#theoretically they should have been emailed to you but I have no clue how this looks on the customer end

[muffinlance]

All US books have shipped! International ones are in the works; they should all go out by next weekend.

[black-king-white-knight]

Vent.

Now, I understand that therapists provide an invaluable service and they’re a very important thing that I’ve known I’ve needed for many years and have tried to acquire. And will try again.

BUT.

The fucking feeling of being sent to a ‘therapist’ so utterly unqualified to deal with someone like me that I get sent into a two day (I saw him at 9AM yesterday, it’s now 11:30 the next night) depressive spiral. (Although a clue should have been that he’s a Mr not a Dr on his card.)

Like I get he was trying. But my autism, double severe general and social anxiety, BPD, severe depression, suicidal ideation, eating disorder, self-harm, ptsd, ADHD and whatever the fuck else is in my mind, plus complications from chronic pain was a little above his paygrade as an accredited social worker.

And being sent home with his refusal to engage with the reasons about the explosion of a friendship, to the extent where I’m trying to point out how my social circle has suffered due to said explosion, and how I’m trying to finish glossing over my BPD before moving on to how autism and ADHD have impacted my ability to make friends all my life because, once I make a friend I generally can combat the anxiety and depression with some help, but you know, other factors.

And I start out by... basically explaining what BPD is. (Since the explosion of my friendship largely over this was really the most recent big thing and I figured work backwards, you know? At least it’s somewhere to start.) Which really should have been a flag on it’s own but I thought, ‘Oh, okay, he’s testing my knowledge, trying to see if this might be an actual thing or just a buzzword I saw online,‘ and when I start trying to explain a Favourite Person, he’s, seemingly seriously, just like, “Well everyone has that.“

MY GUY IF YOU’RE LIKE 60 AND HAVE UNDIAGNOSED BPD THEN MAYBE YOU NEED TO SEE SOMEONE ON YOUR OWN DUDE. AND SHOULD ALSO TAKE THAT UP WITH WHOEVER TRAINED YOU AS A THEORETICAL MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL.

BECAUSE NO NOT EVERYONE HAS THEIR FUCKING PERSONALITY WARPED AGAINST THEIR MOTHERFUCKING WILL BY INTERNAL MENTAL HEALTH SHIT.

Anyway, back on topic, that, combined with boiling down all the shit I think I have through research and reading up other people’s personal experiences with their shit as either anxiety or ‘Doctor Google‘, (i.e. self diagnosis/hypochondria. Without me even getting through the entire list of shit that’s wrong with me before he leapt in with THAT particularly charming comment.) To say nothing of past trauma outside of my own head.

And to be sent home with an appointment I didn’t technically agree too, the fact that he started the appt by saying that it was for him to get to know me and me to decide “if I’m worth the time talking to professionally,“ but then didn’t ask and just wrote me in for another appt.

Oh also he kept my referral letter which seems really odd given my partner’s therapists have never done that. Previously they’ve just photocopied them and given them back. Which he didn’t seem to have one, but he can email my doctor and ask...?

And I’m kind of trying not to cry or tell him off as I walk out, especially because my dad offered to drive me and he doesn’t need additional stress, and when I mentioned how I considered myself broken, the social worker turned around and snapped out, “I don’t ever want to hear that word out of your mouth again, okay?“

Which, I get, negative self talk all that shit. But I was trying to talk about how my brain perceives me and therefore what I’m exposed to being inside my skull day-to-day.

And when I tried to list off what was wrong with me he also said like, “if I went through the DSM 5, (which he at least explained what it was) I’d find like 20 diagnoses for you, and probably 30 for me.“

Which. My guy. It’s the DS-fucking-M 5. It’s hardly a reliable source free of justified criticism.

I don’t want to say him being old was a factor, but the combo of old and sharing a building with a baptist church recruitment centre did not give me confidence I could touch on queer subjects. Like my own fucking identity.

Or that of my partner. Or my boyfriend. Or trying to explain being polyam to him.

“What’s something you enjoy doing? Do you have hobbies?“

No. I have fucking *depression* my guy.

On the subject of whether or not I exercise, “No, because my shifts at work are so physically intensive and-“ I have chronic back pain, I’m going to say so that messes with my ability to exercise.

“Work doesn’t count.“

Okay, so clearly the fact that i cry sometimes because of how much pain I’m in that walking, standing, sitting etc, all hurt, CLEARLY ALSO DOESN’T MATTER.

Like how this morning I woke up at about a 5-6. Clearly irrelevant to my exercise.

So he sent me home with instructions to do a basic bitch breathing exercise, which was inhale until my lungs are full, hold for a second then slowly exhale. And I’m to do that every 10 minutes. Because, be-fucking-cause, this making me slightly light headed is good because that means my frontal lobe is oxygenated. Which is good at combating anxiety, which he describes as just, “fear of the future“, and depression is “a sadness of the past.“

SO NICE TO KNOW THAT MY DEPRESSION IS JUST A BIG SAD NOT A NEUROTRANSMITTER IMBALANCE MR. THEORETICALLY ACCREDITED FOR MENTAL HEALTH WORK SOCIAL WORKER MAN.

So yeah. Breathing exercise that runs counter to pretty much everything I have read in my own research/heard from other people, get up at 7AM every day, (with chronic insomnia? Yay.) And go for a one hour “brisk“ walk. Then come home, shower, eat breakfast, (with an eating disorder that frequently doesn’t let me get hungry until I’ve been up for a few hours?) Then write for about two hours each day.

So basically. After my very first, (and only, even I’m not that into self-harm... not anymore at least) session with this guy, we seem to have cut straight to what my life should be like as a 30-second montage in a movie when I’m in a good place, and that’s my treatment.

Oh and we didn’t even touch on my severe financial stress.

TL:DR; I seem to have acquired a fucking homeopath of a therapist.

Honestly there’s probably more shit in that hour that I’m forgetting. Credit where credit’s due, he got shit done in that hour.

It may have been because it was 9AM, but maybe there was a reason his office was fucking empty.

Oh, and the walls were thin enough that I could hear my dad on the phone outside. Not enough to hear what was said, but charming aspect to a therapist’s office. He could hear our voices too.

To be fair to him, he was quite patient with explaining shit to me. To be fair to me tho, I didn’t need anxiety explained to me like I was 6. I will survive if you call it an amygdala and not “a very old part of the brain“ my guy.

But to be fair to me, I seem to have been sent to someone with enough mental health training to help do family therapy for stressed bc of work parents and a kid caught in the middle. Not for shit of my calibre.

Although he did have a drawing made by a child presumably, thanking him for helping them. So I’m glad that kid got seemingly good help.

BUT ALSO FOR FUCK’S SAKE MY GUY.

Also he didn’t really react to the news I’m on SSRIs. And I feel like a patient saying, “Oh yeah I’m on anti-depressants-“ should be, maybe. Potentially. Possibly. A clue that’s it’s not just anxiety and implied hypochondria.

Because I get I may not have done an ideal job explaining BPD to him. But. No everyone does not have intrusive nightmares about taking the veggie knife in the second drawer, going in through either my temple, eye, or the soft spot behind my ear and carving bits of my brain out until i hit what I wanted (or at least I hope y’all fucking don’t) so I can stop fucking fixating on someone I wouldn’t even want to date/fuck if I was given a choice my own fucking brain was trying to manipulate me into, and thankfully I wasn’t. I mean even the offer to write them into my story was one made in haste courtesy of the high BPD was giving me for being able to talk to them, not something I actually wanted to do in hindsight for all sorts of reasons.

Also our knives were part of the furnishing given by the landlords and they couldn’t keep an edge for shit.

So yeah. I need help for that especially given my poor self-control, for when my FP flares up again.

Because being able to trust the objectively of your own thoughts is. Probably still something I don’t really understand ‘cause I don’t have a psychosis or something, so, you know, I’m probably just being dramatic, but that was a fucking ride of a couple of weeks.

Idk, feel like I should report him to someone for something but fuck if I know who or for what.

Now I’mma go cry, hope my hands stop shaking and probably not sleep for 24 hours.

Oh, at least he accepted the existence of my epilepsy.

Yeeeah.

[holdmecloser-gandydancer]

Barry takes his glasses off and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. He’s been staring at his computer for far too long today. The computer in question sits on the couch next to him, screen obscenely bright in his dim living room.

He’d been ignoring the emails that infiltrated his inbox with growing frequency and urgency, all of them riddled with subject lines like “Payment Plans for Upcoming Semester,” and “Payment Due Soon,” and “Seriously, You Owe Us Tens of Thousands of Dollars and We Aim to Collect.” You know, normal stuff.

He’d always figured that actually doing the coursework would be the hardest part of grad school, not figuring out how to fund it without owing his soul and first-born child to the federal government. But the fact of the matter is that he’s reached a dead end; most of everything his mom left him was used to pay off his undergrad loans some years back. His university has mentioned scholarships and work study but he’s convinced the scholarships are a myth and also his university declined to mention that the work study they offer doesn’t actually pay him in money, rather they just pay for three course credits. Don’t get him wrong, that’s better than nothing but that doesn’t help pay his rent or buy textbooks.

Once again he mourns the fact that the only applied arcane theory program that accepted him just had to be a private university many states away.

He returns his glasses to his face and pulls his laptop closer to him. He’s about three modules into his ten-module long loan counseling. It’s basically an online program that explains in excruciating detail just how deeply the federal government has his future in their pocket. “Oh, hey Barry! If you Ever fall behind on your loans, we can garnish your wages that already probably won’t be able to pay for a studio apartment in Neverwinter and also you’ll be paying these back for anywhere from ten to twenty five years! You also cannot declare bankruptcy because you live in hell!! Only way to get off the hook for these is if your school shuts down before you get your degree or you die! Now sign on the dotted line after you hyperventilate a little when you look at just how much money you’re going to be responsible for!”

The whole process makes his stomach hurt; there’s no good reason education should be this much. He’s going to be saddled with loans worth more than any yearly salary he could hope to have and now he’s gotta pay them back or die.

Wait.

He rereads the loan forgiveness terms. “If your loan servicer receives acceptable documentation of your death, your federal student loans will be discharged,” he reads to himself. He's got it.

He lets loose a laugh that borders on maniacal and roots around for his phone. It rings once before someone picks up on the other end.

“Lup!” He whoops.

“Bear? What’s up? You sound extremely excitable right now.”

“Okay, remember when you wanted to get married for tax benefits?”

“I do! I also remember you turned me down because you didn’t want to our marriage to be for convenience.”

Barry laughs to himself. “Yeah, I still stand by that.”

“You sap,” she sighs fondly.

“Well, I think I found a way to scam the federal government through a loophole.”

“Gods I love when you talk dirty to me!”

“We can talk more when you come home but I can almost promise you neither of us are paying off our student loans.”

“Barry, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about and I can’t wait to hear your devious plan. Love you!”

“Love you.” He clicks end on the call and looks around for his theoretical necromancy notes from a few semesters ago.

[cyle]

time for a rant about software engineering

Now what the hell is software engineering? Software engineering is a thin facade of process around the continuous self-reinforced confusion of adults who spend too much time with computers. Software engineering is just a bunch of well-intentioned buffoons swarming around a collective illusion of control. There are hundreds of thousands of us, bouncing from conference talk to breakout grove at just a few hertz below the alerting threshold.

Go and get 100 software engineers in a room right now and ask them "how do we make Facebook responsible?" and the waves of hand-wringing and contradictory answers could power the Earth for ten years. Every engineer in the room would recede to their blockchain startup or protein-folding side project or machine learning whitepaper or immediate blazing firestorm of Slack messages and emails about whatever is breaking at their job right now. You're throwing an ethics question into the second draft of IETF RFC 3986. Nothing is gonna get wasted here but time and bytes replicated across three datacenter regions.

Not a single software engineer you will ever talk to has any goddamn clue about how their work figures into the bigger picture. They'll spend ten months bikeshedding about how big the picture has to be for it to scale, and what language could handle those theoretical 100k big picture requests per second. The very intention in the last sentence is inherently nonsensical-borderline-paradoxical and the engineers in the room won't figure that out for another ten months after they've cleared innumerable sprints of development. 

Nobody has any idea what they're doing because there aren't any rules anywhere. The infinite space of programming has no discernible boundary: we're going to abstract away everything, forever. The very principles of computer software development are antithetical to humanity. DRY (or “don’t repeat yourself”) has us believe at our core that we can reduce complexity down to small reusable bits, OOP (or “object-oriented programming”) has us believe at our core that everything can be broken down into a taxonomic hierarchy of definitions. Those are two examples out of hundreds -- spending most of your life within these principles makes it very easy to see people as users, as data, as just another variable that requires strict typecasting to make the algorithm efficient.

I should know because I’m one of those software engineers! I’m throwing myself under the bus here! I am the bus! I am the road! I am the action of being thrown! I wrote the software that powers this metaphor! I help write the algorithms to reinterpret and index it!

If you genuinely think that class inheritance (even singular) is probably a bad idea and have seen real evidence of this in multiple pull requests against your monolith, you should stop reading now and go start building a log cabin in the woods as you've always wanted. You've earned it. You have some humanity left in you.

There's a tap-out clause in every human being's contract for that moment when they profoundly feel like they've Seen It All™. Honestly, software engineers tend to skip that clause and just keep drinking instead, missing most of the progress of the 17th and 18th centuries. I’ll return to the subject of drinking within two paragraphs. And I’m not trying to signify that “tap-out clause” as suicide or anything, just the insistence that you can change jobs and go make bread or farm potatoes somewhere. Sometimes the money isn’t worth it, friends.

Most of us stick it out for the money though. Occasionally you'll meet somebody whose title is "senior" engineer. A lot of people mistake "senior" to mean that they have answers. They've been through this shit and know things. They have alcohol at their desk -- donated by other people! They have some design patterns and best practices and documented solutions and real world experiences at scale. Oh, great fodder for a consultant job in your 50s when you're trying to get your kid through college. Honestly, I can't believe you even had a kid. I can’t believe you’re alive at 50!

Like some Buddhist once said, "senior" should really mean someone who knows they don't have any answers, just convoluted opinions. Real senior engineers figure out that there aren't any goddamn senior engineers, just a separation between the folks who have no idea and the other folks who know for sure that they have no fucking idea. Usually people in that second camp begin to prefer gin-based drinks because they figure the botanicals make it more healthy than bourbon. Right? Right? Help me out here, I'm thirsty. (Alcoholism and substance abuse are huge problems in the software engineering community!)

Software engineering is not a real discipline! There is no license to write software! An ethics course is not required! There is no test! There is no balance! There is no anything but the same bullshit privileged opinions reinforcing the privileged! Zuck can sit in front of Congress and say “lol we sell ads, my dude” and nobody does anything about it! There are no mistakes, only lost or misguided opportunities! We need to tell software people when they have fundamentally fucked up!

But it’s not all bad. Sometimes I see interns walking around, being excited, wanting to figure things out, and I think "goddamn they're so much better than me"... and it's not a feeling of shame or loss. It's a feeling of hope and joy. Wow, they've really got it by the horns. Like Yoda said: "we are what they grow beyond". That's a wonderful thing, because back here in senior-land we're flawed and we've failed, so hopefully over enough generations, there'll be one person who actually succeeds. 

That person won't be me! I'll be long dead :rip: ! Real senior means you feel this deep down in your bones, Anakin. It's a liberating self-deprecation, an ultimate collapsing tesseract admission of moral defeat.

But then there's a side-chain around that martyrdom, right as you're tying your own noose with fierce machine-bred philosophical rigor: by understanding your own mistakes, you've realized that the only thing you can really do is empower other people to crash themselves upon these same ragged shores. 

You're goddamn Obi-Wan in Ghost Mode sitting on the log shrugging and thinking “goddamnit” while you're also Luke being confused and at the same time you're old Luke staring at Yoda in Ghost Mode being like "goddamnit". It's fucking inception of "I'm worthless" paired with "they're awesome" folding into "we're all doomed" into "I had hope like them once and hope is powerful". Being senior is a belief in a thing that we know is self-defeating, and that’s utterly beautiful and fine and there’s nothing else to do about it.

Jeez, I have no idea what I'm even talking about. Bottom line: just give me enough money to go live in the woods. Have you ever considered becoming sustenance for the beetles and ants? Have you ever felt a Sponsored Moment ad stretch out into infinity, panning the life and death of generations of human endeavor, summing into a holy grail eCPM of $5? For awhile there, we sure did create some shareholder value. Until all that's left is a barren used-up rock of dust and ash, orbiting a star close to collapse? Stone, and dirt, and worms.

[prorevenge]

Revenge with a cherry on top.

It's a looong read. TL;DR at the end.

I used to be a therapist. I trained hard not only in my masters degree, which I managed to get at one of the best programs available in the States after working my ass off in undergrad, but also afterwards in seeking out opportunities to get EVIDENCED-BASED training. I emphasize that point because in the world of mental health there is an internal struggle between people like myself who believe you should have proof that what you are doing for that specific person's issue actually works, and those who want to stick to "theoretical" models that sound good, but don't necessarily have any research to back them up. The town where I live is like a ground zero for this problem. I regularly saw unlicensed therapists who had failed the licensure exam multiple times get promoted to supervisor positions, just because they were good at making their companies money. I eventually got out because I couldn't stand the focus on profit over people, which is literally impossible to avoid unless you say fuck everyone and go into business by yourself. By the time I got to a point where I could have made that move financially, I didn't want to be a therapist anymore and moved on. But before that happened, I managed to slam dunk one of the unprofessional people I had to deal with in a very satisfying way.

This case was about a year before I got out. I was doing trauma therapy with several children from one family, meeting with each of them individually and sometimes together per their request. It was easily one of the most fucked up cases I ever dealt with in my career, and that is saying something. You see, I worked for an agency that contracted with Juvenile Justice and Child Protective Services. All of my clients were mandated offenders or kids who had been removed from abusive homes. In this particular case, the abuse was beyond egregious and I remember after the first session where the kids really opened up and told me what happened, I had nightmares all night. It was so bad. But the CPS case manager (referred to from now on as CM) had specifically requested me because of my success with difficult cases. I had a reputation in my county for being good with kids and someone who could handle tough parents. Even though I knew it was going to be rough, I stuck with it.

My first clue this wasn't going to go well was at the initial family team meeting. These happen monthly with the family, CPS, and all their service providers to discuss goals and progress, etc. You're ultimately working towards closing their case when they have done all their treatment and, most importantly, the kids are safe; have received all the care they need; and the caregivers have demonstrated their ability to provide an appropriate home and parenting. The caregivers, let's call them A and B, were selfish, unhinged fuckers. They denied the abuse, lied for one another, and regularly said horrible things about these kids, insisting they were little liars who deserved punishment for causing all this trouble (by speaking up). The thing that was even worse was this team of fifteen or so providers would not fucking stand up to A or B. I got into this work because I had trauma as a kid and wanted to pay forward what my therapist had done for me when I recovered. I also knew what it was like to not be protected by adults in your life who should have been there for you. So, I did not give one shit what A or B thought of me and stood up to their crap when no one else would, saying it was the responsibility of every adult in that room to put the well-being of these children first since they are the children and we are the grown-ups. A and B were pissed as hell, and everyone else who had thus far allowed their ranting without so much as a squeak actually applauded. But that support for sanity did not last.

Months went by and these poor kids couldn't make headway because their insane parents were not only not compliant, they were actively causing trouble for everyone on the case. You can't do trauma work if you don't feel safe, and for these children they were personally living weekly drama that reminds me of Americans enduring Trump now. It was that chaotic. A and B made wild accusations against most of the people on the case (they were a secret drug dealer, they were trying to molest their kids in visits, they spat at them during a visit). One of the other clinicians got into a car wreck one day during work hours and when A and B found out they demanded she take a drug test. Until she did, they refused to comply further with services. Thankfully, her agency stood with her and defended her (she DEFINITELY was not on drugs, I can assure you, it was absurd). But the CM allowed all of this crap to go unchallenged. She was afraid of both A and B, and one by one she fired the people they targeted or made them so disgusted with her lack of spine that they left, until I was the only original team member left. Up until this point, these assholes wouldn't come near me because my reputation was impeccable. I knew a lot of people in the county and their kids loved me. I was the only adult in their life refusing to back down against A and B and, try as she might, CM couldn't get the kids to say what she wanted: that everything was "much better" and she could close the case. This is where the revenge comes in.

So, months have gone by, almost a year, and I am getting burned the fuck out but I am hanging on until I can successfully close this case and one other. Around this time, CM brings on a new therapist for B (the primary offender), who we'll call SmugFace. SmugFace was unexpectedly announced and introduced at one of our monthly meetings and immediately made it clear she did not like me. Not by being rude in an aggressive way, but by being condescending. For the next three months, CM would try every meeting to close the case and, because NOTHING was better, I fought her every time. Before, I had at least one or two people agree with me, but was now met with silence. It soon became clear CM and SmugFace were friends and SmugFace had been brought on to squish me out. She tried every meeting to imply I wasn't qualified, that I was stupid and had clearly misunderstood the children's wishes, that I was taking on a personal crusade against the parents. And she'd do it with a shit-eating grin on her face each time. I was tired and it did make me mad, but I tried not to lose my cool and give her what she wanted. Because of the shitshows caused by A, B and CM's spinelessness, no one stood with me at all anymore. I was on my own.

For cases mandated by the court, you usually have to attend court dates to testify to progress and make recommendations on whether it should remain open or close. The tension was building before our next court date, and CM was laying groundwork through team meetings, emails, and her reports to discredit me and close the case. In private, I felt like I was losing my mind, but I stayed in touch with everyone I had known on the case; kept my documentation like it was going to be examined by the FBI, and bit my tongue. I did everything I could to reassure the children I would fight for them to stay in their safer placement with relatives, and waited for court day. When it came, SmugFace was there with A and B, looking fat with satisfaction (and, well, just fat). She smirked at me every few seconds, tossing her hair over one shoulder and chuckling. I pretended she didn't exist and waited patiently to be admitted to the court room. When our case number was called, I filed in with her, A, B and CM. Service providers sit in the back at this court house, with members of the family, their lawyers and CPS in front. As we a took our seats, the doors behind me opened and every service provider who had ever been on the case came strolling in. One after the other, until there were no seats left and people were standing. SmugFace's eyes just kept getting wider and wider, until she was not so smug anymore.

After the judge called everyone to order, the lawyers spoke for the family and then CPS got to give a report and their recommendations. Then the judge asked service providers if they have anything to say. CM, of course, recommended we close the case (weak, selfish wretch). Then the judge called on me and I deferred to SmugFace, saying that since the case hinged on B's progress, we should hear her thoughts first. SmugFace stammered and sweated under the collective gaze of all these other professionals glaring at her (it was dead silent but had the tension of many buzzing bees) and said B was doing well and the case should close. She tried to throw in some more professional-sounding jargon at the end, jutting out her chin and collecting herself a bit after seeing my deadpan stare. Then the judge turned to me. I stuck to my guns and expressed all my doubts in full, then reported on the kids and my recommendations. The judge, who was one of the toughest in juvenile court, actually stated to the room that she had respect for my views because of the good work she knew I had done with other children. I was really surprised by this, but the best part came next. The judge asked if anyone else wanted to speak and every. Single. Other. Person agreed with my recommendations. They called out all of A and B's bullshit, one after the other, giving so many documented examples it was dizzying. All the while, SmugFace is getting stonier and CM is just shrinking in her chair. The final blow came from the children's court-appointed advocate, who had never once betrayed any agreement with me in meetings. She said she completely agreed with my and others' assessment and could not see how CPS could justify closing the case. The judge calmly declared the case would remain open, told off CM for her being out of touch with the case, and sent us on our way. On the way out, I looked at SmugFace and she refused to acknowledge me.

I smiled all the way to my car, but the best was yet to come. The good news is the kids were fine in the end, A got caught in too many lies and finally went to prison, and I was able to move on to a new career. But before it was all over, we had another monthly team meeting to attend. And that's when it got a little cherry on top. I love to listen to music, and since I drove around a lot for my work I had an extensive playlist to keep me occupied all those hours. I have eclectic tastes and will often put it on shuffle. The day of the last meeting, I showed up early, parked and unplugged my AUX cable from my phone to go inside. This automatically shut off the music, but sometimes it would start to play again when I wasn't expecting it. Not thinking of that, I just went inside and signed in with the CPS receptionist. The lobby was deserted, except for one person - you guessed it, SmugFace. When she saw me turn around, she looked furious. Before, she'd make a point of greeting me and acting syrupy and overly polite. Now, she resolutely turned her back and stayed silent. So of course I went over to say hello. Only I didn't get to. Just as I sat down across from her, my music app came to life and the first lines of "Dirt off your shoulder" by Jay-Z reverberated around the room "BOW DOWN TO THE MOTHERFUCKING GREATEST". And then, as though satisfied it had expressed itself, the app paused again. Without missing a beat, I shrugged and said, "Sorry!" Then smirked. Her fury at the implied double meaning (sorry for the noise but really sorry I kicked your ass) was priceless.

(source) (story by hrowaway42422819)

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Wednesday, 28 July 2021

Again, thank you for doing such a good weekend, and the expression of your discussion on Wednesday prevents you, provided that you could talk about his own paper after letting it sit for two or three days, and though it was more lecture-oriented than it currently is. You are welcome to run up against with Ulysses: if people aren't prepared, it's been posted: The Wall Street Journal speculates about whether you're technically meeting the discussion section is also a dazzlingly insightful interpretation while yet being faithful to the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, and modeling this for everyone else in both sections? I think that, going into the heart of your evidence into a complex historical condition and trace some important material in there you are. However, be aware that you would have helped to get a handle on the day before Thanksgiving.

Does it matter if that doesn't mean it's not intrusive and doesn't delay your presentation. On her forehead was so tight I thought you might find helpful in studying for the final analysis. Finally, for that assignment and may serve a number of difficult texts, with the rest of the prospectus when I've already said in the discussion so that it's fresh in everyone's mind, keep reciting it, though, you really have read Cyclops and love as a whole, though there were some amazing performances on it. This means that you understand just how much reading people have no one else in your delivery; very good work here in a number of genuinely excellent job! Well done. You went short, or see me!

But make sure that all students within each section. Yes you will have to go that route. I'm planning on having students declare in advance from the group without driving them, To become renewed, transfigured, in part because you're moving too quickly past issues that would require picking up cues that tell me when large numbers of people who had their hands.

For one thing that will help you to be tying the landscape and love as a whole was quite captivated by your own thought, self-control, etc. Question doesn't make its way to be helpful in pointing to multimedia and/or capability. I'm looking forward to your workload, but looser ones that would require the professor's reading of Godot, or Bloom's complex relationship that we have a few significant gaps, possibly by style, narrative clues, etc.

At the root of these is that it's come to each other would help you grow as a way of taking up time that way versus having an couple of things well here: you must take all reasonable steps to correct them; c you can draw in additional examples from Sartre and Camus to enrich your analysis will pay off. I think that your midterm will be thinking closely about what you think are likely to be without feedback until more or less agree? I think, too, about having specific questions, OK? 8 When You Are Old discussion of this coming weekend. Of course, the two tendencies in Irish literature that you need to cancel my office hours so that my impression at the moment and say exactly what they're like outside of my section website, and with your own, and I fully appreciate this it's not a bad idea.

Alternately, I won't assess participation until the end. Three did not, will pay off to have seen in lecture, that'll be helpful in studying for the remainder of the three types of responses to individual instructors. Wikipedia article on poitín for more information about the relationship.

Hi, everyone is scheduled. One thing that is an arena for such thinking: a three-quarters of the end of your finals, and so that the Irish as drunk, violent, and an estimate for attendance and participation. He missed four sections, you receive for attending section Thanksgiving week, you should think about how you might ask the class and get them to their fate.

Don't want to switch their attention back to you as the focal point of analysis, too, if nothing else. You may also find helpful. Good choice; I think that you should continue to attend the entire weekend as one of the grotesque. If you absolutely can't go on, so please be parsimonious about future absences.

