I mean, whenever I hear an alarm I ignore it, because I just hear it so often. But what if instead we used these types of alarms for real emergencies? For example a personal alarm to protect yourself.

today’s the summer solstice (for the northern hemisphere), so tell me your favorite way to cool down while we’re watching the world burn. 🔥

hey beeple! I didn't quite know what to title this, I apologize.

feeling a bit insecure about what would be interesting to post about here on beehaw. so, I thought I'd ask, what kind of posts interest you in the communities you're involved in?

I personally like to learn a lot of things (provided I'm interested in the topic! school was not great for that) and like to learn from other people. for example, I'm recently dipping my toes into linux, and I've started doing things with self hosting (also linux...) as well as trying out new video games and such. I don't have many people to talk about these things with, so I'd like to turn to beehaw for this, but wanted to see if people are generally discouraged by seeing if 1) the same person is posting a lot of topics and 2) that person is a newbie to what they're posting about most of the time.

I know I can't "win it all" per se and have everyone enjoy that kind of thing. just wanted to post a general feeling out thread of how people feel I guess? I came from reddit (unfortunately) and am still trying to grasp what a community like this is open to. since my experience on reddit was not great.

I do want to post some other things and get feedback and possibly stir up discussion if that ends up happening! I'm trying to participate hahaha.

as an additional question, somewhat related, but is there a new hobby you've recently gotten into?

Reddit users are called Redditors, Tumblr has Tumblrinas, Lemmy has Lemmings, ~~Twitter has Twits~~...

I feel like Beehaw is separate enough from the rest of the Fediverse both in terms of ideals and the space you're trying to create and in terms of actually being separate (defederated) from many of the most popular Lemmy instances to deserve its own demonym. Beehaw users aren't just any old Lemmings. We should have our own word. What do you think it should be?

Reading the post and comments on Softbank plans to cancel out angry customer voices using AI made me think it could be an interesting topic to chat about.

I think the best support I received was in the chat application and service Slack. A competent, friendly human responds. I had two or three support inquiries with them.

The last issue I had in Slack was when I opened via try icon click my clipboard content was being pasted. I was surprised they were able to identify the issue which was due to a third-party application that had only just released with the issue a day earlier. Slack support was responsive with a first message before the solution, and fast to respond with the second message with the identified cause.

I'm not sure any stand out as particularly awful for me. [Kinda] Bad seems to be the norm. Sometimes bots sit in front of being able to write a message (my bank, I have to write the same inquiry a second time), sometimes the first response is automated or templated, sometimes the first response is automated and immediately but a human will follow up, sometimes you call and can hardly understand them because of accent or even awful intonation. Often you receive incompetent answers that don't respond to your message or issue. Sometimes they're unwilling or incapable of resolution or agreeable conclusions.

busy as always

Black history month has passed and gone. Pride month is in full effect. One wonders what marginalised group will be put on the chopping block, the next witch to be burned at the stake, the next symbolic month that celebrates their plight.

In Europe, the most discriminated group are the Roma people - also known as the "gypsies", but arguably, antisemitism is on the rise - largely thanks to Zionism, but I've also heard "the Jews run Hollywood" one too many times this year. I've sort of gotten re-woke, because I've also realised that I've failed one of my rhetorical heroes.

I watch Vaush (yes, I know - booo) and he recently had a video about using the pejorative "orc". If you check my comments, in various Ukranian communities, you'll see I've used that word a couple of times.

It speaks to a deeper issuer and a problem that is hard to focus on, simply because enemy mentality is on the rise, humanism is being subverted by naturalism, nationalist fascism is en vogue again. People are paying lip service to the honour system in a time of law and contracts.

I am a Norwegian. The first part of our constitution is weird, because it juxtaposes two things that could arguably be seen as opposed - since the former is traditionally associated with naturalism. "We hold that this country has it's values and morals in its Christian and humanist tradition."

