Furthering

Hot tip for exchanging voice notes, whether through Signal or whatever: It's good practice to actually acknowledge what the other person said previously, to touch upon it, to comment on it. To let the other person know "I hear you." When we leave a voice note that doesn't acknowledge what the other person has said in their previous voice note, it's like they've never spoken. The benefit of voice notes is that you can carry on a discussion with someone asynchronously. But it isn't a discussion if we're not actually engaging with the other's words. Nobody is here to just be a vessel for our thoughts. We should be receptive to others' thoughts just as we expect them to be receptive to ours.

Spent the day trying to do the little things that I was supposed to do today, and as per usual, they took longer than expected and extracted too much energy, and now I am back to zero in the rest department. Tomorrow I have to do all of the things that didn't get attended to today before the week starts in earnest. Really grateful for the nice conversations and connections here, though, which have kept me company.

@KatyElphinstone@mas.to Thank you for this discussion of empathy. In my experience, many people who tell me they don't "feel" empathy (perhaps like they understand that others feel it) then go on to show what seems to be great compassion. Your thread has helped to clarify what may be happening here! I have been thinking about empathy as a lack of imagination, but lack of deep thinking may broaden that thought or be another way to describe it. And thank you for the references! I've found the first book in my digital library.

It's that marvelous time of the year when the temperature has dropped at night and the heating has yet to come on. Crack a window, get an extra blanket, and it's perfect sleeping weather. This short period is to to be savored.

@nomdeb@mstdn.social Ooh, I didn't know that about jasmine, a scent I really like. And yes, the opportunities for exploration are endless with this topic! I thought of you the other day. I had a sample of Debaser in Bloom, which was okay/tolerable (though not, to me, "wow"). The year before, I had a sample of the original Debaser and was thoroughly repulsed by it and ended up giving it away. Of course, the subjectively "stinky" ones always end up seeming to last longer on the skin 😅

@nomdeb@mstdn.social Interesting! This is one type of fragrance note I hadn't really thought about before.

@KatyElphinstone@mas.to It's super helpful. Like others, I tend to feel deeply for others' pain, but I don't think I've lost scope of the big picture (I am also interested in the systems that cause harm, whether intentional or not). However, I see how useful it can be to bring more focus to that big picture when, for example, communicating than the feelings themselves because it's more helpful in the long run. Really great discussion!

One of my least favorite types of posts here is when someone shares a link with a garbled headline and the only text in the post is a repeat of the garbled headline without any context or information about relevance.

When I write something ranty, I think back about the time a dude read something similar and exclaimed, "You sound so angry!" This was back before I had been exposed to the many wonderful internet feminists doing good work and couldn't understand what was wrong with that. Now I know there isn't anything wrong with that. Anger is a perfectly reasonable response to a lot situations.

I was talking with someone, and they said something like "action cures fear," like it was some universal truth, and I had to pause because I'm thinking about the neurodivergent experience. If you're neurodivergent, does "action cure fear" (i.e., you feel less afraid/anxious because you've put something into motion) for you? Or does it have some other effect? #Neurodivergence #ActuallyAutistic

One thing about the heat that I don't think is considered often enough is that it's not just "the heat" that affects people's lives. Yes, the heat is the cause, but it has a knock-on effect for everything else. Sleeping in a hot room is less healthy than one that's cool. But if you can't sleep at all or sleep poorly due to the heat, you're liable to have other health issues -- your immune system is less effective and your mental health may suffer (not to mention "productivity" or cognitive function). If you work out at home and depend upon that for exercise, you can't do that in the heat (or maybe you can, but I can't, and women generally sweat less and later than men, and as the body tries to pull blood to the skin to cool it, it's cardiovascularly stressful). And if this exercise is what helps you maintain emotional equilibrium, mobility, and an existence with fewer aches and pains, you're in a worse position there too. If you are neurodivergent, you may have a harder time regulating body heat, too. Older people have less resilience to it, too. And many other problems might be named depending upon if you have pets/children, commute, have different food storage conditions, have a chronic illness, etc. and that the suffering is unique or uniquely poignant depending upon these various factors. I think my point is that people in Europe who have dismissed the prior heatwaves haven't had to contend with or think that it's fine to just deal with the effects of hot weather (or aren't as sensitive to them as others) on society and that there's no reason to voice frustration with it. There's also the fallacy that everyone has more or less the same internal and external conditions. To be an adult and not realize that everyone is different and has variable levels of tolerance to anything is just a giant facepalm. As someone who has always been highly sensitive and therefore a canary in the coal mine, I've been talking about the ever-warming summers for years now. I've been repeatedly dismissed as being melodramatic or a whiner. And this is someone who was motivated to live where I live in part due to the mild summers because I can't do hot weather. So now I live in a country without reliably mild summers OR an AC culture.

