jesse_the_k | Entries tagged with ponderments

Mary When You Follow Her

https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/2018/06/mary-when-you-follow-her

Holy wow can Carmen Maria Machado carmenmmachado write!

This 1200-word story was written, oulipian-style, to a restraint. It’s so successful you won’t even notice. Can’t summarize; it does contain: Dominicans, teenagers, runaways, night, summer, love, kidnap, danger, neighborhood, work, poverty, harassment.

Abstract Art without Artists

Visual delights abound at the Reddit community devoted to unstirred paint — that is, what you see after you pry the lid off house paint.

https://www.reddit.com/r/unstirredpaint/

Shape similar to limp head of cabbage unfolding in blue-grey-green-white-swirls

jessamyn is an internet elder, former MetaFilter mod, activist librarian, and originator of the warrant canary. She communicates a lot in this short essay examining selling out and/or compromising principles:

Compromising your Principles

This list could also easily be titled “Five ways to console yourself when you’re a sell-out.” I see it both ways at the same time. My ideals need to be made real through an existing imperfect system if I’m going to get anything done at all.

Sometimes you can’t just be there, you have to get there. That takes time and possibly doing things that feel less important along the way. Be okay with that time. It’s necessary.

Everyone’s hardest struggle is their hardest struggle.

Be tactical. Realize you’re playing the long game.

Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.

Everyone, everywhere, is in some sort of compromise position with their values.

Sometimes there are problems that money can solve. Know which ones those are.

https://medium.com/message/on-compromise-4fe1a41ecc7d

These occurred to

sasha_feather and me over lunch. Feel free to add yours in comments!

Poll #23029

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34

View Respondents

Life is better thanks to

View Answers

parchment paper
10 (29.4%)

carabiners
12 (35.3%)

rubber bands
8 (23.5%)

backpacks
22 (64.7%)

rubber husbands
9 (26.5%)

hairbrushes
8 (23.5%)

castering wheels
9 (26.5%)

checkboxes ☐ ☑ ☒
21 (61.8%)

see my comment
4 (11.8%)

It's raining again, and the pollen is mighty in the air (the result of botanical sexism).

So every time Bella goes out to pee, she patiently tolerates our toweling dry her feet and underbelly.

She loves attention, so it's no problem.

But what does she think we're doing? Does she think we have a toe bean kink? Does she understand "cleaning paws"?

Current Mood: curious

(cross-posted to

access_fandom)

I'm not going to provide a link, for reasons that will become clear.

That announcement pushed a whole row of my Assistive Technology Geek buttons, and I gotta rant. I'll use the LEGO braille printer "BRAIGO" to illustrate why I get so hot under the collar when I see this shit. (My cred: I've hung out with people who use assistive technology since 1982; I designed and sold braille translation software and embossers in the late eighties; and I've personally depended on assistive technology since 1991.) Based on thirty year's close attention to the development/PR/funding/purchasing/abandonment cycle for assistive technology, here's my take on the BRAIGO announcement.

( DESIGNERS GET COOKIES FOR PROTOTYPES, NOT AFFORDABLE PRODUCTS )

( DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT EXPERT ENDUSERS IS POINTLESS ) That's why the BRAIGO can't create useful braille.

( PR BECOMES DISINFORMATION ) A $350 embosser would be an amazing thing. Hundreds of well-intentioned editors and readers are willing to take the inventor's word for it. But this device is not a embosser.

( EXPERTS ARE AVAILABLE on REQUEST! ) We live in a press release culture: what the company wants to say is what we hear. Or in this case, what a 12 year old (who mentions absolutely no contact with braille users) says gets broadcast.

( FAST FACTS RE EMBOSSERS & BRAILLE )

Start from the first dot at the RNIB's Learning Braille site or pick an excellent start for adults at the Achayra firm in India. Teach more at the National Federation of the Blind's Braille is Beautiful resource for kids.

tl;dr Just because assistive technologies are tools for people with disabilities doesn't mean we must accept only good intentions. We want the best engineers working on our designs, the best marketers making them affordable, and the best politicians making them subsidized.

I had one of those encounters in the weeks before WisCon. I want to record it for posterity, and I welcome your thoughts as well.
( What she said, what I did and didn't say )
The ideal response is not having it matter it all. Not surprisingly, Dave Hingsburger's recent entry explores what it's like when we can really not care. ( Dave Hingsburger's recent entry explores what it's like when we can really not care. )

In the shower last week she carefully wielded her razor. She commented: Either shave it or braid it!

