The Dream: My mother gifted me an old, beat up RV to live in. It was filthy inside, rusted outside. I saw my aunt who wanted to see it and give me a house warming present but I told her No because it was so gross.

The Explanation: It’s because I have a very strained relationship with my family right now. They failed to step up to protect me when I was young, and then failed to show up again when I needed support as an adult (along with numerous times in between). They left me with trauma and fear and self-hatred without ever an apology or a modicum of empathy. It’s left me with the intense desire to be seen and to be loved, but at the same time an intense fear of being treated again like I was for so long. It’s left me opting out of most of life, because who would want to see such a disgusting, shoddy RV like me? And even if I do convince myself that someone might, what if they burn my RV down? Or come in and are repulsed because they don’t like what they see?

The fact that California, a state with THIRTEEN TIMES MORE PEOPLE than Mississippi, has less than half the number of traffic fatalities is mind blowing. Mississippi is just 30% of the landmass that California represents, and yet it gets more than double the amount of traffic fatalities.

Looking at the left side of the graph, the trend is easily recognizable. Drunk angry and repressed, poverty stricken republicans will drive drunk like it’s the right to bear arms. The further right you go, the more democratic the state.

Fuck. That. Fuck the cards I’m dealt. I’ll make my own fucking cards. Play them how I want. And if I have to, I’ll make my own fucking game (creative commons licence, of course, in case anyone else is into it).

Limits are meant to be broken, not embraced.

Literally what the movie is about

I just back from vacation, stayed at a hotel that had free breakfast from 6-9. I was in that hotel for a full week, didn’t make it to breakfast once. Felt like a waste of money, waking up at noon and walking to a breakfast place nearby, but I’d rather pay for a meal than wake up early so 🤷‍♂️

*reject

Watch The Sound of Metal, it’s very good

Ah don’t worry about it. I’ve been working out since I was a kid and have fucked up so much it’s ludicrous. When nobody tells you how to work out, you end up doing shit wrong. It’s OK though, because just like life, it’s one long slow learning process.

Like, I want to compete in a body building competition, and so I diligently went about my training regimen with renewed focus and determination. Started posing practice after each workout. Couple weeks before the show, I’m at 6% bodyfat, lookin good, feeling good. Then I think “wait a tick, in all my posing, I’ve never actually seen what my back pose looks like.” So I went and set up a tripod and camera and took some shots and… woof. My back is underdeveloped as shit. Look like a body builder from the front, and a lil’ twink stick figure from the back.

So now I incorporate 3 more back exercises.

Also, I only ever started doing a regular Leg Day like 6 months ago (Just bicycled and ran before).

So, yeah. Now I’ve got a competition circled that’s further out so I can focus on back, and hopefully by then I’ll be ready. If not, oh well, just circle the next show on the ol’ calendar.

PROGRESS

I dunno man, just look at ol’ rudie guiliani and mike lindell (the pillow guy). They’re both broke as shit, ruined their lives. Now all they have left is grift

Actually…

study - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718793115

CNN article talking about the study - https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/health/falling-iq-scores-study-intl/index.html

Tried to watch it, the casual attitude towards rape turned me off.

Collin Farrel and Kristin Stewart.

They’re just not good actors. They’ve been in a couple good movies, but those movies succeed despite, not because of them.

Create art. Writing screenplays and books. Painting, gardening, working out, traveling, seeing live music, volunteer with whatever great organization I happen to be into at the time. Spend more time in my community. Have children.

The way I console myself is by saying that likely, the only way the US elects a true socialist democrat (AKA Bernie Sanders / AOC) that can bring about a Brand New Deal, is by having the pendulum of American politics first swing so far to the right, that everyone with a conscience is forced to get out and vote in retaliation.

But the idea that we could simply vote our way out of a rising fascist dictatorship seems a fleeting fantasy.

we’ve been given too much bread and too many circuses

For a while I celebrated the idea that we were in the “Golden Age of Television.” So many amazing shows, stories being told so exquisitely. But the more I think about it, the more that the ancient roman proverb of Bread and Circus seems more apt. I sit in front of a computer screen all day for work. On my breaks, I browse Lemmy on my phone. When I get off, I work out while staring at another screen in the gym. While making dinner I put on whatever NBA game is currently playing. While eating dinner I watch a show. After dinner I watch a comedy series while I eat dessert, occasionally browsing the internet simultaneously. My whole day, from when I wake up, to right before I go to bed, consuming content from a screen.

I wonder how many are like me, and how many of us are successfully using this constant stream of info- and entertainment to dull the pain of living like this. And what would it take for us to truly resist.

