#everything is so out of my control I don’t like these external variables

[kavehater]

Maybe I’ve been going about this the wrong way

[aaalanasblog]

Journal Entry #3:

I’ve recently been tasked with eating without using my phone. During these few days of doing so, I’m come up with 3 big conclusions and lessons.

1. I don’t like eating lol 😭

Don’t get me wrong — I LOVE food! I love the taste, finding new foods, trying different types of cuisines. It’s the actual eating part I don’t like. It’s tiring and burdensome. Chewing truly is so monotonous. If I could get all of my nutrients through smoothies or powder mix, I probably would lol.

2. Setting intentions/praying/blessing over things you consume is so important.

Not just food but everything. Drinks, TV, social media, news, day-to-day conversations, etc. — everything should have a purpose or intention. It’s an act of boundary-setting, in my opinion.

For example: I’m lactose intolerant but I love cheese. If I’m eating something with cheese, I will be intentional with saying I want it to digest without pain and without slowing my metabolism.

Another example: I can be a doom-scroller, which in turn affects my mood for an entire day or more. I internalize those feelings and apply them to personal things where they don’t fit. So before I engage with social media or digital conversations, I set an intention of getting positive and productive things out of my digital use; to know when to turn things off or disengage; to know my personal limits before things affect me negatively. I honestly need to start doing this in the morning for the entire day and not just sporadically throughout the day.

3. Eating is a great metaphor for the stages of life!

Good eating habits include: taking reasonable bites so you don’t choke, chewing your food thoroughly before you swallow, leaving some buffer time in-between bites to gauge if you’re actually still hungry or just craving the taste of food (sometimes using water as a variable/proof), and knowing when to end the meal (sometimes having leftovers).

Such important practices of self-awareness, intuition, discernment, self-control/discipline, and sense of autonomy.

You can apply this directly to life!

Taking reasonable bites = knowing your limits on activities, current goals/situations, knowing how to choose what to pursue at a given time

Chewing your food thoroughly = going through everything with 100% effort to reach the end of that stage, not quitting, being aware of surroundings/circumstances

Leaving buffer time = giving yourself time to rest and recharge/re-center before moving onto the next thing, giving yourself space to make a choice on what’s next for you/practicing autonomy

Using water to help gauge the appetite = knowing when to ask for help or engage an outside resource for guidance

Taking that next bite = entering the next stage, doing this process all over again

Knowing when to end the meal = recognizing when things aren’t working, knowing when to regroup, allowing yourself to stop, honoring your boundaries, exercising increased self-awareness, giving the middle finger to burdensome external pressures

And as we know, some bites are bigger than others; requiring more time to chew and longer buffer time.

I say all this to say this: such a little thing as eating builds much larger life skills that can be used every day.

Eating intentionally without distractions builds self-awareness, intuition, discernment, self-control/discipline, and sense of autonomy into your muscle memory. That way when you encounter life doing its big one on you, you’re able to get through it without hurting yourself and with increased health and wellbeing.

I swear, you can really tell I’m a Capricorn rising because the life lessons do be lesson-ing 🤠 (at what cost? lol). I’m thankful though that I can share my lessons at the same time I experience them. Even in a large void like the internet, someone may need this just as much as I do.

Well, until next time! 🫡♥️

[weirdmageddon]

five years too late let’s analyze this. the commentary has gotten me back into gravity falls reigniting thoughts and insights i came to years ago

i love everything about this commentary in general it hits the points of humor, genuine analysis of the characters, but most of all im so glad hirsch addressed that the droid not detecting any fear from dipper here doesnt make any scientific sense because that was a massive CinemaSins moment for me

IDK the fact that dipper can fucking stand after an airship crash because theres a bigger threat at hand is literally one of the defining capabilities owed to adrenaline lol...... IM SORRY im a biopsychology student if i dont point that out iwill seethe and die because that was just . its a grudge ive held for a long time about this episode but didnt rant about because it was something so minor and i’m sure nobody would care.

i was 13 when this episode came out and i’m almost 19 now, i had a special interest in biology and i still do but now i’m actually having college classes in biopsychology so i can give my arguments more oomph now. and i have to say, now that i know more about the brain and autonomic nervous system the more this scene bugs me, if that was even possible. and it says a lot of dipper and ford’s relationship.

if dipper clearly wasnt calm before, why would he be now just because he’s put up an outwardly confident facade? before he was in the flight but now hes in the fight. my boy just rode on top of a spaceship by nothing but a magnet gun that could detach at any time if it failed and then the ship crashed, he sustained injuries, is in emotional turmoil because he thinks his uncle is Fucking Dead and the threat of a security droid that detects adrenaline is on his tail and produces a Big Fucking Gun in response to dipper saying “i hAvE a MaGNeT gUn” and hes screaming and has his teeth clenched but sure there’s no adrenaline coursing through his body in that moment i can totally believe that

when dipper asks what happened, ford says “the orb didn’t detect any chemical signs of fear, it assumed the threat was neutralized and self-disassembled” but i don’t think measuring someone’s heartbeat alone is particularly relevant in detecting ... chemical signs of fear?? they dont really tell you this shit but noradrenaline (and maybe adrenaline too if the acetylcholine from sympathetic outflow always activates the adrenal medulla??, theres two pathways) is always active in small quantities to make sure your parasympathetic nervous system doesnt slow your heart to dangerous levels on its own, regardless of your emotions. it’s just a homeostatic mechanism. your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are CONSTANTLY modulating control of your organs on a see-saw, literally with every breath you take. simply standing upright causes specialized mechanoreceptor neurons in blood vessels to signal your brain to project signals to release catecholamines via the sympathetic nervous system to constrict your blood vessels so that blood is able to reach your brain and not pool in your legs. i have a deficiency in my body’s ability to adapt to this which is why i know so much about it. if i stand up my heart races to compensate. i’m not feeling fear, my body is just adjusting—albeit grossly and incompetently lol.

but what im saying here is that the security system is flawed. it’s a cool idea to have security droids detect fear, but in practice by detecting adrenaline, and not even directly by detecting the molecule itself—it’s done in a roundabout way by reading the heartbeat, could be a recipe for false alarms. like what if someone’s on beta-blockers. that’s not really an adequate way to measure “fear”; there’s so many variables that could interfere with the measurement the farther you abstract from what you’re really trying to detect. and besides, adrenaline is NOT just a sign of fear, it’s just for preparing the body for action. i know the sympathetic nervous system and adrenaline is constantly linked with the “fight-or-flight” reaponse to a stressor, but 99.9% of the time the sympathetic nervous system is used in your life is to balance out your parasympathetic nervous system to maintain homeostatic equilibrium for mundane things.

i think detecting amygdalar activation would be more efficient in detecting fear. the amygdala sends projections to the hypothalamus which then in turn modulates the autonomic nervous systems. but the amygdala is intensely activated specifically in response to a fear-inducing stimulus (it does activate in response to other emotions but they’re mostly negative and is most activated by startle and fear), and wouldnt be highly activated by many other confounding variables like measurement of the heartbeat could be. the amygala is one of the first stops directly from external stimuli.

to show you how integrated the amygdala is as the first step in registering fear after receiving input from sensory stimuli let’s look at the auditory-amygdala connection for example

see how the auditory thalamus projects to the primary auditory cortex and auditory association cortex? the cortex is where conscious awareness of what the stimuli is comes from. this is the “high road”. it goes sensing -> perception -> emotional response. but sometimes you can be startled without even processing what it is you’re sensing, like the startle response of an alarm or a phone ringing in a quiet house before you even register what it is. this goes sensing -> emotional response, without perception happening until after you’ve already felt the startle. that’s when it takes the “low road”. here’s a simplified version:

even if that were the case with these droids though it’s obvious dipper is still fearful on some level here. his body language, voice, expressions all give it away. for the amygdala, aggression isnt too off from fear so it would be detected equally.

the reason this is so important is because ford uses this as evidence for why dipper is special, “i did it?” “you did it. this is what i was talking about, how many 12 year olds do you think are capable of doing what you’ve just done?”

but like....did he really? i’m not saying this to shoot dipper down or make him out to be more of a wuss, he was incredibly strong-willed here and i dont want to take that away from him because it WAS growth on his part. but the underlying psychophysiological reactions of aggression and fear shouldn’t be that different and this was a total asspull. maybe the droid was so old that it fucked up. maybe dipper being covered in grime and dirt made it harder for the droid to measure the correct heart rate through photoplethysmography (im assuming since they use a camera and are non-contact).

and in all honesty everything i just said brings into question the interpersonal healthiness of ford’s judgements, what he thinks, his expectations, and how he communicates that. in this video alex already talks about how ford is projecting onto dipper. and i think ford may be projecting his expectations for himself onto people who are not him, and the fact that it’s on dipper here makes it far more unfortunate. you realize how much this boy idolizes ford, right? how much impressions matter? dipper even tells himself before he leaves in this same episode, “all right dipper, this is your first big mission with great uncle ford. don’t mess this up.”

even though it’s unstated, the implicit message dipper is perceiving from ford based on their dynamic is: “do you have what it takes for me to be proud of you?” and to accomplish this he must be like ford, even though he’s clearly not and he knows this. he says “i don’t think have what it takes. i was tricked by bill, i was wrong about stan’s portal, heck, i can’t even operate this magnet gun right.” then, by simple chance without even knowing what he did, he activates the magnet gun and pulls out the adhesive, which immediately takes the focus away from what dipper was telling ford about his feelings of inadequacy to ford saying, “yes! dipper, you found the adhesive!”

these thoughts of dipper’s hang in the air without resolve or comment from ford. we don’t know what ford would have said. but it then becomes painfully self-evident in the scene immediately after when the droids emerge and ford tells dipper, “they’re security droids and they detect adrenaline. you simply have to not feel any fear and they won’t see you”, to which dipper replies with an exasperated (and rightful) “WHAT?”

dipper goes in a panic trying to indirectly tell his uncle that this isn’t something he can do. and he is completely right and valid to be freaked out by that full stop. that IS crazy. you can’t control your fear. you can control how you interpret that fear in your higher brain regions but the physiological changes will stick around for longer than it takes to cognitively calm down. it’s easy for me to detach from my emotions to analyze them, but being able to do this does not come naturally for everyone. even i have an irrational fear of wasps and i can’t control it by detaching myself, my body is just automatically primed to get the fuck out of there. i know it’s stupid and i know it’s irrational and isn’t helpful to get myself worked up but i literally can’t stop how my body reacts no matter how i cognitively think about it. expecting composure from dipper in a situation like this when he’s being made to consciously be aware of his anxiety is absolutely fucking insane. look what you did, placing these cruel expectations on him, now he’s afraid of being afraid! this isn’t a case where two wrongs cancel out, they just stack on top of each other.

there’s a good reason these scenes were put side by side but it seems up until now it had remained unanalyzed.

what dipper fears from ford is disappointment. not living up to his uncle’s (quite frankly badly placed) expectations for a twelve year old with anxiety. not once did ford say or subliminally communicate “i don’t expect you to be able to do what i can since you are not as experienced as i am and that’s perfectly okay, no judgements”. you don’t put a child on bike before training wheels. you don’t throw a kid into a swimming pool without giving them swimming lessons. the way ford is doing it, there’s no room for trial and error or mistakes that are an opportunity to grow and learn; instead, it’s life or death. he only seems to pride dipper on what he can do while ignoring the underlying struggles that plague him and never making it known it’s okay for dipper to fail in front of his hero and that he won’t think anything less of him for it.

and that’s why i found the ending scene for dipper and ford’s adventure in this episode to feel so.. wrong. on a scientific and social level. because by the sound of it ford focused more on what dipper had done to dismantle the droid (the droid not detecting any fear) instead of how dipper displayed love and protection for him even if he was truly afraid. what if the science was accurate and the droid detected adrenaline while dipper was confidently standing up for his uncle. would ford still be proud of him regardless?

[kookiepredictions]

Why Jungkook will fall in love with his future spouse

First of all I hear, “Can’t help it”. It’s a strong magnetic pull that Jungkook simply can’t resist. “Before I even knew what it was, I was already in love”. “I try everything to stay out and stay away, but every time I fall deeper and deeper”. I’ve already mentioned that I strongly feel that his is a twinflame connection. There’s an intense and all-consuming attraction between him and his partner that neither of them seem to have any control over. The connection has a mind of its own and instead of getting normal with time, it just keeps intensifying. There’s the typical push and pull dynamic, where one moment they try to get rid of the connection and the next moment they want to cling to it. One moment it’s a gift from the heavens, then the next, the biggest curse. They love each other but don’t always know what to do with it or how to handle it without anyone getting hurt. Specifically speaking of Jungkook, he finds her when he was a bit... lost, for the lack of a better word. She brings in a sort of newness in his life, something exciting to look forward to everyday. Twinflames are reflections of each other, so as the connection grows, he sort of “sees” himself in her, both physically and personality-wise. He finds another him in a world where he was feeling a little lost and lonely. Typically in a twinflame connection, Divine Feminines are the advanced spiritual journeyers who sort of lead the connection from a spiritual standpoint (whereas Divine Masculines lead in the physical world), so Jungkook finds “answers” pertaining to his life, from both her and the connection in general. He gains overall clarity about some things. But that’s not all that a TF connection does, therefore he also gets hella confused about a lot of things. This is because he is in a process of awakening spiritually which is why his perceptions of life are being challenged and changed. This is why, while on the one hand, he gets more clarity, on the other, he gets more tangled up, until those tangles are sorted out and then he gets tangled up about something else again. So on and so forth. This is of course frustrating for him, given that he is in a stage of his life where he doesn’t have the luxury of time for sitting in silence for spiritual awakening to happen. However, he also feels an overall sense of growth and calmness that comes with your spiritual journey, whether or not it is welcomed. This connection propels him to a new direction of knowledge and awareness and there’s almost a supernatural, otherworldly aspect to his life because of this. There are moments when he wants to make it all go away but he also feels himself becoming into a new version. This whole process is one of the reasons he loves her. This “new” perspective that she gives him. Before her, his life was a tired cycle of old thoughts, beliefs, habits and practices. One thing that must be mentioned is that this process starts even before she comes into his life. He starts slipping into the “dark night of the soul”, an indispensable stage of spiritual awakening, a few years before he meets her, where he is a little disenchanted with the world, the people in it, and life in general— including love. There is a sense of despair and hopelessness about what the world has to offer. Everything feels meaningless and purposeless— not like he hates his life, but more of the drudgery of everyday life, the same things happening over and over again without any real growth or advancement on life. This was the stage where he was, consciously or subconsciously (mostly subconsciously, because when you “awaken” is when you find consciousness), seeking answers and some kind of a purpose to it all, that would give him the motivation to move ahead— heck, to even get up from bed every morning. Like, “What is the point of all this? What is the point of life at all? Why am I doing what I am doing everyday? Is this the best way I can live my life? If yes, then why do I only feel OK and not exhilarated every moment? Is there a way to feel happier than what I feel right now?”

