Weird night last night, went to bed at about 19h, because I was really tired. Couldn't get to sleep for more than an hour (a totally unusual thing for me - usually five minutes and I'm gone). Then my sleep was fitful, until about 23h when I got up again. This, too, is unusual (the fitful bit).
All got sorted when I went back to bed, though, 3 solid hours after a few minutes to get to sleep. shrug Weird, like I said.
Got a light day today, which is nice: one meeting at 17h, which is inconveniently late, but I'll cope. It's the final meeting for the granting foundation I've been working for. Which is good, because it means the honorarium is coming soon, and I could use it.
Before then, though, I have to go through and score the applications I'm responsible for. That's for this afternoon. This morning, I think I'm going rally driving (virtually). Been about seven or eight months since I drove, but hopefully it won't take too long to get my sharpness back.
One thing I don't understand: cheating in video games. Like, what's the fucking point? You're playing a game with yourself. Whom are you cheating? Great, so you got a world record time with cheating. You're always going to know you didn't really do it, so it's got to be pretty hollow victory.
Thankfully, the newer rally game I'm playing (EA WRC) has rigorous anti-cheating methods. I'm down with that. I don't mind being the 357th fastest person in the game, if that's what I can actually do.
Anyway, that's my post, and I'm sticking to it. Hope your day {is | was | will be} excellent.
That's a long time. There are local rally clubs all over Ontario, which is nice, because they put on public events a few times a year. I got to be a navvy for a misogynist dickwad with a gnarly WRX for one event. Couldn't stand him, but I'll admit he could drive like a demon. We were bombing down a snow-covered forest road at about 140 km/h one dark night, and it finished its straightaway section with a hard left just at the shore of a lake. I swear I thought we were going to launch off the snowbank and into the lake.
@oldladyplays I love the idea of doing up a 2wd class car - it'd be a hoot and I could build a reasonable one. But same effort on circuit cars has a lot more events a lot closer
To any of those with contact with young people who are out protesting for Palestinians.
When the cops come for you, like they did, with heavy hands and empty orders, they're doing that because the boss class wants to scare you. They want you to think that they're going to blackball everyone who ever got a charge for protesting from ever getting a corporate job.
This is bullshit. There are too many of you, in a full-employment economy, for them to shut you out. And if not, you'll find ways to start your own organizations, and build society differently that way.
They're doing it this way because they're afraid of you. They're afraid of your passion and commitment in pursuing something you know could damage a career. They worry about having employees like that, because your kinds of people become the seeds of unions. Of worker power.
Keep it up. Keep up the pressure. You're winning. They don't know it yet, but you're winning.
I can't be with you right now, because of my disabilities and health stuff. But I'm behind you. Cheering you on. You're doing the right thing, the moral thing, and doing so with deliberation and hard thinking.
One thing transition brought me was relief from the rage. I often wonder how many of you had this too. In part, this is because in the fight/flight/et c. response, I'm pretty much always ready for the fight. Or I was.
I once had a car cut across four lanes to cut me off so he could turn left off the one-way street at the next light. I honked, he flipped me off. When he pulled up at the light, I bumped his car. Just a little. Not enough to set off airbags. Just a wee tappy-tap.
That one cost me CAD500 to square away.
Cut to five years later, post-transition, I'm in a gas station in downtown Toronto. We pulled up behind someone and started working the pump. The person in front drove off.
Someone pulled up behind us and honked that we should get out of the way, and go use the other pump. We waved them around. They declined, with a prominent showing of middle fingers to accompany it. My two friends, a lesbian couple, both got out of their front seats to challenge these other women to a fight. I jumped out even quicker, and got my biggest-body-on-the-site between the two groups, arms out. And they start trying to take pokes at each other, around me. I'm blocking these. They all got frustrated, but I stayed there until everyone calmed down and got back in their cars. I finished pumping the gas, went to pay, and we drove off.
What happened between incident A and incident B? Estrogen, baby. I had transitioned, and finally gotten on hormones. And when I did, the rage just...floated away like a soap bubble on the breeze. Pop! I had lived with that rage, I hadn't realized, for all the previous 27 years of my life.
And transition made it go "poof".
I thought that was all of it. I would still get angry occasionally, but the daily undercurrent of rage at the world that I'd felt since I realised I was a girl at 4...that went.
Then I had my bottom surgery. And found out what a life without T would be like. I lost almost all aggression. The rage fuel tank was empty.
@oldladyplays it's funny how these things go for different people... I was kind of too disassociated and numb to get to anything more than "enough performative anger that people don't ask questions". And I'm actually... not far off the needle sitting on the Empty peg now but more
Just because I know there are folk out there who need to hear it: not only are Black professionals not more likely to make life-threatening errors than white professionals, the racist headwinds those Black professionals faced to become recognized and credentialed made it so that only the very best got through.
The hardest-working, smartest people got through. Sound like anything we're nominally pursuing?
This is why they say that a Black person has to work twice as hard, be twice as good, as a white person to get similar success. Not only should you not cringe when you see a Black pilot flying your plane, you should salute her for the hard-ass work she did to get into that pilot's seat. She is, by facing the fires of racist hell, circle by circle, going to be among the most qualified pilots you could find.
It is blatantly and self-evidently counter-productive to try to segregate certain jobs, any jobs. By definition, the most qualified person should win, no? That's what our supposed meritocracy means?
