#that's what happen when you take healthcare away from them they become suicidal and plan to take everyone with them

[littlefankingdom]

Trigun Maximum be like: Diversity wins! The genocidal bad guys are all trans!

[this-is-fox-speaking]

why are they bad?

(a post about trumps possible second term plans, from an lgbtq= afab 18 year old living in america, who is terrified for her life in the next year)

ending gay marriage = splits families apart. forces many couples to lose eachother after already facing so many hardships for just how they were born into this world. could force so many parents to become single parents. could possibly quickly lead into children of these queer or same sex parents being taken away and being forced into foster care, which could be heavily traumatic and cause a mental downpour for them. we would probably be having to resort back to methods from like the 1920’s or something just to feel joy with those we love! nobody should suffer that!

remove sexual orientation and gender identity from non-discrimination policies = directly turns neutral laws to shoot directly at queer and lgbtq people. this is just turning already existing policies written for all citizens to go specifically to harming lgbtq citizens. no human should be targeted just for choosing to live somewhere! we deserve to feel safe in the society we choose to settle down in!

ban + remove trans troops from military = you can easily joke this off as “oh hah well we don’t wanna go into the military anyway!” but this is something that could go from small into a large snowball. it’s a small act of discrimination, in some peoples eyes, but can ultimately ruin people in the long run. and although i personally don’t really like how my country handles military budgeting, some people really do want to strive to become a soldier and protect those in their state! we all deserve to fulfill our dreams!

ban trans healthcare for kids = will 100% cause trans kid suicide rates to go up. this ban will force trans kids to live in a body they hate to look at or even feel. some people have dysphoria so bad- ESPECIALLY during puberty- that they can’t even look at their bodies. could you imagine being forced to live like that? it never ends well.

outlaw pornography = porn is a natural thing that humans want, because it’s an easy way to fill that sexual desire we have. it is not wrong or dirty. outlawing it will also lead to people losing their jobs. imagine what’s going to happen to all the pornstars! they’re gonna get fucked, and not in the fun way!

imprison people who create pornography = just having a job that hurts nobody around you will imprison you, just because some people can’t learn to just not look at it, and decide it’s a widespread evil that needs to be demolished.

register educators and librarians who offer pornography as sex offenders = porn is something that can actually be suggested to you to learn what you like, how to satisfy your partner, what your partner likes, etc! this law would be ass backwards, anyways, as i imagine these educators are not offering it to get off to your uncomfortability hearing about it. you can just say no and they go well okay that’s alright. it’s apart of their job to help and educate you! don’t go and offer pornographic content to a little kid, yeah, but grown adults who pay for the service to actively learn these things, like sex therapists? yeah, that’s fine! it’s not wrong, it’s just apart of learning! i cant word this well but yknow?

apart of this would also be banning “transgender ideology”, as project 2025 considers it pornography. just think about that for a moment and process how dumb it is. wanting to feel safe and comfortable in your own body, and taking the measures to not want to feel like wanting to kill yourself every morning when you open your eyes, with the consent of your parents or you yourself as an adult, with several other adults who are doctors and therapists and the like- all of this, the simple idea, being counted as pornography. is this gets passed off, trans kids are doomed.

national abortion ban = if this law is passed, women are DOOMED. children going through early puberty and getting early periods, blooming early, etc can get raped and be forced to go through with the traumatic experience of giving birth to another child. process that. read it again. a child giving birth to another child. this is the life that project 2025 writers want to excuse and live by, and it’s fucking disgusting. all for some clumps of cells that aren’t even alive nor conscious??

limit access to contraception, such as the plan B pill, in an effort to end recreational sex = no more sex for fun! sorry! abide by our christian laws being forced upon you or get jailed for wanting to enjoy your life however you want. isn’t this sort of thing illegal? shouldn’t it be?? forcing your religion into laws that effect an entire country population should be illegal if it isn’t already. your job is to protect the people, not protect your beliefs and forcing random citizens to abide to it. if you have sex in any way, with this law passed, you’ll constantly be at risk of being forced to have a child and bring it into this world. teenagers will be forced to bring children into this world.

public health clinics must emphasize the importance of heterosexual marriage = marriage is not the business of a health clinic. what does personal information about your sexuality have to do with health? it’s just another law to enforce your beliefs onto random people who just didn’t ask.

repeal any programs that support single mothers or lgbtq parents + as per the bible, the only legally recognized families are those with a husband, wife, and biological children = single mothers and same sex or nonbinary, etc, parents will have no support because they don’t match a random group of peoples view of a “””proper””” family structure. even straight single mothers won’t be helped, because they don’t have a husband. they don’t deserve help just because they’re on their own? what does this mean for single fathers? will they still get help because they’re males and not, i presume, silly, foolish women?

increased prescription drug prices = work harder if you want to get any help for your pain! body pains, mental pains, unwanted thoughts, impulsive thoughts, disorders, hallucinations- you’ll just have to find a way to work harder if you want the right to help yourself and live an easy life! what a load of bullshit. i’m not hiding my rage anymore, this is just fucking evil.

social media control = locking down social media for young kids makes it so they lose that safe space they have away from their possibly abusive parents, families, grandparents, etc. away from their possibly shitty life. and it locks away the ability for them to connect with a community of those similar to them! it locks them away from creating any friends, or getting help, or finding a way out! this also locks away information easily accessible to them, such as explanations for why they’re a certain way, or why their familys treatment towards them or others like their siblings is horrible. and at the end of the day, if it were truly about making children’s lives better, they wouldn’t be doing this when a genocide is happening across the world.

eliminate the department of education = this should terrify you. this should make you afraid for what they’re going to teach your kids or your younger siblings in school- from kindergarten, elementary, middle, and so on! kids are easily impressionable. especially at a young age. eliminating the department of education means there will be an easier influence over what is “correctly” taught and what is deemed “wrong” for children to learn. this could even cover up past events, like world wars or slavery, if you really wanted to get crazy with it.

create a “parents bill or rights” = an idea that is equally scary. parents limiting what their children get to learn about is horrifying. science could get completely thrown out the window, in some parts. children wouldn’t learn about some parts or large chunks of history. this bill would disrupt children’s learning and make everything confusing in the long run. other effects of this bill are also listed in the original post.

end funding for any school offering diversity or lgbtq youth programs = imagine just wanting your students to feel safe in your school and have a place where they can truly connects with others- and your school gets shut down for it from lack of funding. it’s gross.

ban education or race, gender, and slavery = oh, look at that, my suspicions were right. they really are trying to put the whites on top. how lovely (/s). watch out kids! if you’re not straight, cis, white, or a man, america will fuck you over! the history of black people will also be erased, and a large chunk of children won’t know it ever happened! that’s bad! we need to know our past to fix out future!

end free school lunches = starves poor or homeless kids who don’t have the money to eat at school. some kids look forward to school lunch because it’s the only time of day they get a good meal, and taking that away is practically telling them to starve for something out of their control.

infuse public education with christianity = your religion! is your religion! let others! do their own! thing! that’s not very love thy neighbor of you!

consolidate the power of the president by firing thousands of apolitical federal employees (scientists, engineers), and reclassifying them with political appointees. = having an echo chamber of your own opinions while being this high in power is just a show of your own ego, and that you refuse to listen to anyone but those who trust you. it’s a horrible way to think, and knowing a man like this is someone people look up to scares me deeply.

end separation between the department of justice and the white house = your trial will be at the hands of the president instead of a separate, lone jury. this is not good. i cant put it into words, myself, but the original posts does it well.

use national military to break up protests = imagine using soldiers who’ve ended entire wars to break up a fight between two group of people on the street. this feels more like a fear-fest than to actually protect the people. if military is involved, it’ll scare more people into possibly not protesting. protesting is a given right, and is a valid way to voice your concerns to those in charge!

i don’t have the energy to go entirely over the climate change section. so heres a one take on it.

climate advisors replaced with fossil fuel lobbyists + cut environmental protection agency + discard peer reviewed research and privatize polluter profits + end of regulations on the fossil fuel industry, restrictions on drilling, renewable energy programs, and regulations on greenhouse gas emissions = this all means that instead of keeping people wanting to save the earth, they’ll be replaced with people who’d rather destroy their only planet for money.

[gr0veyard]

Ooc.; also other stuff im giving my 2 Cents to, so skip if you dont care

[[MORE]]

Puberty blockers:

PBs are not irreversible lmao. They don't mutilate a minors body. They merely keep puberty on hold long enough for the minor in question to have time to make sure they want to transition. PUBERTY is what is irreversible. Imagine going thru puberty and growing into a body that at worst will make you wanna KYS and at best hate looking at yourself in the mirror. Do you know how expensive transition can be after puberty? PLEASE do more research before making asinine statements like PBs being comparable to mutilation. PBs only hold puberty as long as theyre being taken, meaning that if you stop taking em puberty will set in just as it usually would.

"Even hormone blockers and transitional hormones are largely untested when it comes to long term effects" is a baseless claim which a little googling can be disproven.

"One of my friends in high school medically transitioned, and it did nothing to help their dysphoria. It just made them even more depressed, and they later killed themselves." I'm sorry for your loss, genuinly. That really sucks. But as much it makes me look like an asshole for saying this, this is an appeal to emotion (aka not factually backing your other claims) and also circumstancial. If your friend's suicide was tied to their transition, their case is just that: theirs. One of the biggest contributors to trans suicude rates is the unattainability of affordable transition and dysphoria caused by the changes made by puberty, only topped by abuse from people towards trans people. By advocating for PBs to be prohibited or limited, you don't help. You make the problem worse.

Communism:

"I’m against Communist and Fascism as they’re both extremely Authoritarian systems that give the government complete control over how you live your life." Since I'm a socialist and not a communist I cant speak for communism, but most allegedly communist states today still basically operate on a capitalist core, where they have communist parties etc., but still have a free market for instance. China for example, but Russia too.

Capitalism amasses copious amounts of wealth on the backs of the lower class in a short amount of time but is ultimately unsustainable. Vaush on youtube has a number of videos on this I recommend you to check out.

Healthcare:

"You can’t have a right to the services and labor of another person, their own freedom is taken away by that." No one is saying that should happen. Ideally, the state pays for this healthcare and before you say anything about that: I'm from a country without america's privatized healthcare. It's never been an issue here, people aren't fucking terrified shitless to go to the doctor bc they could go into crippling debt. Sure, you gotta wait a lil longer than someone w a private insurance company (which still exists but isnt necessary to live) in the waitingroom but that's annoying at worst.

I went to america end of 2019 to visit my gf and I fell really ill there. I had to go to the doctor there and I nearly felt my soul leave my body when I had to pay 100 FUCKING DOLLARS HOLY SHIT. thats nearly a fourth of my monthly income bro, how can you claim this to be okay? Ofc medstaff still need to be paid but oh my gods this is not okay. If I had to live with this system for the rest of my life it's fair to say I'd never go to the fucking doctor. And that'd be worse for the docs AND FOR ME.

"If you die or develop incurable illness awaiting treatment for months, there’s nothing anyone can do. If you’re treated right away and unfortunately end up with loads of medial debt, it’s unfortunate, but you’re still alive. You can still try to fundraise money, get donations, or if you’re skilled, work it off. It’s really shitty, but necessary." N- no????? It reaLLY ISNT THOUGH??? As I've stated before, this is not an issue w public healthcare. It's smth that's an issue in general and it DOES happen in america right now. Where I live this doesnt happen to my knowledge. Why should it? The gov is gonna pay anyway so might as well get it done and get the next patient. You shouldnt have to go into debt to live. That's not humane.

"I don’t think the poor should die, I don’t want the suffering to be left to their fate." Contradictory to the part where you think going into debt is necessary. Being in debt IS suffering. *I* am in debt, and I suffer because of it everyday. And it's not because of healthcare.

When going into debt to heal is your only option as an alternative to possibly dying or suffering on, then making that choice is like having to choose between the black plague and cholera.

"Buy a gun, grow a garden, learn to build shelter, and make plans to invade a neighboring territory and become it’s technocratic warlord after your country collapses into an unlivable hellscape." Making a joke like this at the end of a post about serious topics like this is kind of trivializing the entire issue and a little disrespectful. Don't do that please. It's like you're comparing to Fallout 4 and I shouldn't need to point out why that's bad.

At the end of the day, Im not trying to change your mind bc thats futile and not my job. But I do absolutely intend to fact check claims I know for a fact are BS, or educate myself to make my own judgement, and so should you. If you want to know how truthful smth is, listen to multiple scources (centrist AND leftist) and crosscompare wether what you hear abt certain leftist ideas is in fact true or not.

Or dont and continue living in an echochamber. Your call.

Have a nice day.

[isitreallyok]

Therapy, Medication, And Mental Help

I’m gonna level with y’all here. This post will likely not be quite as articulate as some of the other ones. It’s been a really rough morning, but I wanted to address this issue while it is still fresh in my mind. I have yet to ask for advice or feedback on a single one of my posts, but if anyone has any I’m definitely not opposed to receiving it on this one.

Uh oh. That doesn’t sound great. What’s going on?

I’m going to attempt to keep this as brief as possible, and it likely will still be quite lengthy, but I’m going to have to give a bit of context here as well. My current life situation has been radically altered in the last year. 2020 has thrown so many wrenches in my plans and Covid isn’t even the biggest of them. However, lets take this from the top.

When I was 9 years old my parents divorced. Not a huge deal. It happens to a lot of kids as sad as that is to say. I grew up with my mother, brother, and sister in a single parent household with a skewed picture of who my father was and didn’t want too much to do with him. Fast forward a few years, my dad moves to Idaho and remarries and has a wonderful relationship with my stepmother. I wasn’t able to visit too often, but it wasn’t horrible when I was able to make it out there. As much as I minimize the normalcy of being a child of divorce though it still had a horribly impact on my emotional well being and my mental health as a child. Many other kids throughout school came were content with their home life. They were able to enjoy being children and did not have to worry about the pressures of caring for their siblings started at a young age. I, on the other hand, was not content with where I was at in life and wanted desperately to change it.

My mother was incredibly supportive of us kids as best as she was able. She made sure that we had routine trips to the doctors, that we had what we needed in terms of food and shelter, and even got us therapy and psychiatric help. I was blessed to have that available to me as a child. Many children going through similar situations do not have access to that level of external help for a myriad of different reasons. However even though I had these things I still ran into trouble. As I was growing up my father discredited mental healthcare as a practice so I always had that rattling around in the back of my head. By the time I was 15, I decided to stop taking my bipolar and depression medications because I didn’t feel like they were helping me. This is honestly the biggest mistake I’ve made in my entire life. I continued to see my therapist, until I not longer had insurance at age 18, but I didn’t feel as if I was making any real strides there either because I had also adopted the mindset that nothing was working and therapy and caring for my mental health was a joke.

