He gazed up at the enormous circledot. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the golden badge. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved mk.

(jokes obv mk, we love u man)

Thanks for making the world a little better.

Hey man, we gotta push back the dark somehow.

An old hubski sticker on a long-since retired journal begs the question, "What can be learned?" Not to box anyone into a particular interpretation, but the question has always felt ambitious to me - it's a guiding light of the discourse we have here, a fundamental principle from which all goals can be derived. It's also a question from a frame of mind that feels incredibly foreign right now, but searching for the emotional means to express myself...The incongruity of it feels nostalgic, and I think that nostalgia bears the mark of an ambition that I've set down for the time being.

It was a guiding principle before, and I think that principle has changed meaning for me while we all search for normalcy: The goal is to return to the mindset that created this account in the first place. The ennui is dissonance between the goals that we made and the reality we're living, and "What can be learned?" is a lighthouse back to the person who made those goals.

If I can stick with that understanding, I think I'll come out of this a little stronger. Sorry for rambling, I hope the purple prose doesn't eclipse my meaning.

Just be glad you're not all mining bitcoin for me right now ;D

I've got permanent bags under my eyes. This is mostly owed to my larger than average eye sockets, but partly because I'm always staying up past my bedtime. I've been putting thought into why I'm constantly giving myself insufficient sleep for no good reason, and this is what I've got:

I'm good looking. I'm smart. I'm funny. People want to be around me, and I tend to attract them easily. But even around family, I have a baseline level of discomfort. If I spend too much time with someone, I accumulate a nauseated feeling in my stomach that's only relieved by periods of solitude.

Night is the perfect time, because everyone else is gone. They're asleep or they're kindred spirits and don't expect my acknowledgement any more than I want theirs.

I love what nighttime sounds like.

Even the highway by my house is silent but for the perfectly digestible sound of one or two cars pushing like boats through a river of asphalt. The night is so still that the sound of my parent's antique modem clicking away in the kitchen can be heard clearly from the carpeted living room. The TV is on, and although I've muted the late-night advertisement for a new and innovative CPAP machine, I can still hear the small whine of static electricity arcing from red to green to blue. This small whine is overwhelming. I can smell it if I focus on it. It smells like hot dust. If I'm feeling particularly aspirational, I know that birdsong will eclipse the modem and the pixels when the sun stretches its first amber fingers and brushes their tips over the roofs of my neighborhood.

'Alone' to me means 'relaxed.' People bring tension, and they take me from my thoughts.

I'm still sussing out the underlying reasons here, but that's the basic phenomenon - I can only relax on my own, and I'm always alone at night. I think for now a simple description of the phenomenon is good enough. I'll keep sussing, and maybe I'll bring you an epiphany next week.

Alright.

Regarding the quoted death statistics: I agree that people who die in combat are often people who put themselves there, but it's undoubtedly true enlisting in the military carries some risk of a life of violence. But regardless of whether I'm off-base about inherent risk of violence (which I concede I might be, and I welcome correction on this), a long-term study on the health of 30,000 OEF/OIF Veterans and 30,000 Veterans from the same era who were not deployed (done by the National Health Study for a New Generation of U.S. Veterans) found that 10% of even non-deployed vets develop PTSD, and 13.5% of all OEF/OIF vets. To quote the abstract, "PTSD is a significant public health problem in OEF/OIF-era veterans, and should not be considered an outcome solely related to deployment."

Next:

You see, the Army is just not making their numbers. In fact, they aren't anywhere close. And you know who's fault it is? It's the recruiters, for just not being able to reach these kids, get it? You don't make the quota of one recruit a month? Well then you're a piece of shit NCO and your performance record will reflect. And are you aiming for a promotion in a couple years? Better get a good report or you're shit out of luck. But you know what, sometimes it's ok. Because up till now, the military has treated you pretty well. You get a solid paycheck, health insurance, life insurance, dental, and education. You're better off for the army, so it makes you happy to help someone reach your status.

