idk who needs to hear this but if you have been putting something off bc it doesn't need to be done until the end of the month. we are almost done with the teens we are approaching the big numbers (the twenties). that date shall dawn upon you swiftly and without mercy before you know it. psa for everyone except me i got plany off time
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As we see a barrage of evil executive orders come in, they are not immediately enforceable and will takes months or years to implement.
That’s still not great, but don’t let these pile up to the point of hopelessness. Take a breath, and look community leaders who will fight it every step of the way.
Reminder that when Trump was in office before a LOT of his orders got overturned or held up in lower courts for long enough that they became irrelevant. It also does not mean they WILL be enforced. Stand with your community where you can. The fight is not over. Do not obey in advance.
The data does not support the assumption that all burned out people can “recover.” And when we fully appreciate what burnout signals in the body, and where it comes from on a social, economic, and psychological level, it should become clear to us that there’s nothing beneficial in returning to an unsustainable status quo.
The term “burned out” is sometimes used to simply mean “stressed” or “tired,” and many organizations benefit from framing the condition in such light terms. Short-term, casual burnout (like you might get after one particularly stressful work deadline, or following final exams) has a positive prognosis: within three months of enjoying a reduced workload and increased time for rest and leisure, 80% of mildly burned-out workers are able to make a full return to their jobs.
But there’s a lot of unanswered questions lurking behind this happy statistic. For instance, how many workers in this economy actually have the ability to take three months off work to focus on burnout recovery? What happens if a mildly burnt-out person does not get that rest, and has to keep toiling away as more deadlines pile up? And what is the point of returning to work if the job is going to remain as grueling and uncontrollable as it was when it first burned the worker out?
Burnout that is not treated swiftly can become far more severe. Clinical psychologist and burnout expert Arno van Dam writes that when left unattended (or forcibly pushed through), mild burnout can metastasize into clinical burnout, which the International Classification of Diseases defines as feelings of energy depletion, increased mental distance, and a reduced sense of personal agency. Clinically burned-out people are not only tired, they also feel detached from other people and no longer in control of their lives, in other words.
Unfortunately, clinical burnout has quite a dismal trajectory. Multiple studies by van Dam and others have found that clinical burnout sufferers may require a year or more of rest following treatment before they can feel better, and that some of burnout’s lingering effects don’t go away easily, if at all.
In one study conducted by Anita Eskildsen, for example, burnout sufferers continued to show memory and processing speed declines one year after burnout. Their cognitive processing skills improved slightly since seeking treatment, but the experience of having been burnt out had still left them operating significantly below their non-burned-out peers or their prior self, with no signs of bouncing back.
It took two years for subjects in one of van Dam’s studies to return to “normal” levels of involvement and competence at work. following an incident of clinical burnout. However, even after a multi-year recovery period they still performed worse than the non-burned-out control group on a cognitive task designed to test their planning and preparation abilities. Though they no longer qualified as clinically burned out, former burnout sufferers still reported greater exhaustion, fatigue, depression, and distress than controls.
In his review of the scientific literature, van Dam reports that anywhere from 25% to 50% of clinical burnout sufferers do not make a full recovery even four years after their illness. Studies generally find that burnout sufferers make most of their mental and physical health gains in the first year after treatment, but continue to underperform on neuropsychological tests for many years afterward, compared to control subjects who were never burned out.
People who have experienced burnout report worse memories, slower reaction times, less attentiveness, lower motivation, greater exhaustion, reduced work capability, and more negative health symptoms, long after their period of overwork has stopped. It’s as if burnout sufferers have fallen off their previous life trajectory, and cannot ever climb fully back up.
And that’s just among the people who receive some kind of treatment for their burnout and have the opportunity to rest. I found one study that followed burned-out teachers for seven years and reported over 14% of them remained highly burnt-out the entire time. These teachers continued feeling depersonalized, emotionally drained, ineffective, dizzy, sick to their stomachs, and desperate to leave their jobs for the better part of a decade. But they kept working in spite of it (or more likely, from a lack of other options), lowering their odds of ever healing all the while.
Van Dam observes that clinical burnout patients tend to suffer from an excess of perseverance, rather than the opposite: “Patients with clinical burnout…report that they ignored stress symptoms for several years,” he writes. “Living a stressful life was a normal condition for them. Some were not even aware of the stressfulness of their lives, until they collapsed.”
