Neither Party Notifies

The first time we watched Killjoys Shanda couldn’t see the murder cult narc 1%er abuse backstory of the main character. But you can now; they address it directly. It’s one of the things I love about the show. It’s the backstory this person actually has to be where they are now, and it’s what gives them a perspective on and power against the broader oppression of their world. Episode 4 starts with an off-handed but thoughtless and mean comment about how the protagonist isn’t as human as people who feel pain. But it ends with that same commenter telling our hero they “got out clean”, from whatever shit they escaped, once the commenter has some perspective. And she’s good at heists. They all are, but season 1 wants us to know it’s all her. It’s nice to see murder cult 1%er abuse people represented in media ¹just like The Good Place represents for my Arizona trash people. I’d definitely grow up to be a Killjoy instead of Music Man, given the opportunity.
Killjoys has a bunch of characters full of cool and pain and it shows them actually coming together without losing themselves. Coming together to find themselves, in spite of obvious reasons it would feel safer to stay seperate. It’s a more hopeful show than the setting and backstory and conflict would have you believe.

And it gives me Fancy. They never get to giving us a lot of depth on him, and so he changes with the seasons to stay relevant to the plot. But he has some great lines. “You make that sound and all I hear is love”, he says to the room full of people who are excluding him but need him. Who ought to be I pressed with his skill and independence but who decide it’s easier to hate him than hate the oppressors that make him necessary.

I read WI DoR Publication 113 last night, in service of an argument with a narc and reassurance for DerbyK. Like all tax code it’s boring and complicated and mostly about rich people using the lawyers and accountants to be bad citizens, but given that it’s actually quite interesting, because official government guidance to the public in which the clearly frustrated DoR authors rag on the legislature and recommend that citizens ignore certain parts of state law. It carefully explains the “right” way to do things, under the law, and the goes on to point out that’s a terrible plan that they don’t support and is likely to get you audited by the IRS and punished by the DoR. But it worked. I wrote a lettet that made a narc feel dumb and like they might have made a mistake and it changed their mind right away. It’s not quite as good as arguing with school administrators, but it’s about as much fun as you can have with tax law.

I was thinking today about the way many people – our society in general – has trouble imagining sex and feels in a sensible way. All the folks who are surprised to discover that sex breaks their avoidance on certain feels, or triggers them to old feels their brain relates to sex, or fails to produce a particular feel they expect from the experience. All the weird things people do about sex (or to avoid sex) as a result of those expectations. We sometimes tell people, for example, that sex will make them “catch feels”, as opposed to reveal them, like the act wills a particular state of emotion into existence. Or we imagine that if you are “correctly” in love that feeling will somehow dictate the existence or nature of your sexual interest, so that desire for others can be used a “proof” that a particular kind of relationship exists or does not. Or the way we sometimes hope sex will make some decision or change “permanent” or “official”.

Some of these are easy for me to see because they’re part of the lore of monogamy ²I just read a story about someone who proposed and arranged a 3-way with the intent of handing off their partner to this new person, instead of breaking up with them – they imagined sex with a new person would hand off the relationship. I ready a story about someone who was having sex with another person and eventually did break up “because” … Continue reading, which stands out to me like religion or advertising. And I think some of it is easy for me to spot because of the special relationship to feels and socialization that my life has demanded. I definitely see sex as a way to access and provoke feels, and to share them, but like any other tool the actual outcomes depend on what you do with it – sexual behavior doesn’t prove or disprove, create or destroy, forbid or guarantee any particular feeling or outcomes. You can hurt people with it or help them, you can lie to yourself or learn truths.

I am sometimes amazed that Dog decides to just hang out in my house all the time. Lots of the time he wants to be right with us, but I’m always surprised to see him wander in to the room – when the automatic lights track him – after he’s been entertaining himself somewhere else. To be fair I do keep him locked in most of the time, by virtue of him not having thumbs to operate door knobs, but it’s not like he has no opportunity to escape. The fence in the back yard is only a suggestion for cats, let alone a 60 pound dog. But he just peeks and doesn’t run; I built him a peeking hole that he could definitely step through but I think he likes feeling protected by the barrier (and presumably his Construction skill is too low for him to notice the fence is made of wet paper).

He doesn’t like being closed in our room at night though. Our door is rarely closed at night because I don’t like being locked out on the porch at night, but it was last week sometimes with Cassie here. Dog won’t have thar though. At bed time he wants to lay with us, and he sometimes falls asleep there for a few hours, but when he rouses or chooses a sleeping spot for the night it’s often in the living room ³He’s super cute when he’s curled up on my chair, right where he lays next to me while I work. He often ends up with his ears flopped at a jaunty angle on the armrest, staring straight down the hall so he can see the whole house. And I like that he’s out there to eat with me, while I fight with myself about my eating disorder. He’s the only … Continue reading. If the bedroom door is closed he’ll stand next to it in the dark for a while, then come stand next to me in bed (which puts us at about eye level), then huff at me to get my attention if I don’t notice him. Eventually he’ll lay back down if you don’t let him out, or if you guide him to, but he wants his nighttime freedom. I don’t blame him.

