest and enjoy the peaceful sounds of nature. If we are close to water, I like to sit and admire the big bodies of water and what could be living within them. I’m not thinking of myself as separate from nature. I’m lost in it as part of the environment around me. I see the animals living in harmony and think of myself as if I was one of them. I’m happy and at peace during these moments. I think that nature improves our mental and emotional health. Whenever I feel down or stressed, I take a walk through a trail or I make a trip to nearby natural areas to relieve the stress.

A picture of the sunset that I took on one of my nature walks. So peaceful. Nature truly brings me happiness and joy whenever I'm feeling down. 

Watching people enjoy nature ignites me. I always take it upon myself to find beautiful natural environments to take family and friends to. Finding the perfect camping spot or viewpoint and showing it to important people in my life gives me great joy. I feel like nature should be enjoyed by everyone and spreading my knowledge ignites me the most as an interpreter.

[joanaflbarbosa]

How Therapy Works: What it Means to "Process an Issue"

People are often advised to go to therapy to “process” some issue. But what does “processing an issue” actually mean? And why and how does this “processing” help?

For starters, we may define “a process” as a series of actions or operations taken toward achieving a particular end. “To process,” hence, is to perform a series of operations on something in order to change (or preserve) it—processing milk to make cheese or yogurt, for example. In therapy, these operations are performed through the therapist-client interaction, and they may take several forms.

First, processing an issue in therapy may mean working to place it inside a coherent life narrative. We experience our life as a story, of which we are both protagonists and narrators. And we make ourselves known to others in this manner, too. If someone wants to genuinely get to know you, giving them a list of facts and numbers describing you will not suffice. They will want to hear your story. For human beings, processing information involves organizing it in narrative form.

In this framework, shocking or traumatic events damage us by disrupting our stories, mangling our established narratives of self and the world. They do this by refusing to fit into our established narrative (“This is not me; this can’t be happening”) or by flooding and overwhelming it (“I can’t stop thinking about it; nothing else matters”). To “process an issue” in this case is when therapy helps us to either integrate the traumatic event into our life's narrative or pull our story out from under the weight and confusion of the trauma.

Second, processing an issue in therapy often means bringing past events or habits into present consciousness and analyzing them using our current tools and knowledge, resulting in fresh insight. One reason this is helpful is because difficult events often lead to avoidance. Places, emotions, and memories associated with the traumatic event are avoided, and thus they fail to undergo the constant reevaluation and examination that would have updated their meaning in light of new knowledge and experience. Thus, the meanings of these difficult events remain frozen in a past perspective. This means that the only reactions in our repertoire regarding these events are our original ones, which by now may be dated, ill-fitting, or suboptimal. If a dog bit you when you were 4 years old, leading you to hate dogs and carefully avoid any contact with them, whenever you do finally encounter a dog, you will have the terrified reaction of a traumatized 4-year-old, which you no longer are; likewise, the dog you are responding to is the one from your childhood, not the one in front of you now. Such a rigidly disproportional reaction is, by definition, neurotic, and neither healthy nor helpful.

Another example: Children often experience their parents’ divorce in real time as somehow their fault, and thus may harbor guilt and self-doubt related to the event even many years later. Observing the events of a divorce from an adult perspective allows the client to realize that their parents’ divorce was not their fault, and that the childish expectation that their behavior could somehow have mended their parents’ rift was both developmentally understandable, even inevitable, but also factually incorrect, even absurd, when viewed from the perch of the grown-up perspective.

“Processing” in this context often includes not only updating and reexamining the meaning of old memories and emotions, but also developing a new language with which to describe, experience, and understand the past and present. Moving from a language of powerlessness (“I’m a victim”) to a language of resilience (“I’m a survivor”) is one example. Moving from self-demeaning, perfectionist language (“I made a mistake; I’m stupid, deserving of punishment”) to a language of empathy and self-nurture (“I made a mistake; I’m human, deserving of compassion”) is another.

A third way to understand the notion of “processing an issue” is through the prism of cognitive developmental theory, specifically the seminal work of the pioneering cognitive theorist Jean Piaget. According to Piaget, the child is akin to a scientist, exploring her environment and experimenting with its properties in order to gain an understanding of the world and its laws. As the child experiments with objects, she learns about the character and attributes of reality itself. The child thus develops cognitive “schemas,” the building blocks of her mental architecture. Piaget defined a schema as, "a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning."

In other words, schemas are organized ways of interacting with the world. Through experience, our schemas over time become increasingly numerous, at once larger and more specific, and they help guide our movement in the world. Having acquired a "restaurant schema," for example, allows me to know how to behave and what to expect in any restaurant, even one I had never visited before. Because I have a "party schema," I know a party when I see it, I know how to behave at a party, and I have a set of party-related expectations by which to evaluate whether the party was any good.

According to Piaget, schemas develop through two cognitive processes: assimilation and accommodation. We assimilate when we use an existing schema to understand novel information. Accommodation happens when the new information cannot fit our current schema, and we must then adjust our schema to fit the information. My “mammals” schema may easily assimilate a lion glimpsed for the first time. But upon encountering a whale, I may need to change my schema to accommodate this new information. If your wife gives birth to a new baby boy, assimilating him into your "male family member" schema will be easy. Yet if your adult daughter decides to transition to become a man, then you may need to accommodate your old "male family member" schema to include transgender persons.

From this perspective, processing an issue in therapy amounts to an effort to assimilate and accommodate new information, to improve our ability to understand and move in the world more seamlessly and effectively.

Fourth, processing an issue in therapy requires that we engage it, think and talk about it. In doing so, we are practicing de facto exposure with regard to the emotions attached to the issue. Exposure is a therapy technique that lets a client face up to a scary or uncomfortable situation. The goal of exposure is to achieve physiological habituation, psychological mastery, and behavioral skill. Physiologically feeling your emotions and remembering your memories will result in nervous system habituation and, with that, lower anxiety. Psychologically confronting difficult memories will lead to a sense of agency, courage, and achievement. Behaviorally learning to feel, identify, express, and discuss one’s emotions will lead to improved communications and interpersonal skill. Moreover, with exposure, the client learns new associations regarding the issue at hand. (Through interacting with dogs, I begin to associate them with playfulness and companionship rather than with the pain of the initial attack.)

Processing in this context can be viewed as a way to familiarize a person with unfamiliar territory. When we process an issue, we learn the terrain, thereby becoming less afraid of it and more able to navigate within it.

Working for many years in this area, the influential psychologist Edna Foa has proposed that fear is represented in memory as a cognitive structure, a program to escape danger (e.g., you see a lion; your heart races; you run away). The fear structure however, may in the course of one’s life become faulty, acquiring inaccurate associations between benign stimuli and exaggerated fear response (e.g., you see a lion at the zoo; your heart races; you run away). In Foa’s system, emotional processing, achieved through exposure practice, involves activating a person’s fear structure and then introducing new information that is incompatible with earlier faulty associations (e.g., hanging around the lion’s cage is safe; your heartbeat will eventually come down; you don’t have to run).

Fifth, processing an issue in therapy means bringing the issue into the light of another’s benevolent attention. Such interpersonal light is often, as it were, the best mental disinfectant. We are social animals, and we define ourselves, and our circumstances, in part by others’ responses. For example, if you kill your enemies in socially approved ways (say, by becoming a soldier and going to war), then you become a hero, but if you kill your enemies in a way that is not socially approved (you poison your nasty neighbors), then you have become a murderer. It’s all about how others see and judge what you have done. Receiving a 5 percent raise at work will make you feel good, but only until you find that all your coworkers have received a 10 percent raise. Your mood is determined not by what happens to you, but by how it compares to the experience of others. For good or bad, social connectivity is our foundational psychological currency. As Alfred Adler argued a long time ago, in the human psychological calculus, social connection is akin to health. Social isolation is akin to illness.

