Today is the two-year anniversary of the passing of our favorite cat, Thumper. I picked up a copy of this book a few months ago and hid it on top of the bookshelf. This evening, I pulled it down and my wife and I read it together. Even after two years, it’s hard to comprehend that she’s gone, and the world still managed to spin around the sun two times without her being here with us.
The book is excellent. Not all cats are the same, but somehow, the stuff in this book was about 95% on point, and it brought back a lot of good and sad memories.
Thank you, to the author and illustrator.
I’m grateful for the time we had together, but I wish she was still around.
Today, I learned that the original 1954 #Godzilla film and the concept of Godzilla were inspired by the #atomic bombings of #Hiroshima and #Nagasaki by the US during World War II. I never really thought about it, but it makes sense.
“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
I never thought I’d be this interested in a book that is all about a guy on his boat catching a fish. Of course, there are themes about the importance of community, tradition, dedication, and the reality that hard work sometimes ends in failure, but it’s really just a book about some guy getting into his boat and trying to reel in a fish for almost 100 pages.
And it was amazing.
I’ve read almost 800 books, not counting comics and manga and portions of books that I read for college, and after a while it seems like almost all books are basically the same story, just in different settings and with differently named characters, so it’s nice to read something a bit different for a change. I’m finding that I want to read classic literature more now when I want a novel because the books that have lasted tend to be books that focus on human nature and the human condition and I appreciate that the books are offering something deeper and more meaningful to me than just entertainment.
“You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”
Universal Life Church Ministries Credentials of Ministry certificate
Apparently this is legit, and I’m an #ordained#minister with the Universal Life Church now. I didn’t realize it was that easy to get this title. It felt like I completed a level 2 quest in an online MMO starter town:
“Quest Complete! Title Unlocked: Minister”
I’m going to file paperwork with the City Clerk’s office and then if the need arises I’ll be able to perform marriages, baptisms, etc. in New York.
I was inspired to look into this by “The Big Bang Theory” TV show. In season 5, episode 24, Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, Penny and Amy all go online to get ordained as ministers to perform Howard and Bernadette’s wedding ceremony together.
It was one of my favorite moments in the show, and I thought it was just for TV that they were all able to get ordained online. I looked it up and found out that it’s a real thing, and finally got around to doing it myself. I suppose I did it more for the novelty of the idea than anything, kind of like how owning a few doge coins is kind of interesting to me. But hey, maybe I’ll be able to use this.
I’d like to get certified as a public notary too, because why not?
I’ve really been enjoying stuff like this lately. I didn’t realize it was available on YouTube. Or anything like it, I mean. You really can find almost anything online now. Sometimes, I wonder what sort of interests I would have developed if I’d been born a decade later.
A kid who grew up with the internet and everything it has to offer had so many more opportunities for growth and personal development than someone born in the 80s, even if they’re from a small town. When I was a kid, you couldn’t get hold of anything if local stores didn’t order and stock the item. If you had non-mainstream interests, then you were just out of luck, especially if you were interested in other cultures.
Anyway, this type of music is almost like a video game soundtrack. It reminds me of when I would leave my game character idling in the housing areas of Final Fantasy XIV while I did other things, just to hear the music playing from the speakers. It’s really relaxing and makes me feel like I’m somewhere else when I listen to it.
The most powerful safety app for today’s world. Download Citizen to feel safer at home or out, get real-time safety alerts and live video of incidents happening near you, updates on natural disasters or protests, and know if your loved ones are near a dangerous incident.
And that all sounds great, right? Who doesn’t want to feel safe and informed? When I first downloaded the app a few years ago, it was pretty neat being able to see where crimes were taking place at the street level. It gave me a better idea of what areas to avoid and what time to avoid them. The data wasn’t complete, it wasn’t always accurate, and the user videos were usually pretty bad, but it felt more genuine than what I would see on the news. It added value to my day-to-day.
Then, Citizen tried to be more than I needed or wanted it to be. And it got invasive. During the pandemic, I started to get really wary of the Citizen app. It started adding a lot of features that went beyond its original purpose, like prompting for always on location tracking for friends and family members, COVID-19 symptom tracking, and background contact tracing. All of that sounds cute and useful on the surface, but who is Citizen and why should they be trusted with that much of my personal data? And even more important, does giving them that information add real value to my life?