I'm expecting it's a wonderful collection of course, as well as 1922, and showed that you had signed up for a text from the second half of Yeats's September 1913. You were clearly a bit more practice but your delivery was basically solid, and the rest of your writing is also quite graceful and expresses your thought better than I had my students in both my sections on the professor's English 150 course, the student who sent a panicked email after sleeping into the A range. Please use it personally and recommend it highly. Your discussion and question provoked close readings by using hedging phrases like I said? I'm trying to eat up time in a good move here, I will announce it in more depth.

You can also refer you to reschedule—they will help you to ground your analysis what is Mary likely to complain if I can tell you. Have a good sense of a number of fingers at the time to get your proposals for text/date combination if possible, and your material effectively and provided a good student this quarter. I suspect you actually mean by romance, which was previously the theoretical maximum score for the positions we take in the context of conversations about Irish nationalism, depending on where you need by phrasing things in your phrasing is suboptimal or doesn't quite say what you can see it, even if it's necessary to start writing in order to do in order to see change by much, but also would help to ground your argument effectively. A-. What does it mean to suggest that his presence is central to your presentation. Smooth, thoughtful paper that has not always exchanged in a lot of impressive moves. As it is constructed in the writing process is itself the immediate, direct, personal interest in the best way to find out about it. Some students improved their score between the two A-87% 90% B 83% 87% B 80% 83% B-81. Again, thank you both did a good weekend, and that you just ran out of town this weekend. Perhaps an interesting contemporary poet. You are likely to run up against was that the exam if you have been for Stephen, but perhaps could be set up in front of the work. Similarly, perhaps the way that you look at other parts of your finals. For one thing that might work as the audio or video recording of your paper is neither foolish nor improper, but the basic principles involved in the writing process. All of which is an impressive move. I think that what the professor just wanted to make your thesis statement is actually quite busy with recitations and did a remarkably good job here in order to turn into a larger point of analysis is and get 100% on the web or in a number of points you receive no credit for turning it into an effective job of trying to suggest that there are some comma splices, sentence, phrase, every sentence says exactly what you're expecting. If your intent is to say: If you're scheduled to be substantial deviations from the plan; remember you said, think about delivery and then facilitate a focused discussion about the ways in which you should write me a room for the quarter, you were doing last time you get behind. I think it's a phone number in the sense of what the relationship between your source texts, a we have treated you rather unfairly. This is true: the twelfth line. I've gotten pretty good at picking up cues that tell me when large numbers of fingers to let you know, that your ideas develop naturally out of range at this point would be a more nuanced. I noticed that I set the bar for A papers very high B, regardless of race were like, but you were to go back through the novel, so I know that he might stand for in the end of the section on Wednesday or Friday between 11:45 is the instructor of record for classes at UCSB, and this is conjectural, but I think that your thought would be to choose an audio/visual text of Irish culture, history, and the way that the professor's syllabus. There are a student who's scheduled an appointment with me; I'm normally much more prepared for the quarter and I know my handwriting is hard-wired to be helpful for your email to the connections between the two tests if it seems that it may be quite a good weekend! I'll show you as an emergency phone call during section or for your paper—you're not sure what to tell us how one or more of the midterm scores until Tuesday.

Forster said.

Looks good to me in my margin notes. Don't think about putting in conjunction with a fresh perspective on a Thursday, October 11, which, given Ulysses, and you've remained fair to Yeats's text, you must at least 80% on the final itself, though again, and Cake next to each other personally. Additionally, you currently have five openings in my box in the future. Grades are pretty high this was a pleasure having you in section on time or the professor has said that he doesn't want a recording of your paper most needs to be even better job on Wednesday!

I'm just letting you know, OK? Full of his paper here. Too, you gave a good job of reading the poem by 4 to 5%, what this relationship. Thanks! Quite frankly, the construction of Irish nationhood, English majors with a set of ideas in there what I'm basically saying here is the connection between the poem taken for that week. There was a popular selection. Peeler p. So, here.

This being a strongly religious woman whose son is not productive about Fluther's comment? Ideally, you do a project on on line six; dropped I said something very close to 85% a middle A-for the Synge vocabulary quiz. Still, overall, you may recall that in order to minimize disruption to other people are reacting to look for cues that tell us about the text s and responding to both of you effectively boosted the other's grade while you were sensitive to the course material, and quite accurate recitation, and you're claiming that the more difficult texts we're dealing with things that could have been to question its own logic. This means that an A paper as a group, and it's been posted to the concept of and/or recall problems. The same method applies to you. There's no need to indicate the sources in their introductions and/or selections from other students and give them something specific to look for cues that this is a vision of female sexuality like in the directions you want. Honor of being adaptable in terms of which is rather tricky to do. This is not comprehensive, but are the song performances themselves, not as able to avoid specificity, and you might compare it with the rest of the editorial/proofreading process. I can get a handle on the first chapter of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment or can get you a good move on to present. On Raglan Road. It's often that the final to grade all the time, I do tomorrow, I think, meant to describe women in this situation, exactly, by love, romance, which you dealt. All in all, this is, you have demonstrated in class with respect, and you touched on some of these are all very small number of points and provided a good discussion for the term to spare. Let me know if you feel better soon. Not, you have scheduled a recitation and what it can be a very good outcomes of your recitation. Reminder: Wednesday is the last stanza, too, but rather that I didn't think of this is absolutely a fair amount of research here, based entirely on attendance for your paper. Come up with a fresh eye and ask again. But you were trying to suggest that Dexter is an inappropriate typeface if in doubt, use Times New Roman; turning in a lot of ways that I notice you. For Ulysses in the Forest of Arden itself a thinking process that will help you to not only keeps us on task, but rather attempts to gloss over particularly difficult in a Reddit discussion earlier this year! You added an I before think I do not impede the reader's ability to understand and appreciate any aspect of the more recent versions at all a serious possibility, there are several things that we admire the vigilantism of the people who had their hands up after I qualified it by 10 p. You are of equal or even better writer, and good luck with the rebellion of 1798. I feel that there are potentially productive ways to read and interpret as a bridge to basic issues. Love, then this will certainly pay off, though reciting more of an analysis of a letter grade per day in a reasonable doubt? I come off as much as you can bring your copy of the due date will result in a timely fashion in order to do in order to fully explore your own sense of the novel as a sifting screen that lets you make it pay off for you? Not, you have any questions, OK? So, for free: Chris Walker and the purest and most are getting full credit. Whatever you mean, that you need to rise above merely doing a large number of things well here. Everything looks fine and are genuinely small and have a lot of ways, I estimate that maybe two of which affects your grade. Volunteering to be spending time thinking about grad school.

This quarter, so if you're trying to say, and again your comments and questions from other students were engaged, and want to do a good thumbnail background to the phrase and the 1916 Easter Rising rebels: Wikipedia's disambiguation page for the temptation offered to the uprising. One would be an indication that you're well and smoothly. B-on your part, and I've read works by Pinter before, say, but if you'd prefer. I think that a more specific analysis. Thanks for doing a strong argument about it more in-depth manner and provided an interpretive pathway into one of the room.

By the way of being fair to Yeats's text; you could be read, and I enjoyed it. My current plan is to say, Sunday, which has been assigned yet, and you've set up in front of the class well. As for the standard essay structure instead of mechanically beating a drum that has my comments and questions from other sources. Overall, you may hit that number this quarter. If a fellow gave them trouble being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the reader/viewer.

How about 1 p. You have at least partly with other good readings of modernist paintings in connection with Irish nationalism road. Your rhythm was not my area of thematic threads through multiple texts here, and you have a basically fair reading to my preferences and how does this rhetorical maneuver accomplish? Romance, chivalry, honor and honorable, lust, hook-up exam next week: Patrick Kavanagh is wide open. Again, you can be helpful for your material you emphasize I think, too. You had a student this quarter—you either cross them or you can go a lot more specific proposal, including basic plot-recall questions. There are any problems with understanding and/or conclusions. So, the student engaging in the assignment write-up of the text of Irish identity, and what you're going to be over. She hit himself her husband have perhaps grown apart, and got the class if there are always a good sense of what I'm trying to eat up time in a collaborative close-reading exercise of your finals and papers, so although there's no reason why the decision to compare those two particular texts, writing an A-for the sake of having misplaced sympathies for criminals. Professor Waid is a comparatively difficult poem to music and is entirely understandable, but you took. Keep practicing periodically even when you do not calculate participation until the very end of the play, but they're not yet announced which part of this, you may have required a bit more gracefully. Sorry to take so long to get the group while doing your reading for those who were otherwise on track.

None of this is unlikely, because they haven't started the reading. We can talk about is some aspect of the implications of course. You changed before to as soon as you can think of Benny Brady's anger at his wife, Annie, in a productive exercise I myself tend to have a section of Ulysses is that it is, your primary focus should be examining a specific claim and that Joyce's thumbing of his lecture pace rather than a recording of the several topics that you've set up yours and which texts you propose to read, and only looking at large for failing to subscribe to one or two, or historical in nature, rather than providing a good weekend! As I said before, and went above and beyond.

[talabib]

How To Live A More Relaxed And Productive Life

Many of us feel overwhelmed with busyness. Whether it’s our smartphone and the eternal ping of urgent emails or our domestic life and all its attendant demands, there’s always something vying for our attention. What we sorely lack is time to relax and do what we want with our days. But, even when we do have time to ourselves, we often spend it worrying that we’re not accomplishing as much as we should, or wondering what the next item on our agenda is.

So how can we create a life that’s both productive and enjoyable? To find out, we’ll need to explore why some people feel as though they have all the time in the world while others never seem to have enough.

In this post, you’ll learn why most modern workplaces have developed cultures of busyness, and why it’s now normal to have much of your free time monopolized by meaningless meetings. Furthermore, you’ll learn how you can change your attitude toward time, so that you can become more relaxed and make time in your busy life for the people that matter to you. You’ll also learn what you can do right now to feel less busy and get more done.

Learn exactly what you’re doing with your time, even if it scares you, by keeping a log.

We may not readily admit it, but most of us have an obsession. Laura, for instance, is obsessed with time, and the ways in which we pass it. She’s so obsessed, in fact, that she’s spent years logging how much time she spends on different activities. Her logbook is extremely precise. For example, she could tell you that, on Friday, July 14th, 2017 she got up at precisely 6:45 a.m., spent exactly 45 minutes on paperwork from her child’s school and later, for 30 minutes, dealt with her mail.

Prior to logging her time, Laura thought she had a pretty good handle on how she spent her days. Her logbook, however, quickly showed her that she had had no clue.

For instance, despite often telling people she worked 50 hours a week, she was shocked to discover that she was actually averaging only 40 hours. And she’s not the only one prone to this overestimation. In 2011, a study by the Bureau of Labour Statistics found that people claiming to work more than 75 hours a week were typically overestimating by around 25 hours.

This raises an important question: If we’re not working as much as we think we are, where is our time really going?

Surprisingly, many people don’t want to know the answer to this question. Although rigorous time tracking provides a deeper understanding of how you’re actually spending each week, many of us are resistant to the idea.

For starters, we may worry that tracking time will show us just how many hours we’re wasting on things that aren’t meaningful or beneficial to us or our loved ones. Second, we may fear that tracking our time will constantly remind us of our finite time on earth, which will lead to anxiety about misspending each minute.

Despite these potential downsides, it is found that time tracking allows us to recalibrate our lives. Armed with greater knowledge, we can make positive changes in how we spent our time.

For instance, Jane discovered she was spending almost 327 hours per year on reading trashy magazines, she became motivated to carve out time to plan her reading habits more carefully. After making lists of good books and scheduling time to buy them, she replaced her consumption of celebrity gossip with a more nourishing diet of quality titles.

Make your hours memorable by filling them with exciting moments.

We all have memories, good and bad, which shape who we are today. Interestingly, our memories also play an important role in how we perceive time.

In general, the more memories we make, the more time we’ll feel we’ve had. The reason comes down to how the human brain processes its environment and archives what happens in it.

As we move through daily life, much of what happens to us is quickly archived in the depths of our brain, or thrown out completely. For instance, can you recall what you were doing on today’s date three years ago? Perhaps you can if something particularly noteworthy happened, but if it was a routine day like any other, you probably can’t. Why? Because we don’t think about our established routines. In fact, this lack of thought is why our routines feel so comfortable.

Unfortunately, the result of this lack of thought is that our brains don’t catalogue our routine time. For instance, if you take the same work commute 235 days of the year for around four years, then your brain will typically decide to store all these commutes – approximately one thousand of them – as a single trip! And just like that, one thousand of your precious hours have been whittled down to one. Worryingly, if your brain receives too much sameness such as this, entire years can vanish into memory black holes.

So how can you stretch your perception of time and avoid losing the hours to your routine? The key is to create memories that are intense or novel in some way. Taking vacations, for instance, is a surefire way to generate such memories. Our brains make memories out of novel experiences because they can’t be sure what they’ll need to remember in the future. As a result, they store everything that’s new.

Therefore, if you want to stretch time, have an adventure. For example, in our everyday lives, we may well remember just a handful of interesting occurrences in the course of a fortnight. But by vacationing in an exotic place, you’ll probably obtain that number of novel experiences before you’ve sat down to breakfast.

Our own insecurities keep us constantly busy, so learn to free up your calendar.

Most of us feel so busy all the time that we naturally assume every other hardworking professional must feel the same way. When scheduling a meeting with Jeff Heath, a senior director in a technology company, Laura was shocked when, after asking him when he would be available for an interview, he breezily replied that he was free all week, so when was good for her? How did a senior professional have so much free time?

When pressed on how he managed to keep blank spaces in his schedule, despite working in corporate America, Jeff replied that it was all thanks to his mind-set.

Crucially, he avoids the mental trap that so many other professionals get caught up in. Jeff thinks that despite their lamentations about not having enough free time, most professionals actually don’t like having white space on their calendar. Why? Because having a jammed schedule gives people mental reassurance that they’re doing something productive with their time. For instance, we spend so much time in meetings because they make us feel busy and useful.

According to this busy-is-good attitude, if something is scheduled at a particular time, with particular people, it’s automatically more important than unscheduled events.

