megane-kun

Don’t use Voyager that often, but you’re currently +4

Diagnosed BIpolar 1, mostly depressive, but sometimes manic.

I am deathly afraid of the manic episodes that I’ve got some fear of “being too happy”. I’d rather deal with the lows (even the lowest of the low) because at least with those, I can trust myself to lack the energy to be destructive. I am fairly confident that in my lowest, I won’t even have the energy to commit suicide even if I want to.

Mania is a very different beast altogether. It might manifest on a spectrum from “just too wired up for sleep” to, in a couple of really badly unmanaged episodes, going off to an entirely different part of the country on a whim just because “who cares, I’m dying anyways?” Only through sheer luck did I manage to get home safe both times.

That said, honest self-awareness, honesty to the mental health professionals, and sticking to the treatment plan could make it manageable. It’s no guarantee, but it helps.

It also helps to manage expectations: the treatment won’t be on target especially on the first states, while the doctors adjust the medication and the dosage, deal with the side effects, etc. Some kind of faith in the process is necessary, I think–not blind trust, but trust that if you inform the doctors honestly any effects (side effects or not) to the best of your abilities, then the doctors can manage the condition better than if you think “I feel fine, the meds aren’t needed anymore!”

The treatment–the management of the condition is likely to last until the very end, and that’s fine.

About being in a relationship? It’s really up to the person and their partner: I wouldn’t trust myself to go on in a relationship without at least informing my partner about it–and keeping them up to date with “my mood weather report”. However it probably takes experience, a few cycles to get used to it.

is_this_loss.jpg

I tried Zen for a while during the peak of its hype, and it’s fine. It’s too “Apple” for my taste though, with limited UI customization. It’s opinionated, and I quite like the overall look, but it just felt off to me. It’s nice to look at, but a bit off to use.

Oh, the name and the icon are probably the only things I am actually displeased with in Floorp. I wanted to change the icon for my system too (or just use a more generic “firefox fork browser” logo for it to contrast with my ungoogled Chromium one–but I abandoned it after finding it troublesome (skill issue on my end).

But hey, beyond the icon and the iffy name, it fits my needs, so it stays.

I actually had this trajectory: Vanilla Firefox -> (manually) hardened Firefox -> Librewolf -> Floorp

I wasn’t actually displeased with Librewolf, but I found it a bit sparse when it comes to customization. I am aware that I’m trading customization with security when I made the last jump, but given my opsec situation, I don’t think I am being careless with switching to Floorp, and it has some decent security defaults, so I stuck with it.

Everyone else’s usecases may vary and even Floorp with its customization options isn’t for everyone. That’s the beauty of Firefox and its forks, if you ask me. There’s likely something for everyone–and for some, Firefox might be it.

No one mentioned Floorp yet, so I guess it’s on me.

It’s Firefox, but with more customization options right out of the box. I also have an ungoogled Chromium on standby for those sites unwilling to work well with Firefox (and forks).

EDIT:

Oh, it’s mentioned in the OP:

• Floorp: A random find from exploring Linux for the first time. I was running Pop!_OS and found it on the store. I’ve never experienced such a smooth Firefox fork before. It really is barebones, but has a lot of customization built in. Instead of the custom options piling on one another, most of them change how it works on a foundational level. The style of your UI and tabs, side tabs, fading URL bar buttons, and a lot more. At it’s core, Floorp is a stripped down and security first FF fork developed in Japan. I took the time to translate the TOS pages, and most of it is promising that there is no data collection. It’s fairly vetted and trusted from what I’ve researched.

I was thinking of those composite names too, like Juan Miguel Archangel (John Michael Archangel) but the person having such a name would just choose at most two and would introduce themselves as John, or Michael, or Miguel.

I’ll try to send text to the very beginning of the seven-day period, sending each message on two-hour intervals sent to the point in time one second after the last message.

Let’s assume that the seven-day period starts on 2025-05-12 08:00:00.

• The first message will be sent two hours after the seven day period starts, and every two hours thereafter. This first message will be sent on 2025-05-12 10:00:00 and will include:

  1. the timespace-stamp of when and where the message is sent. the time part of this would be written in way that only I can encode and decipher.
  2. all the rules as I understand it so far
  3. what I’ve done from the the start of the seven-day period.
  4. something only I know that will convince myself that I indeed sent the message from the future

• The messages will be sent to the time one second after the previous message was sent. Hence, continuing the example, the next message would be sent on 2025-05-12 12:00:00 to 2025-05-12 08:00:02, and so on.

• The messages will follow the same format as the first one:

  1. timespace-stamp (when and where I sent the message from), the time portion written in the same code as the first one.
  2. any updates to my knowledge of the rules
  3. where I’ve been and what I did since the last message
  4. something only I know, and will reassure myself that the message is indeed from me

• If for some reason I am unable to send any messages (for example, I have been asleep, or out of network coverage area) when I should (two hours have passed since the last message), I will send a message immediately when I’m able. This message will be sent to the time one second after the last sent message. So continuing the example, if the last message was sent on 2025-05-12 22:00:00, to 2025-05-12 08:00:07, and I’m asleep until 2025-05-13 09:00:00, I will immediately send a message to 2025-05-12 08:00:08.

With this, assuming I survive for seven days (exactly) and stay awake the entire time, I will receive the last message before 2025-05-12 08:01:24. The timestamps of the last message will also give me a good indication if I survived the seven days, or how long I survived. If I continue receiving messages past that, maybe my future self messed up, or there’s something more going on, or my future self just decided it’s a good idea to just continue. Nevertheless, I have advance notice of what happens to me.

