On twitter I’m seeing dozens of threads from Black activists warning people against burnout, giving all sorts of useful tips about preventing and managing it for the sake of a long-term, sustainable effort.

On tumblr I’m seeing a hell of a lot of young white kids yelling at anyone who actually follows those steps, and acting like burnout is a moral falling rather than a well-proven psychological phenomenon.

Be careful who you get your information from. Don’t let guilt lead you to make choices that will harm both you and the movement.

I’m going to reblog this again since I see more individuals are inquiring about burnout prevention tips in the notes and it’s why I sought out this resource. I hope it helps you!

source

them: you don’t watch game of thrones?? really? how come?

me: 

@scarcity-of-cats @annajanes

It’s called Unconsenting Media 

Oh my god, this is going on my list along with doesthedogdie.com

Holy shit that’s useful

I probably won’t find myself using this but for my followers: if you can’t handle this shit, USE THIS. If you think a movie or tv show may be hard to watch, do your homework.

1 - the very reason why I don’t watch GoT

2 - This and rotten apples are some of the best sites ever

3 - Does the dog die have a TON of subcategories, such as jumpscares, strobe effects, does a kid die, does an LGBT person dies and many, many others (they actually link to unconsenting media under “someone is sexually assaulted”). Please save it to tour favorites is really freaking usefull

Useful info. But… (and I sort of doubt it) is there a database like this for car and/or motorcycle accidents? I end up having to give up on lots of movies and shows because there’s often too much for me to handle still. Don’t really like playing the guessing game of “how traumatized is this gonna make me”

Does the Dog Die has car crashes, and if someone gets hit by a car

Seriously, they have a ton of things, and if they don’t, you can reach out to them and they’ll add a category

Hey y’all I know I haven’t posted in literal ages but here’s a bunch of sites who do this way better than I do!

I have epilepsy (among other things) and use these sites. When friends haven’t seen a show/movie and can’t inform me if it’s safe, I browse these sites. Saved me from having seizures.

as someone who never even realized there were websites with trigger warnings, this is absolutely incredible information

This has been driving me insane.

I used to be *good* at search. It was a whole thing - I found people's "lost songs" or their unknown-source childhood stuffed toy or whatever from Google.

Now, you can't search for the exact brand/design name of something and get accurate answers. It drives me spare on Amazon - if I search for XYZ and you don't have any, or you only have 2, tell me that.

I wouldn't mind if it said "Here are 2 XYZ. Shoppers also searched for..." Instead it'll just throw a random, barely-linked pile of results and you have to wade through every single one to see if the thing you want exists.

THIS. For ages I used to say that I had "high Google-Fu". I could find *anything* because I knew how to use strings to enhance searches. The string commands haven't even worked for well over a year or more, far before they put in this infernal (and often wrong!) AI BS on top.

I used to be able to search for recipes and easily eliminate unwanted ingredients with a -. For example I'd look for low-carb desserts but without the zillions that use peanut butter simply by searching for something like:

low carb chocolate dessert recipe -peanut

And I'd get a slew of on-point suggestions. For some time now if you do -peanut Google ignores the - and assumes you want recipes stuffed with peanuts.

Where it's even worse now is now you get directed to sites full of bogus AI recipes that don't even make sense. But they have peanuts in them.

I used to be able to use reverse image searches to find out who made that awesome art so I could give credit in my share. They've removed that ability entirely and replaced it with Lens, which is AI BS just showing you more like what you looked for. (Rebecca Watson complained about this in her recent video about JD Vance jizz cup rumours and I apologise for that sentence but...yeah. Watson is great, go find her on Youtube and subscribe because she went into detail about how Google has become less and less useful for debunking.)

This isn't just about Google inserting shopping ads instead of what you wanted to learn about. That's bad. But the results now are just *broken*. The tools we used to have to make searches better have been removed. Google no longer wants us to find the answers we seek, but the answers they want us to have, and that's super creepy and dangerous.

And the alternatives are either using Google in the back end or have other significant barriers to use.

This sucks.

Duckduckgo and all the other alternatives work this way too, now.

Verbatim search, guys!! Go to "Tools," and enable "Verbatim."

It's a pain in the ass, but it still works!

1) yay, thank you

2) WHAT THE FUCK WHY DID THEY HIDE IT

i know hearing people on this website love to pass around those posts with links to free sign language lessons but you know you need to actually put effort into learning about Deaf culture, too, right?

if you are currently learning ASL, you need to read Introduction to American Deaf Culture by Thomas K. Holcomb

resources for other Deaf cultures include, but are not limited to:

"Look at this video of a child disappointed at their expensive gift! Children are so spoiled these days!"

