Isometric exercises…agonist/antagonist muscles…writing process: using others’ expertise…AI and tech drama…liking yourself vs. bragging.
Adventures du jour!
Isometric exercises: the results are promising. So promising, in fact, that they have spurred me to take the morning off yoga and have a minor moral collapse so I could do a Panera bagel run. I am sore and I have very little willpower. I *wanted* some of the random-ass donuts from my favorite mom’n’pop place, Amy’s Donuts in Colorado Springs, but alas, that’s bit of a drive from Florida.
I could have obtained donuts from somewhere in Florida, but it’s not the same.–The thing about nation-wide chain restaurants is that the memories you make at one restaurant transfer easily to others of the same type. I used to work at Panera back in the day, with lots of good memories of people I worked with and therefore also the food there. Panera is an easily obtainable hit of nostalgia for me, even if I find their politics questionable at best.
In the Yoga Anatomy book, I’m reading about muscles balancing themselves in pairs for specific muscle movements, to help modulate joint actions (that is, to control movement so it’s more subtle than a kick or a punch, as it were).
As a writer, the terms the book uses sends my brain in all kinds of odd directions. “Antagonist” is used for the forces set against the main characters of the story. ENEMY MUSCLES!!!
From the book:
“One of the common paradigms for organizing muscles is into agonist-antagonist muscle pairs. … The muscles that create the joint action are called your agonists, or prime movers, and the muscles that create the opposite joint action are called your antagonists.* When on muscle of the pair acts, the other muscle receives a message to respond and modulate. … Agonist and antagonist roles are relative, and they change as the focal joint and the joint action change. These terms do not describe an absolute quality inherent in the muscle itself, but something about its relationship to another muscle during a specific moment at a particular joint. Whether a muscle is an antagonist or an agonist depends on which joint and which joint action are the points of focus and where the main resistance to the movement is found.
*The word agonist comes from a Greek word meaning “contender” or “contestant.” Antagonist comes from the Greek word for “opponent.”
…
…This whole discussion makes me, a writer, want to stop using “protagonist” to describe the prime mover of my stories. AGONIST. What a great word!
Also: OW I AM SORE. I wish I hadn’t reminded myself about enemy muscles. Some of my muscles are thinking about fomenting rebellion, a rebellion that can only be prevented with Cinnamon Crunch Bagels, apparently.
The past couple of days have mostly seen me working on a short story for an anthology. I *could* wait and write it later, but I was talking to a friend about her area of expertise and she said some variation of “And if you ever need to write a story about this, I’m your expert” for the third time.
“What I tell you three times is true.”–Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark.
Therefore, says my brain, she must really mean it. But, also says my brain, FOR HOW LONG?!?
So I picked her brain, starting with interesting murder methods relevant to her expertise; we got some good ones going. Then I went grocery shopping after sunset, got lost multiple times and drove around in a huge circle (a sign that I knew *exactly* where I was but that my subconscious wanted some extra driving time). As soon as I got the idea for the story, I became “unlost” and was able to get to Aldi’s without further ado. I threw notes down on my phone as I shopped, then came back to the house and started the story, pinging her with further questions. The story has a weird structure, and I’m worried that it’s going to go over the wordcount for the anthology. But it’s a good story so far.
Walks: UGH, they’ve been relatively short the last few days. I didn’t take any pictures the other day, took a bunch yesterday, then didn’t take any again this morning. Guess which days were days that I overdid it with the isometric exercises. GUESS.
Movement: It’s easier for me to hold balance poses while music is on. It’s *much* easier for me to hold and move through balance poses if I think in terms of kicks. Ray was in karate for a while as a kid, and I joined her for a bit, so I know some basic kicks, which I haven’t done for over a decade. Now working through the ones I can remember, trying to do them more for balance than power. I’ll probably go harder on them once I get some decent shoes and don’t need to worry as much about a slip.
AI: More drama. More arts places are setting up wonky “agreements” to not use AI for training data sets…but they’re “agreements” that default to being able to use the data unless the individual artist opts out. HUH. Artstation seems to be the latest site to do this.
Chaosium, Inc., whose major game property is the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, has said they will only use human-created artwork (no AI) in their art. Could Cthulhu illustrate his own game? Currently, no.
I saw a story on Twitter about a teacher who busted their student for probable AI use on an essay; the problem in the case was that–because AI doesn’t copy the exact words its sources uses–it was difficult to *prove* that the student used AI, even though they had clearly done so. Also, the essay came to a completely false, unjustified conclusion, one that sounded good but that wasn’t based in any actual facts.
One of the bugs that I’ve been putting in AI entrepreneurs’ ears is the necessity of being able to provide sources. Nobody’s going to trust an AI that can’t tell you where it’s getting its information…which means AI-backed products won’t sell as well and, if they do, leave everyone involved open to lawsuits. (There will probably be lawsuits regardless.) I feel like the ability to get AIs to spit out their sources will be valuable for all kinds of things, including the possibility of establishing payments for artists whose data is included in training sets.
Other tech news includes TomTom, Microsoft, FB/Meta, and Amazon partnering for a public non-profit, Overture Maps Foundation, to provide geospatial data.
This is a Big Freaking Deal.
I know fusion is important (the big science news at the moment–they’re getting better at hacking the universe to basically create perpetual motion machines *or better*), but this geospatial stuff is right here and, like AI in general, already affecting your life.
Deciding who owns the information of “where/when is x” is like deciding who owns the moon. Either we *all* own the moon, or it gets sliced and diced by politics, corporations, and special interests. Likewise geospatial data. Imagine, if you will, that Nazis owned Google Maps. Or if Elon Musk did. This data needs to be public, truly public.
Finally, I want to muse on what the line is between liking yourself and bragging.
As I learn to like myself–it’s a weird process–I’m running into mental walls where I hesitate to say nice things about myself or promote work. “If I say X out loud, it’ll look like I’m bragging.” Honestly, I think most of it IS bragging.
Is that bad, though?
When I was struggling with how to defend myself from catcallers and particularly that weird guy who was circling the neighborhood in his truck back in August, a friend gave me the advice to stand up for myself as though I were standing up for a twelve-year-old kid who just happened to be me, my younger self.
The thought really helped, and soon the guy just sort of stopped following me around, I suspect because he wasn’t getting the reaction he wanted. The few times I’ve been catcalled since I moved to the new apartment, it’s just amused me. “Is this a problem you want to have today, buddy? No? Because I’mma be a problem in about two seconds.”
BUT.
Here’s a thought: what if I don’t just defend myself like I’m protecting a twelve-year-old kid who just happened to be me. What if I talked about her like I was proud of her, too? What if I bragged her up?
There *will* be people who get hurt by me saying good stuff about myself in public. I’ve taken it personally myself when people brag about their accomplishments, because sometimes I’m a small-minded jerk with a gaping hole in my heart that’s only just barely scabbed over at the best of times. Why wouldn’t other people *also* be demons of insecurity held together with reused wrapping paper and Scotch tape? It’s happened before. I’ve hit sore spots and been pushed away or ghosted. It’ll happen again.
But I feel like, tentatively speaking, saying nice things about myself is giving me the room to not get mad about others’ successes, as well as giving me the room to get ghosted and pushed and not take it personally, and to hold space so we can pick up again later.
I’m still letting go of people who are bad for me, as well as a couple who are okay around me but unable to control themselves around people I care about. Their “respect” is something I can live without.
So probably bragging is a net benefit. As long as I don’t turn into my own worst soccer mom or something. Now there’s a thought.
Pictures from making crystalized ginger. Or caramelized ginger, one of the two! But delicious.
I am proud of this kick! I had been holding it for about 10 seconds when I took this, and listening to raucous music (Pigface).
An image of a theriac mixure, or a sort of anti-poison cure-all, often used in plague masks.
(Here’s the prompt: poison plant, jar, beetle, skull, snake, symbol, herb, theriac. Run on Midjourney v4 with a light upscale.)