Only so many times a sail can get winded before the ship goes down. If you can do it more power to you, but I’m sunk.

There are no ultras or anarchists (that I know of) who are regulars on grad and in my xp that umbrella is the most drama-prone

I keep trying to do the dataannotation one because I can do programming but they keep making me unable to do the assessments and won't respond to my support tickets. I've made like two separate accounts there and this has happened to both of them (very cool)

If this is a different one I'd like to bite. Bonus points if I can do programming stuff on it

I won’t defend it

proceeds to defend it

This has been what I assume is a reclamation effort but I am still a bit wary of it. That word was the calling card of abuse back when I was growing up closeted so if that is what's going on I don't want to harsh the kids' mellow but I'm not in any hurry to take it back.

The middles aren't really either. I can't speak to the youngs, but they're probably fucked up too.

They are all like this. All of them. I've given up. I can't keep trying to organize my workplaces and every single time having my coworkers say shit like "I hope we start WW3 and kill all the Russians! mimicking machine gun fire"- a real quote from a guy I worked with years ago. Minimum wage.

Took a walk with someone I worked with on our lunch break in 2018, a homeless guy barely starts walking toward us in the parking lot and dude literally loses his mind, starts screaming and acting like we're being attacked by a bear or some shit. "GO AWAY. NO. NO!" until the homeless guy, rightfully shocked, bolted. Just unbelievable stuff.

I have more. It doesn't matter what we do. They won't listen when I talk to them. America and Americans are the devil and its little imps, and I can't handle trying for them anymore.

if the soundtrack isn't by shimomura i will be upset

Listen, I’m not that old. But I’ve been using computers a long time. It is REALLY not that hard to use other browsers. I have no idea where this hardline comes from for so many people, it…it’s literally all the same. the buttons are all the same. they do the same things. Back button goes back. blank bar where u type website. What’s the difficulty?

I did listen to it. I have been a follower of that podcast on the periphery and it is nice to hear from other IC people how they are dealing with this reality. I got a little choked up listening and thinking of my own partner, who at this point is almost a caregiver, too. It irrevocably changes your life and the lives of everyone around you to be like this in a way I don't think anyone can really grasp until they're in it. I don't want to say it's become a "special interest" or anything but I have been really diving into reading about the history of movements of the sick/disabled and especially how it relates to modern socialist ideology- there's a LOT of material about this from the USSR, actually! it has been equal parts inspiring and horrifying especially knowing the trajectory we are moving in. I don't know that there is a more singularly reviled condition by the public writ large historically than being disabled...at least it sure seems like it. There is a lot more I need to learn.

One of the things I miss the most about growing up in USSR is not having ads shoved down my throat at every waking moment.

Whoa, really? I mean the no ad stuff makes sense, but I didn't know you grew up there, comrade.

Thank you, it did help. That book is one of the old classics I have yet to get to, but I think I’ll move it up my list.

The brightside is since you’re here at least you recognize that “Back to Normal” is a lie, so hopefully you’re also picking apart at all the other related mental chains that keep your inner revolutionary arrested.

This is true. I am imagining and building what a new life, at least for me, looks like in this hell, and that’s not nothing. I never feel like I am afforded the grace to mourn my old life but this adaptation is the only way forward for us all and I am, at least, doing that. I should consider it a head start if nothing else, and it has led to a lot of actualization that otherwise went neglected. Even if it hurts now, I am better for it.

I gotta be honest I genuinely don't know what any future looks like under these conditions. There is nothing like the confluence of what we are going through in any history book I know, and I get extremely anxious about that.

Thank you. I wish I could say it was more common but…it’s not. I have gotten an equal amount of resistance to all of my outreach. I don’t know why it is so difficult.

Pretty much!

I really try not to be a doomer about this but living through this last four and a half years there is really not any other logical response to all of this if you are any sort of medically vulnerable. This is a culling, plain and simple. My politics now begin and end with “what will you do with the sick and the disabled” because modern-day communists and fascists alike have given me the exact same answer and I am not exactly thrilled about it!

It's been a year and a half for me, in a supposed "skilled, high demand" field, and I'm feeling the same. I stick around out of spite alone, and to be fair, it's a pretty powerful motivator at this juncture. They've won it all, and now they want me gone; I will not let them win this one.

The hardest part for me has always been convincing any of them to read at all tbh

Thank you so much. Cheers!