Final Duck

Level 2: We shouldn't treat mental health facilities as objects of horror because it stigmatises mental illness.

you work 5 days a week for 8 hours at a very intense job with multiple skills required. you have 5 minutes to grab all of your very heavy tools and navigate to the opposite end of the building when you change shifts. you get a single 30 minute lunch. you have to exercise, regardless of illness, neurodivergence or disability for an hour and you don't get to choose what you do. you have hours of the same work to do at home. also if you fuck any of this up, or do it the wrong way, or stop showing up, you will be punished and your caretakers could go to jail.

maybe you have the choice to do this all at home. the only difference is that you don't have to transport as much. so you're stuck in one spot, alone, head down, working like you usually would otherwise.

completely inhumane, right? but sure, "kids these days are..." alive people who think and feel. you should not torture children.

Kids are told to retain their childlike wonder and have fun while your a young dumb teen yet they don’t allow you to do that, so it’s literally a paradox.

If you don’t completely memorize information like what adaptations an urban hawksbeard flower has over a nonurbanized hawksbeard and get it wrong on a test then your grade goes down. the grade that represents your worth and work in your future.

Memorization of useless information is prioritized more than actual fucking learning and it’s so fucking annoying.

I realise I'm an outlier (custom 20TB network storage server cobbled together with used parts) but I am getting second-hand claustrophobia trying to imagine only having 256GB for my entire digital life

Your friends drink it (but only for fun, never for important stuff). Your classmates are obsessed with it. Your teachers say students aren't allowed to have arsenic smoothies in school, then immediately take a sip of their arsenic smoothie. There's ads recommending it for pregnant women and birthday parties and pet owners and grandparents and every possible thing you can think of. You try to buy a smoothie, it's got arsenic in it. You go to a different shop, also arsenic. You go to a smoothie shop with your family and they call you dramatic when you ask if the smoothies have arsenic in them. There's children's toys that make arsenic smoothies from voice command. Why would you have a heartfelt moment with your loved ones preparing a smoothie with the fruits you grew together when you can order a box of arsenic smoothies by arsenic smoothie drone, same-hour delivery? It's so much easier, it's so much more convenient, everyone already does it, everyone in the future will drink it anyway, we have to adapt.

All the big arsenic smoothie companies are squashing the regular smoothie businesses under their boots made of cash and bones. You point out that that's kinda bad, but everyone just says the smoothie businesses have to adapt, this is the age of arsenic smoothies after all.

There's overwhelming evidence that arsenic smoothies are bad in every possible aspect, but everyone around you chooses to ignore it, because it's so much easier, it's so much more convenient, everyone already does it, everyone in the future will drink it anyway, we have to adapt.

Open the “apps” section in your settings (it’s usually at the very bottom), go to photos and scroll until you see “Enhanced Visual Search” and then turn that shit off. Then go to “Privacy and Security”, scroll until you see “Analytics & Improvements”, and turn off “Improve Siri & Dictation” as well.

​I am an artist with hundreds upon hundreds of my artworks in my photo album. I also have plenty of photos with not only my own face, but the faces of my friends and my family. I do not appreciate that being used to train AI without my consent, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same for others too.

I’m so tired of big companies.

How about "friends you don't have to pretend around" time.

"Uncensored access to information" time.

"Equal opportunity for respect" time.

"Being able to walk away from people who are trying to harass you" time.

I mean, I had no access to anything internet related up to age 16-17, and only had a couple of hours a week of directly monitored desktop use up to 18. I regularly went out, because I lived in a house with a big garden.

I still ended up with progressively worsening vision, which is genetic and inherited from my dad (who didn't have any devices in his youth at all). I still ended up with severe derealization, that I struggle with to this day, because I was still alienated from "adult" life and had my sense of self devalued.

The worsening vision part is like. I'm not saying anyone who goes outside will have perfect vision. I'm saying "bad vision from screens" is technically a thing that can be avoided.

I don't think any extreme is good. Controlling everything your child does is bad. But letting them do anything they want without guidance and support is bad either.

Like I think extremely limiting a kid's diet and not allowing them any sweets ever is bad, but letting them eat ice cream for every meal is bad either. There's a balance.

A lot of people say "kids shouldn't be on their phone all the time!" without like. Suggesting something for the kid to do without the phone.

And some of ya'll are gonna say "well, they go play, DUH". But...

Kids don't know how to play anymore. Because their parents aren't modeling how to play. And a lot of kids aren't getting semi-unsupervised playtime with other kids. Parents won't even let their kids go outside to the nearby park by themselves!!

I was running around the neighborhood as early as 8 years old. Often with my younger brother in tow. But we were taught how to be responsible. When we were younger we had plenty of semi-unsupervised time with our mom bringing us to a park and then letting us run wild. We had semi-unsupervised backyard time. Then the radius of where we could go expanded. Further and further the older we got. We were taught stranger-danger, how to call 911, and we memorized our home address and phone number. We had the skills to help ourselves if trouble happened.

What did we play outside? Well, sometimes we brought a toy but usually it was just all imagination. We're orphans who have to survive in the woods! We're lions in a pride! We're dinosaurs! There's a pretend tornado coming! Quick, we're an ambulance crew now! Watch out, the cloud shadows are dangerous, get into the shade of the tree before it gets here! Oh no, the toy we brought with us is still out in the Sun! Run, get it!!!!

i am constantly being reminded of the dichotomy that exists in psychology between the "mentally well" healthcare provider and the "mentally ill" patient, who are seen as diametrically opposite to one another. you see it when textbook authors (who are themselves clinicians) speak to who they assume the reader is:

trying to appeal to the aspiring psych professional (who they presume to be neurotypical) by othering autistic people and sensationalizing autism, saying it "undermines the traits that make us human"... several textbooks i've read have made it very obvious that, despite being a psych student, i am not the reader they are speaking to.

i see the dichotomy in the number of psych students who still use autistic as an insult, or make jokes about something being "so OCD" or "so bipolar". i see it in how, as soon as i try to explain something "as a person with OCD", the professor is taken-aback, and students get uncomfortable. even if i am surely not the only psych student in any given class with a mental health condition, it is taboo for me to be open about it, as it violates what a psych provider is supposed to be.

i also see how psych as a discipline fails to be critical of itself and its practices. in my abnormal psych class, we are made to unquestioningly memorize and regurgitate the dsm-5, without even engaging with criticisms of it. and in several of my classes we are made to memorize and reproduce classical freudian theory (e.g. "write about this case using freud's concepts") without ever touching the ongoing harm that classical psychoanalysts partake in (against incest victims), simply because he is a "foundational theorist". would an anthropology professor ask you to analyze something like race scientist johann blumenbach would, without speaking to the harms of race science? no, because anthropology (from what i've observed) actively denounces these theorists, something that psych fails to do. they even fail to denounce evolutionary psych despite it being largely pseudoscientific.

Air? Polluted. Killing babies. Possibly full of low-frequency soundwaves giving kids heart murmurs

Water? Not enough pressure on the pipes, clean drinkable water gobbled up by data centers

Earth? People priced out of buying land. Perfectly fine homes destroyed for gargantuan data center. Perfectly fine agricultural land destroyed for gargantuan data center. Earth poisoned with heavy metals and shit.

Job market? Even more utterly fucked than previously thought possible