I got a new shirt!!!

Thanks, _refugee_! I love it.

Been busy working. My wife and I got drawn into watching Poldark. She's particularly taken with the protagonist.

My good friends launched https://futureswap.com two days ago. If you are into Ethereum and Defi, it is amazing. Ridiculously good returns for liquidity providers atm.

Oh, and my dev hubski server has my local weather. Coming to a Hubski near you soon.

Didn’t find the motivation to go buy supplies for the embroidery stuff I want to make yet. But in the meantime, I’ve finished this octopus I started more than a year ago. I abandoned the project halfway because I thought I needed to go buy filling for it. But I realized I could just gut an old pillow and complete the project! I’m happy with how it turned out.

We adopted a five year old Australian Cattle Dog on Monday of last week. He bolted Tuesday of last week. We tried to catch him but he is one smart and athletic dog. A dog recovery non-profit saw our post on Facebook and got involved the next day. A super athletic friend of mine who helped in the chase gave us a 5% chance of catching him by running him down. I had taken to calling him Nelson Bolt because he loves freedom as much as Nelson Mandela and was as fast as Usain Bolt.

You might say that we should have been more careful and you would be right. His disposition the night we brought him home lulled us into a false sense of security. When brought into the house he pretty much glued himself onto family members every moment, especially my wife. He seemed like a lover not a runner and when he took off first chance he had it was a surprise.

We posted fliers within a mile that said call us with a location but don't chase him and don't feed him. We didn't need to post fliers over such a big area, he stayed in small five block area that was about a quarter block from our house. When it became apparent that standing around in a nonthreatening way with a hotdog wasn't going to lure him in the non-profit provided us with a dog trap.

The dog trap spent three days at the edge of his range with no hits besides three or four pissed off house cats.

The dog recovery people said to leave the trap in one place for three days before you move it. During this time most the calls of sightings were one damn block from our house! The trap was at the furthest point from this location that was part of his range (we had a pretty dope Google map of his sightings).

One of the days we got a text that he was heading down the street toward our house. My wife went outside to try and spot him. A random lady walked up just as the dog did, followed my wife's gaze and watched him calmly trotting.

"That's my dog," says the wife. The lady looked puzzled.

"He ran away on Tuesday." The lady gives my wife an more puzzled look.

"You can't catch him, watch," and let out a little whistle, causing the dogs head to jerk around and bound off into a back yard.

The dog knew every Ally and lose fence post in a backyard by this point. He probably knows the neighborhood as well as any creature on Earth.

Finally we moved the trap right next to the house with a chicken broth trail leading from a woodpile he was known to frequent to the cage. That night he struck. Little monster reached over the trigger plate, pulled the plate with the bait out of the cage and had himself a snack. He robbed the cage twice that night.

This was all good. He thought he knew a good place to find a quick and easy meal and it was going to be his downfall. Meanwhile we caught three more cats, one of which was my super dumb cat who got caught three times, much to his distress.

I drilled a holes in a piece of plexi glass and tied it the the front bottom front edge of the trip plate, it extended the trigger for about six more inches but it was invisible under the towel that we had hiding the mechanism. He could see where the trip plate was under the towel but the extension was tied lower than the plate and it was pretty much invisible.

About 9:30 at night I heard a sad sad howl and a few little yips. We had him. The cage with the dog was too heavy for me to move myself but you were supposed to move the cage to an enclosed space before opening. My closest buddy wasn't answering his phone and I didn't know what to do. Probably stupidly I cracked the door open with my body leaned into it, any 50 lb dog that can shift my 230 lbs has earned it.

I got a hand on his collar and he went nuts. It reminded me of catching a real big fish, thrashing in every direction. I worried that he might shake loose as I dragged him out the trap and hoped he wouldn't bite me. I got a second had on his collar and drug him to the front door. He was pinning himself to every bit of architecture in a final struggle for freedom. I basically gave him a big heave with both hands on his collar and launched him through the door, legs splayed in every direction with a spinning thud, claws scrambling on the wooden floors. He looked around stunned for a moment and than crept up to wife and glued himself to her side, just like the day we got him. He was once again a sweet mild dog that loved people.

The chase consumed seven days. The dog appeared a bit skinnier, super filthy but none the worse for ware. He does seem to be unsure of his situation and a bit nervous and I'll at ease most the time. We've had him back for two full days.