Wait. Isn’t this a place where you talk explicitly about your mental health and how to manage and cope with various aspects of it?

Why yes. Yes it is. I’ve been handling my manic depressive bipolar disorder unmedicated for the last 13 years. It has been absolute hell most days. A few years ago I hit rock bottom and realized that I needed help. The girl that I had been dating for a few years, was living with, and planned on proposing to cheated on me and I ended up moving back in with my parents because of the situation, I slept on a futon mattress on the floor for months before we ended up moving, and due to this my mental state deteriorated to the point of suicidal ideation with intent.

This is when I realized that I was wrong in my views on medication and therapy. I had been putting myself in a position where I was running people out of my life due to the fact that I was using my friends as free therapy and they drew a line and I had to respect it. There was only one problem with finally accepting that I needed to get help. That problem is that help is expensive. I had been uninsured for mental health since I was 18. I accepted the fact that I needed to get help, but the fact that I could afford it drove me even deeper into despair about my circumstances.

So what did you do? Did you get the help you needed? Clearly you didn’t give into your suicidal tendencies.

Well. Yes and no. I didn’t get the help I needed, but I managed to find a way to distract myself from the troubles of the real world. I poured myself into my job and decided that that was the time to go to college. I do understand the irony or going to college after complaining that therapy was too expensive. Believe me that is not lost on me. The difference is you can’t get student loans for learning how to take care of yourself.

Rather than allowing myself to begin working through the existing trauma in my life, I decided to put myself in a position to where I could start to try to live a “normal” life again. Whatever the hell that means. I had a routine, albeit a poor one, I was socializing, albeit minimally in my classes and typically only for group projects, and I was too distracted by other pressures to reminisce on how much I hated my life. I started taking steps that I felt like a therapist would tell me to and began working towards chasing a dream again. This felt different, but I don’t think I’d venture as far as to say it felt good. It was just a different kind of stress that I was piling on myself. I still felt like I needed help handling the day to day. Learning to cope with my bipolar unmedicated took years and the singular trauma of living with my family again meant that all the coping mechanisms I had worked to develop became even more difficult to manage and I had to once again learn different strategies to handle all the new challenges.

Instead of schooling and attempting normalcy on your own wouldn’t it have been easier to get help?

Easier? No. More beneficial? Absolutely. The hoops that one has to jump through even to get seen by a therapist nowadays is challenging enough and that doesn’t even include financial ramifications for those without health insurance that covers mental health, which most workplace insurance plans don’t. With that in mind, the benefits of getting the help that you need often are not able to outweigh the cost.

Realistically, even if I had been able to afford to get myself the care that I need I likely wouldn’t have. I have always been the type of person to do everything on my own until I have exhausted all of my options. This is not something I recommend. One of the biggest things that I want to learn to do is ask for help when I need it instead of asking after I am already at the end of my rope. Even as I’m typing this I am beyond frustrated and want nothing to do with with the stress I’m under from today and it took me hitting that point to finally open up about talking about it even though it was among the first topics I decided to address when I first started this blog. Asking for help at appropriate times is a topic all on it’s own so we’ll save that conversation for another day.

So I’m starting to see a bit of where you’re coming from, but what happened today?

So this part of the background info I plan to address more in depth in the future and will keep the context of this very brief. Remember how I said that my dad and I had a strained relationship even after he moved? Well that changed once I was about 20. We reconnected and for years spoke nearly every day and he became a close confidant and more of what most people with a healthy relationship with their father have. We disagreed on a lot of things, but we were able to understand each other. A few years ago my stepmother passed away. Even before she passed my dad was diagnosed with early stage dementia. He had been having memory issues and it felt like he was a completely different person. At the start of this year he moved back in with my family and that has been a challenge having my divorced parents living under the same room without the ability to properly communicate with each other.

Fast forward to this morning. I woke up to both my mother and father bickering with each other about something related to Dad’s socks. Rather than handling it like adults they were both fighting like toddlers from what I could hear in my bedroom. This has become an increasingly common occurrence. One gets frustrated with the other, situation escalates, I feel pressured to step in and deescalate the situation, I typically end up frustrated and my mood is shot. Dad feels more comfortable talking and listening to me, Mom backs off because I get what needs to be done done, I wind up once again in the middle of a weird situation between my parents. I tolerate this because of the fact that I am able to assist in my father’s care in a way that is beneficial to his understand of what he needs and it eases the burden on other people that are trying to convey the same message with zero results. However over time this would wear anyone down and that point is where I finally reached this morning.

Rather than being able to calmly handle the situation with a level head I ended up snapping at all partied involved. I snapped at Dad for not wanting to do anything to mitigate the problems he complained of, I snapped at Mom for escalating the situation, I snapped at my sister who was just checking it see if I was okay, I ran the gambit of getting frustrated with people. Instead of handling the situation the way I normally would with patience and dignity, I mismanaged the situation and likely made it worse. 

This is where we get back to the topic at hand. I have finally managed to actually get myself on some half decent health insurance that has wonderful mental health coverage. This kicks in at the start of the year and I will be able to finally get some help with handling the fact that this entire situation has been traumatic and has left some serious scars. I’m excited but this also got me wondering about the part that I need help on.

My bipolar and resistance to most psychotropic medication had to come from somewhere, as it’s a disorder that is tied to genetics, and my mother is not bipolar. This tells me that my father, who exhibits clear symptoms of having bipolar depression, is where I got my proclivity for the development of this condition. That being said, with my father’s resistance towards getting psychiatric care, and being medicated to balance any chemical imbalances, puts me in a weird state for doing what is best for him and his care. Do I force this help on him? Do I accept that he’s not ready for it and sit idly by and continue to watch him deteriorate? With his dementia he’s less likely to be able to receive the care he desperately needs due to his inability to create a coherent thought in regards to what his needs are for the large scale rather than just being fine in that exact moment. So I truly am at a loss. This is the part where I ask for advice. If anyone who has read this far has any experience with dementia and psychiatric care I could really use some advice on how to best have these conversations with my dad. This has been one of the biggest hardships I have faced and I am getting to be at a proper loss for words in how to help the situation which as you can tell by the verbosity of this post is difficult to do.

You’re totally fine in not knowing how to handle this situation. This is a difficult situation to be in regardless of who you are. You’re doing well.

Thank you. All of that stuff is an absolute nightmare to handle and life has been absolute hell, but I hope that that helps you to understand where I’m coming from when I encourage you all to once again remember the three reminders! I know most days, including today, I need to remember them to so lets run through them together before we end things for today. You are so much stronger than you think, you are beautiful inside and out, and jinkies you are worth love, kindness, respect, admiration, and all those things you think you’re not worthy of. Lets turn today around together and kick some butt and take some names.

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #6- Rung Has a Friggin’ Day

It’s time for therapy.

Finally.

It turns out that Ratchet didn’t forget about Fortress Maximus’ acts of extreme violence in all the chaos that was last issue, and requested that Fort Max get set up with some mandatory counseling. Of course, because it’s been about a week in Fort Max-time since Garrus 9 went down, he’s not exactly thrilled to talk about what happened. And who can blame him? Garrus 9 sucked big time for everyone involved, even Overlord.

Fort Max claims to not remember what happened- he’s lying, and we’re treated to a flashback that sort of justifies his fib- and Rung suggests they get Chromedome involved, which seems perhaps a bit unethical? To just rip traumatic memories that may or may not be repressed out of a guy’s head? Like, I’m not super well-versed in psychiatry, but that seems a little off.

Rung, in an attempt to make Fort Max feel a little safer, tells him that Overlord- though he doesn’t say his name, because triggering Fort Max could literally get people killed- was neutralized about as efficiently as possible for their species.

I can’t believe Cybertron has a better veteran healthcare system than the United States.

Enough of Fortress Maximus’ impending implosion, it’s time for bar shenanigans!

Over at Swerve’s, Trailbreaker is proving to be completely incapable of keeping his drink in his glass, as Chromedome participates in a game where he has to guess who’s transforming into their alt-mode, based purely on the sound. He gets it in one, and everyone loses their shit. Chromedome, never one to hype himself, takes the opportunity to instead build Rewind up, because he just loves him that much.

Fortress Maximus gets brought up, and while Trailbreaker thinks the guy’s a little overrated, the others have heard about what happened on Delphi, and proceed to learn the wrong lesson from the whole thing. Tailgate enters the scene, after a rousing study session with everyone’s favorite giant neurotic.

Tailgate, you fool! It’ll be another 41 issues before Cyclonus is ready to even acknowledge his feelings!

It’s good to know that Tailgate doesn’t hold any grudges over the info dump Rewind gave him the other day. Also, that table looks like a nightmare to clean.

Ultra Magnus walks in, looking about as cheery as he possibly can considering who he is, promptly arrests Swerve for running the bar without taking bureaucracy into account, and whisks the little jabber jaw away in handcuffs, practically carrying him off by the scruff like a kitten.

Fort Max enters the room, having decided to grab a drink after the ordeal that is mandatory therapy.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a day on the Lost Light without something going just a little screwy.

This is a typical Wednesday for Pipes.

Fort Max proceeds to wreck several robots, seemingly at random, though he somehow manages to not actually kill any of them. Intentional or not? We still have several pages of this issue to get through, hold your horses! All will be revealed in time.

Which brings us to now. Fort Max has locked himself in Rung’s office, alongside Rung and the poor sap who was unlucky enough to have had an appointment when the big guy showed up. Rodimus and Drift are trying to figure out just what the hell to do with this current situation. Magnus enters, having just set Swerve up with his punishment, and berates Rodimus for letting Fort Max run around with a gun, as if 90% of the crew doesn’t also have massive weapons literally built into their bodies.

Blaster gets a video feed from one of the surveillance cameras going, and we get a good look at just how fucked this whole thing has become, because as it turns out, Rung’s appointment for this time slot was none other than Whirl, instigator extraordinaire, and being stabbed by some ship piping has done absolutely nothing to slow his suicidal roll.

That gun is positively ridiculous. Where were you even KEEPING that thing, Max?

It only takes a couple of face-mashings with the barrel of the BFG to get Whirl to back off, accomplishing what Rung simply cannot, because Whirl doesn’t play by the rules of anyone who values their life in any capacity. You’d think it’d take more than that to shut him up, but Whirl’s head is made of plot, so it’s a bit delicate.

Rung spots the camera, and decides to make himself useful by providing audio to this whole debacle, by way of his microphone thumb.

Now, a hostage situation just isn’t complete without some sort of demand in exchange for the safety of said hostages, and Fort Max has quite the doozy for Rodimus: he wants to go back to Cybertron, so he can confront Prowl on the slow response to the hell that was Garrus 9. Max was trapped there for over three years before the Wreckers came along, and it’s still pretty fresh for him because of the coma letting him skip a lot of time he could have spent healing.

Pro-tip: when handling a hostage situation, don’t get into a screaming match with the dude who’s about to shoot the only mental health specialist your race has ever managed to produce. Blaster gets it.

Rung is many things, but is no actor, as is made apparent by him holding his microphone thumb-bound hand in the most fucking conspicuous way possible. Fort Max notices- because how could he not?- and relieves Rung of this terrible burden.

Rung is really regretting not minoring in theatre right about now.

Hours later in the medibay, First Aid is proving to have gone mad with power, as he maintains some dangerously high snark levels while keeping the victims of Fort Max’s spree stable. Ratchet, whose hands are still Pharma-blue, is starting to piece together the reasoning behind who got shot.

That’s right, Fort Max was embarrassed that he showed up with the same color paint as all these guys, and tried to kill them to keep his fashion faux pas to a minimum.

Back in Rung’s office, Whirl’s dropped all pretense due to sheer boredom, and straight-up asks Fort Max to just get it over with and shoot them both. Having his thumb ripped off has made Rung a bit snippy, and he snaps at Whirl for the quip, before Max decides that he’s actually rather interested in just what Whirl’s appointment was going to cover. Rung tries to stymie this line of questioning, but he really ought to know not to get in the way of the plot progression at this point.

Whirl does decide to spill his beans, if only after Rung gets the obscenely large barrel of Max’s obscenely large gun pressed to one whole side of his face.

It turns out Whirl has depths to him, or at least he did, once upon a time. Before he got booted out of the Wreckers, before he was even in the Wreckers, he created as opposed to destroyed. More specifically, he was a watchmaker, good enough to find an audience in the time of Functionist Cybertron. Now, because he’s a helicopter, the guys up top weren’t too jazzed about Whirl not doing what he’d “been born to do,” on top of not giving them any of his sweet watch money, and decided to start fucking up his life to get him back in line. They started with tearing his shop to the ground.

But we’ll get to what the hell empurata is in a few issues.

Also, while Whirl’s been sharing his backstory, Rung managed to grab his model ship from off the floor.

I’m not sure how he managed to get ahold of his model without making a giant clumsy scene either, considering that’s his thumbless hand.

Rung, because he’s a clever man, is staring super hard at the camera and making kind of a weird face as he taps on the little windows of his model ship, signaling to Rodimus and crew to see what they can do with the windows outside of his office. He’s got three real big ones that let you see out- or in- the whole room. Rodimus makes a call, and we get a proper understanding of what Chromedome meant when he said Rewind was outside.

No kidding.

Rewind and Swerve are on rivet replacement duty, using rivet guns nearly as big as they are. Swerve’s passing the time idly chatting, because that’s his whole deal.

Knowing Swerve, that’s probably a joke, but given what we learn a few issues after this, on how exactly Cybertron handles those who don’t fall in line, I can’t help but wonder…

Okay, we know why Swerve’s out here, but what’s Rewind’s deal?

You remember those data discs Red Alert mentioned last issue, the ones Rewind was begging Chromedome to help him find? The ones he got from Swindle at the start of the series? Yeah, turns out those were chock-full of video footage of people dying.

Rodimus didn’t like the fact that Rewind had brought snuff films onto the Lost Light, and now here he is. We don’t get an explanation as to why he wanted the films in the first place, though he does integrate that it isn’t a pleasurable thing to watch. Rodimus calls, interrupting the conversation, and asks Rewind to take a walk.

Returning to the office, we find that Whirl’s really pouring it out now, giving us his whole life story.

Rung’s reaction here is equal parts sweet and sad. It’s like he’s never had a fucking friend in his entire life. Rung seems terribly lonely.

We also get the answer as to what exactly Whirl did to get kicked out of the Wreckers- he tried to mercy-kill Springer. After the events of Last Stand, Fort Max wasn’t the only one in a coma, and Whirl saw the writing on the wall in terms of Springer’s chances of recovery. He tried to put the guy out of his misery, but was caught and kicked to the curb before that could happen.

