This needs to be pinned like the last one, by the way. I can’t keep track. Please pin it and unpin the previous one.

If it’s any consolation, I glued my ass to the chair and wrote the PhD thesis, and even got tenure in academia. I quit my job after being tenured and promoted. So it’s all good. It’s nice, though, to finish the fucker. The best way is gluing the ass to the chair. I can attest. Get well soon!

What kind of thesis? Is it the MA or the PhD? I’ve completed both. First step is to get some glue and a paint brush. Second step is to slather your ass with the glue. Then, you sit in the chair. If it’s MA, you can probably get away with less glue.

OMG. I love Malibu. I guess it isn’t Malibu Creek, but whatever. I’d totally go camping in Malibu.

Well, that is just not fun. You’re nice because you know those friends of yours meant well.

I’ve been drinking a lot, so it’s pretty good. It’s really nice to relax on vacation, drink a lot for the summer, and kill some brain cells. Also smoking more. Drinking and smoking more, for sure. I also made myself some french fries today, with grilled cheese sandwich. So, kids’ menu straight out of Friendly’s, drinking, and smoking. Week couldn’t be better.

There isn’t a need for that at the moment. There are PLENTY of small publishers you can send a manuscript to. Small publishers will, of course, sell authors’ books on Amazon, but it’s absolutely not the same thing as going it on your own as an author dealing directly with Amazon. First of all, if you submit to and are accepted by a small publisher, libraries can purchase your book and there are none of the exclusive rights crap Amazon imposes on the individual writer looking for a venue. Most writers seek out a small publishing house before resorting to the “go it alone” approach. There are many writers who also avoid the Amazon bullshit by setting up their own publishing company just to publish their own works, which is perfectly simple to do and doesn’t cost much at all, in comparison to all the costs associated with marketing, cover art, bla bla bla. Amazon is often a last resort or a result of “the final straw” of receiving rejections from publishers and when writers don’t know how to set up their own mini publisher to self-publish first. Anyway, you can by-pass a lot of the Amazon crap by setting yourself up as a publisher that dedicates itself to publishing your writing. You can even offer paperbacks and hardcovers, using a printing service to take care of that for you. Then, through your own publishing company you set up, you offer your work to Amazon. It’s a different set of conditions.

Yes, this new type of statistical reality in this parallel universe I’ve stumbled into, where people don’t die if they walk, is fascinating, isn’t it? If I see a casino, I’m definitely going all in on the roulette wheel.

Well, thank you. You made my day.

Wow, I know a lot of people that died and they were quite the walking enthusiasts. Some of them must have only walked 3966 steps a day. They were just one step away from immortality, perhaps?

Exactly. That was my point. However, Grindr just doesn’t fit into my life, mostly because I tend to reject superficial stuff for the most part. I don’t reject frivolity, but the whole dating app thing kind of makes me throw up a little. It’s like gay.com was, only more modern. Anyway, “dollar voting” is a total sham that bourgeois podcasters blab about on their smarmy podcasts and write about on their maketeering blogs when they discuss their recent “retail therapy” outing. You don’t vote with your dollar, or with the app you scroll through. You vote when it’s election time. People are voting for things to just keep on chugging along as they have been: treat workers like garbage, make healthcare expensive and inaccessible, alienate the queer people, alienate anybody that isn’t white, etc. It would just be so nice if all the people using Grindr would delete their accounts all at the same time and delete it from their phones. It isn’t going to happen, but don’t you dare keep me from making fun of my friends at the bar that get all in an uproar over their Grindr bullshit. I make fun of them. I laugh at them. I call them names. Over drinks. Then they tell me I’m just a you-know-what. And I laugh, and I say, “how many no-shows last week, babe?” You see, in the big picture, why yes, it’s all about the political economy, how the system works, etc. In the little picture, in the personal day to day things of living an individual life, it’s about sticking to your guns and having a personal code of what you will do, what you will not do, and what you have a conscience about. So, onward everyone! With your conscience!

Yes, I know all of this already. It doesn’t mean I should shut my mouth.

Yes, I realize that. However, they don’t even care about their image. Why don’t they care about their image and how the people who use their app see them? Perhaps the people who continue to use their app are either A) indifferent or B) uninformed. I went out last night and talked about this situation (you know, at the LGBTQ bar where all we LGBTQ people go) and I got a lot of indifferent attitudes about it. I got an equal number of attitudes that expressed concern, but some of them expressed concern as they were checking their Grindr notifications on their phones. I think it’s time for us - the ones who care - to band together and burn it down.

