chat

The HR thing I posted about never went away and I got fired today. Already applied for unemployment so at least I'll now get paid while I search for another shitty job and I won't be spending $300 a month on gas just to get to work.

It's kind of a relief in a way. This job was a major source of stress for me and it's not like I'm the only person they've fired recently. They've been letting people go left and right, getting rid of long-time veterans to cut down on wage costs I suppose, so I'll just take the L, chill the rest of the day, and try to get some things done around the house.

I'm looking for specific and non obvious answers. Give me something visceral, rid the world of a figure or nation you hate. Preserve a culture you adore. It doesn't have to make sense either, you are basically god here.

What I mean is don't just say you'd get rid of imperialism or colonialism bc no shit

Personally I would make it so that the Americas are never discovered by the old world and every would be conquistador (especially cortez and pizarro) explodes.

[Self doxx] [Semi Rant]

Over the last few days I’ve seen my hometown get completely rattfucked over but have seen some beauty in the process.

Before Friday it was unthinkable that this amount of damage could happen here. We are hundreds of miles from the coast and supposed to be a ,,climate haven” but nevertheless half the town is underwater. And we’re the lucky ones — nearby towns like chiminy rock are completely gone, off the map. I can’t comprehend the destruction that I have borne witness to the past few days. Again, I can’t stress how unthinkable something like this in Asheville is.

On Thursday it started raining hard and most everything shut down, this continued through Friday morning. When it finally stopped I was able to see the height of the river, and words can’t express how scarily magnificent it was. I saw houses being washed away, the entire river arts district underwater and water half a mile up from where it normally is. Now, as it’s started to go down, we’ve been able to see some of the damage. It will be decades before things will be as they were.

Up until Sunday afternoon there was only one open road in or out of the county. Over a quarter of roads within the county are flooded or impassable.

Almost everywhere is out of gas too and we’re not sure when more is getting in.

Almost the whole town lost power, cell service and water Friday morning. They have had internet at a few different points (like the fire dept) and cell service is just now starting to come back on. Power is spotty, depending on whether there’s a tree down on your street.

The water situation is the true concern: Personally, I had plenty of drinking water stored but others aren’t as lucky. I am now getting extremely worried about my supply of water, because I only have a couple flushes of the toilet left !beanis. Again, I’m lucky that I’m only worried about flushing water and not drinking water.

It is likely that they won’t have the water back on for 2-6 weeks. The treatment facility has flooded and it’s still unreachable to diagnose the problem. Shit genuinely may get extremely ugly before then. In the daily media briefings, they’ve been saying that shipments of food and water would be here soon, but they’ve been saying soon for 3 days now. People are running out of water for flushing toilets, and no one’s showered in days. It’s getting to be a public sanitation worry. Depending on what I hear tomorrow morning, I may take up an offer from a friend to leave town. (I am so lucky that I can do so, many cannot.)

There is much more I could talk about, such as how other communities have been absolutely wiped off the map, how bad I want a shower, or some of the places that have been destroyed. This kind of climate disaster is something you truly can’t comprehend until you’ve lived it. The climate crisis is a series of videos you see online until you’re the one filming the videos yourself.

However there is a bit of a silver lining to me. This is the first time I feel like I’ve seen real community here. Whether it’s pushing a dead car, clearing a tree or sharing food I’ve never seen people help each other out in this way. Additionally, I have NEVER seen so many people outside walking around and talking with their neighbors. It’s insane how the moment trees block cars from neighborhoods, everyone is immediately in the streets creating third spaces. A few nights ago, some neighbors setup a movie night in the street (between two fallen trees and with a generator) and upwards of 50 people turned up to watch. When the gas lines started getting too long and people started yelling, random strangers came into the street to direct traffic for HOURS.

