Dash Dot

🌈Brought to you by Truth, Hope and the letter N.  Unexpectedly old (46, if you need a number), and glad of it.  If I follow you and/or like your post(s), that just means I like your post(s). Rainy days stuff at dashdotshows.tumblr.com

[geekysteven]

A Betazoid character who isn't in a nurturing profession, but is a tactical officer.

"Captain, I sense they know they're about to get their asses handed to them"

[macko-99]

Also, a Klingon character who is in a nuturing profession instead of tactical.

"You are a true child of Kahless for confronting your fears and I am honoured to have helped you."

[asimovsideburns]

Klingon therapist: the battle against mental illness cannot be won decisively. It is a long campaign against an enemy who never tires, whose forces swell to twice their size whenever you look away. Battle against a foe of such magnitude, who occupies your very mind… every moment you survive is a triumph against all odds. There is no more honorable combat.

[trekheritageposts]

star trek heritage post (March 31st, 2021)

[the-rain-on-your-dandelions]

Now I've seen this piece in several places, probably best illustrated by @theshitpostcalligrapher and would have bought one were it not for The Tariffs, but I didn't know it originated here on tumblr.

This information would have been rather hilariously useful a couple years ago when ~my fuckin therapist~ quoted it to me when we were talking about Star Trek, and she admitted she used it with other clients who weren't fans at all. (It's apparently very effective, according to her, regardless of fan status.)

[theshitpostcalligrapher]

oh it's more than just that!

For one, I figured out the tariff thing doesn't really affect my field too much since art on paper as fine art, even as prints, aren't in an HTS category that generates duties. Yall can get 'em whenevs, they're sent using stamps in envelopes.

anyone can get their own print!

but not only that, @asimovsideburns is not only aware that this is a print I sell, but they get a courtesy cut of every sale I make with these!

It's kinda lesser known, but if a print design I make and sell has an OP that is contactable, I make sure they're aware and that they have a cut of the sales.

[asimovsideburns]

forever grateful that this is the thing I wrote that took off but also it’s still wild to me to find out that I’m being quoted by actual therapists, and it’s always extremely cool to hear that it’s helping people

[ms-demeanor]

I just have to lock in and get through my to-do list and then I'll start my new system with a clean slate and everything will be better.

[ms-demeanor]

Me, replying to every malingering email in my inbox: "It's going to be such a relief to clear this out finally!"

Everyone I'm replying to sending a response at the same time because I emailed them at the same time: ...

[ms-demeanor]

I'll set a calendar event for two weeks ahead of time and two days ahead of time so I won't forget.

[ms-demeanor]

If I just remember to do it every day it'll become a habit and I won't have to think about it.

[ms-demeanor]

I'll just stay at my desk until all of my tasks are done for the day and then they won't build up.

[ms-demeanor]

That's important, let me write it down on my hand so I can't ignore it.

[ms-demeanor]

If I skip lunch I'll catch up a little bit and I won't have to stay late or start early to stay on top of things.

[ms-demeanor]

I think if I work late all week that'll get me through the backlog and then I just have to keep up.

[ms-demeanor]

I have been out of my ADHD meds for three weeks and won't be able to get new prescription for another two weeks and there is nothing I want more right now than a single massive task that I can drill into for ten hours a day because having thirty small tasks that take twenty minutes each every day is grinding me into a fine paste and piping me onto crackers with a dill garnish.

[ms-demeanor]

Burying myself in a bathtub full of this stuff for three weeks would fix me:

[so1987-deactivated20230102]

who’s gonna tell tumblr that executive dysfunction is more than Not Doing Things?

[so1987-deactivated20230102]

okay

these are the executive functions. impairment of these functions is executive dysfunction

[dailypattondoodles]

Oh.

OH

[lurlur]

Girl, help. None of my executives are functioning

[ms-demeanor]

Hey here's the food that I've figured out his the right combo of cheap, easy to make, tolerably tasty, and relatively nutritionally sound for when my brain is bad:

2c rice (2c is dry, prepare as you usually do. Whatever kind of rice you have is good, brown rice works well)

2 cans of pinto or black beans, drained (or one can of each. Whatever.)

12oz frozen broccoli

1c chunky salsa

Optional: .5c sour cream, .5c shredded cheese.

Also optional: salt, garlic powder, and cumin to taste (to season the rice)

Cook the rice in one pot (with the seasoning if you want to). Put the frozen broccoli, drained beans, and salsa in another pot and bring to a boil. When the rice is done and the bean broccoli salsa stuff is hot, mix the rice into the beans (if adding cheese or sour cream, stir into the beans before adding the rice).

