Alright. As I yield to yet another cannabis-laced existential crisis, picking idly, furiously, at my own damn identity and supposed role in whatever this place, space, realm is … Well, this hit me (pun shockingy not intended) and my current mental state so close to home, it’s not even funny. Except it is. In a bittersweet way, I love it.

I love this style of webcomic (bookcomic? lul) and I feel like I’m about to dive headlong into another beautifully depressing, identity-shattering rabbit hole like I did with Elan School.

Edit: I’d never seen this or the full book before, so if you do check out Elan School (which is non-fiction btw, at least in this reality, hahaha), be warned, it’s a lot longer than 22 pages. So worth it though. A wiiiild ride.

Alternative Protein … because sourcing your nutrients somewhat humanely from a farmed food animal is WOKE PROPAGANDA

She looks like she subsists on a diet made purely of literal crickets and collagen injections anyway. Gives her that hollow, sinewy vibe she likes so much. And with all that lean protein just sitting there, why would she not give the freshly slaughtered Cricket a little nibble? Waste not, want not after all. Now that is the conservative way, Kristi!

[I hate that I wrote this out and that I’m supposedly her constituent.]

Holy sheeps, I’m not the only one?! I know I need to get my butt off Windows, but oh my lordie, the slowness of typing feedback gets so bad on Word or Mail that it literally sometimes refuses to graphically acknowledge an entire short word, leaving the screen void of the word I know I just typed, until I backspace one measly letter and the word (minus the letter) finally shows up.

It is absolutely, unironically infuriating.

Don’t forget the rectum bleacher! You’ve gotta whiten up all your pearly bits when grooming personally with these here personal grooming products! From teeth whiteners to skin toners, nipple brighteners and our ever-popular melanin relaxers, they’re all conveniently listed in this one incredibly inconvenient list! No matter which parts of your body, which orifices, which end of your digestive tract you reeeally want to whiten up: Lighten Up, We’ve Got You (Un)Covered!®

Man, this is fucking rich, telling someone to hang with a better crowd, a crowd you couldn’t possibly know about, all the while insinuating they are trash and literally bringing them down.

Take a hard look at yourself, bud, and figure out which trash really needs to be taken out here.

I wonder if the effect would be akin to mixing every paint color and getting “super dark greyish black-brown” as a result.

My guess would be “super icy horrifying franken-fruit.”

It is just laziness and they have a blanket scapegoat to use to get out of doing their job if you walk in and are overweight.

(Please take the following as pondering general discussions of obesity between doctors/patients and not specifically directed at you.)

This was a really thought-provoking summary for me, your belief that doctors are telling people to lose weight out of “laziness.” If a suggestion like this is lazy, are patients who don’t listen to their doctor somehow not lazy?

The idea that doctors make weight a scapegoat seems prevalent in American healthcare (probably because we’re generally obese, myself included). It feels a lot like projection of one’s “laziness” (mentally it’s much more complex than that) onto a doctor, even though that doctor has probably seen hundreds of cases with the same predictable outcomes and knows that appropriate weight management would head off more serious treatment.

Frankly, I think doctors are anything but lazy when they are “forced” to order and perform risky and invasive treatments on a patient who refused to meet them halfway before the treatment became necessary in the first place. I get it, nobody likes being told what to do, especially when it seems (and literally is) so personal. But doctors also don’t like to be told what to do (“fix me!”) when a patient deigns even the gentlest suggestion to take some control of their issues at hand.

I am 15lbs into the obese BMI category myself, but 30lbs below my highest weight. The severity of my issues (joint pain, lethargy, depression, etc.) has palpably lessened losing that 30lbs very inconsistently over the last four years. If anything, I think doctors need to better read the psychological resistance many people have with weight loss and then illustrate to, rather than tell, patients how to attain weight loss in ways that don’t seem restrictive.

That 30lbs of mine, could I have done that in 30 weeks or fewer? Sure, but I didn’t want to feel perpetually hungry. In fact, I never even set a goal weight. Instead of thinking “Idgaf about my weight” or “I must lose 20lbs by Christmas!!” I just made the tiniest changes, the biggest one being taking advantage of times I wasn’t hungry by (gasp) not eating.

… Shit, I guess lazy weight loss works, too!

So I am still tapering off Zoloft since this “aha” realization only happened this week… Everyone please take my extra serotonin, please!!! (/s)

For real though, being depressed was its own terrifying animal and I hope anyone suspecting it gets the help they need. I’m glad I could work through it with meds and now therapy, but it’s crazy how delicate the balance needs to be with brain chemicals!

I had definitely thought that as well! But then I googled it and found there can be “major interactions” between Adderall and Zoloft, and that Adderall can actually affect serotonin (not sure if it promotes more serotonin or inhibits reuptake). It must be some kind of compounding effect?

But great point on the Zoloft! It seems it was definitely an OD factor, especially if there is more serotonin floating up there “naturally” and the re-uptake inhibition becomes way more effective. 😬

(I’m still actually dealing with tapering off Zoloft, but oh my gods I am so much less physically anxious already.)