The engine of therapy is the human connection at its core. In this context, processing an issue means communicating it inside a safe, supportive interpersonal space. A secret loses much of its power to paralyze and poison us internally when shared with others who are capable of resonating with our experience, accepting and understanding it. In the act of discussing difficult matters, we become less alone, less opaque to ourselves, and thus less fragile. We manifest and build our strength when we express and own our weakness.

In sum, therapy may help you “process” a difficult issue by helping to place it inside a coherent life narrative; by reviewing past events using current tools and knowledge; by adjusting your cognitive schemas to include new information; by helping you confront previously avoided uncomfortable feelings in order to increase your competence in managing them; and by bringing the issue into the light of another’s benevolent and empathetic attention, thus reducing shame, fear, and isolation.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201801/how-therapy-works-what-it-means-process-issue

[words-writ-in-starlight]

For your anon re: intelligence: take it from a social psychologist and professor- there are many different ways to be intelligent. Traditional school, IQ and standardized tests only measure a very narrow version of it. Look up Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences to start off with. And also the advice to see a counselor is excellent. It's so hard to unlearn the negativity put on you by the people who are supposed to lift you up, but it's so worth the work!

(intelligence anon)

Yes!  For those of you who have not taken a bunch of psych courses, the theory of multiple intelligences states that there are many different ways to be intelligent, not just “are you good at standardized tests, yes or no.”  (Honestly even that question is pretty loaded--I’m great at standardized tests!  For about three hours.  Past that, I might as well just leave, my score would probably be better.)  

Gardner’s proposed types of intelligence are:

Verbal-linguistic, or having a gift for language, spoken, written, whatever; these people are usually well-spoken and well-written and sound “smart”

Logical-mathematical, or, let’s be honest, what everyone thinks “being smart” entails, a sense of how to assemble a good argument or how to grasp a mathematical concept

Bodily-kinesthetic, or having an understanding of how to make your body and your environment play well together, so that you get the result you want; “natural” athletes are naturally good at this, I had to work really, really hard at it out of sheer self-preservation against my natural clumsiness

Musical-harmonic, or having a good sense of how the pieces of music fit together into the complete thing--this is not necessarily the same as being able to read sheet music, fun fact, which I personally am horrifically incompetent at and falls more under one of the first two

Visual-spatial, or having an idea of how the visual world works, both in terms of art and practical things like pouring water from one glass into another; my mom is one of the smartest people I know, and also she has never correctly estimated the volume of any single object in her entire life

Intrapersonal, or the ability to evaluate your own mental health and emotional state, introspectiveness; if you feel like you don’t have this one dead to rights, perhaps some therapy! I recommend some therapy!

Interpersonal, or social skills; I had the cosmic forethought to date someone very very good at this, which helps buffer the fact that I just do not have a natural gift for socializing, I also recommend that

Naturalistic, or the ability to understand how the natural world works, having a ‘green thumb’ or a natural talent with animals; one of my partners can make anything grow with a shrug and “I don’t know, felt like it should get watered”, whereas my mother can, has, and doubtless will again murder a cactus out of sheer failure to grasp how cacti work, despite extensive googling

Now, someone might be phenomenally gifted in one or several of these areas, and then be desperately lacking in others.  With some of them, a natural talent is worth far less than in others--anyone can learn to evaluate their own emotional state, but straight up some people have good aim from the start and the rest of us fools just have to deal with being a hazard.  You may be good at one thing within a specific type of intelligence and not another, like someone who’s incredibly articulate on the page but struggles to be clear aloud.  You may have the capacity to be good at one of these, but not always the energy--I can put on my best neurotypical social skills, but it’s exhausting, and I need a hard time limit or I start getting a little mean.  

The point is, there are a lot of ways to be smart, a lot of things to be smart about, and a lot of people who showcase those different types of intelligence.  Some types of intelligence are valued at a higher place in our society, but that doesn’t make them innately more valuable in a person.

And before you call me out on that, yeah, listen, I’m a medical professional.  I have a natural inclination to believe my profession, and therefore the intelligence that facilitates it, is The Most Important, because all medical professionals are like that and we’re all insufferable for it.  BUT.

The entire human race owes its existence in its current form to some bright spark who looked at a plant and said “You know, I bet I could grow that,” so don’t get uppity about math or whatever.  We’re all only here because of six inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains and some folks who had the naturalistic intelligence to take advantage.

[gaslitbyamadman]

Aphorisms On Madness, Philosophy, & Society (from my book, Gaslit By A Madman)

Aphorisms On Madness, Philosophy, & Society (from my book)

Wittgenstein on Otto Weininger.

Wittgenstein once said about Otto Weininger: “If you were to reverse all of his assertions, they would still be equally fascinating and worthwhile. ” That tends to be how I view all utterances. (If only SJWs thought like this about all utterances!) This is much closer to truth as aletheia, the Greek and Heideggerian notion, rather than strict formal, propositional veracity.

If you believe in truth, you are delusional!

.......Thus, as things became even more extreme, and relativism spread from ‘values’ to truth itself, we increasingly began to see the crazed spectacle of Professors of Psychiatry ‘scientifically’ labelling everyone who simply happens to have different beliefs from themselves as ‘sick’ and ‘delusional’i. e meaning they have a ‘fixed false belief’. while their prestigious, highly rewarded colleagues in the Humanities, Philosophy or Literary Studies department loudly proclaim there is ‘no truth, only interpretations’! No doubt somewhere or other, the two doctrines have been combined and solidified in the very same individuals such that if you still believe in ‘truth’, you are delusional, i. e you have a fixed ‘false’ belief and require urgent ‘treatment’! Pretty deranged, eh?

Truth as the best healer

Real truth saves lives; real truth works better than any pill. Especially for the honest.

On self-identity and freedom of conscience

Nowadays, if a ‘woman’ came into a psychiatrist’s office and professed to be a Champion Bull, raring to butt horns in the otherwise peaceful long-grassed meadows of her youth once more . the good Dr. would quite rightly feel obliged to continue the interview in aggressive snorts and threatening raking at the carpet, like any other modern, non-bigoted professional. But if this erstwhile proud Minator were to opine that there is no such thing as ‘schizophrenia’ or ‘mental illness’, someone’s professional opinion would be gravely offended and someone else’s dosage – that of the poor, once righteous monster -- would be judiciously and roundly quadrupled.

Excessive codes of 'civility' as cause of hateful outbreaks

Excessive codes of 'civility', which rule out certain antagonistic, strongly felt forms of speech, when such cosy 'civility' is not truly felt are one of the leadingyet most over-looked causes of hatred and violence. The reason that throughout society and on all social media websites especially there is enforced civility is because the powers-that-be were afraid of people's differences being worked out in a peaceful manner and them growing united and thus harder to control and dominate.

Psychiatry’s inversion of health and sickness.

In all discernment between healthy and pathological behaviors, the key thing to be aware of is that the nature of the former is to be a deliberate, willful action -- realizing one's 'true will' to quote Aleister Crowley -- whereas that the latter is to be picked up unconsciously or half-consciously from one's environment, sometimes with a dimly conscious but burgeoning awareness that it is vulgar, stupid or slavish. Psychiatry precisely inverts the true nature of this dichotomy, labelling healthy, i. e willful liberation as pathological, and unhealthy, slavish unthinking conformity as healthy: it is the exact opposite.  "Its sickness is for its traits and the traits of its parts to be traits by which the soul does not do its actions that come about by means of the body or its parts, or does them in a more diminished manner than it ought or not as was its wont to do them. Al Farabi

Harm, punish, or 'treat'.

If you harm, punish or 'treat' an bad man, he might just re-consider his wicked ways; but if you harm, punish or 'treat' a good one, he is often liable or prone to re-consider his good ways.

