Corner of Bourbon & Division

 Work has been kind of wild tonight. I'm working the AVSEC desk and I've had weird breaches and a case of arson and one airport employee meeting a Tindr date next to one of the departure gates. I'd blame the full moon, except that that was several days ago (and that was also a bit of a wild weekend!). I guess someone just spiked the water with something tonight.

I decided to take a relaxing break from watching Law & Order: SVU by watching The Purge movies. I am partway through the second one. I watched them once before, many years ago (the most recent one is from 2016), and I'd forgotten how much the premise makes so very little sense. I think it's because whoever conceptualized and wrote it didn't really think it all the way through. I have been trying to figure out how it could work, and honestly it just doesn't. The writer put a lot of emphasis on the fact that every crime is allowed during this 12-hour period, including murder, as if murder and violence is what most people aspire to. The Purge announcement over TV/radio/etc. also makes a big deal out of how murder is allowed, and therein lies the central weakness of the narrative.

The idea, of course, is that the poor and marginalized, the "undesirables" will either kill each other off, or be killed off by wealthier people with better access to weapons and hired mercenaries or whatever. And yeah, sure, there might be some of that in reality, but I don't think it holds true of most marginalized people. If anything, they are the ones most likely to engage in mutual aid and take part in a more unofficial economy. Also, while I'm sure there are wealthy people who'd take advantage of things, I rather think they'd be too concerned about preserving their property to really get into that much trouble themselves.

Also, straight-up murder is just so unimaginative, and humanity can get super creative with their crimes. Why go outside and run the risk of physical injury when you can hack into a bank, or government systems? You could transfer a bunch of money into your accounts, or cancel your student loans (or everyone's student loans!) Why wouldn't every organized crime group arrange to move vast amounts of drugs during that night with no repercussions?

What would stop the powerful people at the helm of institutions from committing collapse-inducing crimes? A bank CEO just cleaning out his entire bank, or a government official selling every single national security secret available to foreign powers. It's not treason during Purge Night! If even a few dozen people committed large-scale crimes, it could absolutely collapse the nation in short order. 

And then there's the issue of the emergency services. According to the premise, they are unavailable during the twelve hours of Purge Night, which makes a certain amount of sense: people would target any first responders getting in the way of their crimes. If you're murdering someone, you want them dead. That all holds up until you get to the fire department. The movies don't (to my knowledge, I could be misremembering) show any kind of arson, and you cannot convince me that there wouldn't be pyromaniacs and overexcited teenagers setting fire to shit all over the place. You know what fire does? It spreads. So why aren't entire neighbourhoods wiped out by fire on Purge Night, since there are no firefighters to keep the blazes under control?

Another thing that bugs me about the movies is that they focus exclusively on urban settings. It definitely works better for the plot, but a lot of the USA is either rural or at least from small towns. Does the Purge even happen there? Would people attack farms? You could set fire to all of the USA's food supply and, again, cause some pretty significant societal damage.

In short, the writer did not think this through, and just created a hyper-violent but ultimately unimaginative premise that doesn't really prompt the audience to think about the broader societal issues underpinning the story. It just boils down to "murder and violence bad," as if we didn't know that already.

Okay, thank you for bearing with my rambling thoughts about The Purge franchise. ;) Catch you on the flip side, friends!

So because the last two night shifts are 12-hour weekend shifts, the halfway mark of my week of night shifts is actually on Friday. Exactly 32 hours of work left before I'm off for two weeks, since I traded my weekend day shifts with a coworker.

I am excited to get through my night shifts and into next week, even though I'm going to be super tired. Between the night shifts and the terrible quality of sleep I've been getting, I'm going to be a bit of a basket case during the week. However, I am excited to have the professional organizer over to help me get the kitchen whipped into shape. I have some ideas about how to move some things around to make things more effective, and I'm hoping she will be able to help me streamline the rest of it to be as functional as possible. I would really like to bring my herb garden into the kitchen, too, although I don't know if that will even be possible. I guess we'll find out.

The international news is currently awash with headlines about the 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar. I just saw that the United States Geological Service's (USGS) predictive modelling estimated the death toll could exceed 10,000 people, and that losses could be greater than the value of the country's gross domestic product, which is WILD. How does a country recover from that kind of disaster? I'm actually surprised the USGS is still functional enough to provide services internationally. I assume that Doge will be decimating them shortly. *sigh*

I am struggling a little to find good news in the world these days. Right now everything feels like it's on fire all around me. So even though my own life is going comparatively well, I am struggling with survivor's guilt about that. I'm also worried that the fact that my life isn't going nearly as well as I think it is, and that it could all fall apart at any time. Apart from the fact that I have exactly one year and two days left in my work contract, which means I could very well be unemployed right after that, there's a non-zero chance that my contract could be ended early if the Conservatives get into power and decide to force more cuts in the government. Hell, the Liberals could do the same as well. It's also increasingly likely that we're going to face some sort of violence from the USA, ranging simply from economic violence all the way up to and including invasion/annexation.

It actually reminds me of a post I saw earlier today, by someone named nitewriter:

So, yeah, it all feels sort of like that. I actually tried bullet journaling a while back, and it didn't work as well as I wanted it to, which is kind of weird because the person who invented bullet journaling did it in order to manage his ADHD. I'm actually curious to see if any of the ADHD management techniques that have failed for me over the past few years might not work better after I get a CPAP, supposing the CPAP actually makes a difference in my energy levels and ability to focus and retain information.

I really liked the concept of bullet journals, and I got very excited when I saw all the pretty ways in which people on the internet were customizing theirs, but I got bogged down in perfectionism and preparing my pages in advance started taking up so much time that I would put it off until I was "too far behind" the arbitrary deadlines I'd set for myself. That's mostly because even when I picked the easiest pretty layouts I could find, my artistic grasp exceeded my reach. I am really, really shit at visual arts, and so even very basic stuff takes me forever to accomplish. So if I do decide to go back to a bullet journal (or BuJo, as the kids were calling it a few years ago) I will likely avoid trying to make it look aesthetic and stick to just plain writing. Anyway, I don't plan on trying yet another journaling method at least until I've had my very own functional CPAP for a few months.

I probably shouldn't hang so many hopes on the CPAP. If I turn out to be among those for whom it's not effective, the disappointment will be excruciating. I'm just excited at the prospect of no longer constantly feeling like absolute garbage. I have no idea for how long I've had sleep apnea, but I've felt like the aforementioned garbage for years now, although it got noticeably worse at the beginning of the pandemic, so five years at least now. I assumed at first that the brain fog was just due to aging and ADHD combined, and then it kept getting worse. At multiple times I thought maybe I'd had an asymptomatic case of Covid (in spite of the fact that I mask everywhere in public) which had resulted in long Covid that had fried my brain. Of course, there's no way to test that theory as far as I know. I've been vaccinated multiple times, so the antibodies will already be present in my system. Right now the sleep apnea seems to be the more likely culprit.

Okay, time to get back to work. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

The consultation with the behaviourist went quite well today. Well, technically yesterday now. She told me that even though the clinic calls the position "behaviourist," most of them are actually social workers, which checks out. For one thing, I can see how that skillset would apply pretty well to determining whether or not a patient is adhering well to new guidelines, or how likely they are to change behaviours and stick to that in the future. For another, I can also see how many people might find it off-putting or even stigmatizing to have to talk to a social worker for this. After all, social workers are for foster kids and drug addicts! Obviously social workers have a much wider range of skills than that and engage in a wide variety of activities with people from all walks of life, but I assume that most people think that you have to be in some kind of trouble in order to have to engage with a social worker.

Anyway, we had a nice chat for an hour and a half all about me. The behaviourist was almost exactly my age (also born in '79 but at the end of the year) and had a very similar sense of humour to mine, so we had a pretty good time overall. She asked me a bunch of questions, most of which I'd already covered with the registered nurse and with the dietitian, but that's fine, I understand that they have to dot their t's and cross their i's, and make sure there aren't any significant discrepancies between my answers, among other things. We commiserated over night shift work, and agreed that "outsidey" is a great word for people like me who enjoy doing calm activities outside, because "outdoorsy" suggests someone who gets up at 4am in order to go hiking along the Appalachian trail for six weeks. She also had an adorable black and white cat named Hobbes, who is apparently an antisocial crank, and I love him.

Long story short, the behaviourist is very happy with all the changes I've already implemented (eliminating alcohol, caffeine, and NSAIDs, drinking flat water instead of fizzy water, incorporating more protein into my diet) and is overall satisfied that I am ready to move to the next step in the process, which is the Pre-Surgery 2 class. They are held every two weeks, but when I get to go will depend on whether the classes are already full in the next few weeks. Obviously I am hopeful that it will be sooner rather than later, because I hate waiting. I actually told the behaviourist that, and she laughed and wrote my quote verbatim in her notes.

After that, I passed out in my bed until 6pm. Theoretically that made for 7.5 hours of sleep, but my Fitbit informed me that it was closer to 6 hours, and I still felt like steamrollered shit afterward. Of course, now I know why that is. I wonder if, now that I know for sure I have sleep apnea, the fact that I still felt like garbage after sleeping might not have been partly due to the nocebo effect. I really hope not, because I have at least three to four weeks before I can get a CPAP machine. It will be two and a half weeks before I see the sleep specialist to discuss my results, and only after that will I be getting a prescription for a CPAP machine, supposing that's the treatment they decide to go with. I assume it will be, since I'm pretty sure it's considered the gold standard of treatment for severe obstructive sleep apnea. I know that there are lifestyle changes that get recommended (lose weight, stop smoking), but that's typically not enough if your case is severe enough, but I don't think my case is so severe that would warrant surgical intervention. I mean, it might be, what do I know? But my relentless googling has so far led me to this conclusion. Anyway, I am not looking forward to an extra month of shitty sleep, but I guess I've made it this far in life, wo what's another four weeks?

Later today I will be having my follow-up appointment with the naturopath. Now that I know how severe my obstructive sleep apnea is, I'm pretty sure that's the main cause of my brain fog and general stupidity, but I'm interested to see what she has to say on the topic. 

I haven't been talking much about politics here of late, and maybe I should, but sometimes the sheet idiocy/lunacy of it all feels a little much to bear. The latest debacle has been pretty spectacular to watch. Turns out several highly placed members of the Trump administration, including J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth (the Secretary of Defense) created a fucking Signal chat in order to discuss their top secret war plans. A Signal chat. I CANNOT. Anyway, someone in that group chat (I think Hegseth but it's unclear to me if it was him or someone else) added the editor of The Atlantic to their group chat while they were texting about their plans to bomb Yemen, specifically the Houthi rebels. Apparently there were more emojis than I personally would feel comfortable with in a char about top secret war plans. /o\

*weeps in COMSEC and INFOSEC*

I worked for over ten years in a national security setting. We weren't allowed to wear smart watches where I worked, and had to lock them inside lead-lined boxes along with our cell phones before going to work. I can't begin to imagine the level of horrifying non-compliance you'd have to engage in in order to use fucking Signal to text your cabinet buddies about your attack plans on enemy fighters. All of our top secret information was (and presumably still is) held on secure servers with a discrete encrypted network that is only accessible by a select few, and all those computers are kept behind multiple layers of physical as well as cyber security. While a Signal chat theoretically benefits from end-to-end encryption (I use it myself), it is by no means anywhere near as secure as official government crypto equipment. Did I mention that some of these people were in Russia while they were texting each other? Thereby almost guaranteeing that Russian hackers or other agents might access that information?

I can't imagine that this is simply incompetence. The magnitude is simply too great. Every employee at every level gets briefed on communications security and information security. You have to sign multiple documents swearing you will never share that information and that if you do, you could face penalties ranging from losing your job all the way to going to prison for the rest of your life for treason. There is no way not a single one of these people didn't at one point think "Hey, maybe we should stick to official channels when we discuss this stuff?" Of course they will not suffer any repercussions for this, because the Trump administration is made of goddamned Teflon, but you will never convince me that this was just some sort of silly mistake by people who don't know what they're doing. It's treasonous sabotage dressed up to look like incompetence so they can have plausible deniability.

In Canadian news, we're having a federal election. Yay.

Right now this is looking like it's Mark Carney's election to lose. He's not my favourite choice, but he appears to be appealing to Canadians as The Guy who can stand up to the Trump tariffs and give the USA a run for their money. The Conservatives have been turning blue in the face trying to criticize him the way they did with Trudeau, even trying out the phrase "the Trudeau-Carney Liberals," but it just doesn't seem to have any staying power right now.

The Conservatives were in a much better position when they were just bashing Trudeau, because he made for a convenient scapegoat. However, Carney is a more difficult target for them, and it's increasingly exposing Pierre Poilievre as a one-trick pony who doesn't actually have any meaningful policy plans or even much of a political platform other than "Trudeau Bad." The Conservatives started with a 25-point lead in the polls in January, if memory serves, and as of yesterday the Liberals now hold a six-point lead. That HAS to sting if you're Poilievre. Honestly, if he loses this election, I can't see any alternative except for him to resign as the leader of the Conservative Party. He's now lost twice to the Liberals, and if the Liberals come in with a majority I think he won't have a choice. It will also mark ten years of the Liberals being in power after ten years of the Conservatives being in power, which means the Conservatives will need to some serious soul-searching if they want to continue being taken seriously as a political party.

The poor NDP (the party I vote for the most often) are in crisis. They started out as a leftist party and have been steadily creeping toward the centre for years now, which I personally think is a mistake. They've accomplished some great things thanks to their Supply and Confidence Deal with the Liberals after the last election (a universal dental care program and the beginnings of a universal pharmacare program, among other things), but have made some baffling decisions too, like tearing up their Supply and Confidence Deal at a time when it kind of felt like nothing was at stake politically, which made no sense to me at all. They are increasingly slipping behind in the polls, and I think that after this election their leader, Jagmeet Singh, will also have to step down. My own opinion is that the NDP needs to go back to its roots and not try to appeal to the centrists, and also that they need to reverse their stance on gun control. I have thoughts on how to re-vamp our gun legislation, and I think that if the NDP lighten up about ALL GUNS BAD they could actually make significant inroads in rural, working-class areas. Alas, that doesn't appear to be their trajectory for now.

All right, I think I've blathered enough for tonight. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

I haven't been talking all that much about *gestures broadly* the world at large, mostly because I am tired and frightened and overwhelmed, which  of course is exactly what they want. The shock and awe tactics the current US government are using are specifically designed to create feelings of helplessness in the populace so that no one resists what they're doing, and it's unfortunately been working, including on me, and I don't even live there.

I've lost track of all the horrible things they've done. The latest appears to be a vote to slash Medicaid funding, which means a lot of vulnerable people are going to simply die. There's continuing chaos in all the departments affected by DOGE's interference, and there are anecdotal reports coming from all quarters about people whose support cheques of various kinds are either entirely missing or else have been brutally slashed. People are losing their homes because they can't afford to pay their rent for their houses or apartments or the residential facilities where they've lived for years.

I refuse to despair, but I am angry and a little at a loss as to what I can do from over here in another country. I know that I am ready to help any and all of my US friends if they tell me they just need to get away. I'm also ready to fight however I can if the US makes good on its threat to take over Canada. I don't know how they're planning to do that, whether it be through more "normal" channels of economic pressure (tariffs, sanctions, whatever) or just outright military invasion, but either way I don't plan on sitting idly by when that happens.

KK and I are already working hard to divest ourselves from as many US products as possible. Our economies are so intertwined that it's next to impossible to do this completely, but wherever we can, we're trying to buy local, or at least Canadian, and where it's not possible to buy Canadian we are looking for products from Mexico, Europe, and whatever other country is willing to sell to us instead. I am hopeful that Canada on the whole will perform a similar pivot in the coming months. It won't be easy, and in fact it will likely be incredibly messy both politically and economically, but it's long past time we loosened our ties to the US. We're far too dependent on them, and they are no longer a dependable all, but an unstable, volatile country that is rapidly descending into fascism and collapse. And at the rate they're going, they are going to drag us down with them.

I'm a little disappointed in myself, actually. There's a saying that turned into a meme over the past few years which says something to the effect of: "If you've ever wondered what you would do if you were in Germany during the rise of Nazism, congrats, you're doing it now." And although I never answered that question to my own satisfaction because I understood that you can't know for sure what you'll do in a situation until you're actually in it, I'm not sure that sitting impotently behind my keyboard was high on my list of possibilities.

It feels analogous to "I didn't think that, when the apocalypse came, I'd still have to commute to work and pay rent."

*sigh*

The movies all make it look so much more glamorous and heroic, don't they?  And of course, intellectually I understand that movies are not real life, not even a little bit, but I think that somewhere in my heart I kind of hoped that it would be more like the movies, because simple narratives with a beginning, middle, and end and a clear villain are so much easier for my mind to grasp. Right now there are horrible people in charge, but apart from that handful of people all I see is a vast ocean of victims, and the only difference between them is how complicit they are in their own victimhood. There's a huge difference between the people who are selling out their friends, their neighbours, their family in the hopes that it will keep them safe or even afford them a little bit of privilege, and all the people who are being sold, but in the end they're all mostly victims regardless.

For what it's worth, I do think that this is temporary. I do think that eventually democracy or some more just form of government will be restored. I just don't know how long it will take, and I do know that in the meantime tens of millions of people are going to suffer, and far too many people are going to die. We will not be able to turn back the clock and restore those people to life, or undo the harm that has been done. At best there will be a fuckton more generational trauma to deal with.

And all this because the US is being run by men whose daddies didn't love them enough. Like, I wish I was joking, but honestly it does seem to me as though both Musk and Trump are the products of awful fathers who didn't know how to love their children (and likely themselves had fathers who were awful and didn't love them), and now they in turn have passed on this toxic sludge to their children. It's so frustrating to think that a few years of therapy might have averted all of this.

 I said on BlueSky that it feels like I'm watching the USA hurtle at top speed into a volcano, and there's nothing I can do about it. Every time I blink, Trump or someone in his administration is doing something else that is either batshit insane, incredibly detrimental to the country, or both. Both seems to be the preferred method these days.

I didn't post about this earlier, but there was a really tragic mid-air crash on Wednesday night when a Blackhawk helicopter collided with a passenger plane carrying about 64 people, resulting in a total of 67 deaths. Even more tragically, the plane was carrying an entire team of young figure skaters, children by the looks of the photographs, maybe in their mid-teens. There were some more famous figure skaters who performed in the 1990s, but the number of kids on board that airplane is heartbreaking.

There's no explanation yet for the crash. They've recovered 41 bodies and expect to recover the rest, but are being hindered by the weather. I was working that evening, and even though no Canadian aircraft was involved, it was a Bombardier jet (made in Canada), and of course we expected there to be ripple effects from the airport shutting down, so we were very busy for the last hour of my shift. 

So of course, given the political climate, things are metaphorically blowing up about this crash. Trump immediately came out and blamed it on DEI (for future me, in case you're confused about acronyms when you read back: it stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), because he's a racist POS and can't keep his mouth shut for five fucking minutes. He also refused to go to the crash site. I believe the quote was: "I have a plan to visit, not the site. Because you tell me, what’s the site? The water? You want me to go swimming?" So, you know, full of empathy, as usual.

Conversely, his opponents are already losing their minds and engaging in the worst kind of conspiracy theory nonsense. Some are pointing at Trumps (definitely disastrous) decision last week to fire the head of the TSA and to dismantle the Aviation Security Advisory Group as the reason this happened. While I think that this will absolutely lead to *more* accidents like this in the future, it's literally only been a week. There just hasn't been enough time for new, laxer, security measures to be implemented. Others are saying it was deliberate, because Blackhawk helicopters don't fly at that altitude, the pilots are highly trained, aircraft are equipped with TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance Collision System) and that should have prevented the crash, all of which is mostly nonsense. Blackhawk helicopters can fly at any altitude (they are helicopters, after all), and yeah, this one shouldn't have been where it was, but shit happens. TCAS is not great at short range and is often turned off when in the airspace above an airport. Also, anyone who thinks the US military has suicide pilots on standby is out of their minds.

And NO, this isn't a "diversion" to distract people from the nomination hearings for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (whom I've affectionately nicknamed Brainworms McGee), which are an absolute dumpster fire so far. This is just a horrific accident, and supposing the investigation isn't botched or sabotaged, the explanation will come out eventually, likely long after this tragedy has stopped making headlines.

Actually, someone wrote a laugh-so-you-don't-cry report of the two day nomination hearings, and I may post the transcript in another entry for my own amusement because it's on Facebook, and God only knows how long Facebook content will still be accessible if it doesn't kowtow to the fascists south of the border.

In the meantime, the administration is continuing its unchecked rampage in dismantling/tearing down every government body and regulatory agency it can get its stubby little hands on. Just today there are reports that Elon Musk--or more specifically, some of his minions--have restricted government employees' access to computer systems (high-level employees, that is, career civil servants who perform crucial functions), and also tried to access the government's payroll system, where in theory he and his newly named department have no business poking their noses. This seems to be another attempt to stop government spending after the last aborted attempt via executive order (which was thankfully rescinded within 24 hours), meaning they could "turn off the spigots," aka just stop sending money to people receiving government benefits for all sorts of reasons.

Trump also announced that, starting tomorrow, there will be a 25% tariff imposed on goods from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% tariff on goods from China. Experts have already warned that this will have a devastating effect on the US economy, because neither industry nor individual consumers can absorb that much of a price increase. This means demand will plummet, and several key industries are likely to grind to a halt. This will of course have a terrible impact on Canada too, because we rely a lot on the buying power of the USA, but it's going to be much, much worse for the USA, at least in the short term. I really hope Canadian businesses can find a way to pivot to other markets, or that the government may step in to help small and medium businesses not go under while they figure out the next steps.

The fact that a tech billionaire is sticking his fingers in the pie of the treasury is wild. Either he's doing this with Trump's blessing (terrifying) or he's gone rogue (even more terrifying). Either way, things seem to be snowballing, or maybe spiraling, much faster than I ever imagined they could. I remember learning about how fast the Nazis took over once they got enough momentum in the lead-up to World War II, but it's a very different feeling to be watching something eerily similar unfold right under our noses.

We either haven't learned from history, or some people learned *too well*, and now we are doomed to repeat it.

There's a screenshot bopping around the internet of someone asking: "What's the most boomer complaint you have?" And the reply is "Stop making me make accounts. A lightbulb that changes colours shouldn't require an account. A TV speaker shouldn't require an account."

This is one of the most relatable things I've seen of late, because I have had to create so many accounts for things that honestly should not require any such thing.

I have an account for my computer mouse and keyboard, I have an account for several "services" relating to my television, an account for groceries, an account for Canadian Tire, Home Depot, a couple of restaurants from which I order food sometimes, my Fitbit, my bus pass... I could go on and on and on.

This is, of course, because all of these companies want my data. It started out I don't even remember how many years ago with those points/loyalty cards. Remember when there were physical cards for those things? The companies figured out they could a) keep their customers coming back with loyalty programs, and b) track where people were spending their money. There have been stories over the years about how advertisers know more about us than our own family members, like that time Target allegedly knew about a teen pregnancy before she told her father (that story is likely untrue, but a lot of women reported that when they were "trying" for a baby they started receiving a lot more pregnancy and baby-related materials despite not making any significant changes in their shopping behaviours yet).

These days, it's all about the almighty Algorithm. The Algorithm gets talked about like it's a living, breathing, sentient being, and that's maybe not too far from the truth. It is something that learns and grows and is designed to try to read your mind, to predict what you might want to see next, but it's also designed to influence you to want more things, too. On social media it will feed you posts that it wants you to engage with more, and on websites like Amazon it's designed to make you want to buy more things. Sure, we can joke about the algorithm suggesting toilet seats to us for months after we bought the only toilet seat we're likely to need for several years, but the fact remains that it will absolutely suggest "related" things to the books and other doodads that we're already buying, and I have not been immune to the "Oh, that's a good idea!" effect of having it in front of me, the same way you impulse buy a chocolate bar at the checkout at the grocery store, only worse, because the website remembers everything.

Worst of all, we've gotten to a point where we can't opt out. I seeds from a Canadian retailer a few months ago, and found myself mysteriously signed up for something called Shop, which is now being used by a bunch of retailers that I frequent online. Okay, fine, it seems to be a weird combination of PayPal and Wayfair, and it's not my favourite, but if I have to have this account in order to get seeds, I guess it's fine. But then suddenly I couldn't track my orders without downloading the Shop app on my phone (very sus) OR allowing it access to all of my emails, including read/search privileges (SUPER sus). Like WTF is up with that? NO, THANK YOU. Why do you need the ability to search through my emails, Shop? Hmm? And it's the same with so many other things. Buy a robot vacuum? You have to create an account or it won't work (I had one of the early ones in 2006 or so, and it worked just fine because smart phones were barely a blip in those days and "there's an app for that!" was a cute new catchphrase). Want your landlord to make a repair? Make an account on the new residents' portal! Want to control your own thermostat? FUCK YOU, MAKE AN ACCOUNT.

*lies on the floor*

I'm fed up with being The Product (as in "if the product is free, then you are the product"), especially as I am more often than not paying to be the product these days. I would like to live my life without being in forty thousand databases, and I would like to do that without scrubbing every trace of myself from the internet and going to live in an off-grid hut in a swamp and becoming a bog witch. Surely there must be a happy medium somewhere?

Anyway, that is my rant for the day. Carry on. See you on the flip side!

 Those of you who are more recent arrivals to this LJ (i.e. less than ten years ago, ahem) may not know that I actually have crazy nutbar prepper tendencies at heart. One of the reasons I've always wanted a hobby farm is to be more self-sufficient. I don't have any delusions about rugged homesteading and becoming 100% self-sufficient, because that's just not feasible, no matter what the Libertarians would have you believe. ;) Nonetheless, being less reliant on The System(TM) has always been an aspiration of mine.( Doooooooom... )

Sorry about the feelings-vomit in the previous post. I will try to be more upbeat about things, as much as I can.

I was out and about a bit today, for the first time during my vacation (other than the jaunt to Montreal to see Captain America). I got up at a relatively decent hour, but then kind of procrastinated during the morning on getting anything done. Still, I saw that my basil plants were threatening to bolt again, so this time I went at them viciously with a pair of scissors. I'm hoping I was fast enough, but a few of the stems have turned woody, which tells me I may not get more leaves from them. I took some cuttings the other day in order to try to propagate the basil, but they are looking pretty wilted, so I'm not optimistic. I seem to have the darnedest time getting basil to keep growing. I don't suppose any of my gardening people have tips or tricks for me?
( More gardening stuff )

( Books, and a review of Marie Kondo's Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up )