cjsmith: (Default)
Friday, October 1st, 2021 08:53 pm
Conversations at my house

R: I learned that if you get cataract surgery on one eye? And pop out the lens of your glasses on that side, so you can see, until you get the other side done?

Me: Yeah?

R: You basically spend two weeks throwing up.

Me: ...

Me: There are simpler ways to achieve that.
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Thursday, September 30th, 2021 11:42 am
I found this to be good food for thought, regardless of the neurotype labels (for example, I think I've been a cactus type in some friendships and I think I've been a rose type in others).

"What happens in an inter-neurotype friendship where neither understands the other's friendship style [is that] the beauty and strength of the rose wilt away while the cactus stands strong and steady but utterly oblivious."

https://www.thearticulateautistic.com/when-a-cactus-meets-a-rose-why-autistic-neurotypical-friendships-often-fail-and-how-to-prevent-it/
cjsmith: (Default)
Friday, September 24th, 2021 09:40 am
~ waves at people who inspired this post ~

I use "I'm bisexual" to mean vaguely "The people I am attracted to can be, but are not necessarily, of the canonical binary gender opposite the one I was assigned at birth". I think that my meaning for it is in response to my presenting as female, being long-term partnered with a cis dude, and therefore being presumed straight most of the time. "Bi" merely means to me that nope, I don't fit in that box.

Not to mention I'm approximately as female as a doorknob or a window or a lampshade. (Also approximately as male as all those things.) The "my own gender and something else" definitions of "bi" get weird when mine is sort of... undefined.

I have found a variety of genders and physical presentations attractive, including nonbinary folk. Maybe if I were figuring myself out anew today I'd say pan, but I grew up with "bi" and am likely to keep it.
cjsmith: (Default)
Thursday, September 23rd, 2021 05:18 pm
Hello all! Happy Bisexual Visibility Day!

~wave~

For the three people on the planet who didn't know: I'm bi. Hi everyone! :-)
cjsmith: (no gender roles)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2021 04:11 pm
proud of self. ate a food today.

(my gut is very Not Happy with the fact it's being handed a normal size lunch after the weekend I had, but hey, I got it down and that's worth celebrating.)
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Sunday, September 5th, 2021 11:47 am
I don’t want to live in a fascist country. I don’t want to live in a country ruled by hatred and bigotry and conspiracy theories and death cults. (But no country other than the US would have me.)

I don’t want to live on a planet where women aren’t people. But there is no place else. There’s literally nowhere I could live where I would not be hated for the body I was born with and where I would have the basic human rights that people born with dangly genitalia have.

Nowhere.
cjsmith: (Default)
Wednesday, August 25th, 2021 10:13 am
I found this to be worth the time and good food for thought.

The Wisdom and/or Madness of Crowds: an interactive guide to human networks

The links to more information are informative, too. As always, there are people who've thought about these things far more than I have, and there's a bunch to learn.
cjsmith: (Default)
Wednesday, August 25th, 2021 08:43 am
I was recently reminded again (thank you, [personal profile] minoanmiss!) of the story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

I love that story.

It's not a comfortable story, not exactly a delight to read*, but it speaks powerfully. LeGuin was a clear thinker and very philosophical. (I own a book of her essays, written later in life, and I have that illusion that readers get, that I know her a little bit through her writings. She's on the short list of people I really wish I could have had dinner with in my lifetime.)

Anyway, the reminder made me think of how strongly that story has affected how I think about people.

Omelas poses a question that, to me, has become one of the things I sort of form guesses about as I get to know people. Would this person ever walk away from Omelas? I don't always have an answer, but if I get to know the person for a while, I form a guess.

I know, love, and trust some people who wouldn't. I treasure those who I think would, and I trust them in a much deeper way.

________________________________________
* see also the difference between enjoying a book and being glad you read it
cjsmith: (Default)
Monday, August 16th, 2021 08:18 am
"...adenotonsillectomy may have a positive impact on the neurobehavioral problems of children with sleep-disordered breathing."

One speculated link is sleep.

