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Complex Numbers
Complex Numbers
A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.
The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.
Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.
Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.
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We'll end July with an article that's mostly for clarification, not for me to rag on. Now, the author has some bias, as always, but it happens to be a bias that I share -- only in her case, it's backed up by facts and education.
Last month in book club we were talking about an adorable newborn baby we had just met over Zoom.
Normally, I'd Stop Reading Right There because everything about that sentence is just plain wrong. But I was able to move past the anecdote and get to the important stuff.
Someone commented that the baby looks like their father. Another person piped up with an evolutionary explanation they had heard before — newborn babies look more like their fathers so that the father will know they’re his and will help raise and protect them.
You know, assuming I were the type of person to do book club meetings over Zoom (meetings that are interrupted by people bragging that they successfully fucked), which I'm not, I wouldn't make uninformed statements about evolutionary effects, however plausible they might sound, in front of an evolutionary biologist. That's just begging for a smackdown.
Some of us started wondering how something like that would even work. We agreed that this kind of “paternal effect” was possible and moved on. Later I looked it up only to learn that this popular hypothesis had been debunked nearly ten years ago.
Just in case you were thinking that this sounds reasonable.
Here's the important part; the rest is commentary:
Any discussion of a scientific hypothesis to explain a pattern should ask first, "is the pattern real?" and second, "could anything else lead to the same pattern?" There is a fine line between “it’s possible” and “it’s probable” and the consequences of mistaking a possibility for the truth can be far-reaching.
Evolution is often treated as synonymous with natural selection, and natural selection is often boiled down to a single phrase: survival of the fittest. This oversimplification is easy to apply to everyday life — but should we? If we don’t carefully manage our assumptions and biases, we are in danger of the same sort of thinking that leads to Social Darwinism, in which Darwin's theory of natural selection is applied to justify social inequities between different groups of people. To prevent that, let’s tease apart the concepts of evolution, natural selection, and fitness.
The article goes on to do so, and I obviously won't be quoting all of it. But I felt it was important to emphasize this thesis.
Some evolution is random, but not all.
It can be important to choose one's words carefully. One of the persistent refrains from the anti-evolution crowd is something like "human beings didn't appear at random!" Thing is, no, we didn't, and neither did cockroaches or oak trees. Random mutations, as the article notes, can be detrimental, neutral, or beneficial to survival and reproduction. It's like if you keep rolling a pair of ordinary six-sided dice, but you only keep the results of 10, 11, or 12. Random shit happens, but the higher number are selected for (in that case, through human decision, so it's an imperfect analogy).
In evolutionary biology, the word "fitness" is the capacity of an organism to survive and reproduce in a given environment.
Another thing that some people misunderstand: we're not "more evolved" than mice, for example. Mice are just as suited for their natural environment (which is not mazes and laboratories) as we are for ours (which might include mazes and laboratories).
Also, evolution doesn't have a "goal." It's a result of mutations and environmental factors, and has no way of looking ahead and going, "There's going to be climate change soon, so we need to adapt to that eventuality."
In social species like humans, this contribution can be indirect — for example, helping to raise your sibling's kids increases your own fitness.
This is another important point to note. People (ironically some of the same people who don't "believe" in evolution) have used the idea that certain people don't reproduce to argue that, for example, being gay is "unnatural." That is arrant nonsense.
Armchair evolutionary psychologists love to reinforce gender stereotypes, touting that men are built for fighting and hunting and not caregiving, or women are less promiscuous and more inclined to prefer monogamy than men.
And I've been railing against that kind of bullshit for years.
Confirmation bias kicks in: people who want these statements to be true will believe them to be true without looking for good evidence. And of course, this danger goes beyond gender stereotypes to racial and ethnic stereotypes.
You know what's worse, in my estimation, than someone going "it's this way because God made it this way?" Its misusing science to marginalize individuals or entire groups.
Moving past evolutionary biology background facts, the author finishes with opinion (one based on said facts), but like I said, it's one that I share:
The existence of natural selection in nature does not justify its application to social policy. The synergy of intelligence, compassion, and social structure in humans has created a unique opportunity to prioritize equity and even the fitness playing field within our species. Some of our greatest achievements as a species have increased access to resources and raised each other’s capacity to survive and reproduce. These innovations are cultural adaptations rather than genetic adaptations — they are passed down through culture rather than DNA.
Some people have internalized the idea that competition is the driving force in evolution. It's certainly a factor. But among humans, cooperation, not competition, is the defining attribute. |
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Unlike those about the band or the car company, articles about Tesla the man never get old.
I know I've talked about him before, but I thought this article shed some additional light on what I knew of his history.
By the end of his brilliant and tortured life, the Serbian physicist, engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla was penniless and living in a small New York City hotel room. He spent days in a park surrounded by the creatures that mattered most to him—pigeons—and his sleepless nights working over mathematical equations and scientific problems in his head.
Too bad the pigeons didn't have answers.
Tesla believed his mind to be without equal, and he wasn’t above chiding his contemporaries, such as Thomas Edison, who once hired him. “If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack,” Tesla once wrote, “he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.”
Edison was probably like, "Theory? Calculation? That's for pussies!"
He managed to convince J.P. Morgan that he was on the verge of a breakthrough, and the financier gave Tesla more than $150,000 to fund what would become a gigantic, futuristic and startling tower in the middle of Long Island, New York. In 1898, as Tesla’s plans to create a worldwide wireless transmission system became known, Wardenclyffe Tower would be Tesla’s last chance to claim the recognition and wealth that had always escaped him.
I've never been clear on whether wireless electricity transmission was a fever dream or an actual possibility. It's not my field (pun intended). I am sure that if it were, we'd never know because there's no way to monetize it.
He would spend the next six years of his life “thinking” about electromagnetic fields and a hypothetical motor powered by alternate-current that would and should work.
And of course, AC electricity is how we get most of what powers us now. This is mostly thanks to Tesla. If Edison had had his way, well, we'd be in an even worse dystopia than we're in now.
According to Tesla, Edison offered him $50,000 if he could improve upon the DC generation plants Edison favored. Within a few months, Tesla informed the American inventor that he had indeed improved upon Edison’s motors. Edison, Tesla noted, refused to pay up. “When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke,” Edison told him.
I'm also unclear on whether this story is apocryphal or not. But it does capture Edison's essential dickishness.
His work with electricity reflected just one facet of his fertile mind. Before the turn of the 20th century, Tesla had invented a powerful coil that was capable of generating high voltages and frequencies, leading to new forms of light, such as neon and fluorescent, as well as X-rays. Tesla also discovered that these coils, soon to be called “Tesla Coils,” made it possible to send and receive radio signals. He quickly filed for American patents in 1897, beating the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi to the punch.
Other fans of Tesla have made a great deal out of it being him, and not Marconi, who invented radio (suck it, Starship). While this certainly has a kernel of truth, the invention of radio as we know it today was somewhat convoluted and there wasn't just one inventor, the way we like to think of things.
On the tower which is ostensibly the focus of this article (keeping in mind that this was more than 50 years before satellites, and even before airplanes):
“As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere,” Tesla said at the time. “He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind.”
Well, that sounds familiar. Sure, it was implemented differently (and incompletely), but the vision was pretty clear.
Unfortunately, it also led to social media.
Wardenclyffe Tower became a 186-foot-tall relic (it would be razed in 1917), and the defeat—Tesla’s worst—led to another of his breakdowns. ”It is not a dream,” Tesla said, “it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive—blind, faint-hearted, doubting world!”
For a while there, Musk had the idea to rebuild Wardenclyffe. Like a lot of what Musk does, that seems to have gone by the wayside. It wouldn't have done anything much, but stand as a monument to one of the greatest geniuses of all time.
“The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.”
― Nikola Tesla |
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I don't usually draw from this source, and hopefully you'll see why.
Think about your work ethic during the pandemic. Have you been more productive than usual? Do you rush to volunteer for projects at work, even when your plate is already full? Do you promise to make dinner as soon as you finish “one last thing” on your to-do list? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you might be suffering from toxic productivity.
No, no, and no. There, done.
My work ethic used to be stronger, but nothing good ever came of it, so I abandoned it. For some people, though, this ill-defined concept of "hard work" keeps them sane. Newsflash: everyone is different.
In many ways, “toxic productivity” is just a buzzy new term for workaholism ― but it’s also a little more nuanced than that old-school phrase. Toxic productivity is essentially an unhealthy desire to be productive at all times, at all costs.
I hated that old term too, as well as anything that gets tagged "-holism." Similarly, stop tagging "-gate" on every damn scandal.
