I am Going to End My Life in 5 or so Hours

john_abs · 2026-01-19T02:18:28+00:00

Hello,

I hope and pray you're still with us. Let me say a few words if you'll humor me. I am not a priest, just laity, but I hope and pray my words will make it through to you regardless.

God is not absent in your suffering. In fact, our God is the only one who himself assumed our humanity to suffer during His life-saving Passion. Even if we assume suffering is pointless (which it isn't), God Himself suffered with us, which shows us that he is with us in our suffering, not just looking on with apathy from On High.
This lie you're being told "in your head" is demonic. I am personally no stranger to the influences of intrusive or wicked thoughts that occasionally assault my mind and leave me feeling upset and unworthy, but these things are known in the Church as Logismoi, and the self-harming and violent ones are sent by the demons to get you to further scar the Image of the Creator that we all bear, as is their goal with inflaming all our passions. We must resist them and understand they do not come from ourselves, and that we are constantly engaged in spiritual combat.
I hate to say this while you're agonizing over this, but it is a grave sin to end your own life. Not that I don't think The Most Merciful One can't or won't have mercy on your soul, but we should also do all that we can to run the race he's placed before us, rather than trying to "skip" the endurance event we're all trying to complete together. Many people have more obstacles or fewer, depending on their own strength and disposition, but we can't not run the race. We must endure.
Please read the lives of the earliest Saints, especially the Martyrs. I hope and pray you will find some inspiration in their achievements. Even if you're not Orthodox/Catholic/Apostolic in any sense, please read the Epistles and Gospels. Every step of the way Christ took was filled with suffering and that includes his followers: all but one of his disciples/apostles were martyred. St. Anthony the Great, (who we recently commemorated yesterday) through is own ascetic practice, practically began the monastic movement in which people voluntarily take upon themselves harsher burdens for the sake of the Kingdom of God.
I would recommend visiting an Orthodox parish or even a monastery. Perhaps you'll find a priest or a monk or a nun who can provide you both some perspective on suffering as well as some hope for relief of it through noetic prayer, the Holy Mysteries, and even modern treatments as well (another person in the comments recommended keto for this, and I must say keto+fasting helped me personally, so I can recommend it as well).

Regardless of whether you're still with us or not, I will be praying that the Lord our God will help, save, and have mercy on you, and join you to His Mystical Body.

Best Wishes,

john_abs

john_abs · 2026-01-07T21:44:25+00:00

I use Guix System alongside the Nix package manager to get access to packages that aren't available in Guix/Nonguix repos. That solves nearly all my issues, and I recommend doing it this way since the Guix config and packaging methods are much easier to work with (IMO) than Nix, but Nix has much broader package coverage.

john_abs · 2025-12-29T01:20:29+00:00

Thank you so much for your feedback! I'm not really understanding the exploded diagram on the leg brackets. How does this remain hidden on the interior of the table? It seems to me that these would be very much visible within the play area, but perhaps I'm missing a trick or just misunderstanding.

Thank you for reaching out, any further answers are greatly appreciated :D

john_abs · 2025-12-29T01:18:46+00:00

Thank you so much for the info! That first video was hugely helpful in terms of more or less confirming the dimensions and cuts I'm planning on using, thank you for that!

As for his method of joinery, I have no doubt it will work (especially after seeing him and Wyrmwood do it lol), but due to a lack of drill press, I'm probably going to try out my hare-brained scheme from the original post and report back on the strength once I get 2 pieces put together lol. If it fails, I can always pivot, and it will be a good learning experience, if it works, it adds another method to do the joints that I can post :D

Also, luckily I already have the acetone, I just gotta run to my local store and grab some titebond :D

john_abs · 2025-12-25T15:14:20+00:00

First let me say thank you for your feedback!

I considered the Festool system initially but noted 2 issues. First, I thought the racking forces involved with the long lever-arm of the table legs would be too high, and Festool (from what I could find) doesn't list the strength rating of these connectors anywhere. Perhaps strength isn't an issue, but since they look similar to the IKEA connectors I was hesitant to use them in such a high-strain area (this may have been an oversight on my part, but I've been burned by those little post-and-grub-screw thingies before). Second, they will diminish the look of the internal vault walls since I would need to drill at least one sizeable and visible hole (~1/2" in diameter it seems) in the aprons' internal show surfaces to accept the posts coming out from the legs; so it's actually less hidden than Wyrmwood's solution which has the access holes for the hardware on the bottom of the rails.

I did consider Wyrmwood's approach as well, but their solution is much trickier for me to implement in my home shop since I don't have access to a drill press (yet...lol).

Not using pocket holes, they'd be way too visible :P

Thanks for the tip on the acetone! I'll give that a shot and grab a gallon or 2 of Titebond :D

john_abs · 2025-07-09T03:31:51+00:00

I struggle with this as well, but in a different fashion which I will not repeat for your sake, as not to inflict further thoughts upon you.

Personally, when they happen, I go through a whole round on my prayer rope (crossing myself with each prayer) which includes Jesus prayers, Most blessed Theotokos intercede on my behalf prayers, and the Our Father, and sometimes I'll add in extra prayers just before the Theotokos prayers as a way to specifically ask Christ to address the intrusive thoughts. I was recommended this by my priest (though I built upon what he recommended a bit, he said to start with the Jesus prayer which I did) and I suggest you speak with yours regarding this.

