| [surrealism] Huh. I wondered if they ever do that. |
[Jun. 17th, 2013|05:44 pm]
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I was just sitting here peaceably sorting my laundry, when I was startled by a loud crash. I got up to the window and discovered that a window-mounted air conditioner on the third floor of the building opposite had fallen to its death.
I somehow feel my life is a little more complete: all those carefully poised air conditioners, precariously balanced on their window sills, like Chekhov's proveribal first act guns on mantelpieces, and one finally went. |
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| [lj, admin] Greetings, Slackers |
[Jun. 17th, 2013|02:50 pm]
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(and a friendly wave to the NSA)
I am mostly free to post and participate in LJ on the weekend (Fri afternoon through Monday afternoon).
I gather that most of you, my flist, read LJ while at work during normal business hours (SHAME! SHAAAAAAAAME!!! *envy*).
I suspect this means that for many of you by the time you get around to checking your flist late Monday/early Tuesday, most of my weekend posts have slid off the bottom of your flist.
Would it be helpful for me to post a recap post on Monday afternoons, with a link round up for what I posted since Friday or so? |
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| [soc just] The Four Responses |
[Jun. 15th, 2013|10:03 pm]
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I want to capture this here for future reference; I was a comment I made elsewhere. When I as a member of a group find that some other member(s) of the group are taking advantage of the opportunity of our joint membership to advance their own wellbeing at the expense of my wellbeing, I have four choices:
1) Tolerate it. Maybe I determine the net benefit (after accounting for the hit to my wellbeing) to me is worth it.
2) Leave the group. Remove the opportunity for the others to decrease my wellbeing.
3) Defend myself. (Directly, without intermediation.) Utilize defensive and/or offensive methods to make the others less (or not) willing or able to diminish my well being.
4) Enlist the group's mechanisms, if any, to end or ameliorate the diminishment of my well being. This, obviously, depends on the group and what mechanisms for handling defectors it has. In some groups, it means rounding up a posse to give someone a beating. In others, it means pressing charges. In others, it means passing word to the senior aunt to have words with the culprit's mother. In others it means suing for weregild or petitioning for qisas. In others it means making a formal complaint to HR. Etc, etc, etc. This isn't about me per se; I set it in the first person merely for grammatically clarity after trying alternatives and finding them unsatisfactory.
I don't have much of a point about this right now, except to note that one huge underlying issue of social justice is that a common (universal?) aspect of oppression is being systematically (culturally and/or legally) forbidden from excercising option #3, all while #2 may be impossible, #4 implausible, and #1 intolerable.
The Four Responses are, of course, not exclusive of one another. We all pick and choose among these, and evaluate their feasibility and combine them as seems good to us.
ETA: Maybe being deprived of #3 is what oppression is. After all, when people do bad things to us, that's not, per se, the problem. It's when society prevents us from doing anything about it -- when "people like you" don't get to talk/fight back -- that it's what we're terming oppression. |
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| [tech] Yahoo now requiring annual login |
[Jun. 14th, 2013|11:55 am]
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I just got my first ever, "log in by date X to keep this account" notice from Yahoo. Maybe because I haven't ever gone a whole year without loging in to it... but I don't think so. So this would be a policy change. |
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| Do I know a good physical therapist? |
[Jun. 14th, 2013|01:37 am]
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I got the script for round two of physical therapy for my shoulder today. I wasn't happy with the PT I drew for my first round, so was just looking at gmaps search results --- which were missing several I know exist --- when it occurred to me that this is not how I would go about finding any other professional service.
I know that my social network extends within two hops to a variety of health-care professionals --- MDs, Nurses, Licensed Mental-Health Counsellors, Massage Therapists. Does it also extend to Physical Therapists? |
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| Apartment Seeking |
[Jun. 11th, 2013|03:29 pm]
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As some of you know, I'm moving this summer. I'd really like to find a place on the bike path, most likely near Park Street (so that on non-cycling days I'd be starting from the end of the bus line, hence able to get a seat). Which is certainly not to say I'd be averse to a place that meets the rest of my requirements somewhere else along the Minuteman.
At any rate, I plan to put a poster up in the appropriate area (almost certainly also posting its text to craigslist, sans personal info). Before I do so, I thought I'd run it by you good people. Any thoughts?
( Draft poster behind the cut.Collapse )
(Note that I intend to put a footer on it saying when it was put up, and the date I plan to take it down. That sort of thing seems to me basic good citizenship when putting up private messages on public property. Which I realize makes me weird.) |
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| Walter Jon Williams ebooks |
[Jun. 11th, 2013|10:29 am]
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Almost all of Walter Jon Williams' novels are now available in DRM-free ebooks from Baen:
http://www.baenebooks.com/s-156-walter-jon-williams.aspx
The remainder, which are his early historical naval novels, will be available soonish.
Highly recommended: _Aristoi_, the three Maijstral comedy-of-manners/SF/heist novels, and _Voice of the Whirlwind_.
But really? All of them. Those are just my particular favorites above. |
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