Toxic productivity doesn’t even let up once the task is complete. Once you’re technically done with a project at work, you might feel guilty for not having done more. For the afflicted, too much is never enough, said Simone Milasas, a business coach and author of “Joy of Business.”
Is a "business coach" something like a "life coach?" Or is it some weird hybrid airplane ticket?
Many of us have fallen into patterns of toxic productivity during the pandemic, said Kathryn Esquer, a psychologist and founder of the Teletherapist Network. That’s primarily because all of our regular routines were put on pause. All of a sudden, we had unprecedented amounts of free time.
"Many?" Any chance of being more specific here? Also, where did that "free time" come from, removal of commute?
But why did we throw ourselves into work instead of seizing the opportunity to be blissfully, guiltlessly idle for once?
And what's this "we" shit? My routine barely changed -- though I admit I'm an outlier.
We didn’t stop once the workday ended, either. We told ourselves we’d learn a new language, become an expert baker or master some other skill we’d put off learning in the Before Times.
I have been learning a new language. I started two years ago, before the pandemic. And dammit, I'd demand royalties on the phrase "Before Time," except I stole it from a Star Trek (original series) episode.
As one viral productivity-pushing tweet put it: “If you don’t come out of this quarantine with either: 1.) a new skill 2.) starting what you’ve been putting off like a new business 3.) more knowledge [then] you didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline.”
And once again we see the cesspool that is Twatter. First of all, "either" implies two choices, not more; second, we should be shooting for "more knowledge" all the time.
Work culture in the United States valorizes the grind ― and in moments of crisis, we grind all the harder. Look at World War II and the vast, rapid expansion of U.S. civilian manufacturing capacity to meet wartime demands.
That was top-down, not bottom-up.
The first step is to recognize that you have a problem.
Oh? Are there eleven more steps?
“One sign of toxic productivity is calling for a Zoom meeting when certainly a phone call or email would be OK,” she said. “Another is using of lot of jargon that makes the conversation twice as long because you’re afraid of how it will look if you’re brief, concise and just move along.”
Oh, and here I thought those were both signs of "being a manager."
Once you wrap up one project, do you give yourself a well-deserved break, or do you run to the next project with little thought? Are you constantly asking yourself “What should I be doing now?” even when it’s the weekend?
That question is a sign of textbook toxic productivity, Milasas said. She said a better question to ask yourself is: “What could I do or create with ease now? What would it take to create this with zero stress?”
I can always play video games or watch old episodes of Star Trek.
What’s funny about toxic productivity is that it exists more in our heads than in our actual work environments. In other words, there are very few bosses out there who care if you’ve been working hard around the clock, Ruettimann said.
Is that so? Then how come those same bosses monitor your keyboard and camera time?
And again... what exactly the fuck is "hard work?" Farm hands work hard and twenty years later, they're still hard-working farm hands.
Americans have a notoriously bad grasp on work-life balance: We’re loath to take our vacation days. We’re overworked, especially during the pandemic. We send unnecessary emails over the weekend. We simply can’t log off.
Again, what's this "we" shit?
Okay, to be fair, I'm sure there are a some people who need this advice. For others, it can be safely ignored. My biggest issue is how it's presented.
But unless you have a specific goal in mind, working extra hours is just counterproductive. That goal could be "keeping my job," but do you really need to keep a job that makes you work 80-hour weeks?
It's time the workers fought back, and not just in the service industry. Rise up! You have nothing to lose but your chains.
Once again, I failed to do this review yesterday for a movie I saw on Tuesday.
One-sentence Movie Review: Old
While I can certainly understand anyone's trepidation for seeing another Shyamalan movie, this one is done well, with brilliant acting, seamless effects, and remarkable camera work, although it does stumble a bit in some places; the trademark MNS "twist" isn't the movie's whole gimmick, and while it's not what anyone would call realistic, that's never been a requirement for a horror movie.
Rating: 4/5
Next week, I'll take on The Suicide Squad. |
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Getting back to articles I found online, here's one that I need...
Finally, I can learn how to be funny!
Have you ever thought of the perfect quip or comeback after it didn’t matter—a minute, hour, or day after your conversation has ended?
Sometimes it takes years. Hell, I'm still working on one from my past life in medieval Bavaria. Unfortunately, I'd have to learn Middle German first, and then find the reincarnation of my verbal sparring partner from the time and hope they have learned it as well.
Well, there’s a name for that phenomenon. It’s called l’esprit de l’escalier, or the spirit of the staircase, and refers to the perfect retort that arises at the wrong time.
Hey, that's not German; it's its polar opposite, French.
Still, you’re not doomed to sit by as clever companions exchange sharp banter. You can practice being wittier, improving your reaction times and ability to land a jab or joke at just the right moment.
By memorizing every sit-com ever aired on TV?
In his new book, Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It, released on Nov. 13, author, editor, and journalist James Geary of Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation argues that wit isn’t just for a few gifted linguists.
Hey, look, it's an ad for a book (standard disclaimer: this is a writing site so I'll allow it). Also, the author failed at being witty there. He should have said "cunning linguists."
And it’s worth trying, according to Geary, because playing with language—elevating mundane communication from mere talk into a creative process—is a form of innovation that sheds new light on old ideas. Plus, it makes life less boring and more fun for you and others.
But I've been doing something like that for years. It may make life less boring, but people still hide from me at parties after I talk to them. Back when I got invited to parties, anyway.
“[W]it consists in binding together remote and separate notions, finding similarity in dissimilar things (or dissimilarity in similar things), and drawing the mind from one word to another,” Geary explains.
So... puns. Yeah, that's why people hide from me.
“Uncensored access to associations, conscious and unconscious, is essential to wit,” Geary writes. He notes that some people who experience brain damage or have neuropsychiatric diseases lose their ability to make these associations altogether, while others suffer from witzelsucht. This German term means “wit sickness” or “wit addiction” and results in a compulsion to make jokes that are often socially inappropriate.
Ah... there's some German. And I begin to see the problem: brain damage.
Understanding the neurobiology of people who suffer witzelsucht, and those who are linguistically humorless due to brain damage, could shed light on the mechanisms of wit.
I'll take that as granted, but it is utterly perpendicular to the title of the article, which is, I remind you, "The secret to being witty, revealed." Now, true, beating one's head against the wall might be funny to the viewer, but I don't think it's guaranteed to make someone wittier.
Like other forms of creativity it is borne of knowledge. Having a rich vocabulary is a starting point. Curiosity is another important element. Appreciating language in all the places and ways it’s used—from pop music to literary fiction, scientific writing to slang—makes it easier to generate unusual combinations.
I mean, sure, but "don't be stupid" is good advice for almost everything in life.
Yet writing a book about wit was harder than the writer imagined. Geary couldn’t very well be pedantic and dull while highlighting the need for wise, fun, creative communication.
I can only wish we could say the same about this article.
He raps, rhymes, puns, quips, jives, and dialogues his way through this rich history and analysis. Each section of the book, which reveals the elements of different kinds of wit, and offers insight on developing it, is written in a distinct form.
Writing something funny is distinct from saying something funny. For the former, you have months to work on the jokes. For the latter, you need to be quick like sand. Can you really learn how to be funny by reading a book that the author has spent agonizing weeks preparing?
If we were cracking wise, rather than reacting angrily, and being wittier on Twitter, we might all have a much better time.
Or -- and hear me out here; this is blasphemy of the highest order -- we could all decide to collectively ignore Twatter. |
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And now, the final entry for this round of "JAFBG"  [XGC]. Tomorrow, I'll go back to riffing on links I found. I have a bunch in the queue now.
What stereotypes accurately describe you? Are you comfortable with them? Which would you like to change?
When I was a kid, once the other kids found out I was Jewish, they'd drop pennies near me to see if I'd pick them up.
For a while I resisted, but then I was like "fuck it" (I learned to cuss early, but unfortunately before I learned not to do it in front of adults), leaned into it, and started picking them up.
Their loss was my gain, and as long as they were going to do shit to me for being different, I might as well make money at it.
Naturally, they figured out what I was doing and stopped. That's when they started asking if Christian babies taste like chicken.
(They taste like pork, but I didn't know that then because my parents tried to keep kosher.) (That's a joke, in case anyone still thinks that bullshit that's been making the rounds for centuries is true. Think we can eradicate fake news? Think again.)
Anyway, these days, no one would know it if it didn't come up in conversation every once in a while. I'm not in the least bit ashamed of my heritage, but it's not like I'm a vegan or do Crossfit and have to shout it to the world. I look like an ordinary Euro-American middle-aged man, and I abandoned religion long ago. After all, it leads to pernicious misinformation; see above.
