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A number of friends and mental health professionals helped me with this post. You know who you are. Thank you.

To the student for whom school is a safer place, but now you’re stuck at home in a toxic environment during the pandemic,

I see you. You’re not invisible. In fact, a lot of people see you and are thinking about you. I can’t tell you how many of my friends and colleagues have brought you up in the past few months, and expressed worry for what you're going through. Hang in there.

When schools started sending students home in March and April, I thought of you immediately. I waited with you to see if schools might open again in a few weeks, but of course that didn't happen. I waited with you hoping this country would get its shit together and start prioritizing realistic approaches to containing the pandemic, so that you'd be able to go back to school in the fall. And now it's clear that many of you won't be able to do that. It's also possible that those of you who can go back won't be able to stay there for long, though I continue to hope it won't play out that way. I, and a lot of people, wish you didn't have this uncertainty pressing down on you right now.

Hang in there!

Here are some tools from my own PTSD toolbox that might help. Some are more immediately helpful, some are stopgaps and temporary coping mechanisms. Some might spark ideas for you:

When possible, create distance from the toxicity. In my own experience, sometimes the smallest amount of distance can help. If you can safely go for a walk now and then, do it. If there's a physical spot where you can be alone sometimes, find it. If you can spend time online with friends, or even socially-distanced time outside, do it. Are you caring for siblings in some way? Is there some way in which you've been placed in the position of caring for your own parents? If so, that's a lot. If you ever have the opportunity to take some time to care for no one but yourself, I hope you won't begrudge yourself that. You deserve care as much as anyone else.

For some of you, maybe there's even some other home where you could live (if only temporarily), like the house of a safe relative or family friend. Have you considered whether that might be the case for you? Give it some serious thought. This is important, though: Before making any major decisions or drastic changes, talk it through with a trusted adult. If you don't have a trusted adult, talk it through with a youth crisis line (see below). Your safety is the most important thing, and setting off an internal family drama may not be worth it and may even be dangerous. Also, you don't want to move yourself into a situation that's just as harmful, or even more so. This leads me to the next step.

Reach out to people who can support you. This might be friends, other family members, teachers, therapists or counselors, anyone in your life who actually sees and cares who you are and what you need when they look at you. Reaching out to trustworthy supports might give you a place to vent some steam and get some validation, and it might also lead to some practical help. Don't be afraid to consider professional organizations and helplines too. The first two organizations below are geared to helping kids and teens in danger of physical and sexual violence, but according to my professional source, they'd likely help if the threat is emotional too. The third organization is open to helping with any kind of crisis:

Safe Place
https://www.nationalsafeplace.org/
Here's a link to find a Safe Place site near you.
Or, to use TXT 4 HELP, text the word “safe” and your current location (city/state/zip) to 4HELP (44357). Within seconds, you will receive a message with the closest Safe Place site and phone number for the local youth agency. You will also have the option to text interactively with a professional for more help.

SafeHouse Center
https://www.safehousecenter.org/friends-family/children-youth-services/ 
https://www.safehousecenter.org/
They have a National HelpLine, available 24/7, at 734-995-5444 (English and Spanish). Advocates and volunteers can answer questions, give support, and provide information and referrals.

Crisis Text Line
https://www.crisistextline.org/
Text HOME to 741741 from anywhere in the United States, anytime. Crisis Text Line is there for any crisis. A live, trained Crisis Counselor receives the text and responds, all from their secure online platform. In the UK, text HOME to 85258. In Ireland, text HOME to 50808.

Note that while these are (inter)national organizations, there are a lot of local organizations as well. Do a little poking around and see what might be available to you, or ask someone you trust to do so.

Journal. This one definitely isn't for everyone, but if it's something you can do safely and if it appeals to you, give writing a try. It can be immensely clarifying — and can help with plans and goals — to write what you're going through and how it feels. I have a journal now, and years of journals stashed somewhere or other, and I'll probably never look at them again… I don't know that I've ever once gone back to look at something I've journaled. But I 100% know it helps me feel understood while I'm doing it, which is what matters.