The disadvantages of self-control.

The exhortation to self-control is really an exhortation to obedience and submission. (When they said I lacked 'self-control', what they actually meant was I wasn't controlling myself according to their demands. and they proceeded to take actual selfcontrol away from me) If we are really going to free ourselves of the crippling influence of convention and actually arbitrary, oppressive socalled 'authority', we probably ought to rid ourselves of all self-control that is not absolutely necessary.

Real change.

The cave-dwelling masses and everyday non-mental -patients, while all too fatuously and recklessly embracing ideologies of social 'progress', are frightened of a real change in their Being and locked into a pattern of stagnation and decay. The madman, (remember, the etymological meaning of the word 'mad' is to 'change') at least in the normative, ideal sense of that term, (as well as often he or she who is solabelled), has awakened to the need for spiritual becoming, both in himself and others.

Madness and Art.

Madmen and poets are alike: they both give freer reign to their emotional and linguistic expressions than is considered decent. And, both of them too, do it largely for socially admirable, therapeutic reasons. Albeit the 'mad' one is more often misunderstood, since people forget that all life, and the unartistic life most of all, is a good opportunity for art, for therapy.

The unartistic life is the most drab, automatic, unredeemed kind of life, in which salutary disruptions are still possible No one blinks twice if they see an eviscerated heart in an art gallery nowadays. But if they see an eviscerated heart while it is still in someone's chest. That's magic.

Autobiography of values as requisite.

To counter-act the tide of artificial, false pretenses to expert, scientific 'objectivity', and the docile, herd-like conformity that actually entails within social science, within the healing professions, and within society a whole, I propose that a personal account of one's life-story, focusing on how one came to arrive at one's central, integral values, become a standard for all such careers. This would be a move towards bolstering the development of personality and character throughout society, preventing people from hiding entirely behind their professional veneers, and presencing the real-lived experience and actual, rather than false selves, of individuals. I don't propose this merely as a helpful task for the 'professional' on the way to qualifying, but as a central piece that he must present to his or her clients/patients. A kind of C. V., but, as I say, with the focus on HOW HE CAME TO HIS CENTRAL CONVICTIONS ABOUT LIFE

‘Recreational’ drug use is medicinal drug use.

The potential of currently illegal substances such as LSD and DMT, as well as more common and less potent ones such as marajuana, to provide radical new, mad vistas of consciousness, and so heal the mental sickness with which mainstream society is so disastrously afflicted ( see the work of Terence Mckenna), is no less important than their capacity to treat physical illness or relieve physical pain. While all substances can potentially be used ill-advisedly, the depreciation of supposed ‘recreational’ uses ignores the dire and gaping need even so-called ‘normal’ people have for fresh inspiration, hedonic sustenance, and the health benefits that all true enjoyment, relaxation or true insight brings. It merely repeats the fallacious and artifical seperation between these supposedly mutually alien aspects of ourselves, a long with the superstitious, ascetic and crude utilitarian privileging of the mere functionality of ‘health’, over the supposedly wicked nature of happiness in this world --- a sad residue of religious puritanism and centuries of slavery to sadistic dogmas of control --even though it is only Epicurean pleasure that ultimately justifies life itself. This attitude is so pervasive and so perverse that it simply cannot be under-stated.Ravi Das, a neuroscientist at University College London who is researching the effects of ketamine said: “The potential benefits are definitely downplayed in face of these drugs being used recreationally,” he said. “People view their use in a research setting as ‘people are just having a good time’. ”From this vantage point, must one not wager the theory that almost the whole of modern medicine, most obviously in terms of mental illness, but even in its approach to illness as such --- including physical illness- -- as simply a form of prolonged Christian hatred-ofthe-flesh and jaw-dropping sado-masochism on a mass scale ? That is why Prof. David Nutt equated the barriers to research to the Catholic church’s censorship of Galileo’s work in 1616. “We’ve banned research on psychedelic drugs and other drugs like cannabis for 50 years,” he said. “Truly, in terms of the amount of wasted opportunity, it’s way greater than the banning of the telescope. This is a truly appalling level of censorship. ” Ignoring the importance of psycho-active drugs for promoting health is bad enough, but to ignore or denigrate the importance of pleasure to this aim, is like discounting the use of the eyes in driving to work in the morning! --.

Beyond rational self-preservation ((lock him up! He's a danger to himself.

.!)

. Enlightenment thinkers such Thomas Hobbes and John Locke tried to appeal to and foster what is called man's rational selfpreservation, inserting it above all other goals as the centrepiece and pivot of the whole of society. Notice here the two concepts, reason, on the one hand, and self-preservation, on the other, are heavily intertwined, which still remains the case today. Madness, on the other hand, is commonly associated with throwing caution to the wind, tightrope walking over a precipice just for the sheer Hell of it, and embracing a variety of dangers that may very well end in personal extinction. However, when one considers the nature of our own inevitable mortality, is making selfpreservation our highest goal really so rational? In order to face life in all its grim reality, is it not necessary, at some point or other, to eschew 'rational' self-preservation for a bold leap, (if only in the imagination, if not outward practice), towards an affirmation and embrace of this inextricable fatality? Especially if one seeks to give birth to something greater than oneself, like the Christ, and take on the grave sacrifices that sometimes requires. In other words, rather than 'rational self-preservation', isn't the ability for the‘insane self-annihilation’ of loving sacrifice equally, or an even greater sign of maturity - or of true morality? Thus also the Buddha would seem to have it, who equally, in view of the passing away of all earthly things, preached 'Loss of self' rather than the steady incremental Lockean accumulation of an estate that is eventually destined to perish anyway; he who is said, out of compassion, to have given his life up to be voluntarily devoured by a starving tiger. Reminds me of those ‘voluntary patients’ on the ward that I was on!—.

Consequences of the dehumanization of madness on the collective mind.

The villifIcation of madness and the various phenomenon which are labelled as ‘mentally ill’ in our society, such as ‘grandiose delusions’, ‘hallucinations’, ‘paranoia’, etc. , a long with all the other countless  represents a form of collective repression that not only has unspeakably dire results for those so labelled, but wreaks utter havoc on the collective unconscious and the collective conscious. Rather than being the shamen, the spiritual leaders of society, such men and women are quietly tortured and cast into ignominy. Thereby, society is not only deprived of its natural guiding elite, but everyone in society is trained to feel a senseless (‘paranoid’) fear and hatred of their own deepest spiritual roots, that prevents them re-connecting with these forbidden aspects of themselves and manifesting their true potential. Take for instance ‘paranoia’. This stigmatization of questioning the benevolent motives and fundamental agendas of one’s government is one of the most cynical and blatant causes of that government getting out of control and the citizenry failing to protect their own rights and freedoms. The same applies to all the other associated phenomenon of madness, which as has been argued, represent a perenial bed-fellow and midwife of intellectual and spiritual awakening. Just as the criminalization of drugs produces an association between drug-use and general criminality that does not exist independently, re-validating society’s negative view of drug-use in its own eyes, so the category of mental illness and the inhumane, disabling treatments with which those who fall subject to it suffer, is not merely a product of but re-inforces and creates society’s negative attitude to those who manifest these various ‘mad’ phenomenon. All the while, the fact that the sacred key to everybody’s own selfrealization is so maligned and spat upon understandably produces a deep, unacknowledged sense of disconcertedness and pessimism in the population as a whole, the root cause of many other of society’s ailments and self-destructive tendencies. In truth, the real mental illness is the senseless conformity which the ‘mental health’ establishment sacralizes. This sanctified madness then, unconsciously aware of its own shortcomings, in order to sustain its own self-conception as reasonable and sane, is driven to ever more fervent quest to identity and persecute those it delusionally deems ‘mad’, for the sake of externalizing and thereby gaining some sense of control over its own deepest insecuries, and having an Other to label & stigmatize in opposition to which it can re-affirm its own false, insecure and groundless sense of Self  

The question is.

why do 'sane' family members (& Dr.s & nurses) have such an enormous problem correctly even identifying their 'unwell' relatives extremely normal human needs? ~Max Lewy 

[inappropriatefangirlneeds]

Gotham s5ep1 “Year Zero” Personal Review

““It will come”  “A thousand rounds of freshly minted nine millimeter stock”  Warning spoilers below  

 Hello there Gotham. The scenery with Edward arming himself and the disturbed vinyl sound makes me remember everything why I love this show. Oh, Oswald all dolled up and with a knife, I love it even more!  

