and i, you

i don't even know why am i trying anymore

[momentsofsolitude]

Dua Puluh Tahun

Penakut. Cengeng. Tidak bisa sendirian. Tidak bisa diandalkan. Suka menunda-nunda pekerjaan. Pemalas. Suka menyusahkan orang lain. Tidak tepat waktu. Pelupa. Tidak menepati janji. Susah berkonsentrasi. Suka merepotkan orang lain. Susah bersosialisasi. Malas mengembangkan diri. Susah bicara. Malas membaca. Tidak belajar dari pengalaman. Sering galau. Khawatir berlebihan. Overdosis rasa bersalah. Mengentengkan pekerjaan. Tidak bertanggung jawab. Membebankan pekerjaan kepada orang lain. Tidak mau belajar hal baru. Kurang komitmen. Tidak bisa memotivasi diri sendiri. Membuang-buang waktu. Memikirkan hal yang tidak perlu dipikirkan. Manja. Suka memendam amarah. Bersikap kekanak-kanakan. Harus menjadi lebih baik!

Ngomong-ngomong, selamat hari statistik!

[momentsofsolitude]

tiga puluh dua tahun.

kok tidak ada yang berubah?

[furryprovocateur]

i think ultimately you do really have to kill that part of your brain that vividly imagines how you would redo parts of your life.

[headspace-hotel]

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

[headspace-hotel]

We will be feeding our grandchildren strawberries and raspberries we grew in our gardens, dragging them along to the farmers' markets for tomatoes and eggs and goats milk and pickles and pecans and salsa and sunflower seed butter and jars of honey, as they complain and drag their feet because Gramma always stands around talking to people for like an HOUR

and we will say "When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn't even legal in some places to grow your own food"

and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn't mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER

But they will go, because there might be baby goats.

[headspace-hotel]

Since I made this post, dozens and dozens of people have left tags telling me that it was the first thing today that made them want to continue living, that it was the first thing that made them consider that they might be okay years in the future, that they might grow old, that it was the first and only post of its kind they'd ever seen—the first post that boldly predicts a future where we make it.

And many other people have been just spitting, foaming at the mouth fucking FURIOUS. How dare I have the audacity to imagine a future where things get better?

Don't I know how BAD things are? Am I not aware of the TERROR and DEVASTATION of climate change and fascism and biodiversity loss? How dare someone be so bold, so callous, as to imagine something other than misery and suicide. How dare someone suggest it will get better. How dare a person propose that there is a future where we will be okay, in the face of so much terror. Hasn't she seen the abyss opening its jaws before us?

Well? What do you think?

Do you think I've seen the abyss?

[cuntyjugheadfromriverdale]

the idea that there is hope for the future is the only way we have this kind of future.

there were kids who stayed inside because of the black plague and went on to help cure it.

there were women who sat at home and cleaned the house and dreamt up a world where they could vote and have jobs.

there were kids in the mines who thought up a life outside of it. there were children who hid in annexes and wrote a diary where they prayed for a future without a terrible man in control

there were slaves who wanted freedom so badly and had hope that it would get better

there were gay people who hid in the corners of clubs and fought back for a future where they could walk down the street together

do you know what all of that has in common? they had hope that things would get better and they made that change. they looked at the world in its cruel ways and fought back.

so now, there are kids and teenagers and young adults and new adults who dream of a world so beautiful and the only amazon their grandchildren know is the rainforest

and it is in everything we do that we find this hope. wishing on dandelions, counting the stars, making our own clothes out of crochet or knit or sewing it, watching the sunset, going to the farmer’s market, feeding the birds, planting seeds.

step by step, we dream up, like our ancestors before us, a beautiful world

[ruerock]

im sure someone already made a post about it but i came across a ublock origin add-on that blacklists around 950 AI websites and disables AI overview ☝️ so u can be free from seeing AI in your search

[hellishkat]

sorry i haven't replied i dont feel like a person

[ahotknife]

oh emily wilson translation of the iliad we’re really in it now

[ramonacatholic]

what are you supposed to do on the days that absolutely no food sounds appetizing but youre sitting there hungry and getting a headache but everything does not sound appealing

[purple-purple-pink-purple]

Drink something with calories (more is better). Juice, chocolate milk, whatever. Once it hits your blood stream you'll have 10-20 minutes of feeling better where you can get something more solid into your belly. This can be candy at first, but step your way up to something with protein and fats (this'll help you feel full and satisfied and keep you from having a spike/crash of energy).