Do creative projects. Again, this one isn't for everyone, but my larger point is this: If you can find an outlet for your distress, and most especially, a way to express it, so that there can be some way you're telling the truth of your experience to the world rather than bottling it up — it can help. It can allow you to take back your ownership of yourself and your experience, and it can give you power against the lies to which other people are subjecting you. I would venture to say that everything I write is some version of this. (But you don't have to write a book! I also knit, sew, draw, do collage, take pictures, or even get pleasure out of arranging items symbolically in my house. You get to decide what creativity is, and what helps you feel better!)

Find an anthem. This is also in the category of self-expression and connection. Find artists who seem to get what you're going through, and spend time with them. (Of course it doesn't have to be musicians. A book, or a character in a TV show, can do the same thing!) Some of my anthems over the years: "Girl" by Tori Amos. "Oh Father" by Madonna (the link opens a YouTube video).  "No More Drama" by Mary J. Blige. "Cold As It Gets" by Patty Griffin.

Trust your sense of things — while having compassion for your self-doubt. If you live in a toxic home, there's a good chance that the toxicity around you includes other people's denial of the fact that it's a toxic home. Trust your own unhappiness, anxiety, avoidance, self-loathing, fear. Trust your sense that all is not okay. This self-trust can be challenging no matter what kind of abuse you're experiencing — but I want to give a special shout-out to people experiencing emotional abuse. It can be especially hard to believe your environment is toxic if the damage is "merely" emotional. In fact, it can be hard to metabolize a word like "abuse" when the abuse is "merely" emotional. Surely no one's abusing me? Surely this is just regular life, not abuse?

It's okay if that word doesn't feel right to you. You get to decide what words apply. But trust the panicked feeling you have, the one that's driving you to want to escape. Trust your gut. Something is wrong, whatever you want to call it. A person in your situation deserves help and relief, just like anyone else.

At the same time, this is important: Depending on your situation, you may not be able to do much with your gut realizations at the moment. And if there's not a lot you can do to fix your situation right now, there might be limits to how helpful it is to realize how bad your situation is. So, also have compassion for the ways you end up doubting yourself. It's normal and okay to doubt yourself; it's not a weakness. Your self-doubt may even be a temporary survival mechanism, working hard to keep you safe and get you through this, which is important. Your self-trust, in the meantime, will outlive this situation and be a source of healing someday.

If you can, hold onto your sense of humor. This might not be possible, depending on your situation. But if it is, it can be another release. Example: I once went through a stretch of time during which I had relentlessly recurring dreams that I was moving to a new home that wasn’t emotionally safe for me. When I say relentlessly recurring, I mean that I had some version of this dream every single night for three months. Every single night for three months. Except for one night! One night during this stretch, I had a dream that I was moving to a new home and it was perfect. It had an elegant dining room, fancy staircases, a lounge — it was noticeably bigger and fancier than any of the other homes in any of the other dreams I'd had — and I belonged there, I could be myself there, I was emotionally safe there. I was so, so happy. So were all the other people who apparently lived in this home, because it seem to be sort of like… a gigantic, perfect hotel? It wasn’t until I woke up from this dream that I recognized this “hotel.” We were on the Titanic.

I'm sorry, but that's hilarious. Thank you, unconscious, for cracking me up. If there's anything right now that cracks you up… Hold onto it.

Hang on. Someday you'll be able to build your own life. You will. For now, whenever you can, do get whatever help you can. You deserve it.

I hope something on this list is helpful. If nothing else, remember that I, and so many other people, are thinking about you and pulling for you. There are even people who've dedicated their lives to looking out for you; reach out to them. We know there's light at the end of your tunnel, so hang in there. You're not invisible. We see you!

Love,
Kristin

Sandra Tayler, whom you may know as the editor, publisher, project manager, and so much more behind Schlock Mercenary, is crowdfunding a book called STRUCTURING LIFE TO SUPPORT CREATIVITY.

I can personally vouch for the principles and practices presented in this book, but that’s probably kind of obvious. Sandra has worked with many other people and organizations over the last decade, so this book is far, far more than just (!) the life experience of someone who wrangled a single cartoonist into profitability while managing her own career writing children’s books and short stories.

