7jan2025

So I was reading this dude's rant on pocket why nothing works anymore and now have a rant of my own—as you may have noticed I'm kinda aggressively avoiding the political nonsense on the national level—and the big reason this particular rant annoys me is not that the guy is ranting—we're all allowed to do that—but that he's committing the fallacy that LanguageJones cites in his annual how to learn a language video which is successful learner-youtubers push a particular technique that works for them but isn't universally (or even commonly) applicable and not necessarily supported by science.

Going back to Dr Bogost's rant, he starts out with his three year old's refusal to use ‘magic’ (sensor activated) potties, because the kid is so short it triggers the flush mechanism prematurely, thus frightening the child. Such toilets, he says, waste 3x as much water as the old fashioned kind you had to manually flush. Ditto sensor'ed sinks, that jet water out at full blast.

These, he says, are examples of the declining quality of tech, but a professor who writes books about how to spend your time wisely ought to be able to differentiate between poor tech and the real problem (which he very, very briefly touches upon) which is corporate cheapness: sensored toilets work pretty well—when the sensor, as with our Japanese toilets, is located on the seat, rather than at the back. In another tab, I have an article from Smithsonian magazine about the absolute filthyness of human hands—because they touch things—so I'm all for bathroom design that is touch free (you see this in modern theatre design, where you don't even have to touch an entrance door) because the fewer things you touch, especially in public places, the less likely you're to pick up (or distribute) fomites.

This means, not having to touch toilet, sink, and paper towel, even soap dispenser handles is a good thing. But he's mourning the (loss of) sensory delight of yanking out paper towels unimpeded (which, yeah, nice, but honestly, people [like him?] who pull out too much have spoiled it for the rest of us), or flushing toilets by hand (ugh) .

His is most certainly not a universal experience!

In his view, those automations merely mean fewer workers to clean the bathroom. (How? —I can see how public restroom hand dryers, which a lot of people, myself included, don't like, presumably because they're slower, much noisier, plus they deprive the user of a handy cover to open the bathroom door, though I expect they're more ecologically sensible, at least for the vast majority of people who throw the paper towel out [and yes, I cart them home & use them to wipe up bead release off my table, then compost them, because it clogs the plumbing system to use washable rags] —nobody seems to be arguing for a return to those unsanitary cloth towels of days gone by).

I haven't noticed that the sensors have substantially reduced cleanup time, or, to be more precise, (since I haven't cleaned a public restroom in about 50 years & don't actually know how much of an impact the new tech has had) how much impact its had on the cleanliness of bathrooms, which I'm using as a proxy—after all people still drop toilet paper on the floor, and the tampon collectors still need to be emptied at the same rate. I mean, places that post cleaning schedules seem to imply a once-an-hour check, and that's about what I recall, too.

Personally, I love the way tech has improved not only toilets, but dishwashers (which waste less water than cleaning dishes by hand) washing machines (which freed women from a major household chore), furnaces, induction cooktops (so much safer than gas & more efficient than the old electric coils...) not to mention the plethora of devices that didn't even exist when I was a child. Microwaves for the win!

I expect low information (for values of whatever the topic is at hand—I, frex, am a very low information person regarding football, so I'm not necessarily being pejorative here) folks to make this error, but not professors writing books on how to spend your time wisely, for which these modern (in)conveniences are clearly adjacent.

But bitching about tech is easy. Fixing the power imbalance between the average schmoe and corporate America is not. Identifying an imperfect, annoying piece of tech is easy. Understanding why manufacturers, in our profit driven economy have prioritzed half-assed decisions amongst a myriad of factors (which all boil down to money, really) is more complex.

But with so much misinformation out there, it behooves those of us who (presumably) have the resources to filter it, not to give into clickbaity impulses, and lay the blame squarely where it belongs: on greedy people.

That said, this bead is a sample, and the design needs work, so perhaps I too am being a bit selfish inflicting it upon you. But perhaps I'll figure those bugs out, along with a bunch of other projects; but as a first pass, it's not too bad.

6jan2025

For those of you who celebrate it, Happy Epiphany—I happen to have a good friend with a birthday on this date, so the 12th day of xmas is generally a positive for me.

On even numbered years I celebrate the xmas hols with my sibs and their families, which is a roundabout way of saying since I'm out of town, I tend not to post over the holidays. (Was looking over last year and was so impressed that I managed 12 days of xmas posting—not this time!)

I did, in fact, post most of the 2022 giftwrapping, but none of the beads I made as family mementoes, and since my flash isn't talking to my camera (resolving this issue is clearly on the list of New Year's resolutions) I've yet to take any studio shots of the latest batch. So! 2022 it is, starting with this gift, which serves as an intro to the 2022 xmas bead colour scheme:)

2jan2025

Happy New Year.

