I have raised an adult

The kid and his husband have flown off for a week in the Outer Banks (with the husband's family). I had almost nothing to do with any of this -- the kid didn't need my advice for booking the flights, or renting the car. They didn't need my help getting to the airport. I didn't have anything to do with their packing.

I'm feeding the cat while they're gone. That's it.

My kid is an adult. 

(I remember taking the kid to the Outer Banks when they were about two, staying with my family. That little little kid in the sunhat has become an adult. I hope he remembers to wear his sunhat at the beach. You will not believe the restraint I am practicing to keep from saying that to him.)

Read This Thread at BlueSky

 Read this thread about why Conservatives oppose certain treatments and approve of others.

There are two pillars of conservative medicine: One is eugenics, the other is a hatred of science as a method of discerning objective truths and a need to replace scientific truth-finding with declarations from conservative authorities.

 

Piano Update

I have assembled instruction books and Dr Skull's ancient Kutzweil and am busily engaged in teaching myself to play the piano. 

Dr Skull, who had actual piano lessons as a kid, cannot stop himself from backseat teaching. Since I don't understand a single thing he tries to tell me, this is doing no good, but no real harm either.

I should probably find someone to give me lessons. But I'm enjoying the process so far, so I'll stick with this for a bit.

My Yard is Full of Fireflies

I dislike summer intensely, as you all know, but I must admit I love this particular season, when -- thanks to the green space behind my house -- my yard is filled with fireflies.

They're so pretty. Also, it's fun to watch the neighbor's cat trying to catch them.

Shamus just ignores them.

Spotted on Tumblr

"I don't think anyone has won a war as many times as Trump has won the Iran war. MAGA!"

Hey! Who Knew?

This guy tells us about a study which shows that cooking meals -- especially if you're bad at it, like I am -- helps stave off dementia. Who knew!

Money Makes You Miserable

So ever since I quit Twitter and have nearly quit FB, I've been spending my social media time on Tumblr or Reddit. (I highly recommend Tumblr, btw, which is the best social media site still in existence.)

Recently on Reddit someone asked "People who have become rich, what's something poor people misunderstand about money?"

I knew they were looking for 'advice' like, "If you stop buying coffee and save that $5.00 instead," or "Getting a second job will" or "cook your own meals because," but as someone who used to be poor and who is now newly rich (okay, sort of rich), I decided to chime in. I said this:

That having money makes life much easier. I was lower middle class most of my life. Now I have enough money. It's just amazing. I don't have panic attacks when we have medical problems, I can buy fresh fruit, high gas prices annoy me, they don't destroy me.

Anyone who says money can't buy happiness is trying to sell you something.

I got lots of likes -- more than I have ever received on a Reddit post -- but I also go a lot of argument.

Money does not buy happiness, people told me, because look at all the miserable rich people.

Money does not buy happiness, they said, because it can't buy family or friends.

Money does not buy happiness, because money actually makes people UNhappy.

Also, my favorite: "Poor people can buy fresh fruit lol"

My favorite was the comment that accused me of being out of touch with what being poor was like. 

Anyway, I'm here to say that while it is true money can't buy a happy family or cure your depression, it can certainly go a long way toward alleviating anxiety, which apparently was 90% of my depression. 

Also, being able to buy all the fresh fruit I want is nearly as nice as being able to buy all the books I want. 

I've certainly known rich people who are assholes (I'm thinking of two specific people here), but they also seem pretty happy. I guess because they think their wealth vindicates their contempt and bigotry? I don't know.

Does having money make people happy? What do y'all think?

What I'm Re-Reading Now

Mostly I have been re-reading Kage Baker's Company series, which if you like science fiction and revolutions, you should give it a go. It's about people chosen as tiny children by a corporation in the 24th century to be rebuilt into immortal cyborgs. The immortality process only works on children younger than five or six, but then those children grow up to work for the Company. An immortal workforce that you don't need to pay! Who never get sick and who will never be old!

The Company has them collecting works of art, rare or extinct species of plants and animals, even various humans whose culture or genetic material will vanish through time. It's all in the service of making the Company and its stockholders even richer than they are, though it's sold to the little cyborg children as preserving things that would otherwise be lost: one of our main characters, for example, the botanist Mendoza, hunts for plants that would otherwise go extinct, while meanwhile attempting to breed a type of maize that will be nutritionally complete, using the maize plants that get lost as climate and farming practices change. 

The Company looks like the good guys at first -- the children who become cyborgs are rescued from terrible situations (wars, earthquakes, the dungeons of the Inquisition), and the work they grow up to do does seem important. As the series progresses, though, we come to see the Company's true motives; and how they handle cyborgs who rebel; and what life is like for someone who is hundreds of thousands of years old. There is also a romance between Mendoza and a different sort of cyborg, one who is not immortal.

These are really good books, and Kage Baker, having finished the Company novels, was starting two new series, one set in a fantasy world and the other set on Mars. Sadly, she died of cancer in 2010, while in her early 50s, leaving those series only barely begun. Still, very much worth reading. Start with Garden of Iden, or else The Bird of the River.  

My kid's Comic

 Are you reading my kid's comic? Read my kid's comic here!

