brainwane | Recent Entries

“queer not as being about who you’re having sex with (that can be a dimension of it); but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” -bell hooks

(via Dr. Damien P. Williams on Bluesky; I have not checked the cited source, which is a video of a live conversation)

in 2010, in a conversation at Open Source Bridge, Jim Blandy mused aloud,

"Every good thing I've ever done has been unauthorized."

I mentioned that just now in the Fediverse and a friend replied with:

"We need people who can do good and not get caught." - Alan Furst

And I'm thinking about Huckleberry Finn, specifically:

"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.

As I wrote a few years ago: The nuance I still ponder is: Huck doesn't say his way is right. He decides he's wrong but he's going to do it anyway. He decides to be a hypocrite. He does not see himself as articulating a new consistent ethical framework under which he is morally right; he is accepting the status and the consequences of his actions in the religious framework everyone's taught him, but he decides not to let that get in the way of what he feels compelled to do. It's a different kind of resistance.
I heard an echo of this moment in "The Rundown Job" (Leverage, S05E09), when a government official tries to get Eliot, who used to do wetwork, to leave the Robin Hood-type vigilante outfit he's with now:

Colonel Vance: The world can always use more good guys.
Eliot: Yeah, well, too bad we're the bad guys.

And, relatedly, N.K. Jemisin's "Cold-Blooded Necessity".

"I think the shift from extrinsic to intrinsic valuation -- from caring about what others think to caring about yourself -- is a fundamental part of the transition from amateur to professional..."

And, I'd add now, for me, just a general part of maturing.

So much of maturation, for me, is about accepting things about me that just aren't going to change no matter what the jerk voices in my head want to shame me about. And that's all tied up with self-confidence and self-worth.

I'm noting down here a few of the bits of compass that help me realign myself when things get foggy.

I've gotten into Taskmaster (UK) recently, subsequent to previous fannish dives into the Dropout game show Game Changer, Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal, and The Colbert Report.

I am extremely open to talking with y'all in a fan meta fashion about

The different Dominance/submission approaches within Game Changer and Taskmaster, and in particular, how they delicately balance how much/whether to humiliate contestants. Like, (spoiler for Series 13 of Taskmaster), ( Spoiler for Series 13 of Taskmaster ) And that made me think about how much the show's executives and staff have to juggle, to simultaneously trade off the 3 levels of (1) making an entertaining TV show, (2) running and maintaining a workable system of games, and (3) taking adequate care of each performer's ego. And my understanding is that Game Changer is much more Californian in culture about this, in either not doing or not showing us situations where the performers are just having an unalloyed bad time. In early Taskmaster seasons I think we see, for instance, vegans who have to eat eggs as part of a task, which is just not something I'd imagine Game Changer doing.

Alex Horne, Greg Davies, Stephen Colbert, and Nathan Fielder deliberately donning unflattering personas and maintaining them indefinitely during improv. If Colbert were willing to reprise a bit of his old Report character, I'd suggest him for a judge for a US outpost of the franchise.

From Emily McCombs in a Slate advice column last year:

In recovery circles, I’ve heard this described as “going to the hardware store for oranges.” In this case, the hardware store is your parents and the oranges are the love and support you rightfully wish they could give you. Unfortunately, the hardware store simply doesn’t stock oranges. And we save ourselves a world of hurt when we learn to stop going to people for things they aren’t capable of giving us.

From Frowner on Ask MetaFilter ten years ago:

....a "this is the way the world has to work or something is wrong" way. It's like my parents feel that you really aren't having breakfast unless you have a little egg-cup-sized glass of orange juice. It's how they grew up, there's nothing wrong with orange juice...but I had to get orange juice glasses for their visits because they really did not like not having orange juice at breakfast and not having tiny cups, even though I never have it myself and don't really have a use for tiny cups*. But breakfast is Wrong without orange juice in tiny cups - they're not tyrants, they're not selfish people, they just have this...deep....feeling that the way the world works requires OJ in tiny cups.

My point is that you do not need to be a selfish tyrant to have learned that something is just off about the world if your daily life isn't completely in line with your feelings, wishes and beliefs. You can feel this in a very deep way that feels "true".....

*My parents are great; I don't mind having the cups.

And I can't find this bit right now, but I remember a blog post where a guy mentioned that his usual order at a particular restaurant was such-and-such main dish, because "I like the potatoes it comes with." Which has stuck with me as a metaphor for doing something because you want a side effect that indirectly comes along with it, rather than intentionally and directly choosing the thing you want.

I'm writing a blog post over at my name blog about how open source maintainers can think about trusting new co-maintainers, what that trust entails, how to check for trustworthiness, etc. I was writing this bit, and then a friend reminded me that including something about sex in this piece would mean that she could not share it in her starchy workplace. So I'm saving it here instead, and will replace it with an analogy that won't raise as many eyebrows.

