UKMT March 2021 - Two Flags One Pole - The Something Awful Forums

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Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

josh04 posted:

"grokked" is the made-up cyberpunk term.

Stranger in a Strange Land isn't cyberpunk!!

edit dang double beaten

# ¿ Mar 8, 2021 16:13

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 13:54

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Comrade Fakename posted:

"Grok" is much worse than a cyberpunk term because tedious wankers unironically use it as if it means anything more than "understand".

sorry words mean different things comrade fakename

# ¿ Mar 8, 2021 16:20

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Cyril Sneeer posted:

Was waiting for the bus in pudding lane in maidstone on sunday. Ended up sat outside the models in the window of the local Warhammer.

Shop was closed but HOW can these models come to be THAT much??

Just pieces of Chinese plastic.

monetary value of consumer commodities is largely arbitrary

# ¿ Mar 8, 2021 17:24

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

kingturnip posted:

Second day of schools being back properly and the trains were too busy on the way home for social distancing to be possible.
We are all hosed.

same as it ever was
same as it ever was
same as it ever was
same as it ever was

# ¿ Mar 9, 2021 18:57

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

NotJustANumber99 posted:

My mum was an NHS physio and whenever I complained to her about my sporting injuries she never gave a poo poo.

haha same

# ¿ Mar 10, 2021 13:31

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

TreeTrunks posted:

This is no reflection of you, I don't know you, it's a reflection of how scary it is to be alone outdoors, as a woman, at night. I was told to put my door key in my fist to use as a weapon, just in case, when I walked home from an after junior school club in winter when it was getting darker outside.

My partner was literally today talking about how she and every other woman she knows was taught to do this, you're entirely right

# ¿ Mar 12, 2021 09:55

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Venomous posted:

the BBC continues its slow decline towards the unenviable status of state broadcaster: https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1370256264509464577?s=19

luv 2 live on rainy fash island, where even milquetoast left of centre comedy is just too spicy for our lovely authoritarian palates

# ¿ Mar 12, 2021 10:23

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Salisbury Snape posted:

Pretty sure in 33 years I've had no urge to kidnap or rape a women (or man) before or after 6pm

Ur a loving hero m8

# ¿ Mar 14, 2021 11:02

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

The Perfect Element posted:

I really feel like we're witnessing the death throes of boomerism and neoliberalism play out in front of us.

The way the press is ignoring the protests, the loving headline death threats against Harry and Meghan, its just all so febrile and mental, but all controlled by a dying media consumed primarily by people who are in their 60s or older.

Labour are haemorrhaging supporters because they have become the 'don't rock the boat' party, but eventually they or someone else will realise that they need the support of the next generation, who think that fascism and structural inequality are bad actually, and that will be the dominant philosophy.

So this descent into fascism we're experiencing now is a horrible, ugly spasm of a dying ideology, and it won't last.

We just have to hope it doesn't take too long, or claim too many victims before it ends.

(or all the above is bollocks, and we're all hosed)

Yeah no I don't mean to be a dick but we're all completely hosed.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2021 11:03

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Isomermaid posted:

Reckon that's how it's going to go, more and more though. The next pandemic, climate change... these are the things that are going to take us down, we won't get to live out our last days dying comfortably of old age with a loved one in a cottage in the woods. Its not how it should be, but I feel like it's hopeless. No point saving for the future if you can't save the future.

This is where I'm at, so I'm just trying to have fun while I can

# ¿ Mar 14, 2021 17:10

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Mebh posted:

I assume he's talking about retiring, voting tory, and using all the resources at ones disposal to maintain the status quo, drat everyone else.

And ensure the planet will be unlivable for their children and grandchildren also

# ¿ Mar 14, 2021 17:24

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

That's been obvious for like half a decade now

# ¿ Mar 15, 2021 11:46

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

we are a nation of hateful supine bootlickers, exhibit 45,775,320

# ¿ Mar 15, 2021 12:51

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

they're stupid, short sighted and concerned wholly with the short term

efb

# ¿ Mar 15, 2021 13:53

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Endjinneer posted:

There's a point made by Mark Blyth that the hypothetical average boomer is comfortably in the top 10%, but that's because the top 10% of boomers are the top 1% of wealth distribution.
Put another way, we're down on boomers because only 90% of them up poo poo creek with the rest of us. Meanwhile there's a lot of common ground we could have with them about accessible spaces, meaningful communities and good public transport.

sadly they're all too lead and daily mail poisoned to ever realise their situation

# ¿ Mar 15, 2021 15:26

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

forkboy84 posted:

Adam Buxton gave a platform to Malcolm Gladwell? loving public school boys.