No, I'm a white guy with facial hair who loves craft beer, and that's a stereotype I can live with. I walk into a brewery and usually I think people look up and go "Oh, hey, it's a beer guy." And yet I don't identify with most of melanin-disadvantaged America. People have tried to start up conversations with me about how wonderfully magical and holy Trump was, and I just steer the conversation away from the political realm. After all, the guy doesn't even drink beer; how could I trust him?
Personally, I think we'd all do well to get rid of the whole stereotype thing altogether. Even the positive ones can be degrading. You end up seeing people not as people but as representatives of a subgroup: women drivers, Blacks eating fried chicken, Jews hoarding money, Scots hoarding money (but for some reason it's a positive trait for them), the Irish drinking a lot, white people who can't stand anything spicier than mayonnaise, Mexicans who only eat spicy food, Asian math whizzes, Roma stealing everything that's not nailed down, the French scowling at anything that's not French, Canadians saying "sorry" a lot, US Americans shooting everything in sight, and so on.
Just stop already. It's the worst kind of confirmation bias: you see someone exhibiting a stereotypical trait for their subgroup, and ignore the same trait in other subgroups, so it reinforces your prejudices. And we all have prejudices; they're mostly just shortcuts that bypass a lot of the hard work that it takes to really get to know someone.
I still pick pennies up off the street, though. One day I'll buy a Coke with all my found cash, and then we'll see who has the last laugh. Now, where did I put the controls to that space laser? |
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Tomorrow will be the final "JAFBG" [XGC] prompt. Today, I'm going to break with my own tradition and piss off some people.
Sometimes it's frustrating to have to bite your tongue. This is your chance - get up on your soapbox and rant. What do you wish you could say to someone (or a lot of someones)?
Lately, I've seen a few stories in the news about people who had the opportunity to get the covfefe vaccine, didn't, and ended up in dying, in pain, intubated and alone, in the hospital.
And my shits-to-give reservoir has run completely dry. In fact it's inverted, and when I see a story like that these days, all I can think of is, "Good. One less stubborn, willfully ignorant idiot in the world."
I saw where one 20-something dude got the 'rona and received a double lung transplant. This pissed me off all the way to Mars, because those donor lungs could have gone to someone more deserving than someone who refused to get a little shot in his arm when all the information was out there that it's a good idea to do so, but he only listened to things that tickled his confirmation bias. Those donor lungs could have saved the life of a coal miner, an asbestos-snorter, or a three-pack-a-day chain smoker -- anyone more responsible than this dipshit.
Now, look, ordinarily I don't care what you do to yourself. Drink? Great. Smoke? Fine. Do a few lines of coke until your heart explodes? You do you. Point a loaded gun to your head and fire? Well, I feel bad, but ultimately it's your choice. It only affects you. Sure, some people will be sad for a while, but you could have thought of that first.
But this shit going around is stealthily contagious, way worse than "the flu," and there are worse outcomes than dying, intubated and alone, in the hospital - like living for a few more years with scarred lungs, dealing with other organ damage, or losing your sense of taste and smell. And there are people who, for whatever reason, cannot get the shot and are therefore vulnerable; the more people get their shots, the less vulnerable they are. "But it doesn't affect kids!" Not as much, no, but some still die or suffer worse consequences from it, and more, they have the opportunity to pass it on like a retarded game of Telephone. Not to mention the reservoir of active viruses that have all the more opportunity to mutate into something more contagious or deadlier, like it's already done at least four significant times.
It's not like wearing a seatbelt or not. I personally don't give a shit if you wear a seatbelt. Doesn't affect me. This is more like drunk driving: Please, by all means, drink all you want, but the minute you take off drunk in your car you're endangering everyone else.
So what I wish I could say to a lot of someones is: Get the goddamned motherfucking vaccine. I know you're terrified of needles. I get it. I'm terrified of shit touching my eyeballs, but I'm going to suck it up and get eye surgery anyway, and that's not even affecting other people (again, unless I'm reckless enough to drive without corrective lenses).
I mean, surely it can't actually be the vaccine that's making you cower like a little kid in a dark scary room, is it? That shit's safe. It's safer than most medications. It's safer than goddamned sugar, and you eat that shit all the time. All the shit you've heard about nanobots, DNA alteration, mind control? That's deliberate disinformation. Stop believing obvious bullshit.
And if you don't -- if you still refuse to believe the science (not me, the actual science) -- if you're able to get the vaccine and you refuse to do so -- and I read about you in the news dying in an ICU, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to laugh my goddamn ass off, that's what I'm going to do.
And if you whine about "I should have gotten the vaccine!" like I've seen some of these people did, I'm going to laugh even harder. I might even burst a blood vessel and die from laughing so hard. It's okay; I'll go to oblivion knowing I literally had the last laugh.
I'm done feeling compassion for these morons. I'm completely over having a live-and-let-live philosophy when it comes to this shit.
"But you can get the vaccine and still get sick!" Yes, it's not perfect, but it gives you a better chance, and reduces opportunity for further transmission.
"But I had the disease and all I got was the sniffles!" Lucky you. Get the shot anyway. It provides better protection than having had the 'rona.
"I have a friend who said their second cousin's mother's boyfriend was laid up in bed for three days after the second shot!" Still better than 'rona. I got a shingles vaccine a while back. Two-shot regimen. Second shot knocked me on my ass for two days. Still beats getting shingles. Second 'rona shot just made me tired for a day. My anecdata is just as good as theirs. Better, because it's first-hand.
"Hell with it. If I get it, I get it." Again, fine, I wouldn't care if it were just about you. But it endangers others. If you don't care about some abstract "others," I mean your family and friends.
"People have gotten the vaccine and then died!" Yes, they have, but correlation isn't causation. I know someone who died shortly after getting married. Therefore, marriage will kill you and should be avoided at all costs! Even if some of them died from the vaccine, your chances are still better than if you catch the damn virus.
"My body, my choice!" Oh, NOW you believe that? Right. Also, no, like I said, it's not just about you.
"It's all a liberal hoax perpetrated by the lamestream media to force us to comply with government overreach!" Please die slowly and painfully, hopefully before breeding.
At this point, there's no excuse to not get the shot if you're eligible and it's available.
And yet...
I don't want to have this much schadenfreude. I know that while we're responsible for our actions, we can only choose what we're programmed, by genetics and environment and experiences, to choose (reading this rant counts as "experience," by the way; I'm not saying people can't change their minds). There really is no choice at all, so should I really be celebrating these anti-vaxxer deaths and injuries? Sure, they're influenced by bad actors in a lot of cases, but those influencers don't have a choice, either. But... by the same logic... I also don't have a choice.
I'm all out of shits to give. |
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I've thought about this one before. The perils of being a science fiction fan and sometimes a writer. From "JAFBG" [XGC]:
You've been given the opportunity to start a new civilisation off-planet. Who is banned from joining you and why? What rules will you put in place?
The only socially acceptable answer to the first question is "fat white guys."
But since I'm a fat white guy, I won't say that. But I wouldn't ban any demographic group. I'd want as diverse a population as possible, not only for the sake of inclusion but for genetic preservation.
The only people banned outright from joining would be assholes. Why? Because they're assholes. How I'd sieve them out is a different question; I'd have to resort to psychological screenings, and of course the criteria would be known only to me to prevent cheating. Because assholes will cheat given the chance.
The assholes can stay here and inherit the Earth.
I will resist the temptation to ban "everyone except me and a wide selection of attractive females" from the journey. 15-year-old me lived a very long time ago and had different priorities, but he's still in here somewhere.
As for rules, well, as much as I'd like to be a benevolent dictator, history has shown that no matter how benevolent the dictator starts out, becoming a dictator makes you an asshole. Not to mention that there's nothing in the prompt about me living indefinitely, and whoever succeeds me will face the same problems.
No, as imperfect as it is, the only rules I'd put in place would be ones to make the civilization (US spelling here) a democratic republic. Like the Constitution of the US, only hopefully without all the baggage like the "3/5 rule." There are of course other models for democracies, but the US is the one I'm most familiar with, and as ideals go, it's not bad -- we just sometimes have trouble living up to those ideals.
Mostly because of assholes.
The essential feature of a democratic republic is to have in place protections for everyone's rights, while allowing for social changes over time. In a pure democracy, the simplistic implementation leads to mob rule. Like, say, suppose 51% of the population votes to ban alcohol. This is obviously one of the worst things that can happen to a society (that's not just my opinion; look at history again), and tramples on the rights of the 49%. Or to use a slightly less controversial example, you can't have 51% of the population say, "We're going to make it illegal to practice [insert specific religion here]."
The goal, therefore, is not to enforce the will of the majority but to protect the rights of the minority. Hence democratic republic instead of pure democracy.
