Category: Uncategorized

breathing room

There weren’t very many elections yesterday in the US, it being an off year for any sort of federal elections. We had none where I live, for instance. But some of those elections will have a big impact. Redistricting in California that balances against Texas’ gerrymandering. Pennsylvania keeping its Democratic state Supreme Court, which may play a role in the midterm and next Presidential elections if there are legal challenges. Maine voters rejected a proposal meant to disenfranchise voters. JD Vance’s half-brother was absolutely humiliated in a race for Cincinatti mayor, against the child of an Indian immigrant and a Tibetan refugee. And the next mayor of New York City is a Democratic Socialist, a Muslim, and a strong supporter of trans rights — and he won by a huge margin.

That last bit is huge. 38 out of 50 states (and something like 90 nations) have a smaller population than NYC. That is a lot of voters, and a real chance to change the course of American politics.

All Republicans offered was anti-trans attack ads (in Virginia the candidate spent 57% of their campaign budget on that alone) and other culture war stuff. Democratic messaging focused on peoples’ actual needs and rights. The winners seemed to know what people actually want… unlike the so-called strategists who were, up until yesterday at least, still on the “everyone needs to move to the right” train.

Trump, of course, had a hissy fit on social media. But, damaged as his brain is, he seems to be fully aware that people are not buying the shutdown strategy of “punish the people and blame Democrats for it.” He’s distancing himself from “Republicans” in general, because in his mind he’s not a loser and nothing is ever his fault. But my prediction is, he’ll tell his pet senators to put health care back on the table and get things moving again, and then attempt to claim credit for ending the shutdown because “art of the deal.”

…

Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I feel physically better today. For a couple of weeks now I’ve had a combination of back pain, a tendency toward anxiety, and let’s call it an uncertain digestive system. Perhaps a lot of that really is driven by anxiety, so a little emotional relief brings some physical relief as well.

My current read is Starless by Jacqueline Carey. I haven’t read any of her other stuff, so I have no idea how it compares. It’s certainly very tropey, in a quite stereotypicasl desert setting that has a couple of clever worldbuilding twists to it. I’m a little bothered by the idea that one of the tribes/cultures is very much associated with thievery, and everyone (including those people) just goes with it — this isn’t too much different from real-world racist tropes about the Romani for instance.

Despite that I’m enjoying it so far, but I see a lot of reviews saying it will start to drag and feel slow later on. We’ll see.

This book no doubt wound up on my list due to the trans angle — the main character is bhazim, an “honorary boy” because boys bring families more status than girls — and for some reason he was raised in ignorance of that fact at first. At ten years old he’s been living his whole life since infancy in a monastery training in martial arts, never even seeing a woman. He’s destined to be a bodyguard for a princess, which would have required castration if he’d been born with those parts. So, individuals vs. sexism is definitely a theme here, as well as class struggle.

triple word score

The album seems to be coming together piece by piece. That is, I’ll do a short session, record a drone or a looped sequence on its own, and move on… then find parts which match up, and introduce the glue that binds them together. This has inspired the name I want to use for this release, and it begins with one of those unused letters.

CVz is good. It does The Thing that I wanted it for, and more. Rotating the inputs/outputs of the matrix mixer with CV enables all kinds of additional scanning possibilities.

I’m thinking of this patching technique as “split-and-merge.” Philosophically it’s a little different from the Make Noise NUSS concept I think, but it’s a close cousin.

Multimod makes a great splitter, creating variations in phase (timing) and rate (pitch). Small pitch variations serve as unison detuning, like a fancy chorus effect, and sound really lush. Larger ones can create chords, clusters, and harmonics.

But Multimod is not the only option. Filters are good for this — multiple different strategies, whether it’s complementary filters that mix back together to fill the original spectrum, or groups of bandpass or vocal filters, or fancy spectral filtering. Delays… well, actually a straightforward delay being panned around just sounds like plain old ping-pong which isn’t that much fun. Slightly weird delays can make things interesting.

I should keep in mind that software does this technique quite well, and it’s not always necessary to do it all in Eurorack. But if I were going to dig this particular hole just a little deeper, I would primarily be looking at Three Sisters — a lovely filter I had before, with three bands which can be low/mid/high or triple bandpass, and with the option to use separate inputs for each band. Root Locus would be another strong contender. I think the smart play right now is to wait though; I have heard that Tom Erbe is working on another non-NUSS module for Make Noise which might be exciting, and if not there are always new and interesting things to try out. I don’t really need to specialize in split-and-merge — and there’s a lot of room for experimentation that these modules have opened up.