I see people helping people and it makes me happy. !bloomer

~I’m not gonna proofread this cuz I’m too tired, my extremely lucky and privileged ass just want to dump some thoughts, maybe I’ll edit with some resources to donate or whatever in the morning. I’m not worried about doxxing myself because I was about to delete this account for a new one anyway.~

Update: It’s still seeming like it’ll get worse before it gets better so I’m going to leave town with a friend. It hurts because I feel like I’m abandoning my community but I also think it’s the right thing to do.

https://www.nature.com/articles/438406b

This is from 2005

>China claims to be well on the way towards vaccinating every domestic bird in the country against avian flu. The bold scheme — which would mean inoculating some 14 billion birds — was announced on 15 November and comes in response to outbreaks that animal-health officials say are dangerously widespread. On 16 November, China confirmed its first two human cases of bird flu, one of which was fatal.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8327827/

A new strain developed in 2013 and was essentially eradicated by developing a new vaccine for the birds.

!

Why aren't we doing so in the US??? We have an effective vaccine!

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24155545/bird-flu-vaccines-h5n1-avian-flu-cows

>However, despite seemingly having an effective vaccine in hand, as of late April, the USDA is still not pursuing bird flu vaccination as a disease control strategy. “While USDA is exploring the possibility of developing a poultry H5N1 vaccine to stock and use in an emergency, we are not moving forward with a HPAI vaccination program at this time,”

>The biggest sticking point is around trade. The US exported more than $5 billion in poultry meat and products on average every year for the past three years. The USDA enters into trade agreements with each individual country it trades with, explained Upali Galketi Aratchilage, a senior economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Each agreement outlines specific biosafety and production requirements that both countries agree to follow. The USDA said, in an email to Vox, that many of those agreements do not allow bird flu vaccination.

Every single bird that is infected gives the virus another million chances to mutate into something 100x worse than COVID. And we are not doing it because of the fucking cost to GDP.

I feel vindicated. What I have now in my possession took me 8 fucking years to get. It's not the typical shit that you hear from people who claim to be Gangstalked (EG: People are making hand signals at me, there's a lot of red cars around me, etc.) 2.5 hours of pure unadulterated abuse. The kind of shit you'd hear said in a blacksite. Going through it again to verify that I'm not just hearing things was especially hard, but I finally have it. It's absolutely pure arrogance on their part as well because they dug around in my backpack for my voice recorder and acknowledged that there's "a lot of evidence on there", and then kept abusing me.

8 years of my life people called me crazy because I gave up on trying to gather evidence for the longest time. Now I have it. I don't really want to say too much more because I am going to have to start legal proceedings soon, but I just wanted to let you know about one of the small victories that fell into my lap.

if you didn't have one, please feel free to invent what you think would have happened/what you would like to have happened

Much like a lot of Gen X, some of the older Millennials in my life (particularly the white working professionals) are parroting the age old mantra of "I don't care about passing my skills on to the younger generations or helping those in need, no one ever helped me in my life.". My response is always "That's not a good thing!" because I never know what to say. Debate is not my strength.

My working class grandparents were never like this. They lived through the great depression and two wars and never wanted anyone to suffer as much as they did. I miss them and their kindness dearly. It's only from boomers and younger that I've seen this attitude. Capitalism is crushing our instincts as a social species. If we can't stand on the shoulders of giants... well then we will stop advancing as a species. We will stagnate and go extinct because the challenges we face now need all of us. It goes against everything that is human to be this alienated and antagonistic to one another. Particularly frightening is the hatred and contempt modern society has towards children.

This is not going to end well.

I appreciate all the people here, whether you're 20 or 60, for not becoming the thing that hurt you. We need people with a soul more than ever.

Saw this today at my local library, they were having a fun little propaganda session. Wish there was a way to stop this shit. !

I was able to pickup the sixth Wheel of Time book, which I guess was nice.

Love to see a bunch of shit I'm not qualified for and then a bunch of things that don't begin to cover my expenses and feel bad about myself and my circumstances and cry and eventually put one application for a custodian position with the county because what the fuck else will I do

I know if I went back to school and finished a degree it would give me a leg up but I just can't fucking handle the workload of work and school anymore, I feel like such a lazy piece of shit but I just don't have it in me anymore to keep this shit up

Dealing with a lot of dark thoughts today. Very dark.

Couple months ago I met a woman who works at a dispensary I visit about once a week. We hit it off really well. Despite trying to just keep it casual sex, and that only, I ended up developing some feelings for her. She confessed the same to me. I even introduced her to my teenaged daughter, for fucks sake.

