latenightnoir

Fair enough, I'm all for trains! And I agree, they really do have the most potential out of pretty much everything else (to be fair, they each excel at different things) in terms of people over distance.

And I get what you mean about the structures, starting to see the same tendencies over here as well. Add to that the fact that our average is about 0.6 cars per person and growing (mostly concentrated in cities, of course), or something like that, plus an outdated infrastructure which is basically frozen due to being surrounded by historical buildings (and god forbid we do anything with those, ours is to wait and watch them slowly crumble!), and you have traffic jams in even the smaller cities and towns. It's fucking horrid, is what it is...

Plus every new neighborhood which is added around the city is either a new residential area filled with tumor-like arrangements of apartment buildings with, of course, insufficient infrastructure to support said 0.6 cars per capita, so the possibility of extending a public transport line of any sort to that area is basically nulliffied from the start, or a useless shrine to Corporate Capitalism in the shape of a business center with a couple of gaudy office buildings and a whole swath of land tarped over with concrete and "modernised." While maintaining the old two-lane streets. The main bus line for the residential area in which I lived in my old city used to run along the industrial traffic lanes - you'd frequently see lines of fully loaded semi trucks waiting for the bus to finish transfering passengers. Because they had nowhere else to put it, they just sold the area to developers without a second thought given to how they'd actually connect the area to the rest of the city.

And to get back to the trains, we actually have a decently extensive railway network, but all it's seen for the past few decades has been basic maintenance, and our trains are the same. I mean, most of our engines are from the Communist era and most of our train cars are hand-me-downs from Germany - and they're really nice train cars, honestly, the sleeping cars have wood paneling, in-cabin grooming sink, and actual mattresses, they're a splendid bit of engineering - and they start looking like hammered shit maybe half a year after being introduced. I had to make 12 900km trips by train throughout the country last year and I'd say I ended up with an immune response after at least eight or nine of them, felt flu-y for a couple of days. And, yeah, this is also a major problem with the education and level of wealth around here, but they really don't bother actually trying to maintain a semblance of cleanliness.

So of course everyone buys one and a half cars and lugs that hunk of metal all around the place.

I honestly think that has very little to do with being a femcel and pretty much everything to do with her grooming habits.

The description fits a girl with whom I crossed paths during University, one of my exes' roommate. I used to crash at my ex's place quite a bit back in the day, so I naturally started interacting with the other people around, got to know her a bit.

She was most definitely not a femcel, had a boyfriend for at least the time I was there (about one year, one year and a half), although I seem to remember her telling me that they had been together for several more beforehand.

I swear I don't remember ever hearing the shower/bath tap being turned on while she went to the bathroom - before anyone says anything about perving, you are welcome to come over here and try out our standards for soundproofing apartments 'round these parts, you'll get what I mean.

And she sure looked as though she didn't bother with the cleaning too much. We'd see her wearing the same clothes for days which would smell faintly of spoilt vinegar (I have no better words for it), her hair would become... firm and plastic, and, while I normally prefer to mind my own plate, I couldn't help but notice the utter disregard she had for any sort of grace. I vividly remember the four of us having breakfast one day as her boyfriend had cooking spells (cool guy, bit much on the smoke-y side, but he was chill, sociable, and had weed, so really can't complain) and had prepared us sunny side ups.

I swear, her hair was all over that damned yolk. Those eggs saw more hair than fork, bread and/or teeth that day. My ex and I could barely maintain our composure, her boyfriend was 100% and exclusively focused on the food in front of him, and she was chatting with egg yolk in her hair. Which remained there for at least the rest of the day.

The worst of it was when both my ex and I caught some sort of bacterial infection or fungus from her from sharing a toilet... And we always disinfected the toilet with chlorine and gel before using it (except maybe when we got back drunk, or smth...), it was the first protip my ex had given me once I started hanging out there.

And, to be clear, I know plenty of dudes who are just the same, shared a dorm room with one during my first year of Uni and threw him out during the second after a two-week ultimatum to wash his dishes, stop warming up vegetable soup in tin dishes on an electric top (the walls were COVERED), unclog the damned drain after taking a shower (he was the only one with long hair of the three in that room), and stop leaving used bandaids/dressings in the middle of the goddamned room, next to his bed - I shit you not, with blood and everything, one of his toes had a nasty infection or smth.

So, yeah, this ain't political and you shouldn't even try to make it, it's a run-of-the-mill stinky person, plain and simple...

Had doubts about the Kākāpō, but then I reached the "mostly foliage" part and knew I'd found the match.

organ music intensifies

This was my thought as well, goes to show we need better long-range public transportation!

And bikes should be used for more granular destination points, once the bulk is covered via whatever works best as public transport in a given area.

Edit: bikes could also serve as a good first step toward a more rational approach toward public goods, as we could just stack public bikes at each node to be grabbed for free. It's self-limiting, it presents minimal waste as once you have one you don't really need a second, and it'd remove any entry barrier there may be to biking. Other than learning how to ride, of course. And this would be in addition to dedicated carry spaces for bikes on public transport - s'why I love the subway.

And I'm done hallucinating, I apologise.

Ouchie. My bones hurt.

Edit: also, a huge transdimensional hole where my heart used to be, but ow, me bones!

Honestly didn't even notice, my eyes were caught up with the base and the dithering on the carapace, it really looks organic!

Well, I'm glad that the worst of it's behind you! You've been through plenty... And you're right, it can always be worse, but it can always be better as well. Bad enough's bad enough, y'know?

And fair enough!=))) I sometimes vividly daydreamt about developing a sort of defensive physiological mechanism like squids have, but instead of ink, I'd select bile if at all possible:))

Anyway, really hope you'll manage to find some peace in the meantime, being on edge neither feels, nor sounds pleasant. Heck, maybe try to release it somehow, give it a controlled voice. Might as well have it do something for you if it's there anyway:))

And it was my pleasure, thank you for sharing! It sucks to hear that other people have gone through relatable things, but it does shrink the loneliness of understanding such things a little bit. So, yeah, thank you!

Edit: thank you! Yeah, it's slow making peace with everything, but one day at a time!:)) I will say, though, shifting to anger has helped!:))

But demonstrate the incontrovertible need for a car during one's regular commute through an average modern city. And I'm even offering the main exception - busses and taxis/ride sharing/whatever the current nomenclature, as I consider public transportation to be its own independent thing, unrelated to Cars.

I think the people who would enjoy such a venture via bike have or are already doing it, the rest of us would just like to be able to ride the bike through the city without having to play Frogger with three lanes filled with enraged lumps of cortisol *wrapped in two tons of steel and various other such substances.

Edit: added * to further drive home the viscerality of my desire.

Because they made a lot of mmmmoneyyyy for their producers.

My gut reaction was "ok, who gave the 'Nids railguns?"

Awesome paint job, and especially love the base! You really got the "days after fresh snow" feeling down!

Oh, wow, you've been through some really heavy stuff, I'm sorry...

Also, from personal experience, the grief never really stops, nor does the anxiety. I honestly don't think there's a definitive fix for these aspects at all, it's just them growing duller and sparser in their effects combined with us becoming more adept at stemming the tide and handling damage control. I'm decades past my trauma points, and decades since I've done my best to process them, and I still get a flash from time to time.

Heck, even that wall of sadness you encounter when doing psychedelics sounds like a clear sign things are still clinging on to you. Would be totally understandable and justified, as my two cents. It sucks, and I'm sorry...