And that’s about where he stops. You know, if it weren’t for the whole “being held at gunpoint” thing, this would have been an amazing therapy session! Whirl really opened himself up today, I’m proud of him.

Fort Max realizes that the ship hasn’t turned around to head back to Cybertron, and that’s about the point where he decides it’s time to make good on his threat. Whirl volunteers as tribute, as Swerve and Rewind peek through the window, ready to enact the next phase of Rodimus’ plan.

Rung tries to deescalate, with Whirl reescalating in equal measures, because he is actively and violently suicidal at this point, bringing us to a standstill in negotiations as Ratchet finally gets ahold of Rodimus to tell him something very important.

Ratchet’s sussed out the central pin in this pegboard of PTSD, and it’s Overlord. Every guy Fort Max put in the ICU looked at least somewhat like that lippy bastard. Rung comes to a similar conclusion on his end, claiming that Fort Max is acting out because he went through hell at Overlord’s hand, and wants payback.

Outside the office, Rewind is lining up to shoot Fort Max with his rivet gun, though he has his reservations.

It’s a special kind of love that makes you want your husband to support you through sniping a guy five times bigger than you.

Rewind’s lining up the shot, when Fort Max moves behind a pillar. Time for Plan B.

Rodimus, you can’t just SAY that to him, he’s a married man.

Whirl’s egging Fort Max on, his eye flaring out in a way that one might consider to be crying, though if you asked him he’d absolutely deny it. Then Garrus 9 pays everyone a little visit, by way of Rewind’s camera projecting on the wall. This freezes Fort Max in his tracks, because of course it would. That shit’s terrifying. He breaks down, falling to the floor in a heap.

I suppose this is one way to handle a hostage situation. Rodimus, not wanting to take any chances, orders Swerve to take the shot anyway.

Safe to say, Swerve wasn’t top of his class at the military academy.

As Fort Max mourns the loss of Rung, Whirl yanks that pipe that’s been stabbed into his belly for the last several hours out, and returns the favor, getting Max right in the chest.

Shit.

All those fucking therapy appointments are going to have to be rescheduled. There are over 200 robots on this ship.

I sure hope Rung had a secretary to handle all that.

Later on, after the messy stuff’s been dealt with, Rodimus and Drift have a chat about Red Alert, and how he’s developing a potential to be a liability. As they talk, Red Alert is shown to be ripping the drill arm off that guy who got eaten by the quantum engine and using it to dig into the floor where he heard that super-slow voice. What does he find? I hope it’s treasure!

...That’s not treasure.

Hey, Rung?

Rung?

Buddy, I think someone might’ve been fibbing when they said that.

Nobody tell Fort Max about this.

[brazenautomaton]

My Libertarian Principles

idk for some reason I feel like I should explain my political views because... because idk. I think we need to stick a lot closer to libertarian principles, but anarcho-capitalism is not the solution.

this gets long and rambly

I like the free market. The free market, and capitalism, are extremely good things. I am pretty sure I heard that the invention of the smart phone has helped the Third World more than all the foreign aid money the US has ever spent, and I believe it, because the ability to coordinate isn’t free! I also believe that people make incredibly bad decisions most of the time. Capitalism is good because it says “Hey, anyone who identifies a problem or need? You go ahead and try to address that, and if you happen across a good idea by accident, people will reward you for it and emulate you.”

People making bad decisions is not a case for government regulations to force them not to make bad decisions, because government regulators ALSO make bad decisions. And then those bad decisions get locked in and everyone has to follow them. With one set of regulations, the odds that “someone accidentally had a good idea” is much lower. The regulations become calcified and eternal because there is much less feedback of “this is not working and you are failing try something else”. They are subject to Goodhart’s Law like whoa, using imperfect and gameable proxies to measure imperfect and gameable proxies..

One example is things like OSHA. OSHA is supposed to keep people safe on the job. This is a good thing that we like! But OSHA regulations can’t say “Make sure people are safe”. How do you define safe? How do we define safe? What’s a reasonable expectation? You can’t answer shit that fuzzy with black-letter law. So OSHA has a bunch of very specific regulations on individual types of workplace and equipment. You need railings everywhere and they need to be this high and they need to be this far from the wall. You need to store everything capable of this kind of reaction in a container this thick. Eye wash stations need to be every X feet. Et cetera, et cetera. There are a lot of regulations, they are not always clear or in the same place, they are expensive to ensure compliance with, the overwhelming majority of them don’t make anyone any safer, the ones that DO sometimes make people safer cannot adapt to situations or conditions, and it leads to obviously absurd outcomes like “you have to treat water as a hazardous material”. It’s not a good system.

Libertarian OSHA, an idea I bring up because it really stuck with me how clever it is, is “There are no regulations on workplace safety or construction whatsoever. Anytime someone dies or is injured in your workplace, even if it clearly is not your fault, you pay us fifty million fucking dollars. If you do not want to pay fifty million fucking dollars when people keel over from heart attacks or commit suicide or die in ways that aren’t your fault at all, well, then you should get some employee death insurance. Those employee death insurance companies would then be incentivized to inspect your workplace and ensure it’s actually safe, instead of if it adheres to an arbitrary list of criteria that are an imperfect proxy for an imperfect proxy for safety.” So, should we institute Libertarian OSHA? Well, that’s the thing.

My philosophy is “The free market will solve everything... eventually.”

Because the free market is people not being actively prevented from solving their problems, people will keep trying things to solve a given problem until they happen upon it. But seeing what works takes time. The first thing probably won’t work, because people make bad decisions. It takes time for someone to chance upon a good decision by accident. Once they do, it takes time to prove itself. Once it does, it takes time for everyone to adopt it.

So in once sense it is unfair to go up to ancaps and say “Well what will you do about contract disputes” and make them say “well uh uh private contract syndicates that are voluntarily joined!” and look dumb. Because the point of the free market solving problems is, you’re an idiot, we’re all idiots, someone is going to have a good idea by accident, we don’t know what that’s gonna look like because we’re morons.

But in the time it takes people to figure out “oh hey, this is a really good system we can use to arbitrate disputes without a government” once it is invented, that need for dispute resolution will go unmet. And that could cause a lot of heartache and misery and destruction in the meantime.

The poor have no healthcare? There are a lot of poor people so serving them is in fact a very good idea to make money (Walmart, big evil corporation, got so huge because it served poor people). Usually it’s onerous regulations that make it a bad idea to serve poor people. So there is a need there, and there is an incentive to address it, and as long as we’re not actively preventing people from solving the problem (like when we got very upset that HMOs, which kept costs down by not paying for extremely rare or experimental treatments or treatments with low success rate, were not paying for experimental treatments or treatments with a low success rate, so we made them stop providing affordable health coverage altogether), someone is going to eventually find a way to address that problem because they get rewarded if they do. But until someone does come up with that solution and it gets widely spread around, a LOT of poor people in Ancapistan are going to die from lack of healthcare. 

So that is why I am not an ancap. In theory, Ancapistan will eventually arrive at an optimal solution for everything. But no it won’t because in the time it takes to solve those problems things are gonna get really really bad and the free market’s solution to shit being awful is going to be “make this stop being ancapistan” and then the state is going to exist and will start micromanaging people’s lives because that’s human nature.

So that’s why I think we need a state, but it should adhere to libertarian principles. There are things where it is actually valid to say “Yes, the free market could find a solution to this eventually. But we as a society are not willing to pay the cost in lives and unhappiness that it would take to give the market time to sort that out.”

But the thing is, a state with libertarian principles needs to A: be aware that they are doing this, that when they make decisions it is to put into place a bad and inefficient system so we won’t have to pay the staggering human cost of waiting for the good one. This means “I don’t like that people do this, there ought to be a law” is not sufficient grounds to make a regulation. This means you need to be aware that there are a lot of times you can see people hurting, or being exploited, and you should not intervene because you should know by now that your intervention will make it worse.

And B: a state with libertarian principles should, whenever possible, allow the free market to still have the chance to come up with a better solution. This is why I am for the public option. People need healthcare. The government says “Okay, everyone needs healthcare. So here is this insurance plan we have, everyone can join it, but because we’re the government it’s kind of a crappy plan. If anyone else can provide a better plan, you can go ahead and do that. If you can’t provide a plan that’s better than this crappy government plan, well then fuck you you deserve to fail.”

So Libertarian OSHA needs one more step to work. All the onerous, shitty OSHA regulations that are expensive to comply with and don’t really make people safer are still there, in one book, but OSHA is now OSHIA. Occupational Health and Safety Insurance Administration. If you comply with those shitty, costly regulations, then you’re covered by the OSHIA plan, and our adjusters will gauge your premiums accordingly, and you don’t have to pay fifty million fucking dollars when someone dies or is injured. But if someone comes along and has a better idea of what keeps people safe, that takes less money to comply with than OSHIA’s regulations, then you can join their plan and not care about OSHIA’s rules at all.

There are legitimate purposes of a state with libertarian principles. Sometimes, solving coordination problems is a very good thing that a state can do because it creates shit-tons of value that can’t be effectively captured by the coordinator as a reward. The fact that we have roads and a postal service enables great amounts of economic growth, but the road-makers can’t be effectively paid for it (toll roads suck and are only profitable in high-traffic areas, but we want roads to connect everywhere), and the postal service is allowed to have competitors who can offer to do a better job than the postal service. But again, you gotta *know that is what you are doing*. You can’t just say “People need something, the government will give it to them!” and you certainly shouldn’t do the thing America does where it goes “People need something, so the government won’t provide it but WILL tell other people they also can’t provide it!” You need to be saying “People need something, and the government will facilitate their ability to serve their own needs.”

Libertarian principles mean you know what the government should intervene in, why it has to do so, and only do so when warranted, cognizant of the fact that your interference is by necessity deforming incentives and taking away people’s ability to solve their own problems better than you can. (Even Libertarian OSHA creates deformed incentives; namely to cover up deaths or injuries in your workplace. Not sure how to solve that.) You can’t create regulation because you’re upset or you think you know better than people. Money isn’t fake. Money is resources, and the freedom to expend one’s own resources however they need to is a vital freedom for human beings. You can’t just blow off the consequences of your regulations because “pfft, it’s just money, you care too much about money, something something capitalism greed”. Increased costs have a cost.

You can’t say we need to end the drug war, and then advocate for a bunch more policies that are driven by that same “I know better, I should make decisions for them, they aren’t using their resources the way I want them to!” impulse.

Like let’s look at a justified case of state intervention. Segregation. Now the free market could have absolutely solved segregation in the South, because refusing to deal with a significant portion of society means you’re just leaving a lot of money on the table and businesses that leave money on the table will fail compared to businesses that don’t. The incentives of capitalism are not to discriminate because the Almighty Dollar doesn’t discriminate. But even without existing bigots being able to enlist the state to enforce their bigotry, it would take a long time -- multiple generations -- for the money you get from serving the whole population to outweigh the penalty of going against the social system and the customers you lose from that. That’s much too long to ask people to live in an area that hates them and discriminates against them, and though there may be a more market-based solution to the problem (”you can discriminate all you want but it’s gonna fuckin’ cost ya until you give up on it of your own free will” and “you can discriminate all you want but also we just pay for black people to leave so they don’t have to put up with your bullshit” are xamples) they also have their own serious problems, and it was a legitimate reason for a state, even one with libertarian principles, to intervene.

But the intervention didn’t stop at what was necessary, it didn’t do the bare minimum to allow people to solve the problem themselves or nudge incentives so that they were encouraged to solve the problem. One of the most egregious examples was “busing”, which was the practice of assigning kids to schools outside of the school district where they lived, so as to achieve a better mix of racial integration in each school. This was one of the shittiest ideas ever and everyone who was actually affected by the system despised it -- you had to get up super fucking early and get home super fucking late because your bus ride to a distant school was way too long, and when you got there, you were surrounded by people you didn’t fucking know and couldn’t hang out with because they loved too far away and this was an era where kids played with neighborhood kids! So you got to be exhausted and lonely and miserable so someone else could nod approvingly at the racial percentage of the school. It didn’t help at all and just built resentment. That’s the easiest, most uncontroversial example of how legitimate reasons for intervention easily go too far. The regulators and those demanding change, as they often do, completely ignored what the costs to affected people would be because We Know Better. And they thought their job was to change people’s minds, instead of to allow people to solve their problems, so they piled on more feel-good policies that did nothing but hinder people. That’s the kind of restraint and self-knowledge I am talking about when I talk about having libertarian principles. “It sure would be nice if people of different races got exposed to each other more and felt more comfortable around each other. But doing that is not my job, and I know I won’t be able to do it well, so I’m just here to ensure people aren’t actively causing harm and have opportunities to solve their own problems.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Collective Action: an interview with Cory Doctorow, author of ‘Radicalized’

A few weeks ago, we reviewed Radicalized, a fantastic collection of four stories from author Cory Doctorow about the extreme measures that people (or a certain Kryptonian) will take to push back against extreme forms of oppression or circumstance.  

Recently, I had the chance to speak with Mr. Doctorow about what inspired these tales as well as what some of the real world parallels they were inspired from.

There will also be spoilers for the various stories in Radicalized (especially Model Minority), so make sure you’ve already them first…which you really should have already.

AiPT!: Every story in Radicalized is great, but Model Minority really stood out to me, mostly because it was one of the best and most uniquely structured Superman stories I’ve ever read. What was your approach going into it to make Model Minority different than what has come before it?

Cory Doctorow: Humans have always been portrayed as his Achilles heel, but I think there’s an even deeper [issue] for Superman that goes back to his origins as a character. He was created by Jewish men in Brooklyn who were horrified about the rise of Nazism across the Atlantic. They wanted to build an immortal and unstoppable hero who could conceivably punch Nazis until they…well, stopped being Nazis!

But the actual answer to Nazis in Europe — although there were many brave individuals — was in no way an individual action. In fact, the answer was the largest collective action in the history of the world.

For reason both noble and base, I think we like to frame big fights as a struggle between individuals. The heroic individual who was at the right place at the right time and makes the sacrifice that makes things happen. Humanitarian movements definitely cultivate this.

Rosa Parks gets a lot of press as a solitary hero for her bus protest during the Civil Rights movement. But she was actually a community organizer who—along with her colleagues—planned out a strategy to get her arrested so that a case would be keyed up with a certain set of legal consequences that would be easier to argue in court and play into existing precedencies. If Rosa Parks had merely been a lone individual who was brave enough to refuse to give up her seat, she likely would have died in jail. It’s because she was part of a huge collective that she was able to have such a huge impact.