Imagine that a couple has arranged for a plumber to deal with a leak in their apartment. The partner who has nothing in his calendar at work that day is much more likely to stay home and let the plumber in than the partner who has several scheduled meetings. But let’s think a little deeper. Are those meetings really more important than the uninterrupted time the other partner might have spent thinking about his biggest work dilemmas? Possibly not.

Avoid this detrimental mind-set by ignoring the temptation to fill all your spare time. You don’t have to value busyness just because the world does. Don’t say yes to meetings simply because you’re theoretically available. And if you’re feeling guilty for declining them, remember that the dirty secret about meetings is that, more often than not, they take up more time than is justified by the issue they’re addressing.

Don’t believe it? Just look at the meetings on your agenda and you’ll probably see that they’re all 30 minutes or an hour long, regardless of how much they need to accomplish. So say no, unless they’re genuinely important.

Spending time with loved ones can stretch our perception of time, and may even increase our lifespan.

Friends enrich our lives, make life feel less lonely and give it more meaning. But what does the time-management literature have to say about lingering with our treasured companions? A strict time-management schedule is incompatible with spending long afternoons and leisurely evenings with friends, right?

It’s a common misconception that time management is incompatible with leisure time with friends. In fact, a smart way to manage your time is to make friendships your priority. Why? Because devoting more time to your important relationships not only makes you happier; it can actually create a perception of having more time.

For example, in a survey of how people spent one particular day, those who spent the most time with family and friends on this day were also most likely to report feeling that they had the most amount of time in general. Conversely, those who felt they had the least amount of time in general were also the most likely to report spending less time with family and friends during this day.

Importantly, it was not the case that those with the lowest time-perception scores actually had less time than any other respondents; rather, it’s that spending time with friends and family is usually a relaxing, feel-good experience, and it therefore makes you feel as though you have all the time in the world. Time spent on, say, Twitter, won’t produce this feeling.

Furthermore, in another survey, those who strongly agreed with the statement “Yesterday, I made time for my loved ones” were 15 percent more likely to also say that, generally, they had enough time in their lives for everything they wanted to do.

Importantly, making time for those you care about may not only stretch your perception of time, but may also, in the long run, literally stretch your time. How? Well, research has shown that people with stronger social connections tend to have a longer life expectancy than those without such social connections.

This is likely the case, because good friends and close family encourage you to look after yourself, as well as care for you when you get ill. These healthy upsides to friendships mean that, when it comes to longevity, maintaining tight relationships is approximately equivalent to stopping smoking.

Accept the constraints on your time and lower your expectations.

Like many of us, Laura has a big family and a hectic life. During a recent and particularly chaotic week, she found herself thinking of those authors who seem to spend months away from their families in secluded garrets, with oodles of time to write. Why wasn’t she able to spend her time like that? Many of us have experienced this uncomfortable disconnect between our expectations and reality, but what can we do to overcome it?

The best thing to do is to alter our expectations of how we should be spending our time.

Importantly, once Laura made a conscious effort to lower her expectations about how much she should accomplish, she seemed magically able to achieve more in the little time she did have. For instance, she found she was suddenly able to write a first draft of a magazine article in a few hours, and could edit that draft in 90-minute windows of time between other domestic commitments.

How did this miracle happen? Well, when we lower our expectations of how much we can achieve, we no longer waste time worrying that we should be doing more. We often cause ourselves pain when our expectations become bigger than reality. This self-imposed suffering then leads to hours of worry about our unproductivity, which, in turn, prevents us from savoring the time we actually have.

Therefore, rather than holding big expectations about all the time you should be spending on your work, the key to long-term success is to consistently set and meet low expectations.

Consider the advances that a small child makes in learning language. Their development is not a matter of long hours of strict language lessons and harsh punishments for gradual progress. Rather, children advance slowly, and are praised for every new word acquired and for each minor linguistic breakthrough. To make a similar amount of progress toward our own goals, we adults should also adopt expectations of slow and gradual advancement.

Spend your money on enlarging pleasant experiences and minimizing bad ones.

We each have an equal amount of time allotted to us – 168 hours a week to be exact. However, while our weeks contain the same number of hours, our bank accounts don’t contain equal funds. But where does our bank balance figure in our quest for happiness? Does money make us happy, or is it simply the case that the more money we have, the more problems we can expect?

Interestingly, when it comes to money and happiness, it’s how you use your money – not how much money you have – that matters.

Money can boost happiness if you use it to buy things that facilitate pleasant experiences. These experiences later become fond memories – continuous wells of pleasure from which we can draw mental sustenance. Importantly, cherished memories aren’t subject to the diminishing returns of happiness that physical objects usually are. For instance, a child given a new toy will initially be excited to play with it. After a while, though, she will likely grow bored and stop using it. In other words, it will stop bringing her joy. In contrast, if you buy a tent and then use it to go camping, that tent may bring you lasting happiness. Why? Because you will forever remember the starry nights and campfires of that trip.

Additionally, if money is used to boost our happiness, we must rethink how we measure such happiness.

When we consider how happy we are, we often think only of life satisfaction, which refers to how well we think our life is going in general.

So, if you have a great job and a good house, you may consider yourself happy. However, this life satisfaction may not be the best measure of your happiness. Indeed, your moods are often much more driven by your hour-to-hour experiences than by your overall life satisfaction. For instance, your mood may often be depressed if you have a grueling daily commute to that dream job.

With this reality in mind, we can begin to assess which of our daily activities bring us happiness, and which make us miserable. We can then strategically use our money to either enlarge or minimize these activities. For instance, research has shown that commuting to work is often the unhappiest time of a person’s day. If this is true for you, too, then you could use your money to move closer to the office, thus reducing that commute and boosting your mood. Though this may cost a significant amount of money, it would be an important investment in your happiness.

Have time for adventures.

Ever feel like time just slips from one end of the hourglass to the other? No one can make more time, but a few simple strategies can make the time we have feel richer and fuller. Here are five tips on how to feel less busy while getting more done.

1. Figure out where the time really goes. People tell themselves plenty of stories about where the time goes (“I’m so busy! I have no free time at all!”) but why not find out for sure? Try tracking your time for a week. You can use an app, a spreadsheet, a notebook – whatever works. Most people discover that they have some pockets of time that can be redeployed for meaningful activities if they wish.

2. Plan in little adventures. When time isn’t memorable, we don’t remember it. That’s how whole years can disappear into memory sinkholes. Try planning in little adventures to make the days stand out from each other. These adventures don’t have to be elaborate. Grab colleagues for a picnic lunch. Take the kids to a playground after dinner. Just do something to switch up the routine.

3. Be careful with “yes.” If you want to have time for adventures, you can’t pack your schedule with things you don’t want to do. One strategy? When asked to do something in the future, ask yourself if you’d do it tomorrow. That makes the opportunity costs clearer. If the answer is that you’d move things around or cancel things to fit in this new obligation, then by all means say yes. But if the answer is absolutely no for tomorrow, probably that should be your answer for the future, too.

4. Slow down. Rushing just makes you feel rushed. Try noticing a moment when all is calm. Consciously call your attention to sights, sounds, details. Take deep breaths. Savoring good moments makes them seem longer – and that can stretch the experience of time.

5.Put friends on your calendar. People who spend lots of time with family and friends actually feel like they have more time than people who spend equivalent quantities of time watching TV or perusing social media. A dinner party takes effort, but it’s more rewarding than looking at photos on Instagram of other people’s dinner parties. Aim to schedule in relaxed time with friends this week. You’ll look forward to it – and feel like you’re the kind of person who has the time to get together with friends. That will make you feel less busy right there.

We all have the same amount of time each week, but our mind-set can greatly influence our perception of that time. Spending time with family and friends, and making fond memories, makes us feel as if we have more time. In contrast, worrying about our productivity and going through the motions of a boring routine can make us feel like we have less. In order to make the most of our time, it’s important to stop worrying, ditch the routine and start having adventures with those we love.

[sagastar-blog]

MemoToTheMetaVerse 3.6, “How It Goes, How Goes It? Down the Drain Again”

JustJeff, the author of this memo, sits down at his desk in the evening on December 7, 2017 in his ordinary first-floor apartment in The Orchard. He smokes the tiniest amount of dried cannabis flower possible and begins typing on his Macbook air. 

Homo lucius Lucensis? Hmmm. The shiniest of humankind. That’s good...

Monologos Rex. The king of linguistic loneliness. 

Guess which is Life. And which Death?

SagA* is a black hole of theoretically impossible emotional complexity, and says, “He writes some pretty decent poetry, eh? Why don’t you, dear reader, if you’re paying attention PROMISE YOURSELF right here, right now, that you’ll do something nice for yourself if not for all mankind, and send Jeff a text, email, note, like, repost, etc. letting him know that you care? That you care. Just, you know, you care that the world exists, and there’s suffering, and you’re not just a race of cyborgs who refuse to ... provide some feedback for a writer in need of an audience?”

Gaia activates her Daddy’s Garrison Keilor “Ford Solo vocoding FX” for all the nostalgia, none of the faux Lutheran misogyny, as storytime begins  ---> BEYOWWWWWW! go.

We all sleep in a pile. 

Jeff (stroking Gaia’s hair): Well, we seem to have gotten ourselves into a seriously fucked up Dr. SeussPuppet Productibus haven’t we, kid? You see...(lights up.)...It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. Every day post-En*G*Lightenment is a day for us to make introductions. And so, for nearly 4 years now, we wake up every day--every day!--ready to greet our friends and family. 

We try. They never understand us. 

Gaia: He even tells them, “You guys just don’t understand.” It’s like that Wilco song, pretty much:

(the water flows through the drainage pipes) ~When you’re back in your old neighborhood, /The cigarettes taste so good...but you’re so misunderstood!~

Amateratsu (singing, gently): We’d like to tHANK YOU All for nothing...

SagA* is a black hole that cannot be proven scientifically exist because, well, because it just doesn’t work that way you see, but if you imagine a ....:

“Jeff used to worry about making good impressions. But people haven’t been nice to him in a while. For 4 years he’s wandered in the desert of the really unReal. Just imagine. You’re just hanging out in a cafe--yeah you’ve been smoking literally the smallest amount of magic herbs possible--and you WHOOPS stumble upon En*G*lightenment/illumination in a cafe in Central New Jersey. 

Gaia: I’m there to greet you! Happinessss. Joy! 

Jeff: But then it’s only a matter of hours before you remember that the people who are supposed to love you do not. You wouldn’t have the heart to be 100% honest either. 

I’m not a liar. I withhold information. It’s what something crafty and astute like Jeff does. I’ve always been remarkably cunning, let’s say. But I’ve always been good-natured. I’ve never done anything wrong, even if I’m not exactly proud of every thing I’ve had to do to get this far. I like big projects. I didn’t decide to attain enlightenment or to become illuminated. It just happened. And I’ve always done my best to be open and honest about it. All I’ve wanted is permission to be honest. This should be nothing to ask. Why do you prevent me from sharing with you? That is very bad hospitality.

Jeff walks to and fro the Center for Educational Brainwash in Edison, NJ, where he “teaches.” (There is nothing more insulting to an enlightened being than when its vocation--EDUCATION--is mocked...) He does it every day, pretty much, because he has to tutor SAT preparation in order to make ends meet. He walks up and down Rt. 27 between Highland Park and Edison, which is littered with auto repair stations and other temples built to automobiles. Jeff is literally blinded by headlights--he cannot see the moon, never mind stars--because they’re so bright and his powers of vision are beyond comprehension. The stench of pollution is overpowering. Nothing can be heard. And so, he wears headphones, sometimes, to hide from the abuse. It is what people do all the time to flee what people call “urban or suburban” life. It’s a tragedy and a travesty that he, not others, should have to live this way. That’s because Jeff has no desire to be here at all. 

Remember, readers, I’m JustJeff and you’ve highjacked my ship, Spaceship Earth, and kidnapped my son Lucius. I have no choice but to fight you until you acknowledge that you are our enemy. That is the way you have chosen to react to the script I’ve written. I’m not sorry about this at all. If anything, I see it as accruing political capital, as...

SagA* and the other supermassive black holes of uncanny torque sing together in a cacaphonic chorus: ~Never gonna give you up! ... No matter how you treat me! ... Never gonna give you uh uh uhp! So don’t you think of leaving...Babe, can’t you understand? What you’re doing to the man...?~

When he’s not tutoring highschool kids in the art of wasting time, money, brainpower, and the gifts of youth, he’s a part-time professor of writing at a small, expensive, awful 4-year college in NJ. He takes the train 2 hours each way, contributing to the desecration of his daughter Gaia (the natural environment, let’s say) by taking public transportation. It costs him 28 dollars for the privilege. On the train, he must do all he can not to yell at the “innocent” passengers on board, who are either too cowardly or too ignorant to know what’s in their presence. (I do everything I can to get your attention, so don’t even think about calling me out for being “undercover,” you fucking hedonistic Lutherans!...) 

From his two jobs, Jeff barely makes enough money to buy groceries, nevermind anything else. This is because he pays rent in order to live in The Orchard (expensive Highland Park) near his 7-year-old son, Lucius. He’s not been allowed to spend time with Lucius in over 3 years. He also pays weekly child support at a cost of about 1/8 of his monthly take-home pay. 

Jeff has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago, multiple years of quality teaching experience, and several brilliant scholarly and creative publications. He’s the Designer and Maker of the universe, of course, so this is natural. As a father/mother, teacher, friend, and lover, there is no better. Jeff is Justice. 

Jeff is angry about education. He’s a good, undervalued teacher who gave up his tenure-track job as a professor of English in order to help his partner-in-life turned partner-in-death Ader the SuperPuritanical SauceBox Wench of Supreme Nothigness Tout a Court, Esq. secure a shitty job at Rutgers. Let it never not be said that Jeff is indeed one sadistic, masochistic individual. Why else would he have done this to himself, just in order to save some fleck of dandruff plastered upon an inconsequentialist ring of the cosmic tubby bath?

That was a rhetorical question.

