I have been in and out of college several times and I've failed physics twice already. My entire life has been on hold for the past 10 years because I have most of a degree except for physics. So here I fucking am, taking physics as an older and more mature adult. Surely I'll be able to make it work just this once. But no. The lab professor is the biggest hardass I've ever seen and I'm not even completing the non-lab homework at a sustainable rate because they're being hardcore about that too. At a community college this time of all places.

If I had a time machine I would go back in time and tell myself to never go to college ever under any circumstances. Even going to las vegas and gambling all my money away would have been a better choice. Even throwing fistfuls of $100 bills out of an airplane would have been a smarter financial decision. Even working at Walmart where those 15 cent raises eventually add up over the course of 10 years would have been a more lucrative career path.

Tl;dr fuck society

I was trying to help a male friend with his depression and the entire conversation quickly switched over into him ranting about how awful women are and how we won't give him sex and how we just use men to provide things.

I tried sympathizing and he went on and on about how we're just ice cold harpies who don't care about men.

He complained that his cortisol was high and it was all caused by being single and women were killing him.

I lost it and said 'scoop your adrenal glands out with a spoon then'.

Ooooooops. I could have handled that a lot better.

I can't seem to understand it. Day in and day out most of us wake up to clock-in for some bullshit product that creates waste and inflates the pockets of some bullshit board member? What the fuck is that? Don't give me the productive member of society rhetoric. How am I creating benefit to the world while simultaneously destroying it? You don't need that new model car. You don't need a smart-oven. Just like the livestock industry, we are born and urged to consume. We keep getting bigger, taller, stronger - but for what? We don't have any actual predatory threats except for ourselves, so why do we insist on strong-arming one another? The convenient excuse of the Human Condition? We developed critical intelligence and dextrous motor skills to engorge ourselves to extinction? Stupid. Stupid. STUPID.

Why does crunching imaginary numbers for a socially-engineered financial index get you "paid" more than feeding your local population, or delivering health-critical mail to someone's front door? Our existence collectively has placed our value in all the wrong places. I suppose Man's need to dominate all things prevails; our planet included. When will we stop raping our soil of cash crops to feed an industry that poisons our wells every day? There is no bastion for any precious material on Earth. Especially so for the hope of future generations.

The worst part? It's that I know I am part of the problem. I don't want to lose my comforts. So, I go back to my bullshit product and make wealth for some bullshit board member. This way, some day, I'll gain that 15% of my actual life to live with a neat variety of health issues to physically limit everything I've wanted to do in life before that moment. All the while, said board member will be able to replace internal organs in order to enjoy their sports yachts for much longer than I can even dream of.

Life is great. Thanks for listening.

When October 7th happened, it was horrifying and Reddit became a political warzone. People on Reddit were calling openly spreading hate and calling for genocide. I reported those users, because it was against Reddit TOS. I was banned for a week. None of those users were punished.

Over the next month, I was banned from every major news sub and beyond for speaking out against the IDF's actions in Israel. No comments I made broke subreddit rules or Reddit's TOS, but moderators banned and muted me anyway. I reported moderator abuse to Reddit and they ignored it.

This week, I reported multiple people again for calling for genocide. I was permanently banned for "report abuse" citing a report I made THREE WEEKS prior with someone calling all Palestinians terrorists and advocating their murder. That user is still on the site and never punished.

Report abuse is meant to protect speech and discussion on Reddit, but it's being weaponized as a tool to silence criticism of Israel. Multiple appeals have been denied despite there being no justification and no violation of Reddit's rules.

My secondary account was banned ("ban evasion") the moment I commented in a sub from which my primary was unjustly banned for commenting negatively on the IDF. Reddit is refusing to honor its own rules and actively oppressing speech its administration doesn't agree with.

1. I establish username, pwd, and provide an email address

✅

Looks good so far but all goes silent and they don't send me a verification email.

2. next day I try to login using the credentials I established yesterday

🚫

"login invalid"

3. So I try to establish the same username password and email address I tried yesterday.

🚫

"user already exists"

4. So I try to log in using those credentials.

🚫

"incorrect login credentials"

5. So I come up with a whole new username and a whole new email address. I try this with that instance and it takes me back through steps 1-5. So I try it with a different instance and it takes me back through steps 1-5. Over and over again. For months

The only instance that has ever let me in is dot world but they are glitching so hard lately and I want to join a new instance. I'm trying!

