Puer Aeternus

"Jack (your buddy, the kangaroo)" Mateee, not sure if Jack knew about or agreed to this friendship. Maybe it just sensed a disturbance in your emotional matrix and like a good emotional support lizard ran to embrace you and make it all better again. And to think you didn't even nail paint its talons in gratitude, smh. Impressed nothings consumed you yet. Today I saw a squirrel, it hopped away after seeing me. Nature here wants no violence against me, maybe cause I am pure dominance. Or maybe cause I'm not in Straya, umm definitely that one..

I am curious if you can describe what the felt sense of your body is like? Can you explain in more detail what the disconnection would feel like? If you zoomed in on a body part like your stomach or palm of your hand, what is the texture sensation that would be experienced? Well, you definitely won't be feeling like a "normal brain" anytime soon. But things can only stay the same or get worse? You don't really know that. This is just imagining things will stay the same or degrade further. Could be true, but a switch could flip and things change in an instant too. You don't really know, even if that's what you've experienced for a long time now. On the last page, you talked more about your felt sense of disconnection which I definitely believe. But then you gave some scientific theory behind it, alas that is definitely not direct experience. I do wonder if this could be feeding this negatively tinted "well things just aren't going to change" story, "it's just my brain brother it's neurological." And I'm not trying to gaslight you and be like OHHH it's not true. Something IS indeed a brewing. Again, that felt sense is such MWAH chef's kiss very good shit. Ya just don't really know and that's okay. Ultimately what's going to happen is going to happen. Inshallah, I hope you wake up tomorrow and realize your true nature as infinite crocodilian. You abandoned society and frolick in a bog aligned with your true nature as a happy swamp puppy.

What a wicked survival dilemma. On average seven years to get a donor? Not only is there a risk of death, but it's probably going to be degrading their quality of life while they wait. Could be literally unbearable pain day in and out. Pain for those around them during this time. Plus no one really plans for it- it just happens, you could have family, responsibilities, etc and it's like WTF am I going to do about that? Also just not wanting to die in general, of course. It's iffy, but. Hot take, I might even be okay with people selling organs if there was a reasonable system where donors were compensated fairly and looked after medically after. But of course, this is some fantasyland scenario. Because it's the cartels, you might as well assume someone got murdered for the black market organ you'd be getting. There would basically be no way to tell if it was or not. Both donor and recipient are locked into desperation and are getting heavily ripped off on price. Plus where is the accountability that the organ would even remain functional, could just be all for nothing. Not like there's even some Yelp-esque website for airing out botched organ deliveries. Of course, if you needed an organ there's a good chance you'd be too emotionally compromised to consider it all. Some Latino guy who I've never met and from a country I've never been to has to die for me to get an organ. Hmm, I'm not going to face this reality but it's emotionally distant enough from me where I'll be able to pretend it didn't happen! "The cartel told me the organ was ethically sourced with love from a happy donor! "

Really makes you think if there can be genetic freaks in other animals that can give them abilities beyond what the typical for their species. Actually, thinking about it for more than two seconds. It seems perfectly possible. How many other empath gators are out there waddling around in the swamps, who knows!

@Hojo @cuteguy KISS! KISS! KISS! KISSSS!!!

Was fun test schloop that I haven't subjected myself in awhile. Not like all the questions were great, but when are they ever with these tests! Looking at the design of these flags does feel like an atrocity against my eyes though.

@Hojo How could such an allegedly cute guy not love you

Yup, to have faith is to trust the process. To be okay with failure, taking on the pain without such unnecessary suffering. When you don't have faith, you're just stuck in your head and in worry more. Catastophizing and nervously trying to plan for a future that will probably not come. Faith in trusting the process allows you to flow through obstacles more quickly, thus you get to success faster than if you were stuck in that resistance. The only issue is you can't really "choose" to have faith, at least immediately. Faith is something that is developed in time spent with yourself and lived experience. Intellectual understanding of faith is a beginning but not enough.

