I was out of work for over a year and jobs have been coming in again since two months. The many indications that this unholy shit bubble is finally bursting has me smiling, dancing and singing “The robot is dead, the robot is dead!”. I hate the AI hype with a passion, not just because of my work, but because of the ghastly slop we’re being exposed to everywhere online. I hope it disappears quickly into the same hole NFTs when to fuck off into.

Now before the billionaires come up with the next stupid hype can we at least eat a few of them?

Touch grass is what we need to do. I do as much as I can in my surroundings - raised beds, gardening, and sharing stuff with people. I work as much as I can in my local community. That’s how we beat this shit and keep our souls alive.

Yes I will fucking freak out. The planet is on fucking fire, people can’t afford basic groceries, species are dying - and some idiots insist in spending water, using energy and stealing people’s works using some fascist tech-bro’s doombot because AI is supposedly fun or convenient. I hate AI with a passion for all the reasons reasonable people keep explaining again, and again, and again: the environment, the copyright, the dark fascist agenda behind it. Soon enough I’ll lose patience with stupid AI bros who are going ‘but it’s just harmless fun’ and just screech into their ears at full volume in a last desperate attempt to wake up their shrinking GPTchat-fucked brains.

No, it’s not just a trigger. It’s just really that bad.

I feel you, I know what you mean. End of the world - as we know it. I hope that while everything comes tumbling down we re-learn how to be in community with others, humans and non-humans. I hope we re-learn how to be and not spend so much energy. The tiredness people feel these days seems to indicate that the great mother is taking care of that for us - nothing we have to do, just give in to feeling tired. In the meantime, I am coming to accept that together with many others I might die in this process of unraveling, but that’s not important.

Slow down, do less, achieve less, buy less, worry less. More casual hanging out with trees, birds and lizards in my neighborhood. Eat the rich.

I’m a translator, and we’ve been plagued by MT (machine translation) for years. A year ago translation jobs stopped completely and all I was offered was “Rating AI results”. I refused all of that garbage and turned temporally very poor. I went to shovel manure like a proper peasant to not have to engage with this shit. A year later translation seems to bounce back a bit, and I suspect art will do so as well. Most people can’t stand this slightly-off uncanny slop everywhere. It’s not just us artists and writers who react with almost visceral hate to this life-less soul-less crap. The hype will die down (don’t forget to diss it wherever you can in your free time!)

I believe a lot of the wellness stuff is to keep us functional in a sick world (I have used mindfulness to be more productive before and it has driven me into burnout), so I really don’t want to get obsessed about the wellness or fitness game. I also don’t want to be a fucking wreck at 55. Not always as chill as it seems. 😅

I’ve been looking into local plants as coffee substitutes, and made my own malt coffee once by sprouting and roasting grain. At the moment these are too time consuming for me, but I might get there at some point. I really don’t like being addicted to this colonial stuff, it’s wrong on so many levels, not just health.

I’d say it’s a solid 50/50 these days. If I force myself to follow ambitious plans, anything to do with what others might think of me, or socialize too much when I actually should be resting I will certainly regret it. I try to access my feelings and find out what really matters to me. Those are the things that make me feel more alive. Hard to find the difference but I’m getting better at it. Most FOMO can go fuck itself these days.

To create is even more important now. To fight this machine, this soul-less destruction. I’m more of a crafts person and only rarely a writer. Everything I do can be done by a machine faster and cheaper, so there is seems to be no reason to keep making it. A lot of the time I stare at my little felt figurines and my plant-dyed yarns and wonder why I even bother, and lately have stayed alive only because it would make my dad and my kid sad. But every now and then someone’s eyes get a certain sparkle when they see what I do. There’s life in it. My wonky basket contains life and love - the plastic basket with the fake wicker pattern does not. People at the moment can’t afford to buy my basket instead of the plastic one, but it has to exist to keep the real craft alive. We crafters, writers, artists, musicians need to keep alive the knowledge of how to make the real things. Some day it will matter again, I believe at some point the machine will eat itself.