That's cool. So, why did their parents upload their small child being upset online? In a public video, shared to the entire video? Why did they even save the recording?

Like. The kid in that scenario could be saying the most entitled nonsense in the world, and if their parents post it online to be publicly shamed, I'd still support the kid 100%. Thinking your child's life is a toy to exploit freely for #content is "spoiled"; when faced with mommy vlogers, kids should be demanding three PS5s and a new Bugatti, and we should be applauding them for it

This also tends to attract a lot of responses from grown adults eager to fantasize about how they'd "punish" the kid, and. If your power fantasies involve you owning an eight year old (in the metaphorical sense not the Sixpenceee sense) I don't even know what to say

Also there are a lot of expensive gifts that are really thoughtless. If an 8 year old wants a Lego set and you buy them a model train set and they get pissed about it, you’re the problem.

I don’t care that the thing was expensive, if you didn’t ask or ignored what they wanted, that’s on the parents

A lot of people seem to not realize (or care) why kids want specific things, and also that kids don't get what money is. They haven't had it beaten into them yet that they're supposed to like expensive things more than less expensive things. What they find enjoyable may have nothing to do with how expensive it is, and that fries the brain of well-off parents who care about things primarily as status symbols. The notion that someone could be happier with something that cost $20 than something that cost $2,000 infuriates them on a deep subconscious level

It's also limited by parent's lack of knowledge about tech, so they can't understand why someone who wanted a Switch would be upset if they get a PS5. It's more expensive, so clearly it's just the same thing but better in their mind. They don't know or care that their kid really wanted to play Mario and that they can't do that on the PS5, so they process it as ungratefulness

Kids also don’t have a huge amount of experience in anything, and it’s a parent’s job to teach them. This sounds incredibly obvious, doesn’t it?

Before a family Christmas celebration, when all five of us happened to be lounging around together, I announced we were playing PRESENT PRACTICE. I wrapped a toy frying pan in a muslin cloth and handed it to a child, who unwrapped it and mimed amazement. The older children and their father were all awarded points for their simulated appreciation and the baby got points just for learning to unwrap something. On the second pass we all leveled up to making a grateful comment in reaction to the particular gift, such as “this will go in my collection of frying pans” and “now I can cook one very small egg.”

For the six year old, I very seriously presented the important and tricky case study of unwrapping a large exciting box to find a single pair of socks. The child suggested a reaction of “this is great, how surprising! But,” their face changing to seriousness and the tone of giving the giftee useful feedback for the future, “I’m not very interested in socks.” They explained the utility of passing on this feedback. So, this being present practice, I received this reaction with the grace and thoughtful attention of an award-winning director, and we discussed how we would leave that part out for our more sensitive audiences.

The children also traditionally give small cheap or handmade presents to their family members. Each parent takes each child secretly in hand to prepare a present for the other parent. The six-year-old also has access to the PTA school shop, where the PTA purchase small shitty items (scented candles, bars of soap, cheap socks) and sell them to the schoolkids for £1.50 each, and wrap them on the spot. The 6-year-old carefully squeezes the value from the £10 we give them for this purpose, and squirrels away their mysterious bag of wrapped gifts like it’s a state secret. The three year old is given “pocket money,” and taken shopping. There is now emotional investment in giving; we whisper together quietly about how much people will like the gift. The three year old frequently whispers hotly into my ear about the item they chose for their grandmother (a tissue cover, lmao). The children, therefore, watch adults carefully when their own offerings are unwrapped and admired. When they see us reacting with amazement and gratitude to their gifts, it maps that pathway and lights it up. It also teaches pretty early on that giving is actually supposed to be rewarding, and is a more reliable source of cheer - as you can always control the feeling giving, while getting is tiresomely at the whim of an external giver, isn’t it? And it reinforces that a certain degree of social performance is expected.

Present Practice is a fun game to play so the kids do it to each other. It’s a funny trick to play on a parent, too. You can hand a parent something hilarious, like a potato wrapped in toilet paper, and see them try to do a Level 3 reception on it (“this will be my favorite ever potato,” I say mistily, “how did you guess what was in my heart?”)

