Good documentation makes me happy, bad documentation makes me run away. I suspect I’m not the only person who not only reads the fucking manual but thinks writing good technical documentation is an art of its own. Good luck with trying to replace proper documentation with profuse gibberish.

A not very epic poem about smart appliance FOMO, to be sung to a tune played on the world’s smallest violin

I’m devastated my fridge is old and does nothing
but keep my food cold.
I feel so poor and left out,
having no access to these value-strengthening promotions and curated advertisements.
My dumb fridge just
stands in a corner of the kitchen, not talking to me!
I feel so alone among my silent appliances.
Please speak to me washing machine
say something sweet space heater
profess your undying love to me dish washer

Thank you so much for that inspiration! I am seriously considering changing back to a dumbphone. The permanent checking and scrolling does me in, and I want my analog life back. Got myself a pile of printed books now I just have to remember to take one of them out and dare to make notes or draw in public.

I was out of work for over a year and jobs have been coming in again since two months. The many indications that this unholy shit bubble is finally bursting has me smiling, dancing and singing “The robot is dead, the robot is dead!”. I hate the AI hype with a passion, not just because of my work, but because of the ghastly slop we’re being exposed to everywhere online. I hope it disappears quickly into the same hole NFTs when to fuck off into.

Now before the billionaires come up with the next stupid hype can we at least eat a few of them?

Touch grass is what we need to do. I do as much as I can in my surroundings - raised beds, gardening, and sharing stuff with people. I work as much as I can in my local community. That’s how we beat this shit and keep our souls alive.

Yes I will fucking freak out. The planet is on fucking fire, people can’t afford basic groceries, species are dying - and some idiots insist in spending water, using energy and stealing people’s works using some fascist tech-bro’s doombot because AI is supposedly fun or convenient. I hate AI with a passion for all the reasons reasonable people keep explaining again, and again, and again: the environment, the copyright, the dark fascist agenda behind it. Soon enough I’ll lose patience with stupid AI bros who are going ‘but it’s just harmless fun’ and just screech into their ears at full volume in a last desperate attempt to wake up their shrinking GPTchat-fucked brains.

No, it’s not just a trigger. It’s just really that bad.

I found out that the random weed in my crappy backyard is feverfew (tanacetum parthenium), a medicinal herb against migraine and menstrual pain.

I feel you, I know what you mean. End of the world - as we know it. I hope that while everything comes tumbling down we re-learn how to be in community with others, humans and non-humans. I hope we re-learn how to be and not spend so much energy. The tiredness people feel these days seems to indicate that the great mother is taking care of that for us - nothing we have to do, just give in to feeling tired. In the meantime, I am coming to accept that together with many others I might die in this process of unraveling, but that’s not important.

Slow down, do less, achieve less, buy less, worry less. More casual hanging out with trees, birds and lizards in my neighborhood. Eat the rich.

I’m a translator, and we’ve been plagued by MT (machine translation) for years. A year ago translation jobs stopped completely and all I was offered was “Rating AI results”. I refused all of that garbage and turned temporally very poor. I went to shovel manure like a proper peasant to not have to engage with this shit. A year later translation seems to bounce back a bit, and I suspect art will do so as well. Most people can’t stand this slightly-off uncanny slop everywhere. It’s not just us artists and writers who react with almost visceral hate to this life-less soul-less crap. The hype will die down (don’t forget to diss it wherever you can in your free time!)

To create is even more important now. To fight this machine, this soul-less destruction. I’m more of a crafts person and only rarely a writer. Everything I do can be done by a machine faster and cheaper, so there is seems to be no reason to keep making it. A lot of the time I stare at my little felt figurines and my plant-dyed yarns and wonder why I even bother, and lately have stayed alive only because it would make my dad and my kid sad. But every now and then someone’s eyes get a certain sparkle when they see what I do. There’s life in it. My wonky basket contains life and love - the plastic basket with the fake wicker pattern does not. People at the moment can’t afford to buy my basket instead of the plastic one, but it has to exist to keep the real craft alive. We crafters, writers, artists, musicians need to keep alive the knowledge of how to make the real things. Some day it will matter again, I believe at some point the machine will eat itself.

Got some of this as well, started with pain in the throat last week, I slept a lot for two days, came down with migraine a day after that, and the last week I have been mentally really unwell feeling more anxious and depressed than usual. Something is going round.