I didn’t mention this before, but I’ve also ordered a lo-fi sampler from a maker on Tindie. It uses a really cheap, bad chip originally meant for digital voice memos or greeting card messages. But as cyberpunk tells us, “the street finds its own use for things” and people have made little musical devices from it, with a pleasant lo-fi crunch. Usually overpriced, and often with waiting lists because they’re only built a few at a time, but I got lucky with this one and the price was right. I’m a little surprised that nobody has taken it a little further and made it into a really dirty delay, but perhaps the chip’s functions are too fixed for that.

A couple of nice bits of software I’ve picked up this week:

Aberrant DSP Cataclysm is a multi-effect plugin with several sections and an experimental bias. There’s a “hum” generator which can sound like 50 or 60HZ interference… or it can use a pitch detector on the input and attempt to follow along. The amplitude modulation section and resonator can do that as well, but can also drop down into echo territory. There’s a drive section with gated/octave fuzz, which you can also modulate from an envelope follower. It’s capable of quite a lot of fun strangeness, and has a vaguely 80s spy equipment/paranormal research vibe.

Lese Smear is a spectral multi-effect, a little bit like UA SpecOps in a very loose sense. My short general review is, it’s a bit less universally useful and versatile than SpecOps, with a bias for detailed frequency resolution at the expense of poor time resolution, giving it that blurry/smeary sound. But between this, the choice of effects, and the very nice system for specifying how the effects apply to different frequency ranges, it’s well suited to slower ambient and drone applications and its sweet spots are very sweet.

back to CVilization…

Happy Halloween!

(Unsurprisingly, it’s an apocryphal quote, but I still like it.)

That’s not a typo in the post title. I bought a used u-he CVilization module, the one that looks like a Lite Brite. Yes, I had it before, then decided about a year later that I didn’t need it because dead-simple mixing was enough for my purposes.

But this year in particular, I’ve been wanting more ways to mix multiple related sources, placing them in different spots in the stereo field and moving them (typically circling around each other). Silhouette is almost made for this, but its movement has a lopsided lurch which I think suits feedback patching nicely, but not smooth, slow swirling. I’ve tried a number of other things, finally breaking it down to the simplest thing a couple of nights ago:

  • To make something circle in the stereo field requires a sine LFO over its panning. Panning requires left and right VCAs, with one opening as the other closes. (In other words, a 180 degree offset.)
  • To make two or more point sources circle each other in stereo, offset the phase of that LFO an appropriate amount. A quadrature LFO conveniently provides 4 outputs with 90 degree relative offsets from each other. Again, two VCAs per voice, then mix the L and R channels together.
  • My Doepfer A-150-1 provides the 8 VCAs with mix outputs for groups of 4, which is perfect. And Multimod, or Bitwig Grid and 4 outputs of OptX, can provide the quadrature LFO. (It may not be exactly 90 degree offsets, but close enough.)

But patching both sides of 8 Stackables in the front of that 6HP Doepfer module is pretty messy. I started checking ModularGrid both for quadrature LFOs, and a better mixing solution… and found CVilization.

CVz’s mode 4 is a quad panner — specifically designed to rotate 1-4 inputs to 1-4 outputs quadraphonically. You can rotate each one with an encoder, orbit automatically, rotate with CV, or have it “hop” to a random position when a transient is detected. And they can all rotate at their own rates and directions if you don’t want to keep them all synchronized.

I’m not doing quadraphonic, I’m doing stereo. But if you take the two rear outputs, filter them a little and mix them with the front outputs, you get a simple “fake quad” effect. I could also use it with Nearness… or run the “back” outputs through other effects for additional fun. Options are good. And when I had CVz the first time, I also found several other alternative uses for mode 4.

CVz’s mode 1 is a matrix mixer, which is really intuitive to use if you stay away from its options pages for quantization. (Quantizing in a matrix mixer is a pretty niche thing anyway.) And there’s an option to be able to rotate the inputs and/or outputs relative to the matrix settings using CV, which would also create the opportunity for more movement and morphing. Good stuff.

Mode 2 and 3 are very cheat-sheet dependent, and they don’t do anything I particularly need that MD2 or other things can’t do better. But some work is happening on new firmware for CVz, including a quad oscillator, which might be fun when I’m not using the other modes.