It's painful bordering on hilarious to witness. The last job I had was being a custodian at a high school. Going into the job, I just figured it would be super chill. Scrubbing toilets, disinfecting desks, etc. Why wouldn't people get along at such a simple job?! Oh hahough, how WRONG I was. First day introduction I come in with the facilities director (my boss's boss) and him and my direct supervisor start BEEFING right in front of my wee little eyes. Everyone at every level actively disliked each other and talked shit when the others weren't around. It was practically a mandatory every night occurrence that in the break room after everyone finished cleaning their area, there was time dedicated to waffling on about omg OUR SUPERVISOR IS SOOOO STUPID If it wasn't the supervisor, they'd find someone different to target. I tried being friends with a few of the ones that were my age to pass the time, but of course. They had the same affliction. Eventually I just got burned out from all the nonsense and quit. Which is extra funny, because half of them frequently yapped about their quitting fantasies. Yet months later I look at the school directory and they're all still working there! It really did baffle me. I'm sure my workplace was more on the toxic side, but WOW. The shit talking clip is infinite- these people could've kept spraying til their deaths and never run out of ammunition.

Muy interesante I guess as usual, you can't just say it's one thing. @Emerald thanks for chiming in with your direct experience of things, that it was never really perfect. That stuff like this has happened before in the past! It isn't just x thing, but rather all these things.. method of instruction, the effects of lockdown, addictive phones all have their own impact on some already innate level of talent. It doesn't affect people the same across the board but it DOES do something. We can replace one ingredient and make it more high quality, but if the others still suck. You're still gonna have problems.

@Hojo If you're suggesting it's a grand conspiracy to intentionally make kids/people dumber, I just don't think so. I'll never throw it out 100%. BUT I just think it's corruption and institutions being fallible. Definitely not helped with shall we say, the continuing movement into stage orange. There's always a risk of grifters and nefarious people hijacking things for their own personal benefit. I've studied too many different case studies and just see it happen over and over again. It's like a law of physics that people are just big silly idiots. Bribable, self-deceived, fearful, self-interested, naive. Most aren't quote on quote "bad people" but are just floating along on the whims of emotional and social influences they don't recognize. Absorbing information without many questions asked and struggling with the emotional weight of admitting "I was wrong" which many just never will. It's much more comforting to blame some small group of manipulative elites! Get rid of the guys at the top, it'll solve itself! Naaaah, reality is much more of a wicked beast to deal with than that. It's more fundamental. It is us.

Maaaaate. @Emotionalmosquito Hold yer horses there boss. I think this really goes deeper than just getting a nice paying job! That's certainly an ingredient to the solution. But you're missing that secret sauce sir. It seems like you have a good amount of emotionally baggage, that will be sticking with you on the ride even if you start making racks and rolling in dough. I meannnn, maaaaate what's this. And this. Like, where you hearing about this information? Are you directly experiencing it or is some guy telling you it online? Genuinely, where ya hearing it from? See, I used to be on the black pill. It's a tough place to be at! OmG women would never be attracted to me, I'm so ugly. It just is what it is and I'll never be loved like that. Took on many of the same ideas you probably have. Really I was just insecure, afraid of rejection, and not confident in who I was or expressing myself. Cause with time, I just found out it wasn't true. I mean, I'm uuuuuggggglyyyyy. Well, not that ugly but definitely medium-ugly and definitely pretty broke. Walking down public streets I don't inspire any geysers. Yet, enough women have become naturally attracted to me over the years for me to realize my black pill ideology wasn't real, I was the problem. These faulty beliefs in my head, the trauma of it all. Not every girl is looking for Chad with a six figure income. You don't need to go through thousands of women to find one that will want to love and bang the fuck out of ya! Sure, make more bread. Up your appearance game. It helps, but don't forget to work on the other stuff. Cause if you got that bread, but you're still walking around with that incel voice in your head. Then you're going to scare the hoes away!! Because it just isn't true and shows them you won't be able to understand what their true intentions are, only that you see this corrupted incel image of what women are in your head. Start deconstructing! Find out how your psychological problems tie into this all?🙏 I promise it's not all true! It's really tough stuff but you got this.

