I think about killing myself every day. Nothing good enough ever happens to make that go away.
There's an interesting political movement called CalExit. The goal is for California to leave the United States and become its own country. It seems like a good goal. The idea has been around for a while; I wasn't much interested in it before but now that Trump is president, it seems much more appropriate. I'm pretty sure that California always votes Democrat (in recent history, anyways), and for us to be saddled with such a garbage president, one that we didn't even want, is a bit much. A Republican president is one thing, Trump is another thing altogether. Now he's trying to interfere with California keeping its air clean.
If California does exit, I could leave the United States without ever actually going anywhere. Which is merely amusing. Unless other things seriously change, we'd still have a homelessness problem and a housing problem at the least. Newsom would probably nip the gun rights bullshit in the bud, but I don't know whether he'd still be governor at that point. I'd vote to leave just to get rid of gun rights. But we'd still have a crime problem, and there'd be pushback on the gun rights issue because of it. And we'd still have insane, loud, self-centered, violent, and aggressive people. We'd still have Americans. A culture change would take generations. Newsom I think is also crazy for trans shit and would be willing to put womyn in harm's way. Jesus Christ I'm tired of the transactivist community and its endless whining about how the world owes it to them to validate their "identities." Somehow I see more about the validation of identities than I hear about this supposedly marginalized community being unfairly fired, assaulted, murdered, or suffering any real marginalization at all. And ye gods, continually pretending that they're on the verge of genocide.
In the piece, Hochman endorses former President Trump’s extremist proposal to eliminate trans people from society: a ban on gender-affirming care for all trans people—kids and adults, legislation to declare that there are only two genders that are assigned at birth, immediately ceasing all funding for any federal program that recognizes that trans people exist, outlawing federal funds from going toward gender transitions and a private right to sue doctors who provide gender-affirming care.
The society proposed by Trump and Hochman is not one in which trans people can exist in any capacity. It’s a fundamentally eliminationist proposal, akin to taking Raid to millions of American trans lives.
https://xtramagazine.com/culture/conservative-media-agenda-trans-245685That article was linked in a letter to the editor in Stanford University's newspaper, apparently to back up the letter-writer's claim that "anti-trans sentiment" across the world amounts to genocide:
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/03/05/letter-to-the-editor-in-defense-of-the-trans-agendaNot anti-trans
action but merely anti-trans "sentiment."
I need to stop reading this paper; it's a waste of my time (and not particularly because of this article).
It's funny how lack of non-medically necessary medical procedures and the existence of laws concerning the meaning of gender constitute genocide. I thought trans people were supposed to be "valid" (and therefore exist) whether they medically transition or not? And what happened to all the trans people that supposedly "always existed" throughout history, before these medical procedures, federal funds/programs, and so forth existed? How did they exist without all the stuff that trans people supposedly need to exist?
Why am I talking about this shit again. The trans activism community is just a bottomless goldmine of bullshit.
I guess I'm now advanced enough in Mandarin to start listening to podcasts. It's a beginner's podcast, but it's a podcast.I wanted to start with Learn Mandarin with Miss Lin, but I need transcripts to follow along with and learn new vocab from the audio, and Miss Lin seems to provide transcripts for her Youtube channel only, and I no longer consume Youtube content. Or maybe I just don't know where to find the podcast transcripts. So instead I'm starting with an easier podcast called, unimaginatively, Learn Taiwanese Mandarin Podcast. I've been listening to the first episode, and I can understand quite a bit of the vocab at least with no transcript. Something about the podcaster's tempo makes understanding full phrases difficult, however.
Most of the female Mandarin speakers I've listened to have very high-pitched voices. Sometimes it sounds downright unnatural. This is true of the audio that comes with two of my textbooks, my new podcast, the videos on the Taiwan Center for Mandarin Learning website, and the Taiwanese presenter of the Easy Mandarin channel on Youtube. I find it unpleasant and I'm a little concerned about subconsciously picking up a habit of speaking in a high pitch because I rely heavily on imitation for proper pronunciation. I prefer to listen to men's voices.
I'm still wasting hours per day with drowsiness, it's just not as bad as before and it doesn't make me feel as terrible. I want to go back to going out before sunrise. Today I couldn't even walk the track because I was too bothered by another walker continually moving in my peripheral vision. I can't find the time or energy or cognitive function to properly search for a job. I have one that I need to take a test for when I get my credit card, but I have no other possibilities in mind. I don't really know what to do because I'm still too disabled to work. Previously I had just sort of given up. I've wondered why I gave up, and now I'm at the point that I remember why: this job search seems kind of pointless. Actually, I was much more disabled before; I have less brain fog and more energy now. I still can't handle a full-time job, however. I don't want to waste employers' time by applying for jobs I cannot hack but what else can I do except keep living the way I am now, on welfare plus less than two hundred bucks per month?
I abruptly woke up from the middle of a dream this morning. Why? This isn't normal. I don't remember hearing anything; if there was a loud noise, it happened only once. I have no insight into the cause of my insomnia.
Every day I think to myself that I'll do Rosetta Stone Korean, and every day, I fail. I just re-started a lesson a while ago, but I'm going to abandon it because I'm too sleepy to think or remember any of it. The lessons are long, so remembering is important. Does that sentence even make sense? I'm strugglig to think of why long lessons make remembering important.
Now that I'm having no caffeine except a cup of green tea each day, my sex drive has cooled off. I'm closer to where I was before: feeling like being attracted to anyone would be difficult. It's good and it's bad and it also doesn't really matter.
I started a new Spanish podcast today and I understand maybe half of it. The speed is the issue. So many years I've wasted failing to progress in my language skills. I didn't know what to do after I left school. Then I gave up after I was diagnosed with auditory processing deficit. And now I'm back at it.
Ten o'clock is too late to go to bed.