Naturally, a couple of days before we take off on a trip, the downstairs toilet is leaking with some degree of enthusiasm. We’ve had, for years, just a little bit of drip into the basement from somewhere unidentifiable in the bathroom — we had a plumber look around for it, find nothing and leave us unimpressed. But it’s gotten markedly worse in the last couple of days or so and I suspect the wax ring and/or something else with the toilet mounting. (It could be something else, maybe a supply line, but that seems so much less likely.) There’s no water on the bathroom floor, but things are obviously wrong down below. We wanted to replace that toilet anyway — it’s the cheapest one the flipper could find from a brand that my mom’s plumber said to avoid — but the timing leads something to be desired. I mean, it’s never a good time to have a plumbing issue, I guess…
For now we do have an upstairs bathroom, built into a roof gable. But aside from being small and cramped, it can get miserable in summer heat because there’s no AC vent. Better than nothing or letting this leak continue to progress.
And while I was stewing over that this morning, I logged in to work and… time for performance reviews. I had to fill in my SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) thingy with some haste, since we’re also in the final week before a code freeze and I have other stuff to get done. My actual performance reviews always go well and are a relief to get done, but I don’t like trying to figure out what to fill in on that form. I have plenty I could say about “threats” but if I want to avoid excessively personal or political topics at work, which I absolutely do, I have to leave them off.
I just realized, Amphibian was only about 3 weeks in the making from start to release. Nice.
That Nulea M505 trackball is… fine. I feel like it might have been designed with a smaller hand in mind, but after some time I find it’s comfortable if I just rest the right side of my hand on the desk. Everything else falls into place comfortably. I find myself having to think about what I’m doing a lot less than with the Adept.
I’m still playing with speed/acceleration settings, finding that nice compromise between being able to move 2560 pixels across the screen in a single motion vs. precision. I’ve tried Custom Curve from mouseacceleration.com off and on, and I think the trick for me is going to be just to leave it at its default curve (ironically enough) and get used to that. It is definitely better than Windows’ internal “enhanced precision” feature, at least for the needs of a trackball.
My run in GW2 continues. This may be the longest I’ve kept playing it before deciding to drop out and do something else.
I leveled and geared a Vindicator — giving up my “free” slot I was using for key farming — and she’s probably the best of my characters in terms of performance, even better than the Willbender. Then I decided to abandon my Tempest (forgetting that they had a Jade Bot core that doesn’t show up in regular inventory, so now I have to get my jeweler to build another new one) and raise up a Barbarian — too early yet to tell how effective this will be, but probably not a super tank. I went with a cute Asura who is technically male but has a feminine face and hairstyle; that race has basically no sexual dimorphism in body shape by human standards.
My experience with reading philosophy and philosophy-adjacent books has been very mixed. Some authors assume you have an education in philosophy (and maybe fluency in 4 or 5 languages… the showoffs). Some write for a layperson, clearly lay out examples and reasoning, and are merely trying to share fascination and wonder (this is great). Some are more of a guide for living.
In this case, the reading is not necessarily easy, but it’s not elitist either. The author is interested in liberatory, resistant philosophy meant specifically for trans and nonbinary people and friends (“I do not believe in wasting my breath on transphobes,” she writes). The point of the book is to find an understanding of both trans oppression and “trans gender phoria” — her term for both dysphoric and euphoric experiences. It’s impossible for this not to also be a feminist project, because no matter how you slice it, transphobia has its roots in the worst parts of heteronormative sexism. It also would would have been nonsensical and irresponsible to not include racial oppression because it’s very much tied together. (A major part of colonizer thinking was that “savages” were not “properly” masculine or feminine, thus not proper men or proper women, therefore not proper humans. Jim Crow era public restrooms came in Men, Women, and Colored; even in the present day nonwhite cis women are often targets of transphobia and “transvestigation.”)
There is a lot going on here, and I’m finding it hard to summarize. If it was that simple it wouldn’t need a dense 312-page philosophy book. Probably some brilliant writer could condense things a bit more than Bettcher did, but I’m not that person.
But it’s providing a lot of food for thought. I am starting to think about my own identity at a different depth now, so it’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
It’s released! Back to free/pay-what-you-want, but I encourage folks to donate to a worthy cause. Particularly one that protects the rights, safety and dignity of marginalized people. Or maybe support good solid, non-pandering journalism.