...some intake processes concentrate quite a lot on checking for trustworthiness, specifically for the candidate's capacity to be a responsible colleague and take criticism well.....

In the subculture of people who engage in nonmonogamy or other alternative sexual experiences together, "vetting" is sometimes informal, but sometimes groups do require new members to go through a formal process. This Bay Area-based group's application asks whether any existing group members have endorsed the candidate's application, and asks questions like
How do you know when someone consents to an experience you invite them to share with you? What information do you look for and how do you seek it out?
In Bonobo, we understand that people may make mistakes, cross other people's boundaries, or just impact one another without necessarily realizing it. But we also expect that people will own up to their impacts and mistakes, and take responsibility for them. Tell us about a time you crossed someone's boundary and took responsibility for it. What happened, how did you respond when you realized you crossed their boundary, and how did you deal with it after that?

https://www.bonobonetwork.com/apply
vetting, asking them to think about their values (Oakland play application), asking for references,.....

My mother died this year, after a long decline in her health, and I was one of the main people who helped take care of her. (Here’s her obituary.) While caring for her, preparing for her death, and handling logistics afterwards, I learned a lot from online resources, various professionals, and friends. So I'm trying to pass on some things I learned by sharing them in a new blog post: Eldercare, Family Caretaking, and End-of-life Logistics: Stuff I Learned.

Topics:

You HAVE to take care of yourself: what happens if you don’t, the minimum you have to do, and checking for emergency levels of stress.

Changes to expect in the months, weeks, and days before death: read this free guide.

Checklists for before and just after death: a few free lists and workbooks to help you plan things and take care of logistics.

Wills, powers of attorney, and advance health care directives: start before you need them, and LegalZoom is fine.

Easy-to-eat food, and letting your friends help you: MealTrain, deliveries, and what food is easiest.

Hospital chaplains can do a lot: even if you’re not Christian, they can connect you to useful people and resources.

Patient advocacy (which means catching mistakes): the medical team will probably accidentally miss stuff unless you remind them.

Medical notetaking at appointments and the bedside: be a patient advocate, provide continuity of care, and prevent mistakes; make and bring basic records, and keep up during a hospital stay.

Researching specific treatments and how to perform at-home procedures: look up science and instructions by professionals so you can know what’s happening and how to troubleshoot.

Organ and body donation, and donating unused medicine: try to do paperwork before death, and have a Plan B.

Palliative care, hospice, insurance (including Medicare), and hospice facility eligibility: the doctors are giving you subtext you need to understand.

Delirium and persuasion: it’s hard to be with someone who’s losing connection with reality, but I have some tips.

Music for comfort: calming playlists can calm agitation, and be solace if you’re not there.

Books and blogs that helped me prepare for this: I recommend some memoirs and how-tos.

This was, at times, hard to write. Hope it helps. Please feel free to share it publicly and widely.

Haven't been keeping up on my Dreamwidth or Fediverse/Mastodon feeds since early October. Hope folks will email or comment here if they social media posted something they really would prefer that I know.

I'm a little frazzled and need a pointer or two.

I don't want to spend $150 on a fit testing kit. I'd like to spend less.

The $40 one I've seen mentioned is sold out.

Resources I've read about how to do-it-yourself say that I need a nebulizer/atomizer. I saw a mention at some point of a USD$10-$15 nebulizer the author had bought on Amazon, and evidently I misplaced that link because I can't find it now. I find disposable nebulizers for sale at Betty Mills in about the $3 range. Are those the types that I would want?

Or, if you have a lead on a complete DIY fit testing kit that costs under about $50, I'd love to know. Thanks.

My spouse Leonard Richardson, the creator & maintainer of the screen-scraping library Beautiful Soup and coauthor of the book RESTful Web APIs, is open to new work opportunities as a senior software engineer. (He left the New York Public Library last year and has been doing some part-time consulting since then.)

He's open to remote contracting, consulting, full-time or part-time gigs starting in December 2023. And he's seeking a mission-oriented org, ideally involving publishing, freedom of access to information, or climate resilience.

A little more about what he's looking for in his Fediverse post which is what I would suggest you publicly link to, or pass along to interested folks, instead of this Dreamwidth post. Resume, LinkedIn.

[EDITED 9 NOVEMBER 2023: New gig found!]

COVID-cautious folks:

Carrying a carbon dioxide monitor helps me check how safe the air quality in a space is, and lower or raise my cautions accordingly. (Details and photos.) Super useful.

I use and like the Aranet 4 CO2 monitor. The Aranet 4 is usually USD$249. It's on sale, direct from the manufacturer, till September 17, for $184.35, with free shipping in the US.

