Being back under PT has been a little odd. I don't know how to judge the profession - how much learning is there behind it? Some fields, like therapy, are I suspect more about doing the obvious, but with enough attention and devotion. Maybe PT is like that. It's still useful though, and my ankle recently having been troubling me a lot, it was nice to just ask about that, have someone take a look at it, and have some more exercises to try to strengthen the necessary muscles. It's also nice that my neck is getting better mobility pretty quickly, and hopefully in general I'm paying more attention to my posture.
The recent political stuff between that one idiot who's our POTUS and those four idiots who are giving Pelosi some pain has taken a disturbing turn. I don't know how to judge if "why don't you go back" is racist, but it's a stupid thing to say to 3 people who were born in the US, and weird to say to a naturalised citizen. It's more disturbing yet that it's apparently becoming a phrase Trump's supporters are using at rallies. There've been a number of dark moments for the US recently. Not all from the POTUS, but quite a lot.
About to head back to the Cleveland area to visit family. It's been awhile. Been feeling a need to reconnect, at least a bit, back to my roots. I sometimes think about my grandparents, none of which are still around but some of which were a big part of my mental life. Some part of me wants to give my grandma on my mom's side a call. Bothers me that that's not possible anymore - the last conversations I had with her were over the phone, talking about what NYC is like and her impressions that all of this sounds like a lively adventure. I think perhaps she spent time in NYC at some point in the past. And all that was some years back. The passage of the years continues to astound. And that my sisters all have a kid apiece. I still really want not to be alone and to start a family, but I've also grown comfortable with my loneliness and find it hard to change. I still want my life to somehow not feel like a tragedy though. Last weekend's visit of one of my sisters was another reminder of what I don't have.
Ross Perot died recently. I think his candidacy was one of the first few that evoked wonder for me - I thought a lot about the two-party system starting then and learned about its history and what it takes to upset the paradigm. Some of the people I pay attention to blame his candidacy for a lot of the Tea Party nonsense, but I don't see the tie. What I remember of his campaign is that he tried to bring numbers and technocracy to his run, not something populist. I don't know if he would've been a good president.
There's a coworker at work, Cara, who (with her husband) has inspired me to put together a Commander magic deck. We're hopefully set to play a game or two in the coming weeks, although they also recently decided to move to Switzerland. This is natural for academia, but it still sucks as it really takes me some time to warm up to people and I am bothered that it by the time it happens often they're heading off to the next stage of their life. Feels like a tragic pattern of loss.
Been studying Warren's positions as I may wish to offer some financial support. Looking at her website now there are still some annoying policy ideas that I don't support, but that'd be true for anyone.
Two days ago I went to a Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof. It had two flaws that bugged me (the character of the Fiddler was cast as someone best described as a reject from "Cats", and they alternated between "Rich Man" and "Rothschild" in the relevant song), but overall was excellent, and as has occasionally happened before I've felt my heart strings being tugged a bit towards a Jewish life - for various reasons this is not for me (being Atheist, not being Jewish by chalakah, and a rejection of past cultures for the sake of building better future ones not based on blood), but heartstrings are not known to always resonate with decisions the rest of us makes. It speaks well of the production that it evoked this feeling in me - it's been awhile since I felt it. Yiddish was not a challenge for me - my German is decent, I've spoken in Yiddish dialects before, and I know the play very well. I'm likely to try to see more Yiddish theatre in the future - will be avoiding anything about Shoah, but otherwise open.
Also recently I caught up with a former coworker (which was nice - someone I've always respected) and we did it at a Malay restaurant (my first time). I was surprised to find that the Malay rendition of curry that I had there was sour and spicy - it was excellent and immediately one of my new favourite foods.
Very keen to visit the mission control room used for most Apollo missions.
I'm kinda dreading watching the second night of the debates, even this far out. I really don't like the format, and dislike what the moderators let them get away with. I also worry about the number of stupid things candidates might get peer-pressured into, like open border pledges.
