Juliebarkley seeks the positive

[juliebarkley]

Last challenge I worked on building foundational habits for my different skill categories. I was mostly successful, except for the physical skills of STR/DEX/CON - oh the shame of it all on a physical fitness forum! So yeah, this time I have to actually move, rather than just talk about how I've not moved. I'm going to be carrying these foundational habits forward for this challenge so that I can build on them.

 

I also want to start a project. Predictably, this will be a getting-rid-of project. (A glance at the Arts/Skills section of my battle log will reveal that I have a tendency to pile things up and then pretend they're not there when the get overwhelming, sometimes for literal decades. I'm trying to get rid of the accumulated stuff in manageable chunks over a long period of time.) I started this project a little last challenge, when I was bitching about how hard it was to make the rectangles I was using to plan shelving arrangements behave themselves. I need a more functional recording space to make progress on Occ. goals. What I have works, but it's not as convenient as I'd hoped to convert it from living to recording space and back again. And I have too many books for my shelves, so I need more of those anyway. I think the new design I have in mind will work. I have a basic layout in mind. I will need to do a little bit of sewing on the blankets to make new attachment points, but that's no big deal. What is a big deal is the ginormous pile of discarded books from the Great Weeding Project of 2020. I need to get rid of them to make room. Or put them up for sale and shift them to the "for sale" area. Or something other than sitting in piles and being useless. In addition to clearing space for recording, it will give me more living area AND an indoor space for handstand practice, so it's like an achievement that will unlock new levels of the skill tree.

 

I will have to be very careful to keep habits going while project mode is engaged; this is a big deal for this challenge.

 

I'm going to try something  fun to round off the challenge. The news cycle runs on terrible news. They get people to tune in by hitting their fear and outrage buttons. It's very effective. But it's also bad for mental health in the long run to be bombarded with so much negativity. When you think about it, even after the disaster that was 2020, things around the world really have been improving for humanity. Since 1990, the child mortality rate has more than halved. The number of people living in absolute poverty is lowest it has ever been even though there are more people alive now than ever before. We have gone from ~370,000 cases of guinea worm to only 28. And look how quickly we rose to the challenge of creating multiple vaccines, some using technology never before used for a vaccine, for a virus whose relatives have resisted our efforts in the past. We are an ingenious, resilient, and scrappy species. I am going to find an example of people using their resourcefulness and creativity to make the world a better place and report it back here daily. (And if you have any you'd like to share yourself, please do! The more the merrier.)

 

Or, as expressed in D&D-speak:

 

STR: Continue the current habit, but actually do it this time.

DEX: Same as above. This one I got lazy on, but I do need to modify it to remove some of the jumps because they risk waking people up.

CON: Same as above. I anticipate this one being spotty because winter.

INT: Same as above, but with at least one session per week of focused reading time (ie. not while eating).

WIS: Same as above, but with daily efforts at appreciative mindfulness thrown in as well. This is not a quantifiable goal, I know. Also the positive news challenge mentioned previously.

CHA: Monitor charitable organizations to see if any would make good potential volunteer opportunities. Make time on 1-2 evenings to intentionally spend time with my son.

Occ.: Continue the current habit. Do something every day to prepare for recording when the space is up.

Art.: Book discarding/selling challenge listed previously. Also, continue music practice daily.

Lang.: Continue the current habit.

[Mad Hatter]

32 minutes ago, juliebarkley said:

I am going to find an example of people using their resourcefulness and creativity to make the world a better place and report it back here daily.

Looking forward to this!  

[Mike Wazowski]

Here for the happy news, for sure!

[Scaly Freak]

6 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I'm going to try something  fun to round off the challenge. The news cycle runs on terrible news. They get people to tune in by hitting their fear and outrage buttons. It's very effective. But it's also bad for mental health in the long run to be bombarded with so much negativity. When you think about it, even after the disaster that was 2020, things around the world really have been improving for humanity. Since 1990, the child mortality rate has more than halved. The number of people living in absolute poverty is lowest it has ever been even though there are more people alive now than ever before. We have gone from ~370,000 cases of guinea worm to only 28. And look how quickly we rose to the challenge of creating multiple vaccines, some using technology never before used for a vaccine, for a virus whose relatives have resisted our efforts in the past. We are an ingenious, resilient, and scrappy species. I am going to find an example of people using their resourcefulness and creativity to make the world a better place and report it back here daily. (And if you have any you'd like to share yourself, please do! The more the merrier.)

