doozer

Hanif Abdurraqib interviewed by Ruth Awad: Joy Is Not Promised to You

Hanif Abdurraqib interviewed by Ruth Awad: Joy Is Not Promised to You

girl im bored lets browse academic articles

Hot tip: if you want to see scientists being snarky and sardonic, type ‘Reply to’ into google scholar and make yourself some popcorn. You can add your field of interest to the search or narrow down the timeframe to make it more specific or recent.

holy smokes. dr scherz it’s an honor

The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it.

Like ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the world. But it’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm.

Checkmate, nihilism.

This is a powerful positive message..

I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientifically sound.

There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (I.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try.) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physically moving the rat to the cheese - the learned helplessness goes away.

No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing. Do a favor for a friend. Call your elected officials.

Knit a sock.

If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.

This is really good advice for ADHD people because when executive dysfunction gets bad it’s easy to fall into this pattern of thinking. Do just one thing. It doesn’t have to be your homework, or a chore. It can be something small, it can be something you enjoy. But do just one thing to remind yourself that you can.

This is what “humans want to be productive” really means

We want to make things. We want to do something and at the end of the process see that something has changed. We want physical proof that we did something. We want to be able to point at something and say “I made this”. We want to be creators

perhaps the most beautiful snail I’ve personally seen.

Everettia sp., Sarawak, Malaysia

The bug store for bugs

— Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

I am whole

Penultimate instar giant katydid nymph & adult (same individual seen two weeks apart). 💚

Backgrounder: Small Scale Farmers and Peasants Still Feed the World

For your consideration: Tachygonus lecontei, a silly tiny nugget of a weevil who can occasionally be found very slowly monching their way through a single oak leaf over the course of their life. 🤎

The same leaf their whole little life!

2007

Healing isn’t linear. You’re allowed to feel sad about it.

Healing isn’t linear. You’re allowed to feel mad about it.

Healing isn’t linear. You’re allowed to wish you had done things differently.

Healing isn’t linear. You’re allowed to wish it hadn’t happened at all.

Healing isn’t linear. It’s okay not to be okay.

You don’t always have to get over things quickly because that’s what you’ve done in the past.

It’s okay to cry, scream, write or do whatever it is that helps you release it.

It’s okay to go at your own pace.

- Note to self-🧨

A surprise guest comes over for carrot!!!

The pastoralist fantasy of "modern life is too stressful so I should move to a remote area and do hard labor" is so funny

I have a theory about that.

I think that what people want, when they talk about a pastoralist fantasy is actually an anti-capitalistic fantasy: i noticed, even from my experience, that most people don't mind phisical labour if it gives them results: actual, tangible, results.

Once my boss asked me to copy every article from a website and paste them in the new one. It took me roughly four hours for three days to do and my soul was slowly leaving my body. It was easy work, i mean who wouldnt want to earn money to just click here and click there, rinse and repeat? But it was boring, ripetitive and basically useless.

But when I take some time and clean my house, i sweat, i am tired but... satisfied. I see in front of me the result of my hard labour and I am happy, or at least i don't think i wasted my time.

So the fantasy of working hard but at least getting something out of it is appealing: why do people work in kitchens? Or bakeries and wake up at dawn to make bread? Or any hard job like that? I knew a guy that had the possibility of having every job he wanted, but he opened a bar and couldnt be happier.

This is my idea, i'm not a student in sociology or anything but I hope i made a point.

I have two degrees, and my previous job was the marketing department head for an international biotech company. I was well-paid, but dreaded work every morning. The endless cycle of low-grade manipulation and feeling like “making money for someone else to pocket, HELPING no one else” felt miserable.

I left and now work at a garden center. I haul around plants and educate people about them, so they can make informed choices. I help people, and seeing the plants grow under my care is wonderful. My soul is flourishing, my heart is at peace. My coworkers are all honest (as far as I can tell), and there’s no push for upselling or pushing people to buy stuff if it’s not very suited for their landscape.

Even if my wallet is a lot lighter these days, so too are my worries!

I worked IT in a city and fuck. People try to controll your every second. Faster! More efficient! You took a second too long to type that. You drove 56 kmh but could have gone 58 without getting caught. I messaged you a minute ago but you didn't reply so I walked to your cubicle to ask you. Also let's have an efficiency meeting. You are too slow. That's your feedback. How long will that task take? Can we somehow shorten that?

And all for what? To manipulate the user to buy product. Not to improve the website mind you. Whenever I suggested: hey, our website is not useable for the visually impaired/people with motor problems. I got back an: we don't care they're too small of a market value

So can you really blame me for fantasizing about a life where I can just plant flowers and vegetables and walk everywhere without the need of manipulating people and mikromanage my every second

my current job is managing a plasma cutting machine, so i have to spend a lot of time dragging big chunks of iron on and off conveyor belts and i end up sore and filthy at the end of every shift, and usually a bit scratched up.

but it’s third shift and there’s no supervision whatsoever, so while the machine is running, i can type on my phone. i’ve written most of a novel so far with my thumbs, covered in grease and iron dust. and i also produced a lot of construction materials for bridges, dams, warehouses, and skyscrapers.

i really like my job.

This is Marx's theory of alienation.

When people are removed from the tangible results of their labor, they become distressed and dissatisfied - and this is the result of capitalist profit-focused processes.