That’s what Model Minority really tries to dig into—the limits of individual action and the importance of collective action. Our perception of the individual as the driving force for change (rather than the collective) is something that still has a paralyzing effect on society’s willingness to confront its own issues. Look at climate change. It’s not happening because you didn’t recycle enough. But chances are (if you live in a city) that your biggest contribution to climate change is probably your commute. But you can’t dig a subway— Elon Musk can’t do that. And if even you could, you couldn’t rezone all the buildings for it to work. It would have to be a collective action.

AiPT!: Aside from Model Minority, the rest of the stories in Radicalized had a very near-future, Black Mirror-esque feel. Do you see the technology and events that took place as things we will see in the next few years?

Doctorow: I’m not a believer in the ability of science fiction to predict the future because I’m not a believer in predictable futures. That’s one of the big differences between an activist and a futurist. Activists believe that the future changes based on what we do. If the future were predictable, there’d be no reason to bring forth an event to create change.

The model of these stories is to show that the future can be great if we just don’t f*ck it up. The thing that drives a story like Unauthorized Bread is not merely that it shows how technological oppression takes place. It also shows how technical liberation takes place. People put a lot of emphasis on what technology does, but often overlook who it does those things for and who it does those things to. Often times that’s way more important.

Masque of Red Death was inspired in part by Doug Rushkoff’s story where he spoke to a bunch of hedge fund managers about their doomsday bunkers. They were trying to figure out how to make their bunkers sustainable after the apocalypse, but what worried them in particular was that their guards would kill them and take their food. One of the solutions they came up with were biometric food lockers that would only open for them. Once again, the issue isn’t what the technology does, but who has their finger on the button controlling it.

Going back to Model Minority, we have these predictive policing tools like the one Bruce sold to the NYPD. In reality, those tools are super racist. Patrick Ball, who runs the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, took PredPol (which is a major predictive policing tool) and gave it 2016 policing data from Oakland. He then asked it to provide where it predicted the most drug crime would be in 2017. He was then able to compare its predictions to the NIH survey about drug usage.

Predpol predicted that all of the drug crime was going to take place in black neighborhoods, which follows the police pattern that created its training data. If you’re only asking black people to turn out their pockets to look for drugs, then you all the drugs you find are going to be in black people’s pockets. According to the NIH data, however, illegal drug usage was pretty much even across the entire area among all demographics.

Now think about this: Instead of unfairly targeting a group of people, you could potentially use the exact same technology and data provided by PredPol (compared with the NIH data) to determine if policing patterns are racially biased. It’s all about whose finger is on the button.

AiPT!: Do you see the crisis on America’s southern border as a potential breaking point for people to become radicalized on both sides of the issue?

Doctorow: As a Canadian, I am somewhat baffled by both the American relationship to guns and the American relationship to healthcare. Every country has blind spots—when I lived in England, I couldn’t believe a country that managed to conquer the world still hadn’t figured out plumbing.

But America’s blind spots are pretty weird. The fact that they can’t do something every other country in the world has figured out is pretty baffling. It also spawns another weird question: Why is it that frustrated white dudes routinely shoot up mosques or kill their ex-wives, but don’t murder the healthcare executives who doom the people they love most in the world to die a slow, painful death? The pat answer would be that those executives are protected by a large amount of wealth and power. It’s much easier to punch down than punch up.

The other thing that Radicalized tries to do is to rebut our dominant model of radicalization, which is the contagion model. The idea with that model is there are a lot of people out there with very bad and dangerous ideas. If you get exposed to those ideas, then you will have the ideas too and go do bad and dangerous things.

But there’s not a lot of evidence to support that. Boston University did a study on the history of suicide bombers in the occupied territory in the West Bank. What they found was the biggest predictor of whether someone became radicalized was not ideology or a commitment to violence—it was if they were already suicidally depressed.

That trauma model—where people who are traumatized become much more susceptible/vulnerable to people with bad ideas—is a much truer account of what goes on in radicalization. It suggests that what we really need to be doing is reducing the amount of trauma as opposed to the exposure of people to bad ideas.

AiPT!: Where do you see that model at work in the current global landscape?

Doctorow: I feel like the people who are fighting it are being affected by racism that has been compounded by trauma. We’ve had 40 years of tightening belts and shifts in wealth from the middle to the wealthy. This has produced a large group of people who are traumatized and ready to be radicalized by difficult circumstances.

This about it this way: You think you have a secure chair at the table. Then someone announces “Actually, it’s not your chair. It’s musical chairs and at the end of the every turn, we’re going to decide whether or not you get one. Oh, and by the way, we’re going to let a bunch of people who have never had a chair compete for the chairs, as well…and we’re going to take away chairs at a faster than any in point in human history.”

When you consider that framework, it’s not a surprise that people can become racist, xenophobic a------s. It doesn’t exonerate or excuse them, obviously, but it does help explain it.

The arguments anti-vaxxers make today aren’t any better or more informed than they used to be. It was a stupid argument then and it’s a stupid argument now. Same with flat eartherism. What changes are the material circumstances of the people who believe the arguments. When you look at the rise of authoritarian movements throughout history, they almost always follow some sort of collective trauma.

Another source of trauma for people is that despite the wealth of information at our fingertips, there is a collective inability to trust it. There so many different sources of information that it becomes impossible to adjudicate them all, which forces you to defer to whomever is deemed the expert…or whoever shouts their information the loudest. That’s part of the reason you can have the FDA saying for 15 years that opioids were safe. Even the government can’t be trusted as a source. This leads to people often times finding someone who “feels” like someone they can trust whether they are credible or not—and you just believe whatever they tell you.

AiPT!: Moving onto something a little more light-hearted: Is Superman (or any other character in the DC Universe) someone you’d like to revisit in the future?

Doctorow: Honestly, I didn’t really always want to write Superman. In this instance, Superman was simply the right metaphor for the bigger question about individual and collective action and being an ally.

Speaking as someone whose father was a Jewish immigrant refugee to Canada, it was odd to see how he was initially treated as a racialized minority, but later “became” white. It showed me how whiteness is socially constructed—and how the last people on the whiteness boat are usually the first ones to get kicked off. In Charlotte, we had people chanting “Jews will not replace us,” but there are still conservative Jews (including within my own family) who treat white supremacy as a small price to pay as support for Israel and other portions of the GOP agenda.

One thing I wanted to draw attention to in Model Minority is that Superman’s whiteness (and humanity) is assigned to him as a courtesy. It is entirely contingent on his support of the establishment, who can withdraw it at a moment’s notice. It also shows the difficulty of allyship. No matter what you go through to help others, your struggle will pale in comparison to the ones without your privilege who you’re trying to help. Just like when Superman was asked “Where were you for the last 100 years,” you might have to confront the fact that you were previously a part of the problem.

That’s not to say we need to play oppression Olympics with everyone to compete for who has struggled the most in society. But I do think we need to acknowledge that the daily experience of different people in different experiences is something that we can’t fully comprehend.

AiPT!: This probably won’t be possible with Model Minority due to all the licensing red tape you’d have to jump through, but are there plans to make any of the other stories in Radicalized into other media properties?

Doctorow: Unauthorized Bread is currently in development as a television project. That’s all I can say for now

www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2019/08/13/collective-action-an-interview-with-cory-doctorow-author-of-radicalized/

[weerd1]

Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1909.28: Missions Reviewed, “Extreme Measures,” “The Dogs of War,” and “What You Leave Behind.”

(Note: as we are in the last nine episodes which run as a continuous storyline, these three will be summarized together.)

Kira and Garak return an ailing Odo to DS9, and his condition is far worse than Bashir expected. Odo asks Kira to return to Damar so she doesn’t have to watch him die, and so Kira’s grief won’t be the last thing he sees. Bashir and O’Brien reveal their plan to Sisko who though angry, gives his approval. They also reveal they have Romulan mind-probes to use if the Seciton 31 agent does not want to be helpful. Soon enough, Sloan himself arrives, and Bashir springs his trap. Realizing he’s cornered, Sloan triggers a suicide device.

 Bashir stabilizes him, but they have about an hour before he dies. Bashir re-rigs the Romulan probes to create a mind meld, and he and O’Brien go into Sloan’s brain to find the material. At first there is little resistance, but the longer they stay the worse it gets until they are shot by a “guard.” They realize that must symbolize where the information is. Trying to enter, they find themselves awakened by Sisko, who puts and end to it. In his quarters, Bashir tries to read, but the book just starts over again right where he left off, and he realizes they are still in Sloan’s brain; Sloan can’t replicate what Julian has not read yet. He gathers O’Brien and returns to “the room,” finding Sloan inside surrounded by documents. O’Brien finds the cure for Odo, but Bashir does not want to leave given all the other information. 

O’Brien talks him out, and they wake up, really this time, as Sloan dies. Bashir replicates the cure and saves Odo. Starfleet however does not want to share the cure with the Founders, and Sisko follows those orders, asking Odo not to do it either. Odo mentions how the Federation wrings their hands about a Section 31, but they still allow them to do the dirty work, and accept that work. On Cardassia, Damar’s resistance cell is in trouble when betrayed by one of the officers he tries to recruit. Soon, it is just Damar, Garak, and Kira hiding in the basement of Garak’s childhood home, tended to by Mila, the servant to Garak’s father Enebran Tain, and likely Garak’s mother.  The ailing Founder decides to pull Dominion forces back into Cardassian space, solidifying their position, and allowing them time to build more ships and Jem’Hadar and extend the war. The Federation Alliance decides not to let this happen, and prepare to invade Cardassia. Kai Winn takes Dukat, whose sight is restored, back in, and the two plan to take the book of Kosst Amojan to the Fire Caves to release the Pah-Wraiths. Quark gets a message from the Grand Nagus that he’s going to be made the next Nagus, and begins to plan. Brunt shows up, ready to suck up, and tells Quark about the various reforms Zek has made, like taxes and wage guarantees and free healthcare. 

Quark vows to return Ferenginar to it’s corrupt, greedy glory. Ezri and Bashir begin to talk about whether or not they should pursue a relationship. Initially they decide not to ruin their friendship, but soon they are making out in a turbo lift. The Nagus arrives, and reveals that he thought he was talking to someone else when he named Quark Nagus…Rom. Rom becomes the Grand Nagus and Quark vows that HIS bar will always be the greedy and corrupt tribute to what Ferenginar should be. Dukat and Winn find the right place in the caves, and reading the right spell, they burst into flame. They await the moment. O’Brien makes the decision that he will return to Earth after the war and take a teaching position at the Academy. Kasidy reveals to Ben that she is pregnant.

The invasion of Cardassia begins. On the planet, Damar reveals he is alive, and the people begin to rise up against the Dominion in the name of Damar. In response, the female Founder orders a city destroyed. She promises every act of betrayal by Cardassians will result in another razed city. Jem’Hadar forces find and capture Darmar, Kira, and Garak.

 They are about to be executed. The Alliance fleet enters Dominion space and the fight is on.  Things are not going well for them. Winn on Bajor proposes that Dukat drink with her to celebrate, but he realizes too late that she has poisoned him and his death is the sacrifice that brings forth Kosst Amojan. Just as the Jem’Hadar are going to gun down Damar and crew, the Cardassian guards turn on the Jem’Hadar, and declare their allegiance to Damar. They prepare to raid the headquarters. In space, the Cardassian fleet turns its guns on the Breen and Jem’Hadar, turning the tide. The Alliance fleet pursues the Dominion to Cardassian orbit. There are thousands of ships and orbital emplacements there. The fight is not over but becomes a stand off. 

 Given the Cardassian change of sides, the Founder orders the elimination of all Cardassians on the planet. The world begins to burn. The rebels hit the HQ, but Damar is killed in the process. Kira and Garak make it into the control room, and Garak kills the last Weyoun.

 The Founder refuses to call off the attacks on Cardassia or surrender the fleet, telling them they will have to fight to the last Dominion soldier. Odo beams down from the Defiant, linking with the Founder, curing her in the process. In the seconds they are bound together, he negotiates a treaty between Dominion and the Alpha Quadrant. The war comes to an end. The alliance beams down to find the Dominion has killed 800 million Cardassians. Odo reveals the Founder will stay and face war crimes trials, but he will go back to the Great Link and cure his people, teaching them about the Solids. Kira asks when he will come back. He reveals he won’t.

On DS9, everyone gathers in Vic Fontaine’s lounge, realizing it is likely the last time they will all be together. Worf takes the position as Federation ambassador to the Klingons. Garak has stayed behind to rebuild Cardassia. O’Brien gets ready to leave to Earth. On Bajor, Kosst Amojan returns, but rather than come into the Kai, he reanimates Dukat, restoring him to his Cardassian form.

 Sisko senses it from the station, and goes there. Dukat/Amojan disintegrates Winn as she tries to stop him, distracting him enough Sisko can tackle him, and taking the book, knock Dukat, himself, and sacred evil text into the flames. Sisko is suddenly in the Celestial temple.  Sarah/Prophet is there and tells him that he has fulfilled his duty, Dukat will forever be imprisoned with the Pah-Wraiths on Bajor. But Ben’s corporeal form has been destroyed. He is now to stay in the temple and learn, so he may one day return to Bajor as Emissary. He reaches out and brings Kasidy into the temple, telling her what has happened, but telling her to make sure everyone knows Benjamin Sisko, The Emissary, promises to return.

Kira takes Odo back to the Great Link, where he changes his appearance to look as if he is in a tuxedo one more time and bids her farewell. He steps into the dying link, and it begins to heal around him, but he can no longer be differentiated from his people. 

Kira returns to DS9 where she has assumed command of the station. She finds Quark has started a betting pool on who will be the next Kai, which she immediately shuts down. Quark realizes he’s going to have to stay crafty to keep ahead of the new station commander. “The more things change the more they stay the same,” he says. Kira sees Jake Sisko, standing on the upper level of the Promenade, where he and Nog (Kira’s new Ops officer) used to look down on the others. Now he’s looking out, toward the wormhole, knowing his father is in the Celestial Temple. She joins him there, and the two look out as we pull away. Deep Space Nine, formally Terok Nor, hangs in space at the mouth of the wormhole, and as it has for the last seven season…it waits.

I’m not sure how you mourn a show that ended two decades ago, that you know is on Netflix, or that I know I have upstairs on DVD. It’s a show I can revisit anytime I want to in any amount, and dammit, I am sad it is over.  I want more, I would watch all of these people carry on tomorrow if I could. We’ve lost some of them, but dear lord how this all ends, enough to satisfy, but I would return to Bajor in a heartbeat if they announced it.

