Cvt2dvm - CVT To DVM

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

I'm at a BBQ/baseball watch party and I gotta piss but this frat bro is taking a shit in the bathroom.

I'm Sorry - Gator Days

My answer to this, and I've just figured this out in the past 6 months or so, is being largely apolitical on social media. There's a few reasons for this:

Social media is built on engagement metrics, so the most ragebaity, sensationalist accounts covering current events get the most engagement and therefore end up in your feed the most.

Social media is the least effective method of praxis

Social media also has the most room for misinformation, disinformation, and propoaganda.

Social Media also has a habit of engaging with news, politics, and political discourse in the worst possible bad faith.

What I do instead:

During my morning coffee I listen to my local NPR station.

I have a few select news podcasts from a variety of leans and angles, (The New Yorker, NPR, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The American Conservative) that I rotate throughout the week, so that I have a bit of background on what all positions of the media are saying about certain issues.

Using Allsides for big issues, find them here. They present articles from across the political spectrum on current events issues, primarily for US politics.

CSPAN is your friend. It is... quite literally just the facts, with opinion lines for both liberals and conservatives, and it's where most of the livestreams of congress and political events are done.

I’ve seen quite a few people this past week ask something along the lines of ‘how to be up-to-date and properly informed about current events and politics and also not get super depressed?’

While most of these were phrased in a joking matter, it actually is a really good question. Being able to balance awareness of the shitty things happening in the world, but not letting that shittiness destroy you is a skill.

Being well informed is vital. However, if you become so informed that it’s starting to effect your life, you’ve gone too far.

The point of being aware of current events, especially bad ones, is so you can do something about it. Read about it, post about it, donate to charity, volunteer, etc. Something you can’t do if your overwhelmed with (rightful) anger and sadness.

So the answer to the original question is that you become informed enough that you want to do something about it, but do not overload yourself to the point where you feel too depressed to take any action.

Burying your head in the sand isn’t good. But neither is doomscrolling into oblivion. Find that middle where you are actively interested in what is happening in the world, but not to the point where it becomes a hinderance to regular life.

Being aware of the world around you is super interesting, but don’t spiral. Misery loves company. Stay informed, stay active, stay hopeful.

Today is a very special day

[research life]

Coffee shop study date as a bit of a mid-week motivation 🤩📝🥹🩰

Okay, so I am still on muscle relaxers, but at a lower dose than the ER gave me so here goes:

By eliminating caps on corporate donations to political PACs, candidates, and proposed legislation, we essentially handed over our governmental system to corporations and super PACs, while this has been visible since Citizens United, the new Pseudo-feaudalism was the most clear its ever been during the 2024 Presidential race, while the Harris Walz campaign did have corporate donations, the Trump Vance campaign had Elon Musk, who had not one, but multiple corporations actively interfering in the election, between the algorithmic changes to Twitter favoring Trump-backing voices as well as voices sowing discontent and apathy among leftists, and reducing Moderate and main line democratic voices, the million dollar check raffles to essentially buy votes, and buying himself a governmental appointment (as a immigrant who, before being naturalized, was infact here illegally via immigration fraud during his Zip2 era). We are not longer a governmental priority, and while some more cynical people than me believe we never were, I would argue that the rapid degeneration of American Politics is directly linked to uninhibited campaign donations, corporate personalization under Citizens United, apathy to history and civic duties, and the rise of Infotainment over academia.

Now we find ourselves in a place politically and economically where the bootstraps simply do not exist anymore, we exist in a state of faceless corporations owning the majority of housing, production, recreation, and leisure. You cannot go a week without giving a dollar to a corporate conglomerate that owns everything from your deodorant to your cereal, to your utilities, to the land you are standing on. I'm not going to name too many names on this because a funny thing happens when you do that, you suddenly develop major mental health problems and end up dead "by suicide". Your boss's boss, what used to be the top of the corporate ladder, had instead become a lower manager compared to the shareholders and the hedge funds on Wall Street and in the pockets of your politicians. Have you ever tried to start a small business and looked to source your raw materials from a supplier? Have you ever looked into who owns that brand only to find it's actually the same owner of the very product you're trying to counter in the market? This is what corporate feudalism has developed into, there are very few raw materials you can outsource and stay away from them, you are dependant on them for the food you eat, the water you drink, the roof you sleep under at night. And that's just what it's become.

How do they keep making later and later stages of late-capitalism

just got 100% on five tests and 97% on the last one. pretty impressed.

photos from pinterest!