Self Indulgent Therapy

she/her 🇨🇦🥞🍰

[myalgicencephalomyelitiscfstom]

Unusual but sympathetic paper:

Language Matters: What Not to Say to Patients with Long COVID, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Other Complex Chronic Disorders

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/22/2/275

[dittography-direwolf]

Totally normal for a legitimate for-profit company to refuse to reclaim or stop running their products even after they're no longer being paid to do so. I'm sure it's very normal to just keep running your service for free when your contract's been terminated. Spending money to continue running cameras that supposedly no one is looking at is definitely not an indicator they are just run by the federal government to spy on everyone and only a wacko conspiracy theorist would think so.

[mamoru]

life pro tip: if you happen to be considering purchasing an LG TV or monitor, you possibly want to pick something else! and if you have an LG monitor that has not been plugged into anything in a while, you might want to leave it that way!

if you already have an LG monitor or TV or intend to buy one, you probably want to watch this video and keep an eye on gamers nexus for updates (or anyone else covering the LG spying situation):

posted july 16 2026

LG is doing some bad things. how bad? well. here are some very brief bullet points. I am not an expert, gamers nexus is, see the video for more information than this:

LG monitors (brand new and years old, cheap and expensive) auto-install LG's own adware-spyware called LG Monitor App onto windows 10 and 11 computers. you plug in an LG monitor for video output and this gets installed automatically. no hitting OK, no confirmation, no toggles, NOTHING.

the auto-installed LG Monitor App auto-grants itself access to your internet connection and ALL computer resources. the LG Monitor App has the ability to collect: geolocation data, device data, personal information, online activity data, contact data, and more!

...and it shows pop-up ads! because fuck you

on some affected versions of windows, auto-installed shitware like the LG Monitor App can be prevented by navigating to gpedit.msc -> computer configuration -> administrative templates -> system -> device installation -> prevent automatic download of applications associated with metadata

...but, if your LG monitor already installed the LG Monitor App, this is like closing the barn door after the horse got out. and that horse has the logs of everything you were doing on your computer! someone stop that fucking horse!!!

unrelated to the LG Monitor App, many LG TV owners are now required to tell all household members and guests that their LG TV is recording and processing ALL nearby voices. or else they may be in violation of local eavesdropping and wiretapping laws. for owning a fucking LG TV.

plus, how many businesses, workplaces, public spaces use LG TVs?

allegedly the microphone spying can be turned off by disabling microphone features, but LG has been caught disregarding opt-out settings before.

LG TVs can record everything that happens on the TV, including the video output of connected devices like phones, computers, gaming consoles, anything that happens on the TV screen.

LG was sued for their spying, and as a result of that spying suit, now shows pop-ups saying oops! they got caught spying and intend to continue spying. thanks for buying LG!

as of when the video was posted, there was no list of every spying LG monitor or TV. but this stuff is getting rolled out to more and more LG devices, including those purchased years ago.

and that is the shortest summary I can make of this situation without just summarizing more of the gamers nexus video.

@gamersnexus.bsky.social

Update: We are working on a follow-up to the LG story and have some disturbing findings re: LG's products. It will take us a while to parse

⬆️posted july 23 2026

gamers nexus is fairly respected in technology journalism. they fly around the world investigating companies that fuck people over and have pressured major companies to make major changes over the years.

so for gamers nexus to say that this LG spying situation is both unprecedented in how uniquely bad it is in this era of spying, and that it gets even worse than their video where they already say to stop buying and using LG products while recanting every prior recommendation for LG products?

oooooofff

[jenroses]

For context, Gamers Nexus is a channel that does incredible deep dives and they work very hard not to be beholden to the tech industry. Steve is what I would consider a Very Reliable Source and I pay a lot of attention to his work.

Also LG is the epitome of planned obsolescence and while they often make very clever products, they also do things like not having parts available for less than the cost of a new machine and designing stoves that will destroy themselves with the self clean function.

I will not buy them again. Not in any category.

[hug-bees]

1001 Dalmations

[parkchanwoohoo]

Incredible faces OP, love how loose the lines are and the expressions/profiles are brilliant

[trench-knife]

one of my worst writing sins is abusing my power to create compound words. i cannot write the sentence "The sun shone as bright as honey that afternoon." no. that's boring. "The sun was honey-bright that afternoon" however? yes. that sentence is dope as fuck. i do not care if "honey-bright" is a word in the english dictionary. i do not care if the sentence is grammatically correct. i will not change. i will not correct my erred ways. the laws of the english language are mine.

[portland-sunshine]

Not a sin at all!

This is what's called a poetic epithet, and it happens all the time in writing. Consider, for example, Homer and his wine-dark sea, or Shakespeare and his death-mark'd love.

