#opinion article

Complete Article under the cut

En la actualidad, las redes sociales se han convertido en una parte integral de la vida de los jóvenes adultos. Con la capacidad de conectarse con amigos y familiares en todo el mundo, compartir experiencias y descubrir nuevas oportunidades, estas plataformas digitales ofrecen una gran cantidad de beneficios. Sin embargo, su uso también puede tener un impacto significativo en la salud mental de los jóvenes adultos. En primer lugar, las redes sociales pueden ser una fuente constante de estrés y ansiedad para los jóvenes adultos. La presión para mantener una imagen perfecta en línea, recibir la aprobación de otros a través de los "me gusta" y los comentarios, y mantenerse al día con la aparentemente perfecta vida de otros puede ser agotador. Esto puede llevar a la comparación constante y a la baja autoestima, especialmente entre aquellos que ya luchan con problemas de salud mental como la depresión y la ansiedad. Además, el uso excesivo de las redes sociales puede interferir con el sueño y la concentración, lo que puede afectar negativamente el rendimiento académico y laboral. Los jóvenes adultos pueden perder horas valiosas desplazándose por las redes sociales en lugar de hacer cosas importantes, como estudiar o trabajar en proyectos importantes. Esto puede llevar a una sensación de culpa y disminución de la autoestima, lo que a su vez puede contribuir a problemas de salud mental como la depresión y la ansiedad. Otro problema importante es el acoso en línea. Los jóvenes adultos pueden ser víctimas de acoso, intimidación y acoso en línea, lo que puede tener un impacto negativo en su bienestar emocional y psicológico. El acoso en línea puede llevar a la ansiedad, la depresión y el aislamiento social, y puede incluso conducir a pensamientos y comportamientos suicidas. En resumen, las redes sociales pueden tener un impacto significativo en la salud mental de los jóvenes adultos. Aunque estas plataformas ofrecen muchos beneficios, es importante reconocer los riesgos asociados con su uso excesivo y abordarlos de manera proactiva. Esto incluye establecer límites en el tiempo de uso, priorizar actividades que promuevan el bienestar emocional y físico y buscar ayuda profesional si es necesario. Al hacerlo, los jóvenes adultos pueden mantener un equilibrio saludable entre su vida en línea y fuera de línea, y disfrutar de los beneficios de las redes sociales sin comprometer su bienestar mental.

Para no sentirse agobiado por el uso de las redes sociales, es importante establecer límites claros y realistas en el tiempo de uso. Esto puede implicar establecer un horario de uso específico para las redes sociales, evitar su uso antes de dormir o durante situaciones estresantes, y dedicar tiempo a actividades fuera de línea que promuevan el bienestar físico y mental. Otra recomendación es ser selectivo con los amigos y seguidores en línea y limitar el contenido que se consume en las redes sociales. Esto puede incluir dejar de seguir cuentas que generen estrés o ansiedad, y buscar contenido que promueva emociones positivas y constructivas. También es importante ser consciente de la forma en que se utiliza las redes sociales y de los pensamientos y emociones que se experimentan mientras se navega en ellas. Si se siente ansioso o deprimido, puede ser útil tomarse un descanso de las redes sociales y buscar apoyo de amigos, familiares o profesionales de la salud mental. Finalmente, es importante recordar que las redes sociales no representan la vida real de las personas. Es fácil compararse con otros en línea y sentirse mal por no estar a la altura de sus expectativas, pero es importante recordar que las imágenes y los mensajes que se comparten en las redes sociales no siempre reflejan la verdad. Por lo tanto, es importante centrarse en las relaciones reales y en las experiencias fuera de línea para mantener una perspectiva saludable.

This guy is a comedic genius lmao. 

