I keep telling myself to stop publicly posting about this whole leg of my sobriety journey because it is not interesting. Yet here we are, and here I intend to remain.

I don’t know what’s causing my mood disturbances right now. But I am disturbed in a way I haven’t been for many years. They say that heavy cannabis users may continue experiencing withdrawal effects for about a year. It could be that. It could be my attempt to curtail caffeine, which is a grumpy experience. It could be the gaba/l-theanine I’m using to sleep. It could be PMS. It could be bog-standard autism meltdowns.

I never really had a full picture of what was happening to me. Therapists and psychiatrists haven’t been entirely helpful. There are reasons I ended up self-medicating with, like, everything on the planet. But there are also reasons I stopped all that.

I do miss the version of me that didn’t have many emotions, when I was very stoned. I liked the numbness. Obviously! It’s hard and scary when I melt down. I can miss it, but not want it. I’ve learned too much to want it again, for better or worse. The exciting self-medicating part of my life has ended. Now it’s just me with my miswired brain, and I’m raw-dogging this shit.

The helpful thoughts that I have now that I’m older and not using Substances:

This is going to pass, sooner rather than later.

These feelings are just feelings.

Wherever I am in the moment is where I am in the moment.

The latter point is an extension of things I’ve been learning while reading about Buddhism. Thinking about tanha, desire, and the desire to be rid of whatever meltdown I’m in, the desire to be different — that is one source of dukkha, suffering. It’s also a reminder to root myself where I am and utilize grounding techniques I learned in IOP.

To some extent, I am trying to accept this is how I’ve always worked. This is my werewolf, my demon, my Lady Hyde. I haven’t seen her in a while. She is scary and familiar. Hey there, girly-girl. Weirdly, I kinda missed you.

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The whole Netflix games thing is still weird, but it is going to bring Hades natively to iOS on March 19th (Engadget), so I’m pretty pumped about that. It’ll be a good format for it.

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Anna Marie Tendler has a memoir coming out in August, and it sounds relatable (Variety). I’ll be there.

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I always have the urge to snark about projects like this, which seem ill-advised at best and a grievous misuse of resources in a struggling society at worst, but I’m honestly pretty neutral about efforts to bring back woolly mammoths (NPR). The end game might strike me as silly, but hopefully we learn useful stuff from it.

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Doctors aren’t allowed to participate in lethal injections, so a lot of the people who do it are simply those with related experience, like EMTs and nurses. In some states, they are volunteers. (NPR)

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Here’s an interesting Ars Technica about the evolution of a firefly’s glow, which comes from something called luciferase. I wanted to try to summarize it, but I don’t really understand it, and scientists don’t entirely understand it yet either. Still kinda cool to think about though.

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The FDA has approved its first OTC continuous glucose monitor. (Engadget) I already predict it will be used by a lot of people who follow ketogenic and low-carb diets as part of their eating disorder. For my part, I seem to have reactive hypoglycemia as a side-effect of my SSRIs (which I was told by a dietician at IOP a couple years back), and I really want one of these so I can (hopefully) be warned the drop is coming before I’m feeling like hell. It needs replacement every couple weeks, so I hope it’s affordable.

I do a finger stick test if I want to verify why I feel horrible — usually while eating something to bring up my sugars again — but I feel *so* *terrible* in these situations, it would be nice if the thingy just did it for me.

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The climate crisis has already been here for a while, and in many ways that American denialists just don’t see. Here’s an AJE article about how climate change is impacting Malaysian fishers.

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Vinnie Jones refused to play Juggernaut again unless they paid him much better, and Hollywouldn’t pay him (ba dum tss), so there we are. (Variety) He’s not the only Actually Good Actor who has been deeply disappointed by their brush with modern superhero cinema. It’s a shame: Jones is not just a good actor, but a great fit for Juggernaut. I can’t think of one better tbh. Pay actors what they deserve! Stop making movies by committee!

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I’ve pretty much only heard negative reactions to the live action Avatar: The Last Airbender remake, but Netflix’s numbers have deemed it worthy of renewal anyway. (Reactor, formerly Tor dot Com) The cast is adorable so I guess I’m glad they’re getting more work.

Tangentially, I’m really reluctant to share Reactor articles when Tor, the publisher, is using AI covers. It’s just like…the world is such garbage and they’re not a place to hide out from it. Reactor can try to disassociate but the north remembers. Or something like that.

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Frostpunk 2 is coming out in June. Maybe I’ll actually play more than the one campaign in Frostpunk 1 someday? Hahahaha just kidding, it’s one of those games I love where I will only ever play about 5% of the content. I’ll buy the sequel to support them, though.

