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(I reserve the right to delete this one, too)

There is…a cliche? a conversational pattern?–described in the atheist blogosphere, at least as of the late 00′s/early 10′s.

As the atheists describe it, it goes something like this:

Christian: But clearly you do still believe in God, deep down, because morality comes from God. People do what’s right because God wills it, because they know God will judge them. The fact that you aren’t on a killing spree right now means you know God will judge you, too.

Atheist: …no? My morality stems fro– wait. Are you saying you would go on a killing spree if you thought God wasn’t watching?

—

The atheists speak of the chilling realisation of how close someone is to snapping. The realisation that you were actively pushing someone towards snapping. They hope that the Christians who fit into this pattern are merely bad at introspection, that their moralities would still function if God were removed from the equation, but fear that those Christians are portraying themselves accurately.

What no one talks about, at least not in my experience, is that it’s also terrifying from the other side. Oh, maybe some of those Christians are really confident it’s because atheists still have enough belief in God to act morally, but the ones who aren’t so confident?

It is a terrible thing to look at someone and realise that you do not know why they aren’t torturing you right now. You hope they have reasons of their own, but even if they do…because you don’t understand those reasons, you don’t know what would convince them to change their mind about the no-torture thing. You wouldn’t be able to tell in advance that they’re changing their mind, and you have no clue how you’d go about persuading them not to.

(Some parts of you–the part that assumes the worst, the part that was never any good at theory of mind–fear that they have no reasons, that they’re not torturing you only because they’re not in the mood right now, or–worse–because it simply hasn’t occurred to them yet that there’s nothing stopping them. You’re reluctant to ask them too probingly about the underpinnings of their morality, for fear that you will be the thing that causes them to realise they don’t have any.)

Tags:

#last night I was reading a blog #and realised that the blogger’s morality was so foreign to me I couldn’t even tell whether he had one #it was…unnerving #oh look an original post #arguably a follow-up to the previous reserve-the-right-to-delete post #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #(I tried to find this post by looking in that tag so I guess that means I should add it)

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Yeah, going to need mobile data.

I mean, to be fair, I haven’t really had a chance to map the business district yet, and business districts tend to be better about Wi-Fi coverage. But I mapped my neighbourhood this morning*, and found…nothing. Every other residence was locked. Every non-residence didn’t have a hotspot.

Still, I’m glad I did it. Now I know, and knowing where Wi-Fi isn’t is almost as important as knowing where it is. (I say “almost” because it’s more likely to lead to people trying to re-invent the wheel: anyone else looking at the public map won’t be able to distinguish “somebody mapped this area and found nothing” from “nobody has mapped this area yet”, although they might be able to guess if they see that the areas surrounding that area have clearly been mapped.)

I also learned more about hotspot default names. The stuff I looked up about it later wasn’t super clear, but reading between the lines, it looks like Cisco got sick of being “linksys” all the time, and more recent Linksys routers are named using a random generator that spits out things like “AquaCedar” and “BusyEagle”. (When I was in another town running errands, I saw a network named “FastDove”, and wondered why they chose that name. Now, I think that they didn’t choose it: it came that way.)

Almost all of the networks with this naming scheme (I saw one that didn’t have this; my guess is they opted out) have another network named “[name]-guest”. The guest network claims to be open, but when you try to load a webpage on it, it redirects to a password prompt.

(My stance on residences with password-locked hotspots is: passwords are, first and foremost, a “Keep Out” sign, and as a general rule I respect requests to “Keep Out” even if they’re unenforced. If you have a Wi-Fi password, I will make no attempt to figure out what it is, even if it would turn out to be “password”.

(If a non-residence (business, community centre, etc) happily gives out its password to anyone who walks in the door, I will happily give out its password too. Otherwise, I treat them like locked residences and don’t pry further. I even phrase my initial questioning as “Do you have Wi-Fi?” when I already know that they do, so that they have the easy out of answering “No, we don’t have it” when the real answer is “Yes, but you can’t have any.”))

Anyway, after three or four [adjective][animal/plant]-guests that weren’t actually open, I’m thinking I won’t even bother to try future instances of the category. Again, useful information.

—

Oh, also, I did the factory reset I was planning on. Setting up my phone went much faster and smoother the second time (except Yahoo Calendar, but that’s Mom’s fault because it’s Mom’s calendar), and while I haven’t gotten all of my space back (I suspect the phone was lying when it said some of the built-in apps were removable; I think that’s enough to explain the remaining discrepancy), in general I am cautiously optimistic about the state of my hard drive. *knocks on wood*

—

*When you’ve lived in Canada for over nine years, +1°C starts to feel like reasonable outdoor weather.

Tags:

#it’s supposed to be +8C on Saturday #the peak of the usual January thaw #looking forward to that #hoping to get a lot of mapping done this weekend #it’s about as enjoyable as I thought it would be #treasure-hunt/seeing-into-normally-hidden-layer-of-existence*/act-of-public-service rolled into one #(*chalk another one up on the ”humans as fae” tab) #oh look an original post #oh look an update #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now

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Yesterday afternoon, upon further reflection, it occurred to me that whatever Mysterious Problem is keeping me from 1.5 GB of my hard drive space could very well have other ill effects. It’s probably worth at least *attempting* to eliminate the problem before I resort to routing around it.

…of course, it would have to be a *Monday* that I conclude this, wouldn’t it.

Tags:

#no brain it’s okay #we don’t have to Fix Everything Right Now #the phone’s current functionality level is good enough to get us through the rest of the week #(if it makes you feel any better) #(it’s supposed to be a windchill of 0 and non-precipitating tomorrow) #(that might be good enough for at least a *little* Wi-Fi mapping) #((…except since the time I drafted this post the highest windchill temperature has dropped to -1)) #((*and* it’s more like -3 at the time of day I would actually go out)) #((normally I don’t tend to mind being cooped up inside that much as long as I have Internet)) #((but not right now)) #oh look an original post #oh look an update #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now

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Brother’s identical phone model hasn’t had this problem. All of his internal storage is accounted for.

Options:

1. Perform a factory reset in an attempt to reclaim the missing 1.5 GB. Cons: requires mostly starting over on configuring the phone to my liking (though I’ll be able to skip some of the problems I ran into along the way, now knowing their solutions), might not work (whatever mysterious thing caused me to lose the 1.5 GB could just as easily happen again; I can’t learn from my mistake if I don’t know what the mistake was). (Note: re-configuring the phone will probably consume some time I would otherwise have spent working, perhaps $1 – 10 in opportunity costs depending on how successful I would have been in finding suitable jobs to claim.)

2. Configure the SD card I already have as internal storage. Cons: slows down the phone by an unknown amount (may or may not be significant), requires wiping the SD card and re-downloading everything I currently have stored on it, causes the real internal storage to become user-inaccessible (but still in use behind the scenes, so I might find that I have a need to see it and can’t), originally had trouble getting Dropbox to work on internal!SD but I think I *might* (maybe) know what I did wrong. Other people tell horror stories of losing their data to their internal-configured SD card breaking, but any data of any importance has at least two additional copies (one on laptop, one in cloud), so I’m not too concerned by this possibility.

3. Convince Brother to swap SD cards with me, and configure it as internal storage: turns out his *is* high-speed, and currently external. Cons: the non-slowing cons of 2, plus Brother might not agree.

4. Buy the same SD card Brother has, configure as internal. Cons: the non-slowing cons of 2, plus costs $30.

(Note: Brother says he is *much* more skilled at taking this style of phone apart–he proceeded to tear the back off of his phone to demonstrate, making it look easy–and thinks that as long as I wait until a time he’s available, he can perform any SD card swapping I need done without any trouble.)

(Pros of each option: doesn’t suffer the cons of the other options, except where specified.)

Currently leaning towards attempting them in the order 2, 1, 3, 4. If I have to resort to option 1, try to arrange my schedule so that the re-configuring occurs over a weekend.

Tags:

#I don’t expect it to be very easy to arrange to do a factory reset over the weekend #unless I happen to give up on Plan A at the right time of week #there’s already enough things I want to do with this phone that I’m being forced to wait on #it’d be hard to convince myself to wait when I *don’t* have to #oh look an original post #oh look an update #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now

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System memory: 3.79 GB

Apps: 2.12 GB

(various other categories of stuff: a couple dozen MB combined)

Total: 7.55 GB

“Warning! You are running low on storage space!”

where did that gigabyte and a half go?!

