Reading

Current Mood: rushed

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Links from Dreamwidth and Today's Study of Mandarin

I tried so hard to focus after lunch but the drowsiness won. I went out for dark chocolate bars. Four hundred extra calories. I'll have to cut back on dinner, which is an uncomfortable thing to do.

I didn't feel nearly so drowsy before lunch, so I thought my blood sugar had just dropped. The blood glucose reader said that it wasn't low. I did a finger prick test and the blood reader whatever it's called indicated the same thing. No idea what's going on.

I'm bleeding heavily today, soaking pad after pad. I went to the library for some free menstrual pads on my way out for the chocolate bars. There are so many nice things I can access here, and I'm giving them up to move back to the poor county I came from. The poor county I came from has better humidity than this place, and I cannot live with the skin issues I'm having. People also don't treat me as weird over there, and accessing SF and Sacramento is much easier. But the payment standards for my housing voucher are also lower, so I may not even be able to afford to rent anything there. What shitty options.

I can't even think straight, the menstrual cramps are so distracting. I'm waiting on ibuprofen to kick in. I was supposed to job search again today but I didn't have the brainpower. I can make flashcards though because it's mostly just copy-and-paste.

I've worked out a flashcard-making system that doesn't take up so much RAM: instead of inputting directly into the flashcard software, I type the data into a CSV file that I later import into the software. That way I don't need the software open at the same time as the web browser, the PDF reader, the text editor, and the audio editor. The websites where I get the audio and images for the flashcards don't load properly on the lighterweight browsers, so I handle those after I've finished using the lighterweight browser for the translations and pronunciation. The audio from wiktionary.com is a nice change of pace from the voices that come with my textbook audio.

While I was out getting the chocolate, I listened to one of the native Mandarin podcasts I mentioned before, the one with the host whose voice sounded sleazy to me. I'd been avoiding this podcast even though I don't have a lot of alternatives. I cannot say that I like the guy's voice, but it doesn't sound so bad now. I'm glad I feel better about it because this podcast is easier to listen to than the other one I have. I found a Mandarin podcast whose (female) host does not have an insanely high-pitched voice, but men are just always easier to listen to. This podcast is quite motivating; they use more vocabulary than I recognize and I'm quite curious about what the hell they are talking about.

I guess I could try to look for more Mandarin podcasts, but it's just kind of a weird thing to do because I know so little of the language. When I look for Spanish or French podcasts, I type a particular topic into a search engine. I don't know how to spell enough Chinese words to type much of anything. I don't know enough vocabulary to express any preferred topics. I guess I could type out food or something related to school. My results are gonna be a far cry from the sorts of podcasts I typically listen to.

The goddamned cramps aren't going away.

Oh yes! a package was just dropped at my door. It's probably my new headphones. I was afraid they wouldn't arrive today, as Amazon said they would.

I get clip-on headphones and these are a better fit than the previous pair, another Panasonic product of a different model. These are cheaper, and Amazon ships some shady bullshit sometimes, so I was afraid these would be lower quality. I'll have to wait and see how long they last, however.

Today I learned from somebody's blog:

The 2025 Gender Census is available, for people who want to pretend that man/woman are genders (rather than sex-based categories) that are intended to represent people's entire personalities, so census-takers can talk about how speshul they are for having personalities beyond manhood/womanhood.

https://www.gendercensus.com/

An article about the concept of Queer Time, which refers to not meeting typical milestones of adulthood such as marriage and spawning children. Except, like all things queer, same-sex attraction, gender nonconformity, and the completely invisible/entirely psychological forms of "queerness" (such as nonbinaryness) and the politically irrelevant types of "queerness" (such as asexuality) are all lumped in together, thereby obfuscating the fact that the heterosexual and/or nonsexual "queer" people never have to worry about being on queer time because same-sex marriage doesn't exist, same-sex couples adopting is illegal, or being openly gay is too life-threatening for anyone to even risk coupledom. Much like the gender-conforming "queer" people never have to worry about suffering the fate of gender nonconforming people.

In other words, we have an example of why the concept of queerness should not exist.

https://daily.jstor.org/queer-time-the-alternative-to-adulting/

The following article is several years old, but I somehow got to it through a bunch of these sorts of links:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

It's another person comparing physical brutality to mean words. And so often, these people use the mistreatment of adoas as their example. Why? Why does no one use the internment of Japanese people for their specious comparisons? Indigenous American genocide? It's always American slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings. And the author's bullshittery doesn't end there: the article includes a link from his assertion of the Trump administration's "ethnic cleansing" to an article about Trump ending the temporary legal resident status of certain migrants. The parents being sent back to their home countries somehow ethnically cleanses ther American-born children.