TFs typically meet at this point of seeking answers. Like I said earlier, the DFs (gender neutral) tend to be ahead in their spiritual journey so they are the ones who tend to have some of the “answers” before the DMs. So when the meet, the DMs almost feel “initiated” into their spiritual journey. Note, the journey starts even before they meet, but now it starts to make sense, albeit at a very slow pace. Nevertheless, compared to the state of mind the DMs are in prior to the meeting, this new and fresh change in their life situation is very welcome to them. This is Jungkook’s first reason of attraction towards his twin. It’s a fresh change in his life, but not in a superficial way, rather in a deeper spiritual way. Of course, twinflames don’t immediately see it as that, as real twinflames typically know absolutely nothing about either spiritual terms or twinflame concepts UNTIL they meet. (Those who say they’ve met their twinflame AFTER they learn about twinflame connections, aren’t really in a TF connection but that’s a topic for another day). It’s like, they’re thrown into water without knowing how to swim, where they are then expected to learn how to swim. It sounds harsh but spiritual awakenings are about being out of your comfort zone without having a clue about it. Twinflames though, are selected for the job because they are innately endowed with personality traits that won’t allow them to drown in the water. They are problem solvers and answer-seekers. If they sense something is wrong around them, even though everyone else is silently following it, they won’t do the same. They would like to first understand what is wrong and then work on righting the wrong. Jungkook, as the DM, naturally has these personality traits, a rebellious, go-against-the-grain attitude being one of them. He was created to question, he was created to seek answers. “Doing the right thing” is important to him. However, when the whole world around you operates directly opposite of your ideas and beliefs, it’s natural to feel alone and also frequently doubt your own beliefs, or end up doing certain wrong things believing that they might be right, or just ignoring the whole soul-yapping. In this situation, he alternatingly chooses between 1) adapting and adjusting with what others are doing, which gives him some moments of conflict-less peace, 2) getting tired and drained of adapting and behaving opposite of what his soul tells him to do and shutting the world out and being alone with his own thoughts and feelings, and 3) feeling lost with no direction or conclusion to his thoughts and then going back to 1 again.

So when he meets his DF, there’s a sense of having another person who understands his POV unlike anyone else ever has. This is because DFs have already gone through this stage before their DMs. She was also thrown in that water and she has figured out a little of how to swim. This makes him feel not alone anymore. And because she is able to articulate these struggles, she also helps him figure out his own way, which gives him a nudge towards the direction that he had been looking for since even before they met. This is why DMs fall in love with their DFs. This is the outer manifestation of the soul connection that they have. As mentioned in the Ideal Type reading as well, when Jungkook said in his interviews about wanting someone to teach him new things, someone maturer than him, it’s all DM behaviour. As is common knowledge, twinflames, from the time they are born, seek their soul counterpart— subconsciously of course. This is why their ideas and concepts about love are really different from, say, their friends or siblings or parents’ ideas. There is something very specific they are looking for without knowing what it is. Their crushes, previous partners etc. all have some attributes very similar to their twinflame counterparts’. Because they were looking for their counterparts in all those people. So when they meet, they have this sense of FINALLY! that they feel deep in their bones without consciously knowing about it. It’s a strange kind of overwhelming happiness in finding your twinflame counterpart for the first time. You don’t know they are your twinflame, heck, you don’t even know the term “twinflame”, yet you feel like you’ve found someone so similar to you it’s unreal. You immediately want to lock arms, see the world together, have all kinds of experiences together because you now have someone with whom you have the purpose and the motivation to see more of this world. You’re not a lonely loser anymore who is a walk inconvenience for everyone with their unconventional thoughts and ideas. Well, if you’re a loser, then at least you now have a partner-in-crime together with whom you can judge the rest of the world. Although the twinflame connection is often confusing, frustrating and full of external problems and obstacles, just the feeling of having a partner who is truly your other half, in a world where everything is so temporary and uncertain, is unparalleled. Honestly, this is the main reason why Jungkook falls in love with his twinflame. Of course, they motivate each other to become better versions of themselves, but self-improvement is a trait they already had in them before they met. It’s the partnership, the “we got each other while we deal with everything else” vibe that is the main foundation of their love. Everything else, like her looks, talent, personality etc. are subordinate and variable— meaning, Jungkook does appreciate all of these things in her, but even if she looked different or had different sets of talents, he would still fall in love with her.

[saestrah]

Hey there! You’re themes are ✨ lovely ✨ and so accessible. As someone with v. sensitive eyes and the owner of a writing blog having the option of switching between a light and dark bg with the click of a button is all I ever wanted out of a theme. At current I’m trying to use your Tangerine theme, but the customization options for the night mode don’t work properly.

The problem that I’m having is that the sidebar text and title are both controlled by “Night Links”. I tried going straight into the code and pasting the color hex code directly, but it didn’t take; like the number is there, but there are no changes. In doing this I also noticed that they’re all defaulting to “ffffff” no matter what color I chose in the customization tab. Also “Night Base” controls what should be “Night Buttons” while the “Tab Text” option changes the text color for both day and night modes. Everything else seems to be working fine, however (tho I’m not quite sure what base, subtitle, and tooltip text control as I didn’t notice any changes when I manipulated them).

I know little to nothing about coding, so I haven’t the first clue as to how to fix this, though when I pasted the code into a word doc and did a quick search I found that there was 584 >’s and only 583 <’s so maybe that has something to do with it? Idk, that’s the sum total of what I know to do and it’s probably useless lol. Anyway, sorry this is so long, but I figured you’d want to know the whole of the issue. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide, and have a good weekend!

i'm glad you appreciate the accessibility toggles for my themes!

in terms of the night-mode customisation for tangerine, it's something i've been meaning to fix as a while ago i added night-mode customisation options into the code via pastebin, but github hadn't saved any of the customisation edits to the css, so the new 'updates' never really existed. that should be fixed now, though externally sourced css (which my themes use) can take a little while to sync, so if it's still not working at your end, just give it an hour and then if it's still not working let me know!

in terms of everything defaulting to "ffffff", is that right at the start of the codes in the meta variables? if so, that just tells tumblr what the default colours should be when someone downloads the code for the first time, but gets overwritten when a user updates the colours in the customisation panel. you wouldn't see the actual hexcodes you've selected in the code, as that would be in the css which i host on github.

as for the other class titles: "buttons" is the background colour of the tab buttons down the right of the sidebar, "base" is for the background colour of ask posts and music players, "subtitle" is for titles within posts, and "tooltip" text is the colour of text in the little messages that pop-up when you hover your cursor over something!

i hope this helps, and you have nothing to apologise for in terms of the ask being long! the more detail the better, as it means i know exactly what it is i need to fix

[mr-entj]

Hi Mr ENTJ, How do you deal with doubt? That gripping feeling that you're just not enough and you should be better? How do you look for answers from the inside rather than just patch in on from the outside? Thanks.

Related answers:

Can you talk about the quality(ies) or trait(s) that contributed most to your success?

What do you think is required from a person to succeed ?

Dealing with failure and overcoming adversity

You’re referring specifically to self-doubt. This is a great question that took me a long time to properly articulate a response because I didn’t want to dismiss it with a stereotypical: “I don’t feel self-doubt. I just fix the problem, power through it, and move on!” like every other ExTJ out there. I want to properly explain why this is the case so let me try:

I don’t often experience self-doubt or the gripping feeling that I’m not good enough, not because I’m a perfect human being (far from it-- here’s a greatest hits collection of some of my biggest failures), but because of my general approach to life that’s shaped by a few key beliefs.

1. I know where the world ends and where I begin

This means that I know where the line exists between what I want and what the world wants, between who I am and who other people want me to be, and between my expectations for my life and other people’s expectations of me. I see this boundary crystal clear and I enforce it. I set my own goals and I hold myself accountable to them.

This helps fight self-doubt because I don’t attach my self-esteem and self-worth to externally defined goals or assessments, I don’t accept unwanted input into my personal life from people who don’t matter, and I don’t compare myself to other people in destructive ways. If I compare myself to other people, it’s for the purposes of data gathering and not validation.

For example, the knowledge that most students graduate college in 4 years tells me that 4 years is the average amount of time. My key takeaway is that 3 years is above average speed and 4+ years is below average speed so I should aim to get my degree in approximately 4 years. My key takeaway is not that I’m a disastrous failure if I don’t graduate college in 4 years. And FYI, I ended up graduating in 6 years because I dropped out for 2 years and I still turned out fine.

Self-defined and self-enforced goals are critical to combating self-doubt because they mute all the outside noise; pushy parents, nosy friends, aggressive colleagues, and fickle societal standards. Life is very difficult by itself without the added complexity of multiple people pulling you in different directions that you don’t even want to go. Set clear boundaries and take the time to self-reflect what’s important to you so that you can be happy with the results of your efforts even if they don’t yield acknowledgement from anyone else.

tl;dr:

Find peace with the life you create for yourself because it’s you that has to live it.

2. I keep the big picture in mind, always

This means perspective. In the grand scheme of things, small losses here and there don’t amount to much because life is a marathon and not a sprint. This means that if you screw up today, there’s a high chance you can fix it tomorrow. If not, then know the world isn’t going to end because of it. The sun will still rise, babies will still be born, puppies will still be cute, your family will still love you, Tumblr will still be toxic, and the earth will still spin on its axis. I have failed classes, almost got held back in school, screwed up at work, infuriated important people, been rejected from 100+ jobs, lost important scholarships, and things still worked out because those failures didn’t matter in the long run even if they felt enormous at the time I was experiencing them. I know mistakes can be fixed, they’re not permanent, and they don’t sabotage the grand vision I have for my life. It makes the times I fall on my ass less painful which consequently makes me less fearful of trying to fly over and over again until I get it right.

This helps fight self-doubt because I attach failure to individual outcomes (actions) but I do not attach failure to me personally (identity).

For example, if I applied to Harvard University but got rejected, my interpretation of that outcome is this: “I failed to get into Harvard.” Yes, I failed to get into Harvard (action) but no, I am not a failure (identity).

The failure starts and stops at the end of an outcome, I don’t let it escape its container and infect other parts of my life by internalizing this kind of garbage: “I failed to get into Harvard so I’m dumb, I’m unworthy, and I suck.” This prevents self-doubt because I know failure is an isolated incident and I don’t take it personally. I don’t absorb failure as a personal identity-- I attach it to the specific event, action, or outcome and then store it in my vast library of knowledge as a lesson learned.

tl;dr:

Life is long and screwing up is part of the journey. Remember that you can fail at things (action) without being a failure (identity).

3. I accept that life is a game of probability

This means that I view life as a statistics game with events on a sliding scale between low probability of success and high probability of success. Probability of success is influenced by many variables such as my preparation, my natural abilities, the economy, my competition, timing, etc. I adjust the probability of success based on those variables to make better predictions:

I know that if my goal is to join the National Basketball Association (NBA), my probability of success is lower because my basketball skills and physical traits are below the average of a typical professional basketball player.

I know that if my goal is to get accepted to one of the best universities in the world, my probability of success is higher because my grades, test scores, and academic profile are above the average of a typical applicant.

Low probability of success doesn’t mean low effort. I don’t half-ass things that are unlikely to happen, I put high effort in all my endeavors if I really care about them and an obvious example of that is my life. Everything I’ve achieved in my life has been statistically improbable because I come from an underprivileged background where it was highly unlikely for me to have the life I have now. I beat the odds and achieved my goals anyway because I maximized my chances of success.

This perspective influences how I interpret success and failure:

Low probability of success that results in failure: “This outcome is what I expected so I’m not surprised, but at least I tried, gave it my best shot, and I know the answer. I’ll learn where I can improve and take that knowledge forward into the future.”

Low probability of success that results in success: “This outcome is not what I expected but I’m pleased it went my way. I understand this was an exception to the norm and I’m grateful it leaned in my favor.”

High probability of success that results in success: “This outcome is what I expected and I’m pleased it went my way. I need to continue doing the things that worked well and keep that knowledge for future reference.”

High probability of success that results in failure: “This outcome is not what I expected so I’m disappointed. I need to evaluate why I failed, understand how I can improve, and try again until I get it right.”

This helps fight self-doubt because it does one very crucial thing for me: it makes it impossible for me to lose.

I tell people all the time: “I’m undefeated because I’m still standing and I’m still going.” I can’t lose, I can only learn. It enables me to set realistic goals, have realistic expectations about my chances to achieve them, understand why I failed, and feel grateful when I succeed. Success is never guaranteed and failure is always accounted for in my calculations so I’m never blindsided. I know that I can be “perfect” and still fail, but I also know that I can be “imperfect” and still succeed. If I’ve done everything within my power and it’s still not going my way, then I’m not plagued with self-doubt because I can accept it was beyond my control and that it’s time to try something else.

tl;dr:

Many things in life are out of your control but try your best so you have peace of mind that you’re not quitting-- you’re moving on.

I’m not invincible, but for these reasons, it’s rare for me to feel self-doubt because I don’t view life as a game of “am I good enough or not?” I view life as a game of “what’s the best way to get what I want and did it work?” My two options are then: 1) Succeed, learn, and move on or 2) Fail, learn, and move on. There’s no third option to spiral into uncertainty and crippling self-doubt. I focus my energy on identifying the problem, the variables I can control, and the learnings from my outcomes.

In the rare times I do feel self-doubt, I go through a rigorous self-reflection exercise to identify the cause whether that’s concerns about personal decisions I’ve made, thoughts on my professional trajectory, or the state of my relationships. I identify the outcome that I want, gather information on how to secure that outcome, and give it my best shot. The result of that effort provides knowledge, wisdom, and opportunities to either 1) continue on the same path or 2) stop and try something else.

Ultimately, I always feel like there’s something wonderful in life waiting for me just around the corner and agonizing over past failures or self-doubt-- instead of getting up and trying again-- only delays me getting it.

[mashounen2003]

Here is the text of the video, translated into English. Seriously, check out this video, this guy is awesome.

"Conspiracy Theories" by Guille Aquino.

Posted on June 27, 2019.

--------------------------------------------------

Warning: if you're influenceable, you need to watch this.

--------------------------------------------------

Alright, before we start, I want us to welcome and applaud our new friends from the CIA, the FBI, NASA, the former SIDE -today, the AFI-, the KGB, Interpol, and the lazy virgins at the troll centre on Miserere Park, who are surely already watching this video because today we're gonna talk about...

Conspiracy Theories.

We all know some: the humans didn't go to the Moon, the 9/11 was a self-attack by the USA's government, Bin Laden never existed, Walt Disney is frozen, Elvis Presley is alive, the Simpsons predict the future, Marcelo Tinelli went to a famous hospital with a famous object inserted in a famous place on his body, and Dengue and Zika fever were created by Bill Gates who genetically modified mosquitoes to depopulate the Earth because it most likely was easier than making work that "Internet Explorer" bulls*** he sold us. But let's get to the news: in early 2019, YouTube modified its recommendation algorithm to avoid promoting conspiracy theories and false information. And let's stop here because I want us to become aware of the magnitude this matter took on and how this little joke of the conspiracy theories videos completely went to Hell.

Think of it this way: YouTube, the second most trafficked website in the world after Google, with over 30 million visitors per day and over 1.3 billion users -almost a third of all people connected to the Internet in the world-, where 300 hours of videos are uploaded per minute and almost 500 trillion videos are viewed per day, had to change its own recommendation system because all of us were watching too many videos denouncing that Lali Espósito is an Illuminati:

Video excerpt: [with obvious robotic voice] "Also, at the second Number Ten, she covers one of her eyes again, obviously symbolizing the All-Seeing Eye."

And I'm very sorry to tell you that, in today's world, if YouTube has a problem, we all have a problem.

Conspiracy theories are the Internet's new porn. In fact, if you filter the words "conspiracy" and "theories" by the number of views, the most viewed video has 36 million views. THIRTY-SIX! MILLION! VIEWS! That's like putting together the total populations of Belgium, Greece, Cuba and Jamaica, and then lighting a giant reefer to everyone and making them watch this video of people saying the Earth is flat:

Another video excerpt: [Channel 13 interview with Flat-Earthers, recorded in a park in Buenos Aires] "I pour water into this dish... Look, I pour water, and it stays, you see? But we pour water into the globe... and it goes down, people."

Okay, now we're gonna go over some of the most popular conspiracy theories of recent times, and we're gonna try to deconstruct the psychological profile of the average consumer of the conspiranoid world.

--------------------------------------------------

We'll start with everyone's favourite...

