The Montreal part has me laughing like a hyena, and I don’t know why.

Bel Throat, a condition of the larynx where the sufferer is unable to speak because of nervousness/anxiety. Often suffered by brides and grooms at the altar.

I was on a leash as a kid in the early '80s 😂 I forgot all about it until I saw this post. It was just when we were out shopping or something, it wasn’t like I was tethered to a post in the back garden. But honestly, a leash on young toddlers just seems like a good idea to me, especially if you have 2 or more kids and you’re all out together. Lots of tragedies could have been avoided if little Willy and his new superpower of self-determined locomotion wasn’t able to suddenly take a sharp 45° turn and sprint headlong into oncoming traffic. Abductions would be a lot harder to pull off, too. Thinking of James Bulger, specifically 😔

I also think it’s way nicer/less “abusive” than placing the kid in a buggy/stroller and wheeling their grumpy asses around like yer bell-ringing fella from Breaking Bad. They have zero freedom in that case, whereas on a leash they can at least walk around a bit and expend some of that crazy fizzy energy.

Shit’s treatable as fuck, especially depressive illnesses like, well, depression, but also bipolar and so on. If you look up the success rate of treatment for these things, you’ll see that they’re really, really good, all things considered. It 100% won’t feel like anything will ever help you when you’re in this state of mind - I know only too well - but trust me, your motivations and thoughts are off kilter right now, and with some help from the doc, you will look back on this time with bemusement.

It’s like being horny. When you’re in that state, you’ll do - and want to do - things that you would not wanna do on a Monday morning as you get ready for work. You’ll put things in your mouth that would probably make you puke if you thought about doing it in any other circumstance. Once you orgasm, and the post-nut clarity kicks in, you’ll return to your normal state and will resume your normal thoughts. You won’t be single-minded in your quest for an orgasm anymore, and you might even feel shame at what you were willing to do just 10 minutes earlier. But you can get back to your life. Right now, your brain is gooning for suicide. Your brain can go fuck itself. Get help, just go to your family doc and tell them what you’re going through (I recommend writing out a list of symptoms/recurring thoughts to make it easier). If you’re already in treatment and you feel it’s not working, you need to let them know so they can try other medications or other more dramatic interventions like ECT or ketamine or something.

If you’re afraid of being carted away and locked in a 17th century insane asylum, I can assure you of two things. First, you will not be hospitalised unless you explicitly tell the doc you plan on harming yourself. So you can safely tell them “I write drafts of my suicide note daily, I think about ending it all the time, I don’t see a future, I think everyone would be happier if I were dead” etc. None of that will get you hospitalised against your will. Saying “when I get home I’m eating 100 pills and slitting my throat”, that will get you hospitalised. The second thing I can assure you of is that, whatever nightmarish ideas you may have in your head of what it’s like to be in a psych hospital, it’s nothing like the movies. It’s no different from a regular hospital. If I were talking to you 40 or 50 years ago, I would probably recommend you avoid the hospital at all costs. But in 2025, it’s not a prison with nurses instead of wardens. It’s not One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I know from personal experience, it’s really not a big deal, especially if you’re non-violent and are more of a threat to yourself. But even with all that said, you almost certainly won’t be heading there against your will unless you tell the doc you have imminent plans to end your life. Depression is one of the leading causes of doctor visits these days, they sure as fuck can’t hospitalise all such cases, so they definitely don’t hospitalise people willy-nilly. And because it’s such a widespread issue, the science has advanced in leaps and bounds just in the last couple of decades. For a doctor, and especially for a psychiatrist/psychologist, depression is pretty milquetoast shit. To the sufferer, it’s literally so bad you would rather be dead than to feel it anymore. But as far as the docs are concerned, it’s easy mode.

Get help, start with the family doc and go from there. If you’re already getting help, tell them it’s not fucking working. If you’re scared of going to the doc, you can try a suicide helpline. The Samaritans is the obvious one, but there are countless others all over the world, and many of them have email as well as phonecalls if you prefer typing. They are trained to talk to people in your specific shoes, so don’t be nervous about not knowing what to say, just ring and let them take the lead.