I needed that gigabyte and a half!

I uninstalled a couple apps I don’t really use and it’s now dropped to 7.45 GB, which stopped its complaints. (Presumably the complaining threshold is 7.5.) But…goddammit, one of the reasons I got this phone was so that I would stop having to juggle app installations.

(Fuck, I might have to wade back into the morass that is configuring an SD card on Android 6.0, so I can convince it to keep some app data there. Apparently configuring it to store app data on the SD card slows the phone down unless you have a high-speed SD card. I do not have a high-speed SD card, and I doubt we have any lying around. Even if I obtained a suitable card, in order to take SD cards in and out of this model you have to literally tear the phone in half, and it’s a fucking miracle we’ve managed to do it twice with only minor cosmetic damage.)

Tags:

#this hard division in the new Android version between SD-card-as-external and SD-card-as-internal is not working out well for me #and of course there’s still the question of where my gigabyte and a half went #*sigh* *headdesk* #I’m going to bed #I’ll have to deal with it later #if I’m lucky Brother will have already had and solved this problem and will be able to help me #but my hopes on that are not high #oh look an original post #rants #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #I thought I was done setting it up but apparently I am not

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Updates:

SD cards turn out to be a lot more complicated on Android 6.0 than they were on 4.2, so it took longer than I thought it would, but I’ve finished the transfer. All of my stuff (give or take a weather app) is on my new phone, and my old phone is now officially Mom’s.

—

Re: Internet access, it remains to be seen how much can be done with option 1–I might still use it at least partially–but it’s looking like the primary answer is going to be option 3.

Mom was remarkably agreeable to switching to my old smartphone as her primary cell phone, under two conditions: that nobody expects her to use the smartphone to anywhere near its full functionality (she doesn’t want to have to deal with getting to know a new kind of computer, at least not beyond a shallow level), and that I figure out a reasonably practical way for her to carry it around with her (she currently carries her phone in a flip-phone-sized pouch in her backpack).

(Dad suggested sticking her SIM card into a smartphone when I wanted to use data, then putting it back in the flip phone afterward for routine use. I said I didn’t think flip phones had removable SIM cards. Turns out the real answer is in between: *modern* flip phones have removable SIM cards, but her phone is so old it predates PC Mobile flip phones becoming the type of phone that has a removable SIM. In order to switch a SIM card back and forth, she’d need to get a new flip phone; if she’s going to change primary phones anyway, why spend money on an additional phone when we have a perfectly good smartphone available?)

It seems we can’t get a monthly or yearly graph of how much phone credit she’s actually using, but judging from the amount of credit she currently has built up, over the six years she’s had her account she’s used an average of ~$70/year. Put another way: if the average usage rate holds, we could buy a $10/month basic data plan May – October and not run out of spare credit for about 6 years. That’s long enough to be getting on with; hell, for all I know, I’ll have a need for my own phone plan by then.

I already borrow Mom’s phone on those occasions I need access to the cell infrastructure. This will just be an extension of that.

I’m not going to take any action on obtaining a data plan until it gets close to spring. If all goes well, Mom will keep her old flip phone for the rest of the winter, and she’ll have some time to get used to having a smartphone before trying to do any actual phone stuff with it.

(It’ll have to be Brother who gives her the tour of how to do actual phone stuff on a smartphone. I’ve never done it, after all.)

Tags:

#I looked it up and it turns out PC is actively encouraging people with SIM-less phones to upgrade to SIM models #so they can consolidate their networks #for us personally I consider this a good sign #because it means it *probably* won’t be a huge hassle to switch her account to a new phone #people usually make things easy to do when they’re trying to convince you to do them #hopefully running a mobile hotspot will also be non-frustrating #*knocks on wood* #oh look an original post #oh look an update #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(and not three) #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon

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My new phone arrived yesterday!

(Amazon almost always takes less time to ship than they think they will, so I ignored them telling me to expect it on the 9th and kept an eye on the tracking page.)

I haven’t got it fully set up yet, but it’s coming along well. I might be finished by tonight, and likely by the end of tomorrow.

There are two main problems left.

