Long but good.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a pervasive and lifelong mental disorder that affects interpersonal relationships, mood, and behavior. Those diagnosed with BPD often struggle with an unstable self-identity and self-image, difficulty in regulating their emotions, impulsive and self-sabotaging behavior, a fear of abandonment, feelings of emptiness, and a pattern of highly unstable relationships where idealization and devaluation are common.

Complex-PTSD

Complex PTSD, or cPTSD, is a subset of PTSD. Whereas PTSD is a fear-based disorder, cPTSD is often referred to as a shame-based disorder originating from a history of chronic, and long-term exposure to traumatic events such as ongoing severe child abuse or long-term relationship abuse.

Key Differences Between BPD and cPTSD

• While both disorders may experience symptoms associated with fear within relationships, one distinguishing factor seen in BPD that is not often seen in cPTSD is a fear of abandonment. Those with cPTSD, however, may avoid relationships based on feeling somehow unlovable or undeserving because of the abuse they endured, which can overlap with similar feelings experienced in BPD. Similarly, those with cPTSD often avoid relationships altogether or push others away as unsafe or threatening; these behaviors may be confused as a fear of abandonment seen in those with BPD.

• Those with cPTSD may often feel shame and blame themselves for their interpersonal problems—a symptom that is also similar to the experiences of those with BPD. However, another key difference is that those with cPTSD usually do not self-harm; this is a more common behavior seen in BPD, where stressors in interpersonal relationships may trigger episodes of self-harming behavior. This may include suicidal ideation or a suicide attempt.

• Another key difference between the two is that whereas both may feel relationships are seen as unsafe or threatening, a person with cPTSD may often choose to avoid intimacy or relationships altogether. A person with BPD, on the other hand, may struggle with being alone and may use relationships to prevent feelings of loneliness or abandonment.

• While both those with BPD and cPTSD struggle with emotional regulation and often experience outbursts of anger or crying, those with cPTSD may experience emotional numbing, emptiness, or detachment from emotions.

• Additionally, while both those with cPTSD and BPD can struggle with a solid self-concept, those with BPD often struggle with an understanding of who they are at their core. They may change their interests or hobbies depending on who they associate with because of a limited sense of self-identity. On the other hand, those with cPTSD have an understanding and awareness of who they are and have a more stable self-identity. However, they struggle with feeling "damaged" or deserving of the pain they’ve suffered and carry misbeliefs about themselves as unworthy of love or undeserving of happiness. These experiences impact relationships, which may be confused as a problem with self-identity or self-awareness.

• Lastly, while both those with BPD and cPTSD often struggle with traumatic pasts, with successful treatment those with cPTSD may experience less emotional reactions or behavioral disruptions over time by engaging in calming strategies or redirecting their energy away from an emotional stressor to reduce symptoms associated with panic attacks.

tl;dr:

• BPD has fear of abandonment. cPTSD has fear of relationships
• BPD has self-harm. cPTSD does not self-harm.
• BPD struggle with being alone. cPTSD avoid intimacy and relationships.
• cPTSD is more likely to experience emotional numbing and detachment.
• BPD have difficulty understanding their core identity. cPTSD see themselves as damaged.
• cPTSD symptoms can improve with successful treatment.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/538582

Video of people making crazy crystal balls

Busytown

The USS Indianapolis had delivered the crucial components of the first operational atomic bomb to a naval base on the Pacific island of Tinian. On August 6, 1945, the weapon would level Hiroshima. But now, on July 28, the Indianapolis sailed from Guam, without an escort, to meet the battleship USS Idaho in the Leyte Gulf in the Philippines and prepare for an invasion of Japan.

The next day was quiet, with the Indianapolis making about 17 knots through swells of five or six feet in the seemingly endless Pacific. As the sun set over the ship, the sailors played cards and read books; some spoke with the ship’s priest, Father Thomas Conway.

But shortly after midnight, a Japanese torpedo hit the Indianapolis in the starboard bow, blowing almost 65 feet of the ship’s bow out of the water and igniting a tank containing 3,500 gallons of aviation fuel into a pillar of fire shooting several hundred feet into the sky. Then another torpedo from the same submarine hit closer to midship, hitting fuel tanks and powder magazines and setting off a chain reaction of explosions that effectively ripped the Indianapolis in two. Still traveling at 17 knots, the Indianapolis began taking on massive amounts of water; the ship sank in just 12 minutes. Of the 1,196 men aboard, 900 made it into the water alive. Their ordeal—what is considered the worst shark attack in history—was just beginning.

As the sun rose on July 30, the survivors bobbed in the water. Life rafts were scarce. The living searched for the dead floating in the water and appropriated their lifejackets for survivors who had none. Hoping to keep some semblance of order, survivors began forming groups—some small, some over 300—in the open water. Soon enough they would be staving off exposure, thirst—and sharks.

The animals were drawn by the sound of the explosions, the sinking of the ship and the thrashing and blood in the water. Though many species of shark live in the open water, none is considered as aggressive as the oceanic whitetip. Reports from the Indianapolis survivors indicate that the sharks tended to attack live victims close to the surface, leading historians to believe that most of the shark-related causalities came from oceanic whitetips.