I keep seeing overblown bullshit like this, today, not just back when this article was written. What is up with this dishonest rhetoric? It's so blatant. Do people like this manage to convince themselves that their straight up lies are helping anyone?

Shit, time for a walk.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: my bedroom
Current Music: Metronome {by Circus-P ft. SF-A2 Miki}

Entry tags:

post type: discussion

My/Our 12 Pen Person Questions

"My/Our" put in the title because we're plural, but hi I'm Jade (she/they/bark)! I wanna get this system more into journaling again :] but for now here's my/our anwsers.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

music,
music monday

Music Monday

🎵 Atreyu, “Falling Down“

Leave a comment.⁺

Current Mood: nauseated

Entry tags:

Getting to the Bottom of Quantum Mechanics

I've been using my earbuds because my headphones died a couple of days ago. As of yesterday, the earbuds are also dead. Great timing. So that's another thing I need to buy. I think the headphones and the earbuds lasted longer than usual because I used them for separate activities, so I'm going to keep doing that.

The blackout curtains worked as expected but I did indeed have trouble getting up and feeling fully awake, even after I turned on the sunlamp. The sunlamp ain't got nothin on the actual sun. Finally I had to just mentally snap myself out of it and force myself up out of the blankets and things.

I had a very colorful dream this morning about people modeling clothing. The men's clothing style was fairly standard, but the women's clothing was stuff I'd never seen before. I don't follow fashion and I like rather conservative men's fashion, like jeans, button-down shirts and slacks, so I don't know where the content of this dream came from.

I feel worse about my limitations now that I want to date again because I think about what I can offer to another person, and someone who struggles just to keep an apartment clean is not something I want to offer. Oh but I've been in pain lately because I've been undersleeping, so I'm not as bad off as I was thinking today as I looked at the food caked onto my stovetop.

I had no glycine but I'm still tired. Coffee hasn't been working lately, which is extra strange because I had time off from it.

Eighty pages into the Asimov novel, there's still not much more happening than a bunch of talking, and it looks like political intrigue is brewing. What really made me put the book down today (and possibly forever), however, is a description of the main character's space ship as changing mass. MASS. Not because bits are falling off of it, not because it's approaching the speed of light. JUST BECAUSE IT'S LANDING. No, dammit.

Sci-fi novels that don't even obey the laws of physics are things I will not abide. If sci-fi authors don't want their fictional universe to work like our universe, they need to create and describe the alternative universe in which their alternate physics exists. Well, Asimov hasn't done that and the previous eighty pages suggests that he won't. I was already annoyed by an earlier, unexplained description of the ship as "gravitic," operating somehow without regard to gravity. This disappearing mass is going too far.

I'm a bit exasperated that this is the second sci-fi novel I've recently tried, thinking I'd found something worthwhile in the trashbin of English-language fiction, that turns out to be more trash. I had a vague idea that Asimov had some actual scientific qualifications, probably because I read science books of his when I was a kid, and these fictional details are disappointing coming from a scientist, if he actually was one.

I think some people don't understand that science fiction needs to actually be science-based to qualify as science fiction. There are limits to how foreign, how technologically advanced things can be before the story veers into the realm of fantasy.

Today I finally started reading the philosophy of quantum mechanics text I bought months ago. The writing is not as clear as I'd like but I feel some relief at beginning to finally get some clarity about quantum mechanics.

I actually took a quantum mechanics course in college, and I've always felt that I know next to nothing about the subject. The textbook made a lot of vague assertions, then we the students did a lot of weird math that was somehow connected to these assertions. Chiefly I remember that the book would always refer to particles without specifying which particles were under discussion. I don't know whether the stuff pertained only to subatomic particles (and which ones?) or included atoms and/or molecules. I could tell that something was off with either the teaching or the theory itself at a very fundamental level, but, to my exasperation, I couldn't put my finger on what.

My new text confirmed my suspicions. The author says that quantum mechanics, as it's typically taught at least, is not a physical theory. That means that it's not a theory that clearly stakes out a particular type or set of physical object(s) and describes the behavior of that/those object(s). So it's no wonder that the authors of my college textbook never specified which particles they were going on about.