The other module I found in my search is Root Locus from Nekyia Circuits. It’s a similar design to the Serge VCFQ filter, but people seem to find it more characterful, and the extra features handy — dual inputs with a crossfader, and an alternate output with CVable mode. It turned up in my search because when self-oscillating it becomes a quadrature VCO/LFO. I could make space for it, and use it both for modulation purposes as well as using the bandpass and notch outputs to treat with different effects (as recently suggested in a MW thread). But I’ll hold off a while and see how things fare; it’s more of a fun alternate way of doing some stuff I can already do than a new function.

To help myself calm down and get to sleep, there’s this routine I have started going through. It merges a meditation technique, a breathing exercise, and a “body scan” technique that I read about at random in Prevention magazine probably in the 80s or 90s.

Lie on your back if possible, or on your side if necessary. Make sure it’s a relaxed and sustainable position. (I had to go through physical therapy once after a long habit of tucking one arm under my pillow and tilting my head down to rest on it. Not recommended.)

Cycle through parts of your body, starting at the toes. Inhale slowly and deeply (through your nose if at all possible), thinking to yourself “My toes are relaxed and comfortable.” Make sure they really are and wiggle around, shift positions, tense and release if necessary. Even more slowly, exhale deeply (also through your nose), while thinking/subvocalizing “haa.” Imagine that your exhalations carry away your worries with them, and empty those lungs. (I don’t personally like to hold in between inhale/exhale or exhale/inhale, but do what is comfortable and relaxing for you.)

The specific parts you name don’t matter — the point is to (A) check on and relax your whole body, and (B) make it specific enough that you’re getting plenty of these deep, slow breaths. At the end I usually go with “I am relaxed and comfortable” to bring it all together.

I like to cycle through different vowel sounds on the exhale — again, the specific sounds don’t matter, but I find this keeps things a little more engaging so my mind is less likely to wander.

I’ve found that by the time I go through the whole body, I’m pretty close to sleep. Or at least, my mind is calmer and my body is more relaxed.

a rough week

I’m kind of wondering whether the cat and I had the same illness — some gut infection that just didn’t show up in the cat’s veterinary tests. (Almost certainly not norovirus, because the one that affects cats is very different than the human one.)

Rico, thankfully, has not done his painful-sounding yowl for a couple of weeks now. I’m not sure he’s eating his normal amount of regular food yet, but he is super enthusiastic about the new probiotic bites I’ve been giving him.

I was sick the previous Saturday morning but recovered pretty well by lunchtime, fine Sunday through Tuesday night. I spiraled into a panic attack Tuesday night noticing my heart rate was high, and Wednesday was miserable. Thursday and Friday were not good but I managed to work. Saturday I was fine… and I probably overate when we visited my parents. Yesterday was bad again. Today I’m not at 100%, but I’m enduring work OK and ate a normal breakfast.

The biggest symptoms for me have been lower back pain (which I thought was from the deck work, but I’m not so sure anymore), lack of appetite and super low energy (physical and emotional), chills, and what seems to me like an elevated heart rate. Thankfully no actual throwing up, nor really bad diarrhea, nor fever. I think I’m just going to take it easy the next few days in terms of diet and activity, and see if it’ll work out. If it’s something viral that’s all that can really be done anyway. But once I am feeling better, I do want to go ahead and look into an official diagnosis and some help for the anxiety. There certainly are a lot of anxiety triggers in today’s world, and they don’t all rhyme with Chump.

During this same week, my spouse has been having a bad RA flareup. Hands, arm and then shoulder. She doesn’t think it was the change in the weather (because that came first) nor the deck teardown (because she doesn’t think she did that much, compared to some other gardening work she’s done) but more of a coincidence.

So, it’s been a rough one for us; hopefully this week will be much better. I didn’t really do much musically, aside from trying out a new early access synth plugin, Sine Machine. It’s an additive synth, with some clever ways of manipulating envelopes, tremolo and pitch variation across the partials, and a clear glassy sound like late 80s FM synths without the FM, which especially shines with unison detuning. It’s definitely got some bugs and an unfinished interface at the moment, but the sound is gorgeous and the potential to be even better once MPE support and some other issues are fixed is pretty wonderful.

Thankfully, both the dogs have finally gotten used to the new back stairs and don’t have to be cajoled or carried. That took some of the load off.

all hands on deck

Saturday, we had thunderstorms most of the day.

Sunday we demolished our old deck and put up the stairs. Here’s a progress shot when we first took a break:

We knew, when we first bought this house 15 years ago, that the deck was not very well constructed. But we didn’t realize just how bad it was until we had to tear it down. I am not a carpenter, architect or this kind of engineer but I know wrong when I see it.

  • We knew that more than one joist was rotten. What we didn’t know is there was exactly one that wasn’t rotten. It seemed to be newer wood, horizontally nailed to an older one that was pretty far gone.
  • In the middle of the photo you can see the only support post — and I use “support” in the loosest possible sense — where a joist or beam was sitting atop it, rather than horizontally nailed to the side. There were no joist hangers or brackets, and no big bolts — just nails. A few of those nails had sheared off, and about half had simply worked loose over time.
  • None of the posts were anchored in the ground at all, just sitting atop the concrete pad. One of the posts was nailed to a fencepost that is embedded in a blob of concrete — but you can see that fencepost itself at the left side of the photo, it’s not in great condition itself. At least most of the posts were still solid and not rotten.
  • There were attempts at diagonal bracing… just nailed onto the side of joists and posts.
  • The “beams” weren’t what I would call beams, more just… edge pieces.
  • There was nothing at all resembling a moisture barrier.
  • The ledger — the board that is attached to the house — is supposed to be protected by flashing which redirects water from getting behind it, and is supposed to be attached to the house with carriage bolts every few inches. It had no flashing and was nailed in place maybe every 3 feet. One of those nails was sticking out a good three inches, bent and rusted.

Here’s the “finished” state for now. We’re leaving that railing and lattice in place until we get a proper fence and a new gate put in — since the post up against the house isn’t anchored to the ground, the only thing keeping it upright is a remaining bit of decking attached to the ledger. Probably what we’ll do when the fence is removed is paint the ledger white and leave it on.

There’s still most of the opposite side that we left in one awkward piece, leaning out of the way, and a lot of mostly-rotten scrap wood with nails in it that we will have to dispose of. The entire set of steps on its stringers came out in one piece, and we may be able to use that to replace the rotting railroad ties that lead up from the patio to the back yard level. But we accomplished the main goal: making it safe to step outside the back door. It was a lot of work, which we had been perfectly willing to pay someone else to do if they had showed up, but we exchanged being very sore (my spouse had a bad RA flareup and my back has lodged a long list of complaints) for saving a chunk of money.

We have much more confidence in these steps — rated for 1000 pounds, OSHA certified, not built by amateurs, and rock-steady as you walk on it. The dogs however, are not thrilled. Lady was seriously reluctant to go up at first, but is getting better. Yankee is a bundle of neuroses covered in scraggly fur, and is often weird about stairs and hallways; right now he will run down the steps if you place him on the landing, but won’t come up without being carried — and he will often not want to be picked up, instead barking at the door and then running away when you try to assist him. (And sometimes he asks for an escort just to go to the kitchen and drink some water.) Crazy little weirdo.

We still have a lot of home stuff left to take care of. Some of it is cosmetic, some more functional but not quite as high priority. But the big expensive issues, and the ones involving personal safety and keeping our house from collapsing are taken care of.

Update on Rico: as of yesterday afternoon the visiting doctor who did his ultrasound Thursday still hadn’t sent the full report to our vet’s office. There were apparently some communication problems because the x-ray, blood pressure readings etc. they sent her had to be re-sent too. But what we do know is… the ultrasound didn’t show anything.

With nothing else to go on, they speculated based on his age that he might have cancer that might show up in an abdominal ultrasound (Thursday was just his heart/chest)

His heart rate was in the 160-170 range despite being sedated (he was very anxious, as many cats are at the vet) and they were expecting 140. (Looking around online I see wide ranges of “normal” values for cats from different vets, so I would not worry about this too much if it weren’t for the bloodwork results.) They asked me to check on his heart rate at home when he’s relaxed, over the next couple of days. This is a bit tricky, because there are only 3 places where you can normally feel a cat’s heartbeat, they might not want to be touched there for very long unless they’re really relaxed and content… and then they’re purring hard. But I think I measured around 130-140 last night.

He hasn’t made his startling painful yowling noise for the past few days, and the probiotics I’m giving him (Pet Honesty bites, which he absolutely adores) seem to be working too. So maybe this was a passing thing. I don’t want to subject him to more medical procedures that will make him uncomfortable if they can’t solve anything and he’s not in distress. On the other hand… if he does have cancer it’s better to catch it earlier rather than later. Hmmm.