“Like, did everyone at Sunrise honestly think that the most ideal version of this story is to have Towa and Setsuna coming face-to-face with their father for the first time in their lives, after eighteen episodes of buildup, only for their reaction to be, “Who the hell is this guy?” Or for Sesshomaru to randomly descend from the sky, beat up Kirinmaru for ten minutes, and then fly off without a single word to the twins he almost let burn alive in a forest fire that one time? New viewers are supposed to think that this deadbeat is the sexy, smoldering bad boy demon prince that half the fandom has been thirsting over for twenty years? And what the hell is with knocking Moroha out of every single battle? Is it just so she can ask Towa and Setsuna to explain shit the audience already saw after commercial breaks?“

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/yashahime-princess-half-demon/episode-18/.169008

Author is James Beckett

I thought about combining two of my biggest interests – Finance, the economy, capital markets, etc (basically what I do for a living), and Pokémon (what I wish I did for a living).

Yes, I would call myself a wannabe Pokémon Master. I’m proud to have a career of over 20 years of Pokémon catching, training, breeding (gimme that Ditto) and exploring. Apart from competitive battling, I’ve practically done it all, spanning multiple consoles and generations. And I am still just as excited about it as I was.

That’s my response when people ask me “What do you do for a living?”. Followed by “I also work for a bank”. Then they chuckle and I say “Just kidding”.

……………

Something we’ve been working on, at the bank, is repositioning our Client’s assets under management (AuM) to a more resilient stance – the global economy is pretty late in the economic cycle, so a downturn is expected, in the near future. The last recession hit everyone pretty bad, not just the financial sector. Families worldwide struggled - guess they ran out of PP - Purchasing Power, since many jobs and companies collapsed.

This made me wonder whether they have recessions in the Pokémon world. Certainly an economy where there are state-maintained Pokémon centers in every major town, has a pretty high tax rate – at least judging from how much is deducted from my salary for social security and the like… And given people seem to retire at an early age – at least our mother in one of the generations was a former nurse Joy, and she seems pretty young to be fully retired… But don’t mind me, I’m just taking my fictional mother’s pixelated measurements.

Gym leaders also seem to be state-operated. Maybe the Elite Four has something like the “Pokémon’s Guild of America” (PGA) and funds every Gym and employee. Not to say they have a lot of money, but… Chuck you have LITERAL WATERFALLS IN YOUR GYM AND LIEUTENANT I’M SURE THOSE SWITCHES DON’T RUN ON SOLAR POWER. In gen III our father works at the Petalburg gym, so that’s the family’s main source of income. Yes, because in Hoenn kids don’t send their mothers part of their earnings for safekeeping (and the occasional purchase of Sitrus berries). So trainers come and battle, when they lose they pay the winners - workers for the gym – let’s assume they work (partly) on commission. How many battles they win, directly translates to how much money they get to play the slots at Celadon. So only part of their income is state-funded – maybe even none of it.

Hm. Perhaps instead of reallocating from stocks to bonds, I should start advising my Clients to open their own Pokémon Gym in their local town. I wonder if that’s under the “Real Estate” or “Alternatives” investment space.

They could then create a network of gyms which exist co-dependently, culminating in challenging the Elite Four. Maybe the proceeds could be shared among the gyms, I mean, assuming Clair wipes the floor with her Kingdra much more often than Falkner does with his Pidgeotto…

But the question is – is this model sustainable? Or is the Pokémon world headed for recession, no better than ours?

Well, let’s put the cards on the table – there is a global event that triggers the down cycle. The Fed (Federal Reserve) has no choice but to announce a recession, while Europe is already seeing its GDP constrict more than a Shellder on a Slowpoke’s tail. People get scared. They still remember what it was like in the last one – millennials (for as irresponsible as people like to paint us) grew up during the financial crisis and live fearful of seeing themselves unemployed. “João used Unemployment!“ -It’s not very effective... at sensitizing politicians to the living conditions of lower-income households or avoiding the downturn in the economic cycle.