So my problem as a student was that I subconsciously expected all the physics curriculum to pertain to physical theories. Quantum mechanics is apparently a wildcard, and nobody told me so, and I didn't know enough to get to the bottom of that myself. I kind of feel like I'd been gaslit in a way.

After I'd transferred to a second university, I spent a lot of time in the science section of the school library trying to find discussion of quantum mechanics that would...actually explain quantum mechanics. Or just shed some light on what it's fundamentally about. But even the history of science books just repeated the vague statements I'd been fed in my degree program. The fact that tracing this discipline to it's very origins turned up no answers was rather bewildering. Book after book that seemed to say nothing. It was like being trapped in some kind of a nightmare. Not the scary kind, the kind that are weird to the point of driving the dreamer insane.

I'd been afraid of starting this book because I suspected I might have to face the harsh reality of being so sick and tired that I couldn't even understand it. The pain and the chronic insomnia have left me duller than I used to be. But I was motivated to open it up because I'd put down Asimov's book after reading less than one page and because I think I'm back to my usual five hours of sleep per night (and the associated level of cognitive function). And now I'm motivated to keep going.

I feel nauseous now and occasionally and I don't even know why.

I think that my blood glucose sensor reader may not be functioning properly. It shows that my blood sugar hasn't dropped in days. I don't see why I'd suddenly be so stable. Plus I saw an error message on the thing earlier today. I closed the message and haven't heard or seen anything unusual since. Maybe I knocked the sensor loose. I was scratching the skin around it a lot the first few days after I installed it.

I want to keep adding more and more shit to my blog posts. It's not healthy. I'm avoiding my offline life. But now that I think of it, I also have problems switching tasks and focusing when I'm hungry or have even mild pain. My life is rather boring, though. Composing posts is more interesting. Ok I'm going. Potatoes, rice, and soy chorizo for dinner tonight. I feel weak with hunger but apparently I'm not actually undereating because I don't seem to be losing anymore weight. I'm hoping that I'm just losing super slowly.

It's kinda sad. I need to get more stuff going in my life. Studying Mandarin takes forever though.

Monday @ 10:54 am

Aa-aa-and final part posted, so re-upping this whole thing.

Next step is formatting it all for print but . . . that might be a next year job, hey.

RE: https://cryptid.house/notes/aayq6d2fl6n70022

Leave a comment.⁺

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: New Digs

Entry tags:

Weekend update is tired

Not worked-too-hard exhausted, just...tired. Low on gas. Going at a slow speed and deciding not to accelerate any faster for a while. Perhaps it's that I've been waking up a lot during the night, perhaps it's the RL political fuckery, or maybe it's closer to home with the day job drama. [Definitely not because of the day job getting busier for Q4, though...that won't happen for another month or so.] Or a little of everything finally piling up. I just don't have it in me to give any more fucks right now. Maybe a few spoons left that I'm keeping as backup, just in case.

Which is frustrating, because this is happening just as I want to start giving myself more ability to focus on my creative endeavors. But I'm not going to let it get to me all that much, because sometimes it's just not worth the added stress and anxiety. Figure out a workaround instead. Figure out what really matters and put most of my energy into that instead of trying to keep a sinking boat afloat.

Mind you, I'm still happy that I'm not nearly as full of stress and anxiety as I was with the bank job, that's for sure. I'm just more aware of it when it does arise, and I just need to do my best to divert it when and where I can.

Monday @ 12:15 am

Unobscured image of an ad for a black Santa hat, comparing it features ("thick," "big ball," "long fluff," "large size") versus the inferior competitor ("thin," "small ball," "short fluff," "small size").

It occurs to me (because @jackalope reminded me) that I never answered what this was an ad for. So. I present to you . . .

RE: https://cryptid.house/notes/ace8xlapfscu04hx

Leave a comment.⁺

Trying the dreamwidth thing again!

Name: Celestial

Age: 31

I mostly post about:

my personal life, thoughts, day to day stuff. Sometimes mental health/trauma related stuff. Crafts, occasional outfit photos. Cat pics. I also recently did a huge family photo archiving project, so I want to share some cool old photos and what I know about the people in them.