Also, while I'll likely never get even the least bit preachy about it, it's neat to see that I'm not weird for generally turning subtitles on in games, and that hopefully game companies will keep putting in the effort to support subtitles.
Doing my (sigh) civic duty and watching the Democratic debates. Taking notes here.
Good challenge to Warren on economy opens the debate. She fields it well. Followup to Klobuchar on her competitors economic plans. She isn't good at speaking on her feet. Beto .. is asked about financial policy. He offers vacuous answer and then annoyingly mixes Spanish and English sentences. This debate isn't in Spanish. Rambles about other things, ignores question. Refuses to give straight answer when directly asked again.Beto .. is asked about financial policy. He offers vacuous answer and then annoyingly mixes Spanish and English sentences. This debate isn't in Spanish. Rambles about other things, ignores question. Refuses to give straight answer when directly asked again. Booker asked about policy towards business breakups and consolidation. Wanders around question for a bit, seems to ignore quoted position. Warrren given a followup, asked if she's picking winners and losers. Refers to existing laws, says they're fine but we're not using them b/c of lack of courage. Castro asked about pay gap, talks about his experience with these issues. Suggests passing Equal Rights Amendment (which is probably a good idea, but isn't something Presidents can do. It was held up because of not enough States signing on. Also talks about passing legislation, which again is not something Presidents do. Wrong governmental branch. Gabbard given same question. Talks about fighting for people in government, brags a bit about military service, and ... meanders further from the question. BdB asked about gap between wealthy and poor, asked about income inequality. Talks about minimum wage and other local policy things. Makes case for a general boldness. Delaney asked about BdBs statements. Talks about a variety of things he's pushed for. Probably was a bad question because he's going all over the place. Islee asked about income inequality, talks about unions and his support for them. Talks more about goals than means. Ryan is asked about Trump's claim that jobs are coming back en masse and if he can promise the same. He thinks so. Long on problems to point at, short on actual solutions.
I likely will just run with the per-candidate impressions going forward.
As we've seen everyone talk by now, quick shallow impression (biased possibly by my prior impressions):
While I doubt this blog has many, or even any regular readers, I still like putting time into it because it's a way of writing onto the world - a way that someone might hear my thoughts on things. And so I care about it. I'm still regretting that the URL-pattern for it means I'm hosting it on blog.dachte.org, and there's an extra "blog" in the path part of the URL. Why did I do it that way? Because I want to be able to host reviews on it too, and it feels weird to have reviews live "under" blog in the path. And I had to bind the software somewhere to the path in the webserver-app glue. I don't think the other choice - binding it right to the root, would've sat any better with me. I guess I could've given it two domains. That's maybe what I should've done, but anything administrative about the software would then need to pick one of two kinda-inappropriate places. Or I could've had a third domain, but then anyone who might want to use it would need three domains. Or I could make it flexible, but that gets messy.
All that said, things are pretty okay right now. Recently I've been enjoying reading through sourcebooks for "Old World of Darkness", having become interested through an upcoming game about the vampire-focused variant of the game. Instead, I've been interested in the Mage-centred bits, and in particular liked the sourcebook for Void Engineers. I doubt I'll ever do real RPGing in the system - the mechanics of play seem clunky, but I love the worldbuilding, and I've long enjoyed buying sourcebooks just to see the worlds people build in them. Interesting that this stuff is so scarce in writing videogames, although there's a difference between doing the broad strokes of a world and doing the fine details. I suspect different kinds of storytelling itches are involved - I've usually found the broad strokes easier.