I ran into her this evening at a gas station, with another guy, who turns out to be her husband. They’ve been married five years, and have two children together, ages 4 and 2. Finding out they have kids just made me feel disgusting.

So, I told him. He didnt believe me until I described a tattoo in a somewhat intimate place on her body. I had no fucking clue she was married. I think I ruined someone’s marriage. Or at least took part in ruining one.

I feel guilty. I am sorry for what I participated in. Am I a bad person?

u galz R great

are the pizza muffins ready?

Have the house to myself for a while and no reason to leave.

I will not be constrained bourgeois expectations, I will live a pants free life! (at least until i have to go buy groceries) Rise up and throw off the oppression of cloth!

Long story short he's back at me again because I asked him for $5 so I could grab smokes, even though I lied and said it was to buy a coffee (fuck him). Laid into me about how I suck and I'm a parasite.

Like I said in the title it puts my self-esteem in the dumps because I can't just move away and tell him to eat shit and die and never speak to him again. I'm beholden to this fucking monster that hates me.

And the funny part is I had a plan to quit smoking this weekend now I'm saying fuck it to that because what's the point?

Because I think that it has been appropriated. Bandhani is a traditional tie-dye technique, with deep cultural and historial significance for the Rajasthani, even extending to Sindhi and Marwari sub-groups in the west of India and east of Pakistan - who comprise of nomadic and semi-nomadic artisans.

The word 'bandhan/bandhana' can have several meanings depending on the context - knot, relation(ship), or kerchief - they're all related to each other, in the sense that this piece of clothing signifies relationship, and can be tied to the end of one's cloth - just in the same way you can "build" a "building" in English, if that makes sense. One of the most identifiable parts of the bandhani is the parsely and floral pattern, as well as the use of non-pastel, dark dyes.

Now, I am neither a Rajasthani, nor from the north-western parts of India or eastern part of Pakistan, so it should be obvious that I don't know much about them. Maybe some information over here is not true - and I'd appreciate correction. Personally, I feel like it is an extreme case of cultural appropriation in the sense that:

• the culture behind it has been erased, or people don't bother doing enough basic research behind them

• it has been commodified and mass-produced as a fashion trend, which is disrespectful to the people, and has harmed their livelihood severely

• the patterns have a deep cultural, religious and social significance, so do the colors, and using them trivially again erases the original meaning behind them

The bandana culture (at least from my stereotype of American media) has been stolen collectively on different occasions by multiple subcultures - the hippies, the bikers, white supremacists, cowboys, gang members, black rights activists and even antifa/anarchists members, shifting the original symbolism from that of familial collectivism to something that is representative of rejection of government authority.

Unfortunately, as a very vulnerable group, they don't have the voice to raise against this injustice, because obviously when basic needs are not met, people tend to ignore the erasure of their own identity and culture, and try to survive with what they can. The place that they live in is the antipode to the American continent, and obviously, that region does not receive a lot of attention, as opposed to western cities.

Maybe not really a question, more of a vent. But 5 years ago I was doing lib issue activism (let me keep it vague to not get myself doxxed). I was close to this person in the org. We even got so close that we went on holidays together. When they were in this hospital for a week, I was there every fecking day.

Over the course of our short but intense friendship, I started to notice that literally every time we met, they were shit talking other activists. I did say that they needed to discuss it with the person in question, I did let them know it wasn't cool. I also noticed that there was a lot of drama between them and other members. When shit happened, it was always "let me send out a ten paragraph email on why that activist is shit, but never CC the person in". And always, this former friend was never wrong about anything, could never apologise, which frankly is one of my big pet peeves. Heck, I apologise and self-crit constantly.

Back in 2019, I said that I don't like having people raise their voice to me and order me around, as this former friend liked to do. Over a course of a month, lots of former friends become really cold to me without reason. People stopped replying to texts. I asked for an explanation but got none. After 3 months, I was officially removed from the group's Whatsapp group by this former friend. When I asked for an explanation, they blocked me. I swear to god, I was never given an explanation. For the benefit of the movement, I didn't make a big deal out of it. Although it hurt like shit.