 

Humanity surviving despite it's own best efforts. I like it. I look forward to seeing what comes out of this particular part of your challenge. And I'll try to find a way to contribute at some point as well.

[juliebarkley]

22 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Looking forward to this!  

Me too!

 

17 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Here for the happy news, for sure!

The more the merrier!

 

16 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

Humanity surviving despite it's own best efforts. I like it. I look forward to seeing what comes out of this particular part of your challenge. And I'll try to find a way to contribute at some point as well.

Haha, that's one way to look at it. I'd love to see any happy news you stumble across as well!

 

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Didn't walk. I didn't look at the temperature during the day, but it's really cold now, so I'm staying in. (Today I found a way to arrange my beanbag chair with a different chair funnelling the warm heating vent air to my feet, with a cat next to me. This is a good illustration of how I feel about willingly making myself cold.) Haven't done DEX yet, BUT I WILL.

 

Sorted all the books into piles by weight (the weight determines the shipping price, which helps me calculate whether they can be profitably sold or not). It took under 3 hours, which was a lot less time than I was expecting. A few books that fell apart in my hands while sorting got recycled.

 

Today's good news item is a really small one pulled from the local paper. We've been under a stay-at-home order since Christmas, and shortly after that, the city shut down all toboggan hills, skating rinks, and ski places. If you live in the city and have kids, there is nowhere much to take them. Since a lot of them have school at home, they must be getting pretty stir-crazy, especially if they don't have yards. Well, we finally got some snow that stuck around in January, a few days before they shut down all of the things. After another snowfall, the plow came round to a street where the kids were playing on the big piles of snow on the sides of the road.  The plow driver, seeing how the kids were trying their best to have a good time outside, decided to help out. He used the plow to form the newly-plowed snow into a big slide so that the neighbourhood kids could all play safely. Such a small gesture of kindness that probably only took 5-10 minutes of his time, but it meant enough to the parents and kids that day that they wrote in to shout him out and thank him.

 

STR: not today.

DEX: not yet.

CON: too cold.

INT: I read a chapter of Dracula after I woke up, because it was cold outside of the blankets and I wanted an excuse to stay in bed. Goals AND laziness.

WIS: not yet.

CHA: not yet.

Occ.: not yet. Note to self: do this after the post, since it can be done in the beanbag chair with the cat alongside. Wouldn't want to disturb the cat, after all.

Art.: Yankee Doodle is really hard!

Lang.: Done. I did some math on this today. If the number of lessons in each skill are consistent, which they appear to be, and I continue at the current average pace of one new lesson and two reviews per day, I am going to grow old working on the Duo trees. I have 3540 lessons to go in Spanish, 3480 in French, and 1080 in Esperanto. One lesson per day and I will not be done for ten years. 😳 I'm going to have to start spending some of my lingots on the level skip tests. And accept that I will not be done by the end of the year.

[Scaly Freak]

10 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Well, we finally got some snow that stuck around in January, a few days before they shut down all of the things. After another snowfall, the plow came round to a street where the kids were playing on the big piles of snow on the sides of the road.  The plow driver, seeing how the kids were trying their best to have a good time outside, decided to help out. He used the plow to form the newly-plowed snow into a big slide so that the neighbourhood kids could all play safely. Such a small gesture of kindness that probably only took 5-10 minutes of his time, but it meant enough to the parents and kids that day that they wrote in to shout him out and thank him.

 

I remember when I was a kid, we used to build fortifications on the snow mountains created by the snow plow. We tunneled through them if they were large enough, and inevitably we ended up standing behind our little fortress walls and pelt each other and our parents with chunks of snow. We did a lot of sliding and sledding on the snow hills too. 

 

This plow driver did a very good thing.  

[Mike Wazowski]

That plow driver story really warmed my heart - thanks for sharing!!

[Scaly Freak]

15 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

If the number of lessons in each skill are consistent, which they appear to be, and I continue at the current average pace of one new lesson and two reviews per day, I am going to grow old working on the Duo trees. I have 3540 lessons to go in Spanish, 3480 in French, and 1080 in Esperanto. One lesson per day and I will not be done for ten years.

 

And actively learning languages every day for the rest of your life is a bad things because....? 😛 

[Epsilonte]

16 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Today's good news item is a really small one pulled from the local paper. We've been under a stay-at-home order since Christmas, and shortly after that, the city shut down all toboggan hills, skating rinks, and ski places. If you live in the city and have kids, there is nowhere much to take them. Since a lot of them have school at home, they must be getting pretty stir-crazy, especially if they don't have yards. Well, we finally got some snow that stuck around in January, a few days before they shut down all of the things. After another snowfall, the plow came round to a street where the kids were playing on the big piles of snow on the sides of the road.  The plow driver, seeing how the kids were trying their best to have a good time outside, decided to help out. He used the plow to form the newly-plowed snow into a big slide so that the neighbourhood kids could all play safely. Such a small gesture of kindness that probably only took 5-10 minutes of his time, but it meant enough to the parents and kids that day that they wrote in to shout him out and thank him.

 

Ooooh this is so nice, thanks for sharing! 

Isn't it wonderful how one smalll good deed can brighten the day of so many people? ❤️ 

 

16 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

INT: I read a chapter of Dracula after I woke up, because it was cold outside of the blankets and I wanted an excuse to stay in bed. Goals AND laziness.

 

Perfection.

[juliebarkley]

9 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

I remember when I was a kid, we used to build fortifications on the snow mountains created by the snow plow. We tunneled through them if they were large enough, and inevitably we ended up standing behind our little fortress walls and pelt each other and our parents with chunks of snow. We did a lot of sliding and sledding on the snow hills too. 

 

This plow driver did a very good thing.  

We used to do that at school, but we were always cautioned very hard against tunnelling. We use a lot of salt on the roads, and they weaken the integrity of the snow enough that tunnels and snow forts can and do collapse on and kill children. Yard snow was fine though. I remember one year we had a little fort and the dog tried to run over the top. All four of her legs poked through the roof at once and she was stuck that way till we rescued her.

 

5 hours ago, Mike Wazowski said:

That plow driver story really warmed my heart - thanks for sharing!!

That's the idea!

 

5 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

And actively learning languages every day for the rest of your life is a bad things because....? 😛 

Because I don't wanna get stuck at beginner-intermediate, I wanna get better now! *stamps foot* (More seriously, it's easy to get stuck on lessons, but you can only progress so much that way. I do want to progress as fast as I am able to get on to the funner stuff. )

 

4 hours ago, Epsilonte said:

Ooooh this is so nice, thanks for sharing! 

Isn't it wonderful how one smalll good deed can brighten the day of so many people? ❤️

 

Perfection.

It really can. We used to get lines of people going through the Tim Horton's drive-thru, each of whom would pay for the person behind them. It often went through half a dozen or more people paying it forward. Almost everyone paid roughly the same as they would have for their own coffee, but you get that warm feeling of someone doing something nice for you and being able to return the favour.

 

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Today is gonna be a writeoff, more or less. I have spent the day catching up on some old threads and starting to check out the new ones, chipping away at Mount Email, etc. with the full intention of getting to exercise and so on after supper like I always do. But this headache/migraine/whatever has been growing for hours and is only getting worse. I'm struggling to keep my eyes in focus and my ears are starting to go funny too. I was really looking forward to getting the exercise back on track, but I can't face it right now. I can probably do a little Duo with the volume down, maybe even some book sorting, but music and VO practice are out.

 

Today's good news item comes courtesy of my slightly Minecraft-obsessed child. Investigative journalism can be a dangerous career and press freedom around the world has dropped in most places over the last ten years. This is true even in countries we think of as having free media*. Articles, websites, blogs, etc. can be censored or taken down if a government doesn't want its people to hear what they have to say. What's a journalist to do to get the truth out when a free press doesn't exist? Turn to Minecraft, of course! Reporters Without Borders set up the Uncensored Library as a Minecraft server with censored articles as books that can be read in-game. Minecraft is available almost everywhere, since it's just a game. And since the server can also be downloaded as a map file and passed around that way, it's virtually impossible to censor in future. And I love that it's most likely to be accessed by young people. They did something similar with Spotify a few years ago, too. Such a creative way to fight censorship. ❤️

 

*The US is now ranked #45 in the world, after taking a big hit in 2011 during Occupy Wall Street and a huge hit in 2014 when the aggressive pursuit of whistleblowers ramped up. Bipartisan suckiness on this issue means that the score hasn't improved since then, though at least it hasn't kept dropping. Come on US, you can do better than this. I believe in you.

[WhiteGhost]

On 2/12/2021 at 4:40 PM, juliebarkley said:

I am going to find an example of people using their resourcefulness and creativity to make the world a better place and report it back here daily.

I love this

 

On 2/12/2021 at 4:40 PM, juliebarkley said:

Make time on 1-2 evenings to intentionally spend time with my son.

Love this too

[juliebarkley]

15 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

I love this

 

Love this too

Me too! Glad to have you along!

 

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Yesterday was a truly lost day. I don't think I did a single challenge thing other than reading a bit at meal time. It took a long time to bounce back from the migraine and I had no energy all day.

 

I still have no energy (different reason though), but I don't want today to be a repeat of yesterday. Update again later with (hopefully) the successes of the day.

[Xena]

On 2/14/2021 at 1:00 AM, juliebarkley said:

Because I don't wanna get stuck at beginner-intermediate, I wanna get better now! *stamps foot* (More seriously, it's easy to get stuck on lessons, but you can only progress so much that way. I do want to progress as fast as I am able to get on to the funner stuff. )

 

I'm not sure what your goals are or how much time you want to spend on it, but are you looking for other ways to progress? I've found podcasts helpful. I'm not sure about Esperanto, but I've seen things targeted at all different levels in French and Spanish.

[juliebarkley]

4 hours ago, Xena said:

 

I'm not sure what your goals are or how much time you want to spend on it, but are you looking for other ways to progress? I've found podcasts helpful. I'm not sure about Esperanto, but I've seen things targeted at all different levels in French and Spanish.

Maybe? I have to give a little thought to what my goals are, to be honest. My Spanish is very beginner basic (can't-conjugate-outside-the-present-tense-yet basic), but in the other two, I am much stronger. I am currently reading in French on my meal breaks, playing some Esperanto D&D, and watching a few Esperanto YouTube videos from time to time, but that's about it. I should probably put more work into the listening/speaking side of both, and especially make a more active effort to pick up new vocabulary. At the moment I'm just kind of keeping everything warm, it feels like.

 

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Yesterday was, as predicted, a very low energy day. I did a few habity things, but mostly just caught up with stuff that I didn't do in the previous two days. It wasn't very exciting. The only thing worth noting is that when everyone cancelled for Sunday D&D (Valentine's) and no one showed up for Monday French (didn't send a reminder, and also Family Day), my first thoughts were "must be because it is a holiday" rather than more self-destructive things, which feels like progress.

 

Today I have energy again, and at least a couple of hours before bed. I fully intend to get all the daily habit items done.

 

I also have ideas for two good together activities. My son told me that he's had like three people tell him in the last week that he should watch The Wolf of Wall Street. On looking that up it looks like maaaaaybe we should give that one a pass, but we'll watch something else one evening. And probably on Thursday, I'd like to take a walk to the bridge on the other side of the river. Now, this sounds like a pretty boring activity, but hear me out. The water under the bridge is pretty shallow and slow-moving. The way that the bridge sits over it shelters it from both wind and snow as it freezes. The result is ice that is clear as glass. It looks unfrozen from a distance (actually even when you are close; I've had to step on it first to convince people it was real) , but you can stand on it and sometimes see things floating or even swimming past underneath. We try to make it over at least once a year, and since the river didn't freeze well till mid-January, we haven't made it yet.