The Flat-Earthers.

Excerpt of the second video: "This first meeting began to be announced in the groups I followed on YouTube. (And the tattoo you have there, what is it?) This is the flat Earth, the Sun and the Moon."

The Flat-Earthers basically hold the theory that the Earth is not actually spherical, and they claim Galileo Galilei was an old smoke-seller blabbermouth who often played into the Far-Right's hands, cut his hair in an old-fashioned barbershop and used the 1610 telescope mainly to bed with chicks. And I have nothing personal against the Flat-Earthers but I find it difficult to take them seriously, mostly because much of their scientific hypothesis can be explained with this blooper.

Excerpt of another, different video: "There's an inflatable pool filled with water and with two people in it, a third person suddenly jumps into the water, and the pool deforms and overflows on the other side, as one of the two previously present people also falls over the edge."

(Images from the film "Armageddon".)

The truth is that the "flat Earth" theory has one fundamental premise, and it's the same one that supports 100% of conspiracy theories:

There's a power above us that manages everything.

Governments, lobbies and other de facto powers are capable of lying on a massive scale, just as intelligence services, the New World Order and FlyBondi hostesses do.

Excerpt of the second video: "(And you can't see the curvature of the Earth from the plane.) Uh... I travelled by plane to Bariloche, and no, I didn't see it. There's some aircraft glass with a small magnification or something that changes your perspective, due to the thickness of the window, and because aircraft glass also has something."

Alright, stop, let's not turn this into "Point at the crazy assholes and laugh" either, right? Well, yes, a little- But we go beyond that! We're better than that!

Why do so many people choose to believe we're puppets of an evil system? One might say that, in the absence of a sense of real control over our own lives and in the face of the desolation of living in a seemingly random, chaotic world, believing there's an external force exerting control is, to some extent, comforting. Yes, phone the Vatican.

And according to a certain old white upper-middle-class snob who teaches at Harvard University, conspiracy theorists share several or at least one of the following features: they're paranoid, radical, extremist in their opinions; they aspire to a feeling of superiority, and basically, they feel special for possessing information that exceeds the common citizen. Yeah, it's like the row for an indie film festival.

Umberto Eco even said:

"The control syndrome invades us. When someone claims to have a secret, their strength is not in hiding something but in making people think there's even a secret in the first place."

And I didn't understand a f*** because I've never read a book in my life, but it sounds ultra-mega-hyper cool. I dare you to deny it!

So who would be the most likely to believe in these kinds of theories? People who had bad experiences in life, people in search of an answer that would rescue them from a deep existential crisis, and the most important: people in search of a place of belonging.

Excerpt of the second video: "Well, no, this opened a door for me to start thinking more, to question things, about a supposed alien invasion."

Wait, stop right there. Excuse me, but if I'm an alien and I have the power to cross the universe in a spaceship, with my own army and the ability to colonize a celestial body, I don't even waste my time invading a paper-thin planet. Give me a round planet or give me death!

And that's when the contradiction comes into play. Because if you believe in one conspiracy theory, you immediately start to believe in all of them. It's like the weed. Even the refutation of a plot fits within the plot itself: for example, if you believe Lady Diana was killed by the British Crown, you're also prone to believe Lady Diana is actually still alive.

(Woah, Mind Blown... She was totally killed anyway, sorry.)

--------------------------------------------------

Good, let's move on to the next one:

The Anti-Vaccination movement.

Okay, here we come to a key point, since clearly there are the "harmless" conspiracy theories and the... rather dangerous ones. We've all heard someone say vaccines may cause autism in kids. Now, I'm clearly a specialist in absolutely nothing, and I ain't gonna explain why you guys have to vaccinate your children, so I better recommend to you the websites of any Ministry of Health or Wikipedia, so that you later visit them and find out how very important it is to inject legal drugs to your sweet little angels. And it's not to detract from any position or to err on the side of bigotry, but if you're an anti-vax and your baby coughs next to me, I swear I'll kick their head off.

(Tack! That bag of germs...)

And after all, that's why we invented Democracy!

(Ha, of course not, but...)

In fact, I dunno who gives a f*** about this but maybe someone will find it useful: I follow a pretty simple method when it comes to ideologically locating myself regarding any issue. And this is:

Always do the opposite of whatever Gisela Barreto says.

Gisela Barreto: [speaks with a flag in the background] "Vaccines show up, and they show them to us as something that heals us. Actually, they're part of our death."

(Seriously, she came this close to being in the Avengers.)

--------------------------------------------------

Okay, and now let's move on to one that touches us all closely (at least here, in my country):

Hitler in Argentina.

It's the conspiracy theory ensuring that, after losing World War II, the Nazi leader, the most disgusting dictator and genocide in Human History, came to live incognito in our country. And I ask myself: what the heck did we need to shelter Hitler for? The birth of Alejandro Biondini, who's pretty much our local version of Nazism, was imminent:

Interview with Biondini in 1991 by Mariano Grondona in his program "Key Time":

Grondona: "Would you condemn Adolf Hitler?"

Biondini: "No, we vindicate Adolf Hitler."

--------------------------------------------------

Okay, question: is it possible to keep a secret on such a large scale for so many years? Well, the Math says no. Seriously! I've read that a physicist at the Oxford University (Where else?) took the "humans didn't go to the Moon" theory, and then this guy created a mathematical calculation based on the number of conspirators involved, the time elapsed since the conspiracy, and the inherent possibility that a plot would fail.

For example, in the case of Apollo 11, 411 thousand NASA employees were involved, and according to the variables this physicist analyzed, the lie should have been known in less than four years; half a century passed, and no employee denied the mission. What does this tell us? Well... they were threatened and killed off, of course! It's obvious! [imitating Mirtha Legrand] Stanley Kubrick was not in the coffin! Nobody saw him. Nobody saw him!

--------------------------------------------------

Gimme more!

Famous people who are actually dead.

For example, Paul McCartney. On the cover of the album "Abbey Road", he's barefoot; a clear subliminal message that the real one died and was replaced with a stand-in. (Why?!) It sounds silly, but the rumour got so big that McCartney himself had to go out and publicly deny it... Although come to think of it, he also came out to congratulate the butchers who named their butcher shop "Paul Mac Carne" ["Paul McMeat"], so maybe he's truly a stand-in and, to top it off, looks like a raisin.

Excerpt of another video: "Well, thinking of different names, someone said "Paul Mac Carne". And well, he, being a vegetarian, says the idea was very good, started laughing and sent us a greeting."

--------------------------------------------------

I love this one:

The Reptilians.

It's basically the theory that there's a race of amphibian aliens [Wait for a second: aren't they called "reptilians"?] living among us for centuries and hiding their reptilian features behind human faces.

(Oh, you were telling me they're not actually aliens because they were born here?)

Excerpt of the 1996 movie "Mars Attacks!".

And who discovered this? David Icke! Or "Ique". An unsuccessful former soccer player and sportscaster. (How can you be unsuccessful as a soccer sportscaster?! All you need is a suit!) It's like believing in a religion where your Pope is Diego Latorre.

--------------------------------------------------

Now, I know what you're thinking: after all, how dangerous can all this get? I mean, no conspiracy theory has someone popular to represent it, no spokesperson of ridiculous and implausible plots has reached a truly important position in today's world.

Bah... There's actually only one.

The President of the United States of America.

That's right! Donald Trump, once the leader of the most powerful country in the world, had come to power mostly by throwing out fake news and conspiracy theories. And here are some:

Barack Obama is an immigrant.

Trump: "And I just say: why doesn't he show his birth certificate?"

Global warming is a myth.

Trump: "Obama is saying all of this has to do with global warming and I say all that is a hoax..."

Gisela Barreto was right.

Trump: "At two and a half years old, the baby, the beautiful baby, went to get the vaccine. Now he's autistic."

--------------------------------------------------

Okay, then... Conspiracy theories. For what? Well, in the case of Trump: influence on public opinion and accumulation of power. In the case of people who upload videos to YouTube... What do you think? A profitable, monetizable business! In fact, there's the conspiracy theory that we're actually making this video about conspiracy theories in order to have lots of views and earn buttloads of cash. (We'd never do that!)

And finally, a much deeper, inherent aspect of the human condition:

The need to believe in something.

The world is divided into two types of people: some think everything happens for a reason, everything is a sign, and perhaps there's also a magical entity organizing things for us; the other half of the people think we live in a desolate world without meaning or messages, there are only atoms randomly colliding with each other, and the Universe gives no f***s about us. Which of these two groups seems happier to you? Which one do you belong to? Which one would you like to belong to? I choose to join the conspiranoids! And listen to this, I know exactly what's going on:

The New World Order organized the Lollapalooza at the request of the Illuminati, who wanted to marketingly manage Lali Espósito, who actually wears a mask and underneath is "La Mona" Giménez, who's not actually a monkey but a reptile and has drank all the wine to get immunized against the vaccines at the request of Gisela Barreto, who was born in Corrientes just like Barack Obama, who claimed to have killed Bin Laden, who's actually alive and was driving the car that crashed that night and carried Chano Charpentier, who taught driving to Lady Diana, who was actually Mexican and was assassinated by Donald Trump, who was matched on Tinder with Hitler, who lives in a nursing home in Recoleta and has glaucoma, so he's hitting the reefers with Biondini, who is actually a hippie and a fan of León Gieco, invented global warming and, when being in a bad mood, takes a bus and goes to dinner at "Paul Mac Carne", where they invented the extra-thin Provoleta cheese, which coincidentally has the same shape as the Earth, which is actually flat!

*sigh* Knowledge is power. Quiero creer.

Soundtrack: State Anthem of the Soviet Union.

[funkymbtifiction]

Hi guys! I I'm an ENXP and I was looking for some advice about knowing myself better. I saw the mods are ENPs and maybe you guys could help me. I recently noticed a pattern regarding my own actions that is basically ruining my life. I seem to rely too much on my Ne, specially about my future and my career. I'm ruled by a need of pursuing anything that catches my attention in a determined moment. I obsess over it for a while and then move on. I've changed my major 4 times now. Every activity I do is temporary. And if I don't find something I can obsess over I get depressed and bored. Anyways, I think this has led me to not trust myself anymore, since I can't commit to anything because I lose interest in everything and I'm always looking for new possibilities. I have reached a point where I can't allow myself to pursue everything I want and I have to make decisions and commit. But I'm too scared to become trapped and take responsibility for my own decisions. I think this would be easier if I knew myself better, but I don't think I know who I am besides my own random interests, which is weird I guess. How can I develop my own Fi? Or Ti? How do you guys deal with your dominant Ne? How do you commit to things? I'm 23 by the way. Shouldn't I have developed some Fi or Ti or something by now? I turned to mbti because I wanted to gain a better understanding of myself but holy shit this is hard. I could only recognize my dominant Ne. All this self analysis seems useless if I don't really know myself, I realized I'm not self aware at all. So anyways, as fellows Ne doms how did you guys developed your auxiliary functions? Any advice will be amazing! Thank you guys for everything you do here!

The first thing you need to do is recognize is you are an Enneagram 7 and all of this is ‘normal’ for them in lower health levels. To overcome this, you have to ‘grow up’ as a 7 and stop allowing fear of commitment or quick loss of focus from dominating your life. You have control over yourself, you are not utterly helpless to your whims (said the Fi user who has a moral tone of ‘you make your own choices and messes and you have to get out of them’ ;).

7s have to learn to be open to the scary idea of commitment to reap the dividends of hard work.

Read the 7 profile and see how allowing yourself to ‘run away’ from commitment (which includes not finishing or devoting yourself to any project) can hinder your life. Once you recognize WHAT you are doing, and WHY you are doing it, you can develop the power to STOP YOURSELF from doing it, or from allowing ‘excuses’ or fear to run you away from good things.

ENTP Mod. : Charity is right. Here is also where the judging functions come into play. With Fi, you can eventually weed out that which you aren't personally passionate about/ those goals which don't align with your personal values. With Ti, you can see a chain reaction of the patterns in your life, and determine the most effective path to help yourself using logic to streamline your processes, make it more elegant.

Slow the hell down. Force yourself to stop running toward the future and live right now. Repeat the mantra of ‘right now is all that matters today’ a 100 times an hour if you have to. Be present. Be invested. Bring yourself into ‘now.’

My co-mod is a 7w6 ENTP who suffers from a lot of the same issues; I will nudge her to offer her two cents to this post, in regards as to what she is currently doing about it. Basically, she had to talk herself into getting a permanent job rather than talking herself out of it. Once she got into it, she realized it didn’t suck as much as she feared. Her brain is her own worst enemy.

I had to talk myself into this job. I gave myself lots of reasons why I would love it. It might sound a little unrealistic going in with pre set expectations but at least you will not go in blind. Making a pros cons list is always a good idea. It helps to sift through your multiple ideas, and narrow down the ones which can really work. Test out the feasibility of your ideas, opportunities before hand. Talk to people, do your research. Just remember that things will never be as bad or boring as you think them to be. This is a cliche but something which helps me in the mornings when I know I have boring work to do is "Get up, dress up, show up. Never give up." Also it helps to live from day to day. Don't worry too far into the future, you never know what variables might upset your plans.

Work-wise, a 7 needs to travel, get the ‘high’ of meeting new people, and not to be involved in sheer detail-driven grunt work. They need challenges to work toward and obstacles to overcome. Pick a career that offers you all of that. If you do not, you will have a string of 6 months at ___ jobs that do not look good on your resume. Find a career in something that you feel passionate about, that offers some kind of mental stimulation.

ENTP 7 co-mod is an attorney who loves to find ways to ‘get around things’ in the law.

ENTP Mod. note: Always try to remember the root of your passion when you feel like defecting from one option to another. If you must leave, leverage what you have learned in one place and how you can dress that up to make your hopping about look good. That's what I did, and it worked for me. Some of the reasons I love my job are the constant intellectual stimulation, creative aspects of it, my love for criminology pays off, meeting interesting people. Sure there are sucky days when you have to deal with the bureaucratic demons. But that won't be every day. Unless your role requires you to do something like it. In which case I would suggest that you avoid picking up detail heavy, low Si or adherence related work which will make you feel miserable and frustrated. Try to pick something that plays to your strengths, improve your weaknesses. Compete with nobody but yourself. Every day you are better than you were, yesterday. Even with a little effort. It is important to not give up. It is so hard for 7s but we have the gift of rationalizing. So instead of using it as a mechanism to justify dropping things, use it to tell yourself why you should stick around. You as a 7 can make most things fun. So find little tricks and ways to make the work day fun. Whether it is achieving small, impactful targets or making games out of small, low stakes things. Also, having money and being able to live nicely is fun. Nobody is gonna pay you if they think that their money will be wasted on training you if your pattern is just leaving jobs. It took me a long time to develop this perspective but I am glad I did.

I (ENFP 6w5 sp/so) chose a career in magazine editing, because it gives me time to do what I actually love, which is write novels. I’m afraid I can’t give you advice from my own life that would work for you, because a 6w5 sp/so is far more focused and driven to finish their projects than a 7w6, which means I push through ‘the boring, tedious bits’ of projects regardless of how ‘excited’ I am. It’s not fun to edit a book 7 times, but I still do it. I force myself to show up to work, to sit there for 3 or 4 hours, and commit to X amount of words, pages, etc.

Do you think it’s “fun” for me always to keep this queue stocked, or to type up characters at the end of a long day because the queue is low? Or go back and update old profiles and move them from this blog onto wordpress? No. I hate it sometimes. It’s boring as hell. But I committed to it, I will see it through, even though looking into my “to update” folder makes me want to scream. I tackle huge projects one step at a time. I’m disciplined but I can procrastinate at work, rather than doing whatever needs doing.

