Redbird (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
redbird) wrote2025-05-23 11:12 am
redbird) wrote2025-05-23 11:12 amEntry tags:
talked to GI doctor: we have a plan
I just had a telemedicine appointment with the gastroenterologist. Her office called at about 9:30 this morning, to ask if I was available for a 10:30 appointment, and I said yes.
The diagnosis is collagenous colitis, which I already knew from MyChart. The good news is that it's both benign and curable. The treatment will be nine weeks of budosenide pills, starting at three/day for the first three weeks, then two/day for the next three weeks, and a final three weeks of one/day. Those are to be taken with food, and in the morning because it's related to steroids and can interfere with sleep.
The most common risk factors for this kind of colitis are being a woman over sixty, and regular use of NSAIDs. Therefore, Dr. Morgan wants me to talk to Carmen about whether there's a plausible alternative to me taking naproxen almost every day, but she did say there may not be, since tylenol doesn't work the same way and may not be effective for the hip and knee pain I'm using it for.
I asked about continuing the Imodium and the fiber capsules, and Dr. Morgan said I could stop using them when the budosenide starts to be effective for the diarrhea, which might be within a week. I told her that the combination of Imodium and fiber is working well enough that I may not notice a difference, so the tentative plan is to wait at least a week, then pick a day or two when I won't need to go out, and try stopping the Imodium. (Adrian pointed out that I'm currently taking two pills twice a day, so I could try halving the dose and see how I feel. That sounds plausible, but I'm going to ask Dr Morgan if she thinks that's worth doing.
Also, a significant number of people with collagenous colitis also have celiac, so she wants to test me for that. I asked, and it's a straightforward blood draw, which I can do at my convenience: I don't need to wait until after getting blood drawn to start on the new medication.
She is sending the prescription to CVS, and told me to call her office if there's any problem with the insurance company.
ETA: I looked at the doctor's visit notes on MyChart, which reminded me that I should be checking my blood pressure about once a week while taking the budosenide.
The diagnosis is collagenous colitis, which I already knew from MyChart. The good news is that it's both benign and curable. The treatment will be nine weeks of budosenide pills, starting at three/day for the first three weeks, then two/day for the next three weeks, and a final three weeks of one/day. Those are to be taken with food, and in the morning because it's related to steroids and can interfere with sleep.
The most common risk factors for this kind of colitis are being a woman over sixty, and regular use of NSAIDs. Therefore, Dr. Morgan wants me to talk to Carmen about whether there's a plausible alternative to me taking naproxen almost every day, but she did say there may not be, since tylenol doesn't work the same way and may not be effective for the hip and knee pain I'm using it for.
I asked about continuing the Imodium and the fiber capsules, and Dr. Morgan said I could stop using them when the budosenide starts to be effective for the diarrhea, which might be within a week. I told her that the combination of Imodium and fiber is working well enough that I may not notice a difference, so the tentative plan is to wait at least a week, then pick a day or two when I won't need to go out, and try stopping the Imodium. (Adrian pointed out that I'm currently taking two pills twice a day, so I could try halving the dose and see how I feel. That sounds plausible, but I'm going to ask Dr Morgan if she thinks that's worth doing.
Also, a significant number of people with collagenous colitis also have celiac, so she wants to test me for that. I asked, and it's a straightforward blood draw, which I can do at my convenience: I don't need to wait until after getting blood drawn to start on the new medication.
She is sending the prescription to CVS, and told me to call her office if there's any problem with the insurance company.
ETA: I looked at the doctor's visit notes on MyChart, which reminded me that I should be checking my blood pressure about once a week while taking the budosenide.
mindstalk (mindstalk) wrote2025-05-23 09:47 am
mindstalk) wrote2025-05-23 09:47 amThoughts on The Line
A video yesterday reminded me of the Saudi Line proposal to build a brand new very linear city (or linear arcology, one long building) in western Arabia. I looked again at the numbers, and wow it is nuts.
170 km long.
500 m high.
200 m wide.
(Area 34 km2.)
It's supposed to be higher than it's long! Crazy. You could probably bring the cost down just by flipping those two numbers (though maybe ventilating a 500 m wide building would be a bit more challenging, I dunno.)
For minimizing trip lengths you would want a circular city, or something close like a diamond or grid. But I can see some appeal of a linear city: simplifying your high speed transport by needing just one backbone route, and keeping it easy to go outside the city into a greenbelt/preserve. (Not sure how much point to that there is in western Arabia, but anyway.) So I wondered what a saner proposal might look like.
1) drop the arcology and just go with a conventional city with streets and buildings.
2) Have the width be at least a 5 minute walk from edge to spine, so 400 meters, making it 800 meters (10 minutes) edge to edge, which avoids the need to have any cross transit. This is 4x the width, so could reduce the length from 170 km to 42 km. (Though the original proposal used the height to be very high density, which I'm kind of waving away.)
You could double the width, for a 20 minute edge-edge walk; 1.6 km x 21 km.
But since you're trying to avoid cars, you should go in for bicycles and other micromobility, at let's say 3x expected walking speed. 2.4 km edge to spine, and 4.8 x 7 km in shape... which is actually almost a square, whoops. And you'd probably need cross-transit again for the minority who can't use any form of wheels, or the larger group who don't always want to. Still, it's a city where every point is a 10 minute bike/fast powerchair ride to the central spine, at 15 km/hr.
