bojackstorkman

This ian't the sort of topic that I normally comment on, but today's events have been particularly disturbing, so I thought I would share what I have experienced.

I have seen two very different people that are very close to me radicalized and turned into full-blown white nationalist, violent tinfoil-hat types.

In the first case, my brother (let's call him Bill) struggled with uncontrollable anger and violent outbursts for his entire life from the getgo. I've been told that that could be linked to a near-suffocation event that happened to him during birth, though I suspect that may be neither here nor there.

Because of his behavioral issues and a terrible juvenile "corrections" system, he spent the majority of his life from the age of twelve through 25 in juvenile detention, jail, and eventually prison. He was in some of the most violent prisons in the United States, and joined a "white power" gang largely for survival. He regularly espoused the exact views detailed in the manifesto on a regular basis whenever he was out. However, after a few years out he sort of naturally came to the conclusion that his whole ideology was bullshit and abandoned it. At present, he no longer holds those views.

In case 2, a friend (who I will call Bob), had never been in trouble, never had any family trouble or any serious trauma, started spouting the exact same stuff as Bill used to. He was about 26 when this started, and it was an enormous surprise to everyone he knew. I, being extremely curious by nature and very close to Bob, spent dozens of hours trying to get to the root of what was going on with him to absolutely no avail.

The important thing with Bob is, his answer to every question about "Where are you getting that?" was a simple "I read it on 4chan/8chan and I believe it." Every. Single. Time.

I realized a couple things. First off, Bob was gone. Every conversation with him was just him repeating *chan talking points over and over again. No amount of appeals to humanity could provoke a novel thought. He kept to his points religiously, and he made it exceedingly clear that he was trying to recruit as much as he could.

Secondly, Bill had originally found himself in his situation through systematic dismantling of his humanity, whereas Bob was doing it purely for uh, internet street cred? Bill was able to face the real world after leaving prison and make his own decisions, but Bob carried something (in my opinion, specifically regarding this issue of radicalization) far more insidious around in his pocket. The approval he craved from the chans was something that had to be sated daily, which made (and continues to make) him a terrifying person to be around.

My point is that from firsthand experience with people from two very different backgrounds that I am very close to, the 4/8/whatever chans are far scarier when it comes to indoctrination than most people could believe without seeing.

TL;DR This issue is far larger and more impactful than nearly anyone would care to admit, and sites like 8chan will likely have an unpredictable and indelible impact on many, many people's lives until it is acknowledged and addressed.

To begin, I know that my resume is quite different from many others in this thread, so if my qualifications aren't appropriate, I'll take this down. I figured I would post here anyway because in the past I have had some truly wonderful and supportive people reach out to me from HN, so it's worth a shot.

Location: Rural Washington in the Columbia River Gorge area

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Unable

Technologies: Email, Excel, Slack/GroupMe/Kik (messengers in general), (S)FTP/SCP, basic troubleshooting for Windows/Mac

Résumé/CV: 1 year of office management doing invoicing, customer service, payroll, etc. for a door and window installation contractor that worked with one of the largest home improvement retailers. 1 week customer service for a law firm (The business shuttered exactly one week after I was hired)

1 year doing customer service/payment processing at call centers that handled things like customer satisfaction for multiple home alarm companies, processing payments for 3 of the big 4 cellular companies, and taking orders for the majority of the largest broadband providers.

1 year of (inbound) sales for home foreclosure listings and police auto auction listings.

(Off and on) About ten years tutoring/editing/providing feedback on essays, one Masters' thesis, website copy, a (yet unpublished) book about patients' relationships with practicioners and how it impacts health outcomes, etc. Pretty much anything you can think of when it comes to written English, I've probably helped somebody improve an example of it.

(Also off and on) About 15 years of helping elderly/non-technically inclined people do basic things like troubleshoot their computers or set up simple websites for themselves.

Most recently: Did all of the copy for a southern California food delivery business, which worked quite well. I am also finishing up the copy for a more premium offering for the same business under another banner.

  Email: tyleras2017@gmail.com

I am aware that my resume isn't quite spectacular because for a number of reasons, I have had many significant challenges establishing a clear career path in a corporate environment. For this reason, I am happy to accept minimum wage or thereabouts, as I suppose everyone needs to start from the bottom sometime.

Ideally, with my excellent communication skills, I am seeking work in a customer service, clerical work, copywriting role, or something in that area.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Most (maybe all?) CGMs need to be calibrated regularly with finger pricks. In fact in the case of both the Dexcom G5 (haven't known anyone on the G6) and Medtronic Guardian sensors they can occasionally sort of derp out and ask for multiple calibrations in a row for utterly mysterious reasons. I just asked and my partner says the most times she has had to test to get a Guardian sensor back to normal was seven times in two hours.

Of course this is anecdotal, but the point is that your mileage may vary.

By happenstance I have spent about half of my life living with people with T1D and this post echos pretty much exactly what I have heard over the past decade or two.

A lot of non-t1d folks seem to fixate on the needle/lancet parts of management because it is visceral, but have difficulty grasping the huge amount of stress and responsibility around managing time, activity, boluses, diet etc.

For example, managing stress can itself be stressful. Some people with t1d have sever anxiety, and a panic attack can trigger a cortisol dump into their bloodstream, which in turn causes a significant spike in blood sugar. I once saw a panic attack spike a person from 80mg/dl to over 400 mg/dl with no eating, no pump/infusion site failure, or incorrect basal rate.

Also, concerns about your ability to engage in sexual activity with regard to blood glucose is the furthest thing from a humble brag. It is an issue for many, many diabetics and is often a point of embarassment. Kudos for mentioning it!

Recently my partner (23yrs with t1d) and I made accounts on the twitter-like site called Beyond Type 1 which has actually been a really great community of diabetics (and diabetic-adjacent people like me) sharing their concerns and advice and we have both loved it.

I find this post interesting. I moved out of Portland last year because I was summarily priced out of the city. By "Portland" are you including Gresham/Milwaukie/Beaverton in your estimation?

About seven years ago my friends and I got a 2bd 1.5br apartment for $775 per month in SW Portland. That same apartment is now about double that. In many of the new or renovated buildings you can see a lot of studio apartments with a price floor of $1,300 per month.

Also, little things like a beer that used to cost $2.09 now costs $4.19. What used to be a $4 sandwich is now $7.25, $1.60 tacos went up to about $3. Even prices for stuff like clothing at Goodwill went up significantly over the years that I lived in Portland.

I know this is just my personal experience (and that of my friends), but the genral trend that I saw was an enormous shift to accomodate higher income individuals and families, and an exodus of lower income people all over the place.

This was an interesting read. I guess I'll start with the response.

As has been pointed out by others, bringing up the book was a weird humblebrag. It kind of makes me think that Polly chose to answer this particular request for help because it was an opportunity to continue promoting her book, not that it somehow organically happened to fit in with her advice.

Also, it seems like a lot of the response kind of boils down to "nuh-uh!" and "cut it out!" with no shortage of affirmation-esque platitudes. From my personal experience, I have found that line of reasoning to be frustratingly valid only in retrospect for people that have already overcome the bulk of their depression/anxiety/existential dread. It's easy to be prescriptive or reductive when you have some distance from the issue that you're talking about, and that's not necessarily helpful for everybody.

Anyway, as far as Haunted's post goes, I can entirely identify with those feelings.

On my nineteenth birthday I had my house raided (and entirely destroyed) by the gang taskforce of the local pd. This was because in the middle of the night before, my house had been tagged with some gang related graffiti on the side of the house that faced the freeway. I couldn't afford to fix the place after the raid, and had no way of guaranteeing that the people that tagged the house wouldn't continue to do so.

So I had to move with only the clothes I was wearing.

At 20 I had to move overnight because a stalker broke into my mother's house (where I was staying) and tried to choke me to death. When the police arrived, I was almost arrested because the stalker had friends in the department (this individual moonlit as a kind of "high class" cocaine dealer to lawyers and a few judges in the area). Knowing he was certainly going to come back with no consequences, I moved again. This time I was able to carry my laptop and a change of clothes.

At 21, me and my then-girlfriend up and left everything that wouldn't fit in her car so that we could move in with her parents as a way to get her out of prostitution. When we got there, her parents changed their minds and we ended up selling everything including the car in order to get a ride across the state to an office building I knew we could squat in.

At 22, I was summarily kicked out of the living room that I had been crashing in because I told the guy whose house it was that I wasn't comfortable with covering for him every time he stole money from his wife to buy heroin. He kept my laptop and the bag of half my clothes out of spite.

I have since lived in much more stable circumstances, and the last two time I'ved moved, I've kept all of my stuff and relationships! For the first time in my life! That being said, it's made it difficult for me to shake the mindset of "Don't buy it or care about it if you can't take it with you given five minutes' notice." In fact, I don't know if I'll ever be entirely without that feeling rattling around in my head.

If put on the spot, I would have difficulty making a rational argument that my life hasn't been wasted. There objectively exists a number of periods of my life which I have nearly zero to show for. That being said, it's not a line of thought that I regularly entertain. That type of existential despair is simply too easy to wallow in. It's like quicksand. The idea of a ~Meaningful Life~ (and its opposite) is at once way too emotionally weighty and way too easy to mercurially define to be a useful focus for anybody, especially people that are already struggling with other issues.

As for broke, it is a tangibly anxiety-provoking and embarrassing thing. Every little setback (like schools you're applying for asking for surprise paperwork that you can't access, being "mysteriously" rejected by a school wholesale without an interview just for ASKING if they offer financial aid, not being able to afford basic resources to launch a small business, etc.) makes everything seem more and more like there is some sort of cosmic curse at play, or that the world is actually reflecting my personal worth. All I can really do is keep trying, and personally only the tiny victories help with that sort of anxiety. That's just me of course, others might respond to being broke differently.

As for "friendless", the only thing I can think to say to someone who makes that claim is "Are you sure about that?" I recently moved to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and have yet to make any close friends in the area, but I still have close friends from all around the country that I talk to on a near-daily basis. Group chats are great for this. Whenever I am feeling lonely, I figure that it's on me to reach out.

The friends you"ve moved away from probably miss you as much as you miss them, and while it's not the same as hanging out in person, an extended phone call or a nice text chain full of jokes and news snippets can be a healthy reminder that you haven't just "disappeared".

Sorry this got a bit long, I might've lost and then re-found the thread of my reasoning at some point ;)

Basically, I think it's good that the original author decided to reach out and ask for help, even if the help is from an advice columnist. I would encourage anybody else struggling with these things (like I currently am) to make an effort to do the same in whatever way works for them. Asking for help when needed, and offering it when capable are two of the most satisfying and empowering things a person can do.

Also as stated by many posters, therapy from a good therapist can also be a godsend.

Anyway I'm done rambling for now. If anybody wants to have a friendly chat about depression or isolation etc., feel free to shoot me an email! I am not a professional anything, but I'm pretty friendly and a good listener!

:)

This is really neat. The stylization of the hexagonal tile sets reminds me of a tabletop game I played years ago called Heroscape. Is there any chance that it was inspired by that?

This made me laugh. Perfect. :)

I find the phrase "oriental philosophy" to be problematic in addition to being quite vague.

Additionally, your statement that this "oriental philosophy"(?) doesn't give "due credit" to abstractions, which seems like a very wide dismissal of an undefined subset of philosophical groups.

Then you go on to dismiss meditation as a practice as well, as an "escape from reality". I am assuming that you would agree that since abstractions and definitions are important, the term "reality" isn't well-defined within your statement.

I am curious as to what you mean in general, because it seems like you're trying to tear down some sort of philosophy that we aren't privy to without offering any meaningful alternative counterpoint.

Thanks for that! That actually looks quite promising for my goals. Just gotta figure out student aid or loans for random expenses haha :)

I have been homeless in very affluent cities on the California coast, including San Franscisco. I strongly disagree that having a "million dollar view" constitutes "living the dream."

If a person is at risk of assault or arrest for their inability to go indoors and has no immediate ability to remedy that, I have no issue calling that person homeless. Regardless of how one views that person's life decisions they face the same systemic issues as any other homeless person.

If your point is strictly that the language is ambiguous, perhaps it would be more appropriate to use "people that choose a vagabond lifestyle" (which is close to your original statement) over a confusing mix of "homeless" and " "homeless" " to refer to the tiny subgroup that you are referring to.

Though I strongly disagree with the overall sentiment here, as well as some of your specific statements, your post touches on some interesting points.

In an earlier post, I mentioned a very, very small group of people that I have met that were almost mystifyingly homeless despite them having very few limiting factors that regularly contribute to homelessness.

The one thing they all had in common was that they stayed in places that didn't have harsh winters or dangerously hot summer (e.g. coastal California). I have not, however, met any person that fits that description in the Oregon/Washington deserts, Utah, Colorado, or even inland California.

In a nutshell, yes it is technically possible to sleep outside in coastal California without risking death from exposure. However, climate does not mitigate the risks posed by arrest for illegal lodging, violence from those around them (other homeless people, and others that are simply cruel), starvation, theft etc. It also does nothing to help with access to (even critical, immediate) healthcare, counseling, education or really any other factor that helps people get into a better situation.

As far as smartphones go, I agree that access to one can be life-changing to a homeless person, bt I could not disagrew more strongly with your characterization of that access making living on the street -with all the risks that that entails- as "less unattractive". To be earnest, I suppose I don't understand that point. If your landlord shows up with a police officer to forcibly remove from your home for not paying rent, the relative "unattractiveness" of what comes next for you isn't a variable that is taken into consideration. You have what you can carry, and hopefully an idea of where to walk next.

If "what you can carry" includes a smartphone, your chances of getting access to help is certainly improved dramatically, and yes, if you can find a spot that is near an open wireless AP, you might watch some Netflix. It is hardly the equivalent of living in a 3k/month apartment.

From my experience, cars and vans break down or get towed, phones break, phone plans run out of data (or in some cases, phone minutes. The poorest peole often still don't have reliable access to unlimited plans, even in 2018), you can get banned from coffee shops for making others uncomfortable by your appearance alone (people don't like to look at a person that has to carry all of their belongings with them).

I lived in a car for a while, but sold it for $300 for a train ticket to a place with fewer police. I had an eight year old laptop running an old distro of Ubuntu (without a working battery) that I traded for a weekend inside during a particularly bad cold snap. On two different occasions I have had to leave every single object I owned behind, and start over with only the clothes on my back and whatever was in my jeans' pockets.

If your point is that there is a differnce between homeless people and, as you put it, "homeless" people, then yes I agree. The biggest difference here is that of access to resources that can help bring one off the street, and whether or not perfectly healthy, capable people are making intentional decisions to reject those resources. The latter group is a genuinely fascinating anomaly, and does not reflect the reality of the problem.

Personally, I find that "move somewhere that's more desirable or manageable" to be problematic. The only reaon why I was able to leave a particular city was because I had a car to sell for tickets. If I hadn't, I simply would not have left. Even when I got there, I didn't have two nickels to rub together, so housing prices didn't really matter.

I would encourage anyone that feels this way about the homeless to do a bit more digging, or just have a conversation with a few people that are currently or were recently homeless. This particular attitude of lumping everybody under the umbrella of The Worst Examples doesn't seem to serve the goal of fixing this problem.

Thanks for reading! 90% of what I read about on here is stuff I don't fully understand that I read juat for self improvement, so it's nice to be able to contribute to a thread occasionally :)

In my experience of living in multiple shelters/streets/camps in multiple cities is that there is a lot of truth to this idea.

For example, I knew a man that was incredibly ornery, almost always drunk, and prone to occasional violent outbursts. Everybody (including the rest of us in the camp) avoided him. About a year after I left the camp, I ran into his daughter and learned that he had been a normal, successful eletrician that had sustained a severe brain injury at work, and his employer managed to avoid paying for workman's compensation or helping with his medical bills, leaving him permanently disabled and with no safety net.

I knew another man that also received a brain injury during a car crash in which he also lost the only extant copy of his masters' thesis in anthropology (the crash occurred in the 80s), and was in a similar position.

I knew a man that actually managed to get a section 8 apartment, but lost it because he opted to move back to the riverbottom and let a pregnant homeless woman stay in it in his stead. He was then also cut off from ALL social programs.

I saw a man get banned for life from an entire network of shelters spanning a huge chunk of the state for taking three (3!) single-use packets of Tide laundry detergent out of the facility.

I have also met a (very) small handful of genuinely odd people that just preferred to live mostly off the grid but still wanted to be near their families/veterinary clinic/spouse's grave/etc. but they are very much the exception and not the rule. I think that for some people with limited experience with the homeless, people that are chronically homeless might appear to all fall into this category.

I do 't think this happens all the time, or even to a majority of the population, but it is an idea that I have heard repeated numerous times.

From my experience, the details are almost always surprising, and the search for simple explanations or solutions is frustratingly unsatisfying.

I am happy to read about programs like this. I have struggled financially for the better part of a decade due to a variety of issues ('08 crash wiped out pretty much every job that paid a living wage in the city I lived in, sickness/cancer in my family, people that I relied on for work dying, my personal issue with PTSD, etc.)

Housing has always been the most influential factor in whether I was able to achieve even temporary stability. For the periods of time that I wasn't homeless, my place to stay was wither explicitly temporary (often for arbitrary, unknown periods of time) or cost nearly 100% of the income I was able to scrape together.

Just three months ago, after nearly ten years, I was offered the opportunity to live in, maintain and fix up a small investment property in the middle of nowhere. As it stands, this arrangement should last a year, after which I can opt to stay and pay rent at market price (which in the middle of nowhere is very low).

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I am stable enough to apply for school (starting in October, fingers crossed!), and try to really focus on doing some freelance website work for small businesses on the side. I wake up every morning and actually eat breakfast, which doesn't seem that significant, but for me that has been historically difficult or impossible because of my severe, sometimes crushing existential anxiety.

I still have problems, but they are considerably smaller and more manageable. In these three months I have spent most of te money I've earned on either food or supplies for the house. As of right now, my most pressing problem is getting $40 to get a copy of my high school proficiency certificate, and beyond that it would be nice to get a beer at the only bar in town to meet some folks, but I'll take that set of problems over worrying about being cold, or hungry, or getting arrested for sleeping outside any day.

So yay! These arrangements can be an absolute godsend for people that otherwise would have difficulty digging themselves out of a hole.

I have personally seen an entire friend group abuse buprenorphine recreationally. It doesn't produce the traditional opiate euphoria, but for people with little opioid tolerance it can be a very strong intoxicant.

From my experience, kratom is noticeably less euphoric than most opiates and doesn't cause as bad of side effects such as nausea and constipation.

Considering that difference and the big differences in price and availability (eg for people that lack access to healthcare), I believe there is a significant portion of people that could viably use kratom in lieu of buprenorphine, and ESPECIALLY in lieu of methadone.

I genuinely believe that the debate about kratom is framed squarely by those who seek to control the profits in addiction treatment.

For reference I am 7 years clean, and have "babysat" over a half dozen people through various stages of withdrawal from opiates, amphetamines and alcohol.

I think the problem more relates to how the risk associated for privacy violations is communicated to people. "People don't care about privacy" is a reasonable conclusion to reach if you don't factor in the perception of the risk in and of itself.

That being said, I have heard that idea a lot --and again, I see how it could be a logical conclusion in certain (or even numerous) scenarios-- and I think that it might be fundamentally flawed.

Sometimes "but they don't care" sounds more like a line people use to avoid actually addressing people in a meaningful way than an actual summation of the situation.

Thanks! I'll pass that along.

I am curious as to how narrow your scope of industries/requirements will be in the future.

I have a friend with a BA in Photography and a MA in Collaborative Design. She is very talented and intelligent, but has trouble explaining exactly what it is that she excels at. (I've known her for years and I still only get the gist of it. Think creative work mixed with formalized systems thinking.)

Is this a possible customer down the line?

I am glad that this is becoming more prevalent. While I personally have never really gotten into any trouble, I know a lot of people that have been incarcerated for weed. In other cases, the presence of weed allowed for entry/search by police which for any number of reasons resulted in being charged for one crime or another.

More importantly (to me personally, since this affects people close to me), a big chunk of them experienced insipid forms of violence while locked up, and in some cases this derailed people for years, or even permanently.

I sincerely hope that the sheer human cost of current policies can be reduced or eliminated altogether.

I think this is a wonderfully poetic viewpoint. It somewhat reminds me of the general tone of the Tao Te Ching.

This cheered me up a bit, thanks!

It is 2018 so this is a good time to have this debate.

Geocities > Angelfire > Homestead > Lycos Tripod.

I remember holding this opinion but cannot remember why, or if it was actually informed by anything.

Oh my gosh, I used to know a guy that went by 'puppies' or something that used to talk extensively about the "AOL progz" and I just got a flashback. This is incredible.

This is actually quite charming. Thanks for sharing it!

Too bad caffeine makes me anxious!

Jokes aside, I think this is kinda neat. Platforms like this are becoming more and more necessary for a segment of the population. I have been considering taking up a blog or other writing endeavor, but beyond building an audience, paying to keep a domain or hosting can also be an issue.

Anyway, I am sure you've heard that before. I will likely be a user, and will provide more feedback once I have used it for its intended purpose (it might be awhile).

I do have a question about your policy on "any creator" though. I know a few people that had a bad experience with Patreon/other similar sites because they produced adult content. I do not work in this space, but my understanding has been that this is a pain point for many self-employed content creators.

Anecdotally, I have heard from more than one person that systems like this help protect people (disproportionately women) from exploitation in this industry, by giving one autonomy over their finances without having to contract with a studio or whatnot.

So, is this an issue that has been adressed in designing this platform?

(I know this looks like the ultimate "JUST ASKING FOR A FRIEND!!" post, but I am not in that business, not that anyone should feel ashamed to be.)

I understand your view on critical thinking, and I am intentionally trying to foster that by encouraging other stakeholders to speak up. Namely, us Poors!

In this case, what speech is privileged over the rest? I read the article, her post, your post, and so on. I will continue to do so.

If your issue is with tone, great! Tone is an important discussion to have!

No problem!

1. This is kind of open ended, so I'll give it a shot. Both of my parents were janitors. I went to a private school in middle school on a work scholarship (we had to drive an hour each way, open and close the school every day). I dropped out of high school and have a few community college credits.

2. PTSD unrelated to anything I would care to discuss on HN.

3. ?

4. No. I have applied multiple times over the past six years, but long periods of being uninsured makes people wary of making any decision based off of medical data.

5. When I was 14, I founded and ran a hosting company, so I learned how to use PuTTY, maintain PHP installations, run cPanel, etc. I guess you can say I am "Okay with computers"

6. I have worked in construction, customer service, and sales across a few different industries, but all for very short periods of time. This relates to my disability.

7. I do have a small group of friends that I am very thankful for, but not to the extent that it doesn't scare me when it is snowing outside.

8. I would love to know how my answer to this matters to your estimation.

Edited for a typo.

Thank you for sharing! I ABSOLUTELY know what it's like to have people believe that you deserve poverty. Sometimes when I get really depressed, I feel that way toward myself. The idea of reduced inherent personal value seeps into everything.

Your point about the difference between being on a couch after a high value MBA vs being on the couch --full stop, end of sentence-- being a total chasm is totally correct.

I think that it is interesting that another poster posited that poverty is truly informed by hopelessness, with the implication that HN readers can't be hopeless. The idea that the concept of poverty is definable only by those far enough away from it to say "That is another group of people than I am in." is problematic in my view.

I have also lost access to education because of resources multiple times. I cannot stress how much this has impacted me materially and in terms of morale, both in the short and long term.

The amount of inertia that the self-perpetuating condition, as you aptly put it, is staggering to many that aren't actively experiencing it.

It is difficult to know what aspects of being poor are seen as urgent --or even actionable at all-- by others. Communicating this is complicated, and I haven't been satisfied by the general discourse on the subject, personally.

I am poor and volunteered my voice on the subject of how poverty affects people. I specifically asked (as a question, not a substantive statement) whether or not my input was welcome. I have also made a point of saying that I have no issue with other perspectives. I can not speak to how you experience my intentions in my writing, but I will try to keep clarifying.