The first night, the sharks focused on the floating dead. But the survivors’ struggles in the water only attracted more and more sharks, which could feel their motions through a biological feature known as a lateral line: receptors along their bodies that pick up changes in pressure and movement from hundreds of yards away. As the sharks turned their attentions toward the living, especially the injured and the bleeding, sailors tried to quarantine themselves away from anyone with an open wound, and when someone died, they would push the body away, hoping to sacrifice the corpse in return for a reprieve from a shark’s jaw. Many survivors were paralyzed with fear, unable even to eat or drink from the meager rations they had salvaged from their ship. One group of survivors made the mistake of opening a can of Spam—but before they could taste it, the scent of the meat drew a swarm of sharks around them. They got rid of their meat rations rather than risk a second swarming.

The sharks fed for days, with no sign of rescue for the men. Navy intelligence had intercepted a message from the Japanese submarine that had torpedoed the Indianapolis describing how it had sunk an American battleship along the Indianapolis’ route, but the message was disregarded as a trick to lure American rescue boats into an ambush. In the meantime, the Indianapolis survivors learned that they had the best odds in a group, and ideally in the center of the group. The men on the margins or, worse, alone, were the most susceptible to the sharks.

As the days passed, many survivors succumbed to heat and thirst, or suffered hallucinations that compelled them to drink the seawater around them—a sentence of death by salt poisoning. Those who so slaked their thirst would slip into madness, foaming at the mouth as their tongues and lips swelled. They often became as great a threat to the survivors as the sharks circling below—many dragged their comrades underwater with them as they died.

After 11:00 a.m. on their fourth day in the water, a Navy plane flying overhead spotted the Indianapolis survivors and radioed for help. Within hours, another seaplane, manned by Lieutenant Adrian Marks, returned to the scene and dropped rafts and survival supplies. When Marks saw men being attacked by sharks, he disobeyed orders and landed in the infested waters, and then began taxiing his plane to help the wounded and stragglers, who were at the greatest risk. A little after midnight, the USS Doyle arrived on the scene and helped to pull the last survivors from the water. Of the Indianapolis’ original 1,196-man crew, only 317 remained. Estimates of the number who died from shark attacks range from a few dozen to almost 150. It’s impossible to be sure. But either way, the ordeal of the Indianapolis survivors remains the worst maritime disaster in U.S. naval history.

Apparently he was an advocate for financial austerity, so his name became connected with cheap or discount things. A silhouette was an affordable type of portrait.

So the tailor doesn't touch your penis when they're measuring you

Photo credit: Matt Minnich

archive.org link to a news story with more info.

The term originally characterized farmers that had a red neck, caused by sunburn from long hours working in the fields. A citation from 1893 provides a definition as "poorer inhabitants of the rural districts ... men who work in the field, as a matter of course, generally have their skin stained red and burnt by the sun, and especially is this true of the back of their necks".[12] Hats were usually worn and they protected that wearer's head from the sun, but also provided psychological protection by shading the face from close scrutiny.[13] The back of the neck however was more exposed to the sun and allowed closer scrutiny about the person's background in the same way callused working hands could not be easily covered.

By 1900, "rednecks" was in common use to designate the political factions inside the Democratic Party comprising poor white farmers in the South.[14] The same group was also often called the "wool hat boys" (for they opposed the rich men, who wore expensive silk hats). A newspaper notice in Mississippi in August 1891 called on rednecks to rally at the polls at the upcoming primary election:[15]

Warping is throwing an anchor either manually for a small ship or by rowing the anchor out and dropping it farther away for a larger ship. Then the ship would reel it to change position. Good for maneuvering in harbor. Etymologically related to "throwing" and essentially threading a needle across the sea.

Warp factor get you asses in the rowboat. Engage.

From the pdf:

After the Sun, the closest star to us is a small Red Dwarf star, Proxima Centauri. It is too faint to be seen without using a sizeable telescope. It is 4.24 light years away, so in our model, which is 1:1 billion scale, it is 40,140 kilometres away. This is approximately the distance around the circumference of the world from Melbourne to Melbourne.

That's extremely nerdy, I love it.

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/s/vMRsaTdMn0

(it's not a solar system because Sol is our star, specifically; we're the only Solar system)

TRAPPIST-1 is a cool red dwarf star[c] with seven known exoplanets.

Up to four of the planets – designated d, e, f and g – orbit at distances where temperatures are suitable for the existence of liquid water, and are thus potentially hospitable to life.

The red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 has an estimated lifespan of pretty much the entire lifespan of the universe. If any of those planets are habitable, and humanity goes there, we could live there until the end of the whole universe, no worrying about our sun going out in about 5 billion years. It could be our forever home.

The planets in the TRAPPIST system are extremely close to each other, so the night sky on any of them would be awe-inspiring, with multiple bodies bigger than our moon rising and setting every night.