There are some things here I might have done differently. I still think Kira should have killed Dukat rather than Sisko, and with all the talk of the Alamo, it seems like the final battle of the show should have happened at DS9, surrounded by insurmountable numbers of Dominion ships, but perhaps that would have been too much like the battle that opened Season 6. The culmination of the Damar storyline, from “Cardassian Bridge Officer” to Dominion toady, to hero of Cardassia is so pitch perfect as to need the climax on his world. The fleet battle so ridiculously epic to this day, despite 20 years old effects, you need it to be where it is so you can cheer when the Cardassians turn, and be horrified when the Dominion turns its guns on Cardassia…formerly the villains. What a change from the first episode, and what a journey.

What a journey for the Ferengi as well, as Rom goes from “Pit boss” to Quark’s brother to engineer to Nagus.  Or Nog as he goes from child thief, to Cadet, to DS9’s operations Lieutenant. Garak, as the plain, simple, tailor with a mysterious past to the defacto ruler of a smoldering Cardassia.  As great as all the main character arcs where, those supporting characters are what really makes DS9 great. Brunt, Weyoun, Martok, Sloan, Cretak, Winn, Bareil, the list goes on. A couple of particular things I took away from the finale, the final battle between Sisko, Dukat, and Winn struck me this time as a nearly beat for beat homage to the final scene of the Classic Series’ second pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” where Kirk has to face his friend Gary Mitchell who has developed god-like power along with ship’s psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Dehner. The dynamic where Dehner realizes she’s wrong as she watches Gary force Kirk to bow to him as a God is remarkably similar to Winn watching Dukat do the same to Sisko.  More on that in a minute. Another character note I love, and something I missed 20 years ago, Worf becomes Ambassador to the Klingons…the same position once held by Curzon Dax. What a fascinating extension of his relationship to Dax, even as Dax’s current host Ezri has chosen Bashir.

Kira Nerys: Former freedom fighter, who may have delved into terrorist one time too many. Woman of faith, surrounded by a scientific world. Woman who owns her sexuality and her femininity, and is perfectly happy to kick your ass when you need it. A woman we watch grow from ready to kill every Cardassian she sees to co-liberator of their world. Who loved and lost a Changeling, but whose love will set the stage to bridge Odo’s people with the Solids.  Who served next to her Emissary, and stands now in his place waiting for his return. Rewatching DS9 absolutely reinforced my feelings that Kira Nerys is Star Trek’s best character.

Hindsight allows me to see what DS9 foreshadowed in television as well. Complex characters in morally ambiguous situations; long story arcs dependent on you seeing each chapter, and each episode leading into the next; women as leaders and peers who are not marginalized by the story; a brown man who is presented as a good father AND as the Messiah: Deep Space Nine is not just progressive for its time, it helped define what television would become. It’s continuity replicated in a thousand binge-worthy streams on Netflix like “Stranger Things.” Representation for women on shows like “Jessica Jones,” or “Game of Thrones” or of course “Star Trek: Discovery.” Though honestly, we have perhaps not learned enough from DS9, as there has never been another character quite like Benjamin Sisko, and all he represents. We can still learn from that; as I have said many times in this rundown, “Star Trek is always relevant.”

So now it is over, and I find that yes, DS9 holds up pretty well 20 years later. It’s still ahead of its time in some ways, and in those things that aren’t, serves as a roadmap of where we have been, demonstrating why we needed to move beyond such tropes. But in questions of faith, what it means to be human, and how one doesn’t have to be perfect to be better, nothing quite examines the human condition like DS9 does; and that’s why, hands down, at least for now, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the very best Star Trek has to offer.

NEXT VOYAGE: After  173 episodes, 124 pages, and 71,819 words about DS9, how is there a Next Voyage? Join me one more time for my review of “What We Left Behind,” this year’s DS9 documentary. But let’s face facts: I will never be done talking about DS9.

[thatssomental-blog]

Too Coward for the "Coward's Way Out": Living with Passive Suicidal Ideation

TW: This article may be hard for some to read, but is intended to assist others who may be dealing with passive, or active, suicidal ideations. The following text contains details of suicidal thoughts (without intent) and mentions self harm (briefly, and without detail), in addition to depression and it’s relationship with suicidal thoughts. 

So many people label suicide as the “coward’s way out”. If that’s true, then why is it that I feel like a coward because I could never follow through? Passive suicidal ideation is defined as wishing you were dead or that you could die, but having no intention to take your own life. Whereas, active suicidal ideation means one is not only struggling with these thoughts, but may have full intention, or a plan already in place, to take their own life. Passive suicidal ideation is still a risk factor among patients with depression and suicidal thoughts, and just because you are not planning your great escape from this world now, doesn’t mean you should skip out on your therapy sessions. All that being said, it is very real, your thoughts are just as valid, and you are not alone in feeling the way that you do.

Before I continue, I would like to specify that “wishing you were dead or that you could die” isn’t a reference to how you feel waking up in the morning, before you reluctantly drag yourself to work/school, it is in reference to a very real, deep desire to stop living, that may come or go, or may stay with you incessantly, even on your best days when everything seems hunky-dory. I am specifying this, because as someone who suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the mental illnesses that myself and others suffer through daily are not meant to be #relatable, just because you like things neatly organized or hate your job/school.

My own struggle with suicidal thoughts is a plague that I can't seem to get rid of. I suffered from them long before I even knew what suicide truly was. I was about 14 when the first thought came along, and I clearly remember it. I was putting away the clean dishes and took a knife from the dishwasher. I stood there for about five minutes straight, just staring at it, and thinking that I could just slash my wrist open and the numbness I’d been feeling for weeks would all go away. I scared myself with that thought, put the knife away, and didn’t do it; I couldn’t do it, and I wouldn’t have done it. I can’t remember any other thoughts as vividly as that single instance, but sometimes they were there, and sometimes they weren’t, and every time I had them I could never bring myself to act on them.

Health care is necessary for a healthy life. In the US healthcare is expensive, whether you have coverage or not. Health Insurance, especially with Mental Health included, is hard to come by. Even if you’re one of the “lucky” ones that manages to land a job that provides it, a good plan for yourself, not to mention a whole family, can easily eat up what little bit of wages you work for, and have to live off of. In the past several years, life has been difficult for me, though it was mostly adjusting to living the independent life, learning how to pay bills, and learning how to take care of myself. Despite all of the challenges and obstacles I’ve faced in that time, I was doing pretty well. Even through the trauma of sudden death, which my family is not equipped to handle, I managed. Within the past eight months, I attempted to better my situation by leaving a toxic work environment and moving on to something new. Unfortunately, by choosing to leave that job I also left what little health coverage I had, and since have had to move on to even worse challenges and obstacles, all with untreated, depression, anxiety, body and gender dysphoria, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. If you’ve never been through that, I’ll tell you right now that it is hell, and as petty as I am, I wouldn’t wish anything I’ve been through on my worst enemies.

Factoring in all of the above, with the soul crushing feeling that your whole life and all of your freedom is crashing down around you, like an imploding dumpster fire, it really adds up. In my last few months before moving back home with Mom and Dad, something none of us want to do even if we love our parents with a fiery passion, I was at rock bottom. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but the bare minimum, which made moving day tougher than it already was, and left me feeling hopeless and drained of life. I would lay on my couch for hours, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the wall with an empty mind and heavy heart, it was the worst I had ever been, and I allowed myself to wallow in it, only making it worse.

Even now that I am home, and surrounded by the love of my family, I frequently wish I was dead. I don’t think such things only when everything is going wrong in my life, but the harder times get the more I just want all the pain to go away. I think of scenarios in which I could put myself out of my misery. I own a gun, I have access to others, and medications, not to mention every knife in the block or kitchen drawer that could easily end all of my suffering. But, why is it that despite my desires to no longer deal with life's stresses, my battle with my seemingly, ever changing, gender identity, and my unbridled hatred for the world we live in and the multitude or horrible people in it, do I refrain? Why, when it seems like the only option for peace of mind and escape from the emotions I can’t control, can I not do it? Why, when I wish for the calming embrace of death, do I fear strangers who could kill me in cold blood? Why, if I want to die, did I seek medical attention, without any health coverage, and go to the ER when I legitimately thought I was dying?

Fear of the unknown. I was raised in the Christian faith from a very young age, and was even baptized twice. My mother was raised within that same faith, and my father is an atheist. Despite my current pagan-leaning/agnostic dogma, there is a fear bread into me from childhood that I will burn in hell. Since becoming “woke”, so to say, I have completely denounced the Christian god for what he is. Despite my genuine certainty that this god does not exist, and if he does, he’s actually quite a terrible deity, because of how I was raised, I will more than likely carry that fear of denouncing him and burning in hell with me, for the rest of my life. Religion aside, and taking things from an atheistic perspective, maybe I’m just going into a hole in the ground when I die, but the thought of everything being black forever is also terrifying for me. Even though I am aware that, in this scenario, I will literally not be conscious of my own death, it is almost impossible for me to wrap my head around it, and as someone who has exhibited a very present case of FOMO all of their life, that just doesn’t fly with me. Regardless of whether we go to sit at Odin’s table in Valhalla, or up to a magic golden kingdom in the clouds where everyone is happy and wants for nothing, or we just literally kill over like a toy with dead batteries, no one actually knows until they actually die.

Fear of failure. I have had a very hard time succeeding at pretty much everything I’ve tried in life. No matter what I do, I never feel like the product is good enough. I am my own worst critic, and, on top of that, I am a rage-quitter. If I am not instantly or naturally good at something, I get bent out of shape when I mess it up, maybe I cry, then I quit, and I move on. (Though that statement doesn’t apply to absolutely everything, it applies to a pretty big chunk of things.) One of the greatest fears that keeps me from “attempting” is knowing that if I mess up, I may not recover. Some people are saved at the last minute, and depending on what you’ve done to yourself, sometimes the wounds or the manner in which you’ve attempted will mend. However, if some things are done incorrectly, i.e. putting a bullet in your brain, or a fall that just wasn’t quite big enough to kill you, you may still survive, but there could be permanent consequences such as brain damage, loss of mobility, etc. I’m sure you catch my drift. I suppose this also technically falls under fear of the unknown, because you never truly know what’s going to happen until it does. Sometimes you just have to stop and ask yourself, would you rather be depressed and fully functional to the best of your capabilities? Or depresses and handicapped, and therefore, with your anxious/depressed brain, if it works anything like mine, an even heavier burden on those around you?

Forcing others to suffer. I am very lucky to have an amazing family that is full of love. Even for those of us living a life that others may not agree with, disowning and/or not loving one another is not in our vocabulary. I am very close to my mother and my grandmother, and it would devastate them beyond comprehension. That used to be my only line of thinking, however things have happened and times have changed. Less than two years ago, we buried my grandmother’s youngest child, my mother’s youngest sister, and one of my best friends, who was more like my sister than my aunt, along with her unborn son. Even if I intended to follow through on my own suicidal thoughts, and even excluding the above reasons, I could never force my mother to bury her only child, or my grandmother to bury another grandchild. I also have an amazing SO and friends who would at least be a little devastated, as well.

I just can’t. Ignoring every other reason I have included, I just can’t do it. Despite my fear of death, failure, and hurting those I love most, I just don’t have it in me. It’s not the pain that I worry about, one could easily swallow a bunch of sleeping pills and hope to not wake up, and as much as I hate to admit it, I have physically self harmed before, way back in my teen years. I don’t know how else to explain it, other than I just can’t. I have a huge fear of missing out, if I don’t know all the details of something it will drive me nuts, and I hate surprises. Despite how great it would be to just not have to worry, and despite how hopeless I feel, there is a part of me that knows something better is coming. If I were to take my own life, there are countless things I would miss out on, things I’ve always wanted and things that I may not even know that I want yet. The future is a mystery, and I’ll never find out what it holds if I don’t have one.

Do those things make my suicidal thoughts invalid? No, and though your reasons behind your lack/full intent may differ from mine, they do not make yours any less valid, either.

I am by no means encouraging suicide, though if you ever lose your battle just know that I will never call you a coward when you’re gone. Suicide is the final side-effect of losing your battle with a very real illness, one that may not be visible to even those closest to you.

My parting wisdom is this: Whether you intend to follow through on your suicidal ideations or not, if you take your own life, you will never be around to see it get better. I know it seems hopeless, I personally feel hopeless about 95% of the time, and I know that sometimes it seems like the only escape from not only the world, but your own mind. I really do. I know it hurts, and even if I don’t know what you’re going through, or how you feel, perseverance is the answer, not death. If you are strong enough to make it this far, through all the grief and torment and suffering, then you are strong enough to build your own future. Please don’t take that away from yourself, no matter how much you may want to.

If you, or someone you love is feeling suicidal, please check thatssomental.tumblr.com/resources for a list of suicide and mental help phone lines, chats, and websites.

©thatssomental.tumblr.com 2019

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Mental Health Apps Abound Us but Picking the Right One is Tough

There is no doubt in saying that with the advancement in technology we all have benefitted immensely. Today, if we talk about the smartphones, it facilitates you in every aspect of life. However, over a couple of years, smartphones have modified the way most people approach health and fitness. For instance, people become quite concerned not only about physical health but mental health as well.

This is happening because now these smartphones give you the option to download mental health applications. With it, we can expect the awareness of the mental health conditions and not the complete removal of taboos. You can get a variety of mental health apps but picking the right one can be an arduous task for you. Even so, we can help you in finding the best mental health app by providing your insight into it.

What Are the Categories of Mental Health Applications?

During the mental health app development, the work is done on the categories of the application. It is done to decide the focus of the app to facilitate the user. In this regard, the mental health apps differ from each other because of their utility and complexity. You can see that some mental health app development solutions provide deep breathing and relaxation plan.

However, other apps will assist those who undergo rapid mood swings as in the case of bipolar conditions. There are complex mental health apps to perform testing. It takes assistance from device learning to aid PTSD and depression. Specifically, the healthcare app development designs the app keeping in view the demographics of the people.

Not just this, the mental health app has widely subtypes to keep you satisfied whenever you use it. These subtypes include mental improvement, psychological disorder, and common mental health.

Psychological Disorder Apps

If you quickly search on the app store you will find different applications on mental disorders. The Mental Health App Development Solutions offer several functions like sending messages to the doctor, providing tips, and mood controlling programs. There is a specific app for depression with the name of MoodTools to render suicidal precautionary plans.

On top of that, there are applications for the treatment of psychosis and schizophrenia. Mostly, the doctors say that such mental health apps are add-on with therapeutic interventions. But this is applicable in case when certain specialist remains on board 24/7. On the other hand, the app users can make bonds with other people there. In this way, they can get the opportunity to share their emotions.

