lol

I used to hate "lol". Like, from at least when I was 13 and for twenty plus years afterwards. I don't hate it anymore, in large part because no one uses it as an acronym for "laugh out loud". It has become its own thing. Still jocular, sure, but not an expression of laughing out loud or even really its concept. At least not how I remember it signifying that. Perhaps I've changed more than lol, but if that's the case it's really hard for me to tell.

I'd like to pronounce with some certainty that I've got the right idea here, but no, I don't really have much confidence in my assertion that lol's meaning has substantially changed--I shudder to think that I may only just be realizing its true meaning, which has remained mostly the same. It's possible. I can be oblivious. More likely it's a combination of things; language does certainly evolve, so if lol has always meant whatever it means today (even if I still am wrong about it) then I'd be surprised.

Today I've been contemplating a trip to <redacted> for <redacted hobby> (henceforth RH). It's not a nice place generally. In fact, if it weren't for the specific purpose I'm considering it would be an awful place for me to go. But the conditions for RH there are rather favorable, and these conditions can change suddenly for the worse. That's usually how things go. It's a pretty fleeting idea, though. I don't want to spend vacation time traveling a long distance to a place with no charm.

I've been thinking more about RH lately in part because I've been spending time in a chat room and forum for it, and I have been practicing a fair bit. I have enough experience, believe it or not, to actually be providing advice to people in some contexts. Wild! I'm still quite mediocre, but it seems that experience level of RHers looks like the population age-pyramid for a developing country. The more time you spend with it, the more likely you are to move on to other things, and there's an endless pool of aspirants. I don't know the actual shape of our experience-pyramid, in sooth. Definitely a wide base, definitely a small tip, but I don't know if it's actually pyramid-y. If it gets straight-sided at some points, or even bowed outward. Would be interesting to find out.

I'm not sure of much today, huh?

lol

I slept 1 hour and 9 minutes

This is according to my Fitbit. Called in sick, but had to get up for a doctor's appointment. Good news is that my stupid toes are healing. Hopefully I can grab a nap and an early bedtime to help recover.

I wish I knew how much damage I just did to my brain. And how much can be reversed. And how. If I'm going to become feebleminded I want to see it first.

Come on, medical science! Do it for me and the millions of other doofuses like me who self-sabotage as a matter of course!

On genocide

I have complicated feelings about genocide as a concept. They've evolved a lot over time and generally come to become broader in what events fall within that category. Once upon a time it was just the Holocaust and Rwanda. Then the Holocaust and Rwanda and Cambodia. Then the Holocaust and Rwanda and Cambodia and eastern Ottoman Empire (against Armenians/Circassians/Greeks and more). Now I don't even know. Those and more? Unpopularly, I don't favor labeling the atrocities in Gaza as genocide. But I do favor it for the Rohingya and Uygurs. Look at me, so persnickety.

Anyway, I am posting in these wee hours, violating my 30-day goal, in part because earlier today my sensitive self got triggered by a Chinese national in Discord who denied that the Uygurs were suffering at all. The best was when he said:

Minorities have much more priorities than us, sad

So it's true that nationalities are not equally treated, but for minorities they're better treated

Muslims in northwest areas discriminate us, yet we still have to take tax budget to build infrastructure for them, ironically

This guy doesn't live in China; he is currently visiting, but I'm pretty sure he lives in Europe. And yet the Chinese government narrative has so thoroughly ingrained itself in him that he parroted it uncritically. Honestly, the denial of the atrocities didn't bother me as much as the uncanny similarity his words had to some of the terrible things you hear right-wingers say stateside. How much these feelings pervade. Earlier in the day I was bitching about Bolsonaro and whining to myself about that guy too.

Past-me had an American ecumenism that I long for today. But present-me doesn't have the privilege of sharing a reality with most people who disagree with him from the right. It makes everything harder. And then to have the reality-denial from a Chinese person who should know better--don't call it genocide, I don't care, but don't dismiss it as "fake news"--it makes me despair. I think about the Chernobyl disaster, and how it so encapsulated Soviet falseness, which every free-minded person thought was a scourge: now we have Russian, Chinese, Brazilian, Argentinian, Turkish, Republican falseness that all demonstrates we have so much rot to debride.

