You know what’s kinda wild about life? No matter what you think, no matter your attitude, you can find community. You can have the most foolish ideas and the least amount of experience, but if you’re loud and persistent, you will find people who validate your worldview enough to keep you there.
I see loads of folks with zero real experience become experts in their fields by convincing people they’re experts. I see folks charging expert fees for their amateur information/skills all the time. Likewise, you can just opt out of all of that, and if you make your values something bizarre then you’ll eventually find folks who are in the same place.
This isn’t judgment. This is me saying, whatever you’re doing right now? It’s enough. If you feel insecure or like a fraud, you don’t have to. If there’s any secret to life, it’s persistence. The way you become the right person for something is just by being the person who is there.
It’s actually kinda cool what I said in paragraph 2 – non-experts making careers out of stuff because they invested their time into it anyway. You know, I see this used by scammers a lot, but it ALSO means that you can just suddenly be King Of This Thing You Like for totally benign non-scammy reasons. You decide that. You make your social reality. You put out your sign and be consistent about it and folks are gonna gather. Like I’m a weird little nugget but I yell loudly about how much I love things and I just always manage to find folks who love the same stuff!
YOU ARE ENOUGH! Make 2024 your best friend by telling it that it’s gonna treat you right.* Become the king of whatever you love. Have a great week.
*If you’re just tired, sick, or sick and tired and no attitude is gonna change what you need changed in life, I validate you too <333 it’s really not always mind over matter, is it?
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Speaking of mind over matter, my elbow has been hurting me from crochet. I looked it up. It’s probably not a repetitive stress injury, but tendinitis, and I thought one of the recommended remedies was interesting: deliberate inflammation. The way they suggested doing it was “dry needling” (like acupuncture, I think) to increase blood flow, but it occurred to me, you know what else increases blood flow without stabbing myself? Doing gentle exercise.
I mean, honestly, I’m not averse to stabbing myself. I have piercings. I test my blood sugar and use lancets pretty regularly. I keep cacti on purpose. Getting poked productively sounds wonderful; it’s just probably gonna involve leaving the house to get it done properly.
What’s much easier is grabbing a water bottle and moving my arm around gently in all the normal movements. I’m so annoyed it helped.
It’s like how I’ve been helping my hip pain lately by getting onto a round balance board and swiveling my hips every which direction. I started out so unstable on the board, but now I can balance well enough to venture a few tentative squats. And if I start messing around on it for a while, I just feel a lot better.
The whole thing where I’m actually in more pain when I move less is such nonsense actually.
Other random mobility observations:
- It’s so important and helpful to stretch my arms above my head and behind my back. This is so good for neck/shoulders.
- If I spend a lot of time with my legs rotated knees-out (which I do because I love sitting cross-legged), I should stretch sometimes with legs rotated knees-in. The pretzel stretch can do this. This is so good for back/hips.
- Spreading my hands palm-down on a firm surface, like a counter or table, and resting some weight on the hand evenly is almost as good as doing something like downward dog without as much strain. At least talking about how much it helps my hand/arm pain.
- Doing a little bit all the time feels really good actually.
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America has more than a few of its own odd conservative quirks, but it’s always interesting to see where even more conservative societies draw their lines. In Russia, celebrities were arrested for an “almost naked” party. (AJE) Say what you will about the USA, but most corners are okay with naked hot people, I think?
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AMC Theaters kicked out a civil rights leader who needed his wheelchair in a movie theater. (NPR) It feels like the movie industry feels entitled to our viewership in-theaters. They don’t want to earn our attendance. This reminds me of Martin Scorcese wanting no intermission for his movie, even though people without profound disabilities can’t sit comfortably that long. And AMC doesn’t want this dude to have his own chair? Get outta here.
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Engadget has an article on canceling certain common subscriptions. I’ve been in the subscription-cancelling mood, myself. I finally figured out how to get rid of two of my worst, most persistent subscriptions. Now I just have to figure out the gym.
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The influencer segment of the marketing industry is getting knee-capped by AI influencers. (Ars Technica) Although we can all think of a few influencers the world could do without, I’m sure, this is one of those jobs that has been enabling people with disabilities and complex situations to work from home. It’s just amazing how this technology is persistently applied in ways that compress the more accessible parts of the labor market, yanno?
Another example of AI being considered for boring uses: Square Enix wants to use AI generation for coding, marketing, etc. (Engadget) I play a lot of RPGs and whatnot, and I think it would be cool to use generative text to create infinite interactions with NPCs that previously must (charmingly) repeat the same three lines over and over. Why can’t we conceive of AI for fun toy things, at the very least, instead of job-destroying things?
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The Game of Thrones universe has animated series on the way. (Variety) I would prefer to see these kinds of adaptations done in animation, personally. House of the Dragon would have dealt with less recasting flip-floppery if they’d just animated the thing, and we could have so many more dragons.
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Tor dot Com shares books about forced body modification. The top story sounds interesting to me in particular. Honestly, this is kinda tapping into a whole type of story I’m definitely in the mood for.
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Zaddy Jordan Peele is teasing us with his next movie. I’m still predicting ghosts/possession. Or just hoping? I don’t honestly care. I love his movies. (Variety)