My hobbies are:

I like dabbling in different types of crafts. Primarily into making beaded jewelry, but I've also been learning stained glass this year and that is really cool. Trying to get into reading again. Taking photos, doing home DIYs, watching a lot of movies and TV. I like fashion, but don't dress up much lately (trying to fix that).

My fandoms are:

not a huge fandom head in the traditional sense anymore. I'm a diehard My Chemical Romance fan since I was literally 10 years old. Also a big Nicolas Cage fan, almost finished with a quest to see every single movie of his. Can't think of many others off the top of my head but I fixate on stuff for a while and then forget about it.

I'm looking to meet people who:

are also neurodivergent (audhd here). have a wealth of different experiences and points of view. anyone who is willing to read and occasionally comment.

My posting schedule tends to be:

I'm aiming for once a week this time around, but may be more or less depending on what's going on in my life.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are:

No TERFs, no centrists or republicans, no Zionists. I don't care if you're personally religious but I'm not and don't appreciate that perspective in regards to my own life. No Harry Potter fans, it's lame if you're still into that given... everything. Don't be a shithead in general. And probably no one under 21.

Before adding me, you should know: Hmm. As I said, there may be the occasional post about mental health/trauma stuff. I'm also regrettably a true crime enjoyer, i rarely talk about it but if I do I'll tag. Unsure about anything else that might be relevant

Current Mood: content

Entry tags:

ibs,
insomnia

Trying to Cure My Insomnia

I feel like shit; stomach cramps have given way to menstrual cramps, but I still have a bit of stomach cramps, and taking ibuprofen for the menstrual cramps makes them worse. Also I have been traumatized and I don't know how to overcome the trauma.

I've got to find a way to sleep normally or ibs will never go away. I've just tried so many things over the years that I don't know what else to try.

Ok, I'm gonna try putting the blackout curtains back up. I have trouble falling back to sleep when I wake up to early, and the sunlight is at least part of the problem. I've taken the curtains down and put them back up several times before, and I can't quite remember why I keep taking them down. They don't get me to eight hours of sleep, but I know they work some. I think the lack of sunlight gave me trouble when I did finally want to get up in the mornings. I can keep the sunlamp in the bedroom and use it to wake me up once I decide to get up.

Also I might try taking glycine earlier in the evening since it helps me sleep but keeps me sleepy until the next day.

I'm gonna try an LED projector in lieu of a computer monitor as well. I wish I would have known about this before I asked for a new monitor.

I want to call my sister to find out how she's doing, but I'm afraid there'll be bad news that'll increase my stress and worsen my sleep. Whatever she may be going through, I'm almost certainly unable to help her, plus we aren't close, so circumstances are kind of weighted in favor of my not calling her.

Actually I think I'll skip the glycine for tonight so I can see how well the blackout curtains do by themselves.

I'm kinda ready for menopause now. I've been afraid of it but it can't be worse than these goddamned menstrual cramps. Decades of this shit, it's madness. No, it's not madness; it's modern life. My cramps stopped once I exercised regularly and stopped eating hybridized wheat. I seem to do fine with Einkorn. But Einkorn costs five dollars a pound.

Even if I get the insomnia sorted, I'll still have trouble finding and keeping a job. I feel so far away from my goals; it's like thinking about getting to another continent. All I want is a house and a boyfriend and a normal amount of energy/cognitive function during the day. I've spent too much of my life alone and it just isn't healthy any more even though I don't get anything out of being around people in most cases. Also, I need to get out of this apartment because of the mold. I have symptoms of a sinus infection. I just read on the insomnia sub-reddit that someone's undiagnosed sinus infection was causing insomnia.

Oh thank goodness it's almost dinnertime. When I eat too much for my midday snack, I continue to feel hungry.

In today's mail I got a notice about renewing my driver's license. The goddamned price has gone up. I looked through the renewal forms and saw the question about being an organ donor. I'm going to mark it "no" but I'll still need to have myself removed from the organ donor registry, which I think I signed up for years ago. I'm done with humans, this sick bunch of dysfunctional apes. Why give organs and tissues for an animal I want to die off? I decided today. I just need to find out how to donate my body so that it benefits non-human animals.

Oats for dinner. So damned good. With these expensive-as-hell golden himalayan raisins. I don't feel like shit anymore; the cramps are gone for now.

(no subject)

Name: Nora Neurosismancer (they/she)

Age: 41

I mostly post about: Whatever is on my mind, also my daily poetry when I'm happy enough with it to share.

