(status: I acknowledge that this is psychological damage from an extended period of financial hardship during formative years, but I nonetheless mostly endorse it)
Hmm. I seem to be having a bunch of thoughts and feelings about this.
There seems to be a…maybe “divide” is too strong a word, I don’t know. But…like, I called it “fuck-you money vs fuck-me money” in a post a while back. Even when the actions are the same, there’s this psychological difference in how people can approach it.
When I see FIRE people, they always frame it in terms of *freedom*. (It’s right there in the acronym: Financially *Independent*, Retiring Early.) But to me, it strikes me as being a thing about *safety*. “Enough money that you can run your household solely off the interest from your investments” can protect you from a lot of different problems, and *that’s* why the idea appeals to me.
A few weeks ago I saw some distant acquaintance-of-an-acquaintance on Tumblr (I don’t recall who) advising a young person with a high-paying job and relatively low expenses (Silicon Valley programmer, I think, or something like that) to go on some trips and enjoy themself, because they weren’t going to have this much disposable income again until their forties if not later. And it felt like a very weird framing to me, because…the way I see it, if future-me doesn’t have money to spare, then neither do I. I don’t have spare money unless I can afford to feed myself, and I can’t truly afford to feed myself unless I can afford to feed *all* of my selves.
16-year-old me got to eat because 7-year-old me’s dad put away some “”extra””, and eventually that “”extra”” was all he had left. Where is 33-year-old me getting *her* food from?
Because if the source isn’t me, then I don’t trust it to come through for her. I want to do all I can to make sure that, no matter who is or is not willing to employ her or for how much, 33-year-old me (and 44-year-old me, and 55-year-old me…) is fed and housed and so forth.
—
(This was going to be a tag ramble, but then I thought it should probably stay with the post if somebody reblogs it to respond or something. I’m just going to leave it in tag format.)
#this post probably partly inspired by my first anniversary of non-freelance employment #which is coming up soon #I think I will celebrate by scheduling the dental checkup I have been putting off for ~3 years because I didn’t feel I could afford it #(yes government healthcare does not cover dental) #(OHIP has some very weird-looking exceptions) #(this is probably the result of some kind of complicated political negotiation that I’m not sure I want to know the details of) #anyway a dental checkup seems like a good compromise between celebratory and practical #(and [practical celebrations are easier to enjoy]/[I find myself drawn to practical gifts these days anyway including gifts I buy for myself]) #((that safety thing manifests here especially)) #((the things I dream of buying these days are always things that protect you from something)) #((checkups that protect you from tooth damage and electric cars that protect you from rising oil prices and solar-powered phone chargers that protect you from power outages)) #((this I am much less sure I endorse)) #((I mean I think it is good to want practical things but it would also probably be good if I felt safe enough to want a few non-practical things too)) #(((sometimes on especially bad brain days I can’t even bring myself to play Flight Rising))) #(((that is currently the most common cause of my FR hiatuses))) #(((it used to be the most common cause was that I felt like playing some other game instead)))
#I will put this in the tags though: #I was reading my Tumblr archive recently and *damn* 2014!me was having a hard time #she didn’t talk about it much in public but occasionally she couldn’t quite hold it in anymore and it leaked out into a post #I felt very sorry for her #basically what I’m saying is #hi 2022!me #I hope you’re in a good enough position that you can feel sorry for me rather than going ”yeah I still know that feel” #(but if so please do still provide for farther-future!us) #(just with a healthier frame of mind) #(maybe buy solar chargers *and* video games)
Hi, 2018!me.
I won’t lie to you: I do still know that feel. Things haven’t really changed much for us financially: still a slow bleeding kept at bay by unpredictable one-time cash infusions, still with a-home-in-good-repair being a cherished but distant dream. Still taking some gigs at $1.30/hour, though only the especially easy ones now. We graduated last year, and the diploma’s been *exactly* as much of a waste of time and resources as we feared it would be, though I have not quite lost hope altogether. I have made only $309 in deposits to my retirement fund, in the time since I was you.
Financially, we still don’t have the stability and security that we long for.
*Non*-financially, though, our position has improved. We’ve made new friends, and even mostly managed to keep the old, and (in addition to the non-practicality-related aspects) they’ve taught us (and we them) many useful things. I’m in better shape now: not *great* shape, but on a good day I can run for half an hour straight (almost two miles!), and even on moderately bad days I can do twenty minutes. I still work at the restaurant, but I’m allowed to mask at work now (I know, right, we thought that would *never* happen, didn’t even dare hope for it), and we were–by, admittedly, a terrifyingly narrow margin–not fucked over by the travesty that set the precedent that workplaces allow employees to mask.
(If this were two-way communication, I’d have opened with advice on getting higher-grade and more durable masks while they’re still easy to come by, so that the margin won’t be so terrifyingly narrow. But it isn’t, and I will have to content myself with knowing that it worked out for us in the end.)
(It didn’t work out, for a lot of people. A lot of people, in a lot of ways, are worse off now than they were in 2018. I do not live in as flourishing a world as we would hope.
But we, personally, were fortunate in this regard: we rose through the cracks of the problems that hit everyone, and that actually ended up counteracting a lot of the problems that were specific to us. It’s where most of the one-time cash infusions came from; it’s why I haven’t been sick–not *really* sick, not anything bad enough to make me wish I were unconscious–in over three and a half of the four years that separate us.)
((common-cold-induced depression isn’t normal, BTW. you know that weird non-depressive cold we had in December of 2017? yeah, that’s just what colds are like for normal people. sure does explain a lot about why people are Like That.))
The Ontarian government has announced plans to start covering dental care in a couple of years (a long enough delay that I’ve decided it’s still worth paying for a checkup this year, though I may skip next year). Our parents’ pensions will start trickling in next year, with the bigger ones starting in 2025. I still have a couple more ideas for how to break into an accounting career, and I still have the option of changing tacks and making a living in an unrelated field.
In the time since I was you, I have bought both a solar panel and a video game.
One way or another, we’ll get through this.
Remember, I love you.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #adventures in human capitalism #adventures in University Land #in which Brin has a job #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #covid19 #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #venting cw? #bragging cw? #kind of both
Oh shit this blew up Um I wanna address that he has plenty of space other than this window
He has this entire one right next to it with a blankie and he uses it exclusively for people watching. He really only goes to the other window when he decides to be A Menace
and with a VCR you could do all of this AND have the visuals as well… but an audio cassette recorder is a good place to start, since they’re small and simple. I would not recommend a boombox, because those are large and nowadays all very, very bad quality.
Now you may be saying “how is any of this helpful, I want a digital file…” here’s the fucking magic. You go into Audacity (free program), and lie to it that the tape recorder is really a microphone. Then you hit record on Audacity, and hit play on the tape, and let it play at regular speed. Trim and export the digital file, and you’re doing gangbusters. You’re cooking with gas. You’re thinking with portals. You’ve won the internet.
Congratulations, you can “pirate”* anything you want, and literally no one can catch you, because you’re not downloading in the traditional sense. You’re streaming to an external device, and that device is recording what it receives. It’s exactly like taping a live tv show to a VHS. This is a very low-key and non-strenuous task for the computer, since your tape recorder does all the work.
*Is this piracy? No. Well- it’s time shifting. Sort of. Tell it to my Steely Dan albums. Tell it to my The Sims: Hot Date VG Soundtrack album.
OP, dropping surprising knowledge from across time and space:
Fun fact: this is called the analog loophole, and it’s completely impossible to close, even in principle. No matter how much copy protection you add to a piece of media, it will eventually have to be sent to a display and then turned into an audio/video output that humans can interpret, because… that’s the whole fucking point
So even if they find some way to encrypt the signal sent to the display so you can’t intercept it with a VCR or tape recorder (which would be exceedingly difficult if not impossible), at the end of the day you just can’t do anything about someone pointing a camera at the screen or a microphone at the speaker. Yo ho ho
(By the way, I’d love to see someone actually talk about the legal precedent of this wrt it being literally the same thing as recording a TV show on a VCR or recording a mixtape off of the radio, both of which I believe are absolutely unambiguously legal. OP may be right that this is literally, legally, not piracy, but I’m not a lawyer nor am I opposed to crimes so don’t ask me)
What’s the advantage to including a tape recorder in this process, rather than cutting out the middle steps and just having Audacity record your headphone output? Is it just that it bears a closer resemblance to the situations that set legal precedent regarding time-shifting?
Don’t get me wrong, it did occur to me (though by the time I decided it was worth including in my response, I’d already left for work) that OP’s username is magnetictapedatastorage: presumably they take pleasure in integrating tape into their stream-archiving workflow.
But looking at the notes, there seem to be a lot of people under the honest impression that a separate recorder is *required*, and I would like to be clear that–at least in terms of practicality: I can’t speak to legal camouflage–the tape is in fact optional. You can plug a pair of non-lie headphones in and instruct Audacity to record what’s sent to them.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers
unfortunately there is no tininess of amount that will make my fingertips not feel goopy. if somebody else wanted to rub the moisturizer into the tops of my hands it wouldn’t matter because I wouldn’t have to touch my keys with it
I am extremely weird about hand cleanliness with my stuff and basically only my stuff. I don’t care much normally but if you are using my keyboard, controller, or guitar, you gotta wash them grubby little mitts
I can rub it into the backs of my palms without using my fingertips, by rubbing them together, but I can’t really get the backs and sides of my fingers well done, which is historically a problem area
I technically can use the computer with gloves on, and I have done it in cold weather, but I feel so much less competent at typing and mousing that I really avoid it when possible
I do moisturize before going to sleep and wear gloves over it, but since I prefer to do so after I finish reading on my phone, and I’m often very sleepy by that point, it’s less than maximally reliable
the best solution to this problem is to adequately humidify my environment such that I don’t need to moisturize at all, but until I get the right quantity and quality of humidifiers sorted moisturize I must, and deal with some level of goopiness I must also
the best time slot for moisturization I’ve found for me personally is before going for a walk, as I usually wear gloves anyway and don’t use my hands much
>>unfortunately there is no tininess of amount that will make my fingertips not feel goopy
I do hear some brands absorb a lot slower than others, so it’s possible switching brands would help. I’m currently experimenting with Live Clean’s “intense moisture” lotion and finding it decent. (A bit of poking at Amazon suggests that Live Clean *exists* in America but might be harder to find there?)
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>>I technically can use the computer with gloves on, and I have done it in cold weather, but I feel so much less competent at typing and mousing that I really avoid it when possible
Same, TBH. Apparently it works well for some people, though, and sometimes I’m desperate enough to do it myself.
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>>the best solution to this problem is to adequately humidify my environment such that I don’t need to moisturize at all
I run a humidifier in my bedroom overnight, and if I’m not working food service I generally find that moisturising once a day is enough (with larger quantities in winter). But I *am* working food service, so I need to break out the big guns in order to get anywhere near keeping up.
I’m not sure where it falls on the absorption-speed spectrum, but in terms of *effectiveness* the best lotion I’ve yet encountered is Beekman’s honey and orange blossom: the only one that’s ever allowed me to actually *keep up* with food-service levels of handwashing instead of just partially mitigating the damage. Horrendously expensive, though, which is why I’m still experimenting with other brands. (Probably less horrendous in America, with domestic shipping costs.)
yeah some brands are better than others. even very good ones by this metric are imperfect, tho, and tbh I don’t want to spend that much money on goo
if I am only washing my hands for textural reasons I can use water without soap which is much less damaging to the skin, so theoretically with good enough humidification I don’t need any moisturizer. I have achieved this level in new york, it remains to be seen if it’s possible in colder & dryer places.
Update: Aveeno oat and shea butter is *also* good enough to keep up with food-service work, while being much cheaper and *much* more readily available than Beekman. It’s so nice to have fully functional skin again.
Next I’m going to try the store-brand knockoff with a *very nearly* identical ingredient list (even cheaper and almost as readily available) and see how that goes.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #recs #body horror?
one the one hand, washing my hands after moisturizing them kinda defeats the point
on the other hand, I need to use my computer. I’m not gooping my computer
Three useful tactics:
1. Moisturise in tiny amounts (so that it’s pretty much all been absorbed by the time you reach your computer), making up for it in frequency.
2. Moisturise at bedtime.
3. Wear gloves over the top. (Also combines well with 2, to avoid gooping your bedding.)
unfortunately there is no tininess of amount that will make my fingertips not feel goopy. if somebody else wanted to rub the moisturizer into the tops of my hands it wouldn’t matter because I wouldn’t have to touch my keys with it
I am extremely weird about hand cleanliness with my stuff and basically only my stuff. I don’t care much normally but if you are using my keyboard, controller, or guitar, you gotta wash them grubby little mitts
I can rub it into the backs of my palms without using my fingertips, by rubbing them together, but I can’t really get the backs and sides of my fingers well done, which is historically a problem area
I technically can use the computer with gloves on, and I have done it in cold weather, but I feel so much less competent at typing and mousing that I really avoid it when possible
I do moisturize before going to sleep and wear gloves over it, but since I prefer to do so after I finish reading on my phone, and I’m often very sleepy by that point, it’s less than maximally reliable
the best solution to this problem is to adequately humidify my environment such that I don’t need to moisturize at all, but until I get the right quantity and quality of humidifiers sorted moisturize I must, and deal with some level of goopiness I must also
the best time slot for moisturization I’ve found for me personally is before going for a walk, as I usually wear gloves anyway and don’t use my hands much
>>unfortunately there is no tininess of amount that will make my fingertips not feel goopy
I do hear some brands absorb a lot slower than others, so it’s possible switching brands would help. I’m currently experimenting with Live Clean’s “intense moisture” lotion and finding it decent. (A bit of poking at Amazon suggests that Live Clean *exists* in America but might be harder to find there?)
—
>>I technically can use the computer with gloves on, and I have done it in cold weather, but I feel so much less competent at typing and mousing that I really avoid it when possible
Same, TBH. Apparently it works well for some people, though, and sometimes I’m desperate enough to do it myself.
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>>the best solution to this problem is to adequately humidify my environment such that I don’t need to moisturize at all
I run a humidifier in my bedroom overnight, and if I’m not working food service I generally find that moisturising once a day is enough (with larger quantities in winter). But I *am* working food service, so I need to break out the big guns in order to get anywhere near keeping up.
Also, while we’re on the subject:
I’m not sure where it falls on the absorption-speed spectrum, but in terms of *effectiveness* the best lotion I’ve yet encountered is Beekman’s honey and orange blossom: the only one that’s ever allowed me to actually *keep up* with food-service levels of handwashing instead of just partially mitigating the damage. Horrendously expensive, though, which is why I’m still experimenting with other brands. (Probably less horrendous in America, with domestic shipping costs.)
The most popularly mentioned symptom of hypersensitivity is thinking or feeling that things are polluted when they aren’t. But it’s not the only one. Many hypersensitives also have “obstructed melioration”, where – especially if something is actually polluted or actually has something on it – they are so paralyzed by their feelings of disgust that they can’t take actions to clean.
