Darkoshi

Ren still impresses and surprises me

2023-07-29T03:04:22Z

I wasn't expecting a video about reaching a million subscribers to have a deep, emotionally impacting message.

Video title: ONE MILLION SUBSCRIBERS - Defining success
Posted by: Ren
Date posted: Jul 28, 2023

I didn't care for Ren's last song/video, "Murderer"; I found it disturbing. It would be unusual if I liked every single song an artist released. But I am still amazed by his talent. If you're new to Ren, please watch some of his other videos first.

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diamond showers, supergeil, is mir egal, Kazim Akboga

2020-01-26T09:49:16Z

On PBS, I watched the Nova episode The Planets: Saturn

From the transcript:

"At 5,000 miles deep, the pressure of the atmosphere is 80 times greater than that at the bottom of our deepest oceans, enough to transform this sooty, graphite rain into diamonds. But even these diamonds are likely destroyed by the pressures of Saturn, eventually dissolving."

Here's another article about it:
'Diamond rain' falls on Saturn and Jupiter

Lightning storms turn methane into soot (carbon) which as it falls hardens into chunks of graphite and then diamond. These diamond "hail stones" eventually melt into a liquid sea in the planets' hot cores...

It made me think of a song I once downloaded and bought, named "Diamonds Shower" by Friedrich Liechtenstein:

Video title: Friedrich Liechtenstein tanzt zu Diamonds Shower vor Raffinerie
Posted by: Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mb3MqB6YNU
Date posted: Oct 12, 2015

I looked up info on the artist...
Once an Ornamental Hermit, Now a German Media Darling

I found this amusing Edeka (German grocery store) ad featuring the same artist, which I'd actually seen before, but it is still funny. The video doesn't show an English translation, but "Supergeil" means basically "super-cool" or "super-awesome", although the word "geil" originally meant "horny".

Video title: EDEKA Supergeil (feat. Friedrich Liechtenstein)
Posted by: EDEKA
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxVcgDMBU94
Date posted: Feb 20, 2014

Then I found these even more amusing videos by BVG (the Berlin Transport Company), which runs the public transport in Berlin. The videos have English closed captions that can be turned on. This first one feels especially heart-warming to me:

Video title: BVG "Is mir egal" (feat. Kazim Akboga)
Posted by: Weil wir dich lieben (BVG)
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvcpy4WjZMs
Date posted: Dec 11, 2015

"Alles Absicht" means "Everything on purpose".

Video title: BVG "Alles Absicht"
Posted by: Weil wir dich lieben (BVG)
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pic3FnvUrY
Date posted: Sep 26, 2016

Video title: BVG-Arie
Posted by: Weil wir dich lieben (BVG)
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlKhh6HFGdI
Date posted: Jul 5, 2017

The guy in the first BVG video is Kazim Akboga:
https://www.youtube.com/user/KazimAkboga/videos

From reading comments on his videos, I found out the sad news that he had suffered from depression and killed himself in Feb. 2017.
:-(

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little things

2018-09-27T03:22:57Z

I watched the first episode of A Million Little Things tonight. In spite of the subject matter, it was well written and touching; I'll be watching more of it.
[ Content/trigger warning: Suicide ]

The ABC page has a trailer, but it gives away a lot of the episode. I'm glad I didn't see the trailer before watching it.

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triggers and depression

2015-05-12T04:54:23Z

When I hear accounts of abductions such as this one, I'm intensely appalled but also darkly fascinated. I feel pulled to learn more of the story, more details. (A part of this I think, is that my own fantasies tend to revolve around bondage and torture and such.)

In a similar way, I'm both fascinated and repulsed by accounts of the Nazis and the Holocaust, and other sordid incidents from history and recent times.

Yet I've learned (somewhat) to avoid reading/listening/watching those kind of things, due to the deeply negative impact they have on my emotions.

When I do start paying attention, reading, digging into the details, then my mind has a very hard time letting go of it. The horror stays with me, and my mind keeps dwelling on it, over and over again, and everything starts to feel very grim. I know that the world is full of other horrors too, not just that one, and all the horrors are too much to bear. How can anyone stand to live in such a horrible world full of horrible people and horrible situations?

It often takes several days for these feelings to start fading away again, and to get distance from them.

So, when I first heard about that particular abduction 2 years ago, I didn't dig into the details.

But while driving home last week, there was an NPR radio piece with an interview with 2 of the survivors, and I listened to it. Then I got home and turned it off, and avoided researching more of the story even though my mind had plenty of questions about it.

With these kind of sexual abductions, it's nearly always females that are the victims, and males that are the perpetrators. This gets me so angry, so disgusted. Men preying on women and girls, over and over again, all around the world, all throughout history.

In some countries, this kind of thing isn't even necessarily considered a crime. Husbands locking up their wives, beating them, raping them... these women, even if they escape, can't just call 911 and be saved. There's no place for them to go. In some places, women aren't even allowed to go out in public without a male escort.

And then there are things like Gamergate and online trolls and street harassment. Lesser evils, but still, largely men preying on women. So damn disgusting.