There are contradictions inherent in all of this, of course. I think you'd find that whatever system of rules and government is put into place, there will always be contradictions. We as individuals can't avoid internal contradictions; the problem is only magnified when you get to the government level. The trick is to maximize freedom for everyone to the extent that it's feasible to do so.
Except for assholes. |
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Sober this time, another "JAFBG" [XGC] prompt...
What is the most disappointing thing about 2021 so far?
That we're still numbering years and counting dates arbitrarily.
Okay, no, not really; we're too invested in the Gregorian calendar to alter it wholesale, so I just go along with it like anyone else. Still, what I'm pretty sure I said on December 31 of last year still holds true: ain't nothin' gonna change.
I mean, yeah, sure, things have changed; some change is inevitable, and that's how we know we live in reality. But, to coin a cliché, it's the kind of change that's like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
On a personal level, perhaps the most disappointing thing about this year thus far is being unable to continue with my road trip. I was hoping for another two weeks or so, and to see a few other people, but as I said, shit happens.
Globally, it's the realization that no matter what needs to be done for the good of society in general, there's a good chunk of the population that will resist it without question or thought. If you figured we could all band together with a common goal, well, you sweet summer child.
Ain't nothin' gonna change. I'm just glad I didn't have kids so they could be alive when the fecal matter really starts to impact the rotating blades. Me, I hope to be gone before that happens. And it will happen; you can count on it.
Disappointing? Nah. This has been the best slide into oblivion of any doomed culture at any time in history, and I plan to ride this sucker down with a beer in my hand, a smile on my lips, and the hot wind in my hair.
Ain't I just a bundle of joy? I told you I was more fun when I've been drinking. |
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Warning: I've been drinking. But I still wanted to do another prompt from "JAFBG" [XGC].
There's a difference between ignorance and willful ignorance. What reality do you wish people would face?
Ignorance is our natural state.
It is also our natural state to combat this ignorance by learning shit.
People who refuse to learn are therefore fighting against nature.
As we are fallible minds, the only effective way to approach reality is through systematic trial and error. Making judgements based on singular events leads to misconceptions. It's like... say you've just learned how to ride a bicycle. You're out on the street enjoying this newfound skill, when someone in a car cuts a corner and knocks you off your bike. That's your one and only data point, so you stop there. You might decide, all bloody and bruised and shit, "Fuck this bike-riding noise; I'm going to stay in a car where it's safe."
But that ignores the large number of people who ride bikes without ever being hit by a car, or the traffic accident statistics. Your experience is an outlier, but you don't know that, because you're living it and it's the only experience you know. Sure, cycling has its dangers... but so does driving a car, or sitting at home, or doing literally anything. Yes, some things are more hazardous than others, but again, if your only data point is your own experience, you'll end up with a warped view of reality. You might spend years taking showers every day, secure in the knowledge that it's perfectly safe, until one day you slip in the tub and crack your head open. Surprise, it wasn't perfectly safe after all.
At first glance, everything is binary. Either you get hit by a car, or you don't. Either you contract a dreaded disease, or you don't. Either you die in the shower, or you don't. Either the jump off the bridge kills you, or it doesn't.
But life doesn't work like that. There are always outliers, but by definition, they're not representative. To use a current hot-button issue, sure, some people die after getting the covfefe vaccine. Statistically, this is inevitable, just as it's inevitable that some people die from being in a car or an airplane. This ignores that more people die from NOT getting the vaccine, or that the death might not have had the vaccine as proximal cause, or that there are far, far worse outcomes from illness than mere death. There's always nuance, and it often contradicts one's lived experience. This is why people like me rail against "anecdata," the stories people tell that inevitably go against the majority experience. (I'm aware that my own situation is similar, which is why I'm going to suck it up and get the cataract surgery; the numbers are on my side on this.)
Vaccines (ALL vaccines), by the way, are real-life trolley problems. Can we ethically justify taking actions that will have negative effects on a small minority, in order to avoid negative effects on a larger population?
My answer is yes. Qualified, depending on the actual numbers involved.
It's a similar situation with self-driving cars. Right now, the technology is in its infancy, I'll grant. But also right now, every year in the US, about 35,000 people die in auto accidents. Many more are injured. That's obviously not an exact number, but whatever; the exact number is irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make, which is that we have decided, as a society, that the benefits of being able to drive cars and trucks outweigh the costs in life, property, and injury from driving cars and trucks. I'm not contradicting this. But what if we come up with a method to decrease that fatality statistic by 1,000? 3,000? 10,000? What is the threshold number that will make us, as a society, say "You know what? This is worth it to do?"
To hear some people talk, any major change such as turning over control to an algorithm would require a reduction in transportation fatalities to zero -- which is a completely unreasonable number. Sure, it would be nice, but wouldn't it also be nice to, say, just reduce it by one standard deviation? To have, instead of 35,000 fatalities in a year, 31,500?
Yes, I know, these numbers are really only meaningful as compared to total population in a particular country or whatever. I'm just throwing out figures here to make an argument, not to be absolutist.
The perfect cannot be the enemy of the good.
When I started writing this, I thought my answer to "What reality do you wish people would face?" would be "That science is imperfect but it is still the best means we've ever come up with to understand our universe." But I think I want to be a little more focused than that. Not just science, but statistics and probability.
But that would require people being comfortable with math, and also with accepting the idea that their lived experience may not be representative, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Yes, I could have just seen it on Netflix. But then I wouldn't have gotten the theater experience, or the drafthouse experience.
One-sentence moviecomedy special review: Bo Burnham: Inside
Funny and relatable as all hell, this guy's genius is all over the place, and it's totally worth seeing in the theater or on streaming -- but some comedy is best shared with a large group of like-minded strangers.
Rating: 4/5
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Just a few more prompts from "JAFBG" [XGC]. This is one of them.
What upcoming event are you dreading and why?
Anyone who's been following along here knows my answer to this one.
When I was somewhere in my 20s, I worked for a home construction and addition business. Safety procedures were lax at best, but I did have safety goggles of a sort, if not a hard hat. One day, I was working on some rich asshole's garage when my glasses fell right down a stack of cinderblock cells, too far down to reach. So I kept going without them, because it turns out that in order to collect a paycheck, one has to work.
Naturally, it was shortly thereafter, as I was attempting to hammer a nail through a nice springy sheet of plyboard, the nail flew up and popped my eyeball.
Surgery to repair torn eyes has supposedly come a long way since then, but at the time, I'm told they put nine stitches in my cornea. This happened under general anesthesia, so all I remember was passing out and then waking up with a patch over my left eye. That was bad enough, but in order to keep the stuff inside my eyeball from leaking to the outside of my eyeball, they sealed the suture holes with cyanoacrylate.
Yes, that's what's commonly known as superglue. I expect it probably had a somewhat different formulation, but it was still runny enough that it leaked onto the sclera, the part of the eye that's usually white but turns red whenever someone drinks or gets cyanoacrylate on it.
I've been in pain several times in my life. Appendicitis, recovery from the appendectomy, bee stings, a goddamned heart attack, toothaches, paper cuts, whatever. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was as unbearable as the pain of the doctor getting CA on my sclera. That shit hurt like someone was rubbing sandpaper on my eyeball. The initial injury didn't hurt that bad. The surgery itself didn't hurt at all (because like I said, I was completely conked out for it). But I remember sitting up in the recovery bed screaming like I was finally ready to tell the enemy all of our troop numbers and deployment.
Eventually, they took the patch off and, in fact, the vision in that eye improved. The ophthalmologist wrote me up in a paper somewhere and I'm told it led to advances in LASIK and other corneal adjustment procedures.
Not worth the pain, though.
Some time after that, I heard a real-life horror story of someone undergoing eye surgery, and the anesthetic didn't work as advertised. The patient was awake for the whole procedure, able to see and hear the surgeons and nurses doing their thing and talking about it -- but unable to move a single muscle, including the ones controlling speech. Can't move, can't breathe (that's handled by a machine), can't do anything but lie there and be tortured. As someone who occasionally enjoys (that's a joke) sleep paralysis, this freaked me out more than clowns, spiders, needles, heights, or tall clown spider needles. As I recall, that patient spent a long time afterwards, perhaps their entire life, with something like PTSD, never right in the head afterwards.
Whether their vision got fixed or not, I don't know.
Perhaps because of this, the one phobia I have that I'm aware of is of something touching my eyeball (though my eyelids get a pass). I never could wear contact lenses because of it, and whenever I need even something as innocuous as eye drops, I have to trick myself into applying them.