Sometimes we do what we can, and that has to be enough.

I've had to run the air purifier for weeks straight. As someone who doesn't like any noise, even white noise, it's draining.

"Just get AC," the Americans say. Oh ho, if it only it were that easy. Let's say you own your apartment. It's not just a matter of deciding to put in an air conditioning unit. No, you often have to go through the rigamarole of getting a vote allowing you to do exterior work to the building from all of the other residence that live in that building. Those window air conditioners people in the US sometimes use don't work with European tilt-and-turn windows. If you rent, well, too bad for you. Apartments that don't have it probably won't get it and the ones that do are snapped up within a few minutes of listing at a premium price. Those mobile AC units? Well, some people do that, but it's if you have the money to get one and the space to place it, if you can tolerate lugging it around with you when you invariably have to move (as a renter), it's maintaining its spouts (for water) and pipes (for airflow) and getting one of those covers for European windows to make it more efficient, and in the end, you still have to contend with the noise outside because the sound is still coming in, which is one of the benefits of actual AC in the summer, closing the windows at night so you can actually sleep. Apparently, the portable units only cool a few feet, so you're stuck to one room where it's set up when you're at home.

Something that was stressing me out resolved itself. It was stressing me out because something was off about it, and the conclusion was likewise off. I know someone else might read the situation another way and try to resuscitate it, but for now, my intuition was correct that it's too much for me to deal with when I'm dealing with other stuff.

Just as I'm settling in to read for the rest of the evening, someone in an apartment above me has decided to run a power tool. Because if you're not disturbing someone else's peace, are you even living?

@marsiposa@social.coop 🙏 ❤️

@marsiposa@social.coop There might be. Mine is a fancier Dyson model, but I have to run it on the higher settings. It's the fan that's loud, and that fan also helps to keep the room cooler because I can't open the windows and don't have an AC unit.

@colinpurrington@flipping.rocks Ooh, that's interesting! I think we're in an era where it is becoming a standard necessity to use indoor filtration. And the quieter, the better, indeed.

@colinpurrington@flipping.rocks Thanks!

@colinpurrington@flipping.rocks I have a good-quality air purifier with a brand-new filter. The flat is not that big, but I have considered trying one of these box-type ones to have one filter for each room.

@jaykass@mastodon.online Yes, various, but some were due to necessity and others to reinvention. I'm not sure people could be as career flexible in the past as they are now -- or perhaps they weren't interested in being so because good jobs came with benefits and security.

@hosford42@techhub.social Oh, this is so hard. 💔

@transience@beige.party I can certainly understand why!

Does anyone have experience with Proton Meet call quality? I tried to briefly move to Signal for video calls, but without the automatic background noise muffling Zoom has, the audio quality wasn't great for anyone involved. I'm wondering about Proton Meet's overall quality compared to Zoom. #Proton

@dontpushtotalk@mastodon.social Aww, thank you so much! Hope you're able to cope, too, and have ways to escape the heat when you need to.

@abetterjulie@wandering.shop Nature is amazing! 😆

@deborahh@cosocial.ca I hope you enjoy it!

LOL. Nope.

I don't usually drink bottled water, but to get through the summer, sometimes I buy sparkling mineral water. Unfortunately, the local mineral water isn't sold in glass bottles anymore, and while, yes, some studies have shown that glass bottles maybe contain more microplastics than plastic bottles (seems a little sus), I can't stop imagining plastic bottles sitting in a hot warehouse and contaminating the liquid within. So I buy a few bottles of French mineral water, the only type I can find in glass liter bottles. And really, chilled or over ice, it's sooooo delicious on a hot, airless day.

@dontpushtotalk@mastodon.social Thank you. Yeah, several people have mentioned Jitsi, but it still only offers single sign-on options rather than individual credentials, which would be a no from me even if it were an option. While privacy is indeed important to me , I also really need to be able to see and hear the people I'm on the call with, and they need to be able to see and hear me. I wanted to move to Proton to have everything in one place with automatic link creation via appointment booking. Looks like I'll have to manually add Zoom links if I go the Proton route.

When a post includes red flags like "It's not X, it's y" "That's the point" And words like "built" as well as framing what happens "instead" It's been extruded by an LLM.

Several days after the heat has subsided, I'm still dealing with an unpleasantly warm/stuffy apartment. This is due to the building absorbing heat over the days and releasing it slowly. It isn't just a matter of opening the windows -- it's like an oven that's been turned off. The heat has to dissipate and may take some time to do so even when you open the door. I've been using a fan blowing out during the day, but I feel like I'm just heating up the outside air. Nights are harder because opening the windows means dealing with all of the screaming that tends to happen as night falls (and dogs barking, and sirens blaring, and mopeds growling). And I won't place a fan in front of that window because then I wouldn't have any privacy due to how my flat is situated. I haven't had a pleasant night of sleep since the heatwave because of this, and it's so much worse when the nights don't get cool enough to make a difference.