Last weekend I went to ReasonableNewYork's Solstice in the Park thing. I haven't been to any of the secular community's events for a good while, not because I'm any less atheist, but for a variety of other reasons - one of them is that I just don't see that as a basis for whom I want to socialise with. In the same way that I've been uninvolved in BIGALA things for a long time because I don't see being bi as a basis of socialisation. Massimo was there, and I became frustrated again with him philosophically. In ways not unlike other academic philosophers, and fitting into why I think academic philosophers generally are worse off for it. I was chatting about neuroscience with some other people there, and one person asked about consciousness. I said that I didn't find it a particularly worthwhile term to define, and so I don't bother. Massimo found this incomprehensible (apparently), spouted off his definition as the right one, and said that he can't understand why someone wouldn't define it. I wish he had just asked so we could have the conversation. Lack of curiosity isn't a good look for someone calling themself a philosopher.
Recently I saw Sanders talk about his ideas of Democratic Socialism in a speech. It seemed a fairly tame definition - what I got out of it was that he believes in a number of economic rights, mostly those laid out by FDR as part of his (never implemented) second half of the New Deal. If that's all he believes in, I go further than he does into socialist waters, but it is a pretty defensible place to plant a flag, as FDR is well-regarded here and having a good place to stand to undo a lot of McCarthyist indoctrination is pretty important.
Also recently had a stupid argument with someone on Twitter who made the (in my view unsubstantiated and a bit unlikely) claim that Trump is in Moscow's employ. I expressed skepticism, they somehow lept to the conclusion that I was likely a rabid Trump supporter. I wish people were more careful with their stances. As always.
This past Friday I went to a bad movie event, and saw a film that wasn't bad at all - it's a Tamil superhero film called 2.0. It wasn't exactly a good film by traditional standards, but it was really awesome.
Really disappointed to see another instance of politics as policy grabbing a community.
Smaller thoughts:
Been reading a lot recently, but I'm not making good progress on reducing the massive backlog of things to read because I'm getting more books at the same time. It's a bit frustrating, even though maybe a backlog should not bother me so much. There's just a simplicity in my life that I'd like to have in an area where I clearly don't. And those simplicities (or their lack) contribute to how much peace of mind I have. I want to spend my attention on the right things, and I typically tune everything else to a low-but-acceptable payment. Even if it means I'm not dressed particularly well, or don't enjoy life all that much, and so on. I don't think this is that weird though. Most people just don't realise they're doing it, and a few oddballs really try to split their attention so they can get solidly good results from the basics before going after the hard stuff. I think that likely gets them worse results for the hard stuff (like having the most interesting ideas), although maybe I'm wrong on this and effort is upwards-trainable.
This weekend I had some very odd sleeping habits that led the weekend to feel like it had an extra day. It worked out pretty well overall, although I doubt it's repeatable. Was great for feeling like I got a good use of the weekend. Apart from some good walks and some reading, I also enjoyed playing through a new DLC for Borderlands 2. The plot wasn't particularly good, but that's been true of that series for awhile now - the environments and the gameplay are the real draw.
Recently been weirded out to see some political bother over rainbow flags for pride month. I think were I a national leader I'd prefer not to have flags of social movements be part of a state that's trying to represent everyone, for the same reason I wouldn't want the flag of my political party (let's assume I actually belonged to a party, and that parties have flags) be flown as part of national imagery. I'm not suggesting that nations shouldn't actually have leaders that try to enact policies that reflect their values, but flags-for-causes are actually a value-loss because without themselves actually advancing anything worth advancing, they lessen the vestedness of other people towards their nation. In the long rum, that's dangerous. So I think it's actually appropriate to curb that, and would respect politicians more for declaring that their administration will disentangle the state from such things.
