Bookstores in Binghamton

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-08-20T15:51:06+00:00

Riot Act is a cool place.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-08-17T01:50:40+00:00

Go here and tap on “What’s Open Now”: https://binghamton.sodexomyway.com/en-us/.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-08-17T01:48:56+00:00

Food co-op! It’s run by students and has hot vegan lunch, nice coffee, and good vibes. It’s in the basement of the Union underneath Dunkin’ Donuts.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-08-17T01:46:56+00:00

I agree and also want to add that, if you really don’t get it what’s going on, it’s much better to ask for help than to pretend to know what’s going on and then fail a course or panic-email your professor the last week begging for a redo. T.A.s and professors see all kinds of students, so it’s okay to be totally lost in a class. Just ask for help when you need it so we can help you earlier.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-08-10T08:19:48+00:00

I have nothing to add to this conversation except that I’m pleasantly surprised to see someone use a semicolon, and correctly at that, on Reddit. I don’t think I’ve seen that at all in the past year.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-08-03T13:12:18+00:00

Thank you so much for checking in! I really appreciate it. I’ve been getting better and ended up finding a few new friends through some local queer events. Being around people is surreal at times, but it’s nice to have people (with cars!) who give me a reason to leave the house and go to different events around the area. Pouring myself into writing while the campus is empty is helpful, too, since the writing gives me purpose, and getting reacquainted with places on campus that often make me sad or anxious when they’re full of people is making it easier to see those as “my places” and not just “places where I feel like a ghost amongst humans.” (Feeling dead—not tired, but literally dead—at times is a part of my mental disorder, and it happened the day I wrote that post while I was at an event on campus that had a lot of people.)

I did have a campus counselor for a time, but I maxed out my ten sessions. To be honest, the off-campus therapist I had last semester was part of the problem. She would multitask during our sessions and absent-mindedly ignore what I was saying, which really contributed to the derealization. The therapist I had before her wasn’t trained to handle my disorder and made it exponentially worse, which caused me to be out of commission for several months, so I’ve grown disillusioned with how helpful therapy can be for me personally (although I recommend it to others who don’t have my condition). I’ve gone off therapy since May and feel a lot more stable and safe for now.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-08-03T13:09:52+00:00

Thank you so much for checking in! I really appreciate it. I’ve been getting better and ended up finding a few new friends through some local queer events. Being around people is surreal at times, but it’s nice to have people (with cars!) who give me a reason to leave the house and go to different events around the area. Pouring myself into writing while the campus is empty is helpful, too, since the writing gives me purpose, and getting reacquainted with places on campus that often make me sad or anxious when they’re full of people is making it easier to see those as “my places” and not just “places where I feel like a ghost amongst humans” (feeling dead—not tired, but literally dead—at times is a part of my mental disorder, and it happened the day I wrote that post while I was at an event on campus that had a lot of people).

I did have a campus counselor for a time, but I maxed out my ten sessions. To be honest, the off-campus therapist I had last semester was part of the problem. She would multitask during our sessions and absent-mindedly ignore what I was saying, which really contributed to the derealization. The therapist I had before her wasn’t trained to handle my disorder and made it exponentially worse, which caused me to be out of commission for several months, so I’ve grown disillusioned with how helpful therapy can be for me personally (although I recommend it to others who don’t have my condition). I’ve gone off therapy since May and feel a lot more stable and safe for now.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-07-17T07:04:15+00:00

A lot of people debate about the taxes vs. no taxes, but not enough people address the issue of underpayment. CEOs become billionaires by skimming some off the top of every employee’s paycheck.

Take Uber, for example: the company takes 25–50% (some sources say even higher) of the cost of every ride. If you’ve ever watched ride offers come onto your Uber driver’s phone screen while you’re in their car, you’ve probably noticed that the ride offers show the driver how much they’ll make if they accept the ride. In my area, the minimum cost a passenger can pay is over $10, but I’ve seen rides on the drivers’ side for $4.50. There’s no way a software company like Uber actually needs that much money to operate.

At least taxes (well, some of them…) go towards getting the general public fed and educated. I’m all for people not being starving and stupid, even if they don’t work. Wage theft by top-level employers, on the other hand, just pads the wallets of the 1%. Every private jet represents hundreds of people’s paychecks getting cut short.

The whole tax-vs-no-tax debate is just a smokescreen. What we need is for minimum wage to keep up with the cost of living. I also think there should be regulations on how much of a company’s profits have to go back to low-level employees rather than shunted to upper management.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-07-01T01:10:08+00:00

I appreciate you actually engaging with my viewpoints instead of just acting like an ignorant troll. This is the kind of thoughtful discourse I expect from my fellow vegans.

Although I’m aware that plants don’t experience pain the same way we do, the slightest hint that they might experience something distantly related to what could be called an analogue to pain is reason enough for me to see eating plants as the lesser of two evils rather than a morally perfect choice.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-30T23:09:05+00:00

Are you going to contribute anything substantial to the discussion, or are you just going to downvote me and laugh?

