Month: November 2018

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

So much adulting today.

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Got up a bit early for an appointment at the doctor’s office, because starting a few months ago most of my menstrual periods have been significantly worse than usual, and after the 2.5th bout of debilitating dizziness (the .5 was a time where it felt like it was *going* to happen but never quite got bad enough that I couldn’t stand up) I figured there was enough of a pattern developing here that I shouldn’t bet on it going away on its own.

The first-line treatment is daily iron supplements, plus two naproxen twice a day around the onset of menstruation (apparently, in addition to the painkilling effect, higher-dose naproxen can also make periods lighter). If the OTC stuff doesn’t cut it, the next step is to “”sample”“ some birth control pills. (She is one of those doctors who, when possible, keep their poorer patients supplied with enough ”“samples”“ of a medication that they never actually have to spend money on it.)

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Then my brother and I went to the bank and signed up for index-fund RRSPs [link]. It’s not so much that I’m planning for retirement per se (though my brother might be thinking of it that way, I’m not sure), but after many hours of very stressful research regarding which forms of investment fall in the intersection of “non-awful returns”, “low fees”, and “won’t piss off the IRS [link]”, this is the only entry that I am sufficiently confident is on that list.

(I came scarily close to buying some non-RRSP index funds this autumn–even set up the account for it!–and only found out that doing so would incur the IRS’s wrath because my brother mentioned he was thinking of getting a TFSA, and this inspired me to read the Wikipedia article on them [link] (they are also terrible, for some of the same reasons). Thank you for telling me this extremely important information, Wikipedia, because nobody *else* fucking did!)

It looks like we are allowed to have *some* ETFs [link] under *some* circumstances, but I don’t have a clear sense of which ETFs/circumstances those are. Once we’ve reached a point in our lives where [18% of all the post-immigration income we’ve ever had] isn’t enough room to keep our savings in, we will have to find an appropriate specialist to consult about exactly how to tell when an ETF is permissible.

Tags:

#sometimes I wonder if I should go into U.S. tax preparation so maybe one day I can actually fucking understand what my own taxes are doing #but I think I’d rather do something more in the realm of bookkeeping or cost-benefit analysis #this stuff does not seem to *quite* be my style #but it’s even less everyone else’s style so I took the research upon myself #(at least I get to cost-benefit-analyse the various types of investment?) #adventures in human capitalism #oh look an original post #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #medical cw #menstruation #the more you know

Quote ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

outofcontextdnd:

“I can worship multiple gods, I’m polyamorous!”
“…You mean polytheistic?”
“I’m into that too!”

Tags:

#I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #(Tumblr can’t quite seem to decide whether or not the formatting on this post is broken) #(sorry if it’s on ”broken” when you see it)

Image ~ ~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

they were not kidding when they said this economics textbook had been adapted for Canadian audiences, huh

Tags:

#this image file on my computer is named ”Have We Mentioned Lately We’re Canadian.png” #(I wonder what this example is in the original American) #oh look an original post #our home and cherished land #adventures in University Land #reactionblogging #bluespace #(not *exactly* but it does seem to have a similar blurring between the picture and the other elements of the page)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

itsbenedict:

everyone’s posting their links to the other social media they’re active on in case their tumblr gets deleted in the latest and greatest ill-conceived ineffectual attempt to algorithmically combat pornbot spam

so in case my tumblr gets deleted for some reason, here is all the other social media i use:

  • none. really hope my blog doesn’t get deleted

I don’t *currently* have any other sites, but in the event of a Tumblr shutdown–either of me personally or of everyone–you can probably figure out where I’ve moved to by googling my username.

“But Brin, doesn’t your blogging style rely heavily on being able to link to your previous posts?”, you ask. That’s where the WordPress export comes in!

Unlike a lot of blogs that claim to take Tumblr imports, WordPress includes reblogs and images. My WordPress is currently private, mostly because the formatting is fucked up in ways that would be simple but tedious to fix (tags insist on displaying on alphabetical order, which scrambles the commentary; intra-blog links link to the Tumblr copy and not the WordPress copy): if the original Tumblr copy vanishes I will go through the whole thing, clean it up (moving commentary tags into the main post body), and mark it public. If anyone else reading this wants to be more reliably able to link people to their old posts, I recommend a WordPress backup.

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While I back up my Tumblr to my laptop daily, and to my phone weekly, I’d only done a WordPress backup once ages ago. Thanks for the reminder to add it to my routine backup schedule: I’d hate to be unable to link people to old posts, or to have to figure out how to host the local copy in a reasonably linkable way.

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(Sorry for getting my seriousness in your joke(?) post, but it inspired me.)