He trusts me less than any other person he's met so far, which I suppose is fair seeing as I caught him and than gave him a bit of rough handeling. All the same he's sat next to and put his hand in my lap.

He really likes meeting people and other dogs. He's great at walking on a leash and is a lustful walker. He seems to know no commands which kind of surprised me with how well behaved he is on a leash, he's better than most well trained dogs I've known.

I took him to the vet and and a few not too crowded public spaces. He's behaved really well. He's friendly with kids. he behaved well when given a bath, only twice attempting half hearted escapes and wow was that dog dirty.

I haven't had a dog in twenty years and all the dogs I've had we raised as puppies. I didn't think much about how different adopting an adult dog would be. Giving him as much attention as he wants and lots of sweet praise to let him know we're glad he's with us. They say it takes about three months for a dog to get fully comfortable in new home, I hope he does.

Here is a very small sample of some of the books I make. These are the best ones I currently have, but are by no means the best ones I’ve made. Like I told flac last week, when I make a really good book, I’m so excited about it, I can’t wait to give it away. I’m thinking about creating a post eventually, about how I make the majority of my books and why I go that route. It’s funny, because I’ve made so many of them the process seems pretty straightforward to me, but when I stop to think about all of the techniques I use and why I use them, I realize there’s quite a bit of stuff to explain.

In short, I made all of my books with as many natural and bio-degradable materials as possible. The only polymer based materials I intentionally use are PVA Glue and Acrylic Paint. I bind my books with the flat back binding method for two reasons, mostly because I don’t have the tools to do rounding and backing on my books, but also because the extra board on the spine means I don’t have to put headbands on my books if I don’t want to. The one drawback to that binding method is though, while the books open completely, they don't lay flat. It makes writing in them a bit awkward. So it's great for text blocks with pre-existing text already in them, but for journals and sketch books, not so much. When I create my own textblocks, I use linen book tape for reinforcement, french link stitch to help prevent vertical travel between signatures, and kettle stitch on the ends to keep everything nice and secure.

Here’s what a text block looks like by itself.

Here’s a close up of two different lino-cut stamps I’ve made for my books. I like lincocutting a lot. Partly because you can kind of get a woodcut print look out of it, without having to work as hard as you would carving a block of wood. Additionally, because linoleum is made from plant materials, it's biodegradable, which is a plus.

The paint for the dog is Liquitex Acrylic and the rooster on the right is Speedball Block Print Ink for Fabric. I’m not too happy with either. The Luquitex Acrylic, while it dries nice and quick, is really hard to get an even, consistent color out of. I use it though, because I know it’s acid free. I’m saving up some cash this month and I’m gonna buy a few tubes of Luquitex Soft Body Acrylic to see if that’s easier to work with. I’m assuming the answer will be yes. The Speedball Block Print Ink on the other hand, takes forever to dry. We’re talking days. Additionally, I can’t find any information as to whether or not it’s acid free, so there’s that as well.

These are just test prints for the two linocuts I’ve made so far. I’m thinking of buying a button making machine in the future, to turn these test prints into buttons. That way, they’re just not sitting on fabric going to waste.

So yeah. Bookbinding. That’s what I’ve been spending a lot of my free time learning and working on. I have three different projects down the road that I’m gonna try and document to share with you guys, but other than that, if you’re ever wondering what I’m doing with my free time and blowing my money on mindlessly, you’re looking at it.

Have a beautiful day guys.

i am:

in college

making friends + meeting people

doing well in classes

feeling happy and confident, about myself and the things i'm doing

i have:

gone on a date with somebody (verdict: just friends)

gone to my first futbawl game (verdict: the student section is fun, but standing for 3 hours on concrete makes my feet hurt)

got invited to a linguistics research lab thing by a professor (verdict: very excited - first meeting on friday)

Thoughts

This is the happiest (and most consistently happy) that I can remember being, if not ever, then for a long time. I see no reason for things to get worse, and a lot of reasons for things to get better in the next little bit / the future.

(it's amazing how much easier things are when you consistently have energy and don't hate yourself)

Life is goodski.

The clicking of the hubwheel is a deeply personal decision of which any one else's dogmatic or relavatory advice should be considered purely advisory.

Engaged.

"don't report on it, it encourages them" is the "just ignore it and they'll stop bullying you" of the gun control world, and it's a reddit comments section-tier analysis of the situation

i wish i could spit on an opinion

No update of substance with regard to health. More testing has been scheduled after the treadmill stress test I took showed a drastic decrease in exercise capacity. Essentially as soon as I start moving I become anaerobic because blood isn't getting to all the bits it should. Another neck-needling cardiac procedure sometime soon, inner ear testing to check for/rule out true vertigo, a few other things.

