Lily, judging life from her new expensive Condo Shoe Box.
Happy Caturday.
Category: Uncategorized
Get some Perspective
Stop being afraid of being bombed by a terrorist.
Unless you live in Syria or similar locality, your odds of dying or being injured while driving to work are far far far greater.
You aren’t afraid to drive to work. And no one is spending billions of dollars to save you from death by driving to work.
In fact, you may not realize it, but if you live in North America or Europe you really don’t experience much in the way of terrorism from ISIS. You don’t realize it because our media don’t report too much on the horrible terrorists attacks in the Middle East and Africa.
As you might naturally conclude, ISIS is almost universally hated in the Muslim World.
So, lets assume that you are a Syrian Refugee. Your sister was killed 4 feet from you and you have fled with your family. But now you are separated from your family who are all in different refugee camps. No country wants you because they have ignorantly branded all Muslims as terrorists. So now people think you are the very thing you hate so much. Imagine how unfair and horrifying that would feel as you remember holding your dead sister in your arms screaming in terror and anger at ISIS.
Muslims are not our enemies. They are not evil. They are humans. Just like you and me and they are being persecuted by both ISIS and Western Nations. ISIS, I won’t try to explain.
But us. We are treating them like garbage out of ignorance and fear. Its horribly unfair and stupid. Stop adding disdain to their horror.
Stop the Panic. Get some Perspective.
Stop feeding the terrorism with irrational fear. Start treating your fellow humans with compassion and kindness.
In which Lily is sure I bought a shoe box, not shoes.
I bought shoes. For those of you who don’t remember the minutiae of my life updates, there was much debate on whether or not to buy shoes as the money that had been allocated to them was spent on trivialities. (AKA a rather painful UTI.)
Lily, the cat, has assumed that this was the purchase of an expensive box for her. Shoe boxes are of course the second greatest thing since catnip. And this shoe box is from Dankso, who created a non traditional shoe box to justify their expensive shoes.
Lily is fairly sure that this is like moving into the penthouse in Manhattan. Possibly overlooking Central Park.
Caturday pictures of Lily’s new diggs will be forthcoming. Stay Tuned!
Owww! My Eye!
In an almost miraculously stupid turn events, my shirt tried to poke out my eye by colluding with the file cart.
My shirt has tie strings with wooden beads at the end. While in my chair, I leaned over the file cart and then sat back in my chair. The beads got caught on the cart, pulled tight, then broke free and WHAM:
Wooden Beads slammed into my open eye.
It hurt. A LOT.
And it was such an odd idiotic thing to happen.
I hope it didn’t damage it. The eye, not the beads. I hope the beads burn in the open pit of Hades.
I suppose I will have a black eye, but I don’t want the actual eyeball to be hurt. Because it was the only good one I had left. The other one has the damn Iritis. If I must be blind I prefer it is only in one eye. No doubt that is selfish of me.
And to add insult to injury I am now complaining about my minor hurts and injuries, like that is fascinating for everyone.
Sigh. It is the next step from single cat lady. Eventually we become Spinsters.
Its Morning.
I’m not appreciating any of its glory. I’m actually resenting its existence.
There is something wrong with the human brain that it doesn’t enjoy waking up. That should be a signal toward wonderfulness, right? Instead, we wake up full of resentment and an overwhelming desire to go back to sleep.
I think the reason we have a hard time resisting donuts and forcing ourselves to exercise and wash the dishes is because we used up ALL of our willpower just to wake up.
You only have so much willpower. Its a like a gas tank. I think we use 7/8ths of the tank just getting out of bed in the morning.
We need to just ban mornings and all would be right with the world.
#dubioustheoriesoflife
Did you know?
That Trump, Cruz, Clinton and Sanders all favor gun regulation? To differing degrees to be sure, but all of them are OK with regulation and have some form of proposal for it. Trump favors extending the waiting period and eliminating Assault Rifles, while Sanders wants there to be instant background checks and no semi-automatic weapons. But some kind of regulation – everyone agrees.
Did you know…
That Trump, Cruz, Clinton and Sanders all favor Israel. With Sanders being almost critical and the rest be unreservedly in support of Israel.
Did you know…
That Trump, Clinton and Sanders all favor increasing taxes on the very wealthy? Cruz has a flat tax proposal that he thinks is going to save the country. But the rest of them Clinton & Sanders think we need to make those 1% stand up for more of their share. [Keith has pointed out that Trump actually wants to reduce the tax rate on the wealthy – my information was from 17 years ago. Apparently, he no longer thinks the wealthy need to pay more]
Did you know…
That Trump, Cruz, Clinton and Sanders all favor creating jobs. I know – that surprises no one.