I am a humanist, but in calling Russian conscripts "orcs", I abandoned this philosophy in a moment of catharsis. I have also been telling people to help Russians, that common Russians abroad should be empowered to oppose the Russian, nationalist regime. There's some cognitive dissonance in these stances.

I'm often drawn back to Martin Luther King when he spoke on non-violent protest. So many people flip on MLK when their violent revolutionary pops out of their gonads, when people with melanin content of the skin start to talk about Malcolm X and his attitude towards violent oppressors.

These people almost always forget Malcolm X's journey to Mecca and his change in philosophy upon returning to the US, but he was also assassinated shortly after, which means there is more media about Malcolm X before he went to Mecca than after.

But what he saw, despite rampant Islamophobia in the west, was all kinds of people praying and worshipping together, albeit not in the colours of the rainbow, but at the time it was something so diametrically opposed to what he had experienced in the US that it inspired and moved him deeply. One wonders what he could have said and done if his life wasn't cut short.

When MLK talked about non-violent protest, his stance was to not dehumanise your opponent, that the act of dehumanization makes you no better than your opponent, that you've intrinsically sacrificed your principles to fight the thing you might ultimately become.

MLK's rhetoric is still being taught in Norwegian schools, in both English and Norwegian language classes, studied for his powerful rhetoric. But I hope that his message and the philosophy of stoic humanism sets it's seed in the young mind, and I hope more people can see why dehumanization makes monsters of us all.

Thank you for reading.

Personally, While i appreciate the good moderation and have never had issues here. I have noticed that communities are a lot smaller when viewed from here?

Anyone else think here is a little too closed off?

"Plan to follow, look to overtake". That's quite a simple rule that should be taught to everyone. It's a nice instructional video they won't put drivers in the defensive.

Go give it a listen. It's this adorable little composition, and whoever the studio drummer was just went "fuck this being a friend shit I'm going to give these fuckers a god. damn. ending." And that he did. It seems like a super simple snare fill kind of moment but nope lol. Every time I hear it I just explode with joy.

Anybody care to share examples of this type of joy you experience in your life? Random little moments that might not get talked about a lot, but are a mainstay in your lived experience?

Were you to ask everyone who's known me to use five adjectives to describe me, I guarantee one that will not show up in the data is "sane."

But the first time I even considered the notion was waking up, disoriented, with a tube down my throat and a catheter in my cock, to say nothing of the spaghetti coming out of my arms. The electrodes, I had no opinion about.

It would still be a bit before I found out about the catheter, and the tube was only confirmed by way of a small mirror on the opposite wall of the ICU room I was in. And I had only one thought:

"Well, fuck. I can't even do that right."

This is, of course, the story that -- back in 2000, especially -- people wanted to hear to confirm the horror show of MDMA killing kids at raves. I also wanted them to at the time, so I did that thing where I wrote a column and ended up winning another fucking award from Columbia ... that's not a brag; a column about drug use ending in a suicide attempt is not really something one points to in interviews.

At the time, I was:

• working in the only role I could conceive wanting;
• pretty much done with the expectations of others;
• experiencing a level of freedom like never before; and (perhaps related)
• ~~single~~ not cohabitating.

These all apply today, though the second and third are way more of a heavy lift after college.

And so two weeks ago, when I rolled again in an anonymous group setting for the first time since -- look at all these comparable data points! -- the same thing should clearly have happened.

Spoiler: It didn't.

For the reasons I wanted to write that column all those years ago, I feel compelled to write this -- and it's Wednesday, so the parallelism works.

It's comparatively easy to write about the psychedelic experience when it's negative; you don't have to describe shit your audience doesn't understand. You're essentially a sympathetic character who admits they lost their way and regret the error, so society basically says, "I hope you learned your lesson."

At nearly 45, I have. It's not at all the one I was supposed to, and it took a quarter-century and psilocybin.

(This isn't exactly a beehive of conformity, so this is likely of little surprise to many. But indulge me in explaining why.)

The aspects I cited earlier are a mix of personal and interactive attributes, but they are all external facing. They are things others can glean from conversation; they are part of my persona; they are not me.