@marsiposa@social.coop Thank you!

I recently got to introduce someone to Emily Bender's work.

@deborahh@cosocial.ca They make the peas seem so delicious!

The top of the pepper grinder came off as I was preparing dinner. My slow cooker chicken and sweet potatoes will be extra, extra peppery. At least it wasn't the salt shaker. #Food

@britt@mstdn.games I adore Nicola Griffith's Hild and Menewood. Witchy elements and set in 7th-century Britain, beautiful writing and all well-researched so you really feel you're in that place and time.

@rejinl@masto.nyc Someone was feeling a little mischievous? I didn't see the original article, but I get a kick out of seeing this little bit of chaos as well as the retraction statement.

@ShaulaEvans@zirk.us This is a good idea!

I don't usually like movies due to the sensory overload and the really bad premises/dialogue/writing, the suspense, the flashing lights, and just the overall cringe. But The Princess Bride is comfort viewing for me (even despite the misogyny). It's quick and punchy and doesn't take itself seriously with the Renaissance Faire-ish costumes and comedic quips. I also really like how the music works with the story, and I'm someone who typically really hates music and soundtracks because they overwhelm scenes or create distraction or are melodramatic. The music here is in time with movements like sword thrusts or nods or the last throes of life of an R.O.U.S. moaning in pain. We have no references to pop culture or sappy lyrics to make us roll our eyes. And even though the story is cornball, we actually never roll our eyes -- the humor is on point, self-aware and silly and okay with it -- actually this is the promise it delivers. Humperdink twirls his skirts, Vizzini collapses mid-guffaw, Buttercup scrunches up her forehead when Wesley describes the genealogy of the Dread Pirate Roberts. I have a few rituals when I watch. I can mouth along with the script, especially when Fezzik and Inigo are rhyming. I'm on the edge of my seat with the glorious fencing scene, thinking about the video of Mandy Patinkin almost in tears at the knowledge that he'll never get to do such a sequence again. I think about the back stories included in the book that don't make it to the movie. I notice some salient points Cary Elwes made in his memoir about the concussion he got when Count Rugen hit him with the butt of his sword or the limp he acquired in an accident with a four-wheeler with Andre the Giant. And every single time, I hold my breathe when Buttercup descends into the lightning sand of the fireswamp and she and Wesley emerge with gigantic gasps for air. I adore the light makeup of the characters, Buttercup with her pleasant flush, Humperdink with his cheeks high with color, Wesley with his golden hair tied back into a ponytail. Everyone looks so young, even Wallace Shawn, even though when I first watched it, everyone looked mature. In my life, often lines from the movie come to me. Got some social anxiety? "Friendless, brainless, helpless, hopeless!" rises to the surface in the middle of the night (and I laugh). Worried about my job prospects? "I'll send you back from where you came -- unemployed . . . in GREENLAND!" A product that I've bought for years gets discontinued: "I will never love again." Something once again breaks in my apartment? "We know the secrets of the Fire Swamp. We can live there quite happily for some time." I have few watches like this that bring me pleasure each time, even when I recognize their flaws. If you, too, want to sit back, laugh at the subtle and not-so-subtle gags, are craving a story with villains who are actually heroes with a moral core ("We fight each other like god intended -- skill against skill alone." "Wait until you're ready."), and are tired of overdone, artificial, and over-the-top everything in entertianment, you can watch it here: https://archive.org/details/the-princess-bride_202306 #ThePrincessBride

@Rye@kind.social I love it!

Yesterday I was wearing a mask indoors. I didn't realize how permeable this flat was or how much the pollen could still hang in the air after closing all of the windows.

@nomdeb@mstdn.social I'm definitely into spice -- I should see if I can smell this one somehow.

@dontpushtotalk@mastodon.social Yes, it does, from what I can tell. It just won't generate the link automatically, I guess. I'm hoping either an integration becomes available or, even better, Proton Meet improves so that it's eventually a usable alternative.

I went to the doctor to get help with allergy symptoms. To protect myself from breathing in the pollen, I wore a mask on the way there. Though I did get some help, the doctor initially suggested that my symptoms were due to the mask. 😭

This may be a long shot, but does anyone know of any source for historical data (even just for this year) for pollen allergens by species for European locations? The source I am using groups all grasses together, and I'm curious about specific types. #Allergies #Pollen

I'm not sure why LLMs say things "stopped" doing something instead of saying they don't do it anymore. Worse on purpose, indeed. It's really something when complaints about LLMs use LLM speak. Yes, tired subtoot.

Thunderstorms will be thundered!