Mental Improvement Apps

Those who want to break their patterns and stop negative thinking can also download the mental health application. Most apps contain yoga and meditation plans so that you can adopt healthy habits. Let's consider an app called Calm which uses meditation as its basic feature to let the users channel stress effectively. Moreover, those who don't find relief with meditation can take help from self-checking apps. Few mental health apps provide the chance to get in touch with a team of psychologists to recover from mental illness. All in all, mentally healthy individuals can be divided into stress-relieving, addiction reversal, and common mental health apps.

Common Mental Health Apps

This category of apps is for those who want to improve their self-awareness by getting rid of unhealthy acts. To put it simply, the What's up app can help you acknowledge your emotions in few minutes. You have to give answers to basic emotion-related questions. In short, it can keep you away from negative thoughts. Other than that, in case you were searching for an active listener then download the 7 cups app. Through this application, you can get help from professionally trained listeners. Of course, they won't get tired by listening to you. However, this app does not only limited to psychologically challenge ones. On the other side, the mentally healthy can also opt for this app.

Features That Make an App Useful and Effective

After in-depth research, we found out that different mental health apps provide a variety of techniques. It contains gamification, cognitive therapies, mood training, and customized configuration. Keeping this in view, we have picked mental health app with all the essential features to guide you in every step. Most of the features of the app can relate to healthy people. It is to ensure that they can also get benefits from these applications.

· Self-Management

In most cases, mentally healthy users download such apps to know about their current mood patterns. On the contrary, mentally challenged people want to check their disorder-related symptoms from the apps. The frequently used app related to eating patterns helps the operator to monitor meals, feelings, and thought processes.

· Reminders

There are times when the people using the app forgets about the certain thing they have to do. Therefore, the app that provides a reminder option can be the user's favorite. In this way, the app recommends that one has to exercise or perform relaxation techniques. This might sound obvious. But the notification feature can become a valuable factor for people who give less time to themselves. Although getting non-stop notification from the app can be the source of stress for both healthy and non-healthy people.

· Support Circles

It is true to say that getting in touch with other people in sound conditions can help gain confidence. The app that gives the feature of a support group can be effective for the unhealthy and healthy ones. It can perform under the guidance of psychology professionals. The apps allow the user to send messages any time they want. In turn, this can be a positive point for people with depression and other disorders.

·  Video/Voice Chats

Not all mental health apps give you the option to make video or voice calls. But the apps that have this feature are more likable by users. The video call allows the user and psychologist to talk face to face. As a result, one can minimize various communication errors. Though, it depends upon the user which platform he thinks is the most comfortable.

The Best Mental Health Apps

Upon installing the mental health apps you can easily check your progress on it. It also does not make you worried about taking the appointment with the psychologist. Therefore, we have brought you the best mental health apps that facilitate in every way.

· Moodfit

As the name suggests this mental health app is to keep a record of your moods. In addition to this, to elevate your mood it has the feature of sending constructive messages. On top of that, the apps suggest various activities that keep you engaged. Both Android and iPhone users can download this app to make their mood joyful. This app also gives you a good insight into the sleep and activities affect your mood.

· Talkspace

For those who are searching for someone to listen to them. Now they don’t have to search for a person as this Talkspace app is the solution. The community-based app consists of multiple psychologists to assist you in overcoming anxiety and depression. The objective behind this app is to provide you a psychologist who will give a one-to-one session. For permitting you a deeper knowledge of your mental health the Talkspace has more features.

·  Sanvello

The app is designed to render complete guidance and support to individuals. With this mental health app, you can make a platform where you can speak your heart out. Most importantly, this app offers you options to choose the suitable intervention for you. Of course, you have to follow instructions from the psychologists to save you from any mishap. Furthermore, Sanvello can give you enough strength to tackle the symptoms of the related condition. There is a facility for getting in touch with the coach so that you can be at ease every time.

· Happify

Yet another mental health app to assist you to fight stress and negative thoughts. It creates every action based on evidence tactic. The app can break the pattern of your bad habits and encourage new good habits. The recommendations it gives you are not overwhelming and difficult therefore, you can follow the guidelines smoothly. The Happify name is given to this app for the fact it measures your happiness level. It generates the score by presenting few simple questions to show you accurate results.

· What’s up

Whether you are dealing with anger issues or any mood disorder this app is the answer. The app contains techniques based on ACT and CBT to keep you less anxious. On the other side, there is an in-built forum that allows the user to interact with others. It teaches you mindfulness, gratitude, and de-stress activities to use in case of any difficulty. Unlike other apps, it provides you feedback on your habits to get an idea of why you do certain behaviors.

Conclusion

All in all, in the above write-up we have added top-notch mental health apps to choose from. These mental health apps will be your best companion to seek help where you go. However, there are some limitations that you need to take into consideration. The mental health app can’t be the complete substitute for the therapy. However, the purpose of this app is to create more awareness related to your mood and anger issues. Without any doubt, it provides a platform for both client and the professional.

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My Transition.

...hope this helps someone. I've put a lot of thought into writing this and my transition.

I just started dressing full time for 2 weeks now. I had to build up the courage and strength for a long time before even considering it. It came about one day where enough was enough.

Previously, I had a harassment case at work, where someone was making comments about my gender and riding my ass (no pun intended) since I started working there. The very first person I came out to was my lead supervisor. He was very supportive about this issue. I let him know what was going on with me and he had to report it to my shift supervisor. He was supportive as well.

How my supervisors handeled this situation gave me the strength to know the time was right. I just had to have the courage, to deal with everything that will come after, once I make this choice. Now if you know me, I'm stubborn and once I set my mind to something, I don't give up. Now this shit right here: is a major choice. I mean there's no going back. It's either work or life suicide. There will be so much repercussions to a major choice like this.

I couldn't even get my head around it. I mean I'm passable and gone out before but to do it full time? You got this, I said. The hardest thing would be passable but what is passable? To me it was looking the best I could as a woman from head to toe. From everything I've learned and soaked in all my life, from observing every woman in my life, I felt confident in this department.

Shopping spree and acquiring everything needed was already done but it's never done right? There's just so many things I want to buy. I'm a bargain hunter on designer brands so at least I got taste. Expensive taste but hey why not? This girl deserves it. I can spoil me. I work hard for that money. Well, I've compiled plently of outfits, to not wear the same thing in a few weeks time twice. Just need more shoes! Omg, there are so many shoes I want. All that was left was getting the right make up and the last essentials.

I already had my belly button pierced and 2 piercing in both ears prior to coming out. I think this was the start of my transition... At least in my head it was when I started it. I had my tounge pierced already and my left ear but wanted to feel complete. I just had to acquire ear rings to go with my new outfits. This makes a difference in your beauty believe me. I guess the next thing on my list is a 3rd piercing in the ears and ho stamp here I come!

I'm not ready for tattoos yet. When I do I'm getting things that I would have been laughed at for having before. Such as butterflies. To me I'm transforming into something beautiful. This will be a way to express my transition from a caterpillar to a butterfly. My personal beauty that's inside that can finally shine because baby I'm a firework.

Well, I handeled that situation at work, but still had to continue on with the next step that i wanted to achieve. My transition.

I was thinking about this for so long. Reading everything I could about mtf transition. Re-reading everything I've read years before. I had so many questions. What do I say or how do I go about it? How do I tell my family? How do I tell my friends? Will any of the mentioned be left afterwards. God so much fear. So many worries. Not to mention how to tell the most important people to me my wife and sons.

With all these worries, I had nothing but time to think, at work and at home in my head always thinking about this. Consuming every minute of thoughts enough to make me burst in tears. Why now? I ask. I ended up trying to find out all the information I could on legalities of name changes. How to make it official as far as I can with everything I could think of. How to blend my past life with my new life. Work history, job skills, college experience, and anything else you could think about.

There's so much to plan out it can become overwhelming. There's so much to your transition, that you need to think about, to know what your getting yourself into. It costs so much to be a girly girl, diva, or supermodel.

-Just don't fool yourself. It may not be right for some. Mainly because your features may not be feminine enough. Hey, I know it hurts to hear, but for some it may not be achievable. You know I'm right. If I'm wrong then...

You can achieve it. Through all the steps in your transition you will become that woman you want to be. Just plan it out and what's not planned you'll learn along the way. Just trust in yourself. It's you that wants to change. Results may vary.

Don't think that you will get immediate results. It takes time. Rejoice in each change you see. Cry when you need to and have ice cream ready. I haven't cried so much lately I think I'm making up for all the years I haven't. And just think...I haven't even started estrogen!

Now just think, you will go thru another puberty, that lasts as long as what another female goes through. It may be 10 full years, that go by, when you look at yourself in the mirror and your not the same person as at the start of this journey.

Embrace it ladies and look back at the old you. See how far you've come and the many changes in your life that's happened. Just remember the old you..  don't forget it. Please. Come to terms to say goodbye to that person. In reality you are killing them off, to become that woman that was inside, but yet it is you that's still inside.

Well then the day finally came. I finished sewing clips into my extensions, over the weekend, and wore them into work one day. The next day I visited the salon to get my hair did. Mind you for the 1st time in my life. I let my hair grow for 15 years and came into the salon with virgin hair. The girls rejoiced and I was happy with the finished results. Dyed to hide the gray, highlights with tones, and ombre with blonde. Extensions were dyed the same as my hair. I felt so beautiful and the best part... I was dressed as a woman. Yet, I didn't have the confidence, to fully walk out of my home like that or back into it. I threw man's clothes over me so the neighbors wouldn't see me like that.

Although I made it through that experience I couldn't go into work dressed as a woman that day. Yet each day I slowly progressed becoming that woman I would become. With each day my coworkers were starting to become aware of my changes.

The mask had to come off. I was tired of the sarrades, of trying to hide any girl features that would be seen by anyone, when I was a man. Or worrying about if anyone seen me as a girl when I was dressed at home or out in town.

I've dressed at home always before stepping out. It became a half and half thing in my daily life. Maintain a guy appearance at work and girl appearance at home. This was the only way to keep a balance in my life up to this point. Also to have some sanity to keep my mind right with the struggles I would face inside.  Maintaining this balance was the best I could do up to this point.

After coming out at work I slowly implemented it. I didn't want to completely shock everyone with such a drastic change. They knew or suspected something but the mold was coming undone. I knew it was time to stop fooling myself as well.

I can say that I have a great job, where my coworkers are accepting and the company is a LGBT friendly place. If my coworkers are not accepting then they are just tolerating the change. The company's ethics policy protects me being a member of the LGBT community and the way I am so I'm thankful for that. I know it was a shocker for some but this day and age most people are more accepting than if I came out 10 years ago.

Ive been a crossdresser for over 15 years. I think the biggest pain was suppressing it for the past 10 years. It was not healthy mentally. I'm sure it's taken a toll but I know what I want and who I am now. I'm on a transition to mtf. I'm not having any doubts. I've lived half my life as a guy and now it's time to be a woman. I've suppressed her for half my life. I've shared her in this body.

It was like I couldn't just throw her and all the clothes into a box and hide her away. I would always come back to it. It to me was a fetish at 1st. Next was attraction and being with men. Later in life, finding out how I felt all along since a teenager, was that I had gender dysphoria. There was nothing wrong with me or how I felt inside. There was nothing wrong with the stages of this developing from crossdressing to transition.

Now it's her time and he can share or fade away. I look forward to the new me. I know the HRT will help. The progesterone as well. Surgeries when I have enough saved in my HSA. Also having good healthcare. I have support. Friends, they'll be there or I'll make new ones. Family, they will accept me or reject me. I just hope they know I love them and I'm the same person inside. Just changes to the outside from what I feel inside.

I hope this helps anyone in need or that's in the same shoes as me. I know what your dealing with and your not alone. There's always someone that can help. Just reach out for someone like you. You are beautiful.

💋Thrica Allure

xoxo

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

18 Feb 2019: Walmart: “We're just going to call the program Go”, UK Parl’t: “We must make sure that people stay in charge of the machines”

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading and please do send ideas, questions, corrections etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

[Image: Caspar David Friedrich via the London Tube]

Walmart’s checkoutless plan undone by shoplifting and low adoption

Walmart on why it abandoned its scan and go programme:

"In our efforts to minimize friction points, we found that the program created some of its own such as receipt checks, weighted produce, and un-bagged merchandise resulting from using the program [...] Additionally, low adoption played a role in the removal of the program."

And this quote was good (and it echoes Amazon’s “just walk out” story): "We're just going to call the program 'Go' because the customers can't seem to 'Scan' anything”. Walmart’s now trying a the-cashier-comes-to-you model.

Amazon in the home

A few weeks ago we discussed whether the “Amazon wins the kitchen, Google wins the living room” thesis of smart home assistance was being replaced by an “Either Amazon or Google wins the home” one.

This week, Amazon bought smart wifi router company eero. (The smart bit is that it’s easy to plug more eero boxes in to extend your wifi range without needing to fiddle with passwords etc.) You can see a few rationales: make Alexa hardware better value and “just work” to a deeper degree, compete against Google’s Nest, get Prime onto every device and into every room. Own the last few metres to the home.

Previously: “2024: Amazon Prime Home team lead Karyn steps around a Freshco grocery delivery drone twitching on the path. It has been jammed by your home’s router for a breach of delivery licence, and will be released shortly.”

Climate change: slow then quick

The effects of technology change often look like this: practically nothing for a long time, then suddenly everything. The internet was around for a long time before the mid 90s, when it eventually/suddenly started changing everything. New companies chip away at an incumbent’s market for a long time, the incumbent dismissing them because they’re small, or serving the lowest-revenue customers or whatever… then the new company replaces the former incumbent.

Climate change seems to have that nothing-then-everything quality to it, though the effects and the stakes are much higher. Collectively, we haven’t done enough for a long time. And in future our world is either going to change a lot because we’re busy trying to fix it, or it is going to change a lot because we’re not.

Many children walked out of school lask week to protest the lack of climate change action from government (or the generations above them). This was a Bad Thing from the perspective of things like wasted planning effort for teachers, school attendance records etc, and some politicians took that line. From the perspective of 2050, it might look like a Good Thing.

Lyft and Uber: regulation, competition, maps

Lyft lobbies to prevent US cities from regulating to manage the local impacts of it and Uber. The argument seems to be that too much regulation makes it difficult to provide transport services that deliver value to passengers. The counter-argument would be that population density in cities results in different effects than, say, rural areas, so the city is the perfect level at which to place the regulatory function.

Uber and Lyft may compete with public transport as much as (more than?) car ownership: “When Uber and Lyft enter a city, the app-based taxis decrease rail ridership by 1.29 percent per year and decrease bus ridership by 1.7 percent”

Uber has released travel time maps for several cities. Here is Manchester’s.