A few other thoughts:
Been recently thinking about the different emphasis different political philosophies put on public versus private power - I eventually came around to be concerned about both, and to see both as potentially decent tools to check the other. I think good societies keep an eye on challenges coming from both camps. A good example is when a company - typical holder of the most potent private power - has control over a public forum of some kind, and decides on acceptable expressions of views there. I am not a fan of anything but the most minimal rules for any broad forum (Twitter, Youtube, so on), even when there's substantial other public goods to chase with these efforts. And so I would be happy to see government attempt to ban such private censorship, or at least see if the lines culd be drawn. But likewise, even though I believe the state is generally more accountable to the public interest than corporations, the public interest is sometimes fragmented, with voting being just one measure of it. Efforts to clamp down on dissent, whether supported through elected representatives or not, are often circumvented through privately written tools, and this too is to be lauded. I don't feel this is a conflict so much as a productive tension - there are some cases where we must put all our trust in one entity (or class of entities), but such tensions are generally healthier long-term than a single guardian of society's interests. In this, the entities ideally become resigned enough to potentially dominate the common cases without being able to provide a complete lock on a topic - in frustrating the purists society wins.
This weekend I finally, having found the missing set of screws and other components a few weeks ago, put together my keyboard stand. Feeling very good about it - it's now actually convenient to play keyboard (don't need to pull it from leaning against a wall to weighing down on my lap - the thing is ridiculously heavy). Been working mostly on the Spinach Rag, but also a few other songs. It's a joy to play so conveniently. And this in turn has me thinking back on being a memoriser rather than a sheet-music reader. Most other people in the orchestra used sheet music to play, to the level where they had a tough time playing without it, while for me reading music was a burden and while I could usually manage to read along as I played, I got little from it. I think I've been leaning towards the understanding that most people actually rely much more strongly on memorisation than they think, so the difference probably is actually is that I'm a little more honest plus I'm just missing a capability. My reasoning is that if most musicians were as sheet-music centric as they think, they wouldn't need to practice specific songs, just reading music itself plus musical proficiency - the need to practice specific songs tells me that they internalise the music as I do, just maybe not as strongly.
In April there was a Quillette post on divorce that I was vaguely aware of - while at present I financially support Quillette at some low level, it's mostly that I want them to exist to counterbalance the wrong kind of liberals - I'm frequently frustrated with them too. Some of the chatter in their community runs much more conservative than they do, and some of their articles are more for that part of the community - I got the impression from some of this, before reading the article, that this was one of those weirdly-far-right articles rather than their standard faire, thinking this was people railing against divorce in general rather than the much more narrow point that lying in the courts to get divorce on suitable terms is a terrible thing. I was thinking of railing harder against this article (I'm contrarian there too), but was relieved to see the narrow point is solid. Still, I started to gather my thoughts on divorce (as my parents divorced near the end of my undergrad in a far less civil way than would have been ideal, most of the blame for that presumably sitting on my father's head, although we're again on speaking terms years later), bringing in some context from my life (to be clear, I have never been married). I don't think divorce per se is a bad thing, and I don't want people to be reluctant to do it if they think it's probably the right thing to do. I believe it should be doable by either party, and I don't think having kids actually makes it worse compared to the alternative - a nonfunctional marriage is in my view a worse environment in which to raise kids than a divorce-properly-done. One fairly healthy model I'd have would be that there's something that starts to feel missing in the marriage, both sides talk about it, they try to fix it, but after a month or more, one side becomes convinced that the marriage cannot be repaired and decides it should end. After more conversing, it's clear to both sides that things are busted, even if one side would like to keep trying. And so they file for divorce and start the messy business of disentangling their life. If they have kids, then provided it's practical (nobody's heading off to another country), they don't disentangle entirely, but enough to back down to civility that might rebuild into a strange kind of friendship or sibling-like tie sufficient for them to remain good parents. That's the ideal. It's not what happened with my family, but had it played out that way I would have been largely emotionally unaffected by the divorce and would see it as not that differently desirable an outcome than had things remained solid all the way through. Why little different? Part of it is that I don't see marriage as being about trying fairly hard to make a shared life, rather than a promise to make it work or pretend it's working regardless of facts. And I think the consequences of pretending it's working (or trying to force it) as usually worse than ending it. I don't disgregard the possibility of rough spots in a relationship and the value of trying to work through them, but I trust people will use their judgement on their specifics, and even if they sometimes give up too early, they might likewise stay too long in something that can't work (or even can't work for the now - occasionally people remarry people they divorced, later in life after having figured some things out). Returning briefly to Quillette, there are a few things in their portrayal of divorce that I see as wrong and unhealthy - one example being "Lies are at the messy heart of divorce" - this may be true for a certain set of circumstances around divorce, but they're not a necessary trait (hoping I'm not misunderstanding the context).