Not very well, to be honest. I have replaced one or two of the many coffees I drink every day with herbal infusion because my joints have started rattling in the last few years. I add vegetables to my food often, and also use the herbs I grow on my balcony. I pray to the goddess that she permits my coffee habit for another few years. But also, I very rarely touch ultra processed foods, don’t drink soda or any other sugary drink, avoid stress (even most stuff considered ‘fun’ stress, like holidays and events) and try to not pollute my mind with too much bullshit. I don’t like being obsessed or make myself feel guilty about living in a very healthy way. Most of my wellness practice consists of doing whatever I feel like doing without worrying too much about it.

Got some of this as well, started with pain in the throat last week, I slept a lot for two days, came down with migraine a day after that, and the last week I have been mentally really unwell feeling more anxious and depressed than usual. Something is going round.

“Invasive seaweed” is not a very nice name to call UK tourists.

Lots of good advice here already, especially regarding IFS, which is a therapy approach that works with splitting one’s inner monologue into a conversation between different voices.

Since a lot of commenters seem to equate inner voices with schizophrenia or psychosis I’d like to let you (and them) know it’s not that unusual to have inner voices with different personalities! I found my inner voices very helpful to deal with my mental challenges and this never turned into anything uncontrollable. I had a similar very critical inner voice which I then recognized as mainly being my mother’s way of criticizing me - even after I went no contact with mom, she was still occupying space in my head telling me everything I did wrong.

The way out was really simple, CBT-based: a therapist reminded me to be kind to myself and I just practised - like giving myself an inner hug every time I used the unkind voice and remembering that kindness to myself is important (not beating myself up for being unkind!), and to avoid self-deprecating humour. It just took some time, maybe a year, and now I see clear improvements. The voice is pretty much gone. At the moment I have no need to separate into different voices and feel quite at home within myself. Hope you get there soon, you seem a be on a good path towards it!

I found it easier after understanding that everyone else is also struggling, everybody feels like they don’t have their shit together, and everybody needs help. There might be a few people who claim they have it all figured out, they are not the ones I want to take advice from because they are full of shit (often they are some guru type and/or just want your money).

Also helps to realize that a lot of people feel bad because things are bleak - we struggle with climate change, alienation at work, being disrooted, at the brink of yet another war … it’s objectively hard to live during these times. The only thing that makes it easier is talking to each other. A woman visited me yesterday, told me about her problems with her health and her main problem seemed to be that she feels unproductive and too tired to get the things done she believes she should be able to do. After telling her that on most days I was pleased with myself for simply getting up, feeding the cat and brushing my teeth, and that I know so many more people who tell me they feel like this, she was visibly relieved, and I was as well.

So when we talk to each other it helps to realize there’s nothing wrong with us personally - we are not failing at being a person, we are just reacting to the best of our abilities to an onslaught of trouble around us. Plus, when we talk to each other we often find out how we can help each other out in very practical ways - like sharing resources, supporting each other with our different strengths, ganging up together against the hardship. Community is how we can survive the hard times!

So is there someone in your life you can ask for help? Are you thinking about enlisting professional help like a doctor or therapist? What do you need right now?

The majority of German media reports as if Trump was a normal politician doing normal politics stuff. Where I would expect some voices calling out the absolute awfulness of human rights violations being committed and laws disregarded it all sounds like “This is fine! We might not agree, but there is nothing outrageous! He’s just a very silly guy who happens to be the president of the USA!” - It is absolutely chilling to not have any larger news outlets getting absolutely alarmed, all is just business as usual. But then it’s the same with Israel - “12345678 more children died in the ongoing conflict (we are not going to tell you that they were murdered and who did it)” instead of “Israel commits murder and genocide and needs to be stopped.”

Ah beautiful, that’s the way!

Not if you could express it in a more accessible way without loss of meaning, and especially not if you claim to want a broader public to opt into your cause. Mostly it’s smartassery. I understand that there’s situations where you want to speak about scientific topics and need specific terminology for precision, but this is definitely not it.

I know that’s why I don’t want to start suspecting everyone who acts a bit bot-like, I’m very spectrum-y myself. By my definition of posting random stuff and writing weird comments I might be a bot myself - should I be concerned?