“We must make sure that people stay in charge of the machines”

The Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s final report on Disinformation and 'fake news', says technology is currently “hijacking our minds and society”:

“enforcement of greater transparency in the digital sphere, to ensure that we know the source of what we are reading, who has paid for it and why the information has been sent to us. We need to understand how the big tech companies work and what happens to our data. [...]

The big tech companies must not be allowed to expand exponentially, without constraint or proper regulatory oversight. But only governments and the law are powerful enough to contain them. The legislative tools already exist. They must now be applied to digital activity, using tools such as privacy laws, data protection legislation, antitrust and competition law. If companies become monopolies they can be broken up, in whatever sector. Facebook’s handling of personal data, and its use for political campaigns, are prime and legitimate areas for inspection by regulators, and it should not be able to evade all editorial responsibility for the content shared by its users across its platforms.”

Trusting chatbots and computers in healthcare

Sometimes people find it easier to speak about some issues when they know they're not speaking to a human. Relate found that people open up more readily when they understand they are talking to an AI counsellor. (More background on theraupeutic uses of chatbots.) And an NHS Trust in South Yorkshire has been testing the use of AI to identify mental health patients at risk of suicide.

On the other hand, flinging technology at healthcare isn’t an easy answer, as the NHS has found in the past. (It also leads to some unusual analogies, for instance the NHS Secretary wanting the NHS to take Tesco grocery delivery as an exemplar.)

Co-op Digital news

Data hackathon: how can we make better use of our data?

Lack of trust in relatives leaves adults unprepared for later life.

Events

Shifts show & tell - Tue 19 Feb 10am at Federation House 6th floor.

Web team playback - Tue 19 Feb 1pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Health team show & tell - Tue 19 Feb 2pm at Federation House 5th floor.

Data ecosystem show & tell - Wed 20 Feb 3pm at Angel Square 13th floor.

Manchester WordPress user group - Wed 20 Feb 6.30pm at Federation House.

Python NW - Thu 21 Feb 6pm at Federation House 6th floor.

Membership show & tell - Fri 22 Feb 3pm at Federation house 6th floor.

Delivery community of practice meetup - Mon 25 Feb 1.30pm at Federation House.

Funeralcare show & tell - Tue 26 Feb 1pm at Angel Square 12th floor.

CMO CRM show & tell - Tue 26 Feb 2pm at Angel Square 13th floor.

Greater Manchester Democracy Hub - Tue 26 Feb 5.30pm at Federation House.

Tech for good live - How to make people care - Wed 27 Feb 6.30pm at Federation House.

Membership show & tell - Fri 1 Mar 3pm at Federation House 6th floor.

More events at Federation House. And TechNW has a useful calendar of events happening in the North West.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved and thoughtful readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to the newsletterbot’s flunky @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading please consider telling a friend about it!

If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog.

[bforbookslut]

Review: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

I have given this book ☆☆☆☆☆. 425 pages. It is Book 1 in the Constellation series. It belongs to the Young Adult Fantasy genre. Hot Key Books/Bonnier Publishing published it. It was published April 6th 2017. I would recommend it to everyone, I mean, everyone because I’m obsessed. The blurb reads: “NOEMI is a seventeen-year-old soldier from the planet Genesis. She can fire weapons, and fly a single-pilot fighter.

ABEL is a young mech from Genesis’s enemy planet Earth, and the most sophisticated robot warrior ever made.

Stranded together on an abandoned ship in space, Abel and Noemi should be sworn enemies. But Noemi’s home is in peril, and only Abel can help her to save it. Together they embark on a heart-stopping voyage through the galaxy, one that will lead them to question everything they thought they knew about each other – and what it means to be human.”

“Where there’s no free will, there’s no sin.”

Phenomenal.

Like, so mind-blowing and perfect that I stayed up until 5am to finish it and then put off continuing it for an entire month because if I did, then the book wouldn’t end.

I know I overuse 'phenomenal’ when it comes to my reviews but if I could give this book any more stars, I would (but my blog rating system goes to five). That’s how good Defy the Stars was. Hot Key Books’ blurb doesn’t do it justice and when I first bought it and read it, I was very confused because I thought mech meant “mechanic” and I thought it was about a pilot and an engineer, haha.

Simply put, DtS tells the story of Noemi, the soldier-pilot chick and Abel, the super-hot-robot-dude. On a test flight of the Masada Run, basically suicide mission to prevent Earth’s mechs from invading Genesis and taking over it, the test flight becomes a sneak attack by Earth and Noemi’s best friend, Esther, is injured. They are too far from Genesis to get Esther the help she needs and Noemi spots a seemingly abandoned spacecraft. She goes for it to prolong Esther’s life and get both of them back to Genesis. Aboard the craft, she meets Abel and learns that a Gate, the portal that leads to all the worlds, can be destroyed. Of course, destroying a Gate would be far better than killing hundreds of soldiers in a suicide mission. Without spoiling DtS much further, Abel and Noemi travel the entire space universe together (chased by the universe’s mech police) and along the way, they meet many colourful characters, people, learn about a space rebellion and the true meaning of being human.

[may contain spoilers]

Abel and Noemi, oh how my heart beats for these two idiots. I shed tears, believe me.

While I’m not the biggest fan of young adult fantasy novels revolving around the central couple, I make space in my cynical heart for Abel and Noemi. One, because they’re my favourite trope. It’s the two MCs who don’t like each other at first and then, they slowly fall in love in the classic slow-burn. Abel is snarky and sarcastic and frankly, a little bitch in the beginning but the conversation is so witty, I make way for this trope.

“Why do you have to act so superior?”

Abel considers her assertion. “I am superior, in most respects.”

Noemi’s hands close around the back of the captain’s chair, gripping it too hard, and when she speaks again, she grinds out every word. “Could. You. Knock it. Off.”

“Modesty is not one of my chief operating modes,” he admits, “but I will try.”

She sighs. “I’ll take what I can get.”

Okay, admittedly not the best example I could find but when I started reading this book, I hadn’t planned on reviving my book blog. And while Abel is the snarky bitch, Noemi is the serious, no nonsense leader who pretends to be super stoic and hard but is a little softy who can’t help but care for other people.

But other than the characters who frankly are so big and vocal, they can speak for themselves, Claudia Gray does an excellent job at world-building the Constellation verse in the short amount of pages that she has. There are descriptions of:

the history of how Genesis came to be and why Earth is attacking them

how Earth came to be the dominant powerhouse of the universe

space travel and space-travel vehicles,

and my personal favourite: very, very vivid and beautiful descriptions of each planet (there are six in total: Cray, Kismet, Stronghold, Cray, Earth and Genesis) along with what the society is like and how the world is built/life sustained/purpose. It’s a well-thought out and detailed world-building, something that a lot of young adult fantasies lack these days. I never for a moment was lost about a certain function of the spacecraft or questioned what the fuck is this planet?

Abel and Noemi travel to all these planets, through the very clever placing of the plot which starts off as a simple mission to retrieve a component needed for Noemi’s master plan and turns into around the world in 80 days, with each planet driving them on to the next (and even into a sort of deep space, floating, empty area full of asteroids).

Speaking of plot, there’s more to DtS than meets the eye. Hot Key Books’ blurb does a bad job at telling you what the plot is and what to expect, which I suppose is a good thing in the end. The blurb on Claudia Gray’s website is much better. Part of it says:

“But Abel’s programming forces him to obey Noemi as his commander, which means he has to help her save Genesis–even though her plan to win the war will kill him.

Together they embark on a daring voyage through the galaxy. Before long, Noemi begins to realize Abel may be more than a machine, and, for his part, Abel’s devotion to Noemi is no longer just a matter of programming.”

But, none of it references Abel’s creator, Mansfield which although plays a massive part in the book, only appears towards the very end with a shocking revelation about Abel’s purpose in life. And there’s also another twist at the end about Noemi’s Genesis and even hinting at what it is will give away the entire twist. So, imagine a movie where two characters meet each other and travel on a massive journey across the world for some mission and boom, plot twist at the end. The next day, the news announces a sequel in the making.

There’s definitely a sequel.

Because I wasn’t a big fan of how it ended (I shed a couple of tears, in public, at a train station). But I’ve resigned myself to the fact that YA books always end like this.

[contains spoilers]

Plot, characters and world-building aside, my favourite part about DtS is not literal, but rather, one that you have to think about. Mechs are considered abominations on Genesis, literal pariahs because the people of Genesis do not believe in the rise of mechs and the human reliance on them, from healthcare mechs, babysitter mechs, pleasure mechs and so on. So, when Noemi first meets Abel, she hates him, treats him like dirt. But Abel is not just any mech. He is created specially with all the skills of all the other mechs, basically equipping him with supreme artificial intelligence.

That is as close to human as one could get, metaphorically. Humans are equipped with bits and pieces of knowledge and life, and not built for one sole purpose, like a robot.

In Abel’s years of isolation on board his spacecraft after being abandoned by his creator, he grows more sophisticated as he only has his mind, knowledge and thoughts to keep him company. Like humans, when we are left alone with our thoughts, we tend to ponder over them and come out with new ways of thinking, seeing and doing. We grow as people. That’s what happened with Abel.

It’s obvious to readers immediately that Abel is almost human; he’s got his own mind and thoughts, he’s able to override basic commands, act upon his own decisions and so on. But in the end, Mansfield is able to use a mech’s core programming to control Abel, to make him do what his creator wants, to kill Noemi. But, Abel is able to resist, to fight back. As he puts it, he is torn between his core programming and his love for Noemi.

Furthermore, Noemi realises that Abel has a soul; she has been treating him as human for a while now, coming to rely on him like you would a friend, boyfriend even, but how can a person be in love or friends with a robot? She realises he has a soul and says this:

Where there’s no free will, there’s no sin.

But on the other hand, Mansfield only sees Abel as shell, a host for his brain even though he realises that Abel is human-like, has free will and thoughts, dreams even. But all he can see is the metal casing that makes up Abel instead of bone.

Which then raises the question about what makes us human? 

Is it our physical bodies so different from that of animals? Aliens are always pictured as grotesque and foreign.

Or is it our ability to think for ourselves? To have independent thoughts and ideas?

Or is it perhaps free will? We have ultimate control of our bodies even if we are driven by coercion or force, it’s always a choice that we make. But free will can be taken away in instances of war for example, war victims didn’t choose to die.

So, what exactly is it that makes us human? What would be considered human?

A soul? But souls cannot be seen, touched and measured. How do we tell if someone has a soul? Is that the right way to see who is a human being when the technology has become advanced enough that artificial intelligence acts, looks and talks like a human being?

It’s an incredible dilemma that CG may or may not have intentionally included into DtS.

But fret not, because there is definitely a sequel coming and I cannot wait to see how far Abel and Noemi have grown as people, especially with all the twists that came flying at the end of the book.

Have you read Defy the Stars? If you have, tell me what you think about it. Did you experience the same questions about humans and mechs that I did? Do you love Noemi and Abel as much as I do and want to know more? If you haven’t read it, are you planning to? Come into my inbox~!

[mangohealth]

Building Your Mental Muscle: 5 Dos and Don’ts

Like physical prowess, mental fortitude is a trait that can be developed. Author Debbie Hampton shares a few helpful dos and don’ts to building mental strength, and why it’s worth your effort.

[Mental strength] is about consciously taking responsibility for your attitude and actions, rather than saying, “I can’t help the way I feel” or “this is just the way I am.”

What is mental strength? To be mentally strong is to become aware of both your head and your heart to consciously choose your actions. In other words, it’s the ability to draw upon both rational thought and emotional intelligence when making decisions to guide your behavior.

Mindfulness, or paying attention to what’s happening in each moment, is a core component of the mental strength. It calls for being aware in the present and intentionally responding rather than reacting. It’s about consciously taking responsibility for your attitude and actions, rather than saying, “I can’t help the way I feel” or “this is just the way I am.”

 How to get mentally strong Psychological toughness may come to some more easily, based on genetics, personality, upbringing, and experiences. While you may not be able to change what happened in your past or the fact that depression runs in your family, everyone can build mental muscle -- with time, attention, and focus.

The same way you would train with dedication and repetition to build physical power, you can regularly exercise to boost mental strength. Here are a few dos and don’ts to cultivate mental strength, based on Amy Morin’s book, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do:

Those with mental strength understand that they are in control over their own emotions, and they have a choice in how they respond.

DON’T: Give away your power. In the light of a challenge, it can be tempting to blame others or focus on what you can’t control, like lost luggage. But have you ever considered that by saying things like, “My boss makes me feel bad,” you are giving away your power in the situation?

DO: Take responsibility. Those with mental strength understand that they are in control over their own emotions, and they have a choice in how they respond. Focus on what you can control, and recognize that sometimes, the only thing you can control is your attitude.

 DON’T: Waste time feeling sorry for yourself. Mentally strong people don’t sit around feeling sorry about their circumstances or how others have mistreated them. They don’t waste time wishing things could be different or dwelling in the past.

DO: Live in the present. Understand that life isn’t always easy or fair. Mindfully learn from the past, live in the present, and plan for the future.

 DON’T: Shy away from change. Mentally strong people understand that change is inevitable. Rather than being afraid of the unknown, they believe in their ability to adapt and and see opportunity in the changes.

DO: Take calculated risks. No need to act recklessly, but be open to the possible benefits of calculated risks. Mentally strong weigh the pluses and minuses before making decisions and moving forward.

[Mentally strong people] move forward and make better decisions in the future, without viewing failure as a reason to give up.

DON’T: Resent other people’s success. Mentally strong people can appreciate and celebrate other people’s success in life -- without feeling jealous or cheated. They understand that they are not entitled to success, or that the world owes them anything.

DO: Invest in yourself. Recognize that your own actions are the primary factor to any success you can achieve. Spend the time and effort to create opportunities for yourself, understanding that how much you invest will often be directly correlated to the amount of any benefit.

 DON’T: Make the same mistakes, over and over. Mentally strong people accept responsibility for their behavior and learn from mistakes. They move forward and make better decisions in the future, without viewing failure as a reason to give up.

DO: Learn, grow, and be patient. Use failure as an opportunity to grow, improve, and revise plans. Whether you’re working on improving health or starting a business, don’t expect immediate results: know that real results take patience and time.

 The benefits of mental strength The benefits of developing mental strength are many, including increased resilience to stress. You’ll handle everyday situations better, not just the crises, and reduce overall stress. Don’t be surprised if you feel improved life satisfaction as well – as mental strength increases, confidence, and peace of mind often see a boost, too.

It’s easy to feel tough enough when life is humming along smoothly. But being mentally strong will make you better equipped to deal with any challenges that will inevitably appear. Whether you want to be a better athlete, parent, partner, or worker, increasing your mental strength can play a critical role in helping you reach your full potential.

