tylik

A lot of people are posting their Planned Parenthood stories, and my initial thought is that I don't really have any, or that mine are just too boring. But then, thinking about it, in some ways, that's kind of the point.

When I was seventeen, and living on my own (or at least, renting a house with a number of friends, as I had been since I was fifteen) I thought I didn't have health insurance because I had been told that my father had removed me from his plan when I moved out.* So when I decided that I wanted to go on birth control pills, I went to the local planned parenthood.

And the people were just so sweet. They listened to me. They were really glad and encouraging that I was informed and proactive about my own sexual health. They answered all my questions. (That particular branch was only sometimes picketed, but the contrast between the sweet and encouraging people inside, and the really mean and nasty ones outside - who tended to make assumptions about me and call me names - is the kind of thing that stays with you.)

I worked out my insurance situation while I was back at the university, but then returned to Planned Parenthood soon after I left, before I'd figured out my new insurance (having been with Group Health all my life, Microsoft insurance was pretty confusing.) And I stayed with them from all my gynecological care for several years, just because I liked the people so much and I preferred to receive it in such a supportive environment - and I liked to be paying them full rates when I could afford it, having maxed out their sliding scale at the other end when I was younger.

So... it's really boring. And moreso because I was privileged enough to have other options (even when I didn't know it.) But an awful lot of what Planned Parenthood does is that kind of boring absolutely essential kind of stuff - and often for people who don't have other options.

* Actually, this turned out not to be true - he wasn't actually able to do that, but it's not like I tried to use health insurance I didn't think I had.

I really love book release days. Yay, books!

I really, really hate DRM.

Seriously, I know this is not something most authors have control over* but dealing with DRM on books I've legally purchased is a giant PITA** and it just makes me so sad.

I mean, I'm lucky. I am physically capable of reading books from a proprietary reader. It's just not my preferred way of doing so, and hugely inconvenient. (I do most of my fiction read via TTS. Because then I can read books while doing all kinds of other tasks. Otherwise I just don't have time to read very much fiction at all.)

But again, I'm lucky, because I have a lot of friends where it's not a matter of preference or convenice but of accessibility. And for the record, no, I don't think "just buy the audiobook" is a reasonable answer. Though it's an answer that I might choose for some circumstances. (Nor, admittedly, is this the only problem I have with DRM. But it's the one that I run into on a near daily basis and it drives me up a fricking tree.)

* Or at least, not beyond the level of "publish with major publishing house or not" and seriously, just not going there.
** There is a better tool chain for removing DRM from most kindle based ebooks, but I go out of my way not to buy from Amazon.

Sometimes the best thing about working in a *nix environment is the selection of big hammers that it gives you. (No, really, I thought I had my modelling environment entirely working before going to bed last night. In fact, I just had all the parts I actually care about working, as opposed to silly things like dropping movies.)

I gave someone my LJ address, saying I was going to post all these pictures there... and then decided the ello photo handling interface was easier to deal with considering. So I give you, People Hiding Alone at Neurosciences. #SfNretreat

https://ello.co/tylik/post/_2K18D14Kp771KRiJk0vtQ

So, how many of you are on Diaspora? Do you use it? Why or why not? (I'm tylik on http://diasp.org )

(as posted elsewhere...)

(I've thought about writing something like this many times. It's possible I already have. If so, sorry.)

Y'know, folks (and I see a lot more of this on facebook, but I don't write longer format posts there, because facebook) could you maybe think a bit before posting your introvert are actually the bestest chosen people comments? Because there's a lot of extravert hate in there, and I'm really getting tired of seeing it. (This has generally been fading, but I just saw a few more of them recently.)

Apparently extraverts prefer small talk to talking about anything substantive, and are poor listeners, aren't socially sensitive, and like conflict. Also, they jabber all the time and dominate any gathering, and follow their poor introverted friends around and try to force them to interact. (Rather than spending a huge amount of time and energy taking care of their special snowflake introvert friends who apparently want social interaction, but only specific kinds of social interaction, and can't seek it for themselves.) Oh, yeah, and introverts are super rare and chronically misunderstood.* This is not even to get into the "introvert or extravert" quizzes that are all "Are you a good, sensitive, caring introvert? Or a brutal, clueless, and mean extravert."

Um, really?

One of the funny bits here is that I'm not really that extraverted. I mean, there isn't an agreed set of definitions here (so almost all of this involves someone talking out of their asses) but while I like my social time, you don't have to know much about my life to know that it's not really structured around social time. I'm fairly outgoing, I'm socially confident, and as least some of the time I'm reasonably socially clueful. None of these things mean that I'm an extravert. (Of course, enough people have told me that I'm *such* an extravert that I'm pretty sure when they post this stuff they mean me.)

Even assuming there's a good way to measure introversion, there's a lot of stuff being conflated here. And you want to watch those conflations, because even if there's some kind of measureable difference in the probabilities of this or that, on a population basis, that doesn't mean they are predictive for any given individual. For instance, men are fairly likely to be sexually interested exclusively in women. That's a way stronger association than most of the tendencies that are being discussed wrt introversion. And yet, I think most people get why generalizing along those lines is fucked up. When we're talking about the more common "this population is slightly - but statistically significantly - more likely to be inclined in foo direction" the generalizations are not only problematic, they're also really weak.

There are awkward, socially clueless extroverts. (Quite a few, really, especially in geek circles.) There are uncreative, oblivious introverts. I've had friends who insisted that they were introverts (and that I'm an extrovert) repeatedly try to drag me to parties when I just wanted to stay home and study. (Which is not to say I always want to stay home and study.)

I get that introvert pride is a thing. And I'm good with that. (Though most being in introvert majority communities, it's sometimes a little odd.) There are a bunch of different axes, here, that are at least partially independent. Also, putting people who are different from you down doesn't really reflect well on you.

* Depending on how you define it - and I distrust all the definitions, frankly - introverts are somewhere between a third of and slightly more than half the population. Of course, introverts might seem more rare if they don't talk to eachother very much. Though, people, isn't that why there's an internet?

So, today I brought in the year's first eggplants,

Which I think roasted along with some peppers and shallots from the market, and then mixed in with quinoa, chick peas, olive oil, balsamic vinegar (I'd have used lemon juice by preference, but didn't have any), a pile of finely chopped parlsey, rau ram and a bit of oregano, and then salt, pepper and some ground coriander, fenugreek and aleppo pepper.

This is damned tasty.

This evening's Chen class was interrupted by mushroom hunting:



And also getting to visit with one of my favorite families, and exploring a neighbor's garden which is pretty magical even when it isn't full of chanterelles.

So, the last couple of years I keep asking anyone who sell herbs at the market if they carry rau ram, aka vietnamese corriander, vietnamese cilatro, aka pretty much my favorite herb. Well, at least, my favorite one that I have to work to get.( Read more... )

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