Which really is the bottom line. You want to finish things? Just do them. Force yourself to show up and do the work, even if it’s “boring.” Most of life isn’t fun. Paying the bills isn’t fun. You do boring stuff to make a living, so you can have the money to do fun things. If you do not learn to do it, whether or not it is fun, you will wind up ‘stuck at home this month, because I have no money.’

That frustrates a 7 even more than being bored at work.

Accept that your fear of commitment is a fear-driven lie.

You are not going to get trapped by committing to something or someone. Head types massively over-think things and allow fear – in the 7’s case of “missing out” on better things – to dominate their life. Admit it’s fear. Admit that allowing fear to ruin your entire life is stupid. Then do something against the fear. Do the thing fear tells you not to: commit and work at it. Fight the urge every day to leave. Stick it out, and prove you ‘can’ to yourself.

Middle functions. You’re in college so you should be seeing either some Ti analyzing or Te “buckle down and set goals and get this schoolwork finished by the deadline” kicking in. Are you more inclined to self-doubt and beat yourself up like a young FiTe user after ‘failing’ to organize your time efficiently or to make excuses and blame external circumstances like a young TiFe user?

My Fi has always been strongly evident, though I didn’t know what it was at the time. Things that set off a NOPE response in me vs. the ‘rest of everything, which I don’t care about.’ The intense sensitivity as a child. The compassion for other people and especially for small animals. The understanding of emotional dynamics and how people ‘feel.’ The constant angst between caring too much about people’s feelings and being low Te blunt or rude when I’m having an off day. The ‘going away from everyone’ to deal with my feelings in private. I have always fiercely, Fi-ishly known what I like and do not like, and have no ability to ‘tolerate’ things that I do not like. Once, I didn’t like half the people seated at my table at a public event, so I shut down completely and did not say a word to anyone at the table for two hours. My Fe friend also hated them, but smiled and charmed them all. Lucky girl. She can fake her feelings. I can’t.

- ENFP Mod

[hexlikesramennoodles]

For @granpappy-winchester, inspired by Cherry!Billy.

*

*

*

The music was turned down low, the lights dimmed; the festivities’ last stragglers wandering off to either pass out or fuck in whatever spare corner they could find. Robin’s friends had turned the living room into an island of refuse, cigarette butts buried behind the sofa cushions, empty bottles gathered on the coffee table like dominos, cold pizza crusts lining the pot plants. The shattered window had been sealed with excess rolls of duct tape, and yet Steve still felt the wind on his nape; a chilly, autumnal wind, with the knifelike threat of winter in it. He couldn’t see Billy, but he could hear him breathing; shallow and hoarse, as if he’d been walking on a steep upwards incline—or smoking an entire carton of cigarettes, which he did nearly every other day.

“Looks like we’re the last ones standing, Harrington,” Billy said.

The pantry door stood open, the single bulb inside flickering, spilling sallow light across the linoleum. Steve followed the emphysemic rattle of Billy’s lungs; he had memorized the sound, apparently. He knew the way Billy moved, the way he smelled, the shape he took in the darkness; like reaching for a wellworn light switch, you were confident it would be there when you did.

He was struck by the surreal domesticity of the scene: Billy Hargrove, sitting at his kitchen table with the sole of one boot planted carefully on the seat of a chair—Steve’s chair. He was, at nearly four o’clock in the morning, eating a bowl of cereal: balancing the bowl atop his fingertips, slurping noisily from it as one would with soup; Steve’s bowl, Steve’s cereal.

“No one else could keep up,” he added, after a pause.

Steve said nothing.

(He would be lying if he said he hadn’t imagined something like this—wished for it, even—Billy, eating breakfast in his kitchen the morning after, sneaking up behind him to wind his hands around his waist, his jaw whiskery with stubble and his voice sleepy, hazy, asking: what’s cookin’, good lookin’? The answer, Steve imagined, would be French toast, because that was what he had cooked for Nancy. Because Nancy had always stayed, the morning after.)

“Be honest,” Billy said. Both boots were resting on the chair, now. His legs had fallen into a wide V, seemingly casual, but Steve knew better; like a wellworn light switch, Billy was extremely predictable. “If it were you and me—if we were the last two people on Earth, what do you think we’d be doing?”

Steve said nothing.

(Billy never stayed. Billy was here one day and gone the next; he could be gone for weeks. He refused to shower at Steve’s, refused to even touch the spare toothbrush Steve had left for him in the bathroom; if Steve went as far as to offer him breakfast, Billy would laugh in his face. He had learned not to ask, and so he said nothing.)

“Or even—even before the asteroid hits,” Billy said. He was watching Steve closely, the whites of his eyes shining, a little frantic. Setting the cereal bowl down, he dangled his empty palms between his legs; a vague suggestion. An invitation to look, come closer, see for yourself. Steve tried not to look.

He tried to say nothing.

“The asteroid,” Billy repeated, nodding. “Or the nukes. Or a biblical flood sent by God, the Russkies, the fuckin’ Chinese. I’m talkin’ about the end, Harrington. Of everything. When the volcano erupted above Pompeii, you wanna know what the people did? Have a city-wide orgy, right there in the streets.”

“You’re drunk,” Steve blurted out.

(His anger was cold and clear and pure, like the depths of a mountainside stream; for once, he could see all the way down to the bottom. He knew what he was going to do: tell Billy to take a hike. Tell him, get out. No one wants you here. It had all seemed so easy, before; when he’d had something else to protect—the kids, Nancy. Steve was never as good at protecting himself. As a boy, he would forget to look both ways before crossing the road; he had assumed the drivers of the cars could see him. Too willing to see the good in other people.)

“Fucking,” Billy said clearly, in an infuriating, teasing tone, “is the best thing there is. It’s what makes life worth living. That’s what we’ll be doing, when the world ends. We’ll be balls to the wall, going at it like rabbits.”

His smile had unfurled like a sail, wide and white. Steve didn’t return it. Billy was making a pass at him; he was also mocking him for his stupidity, his weakness, his gullibility. Somehow Billy making a pass at him and Billy mocking him with each exhale always seemed to be one and the same. It was the only reason he was here; the only reason he seemed to exist, in Steve’s opinion. “Billy. You’re drunk.”

“I’ve only had one beer,” said Billy.

He stared at Steve, blinking, unmoved. Expression colorless, implacable, erased smooth. You never saw the change happen; Billy would be smiling, laughing even, his face flushed and his gaze bright and sharp—and then he wouldn’t be.

(Steve didn’t even know if he was real, sometimes. He was still wondering if this was one long, feverish dream he had yet to wake up from; a bad fucking trip. Billy was both the high and the crash; he could be both loving and tender, and cruelly dismissive. The ups and downs were hatefully addictive, poisonous, yet Steve couldn’t bring himself to stop. Billy knew. He knew how much Steve liked the chase, the competition. Like they were back on the basketball court again, just the two of them, the world narrowed to the size of a fishbowl.)

“Baby,” Billy said, spreading his legs wider. “Don’t you miss me?”

Steve said nothing.

(Deep down, he knew that it had been Billy who’d thrown the brick through his window. Steve remembered waking to the explosive decompression of shattering glass, the sound of an engine; he had memorized what shape the Camaro took, as well: a blistering roar in the night. As if the sound was the hellish manifestation of Billy’s own rage, burning as hotly as a falling star, burning itself out. Why had Billy done such a thing?

Why did Billy do anything?

Because he could. Because he wanted to.)

“You broke my window,” Steve said abruptly. He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. Billy would use them as an opening, find a way to shift blame; he would sweettalk Steve, soothe him, make him forget about being angry. Until it happened again. And again.

“I what?”

“Our living room window,” said Steve. “You threw a brick at it. It’s gonna cost me and Robin, like, two hundred dollars to get a new one. Why? Why are you so—”

“I don’t know what you want from me, Harrington.” Billy was frowning, his lower lip jutting out. He looked like a sulky schoolboy. Steve was too calm; too still. Billy hated stillness, people who walked too slowly in the street; he hated the quiet, which was an unknown variable. Billy preferred being in control; they grappled for it, locked in an eternal struggle for power, as all rivals were. It was vicious, petty; it could also be soft, but that was rare. In elementary school, Steve had played war games during recess with the other boys, shooting at them and declaring himself king when he was the only one left, the last boy standing; the rules were not so simple as adults.

“I want you to say that you’re sorry,” he said. “Can you do that?”

Billy rolled his eyes, huffing. “Fi-ine.” He was theatrical with his movements, letting Steve know how ridiculous he thought he was being, how much of an unnecessary fuss he was making. The Queen of Sheba, getting his royal panties in a twist. That’s what he called Steve sometimes, smiling and snide: the Queen of fucking Sheba. What, you want me to kiss your feet, Your Majesty? “I’m so-rry. How was that, pretty boy? Are we friends again?”

“Is that what we were, before? Friends?”

“ ‘Course we were,” Billy said, too quickly, too comfortably. “I’m everybody’s friend.”

Liar, Steve thought. Billy didn’t have any friends, apart from Steve. If you could call what they had friendship—it wasn’t, Billy could say it was until he was blue in the face, but he was lying, he lied so easily—a moot point, either way. Billy didn’t have friends. People swarmed to him in droves, like moths blind to the lethal electricity, the sharpness of his teeth, all the better to eat you with—they weren’t his friends, but means to an end. They gave him booze, weed, a place to sleep when he had nowhere else to go; sometimes, they gave him sex. Of that, Steve had no doubt.

(He thought he’d known what he was getting himself into. Billy had warned him. You’re just a warm hole to me. Did Steve even have a right to be angry, when he had seen the bullet coming from a mile away, had goaded Billy into pulling the trigger himself?)

“Baby,” Billy said; he sounded breathless again, perfectly contrite. His lips were as dark as ripened cherries. Steve thought he knew what the lipstick was called. Little Red. He knew where Billy had hidden it, too—in the glovebox of his Camaro, where he also hid his porn, rolling papers, and condoms. On anybody else, such a color would look whorish, cheap. Steve had watched Billy put it on, his mouth puckering as he stared at himself critically in the rearview mirror; after dabbing the bullet onto the center of his lips, Billy had smacked them together, fingering his hairsprayed curls until they bounced; he had done this in the same haughty way Steve had seen girls do, the beautiful, untouchable girls they’d both gone to high school with. I’ll kill you if you tell anyone, Harrington. I mean it. I’ll break your fucking fingers.

Steve hadn’t told anyone. The lipstick left pinkish smears on his neck, his nipples, his cock. It had occurred to him that Billy was attempting to rewrite some essential part of himself; plucking his eyebrows, curling his hair, stripping the hard external coating of his masculinity away. Steve wondered if Billy, as a child, had ever played dressups with his mother’s clothes. If he did, his dad had probably beaten him for it.

(You’re a better fuck when you’re angry, Billy had told him. He preferred Steve’s anger to his softness, as if the only emotions Billy understood and could navigate were fury, pain, and grief. A child, trying his mother’s clothes on for size—trying on the lipstick, the eyeliner, the lady’s perfume he filched from the SALE! counter at the drugstore—furtively and when no one was looking, as if to do too much, too overtly, would endanger him.)

“Say you’re sorry,” Steve said.

Billy opened his mouth, perhaps to argue at first—if he ever apologized, it always came with a disclaimer—then his expression changed, sharpened. The chair toppled to the floor as he slid into a standing position. His fingers scrabbled for his belt buckle, suddenly clumsy; it was Steve who slid the leather through the loops of his jeans, folding it up and laying it next to the cereal bowl. Without the belt to hold it in place, Billy’s jeans sagged, looser than usual, making it easy for Steve to pull the denim all the way down his legs. He could see the paler skin of Billy’s pelvis where his tan didn’t reach, and, cutting into his hipbone, a delicate scrim of red, shiny satin.

Billy was wearing panties.

“You got a hot date tonight, baby?” Steve demanded.

“I wish,” replied Billy. “The asshole never returned my calls.”

He was leaning on the table using his forearms as leverage, his head angled over one shoulder; his gaze was relentless, unnerving. So glaringly blue.

“So, what,” Steve murmured, his thumb grazing the edge of the red satin. Billy regarded him coolly over his shoulder, his eyes rebellious slits. Ready to bite back, at any given opportunity. “You decide to smash his window with a brick? Like that’s something any normal, sane person would do?”

“You were ignoring me,” Billy insisted. “You were rude, Harrington.”

His lip continued to jut out; it looked swollen, obscene. He sounded so reasonable, so wholly convincing, that Steve almost believed what he was saying—he wanted to. He wanted to bite into the cherry of Billy’s lower lip, taste him, let his juices flow down his chin.

“In other words,” he said, “you can dish it out, but you can’t take it.”

One thumb became a thumb and a forefinger, pushing the panties up and away; baring Billy’s soul. He took note of Billy’s thighs: thick with muscle, but lusciously soft to the touch; he’d shaved.

(The image of Billy with one foot perched on the edge of the bathtub and a woman’s razor in hand floated into being, unbidden. There was something about the ritual that had always seemed erotic to Steve; maybe it was the privacy of it, the unknowability of femininity—how many times had he and Tommy been caught by their teachers trying to sneak into the girls’ locker room, if only to see what went on behind closed doors? In that sacred state, Billy would be completely naked, at his most vulnerable.)

“Fuck you,” spat Billy. “You think you’re too good for me? Huh? You ain’t shit, pretty boy. Don’t get too big for your britches—”

He moaned angrily, his arms spasming as Steve shoved the blunt head of his cock between his legs, plastering his chest to Billy’s torso; there came the subtle snarl of tearing satin, the panties falling to pieces between the tight friction of their bodies, grinding, so close—a fact neither of them would register until later, until it was over.

“Don’t put this on me,” Steve said, pressing his mouth to Billy’s neck. “You told me, remember? You told me that you don’t care what I—what anybody—thinks.”

“Fuck you,” said Billy. Desperately, as if he had realized that he was on the losing side; as if this was his last resort. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

Steve drove forwards, using the silky, slightly sticky corridor of Billy’s thighs like a glove, like his own fist around his cock. It wasn’t hard to imagine that he was fucking Billy, really fucking him; Billy was slamming his hips to match his pace, his cheek flattened against the scratched surface of the kitchen table and his wrists crossed behind his back. He mewled when Steve caught on his perineum, his spine bowing into a parabola of pleasure, outrage, or both. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck me. Stevie, Stevie, Stevie. His moans were loud and brash, performative; obviously not for his own benefit. Steve hated that. Billy thought he was the smartest person in the room, but he didn’t know how transparent he was, truly.

“Shit, Steve,” Billy was panting, biting his lip. When he reached around to take Steve’s cock in hand, Steve saw that his nails were painted the same cherry color as his mouth. It nearly did him in, the sight of his cock moving through the cage of Billy’s fingers, all that debauched red. “You make me feel so good. So fucking good, like this.”

He mewled again when Steve wrapped a hand around his throat, digging his fingers ruthlessly into his air supply; Steve saw the blonde curls drop, the hard, clenched arch of Billy’s spine giving way like a snapped power cable. His Adam’s apple strained under the pressure of Steve’s hand; the false sounds issuing from his throat had ceased. Steve was coloring Billy in; filling in the uncertain lines, making him seem more lifelike. The lipstick was getting everywhere, feathery vibrant slashes of it on Steve’s palm and knuckles, as if he’d been fingerpainting; adding shade and depth and nuance, marking Billy, marking himself.

“Steve,” Billy said. His voice was hushed, remote. As if he were dissolving, liquefying like one of those hard candies that came in the plastic wrapping, especially susceptible to heat; turning into sugared sludge, sweet enough to make your teeth ache. They were merging into one another. “Steve, honey. Look at me.”

