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  • The news

    • Same. For many years now. I didnt even remember that some people actually watch the news regularly.

    • There was a news station I saw while vacationing in the Smokies. They called it "news with a heart". They did all the same news stories, bit didn't dwell on the death toll or show video of the carnage. It was the first time I didn't become enraged by the news.

      We have a drinking game for the NBC Nightly News. Drink any time they say "breaking news", "disaster", "epidemic" or show people crying. You won't make it through the news.

    • The correct answer.

    • I have a friend who regularly shares the latest news that brings him mental anguish, followed by messages along the lines of "the world is doomed, society is trash, how can anyone sleep soundly at night knowing the terrors that are happening this very second". I don't know why he still follows them. It's not like he takes action against these things, and most often he can't do anything against them even if he wanted to, and this feeling of powerlessness, helplessness, hopelessness, is weighing him down so much.

  • Not me but when my wife was pregnant, the scene in Homeward Bound where Sassy is swept away in the river left her in tears. She stopped the movie and never watched it again lol.

  • Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice. Played it with headphones as many suggested. I had recently lost my uncle, who by the time he died, was in a pretty bad state mentally. Seeing and hearing things that weren't there. Everyone out to get him. Calling to say the cops were trying to break into his home. No one was there.

    He was a good guy and incredibly funny. Introduced me to the greatness of Monty Python at a young age. He was getting some better help near the end, finally. In part because he finally was accepting help.

    He was a Vietnam vet, and from what everyone told me came back changed like so many did. This, in part, led to drug use that spiraled him down. Much better handled than some as he always held a job and such.

    But the game made me think of what he might have been experiencing, and it was overwhelming for me. I think I stopped a third of the way through. It is very well done, but I just couldn't deal with it.

    • Senua is wonderful for people not affected by what she suffers from imo

    • Glad you switched it off. I've read a lot of stories of people playing Senua and having a mental breakdown over associating her with themselves or relatives. Ultimately, not the best way to reconnect with your family. The worst way.

      I stopped playing it after fear of me myself having something akin to it. There are mental illnesses running in my family and I'm afraid I have some chances to play Senua IRL. 'Tis why I don't even try to get a gun license. It's safer that way.

  • CW: Trump, uspol

    Trump separating families at the border. Children being put in cages. Americans waving the fucking nazi flag.

    It's one thing to read about genocide. Another thing is to see it with your own eyes, even on TV.

    And if any of you fuckers tries to tell me that both "sides are the same" or that "democrats did the same" or something in that vein, they are obviously doing this in bad faith and they can go fuck themselves. 🖕🤬

  • German movie 'Der goldene Handschuh' which tells the true story of 70's serial killer Fritz Honka. When a friend proposed to watch it, I seriously thought it to be a sports movie (the german 'Handschuh' translates to glove and my association instantly was a goal keeper's glove...). Well, I was wrong. The dense and depressing atmosphere of Honka's childhood and life, together with the derogatory, very hard and profane language and of course depiction of sexuality and violence towards women was simply too much for me. It sucked away all positivity at that moment. I finished it later and the director hit me once more, because in the end credits real pictures of the true locations where shown, proving the film's sets where simply identical. That ripped away the last imagination that what I've just seen was just a very dark fantasy and too bad to be real. Brilliant movie and actors (the main actor in his role is simply not recognizable any more from his real life appearance, just like Charlize Theron in 'Monster'), but too hard to for me to take.

  • La La Land. I had just been unexpectedly dumped by my anchor partner a few days earlier. Crashed at another partners place and did a bunch of mushrooms, they put the movie on without thinking just trying to fill the time to keep me distracted. The movie about two people having a very sweet relationship then breaking up and not getting back together again was maybe a poor choice lol. We had to stop it part way through so I could ground myself but after a while I did end up pulling it together enough to finish the movie (with some crying breaks here and there). 10/10, would mushroom and watch again. Helped me process tbh, after I knew what I was getting into, very emotionally draining on me though.

    • Never tried shrooms yet, but had a similar experience with Amelie. Just after the break up I held myself okay, like a functional adult, but when there was a scene where Amelie felt like she's imagining things and he'd never come for her, I teared the hell out of me, nearly vomited my guts out from the sudden strike of sadness. Doubt I'd recomend it in an altered state of mind tho - the movie is already wicked. Yet, it's very, very sweet. If you'd come around it, feel free to write me back about how it felt, or maybe do a post here on the fediverse.

  • The Last Of Us.

    Because it could happen. It's unlikely yes, but all it takes is one lucky mutation and we're done. They were correct in that game, our understanding of fungal infections in humans and our ability to treat it is almost non existent.

    We were able to product a vaccine for COVID, a far, far less disruptive illness, within two years (via huge global effort) because we'd been focusing on that area of research for decades very closely and producing similar treatments for a long time already.

    But something fungal, and highly contagious? There's nothing we could do except try to quarantine, bomb and napalm every infected area, and hope we got it all.

    And we've already seen how an easy to contain illness like COVID simply can't be contained even when we've had a heads up and some time to prepare. It will suddenly explode into the population, and once it's out there it's out there.

    Long ago, we used to be protected from extinction due to disease as a species due to our inability to travel long distances to spread it. Now? All it takes is one infected person to spend a few hours at a large airport, and within 48 hours it's reached the doorstep of vast majority of the populated world, and is already behind our best pandemic defences.

    If a fungal infection that serious ever does make the leap to humans (which again while unlikely, is also entirely possible, it's like winning the lottery - it could happen tomorrow or maybe never), we have an extremely tiny, almost non existent window in which we must identify how dangerous it is, quarantine the entire region it was located in, bomb it off the face of the earth and hope to the gods we got it all.

    But, our morals, humanity and our indecision will stop us from committing what would normally amount to serious war crimes to save the human race, and that tiny window will slip by.

    And then we're done.

    • And COVID just proved that a significant part of the population will absolutely refuse to admit it's a threat or a problem, dismiss it as hysteria or a hoax, and end up spreading it everywhere. Or hosting rallies and events about the evil government trying to control them and end up with a superspreader event. Even IF we had the means to prevent the spread, these idiots would undermine it. We're all fucked.

      • Sadly I believe you're right.

        The other side of the coin is desperation, too. Let's say there's a truly serious pandemic. Huge numbers of people getting sick, not enough resources to treat them all, even if there is a treatment.

        In that scenario, even in a world with no antivaxers or antimaskers, where everyone trusts the science and the doctors, do we think everyone is going to just stay in their homes following the quarantine rules, when there's not enough to go around, and doing so could be a death sentence?

        Or do we think they'd go out, and try to get their hands on what they need to survive? Be it food, medicines etc...

        Even in a world of people who trust the science like you or I, we're probably screwed if things really get that bad, and the only reason COVID didn't get that bad is for all its awfulness, it's actually a relatively mild illness overall (not to disrespect the many deaths it caused, just to say that as things go, it could have easily been more infectious, more deadly, harder to treat, etc).

        When things get that bad, good people will be so desperate to save themselves, their families, their children, that they'll break the rules, spread the disease, and doom us all :-(

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