If you were then to start using them instead of the word they're describing, you'd be making a kenning. For example, if instead of describing the sun as honey-bright, you said "the honey-drop in the sky". Kennings are best known from Norse writings, like "the path of serpents" for gold, or "Grímnir's lip-streams" for poetry itself.

So you're not sinning, you're participating in an ancient literary tradition!

[i-scan-your-poems]

Scansion:

◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – / ◡ – The sun / was ho/ney-bright / that af/ternoon

Metrical form: iambic pentameter

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

books with non linear narrative, experiments with the form, etc: go!

please do not all say house of leaves i know some of you bitches read books

[teratocybernetics]

Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire: each chapter takes place in the same chunk of London over something like 1000 years

if we can count comics, Moore's Promethea too, one of the volumes is a trip around the Tree of Life, i think the whole narrative can be mapped on the Tarot Majors too

Mark Danielewski's Only Revolutions is a book length prose poem that you read from the ends in to the center. i haven't gotten through it but respect the ambitious structure

i feel like Hal Duncan's Vellum & Ink had something interesting structurally between them but i don't think i finished them, specifically bc i waited too long to start Ink after Vellum & got completely lost

Honorable mention/not sure if it counts but the language was interesting enough that I'm tempted to include it: The Tide Will Erase All by Justin Hellstrom is an Improbability Drive-style apocalypse told by a ten(?) year old but might also be a radio/satellite announcement of their story after the fact? needs a revisit

OH SHIT Koji Suzuki's Ring Cycle. Ring is a horror novel that happens on an entirely different level of operation than what we find out about it on Spiral & Loop

Jeff Vandermee's Dead Astronauts, i actually don't know how to describe what he did with it but it's nuts

The Dictionary of the Khazars is a novel that's a lexicon

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

this is turning up a whole bunch of things I hadn't heard of which is EXACTLY what i wanted god bless you all:

So Stories of Your Life and Others has been on my wishlist for ages as has Pale Fire; Voice of the Fire is on my bookshelf waiting for me and I think I read Promethea or parts thereof when it first came out; I read Catch-22 recently and will rave about it at the drop of a hat, read Cloud Atlas… a couple of years ago I think? After having it on my shelf for a million billion years & dug the matryoska structure muchly, but yeah! Otherwise I hadn't heard of most of these?!?! excellent work everyone well done

[radiosaturday]

Got a few I haven't seen in the notes:

Blake Butler's There Is No Year is decidedly nonlinear, bordering on nonsensical, with upsetting vibes and such perfect pacing that I couldn't put it down

Matt Bell plays in this territory a lot; pretty much anything by him is going to be fighting you back a little but my introduction was the short story "The Cartographer's Girl"

John Elizabeth Stintzi takes a pretty oblique approach to structure in Vanishing Monuments and, I understand, in My Volcano. (Disclaimer: they are also a friend of mine, but I make the recommendation in earnest)

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins is like if Warren Ellis tried to write House of Leaves, and I mean that as a compliment

I'm sure you're aware of Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, but it is, in fact, all that and a bag of chips, especially in its structure

Monica Ojeda does some fun things with structure, especially in Nefando but definitely also in Jawbone, though I'll note that Nefando especially deals in some very dark territory

Steven Millhauser's short stories are pretty distinctly nonlinear and often outright weird in a very fun way -- I love his collection The Barnum Museum, notably the source of the short story that inspired the movie The Illusionist

I feel like Ayse Papatya Bucak's The Trojan War Museum fits here, but I also just feel like that collection is underrated, so cum grano salis

I think the movie is better-known, but Laszlo Krasznahorkai's Satantango is formally and topically very weird in a way that I found delightful

I also enthusiastically cosign the recommendations of Coup de Grace and Pale Fire. For what it's worth, Pale Fire is also one of the funniest books I've ever read.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

I am not aware of Our Share of Night! Also, "bordering on nonsensical, with upsetting vibes" is like catnip. Thank you.

[princefuckyouknickers]

253 by Geoff Ryman (originally published on the web with hyperlinks, later published as a paper book) now at : https://www.253novel.com/

The Bridge by Iain Banks

and

Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh

(both have the dude in a coma)

See Under: Love by David Grossman. It's in four parts, two of them are straightforward lit fic, one is salmon point-of-view, if I recall correctly, one is a story told in dictionary definitions.

