patience_limited's recent activity

  1. Comment on Underrated ways to change the world in ~life

    patience_limited
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    From the essay: Personally, I needed to read this essay. My morning's reading included this The Onion article. I actually started weeping because satire is moribund, if not well and truly dead. I...

    From the essay:

    A lot of people would like to make the world better, but they don’t know how. This is a great tragedy.

    It’s tragic not only for the people who need help, but also for the people who can help, because good intentions start to rot if you don’t act them out. Well-meaning people who remain idle end up sick in the heart and the head, and they often develop exquisite ideologies to excuse their inaction—they start to believe that witnessing problems is as good as solving them, or that it’s impossible to make things better and therefore foolish to try, or that every sorrow in the world is someone else’s fault and therefore someone else’s responsibility.

    We get stuck here because we assume that there are only two paths to improving the world. Option #1 is to go high-status: get rich so you can blast problems with your billions of bucks, or get into office so you can ban all the bad things and mandate all the good things. Only a fortunate few are powerful enough to do anything, of course, so most of the people attempting to improve the world through the high-status route will end up either begging our overlords to do the right thing, or trying to drum up the votes necessary to replace them.

    Option #2 is to go high-sacrifice: sell everything you have and spend your life earning $7/hr to scrub the toilets in an orphanage. Only a virtuous few will have the saintliness necessary to live such a life, of course, so most of the people attempting to improve the world through the high-sacrifice path will end up writing checks to the martyrs on the front lines.

    These paths aren’t wrong. They’re just too narrow. Money, power, and selflessness are all useful tools in the right hands, but the world is messed up in all sorts of ways that can’t be legislated against, bought off, or undone with a hunger strike. When we focus on just two avenues for making the world better, we exclude almost everybody, leaving most of us with a kind of constipated altruism—we’ve got the urge to do good, but nothing comes out.

    I don’t know all the ways to get our good intentions unblocked. That’s why, whenever I spot someone changing the world via a righteous road less taken, I write it down on a little list. I glance at that list from time to time as a way of expanding my imagination, and now I’m sharing it in the hopes that it’ll do the same for you.

    Personally, I needed to read this essay.

    My morning's reading included this The Onion article. I actually started weeping because satire is moribund, if not well and truly dead. I don't want to exaggerate, but too many people are influenced by fear, greed, willfully chosen misinformation, and learned helplessness.

    If ever there was a time to do small good things, to demonstrate that we can make individual choices matter, it seems to be now.

    16 votes

  3. Comment on The overlooked lesson of Octavia Butler's "The Parable of the Sower" in ~books

    patience_limited
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    Noted for future reference, thank you!

    Noted for future reference, thank you!

    3 votes

  4. Comment on The overlooked lesson of Octavia Butler's "The Parable of the Sower" in ~books

    patience_limited
    Link Parent
    Done - still got phenomenal cosmic powers here, apparently.

    Done - still got phenomenal cosmic powers here, apparently.

    3 votes

  5. Comment on The overlooked lesson of Octavia Butler's "The Parable of the Sower" in ~books

    patience_limited
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    @cfabbro, @myketfirvirrad, my apologies for dumping another taxonomy quandary on you - LMK if this belongs in ~enviro instead. From the essay: Read the whole thing, please. As a grand dream, the...

    @cfabbro, @myketfirvirrad, my apologies for dumping another taxonomy quandary on you - LMK if this belongs in ~enviro instead.

    From the essay:

    What is the point of talking about botanical beauty or mystery in times like these? How can anyone let their eyes linger on the way the light is hitting a bowl of persimmons? Who could be thinking about flowers at a moment like this?

    Fair questions. Let me try to answer them. Fair warning: It’s going to be a bit of a roundabout journey, and it begins, as so many journeys in these times do, with Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower.

    Published in 1993, the novel opens 21 years in the future—that is to say, 2024—in a degraded Los Angeles suburb. Lauren Olamina is a teenage girl from a family just up from the bottom rung of a society that is collapsing on itself. On November 6, 2024, a presidential candidate wins with the slogan, Make America Great Again. “He hopes to … suspend ‘overly restrictive’ minimum wage, environmental, and worker protection laws for those employers willing to take on homeless employees and provide them with training and adequate room and board,” Olamina writes in her journal. In practice, this means bringing back slavery. That president, Christopher Charles Morpeth Donner, is pretty much what you expect.

    The narrator Olamina, on the other hand, is not. She has very little and soon loses even that. Her response to her circumstances is to imagine this new religion called Earthseed. Bits of Earthseed lore are included throughout The Parable. For times like these, the basic tenets have always felt like a balm to me (and many others). For example:

    All that you touch
    You Change.
    All that you Change
    Changes you.
    The only lasting truth
    Is Change.
    God Is Change.

    Once that concept got into my mind, I have thought about it pretty much every day for 10 years.

    Or consider this bit of wisdom:

    Earthseed
    Cast on new ground
    Must first perceive
    That it knows nothing.

    Undoubtedly, you will see this book and Earthseed more in the coming months, as we did when Trump was first elected. There’s something so eerie and uncanny about this work. We should be stunned by Butler’s prescience, and scour the text for what it might offer about the cultural and political dynamics of our time.

    But that’s not all that’s going on. Earthseed is not mere folk wisdom or sci-fi guide to the future. There is a key dictum of Earthseed that almost everyone ignores, and which names the purpose of humanity:

    We are all Godseed, but no more or less so than any other aspect of the universe, Godseed is all there is—all that Changes. Earthseed is all that spreads Earthlife to new earths. The universe is Godseed. Only we are Earthseed. And the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.

    “The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.” Olamina means this literally. In her religion, humans have a special purpose, and it is to spread our biosphere (“Earthlife”) to other planets.

    There are fascinating passages in the book where she tries to tell people about her vision for Earthseed. They do not really believe her. Space travel? Lady, slavery is back! Refugees are streaming up I-5! Drugs and gangs and guns are everywhere! Society has collapsed! Space travel?!?

    Sometimes the characters, like many people in our real world, choose to see Earthseed as mere prescription for an addled world. But Olamina is clear: “Fixing the world is not what Earthseed is about.” It is bigger than that. She said what she said: “And the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.”

    When I first read the book, I struggled with Olamina’s insistence. In fact, it makes recruiting people to Earthseed more difficult. There is something inexplicable about it. Why did she feel this way? Because she did. It came from the part of her that did not need any kind of instrumental justification.

    Over time, I came to understand it differently. Butler is saying: people need a transcendent goal, a way of tapping into the awe and wonder of the universe. The impossibility of travel to the stars in the Parable is neither here nor there. The power of Earthseed is that it demonstrates that anyone in any circumstances can hold an audacious and global dream for humanity in their heart. The existence of a nearly impossible vision inside Lauren Olamina is, itself, a form for power; it says, you cannot kill off the spirit through brute force and immiseration.

    Does the specific dream matter? I’m not sure it does. And I would suggest a journey inwards into life, rather than outwards into space.

    To me, our destiny is to be the part of the biosphere that comes to understand what it is to be alive. Life, in its many forms, remains fundamentally mysterious. Life does things that the rest of the universe does not. As physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker puts it, “Life is the only physics that can generate complex objects." Life has agency, and yet is made of the same things as the rest of the universe. How? It has something to do with information and energy, something down near the fundamentals of the universe, but how the parts are connected remains unclear.

    Read the whole thing, please. As a grand dream, the Earth's biosphere is worth preserving, whatever you may believe about the value of various humane goals.

    10 votes

  7. Comment on The resistance is not coming to save you. It’s tuning out. in ~society

    patience_limited
    Link Parent
    I actually got a conservative woman friend (wants to be a tradwife...) to think twice about Trump by saying outright, "Punishing trans people isn't going to put money in your pocket. It's just a...

    I actually got a conservative woman friend (wants to be a tradwife...) to think twice about Trump by saying outright, "Punishing trans people isn't going to put money in your pocket. It's just a distraction so you can keep getting paid and treated like dirt". She went completely silent and came back with, "You're right, I never thought of it that way."

    I was stunned that message worked, but we'd trusted each other in some pretty hairy situations at work. I don't know if it was the shared experience that opened her to rethinking her stance, or if it was just that no one had ever put it in those terms.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on I was brusque with my family today in ~society

    patience_limited
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    I didn't have any particular advice or thoughts to offer that haven't already been addressed by others, but I just read this and thought of you and your relationship with your family. Please take...

    I didn't have any particular advice or thoughts to offer that haven't already been addressed by others, but I just read this and thought of you and your relationship with your family.

    Please take your well-being and that of people you care about as your first priority, and let the rest go by.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on If our worst fears about Donald Trump play out, how will we know when it's time to leave? in ~society

    patience_limited
    (edited )
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    I've thought long and hard about this, and I'm stuck here to fight, for better or worse. Most countries award negative immigration points for anyone who's likely to burden the health system or is...

    I've thought long and hard about this, and I'm stuck here to fight, for better or worse. Most countries award negative immigration points for anyone who's likely to burden the health system or is over a certain age, regardless of skills and language fluency. Spouse and I are both over 50 and have serious medical needs.

    He's not interested in relocating, and frankly, I don't think "safe" places exist any more. Democracies are vulnerable to right wing-influenced rage at immigration, climate change is increasing political volatility and food inflation.

    It's important that some people who remember when things were better are still around to tell the stories and keep hope alive. I'm not a natural networker or political organizer, but I'm hella good at logistics and comms tech, and there's a place for me in someone's underground if it comes to that.

    I don't think I'm being overly pessimistic or paranoid. I'm personally acquainted with honest, decent, ordinary people in my neck of the woods who've already been forced out of their public service jobs or into relocating by strategically targeted Republican/MAGA action (SLAPP and Open Meetings Act lawsuits funded by out of state PACs, malicious disinformation and doxxing, anonymous threats, etc.). It's already unsafe for brown and LGBTQ+ people, there've been anonymously-tipped immigration raids on farms, and synagogue and women's health care vandalism and threats. I think this kind of quiet, seemingly disorganized terror is just going to persist and get worse in many places, with right-wing police looking the other way, and most of the populace ignoring it and getting on with their lives until it's too late.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on The resistance is not coming to save you. It’s tuning out. in ~society

    patience_limited
    Link Parent
    Generally, I'd agree with you about recent history of leftist demonstrations. They've been too inchoate and performative, more street party than strategic and instrumental. Part of the problem was...

    Generally, I'd agree with you about recent history of leftist demonstrations. They've been too inchoate and performative, more street party than strategic and instrumental. Part of the problem was that power wasn't strictly unipolar and centralized. The protests disrupted everyone's lives and created general hostility without significant effect to help the people being hurt or hinder the powers responsible.

    There's a now a purpose to public protests beyond whether they're directly effective in achieving desired ends. In authoritarian regimes, widespread protest prevents isolation of opposition figures and scapegoats, and serves as an information operation signaling to the rest of the world that the entire country isn't acquiescent or compliant.

    We still have an attachment (however romanticized and politicized) to the images of the Tianmen Square protests, women rejecting the hijab in Iran, Alexei Navalny's imprisonment and martydom, and other acts of meaningful civil disobedience against violent dictatorships.

    Visible mass protests can help prevent the entire world from equating "American" to "fascist" permanently. We have the current examples of Russia and Israel, where the suppression and silencing of mass protest has resulted in the complete isolation of any internal opposition.

    I know we're not there yet, but as far as I'm concerned, it's 1933 and I'm not interested in letting a Reichstag Fire shut everything down.

    5 votes

  11. Comment on The resistance is not coming to save you. It’s tuning out. in ~society

    patience_limited
    Link Parent
    The Teamsters aren't a large fraction of unionized workers. SIEU, AFSCME, teachers, CWA, UAW, and others constitute significant numbers. But I get your point. In terms of a Mafia, I'm more worried...

    The Teamsters aren't a large fraction of unionized workers. SIEU, AFSCME, teachers, CWA, UAW, and others constitute significant numbers. But I get your point. In terms of a Mafia, I'm more worried about police unions. But general strikes and work stoppages, street protests, road blockages, and other forms of direct action don't require formal unions, just enough people feeling angry and helpless.

    I don't know if it will take the decades of India- or Mexico-scale corruption, obvious and drastic human rights violations, or heinous killings, but don't discount spontaneous uprisings and the (current) ease of making a flash crowd happen.

    13 votes

  12. Comment on The resistance is not coming to save you. It’s tuning out. in ~society

    patience_limited
    Link Parent
    If I was sanguine that only the people who caused the mess would get hurt by it, I'd be inclined to agree. I'm ashamed to say that I'd love to see some faces nibbled by leopards. But that's not...
    • Exemplary

    If I was sanguine that only the people who caused the mess would get hurt by it, I'd be inclined to agree. I'm ashamed to say that I'd love to see some faces nibbled by leopards.

    But that's not how the authoritarian playbook works.

    We do need to be organizing now:

    • to shelter undocumented people from deportation or worse;
    • getting journalists safe platforms away from censorship and persecution;
    • funding bail and legal defense;
    • organizing labor strikes;
    • running healthcare, escape, and shelter undergrounds for trans people and women;
    • promoting surveillance defense;
    • making sure that communities have supplies and aid when they're cut off because they're the wrong ethnicity or they pissed off the wrong apparatchik;
    • setting up alternate communication networks;
    • arranging mass protests where they'll be most effective...

    Lots of ideas here. No single thing will get us through what's likely to come, but no need to wait for the other shoe to drop, either.

    26 votes

  13. Comment on Longevity of tech equipment in ~tech

    patience_limited
    (edited )
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    Forgot to mention 10 years with a Linksys WRT54G wireless router, going through various generations of DD-WRT and Tomato firmware. It was perfect for iptables, jacking up the power output (added a...

    Forgot to mention 10 years with a Linksys WRT54G wireless router, going through various generations of DD-WRT and Tomato firmware. It was perfect for iptables, jacking up the power output (added a parabolic antenna array) and bridging to another access point, thoroughly covering a concrete-block ranch house in Florida.

    That router is still not dead, just hopelessly obsolete (no 802.11ac 5 GHz bands) and now residing in a box of "emergency fallback" things.

    1 vote

  14. Comment on The resistance is not coming to save you. It’s tuning out. in ~society

    patience_limited
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    Here's a different take. People are still recovering from shock, and that's a good thing, because ..".fascism thrives when we are dead inside". It's right and necessary that we take time to...

    Here's a different take. People are still recovering from shock, and that's a good thing, because ..".fascism thrives when we are dead inside".

    It's right and necessary that we take time to bandage our wounds and evaluate what went wrong, then figure out how we can build durable opposition, shore up our communities, how we can best protect the vulnerable, how we can re-muster our resources for the fights to come.

    It's not like we can count on any of the usual punditry suspects (The New York Times, Washington Post, and especially, Politico) to cover this process. Further, old media aren't reaching out to talk with the people most likely to engage in resistance, in the same way they weren't able to influence many voters.

    30 votes

  15. Comment on Weekly thread for casual chat and photos of pets in ~life.pets

    patience_limited
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    So I've apparently got a dud cat. Four years old and the poor, pathetic dear had to have dental work yesterday. It's a genetic thing with Siamese-breed cats. Here I was hoping Lilly was enough of...

    So I've apparently got a dud cat. Four years old and the poor, pathetic dear had to have dental work yesterday. It's a genetic thing with Siamese-breed cats. Here I was hoping Lilly was enough of a mutt (tortie-point, which isn't any kind of standard) to avoid breed-specific genetic problems. But I should have known from the intense blue eyes, long legs and tail, lanky body, and distinct color points that she wouldn't get off that easily.

    An hour of chasing to get her packaged and dropped at the vet, all the while listening to her folk ballad of the bloodsoaked revenge she would exact for the unspeakable betrayal of being trapped in a carrier and CAR RIDE.

    Nonetheless, she came home, ate like nothing was wrong, and settled down purring.

    Her partner in crime, Dash, goes in for vaccinations next week. As yet another Siamese-mix, I'm hoping he doesn't also have any exciting stuff going on, but he's Siamese enough to have slightly crossed eyes, so who knows.

    5 votes

  16. Comment on Longevity of tech equipment in ~tech

    patience_limited
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I lived in Florida, the lightning strike capital of the world, so I religiously kept the thing plugged into the best surge suppressors I could get, replaced regularly. Never had an issue with the...

    I lived in Florida, the lightning strike capital of the world, so I religiously kept the thing plugged into the best surge suppressors I could get, replaced regularly. Never had an issue with the power brick.

    It's surprising how bad U.S. power quality is in many places, how vulnerable​ most devices are to voltage spikes and brownouts, and how little people are aware of this risk.

    1 vote

  17. Comment on Follow up on the username thread: What Tildes users do you recognize when browsing and, without being rude or inflammatory, what is your impression of them? in ~tildes

    patience_limited
    Link Parent
    I feel you - quitting after job burnout is usually a good time to find and deal with what's been breeding where you haven't been looking. The good news is it gets better - I just this evening...

    I feel you - quitting after job burnout is usually a good time to find and deal with what's been breeding where you haven't been looking. The good news is it gets better - I just this evening realized I was actually relaxed and enjoying driving again.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk

    patience_limited
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    Congratulations! There's nothing like the sense of liberation from kicking a miserable job to the curb, even with an unexpected expense looming. I hope you find something more satisfying, even if...

    Congratulations! There's nothing like the sense of liberation from kicking a miserable job to the curb, even with an unexpected expense looming. I hope you find something more satisfying, even if it's a few months of just rediscovering life outside the shackles of work.

    5 votes

  19. Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk

    patience_limited
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    We found and fixed a leak that the plumber took two visits and the threat of tearing down a ceiling to miss. One $4 length of 1/4" poly tubing and a borescope, 15 minutes of swearing and yelling...

    We found and fixed a leak that the plumber took two visits and the threat of tearing down a ceiling to miss. One $4 length of 1/4" poly tubing and a borescope, 15 minutes of swearing and yelling between floors, one YouTube video, and done. Turns out the previous plumber caused the leak by nicking the existing tubing with a drill... The well water tap in the kitchen is working again, and I'm happy to drink those yummy minerals.

    7 votes

  20. Comment on Follow up on the username thread: What Tildes users do you recognize when browsing and, without being rude or inflammatory, what is your impression of them? in ~tildes

    patience_limited
    Link Parent
    Well then, assume it's the opinion of another solidly mediocre writer, if the praise is discomforting. My spouse tells me I should see a doctor about that... perhaps the inability to accept...

    Well then, assume it's the opinion of another solidly mediocre writer, if the praise is discomforting. My spouse tells me I should see a doctor about that... perhaps the inability to accept sincere compliments is a form of dysmorphia?

    4 votes