Category: Scarred Brain murmurings

I think the kids’ joke punchline is “Ophelia Butts”

It’s a gray day with lots of drippage action here in one of the bluest cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia (and it’s been that way since the Yankee oppressors evacuated in the 1870s).

A bit odd watching places I used to frequent in Norfolk being covered by national reporters. Though the locaal stationss down theer have been remarkably quiet, I’m sur that Lake WAVY in P-Town hahs reappeared.

With that, detour to check IG.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxiFaMTrJ9e/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Another week in the books, largely spent alone with my wife away.]

The week started rather ingloriously. Last week, and most of the week, I was having some pretty significant pain in midsection. Lower left love handle, back, and so on.

You’re short of breath/Is It a Heart Attack?

So I got through the work day, and went to the urgent care clinic here in town.

Nope, not having a heart attack, but do I have diverticulitis?

They need to do a CT scan, which they can’t do in the urgent care clinic, so off to the ER in DC.

Got to the ER at like 6p. Triaged, heart and lungs sound okay, off to somewhere where they could attend to other people more critical.

Is an MS flare? No, I don’ think so. Reaction to Keysimpta?

Probably not.

I finally, after several other tests I finally saw a doctor.

At about 2a, after I expressed my desire to leave, a doctor finally saw me.

Missed both Monday Night Football games, including the Saints.

I. Need. A. Break.

The doctor wrote me a get-out-of-work note that’s good through the date of my next appointment with my PCP.

Did I take time off?

Of course I didn’t. I made my 1100 meeting on Tuesday, and worked pretty much regular hours the rest of the week.

Why? Because I am so incredibly busy trying to tie up responsibilities at work.

There’s so many places where people are just accustomed to operating one way, and have no idea why things are done that way.

Way too much ibuprofen this week dealing with the pain, but, I think it’s kind of subsided this morning, at least.

Lots of time spent actually listening to music this week. I’d stumbled across a story that Liz Phair is going to tour, and play stuff from, Exile in Guyville, on its thirtieth anniversary.

Show in DC? Yep. Would I forgive the venue who’s management company had engaged in some of the worst COVID excesses?

Hm.

Hm.

Yeah, okay. I’ll go, but I’m not planning to pay for anything other than the ticket , itself. Beer? Nah, I’m good. You did what you did, and I’m not ready to forgive.

But it’s a choice I made. Any action you take against a company or another individual might cause you some discomfort, inconvenience, but it’s a choice you made.

No, it’s better to force people to behave in the way you see fit, and you should never face any problems for your choice.

There should be a law….

No, you really don’t like something that someone else is doing, you have to remove yourself. You can, and have to, leave.

Thumbing through news in between NFL games. Really not looking forward to going to the office this week. Supposedly my access issues have been resolved so I can, you know, actually get to where I’m supposed to work without needing help.

Not going to delve too deeply into that for lots of reasons. But the entire situation has negatively affected my health pretty significantly. So maybe a trip into the District sometime this week to see my PCP.

I should not feel like this.

But, for the people who are constantly reminding people how they’ve been right about everything all the time, and claim to be in favor of fractured government, or complete absence of government, I present Libya.

Libya really hasn’t had a functioning government since the Obama Administration quietly affirmed the Muslim Brotherhood’s overthrow of Gaddafi.

There’s not been a functioning government, or even a series of cooperating governments in a while.

Then there’s a storm, and you get this.

While COVID showed how government can be overbearing and ineffective, Libya shows how its absence can ensure that many people die.

Good job, Secretary Clinton.

Would this many people be dead if there was even a minimal government organizing?

I’ve often said that government is really good at two things: breaking things, and killing people.

But since it is good at the latter, it can take minor steps to prevent it.

Kind of something I written about a lot.

I’m thinking at his point, even if you consider someone a pleasant acquaintance, it’s better to just leave. When you’re sick of something, just go away, quietly.

Incredibly long week. Incredibly hot for September, too, which is not good for me.

Don’t Say anything, just leave.

Oh well.

Incredibly busy period of time this past week.

I actually sent an email at work that pointed to make sure your boots are shined before you criticize someone else’s shine job.

Some of it is the sorts of precautions people are taking in the name of cybersecurity.

We do this terribly ineffective thing because it makes things more securre.

Kind of fits in with the COVID things; people still wearing masks even when there’s ample evidence that they don’t work, and didn’t do anything to fix the pandemic.

But makes ME feel better.

Um. Okay.

I just don’t want to have anything to do with you if you think that.

Jimmy Buffett has died. (For future reference if the link breaks, this is to the NY Post story I saw bout it after seeing his name trending on TwitterX)

For most people, this is a bit of a sad celebrity aside.

For me, however, it’s bringing up all sorts of thoughts, primarily, “should I try to tell my mother about this?”

This is the day after I bought tickets for my wife and I to travel down to Biloxi to see her later this year. She’s in memory care. When I can get in touch with her, it’s never a sure thing that there’ll be a coherent conversation.

There are periods of lucidity, but most of the time, if a conversation starts, it goes nowhere quickly.

So, why would this have been important to me (and her)?

My parents followed his career, and were fans. They’d started following him as he’d peek in to his, alma mater, The University of Southern Mississippi. My dad was there 1969-73. My mother was in and out as her husband was off doing things in the Army as one of the last class of Lieutenant Dans for Vietnam. (He was in Infantry Officer Basic at Fort BenningMoore when the Paris Peace Accords were signed. (His Infantry Battalion was quickly rerouted to Okinawa with the end of hostilities. This also relates back to something my cousin and I were discussing, as he wants to meet up with my wife and I when we come down this fall. I have a strong suspicion that the Po’boy shop near his house is named for a guy who purportedly called my dad a draft dodger because he went to college to be an officer instead of enlisting. My dad wanted to be like his grandfather, who’d been an Army officer during World War I.)

My dad ended up spend nearly the next quarter-century on active duty as an Army officer. I have memories of Jimmy Buffett tapes coming through tinny speakers.

My mother got on a plane for the first time in 1973 to join her fresh 2LT husband in Okinawa after the redirection.

He’s now in Arlington. She’s back in memory care in Mississippi.

Do I even bother to try and tell her about it?

I really don’t know.

The music and lifestyle with which he made a name for himself really aren’t my cup of (“tea” would be in appropriate, so put in whichever boat drink you like…).

Though there were mentions in earlier parts of his career, I didn’t care much for the Marijuana references. I still have never smoked weed, despite my time in broadcast, and having MS!)

So a puzzling day two of what should have been a four-day weekend for me. Fair winds and following sea to Mr. Buffett. I want some coffee.

One of the things I’ve been kicking around today is where, logically, an appeal to authority who can use force falls. It’s not completely the logical Argument From Authority, but appeal to someone else who can do something, forcefully, bad to you.

I am really guilty of this, professionally; we can’t do what you’re trying to do because $rule.

In the political context, however, I think there’s something further. You think X should be a violation of Y law.

What do you want the enforcers to do about it?

Carry it through to the ultimate conclusion.

You’ve snitched; you’ve called the cops, now what do you think the cops should do?

I’m wondering if taking that sort of response is really a bad tack….

After a week off, I’m back to doing what I do on the weekend. Pretty much. I’m on puppy duty after an unspeakably long Friday.

It’s a situation where I’ve been handed something that, yes, I’ve done in hte past, but I really don’t have a good idea what’s going on, and my physical limitations are really negatively affecting my performance.

Maybe I’ll be better when I head there next week to try again. Maybe I’ll have more energy because I won’t have been trapsing around a very notable NoVA landmark.

Navigating that place is difficult for healthy people. For someone with the various malaise I have, it’s damned near impossible.

Even moreso when the neat indices are flirting with triple digits.

Thankfully, Remy, who’s written artfully about the Metro, perfectly-encapsulated the mood among the rich men North of Richmond.

Dear Oliver Anthony,

It's hard for us too. 😢

Sincerely,
The Rich Men North of Richmond pic.twitter.com/PSXiAJLAux

— Remy 💥😃 (@GoRemy) August 25, 2023

I think I got the WMATA short bus stuff figured out again. Need to have some more papers filled, and probably go into the District for an are-you-really-disabled exam.

Am I Sofa King done? *shrug*

I’ll keep trying until I can’t anymore.

Kind of how I roll. Always has been. But, legitimately, I’m near the end. A bit depressing?

Maybe.

Have I been listening to Exile In Guyville for unknown reasons? Yep.

