Part of the reason I feel like I’ve been ratcheting is that I’ve spent a chunk of the past fortnight working in an aged care facility, and it’s been like sandpaper on my soul.
This is one of the better companies, and isn’t a dig on them, so much as how we as a society treat people at the end of their lives.
About the “balancing act” of for-profit companies extracting the maximum that they can from residents and their families to provide a “return” to shareholders, while trying to work out what the bare minimum services they can provide to those same residents are.
While the staff are literally overworked and underpaid for dealing with some of the worst literal shit you can’t even imagine.
What’ll really bake your noodle is when you realise how much DARVO is not just weaponised by angry men, but it’s been built into the structure of society.
It’s not that corporations spent decades colluding to bury the evidence of climate change, it’s that you don’t recycle enough.
It’s not that companies have repeatedly cut corners & staff to increase profits, and C-suite salaries, it’s that you don’t work hard enough to justify a salary increase.
It’s not that governments have collectively and consistently preferenced the wealthy landlord “investor” class in their policies and made housing precarious and unaffordable, it’s that you ate too much avocado toast.
It’s not that the economy is structured around having a permanently unemployed pool of people, it’s that people are lazy just don’t want to work.
It’s not that dental care is unaffordable, it’s just that I prioritised keeping a roof over my family’s head, and food on the table, in a single income household, over getting dental work done. I brought it on myself.
Bought a smart plug on Amazon last yesterday and installed it this morning. Outside. For the gas heater.
Which now regularly fails to turn on, and has had a technician out twice.
Last time the tech came out, he told me to let the agent know if the issue was resolved, and he’d come back the next day if not.
Agent doesn’t answer phone. Agent doesn’t answer emails. Agent’s phone now redirects to a full voicemail box, and cannot accept messages.
So I’ve bought a smart plug so I can power cycle the gas heater from inside the house during winter. Woke up to 15C inside the house this morning, but it’s been as low as 12C inside some nights.
It was 5C outside this morning as I stood outside and manually power cycled the gas heater at 5:30am.
(Heater will attempt to fire up three times, and if it doesn’t light, will switch itself off, requiring a manual hard reset).
I'm effectively trying to use tech to work around a fault.
I'm wondering if I can get some sort of smart thermometer for inside the house that if it drops to a certain temperature inside, it can trigger the smart switch to turn off, wait 60 seconds, and turn back on again.
I cannot explain why I am Not OK, because I cannot find the words to explain why I am Not OK, particularly in a way that neurotypicals could understand and find acceptable.
I have commitments and responsibilities and demands on my time that have reached the point that I "should" be able to cope, if I was neurotypical.
I will grind out the next two days, and then my weekend will be a write off.
Then I'm into another on-call week, which is this, but on steroids.
I love it when an iOS app that has been free for several years suddenly moves to a subscription model of $4.99... per week.
In short, screw you [again], Evernote.
Edit: To be clear, this was Evernote's iOS app Scannable. I gave Evernote the boot years ago when they said "LOL, free plan only two devices now, screw you(ser)!"
@grissallia as @daedalus pointed out in his newsletter, the only people that really cared about news disappearing for a month back in 2021 were journalists. Nobody else really gave a flying fuck.