His eyes, latching onto Steve’s face, his mouth. He knew how much Steve needed eye contact during sex, how much he craved it. The shreds of intimacy he scattered like breadcrumbs, because he enjoyed watching Steve get on his knees for them; begging, like a dog for scraps. They were merging, holding hands.

“Sorry’s—sorry’s just a word you say,” Steve grunted. He watched Billy’s fingers, the gemstone flashes of his painted nails as he pushed between his legs, slowly at first, then sharply, brutally, as if he were stabbing Billy, or exorcising him. “It doesn’t—ah—it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just you telling me what I wanna hear.”

He drove forwards and forwards, losing sight of the painted nails as he came, his eyes slipping shut and cock bucking, spurting between Billy’s thighs. He might have heard a moan, a curse. Billy’s legs were trembling; his shoulders had slumped forwards, as if he were concussed, or praying. Their come dripped steadily onto the linoleum, pale as churned egg whites; dreamily, Steve reached down and caught some of it on his fingertips, ignoring Billy’s reflexive shudder.

(He tried to remember where he was, where he had been before Billy had come into his life; he had been at a party. Robin’s party, or had it been Tina’s? They all looked the same, after a while: the same music, the same clinging miasmas of marijuana and free beer and unsafe sex; the same leftover cigarette butts and pizza crusts in the pot plants, the cheese hard as dried chewing gum.)

Billy whispered, “It’s not my fault you’re so easy.”

Mists of sweat hovered between his eyebrows, his upper lip; his hips had slowed to a lazy, languid roll. Billy smiled, looking like an insolent cat, the cat that got the proverbial cream. Then he rose, his hair falling in fuzzy cumulus clouds around his shoulders, and kissed him. Steve’s reaction was pained, immediate—he told himself that he didn’t want to be kissed, he didn’t want to have anything to do with what Billy considered intimacy; he wasn’t anyone’s experiment, damn it, he didn’t want to be fed Billy’s scraps—the taste of the lipstick was waxy, alien, as was the way Billy was licking into his mouth: using too much tongue, making a mess, bloodying him with the color. Steve knew how it would look, when he finally pulled away: like they had cannibalized each other. Like Billy had torn his heart out, dripping, and eaten it.

[is6621]

How Safe is your Fitness Tech? - Allison Puglisi

In one of this week’s tweets, I discussed the new children’s smartwatch that predators use to target children. While I don’t have a child to worry about, this got me thinking: I may not be using this specific technology, but who’s to say that a stalker couldn’t just as easily find me through my wearable tech or the apps I use every day? One of the main privacy concerns for those using smartphones is the common location tracking feature. This can be utilized through exercise apps which use GPS to track your running route. 

Why Use Run Tracking Apps?

A quick search in the Apple App Store for “running app” returns hundreds of results that boast their ability to track your distance and specific route for you to fully comprehend and analyze the results of your run. Over the years of my running journey (which looks something like this: start running, lose motivation, start again, and so on and so on) I’ve tried tons of these apps to chart my route around the neighborhood to check my pace and see what distance I can add by going into little cul-de-sacs and venturing into different neighborhoods. One recent social media trend has been to post your running routes after completion to celebrate the distance, pace, or new route tried out to share with your following. By all accounts, one might think that if you have a smartphone that can track that data and are making admirable progress, why not post about it? 

What’s the Risk?

A Twitter thread from August 2020 first noted the dangers of posting your running route online, and within hours of the Tweet’s publication, hundreds of women were sharing horror stories of stalkers tracking women via these public profiles. Many running apps will save and share your route history for you to track your progress. The popular MapMyRun (link) stores the information on your run history in its “Explore” tab, making it easy for anybody on the app to see all of your previous runs and map out where you could plausibly be. Other apps may not publicize the data, but users will post pictures of their routes online because they are proud of their physical accomplishment. While celebrating achievements is healthy, for some people the publication of running routes may open the door for stalkers or other malicious individuals to learn your constant whereabouts or home address. 

In one such instance documented by a British blogger, author Rosie Spinks describes her struggle with a stalker on a run-tracking app, even despite her heightened privacy security on the app. The logistics of the app meant that even though some of her statistics would not be publicized, her running route and other information was published on the main app “leaderboard” where anybody could like or observe her workouts. This lack of privacy is just one of the main things women and other victims have to contend with.

What to Do About It?

Fantastic question. I wish I was the be-all, end-all genius who could solve the ever-present problem of womens’ safety in the age of technology. However, there are some things everyone can do right now to ensure your safety moving forward.

Update your privacy settings. No, really-- go double check them. You might just find that what you think is hiding your data from public view is actually only protecting a small portion of your information. If it says anything about sharing on leaderboards, community forums, or with your followers, think twice. Better to err on the side of caution.

Stop posting your routes on Facebook! We’re all so proud that you’ve reached your new highest distance/lowest mile time/saw a beautiful building on the back half of your run. Keep killing it! Just STOP. POSTING. PICTURES. ONLINE. If you truly think that your status update isn’t the same without adding an image, be sure to crop the route you ran out of the picture. You never know which friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend is going to see that at the end of the day.

Always stay alert. You can’t control everything that’s happening around you on a run. Even if you take every possible precaution, there are always external variables that may throw you for a loop. Make sure someone you trust knows where you are (Now’s the perfect opportunity for your smartphone! Drop your location!) and keep an eye out for anything that may seem amiss during your run.

It’s a sad truth that many of us, particularly women, have to stay on top of our surroundings while we’re out and about. However, that shouldn’t mean you can’t enjoy your run-- just protect yourself as best you can while doing it, and then go out and kill it!

Sources

https://www.techtimes.com/articles/251695/20200810/psa-stalkers-will-know-your-running-routes-online-dont-post-running-activities.htm

https://gizmodo.com/stop-posting-your-running-routes-online-1844634905

https://qz.com/1042852/using-a-fitness-app-taught-me-the-scary-truth-about-why-privacy-settings-are-a-feminist-issue/

https://twitter.com/jihanmarie_/status/1290996786245464064

[chipotle]

Panic's Nova text editor (a review)

Review: Panic’s Nova text editor

Panic, the long-established makers of Mac utility software, seems fully aware that introducing a new, commercial code editor in 2020 is a quixotic proposition. Is there enough of an advantage to a native editor over both old school cross-platform editors like Emacs and explosively popular new editors like Visual Studio Code to persuade people to switch?

I’m an unusual case as far as text editor users go: my primary job is technical writing, and the last three jobs that I’ve worked at have a “docs as code” approach, where we write documentation in Markdown and manage it under version control just like source code. The editor that works best for me in tech writing is the venerable BBEdit. When it comes to editing code, though, BBEdit lags behind. My suspicion is that BBEdit’s lack of an integrated package manager has hurt it here. Also, BBEdit’s language modules don’t support extending one another, making it effectively impossible to do full highlighting for a templating language like JSX or Jinja.

When I was a web programmer, I was one of many who moved to TextMate, and used it for everything for a while. When the Godot-like wait for TextMate 2.0 became unbearable, I wandered the text editing wilderness, eventually splitting my loyalties between BBEdit, Sublime Text, and more recently VS Code. At this point, I suspect nothing will pull me away from BBEdit for technical writing, but for programming I’m open to persuasion.

So: meet Nova.

I’ve been using Nova off and on in beta for months. I’ve reported some bugs, although I may mention a couple here that I didn’t catch until after 1.0’s release. And, I’m going to compare it to the GUI editors that I’ve been using recently: BBEdit, Sublime Text, and VS Code.

Nova is a pretty editor, as far as such things go, and with files of relatively reasonable size it’s fast. With stupid huge files its performance drops noticeably, though. This isn’t just the ridiculous 109MB, nearly 450,000-line SQL file I threw at it once, it’s also with a merely 2MB, 50,000-line SQL file, and Nova’s offer to turn off syntax highlighting in both files didn’t help it much. This may sound like a silly test, but in my day job I’m occasionally stuck editing an 80,000-line JSON file by hand (don’t ask). This is something BBEdit and VS Code can do without complaint. Panic wrote their own text editing engine for Nova, which is brave, but it needs more tuning for pathological cases like these. They may not come up often, but almost every programmer has one stupid huge file to deal with.

Nova has an integrated terminal and an integrated SSH client, and even an integrated file transfer system based on Panic’s Transmit. In fact, if you have Transmit and use Panic Sync, it knows all of those servers out of the box. Nova has a task workflow system for automating building and running. You can associated servers, tasks, and more with individual projects; Nova’s project settings are considerably more comprehensive than I’ve seen in other editors. You can even set up remote tasks. Nova has a serviceable Git client built in, too. Like VS Code, Nova uses JavaScript for its extension API, and it has built-in Language Server Protocol support—it’s a superbly solid foundation.

Beyond that, some smaller features have become table stakes for modern GUI editors, and Nova handles them with aplomb. “Open Quickly” can jump to any file in the open project, as well as search by symbols or just symbols in currently open files; it has a command palette; you can comprehensively edit keybindings. It has multiple cursor support for those of us who like that, and a “mini map” view for those of you who like that, although know that you are wrong. Nova’s selection features include “Select all in scope” and “Select all between brackets,” a command I often use in BBEdit and miss dearly in Code. (Both Nova and BBEdit select between brackets and braces, although BBEdit also selects between parentheses.) This effectively becomes “Select between tags” in HTML, a nice touch. There are a few other commands like “Select all in function” and “Select all in scope” that I didn’t have any luck in making work at all; a little more documentation would be nice.

That’s worth an aside. Panic has created a “library” of tech note-style articles about Nova sorted by publication date rather than an actual manual, and it’s not always easy to find the information you want in it. I know this is just what a technical writer would say, but I’d dearly like to see a human-organized table of contents starting with the editor basics and moving to advanced topics like version control, server publishing and extension authoring.

The Zen of Language Servers

A lot of Visual Studio Code’s smarts depend on the implementation of a “language server” behind the scenes: language servers offer almost spookily intelligent completion. For instance, take this PHP snippet:

if ($allowed) { $response = new Response(405); $response->

If you have the Intelephense PHP language server plugin, Code understands that $response is an instance of Response and, after you type the > above, offers completions of method names from the Response class.

Right now, Nova’s mostly limited to the language servers Panic provides, and they’re… not always so smart. In that snippet above, Nova starts by offering completions of, apparently, everything in the open project, starting with the variables. If I type “s,” it narrows things down to methods that begin with “s,” but it’s all methods that start with “s” rather than just the methods from Response. The “Jump to Definition” command shows a similar lack of context; if I highlight a method name that’s defined in multiple places, Nova shows me a popup menu and prompts me to choose which one to jump to, rather than introspecting the code to make that decision itself.

But, this is a solvable problem: there’s (I think) no reason someone couldn’t write an Inteliphense plugin for Nova. If Nova’s ecosystem takes off, it could be pretty formidable pretty quickly.

Walk like a Mac

Even so, LSP support isn’t Panic’s biggest selling point. Unlike Sublime Text or VS Code, Nova isn’t cross-platform: it’s a Mac-only program written to core platform APIs. Is that still a huge draw in 2020? (Is it instead a drawback?)

You can definitely see a difference between Nova and BBEdit on one side and Sublime and Code on the other in terms of resource usage. With the two Ruby files shown in the screenshot above loaded, I get:

VS Code: 355 MB, 6 processes

Sublime Text: 338 MB, 2 processes

Nova: 101 MB, 2 processes

BBEdit: 97 MB, 1 process

Code is an Electron-based program, although Microsoft famously puts a lot of effort into making it not feel like the black hole a lot of Electron-based apps are. Sublime uses its own proprietary cross-platform framework. In fairness, while us nerds like to harp on research usage a lot, if your computer’s got 16G or more of RAM in it, this probably isn’t a big deal.

You notice Nova’s essential Mac-ness in other ways. Its preference pane is, like BBEdit’s, an actual preference pane, instead of opening in another tab like Code or just opening a JSON file in a new tab (!) like Sublime. And while all editors better have first-class keyboard support—and Nova does—a good Mac editor should have first-class mouse support, too, and it does. You notice that in the drag-and-drop support for creating new tabs and splits. Nova’s sidebar is also highly customizable, possibly more so than any editor I’ve regularly used. (Yes, Emacs fans, I know you can write all of Nova in Lisp if you want. When one of you does that, please get back to me.)

Unlike BBEdit, though, Nova doesn’t have a Mac-like title bar, or a Mac-like outline view of the project files, or Mac-like tabs. (Well, BBEdit doesn’t have tabs at all, which turns out to be a great UI decision once you have a dozen or more files open, but never mind.) This isn’t necessarily bad; people often say BBEdit “looks old,” and it’s hard not to suspect that what people mean by that—whether or not they know it—is that it looks like the long-established Mac program it is. Nova is relying less on “we have a Mac UI and the other guys don’t” than on “we have Panic’s designers and the other guys don’t.” Make no mistake, having Panic’s designers counts for a lot.

What may be more disappointing to old school Mac nerds is AppleScript support: none whatsoever. It doesn’t even have a vestigial script dictionary. Again, this may not be something most people care much about; personally, I hate having to write AppleScript. But I love being able to write AppleScript. BBEdit’s extensive scriptability is one of its hidden strengths. Nova’s Node-based JavaScript engine is probably more powerful for its own extensions and certainly more accessible to anyone under the age of 50, but it may be hard to call it from external programs.

So is it worth it?

That probably depends on where you’re coming from.

If you loved—or still use—Panic’s older editor, Coda, this is a no-brainer upgrade. If you used Espresso, a Coda-ish editor that always seemed to be on the verge of greatness without ever reaching it, Nova may also be a no-brainer for you.

If you’re a fan of Sublime Text, BBEdit, TextMate, or another editor that doesn’t have native Language Server Protocol support, you should definitely try Nova. Sublime and TextMate have more plugins (especially Sublime), but many extensions seem to be languishing (especially TextMate). BBEdit never had a great extension ecosystem to start with. All of these editors have strengths Nova doesn’t, but the reverse is also true, and Nova may catch up.

If you’re an Emacs or Vim power user, we both know you’re just reading this out of academic interest and you’re not going to switch. C’mon.

If you use Visual Studio Code, though, it’s way tougher to make the case for Nova. Code has a vastly larger extension library. It has the best support for LSP of any editor out there (LSP was developed for Code). Despite being Electron-based, it’s pretty high-performance. Code doesn’t have an integrated SSH or FTP client, but it does have an integrated terminal and task runner and Git client. If you don’t object to using an editor that isn’t a “perfect fit” with the Mac UI, Code is very, very good… and it’s free.

I don’t object to Nova’s pricing model—$99 up front including a year of updates, $49 for future years of updates—but I can’t help but wonder if Panic should have gone with super aggressive introductory pricing. Also, I saw more than a few suggestions on Hacker News about how there should be a Code-to-Nova extension translator; I’m not sure automatic conversion would be practical, but a guide on manual conversion seems like an excellent idea.

For my day job of technical writing, I’m going to stick to BBEdit. (One day I’ll write up an article about why I think it’s the best “documentation as code” editor on the market.) For programming and web editing, when I was working on both a Ruby and a PHP project—the former a Rails learning exercise, the latter an obstinate “I am going to write a modern PHP app without using a framework” exercise—I kept trying Nova’s betas and then switching back to Code for Inteliphense and, I swear to God, MacVim for Tim Pope’s amazing rails.vim plugin. I suspect Nova could duplicate both of those, but I’m not sure I want to be the one to do it. (Also, while Panic has decent reference documentation for writing extensions, I’d like to see a few simple end-to-end walkthroughs for those of us who look at a huge list of reference topics and don’t know where to start.)

But Nova isn’t just pretty, it’s powerful, and has a lot of promise. The editors I’ve been comparing it to have been around since 2015 for VS Code, 2008 for Sublime Text, and 1992 (!) for BBEdit; it’s not reasonable to expect Nova to blow past them in every respect right out of the starting gate. Even so, they are Nova’s competition. Catching up fast is an essential requirement.