“It's two minutes past pumpkin time, sweetheart.” I was worried about BARBARA KEAN. The last season ended as if they would make her some horrible “someone got what feminism is about really wrong” character but there she is protecting women, looking stunning and being god damn reasonable! She´s doing good! She´s doing it on her own terms. Granted the men buying time thing seems a tad bit silly but could be quite entertaining, also pragmatism rules!  “Honey, no one is asking you to forget what happened, but how do we protect the women who come in here every day looking for safety? We need this.”  It was heart breaking and inspiring to hear her tell Tabitha  “I need you too” This is how it should be, this is how you should do it. Also this just erased all my memory to all the wonky Barba and Ra´s al Ghul stuff.  Please just don´t let her be all cray cray mad from ��now on. I really root for Oswalds ““Can we move past this? Say the whole Tabitha-Butch chapter is over?” approach. I could have done without all the BUTCH & TABITHA GALAVAN stuff. It just made barely any sense for Tabitha. It lessened the unexpected joy over finding out Tabs actually cared about Barbara. And while I always found it odd that OSWALD COBBLEPOT would neglect his revenge it feels stale at that point.  And for me it gets even more cheapened if they have it circle on with Barbara trying to off Oswald. Things should come to an end or it makes something grave look like some soap opera relationship drama know.   [Also why am I so suspicious about Tabs “don´t” line maybe being not only pure love and reason but a hint that she will somehow be back. Like oddly I don´t feel they would bring her back, but .. still suspicious!] “Gee. For a second there, I was worried.” Gee that was a good line. But I´m not really feeling it that SELINA KYLE would put the blame on Bruce like that. I get the pain, I get where she is and I get that there has to be some strain in between them because of this but I also feel like Selina would know, recognize and acknowledge that it is just Jeremiah who is to blame and no one else. Her saying something like that in that moment and state that she is in, perfectly reasonable but I so hope they won´t go further down that route once she´s healed (just have to assume that’s gonna happen) Sure it also seems to go hand in hand with her NO1. rule, that she just should have stuck to it and her going astray lead to her state and that Bruce is ultimately to blame which would send her on an even more solitary path than the one she has been on before, full of resentment for others BUT she´s always broken that rule, she´s always taken risk for others and not always has some profit from it, still she must have recognized to worth of that, I hope the writers won´t ignore that, like just to drive Bruce and Selina apart or something. The two of them had plenty of conflict, there is some things that Bruce actually did that Selina blames and resent him for, they do not need this as source of conflict. Also they already had her in a hospital and hopeless situation. Enough!  But damn, those first few scenes. Camren Bicondova is such an amazing actress. This just broke my heart before I even got to know what situation she is in. Also damnit, I didn´t need the feelz of this plot line, I really didn´t please just let Selina be ok again soon! ALFRED PENNYWORTH seems to be out of his depth with everything, but hell who wouldn´t be. It seems they´ll keep pushing Bruce to be the one to call the tune, especially since Jim signing him in.  That surgeon should just kiss Alfred, they should just let off some steam, clear the head, get rid of some tension and have Alfred build up something of his usual shine. Like I know it´s important for Bruce that someone watches Selina while he tries to fight for the medicine in the basement, and it´s great that he trusts Alfred with this but idk I feel like there´s still plenty of punches for him to throw in the right faces. “It's made him unassailable.” Can we talk about the shade in that line: “I mean, we have Penguin in City Hall, for God's sakes. He raided the armory and stockpiled weapons, then repurposed a factory to manufacture ammunition.” Jim´s voice was awesome when he delivered that. Like can you believe it, off all malady, we got penguin in the city hall, what a disgrace, I can´t believe it. But I´m glad OSWALD COBBLEPOT was clever to get things going well for him! Love that. He looks great too. But why the hell did he dress everyone around him so bland and boring??!!! Where is the previous style. Bring it back! Why is everyone looking so unhappy.  >>> Oh no .. was this fashion foreshadowing. Apparently, Oswald dines well while letting everyone else starves.  I feel Mr. Penn´s accusatory, disappointed and annoyed gaze. Also what is with all that politician like rhetoric? It´s bland, it´s boring. And it´s at odd times. Oswald has always been great with talk but now there´s something else happening and I don´t like it.  I mean it´s great that he´s back on track with the self preservation thing , it suits him and it´s nice but he´s shown great concern for the people of Gotham and now he wouldn´t care at all that people starve in his workshop?! #notmypenguin  I don´t buy it, and just because SELINA KYLE alone didn’t devastate me and I´m in that kind of mood I´m gonna read it into Oswald as well. After all I do think it makes more sense if I see Oswald being not quite in a dissimilar place than Selina is, or rather he is where I do think Selina could be if they give her back her agility (and hopefully a will to live) and just let her off without mental health treatment. Resentful, only being able to acknowledge the bad that has been done to them, desperately trying to keep themselves safe and especially keep themselves safe from others. I think it´s even telling that Selina can´t walk and they show Oswald getting a device for his leg just to be shot in it later. Oswald seems genuinely relieved and happy, the “feels good” carries joy. The device probably lessened the pain he has been in and moreover it grants him more mobility and agility, which in the current environment is more important than ever. However that cheery mood just lasts a tiny moment, it´s promptly followed by: put a knife on it . It´s pure survival. There´s some happy laughter about the new improvement but promptly Mr. Penn enters with more bad news and even worse something that basically challenges him and his leadership. Oswald just has to dismiss it. I feel like him talking so carelessly about the workers is not actually the lack of care but him being in a state where he just can´t acknowledge it. Something that he previously might have seen as something that needs to be tackled and resolved is now just a threat > Dismiss it! Same with the food. It´s not perfect, it´s not up to standard, it´s not what it should be > Overcooked, just get rid of it altogether. Not acceptable. Previous Oswald would have acknowledged a problem but would also have seen the other side and tried to utilize both but now he just can´t. Moreover his appearance is more on point than ever, meticulous even, and we get a scene with a makeup brush which certainly highlights this. > Everything has to be perfect, in place and under his control, he can´t tolerate anything else. He just can´t provide a target, and even if it´s smeared eyeliner. I think he´s strained, he´s scared, he´s terrified, he´s hurt. And it took a toll on him.  It also explains the constant politician lingo, he just sees everything as a threat and he has to fire and try to disarm with the politician protocol. He can´t get to the core of a situation anymore it´s just politics of survival. Maybe even more in his head than it actually is. [Okay to be fair maybe I´m not taking into account the full situation, after all it is more than reasonable to fear for his life in his situation, even Tabitha aside, but it´s not like he hasn´t navigated through that before] [Also, I might just read nonsense into this because I´m sad and because I just don´t want Oswald to be a cookie cutter meaaaniie] 

