Notices by Muninn 🍃 (muninn@social.coop)

Gentle reminder that being "self-sufficient" and a "self-starter," and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and even just living on your own and expected to be able to do everything for yourself, is actually a highly unnatural state of affairs for human beings which only became the norm in a small number of countries less than a century ago.

Here's to everybody who won't have good #holidays this year.

* shout out to those who can't be with friends & loved ones, or who have none
* shout out to every fifth wheel
* shout out to those around people committed to misunderstanding them
* shout out to those who put up w/ignorant comments when prioritizing self-care
* shout out to those dealing with flareups of anxiety, mood disorders, cognitive dysfunction
* shout out to everybody who has to keep a lid on something today.

#StayStrong

On day 4 of the meditation retreat I gave a note to my zendo neighbor, thanking her for putting up with my endless fidgeting and letting her know that her stillness inspired me.

In the closing circle, she shared how on her most difficult day, she got a small note from someone which totally upended her perspective, allowing her to integrate what she needed from her struggle and find a state of deep peace.

We can never know what even the smallest act of kindness will mean to someone else.

Some people tend to get depressed because their brains are biologically tuned to be better at perceiving and focusing on negative information in the environment.

Living in a hostile environment is particularly bad for these people. Interestingly, there is some evidence that living in a supportive environment is particularly *good* for these people.

Many "risk" genes for mental illness may be more accurately described as genes which make people sensitive to the environment, for better or worse.

I'm realizing that a significant proportion of white middle class Americans have little to no concept of hospitality, and thus their isolation is no surprise. My parents were like this and I chalked it up to them being weird, but it's apparent that this is actually the norm for many people.

Such people may have parties, guests even for the long term, etc etc, but there's something missing and hospitality is the best way I can name it. It seems like a learned skill that's missing.

#USA #America

#Loomio just crashed my phone so hard I had to hold the power button down to force a hard reset. Quite frankly, the UX is difficult and painful on desktop, while being considerably worse (and WAAAY slower) on mobile. This is worth noting when considering questions of #socialcoop engagement.

Now, instead of scrolling down on a thread to wait ten seconds for Loomio to load each group of 5 comments, I'm going outside.

#tfw you're built for coop mode but were born into a pvp culture

#SciHub HTTPS Certs Revoked by Comodo

"#Comodo … responded to a court order which compelled it to revoke four certificates … [but] domains https://sci-hub.is and https://sci-hub.nu are fully operational with certificates issued by #LetsEncrypt, a free and open certificate authority supported by the likes of #Mozilla, #EFF … and other prominent tech companies."

https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-pirate-bay-for-science-security-certs-revoked-by-comodo-ca-180503/

#publishing #science #Elsevier

Wow. Yeah, this about sums up what it's like living with #executivedysfunction sometimes.

(Which, BTW, isn't just an #add / #adhd symptom, but also appears in #bipolar, serious #depression, and #tbi)

#Cloudflare Terminates Service to Sci-Hub Domain Names

The CDN provider was compelled to take this action in response to a permanent injunction the American Chemical Society obtained late last year. While Cloudflare previously objected to a similar request, there is no sign of protest this time around.

The site is currently still available.

https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-terminates-service-to-sci-hub-domain-names-180205/

#scihub #decentralize

Reminder: #introverts need a certain minimum amount of #solitude. For most, this means an empty house. When people are running around in the other rooms it isn't solitude. Please remember this for the sake of your #introverted loved ones.

(Also, this isn't an illness or an affliction or something regrettable or something to be fixed. It is our way of being and it is perfectly valid. Please respect that.)

#introversion #alonetime #downtime

I've been using Loop #Habit Tracker for #Android for a while now and I really like it.

Best features:

* isn't a jerk when you don't do your habit - the "habit strength" graph declines slowly instead of "lol back to zero, loser"
* flexible habits - daily, weekly, n times in a week, etc
* nice charts and graphs to visualize your progress
* open source / #FOSS

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.isoron.uhabits

#selfimprovement #behavior #bmod #shaping #mentalhealth #wellness

I got my wifi hotspot with 1 year of service from pcsforpeople.com. They took a SNAP (food stamps) letter as verification of low income. So far so good. It connects to the Sprint LTE network and is supposed to be truly unlimited. It's like the #CalyxInstitute deal but for people with proof of #lowincome.

I'll update after I've used it for a few days.

#digitaldivide #wirelessinternet #WISP #pcsforpeople #pleasetag

#FamilyCare shutdown will bring big changes to clients' mental health coverage https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2017/12/28/familycare-shutdown-will-bring-big-changes-to.html

tl;dr if you were getting mental health services in #Oregon through FamilyCare, the state will transfer you to a carrier offering worse coverage for more money.

#healthcare #mentalhealth #prevention #USpol #America #priorities

Some people need to withdraw & have alone time because their mind *literally stops working right* if there's no downtime from social input. It's not always pathological, even when it comes as part of a mental health condition we would like to change.

@mayel Absolutely agree. There are aspirational hobbies and interests, and real hobbies and interests. Sticking with hobbies and interests involves finding ones that are inherently enjoyable to us.

Can ppl boost this until somebody who knows #stats or #dataviz etc sees it?

I have a time series of numbers, sampled irregularly, typically between 1 and 6 samples a day. On a line graph, there's considerable jitter. If I want to smooth jitter and see trends on e.g. a 36-hour granularity level, but also not lose outliers in the smoothing, what's the best approach?

My idea: average samples in arbitrary 12-hour periods (am/pm), then apply a 36-hour moving average. But I don't know this stuff.

Then of course there are editorial concerns. What constitutes toxic #news? Which upsetting stories are important enough to include in the feed? What about differing user preferences for amount of unpleasantness in their news feed? And how to deliver such tailored feeds - RSS/Atom by topic and unpleasantness tier??? I'd be happy to offer this myself if I had the spoons to deal with the endless tide of existential horror in the news, but I don't. #newsdiet #mentalhealth

I would love to have a set of #newsfeeds organized by topic & curated such that toxic news was minimized. Not eliminated, mind you - I don't want to read about e.g. ongoing ethnic cleansing or #metoo in daily minute detail, but I do want to at least be aware. But this requires outsourcing labor, both what we typically consider as labor, & emotional labor. There are people who would be fine with doing the emotional labor to make this work, but they'd need to be paid. #newsdiet #news #mentalhealth

Long ago I started a #newsdiet for my #mentalhealth. It's been helpful. I do it by carefully choosing my sources and reading my news in an RSS / feed reader.

Unfortunately, curating on a source level isn't granular enough. I still get too much toxic news, and too little of some topics I want to see.

The missing topics - e.g. politics - tend to cluster with toxic news, so I don't subscribe. But then I cheat, checking in on the sites themselves, and get exposed to toxic news anyway.