And short stories:

Stet by Sarah Gailey (the story emerges from the footnotes)

Wikihistory by Desmond Warzel (a story in forum posts)

[madlori]

I'm frankly shocked nobody's mentioned David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas," which is an interconnected set of six stories in different times and with different narrators that are all split in half and work towards the center, like this:

1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2-1

The stories leave off, sometimes mid-sentence, and resume later in the book, while working forward in time from the first story that's an Age of Sail story until the 6th one, the only one not interrupted, is in the far post-apocalyptic future. Then each story is resolved in reverse chronological order.

What amazes me about this book (it's one of my favorites) is that Mitchell somehow makes each of these stories entirely distinct and unique. I don't know how he managed to write in six such distinct voices to the point that you'd think six writers had collaborated on this work.

[littlegreyduck]

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice definitely plays with "when" the narrative is taking place from POV to POV, not to mention playing with the POV itself. The later books become a fair bit more conventional (but no less entertaining for the change) in that regard. I think her later The Raven Tower does some of that as well but it's been a bit so don't hold me to that one. (I remember being amazed by what it pulls off, mind you, so it's another big recommendation.) But definitely, Ancillary Justice.

[blackjame]

Ghosted After a Job Interview? Report the Company

Ghosted after a job interview? Submit an anonymous report and see which companies candidates say stopped responding after interviews.

[luna-azzurra]

Something neuroscience-y that helps with prose: attention is selective. A character will not notice everything in a room. They will notice what matters to their goal, fear, desire, training, wound, or obsession. A jealous character notices hands. a hungry character notices food. A soldier notices exits. A lonely character notices pairs. Description becomes character when attention has a bias.

[funny-tik-toks]

[depsidase]

[theaceofwords]

It's called the Global Justice Report, it is here. This is an actionable plan which can be sent to legislators and demanded of political parties. We could save the world within our lifetimes.

It has always been possible. It is still possible.

[guerrillatech]

[aflo]

posting this on twitter will get you put into witness protection

[truestoriesaboutme]

The magic of childhood is that you were constantly encountering new things. The best way to feel that way again is to fill your life with new experiences.

[terminallyonlinecat-deactivated]

The magic of childhood is that you were constantly encountering new things. The best way to feel that way again is to fill your life with new experiences.

[wizardarchetypes]

Learn to identify bugs 🫵

[gravitren]

We all know what erectile dysfunction is but literally no one is ever taught what vaginismus is and it can cause people to feel extremely lost, broken, and cause people to take their own lives. Raise. Awareness.

[pokemonprofessor]

For the uninformed, vaginismus is when the vagina painfully tightens and spasms when faced with pressure, usually from anything trying to insert into the vagina. It’s the reason I can’t wear tampons, and why many people can’t have vaginal sex without severe pain.

There’s not a lot of treatments, and there isn’t a single one that is for vaginismus exclusively - they’re all medications or treatments to treat symptoms, but not the causes. In fact, for a long time doctors waved off vaginismus as a purely psychological disorder in cis women.

Seriously, this is so unaddressed and uncared for in medical circles. Please spread awareness, even if all it’s for is to let those who have it but don’t have a name for it finally be able to understand what’s happening to their bodies.

[certifiedsexed]

Certified Sex Ed Post!

[mystery-ink]

Hi hello! This post is almost 10 years old and there ARE treatments for this. Vaginismus is otherwise known as pelvic hypertonia and it is a MUSCULAR condition that can be caused by many different factors including endometriosis, trauma, chronic UTIs, and connective tissue disorders.

It’s incredibly common! And it can be treated by physiotherapy.

I know this because I’m currently undergoing physio and although it can take months to recover, I’m already seeing improvement. A lot of the pelvic floor exercises are available online, but if you have these symptoms please TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR and see if you can get a physio referral (or investigation for underlying causes like endometriosis).

Also, my additions to posts never get reblogged so a note to my followers: this is SUPER IMPORTANT ISSUE that affects many people and is rarely talked about. Please reblog, and please share this info with as many people as possible.

Pelvic hypertonia/vaginismus is incredibly debilitating and psychologically damaging but it CAN BE TREATED. Spread the word, and you never know who you’ll be throwing a lifeline to.

[dittohasadhd]

My chronic pain community, please hear this.

Including, but not limited to! If you have experienced chronic muscle pain, nerve pain, hip injury, spinal cord injury (or lesions), difficult pelvic exams, hormonal changes- consider if this is something your doctors might be overlooking.

Pelvic pain is really common, and there are surprising symptoms associated with it. I cannot overstate the importance of non-physician providers in your care team, especially when it comes to treating pain. Reach out to physical therapy, get an evaluation, and discuss a schedule.