As for the housing stuff, there's definitely affordable housing in relatively safe areas. But of course the trick is it has to be somewhere without much in the way of well paying jobs and also not desirable for holiday homes for rich pricks.

poo poo sucks, unless you are in a position to work from home and don't mind living in an area away from civilisation and with daily reminders of the cost of Thatcherism.

Yeah it sucked and he sucked

I love Buckles dearly but he is a deeply wet liberal who also likes to passive aggressively whinge about cancel culture and twitter spats all the loving time

# ¿ Mar 15, 2021 18:02

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Red Oktober posted:

I'm not a defender of this government at all and we know there was a huge amount of stuff they cocked up (and still are) around tracking and tracing, closing borders etc - but was this not the same as when they discovered the 'UK Strain' - that it was already in a few other places too, and the UK was the first one to put their hand up and say "erm, we have something new here"?

IIRC didn't we actually find patient zero for the UK strain, and it was some dude who somehow had it for so long that he produced a bunch of new variants on his own?

I might be eliding two different things, though

# ¿ Mar 15, 2021 18:29

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

literally looks like one of those preserved bog bodies

# ¿ Mar 16, 2021 12:49

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Borrovan posted:

You're not supposed to drink after giving blood

goes to your head quicker

# ¿ Mar 16, 2021 14:56

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

I've recently come to realise that despair is actively counter-revolutionary

Thanks therapy!

Edit and also Disco Elysium lol

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 09:59

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

nurmie posted:

I kinda do see a case for a country-wide alliance of localist, decidedly leftist parties that potentially could have a fighting chance against both the tories and the bloated shambling walking corpse that is Labour atm. Like if a bunch of X Independence Parties popped up all over, and managed to find some common ground among themselves while also focusing on local issues, that'd be cool. If they could be better than NIP in how they apparently handle disputes (seeing what happened to Rumda) that'd be even cooler.

Also, while I personally really dislike both nationalism and British state with its history, I'd be careful with wishing Yugoslavia upon it No matter how bad it seems now, state collapse can happen extremely fast and become extremely violent even faster, and trust me, that's much, much worse. I mean, things might eventually get better in a balkanized UK, but there's a good possibility many posters won't see it on account of violently dying in the process.

Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but I think there's a pretty good chance of violent death under a united UK for a lot of posters itt as well

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 10:57

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

TACD posted:

Do you have any anti-despair pointers because I think I might be in too deep at this point

I mean, yes, it's "go to therapy"

Choosing not to give in to despair and choosing to feel and try to embody revolutionary hope isn't a rational decision, so I can't give you, like, a logical argument as to why or how to do it. It's a case of finding or creating or reclaiming your own self and strength regardless of external events.

Super unironically I found this post incredibly helpful. Some of it may not make much sense if you've not played the game, but the gist of it is relevant to all defeated-feeling, broke-brained communists like us

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3899418&pagenumber=226&perpage=40#post501553265

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 11:22

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

forkboy84 posted:

Sadly a luxury not afforded to most people in this country.

Bobby Deluxe posted:

drat, that is a top tier post.

I'm glad therapy is working for you, it seemed like you were in a pretty bad place a while back. Therapy is a hell of a drug. Unfortunately it can be hard to see that moment of revelation if you're not there.

Ages ago one of my wife's friends shared a 'motivational' video by some YouTuber, Prince Ea. He was ranting about how he truly believes that everyone can just 'choose' one day to just get up and start fighting.

And it's very easy for people like him to say that, when they are in a position where their biology isn't letting them down, when they're not physically and mentally exhausted, when they have a non abusive / demotivating support network, when they have a decent income, or in the case of a lot of YouTube motivators like the geordie personal trainer my sister in law listens to, are coked up to the loving eyeballs.

When that motivation is precisely what someone is lacking, it really feels like telling someone trapped under rubble to 'just pull themselves out.'

Good therapy is a process of slowly unravelling destructive behaviours and can slowly, over time, help restore good routines and mental health practices. But it can only do that carefully and slowly.

Which is why it sucks that government policy runs completely contrary to this and says that if someone is not working, you give them a boot up the arse and if they stay down you keep kicking them until they move or 'stop being a statistic' as a euphamism for death.

I 100% agree with you both, to be clear, and I'm really, genuinely sorry if my post came off as glib. MH provision in this country is utterly atrocious and we live in a society fundamentally hostile to human flourishing and designed to elicit despair. I know that bootstraps is never going to be the answer.

