Breaking my exile I almost died. One doctors said they almost put me on a machine. I had to call 911 and could barely make it down the stairs. Then I fell down in the parking lot while they wheeled out the gurney All because of a little alcohol withdrawal
It has actually been 6 hours for the last couple of weeks. elizabeth is right, Pubski is unaffected. I intend to end the experiment this week, once I am back on home internet. It hasn't had an obvious effect on activity (https://hubski.com/stats), but I'd like people to give feedback if they've noticed anything. It's not a blanket 12 (6) hour waiting period. I follow tacocat, and see all of his comments immediately, so does anyone else that follows him, or that he responds to. If people don't like it, that's ok. It's an experiment. I still feel that people are unnecessarily hostile to each other in comment threads, and that the medium is partly to blame. I'm still ok with experimenting with the medium.
okay 1) By defining what is "thoughtful" and what isn't, you've turned the tenor of the site much more cautious. 2) Those people among us who tend to be emotional have left. 3) What discussions we do have tend to be boring exercises in navel-staring. 4) there's absolutely no point in looking at anything until it's half a day old. 5) I regard this as your passive-aggressive attempt to make "following" work despite the fact that there's no point because you've got about 30 actives. 6) People are now hostile, just delayed. 7) The medium of Hubski is "maximum confusion" which basically means that the people who are used to your hijinks are more likely to interact. New people will simply opt out. I've had this discussion with two separate signage companies this week, by the way - making things difficult to do is not the same thing as making the stuff you want them to do easy. The end result is the same, except the interface amps up confusion, fatigue and hostility. 8) "If people don't like it, that's OK" combined with "I still feel that people are unnecessarily hostile to each other" is your way of saying "I get to decide what's acceptable and what isn't" which is diametrically opposed to "personal content isn't a sin". It's content. It's personal. You've created a space for people to create it. You've now decided that you're going to put a morality code in place, not because everyone is spamming each other with torture porn but because we're in the midst of a pandemic, a depression and a slow-motion coup. Your response? "Beatings will continue until morality improves." 9) If you're "still ok with experimenting with the medium" why don't you go the other way? You were entirely too ready to go "stop being mean on my toy" but I haven't seen you try anything to make people be nice. Put a time limit on mutes. Let anyone badge 90-day-old content to bring it back into the mix. Give Pubski a rotating owner. That's off the top of my head - positive behavioral shaping, as opposed to negative.but I'd like people to give feedback if they've noticed anything.
The place seems more empty, stale and also lots more spammers. I think to improve the site we need more people, not less. Confusing mechanics are not helping. I've almost invited my IRL friends to join Husbki a few times over the summer, was about to send a link to the site and then didn't because I'm not sure what would be the appeal for a person that hasn't been here the past 4 years. I think the hostility can partly be attributed to the pandemic. In a time where everything is changing, switching up the mechanics of a place I spend my internet off-time is also kind of annoying. I get it that it's your place, and you can do whatever you want with it. But this also reminds me it's your place, not mine so with less feeling of ownership I'm less inclined to post OC, comment and participate.
I can appreciate that. One aspect that might not be factored in is the number of users that have reached out to me directly to lament the decline of Hubski. The common theme is a lack of empathy and increase in hostility that people are feeling. IMO the pandemic has exacerbated it, but the feedback began before. I don't think this experiment has been a success. However, I think we might be able to do things to remind us to be cool to each other. I'll post a follow up on this experiment, and hopefully we can get a bunch of suggestions. I don't want to force people into being nice. I can't. But this was a place that was previously kinder and more forgiving. If there's a path back towards that, I want to find it.
I think the people who complain to you in private rather than doing something about it or attempting to improve things themselves are the last ones the site should change for. Because then, rather than solving the problem, they convince you to do something useless and offensive in an attempt to solve a problem that isn't yours. Frankly, there are way too many people on this site who stir up shit by PMing each other to talk about a third person rather than just putting on their big girl pants to address the issues.