In the locker room today, she was telling of visiting a large store on a busy day. Well, she sighed Play hard or get out.

A crude admonition against workplace harassment is Don’t shit where you eat.

sasha_feather reminds me of a lesson learned in the lab: Hot glass is still clear

I’m seeing a pattern here. A message squeezed so tightly is easier to remember.

Got any to add?

Back in town, I was discussing pain with my acupuncturist (as you do). Verbalizing my experience helped me realize why my #1 pain remedy works as it does.

My neck, shoulders, arms, and lower back are subject to fibromyalgia pain. It can start with a tiny trigger — an uninvited touch to my shoulder, or skewing my neck when sleeping, or reaching too far to prevent a fall — and then spreads as a dense burning underneath my skin. The pain feels like it's larger than my body.

For two decades, both ice packs and heat packs have helped with this pain. Today I understood why. When fibro pain expands beyond my own body map, I no longer feel capable of controlling it — it's outside my purview.

The cold and heat packs work in the same way; for simplicity I'll describe the effect with the cold version.

The pack serves different functions as it gradually warms up. Initially, the ice cold sensation simply trumps the pain. But as the pack warms, the temperature difference between my skin and the throb of the pain is like a strobe light outlining the edge of my body. These bright lights illuminate which muscles and tendons to consciously relax, as well as scare away the terrorizing shades of uncontrollable pain.

The cold packs are better analgesics, when pain has already taken hold. The hot packs are kinder, and hug places before they start screaming. I don't use electric heating pads, because it's too easy to fall asleep on them and they will burn you. There are various pack systems marketed to physical and occupational therapists; one can get two cases (to cinch around one's shoulder or leg) and then three packs. Two live in the freezer and one dallies near the microwave.

I've been falling down a Sherlock (BBC TV version) rabbithole. It's been a lot of fun. One of the reasons is that the Sherlock Holmes canon is entirely in the public domain, and writers have been playing with it for more than 100 years.

The realization? I could spend the rest of my life reading nothing but Holmes pastiches, fanfiction, essays, scholarly meditations, as well as watching scores of movies (in English, Russian, and probably a dozen other tongues) and I still wouldn't read them all.

Completism is dead!

Also reading The Ticking is the Bomb by Nick Flynn. Beautiful writing, tragic meditations on parental failings, personal failings, torture and samsara.

Thanks so much for your warm thoughts on our anniversary. ( Now I'm going to natter on about why we've lasted this long. )

...and much relaxed. Our cosy cabin sheltered myself, MyGuy, my oldest friend Bountiful B (her family's cabin) and of course Lucy. Had many chances to float like lily pads (while ignoring the bluegill fish striking on our meaty white thighs).

Ate excellent meals cooked by MyGuy. Spent many hours reviewing the 30 years we've known each other.

Lucy is not a water dog, so she mainly looked longingly into the woods for deer.

Thought I might be back with a Major New Statement on Social Networking, but no.

However, why do I feel so carefree to post or comment on Google+ or Twitter, yet anx-anx-angsty re posting here? Huge overlap in readers wherever.

Contemplating what's available at northern garage sales and flea markets as far as SFF goes, not much. Which highlights the humor of this "starter kit" for the Vorkosigan Saga
http://jjhunter.dreamwidth.org/84741.html

Arghh! Time to eat dinner!

Every morning I have the same darn thing for breakfast (steamed squash, amaranth, blueberries, broiled chicken, nuts). I daily wield my favorite Santoku knife to turn a lump of chicken into shreddy bits.

This Monday I experimented and simply positioned the knife edge on the chicken. The weight of the regularly-sharpened blade was enough to do most of the work, making a clean cut. I realized that I had been holding my arms and neck and back tense, guarding against a slip or a tremor or weakness.

When I let the knife lead the way, it's much less work. This is probably also true in many other areas of my life. This will be interesting to learn.

Current Mood: contemplative

is the word you didn't realize you needed to have. It's been crowd source by the o-so-classy folks over at Effing Dykes. Not work safe. Finish all food and fluids so as to prevent choking hazards.

