#62: Shocked and odd

Actual updates

I’m writing this right after a swath of bad news, and there’s no indication that’s going to calm down in the next couple weeks¹ before I send this out. I’m feeling sick whenever I think of a particular bit of (supposed) bluster about annexing a sovereign nation (from which I happen to hail!), I’m not sleeping, I’m on edge, my stomach hurts, I’m short with people I should be understanding with. But the one thing that’s come up in a few different conversations is that this strategy of a heavy barrage of aggressive legislation specifically geared to upset particular groups of people does two things. First, it’s a signal of solidarity to the “you hate who I hate, and I like that” contingent. And second, and this is something that has been stated openly, this is a strategy to demoralize, overwhelm, and subdue opposition. Am I alone in, when faced with a situation where you know what reaction someone wants to engender in you, having an immediate reaction of

I’m very mature.

But in seriousness, I do not wish to be cowed. And just because some miserable little dictators want me to be is not a good enough reason. The best advice is the same as last time: determine what the one or two most important topics are to you (I know they’re all important! But you will spread yourself thin and wind up not able to be effective at any of them), find who is already working on those things, and help in whatever way they need and that matches your skills. Think about what you have to offer. It can be a skill or an ability, it can be money, it can be looking like a good little member of the establishment and therefore able to run interference for other people who would get hassled way more than you would. It can be knowing a lot of people and putting folks in touch with who they need!

I believe in you! I know there’s something you can do. If you want a hand determining what that is, let me know! I sound terrifically optimistic. I’m not, about The Situation At Large, but I am, about the people I know.

It’s also funny for me to sound optimistic when I’m freezing my ass off. I don’t feel personally optimistic (do I ever?), because I can only prove I have 10 toes by counting them, not by feeling them. We’re saving money with the heat turned off for more hours of the day, after a big heating bill last month (update: also this month! even worse in fact). The other day it was in the 50s² in the room I was working in. I love feeling like “being able to feel my extremities” is an extravagance!!

Small victories(?) department: I just felt an earthquake! So, first of all, that gives away the date I was writing this particular paragraph on, and second of all, this was a small small one, 4.1 magnitude, centered just off the coast of Maine. The house shuddered here and I heard a rumble, and thought it was something going catastrophically wrong with our heater (or perhaps a large truck going down our small street). Neither appeared to be the case, and light finally dawned on me that I had FOR ONCE not missed the geologic event, unlike last time.

Everything’s fine - nothing so much as tipped over off a shelf - but it’s been a solid 20+ years since I’ve experienced an earthquake, and it’s nice to be able to participate in The Moment. Besides, small nothing earthquakes like this are kind of fun. Obviously real earthquakes are terrifying and very serious, and buildings around here are NOT built for them and it would be disastrous, but a little jiggle of the earth? That’s just for funsies.

What am I reading

Ok, so I’m nearly through this Hank Williams biography, entitled Hank Williams: The Biography, in case you like a bit of truth in advertising; I honestly knew little about his life before reading this, so it’s been illuminating.

One thing I didn’t expect it to be about in such a major way was the business of song ownership. Some of the biggest conflicts in the book are based on someone claiming ownership over a song that wasn’t theirs, or demanding that their cut of the royalties from a given song should have been higher, or just figuring out who a certain song ought to have belonged to. The early radio music era was just terrible for the performers and songwriters, honestly. They were commodities, shuffled around to shows at someone else’s whims, getting little or nothing from their own hard work - I realize the difference hasn’t been stark for most of the rest of the 20th and 21st centuries, but it’s at least a LITTLE better now.

Also, yet another example of chronic back pain leading to someone’s demise - although this time it was the demise of the pain sufferer, via the intermediary of how it was medicated (or “medicated”). That’s all I’ll say on that!

Interestingly it hasn’t made me go on a rip through his discography (yet). To me this has felt more like the story of a man whose talent was used to enrich other people, who had people arguing over him all his life, who was no angel himself (a string of ex-wives and girlfriends would agree), with the music of it all coming in a distant second place. I should delve in, though.

Some links

You know I appreciate a top 5, and I also appreciate a sandwich, and in these trying times, I imagine you’d like to see what David Lynch’s were. David Lynch’s Top Five Sandwiches

Why are people throwing money at these health companies? It’s ripe for scams and that’s why there’s been so many. And you’re playing with real human lives. A Startup Claimed Its Device Could Cure Cancer. Then Its Patients Began Dying

This is so true; I have no idea what the desert smells like but I know what home smells like, for all the different places I’ve called home. Scent Makes a Place

It’s not a long read, but this remembrance of a cat found in dire circumstances packs an emotional punch. My Cat Mii

AI datacenters, blighted crops, and power both electrical and political. It annoys me every time someone who should know better acts like AI is a lark and not that serious, but more than making me angry, this piece made me sad. Power Failure - On Landscape and Abandonment

Now this, this is a yarn. The Twin Bandits who (Nearly) Outsmarted Australian Police

My one problem here is that I can’t tell how funny this is supposed to be. The descriptions of the original meanings of the words read like very deadpan humour (original meaning of “cloakroom”: a room for cloaks. no-shit.gif), but I get the sneaking suspicion they aren’t meant to be. Still! Interesting to think about the terms and sayings that are still in use but whose original reference no longer exists. The gesture section was particularly interesting to me! 36 Examples of Anachronyms

This is true actually. My “third spaces” are all online. And partly this is because the internet is terrific for this since the space can include people from all across the world, and partly it’s because I have a kid and live across town from my friends and can’t go to a physical third space anymore. Do you have an in-person one? You Can’t Handle a Third Space