So: yes, I’ve bought Nova, and I’m rooting for Panic here. I’ll come back in a year and report if I’m willing to stay on the update train.

[legionofpotatoes]

My assorted musings/theories about Control in one post!! I am having a lot of fun dissecting the implications of all the information we’re getting tiny peeks at. This WILL be a thought torrent so I won’t make any literary-essay-level structuring promises; click through at your own risk of losing sanity over my tangents.

So the base axiom the lore stands on is that reality in Control is shaped by the collective human subconscious in unpredictable ways, causing altered world events, subsequently creating altered items imbued with archetypal properties in correspondence with their historic context, and generally having things go way out of whack. 

But, as seen with the whole slide projector hubbub, we also know that other realities/dimensions exist in their own right and can, by virtue of their agenda, and not that of our thought, attempt to invade our reality through resonance-based means. Their motives can run the gamut but we know that their involvement/influence can have far-reaching consequences on our reality.

(there is an argument to be made that both the Hedron and the Hiss could have been extremely potent creations/projections of Jesse and Dylan’s minds altogether, especially since Polaris exists within one of them inherently, and that the slidescapes could simply have been an extension of the slide projector’s astral power still fully fed on human perceptions. But this theory sort-of runs everything else to the ground and makes us the center of the universe, and I don’t like that too much).

This is where the Oldest House comes in! And I love its deeply rooted historic/theological implications just as much as its impression at face value. I believe that since time immemorial, the Oldest House was a stabilizing element, a kind of ward against dimensional rifts threatening our reality. And it did that by presenting itself as a guide for human thought; a house of worship, a monument to service, whichever concept happened to elicit inherent respect and trust in that period of time, allowing the House to then control (ha) our thought through belief systems. Today, it’s a brutalist office building with no windows, which is, like, so on point. But anyway.

The Board. We know that it controls the Oldest House to an extent. Whether it represents the gods and deities we once made up is hard to tell, but its influence over the House’s functions is clear. We know that it had chosen individuals in the past to possibly represent the House’s intentions (today – the Directors of the FBC), giving them access to the Service Weapon and a direct link to the astral plane. I believe these would be our Thors and King Arthurs and Greek heroes and what have you. We KNOW that the Service Weapon is, by definition, the archetypal concept of “weapon” as shaped by human thought, and that the BFC suspects its past forms may have included Mjolnir and Excalibur among others. Today, it’s a handgun. Again, the implications. Delicious.

And I think the Oldest House is the same way; constantly shifting form, shape, and even geographical location to best fit its own archetypal concept, which I conflated with place of respect and/or worship up there, but even that can change to best fit the agenda of, what I think, is stabilizing and warding our reality against foreign resonances. It does this by presenting itself as a guidebook for human thought, tapping into our inherent astral potency, and utilizing resulting constructs – the Service Weapon, the anointed Director, and certain altered items – to serve its own upkeep. As directed by The Board.

(I believe that is also part of the reason why the FBC ended up discovering the House when it did – The Board allowed it per the alignment of the Bureau’s motives with its own. They both wanted to identify, neutralize, and contain AWEs both external and internal in order to keep the public – and by extension their thoughts – fully under control. I believe this had happened numerous times in the past, as well)

But to circle back – why does The House need upkeep at all? My guess is, it’s an extension of the initial agenda, and we KNOW it is inherently tied to (read: contains) thresholds, or dimensional rifts, or just other worlds. Let’s call them other worlds. The Oldest House is an ever-shifting place of power that both shapes and is shaped by human thought, in order to keep that very human thought – our “resonance” – the sole dominating astral force in our dimension. It focuses all incoming “traffic” within its walls and creates the thresholds as bottlenecks – while the traffic it can’t focus on itself, it contains, and brings in anyway - and finally, it uses the Director to keep all these foreign rifts and aberrations in check.

We are the House’s assistant. Familiar word? There’s one person in Control who keeps calling us their assistant despite our formal title being a peg above that definition. It is the Janitor – another very common archetype of stabilization, maintenance, fixing things up; in this case, Ahti – The Janitor – is simply a way for the House, and not The Board, to communicate its intent. The Janitor is as much part of the place of power as are its walls and rooms. They are one and the same. And a Janitor is a role that would be chosen with very particular intent. He knows the House’s innards as intimately as he knows how to keep them functioning.

So to recap, again – The House both feeds on and forms human thought constructs in order to keep other worlds at bay and is very much willing to directly cooperate with people when that agenda is mutually expressed. What if this whole entire system then, of a dimensional hub, a place of power trying to keep our resonance separate from others, is in itself a construct, an ancient expression of a basic human need? Or rather, a basic human emotional response? To go a bit meta, as a story with thematic underpinnings, that would make a sensible endgame to Control’s ideas and messaging. 

The Oldest House exists because we needed it to exist, and by consequence, we saved OURSELVES from the Hiss. Among a lot of other things in the past, I’d reckon. And The Board is our “representative” in the astral plane. We made them, too. We cocooned ourselves in constructs that would protect us from all outside resonances – all outside worlds – all outside points of view.

So what am I saying? Is The Oldest House a staunch apotheosis of conservative thought given form? I’m not willing to bet my life on it, but again, it all oddly falls into place. Think about it.

TRENCH let the Hiss in. Why? We’re told the Director of the Oldest House grew irrationally scared of the Hedron’s (arguably benevolent) influence and opted to fight it with fire; with an otherworldy horror. My guess is the House made him do that. The Board, sorry, made him do it. As firm believers in isolating humanity’s resonance from all others, they feared the Hedron’s presence as a variable incompatible with that agenda, and brought the Hiss in AS A WAY of proving their point, of keeping the cycle of fear strong in humanity’s thought, by killing Hedron and then using a newly appointed, freshly brainwashed Director Faden to remove the Hiss from the equation, as well. 

Status quo restored, all branches clipped, everyone agrees other dimensions bad.

The emotional response I mentioned was fear. We created The Oldest House out of fear. Fear of the unknown. And it became a feedback loop that disallowed us to ever consider anything else outside of our world as anything other than a threat.

Oh and you know what’s a real swanky way to impose fear on a willing humanity? *guitar riff* religion babyyyyyy

To wit, The Board refers to the House as a Tree at one point. We can find a scribbling of a tree in the Foundation. Ahti hands us a cassette tape from “his old friends” – and the band that starts playing call themselves the Old Gods of Asgard. So a tree connecting worlds. A housekeeper who is a friend to Odin’s pantheon. A chosen hero wielding Mjolnir. Did the House parade as the Yggdrasil at one point? Followed by some other nexus of blind human faith or a system of belief? Or just as religion itself?! And since now we all worship capitalism or some other forms of financial labor/revenue funnels and shoot each other dead in the streets, our Oldest House is an office building smack dab in the middle of Manhattan, its Director carries a literal handgun, and together they keep us safe from outsiders.

It all makes sense with a big ole asterisk that spells out “Yikes” in the end. 

Except there’s a caveat here cause!!! Within Jesse lives a spark left behind by Hedron; within her lives Polaris, a remnant of the slidescape, of the outer worlds; a hope for maybe liberating human thought of the endless cycle of fear that keeps it under its own Control. Will we bring the Oldest House down in a possible sequel? Is Jesse a Trojan horse? A byproduct of the Board’s arrogance? I mean we KNOW the pyramid is a hyperfocused, almost blatantly jealous entity that downright bribed us with healthcare plans in order to steer us away from The Former, another extradimensional being that was trying to get in through altered items. So maybe the House itself can be preserved, and its agenda retrofitted, and it is the Board we will have to tear down. It still all fits.

The Board is our projection of fear, the Oldest House is the wall we built to protect ourselves, and Jesse is poised to bring it all down. That’s my theory in a nutshell!!!!

I think I’ll end here for now. I could be entirely wrong about EVERYTHING here but the JUICE in this story is too damn nourishing, dudes.

[cowtale-utau]

Sans/Ace INTJ vs ENTP

Welp this is not the full breakdown I’m working on but. This is contributing to that? I was asked about my type choice (which I super don’t mind! I love a good debate) and this will help in breaking down that part of the full work up. It’s super friggin long. I’d apologize, but I wouldn’t really mean it. Anyway, here we go.

First lets look at the functional stacks

INTJ / NiFeTiSe (NiTe) vs ENTP / NeTiFeSi (NeTi)

Ni – Internal intuition vs Ne – Extroverted intuition

Sans is suspiciously intuitive. There was no argument that Intuitive was going to be part of his typing. How the intuition functions and is used is where we have some point of potential debate. This comes down in many ways to how Jung viewed extroversion vs introversion. Extroverts are characterized as expansive and expressive, with short attention spans and rapidly shifting focus. They also tend to have relationships characterized by breath as opposed to depth. That is, many, more “shallow” relationships, rather than fewer, “deeper” connections. Conversely introverts are more focused and narrow, spending more time and energy on fewer things they give more value. Ne tends to have a wider range of hobbies and skills, while never focusing enough to master any, while Ni tends to develop mastery in fewer, selected areas. Ne also tends to want to bounce topics and visit many areas of conversation, while Ni wants to focus in on a singular topic to explore as deeply as possible. Ne wants to have many options while Ni wants to zero in on one singular answer.

Honestly, you can see traces of both Ne and Ni in Sans personality. He has a broad range of skills, and a pretty large number of arguably shallow “friendships”. He also keeps a very small number of deeper, more developed relationships, and there is evidence of him having a few areas he has a much deeper knowledge of.

Getting into the real differences is easier when you pair Ni/Ne with their respective sidekicks. Thus we have NiSe and NeSi. If we go by type theory Ni uses information Se has subconsciously gathered to find patterns and themes in their environment. They cast a wide sensory net to take clues from all possible inputs, visual, auditory, etc. They then use this data to compile a narrow underlying pattern. Conversely NeSi, draws on repeated snapshots of experiences to compile an established pattern to put forth a range of possible “what ifs”.

A simplification of what separates Ni from Ne can be put as such; Ni  is insight, Ne is ingenuity. Both E and I express intuition in their focus on the metaphysical and theoretical. NJ's can be seen as less creative while NP's are less able to come up with convergent ideas. ENPs see several potentials in everything, they struggle to trace back to a single causality. ENPs often take a “spray and pray” method, and are surprised should they hit upon the correct answer. They won't likely trust this as the true answer until they've tested and exhausted all possibilities.

INTJ and ENTP functions are perfect flips of one another and are often mis-typed. 

INTJ: Dominant: Introverted Intuition Auxilliary: Extraverted Thinking Tertiary: Introverted Feeling Inferior: Extraverted Sensing ENTP: Dominant: Extraverted Intuition Auxiliary: Introverted Thinking Tertiary: Extraverted Feeling Inferior: Introverted Sensing

Personally I'm inclined to lean towards Ni for Sans, but both are viable options. In fact both are so viable, that this breakdown wasn't particularly helpful. But it was interesting, and fun so I'm not mad I did it. So lets try this from a different angle. This time I'm going to ignore “stacks” and look at the purely E vs I, T vs P, etc break downs, and include my personal opinions on them, and how I got to the choice I did for Sans.

Introversion vs Extroversion

E – Energy is outward, towards people and things. Gains energy by being with people, batteries drain when alone. Need stimulation and are expressive. Like variety, action, and achievement. Communicate openly without censure. Allow conversation without conclusion. Take words at face value.

I – Energy focused inwards, towards ideas and concepts. Recharge with “me time”, drained by crowds and company. Tend to be reserved, and can seem subtle or “impenetrable”. Think before they act, often taking time to make a decision.

When I first typed Sans I had to ask, is he an introvert, or just depressed. I think it cannot be argued whether or not Sans suffers from depression. The indicators are there. It is a widely accepted view. However, I do not believe this excludes him from being an introvert. I see Sans as a social introvert. He likes people in general, enjoys crowds, from a comfortable distance. He keeps most relationships at arms length, and needs time alone to recoup. Sans is a very guarded and reserved individual, who can play at being an open book. He deflects with jokes and entertainment, but how many can say they are genuinely close to Sans. Even Papyrus is kept at a certain distance despite Sans clear love for his brother. I think Sans is kinda the poster child for the misconception that introverts are isolationists that hate people. They (cough we cough) aren't. They just need time to themselves to reorient, and re-energize. And that doesn't necessarily mean complete isolation either. This can often be achieved in the company of those held especially dear, or by simply withdrawing, even around company. This can be seen in Sans choosing to be at Grillby's but choosing a somewhat “closed” location. Yes he's towards the center of the room, but he's at the corner of the bar. He directly faces only Grillby. Or a common fanon example, Sans shutting down and allowing himself to be lugged around by Papyrus. He stays physically present, and is likely taking in the going ons, but has disengaged on a personal/social level.

Intuiting vs Sensing

S – Focus on immediate thought and sensory input. Trust conscious, limiting to facts and solid data. Pay attention to immediate, material, practical and “real”.  Work on a clear schedule and use logic to work in a direct sequence. Practical, realistic, grounded, direct.

N – Process data on a deep, subconscious level, trusting “gut feelings”. Spot patterns and take broad high level “big picture” views. Enjoy ideas and theories, are willing to work with factual evidence on a “instinct”. Change and adapt plans as information changes.

While I suppose an argument could be made for either I'm inclined to pin Sans as an N. Especially if one dismisses the “Sans remembers resets” theory. One cannot deny he uses facial cues and behaviors to make “gut” predictions about the player character/Frisk. Sans does not strike me as one to stick to any schedule not externally enforced by others (Papyrus). He doesn't need solid proof to make an accurate assessment, and trusts his own instincts. Somewhat unrelated to current discussion but one could argue a case for Sans having some almost... Arrogance in this regard. He is so confident in his assessment that he calls you on it, despite having no solid, in hand, proof of any of his accusations. This is a man who trusts his own mind.

Thinking vs Feeling

T – Thing logically and with reason. Desire fairness and objectivity. Black/White mentality. Seek truth and clear use of the rules. Sometimes forget or dismiss the “person” variable. Prefer truth over tact. Analyze pros and cons, and when a decision is made, consider it done.

F – Make decisions based on the feelings and considerations of others. The 'person' element is the first and primary considered. Value harmony, and try to be tactful even at the cost of some truth. Some times overlook the “hard” facts and can come off idealistic.

Here's another area where both typings agree. Sans is very much to me a T. Despite his apparent “easy to get along with” nature he can clearly lack tact (as seen in his 'you'd be dead where you stand' line). It's clear he is capable of dismissing the “people” component as seen in a neutral run. Even if you are to kill his brother there is little reaction beyond a few (or single, I'm slightly tipsy and my memory sucks) lines about his upset. This could theoretically be blamed on the nihilism/depression we see present, but could also be tied into his objective way of thinking (and if one considers that he's at least distantly aware that the outcome isn't permanent than this way further leans into T type. He knows it isn't the end, and so can accept that even if his brother is dead now, he won't be later, allowing him to remove emotion from the equation). If his magic coloring is tied into the presented soul traits the desire for fairness and objectivity is clearly seen in his secondary (?) Justice trait. I also believe Sans very much has a Black/White view of morality/the world. You can see this in the neutral run. While he may not attack you in anything less than No Mercy/Genocide, he definitely calls you out. Even just reaching LV of 2 is enough for Sans to express disgust in both you and your actions. This suggests he has absolutely no leniency in his views.

Judging vs Perceiving

J – Decisive and controlled. Are rigid and take charge of their environments, making choices early. Specific in what they ask, and expect others to do as told. Seek order and closure. Like to have time for preparation. Enjoy being experts.

