I would probably be a bit more excited if it didn’t start coming out during a time of widespread disinformation and anti-intellectualism.

I just come here to share animal facts and similar things, and the amount of reasonably realistic AI images and poorly compiled “fact sheets”, and recently also passable videos of non-real animals is very disappointing. It waters down basic facts as it blends in to more and more things.

Stuff like that is the lowest level of bad in the grand scheme of things. I don’t even like to think of the intentionally malicious ways we’ll see it be used. It’s a going to be the robocaller of the future, but not just spamming our landlines, but everything. I think I could live without it.

That’s a big ask to have them take in all that rural NY and PA though! They already got AB and SK to deal with. 😑

I’ve been feeling that killer buyer’s remorse with Fetterman lately, but it was either him or Oz, so what’s a PA voter to do?

I use it pretty regularly in the US for a few specific things. The bagel store and the Jamaican takeway are the best ones near me, but I also hit it up when out of town to find some local treats on the cheap.

Always got some pretty good stuff, though after a year or so of doing it, I did get very temporarily screwed. Went to the bagel store to pick up my order yesterday and it had closed early. Submitted a refund request with a photo of the deserted store and the sign on the door saying sorry closed early, and I had my refund before I pulled out of the parking spot. So great on them, not so great for the store not notifying me, but they usually give me more than they should and sometimes they even let me pick what goes in my order, so I’m going to let it slide.

I remember a lot, but my memories often seem to account for things happening much differently. The mind does some amazing things to try to cope!

For me, depression felt like things just stuck to me. Everything negative, from minor and petty things to real major life events. Every time something new would happen, it would get stuck to that pile of things and pull on all that negativity, waking it up again. Like if you’d forget you said you’d help me with something, it would bother me because you forgot, but it would also trigger all the other negative things I could think of about my history with you and me, and often with other unrelated people, making me feel like nobody cared about me, or that I was just a joke of afterthought to everyone in my life, even though it was nothing more than something just slipping your mind. So instead of just sayin, oh no problem, you were probably just busy and got disctracted, i’m glad you’re here now, it’d trigger vivid memories of like 100 bad things that happened to me all at once. It’s just impossible to function like that.

Almost immediately after I got on medicine that costs me less than Tylenol, all that stickiness was gone. Being able to separate my feelings and deal with them one at a time as they came in instead of trying to cope with a life’s worth of issues all at once was so life changing! It finally gave me time to resolve my feelings about those old events and to move on from them instead of dragging them with me everywhere I went.

When I feel really bad now, I feel that weight start to build and it tells me that I need to look inward more seriously again. I feel myself reach the limits of the medicine. I tried to up the dosage (with doctor’s permission!), but that made me too tired. I just have to pay attention and assert myself where I can with people causing me issues, and I need to make sure I’m having good times with people and activities I do like. It’s like watching your hunger now. You don’t want to let yourself starve, and you don’t want to get so hungry you pig out on a bunch of junk. I just need to be smart about my emotions. It’s way easier still than if I would not be on my medicine. It’s so scary to think that I could still be that old way, and if I ever forget to take my medicine I do feel it creeping in. There are a few downsides to meds for me, but I feel they are very minor compared to the depression.

I accept what is done, and I use those things as learning experiences now. I wish I could forget some of it, but now that I can understand what I’ve done in the past, it makes the lessons really stick now.

I don’t know if I’d consider myself “happy” at the current period of time I’m in, because meds or therapy aren’t cures, they just let you process stuff in a more productive way. I’m fighting with my job about a bunch of issues I see as them not looking out for my safety, and there’s always family drama and I don’t have much in common with my own or my girlfriend’s family. I’m just able to process all that without flying off the handle or totally walling myself off from everyone and all that fun unhealthy stuff. I’m at least able to appreciate the good things that do still happen though, which I couldn’t before.

Talking about it and trying to destigmatize it is part of the responsibility I feel, because while I can’t undo any of what I did, I can at least try to help other people to help themselves so they can avoid walking down the same path as I did for so long. It helps them, and all the people that those people run into in life.

Hands down, ignoring my depression for so many years. Cost me countless friends and relationships.

The shame people at least used to put in getting any kind of help for mental health made me try to overcome it all on my own, and for most of my life I’ve probably made things worse for a lot of people and don’t fault them one bit for not wanting to be around me.

Getting help, for me at least, was very easy, cheap, and straightforward, and I almost immediately did a 180 in most every aspect of my life. I hardly recognize how old me used to live now, but I also have the guilt of all I did while I was untreated.

I vaguely remember a time when it felt like all these small companies were supposedly working in vehicle conversion kits and I was excited about all the cars that could get saved and brought into the next century, but I feel they were all vaporware since I’ve never heard of one actually existing in real life.

It was one of the few moments where I actually felt close to being alive in the future that was promised to me as a child. Maybe someday…

The article I looked at had a few side by side images, and while it does share a decently similar silhouette, the feeling I’d get seeing those 2 vehicles on the lot or the street would be so different between the pair. I get that underneath it’s likely the same exact truck, but I’d see different types of people wanting one or the other and I wouldn’t expect both to be coming from the same manufacturer.

Again, I’m not a truck person, but while I like those last generation of trucks before pickups had to go all aggro, the production model is dated now while the concept looks like they could successfully unveil it this year. It looks bold, but in a sci fi way moreso than in a Texas truck bro kind of way. Like someone could be hauling a suit of Fallout power armor in the back of it or be conducting some post apocalyptic research in the wasteland to save humanity.

I don’t follow trucks, so this was the first I heard of the Alpha-T. Would definetly take that over the Cybertruck.

Here it is for anyone else not familiar. It may have been a bit much for 2001, but in the 2010s with the Total Recall and Blade Runner remakes, this would’ve fit in great!

1. Unscrew one of the wire terminals. Wrap a piece of tape around it so you know which wire is which. Unscrew the other wire. I think you should be able to pull the wire through that stress relief and then cut it off on what would be the inside instead of cutting it off outside and trying to thread it through the molded rubber. It might be stiff but you can try putting a little soap on it to lube it up. You may or may not have to split the jacket down the middle between the 2 wires depending how the relief is molded.

2. If you’re soldering, just cut the wire at the terminal ring and solder the wire right to it. You can also get new crimp on terminal rings. Take an old one to the store to match it up to get the right size.

Disclaimer: not electrician, just a DIYer that doesn’t like to spend money