I find it appalling that Amazon demanded evidence of a trademark registration for her name. I hope they get sued. Trademark or not, you can’t put an author’s name on something that they did not write. That’s called plagiarism, and it is not legal, especially if you try to make money off of it. I wonder how many authors they did this to? How clogged will the civil courts get from this? What a mess!

Even companies that cater to the LGBTQ+ community, which is all about equality, treat their workers like garbage. There seems to be no incentive for any corporation to actually be decent to their employees, no matter how liberal their social views might be or appear to be according to corporate image or culture. I guess there aren’t enough protections for workers and nobody cares, just as long as they can scroll through somebody’s workout pics and try to hook up with them. (Oh yeah, I’m brutally sarcastic sometimes)

Age is wasted on us. We get older which means we get wiser, better at living, but with age we get closer to death. It’s really an unjust world.

Don’t watch The V (a classic miniseries that was actually remade, too. Don’t watch either.) Also, stay away from Colony and don’t even think about watching Falling Skies. To feel slightly more upbeat, I would prefer The X-Files although sometimes the mood is “wow people are disgusting and don’t care about other people and will even suck up to alien invaders.” Star Trek is nice because, yeah, some of the aliens and some of the people are banded together to fight for justice. Lost in Space gives a similar vibe. Anyway, I agree with everything in your OP and I agree with you here. The aliens concept can turn into a happy fairy tale that provides a therapeutic mental escape from the drudgery of the real world that doesn’t seem to be getting better at all. People say “it gets better” because they mean well, they are trying to inspire hope. One thing I’ve learned is that in some ways the shitty things “get better” because over time I learn to live with the shitty things I can’t do a damn thing about.

It really depends on what hardware you have. A new laptop just released last month will have a ton of issues with any linux distro. The guy we’re replying to installed linux on a mac laptop. Not ever easy! The ThinkPads often work well with any distro, as far as I know. Same goes for HP laptops. BUT, most gaming laptops are a no-go, unless you’re ready to spend hours tweaking after installation.

I don’t think this is the right way to answer the thread you are referencing. Instead, you should start a post in this community talking about something you think might be interesting to discuss. What you’ve done, whether on purpose or not, is create a thread in which people can hide themselves. Instead of creating a new post in this community, they just say in a comment stream what they wish they could have the courage to make a new post about. What you’ve done is create a sub-community within the community. People put in this thread what they’d like to talk about out loud, yet feel better about saying it here because it’s buried. I don’t think you had this in mind by design when you created this post, but this is what has happened. People are posting a response to you with things that they didn’t create a post about. Are you all that afraid of creating a new post? I’m not. I’m trying to figure out a post to create here, independently of this thread, to contribute to this community. I have nothing right now of interest to discuss because I live a hugely dull and boring life. Just as soon as a bird shits on my head when I’m walking under a tree, y’all are getting yourselves a post in chat about it I created. Because that’s pretty much all I can possibly have right now. If you’re smart and take a look at the lay of the land, you have nothing to lose actually starting a new post here that maybe you felt like you couldn’t post on Reddit. Nobody here is going to rip you a new one. You have to be nice. Remember what that was like in society, when you actually felt like being nice? Maybe if you are nice and just accept the fact that people here are nice, you won’t feel the need to do this. I’m super fucking nice. Are you super fucking nice? I swear, this place needs a new motto. “Are you super fucking nice? Be(e) super fucking nice.” I am so into this beehaw thing you have no idea. Make a new chat post about your life that you think might be interesting. I’m at a huge loss. This community is the first to fucking know as soon as something unusual happens to me. I’m making a new post in here. And everyone is going to be nice to me so much I’m going to die from all the love. That’s what make this place the place. I love it!

You’re so welcome. I’m grateful to find someone with a similar problem I have. It’s helpful to commiserate. I’m so glad you can still ride your bike a little. I think that if my knee hadn’t swollen up like it did I would perhaps have found myself in a similar situation to yours. Until two weeks ago, I would have called it “working it out,” with “it” being the discomfort. Joints are like that. I have a small pain here and there in the past years and walking a little has provided me with relief. Even now, it feels good to bend my shitty knee when it’s sore. In fact, when it starts to feel funny, I automatically bend it to make it feel better. Moving joints helps with pain. It’s just not always a good idea. How are we supposed to know? We aren’t specialists in this stuff. So, in my mind, you did nothing stupid. In fact, it makes total sense to me. I’m going through it now as I’m typing, actually! Anyway, feel free to chat any old time. Always happy to listen and read about your experiences and be helpful if I can.