How are we?

[Therion]

For a long time I have that feeling that my life will be cut short. That I have no future.

[Therion]

I sold all most of my Euro comics because they were degenerate and I missed having cash to buy something for myself. I sold Jodorovsky's comics - Borgia series in December and now Incal, Castaka and Metabarons. I used to like them a lot but now I hate them for all the degeneracy and stupidity in them.
I bought myself Torment The Tides of Numentera in a collectors edition - it was discounted 60% because it was one of the last ones in a store - I also bought myself a CD album - Kiddo by Tove Styrke - managed to get it at 30% of the normal price new.

The items arrived next day, which was Friday.

Yesterday I sold Nikopol trilogy, Salambo and two volumes of Elric. Most of that stuff was degenerate.

I was wondering what to buy. I wondered through bookstores but nothing caught my attention enough. Eventually, I ended up

This post was unfinished in one of my tabs. I think it's from 20180217. It's from another era. (yeah, some of my tabs are, like half-a-year old.)

What I ended up buying was Opus Magnum and I donated the rest - 50pln (a work equivalent of 36GBP, unfortunately only 10GBP in money because of the ridiculous idea tha Polish time and work is somehow 3,6x worse than British.) to a fellow Tumblr user who got a benefit sanction and needed help.

This made me feel a bit better, especially the donation. During the beginning of the year I didn't have any income, so getting a bit of cash from selling decadent comics have helped somewhat.

Now I kinda regret selling Incal, Nikopol trilogy, Salambo and two volumes of Elric (but not the Metabarons stuff - too absurdly edgy) because I changed my views on decadence - partially because I stopped talking with radical feminists and partially for spiritual reasons.

I played the new Torment for a few hours but I don't really find cRPGs so appealing any more.

Also, during that time, I enrolled on a web design course funded by EU which enables 3 month paid internship and had a 360pln course scholarship. Was having meetings with various advisers, there but the course only started in late April.

[Therion]

Woke up, scared for my life, feeling physically sick. It's obvious normies shelter Nazis. They pretend to be against Nazism but they allow Nazis to spread their propaganda and exist and attack people of colour
(like 5 Nazis attacked someone recently with an axe) and of course they love punishing victims of Nazis for being traumatized, they love starving victims of Nazis, generally love punishing victims of violence with poverty and early death.
So, ultimately a normie is just a form of a Nazi.

Anyone who isn't demanding awesome compensations and high quality help in recovery for victims of psychological liquidation and generous disability pensions proportional to native IQ for disabled victims of psychological liquidation is an ally of Nazis, rapists, child abusers, etc. that insists of punishing people for being traumatized and the wrongdoings of these not being fixed.

Vast majority of people hate traumatized victims. It's clearly visible in lack of solidarity and their fanatical ableism.

I'm so stressed out, to the point of physical pain. The world always was against me, conspired to traumatize me to not allow me to live in peace, to thrive.

First with everyday racist insults until I was, like, in the second high school.

Well, no, first with my father that was liar and cheater and later dodged child support and had more children despite that he already had children to support.

Then being targeted by two abusers in the last year of primary school and suffering from burnout, school phobia, IBS, etc.

Then the Neo-Nazi attacks of 2003-2005.

Like it's just a traumatic event after traumatic event. Never long enough period of peace to recover, not talking even about thriving.

I don't know, I just feel much worse now. Extremely stressed out. Knowing there are enemies out there who want me dead and can attack me at any time when I'm outside and normies allow them to exist here. Normies shelter my enemies.
Normies are also, a problem, a mortal threat but when normies will try to kill me, I'll have a long notice - first no contracts, then no cash, then credit card running out. That's a lot of time to prepare and try to counteract. But of course it's not possible to counter-act it, because people on the internet would just ignore my desperate pleas for help.
But, there's always time to take action. Like weeks, even months of notice.

With Nazis it's a much more unpredictable threat. I once saw three of them sitting in a bar with t-shirts with Nazi slogans on them and they weren't eliminated. They were sheltered by normies.
Once several Nazis attacked my father, who barely managed to get away.

It's one of these moments when one really starts to understand the wisdom of many Wh40k quotes, like:

"There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush" -Scriptorus Munificantus

I also realised, it was probably the reason why I got so heavily into military history and wargaming after 2005. In the end, "there's no peace among the stars". I stopped being interested in war stuff in the beginning of 2017 because it's such a gruesome hobby and also, because I felt no real connection to it and that interest in war is more pornographic in nature.
But now I just feel so threatened by violence, so stressed out, that I can't really connect with most of people nowadays. The threat of violent death makes me feel more related to war than to peace.