I don't fully know how I feel about genocide as a concept. My feelings will evolve over time. But even when I didn't call the Armenian Genocide a genocide, I didn't deny the murders and deportations. Even as an ethnic Turk with no education in this, I didn't buy into Turkish denialism and counter-narrative as a teenager. Fie unto folks who can't even manage something similar as adults.

(Side note: I learned when I was with my family earlier that my great-great-grandfather was not, in fact, governor of Aleppo. He was a high official (possibly governor) in Damascus during World War I. It would seem my past is tied more with Arabian revolution than genocide. Woo.)

Danielle found another cat

A friendly gray who was sitting on our porch when Ammu and Meera came to visit. They ate some food. They jumped into her arms. They shivered. They were brought into our guest room.

Thankfully our incumbents didn't notice the foreign presence until after it was gone (and now Simon, Hex, and Howl are alternately sniffing at the closed door--we have to keep that area off limits until we know whether Cat has FIV or any other communicable illness).

Danielle clearly wants to keep them. Her friends Mars and Jay, who are also here, are enamored with them. I feel like a wet blanket, but even if Cat turns out to be clean and unowned, we can't keep them. Something tugs at me that says a friendly presence wouldn't be so bad, but I know that more likely than not it will upset the balance among the five incumbents and possibly cause major issues.

I knocked on our neighbor Patty's door. She had fed The Void back when she was still stray. Apparently Cat was one of six from a litter of 2 grays and 4 voids, including our Void. I'm not sure how reliable her memory was, but generally speaking it would seem there's a household in the apartment building kitty corner from our backyard that does not take cat ownership seriously. The kittens were released at 6 weeks old, Patty said. Again, I don't know how reliable her memory or her estimation is, but people can be cruel sometimes.

Patty said she'd be willing to keep Cat if we needed to give a home. I kind of regret offering this option to her. Danielle is dead-set against it; she's convinced she'd be a bad owner.

For all we know, Cat already has an owner anyway--just one neglectful/unlucky enough to lose their cat in the cold. Jay and Mars are at Petsmart as I speak to check for microchips. They asked for clear instructions on whether to leave them there, but I don't know if we were clear enough. But I think I sufficiently communicated that we would like Cat to remain at Petsmart if possible. That message probably went through. Whether it's feasible is a different story.

Regardless, I feel bad for poor Cat. It's too cold to be outside up here.

Working through mental constipation

I have a lot to say, but only a fraction of it gets expressed by talking to Ielly, or friends, or myself. Blogging is an outlet that I've underutilized. Now I am out of practice and kinda gummed up; I can feel the pressure of ideas but struggle to effect the conjunction of relevant topics with interest in writing.

But here's a small something: in the Dark Unblogged Ages, Danielle's (and my) friend Ally and I came up with an ephemeral idea of making a podcast. One of the potential themes would be for one of us to exhaustively research a topic or read a book while the other did no preparation, and then just talk. We have a nice cadence to our conversations, we figured, and it could be interesting and fun.

I went to the lengths of buying microphones and setting up recording software on my laptop. (RIP. Wait, did I even tell you about that? It was stolen in Vegas. I'll have to tell you about that.)

But I was more into the idea than she was, and I wasn't even that into it. Not in terms of excitement, but in terms of execution. I am still excited at the prospect of doing a podcast with her (or anyone). Not excited about feeling like I'm shouting into a void, though. That's what you're for!

Most of all, I dread the feeling of doing a lot of work only to make something that goes nowhere. I think I am always weakened by that kind of thing, and especially since I started my current job, where it feels like so many efforts have been forgotten or ignored while some non-efforts become unsuitable foundations for important business decisions.

So the podcast idea that we shared died pretty quickly. The idea in my head lives only in weak embers. Someone I met in the <redacted> sphere separately suggested I'd be a great podcaster, and that spurred excited feelings (but no ideas). I just think sometimes about doing that kind of thing. I get wistful about opportunities I never put myself in line for. Sometimes I feel a little hope.

Okay, I think that counts as passing at least one goat-poop. That's a win in my book. Also I remain technically in compliance with my January self-care goals. =D