I honestly don’t get why so many people are so reckless and impatient on the roads. I’ve seen some people being really fucking stupid around cyclists and motorcyclists. One incident haunts me, because I know someone would have been severely injured, maybe killed, if I hadn’t been quick enough to get out of the way of an impatient person overtaking in a stupid place.
And it’s just like… why? Just leave home a few minutes earlier!
I did not know the exact wording of this guidance, but this is basically the strategy I use. I’ve always figured that because I prepare for my journeys, I am never in such a rush that I need to put someone else’s life at risk in order to pass them quicker - it’s not like it’s going to make a difference to my day if I arrive at my destination 2 minutes later, but it’ll make a huge difference to someone else’s day if I rush past a cyclist when it’s not safe.
Wonderful advice, thank you! I still haven’t really worked out what actually helped to destress me and what didn’t (aside from venting - just feeling heard makes a difference!), because I don’t think I ever really destressed until the deadlines had passed.
For sure, it’s definitely been valuable experience! I would like to think in a working environment, things would be a bit… easier, I guess, since a big part of the problem was this project didn’t have any effective leadership that could challenge the asshole on his lack of contributions. Whereas I would hope that in an actual studio, department heads wouldn’t let someone produce absolutely no work for months, while blindly believing every excuse which is, sadly, what the leader for this project did. The lecturer knew what was up, because despite taking a hands-off approach, he was watching far more closely than most of the class realised - but he let it play out this way precisely because it’s a good learning experience. Suffice to say, I got an extra few points on my grade because I stepped in at the last minute.
Finished with university until September now, and have most of my grades for this year back (still waiting on one module). Having mixed feelings about the grades, because I know objectively that they’re excellent, yet I still feel like I could have done better. I still got better grades than everyone else. I will acknowledge the two may be connected: when you constantly feel like you could be doing better, you push yourself harder. Even so, I did learn a ridiculous amount this year, and produced some work I’m really proud of.
The end outcome of this is, of course, that I’m exhausted, yet simultaneously having trouble slowing down. Having been pushing at full speed ahead for many months, I’m now feeling weirded out by not having any assignments to do or deadlines to meet. If I had to summarise what my brain is doing right now, it would be:
???
There is also tangible relief to be away from… that guy. I can’t remember if I posted about it at the time but basically he got caught lying about his part of the group project, namely that he had finished it when he had not even started it. So with 24 hours before the deadline, we essentially kicked him off the team and I did his section of the project. A week’s worth of work packed into a single evening. Because he’s using his neurodiversity as an excuse for not doing anything for half the year, they’re probably going to be reluctant to kick him out… but that’s a problem for next September. For now, I’m just going to enjoy not having to deal with the useless, arrogant prick for a few months.
where does that weirdness come from?
Kids are weird, largely because they repeat things they hear without any understanding of the meanings and significance behind the words. So in the cases of past lives, they’re repeating stuff they’ve heard on TV, films, documentaries, etc, and describing images they’ve seen on posters and adverts and book covers. And they talk about it like it’s real because at that age, kids can’t tell the difference between reality and fiction, so it’s all equally real and it all gets blended together in their minds. Then adults read something into it that isn’t really there.
Consider me highly sceptical.
How Aija once dramatically declared to her parents, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the end of the world!” and curtsied.
“It’s a little disturbing to hear that from a 2-year-old, especially in the middle of a pandemic,” Marie says with a slight laugh.
Tucker nods. “You kind of wonder where she even picked up the expression.”
Because, yeah, there were absolutely no individuals on TV or radio who sarcastically remarked during the pandemic “ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the end of the world!” Just because the parents didn’t remember hearing it, doesn’t mean the child didn’t hear it and emulate it. Childrens’ brains are wired to pay attention to their surroundings in ways that adults aren’t, because that’s how they learn. It seems massively more likely that the children in these cases are echoing things they have heard and absorbed that their parents simply paid no attention to.
Unless the parents can categorically prove that, for example, they never watched a film or documentary about the Holocaust while their child was nearby and able to hear it, that seems a far more likely explanation than reincarnation. For that matter, I’d be more inclined to believe that the child was remembering details from a documentary the parents watched when the child was still a baby, and thus considered unable to absorb anything at all, than believe the child was remembering a past life.
The fact that they can never be pinned down to a specific historic individual is also suspect. The article gives a generic “Presumably there were a lot of Ninas in concentration camps”, but okay, has anyone checked how many there were, and what ages they were, and what other details might match up with the child’s story? A bit of research would prove it one way or another, and the reluctance to follow through on that research makes it hard for me to take the claims seriously.
Seagulls are more endangered than people think they are, though (red listed in the UK, population decline of over 50% in the last 40 years), in large part because humans took all their food. I think a fair trade might be that they won’t steal our chips if we don’t steal their fish? You know, rather than pointless animal cruelty. Fuck this dude.
I have one, which I made myself (cheaper than buying from a maker, if you have the crafting skills to make it look decent - it actually took me about two years to make because I wanted to do a good job with it). But I don’t get to use it all that often, as my only option locally is the fantasy/sci-fi/comic convention in August - and the last couple of summers have been way too hot for me to be fursuiting in the sunshine! I enjoy it when the weather’s cool enough though, because there’s no other furries that go to that convention, so I really stand out - which is great for interactions with both other cosplayers and the general public. That’s the only reason I fursuit really. It’s fun being a big fluffy tiger booping Sith lords and pretending to be killed by a Dalek.
There’s meetups about 100 miles away that I used to go to, but the whole group is just far too dramatic for me. I do not have the energy for that much compulsive backstabbing! Which is a shame, because it would be nicer to get to use my fursuit more often. There is something special about fursuiting in a group.
I’m feeling the need to do a social media detox, including Beehaw. Pro-AI techbros are getting me down.
Shockingly, keeping Instagram active. My feed there is nothing but frogs, greyhounds, and art from local artists, and detoxing from stuff that is improving my mood rather than making it worse seems unnecessary.