I’ve got about 21 minutes of music recorded, and a Bitwig project with the foundation for the next track. This has been more “assembled” than most, with individual drones and sequenced loops being made in separate sessions and then glued together, with or without additional parts. I’m leaning toward this being similar to Parallax or Luminous Phenomena, with two or three roughly 20-minute tracks consisting of stitched-together sections that flow together.

So far, there’s a been less live playing — even what I played on the bass guitar got turned into a captured drone. But it works overall, and that’s what’s important. Maybe for contrast, I will have a section where there’s a lot more live improv, if I can make it coherent with the rest.

My latest read was Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston. Written by a local, it’s a middle-grade — but not childish — novel about a non-binary kid confronting conservative, patriarchal, transphobia, gender essentialism, and misogyny (these are all pretty much the same thing) as well as complex feelings about family, a friend with depression, etc. Despite sounding super heavy, it’s charming and infectiously fun and I want to read the rest of the series.

The author was a former HP fan who felt betrayed by JKR’s swing from “beloved children’s author” to “billionaire TERF troll.” Callie was originally going to be a trans boy, but that just didn’t feel quite right — “definitely not a girl, but also not a boy” did. In figuring out why, the author’s own nonbinary egg was cracked.

ubiquitous

u-he Uhbik is a suite of effects plugins with similar interfaces, which originally was released in 2007. I probably got it around 2010 or so at a nice discount. At the time, some of the effects it came with had very little competition, but (as with GRM Tools) other alternatives sprung up along the way, so it didn’t remain state-of-the-art forever.

But still, up through 2025 I have found Uhbik-Q (a parametric equalizer) useful. it displayed no spectrogram or Hz values anywhere, requiring me to tune it with my ears alone, and it just had a nice vibe as a companion to more surgical equalizers. And Runciter, which combines fuzz, overdrive and an enveloped filter, still sounded great. The flanger and phaser were a little bit eclipsed by other offerings but still worth using for their particular approach, and the reverb — on those rare occasions when I remembered it existed — also still had some life left in it.

u-he just dropped Uhbik 2.0, a free update for owners of the original. Updated interfaces, VST3 and CLAP support, built-in modulation, a new compressor plugin, more filter types for Runciter, another reverb model for the reverb, less cryptic names, a little fresher DSP code etc. The EQ does show Hz values now, but not a full spectrum and it’s still vibey. I still am not really a fan of the delay, but I have plenty of those. I could wish the visual feedback for modulation was a little more “live” as it is with Bitwig, but that’s a modest nitpick. It’s a lovely update.

While I’m on powers of 2, Joranalogue announced the upcoming Walk 4 module a few weeks ago, to be released sometime in the remaining quarter of 2025. It’s an interesting concept — a quad sample and hold which adds input voltages to a channel rather than merely replacing it, combined with an auto-reset feature to create steppy ramp modulation, a quad random source to create “random walk” steppy modulation, and a Constraint CV that reduces step sizes as they get farther away from 0V. Its internal clock tracks V/OCT, or each stage can be clocked externally.

This is one of those modules which doesn’t necessarily have a prescriptive use, but can do a variety of things. It’s not going to replace my Clep Diaz, which steps a precise number of steps per cycle, but it’ll do things in a similar spirit along with a lot of other stuff. I’m particularly keen to try processing other CV and audio with it, generating related variations, which should fit right in with Multimod, Just Friends, Silhouette, Nearness, Planar etc.

It’s replacing my Zorlon Cannon. I know, I liked ZC and kind of missed it after selling it the first time. But I have tools to generate similar shenanigans, and its flexibility pales in comparison to what I expect from Walk 4.

New Survey Finds Anti-Trans Ads Ineffective, Disliked by Voters

As it turns out, political ads that attack trans people are unpopular with not just Democrats but Republicans. Even the people who don’t care about trans rights are tired of the obsession with picking on trans people, likely seeing absolutely no relevance to the economy or any of the issues they actually care about.

Not only that, but by a 21% margin, voters would rather back a candidate who supports trans rights over one who opposes them. 74% of people say that trans folks deserve dignity and respect. 58% overall (and even 45% of Republicans!) say that the government should stop interfering with trans rights and health care.

But MAGA just can’t offer anything that will actually help — the only thing they can deliver is hate and distractions. Remember how T***p was going to fix the price of eggs and supposedly that’s why he had so much support? Oh ho ho ho. Here is data from those horrible woke socialists at… Harvard Business School.

Compare that to wages, with this absolutely dismal forecast…

Given their lack of an alternative, I think the MAGA types will just keep doubling down on the hate and lies until the entire movement totally stalls out and crashes.

But I sure hope Democratic strategists and the media are paying attention here. The survey data very much counters the narrative that dragged on all spring and summer about how Democrats lost because they were “too woke” on trans rights, which everyone apparently just pulled out of their asses (despite the Harris campaign barely touching on it at all, instead following the HRC’s recommendation to ignore political attacks on trans people.). Now we have Zohran Mamdani, who apparently really knows how to run a campaign, literally dedicating an entire video to trans rights and featuring the story of Sylvia Rivera, and getting praised widely for it. So, strategists and candidates, consider that in your calculations.

of hearts

Yup.

You see, caring, especially about people you don’t know, is one of those terrible things that only leftists do. Even respecting other people enough not to be a total dick to them, is failing to be competitive and assert supposed dominance or the superiority of whatever in-groups you belong to either by accident of birth or by choice. It’s anti-capitalist and unmasculine. So is, apparently, wanting to live in a world that’s not starving and choked by poison… because I guess a Real Man ™, a true patriot, would just power through the smog and the pesticides and microplastics and let the weak die.

I kind of don’t want to go from there to talking about my cat, so let me first talk about GRM Tools Atelier. There has been at least a constant low-key hum of hype around it for several months now, ever since Superbooth at the very least. GRM Tools was once (apparently) an amazing and unique set of spectral effects plugins, from INA GRM, the other French audio research group that wasn’t IRCAM. The world caught up and somewhat passed them by. Then earlier this year they announced a new suite of tools and an apparently well-designed interface that unifies them. No exciting new types of effects really, just a nice wrapper for it. Of course I’ve long said that how creative tools feel to use, and the approaches they encourage, are often the most important factor. But also, I feel like I have things well covered with what I have, so I’m not convinced to spring for it.

As it turns out, the suite of available tools is really quite limited to start. They’re promising to add more modules to their system over the next couple of years (at no additional cost). The development team is apparently two people, so they’re going to have their hands full delivering on promises as well as dealing with support.

The bigger strike against them is… it’s Mac-only, at least until “early 2026.” And that sends up red flags for me. If you’re planning on a multiplatform release, but you don’t develop in a multiplatform way from the start, and plan to catch up later, with your small overworked team? It’s honestly not a great sign.

Look, I love some of what Madrona Labs has done, and the ideas behind most of their synths. And Aalto is certainly among my top favorite softsynths of all time. But with Sumu… it was announced in December 2017, to be released originally in Spring 2018. And then — in between sporadic “coming soon” and “taking longer than expected” updates, early 2019, fall 2021, and then “Early access release lacking a few features” in fall 2023, which actually shipped in May 2024. There have been 1.0 and 1.1 releases since then, but frankly the MPE is still fairly broken and it’s just awkward to use. It was a great concept, but it just did not come together IMHO. Part of that development hell was working on Mac first with a “semi-multiplatform” approach and then trying to port to Windows.

With GRM Atelier, from the reviews it sounds like they have an impressive interface, but again, it’s just Mac-only right now, with a limited number of plugins, and some of the plugins are really not best-in-class. They’ve also had an awkward release with complaints about discounts not applying correctly, PayPal not working, existing accounts not being recognized etc. I just have no confidence in it.

A couple of recent reads:

The Out Side, edited by The Kao. An anthology of short, autobiographical comics from a number of trans and nonbinary authors. Mostly uplifting and heartening, and kind of cozy. More of this feeling, please!

Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw. One of the original books about nonbinary gender identity before it was even called that — in fact the community’s use of terminology has evolved enough that the author updated the edition about 10 years ago to make sure it wasn’t misinterpreted. Of course it was much more radical when it was written than it is now, and I kind of wish I could read the original version and feel how it would have hit people at the time. (I kind of find the history of gender theory over the last 100 years or so interesting, both in terms of the general public’s understanding more so the queer community. In Transit was really good for that.) Overall it was probably one of the better books on the subject, though I skipped over the plays at the end. (Theater is just not my thing for the most part, and I can’t think of much that’s duller than reading the script for a play, unless it’s reading a musical score.)