So perhaps you can understand why I'm dreading cataract surgery -- an outpatient procedure that's over in a few minutes and has a really good track record of safety and efficacy, but involves only local anesthetic. You're awake for it, with your eyes wide open -- probably via clamps like Alex at the end of A Clockwork Orange -- and you get to watch as they break up your eyes' lenses with ultrasound, suck out the pieces through slits in the corneas, and replace them with shiny new artificial lenses.
None of which would bother me all that much if it weren't for the "being awake and aware" part. I guess they give you Valium or some shit so you don't freak the fuck out, but I'm not sure that's going to be enough for me.
So, yeah, fine, I'm dreading it. I'm going to do it anyway because being able to see is important to me (it kind of helps with driving), but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
I've already roped a friend of mine into taking me there, even though the surgery date isn't set yet. Hopefully there will be beer nearby when it's over, because nothing says "pass out completely" like alcohol and Valium. |
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More fun with "JAFBG" [XGC]...
We look back on some historical practices with disbelief. What current practice do you think will be ridiculed in the future?
All of them.
Especially fashion.
You know all those fashion trends that we look back on and go, "What in the hell were they thinking?" Almost every one of them, at one time, was considered the pinnacle of self-decoration. Powdered wigs. Low-rise jeans. Feathered-back hair. Polyester disco suits. All of these things were the Hot New Thing when they came out, and all of these things are currently the butt of jokes (in the case of low-rise jeans, I mean that literally).
Each of them certainly had their haters at the time (or as I like to call them, "sensible people"), but they wouldn't have been trendy if the followers hadn't outnumbered the detractors.
It's not just clothing, though. I've had the misfortune of seeing those hardware store ads masquerading as reality TV, you know, the "buy a shit house and fix it up" genre. Some have legitimate aging problems, but others? "Ha ha, look at this green shag carpet; how blind were they in the 70s?" What they forget is a) At one point, green shag carpet was the In Thing, and b) In 40 years, that open-plan kitchen/dining/living/sitting/family/breakfast/study room with the granite countertops and burnt orange backsplash is going to seem ugly and stupid.
Those, though, are just the matters of taste.
100 years ago, the average life expectancy of someone in the US was around 50-55 years. (Source.) Now, it's pushing 80. We look back on the medical practices of the past -- leeches, trepanning, whatever -- with horror and disgust. Our current medical practices seem bright and shiny now (hell, some of them seem like sorcery to me), but give it another 100 years and people be like "You mean they treated cancer with a combination of nasty pharmaceutical chemicals with horrible side effects?"
Obviously, what we consider right and wrong changes over time, as well. We're pulling slave-owner statues off of pedestals now. In a few decades at most, we of today will be cancelled by our robot overlords for having the audacity to own computers.
But hopefully -- assuming we make it that far, which is an assumption I'm not willing to grant -- the biggest thing people in the future will look back on with shock and anger will be: "They... burned... fossil fuels?"
But yeah. History backs me up on this: whatever the practices of a certain time period are, they will be mocked by those of a later time period (though to be fair, there might be a time of nostalgic references somewhere in the middle). Hell, even the "futuristic" architecture styles of the 50s and 60s don't say "future" anymore, but "past." The generation war now, marketed to be millennials versus boomers, is just the same shit all over again - back when the boomers were young, there was a "generation gap" and the then-younger generation (boomers) was going to Save the World. And when today's millennials and/or Zeds reach retirement age -- assuming they're still around and are able to retire, which, again, I'm not sanguine about -- they'll be pitted against whatever they'll call the younger generation, too.
I guess some things never change, after all. |
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A possibly contentious "JAFBG" [XGC] prompt...
How do you feel about the integrity of the news? Can we believe what we read/see? How much bias is there?
There is always bias in the news.
I mean always. Some things are actually impossible, and one impossible thing is to be without bias. Even if a news source can be trusted to report only the objective facts of something -- keeping opinion completely out of the text -- they demonstrate some bias in the simple act of deciding what to report on.
You hear the complaint all the time. Like, just yesterday, I found out that coal miners in Alabama are on strike, and it hasn't been reported in the major news networks.
Well, actually, I only have their word that it's not reported on the major networks. I didn't fact-check that. It doesn't matter enough to me, and besides, it's very hard to prove a negative. But let's assume they're correct at that source, for now (at this point someone else may have picked up the story; again, I don't know). It demonstrates the point: One source finds this to be significant enough to report on, and another doesn't. Why? Who knows? Maybe the large corporations running the major networks (both left-leaning and right-leaning) don't want to give attention to workers' rights. Maybe there's too much else going on to squeeze it in. Maybe they don't want to take the chance of losing major advertisers.
In any case, "this is something They don't want you to know" is itself a biased (and clickbaity) tack to take when reporting on an event.
So, yes, there is always bias in the news. That's not the problem, not if you're aware of it and can ask your own questions.
The problem is that sometimes the news tries too hard to be unbiased.
I know I've harped on this before. For a long time, and it might still be going on, a news story about some new finding in, say, the field of climatology would be reported on like "Here is what scientists say is happening," followed, in some stupid attempt at "fairness," something like, "And now here's Joe-Bob insisting that the drought in the West is perfectly normal."
Those two things are not equivalents. It is as if you report on someone circumnavigating the Earth, and then switch to a flat-earther proclaiming that it couldn't have happened because the Earth isn't round. It would be like if you're doing a report on NASA sending another mission to the moon, and in the interest of presenting "both sides," you cut to someone who claims that no one got there in the first place.
We should not be giving equal time -- or any time, really -- to people devoted to denying the facts.
And that's just facts. Opinions don't have equal weight, either.
Like... take my second-favorite subject, beer. I like several different styles of beer, notably stouts and Belgians; I generally dislike West Coast IPAs and I utterly despise mass-produced watered-down piss such as Coors Light and Buttwiper. That is an opinion, and it is mine. Other people really enjoy West Coast IPAs and dislike Belgians. Some people even like Coors Light, or they wouldn't keep selling that crap. Yes, I have strong opinions about it. But my opinion is no more "true" than yours or his or hers or theirs, because what beer someone likes (or even if they enjoy the delicious amber nectar) is a matter of taste. And susceptibility to marketing strategies, but still, people like what they like.
In matters of taste, your opinion is right for you and mine is right for me. We might influence each other, but neither of us is objectively right.
But -- and I'm going to borrow from a comic I once saw -- say you're a passenger on an airplane. You may have an opinion of how the plane should be flown. But you're not a trained pilot. The actual pilot also has an opinion on how the plane should be flown. She or he, in that case, has a better opinion than you do.
They could still be wrong -- sometimes planes crash due to operator error -- but they have a much, much lower chance of being wrong than you do.
Opinions are like assholes: Everyone has one, and most of them stink.
Since a lot of journalists seem to have forgotten this hierarchy of opinion, giving apparently equal weight to evidence-based opinions and ignorant opinions, it's up to us to discern who we should believe when they make a statement about, for example, public health.
And obviously, as a group, we're completely incapable of doing that.
Which sucks. In my opinion. |
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Another one from "JAFBG" [XGC]
We all have chores or responsibilities. If you could outsource one task, guilt-free, without it costing you a cent, which chore or responsibility would you pawn off on someone else?
Aging.
Okay, fine, that's not a chore or a responsibility, but the inevitable result of not dying.
Everything has a cost. That's basic economics. The cost isn't always monetary (to address the "without it costing you a cent" part) or emotional (to address the "guilt-free" part) -- often the cost is one of opportunity or time. There are probably other ways to assess cost, but I can't be arsed to provide an exhaustive list right now because that would take too much time. See? Case in point.
While money is our most common way of figuring cost -- it's versatile and convertible; hence "time is money" -- sometimes things that are "free" are simply not worth the non-monetary costs.
For example. "Sign up for our FREE newsletter!" Yes, you don't have to pay money for the newsletter, but we're going to send you emails every fucking day and, moreover, make money ourselves by selling your email address to a bunch of other shady businesses who will then proceed to send you emails every day. You will then have to spend time and effort to deal with emails -- directing them to other folders, unsubscribing (good luck with that), deleting them as they come in, or abandoning your email address and getting a new one.
This was a lesson I learned early on in life, and is one of the few that I didn't need personal experience to absorb. I think I was filling out whatever paper forms there used to be for the Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes. My dad saw me doing it, and gave me my first (but definitely not my last) lesson in economics.
"Nothing's free," he said, or words to this effect. "Even if you did win that, which is improbable, you'll be hounded for taxes and probably discover cousins you never knew existed, and neither did your mom or I."
Well, he said it in different words and with a bit of a Louisiana accent, but that's the gist of it.
Still, it sure would have been nice to win the million dollars or whatever. That was a lot of money back then. Well, okay, it's still a lot of money, but it's not "tell the world to go to hell" money anymore. Even after taxes, that would have been at least $500K, and then maybe I could have gone to a state university in a Porsche instead of a pickup.
