I wonder what it would be like to have a place all my own. It isn't really an experience I have had, to be honest, and the idea of it has been tickling my brain for awhile now. I lived with my parents when I was young and they gave me reasonable latitude for organizing my own space. On my ceiling they painted a giant bird modeled vaguely after thunderbirds I have seen in Native art just because I wanted it, for example. In the end they were the ones calling the shots though, and I got to express preferences, but I didn't get to vote.
In university I lived with other people in many configurations. I rented rooms from strangers, shared houses with friends, and lived in residence. In none of those cases did I really have control over my space. Residence came the closest, I guess, but I still just had a single room and there were a great many rules about what exactly I could do with it.
After university I moved in with Wendy, and have been living with her ever since. Technically I have an equal vote in how we organize our space, but in practical terms she makes the great majority of those decisions. She cares more than I do about each individual thing, so we just do her thing by default.
Lately I have been looking around our place thinking about what I would do if I didn't have to consult anybody at all. How would I organize it? What would I get rid of? Some things wouldn't change, of course, in terms of organization, but I would throw out or give away most of our possessions. The place would be empty, clean, and austere.
It would be glorious.
This has me thinking about alternate arrangements for partnerships. There are people, for example, that live in a different city than their spouse. Not because of some temporary problem, but by design. They like the long term partnership and they like their own space and quiet.
I sometimes consider how it would work to arrange such a thing. It would ideally be a lot closer range than different cities though - that is farther than I want! In theory you could have separate areas within a single dwelling, but I think that wouldn't work for Wendy and I. Her stuff would encroach and she would want to fill all my wonderful empty space with her possessions. Maybe if we just had adjacent condo, so we could spend all the time we wanted together but at the end of the day I retreat to my room, in my place, that doesn't have any stuff in it aside from the most bare bones requirements.
I also wonder what I would be like if I had had that single living experience. Would I see the world differently if I had rented my own apartment for a year or two after university, and eventually moved in with her? I imagine what it would be like, but maybe it is a silly fantasy, and I wouldn't actually end up with things the way I want them. Perhaps I would end up with piles of takeout boxes stacked in the corner because there is no one else to want them cleaned up! I haven't tried it, so I don't know for sure.
Maybe someday I will be rich and can just buy my own place so I can test this out. Until then, financial pressure, if nothing else, will have to keep this an unknown.
Friday, May 24, 2019
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
You gotta waste money to get elected
Ontario is doing something really stupid right now. The Conservative government has decided that we shouldn't take part in the carbon tax plan that the Canadian government is going with, so Ontario is being flooded with ads bashing the plan. The ads basically talk about how the carbon tax is taking money away from families, and that Ontario has a better plan. Spoiler: Ontario does not have a better plan and the money is paid back to people anyway because the carbon plan is revenue neutral.
The TV ads have pictures of people doing normal things when out of nowhere money starts falling out of their pockets, showering the ground with coins. The hapless people look on in dismay as their wealth rolls away, helpless before the power of taxation. Naturally the ads don't show the money flowing back into their pockets later, even though that is what will happen.
It makes me so bitter to see this. It should be absolutely illegal for the government to spend public funds to bash other political parties, but that is what is happening. The Liberals are in charge federally, so the provincial Conservatives waste money advertising that the Liberal carbon tax plan is hurting families. They don't *say* the word Liberal, or Conservative, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that what is going on here, and even if there were doubt, the idea that it is appropriate for the provincial government to buy advertising time to complain about federal policy is ludicrous.
This is what we get for voting in a buffoon with no policy platform. We get idiotic moves to 'save money' that are implemented foolishly and end up costing more money than they save. We have a premier who simply does not understand anything that he is doing, but is so convinced of his right to rule that he thinks he doesn't *need* to understand.
Just do whatever dumbass thing you want, and ignore the consequences. It is all about the show, after all, not about careful consideration of the results. Like, for example, the gutting of public education and massive increases in classroom size - it saves a few bucks now, but results in a serious reduction in educational quality. We know that long term good public education is an amazing investment that pays for itself many times over, but that isn't relevant to the current government - they need that money to give to big companies, you see.
Wealthy investors need their payouts now, and the consequences of a less educated population are years away, and that is apparently all you need to know.
This is a classic example of a position I have held for years now about 'small government' and 'responsible budgeting' platforms. They are all bullshit. Every government will spend money, often foolishly. You *cannot* choose responsible financial policy, no one offers that.
What you can choose is *how* they waste money. And the Conservatives want to waste it by giving it to the rich and buying ads to talk about how we shouldn't try to prevent climate change. Anything would be better.
The TV ads have pictures of people doing normal things when out of nowhere money starts falling out of their pockets, showering the ground with coins. The hapless people look on in dismay as their wealth rolls away, helpless before the power of taxation. Naturally the ads don't show the money flowing back into their pockets later, even though that is what will happen.
It makes me so bitter to see this. It should be absolutely illegal for the government to spend public funds to bash other political parties, but that is what is happening. The Liberals are in charge federally, so the provincial Conservatives waste money advertising that the Liberal carbon tax plan is hurting families. They don't *say* the word Liberal, or Conservative, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that what is going on here, and even if there were doubt, the idea that it is appropriate for the provincial government to buy advertising time to complain about federal policy is ludicrous.
This is what we get for voting in a buffoon with no policy platform. We get idiotic moves to 'save money' that are implemented foolishly and end up costing more money than they save. We have a premier who simply does not understand anything that he is doing, but is so convinced of his right to rule that he thinks he doesn't *need* to understand.
Just do whatever dumbass thing you want, and ignore the consequences. It is all about the show, after all, not about careful consideration of the results. Like, for example, the gutting of public education and massive increases in classroom size - it saves a few bucks now, but results in a serious reduction in educational quality. We know that long term good public education is an amazing investment that pays for itself many times over, but that isn't relevant to the current government - they need that money to give to big companies, you see.
Wealthy investors need their payouts now, and the consequences of a less educated population are years away, and that is apparently all you need to know.
This is a classic example of a position I have held for years now about 'small government' and 'responsible budgeting' platforms. They are all bullshit. Every government will spend money, often foolishly. You *cannot* choose responsible financial policy, no one offers that.
What you can choose is *how* they waste money. And the Conservatives want to waste it by giving it to the rich and buying ads to talk about how we shouldn't try to prevent climate change. Anything would be better.
Friday, May 17, 2019
Everyone is like me
The other day I was at a doctor's appointment with Pinkie Pie. (Routine, everything is fine.) The two doctors we were seeing were ones we had never talked to before, and they were trying to make small talk with Pinkie Pie. Of course they asked the one thing everyone asks a kid - what grade are you in? That she is being homeschooled came up, and they seized on that. They started asking about university entrance exams for homeschooled kids (I don't know much about it, to be honest) and made it clear that the really important thing about homeschooling was getting good grades on said exams... even though none of us even knew if said exams existed.
They also talked about how wonderful homeschooling was because you can apply to university years early and get started on your career faster. I tried to explain that going to university at age fifteen wasn't for everyone, but they were off, chatting to each other about how great it was that she was being homeschooled so she could skip tons of grades and get working sooner.
It doesn't surprise me that a couple of doctors would see it this way. Their world mostly consists of overachievers who put an uncommon amount of time and energy into their careers. For them, going to university early would have been fine, from a academic perspective at least.
But from my perspective people have forty years to do the career thing, and only a handful of years to do the teenager thing. Rushing to the working world is fine if that is what the teenager in question really wants, but pushing it onto them, or assuming that this is obviously the thing you should do, is a destructive error. They will have so long to grind away in a job - let them grow into it organically, no need to force the issue.
What is particularly frustrating though is how they projected their worldview and experiences onto my kid. They didn't think "Well, there are a ton of reasons for homeschooling, maybe I should ask what the reason is." They immediate leaped to the assumption that I am homeschooling with the purpose of giving my brilliant, overachieving child a head start on her career. If they had asked I might have said that homeschooling is because I want to teach from the Bible, or because fuck the system man, or because school isn't working for her, and those are completely different situations than they are imagining.
Also my kid, while fairly clever, isn't by any means overachieving.
Doctors making all kinds of silly assumptions doesn't affect me directly. These guys assumed that everyone is in the top 5% of humanity academically, and don't notice the fact that this isn't possible, but people assume plenty of things more ridiculous than that.
But it bothers me that they don't seem to notice how it will affect kids in their care. 12 year olds aren't stupid, and when you make it clear that your standard of normal far exceeds their capabilities they notice. When you lead off with the assumption that this kid finds school trivial, that academics are effortless, and that marks on exams are the important thing, you leave kids who struggle in school, get low grades, and do poorly on exams feeling even worse than they already do. Kids that have trouble in these ways are sent the message that they suck constantly and they don't need more of it from their physicians.
A lot of the world struggles mightily with the structures we have in place to measure, control, and evaluate each other. Just because *you* fit nicely into those structures doesn't mean everyone does. Those doctors surely would have agreed that some kids really have trouble in school, but they never bothered to think that the kid they are treating might well be one of those, and just assumed that she was just like them instead.
I want the world to be a place where a lot more people spend a lot more time thinking "What if this person in front of me is someone who finds this thing hard, even if *I* find it easy?"
They also talked about how wonderful homeschooling was because you can apply to university years early and get started on your career faster. I tried to explain that going to university at age fifteen wasn't for everyone, but they were off, chatting to each other about how great it was that she was being homeschooled so she could skip tons of grades and get working sooner.
It doesn't surprise me that a couple of doctors would see it this way. Their world mostly consists of overachievers who put an uncommon amount of time and energy into their careers. For them, going to university early would have been fine, from a academic perspective at least.
But from my perspective people have forty years to do the career thing, and only a handful of years to do the teenager thing. Rushing to the working world is fine if that is what the teenager in question really wants, but pushing it onto them, or assuming that this is obviously the thing you should do, is a destructive error. They will have so long to grind away in a job - let them grow into it organically, no need to force the issue.
What is particularly frustrating though is how they projected their worldview and experiences onto my kid. They didn't think "Well, there are a ton of reasons for homeschooling, maybe I should ask what the reason is." They immediate leaped to the assumption that I am homeschooling with the purpose of giving my brilliant, overachieving child a head start on her career. If they had asked I might have said that homeschooling is because I want to teach from the Bible, or because fuck the system man, or because school isn't working for her, and those are completely different situations than they are imagining.
Also my kid, while fairly clever, isn't by any means overachieving.
Doctors making all kinds of silly assumptions doesn't affect me directly. These guys assumed that everyone is in the top 5% of humanity academically, and don't notice the fact that this isn't possible, but people assume plenty of things more ridiculous than that.
But it bothers me that they don't seem to notice how it will affect kids in their care. 12 year olds aren't stupid, and when you make it clear that your standard of normal far exceeds their capabilities they notice. When you lead off with the assumption that this kid finds school trivial, that academics are effortless, and that marks on exams are the important thing, you leave kids who struggle in school, get low grades, and do poorly on exams feeling even worse than they already do. Kids that have trouble in these ways are sent the message that they suck constantly and they don't need more of it from their physicians.
A lot of the world struggles mightily with the structures we have in place to measure, control, and evaluate each other. Just because *you* fit nicely into those structures doesn't mean everyone does. Those doctors surely would have agreed that some kids really have trouble in school, but they never bothered to think that the kid they are treating might well be one of those, and just assumed that she was just like them instead.
I want the world to be a place where a lot more people spend a lot more time thinking "What if this person in front of me is someone who finds this thing hard, even if *I* find it easy?"
Monday, May 13, 2019
Fallen one
For years I was one of the bright ones, those people who are shining examples to the world. When I looked about at the people around me and saw their phones I saw webbed cracks, shattered panes, screens divided by violence. I was one of the good people though, one of those who could rightly claim to treat my phone properly. I could look down on the seething masses of humanity with a sneer, knowing that I retired a phone after five years of constant use and it was *pristine*.
Yesterday my world came crashing down around me. I walked out my door, put my earbuds in, and put my phone in my jacket pocket. The street crossing countdown began and I ran for the intersection, heedless of the danger. Then a ripping feeling, a burst of noise, and my earbuds flew out of my ears. I spun round and saw my phone lying, still attached to my earbuds, submerged in a puddle.
Panicked, I yanked the phone out of the puddle and frantically tried to dry it off. I must commend the engineers that designed it, no doubt, as somehow despite being quite underwater it is completely functional. Relieved that I hadn't made a mistake of hundreds of dollars worth, I went inside.
And that is where everything broke. I looked at the screen and saw cracks, and suddenly I was down to earth, wading through muck, one of the regular people. I was one of those people whose phone is broken, one of those I had so easily dismissed in years past.
I am one of THEM.
Now I walk bent over, shaking a little, looking about me frightened that other people will see, that they will know. Worried that they will judge me the way I judged others in my past life. Glory replaced with drudgery and fear, paradise lost.
The cracks in the pane reflect the cracks in my soul.
My phone screen is broken, and I am fallen.
Yesterday my world came crashing down around me. I walked out my door, put my earbuds in, and put my phone in my jacket pocket. The street crossing countdown began and I ran for the intersection, heedless of the danger. Then a ripping feeling, a burst of noise, and my earbuds flew out of my ears. I spun round and saw my phone lying, still attached to my earbuds, submerged in a puddle.
Panicked, I yanked the phone out of the puddle and frantically tried to dry it off. I must commend the engineers that designed it, no doubt, as somehow despite being quite underwater it is completely functional. Relieved that I hadn't made a mistake of hundreds of dollars worth, I went inside.
And that is where everything broke. I looked at the screen and saw cracks, and suddenly I was down to earth, wading through muck, one of the regular people. I was one of those people whose phone is broken, one of those I had so easily dismissed in years past.
I am one of THEM.
Now I walk bent over, shaking a little, looking about me frightened that other people will see, that they will know. Worried that they will judge me the way I judged others in my past life. Glory replaced with drudgery and fear, paradise lost.
The cracks in the pane reflect the cracks in my soul.
My phone screen is broken, and I am fallen.
Friday, May 3, 2019
Leverage, or a lack thereof
Wendy linked me to a great article talking about financial leverage and how it interacts with people in different financial situations. The core of the concept is that people's lives are completely different based on the size of the largest financial shock they can absorb. Whether it be through access to credit, family money, cash under the mattress, or any other method of surviving an unexpected money shortage, if you can survive a financial mishap your life is drastically easier. Having to pay back the money later isn't actually that much of a problem so long as your life doesn't explode in the meanwhile.
Everyone ends up faced with small disasters like needing new tires for a car, having something stolen, or having to help a family member with a financial crunch. If you have the wherewithal to deal with that without issue, no problem. If you don't, you can end up in disaster mode - losing your transportation, losing your job, or being stuck with outrageous interest payments. I think that many people who have a large degree of financial resilience underestimate how bad things get, and how fast that happens, when you don't have that backstop against disaster.
I have particularly large financial resilience compared to my household income. Partly this is due to circumstance and luck - my family is stable and could help me if something terrible occurred, for example, but they don't shower me with expensive stuff either. But a really significant part of it is the way I think about risk, resources, and debt. I have a money demon that makes me dread the possibility of being in debt, so I hoard resources to make certain that I never have to worry about financial shocks. I have spent my whole life deeply concerned about this, and even when I was earning a lot I sat on it, at least in part to be certain that when something bad happened I would never have to ask anyone for assistance.
Some people don't have the discipline and worries that I do, so they live closer to the edge, and disasters have a much easier time wreaking havoc in their lives.
Some people have a lot less luck than me in terms of money, so they are stuck closer to the edge regardless of their inclinations.
And of course some people have way more luck than me and so they avoid disaster by dint of being rich, or having rich people around them who can provide insurance against financial shocks.
The better a society protects vulnerable people from financial shocks the more equal it will be, and the better off it will be overall. When rough times come, the rich ride it out, but the poor can lose everything, and the rich scoop up the leavings. We can fix this stuff by having universal health care, so that a disease doesn't ruin your life because you have no resistance to financial shock. We can do similar things with basic income or other social supports. Even things like public education, public transportation, and libraries all help keep people who might otherwise collapse under the weight of a small problem survive and thrive.
Whether a person is easy to leverage via financial shock because they have squandered their money or because they had challenging circumstances doesn't change the way I feel about taking care of them. We don't need to provide luxuries, but making sure that small challenges don't destroy people can improve the overall experience of our society enormously.
Everyone ends up faced with small disasters like needing new tires for a car, having something stolen, or having to help a family member with a financial crunch. If you have the wherewithal to deal with that without issue, no problem. If you don't, you can end up in disaster mode - losing your transportation, losing your job, or being stuck with outrageous interest payments. I think that many people who have a large degree of financial resilience underestimate how bad things get, and how fast that happens, when you don't have that backstop against disaster.
I have particularly large financial resilience compared to my household income. Partly this is due to circumstance and luck - my family is stable and could help me if something terrible occurred, for example, but they don't shower me with expensive stuff either. But a really significant part of it is the way I think about risk, resources, and debt. I have a money demon that makes me dread the possibility of being in debt, so I hoard resources to make certain that I never have to worry about financial shocks. I have spent my whole life deeply concerned about this, and even when I was earning a lot I sat on it, at least in part to be certain that when something bad happened I would never have to ask anyone for assistance.
Some people don't have the discipline and worries that I do, so they live closer to the edge, and disasters have a much easier time wreaking havoc in their lives.
Some people have a lot less luck than me in terms of money, so they are stuck closer to the edge regardless of their inclinations.
And of course some people have way more luck than me and so they avoid disaster by dint of being rich, or having rich people around them who can provide insurance against financial shocks.
The better a society protects vulnerable people from financial shocks the more equal it will be, and the better off it will be overall. When rough times come, the rich ride it out, but the poor can lose everything, and the rich scoop up the leavings. We can fix this stuff by having universal health care, so that a disease doesn't ruin your life because you have no resistance to financial shock. We can do similar things with basic income or other social supports. Even things like public education, public transportation, and libraries all help keep people who might otherwise collapse under the weight of a small problem survive and thrive.
Whether a person is easy to leverage via financial shock because they have squandered their money or because they had challenging circumstances doesn't change the way I feel about taking care of them. We don't need to provide luxuries, but making sure that small challenges don't destroy people can improve the overall experience of our society enormously.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Sparkly and Pink
I got my nails done. Are they not pretty?
It was a couple weeks ago. They are chipping away and not nearly as pretty as they were. Still, shiny.
This wasn't a professional job. I was at a birthday party and part of the thing was a nail polish station, primarily intended for the small girls at the party. Naturally an older man at the party made jokes about how the boys are going next, clearly thinking that no boy would do such a thing. Because girl stuff, ewww!
I went next.
Apparently there were more comments during the event disparaging men or boys getting their nails done, but none of them made in my presence. I guess none of the people there felt up to challenging my masculinity on the basis of a couple mL of sparkles - which is unfortunate, because I had some savage replies all locked and loaded.
The small boy at the party also decided to get his nails done. I hope he didn't have to put up with a lot of flak for that choice, but this family runs pretty conventional, so I expect there was pushback.
I have gotten plenty of weird reactions in the weeks since. Lots of people notice it and are surprised - it isn't normal for me, and it doesn't fit with the rest of my aesthetic.
It does make me a bit sad though when people totally lose their minds about it. I have had medical professionals demand that I parade myself in front of secretaries to show off my nails because a man with nail polish is JUST SO WILD and WOW. It isn't the same as criticism, certainly, but I don't want a gigantic fuss made about me at all - I just want people to shrug and ignore it. I like the idea that if I do something outside the normal gender rules people will be cool with it, not put it on me to be part of the show.
There are people that dress differently to get a reaction, certainly. But most just want to do their thing and be left alone, and usually I get left alone because I look quite expected. For the next few weeks though I will be hoping to just sneak under the radar and not have everyone make a fuss, aggressive or not, about a couple mL of pink goo that happens to be coded 'woman'.
It was a couple weeks ago. They are chipping away and not nearly as pretty as they were. Still, shiny.
This wasn't a professional job. I was at a birthday party and part of the thing was a nail polish station, primarily intended for the small girls at the party. Naturally an older man at the party made jokes about how the boys are going next, clearly thinking that no boy would do such a thing. Because girl stuff, ewww!
I went next.
Apparently there were more comments during the event disparaging men or boys getting their nails done, but none of them made in my presence. I guess none of the people there felt up to challenging my masculinity on the basis of a couple mL of sparkles - which is unfortunate, because I had some savage replies all locked and loaded.
The small boy at the party also decided to get his nails done. I hope he didn't have to put up with a lot of flak for that choice, but this family runs pretty conventional, so I expect there was pushback.
I have gotten plenty of weird reactions in the weeks since. Lots of people notice it and are surprised - it isn't normal for me, and it doesn't fit with the rest of my aesthetic.
It does make me a bit sad though when people totally lose their minds about it. I have had medical professionals demand that I parade myself in front of secretaries to show off my nails because a man with nail polish is JUST SO WILD and WOW. It isn't the same as criticism, certainly, but I don't want a gigantic fuss made about me at all - I just want people to shrug and ignore it. I like the idea that if I do something outside the normal gender rules people will be cool with it, not put it on me to be part of the show.
There are people that dress differently to get a reaction, certainly. But most just want to do their thing and be left alone, and usually I get left alone because I look quite expected. For the next few weeks though I will be hoping to just sneak under the radar and not have everyone make a fuss, aggressive or not, about a couple mL of pink goo that happens to be coded 'woman'.
Monday, April 15, 2019
Smashing limits
What would happen if people had limit breaks?
By limit breaks I mean the ability to suddenly be extremely powerful, far beyond their normal abilities, but to be seriously restricted in terms of how often this could occur. I have been considering what it would do to society, and how it would directly impact warfare and crime in particular.
The exact rules are critical of course, so here is the structure I have been considering: Each person can limit break once and only once in their life. When they do this they become incredibly strong, fast, and tough. Not strictly invulnerable, certainly, but powerful enough to laugh off bullets, car crashes, and other minor irritations. Obviously while doing this they can easily kill anyone else who isn't also limit breaking. The transformation would last for 1 minute and would make them look really cool - wreathed in flames, surrounded by shining armour, or giant claws - something impressive.
I think you would have to prevent children from limit breaking because otherwise everyone's limit breaks would end up being used at age 2 because they *really* wanted a cookie. I don't know what age would make sense to allow them to be used though. I assume that you can't actually test someone to see if their limit break is still available - only they can tell for sure, unless you see them using it.
Clearly this makes a lot of warfare really weird. You couldn't, for example, attack a village of 300 people with 100 soldiers. The villagers just limit break and wreck the soldiers, especially since the soldiers have likely used their limit breaks before! In fact it might become standard to rotate civilians into combat roles temporarily just to use their limit breaks, presuming they are willing to be used in such a fashion.
This would upend a lot of situations where violent crime is involved. You can rob a convenience store with a gun, sure, but maybe the clerk draws a sword made of rainbows and chops you in half... that is not how you want that robbery to go. Policing would also be a lot scarier, since the police can't count on having overwhelming force at their disposal. A couple of really angry people can stomp a SWAT team if that team doesn't have limit breaks available.
It would also lead to some bizarre situations where people might try to get others to use their limit breaks foolishly, bluffing dangerous situations or trying to trick people. Once you get them to burn their one chance at nigh invulnerability, they know you can beat them at any time.
I wonder if this would actually end up in some kind of Orwellian dystopia. The government recording every use of limit breaks and keeping track of which citizens have it available and which do not, monitoring every person so their level of power can be used, if necessary.
Maybe I am just overthinking this though. Having a limit break available, for most situations, is no different than having a gun. I can kill whoever I want if they aren't prepared, and they can't do much to stop me.
My limit break, in case you are curious, is a general glow combined with a gigantic 2 handed translucent orange battle axe. Because I have some people I want to axe a question or two.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)