TACD posted:

I�ve tried a few different therapists before and it seems like the field is just not geared to provide what I need � if I�m going to therapy it�s because I need advice on how to deal with my situation / issues, and therapy just asks me to think about things in a different way when thinking about these things inside and out is all I�ve been doing and is why I�m all hosed up lol

I also feel like the therapists I�ve seen end up getting annoyed with me because I�m not seeing the point they�re trying to obliquely make instead of just saying outright

It is a good post though

CBT or DBT seems more helpful for you, maybe? I'm the opposite, I didn't/don't need practical advice on what to do and how to deal, so the constant rounds of NHS CBT was more or less useless to me, which is why I'm blowing the last of my savings on an actual talk therapist. Turns out I needed to work out some pretty heavy stuff from my past, but it all seems to be different strokes.

EDIT oh and I'm not kidding, Disco Elysium was literally therapy for me, and I highly recommend it if you're a) a burnout practicing empty hedonism in the face of genuine, gaping loss, b) a communist who has been crushed by recent events into absolute despair, or c) all of the above + you have terrible/awesome dress sense

Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Mar 31, 2021

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 13:08

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Josef bugman posted:

I suppose the ultimate question is why to chose the healthy option. That and, ultimately, how can we make ourselves better people, even if we hate ourselves.

You can't really make yourself a genuinely better person if you hate yourself, bman, as I am finally discovering after twenty years of loving loathing myself

And if you're asking why to choose good over bad, then I guess my response to that would be what is it that makes you ask that question in the first place?

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 13:14

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Josef bugman posted:

To know what good and bad are and then to act upon that knowledge.

How can we know what the healthy option is as it were.

By your own logic why want to know in the first place? Why choose health over sickness?

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 14:03

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Josef bugman posted:

I suppose you could say its out of the desire to understand "stuff" in general? The idea of what constitutes healthy and sickness that can be applied both universally and particularly.

I suppose that, if one were to drill down deeply enough it becomes "to find meaning".

Why find meaning? Why is that preferable to not finding meaning?

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 14:15

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Josef bugman posted:

Because it is required to have Meaning in order to justify Being. I would personally argue that we cannot simply Exist as we are. It's such a ground level state of my own understanding that it is hard to really put into words.

Why does Being require justification? Being simply Is. And while I'm certainly not saying this about you yourself - because you're one of the sweetest people I know - the idea that you have to "justify your own existence" is laden with potentially fascististic overtones, and is in any case a category error, applying a subjective criteria to a purely objective phenomenon

(We should probably take this to discord, mate

but ultimately what I'm getting at is that the act or habit of obsessing over these questions - that have no solutions, really, except insofar as you choose one for yourself - is often the actual problem that requires a solution)

Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Mar 31, 2021

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 14:34

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

TACD posted:

Maybe! I connected well with Stoicism when I was reading about that and I understand that there's a lot of similarities between it and CBT (not so familiar with DBT), so perhaps that's something I should explore further.

I'm hardly an expert but from what I recall, DBT/REBT are, if anything, even closer to stoic philosophy. I sorta obliquely learned about the latter when I was reading a lot of Spinoza, there's broad overlap between all of em

EDIT I also got one of those fake HMRC calls, seems there's been a massive wave of em over the last few weeks

EDIT EDIT it wasn't Spinoza, it was Vonnegut, and the essay I was thinking of is also about Camus! Hittin' all the thread favourites. I'll send it you if you like

Barry Foster fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Mar 31, 2021

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 15:51

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 13:54

Barry Foster: Dec 24, 2007; What is going wrong with that one (face is longer than it should be)

Bobby Deluxe posted:

Counselling was frustrating because I felt the whole time like they were trying to get me to stop caring about the rest of the world's problems and concentrate on myself. Which I get it, you put your own oxygen mask on first, but I can't help but feel that when people are depressed because the world feels wrong to them, the solution is not to convince them to concentrate on themselves.

I was really leery about this as well and was getting a bit frustrated with the way my therapist kept bringing back my issues with the world back to me, but ultimately it's their job to help you, not the world. And at least for me it's been about learning the resilience necessary to deal with said lovely-rear end world to the best of my ability, which requires me letting go off all the nihilism and despair and bitterness and trying to connect in a more real way with other people and with myself.

Like, lots and lots and lots of people before us and around us have fought the good fight, not just relentlessly but with optimism and good cheer, and it's not like they're any less aware of the problems than we are. If you need to speak to a counsellor, it's because your problems are yours, if that makes sense? I can probably find a better way of putting that.

Oh, and much love and solidarity, trans-comrades (transrades?) :glomp:

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 17:20

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