 

Now, for the next good news item. Manwell Wilson started working as a handyman at a homeless shelter in London in 2019. He had a musical background, and noticed that there was always music playing in the young person's area of the shelter, and often singing and rapping too. There was a piano in the rec area, but it was broken, out of tune, and therefore neglected. Manny knew that music had healing powers, so he decided this was his chance to make a difference. He taught himself how to tune a piano and would work on it between repairing other things in the shelter. He played it a little, kept an eye out for others who tried it out, and people started to take notice. He saw how music was helping them with their trauma and pulling them out of isolation. He started giving lessons, bought a used keyboard, and the counsellors got interested in expanding the program. Then the first lockdown hit. The program had to close, but Manny used the lockdowns as an opportunity: he, the staff, and the young people have been working together to find and renovate a former staff room into a proper recording studio by the time the lockdowns are over.

 

Today's story reminds me of a warm-and-fuzzy thing from work. I am working through a training program about how to deal with homeless customers. The presenter made a really good point at the start of the training that I had never thought of before. One of the reasons why we have social conflicts in the library is that it is now one of the only places in our communities where wealthy, middle-class, and poor people regularly mix. (It's true, too - even if you live only a couple of blocks from people of another class, you probably shop, work, etc. in different places and rarely interact meaningfully. Few people have friends outside their social class.) I love that my workplace is playing an important social role just by welcoming everyone. Even though it means awkward moments and unpleasant conversations sometimes.

[Scaly Freak]

8 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Today's story reminds me of a warm-and-fuzzy thing from work. I am working through a training program about how to deal with homeless customers. The presenter made a really good point at the start of the training that I had never thought of before. One of the reasons why we have social conflicts in the library is that it is now one of the only places in our communities where wealthy, middle-class, and poor people regularly mix. (It's true, too - even if you live only a couple of blocks from people of another class, you probably shop, work, etc. in different places and rarely interact meaningfully. Few people have friends outside their social class.) I love that my workplace is playing an important social role just by welcoming everyone. Even though it means awkward moments and unpleasant conversations sometimes.

 

This is one of the reasons why libraries are so very important.

[juliebarkley]

16 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

This is one of the reasons why libraries are so very important.

❤️

 

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Today was reasonably productive. Let's see. I got a few challenges read, I hit most of my habits,... Yeah, pretty good all told.

 

STR: not today.

DEX: not yet, but will do.

CON: will not happen. It was a good day, but not THAT good. But tomorrow is the walk across the river day, so tomorrow yes!

INT: Oh shoot no. I'll have to read a chapter before bed.

WIS: this is always before bed. And also the happy thing below.

CHA: We have narrowed down our movie choices to The Sixth Sense (which he has not seen) and The Matrix (which neither of us has seen).

Occ.: VO meetup group was today. The person organizing the practice session gave everyone something that they thought was way out of their natural comfort zone to push us to try new things. I got a hard sell advertising read, which yup, if you've ever heard my voice you know no one would ever hire me to do. It's a good exercise, though. Keeps you experimenting.

Art.: I only did a handful last night, but I'll settle down for at least the length of a podcast and sort through books tonight.

Lang.: I decided to get all of my languages to even crown levels for best level skipping efficiency, then realized I'd pushed two of the three to level 5, so there's nothing to skip. Oops.

 

The happy news of the day is not one person's story, but is really the story of lots of people individually reaching out to others in need. (Good news stories of innovation and creativity are not super easy to find. It's a bit of a stretch, but it's my challenge after all. This particular story also has potential to be seen as political, but that is not the goal here at all.) This is going to require a little background explanation.

 

Canada started up a program in the late 1970s that allowed private individuals to sponsor refugees (non-program really; since it's more of a get-the-government-out-of-the-way program). We were the only country in the world that did this (that's the innovation part), and no one knew if anyone would be interested at the time. Your sponsorship group has to financially support the sponsored individual or family for a year, set them up with housing, help them find jobs, and basically just help them settle in and act as a support network for them. Well, it turns out lots of people were interested, and it works really well. Their outcomes are way better than government-sponsored refugees - they get jobs faster, are less likely to need public assistance, and integrate really well into their new communities because they have built-in connections right from the start. Even people who lean anti-immigration tend to like the private sponsorship program because it doesn't take any public money (except for some admin costs, I assume). And the people who do the sponsoring often come back again and again because they can hands-on help change someone's whole life for the better. Many sponsored refugees later end up sponsoring friends and relatives in a happy feedback loop as well. We've settled more than 325,000 people through private sponsorships since 1978. So many second chances. It's great. There were so many happy stories that I couldn't possibly pick just one.