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Researchers found an amphibian that makes milk. Sounds tasty already! (NPR) Slurp slurp.

Quitting caffeine is so much harder on me than quitting weed so far. I spent so much time yesterday staring at my screen, trying to write, unable to think of any words. I hate stimulants. Mild use, for me, apparently means heart palpitations; quitting it once I’ve got a dependency means becoming an utter zombie with relentless migraines.

Guzzling iced tea got me into more of a thinky place by the end of the day, but that’s not really a long term solution.

I have to believe if I quit-quit, it will all be better in a month, but I have already sacrificed a month to babysitting myself through weed withdrawal and I’m so reluctant to do it again so soon. On the other hand, from what I’ve learned about substance dependency the last two years, I really want to…not be dependent! On anything! It just sucks because caffeine is in so many things, like basically every drink I enjoy, and also chocolate, and even OTC migraine medications.

On the bright side, I’m not even thinking about weed much anymore, which I never would have thought possible two months ago. Two years ago. Eight years ago. Sober life is pretty neat.

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Another reason it’s good to be off weed is because studies may link cardiovascular disease to cannabis use. (Ars Technica) The more you use (especially daily like me), the likelier you are to have a heart attack or stroke. Considering my heart palpitations became a THING when I was quitting, I totally believe this. There is a big cardiovascular involvement.

The classification of cannabis with far more dangerous drugs has prevented studies like this until recently. America’s drug war has made drugs more dangerous on multiple axes.

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If you watched the John Oliver episode about dollar stores (YouTube), you won’t be surprised that Family Dollar has been fined over rodents in its warehouses. (NPR)

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The CDC recommends covid boosters for ages 65+. (Ars Technica) If the CDC, who recommends you should try licking that light socket, is suggesting the booster, y’all should get the booster.

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Game industry layoff gore continues. EA is laying off 650 employees. (Engadget) Yikes, EA.

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For the time being, Star Trek is safe from David Zaslav and Zaslavian destructive management style. Paramount won’t be acquired by Warner Bros. (Ars Technica)

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I have to share this for the great headline, which you MUST read in his voice: Werner Herzog Watched 30 Minutes of ‘Barbie’ and Asked: ‘Could It Be That the World of Barbie Is Sheer Hell?’ (Variety)

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Montana, of all places, says that a woman’s right to abortion is tied to her right to privacy. A judge declared three anti-abortion laws unconstitutional. (NPR)

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The Oscars loves snubbing horror movies (NPR), as evidenced by the fact Nope should have cleared the 2023 Oscars and did not.

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Two days ago, Ars Technica reported that X revived its anti-deadnaming policy.

Today, X bent over to suck right wing interests and killed the policy again. (Engadget)

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Sophie Boutella defends ‘Rebel Moon,’ and rightly so. (Variety) The movie itself was bad, in the opinion of my review. But Sophie Boutella acted her ass off in it. She committed herself to some of the absolute worst dialogue and gave some absolutely excellent line readings. It’s not her fault the film sucked. She’s right to want to see it treated better when she did her part so well.

I have this running joke* in my family about how I am totally psychic. I have made multiple accurate predictions. There are really funny probably-coincidences I can attribute to myself as psychic predictions, too. I’m not reading minds. It’s nothing like that.

*When I say I’m joking, I’m saying that there’s a 50/50 chance that it’s just a bit (I live for The Bit) or I actually believe it myself. There is no delineation between these two things. I live by Calvin & Hobbes rules. The fact it is funny to bring up frequently is the entire point.

Last night I dreamed about finding an exciting house perfect for my family. Unfortunately, renovations on the house turned out to be performed by scammers. The house fell into a river. The dream wasn’t very stressful; it was kind of funny.

Today I woke up to some external stimulus that had me looking at houses. I had forgotten the dream by this point. I saw one house listing that was really exciting! A good price, a good size. The downside seemed to be its rural location. I asked my online friends what considerations I should have in regards to rural life.

Through a chain of research, I eventually discovered this house is at risk of flooding. It’s unexpected for a house in the middle of the desert. But there’s no denying it: the house is uninsurable due to its flood risk.

I didn’t make the connection between my dream and the house at first. It’s awfully weird I was dreaming about houses falling into rivers before this weirdo chain of events though…right?

So yeah, I’m a psychic. I can’t say this psychic power is *useful*. I am psychic nonetheless.