One thing they did which I thought was very cool, was in the intro to the Chinese translation, included a note that, when she dies, she’d like to be called upon by nonbinary people as an ancestor. My religion also has a tradition of ancestor veneration, and I’ve been unsure about doing that with some other figures from history. But I will be sure to do this (may that day not come too soon).

Okay, the cat. His urinalysis came back normal, which is great (the vet had seemed particularly worried about kidney issues). But in his bloodwork, what jumped out was a test for stress hormones that indicate stress in the walls of the heart, with a normal range of 0-100… his was 1500. I’m waiting on scheduling more diagnostics (EKG, x-ray and ultrasound). Very likely, HCM (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy), which tends not to show any signs until it’s progressed a lot, and about which “the outlook is extremely variable” depending on the cause. Hyperthyroidism is both a common and easier to deal with cause, but I guess there’s not been anything pointing strongly to that. So we’ll see.

He’s 14, so a senior but he may still have a good few more years in him. Whatever time he has, I want him to be comfortable and happy.

coming apart and coming together

“The carpenter guy says he should be able to deal with our busted deck this week.“

This did not happen. Friday as we were going out to dinner, my spouse said “why don’t we look into doing this ourselves” and I said “I was thinking the same thing.” That deck is going to cause serious injury if we let it go any longer, and she’s already had some nightmares about it.

Demolition of a small, not-very-tall deck that’s already half-demolished itself is well within our capabilities. The fence/gate replacement can wait a little bit, since we can just leave the existing side railing and lattice in place for the moment. For the stairs, we found OSHA-certified prefab aluminum stairs, which from the reviews are popular with elderly folks who have mobile homes, for really not much more than what lumber, railings and hardware would have cost to build our own stairs (and I don’t trust my construction skills very much). So those stairs are ordered, and if ship time and weather permit, we can get this done next weekend.

I texted the carpenter to cancel, and he said he’d been in the hospital since Wednesday and apologized for not contacting me to say so. Probably that’s true. But his “I’ll get back to you to schedule that” failed to happen twice previously and it seems like random stuff just keeps happening with contractors and they don’t let their customers know. It’s frustrating.

Also frustrating: contractors who have websites but 100% ignore email and web contact forms. Auto shops that say you need to make an appointment online, but all it does is tell you you’ll get an email within one business day instead of being able to pick a time. (I had that last weekend with tires — instead of waiting for Dobbs to patch a slow leak, I made the longer drive to Plaza Tire and just got it done without an appointment. Unfortunately it was unpatchable, but I got a pretty good discount on four new tires, which was going to have to happen in a couple years or less anyway. And then a couple of hours after I’d finished with that, Dobbs emailed me to say I didn’t need an appointment and could come in at any time. Why doesn’t your website say that, then? :P)


“I’m taking a little bit of time to gather my thoughts on the next album project.“

Things just sort of started to mesh together. I’m blending the sequencer-based fun with the drone/texture beauty, and overall it has the attitude of “guy in a chicken suit in Portland when Kristi Noem was trying to find the alleged violent anarchists.”

Our cat Rico has a vet appointment at the unfortunate time of 7:30 AM Monday. One night last week he was lying there in bed next to me while I was reading, and he suddenly yowled like I’ve never heard him do before, startling the crap out of me. He had a look like he was startled himself, or angry or (more likely) in pain. He has done it a few more times since then… sometimes followed by a quick dive for the litterbox. His poo has been more squishy and stinky than usual lately (since he doesn’t bury it, these things are unfortunately SUPER OBVIOUS) despite no changes in food. Hopefully it’s something that can be easily cured.

Our dog Lady had her own vet visit not too long ago. She had some kind of skin infection (whether mites or something else, we don’t really know) and was scratching herself pretty badly and incessantly, some bare spots in her fur and some bleeding. A combination of anti-itch meds, an anti-fungal and an antibiotic, along with a flea-tick-mosquito shot and a heartworm shot, have helped enormously. But she did have a low number on a thyroid test which needs to be looked at again, because it may or may not have been affected by the infection.

reopen

Deep breath.

Okay.

