Playlist
I watched some more ContraPoints “The Darkness”: https://youtu.be/qtj7LDYaufM I appreciate her talking about art and pain in a way that isn’t just a claim that to be a real artist you must suffer. She talks about the chellenge of providing “a spoon full of sugar to help the feminine penis go down” as a prerequisite to being able to share dark things in a way that protects people. It’s great and you should watch her.
Watched Brooklyn 99 S06E06 “The Crime Scene”. As a plot element Stephanie Beatriz has like 9 different hair styles, several of which are amazing. Since cop shows are one of the ways media demands we interact with the world I’m glad her character is in one. I like the way she is happy being very independent – not just faking it – and is cool and requires that other people deal with her being weird. And I like the way she needs help sometimes anyway, even when she knows better. I am not a fan of her family plot, mostly because it reinforces the harmful idea that assigned family is always with dealing with – that you’re being hurt if you ever refuse to accept their bad behavior – but in general her character is great. Always on point with the makeup and lots of fun hair this time I particular.
Watched Doctor Who (2005) S11E09 “It Takes You Away”. I continue to love this season. The technical plot of this episode is weak, and they only do an okay job setting up all the relevant motivations. So it’s not great but it’s still good. Still makes me want to grow up to become The Doctor, in a way other doctors haven’t. It ends with Janeway/evil avatar interaction (ST: Voyager, S02E03 “The Thaw”) and dialog like this, which is said to the antagonist but is intended to apply to almost everyone in the episode in their own way: “I’m your friend. But friends help each other face up to their problems, not avoid them.” Help me not avoid my problems. And try to remember that I’m your friend when I try to help you with yours.
I went to robots again on Saturday. Mostly just watched people shoot the vacuum shirt cannon they’ve built. It works well, though it’s high labor – a couple minutes to load and three people to fire. It’s good fun. Maybe better fun because it’s a bit complicated. Still a think and electric crank and some diagnostic equipment would help – maybe a vacuum pressure logger and and inclination indicator and something that records the exit velocity of the projectile.
Shanda was done early – plans with Eed got pushed back – and so I picked her up on my way home from robots. That’s how we got all the TV time this weekend. We even got some fast food on the way home, since we had a car; I don’t get much fast food these days. Went to Wendy’s but got Taco Bell service – only about 3/4 of the order was right. Still, the joy of fast food is not in its technical execution, it’s in the way they inject addictive petrochemicals into their grease delivery systems, and that part still worked fine. Had a nice day at home, didn’t accomplish anything, and was happy with that.
I did get things done on Sunday. Got the bedroom window screen back in, or at least as in as it goes on this terrible old frame. Lots of tape. And a broom handle. Advanced the plot on the tea shelf, caught up on a bunch of laundry, changed the sheets, did the trash. All before supper even. And I got dressed, which is not easy for me on days when I don’t technically have to. I’m reluctant to commit to the one outfit I get for the day until I’m sure which sort of survival armor I’ll need.
Work is lined up well this week. I was on the queue but traded for another week, so I don’t even have to do 3 days. I’ve got one bug to file and one SR to close, and hopefully that’s it until Thursday. But you never know what the 70 emails I have in the morning will need. If there are no new emergencies I likely won’t have to work except for the window where I’m in the office between my weekly meeting and the gym. That would be ideal.
And then some sustained time off, after the gym. For 2 nights and 2 days. And I feel like we got the house cleaned up and various other anxiety items checked off the list, to make it easier to relax this week. It can be easy for me to let an overdue day off turn into a day of catching back up on things I had been ignoring. But I think I’ve got that under control.
Read a bunch of HPMOR. It lives up to the name. And only requires a pop culture knowledge of HP to parse (which is good because I still haven’t even seen all the movies). Harry in this world is pretty capitalist, but I guess OG HP did have a literal stash of gold. That somehow wasn’t sufficient motivation to result in him getting care as a young person; the economics of magic land in JKR’s original work is pretty weak all around.
And when I was too lazy last night to read I listened to the opening of Skyward (Brandon Sanderson). It was on ViHart’s reading list. It’s a book about systematic oppression through the lens of corrupt college admissions. It’s about the oppressed person who can’t understand, after finally arriving here against significant obstacles, why all these people are so bad at survival decisions. It’s framed as her real-time disillusionment with the basic promises of society she had relied upon to eventually save her. And given previous Sanderson experience I expect that the protagonist will still have enough privilege that she can have a college story instead of just starving to death while her neighbors refuse to trade with her (because of something her dead father did a decade ago).
Which is good because then she can overcome her totally justified resentment and her intense focus on clawing her way to safety and eventually save the world by transforming society with teamwork and possibly small amounts of space magic. You might like it, if your anxious about college or feeling like your history makes you a weirdo or feeling oppressed by your job or role in society. Or if you just like carefully structured narrative with good world building and often pro-human plots.
Didn’t feel great today. Better by the end but tired and with plenty of intestinal distress. Tried to talk to Shanda about it, and about how I should respond. I got your engagement but not really yoir help, even after a few tries. But we practiced a little, and talked about why it was hard, so presumably next time will go better.
This is just list of things I did, with less theme than yesterday. And a lot of it was consumptive entertainment, for more consecutive hours than has been common in my life recently. I didn’t talk to anyone today other than Shanda. Or since like 1 PM Saturday really. I did worry a lot about you but mostly in the good way where I convert tiny pieces of knowledge about your life into better understanding of you. And then usually write about it to try to share and refine it. That part is still seeping out, the writing about new guesses I have about your lives. Might be for a day or two.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