Or from Amazon for $197. (Might be today only - Sept 7th.)

live Vienna Teng concert now, livestream, free

https://www.youtube.com/live/d6iSm963r08?feature=shared

Within the last few years, I remember reading a lengthy blog post where someone tries to get the reader interested in watching "Nirvana in Fire", illustrated with stills and embedded GIFs that are short clips from the show. It's divided into non-spoiler and spoiler bits. Can't find it now, and want to link to it as part of answering this question. Anyone remember this?

Spoilers for both Novik's Temeraire series and Kowal's Glamourist series.

( Spoilers for both Novik's Temeraire series and Kowal's Glamourist series )

I was talking with some friends recently about the Star Trek characters Spock, Data, and Odo. I believe I've read interesting fan analyses of Spock and Data, but not Odo. I'd love pointers to essays (including video essays or comics), tie-in novels, and fan fiction that provide lenses through which to understand Odo. In particular I'm interested in:

People who found Odo's story reflective of their own in some way, and who are in some way systematically marginalized (adoptees, neuroatypical people, queer people, and so on)
Odo's and Kira's attitudes towards justice and how they work towards it
Fiction or speculation about alternate universes where the scientist who found and nurtured infant Odo was from a different culture, e.g., Betazoid or Vulcan or Klingon or The Traveller or Q, or in a different time period, such as Bajor centuries earlier under the D'jarra system
Comparisons of Odo with Spock, Data, Worf, and Seven of Nine
What a DS9 with a much much higher production budget could have done to make more interesting use of a shapeshifter character (Odo is a cloud much more often! Sometimes Odo is played by Angela Lansbury or the dog who plays Wishbone! Quark sells tons of of caulk to station residents who just want some assurance of privacy in their own quarters!)
Gender and Odo, like, what's up with that?

Please feel free to comment here and to link widely to this request!

Short stories are great. And there are dozens of high-quality online magazines that publish short, original speculative stories for you to read for free. Even when I have a tough time bringing enough attention and time to commit to and finish a book, I can often enjoy a short story or three.

A couple years ago I listed several magazines that have published work I like, and their syndication feeds you can subscribe to here on Dreamwidth via RSS/Atom. Enjoy!

BTW if anyone makes a big OPML feed out of all of those, please link to it in the comments!

On my main blog (as here), I tag blog posts rather erratically, and keep meaning to go back and systematically taxonomize my thousands of posts. One thing that my new blogging platform includes is another way to highlight particular posts for attention: individual "collections" of posts listed on the "Collections" page, which is prominently linked on the top navbar of the site.

Just now I went through about nine years' worth of archives to add posts to a few collections:

Sometimes-silly ideas: I often dream up business or project ideas. Often they’re silly. Often I have no intention of executing on these ideas. Feel free to implement them. Caution: several are probably pretty bad!
Fundamental ways I think about things: These posts illustrate some of the underlying beliefs, habits, and approaches that undergird how I reason and act.
Detailed instructions: Systematic how-to explanations on a variety of topics.

Also, there's a DW feed for my blog at

sumana_feed. I recently found out it had broken last year, argh, and have now remedied that, so please do subscribe if you'd like.

I'm glad I did this tonight especially because I ran across an old post in which I share a memory that means a lot to me:

Once, Leonard and I had to have a difficult conversation. As I gulped breath and tried to get up the gumption to go into the living room and talk with him about this thing, I did a bit of math. There are maybe 350 million people in the US, which means tens of millions of couples - maybe even a hundred million couples, just in my country. Some tiny fraction of those couples had the same problem, so, maybe twenty thousand? And it might take years for the couples to talk about it, and there are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, but even so, I thought, there must be at least a few other couples having this same hard talk tonight, maybe five. I imagined them as points of light, with bright lines crisscrossing the continent to connect us.

Just the hypothetical existence of this community calmed me. We are not alone, we can't be. We talked and came out the other side together.

I've been working on this for weeks? months? I finally published a giant blog post on how I reduce my risk of catching COVID. Includes:

Air quality and ventilation: Specifics on the Aranet 4 carbon dioxide monitor, including a coupon.
Masking: Some N95, N99, and P100 respirators you may not have heard of, with links to purchase.
Self-testing (antigen and NAAT/molecular) and PCR: Links for some amazing sale prices on rapid tests, including more-accurate molecular tests.
Nasal spray: Enovid, the wackiest thing in my post. I assure you that I have not turned into, like, an ivermectin user.
Staying apprised: A new wastewaster data site.

Please check it out?

I'm going to Readercon next month (mid-July, Quincy near Boston, MA, USA). I've never been to Readercon before.

Any of y'all going to be there? (If so, book your hotel room by Friday, June 23rd.)