San Francisco is actually bigger than this, so I've just discovered that SF could be way nicer than it is (granted SF has hills.)
To keep a line shape better, go back to the 10 minute width of 800 meters, triple it for bikes, now you have a 2.4 x 14 km city, and can get some real rail use out of your backbone, while it's still a 15 minute walk from the center to the edge.
cindy (tsuki_no_bara) wrote2025-05-23 12:57 am
tsuki_no_bara) wrote2025-05-23 12:57 am
Entry tags:
oh my god why is it fall again
oh my flist it is COLD and i am ANNOYED because it is MAY. i wore a sweater and a winter coat to work. i mean. wtf. seriously. monday is memorial day! what is this bullshit!
in other less annoying news i am one signed lease away from having an apartment. \o/ \o/ \o/ it has off-street parking and a little storage space in the basement and laundry in the building and there's a hood over the stove (omg) and there might not be enough window for my plants but we'll see. i'll be at the mercy of the bus because i won't be walking distance to the t any more but i won't be massively farther away from everyone either. i was starting to despair and now i'm not altho i have to sort shit and pack and change my address in a million places and i am not looking forward to any of those things. i mean, moving is a pain in the ass.
this past weekend was all family, all the time - cousin j of j&m turned fifty and his lovely wife threw him a surprise party and he was SUR. PRISED. (even tho my sister showed up at the restaurant where his mom and brother took him to to get him out of the house while the party guests showed up. she covered for herself but still, oy.) my contribution was a raisin pie which went over really well even tho i had some issues with the top crust and it was thus not an attractive pie. the party was in the afternoon so afterwards i went over to my sister's and we ordered chinese food (not bad but could've been better - the wonton soup was undrinkably salty altho the wontons themselves were good and the moo shi was about 98% cabbage) and watched drop which was tense and i enjoyed it. (it has some actor from yellowstone 1923 who my sister likes which is why she wanted to see it.) and then sunday was j&m's girltwin's final dance recital, as she is graduating from high school in like three weeks. there were dances in a mix of styles from all the classes at the dance school where she goes and let me just tell you that the tiny girls in the tiny ballet tutus are FUCKING ADORABLE. so, so cute. the girltwin looked very confident on stage and did a really good job and it was overall a thoroughly enjoyable recital.
and last sunday i went to ikea with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tamalinn which is always fun. we had meatballs. :D
and today was the monthly admin lunch and we had italian food which means... meatballs. :D also chicken parm and chicken alfredo with broccoli and bread and salad but, you know, meatballs. i love a good meatball.
otherwise the less said about work the better, mostly because i am MADE OF SLACK and i really do have shit to do. most of it is emails and some of it is expenses and a lot of it is about to be travel and i don't want to do any of it. >.<
...my laptop is really dirty. i need to clean it. not right now but soon.
grosse pointe garden society is done for the season and now i know who the dead body is and i don't know how i feel about it. and i can't get over how dumb most of the characters are about their relationships. seriously, so stupid. but it ends on a "what next??" note so i'll probably watch the second season too.
enjoying poker face tho. it's kind of a weird show but the guest stars are fun and i really like natasha lyonne's character.
lego hq is coming to boston. american hq, anyway. they're moving from connecticut and personally i find this really cool.
in other less annoying news i am one signed lease away from having an apartment. \o/ \o/ \o/ it has off-street parking and a little storage space in the basement and laundry in the building and there's a hood over the stove (omg) and there might not be enough window for my plants but we'll see. i'll be at the mercy of the bus because i won't be walking distance to the t any more but i won't be massively farther away from everyone either. i was starting to despair and now i'm not altho i have to sort shit and pack and change my address in a million places and i am not looking forward to any of those things. i mean, moving is a pain in the ass.
this past weekend was all family, all the time - cousin j of j&m turned fifty and his lovely wife threw him a surprise party and he was SUR. PRISED. (even tho my sister showed up at the restaurant where his mom and brother took him to to get him out of the house while the party guests showed up. she covered for herself but still, oy.) my contribution was a raisin pie which went over really well even tho i had some issues with the top crust and it was thus not an attractive pie. the party was in the afternoon so afterwards i went over to my sister's and we ordered chinese food (not bad but could've been better - the wonton soup was undrinkably salty altho the wontons themselves were good and the moo shi was about 98% cabbage) and watched drop which was tense and i enjoyed it. (it has some actor from yellowstone 1923 who my sister likes which is why she wanted to see it.) and then sunday was j&m's girltwin's final dance recital, as she is graduating from high school in like three weeks. there were dances in a mix of styles from all the classes at the dance school where she goes and let me just tell you that the tiny girls in the tiny ballet tutus are FUCKING ADORABLE. so, so cute. the girltwin looked very confident on stage and did a really good job and it was overall a thoroughly enjoyable recital.
and last sunday i went to ikea with
tamalinn which is always fun. we had meatballs. :Dand today was the monthly admin lunch and we had italian food which means... meatballs. :D also chicken parm and chicken alfredo with broccoli and bread and salad but, you know, meatballs. i love a good meatball.
otherwise the less said about work the better, mostly because i am MADE OF SLACK and i really do have shit to do. most of it is emails and some of it is expenses and a lot of it is about to be travel and i don't want to do any of it. >.<
...my laptop is really dirty. i need to clean it. not right now but soon.