If you cannot understand the difference here, tread lightly with MDMA (not trying to be a dick; this is harm reduction, as I will be encouraging drug use later under the right circumstances).

For all the lip service I've gotten about how "you just need to love yourself" (like everybody else does, since it's so easy), what's been almost universally ellided is "no, no, you don't need to figure out who that is; that's what we're here for." Society, not the people you surround yourself with per se, though if both have the same goals, it's going to be a slog.

That's difficult to escape in adolescence. I met vanishingly few people who actually upheld the ideals of PLUR -- to be sure, there were some, but they tended to look askance at those of us looking to do increasing amounts of drugs without any goal of an epiphany.

Who needs one of those when you can find a cuddle pile? (Narrator: Powderhorn never could.)

The Matrix came out while I was a raver, so "I can only open the door; you have to walk through it" was already floating about in the national consciousness (and sampled in at least one otherwise unremarkable house track). To be exposed to the rave scene was not to become a raver ... necessary but insufficient.

And the girl who opened the door did so because she saw something in me that it would take, again, a quarter-century to figure out. But I was 17 and she was showing attention, so I totally misread it -- and it likely didn't hurt that if you'd asked me to sketch the ideal girl and I had any drawing skill just ahead of going to college?

I was in the rave scene for three reasons: She's really hot, I like oontz, and there are drugs.

Not ideal.

It wasn't all at once. We met in 1997 and went to a single party. She returned two years later, kicked off the weekly schedule (much to my live-in girlfriend's chagrin) since this time I had a car and forbade any of us (she had a couple of dormmates who became fixtures) from rolling. I gave her a ride to the airport one August Saturday, got back to the U-District and rounded up the dorm chicks for the trip to NAF.

We all knew damn well what the plan was.

And if I'd been able to accept what happened that night for what it was, things would likely look a lot different.

Instead, I tried forcing the rave scene and people I knew into the ideal I'd come up with. It's not me; it's them! As with alcoholism, this can work for a time, but there is a fuse.

So we get to June of the following year. By now, I'm rolling three times a week, because reality is way to depressing to actually handle. I'm behind a girl for a massive party (new convention center ... great idea! Drop ravers in a space replete with ATMs!) and when she turns around, there's that "well, she's going to teach me something" gut feeling.

Three weeks later, her screaming at me in my apartment for her "fucking car keys" (I'd provided the ride after she parked at my place; she left the party with another dude) set the wheels in motion for looking in that tiny mirror.

It's tempting to say I didn't push far enough during that period of my life, letting others still define my goals. And I retreated to the societally accepted comfort of drinking instead of those actually dangerous pills.

Where I pretty much stayed for a couple of decades, with a late branching out to adding pot. Talk about growth and personal development.

A few months into sobriety and after all manner of treatment for depression failed with rehab and several further suicide attempts in the rear view, I happened upon a review of Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind miniseries and of course then devoured it.

Here was a journalist I respected presenting information I didn't know. So I did a lot of research and started growing my own shrooms.

Three-and-a-half months later, it's time. The apartment is immaculate, and I have taken intentionality and being able to explain it as a simple statement to heart, so I ask that the rumination be taken away. That cruft, the background noise of self-doubt, the constant reminder of failure that you can dull with practice and concentration but cannot excise.

I'm not going to try to explain the ineffable; suffice to say, when I came to on the floor, I could hear the fridge and my cat sniffing at me. And nothing else.

The questions escalate over the course of several well-spaced trips. By this point, the visuals are actually more irritating than fun, as they're not what I'm here for. And they tell me one required point on my path -- what I want to do next -- but no way to get there.

This kicks off a year in which I slowly reject one layer after another of the expectations of others. I buy a van to live in because a rent hike ate my food budget; I'd already had to rehome the kitty. Having built out the van to survivable, I quit my soul-crushing job. I start hanging out with the old hippie who's been helping with the van. Though looking for work, I'm not feeling it at all ... all I can find is what I don't want, and dear fucking god, will y'all stop telling me I don't deserve better than a meaningless job with no direction that as a bonus barely services my debt? So I cut off a lot of people while literally living off charity and promising it will all become clear Soon™.

