The Contradictory Feelings Thread

[Man in Space]

I hate having principles. (Both relating to the recent events here as well as elsewhere.)

[Travis B.]

I hate having principles. (Both relating to the recent events here as well as elsewhere.)

That reminds me of how I feel about the whole Israel-Palestine thing at this point. Overall I despise the Israeli gov't and the settlers, on one side, and the likes of Hamas on the other, while sympathizing with both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples in general (if you're born in Palestine/Israel, you really have no choice in what the current people in power or one's ancestors have done). And I do believe that the way that the Israeli gov't and the settlers have treated the Palestinians amounts to apartheid. The contradictory feelings come into play because on one hand I think that, despite this, the Israelis have a right to national self-defense in this case ─ you cannot kill, wound, and kidnap hundreds of innocent civilians and not expect retribution ─ yet this would never have happened if it wasn't for the Israeli gov't and the settlers' treatment of the Palestinians, and said retribution will fall upon countless innocent Palestinians who are no more guilty than the innocent Israelis who have fallen victim to Hamas's terror.

[Man in Space]

That reminds me of how I feel about the whole Israel-Palestine thing at this point.

That’s part of the other thing. Woman I used to work with was being very pro-Hamas on X. The NYU Student Bar Association (she’s a law graduate, albeit from another college) put out a statement lionizing Hamas and she commented “Nice!”.

I already knew she was racist (she bragged about having “not a single drop” of a certain ethnicity in her DNA test in a previous tweet), but that finally pushed me to block her.

I very much dislike blocking people on principle. If I get to the point where I do that, you’ve done something serious (like the Tollywood cinematographer who called me a [r-word] and then spent weeks on-and-off harassing me). It is not a decision I arrive at lightly. But when it is someone I value, a friend or a loved one…

The hardest choices require the strongest wills.

EDIT: Looks like I’ve lost another friend to the Hamas business.

DOUBLE EDIT: Maybe make that two.

[Man in Space]

I have deleted X.

I have deleted Bluesky.

I’ve rid myself of other platforms (some of which were more of a disappointment than others).

I am considering deleting Facebook (though I will retain Messenger; that’s the functionality I really need).

There’s a few niche things I need to keep up with due to sentimental issues and/or having friends I can only interact with via the said means.

Social media is a net negative for people like me.

[WeepingElf]

I have deleted X.

I have deleted Bluesky.

I’ve rid myself of other platforms (some of which were more of a disappointment than others).

I am considering deleting Facebook (though I will retain Messenger; that’s the functionality I really need).

There’s a few niche things I need to keep up with due to sentimental issues and/or having friends I can only interact with via the said means.

Social media is a net negative for people like me.

I understand this. The only social media account I have is with Facebook, and I have found that it doesn't do for me what I made it for, and consider deactivating it again. I created it because I hoped I could find FB groups for some subject matters I couldn't find stand-alone forums for, but it is not really useful for that. There are several groups for the subject of sustainability, but they only carry adverts for various organic foods and similar products, and nothing else, so I quit them again. What I still hope it could be useful for, and the reason why I haven't deactivated it yet, is finding musicians for a band, but I fear it will spite me again. I'll probably deactivate it once I have my band together (or have given up trying to find band members this way).

[Raphael]

The upside: the new printer arrived yesterday, so we can print again. It's really neat. Right now, I think it works better than any of our previous printer. Really nice quality prints. It's the first time I'm using a laser printer at home.

The downside: printers cost money.

[Man in Space]

I’ve considered off and on legally changing my name to include my mother’s family name (a double-barreled surname). My Babcia was the strongest woman I’ve ever met and I’d like to honor her memory. A couple problems.

1. My mother recently had to legally change the spelling of her name because someone a few decades ago incorrectly told her that her baptismal certificate was a legally valid document. The name on it and the name on her birth certificate differ by one letter. There was some hassle in getting this corrected. I’m debating whether it’s worth it.
2. Do I use Babcia’s maiden name or the name she used for the rest of her life? On the one hand, she took her husband’s last name and kept that name until she died (which name my mother inherited)…but on the other, my grandfather was a horrible person. (He died shortly before I was born; I never met him, which was for the best.)

My mom actually went the double-barreled route when she got married. (For her part, she regrets not just taking my dad’s family’s name wholesale.)

[MacAnDàil]

It seems to have degraded similarly in France. I did not realise this before I began my PhD. This is a shame because I think people should be encouraged to learn and research but the reverse seems to be the case.

If your research doesn't immediately produce revenue for the institution, then what use is it, really?

Knowledge is more important than money, or at least should be, especially for institutions such as schools and universities whose objectives mainly involve knowledge.

[Linguoboy]

It seems to have degraded similarly in France. I did not realise this before I began my PhD. This is a shame because I think people should be encouraged to learn and research but the reverse seems to be the case.

If your research doesn't immediately produce revenue for the institution, then what use is it, really?

Knowledge is more important than money, or at least should be, especially for institutions such as schools and universities whose objectives mainly involve knowledge.

Was my sarcasm really so hard to read there?

[Travis B.]

Someone I know ran into a major bug in zeptoforth, and I managed to reproduce it. I always feel mixed about bugs, in that one ought to not have them, but at the same time they provide an opportunity to do more programming. In this case, the bug is that if one presses the reset button an RP2040-based board that has one (note that the Pico and Pico W do not have reset buttons), there is an issue on bootup where it reports all the flash as being full. Note that this does not apply if one power-cycles the board or if one executes REBOOT, and I normally don't use my boards that have reset buttons for reasons (i.e. they have flash that is slower to write to than that on my Pico and my Pico W), hence why I never caught the issue. At least I was able to reproduce it on a board I own, and it is a different board than the board the issue was originally found on, which makes debugging and fixing this far, far easier for me.

[Travis B.]

And I have a (stupidly simple) fix ─ i.e. do a software reset of the Quad SPI chip on bootup.

[MacAnDàil]

If your research doesn't immediately produce revenue for the institution, then what use is it, really?

Knowledge is more important than money, or at least should be, especially for institutions such as schools and universities whose objectives mainly involve knowledge.

Was my sarcasm really so hard to read there?

It was for me anyway. Had I heard it, I probably have deduced from the tone of voice.

[Moose-tache]

I read everything linguoboy writes in Truman Capote's voice, so the sarcasm is default.

[MacAnDàil]

That may help but the version without sarcasm felt realistic anyway, to my pessimistic side and to my feelings of doubt about the worth of the thesis and my skills.

[Linguoboy]

So yesterday a did a photo shoot for a friend's project. There were seven other models and we all knew each other so we were able to joke around and have a lot of fun, but--

I couldn't help but notice that--despite the fact that my friend said in his invite he was looking for "all sizes, shapes and colors"--we were all white (or--in the case of my friend from Chile--white-passing). There was only one person of colour on the original invite and he apparently couldn't make it. When I saw the list, I reached out to the organiser to offer to invite a few more guys (thinking in particular of a couple of POC friends who have struggled to find acceptance in our predominately white gay social circles) and he was like "I have enough models already." So I dropped it, but I can't help feeling like I've let my friends down a bit and I wished I'd pushed him a little more.

[Travis B.]

So yesterday a did a photo shoot for a friend's project. There were seven other models and we all knew each other so we were able to joke around and have a lot of fun, but--

I couldn't help but notice that--despite the fact that my friend said in his invite he was looking for "all sizes, shapes and colors"--we were all white (or--in the case of my friend from Chile--white-passing). There was only one person of colour on the original invite and he apparently couldn't make it. When I saw the list, I reached out to the organiser to offer to invite a few more guys (thinking in particular of a couple of POC friends who have struggled to find acceptance in our predominately white gay social circles) and he was like "I have enough models already." So I dropped it, but I can't help feeling like I've let my friends down a bit and I wished I'd pushed him a little more.

About this, all I have to say is that I'd give your friend the benefit of the doubt here. He probably had no intention to exclude POC's, and the fact that there wasn't more is probably just an accident than anything else. It is easy to read into things like this, but I would shy away from that.

[zompist]

I couldn't help but notice that--despite the fact that my friend said in his invite he was looking for "all sizes, shapes and colors"--we were all white [...] he was like "I have enough models already." So I dropped it, but I can't help feeling like I've let my friends down a bit and I wished I'd pushed him a little more.

I think you did what you could, but I disagree with Travis... this is exactly how everyday colorism continues. LB's friend theoretically wanted "all colors", but turned down an easy way to get them that would have been no work for himself... as we know from conversational analysis, turning down an offer requires more effort than accepting it.

Diversity requires a little additional work, because everything looks like this: all white people's contact lists look very white. So people think they're being colorblind, but being happy with one's overly white contact list perpetuates the situation.

[Travis B.]

I couldn't help but notice that--despite the fact that my friend said in his invite he was looking for "all sizes, shapes and colors"--we were all white [...] he was like "I have enough models already." So I dropped it, but I can't help feeling like I've let my friends down a bit and I wished I'd pushed him a little more.

I think you did what you could, but I disagree with Travis... this is exactly how everyday colorism continues. LB's friend theoretically wanted "all colors", but turned down an easy way to get them that would have been no work for himself... as we know from conversational analysis, turning down an offer requires more effort than accepting it.

Diversity requires a little additional work, because everything looks like this: all white people's contact lists look very white. So people think they're being colorblind, but being happy with one's overly white contact list perpetuates the situation.

I don't know exactly what was said, as I obviously was not there, and I can read neither Linguoboy's nor Linguoboy's friend's minds, but Linguoboy didn't say that he explicitly suggested they include a more diverse group of people, just that they have more people. If Linguoboy had suggested the former, and that was turned down, then one could argue more strongly that colorism was at work. Of course it seems from his post here that Linguoboy might have been trying to subtly hint at the former while saying the latter, but such hints are easily missed.

[Raphael]

After I had a very productive and successful (by my standards) day yesterday, I got a lot less stuff done today, mostly because I couldn't think of much to do in the first place - I had mostly done what I wanted to get done yesterday. (I'm not from the US, so there's no big holiday today here.)

[MacAnDàil]

After I had a very productive and successful (by my standards) day yesterday, I got a lot less stuff done today, mostly because I couldn't think of much to do in the first place - I had mostly done what I wanted to get done yesterday. (I'm not from the US, so there's no big holiday today here.)

Maybe you could think of a whole list of things you want to do at some point in your life, categorise them and order them in terms of importance and urgency. That way you would never be in a situation where you can't think of much to do. Then the problem might be making sure to remember that you can only do so much in one day.