My hobbies are: Poetry, paganism, witchcraft, and so much music. I'm big into all things gothy: darkwave and coldwave, post-punk, synthpop, new wave, industrial, metal, and just outright werid shit. Oh, and I do competitive air guitar.

My fandoms are: Star Trek and Trek-adjacent stuff, also I'm deep in the fandom for various bands, especially DEVO.

I'm looking to meet people who: Post interesting stuff. Bonus points if you're trans or some other flavor of queer.

My posting schedule tends to be: I'm aiming for a couple posts a week.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: No minors, no TERFs, no Nazis, no Evangelical Christians, no Harry Potter.

Before adding me, you should know: I write some pretty emotional, and sometimes sexually oriented poetry. I've precious little filter about adult topics.

Tokurecs September 2025 Monthly Self-Reccing Period

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Sunday @ 6:28 am

Sometimes, it turns out, it is not, in fact, your ABC.

Leave a comment.⁺

Entry tags:

alberta,
birds

Fall birdwatching

I caught up with a friend who I hadn't seen since May yesterday. We went birdwatching in our area and saw quite a bit for late in the season. There is a ravine and two storm ponds located close together, making them perfect for birds to hang out or take a break.

We saw...

American coots
American robins
Black-billed magpies
Canada geese
Chickadees
Cormorants
Crows
Gulls of some kind
House sparrows
Mallards
Rock doves (pigeons)
Swainson's hawk (juvenile)
Yellow-rumped warblers
White crowed sparrow
White throated sparrow
Wigeons

Merlin flagged vesper sparrows being in the area, but we felt it was unlikely. The sparrows were hard to see--they were really deep in some bushes. The warblers were all about, though!

Saturday @ 8:05 pm

Was not expecting to go down the "Jackson Pollock was a CIA psyop" rabbit hole tonight but . . . here we are.

Leave a comment.⁺

back again!

name: squid

age: 21

location: midwestern united states

i post about: i'm into a lot of things but what i end up posting about are monthly periodical-types of the music i discover and listen to (free for anybody to access) and the general musings and feelings of an anxious college guy (behind an access lock). i might someday make a dedicated post about history or politics or literature but i rarely feel like i have any meaningful contribution to what could be said. that's a very broad characterization but check my about me on my profile for a slightly more detailed synopsis

my hobbies are: my whole life revolves around music, more or less :] i listen to music extensively (squid771 on last.fm and rateyourmusic), collect vinyl records, and go to college studying sound engineering (i'm a senior!). i have an off-again, on-again recording project that i'll someday release something under. i play guitar, i'm an untrained singer, and i play various keyboard instruments. i always try to watch movies but usually that means i'll just gather a bunch, watch 2 in one night, and then go 6 months without watching another. i'm trying to read more (5 books read this year; infinitely times more than the past couple of years), i'm big into history (currently researching the george mcgovern 1972 campaign, and concurrently the history of how the word socialism/communism got such a negative connotation in the U.S.), and i like to walk around at night, or in the rain, or both. i try to appreciate the little things. i want to write, and learn esperanto, but i've never found enough consistent motivation to try either

my fandoms are: i haven't really considered myself to be really big enough on anything to be part of a fandom, but some of my favorite bands/artists are fishmans, stereolab, broadcast, nick drake, elliott smith, the radio dept., the field mice (all of sarah records really), brian eno, yo la tengo, ichiko aoba, and many many others! i could talk about music for days and days. as far as like forms of media go i'm big into the trails series (games 1-5, trails and crossbell; cold steel ruined the franchise), deltarune (haven't played undertale but i generally know what happens by osmosis), off, team fortress 2, and disco elysium; and then cowboy bebop, samurai champloo, NGE, general 2000s adult swim-core type stuff for anime

i'm looking to meet people who: i put a post up here about 6 months ago when i first started this account and i did get a lot of responses but nearly all of the people that replied to me aren't active anymore. i'm looking for people to really connect with and are in this site for the long haul (or at least for a while). i'm not too picky about sharing interests but having mutual appreciation for something always helps. the main thing though is that i'm just trying to make more friends :]

my posting schedule tends to be: whenever i feel like there's enough going enough in my life to post about something. this is usually like 2 to 5 times a month. i do tend to get wordy in my posts for what that's worth

when I add people, my dealbreakers are: i'm a very vague socialist so i'm not particularly chill with MAGA types or people who are just unnecessarily rude but i think there's like only 2 people on this site with those beliefs anyways

before adding me, you should know: i don't really comment much but i read everything that's posted. i get in my own head about responding to/posting comments and not feeling like i have enough to say. but i'm always looking to talk to more people and come out of my shell
i'm very depressed and mildly autistic and can be in my head a lot of the time, so the posts behind my access lock can get mopey and despondent. i'm doing the best i can to grapple with my emotions and the world around me so a little bit of empathy goes a long way. we're all going through something

