010121 but Millie said “I kind of idolize you... not in a weird way... I mean I don’t want my life to *be* like yours, I don’t want to be a teacher or anything... but I think you’re a good person.” So that was a good start to the year. About the sparkling juice Libby said, “It tastes like disappointment” but she laughed, and later thanked me for buying it. Reading Samantha Irby who somehow even manages to be smarter and more successful than I am even though her whole book is about being dumb and gross and unsuccessful. I’m fifty and probably never going to accomplish much of anything. What are you going to do about it? First “fully” remembered dream of the year: By a sidewalk, Dexter lying on the grass between the sidewalk and the street, a lady--a vet I guess but also some kind of therapist or coach or something?--was talking to him and getting ready to administer the shots that would end his life, put him out of his misery. I thought she was talking too much, and guessed that he probably would rather she just get on with it, and some silly word play ran thru my head and between me and chris, something like “I don’t care that you care that I don’t care that you...” and when she finally started the procedure, chris took out a big camera with a big lens to take pictures (which was odd because it was chris, but you know what they say about the characters in dreams) to “document” the whole thing but also kind of in an artsy “powerful story” way, which I thought was kind of tacky but then again I didn’t really mind. I went over to him, relieved to be able to go over to him and be with him at the last moments, knelt, went to gently pet him, and his head rose up to meet my hand just a little bit, slowly, softly 010221 I do not understand keyboard navigation between these fucking tabs in this Tinderbox thing. But there is, I think this is kind of funny, there is a (dying, I can only assume) ladybug flirting around in here at 11:48 pm on a Saturday night before the last day of xmas break before we all have to go back to the relentless virtual garbage patrol, half-talking and half-moralizing to a bunch of brainwashed teens out of our brainwashed asses about stuff we have no real conception of, and this is a coincidence because I badged this node with a ladybug badge several hours ago, and I guess somewhere, in some video game world, that actually means something or is something more than just kinda funny, or even if it isn’t, maybe nothing is anyway, so what difference does it make? 010421 really fucking worried about millie it’s not that i don’t want to give ke a good reference, it’s that i truly don’t know what to say is that selfish? it feels like it is. something feels off. generalizing that to ‘oh well times are bad right now’ and waving it off may not be the best approach right now. > What are the skills you want? It's not about what skills you already have! What skills do you wish you had? The vast majority of our learning happens on the job. You will only get better at what you spend time on. Learn deliberately. The magic and serendipity of the universe, in any form, isn’t something to be hoarded. Instead, it’s something to be shared with love and generosity. 010621 > But Trumpism is not the opposite of political correctness; both are aspects of the same illness. The collective sickness we’re suffering from is an inability to see oneself as one person among others with no larger or smaller claim on the universe’s attention. The desire to force one’s opinions and preferences on the rest of the world is just the mirror image of the desire to burn it all down. Neither one shows a respect for freedom. Polarization is not the problem in the United States right now so much as the selfishness that generates it. Freedom is only possible when both sides realize that it’s possible for others to disagree with them—and occasionally you’re going to be on the losing side of that disagreement. A respect for the feelings of others makes freedom possible. Sometimes it looks like what adolescents call hypocrisy. > https://thebulwark.com/the-narcissists-coup/ 010721 For anyone who’s not literally tranquilized or effectively dead: we all need our *kakegurui,* our solidity, our vulnerability, our being in the game, *real* risk--it’s our mortality that makes us alive. (But you can’t cheat it by going bust, surrendering to self-destruction--I know--I’ve tried. Playing to lose seems like an easy ticket to win. Trust me. It isn’t.) The further down you go into powerlessness, hopelessness, isolation, and despair, the more lame your invocations become, the less *real* your game. The pure game is life and death. Everything else is receding shadows. It can be a war, a prize fight, a protest, an insurrection, a stunt, a trip, quitting your job, leaving your mate, stealing, looting, self-destruction (now we’re into the ignominious end of the spectrum)--all the way down to something stupid like smoking a cigarette or not wearing a mask to a plague ball. It all comes from the same source. You can get high and mighty and say “it’s what you do with it that matters” but sometimes--most of the time--it feels like we don’t have a choice. I don’t blame anyone for waking up. I’d like to do some waking up myself. If only there were a way for us to make sure that, after reanimation, the thawed-out corpses wouldn’t be zombies hell bent on ugliness and ignominy. But then again, if we could be sure--of literally anything--it wouldn’t work. The engine wouldn’t turn. The fire wouldn’t burn. This is who we are. This doesn’t mean everyone is the same. Beware the false equivalency. The world isn’t flat. Who your friends are does matter. Just because two people smash a window doesn’t mean they are both to be honored, or dishonored, or ignored, in equal measure. You still get to make judgments about who is right and wrong. That’s part of the game--at least for those of us fortunate or unfortunate (depending on how you look at it) to be down here *in* the game. The right-wing cancel mob is making memes about how liberals “liked” rioting when it was BLM but now that these assclowns broke into Congress, suddenly it’s “terrorism.” They would have more of a point if the grievances were the same, if the context were the same--shit, if even the *aesthetic* were the same. It’s not. As humans, our sympathies are every bit as essential as our viscera. I’m not convinced it’s quite true that “rioting is the language of the unheard”--that it happens strictly because a people are beat down, endlessly oppressed, at the end of the rope--that it only happens when people feel like they have no other choice. I think it may be that the rioters are in the prime of their choice. They’re the opposite of helpless, for whatever combination of reasons including sheer, stupid guts and youth. It’s too bad it’s not just the goodguys this happens to, and that there’s no permanently reliable guide to who’s good and who’s bad, or who is acting conscientiously vs running on pure adrenaline. The main thing I’m concerned with now is who has the guns and who’s willing to use them. They’re making self-flattering comparisons with Sam Adams and all the original revolutionaries (obviously) and of course, why wouldn’t they, that’s why those legends and texts exist (one of the reasons anyway), they are *and should be* free for anyone to draw on and identify with. I ‘teach’ that and I mean it. It’s too bad it’s so easy for gross bigoted assholes to wave the Declaration around, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything in itself. The other thing I’m wondering is who’s gonna be the next Thomas Paine, in the bland chaos of this wall of words that is our current hypertextual environment. The other thing I’m wondering is if it’s not going to be my job to start choosing people to shoot and then shooting at them, big if, lol, then what exactly *is* my job? Stop before you answer that. I don’t want to hear anything obvious, lame, cutesy, or boring. > While tension between dissimilar groups is inevitable, it doesn't have to be poisonous—if those groups aren't battling to dominate each other. > https://reason.com/2021/01/07/where-do-we-go-after-the-trumpist-tantrum/ And gambling isn’t brawling. The vitality of the game isn’t diminished by structure; it’s enhanced. (Imperfect) restraint breeds passion, and prolongs it. The selfstyled patriots are posing as classic revolutionaries. Maybe that’s what they are, and revolution is a word compromised by romance. But the instigator of the mob will turn on the rabble as soon as he gets what he wants... which is what exactly? There is no end game when what you want is a state of being? > the Capitol Police were hampered by limits the Pentagon placed on the Washington, D.C., National Guard, essentially limiting them to traffic control. The chief of the Capitol Police made an urgent call for help early Wednesday afternoon only to be refused as an official from the Secretary of the Army worried about the optics of having soldiers inside the Capitol building. How does that compare to the optics of the response to the blm protests? it seems as though intimidation and force was the desired effect there. But that was because of a different gang, acting under different orders. > Although they were different law enforcement branches, and although then-Attorney General William Barr, who ordered the summer’s attack, is now gone, no one could miss that Black protesters could never in a million years have broken in the windows of the Capitol, invade, and wander around taking selfies before leaving without arrest. All these cabinet members resigning: they’re posing it as some kind of righteous principled stand. Ha. First of all, WHY DID YOU WAIT THIS LONG, and second: “The resignation of the Cabinet officials means that they will not have to weigh in on removing Trump under the 25th Amendment.” So yeah. Fuck your contrition. You’re worse than useless. He says “our incredible journey is just beginning” or some such bullshit. in response to these drooling fucktards. journey to what? conveniently doesn’t specify To recap: yes you do need to rise up sometimes. the ability to do that must be nurtured in a civil society. if civility is the only option, it loses all meaning. the beast heart must beat within the civil breast. love the impulse, kinda hate the particular people in this case. we need to make sure they don’t have a monopoly on that kind of energy. > The claim that Trump was denied a win by fraud is a big lie not just because it mauls logic, misdescribes the present and demands belief in a conspiracy. It is a big lie, fundamentally, because it reverses the moral field of American politics and the basic structure of American history. - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html 011321 Cory Doctorow had this 20-year anniversary blog post about how his day goes. It wasn’t really about writing, but it was about the details of the process. Like making the posts, all the technical crap that he has to do to get it formatted and set up right in the places he publishes the posts in, etc etc. It was kinda inneresting but mainly it got me thinking about what MY days are like, and how kind of shabby and flabby and disjointed they are, and how much of them feel dark, grunty, squishy, and WASTED. Where do people like that get their organizational energy from? I feel like it has something to do with jumping off a cliff (FOOL style, not necessarily literally), necessity, not doing the shit that drags you down, not using “I have kids” or whatever as an excuse, but finding ways to work that into it all. Balancing your responsibilities. But under all that, there’s always the layer that murmurs, “No fool, it’s just about talent and brains and you haven’t got any.” When I start these maudlin symphonies up again, there then come (opponent process??) strains of redemption, of inching towards (re)purposing my essential uselessness, of “finding my place” in the grand tapestry, and feeling OK about it, connectivity to other humans and all that being after all what we’re striving for with whatever little scraps of ability and inclination we have... and then it’s almost always “It just seems that at \_\_ years old, it’s a little late to still be at this toddling stage of beginning self discovery” but I mean maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that’s like some kind of dopey inverse of how the “optimistic people who hold out hope for a certain milestone” were the ones who didn’t make it thru the POW camp. Maybe your fixation on where you should be is what keeps you from being where you are. Oh god, the cheez. Always the cheez. And yet. 011421 > Unless you happen to be in the right place and the right time, or you have facilities no one else has, the only way is to be more adventurous.” http://nautil.us/issue/94/evolving/why-it-pays-to-play-around-rp?utm\_source=RSS\_Feed&utm\_medium=RSS&utm\_campaign=RSS\_Syndication 011621 A responsibility you take on when choosing to do an essential job is to accept the risk that it may later become less essential--or it may be less essential that you specifically, or humans in general, need to do it. A perk of inessential jobs is that, despite the daily depression of feeling like an adornment, there are those golden moments when suddenly the frivolous or imaginative can briefly become a matter of survival. 012321 I need to add more fish to the food, food to the fish, whatever. Stuff. Need more stuff in here, in the folders, wherever it ends up being this time. The ol’ spidey life line is gettin a little thin. Like my hairline, but (even) scarier. Any excuse to sneak in, drop a few words, and scurry out before they catch you--now’s the time to take it, to take the chance, it’s now or never (just like it always is). Nobody knows how old anybody else is. That’s part of what makes teaching so hard. #pdp yes [but] you don’t know how dumb i am asmr dude just whispered to me: either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing. i think he is my teacher now. later he said passion passion passssssssssssssssshhhhhh—un