I have a long time friend and mentor who got a heart transplant last year after almost fifty years of living with a condition almost identical to mine. Last week she found out her donors name, Brandy, and some more information about her. She left behind a sister and a teenage daughter, and they have tentatively begun to get to know one another. There is no standard model for contact between a donor family and an organ recipient, everyone seems to do things their own way, for better or worse. My friend is a strong, kind and deeply affectionate person. I hope that Brandy's family will take some comfort in knowing that their mother's, sister's passing accomplished some good, and allowed my friend to continue her work improving cardiac care across the country, across the globe.

Barring some massive development in artificial hearts in the next few years, this is the path I will be on. If you had asked me a year-ish ago if I would accept a donor organ, I would have told you no. I would have told you that there is a high demand for organs, and I have lived my life without much regret. I would have told you that someone younger than me deserved a chance at more years. I would have told you that someone older than me has obligations to dependents, and it would be unfair of me to take a heart when someone's parent might need it. I would have told you lots of things, most of it true-ish. But the real reason I didn't want one is because I truly didn't think that I was worth keeping around.

I have since been convinced otherwise.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

In less dire news, my request to terminate my lease early because of foundation leaks/water damage was approved. We have a cute little house to move into at the end of the month, after it's had it's carpets cleaned, a few other odds and ends. For the first time in three years, I'm going to have a yard, a garden, and nobody smoking cigarettes outside my windows at all hours of the day and night.

Cheers Hubski.

Writing is fun. Being a writer is bullshit. This dichotomy is one of the things writers don't talk about, don't write books about, don't tell students about.

Somewhere on here there's an article about the dirty little secret that every writer you've ever read had/has a spouse or a parent that allows them to eat so they can spend fuckin' forever grinding away at that magnum opus that nobody gives a shit about. If you're a "writer", odds are good you're also wasting your time from an economics standpoint. Stephen King will tell you that Tabby basically underwrote his career through Carrie. Anne LaMott will mention in passing that her dad's agent read eight of her books and oh by the way she's divorced from the guy who put food on the table while she did it. It's the dirty little secret: the people who don't have a benefactor are competing with the people who do but nobody mentions the benefactors. The two successful screenwriters I came up with were both in a position where they could live in $3k/mo apartments for two fucking years without having to earn a penny so they could sit there and write. Must be nice.

The other dichotomy is nobody gets into writing because they want to perform in front of an audience. Nobody sits down to write a book so they can carry it around under their figurative or literal arm to dozens of trained professionals all intent on saying no. Nobody sets out to prove themselves over and over and over again only to be sent a "not for us - sent from my iPad" email on Thanksgiving evening (true story). But once you get accepted by an agent you're a god. But once you get rejected by a publisher you're scum. But once you get published you're a god. But once the book gets panned you're scum.

And it's all so goddamned capricious.

If you ever want to see into the soul of any performer, ask them what work they're most proud of. It won't be one you've heard of. It'll be that thing they believed in, that they put their heart and soul into, that the marketplace crushed. And maybe they'll have rationalized why it got crushed, and maybe they won't, but it's still the central fable of their lives, be it written or a work-in-progress. It's the thing that allows them to make peace with the capriciousness.

Some people don't make peace with the capriciousness.

Hemingway was absolutely at the top of his game. Pithy mutherfucker. "There's nothing to writing. You just sit at the typewriter and bleed." Said the guy who tried on 47 endings and 18 titles for Farewell to Arms. David Foster Wallace? The closer he got to death, the more personal his writing became, the less interested his audience was in what he had to say.

The stories I write for me? Nobody wants to read them. The stories I shit out because someone throws a buck at me? ZOMGBUSINESS. That'll fuck with a mind: You're auditioning for genius but for some reason what they love the most is derivative crap. You'll notice nobody ever calls Danielle Steel or Dan Brown tortured geniuses. You may not think Amy Winehouse would have been different 20 years sober, but you don't care if David Lee Roth is different 20 years sober. Amy Winehouse was "serious." Diamond Dave is not.