I promise you, things will get so much better and you’ll look back on this period of your life like it happened to someone else.

I’m not being hyperbolic or lying for the sake of comedy, but the only games that ever made me feel violent were platformers with high frustration levels. I’ve never felt violent playing DOOM or Carmageddon or Postal 2. It’s pantomime violence, regardless of how realistic it looks. But Mario Bros. and Super Meat Boy? You’d better leave the house when I boot those shits up, and take the hammer with you.

Boots should really come with an exhaust so that with every step you’re pushing air/moisture out the back end. Nothing like a big pipe or anything, just a wee hole and a sort of bladder that fills with air when you lift your foot and pushes it out again when you step on it. Sure, you’ll sound like you’re stepping on farting mices everywhere you go, but if you just cough with each step you should be fine.

SOMA still lives in my brain 10 years later.

It’s a very dark part of conspiracism in general. The same tactics, both conscious and unconscious, are used to evangelise these ideas - and defend them despite being indefensible - as are used in all conspiracy theories and “alternative” views of established fact.

So, it has less to do with the available evidence, and more to do with personality flaws. It’s not even about reasoning skills or intelligence - the more intelligent you are, the less likely you’ll be to change your views because you’re so good at generating narratives that support your position. It’s a deep flaw in human psychology that can’t be reasoned away, and trying to combat these ideas with facts just reinforces them and gives them credibility (which is why no one with any sense debates Holocaust deniers anymore). It’s like when a schizophrenic person hallucinates; you don’t want to do or say anything that makes the hallucination seem real, you don’t want to say “where is the creature? Here? I’m stamping on it, is it gone? I don’t see it!” you simply accept that they’re hallucinating and don’t engage with it beyond that. Extreme example, but the logic is the same.

they do if u kiss me

Most of my teeth are destroyed, decades of neglect due to mental illness. I’ve been hearing about lab-grown teeth for the last 25 years and always hope it happens soon, but the progress sees to be genuine this time. I just hope it doesn’t cost insane amounts of money to get teefs grown.

Dr. Reddy’s hard, bulbous, throbbing capsule will take away your anxiety.

Ahh, so it’s like they’re reading from the order/prescription, and say “ok he needs pregabalin - tick - and it’s 150mgs - tick - and it’s hard capsules - tick”, or something to that effect?

This is an angle I’ve never considered before, with regards to a future dystopia with a corrupt AI running the show. AI might never advance beyond what it is in 2025, but because people believe it’s a supergodbrain, we start putting way too much faith in its flawed output, and it’s our own credulity that dismantles civilisation rather than a runaway LLM with designs of its own. Misinformation unwittingly codified and sanctified by ourselves via ChatGeppetto.

The call is coming from inside the house mechanical Turk!

My favourite show back in the day!

Lower res, for sure. Modern GPUs/drivers and some media players can do a decent job of making them a bit nicer to look at ‘on-the-fly’, too.

Derry Girls

$800 million doesn’t even seem that high at this stage (I had assumed they broke a billion by now).

Whatever this ends up being when it’s all said and done is never going to justify the production costs. If you developed a helmet that could trigger the hardest orgasm your body can muster at the push of a button, it would not justify $800 million.

Price and shit game selection/implementation aside, I simply can’t use the fuckin’ thing without getting headaches and nausea. Tried a couple of headsets and control schemes, but my shitty brain is just not wired for it. I get travel/car sick as well, in fact I had to leave a really good school I was attending to go to a shitty one within walking distance of home because I was puking every morning 😆

On paper, I guess so? In reality, and as is the case with pretty much every developed democracy, money and technology make a mockery of the whole idea. A society in which billionaires can buy their way into the Whitehouse - literally - is no democracy.

Oh cool! Thank you 👍