What is the first thing people do, in a recession? They tighten their purses. They cease spending, they ponder first before spending their entire monthly wage on 5 Fire Blast TM’s (because THEY MIGHT COME IN HANDY AND IN THEIR COUNTRY THEY AREN’T REUSABLE). So let’s assume parents will stop allowing their kids to go on the Gym challenge – the losers have, after all, to pay the proceeds to the victor, so clearing the competition altogether sounds like a plausible reaction. Gyms react. They see their proceeds decrease, and some gyms end up having to fully fund others. And unless they are covertly run by the mob (*cof* Viridian *cof*) or change their layout every year (yes because a ROLLER COASTER WASN’T ENOUGH ELESA), they will have no choice but to close their doors. This in turn means Trainers would skip that town on their quest to be the very best, affecting local Poké Marts, stores and businesses. Companies would relocate, families would follow suit – investment would go to new and profitable areas. It would take years before a certain degree of stabilization could be achieved.

Which is exactly what has been happening since 2007 – that financial crisis was deeper than the 99F dungeons in PMD and we have only now recovered from it. Families were able to save a bit and achieve some stabilization, companies restructured their debt at (record) low levels, unemployment is at an all-time low and earnings are still sky-high. It’s been a long way to recovery. And like the move Recovery, the economy’s just an accurate Dynamicpunch away from losing its entire HP and reverting back to its most vulnerable state.

It’s a frail state, no one knows where the punch is gonna come from, whether it’s gonna spillover from low manufacturing data from Germany, or president Trump’s abuse of Hyper Voice, or the collapse of tech unicorn Sylph CO due to poor sales numbers (because ghost spotting is still more reliable than WeWork’s business model).

So buckle up, grab those Iron Defense-using Torkoal and reallocate your assets to non-cyclical sectors and classes. Because something is coming. No one knows what, or when, but make sure you do something before it’s too late.

And don’t forget to call your mom.

Best of luck with your spawns,

I’ve recently watched GLOW, Netflix’s women’s wrestling-based comedy, and loved it more than I thought I would. It has plenty of heart, and wonderful characters for something that could’ve easily been a wink-wink-nudge-nudge too self-aware piece on an extremely flawed industry. That being said, I also ventured over to the GLOW fan reactions on several sites and noticed a troubling trend.

People who do not watch wrestling are pointing out the shows problematic qualities, mainly the blatant racism and misogyny. I hadn’t actually thought this through until seeing some posts highlighting the less than feminist values of that not only Sam, the promoter, had but the internalized misogyny of many of the female wrestlers. 

This, of course, led me to thinking about women in wrestling now. Not just WWE but independent women wrestlers and how they are treated now compared to how they were treated in the actual show that took place in the 80s.

All of this considered, if you think there’s an uncomfortable amount of sexism and racism in Glow—well, you’re right. 

That’s the point.

Many people who are socially aware want nothing to do with wrestling and those who do have virtually no support if they want to pursue this as a career.

“Women’s wrestling means bra and panties matches or mud wrestling,” my mother told me as she literally got up to go to the bathroom during matches featuring Trish Stratus and Lita, the two mainstays of WWE’s late 90s and early 2000s women’s division. “They just slap each other.”

For the little truth in this statement, there are wrestlers, such as the women mentioned above, who went above and beyond what the industry wanted from them (i.e. mud wrestling, catfights, and lingerie). They had to fight to be trained and fought some more to be “allowed” to wrestle real matches on TV. No one outside of WWE fans even consider this.

As a lifelong fan of wrestling, I can attest that many of us want to change the industry, but the people who are in charge will do what they can to stay the course, the casual audience will continue to become more twitter troll than fan, and the masses in the social justice community will still see wrestling as something that isn’t worth their time. So the cycle stays. The line is towed.

“Then don’t watch it.”

Right. Then nothing happens at all. When it’s good, wrestling tells stories that any other medium could never fathom. I want women to have those stories, because we can. I want wrestlers of color to prosper in every division. I want a woman to hold the world title. I want the LGBTQ+ to be a market where they feel represented, not a joke.

Glow is a step forward. It’s displaying the flaws of this industry realistically that still exist to an audience that normally wouldn’t care…because, well, it’s wrestling.

Be offended. Care that a lot of this is still happening and that people in charge still think this way. How else will things change?