Buds

[	Tags	\|	chicago (シカゴ), the baby (赤ちゃん), travel (旅行), weather (天気)	]
[	Current Mood	\|	hot	]
[	Current Music	\|	Kygo - Out of This Town (feat. Sasha Alex Sloan)	]

Current sitting on the train waiting for it to leave. I was just having a discussion with people about how America's train network is bad, and to be fair a lot of it is extremely bad (if you're not a freight container), but at least in Chicago I can take the L from my home downtown, take the bus from the L stop to the train station--well, I could have, I walked--and then take the train from Chicago out to the suburbs to visit my family. Not owning a car saves our family quite a lot of money, which is good considering how much we spend on health care even with good insurance.

The weather continues to be awful. Today it's 31°C (feels like 36°) with 81% humidity, about the temperature it's been all week and the temperature it's going to be until Monday. We kept getting threats of a thunderstorm and it kept not happening, except for maybe a few drops of rain here and there. On Sunday, Laila had a make-up swimming lesson and literally right before I was going to leave, I checked my phone and there was a warning about a massive thunderstorm sweeping through with winds up to 45 mph, possible tree branch falls, and a note to seek shelter immediately and not to go outside. I broke the news to Laila, who had been eagerly shouting about going swimming, and she got quiet and walked over to her room. When I asked her if she wanted me to hang out with her in room or read her a story, she looked up at me, said, "No" and shut the door.

She ended up taking an angry nap. I told that to the other dads at the Jewish dads meeting I went to and they were very impressed--one said it was a better way of dealing with her frustration than they managed sometimes.

It turned out that we did not get anything more than a few raindrops, but that's because the rain went north of us. Ravinia got multiple inches in an hour.

Train's moving. Time to get back to reading.

Based and Orbpilled

[Jun. 20th, 2025|09:10 am]

[	Tags	\|	anime (アニメ), clubs (倶楽部), note post (手記), science (科学)	]
[	Current Music	\|	Elliot Berger - Diamond Sky (feat. Laura Brehm)	]
[	Current Mood	\|	thoughtful	]

Yesterday, after binging it over the course of a week and a half, I went to a discussion about チ。―地球の運動について― (chi. chikyū no undō ni tsuite, "Orb: On the movements of the Earth"), a series about the progress toward the Copernican Revolution, and talked about it for an hour and a half. Summary: ★★★★★

Discussion below spoils the entire show:
( Orbpilled )

( Notes I took while watching )

three things make a post?

[Jul. 3rd, 2025|02:34 pm]

summerstorm

Betrayed by fandom osmosis: I thought all the episodes of the last series of Taskmaster were out. Imagine my disappointment when I went looking for episode 10 and realized episode 9 had a timestamp of 5 days ago.

I started watching season 3 of the Australian version, but I kind of don't like anyone in the line-up. Maybe if I give it some time.

*

I haven't seen the last two episodes yet, but I am greatly enjoying Cloudward, Ho on Dropout.

*

Seven months after I stopped playing with my Sunday group (and roughly three after they moved to 7 PM EST and I was fully freed from thinking about rejoining them), I've come to realize how much I dreaded that game, felt judged for my choices, and did not trust the DM with a character I was deeply invested in. I still struggle with my ADHD and general social faux pas (plural) and have moments where I beat myself up or wanna crawl into a hole because I feel I was super annoying/took over too much, but I trust my DMs, I have fun, I look forward to every session. It's much freer.

How to Disable and Remove All AI Features in Mozilla Firefox

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[Jul. 1st, 2025|01:01 pm]

anti ai / ai critical, links

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Sigh.

For those who need it.

if you're capable of reading this, it isn't about you.

[Jun. 30th, 2025|12:10 pm]

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mundane

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I had a whole rant but I deleted it. I've lost a lot of interest and social energy in trying to invest in "smaller spaces" online. Not just because of work/IRL stress and general loneliness after my break up, but I've been really disgusted by my experiences in them that it really shows how it's no different than the "bad websites". I'm tired of zoomers and even young millennials to a lesser degree who have been brain poisoned by virtue signaling politics and social media polluting their interactions. My ex went offline and noted how passive and parasocial these interactions in this sphere are, I disagreed at first but now I'm starting to see a point... But this was a huge form of expression for me, I don't know what to do about it. Well, I've been on hiatus so I guess that's my answer now. I've lost interest in creating and I lose interest in new ideas frequently.