Doing okay with the day job. I’m getting things done but I’ve had lots of reactive work so not much SR progress. I closed 2 today but I’ve still got 3 old ones I’ve been ignoring, an RFE that I don’t want to do at all. I’ve also got an Intel hardware bug that they refuse to publish details on, even in their NDA channels, but I should be able to get some slack on that one for the external delays. I also got signed up for “office hours” this Thursday, because apparently I’m a TA and my time should be spent sitting in a hallway not working, in case someone would rather bother a stranger in person than via email. I’m slightly annoyed by it but I also need to get back to the office this week because I forgot my headphones charge case there, and an hour on the clock and highly visible and not really working is probably okay.

Robots is still pretty motivated, which is sort of unusual for seniors after their last competition. But it’s cool, and it’s nice to be able to both work hard and not have deadlines. I did a bunch of things – tried to get T onto a solid plan for a framework refactor, hacked a game pad into the brains for an arm controller, ordered mouse bits and optical flow sensor bits and and some sort of complicated serial<->serial adapter to let us use them 9n allows hardware. S wants to add odometry wheels, which is also a good plan, but they’re really nervous about the plan, which makes them pretty rigid and micromanage-y. They feel safer copying a thing, and I’m all for improving existing designs, but there’s no reason to ignore the parts we already know how to do. It comes off like they don’t think the team is capable, and that’s not a good look either. I’ll have to see what I can do to reel them back in, preferably without becoming in charge.

I am also working on S to make an out-of-town trip happen for the team. We used to get them sort of automatically in FRC but in FTC it’s only worlds that would get us away from parents overnight. They don’t want to organize such a thing – neither do I – but I can make some parent feel good about doing logistics, or maybe even a team member. I don’t know quite what this would be, but presumably I can cook up some sufficiently “robot” reason, and if we pick someplace close the costs should be low enough to let me fund those who need it. Maybe we could take the train down to Portland… and… get a tour of a double lift bridge? That’s like an 1890s robot, right? The goal is just to do some team things and some down time in a place with some isolation from other parts of life.

I wrote most of a letter about paying attention to the privilege of your peers when picking a school. I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to push this unsolicited advice at young people, but that’s a problem for after I’m done writing. Life can be tough at an institution where most of your peers are whiter or richer or more whatever than you, and it’s not a thing people often talk about. It’s exciting to be accepted to a big name school, but going someplace that can accommodate you and where people will share you challenges has a lot of value ⁴I skipped Caltech and MIT because they were just too expensive. They offered scholarships that were plausible, but if anything ever happened to my scholarship I could never have worked out the fees. Instead I went to a state school where loans were at least an option. But in retrospect tution would likely have been the least of my problems – I … Continue reading. And if you don’t match the typical student at your school it can be very hard to get the same sort of advantages other people do – rich people go to Harvard and do networking there, but poor people at Harvard mostly don’t get included. Also, at least in my experience, having a football team people know is at least as valuable as a fancy school name in terms of having people positively evaluate your perceived education.

I talked to Ben again today, after weeks of ignoring his messages. That’s not unusual; even under the best of circumstances we rarely connect on the same day. He’s still real twitchy and defensive, but I think better able to put it aside after some time away. So it’s not exactly better, but it’s at least less raw. He wants me to build an electrical device for him, which I’m basically willing to do – I already did the design for it – but he’s notoriously difficult to work with, and not just for me. We’ll see if he can come to a decision about it while I still have the mind space for it.

CookieZ reached out today. Technically they asked how I was, but it still counts. I wonder what it is they want me to know but can’t say. Presumably they don’t know either, but I’d guess it’s real sad and had been happening since the 90s, because I can’t imagine why else they’d have picked me (then or now). They leaked the word “father” in the past, which would fit that pattern, but it’s not enough for me it guess at. So I threw out a whole wall of text that hits a few different likely sore points, and we’ll see if any of them get a reaction. We’ll see if any of them communicate enough safety to make sharing possible.

I should find a minute to find this week’s topic of therapy. Last week my therapist was working on their breakup speech, and didn’t like my take on it. They promised to consider working with me on heists, and were relieved to see me excited, but it clearly made them uncomfortable to consider the actual aspects of it. So we might be able to talk about that, or we might need something else. As long time listeners will know, I’m not necessarily opposed to a new therapist. But that’s a fair deal of work for anyone, let alone someone like me, and it’s a thing that’s very difficult for me to get support about, from you guys or professionals.

Maybe there’s a topic in finding space for my day job, on days when I can manage. I’ve gotten much better at feeling okay not doing it, which has been very important. I started that plan almost a decade ago and it has mostly worked. But once I gave up most of my fear and shame based motivations I realized I never practiced normal ways of getting started on day job and similar tasks. It doesn’t help that I am part of an oppressive machine at my day job, but that’s only part of the issue. There’s definitely a barrier related to the way I imagine that me liking or wanting a thing isn’t strongly coupled to whether or not I do it. I could probably find ways to make work likable, or at least more likable. But I’m sort of afraid to check, because my brain tells me I’m going to keep doing it even if I hate it, and it’s harder if I hate it.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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