Perhaps a kids styling doll head might work?

Maybe just use your MP’s selfie or ID? use-their-id.com

Brits can just use-their-id.com.

Are you familiar with the Buddhist teaching of The Arrow?

When touched with a feeling of pain, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person sorrows, grieves, & laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught. So he feels two pains, physical & mental. Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, were to shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pains of two arrows; in the same way, when touched with a feeling of pain, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person sorrows, grieves, & laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught. So he feels two pains, physical & mental.

The mental pain is due to our resistance, repulsion, anger, or hatred. Often this resistance takes the form of judgement and anxiety. What are you gaining by holding on to this resistance? Is it worth it?

Thich Nhat Hanh, in his exegesis upon The Arrow in No Mud, No Lotus (p. 46), writes:

…there is real danger attached if you don’t have enough to eat or can’t afford necessary medicine. But you don’t need to make this suffering worse by spinning stories in your head that are much worse than the reality… It’s important to remember that everything is impermanent. A suffering can arise—or can work itself out—for anyone at any moment.

Instead of throwing good energy away on condemning yourself or obsessing over what catastrophes might be lurking around the corner, you can simply be present with the real suffering that is right in front of you, with what is happening right now. Mindfulness is recognizing what is there in the present moment. Suffering is there, yes; but what is also there is that you are still alive…

What has happened to you is wrong, but none the less there is still joy all around you if you choose to find it. I hope that you do! Please take a look at these links and reconsider.

Your severe mental illness might qualify you for disability! That could help with getting the medication covered.

Would you be able to work as a server in a restaurant on your days off from your non-profit work? The tips can be really good in the nicer ones.

Have you explained your situation to your boss? Maybe you could get a raise?

In your situation two different events are taking place. The first, losing healthcare coverage, is not of your own doing. The second, your reaction to this fact, is something over which you have agency. It is within your ability to choose how you respond.

If you are sick or injured, it is your responsibility to get yourself to the doctor or hospital. This is no different but merely more difficult. Have you called your doctor’s office for advice on your situation? Have you called manufacturers of this medication to ask if they have a reduced cost option? Have you looked online for cheaper sources from abroad?

The worst-case scenario is that you and your partner have to sell all your possessions, buy some one-way tickets and move to a different state.

Sedona would be an interesting place to celebrate the winter solstice! Some friends who once lived there invited me to go camping in February at a “vortex point”. It was a really nice experience but a bit chilly at night.

Dialectical behavior therapy has helped me with suicidal ideation. DIY’ing it without a therapist might be difficult at first but the game is to observe your initial thoughts and feelings about whatever is happening, challenge those with reality testing or more helpful alternatives, then reach a synthesis which serves you instead of harms you. My time with therapists was almost a decade ago so this might be a terrible explanation but it’s the best I have at the moment. Suppose for instance that a motorist blows straight through a stop light long after the light has changed. My habitual thoughts and feelings will likely be full of disgust. This is everything wrong with the world all at one: the capitalism, the cars, the Anthropocene, the selfishness! But maybe my assumptions about the driver are incorrect, maybe it would be helpful in this situation to try to empathize with that driver. What were they feeling and thinking? And what about everyone else that’s around, are they interesting right now? What is stopping me from observing without judgement but instead acceptance? Somehow this helps me get back to awe and wonder even in the horror.

You likely have some unhelpful habitual thoughts and feelings on top of the shit life syndrome of living in a vehicle. I’m sorry you’re struggling now. You deserve better! I enjoy reading your contributions and I’m glad you are here. Hopefully you overcome this soon.

The old version of The Sims works just fine for me with the widescreen patcher and doesn’t require any app store or online account.

Actually playing games during dire emotional states throws fuel unto my dissociation/depersonalization/derealization problems; but just mindfully sitting in my favorite place in the Temple of the Moon on a private vanilla WoW server works great for me. The sounds, music, colors, lighting effects, and water create a very zen space that helps me observe my thoughts and feelings without getting so tangled up in them. That kind of presence helps me better understand what is really going on and how it all happened.

If things are merely bad then maybe I’ll play some original Sims 1 or Rimworld on the coziest of settings. So long as there’s no nest of trash around then it’s probably okay. Eufloria in relaxed mode is a lovely RTS game that hasn’t ever caused me any problems.

Hopefully you find your way through this soon!

Wikipedia states that NGO Monitor’s focus is to “End promotion of ‘politically and ideologically motivated anti-Israel agendas’ by certain NGOs,” that they report “on international NGO activity from a pro-Israel perspective,” and that a former online communication editor employed with the group was indefinitely banned for biased editing. Personally I’m more inclined to trust a Wikipedia article with 75 sources unless there is substantial evidence to the contrary.

Yeah the boot process is a mess! Debian’s noisy GRUB and unsightly boot text is an obvious and unnecessary paint point for a desktop user but very desirable for server installations. You do have some options though!

Carlo Contavalli apparently has a relatively simple work-around discussed at https://rabexc.org/posts/grub-shush. What I’ve done in the past is rebuilding Ubuntu’s source deb package for GRUB against my Debian system. You can grab it at https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/lunar/grub2. Build instructions can be found here https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/117503/how-to-compile-a-debian-package-from-source.

The great thing about Debian, Linux, and FLOSS is that you can even automate downloading Debian’s source package when it gets updated, applying the silent patch, applying Ubuntu’s compilation options, compiling the deb, and installing the deb! But yeah why can some package maintainer not provide such as an option in the repository! It’s really an annoyance for many and almost makes me feel like I’m not the type of user the Debian community desires. Like, “Wait… what? You like pretty stuff? GTFO!” Maybe its even true? Hopefully you will enjoy using Debian! Its most preferable to Ubuntu in many ways these days!

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There are a number of nice skeuomorphic tagged themes on pling and other icons and such also are available there. The best option might be to just abandon the trendy GTK scene and embrace good old TDE! TDE has KDE3’s Plastik theme which looks great to me! (And there is a new port available for current KDE if anyone is interested.) But the early pre-gummy version of ClearLooks would be my favorite if it existed. Raleigh is pretty nice with those classic zebra stripes! Please do let us all know what you find because there are many of us not so happy with the corporate minimalist aesthetic.

Extreme Tux Racer is a nice ski racing game but tux the penguin has some aerial maneuverability for long jumps.

Psyche!

Oh my goddesses! Thanks to this thread I see that Heilung will be in my city later in the year!

Faun, Omnia, Eluveitie, Sava, Night Wish, Cultus Ferox, Corvus Corax, Schandmaul, Schelmish, Arkona, Danheim.

If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers was a beautiful masterpiece which I just finished. If you enjoy pixel art and pensive point and click narratives then you should check it out!

NEET Girl Date Night will be the next game I play.