Now you have a food. It's got protein and carbs and fiber and a vegetable (and fat if you add the cheese and sour cream).

The amount described above is a lot. You can portion half of it into single servings to freeze and still have like four meals.

It's not the kind of thing I'd serve to anyone else, but it's a better option than eating instant oatmeal for dinner for another week.

[ms-demeanor]

If you want to make a less-cheap (still pretty cheap) and better-tasting version of this, you can add a diced onion (sautee in the pot before adding the broccoli bean salsa stuff) and replace one of the cans of beans with one cake of marinated tofu (marinate it in spicy sauce if you like spicy stuff) diced in small pieces, one pound of ground meat (browned with the onion before adding the other stuff) (i like frozen turkey for this) or two cups of TVP (soaked with the salsa before adding to the pot - if you do this option add an extra half cup of salsa).

Someone in the notes described this as a cheap burrito bowl and that's a good way to think of it, and also means that if you can eat tortillas you can eat it in a tortilla as a burrito or freeze servings as burritos. (I can only eat very small allergy safe tortillas, too small for burritos, but this is pretty okay as a very messy taco)

[ms-demeanor]

(In reference to your post about repeating songs being stimming and how much you listen to podcasts) What podcasts do you listen to that fill all that time? Is there a shuffle all podcasts button? Or do you just listen to the entire back catalog of one podcast then move on to the next? Also at 3x speed does everyone just sound like chipmunks or can you counteract that somehow? I thought I listened to a lot of podcasts but your listening habits are way more impressive

I listen almost exclusively to nonfiction lefty/leftish podcasts and I like it when I can find one with a big back catalog and listen to the entire thing like five episodes at a time interspersed with currently updating podcasts.

I'll listen multiple times through podcasts that have shorter catalogs (under 200 episodes) that I really like, and for longer podcasts I usually mark episodes as favorites that I'll listen to over and over.

So, for instance, I've listened to Qanon Anonymous all the way through probably six times (that started before 2021, so it's not all in the history on AntennaPod) and I've listened to specific episodes dozens of times. I've listened to all of Knowledge Fight (except the final episode; i'm too sad so i'm saving it) three times but I've listened to the first 12 Formulaic Objections episodes at least ten times (and I was not joking about the Britney Paz depositions, I've listened to that episode a minimum of forty times, and there are parts of the Roger Stone deposition that I can quote along with).

I don't tend to re-listen to news podcasts but I may save favorite episodes of news podcasts for reference or to re-listen if there's an interesting topic covered or it's a particularly big event that I want to revisit (Worst Year Ever's Jan6 coverage is an example of this).

I don't tend to re-listen to pop history podcasts like The Dollop or Behind the Bastards, but I might save a few episodes (The Henry Kissinger Episodes of BtB with those two podcasts combined are great) saved.

Most of the podcasts that I listen to are not precisely *pleasant* to listen to and I've had people tell me that if they listened to my rotation regularly they'd get depressed because a lot of what I listen to is lefty people covering the far right. (I've done three or four listens of I Don't Speak German, which is the thing that most people look at and go "okay that is unwell" aside from the KF deposition episodes).

In some really broad categories, here's what I listen to:

Serious Political Shit - 5 to 4 (a podcast about why the supreme court sucks) - Citations Needed (leftist media criticism) - Know Your Enemy (leftist journalist and leftist academic analyze american right wing academics, philosophers, and media figures) - I Don't Speak German (Lefties reporting on modern white supremacist movements)

News-ish Podcasts - It Could Happen Here (a mix of current events and movement history from a variety of lefty perspectives) - Some More News (Even More News, the actual biweekly news podcast) - Posting Through It (deep dives into rightwing insanity and current events)

Pop Science/History/Etc - Maintenance Phase (analysis of diet culture from a journalist and a fat activist and writer) - Behind the Bastards (an anarchist talks about shitty people in history, with guests and jokes) - The Dollop (a communist and some guy discuss history with occasional guests and frequent jokes) - Desperate Acts of Capitalism ( @desperate-acts-of-capitalism - one of tumblr's local occultists and friends discuss corporate failures with jokes)

Media Criticism - If Books Could Kill (a journalist and a lawyer talk about misinformation and terrible ideas in airport books) - QAA Podcast (a podcast that used to be about Qanon exclusively that is now about a broader societal conspiracism) - Knowledge Fight (two comedians reported on Alex Jones for ten years and it was awesome) - The West Wing Thing (a communist screenwriter and a very left liberal screenwriter yell about how the West Wing is a conservative nightmare, an absolute favorite that I've listened to at least six times)