So if you're a serious artiste you're left grappling with the cognitive dissonance that if you get paid you're a sell-out but if you don't get paid you starve (unless you're one of the lucky dilettantes we don't talk about but we all know and us serious artistes all know they aren't serious anyway, just lucky). And if you're a serious artiste you know that validation is nothing but validation is everything but validation is illogical but if it matters it MUST be logical and somehow

if you let yourself go

and turn off for a while

and give it to the bottle, give it to the powder, give it to the needle, give it to whatever

it doesn't

matter

so much.

Writers, as a species, are sensitive. Writers, as a species, are introverts. Writers, as a profession, must have nerves of steel and an endless appetite for rejection and writers, as a profession, are chronically, criminally underpaid and undervalued. And if that writer has a tendency towards dependency, that dependency is what allows them to power through that cognitive dissonance. It's the thing that allows them to write for an audience.

Would Amy Winehouse's material be different if she were sober? Who knows. King's certainly is.

Inebriation allows writers to plow through the bullshit of being writers. Lots of writers can do it without substance abuse. Some can't. For those who can't, the proximate cause of their substance abuse is the bullshit of being a writer, and the bullshit of being a writer definitely colors their writing (lookin' at you, Charlie Kaufman).

who wants to be a great writer if you are only a great writer when you're fucked up? what an awful fucking curse you know?

Said every writing drunk in the history of writing, ever.

And then they poured another shot.

There's some good solid advice in there. And I think I can add something valuable to what you said: Perspective.

You don't hear people 30-plus years old asking this question. Because they realize it isn't the right question to ask. By the time you are in your 30's, pretty much nobody you know will be working in the field/job that is written on their college degree.

Life is a river. You start off trying to build a dam, and make the river conform to your view of what it should look like. But water is consistent, persistent, strong, and devious. Your every effort to make life conform to your view will fail, and eventually you will get swept downstream.

Some people try to stop. They bash into rocks. They grasp at low-hanging branches and try to stop the water from dragging them further downstream.

Other people go "woohoo! whitewater rafting!!" and look downstream and try to pick a line that looks like the most fun.

These are the people who inspire you. They are the people enjoying life, and who seem to have amazing opportunities drop in their lap.

Schooling, clubs, hobbies, and interests are what you build your boat out of.

Then you get thrown into the water and head downstream.

What skills do you have? Do you communicate well with other people? Do you like to learn? Do you keep your word? Are you an enjoyable person to be around?

Then your boat will float, and you will find the journey enjoyable. The more flexible and amenable you are to life and it's ever-changing dynamics, the more opportunities that will be presented to you, and the more chances you will have to find something that you truly enjoy.

The less flexible, personable, pleasant you are, the less opportunities will come up. Because you are narrowly skilled, and unpleasant to be around, and therefore fit into only a small portion of the available roles out there in the world.

From where I'm sitting, just short of 50 years old, I can tell you that the river widens, slows, and empties into a big placid lake, where you can kinda paddle wherever you want. If you built a good boat.

I don't even recall all the jobs I have had, the places I have worked, the people I have fallen in and out of love with... all that is back there, up the hill, in the rapids on that river somewhere.

Looking back up that river, I can see the path I took now, but it was not apparent to me at the time. I was simply presented with interesting opportunities because I had a wide range of skills, I was funny, and people liked talking to me. They liked having me around, so they would overlook any technical/skills limitations, and just said, "Eh. You'll learn it on the job. It isn't hard."

This is, of course, my advice based on my experience.

Like RD95 says, life isn't lived in a house you built in college; it is a long series of building projects that you live within while building. Some rooms you may never visit again. Some you may crack the door open 30 years later and find a new passion for, and others you may visit every single day.

The only constant is change. Either find a way to embrace that, or live frustrated for the rest of your life.

a coup would be so exciting

I read through the whole thread, and all of your responses, and I see one thing that has not been mentioned: Agency.

You had no agency in "cheeks" asking if the man with you was your dad.

You have no agency in the actions your brother is taking on your behalf.

Rest assured, Cheeks will lose his job. I have friends who are in both Management and Training at Goodwill, and one strike is enough to put you on the black list. They aren't hiring the cream of the crop at Goodwill. They are giving people an opportunity to pull themselves out of whatever hole they are in, by providing free job training, counseling, and other services people need to get back on their feet. So they have a very quick fuse. If you cause any sort of problem, you are out. There is always another person waiting behind you for the opportunity, and Goodwill needs to get people through the system and trained so they become productive employees, as opposed to unproductive trainees.