After learning that her mother’s abrupt personality change was due to a rare form of dementia, this woman launched herself into finding a cure or a treatment, so that she could spare herself and her daughter. Of course, the NIH just got defunded, so who’s to say what’s going on with the state of that research!! Great! We’re doing so great. Fighting to Avoid Her Mother’s Fate, For Her Daughter’s Sake

This isn’t primarily about how the whales found peace during wartime (it’s because the whaling industry was suspended due to all the war going on, spoiler alert), but moreso about how stress is saved in the body and transmitted through a population, which also feels particularly relevant right now. How Whales Found Peace in War

Imagine not just having to live through the most thinness-obsessed era of recent history in a body that is culturally proscribed but also having to write about diets, do them for your writing, and then have to prove whether they worked or not. Nightmarish. A Diet Writer’s Regrets

Don’t worry, it’s not Little Free Libraries, it’s for real! India’s Free Library Movement Counters Caste Discrimination and Authoritarianism

“Tarnishing” is not the right word - they’re flaking and crumbling and coming apart (especially the bronze ones, which seems extra mean, even if it’s just for metallurgical reasons). Paris Olympics Medals Are Tarnishing, Putting LVMH in the Spotlight

Meanwhile, here’s something that was evidently built to last. Missing Medieval Chesspiece Discovered in Family Home After 200 Years, Now Worth Nearly $1M

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

If we’re being honest, the song that really ought to be on here is the Charlotte Diamond children’s classic, “I Am A Pizza.” I played it for Hap the other day, and now he makes up his own rhymes on the repeat lines, and we sing it while he’s brushing his teeth (for some reason). But I’m committed to grownup music in general for this section, so even though that’s what I’ve heard more than anything else, well. I will also not be subjecting you to any portion of the original Broadway cast recording of Les Miserables, which I grew up on and just revisited in its entirety also this past month.

Not to be too terminally online, but: KRYSTAL FUCKING SWORDS (if we ever actually met, she would probably have nothing but disdain for my musical taste but I’ve made my peace with that, I deserve it)

First of all, this has been in my head for weeks, and second of all, I sang along to it in front of the cat and he left the room. All his taste is in his mouth!!³

A buddy made a playlist for These Current Times, and listening to it made me think of this 1998 song that, shall we say, captures a certain mood. In fact, I might make my own “apt for the current moment playlist” with this on it and a few others.

This month’s top 5: parts of my body that hurt currently

1. I’ve done something unfortunate to one side of my neck (I assume related to sleeping on the couch, which I have to so that the cat doesn’t wake everyone else up too). Today it’s actually pretty good, but it’s just one sudden move from an eye-opening jolt of pain.

2. My toes, whose chilblains are way worse this year than in years past, probably due to the fact that my shoes have holes in them and we keep having expenses that cause me to put off buying new ones.

3. My fingers - Reynaud’s strikes again!! See above re: expenses, but this time for putting the heat on. Alas, that means I’m in line for one of the few ways a laptop job can mess you up bodily: these are the fingers I type with, so I can’t bundle them up in gloves (no, not even fingerless ones, the extra padding that the fabric creates between fingers makes it disconcertingly hard to type).

4. You know those pains you get sometimes in the underboob/side area that make it tough to take a full breath, and you have to jam a knuckle up under your ribs to sort it out?⁴ Anyway, I gave myself some injury in that same region - something itched or hurt and I pressed it too hard and felt something give way - so for the last few days that’s been an ongoing state. It feels more muscle-related than anything else, given what movements make it hurt. Anyway. It’s no fun! Especially in concert with the neck thing.

5. I do not at this very moment have a debilitating headache, but at some point before I click “publish” it’s pretty much a certainty.

Here’s something I wrote the other day:

Indeed I might wind up rewriting this section if it changes enough between now and send time.

And behold, it has come to pass. While many of the most horrific dictates are still in action, several have already been altered or rolled back or “paused,” and it’s basically because of either widespread public outcry or a foreign government saying “sure, we’ll give you what you want (aka something we’re already doing)” and making him feel like he really Accomplished Something. I’m sure they’re not done; I’m sure they’ll try to destroy something else tomorrow. But it’s useful to see how these creeps behave when faced with disapproval, and that is by backing down. Not every one of them is desperate to be popular⁵, but a lot of them are, and a lot of the high-level ones are in particular. So blowing up your elected officials’ phone lines about bad ideas and generally making noise are good and useful tactics; if it becomes clear that the country at large hates something, these guys will back it out, because they want - they think, in fact, that they have a right - to be loved. Prove they aren’t, in a way they can’t deny or rationalize away or minimize, and they’ll panic.

That being said, watching actual elected politicians go “golly, someone ought to do something about this!” as if they aren’t the very someones in question - it sounds like a lot of them are hell-bent on not taking this seriously. Just because the people perpetrating the outrages are fundamentally ridiculous doesn’t mean they aren’t doing very serious things that have to be opposed as vigorously as possible, ideally by people who have the most possible clout to oppose them.

Okay, I really have to send this thing or I’ll have to rewrite this section for the 4th time because ANOTHER damn thing will have happened. BYE!

_{1 ahahaha like it’s going to be that quick}

_{2 50 F = 10 C}

_{3 also bad, have you seen what cats eat?}

_{4 this is normal, right? at least for boobs-havers? RIGHT??}

_{5 for instance, the religious wingnuts, or the proud “raging misogynist” (his words) who is general counsel for the OPM}