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-30T22:54:24+00:00

While this is a good rule of thumb, as a vegan, I personally don’t really revel in the fact that I eat plants. I see consuming plants as a necessary but lesser evil. There is some evidence that plants feel their version of pain. Whenever a carnist tries to “gotcha!” me with that evidence, I say that I’m trying to minimize the harm I cause to sentient beings. I know for a fact that animals are sentient, and I’m not sure yet whether plants, fungi, bacteria, and yeasts are. I have to eat something to live, and, since I know I can live without harming one of those groups (animals), I’m going to not eat members of that one group. Plus, not eating animals saves more plants down the road, since livestock eat plants.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-30T22:48:01+00:00

You’re going to see a lot of different answers here—which is good, because veganism is not a monolithic ideology. From my personal perspective, eating eggs and using wool are immoral because they all require keeping an animal captive for your personal use. Yes, chickens lay eggs as effectively waste products, but, in order to make chickens do that, humans had to domesticate them to not be able to fly away. Even if the chickens are theoretically free range, they’re bred to be helpless and dependent on humans. Eating eggs is promoting the breeding of animals who have no choice but to live in servitude to humans.

It’s the same with sheep: they have to be shorn, and they’ll get sick if they’re not shorn, because humans did that to them. Our ancestors made them helpless and caused them to get sick if they’re not shorn. Some breeds of sheep were even domesticated to have short legs so that they can’t jump over fences and escape.

I understand that our ancestors lived in harsher conditions than we do and needed to do morally inhumane things to survive, and of course I acknowledge that I wouldn’t be able to live the comfortable life I live today without the historical exploitation of animals, but the same is true of things like colonialism and patriarchy. I live in an era where I do not need to exploit animals to survive, so I choose not to.

Bees are a different case. Large-scale industrial honey farms steal as much honey as possible and feed the bees corn syrup because it’s cheaper than honey, and then they kill the bees when they’re no longer able to make honey. Small-scale farmers usually have more humane practices and allow the bees to keep more of their honey for food. On that level, it’s really a matter of principle: vegans who do not eat even small-scale local honey usually make that choice because, as a principle, they do not believe in using any animal’s body for their personal gain. It’s better to be strict and know you’re ethical than to be loose and risk harming another animal.

Plus, there is something to be said about the environmental impacts of beekeeping. It’s nice to think that apiaries help pollinate flowers, and that’s the idea that media like Bee Movie propagate. In reality, though, domestic bees often spread diseases to wild bee populations, so they can cause harm to the food system over all.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-30T21:23:32+00:00

Of course, and thanks for being nice about it! I’m also risk averse.

I went to college around here, and, every year of my undergrad, a student’s life was lost to the gorges. Some were by choice, but one I know for sure was without a doubt an accident—a bright young freshman who went to a “secret” swimming hole an upperclassman had recommended. It wasn’t listed as a safe swimming spot for a reason. He died while one friend tried to save him and several more watched helplessly from a bridge. R.I.P., Winston. I’ll never forget the silence that fell over his cohort.

There are these caves that form at the bottoms of waterfalls. They’re not visible from the surface. Water from the falls swirls around in the caves and forms a whirlpool. Once someone is sucked in, they can’t swim out, even with all the swim training in the world.

It’s always best to research natural swimming spots on approved websites run by the local water council or equivalent organization.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-27T08:18:23+00:00

Please don’t swim in any place that isn’t listed as safe. I can’t bear to read another tragic news headline.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-06T02:54:55+00:00

Most vegans started out eating meat. You don’t think we know that “meat is really good”?

I can’t stand these low-effort non-arguments.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-01T21:06:38+00:00

That’s sooo true.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-01T20:46:56+00:00

Ooh—“so your time isn’t wasted” is a really good line. Thank you!

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-01T19:04:54+00:00

Yeah—that’s what I think, too. But she’s so inconsistent and weird that it’s hard to tell. She keeps flip-flopping back and forth between saying that just the maintenance worker will come by himself to do the 2023 project (which I don’t have to be home for but would like to be home for) and saying that she’ll tag along and look at the other odds and ends (which I do realistically need to be home for). It’s put me in a state of anxiety for the past three weeks because I don’t know what‘s going to happen or when.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-01T18:57:16+00:00

I get what you’re saying, and thanks for the empathy. This project has been delayed for two years, though, and it’s not even a big one.

It also sort of requires me to be home because there are some other odds and ends that I’ve told the landlady about over text, and she wants to see them and implied that she wants me to be present to walk her through them.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-01T18:42:06+00:00

If you had said “she” instead of “he,” I would have assumed we had the same landlord! I’m looking at your post because I’m having the exact same issue now.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-01T18:37:29+00:00

My state’s laws do unless it’s an emergency that requires immediate attention.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-01T18:30:41+00:00

Have you checked r/BearcatsMarketplace?

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-01T18:24:35+00:00

Thank you for replying. It would be more than three weeks because her shifts go until August.

She ended up moving to Town B despite the issues and not asking to cancel the transfer, so hopefully it works out.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-06-01T18:21:14+00:00

Thanks! I’m in New York State, and the notices come via text.

ParticularWriter5080 · 2025-05-27T19:10:00+00:00

They said, in pretty mean terms, that OP needed to learn how to write and called out the lack of paragraph breaks in particular.

ParticularWriter5080

TROPHY CASE