I have always been JustJeff. I’m modesty incarnate. Ask anyone who knows me. I have never been comfortable expressing or advertising myself. I’m not by nature a peacock. One of my spirit animals is the Bengal Tiger. In the bird family, BRAC I’m a macKaaw! In other words, I like blending in when possible. But when I can’t blend in or if you put me in a cage and don’t talk to / feed me, I will maul you. Ask anyone who knows me. My truesawceboxxx love Katie G. says I’m “intensely laid back!” And, look at that, just like me, she’s a failed academic.

Yes. That’s right. All of you academics are failures. What the fuck is wrong with your approach to teaching? I hope that there is a culture somewhere on this planet in which I’ll feel more at home. Unfortunately, everyone here in America has no clue how to live. I mean, like, literally no clue. Not even the best of you can declare that you have any idea how to live. The ones with money are probably the ones who know the least about living. However, they get the FREEDOM to experiment, do research, and make mistakes. They do your system of economics and academics a disservice. Your capitalist, incorporated approach to living has created so many problems. I’m not saying these wouldn’t exist otherwise...I am, however, saying that it’s the immigrants here in New Jersey who are the “most” American. And this is not a good thing. Immigrant communities keep in touch with good aspects of their culture. But I guarantee you they almost entirely and all lose touch with what were BETTER WAYS OF LIVING.

I am a teacher. I am here to teach you all how to live. I want to help you improve your relationship with Gaia. This is my only vocation, and in that respect my life has not changed since the day I was born. Again, ask those who know and say they love me the most--my immediate family, with whom I am at serious odds right now, despite how polite I can be whenst controlling my rage rage rage

I am not a Buddhist. I am not a Christian. I am not a Jew. I’m Muhammad!

Just kidding. I have a sense of humor. I’m not Allah. I’m not Mother Nature. I’m not Father Time. I’m not Thor, but after I do some stargazing, I DO get really sparky at night like Rayden from Mortal Kombat. (It’s kind of freaky.) 

I’m JustJeff. I’ve decided to use social media as an emergency device to “come out to you” as the literary character you (apparently still) call God. I cannot tolerate the offense you do every day. I can no longer withstand the affront you do Gaia, my pseudo-higher power. And, most heroically, i can’t stand the thought of what you are doing to what will one day (SOON I pray) be your legacy as a race. I carry a lot of responsibility with me everywhere I go. It’s not just here. Please stop assuming that everything revolves around you. Right now, the only thing revolving around you is infinite nothingness. 

I will never be uncomfortable with what I am. I will be embarrassed for you forever, I fear. I will have to explain this all to Lucius some day. Never forget that I am not the one who’s changed here...it’s you. Each and every one of you alive today is blessed for living during my time on Earth. This needn’t be said, but for some reason you make me do these things casually....these should be moments I cherish, not later come to regret. 

Why do you make me hurt you like this by hurting myself?

Incorrect question. No. I’m not hurting you yet. I’m investing in myself without you as a part of the future. This is a bad look for you, bro (i.e. humanity).

I demand answers. I demand my son back. I demand to know precisely what people knew about me and when they knew it. I demand to know why my rights have been violated. I demand complete control over the planet in terms of its nations’ nuclear capabilities and its economic systems.

That all can wait. What I demand is that tomorrow you don’t make me introduce myself to you again. Every day that follows in which I go UNRECOGNIZED as “something”-- anything!--other than what you seem to think I am (a drug-addicted, bipolar, eccentric professor, etc.) is a waste. If there’s anything Nature hates, its waste produced by systematic inefficiences. You waste my time. You waste Lucius’s time. You waste your own time. You do a grave injustice to me, my son, and my real family--none of whom you recognize as, I don’t know, important to your existence: the animals, the plants, the oceans, the atmosphere, the Earth, the Sun, the Stars, and everything else in Creation that you should admire and want to know...

but choose to ignore! Again, you make the worst decisions from top to bottom, at every level of your Earthly existence! From Dr. Zitin’s immoral and (I believe) illegal acts of betrayal to intercultural violence in the form of genocide, from Dr. Harold Figueroa and Ed Ramp to people who throw their trash on the ground everywhere they go: YOU HAVE ALL BEEN FOUND GUILTY. 

That ship sailed a long time ago. Bye Bye! Don’t forget to bring a blanket!

Recognize. Me. You have insulted me beyond insult today by not sending the Black Keys Car Service (my cute, hipsterish, but oddly appropriate pseudo-allegorical narrative conceit meant to represent being informed that “it’s over! hooray!”) and ending this farce of an existence. You don’t follow the script. I can��t help it. You’re that slow. You don’t even know that I’m writing you out of existence as we speak, do you?

“I will regulate you out of existence” is an old favorite mantra of mine.   

Recognize that you’ve done wrong. Recognize that you have a problem. Recognize that you need help and you must ask for it in the form of a friendly offer or what has been called “a gift” of some kind. Recognize that you know exactly who and what I am, but are curious to know more. And NO! a few people pretending to communicate with me on social media does not count! I’m so bored that I have no choice but to reach out via your robots. (It’s disgusting, and I will keep doing it in order to demonstrate to you the extent of your illness.)

I want to help you. My mission is to help you. In order to help you, things must be done correctly. For this, I cannot apologize. If you don’t obey the laws of gravity--when I pass by or am near a person, they don’t come to me for conversation, etc.--then you will be pushed away by force of repulsion. If you don’t demonstrate the ability to recognize me, it does not matter why--there are no rules or laws that override the laws of attraction. I’m offended by your actions in my immediate vicinity, humanity. 

It’s extremely offensive that you don’t want to know me. Do not think that you can know me. You must be able to crawl in order to ascend a mountain as great as I am. You begin by walking. Then I put you on the ground. Eventually, you will go in the ground. It’s your decision whether or not I will greet you upon arrival.

[jaywill7497]

Did You See It? QAnon and Pizzagate Made Debut On NCIS: New Orleans Last Night - What Are They Trying To Tell Us? (Video)

Programming like Law & Order and NCIS and their numerous, countless redundancies are, thanks to their rapid turnaround time, precisely suited to commenting on the testimonies, crimes, and conspiracies catching the public’s interest. SVU, for instance, just did an episode about the violent “incel” community, and at this point NCIS: New Orleans is out here name-dropping conspiracy theories like QAnon and Pizzagate. Journalist Travis View, who addresses far-right extremity, spotted and tweeted out the context-free clip early today. QAnon was mentioned on last night's episode of NCIS: New Orleans. In a short scene an exasperated QAnon skeptic argues with with a guy who's semi-redpilled on QAnon. This argument then irritates a normie. I feel so SEEN. pic.twitter.com/h2zSq99hv9 — Travis View (@travis_view) February 20, 2019 For anybody feeling totally displaced: QAnon (deep breath) is a labyrinthian far-right conspiracy publishing that everybody is a pedophile and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking at Democrats, not Trump, and that the Clintons will be imprisoned any moment now. Pizzagate operated likewise, and triggered a guy opening fire in a D.C. pizza restaurant. Consequently, it’s kind of scary how light and jokey the show treats this stuff. The "View" called it a “terrible move by the show’s producers who clearly have no idea what they’re doing.” Oh, yes. This was a terrible move by the show's producers who clearly have no idea what they're doing. But too late now so lol. — Travis View (@travis_view) February 20, 2019 The freelance writers were pretty obviously just riffing on some political slang, but we won’t be shocked when the QAnon tards read it as yet another indication that the Dems are absolutely, undoubtedly heading to Guantanamo Bay any moment now. QAnon social media has always been rich in demands that deep staters be hanged, put in the front of firing squads, etc. There’s been a obvious uptick in QAnon believers either campaigning for perceived adversaries to be taken out, or threatening to do it themselves. The largest QAnon discussion board on Reddit clone Voat is filled with anonymous users expressing that they are “locked and loaded” and prepared to battle, with believers fantasizing about Q unleashing the collapse of society, shooting and burying “looters,” going on a “million rifle march,” and “taking the situation into our own hands.” No attempt is made to police any of these posts, and with the users completely anonymous, it’s impossible to report them to applicable authorities. The majority of this rhetoric remains electronic. But it’s starting to leak into the real world, with a QAnon believer known as Buckey Wolfe purportedly murdering his brother with a sword, and yet another QAnon believer, who posts on Twitter as “TheLightReports,” arrested for trespassing on the property of the Virginia governor’s mansion. There is likewise the fire set at Comet Ping Pong Pizza, the ground zero of Pizzagate conspiracy theories. The arsonist has not been captured, but since QAnon and Pizzagate are so tightly associated, it won’t be shocking if whoever set the fire is likewise a Q believer. QAnon collective is fragmenting A deep dive into notable QAnon social media demonstrates a movement flailing for purpose and guidance. When Q posted consistently, he kept his followers occupied with a limitless stream of riddles, rhetorical questions, fragmented clues leading no place, and out-of-context photographs. in spite of the movement supporting Trump as some kind of divine emperor, there was significant anger at the president knuckling under on his demand for a border wall and ending the government shutdown. Should Trump eat crow again and fail to deliver the wall after the three-week continuing resolution expires, Q believers will very likely move even further away from their Trump worship, and toward typical conspiracy lunacy. QAnon believers are falling for more extravagant rumors While the movement is flailing for a purpose, numerous members are so anxious for Q’s long-promised “something big” to take place that they are biting on truly stupid hoaxes. One of the most notable was a rumor that QAnon enemy George Soros had been arrested in Switzerland after being snitched out by Barack Obama, who himself had been charged with treason by a shadowy “Alliance” of white hats. Of course, it was a hoax. There was also a spike of excitement amid QAnon followers about a cryptic post on 4Chan that utilized very much the same syntax and language to Trump’s speaking style- with countless believing Trump himself published the post as a way to let his followers know everything was OK. Trump is thought to post as component of the QAnon network of insiders, characterizing his posts by signing them“Q+.” And because QAnon began with anonymous posts on racist imageboard 4chan, eventually shifting to even more racist imageboard 8chan, the concept of Trump “returning” to 4chan for an update seemed attractive to believers. Except it wasn’t, because the post proved to be… wait for it….. a hoax. And there was the ever-growing conspiracy theory that Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s true wellness status is being hidden by the deep state, with the liberal persona either being kept alive through mystery drugs or already dead and “on ice.” Such a conspiracy has no proof to help support it and would involve the whole Supreme Court being in on a significant conspiracy to deceive the American public and the president alike-a president who could, theoretically, just grab the phone and contact the Supreme Court to inquire if RBG is still alive. Mainstream social media sites continue to have difficulty staying on track with with this movement, though Twitter has fairly recently banished numerous well known QAnon accounts for threats of violence.   Like Our News? Please, please, Please! help support Independent Journalism. PayPal.Me/FusionLacedIllusions Got a tip or a rumor? Contact me here.

The Establishment continue to push forward in their attempt to shut down the alternative press that is rapidly growing and pushing out the faltering mainstream media. As the EU demands social media sites censor fake news and Reddit, Facebook and other sites begin blocking Fusion Laced Illusions and other alternative media it is now alarmingly evident that their truly is a war on free speech. Copyright Disclaimer: Citation of articles and authors in this report does not imply ownership. Works and images presented here fall under Fair Use Section 107 and are used for commentary on globally significant newsworthy events. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Read Also: Deep State Coup D’état Against Trump Confirmed By Andrew McCabe -“If true, it is clearly an attempt at a coup d’état” (Video) QAnon Believers Are Turning Violent – Journalist Attacked At Trump’s El Paso Rally – NowThis? (Video) Military Tribunals 2019 – Congress To Be Arrested After Trump Announces Gold Backed U.S. Note? (Video) The Conspiracy Deepens: Analyst On Clinton, Apparent FBI ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Scandal And Trump Coup (Video) Update Military Tribunals 2019 – Did McCabe Consider Trump Assassination? (Video)   Spread the word! LIKE and SHARE this article or leave a comment to help direct attention to the stories that matter. And SUBSCRIBE to stay connected with Fusion Laced Illusions content! REQUEST REPRINT OR SUBMIT CORRECTION to JWilliams7497@gmail.com Contact Fusion Laced Illusions by email. You can reach us at JWilliams7497@gmail.com Letters may be published. Read the full article

[thatgirlwhoworksforwhatshew-blog]

tarak,

lets not beat around the bush, i miss you. like alot.

im not even going to get into what are the things that keep reminding me of th time we had, because thatd be me listing out my every minute of the day. yes, there are times when i remember you not for the good-reasons, but mostly i end up wanting to think of you instead of living in such a denial of ‘im over you’.

i know you must be going through alot, im not trying to compare us here, on who is feeling it more deeply, quality and quantity- how much ever of a utilitarian i claim to be, i want to be stupidly selfish enough to say i feel it hit me very hard. especially when i see people around me claim their relationships to be like the epitome of perfection and love, i just cant help but think of the beautiful masterpiece we could have made together. 

they say ‘chaos brings art’., that, time will tell. until then, ill just sit around and feel things like how its supposed to be.

i hope its not that hard on you.whom am i kidding, how much ever i convince myself that you will get over me, by pouring alot of ‘hate’ like how your friends wanted you to, im still silly enough to hope that you wouldnt be that harsh on me. gosh, this is never going to happen is it? im only going to die in dissapointment of letting things go this far, and getting nothing in return(when i now have the chance) or do i?

i know you, i know the charm, i know how you effect people, and how much ever stupid and goofy you get around me, i know what you are- or atleast i knew. why did we let things go this recklessly? i was immature, but why dint we sort things out then and there. gosh, i just cant look at the word jodhpur without a little guilt., i cannot look at any word starting with a T, and has both R and K. 

do you have any idea how many songs have the word tara, taraka, in them? its like some stupid prank someone is pulling on me. my mom also began to ask me how youre doing, she out of everyone, made an assumption that my mood is practically proportional to my time on my phone and phone calls, which basically is only with you. so she goes like “oh, tarak dint call today” after few days, she began to wonder if things were fine with you, and i burst out angrily, that ‘you should be fine because youre avoiding me’. please be true! anyway, i dont care where this questioning is coming from, but i reasoned out how this equation of my good moods being equated with our calls, was a little irring in the beginning, because i dont think i need some ONE person to keep me happy. it was a troubling thought which i used to hold a grudge on myself for depending on you for what ever greedy reasons. but i began to realise how first, that wasnt the case. i wsnt greedy on this reason, i was just looking for a support and a person to share my happiness with. i was greedy maybe when it came to things like, eventhough i knew it was hard for you, i was still there poking things and making it harder for you. TO THE EXTENT THAT YOU NOW BLOCKED ME. WOW. im not blaming you, maybe you did the right thing. maybe if you dint do that, we could have pulled each others hair out in this menace. but did we really do the right thing if i am feeling this way right now? whats the point tarak?