* Also how is everyone else just so great at acting. I´m shook. I thought, as usual with the time jump I´m just gonna be annoyed and really wondering how everyone got to the place where they are and why they suddenly liked someone or disliked them (*cough* Oswald n Babs what happened) but I´m just super emotional about how they all talk to each other.  The scene with JIM GORDON & HARVEY BULLOCK & LUCIUS FOX discussing their situation was just so brilliant. (“And the truth?” “We're on our own.” “The truth is we have no idea what might happen. And our job is to keep ourselves and everyone else alive.” > so sell them hope) Respectful, open, aware of the situation, direct no sugar coating but mutual understanding. Same with the JIM & BRUCE SCENES. Feels like they really want to build them up to “Equals” pretty quickly.  Even the scene with JIM & SCARECROW was brilliant. “I know what you're thinking, Captain. I have so few bullets. Do I spend one on him? Is it worth it? “I already know it's not.” But damnit the boy is worth everything. Although I find it really hard to see scarecrow as Jonathan Crane or see any connection between those, I guess it´s more convenient to just let that go and enjoy Scarecrow like he is.  It´s great to have so many references of characters knowing what shit all the others are in as well. Tabitha/Barbara quickly call that Oswald is short on supply. It gives me an odd “we´re all in this together” vibe despite all of them still fighting each other. But as it seems they´re indeed going to team up. Another example of this was: “Sorry. Mouths to feed. And you know all about that, don't you?” I chuckled when OSWALD COBBLEPOT pulled that one on JIM GORDON. Despite having more guns, Oswald still went for the verbal manipulation, try to make Jim see him as basically doing the same just on another side, with other methods.  Also can we talk about they paralleled them as well with the matter of TRUTH! “Truth is, I was never gonna make that deal. I need all those supplies.” “But if it was me, wouldn't I just admit it?  I mean, it's not like I'm going to be arrested.” Oswald really didn´t have a reason to say that he didn´t shot the chopper down except for it being the truth. Jim really didn´t need to tell Oswald that his deal was just a ruse and never genuine, except for it being the truth. No matter the situation, no matter the circumstances those two do share some values! Apart from GOBBLEPOT subtext still going strong we´ve reached another HARVEY BULLOCK & JIM GORDON milestone. It´s their beginning 2.0. No matter what they´ve been trough, no matter how their relationship changed they are basically back to Season 1. In season one Jim held up his badge and announced everything has to be done the right way. Then Harvey Bullock scolded the boy scout and lectured him on Gotham´s ways. The right way doesn´t work in Gotham.  Not we have Jim do the same, and Harvey sticking to his old role. “Three months ago, I would've lost my badge for that.” ..  “You want rules for this game? I'll tell you. I'll make it simple, okay? You win or you die. Next time, shoot to kill.” * “Fine. Whatever.” Oh mood. * “Say it walking.” Oh Harvey, that´s a great one. * “I haven't been happy in ten years.” Oh shit what a mood again. * “Everything all right?” “No, but we're alive, so that's something.” Great line, and I kinda wish it was a mood. * Is the pilot okay? I´m worried. * “You´ve earned a place here” and then Bruce doing that tiny tiny tiiny nod … * Also Jim Gordon not regretting staying in Gotham “Hell no” holding up hope like that, although he might not even have it himself is wonderful. He really radiates the vibe that he got this as much as someone can in that situation.  * Things I (and probably everyone else) just knew would happen 1. Tabitha: “He's gonna regret giving me this.” > Penn: Hey just letting you know quality suffered Oswald: Bullshit *fires shot*  bullet doesn´t go the kind of boom it should > Another bullet does the same making the talk about regret echo in a mean but expected twist. 2. Gotham: A chopper will bring us the much needed supplies it´s gonna be great, it´s just gonna work once but it will work Chopper: Get shot down, what a surprise 3. Dumpster in an alley: Is there  Audience: Ah Edward´s new bed *waits* Yes there he is. EDWARD NYGMA set up in a game against himself could develop really nice. And they had some great visuals in the scenes with him!

[neureaux]

one of my most important treatments starts next week, it’s with the national traumatic stress clinic & it’s one that feels really integral to growth and the kind of healing that’s important to me. healing that takes a while, but it’s permanent. sturdy.

i’m grateful but lately i’ve been feeling a bit weary/tired just in general, not because of the treatments but just in my life, temporarily. i’m doing a lot of treatments, making lots of changes and chasing up a lot of things, and i’m finding myself straddling that physical health & mental health/ptsd overlap and it’s sometimes like juggling. the apartment’s still being renovated, so in the meantime i’ve been focusing on keeping my current one neat just for the sake of preserving my headspace and for pre-preparation for the move and it’s been good for me. i let it get a bit cluttered recently when i wasn’t that well and it made me feel kind of emotionally congested so i’m choosing to stay on top of it now.

these days my weeks are busy, with convenient gaps of a few days towards the end of the week to reflect, restructure and regroup and i’m pretty grateful. i’m easing myself back into socialising but i remember that it can be more complex than just getting on with it alone, honestly i’ve become pretty comfortable with not really doing it and i enjoy my own company, i’m still fairly sensitive emotionally too so it can be tricky to navigate being with others so i’m taking it slowly and all i can do is my best! i’m doing pretty well with pushing myself into speaking up a bit more, with working out how to vocalise my thoughts + feelings and also protecting my energy thankfully, as a big thing is to avoid falling back into any patterns that made me do unhealthy stuff or things that make me feel like i need to indulge extra coping mechanisms in the first place, like actively fighting to conceal my ptsd or health issues/pain and having it backfire on me both at the time and later on/when i come home and causing me damage, or allowing myself to endure things that i don’t want to for extended periods for the sake of others and feeding into unhealthy ideas about myself based in low self-esteem. it’s a lot of work right from the ground up, but it’s actually turning out to be creating a genuinely healthy environment and headspace for myself very gently, not one that just appears okay-ish as long as you don’t look too long or too closely, one that just exists very precariously and only in “perfect” conditions, it’s the creation of something authentic with work so i’m actually very grateful and i’m being careful to nurture that properly and also to work through irrational feelings of guilt for doing that and taking care of myself properly! i’m trying to teach myself for real that i’m at least worth taking care of and i won’t let anyone that can’t actually do it themselves guilt trip me into not doing it for myself and am working on being okay with truly giving myself at least that normal human courtesy. i’m really enjoying cooking at the moment though, and as i get more comfortable in the kitchen i’m branching out more, getting used to cooking the things i like to order at restaurants and learning what my favourite flavours and smells are just in my home. i recently made my first risotto from scratch and i was so proud, i got so full that i fell asleep! i’m getting to know my favourite spices. i just love to make my own food.

i’m still reading a lot, i find it super relaxing and it’s a really nice way to pass the time. i’m nurturing a little growing obsession with my diffuser again, and i bought a vast new set of essential oils so i’m playing with the combos to decide which scent i like to linger in the house. right now, my favourites are sweet orange, bergamot & lemongrass together, and ylang ylang with geranium! it’s just pleasant to wake up and plod around the apartment with something to set the day.

tonight, i want to get an early night and then i’m going to spend my time tomorrow at home, reading and listening to soft music until my groceries arrive - then i’m going to make my first stew. i’m really excited about making onion gravy as it’s my favourite, although this time i’ll have to outsource my roast potatoes which i don’t love, because i like to make stuff entirely from scratch - but i’m okay with it, because soon i’ll be in my new apartment with a much bigger kitchen and a cooker, nesting, and my recipes will just be boundless then! the cooker will be one of my first purchases, and then i’ll make my stew with the same love put into my hand cut potatoes as the rest.

[adenvs3000w23]

Unit 4: The Importance of Art and Beauty in Nature Interpreation

A sketch of some cardinals I've observed in the field.

As an artist and visual learner, one of the main ways I interpret nature is through an artistic medium. My subjects are usually animals, drawn as either anthropomorphic caricatures or a more realistic render. Depicting animals in either of these ways can be considered a nature interpretation if done to represent nature. I would discuss the details of how I think these methods can work in interpretation, but that tangent would work better as a separate post. Like many other students in this course, much of how appreciate and interpret nature also comes in the form of photographs I’ve taken while outdoors.

