Of all the people aside from uncle Ted, I would have assumed that Tolkien the arch philologist would have gotten the eat your cake/have it too phrasing the right way round. Apparently not.

This is one of my favourite Nina Simone moments

Lots of anti-dandruff shampoos can be used for jock itch. You want something that has selenium sulfide or zinc pyrithione in it. The higher concentration the better (as long as you’re buying it off the shelf in a grocery store anyway).

Apply the shampoo to the affected area. Leave it to sit for the time stated on the bottle or longer because that really is not going to do you any harm. If you really want to knock it on its head apply the shampoo before you shower so it doesn’t get diluted by the water and let it sit on your skin for a few minutes and then jump in the shower.

Rinse off. Dry your skin thoroughly, paying close attention to the affected skin areas. I’d recommend using a hairdryer or a fan to dry your skin in these areas completely before you get dressed. Repeat this daily until the itching and skin discolouration is gone then continue with the treatment for at least a couple of days longer.

Keep the shampoo bottle in your shower and if you notice any itching starting up again, apply another round of the shampoo as a maintenance thing and you should be good.

If this doesn’t work then see a doctor/speak to a pharmacist and bring out the heavier stuff. But you might be surprised at how effective antidandruff shampoo can be and you can get a huge amount of treatment for only a couple of dollars. Probably less if you can find antidandruff shampoo in the dollar store where you are.

I’ve worked in the NGO sector. Obviously it will vary between countries but by and large the experience of interviews with NGOs leaves you scratching your head wondering if they’re a serious operation.

Thing is though, it’s the really slick NGOs that give a strong impression of being serious that are the ones to avoid, at least most of the time. Sure, the poor quality interviewer NGOs come with plenty of their own flaws but if the NGO is slick and corporate then most often they are the worst of the for-profit world with being ruthless and cutthroat while also paying like a non-profit and expecting workers to do their jobs (with plenty of unpaid overtime) because of their passion or dedication to a social cause.

The other NGO is the militant sort. Those ones are rare and they’ll mean business in a completely different way to a corporatised NGOs. Hard to find, hard to get into but if you’re good at what you do and you don’t fuck around then they can be really good places to work. Or they can be toxic as fuck but because everyone’s so single-pointedly focused on achieving outcomes, nobody rocks the boat and the culture of the NGO becomes worse each year.

It’s a weird corner of employment tbh.

I keep quiet about which one because I’m a bit security conscious and I don’t want to put out more info about myself than I already do.

The government of the country I’m in. Some shithole western country. But it’s a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie here so it’s a rich man’s government not my government.

If you think it’s doable then I’d say go for it.

Maybe give it a shot and see how you feel about it 6/12 months down the track. You might be able to climb the ladder if you like the job and the organisation enough. But even if you don’t and you hate the job or the location, you’re going to be in a much better place to land a job if you’re currently employed so maybe think about it as a stepping stone to get somewhere better either internally or externally.

Hey, I know a soundtrack for this!

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lJFv4JA-ZgLp4iFf6l9Gfa7wIB3CKko1A

It might be a bit of an acquired taste but the name of the album fits.

You might be. You’re extremely lucky that you didn’t get fired for being drunk at work because that alone is a huge liability and most bosses aren’t going to take that risk.

This is the wake-up call you’ve been waiting for. It’s time to get serious.

If I were you I’d find a good sobriety program and other supports for addressing your drinking problem. Then I’d march into the bosses office, ask to speak to him, sit down and look him dead in the eye and say:

"I’m not here to lie to you and I’m not going to ask you to play pretend with me. You know I have a drinking problem. I know I have a drinking problem. The other day was a turning point for me and I’ve realised how far I let this get out of hand.

I’m not asking for your sympathy or your forgiveness. I’m not going to ask you for a second chance. I just want you to know that I’ve done [x, y, and z] since that turning point the other day. If that’s not enough for you, I don’t begrudge you for it; I have a long road ahead of me and the only way that I’m going to make progress is by taking responsibility for my choices. If this is the point where I get laid off then the only person I have to blame for it is myself."

But the thing is, you’re gonna have to mean it when you say it. The excuses and the denial have paved the road for you up to this point and they’re going to keep on paving it for as long as you keep on using them. It’s only through accountability that you’re going to change the direction you’re heading in.

Good luck. You can do this.

I know I’m not my government but I want to apologize to him for “my” government for being a bunch of spineless cowards who absolutely know what they are doing and what they are supporting being done in Palestine.

It boils my blood to hear them talk as if it’s a war rather than a mass slaughter and to hear them act like “the hostages” (Israelis) are the only ones who matter, as if Israel isn’t holding thousands of Palestinians hostage right now and as if all of Gaza and the West Bank aren’t held hostage by them as well.