Often being really hungry/having low blood sugar can make you feel nauseated and give you headaches, etc. Giving yourself a quick sugar jump will help manage those symptoms long enough to do something more lasting about it.

Be aware! You'll feel better once you get the sugar in your body but it won't last very long! You need to eat something else before it wears off again.

[homoeroticjunoincident]

fun fact: the timeloop can talk and it speaks in your own voice and it says it misses you

[homoeroticjunoincident]

and it asks "what do you have to miss, anyway?" and it means "why are you leaving me?" cause it never thought you would leave, you were never supposed to leave. and it wants you back. and when you think you're safe you hear it. and it’s never mean. and it says it loves you. and its voice is warm. and you're cold. and you want to go back. and you miss it.

[allsadnshit]

"Growing Around Grief"

Lois Tonkin, 1996

[eternal--return]

This is the most important thing I’ve learned about grieving. It never goes away. Time doesn’t make it smaller. Time, if you do the work, makes you bigger. Self expansion is key. Self expansion through creativity and passion and communication. My grief used to be all of me. Now it is a part of me. An important part, but just a part. I love this visualization so much.

[bakwaaas]

@fairycosmos / Comic by @shhhitsfine / Comic by @incendavery

[bakwaaas]

@ryebreadgf / alison zai / phillip roth / unknown / @archbudzar

[astronomnomy-blog]

I’ve always struggled with social anxiety and self-confidence in different areas. It waxes and wanes in amplitude, but it’s always there. This affects my ability to do research as I struggle to do things like use the phone, send emails asking people to do things in a timely fashion, and finish work due to perfectionism.  It was really bad a couple of years ago, during my PhD. We had official annual meetings with a member of staff to check on progress back then, which were a good idea but terrified the students. I always had mine with a member of faculty a lot of people are scared of. I’m not sure why, maybe because their courses were very difficult and they was a strict marker? I’d heard they’d mellowed over the years so maybe, like a fear of the dark, students’ wariness passed down the generations.  Whatever the reason, I’d never been scared of them, and always saw them as a fair mind when it came to assessing my progress. I wouldn’t believe myself or my friends mostly, but I’d trust them to tell the truth. On my last meeting they knew I wasn’t very well. I always cried in these meetings through stress/lifting of stress, so true to form the box of tissues were ready and they offered me a fruit tea. I had the summer fruits. It was really sweet and calming, and I didn’t need the tissues that year. We spoke at length about why I was struggling within myself when my work seemed perfectly fine, even really good in places. And we got talking about anxiety when not at work. Turns out both of us have similar social anxiety problems! We both struggle to go in a shop with no or few other customers, because we hate being watched by staff. It’s really specific but I bet it’s common haha. We both hate using the phone, even ordering take away is difficult! Maybe this is why I wasn’t scared of them?  At any rate, it was great to know I wasn’t alone, here was a full professor with the same problems I have, still doing science! But, I asked, how do you do it? How did you get this high up the ladder and not quit, or not take it out on yourself? How are you not anxious all the time? Oh, I am anxious, they said. I was really bad for years. Wouldn’t use the phone at all. But then I was made Head of Department.  That’s terrifying! What did you do? Well I was still anxious, about using the phone for example. But I realised, the Head of Department uses the phone to call people to get things sorted quickly. And at the moment, I’m Head of Department. That’s the hat I’m wearing. The Head of Department picks up the phone and the Head of Department speaks to people to Get Things Done. That’s a role I’m performing, that’s all, and people expect me to be the Head of Department. And it helped, and now I can use the phone because I’m used to it.  Hearing them say that was a bit of an epiphany. They weren’t saying “just suck it up”, it’s a complete reframing of the interaction. 