(This is where I like to fantasize I didn't go far enough in college, but I didn't have the spine.)

It's a rather isolating position, but the liberation makes up for it.

Unlike that first shroom trip, where the before and after were night and day, allowing me to explore without self-doubt -- not knowing who I am and therefore unable to be comfortable with myself, let alone love myself -- the journey of self-discovery felt glacial at times and perhaps mildly apparent at its most aggressive.

Life is certainly a journey, but finding out what that life looks like is very much a destination. Your life cannot begin until you're at the station. It's a life up to that point, in much the same way people delude themselves into thinking they're a sub between partners. (Like you're not going to get all switchy at some point! Pshaw!)

But once I landed -- and you'll absolutely know when you do if you've been there before, if only in your youth -- things became oddly easy and progressive. The job was one conversation with an old friend, sending a resume and a 30-minute phone interview. Despite my crippling social anxiety that characterized, well my entire life, I hit the ground running as a friendly but sometimes pushy reporter (yeah, the shrooms went for "your field, but nothing you've done before," which is to say I did, but metaphysics is beyond the scope of whatever noun applies to the current length of this post).

And then comes the regional burn, an offshoot of Burning Man, which said retired hippie bought my ticket for as part of his camp, gave me a ride to, made sure I was hydrated after eating some shrooms and pretty much left me to my own devices among 3,000 people who would be wearing less as the days wore on.

I'd be lying if I said the parallels between the raver and burner communities didn't sent a small pang of fear as I took my vape and beer with absolutely no idea where the fuck I was going. So, why was I at raves? Already on drugs; chick ain't here ... ooo ... those are some sweet beats.

And then I got it (remember what I ate). I was here because I was supposed to be here. Whatever happens is supposed to happen. What others give to me; what I give to others. We're all meant to interact as we do. There are no mistakes. It is all ephemeral and will not come again.

And I'd not read the burner literature.

But it was nothing if not logical to just pile on ... some MDMA here, obviously weed, usually with hash, plenty to drink, the occasional nitrous balloon, probably something else I'm forgetting. Putting me in the best actually furnished seat in the entire space for the culmination of the event as the effigy burns to the ground.

But the whole time I was there, because I'd decided someone else's life wasn't for me, I was present. I wasn't thinking about anything other than ... fuck, I really wasn't thinking, truth be told. I was just following whatever was shiny and meeting amazing people.

And I came away with it not with a sense of regret that it was over, but rather thankful that this was the beginning.

Be safe, but don't neglect yourself. This is likely insanely woo-woo, but it's my belief, and I can still write straight news and balance a checkbook. There is no dichotomy, even though I wish I could escape a couple more expectations!

(no time to edit; I've eaten into tonight's burner meetup already)

I'd like to draw everyone's attention to one of our first philosophical documents- the core principles document, "What is (and isn't) Beehaw". I'm going to zero in on a small portion in the middle of the first part here, because a recent discussion in the LGBTQ+ space got charged and, in a way, where a larger educational or explanation of what is acceptable/good/kind/nice behavior would be useful.

But how might one determine when it’s okay to be intolerant towards people you believe are being intolerant or who are being intolerant but doing so because they are uneducated or have not spent time deconstructing their own privilege?

Many philosophers have written extensively about this subject, and we simply don’t have time to write an entire manifesto. In simple terms, we are not advocating for tone policing. We believe that being outraged and angry at people who are destroying our society is a good thing to do. When the Supreme Court removes protections for abortion, it’s okay to be outraged and to take action into your own hands - they have done something intolerant. When someone advocates online that you don’t have the right to your own body, it’s okay to tell them to fuck off. In fact, we greatly encourage it. This is being intolerant to the intolerant.