grosse pointe garden society is done for the season and now i know who the dead body is and i don't know how i feel about it. and i can't get over how dumb most of the characters are about their relationships. seriously, so stupid. but it ends on a "what next??" note so i'll probably watch the second season too.
enjoying poker face tho. it's kind of a weird show but the guest stars are fun and i really like natasha lyonne's character.
lego hq is coming to boston. american hq, anyway. they're moving from connecticut and personally i find this really cool.
sovay (sovay) wrote2025-05-22 09:31 pm
sovay) wrote2025-05-22 09:31 pmIt's a cup trick shell game, it's a puff of smoke
I seem to have spent much of this day driving in a nor'easter, when all the potholes overflowed and every other driver in between the streaming gutters drove like a hydroplaning yak. I got to see rushthatspeaks and secured a new inhaler and an appointment with a pulmonologist. Foods of the hour look like pastrami, scones, and a Zagnut.
Last night's shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum is still going around in my head, even if I didn't have people in the Jewish professional community of D.C. I don't want to entertain a referendum on the politics of the victims any more than I want to hear it about detained students or deportees, but it feels too cheap for irony that the shooter targeted an event with a focus on humanitarian aid in Gaza: all that mattered was that it aggregated Jews. The word antisemitism should be like hot iron in the mouth of the man in the White House. What he has to offer, none of us need.
In stark contrast to the mishegos with FB, when Criterion's website refused to honor a gift certificate I had received from them in the last month, I was able to get a real live person on their customer support staff who solved the problem for me so that I could ship a DVD of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) to a relative who really needed it. Maybe I should try to bribe them for editions of my favorite films.
rushthatspeaks and secured a new inhaler and an appointment with a pulmonologist. Foods of the hour look like pastrami, scones, and a Zagnut.Last night's shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum is still going around in my head, even if I didn't have people in the Jewish professional community of D.C. I don't want to entertain a referendum on the politics of the victims any more than I want to hear it about detained students or deportees, but it feels too cheap for irony that the shooter targeted an event with a focus on humanitarian aid in Gaza: all that mattered was that it aggregated Jews. The word antisemitism should be like hot iron in the mouth of the man in the White House. What he has to offer, none of us need.
In stark contrast to the mishegos with FB, when Criterion's website refused to honor a gift certificate I had received from them in the last month, I was able to get a real live person on their customer support staff who solved the problem for me so that I could ship a DVD of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) to a relative who really needed it. Maybe I should try to bribe them for editions of my favorite films.
yomikoma (yomikoma) wrote2025-05-22 07:01 pm
yomikoma) wrote2025-05-22 07:01 pmEntry tags:
Watercolors!
Last year when I started my watercolor class I promised that I'd have art to share here, and I totally failed to do that. Please enjoy my watercolors at https://suberic.net/~dmm/graphics/watercolor/watercolor.html and find some examples attached below the cut.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
sovay (sovay) wrote2025-05-21 11:11 pm
sovay) wrote2025-05-21 11:11 pmI was wrestling with a coat hanger, can you guess who won?
Despite spending rather more of the afternoon at the doctor's than planned, I do not consider the day a total loss because it contained an unexpectedly successful nebulizer treatment, the acquisition of bagels and chopped liver, a cinnamon cake donut, and ashlyme introducing me to Idris the Dragon. I have now seen what a gas station looks like when the fire suppression system has been deployed. Fell over in the evening and went down a rabbit hole of Boston vintage radio. Read some film criticism by Graham Greene. Am still not really watching movies myself. My brain could come back online any time.
ashlyme introducing me to Idris the Dragon. I have now seen what a gas station looks like when the fire suppression system has been deployed. Fell over in the evening and went down a rabbit hole of Boston vintage radio. Read some film criticism by Graham Greene. Am still not really watching movies myself. My brain could come back online any time.
Sam (l33tminion) wrote2025-05-21 09:56 pm
l33tminion) wrote2025-05-21 09:56 pm
Entry tags:
- books,
- boston,
- parenting,
- pycon,
- self,
- technology,
- the con scene,
- travel,
- work
Disenshittification
I went to PyCon in Pittsburgh last weekend, once again traveling on my own dime and time, per the new way of things at Google. At least they comped me one of their sponsor passes for reg.
Cory Doctorow did the opening keynote, on his theory of the current malaise in the tech industry. Which was quite an opening to the conference: We'd like to thank our sponsors and now here's Cory Doctorow to rip them a new one. I'm a big fan of Doctorow, and think he has a lot of insight. I really do think tech companies have gotten themselves to a point in consolidation-friendly and competition-unfriendly political environment where not only are things getting shittier for users and other stakeholders, the companies have also really painted themselves into a corner and are suffering from stagnation (even in an environment where there's some really amazing development in technical capabilities). Doctorow highlights Jay Saurik's phrase about how the DMCA (and similar laws promulgated by treaty agreements and free-trade deals) prohibiting the circumvention of digital locks makes a de facto crime of "Felony Contempt of Business Model". Doctorow's suggestion that countries should retaliate against tariffs with IP liberalization instead of retaliatory tariffs (i.e. making it possible for their entrepreneurs and firms to compete with US big tech instead of just revenge-taxing their own consumers) is certainly an intriguing possibility!
