I Draw Kinda Decently

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

protesters chased do n and hit with canes. internet jammed. female protesters dragged by their hair.

all for a peaceful protest march. you know, the very thing that Mahatma gandhi used to free our country. and this time it's not even disobedience, this is very much a constitutional right granted to all citizens.

not to mention, cockroach janta party, the banner under which these protesters came together, started as a joke when our own chief justice called unemployed youth "cockroaches"

sonam sir has been on a fast since June 28, and despite everyone's best attempts, he continues to. even as the delhi high court rules that he be moved from safdarjung to medanta hospital

cjp, something that started as a joke on instagram by Abhijeet dipke, is now being treated like a threat to the security of the people

another girl's clothes were ripped off by a female police officer when she was detained and refused to co-operate for a strip search.

the crowd was tear gassed in addition to the lathi chase.

the police and government have released a statement on instagram saying the situation was "professionally handled", and denied the assault and injuries even as video evidence of it was spreading. video evidence of a boy with a bleeding nose. a boy bleeding because he dared to join a peaceful protest.

this protest had not only been a challenge to the government's incompetence, it was also a commemoration for the children who literally killed themselves due to the leak. the father of one of the deceased being remembered went on news to say "main apne bete ke liye aya tha, aur kal ek mahina ho gaya usko. par yahan Jo aadmi humare liye, uske liye baithe tha, usko kheech kar le gaye hain. toh aise mein kya main nahi rahunga yahan? main nahi awaz uthaunga apni?"

this is an excerpt from one of our biggest national news papers:

July 22, 2026 17:20

Before I break fast, want assurance that punitive action won't be taken against protesting students: Wangchuk

After receiving several requests to end his fast, activist Sonam Wangchuk said that he would break his fast if the Govt assures that no punitive action is taken against protesting students.

“During our discussion, you assured me that the Government would positively consider the following,” Mr. Wangchuk said in a letter, referring to his meeting with Union Ministers J.P. Nadda and Jitendra Singh.

He said government would consider:

1. Adequate compensation for the families of students who committed suicide following the examination paper leak.

2. A meaningful discussion in Parliament to ensure accountability, including consideration of the resignation of the Hon’ble Education Minister.

“I respectfully request an unequivocal assurance from the Government that none of the young protesters will face any punitive or retaliatory legal action for participating in this movement. Their only “offence” has been to raise their voice for a fair and accountable education system,” he added.

“If such an assurance is given, I shall end my fast with faith that the Government has heard not only my appeal but also the aspirations of lakhs of young Indians. In the absence of such an assurance, I will be forced to continue my fast indefinitely. I also hope that there will be no further use of excessive police force to repress the movement.”

meanwhile the cjp leaders, including dipke, have asked wangchuk to break his fast due to concern for his health. they have assured him the youth of our country will continue to protest, and have essentially asked him to pass on the torch before this nation loses one of the few prominent people who actually stand up for us

here's another excerpt from that same news agency:

Large groups of people, including supporters of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), continue to join the sit-in at Jantar Mantar on Wednesday (July 22, 2026), with the CJP saying “millions more will come” to Delhi if the government doesn’t agree to its demands, primarily the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the NEET ‘paper’ leak issue. The CJP leadership, including by founder Abhijeet Dipke, has appealed to activist Sonam Wangchuk —who is on day 25 of his hunger strike— to break his fast, vowing that the protests will continue till demands are met.

even now, rajnath has said this is the opposition "manufacturing anger" in our youth, as if we were making a big deal out of nothing

Paid service with no ads: Well, if they're not funding it with ad revenue, they need to charge us something.

Paid service with ads: Well that's bullshit.

that should disgust and enrage you.

if any other demographic of students had a 95% failure rate, we would be demanding reform and studies to understand why that’s happening

when i was at my first university, trying to get accommodations for my ADHD, they just kept asking me what accommodations i wanted, and refused to answer when i would ask what was available to me. how the Hell am i supposed to know what i can have? what’s available???? also, i don’t know!!!! i’m an adhd sufferer, not a fucking disability expert for the fucking college, unlike you, DISABILITY EXPERT WHO WORKS FOR THE COLLEGE.

but because the us is OBSESSED with making sure no one gets anything “”for free””, she literally would not tell me what my options were until i broke down in tears and asked her why she was refusing to help me. and then she did a big sigh, like i was fucking up her entire career by *checks notes* asking the disability center in my university to help me, a disabled student

at the second uni i went to, i tried to explain to a dean that i was literally two gen eds that had nothing to do with my degree away from graduating and that i was burnt out and broke and exhausted and suicidal and i just needed to be able to finish my degree without the gen eds. and this. fucking. guy. looked me right in my face and said in the most patronizing tone he could muster “if you can’t handle it, then maybe college just isn’t for you.” keep in mind that up until that semester, i had been an honor student who made Dean’s List every semester and didn’t get below Bs. if it hadn’t been for my mental breakdown, i would have graduated cum laude, maybe even summa cum laude.

The full database can be accessed here and the ADHD page is here. The full database can be filtered by disability, by limitation, by work-related function, by topic, and by accommodation. Many of these accommodations are applicable to academic settings as well as the workplace.

Here are the section headers for ADHD accommodations ideas to give an overview of what the page contains - this post would become Do You Love the Color of the Accommodation if I attempted to list them all here

Also just heard a podcast interview with a software developer who had good suggestions

I got the idea that the struggle was the point but ☝️ looking at that list, I was rawdogging the "executive functioning deficits" with panic and anxiety.

Fuck me. Help with Managing my Time, help with Organizing/Planning/Prioritizing (exactly what I never learned to to at school or home)?

I grieve our misused, misdirected, underutilized potential.

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.

You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:

Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!

If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:

Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures

BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!

Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager

The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.

Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:

Yesterlinks Directory

Ichigo Directory

Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.

Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.

Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.