I locked the blog down for a bit because the government’s crazy talk (and that of the fascist think tanks that are writing the playbook) triggered panic attacks. I am unlocking it again because:

  • The panic attacks stopped (pretty quickly).
  • The crazy talk has escalated from “designating 4 million Americans as violent extremists” to “designating 200 million Americans as violent extremists” and has gone from frightening to point-and-laugh ludicrous.
  • If anyone reads this and thinks I’m “nihilistic” or “violent”, then they’re so far disconnected from reality that it simply doesn’t matter what I do or don’t say. It isn’t that I hate the opposite of what the fascists hate, it’s that I am opposed to hate. It isn’t that I want to bully them for their views that I disagree with, it’s that I don’t want anyone to bully anyone and that’s 100% why I disagree with them.

You know what’s violent, nihilistic extremism? Federal agents breaking into an apartment building, trashing people’s homes and dragging zip-tied naked children — American citizens — into the street and into U-Haul vans. Right-wing talking heads saying that “a few school shootings every year are the price we pay for gun rights.” Renaming the Defense Department to “The Department of War” and gathering the generals together to tell them beards are not okay but war crimes are totally fine. Taking funding away from schools and hospitals to punish them for being inclusive.

Those things very recently were considered extremely “Unamerican” but this is what they are trying to turn America into. I don’t think they’re going to succeed in this attempt, and neither do some of the hardcore fascist thinkers who are now afraid of “leftist retribution” in 2029 (again, that’s not our thing). But very real damage is being done right now, and more needs to be done to resist and reverse it, especially by those who are supposed to be representing us in government and those who are reporting on all of this.

Okay, so what else is happening? With me, not the country.

We have an official release at work, finally, after weeks of testing and fixes. The #1 priority now is to improve our QA/testing situation. We have a great deal of automated testing, but it by no means represents complete coverage of features and combinations of features. Anything that relies on the GUI (and there’s a lot of it) is either tested manually or using a third-party automation suite — and changes to the GUI by the development team have far outpaced maintenance of those tests by the perpetually understaffed and overworked QA team. I feel like it’s almost impossible to entirely untangle it, but we’re going to make what incremental improvements we can.

The carpenter guy says he should be able to deal with our busted deck this week. He didn’t name a specific day, and communication and response times have been a little lacking… so I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. I was right on the edge of pursuing a partial DIY solution, because that old deck is more unsafe every week.

I’m taking a little bit of time to gather my thoughts on the next album project. While I’ve been getting really amazing beautiful drone textures lately (either with dual Mesmerisers, the new Dawesome Kontrast, or experimenting with Just Friends or Rings) and considered doing an album consisting entirely of drone snippets, I also have MD2 and Polyllop leading me into a sequenced/moving direction. Really though, I want this to be another album with a specific, let’s call it magical, intent. This won’t be the first time I have done that, but I’m just contemplating the mechanics/process right now.

Recent books:

Rowan Alexandria Bennett, Symphony of the Sojourn: a fantasy tale told by several members of an adventuring party (it’s not shy about being influenced by RPGs), it’s nevertheless a unique setting with some interesting characters… burdened a little by a few very silly character names. I enjoyed it quite a lot anyway, but I did prefer The Tightest Embrace Etc.

Maria Ying, The Moth of the House of Hua: a very short entry in the series about uber-rich lesbian sorceresses and monsters. Honestly, skippable.

Martha Wells, All Systems Red: so I had the idea that I was going to reread all the Murderbot books. Except, I don’t actually have all of them, some were library loans. Also, while I enjoyed it and had some laughs, it was better the first time around and doesn’t particularly need rereading, at least not yet.

Benedict Patrick, The Flight of the Darkstar Dragon: a weird fantasy setting and some likeable characters. Fun but not really a rock-your-world sort of thing, I’d say.

Benedict Patrick, They Mostly Come Out at Night: a grimmer fantasy setting. I only am a little ways in and I’m not super into it but I’ll probably keep going.

Gordon White, The Chaos Protocols: I read this a while back. It’s more or less about using chaos magic in the present day. The first chapter talks somewhat astutely about the economics of the world (slightly pre-Trump), and how things are not designed for our benefit. It says we need to reject the idea that those economics are our objective reality, and remember that the whole system is imposed on us. Okay, yeah. It mentions “the black iron prison” of that Philip K Dick book I started reading and gave up on… meh. Then there is a questionable interpretation of quantum mechanics and an insistence that there is no doubt that psi powers are beyond doubt, and I started twitching. Then a self-initiation ritual that syncretizes a bunch of stuff and I just had to nope out and abort the reread. This isn’t my path.