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Bright Wall, Dark Room reviewed a 1989 documentary called “For All Mankind.” Interesting read!

For All Mankind demonstrates a playful self-awareness of its identity as a movie about making movies. Reinert cuts together footage of the astronauts peering through cameras, filming each other, and waving. The men of Apollo 8 hold up notebook paper signs reading “Apollo 8 Home Movies” and “Staring [sic] Bill Anders, James Lovell, and Frank Borman.” In other footage, a tape recorder floats through the module playing the fanfare from Richard Strauss’s 1896 Also sprach Zarathustra, best known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

It can feel as if Reinert, who set out to make a movie about the moon, instead attempted to  make every movie about the moon.

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Crooked Timber shares a thought-provoking essay about managers and their waning power in the office, using the church as an example.

In the encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI made his fateful rejection of all forms of artificial contraception. As an attempt to exercise and shore up authority it failed completely. The realities of raising large families and dealing with unplanned pregnancies were far removed from the experience of priests and theologians. And the church’s evident demographic motive (the desire for big Catholic families to fill the pews) further undermined the legitimacy of the prohibition.

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Lawyers, Guns, & Money sound as annoyed by the semaglutide craze as I am.

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Rebecca Ferguson was reportedly harassed by a costar on set. The Rock wants everyone to know it wasn’t him and he will flex his biceps over it. (TSFKA Twitter) Way to make it about yourself, Dwayne!

In similar entertainment news, Jonny Lee Miller related his reaction to abuse of a woman in the entertainment industry. (The Independent) I appreciate his desire to not make it about himself.

“My memory is a bit hazy, but I remember feeling fury,” he says. “I actually wanted to be more proactive about it, but it was 100 per cent her decision and you have to swallow your male bulls***. I was gonna hire someone to f***ing…” He trails off. “But I didn’t. I had some connections.” I laugh, nervously. Miller does not. And Jolie told him not to? “Yeah. Because it would mean it becomes about you, right? And you wanting to prove how much you care – ‘No one’s going to f***ing do that to my people.’ But what you need to do is listen to your partner.” He smiles, warmly now. “Amazingly, that was the one thing I was able to get right. You know, I was raised by women. I have three sisters. And [Jolie] is a very smart lady. She knows what’s best for her.”

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Florida’s government is all like “let’s make measles great again!” (NPR)

Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has so far not urged parents of unvaccinated children at the school with the outbreak to get their children vaccinated, or to quarantine them. In a Feb. 20 letter, Ladapo left it up to parents to decide whether to send their kids to school.

It’s wild to me that one of the easiest, best, cheapest tools for public health has become so politically polarizing. I can’t think The People actually want this.

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I’ve been waiting to watch Poor Things, and now it’ll be on Hulu March 7th. (Variety) I feel like I have to make an addendum about how I fully expect to hate this movie any time I bring it up, because I am not planning to evaluate it fairly. idk man, I can be petty.

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Are you surprised to hear that Amazon is up to fuckery with the Roadhouse remake? (Ars Technica) They don’t want to pay the original screenwriter for the adaptation and rushed through AI voice work to make that happen. Any interest I had in watching a greasy Jake Gyllenhaal kickpunch his way through the titular roadhouse has vanished.

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Engadget reports that the Apple Car has been cancelled. Word on the street is that they’d like to refocus on AI. I think of Apple as being one of the less-evil corporate feudalist lords simply because they want to keep our data to themselves (no privacy, but it stays in their walled garden), and you pay a premium for their devices and services to get that. I am not optimistic about how long that vibe is going to last.

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The New Yorker wonders if you can want an Oscar too much. Of course they’re talking (in large part) about Maestro, BCoop’s extremely thirsty plea for Oscars attention.

Also from the same source, a review of Dune 2 that makes it sound like I won’t love it for the same reasons I don’t love the first one. But how much can we trust The New Yorker on this when they talk so much about conlang and point to Lord of the Rings as a major source of our fascination when I got into conlang from a Klingon dictionary vastly predating the other properties they’re talking about? They barely mention Star Trek in passing, then spend a bunch of time caring about the Game of Thrones conlinguist (I might have just made up that word) who I am not especially fond of.

Speaking of Dune 2, Stellan Skarsgard talks about Austin Butler (Variety) like Brian Cox talks about Jeremy Strong (“have you tried acting?” to paraphrase), and I never get tired of this kind of story about over-enthusiastic actors with poor boundaries between work and reality.

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Odysseus plopped onto its side on the Moon and will be freezing to sleep forever faster than expected. (Ars Technica)