Slöer arrived today and I took a little time to play with it. It is very ambient and tasty; it does woozy and ethereal like a champ, and a fun vibrato thing as well. Turning the clock rate all the way down doesn’t make it completely lo-fi, but it gives a taste — surprisingly a couple of the algorithms sound grainier and grittier when it’s turned up higher! Overall it seems like a winner. But I want to rearrange my desk a little to make it more accessible instead of having it way off over my left shoulder.
I already have a concept in mind for the next album.
It’s not that these billionaires are specifically transphobic, although many of them probably are. But rather:
Jesse Bryant, a sociologist studying right-wing environmentalism at Yale University, sees the issue as emblematic of a larger trend. He said the bigger issue lies in the fossil fuel industry’s funding of nearly every conservative political issue in the United States.
Indeed, billionaires with fossil fuel origins have left their fingerprints all over right-wing U.S. politics—from fracking tycoons Farris and Dan Wilks’ reported financial contributions toward anti-abortion efforts to Charles Koch’s funding of right-wing groups that advocate for violent border policies. The Koch network has also promoted immigration reform in the past. And Democrats have taken fossil fuel donations, too.
And so:
“If we care about climate, we’re going to have to care about trans rights,” Taylor said. “And if we care about climate, we’re going to have to find ways of getting America and the whole world past all forms of bigotry so that we can work together to face an existential threat to all of humanity and the natural world.”
I am mostly done mastering Amphibian and expect to release it soon. This weekend?
I feel like there’s a lot going on. This week my spouse is taking my parents to two doctor appointments, then we’re meeting with a lawyer to discuss power of attorney (Mom’s idea), and then Saturday a gutter contractor is coming to give us an estimate, Sunday is Father’s Day, and then the next weekend we are taking a road trip to visit my brother (so we need to clean house before that, and do laundry and pack and stuff).
The basement drainage work is scheduled to happen sometime in the first two weeks of August, and before that happens we need to move a bunch of stuff AND get another contractor to come in and cut a hole in or remove an interior basement wall.
And we’re coming up on a new release at work. Scheduled code freeze is right before my vacation. Wheeeeeee!
So Many Stars had some gut-wrenching, heart-breaking stories — though more of them were about government oppression and AIDS (almost the same thing) than rejection from family.
There were also some beautiful stories, people taking care of each other and celebrating who they are and spreading joy. And I don’t think it’s entirely “without darkness there can be no light” bullshit either. One of the things I especially liked was, all these elders (and folks my age… I refuse to call myself an elder yet) talking very respectfully about how much they are learning from younger generations. These folks went through tough times when there wasn’t even a name for what they were, and many of them were fighting for rights and recognition. But they recognize that younger generations are more tuned in to gender issues, that there is still a lot of pioneering happening right now, as well as a lot of struggle still happening. A couple of them gave the hopeful message that the backlash we are seeing now is likely the death throes of transphobia, a final temper tantrum before much more widespread acceptance happens. (I’ve often felt the same, although I recognize that these sorts of struggles go on for ages even after major victories are won. Women still do not have equal pay and respect; Black folks still are being oppressed; slavery still exists in the world even if it’s illegal and disreputable.)
One of the interviewees owns a bakery that makes traditional Argentinian alfajores (cookies with dulce de leche rolled in coconut), so I had to order some. 🙂
I’ve just realized, I didn’t say anything about trackballs!
I have gone back and forth between mice and trackballs for a long time. I loved the original (or at least, one of the early versions of) the Logitech Trackman Marble — one of the first widely available optical trackballs — but its ergonomics were drastically changed, and the original used a PS/2 port and had only two buttons and no scrolling. More recently I liked the Elecom HUGE, until it started to fail on me. Lately I’ve been using a vertical mouse — very comfortable and ergonomic — but the left mouse button had been getting progressively worse over the last couple of weeks, with clicks either not registering or sometimes double-clicking.
There was a recent thread about trackballs over on KvR, and that got me looking around. KvR seemed to like the Logitech M570 or the Kensington Expert. And there are, of course, entire communities of trackball fans. Apparently the GOAT here is the Microsoft Trackball Explorer, long since discontinued and ridiculously expensive if you can find one, although there are quite a few clones out there. There are fans and haters of Kensington, Logitech, Elecom and everything else — different designs work radically differently for different people so there’s a lot of personal preference in play.