In the U.S. not only is there the attention span shortening brain rot BUT it goes deeper than just that. It's a very interesting case study. There's a good chance that many of these kids haven't been given any effective tools to learn to read. In the beginning you probably learned to read with phonics, AKA sounding out a word! The letters, the syllables, and it worked just fine. However, due to academic corruption this method has been undermined by a few academics who have introduced a newer, shittier method that is more just memorization and trying to guess the meaning using context. This new method creates a mirage of understanding. Some kids make it out okay, others fall behind- and can't really read. Can't really write. Of course because the theory is presented by PhDs and "experts" English teachers just eat it up and run it in their classrooms, it becomes standard curriculum mostly without much of a second thought. The inner circle of academics behind the new method monetize this and milk MILLIONS of dollars out of it. And of course, millions of American schoolchildren develop questionable reading abilities that could handicap them for the rest of their lives if not addressed. If you want to learn more about this, there's an investigative journalism podcast series on the subject. Highly recommend it. Here's a trailer for it! You can listen to the series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or this website. Sadly no YouTube. https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

Maybe I've been drinking too much gay frog water, but it simply makes too much sense. Frankly, I'm ready to be milked. To rapturously fall to my knees in an Amazon Warehouse and surrender my matrix battery to the elites to be consumed for infinity, with love. All is perfect after all, eh? Unless you've enough gusto and spiritual savior complex to free us from this matrix, Neo- err I mean, "Natasha".

@UpperMaster What language are you learning? What is the purpose for which you are trying to learn it? Reading, writing, speaking. Which are the most important to you? Honestly, I get the vibe that most classroom languages classes are kind of trash. So it wouldn't surprise me too much that it could be a struggle. Memorizing vocab lists, focusing on grammar but without really having the context, and having your learning directed by a professor and not the way you want it to be. Can REALLY slow things down. It isn't very efficient at all. Where is your greatest weakness with your language right now? How quickly do you learn other things? Can you remember them fairly quickly, or do you need lots of repetition? I think the biggest thing is to consume content. Keep consuming content. Keep letting it sink in, until day by day more puzzle pieces continue to click through pure repetition. Don't focus so hard on trying to make mental effort to memorize something but rather let it deep in via osmosis. Just make sure your contenr is in CONTEXT and you're not living on flashcards. You've probably got enough of a base where you can start with basic content right now. For vocab building I really like the mini stories from LingQ, you can review sentences easily and it will also read them to you for listening practice. It's a great way to hammer lots of vocab into your head up to an intermediate level! For listening, you can start by watching kids shows or soap operas. Something that is very visual, and very context heavy. You want to make sure that you understand enough for what's being said so that you can infer the meaning as well. Not only will it help you understand native speakers but can also build your vocab too. Once these become easy, you can keep leveling up to more interesting native content, makes the whole process more enjoyable! If you want speaking practice, hire. A. Tutor. From somewhere like iTalki! Having someone work with you one on one and be more attuned to your level just beats classroom instruction by a lot. You don't even have to have these sessions too often, but tutors can be cheaper than you'd think they would be. As for grammar, unless you have some specific academic pursuits. Or really need the A2/B1/B2 leveling thingy grammar can be a background pursuit. You probably are familiar with the basic already. Rather than actively studying it- use your grammar book more as a reference for the content you'll be consuming. Really cuts out the fluff this way! Also, if you're consuming content and continually stuck on something Google the grammar rule and watch the lightbulb turn on and an emotionally significant memory you won't forget will be created. Ultimately, it will be slower to learn your first language. But it doesn't have to take 4+ years like the other guys are saying unless you continue to use inefficient methods.. like that class you were taking! It can be done though, I wish you all the best on your journey!

@Insightful27 Glad I could help out! There's always a couple million things that could go wrong that we have no control over. Better to just start with what moves you and it won't be a wasted effort, even if it becomes obsolete in the future 🙏

I think I could love my chair a little more if I drilled big enough of a hole into it.

