grinninfoole

I'm spending the November holiday in Hawaii, visiting with my uncle's family. I have been meaning to post about it, but keep letting it slide, so I'm going to spend 10 minutes doing it now, before I head off to the first Tabletop Oahu game convention.

I got here on a Saturday, got through jet lag, and joined my uncle and his wife at their church service. It's in an old country club founded by Japanese businessmen back in the day, and it's got lots of spacious function and dining rooms, an indoor fountain and waterfall, a gorgeous view, and a golf course. The service itself was mostly simple and repetitive praise songs (e.g. "what a beautiful name it is, the name of Jesus" repeated a dozen times.)

Then I flew to Kona on the big island to stay with my cousin Megan and her husband Scott for four days. They have a couple of guest cottages they rent out on their property, which is in the more rural area about half way up the Mauna Kea from town. It was pretty casual, the big event was a day trip to the rainy side of the island by Hilo, where they showed me a house they were developing with scott's family (which will be a really nice place once it's done) and then we went to Volcano national park and I looked upon the crater at Kilauea once more. Just as it had been in 1979, it was a wide, fairly deep hole in the ground from which some steam was arising. I was better able to cope with the disappointment of not seeing any molten rock this time. It was a lovely visit mostly, though they are MAGA folks who believe the usual lies and conspiracies, so I steered clear of many political topics.

Then I flew back to Oahu, where I have been lurking in my uncle and Anita's guest room.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Honolulu

I just realized that it's four years today since Mom died.

I have gotten accustomed to independent wealth, but I really wish she was still here. There's still so much to talk about.

Current Mood: sad

On the tweeted advice of Delaney King, I tried out the video game Oxenfree (from Night School studios) on Stoic's PS4. I enjoyed it, and I wound up playing it several times through, but I did so in part because I mistook the underlying assumptions of the game design, which leads me to reflect on how this has been a life-long pattern for me.

Cover poster of Night School Studio's video game Oxenfree.

( Overview of Oxenfree )( Where I went wrong. )

I do not write any of this as a complaint–no harm=no foul, obviously. But it reminds me of other artistic interactions in my life, like the time in college I stayed up way too late watching an unevenly acted critique of the deep cynicism and sexism of professional country music that was airing on Cinemax, trying to figure out why it seemed to set up scenes like a porn film, but not have any sex. It wasn't until the next day that I realized that it was a porn film that had been thoroughly expurgated. I remember being baffled why 'skinemax' would show a movie like that, and then remove all the sex and nudity.

More recently, there was the Godzilla film with Bryan Cranston that used some music from 2001 in the trailer, getting me excited for a monster movie that was truly swinging for the filmmaking fences; alas, not so much.

Then there was my years long fixation on the early 2000s revival of Battlestar Galactica. I was completely hooked from the opening scene, and I was deeply invested in the characters and plot, trying to figure not only where the plot was going, but also the larger implications of this fictive world. Ron Moore and his team were raising some interesting questions about what it would mean to actually confront a sapient alien species, to interact with inscrutable transcendent intelligences that nevertheless gave a shit about our grubby human lives, and maybe even share some profound insights on life and identity. The first two seasons were tightly plotted, superbly executed, and teased lots more to come; after all, as the opening credits assured us, "They have a plan."

As seasons 3 and 4 made abundantly and bitterly clear, they did not. Unlike most people, I'm still mad about it 15 years later. It seems clear that I am unusually attuned to responding to stories, and that I can find far more depth in something than anyone intended, simply by misunderstanding the creator's assumptions in making it. All of which brings me to a new big question in my life: am I autistic?

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Edwards Island
Current Music: Oxenfree soundtrack

Joe Biden's terrible showing in the debate with Donald Trump on June 27th has gotten me thinking about what we expect, what we should expect, from the president of the United States. Like many decent and/or sane people, I'm alarmed by Mr. Trump returning to the White House; however, I also think that it helps to stay focused on the specific issue at hand, and not the multitude of terrible futures that could unfold.

In this case, let's get down the prosaic bottom line of this, and every other, election: it's a job interview. We have done a national search, gone through a number of debates, primaries, and other winnowing processes and wound up with two final candidates. We may not like either of them, but the simple truth is that it's too late to start over from scratch and the presidency is too important a position to leave vacant, so we're stuck with an unavoidable binary choice.

