糟糕

Drawing GSGW everyday until my friend finished part 2: Day 13

[ID: a screenshot of the original post's tags that read, "#real turtleheads know this is a play on sliders (turtle emoji) which are a type of terrestrial turtle. but it's also tiny hamburgers #which seems apt. #this has been another episode of Joke Explainer" /end ID]

college finally freed me so gsgw sketches raaaaaaaa yuri jahsol soon

“Hey, none of that. You're a valued member of the team, no matter what your power level.”

“I just don't understand how you can tear open that portal to the fire dimension so easily.”

“… fire dimension?”

“Yeah. Where the fire lives. Before you summon it. For fireballs.”

so are you definitely qin *shi* huang orrrrrrrrr

“This magic potion turned the emperor into an alligator” -> “huh i guess magic potions do exist.”

Simple. Straightforward. Comprehensible. Least amount of cognitive leaps to take. Occam’s razor slices through so cleanly and neatly.

“Some random peasant becomes emperor eight years after QSH’s death, after winning a contentious (haha) civil war, and beating out some of the most celebrated military men in history. Despite being a crude, backstabbing scoundrel who pissed in people’s hats, he also managed to lay the groundwork for a moderate and (relatively) humanist Han dynasty, which lasted 400 years and became china’s first golden age. He stands as a paragon of benevolence (relative) to the draconian Qin rule*. His legacy is so enduring that into the modern day, chinese people still call themselves the Han people, and the language the Han language, while his predecessor QSH (who envisioned himself as the progenitor to an unending dynasty) only managed to create a dynasty that lasted 15 years, and has nothing but crumbling walls and unopened mausoleums that stand as a monument to human exploitation” <- it this was a work of fiction i’d decry it for being heavy handed and painfully unrealistic.

dishes

- wash at least one dish every day. could be a single fork. just do one. at absolute worst this means you're regularly running clean hot soapy water through the heap of backed up dishes in the sink.

- any time you have to wash a plate or utensil because you're out of clean ones, wash two of them. need a knife? wash two knives. need your only baking sheet? wash a cup too.

clutter

- overwhelmed by clutter? take out the bins and do laundry. it's very difficult to organise a space when it's full, and trash and dirty clothes take up a lot of space both physically and mentally. emptying bins makes room for the whole cycle to move.

- those little boxes and containers advertised for ADHD really do work, even if you don't have ADHD. they let you move surface clutter around even if you don't have time to sort and clear it. you can quickly box up the craft project that's been taking up your desk for two weeks, clean the surface, and put everything back.

- on that note @3liza clued me in to the power of a simple wicker basket a decade ago and it changed my life. this isn't a desk tidy, this is a medium to large box or basket without a lid that you can comfortably carry in two hands (doesn't have to be wicker). personally I like a collapsible one so I'm not tempted to fill it with stuff when it's not in use. the point of it is collecting and carrying.

- instead of taking on individual sidequests for every item in an overcluttered room, walk through with your simple wicker basket and collect everything that has to go in the kitchen. take it to the kitchen, put it away. then collect everything for the bedroom. take it to the bedroom, put it away. it's your sifter, your filter, your best friend. this is but one use of the simple wicker basket.

trash

- differentiate in your head between dry trash and wet trash. dry trash is paper, plastic wrappers, packing foam, scrap fabric, dried up pens. 'shelf stable' trash, if you like. nothing likely to leak or rot. this can be collected in small lined wastepaper size bins around the house – one in every room honestly isn't overkill. you only have to empty these when they reach the top of the container.

- wet trash is food waste, soiled or greasy food wrappers, empty bottles, sanitary products, used medication ampoules, anything contaminated by mould or pest damage, etc. the yucky stuff. this goes in a single, large, lined bin with a lid, in a central part of the house (probably the kitchen). Empty this every 3-4 days or as soon as it reaches the top of the container. it won't fill up as fast without dry trash bulking it up, and disposing of it in small amounts regularly keeps the place feeling fresh. importantly it also means the gross stuff is contained in one place, not wearing on your peripheral attention day after day making you feel bad.

generally

- everything I said about clutter and surfaces above also works for floors. you can take stuff off the floor, vacuum, and then dump that shit right back where it was. you don't have to wait for one glorious day when you have the energy to do everything.

- the longer something goes untouched, the worse it gets psychologically. if a particular area of mess is especially upsetting or daunting to you, agitate it. pick up just one thing. dust around it. divide it in two. do anything you can bear that gets you to engage with it and handle it. it's manageable. you'll get there.

During this time, my closest friend was extremely busy with work, I couldn't afford therapy because I was struggling to even make rent, and I didn't have someone I could talk to.

I have OCD. One of my compulsions is "checking" and it often takes the form of googling. Googling a word I know just to check that the definition hasn't changed. Googling whether xyz is normal. Googling how to choose some relatively unimportant things.

I googled all kinds of things. I googled to find out if there's a word for intentionally letting someone hear you cry in hopes that they'll comfort you. (Not because I was doing that, but because I had an overwhelming urge to.) I googled odds of relationship survival after addiction. I googled how to tell if your partner has stopped loving you.

And Google ai overview answered every single question. And on mobile, when I was curled up in the dark at 4am, there's a convenient text box to ask the AI a follow-up question. And the AI says things like "that's a hard situation to be in" and "that must be painful to hear"

And I'm not a fucking idiot. I know perfectly well that AI is trained to be sycophantic and that talking to a fucking LLM about my relationship fears was a massive mistake.

I was also terrified, alone, heartbroken, and desperate.

I spent literally hours of time googling questions on AI mode. Holding conversations with the AI. I have stickers on my laptop and water bottle that say "AI Hater Club" and "generative AI? Nein danke" and I wish Sam altman would fall off the face off the earth.

And none of that mattered. I was desperate. I recognized that, and once things began to calm down (my doctor took me off of the narcolepsy med and put me on a medication for addiction called Naltrexone, I was able to start therapy again, my partner and I worked together and took steps to repair what was damaged) I stopped turning to it for an open shoulder.

But I realized a few days ago that I hadn't stopped using the ai entirely. I would Google "best [item] on a budget" and instead of reading a cnet link that reviewed multiple brands, instead of checking consumer reports, I expanded the AI overview and asked follow-up questions.

I'm currently finishing up an astrophysics internship for the summer. Usually when I don't know how to code something, I look at the documentation or find a post on Reddit or stack overflow to explain. Instead, I was asking Google overview for instructions on how to use sys.argv. At no point was I vibe coding, but I was basically asking Google ai to walk me through it like a tutor.

And then, last week, I realized that I no longer Google things the same way. I used to search like "pokemon sun and moon original release date" but lately I've been searching "what year did pokemon sun and moon come out?" Even my checking OCD has changed. I used to Google "n30i mask cleaning +seal +oily" and now I Google "I use a resmed n30i CPAP mask and it keeps losing its seal when I'm trying to sleep. My face gets kind of greasy when I have it on. I already clean it with CPAP wipes every day and run it under water to rinse, do I need a different kind of mask?"

A few days ago, the news about Hank Green using LLMs to find research papers dropped, and I saw his response on Reddit. I saw the way he talked about the dopamine hit he got from it. And something clicked.

I had to install a different OS launcher on my phone so I could change the search bar widget to Firefox search instead of Google, because that's the only way to ensure I don't get the ai overview when I Google something. It's actually really frustrating because I instinctively search in long rambling questions, which does not work well. But I'm having a hard time going back to how I was.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)

-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt

-ayran: yogurt, water, salt, mint

-sees the reports of the heatwave in Europe-