Entry tags:

Just a Quick Update

Hello, Dear Readers. I have filled in several entries for this month, so please feel free to go back and read them if you'd like. They cover a variety of topics, from cooking, to technology, to opera, to a fun survey, though that one is from earlier today, so you have probably seen it already.

The weather has actually been extremely nice for this time of year. It's been in the eighties during the day several times this week, though at night, the temperatures can now drop as low as the fifties. Still, I'll take what I can get. I'm not one for winter and the cold, as my long-time readers know.

Yesterday, Joanie brought home some delicious food from a local Italian place. I love their Penne Vodka, but I wanted something different, so I chose their Vitello Marsala (veal marsala) and Vongole Oreganata (clams oreganata). I ate the first last night and loved it. The sauce was absolutely incredible. Even had the meat not been included, the mushrooms alone would have made it amazing! Next time, I will try it with chicken, just to see how the meats differ with this recipe. I love clams oreganata, but I am going to have that tomorrow for lunch. Since it's just an appetiser, I will probably need to pair it with something. I'm thinking of my Stouffer's Rigatoni with Chicken and Pesto. I haven't had that one yet, so it will be new to me. Just thinking of this is making me hungry!

I'm really upset over what is going on at the Opera subreddit. I honestly don't understand it. One of the moderators is trying to help me, but even he doesn't know what's going on, and his peers haven't responded to him. Basically, my posts and comments from the last two weeks have all been deleted, including ones that he manually restored! All are about opera and are fully on-topic. I did have a bit of a debate about the singular they (actually started by someone else over a completely innocent comment I made, in which, shock of all shocks, I used "he" instead of "they") and I will admit that it did go too far. There were no insults, threats, obscenities, etc. as i never debate like that. But it was off-topic. Yet no one messaged me to tell me to stop. I eventually did and moved on to other things. But that was awhile before this started. I fully accept my part in it and apologised to the moderator who is helping me. I can't think of anything else I could have written to deserve such treatment. I did write about how I am against dressing badly while at the opera, but we were discussing that exact topic, and again, I was respectful. I just have a very strong opinion about proper dress, which doesn't include jeans, sweats, t-shirts, shorts, flip flops, sneakers/trainers, etc. It's disrespectful to those wearing such things, to the rest of the audience, and to the performers. It's opera, not a rock concert! There. Now is that worthy of a mute or a ban?
Now this moron on Mastodon who constantly posts the same introduction over, and over, and over, and over again definitely should be banned! he is annoying, and TweeseCake will not respect my blocks, just as it doesn't respect my filters for words that I don't wish to see! Why, I don't know! TWBlue does, but sometimes, the program works and sometimes, it doesn't.

I wrote a lengthy letter to a scholar of Tito Schipa that someone in the Lecce subreddit recommended to me. Of course, I do realise that people have lives, but it has been over a week now, and he still hasn't responded. I did write in English, but this man is involved in an organisation which teaches English, so it shouldn't be a problem. I'll give it another week, and then, I'll write to the man who recommended him to me. Maybe, his friend just isn't reading things at that address, or he could be on holiday. I mostly figured out my first questions relating to how and what Schipa learned from Alceste Gerunda, but I still have a few more, and several about Gerunda himself.

Mom says that we'll be starting our family walks on Monday. We're supposed to go on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. She, Joanie, I, and even Alli will all be going. Basically, it's to a park which has a fenced-in part where I can walk with my amd without worrying about bumping into things or people, since I doubt many will be there at that time. We'll see what happens. But it will be good exercise for everyone if we do go.