However, when someone online shares an opinion and it feels like they might be intolerant and you jump to the conclusion that they are intolerant and you launch into a tirade at them, this is not nice behavior. You didn’t check if they have the opinion you think they have, and that’s simply not nice to someone which you don’t know.

The section above is about tone policing. Tone policing is a complicated subject, and the full level of nuance is once again outside the scope of this post, but I want to zero in on something that happened in this specific post and to deconstruct what was and wasn't appropriate be(e)havior.

The post in question was a joke in which the author (who I'm assuming is queer) made a joke about making Non-LGBT the minority. They included a winking emoji and an ellipsis to make it relatively clear that this was a joke. In the text of their post they simply wished the readers a happy pride month.

A fair number of individuals (queer and not) entered the thread to voice the opinion that they didn't enjoy the subtext of the post. In some cases, they immediately jumped to the conclusion that this person was advocating for persecuting non-LGBT folks. Some of these responses were tone policing and others were not. I think it's completely valid to respond to this by drawing comparisons to the persecution of queer folks throughout history and warn against persecution as a response to persecution (do not become your oppressors). However, even that is a bit of a jump of logic, as the person did not advocate for persecution at any point. One reasonable interpretation of the title is the suggestion that everyone should embrace whatever gayness they have, because being gay is not a negative or undesirable thing.

I want to zero in on what kind of behavior was tone policing so that folks who may not see where the tone policing is for whatever reason can more accurately identify and avoid that kind of behavior. The key sentence from the philosophical document above is the following one:

When someone advocates online that you don’t have the right to your own body, it’s okay to tell them to fuck off. In fact, we greatly encourage it. This is being intolerant to the intolerant.

This applies broadly to any form of discrimination. If you are a marginalized individual, you have leeway to express your frustration at the systems that oppress you. For example, people of color have the right to vent their frustration at white folks for the centuries of racial discrimination. It is not okay for a white person to jump in and say "you're being racist against whites" when they vent this frustration. If you see someone venting against any system of power you better do a really damn good job at paying attention to the precise language being used and you are absolutely required to be giving this person a reasonable runway of good faith before assuming that they are doing anything but venting their frustration. It is not okay to come in and assume ill intent, to put words into their mouth, or to start a fight with them in one of the few spaces they can freely vent their negative emotions because in many public spaces they are accosted by this kind of behavior (tone policing) frequently.

To be clear, this does not mean that we are giving anyone a free pass at expressing a hateful or intolerant viewpoint. We strongly believe in the paradox of tolerance here and therefore messages which are intolerant towards people who are intolerant are encouraged. You are free to advocate for punching nazis. This is because it is impossible to be a nazi without having an intolerant view of the world. However, sometimes people make statements that could be interpreted as venting about intolerant folks or advocating for an intolerant viewpoint. So, what do you do to help this space feel nice and want to find out whether the message they are spreading is actually intolerant?

The following are a list of ways in which you can ensure to maintain good faith or get more clarity without making assumptions:

• Frame any reply to this person through your own lens - rather than stating "bigotry is unacceptable" you can say something like "I worry that this will result in a more unequal world" or "I'm anxious about this framing because, ..."

• Ask questions! Rather than making a statement about what they have stated, ask for clarity. Instead of saying "this is promoting intolerance" say something like "I'm not sure I follow, are you arguing that ...?" or "Can you explain in more detail what you mean when you say '...'?"

• Ask yourself whether you are the right person to be responding here. Are you a part of the privileged group that you perceive is being attacked? If you are not a part of the privileged group, do you have any context on the plight being described? If not, you should probably start by educating yourself. If you are educated on the topic, are you giving them the benefit of the doubt?

• Encourage discussions rather than focusing on emotions. Instead of saying something along the lines of “you’d win more allies if you were less angry” consider saying “your frustration shows how important it is to address this issue! I think that…” or “you have every right to be angry about this, but I feel alienated when you say…” Of note, the second prompt here could be used to tone police, so be careful about whether you are addressing the words used or the message.