Honestly, I'm tired of these hyped up sky is falling because of AI predictions. Not to say it won't be disruptive, or cause major problems. I'm guessing it probably will. The truth is anyone making predictions about the future are mostly pulling it out of their asses. Ultimately, we are simple minds trying to understand complex systems and uncertainties. The more time you add, generally the less certain the details. AI fear, uncertainty, and doubt gets clicks and draws attention. Bold predictions for the future draws attention. We will lose all our jobs! The human mind will become obsolete! When it is really just a fearful dystopian fantasy. It probably won't come true. The most you can do is try to be flexible for whatever comes in the future. Use AI to your advantage if it makes sense to do so.

I wonder if therapeutic psychedelics could be a tool to crack open peoples minds and begin their healing. Doubt many of these vets would get into something like somatic therapy, IFS, woo woo/"unscientific" shadow work on their own. Whereas psychedelic therapy is comparatively more simple, ya just go overseas to a retreat, take a substance, and woosh it takes you on a trip. It's pretty low time commitment and the trip does the work. If they're open enough, they have a healing experience that they'll have to reconcile with all they've known before. It could truly be a gateway to doing further, deeper trauma work! That being said, in the US I bet the drug companies are going to fight tooth and nail for this to not happen, for as long as possible.

PFFFF. So true. The universe really likes to troll me in the most random, extreme, and unexpected ways sometimes though. So who knows 5 years maybe God will have chefed up basically me with a vag in the cosmic kitchen and will just toss her at me for a truly what the fuck moment. I never know! I must admit hearing people talk about wanting to have families makes me feel like I'm at the Pinnacle of autism sometimes. So many questions around it, so many behaviors that just confuse me to no end. Maybe you know more yourself, since you've been closer to it all! It is indeed, probably true though. I did fall in love once and it smacked my soul with a thousand life lessons, ow.. it hurt a lot. Because I was a big silly idiot and I needed it. Which definitely raised my standard- and makes it harder to repeat the process again. I suppose it probably will happen again, sometime. Definitely need to live more life first though!

Very interesting! A long term personal issue I've had is it feels like getting into a relationship will just further dick twist me deeper into material reality to provide for someone else's survival needs. The money, the socialization, etc. Which I'm not necessarily super interested in on my own, I'm more so interested in living out my own values and curiosities. I'd be happy live under someone's staircase like Harry Potter and eat bread loaves and milk for the rest of my life if I could do just that. To me it does seem like the two are at odds, and a romantic relationship would be very detrimental in many ways. And I do focus on that more than potential positives. At the same time, I do want to experience what it would be like. For some reason. I've somehow managed to juke wanting status, money, and children- but not this! Booo! Where do I even find someone who could tolerate such a boringly crazy person like myself bumbling about in the wild. I wonder how much I am bypassing versus being true to myself. No damn clue, guess I'm just trying to figure it out!

Hate, controversy, and conspiracy are emotional triggers that catch eyeballs and sell. This is an egregious and extreme example of how through their own policy, Facebook fueled local divisions and became a key ingredient in causing ethic cleansing. The lack of responsibility from was impressive. Creating policy that shifted a low tech nation from basically 0% phone users to 40%, all where a deal was struck so that Facebook comes pre-downloaded on every phone in the country. And further massive incentives are given for the use of their platform. To only have one moderator who speaks the language of the nation. To ignore warnings that things were getting out of control, that their platform was not only a vessel for but actively promoting hate and conspiracy against a national minority group. Yet, they still did nothing but brush the problem under the rug until it was too late.

