LostCause

https://annas-archive.org/

Though I doubt digital things will survive an apocalypse.

From my daily 7,5h I‘d say about 3h of meetings and 2h of work

Humanity sucks. Destroys ecosystems. Feel hopeless.

The only artist I would personally get excited about if someone foreign knew of them is the author Thomas Bernhard (Austria), but he was famous and infamous for hating Austrian culture and it wouldn‘t go over well with many others here I suppose.

So I posit some more widely liked people: Mozart, Falco or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Reading books. I enjoy it so much because it distracts me from depression, but depending on the book, it also can be enlightening in some ways and doesn‘t require me to really do much or go anywhere.

forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)

Definition wise, it‘s clearly social media. I get it though, the corporate giants feel more rage bait-y due to the algorithms they employ.

Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more, it performed a miracle with man, but later did not know him.

To sum up how I understand this poetic piece of text (The Last Messiah from a Norwegian philosopher Zapffe). It‘s a feature of consciousness, that we can even perceive ourselves as apart from nature. Considering our subjugation of it in various ways and currently underway destruction of the climate, it makes sense to me too to differentiate.

Article from more than 20 years ago:

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fmagazine%2Farchive%2F1999%2F03%2Fthe-market-as-god%2F306397%2F

The Market as God. It might interest you.

I use an app called StopTheMadness to achieve that, it also helps me with some annoying cookie pop ups.

Well yeah that is what I was talking about, though the articles I saw didn‘t mention any reason at all and if they had said “shits and giggles” I‘d be even more sceptical of that, since I don‘t think animals really fight without a reason.

Now here is where we get to my wild conspiracy theory, I think aquatic species may not like boats, who they can see killing their species or hunting their food sources. Then they react to a predator, so either they flee or attack. Orcas being some of the bigger ones are probably the few who stand any chance whatsoever fighting, so they might try sometimes.

Edit: Ok I just googled around and saw the articles you mentioned saying they do it for fun, I also found this: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/11/the-orca-uprising-whales-are-ramming-boats-but-are-they-inspired-by-revenge-grief-or-memory

Which made me feel a bit more like at least I‘m not the only one who sees this possibility and also gave me more of an idea of why I might want to see this so much (I think there is an injustice happening).

In completely unrelated news, some whales seem to be attacking boats/yachts. How weird! Why could this be?

Growing up we had a dog and my mother got a lot out of it, mainly cause she made me deal with the shit (literally) parts, while she enjoyed the affection and fun playing time. The barking was a nightmare too and I was not equipped as a teenager to train a dog.
So I naturally ended up strongly biased against pet ownership.

Now if someone has a lot of fun doing all that and the right knowledge, knock yourself out, but I‘m glad if there is more of a nuanced discussion and warning about the downsides too.

Namely that getting a pet, or a kid for that matter, isn‘t a fix for mental health issues. It‘s a lot of responsibility, which I‘m sure can be rewarding too, but some research or training should happen before at least.

Not sure if that is what you mean here, but when I was in University I started taking speed to try and keep up with studying despite my ADHD/depression.

And not just a bit either, but quite a lot and I must have overdone it and stayed up too many nights in a row once. I remember trying to go through my day, while I constantly spotted what could only be described as “shadow people”, whenever I tried to directly look at them they would be gone, but then I‘d see it again just near the edges of my field of view. It was one very creepy day and what led to me finally admitting I can‘t do it anymore.

So I ended up dropping out, found a job in IT and got therapy and some more reasonable ADHD meds too. Still, I imagine that is what being schizophrenic might be like and I did not enjoy that at all.

I read a lot of philosophy until I had an existential crisis, which ironically made me feel worse at first and then better later on, because I realised basically “nothing really matters” and the majority of things that stressed me out are so small. Sure, some stuff has negative consequences for me and messes with my emotions, but even that passes with time and much of it is simply in my head (I got a nice cocktail of ADHD with depression and anxiety and get stuck in feelings of dread and doom).

Well, I also go to therapy, and there I learned to focus on myself and what I need and like, with the goal to either distract myself or enjoy small pleasures. Like I walk to a quiet place somewhere when noise stresses me out or listen to music, I make myself a nice meal or some tea (iced tea in summer) or take a cool shower or sit down to draw something or write comments or talk to a person I like, all those small things that make me feel a bit like “I can live one day longer”.

Basically, instead of looking at the world and the things you can‘t change of affect like your past, look only at yourself in the here and now and ask “how could I make this a bit more bearable for myself?” and then I do that. Though there is some limit there like don‘t do drugs (which I DID do, it gave relief, but made me feel much worse over time! just a warning), but even outside of that there is usually something you can do.

Many desires are also artificially induced by marketing and peer pressure and the more I understood that, the less I felt like I had to do x or y or whatever everyone else is doing to be happy. That includes my comment and those of all others by the way, one or more points may resonate with you and help and others may be completely useless to you, what matters most here is finding what works for you and doing more of that. If you try some of this and have a moment where your mind calms down and you feel alright, take note of that and do that again.

Though I‘m not entirely well, this stuff comes back sometimes, but I got a bunch of ways to deal with it now which help me out.

Yea especially the Bing chatbot is too cute for a job like this, it also added a 😅 later on in our little chat, though maybe the CEO should have taken some advice from it in this case.

Guess time will tell if it would have been smarter to replace the CEO with the chat bot instead.

Finally some good news!

If it‘s Windows, I usually do something similar to this: https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-remove-bloatware-from-windows-10/

Also in addition to the good Firefox + uBlock already mentioned, first things I install would be Windows Power Toys, Greenshot for screenshots and Obsidian for writing and note taking that‘s most of what comes to mind.

In German but “As long as they pretend to pay me, I pretend to work.” Probably one of the first pieces of wisdom I got way back as a wee apprentice.

Now, I work more than this quote may make one think of me, but it‘s influenced me insofar as I‘m aware of not overdoing it as my employers never overdo the pay part either.

I do feel like that gives an incentive to get people of the opposite party into prison to influence the election.