I gave up homerow in 9th grade, so I am not much affected. I got my first good look at it today during a dressing change. It's not a terrible amount gone, but enough that it will take a bit of getting used to. It was weird to see my name on a chart with the word 'amputation' in the description. TBH I don't think I could have lost less and still qualified for that term.
What? It’s not like he cut off his finge... oh wait. Yeah, let’s give him some healing time. Then we can end the experiment.
Hey tacocat. Take good care. I’m sorry to hear you are going through this. One foot in front of the other. One minute, hour and day at a time. Onward!
So if y'all haven't been stalking chat, my current life excitement is that I applied for a job much more closely related to what I want to ultimately do with my life. That would put me as one on a team of 7. My current role has me running 3 county-wide programs myself and gives me a ton of responsibility and freedom. The new role is with the same health department, same pay, pretty much the same people. Not any different in those realms. I went and talked to my current boss on Monday and let him know I applied and how his job might help me achieve my long term goals. He was basically like it won't which isn't true it offers a ton of good experience and skills, just not direct experience. But I told him that and he kinda understood it. I asked him to look into a title and pay grade increase so he's theoretically doing that. He also said he'd be open to exploring how to incorporate my life goals into the job. He does like me a lot so I know he'd write me a great recommendation. I love the freedoms and independence the current role offers. I think I might be leaning towards that but I fear that also relies on my boss getting his shit together and one of the reasons I have so much freedom is because he doesn't have his shit together. Missing 3/4 supervisors (with the one not missing hired a few weeks ago and adjusting) and in general has shit staff that only do the absolute minimum (the fucks won't help with pandemic response in the middle of a pandemic, but it makes me look better sooo...). So he's busy babysitting all of them while also trying to be the head of all of an entire 35 person team with almost no supervisors. In other news Portugal the Man released a new song: Love their activism around indigenous people and cultures. I'm also thinking about learning French. MSF is a French organization and most of their work is in their former colonies which speak a ton of French. Also considering European master's degree because cheaper and then I can become an EU citizen which makes traveling there a lot easier. And France has arguably the best healthcare system in the world so I am considering there.
Hello! I have found a new hobby - I discovered there is a climbing gym like 3 minutes from my apartment and was like "hey, climbing sounds fun!". I went to a night where they let you try climbing and discovered that climbing on a wall is not fun but bouldering is great. Which is convenient since I can boulder by myself. I've gone five times and I am loving it so far. I ruined my hands last friday, maybe because of a lack of chalk, maybe due to callouses having built up and getting caught and torn off, maybe a mixture of both. I've ordered chalk online that arrived today and I'm hoping my hands will be healed enough for me to do a bit of climbing on Friday. It's really fun being a complete beginner at something and seeing improvements from session to session, I think I'm hitting that first plateau of improvements stalling and I'm really hoping I'll still find it fun. I think I will though. I'm also really proud of myself for going in to the climbing gym and participating even though I don't know anyone or anything. I'm easily the worst climber there, and I'm not a hundred percent on the social "rules" but I dared to go in there and participate anyways.
I did a problem I've found super tricky today! I am never climbing it again because it was terrible and kinda scary but I did it! Now I have one problem left of that difficulty. (The second easiest one). I'm looking forward to being able to tackle some of the problems I see others attempting (although I'm guessing some of them will require a pretty significant increase in upper body strength).
Next year I'm getting a membership and "wall-card" and I'm probably getting my own shoes sometime before then. Then I'll be able to go there as much as I want at no extra cost since I've paid everything up front. Hopefully I'll continue to find it fun, I've only been 6 or 7 times so far.
I’m waiting for finger surgery. I chopped of the tip of my left index finger while working on the sauna yesterday. Really a dumb move with a circular saw. I think I am that more ready to be a grandpa. I’ll post pics of the sauna, and maybe the injury, later.
I’ve seen it. It gnarly. It’s a bad injury. I’m glad you’re ok mk. Could have been much worse. Now you’re an altered fella. You’ve got a legit battle wound. I look forward to the fabricated stories you tell your grandkids about wrestling an alligator to save their mom.