Did you know…
That Cruz and Clinton favor the USA Freedom act? Sanders is against and I couldn’t find Trumps position, except that he is pro surveillance, so… probably fine with it.
Did you know…
That Trump, Cruz, Clinton and Sanders all favor preserving social security and Medicare. That all of them want to reform the Veterans Administration? Again – that surprises no one, but its important to recognize the similarities.
There are obviously many stark differences along party lines, but the differences between Trump & Cruz and Sanders & Clinton are fairly nuanced.
Between Trump & Cruz the largest difference is on taxes – Cruz is very keen on a flat tax and removing the IRS. Trump wants to cut spending except on military and increase decrease tax on billionaires.
Between Sanders & Clinton the biggest difference is in Security/Privacy & Healthcare. Sanders thinks we shouldn’t sacrifice our rights and privacy to fight terrorism, Clinton is OK with doing that. Sanders wants a true Universal Healthcare Plan, Clinton wants to improve the current ACA.
I think it’s important to note that the differences between the party candidates get inflated on social media and by the candidates themselves in an effort to claim distinctiveness.
I’m worried about the polarization
of human political discussion.
In my lifetime, I’ve never before felt like the everyone is either a Conservative or a Liberal. I didn’t even think about their political thoughts. I just met them as people. Their political leanings didn’t enter into my judgement of their character. But over the last 10 years, I have evolved an unconscious bias of judging people based on conservative or liberal. ITS VERY DISTURBING.
The reason that I do this new character assessment is that for the last 10 years I have been breathing the ether of the internet on a daily basis. When I’m on Twitter or Tumblr or Reddit – politics is everywhere. Memes abound. And what is interesting is that these people who post all seem to agree with ME.
Because the internet serves us our portions with algorithms that assess what we like and then give us more of that, our politics become a defining character of our internet experience. Google, Twitter, Tumblr all know that I’m liberal. They feed me what I want to see.
Some of it I do to myself. I chose my followers in Twitter – my first social media experience based on some things I was avidly interested in at the time. Those things tend toward the liberal side of the coin – science and skepticism. Then I started to play Favstar on Twitter. I naturally followed the other people whose funny tweets I liked. I, of course, thought tweets that reinforced my own liberal bias were funnier. So I was choosing my own echo chamber. I started on tumblr by following all my twitter followers and so it went.
I’m keenly aware that I’m living in an internet bubble because I work in a conservative fish tank. There are 3 liberals and 47 conservatives where I work. And this reminds me daily that being a conservative is NOT a character flaw. Which is the message that is served to me daily in twitter and tumblr.
I’ve tried not to create my own echo chamber at WordPress. We will see if it works.
Here’s the thing. These echo chambers isolate our viewpoint. They reinforce it and coax it out toward the edges of extremism. Because there is nothing to temper it. To remind us that perfectly reasonable people have different views.
The isolation of a viewpoint is how they create a terrorist. They physically isolate them from seeing any other viewpoint and then keep hammering in the same ideas. And those ideas become the ONLY way. The only right thing. It makes an unnatural extremism seem normal and right.
On the internet, we don’t have to physically isolate ourselves to only see one view point. We only have to go to our favorite hangouts. And the algorithms and our natural tendency to choose people who agree with us will do the rest. Of course we all experience real life, so we aren’t in danger of being terrorists, but we ARE in danger of creating an unnatural dichotomy. Of a confirmation bias that is setting us up for failure.
I’ve read from credible sources that this extreme polarization has happened before in the US, and I suppose it’s happened elsewhere. But I can’t help seeing that uniqueness of our current lives on the internet is contributing.
That girl with the bad attitude.
I think there are 2 different kinds of “bad attitude” people. (In the US we often label complainers as having a bad attitude)
There’s people who resent having a job that for one reason or another they don’t like. So everything is wrong and they have no interest in a solution because they get their satisfaction from the complaint.
And then there’s the people who care. They care deeply and they get angry when things are going badly and no one is fixing it. They complain as well.
A key to good management is sorting the difference. You can turn the people people who care into idea generating dynamos. They come up with effective ideas and make managers look awesome.
The thing is – it is easy to just lump anyone who gripes into a pile of bad attitude and dismiss them with a big “no one likes change” response. But the reality is that it is a bad management technique not to listen to anyone. And it is worse if you can’t discern who is complaining because they resent the job and who is complaining because they actually care about the job.
Complaints are the most important thing a manager can listen to. That is where you get the information you need to make things better.
Female Warriors, a metaphor with troubles.
I struggle with depression and anxiety. I’ve recently adopted a personal metaphor of being a warrior against the parts of my brain that don’t function as they should.
So occasionally I search for a female warrior image that matches the emotional state of my struggle.
And this is when I became hyper aware of the weird fetishizing of women as warriors. Maybe I shouldn’t even call it a fetish because those images predominate.
It is nearly impossible to find an image where the breasts are not carefully delineated and huge. And many just show the breast naked. I’ve seen images where the woman is naked and has a leather strap around her waist while she carries a sword.
Then there’s the weird poses. You know the ones I mean. Just look at the cover of any book or movie poster with women in action roles and they are arching their back awkwardly to push forward the breast or their hips. They are angled so their butts show, their dress is slit and their leg is up to show the thigh. And generally the perspective of the viewer is such that a body part like the breast is the predominant feature of image.
In other words they are selling sexual suggestion. The thing is that this is so predominant that it’s normal and I never paid much attention to it. It’s been that way my whole life. But when I wanted to select images that reflected my particular emotional state it became suddenly clear that finding images with any emotional state besides sexuality was going to be something of a challenge.
So I try very hard to avoid images that turn the woman into a sexual object instead of a warrior. Its so demeaning to the very concept of warrior, isn’t it? It basically says this woman is actually just a toy for men that is playing at being a fighter. Don’t take her seriously.
I prefer my images to be she’s serious and possibly deadly.
Weekend Triumphs
I ended the week on a high note. My brain has decided to climb over the rim of the Abyss of my depression and see the world. Sunlight and Energy and Optimism.
I cannot even begin to tell you how magnificent that is. I know it won’t last, but while I’m here I’m glorying in it.
Friday I looked up 3 recipes and put together a grocery list for them and then after work I went to the grocery store and shopped like grown up for the ingredients. Most of you are wondering why that sentence is something wondrous to me. Well, I hate to shop, I buy the same things everytime shop, and those things are always cheap frozen meals and sandwich fixings and cat food. So this was a triumph of mental energy for me.
Yesterday a UTI that had been hovering annoyingly in the background for 2 days decided to get serious. So I went to the Little Clinic and got tested and meds. Like a grown up. Again, you are thinking – uh, that seems like a normal thing to do, Sara. YES. It is. It’s a totally normal thing which last week I would not have done. I would have abused ibuprofen and tried to drink more water and hoped/pretended that it would just go away before I died of a kidney infection. Seriously. So. I’m loud and proud about my normal action to get antibiotics.
Then I came home and cooked and cleaned. Like that was just a thing I do. I know! Its so weird and wonderful.
Today I want to buy shoes. This, of course, sounds like a wonderful fun thing to do. But for me its a THING. First of all, I want to buy some expensive shoes from Mephisto because I’m a fat middle aged woman who needs good shoes.
So I had to wait for my tax refund to get them. I got that on Thursday. But then I spent my shoe money on my UTI. This is annoying. Now if I buy the shoes I am going to be using the money I had earmarked for car repair/maintenance. That seems like a frivolous way to spend potentially necessary money for car stuff.
So now I’m debating. I need new shoes in any case. I think my ankle pain is because my current shoes have worn soles and so they are putting pressure on the joint in an odd way. Also I’m fat. I keep saying that because the scale yesterday was VERY RUDE to me. I may need to start facing my eating habits. But that’s off the subject.
The point, which I keep wandering away from, is should I buy the expensive shoes or just go to DSW and find something from the clearance rack?
I should probably go to DSW. Sometimes you can find a great quality shoe for stupid cheap on clearance. But that NEVER happens when you are actually looking for it. It only happens when you are killing time while your friend is buying shoes or just shopping to be social with your sister or something. Intention is never part of good deals.
Anyway, I’m in a good enough place that going to DSW is an actual possible thing I could do. So that is in favor of that plan.
What do you guys think? Go to the locally owned shoe store and get a good pair of shoes or just go to DSW or just stay home and cook?
Next up on It’s A Thought…. Women Warriors. A metaphor with challenges.
It's a Thought 