I've photographed the little chipmunk near the Bullring on campus.

A fiery sunset I was lucky enough to see near my house.

Despite my being an artist, I want to emphasize that a person does not need to consider themselves an artist to use art in nature interpretation. In our current day and age, art has become commodified as a skill to be used in the industry, and we forget that the desire and ability to express oneself through a variety of media (including but not limited to visual media such as painting, music, dance or storytelling), is an inherent human quality.

Through my experiences as a summer camp instructor, I’ve seen many people of various ages and experience levels interpret nature through artistic expression. I've seen children use strips of basswood bark and dog-strangling vine to make cordage. Others burned their names into a hiking staff by using a magnifying glass to concentrate sun rays. Learning how to work with materials from nature is also nature interpretation because the use of natural tools helps strengthen one's bond with nature.

A very common and popular theme during discussions of art and nature is beauty. Though some might see beauty as a frivolous thing, it has many important ramifications in making experiences with nature and art pleasant and memorable, delivering an overall positive impact on both the viewer and natural resources.

Enos Mills discussed the concept of the “gift of beauty” defining it as “the ability, and the desire, to sense the beauty in their surroundings - to provide spiritual uplift and to encourage resource preservation” (Beck et al. 2018). Just like art is an inherently human trait, I believe that so is the ability to appreciate beauty.

I wanted to learn more as to why beauty is so important to humans, after all, beautiful landscapes are a common theme in media from postcards to film, to video games. According to Green and Keltner 2017, some psychologists explained this affinity for landscapes and nature to be due to a human’s evolutionary roots. We can assess a natural landscape for how prosperous it can be, and sustain us. Essentially, images of nature are connected to a concept of a home (Green and Keltner 2017). Nature puts us at ease, and the psychological benefits of nature, such as positive influences on mental health, have been documented (Green and Keltner 2017).

That’s why the gift of beauty is so important in nature interpretation: because it helps foster the next generation of environmentalists, whether it be the next David Suzuki or a layman who wants to do their part to protect the environment in smaller ways.





References:

Beck, L., Cable T. T. & Knudson, D. M. (2018). Interpreting cultural and natural heritage for a better world. Sagamore Venture.

Kristophe Green, Dacher Keltner. (2017) What happens when we reconnect with nature. Greater Good. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_happens_when_we_reconnect_with_nature#:~:text=Wilson%27s%20%E2%80%9Cbiophilia%E2%80%9D%20theory%20suggests%20that,food%2C%20shelter%2C%20and%20comfort.



[waterfiltergurus]

Mercury in Water: What You Need to Know in [year]

Mercury is a silver-white metal that is known to cause long-term health complications if consumed in drinking water. This glossary will discuss mercury in water, including how water becomes contaminated with mercury, the potential health effects of mercury, and how to protect your family from this naturally occurring metal. ❔ What is Mercury? 💡 Mercury is a metal and a chemical element that is used in electronic and electrical applications, and in the manufacture of industrial chemicals. Mercury is also used as a topical disinfectant and antiseptic, fungicide, and wood preservative. Also known as "quicksilver", mercury is present in three forms on earth: organic, inorganic, and elemental. Mercury is often present alongside zinc, cadmium, silver, carbon, and gold, as mercuric chloride, sulfides, and oxides. All three forms of mercury are considered dangerous in water; however, organic mercury is easily absorbed by the human body, making it more toxic than inorganic mercury compounds. 🩺 What are the Potential Health Effects of Mercury? Mercury has known potential health effects when consumed in water or inhaled in air. According to the EPA, some of the potential symptoms and health effects of consuming mercury are: - Mood swings, irritability, and other emotional changes - Tremors - Insomnia - Headaches - Muscle weakness, twitching, atrophy - Poor mental function - Memory loss - Nervous system damage - Skin rashes - A "pins and needles" feeling in the hands and feet - Loss of peripheral vision High exposure to mercury may lead to mercury poisoning, with the following health effects: - Respiratory failure - Damage to the kidneys - Death Some sources claim that high levels of mercury can cause cancer, but currently, there isn't sufficient evidence to determine whether or not mercury is cancer-causing. 🚰 How Does Mercury Get Into Drinking Water? Mercury is found naturally in the earth's crust, and enters the environment through natural degassing. It may also be dumped into the environment as a result of incorrect disposal from human activities, or from runoff from farmland and landfills. Combustion of fossil fuels also increases the mercury levels in the atmosphere. Mercury in the earth's crust, rocks, soils, and the atmosphere gets into water through rainfall, runoff, and soil seepage. When water flows over or seeps through rocks or soil with high mercury levels, some of this metal leaches into water. Water then travels to aquifers and reservoirs, many of which are used as public drinking water supplies. 📉 Do Water Treatment Facilities Monitor Levels of Mercury in Drinking Water? Yes, drinking water treatment facilities must test for, monitor, and remove mercury from water to prevent kidney damage and the other known health effects of prolonged exposure to high levels of mercury in water. There are several national guidelines and regulations that water facilities must adhere to for mercury: - Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Maximum Contaminant Level: 0.002 mg/L (or 2.0 PPB) - EPA Maximum Contaminant Level Goal: 0.002 mg/L (or 2.0 PPB) - World Health Organization (WHO) Guideline: 0.006 mg/L (or 6.0 PPB) What do these guidelines mean? The EPA's Maximum Contaminant Level is the highest level of mercury that's allowed in drinking water, while the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal is the highest amount of mercury that is known to occur with no health effects. All regions within the United States government must follow EPA regulations, and some states may have their own more stringent requirements for mercury exposure in water. According to the Environmental Working Group's Tap Water Database, many states have mercury contamination, but no states report inorganic mercury above the regulations. However, the EWG believes that the current MCL for mercury is too high, and sets its own health guidelines of 1.2 PPB. 🔎 How Can I Tell if Mercury is in My Drinking Water? Mercury doesn't have a distinct taste in water, although very high levels of organic and inorganic mercury may have a metallic taste. You can't see or smell mercury in water. Usually, you won't be able to tell that your water contains mercury by taste, smell, or sight. The only effective way to find out how much mercury your water contains is to conduct a water test. Laboratory testing is the most thorough, accurate means of testing for mercury. A lab test report should tell you exactly what concentrations of the various forms of mercury your water contains. Aside from lab testing, you can also find out the concentrations of mercury in your water by viewing your annual Water Quality Report, or Consumer Confidence Report (CCR). All water suppliers must provide annual CCRs to their customers, once a year and on request. Note that a CCR only tells you how much mercury your water contains on a given testing day, and may not be representative of the fluctuating levels of this contaminant throughout the year. 👩🏽‍⚕️ How Can I Protect My Family from Mercury in Drinking Water? The best way to protect your family from mercury in drinking water is to install a water treatment system in your home. Most systems cost $150-$1,200 and have an annual maintenance spend of $50-$250. Water filters that remove mercury are: - Granular activated carbon filters, which are installed in point of entry or point of use filtration systems, and are found in pre-coat or solid block designs. GAC filters remove more than 90% of mercury, as well as pesticides, chlorine, and semi-volatile and organic compounds. - Sub-micron filters with adsorption media, which are often found in under-sink systems or pitcher filters. These filters have pore sizes ranging from 1 to 100 microns and their adsorption media makes them capable of removing more than 90% mercury, organic chemicals, chlorine and chloramine, bacteria, unpleasant tastes and odors, and more. - Reverse osmosis filtration systems, which are typically installed as under-sink or countertop units. Reverse osmosis units force water through a semi-permeable membrane, which removes virtually all total dissolved solids, including 95% to 97% of mercury. RO filtration also involves carbon and sediment filtration, providing thorough water treatment. - Distillers, which boil water until it evaporates and condenses, leaving contaminants behind in the boiling chamber. Distillation removes up to 100% mercury and produces purified water. Most systems take up to five hours to produce a batch of distilled water. If you discover high levels of mercury, especially organic mercury, after testing your water, switch to bottled water while you decide on a suitable water treatment system to remove this contaminant. ⚠️ How Else Can I Be Exposed to Mercury? Drinking water is a major source of mercury exposure. Other sources of mercury exposure are: - Consuming fish and shellfish (such as shark, swordfish, tilefish, and king mackerel) containing methylmercury, which is formed when microorganisms in soil and water convert inorganic and elemental mercury into an organic compound - Being in close contact with a product containing metallic mercury, such as dry cell batteries and fluorescent light bulbs, which break, releasing toxic mercury vapor into the air - Swallowing metallic mercury from broken fever thermometers or swallowing jewelry made from metallic mercury (most likely to happen in children) - Treating tooth decay with a direct filling material known as dental amalgam, which contains mercury - Gold mining - Atmospheric deposition and industrial release, such as combustion of fossil fuels - Use of skin lighteners and anti-ageing products containing trace levels of mercury that are illegally shipped to the US The second most likely source of mercury is eating fish that have consumed mercury from the environment, due to the ease at which mercury can enter the food chain. Mercury in light bulbs and batteries is being phased out, but it's wise to be wary with these items in your home if you're unsure what they contain. 📝 Where Can I Get More Information? To learn more about mercury in water, including the potential health risks of this contaminant, follow the links below. - EPA: Health Effects of Exposure to Mercury - EPA: How People are Exposed to Mercury - WQA: Mercury in Drinking Water - WHO: Mercury and Health Read the full article