I don’t want to say too much but have a family member who is very, very closely connected to the upper ranks in “my” government but I haven’t had contact with them for a long time, which is lucky because if I was near this family member and their colleagues I’d spit in their child-murdering faces and tell them that they’re lucky that it’s the only projectile that I sent towards their heads.

I can’t put it into words how much I hate the injustice of the world and that you, your friend, your families and your people are subject to some of the worst of these injustices. I don’t have a question, I just want both of you to know that I’m sorry that the world has failed you for over a century and that my heart breaks for all of Palestine.

You can’t deploy the IOF to force people to stay this time around, Benny-boy.

I am all △s (except for being a suiter, unless you count wearing a human suit?)

*N95

https://people.com/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-apologizes-after-israel-funding-vote-crying/

Just because you can’t have sex doesn’t mean you can’t have fun!

https://files.catbox.moe/36bhxo.mp4 [Mildly NSFW gesture]

I actually haven’t seen those two you mentioned but I’m gonna take them as a recommendation.

I was also gonna mention The Wall (Die Wand) because it’s a very lonely movie to the point of being bleak, and only the protagonist “knows” what’s going on but it’s not a man-on-a-mission type of narrative so I’m not sure if it fits the vibe. Also the pacing is kinda ponderous which I think suits the story well but it really doesn’t have the same feel as a movie like Memento or The Machinist, which have a sort of urgency to them that The Wall lacks.

Get Out

Now that Chris and his girlfriend, Rose, have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway upstate with her parents, Missy and Dean. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behaviour as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries leads him to a truth that he never could have imagined.

Us

Accompanied by her husband, son and daughter, Adelaide Wilson returns to the beachfront home where she grew up as a child. Haunted by a traumatic experience from the past, Adelaide grows increasingly concerned that something bad is going to happen. Her worst fears soon become a reality when four masked strangers descend upon the house, forcing the Wilsons into a fight for survival. When the masks come off, the family is horrified to learn that each attacker takes the appearance of one of them.

Shutter Island

The implausible escape of a brilliant murderess brings U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) to Ashecliffe Hospital, a fortress-like insane asylum located on a remote, windswept island. The woman appears to have vanished from a locked room, and there are hints of terrible deeds committed within the hospital walls. As the investigation deepens, Teddy realizes he will have to confront his own dark fears if he hopes to make it off the island alive.

The Machinist

Trevor, an insomniac lathe operator who has not slept for months, experiences unusual occurrences at work and home. A strange man follows him everywhere, but no one else seems to notice him.

Hereditary

When the matriarch of the Graham family passes away, her daughter and grandchildren begin to unravel cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about their ancestry, trying to outrun the sinister fate they have inherited.

Midsommar

A couple travel to Sweden to visit their friend’s rural hometown for its fabled midsummer festival, but what begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.

The Lighthouse

Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.

The Witch

In 1630 New England, panic and despair envelops a farmer, his wife and their children when youngest son Samuel suddenly vanishes. The family blames Thomasin, the oldest daughter who was watching the boy at the time of his disappearance. With suspicion and paranoia mounting, twin siblings Mercy and Jonas suspect Thomasin of witchcraft, testing the clan’s faith, loyalty and love to one another.

In the movies mentioned above, most of them don’t have the protagonist with the knowledge but it lies elsewhere.

It Follows, The Revenant, Suspiria (the old one or the remake), The Neon Demon, and The Revenant might also fit the bill.

Maybe starting from Leslie Feinberg would be an easier on-ramp for her

It’s 100% about plausible deniability

Some PR goon has concocted this strategy for her to remain in the progressive zeitgeist, to feel like she’s on the leading edge, but in such a way that there’s this buffer of detachment so that she is resistant to a lot of criticisms such this post.

If she’s just saying “thing bad” in general terms then nobody is pushed to ask what the fuck she’s doing to address it and for a lot of people who aren’t extremely engaged in politics, they aren’t going to connect the dots so when someone criticises her opportunism that less-engaged person is gonna be like “What? She said it’s bad and it has to go. I don’t see why your criticising her; she’s on your side, dummy.”

It’s also convenient because the memory of this will quickly fade and most people won’t recall the exact timing, so even if there are people kicking up a stink right now it’s almost guaranteed to slide into the memory hole in a matter of days or weeks. It sucks to say it and I wish that wasn’t the case but that’s just the reality of the situation.

A big part of me actually making this post is so that it’s searchable and the info is recorded somewhat permanently.

I’m yapping again but I think this stuff is really important agitation work for us to do to push people further left and to get them to divorce with liberalism and “reformism” (or performative gestures about someone needing to do reform, which is even more dismal and exactly what’s going on here).

If Kamala Harris looks set to lose and it’s a foregone conclusion then if AOC makes another vague “somebody should do something” statement like “We need to abolish the electoral college”, which I could absolutely imagine her doing, we can build up a casefile on her bullshit strategy of attempting to ride the wave of popular sentiment into the Shite White House by making empty statements that give people a sense of validation.

>mrw