Adventures du jour!
Last night was the beginning of NaNoWriMo. It went pretty smoothly on my end, if somewhat sadly; I finally hit the point where I needed to write out a past scene that the characters had been mentioning throughout the book and it was a wallop.
Mr. Assassin had been completely convinced that what he’d said and done during the events of the scene had isolated him from the Goob and Dom (whom I shall now call Sabotage like the mouse from Valiant because it fits him). It turned out the Goob, who had been most maligned, had gotten over it, but Sabotage had not.
I got the scene written and went, “I don’t know how I would have handled this. I don’t know if I could have gotten over it.” I mean, I know the Goob did; it’s his POV in the memory and I can feel his forgiveness and understanding. But no wonder Mr. Assassin has been like, “We will never speak again, and I have to accept that.” It was that bad.–But I had a day to get over it and the Goob had three years.
After that, I played Hades, which I still haven’t finished. It’s on the PC, so in order to play it, I have to not be traveling or at an AirBnB, otherwise overwhelmed, have the power continually going out along that wall, or hanging out with Ray.
Conditions were finally met!
I like video games. They help mitigate ADD for me, and also help with the violence thing. Hades is all about death; you’re the son of Hades and you’re trying to escape the underworld. The only way to progress through the game is to die. And die. And DIE. And die again. “You died.” “Yeah, but this time I REALLY pissed Dad off.”
Happy happy.
I crashed midafternoon, took a nap, listened to a video and a half, woke up feeling reset (probably not in that order). Last night was a night of good, solid sleep, although I vaguely remember waking up at one point and feeling like I’d been talking to someone. (It wasn’t Ray; the bedroom door was still shut.) I did wake up early but felt rested. A sense of equilibrium.
Then I did a lot of fun Midjourney AI rolls for cute demons, which made my soul happy. Whenever I roll something that should exist, I feel like I’m doing the right thing.
Quote from Yoga Anatomy (Kaminoff/Matthews):
The skeletal system, muscular system, connective tissue (or fascial) system, and nervous system are characterized as separate body systems. As previously mentioned, the theory of anatomy that maps out discrete body systems grew from a perspective that was looking for ways to depict the working of the body as if it were a machine that could be reduced to its smallest parts and then constructed in a hierarchy of complexity and importance.
We know now that our body is not a machine. We were not built, but grew ourselves.
…
Yoga was wobbly, but not as wobbly as yesterday. I still have to use the chair on the new balance poses. My hip hurt.
Walking: I’m still having to wear socks. I put on my Keenes this morning with socks. Socks with actual sandals. AUGH. But they’ve been the best so far. I was putting them on and Mr. Assassin came out. He’s almost always dressed in natty suits and he has Opinions about my Crocs.
Mr. Assassin: You’re wearing socks with sandals.
Me: Because you tore the shit out of my feet with your emotional meltdown the other day.
Mr. Assassin: And attractive sandals they are, too.
I got to thinking about AI on the walk, live ones versus dead ones. Before I started out on the walk, I took a pose shot in the living room (I’m working on getting less self-conscious). I remembered that you’re supposed to be able to show the palm of your hand at the screen to trigger the camera to take a selfie. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and it’s hard to predict which, which now to me says, “There’s an AI behind this.”
I tried to train the AI to recognize my hands at progressively further distances and/or different hand angles. No dice. I think an AI tool was used to create the programming that “recognizes” the hand gesture, but that it can’t be updated in vivo, as it were.
Anyhow, it got me thinking. When I’m at a grocery store, there are places with “live” cheese and “dead” cheese. Live cheese is loosely and thinly wrapped, and you’re supposed to take the wrapper off and rewrap it when you get home, in paper towels and foil and shit. Dead cheese comes in an airtight, nonpermeable package. Live cheese is still developing; it’s still a living organism. Dead cheese is dead, it’s in stasis. The same “types” of cheese taste differently, depending on whether they’re live or dead.
Pickles that are fermenting, alcohol that is still aging, sourdough bread, creme fraiche–living foods, still changing and maturing.
AI that’s still learning is “live.” Products of the AI that no longer learn are “dead.” Live AIs react in adaptive ways to the materials you give them (“Like this?” “No.” “Like this?” “NO.” “Like this?” “OMG IT’S UNCANNY HOW ACCURATE THESE FB ADS ARE.”). Dead AIs respond the way they’re supposed to, most of the time, then cough up WTF WHY WON’T IT WORK responses some of the time.–We have a Google Nest speaker; most of the time it does fine, but sometimes the sound quality is vastly degraded. Unplug it, let it sit, plug it back in and it’s fine. The speaker itself doesn’t have live AI. (Although it does connect to YouTube’s algos for the music selection process.)
I find that working with dead AI makes me sad but working with live AI makes me happy.
I had a brain side tangent about my tastes in food. I have adventurous tastes now, but I remember not always having them. I think I got those from my one of my cousins, whom I still admire very much, who loved trying new things. (She also introduced me to some good books and music.) It wasn’t any one meal that did it, just being around her and soaking up her attitude. Now I feel like if I run into a type of food that I haven’t tried before, and that I can be reasonably certain is cooked well, I can try it and I’ll probably enjoy it. I won’t say she gave me my sense of curiosity, but she certainly gave me more tools to use it well.
It’s weird, though. Most days I eat really plain stuff, like apples/cheese/bagel or yogurt/granola or a protein bar, then something at least minimally interesting for supper. I can’t do very much of super-spicy foods, but I love to beg for them off other people’s plates and will happily share in turn. (Ray loves Takis, which are VERY sour and spicy corn chips; she loves giving me one or two from a bag because the combination makes me shudder every time. There was one that was so spicy that my brain skipped a beat, like, I had to think, “Wait, what was I doing just now?”)
The stuff I learn from other people isn’t always bad, I think was what my brain was trying to say. Fair, brain. Fair.
While out on the walk I saw a fire, which I posted about elsewhere (with the pictures). It felt very much like an immune system response. I found it interesting that I went toward the fire, but didn’t call 911 or call out to the people initially standing around at the fire; it looked like stuff would quickly come under control (it did) and I had an intuition that if I’d shouted something like, “Don’t go inside!” to the people obviously thinking about running inside, they would have. The paramedics were standing around bored, which was good.
On the way back to the apartment, my hip acted up again and I decided to talk things out with it. It turns out accepting that I have a capacity for violence and/or aggression wasn’t enough per se. I did fondly tell my hip that it was my favorite murder kitten, which made it happy enough to get home. I got back and took a shower, then danced to some music, trying to isolate what still hurt, and told each of the muscles that it, too, was a favorite murder kitten (“Just because you’re some sort of mammalian predator doesn’t mean you’re not fluffy, o best of all hips”), and that seems to have done it. I’m still stiff, but not in pain. Different muscles already feel stiff, which probably means the hips did release enough to have a slightly different posture.
I got the letter back from the friend that had me in fits the other day; it was fine, as expected, except for a particularly valid compliment that I have to process before I can actually respond.
Yes, yes. If you want to knock me down, just say something nice. YOU’RE ANOTHER.