Here are some pictures of the sauna. It's still in progress: I am paneling the foyer with rough cut wood that I got at a salvage yard nearby. I built that door with some storm window panes and 2x4s. I'm pretty proud of that. It's snowing now! Here's the view driving into town this morning: Be careful with power tools!!! That's the least grisly photo I have. The fresh cut version is pretty horrific.
I hope it works. It was literally the last cut of they day, and it was dumb. I got lucky all things considered. It hit my middle finger pretty good too. It could have easily taking that one off in the middle. I can almost sense my father looking down on me and shaking his head. The sauna is coming along nicely. I am pleased with that.
My grandad cut the base of his thumb deep on a table saw, I think he was about 80 at the time. He was a surgeon and captain of a MASH unit in the Korean war, so his first thought was "there would be a lot more blood if I had hit the artery", so he went inside and tried to get good pictures of his exposed artery before bandaging it and driving himself to the hospital. I think he didn't tell his kids until he was back home from the emergency room.
I keep expecting my injury to come... but have avoided it so far. Going to rebuild the deck next year, so that'll give me a lot of opportunity. Hanging 30 or so 2x12s that are 16 feet long should be something that ends up with at least one good injury.
Well, we got a couple more days up here out of it. The surgery went well. I have a follow up tomorrow. Thankfully the surgeon up here could take care of it. There was talk that I might need to go downstate. I didn't want to spend another night with my bone poking out. That was gross. I think I lost about 1cm. I guess that's about 1gram. It could have been much worse.
Things have been bumping along in weird, but ultimately good ways, though not without stress. My girlfriend's dad died of COVID and long story short, we weren't sure what was going to happen next, since she had to return to her home country and her visa was expiring soon after. All that worked out as best it could, so I'm glad about that. I guess I also have an interview show now, which is pretty fun I have to say, but it's something totally new for me. Some questions that have come up for me are of course around how to keep output flowing, The only other update from me is that I've been taking this course with a guy I met through work. Basically, the premise thus far is that democracy is necessary for peace, democracy is imperiled, and everything that people think is helping, actually is not. I like this dude, but I keep waiting to see if he's full of shit. And of course, that could be coloring my time learning with him, but an open mind is something that needs constant work.
Yo! Had a great weekend with a couple close buddies out in the country. It's getting cold, fires are not helping as much as they used to. So it had a real feeling of the "last hangout". Brought some oysters to shuck, ate some delicious asian soup, bloody ceasars, a wild partridge gifted/ gutted in front of us from the friendly talkative neighbour... All around great low key thanksgiving weekend with a couple close friends. We also played Catan, for the first time ever for the 4 of us, with a game master that explained the rules (thank god for the briefing, reading those rules on paper would have been hell). I think my favorite moment of the whole weekend was a bit later in the night, when we were all mildly altered. We're outside, under the tarp playing dominoes while a big storm is brewing. Music on the speaker is some piraty gypsy-punk. My friend is standing in a bright yellow rain coat, looking a bit confused by the game rules. And then the storm and wind really picks up and we're in the middle of a tornado, trying keep the game going. We're shouting because the rain is too loud, the dominoes are falling, the beer bottles are just sliding away on the table with the wind while we're all huddled up around the game - is this a double ? is it my turn ? we're sinking! shit, i skip! we're going to capsize It felt like we were on a sail boat, in the middle of a storm, like old Italians from the 1950s. My first game night was a success. All following ones are ruined unless there's a worthwhile weather event.
That sounds amazing! Welcome to Settlers of Catan. I love it. We have been playing for years. hardtaco, mk and I played last year. It was a lot of fun. It’s one of those Games that is different each time and allows for some discussion to occur while playing. hardtaco created a site wherein he and his family play and critique board games throughout this pandemic. It’s hilarious. You get the feedback from both adults and kids. It’s really well out together. I’ll let HT decide if he wants to share it here. But playing board games in a tornado while eating partridge will be hard to top. Sound like an amazing camping experience. The best camping experience that I have ever had was in Michigan. We took acid and made our camp next to a lake. I had a phenomenal “trip.” We listened to the Beatles and I found myself sitting at the base of a tree, the lake 100 yards away, yet right next to me while I dipped my fingers in the water. It was an odd sensation. The tree and I had a conversation. I know that sounds crazy, but it happened. When the effects of the acid started to wane, we realize we were out of marijuana. Disappointed we sat around the fire feeling the magic slip away. Just then we noticed a light bouncing down the trail; a midnight mountain bikers rode up to our campfire and asked if we would like to smoke a joint? He would forever be known to us as the “midnight rider.” He saved our buzz and extended the trip a little longer. That was an awesome camping experience. A tornado would have rocked our world. I bet for someone with a travel vlog, this pandemic has been super rough. Glad you are taking some trips where/when you can.
This is the part where I point out that Settlers of Catan is based on the 1982 game Survive! which is much more playable with small children. Especially since after you spend ten minutes building up the game board, you get to destroy it. It's also sociologically useful because (A) players who cooperate invariably beat players who compete (B) players who get one VIP off the island can beat players who get six nobodies off the island which says a lot about social priorities. I play Catan? But it's like Bridge - you have fun so long as nobody takes things seriously. As soon as someone starts to get good at Catan everyone has to get good at Catan and then it all becomes about board layout with the actual gameplay being an inevitability. Survive? Survive your ass can get eaten by a shark.
I had put my travel-vlogging days in an indefinite hiatus before the pandemic started, so that was no big deal. But not being able to meet new people and see new places has been hard. I've come to realize i'm addicted to novelty, and I start feeling trapped, stagnent and bored really fast. I've been coping with multiple new hobbies and skills, getting to travel mentally with books and films, spending time out in nature, working on the plastic non-profit... but it's all going to get harder in the winter and I already dread it.
That's going to be a hard experience to beat! I love it... Reminds me of the scene in Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" when they have been swallowed by the whale, and a quietly playing cards... with death... in a grounded pirate ship... in the belly of a whale... all this insanity around them, and each of them focusing hard on the card game to ignore the environment they are trapped inside of...
The first is a print. The second is a wax mold of the print. The third is a mostlyzinc cast of the wax mold. "Of what" is something I'm being coy about. This is basically a self-directed capstone/thesis project and the reveal will either be impressive or an outright catastrophe. For example, you can't see that the blue and silver ones are abject garbage because I (sigh) followed someone's advice and coated the clear one with mod podge before casting it in RTV, and the mod podge retarded the cure such that three goddamn days later the place where it was thickest (top of the top flats on the pillar) it was still toothpaste-ey when I cut the mold off so most of my flats are okay but some of them look like raisins. You can plainly see the cast spalled when I poured it at 1:15 and threw it in the kiln at 5:15; you can't see all the flash I had to cut off of it because bringing something to 400 then 1000 then 1350 degrees f when it was literally liquid 8 hours before is tough on cheap crappy Ransom & Randolph investment. I knew these casts would be garbage when I cut the mold but I also knew that an expert is someone who has made every mistake there is to make in a narrow field and if there's one thing I've been doing for the past nine months, it's build expertise. This is my third attempt at the frickin' mold, when before I started listening to people I had 100% success 100% of the time. The clear one took about six hours to design after spending three or four days thinking about it. It then took 12 hours to print. The blue one took about two hours to mold and then a 3-day wait to not be enough to work. The silver one took 18 hours of waiting, and about 10 minutes of excitement with molten metal. Then about 20 minutes of cleanup. All told it takes about $300 worth of gear to make the clear one (not including the computer). The blue one takes another $1800 worth of gear. The silver one is about $500 on top of that. The urethane mold is about $15 worth of goop but it's reusable. The investment is like $6. Actual metal is fractional dollars. Small-scale casting is effectively a lost art. Nobody does it. There's nobody to listen to. I lucked into knowing a guy who is probably one of the top dozen people in the world but what I'm doing is so far outside his expertise that generally he's making educated guesses.
