Apple updated my iPad and suddenly my bluetooth keyboard isn’t working on it. Nooooo. That’s how I’ve been writing while sitting down lately, so I guess I need to dust off my laptop and actually use it as a laptop? Argh.
I had wanted to try blogging from there this morning, and yet.
So here we are again, at my standing desk.
I’m thinking of using my VR headset to function as a sitting monitor when I hurt too much to stand, without having to convert my desk back to a sitting desk, but it’s an older unit and the resolution isn’t great for text. Not that it extremely bothers me; it’s just an aesthetic for cyberpunk more than writing fantasy.
I’ve got options I GUESS.
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Truly it amazes me that the reason I can do so much crochet, movie-watching, and drawing is because I normally do *absolutely nothing* with my day. Spending a weekend chatting with family, going to an art museum, playing games with my kiddo, and all the usual Actually Living Life stuff takes so?? much?? time???
I mean, normally I do spend substantial time with my kids every day. …sometimes in the form of sitting near them and talking while I crochet and draw.
And I do chores too! Usually while listening to material for me to blog about (or stories in general, just to inspire me).
Why is there so little time? Does it *feel* like there’s so little time because I’m just always stoned so that the hours melt pleasantly into one another, and I never really feel the need to look at the clock, and the rhythm of the days is the pulsing heartbeat of my life?
Maybe it’s just being in my thirties now.
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Who wants to read the feed?
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NPR describes a dream job, which is cheese tasting. I bet my kids could do this with a little training. They have extremely sensitive palates, and we haven’t done much to discourage them from being selective. They can reject food that is only very slightly off at the slightest whiff. It would be nice if they could make money off their ability to tell me what’s wrong with every bite.
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Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns, & Money talks about the intersection of labor and colonization.
One thing we that underemphasize when we talk about the connections between colonization and race is that it was really all about labor. As I always tell my students, while today we focus on slavery and its legacies as about racism, the reality is that the entire point was to create a stable labor force and that continued well after slavery ended, at least in the American South. […] From New York down to Argentina, the singular point of colonization was to force labor to work in order to make Europeans rich.
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Psyche: As a psychiatrist, I’ve seen how chasing happiness leads to misery
Normally I enjoy the writing on Psyche articles a lot more. This one focuses on a couple of cases by the author, a retired psychiatrist and author.
But this is a subject I’ve been thinking about a bit anyway.
It seems paradoxical that the pursuit of happiness should generate sadness, but happiness is a ghost, and chasing a ghost can never be a satisfying experience.
I have a few Mom Sayings that I like to pull out to broadly explain why life is the way life is, and the most useful recent addition has been, “All the good stuff and bad stuff happens at the same time.” Meaning, no matter how bad things get, there are still going to be kittens chasing jingleballs. And no matter how good things get, you might also have diarrhea at Disneyland.
The kid-friendly examples are unnecessarily cute, but maybe you get my drift. We must simply accept that good and bad stuff happens all the time. We’re going to experience all of it. We have to be present for everything so we don’t miss it.
That is much easier said than done, of course. Presence is a moving target.
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I suppose then that it’s worth discussing The Morality of Having Kids in a Burning, Drowning World (New Yorker).
For my part, I just think you can’t ever predict where life is going. Remember how good and bad happens all at the same time? Even as we battle climate change, good things will happen.
Great people with meaningful lives are born in terrible situations all the time. Sometimes good meaningful lives are brief. That isn’t without value. The moments we spend together have value.
If you want kids, have kids. If you don’t want kids, do your best to avoid it.
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Huffpost: Far-Right Populist Javier Milei Wins Argentina’s Pesidential Runoff Election
If it tells you anything, the man was praised by Trump and also has stupid hair.
I’m not insulting him for having stupid hair, to be clear; I’m saying that the modern fascist movement often has leaders with hair that differs from what is considered business appropriate. Trump’s hair is a distinctive feature, as was Boris Johnson’s.
This is one way that far-right leaders shoot for populist appeal. They aren’t like the guys in the system, so they’ll be able to change it. You can trust them! They have stupid hair!
This stupid-haired man wants to screw with education and abortion, so my sympathies to Argentinians. We’re in this together, huh?
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Cyanide & Happiness often feels like it’s throwing nonsense spaghetti at the wall to see if anyone might think it’s funny, but this one is actually funny.
