I’m a woman in her forties and maybe my perspective helps. What I’ve noticed about myself as I am approaching menopause is this: I won’t tolerate stuff that I don’t want. No compromise anymore. My body just won’t allow that I be in a place I don’t want to be in, with people I don’t want to be with, in conditions I don’t control … so I’m probably not a very nice person anymore in the way I used to be - but at same time feeling powerfully aligned with what I really want for myself, and walking out of situations that don’t serve me.

As women are still raised to please and support others many of us tend to wear ourselves out in caring for other people and their opinion, and when that falls away with menopause the results can be very painful for the person themselves and their families. This change in me killed my relationship, and I do feel very sorry how it all went down, but I was literally physically unable to stay and remain in this ‘wife’ situation that I tend to almost automatically create for myself when with a partner.

And for your situation as a partner: No, you never have to put up with your partner criticizing you all day and dumping their rotten mood onto you. That’s not acceptable for any reason.

Why should the homeless have no right to organize? It’s funny that the only places with (rough but efficient) functioning self-organization I could find so far were among the homeless and the small folk. Those with stuff left to protect are too much up their own arse to want to play well with others.

Also, the plans to get off the street are real, most of the time. Every kindness you show is a seed that one day will point towards the right direction.

I’ve been hanging out with the homeless as a kid, and lived on the streets for a few months as a young adult, travelling and panhandling. I met many very kind, and often very damaged people. They are on the streets because it’s for a variety of reasons the only option they can manage, not because they enjoy scamming you out of a few coins and do nothing all day.

If you are concerned about your money look at the suit wearing people, most of it ends up with them.

Improve your local community in other ways. Or give in other ways. Not sure what would apply in your local community - I live in rural Western Europe and that’s very different from what you describe. People here set up donation boxes, swap shops, create food banks, organize markets, create safe spaces for minority groups, community gardens … mostly volunteering time. Not sure you are in the position to do this? Sorry things are so heartbreaking. I hope we all figure this out soon.

How did you like Georgia? I keep beong obsessed by it (because music).

How did you address your trauma? What methods did you find worked?

trying to catch trains, trying to find the correct room at university …

Yours is just one of many versions of ‘why I personally don’t do anything’: I’m all for change, but the others don’t want!

Society will never be fully aligned on the solutions and you cannot expect everyone to agree with you, but you still can work for your preferred solutions in smaller groups?

Society is collapsing as we speak and my best case scenario is this one because I do whatever i can to create a soft landing spot for me and my local community.

Yes, and also closeness changes with time. It has been like this in my family. I’ve felt more close to one or the other of my parents over the years depending on what I was doing but I don’t remember having a problem with it. That said, my parents made sure to treat us both equally as kids, and if they felt closer to one of us they didn’t let it show.

Do your friends have a website? I’m always curious to find good ideas to steal for other communities!

Haha insane, I swear this popped into my head out of nowhere yesterday.

Well not entirely nowhere, but I work with plant dyes. So far I’ve only dyed wool, but I suddenly had the idea to create some T-shirt printing process with what grows around here. A dye bath and ink are rather different things though, so I’d be curious for ideas how to turn plant pigment into ink, or where to look?

I’ve never even seen normal silkscreen printing done, but vaguely understand the idea. I’d try different fabrics stapled to a wooden frame as sieve, and maybe use wax to cover the non-print areas?

For a non natural method - could 3D printing be interesting for making sieves?

And what is an emulsion?

Listening to whatever you like is punk as fuck

I had to check, but I had !climate blocked since … ever? Never missed it, but the occasional discussions around it seem to show it’s not the most agreeable place on this instance.

Not if you want to make cheese with it

First of all, a hug from far, and may the alienation go away soon.

Second, I’ve found there’s no point in discussing politics with people. Not with friends, not with strangers. There’s no point in trying to find people ‘aligned enough’ with my political ideas. Since I’ve accepted that I feel that my attempts at spreading anarchism lead so much further! As long as I never mention the word (or any other political jargon), and always, always approach my fellow humans as humans and try to inquire about what moves them, not tell them what I think they should do.

What do you think is missing in your neighbourhood? If you think it’s human contact, try to start there and invent ways to encourage friendly contact. Maybe create a point for food sharing or book sharing. If people are too shy to speak to each other in person at this point, give them other options, so they can lose their shyness gradually.

Where are you based? I found myself facing the same problem. In my small rural community a 2nd hand and artisan market proved to be effective to get people out of their houses and meet up. No need to throw political theory at them immediately, it’s just great they appeared. Though I do admit there’s already a bit of a community to work with and entertainment is sparse around here so it’s easy to get people’s attention. Where are you based? Not sure what would work best there.

The organizing steps that worked so far for me and bf are described in the Community community of this instance (and the many social anxieties suffered by a person who wants to encourage community but isn’t very social to begin with).

The gist is really just that blockchains are a ton of computers everywhere recording the same list of transactions permanently, under a certain set of rules, and a normal database is just that, but under one person/company’s control

So do all Bitcoin or Ethereum holders have some kind of general assembly or online vote to decide under what rules their currency is run? Does one bitcoin equal one vote? Which blockchains are private, which are not?

Also, banking (including their computing systems) already adheres to a set of rules, luckily. Unfortunately heavily eroded by powerful global players, but very functional, at least in Europe. Hey there’s even cooperative banks and credit unions here if you look carefully! In my opinion we should seek to build common sense and evolve to an economy based on mutual trust, not build technology based on general mistrust.

Get off the internet if you don’t like datacenters and technology.

Non-haters don’t care about the differences between datacenters, technology and blockchain. They want M.O.R.E. T.E.C.H. because it’s new and shiny. ;)

I do understand my banking statement, and even most of the fees I’m paying or my account. I don’t really understand what happens in a blockchain. If you can explain it to me like I’m 5 maybe I’d be more likely to adopt the technology. I’ve heard rumours that it’s really just a glorified database - if that is true, what’s the difference between databases we already have, and this new fancy kind?

What are you even trying to say? I am still trying to find something actually useful where blockchain is necessary that doesn’t spend as much energy as a small country. Every ‘explanation’ of why I should adopt this tech for my project/business/government/younameit is intransparent as heck. Lots of hot air, especially emanating from all those data centers. Fuck blockchain and AI.

Stopped reading at blockchain technology.