It led to 2 years of feeling suicidal, depression, medication, and therapy. After which I became a much harder leftist. Fuck rich people like them.

I'm not saying I was perfect. Lib ButtBidet was pretty dramatic, and lacked people and coping skills back then. Nowadays, when friendships need to die, I like them die gracefully, and just more slowly reply to texts and shit. There's no point and feeling sad that a friend won't admit to making a mistake and keeps making it, it's best to move on.

AFAIK, the movement that we were in together is now dead locally. I strongly suspect it has a lot to do with this person's toxicity, as they tend to have their "activist enemy of the day" but honestly it could be anything.

Anyhow, since then I've joined a local left org, and we've been doing very well. I've been doing it for 4 years and it's great. I'm one of the key organisers. Now this old activist friend has started showing up to our events. I can't explicitly kick them out, because they're not racist or anything. But honestly gossiping and not apologising are pretty toxic traits for an org. I tried to explain it to the other key people but it's just empathy and shrugs. I get it, the person hasn't doing violence or anything.

Thanks for letting me vent

Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away, on my way to where the air is sweet!

Wooooooo

Fucking aye.

Sometimes I feel like an alien on the wrong damn planet.

I don't get you humans at all.

It feels lonely sometimes.

really normal dream where nothing out of the ordinary happened tbh, not sure why I felt the need to post about it !very-smart

i posted about passing on a job offer a few weeks ago. I didn't really pass on it, I accepted but told them that the work wasn't what i really wanted to do, and they decided to rescind the offer. same thing

jobs are so scarce, I definitely should have just said nothing and sign the contract. They would drop me any time they wanted, so I can leave any time I want too. i just couldn't commit to something i thought would make me miserable.

At the time I didn't think I could even tolerate the job. Got some space to think properly and I just don't think that's true any more. I can tolerate it fine. Work environment is fine, pay is fine, just the work wasnt what i wanted to focus on. These are all just tech white collar jobs anyways, what was i hesitating for. motherfucker

I've got some clarity now, i'll move on. sometimes i just hate myself

Seriously I just had a dream where I was taken into an office by one of my professors and she was like "so can you get this done on time" and I was like "yeah, sure, totally!" And she replies "Oh, thank god you're a capitalist!" And I was like !what-the-hell "NONONO I'm definitely not a capitalist!" And she goes "Uh huh, sure. Me too. !janet-wink "

!kitty-cri does this count as bullying myself if my brain creates my dreams?"

I want to immigrate to someplace that's not a shit hole teetering on the brink. The culture is so fucking violent and geared towards crushing the human spirit, it really is a blight. Is there any place in the world that's halfway decent and isn't infected with burger brain disease? Especially if it's easy for an angloid simpleton such as myself to assimilate.

Edit: also trans friendly! Or at least not a danger zone like half the US.

I remember seeing it in PC World and dreaming about having one. 9800 GTX and raid 0 drive setup awoooooga.

Mostly remembered it because its designed featured in Recovery of an MMO Junkie and I was like "i know that case!"

Me if I had this PC

!

Can't find any second hand my life is over

https://youtu.be/RFddjM1NwxI

Its so beautiful

Basically title. Ever since my father died when I was at the young age of 9, my life has been on a downward trajectory. I got bullied at my middle school. I contracted some unknown disease related to my stomach which manifests itself through taking my energy away and making me depressed (also a lot of growling, gasses, diarrhea cuz of nervousness when I went to school and had an exam etc.). Of course the healthcare system in my third world prison has no idea what the fuck is going on. I tried both private and public healthcare, and both of them basically told me to fuck off.

Then after that, because I at the time lived with my grandma, and she got some unknown virus that caused her liver to shut down, even though she made it in the end, I was still forced to relocate to my mom and stepdad's house. This probably was the worst period of my life, mainly because of this asshole. First off, he didn't physically assault me, at least not until the very end. No, he instead constantly kept arguing with me about absurd conspiracy theories, even forcing me to stay late into the night, even though I had school early in the morning. Like, it got so bad, I kept avoiding eye contact with him at all costs, lest I wanted to trigger an unskippable NPC cutscene, filled with gay lobbies and anti-vax nonsense. Then he gradually started restricting stuff like the PC, not because I did anything bad, but because I correctly pointed out that no, warmups wouldn't have made a difference in my ankle sprain when I landed awkwardly. At the end he pushed me because of some stupid lie I made up so I wouldn't have to talk with him, causing me to start planning to get out of there as soon as I can.