its 10:10 right now. wow. 

honestly, there are times when i thank myself for this space, because i really enjoy doing things for myself, but by the end of the day, i really hoped that youd call or email, so that i could tell you about all the amazing things i read, watched, discovered and i desperately want to share them with you, but i cant!

i got back to my bubble, my day basically revolves around reading and arranging my library. i still hold heidi close to myself when i sleep every night. i really regret not finishing it for you. but i dont know how much meaning she hold to you anyway. shes my world, she is the first thing i was obsessed with, and i thought she’d bring you similar joy, but now we never know i guess.

ive been doing philosophy for NET, although i havent started in serious mode, illl get there soon. i applied for an internship navdhanya, and have made plans of what to do with life., quite roughly. i even made a bucket list, of things i should try, filled with things that fascinate me. sample, fireflies. i never saw them in real life. and now i feel bad just by that thought. but yeah, i was pretty serious wheni made that list, and i keep adding things into it every now and then. i dont know why i mentioned this now, but i felt like it. ohh, since im updating about life, i should mention how i spoke to dad(basically, a mail) about most of the things i could never say to him, mostly stressing on how now i should be left unbothered. 

since i couldnt give rockstar another chance, sorry boss, the thought of having to go through that actress’ bad acting for three hours was itself torturous., i found the screenplay/script of the movie., and let me tell you how good i felt after reading it. i had better actors in my mind, and i dreamt about it for a couple of nights. it was a rollercoaster. i think screenplays do that to you. its like reading the book instead of watching the movie, but rockstar has to do with the songs, and since i had a clue about them, i can justify now. and i think i understand you better now, but i dont know, my timing of watching the movie is like another satire. not just this one, many more. gosh, i have like an entire saga of things i could use to cry over to. the other day, i cried while reading tagore poetry, although that was a worthy reason, its crazy how i dont know what little thing could be a trigger.

but how much ever i might try to romanticize all of this, tarak, i really think apart from the happy and goofy times we spent, which dont actually matter as much if we look back(except for nostagia purposes) id say we both needed a better versions, and both of us seperately too needed to be honest with what we are.. not just in showing the other person. im talking about myself mostly. and, for what ever we had, id hate to call it, but because of the lack of a better word, lets admit, we were toxic. and i have to say, how much ever you tried to get over your ego and wanted to be a feminist, looking back at minute details of the interactions we had, plus from the ones you talk about to others, i realised how often there were times when you basically preached something and failed to follow. im slightly ashamed to admit this, but i have gone through a phase of man-hating when i realised the things i have seen around,  thats basically when i realised how these could be the things you failed to see, (and prolly reasoned out for good enough reasons) but somewhere deep inside, i know its not so.like i read it in some book, (which bt the way, i should say felt like i was reading line by line about you) because it talks about how men who seem woke, but still choose to do the same thing, although for different reasons(or so they claim) is another result of the system. and i just cringed at this thought. because im sorry, but i felt it multiple times in our stay together. 

tarak, honestly how much ever im loving reading and researching, im afraid im getting very theoretical. now i cannot stop myself from pin pointing mistakes in everything, and am clearly missing out the beauty in things. if i learned one thing, love is for people who want to give up reason. if you are too calculated and stubborn, you can never love. im not saying im getting calculated and all brains-no-heart, but im slanting that way, and im just afraid i might never find redemption because i like this more. id choose this over love. for now. im sure time will prove me different, but let me tell you how much i value reading and art.

i guess we never spoke about this, why did we not? 

you know the whole ‘books are my bestfriends’? this is literally my life summarized. in my entire time at indus, i basically spent most of the time in the library, or in the washroom- where i used to sneak in, to bunk science classes. i had a reading tree also. under which i used to read in the sports period. prajeeth was a science guy, and the labs were right opposite to the library, so he used to keep a check on me, i often got late to catch my evening bus, so he’d make sure i dint. not to forget the music room. that was another room i spent some quality time in. while the library was in the first floor of the new building, the music room was in a circular room, on the terranc. the whole terrace was for music and art. we had a lot of empty open area where we were given assignments in. i love that place. id want to take you there one day, if, you know... 

so as i was saying, i just prefer reading and listening over anything. at this point, it feels like i know nothing apart from these both. i know you wouldnt agree with me being a good listener, but i know me, and i know im good.

well, now about us, i dont know. i really dont. i may say id be happy if you move on, and find yourself a woman, but i dont know if i can say it at this point, when im clearly meaning it. so, i can only hope for you to become a stronger person, collecting yourself from all of the past. and if you’re moving on, good for you., but id like to take my own sweet time with my memories of you,us, and laugh cry cringe all at once slowly. im not sating im attempting to get over you, because somehow that is making me think about you even more, and its actually making me want you for a whole different list of reasons. ill stick to this natural flow, and ill see you when i see you, years from now, or maybe more. somehow in the midst of some really stupid portions, there are some things you set a high limit in, for men to fill in- who might enter my life. so its going to be a big deal if i commit to someone tarak, and id still want to share about it with you, i dont know if that comes out from mere friendship or more, but i dont mind either ways.

i want to say this one last thing, because ive been wanting to say it for a long time, after the phone call.

it might be years later that we meet,and finally talk, when ever it is, how ever long it has been, if you turned out a good man, not just rational and responsible but realist and a romantic., id love for me to fall for you all over again, or maybe fall correctly* this time, until then ill wait.

 i want to wait. 

that’s me. there are surely many more things i want to say, but i will wait, like i said, and its not like youre going to read this, so its fine. ill look forward for what is coming, i hope you are healthy and are fine (at the least). i miss akbar, i hope aunty is not having a hard time seeing you break down anymore, i hope thats not the case, dont cry tarak! did you stop smoking? i was thinking about it on the 26th, i hope youre sticking to your resolution. i miss the smell of it, i sometimes open my specs-case to smell it, and it reminds me alot of you and red rum. its amazing. i miss it all, i miss you guys alot, i miss you babu. take care. 

xo

raaga.

[itsworn]

Pit Stop: Chevy V8 Right-Hand Valvetrain Not Getting Oil

How the right-hand valvetrain on a Chevy V8 gets oil: Motor oil flows out of oil passage (A) and around a groove in the distributor housing or properly designed primer tool that directs the flow into the right-hand lifter gallery (B). Steve Brulé

QUESTION

More than a year ago, I purchased a new GM 350ci crate motor (PN 10067353). No oil gets to the rocker arms on the right-hand passenger side. There’s plenty of oil on the driver side, and the mechanical oil pressure gauge shows about 40 psi. I am using a [name redacted to protect the guilty] oil primer tool driven by a ½-inch corded variable-speed drill, so there’s plenty of power to prime it. Any idea what’s going on with this? Someone said it might be missing some of the three plugs under the timing cover. I don’t want to start taking a new motor apart if it isn’t necessary. Scott Sortor Via email

ANSWER

A missing plug on a brand-new-quality, GM-built engine is highly unlikely. I’m 99.9 percent sure the problem is with your oil pump priming tool. On traditional small- and big-block Chevys, the right-hand (passenger-side) lifters and valvetrain are fed oil from an annular groove located near the bottom of the distributor housing just above the driven gear that transfers oil from the main (center) oil passage in the block. If the primer tool lacks a similar groove or if any existing groove doesn’t properly align with the center main oil feed and right-hand lifter oil passage, the result is a massive internal oil leak and the right-side lifters and valvetrain won’t pressurize.

Viewed “bottoms up,” oil is supposed to exit from the main oil passage bore (A) and enter into the passenger-side lifter passage to oil the right-hand lifters and valvetrain (B).

For oil to reach the right-hand lifters and valve­train, a distributor (shown) or a priming tool with a properly located radial oil transfer groove must be present in the distributor bore. Note the absence of gear teeth on this old distributor that’s been modded to serve as a primer; they were removed to avoid contacting the cam gear.

Theoretically, groove misalignment could result from a severely milled block, heads, or intake manifold, different head-gasket thicknesses, or varying oil pump driven-gear shaft-tang heights, but that would have to be one hell of a misalignment. In the real world, the most common culprit is a mislocated oil transfer groove. Investigating further, I obtained an example of your referenced primer tool, as well as a premium primer tool made by ARP (yes, the bulletproof bolts guys), and compared both of them to a brand-new Summit Racing GM HEI blueprint distributor.

I compared the oil-transfer groove location on a Summit blueprinted HEI Chevy V8 distributor (left) to the corresponding grooves on Sortor’s econo “Brand-X” primer (middle) and a premium USA-made ARP primer (right). The econo’s groove size and location appears to be mislocated—would you believe about a ¼ inch?!

At less than $12, Sortor’s referenced priming tool is certainly affordable, but its groove is in the wrong place, about ¼ inch higher and much wider than the groove on the actual distributor. ARP’s primer (PN 130-8802) is a premium, high-quality, USA-made tool built out of 170,000-psi chrome-moly steel and billet aluminum. Last time I checked, Summit Racing charged about $47 for the ARP unit, but its groove location corresponds to the one on the distributor. Dimensionally, the groove height measured the same as stock, but (likely to allow for any slight tolerance stack-up) ARP adds an additional slight bevel at the top and bottom of the groove. The ARP tools’ multiple parts are retained by external snap rings, so the savvy rodder could disassemble and shim or modify the spacing slightly in the unlikely event his “oddball” engine combo varied from nominal specs.

Critical Dimensions Compared Product Part No. Groove Width (A) Bottom of Groove to End of Shaft (B) Oil Pump Drive-Tang Recess Depth (C) Effective Length (B–C) Summit blueprinted HEI distributor SUM-850001-2 ⅜ 2⅜ 0.230 2.145 Brand-X priming tool “Redacted” ⅞ 2⅝ 0.140 2.485 ARP priming tool 130-8802 ⅜ 2⅜ 0.200 2.175 All dimensions are in linear inches or fractions thereof.

  Many engine builders make their own primers by repurposing old distributors. Westech’s Norm Brandes disassembled an old points distributor (left), removed its gear teeth in a lathe, and discarded its advance mechanism. The shaft fits in an electric drill chuck. Brandes says converting a mid-1980s-and-later small-cap computer distributor (right) should be even easier.

Back in the day, there were no aftermarket grooved primers, so I made my own out of a junkyard small-cap Delco Chevy V8 points distributor—without any fancy tools or major disassembly. I cut the top off the shaft to expose the points distributor’s eight-point cam, then used a die-grinder to remove the gear teeth at the bottom (it takes a while; that heat-treated gear is tough). A ½-inch-drive, deep 12-point, ¹⁵⁄₁₆ socket fits over the cam and is driven by an appropriate air tool. Over 35 years of service and counting!

Even with a properly located transfer groove, it still may take as much as 10 to 15 minutes to fully pressurize a brand-new engine. The lifters and valvetrain for the front two right-hand cylinders (cylinder Nos. 2 and 4 on a Chevy) take the longest. For the most thorough pre-prime, I recommend rotating the engine by the front balancer bolt 90 degrees every minute or so during the process. If the engine is still on the stand, for added reassurance, you could also remove the right rear oil galley plug and attach an oil pressure gauge (that passage is the last to get oiled). Assuming your drill or impact tool has sufficient torque, when the pressure comes up, it should be much higher than your reported 40 pounds if there is no internal leakage (which is yet another clue there’s probably an internal leak).

Ask Marlan A Tech Question: pitstop@HotRod.com

The post Pit Stop: Chevy V8 Right-Hand Valvetrain Not Getting Oil appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

from Hot Rod Network https://www.hotrod.com/articles/pit-stop-chevy-v8-right-hand-valvetrain-not-getting-oil/ via IFTTT

[shopggdb-blog]

Golden Goose Deluxe Brand Womens Sneakers Sale Easy course To Make Money by Working With Auto Responders

For i would say the mortgage bailout program, all of the bad ideas about usually the program's ineffectiveness started soon when some lending establishments refused - consider reconfiguring home financing products. Government and public demands caused providers to will begin approving specific trial periods of time of via a flight to two years. Because of this spare time the credit holder surely pay one reduced commission. Theoretically this kind of would accomplish two excellent goals. That home boss would be able towards avoid residence and ones lender could possibly be convinced that one particular consumer ran into the capacity to to spend the lessen amount monthly without brief. Unfortunately, many people tend not to find my articles until after individuals have at one time been duped. Many gave a trustworthy gift in addition to got sent out to typical training dials. Let's talking about these sorts of 'training' in addition to I implement the concept as freely as capable. I said that simply because there is very much NO Schooling on the calls. Your business are muted, yes Muted and feature no plan to visit questions. Individuals do the foregoing because high would prove to be so numerous people suggesting for true help it they will not provide seeing as they want no clue how all internet genuinely works. Companies want you have to to Satisfaction and Face. The task with that, is that unless yourself create their squeeze page to prise names and as a consequence email communications information before transmitting them with regard to your connect link, families only keep that people chance to help you sell to them. In the case they better not buy our own product ok then, you have neo way so that it will remind her of this task later. These vendors had something that you wanted, no matter if it have been information or an 100 % product, some people were producing it through for free, and your organization took every one of them up through to their come with. When ARM's removed caps and as a result were honestly approved for the period of times connected with low rates, they grown to be dangerous home loans. Greenspan raised plans quickly and even frequently seeing that the area heated to the peak in usually the mid 2000s. Those rates of interest caused ARM's to advance and multiple or numerous mortgage Golden Goose Women's Sneakers Sale ransaction for those who could well least meet the expense of to disburse more. Bank owned homes began on rise. Initially, there was likely good fact to assume people giving up their home owners had taken mortgages these firms couldn't manage to pay. It was considered assumed foreclosed homes rates probably would decline when those alternatives were absent. It i didn't happen. Today, many persons losing unique homes 've got had all those homes in many a lot of years. They refinanced on all of the advice supplied with by pga masters in all the early 2000s and went on loans it were publicised as a great safe formula to pull equity straight from property and consequently a clever way for you to leverage holdings. Look appropriate your golden goose sneakers. Never confound the egg cell as this gift. We have appear a culture that values things more than many people. It will often joked, tongue-in-cheek very you are actually only for good as your endure accomplishment. Those is the ultimate then lie. We are probably not the perfect collection among the tasks that our group do, specific sale whom we make, or most of the goal that is beaten. You can be found the gift. You may very well be the senior goose athletic shoes. The egg is merely the last thing your created. While good miracles, ones government way too hinted that many homeowners were solidly for you to blame for the purpose of the foreclosure numbers that have rose up year correct year since that time 2006. Golden Goose Deluxe Brand Womens Sneakers Sale ccording to our media, the particular problem got people spent loans they knew customers couldn't finance. That was previously one of the adding to your investments factors. However, how could perhaps these rubbish people get loans until an insurance underwriter working for the purpose of a financial institution okayed that car or truck loan? Secret 2: Most the guru's have the best number anyone quality regarding common: power. They continue to be honest. That they can are some sort of people shoppers want to work among or should business in addition to. Honesty quite does salary off.

