I am the Kat that Walks By Itself

I am weary of
Rage simmering in my bones
Anger's acid eroding my peace
More bad news
More bad news
More bad news
No
Don't tell me
More bad news
I am bottled in my home
Masked for my life
While others waste their breath
Spreading death.
Hugs are the currency I need
Alas, they are few
And far between
In my little household of one.
It has been a long, long, long, long, long
Pandemic.
It ain't over
And I am weary.

Just started watching "Moon Knight". (yeah, yeah, late as usual.) Interesting show.

And there's a line from the first episode which has stuck in my head.

(about the goddess Ammit) "She grew weary of having to wait for sinners to commit their crime before punishing them. Would you wait to weed a garden till after the roses were dead?"

Would you wait to weed a garden till after the roses were dead?

That's pretty profound. Flawed, but profound. Because of course most people would say, "No, you wouldn't wait; you would weed the garden to protect the roses." ( BUT... )

False hope is worse than no hope.
Dissappointment is more difficult to deal with than despair.

(I started saying stuff on Twitter this morning... realised it turned into a longer thread, so I'm posting an expanded version here.)

Sometimes the only thing I can do to "live in the world but not of it" is to be polite and silent, refusing to engage in discussions of morality, saying that other people's morals are NOT MY BUSINESS. Does that make me a coward? I hope rather it makes me a peacemaker. Take-home from this: if I am silent on a subject, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with you. I hope, rather, that I am following the command "Judge not, lest you be judged."

I am glad that I am not in a position to be required to judge, such as being someone in authority over others. That I am able to say "It is not my business what other people do, it is not my business how they choose to sin. We are ALL sinners. My sins are not less than yours."

It is not my business who you sleep with.
It is not my business how you dress.
It is not my business what bathroom you go into.

It is my business how I interact with you.
I will not shun you.
I will respect your pronouns, because I would much rather be polite than obnoxious.

It is your business how you choose to interact with me.
If you ASK me what my position on something is, do not expect me to lie. Being silent is the best I can do. Perhaps the fact that I disagree with you makes you feel that I am silently judging you. If you feel that, that makes me sad. It will not change my position, but it still makes me sad.

When I was younger, I was far too quick to speak up about what my position was, because I was insecure enough to be afraid that people might actually think that I agreed with XYZ if I remained silent, if I didn't quickly defend ABC instead, if I didn't correct people's assumptions. Perhaps I've gone too far in the other direction, but many painful interactions (and the internet is a TERRIBLE place to have nuanced discussions, really) have taught me that I ought to shut up instead. Mostly.

And I need to try not to worry about what I imagine people think of me. As do we all.

Sit down and pull up a chair, I'm about to give a rant. I can't remember if I've ranted about this subject before, but I'm about to do so now.

This rant is brought to you by a few comments on a YouTube video which... well, the video was looking at blood-glucose levels as related to things like breakfast and drinking coffee. That was fine, the original video was sufficiently qualified in its statements and was interesting. But then someone in the comments mentioned they were diabetic and immediately some well-meaning person replied "Look into resistance training".

No. Just no.

It doesn't matter how helpful a person intends to be, all unasked-for advice is unhelpful. Why? Because it isn't advice, it is criticism. It says "Why haven't you done whatever-it-is?" It says "Your problems are easily solved and therefore trivial". It says "You are stupid/ignorant/lazy because you haven't fixed it already with this simple solution". It says "Your suffering is your own fault."

These pieces of medical advice are always given by people who are not qualified in medicine. Medical professionals know better than to give advice when they don't know the details of the condition. Especially not advice to random people on the internet that they've never met. And even non-medically speaking, anyone who is an expert in something (and I speak as a computer expert, okay?), anyone who is good at solving problems, they aren't going to toss out suggestions without asking questions first. Because the more you know about a field, the more you are aware that things that may seem similar on the surface can be quite different from each other once you know a few more details. A one-word description of the problem doesn't cut it.

And yet some people jump in as soon as they hear the words "diabetes" or "obesity" or "sleep apnoea" or "insomnia" or....

Who do you think you are, random advice-giver? Who are you to tell me what to do? You know-nothing ignoramus, you don't know a thing about me, what gives you the idea that you can solve my problems? I did not ask for your patronising condescension, you useless busy-body! If I'd wanted advice, I would have explicitly asked for it.

Don't be that person. Next time you feel the urge to pass on something you read in a magazine, or something that worked for you but might not work for everybody... take a deep breath and ask yourself, "Did this person actually ask for advice, or did they just mention their state of being?"

The rise of governments filled with climate-change deniers has led people to complain that governments (and politicians) "shouldn't have ideology-led policies". Which, while I can see where they're coming from, has always niggled at me as not-quite-right. Because every single political party under the sun has an ideology, that's what makes them a political party, not just a bunch of random power-hungry douchebags. (Though many of them are still random power-hungry douchebags.)

One may disagree with a particular ideology, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have one -- because, as I said, everyone has one, so it isn't the fact of having an ideology that leads to nutty decision-making or everyone would be doing it.

So where does the problem lie? Ideology influences policy: that is good, that is its purpose. Ideology, however has no business influencing your science, your engineering, or your maths. That is like putting your cart before your horse and then shooting your horse for being defective because it couldn't push the cart. Science, maths and engineering will no more bow to your ideology than the mountains will bow to a butterfly. To believe otherwise is magical thinking, like a cargo-cult.