I probably need a gun, but of course thanks to ableist laws, I can't have one, because if you're a victim of violence and suffer from trauma, you can't because victims are forbidden from having weapons for self-defence. Another example how normies hate victims and want us dead.
I think I could put a large knife or a machete in art carrying case since they aren't weapons, but I don't know how it would work for multiple attackers. I wish I could just open-carry a Cold Steel Gladius in a sheath on my waist, but it would probably attract too much attention.

A few months ago Nazis attacked and critically wounded a black guy at some disco.

I just feel so stressed out.

I think the reason I got so much into war stuff, etc. because my life is war and I’m under constant threat. But I lack resources. For example I don’t have bodyguards, or weapons, body armour, stuff like that.
So when going outside, I’m exposed.

[Therion]

I woke up and I'm still not safe. Nazis exist and normies are enabling their existence. I know I won't be safe as long as single Nazi exists here. They are my biological enemies. Normies are sheltering my biological enemies.

[Xisor]

Yeah, I hear you, Therion. Life's bloody rough, to put it mildly, and the disparities are... not small. Whereabouts in Poland are you these days?

----

I was in Gdansk not long ago (end of April). Got sunburnt, but had some lovely food, and a surprisingly nice time. One of the better, more prolonged 'good' times of recent years. (A bad measure for things, but fairly true too.) Followed it up again a fortnight or two back for a weekend in Wales too.

Again: a surprisingly wholesome time away. Sort of bolstering my spirits (not that they were especially low, but I've certainly ruminated on... neurodiversity a lot recently, much like I did [in this very thread!] back in '12-'13).

Reminded me, overwhelmingly, of when I chucked everything on the line and escaped to London, also back in '13. (More or less five years to the day.) One hell of a massive roll of the dice, but at the same time it wasn't entirely caution-to-the-wind either. The trepidation and bravery (in the face of trepidation) that others ascribe to the event doesn't seem to... register.

It's a difficult one to articulate, but that sense of 'this seems to be something other people worry about, but despite affecting me (causally, demonstrably), it still doesn't entirely impact on my mind'. Like being intellectually aware of something, but not perceiving it in any tangible, even if distant or indirect, sense.

But otherwise? I'm alright, I think. How is everyone else?

[Boris]

I'm good, there's much that has changed since my last post, which I believe was some time in 2016. However, that would be far too long and boring, suffice it to say I'm mostly excited for my career change in the near future.

It's time for me to move on from what I've been doing for the past six years and whilst I appreciate people within that career path might say it's no time at all; we all have to leave at some point.

As such, I'm also planning at getting back to writing (aren't we all?) as I've seldom been able to do some, or been far too undisciplined to do any.

[Rob P]

Hey Boris!

Glad to hear that things are on the up regarding your career. Feel free to say as much or as little as you want about that sort of thing.

I'm also feeling like i've got time for fiction writing again. Perhaps, if there is enough interest, a bunch of us can do something on the competition section of the forum. I've always been a fan of taking part in RIAR both from a writing and reading POV.

[Boris]

Rob,

The work 'thing' is one of those decisions that have people either scratching their heads going "Why ARE you going?"

And then either not listening or not implementing anything, or indeed taking it as 'natural wastage' I believe the comment was. The interview with said person, which required 'booking' and such lasted five minutes as he had run late with the previous two people. He looked at my credentials, I said "Yes." respectfully enough, he read out my justification, agreed because it was/is/continues to be my decision and was told it would be endorsed.

It also has people backing me up saying if they were not pension trapped or had a house and such already, they too would jump ship.

I have no problem, overall, with the establishment. It's developed me, made me financially stable, definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone. But for all that, the one thingbit cannot to much to the annoyance of my wife and I; is plan, prepare, all those P's.

I understand the whole "Things change." "Fastball incoming." Etc etc. The trouble I have found is expecting the worst and still being disappointed. Quite literally, not even figuratively.

I therefore made the decision, for better or worse to make my own path outside a completely rigid structure. It wasn't the whole "It's me and the dog OR the job." But I didn't want it to come to that. I've enjoyed what I have done, but I don't think it's worth that much.

I may, in a year or two, come back. Full of tales of how the other side isn't so green, how you have to earn your living. However if I won't do it, I will on sit on it.