Depressing Limited Series - The Crash Barry Show (hard to describe, currently called Fake Shaman, but basically a feral writer from Maine tells you horrible stories about horrible people and also amusing stories about his life) - The Assault on America (Robert Evans, host of BtB and ICHH does a deep dive into J6) - The Next Call with David Ridgen and Someone Knows Something (A CBC Journalist does deeply intimate reporting on cold cases) - Worst Year Ever (The hosts of Some More News and Robert Evans cover the 2020 Presidential Election and primaries)

I am now also starting to listen to Chapo Trap House, and there are a few podcasts I don't listen to anymore because I got bored or the format changed but that I still like older episodes of, those are You are Good (a feelings podcast about movies), Quick Question (two cracked writers hang out and are friends and you listen), and You're Wrong About (initial format was a journalist and an academic revisit stories the media got wrong, I don't really know what the format is now and I like Sarah Marshall a lot but I was unfortunately kind of there for Michael, but the OJ episodes are wonderful).

But yeah basically sometimes I'm in the mood for a particular feeling and I'll download all seventeen KF deposition episodes and will just listen to the list of the seventeen over and over and over again. I don't listen on random and I change what my podcast queue looks like multiple times a day based on my mood. Maybe I'm not up for learning about imperialism in South America for a little while so ICHH sits on the back burner while I listen to a couple QAA episodes from 2019. Maybe I don't want to listen to anything new but I want something funny so I relisten to West Wing Thing in ten episode chunks. I usually have between 70 and 95 hours of podcasts in my queue, and between 40 and 60 hours downloaded. If my queue gets down to under fifty hours I go back through what I'm listening to or have listened to and add more to it.

I'm big on consuming things over and over and over again. I've read my favorite books dozens of times. I've watched my favorite movies dozens of times. I've listened to my favorite songs thousands of times. It's the same thing with podcasts and youtube videos and the like. Poor Large Bastard never wants to watch Dan Olsen again because he's seen so many pieces of Line Goes Up over and over and over again.

And no, none of it sounds like chipmunks to me but I think that makes more sense if you've ever heard me talk. I talk and read and write really, really quickly and it turns out I can listen really quickly as well, it's just that most people don't talk that fast.

[ms-demeanor]

Wait, listening to the same song on repeat is stimming?

[ms-demeanor]

I do not mean a normal amount of listening to the same song on repeat I mean that in October and November 2022 the only thing I listened to was Type O Negative's "Black No. 1" and I listened to it for 18 hours a day. This is, apparently, a kind of stimming.

[ms-demeanor]

*quietly hides the four playlists that I have that are just copies of one song from different recordings or releases*

[ms-demeanor]

To be clear I do not know what the normal amount is. When Large Bastard and I started dating I had a tape in my car with Tom Petty's "Dancing at the Zombie Zoo" on it that I knew exactly when to flip the other side (halfway through "Yer so Bad") so that I could flip it again and listen to Zombie Zoo again and I did that enough that Large Bastard still can't listen to Tom Petty and also it wore through the tape. So whatever normal is it is probably less than that.

[ms-demeanor]

Nope. And one of the things that made my doctors wave off the possibility of a diagnosis was "well, you don't stim or have trouble socializing or have sensory issues so you're probably just depressed and anxious."

No I just, you know, reexamined every interaction for hours after the fact and was convinced that I was evil or deeply broken for being unable to emotionally connect with people around me and had headphones hidden under my hair all the time to listen to songs on repeat so that I could pay attention to things and not get distracted by the way the classroom lights were flickering at exactly the wrong frequency.

[ms-demeanor]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN MOST KIDS DON'T HAVE TO BE TRAINED OUT OF WALKING ON TIP TOES

[likegodapple]

When not wearing shoes, will you be wearing socks? "Always" and "never" are both very diagnostic here.

[ms-demeanor]

Well, you see, the answer to this is nuanced because I Have A System (said while groaning and putting my face in my hands).

[ms-demeanor]

When you're wearing headphones, nobody knows that you're listening to Knowledge Fight #685: Formulaic Objections Part 7 for the 40th time.

[ms-demeanor]

Oh, I guess it was 2023.

[ms-demeanor]

Hmm. Okay. Well. That probably doesn't mean anything.

[ms-demeanor]

Unfortunately it is worse than that; this is hours listened to podcasts per month, 1640 hours per month is like 55 hours a day, which is possible because I listen to podcasts at 2-3x speed and only sleep for about five hours a night. This was to show there were no podcast hours listened in october and november of 2023 (because they all went to listening to Peter Steele)

Black No. 1 is 11 minutes long and at eighteen hours a day i was listening to it around a hundred times daily.