[sharingshane-blog]

Why I am a Leftist

I thought I would spend some time discussing some of my socio-economic beliefs and how I came to where I am today.  My battles with poverty, disability, chronic illness, and discrimination (being genderqueer and bisexual) have largely informed my current beliefs about how society should function.  Just like anybody else, my environment and struggles have shaped who I am and what I believe today.

I have been registered in every party with the exception of the libertarian party.  Currently I have no affiliation.  I have become increasingly more frustrated with the socio-economic and political climate of today, and it is not due to how divisive people are after the orange was elected in 2016.  That divisiveness was always there, and it was always meant to be there.  The so-called problems in this current system are not really problems at all.  They are simply injustices, but those injustices were meant to be there.  The United States was never founded as a land of freedom and democracy.  Hell, only about one-third of the population in the American colonies actually wanted to break away from England.  The vast majority were either ambivalent or actively opposed separation.  The Constitution was drafted and ratified by a legislature that consisted solely of white, cisgender, heterosexual, wealthy, privileged men.  Some were rapists such Thomas Jefferson.  Some were frauds such as George Washington.  Some were narcissists such as Benjamin Franklin.  All of them were racists.  They all possessed power and influence in their given states.  The America today is exactly what America was always meant to be, a place where those privileged few controls and uses the rest of the population for their own personal gain.  It is an oligarchy disguised as democracy and exploitation at its finest.  I am completely pessimistic about the future of America unless the entire system is uprooted and we begin again from scratch.  Anyone who believes that the system can be fixed are unfortunately sorely deceived.  

I came to this understanding during my one-year hiatus from college in 2017.  During this time, I was working at Panera Bread as a cashier. As the year progressed, the job became more difficult.  I was unable to work full-time because of my health.  I was in intensive therapy for the first half of 2017 spending about 10 hours doing that and 20 hours working each week.  It was emotionally exhausting and my chronic fatigue was weighing heavily on me.  During the course of the year my anxiety and PTSD became more intense.  Near the end of my intensive treatment, I began to develop these disassociative episodes or stupors when I was triggered or overwhelmed. It happened to me once while I was driving causing me to have car accident and total my car.  They began happening more at work and I would have to be sent home.  During these episodes, I cannot respond to most external stimuli and am largely unresponsive.  I am unable to speak or speak very little.  I lose track of reality.  I cannot feel different parts of my body particularly my arms and legs.  There became an increase fear that they may be seizures.  Sometimes it appears I am having a stroke.  So far there is no evidence of either.  I developed more chronic pain.  It is highly suspected that I have endometriosis although I haven’t had the opportunity to have the surgical procedure to confirm the diagnosis. There is more, but I will not get into that now.

During this time, I realized how little my health seemed to matter to my employers.  They could make some accommodations for me, but in the end, it was their priority to make sure that business ran smoothly.  If my health got in the way too much, then I could face the chopping block.  I watched as two other fellow coworkers got fired for taking too many sick days. Both have debilitating chronic conditions that could become life-threatening if not treated.  Of course, it would be outright discrimination to fire them based solely on their health conditions.  So, they took another route.  I was terrified of losing my job.  I pushed myself as hard as I could and would neglect my health in the process. It became clearer; however, that I could not maintain the work.  My managers began cutting hours.  I was already not making enough to satisfy basic necessities and now I was making even less.  I was forced to have to live with my parents which was an unhealthy situation for me (which I will refrain from explaining why for the time being).  I felt like a burden on everyone which took a toll on my mental health.  I attempted to return to school after my hiatus while still working my job at Panera and living with my parents.  This proved to be too much for me to handle.  I quit college and moved in with a friend.  I came out as transgender and my hours were cut more at work.  I was eventually forced to quit.  I caught my manager complaining about my health issues behind my back to other coworkers.  This is actually a HIPPA violation, and I could potentially press charges.  In the end though, I am poor.  I do not have the financial and emotional resources to fight her.

Be patient.  I promise you this is all relevant.

In all this, I tried to develop a better way to organize the business in order to make the employees feel less like they are part of a massive machine and more like individual human beings.  I felt as though I was part of that machine, and if I became too weak, the machine would break.  Another thing I realized was that I was easily replaceable.  There is not much incentive for employers to work with me when they could easily switch me out for a stronger part.  No matter how nice they seemed, their primary duty is business.  If they are not successful at it, they will lose their position of power.  The system requires them to be exploitive towards the lower-wage workers.  I could not develop a system in my mind that would fix this unless capitalism as a whole was completely abolished.  If we remove CEO’s and had the workers run the industries democratically, that would fix the problem.  However, this would require a complete uproot of the system today.  I became more familiar with the term class-consciousness.

I am a hard worker and a fighter.  However, I am human and limited.  Because of my disabilities, employers consider me to be a malfunctioned part. I cannot lift heavy things or be on my feet for too long without feeling like I’m about to collapse.  I have now been reduced to a cane.  There is nothing that I can do to change this.  The phrase, “pick yourself up by the bootstraps,” did not work for me.  It did not matter how much effort into the system, I was stuck.  It would have to take sheer luck and a willingness to exploit others to rise up in the ranks.  The latter goes against my moral compass.  I realized that I could never bring myself to ever be a manager.  I cannot ethically justify being in such a position where I have to treat money with greater importance than the human beings that would work under me.

However, in order to create a society in which people are treated as human beings, and true equality is obtained; it would mean that those on the top would have to relinquish their power and wealth.  There is this narrative in which people believe that it is perfectly natural and necessary for there to power figures; otherwise, society would turn to chaos. It is true that we make decisions on our self-interest, but that is why an anarcho-communist society could honestly work.  It is in the workers’ best interest to distrust power figures, to have control over industry, to regain their humanity, to maintain industry and do their part in society, and to be a part of a society.  It will not happen without a fight though.  Millionaires and billionaires will not relinquish their power easily.  The system was created to keep those people at the top.  Racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia have been perpetuated to pin those on the bottom against one another, to keep them from uniting. The police were established to enforce this narrative and protect capitalist interests.  In the North, they were established to protect the transportation of goods and keep poor workers, largely immigrants, from collectivizing and prevent them from having a voice.  In the South, the police were derived from overseers with the intent to preserve slavery. The police system is not broken. It is running exactly how it was intended to run.  The narrative that there must always be people on the top and those on the bottom was a common defense of African-American slavery.  It is an idea with the sole intent to keep people oppressed.