And I ended up doing so, in fact, I went out with style, as I was going to first celebrate New Year's eve with my friends in the capital city, and only then would I relocate to my old home. That was, in the last 10 years, probably the only point where I thought I might actually be able to have a normal life, friends, a girlfriend, confidence in myself and maybe even figure out what the fuck was happening in my guts. But of course, If that did happen, I wouldn't be writing this story now, would I? So of course after about 2-3 months of me arriving from that trip and back home, I get into a spat with my friends because of, as Tony Soprano would say, "normal teenage shit". I didn't do so well being on alcohol the last 2 times we went out, so they thought I couldn't control myself and whatnot (completely ignoring the 2 other times where I was completely fine). We make up in the end, but they basically ice me out of the friend group, giving me no choice but to cut them off completely.

And so, here we are. After all that I really was already starting to feel pretty fucked up. No father, health, friends etc. But what really got me deep in depressing thoughts was the fact I was basically forced to enroll in some dipshit local college, which I was pretty much SPECIFICALLY trying to avoid. I simply can't fucking stand going to this same fucking town for 4 more fucking years after high school. It's like, at this point I have nothing to cling on to. Even my education, where I was pretty much a straight A (except we grade with numbers 1-5, so a 5) student throughout, which I thought would give me at least some form of agency over my life, has proven to be completely useless due to some bullshit, random factors outside my control.

TL:DR - I'm not really sure what to do. At this point, I just want someone to talk to, and not exactly some reactionary lib morons from !reddit-logo. Basically, in my rural area, there really aren't any jobs except seasonal ones. So I would really like some help in that sense, especially in tech, since I'm already pretty deep in and I use linux pretty much everywhere (also reading Linux for beginners, but goddamn if I didn't start it like 3 times and never finished it, at least I kept notes last time so I can just catch up). Any help is sincerely appreciated. !meow-hug

So. My terf sister fucking stabbed me when I was visiting my mom. Now I'm recovering. This sucks fr fr

Like the drug dealer?

Saw a "performative" animal rescue video where a young lad was harassing a really old, poor Rajasthani woman of nomadic origin, perhaps from a very vulnerable, and extremely backward scheduled tribe, whose culture very much resemble with the Roma people, (perhaps it is because Rajasthan/Sindh is where the Romas migrated from almost a few thousand years ago, so it makes a lot of sense).

In this particular instance, she had a snake with herself, and what she would do is sell a pseudo-scientific drug/herb-mixture, claiming that this saves your from the bite of an Indian cobra. She would let the snake bite her - well, here's the reality - the snake had it's fangs removed.

The snake can not survive in the wild now, which sucks. I condone condemn the exploitation of animals too, as well as this old lady's behavior, but how is this fair? This young lad comes from a society of high privilege and caste. Dad is probably a government civil servant, mom is a doctor. Grand parents probably one of those freedom fighters from India. So this kid is probably loaded with old money - he and his kids will never have to worry about working for their entire lives, and they'll still make money passively.

Seeing from a colonialist lens, this looks like intersectional imperialism to me, in this instance, brown imperialism (which I've talked about before; remember linguistic and cultural imperialism of majoritarian culture?). The boy "saved" the snake, but at the cost of letting these vulnerable people starve, and does he provide an alternative for her livelihood? She's probably de-fang another snake, albeit with a lot of difficulty.

Alternatively, there exists a few illegal night-club party bars out here in India for the ultra-rich, where they use small doses of snake toxins to get a high - I am not really sure how that works, but from little what I know, it is similar to acid, with the added risk of dying from the venom itself.

If this kid is so much about animal activism, why does he and his friends not care about those instances of animal abuse from the corrupt, rich people? Why does he not care about the inhumane dairy industry or the industrialized broiler chicken farm?