I think the world Doctorow envisions would be so much better for a lot of people, including software engineers specifically. For those at startups, sure, you could actually get your "compete with the big players" start-up funded, for one thing. But also for those at big companies, which could actually compete with their rivals, instead of just carving out separate fiefdoms and taking occasional all-in/all-out-double-time shots at someone else's crown.
I got to spend a lot of time with my colleagues, especially meeting members of the new Python Team and catching up with members of the former one, many of whom seem to have settled into some really cool Python work at Meta (working on Instagram's high-performance CPython fork or the Rust implementation of their Python type-checker). It's so heartening to see people who enjoyed working with you and are happy to see you and would enjoy to work with you again. (Not that I don't get that on my current team, it's just very reduced.) And I ran into Itamar, a colleague back from my ITA days, and Allen Downey, my CS professor from Olin. Spent most of my time at the convention center, but got to take in a bit of local color. Ate some big sandwiches at Primanti's anyways.
I spent Friday morning in conversation with Cory Doctorow at the PSF lounge in the expo hall, wandered the expo floor, caught talks on new Python features that I hadn't read up on before (e.g. template strings, the effort to escape once and for all from the Global Interpreter Lock), heard about people's fascinating projects. All the talks will be posted to their YouTube channel over the next week or two. The Python community really is a pointedly liberal and activist one, too, there's a real insistence on "Python is for everyone". Python really did carve out a unique niche in its balance of usability and "batteries included" power.
After getting back: This week has been pretty busy with a lot of city and school events. This evening was Somerville's Slice of the City pizza-party get-together for our neighborhood. Tomorrow morning, Erica's class is participating in the Argenziano Wax Museum, an event where the third graders portray people from history (this year focusing on figures from the American Revolution). Tomorrow evening is Argenziano Heritage Night, a big cultural festival at the school that Erica looks forward to every year.
Cory Doctorow did the opening keynote, on his theory of the current malaise in the tech industry. Which was quite an opening to the conference: We'd like to thank our sponsors and now here's Cory Doctorow to rip them a new one. I'm a big fan of Doctorow, and think he has a lot of insight. I really do think tech companies have gotten themselves to a point in consolidation-friendly and competition-unfriendly political environment where not only are things getting shittier for users and other stakeholders, the companies have also really painted themselves into a corner and are suffering from stagnation (even in an environment where there's some really amazing development in technical capabilities). Doctorow highlights Jay Saurik's phrase about how the DMCA (and similar laws promulgated by treaty agreements and free-trade deals) prohibiting the circumvention of digital locks makes a de facto crime of "Felony Contempt of Business Model". Doctorow's suggestion that countries should retaliate against tariffs with IP liberalization instead of retaliatory tariffs (i.e. making it possible for their entrepreneurs and firms to compete with US big tech instead of just revenge-taxing their own consumers) is certainly an intriguing possibility!
I think the world Doctorow envisions would be so much better for a lot of people, including software engineers specifically. For those at startups, sure, you could actually get your "compete with the big players" start-up funded, for one thing. But also for those at big companies, which could actually compete with their rivals, instead of just carving out separate fiefdoms and taking occasional all-in/all-out-double-time shots at someone else's crown.
I got to spend a lot of time with my colleagues, especially meeting members of the new Python Team and catching up with members of the former one, many of whom seem to have settled into some really cool Python work at Meta (working on Instagram's high-performance CPython fork or the Rust implementation of their Python type-checker). It's so heartening to see people who enjoyed working with you and are happy to see you and would enjoy to work with you again. (Not that I don't get that on my current team, it's just very reduced.) And I ran into Itamar, a colleague back from my ITA days, and Allen Downey, my CS professor from Olin. Spent most of my time at the convention center, but got to take in a bit of local color. Ate some big sandwiches at Primanti's anyways.
I spent Friday morning in conversation with Cory Doctorow at the PSF lounge in the expo hall, wandered the expo floor, caught talks on new Python features that I hadn't read up on before (e.g. template strings, the effort to escape once and for all from the Global Interpreter Lock), heard about people's fascinating projects. All the talks will be posted to their YouTube channel over the next week or two. The Python community really is a pointedly liberal and activist one, too, there's a real insistence on "Python is for everyone". Python really did carve out a unique niche in its balance of usability and "batteries included" power.
After getting back: This week has been pretty busy with a lot of city and school events. This evening was Somerville's Slice of the City pizza-party get-together for our neighborhood. Tomorrow morning, Erica's class is participating in the Argenziano Wax Museum, an event where the third graders portray people from history (this year focusing on figures from the American Revolution). Tomorrow evening is Argenziano Heritage Night, a big cultural festival at the school that Erica looks forward to every year.
lb_lee (lb_lee) wrote2025-05-21 08:08 pm
lb_lee) wrote2025-05-21 08:08 pm
Entry tags:
LB is Moving! Take Our Stuff
Mori: welp, our new shrink got ratfucked by Trump, even though we only got him last month, which means we have to go hunting a new one and start the whole training process over again while moving. This means we are eager to clear our plate of other distractions ASAP!
First: Wanna help us move? We will be moving on the last weekend of May--most likely Sunday, June 1 because our other three roomies move on May 31 and we don't want the front door to become a clown car. Are you available? Are you willing to lug boxes and get treated to dinner afterward? We would appreciate you (especially if you have wheels)!