Current Mood: giggly

( an obituary over the weekend introduces me to a writer worth finding )

begin quote When filling out a form for the Ministry of Justice that asked [the deceased woman] to report any losses inflicted by her husband’s arrest and execution, Ms. Kovaly drew up a list that included “loss of honor,” “loss of health” and “loss of faith in the Party and in justice.” Only at the end of her 10-item list did she write “loss of property.”

“I carry the past inside me like an accordion, like a book of picture postcards that people bring home as souvenirs from foreign cities, small and neat,” she wrote in her memoir. “But all it takes is to lift one corner of the top card for an endless snake to escape, zigzag joined to zigzag, the sign of the viper, and instantly all the pictures line up before my eyes.” quote ends

Hida Kovaly was a Czech woman of letters, who translated the "great men" of the 20th century from English and German into her native tongue. She lived through her country's occupation and destruction by two totalitatian regimes, and died there free.

A unauthorized scanned reproduction of a CPJ rave review essay by a U.S. think-tanker meditates on the importance of understanding the delicious appeal and the ultimate weakness of totalitarianisms, which we may think we already understand. But could it hurt to learn more? Significant portions of that same article are in text in this blog post. There's a typically detailed and footnoted review from the wonders that is the H- lists (in this case founding mama H-NET)

While I want to steer a course away from an unthinking elder-worship, most people who have survived that long have learned many things worth learning. (While having had an exceptionally strong body & mind as well access to food and travel at crucial times.) There are literally uncountable millions of 90-yr-olds whose wisdom we'll never hear from the short and brutal 20th Century.

Current Mood: melancholy

Loud as lightning! Bright as thunder! Major hat-tip to

browneyedgirl65 for the link to this wonderful essay

begin quote Disability Dharma: What Including & Learning From Disability Can Teach (Everyone) About Sex
by Heather Corinna

Sometimes we also need to accept what our body does totally out of our control, whether we like it or not. That might be ejaculating before we'd like, farting during sex, making certain noises or things like muscle spasms, urinating during some kinds of sex or having certain body parts just stop working when we're not done using them yet. Some people with some kinds of disabilities need to accept that it might take them longer to connect with their own bodies sexually or with someone else's in some ways, or take longer to learn to be sexual with others: this is a flexibility a lot of people, especially young people, could benefit from nurturing with sex and sexuality.

Know what else inclusion helps with? Acceptance of everyone's sexual variation, including your own. Like understanding that we or anyone else can't "make" ourselves like things or people we don't like sexually, can't willfully change our sexual orientation or gender identity, or that something one person finds to be very sensitive on their bodies is not on our own or on a partners' body. Sometimes a given variation can be far outside of our experience or awareness, but rather than viewing that as cause to freak out or run away, we can view it as an adventure, as a whole new avenue for us to learn and experience things about ourselves or others we might not have had the opportunity to otherwise.
quote ends

Current Mood: awake

with delightful intellectual stimulation: silk, warm, soft, familiar enough to calm, new enough to soothe. Just the thing for post-election blues

You Can't Say That

Its maintainer, John Dierdorf, dierdorf@io.com, warns:

begin quote I hope writers will find this site helps them to avoid missteps, but I understand how difficult it would be to attempt to eliminate all errors without spending more time reading the Oxford English Dictionary than writing books. In theory I approve of accuracy, and I will admit I’m obsessive, but I will also admit that I like to read, and I really don’t want my favorite authors to starve — I want them to write more (possibly inaccurate) books, not fewer accurate ones. quote ends

There are many things we can do to improve everyone's lives. Voting is not the only thing, but it sure is hell is easy to do. Many have given their health, their peace of mind, and their lives for the right to exercise the franchise. If you're a U.S.an, head on down to the polls in your municipality this coming Tuesday. And while you're there, you might be wondering, "Gee, just how do people with disabilities vote?" As it happens, I know a little about this. ( And this time, dear readers, I've put it behind a cut. )

Yesterday met someone new at

beer_marmalade Feminist SF book group. He asked, as you do, "so where do you work?" I replied "I'm too disabled to work."

Asked and answered, no angst, no regret, no hasty explanation of all the things I did do that made me worthwhile once.

That only took 20 years!

Current Mood: indescribable

My "internet budget" (no access during the day) has been enlightening. When the access turns off, I feel an enormous burden lifting from my shoulders.

I find I'm posting *more* because I have a limited amount of time and therefore don't revise, reword, edit, rethink and (65% of the time) abandon my responses.

I've so enjoyed the poems popping up all around my d-roll. Let me share my enthusiasm for Lucia Perillo.

The Sweaters -- 1989

Used to be, fellows would ask if you were married--
now they just want to know what kind of diseases
you've got. Mother, what did they teach you of the future
in those nun-tended schoolrooms of the Sacred Heart?

Nobody kept cars in the city. Maybe you'd snuggle
when the subway went dark, or take walks
down castle Hill Avenue, until it ran into the Sound--
the place you called "The End": where, in late summer

the weeds were rife with burrs, and tomatoes ripened
behind the sheds of the Italians, beside their half-built
skiffs. Out on the water,
bare-legged boys balanced on the gunwales
of those wooden boats, reeling in the silver-bellied fish
that twitched and flickered while the evening dimmed to purple.

What sweater did you wear to keep you from the chill window
blowing down at The End, that evening you consented
to marry Father? The plain white mohair, or the gray
angora stitched with pearls around the collar?
Or the black cashmere, scoop-necked
and trimmed with golden braid, store in a box below the bed
to keep it hidden from Grandma? Each one prized,
like a husband, in those lean years during the war.

I see him resting his face against whichever wool it was,
a pearl or a cable or braid imprinting his cheek
while the Sound washed in, crying _again, again_.

Mother, we've abandoned all our treasured things, your sweaters
long since fallen to the moths of bitter days. And what
will I inherit to soften this hard skin, to make love tender?

Resource: Whoever is running her website is stuck in 2000: frames and bitmapped menus. Here's a page of audio links, and she's got a mittful of books available as well.

Current Mood: content

kestrell introduced me to "exo-cortex," a handy term to cover any external device that augments our sometimes-iffy human brain function. The initial exo-cortex was probably the sand-clock. Pen and paper is generally reliable, as long as one doesn't leave them somewhere. (Yesterday I lost track of both my keys and my debit card. Got 'em both back.) More recently, I've used Palm devices (in particular, my late lamented AlphaSmart DANA) and now an iPod touch and cellphone.

I just stumbled on The Quantified Self website. I can't describe it in a sentence: that link is a mittload of web- and phone-enabled tools to track one's health and well-being. These are the sort of tools I love to use, but hate to evaluate: short-term memory loss means I need exactly the sort of tool I'm testing to remember whether it was effective.

One of the hosts is a BNF in the dot-com world: Kevin Kelly, who helped start the pioneer online comm the Well, thence to Wired and hence here. He's an alpha alpha geek. The other is Gary Wolf, of whom I know nothing.

Self-efficacy is a term which keeps popping up on the site. As Wolf writes:

begin quote Self-efficacy is different than self-confidence or self-esteem. It is not a personality trait, or a set of general beliefs about oneself. Rather, it is a subjective expectation of how likely you are to succeed at some specified goal. quote ends

It seems the Quantified Self is about how to increase one's self-efficacy, and therefore, one's quality of life. Many of the articles are quite meta: people addressing the "how do we monetize personal health informatics?" question. But (as Tara Calishain's weekly newsletter used to remind me) worth a look.

Edited because I used "Qualified" instead of "Quantified" in the title, which is a pretty dorky error, yes?

Current Mood: curious

This Johari Window test purports to educate me about the difference between how I view myself and how others view me.

Does it? I need players to find out. Go! Click! You can be anonymous!

Current Mood: awake

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Inside the Little Plastic Castle

adventures with Jesse the K

Entries tagged with ponderments

boost: flash fiction; pondering selling out; beauty without artists

Mary When You Follow Her

Abstract Art without Artists

Compromising your Principles

poll: Your Favorite Technology

Mysteries of Canine Cognition

About that $350 LEGO braille printer

Drowning in micro-aggression, imposter syndrome, and rumination

Distilling Wisdom in Five Words

Managing & Understanding Pain with Ice and Hot Packs

Awesome realization

Foundations of our long-term partnership

Back from Rhinelander

Letting The Knife Lead the Way

Clitorference

R.I.P. Heda Margolius Kovály

Insightful Kaboom!

Stroke your brain

Voting Opportunities and Mechanics

Wrestling my internal disablism to the ground.

Update & NPM contribution

Quantified Self: Web & Phone Enabled Exo-cortices

Meme Sheep is Sheepish

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