• Ask yourself whether this person may simply be venting their emotions in a safe space online. You can ask questions to clarify this, or simply accept that it's a reasonable interpretation and post nothing. If you are inspired to respond, even just showing recognition that they might be venting their emotion before talking about something else gives space for this possibility and reminds others that it is okay to vent about intolerance directed at you or your loved ones.

• Take a step away from the thread, post, or comment and come back to it hours later. Do you even have a desire to open the thread, post, or comment in the first place? If you do, do you even still wish to engage in that conversation? Have other replies since allayed any concerns you have or made it clear they were joking or venting emotions? Is it worth your time and effort to reply?

• Write a reply, but don't send it immediately. Minimize or hide the tab and come back in 3 hours. Re-read what you wrote. Is it giving them the benefit of the doubt? Are you the person that should be mentioning this? Was this an emotional response to what they said? Could you reword what you wrote to give them more charity? Or does this still bother you and is this the best way to start that conversation about what is bugging or harming you?

• Write a reply and then send it to someone you trust and ask for their interpretation of the comment and your reply. Another person might help you to see that your wording comes off in a way you aren’t intending it to. If you don’t have someone you trust, try floating the response in our discord or matrix channel and get feedback in a smaller group of individuals before posting. If neither of those are available or you can’t find someone to give you the time of day, try asking ChatGPT how it would interpret your message (be sure to include the original comment or chain of comments) and ask it for suggestions on rewording your response “to avoid tone policing.” With the right framework being fed to ChatGPT, it can help you to see how it would change, revise, or re-frame your response. You can use this information to identify the mechanisms/tools it is using and apply them to your own writing.

Hopefully this discussion and this short toolkit will help you to help keep this a safe space, and a nice space online. If you participated in this thread and are unsure whether your behavior was tone policing, I’d encourage you to critically look at your responses and ask yourself whether you employed any of the mechanisms above and whether you may have been tone policing others. If you ever have questions about how we moderate or whether something is okay, feel free to drop in the discord or matrix and ask us.

I just ran into this being quoted in a YouTube comment and was like, "well, that's horseshit."

There's plenty of examples where I ... well, uh ...

Curious what y'all think.

Why does everyone suddenly seem to think it's ok to say the R word again? I feel like I hadn't heard it in years and suddenly everyone around me is using it, and I see it on Reddit all the time. Am I imagining it? Is anyone seeing this? I don't even know what to say when it's suddenly just everyone in a group and everyone acts like it's normal.

I just got this email from Reddit, and I just realized it's been a year now since I swapped over here, and I haven't thought about awards once. I always thought they were gimmicky and a way for people to throw away money. It's just really nice not worrying about them.

(I also have participated more in BuyMeACoffee and Patreon over here now, and I think my money is better spent that way)

Also, what is with that exponential scale, so screw you if you're a big time user apparently? And the expiration? The whole thing has corpo stink on it

A number of wheels starting turning a year ago. Haltingly ... maybe more like relay switches.

As we need Point A to be able to differentiate from Point B (Point Q is irrelevant to the discussion), I bought a domain for a website that never happened and just lapsed. I was a billing clerk for a small firm that treated me well but didn't want to ever hear ideas about how to streamline operations. My prior role had been automation. For print newspapers. Not a lot of overlap, but if it can be defined in code, why the fuck am I doing this manually?

I'd been sober a year, having met the owner in detox.

And it was miserable. I was pretty sure rent would go up to the extent that I could no longer afford my cat. Cats, my mom would say, are my totem, so this is desperate times. It's actually worse: also no food budget.

It's about this time Reddit shits the bed and I discover Beehaw. After a few weeks, U.S. News is about to be created, and I'm in the right chat channel at the right time. After this weekend, I don't think my introduction post is actually for anyone else, but me finally saying: This is what I want to do, and anything less is unacceptable.

I'd been sketching out 400-square-foot off-grid cabins for about seven years at the time, and I veered into researching vandwelling, as it would provide flexibility if, say, the climate went to shit and whatever land I'd chosen no longer has water.