So, how do we pick between them? Or, for those of us who aren't fools or fascists, how do we stomach the idea of voting for a doddering old man whose feebleness and confusion were plain for all to see?

As I see it, there are two things to consider here: the extent of President Biden's debility and actual requirements of the office of the president.

Dreadful as he was last Thursday, the President was lively, focused, and engaged back on March 7th when he gave the State of the Union address. Moreover, he was back in the same feisty form the day following the debate at a rally in North Carolina. It seems, then, that Pres. Biden isn't completely decrepit; indeed, he seems to be capable of functioning at the same level he's displayed throughout his first term, during which he he passed groundbreaking climate change legislation, cut unemployment in half, reduced the federal deficit, reduced child poverty and student debt, and rallied NATO to oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Altogether, I think Pres. Biden is still quite capable, but with some obvious limitations. Like many people his age, he 'sundowns' later in the day, but if he limits the hours he works, he's still 'got it'.

Which brings us to the second issue: can a president who works 9-5, but only 9-5, do the job? Broadly speaking, presidents do a few things: oversee the day to day workings of the 438 federal agencies; sign or veto new laws; meet with foreign leaders and direct our relations with other countries; propose annual budgets and other policies to Congress; and marshal our national resources in emergencies.

That's a lot, obviously, but every president has literally thousands of subordinates from interns and file clerks to ambassadors and cabinet secretaries to help. Surely, if FDR could lead the country through World War 2 with his impairments, Joe Biden can manage with his, too. But what about the dreaded 3 AM phone call, bringing news of some terrible crisis? We don't want the guy we saw the other night handling that, right?

No. Of course we don't. But that weak old man doesn't have to; Vice President Harris is alive, well, and only 56. President Biden could simply give standing orders that he's not to be disturbed between, say 10 PM and 6 AM, and an emergency that requires a snap presidential decision is thereby delegated the VP. (You know, the woman we elected to succeed him if he dies or otherwise can't do the job?) He can take up the reins again the morning.

You may not, gentle reader, like the notion of Ms. Harris stepping up like that, but you have been living with the reality of her in such a role for nearly four years now, and all that time she's been learning how to be president from Mr. Biden, so she's better prepared for the job than almost anyone else on earth.

So, in sum, with some obvious caveats, I think Joe Biden is still capable of handling the job of President of the United States, and if he takes steps to address the physical challenges of his advancing years, people can vote for him with something resembling a clear conscience.

*=Even in his failures, like the Israeli invasion of Gaza, we're still better off with him than Mr. Trump, alas.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: my office
Current Music: Guero by Beck

Joe Biden was appallingly old and feeble on Thursday night, even after he warmed up. I think it's reasonable to doubt he's fit to be president for another four years, and many folks are clamoring for the Democrats to find another candidate. While I sympathize with their alarm, we can't.

See, the reason why the Republicans are the 'bad guys' in our current predicament is that they have no principles, only appetites. (viz Trump's presidency, the conduct of Clarence Thomas and the recent SCOTUS rulings, the clown show of the GOP controlled House, etc.) They want Mr. Trump in power however they can manage it, because nothing matters more than getting what they want, and the plan outlined in their Project 2025 will end our democracy, which is why it's so important to stop them.

Being the 'good guys' (or less bad, anyway) means we have to accept limitations on what we can do and how we can do it. Legally, there's nothing to prevent the Democratic Party from nominating someone other than Joe Biden for the November election, but disregarding all the state primaries we have held (in which the president got more than 14 million votes) and installing someone else simply because we no longer fancy the winner's chances, makes a mockery of the very name of the Party, much less its principles.

If Pres. Biden drops out, the Dems would obviously have to figure something out, but unless he does that, I don't see a legitimate basis for displacing him.

If he does resign, then I don't see how we can avoid VP Harris taking his place, for the same reason; while folks may not have given it much thought, she was nevertheless on those same ballots with Joe Biden, and she got all the same votes that he did. They're a joint ticket, so if he departs then she steps up. That's the how the actual offices work, and I don't see any ethical basis for upending the internal processes of the Democratic Party just because we're concerned she'll lose the election. That's the consequence of making her Vice President. (The only way around THAT would be for both of them to drop out, which is just madness.)

