Little Victories

"Jobs, jobs, jobs! They’re everywhere. The problem with all this job-creation is the new jobs are all..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 02:29:37 -0400

“Jobs, jobs, jobs! They’re everywhere. The problem with all this job-creation is the new jobs are all worse than our previous jobs, which, to be honest weren’t all that rad in the first place. Some jobs, they don’t even pay money, which is still a thing you need some of to live. My mother spent the recession in multiple jobs, the most recent of which paid federal minimum wage. $7.25, baby! This is the reason why, when I hear well-paid pundits say that no one except high school kids work for minimum wage, I want to fly to their home, poop on their doorstep, and set it on fire.”

- Matt Bors (via azspot)

Spot on, A-FUCKING-MEN.

Balderdash and Whimsy: raemanzu: riker-wears-a-skant: punkrocklibrarian: lost-plots-of-tng:...

Sat, 11 May 2013 02:27:59 -0400

Balderdash and Whimsy: raemanzu: riker-wears-a-skant: punkrocklibrarian: lost-plots-of-tng:...:

raemanzu:

riker-wears-a-skant:

punkrocklibrarian:

lost-plots-of-tng:

data realizes that his gender has been arbitrarily assigned to him, and begins experimenting with other gender roles from other planets.

!!!

DATA DOES A MONTH-LONG INTENSIVE EXPERIMENT…

^^ Someone write this. Or draw in comic form, or something. I would if I could draw.

"Sometimes I think I owe people more than I can possibly repay. Sometimes those same people turn out..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:27:40 -0400

“Sometimes I think I owe people more than I can possibly repay. Sometimes those same people turn out to have such poisonous things hidden in them that I’ll never really be the same. People are fucking difficult to deal with and full of layers and so very weird.”

- More wisdom of LSG.

McDonald’s Theory — What I Learned Building…

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:28:28 -0400

McDonald’s Theory — What I Learned Building…:

Anne Lamott advocates “shitty first drafts,” Nike tells us to “Just Do It,” and I recommend McDonald’s just to get people so grossed out they come up with a better idea. It’s all the same thing. Lammott, Nike, and McDonald’s Theory are all saying that the first step isn’t as hard as we make it out to be. Once I got an email from Steve Jobs, and it was just one word: “Go!” Exactly. Dive in. Do. Stop over-thinking it.

The next time you have an idea rolling around in your head, find the courage to quiet your inner critic just long enough to get a piece of paper and a pen, then just start sketching it. “But I don’t have a long time for this!” you might think. Or, “The idea is probably stupid,” or, “Maybe I’ll go online and click around for—”

No. Shut up. Stop sabotaging yourself.

The same goes for groups of people at work. The next time a project is being discussed in its early stages, grab a marker, go to the board, and throw something up there. The idea will probably be stupid, but that’s good! McDonald’s Theory teaches us that it will trigger the group into action.

Last night's dream

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 03:34:35 -0400

I dreamt that I met you on a stormy sea

and I had little to say

Past the lump in my throat

Past the ache in my heart

My cousin warned me that the game I was playing

was vulnerable to hackers

I said I knew

And I’ve taken all the precautions I can take

and they may have taken my phone

but they cannot take my heart

Only I can give it away

Wisely

or not.

[Thanks, brain. /semiscarcastic]

Recovery

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:39:45 -0400

Today I wore some socks that B gave me without wanting to jump off a bridge every time I looked down at them, so that's progress. I think.

