I’m a woman in her forties and maybe my perspective helps. What I’ve noticed about myself as I am approaching menopause is this: I won’t tolerate stuff that I don’t want. No compromise anymore. My body just won’t allow that I be in a place I don’t want to be in, with people I don’t want to be with, in conditions I don’t control … so I’m probably not a very nice person anymore in the way I used to be - but at same time feeling powerfully aligned with what I really want for myself, and walking out of situations that don’t serve me.

As women are still raised to please and support others many of us tend to wear ourselves out in caring for other people and their opinion, and when that falls away with menopause the results can be very painful for the person themselves and their families. This change in me killed my relationship, and I do feel very sorry how it all went down, but I was literally physically unable to stay and remain in this ‘wife’ situation that I tend to almost automatically create for myself when with a partner.

And for your situation as a partner: No, you never have to put up with your partner criticizing you all day and dumping their rotten mood onto you. That’s not acceptable for any reason.

Why should the homeless have no right to organize? It’s funny that the only places with (rough but efficient) functioning self-organization I could find so far were among the homeless and the small folk. Those with stuff left to protect are too much up their own arse to want to play well with others.

Also, the plans to get off the street are real, most of the time. Every kindness you show is a seed that one day will point towards the right direction.

I’ve been hanging out with the homeless as a kid, and lived on the streets for a few months as a young adult, travelling and panhandling. I met many very kind, and often very damaged people. They are on the streets because it’s for a variety of reasons the only option they can manage, not because they enjoy scamming you out of a few coins and do nothing all day.

If you are concerned about your money look at the suit wearing people, most of it ends up with them.

Improve your local community in other ways. Or give in other ways. Not sure what would apply in your local community - I live in rural Western Europe and that’s very different from what you describe. People here set up donation boxes, swap shops, create food banks, organize markets, create safe spaces for minority groups, community gardens … mostly volunteering time. Not sure you are in the position to do this? Sorry things are so heartbreaking. I hope we all figure this out soon.

How did you like Georgia? I keep beong obsessed by it (because music).

How did you address your trauma? What methods did you find worked?

Thispunk.

trying to catch trains, trying to find the correct room at university …

Thanks a lot for sharing this. I’ll keep it bookmarked for later reference, looks very cool!

Me too

I know nothing about how an international union could work - need some smart people to help.

I have been thinking about the possibility of an international screen workers’ union. My own job is in translating, but there’s millions of people doing data entry, AI-related stuff, graphic design, devloping etc. on a kind of semi-freelancing basis, often via job platforms that keep part of our earnings. I’ve often thought a union to bring all this workforce together would be great.

Emergency? Which emergency?

I was leftie before I was techie. If you don’t know anything around tech and computers you wouldn’t know what to do. Even as a fairly tech-adjacent professional it took me quite a while.

Then again, I only became a real leftie again after kicking all the corpos out of my computer.

Tech used to be (and still is) obscured by heavy gatekeeping. We who understand a little more like to joke about those who don’t, and I guess we’ll have to stop that if we really want to unite the left. Don’t ridicule, explain. The person might never have had a chance to learn the concept.

All my parent’s bookshelf when I was little is there, plus a lot of the fantasy novels I read later. I just can’t help but wonder wtf is left for the kids to read? The Bible and the Very Hungry Caterpillar?

I thought this was about programming

yes

TLDR: Because AI is shite

‘Tech Billionaires give all wealth away to end world hunger.’ ‘Tech Billionaires lobby for wealth tax with national governments.’ ‘Tech Billionaires realize they are normal people like anyone else, not super smart world-saving geniuses, and finally shut the fuck up.’

Now these would be news.

Degrowth first.

Every single ‘green’ solution that is hyped at this moment is just going to be used as an excuse to continue business as usual. Every promise of some greener battery tech, carbon capture solution, ocean cleaning effort, tree planting campaign will only make people complacent and distract from the one thing we need to do now: LESS

Shit I wasn’t even going to spoof a car logo, just make a tiny wheat paste sticker with a penis drawing and the words “small utility vehicle” - but your idea is beautiful as well.

I got slightly taken off track when I was too lazy to draw the tiny penis myself and typed “tiny penis” into my search bar.

If anyone would like an A4 sheet of tiny penises to print and glue on SUVs, let me know I’ll finish it. Shaming these motherfucking SUV-owners out of existence maybe works.