Lots of research ensues, and I buy a tool van. Learn electricity, put up solar panels and start living off my own microgrid. I build it out at the local makerspace after a Reddit question, where I meet Eric (it is left as an exercise for the reader to determine if I've changed his name), without whom I would not have succeeded.

Work goes south; irreconcilable differences. I get to the point I'm wanting to drink and feel I need to get out, so the Friday before Thanksgiving, the accounting gig is done. Step 2: ???

I had enough saved up for a month and a half, which on this timeline is assuming I'll magically get hired Jan. 2. (Narrator: It didn't happen.) I was throwing darts with applications, finally purchasing the services of a couple of scam artists on LinkedIn.

Truck breaks down (serpentine belt), and I'm out $400 for an 8-mile tow (Class 4). Same day as the fraud becomes apparent ... and things go poorly from there. By the end of the month, I've borrowed more money and basically drank it away, getting me into a ward.

Eric drives me to the ER and comes to understand that after doing so much of the build myself (solar was all me, and when he saw it, he was rather surprised), I'm not lacking motivation but rather resources. He's a retied rich guy (this will be important later) who also knows vehicles, and so after he buys a new serpentine belt, he spends hours over days tracing the problem, which was a loose nut on the starter motor but presented as wild voltage droops from panels because an A/C line runs near it.

So, to start March, I'm mobile and back on the job prowl for random positions. So here, now while everything like meeting Eric had to happen, I had to be parked where I was because of where I take my morning constitutional for the rest of this to play out.

I'm leaving the washroom, and as I like to vape, I head out the patio door to run into my former assistant and his family. Small talk ensues, and he says, "Well, why don't you send me your resume? Trade pub I work for is hiring freelancers."

Briefly, my editor used to run papers I then ran design for, so absolute alignment on journalistic integrity. I took a writing test, and I guess I don't suck. Part of why they're expanding is they want beat reporters. Like as of me; as of exactly then. You start to see how this is all looking suspiciously like when the shrooms told me I want to be a green-energy reporter but were unhelpful as to how some months earlier, it was a waiting game

So, I say I want to cover green energy. Done. Right place, right time. Good pay.

Meanwhile, Eric's purchased four tickets for Burning Flipside, a regional burn about an hour out of Austin.

And here, dear reader, yes, we finally get to the subject of the title.

The van was not the point. The job was not the point. I had to get all of that done so that when I got to Flipside, I wasn't a whiny bitch but an actually interesting guy who apparently has some pretty awesome dance moves now that I'm old and don't care.

To paraphrase my Reddit post, this weekend I learned that is is possible to experience genuine wonder halfway through my 40s, and the thing about wonder I'd never realized is it is a critical component for joy. Joy isn't something you're expecting. You can't plan for joy. So you sure as fuck need wonder.

Confident in where I was at and unwilling to squander this opportunity, I quickly broke camp and just started looking around. Needless to say, as a former raver who sadly still views a kinky chick with short unnatural hair as the dream, I was not disappointed.

Most amazing weekend of the past 15 years. Walking in expecting nothing, came out with everything. Like, I'm not fucked, we all actually realize how toxic society is. The couple thousand of us, I guess.

I made friends; for the first time, I just danced without giving a fuck, which should have happened at my first party in 1997, but I was wee. I had fucking DJs making it a point to thank me for dancing! People came up to me like never before ... I'm terribly introverted, so yeah ... not where I expect to shine. And I don't mean like two people; I had like four DJs and four new friends in two hours.

Either I didn't care or they didn't care. This is a burn, so assumptions about sobriety per substance are likely incorrect.

But oh, my god.

I recently had that feeling of "you're exactly where you're supposed to be" for the first time since 2009. This weekend was just beating the drum, basically saying: and here's why.

I have the van. I have the remote job. I have the tribe. I am fucking done with your constructs, and cute ravers will cuddle with me for finally getting here. Seriously, what can you ask out of a holiday weekend that is reasonable and exceeds this?

