Gimble vice and a fleshlight?

People’s brains fall out of their heads on this one hey? Like wtf, you’re actually responsible for what you say seems pretty basic. Nobody is arguing for prosecuting anyone who expresses opinions, or what they earnestly believe to be true and communicate in good faith. Just, if you make shit up and people get hurt well then, you did that hey.

Hmmm lets examine this statement.

Isolated weird place, scary Russians, Russian stereotypes of intellectual game + tremendous violence.

Gee, it almost sounds like this is a too convenient racist lie. Any proof? The oldest reference just says ‘it totally happened’ and cites something I can’t access on Google books. It’s 20 years after the fact and not a primary source.

It’s a book about non monogamy and how to practice it in a considerate and sensitive manner.

She makes a handful of digital toys free. Slurs hurt real people. Keep this in context

Wrong!

No frotting the electricity

I’ve been called a tankie for just trying to be clear about what Marxism actually is. I would say I’m sympathetic to Marxists but not one. Having far stronger anarchist sympathies.

But you know, being critical of the usa or saying anything remotely positive about China/the ussr means you are either a Russian bot/op or a tankie.

I’m not calling anyone out. We all eat worse than we’d like to, exercise less than we feel we ought to, have a home messier than we’re pleased with, spend more time watching mindless tv than is really good for us or some analogous permutation of minor sins.

We’re apes trying to figure out how to use root digging and berry picking brains to navigate the lightbox of eternal distraction and a world of concrete, glass, and tedium. This shit is hard.

If you have similar experiences to my past ones then I hope you can draw comfort from knowing you’re not unique in your difficulties and it is possible (although life circumstances depending not always easy) to overcome them.

Sorry to hear that. I’ve quit quite a few things, as well as a long term weed habit in my early twenties and so here is what I have to say in no particular order:

• Understand yourself. Take a bit of time to think through how you feel about what you’re doing and why you do it. Have compassion here and look at the root causes, don’t be like “I vape and I don’t want to because I’m a garbage person with no willpower” or something nasty and unhelpful. For example with myself with weed I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really enjoy the effects overall, but it was a very comfortable way to alleviate boredom and the rebound anxiety and sleeplessness was difficult to handle.

• Based on the above figure out what you’re going to do about it. If you want to stop then have plans for handling anticipated barriers (if you can’t sleep don’t lie in bed being miserable. Have a book to read, a walk to go on, a show to binge or a friend to chat to etc). If you have particular triggers find ways to avoid them, raise the barrier to using weed by making it a pain to get/be reminded of. If you always vape when having a morning coffee maybe idk have a morning coffee at a cafe instead while you adjust.

• Understand it’s gonna suck a bit. It just is, there will be a period where you are restless and bored. Acceptance is powerful.

• Understand that there is no point in making it harder for yourself. Like yeah it’s going to suck a bit but there is no need to punish yourself. Have plans for stuff to do to replace it, have plans to alleviate the worst symptoms, pick up new hobbies, adjust your work schedule if you can (more or less, whatever makes it easier for you), change your space etc. Don’t just raw dog misery and hope to succeed. It’s ok to take a sedative the first couple of sleepless nights, or to lean on friends a bit, or be messy and late, or spend a weekend mindlessly videogaming or whatever.

• I strongly recommend exercise. Exercise helps manage stress and energy so much, it makes the brain dispense the happy chemicals, and it is time consuming but simple. Try find something you like to do. Again don’t force yourself to suffer. Long walks, swimming, running, cycling, lifting, climbing whatever takes your fancy.

• edit. Of course most of all: Almost nobody reliably succeeds at tasks on the first try. That is not weakness, that is life. Sometimes we get beginners luck and something comes naturally and easy, usually we have to fumble a few tries getting better each time. Plan to succeed, accepting lessons along the way. Every impulse resisted is confidence and experience, every stumbling block is an obstacle identified, every minute your body is normalising its chemistry. You cannot go backwards by trying.

I would quibble here and say that torture is actually an incredibly civilised act. I mean this not as an endorsement, but rather in the sense that only highly ‘civilised’ societies appear to have every carried out systematic torture. It seems to require a great deal of centralised, bureaucratic control in order to prevent instincts like empathy from preventing it.

It’s also worth pointing out that torture, as defined in a UN convention that is pretty broadly ratified is much broader than we normally think of it. It is defined as follows:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Which I think is food for thought. Portrail of torture is incredibly systemic in media, and I think we are numbed to it a great deal although I don’t know which way causality goes there. How many of you have seen cops handling someone roughly with the intent to hurt them or intimidating someone to make them pliable as routine ‘justice’? That is literally torture by a convention that it is highly likely the country they work for has ratified.

You topped my joke so hard you’re in orbit. Bra-fucking-vo, I’m in stitches.

I dunno what songs they’re singing but the lyrics seem a bit avant-garde

back in my day we just said SWIM unreservedly supports crimes.

Oh idk, fucksaws are pretty manly. Love a man that knows his way around a fucksaw.

Real men can shrug off any calibre not designed to punch through car engine blocks.

Shit, I hear that if you use enough power tools and watch enough sportsball even those liquid copper jet tank boomy things have a hard time getting through the protective crust of sawdust and testosterone.

quite frankly, if the repubs are allowed to make up stuff, so is everyone else.

Log off. Please log off, you are doing significant brain damage to yourself.

Jet fuel can’t shoot steel BBs!

you need to lay off the petrol sniffing mate.

Yeah I imagine whatever your reasons it’s probably a pretty stressful to carry out a suicide attack.

Idk, I live in a place where guns that look scary are banned and my interest is blackpowder and old timey low calibre target shooting /shrug