Sargon of ACAB

Sure, but that doesn’t change my points in any way.

I don’t live in the US so my assessment might be completely off here, but with protests like this you shouldn’t hope for the more radical positions. If you’re more radical yourself this can be annoying or feel like it serves no purpose and I get that. It still provides opportunities for us.

There’s two main reasons I advocate for showing up at things like this:

1. Treat it like a networking event. Go talk to people, hand out flyers, wave your flags, bring funny signs, hand out vegan cookies… As an anarchist I’m very much aware that most people never think about anarchists, and when they it’s rarely in a positive way. Protests like are an opportunity to get people to see, however briefly, that anarchists can be nice people with free cookies.

2. If or when things go poorly, like if the police or the far-right decides to escalate, I’d want people with experience there to provide assistance. Whether that’s taking up the front to defend others, yelling: “Walk! Don’t run!” while people are trying to get out of tear gas, handing out water so people can rinse out pepper spray (and telling people not to use milk), explaining how to handle a kettle, etc.

This was always something I struggled with.

It’s something I still struggle with. I’m getting better at accepting I’m tired almost all the time, but everything else I, much harder to accept.

I know fairness is irrelevant for this, but it just doesn’t feel right that I have carefully plan my most meaningful activies because I’ll be emotionless for two weeks if I do two protests in one week. Or that a date night could be ruined by an unexpected depressive period.

I sometimes wonder If I had everything I ever wanted would I actually be happy?

Happiness isn’t about having things, I think. Of course being in a situation in which you have your needs met helps. Financial security, a partner, housing, food, friends, etc. make it way easier.

But most of the moments in which I was “happiest” weren’t about “having” or the fulfilment of a specific desire. They were much more about experiencing community and feeling like I had agency.

As someone who has treatment-resistant depression: keep inviting your friend. Keep asking them for help when it makes sense to do so. Even if they cancel a lot or are quiet when they do show up. That’s helping a lot.

People need community.

It does.

I’ve experienced symptoms of depression for as long as I can remember. Over the years I tried a lot of different treatments, medication, therapy, etc. None of it ever worked.

I lost a lot of jobs and friendships because I simply didn’t have the energy to do the bare minimum. I divorced the love of my life in part because I could see how much my chronic illness was weighing on them.

I was never suicidal but I’ve frequently wished I was because that at least would provide me with an option to stop the unending apathy.

There’s never going to be a point in my life when I’m not depressed. I’m gonna have to be very disciplined and work hard to maintain a level of functioning that I consider suboptimal. Mistakes made when trying to judge how much energy something will take or those unavoidable times where you simply need to push yourself more than is comfortable will be setback that could take days or weeks to recover from.

But I have reached a point in which I’m content a lot more. I have a partner that loves me and they’re great. I’m a more-or-less reliable member of a local anarchist collective and people appreciate me and come to me for advice. They’re respectful of my limitations. I’ve been reading more and trying new hobbies. There’s people who love me and I love them.

I can look at a sunset and appreciate its beauty. Yesterday I was singing along with some punk rock while driving and kinda enjoyed it. I baked cookies to share with people and I look forward to handing them out. I found an empty snail shell on the street and it was pretty enough to make me smile.

Is my life amazing? No. Do I have to work very hard and be very disciplined to achieve what most people seem to have naturally? Yes. Have I reached the point where I think that work and discipline is worth it more often than not? Definitely.

The best advice I can give you is to do things anyway. Seek out things that are, at least in theory, fun or enjoyable. If there’s something you’d like to try out but it feels scary or not worth doing, try do it anyway. Look for what makes it easier.

Imagine the coolest possible future version of yourself. Try to take small steps to move in that direction. For me that was things like painting my nails, going to Pride, joining a protested, learning to wield a sword… For my partner this was dying their hair, going out to party, learning to make fire… However it looks to you: try to do it.

Living in Europe this is fairly easy te remember. None of the choices are great, but they definitely exist.

Installing something like Linux Mint or Ubuntu is fairly easy. The hardest part is probably creating the install media and that’s not particularly hard ei her.

If you don’t rely on specific software (like Adobe), using Linux is a good idea. I’d still advice not to mess with a computer you rely on and wait until you have sufficient time to troubleshoot something. Even if nothing goes wrong a new OS can still take a little getting used to.

Maybe “automation” wasn’t the correct term to use. I mostly meant predictive text suggestions, or your IDE handling boilerplate code and stuff like getters and setters. Maybe even auto-bracketing.

We’ve had predictive text and automation of boilerplate code for years without needing any generative AI.

Hostility towards what is now colloquially called AI seems very justified to me. The costs to society, especially the environmental ones, can’t be justified by the meagre “benefits” it purports to offer.

The biggest boons of generative AI I’ve see its champions mention (other than making horrifying imagery that makes someone feel like an artist with zero art involved) are cost-reduction and automating the “boring” parts.

The cost-reduction seems unsustainable and mostly exists because these companies are operating at an enormous loss. A lot of the automation already existed and those “boring” tasks where also opportunities for junior coders to learn their trade.

It doesn’t respond to what’s going on around me, but bone-conduction headphones do help me stay focused and can be used when interacting with others if you don’t make the music too loud.

they should obey Aerion over Egg, but Aerion is such an PITA that they wait for a tie breaker from someone who has even more seniority: Maekar or Baelor.

That’s how I interpreted it while watching. The guards were given orders they disagreed with so when they saw an opportunity to disobey they took it.