Ideology-led mistakes can happen to both the Left-wing and the Right-wing. Yes, the left-wing can ignore science too; or be ignorant of the unintended consequences of their actions. I mean, it's all very well to say "conservation is good", but does that mean one shouldn't do preventative burn-offs? Does it mean one shouldn't uproot the stumps of trees that have fallen? (I can't remember the specifics of that one, I just remember vaguely some farmer complaining about Greenies making it illegal for him to uproot tree stumps that needed uprooting, but I can't remember what the reason for uprooting them was, just that it was apparently a good reason, and that the Greenies policy was a knee-jerk reaction that was impractical and insufficiently pragmatic. I have insufficient data to say whether the farmer was biased, or whether the Greenies were ignorant.)

(This thought is brought to you by the Banqiao Dam Disaster which can partially be laid at the feet of the ideology-led policies of Mao Zedong...)

So, what do you think? Any examples of left-wing stupid decisions that are better than the ones I could not properly remember? Any thoughts on the rise in magical thinking and the denial of science? Thoughts as to why that has been happening? Please chip in with your comments!

The song "We've Got a Groovy Thing Going, Baby" just came up on my randomplay. Now, I normally like Simon & Garfunkel, but this song... the lyrics...

So the boy's just hearing that his girlfriend is leaving...

Bad news bad news
I heard you’re packin’ to leave
I come arunnin’ right over
I just couldn’t believe it
I just couldn’t believe it

And his first appeal is to call her crazy...

Oh baby baby
You must be out of your mind
Do you know what you’re kickin’ away
We’ve got a groovy thing going baby
We’ve got a groovy thing

And his second appeal...

I never done you no wrong
I never hit you when you’re down
I always gave you good lovin’
I never ran around
I never ran around

...is to say that he met the minimum acceptable standards in a boyfriend.

And his third appeal...

There’s somethin’ you ought to know
If you’re fixin’ to go
I can’t make it without you
No no no no
No no no no

...is to try to guilt-trip her.

No woman in her right mind would be persuaded by any of these arguments, surely?
Are we supposed to take this song seriously? Or is it supposed to be a parody of an oblivious selfish boyfriend?

Please enlighten me, people!

Chemical equations are like algebra with molecules.

I've just discovered that murder hornets are a thing. Didn't realise before probably because it's a US thing and not an Australian thing. But... really... I can't help thinking of the plagues of Egypt. The count is rising...

• Fire
• Plague (aka pandemic)
• Insect pests (murder hornets, not locusts)

Ah, looks like I'm not the only one to make the connection. I like this take on it.

Thing is, a lot of the stuff going on now is a case of "what goes around, comes around".

• The bushfires in Australia in January: global warming. Which is man-made.
• Covid19: forget the ridiculous rumour that it was made in a lab; this is, like Ebola, like Swine Flu, like Bird Flu, like Mad Cow Disease... a disease that jumped from animals to humans. (See Americapox: the missing plague for a more in-depth discussion about what conditions are required to create plagues). The practice, in China, of having "wet markets" (public markets where live animals are sold and slaughtered at the market) makes the likelihood of animal-to-human disease-jumping higher. Which means it isn't terribly surprising that China has been the source of more than one dangerous disease in recent history.
• What is happening in the USA now... there's a whole lot of karma coming home to roost. Lack of public health care; the attitude of shoot-first-and-don't-ask-anything (from the gun lobby AND from the government); the glorification of individual rights to the detriment of community safety; and the pernicious racism (which is leading to protest marches all over the world, which is going to pretty much guarantee a second wave of Covid19 spread).

The strangeness of a global pandemic is that it isn't the Apocalypse that the extremist preppers/survivalists signed up for; it isn't the Apocalypse that SciFi writers wrote about. Instead of rugged macho individualists murdering their neighbours with impunity (in the name of self-defence), we have people staying at home making sourdough bread. It is a feminine Apocalypse: solved by kindness, cooperation, and baking. We've had the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror(ism)", but trying to frame this as a "war" is doomed to failure. At least, framing it as a modern war is. World War II had the Blitz, and it is more that kind of spirit that we need; endurance, cooperation, holding fast, and making do. And, indeed, there are many who are showing that kind of spirit: let us not forget that.

There's a saying: love God and do what you want.

Which is not as foolish as it might seem, because if you love God (first), what you want is to do good things, things that please Him.

I say this because I was pondering what I really wanted to do. I came to the conclusion that I want to make art/craft that encourages people. Even if that is just on the tiny level of making someone smile, or lightening their eyes because they see something pretty. "Brighten the corner where you are." It doesn't have to be big, or grand. Because even though grand things are grand, little things applied more frequently, they do a lot in the long run. (Cue metaphor about water wearing away stone.)

I mean, yes, it is true that I don't think I'm capable of grand things, but I don't even desire to do grand things. Grand things tend to be tainted with ambition, and poisoned by fame. Fame is horrible, I really don't want that. Mind you, the ones who have achieved grandly good things, they've usually done it by perseverance in small things that grew.

If you could do whatever you want, what would you do?