[yawpitch]

Go feed some pigeons.

Seriously, just buy a bag of seed, go find some pigeons, and feed them.

Now, watch them, carefully… see how hard they work, every day, even when they’re hobbling around on grotesque stumps where their feet used to be before they got wrapped up in our discarded waste.

Notice how something can put so much effort into just surviving, against all the odds, and against the abuse and mistreatment and just casual negligent brutality inflicted upon them by your species. See how they aren’t focused on money or jobs or learning or prestige, just on being now and being for a bit longer.

See how they’ll eventually trust you enough to approach or land on your hand to feed. How, if you do this day after day, they’ll recognize you and wait for you.

The only living thing that won’t, eventually, react to a modicum of gentleness and kindness with trust is a human.

You’re not on this planet to earn money. You’re not here to work. You’re certainly not here to build edifices of ephemeral noise. You’re here to be, while you can.

Pay your parents back on their real investment, by dedicating your time to them. Be there to care for them as they age. Give them a bit of gentleness and kindness… they need that much more than they need the fiction that is money.

When they’re done, then check out if you want to. I’ve been suicidal for as long as I can remember, I’m faking it until there’s no one else to care for. That’s enough.

No one is beyond redemption, if only because there’s no such thing as redemption in the first place.

[justanything]

I need money to be here. and to have decent money, i need to have skills, which i have to learn, which i am not able to do

[yawpitch]

You are able to, that’s a defining trait of being human… what you may not be capable of without a serious mind shift is applying yourself to that learning. The first step of that will be seriously lowering what you think of as decent money (if you live somewhere that actually requires millions, which is effectively nowhere on Earth you’d ever want to be, then move elsewhere) and then getting control of that shame impulse. Doing that is going to be best helped by seeking out mild antidepressants, individual therapy (CBT works), and time in nature (in no particular order). You don’t need, or want, tech bro money or tech bro work, find something you can concentrate on, and do it.

Fake it till you make it works, you just have to lower your bar on what you only think due to bad marketing represents making it.

[hollerith]

I'm surprised to hear that anyone enjoys feeding pigeons or even being around pigeons.

[yawpitch]

You’re only surprised because you haven’t spent enough time watching pigeons. They’re beautiful birds, many past societies literally worshipped them, and they saved a lot of butts in both World Wars. They’ve fallen from grace because 20th century plus humans don’t like what survives and thrives wild in their cities, especially when they associate them with dirt and garbage the humans leave everywhere.

[hollerith]

I've spent plenty of time around pigeons. They've nested a few times within 20 of feet of my apartment.

If I don't use adequate protective equipment while cleaning the pigeon shit from my patio, I can be infected with an organism in the shit, namely, Histoplasma capsulatum, Cryptococcus neoformans, Aspergillus fumigatus, Chlamydophila psittaci, Salmonella bacteria, Escherichia coli, Mycobacterium avium complex, Listeria monocytogenes, West Nile virus, St. Louis Encephalitis virus or Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus.

[yawpitch]

Most of those you have any realistic chance of catching from a wild bird you can also get — and are vastly more likely to get during your lifetime — via the fecal-oral route from another human. Indeed many of those are only a risk at all with pigeons because they live near humans who expose them to filth they’d never encounter in the wild.

Oh, and several of those you can’t get at all from a pigeon’s poop, they require an intervening, blood-feeding arthropod.

[hollerith]

>several of those you can’t get at all from a pigeon’s poop, they require an intervening, blood-feeding arthropod.

"A mosquito is needed to transfer the virus from the pigeon to me," is not a great defense of pigeons because of how common mosquitoes are and how hard it is to get rid of them.

[yawpitch]

Sure, mosquitoes have, historically, earned your ire, but now you’re blaming the pigeon, again, for a disease you’re just as or more likely to get from another, very likely human, source.

Which is especially true when you realize that most mosquito species that have adapted to blood feed off avians don’t also tend to blood feed off mammals.

And, not for nothing, but what I was refuting was the idea you needed safety gear around pigeon poop to defend you from blood-borne viruses that aren’t known to transfer via that poop.