For high-pressure present-opening situations, you can just sit back and watch, really. Even when I had to let them open USA-grandparent Christmas presents over Zoom AT the house of the British Grandparents. The children spontaneously decided to receive presents in the guise of angels. I was giving the kids wild thumbsups from behind the camera as they warmly enthused over the sentiments in the cards before even looking at the gift.

Does it sound artificial? Well, they have fun, and they’re kind, and they love giving and receiving. They’re nice and well behaved - and people love to give them presents. It’s all social performance! and you’re expecting super high-level software to run on Kid Hardware, which is like trying to program Plant Pathology 101 onto a border collie! Kind of an unfair expectation on the framework, mate!

I’d suggest the first port of call is literally - teaching kids how to get presents.

Aww it looks like present practice trotted around the world getting notes when I wasn’t looking! That’s so nice guys

at some point we gotta acknowledge that getting the majority of your news and takes and general opinions from tumblr is not meaningfully different than getting it from tiktok even though on here it's in textual form. understanding the world through the lens of viral videos vs understanding it through breathless unsourced text posts written by dykeastarion69

#this is what made me switch to actually reading news sites regularly some years ago#(and when something's controversial or doesn't seem quite right I look up multiple news sources to try to get a fuller picture) (@thirddoctor)

A quick reminder that the Associated Press is totally free, and also often covers the news stories that Tumblr users say no one is covering. NPR is also free. So is ProPublica.

Also, here's a chart that might be helpful, in terms of determining bias and reliability: Interactive Media Bias Chart

does anyone know if i can like block sites from appearing in my google images searches??? i keep getting those awful ai generated things with a hand coming out of a man's neck and just straight up not what i was looking for, because this was in a search for "curly hair in medieval paintings". it happens every time i search for anything vaguely art-reference-like and it's so fucking annoying and it clutters my search results so much. i don't wanna add specific commands to the query every time too, what i need is like a browser extension or something

okay i found one! it works! everyone come get your blacklist 👍👍👍

I made a list of as many ai sites i could find to block with ublacklist, just copy and paste them in ublacklist's options menu

Found this on facebook but reposting to SAVE A LIFE.

Or at least some of y’all’s GPAs.

You’re welcome.

Holy shit? thanks op!

for comp sci, physics, math, etc p much everything is uploaded by authors to https://arXiv.org

also, use Unpaywall

(and sci-hub but I didn’t tell you this)

This is true! I was writing a fanfiction and found an article that would be a great reference so I sent an email to the professor who wrote it with my .edu email and told him it was for a “personal project”. Never give upon your dreams kids

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

HEY wanna read but annoyed on where to find copies of books?

Here's an archive with millions of PDFs of books and papers and magazines and essays and stuff.

I've been looking for such archives, thanks

It's so weird talking to people who's view of "here's the way life is for everyone" is shattered as soon as they talk to someone with disabilities (physical, mental illness, any). Like you'll say you'll have a problem and instead of helping you they'll argue with you about how you're not actually facing that problem. Like,

Me: Hey, I'm really struggling to find a job and a part of it is my resume. I was depressed & psychotic during highschool so I didn't do anything to gain skills or achievements to put on my resume. I also don't have anyone to put as a reference. What can I do?

Them: You can add your skills, hobbies, clubs you're in, and different volunteer work you've done! You can also get your teacher as a reference.

Me: I already know what to put on a resume, my issue is that I don't have things that I can use. Also, I'm in my mid 20s so I don't know if I can put my highschool teacher as a reference.

Them: Well if you're a part of a church or an activity group, you could add that. Also, think of any projects you've worked on in the past.

Me: I already know you can put these things on a resume. I'm not looking for suggests of things I've already done, I'm looking for what I can do now if I haven't done anything.

Them: There's no way you didn't do anything during highschool?? What about some odd jobs you definitely did for extra money, like babysitting or mowing the lawn?

Me: I spent all of highschool either in modified classes or in bed doing nothing - not even hobbies, what about that do you not understand?

And then you talk to someone who's also disabled and they're like "Here's a bunch of jobs you can do from home that don't pay much but look good on a resume, here's some free online courses that also look good on a resume, here's how you can be making small amounts of money in the meantime, here's some things you can put besides a professional reference, and here are your rights if your future employer tries to take advantage of your disability - which you probably shouldn't tell them about unless you need accommodations."

And suddenly my will to continue trying returns!

c...can we maybe get some of those ideas in full? Pls?

Two other people asked as well so okay! Though this post will be rather long.