Then it's about time we faced reality, and recognized that the systems we've built in majority-white Western nations produce top-quality graduates...from the repressed groups. It's human nature. If the representation is less than in public life, then there are fewer spots being chased by the same number of people. That's going to inflate the grade level needed to get in above that of the best students in majority populations. It's just reality. Math.
This is how deep white supremacy colonizes our minds. We buy into these false, self-serving white supremacist beliefs, like "affirmative action means the unqualified will get through".
We as white people in those countries need to do more to unravel these beliefs when we encounter them. You may not convince the bigot in front of you. But you might just sway the ignorant person listening to both of you.
Be safe, but be bold: challenge racism where you see it. And learn to see it better. I will be.
@oldladyplays I'm so glad to hear your girlie AF voice again and even more glad that you and Michael are having so much fun. You deserve that, sweetie, so revel in it! We love the updates. 💖
Hey, anyone know of a job opportunity for a brilliant nuclear physicist with skills to pay the bills? She's located in the Bay Area of California in the US. Check her account for a recent post on her outline of her skills:
It's fairly simple. I don't want to spend my time managing my OS. Finding drivers, and compatibility, and all that: you find that fun and interesting. I find it boring and irritating. When I sit down at my computer I want to do the thing I came there to do, not spend my time convincing my computer to run properly. With Windoze, I generally don't have to do that. It's not perfect at eliminating that stuff, but it's a lot less technical and involved than running a Linux distro.
Yes, I'm sure you're able to do just that. Make room in your brain for the idea that not everyone is capable of that, or wants to be capable of that. While I've no doubt that the sign I've hung out here will draw the Reply Guys like no one's business, you're not going to get me to change my mind. I know what I enjoy doing, and maintaining my OS is not among it.
I built - from scraps - my first PC at 14, in 1980. I'm not indigitate (think illiterate, but for digital stuff). I just don't want to. That's not where I get my entertainment from computers.
I'm very glad you get the enjoyment you do out of Linux. Long may it continue. But make room for the idea that we don't all enjoy computing in the way that you do, and that that is okay.
Or (tl;dr version): Damnit Jim, I'm a linguist not a mechanic!
@Uraael Haman Kadon, but it's not the speakers. They work perfectly well with Windows or macOS.
It seems to be connected to Ubuntu's power_save feature somehow but disabling it, even permanently, only yields temporary results. Click, click, click, as soon as any speaker or headphone is connected to the audio port (not happening with bluetooth though, which is weird).
btw, that you expect me to run into trouble in the first place is already not filling me with confidence 😅 but, yes, I try to be fair, sometimes it does happen under Windows too – it was quite an adventure to get sound working properly in Midnight Suns, for example. sometimes software is just written crappily.
Also, again, I could name a lot of things that are much worse in Windows. I'm not keen on doing any actual work on this platform either.
btw, that you expect me to run into trouble in the first place is already not filling me with confidence 😅
Yeah, I thought that as I was typing it, hehe, but I have said the experience is on par with Windows, not perfect. ProtonDb is my PCGamingWiki for Linux. I guess I had a little panic: I'm not used to people listening to me! 🤣
Harmon Kardon, eh? Nice. I didn't think it would be the speakers. My next question was distro. I think everyone uses Pipewire for audio these days which I've had zero complaints with, so the popping issue is curious. Excessive Power Management does sound like a likely culprit.
Mmmm...just spent the morning nerding out with a friend about languages. It was glorious. We must have talked for about an hour and a half. About polyglots, and Armenian history, and classical Japanese, and all kinds of stuff. I love having friends who know more than me about stuff. 😁
A friend of mine with significant visual impairment pointed out that the lack of description on images is a cultural problem on Fedi, not an individual failure.
So, let me do a thing to help build that culture.
How I Do Image Description
I close my eyes. I look at the image first, and close my eyes. Then I try to describe it without looking. I find this focuses me on the important things to get the image across, without getting distracted by unnecessary detail.
It's okay to peek. I have a strong visual memory, so I'm good with one look, but not everyone is. But do try and see the picture in your mind, if you're not aphantasic.
If you are, I'm not sure if I know a way to help. I apologise; I don't know enough about it to know yet. I did want to acknowledge that not everyone can do this approach.
Anyway, that's my contribution today to creating a culture of image description.
@oldladyplays
I post a lot of my nature/landscape/wildlife photos. What try to do is give a broad description, and then more detailed, and then maybe a description of the circumstances of when I took the photo, and sometimes my reaction to what’s happened, and sometimes I’ll mention something like historical info about the location, or if it’s an animal I’ll give some tidbit of info about them. Maybe I’ll give details, like sparkling water, or orange skies. I try to tell a story.
@oldladyplays
I want people to want to click on a photo of mine to see what story I’m telling this time, when they see another photo show up in their tl.
I will say as a preface to this post that I dearly love my young friends. I honestly do.
But sometimes, it don't half hurt to be friends with them. Like when a group of us are talking, most in their 20s, plus me, and one of them talks about how gross it is when some old person hits on them, "all grey hair and wrinkles in their 50s".
Like...ouch? I mean, yes, it's a little creepy when someone that age hits on someone so young. But have a bit of empathy, folks, for who's listening when you're talking. I didn't really need to hear today that I'm gross for being all grey hair and wrinkles in my 50s.
I know I'm not. I don't desperately need reassurance. But yeesh. Just...have some empathy for your listeners? A bit?
A cis man's take on Trans Day of Visibility and Easter Sunday being on the same day this year. It won't go where you think it will, based on how he looks and talks. Give him a shot, and see if you still feel that way when he's finished talking.