First, it’s fucking cold out. -10C, windchill -20. It’s going to get less fucking cold in a couple days, but there won’t be a positive windchill temperature in the foreseeable future. Apparently active Pokemon Go players are dealing with this as best they can by things like walking laps around malls and camping indoor Pokestops. I might do stuff like that *next* winter, but I don’t want to *start* playing a game while it’s in winter dormancy.

Second, Internet access. I still don’t have a SIM card, which means I don’t have a data plan. I’m told Pokemon Go requires a continuous Internet connection.

I can think of a few ways of dealing with this:

1: Play only in Wi-Fi zones. I can’t tell yet how feasible this is: I don’t know what the public Wi-Fi coverage is like in my area. Because it is, again, fucking cold, I can’t go out mapping yet. (There are a *few* hotspots already listed on that map as being within walking distance, but it’s clear nobody’s gone through and systematically mapped my area. Not yet.)

2: Pay my brother to come with me, with his phone set to mobile hotspot. I might need *a* mobile data connection, but nobody said it had to be *mine*. I’m pretty sure I’d need to pay him even if he didn’t mind the act of coming with me, because I don’t think he currently has a data plan, nor do I think he has enough spare credits that he could buy one without making more top-ups to his pre-paid account than he otherwise would.

3: Convince my mother to detach her pre-paid account from her current flip phone and attach it to a phone capable of generating a mobile hotspot (the smartphone I’m giving her, perhaps). Then, take her phone with me. (She probably wouldn’t mind me using her phone without her supervision, as long as I asked first.) She has enough spare credits built up that I probably wouldn’t need to pay her, but she likes her current phone and getting her to switch would be tricky.

4: Finally just buy my own phone plan. (This option can probably be discarded. I am very reluctant to spend money on gaming: I normally stick to video games that are ad-supported, volunteer-maintained, or have optional purchases I never buy. I might be willing to bend a *little*, but not to the tune of $100/year. This option would be feasible if I had a significant amount of non-Pokemon use for a phone plan, but I currently don’t.)

5: *Partially* just buy my own plan: instead of getting the same setup as the rest of my family, with a $100 minimum top-up paid annually, pay on a sub-annual scale and let it lapse in winter. Alternatively, pay on a monthly scale only on months I don’t have school (and therefore have a lot more free afternoons in which to play), letting it lapse during winter *and* during school semesters (using one or more of the other methods to play during semesters). Even pre-paid plans don’t like people lapsing, so there would be penalties for having my plan be on-and-off. Because of the discount for paying annually, it might not even be cheaper depending on what periods of time the plan is “on”.

(All of these options, other than 1, also require arranging the data plan itself for maximally efficient use of phone credits. Depending on the setup, minimum payments might not provide enough credits, and if the minimum isn’t enough even Mom’s built-up credits would eventually run out.)

Last I heard, @nenya-kanadka has an on-and-off phone plan. Her Internet connection usually isn’t good enough for Tumblr these days, so she probably won’t see my ping, but I think I’ll message her on Dreamwidth and ask for details about how her setup works. (What with her being in Canada, any country-specific advice she gives will still apply.) That’d get me a bit closer to having enough information to make a decision, though I won’t be able to make any plans until I’ve mapped the local Wi-Fi.

Tags:

#originally I wasn’t even going to *consider* replacing my phone until spring #because I knew I’d get antsy if I had the theoretical capacity to play Pokemon Go but not the weather #(I’m now trying to balance ‘doing enough research to plan stuff like Internet access’ with ‘researching will make me antsier’) #but the sooner Mom gets an Android that actually functions okay (unlike her shitty tablet) the better #and anyway the roomier hard drive will be nice regardless #oh look an original post #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #(three at the moment) #in which Brin learns to speak Pokemon #I’m not especially *expecting* advice but if anyone has any I’d be interested in hearing it

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I’ve been wondering this on and off, and I figured I might as well get around to asking:

Are other people’s imaginations shut down or impaired when they’re sick?

Mine is: I pretty much don’t have visualised fantasies at all when I’m sick, and what fantasies I do have are much fewer in number and much less vivid. I can think of possible explanations that lead to both “this is a very common experience” (maybe it’s part of the cognitive issues that come with the brain’s convalescence mode) and “this is a very rare experience” (maybe it’s my brain’s way of resolving the conflict in the instinctive How to Respond to Illness code between “get lots of rest” and “avoid getting pregnant”, forcing a loss of libido by rendering me incapable of sexual fantasies (and, as a side effect, non-sexual fantasies)).