So then, kingsmudy, what do you think these people's motivations are? Are they silver tongued adults tempting our youth to their deaths? Or are they just regular goddamn people trying to live good lives? I respect the recruiters I know a hell of a lot more than many of my highschool friends who went off to work at facebook and google. At least they believe they're helping people, the FB and google people tend to solely be in it for the money.

I want you to know that I sympathize with recruiters, but this quote is exactly why I feel the way I do. The job as you describe it sounds like a nightmare. Their career is put on the chopping block, and only by pushing kids through the system can they avoid being a "piece of shit NCO" and maybe one day get promoted. If you find yourself in a struggling position through no fault of your own, what do you do? You find another kid. But you need this kid to join the military. What will you tell him to get him to enlist?

Is it okay to mislead someone if you genuinely think your lies could help them?

The gist of my opinion is this: I believe that most (if not all) recruiters truly believe the military is a good opportunity for young people. As you point out, most military recruiters aren't assholes, they're people trying to make ends meet. Nevertheless, they exist in a system that you correctly point out as brutal to their potential, endemically focused on number numbers numbers. I believe that this puts recruiters in a difficult position and incentivize dishonesty and manipulative behavior. Whether someone turns into the person the system seems to be (unintentionally) designed to create is up to their individual dispositions and the strength of their personal convictions.

As a supplement to this position, I'm providing this excerpt from an article published by the Army Times, discussing a study about why soldiers join the military. To summarize, it found that primarily people had joined because of familial relationships and expectations, but that many soldiers felt misled by recruiters:

“Many recruiters perform admirably, but others may paint an unrealistic picture of day-to-day soldier life, thereby creating unusually high expectations,” the study says. “A steady diet of World War II action movies may likewise leave a prospective soldier uninformed about modern life in the Army.”

The stereotype of the embellishing recruiter is alive and well, according to the study.

...

“Many recruiters offered genuine help to soldiers seeking a job in the Army, but other recruiters (and recruitment materials) appeared to oversell an MOS and set overly high expectations for entering soldiers,” according to the study. “Though one-third of participants stated their MOS met or exceeded expectations, other soldiers were disappointed with aspects of their occupational specialty choices, complaining about boredom, about lack of field time, and about having to perform tasks unrelated to their occupations.”

This without the acknowledgement that many of the kids who can be helped by serving are only in that position because our society offers them no better alternative - because they've been deprived of services that are basic rights in other parts of the world. So recruiters can lie to kids about what the military can offer them (and the recruitment system encourages them to do so for the sake of their career), or they can be honest with them. I fully believe that most are honest, but the benefits are things that those kids should have anyway.

A 2017 Department of Defense poll of young people shows 49% of survey respondents indicated that if they were to join the military, one reason for doing so would be to pay for future education. “[Privileged people] have sufficient resources to meet their needs....They don't require joining the military to travel or learn a profession. They have connections to help them get into jobs that pay well and provide benefits. They don't need the military's medical insurance coverage that sometimes motivates low-income people to enlist.”

None of this is the recruiter's fault. They're using the tools available to them to encourage kids to make a decision they think will benefit them. But this idea that they're offering a pathway out of poverty and deserve praise for that frustrates me because it shouldn't be necessary.

Like I said to kleinbl00, "[Recruiters are] trying to figure out the best way to explain [how the military can benefit me], but those arguments end up being "Hey, you could escape poverty!" and while it's not the recruiters fault, it targets kids with little to no alternative. The military [is] a fantastic opportunity for those kids, but I wish there were more options for social mobility outside of enlistment, because a lot of them will be killed or crippled or mentally sundered by it. It sucks that they have to roll dice while I get to turn my nose up at in distaste, and maybe military recruiters just remind me of that inequality."

And while they might enjoy some benefits while serving, I don't think it's heretical to suggest that our nation needs to treat veterans better. Here's an opinion piece that conveniently encapsulates my feelings specifically in the context of recruiting:

The VA is a perpetual mess, GI bill payments stop coming at random intervals, and the closest we’ve managed to come to engaging with the veteran suicide issue is videotaping ourselves doing push-ups about it for Facebook.

Recruiters today are faced with convincing people to serve while dodging questions about American foreign policy, the divide between our military and political leaders, the chances that healthcare and education service members are promised might not come through and of course, the fact that after wearing a uniform for a while, there’s a greatly-increased chance you’ll find yourself in such a deep depression that you choose to take your own life.

Recruiting isn’t going to get any easier as long as we see veterans as damaged goods, break our promises to them, turn on them as soon as it’s politically expedient, and expect service members to fight in conflicts that may start or end at any time based on politics, rather than direct threats to the nation’s security or an overarching strategy toward global stability. Right now, it doesn’t seem like we, as a nation, know what we’re doing. Why would young kids want to subject themselves to such hardship with no promise that it will benefit them or the country?

Finally, here's an article written by a staff sergeant who shadowed a recruiter for two weeks

Recruiters are unethical liars and manipulators by trade. Among military and probably even some civilian circles, recruiter dishonesty is nothing new or surprising, and is often a punch line or the center of a funny anecdote, like “I know a guy whose recruiter told him he could keep his long hair in the military, and he totally bought it!” or “My recruiter told me I would travel the world in the military. Ha!” However, the problem is far more sinister than that.

...

So what was I supposed to do when parents told me to leave their family alone? You would think I could cross out that name on the list, or mention in the log that this one is a no-go. According to my recruiter, respecting someone’s wish not to be harassed is for quitters. Believe it or not, my recruiter told me that when parents say their kid isn’t joining the military, and refuse to let us speak to him, I am supposed to shame them for being overbearing control freaks. Something like “Isn’t that his decision to make?” or “You’re not him – I’d rather he speak for himself” comes to mind as the scripted response. I couldn’t summon my inner asshole to bully parents, so I didn’t.

Recruiters obtain contact information through sketchy means, they use that contact information to harass families, insult parents and ignore their legitimate requests to be left alone, and then they try to make minors feel like terrible people for accepting their parents’ financial aid as they go through higher education.

...

Just a word of advice to anyone considering joining the military: joining is a huge life decision that cannot be taken lightly, and you need as much information as you can get before deciding. Recruiters are not legitimate sources of this information. Do your own research. Talk to a diverse group of people who are in the service and pick their brains about their experiences. Recruiters are not there to help you make an informed decision. They are there to sign you up by any means necessary and will say anything to make it happen. They are not the gatekeepers, they are the ones who hunt people down and drag them to the gates.

So, there it is. Military service is honorable, and it can help people. I don't like the system that recruiters exist in because it incentivizes the exact behavior they're accused of by people who serve. I don't like recruiters because the US Military built a system that encouraged the worst of their behavior, and in a just world their toolbox wouldn't include the basic rights that people should have access to without committing their livelihood to the government.

To offer a slightly different perspective...I obviously don't believe that "Muslim" is a race, but to many white-supremacist and Islamophobic groups it may as well be.

Islamophobic prejudices don't get applied to White or Asian Muslims in the same way as for Muslims from the Middle East, because people seem to be assessing whether they look like the guys they saw on the news. I want to, for example, bring up the case of an Indian software engineer from Kansas who was killed two years ago:

The suspect in the shooting, Adam Purinton, was drinking at the bar in Olathe, Kansas, at about 7:15PM that night, the Kansas City Star reported. A witness said he yelled “get out of my country” to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were “Middle Eastern.”