 About the Author Debbie Hampton recovered from a suicide attempt and resulting brain injury to become an inspirational and educational writer. She is the author of Beat Depression And Anxiety By Changing Your Brain and writes for The Huffington Post, MindBodyGreen, and more. On her website, The Best Brain Possible, she shares lifestyle, behavior and thought modifications, therapies, and mental health practices she used to rebuild her brain and life to find joy.

 If you liked this post, you may also like: - How Emotional Intelligence Can Improve Your Life - 4 Ways to Increase Your Mental Strength Every Day - How to Find Your Personal Method of Meditation

 The posts on this blog are for information only. They are neither intended to substitute for a relationship with your doctor or other healthcare provider, nor do they constitute medical or healthcare advice of any kind. Any information in these posts should not be acted upon without consideration of primary source material and professional input from one’s own healthcare providers.

[someanswers]

SomeAnswers RE: Relapse

Friends: it has been some time since I have been on Tumblr. I was really on a roll there - I'm proud of the SomeAnswers that I've been able to contribute to the world so far, and I plan to pick up where I left off with exploring alternative healthcare options. 

But why? If I was on a roll, what would make me choose to stop?

It's a trick question. I deal with severe recurrent major depressive disorder. Between March 11th when I last posted (link) and mid-May, my depression relapsed following nine months of true remission. Beginning around the month of October after watching for ""the other shoe" to drop for so long, I started to think "hey, its over, we made it, we did it!!!"

I truly was so happy that I had shed the filthy shadow that characterized my being for the majority of my life. Things were going so well in all areas, but I was tired of watching. I was tired of having a fundamental lack of trust in myself that  perhaps I was deluding myself into thinking that I was okay but really not okay. But the data (in the forms of grades, finances, and psych assessments) showed otherwise. Things were getting better. I thought to myself, "things aren't perfect, but even if this is as good as it gets I would still be so thrilled".

I essentially began to act as if I was "cured". In fact, I think I pretty much self-declared myself "cured". Treating depression is the most exhausting thing. A constant vigilance, a constant battle with yourself, a constant making sure that all self-care strategies are followed, a constant making sure that you don't miss any doses of medication, a constant intensive management of yourself. I was so tired. 

I looked around at my peers and the lives they led. They could run off minimal sleep, be involved in every activity, and yet still maintain academic excellence, happiness, and relationships. I looked at the treatment plan for my depression. Physically, there was not enough time for me to work, do school, manage myself, and maintain relationships and happiness. In recovery, abandoning any  aspect of the care plan resulted in a complete collapse of progress. It is like balancing your life on a steak knife.

My reasoning was, how much sustained progress was required before I could say that I was recovered, that I had killed the beast? It was a beautiful fight, I was so proud of myself for the progress I did make. For the first time in my life, I felt internal strength. To me, this signaled that it was over. I was out of the woods. I felt unstoppable.

Slowly, gradually, I began to stop the majority of my self-care measures. It wasn't anything I deliberately chose to abandon. It was in my view, rewarding myself for winning the fight. Having freedom to do most anything that I wanted without being followed by the specter of depression and the exhausting self-care measures that came with it, this is the "reward" I speak of. The ability to leave it behind, and fill the space with everything that I desired.

There was something I did not account for: stress. Under stress, I get depressed. Self-care measures work as a life raft in this situation. I might have been stressed, but I did not get classically "depressed". In these situations, I bear a manageable sadness. All stress ends, and when it does, I find myself on solid ground once again. 

Around February, stress came. This stress was objectively long term. I was so wrapped up in getting what I wanted. I felt as if I had wasted the previous ten years of my life. You could call it "making up for lost time". When I left my depression and the interventions to treat it behind, I honestly forgot how to even self-care. My "self-care" had become going after what I wanted in life, regardless of anything else. I felt entitled to this, and I didn't want to let go of it. And so I went straight into a relapse which thankfully somebody else has taken the liberty of describing:

All of the above thoughts swirled in my head. In retrospect, they started as a whisper which gradually grew louder and louder. By the time I was able to hear it, it was too late.

Instead of throwing myself back into my self-care regimen, I threw myself into a list of 

stupid arguments,

hurtful things said or thought toward others,

fuckboys who would string me along but whom I kept up with because their touch and superficial sweet nothings and understanding were like an opiate for the pain,  

self-medicating, 

complete rage, 

and more than anything:

such a self-hate that I did not want to be around any of my friends or family - I looked back at my life pre-remission and saw exactly how much I had put them through, and this too, the guilt of what I had done to them in a mental state that I mostly do not remember, wrecked me. 

I am happy to report that from the other side of this screen there is a Me who is back on solid ground. Pre-remission, my best friend in a strange way prevented me from going through with a suicide attempt. Strangely, this time he was there again in late April with a wake up call for me in two sentences: "Are you depressed again? I'm not letting this happen again."

What happened next was what progress is in recovery. His words called something in me to take stock of where I had gotten to. In that moment, the fear I felt was immense.

It was a fork in the road - I could have faith in self-care and other interventions that at the moment I saw no use for and step forward to recovery, or I could fall off of the edge of the cliff I was on and return to my former pre-remission state. That fear made me take the first step away from the ledge, and the second step away instantly reminded me of how much I was capable of. 

In this return to recovery, I never knew what I needed from my loved ones or how to describe it. A friend introduced me to the song "Show Me Love" by Hundred Waters ft. Chance the Rapper and for the first time I knew what I needed:

"Don't let me show cruelty

Though I may make mistakes

Don't let me show ugliness

Though I know I can hate

And don't let me show evil

Though it might be all I take

Show me love

Show me love

Show me love

I see you, you see me

Aliens hanging on, release me

Don't let the feeling that I'm all alone deceive me

Just let me in and show me love"

I then started to ask for essentially the above from my support network. This relapse has taught me that love - not romantic love, but fam love, will always cause me to realign to where I need to be. When people show you love despite the sheer awfulness you may be emitting from depression, it is the ultimate reassurance that they know that what you're going through is not your fault. The clearance of guilt that this causes in my conscience - my god is it illuminating. It allows me to see that I am being deluded by my brain. It has been said before and it must always be said whenever it is relevant: Depression lies. It lies and it invites you so warmly into these lies that you want to be there. 

What I keep coming back to though, is that remarkably through all of this, no matter how terrible I may have felt in the moment I always wake up the next morning. Every morning I wake up and recall the previous day and think "Jesus we're still around after that?" It happens without me trying. From there I can justify getting out of bed. 

If you're depressed, you need to get treatment from a licensed professional. There is no self-medicating or positive thinking that will save you. If you're suicidal, think about if any of the above anecdote is applicable to you, and get help:

[demblackmamas-blog]

Imprint & Impact: Mental Health in the Postpartum Period

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Sometimes we have experiences that stick with us. Are imprinted on us. That leave us tossing and turning at night for weeks - months even - so restless in our spirits that sleep won’t come or won’t stay. We search for meaning or ways to cope through it, make sense of it, use it for good. I’ve had a few of those moments, and some still color the way I experience and respond to the world many years later.

One of my most vivid memories from childhood has to do with a little girl I grew up with. She was a sweet girl and I enjoyed playing with her. She was in my class and also lived in my neighborhood, so we saw each other all the time. One day at school as we were walking down the hall, she collapsed suddenly, then began to convulse and twitch. It was my first time seeing an epileptic seizure. My little mind couldn’t process it. It was as if her body betrayed her for what seemed like hours, although I’m sure it was only a couple of minutes. But for however long it was, she was a prisoner to her own body. It wouldn’t allow her to lay still or to stand or to speak. This was incredibly frightening to witness as a child. How did that happen? Why couldn’t she control it? Could my body do the same thing to me one day? I became hypersensitive to epileptics. This girl, a man who lived on our street, a family friend’s son… I would watch them closely, observing their every move for a hint that it was about to happen. I couldn’t be caught off guard again. I couldn’t handle it. I read up on epilepsy until I was confident that I’d know how to respond in case it happened again...how to prepare... how to be a helper instead of running or being frozen in my fear.  I guess this was the best way my young mind could cope with what I had seen and experienced. I was terrified, traumatized. The thought of one’s body reacting in a way that was out of one’s own control was too big for me.

That was decades ago. Yet, when I think of moments that are imprinted on me, it always comes to mind. There is another more recent experience that has impacted the way I approach my interactions with new mothers. 

After it happened, my friend tried to brace me...

“Sit with it”, she said. “

Write down everything you remember so you have record, but know that that in itself is a re-living of it and will be more difficult than you expect”.

She was right. Writing this, I’m struggling with the words to paint the picture for you without infusing more of me into the story than is appropriate or accurate. Truth is, I don’t know where to start. But I know where it ended.

This one is about the time I encountered my first client in a mental health crisis. It shook me to my core.

I see parents of all sorts in my line of work. There are the stern “just the facts” types, sobby emotional wrecks who need reassurance they won’t royally F this up, and what I call deers in headlights parents who don’t even know what to ask. And the truth is, no matter how well you prepare for parenthood, you can never really wrap your mind around it until it happens. And then, it’s sink or swim. Some have a harder time swimming than others. Don’t get me wrong. Most parents of newborns that I see are struggling. They are all exhausted, confused, frustrated, overwhelmed. These are the normal emotions of managing life with a tiny human who cannot tell you what they need, yet they Need. So. Much.

But this client...she...was different. She was so much more. And I’m fighting back tears just trying to find the words.

You know how you know when something is just… off? How you have that gut feeling you forgot to do something important? It’s nagging but try as you may, you can’t put your finger on it but you’re sure there is some major important thing.

Did I leave the stove on?

Did I remember to pack my passport?

Did I forget to make a call?

Is someone somewhere waiting on me to do some... thing?

As I think back now, that’s how it felt. I knew it. She didn’t really have to say or do anything dramatic to give her secret away. And the first consultation was pretty routine as consultations go. I just had a sense. She put up a strong facade, but hidden behind her eyes was something... well, nothing actually. There was a vacancy, a mechanical way that she approached her interactions with me. As I drove home that night I spoke with a colleague. I remember saying, something was off.

Over the days that followed, a clearer picture came into focus. There was always some new thing that needed to be fixed. She requested I come back again, and again. Each time with just a tinge more urgency than the last. Each time I talked her down, did a little LC magic, and she declared me a genius who had saved her life. I went home happy and waited to see if there would be a new thing that required a follow-up visit. We had gotten into a little rhythm, as it were. I didn’t think much of it since some parents lean on us more than others. This was just her personality, I surmised. And then it happened. I went over for what I thought would be a simple, quick follow-up visit. But it was anything but simple and nowhere near quick. She hit her breaking point that night and I had a front row seat to it all.

There I was, that night years ago, my adult self in my client’s living room. I stood there, watching, listening, frozen as she shouted and cried, vacillating between anger and despair. I tried to say reassuring things, to tell her it would be ok, remove the mantel of guilt and shame. But there was nothing I could do or say. It was like watching someone collapse into a seizure, writhing on the floor, teeth clenched, and eyes rolling back in their head. She was out of control, not of her body. But of her mind.

This is what a mental health crisis looks like.

I am not equipped to deal with this.

She needs help… more than I can give.

How could I have not seen this coming?

She needs to be protected from herself.

We, the baby – oh God the baby – needs to be protected.

What am I supposed to do?

Those are the thoughts of a grown woman standing face to face with fears rooted in childhood. Of a lactation consultant ill prepared to support a mother in crisis. In over my head. Frozen and afraid, wanting to run and hide and send some responsible adult in to fix it, make it all better.

I made it out of there that night, albeit changed. But not before making sure that the mom and baby were safe and that the baby would be fed with or without mom for a few days. And then, I made the long drive home through dark and windy roads utterly shaken. When I arrived home I was happy that my family was asleep. I didn’t have any more words. But in the safety of a long hot shower, I wept. If anyone was listening, they might have said I sounded something like my client, wailing. I wept for this woman for whom it was all just too much. I wept for all the mamas out there who are exhausted mentally and physically and just trying to keep it together. I wept for a society that puts such a stigma on mental illness that even though I asked on my first visit if mom is struggling with any anxiety or depression, she said NO. I wept because when I asked if there was a friend or relative I could call to come and stay a while to help her get a break, she said, “NO. I have no one.” I wept because there was nothing else for me to do, no way to help. And that was terrifying.

And then I did the coping thing that I perfected as a kid. I read everything I could get my hands on about postpartum mental health. I did what I could to make sure I wouldn’t be caught unprepared the next time. More importantly, I learned a few tips to share with expecting parents about being vigilant and responsive in protecting their mental health in the postpartum period.  

There is no room for shame when it comes to your mental health. If you are feeling not like yourself, please talk to your healthcare provider.

Postpartum blues, postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are elevating progressions of the same condition. Blues are very common and subside on their own in hours or days, depression is longer lasting and starts to become debilitating, psychosis is the most pronounced and has the greatest potential for harm.

Plan ahead before delivery to have your “people” available and ready to pitch in and help.

Be honest with yourself and your healthcare team if you have a history of anxiety or depression.

Do not allow thoughts of suicide or harming your baby to go unchecked. There is help available to you and those thoughts are a sign that you need it immediately.

Give yourself a lot of grace as you figure out your new role as a parent, and figure out your baby.

New parents get very little sleep. If you find that you are battling insomnia even in the quiet moments when sleeping is an option, take note. This is especially important if instead of tired, you feel energized in the first weeks.

During pregnancy if you start to feel depressed there are medications that are safe to begin taking even before you deliver your baby.

As much as I love breastfeeding and I support it as a method to stave off postpartum blues and depression, more complex mental health situations may be exacerbated by the constant waking and the responsibility of having a newborn tethered to you 24/7. Make the best infant feeding decision for you and your family.

You’ll have precious few moments to think and rest mentally. Fill those moments only with things that feed you and make you whole. Everything else can wait. 

My client and her baby were okay in the end. They received the help they needed from healthcare providers. They found their people. They took it one day at a time. I often think back on her and consider what I would do differently today. In some ways, I suppose I grappled with it for years. It’s an experience that has stayed with me, not unlike that experience with my childhood friend. We’ve all had those moments that change us, stick with us, impact the way we move through the world. It changed the way I see new parents and how I serve them. I will never again shrug off that “something is off” feeling.

Whether you’re experiencing this stuff firsthand or watching a loved one or even a client trudge through the murky waters of postpartum crisis, let my story be a lesson to be kind to yourself. Be honest with yourself and those around you. This is not a game. We need you here and we need you whole. Do whatever it takes to be here and to be whole. 

Nikki Killings is a Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC, RLC) with several years of experience in breastfeeding counseling and education.  A mother of three, she fell into her passion for supporting mothers and babies through her own breastfeeding challenges with her first baby. 

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