The point is, everything has a cost; the key is to know what the cost is so you can decide whether or not you're willing to pay it. The economic principle is No Free Lunch, and it's absolutely immutable.
In the case of chores or responsibilities, at least part of the cost in outsourcing them is loss of control.
For instance, I've been paying someone else to mow my lawn for years now, because I'm allergic. Not to grass clippings, but to hard work. It comes from growing up on a farm and then discovering that hard work doesn't actually get you anywhere. If hard work was all it took to succeed in life, then sharecroppers would be millionaires. But I digress. Back when I did mow my lawn, I knew every contour, every corner, every bump in my yard, and I could plan the mowing thereof accordingly. I had precise knowledge of where the boundary lines were (I helped survey them when I bought the place, because I could). Now, however, some guy of indeterminate immigration status comes in on one of those lazy-ass standing riding mowers, gives the lawn a buzz cut along with parts of the neighbors' yards (though they haven't complained yet), bills me $50 and buggers off.
It's still worth it to me to avoid having to give the yard a haircut when it's 100F and humid out there, which here in Virginia we call "all summer."
I also outsource a lot of the housecleaning, for much the same reasons except it's usually not 100F inside the house.
One of the other non-monetary costs of outsourcing stuff is harder for me to describe. I don't know what to call it, so I'll give an example. Say your toilet overflows. It happens, and it sucks. If you don't deal with it yourself, you're telling someone else that you think so little of them that you would pay them to clean up your literal shit. "I'm more important than you are, so here's a wad of cash if you just wade through my sewage for a couple of hours."
I guess that's where the guilt comes in. You gotta clean up your own shit and not expect other people to do it for you. Another lesson from Mom and Dad. Mostly Dad, after I stuffed way too much toilet paper down the commode as a stupid kid because all kids are stupid and that's the kind of thing they do. Okay. Lesson learned.
Other things, I simply don't want to pawn off. Like taking care of my cats. Pets are responsibilities (tell that to whatever neighbor let their husky wander onto my deck last night). But would they really be "my" cats if I made someone else do the feeding, hydrating, and litterbox cleaning? No, that's part of living with cats, and while I'll arrange for someone else to do all that if I'm gone for more than a day, it's not something I'd outsource when I'm home, even if I were disgustingly rich.
Driving is another thing. I really want a driver to help me in my goal of visiting All The Breweries, but it's not like I can afford a full-time chauffeur or anything. Besides, even if money or guilt weren't involved, I just like to drive. When I actually have a car, anyway, which is not now.
Cooking? Nah. While I'm entirely too lazy and single to bother doing complicated meals, I find the only way to get food that I really like is to fix it myself. Or go to certain restaurants, but again, that's unsustainable as a habit. I might only be making a ham sandwich, but dammit, I'm making it my way, and no, I don't need someone to cut the damn crusts off; what even is that bullshit anyway?
After all that, I can only think of one chore that I'd outsource under the conditions in the prompt here, and that's landscaping.
I don't mean lawnmowing; like I said, I already pay someone for that, and they do a decent job. I'm talking about the rest of the yard: flowering plants, shrubs, trees, keeping the poison ivy away; that sort of thing. I hate doing it myself because a) it's work; b) it's outdoors; c) I don't have the slightest idea what I'm doing and it always ends up looking like shit again and d) because there are plants involved, everything I want to keep alive dies, while everything I want to kill (like the poison ivy) gets bigger.
You'd think someone who spent his childhood on a farm would know how to keep plants alive, but nope, they take one look at me, determine that they can't escape because they're plants, and simply commit suicide as their only means of getting away from me, like when a cat catches a rabbit. Again, except for the poison ivy and Virginia creeper, both of whom have a nice laugh at my expense. I can actually hear them growing sometimes, laughing the whole time.
So that's a long way of saying that I'm pretty happy with my current chores and the delegation of some of them, but man it would be nice to have an actual landscaper. |
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Leave it to me to have a hangover at midnight. Nevertheless I will attempt "JAFBG" [XGC]:
Tell us about something or someone that shocked you recently.
Well, um...
Hm.
Maybe this is too much for my hung over brain to handle.
When you're as jaded, cynical, and pessimistic as I am, what can possibly shock you?
Surprise? Sure, sometimes. But "shock" (when not taken literally) requires more than surprise. It implies a kind of initial disbelief, quickly followed by something like anger. Not the whole Five Stages of Grief, or maybe actually the whole five, but in very rapid succession.
A politician gets caught taking bribes and/or evading taxes? Expected.
A priest bones an underage boy? Yeah, it figures.
An actor turns out to be a sexual predator? Yawn.
A cop lies about that shooting? No surprise there.
I'm not saying that nothing could shock me. That would just be tempting fate. And shocked or not, there needs to be consequences for any of those things, however everyday, expected, and commonplace they have come to be.
Hell, even hitting a deer on the road the other day didn't shock me. Startled, surprised, inconvenienced, sure, but right after it happened I was like "Oh well, I knew this could happen."
Is that wrong? Is it bad to be so inured to bad shit happening that I can't even work up that sense of betrayal of everything that's right and good and pure that's called "shock?"
It's not that I don't experience emotions. Hell, I am often pleasantly surprised -- perhaps the opposite of shocked. Even sometimes delighted, moved, giddy.
Perhaps the most shocking thing of all is that I can still feel emotion. |
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Only halfway through "JAFBG" [XGC]...
Sometimes we have to tell the world to fuck off and just look after number one. What do you do (or wish you could do) for self-care?
Are you kidding me? I've arranged my life around not having to do more than the bare minimum for other people.
When you're single, retired, and don't have kids, you can do that. I know for some that would be a meaningless existence, but existence is meaningless anyway, so what's the difference?
Nevertheless, I don't know what self-care is supposed to be. I guess you can count sleeping. I'm a big fan of waking up whenever the hell I please, not being constrained by alarms. Of course, the world being what it is, sometimes you have to get up at a certain time; that's just life. And when I travel, I do try to be awake for experiences. Sometimes I'll even wake up for the sunrise, instead of staying up for it.
But sleep is important to me. It's not optional, and it's not generally something that can go by the wayside so I can do other stuff. Interfere with my sleep cycle at your peril. There had better be a fire or flood, and, moreover, something I can do about the emergency besides wait for impending doom. I'd rather die in my sleep.
Still. This isn't meant to imply that I don't care about other people. Or my cats. I try to fulfill my responsibilities; it's just that I work hard to avoid having too many responsibilities in the first place.
I understand that for some people, I don't know how many, it's in the gathering and discharge of responsibilities that they find self-actualization. But not everyone is like that. If you try to impose that on someone like me, it just becomes frustrating, aggravating, infuriating, or worse, like forcing an introvert to be an extrovert, or a night person to be a morning person.
I've known people who live only for others. Some of them do just fine with it. Others... well, others could use a good night's sleep, or a bong hit, or a nice tall cold beer. One of the greatest lies perpetrated on us is that self-indulgence is always wrong. Certainly, too much can be detrimental -- but then it ceases to be self-care and just becomes self-destruction.
After all, if you don't take care of yourself, how can you take care of others?
The trick is finding the balance, and that point will be different for everyone.
Still, moderation only works in moderation. Sometimes you have to go for excess.
Speaking of self-indulgence, on Thursday, I went to see Black Widow, and then I completely forgot to review it here. So I'm doing it now.
One-Sentence Movie Review: Black Widow
While you will need to have some familiarity with the Marvel Cinematic Universe to fully understand some of the references in the movie, there are enough gun battles, fight scenes, car chases, explosions, and special effects to make the film shine on its own, along with an actual plot with a satisfying mix of humor and drama; many of the scenes are unrealistic, but come on, it's an action/adventure science fiction movie based on comic book characters, so no one should go into this movie expecting adherence to the rules of physics or biology, just the Rule of Cool.
Rating: 4/5
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I'd skip this one, but I'm determined to do all the "JAFBG" [XGC] prompts in random order.
Tell us about a recent injustice you witnessed.
The reason I'd skip it is because I don't recall witnessing any injustices recently. In order to do so, I'd have to participate in the world more. And I don't think a bar opening at 4pm when the hours clearly state they open at 3pm counts as an injustice. Yes, that's the closest thing I've experienced lately.
Going back, well, I'm still drawing a blank. Of course, I've been the victim of injustice before, but that's less "witness" and more "experience." Like the time in high school when someone left a tack on the teacher's chair. The teacher didn't even sit on it. Perhaps being aware of the sociopathy of your average teen, she checked first, held up the tack, and said, "Okay, who's the joker?"
