Joyfulsmolthings

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

It is with the deepest frustrations that I must report Microsoft has pushed out Copilot onto Microsoft Word no matter what your previous settings were. If you have Office because you paid for it/are on a family plan/have a work/school account, you can disable it by going to Options -> click on Copilot -> uncheck 'Enable Copilot'.

(Note, you may not see this option if you haven't updated lately, but Copilot will still pop up. Updating should give you this option. I will kill Microsoft with my bare hands.)

In addition, Google has forced a roll-out of it's Gemini AI on all American accounts of users over 18 (these settings are turned off by default for EU, Japan, Switzerland, and UK, but it doesn't hurt to check).

To remove this garbage, you must go to Manage Workspace smart feature settings for all your Gmail/Drive/Chat and turn them off. Go to Settings -> See all settings -> find under "Genera" the "Google Workspace smart features" -> turn smart feature setting off for both Google Workspace and all other Google products and hit save. (If you turned off the smart settings in your Gmail, it never hurts to open Drive and double-check that they're set to off there too.)

Quick Edit: I found the easiest way to get to the Smart Feature settings following the instructions above was to do it through Drive. Try that route first.

Now is the time to consider switching to Libre Office if you haven't already.

people are saying do it scared, but you also gotta do it alone. you'll miss out on so much you want to do if you wait til someone will do it with you. do it scared and do it alone.

you will live and you will say the wrong things and make mistakes and people will love you anyways.

Trying to keep your footprint as low as possible is a great way to self-destruct.

And I'm not saying this to people who take two hour showers during international flights while shoving red meat into their mouth. I'm saying this to my fellow activists who feel conflicted about heating their home on fossil fuels even though they don't have any other options (and struggle to afford it).

Like, we can talk about how 'consumer choice' is never going to save the planet and stuff, but more importantly: You are not a sin. Your basic needs deserve to be met. You deserve to be warm and filled with food that satisfies you and you deserve to see your friends.

We are not fighting to save 'the planet', that's a piece of rock. We want to save ecosystems and plants and animals, including people. You are part of that. Don't leave yourself out of the list of creatures that deserve to thrive.

it's ambedkar jayanti and here's a reminder that the annihilation of caste is available freely in most places on the internet including archive.org (you can do text-to-speech if you prefer listening) and youtube (as an audiobook in hindi, english, tamil, and other languages). pdfs and epub versions are available on library genesis. if you live in a western country im sure your local library has it too. so you really have no excuse for not having read it especially if you're an indian/person of indian ancestry.

On of the less intuitive things about love, I've found, of any kind, is the importance of needing things.

I didn't realize it until recently, but I've always seen love as something requiring sacrifice, selflessness, patience, and generosity- to ask for nothing is to be the best person I can be, small and quiet and never in the way, always happy and helpful, self-sufficient and present when desired.

It's only as an adult, now, that I'm beginning to see the selfishness of wanting nothing.

I cut my friend's hair in my kitchen the other day. They wanted a trim and I had the skills, so I offered, and was genuinely excited when they stopped hesitating over "bothering me" and took me up on it. It was a peaceful afternoon, and we had tea and chatted for an hour or more.

My brother and I shared popcorn at the movies a while ago. When I came time to pay, I pulled my card out like a wild western sheriff and slapped it on the machine before he could fight me for it first. The satisfaction was delightful.

Someone called me crying on the phone the other day. Kept apologizing for disturbing me at work, talking about how they were bothering me on my lunch break. I was telling the truth when I told them that really, I was flattered and honored and relieved, knowing that if they were hurting I would know, that I didn't have to worry in silence. It felt good to hear them slowly come down, and to know that they knew it would be better soon, and to hear them laugh wetly on the other end. We're getting together for a visit next week.

It's hard to need things, if you've trained yourself not to. It's hard to want things, when you don't know how to want anymore. Trusting people is difficult, and so is relying on them, but I don't know where I'd be without the people who rely on me.

I've heard a lot of people say, "Nobody will love you unless you love yourself". I've had a lot of thoughts about it. It's not right, but it's not wrong, either, I think.

"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... I've always taken that to mean, "You will not be lovable until you develop a positive view of yourself as a person".

Now, I think it's sort of inside-out.

"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... because nobody can show their love to you in a way that you can accept until you treat yourself kindly, and learn what you need, and what you want, and how to ask for it, and then give that vulnerability away.

Love, for me, is someone I ask for a ride to the airport. Whether they end up doing this or not is irrelevant.

It's not needy, or selfish, or taking up energy. It's giving the gift of being wanted, and needed, and thought of. It's giving someone the security of being part of someone's life.

Remember kids

As tiring as all this shit is, I can't in good faith continue to use spotify.

For anyone else jumping ship, I used to exportify.app to save my favorite playlists.

file -> phrases that are going to shift something in me forever