It's possibly what's driving an agglomeration of ideas for what might at this rate become novel length. Nothing is put down. That's my main downfall, not actually writing. Or making time. Silly of me really.

So, long story short. New job, new writing.

[Xisor]

The motivation to hump ship, as you describe, Boris, is hugely relatable. For a lot of people that sort of thing is a wistful annoyance - describable and disliked, but ultimately tolerable. For other people, it's tolerable in the short term, but it erodes the spirit longer term. I certainly found that.

For me, the move was 100% correct, but exposed some other details that I'm still trying to stabilise (plate-spinning is a fine analogy: now I can see that at least one of my remaining plates is actually a spinning teapot full of tea. I like tea, but keeping it spinning is a dubious endeavour, so it's necessitating a bit more... investigation. And breaks the analogy.)

Suffice to say: hasn't worked out perfectly, but in terms of the decisions that were available, it was 100% the useful one. (As best I can see. Speculating on alternate realities isn't entirely my forté...)

----

I had an utterly lovely time at BLL this weekend. Exhausting, but deary me a really nice time. Wish more of the old faces were about, but catching Rawne, Shadowhawk, and Schafer, amongst many others, is always a treat.

Post-con blues certainly kicked in hard come Monday, but I think it's definitely worth it. (If only the Bolthole were an evening-hours cafe just a few doors down from everyone...)

[Boris]

So far, granted the process isn't completed until January, it's the best decision for myself out of a number.

Part of me does think I might not find the banter or terrible jobs you do because "It's your job..."

However, the show must go on.

--

Good to know BLL went well. It is indeed a shame it's not a cafe as you say. I'll have endeavour to try next year.

[Therion]

Completely exhausted. Having trouble with basic stuff like taking a shower before going to bed and making breakfast lately. I'm just so sick and tired of it all.
Like, 2014, 2015 and 2016 took such a toll on me that's just inhumane.
Constantly not knowing if I'll be alive next few months.

God, I hate these ableist starvation worshipping normies so much.

Anyone who thinks that victims of psychological liquidation should suffer in poverty and be constantly threatened with starvation instead of receiving awesome compensations and high quality help in recovery from the society and disabled (even partially - like in becoming a burger flipper instead of engineer) victims of psychological liquidation receiving generous disability pensions based on native IQ is my mortal enemy.

I hate normies 1000x more than the abusers who originally deprived me of my health in primary school. It's because normies have this mindless fanatical hatred for justice and for victims of psychological liquidation and love malnutrition. Starvation is forbidden and victims of psychological liquidation (abuse leading to loss of mental health) must receive awesome compensations and high quality help in recovery from the society and disabled (even partially - like in becoming a burger flipper instead of engineer) victims of psychological liquidation must also receive generous disability pensions based on native IQ.

Normies are such hypocrites, they will virtue signal opposition traumatizing violence but then will gladly take part in further torture of traumatized victims - deny them help and compensations, mock them telling them to work hard, to get a job, to study, etc. despite that detrimental effects of trauma on memory, concentration, ability to function in day to day life, etc. are well known. God, I hate these enemies of justice and fanatical allies of bullies, rapists, paedophiles, racists, etc. I wish they could be brought to justice.

Even psychiatrists who research that stuff often compartmentalise everything they learn, like you have health problems that make you unable to regularly get to school on time/be on all lessons and they note them down but then they tell you that you haven’t internalized social norms because you’re getting late.

An obnoxious example of compartmentalisation is Big5 test that will decrease conscientiousness and agreeableness score when high neuroticism interferes functioning causing one to be unable to fulfil various duties and expectations and stuff.

[Therion]

My sleep cycle is a complete mess lately, even more than usual as I no longer sleep 8 hours in one block, but tend to wake up after 4+ hours. Yesterday I woke up at 0200, then I took a nap at 0730, woke up at 1200, then stayed up until 0600 then woke up at 1030. Something was blocking me from going to sleep and when I went to sleep, I couldn't fall asleep for some time.
I don't know.

Got stuck with learning web development. Was going forward in Applied Visual Design on freeCodeCamp until I got to CSS drawings and just lost all my momentum. That's besides all the stress of the Nazi threat lately. Managed to find a way to carry my Cold Steel Smatchet without being obvious about it, so I feel more confident when going out. If they'll attack me, I hope I'll be able to take at least one Nazi with me.