Helen Keller, the famous activist who fought for the rights of those disabled, understood that equality for those disabled could never be obtained in a capitalist society. Disabled people will always be seen as inferior.  Safety was secondary; so, businesses can maintain their quotas increasing the possibility of accidents causing workers to become disabled.  It is not commonly known that she became a socialist herself and became a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization which believed that that the workers must run industry.  It is a workers’ union dedicated to democracy and solidarity. Their core belief is that you have nothing in common with your boss.

Bernie Sanders is not a true socialist.  He is a social democrat, and lately he has had to tame his speech in order to maintain his power and influence.  He believes in a highly regulated capitalist system.  Socialists believe in abolishing capitalism altogether.  

I am an actual socialist.  I do not believe the system is flawed.  I believe the system works exactly how it is supposed to function and it is disgusting. This ended up being a loner post than I had planned it to be, but I do have much to say on the subject.  It is something I am passionate about even though I will probably not see this come to fruition.  I hope this was insightful to how I have come to my beliefs which I hold today.

[scripttorture]

I have a character who was in the army during a conflict, and had both acquaintances/friends who were tortured, and acquaintances/friends who were torturers. My question is: over a sufficiently long period of time, would these two groups of people become difficult for him to distinguish, just based on their persisting trauma symptoms? e.g. he knows Friend A was involved with torture in some way, but can't remember if Friend A was tortured or a torturer. (continued in next ask)

(continued, on distinguishing perpetrators and victims of torture) If it's the case that, eventually, these two populations eventually become indistinguishable based on trauma symptoms, what's an appropriate time frame for this to happen? A year? More than five years? (Context: this character is trying to convey to his friend that torture is not an appropriate course of action. The friend doesn't care about the potential victim, so my character tries appealing to his sense of self-preservation).

I think what you’re going for, dissuading the character by appealing tohis sense of self preservation, is a good idea. I’m not sure a directcomparison to victim’s symptoms is the best way to approach it if that’s youraim but since the best approach probably depends a lot on individual writing style and the characters- This is as much detail as I have on the differences mental-health-wise between victims and torturers. Use it in your scene in the way that works best for the scene and story. 

 For the sake of the argument I’m going to ignore cases where torturershave also been tortured or otherwise traumatised. (This does happen, a lot oftorturers are not in particularly secure or safe positions and an awful lot ofpeople feel torturing them is justified).

 I���m also not currently aware of any systematic studies of torturers’symptoms in direct comparison with victims’ symptoms. Sironi produced thelatest systematic research on torturers as a class (youcan find her work here I’m working on getting a translation into a language Ican read). So far as I know her work doesn’tcontain an analysis comparing the symptom profiles of the torturers she studiedto symptom profiles of victims she’d worked with earlier in her career.

 So what follows is based on anecdotal evidence- it’s from interviewsI’ve read with torturers and interviews I’ve read with victims and it’s verymuch my interpretation of the two. Thorough academic analysis may well comealong later and change my interpretation and opinion. But unfortunately when itcomes to discussing torture working with the available evidence often meansworking primarily with anecdotal evidence.

 I’d say there is a differencein presentation between torturers and torture victims. But I think how markedthat difference is depends on the individuals involved, it can be quite subtle.

 My interpretation of this is that the difference isn’t primarily rooted in the symptoms themselves. I think that thedifference is (partly) telling us something about the kinds of people who are…It’s not purely ‘more likely to be torture’. It’s ‘more likely to have the opportunityto torture’ and ‘more likely to be targeted by pre-existing torturers forrecruitment’ as well.

 Torturers tend to lack insight into what they’ve done. They tend to puton an arrogant macho front (possibly related to the toxic hypermasculine subculturethey function in). And they’re often (although not always) pretty deluded aboutthe ‘effectiveness’ of what they do.

 To illustrate that one of the accounts I have is a victim describing anunusual torture used during the Irish Troubles. The torturer said that this‘always’ made victims talk. The account is from a victim who didn’t sayanything.

 That’s a pattern I see in a lot of accounts: torturers claiming they personally can achieve things thattheir own (and other people’s) accounts show them consistently failing at. Thiscombined with a lack of insight into the effects of their actions and the machoposturing can make it incredibly difficult to persuade torturers who are still torturing and still in theirsub-culture of fellow torturers that what they’re doing is wrong.

 When they’re removed from that toxic subculture though, they seem tocollapse pretty quickly. That doesn’t always mean they gain insight into whatthey did, it means that the support they relied on to hold themselves togetherand function despite their symptoms- goes.

 What I think this means is that you’re more likely to see a decline withtorturers. Whereas with victims there’s a sharper cut off point of what theywere like before and after torture. The torturers’ symptoms build over time.The victim comes out of torture with their symptoms.

 Torturers also seem more likely to try and hide their symptoms. Victims can certainly do the same thing, andsome victims definitely do buy in to the sort of hypermasculine culture that makesit difficult for them to accept their mental health problems and what happenedto them. But victims seem to be much more varied then torturers in this regard.

 This could manifest in thevictims the character knows being more willing to accept they have a problemand more willing to seek medical help.

 In both populations it seems common for people to not seek medical help.Often because of stigma associated with both mental illness and torture.

 I also get the impression torturers are more likely to have slightlyfewer or slightly less severe symptoms but this is definitely not always thecase.

 Having said all of that about the differences I think you could stillreasonable have characters whose symptoms were more or less indistinguishable.Symptoms in both groups are highly individual and impossible to predict. Withmultiple characters who are survivors and multiple characters who are formertorturers I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have a few people whose symptomsoverlap.

 Showing everyone with the same symptoms- that does everyone a bit of adisservice by over simplifying their experiences. But it doesn’t sound likethat’s what you’re going for.

 A professional who had experience with both groups might be able to tellthe difference based on how people behaved but even then I think it would behit and miss. You can’t really judge what kind of traumatic experience someonehas had from their symptoms and the differences are small.

 Someone who didn’t have a lotof experience with both groups (and didn’t know that torture was involvedsomehow) probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

 The time frame is- honestly, there isn’t any data at all.

 I would guess that it dependswhen you’re starting the timer from, when a torturer starts torturing or whenthey stop. Someone who tortured once and then stopped, left that environmentand never did it again is unlikely to have symptoms as severe as their victim.Someone who’d been torturing people for a long period of time would probablyshow a severe decline on leaving that environment and stopping but they’d alsoprobably already have obvious symptoms.

 Regardless of where you’re starting the timer from I don’t want to put anumber on this. For torturers- I don’t even really have enough data to make aneducated guess. We just don’t know yet.

 I think having your character highlight symptoms in people he knows andthe severity of those symptoms works really well for this scenario.

 Narratively I wonder if the character would find the comparison betweeneffects on victims and effects on torturers convincing. I know a lot of peopleand character wouldn’t believe it. That’s counteracted by the friends yourcharacter can use as examples of just how severe the symptoms are- Just keep inmind you’re not just convincing this character, you’re trying to convince theaudience.

 I do think this is a really good idea and it could work very well. Butthere’s a delicate balance to strike here: comparing the effects of torture onthe victims and the perpetrators by stressing similarities could easily tiptowards suggesting torturers are just as much victims as the people whosurvived them.

 That bit is entirely in how you write it, rather than the scenarioitself. I’ve not seen something like this done before and it strikes me as areally clever idea.

 I hope this helps, and good luck with your story. :)

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