Greetings! Long time lurker of this thread, I've pulled a lot of docs from here and figured it'd be a good time to make a contribution. I've always been interested in cultural documentaries and have accumulated a few over the years. Some may be historical, some may be eclectic, all I hope will give you a view of how different life can be in these different places. 1. The Death of Yugoslavia: https://youtu.be/bVUg-VoPAeA?si=rcVm3NB_gz9BCsSh One of the top documentaries I've ever watched. A nearly 5 hour long geo-political case study of the collapse of Yugoslavia (Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Slovenia, etc). Really lays out all the major events and interviews most of each country's leaders/political officials. How they all they all rationalize ethnically cleansing each other. Really shows how power political play out between stronger/weaker countries, propaganda is used, and collective ego. 2. When Algeria was French: https://youtu.be/Zer50bkr6hY?si=mqcahC1UUDrKHI-8 What if the Palestinians kicked the Israelis out and took back their land? In Algeria this kind of happened. The French invaded the land of Algeria and essentially turned its Arab population into second class citizens. This docu shows the build up/conflict leading to Arab Algerian independence. Highlights the stark contrast in living conditions between the two sides, how cultures can be too different to co-exist, and the naive attitude of the settlers. 3. Tokyo Noise: https://youtu.be/ga6ZwfsS1cA?si=ee4PQ235Mcy7dhu- Chaotic, grading, experimental. An artistic interview style documentary with a variety of characters. All about what it's like to live in Tokyo/be Japanese, peering into their minds and unraveling the mystery just a little bit. Manually turn on subtitles and definitely don't watch if you have epilepsy. 4. If you have not watched old Vice documentaries, you are missing out. They are all completely unhinged, entertaining, and give you a view of how radically different people live their lives. I'll link some of my favorites, the one on Liberia is particularly absurd. Prepare yourself for descriptions of extremely violent acts/sexual assault. 5 The Yogis of Tibet: https://youtu.be/GrWhX1BixBk?si=jDpwPWIxPs8yv6rk A docu packed with history and interviews looking into the monastic Buddhist society and traditions of Tibet. 6. The Act of Killing: https://youtu.be/4kJZb2Q1NmE?si=nJw_C10MtYCqe1VB A journey into the stage red mind. In Indonesia,1965, there was a government coup followed by period of communist paranoia where mass killings were carried out. This documentary takes gangsters/military junta members years later, interviewing them and having them recreate their crimes for film. Which they have no reservations about doing.. for them murder, rape, and corruption were normal, every day events and not a big deal. Graphic warning again. 7. Argentina's Economic Collapse https://youtu.be/0CzS6eHqtnQ?si=CQy2JmUwjwqkdj3O A modern history of how Argentina arrived in the 21st century before Millei. Absolutely getting fucked by a rotating cast of corrupt, greedy, incompetent politicians. This documentary really puts on display that toxic cycle of governmental deterioration. 8. Modern Pirates Are Still a Threat on The Coast of Africa https://youtu.be/cfh9suqsIPs?si=k9xee_7xiuKBfPmI You're born into a third world shit hole. Government is corrupt, no good jobs, nothing for you family. But you can make bank being a pirate, what will you do? Yes, this is about Somalia lol.

Yup, and Musk's lackey lost by a 10% margin in a state that went to Trump in the presidential election just a few months ago. Also a big Democratic swing in a deep red Florida district to replace Matt Gaetz. Just small indicators, but definitely pointing in a positive direction. People realizing they done fucked up, and Trump will probably only agitate them more. The conservatives are likely going to get deep fried in the midterms, assuming no tomfoolery goes down. Which is a big assumption. Two years can't go by fast enough.

@thedoorsareopen Hey man, I am in a pretty similar position to you maybe a little bit further along. You've just got to keep pushing along.. don't be afraid to feel into it. That's where the insights are. This whole thing is so, so, so stupid. I've started to become very detached from it all. I am determined to keep living the good life and finding more mental health/spiritual growth- This isn't going to stop me. I am doing my best to position for the stupidity wave.. and learning to read the news without having such a horrible reaction. Because we cannot stop this but we can get ready. In mind/spirit/plans! I have a few plans. But if they don't work out and things get really REALLY stupid.. like getting drafted to the army to occupy Canada/Greenland (lmfao). Then I've reached the point where I'll have no problem peacing out from this existence. Unlike America I will not go back if it ultimately comes down to that. This does not have to kill all your progress. This does not have to kill your happiness. You've made it very far and I hope you can keep up the good progress.