So far, I made this and uhh... this. Tried making another page and realised I have no idea how element boxes really work because I've put several blocks in a div and for some reason only one block counts as belonging to that that div O_o . It turned out that it's somehow related to float property of these blocks O_o . So, at least I know what to read about.

So, I'm still on stage where stuff I make is extremely crude.

Was planning to start working on website for my mother's company this month but from what I see, it will have to wait for the last month of the internship.
I can't seem to be able to build up studying 4 hours a day.

[Therion]

It’s very nice to go outside in the early morning.
Went to throw out the trash and spend a moment outside before everyone wakes up.
Managed to catch that quiet moment when only birds are heard and the car noise isn’t polluting everything.
Some parts of my backyards are very nice - like the trees and stuff. I wish there was more of them.

It certainly gives motivation to do throwing out trash.

I like waking up around 1 am a lot. Too bad I can’t have a stable sleep schedule and I always end up going to sleep and waking up all over the place.

I realised I lost momentum in learning because I'm not doing multiple topics concurrently - that way, I'd always have something to progress in, even if I'm stuck on something else.

Got back to learning GIMP as I guess I need to learn to make textures and stuff like that. It's good that I have amassed a small library of books on web design/development/graphics over last 5 years. They are very useful in my internship.

Got to solve the floating element problem. Turned out it's just messing up layout and I need to add another property to main div make it work.

Annoying that it's in day hours, because most natural for me is working during night when the noise ends. Day is so bothersome. Also, having to be awake during that time in case control comes which I just learned happens often. I'm tempted to go to psychiatrist and try to get diagnosed and get a sick leave for all the internship time - probably should do it because I'm not really in condition to do this. Just doing as much as I can, which isn't much. The truth is that I should be on disability pension, since, like, 2002.

Sucks a lot.Especially that my sleep hours shift from day to day. Often I can't fall asleep or feel dread of going to sleep. And of course not getting enough sleep causes my learning difficulties to get even worse than usual. Not to mention the pure suffering of not having enough sleep, somatic symptoms, etc.

I should go to psychiatrist to get diagnosed anyway, maybe get some therapy, but I have trouble writing down my life history, especially, making it sound acceptable to normies.

Anyway now I know why I couldn't get an internship for all these years and all the companies I was sent to apply to required experience despite that internship shouldn't require it. Basically it's like a full time job except that there needs to be a person assigned to oversee an intern all the time. So, basically, in reality it's just a burden. So for most of companies who do this it's just a scam where they get a full-value worker sponsored by the state.

Managed to do a lot today - besides learning how to do the float stuff right, I managed to read 9 pages of the GIMP book - learning about layout and drawing tools and do one exercise on freeCodeCamp. Then I was just exhausted and unable to continue. Had to nap for two hours.

One thing that annoys me is that I have hard time writing even internet posts. Unanswered posts pile up for months.

Today I went to post office and got one of the old titles I sold in 2017 - about Renault FT - 354 pages in hard cover, B5 format. Unlike many items I ordered online recently it arrived in perfect state. Clean, well packaged - the package was damaged but it had two layers of cardboard so the book arrived safe. Good because that bookstore has many titles that are OOP so I need them to get it right at the first time.
It pisses me off that so many people send out their items poorly packaged.

Anyway, somehow it doesn't really excite me. Even though I'm interested in war, perhaps in archetypal sense, I just can't really identify with that stuff, because they were all different types of people who had different strengths from me. For example not having dyspraxia.
If I'd be in military, I'd probably end up in propaganda department or maybe military journalism if they'd have some reasonable assignments or like Gomer Pyle if they don't. If I'd still have sense of humour, I'd probably end up in military entertainment section like Benny Hill or Flip Wilson. It's really far from what I was passionate about and I admire.
It kind of spoils military history as a hobby for me.

[Therion]

I realised that Somniphobia is a thing. I probably have it. Because I often feel a sort of dread of going to sleep. It's probably related to chronic insomnia that plagued me for, like 1,5 decade after the abuse in the end of primary school - I'd lie in bed for, like an hour, unable to sleep, often agitated.
Then there was that period when I had violent nightmares every night two years after the neo-nazi attacks in 2005.

I just feel like there's a barrier between me and going to sleep and dread. Partially also dread of ending the day. For a long time I feel like my days don't have 24 hours. Then there's the thing where future has so many threats that I don't really want to be transported 8 hours into it.

Like I went to take a nap at 1630, woke up at 2100. Now it's 0506, need to start internship at 0800.

EDIT:
Aaand it turned out it's because I couldn't get asleep anyway. Ended up reading a bit and then going to store and buying a lunch.

Ugh, now I'm sitting here before my computer completely mentally drained, not doing anything productive because of the severe under-sleeping when I could just go to sleep and learn when I'll wake up. Goddamned bureaucracy. I wish I could already get enough skills to be able to freelance and get money from customers instead EU programme.
Though I don't know if I will be able to get customers at all. Maybe I'll just wash dishes or bathroom. It wasn't washed for a long time.

[Xisor]

I can hugely, *hugely* relate to that, Therion. It's a description I could have written myself. (But not so concisely or illustratively! )

For a long time I feel like my days don't have 24 hours. Then there's the thing where future has so many threats that I don't really want to be transported 8 hours into it.

That's haunting, and incredibly accurate for me too!

(Though I'm so locked in the present that even vaguely contemplating future personal plans or details in anything other than a detached, "professional" way, has my mind rebel in horror; it's like I won't even tolerate the hint of the anxiety it might cause. [Or, more peculiarly: that I just had no sense of anxiety. Pretty certain I do though, But its a bit... distorted from how most everyone talk about it.])

----

Sleep has been one of the chief issues I've struggled with myself. I'm still erratic, and easily disrupted, but after about five years of trying various different tricks and things, something seems to have worked for me. (Though I'll be damned if I can say authoritatively what it is.)

My routine now is very much, not that it will necessarily be of huge interest:

1- awake between 6 & 7, usually thanks to a single alarm and no tolerance for the snooze button.

2- go for a swim via the 7am (first) bus. (Expensive, week to week, but I'm trying to justify it whimsical carelessness with money. If I try and say it's "making a sacrifice in other bits of my life because I know it's an investment in myself and self-care", I think I'd get the dry boaks.)

3- swim for a short time (2 breast, 8 front, 2 breast, 8 front, 2 breast), pushing myself as hard as I can each length. This also means most of my time in the water is spent puffing away at the end of the lane, chest heaving, trying to recover my breath. On the upside, this short time and low number of lengths means I don't have to spend too much time wrestling/dodging other swimmers, even at busy times.

4- I'm now in town so early that I can't do my usual 'vague wandering' (which inevitably ends up with me spending at least £2 on some tea in a cafe [or more, if cakes are involbed])

5- do the day's stuff: catch up with people; get back to the flat; off to appointments; meetings; work etc.

6- dinner between 5 & 7.30pm, no caffeine after 12 noon (unless almost zero sleep, in which case "break glass in case of emergencies", as late as 3pm, or if my whole schedule is out the window anyway [e.g. when my dad had a heart attack earlier this year, he's fine now thanks to Valencia {where he was for a few days on little holiday at his son-in-law's} healthcare], I'll have caffeine even after 3pm.)

7- try to avoid my phone/tablet/laptop as of 9pm (console games that are easy to set aside, e.g. Borderlands)

8- ideally, bed by 10pm (Or theatrically act out "blimey, this is late!" nonsense - try not to keep it internal to me, or set it aside to be dealt with later [spoiler: later could be years away for my subconscious].)

9- phone/tablet mostly forbidden from the bedroom, categorically when going to sleep. (I slipped up with this on Sunday evening, and with the UK Brexit minister resigning at 1130pm, I inadvertently stayed up following the news [and more significantly: twitter commentary!] Until a solid 2am)

Also I now drink lots of water. A laughable amount.

----

There's a good chance none of that has been responsible for better sleep, but it's certainly minimised potential disruptions to a Good Pattern[TM]

Also: whilst I'd hoped that fixing sleep and fixing my exercise (and to a lesser extent my weight and diet, but I don't *really* care about them, only in a vague intellectual sort of way - they don't motivate me much), might sort out other mental challenges I wrestled with...

They didn't. They helped, but it wasn't the sort of miraculous transformation that is often tantalisingly implied when people talk about exercise and sleep being important.

What was *really* useful was getting doctors to take my suspicions urgently. Not that they'd dismissed me either, but I think in their minds what I was presenting to them could easily be mixed up with "poor lifestyle" sort of things.

But when I could go to them and say

Look here, you patriarchal elitist benevolent scumbag who I want to help me!
I eat better than I've done in years, I sleep well, I exercise vigourously and regularly, and have done for months, *but* my mood is still atrocious, and my attention span is there's a squirrel outside the window, and my motivation is near-zero.
What are we going to do about it?