Finally feeling mostly recovered from last weekend's trip. Still pretty sunburned.
I'm a little frustrated that wildcard DNS certs are fairly expensive with the registrars I want to use. I'm not a fan of LetsEncrypt, but this reminds me of one reason why people like it. Anyhow, it's finally become solidly Summer-weather, and NYC is muggy as it always is this time of year. I've been catching up on a number of health-maintenance-y things recently - regular checkup (with bloodwork), cat checkups (also with bloodwork), and have been reminded by the latter how much subsidies count for keeping costs down for human healthcare. I'm glad I finally have a vet that doesn't do alternative medicine though.
The yearly trip for work is coming up. I still feel I'm not good at vacations - I don't really know how to relax and I don't get a lot out of luxury. Maybe I'm learning though - the opportunity to get out into open water and swim is something I dig. Probably the best part of the trip. Recently I've had the oddest sensation of finding it the best thing in the world to just hold my hands underneath water for a prolonged period of time. Feels weird that it's so good.
I've been poking fun at a British coworker for liking PG Tips (as it's made by the Lipton company under another name), but she finally nagged me into trying it again, so I bought a box for my apartment. Having tried it a bit, I still don't think it's great tea - it's a blend that has a very particular unusual taste profile, a little like Earl Grey (which is kinda bleh compared to proper teas - the Bergemot masks the taste of the tea too much). I guess I can understand why people like it though - it's okay in a sense mostly distinct from what tea snobs actually look for in a tea. Still, I'd be unhappy if I had to drink only this tea for the rest of my life (or in fact if I had to drink it very often).
A few takes:
Earlier this week I had a morning where I woke up and some of the details of PCA that had become fuzzy to me (where I had meant to spend some time to clear it up) became entirely clear again. It felt like I hadn't spent much time on it, it just was suddenly clear, and it's remained clear since. The accessibility of intuitions are like that - it reminds me of past (tough) interviews at big tech companies where there are brute force solutions, and then a series of insights that offer headway on the problem and increase the efficiency. PCA is more pass-fail (although approximate PCA is another matter).
Over the last few weeks my sinuses have been really bothering me - this happens twice a year, but it finally seems to be on a downslope today - slept a lot last night and a lot of the discomfort was gone when I woke today. Optimistic that it's gone for good. The yearly company trip is coming up, and I'm glad it probably will be entirely good by the time I'm out there.
Been feeling a little less politically threatened recently because two radical groups finally have a counterweight - I'm coming to learn that I mostly care that no energised group feels that it's winning, rather than who is making headway. Just as it took society some time to learn to argue against Libertarians in the 90s but now people are used to it, there needs to be time for people to learn to argue against other kinds of activism, and having more than one side show up at the various debates helps make nobody show up with feelings of triumph that lead to terrible outcomes for those that disagree. These two examples are a group called "Code Pink" that's spent a lot of credibility supporting Maduro (surprisingly), and another where NYU's sociology department has been trying to cut off the israeli branches of the same university - they're getting strong pushback and that's great. Although I think they're also not entirely wrong (I generally loathe sociology departments for being radical activists demeaning academia by pretending to be scholars, but it's also important to push back against Israel's being allowed to be the one terribly regressive place that gets a free categorisation of being highly civilised despite these failings). I hope this tension never ends because it's productive.