I've also just wanted to log off more after April, but don't have any opportunity to. I guess my goal in the next 5 years is to have a car, I can't afford it but it would be the first step to improving my circumstances. Being no one's priority anymore means that I'm not going to prioritize anyone else but myself and money. I've hit my limit with trying to empathize or understand people.

Chaosium Convention Melbourne

[Jun. 30th, 2025|11:49 pm]

tcpip

[	Tags	\|	rpg	]
[	Current Mood	\|	accomplished	]
[	Current Music	\|	Leonard Cohen, Complete Studio Albums	]
[	Current Location	\|	The Rookery	]

My weekend started on Thursday evening, venturing out with Kate R., to the deco Sun Theatre in Yarraville, where a 20th anniversary screening of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" was showing with the making of the film, and with a Q&A session with the director and the producer. It was an especially clever low-budget film, deciding to produce in a 1920s style; black-and-white, silent, and with inexpensive but real special effects. Distacted by dinner, we ended up entering the cinema a good twenty minutes late, so on Monday we decided to watch again at my very local cinema (i.e., my place).

It was all a prelude for Chaosium Con, held at the Moonee Valley Racing Club with some 250 people in attendance. Chaosium is quite a fascinating company, as a producer of board games and role-playing games. Established fifty years ago this year, they have produced a great number of games which are very well received by aficionados, including the high fantasy "RuneQuest" once considered a serious rival to Dungeons & Dragons, "Stormbringer" from the world of Michael Moorcock, Larry Niven's "Ringworld", the highly acclaimed "Call of Cthulhu", and the literary brilliance of the Arthurian "Pendragon", and so many more. The company is "just right" in terms of size; large enough to be a successful global publisher, small enough to have personal connections with the fan base. This probably the right time to mention that my main RPG project for the second half of this year will be writing a campaign for "Call of Cthulhu" with the working title "Fragments of Time, Slices of Mind"; it involves "The Great Race of Yith", and that's all you need to know.

I was there to look after the RPG Review Cooperative stall, which did quite well because RPG fans love rummaging through old games from the 80s, 90s, and 00s. I became good friends with our neighbouring stall run by a blacksmith (Morgan F) and a 3D printer (Ash M). It also turns out that our Cooperative was also the only non-Chaosium sponsor of the convention, albeit with a modest sum. Also from the Cooperative, Liz B., worked on the registration desk, Karl B., ran several sessions of his post-apocalyptic Australian-setting RPG, and Chris McC., ran a session of "Superworld" set in Perth. I am encouraging the committee to release a double-issue of RPG Review for Chaosium games, new and old, this year. They have made an incredible contribution to the gaming world, and it will certainly be a real pleasure to explore and publish with the incredible and creative energy.

"Dreams are older than brooding Tyre or the contemplative sphinx or garden-girdled Babylon.."

[Jun. 25th, 2025|01:15 pm]

[	Tags	\|	dreams (夢), insomnia (不眠症), introspection (反省)	]
[	Current Music	\|	Heather Dale - Mordred's Lullaby	]
[	Current Mood	\|	relaxed	]

The icon is an anti-icon because I actually haven't had insomnia in a long while, and I even got enough sleep last night! I managed to finish all my nightly chores--prepping for breakfast tomorrow (cook fish, set rice in the rice cooker to cook overnight), make lunch, exercise, clean up a bit, take a shower, check on Laila and make sure she's sleeping--by 10:45 p.m., and then I read for a bit and lights went out by 11 p.m. My watch tells me I got three hours of deep sleep and six and a half hours of quality sleep, all of which ended when Laila took a flying leap onto mama and abba while we were both sleeping. I was in the middle of a dream about...something. I don't remember it anymore. That's pretty standard for me now.

"When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key to the gate of dreams."
-H.P. Lovecraft, The Silver Key

I used to have dreams that stuck with me for hours, at least long enough to write them down, and some that remained no matter what. I still remember recurring dreams from my childhood, like the one where I was in a cabin on a peninsular cliff over a raging ocean under a clear blue sky, or the one where my friends and I were hunting vampires through a weird dream version of my hometown. Now I basically can't remember any dreams at all. I had already forgotten most of the details of my dream within a few minutes of waking up and now I can't remember anything.

sashagee tells me that sometimes I'll be thrashing around and muttering and she'll wake me up and I'll thank her and fall back asleep and I have no memory of any of this ever happening.

