@elana@babka.social
@elana@babka.social avatar

elana

@elana@babka.social

I'm a newly minted Doctor of Smartness in ancient stuff. I live in Toronto, and I like cats, pretty dresses, and video games. Spent my childhood / youth being asked "where are you from" by Ashkenazi classmates at my Jewish private school, and my adulthood trying to reconnect to my Japanese heritage. The "current cultural climate" has me running back to safety in the Jewish community. Thanks for being here for me now.

Formerly elana@mastodon.social, which I still use for Elastic Search purposes.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

elana, to random
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achieving anything these days comes with a minimum of 150% effort tax of 'assembling the will to try'

thatkatharine, to random
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Listening to a podcast that mentions the pandemic, in past tense natch, and how it changed their behaviour re: being more cognizant about hand washing and gross surfaces. And, y’know, they sound really earnest about what they think they learned. Truly, it seems like people learned about hand washing and face touching in 2020, then got their initial vax in 2021, flung off their cloth masks, and never gave another thought about Covid.

elana,
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@thatkatharine it grosses me out so bad to know how many people weren’t washing their hands frequently before 2020. it's another aspect of that feeling of “we are not in the society I thought we were in”. blech!!!!!!!!

elana, to random
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while all roads do eventually lead to cat videos, tonight we found a different route. I was down in the dumps and in desperation J-M searched "camels drinking water vigorously"

it worked. if only I could enjoy water as profoundly as camels!!! what incredible beings. the world is a place of wonder

elana, to random
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For those of us who need fire once in a while and don’t like plastic or single-use things, what do we like to use? I’ve had the same Zippo lighter since 2002, and I’m getting rather annoyed at the way the fuel has always evaporated by the next time I pick it up. I’ll use up the canister of Zippo fluid I have now but surely we have the technology for some better alternative!!

Edit: actual experience with a thing you use yourself and like is the most useful information here, thanks!

elana,
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@AdaraAstin I got burned (haha) by a box of matches that went bad midway through, and stopped lighting easily or at all. Nothing quite so unsettling as throwing match after match in the garbage (I soak them first….) And I’m sure you can relate to wanting to cut down on the number of things that require intermittent replenishment! I do like matches, but only when they work 😁

elana, to random
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sometimes I need a nap after eating pasta for lunch, can you imagine me with post-exertional malaise? hell no, I'm wearing a respirator for the rest of my life

elana, to random
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On this Yom HaShoa (Holocaust Memorial Day), all I would ask of my non-Jewish followers is to type "Holocaust inversion" into your search engine of choice, learn whatever you'd like to learn, and then notice how often this rhetoric comes up on the Fediverse.

Just notice. That's all.

elana, to random
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My Discord community started watching Batman: The Animated Series on Saturdays, and because poison gas that causes a variety of emotional responses is a popular trope (Scarecrow’s fear gas, Joker’s laughing gas), we’ve seen Batman wear this AMAZING respirator a couple of times already. I want one!!! It looks kind of like some of the cool 3M or Drager ones when they have no cartridges installed 🤔

elana, to random
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I offhandedly remarked to a friend this afternoon that people wear surgical masks instead of proper effective respirators because they are caught in a 'reasonableness' fallacy that makes them pick whichever option appears to be the 'middle' option (neither an under-response nor an over-response), which is obviously subject to whatever is arbitrarily being presented to them rather than a meaningful relationship to facts or efficacy. I based this on a 2022 essay about cognitive fallacies by a social psychologist who blogs infrequently at Essays You Didn't Want To Read.

seven hours later, she updated her blog with a new post making this EXACT ARGUMENT.

am I a witch?

(it's a great essay: https://essaysyoudidntwanttoread.home.blog/2024/05/04/clowns-to-the-left-of-me-jokers-to-the-right-here-i-am-stuck-in-the-middle-with-you/ )

elana, to random
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I didn’t just lose faith in institutions. They didn’t just fuck up and leave me confused and adrift. They made errors that were painfully obvious, that were screamed about by many people, and which have had pretty much the exactly predicted consequences.

They fucked up, and my faith in them was replaced by a new faith in myself: in my own judgment and reason.

Play rugged individualism games, win rugged individualism prizes, I guess.

