I grew up with a lot of male cousins who loved watching sports. I understand that some people enjoy gambling for emotions, but I don't.
That's why I like books. Instead of gambling for feelings, a book takes my emotions on a journey, rips them to shreds in the middle in an unpredictable way, then grinds my feelings into a fine paste that they feed to their goat, which is sacrificed in a bloody feral ceremony whose carnage further defiles said emotional residue
Or you can …
A House of Dynamite (Netflix)
is an expertly crafted political thriller about living 18 minutes from nuclear annihilation.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it shares thematic DNA with two of her previous films, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.
The film tightens the tension in the first 18 minutes, releases it just enough to breathe, then resets and winds you up again—and then again.
There is no climax. That frustrates some viewers, but the ending makes the point: …
🧁 Tiny sugars in the brain disrupt emotional circuits, fueling depression
#brain
Kelce emotional after season finale at Arrowhead https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47415957/emotional-travis-kelce-praises-chiefs-possible-arrowhead-last-game
Filing: Oracle signed ~$150B of data center leases in the three months ending November 30, raising its total data center and cloud capacity commitments to $248B (Martin Peers/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/o
I don't think I'm ever going to enjoy gifts.
I can get why people would give them to children. After all, children don't have their own budget. However, I'm talking about occasional gifts, not a new toy every second week, because "we must outcompete the other grandparents". But to adults?
Once I've heard that you should gift people with what they won't buy themselves. Well, that's won't work for me. I'm a minimalist. If I don't need something, I don't want to have it. Unnecessary junk is only emotional burden to me.
I can get why you'd enjoy something handmade. But something people bought? If I need something, I can buy it myself, when I need it. And I definitely don't need people to prove to me that they never cared to learn who I am, and just buy whatever they like or whatever is "fashionable"; which usually means exactly the opposite of what I'd prefer (i.e. something minimalistic). Or even worse, I don't need people manipulating me through gifts.
Sweets? Besides my diabetes, I don't really enjoy expensive shit that people generally buy because it's what's advertised. For the money they waste on it, I'd buy three times as much sweets I'd actually enjoy.
Gift cards? Oh yes, "you aren't supposed to give money, so let's just give the equivalent of money that's actually worth less than money". Actual money? And here we reach the true nonsense; we exchange the same amount of money, so it's just pointless gesture. Unless one of us gives less money…
What I'd really like, as a gift? Maybe that people would finally bother accepting me as who I am. The absolute minimum of caring that I hate consumerism, and not fueling it "for me".
#AntiCapitalism #minimalism #ActuallyAutistic
Banana Shire’s recent history’s tied heavily to #coal, but they’ve pivoted towards #solar generation in the last couple of years. It’s great to see they’re following that up with environmentally responsible policy to mitigate landfill from solar generation, too.
And you don't need to accept the trap of authoritarian masculinity on logic alone, the proof is right there in male influencers like Andrew Tate and their followers. These dipshits get so obsessed with gatekeeping they don't realize that the gates they're tending keep them in, that the more walls they put up to protect their privilege, the smaller their identity can be. They huddle in tiny pens, terrified of crossing imaginary bounds that they imposed *on themselves.*
They have built their own torture chambers and locked themselves inside, and for what? They turn themselves into dragons, hoarding what they see as valuable while repressing every emotion including joy. And if they let themselves experience joy, they would, perhaps, realize that all these privileges are inconsistent with it. They might, perhaps, recognize that they have built up these privileges so they don't have to admit that their suffering and fear are not, in fact, admirable. They might have to face the fact that they have lived lives that are deeply pathetic, might have to face the fact that only empathy can give one access to deep satisfaction, might have to face the fact that they have lived their whole lives on a treadmill, going nowhere.
But I assume that they won't ever do that, because to do so would force them to face the enormity of the emotional debt, the pain and suffering they have inflicted on the world, and those are big feelings. It's far easier to hide in a hole, forever alone, making up silly rules to keep everyone inside scared and keep everyone outside from seeing in.