All of which is to say: Joe Biden & Kamala Harris are the Democratic nominees, and it's too late to change it.

Current Mood: worried
Current Music: the Red Sox getting crushed by the Padres at Fenway.

My brother's cat Tigger is going to die in the next few days. He's really skinny, wobbly on his feet, and has hardly eaten anything since Wednesday. His kidneys are shot and he'd really gone off food for the most part months ago, but I gave him some Temptations™ treats like my Dad used to do, and he ate those, so I have been just buying bags of them and putting them out for him on a little plate, and that's gotten us another five or six months together.

But now he's hiding under the sofa, and just kind of hunching up when he sits with me. He's still interested in tuna water, so he's got a little time left, but it can't be much. Of course, I'm bad at estimating this kind of thing. When the oncologist told Dave there was nothing more to be done, she said he likely had a month or so left; it was one week. When Mom came home to hospice, the doctor's said it would be a week or two; it was less than 24 hours.

But however long it is, I'm once again on a death vigil, and I'm struck by the mundanity of it. Surely there should be some profound action I should take, a ritual to provide a capstone to a life; or at least constantly attending to my friend in his finale.

Damned if I know what it is. I'm not dying. I still have stuff to do this week, this month, and however much longer my mind gets to drive this collection of molecules around. If I ever get the hang of this, I'll start a cult.

EDIT: As it was, Tigger was with me for another nine days. I hope they were good ones, or at least not too bad, for him. I'll be burying his ashes with Dave next time I visit the family.

Current Mood: depressed
Current Location: chez moi
Current Music: The Great Gig In The Sky by Pink Floyd

Well, today marks 10 years since Dad died. I'm not sure what else to say about it. I hope he'd approve of how I have carried on without him.

{addendum: the Phillips Academy alumni bulletin came today, and in the back were notices for death of my great mentor Ed Germain and of Alice Purington, who was the college admissions counselor who suggested I apply to Kenyon. Both people who made a real difference in my life, now in memoriam only.}

Current Mood: sad

Radically overslept today. I often don't get to sleep until like 5 AM, but the cloudy drizzle today made a perfect environment for me to sleep in, and I woke up at 8 minutes past 3 in the afternoon, completely missing my training session today. Clearly, I need to make some changes.

After eventually bestirring myself, I ran a couple of errands and stopped by the diner on the way to my office. My order included a salad, from which I asked them to exclude the tomatoes, "the devil's fruit!" This prompted a long series of confrontational comments from a gaunt young woman with stringy blonde hair seated nearby, who proceeded to call me out for my using too much salt, drinking too much soda, rejecting god, and pedophilia. It quickly became clear that she was not rational, so I stopped engaging with her, but she continued to berate me–and the young man sitting with her, when he asked her to stop.

After about 15 minutes, a police officer came in asked her if there was a problem. She was obstreperous, but eventually left without further incident. I thanked the officer for serving as the 'designated grownup' in the situation.

But while I appreciated him doing his job, I hated that he was armed with a pistol, a taser, and a baton, with two extra magazines clipped to the front of his bulletproof vest, as a matter of course. Easthampton just doesn't need that sort of combat readiness. He's prepared for a level of danger that would make more sense if he'd been deployed as a peacekeeper in Gaza. Why should I trust someone so prepared for violence to keep the peace?

Back in January, I wrote a second letter to President Biden, which I repost here:

Since 1988, I have been voting for Democrats because I believe in every person’s right to life, liberty, and happiness. I joined the party in 2012 because I believe that our government can and should marshal our collective resources to fix climate change, health care, and injustice. I have contributed over $26,000 to Democratic candidates because we need a government that actually functions. I voted for you in 2020 because we need a president who actually wants to do the job, not crown himself emperor.

In short, I vote for you and other Democrats because you share my values. At least, I thought you did. Israel’s ongoing slaughter of ordinary people (over 12,000 of them children) and your support for it is making me reconsider.

Your warnings to avoid the heedless mistakes we made after 9/11 have been ignored. Your attempts at quiet diplomacy have failed. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel made sense in early October, but it’s now February. The longer you refuse to use our vast leverage to stop the killing, the more you make me and every American complicit in this great crime. Your determination to support the people of Ukraine as they resist Russia’s invasion shows you understand the moral calculus as well as I do, so why won’t you apply it the murder and displacement in Gaza?