Anyone know how common imagination impairments are when sick? Failing that, anyone have anecdotal experience about whether this happens to them?

Tags:

#oh look an original post #illness tw #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #(as far as I know I am not currently sick) #(*knocks on wood*)

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How can Pokemon Go be so popular if so few phone models can run it?

Like, am I missing something, or are phones with enough RAM small-selection and rather expensive? I looked on Amazon for 2GB RAM smartphones, and I got four entries, three of which were ~$195 and one that was $280.

Though I’d prefer to use Amazon store credit, and an unlocked phone could be nice, I might end up buying another locked phone from PC Mobile. They’ll sell me a 2 GB model Amazon doesn’t carry for $104. The only problem I’ve ever had with my current PC Mobile lock was having to buy a very cheap flip-phone shell when I needed a temporary American cell phone last year, rather than putting an American SIM card in my pre-existing smartphone. Not only have I never wanted to buy a non-PC Canadian plan, I’ve never even bought a PC plan. It’s looking like my first smart-”phone” is going to live out its entire life without ever actually seeing a SIM card.

Also, apparently all smartphones are really tall now, so I’d need to replace my phone pouch too so a new phone will fit. I liked that pouch.

(I’m not just complaining. If anyone knows of an Amazon Canada listing that the search isn’t picking up, or some other decent method of obtaining a suitable phone (either cheaper or less locked than PC), or if Pokemon Go actually runs fine on 1 GB of RAM and Niantic was just being conservative with their list of specs, let me know. America-specific recommendations accepted if I can act on them during my day trip to Buffalo later this month and they’re unlocked, or possibly so cheap that their unlock fee is worth it: I don’t want to be tied to a carrier whose service area I don’t live in, in case I buy a plan someday. (But keep exchange rates in mind; from a CAD viewpoint, objects priced in USD are more expensive than they look.))

Tags:

#oh look an original post #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #and has been thinking of replacing the smaller one #nothing is *wrong* with it per se #it functions fine according to its original specifications #but I’m getting tired of juggling data around its tiny hard drive #(I’ve already had to uninstall multiple apps I wanted to keep because I simply didn’t have space) #(not *everything* can be transferred to the microSD) #and I would like to finally learn to speak Pokemon #but the thing that pushed me over into serious planning for replacement #was that Mom now has a thing she’d like to do that she needs a smartphone for #but it doesn’t really matter how *good* a smartphone #so I told her I’d buy a new one for me and hand my old one down to her #(neatly circumventing waste-not-want-not issues) #tag rambles

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I saw Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a couple days ago.

(spoilers behind cut)

Thing I liked: the amount of short-range Apparition in this movie. Characters routinely use teleporting to get past grates, to jump from one building rooftop to the next, to dodge attacks. This is a very Correct use of teleportation and I approve.

Thing I did not like: the amount of Obliviation in this movie. Like, even more than I was expecting. Were we supposed to consider the mass mind-wiping of an entire city a happy ending?

I spent most of the movie worried about whether Newt’s Muggle companion* was going to make it through intact. At the end, the President of Wizarding America is like “You’re going to have to obliviate him, but I’ll give you a chance to say goodbye”, and then she and all her lackeys walk away. Now, to someone who is already thinking about the Eleventh Doctor, this is clearly code for “I’m going to look the other way while you smuggle him to safety”. Except Kowalski then does a 180 on his previously-expressed desire to stay in touch with the wizarding world, says some “I was never supposed to know, this is how things should be” bullshit, and deliberately walks out into the rainstorm of Lethe water. *sigh*

(It didn’t just remind me of Doctor Who, you know, but of a movie I saw when I was a child. Another movie with a setting hidden amongst ordinary New Yorkers, and which was far, far more horrifying than it thought it was.)

(when the monsters came for me, they did not wield claws or teeth or guns, but those little silvery sticks)

*My brain insists on referring to Kowalski as a “companion”, because Newt has the same accent as Matt Smith and once that’s gotten you to start seeing Newt as the Doctor, it turns out to be kind of hard to stop.

Tags:

#in conclusion: #entertaining movie #will make you side-eye your water bottle #amnesia cw #oh look an original post #Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them