P – Feel limited by structure. Feel more in control when options are left open. Thrive with the unexpected and are open to change. Tend to be loose and casual. Work in bursts. Are tolerant of people differences and will adapt to fit a situation.

And here's the other where the two potential types vary. And I can see a case for either. Its when all the parts are taken in together that I lean towards J over P. (although if we went with the percentages system I could see him as being fairly close, and sometimes slipping one way or the other over the line. I've know a couple of people personally who do so every now and then. A close friend of mine regularly tests at 51/49 in their J/P alternating between INFJ and INFP) I think when balancing Sans' N and T it comes together more comfortably in J. His rigid morality suggests a lack of tolerance and adaptability. Once he starts something, he sees it through to completion. His desire for the cycle of resets to be stopped can be seen as a need for closure, but I think we can dismiss it as extenuating circumstances. Anyone would want it to stop after a fashion, even if they are only distantly aware of the occurrence.  I think Sans straddles the J/P line leaning slightly more into J. He needs order and routine, but is stiffed by too rigid of a structure. I think for me this ultimately came down to me viewing Sans (or perhaps Ace in this case) as an ultimately science leaning mind. He needs answers. He needs clear, clean answers, and not getting them is distressing. While he may like to keep his options open in some areas of his life, overall he prefers to know what he's getting into, and how he's going to handle it. He's a free personality, that dislikes an unpredictable world. He wants to know where the end is, and have several methods of getting there. Not knowing the answers is scary, and Sans/Ace hates being scared.

So there's that. I don't know if any of it made any sense, but there you have it. How I typed Sans and why. Bare in mind, that this is also a half fanon typing. This is at least in part, based on occurrences after the events of canon Undertale, and how Sans/Ace behaved then. (you’ll see more of that in his full workup) As well as being based on some headcanons, though I tried to be fairly sparing with them. I also find myself frustrated as to the lack of information on Sans behavior/personality prior to the events of the game. What was Sans like, before the resets, before the depression. I would love to see what Sans had been like when he was younger. Alas, this is unlikely to ever happen. But anywho, this got way long, and if you manage to actually get through the whole thing I would love to hear your opinions. How do you type Sans, and why? Is there some glaring in game clue I missed? I'm totally open to friendly discussion on the topic, if you want. I included a couple links that give a pretty good rundown of the different functions and how they come together.

https://www.typeinmind.com/nite

https://www.typeinmind.com/neti

[mysticalmindblog]

A candid look at one of the most common sources of heartbreak and sadness readily available to each and every human being. The Internet is awash with memes and quotes mixing Positive Affirmation with Expectation. The reality is that when you are prone to expecting something, you are opening doors inviting disappointment and suffering to visit.

THEME: Until you can accept what is, you will never move into what could be.

Look back on your life, and count the many times you feel you have been let down, deflated, disenfranchised, because expectations and promised results didn't come to fruition. How much suffering have you gone through in your life because you mentally and emotionally invested far too much in expectations that proved unrealistic..??

There is a glut of memes and quotes all over Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and many other online sources that are very generic and 'feel good' but with no substance.

Examples are:

You Deserve It, So Expect It

Expect and You Will Receive

You're a Winner, Expect Great Things

It's Good to Know What to Expect

You Are Unique So Expect Unique Things

etc. etc. etc.

Some of these quotes have tens of thousands of likes. The problem is that they are so general and generic that the presupposition is applying to ego, rather than the truth. It is part of the 'INSTANT' gratification "Feel-Good" motivational movement that is nothing more than a mental band-aid rather than an enlightening revelation.

There's also a fine line between expectations & dependency. There is another fine line between expectations & an entitlement mentality. Inevitably, to be in expectation of something opens up the doors of possibility to disappointment & suffering. It is far preferable to work with Mindful intention instead, in the present moment you are in, to project desired results.

Expectations

Having expectations being thwarted leads to very deep sadness and longings... They can just rip out all of your cultivation and capacity for being able to give kindness and compassion to others and can make your soul stale.

They can make a warm heart turn ice cold.

They can cause mental anguish and intense frustration.

Expectations, for the most part, are made up of the imagined desired results for a future moment in time. They represent a large percentage of thoughts that are dedicated to the variables of the future. Expectations represent a diversion from present mindfulness, away from the moment you are in into the unknown moments of the future.

Truthfully, we all suffer from vulnerabilities intertwined with emotional dependency on expectations projected, like architectural blueprints, on those around us. Disappointment after disappointment wears down our patience, as well as our ability to trust and give unconditionally.

On the extreme far end of the mental spectrum, many people who walk around in a constant state of anxiousness due to 'Expectation', also exhibit egocentric and entitled behavioral patterns.

It's a trap.

Over-indulgent and pampered personalities tend to lead lives where they expect, and expect, and expect (the best, the more, the most), and often with emphasis on being entertained and distracted by nonsense more-so than anyone else around them, or the VIP treatment; is another way to put it.

Disassociate

It is for me an ongoing quest, to disassociate from emotionally attaching to high hopes and expectations in regards to the attitude, words, and actions of others.

From family, to friends, to acquaintances and strangers, in a variety of settings, they will invariably surprise you in a negative way at some point or other; it is inevitable. Often this is because we invest far too much expectation upon them. In some ways, our expectations can become so unrealistic, that they depend on the person in question making personality changes that are not even made clear.

I talk often of the Noisy Mind condition; where we go from moment to moment not actually living in the moment, but living either in the past, or the future, or even worse: Both simultaneously - all without actually living mindfully in the present moment.

The inherent problem with setting expectations in regards to all those you have come to know is that we always seem to set the bar too high. It helps me to look inside myself at my own failings, and the ways I could improve myself - before looking to others for inspiration. Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, setting expectations makes us deviate away from present-moment mindfulness.

Here are some plain truths:

We have NO control over anyone but OURSELVES.

We have NO ability to see the FUTURE.

We have NO ability to change the PAST.

We live in NO other moment but the moment we are IN.

We have NO better immunity against emotional pain than ACCEPTANCE.

We have NO better immunity against anger than COMPASSION.

The ONLY one who can truly know you is YOU.

The ONLY one who can use the key that unlocks your heart is YOU.

The ONLY one who can make you change who you are is YOU.

So basically this article comes down to some harsh and unpleasant facts; such as dealing with the negative aspects of people that WILL invariably either go out of their way to hurt you, or alternatively hurt you in their ignorance. As such, you measure the depth of your sufferings and pain based on your expectations.

Expectation is a strong form of attachment making. It is that which will sink deep hooks into your most sensitive nerves, and will ever-so-often bring tremendous suffering.

Now it is important to point out here that I am not saying that as far as I am concerned, it is best to go around looking at everyone through cringing and skeptical eyes, treating them all as potential antagonists - definitely not. Alternatively, what I am saying is what I actually try to practice daily, treat others as you wish to be treated, but don't attach to the expectation that they will reciprocate. It is as simple a recipe as that.

The Alternative

The 2nd Noble Truth of Buddhism teaches that 'Suffering' is due to attachments and expectations, to grasping and clinging. This truth is a secular truth whatever your belief system.

So how do we liberate ourselves..??

You can literally transform your life by learning your own personal art of "Letting Go.."

It is a matter-of-fact that by cultivating and changing your mental thought processes, you can relieve emotional discomforts and pain, and chief among those changes are the way you accept & embrace change.

Realizing how we instinctively react when provoked by broken expectations and unexpected change, and then modifying the way we react can help us break out of the need to be micro-managing every little detail of an uncertain future, and individuals in our lives who we have no power to change or control, and instead, we can simply embrace with acceptance of the present moment we are in.

It's only possible in the present moment that we will find the courage to cross the threshold of the unknown and relax into the changes we cannot avoid.

The Attachment of a Sense of Predictability

It is a Human condition, we feel that much more secure when we are assured that we possess a sense of predictability, and in that effort we invariably develop a great capacity for denying a very basic & simple truth which is 'that nothing stays the same'.

Such a denial can invoke an inner arrogance, an egoic but illusionary 'reality' construct; and then along comes the unpredictability of life, and through loved ones, friends, or life changing situations, we are painfully shown that even if we do everything "right" and exercise every precaution, we can still face extreme disappointment and unexpected loss.

As such, all too frequently, rather than surrender to the inevitability of change, and embrace it, and work creatively with it, we Humans resort to the anxiety & fear-based behavior of forcing situations to occur the way we want them to, and to take charge and exert pressure on other people and situations to conform to our expectations. Again, this is a terrible trap.

Your inability to avoid disappointment, broken expectations, and deflated dreams as well as accepting change may make you wrathfully angry, sad, depressed, and frustrated. It can be hard to let go of the false belief that the only way to achieve happiness again is to regain what's been lost. Even when you know you can't reverse the situation, you may enter into a perpetual suffering, and constantly agonize over this unwanted reality, knowing no inner peace as a result.

When faced with disappointment and broken expectations, we can mistakenly cling on to what once was, actively avoiding the needed process of grief and acceptance, and end up in a constant state of non-growth and life paralysis; grasping for a future set of circumstances or a situation identical to the past holding you back from discovering what better roads lie ahead, just around the corner, simply just outside of your vision. The desire to backslide, or reconstruct the known comforts of the past will almost always result in you walking around in circles, lost in the ashes of the unchangeable past, instead of venturing forth with mindfulness and actively taking steps to look around those corners and see new ways to grow, new paths to follow.

Change your Perspective

The change in perspective that invariably happens when we come to the enlightening conclusion that there's no such thing as a permanent comfort zone, or feeling of happiness, will allow us to embark on a voyage of healing from suffering. It leads to a rise in wisdom, a new understanding, and helps us take the next brave step which is to accept that we must often be broken to mould ourselves anew, and broaden our reality giving a new definition of what we need in order to be productive, happy, and liberated - giving up the old and painful habits of clinging and grasping, as well as the need to control external circumstances and future events.

It's important to balance the concept of something you want, with an acceptance of what is, right in the moment you are in. It is no good wanting something for what you want it to be, rather than wanting it for what it is now in the present. You MUST know your limits.

This subtle balance which is a mindset to adopt, allows you to live in this, the present moment and trust that your acceptance of a given situation or individual or concept, will relieve the suffering and confusion that comes when not things do not go the way you 'expect' them.

In other words, having expectations is an inevitable Human condition, but it is down to your Mindful clear thinking on how much you invest in those expectations, and how realistic they are, cognitively understanding that everything is impermanent, even expectations, that will clear the brain-fog of confusion, unnecessary emotional attachments, and distractions, and show you the path to move into a more clear and unrestricted, happier, way of life.

When we cling to the past or what no longer serves us, we contract ourselves to the point where we're unable to be nourished and invigorated by the present moment. We have to accept that what's past has truly passed in order to open up to what the present moment offers us. In this opening we become nourished, refreshed and revitalized.

Finally, it takes us making an effort, and acknowledging not only our own flaws and damaging personality traits, but also for the most part, understanding that the general population ultimately only care for themselves and their own comfort zones and closed circles, and will extract what they can for their own pleasures and comforts from whoever can supply it the soonest. That's the modern sociologically imprinted "I want it and deserve it and I want it now" illusionary construct. It is damaging to everyone, and leads to awful entitlement issues.

We can CHOOSE not to be that way. That's part of the old 'primitive' brain that is programmed with a genetic self-preservation instinct and gets combined with the ego to the point that so many end up with toxic personalities.

If we see it, recognize it, choose not to be a part of it, and instead take care of all that we have power over (ourselves), then we can be liberated from the suffering it can cause.

Knowing this, it is up to us as the responsible entities to go within and make the changes necessary to better deal with those occurrences, and live more in the present moment while annihilating our expectations of things we have absolutely no control over.

[myyeslifeofficial]

The Top Mindset Lessons I Learned as a Military Spouse

:…..

The Top Mindset Lessons I Learned as a Military Spouse

I became a military spouse at 24.

When I married my husband I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into.

I wasn’t raised around the military.

I had no idea what to expect from the lifestyle.

I just knew that I loved him and saw an incredible future with him by my side. 

My Unexpected Military Life…

But military life is hard.

Being a military spouse is hard.

Deployments, long work hours, weekend duty and all the stinking moves to new places far away from family and friends.

I could very easily get caught up on all of these challenges, the uncertainty…

…and wondering what the hell happened to to box with all the furniture hardware after the last move. (For real though, we really needed that box to reassemble everything!)

But I have learned not to.

I would say the first nine years and four duty stations as a military spouse were the most challenging. 

I created a lot of suffering for myself and my husband by fighting against the uncertainty, arguing with reality, giving my emotional power to external circumstances and refusing to ask for help.

(I’m not trying to say that the challenges I experienced as a military spouse are unique. It just seems that military life amplifies the challenge and uncertainties, often making them more frequent than civilian life).

Gave Me Unexpected Gifts.

Little did I know that through the greatest of struggles, I would also be blessed with the greatest of gifts.

Because I was open to learning, exploration, and growth through the challenge, I was able to learn these four mindset lessons as a military spouse: 

Surrender

Accepting What Is / Presence

How You Feel is a Choice

Asking For + Accepting Help

I realized that military spouse life gave me a crash course in figuring them out, long before many of my peers, and tons of opportunities to practice them along the way. 

Surrender

We trick ourselves into thinking that we control our lives.

We avoid uncertainty at all costs.

We think that if we can just plan for every detail, pick the safest and most secure option that we are in control and the outcome will be certain.

Thankfully, military life taught me that certainty and control are all but an illusion.

We never know when we are going to move next, let alone where it will be.

We rarely know with much advance notice when he will be deployed or on temporary duty, gone for months at a time.

So many aspects of family planning that most people take for granted are big, huge uncertainties in our lives.

Which makes planning more than a few months in advance a challenge. (We wanted to take a trip for our 15 year wedding anniversary but didn’t even feel secure enough for that…which is good because it fell during an international move!).

Which always makes you wonder if the couch you want to buy now will fit in the next place.

Which makes you question keeping the extra jackets or if you only be wearing flip flops at the next duty station. (No joke, we moved from Alaska to Arizona, thanks Air Force!).

We have always had to actively manage the uncertainty, or at least our emotions in reaction to not knowing or being in control of so many of the variables of our lives.

Even after 15 years my family still asks me if we know when we are going to move next, where we are moving, when he will be promoted to the next rank… and I always have to remind them that we just don’t know and won’t know until it happens.

But it’s from this place surrendering to radical uncertainty that I have realized just how much certainty is an illusion in life.

That secure job that you were downsized from?

That perfectly planned out career path that you ended up hating?

That perfectly healthy person who found out they have inoperable cancer?

That young mother who died in a car accident on her way home from the grocery store? 

There’s so many things in our lives that we take for granted that aren’t promised and are far from certain, no matter how much our brain tries to lie to us otherwise.

The best practice is to decide WHAT you want in life, WHY you want it and surrender the HOW.

Rarely does anything go according to plan, in the exact sequence you dream up.

But if you know what you want and why you want it you can start moving toward it and be flexible and adaptable along the way. 

Accepting What Is / Presence.

Byron Katie teaches “When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time.”

There’s so many parts to military life that I could argue with (and did in the beginning!) only to create a ton of suffering in my mental and emotional space.

And it kept me from truly living in the present moment – I was arguing with the past and the future and all the ways I thought things should be.

We shouldn’t have to spend our first year of marriage in different countries.

Well, we did.

He was in Korea on an unaccompanied short tour and I was in the US.

We were honeymooners with a 17 hour time difference before there were so many free video and voice communication options on the internet.

It was hard, and I spent a lot of time arguing with how hard it was and how unfair it was when I saw other couples spending time together.

How dare he leave me, again, in a different continent than all my friends and family.

Well, he did, and not by choice, but because he was told to.

I was lonely. 

Yet I made it worse by resisting feeling sad and alone. 