I think you’re right in that it would take hardship. We’re all mostly two missed paychecks away from our living standard collapsing, that could do it. But then that begs the question, how does one resist the rise of fascism? Because I’m beginning to think that voting may not save us when those in power are completely divorced from public outcry or consequences. When peaceful opposition is made impossible (or illegal on certain college campuses), when they round up and deport those that would publicly question their authority, when our elected leaders wring their hands in mocking frustration over all the nothing they’ve tried… well, perhaps violence is the answer after all. What other means have they left us?

I don’t agree. I think what was originally dubbed masculine, was thinly veiled stoicism. It was a philosophical approach to how one should live a good life. It was be a hard, strong, quiet man that takes it all on the chin because you know that your work will come back and benefit you in the long run. Masculinity was akin to boomer-isms of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” or “work hard and you’ll be rewarded.”

But through the lack of social economic reforms over the last half century, there is a profound disconnect between hard work and wealth. Wealth generated passively from capital has surged, while earnings from actual hard work has dried up. Young men are not so stupid that they don’t see this. So what happens when someone swoops in with seemingly a massive fortune, that is selling a new version of masculinity? He’s selling a new philosophical approach to the dire economic hardship of today, and it’s basically one of the gangster. The same people that idolized Al Pacino in Scarface, now, instead, worship online toxic figures selling similarly thought out get-rich quick schemes.

His philosophy could be surmised into “Use everyone around you in order to accumulate wealth.”

It’s really just a terrible philosophy that destroys lives, but within it, he offers the same snake-oil that most religions do, “it’s not your fault.” Which is the barb that sticks in people. “It’s not your fault, it’s XYZ (whether that’s the woke or women or immigrants or whatever, it doesn’t matter who they blame, so long as they blame someone else for your problems).”

So, instead of focusing on figures of true positive masculinity (Steve Irwin, Mr. Rogers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lebron James), they flock to the simpler, easier answer. They can imagine how to use people, how to sell drugs or prostitute women, because they see it depicted in movies, and think that they could do it. It’s far more difficult and far more convoluted to grow into a fully realized man that values others, and works hard despite not garnering massive wealth. To live a life of charity and humility isn’t sexy, and doesn’t make one a millionaire. So why would they flock to it?

Fix wealth inequality, and you’ll fix a LOT of issues we have today, including (I think) the rise of toxic male influencers.

Gardening.

Previously my only gardening experience was my mom yelling at me to weed outside in the hot summer sun.

Now that I live alone, I started getting potted plants, and there is something wonderful about sharing my space with green growing things. I have a few that have really taken to the environment and amount of sunlight, watching them grow is wonderful. Marveling when one of my little planty bois randomly flowers, and there’s something so stress-relieving about digging your hands into soil when it’s time to re-pot.

My marriage. In all my past relationships, it usually takes me about as long as the relationship lasted to get my feet back under me, but in this case, that time would be 10 years, so I really hope it won’t take that long. I’m on year 4 now. I read somewhere that men take longer to get over romantic relationships, because usually their romantic partner is also their best friend, and mine was no exception. We broke up because we shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place. I was in active alcoholism, and despite us both knowing that I wanted children, and she absolutely did not, we plowed ahead regardless. It seems stupid, but we truly loved each other. Heck, I guess we still love each other, we just have acknowledged that we’re not compatible in a way that severely limits our long term goals. It sucks. Logically, I should be able to just get right back on with dating, but it hasn’t been so easy.

There’s been multiple things standing in the way. First and foremost, some childhood trauma that had been trying to resurface for as long as I was an active alcoholic. Add that into a severely dysfunctional family dynamic, and you get a big ol’ mess that I’m only now starting to emerge from. I’m back to browsing tinder, and even though I do fine with matches, I just haven’t the energy to message anybody. Like, I just assume that they’re going to waste my time, and so I just sit by myself instead. I’m trying to become the person that would attract my ideal partner, so I’ve been putting extra time in at the gym, and have refocused on some hobbies of mine, like writing, and performing stand-up comedy. But even those seem like a chore sometimes.

Although she was sterilized during her medical care, scientists believed that she had been capable of reproduction.

In August 2023, Scientists asked the caretakers at Mantenedouro São Braz for fresh pictures of Dogxim. The caretakers replied that she had died six months prior to the request, being recently sterilized.[9] The time and nature of her death were never reported.

Wow great job, guys.

Veterinarian and conservationist Ferrari recalled that the canid had “no indications of any health problems” after her recovery.[13] Six months after the injury, she had been noted as completely healed.[2] The Brazilian government issued concerns on the cause of death.[9] The Secretariat of Environment and Infrastructure (SEMA) is conducting the investigation.

The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947)

I don’t know if this counts, but when I was little I’d go to friends houses, then later in high school to my first serious girlfriends house, and I remember their families were like… loving? I loved spending time at my girlfriends house especially, hanging out with her Mom and her Dad even if my gf wasn’t there. They were so nice, and you could tell had genuine affection for their children (and to some degree, me). I miss you Mr. and Mrs. Miller!