By then, the medical folks were quite able (and super enthusiastic/positive, not just officious and well meaning but stressed) to actually start getting to the "real" issues. (Not that those other issues aren't real, but that in my case they weren't the lone cause(s) of my woes).

------

Of course, my route round this sort of thing is fairly... meandering.

One of the key factors that this has all highlighted to me is that, whilst I am fairly educated and not without the little grey cells, I was unwittingly but absolutely atrocious at studying things *properly*.

(And one of the saddest lessons to accept, for the time being, is that I should probably stop trying to study as I did before. To, as the little hermit on Dagobah says "unlearn what you have learned", in technique, at least - mostly because it was wall-to-wall bad habits.)

I was doing things and things were going into my brain, but that wasn't the first things causing the second!

Which is bloody annoying, because I like studying and I like learning. But I'm resolved, on that front at least, to set it aside as "out of service", at least I until such a time as I can overcome, demolish, repair or otherwise salvage those bad habits into material or fuel to set up some new, ideally *good* habits.

But the jury's still out.

[Therion]

Whoa, found this post from 22 May, this year when I was looking for the post I was writing for the what are you reading thread XD . Cool. I thought it was gone during one of browser restarts but it was still there!




I recently got into that EU programme for increasing qualifications. A web design course with EU-sponsored internship. I finished the course, learned some new things that no one told me before - like for example most of webpages nowadays are based on Wordpress. Whoa. I didn't even know it can be used for anything other for blogs and it apparently powers 75% of websites out there.

I got 360pln of a student stipend which I could all spend. Annoyingly the course was just 55 hours long and it was paid by hour - what is weird that a forklift truck driving course was 192 hours long - what? There's absolutely no reason why a web design course would be less than 200 hours long if the ones setting up the course know what they are doing.
Like there was no computer graphics part, just basics of basics of HTML and CSS and Wordpress.

Ended up spending all of it the day I got it. Day before I got it I was trying out to figure out if I could browse online courses on ebook readers because browsing the text-heavy ones on smartphone or computer screen is awful. I was considering spending everything on an ebook reader but it turned out browsing internet on low-mid end ones, even Kindle 8 is absolutely awful. Also I realised my ebook reader has much more pleasant browsing due to the screen not flashing horribly when turning pages which happens even on the Kindle. I guess that’s why it has power consumption closer to a smartphone than to a typical ebook reader.

So, I decided against it.

So I ordered a proper HTML and CSS manual to have something about it to read in bed and in coffee shops. It’s HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites. It’s somewhat dated but it’s a beast of a book with all pages in colour.

I was thinking about finally buying myself a big expensive book, like for example I Am Providence : The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft and donating the rest to one of Tumblr persons I follow that needs help, but then I realised I already ordered the web design textbook, so I resigned from buying the big book.

Today when I finally got the money I started out ordering from abroad. I ordered the first volume of The Flowers of Evil - Complete manga. I’m looking forward to finally holding that amazing manga in my hands.

I also ordered Nicoletto Giganti’s the School of the Sword : A New Translation by Aaron Taylor Miedema. Mainly because I recently realised what a brutal-looking beast of a sword a rapier is. It’s a one handed sword and it’s long. For average person it’s about 120cm long, for me it would be about 140cm long.

Shit, if I’ll ever get out of this awful situation, I’ll buy myself a huge custom rapier.

I ordered two next volumes of Anaïs Nin diaries. This time in a local online bookstore which has an up to 35% promotion on many books. The last time I ordered a journal on a local auction site, it arrived beaten up and with damaged front cover. I was too exhausted to return it or something.

I also bought myself a manga - Pietia which recently got published in Poland.

So, in the end, I had 1/4 of the starting sum left and I donated it as I intended. I'm a bit horrible with money, perhaps I shouldn't have bought another fencing book and donated more instead.
It's not much anyway, because of the sick insane ideology of inferiority of Polish work that haters of Justice and Equality so fanatically believe in. If my work would be considered equal to American like it really is, it would be 64$ but as it stands it was just 20$ which doesn't help much.
I hope more people helped. Though it's always doubts because lots of people on Tumblr are broke, especially followers of blogs about mental health.


Now there's the question of the internship. The way I see it, I need to use it to bridge the gap between a person vaguely knowing computer stuff to having some concrete skills. I want to use it to make a website for my mother's company and a portfolio. So, it includes learning a lot. I guess it would be easier while the world has a pause from trying to kill me.

The skill gap is a big problem. I'm not even sure how big because I don't even know how difficult learning web development is supposed to be for a non-disabled person. Today I was reading while drinking a latte and I've read, like two pages in half-an-hour. I checked out the reviews of the book to day to make sure if I'm not wasting time reading it, but it had very high reviews, one thing that struck me was someone mentioning

I kinda wasted 2017, because I was doing too difficult stuff like the systematic program design course because I wanted to make the mass shooting game and kinda lost sight of the goal of doing web development I had before.

[Therion]

I'm reading about plans for WWIII lately, mainly because I got myself into beta-testing wargame set in that period. I find the subject extremely disturbing, disgusting, I would even say.
All these powermongerers planning to murder hundreds of millions of people, to destroy cities. Absolutely revolting.

It's interesting, how ghoulish our hobby is. Fascination with abominable inhuman evil, even to the point where we feel need to create and seek tales of evils and depravities that don't even exist.

When I play wargames lately, I find the act of creating a mission on terrain including human dwellings most offputting and disturbing.

[Rob P]

I'm reading about plans for WWIII lately, mainly because I got myself into beta-testing wargame set in that period. I find the subject extremely disturbing, disgusting, I would even say.
All these powermongerers planning to murder hundreds of millions of people, to destroy cities. Absolutely revolting.

It's interesting, how ghoulish our hobby is. Fascination with abominable inhuman evil, even to the point where we feel need to create and seek tales of evils and depravities that don't even exist.

When I play wargames lately, I find the act of creating a mission on terrain including human dwellings most offputting and disturbing.

When I read certain books I'll read something really disturbing that puts me off it. I then have a moment where i'm like ít's just fiction'. And then sometime later i'll think ít might just be fiction, but someone had to think that into being and then someone else had to approve that'.

Then again, I could be playing something like Warcraft and although I might literally kill a thousand things during a sessions, it's just a game, right? Do games need moral lessons or are they just time wasting things. In the context of games and films the killing is often just the medium of progress rather that something that makes you pause.

On Topic: I'm in limbo a bit at work at the mo. It's occasionally getting me down for reasons I don't want to discuss at the moment. However, something exciting might be happening for me later in the year.

[Therion]

Then again, I could be playing something like Warcraft and although I might literally kill a thousand things during a sessions, it's just a game, right? Do games need moral lessons or are they just time wasting things. In the context of games and films the killing is often just the medium of progress rather that something that makes you pause.

Games primarily tell stories and provide experiences. In case of wargames, first person shooters, etc. it's about killing. It's not a side effect for abstract concepts like "medium of progress". Killing is essence of these games.
One thing is that one wants to waste time watching/hearing bloodshed instead of less traumatic content. That's why I say it's a ghoulish hobby.

When I read certain books I'll read something really disturbing that puts me off it. I then have a moment where i'm like ít's just fiction'. And then sometime later i'll think ít might just be fiction, but someone had to think that into being and then someone else had to approve that'.

Fundamental problem is that a part of the hobby is drastic widening what isn't disturbing. It's one thing that I learned when I took a year long vacation from it.

[Xisor]

I'm pretty certain that the fundamental elements are peril and thrill, that death and killing is ancillary (but not exactly uncommon) to that. Else games like Football Manager, the Sims, Pokemon Go, and Rocket League really wouldn't be as successful as they are. (And less benignly why bloodsports persist, but idly killing animals for the hell of it isn't a day to day activity everybody indulges in at the drop of a hat.)

Nevertheless, I think you're right that as a species, we're perhaps a bit more ghoulish than you'd imagine from how we describe ourselves.

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Incidentally, I met a guy at a tearoom today, in passing whilst in the queue for a table, who was (to my ill-trained eyes) fairly severely autistic, and his parents were struggling slightly with frayed nerves/tempers due to the unholy heat and humidity in England. I digress.

Chatted away with him quite comfortably, which I think was a bit of a relief to his parents, but it did open up a long line of other thoughts that had vaguely percolated over the years. A hop skip and a jump from that and just some minutes ago I read through this article on autism's presentation in women, amongst a huge other line of thoughts.

It's very interesting, and not something widely discussed, but whilst it's fairly academic the topic isn't at all dry (really fascinating, and not to mention moving observations), and as a qualitative study even the data is fairly accessible.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 016-2872-8