I did not expect my retirement years to be, um, so excitingly...chaotic. I have fond hopes that the current turmoil will be a turbulent prelude to an ultimately better, kinder, more just world; but I'm not a fan of the idea of hitting bottom before coming back up. Wages were depressingly flat during my working years, but things seemed relatively okay; I do wonder what sort of impact all this is gonna have on young people growing up in it. I worry about them.

I want to make more art, and spread more beauty and kindness in the world. To that end, here's a webpage of a drawing I made to bring in the new year—it's imperfect, but then, so are we; and nevertheless it can still have some value.

Take care.

5dec2024

Well, yesterday? we were all s'posed to post this ‘LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back’ meme, which as a bona fide non-cis person you'd think I could get right, but nooooooo, cuz I'm always behind.

Currently reading a m/m reinterpretation of Pride and Prejudice as recommended by NPR, Gabe Cole Novoa's Most Ardently, which for obvious reasons needed to be relocated to London (Longborn, Elizabeth Bennet's home, is nowhere near London) in order for there to be enough of a queer community for the characters to interact with, but the author could've stood to have done a better job to make alternate-history geography apparent: as it was, I was scratching my head wondering how Oliver (the Elizabeth character) could go to a big fair, then an impossibly large bookstore while living near a tiny village, then wait, wut? only Darcy could afford more than one book? Did the author not realize Jane Austen and her family, despite their finances (probably) being about the same (or worse) than the Bennets’, were all ‘great novel readers’? By the time we got to the Watiers invite, I'd concluded the Bennets were not living in the country, but couldn't help wondering whether they even let minors in the infamous gambling club, let alone have a special night for them?

The author also refers to Oliver Bennet and Darcy as ‘boys’ which was super grating, because the original characters were very much adults—legally and emotionally. In this version, only Bingley (& mebbe Jane?) seem to be grown-up, which comes off very strange, as Darcy is the elder and Bingley's mentor in the original, whereas here the roles are sort of reversed...?

Plus, I don't think regency era people ‘processed’ their feelings. Reviewed, examined, considered, perhaps—but not processed, which strikes me as corporate-speak escaped into the wild. I mean, here's Elizabeth, frex, after receiving that pivotal letter from Darcy that flipped her opinion prejudice of him:

After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every variety of thought, reconsidering events, determining probabilities, and reconciling herself, as well as she could, to a change so sudden and so important...

—Austen, Pride & Prejudice, end of ch 36

But I'm only a quarter of the way in, so the story could very much improve!

But keeping with the Janite theme, here are some comments on two Austen related stories I did finish; and in the meantime, stay strong, everyone, cuz I don't really think the world is gonna be a better place if we return to a state in which a reasonably liberally reared teenager could be unaware of gay people's existence. (Why yes, that was me, half a century ago. The 70s wasn't weren't all peace and love.)

UPDATE: fixed link, minor formatting & grammatical errors

18nov2024

Ok, nobody needs to read yet another political rant, so I kinda buried that. On to linkies.

• the physics of curly hair. (With chemistry;)
• Boing boing, to use Cory Doctorow's phrase, has become entirely enshittified, but here's one of the very last interesting posts, about the highest order rubik's cube that's been built—it weighs (iirc) nearly a hundred pounds and requires a supporting frame to reposition. Somebody did a lot of 3D printing to make this thing.
• Fabulous and ferocious feminist northwest coast's masks
• A US sitcom (that I never watched) converted to an even more successful Russian one. Superb casting, copying the script but subbing in localized jokes made this show about a dysfunctional family work.

That you could just straight-ahead convert a script was not something that would occur to me. I s'pose this was the equivalent of that famous comic artist who said, never draw what you can copy, never copy what you can trace, never trace what you can just sub in. Or more charitably, don't reinvent the wheel.

So, here's a new gifwrap that riffs on designs I've been doing for awhile. But it's the first non-doodle art I've made since the election, so I'll take it.

5nov2024

I'm one of the 60 million people who voted early in the US election, along with my entire family, including f2tY, who express mailed their ballot all the way from Japan, and yes, all of them have been received by our City Clerk. I realize I'm extremely lucky, as we have liberal absentee and early voting options, which are not available to everyone.

Nevertheless, me and mine would take it kindly if you made whatever effort you could.

Others have made a number of far more cogent arguments than I ever could, but the thing that gets me is that one candidate has promised there will be another election in 2028.

The other has not.

Pretty stark choice, if you ask me.

Nothing, nothing, nothing can be fixed if we do not have the right to keep voting.

Please choose wisely.

Thank you.