Second: FREE STUFF GIVEAWAY (long as you cover shipping)! We have a couple books free to good homes:
Okay, back to trawling my health insurance website for potential new shrinks!
First: Wanna help us move? We will be moving on the last weekend of May--most likely Sunday, June 1 because our other three roomies move on May 31 and we don't want the front door to become a clown car. Are you available? Are you willing to lug boxes and get treated to dinner afterward? We would appreciate you (especially if you have wheels)!
Second: FREE STUFF GIVEAWAY (long as you cover shipping)! We have a couple books free to good homes:
- Sweet Abilene, a M/FTM porno comic by the great E.K. Weaver. Sweet Abilene is a spin-off of their webcomic Shot and Chaser, so you can get a good idea of the art and main characters! It's great! We want other people to love it!
- Festival of the Bones II: What Is Remembered Lives, an anthology of ancestor worship stories and poems edited by the Writers Egbe of Ile Orunmila Oshun. We fed it through the bookscanner, which means this book can now be liberated! (The PDF will be uploaded once we get it OCRed.)
- this page of MPD for You and Me (original)
- two spreads of the queer trans multi wedding in LB Goes To Alaska (prints made to look like the originals in a sketchbook, which include marginalia and green colored pencil underdrawing that are erased from the comic). You can see a photo of one of them here. One spread shows Zyfron and Mystics doing their wedding smooch and first dance; the other shows the wedding dance afterward. These spreads inspired the name of the art show they were framed for, "Love is for all of us." If you need high-res images of the pages in question, just ask!
Okay, back to trawling my health insurance website for potential new shrinks!
kitewithfish (kitewithfish) wrote2025-05-21 08:08 pm
kitewithfish) wrote2025-05-21 08:08 pmEntry tags:
Wednesday Reading Meme - May 21 2025
TV: I have started watching Murderbot! I am intrigued by it! Skarsgard is doing really good at displaying Murderbot's discomfort and the team gets nicely fleshed out. I am cautiously optimistic. The fight scenes are less horrifying than I was imagining.
Real Life:
In other, sadder news, over the last week, a very dear friend of mine has been dealing with the sudden illness and death of a dear friend of theirs (not someone I knew directly). Since we are each other's emergency phone call buddies for a lot of stuff, that means, while I was in no way attached directly to the person who just passed away, I have been doing a lot of emotional support over the phone and I am feeling the general sadness of human fragility and loss rather than missing a particular person. But he was about my age, and he got sick and died and there's just a whole lot of grief swirly around me even if it's not mine.
Work has been incredibly intense due to hosting events on site, so I have had a lot of traveling to the site, sleeping in a strange place, and doing pointless customer service to support a branch of my org's team that needs people to help manage the events. The whole thing seems wildly pointless.
What I've Read
Oh I have read nothing. Slightly behind on the year to date goals
What I'm Reading
He Who Drowned the World – Book club re-read
The Ministry of Time by Kailane Bradley – 25% ish, it’s kind of The Terror fanfiction
Hunting Toward Heartstill by Blackkat -about 45%
My Favorite Thing is Monsters -Emil Ferris – over 60% - okay this is turning out great.
The Antarctica Conspiracy Derin Edala – slightly on hold.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In – John Wiswell – 15%
What I'll Read Next
Hugo Nominees are out!
Track Changes
The Deep Dark
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book 2
The Tainted Cup
Alien Clay
Service Model
The Ministry of Time
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way
Monstress, Vol. 9: The Possessed
Navigational Entanglements
The Butcher of the Forest
The Hunger and the Dusk: Vol. 1
The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right
The Brides of High Hill
We Called Them Giants
The Tusks of Extinction
“Charting the Cliff: An Investigation into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics”
“Signs of Life”
“By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars”
“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”
“Loneliness Universe”
“The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion”
“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea”
“Lake of Souls”
Real Life:
In other, sadder news, over the last week, a very dear friend of mine has been dealing with the sudden illness and death of a dear friend of theirs (not someone I knew directly). Since we are each other's emergency phone call buddies for a lot of stuff, that means, while I was in no way attached directly to the person who just passed away, I have been doing a lot of emotional support over the phone and I am feeling the general sadness of human fragility and loss rather than missing a particular person. But he was about my age, and he got sick and died and there's just a whole lot of grief swirly around me even if it's not mine.
Work has been incredibly intense due to hosting events on site, so I have had a lot of traveling to the site, sleeping in a strange place, and doing pointless customer service to support a branch of my org's team that needs people to help manage the events. The whole thing seems wildly pointless.
What I've Read
Oh I have read nothing. Slightly behind on the year to date goals
What I'm Reading
He Who Drowned the World – Book club re-read
The Ministry of Time by Kailane Bradley – 25% ish, it’s kind of The Terror fanfiction
Hunting Toward Heartstill by Blackkat -about 45%
My Favorite Thing is Monsters -Emil Ferris – over 60% - okay this is turning out great.
The Antarctica Conspiracy Derin Edala – slightly on hold.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In – John Wiswell – 15%
What I'll Read Next
Hugo Nominees are out!