You know what a disaster a second Trump administration would be for women, POC, democracy and the climate. You understand as well as any the agony of losing a wife and child in a shocking moment of chaos and twisted metal. Your faith tells you that every person is a precious child of god. Why aren’t you acting like it?

I don’t know why you’re going along with Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing, but you are… and so long as you do, I can’t vote for you. I can’t support you, or other Democrats who won’t call for a ceasefire and an immediate, massive relief effort.

I’m aware that you need my help if you’re going to defeat Mr. Trump and his fascist lickspittles in the GOP. I know it’s a matter of life and death. But I can’t bring myself to lift a finger for your campaign or the party’s efforts this year so long as you enable genocide.

I’m not alone. You are losing the solid core of the party because you won’t do what’s right, which not only enables ongoing warcrimes, it also fails to meet the growing threat here at home. Please do the right thing, for both moral and cynical reasons.

More recently, I wrote him again:

I wrote to you in February of this year, urging you to change course in supporting the IDF’s offensive in Gaza, lamenting your unwillingness to change direction as the bodies pile up and the fascist threat grows here in the USA. I explained that I can’t support your candidacy while you permit Israel to commit war crimes with weapons paid for with my taxes. I also quit the Democratic party.

Since then, thousands more have died. Protests have erupted at the colleges across the USA. Israel continues to kill helpless civilians while blocking aid shipments, and is now destroying homes in the West Bank to displace those people, as well.

In response, you have delayed one shipment of bombs and scolded student activists for being disorderly. You have prevented the UN from recognizing a Palestinian state. (Surely a pre-requisite for the Two State Solution you claim to support?)

Meanwhile, thousands are in the streets in Georgia while Russia advances in Ukraine and two bloody wars continue in Africa. So long as you fail to do the right thing about the Levantine crisis, you also fail to address Mr. Putin’s tyranny and Africa’s slide in violence and despotism.

Have you seen the CNN report on the Palestinians detained at Sde Teiman by Israel? “[Whistleblowers] paint a picture of a facility where doctors sometimes amputated prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning it a reputation for being “a paradise for interns”; and where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot.”

You have the CIA, NSA, and more to tell you if this is true. If it isn’t, please have the state department tell the world. If it is… how can you permit it and look in the mirror?

Or do you truly believe that you don’t have the power to rein in the Israeli government? If so, please explain it to us. Surely it’s better to be clear about the limits of American power than to allow the world to believe us accomplices in these atrocities?   Time is running out for you to what’s right, to avoid the mistakes of Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats in 1968. As things now stand, I still will not donate to you or any Democrat who supports you. I didn’t vote for you in the primary, and don’t count on my vote in November.

The moral, electoral, and geopolitical calculi all dictate that you change course in your support of Israel. Please do so while there’s still time for it to matter.

Since my last entry:

Last fall/winter, I went to Metatopia with Stoic and tried some fun WIP games, and offered what I hope was useful feedback. I got mini-splits/heat pumps installed at my house, replaced the crappy old masonite siding with vinyl, which cost a lot, but there was a significant state rebate and an interest free loan for the HVAC improvements, which seem to have cut my electric bills 30-50%. In an attempt to be fiscally prudent, I trimmed a couple hundred bucks a month off my pattern tab, but it's creeping back up as I find new stuff.

I also underwrote the fall fund drive for Valley Free Radio again, which I'm happy to do, but playing 'wealthy community benefactor' continues to feel weird. Do other rich people spend much time worrying about using their wealth ethically? I'd love to find a support group, but I can't even find a therapist who will return my calls.

I finished writing a superb Doctor Who story (that I wish would get produced but only certainly never will), which is posted on my fic journal. If only I'd finished it BEFORE Jodie Whittaker left the show....

More recently, Stoic and I made the trip to Morristown for Dreamation (back for the first time since Covid. Such a great con) and a made quick dash to Cleveland to stay with my dear old friend B and his wife and two ADORABLE black kitties so we could see the solar eclipse on April 8. I didn't have a transcendent experience, but it was very cool, and I'm so glad I got to reconnect with B and stay in their lovely home on a gorgeous spring weekend in Berea.