I'd also like to cite Wikipedia's article on Islamophobia, and the section about the relationship of Islamophobia and Racism:

Some scholars view Islamophobia and racism as partially overlapping phenomena. Diane Frost defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim feeling and violence based on "race" or religion. Islamophobia may also target people who have Muslim names, or have a look that is associated with Muslims. According to Alan Johnson, Islamophobia sometimes can be nothing more than xenophobia or racism "wrapped in religious terms." Sociologists Yasmin Hussain and Paul Bagguley stated that racism and Islamophobia are "analytically distinct," but "empirically inter-related"

SO, the argument I'm putting forth here is this:

Muslim people do not constitute a race, but the people who are prejudiced against them (and those who physically attack them) often believe that they do. Using the word 'Muslim' as a weird synecdoche for 'Appears Middle Eastern' is common enough, and I believe that people who hate the nebulous group of 'Muslims' are holding racist beliefs against a race that they have misnamed, and largely imagine to exist.

In the case of Roseanna and Amy, I would guess that they have learned Ilhan Omar's name and may be vaguely aware of her nationality, but probably subconsciously conceptualize her religion as her race and act with according prejudice towards the congresswoman.

...Or that's how I think about it, anyway. Do you think I'm maybe not being fair? Honestly, there's a chance I'm assuming too much about Roseanna and Amy. Idk. The idea's out there, I'm curious what you think about it!

Here you go!

I can reduce the static too, if you want? I was going for a more glitch-y VHS feel with the original.

I imagine part of why you might have caught some flak for this is because the advice isn't anything unique--telling someone to "get over it" either through help of therapy or on their own doesn't solve the problem. Therapy doesn't just make people feel better, either--rape victims don't become okay with thinking about rape all of the time because they sit down and talk it out with someone who is willing to listen to them on a regular basis.

And second, it just seems a little insensitive. Why do trigger warnings bother you? If you didn't read/view/experience something because somebody warned you that it was going to be intense in a specific way, the trigger warning has kept you from being put in a bad mood, or worse...and if you don't use it, it's literally 15 seconds of your time devoted to trying to help other people be comfortable.

Your post is like getting mad at the Parent's Guide on IMDB, or like being pissed off when an amusement park warns you that you will get wet on a ride. And you know what? It isn't even about being offended--trigger warnings, although infrequently frivolous, are about maintaining and respecting the mental health needs of other people.

And finally, it isn't like Columbia stopped teaching Ovid to students, they just gave them an alternative assignment like goo mentioned. The whole world isn't being turned into a bouncy house to protect these people, we're just putting warning signs on particularly uncomfortable sections of it.

Leon motherfucking Bridges.

I've seriously bonded with my dad over this music. It reminds him of 60's soul and blues, and it's new enough to not feel dated for me. Give the whole album "Coming Home" a listen, there are some amazing gems in there!

I was pretty aggressively bullied for several years in middle school (2008-2011), and I'm still really sensitive to a lot of insults.

In particular, I was bullied for being a 'faggot' by the popular group (10-15 boys, one of which was my next door neighbor and childhood friend (we haven't spoken since 2011, despite living 40 feet from each other)), but I think I mostly brought it on myself by trying to fit in with them instead of appreciating the people who were actually kind to me. This kind of wrecked my self-esteem for a few years, and I think I only truly pulled out of it when I met my current girlfriend. I'm doing WAY better now, but I still have trouble connecting to other men.

I haven't really processed this yet, but I'm pretty sure I was molested at summer camp. I really only realized this a few months ago, but I remember having a HUGE crush on a counselor at camp, and eventually she started reciprocating--we did some stuff that was VERY intense for my age (I was 11 or 12 while this was going on), mostly making out and touching. We kept texting after summer camp, and she would convince me to exchange exposing pictures with her. This spanned ~1 year until she suddenly stopped talking to me. At the time, I loved the attention, and obviously I was crushed when it ended, but now I can't help but feel like the situation was incredibly fucked. She told me that she had a thing for very young boys (she was into shota/yaoi type shit, afaik), and it never processed. Like I said, it didn't click until recently that she is 6 years older than I am...and I have NO idea if this has affected me at all. I have a normal relationship now, and I don't think it's caused me any problems, but holy shit...was I molested?