(I hate it. I’m ready to live in a society again.)

elana, to random
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"you're still avoiding covid because you're a risk-averse health freak"

lol I eat like trash, live in a gremlin cave, and never exercise. I just don't want to kill people

a sequel to this old toot: https://mastodon.social/@elana/111307053342679846

elana,
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@eniko oooo look at you, so demanding, wanting your most precious and irreplaceable thinking organ to continue functioning 🤪 I bet you still want your blood vessels to communicate oxygen too, princess 😆

elana,
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@eniko looks good to me 😄

hoity toity, breathe-y wheethe-y, thinky winky, robust immune response-bobust immune response, all the things 😆

elana, to random
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things that used to be maladaptive and are now highly protective:

2020: being a hoarder
2021: being antisocial
2022–2023: being an outcast
2024: being lactose intolerant 😂

elana, to random
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Okay billionaires, you don’t want to be taxed, fine, but at least SPEND your money somewhere. It’s unseemly to have so much hoarded like that for no purpose. You need help? I can move it around for you. I can get you down to millionaire status right quick with some good old fashioned stick-to-it-iveness

elana, to random
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I’ll just put on one of my favourite relaxing sewing channels while I have a late night snack, what’s next on her channel?–

Oh, an absolutely horrific story about WWII POW labour and textile manufacturing, okay then 😵

I’m so glad I basically divested from fast fashion as part of the Great Lifestyle Reset of 2020 😵‍💫

https://youtu.be/0pJwJCwvYiI

elana,
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[wearing a top that I bought in approximately 2006 that at this point is more holes than shirt]

You don’t understand, I’m being sustainable 😆

“But what if you need to go out and see anyone or if someone unexpectedly drops by–“

[loud, raucous, healthy-lung’ed laughter]

elana, to random
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me: "Meow Meow–!!!"

J-M: "what??"

me: "Meow Meow just stuck her face into my cup and sneezed!"

J-M: "😏 Whose cup?"

me: "…my cup?"

J-M: "🎶​ I don't think she agrees… 🎶​ 😁​"

elana,
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@eniko 😆 Meow Meow says: "it's okay, we're in a bubble!" 😆

she sleeps right on my face and would lick the insides of my bronchioles if she could 😆 absolutely zero concept of personal space that one 🥰

elana, to random
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My radical activism, today as every other day, is Existing While Sad.

elana,
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@AdaraAstin thank you for being here with me too 🤗

elana, to random
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My Sims game is a matrilineal epic of passing along generational wealth to deposit satellite familial branches into every mansion in each neighbourhood. My current heiress was moved early into her appointed mansion because her grandfather was unexpectedly abducted by aliens and gave birth to twin alien girls, which had never happened to me before, and I really wanted to give them household space to have their own human-alien hybrid babies. So now I have a blended family of two alien ladies, one of whom has a husband, their purple child, and the human teenager who was supposed to be the main character 😆​

elana,
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important Sims update: one of the twin alien ladies joined the Scientist career and has invented a transporter device that will allow her to visit her homeworld. I've never played the Scientist career with anyone else but I assume bringing an alien there will trigger a completely different experience than with a non-alien Sim. hyped for the welcome party that will surely happen as soon as I arrive

elana,
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important Sims update: my Scientist has reached level 10 in her career, which was a prerequisite for the portal upgrade to get her to be able to visit her alien homeworld. we are now in a race against time: will her niece get married and need to move out before her next scheduled workday when she can work on the portal? if so, will I juggle two households at the same time so I can see what happens to both people??? stay tuned

elana,
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important Sims update: I decided to cheese it and create a separate save to see what happens to the niece and then come back later to mess around with the level 10 Scientist. the timelines have diverged 👽

elana,
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Because of the weirdo way I play The Sims, I end up selling and re-buying the same retail property over and over in order to liquidate it and then pass it on to the next generation. There's probably a smarter way to do this, but I guess I don't take things that seriously. Anyway, it's interesting to start over again with all the perk points and build the business back up again, while selling masterpiece paintings created by their great-grandparent or whatever

elana,
@elana@babka.social avatar

@Bam 😃 thank you!!! I'm so happy it brings joy to someone else 😊

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