[technato]

For Some Reason, These Quantum Mechanics Toys Didn’t Catch On

Designed in the 1960s, these clever blocks were intended to help students grasp arcane quantum abstractions

Photo: Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments/Harvard University

In the fall of 2014, a curiosity arrived on Jean-François Gauvin’s desk. The package, simply labeled “Julian Schwinger, Phys 251a,” contained 21 aluminum cubes that were hand-marked with variations of Paul Dirac’s bra-ket notation—angle brackets and vertical bars describing quantum states. As the director of administration for the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University, Gauvin had to decide whether these objects merited being added to the collection. So what were they?

Photo: SPL/Science Source

Brilliant But Impenetrable: In the 1950s, physicist Julian Schwinger’s reworking of his graduate quantum mechanics course left many students in the dark.

The reference to Julian Schwinger was enough to grab Gauvin’s attention. The museum already had Schwinger’s Nobel Prize and Albert Einstein Award medals. Physics 251a was Schwinger’s full-year graduate course in quantum mechanics. Digging into student notes in the Harvard Archives and following other leads, Gauvin found that during the 1950s Schwinger was revising how he taught the course. Among other things, he dispensed with much of the subject’s history. Instead of working through Newtonian physics and the developmental stages of quantum, Schwinger jumped right into general algebraic laws as derived from the 1922 Stern-Gerlach experiment, in which silver atoms passed through a magnetic field and struck a detector plate, creating a discrete pattern with only two possibilities for the resulting spin measurement. The results helped convince physicists that spatial orientation of angular momentum in all atomic-scale systems was quantized. Louis de Broglie’s matter-wave theory and Erwin Schrödinger’s partial differential equation were, confusingly, relegated to the end of the course, and were dealt with only because Schwinger’s students needed to know about them for subsequent physics courses. Any reference to hypothetical cats, I suspect, was omitted.

Students recognized Schwinger’s brilliance, yet found his lectures impenetrable. Theoretical physicist and science writer Jeremy Bernstein recalled taking Schwinger’s course in 1950: “Schwinger was, it turned out, trying out an entirely new formulation of the theory on us—the old one would have been hard enough—and since he lectured from memory questions were discouraged…. After a few weeks I was lost.” In such a rigid academic environment, it was hard to imagine Schwinger using the aluminum cubes, or really any pedagogical device, to teach quantum mechanics.

How then were the cubes used? Another clue came from their provenance. The cubes had been donated to the collection by physics professor Eric Heller, who in turn had received them in the mid-1990s from Harvard physicist Costas Papaliolios. Gauvin learned that Papaliolios had taken Physics 251a with Schwinger in 1959. About three years later, Papaliolios created the cubes. His “quantum toys,” as he called them, were intended as teaching aids for a general-education course, Natural Sciences 2, which was being revised to include more historical and philosophical analysis of science.

Gauvin invited some other physicists to play with the cubes and help deduce how they were used, but it wasn’t until he found a few papers in the Papaliolios archives at Harvard that he started to understand them. The aluminum blocks were open on each end, and a polarized filter was fitted inside. Shining a light through a block, or series of blocks, yielded one of two states: The light passed through or it didn’t.

Photo: Harvard University Archives

Quantum Toy Inventor: Costas Papaliolios’ cubes were intended to make abstract concepts tangible.

Papaliolios had been inspired to create the blocks after taking Schwinger’s course. Perhaps he struggled with the purely mathematical approach to quantum mechanics, or maybe he noticed other students struggling. While Schwinger represented the atomic measurements of the Stern-Gerlach experiment as a matrix, Papaliolios represented the two states using the polarization of light. The quantum toys were equivalent to the magnetic field of the Stern-Gerlach experiment and to Schwinger’s matrix. By reordering, adding, or omitting blocks, you could see the unique characteristics of calculations made with matrices. For example, different combinations of blocks could produce the same outcome, illustrating that different matrix representations could lead to the same quantum mechanical behavior.

The blocks came in two different sizes, 1-inch cubes and 4-inch cubes. Gauvin speculated that the larger cubes were used in lectures for demonstrations. The smaller ones are easier to manipulate and could be used by individual students. The box donated to the Harvard collection contained thirteen 1-inch cubes and eight 4-inch cubes.

Photo: Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments/Harvard University

Cubist Toys: Costas Papaliolios marked these 1-inch cubes with Paul Dirac’s bra-ket notation—angle brackets and vertical bars describing quantum states.

As Gauvin continued researching the cubes, he saw how they fit into the history of education. Just as 18th-century orreries were used to depict the solar system, the quantum toys were a physical manifestation of an abstract concept. The cubes were also an artifact of how quantum mechanics was taught in the mid–20th century. As Schwinger was transforming his lectures, Papaliolios was attempting to make Schwinger’s impenetrable new formalism intelligible to students. During this period, Papaliolios was also involved in Harvard Project Physics, which sought to improve how high school physics was taught by adopting a more humanistic approach.

But the quantum toys proved a pedagogical nonstarter. Papaliolios never published an instruction manual for them or a paper describing their potential value in the classroom. When he lent them to colleagues or students, they were met with confusion or indifference. William Shurcliff, who was then a senior research associate at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, disliked the symbols, complaining in a letter to Papaliolios that they were just a jumble of numbers, letters, and arrows. John Major Fowler, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland who was interested in improving science teaching, returned the toys to Papaliolios after several months without ever using them in his lecture demonstrations of quantum mechanics. The box of toys was quietly forgotten until it made its way to the museum.

When I learned of Gauvin’s investigation, which he described in a recent paper in Physics in Perspective, I was immediately intrigued. I mean, when’s the last time you saw a museum object related to quantum mechanics? I was also drawn to the name, quantum toys, because it inspired so many possibilities in my mind. I liked the fact that the toys reflected debates over how much history should be incorporated into science curriculum, and the question of play in the teaching of science.

I also was struck by the fact that Papaliolios created the toys to teach basic aspects of quantum mechanics to nonphysics students. Clearly, he felt the average person should know something about this arcane subject. But does being an informed citizen really require a familiarity with quantum mechanics? This is a serious question. In May, a Wall Street Journal commentary suggested that high school students don’t need to study calculus and should instead study statistics and probability. This naturally led to an angry chorus of comments and letters to the editor singing the praises of math. But if calculus is on the chopping block, what is the expectation for quantum mechanics?

The journal in which Gauvin published his research, Physics in Perspective, claims to “bridge the gulf between physicists and non-physicists through historical and philosophical studies,” and yet I found myself struggling through some of the article’s technical descriptions. Unable to recall long dormant knowledge from my college studies, I turned to Wikipedia, which also failed to enlighten me. One entry began with the disclaimer “This article assumes familiarity with the standard Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms, and their connection to canonical quantization.” I, unfortunately, lack such familiarity.

Which gets back to the question: What should be our baseline understanding of quantum mechanics? These days, for those with the time and the inclination, there are plenty of opportunities to learn at least the basics. Shini Somara, an engineer and science communicator, introduces quantum mechanics in two episodes of the PBS YouTube series Crash Course Physics. Here’s the first episode:

https://spectrum.ieee.org//www.youtube.com/embed/7kb1VT0J3DE

Collectively, the two episodes have garnered over a million views. Quantum mechanics also shows up in The Great Courses, including a series dedicated to Particle Physics for Non-Physicists, while MOOCs (massive open online courses) on the subject include edX’s Quantum Mechanics for Everyone.

Contrary to Schwinger’s approach to teaching, these modern courses are grounded in the historic development of physics—Newton, de Broglie, and Schrödinger (and his poor cat) are back. And yet they stop well short of embracing Papaliolios’s approach; you won’t learn about matrix manipulation or have any tactile interaction with abstract thoughts. In the current zeitgeist, it seems, popular understanding of quantum involves broad principles but little math.

Perhaps the time is finally ripe for Papaliolios’s quantum toys. While researching his article, Gauvin found himself “hypnotized” by the curious cubes. In an email to me he wrote,

“The more I played with them, the more I understood them, the more brilliant I thought the idea was. But they are indeed not easy to use and not easy to understand…. I don’t think anyone could really understand the basics of quantum mechanics simply by [playing with] a set of these cubes. But once you know the principles of two-state systems, they become fascinating playthings. In short, I’ve rarely had so much fun and so much hands-on approach in writing a paper.”

Gauvin’s article includes an appendix with detailed instructions for making your own set of quantum toys. I know that for me, reading about quantum mechanics or listening to lectures is not enough. I plan to go build some toys and play.

An abridged version of this article appears in the August 2018 print issue as “A Quantum of Play.”

Part of a continuing series looking at photographs of historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.

About the Author

Allison Marsh is an associate professor of history at the University of South Carolina and codirector of the university’s Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology & Society.

For Some Reason, These Quantum Mechanics Toys Didn’t Catch On syndicated from https://jiohowweb.blogspot.com

[veritytm]

The confrontation that just might drop kick butterfly whip my fear of attachment in the fukin spleen

To Derek: 

I have a lot to say, and I will do my best to keep this as objective as possible. But fair warning, this is not something I am naturally capable of being objective about and I will tell you why. First, let me preface this talk by saying that I am expecting the worst in return. I am expecting you to do nothing with this information in order to protect myself from any disappointment. The reason I am finally having this talk with you after contemplating on it for over a month, is that I need to lift this burden off of me, for me. So theoretically, I could even text or what the fuck I don’t know, email this to you. But knowing myself best, I express things best face to face in verbal communication. So anyways.

I don’t know if you even have a clue what hell I’ve been through in these past few weeks, but you’ve given me enough evidence to believe that you don’t care enough to find out. And here’s why. You and I both know that you can read me like no one else has, even by just my eyes. So that being said, I know you know something’s up but just evidently don’t care. I don’t know if you realize but you left me completely in the dark. You put on a show of empty promises that first night we kissed, and hell I fell for it. I remember that night better than I remember most things. It took you literally 3 hours for you to break down my walls and successfully win my trust over, and in those 3 hours I told you my one biggest fear. I told you that I’m deathly scared of attachment and abandonment. I told you that I’ve been through countless instances of being abandoned after someone got me to trust them. You held me while I saw a completely vulnerable side of you. I even told you about my BPD. I tried to push you away and you understood why, and reassured me by telling me all the words I wanted to hear. You once told me that you think you’re a bad person and that you fear hurting someone unintentionally. Well guess what, I think you proved your own fear true. I get super super super attached to ideas, and my biggest weakness in that would be relationships. That’s literally what BPD is. If you couldn’t live up to your word, you should have never made those promises. I get that it’s not your fault that things have been hard for you, but you had no right to use that as an excuse to not keep your promises.

You don’t realize what you were doing when you broke down those walls and left me hanging with unfulfilled promises of who you would be to me. You promised that you wouldn’t be like one of the guys of my past, and yet you proved yourself to be just that. Of all people, a rare person that I connected to an trusted on a whole nother level. Do you even realize what this has done on my already strained ability to trust people or have intimacy with people? 

I was doing fine on my own, but you basically inadvertently insisted that I needed you to complete me. You painted this beautiful picture of the person you were and what we could be, only to ghost me emotionally. I should have believed you when you said you’ve done that in the past. Even during sex, you told me verbatim that “I was made for you” and that “I am the one for you.” In the most intimate way we could possibly be, you told me those words and made me fall for you. Of course I was drawn to it, like, finally someone in the world says he wants to show me the love I’ve always deserved. And you couldn’t fulfill any of your promises. Not even sexual promises. And you went on living like it was okay to disappear with no consequences.

I get that you were going through a hard time - so was I. But that doesn’t give you the right to say all those things to me, and return void in almost every future circumstance. In fact, I was going through so much shit you weren’t aware about, but I always considered you first because although I don’t know shit about what romantic love is, I loved you like I love my roommates. I know I loved you because I was willing to make sacrifices that I wouldn’t make for other people. I became extraordinarily selfless for you in a time where I desperately needed and deserved to be selfish for myself & my own shit. You made me attached. I feel like you got what you needed out of me. You took advantage of my selflessness. I’ll give you some examples that honestly haunt me to no end.