Track Changes
The Deep Dark
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book 2
The Tainted Cup
Alien Clay
Service Model
The Ministry of Time
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way
Monstress, Vol. 9: The Possessed
Navigational Entanglements
The Butcher of the Forest
The Hunger and the Dusk: Vol. 1
The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right
The Brides of High Hill
We Called Them Giants
The Tusks of Extinction
“Charting the Cliff: An Investigation into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics”
“Signs of Life”
“By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars”
“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”
“Loneliness Universe”
“The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion”
“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea”
“Lake of Souls”
Redbird (redbird) wrote2025-05-21 05:07 pm
redbird) wrote2025-05-21 05:07 pmEntry tags:
proposed restrictions on covid vaccines
The clowns running the FDA have proposed restricting access to covid vaccines, to people over 65 or who have certain medical conditions. There's a public docket for comments on the proposal.
Your Local Epidemiologist has a good post about the proposal, including that the people suggesting this know that nobody is going to do the placebo-controlled tests of new boosters they want to require.
Possible talking points include:
Families and caregivers wouldn't be eligible for the vaccine, even if they share a household, unlike the current UK recommendations.
Doctors, dentists, and other medical staff wouldn't be eligible either.
My own comment included that the reason I'd still be eligible for the vaccine is a lung problem caused by covid.
(cross-posting from![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisfinecrew)
Your Local Epidemiologist has a good post about the proposal, including that the people suggesting this know that nobody is going to do the placebo-controlled tests of new boosters they want to require.
Possible talking points include:
Families and caregivers wouldn't be eligible for the vaccine, even if they share a household, unlike the current UK recommendations.
Doctors, dentists, and other medical staff wouldn't be eligible either.
My own comment included that the reason I'd still be eligible for the vaccine is a lung problem caused by covid.
(cross-posting from
thisfinecrew)
Katarina Whimsy (sorcyress) wrote2025-05-21 02:08 pm
sorcyress) wrote2025-05-21 02:08 pmEntry tags:
[therapy] Time shifts experiences
Content Warning: non-detailed allusions to my shitty abusive ex and the shitty relationship we had
I have been working on the Inbox0 project, which sorta has two modalities:
First, the banality of daily life. Unsubscribing from things I don't care about, and mass deleting the bulks they have sent in the past. Meeting notes and invitations and preperatory emails that can safely be labeled ("highland ball" got a workout today, from when I ran it in 2017) and archived. Going through the 50 most recent emails in the inbox and trying to at least first pass all of what's happened lately.
Second, the weight of history. I have had the same email address since 2005, so that sure is, uh, twenty years since January 15th. It's not everything I've ever gotten (see above about bulk-deleting bullshit) and I do have like, a more professionally wallet-named account, but even that sends its email into the main box.
And the weight of history can be _exhausting_. That's part of what makes this game difficult, trying to motivate myself to be exposed fully to some of my worst ADHD sins, or the parts of my personal history where the Big D went on the word depression. Have I mentioned lately I went through an abusive relationship for most of the year 2007? Yeah, uh. That still has bits and pieces lying around it sure does.
But mannnnn one of the benefits of hindsight and being an actual friggin' grown-up and stuff is the ability to look at some of those bits and pieces and see just how much I have grown and improved and gotten better. I can have a lot of grace for myself (I do genuinely like myself, regardless of how much I whine I am a really spectacularly awesome person) and part of the reason is that recognition of the work I have done to reach better and better heights as time goes on.
Or, like, to read an email in which this guy I was totally into was basically breaking up with me, in part because he was not interested in being in a polycule with my shitty boyfriend. Boo hiss, this should be real sad. But it's _not_ because it's been twenty freaking years, that guy I was totally into has developed a lovely sounding life for himself on the other side of the world and I've made a polycule that has an absolute dearth of shitty boyfriends anywhere in it. And so I can read stuff like this...
...and scream lovely modern "YASS QUEEN SLAY1" because BOY HOWDY it is good to remember that there were people who were willing to say to my face "yeah, your boyfriend ain't shit because shit at least provides fertilizer and causes growth2". I mean, I didn't listen sufficiently at the time, but it turns out it never gets old to listen to folks drag my shitty partners, even if I didn't necessarily realize it at the time.
So yeah. The history is rough but it's also nice to see the growth that goes alongside it. And it's nice to get reminders that however fucked up current-right-now Kat is, they're not (correctly) getting dragged by a twenty year old for acting like a sixteen year old3.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: This is almost certainly ironic as it's not language that has actually gotten into my lexicon yet.
2: Okay sure, I suppose you could argue that kSatyr caused growth _in me_. As a different shitty ex once said "-99 points for everything, +1 for making a better Kat for the rest of us". But just because it causes growth doesn't mean I particularly want to be covered in shit. :P
3: September party! I will finally be the age my abusive ex was when he dated me! WOOO!
I have been working on the Inbox0 project, which sorta has two modalities:
First, the banality of daily life. Unsubscribing from things I don't care about, and mass deleting the bulks they have sent in the past. Meeting notes and invitations and preperatory emails that can safely be labeled ("highland ball" got a workout today, from when I ran it in 2017) and archived. Going through the 50 most recent emails in the inbox and trying to at least first pass all of what's happened lately.
Second, the weight of history. I have had the same email address since 2005, so that sure is, uh, twenty years since January 15th. It's not everything I've ever gotten (see above about bulk-deleting bullshit) and I do have like, a more professionally wallet-named account, but even that sends its email into the main box.