Apropos of rich guy shit, Moyra Turkington, who I met a few years ago at Dreamation playing in an incredible LARP inspired by LeGuin's The Tombs Of Atuan, has created new LARP called Lumberjills and was trying to get it funded on Kickstarter. I heard about it a week before the deadline from a post by Avonelle Wing on FB, checked it out, pledged, and noticed that it was only a couple of grand shy of hitting its target.

Avi is, I think, something of a figure in the game development/conventions milieu, and one reason for that is she's really kind and works hard to include and welcome people in the best geek culture fashion. Since she'd shouted Lumberjills out as worthy and struggling, I sent her a message promising to cover the outstanding balance, if any, on the last day. I didn't realize that it was Mo's game, so I was especially pleased to reconnect with good news.

But, geez, is it just a pleasant accident that $2,000 is a big deal for almost everyone, but not for me? Or is it a sign of just how broken our society is? I think the latter, but it's really playing into my tendency to live like I'm safe in the balcony and not sat on stage with everyone else.

Last weekend, Sydneycat and I went to see Elliot Page live at the Academy of Music, in conversation for an hour with the director of Transhealth in Florence. The Lt. Governor was also there, and I'm so glad that MA has elected leaders who care about helping people. I was stunned to learn that within a week of opening up, they had 2000 people on their patient waiting list.

I have started checking my blood sugar levels because I don't want diabetes (I seem to be OK), and FINALLY started going back to my trainer.

I'm still doing Civil Politics on VFR, which makes it about 10 years now. I wish we weren't watching a creeping car crash in Ukraine, Gaza, the US election, and the climate crisis.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Heroes by David Bowie

Back on the 7th, over a thousand soldiers from the Hamas terror group staged a surprise breakout from the Gaza Strip concentration camp and proceeded to attack a number of Israeli military bases... and also towns. They gunned down over 1,300 mostly unarmed people, many of children, in an indiscriminate rampage. Pretty much everyone in the world who hasn't sided with Hamas in its war with Israel has rightly condemned the attack.

In response to this pogrom, the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu lost its mind and started bombing Gaza with abandon while cutting off all outside food, water, and electricity. The 2 million people there (half of whom are kids) are facing incredible misery and danger.

I don't want to take a side this fight; I don't want to join the fight at all. I want us to use our vast wealth to help people in need. I sent the president a letter about this on Monday. I wrote:

I am alarmed by Israel’s response to the pogrom conducted by Hamas on October 7th. The sickening brutality of terrorism cannot be an excuse for war crimes in response, and the total blockade, the extensive bombing, and planned invasion & displacement of a million people all qualify. The truth of General Sherman’s observation that war is unrefinable cruelty is on display for all to see.

The central insight of America’s founders is that everyone matters; it’s the basis for all of our rights as citizens and our raison d’être as a nation. We are–or should be–the place no one is disposable. Too often, to our shame, we haven’t been, but it is never too late to make better choices, and now is a moment for living up to our own standards.

You understand as well as anyone the pain of losing a child; please don’t use my tax dollars to inflict that agony on families in Gaza. In this moment of conflicting passions, let us heed the wisdom of John Adams, and prioritize protecting the innocent over punishing the guilty. Let us be truly American and support the life, liberty, and happiness of all the people of Israel and Palestine.

Since then, the courtyard of the Ahi Arab hospital in Gaza was hit by a huge explosion, killing hundreds of people displaced by the bombing who took shelter there because they had nowhere else to go. (It was also where the hospital was storing the bodies of those who had already died, since they were already using every available space to treat the living inside.) I don't know who fired the missile( or whatever) that killed all those people. The IDF is the obvious candidate, but the Israelis and the USA both insist that it wasn't Israel, it was another terrorist group shooting a rocket that misfired and crashed near its launching point. Since this is what Israel would say regardless of whether or not it's true (all governments lie, after all), I withhold judgement.

Outside the narrow context of who should be facing murder charges however, it hardly matters. War is cruelty, and we're getting lots of new demonstrations of that ghastly truth.

