Zompist Bboard Again

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Jan 09, 2025 2:18 pm

Starbeam wrote: ↑Thu Jan 09, 2025 2:07 pm Update: got the accomodations! It's informal and not with any kind of record, but whatever works

Hm - congratulations?

I mean, accommodations are accommodations. Honestly, it prevents a lot of paperwork that wouldn't matter

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jan 12, 2025 8:55 am One of my shoulders hurts for no apparent reason.

Welcome to the treadmill I walk on, kiddo.

alice wrote: ↑Mon Jan 13, 2025 2:34 pm Only my second week back at work and already I've had to write off a day due to an ME "event".

That sucks. Sorry to hear that.

I need to stop clinging to dreams.

I don't mean metaphorical dreams, of course. Clinging to metaphorical dreams might well be necessary to stay half-way sane in a time like this.

No, I mean literal dreams. It happens again and again that I get half-way awake, and then I basically choose to go back to sleep, or at least try to go back to sleep, so that I can go on following the interesting things that happen in my dreams.

Fortunately it turned out that my car just had ice stuck on a wheel causing the rattling. Nonetheless, I cannot stress enough my dislike for winter. The cold is terrible enough, particularly given the paper-thin walls in my apartment. The snow is what really gets me, particularly when I have to drive on iced-over roads at night on my daily commute. Even aside from its awful political culture, Missouri has the worst weather: the harsh winters of the north and the brutal summers of the south.

It's really not that bad here (no snow yet!), but yeah, I can't wait for winter to be over with myself.

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2025 2:48 am I need to stop clinging to dreams.

I don't mean metaphorical dreams, of course. Clinging to metaphorical dreams might well be necessary to stay half-way sane in a time like this.

No, I mean literal dreams. It happens again and again that I get half-way awake, and then I basically choose to go back to sleep, or at least try to go back to sleep, so that I can go on following the interesting things that happen in my dreams.

I had a very interesting dream the other day... One of those with kind of a coherent story. Unfortunately I woke up before the story ended. (Of course I know there's really no satisfying ending anyway... like a bad TV showrunner, your brain makes it up as it goes along.)

malloc wrote: ↑Fri Jan 03, 2025 3:19 pm I don't understand what difference therapy would make. My feelings are the result of objective verifiable problems with the world that would still exist regardless of what therapists told me. Furthermore I question whether making peace with those problems would even be a good thing. It seems horribly disrespectful to harden my heart to all the suffering to come.

Cure you of an inability to disregard apparently unfixable reality? Especially relevant if this 'reality' is only the most probable outcome - it might not happen!

The latest Python iteration of my SCA has fallen catastrophicaly out of sync with another library and now I have to rewrite the damned thing yet again. I think I'll write it in Rust and never mind the Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Flying back from the US to Europe in wintertime always seems to massively screw with my internal clock. Still doesn't yet feel I'm on "normal" time yet, and it's been almost two weeks...

doctor shark wrote: ↑Tue Jan 21, 2025 3:16 pm Flying back from the US to Europe in wintertime always seems to massively screw with my internal clock. Still doesn't yet feel I'm on "normal" time yet, and it's been almost two weeks...

Isn’t it supposed to take 1 day for each time-zone crossed?

TomHChappell wrote: ↑Tue Jan 21, 2025 3:32 pm

doctor shark wrote: ↑Tue Jan 21, 2025 3:16 pm Flying back from the US to Europe in wintertime always seems to massively screw with my internal clock. Still doesn't yet feel I'm on "normal" time yet, and it's been almost two weeks...

Isn’t it supposed to take 1 day for each time-zone crossed?

Normally, and it's usually six for me, but the first day doesn't really count (in my reckoning) because I can't really sleep on airplanes. And the issue more is that I fly to/from the US in winter, a season in which there's not a lot of bright sunlight in Europe, so trying to use sunlight as a natural cue is quite challenging when it's dark and dreary most of the day...

FFS. An acquaintance just posted on Facebook he "prides" himself on "having friends across the political spectrum". I asked if this included Trumpers and his responded with some typical centrist pablum about reaching across the political divide. Dude, you're gay like me. How can you delude yourself into thinking you're "friends" with someone who doesn't think you're their equal in dignity and humanity? Did they flatter you by telling you you're "one of the good ones" or something?

The people who support Trump fall into two categories. First there's the stupid ones, the ones that actually believed that he was going to reduce their grocery bill and who thought that he somehow didn't really mean all of the other stuff he said, despite having had a full term in office already to show his true colors. Then there's the evil ones, the ones who knew very well what he intended and supported it as such.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2025 4:07 pmThe people who support Trump fall into two categories. First there's the stupid ones, the ones that actually believed that he was going to reduce their grocery bill and who thought that he somehow didn't really mean all of the other stuff he said, despite having had a full term in office already to show his true colors. Then there's the evil ones, the ones who knew very well what he intended and supported it as such.

At this point, there's every little light between the two camps. He made it abundantly clear on day one that he was going to give the latter what they craved at the expense of everyone else. So now the former group consists of those who never thought leopards would eat their face and those for whom leopards eating faces is not a dealbreaker.

What's really infuriating to me is the amount of defeatism and resignation among so-called anti-Trump commentators. Lots of people seem to be saying "Welp, that's that then" as if, I don't know, a dozen colour revolutions never accomplished anything, Yes, if we protest, there will be attempts at violent suppression. If you're not prepared for that, then stop sharing memes lamenting that your neighbours would rat out Anne Frank because you're hardly any better.

I sort of don't want to post this but I also kind of want to vent it somewhere. I had a very close friend all through school and I believe he died in July. I've just kind of pieced it together today. It appears he spoke to me for an hour and a half on the last day, or possibly days, of his life. He was going through a lot, but it was a very beautiful conversation at the same time and we made vague plans to see each other: he gave me a lovely location to imagine meeting up at, though not a date or a time. I now think he was trying to leave me in a good place, with nice feelings, affirmed in the meaningfulness of our friendship, knowing he was saying goodbye.

I'm so sorry. If that is true, I hope one day you can look back on those memories with more gratitude than pain.

Thank you. I feel enormous gratitude to him. Both for his friendship and that he called me that day and left me knowing how much he loved me. He didn't have to do that, and it would have been much worse without it.

I called the police department in his area and after I said his name they read quietly for a long time, then said "All I can say is, we are aware." (Followed by "What's the reason you didn't report a concern sooner?")

I gave them my contact details and asked them to be passed on to the next of kin.

Sorry that this is very much not a light post. I'm ok. Very, very sad, but ok. He was a wonderful friend, and as S Club 7 so pithily put it, "friendship never ends".

Make the most of everyone, eh.

Ok, now I'm gonna try for a lighthearted vent. I can't believe I forgot that that line is, obviously, from the Spice Girls, not S Club 7

sasasha wrote: ↑Wed Jan 29, 2025 4:07 am Ok, now I'm gonna try for a lighthearted vent. I can't believe I forgot that that line is, obviously, from the Spice Girls, not S Club 7

Your finger is obviously nowhere near the pulse of youth