Nothing helps recovery as much as maintaining an active routine. Brain fog is lifting, muscles are moving, and I didn't have this kind of energy in literal months. I'm still feeling weak -- lost over 10% body weight to five weeks of fever, stillness and lack of appetite. Sorry for being a pain about it though. Today I conducted my first class of the year, and while it's been nice to get out of my place or talk to students, it's more than a bit off to realise you're talking to an empty-but-not-really classroom. Yeah, I'm fast like that sometimes. I've been stumbling a lot and didn't get into the flow until the middle of it. In part because, mentally, this is how I rehearse material, not deliver. Wish I had more time to get into it. Doctoral-level classes are, as usual, annoyingly inconsistent. One week it's little more than doing some reading, the other time we get slapped with a problem that takes 30-50 hours of collaborative work to solve. This time around, about half of my courses are seminars, which despite being very vaguely defined, here are usually a cross between a journal club and guest/relay lectures. In many ways they're the hardest to prep for or follow, often dedicated to cutting edge topics or methodologies. Pretty much define what I have in mind when thinking 'grad school'. I noticed I don't have any real want for reading outside of studies recently and generally felt like my thinking lost its edge. Not sure why or since exactly when, though I think it snowballed since May. Realising it and knowing I don't like it is at least a good start for seeking improvement.
Someone joked on Twitter that the Low Lands need a new name now we're the per capita champion of corona cases. We're back in soft-lockdown because our government refuses to learn from its mistakes and waited until the very last moment to maximize lockdown length, it almost seems. At least we're doing just fine. SO got a new job in September, back then it was a temporary thing until the end of the year, but now they're certain they can give her a year contract so that's dope. My academic paper has been accepted recently, is already published online in Open Access format even though I still need to proof it. I'm taking a well-needed week off next week to dive into that and finally enjoy my PC again. I don't know how other people do it but after 8 to 10 hours of screen-based desk work and Teams calls I simply don't want to sit another minute behind the same screen. So I've been reading more books lately, getting more mileage out of my iPad consuming them contents, and have been cooking more from a phenomenal book on Indian vegetarian cuisine. Yesterday we made samosa's for the first time, which was great.
My refrigerator has been filling with water, I think my freezer drain is clogged. We have an extra adult living in the house right now, the fridge is filled with more stuff than usual. It's a pain to work on it. I hope putting a bunch of hot water and leaving the fridge off for an hour clears it up. It's a dead simple fridge and if I have to do surgery I will and it won't be bad but I'd rather not.
Been playing a mental game with myself. Thinking about Trump winning the election, and things continuing on their current trajectory... and I'm wondering if it is the only way to beat Trumpism? Another four years of batshittery will be the downfall of conservativism. A demonstration of the faults inherent in the "economy at all costs" version of conservativism that has destroyed our republic. An undeniable defeat of the libertarian/republican "every man for himself" type of fuckwittery. Which would be a good thing, in the end. The cost is high, of course. But I just don't see a one-term Biden presidency doing anything to quell the insanity. And unless the Dems sweep the House AND the Senate, Biden will have little power to make any significant changes to stop the bleeding. So ... four more years of ever increasing lunacy from militias and Qanon and Proud Boys and the KKK, destroying our public spaces, killing at will, and making the streets unsafe for Americans? Or four more years of unbridled batshittery like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where only the least competent are left standing? We are so fucked.
Lol. I've stopped making those predictions. I thought Trump getting a serious look form GOP primary voters was the downfall of conservatism. Then I thought him winning the nomination. Then the election. Then the selling of US foreign policy. The abyss is so much more vast than I think we ever supposed. I checked Fox News' website this morning to see what their takeaways from the town halls were (I didn't watch). Their headline was "Biden not asked about Hunter's emails." For real.Another four years of batshittery will be the downfall of conservativism.
The one thing that all positive feedback loops have in common is that they all have to end in instability eventually. Either the system runs out of fuel, it collapses, shorts out, whatever. So while I'm not in the business of saying what will cause the end of the craziness, I am confident that something will. I really hope that something isn't a war.
Biden’s a competent and compassionate person. He will surround himself with a diverse group of smart and capable people. He will listen. I don’t think we are fucked. I think we will have far more transparency and actual leadership. I’m encouraged. But he has to win.
So was Obama. And he got fuckall done because we have a tricameral system that balances the powers between three branches of government, and the Republicans own two of them. To eliminate the Electoral College, replace stripped environmental regulations, and replace the insurance industry with actual healthcare, will take all three branches of government working together towards the same goal. And while a blue sweep would be nice, nobody is seriously thinking that's going to happen. So even if Biden wins the Presidency and the Democrats retain the House, we will be EXACTLY where we are today with progressive issues: deadlocked.
I think you’re wrong. Progress comes in fits and starts. ACA isn’t the end game but it was a major advancement. The things that seemed too progressive to pass muster 8 years ago are platform policy now. UBI seemed like a far off idea until Yang and the pandemic brought it in full light. So many things will and have been advanced by decades because Of the pandemic. If you want to advance change the best thing to bring it about is a catastrophe. We are in one. I also hope your apathy isn’t shared by too many on the left. We need to mobilize, donate money and time and get that unlikely blue wave, to become a reality. I think it’s possible to take all three; house, senate and whitehouse.
Don't mistake my poor outlook for apathy. I have voted in every single election since I could, in 1987. (October birthday! Woo!) I was a delegate for Bernie in 2016. I give profligately to key campaigns outside my state (which is decisively blue, and therefore a waste of my time/money). But the ACA was, in the end, a toothless sop. The Republicans forced him to compromise and put together a patchwork of largely cosmetic changes that did nothing to address the core problems of healthcare, or to de-fang the pharmaceutical lobby, create pricing transparency in hospitals, or make the structural changes that will lead to a long-term healthcare industry (rather than insurance industry, which is what we have today) that benefits the key Americans who need it; the lower and middle class who are dying from our healthcare system. BECAUSE he chose to "compromise" with Republicans, to get it through the Senate, rather than play hardball and expose the Republicans for the nihilistic sociopaths they actually are, and have the public twist their arm and get them to succumb. Now with the Supreme Court solidly conservative, and no less than six cases lined up and carefully sculpted to destroy the last remaining threads holding the ACA together, the last thing Obama accomplished will be undone. The flaws in the original design of our republic have been weaponized by people with no foundational beliefs, morals, or sense of community. It's defective, and needs structural renovations for it to survive and prosper into the future. There need to be significant changes to how voting is done, how votes are counted, how districts are defined, how basic human rights are protected, and a strong curtailing of the cult of corporate-profits-at-any-cost. Without a progressive President, House, Senate, and Supreme Court (now that the Commerce Clause has made them more powerful than the other two branches of government), any efforts at addressing these structural problems can be easily destroyed by the next clown to sit on the throne for 4 years. What we really need this year, is for EVERY single person under 40 to vote. That would completely flip the government upside down - AND make every voter feel like their vote actually counted, thereby reinforcing their decision/passion for voting again in the future - and could possibly lead to a decade-plus run of progressivism that could help reset this country back on the path, and embracing the beliefs, we were founded upon. (You know none of this is targeted at you, right? Apparently I needed to vent.)
Turns out if your film adaptation of a book does well on Netflix, every copy of the book up for sale on the internet sells out. So I'm reading "I'm thinking of ending things" on Kindle. Never was a book more aptly titled for my life. Aren't I always the one? In a PS, I'm re-watching Fright Night (maybe I'm watching it for the first time) and really enjoying it. Pandemic TV is getting boring AF, and I'm in the mood for movies (not series). Drop your spoopy reqs below. If it's mainstream after 1990, I've probably seen it. And if you rec Babadook or Hereditary OR The Descent OR Silent Hill, I'm going to silently pretend you never existed. Otherwise... ...that's all. :)