YOU might not like using the telephone to ask so-and-so to do something, but Scientist-In-Charge-Of-Making-This-Thing-Work DOES call Collaborators to remind them, and then Collaborators can respond that they forgot, or they have it scheduled in for next week, because it’s their role to do something. 

YOU might be scared of going into that shop, but a Potential Customer does go into shops and look around. Potential Customer might be asked by Sales Rep whether they need help, and Potential Customer can say just browsing. Sales Rep may watch Potential Customer browse, but that’s okay, because they’re waiting to perform their role. And when Potential Customer leaves the shop, they aren’t that role anymore, back to self. Interaction done. 

YOU might not want to email that person to ask them for a reference, BUT a Final Year Student DOES send the email, because part of their role is to get a reference at the end. And the person receiving the email also has a role, and that is Someone Who Sometimes Gets Reference Requests, that they can response Yes or No to. Then Final Year Student can get their reference about Final Year Student or can move on to someone else. Interaction over. Slate clean. Sometimes we get so caught up we forget that many of the things we do are divorced from our own self, and we worry about judgements from other people. But in a lot of our interactions, especially at work or school, we have a set of roles and rules. When it’s getting really hard for me to do things like email, phone, or go somewhere, it helps me to think of that Professor’s first day as Head of Department, them sitting there with that weight of responsibility and internally screaming as they pick up the phone the first time, because that’s what Head of Departments do. If they can do it and normalise it, I know I can too. One day! :) 

[psychotic-gerard]

Draw badly. Write nonsensically. Embroider messily. Burn what you bake and cook. Get paint everywhere. Read half a book. Lose your mind for a bit. Plant things. Have faith in the process. Abandon 70 wood-carving projects. Get a kit and do some of it and never return to it. Get comfortable with sucking and losing motivation. Continue to create with reckless abandon.

[soul-hammered]

[weabooweedwitch]

I love that the pandemic actually definitively proved a lot of those "hard" questions for us. Masking up reduced cases of the flu to almost nonexistent numbers and we had zero flu deaths for a time. The welfare and social service and unemployment programs helped keep people living paycheck to paycheck out of poverty, and those stimulus checks some folks keep complaining about actually massively benefitted the common man and the economy. Individual personal travel was so extremely restricted on a global scale that we basically have concrete proof that individual restraint in terms of driving cars or travelling means absolutely nothing by comparison because the mass pollution is coming from the fisheries and the corporations with private jets and container ships. Working from home actually has massive benefits for a company like productivity boosts and better mental health of employees while also saving gas

and we're just. Willingly going back to how everything was before. We were shown how to do things better and the people in charge said "that's nice but we just want to get everything 'back to normal' :)"

[roach-works]

we’re not willingly going back to how everything was before. we are being forced back into it by members of the ruling class who found out that making things better for almost everyone else made them feel bad.

[lilaeleaf]

Some poor suffering gobs!!

[gothiccharmschool]

I love these and I wish to adopt them.

[meckamecha]

I got a laptop with Windows 11 for an IT course so I can get certified, and doing the first time device set-up for it made me want to commit unspeakable violence

Windows 11 should not exist, no one should use it for any reason, it puts ads in the file explorer and has made it so file searches are also web searches and this cannot be turned off except through registry editing. Whoever is responsible for those decisions should be killed, full stop.

Switch to linux, it's free and it's good.

[kuromi-hoemie]

u r absolutely right I have SO many complaints about Windows omg.

For anyone who'd like to follow along, I'm gonna share how to get around those things with group policies bc they're more user friendly and descriptive than registry editor imo :3 I'll also show how to get around needing a Microsoft account to get setup.

For the Device Setup

"OOBE" stands for Out Of Box Experience which is what that setup workflow is. But it also happens to be a folder with a little program in it that'll let you skip connecting to the internet; this makes it so you don't have to sign up with a Microsoft account and can just use a normal local one instead. And it already comes preinstalled! Here's how you get to it:

Hold Shift + F10, or Shift + Fn + F10 depending on your keyboard.