“Invasive seaweed” is not a very nice name to call UK tourists.

Oh, thanks for the detailed write-up! I’ve always dismissed hydroponics as ‘too much tech, can’t be arsed to bother’, but it does sound interesting, especially the part about soil-based pests. Not sure I understand how the roots are in water yet get aerated? How do you use clay balls? How do you test for nutrient strength? Sorry, so many questions. I miss growing the good weed, but at the moment I’m not really settled anywhere.

Funny enough today was my day of getting stung - visiting a farm I’m hoping to move to, where I’ll have space for a garden. Nice welcome, got me straight in the eye and I learned that plantain (Spitzwegerich) gives immediate relief and prevents too much swelling (in the past I’ve used onion as well with good success). They seem to have settled in every hollow space they could find. Photosensitivity seems a likely explanation. I’ve always assumed they get more aggressive as their nests grow larger with brood to protect, but it doesn’t explain how they seem to start stinging at the same time in different places in Europe.

How sweet of your grandma to notice how you created an island of life! Seeing everything dead is really tough to witness - I find it strange how most people seem to be okay with it, but then how okay are they really? Just creating a place for life is probably worth more than any harvest and brings plenty of good karma!

Lots of good advice here already, especially regarding IFS, which is a therapy approach that works with splitting one’s inner monologue into a conversation between different voices.

Since a lot of commenters seem to equate inner voices with schizophrenia or psychosis I’d like to let you (and them) know it’s not that unusual to have inner voices with different personalities! I found my inner voices very helpful to deal with my mental challenges and this never turned into anything uncontrollable. I had a similar very critical inner voice which I then recognized as mainly being my mother’s way of criticizing me - even after I went no contact with mom, she was still occupying space in my head telling me everything I did wrong.

The way out was really simple, CBT-based: a therapist reminded me to be kind to myself and I just practised - like giving myself an inner hug every time I used the unkind voice and remembering that kindness to myself is important (not beating myself up for being unkind!), and to avoid self-deprecating humour. It just took some time, maybe a year, and now I see clear improvements. The voice is pretty much gone. At the moment I have no need to separate into different voices and feel quite at home within myself. Hope you get there soon, you seem a be on a good path towards it!

Not knowing what number 3 is

What the fuck, that looks absolutely desperate! I’m sure it will have the opposite effect. Fuck reddit.

As soon as I have some indoor grow space again I’d love to learn more about hydroponics. I guess the difference is the very controlled and shielded environment of hydroponics vs the open environment of balcony plants in soil? On the balcony you recreate a small, but incomplete ecosystem - I would imagine that a better balance might be created after some years. However the ecosystem itself will not care about whether we feel it’s agreeable for ourselves. I wonder if there is one week of the year when they start turning aggressive - I remember leaving their nests alone because they would be peaceful during the spring months, and then at some point in summer I’d get stung. This year I’ve witnessed quite a few people within one week getting stung by wasps - in different countries, so that’s quite interesting. I’m a real fan of undesired non-humans, so figuring out how to co-inhabit spaces with wasps, ants, rats, mice etc. without resorting to genocide is one of my favourite topics!

I found it easier after understanding that everyone else is also struggling, everybody feels like they don’t have their shit together, and everybody needs help. There might be a few people who claim they have it all figured out, they are not the ones I want to take advice from because they are full of shit (often they are some guru type and/or just want your money).

Also helps to realize that a lot of people feel bad because things are bleak - we struggle with climate change, alienation at work, being disrooted, at the brink of yet another war … it’s objectively hard to live during these times. The only thing that makes it easier is talking to each other. A woman visited me yesterday, told me about her problems with her health and her main problem seemed to be that she feels unproductive and too tired to get the things done she believes she should be able to do. After telling her that on most days I was pleased with myself for simply getting up, feeding the cat and brushing my teeth, and that I know so many more people who tell me they feel like this, she was visibly relieved, and I was as well.

So when we talk to each other it helps to realize there’s nothing wrong with us personally - we are not failing at being a person, we are just reacting to the best of our abilities to an onslaught of trouble around us. Plus, when we talk to each other we often find out how we can help each other out in very practical ways - like sharing resources, supporting each other with our different strengths, ganging up together against the hardship. Community is how we can survive the hard times!

So is there someone in your life you can ask for help? Are you thinking about enlisting professional help like a doctor or therapist? What do you need right now?