Current Mood: sleepy

Entry tags:

Gentrification on A Random Journal, I Get Hit with Trump's Tariffs, and Dental Cleaning

My dental office keeps calling. My dental hygienist recommended that I get another cleaning after six months, but my insurance will pay for only one cleaning per year, and the cleaning costs a hundred and forty dollars, which, of course, I don't have. I sort of just put it out of my mind for the time. Then I noticed my teeth feeling fuzzy a couple of days ago. I brushed them (with toothpaste); they still felt fuzzy. I brushed again, with baking soda, and they felt better but still vaguely fuzzy.
nntnn

Someone just called again and I asked about payment plans. The payment plan is 50% now and 50% later, and I can pay the latter in installments. Even seventy dollars is difficult for me to come up with. Seventy dollars is half my monthly income. I've got forty-four dollars in the bank, I need a twenty-dollar pair of earphones, I'd hoped to pay a good chunk of my credit card bill down next month, and I'm going to need some new clothes now that the weather is cooling off. I keep trying to pay that credit card down and keep needing to use it again.

So I just tried to buy the earphones on ebay. I found a pair for fifteen dollars. Every pair on ebay is in Japan. A twenty-dollar import fee was tacked on, and there was a message about U.S. policies being the reason. I'd love to buy from a U.S. seller or manufacturer. But there wasn't one. I don't think Panasonic is even making the model I want anymore. I'll try Amazon.

The dreamwidth journals that come up when I click on my interests are better and more varied than the ones I land on after clicking the random journal link. It's mind-boggling how unreadable some of these journals are. I can read sentence after sentence and have no idea what is even being said, what the topic even is.

I clicked on "veganism" and the first result I read is this guy who is planning to move to Mexico. Someone comments about gentrification and the guy doesn't really take any responsibility for it:

https://nahele101.dreamwidth.org/1314363.html?thread=72763#cmt72763

"It happens everywhere" is irrelevant. Or maybe it's a way of saying "everyone does it," which is a way to disclaim responsibility.

"People move where it's better economically for them," he says, but he's apparently a cardiac surgeon and could therefore afford to live damn near anywhere in the United States (I'm assuming he has some kind of legal right to reside in the U.S. since he's applied for Mexican residency in the U.S.) and possibly other English-speaking countries (depending on medical licensing issues). And poor and low-wage people don't gentrify when they move where "it's better economically for them," if we even have the ability to move at all. So it's not really true that "everyone does it;" it's only people who have power via wealth.

The local people who raise prices for everyone in response to high-wage migrants moving in, those people need to be held responsible for gentrification. It would be fairer if prices were higher for these migrants only, so the general local population didn't have to suffer and eventually move away. I don't know how that would be put in place; maybe it is partially in place in some locations via taxes or something.

I feel like I'm losing and gaining the same pound or two over and over again. It's maddening.

Entry tags:

politics,
uspol

Yike.

[Derek] Thompson is very skilled, a latter-day slightly-less-talented version of Malcolm Gladwell, who can make the upper class chatter. For instance, he recently wrote about how young people aren’t partying or drinking much anymore, which is a perfect topic for a 15 minute conversation between two lawyers in DC.

Matt Stoller calls the burn ward.

This is from a longer article on an internet slap-fight between Stoller and Thompson over the former’s critique of the latter’s “abundance” bullshit; basically neoliberalism repackaged as “hey wasn’t this better than fascism tho?” to sell back to a gullible “socially liberal but politically conservative” professional-managerial class. For all that I do have problems with Stoller (specifically, as a populist he’s too fast to get into bed with the far right so long as they make vague anti-monopoly mouth-sounds), I think his critiques here are worth a read, if only for the drama.

Leave a comment.⁺

Entry tags:

A Modern, Accessible DOS

(Catchup - 19 September 2025)
Hello, Dear Readers. This is something I wrote on Mastodon and thought some of you might find interesting. Here is the original post.

https://someplace.social/@dandylover1/115212161382526083

( A Modern, Accessible DOS )

Entry tags:

Rigoletto, 1954

(Catchup - 19 September 2025)
Hello, Dear Readers. Today, we have a lovely opera review today, plus a bit of background. Unfortunately I am having a serious problem with the Opera subreddit. My posts and comments keep being deleted, even though they don't break any rules. I have been communicating with at least one moderator, but even he doesn't know what is going on, and his peers still haven't answered him. All of the other subreddits I'm in, are completely fine. Sadly, this is still true as of 19 September. What this means is that I can't post there until this is resolved, and I can't give you the links to the following posts. Regardless, here they are in their entirity.

( Read more... )

Below is the actual review.

( Rigoletto, 1954 )