Unless I should have just purged them in the great getting-rid-of-reminders, but that was mostly for things that were involved in the gaslighting, like the expensive pants I was encouraged to buy that looked so good because I stopped really eating and lost 20 lbs. due to stress. Like dressing right would somehow atone for my lateness and all the other reasons that I was a horrble person. More fool me for being desperate enough to try it.
..........................................
Expectation: I feel a little bit better today!
Expectation: I feel a little bit better today!
Expectation: I feel a little bit better today!
Expectation: Hey, I think I feel pretty good!
Expectation: I guess that means I'm normal now! Time to go live a normal life!
---------------------------------
Reality: I feel terrible.
Reality: I still feel terrible.
Reality: Is this seriously "recovery?" This sucks.
Reality: I don't want to be thinking about all of this shit, this is exhausting.
Reality: I guess today's not so bad.
Reality: Today is bad again.
Reality: Today is bad, but I think I'm starting to understand why.
Reality: Wow, how long has it been since I cleaned my room?
Reality: Cleaning my room didn't make me feel any better, but hey, room's clean.
Reality: Whoa, okay, I need a shower. And maybe a haircut? Definitely a haircut.
Reality: Everything sucks.
Reality: Okay, except you.
Reality: And you too, I didn't mean that you sucked.
Reality: And that thing that I like is pretty cool.
Reality: What was I talking about?
Reality: Wow, it turns out that was totally my fault?
Reality: I was the jackass.
Reality: Holy shit, I am such a jackass.
Reality: Everybody must hate me.
Reality: EVERYBODY HATES ME.
Reality: Okay, how could everybody hate me? I mean, even if I'm a jackass, the Law of Averages dictates that SOMEBODY out there would probably like me anyway.
Reality: Why would everybody hate me anyway, I'm awesome.
Reality: ...I'm not that awesome.
Reality: Sometimes I'm pretty awesome, though.
Reality: OH MY GOD I HATE MYSELF
Reality: WHAT IS THIS, I'M RIGHT BACK WHERE I STARTED
Reality: EVERYTHING SUCKS, THE WORLD SUCKS, I SUCK, NOBODY WILL EVER LOVE ME AND I WILL DIE UNMOURNED AND ALONE
Reality: ...What the hell was that about?
Reality: Anyway, gonna get stuff done.
Reality: Gonna get stuff done
Reality: Getting stuff done
Reality: WHY DO I FAIL AT EVERYTHING
Reality: WALLOWING
Reality: WALLOWING SOME MORE
Reality: Okay NO MORE WALLOWING, we've talked about this, we're not doing this right now.
Reality: ...I can't believe that worked.
Reality: Huh.
Reality: So hang on, is this it?
Reality: I mean, is this recovery? Am I doing this right? Is it going to be over soon?
Reality: I just want to be normal.
Reality: I am such a ridiculous trainwreck of a human being. How do I even exist? Why do I get to have friends? Why do you people talk to me? There's so much about myself that I really don't like, and there's probably even more stuff that I don't even know about that isn't too hot, either. And I'm working on it, but man, it's hard.
Reality: ...I just realized that everything I just said is normal.
Reality: Oh my God, am I already normal?
Reality: I'M ALREADY NORMAL. THIS IS NORMAL.
Reality: It's...not exactly everything I was hoping for, to tell you the truth.
Reality: ...Oh well.
Reality: Today was okay.
Reality: Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Pink: “Try” at the 2012 AMA Awards. I love the...

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 01:03:51 -0500

Pink: “Try” at the 2012 AMA Awards. I love the choreography. This is emotional pain made physical. Someone linked the original video on facebook tonight, but I think this one is even more raw and evocative, and I like the set better.

Some days I find it inspiring that D & I have walked through this much fire and our relationship has come out the other side, but I have cried every time I’ve watched this because it makes the memory of mind-cracking pain visceral again.

Part of what it means to be human, to make art, I think, is to take the wordless anguish and give it form in a way that nothing else can.

Tomato genetics!

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:36:25 -0500

In 2010, it appears that one of my varieties of heirloom, open-pollinating tomato plant pollinated another. This doesn’t happen often as tomatoes tend to self-pollinate, keeping their genetics stable. In Spring 2011, two random crosses of the 2010 plants sprouted in my garden bed with no help from me. These are the F1 hybrids. One of them didn’t survive transplant, but the other did, and gave amazing-tasting sweet-but-not-mushy fruit with great drought resistance and seeming blight resistance. I saved as many of its seeds as I could. These seeds will be the F2 generation, and I planted as many as possible in 2012 because each and every one would be a different combination of its parent’s traits. (That is the correct apostrophe, barring weirdness, each seed will be self-pollinated and thereby only have one parent.)

Since I’m a geneticist, I did want to go into this with some information (although there’s something to be said about the “what the hell, let’s see if it works, don’t stress” approach). Although I understand the theory of F2 crosses well, I had no knowledge of the phenotypic “tells” of tomato plants - in flies these would be things like white eyes instead of red, curly wings instead of straight, and so on. Never fear, the internet provides tomato genetics. This page looks a lot like a FlyBase record with the gene name and phenotype, and links to paper which presumably tell me something more about the inheritance mechanism of each gene.

Unfortunately, tomato genetics are not nearly as well defined as those of flies, and there’s no obvious way to manipulate them in the garden. For instance, ’Potato Leaves’ are dominant, and my tasty F1 had them! So I could easily pick out all the F2s with PL in 2012… but they don’t necessarily track with taste or hardiness or ripening to red. Oh well.

After growing about 12 plants to maturity, I ended up with 4 F2 hybrids I liked. Many of my F2s tasted watery, or weren’t heat- or drought-tolerant.

F3-1 Chameleon parent: 5” diameter, light pink tomatoes; looks store-bought but tastes good! Medium number of seeds, plant hardiness unknown.

F3-2 Small Tangy parent: small, round tomatoes. Good taste, but not the most hardy plant and may be determinate.

F3-3 Big Red parent: Brandywine-looking tomatoes but with less cracking; indeterminate, and plant is very very hardy. Too bad the taste is only meh.

F3-4 Conjoined parent: 3” diameter round, deep red tomatoes with a tendency to grow together. Low hardiness but great taste; not many seeds.

Maybe I’ll contact a couple of ag programs and see if they have a species with balancer chromosomes or linked genes or whatever they have for plants and see if I can cross the either another round of F2s or my chosen 4 F3s with them for better control.

"All they [Hobby Lobby] are asking for is a narrow exemption from the law that says they don’t have..."

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:44:01 -0500

““All they [Hobby Lobby] are asking for is a narrow exemption from the law that says they don’t have to provide drugs they believe cause abortions,” Hobby Lobby attorney Kyle Duncan told CNN affiliate KFOR before Sotomayor’s ruling. “Our basic point is the government can’t put a corporation in the position of choosing between its faith and following the law.””

- Hobby Lobby: The First Martyr Under Obamacare?

Following that same argument, Hobby Lobby is arguing that I should be exempt from paying any federal taxes to be used by the Defense Department or CIA killing of the innocent in drone attacks, or by the Justice Department or my state to lock up brown people in disproportionate numbers to white people for the same crimes, right? I’d also like a refund of all the Federal tax money that was used to pay for the invasion, occupation, and destruction of Vietnam and Iraq, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the entire Department of Homeland Security, all foreign military bases, and 40 years of party primary elections. Then we can work on ending all tax-financed subsidies of any kind to private enterprise, and start making broadcast media pay for their share of public bandwith.

I have serious moral objections to my money paying for all of the above, but I can’t seem to find anyone willing to take me seriously. I guess I’m just not Christian enough for them.

(via blissandzen)

Probably not. Don’t you know that the validity of your religion is directly correlated with your net worth? Only billionaire CEOs can afford to have crises of conscience nowadays.

(via recoveringhipster)

National clean off your desk day

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 01:38:48 -0500

National clean off your desk day

Cats in harmony

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 02:50:53 -0500

Cats in harmony

This is why I like the idea of Callahan's Place.

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 01:29:15 -0500

lordsteeb:

imagine being an old-timey gangster but instead of having people murdered you had them loved. that’s pretty much my dream job now that i think about it. all sittin in bars in a pinstriped suit, being all “hey tony. see that guy over there? go take care of him, if you know what i mean.” and then tony goes and gives him a hug

Bold Black & Bitchy: khaleesi: libertarians who say not voting is the same as casting a...

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 13:30:45 -0400

Bold Black & Bitchy: khaleesi: libertarians who say not voting is the same as casting a...:

khaleesi:

libertarians who say not voting is the same as casting a vote because “none of these options are good enough”

actually ANYONE who says that

are you so blinded by your own self-absorption that you don’t realize the rights of a LOT of people are genuinely at stake, here?

…

I've been talking to the flowerpot again.

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 22:57:19 -0400

I've been talking to the flowerpot again.:

It *should* be.

The answer to the question abuse victims keep asking ourselves

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 17:01:32 -0400

Did I CAUSE the slip in to controlling and abusive insane behavior? Is it MY FAULT? Did I make [my abuser] like this?

No. That wee voice is a lying shite bag. [The abuser] behaves this way because [the abuser] WANTS TO!

You are not responsible for [abuser’s] actions in ANY way. What you did does not give [them] permission to behave like this.

[Abuser’s] behaviour is [their] responsibility and no one else’s. The only thing you are responsible for is your reaction to [abuser’s] behaviour. Only [the abuser] has the power to decide how [they’re] going to act.

-From the beautiful knitting forum where a whole bunch of people are currently realizing they don’t have to put up with this shit.

wilwheaton: NASA’s Curiosity rover and its parachute were...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:44:53 -0400

wilwheaton:

NASA’s Curiosity rover and its parachute were spotted by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as Curiosity descended to the surface on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT). The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured this image of Curiosity while the orbiter was listening to transmissions from Curiosity.

Curiosity and its parachute are in the center of the white box; and a separate image is a smaller cutout of MSL stretched to avoid saturation. The rover is landing on the etched plains just north of the sand dunes that fringe “Mt. Sharp.”

(via HiRISE | HiRISE Captures MSL’s Descent to Mars)

petit-poids: Artoria Gibbons Artoria was a tattoo attraction...

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:40:44 -0400

petit-poids:

Artoria Gibbons

Artoria was a tattoo attraction that worked for 35 years in circus and carnival sideshows. Artoria was the stage name for Mrs. C. W. (Red) Gibbons.

Artoria was born on a farm in upper Wisconsin. Her parents were poor and by the age of 14 she decided to leave home. When she was interviewed by Arthur Lewis, writer and author of the book, Carnival, she said: I never been no place in my life. While hanging around a local carnival sideshow she met Red Gibbons. Him and me got to talking, tole me the show didn’t have no tattooed lady and would I like to be one. Said he was the tattoo artist and if I let him tattoo me I could join the show and see the world. Well that’s what I done. We was married soon after that and we both had a good life. There ain’t hardly no place in the country I ain’t been to but when he died (late 1940’s) I went into retirement out on the west coast.

Artoria’s tattoos were amazing: magnificent reproductions of paintings by Raphael and Michelangelo and a few patriotic designs but for those few exceptions the main inspiration is Italian. My husband done everyone of them, she said proudly. They’re all masterpieces. He was crazy ‘bout eyetalian (sic) painters.

"…God via Christianity, and religion in general, would not allow me to be my most authentic,..."

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 21:04:09 -0400

“…God via Christianity, and religion in general, would not allow me to be my most authentic, human self, which is very important to me.”

- Annalise Fonza, There is No Wipe-Out Story: An Ex-Pastor’s Journey to Atheism

ouyangdan: Pay attention, people. Well said.

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:51:54 -0400

ouyangdan:

Pay attention, people.

Well said.

tuesday-johnson: ca. 1850-60, [hand tinted daguerreotype...

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:43:27 -0400

tuesday-johnson:

ca. 1850-60, [hand tinted daguerreotype portrait of a gentleman with his accordion]

via Be-Hold Fine Photograhs

Sometimes I wonder what these folks would think of my accordion playing. :)