Instead of seeking help for workplace problems or reducing their workload, as most people do, clinical burnout sufferers typically push themselves through unpleasant circumstances and avoid asking for help. They’re also less likely to give up when placed under frustrating circumstances, instead throttling the gas in hopes that their problems can be fixed with extra effort. They become hyperactive, unable to rest or enjoy holidays, their bodies wired to treat work as the solution to every problem. It is only after living at this unrelenting pace for years that they tumble into severe burnout.
Among both masked Autistics and overworked employees, the people most likely to reach catastrophic, body-breaking levels of burnout are the people most primed to ignore their own physical boundaries for as long as possible. Clinical burnout sufferers work far past the point that virtually anyone else would ask for help, take a break, or stop caring about their work.
And when viewed from this perspective, we can see burnout as the saving grace of the compulsive workaholic — and the path to liberation for the masked disabled person who has nearly killed themselves trying to pass as a diligent worker bee.
I wrote about the latest data on burnout "recovery," and the similarities and differences between Autistic burnout and conventional clinical burnout. The full piece is free to read or have narrated to you in the Substack app at drdevonprice.substack.com
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The last time we were on a long flight, my wife and I invented a game we call "Little Guy."
You start a game of Little Guy by saying, "I'm gonna hand you a little guy." The little guy is some kind of baby animal you are imagining. "Oh," she might say in response, "Okay," and hold out her hands for it. I will then mime handing her the animal. This provides some clues as to the little guy's size, weight, and general ungainliness.
She then gets to ask questions about what kind of little guy this is, BUT NO QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS ACTUAL APPEARANCE OR SPECIES ARE ALLOWED. Qualitative questions, or questions about his behavior, are the only ones permitted. She can ask "Is he soft?" or "Does he seem nervous about being held?" or "If I put him in the bathtub, does he seem okay with that?" or "Would he like a lil grape?" or "Is he the sort of little fellow who would wear a vest in a children's book?" but not "Does he have fur," "Is he a reptile," "Is he from Asia," etc. Some questions are in a grey area so you have to follow your heart, but the point is not to identify the animal as fast as possible: the point is to guess the animal purely based on vibes + how he would act if he were in your living room right now.
And I'm not limited to yes or no answers! If she asks, "Would it feel appropriate to see this little guy in a propeller hat?" I can reply, "Oh no, he has a gravity to him. A bowler hat would be a more appropriate hat." Or if she asks, "Does this little guy have protagonist energy?" I can say something like, "he probably wouldn't be the main character in a children's cartoon. He'd probably be the main character's ditzy best friend who's always eating sandwiches, or something."
We're big Twenty Questions to kill time in a waiting room people, but Little Guy is more about the journey than the destination. It's got a different kind of sauce that's nice if "killing time" and "lowering anxiety" need to happen hand in hand.
Stuck on the idea of vampires as a kind of reverse fae, or like someone's twisted, perverse attempt at moulding humans into fae.
They're repelled by liminal spaces.
A vampire could never enter fairyland, not just because they'd never be welcomed, but because most of the usual entry-ways are naturally barred to them.
They can't cross running water. They can't be seen in mirrors. They will wait forever at a crossroads, unable to pick a direction to go in. They can't even step over a thresh-hold unless there is absolutely no ambiguity about whether they are welcome inside.
They crave human blood, iron and salt, but are repelled by herbs and plants. They are supernaturally prevented from harming you unless the rules of hospitality have been invoked.
A fairy may replace your newborn child with something unnatural and ever-hungry. A vampire will do the same, but with your grandmother's corpse.
The fae are typically associated, even in stories where they're the bad guys, with flourishing and purity. Vampires, even in stories where they're the good guys, are typically associated with decay and corruption.
The fae turn ancient human burial mounds into fancy halls for their courts. Vampires take ancient human castles and let them grow mildewed and cobwebbed, exchanging the beds for coffins, turning them into burial places.
Fae don't tend to live among humans, but can generally pass for them with relative ease if they so choose. Vampires nearly always live among humans, but tend to find not revealing themselves a huge struggle.
I can't think of many stories I've read where fae and vampires even exist in the same universe, let alone ones where they actively interact. I feel like their enmity is almost more inevitable than that between vampires and werewolves, however.
The rivalry between vampires and werewolves is, essentially, the rivalry between two apex predator species who share a territory. (Even in stories where the werewolves aren't actually hunting humans.)
The vampires hate the werewolves because the werewolves interfere with their access to prey. The werewolves hate the vampires either because they consider themselves aligned with humans (the prey species), or because they are also predators and the vampires are competing with them.
By comparison, I think there's some story potential in the fae finding something genuinely creepy and uncanny valley about vampires.