Follow the links above to read more about the project. It has funded, and just yesterday Sandra crossed the “we get to make an audiobook” stretch goal. The project closes in two days, though, so if you want to throw some momentum into it on the home stretch, now’s the time.

Ахтям Сакаев из компании Яндекс предложил изменение для включения в Java-библиотеку Reactor, связанное с добавлением в объект Flux метода "unfold" для генерации последовательностей в стиле Scala и Haskell. Несмотря на то, что изменение содержит всего несколько строк кода, поведение которого очевидно, сопровождающие проект отказались принимать изменение по юридическим причинам. Библиотеку Reactor развивает проект Spring, контролируемый компанией VMware, которая год назад была поглощена Broadcom. Майкл Минелла (Michael Minella), занимающий в Broadcom пост директора по развитию открытого проекта Spring, пояснил, что компания Broadcom должна соблюдать экспортные ограничения США и не может принимать изменения от источников из России.

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I’ve almost forgotten how to post! But really, who can miss Valentine’s Day? Christi Friesen has been tucking these languorous beauties in orders all month. Her hearts are encrusted with flowers and pearls and bits of love from Hawaii. They have a perfect beachy buzz. Check out all her fun events and online mischief.

When processing HTTP requests, you frequently need to check the parameters which were sent along with that request. Those parameters are generally passed as stringly-typed key/value pairs. None of this is news to anyone.

What is news, however, is how Brodey's co-worker indexed the key/value pairs.

For i As Integer = 0 To (Request.Params().Count - 1)
    If (parameters.GetKey(i).ToString() <> "Lang") Then
        If (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("ID")) OrElse (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("new")) OrElse _
             (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("open")) OrElse (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("FID")) _
         OrElse (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("enabled")) OrElse (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("my")) OrElse _
         (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("msgType")) OrElse (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("Type")) _
         OrElse (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("EID")) OrElse (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("Title")) OrElse _
         (parameters.GetKey(i).Equals("ERROR")) Then
            URLParams &= "&" & parameters.GetKey(i).ToString()
            URLParams &= "=" & parameters(i).ToString()
        End If
    End If
Next

The goal of this code is to take a certain set of keys and construct a URLParams string which represents those key/values as an HTTP query string. The first thing to get out of the way: .NET has a QueryString type that handles the construction of the query string for you (including escaping), so that you don't need to do any string concatenation.

But the real WTF is everything surrounding that. We opt to iterate across every key- not just the ones we care about- and use the GetKey(i) function to check each individual key in an extensive chain of OrElse statements.

The obvious and simpler approach would have been to iterate across an array of the keys I care about- ID, new, FID, enabled, my, msgType, Type, EID, Title, ERROR- and simply check if they were in the Request.

I suppose the only silver lining here is that they thought to use the OrElse operator- which is a short-circuiting "or" operation, like you'd expect in just about any other language, instead of Or, which doesn't short circuit (pulling double duty as both a bitwise Or and a logical Or, because Visual Basic wants to contribute some WTFs).

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Live long enough It’s a good bet  You’re gonna accumulate regret.  With me, youthful mistakes Manifest in the shower Bursting unmasked, clarity’s power.  How was I so stupid?  Yelping with chagrin Aged missteps alive again.  Despite water and suds I cannot wash them away Dunce cap moments here to stay.  Chattering whispers Turns right instead […]

The post Showering Regret appeared first on Waiter Rant.

(note: this was actually a twitter thread that i wrote this morning... rather than copy paste and chunk this thing out to the other services... duh, post it as a rant and link it :) I've been hesitant to post anything like this, so i'll keep it vague. Lets face it, the last YEAR has been awful. About a year ago, Sarah started to feel sick and it wasn't long before we knew her cancer was back. It was a hard year, but she beat it and we got thru it....

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Welcome back, everyone! We’re having a string of warmer weather in New England and it’s really harshing my fall vibes. I also keep seeing photos or reels of people I know receiving “boo baskets.” Is anyone else familiar? It’s like an Easter basket, but for Halloween. And I kind of love it? I floated the idea by my partner and I was surprised that they wanted to exchange some. Their reasoning is that we’ve been … Continue reading Links: Public Libraries, Lord of the Rings, & More →

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