I choose indignation and anger instead.

I was blaming him when he had absolutely no say in the decision. 

It’s not fair that I always have to give up my career aspirations to be the trailing spouse.

It seemed like every time I had a good thing going, making progress, we would get notice of another move.

Which often meant more than six months of lost wages and me feeling like an absolute loser because I wasn’t contributing and I had too much of my self-worth wrapped up in my career and job title. 

We spend so much time arguing with what is rather than accepting it.

It creates so much extra mental chaos and emotional drama.

Rarely do we argue with things that we can change or control, when the solution is to choose and control the thoughts and story we create about the circumstance.

Instead we play the victim and give away our emotional power, expecting everyone and everything outside of us to make us feel better. 

How You Feel is a Choice.

How we feel is a state of mind, not a destination.

So often I hear people say things like “I’ll be happy when…” followed by new cars, homes, jobs, relationships, income, and a whole mess of other external measures. 

Being stationed in Italy helped me realize that our emotional space has nothing to do with external circumstances.

Here we were in Europe, in the Italian countryside, where so many Americans save up often for their whole lives to visit, and fellow service members and their families were miserable.

Many of our friends we were stationed with still found plenty to complain about, would stay close to base and not adventure around Europe.

Here we were, given this incredible opportunity to see the world, and some people couldn’t even see what was right in front of them because they decided to be miserable instead.

Our emotions don’t happen to us, we choose them with the thoughts we think.

Happiness is an inside job.

This is replicated in so many research studies, where happiness isn’t correlated with income after basic subsistence level is reached.

Once people reach poverty level, happiness is no longer correlated with income.

It doesn’t matter what you achieve, what you earn, what you experience. It matters what you think and believe about those things, and the stories you make them mean.

A moment I felt the most achievement was when someone said to me “It doesn’t seem to matter where you and Jason live, you always find a way to have fun.”

I joke that if we get stationed in a few places he can have fun there without me. (I’ll leave them unnamed so as to not get hate mail from the locals LOL).

But in all reality I would follow him and we WOULD have fun.

We would be happy.

We would have a good time.

Because that’s what is important to us and we know that it’s an inside job and not contingent upon what our zip code happens to be. 

Asking For AND Accepting Help.

This was probably the hardest for me to learn…I am such an independent person.

I pride myself on being able to take care of myself.

To be the person who always gives and cares for others.

Until I found myself struggling with a once-debilitating chronic illness, my husband deployed, and being new to the base without any close friends to rely on.

I was accustomed to getting frequent headaches.

But one day I had the worst I had ever experienced, a migraine to end all migraines.

I left work after only an hour, went home and spent the next 8 hours on the bathroom floor.

Nauseated, confused, and completely disoriented.

I was too weak to know what was happening, let alone pick myself off the floor.

Luckily I had my cell phone with me.

The doggy day care place was about to close. My puppy needed to be picked up. And I was in no condition to drive.

I knew the only option I had was to ask for help. I called my neighbor, a new acquaintance, in a moment of complete vulnerability and weakness.

I told her I didn’t know what was wrong with me (because honestly in that moment I didn’t know).

She came over, picked me off the floor, got me to bed, and made sure I had what I needed before she left.

She picked my dog up, got him home, fed, and taken care of.

She checked in on me multiple times (and make sure that I didn’t need the hospital and to let the dog out).

I was embarrassed to ask, to be seen in that condition, to be perceived as weak or incapable.

But if anyone else had been in that situation I’d be the first to rush in.

I’d be happy to provide assistance and give comfort – without judgment.

To truly be good at giving, we must also be good at receiving.

To know and recognize that we all have hard moments.

To be grateful for those in the military community who are willing to help perfect strangers… 

Willing to pick us up in our most painful and weakest moments…

Knowing full well that they might need the same kindness in the future.

I will always be grateful to my neighbor, and now one of my closest friends.

She answered my call and graciously offered more help than I requested.

I now know there’s no shame in asking and receiving help, because giving is one of the very best experiences we can have.

If I fail to ask for help when I truly need it then I rob someone from being able to give with an open heart. 

Grateful for the Challenges

Now I’d even say that I’m grateful for our military life because of who I have become because of it.

I welcome each new move, each new deployment and all the uncertainty in between…

Because I know that these are the circumstances that help me grow mental excellence.

It’s not the circumstances that are the problem.

It’s my thoughts and beliefs about them, which create my emotional experience.

Now I know to check my thoughts about my circumstances.

Because that is what helps me surrender…

To accept what is…

To ask for help…

And choose how I want to feel. 

Being a military spouse isn’t easy, but I know I’m up for the challenge now.

  The post The Top Mindset Lessons I Learned as a Military Spouse appeared first on life coaching for mental excellence, mindset, accountability .

from life coaching for mental excellence, mindset, accountability https://myyeslife.com/military-spouse-mindset-lessons/

[spnfanficpond]

July 2019 Pond LiveChat Recap

We had a great time chatting with @crispychrissy today! Thank you so much, Chrissy, for joining us!

This month, to make up for not having a chat in June, we chatted for two hours about some issues related to posting your works on Tumblr. Chrissy talked to us about making our own gifs, we discussed giving credit to gifmakers, how to make a Keep Reading cut, and much more!! A rundown of the chat, as well as general Pond news, is below the cut!

[Editor’s Note: For ease of understanding, the tags you put at the bottom of a post with a # will be called #hash-tags, while the tags you use to notify another Tumblr user that you’ve posted something will be called @mention-tags.]

Q: What programs do you use to make gifs? Are they free, or do you have to buy them?

Chrissy: Well, there is a free one I used back when I started called GifCam. It's easy to set up (it's just an exe) and there's a little learning curve, but it's easier than what I do now. I currently use a screen capture program that came with my $1500 graphics card along with Sony Vegas. If anyone wants GifCam, I can send it to them.

Q: And are you watching via Netflix or some other way?

C: Yes, I use Netflix. I have the first 6 seasons on DVD along with 12 and 13, so for bloopers and deleted scenes I have to use the DVD's. For current episodes, I have YouTube TV, and use the screen capture option with that. Tumblr has a 3MB limit on file size, so it’s really hard. The amount of frames you can fit in a sub-3MB gif depend on so many factors. Colors in the scene, movement, FPS (frames per second), and length. A low FPS gif looks pretty choppy, while a high FPS gif is smooth as butter.

Q: So that's why some gifs seem to go on forever, and others are quick things.

C: Yes. I can make a really long gif of something that's really really tiny, but if you want it to fit into the pixels of a Tumblr post, it limits how long they can be.

Q: And I guess that's also why some gifs I find from Google and try to put into a post won't animate right. If they're too big, I guess Tumblr stops them?

C: Yes. Tumblr just freezes the image instead of animating it. When you save it, check the file size.

C: So this is an example of the brightness and colors of a gif affecting the size. Since there's so much brightness and color, the more the gif has to render, meaning the bigger the size. This worked out to be only 35 frames, which is like... really small, but the gif itself came out to be 2.83 MB.

Q: Are websites that come up when I Google "gif maker" worth my time and effort?

C: Only if you don't mind a stupid watermark from the company.

Q: About giving credit to gifmakers....any thoughts?

C: Well, all my gifs have "cc" in the bottom right corner, that's how I give myself credit if they're used. Not everyone knows the "cc" gifs are mine, but I do. I offer my gif making services to anyone if they need a specific gif made for a story or otherwise, not limited to SPN. I've made porn gifs, ones from YouTube, and from other shows. If it exists, I can gif it. Tumblr's search feature is... well, it's not perfect, but it'll help give you a quick gif and give credit to the author. When someone uses a gif I've posted, it gives me a notification, which is awesome, but annoying if it gets reposted a crap ton. It also links the person back to the original post and who posted it.

Q: Some folks seem to think that if they grab a gif from Google, just saying they found it on Google is giving credit. I know this isn't the case. (I mistakenly thought that pasting the link to the image would allow folks to click through to where I found it, but discovered last night that's not the case.) If I found a gif on Google that was yours and used it, and provided a link to the page where Google found it, would that be enough, do you think?

C: Sometimes a reverse image search can be helpful, but it mostly doesn't work with gifs. That would be fine for me. Like I said, I have "cc" in the corner so that's me marking the gif as one of mine. I can't control where someone reposts them or uses them. There's a difference between reposting it to a site like Pinterest or using my gif on a LiveJournal post and saving it and reuploading it like it's yours and without giving me credit. One is malicious, the other isn't. I have a problem with the latter.

Q: I started looking at where Google finds gifs last night, and noticed that sites like gfycat have whole pages of gifs, and just citing that page might not be enough. (And trying to find where Google found them many times leads to a Tumblr blog that’s now gone.)

C: Google finds gifs all over the place. Someone can take my gif from Tumblr and reupload it to a bunch of different websites, all which would show up in a Google search. It's hard to find the original poster when it happens. Yeah, people delete their pages, but the gif stays. If you get to that point, just say, “Gif found on Google, unable to find original post"

Q: Speaking of finding gifs, how does the search function work on Tumblr? Is it just whatever the post was tagged with or the first 5 tags like regular searches or something else entirely?

After some discussion, we all decided that the gif search uses whatever #hash-tags are on a post where a gif is used, and then makes that gif searchable by that #hash-tag. So, if you make a post about chronic pain and use a gif of the Winchesters hugging, that gif will then show up in the gif search under #chronic pain. Also, popularity of the gif ensures it shows up at the top of the search. As people stop using a gif, it eventually falls out of the search results.

Q: Going back to file sizes...Do the dimensions of the source video (like watching Netflix/YouTube in full screen vs in a smaller window) impact the size of the gif, specifically with GifCam?

C: Now, that's a HUGE reason why I switched the way I make gifs. Netflix has a set streaming rate, which is only optimized at full screen. So the smaller you make the window to get it to fit into the size of the gif, the more degraded the image is. (Some confusion was expressed, so she continued to explain it further.) Netflix likes to run as big as possible. It wants as many pixels it can get to show you an image. If you minimize the window, it kind of freaks out and has to quickly scramble to make everything smaller so the video keeps playing. It does that by squishing everything down, making the image look weird. It might not be too noticeable when you look at it, but when you make gifs, they're gonna come out lookin all wonky.

Q: So, you have to make the Netflix window smaller in order to capture the images with the gif-making software? The gif-making software can't capture full screen?

C: GifCam will record the gif based on the window size. You gotta squish the window down to make it a reasonable size to fit on Tumblr. Other programs, which you might have to pay for, might be able to capture full screen and do the squishing for you. (Side note: during this discussion, Chrissy gave us some examples, and in showing them to us, revealed that a good gif size for Tumblr is around 410-430 wide, 230-250 high.)

After that, we moved on to other topics that had been brought up in the Pond survey a while back. 

How to make a Keep Reading cut and when you should use it.

Note: Although this worked for one person on the app, it doesn’t seem to work for all, and we’re not sure why. There are too many variables to determine the root cause for why it doesn’t always work. 

Q: "When should I give someone credit for being a beta (for example: I bounced ideas with someone for a minute or two but they didn’t technically beta read it; I can’t decide between X and Y (with no context), pick one)"

A: Always mention anyone who helped you. You don’t have to say they beta-read your story, but at least mention that they helped, even if they didn’t know it! Gratitude is always a good thing!! Writing takes a village, and being thankful for help is courteous, kind, caring, and helps you to make friends that will be the same right back to you.

How do I add my masterlist for my blog description?

Note: Chrissy pointed out that if you change your bio by hitting “edit appearance” instead of “edit theme” the link will break, so be careful where you add this! These things and more can be found in the Pond FAQ list!!

Q: The facts on search issues (re: links, tags, and anything else that keeps a fic from being “searchable”)

A: A lot of testing and research went into trying to figure this out, and we still probably don’t have it all figured out, but we learned some interesting things!

Most importantly, since we have a lot of smut writers, if you use the #hash-tag #NSFW on your post, your post will NOT show up in any searches!!

Adding an external link should not cause your post to be unsearchable, but that’s not guaranteed. According to Tumblr’s own help pages, “some links may cause posts to be hidden from recent search results.” Since spambots use external links in their posts, this will always be something that could possibly interfere with your post being searchable.

According to Tumblr: “Blogs that have been either self-flagged or flagged by us as “explicit” per our old policy (before December 17, 2018), will not show up in search. Users under 18 are still not allowed to click through to see the content of these blogs. If you think your blog has been erroneously marked as explicit, you can file an appeal by following these instructions.”

When you are searching for your post, make sure you are looking at Most Recent posts, not Most Popular! 

Some things to know about searching:

There are two ways to search a blog. If you use the search box at the top, then your results will have a URL like this:  https://spnfanficpond.tumblr.com/search/big-fish-chat

However, that is not the only way you can search your blog. If you look at a post, and click on one of the tags on that post, your results will have a URL like this: https://spnfanficpond.tumblr.com/tagged/big-fish-chat

The first search will look through all of the text in a post to find the words you’re searching for. The second search will only look for posts with that specific tag. If a blog doesn’t have a search box in its theme, you can type these searches in manually, and they will still work.

You can also do these searches manually through all of Tumblr. Keep this in mind when you’re doing your general Tumblr search and check the URL of your results, because... “search” & “tagged” look at #hash-tags differently!

(This is so confusing, we know.)

“Search” will look through 20 #hash-tags. “Tagged” will only look through 5 #hash-tags. So, put your most important #hash-tags in your first 5!!

Q: Can you talk about xkit?

A: xkit is awesome and we should all bow down to the xkit guy because he fixes things when Tumblr poops on the carpet. Seriously. It’s only for use on desktop, but it makes Tumblr so much easier to manage.

xkit is an extension for your browser. Look for New xkit, and download that. Once you have xkit loaded, click on the xkit icon near the top right of your screen. When the xkit window pops up, click on Get Extensions. We could suggest a list of the best extensions, but they’re all seriously awesome. Blacklist seems to be the most common, as it filters out posts you don’t want to see based on tags and text. Auto Tagger, Activity+, Outbox, One-Click Postage, and Quick Tags are all ridiculously useful for everyday blogging. The whole thing is super easy to learn and use, and you can’t break anything while you’re learning. Some extensions, like Blacklist, may slow your computer down when you’re surfing your dash because they essentially surf it ahead of you and manipulate it. If you start seeing problems, you can disable any extensions you decide you don’t want to use, anymore.

Seriously, it’s freaking awesome.

Great talk, guys! If you have ideas for topics, please let us know!!

General Pond Updates and Reminders

What we’ve got cooking up next: 

We’re working on setting up the discord server. We’re still learning the ins and outs and all the options available. More options means more discussion among the admins and decisions to be made, so please be patient! We’re getting there!

Reminders:

Angel Fish Award nominations are accepted all month long! No need to wait to tell us how much you liked a fellow Fish’s work!  IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A NOMINATION, BUT HAVE NOT RECEIVED A PRIVATE MESSAGE CONFIRMING WE RECEIVED IT, WE DIDN’T GET IT. Be sure to use Submit instead of Ask!

Don’t forget to submit your stories to be posted to the blog! When your stories are on the blog, then they are easier to nominate for Angel Fish Awards!

SPNFanFicPond Season 14 Weekly Episode Challenge - Now that the season is over, we will be reposting each prompt list through the summer months! Remember, there’s no deadline for submissions!

Say hi to June’s New Members!

Check the Pond CALENDAR to see when Big Fish will be in the chat room and other Pond and SPN events are happening! Know of something that’s not on the calendar, send us an ask or submission with the deets info details!  The calendar offers a lot of features, such as showing you when things are in your own timezone! Since we’re an international group, that’s a definite plus!!

We don’t have a topic or speaker set up for August’s event, yet, so if there’s something you want to talk about, or someone you want to talk to, LET US KNOW!