Pensive Pardon
Dems and Reps agree that Bernie can’t be president, and everyone including Trump is afraid of him, at least when they can admit he exists. They also both agree to only switch sides every 8 years, so the Dems aren’t really trying to get elected this round, just to control some of the public attention. They’re running Pete and promised him real backing in 2024 (or maybe even later since he’s young by their standards) and in the mean time he’s a made man. Donnie needs to win the next election to feel good but doesn’t really like being president. The Reps don’t like him either but won’t risk moving against him. In his second term something is pinned on Donnie and affirmed by Pence. It’s not any different than last time except this time Donnie is making a deal. Donnie resigns and Pence pardons him for all federal crimes over his past 74 years. Donnie feels like this is a win because the deal helps him be rich, lets him claim to have won against the government, lets him do the rallies part of president that he likes, and frees him both from crimes and from general responsibility for the rest of his life.
It’s a crazy conspiracy. I’d give it 4:1 odds. Mostly I want it written down here so when it happens you’ll be both impressed and discouraged by my foresight.
I’ve been thinking about code as visual art. Months ago, in I Want to Get Into Your Pants, I imagined I’d be writing a program to generate patterns if colored hex tiles for some of my own design. I have a reasonably clear vision and definitely could do the math. But it’s still not done. In part that’s because the original heist was to get Shanda to try art with me again, and that heist never took. We found other ways into that space, but I still want new pants. I’d still like to get I to some of yours too. But I should get back to mine.
Beyond the change in context I can see I have the feels about using a computer program to do visual art. When I was young computer programs were one of the few forms of expression I could both access and keep hidden. They were invisible to Mother even when running, and I could store them in my head so they couldn’t be discovered or confiscated. Their expression was strictly cognitive and performance and so I knew how to be safe with them.
As in other aspects of my life there was no space for a visual element. For survival reasons, and often also for scarcity reasons, it was important that there be as little visual stimulation as possible. So despite imagining code as a place where I have done much art, despite my more than sufficient skill to describe an image programmatically, I find actually generating an image as output tricky. It’s part of the reason I haven’t been able to do home automation in recent years, and part of the reason I refuse to think about how the robot looks. It’s eaiser with lights than with JPEGs, but it’s hard nonetheless. I had to cry to make crayons work. I had to cry to get the sewing machine going. I should find some time to cry while I try to make python put colored rectangles into a PNG.
Therapy went better than expected. I sent a letter about “2/3rds help” after the session – the sort of help I got all the time as a child. The sort of help I often still get now, and the type of help I always expect. People could see I was without food or shoes or whatever, and imagined they wanted to help. They often did provide 2/3rds help, particularly professionals. But it was always help with the easiest 2/3rds I’d my problems, in exchange for my silence and aloneness on the hardest 1/3rd. They wanted to help perhaps, but couldn’t actually do it. If you tell anyone about the hard part you might be punished for sharing, and lose even the 2/3rds support you had. The world is a dangerous place for disempowered people and “help” is often not available if you do not successfully pretend that your hardest 1/3rd doesn’t exist – that it doesn’t tax you at all.
I remain unconvinced that my therapist understands this problem, which is a barrier to getting their help with things that might help me build trust. But I’m prepared to proceed without them, if necessary. It would be nice to imagine that I didn’t have to figure out how to do this from scratch but it’s hardly the first scam I’ve attempted, and I’m sure I can make it go eventually.
I want to see if there’s a way L could get support from a therapist. I’m pretty confident that I can manipulate a nervous middle aged women into providing care for a child. I’ve got lots of experience, and I am not dependent on this one in any way. But I could use your help in making sure that L gets therapy that works for them. I am working on a story that will let us both feel confident that they can be safe sharing, and won’t be punished like you were when you asked for help.
I can handle all of the the Kim, and I can mostly keep it away from you. I think you can help me understand how to keep L safe. Or at least tell me about how it wasn’t safe for you. I’m pretty sure I can arrange a routine where L gets more support. They also might get an excuse to be seperate from Kim, and space to practice doing things without her. An excuse to ride the bus alone, when they’re ready, or to practice taking Ubers. Familiarity with places of support and places simply to be other than with Kim. Practice using outside support so they have options and don’t need to feel hopeless and trapped when Kim abandons them in a few years.
It might be hard to focus on something like that right now and that’s fine. It’s a lot even if things weren’t busy. Things are safe enough for us to choose our timing and wait until we’re ready. I do want to act, but I’m just trying to bring up the topic, so we can get started on all the ways it’s scary and hard. Your life would have been better with a good therapist when you were 11, right? I think L’s would too. Let’s talk about how to make sure it’s safe and does what they need. Let’s talk about how it still isn’t safe for the two of us.
Ended the week with one SR, fresh in today, which I’m pretty satisfied about. Didn’t get any BZ project done this week, contrary to what I promised my boss. I have 2 weeks mostly free to get it back inine with expectations, which feels very plausible to me. I’ve also got Monday off, which will be a nice break. Off from robots too, since school is out next week.
Didn’t get any interest in new sensors or new input devices at robots this week, but I did find some motivation while we talked about design again. There’s a plan afoot to refactor parts of the code base, which is a good plan of one we’ve had trouble making go. But I finally got around to writing a JSON parser for on-disk config, learning how Android embeds resources, arguing with gradle, and various other bits that are needed to make this go. I’ve churned out a decent amount of code since then. I’m still fighting to get the team to see that the code organization is a choice about communication with programmers (including your future self) and not about technical correctness. But things are happening, and it’s likely we’ll get pointed toward the truth eventually.
We’re headed out Thursday night, to take C & Co to Portland. We had a meeting today to try to get the most anxious of us closer to being able to go. There have been a number of show-stopping issues in the past week or so, even though it’s a months old plan and doesn’t require anything but showing up. I’ve already got it planned and booked and paid so there’s very little place for anxiety to attach, but it’s still been a problem. Shanda did good though, trying to heist to make this go. We needed a minute of our own to prepared for some of the interactions we are hoping to improve, but I feel like we’re actually doing pretty good. Eventually everyone agreed that we could say an itinerary, write it if they wanted, and I hope that will be sufficient to get everyone to actually show up at the train station. The trip should be fine either way – I plan to have a low-stress vacation – but it would be nice if the vibe from the party wasn’t “moderate panic” the whole time.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
