My wife and I had the realization this past week that we have both been in a near constant state of seething anger since the election. We decided that we both need to pump the brakes on reading news for our collective mental health. That doesn’t mean we’re ignoring things, but it does mean we plan to remind each other to take a breather when we’re caught doomscrolling.

We cannot afford to become complacent or ignore things, but we have found that redirecting our anger to productive activities has been helpful. Every time we read a negative article it is a reminder to reach out to our friends who are parts of communities which are currently under attack to see what we can do to help or offer companionship. We also regularly look for local opportunities to connect with marginalized communities in our area, volunteer, and generally make a show of our support.

Or hit em with the 12 foot ladder!

There’s a lifetime movie called Snowed Inn Christmas where the whole premise is two big city journalists get stuck in Santa Claus, Indiana during the holidays. In the movie the town is a picture perfect Christmas village, but the real Santa Claus is basically fields in the middle of nowhere, plus the Holiday World theme park (which is a legitimate banger if anyone gets the chance to visit). It was filmed in Winnipeg. There are funny details like how their flight gets diverted to the “airport” in Santa Claus even though there isn’t an airport that is not a grass strip for like 50 miles at least.

I work a 9/80 currently (so 9 hours a day every Monday through Thursday and then alternating 8 hours every other Friday with a Friday off) and I have grown to love it so much I think I would have an extremely hard time taking a five day workweek job. I also think I would easily work for 10s if it were an option as a constant three day weekend would be wonderful.

I have done my own research on my productivity levels and found that I pretty much get nothing done on working Fridays anyhow, leading me to believe a 35 ish hour four day workweek would be more than sufficient to get everything I currently do done. That’s notwithstanding the fact that during each day I swing back and forth between high and low productivity too, so really something closer to like 25 hours a week of total work is accurate. So something like a certain minimum mandatory set of hours with flexible time to get your tasks done as others have suggested would be the ultimate solution.

A tie in the Electoral College is an extremely remote chance, less than 1%. Widespread interference in our electoral process as part of a broader scheme to put enough doubt in the vote totals to force the issue to SCOTUS or Congress is literally the plan being executed by Trump and the GOP right now. The best chance we have is overwhelming voter turnout to make those “close” states as decisive as possible.

Yeah one of the biggest issues is the fact that nobody teaches how to properly “hit” and, equally problematic, how to properly “be hit.” Contact sports don’t have to be as violent as they are now.

We should do both! A human being can do more science in a handful of days than all of our robots we’ve ever sent to Mars have done in the years they have been there.

Right so let’s allow the serial adulterer, racist, sexist, convicted felon who has no respect for rule of law or democracy win. And then when he proves too senile to serve (or dies) we’ll be treated with a President Vance who is ready to open the portcullis for Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 fascist goons into the castle.

Harris might not be your favorite candidate. She may not currently be campaigning on issues that are the most important for you. But the alternative is unconscionable.

Candycorn + peanuts = Payday 🤤

Your suggestion is wrong. Eliminating the Electoral College is advocated for by everyone who supports Democracy. It is also not a coincidence that the Electoral College disproportionately benefits one party over the other. And to cement that advantage they employ anti-Democratic measures in an attempt at voter suppression.

https://lemmy.world/c/upliftingnews is a good community to add to your subscriptions if you’d like a regular dose of good news! Good news is out there, it’s just much harder to find than bad news these days.

I still cannot fathom how anyone thinks it is a good idea not to do these things with another person before marrying them. My wife and I were both adamant that we live together and go on trips together and do “married” things long before we made that decision. I like to think we ironed out many of the early kinks without the pressure of “we’re married so this absolutely has to work” lingering over us.

I have been on the hunt for more children’s books written in Ukrainian since I’m learning the language currently. It’s a far lower barrier to entry than full length stories!

This is the first time we have seen moderators actually fact check Trump live. I’ll take that in spite of the interruptions.

I have been disappointed by that as well but this has been astoundingly good as far as debates have gone. The immediate fact checking is long overdue. And frankly I look forward to pointing at Trump’s extra speaking time as a bulwark against the “iT wAs BiAsEd By ThE lIbErAL mOdErAtOrS” complaints.

I like Sportsurge as it usually points to high quality sources. StreamEast is usually my pick. Just make sure you have ublock and a VPN and you’re golden.

The problem is not with criticism of Zionism or the majority of the Democratic party being openly pro-Zionism. The problem is with equating the Democratic party with the Republican party and acting like it is somehow “brave” or “righteous” to demonize the only political party in the United States with any shred of decency remaining.

I have a strange relationship with masking these days. I had no idea I had autistic tendencies until I married my wife who has been diagnosed with autism. Since then it has been very rewarding having conversations about how our two flavors of autism differ. One of the things we differ tremendously on is our abilities to mask effectively. My wife has struggled with it, especially as a kid, but it always came naturally to me such that it is now my “default mode” when I am in public. Instead of missing social queues like many people, I find I have the opposite problem where I over-analyze social situations to the extent that I read too much into them and it drives me crazy. So masking has actually been very useful for me in that regard because I feel like when I am masking in public I am less “aware” of how I am acting because I feel like I am mostly coming off “normal” relative to the social expectation.

My wife is also very socially aware but she struggles to turn off her over thinking meaning she frequently comes out of social encounters panicked that she said or did something wrong. Whereas I’ll be so blended into the situation I won’t even remember her saying or doing what she is worried about. We work together well in that regard because I remind her that if I am married to her and I don’t notice her say or do something “atypical,” then someone who doesn’t know either of us well almost certainly either didn’t notice either or won’t remember it five minutes after the conversation ends.

So it is a mixed bag. It has been rewarding being able to unmask at home around someone I can trust and who I know loves me, but I still find today that I rarely completely unmask unless I am literally home alone in our house. That usually manifests in me walking around the house doing chores and things talking to myself about a thousand different made up scenarios, which even as a kid I always regarded would probably come off as weird to everyone else.

I think the most important thing is striking a balance between masking and being genuine. I know many people struggle feeling like they are not being their true selves while masked and others even view masking as manipulative. But I think everyone has a different relationship with the practice.

The map is full of puns. They haven’t managed to burn any buildings down yet but it’s still early XD

We’re playing 5E currently because I have quite a few newer players and it’s all they know. We’re playing in one of my homebrew settings that is a fantasy version of our city!