It was also my foster sister's birthday last week. I stopped by her house in the evening to visit. She happened to have a movie playing on the TV in the background which seemed to be about some girl who had been abducted by some bearded guy. It had the quality of an old movie from the 70s. I did my best to ignore it while chatting with my sister. At one point she exclaimed "Is he torturing her?! He is!". I continued to ignore it. With my back turned to the TV, it was actually pretty easy to ignore. I only saw a few brief glimpses of it, and the volume was low enough that I didn't consciously hear any of the dialog. I thought I heard the name of the girl one time, though - "Amanda Bean". After leaving my sister's house, I put it out of my mind.

On Saturday, I watched the Iranian movie "Taste of Cherry". It's about a man who has decided to kill himself. I found the movie likeable, yet not very uplifting. Most of the scenes in the movie seemed quite bleak. Overall, it was neither a downer nor an upper. It was interesting and gave me a few things to think about.

On Sunday, I was feeling rather down - still partially related to the NPR show and thoughts around that. I did something unusual that day - I went outside and laid down on the concrete driveway, in the sunshine. If the dogs can enjoy the sunshine like that, why shouldn't I? I dozed, feeling the warmth, watching the sky, listening to the breeze. Getting some Vitamin D. Supposed to be good for you, against depression. Supposed to make you feel better.

It didn't make the world seem any less horrible, but it was relaxing. I finally got up and went back inside, as Qiao and I were going to take my mom out to eat for Mother's Day.

In the car, driving to the restaurant, guess what topic my mom starts talking about? She had been watching a movie the other day, about some girls who had been abducted. (I'm thinking, really? Is she really talking about this? For Mother's Day??? Why am I being hounded by that topic?) I don't know if she saw the same movie my sister was watching or some different one... what she described was girls being abducted as toddlers and held captive, but actually not being mistreated. It sounded odd.

Then she mentioned again about how I had nearly been abducted when I was a toddler. Some guy had taken my hand in the subway station and started walking away with me. She had lost track of me for that moment, then ran after me in a panic and pulled me away from the guy.

In the car, she patted my shoulder and commented on how lucky she/I was, that he didn't get away with me. I gritted my teeth in silence and waited for the topic to change.

When I got home afterwards, I was again curious. What movie had my mom been watching, and was it the same one my sister had been watching?

I found no abduction-related results for the name Amanda Bean. Yet Lifetime recently premiered a movie about the Cleveland abduction, one of the survivors of whom was Amanda Berry. So maybe that is what my sister was watching after all.

Then I read a few news articles and the Wikipedia page about that case. Just a few pages to answer a few questions in my mind. I'm not going to watch the movie or read the book, if there is one. I don't want to know all the details.

And then last night, I even dreamt about it too. Fer gawd's sake.

Can it get out of my head now? Can it?? I debated writing a post about this, as writing about it requires thinking about it.

But a part of what I wanted to write about, is that I think it is a sign of a depressed or dysthymic mind, in how the mind can't easily let go of topics like that. How those unpleasant thoughts keep repeating themselves again and again, making you feel worse and worse. Whereas good thoughts come and go, and don't stay and don't particularly make you feel better.

Tonight, Qiao watched 2 Criminal Minds episodes. One about some guy killing people by driving them down, and another about a guy killing people with anthrax. Those didn't bother me at all. They seem like pure fiction. (I guess that must be how it feels for other people when they watch movies about things that affect me so badly, as otherwise why would anyone want to watch those kind of movies?)

Those kind of topics aren't triggering for me, whereas many other topics are triggering for me.

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depression, supplements, omega-3's

2014-06-08T07:07:42Z

(Video) Things you may not know about Dysthymia : In the DSM 5, dysthymic disorder is now called persistent depressive disorder. Mentions some supplements (other than the commonly mentioned ones) which may help: DHEA (Dehydroepiandrosterone), SAM-e (S-Adenosyl methionine), Inositol. One of the comments also mentions 5-HTP (5-Hydroxytryptophan).

(Video) Depression is a disease of civilization: Stephen Ilardi at TEDxEmory : Mentions treating depression with exercise, sunlight, adequate sleep, friendships, and omega-3 fatty acids. Specifically, EPA (Eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (Docosahexaenoic acid). Recommends 1000 to 2000 mg of EPA (or combined?) per day. Mentions it can also help with other inflammatory conditions like tendonitis and dry eye.

(So increasing my omega-3 consumption might be good for both my mental state and my eye problem.)

How too much omega-6 and not enough omega-3 is making us sick : about how the amount of omega-6 you consume influences how much omega-3 you have to consume for it to be effective. Recommends reducing omega-6 intake. (His other articles indicate that consuming too much of both can be bad too.)

DHA/EPA, Omega 3's and Vegans

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My eye doctor prescribed me antibiotic eye drops (Azasite) and pills (doxycycline), not for the antibiotic properties, but rather to help reduce the inflammation / swelling in my eyelid. It somewhat bothers me that he prescribes antibiotics in this way. It seems like there ought to be non-antibiotic anti-inflammatory agents that should work as well. But apparently this is a common treatment.