This man will now lose access to that opportunity permanently, because there was a claim made against him.

Goodwill will do the right thing and talk to your brother about the experience, and will do most of this verbally instead of in a written format, because it is a discovery process.

However all of these actions and activities are being taken on your behalf, because your brother has robbed you of your agency in this situation.

You chose to simply ignore Cheek's request. That was you taking the action you felt was appropriate to the situation.

I have no horse in this race, or have a position to defend in this situation. I'm just stating the facts in a way that might encourage you to take an active role - to regain your agency - in this situation.

I equate your brother taking action on your behalf as equally as demeaning to you as Cheeks' initial comment hitting on you. These are two men who have acted in their own interest, with you as the fulcrum.

Personally, I would not be happy in that place. I would feel used. That's my $0.02.

I blew my lunch hour, and my lunch budget, today at the World Bank bookstore. It's a dangerous place, half the stock is provocative remaindered titles selling at $5-7.

If any of these look good, let me know and I'll make sure they are read and ready for exchange at the next meetup.

Spoken like someone who knows nothing about doxxing.

The first half of the violentacrez/Michael Brutsch saga was a bunch of trolls thinking it'd be hilarious to spread the notion that Dante was in jail for molesting his son... for the lulz. Since Reddit refused to do anything about it, but told me if I could catch them doing other things worthy of getting shadowbanned (important shit, like "altering their CSS") they'd hop right on it, so I spent a year drawing their fire to give them something to do other than destroy the chances of a loving father ever hanging out with his son.

Violentacrez thought this was hilarious because he thought I was way too uptight, so he modded all of those trolls in /r/jailbait, which got it banned for the first time (because reddit is nothing if not inconsistent). That wasn't quite lulzy enough, though so one of them - whom he had become Facebook friends with - sold him out to Adrien Chen.

There was no part of it that was about "consequences." It was always about "I have no power but look, yes I do." Nobody is ever doxed because they deserve it - that's always a retconned backstop so that people like you can think there's some logic to it. And four years later, the Great Reddit Hate Machine starts saying "oh yeah maybe we ought not to encourage bored Russian teenagers to googlebomb the notion that one of our future employees is a child molester" but literally - Reddit still hasn't said shit about my fun'n'games with the circlejerkers, Dante and violentacrez. Alexis apologized to me privately but only to get me to shut up.

My wife? My wife got doxed because I mentioned in /r/skeptic that she delivered babies outside of a hospital. It was the comment after "someone should put your whore wife out of her misery."

Did I seriously expect anything to happen from it? No. But there's always that niggling doubt. That's how shabnameh has always worked. Is the Taliban really going to kill your daughter for going to school once the US leaves? Mmmmmmaybe not. But better to be safe than sorry, right?

There is a very simple rule to some stuff on the internet: if you wouldn't do something away from the keyboard, don't do it at the keyboard and expect some arbitrary internet rules to save you.

It's simpler than that, really: if you piss off someone with more time and less morality than yourself, shit can go sideways. Pretending that your actions have fuckall to do with it is dangerously delusional.

Mr. "I use random strings for my logins because I burn my identities regularly."

I don't understand the assumption purposed in the headline and the introduction. First of all, atheists are not nihilists. Second, why would a life be more meaningful if there is an afterlife than if there isn't? If anything life should be more meaningful without an afterlife. Because then you can live your life and take it for what it is, instead of dreaming about afterlife, thinking of this life as a chore that you must to do to get the compensation. Seriously, I have a friend who can't wait to die, because he wants to see what's next. How is he living a more meaningful life?

Life's meaning should be derived from the life itself instead of what does or doesn't follow it.

Something's wrong? Use our fucking democracy like everybody else.

Democracy is not some magical idea which gives justice to everyone, if only they work with the system. Pure Democracy definitively allows the majority to oppress the minority. The 51% can and will oppress the 49%. That's one of the reasons the US has a Republic. But even the Republic allows systematic oppression of minorities, as much as we try to prevent it.

When the system does not give power to your group, it is not possible to work within the system to fix it.

That said, I agree:

Silencing other people who're working hard to be heard themselves is not fucking acceptable.

Civil disobedience should not involve silencing others to be heard.

Fuck #blacklivesmatter.

Yes, yes, these are only two people and this is only a small minority of the people waving this banner, but that's pretty much always the case.

You're condoning discriminating against entire disparate groups for the actions of a few? I...what? Really? Really?