A friend told me there's a rule at Readercon that each program participant is on only one program item. Is that true? The program isn't out yet, but the list of participants is, and it includes Ben Rosenbaum, Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane Anders, Julia Rios, Kate Nepveu, Sparkymonster, Pat Murphy, John Wiswell, and some other folks who always have interesting things to say.

I particularly welcome recommendations for restaurants and grocery stores near the convention!

I am at WisCon, where the Otherwise Award has several related events and program items this year!
I've already caught up with a few fannish acquaintances and am looking forward to further conversations.
If you would like to hang out in person, please note that I am pretty cautious about COVID and am only eating outdoors, or alone in my room.

(Cross-posted from Cogito, Ergo Sumana.)

I'm going to be at the feminist scifi/fantasy convention WisCon 2023, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, May 26-29, in person. This'll be my twelfth WisCon, and my ninth one in person.

If you haven't registered yet, you can do that now! This year's WisCon is hybrid in-person and remote, and remote attendees will be able to view some program items live. It is likely no public video recordings will be available. Panels and performances where I'll be onstage (all times Central Daylight Time) are on the public schedule:

Imaginary Book Club (online), Friday 7:30 PM–8:45 PM
How to Proceed with Procedurals? (in-person, not sure about livestream), Saturday 10:00 AM–11:15 AM
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in SF/F (in-person, not sure about livestream), Saturday 2:30 PM–3:45 PM
Otherwise Auction (in-person and will be livestreamed), Sat 7:30 PM–9:30 PM
Not Another F*cking Race Panel (online), Sunday 4:00 PM–5:15 PM

If you're curious who'll be at the con in person versus online, the panelists listed on the schedule give you some info.

WisCon's COVID policy includes masking and vaccination for all participants and attendees. And WisCon is adding air filtration units for convention spaces. Here's what they did last year and how well it worked. I'm writing up an exhaustingly long post right now about my own COVID-risk-related practices, but the basics are: I'm going to be masked indoors, and ok with being unmasked sometimes while outdoors. I'm usually happy to eat meals and drink beverages together with others outdoors, and will not be eating meals together with others indoors. I plan to self-test with rapid antigen tests every morning at the convention.

Last year I only participated virtually. This year, I'm going to WisCon to meet old friends and new, to emcee the Otherwise Auction to raise money for the Otherwise Award and entertain people, and to participate in a group that means something to me -- especially since there will be no WisCon next year at all, in-person OR online.

If you've never attended WisCon before, here's why I love it and why I invite you to come. People who participate online as first-timers have also mentioned how fun it is. If you're a first-time WisCon participant, whether you come to Madison or attend remotely, let me know so I can say hi!

New Yorkers don't know where our nearest automated external defibrillators (AEDs) are, so when someone has a heart attack, we lose people we could save. A new NY City Council bill aims to open that data. We need your help to improve it and get it passed.

You don't have to be a New Yorker to help! If you have expertise in health education or open data more generally, or can do 30 minutes of research about your area, you can help. You don't have to write a lot! A paragraph is fine. Submit written testimony by 10am ET on Sunday, April 2nd.

I wrote a post with details:

Thanks.

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Page Summary

appreciating a few quotes right now
Dominance/submission and unflattering personas in nonfiction-ish television
some food analogies/metaphors that have come to mind recently
Excised from elsewhere, on trust
Things I learned about eldercare, family caregiving, and end of life
out if touch
DIY fit testing pointers
Senior software engineer looking for next gig
Significant sale on Aranet 4 CO2 monitors
Vienna Teng concert now
Nirvana in Fire recruiter post?
book series comparison
Readings of Odo
DW and RSS/Atom syndication feeds to subscribe to scifi/fantasy magazines
Splashing around in my archives
finally!! posted a giant "my COVID risk reduction approach" post
Readercon (July, Boston area, 2023)
at WisCon
WisCon 2023, In Person
Improve an open data bill to prevent heart attack deaths in NYC

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Sumana

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true

Recent Entries

appreciating a few quotes right now

Dominance/submission and unflattering personas in nonfiction-ish television

some food analogies/metaphors that have come to mind recently

Excised from elsewhere, on trust

Things I learned about eldercare, family caregiving, and end of life

out if touch

DIY fit testing pointers

Senior software engineer looking for next gig

Significant sale on Aranet 4 CO2 monitors

Vienna Teng concert now

Nirvana in Fire recruiter post?

book series comparison

Readings of Odo

DW and RSS/Atom syndication feeds to subscribe to scifi/fantasy magazines

Splashing around in my archives

finally!! posted a giant "my COVID risk reduction approach" post

Readercon (July, Boston area, 2023)

at WisCon

WisCon 2023, In Person

Improve an open data bill to prevent heart attack deaths in NYC