Freelance Jobs You Do From Home That Look Cool On A Future Resume

Please research any company before sign up with then. So many companies are scams and pay you way less than you deserve for your work. Go to r/freelancers and search to make sure nobody has had some horrid experiences. There's also usually reviews of a company on YouTube as well.

Small Amounts Of Money

If You Don't Have Anyone To Put On Your Resume As References

Once you have some, this is how you would format your references.

None of these are long term solutions and not everything will work out for everybody. These are just helpful suggestions I've received over the years!

May I add Zooniverse for participating in citizen science projects? It gives you a Research Background, plus you can talk about admin/data entry etc

There's also a whole bunch of YouTube tutorials for learning Excel. And, if you've a mind to learn it, there's a mapping software called QGIS that's free to download, and the internet is full of tutorials. If you can learn it, it is an EXTREMELY sought-after skill in a lot of fields.

OMG I know somebody who needs to see a list of How To Money While Body Is Nope.

A nurse has heart attack and describes what she felt like when having one

I am an ER nurse and this is the best description of this event that I have ever heard. 

 FEMALE HEART ATTACKS 

 I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is description is so incredibly visceral that I feel like I have an entire new understanding of what it feels like to be living the symptoms on the inside. Women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have… you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor the we see in movies. Here is the story of one woman’s experience with a heart attack: 

 "I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, ‘A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up. A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you’ve been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you’ve swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn’t have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation–the only trouble was that I hadn’t taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m. 

After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR). This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. ‘AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening – we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven’t we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think I’m having a heart attack! I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart attack, I shouldn’t be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else… but, on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment. 

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics… I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn’t feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to un-bolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in. I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don’t remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like ‘Have you taken any medications?’) but I couldn’t make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stints to hold open my right coronary artery. 

I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents. Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand. 

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body, not the usual men’s symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn’t know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they’ll feel better in the morning when they wake up… which doesn’t happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you’ve not felt before. It is better to have a ‘false alarm’ visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be! 2. Note that I said ‘Call the Paramedics.’ And if you can take an aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER - you are a hazard to others on the road. Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what’s happening with you instead of the road. Do NOT call your doctor – he doesn’t know where you live and if it’s at night you won’t reach him anyway, and if it’s daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn’t carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later. 3. Don’t assume it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it’s unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive to tell the tale.“

Reblog, repost, Facebook, tweet, pin, email, morse code, fucking carrier pigeon this to save a life! I wish I knew who the author was. I’m definitely not the OP, actually think it might be an old chain email or even letter from back in the day. The version I saw floating around Facebook ended with “my cardiologist says mail this to 10 friends, maybe you’ll save one!” And knew this was way too interesting not to pass on.

snopes.com says this one’s true.

Save a life–Reblog.

Female heart attacks are much different, and most people don’t know it!

as an aroace person with limited sexual experience, no interest in watching porn, and poor sex ed as a teen, there IS something simultaneously funny and vaguely tragic about being 28 adult years old and realising how extremely tiny your frame of reference is for genitalia and deciding you should expand this to better understand bodies (yours and others). and then you're just there like "okay so what the fuck do I even google right now, anyway"

Large Labia Project

Labia Library

Breast Gallery-Nonsexualized Images of real, anonymously submitted breasts

Critique My Dick Pic [tumbex archive]-real submitted dick centric nudes

thank you (i think?)

why wouldn't it be thank you? you expressed interest in sexual education materials related to genital body diversity, and i keep these resources on hand for exactly that purpose.

it's natural to be curious about bodies--yours and others. the presence or lack of sexual intent motivating that curiosity is irrelevant. they're just body parts

I also found one of my favorites I couldn't find this morning: The Great Wall of Vulva and their Labia Library

sorry, my gratitude was real, my uncertainty was @ me ("am i sure i actually want to spend my evening looking at genitals or was i using the difficulty of knowing what to google as an excuse not to learn things") lol

do you have any resources for trans bodies, especially transmasc bodies? i am interested in better understanding what changes i might expect as someone on testosterone, but though i found references to photo projects re: bottom growth in a few places, all the links were dead

totally, the London Transgender Clinic and Dr. Keelee MacPhee have a variety of before and after photos related to various gender affirmation procedures.

i think that r/GrowYourTDick is the best repository of images of specifically trans masculine bottom growth. I can't comment on the culture of the forum, but there is absolutely a lot of images of transmasculine genitalia and extensive discussion of physical changes.