Of course I will try not to lose my phone. With advance notice, I will try to stay as safe as possible without deviating much from the timeline. Also, I will try to figure out what’s going on, but only up to the point that I can keep myself safe.

And the other way is distasteful too! Going around helping people because you want to “fish for friends”? Yeah, you could do worse things, I suppose, but still pretty icky.

Some people though, they can be pretty classy about it and if done that way, and no one is harmed, why not?

attach yourself (politely) to the person who comes to help

This probably explains some of the interactions I’ve had when all I wanted to do is to help someone in need. Not in the gym, but mostly in the streets. Like someone getting lost, and offering to show them the way. Or offering my seat to the elderly.

But really, being helpful sometimes is all it takes for give someone the reason to talk to you (and vice versa). Not that I managed to be in a relationship with this kind of a start.

Either way, I’m in a bad situation. I’ll act under the assumption been framed for the murder.

Do not touch anything, don’t leave anything that would indicate my presence in there. Do not attempt to even rearrange the scene to make it seem I wasn’t there. It’s already too late for that. All I can do now is to minimize any additional traces of my presence.

Drink some water. Find some random container that won’t be missed and won’t be conspicuous, maybe something from the rubbish bin, and fill it with drinking water. Do not take anything from the fridge. The point is to minimize any evidence that could point towards me.

The clothes might be a problem. Washing it could work, but it might be easier to just tear the bloodied parts or otherwise just go without the top layer of clothes. Do not throw them away inside the house, but be prepared to scatter them later.

Don’t leave at night. It’d be too conspicuous. The middle of the day, when everyone is either at work or busy having their lunch, works better. Take just enough water to not die of thirst. The point is not to attract too much attention.

When ready, leave. Don’t take the car, just walk. Don’t look too suspicious, but don’t act too casual either—better yet, don’t act at all. However, be cautious. There might be someone watching, following. Don’t take any drastic steps, just walk. If choosing to dispose of the bloodied clothes (or portion of clothes), casually dispose of them in pieces in different garbage bins I may encounter.

I will be walking until I reach the nearest urban area, but basically assuming that:

• I’m being framed for the murder, and so going to the police isn’t going to help
• I’m basically a “dead person” from that point on. My options are down to
  • try to survive being a beggar. there might be a way to claw my way out of this but being a wanted person makes it nearly impossible. staying a beggar, and hence invisible from the rest of society might be better
  • find a way out of the situation in my own terms

Thinking about it, maybe it’d be easier if I just join the dead guy.

I’m a guy, and if a girl sits down next to me and talks to me in a park or even in a bar, hundreds of red flags will be raised that there’d be an impromptu Soviet parade in my head.

Sure, I’d respond politely, but I’d be constantly wondering what she actually wants from me: recruit into a sus MLM thing? recruit into a sus cult? recruit into a sus MLM cult thing? And I am sure that if the genders were reversed (a guy hitting me up, a woman, all of a sudden), it’d not be a Soviet parade, but an all-out scramble for the bunkers. That’s not to say all women think the same as I do, though, but just echoing the OP’s sentiment, which I somehow agree on.

There are far safer avenues for talking to the person of your preferred gender (or non-gender), where flirting is tolerated more, than out in public.

I mean, yeah. Somehow I’m aware of that. But also, we haven’t bought a TV for almost a decade now, and my biggest mistake is letting it update to the latest version. If there’s something these adverts have done is drive me into consuming even less than ever before. I actively don’t buy stuff now.

“Smart” TVs.

I just want my TV to show pretty pictures with sound thrown at it by the digital receiver. If I want, I can attach a computer for streaming. How is that such a big ask?!

A wallpaper of a wall with the center lighted.

I think “What is the meaning of (my) life?” is not a question that we should be focusing on. It assumes that there is meaning to life. Neither is saying “Life is meaningless,” as it assumes exactly that. Both approaches presupposes an answer.

I’d rather think about “What can I do today/tomorrow/this week/this year/in this life?” That is a lot more digestible than chasing a meaning, or dismissing what could be meaningful about my actions.

I’m already here, so… What is it under my control that I can do something about? What can I do about it? Something along those lines.

PS:

The overall tone of my response might be nihilist, or having shades of stoicism, but I am personally biased towards Epicureanism (not the present-day meaning, but the more classical meaning) which gives emphasis to ataraxia, or put very loosely, that state of contentedness. It’s not about avoiding pain and preferring (temporary) pleasure, but rather a more stable state absent of pain and having pleasure that is brought about by mindful actions. I am not exactly learned in this so please take my words with a pinch of salt (or several).

I’ve used to like grids, but I’m now very partial to lists. I used to like how grids enable you to scan thumbnails quickly, (like in games, music, images and files), but now I find them to be quite distracting. In lists, if I know what I am looking for (name, file type, etc), I can quickly go to where I need to be, and only need to scan a few items.

Of course, if the list is incredibly long, it’d be more difficult, but even more so with a grid of thumbnails. The only possible exception here is images. Knowing when a photo was taken can give me a clue, but hell do I remember what I took that got saved as IMG_20230303163333.jpg is and how the content differs from IMG_2023030316303030.jpg

I can count to ten in seven languages. Not as many as some of the others here, I suppose?

Yes, I sometimes count in one of my target languages.

It is a measure of how your actions get you closer to your goals.

Hence, if my goal is learning Japanese, and I spend time in reading raw manga, I can argue I’m being productive. However, if my goal is to learn Rust, then reading raw manga is not being productive.

Productivity does not have an end goal other than what you set for yourself.

EDIT:

Edited the last sentence to make it say what I meant it to say. “Productivity has an end goal…” isn’t it. 😅