Click inside the window that pops up, type the following and press enter afterwards to run it: OOBE\BypassNRO

I believe it should restart your computer automatically, but if not then restart your computer or type: shutdown /r /t 0 /f

Now when you're brought back to the setup workflow, the page where you connect to the internet will have a new button on it that lets you say you don't have internet. Clicking that and proceeding through the rest of the setup lets you get around the Microsoft account thing.

Group Policies

You don't have to know much about them, these are just a bunch of specific settings for what your computer can or can't do that lets you decide how it works in different ways.

I'm gonna show you how to turn off the recommendations and internet stuff basically. For now bring up search and type gpedit, pick this

It'll open up to Local Group Policy Editor and we can get started :3c

Start Recommendations

In the side menu, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar. Click on Settings to sort them with all the "Turn off" ones bumped to the top.

Here's what you should set:

Turn off user tracking: enabled

Turn off feature advertisement balloon notifications: enabled

Remove Recommended section from Start Menu: enabled

Remove Personalized Website Recommendations from the Recommended section in the Start Menu: enabled

Do not search Internet: enabled

Windows Spotlight

Back in the side menu, go down to Windows Components > Cloud Content

Turn off all Windows spotlight features: enabled

Do not use diagnostic data for tailored experiences: enabled

Cortana

In the side menu, this one's back at the top under Computer Configuration. You're gonna want to go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search

Allow Cortana: disabled

Don't search the web or display web results in Search: enabled

News and Interests

In the side menu go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests.

Enable news and interests on the taskbar: disabled

Microsoft Account Login Nudges

When you don't use a Microsoft account they'll nudge you repeatedly to sign in so you can "get the most out of your experience" *gag*. The group policy for turning that off has a note that suggests it might not work with Windows 11 though (implicitly), so you can close the group policy editor window now and for this last one let's just open up the regular settings.

Go to System > Notifications > Additional settings, then uncheck all the boxes. And there ya go! (✿◠‿◠)ﾉ u are done.

Group policies are kind of a rabbit hole so while there is a lot more you could change or read into, for your own sanity's sake I would advise against it and say call it a day lol

[meckamecha]

This is all extremely good information, thank you very much for the addition!

[locusimperium]

[swan-archive]

locusimperium:

A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called “Norwegian Christmas butter squares.” I’d never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies I’d eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic. 

Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that I’ve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband - they’re fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. I’m skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day. 

Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 egg 1 cup sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp vanilla ½ tsp salt Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9x13″ baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.

Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy.  Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour. 

Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and ¼ inch thick.  Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.

[brawltogethernow]

So I tried this recipe.

And it is GREAT.

It basically makes the platonic ideal of commercial sugar cookies, only in bar form. When I give them to people (which I do a lot, because this is one of those simple recipes where the results seem very impressive), I just tell them they’re sugar cookie bars.

[davetheshady]

Life hack: add white chocolate chips and sea salt

[mxxnlit-witch]

I made these today for the equinox with sea salt caramel chips and they are simply amazing. Let’s see how long they last with six people in the house!

[dduane]

Noting for later (as we need more butter for this, and probably won’t do a grocery shopping till the weekend).

[amyamychan]

The OP version of this has become my go-to cookie for basically all things and I have a whole cohort of friends and colleagues who would murder each other to get them. Haven’t tried any add ons yet, since the base recipe is SO GOOD.

[g1sunstreaker]

I’ve reblogged this before and I’m reblogging it again because I’m about to make it again tomorrow and I wanted to add my own tale of just how amazingly delicious it. it was SO incredibly simple to bake and with an extra dusting of brown sugar on top and served warm and soft they gift you with the taste of the nectar of the gods when paired with a small glass of milk. this image is from when I first made them a couple years ago:

GO. MAKE THESE !!!!

[princeanxious]

Being an adult is so wild

Because there are the horrors, and then, there are the horrors, and the horrors. And the horrors. And happy things. But also the horrors.

But I swear it's better bc at least ur an adult and the horrors are the taxes u pay to experience the world however the fuck u can I think. I fucking hope.

Why are there so many horrors. Can I eat my m&ms in peace please. I'll deal with the horrors later.