For (relatively*) trustworthy information, Hudson's FTM Resource Guide contains a lot of information about medical side effects and Things To Generally Be Aware Of, like increased risk for yeast infections and tips for managing locker rooms/swimming. *I can't verify that this information is up to date

I'm not directly connected to any trans masc transition support networks, but i know that discord is a thriving space for transition support and information sharing. i think it would be relatively easy to find positive community there. they often compile resources and information for members as well as provide topical discussion spaces. here's the disboard listings for public trans masc oriented servers

and this is just a really beautiful series of portraits of trans masculine people.

that about taps me out on resources!

no, I lied, I'm not done. I spent way too long looking for this photography archive documenting trans nude portraits specifically. lost to the ether. found other stuff though:

Archive of Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits by Loren Cameron, which includes images of genitalia in its "Genital Reconstruction" section, page 46. Portraits of clothed trans masculine people other than the author begin on page 34 in the "New Man Series."

A Genitoplasty Diary by Lou Sullivan (1984-1987) (no images but fascinating)

the evergreen Trans Bodies, Trans Selves

not useful at all, but an extremely cool in-browser recreation of a 90s mac in order to run a 90s trans information CD-Rom.

thanks! sharing for the sake of anyone else interested too

yeah there's so many dead links out there it's tragic. sometimes you even get as far as the artist's website and they'll have a page for the project but then the project is gone and you just get a 404. i'm guessing the increasing hostility of internet providers and stuff towards nudity/nsfw content and also the general atmosphere for trans people has an impact on the safety and practicalities of continuing to host stuff like that :(

By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.

Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.

This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):

Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):

Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.

But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:

Things can be easier. You do not have to be stuck forever.

Literal definition of spyware:

Also From Microsoft’s own FAQ: "Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. 🤡

KillKillKillKillKillKillKillKillKillKillKill

There's a way to remove it~

Go into the power shell

then paste in:

reg add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot /v "TurnOffWindowsCopilot" /t REG_DWORD /f /d 1

like this

Then restart. Also here is how to turn off the awful search suggestions:

Chronic pain and illness really do skew what you consider to be normal.

I'm complaining to a friend about two separate pains I've got going on right now, pains which I would categorize as "annoying," and "distracting," and she's freaking out, like, "Go to the ER!!!!" and it's like, oh, that's right. Normal people go to the ER when it hurts to breathe.

Anyway...

(Just to clarify, I'm, like, 90% sure it's costochondritis, and I'm not actually struggling to breathe. It just feels blegh. The other pain is more distracting and potentially an issue but we'll cross that bridge if we get to it.)

Been telling my (young and abled) physiotherapist for years that I'm in pain all the time and when he asks me to tell him how bad something hurts from 1-10, I really don't know how to answer that. He'll say "tell me if it hurts" and I have to say, every time "you mean... in addition to how much it always hurts?" Anyway I love the guy, but he kept asking the same questions in the same way and not understanding why it was hard for me to answer.

Then I found this graphic here on tumler dot com (I do not remember the source but please add it in comments if you know) and I showed it to him at an appointment.

He started reading from the bottom to the top, reading each "normal" level followed by the "chronic" level next to it, and at first he was laughing. When he got to about 7/4 he stopped laughing and said "okay well this is getting less entertaining and more concerning." He went completely silent for a moment after he finished, then turned to look at me with real concern in his eyes and asked me if this chart was really accurate. And when I said "Yeah, dude" and gave him a big goofy grin and a shrug, I saw something click for the first time.

Oh, this chart just made me realize my migraines are a 12.

That's... yeah, okay. Printing this out.

YouTube trying to make me become racist while I listen to 1970s J-funk for 3 hours

The best thing I did for my youtube viewing experience was download an extension that allows me to block entire channels. Now when I don't like a thumbnail? Blam, obliterate it, never see it again - and youtube is none the wiser. Youtube has no choice but to bring me weird music videos and retro game reviews.

You know, needing to add basic functionality to a platform yourself to fight back against the forces of enshittification is something tumblr trained me well for. You need like 5 third party extensions to make this site remotely usable.

Block Youtube Shorts

Block whole channels

Youtube Dislike

Highly recommend the shorts blocker as well- this one will play them as if they are a normal video which also speeds up the site a fair bit. Shorts are where a lot of the recommendations for sketchier content have been coming from in my feed from what I've noticed; I don't get them from longform videos anywhere near as much.

With how often AI content mills are popping up on youtube, it's a good idea to have the dislike button too.