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notgreengardens

mithriel-of-mithlond

Eurovision 2021

14sorrow24joy34agirl44aboy

bievanbuckley

i would like to apologize in advance for the person i'll become once the eurovision grand final starts. tonight, i'm a eurovision stan FIRST and a human second

maarigolds

So basically to recap, tonight we're getting:

Cyprus, who seems to be in need of an priest

Albania with Blonde Lady In A Silver Sequin Dress n°1

Israel with Set Me Free -cit. Palestine

Belgium with a milf

Russia with a Russian woman, makes sense

Malta with Lizzo

Portugal, who time travelled from the fifties just for the finale

Serbia with Little Mix

The UK with a pyromaniac in a creepy looking coat

Greece with Tecna from Winx (the cartoon, not the garbage fire tv show)

Switzerland, who has the voice of an angel and the dancing skills of someone in the middle an epileptic episode

Iceland with the friend group you wish you had

Spain with a song by a guy. I don't remember much else to be honest

Moldova with Blonde Lady In A Silver Sequin Dress n°2

Germany with Pewdiepie and a hand

Finland with Linkin Park

Bulgaria, who's ready in her pajamas for when the boring ballads come in

Lithuania with a guy who likes to dance alone in his house instead of going out. Covid conscious, we stan

Ukraine with a bog witch-priestess engaging in a slavic magic ritual

France with the ghost of Édith Piaf

Azerbaijan, who couldn't be bothered to write another song since last year

Norway with a fallen angel... could it be him Cyprus is in love with? The plot thickens

The Netherlands with a song that I've been informed is not actually about broccoli (no really look up the meaning it's really interesting and important)

Italy with four angry teenagers

Sweden with a guy who hears voices (I'm not a doctor but maybe he should get that checked out)

And last but not least, San Marino with its most famous citizen, Flo Rida

goldenskywalker

brightsunnydaysofcastamere

I hope Måns Zelmerlöw is enjoying his last day of freedom before they put him back into the cryogenic freezer for another year

politedemon

Happy Gay Olympics Eurovision!

queerinigo

justanotherbookortwo

Happy Eurovision day everyone

drogonstone

elena: performs el diablo people in cyprus:

wulfhalls

ITS TIME

Fleurety - The White Death

I admit having totally forgot about their existence. After the awesome Department of Apocalyptic Affairs of 17 years ago, they did caress the idea of a a full LP again but I despaired after the years passed by and no concrete news of a full album came out.

Then The White Death popped up among the suggested albums in my Spotify account and I thus devolved a weekend to savour it. And it was worth it.

The White Death sounds much more tamed than its predecessor. 17 years have passed and we have witnessed the watering down or, as I prefer to call it, the less norwegian avantgarde black metal version of today. Now much of it is in the blackgaze+drone+ambient camp more than in the weird and jazzy that Department of Apocalyptic Affairs was nearly 2 decades back. The french ruined the raw spirit of the cold North. But I digress.

Therefore I wasn't expecting anything too weird. The White Death is indeed less weird, much less jazzy, more heavily influenced by prog-metal, a very dark one at that, than the second LP of the band. It is very well grounded, much more consistent from song to song. It doesn't try to break any boundaries anymore, too many have been broke already by the late 90s avantgarde albums from the likes of Arcturus, Dodheimsgard, In The Woods, Ulver, Ved Buens Ende and more. There's no more space for that kind of music but there's for a good, fascinating-sounding album, as The White Death indoubtedly is. While the opener isn't impressive but sets the tone for the rest of the album, The Ballad Of Copernicus seems a song that Carl-Michel Eide could have written completely by himself for his current main project, Virus. I guess his personality influenced way more the music than his role of guest musician usually would. The following one is another highlight of the album: Lament Of The Optimist pays omage to the recent Darkthrone sound, albeit less classically norwegian than Fenriz and Nocturno Culto play.

For songs more in the tradition of Fleurety we have to continue to the remaining songs of the album: especially Trauma and The Science Of Normality. Admittedly, the more interesting songs are in the first part, curiosedly the ones that distantiate themselves from the sound of Fleurety that we are used to. It's probably a sign that the band could go back at experimenting with the next album. I just hope we won't have to wait 17 more years.

#fleurety #the white death #album #music #review #album review #black metal #avantgarde metal #metal

What Is Like To Be A Programmer With Mental Illnesses

For most of my life I've been battling with 2 things: bugs in code and mental illnesses. The former can be fixed given enough time and patience, the latter may never be so.

It is not uncommon being a programmer with mental health issues. Actually, most programmers think are somewhat depressed or that science supports the correlation between spending days of your life coding and mental issues. Albeit some think otherwise, I'm not going to discuss about it. More importantly is to explain to the general public what is exactly like to try to create software while suffering from mental illnesses; in my case, depression and ADHD.

First of all, I constantly feel like I am doing 15% of what I could. Every day. Even in the good days, I can barely do what I consider the minimum for my intelligence and time spent. Perhaps I overestimate either or both but the feeling prevents me to actually enjoy or think as I did enough for the day. Which clearly helps in increasing the depression.

