So much mixed emotions around not being diagnosed with any mental health conditions in the 90s - sure I didn’t get treatment and developed coping mechanisms that have taken a decade to undo, but at least I only got bullied for being fat (until I learned the value of punching your way out certain situations)

Still from the new Mars Attacks! prequel looks great

Yeah definitely geared to purge whatever vestiges of “central planning” even occur in the US anymore- this is IMO an area they believe can be 1-to-1 replaced by AI - and with how “planning” currently occurs in the government (with enough guardrails to prevent too much introspection of root causes)- they’re not wrong, it will just be the death of any sort of novel thought (or whatever offends the bourgeoisie) applied to planning.

Hey now - don’t forget ableism!!

This message brought to you by Ableism - ‘You thought things were bad now? It’s actually the best it’s ever been!’ Ableism! Shut up and work!™️ -*disclaimer - sentence may be applied to most other types of bigotry (in the US)- but the message is the same, ‘get back to work you, ******* ********** *******’

Cheers on the same from clinical depression squad

Booooooooooooo. I didn’t know “Pureflix” existed but now I do. Boooooooooooo

Yeah I hear that. I have no idea what I’m gonna do- I’m almost a “career” employee in the agency I’m at so I may as well stick it out and see if the outlook improves in that time, or see if they fire me - tbh maybe that would be the fun “change of pace” I’ve been craving haha. Good you’ve got something lined up though - the civil engineering world has been wild since 2020, kinda the opposite of the late 2000s- there’s just so much work to do - hope it’s doing something you like and can learn from in the mean time! And most importantly take some time to recover from getting jerked around

Thanks for trying to work for the NRCS - they do good work (imo) but are way underfunded and have a habit of grinding down good engineers. Maybe you’ll get to do their work on contract! I’ve designed a handful of ACEP sites as a consultant - NRCS has produced so many good resources for rural engineering and ecosystem restoration - it’s too bad they’ve gotten fucked up so much by austerity (and the the capitalist desire for converting ag land to development).

By ANY means necessary

They were moved from my very special adhd nook I had them tucked away in. Following up with the responsible party (we have a cute audhd dynamic).

This made me think “wait Ed Harris is still alive?”, and then realized I was thinking of ed asner, whos been a skeleton for a few years lol :(

One doesn’t graduate from Juilliard and just leave without a flourish

Also therapy. Getting it out in one way or another helps too - ugly crying and a heavy bag has been a welcome addition, but I like journaling too. Thought I could outpace it with endurance running or endurance drinking, but neither my knees nor my stomach could keep up lol. So everything in moderation unfortunately. Also weed lol.

Yeah it’s been worse lately for sure, menty b’s used to be an annual/biannual thing but now are much more regular- for the same reasons others have mentioned- grief for a world in pain, grief for powerlessness, grief for seeing capital warp some and crush others. What’s helped? Idk. Been getting into philosophy/theology a bit and my takeaway has been, “existence is suffering, our purpose is to lessen that suffering for those around us in whatever way we can”. At its minimum that’s carrying a lighter or cash so I can share with someone who asks, and that’s led to lots of interesting conversations with people…and often hearing fun new ways how they’re being fed headlong into the woodchipper :/ BUT it’s reinforced my connection and commitment to exactly who we’re hoping to shape a better world for.

TLDR: life is an endless cycle of suffering, but as you have the capacity, you can be a port in the storm for others and thereby find solace in their camaraderie. It doesn’t fix the suffering, but it gives a small ember of hope.

Ptarmigan are ptotally ptubular

Hey nice to meet you folks, Ray Tracing here - director of photography- nice to see my work appreciated

Shit someone please remind me to find the newspaper clipping I dug out of the walls from the 1930s - it’s essentially “hmm this hitler guy seems like bad news but let’s see where this goes”. (This isn’t a bit I keep meaning to post it)

They cracked the code- your autistic child isn’t non-verbal they’re just getting a head start at going no-communication with you down the road lol

Hell of a toll on the expressway though, but at least the metra goes all the way

Just mediating here - you’re both getting at the same point - albeit from different levels of optimism - so I don’t want either of you catching strays.

Unfortunately, peppersky is correct, we’ve absolutely blown past the understood “point of no return“, and not just in a minor way like “ahhhh we eased off but didn’t quite make it to the 2c goal” but in a major way that we’re continuing to accelerate to this day - but if we stopped science at the “understood” we’d never get anywhere. So in order to survive the present moment and make it to the next we need: science, policy, and the abolition of capitalism by any means necessary. Science to inform ways to capture carbon, desalinate drinking water, adapt food systems, etc to try and halt the exacerbation of ecological destruction/protect communities. We need policy (very broadly speaking) to protect vulnerable groups- otherwise the crises of the coming years will be used to exploit them and extract wealth in unprecedented ways. Lastly, to ensure any long-term stability in the science and policy, capitalism needs to end, overconsumption needs to end, sacrificing the many for the comfort of the few needs to end - it has thrown off the natural balance of the biosystem and will be the death of us all.

At present- it’s a matter of resource allocation. Do we spend time and money in science? Policy? Overthrowing capitalism? Movements have been co-opted, capitalist government efforts are dismantled by capitalists, policy-makers and scientists have relented to funders or been silenced through other means. So at this point, I’m hammering on option number 3 as a means to support number 2, and understand both are needed to have success with 1. Science under capitalism is not going to achieve the conditions necessary for its survival, but its high priests will continue sacrifice us and our futures in the hopes that it will. Frankly there need to be actionable steps that can be taken by the international proletariat independent of their governments - at a personal level (so it can not be co-opted) but an organized, global scale (so it can not be quashed).

There are lot more people who suffer from the biosystems demise than there are who profit from it. And while those who profit will sacrifice us time and again - if we stand together …. Idk I won’t say we’ll succeed necessarily but we’ll do whatever we can for each other (regardless of setting) - and that’s life