And the weight of history can be _exhausting_. That's part of what makes this game difficult, trying to motivate myself to be exposed fully to some of my worst ADHD sins, or the parts of my personal history where the Big D went on the word depression. Have I mentioned lately I went through an abusive relationship for most of the year 2007? Yeah, uh. That still has bits and pieces lying around it sure does.
But mannnnn one of the benefits of hindsight and being an actual friggin' grown-up and stuff is the ability to look at some of those bits and pieces and see just how much I have grown and improved and gotten better. I can have a lot of grace for myself (I do genuinely like myself, regardless of how much I whine I am a really spectacularly awesome person) and part of the reason is that recognition of the work I have done to reach better and better heights as time goes on.
Or, like, to read an email in which this guy I was totally into was basically breaking up with me, in part because he was not interested in being in a polycule with my shitty boyfriend. Boo hiss, this should be real sad. But it's _not_ because it's been twenty freaking years, that guy I was totally into has developed a lovely sounding life for himself on the other side of the world and I've made a polycule that has an absolute dearth of shitty boyfriends anywhere in it. And so I can read stuff like this...
However, I talked to ksatyr....he is *way* over-reacting. You think you're not ready for a relationship? I'm sorry, but this is a demonstration of not being ready for a relationship.
...and scream lovely modern "YASS QUEEN SLAY1" because BOY HOWDY it is good to remember that there were people who were willing to say to my face "yeah, your boyfriend ain't shit because shit at least provides fertilizer and causes growth2". I mean, I didn't listen sufficiently at the time, but it turns out it never gets old to listen to folks drag my shitty partners, even if I didn't necessarily realize it at the time.
So yeah. The history is rough but it's also nice to see the growth that goes alongside it. And it's nice to get reminders that however fucked up current-right-now Kat is, they're not (correctly) getting dragged by a twenty year old for acting like a sixteen year old3.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: This is almost certainly ironic as it's not language that has actually gotten into my lexicon yet.
2: Okay sure, I suppose you could argue that kSatyr caused growth _in me_. As a different shitty ex once said "-99 points for everything, +1 for making a better Kat for the rest of us". But just because it causes growth doesn't mean I particularly want to be covered in shit. :P
3: September party! I will finally be the age my abusive ex was when he dated me! WOOO!
Katarina Whimsy (sorcyress) wrote2025-05-20 06:40 pm
sorcyress) wrote2025-05-20 06:40 pm(no subject)
Progress is being made.
I want to be very clear (and whiny) that I'm still burnt out. That hasn't gone away. Roundabouts July 15, is when I stop having Immediate Plans, and go back to comforting vagueness. I am probably going to book the entire week after Pinewoods on my calendar as "do not schedule, do not interact, this is entirely mine and I will maybe do things on an hours notice or less, but definitely not otherwise).
But progress is being made. Having Tuesday come over this past weekend and body double me while I worked on my room was a truly wonderful help. My room still has an infinite of little projects and organizations and puttings-aways, but it is SO MUCH BETTER and because it is not a series of fucking huge piles of undifferentiated stuff shutting my brain down the moment I look at it, I have actually been able to do maintenance level cleaning on a regular basis. Like, just take five minutes to put away several things where they belong instead of dropping them back into The Pile. It feels very good.
I've also returned to the Inbox0 project after basically 11 months of not touching it. I'm not yet at my lowest-ever1, but I have archived or deleted about 2000 emails in the last two days, and most of those were unread. GOOD PROGRESS.
I didn't really do any work progress, which was partly because I had a series of Good Individual Conversations instead. One of my favourite students came for 2.5 hours in the morning (it's a testing day, so weird schedule) and I helped drag him through most of the last six weeks, getting his grade this quarter to jump from about a 20% to an 84%. It's amazing how much quizzes are weighted if you _haven't done any of them_. I also had decent planning conversation with Clayton, and saw a couple other students for brief periods. Tomorrow, I teach one class, and have to proctor the test for ninety minutes, but it should be otherwise pretty mellow.
I should probably medialog sometime soon, especially because I have actually been reading --I've actually read a fair amount, although most of that was my recent murderbot reread. It's still good! It still hits hard! I was pretty vehement that I didn't want to see the tv show (I don't want to rewire my brain in how it visualizes or thinks about different characters, this happened with That Fucking TERF's books when I watched the movies and I didn't like it) but I've seen some pretty excited reviews, so hmmmmmmmmmaybe.
Also I earned a die yesterday, and I'm on track to earn one today. I'm happy to have this ADHD-brain-game maybe working for me again? Especially because it looks the like previous reset was _November_ meaning it took nearly six months to get 31 full-score days on my daily chart. Auuuguh. Yipes.
(gee Kat, what possible reason could your brain have for going all sideways and fukt-up since November of 2024?)
So yeah, it'd be cool if I can get through this batch, uh, a little faster. I liked the version of the game where I was going through about four rounds a year, it feels reasonable to say "I will get full points on a third of the days". Heck, it's still possible for this year if ~I only believe~.
(we build habits as best we can to support ourselves when the things fall apart)
Anyways, nice to have projects in my life that are seeing progress, even if it's just small and silly number-goes-down. I hope your life is also seeing progress.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Technically my lowest ever was the long span of time through 2019 and 2020 where I actually maintained inbox zero pretty consistently. This is possible to do! It's just hard to get back to.
