Category: Local / Living

Couple Thoughts on Alcoholism

Having a problem with alcohol is not about alcohol
As the sober years mounted up, I realised that drinking was a symptom of something bigger underneath. I’ve rarely met an ex-drinker who didn’t have anxiety, depression or low self-esteem, usually caused by experiences growing up. For me, it was growing up gay in the 80s, reading that people like me didn’t have a future. I’ve seen hundreds of people with different stories but with the same outcome: straight men and women who didn’t feel loved, trans people who were bullied, people whose parents beat them, or shamed them about their looks or weight, or sexually abused them … the list goes on and on. Dealing with problem drinking means dealing with what’s underneath. It’s terrifying at first but eventually you’ll come to see it as the bravest and best thing you’ll ever do in life.

The best thing about stopping drinking is that you get your feelings back
And the worst thing about stopping drinking is that you get your feelings back, so the saying goes. If drinking is about dulling pain, when you stop, it comes flooding back like a tsunami. Decades of repressed memories came crashing in. The time a teacher slapped me when I was eight for something I didn’t do, how it felt when my ex cheated on me, a person who bullied me in one of my first jobs, and about a million other resentments – but also the things I’d done: guilt about a joke I made to a schoolfriend that came out wrong and made them cry, relationship mistakes, the time I nearly slept through a photoshoot with Daniel Radcliffe … Gradually you learn how to deal with emotions in a healthier way than just running from them. (Yes, I did go back and apologise to that schoolfriend.)

I spent 22 years as a problem drinker. Here are 10 things I’ve learned since I quit
Matthew Todd
Guardian

Techno Utopianism – Example of

Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and establish new sovereign territories. I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State–related efforts in California—a proposed tech colony called California Forever and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government.

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”

The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.

The Tech Baron Seeking to “Ethnically Cleanse” San Francisco
Gil Duran
The New Republic

Non-Compete Clauses and Overtime for Salaried Workers – Biden Administration Pro-Labor Moves

The Federal Trade Commission banned non-compete clauses in employment contracts, which have proliferated in recent years as a means to prevent (as Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out Tuesday) even low-wage workers like Starbucks baristas from seeking employment with a competitor. Non-competes have become a widely-deployed management trick to limit turnover by closing off the avenues to alternative employment opportunities.

It didn’t last. To the long list of items that went south during the 1970s—heavy industry, the dollar, Main Street, liberalism, literary culture—add the 40-hour work week. The Labor Department stopped increasing x—at first (ironically) because inflation was out of control, later because Ronald Reagan was president, and still later because the Clinton administration somehow never got around to righting this listing ship. Consequently, the proportion of salaried employees who qualified automatically for overtime pay fell to the point where the 40-hour week was no longer a middle-class benefit; it was a poverty benefit, and you had to be extremely poor to qualify. President George W. Bush finally updated overtime rules in 2003, raising x to an annual $23,660, but that was a poverty wage even two decades ago, and because of changes to the duties test, the net effect was that an estimated 6 million workers lost overtime coverage. By 2015, the proportion of salaried workers who qualified for overtime pay automatically was a mere eight percent.
…
In the meantime, Biden has restored the 40-hour work week to the middle class for the first time since the 1970s. The median weekly wage in the United States is $1,139. On an annualized basis, that’s $59,228, or just slightly higher than Biden’s eligibility ceiling. That means workers paid very close to the median wage will qualify for time-and-a-half when they work more than 40 hours per week.

Biden Just Saved the 40-Hour Work Week

Tennessee Auto Workers Vote to Unionize

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Employees at a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly voted to join the United Auto Workers union Friday in a historic first test of the UAW’s renewed effort to organize nonunion factories.

The union wound up getting 2,628 votes, or 73% of the ballots cast, compared with only 985 who voted no in an election run by the National Labor Relations Board.

Both sides have five business days to file objections to the election, the NLRB said. If there are none, the election will be certified and VW and the union must “begin bargaining in good faith.”