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

busy as usual, alas

Niche question, I realize, but I'm going to lend a bit more weight to responses here than elsewhere.

This winter did not go as planned, and as such, I find myself still in Texas, which is bad enough, but I live in a tool van, and even with 2" insulation, it's a metal box exposed to the sun. The forecast for the weekend is 97 all three days, so that reminded me of a friend's suggestion to look into this site.

Ultimately, what I'd like to know is whether it's worth the annual upfront cost to provide a service (unexpected), as while it could get me in air conditioning before leaving this hellhole, it would also be pretty badass to be able to travel the country with indoor plumbing and appliances as my anchors.

currently working on book 28 of 40 for the year

As I've gained more and more close friends, more than I've ever had in my life, and some closer than I've ever had in my life, I've come to realize something recently. Despite the prevailing feeling like I want a relationship, I don't actually know why it is I want one, nor what I have to gain from one.

Many of my friends nowadays are in fact either people who have rejected me romantically, or are exs that things just didn't work out with but we found we made better friends. And that's been the case with getting rejected too. I just end up enjoying the friendship so much, and getting so much out of it, that I just start to wonder why I ever wanted anything more than that. And what even is more than that?

Maybe everybody else has already realized this by my age, and my sheltered religious upbringing has just held me back a few years again, but I've started seriously considering, with every new crush, if they'd actually be any better for me as a partner instead of just a friend, and I've found that the answer, thus far, has always been no.

I guess the only thing that still has me wondering is, well, what does a romantic relationship offer that friendship doesn't? My friends already love me, and tell me all the time. They already care for me in ways I used to think only a partner would, and I do my best to care for them too. I still desire a romantic relationship for some reason, but I just can't see what there is to gain anymore.

The universe has a strange way of fucking with one. In my experience, long and frustrating lulls where nothing happens are punctuated with "oh, you didn't like that? Well, here's everything at once."

I should open with that I am not looking for advice; I've already made up my mind. I'm looking to commiserate and vent.

Requisite backstory: Through a series of events much like what I described with getting back into journalism not too long ago, we met. This required my former boss, the lesbian who was my first real girlfriend, my parents, friends of my parents having moved to Oregon and, oh yes, I-5 freezing the day after said boss was done with me couchsurfing and we disagreed over "by the weekend." She was on the coast and I needed to get to Tacoma two days later.

We'd been talking on OKCupid for at most two weeks. I looked at my options and determined nonfrozen roadway would be preferable, so I sent a very short message: "Fancy a visitor?"

This was 2009, and she felt it was safe because to her mind, there was no way I was straight (bleached hair at 30, amirite?). We've now been divorced for eight years. I'm not going to talk about what went right or wrong. It is firmly in the past, and we have worked in recent years to get back on speaking terms, which varies in efficacy, usually depending on her inebriation level, which is itself horrifically ironic.

So, after she offered to mail me an ounce in April and then went completely silent, with no ounce showing up, she finally popped up last night. She's about an hour away through the week before likely heading to Connecticut for an unknown period of time. No car -- she's going to figure out the transport down here -- but nonetheless, distilled, knowing that I live in a van with a bed too small for two people who aren't fucking: "Fancy a visitor?"

And the reality is I do. Said that once before ...

But wait, there's more! I'd already interacted with her in 2004, when she had a different account. Learned that one the day I moved into her house five days after meeting (which was a drive) and she showed me an old photo. Of her. Wearing what's in retrospect a rather pedestrian collar for something that actually has cone spikes.

I can only say this in retrospect, because I went full Paul Hogan for the wedding after commissioning two artists: That's not a collar ...

She fucking wears her wedding collar to this day (you want it to last, you want a blacksmith; also, be aware that a leather backing can cause cysts). And kept my name. So, you know, it's not entirely out of the blue that after all this time ...

It's the surprise of it all. Even though it really shouldn't be surprising. So, maybe it's just the timing.