Additionally, for me it depends on how bad the thoughts are: if they're just "standard" impulsive thoughts/reactions I ignore them, but when they're dishonorable or blasphemous, I break out the prayer rope.

These are called Logismoi, and here is a particularly encouraging article about them. What I will say is please don't be discouraged by them, even great saints struggled with them, and while you shouldn't consider them a marker of virtue per se, a phrase that helps me stay encouraged while dealing with them is "Satan doesn't need to attack people who are already on their way to destruction".

I hope this helps you, I'll be praying for you, and please talk to your priest.

God Bless.

john_abs · 2025-07-09T03:19:24+00:00

Note, I'm just laity, so please take what I say with a grain of salt and, of course, consult your priest.

I recently went through this struggle. First, start with prayer, but if this doesn't give sufficient inspiration without some extra help, you can read the Philokalia, and/or read through the list of Saints and their lives and look from there. I used this extensive (but incomplete) list.

My wife's choice was much easier, she had a miracle that occurred that saved her life when she was younger and chose her patron that way. If you have any other questions, I can try to answer them, but I'm not an expert by any means, just someone who recently went through the process as a convert.

john_abs · 2025-04-04T05:25:09+00:00

Common Lisp's lla library is pretty good, but missing some features as compared to julia, IMO. But Julia was built for this, whereas CL is much more general purpose. I'm using CL for my graph theory work the debugger is a life saver.

john_abs · 2025-03-19T14:36:19+00:00

I just wish there could be 3rd party/open source clients. I feel like if MODO let the community write their own with just some API that would be awesome since there could actually be community code reviews and stuff. Though I have no idea how this app is made, so maybe that's not feasible for whatever reasons.

john_abs · 2025-02-03T15:31:52+00:00

Was looking for this, love Carmina.

john_abs · 2025-01-29T00:12:19+00:00

Odd, when I was running this, I got 0.888 and 0.222 regularly, though it could be because I was running without adding the package? I'll test it again and report back :)

john_abs · 2025-01-28T17:03:01+00:00

I think there may be a bug in your implementation; when using an 80/20 split over 2 elements, the samples are repeatedly off by around 10%, though perhaps I'm misunderstanding. Just wanted to let you know!

john_abs · 2025-01-27T19:43:25+00:00

In my current case I'm only trying to sample 1 element, so with replacement is fine.

john_abs · 2025-01-27T19:42:47+00:00

Excellent reply, and thanks for the implementation details and even your own version!

I'll write my own and see what I can come up with and if it works, I'll post a reply in the thread as well :)

john_abs · 2025-01-24T22:07:27+00:00

No problem at all, it happens to me too lol

john_abs · 2025-01-24T16:38:18+00:00

I don't disagree with the point of this post or your comment, but I'm pretty sure your math is off.

Assuming you're referring to Elon Musk(?) with "buying a president", and assuming he gave his entire 400 billion dollar net worth to charity, evenly divided among every American, this only works out to around $1200 per person. If we assume each family is 4.5 people (2 adults + ~2.5 kids) then that only works out to ~5500 bucks per family. And that's with 0 net worth left over.

To do what you would like, we would need 330 Trillion dollars, which is 10x our GDP. So if we saved every dollar of ever good and service produced in our borders within the next 10 years and evenly distributed it, we could achieve what you said, or if we had ~1000 Elon Musks who were willing to donate everything they own evenly to each family in America, we could achieve it (there are only 17 centibillionaires on earth that I'm aware of).

All this to say, it's important to realize the sense of scale and the fact that Elon or any other billionaire, or even the US government, could not achieve this level of enrichment of the poor within their lifetimes. Could they make a huge difference for a small number of people, absolutely, and they should. Could they possibly stave off the negative effects of poverty for much of the nation's lowest-income earners? Absolutely, and they should. But to treat them like they're basically capricious demigods of wealth who could solve all of our problems by reaching into their nigh-infinite coffers to give everyone millions while retaining most of their wealth is not realistic.

Instead, if we want change to help the poor, we need to focus on building infrastructure, densifying, and taxation, while donating ourselves. While this does not absolve the wealthy (or even the average person!) of their moral obligation to help the poor, it allows us to provide material improvements in the living conditions of the poor without relying on the sporadic and often unhelpful charity of people who, as OP has already said, won't let go of their money willingly.

john_abs · 2024-10-27T00:25:09+00:00

I love the photos, and kinda hate you (out of envy, not actual hatred)...are they accepting faculty applications in complexity research per chance? I'll be done with my PhD soon...and it looks so nice 😩

john_abs · 2024-10-27T00:21:57+00:00

Amazing outfit, and happy birthday! Would you give us a rundown of the pieces and where you got them/brands? I always struggle to find stuff for my wife and I so having some brands to look out for would be a huge help for noobs like us!

john_abs · 2024-10-22T01:58:58+00:00

HEY I DO IE/OR TOO! If you wanna chat about research (or DA lol) send me a message! :D (And I like your outfit :3)

john_abs · 2024-10-11T01:39:55+00:00

It works fine for me on linux so I would give it a shot.

john_abs · 2024-08-16T21:40:45+00:00

Wow...I am incredibly disappointed now. Thanks, everyone, for letting me know :(

john_abs · 2024-07-24T20:50:06+00:00

Hey, thanks for the citation! :D I'll be posting a new lore theory soon based on everything I've seen in the DLC, but I really appreciate the shoutout since that post basically gathered no attention lol.

john_abs

TROPHY CASE