I thought I was an outsider looking in at the rest of the family when I was a child. Turns out there was no "inside" to be in at that time. We were all too lost in our own pain.
But now I'm inside the family we built from all of that.
I think one of the reasons I sometimes feel uncomfortable about how happy I am for the healing and strengthening of relationships in my family is that I know that there are family relationships that are not reparable, and some people have family members who are too toxic for them to even talk to, and I wouldn't want anything I say about family reconciliation to in any way undercut or invalidate that.
But on a certain level, it's like, it doesn't even really matter that they're my family of origin. They're just people whom I love. That's it.
My relationship with my dad is not important because he's my father. It's important because a lot of love and care has gone into it on both sides. And so on.
My family of origin just so happens to make up a big part of my found family, but it's not some magic, sacred thing. It's just about having people you love who love you.
Seriously, friends, if you have to cut out some or all of your family members, that is a thing you can do. There is no magic bond that says that you owe it to the person who birthed you to stay in touch no matter what they say or do. NOPE. Do not believe in that. Not one bit.
Build happy, healthy relationships with the people who want happy, healthy relationships with you.
I mean, I'm seeing campaign ads and getting so, so many fundraising texts, but Dems aren't going out and pitching a vision of the future to any camera they can get in front of. Republicans sure are. It's a hideous future they're suggesting, but you can't deny they're getting the message out.
I guess in order to do the same, Dems would have to have something to pitch, and they have absolutely nothing to offer, so... that's that.
Seriously, what do you expect in the post-apocalypse? Because I've got some news for you about how many people already live:
✅Food scarcity ✅Lack of clean water ✅No access to healthcare ✅No education ✅Lack of shelter ✅Rampant disease ✅Toxic chemicals in your bloodstream before you're even born ✅Catastrophic natural disasters ✅Dangerous bands of thugs (ahem...pigs) who think they are in charge brutalizing, killing, or enslaving people ✅The wealthy safely walled off far away from the suffering
We envision this hypothetical future where we're all forced to be survivalists.
Plenty of people are just barely surviving and I think I'm sick of seeing dystopia and "apocalypse" through the eyes of those who up until this moment were just fine. As if scarcity, lack of access to vital services, & violence are not facts of life already.
You can say "regular people don't care about that," but...they *could* care about it. It is not a foregone conclusion that they never will care.
I don't really have a solution for getting people to accept our Lord and Savior #FOSS into their hearts, but it's defeatist to just declare that no "regular" person could feel any other way about things than they do now.
So... people who point out that Linux can't run a lot of the games or software people want to use are correct: Linux is not a 1:1 substitute for Windows.
But I gotta be honest, I think people need to get accustomed to this, to the fact that every company selling you a product, selling you convenience, is exploiting you to the extreme, and if you want to step outside of that it will have serious downsides.
With the direction tech is going, opting out of anything will be inconvenient, but the alternative is forever being sold, forever having all of your devices controlled and monitored, etc.
No, people can't just "switch to Linux" with no change or inconvenience, but we should be helping "regular people" get used to the idea of approaching their tech differently.
At this point the mission should not be "convince people they won't be missing anything" but "convince people that not being bought, sold, monitored, and controlled is worth what they'd be losing and that there are benefits to changing your relationship to (and dependence on) your devices and technology."
@SNerd@AnarchoNinaWrites I'm not so sure everyone was against pollution either. Growing up right-wing, any talk about the environment made people angry, and they'd want to change the subject.
Whether you talk about global warming or pollution, they're still gonna call you a treehugger and tell you that it's liberal propaganda.
horror and #ttrpg enthusiast.I'm a bisexual anti-capitalist, and I strongly believe in (at bare minimum) punching Nazis. Reproductive rights and civil liberties for all! Trans rights are human rights. The Palestinian people have a right to self-determination, life, and freedom—just block me if you think otherwise.#nobot #noindex