2025-01-30 12:53:00
Kim there are people dying, and you're absolutely gobsmacked that Mary Sue is wearing the same dress as you to winter formal. ... why do we have to go back to elementary basics and learn to use our fucking words?
Communication is good. Do you talk to your friends about how much this drama upsets you? It sounds really stressful, sounds like you're really stressed.
I'd suggest taking a breath, saying that you want to talk about something that's bothering you, and then get into it. But try not to be so nasty about it when you're talking to them.
I'm nasty when I'm venting, too. But when you get to it, show them respect.
And ... Maybe try to understand where they're coming from. Kim was probably excited to go to winter formal in her cute dress and look absolutely stunning. Do you know how nice it feels to look good? Can you remember a time you were excited and then felt crushed? Do you understand why it hurt her?
And yeah, people have strong reactions to things, and often act like little shitheads. I do too. So did you, in your venting blog post. And that's okay. We are but human.
Things bother us, not necessarily because of their objective significance in the world ("Kim there are people dying"), but because we feel things. We are but human.
Is it not reasonable to act out when you feel angry? And yes, afterward, you wanna apologize, and work to grow, and try not to act out next time. But, you will sometimes. We are but human.
It may not ever end. It will change. We learn to react differently, our values change, and our feelings change. Our social support systems change, and our internal wiring changes. The teenage hormones and developing brain are gonna react differently than the 30-year-old "I been through this shit a dozen times" brain.
Be grateful that you have friends. Be grateful you get to support them through their struggles. Ask them for support through yours, and let them know that you struggle with the drama.
In the end, life is for livin, and we are but human.
2025-01-30 12:08:16
I once believed strongly in this "survival of the fittest" theory of the individual, and I believed in it as the way things "should" be.
But it's fucking nonsense. Babies are weak dumb little idiots (I love babies but its tru. sorry babies), and they survive. They survive because of their community, their support system.
I was, to my perception, one of the "strong" back then. I didn't realize how much support I had, how much my success was built upon other people, upon community, upon society.
This was quite a ... well, honestly a bit of a eugenics type of mindset. I think, presented with someone in need, I would have done the right thing. But in this abstract philosophical space, I believed that it was best if we let the strongest individuals survive and let the weakest individuals die.
My values were misplaced.
A song called "Honda" said "Only The Strongest Survive". I believe in support and community, deeply. Even when we think we're doing things on our own, we're built-up by extensive systems of support, like access to food and water and an economic system.
Hopefully you have closer, warmer support too, like friends or family or a community group. I do, but we're not all so lucky.
umm. Eat a carrot.
2025-01-28 11:15:00
inspired by Sylvia's post of these. og by dabi
Sylvia, I also LOVE The Good Place, was delighted to learn of the e project, and here is an alternate 418 teapot citation
Life as No One Knows It suggests that "alien" life is life that has a different evolutionary history than ours (a different origin story), and that our first encounter with "alien" life will be in a chemistry lab on Earth.
I believe there is alien life. Whether there is sentient alien life? shrug idunno, could be.
Purple, but i'd need to think about it first. Black might be more practical.
Some Black Bears are brown.
(I had already written this other answer so I'm leaving it)
When your osteoclasts make new bone, osteocalcin is released, and this hormone helps with brain function. As a result, osteoporosis can cause mental decline due to a shortage of osteocalcin.
I have Osteopenia, so maybe that's not random, but I read it in Move, which I did not expect to talk about osteoporosis.
To be an Olympic swimmer. I was quite good, but I couldn't go to swim practice any more after the parents separated. Later, I wanted to maybe be a lawyer, to help people, but somebody told me that's not what lawyers do. They were wrong, and I'm sad they said that. I'm not sure it made any difference, though. My life fell apart for other reasons.
Coding? It's my expertise, but no. Civics, social studies, politics. Math, maybe cuz I've always been good at that.
Repair. I'd wanna teach repair classes. (but I have limited repair skills)
A couple stuffies I really like, but not my main bears because I'd be so sad if I somehow lost them in space. My main bears would need to habitate with my bestie.
I can just run slow, yeah? Or walk fast? I'll take walking.
If I walk too fast and accidentally start a run, do I explode? Or is it just physically impossible for that to happen? Strange.
q, probably. q and queue are pronounced the same. queue is a crazy fuckin word
Pistol by Dustin Kensrue. Learned the chords on guitar for my high school girlfriend. I'm not sure it's had a lasting effect, but it's one of the most memorable for me.
While I often appreciate the message in songs, most of my listening is for vibes.
Earth, easy. I know that's probably boring and lame, but LOOK HOW FUCKING BEAUTIFUL THIS PLANET IS. LOOK AT HOW LUCKY WE ARE. WE GET TO EXIST AND HAVE AIR AND TOMATOES AND POTATOES AND candy. Fuck I want gummies. I've been craving gummies recently.
2025-01-28 09:19:00
This afternoon, I hopped in to work on my User Login Library, which I started building years ago.
I wanted to write documentation on how to replace the built-in styles. One of many to-dos on my list.
Well it's built on top of Liaison, a PHP framework I developed a few years ago for building websites and backend webapps. So I check Liaison's documentation to see how to replace a css file from a view.
It wasn't documented. So I find the test function that has sample code, add some special comments to export a code block, which I will then @import() into my Liaison documentation, using a library called Code Scrawl ... another piece of software I started a few years ago.
So that's going fine. I'm writing updated docs for Liaison, for the css file stuff, and I want to link to one of the source files, using @see_file(src/addon/Resources.php, Resources Addon), a feature in Scrawl. Butttt I can't quite remember the syntax, so I hop over to Code Scrawl's documentation.
(I could just write the markdown link, but the @see_file() will notify me of an error in case the target file isn't found. So if my codebase ever changes, I will know that my docs got messed up and fix them. That's the whole point of Code Scrawl - that your docs won't get out of date because of features like this and code export/import from tests.)
And it lists @see_file(rel_path) as the usage ... but I just know that's not right. So now I'm looking into the Code Scrawl implementation (which is also written in PHP), to make sure @see_file() accepts a second paramater and add docblocks to it. It does.
I add the documentation to Code Scrawl. Close that project.
I add the documentation to Liaison. Close that project.
I'm back in the User Lib, wait what am I doing? Oh yeah, documenting how to replace the built-in styles.
Add that documentation, and oh boy I just spent an hour going down this rabbit hole tweaking libraries in my stack.
It's a good improvement overall. I'm happy with my work today. I was freaking exhausted after. I always am after ... basically doing anything. But it was nice.
And this is often what coding is like for me. I'm in one library, which depends on another, which depends on another, so I end up 2 or 3 libraries deep just to complete one feature in the thing I actually want to work on.
This is a side-effect of building all my own stack. (I built my own testing framework too.) Also a side-effect of doing so when I was ... much less skilled at programming, and at writing docs. So a lot of it was a HUGE mess for a long time, and now I just slowly-but-surely am cleaning it up and improving it.
(It wasn't just lower skill-level. I was also constantly anxious, feeling rushed, not feeling I had enough time for anything ever. This was also a product of mental illness, though it took a different shape then than it does now.)
The main thing holding me back is disability. I have these little stints where I'm able to code for a few days. But I can still only go for an hour or two at a time. And then the energy + craving combination wear off, and I just can't do it anymore, so it sits for another month or two with no progress.
The disability-side of it has helped me get MUCH better at taking good notes. I always note where i left off and what needs done next, and I can confidently trust those notes 9 out of 10 times. I used to try to keep alla that in my head and it was a nightmare.
Btw, for that, I just have a Status.md at the root of every project, where I take extensive notes every time I code, and I date them.
I dream of healing from my mental illness and finishing these dang projects. They have so much potential. Much about them is really great. But much about them needs work too. They're not polished like they need to be.
Some of them are basically ready to put out there - like Code Scrawl. I mean, it's not perfect ... but all it really needs is a little bit of improvement in the documentation and ... well ... marketing.
Oh, did I mention Code Scrawl depends on a Lexer I made? From scratch? And for which I made it's very own programming language? Yeah. What the fuck. (Also built in PHP with the dream of one day converting code between languages)
2025-01-28 02:49:00
I really like copaganda. Agents of Shield is my favorite. Will Trent is good, then The Rookie autoplayed after the latest Will Trent episode, and I'm really liking it too.
But I have to catch myself, getting roped into the narratives that they're painting... a lot of really problematic stuff.
Every single episode of 'The Rookie' involves shootouts and badass policing, where some really bad dudes get arrested. And there's new cops (rookies) with new perspectives who are basically trying to be good people, kind of sort of pushing back against some of the nasty police stuff.
Nolan is very sympathetic and sees the good in people, and tries to achieve non-violent resolution sometimes. What's-her-face (sorry) tries to push back against her Training Officer's toxic & harmful B.S.
But at the end of the day, even with the flakes of wokeness added, it paints this picture of cops as uber-necessary heros doing a hard job, doing their best. Most episodes.
Yesterday's (for me, ssn1 ep5) involved a competition, where the three Training Officer / Rookie teams were competing for the most points. 7 points for felony arrests 4 for misdemeanors, 3 for something. Nolan's super into it, but his TO says NO. Good on her.
She pushes back on how problematic it is ... but she reveals why in the end ... because the competition pits the cops against eachother, causing turmoil in THEIR community. Her main concern was not that it incentivizes corrupt police work and bad arrests.
She (and others) do address some of these problems throughout the episode, but the winning narrative is that the competition is good because the cops are doing their jobs, and one of the TOs needs the "win" because of his unresolved personal/emotional issues.
A frequent issue in police shows (not much encountered in Rookie so far), is the system getting in the way of catching bad people, and the "good guy" cops working around the system. Yaknow. The system of accountability that protects our freedoms as citizens, and defends our rights. That system is the problem in cop shows, all the time.
(Sidenote: People constantly give up their rights in The Rookie, letting cops in their house, running their mouths and admitting to crimes. Sets a bad example.)
I believe policing is hard work. I believe police do perform necessary duties. I've had to call them before, and I've had friends who needed their protection in moments of crisis.
But I also believe policing is extremely problematic. That we outsource accountability to state forces. That police enforce horrible laws. That police fail to do their job sometimes when it is important. That there are domestic abusers and corrupt cops, and many aspects of the system encourage that kind of behavior.
I like these cop shows because they have loveable characters who are trying to do the right thing. They're motivated by good, to do good. And the stories are usually interesting, the dialogue is well-written, and there's ACTION. Who doesn't love a good action scene?
But as far as painting an accurate picture of policing, they do an awful job. The majority of what my local police do is categorized as "Calls For Service" without another category. There's really very little gun confiscation or drug confiscation. They don't seem to keep kids out of gangs. They don't alleviate poverty.
(Note: The 'Calls For Service' might actually encompass all categories. The way its reported to our city makes it appear to be its own standalone category, but I'm not sure.)
They aren't interested in getting drunks home safe, because they have no sympathy for drunk drivers. They're more interested in arresting those bad people. (Literally, this is based on a conversation I had with our current police chief.)
I believe free-rides-for-drunks would do more to prevent DUIs than the system of enforcement. But we spend hella money on enforcement, and little on free rides.
My police take about 40% of my city's general fund budget.
It is just way more complicated than these shows let on. And policing is far more problematic than these shows let on. And they build an image in our minds of needing cops all-the-time for every-little-thing. And they make excuses for every single bad thing cops do. And they convince us that the system of accountability is the problem, the reason bad guys get to be free.
I'm gonna keep watching them. But I'm also going to stay mindful.
Is Dr. Who copaganda? What about Batman? What do you think of journalists who out criminals? Are they "police" too? Is it different when the "criminal" is a leader of an institution misusing power?
P.S. Nolan and his TO spend several hours trying to find a temporary shelter for a homeless mother and her ~3 year old boy. They were unsuccessful. At roughtly $60 per hour for the two officers (probably more), they could have just spent $180 to get her a motel room for the night. But then the cops still need paid because we live in a capitalist system and you gotta have that MONEY.
2025-01-27 10:53:00
I've been kind of wired recently.
And I'm at the tail end of that "up" phase, I thiiink. I'm still suffering from some of the restlessness, and the mental obsession with doing stuff, even when it is time to relax, even when my mental energy is spent and I cannot healthily do stuff.
I'm freaking exhausted the last few nights. I'm pretty exhausted tonight.
I'm getting really agitated at minor irritants. I wanted to lose it on the cat for cleaning herself. I tried to talk her out of it, and I was unsuccessful. The noise was YUCKY, but the amount it agitated me was ... not standard or reasonable. I felt like I was going to explode.
Thankfully, I didn't have an outburst. On the rare occasion that I do, it's a bit of yelling (words) or screaming (no words). I used to have meltdowns a lot. That was when I constantly pushed myself to do a bunch of productive stuff. That was when I didn't take care of my health either.
Last night, i was ruminating, and struggled to stop. Tonight, I'm ruminating, and struggling to stop.
Like there's things that are frustrating or a bit annoying. When I'm well, I feel annoyed/irritated, and then I kinda move on, whatever, it's not that big a deal.
When I'm like this, my brain is like BUT HERE'S WHY YOU SHOULD BE MAD. And it is FULL of ammunition. It is NOT healthy, it is NOT fun. And, fortunately, I've grown a lot, and it isn't particularly convincing either.
Like it definitely pulls me in, plays on my feelings, and fucks with my mood. But 5-10 years ago, I'd become completely committed to that anger, that rumination, that toxic reaction to something. Now I'm like "Yeah, that was frustrating, but it's not that big a deal." I know this, so I will not act shitty. I believe this, so it will simmer down soon.
Fuck I hate this shit.
This too shall pass. I'm going to go on a walk. I think I'm going to skip the gym tomorrow, take a breather, yaknow? But I'll try to get a walk in, or some yoga. And I'll be at the gym on Wednesday. I miss smoking weed. (It helped with the acute symptoms, but I think it made the chronic stuff worse.)