I want to be very clear (and whiny) that I'm still burnt out. That hasn't gone away. Roundabouts July 15, is when I stop having Immediate Plans, and go back to comforting vagueness. I am probably going to book the entire week after Pinewoods on my calendar as "do not schedule, do not interact, this is entirely mine and I will maybe do things on an hours notice or less, but definitely not otherwise).
But progress is being made. Having Tuesday come over this past weekend and body double me while I worked on my room was a truly wonderful help. My room still has an infinite of little projects and organizations and puttings-aways, but it is SO MUCH BETTER and because it is not a series of fucking huge piles of undifferentiated stuff shutting my brain down the moment I look at it, I have actually been able to do maintenance level cleaning on a regular basis. Like, just take five minutes to put away several things where they belong instead of dropping them back into The Pile. It feels very good.
I've also returned to the Inbox0 project after basically 11 months of not touching it. I'm not yet at my lowest-ever1, but I have archived or deleted about 2000 emails in the last two days, and most of those were unread. GOOD PROGRESS.
I didn't really do any work progress, which was partly because I had a series of Good Individual Conversations instead. One of my favourite students came for 2.5 hours in the morning (it's a testing day, so weird schedule) and I helped drag him through most of the last six weeks, getting his grade this quarter to jump from about a 20% to an 84%. It's amazing how much quizzes are weighted if you _haven't done any of them_. I also had decent planning conversation with Clayton, and saw a couple other students for brief periods. Tomorrow, I teach one class, and have to proctor the test for ninety minutes, but it should be otherwise pretty mellow.
I should probably medialog sometime soon, especially because I have actually been reading --I've actually read a fair amount, although most of that was my recent murderbot reread. It's still good! It still hits hard! I was pretty vehement that I didn't want to see the tv show (I don't want to rewire my brain in how it visualizes or thinks about different characters, this happened with That Fucking TERF's books when I watched the movies and I didn't like it) but I've seen some pretty excited reviews, so hmmmmmmmmmaybe.
Also I earned a die yesterday, and I'm on track to earn one today. I'm happy to have this ADHD-brain-game maybe working for me again? Especially because it looks the like previous reset was _November_ meaning it took nearly six months to get 31 full-score days on my daily chart. Auuuguh. Yipes.
(gee Kat, what possible reason could your brain have for going all sideways and fukt-up since November of 2024?)
So yeah, it'd be cool if I can get through this batch, uh, a little faster. I liked the version of the game where I was going through about four rounds a year, it feels reasonable to say "I will get full points on a third of the days". Heck, it's still possible for this year if ~I only believe~.
(we build habits as best we can to support ourselves when the things fall apart)
Anyways, nice to have projects in my life that are seeing progress, even if it's just small and silly number-goes-down. I hope your life is also seeing progress.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Technically my lowest ever was the long span of time through 2019 and 2020 where I actually maintained inbox zero pretty consistently. This is possible to do! It's just hard to get back to.
psocoptera (psocoptera) wrote2025-05-20 04:46 pm
psocoptera) wrote2025-05-20 04:46 pmEntry tags:
The Tainted Cup
The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett, 2024 novel, first of a trilogy. A young apprentice investigator with total recall like Simon Illyan, only these abilities are granted via Witcher-like potions (apparently even giving some people the white hair and yellow eyes), gets involved in a murder case in an empire threatened by kaiju and maybe also the manipulations of the Cetagandan-haut-like gentry. Which is to say that if an author admits to being an LLM user, even if he claims he isn't using it for his creative writing, I cannot help but start playing the "which parts of this seem borrowed" game. In all fairness it was a good book, fun, fast read, the mystery seemed to hang together as far as I noticed and I enjoyed the plant-tech worldbuilding. I'll probably read the other two. (I wasn't into Foundryside, but I liked the City-of books, so he is neither a definitely-read or definitely-don't-read author for me at this point.) And I'm actually all in favor of creative recombining/repurposing/riffing! If there's, like, a person doing it. I don't want to think I'm reading a book if I'm actually reading extruded text product though.
lb_lee (lb_lee) wrote2025-05-20 03:46 pm
lb_lee) wrote2025-05-20 03:46 pm
Entry tags:
Building Power While The Lights Are Out: Disasters, Mutual Aid, and Dual Power
Still working through that big stack of zines from Jimmy Dunson and Rebel Hearts Press, and we're down to the last thing: a paper back anthology of essays entitled Building Power While The Lights Are Out: Disasters, Mutual Aid, and Dual Power. It's really making my brain buzz with ideas! I'm only midway through, but so far my favorites are "Mutual Aid and Anti-Racist Organizing in Rural Appalachia" by Rural Organizing and Resilience, "Love My People: Following in the Footprints of the Panthers" by Suncere Ali Shakur, and "Survival Programs: Then And Now" by Malik Rahim (an old guy in his seventies who was part of the Black Panthers in the '70s). Like the other stuff from Rebel Hearts, it looks to be a paper-only release.
I just want to quote a few paragraphs from Shakur here, because... how could I NOT love this book? He cut his teeth on mutual aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, where black men were getting murdered as looters by vigilantes, cops, and others. It was not a safe time and place, and he describes the following events:
I just want to quote a few paragraphs from Shakur here, because... how could I NOT love this book? He cut his teeth on mutual aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, where black men were getting murdered as looters by vigilantes, cops, and others. It was not a safe time and place, and he describes the following events:
