Here's another batch of comments I made on other journals etc.:
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drwex suggested that since comparing ourselves to other people can make people unhappy, because "There's always someone better, richer, more good-looking, more talented," it's better to compare with our past selves: "Five years ago were you better off? Smarter? Had better relationships? Had more skills?"
I thought about that overnight, and then came back and wrote:
And what does "better off" mean? Five years ago,cattitude and I had just moved to Seattle so he could work for Microsoft. Now, we're back on the proper coast, and have a lot more money in the bank.
But five years ago, it was 2013, and Obama was president. Individually, we may be better off, but I worry more now. (That's aside from the health issues.)
The relationships one is also tricky; uprooting ourselves twice (New York to Seattle to the Boston area) has not been good for my social life. And my sisterroadnotes was still alive, and one of the few advantages of being in Seattle was seeing her regularly. (In the sense of "relationships" as sexual/romantic/life partners, they were good then and they're good now; I like being very near adrian_turtle and closer to rysmiel than in Seattle, even though rysmiel may never visit here again, because they would rather not enter the United States.)
Loosely prompted by, but not really connected to, a book review of sorts bylegionseagle and the comments thereon:
I first saw what I think is a boiling chicken some time in the past year: the butcher shop/grocer near my new apartment often has some chickens labeled "for soup only." I haven't bought any—our theory of chicken soup is, in fact, something this woman might sympathize with, roast checken and stuffing on day one, then a couple of meals like cold chicken with salad and chicken curry, then boil the bones and the meat still clinging to them for soup.
There are at least two differences between this and an endlessly recurring chicken. One is that it may be roast chicken for dinner on (say) Monday, cold chicken and salad for lunch Tuesday, something unrelated to chicken for dinner Tuesday night, a curry or pilaf Wednesday night, and soup Thursday*. The other is that we both cook: in that modelcattitude probably roasted the chicken, I made the curry or pilaf, and whoever was home early enough on Thursday made the soup.
No spreadsheets, though, just a whiteboard on the refrigerator door listing what fresh fruit and vegetables we have. We started doing that in our previous apartment (which had one kitchen wall painted so it worked as a blackboard), and it greatly reduces the sort of waste that comes from discovering something sad in the fridge and saying "I forgot we had broccoli?" while carefully discarding it. (That's why it only lists fresh: it takes a lot longer for frozen peas or blueberries to lose their virtue.)
In response to a discussion at Cerebral Sexuality of
different uses of "queer":
I'm definitely hearing the umbrella sense of "queer," like my girlfriend asking me "is she queer?" about the state attorney general (I said yes; Healey is married to another woman and I think identifies as lesbian); or someone we were talking to at the Dyke March saying "lesbian" to refer to me and Adrian, hesitating, and then saying "it's okay, you're queer." And yes, I am, very much in the "we're here, we're queer, get used to it" sense, and the other label that feels like it fits is "bi" (which you can in my case expand to "bisexual" or "biromantic"). I wouldn't use the term "dyke" for myself outside that context—not because it can be a slur, it just doesn't feel like it fits—but in the context of the Dyke March I belong there because I'm queer, not male, and want a political march, not (or not only) a rather corporate celebration.
And I'm back to responding to the odd journaling promptsdrwex has been responding to lately, this one including the word "fantasy" for ideas about how other people should behave:
I'm starting to think that the main message of this series of prompts is "when all else fails, lower your expectations."
In this case: the difference between a judgmental "should" and a predictive "should" is important and sometimes valuable. "I should call my mother" and "it should rain tonight" are saying rather different things, and I think there's some of that confusion in this prompt. Or maybe they're poking at the things that are part expectation based on past experience (like the statement about rain) and part an ethical claim. "The train should be here soon" feels like an example there—it can be "this usually happens" because the 3:10 to Neverland is a reliable train, or a statement about other people's proper behavior, because we paid good money for those T passes, and people need to get somewhere.
Something like "so-and-so is always early to things, it's half an hour late, where are they?" is looking for a different sort of answer than "that guy is always late, where is he this time, damn it?" "People should be on time" is a belief about proper behavior; "redbird tends to get places early" and "redbird is always late" are both factual claims/beliefs about one bit of the world, and cannot both be true. If I am late for an event, someone who believes the second claim is more likely to be angry with me than someone who believes the first, and the shape of the anger and any subsequent argument would be different.
The other connection here is "you can't get an 'is' from an 'ought,'" especially when the "ought" is something like "I should be able to walk five miles without pain." I wonder how many of those "fantasies" the prompt-writer is talking about are that the other person should be both willing and able to do things that they aren't, or that they haven't been asked for.
dichroic was talking about not understanding "the whole ultralight packing thing":
As far as I can recall from when I was trying this, the ultralight packing model includes accepting that you're not going to be wearing any interesting clothing.
There are also unstated assumptions about being healthy and able-bodied: even if carrying bags isn't an issue, this sort of light packing isn't something you can do if you need a large part of your carry-on space for, say, a CPAP machine.
That said, if it works with what else you're trying to do, it's nice not to be dealing with large amounts of luggage, especially for the sort of trip that's two days in one place, train trip, a night in another, another train trip to a third city... rather than traveling to one place and staying there for however many days. At that point, a bag that doesn't encumber you if you have a spare couple of hours makes a difference, in a way that's much less important if you're going to spend your trip in one place, whether for two days or a dozen. (I have fond memories of walking along the medieval walls of York with my backpack, grabbing a croissant and hot chocolate, and then walking back to the railroad station.)
And a bit of whimsy from a File770 comment thread, sparked by the F770 "time machine" that puts utterly random years into the WordPress comment box (but shows the correct date when comments are posted):
In practice, how much milk I want in my tea depends partly on the strength of the tea—and I don't measure my loose tea leaves precisely—and, these days, partly on the fat content of the milk: is it whole or 2% or 1% (marginal) or mixing jugs of skim or lowfat with cream or half and half at a cafe somewhere? So I add milk until the color of the tea+milk mixture looks right, which is why I'd rather do it myself unless with one of the very few people who have seen me drink tea often enough to know what appearance equals tea Vicki will like.
Just to complicate this, the whole milk of my childhood was i think 4% fat, googling tells me that these days in the US it's "at least 3.5%," and the milk I was using in Montreal last week was labeled as 3.8%. The milk in my refrigerator here in Massachusetts just says "whole milk," and while I think what I had in Montreal was slightly richer, I am not paying that close attention, especially as one of the reasons I am drinking tea is for the caffeine, so the first cup of the day in particular is a bootstrap problem.
Here in 8181 you have to make it yourself the first time, but then you can ask the artificial stupids for "a cup of Assam tea the way I like it" and they'll match that. (Here in 8181, ordering an artificial intelligence to do that sort of trivial thing for you is agreed to be wrong, though if an AI is a member of your family it might well offer, just as my partners and I make tea and coffee for each other.)
andrewducker linked to an article saying it's fine to feed bread to swans:
When I was living in New York, the "don't feed the ducks and geese in the park bread" argument was about the low nutritional value of a lot of commercial white or Italian bread (people were buying those a block away, for the ducks) and about just tossing large amounts of brad on the water, where some of it sank and was eaten by rats. Also about the young birds getting too used to being fed by humans, instead of foraging—a lot fewer people want to take their kids to feed the birds when it's below freezing, even if the river isn't frozen.
I stopped buying whole loaves of bread specifically for the birds, but continued to sometime bring them half or a third of a loaf that was getting hard.
It also turned out that "let's feed the ducks" is less appealing when it becomes "let's feed the Canada geese" which turns into "the lawns and paths near the water are all covered in goose droppings." Given the opportunity, Canada geese spend a lot more time on land, eating grass, than mallards do.
I lived in that corner of Manhattan long enough to learn a bit about the local ecology, and see some changes, like the increased goose population (not just in Inwood, this was while the population was still recovering from the effects of DDT). We only got the occasional mute swans, which chased geese off during breeding season. Swans are attractive, and in North America they're an invasive species. But feeding any of the waterfowl also meant feeding the herring gulls and, sometimes, the rats. The rats in turn are preyed on by the black-crowned night herons, attractive birds which fewer people notice because they're not very active during the day. (I also suspect that even people who would like the Parks Department to Do Something about the rats don't want to watch a heron catch and eat one.)
drwex suggested that since comparing ourselves to other people can make people unhappy, because "There's always someone better, richer, more good-looking, more talented," it's better to compare with our past selves: "Five years ago were you better off? Smarter? Had better relationships? Had more skills?"I thought about that overnight, and then came back and wrote:
And what does "better off" mean? Five years ago,
cattitude and I had just moved to Seattle so he could work for Microsoft. Now, we're back on the proper coast, and have a lot more money in the bank.But five years ago, it was 2013, and Obama was president. Individually, we may be better off, but I worry more now. (That's aside from the health issues.)
The relationships one is also tricky; uprooting ourselves twice (New York to Seattle to the Boston area) has not been good for my social life. And my sister
roadnotes was still alive, and one of the few advantages of being in Seattle was seeing her regularly. (In the sense of "relationships" as sexual/romantic/life partners, they were good then and they're good now; I like being very near adrian_turtle and closer to rysmiel than in Seattle, even though rysmiel may never visit here again, because they would rather not enter the United States.)Loosely prompted by, but not really connected to, a book review of sorts by
legionseagle and the comments thereon:I first saw what I think is a boiling chicken some time in the past year: the butcher shop/grocer near my new apartment often has some chickens labeled "for soup only." I haven't bought any—our theory of chicken soup is, in fact, something this woman might sympathize with, roast checken and stuffing on day one, then a couple of meals like cold chicken with salad and chicken curry, then boil the bones and the meat still clinging to them for soup.
There are at least two differences between this and an endlessly recurring chicken. One is that it may be roast chicken for dinner on (say) Monday, cold chicken and salad for lunch Tuesday, something unrelated to chicken for dinner Tuesday night, a curry or pilaf Wednesday night, and soup Thursday*. The other is that we both cook: in that model
cattitude probably roasted the chicken, I made the curry or pilaf, and whoever was home early enough on Thursday made the soup.No spreadsheets, though, just a whiteboard on the refrigerator door listing what fresh fruit and vegetables we have. We started doing that in our previous apartment (which had one kitchen wall painted so it worked as a blackboard), and it greatly reduces the sort of waste that comes from discovering something sad in the fridge and saying "I forgot we had broccoli?" while carefully discarding it. (That's why it only lists fresh: it takes a lot longer for frozen peas or blueberries to lose their virtue.)
In response to a discussion at Cerebral Sexuality of
different uses of "queer":
I'm definitely hearing the umbrella sense of "queer," like my girlfriend asking me "is she queer?" about the state attorney general (I said yes; Healey is married to another woman and I think identifies as lesbian); or someone we were talking to at the Dyke March saying "lesbian" to refer to me and Adrian, hesitating, and then saying "it's okay, you're queer." And yes, I am, very much in the "we're here, we're queer, get used to it" sense, and the other label that feels like it fits is "bi" (which you can in my case expand to "bisexual" or "biromantic"). I wouldn't use the term "dyke" for myself outside that context—not because it can be a slur, it just doesn't feel like it fits—but in the context of the Dyke March I belong there because I'm queer, not male, and want a political march, not (or not only) a rather corporate celebration.
And I'm back to responding to the odd journaling prompts
drwex has been responding to lately, this one including the word "fantasy" for ideas about how other people should behave:I'm starting to think that the main message of this series of prompts is "when all else fails, lower your expectations."
In this case: the difference between a judgmental "should" and a predictive "should" is important and sometimes valuable. "I should call my mother" and "it should rain tonight" are saying rather different things, and I think there's some of that confusion in this prompt. Or maybe they're poking at the things that are part expectation based on past experience (like the statement about rain) and part an ethical claim. "The train should be here soon" feels like an example there—it can be "this usually happens" because the 3:10 to Neverland is a reliable train, or a statement about other people's proper behavior, because we paid good money for those T passes, and people need to get somewhere.
Something like "so-and-so is always early to things, it's half an hour late, where are they?" is looking for a different sort of answer than "that guy is always late, where is he this time, damn it?" "People should be on time" is a belief about proper behavior; "
redbird tends to get places early" and "redbird is always late" are both factual claims/beliefs about one bit of the world, and cannot both be true. If I am late for an event, someone who believes the second claim is more likely to be angry with me than someone who believes the first, and the shape of the anger and any subsequent argument would be different. The other connection here is "you can't get an 'is' from an 'ought,'" especially when the "ought" is something like "I should be able to walk five miles without pain." I wonder how many of those "fantasies" the prompt-writer is talking about are that the other person should be both willing and able to do things that they aren't, or that they haven't been asked for.
dichroic was talking about not understanding "the whole ultralight packing thing":As far as I can recall from when I was trying this, the ultralight packing model includes accepting that you're not going to be wearing any interesting clothing.
There are also unstated assumptions about being healthy and able-bodied: even if carrying bags isn't an issue, this sort of light packing isn't something you can do if you need a large part of your carry-on space for, say, a CPAP machine.
That said, if it works with what else you're trying to do, it's nice not to be dealing with large amounts of luggage, especially for the sort of trip that's two days in one place, train trip, a night in another, another train trip to a third city... rather than traveling to one place and staying there for however many days. At that point, a bag that doesn't encumber you if you have a spare couple of hours makes a difference, in a way that's much less important if you're going to spend your trip in one place, whether for two days or a dozen. (I have fond memories of walking along the medieval walls of York with my backpack, grabbing a croissant and hot chocolate, and then walking back to the railroad station.)
And a bit of whimsy from a File770 comment thread, sparked by the F770 "time machine" that puts utterly random years into the WordPress comment box (but shows the correct date when comments are posted):
In practice, how much milk I want in my tea depends partly on the strength of the tea—and I don't measure my loose tea leaves precisely—and, these days, partly on the fat content of the milk: is it whole or 2% or 1% (marginal) or mixing jugs of skim or lowfat with cream or half and half at a cafe somewhere? So I add milk until the color of the tea+milk mixture looks right, which is why I'd rather do it myself unless with one of the very few people who have seen me drink tea often enough to know what appearance equals tea Vicki will like.
Just to complicate this, the whole milk of my childhood was i think 4% fat, googling tells me that these days in the US it's "at least 3.5%," and the milk I was using in Montreal last week was labeled as 3.8%. The milk in my refrigerator here in Massachusetts just says "whole milk," and while I think what I had in Montreal was slightly richer, I am not paying that close attention, especially as one of the reasons I am drinking tea is for the caffeine, so the first cup of the day in particular is a bootstrap problem.
Here in 8181 you have to make it yourself the first time, but then you can ask the artificial stupids for "a cup of Assam tea the way I like it" and they'll match that. (Here in 8181, ordering an artificial intelligence to do that sort of trivial thing for you is agreed to be wrong, though if an AI is a member of your family it might well offer, just as my partners and I make tea and coffee for each other.)
andrewducker linked to an article saying it's fine to feed bread to swans: When I was living in New York, the "don't feed the ducks and geese in the park bread" argument was about the low nutritional value of a lot of commercial white or Italian bread (people were buying those a block away, for the ducks) and about just tossing large amounts of brad on the water, where some of it sank and was eaten by rats. Also about the young birds getting too used to being fed by humans, instead of foraging—a lot fewer people want to take their kids to feed the birds when it's below freezing, even if the river isn't frozen.
I stopped buying whole loaves of bread specifically for the birds, but continued to sometime bring them half or a third of a loaf that was getting hard.
It also turned out that "let's feed the ducks" is less appealing when it becomes "let's feed the Canada geese" which turns into "the lawns and paths near the water are all covered in goose droppings." Given the opportunity, Canada geese spend a lot more time on land, eating grass, than mallards do.
I lived in that corner of Manhattan long enough to learn a bit about the local ecology, and see some changes, like the increased goose population (not just in Inwood, this was while the population was still recovering from the effects of DDT). We only got the occasional mute swans, which chased geese off during breeding season. Swans are attractive, and in North America they're an invasive species. But feeding any of the waterfowl also meant feeding the herring gulls and, sometimes, the rats. The rats in turn are preyed on by the black-crowned night herons, attractive birds which fewer people notice because they're not very active during the day. (I also suspect that even people who would like the Parks Department to Do Something about the rats don't want to watch a heron catch and eat one.)