I made a metaphor for why you can't think positively when you're depressed.

But the metaphor depends upon knowledge of the works of John Webster, which is a problem in terms of universal comprehensibility.

Here is the metaphor anyway: Try to imagine a happy ending for The White Devil.

See? See?

(no subject)

I feel like you can't really use Shakespeare's tragedies for this, except maybe for Titus; I think the thing that makes them seem to hit harder is that you can always see ways they didn't have to end the way they did. The protagonists have their necessary Tragic Flaws, yeah - but there's always at least one character in there who seems to have a sense of perspective about shit and thus isn't affected by the Tragedy Gravitational Field, and is just kind of going "what the fuck people, calm down." If they'd been the protagonist, things would probably have been fine!

Which is not the case with Webster and Marlowe. No one is immune to the requirements of the plot in those guys' stuff. Which is fine in its own way, but it gives a very different emotional effect.

("Shakespeare is pretty good and interesting," revolutionary opinion here.)

Heartbleed vulnerability note.

If you use LastPass to store your passwords (and it is at the moment the very best way to do that, in my Persnickety IT Jerk opinion), they've updated their password security evaluation tool to advise you on which sites you might want to avoid for the moment, and on which you should log in and change your password. You access it by going into the "Tools" menu and choosing "Security Check."