Tags:

#Tumblr: a User’s Guide #The Great Tumblr Apocalypse #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #amnesia cw #reply via reblog #(every time I suggest backups as a solution to something Dad scoffs and says that nobody actually does those) #(he keeps doing this even though I always respond with ”…*I* do them”) #(if my laptop abruptly fails again it’ll suck having to buy new hardware but that’s all it’ll be: new *hardware*)

Benjamin Skuse on a No-Longer-Sacred Artifact

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

scienceetfiction:

readthispart:

“On the outskirts of Paris, eight metres below ground in a climate-controlled vault, sits a 143-year-old platinum alloy cylinder. Standing just 39 mm tall, it has never been touched by human hands. Like a delicate Russian doll, the cylinder is caged inside three nested glass bells in a room that can be accessed only with three keys kept by three different people. Surrounding the mysterious object are ‘the witnesses’: six ‘identical’ cylinders cast from the same platinum alloy.

“Though preservation efforts rival those of the Turin Shroud, the cylinder is not a sacred religious object. It is the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK), the one and only true kilogram against which all others are measured. Housed in the Pavillon de Breteuil – home to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) – the IPK will soon lose its unique status and become a relic of a bygone age. It will then be as quaint as the International Prototype Metre (IPM) – a platinum alloy bar also housed at the BIPM – that served as the world’s official metre until 1960.”

Benjamin Skuse, SI gets a makeover

Good article about the history of the kilogram and the new definition that was officially adopted yesterday (November 16th).  

About the vote, another article:  “Scientists for whom the update represents decades of work clapped, cheered and even wept as the 50-plus nations one by one said “yes” or “oui” to the update in the French city of Versailles on Friday (local time). 

Nobel prize winner William Phillips called it “the greatest revolution in measurement since the French revolution”, which ushered in the metric system of metres and kilograms.   “ 

Tags:

#oh look an update #the power of science

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

mysharona1987:

 

thes3nator:

Try to do all of them. Here’s my take:

Prologue

Gregg Grimmsby, special agent Space FBI, stumbled out of his space cabin with a space mug of space whiskey in his robot hand. The sound of laser battles throughout the rocky landscape had woken him, and he put his hand up to block out the light from the binary suns as he squinted across the horizon.

The iridescent, crystalline landscape went on for miles, but he saw no sight of the battle. “Oh well,” he grumbled, “time to go get some space herbs.” He took a few steps forward, only to see the ricocheting light bounce off several canyons in the distance before turning through his torso. He fell to the ground, killed instantly.

Gregg shot up out of bed in a cold sweat.

“Agent Grimmsby.”

He looked out to the corner of the space cabin. It was Agent Slater, his longtime lover and boss. He was shirtless and standing in the light of the multiple moons that illuminated the room from the window.

“Come over here and kiss me, you son of a bitch.” Grimmsby growled, growlingly. And as Slater approached, Grimmsby woke up again. This time he was in a hydrotank, surrounded by doctors monitoring his vital signs.

“Fuck, not again,” he blubbered underwaterily, in the water.

Tags:

#storytime #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #death mention

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

rationalists-out-of-context:

-“I’m not French!”

-“…yet”

-“I’m not going to be trans-French! FRENCH IS NOT A GENDER”

Tags:

#I am reminded of that post a while back #depicting a race/class selection screen with really weird options #and one of the races was ”demi-canadian” #and I was like ”yep‚ that’s me alright” #our home and cherished land #the humour of my people #our roads may be golden or broken or lost

I’m in a new demographic now.

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

Age 25 – 34.

(haven’t taken any surveys since, but I’m sure I will soon)

I had a good birthday!

  • Went exploring in some shopping plazas I had previously only visited with specific purposes in mind.
  • Learned about the existence of 3.5mm-to-cassette-tape adapters (examples), wooden sudoku boards, and little grocery stores both expensive (but organic!) and actually very cheap (since Mom insists on having brisket for holiday feasts (except the ones where it’s turkey instead), I figured I ought to tell her about the butcher I found with brisket on sale for $5/lb; she later picked some up and put it in the freezer for the next non-turkey feast).
  • Picked up another free mango smoothie, and a cookie from Subway that I didn’t even know was coming. (I haven’t had any good opportunities to buy anything from Starbucks since they instituted their “must buy at least one thing per year to receive birthday presents” rule, Giant Tiger failed to record my birthday properly and so sent me nothing, and the other freebies I haven’t had a chance to pick up yet without going far enough out of my way to make it not worth the fuel. I expect to be in the correct areas before the various vouchers expire, though.)
  • Ate homemade macaroni and cheese, and later birthday cake made with almond meal instead of flour (I like my chocolate to be mixed with nuts, and it turns out almond-meal chocolate cake is excellent at this).
  • Got the solar-powered phone battery. Have not had a chance to try it out yet, except the flashlight function.
  • Also a gift card for the restaurant I work at (some of our stuff is actually reasonably priced even by my standards if you have an employee discount, so I eat there a couple times a month), and–because Mom has a thing about wanting to give people surprise presents–a variety pack of differently flavoured Kit Kats. (I haven’t yet had any of the caramel, mint-cookie, or green tea, but I did eat the strawberry one. It tasted a bit artificial, and I don’t think I’d bother getting it again, but nor was it bad.)

Tags:

#oh look an original post #birthday #food #adventures in human capitalism