Ultimately, the answer to that question was no. I thought about it for a while and realized that after an initial period of usefulness, my most common interaction with the Citizen app was swiping away notifications. Sometimes not even notifications about crimes, but notifications about the weather, protests, politics, and so much other random nonsense that I stopped even paying attention to them. I also realized that knowing about the crimes in my area with immediate notifications and spending a lot of time looking at and thinking about them wasn’t improving my mood or making me a better person. Instead, it was cultivating an atmosphere of fear.
I’m apparently not the only one that feels this way, though I took it further.
So, I deleted the app a few weeks ago. I realized today that I haven’t missed it at all. If I need to know what’s going on, I can check the news when I want to check the news, so that my mood and my day aren’t dictated by the notifications coming from an app.
I’ve been going through a process of decluttering and minimizing, and I’m adding apps and other digital clutter to the list. I’m getting rid of unused email addresses, deleting duplicate or old backups, consolidating where my data is stored, and moving anything I can to simpler hosting solutions so that I can free up my headspace for other things that are more important to me.
“I think right-wing populists hate the ‘liberal elite’ more than economic elites because they’ve grabbed all the jobs where you get paid to do something that isn’t just for the money – the pursuit of art, or truth, or charity”, notes David Graeber, an anthropologist whose ideas helped shape the Occupy movement. “All they can do if they want to do something bigger than themselves and still get paid is join the army.”
Something about this quote doesn’t sit right with me. I highlighted it when I read The View From Flyover Country a few years ago and I can’t remember why. Maybe I thought it made sense at the time, but from a 2021 perspective, it comes across as insulting. Maybe I just don’t know enough about politics.
I don’t think “right-wing populists” hate liberal elites because they supposedly have a monopoly on certain jobs. There are conservatives that are financially successful who don’t like liberal elites. There are conservatives who are artists, or work in some art adjacent position, and that contribute to charity. I’m not even sure what job is being referred to when Graeber mentions the pursuit of truth. What is that? Journalists? Most journalists aren’t even journalists anymore. They’re entertainers.
What’s being overlooked here is that conservatives aren’t being excluded from these fields due to a lack of ability but rather because of the good old boy system. Getting jobs at higher levels is more about who you know than what you know and once a certain number of people in a position to welcome you into that circle of good old boys are adherents to specific ideology, then of course most of the people that they add to their ranks are going to follow that same ideology.
People want to be comfortable. They don’t want to surround themselves with people who challenge their point of view or outlook on the world. So, it makes sense that certain professions and institutions would be dominated by people with the same outlook.
Graeber’s comment about right-wing populists only being able to join the military makes it seem as if all conservatives are poor and have no options in life, and it implies that the military is full of low achievers, which isn’t the case. Clearly. America may fall behind in a lot of metrics, but we’re really good at blowing up other countries because we have the best military in the world.
It’s more likely that right-wing populists dislike liberal elites because liberal elites say things like this quote by Graeber. Liberal elites infantilize and talk down to conservatives. They constantly insult conservatives and try to sideline or minimize their existence.
Just in case anyone was curious, this is what an official absentee military ballot looked like for residents of Bronx County, New York City, for the 2020 general election.
I wound up not using it. I went to the polling station and voted in person. I was doing some house cleaning, found it, and thought it might be useful to someone in the future.
I received this card from the people at New York City Relief for my birthday. It was a nice gesture that I appreciated. New York City Relief is an organization that tries to connect people in need with essential services.
I spent some time volunteering with them in late 2019 and early 2020, before the pandemic really set in, when they used to provide services out of the Bowery Mission. I don’t see the location listed on their calendar anymore.
It was a valuable experience and I’d like to continue, but I’m waiting for the pandemic to die down first. It’s kind of a shame, but we don’t live in a country with a universal healthcare system, and I want to minimize my risk of getting sick with something that is likely to lead to hospitalization. The city is getting busy again, but I think that’s more the result of lockdown fatigue than an actual improvement in the situation.