One company that cloned the MTE is Ploopy, but they have a handful (heh heh) of other designs: all open-source, 3D-printed, repairable and hackable. Partly for reasons of price, I chose to go for the Adept, which has 6 programmable buttons and generally great reviews and a lot of love. Great sensor and good bearings and buttons. You can scroll smoothly by holding one of the buttons while spinning the ball.
(mine is also purple, but I went for a blue trackball.)
After having it for a few days, I understand the appeal but I don’t think this has the best ergonomics for me. What I find with this:
It has that 3D-printed look, but it feels smooth. Not “luxury” feeling but not bad at all.
Reports of noisy bearings are exaggerated; I don’t think it’s any louder than moving a mouse.
The ball rolls very smoothly indeed, with no sticking. It doesn’t have the kind of momentum that a large arcade trackball would, if you’re looking for that.
The buttons do indeed have a nice, non-cheap feel.
My personal accuracy with it is… not super? I’ve been trying to find a compromise between speed to get that cursor across the screen easily, and accuracy.
It’s making me really aware of how awkward some interfaces are. Guild Wars 2 for instance, requires a lot of right-dragging for camera movement, especially while flying — and there’s a lot of mousing to the center of the screen for confirmation dialogs while manipulating inventory and rewards and stuff that require mousing back to the edge of the screen. (I figure that becoming more aware of something that used to be second nature/muscle memory is, in this case, not really a good thing.)
I think I do want my hand more in a resting position and with some “handshake” angle, rather than palm-down flat. And I think this one is more suited to hover-hand folks.
I’m not sure I love the ball scroll feature after all. It can be awkward at times.
So with a little sadness, I started looking for a different option. Another HUGE? An MTE clone? A thumb ball like the Logitech MX 570 or Ergo? (Logitech mice/trackballs apparently wear out fast and don’t have great sensors; some people hate Elecom bearings and buttons and question their quality control.)
I wound up going for a cheaper MTE clone, a Nulea M505. Ploopy’s own clone is considerably more costly, and this is still sort of a trial to see if I like it. I may go with a Logitech-ish thumb ball instead, or go back to the HUGE, or another vertical mouse… we’ll see.
I’ve kind of been celebrating Pride myself for six months already, and I am probably not going to go to any events or anything. But still: here we are, in what’s arguably the worst year so far for LGBTQIA+ rights since Reagan, and it’s Pride month. We’ll see what happens.
I have been thinking about the term “MOGAI” and especially that first word in the acronym, “marginalized”… and how this relates to a nonbinary identity that is in the margins. I really don’t have any deep insights about that, it’s just simmering.
all the interviewees are people in their 50s, 60s and 70s — something that might surprise younger folks or those who believe that it’s just an internet-fueled fad.
they are from big cities, small towns, reservations, the Philippines, Cuba, Argentina during the “Dirty War”, diverse neighborhoods, all-Black neighborhoods, fish-out-of-water families in white neighborhoods. With those diverse backgrounds come diverse attitudes toward gender, and different ways to adapt.
I also plan to read Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson during Pride month, particularly as this administration tries to erase transgender history even from the monument that commemorates it. Marsha is the one who threw the first brick at Stonewall, but I don’t know much about her at all.
The two books I mostly recently finished were by genderqueer author Alexis Hall. The Affair of the Mysterious Letter is a retelling of a Sherlock Holmes story, but as a sort of eldritch horror/fantasy/comedy with a notorious bisexual sorceress replacing Holmes and a bizarre twist to the mystery. Mortal Follies is a tale of a woman in early 19th century Bath, discovering that she is both cursed and gay (not a part of the curse!), with the Robin Goodfellow narrating and occasionally interfering. The sense of humor is pretty great, and I’ll have to look for the author’s other fantasy novels. But they also write… baking-themed romance novels? Huh.
After waiting two years since its release (and another four years since the original version), I have finally gone for the Walrus Audio Slöer.
I found a B-stock one with minor factory paint flaws at a big discount. My thinking is, I use the Dreadbox Hypnosis very little, so this will either replace that — or it will prove to me once and for all that I just don’t need any hardware effects that aren’t in Eurorack.
I have always liked the sound of Slöer in demos. The original one was mono, which I sometimes find a bit sad with reverb. This one has stereo, more modes, and the “stretch” slider which can lower the sample rate to stretch the reverb and make it more lo-fi. That last bit is something software tends not to do (at least without faking it), so besides the fact that I know it sounds great, that’s also compelling. We’ll see how I take to it in practice, though!
Here’s a dump of some images I’ve downloaded or screenshotted over the past few weeks:
