I try to see (and taught my kid) these people as minor bosses in a RPG, training me for the tougher pit bosses, pointing out my weaknesses to work on and strengths to polish. It looks like we’re on the verge of confrontation with the final boss of our generation. Try to find your triggers and address the wounds. I believe in you, we are stronger together. I’m honored to be here with you, and now I’m off for my 14 hour+ day!

This is spot on, even domestically. Cue butterfly meme, is this American exceptionalism?

If USians ever decide to confront and properly address our collective shadow, we could create something exceptional, one day.

Exactly what I was planning to reply. Your department dean or favorite professor may be able to offer some pointers for application!

Why do scholarships scare you?

Sending love across the river for you and Mexico, sibling comrade.

I’m extremely worried about Mexico and Canada, although Columbia has been extremely blunt so I will say the South.

Hopefully NATO

I’m guessing musk’s offer of "free* starlink for a couple of months will be for spying and we really don’t know what other purposes, other than cutting it at crucial moments?

Requesting analyses from anyone knowledgeable, please and thank you.

Yes. I learned to just sit with them and feel them. I thought about being lonely vs fitting in with people who didn’t think like me, hold the same core values, and thrived on opportunism, one-upsmanship, alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity that denigrates women in general and equates a woman’s love to putting up with struggle love, non-consensual non-monogamy, passing around side chicks (among other people I won’t get into), STIs (and taking the blame for them when they are blameless), financial and physical abuse, parents who rear boys to be abusers and girls to be abused, because that’s the natural order of things.

I may or not be asd. But I think differently. I quit abandoning myself to show up for people who couldn’t give me the time of day unless I was useful to their messed up agendas and started showing up for myself. I quit drinking, doping (including prescriptions), and smoking cigarettes and reefer. I occasionally now indulge in a drink and nicotine vape is the last daily but it’s less and less, especially when I’m getting work. Substances are another way of abandoning myself, the self that was shamed for empathy and compassion. I started eating as healthily as I can according to time and budget. I cut out added sugars and sweeteners except for morning coffee, and add very little raw honey or molasses. I lie down early even if not sleeping or waking up during the night. I’m walking when time and weather permit. I don’t eat chips or candy anymore, occasionally a cookie, two at the most. I enjoy silence. I got to know the me I was running from, and I genuinely like that person. I forgave others and myself. I understood. But that doesn’t mean not letting abuse and exploitation continue. And I have comrades who are infinitely patient, seek to include and understand, and failing understanding, accept. Better these friends online than fake friends and family in 3D.

And I started being grateful. For my slum home, my hood, the sun on my face, my uncomfortable bed, the painted buntings, flutterbys, ladybugs, potable water, hot shower, and decent neighbors.

That’s my current, limited understanding.

Thank you for sharing that.

Are VPN free in China? Is there a cost barrier?

I am surrounded by turbolibs, even in my ethnic neighborhood. I say little unless it’s asking questions: why are the roads bad if we pay taxes? Why are food banks even a thing and we pay taxes? Why does our fire department not have fire fighters and we pay taxes? Why do the biggest water consumption businesses pay the same water bill as a single member household?

Let’s hope it holds.

I kept telling therapists I didn’t want a pill to make me feel better about crappy situations, I wanted people to roll up their sleeves and help me fix it. I finally got off all that crap with weed and am off that too. I also am wanting on energy the last year or so.

The careful positioning in so many arenas is making sense, now. They do plan to wage war in all of them, just not at once. All the strategic posts, tweets, and comments are for the surprise factor. I do hope our comrades and their governments are prepared and manage to stay safe.

Yes, I’m working on it, just currently at an impasse, seeking alternate routes.

People will respond to the change in material conditions.

I hope. I’m thinking I probably need to get more urban, but financial constraints and age deterioration are seriously messing with my creative solution process. But I seriously need to leave the Deep South because regular work hours turned out not to be for reasons I’ve discussed elsewhere. Also our jobs market is decimated.

It’s not very encouraging from the inside either.