My wife and I share a vehicle and it needed to be dropped off at the shop. I brought my bicycle with me to bike back while it’s getting worked on. Biking back I tried not to take many traffic lights, but there are two that are inevitable. The lane splits into a right and left turn lane, so I take into the left lane. Someone honks behind me but I couldn’t tell if it was directed at me. I made the turn and someone pulled up next to me and said “You gotta signal buddy!” I said, “I was in the left lane?”

It looked like he was texting and driving, didn’t see me until the last second and thought, “he should not have been in my way.” Fucking self-titled people throughout the day are just annoying. Get off your God damned phone and pay attention to the road, and don’t pretend like it’s someone else’s fault.

They send a shit ton of letters and texts, call me damn near every day and even had the nerve to show up at my door! I get that my address is public record but I feel it's a step too far to show up and interrupt my weekend to talk about politics. It honestly makes me not want to vote at all if all it does is make it look like open season to be persuaded.

I understand in person/public when people say "How are you?" they aren't seriously asking, well...I don't understand but I know it is a thing. However, in a online social group when they are having a "mental health check in" are you only allowed to say "fine" and move on?

I mean I am not going to unload but there is a lot bad right now, there is no silver lining for me right now, am I suppose to just act like all is good? I am not that good at lying and some of these people have known me a long time.

Am I too far off base to think the idea of a mental health check in is to talk with everyone else, share, commiserate, and find some relief in opening up?

Deep Breath, and done.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/4578562

My grandmother's sister went into the wheat drying room after hearing noises, assuming one of the kids had gotten in. Once inside, she heard a noise coming from a closet. Upon opening it, she discovered a man pointing a gun at her. The man panicked and shot at her head. He then grabbed her phone and started running out. Just then, everyone came out of their rooms, causing a lot of panic. As he ran towards the door within the chaos, my uncle and I grabbed our guns to chase him. He noticed this and yanked my 7-year-old cousin by the wrist, then jumped over the wall with the kid and escaped into the fields. We couldn't find him.

A few hours later, a ransom call demanded 10 million and insisted not to involve the cops. The father of the kid told him it was impossible to gather 10 million in a hurry. Later, he called the cops. The next morning, the guy called again, agreeing to 4 million and arranging a spot for the exchange. He told the father to come alone.

The next night, they managed to gather around 500,000 and went to the spot, the father and uncle, with the cops following and cutting off access to areas. There, the guy took the money and pointed to a figure in the dark, claiming that was the child, and then rode off.

Luckily, it was indeed the kid. Three hours later, we received a call from the cops that they had caught the guy. I forgot to mention that the cops were this efficient because the family knew all the political leaders of the area and had some ministers in their pockets.

We went to the station to check on the situation, and they had beaten the guy up pretty badly. It turns out we knew the guy; he happened to be the son of the land caretaker and had been the family's driver for a few years. His original intention was to steal some stuff from the house, but once he got caught, he improvised. His motivation was the fact that the family of the woman he wanted to marry asked for a 400,000 dowry, and he couldn't afford that.

I know it's not normal. It's something that needs therapy that I can't afford or get to fix. Most people don't sit there when there's a quiet moment thinking about how horrible of a person they are, pulling examples from throughout their life to reinforce just how much worse they've made the lives of everyone around them. I know it's not normal to need constant noise to try and keep your brain distracted enough to quiet those thoughts as much as possible. But I just wonder, what must that be like? What's it like to be normal where you can just enjoy a little peace in the silence without going through your biggest hits: regrets edition?

I know part of it's just being born broken because I was doing this shit when I was a little, little kid. But these days, I can't even blame bad luck when the reason there are so many examples at the ready is because of my history of terrible decisions and bad behavior. I had opportunities many beg for handed to me, and I squandered, wasted, or rudely refused every one of them until I got where I am now.

Every problem I face today is one of my own making. Every time I vent about it I'm reminded of that as people will come in and tell me how they were, "Just like you once, but I fixed myself up and got out of that, so you can too." But I can't. It's doable. Just not by me.

So instead, I sit here, day after day, just trying to make enough noise to drown out the regrets. But sometimes there isn't enough noise, it all boils up, and I'm left stewing in my regrets until it all runs dry and the process starts all over again.