Weather Report

The humidity right now is 100%. And all week the weather guy says highs from 88 to 90. Ugh, summer has arrived,

Declining Birthrate

This article from the Atlantic (gift link) takes a thoughtful, thorough look at why the world population has slowed its increase and may indeed begin declining by 2055. (We're already no longer at a replacement level.) Read the article, but spoilers: it's educating women and giving them access to birth control, as well as underpaying half our workforce. Who can afford kids when rent is half your income?

I'm not convinced a population decline would be a bad thing, given what damage humans are doing to the global climate. Would the world be better off if there were fewer humans? Like, maybe, a couple billion, instead of nine billion?

On the other hand, it's the large population that makes all the things we (I, anyway) love possible: the internet, books, good food, air conditioning, universities, parks...when there were only a billion of us infesting the planet, life was grim indeed. Could we keep the advanced technology, medical knowledge, long lives, and Netflix if there were only a billion of us?

Not to mention the loss of genetic diversity if most of us stop reproducing. Loss of cultural diversity too. 

Then there's the "how do a billion working age people support four billion elderly?" question. But automation could fix that, I suppose. Agricultural robots, driverless vehicles, arcologies...and maybe we can all work to age 75. Not me, mind you. Future old people.

This is a question for science fiction. Back in the previous century, all the books were about how overpopulation would doom us. I remember all those books about women having nine or ten kids each, blissfully delighted to spend their lives changing diapers and cooking dinner. Nothing about the physical toll that many pregnancies took on a woman. All the authors were men, of course. No one seemed to have any notion that if women had a choice, they might not want ten children, or three, for that matter.

I'm currently re-reading Kage Baker's Company series, written mostly at the start of this century, in which (among other things) a coalition of rogue cyborgs decides to save the planet by getting rid of 'bad' humans -- people from Africa, for example, and people in prison, and people in the military, religious people, violent people, it's a long list. What one person, I mean cyborg, thinks is fine, another might decide to doom. This cyborg coalition thinks the planet will be better off if there's only about half a million humans, all kept safely on reservations built specifically for them.

I'm not too worried about the declining population, is all I'm saying. Though I am worried about what fascist governments might do if they see their populations falling. We're seeing a bit of that from MAGA America already. 

Ironing? Really?

This is brought to you by a Reddit post on ironing pillowcases. And sheets. And duvet covers. Also starching shirts. Do people do this anymore?

My mother had an ironing board and an iron and a huge basket full of clothes she was going to get around to ironing any day now. I used to raid it to steal fabric for the little animals I made and the clothes for my dolls. (I made a lot of stuffed animals, but also shirts and shoes and hats for my dolls. I could never figure out how to make pants, but luckily all my dolls were all babies.)

I do remember her ironing my father's handkerchiefs. He had these big white cotton handkerchiefs, and he carried one every day. Men from the 1950s, it was another world. Anyway, she had to keep him supplied with those, so she would crack out the iron when he was getting low. Oh! And she had this thing she put on a Coke bottle -- a real glass coke bottle -- which had holes in it, so she could sprinkle the laundry while she was ironing it. Whaaaat!

Yes, like this!

When I moved out, I bought myself things that had always been somewhere around the house -- screwdrivers, and tin snips, tape, a mop -- but I never bought an iron and I've never needed one. Once when my mother came to visit, she wanted to iron something, so she went out and bought a travel iron and a little ironing board. But when we moved we left it behind.

Generally I only wear clothes that don't need ironing, like shorts and teeshirts, though I did have a linen shirt once. If you hung it up carefully and let it drip dry, it wouldn't wrinkle until you'd been wearing it five or six minutes. I did love that shirt.

And I remember when I graduated high school, my SIL made fun of me because I hadn't ironed the robe before I put it on. (Could you even iron those things? They were 100% polyester.)

Why would you iron sheets? Does it make them feel nicer?

Do y'all iron? and if so, what?

Considering Piano Lessons

Apparently I have decided not to study the classics after all. So now I am considering taking piano lessons.

When I was five, my neighbor advised my mother to get me piano lessons, since I had been messing about on her piano and I was picking up playing it quickly. "What would you rather do?" my mother asked. "Piano lessons or art lessons?"

I picked art lessons, but now that I have a lot of time and money, why not piano lessons, I'm thinking. There's a place in town that gives lessons to adults.

What do you think? Yeah or nay?

I could not be prouder

My kid found just learned that he has been given an internship for this coming academic year. It was a highly competitive application process, so we're very pleased. Also, it's a paid internship, which makes it even better.

He's going to be researching the archeology and historical management of forest lands on Osage land from pre-history to the present. What he learns will go into a graphic novel (which he will write and draw) aimed mostly at children/young adults -- a way to increase scientific understanding of forest management.

His proposal was brilliant, by the way. I have such a smart kid.

I'll share drawings when he starts making them!

Weather Report

Thunder and rain here. The dog is now afraid of thunder. This is because a few days ago when I walked him over to the park, there was a huge blast of thunder directly overhead, which terrified him.

Supposed to rain all week. I like rain, but it does make taking the dog for his exercise a lot more fraught.

Shamus, worrying about thunder