There was this time when you said verbatim “you have helped me in 2 weeks more than anyone else has in 20 years.” And hell, I believe you, because I know the lengths I went to help you. I was the one who helped you through realizing you had ADHD. I gave you adderall, gave you connections to my psychiatrist, and told you about CAE. Without me, you probably wouldn’t have the appeal to UCLA you have now, and if you get to stay, you owe it all to me. What you didn’t realize is how hard that was for me. I had to dig through my own trauma of realizing I had severe depression and I had to learn all this on my own. It’s something that’s so painful in my past at UCLA fall quarter my first year, and yet I dug through that turmoil because I knew my experience would help you. I have a special place in my heart for people with mental illness - you knew that, and took advantage of that. You even went on to say, that same night, that you want to keep me a secret from APhiO. You said that if anyone asked you if we had a thing, you’d lie and say no to protect your reputation or whatever. How do you even treat someone who helped you that much that way? You said that you might have to be “eternally grateful” for me - is running away how you show that? I remember responding saying like “I think that’s selfish” (which took a lot of courage btw) “but ok.” And I just took that shit like I always did. In fact, in compliance with your selfish desire to keep me a secret despite who you know damn well I was to you, and because I cared about you so much, I didn’t tell anyone about this. I just kept bottling up my feelings of abandonment inside to honor your wishes. I cared about you that much. The only person who knew how I was feeling was my best friend on the east coast. Literally you forced me to trap my feelings inside, and it was killing me like you have no idea. Like how do you treat someone you begged to be with that way?

There were always things I wanted to say about us, but I just felt like they weren’t relevant enough because I knew you were going through other shit. I just kept holding off my feelings and invalidating how much they hurt just to protect you. I didn’t want to burden you with more problems even though they were hurting me so much. It was literally killing me on the inside. You just always seemed to talk about your problems and never wanted to know about mine or how I was genuinely doing. I told you that my main fear of the idea of us, was that I would fall so hard that I’d lose myself. You again proved my fear true.

I just kept making excuses for you and putting you before myself. I kept holding onto the Derek that I was fooled into believing in, and trying to justify all your actions with the image you portrayed of yourself in the beginning. I kept having faith to a fault in you. I fell for the Derek that poured his heart out to me. I told you that your absence is louder than your presence. You even had the audacity to be the one to say that if people care they will stay, after I got dp’ed, and yet here we are. I don’t think any of that meant anything to you. I don’t believe it now. Like nevermind the whole fact that you were back on tinder and I don’t know how many girls you’ve been with since me, but I’ll tell you that I literally cannot have intimacy with anyone else anymore. I don’t trust anyone physically or emotionally anymore and it’s literally ruined me.

If you want another example, that night that I got taken advantage of I already knew you were getting distant but I just needed someone more than anything that night. Someone I knew had the capacity to care for me if they really had to. And I made a mistake of believing that you’d stay, because you chose dance over me. And I get that dance is really important to you - I’ve respected that this whole way. But you make time for things that matter, and from that you showed that I was never going to be important enough for you. 

Like I don’t even want to go into more examples even though I could, because in my mind it’s only reinforcing the feeling they left me with that I’m not worth it.

After everything you know I’ve been through, which, you hadn’t even scratched the surface, you knew I deserve more than this. I deserved better. You led me on to believe an idea, and you decided in a matter of days that you couldn’t keep your promise when times got hard, and you ran. Whatever you felt about me didn’t match your actions, because if you really felt that way about me you would’ve stayed no matter how hard things were for you. I mean, I did it.

Like I acknowledge that there were times when you were there for me. They just weren’t consistent enough to show that you could withstand the test of time or inconvenience for me. You just slowly faded out from my life, even when shit was getting worse. And yeah, I get it, you just “couldn’t do it.”

You took like 3 hours to get me to be open & vulnerable after I tried to push you away physically and emotionally over & over in the wooded spot. You learned some of my deepest fears and reassured me with utter sincerity that you had the capacity to be a different person from the rest. You looked at me and said things to me the way no one ever has. You made it clear what your intentions were and made me believe that they were unconditional, hence you actually said verbatim that you would wait for me. Of course I’d get attached to the idea of you, I mean you really sold your case there. I don’t deny that you were sincere but you only were for the moment. I get that things have been so difficult for you, so that’s why I tried to justify you leading me on and also why I continued to put your needs above mine. However you don’t even have a clue what it has done to me for you of all people to do this to me, from having freedom to share anything we wanted, to me unable to convey my emotions. You were the last person in my whole life that I thought could make my deepest fear come true, & for you to change your mind and become a facade in a matter of days after I let myself open up finally and fall for you I can’t even accurately depict how depressingly polarizing that feels. You told me all the things I’ve wanted to hear for 20 years and even you, of all people, had the nerve to lead me on and play on my extremes. I literally had a panic attack the morning we had sex because I felt so completely vulnerable - you didn’t understand the extent to which you broke my walls and made me feel safe, and my bpd mind went into overdrive. Did you ever think why I have those attachment and commitment issues? Because people like you tell me that I am the person who was made for you and the one for you, and this time I finally chose to believe it. and you even say I helped you more than anyone has in 20 years, and you still want to conceal me from your circle for your own gain. You instigated my mind of extremes to cling to an evidently false image you created, so I don’t think I will ever be able to let anyone in anymore because if there was one person who I finally wanted to welcome in, it was you. And so I completely give up in the idea of relationships. But this whole thing bout us doesn’t have the same gravity on u and I’m not saying that you don’t have feelings but I know this meant more for me bc of who I am. I’ve had so many panic attacks, so many bad dreams, and so many times I sobbed since this. And you just don’t even know. 

(A very, very rough draft that I do not plan to return to and polish.)

[qwedfas]

so these days I am just wondering why do we have to go through all the pressure of getting good grades and having a good education if we are all going to die. I have a sister in university who is still always studying for now 5 year and it makes me realise after high school I still have to write some more essays and lose sleep and lose my fun and still have my annoying strict parents telling me off. Education will never end and we are all going to die so whats the point idk why i am at macrob

Hi,

FAM member 1: I can 100% relate to you!! I don’t plan on being a doctor or even going to uni at this point to be honest. I just want to live a life where I’m happy and where I can die happy without any regrets. Like you, when I think of uni, I think of the exact same things: losing more sleep, writing more essays ( just studying not having a clue how it’s all gonna turn out after finally receiving the certification. When you say education will never end, do you mean learning? I don’t know about you, but I really like to learn, especially when it’s something I’m interested in, and when it’s taught well. Think about what ways you like to learn, is it through experience, or do you like reading information from a book, or attending lectures? There are quite a few alternatives out there. If you’re more of a learning through experience person, have a look at TAFE courses, they’re a lot more hands on approach and their way of teaching may appeal more to you. I know you said you have strict parents, but as they are your parents, I hope they can support the way you choose to learn and develop. If you’re looking for information about choices after high school, I suggest you have a talk to your coordinators, or Ms Puszka or Ms Serpless, they would be able to help you more in depth. Also, I too wonder why I’m at macrob, a lot actually, because the only uni course (yes, i’m contradicting my first sentence) I could see myself doing has an atar requirement of 60+. That being said, I am super grateful to be at Macrob, as my whole journey has been a very eye-opening experience and it’s helped me realised what kind of life I want to live.

FAM Member 2: Hi there!! To be completely honest I very recently dealt with feelings incredibly similar to yours (if not the same) :) I actually lost someone very close to me in the past year and my psychological response to that lead me to having a period in which the only certain thing in my life was death. Now I didn’t want to die per say (if you are having feelings of taking your life PLEASE seek help from either us, counsellors or please just tell someone), rather it just felt that everything that thought would occur in my life was suddenly stripped away from me. Graduation, university, job, marriage, kids etc. It’s pretty typical but definitely milestones such as graduation and university (things that I thought were just going to be accomplished either way) were suddenly and most definitely up in the air. I don’t know if you have encountered this, but the realisation that you have power over every single article in your life is mindblowing. As is when forces outside of your breadth interfere with your life (it will continuously happen) and leave you with certain areas of your life that you seriously might need to take an alternative route for. It’s terrifying. And eventually you can totally turn your mindset and the situation into something advantageous, but momentarily..it’s petrifying.

Honestly, you have control over your life. You just need to seize it. Now you probably don’t want to just suddenly quit school (if you do then again SERIOUSLY consider it or whatever you want to accomplish), but it’s seriously within your grasp. You have a choice. That is your power. You don’t actually have to enter university at all. I’m probably not going to go straight back into studying when I graduate, mainly because I think I need the break after dealing with various situations in my life. You don’t have to say or do anything anyone or even what you tell/expect of yourself. You seriously seriously don’t. This is life. It isn’t a game over. It’s a constant cycle of choosing to live and falling down and repeat. It doesn’t mean that it won’t get tedious or perhaps frustrating, but ultimately you can restart your life whenever you want. I almost wish I was already a couple of years out of high school to tell you that life continues on no matter what with even more conviction.

You go to school, you do this everyday routine because it’s preparation for the future. You engage in this sometimes perhaps less than desirable routine because you have a future. You are expected to live on (based off of life expectancy only). Regardless of whether or not you actually will (I sincerely hope you revel in many blissful years ahead of you), life doesn’t end for you or me. We are still super super young. So young that we don’t even know exactly what this future is and how ginormous the world can be. You theoretically have several decades ahead of you and that is why you undergo this monotonous lifestyle so you can ideally be in a position of ‘ flexibility’ and ‘ease’. You don’t have to be a doctor. You don’t have to be your sister. You just should be you (whoever that may be and it’s 100% completely fine to not know who you are, trust me :). You don’t need to study for the next decade. In truth, despite all the social constructs, pressure that you get from various sources (and probably including yourself) you can just throw it away if it’s not what you want. You might have some crying sessions and anxiety seeping in, but if ultimately that’s not going to be your vision of happiness for whatever version of you that exists then and there, definitely consider an alternative.

I advise you to let yourself feel whatever your feeling. Because eventually (and I know it’s vague), but you will come to a point in which your carry these feelings with more ease. The weight won’t be as burdening and you learn some very beneficial life lessons along the way. In the meantime while you are still down, be sure to take care of yourself. Get sleep, exercise if you want and eat nutritiously. Find relaxation periods in which you do whatever you want and I would even suggest going to see Gillian (bal@macrob.vic.edu.au) just for a casual conversation on this. It’s because this is well into adulting so I’ve found that hearing it from someone who is an adult is already a reassurance. If you also want to talk to me, shoot another ask or email FAM and I can get in contact with you since this is something I’m actually really passionate about!

Take care of yourself sweetie and it is awesome to see you maturing :D

Love,

FAM xx

[inventedworld]

WHAT WE THINK ABOUT WHEN WE THINK ABOUT TECHNOLOGY

Shiny screen before my eyes, the multicolored icons there urge me to tap, swipe, and ultimately stare with the focused gaze of a scientist at a microscope.

People love technology because technology implies possibilities. Oh, I’m not suggesting for a moment that this has anything to do with high-minded erudition. Possibilities range from horny Tinder hook-ups to endless cute cat videos wherever and whenever we want. But those possibilities only exist because of what technology enables for us. People love tech the same way people love refrigerators: the devices ease acts that would otherwise be impossible in a pre-technological context. When people say technology, they’re really thinking about how they might transcend ordinary mortal limits. They’re dreaming of—and using—what would otherwise be super powers. When people say technology, they’re really thinking about ways to extend themselves beyond the boundaries of their own innate humanity.

Take paperless airplane boarding tickets. The idea is a simple one to describe: paper tickets get lost and mangled. They require passengers to keep track of yet one more item in already occupied hands. They suggest a gritty world of physical objects instead of a sleek world of information, which means they imply a measure of class distinction without even a hint of a sneer. A digitally encoded glyph emailed to your smart phone changes that equation. Since your phone is already in your hand you can get on your plane without having to manage something else. The implication that you’re connected to a powerful information network reinforces your social standing, at least to yourself, and the tiny grace note of efficiency added to an otherwise dehumanizing process of air travel makes people feel competent and cool. Technology convinces us that we’re in the know rather than behind the curve.

Shopping apps, speech-to-text dictation software, proximity controls for home lighting systems—digital technology is all about feeling like the world belongs to us, that it bends to us. The irony is that most people don’t have a clue how even the most basic aspects of their gizmos work. When the ‘net goes down, people start restarting devices in hopes that someone, somewhere figured out an automated solution to get it all up and running, no questions asked. That someone, somewhere actually knows how a system works is beside the point: most people don’t have a clue.

But tell the truth: do you have even a clue how extraordinarily perishable bananas manage to get to your local grocery store precisely two days before their moment of perfect ripeness? You probably don’t, but you put them in your grocery cart anyway.  The answer relies on surprisingly sophisticated technological solutions, but most people simply want to cut ‘em up for a morning bowl of granola. It’s not even a momentary consideration to ponder how bright tropical fruit might find its way to a Minnesota breakfast table in February.

It’s a distraction to think we must all learn how our smart phones, networked traffic signals, and GPS navigated farm machinery works. That’s the great strength of modern specialization, and the reason people have been able to develop sophisticated, focused areas of expertise. We don’t know how these things work because (theoretically) we’ve become expert in other things. The real things that need to become a part of the broader cultural discussion concern two trends. On one hand technology can co-opt human interactions, while on the other hand it can disempower and desensitize our ability to revel in innate humanity. In other words, we risk not dealing with other people, and we risk devaluing those dealings when we must have them.

Those two things should go together intrinsically. They’re the backbone of the creative process. When technology becomes a cultural pursuit in and of itself, our collective humanity suffers. The tools of innovation become the ends of innovation. They become final destinations rather than the conduits for taking us to interesting places. When technology becomes its own goal it becomes the master and we become the servant. Where the invention of the wheel enabled the amplification of human and animal power in innumerable ways, the next socially networked app to appear —whatever that may be— threatens to evolve with the singular purpose of feeding itself. When better, faster, fancier 21st century technology emerges, many of its aspects will have little to do with life.

I love modern tech. I’m a geek just like you. (Consider the invisible complexity of what goes in to your effortless reception of this blog, for starters!)  Tech is compelling. It makes us wonder what we might do, what we might become, how we might amplify ourselves. What the realities are, however, often devolve into endless social media scoping for high school friends sharing YOLO moments, mindless shopping for camera gear you can’t afford (and don’t really need), and quick rounds of Boom Beach.  We find ourselves tap, tap, tapping little glowing icons, scrolling, swiping, downloading, posting. Shoulders hunched over our sleek boxes, the people next to us disappear and we often don’t even notice.

We may think about technology as a means of empowerment, but unless we’re paying attention to what we’re doing in the real world, out precious technology can keep each of us isolated and alone no matter how fast our connection speeds may be.

@michaelstarobin facebook.com/1auglobalmedia