ADHD is often coexistent with (if not simultaneously causing and being caused by) anxiety, so decreased sleep quality and quantity intuitively make sense to me as another portion of a vicious circle.

I wonder how much of the signs and symptoms I see in myself as "possible ADHD" are sleep problems. I've had pretty bad insomnia for about a decade now. It would make sense that poor sleep erodes executive function.
cjsmith: (Default)
Saturday, July 24th, 2021 01:13 pm
This post by [personal profile] mrissa links to a beautifully written short story that really spoke to me. Head over to the post for a gentle content note from the author and for the link to the story.
cjsmith: (Default)
Thursday, July 8th, 2021 09:56 am
Trello recently converted to a much more restrictive plan for unpaid users. I'd seen all the warnings go by in e-mail: "We will put your boards* into a 'Workspace'! Really, we will! Any day now!" What they didn't mention was that the 'workspace' would make several of my collections inaccessible, and that some of the actions critical to managing them would be impossible from the phone. Oh, and the username and password I thought I had don't work any more because they're now Atlassian and Atlassian doesn't accept bare user names, only email...

Well, that ends my fifteen or so years of using Trello. So it goes.

Last night I got my data pulled off. It is exported in a truly impenetrable** JSON format, but preliminary scouting shows that there are services out there that'll read it, and worst case it's probably one line*** in Python.


_________________________________
* A "board" is essentially a collection of note cards, each with a title, an optional description, possibly some comments, and possibly some attachments such as links or photos.

** folks, there's no excuse for not including whitespace.

*** not counting a page or two of "import" statements ;-}
cjsmith: (Default)
Tuesday, September 8th, 2020 07:44 pm
"I am sorry, no, the forest is your home now. Post-transformation you will live in a hollow tree or the sanctuary of a thicket, but birds will extend their wings to shelter you and the deer will gently bow their necks over you as you sleep, your iconic body littered with rose petals and curled on a bed of moss."

Being pregnant turns you into an ethereal wood nymph
cjsmith: (cooking)
Friday, July 24th, 2020 12:18 pm
I enjoy baking. It's a comfort for me.

What are your comforts? I'll put some of mine behind the cut.
some non-harmful comforts )
cjsmith: (Default)
Thursday, July 9th, 2020 02:06 am
If mixology is a grownup's version of playing with your food, my inner kid who never grew up definitely needs to go to this step next.

Specific Gravity Chart for Layering Drinks and Shots (Spruce Eats)
cjsmith: (Default)
Monday, July 6th, 2020 01:13 pm
Is there a word for that thing that happens when a whole bunch of people who used to do things* slightly differently start talking a lot more and then the doing of the thing gets to be more and more the same? Or at least the differences become hierarchical and some may even be stigmatized?

"Things" can be all sorts of stuff, but mostly I'm thinking of abstracts such as ideas, stuff that's harder to pin down than (say) a recipe. The status elevation and increased spread of what we now think of as the generic USian accent, at some expense to other USian accents, via television and radio -- that's a great example of what I'm trying to get at.

I feel like sociology must have a simple word for this but I don't know how to search for it.
cjsmith: (Default)
Thursday, June 11th, 2020 03:51 pm
Wow, somebody made a comment that I am not authorized to view, yet DW made sure to let me know it exists. I don’t know where; it could be on a post of mine or in response to a comment I made elsewhere. Who knows?

Anyhow, if I’m not replying to you, that’s why. I’m not on the access list.
cjsmith: (Default)
Thursday, April 9th, 2020 03:12 pm
These seem to be very specific to startups.

https://www.notion.so/Hiring-Resources-for-Candidates-10f59de692e845a3a331d77880380ad3 has compiled an impressive list of resources for candidates looking for tech startup opportunities. Probably very useful!


http://layoffs.fyi/ tracks tech startup layoffs and employees laid off to give those employees better visibility in the job market for employers who are hiring. Mixed feels here! But you should at least be aware it's out there.
cjsmith: (Default)
Tuesday, March 17th, 2020 07:29 am
Are you under a Shelter In Place order?

What bits of normalcy do you miss?