This is legitimately funny even now, but to 15-year-old me, it was the most hilarious thing ever. So I laughed. A lot. Of course, that means that the teacher, my parents, the other students, and most devastatingly, the principal, did not believe me when I said it was not me.
Now, it makes sense that I'd get in trouble for laughing, and I long ago gave up railing against the unfairness of it all. The actual injustice isn't that I got punished, but that the dipshit who actually placed the tack in the teacher's chair never got what he (or she, but come on) deserved.
Again, though, that wasn't recent by any measure of time except maybe geological. I'm just mentioning this here -- though I'm sure I've mentioned it before -- because in this geological epoch, I can laugh about it and maybe make someone else chuckle
Though I have not personally witnessed any injustices recently, well, I do see news stories from time to time, enough to know that the world is an inherently unfair place. This is actually a good thing, by the way. If life were fair, I wouldn't be as lucky as I am. And it would imply that there was some consciousness making it fair, which is far, far more terrible to contemplate than the idea that there's an entity making it unfair.
So, in the spirit of the prompt, I present this news story from Canada about an injustice, thus proving that it's not just the US with stupid laws.
B.C. nurse's driver's licence suspended after she couldn't do breathalyzer test due to facial paralysis
A B.C. nurse whose face is partially paralyzed says her driver's licence was suspended and her car impounded after she was unable to provide a breathalyzer sample during a roadside check — and that Canadian laws about alcohol breath tests leave people with certain disabilities no way to prove their innocence.
Jamie van der Leek, 44, of Port Alberni, says she developed a severe case of Bell's palsy — damage to the facial nerve, which left her paralyzed on one side of her face — during one of her pregnancies.
It is not, of course, that laws against drunk driving are unjust. I mean, they can be, but you'd think that a civilized country like Canada, they'd allow a person to show her innocence.
The palliative care nurse was vacationing with her husband and children in Penticton, in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley, on Saturday, when an RCMP officer stopped her for a roadside check after a day at the lake. The officer asked van der Leek to provide a breath sample to test for alcohol. She says she tried, but because of her condition, she failed to create a seal over the device and blow in enough air for a viable test.
She says she explained her medical condition to the officer, who told her she was being difficult and said she would be served an immediate roadside suspension.
Where was that Mountie trained? The US?
"It takes about as much effort as blowing through a straw inserted into a glass of water. The likelihood that an individual cannot provide a breath sample is extremely rare and is usually due to reasons other than a physical disability or medical condition."
But I'm pretty sure that even in authoritarian police states like the US, a person can usually (depending on state laws) request a blood test instead of a Breathalyser. Now, we only have her word that she hadn't been drinking, but it wouldn't have taken a lot of effort to determine the truth or falsehood of that through different means.
So, there it is. Not directly witnessed, since I couldn't go to Canada right now even if I wanted to (and I kinda do because, in general, it's rather nice in the summer), but still an injustice.
Again, not the only one. You read about miscarriages of justice all the time. That just happened to be one I remembered reading about yesterday. Today, naturally, will bring its share of wrongs committed against people from various countries, sometimes by said countries. It would be enough to make one mad, if there were room to become angry after you take into account all the other fresh hells in the news. |
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From "JAFBG" [XGC]:
Write ten truthful statements.
1. Truth is hard to come by these days; many people would rather embrace comforting lies.
2. Something I learned yesterday: The famous Dutch tulip economic bubble was not as big as reported, nor had as far-ranging consequences.
3. Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 US Presidential election.
4. Despite all the hype surrounding the event, Richard Branson didn't actually go into space, which, by international convention, begins at 100 km above sea level. His flight was to about 80km -- significant, but not, by most definitions, space. (To be fair, it is high enough for the US to consider everyone aboard an "astronaut.")
5. Because yesterday was also Bastille Day: it's estimated that a person's consciousness might continue for up to 10 seconds following beheading by, for instance, guillotine.
6. I have never seen the movie Titanic, and hope I never do.
7. Speaking of space, the first human to get there, Yuri Gagarin (who did indeed reach space) achieved orbit in 1961. This was closer in time to the Wright Brothers' first controlled powered aircraft flight (in 1903) than it is to today.
8. While we're on that theme, yes, the Earth is approximately spherical. Not flat.
9. The surface area of the Moon is about 38 million square kilometers, smaller than the size of Asia (44.5 million km2). The Moon, however, has fewer trees.
10. (You know I had to include something about this subject) "A 3,900-year-old Sumerian poem honouring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, contains the oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the production of beer from bread made from barley."
Of course, I can't leave it at that. I had to look for the poem itself, at least an English translation of it. And behold, I found it.
Presumably, the copyright has expired (it wasn't written by Disney) so here it is in all its glory:
Hymn to Ninkasi
Borne of the flowing water,
Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag,
Borne of the flowing water,
Tenderly cared for by the Ninhursag,
Having founded your town by the sacred lake,
She finished its great walls for you,
Ninkasi, having founded your town by the sacred lake,
She finished its walls for you,
Your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake.
Ninkasi, your father is Enki, Lord Nidimmud,
Your mother is Ninti, the queen of the sacred lake.
You are the one who handles the dough [and] with a big shovel,
Mixing in a pit, the bappir with sweet aromatics,
Ninkasi, you are the one who handles the dough [and] with a big shovel,
Mixing in a pit, the bappir with [date] - honey,
You are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
Ninkasi, you are the one who bakes the bappir in the big oven,
Puts in order the piles of hulled grains,
You are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the potentates,
Ninkasi, you are the one who waters the malt set on the ground,
The noble dogs keep away even the potentates,
You are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.
Ninkasi, you are the one who soaks the malt in a jar,
The waves rise, the waves fall.
You are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Coolness overcomes,
Ninkasi, you are the one who spreads the cooked mash on large reed mats,
Coolness overcomes,
You are the one who holds with both hands the great sweet wort,
Brewing [it] with honey [and] wine
(You the sweet wort to the vessel)
Ninkasi, (...)(You the sweet wort to the vessel)
The filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on a large collector vat.
Ninkasi, the filtering vat, which makes a pleasant sound,
You place appropriately on a large collector vat.
When you pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.
Ninkasi, you are the one who pours out the filtered beer of the collector vat,
It is [like] the onrush of Tigris and Euphrates.
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And another one for "JAFBG" [XGC].
Tell us about something/someone that fucked you off this week.
Well. If we're only going back a week, I could talk about the rental car company, who overcharged me. Okay, they didn't really; it cost exactly what it said on the label. It's just that there were only two rental companies in town. You know them; they're the big names: Hertz, named after the electric shock you get when you see the bill, and Avis, which is French for "opinion" as in "in my opinion, Hertz sucks balls, but Avis is worse."
So, with no competition, they can charge whatever the hell they want to charge. And why is it that they make you bring the car back with a full tank of gas, forcing you to buy gas from the nearest station to the car lot, which inevitably has a 25% surcharge on fuel? Which is still better than the $6 a gallon they charge if you fail to fill the tank, but it's still robbery.
I rented the car on Monday but returned it Wednesday morning, so it's still technically less than 7 days ago as I write this.
Also on Wednesday, I flew home. Delta. Oh, I would love to rant about Delta... but the flights weren't all that bad, considering, and in a stark reversal from its usual policy, the Universe didn't hit me with a bunch of delays and cancellations that usually force me to find alternative means of transportation.
Still, airplane food, amirite? If only they still served booze on the flight. Makes me want to swear off flying forever, but there's no other way to get to Belgium next year.
Or I could complain about that perennial goblin, the DMV. Or BMV in some states, but here in Virginia it's the DMV. You all know the drill: in normal times, it's long lines and crowded waiting rooms. Bringing a copy of War & Peace won't cut it; you gotta bring the entire Wheel of Time series. Or, at least, that's what it would be if they still let people just wander in.
Let me back up. Because my car was totaled, I need to give the insurance company my title to the thing. Naturally, it's... somewhere. Who knows? So I need to get a replacement title. As such, I have two choices:
1) Make an appointment for seeing the one remaining employee at the DMV -- currently, there's nothing within 90 days, and they only schedule within 90 days. Or
2) Fill out a form online and wait up to 15 business days for them to mail me the replacement title.
Obviously, option 2 is marginally faster. Or would be if their website worked. Okay, to be fair, it probably works fine, but only if I turn off all the tracking prevention add-ons I have to slap onto my browser in order to have some measure of security.
If I don't find the title somewhere in my house today, probably under a pile of useless garbage, I'll try the online form with a different browser. As long as I only visit the DMV site, there's not much they can track, right?
But let's face it, the DMV is a too-easy target for rants.
How about my discovery that every car available right now for purchase, of which there are few, is overpriced?
I mean, this is not really a discovery. Supply chain issues, especially regarding computer chips, are well-documented. I knew this going in, but then, I wasn't expecting to have to replace my car this year so I figured, wait a couple more years and this shit will get sorted out. Well, I can go without a car for a while -- there was a period of six months last year when I didn't drive at all -- but eventually I'm going to have to suck it up and buy something.
But really, despite all this, I've had a pretty good week. I get groceries and beer delivered, and almost everything else I need is in walking distance. Which would be good for me if temperatures weren't in the 90s, but whatever; it's July in Virginia, and that shit happens, climate change or no climate change.
So, yeah, prompt or not, I don't mean to give the impression that life is some sort of slog. It's not. It's just that I can find something good and something bad in any given week, and for this prompt I kind of had to dredge something up. |
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Yet another "JAFBG" [XGC] prompt.
Tell us about a time you stepped outside of your comfort zone. Did you enjoy it? Would you do it again?
Every time I travel, I step outside my comfort zone (which is about a three-mile radius centered on my house).
Oh, sure, there are times I can step back in, even when traveling. Most of the time, I feel at home in a brewery or brewpub. I speak the language, I mostly fit in (more on this in a later entry), and I can be pretty sure I'll enjoy the experience. Sometimes I don't, but even that is a data point for me.
The most recent time I did something I don't normally do, I wrote about in here. There's a local corner dive bar in a small town in Minnesota, and while I spent a lot of time in dives when I was younger, it's not something I usually do these days. I'm pretty sure I described it as "a return to my roots," but I'm far more comfortable, now, in hotel bars or breweries or other, slightly fancier, establishments.
I mean, the place was a pit. They kept the door open for ventilation, so flies were a thing. A few sad locals sat inside, contemplating their drinks. The pizza on the buffet (uncomfortable enough by itself during a pandemic) had been there for hours, and the salad bar was... well. The less said about the salad bar, the better. I ate both the pizza and the salad anyway; I've had far worse, like a corn dog that had been sitting under a lamp for days in a gas station in northern Nevada. Don't do that, by the way. Not recommended.
Nevertheless, the owner/bartender was friendly and helpful. My vision has deteriorated to the point where I can't read the names on the beer taps or the labels on the bottles behind the bar (in other words, this is a Crisis and Something Needs to Be Done), but he helpfully conveyed their information to me as I sat at the bar, squinting.
A bit of an aside: I usually have a workaround for that. My near-visioin is still pretty clear, so often, what I'll do is take a picture of the taps or the bottles with my phone, and hold the phone up close to my face to read the words. At this point, you may be asking "But Waltz, how can you drive if your vision has gotten that bad?" Answer: prescription sunglasses, and prescription clear glasses for night driving. They make everything clear on the road, but in the dimness of the bar, the sunglasses' darkness keeps me from properly reading the labels. And since it was full daylight, I'd neglected to bring the clear prescription. So, no, vision wasn't an issue when I had the accident; I was wearing the sunglasses and it was daytime.
Anyway, point is, usually I do the trick with the phone (it also serves as a helpful record from my travels), but in this case, I didn't want to be flashing around a brand-new Samsung in what was obviously an economically depressed area. So... bartender.
Speaking of comfort zones, I've lived most of my life with near-perfect vision, with only a slight astigmatism to deal with -- this was only a real impediment to stargazing, and I never even noticed it in my daily life. Later in life, I learned to deal with needing reading glasses for computer work and books. Now, in the space of two years, I've gone from near-perfect distance vision to not being able to read beer taps from across the bar. That's uncomfortable, and I don't like it.
But venturing into a dive bar as someone who Ain't From Around There? That was uncomfortable, but I ended up enjoying it. They even had some of the more widely-distributed craft beers, so I wasn't limited to crap beer or water. (I may descend into dive bars, but I still have standards).
As for "Would you do it again?" -- the thing about doing the same thing again is it becomes part of your comfort zone. Maybe not immediately, but with enough repetition, even the most foreign experience becomes commonplace. So, would I dive into a dive again? Sure. But I think the real question is, "Would you step out of your comfort zone again?" And the answer to that is still yes.
At least, yes, once I buy a car again, which I might just put off until after cataract surgery. Which itself is so far out of my comfort zone that it might as well be on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, and an experience that, once I have it, I doubt I'll be in any hurry to repeat. |
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Might as well accept that I'm going to be doing more prompts from "JAFBG" [XGC].
What pisses you off most about politics?
Sometimes, the other side has good ideas.
I want to say that nothing is black and white, but that's an absolutist stance, so it's wrong. Some things are actually black/white, like "genocide is a bad thing." While there are people who will disagree with that statement, they're, by definition, evil. Almost everything else has gray areas.
Here in the US at least (I'm not embedded in other countries' systems), we tend to treat politics like a team sport. There are exceptions, of course, but a large number of Republicans are Republicans because that's their team, and the same with Democrats, regardless of actual policies and effects. It's like if you're a Yankees fan, you're going to support the Yankees whether the sportsball team is doing well or not.
It gets so that anything a Republican president does is routinely opposed by the Democrats, and vice-versa. That's even if it was their idea in the first place, like with universal health care. They stopped listening to each other and started gathering into tribes -- with, of course, a few exceptions, as always.
Now, I'm not saying "both sides are bad" here. I definitely have a "side," a bias in my political leanings. I don't talk about it much in here because I don't want to start pointless arguments, but I'm sure you've figured it out.
But I don't generally see the other side as evil. Some individuals, sure, but not the entire bloc. And that's what pisses me off the most about politics: that so many people see it as us vs. them, my people vs. their people, when the reality is the solutions are almost always somewhere else.
You all know what happened in my town four years ago: a rally to protest the impending removal of a Confederate general's statue from a prominent position downtown, a gathering that resulted in at least three deaths. Well, you may or may not have heard that yesterday, the people in charge of such things finally removed the statue.
Was it the "right" thing to do? I couldn't tell you. I can see arguments on both sides, but in the end, I don't think we need participation trophies, and I think it was a reminder of a past best left in history books, not endlessly glorified in bronze. But the political process here is supposed to be based on words and ideas, not guns or homicide by motor vehicle. Virginia may not have invented that ideal, but we sure as hell popularized it 250 years ago. (I will also remind everyone that most of the bad actors in that situation were bused in from out of state.) The tribalism, though -- that circumvents the exchange of ideas and replaces it with, in extreme circumstance, an exchange of punches, or gunshots.
Tribalism begets violence. Not always, and not immediately, but when you get people identifying with a certain subgroup and they find themselves at odds -- ideologically, or over resources -- with another group, eventually it usually comes to blows. Don't get me wrong, though; sometimes violence is necessary, or at least preferable to rolling over and accepting whatever other people decide is your fate. I remember a discussion from a social studies class in high school. Someone said, "violence never solves anything," and the teacher rattled off a list of the things that violence definitively solved, like in World War 2.
And yet, the root cause of that war was... tribalism. If certain people hadn't decided that their culture was somehow inherently superior to all others, perhaps it would not have happened. It's fine to identify as whatever, and even be proud of it (depending on circumstances), but it might help to remember that we're all one people, interdependent with the other species on Earth.
A friend, yesterday, challenged me with the question: "Have humans ever done anything good, ultimately, long-term?" The context was not just the statue controversies but the existential threat posed by human-caused climate change. I was hard-pressed to come up with an answer, and I consider myself a humanist. I mean, there's space travel, right? So we can exploit other worlds. There's art and architecture, but do they really improve upon nature? (That one's obviously very subjective.) For every asshole who kicks puppies or abandons kittens, there are ten or more people working to rehabilitate animals; but they wouldn't be in that condition if not for us. Many people work to raise other people from poverty, but, as she pointed out, it was humans who put them into the societal structures that made them poor in the first place.
In the end all I could come up with was "beer," and that was invented something like 10,000 years ago.
I genuinely believe that most humans are good, or at least try to be. But peoples' definitions of "good" vary, too, and what one group considers a benefit, another will consider to be a downside. The example I usually hold up is Mother Teresa: I think she genuinely thought she was doing good, but she was, in the end, as evil as they come. I'd cast her as a villain, not a saint -- but the reality, again, is somewhere in the middle.
The point being, we can have the best intentions and still do wrong. That's why we have to listen to the other side, sometimes, and not just demonize them and reject everything they say or do simply because they're on another team.
I've rambled on long enough, but hopefully I've conveyed exactly what pisses me off about politics. It's still mostly a Forbidden Topic here, but I reserve the right to delve into it occasionally as it is, in fact, my platform to raise statues on.
Or remove them. |
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