The people of Gaza are a poor, tired, hungry, huddled mass yearning to breath free. I think the USA should offer immediate refugee status with a special path to citizenship to anyone there who wants to leave. It won't solve the problems faced by the Palestinians or the Israelis, but it would help thousands of people directly (and thousands of eager young folks looking to start a new life will be good for us, too) and relieve many of the serious points of tension between the two peoples.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: holyoke
Current Music: "Make" by Jain. https://youtu.be/59Q_lhgGANc?si=husP_3RSBnkFT3ht

I'm really sad about the killing in Israel/Palestine following Hamas's pogrom last week. Quite aside from the shock of massacres and brutality, the war-time polarization overtaking how everyone is discussing the situation is reminding me of the sad truth that sanity is a collective endeavor. I don't want to support Hamas or the IDF as they butcher children, but US foreign policy has taken Israel's side over the past 75 years, and I can't escape that I'm helping to pay for it. And, of course, if we could bomb our way to peace, we would have already done so. I fear being an accomplice to Netanyahu becoming a modern-day Hadrian, and doing to the Palestinians what the Romans did to the Judeans in the first century. It's awful being enmeshed in a society where so many of the people in it with me want war.

In other news, earlier this week I met up MaMEd for the first time in a months and saw Stop Making Sense again. I really love it, and it was good to get out of my shell with my oldest friend. Today, I saw the Cumberbatch-as-creature version of the 2016 National Theater production of Frankenstein a the Amherst Cinema with Stoic and Suave. It's pretty good. Then I got my Covid booster, flu shot, and pneumonia vaccine.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Heaven (live) by Talking Heads

Earlier this week, accompanied by Stoic and Suave, I saw the restored version of Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads concert film from 1984, at the Amherst Cinema. I have long loved the album of selected songs from it, so I was primed to enjoy it, and it did not disappoint. It was a well-structured, imaginative concert, and Jonathan Demme filmed and edited it well. I'm not sure how much of the staging of the performance depended upon the act of filming, but it clearly worked well as a live show as well as movie.

I particularly liked how much fun everyone was having on stage, and how much attention the movie paid to the back up singers and musicians, and the respect the Talking Heads showed them as they played–David Byrne introduced everyone by name, and moved over to them on stage, standing with them as he did it. It felt genuinely inclusive, in a manner I haven't seen from any other band.

Also, I wasn't expecting a brief Tom Tom Club interlude, but it was a delightful bonus.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Once In A Lifetime

Stoic and I have been taking advantage of the Fathom Events screenings of classic movies this summer to enjoy some cool films on the big screen. We've seen several Miyazaki greats (Nausicaä, Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Porco Rosso) and fun genre offerings like Conan the Barbarian (much better than it has any right to be) and Enter The Dragon (which was fine), as well as today's flick, John Carpenter's They Live, which has aged really well.

The low budget, low key action and effects still work, the famous five minute fight scene is still fun as hell, and much of the writing is still timely or even prescient. Carpenter truly made artistic mountains out of budgetary molehills, in part because of his unshowy attention to detail and willingness let important story pass at blink and you'll miss it speed. Stoic even pointed out a little dig at Sickle and Ebert that I missed at the end, probably because of how much they hated The Thing. (Which is playing at the Amherst Cinema in a couple of weeks.)

Current Mood: full
Current Location: Hadley
Current Music: They Live soundtrack by John Carpenter

I'm back in Morristown for another delightful July 4th weekend at my favorite gaming convention. The last of these was in 2019, and this is a bit more low-key and smaller than before, but it's nice to be back and trying some new games and getting to know some folks better.

Stoic and I arrived on Thursday, as I had promised to help with registration, but when I got here (around 5:30, thanks to I-84 in Hartford being stuck for an hour) they were already up and running, so I just hung out for a bit. I went down to the bar and got a sandwich, but didn't see anyone I knew. A fellow sitting a couple of seats down from me asked the bar tender who all these nerds were (not exactly those words, not hostile, just curious), so I spoke up and told him what the event was and what we were doing, and I wound up having a great chat for the next two hours with him. His name was Daniel Anaya, and he apparently works a pharmaceutical exec down in Brazil, though he's from a Spanish speaking country (I think he said Colombia?). He seems to have a complicated life, with a lot of irons in the fire, including owning a nightclub in Miami, looking for a new job in the states so he can be closer to his wife and daughter, being involved in some sort of medical advisory council in Brazil (I might have misunderstood that part), and more. We talked about dealing with our dads dying, choosing relationships and getting through divorce, and the importance of living one's values. He also showed me an upcoming video his brother, an EDM DJ called Cato Anaya, will release soon. (I must remember to mention this to ZeroSum).

He both called it a night at midnight since he had a plane to catch, but I quite liked him and I hope I'll get a chance to talk with him again some time.

Someone I follow on twitter posted a long thread today about how our society fails to give space to Aces (i.e. asexual and a-romantic people) because of the long stain of christian shame all over sexuality. Why, she asks, must we justify a way of being human by saying it's universal? Surely being gay, straight, trans, ace, etc. can be OK even if not everyone feels that way?

It's a good question and a thoughtful thread.

I'm a bit amused by it though, because I started following her several years ago because she commented on something about game design, and I liked the comment and I thought the profile pic was cute as hell. So I followed her. She's posted fascinating stuff about game company culture, historical Judaism and her present day embrace of it, illuminating threads about why actual Judaism really doesn't fit into the framework of "Judeo-Christian culture", and adorable pics of her Maine coon kitties. She's really neat, I hope she finds me at least mildly interesting, and I want to meet her in person some day.

The amusing part, to me, is the pattern of my attraction to women, many of whom are lesbian or ace or trans-masc (eventually). I really seem to have a type, and that type is women who are not interested in me that way.

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: my office
Current Music: Destination Unknown by Missing Persons

The true horror of war, I think, is not that it is unjust and awful, it's that it leads us to confront the fact that war isn't exceptional, that the random cruelty and mayhem aren't restricted to certain times and places, but are actually the norm. War is different only because it's more frequent and deliberate.

I started supporting the Opening Arguments podcast through Patreon on September 4 of 2018; over those four years I gave them a bit more than $3,000. It's been a mainstay of my media consumption for longer than that for several reasons. First, attorney P. Andrew Torrez has a knack for explaining legal principles and history and would routinely dive into extensive case law history to illustrate his points; second, Andrew had great chemistry with co-host Thomas Smith, a smart professional podcaster who asks really good questions; third, the show would often cover topics glossed over in the news, like what new laws would actually do and the regulations executive agencies were following (or proposing) and what that meant for what Trump or Biden's administrations could actually achieve; and fourth, it had attracted a community of secular progressives like myself.

I stopped my support last week, because it turns out that Andrew has been sexually harassing women for years, either fans at events or other podcaster folks interested in collaboration, and since then it's spiraled into a battle for control of the show and its revenue, which is considerable even if diminished. (The Patreon support has dwindled from about 4,300 to just over 1,300.)

This is bothering me less as it becomes clear that Andrew understood he was bothering people and crossing boundaries, but chose to do so anyway. One of my greatest fears is sexually harassing someone and not realizing it, or (worse) somehow not quite absorbing the information and acting upon it. The willful blindness that privilege instills is my constant dread, but I really don't think I'd act out of malice and power isn't much of an aphrodisiac for me. Sex is far too intimate to be messing with without consent, because I wouldn't feel safe and my empathy kills my boner when it seems someone is actually not into it.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Location: office
Current Music: DJ Shadow, The Number Song

I support Mr. Castro on Patreon and he posts a daily column with brief comments/reviews on a movie. Sometimes it's recent, sometimes not, sometimes he returns to a favorite with a new thing he likes about it. He's put me onto some really excellent films, which I have watched recently, including Rian Johnson's first film Brick; the documentary The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari; some horror stuff I wouldn't normally have found like Sweetheart, The Shallows, He Never Died, and The Host; older films (some true classics, some not) that I didn't know but found worth a look like Day of the Jackal, Black Sunday, or Witness for the Prosecution. He's also put me onto some excellent shows to stream, like The Old Man on Hulu or Sandbaggers on Amazon.

He's worth supporting just for this, but he also writes good books, too.

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Leonard Rosenman's Lord of the Rings score

I saw this on Monday night with Suave at an iMax in Connecticut, and it was... fine. Far from the worst movie I have seen, but I didn't feel any emotional resonance with it, as I recall doing the first one.

( Who put Jake in charge? )

Aside from all this about Jake, who is arguably a supporting character for most of the film, what did I think? Well, I'll try and write about that in a second post soon.

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Location: my office
Current Music: BSG season 2 soundtrack

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