Or maybe they just garden.

I don’t, and haven’t, and I’ve lived in poverty before that the average person would find humiliating.

That said, I can see I have a stronger sense of righteousness than the average person, probably due to some type of neurodivergence. I have dealt with plenty of bullying for it. So the pain that comes from it sometimes is something I’m used to and no longer afraid of.

It’s easier once you lose the fear. Fear is what pushes people to compromise their morals.

It also helps that I’m relatively smart and can always find alternative options so far.

Are you completely unable to see images or hear voices in your mind’s eye/ear? No matter what you read? And it’s always been like that?

Or do you just get fatigued after a while? But with effort can have a visual or audible imagination?

The former could be something called aphantasia, which is when someone is born without the ability to visualize things in their head

The latter might just a skill thing. When I was about 10, I had to train myself both to sharpen my imagination, but also not to fall asleep reading every time. I remember doing this distinctly, just constant practice with my imagination. It got a lot easier as I practiced.

Yeah, I tend to reply for lurkers, not to change the OPs mind.

Lurkers who haven’t entered a dog in the fight are more likely to be convinced than someone already wound up and swinging. As they read, they are more open, much as I am when I lurk.

This is also why I don’t necessarily mind “fake” posts. The original situation in the post might be fake, but the discussion from people responding does tend to have good or interesting responses in varying levels of nuance.

Self discipline.

Once I learned the skill of purposely removing myself from certain online things…world of Warcraft and social media arguing were two big ones…I got a lot of my life back.

It really just comes down to self discipline and self control, which are necessary to learn if you want to actually mature and grow up.

Edit: you could also consider it the art of learning boundaries.

It’s sometimes easier to do speeches with a mask on.

My easiest speech in high school was in a grim reaper costume that covered my face.

Sounds like I should test if going on testosterone does the same someday.

Escitalopram fixed my Raynaud’s at a low “taper up” dose basically immediately. Although it wasn’t prescribed for that, this was just a happy side effect. I guess some SSRIs do that.

For depression, it took about a month to ramp up enough to see a difference. It did ease the anhedonia, but it also masked my emotional flashbacks until it was too late to disrupt them.

I also had SEVERE issues with my sodium while on it, which is why I didn’t stay on it past a month. However, I don’t snack or eat salty stuff so someone with higher sodium intake might have fared better.

I would have tried to get used to it to see if the masking of the early signs of flashbacks got better as I got used to it if it hadn’t messed up my sodium so badly.

Also, the sexual side effects are real.

Yes. Don’t YOU put sunblock on your nose?

I was going to say something about head/eye coordination…but the snake I used to have could strike at a dead rodent and miss.

So you have a good point.

Awareness not cynicism, yes. Very important for self growth.

The head in the clouds of over optimism and the head in the mud of cynicism are two extremes that’ll both extra super duper fuck you over.

Reality has both good and bad things.

Most people hear that you have to learn to pull your head out of the clouds, but honestly the cynics need to be beat up more about their cynicism because that attitude ALSO lays the foundation for shitty times.

If you go into things having decided they’ll suck beforehand, you contributed to that outcome by not creating, seeing, or seeking better things.

And it takes time and work to kill off the parasite of cynicism if it’s already wrapped around your soul. But it’s hard work that must be done.

Solar panel and battery tech are finally mature enough to keep small electronics powered off grid near indefinitely now if you take the time to understand its capacity and build properly.

If your system is too small you might run into problems cooking, charging a car, gaming, or running an ac, basically things that draw huge amounts of power, but it can run a freezer, phone and laptop, and led lights pretty well. And those things can get you 75 percent of the way to feeling civilized if weather or disaster affects your neighborhood power.

So I’m a fan of this stuff, we are nearly in sci-fi territory with it, and think smart people with a backyard and some space should consider it for storm preparedness and the like. The tech will only improve with time, there’s some recent developments with new battery tech on the horizon that are hopeful.

When I’m elderly in 40 years, I hope to live in a home with plenty of solar and a huge house battery setup in the basement. If I can cover all my electric off grid including cooking, I would feel very rich and secure.

Buy up all the media outlets, especially Fox, and ACTUALLY turn them into progressive propaganda outlets.

Once actual progressives are in power, Lobby for government with the teeth to break up my big media empire monopoly and prevent a new one from forming.

Make a trust in each state to have local news outlets with good journalists.

Fund something to help find and stomp out propaganda bot/slave centers in other countries.

Lobby to regulate the fuck out of AI to stop its use as a programmable propaganda slop machine.

Didn’t the FBI already say shit about bombing California?

Given every accusation is a confession with the GoP I immediately figured they were going to do it themselves and blame Iran. And that California was chosen to try to scare it into line, much like other blue states have been targeted by the current administration.

You know, I just realized how dumb it is that I grew up on TNG and yet have never written a bald dude into my sci-fi.

I need to stop sucking and do that.

Excuse me, low balls simply happen when you get older. It’s a natural facet of aging!

I’ve been fascinated by pterosaurs lately. The book Pterosaurs by Mark P Witton is great.

Pterosaurs interest me because of their wing morphology. Instead of having the wing membrane between all the “fingers” like a bat, it’s attached to their equivalent of a pinky finger in such a way it can fold up enough that they could use all four limbs to navigate on land. They just have such an interesting body shape that no animal today really has.

They also got much bigger than birds. Like, to the point that I want to write a fantasy book where the premise is that dragons are like …the only pterosaur that survived extinction. Because it would be cool to have a dragon that’s directly not related to modern reptiles, birds, or mammals…but still is speculatively based on a flying animal that did once exist.

Cat.

I was surprised by the video on another site AND I had sound off and that video still haunts me.

Pterosaur is a good one to look up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur