2025 May❮❮prev

Some days it's tough to get the productivity ball rolling. It's like there's a part of me that's a poorly trained dog, getting me to be anxious about stuff I don't really need to be that anxious about (a lot of ego there- like it's not just I'm worried I can't do it, I'm worried even if I do it will give me that "shouldn't have been that hard" feeling")

One trick - that I kind of hate works - is playing music... it's just like a weird subconscious distractor.

Kids who grew up in the 80s on recycled Loony Tunes might remember - or even remember quoting - this one Bugs Bunny clip, cued up here where Bugs plays a violin to entrance and calm a rampaging gorilla, and he (mis)quotes "music calms the savage beast"... (later on you hear that the original was William Congreve's "Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.")

Guess it's true!

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RFKjr, not content with helping bring measles back, is slow walking COVID vaccines



operation warp speed, speeding up the initial vaccine rollout was one of the few good things about the first Trump presidency. Now we got captain brainworm at the helm.

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Bonus, older photos I AI'd:

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The Roganification of the Male Mystique
Interesting.
Sometimes I think about what I get out of HONK-ish bands relative to that stuff.

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some days the corruption just smacks you in the face.

the art of the linkedin s**tpost

one day I woke up and realised all the waiting and yearning was actually me living my life and it's happening right now and it's still good even if it's not perfect and there is no moment when all your dreams get fulfilled and everything makes sense. like... this is it. this is life. you'll waste away your youth waiting for some imagined future if you don't love life for what it is now and make the most of it

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That last quote came from when I image searched for this first cartoon by shhhitsfine that I posted a few years ago. They've made a lot of good thoughtful cartoons worth checking out.

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Well, I say this. We had riots in Harlem, in Harlem, and frankly if you look at what's gone on – and people from Harlem went up and they protested, Stephen, and they protested very strongly against Harvard. They happened to be on my side..

he is aging out worse than biden

Trump: Of course, you have the Declaration of Independence.

Moran: What does it mean to you?

Trump: Well, it means exactly what it says. It's a declaration. It's a declaration of unity and love and respect. And it means a lot. And it's something very special to our country.

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worth your 3 minutes to know about
Gov. Evers Releases Message to Wisconsinites Regarding Apparent Trump Administration Arrest Threats

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This meme is hitting for me right now, except instead of other people, it's the sub-parts of my head, the web of moods and emotions stuck to but inconsistently mapped with my actual circumstances - anxiety, contentment, courage, frustration.

Sometimes it's the pendulum swing that gets to me, like how a stretch of feeling "oh hey this is pretty manageable, lifes kinda good actually" somehow drives its countermood that this world is kinda awful, and I feel as unreasonably down as I previously did up.

Sometimes I feel empowered by using focus and self-talk to adjust my mood, but now I worry it's all a sham that just pushes that pendulum, robbing the bummed-out Peter of myself in a few hours to pay happy and content Paul now.

And not to begrudge anyone the pharmacological tools they have been given to help make their own emotional landscapes more hospitable, but sometimes I feel like I should be appreciate myself for using introspection and equanimity and going without external mood balancers, which are crucial tools for many but often clumsy ones, in terms of side-effects. (And as always with the awareness that - as with many chemical based anti-depressants - perhaps my philosophical approach is cutting some of the highs along with the lows.)

Real talk, what are your favorite mental tools for in-the-moment emotional management? Or do you just surf it and feel what you feel? I thought maybe i had ruined the 80% unreliable lightning port on my phone by trying to get rid of lint with a metal wire and breaking it and making it 100% broken - turns out I just made it only a little worse, and bringing it into the apple store they were able to clean out the debris that I I guess I had just impacted further.

The apple store / genius bar: your "Apple Tax" dollars at work!

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Justine had asked him outright, once, what nationality he was. "You're the fortune teller, you tell me," he said.
"I read the future, not the past," she told him.
"Well, the past should be easier!"
"It's not. It's far more complicated."

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'A lady doesn't *go* without a hat, my dear. Only common people.' Common! What's so uncommon about us? We're not famous, we're not society, we haven't been rich since 1930 and we aren't known for brains or beauty. But our ladies wear hats, by God! And we all have perfect manners! We may not ever talk to outsiders about anything more interesting than the weather but at least we do it politely! And we've all been taught that we disapprove of sports cars, golf, women in slacks, chewing gum, the color chartreuse, emotional displays, ranch houses, bridge, mascara, household pets, religious discussions, plastic, politics, nail polish, transparent gems of any color, jewelry shaped like animals, checkered prints ...

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Then the groom, who seemed unsuitably light of heart, followed him around before the ceremony insisting that Christianity was a dying religion. (" It's the only case I know of where *mental* sins count too; it'll never sell," he said. "Take it from me, get out while the getting's good." [...])

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"Scientists," said Duncan, "have been investigating the stimuli that cause birds to vocalize in the morning. So far they have determined only one. They sing because they're happy."

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But was she a fortune teller! I don't mind telling you, I used to go to her myself. Okay, so it's mumbo-jumbo. You know why I went? Say you got a problem, some decision to make. You ask your minister. You ask your psychiatrist, psychologist, marriage counselor, lawyer--they all say, 'Well of course I can't decide for you and we want to look at all the angles here and I wouldn't want to be responsible for--' They hedge their bets, you see. But not Madame Olita. Not any good fortune teller. 'Do X,' they say. 'Forget Y.' 'Stop seeing Z.' It's wonderful, they take full responsibility. What more could we ask?"

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"Otherwise," said Madame Olita, "why take any action at all? No, you can always choose to *some* extent. You can change your future a great deal. Also your past."
"My past?"
"Not what's happened, no," Madame Olita said gently, "but what hold it has on you."

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She had the pathetic alertness of a child who has had to depend too much on adults; she picked up every inflection, every gesture and untied ribbon and wandering eye, and turned it over and over to study its significance. (Was that how she could read the future? She had foretold Great-Grandma's death, she said, when she noticed her buying all her lotions in very tiny bottles.)

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Justine did not seem to be easily disappointed. Which was fortunate.

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"You want to hear about my movie?"
"Yes."
"I'm going to buy a camera and walk around filming to one side of things, wherever the action isn't. Say there's a touchdown at a football game, I'll narrow in on one straggling player at the other end of the field. If I see a purse-snatcher I'll find someone reading a newspaper just to the right of the victim."
"What's the point?" Justine asked.
"Point? It'll be the first realistic movie ever made. In true life you're *never* focused on where the action is. Or not so often. Not so finely."

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"After all, we're living in reduced circumstances."
He seemed to savor the last two words: reduced circumstances. Lucy thought they sounded smugly technical, like devaluated currency or municipal bonds.

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He took the hand, although she was a stranger. He would go along with anything; he always had.

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"Won't you just come away with me?" People had been saying that to him all his life. He had still not learned to turn them down.

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"If you really want to know," he said (but speaking in Caleb's general direction), "I don't believe in people sacrificing themselves for the sake of other people."

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Justine ran through the hallway, breathless and shivering. Someone had died. Something was wrong with Meg. She had never realized how many possibilities there were for disaster, or how calm and joyous her life had been until this moment.

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Reminder that wellness grifters like Trump's new Surgeon General Casey Means spread misinformation about vaccines and health because it is extremely profitable for them to do so.

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falling asleep is never going to feel as good as it is right now

4 star:
* Through the Eyes of a Child (AURORA)
Ambient vibe kind of song
* Do What You Want (Live) (OK Go)
Kind of an Elvis Costello Mystery Dance test mix vibe.
* Bittersweet Symphony (feat. Emily Roberts) (GAMPER & DADONI)
decent club style cover, with a good female vocal.
* Mad About Mad About Me (The Cantina Band) [feat. Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes] (R3X)
via my Disney trip, this is one of the songs the robot DJ is playing (I think they aim for just under 3 minutes for each) Fun that it has the class Cantina song... and at least that Disney cantina didn't discriminate against droids!

3 star:
* Just Fine (Radio Edit) (Mary J. Blige)
* Mad World (Sierra Hull)
* Houdini (Eminem)
* A Bar Song (Tipsy) (Shaboozey)
* Turbulence (Mus Kat & Nalpak)

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Guess you don't need a warrant as long as you're doing Trumps bidding... but don't worry it only affects you if you look like you might be an immigrant.

The repair tool was a little too clone-y for me but I think it got the job done... not sure how to apply a local color filter. The term "indian giver" is racist as hell and I'm not going to use it, but I wish I knew of a good replacement for noun sense of it. "Take-backer"?

2025 May❮❮prev