If You Don't Mind Me Asking, What ARE The Right Codewords To Use On Doctors And Such?

until i read the third tag i was hearing the most wise shit in the universe. then it just became the most insightful driving advice finally put to words, still a net gain

You're just a mammal. Let yourself act like it. Your brain needs enrichment. Your body needs rest. You feel hunger and grow hair. You need to pack bond with other sentient things so you don't become unsocialized and neurotic. You are biologically inclined to seek dopamine and become sick when chronically stressed. "Hedonism" is made up to place moral value on taking pleasure in sensory experiences. I am telling you that if you don't let yourself be a fucking mammal, as you were made, you will suffer and go insane. No grindset no diets no trying to be above your drive for connection. Pursue what makes you feel good and practice radial rejection of the constructs meant to turn you into a machine. You're a mammal.

Abusers are generally great at something called “manufacturing insecurity”. It means, even if you’ve never been insecure about something, abuser will create an insecurity about it, solely for the purpose of emotionally manipulating you. Meaning, when you’re not doing, saying, or thinking what they want, they have a go at your “insecurity”, triggering your pain, fear, guilt, shame, everything they taught you to feel, as a way to teach you that this pain is what you’re going to get if you fail to obey them.

It’s not exactly hard to manufacture an insecurity (provided you are cruel and vicious), all you have to do is take a social norm and convince a person they aren’t good enough in one or all departments. You convince a person they’re too loud, too fat, too ugly, slow, naive, gullible, stupid, lazy, selfish, sexual, provocative, demanding, and that this is the reason why they will always fail, it’s a reason why they keep getting hurt, it’s a reason why nobody will ever love or care for them. It’s utterly cruel, and an absolute lie. Deviating from the “norm” in any way is not a reason of any of those things, if you’re getting hurt it’s because people are hurting you, if you’re unloved it’s because people around you refuse to show affection and care. These things cannot be the individual’s fault, it’s always the environment setting person up for pain. And abusers already know this. But they make a step to convince a victim it’s all their fault, everything others do to them, their fault. And even worse, that they deserved being hurt.

This kind of nonsense blaming everything on unrelated trait of individual can lead to a person getting terrified they could have somehow caused horrible things just by being themselves, that it’s impossible to even predict what might happen to them just because they’re “this way” or another. It creates an atmosphere of panic and confusion, and they find themselves seeing no way forward but to accept guidance from abuser. Abuser then pretends to know what victim is to do in order to avoid pain and failure - of course, only up to the point when abuser decides to inflict pain on purpose, to control and manipulate.

You’re not stupid if you fall for this kind of trap, it’s designed to work on people who are self-aware, who work on getting themselves better, who are trying their hardest. You don’t even have to lack confidence, abusers will take a confident person and eat their confidence away. And once caught in this situation, it might be hard to believe that someone would stoop that that kind of cruelty and lie to you while knowing perfectly well that you are good, that there’s no reason on earth to criticize your traits, that you have nothing to be ashamed of. That you haven’t deserved any of it.

It's exhausting and hurtful to have your every action perceived as if you had the worst intentions, even when you're trying your best to do good. It's what forces you to constantly fight to prove yourself, that you do things in good faith, that you're being honest, that you mean well, as if your actions don't already prove it.

And the thing is it never stops, no matter how hard you try to show your true qualities it's never good enough, you always have to try harder and then hear the lies about what you meant by it. It puts you in this magic loop with no escape, you are never understood clearly, you are never free. At one point you too start wondering if they're right, if your intentions are bad. You doubt yourself, you feel guilty for wanting to feel good about yourself.

Anyone doing this to you does not care for you. You don't deserve to be continually misrepresented and to have the value of your actions voided by someone thinking you should have done differently. You should not be brought to exhaustion trying to be good enough for people who do not care if they're being good to you. People who usually do this won't tolerate any bad intention ascribed to their actions, even when it clearly belongs there. They judge you on standards they would never impose on themselves.

My chronic pain doctor suggested I exercise more

I asked him “how?”

He looked confused. Said I should try a bit every day

I said “not when, how?” I asked what exercises I should do

He suggested half a dozen options that had all been explicitly banned by other doctors. I’m not allowed to run. I’m not allowed to bike. I’m not allowed to use my rowing machine or my punching bag.

I walk my dog whenever I have the energy and when it doesn’t hurt too much

What else can I do?

He told me I should exercise more

And then he changed the subject.

Recently discovered, fully by accident, that the trick to feeling like you have more time in the day is to actually do shit with the time that's there, which seems fake and wrong and it's frankly infuriating that it works >:|

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) dir. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

Hey All,

I've been away for some time, as we've been working really hard on something quite exciting:

let me present to you the world's first ever global ocean drainage basin map that shows all permanent and temporary water flows on the planet.

This is quite big news, as far as I know this has never been done before. There are hundreds of hours of work in it (with the data + manual work as well) and it's quite a relief that they are all finished now.

But what is an ocean drainage basin map, I hear most of you asking? A couple of years ago I tried to find a map that shows which ocean does each of the world's rivers end up in. I was a bit surprised to see there is no map like that, so I just decided I'll make it myself - as usual :) Well, after realizing all the technical difficulties, I wasn't so surprised any more that it didn't exist. So yeah, it was quite a challenge but I am very happy with the result.

In addition to the global map I've created a set of 43 maps for different countries, states and continents, four versions for each: maps with white and black background, and a version for both with coloured oceans (aka polygons). Here's the global map with polygons:

I know from experience that maps can be great conversation starters, and I aim to make maps that are visually striking and can effectively deliver a message. With these ocean drainage basin maps the most important part was to make them easily understandable, so after you have seen one, the others all become effortless to interpret as well. Let me know how I did, I really appreciate any and all kinds of feedback.

Here are a few more from the set, I hope you too learn something new from them. I certainly did, and I am a geographer.

The greatest surprise with Europe is that its biggest river is all grey, as the Volga flows into the Caspian sea, therefore its basin counts as endorheic.

An endorheic basin is one which never reaches the ocean, mostly because it dries out in desert areas or ends up in lakes with no outflow. The biggest endorheic basin is the Caspian’s, but the area of the Great Basin in the US is also a good example of endorheic basins.

I love how the green of the Atlantic Ocean tangles together in the middle.

No, the dividing line is not at Cape Town, unfortunately.

I know these two colours weren’t the best choice for colourblind people and I sincerely apologize for that. I’ve been planning to make colourblind-friendly versions of my maps for ages now – still not sure when I get there, but I want you to know that it’s just moved up on my todo-list. A lot further up.

Minnesota is quite crazy with all that blue, right? Some other US states that are equally mind-blowing: North Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming. You can check them all out here.

Yes, most of the Peruvian waters drain into the Atlantic Ocean. Here are the maps of Peru, if you want to take a closer look.

Asia is amazingly colourful with lots of endorheic basins in the middle areas: deserts, the Himalayas and the Caspian sea are to blame. Also note how the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra are divided.

I mentioned earlier that I also made white versions of all maps. Here’s Australia with its vast deserts. If you're wondering about the weird lines in the middle: that’s the Simpson desert with its famous parallel sand dunes.

North America with white background and colourful oceans looks pretty neat, I think.

Finally, I made the drainage basin maps of the individual oceans: The Atlantic, the Arctic, the Indian and the Pacific. The Arctic is my favourite one.

I really hope you like my new maps, and that they will become as popular as my river basin maps. Those have already helped dozens of environmental NGOs to illustrate their important messages all around the world. It would be nice if these maps too could find their purpose.

My face is having uncontrollable spasms. Great. It hurts really, really, really bad.

I think part of why I have trouble explaining pain to the doctor is when they ask about the pain scale I always think “Well, if someone threw me down a flight of stairs right now or punched me a few times, it would definitely hurt a lot more” so I end up saying a low number. I was reading an article that said that “10” is the most commonly reported number and that is baffling to me. When I woke up from surgery with an 8" incision in my body and I could hardly even speak, I was in the most horrific pain of my life but I said “6” because I thought “Well, if you hit me in the stomach, it would be worse.”

learning how to get out of the victim mindset and approach situations from the student perspective is changing the entire trajectory of my life. i am learning how to stand up for myself i am learning how to make decisions i am learning how to express my feelings i am learning how to live