President Joe Biden, who backed the UAW and won its endorsement, said the union’s win follows major union gains across the country including actors, port workers, Teamsters members, writers and health care workers.

Tennessee Volkswagen employees overwhelmingly vote to join United Auto Workers union
AP

Unrelated Occupants Limit – Repeal of in Colorado

DENVER — Gov. Jared Polis signed HB24-1007 on Monday, prohibiting local governments from limiting the number of people who can live under one roof.

Previously, local governments were allowed to set occupancy limits for people who weren’t related to each other — no matter the size of the house.

There are a few exceptions in the new law. Local governments can enforce residential occupancy limits to follow fire code regulations and health and safety standards, or if the residence is part of an affordable housing program.

The new law will impact many people, including college students, partners who are not legally married and seniors living with non-immediate family members.

Gov. Polis signs housing occupancy bill
9News

Meditation – Surrender to Impermanence

Meditation is deceptively simple. There is really nothing to do. We sit still and know we are sitting. The mind wanders off and when we catch it wandering we use it as a reminder to continue paying attention. Right View asks us to remember why we are attempting such a peculiar thing. Much of our lives is spent thinking about the future or ruminating about the past, but this dislocation from the present contributes to an ongoing estrangement and a resulting sense of unease. When we are busy trying to manage our lives, our focus on past and future removes us from all we really have, which is the here and now. The Buddha had the rather paradoxical insight that it is difficult to remain comfortably in the moment because we are afraid of uncertainty and change. The present is not static, after all; it is constantly in motion and we can never be absolutely certain about what the next instant will bring. Past and future preoccupy us because we are trying to control things, while being in the present necessitates openness to the unexpected. Rather than resisting change by dwelling in the relative safety of our routine thoughts, as we tend to do in our regular lives, when meditating we practice going with the flow. We surrender to impermanence when we meditate. Wherever it may lead.

Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself
Mark Epstein

Cannabis Legalization in Germany

Crowds gathered in Germany overnight to celebrate the legalization of cannabis starting from Monday.

There was music and dancing at the Brandenburg Gate in central Berlin, where attendees waved placards and blew clouds of smoke into the air.

One person could be seen cycling through the crowd dragging an artwork of a giant cannabis leaf on a trailer behind their bike, while another ceremoniously rolled a joint in front of television cameras.

Germans celebrate as recreational cannabis use becomes legal
CNN

Comments on Open Floor Plans – Residential

reddit

Logical_Cherry_7588
absolutely hate open layout with a passion

gumol
why?

TobysGrundlee
I don’t hate it but I’m not a huge fan of it. My current house is basically all one giant room on the first floor with high ceilings and the bedrooms on the second. You don’t realize how loud activities in other parts of the house are until you have no walls in the way. Cooking can be loud as hell. When one person is cooking and the other is trying to relax in front of the TV it’s pretty much impossible because they’re basically part of the same room. Even noise in the bedrooms travels around the house much more easily and is super distracting. Can’t watch loud movies or shows after the kids go to bed since they hear everything in the living room. Adequate and nice looking lighting is also more difficult in these large open spaces.

ancientesper
Not to talk about the cooking smell going everywhere, open floor plan is really just for looks.

TobysGrundlee
Oh god, I hate that part. Nothing like my bedroom smelling like last nights salmon.

astraelly
All of this, and I also find it much easier to decorate in closed layout homes. Walls offer more surface area for art and natural anchor points for furniture. You can play around with things like wallpaper or strong colors without having to carry it through the majority of your home when spaces are enclosed.

We had a very open layout in our old space, which I did love for other reasons — it was a loft with huge windows and skylights, so we had a ton of light and the high ceilings meant we could use some really impactful, architectural lighting and it was great for displaying huge works of art. It had a very cool museum-like feel but I’m also a bit too cluttered to maintain the minimalist lifestyle to make it look good all the time.

grandramble
I live in a studio loft and I love it. But only because I’m the only person here 95% of the time.