[jordanbolton]

To the Person Who Asked If I Was OK

Pre-order my new book here

[squareallworthy]

guy who does unboxing videos but he only talks about the boxes

[squareallworthy]

"Hey, everyone, welcome back. Our first box today is a Uline nine by five by four. Single piece of clear shipping tape over the top, two inch, and the UPS label nicely centered. No edge tape, and you know, that's fine. This box is pretty light, I'd say under a pound, and taped edges don't really add much stability here. Let's open it up and see what we've got for dunnage...okay, half-inch bubble wrap, that's unusual in a box of this size."

[pip-says-hi]

Sometimes a post throws into perspective just how much niche knowledge you possess.

I read this, and I can tell from the “review” that the package was NOT shipped by a professional.

One: two inch tape. Professional establishments use three inch. It’s MUCH easier to seal boxes with, especially around the edges. Two inch is what you can buy from office depot or lowe’s. It’s fine for moving house, but it’s definitely not professional grade.

Two: no edge tape. Just seal your edges, people. UPS basically plays soccer with your packages. Even the light ones, just on principal, give them the structural support you can offer.

Three: centered label. Looks pretty on a package, sure, but it makes it very likely that the label will be covered up when the box is sitting in a stack or a pile, and that increases the chance that it will be manhandled to get to that label or even potentially mis-scanned or missed altogether in a stack. Label the SIDE of the box if at all possible! And put it to the side if you can’t! Visibility!

Also, the reviewer may be accustomed to getting a lot of boxes, but I don’t think they were a professional shipper, either. Someone who has shipped too many boxes would comment on whether the box was new or reused, whether there was any special hazmat (mostly lithium-ion battery) labeling, the condition of the package post shipping, and whether or not the weight of the package matched the stated weight on the label. AND they’d have commented on the two-inch packing tape.

[squareallworthy]

I don't know what to say other than "your experiences are not universal," because I do shipping and receiving at a machine shop for a living, I see packages sent by professional shippers all the time, and I disagree with you on just about every point.

One: two inch tape. Professional establishments use three inch.

Nope. For packages I see, two inch packing tape is the norm. Today I had one package with three-inch water-activated reinforced paper tape and one (from Uline) with 2.75" packing tape. Everything else used 2" packing tape. Yes, it's exactly the same kind of stuff that you can get at Office Depot or Lowe's, and people use it because it gets the job done.

Two: no edge tape.

Not uncommon for small, light packages. I just don't see box failures on packages under a pound where more tape would have helped. Where I do see failures is overloaded boxes, thirty pounds and up, where the corrugate simply ripped, and no amount of tape would have saved the package.

PSA: please don't fill an 8x8x6 single-wall box with machine screws and expect it to arrive intact. Fastenal, I'm looking at you.

Three: centered label.

Label on top is standard. I had only one box today with the label on the side, and all the rest on top.

Looks pretty on a package, sure, but it makes it very likely that the label will be covered up when the box is sitting in a stack or a pile, and that increases the chance that it will be manhandled

Your package will get manhandled, regardless of where you put the label. Plan on it.

to get to that label or even potentially mis-scanned or missed altogether in a stack. Label the SIDE of the box if at all possible!

Heck no! I expect labels to be on top and that's the first place I look for them. If it's on the side, that's potentially four other places I have to look, which is a pain in the ass when I'm busy. And I'm always busy.

UPS, incidentally, says you should put the label on the largest surface. For the packages I get, that's usually the top.

Someone who has shipped too many boxes would comment on whether the box was new or reused,

Okay, that's legit. I do see a fair number of reused boxes.

whether there was any special hazmat (mostly lithium-ion battery) labeling

Hazmats aren't common enough to mention it every time when there isn't one present. (My hazmats are usually solvents or paint, and that's not something I get every day.)

the condition of the package post shipping

Not usually noteworthy. My internal monolog (which is what the above fanciful review is based on) doesn't bother to mention it unless something unusual happened to the box.

whether or not the weight of the package matched the stated weight on the label

Although I ship just as many packages as I receive, if not more, it never would have occurred to me to check. And I don't have a scale in the receiving department, so it would be guesswork anyway.

AND they’d have commented on the two-inch packing tape.

Which everyone uses. There's not much need to comment when it's far and away the most common type of tape.

Perhaps things have been different for you, but this is how it is in the manufacturing industry.

[the-carrot-clarinet]

[j0jin-deactivated20210309]

[dbrann11]

Funniest thing I have seen in 2020

[leeisstillawake]

[mxcheese]

Ok but legit the funniest part of this is that the cat just knows what he’s about to do before his tongue is even out. He’s done this more than once. A lot more.

[marianarira]

All the torso animated studies.

[datsderbunnyblog]

This comment was left on a post about making the most of the Libby app. "Excessive use of generous lending policies" is the most absurd phrase I've ever seen anyone use to discuss libraries.

[catboycommunist]

evergreen