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988 is coming! Sell your rotary phone!
I hope some of you know what rotary phones are. If you have such a phone, the idea of dialing a nine and then an eight and then another eight, well, you are going to be there for a while.
But that’s not the story.
The story is that the number for the Suicide Prevention Lifeline is going to get a lot shorter next month, going from 1-800-273-5255 (aka TALK) to the much shorter 988.
Starting July 16, people all over the United States will be able to dial 988 to reach the new mental health hotline that routes callers to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
The Lifeline's current phone number, 1-800-273-8255, will remain active after the new three-digit phone number launches, and is always available to people in crisis.
Similar to how people dial 911 when in any kind of emergency, 988 will serve as an easy-to-access hotline for people struggling with a mental health crisis. This change comes two years after the five leaders of the U.S. Federal Communication Commission voted to finalize 988 as the three-digit number that would connect callers to the Lifeline's trained professionals across the country.
So learn it! A nine and then a number that isn’t quite nine twice!
Laziness does not exist
Found this one via our super helpful Preshies group on Facebook…
It’s really easy to put a value judgment on someone’s mental condition. You can blame a person with depression for not doing enough to “get over it” or whatever bullshit phrase you want to use.
Devon Price argues that the same could be said of behavior seen as procrastination or simple laziness.
People love to blame procrastinators for their behavior. Putting off work sure looks lazy, to an untrained eye. Even the people who are actively doing the procrastinating can mistake their behavior for laziness. You’re supposed to be doing something, and you’re not doing it — that’s a moral failure right? That means you’re weak-willed, unmotivated, and lazy, doesn’t it?
For decades, psychological research has been able to explain procrastination as a functioning problem, not a consequence of laziness. When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being “good enough” or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness. In fact, procrastination is more likely when the task is meaningful and the individual cares about doing it well.
When you’re paralyzed with fear of failure, or you don’t even know how to begin a massive, complicated undertaking, it’s damn hard to get shit done. It has nothing to do with desire, motivation, or moral upstandingness. Procastinators can will themselves to work for hours; they can sit in front of a blank word document, doing nothing else, and torture themselves; they can pile on the guilt again and again — none of it makes initiating the task any easier. In fact, their desire to get the damn thing done may worsen their stress and make starting the task harder.
And now, Bruno Mars with a counterpoint:
Sex Pistols TV series receives scorn from Johnny Rotten
And thus all is right in the world.
I’ve been watching Pistol and it’s… okay. It’s based on Steve Jones’ memoir and so Jones is the main character in it, even though he was probably the least interesting Pistol of all.
But the most interesting Pistol, Johnny Rotten, is disdainful:
John Lydon/Rotten was at the radio station where I worked one time. Stopping in for an interview. I elected not to bother him. Good choice, me.
Tim Heidecker is on the show this coming Monday
We talk a lot about his music, which is not where most people know him from. It’s sincere music, singer/songwriter stuff with a kind of 70s vibe to it.
But Tim is best known for comedy so here are some videos of that. First, from the surrealistic and sometimes disquieting Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!:
Then from his standup where he plays a character, also named Tim Heidecker, who is a gigantic asshole:
And he also acts in movies! I was going to put a scene from the Jordan Peele movie Us here but it is pretty scary and gross and sad. Funny too! But I just went with the trailer for “Our Flag Means Death”. Tim is in it, pretty briefly, but it’s a great show.