Just needed some opinion on this, because I am kinda ticked off by this brat's behaviour.

I dreamed last night about finding a playlist of 55 or so videos published by some probably 30-something white guy from the suburban USA around 2011. The playlist was titled something like "various rants", but really these videos weren't "rants" at all, they were 5~12 minute videos of this guy just being overwhelmingly and infectiously positive rambling about all his frivolous hobbies, mainly anime, video games, and Nerf guns. He seemed autistic if I'm being honest.

Now on the one hand, it feels kind of pathetic to be dreaming about wasting an hour or two on watching old YouTube reviews, 'cause that's like three layers of unreality... But on the other hand, I kind of wish this YouTuber was real. So if you know any old YouTubers matching this description, please send them to me.

!trump-moist is a NYC failson scion that's obsessed with golf and creepy beauty paegants.

!my-hero goes without saying; he has almost nothing in common with the average "heartland" chud except hatred and targets for hatred.

I don't know how to reach them and I assume if it was easy it would have been done already, but it baffles me that these failson clowns hold the leash.

It goes something like:

>Anchi Telugere, inchi Kannadere > >Encha Tamilere merepere > >Kanne-duru, Kerala-la kelapundu > >Enna Tulu Nadu bulipundu

English translation:

>Thither dwell the Telugus, hither the Kannadigas > >How Tamilians have garnered their name in fame's halls > >A mere eye's blink away, Kerala stands proud > >Yet, my Tulu Nadu weeps and mourns

\- Kayyara Kinyanna Rai

(My apologies for not writing it in the original script, which was just recently added to Unicode 16.0 on 8th September of 2024, - well, for starters, I don't know how to write in it, and second of all, there's no font for the alloted Unicode block or transliteration software available at the moment - the fonts will probably be released by Monotype soon, I would like to believe?.)

Academic stuff about colonial missionary group in Western part of South India, their role in identity erasure and Kannada elitism towards bahujans (umbrella for commoner and discriminated castes)

>In the former South Kanara or south coastal Karnataka region, the presence of overlapping languages, mainly Tulu and Kannada, posed prolonged dilemmas in the nineteenth century for the Basel Mission. The choice of language was important for their evangelical work, supported by important language-related activities such as dictionary making, grammar writing and translations. Since language use was intertwined with caste hierarchy, this raised issues over the position of lower castes, mainly Billavas, for the native elites and upper castes. This article argues that the prioritisation of Kannada, and relegation of Tulu to a secondary position, was an outcome not only of missionary perceptions of the larger Kannada context, but also more importantly can be traced back to elite representations regarding the subaltern Tulu culture and lifeworld. As missionary intervention in education and native language use challenged the status quo of social hierarchy among local communities, this sparked efforts by the native elites to reclaim and restore the earlier hierarchy. In the process, the native elite representations of Tulu language and culture became at the same time an effort at dismissal and appropriation.

 

Yes, missionaries from the colonizing western states were involved in destroying my culture, but that does not absolve the majoritarian groups of cultural imperialism after the independence of my country. Dravidian hypocrisy is when they can't see their own short-comings - destroying vulnerable minority and tribal language, appropriating culture, music and dance. And this is why I am so unenthusiastic and apathetic about growing Hindi imperialism towards the South.

death to america

It was really fun, although hot as fuck, i would suggest waiting til October to visit, or go in early Spring. If you do go in summer you will need a battery hand fan and a solar umbrella, and a handkerchief if youre a sweater like i am. Went to Tokyo, Kyoto and Hakone. It was always the country i wanted to visit the most. AMA.

ohh don't you know in countries with socialized medicine they have long wait times to see a doctor?

I can't see a doctor anyway so just let me have socialized medicine

It's the weekend, it's sunny, and I need something good for both the body and mind right now.

!mario-thumbs-up

I'm going to find a professional out there in my area who can listen to all my concerns about stuff like diagnosing/dealing with AuDHD, talking about dealing with family stuff, and just my general desire to be a better person/communicate better. I don't think I can just indefinitely keep my problems inside the way I've been doing.