They're immortal, like them, but also dead. They can be beautiful, like them, but that beauty is something they actively require humans to sustain. They like to inhabit beautiful and ancient ex-human dwellings, like them, but they actively work to make those places dark, damp and empty.
Fairies who are unflappable in the face of all sorts of Otherworldly monsters, can look an eldritch horror in the eye(s) without blinking, and have never been phased yet by any human, but will recoil from even the weakest vampire.
Vampires who hate fairies just as much, but in a more envious way. The way that the creature for whom immortality is a curse is bound to hate the creatures for whom immortality is an eternity of sunlight and laughter.
Maybe their touches burn each other. Maybe vampires can't stand physical contact with anything so alive and vital. Maybe immortal fairies become ill from too much exposure to the undead.
Maybe they fight over the human population when their territories overlap. The fairy need for servants and people to make deals with, competing with the vampire need for thralls and blood to drink.
Just… fairies and vampires. We need more stories about them interacting.
He almost definitely did not donate to ActBlue. Laurie Beth Brunner (I don’t know her but we share a mutual friend) did the BAREST of confirmation research and determined the donation they’re claiming was this kid was most likely by a 52 year old man who lives 237 miles away who happens to have the same name as him and live in PA. It’s literally journalistic malpractice and meant to bring in an anti-Leftist argument.
Full text of her breakdown:
I've been reading various reporting on this Thomas Crooks of Bethel, PA, and I have to point out something that's not adding up.
Okay, so he's 20, and there are voter registration records showing him to have been a registered Republican. But wait -- news sources like the NY Times and Reuters are also reporting that he made a $15 donation to the Progressive Turnout Project via ActBlue in 2021. But did he really? Consider the following:
- He would have been just 17 at the time. How many 17-year-olds have credit cards? You can pay ActBlue by PayPal or Venmo, too, but you have to be 18 for the former, and a parent would have to have set up a Venmo teen account for the latter. It's certainly possible that his parents did set that up, and that's something that needs investigation.
- The FEC record of that donation says it was from a Thomas Crooks in Pittsburgh, PA. The shooter was from Bethel, PA. Is Bethel close to Pittsburgh? NOPE. It's east of Harrisburg. That's *237 miles away* via Route 76.
- Okay, but maybe he lived there at the time of the donation? Sure doesn't look that way to me. The articles also report that he was a graduate of Bethel High School. Not only that, a quick check online (I used Anywho dot com) shows that there is a 52-year-old Thomas Crooks living in Pittsburgh, as well as two other men with the same first/last names living in nearby suburbs. It seems way more likely that it was that guy who made the donation than some 17-year-old living over 200 miles away.
What's really shameful about this is that it's so easy to do a basic fact check to see whether the shooter and the ActBlue donor were one and the same. I was trivially able to look this up via a free directory website. If I were home, I could have used my laptop to verify this via my LexisNexis account that I use for work. In my job as a prospect researcher, I frequently have to disambiguate multiple people with the same names. With L-N, I could have seen not just their current addresses, but their previous addresses as well. I find it hard to believe that there's no one at NYT or Reuters with access to L-N or something like it. This is *basic level research*, folks. And it seems like these top-level news organizations didn't even do that.
And when this info is being used to suggest that the shooter had progressive sympathies... that's seriously journalistic malpractice.
@kyrianne overall, making important points about misinformation and journalistic integrity. Key point of clarification though, in the text you quote - he was from Bethel Park, a suburb just south of Pittsburgh and much closer to the location of all relevant events - not Bethel. Articles also report he graduated from “Bethel Park High School” and news pieces about his academics were historically printed in Pittsburgh’s newspaper, the Post-Gazette (support their strike, btw!). Those suburbs are in the south hills region and are typically described as “from Pittsburgh” to anyone not from the area. There are also multiple PA municipalities named Bethel scattered across the state. I have no knowledge or opinion on the question of the legitimacy of the ActBlue donation, but I don’t want your underlying point to be undermined by the unfortunate inclusion of some misinformation in this text.
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Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. ❤️
Thank you to everyone who commented in their tags or messaged me. Indeed, today is “Martin and Bosco Day”. I originally whimsically blazed this photo on 13 July 2022. I never expected Martin and Bosco to travel so far and make so many new friends. The experience has been such a gift for me.
For general graphics: use GIMP
For vector graphics: use Inkscape
For drawing and illustration: use Krita
For print and web publishing and design: use Penpot
For PDF authoring: use LibreOffice
For PDF reading and form filling: use Okular
All are free, open source and cross-platform. None use AI.
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I like the fact that the two most well-known uses for lithium are treating people who are bipolar, and making batteries, which are also bipolar but in a completely different way.