A few takes:
Been thinking a bit about placid and turbulent notes in lake weather, and human bodies that are easily ill and easily treatable versus those that are locked to a course and slow to change. And whether my life has enough noise in it. I often think not, despite the benefits. Although the idea of changing these things makes those benefits seem like a lot to give up, and I balk.
This past week I had a checkup w/ my Doctor. I had left this undone for too long, but I still always enjoy it when I have the right rapport with my Doctor. Maybe it's one of the few remaining "check in with a parent" type thing I have in my life - at this point I interact with my parents like generic family rather than the specific "check in with the authority" type relationship I had earlier - it's not that I think they still don't have things I might learn from them, but rather that that trait has come to resemble that of other family, just leaving the "we have a bond" thing that family have. With a doctor, there's expertise in what's otherwise a generic realm of life, and a certain (admittedly paid-for) feeling of care, just slightly abstracted into being one-directional (would we weird to ask my Doctor about their health). Still, these ties are true even if the economics arranges them. In the same way that older co-workers still feel like elders to me sometimes. The roles just fade a bit as I age and the differences-of-percent fade. I sometimes wonder with much younger coworkers if the opposite should build... but that would make me even more lonely.
Life has given me a lot of painful memories. Recently been trobuled by my one marriage proposal and getting a no. I realise it may not have seemed as much to the other person, but it actually meant a lot to me. I still wonder what life had been like had she been at a point in hers where she felt like taking that leap. Although perhaps it would have failed for different reasons. I am amused at recalling the "let's work this out" I did in calling my parents and telling them. Guessing they would've thought it was me being daring for one of the few times in my life. Perhaps reckless. Although I think they met her once? My memories have grown a bit fuzzy. I guess that was 8 or 9 years ago now.
On another note, I wish I were better at emotionally handling confrontations, even when necessary. Recently I asked someone to shut off their car radio when they parked on my street and were sharing their reggae-and-blues music with the neighbourhood. And I was polite and careful not to insult their musical tastes. And they did. So it worked, but I really didn't like doing it. It's really only on some issues that I can do that without any of this emotional stuff, and even then only sometimes. I try to act tougher than I actually am. I think it's harder when I need to start the conversation - if someone comes to me, and I can categorise the way they do it as rude, it's easier for me to be rude - someone threatens me with a car (knowingly or no) and I can wave my middle finger at them. Soneone comes up to beg money off of me? I can swear at them with little guilt. It's more the "hey, do you mind cutting this off" that I need to do that I don't like doing. Not sure that can change easily. Last weekend at Union Square, on the edge of preachers doing their thing, there was a guy going nuts because some interpersonal tie he had to another heckler had really broken down. The whole time he was talking about how much he emotionally gave with the other person having betrayed him, I was just thinking "when I get angry enough with someone in my life, I just cut them out of my life, often without even expressing my anger". I was wondering why he didn't just do that, because I wasn't sure how things could've resolved okay (the other guy didn't think he had done anything wrong). I was a little weirded out at the end that after the angry guy vented enough, the other guy expressed that he probably wasn't being thoughtful, and they reconciled, and seemed to be friendly again at the end. It was strange because for a time it looked like police were going to be needed to resolve things .. and now as I write this it makes me wonder about my "cut people out of your life when things don't seem to be working" thing. In that case, I would've just cut the ties and walked away and never seen the other person again, and I would've missed out on the reconciliation that I saw (which I really did not expect). I guess I also missed out on the people stepping between me and someone I was angry at multiple times, and on all the versions of that scenario that ended badly, but how many times did I step away from personal ties that would've remained turbulent but possibly worthwhile? And are there other times in life, like jobs and other things, where having a bit of a tussle or some noise could've saved things worth saving? These questions don't easily get answered - they'd need to boil down to specifics and specific analyses, and a conclusion could only come from careful cross-event analysis (which I have not done). I hate this impression of loss and of having missed out on so much in life though. I strongly suspect I've missed out on a lot because of a low tolerance for drama.