I give up too easily. It's not like I don't try, which is something often observer blame me to, I can't go through the hardiness of learning and applying generous amounts of mental energies which are needed to code and fight off the ADHD. When I don't get immediate, positive results, that's when the depression kicks in and giving up becomes automatic.

Most of my days when I code go like this:

I have an idea to write something or fix a bug

I rush into implementing it. Key word here is rush as otherwise I believe the idea or fix may slip, forever

I find issues in the idea (which is perfectly normal for any developer)

I look for/think about solutions. That means furiously pressing the right keys on the keyboard in order to find the correct solution

If I don't find any within 5 minutes, the desire to look away and try something else or another day grows

Perhaps at this point I found a way to go on with the code but it nonetheless feels like I'm dumb for not having thought of it before or knewn it beforehand

ADHD is attacking me now, luring me into doing something else, anything else, be it kittens videos or browsing for the news or opening Twitter

The fights against ADHD starts and the energies are lessening

Next issue or bug I find is usually when I stop, wonder what am I good at, if anything, getting angry at myself for not being "smart enough" and despairing to ever succeed

Depression ensues and that's, unsurprisingly, the end of the coding session

Simply too much thinking about the code, keeping at bay the thought of wasting time as I'm not seeing any progress and fighting against distractions makes me give up each time. Only a bit later or earlier, depending on how many energies I have or the difficulty of the problems I'm facing that day.

What if I did something else? Perhaps I'd make more progress. That's an ever-occurring thought while coding; I often try to, only finding another block, which restarts the whole process and I look for something else again. Usually after 3-4 times switching objectives, I give up for the day. The thought of trying again makes me irritable and angry at myself until the moment I go to sleep, the ultimate sign of having given up progressing for the day. Next morning I'm usually not in the mood to code, nor I feel encouraged to do so by the previous day failure.

I take frequent breaks. I mean, like every 3 minutes I open a non-coding related website or I get up and have a brief walk. I can't stay focused for longer than 5 minutes, at most. Unless I am making progresses, which is usually only at the beginning of a project when lots of parts are easy to write and issues come up only later. That's the best part, where I stay put for hours, in the very best days, and the only ones when I feel really productive. Any other time, I distract myself to not feel the pain of failure and the stress of avoiding it.

It may be not a failure, I know. Logically I do. Yet the feelings are not logical, clearly. I am sure I would not get these feelings if I hadn't ADHD: without it I would have a sense of having tried hard at least, "giving it all", and albeit failing, it would assuage my regrets. I'd sleep better, as to say.

Therefore, ADHD is the main culprit. Depression is just the ultimate result of failing again and again.

Yes, I do learn things. It's not like my efforts go wasted all the time. I'm intelligent enough, and in this I'm quoting most people who know me and by no means making any self-claimg of greatness, to improve even if I give 15% of my intellect to the task at hand. Yet, it's a waste of time, can't stop feeling like this.

I wish someday to be able to live one week, one week only, as a programmer without ADHD and depression. I would like to know how it is "on the brighter side", how it is like to have the mind of those programmers that crunch code all day long and have a dozen side-project they regularly return to. I would like to experience this just to have a way to tell myself how good I am to keep trying despite my mental limitations. That would make returning to my normal self much more bearable.

#culture #depression #adhd #mental health #mental illness #programming #developing #coding #programmer #awareness

Are all those who shout animal rights rescuing them?

It has already happened to me more than once to find a video of a pet playing with his 'human' or an animal being rescued. My biggest curiosity and at the same time fear, was checking the comments on whatever the platform was the source of the media. There was not a single time one of those videos was left without an accuse of abusing an animal. Now, being the super emotional persona I am, I always try to analyse the situation and understand if there was is anything to worry about. But do you know how many times an user had a good reason to accuse the owner of abuse? Two out of ten, 2/10 !!.

What I noticed is that we tend to project our emotions and sentiments on every little being that shows a bit of free will around us. Stop. This is not good. The creatures that surround us are not always like us, applying our rules to their lifes is quite egocentric and harmfull.

Now, since we all like to humanize their condition (and I'm not saying animals don't have feelings), a good example came to my mind.

How would we feel if a 'superior' race would come down to visit us and out of pity would keep us in impossible to escape rooms or castrate us? "They won't survive outside",. "It's not safe in there", "Newborns will only suffers", "Making them reproduce it's cruel".

I believe animals expierence strong feelings, in a way much different from ours, this means we cannot apply our view to their behaviors and reactions but should respect it anyway. I believe also animals have free will, it doesn't matter how much it is influenced by survival instincts (which happens also to us, fight me on that). Why so many of us are not able to respect it? Where does our care and empathy ends and their rights really begin?

We consider ourselves superior and capable of evaluating a situation better than others, human or animal, that's were the majority of our errors come from.

When fighting their rights, remember about respecting them entirely and avoid 'colonising' their lifes. We destroyed already enough nature on this planet.