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A lot of the thinking this morning is flavored by the latest WTF episode. Don’t wanna hear what I have to say? Okay. I’m going to keep doing and thinking what I want. I can leave.

But I am tired, and having vague flashes of dread about the full dose of the medication Tuesday.

Do I alter my plans to potentially accommodate a negative reaction?

I don’t know.

And worrying about it isn’t going to do me much good.

So, while I’m responsible for the dog the next couple of days, I’m going to try to enjoy that as much as I can.

And I guess we’ll see how the week plays out.

The tagline of this site is applicable again.

The too-cool-for-school crowd decided that the thing to do for private messaging would be use WhatsApp.

Yeah, about that.

Your messages are not irretrievable. Sorry, Hunter. No, Mister Lawyer, it’s not illegal. If the intended recipient got them, and stoed them somewhere accessible, they’re there to be snarfed.

CyberSekurity r hard.

Even if E2E encryption works, they do get stored.

Though it’s not straightforward, you can export ALL messages, and the contents contained therein.

These are not forever private if they’re stored somewhere locally.

If you’re trying to use them to avoid records being kept, that’s your issue.

I remember we when I was 42.

But the significance of it is from The Hitchhikers Guide series. The entire purpose “Deep Thought,” Planet Earth, itself, was to determine the meaning of Live, The Universe, and Everything.

After millions of years of work, it finished its research, and returned the answer — 42

I was reminded of this by reading this from Reason. The author who’d come in planning to write about the Dutch guilds as early versions of capitalist cooperation, asked several of the commonly-used AI instances when capitalism started.

All provided different answers, but none touched on what he wanted to write about.

I asked Microsoft Bing: “When was capitalism invented?” Bing said: “1776.”

An answer longer than 42, certainly, but still not correct.

It made me think of my time in college. There was a final in Business Law. One of the questions was pretty straightforward, and I eagerly went to work on it.

I used probably four Blue Books writing my response. Just me and my blue-black inked fountain pen.

I left the exam feeling great about what I’d written.

Being that it was finals, I didn’t see the professor in-person again. She did send me my grade via whatever messaging system the university was using in the dark basically pre-web days of the Internets.

Her response was something along the lines of “Well-reasoned using tort law. You should have used the UCC. C.“

I ended up with a B in the class, but it certainly didn’t give me the relaxing summer I’d been expecting; it still stings today about a quarter-century later.

But it ties back into the AI discussion because I think the author really showed the limitations.

So I wonder if there’s going to need to be two additional questions when you suspect someone’s used AI to do research.

While AI tools did you use?

Which questions did you ask? Verbatim. Justify how/why you chose those questions.

Bubuhbut they’re takin’ our jerbs!

No, there’s ways to use the tools. You just have to be savvy enough to ask the right questions, use multiple tools, and draw conclusions based on the varying results you collected.

This is not a one-shot effort.

But it also speaks to things like the scientific method where you publish everything you did so that others can reproduce your work.

THAT’S PROPRITERY INFORMATION.

No. No it’s not.

That sound you just heard was the sound of thousands of 80s and 90s MBAs’ heads exploding.

Spent a good portion of the day today finishing up The Most Hated Man On The Internet.

What a douchenozzle.

At the same time, so you’ve got pics of your boobies on the Intertubes, okay. You haven’t shown those to me willingly, so I’m going to ignore them. You’re human; you’ve got them.

That they’re up there has no bearing on how I view you.

And no amount of litigation is going to make them go away. Very few things actually ever get deleted.

You can find pretty much anything.

I’m sure there’s shit I said on Usenet, or on mailing lists when I was a teenager that I no longer thing. Whatever.

“I really don’t remember that,” is an acceptable answer if someone asks.

That’s true for an asshole missive, or pics of your tits.

If it was last week, that might be a different story, but you have to allow people to present themselves for what they are now, not what they were.

Does that make me a bit inconsistent considering how I treat some commercial companies? Yeah. But I do treat individuals differently.

But the main message is that, no, everything doesn’t actually get deleted.

I understand this is a problem for those who want to carefully-tailor narratives; we have always been at war with Oceana.

But I do take extensive notes, hide things in places where they’re not easily-found.

But very little of it actually goes away.

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Today is Fathers’ Day. I phoned my well-into-his-nineties’ grandfather, and texted my father-in-law.

Going to see my dad’s headstone is something I really don’t have the stamina for, unfortunately.