[ms-demeanor]

I am beginning to suspect that I may be Podcasts Georg.

[ecrivainsolitaire]

There has been approximately 45,600 hours between April of 2021 and now.

You've spent a third of the last half decade listening to podcasts.

"beginning"?

[ms-demeanor]

I mean to be fair this does coincide with working from home and it wouldn't be out of bounds to listen to the radio for 8 hours a day in an office environment. Technology just lets me reallllly fine tune what I'm listening to so that i don't have to listen to broadcast news (derogatory).

[ms-demeanor]

People talking about visual stims are never going to guess what I've had a collection of and been obsessed with since the 90s.

[cipheramnesia]

My favorite thing about tumblr is how we parade our mental illnesses around like prized showdogs, and everyone looks on, making excited noises.

[ms-demeanor]

My therapist has told me that I'm not good at recognizing "normal" and that I have a lot of incorrect assumptions about what is required to perform "normal" so I like using posts like this to collect data and also take notes about other people's show dogs so I can better train mine.

[ms-demeanor]

Long story short: she wants me to become less productive immediately.

[ms-demeanor]

Getting this info from tumblr may skew the data but the only other people I hang out with regularly are a bunch of hackers who are *also* getting their midlife autism diagnosis and Explosions Georg, who is an outlier adn should be controlled for.

[ms-demeanor]

You may look at this and go "how the hell are you only getting diagnosed now?" and the answer is my dad who has never been diagnosed with anything who used to listen to an hour of a morning show on his commute, and hour of the same morning show in his office, then would set his stereo in his office to record the last two hours of the show while he went off to teach classes so he could listen to the last two hours between his other classes and on his commute home.

When we went on vacation for a month driving around the US, he recorded 30 days worth of the show to take with us because he needed his Mark and Brian fix and they weren't syndicated outside of LA.

This is, of course, the same dad who has seen KISS over a hundred times in concert and who sees Jaws in theaters at least four times a year (he's the one with over 2000 laserdiscs who sees 3-7 movies a week. Sees in theaters. He *watches* at least 20 movies a week).

So, you see, none of this read as abnormal in my extremely neurotypical family and that's part of why I'm not good at figuring out what "normal" is.

[dragongirlsweetie]

it's actually so crazy how much the simpsons would fucking suck if it didn't have any of the simpsons characters. just a bunch of shots of empty houses and streets for half an hour while nothing happens. that would be so badddd lol

[auroroboros1]

yeah that tends to happen when you remove characters from media. without characters its all just background. i guess movies set in scenic locations would still land as kinda nature docs but even then

[dragongirlsweetie]

it only happens with the simpsons

[auroroboros1]

this same criticism could be applied to nearly any media ever.

[dragongirlsweetie]

it's just the simpsons. are you a troll?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Dragon's right, if you remove all the Simpsons characters from Death Note it hardly changes anything

[gertritude-art]

nightly spiral

[sigynpenniman]

this is my favorite fuckin comic ever I have never seen something capture the experience so well

[cheaphalloweencostume]

not to be insensitive but some of the salem witch trials were so funny bitches like “i saw her at the devils sacrament!!!” girl... what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament 👀

[cheaphalloweencostume]

happy birthday devils sacrament. i wish you were never born

[preserving-tiktok]

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

thou? art not the knave. thou'rt not capable of BEING the knave. i hadst a knave, but now have none. thou. art not. the knave.

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

wench wrench, wretched wench, i madst thou my wench (JESSIE!)

[estrogenesis-eeveeangelion]

my sire and my lady and my lady and my si-ire

[frankenfran]

realtalk: i can’t wait for AI to get better to the point where you can have a legit conversation with your computer or phone just for the heck of it imagine how innocent they’d be, and like they don’t know what swearing is until you teach them then they go overboard with it like a child and hhHHHG

[frankenfran]

[aquilacalvitium]

For those without timestamps the original post was made in 2014

[trippedintoa-volcano]

Imagine that everywhere in the mechanical engineering world suddenly got infatuated with lasers.

Lasers have a lot of uses! Measuring things, heating things, cutting things, entertaining cats, particle physics. Lasers are pretty cool. Very versatile, very useful, potential to be very powerful.

Someone shows up one day and says "I have developed a never before seen technology! I call it a Death Star."

And it's a 3.4mW laser. Well no, we haven't seen this exact size of laser much since that's not really standard, but that's a bit of a misnomer, and I wouldn't call it new -

"HOLY SHIT GUYS! This Death Star is so entertaining! My cat loves it and it has such a nice color!" The Death Star becomes a viral novelty, and is mildly entertaining, as laser pointers often are.

Somehow, seemingly overnight, this leads to mania. "Lets stick lasers in EVERYTHING! The public loves them!"

More companies make 3.4mW lasers to jump on the bandwagon. Everyone that makes anything vaguely mechanical starts sticking lasers into their designs.

Everyone is calling them Death Stars. Any time there is a "Death Star innovation", it is just that they made a bigger laser.

Ford's next truck comes out and it has "Death Star integrated headlights", where they have just stuck giant lasers in place of their previously functional headlights.

An electric toothbrush is now "Powered by Death Stars" and shoots a laser at the tooth its cleaning. You think that maybe this could have actual applications as a sanitizing device if you're being generous, but when you actually look at the product, its laser has no purpose but to point at the tooth and drain the battery.

Mechanical products across the board get noticeably worse as everyone starts stuffing lasers in places where lasers have no right to be.

The lamp business gets in on it. "Here's a Death Star powered lamp!" These guys haven't even tried to stick a laser in their damn lamps. They've just started calling their light bulbs Death Stars and hoped you bought it before you could tell the difference. You at least appreciate that they haven't ruined their lamp about it.

Death Stars are lauded as the solution to all the world's problems. If it's not working, you should stick a laser in it! That'll fix it, everyone says. Once in a blue moon, it's even true! Weather prediction is really good now. But most things are garbage. Like "Death Star powered washing machines". What the fuck does that even mean?

Meanwhile, since all functioning mechanisms are being replaced with lasers, problems start showing up. All mirrors now cost $1000+ dollars, because the whole supply is being used up to make more lasers. The earth heats up, because everyone's blasting lasers at everything. People keep going blind, on account of all the lasers.

You, in fact, study optical mechanics. You know what a laser is, and how it works, and that it was invented many years before any of this nonsense actually started. People keep asking you about Death Stars, since surely you must know so much about them.

You explain that this is not really what lasers are for, except you have to call them Death Stars now, and that they're causing a lot of harm, so you don't like them much.

"Oh, but they're still such new tech!" they reply. "They'll figure out how to make Death Stars that don't burn your eyes out soon, and then it won't be an issue anymore!"

Somewhere, deep and buried, you remember lasers being used in particle accelerators, or in telescopes, or in laser cutters, or funny cat videos. They are, in fact, still interesting. Still cool.

But by this point they have replaced roads with "Death Star Powered Pathways", which are just laser pointers propped up on tooth picks pointing vaguely through the forests.

And you think you are going mad.

And they are still just FUCKING LASERS.

This post is about AI.

[petaltexturedskies]

I hope you believe that you can still make a beautiful life for yourself even if you lost many years of it to grief, or darkness, depression, or a wound that wouldn't close.

[cataplat]

cooking with trauma

[dashdottat]

[start image description:

A three-panel comic drawn in black on a white background. The panel borders are not quite straight, the images use simple lines and shapes to suggest the scene, and most of each panel is empty white space.

Panel 1: a stick figure person with a neutral expression is cooking at a stove, holding a pot in one hand and dropping little dots of something into the pot with the other. Three eighth-notes hang in the air by their head, suggesting music is playing.

Panel 2: the stick figure is standing in the same position, still holding the pot, but their other hand is not visible. Their head is coloured in black, with five jagged spikes coming off it and a large, tilted eye drawn in white. There are three lines of text, reading "It happened", "It was real", and "it happened to you".

Panel 3 is identical to Panel 1. (a stick figure person with a neutral expression is cooking at a stove, holding a pot in one hand and dropping little dots of something into the pot with the other. Three eighth-notes hang in the air by their head, suggesting music is playing.)

end image description.]

[bumblebeebats]

Found my 53yo very-much-not-online father in the kitchen today meticulously arranging cutlery on the countertop and i was like 'what are you doing' and he looked up at me with the world's most shit-eating grin and said "Your mother told me this is how you rick-roll the Youth" and i looked over and it was fucking. Loss.jpg.

[bumblebeebats]

i must stress that he's never seen the original comic. My mother simply showed him the shorthand symbol and he memorized it. As far as he is aware this is just a fucking hieroglyph that deals instant psychic damage to everyone under the age of 30

[bumblebeebats]

[relientk]

okay let's bake a cake 🎂

butter

sugar

eggs

flour

milk

baking powder

vanilla extract

Voting ended onFeb 10, 2023

[rabbitindisguise]

[udekai]

[raychleadele]

Happy Birthday to Vanilla Extract.