Hordeolum and Chalazion -
The role of meibomian disease and contemporary management :
"Oral treatments including doxycycline and tetracycline are additional leading offlabel treatments for blepharitis. The presumed mechanism of action is an anti-inflammatory effect on matrix metallopeptidase 9 (MMP-9) activity within both the gland and meibum itself.
...
Recently, topical azithromycin (Azasite; Inspire Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) has emerged as an alternative topical off-label treatment for blepharitis due to the agent’s proposed anti-inflammatory (MMP-9) and anti-infective effects."

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music and mental associations

2012-03-11T23:00:07Z

Then there's the possibility that the people who made the music aren't horrible, but that they experienced horrible things themselves. The songs might even be about horrible things that they experienced, or which other people experienced.

I have one CD, Balkans without Borders, the profits of which were to benefit Doctors Without Borders. I've never been able to look at the CD cover without thinking about the Balkan wars and the atrocities that happened in those wars. Therefore I've never been able to enjoy the music on that CD much. Now that the songs are separate MP3 files mixed in with 4400 other songs from my collection, and where I might hear them play in shuffle mode without thinking about or realizing which CD it came from, I might be able to enjoy them.

I had another CD which I finally decided to get rid of. It had electronic music mixed with Jewish liturgical singing. But some of the songs also had voice overlays of people talking about the Holocaust. It's hard enough for me to hear traditional Jewish or Yiddish music (which I once enjoyed), without automatically thinking about the Holocaust. With that CD, there was no way I could enjoy the music.

When I was in high school, I sometimes listened to an Armenian radio show. I liked that music too. But they sometimes talked about the Armenian genocide, or maybe I read about that elsewhere, and later on it became hard for me to enjoy Armenian music, because it makes me think about genocide.

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darkoshi @ 2012-03-11T17:55:00

2012-03-11T22:13:33Z

maybe the people who made some of this music are horrible people. maybe if they were having a party and playing their music, they wouldn't want me there enjoying the music with them. maybe they'd want to rape me or stone me to death or keep me from going out in public without a male overseer and without being covered in a hijab. maybe they're the kind of people who torture animals for fun. maybe they're the kind of people who keep their dogs chained up in the backyard their whole lives.

maybe the slight aura of enjoyment that one gets into while listening to nice music is a fantasy. Yes, it is. the real people who made the music aren't necessarily anything like you vaguely imagine them to be while you're bopping along to the beat. the lyrics sometimes aren't even vaguely like you imagine them to be. it shouldn't make a difference though. there's nothing wrong with enjoying the music, as long as you can keep your vague enjoyment untouched by any unpleasant information.

it seems i'm procrastinating again. why does doing taxes always have this effect on me?

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mood triggers

2011-07-23T19:17:42Z

I know that reading or watching films about certain topics* is almost guaranteed to leave me emotionally/mentally wounded. Doing it fuels my depression, makes my mind hurt, brings a dark mental cloud more to the forefront. Those feelings tend to linger in my mind, and take a while to fade away again.

And yet, I often have a morbid curiosity that makes me want to continue reading or watching those things, even after I've realized that they are going to affect me in a bad way.

Sometimes, I am able to stop myself at the outset... by not clicking on a particular link, by skipping past the material in question, or by switching the TV channel. (Because yes, I already know it is bad, and I don't want to expose myself to even more details of how bad it is, when I'm already too horribly aware of how horrible it all is!)

But once my curiosity has been piqued by something, I'll often keep watching or reading, and even actively searching out more information. Why is it that I do this, even when I know it is going to hurt me?

One might say that I got my fill of the topics in question at an early age. By reading too many National Geographic magazines, watching too many documentaries. Too many "real-life" stories and biographies, too many news shows. The depression that starting coming over me during my teen years may be related to why those topics trigger me so badly. The topics helped shaped my world-view, which helped shape my depression... Then again, maybe those topics are bad enough that I would feel the same way about them even without a history of depression; I don't know.

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* There are many such triggering topics: Wars, the military, the Holocaust, mass killings, individual killings, rape, torture, unjust imprisonment, industrial pollution, clear-cut logging, environmental degradation, radioactive waste, factory farming, slaughterhouses, animal experimentation, pesticides, genocides, the Inquisition, African-American slavery, unjust treatment of Native Americans, racism, sexism, gender-based inequality, police corruption, government corruption, dictatorships, child soldiers, modern day slavery, just about any nation and place on Earth because they've all got horror stories in their histories, and more.

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darkoshi @ 2011-03-09T23:52:00

2011-03-10T05:03:53Z

Study identifies changes to DNA in major depression and suicide - interesting... I want to read more about this turning on and off of DNA somewhen; I've heard about it before but don't understand it well.
"We have about 40,000 genes in every cell and the main reason a brain cell is a brain cell is because only a small fraction of the genes are turned on. The remaining genes that are not expressed are shut down by an epigenetic process called DNA methylation."

via andrewducker

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