EXCHANGE INTERFACE

It was kind of amusing.

I watch the game of the Superb Owls but once a year - if that. Skipped the last few, tbh. Finally decided to take a day off and go to the watch-party with the guys at church, and, yeah, that game was... "interesting".

( a few thoughts on the Superb Owl )

I made a cake to take along, because we were instructed to bring a dish to share, but...these are guys. You know the joke about the reason nothing happens on International Men's Day is because the men have to actually organise it? This is both a little bit like that, but also very much not like that.

The 'dishes to share' were two chip packets brought by the two other guys, hotdogs organised and cooked by the guy who organised the thing (American national married to an Aussie), and me with a slightly experimental upside-down cake.

It's fine. I enjoy baking, and I also enjoy inflicting it on other people. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it; simple as that.

Also at the end, organiser guy collected the dishes and everything and did the washing up. No leaving it for someone else to do.

--

A small note, in the middle of the game, I was thinking "golly they've got some loud drums at the game".

Uh, no. That was the storm cell dumping about 30mm of water on us in the space of an hour. OOF.

The gutters at church were not coping, neither was the smoke detector in the women's bathrooms... I opened the door and was met with a wet floor and a steady drip. A bucket/bin under it stemmed the tide while I informed one of the guys watching the Superb Owl with me - he's pretty much the church treasurer (we also had two of the three church wardens at the viewing party, and the third turned up for about half an hour just to chat).

Hope they got that cleaned up for the thing that was on this evening.

--

( cut for kind-of-peripheral politics and the world we're now living in, may be depressing )

--

I still have to write up the brief on the Independent candidate. Better do it tonight or I'll lose all incentive.

Went to bed developing a sore throat last night. Full blown sore throat this morning. RAT test: negative. Still feeling not-great.

I've said it before, but I really miss the PCR testing sites. I wouldn't even mind paying a subsidised price for it now, just to know that I wasn't spreading virus everywhere.

We'll see how I feel tomorrow when hockey game time rolls around.

--

Anyway, a bunch of links - old and new.

Women-Only Housing

This is an interesting article to me because I match many of the demographic markers, but none of the economic ones: I am a single woman and childless, but also in the fortunate financial position to have a roof over my head.

In Jane Austen language (because my brain is kind of in Regency mode): I am an Emma Woodhouse, rather than a Harriet Smith or even a Miss Bates (well, I might be Miss Bates so far as a willingness to chatter goes, but if so nobody has yet set me down Emma-style).

It's a UK Guardian article, so it talks about class which the Americans will think is a foreign term, but the journalist talks about it in the article: if your choices are limited because of economically-straitened situations, then you are essentially 'in service' to someone else no less than the maids of the 17th, 18th, and early 19th century were.

--

How little has changed about my id in 14 years: my id, let me show you it

--

AI: we need to talk about how AI is basically destroying the planet. I know this one is preaching to the choir: fandom is well aware of the problems with AI - we're the 'class' of people it's stealing from. But fandom may not be aware of the ecological destruction that AI is causing.

We need to talk about Trader Joe's: apparently the well-known and much-loved chain is in the 'business' of copycatting small indie foodstuff producers by pretending they'll sell the indie's product in their stores and then just coming out with their own brand version of it.

It's Obviously The Phones. Why are people having less sex? (Other than that random men are obviously less reliable than bears, I mean) It's the phones, stupid! No, actually, it's certainly a significant factor. It's not the reason and the whole of the reason, but it doesn't have to be. A better world is not going to be built by increasing our screen time.

One More Day: drugs, overdoses, and what I see as the power of a redemption narrative, even if that narrative doesn't provide a workable solution.

Pastor's Wedding Night Advice To Women Opens A Conversation On Harmful Evangelica Teaching On Sex

And from the same publication, We're On A Mission From God: Christians, the Church, and Christian Nationalism.

I love Christmas - or I used to. It's not the gifts or the 'magic' or even the fact that it's summer holidays.

It was the chance (excuse) to spend time with extended family that Christmas provided - the knowledge that, well, we're kind of busy the rest of the year, but we always meet for Christmas!

( last (three) Christmas... )

I wish the local food pantry/community assistance group did Christmas Day events for the homeless/indigent of the area. I don't think they do, mostly because it's primarily volunteers, and the volunteers are all people with families who can do Christmas. But I'll ask and see what their plans are, and if they have any. If they do have something on Christmas Day, if the Big Rello Bash isn't on this year, I might go help. (And even if the Big Rello Bash *is* on this year, I might see if they can do with help.)

A friend asked if I'd be interested in giving a talk about permaculture to her daughter's class, who are doing a Food Sustainability unit at school.

( permaculture day )

--

( thinking through solutions and inconvenience )

A friend I now consider 'former' once scoffed at the idea that we should be generous and considerate when we had plenty and the moral high ground.

Looking back, she wasn't a particularly nice person; I just never ended up on her nasty side.

However, these days her politics are exclusionary and centered around people like herself because her habit is to be selfish and unconcerned with people who aren't like her. She learned how to behave when she had much, she won't learn any differently when she has little, she'll just get scrappier and meaner and more selfish.

A number of years ago, I remember reading a story on FB - one of those copies-of-a-copy things.

The story was about the neighbours of the poster, who watched next door's mom drag the Christmas tree and decorations out in a fury and put it in the trash can, then storm back inside. A little while later, the kids came out and dragged the Christmas tree out of the trash, arguing about 'who broke mom'.

IIRC, the poster found it funny. So did lots of other people.

But lots of people also responded like the mom had put cigarette butts out on the kids' wrists. It was abusive! It was cruel! What kind of mom would do that?

I thought it was funny myself - like, "wow, what did the kids do that was so bad that mom resorted to this", but a friend waxed lyrical about how taking away Christmas was a terrible thing to do to the children for anything they'd done.

Slowly, talking to her and going through the comments, I teased out that what we (all the people commenting on the post) were responding to was how secure we felt about our parents' justice.

If we trusted our parents to be fair and loving, then the mom's reaction was amusing, because obviously the kids had done something TERRIBLE. But if our experience of parental justice was whimsical and volatile, then the mom's reaction was overwrought and excessive.

Well, fuck.

The Crane Wife

Warning, this is traumatising if you have the remotest speck of empathy for women and/or have been through this yourself.

( ramblings on taking up space and feeling like I have the right to take up space )

--

Put down the Self-Help books, resilience is not DIY.

We later verified these results with more than 7,000 young people around the world, but this was the first proof that let us say with certainty that resilience depends more on what we receive than what we have within us. These resources, more than individual talent or positive attitude, accounted for the difference between youths who did well and those who slid into drug addiction, truancy and high-risk sexual activity.

I have to admit it, the diagram made me tear up. We had proved that resourced individuals do far better than individuals without resources, no matter how rugged the latter might be.

Why is this in 'opinion' and not in 'science' or 'politics'? Seriously!

( short rant )

And this is why I probably shouldn't go reading other people's reactions, because it sparks off all my own thoughts and feelings

( warnings for time travel brain breakage )

I really do miss when I could just enjoy these movies. I think I lost that later than most people – after Age of Ultron when the news for Civil War came out, tbh. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed Dr. Strange and GotG2: because they didn’t make my head hurt. (While Civil War made my heart hurt with the sheer lack of Maria in the storyline that introduced her in the comics, even as an antagonist over the Accords or something.)

I don't know if it will be the panacea for all ills, per se; you're probably wanting your favourite rather than mine, and the fixits will be coming thick and fast, but seriously, imma point you at the other side of infinity for something that yes, made my head hurt while writing, but which I'm pretty sure for which I closed all the really huge plotholes...

Oh, and ( spoiler for fic )

Why I’m A Christian And Continue To Suck At Being One

Yes. This.

--

Do What You’re Good At (Not What You Think You Love)

Look, I love gardening and quilting and cooking, but I'm not particularly good at them. Certainly not standout.

I'm good at problem solving. Which is pretty much what my job pays me to do.

--

Mark Latham defamation defence not as good as he thought it was.

tl;dr: Australian racist politician tries to swing at a prominent Muslim personality in legal court. It didn't go well. But Latham is an idiot. As in, in the last few years he has literally become incapable of anything approaching rationality.

--

Not Every Kid-Bond Matures

In capitalism, everything and everyone is a resource in which we place value - including our children. But not all children-as-resources mature into the fully-fledged earning bonds that parents (or our society) would like them to. And this article explains how our society and expectations are making that increasingly hard, and whether there is actually a solution to it.

--

Finally, not a link, but a thought on abuse, abusers, and the victims/survivors of abuse:

Once upon a time, they put a penny coin into a pudding mix. They cooked up the pudding, served it out, and whoever got the penny was 'lucky'.

Abusers are like a pudding, only instead of a penny in the pudding, there's a razor blade.

The thing is, the slices of pudding may be perfectly okay to eat for many other people - possibly even for everyone else; but for the victim, there's a razor blade in their slice. And it doesn't matter how many other people say "but the pudding is perfectly safe, I have consumed the slice and it was delicious" THERE IS STILL A RAZOR BLADE IN THE PUDDING FOR THE VICTIM.

The odds are that I have known abusers. They were probably perfectly nice to me and I probably thought they were lovely people. But here's the thing: I don't have a razor blade in my 'slice' of that abuser. It doesn't mean there isn't cruelty in them, just that I don't get the serving of them with it.

And I'm impressed...

( ...and kind of horrified, too )

I have more things to think about and comment about, but I don't have a lot of brain right now. If you want to discuss spoilers in the comments, then I don't mind at all. I'd love to have conversations with people about different angles.

Also: when's Captain Marvel actually due to come out?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Nick POV section to write for sharp Evening stars and bright Morning flame (the sedoretu series).