On the flip side, too much of that sweet, sweet serotonin will fuck you up. At the very least, it’ll make you sweat like a stuck pig while you (unknowingly) begin tiptoeing toward the precipice of full-blown serotonin syndrome.

Source: Was on Adderall 30mg plus tiny 25mg Zoloft dose “for anxiety maintenance” for two years. Well, at some point this past fall and spring, I must have started making more serotonin naturally or magically idk, not a doctor or witch doctor. And I only recently reread the serotonin syndrome symptom shortlist and finally put two and two together. One’s face should not literally drip sweat walking around a 74° house to grab laundry and one’s heart rate should not be spiking to 160bpm merely attempting to put gotdamn makeup on that very same face, the face full of fuckin sweat fountains.

I wasn’t just maintaining my anxiety, I physically manifested my anxiety in all the worst ways.

Noooo!! You’ve managed to both unlock a core memory about some unnameable PBS show featuring clock-loving clown ladies AND INSTANTLY RUIN IT!!!

^wot in the nation of tarn^

And not to mention tough for their UNDERAGE CHILDREN!!!

^/s

I was sure that was a young Seinfeld until I zoomed in. Mixed feelings on this dude’s sexy sharpness now.

… He’d probably say he’s too young for me.

Maybe she could spin that, too? Like she’s a bad girl, “Muy 'Mala” or something. That probably has too much of a sexist bent to it (in taken like she needs to be punished, she could probably spin that back at Trump again too, in that he needs to be punished), and probably too “sexy” in some of the more positive associations (romantically “baaaad”).

But overall, it could capture an audience who appreciates the inclusion of simple and understandable bits of a language a huge facet of American people speak on the daily. I don’t know, like friendly bits of inclusion flying back in the face of grotesque, obtuse exclusion?

Edit: I am partaking a bit and my high ass thinks I should frame this. Like the next pillar in the Character Counts set or something. OMG does anyone remember Character Counts?? Fairness and responsibility first come to mind.

Just an FYI, although they aren’t physical products like this Roku, many apps and digital services have added the very same binding arbitration clauses recently.

The McDonald’s app for one. I ended up deleting the app after it tried to force me into binding arbitration and I didn’t want to go through to opt-out process for marginally cheaper, shitty food, so I just deleted the app altogether and haven’t eaten there since November.

Watch out for it if you drive for doordash or ubereats as well. I opted out of both, although they claimed you couldn’t opt out in an new contract when you didn’t before (a bunch of BS, if the current contract you are about to sign says it supercedes all others, you can’t make the lack of an opt-out on a previous contract hold up).

On-going services might make sense for these shitty enough clauses, but to be strong armed into it for physical product you bought free and clear … Disgusting.

It’s like all these companies are locking themselves down to minimize legal exposure because they know that their services and products are getting more awful or something.

Pardon my language, but holy balls. I knew AI was powerful and self-driving cars and five-second essays and convincing deep fakes and yada yada, but this … This is shaking me to my core. The refinement in composition, the surrealist allure, the subtle variations of cockroach positioning …

Gotdarn it’s too good.

Unfortunately there are young fucks (relatively) who do the same damn thing. In re: Kristi Noem, SD gov (if anyone hasn’t heard of her, she’s a potential running mate for Trump, and hasn’t paid an ounce of attention to her state since she was sworn in, in 2019). She flipped out when SD passed their recreational measure in 2020 and had the state supreme court overrule it with an incredibly flimsy argument essentially saying the measure wasn’t valid in the ballot as written (the state’s fault really, or was that “oversight” some kind of conspiracy?). Went against the majority, in a state where 2/3 of voters are Republican, forfeited millions in easy tax revenue, all to reject the will of the people simply because she doesn’t like it.

Party of small government and freedom, eh? Her words are like her lips: bloated and fake, fully ingenuine.

Not too bad! All things considered anyway. I started coming down with what turned out to be COVID last Thursday (sigh), 4 days after returning from an insanely fun time at Chicago’s Riot Fest (yay!). Lucky for me, it’s been the equivalent of a moderate cold, with much less fatigue and lack of desire to do literally anything than when I had it the first time 14 months ago. Then again, I slept well into Friday afternoon and now I can’t sleep again and it’s 4am CDT, oops.

Back to Riot Fest though… Oh man, I wish I could go back! Seeing 17 full sets from various punk rock, emo, indie, avant-garde, metal, post-hardcore bands was the highlight of my year. Turnstile, Death Cab for Cutie, Queens of the Stone Age, Mr. Bungle, AFI, and The Dresden Dolls were probably my favorite. Hawthorne Heights and Silverstein were solid, Bowling for Soup was surprisingly fun, and Death Grips was just inteeense. I’m really sad I missed Corey Feldman though, huehue.

Anywho, this is my first post ever on Lemmy. I have no idea how this will even show up (username? at something?) so this is fun. Cheers!