I used to have real trouble falling asleep in any reasonable amount of time but waking up to take care of Laila fixed that. Now I can fall asleep usually in fifteen minutes or so--not as much as my father or my sister, who are "head hits the pillow and lights out" people, but still way better than the thirty-minutes to an hour of previous. My worst night ever I lay in bed for seven hours until eventually giving up, but nothing like that happens anymore. On the other hand, I don't remember my dreams anymore either, and I wonder if the two are connected? Looking it up it should be the other way around--poor sleep quality is connected to fewer dreams--so maybe I just need to put a journal next to my bed or grab my phone and jot down notes if I have any dream memories on waking up. That's hard when nowadays we're usually woken up by a very enthusiastic Laila though, but it should at least be worth trying.

"G-d created Arrakis to train the faithful"

[Jun. 24th, 2025|08:54 am]

[	Tags	\|	chicago (シカゴ), daily life (生活), finances (家計), literature (文学), weather (天気)	]
[	Current Music	\|	WoT Spoilers Podcast	]
[	Current Mood	\|	hot	]

It's currently 27°C but the weather report says it feels like ‎35° and it's only 9 a.m. Fortunately, it's supposed to start raining this afternoon and that will drop the temperature 10°C, which, well, every little bit helps. Our poor aircon was struggling over the weekend to keep up with the sun hitting the bricks and streaming into the windows of our condo and it's probably up there trying its best now. Next month we'll need to have someone out to check up on the HVAC to make sure it's working well--it's one of those things that you're supposed to do every year but money has been tight.

Speaking of money, I have finally decided to crack down and go iron-handed on the budgeting.

sashagee has given me the go-ahead to put her on a strict budget--on our shared money at least, she can do whatever she wants with her monthly salary that I pay her--and since I've been using Quicken (and Microsoft Money before that) for decades at this point, I finally downloaded the app and synced it on both of our phones so she can see our budget at a glance. We'd been going over budget for a while and this will let us figure out where the money is going...or would if I didn't already know where it's going. It's going into healthcare costs and food.

It's always going to healthcare costs and food. Emoji dejected

I finished a book recently--Delta Green, the RPG that's a mix of the X-Files and Call of Cthulhu--and when I looked at my Goodreads account I saw that I'm fourteen books behind on my reading goals for this year. I used to read eighty books a year before the Plague Years, but everything got thrown for a loop after that. After Delta Green I picked up Surprised by G-d by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, which I've had in my 積ん読 (tsundoku, "Buying books without reading them") pile for a while. I'm a third of the way through and my big take-away at the moment is that it's weirdly similar to one of those evangelical "I used to be a sinner but I Saw The Light" memoirs. Rabbi Ruttenberg was a punk kid who hung out in Chicago going to shows--she namedrops The Alley on Belmont so props for that--and thought that G-d and Torah were dumb old traditions with no meaning in modern times. But she took a trip with her father to the camps in Europe, and then later her mother died of cancer and she started going back to shul, and I haven't gotten there yet but I'm waiting for the part where she Sees The Light. I mean, she's a rabbi now, I know where this is going. It's not affecting my enjoyment of the book, it's just surprising to me how well it maps onto The Standard Narrative. But there's still seventy percent of the book to go, so we'll see where the road leads.

En Esch - A Bullet Fires in One Direction

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[Jun. 23rd, 2025|08:53 pm]

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links, music

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Watch on YouTube

A bullet fires in one direction
There's no, there's no turning back...

(I like this album, but the lyrics are so hard to decipher and I can't find them online... lol...)

magic in a dark world

[Jun. 22nd, 2025|07:39 pm]

rafqa

Some more pictures from the solstice dawn--the world hollyhock is back.

with the waning moon

looking into the face of a pink hollyhock

one of the ladies in waiting

lighter sky, clearer view of very tall hollyhock

somewhat later, a clearer view

IT'S EVEN TALLER

The hollyhocks grow where they will. I wondered why I didn't have the hollyhock grove in the front yard this year that I had for two years, even though I knocked all the seeds out when I finally cut the stalks. Then I read that hollyhocks are biennial. Makes sense--although I think I've got a couple that are on year three.

Rodent Update, Social Life, Disappointments

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[Jun. 22nd, 2025|11:40 pm]

tcpip

[	Tags	\|	acfs, ballet, rats, social	]
[	Current Location	\|	The Rookery	]
[	Current Mood	\|	disappointed	]
[	Current Music	\|	Arcangelo Corelli, Dodici concerti grossi Op.6	]

I must prefix this entry with a note of appreciation to Kate R., for looking after "mes animaux de compagnie", Mayhem and Mayday, during my first recent trip to China and Rafe EC for the second. It's good to have such excellent neighbours in my life. My companion ratties are now approaching an entire year of age, which, by a rule-of-thumb, is about 30 years on a human scale. As always, I prefer to let my rodent friends a free-range lifestyle and in this case the study is their home. Poor Mayday, however, is currently in protective custody as his larger brother has power-groomed him a little too much, and his back has too many bite marks. Whilst he disagrees, I assure him it's for his own good, and he seems to be recovering in his relative solitude, spending most evenings snuggled up on my shoulder; it's good to be a rat in my home.

This week, after returning from China, I have, as can be expected, caught up with a lot of work-related business. But I have not neglected my social life either. Kate took me out to the "Ballet of Lights: Sleeping Beauty". It was a very family-friendly affair and, as Kate described it, "P-plates for experiencing ballet". But it was at the Capitol Theatre, a venue I adore, and the costumes with embedded lights were attractive and effective. The following day I caught up with Mel during the day, whom I haven't seen for too long, and then Liza D. for dinner and discussion about her forthcoming performance. The following evening I found myself at Carla BL's Winter Soltice gathering where conversation was vibrant and diverse, but spent most time with Julie A., who joined me today at the Australia-China Friendship Society meeting which was addressed by Dr Fiona Swee-Lin Price on bi-cultural experiences, history, and understanding. Frankly, the presentation was nothing less than glorious, and all attendees thought very highly of the presentation and insights.

It has not been all smooth sailing on this return week, however. I have, unfortunately, experienced a couple of disappointments, one in the form of an otherwise knowledgeable person who stubbornly refused to accept a descriptive error on their own part that was objectively wrong. This occurs more often from political partisanship and typically results in increasingly aggressive responses as the cognitive dissonance kicks in. The other, which I look upon from the benefit of extensive lived experience, is a somewhat sub-optimal life-choice for the person, assuming they care about their future success, but normatively it's their prerogative. In situations like this, one can only offer future support, and then we will remember ("memories in future tense", as "The Church" described it decades ago).

oekaki board (18+)

[Jun. 21st, 2025|09:34 pm]

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Figured some people would be interested, I found a new oekaki board by NYAROMA (NSFW) here: https://oekaki.nyaroma.com/index.php

If you join, put a social media or gallery link for vetting.

mundane

[Jun. 21st, 2025|08:30 pm]

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mundane

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Work is... not great. I only had one day off this week. Worked 4 days in a row, one day off, and then another 4 days. My defauly schedule is going in at 5 fucking AM before my workplace opens, I requested to change my availability on Wednesday to stop doing this. Apparently I signed it wrong, and the paper was thrown out. I check my future schedule for later in July, I go in at 5AM every fucking day anyway because "please don't schedule me at 5AM" is too much to ask. I was on day 2 of 4, but this combined with family related stress and other things I can't talk about in public pushed me over the edge. So... I had 3 breakdowns at work, and I ended up leaving an hour early using my leftover hours to fill in the last hour. And I'm going to take a sick day off tomorrow. I'll work on Monday and then have my 3 days off in a row, then go back to work normally in July getting up early in the morning as usual.

I'm sick of these computer generated schedules, I'm sick of how randomized everything is. I considered sitting out Artfight in July because I don't know if I will have enough free time. But so far in July I don't work 4 fucking days in a row, so. I guess I can cope.

In lighter news, since I'm taking tomorrow off, I can stay up later. I was in Downtown [redacted] for a short time since it's my mother's 60th birthday. I'm going to commission a friend on my next day off but I have a lot of money left over from both my last and current paycheck, maybe I can go down there to the bar and other stuff on my "weekend" later.

I'm insecure about my appearance... I'm not ugly but I still feel so down about my figure.

happy midsummer

[Jun. 20th, 2025|08:55 am]

rafqa

early dawn

sunrise

midsummer sunlight