You can be diagnosed with some forms of hypersensitivity even if you never make a mistake on a test of pollution identification. If you can’t touch the dishes so you can’t wash the dishes; if you can’t stand the smell of dust so you never jack up the couch to sweep it up; if something spilled in your fridge last month and you haven’t been able to open it since then even though it was only ketchup at the time, so now it’s a mold ecosystem you’d need to go after with bleach? If you have a meltdown every time you visit the bathroom and spend two hours sitting there panicking and procrastinating on cleaning up because that would mean thinking about it? If you can’t wash your hands because you’d notice the slightly less clean water rinsing off them? If you haven’t shampooed in six weeks because whenever you wash your hair it accumulates in the drain catch and then you’d have to pick it out? If you have any trouble explaining what needs doing to a professional cleaner because the words taste bad? Then you’re (insofar as you can be diagnosed online) hypersensitive.
If something is so gross that you can’t clean it – not because there aren’t enough gloves and masks and chemicals, just because you can’t stand to think about it that hard, engage with the existence of a mess that needs to be cleaned up – then that’s hypersensitivity, and it’s a disability.
Anyway, how do you all feel about cleaning reds?
#unreality cw? #yet also‚ at the same time‚ very true #I think about this post every fucking time I flinch away from cleaning my fridge #(today’s reblog brought to you by my brother finally throwing out the ~month-old corn that was‚ in his words‚ “no longer yellow”) #(I soaked the bowl with lots of soap for a day or so and managed to clean it after that) #(…now I just need to clean the *other* moldy food container‚ currently sitting beside the sink with its lid on) #(……maybe I will wash the other dishes first)
Update:
About twelve days later, my brother came home with a takeout container from his workplace. He mentioned he was planning to recycle it once he was done with it, because “we already have enough containers”.
I proposed that we instead recycle the moldy one and wash the new one, and everyone with a stake in the matter agreed. (That is to say, I did not bother to ask Dad because I knew he wouldn’t care.)
All’s well that ends well.
(In my defence, I’ve been covering a *lot* of shifts at work the past few weeks (especially those couple weeks), and had a lot less time and skin-HP [link] for dishwashing than usual. At no point during those twelve days was I caught up on all other dishes.)
Tags:
#oh look an update #reply via reblog #(ish) #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia #domesticity #in which Brin has a job #food #unsanitary cw #Amenta RP #unreality cw?
one of the disappointing experiences in life is when i see people reblog my matt levine post and tag it #insider trading, but when I go and look at their blog there’s nothing else in that tag. i think that should qualify as false advertising. maybe the FTC should look into this.
broke: one matt levine post
woke: one matt levine post and a mega series about the economics of osmosis jones
Tags:
#oh look an update #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #adventures in human capitalism
they’re one of the fruits where the supermarket variety is the supermarket variety because it survives the trip, not because they’re good
meanwhile tomato plants are really low effort. if you have favorable conditions you can do literally nothing
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Where are you *finding* conditions that aren’t full of weeds and wildlife-competing-with-you-for-the-food and the occasional blight? A greenhouse?
(…actually, that might not be a bad idea. I *have* heard of people building little personal greenhouses in their backyards, and nothing keeps squirrels from taking one bite out of your mom’s tomato and walking away like a fucking *door*, right?)
Re: surviving the trip, home-grown zucchinis taste about the same but we’ve noticed the shelf life is *vastly* longer. Store-bought zucchinis start to shrivel up and go soft within a few days of bringing them home; home-grown zucchinis can sit in the fridge for several *weeks*. Makes it a lot easier to plan your meals.
Honestly, probably a good part of my problem with gardening is that, because *Mom* loves home-grown tomatoes for some fucking reason, they end up the focal point of the garden and a great deal of my gardening-related labour is thoroughly alienated: I never see the fruits *or* the vegetables of my labour.
A garden optimised for what *I* thought was most worth growing would have zero tomatoes and more garlic and zucchini, with perhaps just enough potatoes to keep in practice so that I can put potatoes in the victory garden. And probably more perennials like mulberries. And possibly mushrooms. And I would want to do a bunch of research and expert-consultation regarding which weeds are secretly edible, since anything *that* easy to grow sounds like something I should take advantage of.
(I’ve been meaning to do some more digging into how to eat dandelions. I’ve heard you can put the new greens in salads and the petals in pancake batter, but I don’t normally eat salads *or* pancakes. Can you just, like, munch on a raw dandelion flower straight-up? Can I fulfil my childhood dream of eating a pretty flower I found in the backyard?)
Yeah, you can just munch any part of dandelion – I often do that when I’m reading in the garden. Older leaves get bitter and shouldn’t be eaten in big amounts, and roots need cooking. Flower is just fine though.
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Hell yeah!
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This is another area where I like a lot of the things the communing-with-nature people are putting out but for completely different reasons. I want to know more about the natural world around me *so that I can exploit it better*. Which wildflowers can I eat? What’s the name of that one plant where when you run through a field of them it sounds like popcorn popping? Can I eat those too?!
(I never stopped wanting to stick interesting plants in my mouth: I just learned to resist it, to assume everything was poisonous until proven otherwise. And for the most part, nobody ever taught me which interesting plants I didn’t have to resist.)
I never stopped wanting to stick interesting plants in my mouth: I just learned to resist it
i never learned this and im still alive. i like to think it’s made me stronger
as for tomatos I don’t think you have to do that much? if your soil and weather conditions are good you can just put the seeds in the ground and come back later to find that you have a giant cherry tomato bush which is overrunning the rest of your garden and that produces way to many tomatos for any ten people to eat
if you don’t have this you might need to water them? I remember watering tomatos. most of the weeds around here don’t get tall enough to fuck with tomatos much. if it’s a major issue you can put them in pots I guess. we never had trouble with squirrels, altho we did have to stop growing tomatos in the backyard because one of the dogs ate them all. I don’t grow many tomatos because I don’t like tomatos, but fresh ones really are better.
idk about potatos specifically but I think durable transportable stuff like potatos and onions is the relative advantage of actual farmers. relative to growing fragile vegetables that kind of thing is probably only worth doing to the extent you’re having fun with it
My mom has tried to grow tomatoes pretty much every year for the past 10+ years and we have had very few home-grown tomatoes to eat
It might be where we live– people not from here think you can grow anything in Georgia but the summer heat really is too much for a lot of plants to handle. The state was also plagued by droughts for a lot of my childhood.
We also had a lot of Critters come sample the garden. Deer, squirrels, rabbits, tomato hornworms, etc etc etc. It always made my mom SO dismayed to come outside one morning to find that a deer had chomped off the entire top half of her biggest tomato plant, but you’d think she would have learned to expect it after about the fourth time
We DID sometimes get to eat the tomatoes if we picked them while still green and then used them for fried green tomatoes. Fried green tomatoes are really delicious. It’s just not what we had wanted to have when we planted tomatoes!
I’ll admit I don’t know anything about Georgia. I think it’s where depressing movies about plantations take place. it produces SCAD students. there’s a big airport I’ve never connected thru.
I asked my mother about tomatos and her opinion is that they’re easy to grow but you have to water them very regularly or else they’ll be sad and also blighted. this is maybe extra true if it’s very hot and sunny, which I’ve been told is the case in georgia. conversely farther north you may have trouble getting enough sun? that could make tomatos slower, maybe
idk about deer. the three places I’ve grown tomatos were:
suburb, but not near the forest so no deer. plenty of squirrels and rabbits but they were never a problem
fire escape. only cats and pigeons, neither of which are much trouble for tomatos
middle of nowhere. shitloads of deer but in the summer they just eat stuff in the forest. huge problem for slow growing perennials but not so much for tomatos
The previous post [link] reminded me to post an update on this:
>>What’s the name of that one plant where when you run through a field of them it sounds like popcorn popping? Can I eat those too?!
I took a picture of a popcorn flower and searched by similar images, and it’s a Plantago lanceolata (sometimes called a ribwort plantain). And apparently you *can* kind of eat them [link], though it’s more of a medicinal thing than a food thing.
Tags:
#oh look an update #food #gardening #reply via reblog #flowers #the more you know #poison cw? #proud citizen of the Future
Brinens and Things 