 

The news part was that I learned only recently that a bunch of other countries were inspired by Canada's success to try private sponsorship for themselves recently (United Kingdom, Argentina, Ireland, Germany, Spain, New Zealand, Australia, and the Netherlands), and the pilots seem to be successful so far. Covid slowed things down, but I do hope that this takes off in other places.

[Mad Hatter]

On 2/17/2021 at 9:30 AM, juliebarkley said:

My son told me that he's had like three people tell him in the last week that he should watch The Wolf of Wall Street.

It is a good movie!

 

On 2/17/2021 at 9:30 AM, juliebarkley said:

The result is ice that is clear as glass. It looks unfrozen from a distance (actually even when you are close; I've had to step on it first to convince people it was real) , but you can stand on it and sometimes see things floating or even swimming past underneath.

Oooh neat! Doesn't sound boring at all.

 

On 2/17/2021 at 9:30 AM, juliebarkley said:

One of the reasons why we have social conflicts in the library is that it is now one of the only places in our communities where wealthy, middle-class, and poor people regularly mix.

I wonder if it's true here too. 🤔 Here there are a few large (by Finnish standards) libraries, and sure the main one by the railway station has issues with homeless people and druggies. (There was even a stabbing incidence, which is crazy in this country!) But most of the libraries are tiny, local ones and you get the books delivered there. I just see a few more grannies than usual there... 

Then again, "mixing" is not something people do in Finland anyway which makes the whole train of thought a bit moot. 😆

 

Loving the stories!

[WhiteGhost]

3 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Canada started up a program in the late 1970s that allowed private individuals to sponsor refugees

Wow, I really love that idea.  I hadn't ever even heard of it before

[Scaly Freak]

5 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Well, it turns out lots of people were interested, and it works really well. Their outcomes are way better than government-sponsored refugees - they get jobs faster, are less likely to need public assistance, and integrate really well into their new communities because they have built-in connections right from the start. Even people who lean anti-immigration tend to like the private sponsorship program because it doesn't take any public money (except for some admin costs, I assume). And the people who do the sponsoring often come back again and again because they can hands-on help change someone's whole life for the better. Many sponsored refugees later end up sponsoring friends and relatives in a happy feedback loop as well. We've settled more than 325,000 people through private sponsorships since 1978. So many second chances. It's great. There were so many happy stories that I couldn't possibly pick just one.

 

This is really cool and made me happy to read. My inner cynic needs to be reminded that the majority of the human race actually are not self-centered assholes.

[Xena]

I'm loving your stories!

And I agree with @Mad Hatter. Walking to the bridge sounded lovely, and not boring at all!

[juliebarkley]

16 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Oooh neat! Doesn't sound boring at all.

1 hour ago, Xena said:

I'm loving your stories!

And I agree with @Mad Hatter. Walking to the bridge sounded lovely, and not boring at all!

We went over to the bridge right after getting up. It was actually a reasonable workout since we had to wade through the snow after we left the snowmobile tracks. The ice was not so great this year, but there were a few really clear spots where you could see the lines of frozen bubbles and the cracks going all the way down (25cm ish). Since the ice wasn't fantastic for looking at but was still nice and smooth, we did some sliding instead. My son claimed he has never slid on ice before (shock horror! I am a terrible parent!), so I explained how it works and he gave it his best shot. He couldn't beat me though. Based on my oh-so-accurate measuring method (I am 5'2', so if I lie down on the the ground that's about 5 feet), he slid 13 feet on his best run and I got to 18 feet.

 

17 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I wonder if it's true here too. 🤔 Here there are a few large (by Finnish standards) libraries, and sure the main one by the railway station has issues with homeless people and druggies. (There was even a stabbing incidence, which is crazy in this country!) But most of the libraries are tiny, local ones and you get the books delivered there. I just see a few more grannies than usual there... 

Libraries are really varied in their populations. My first library was three doors down from a Salvation Army shelter, so we had many customers who were homeless and/or had mental health issues. Neither of those groups were our worst customers. My current library is in a wealthy area, so homeless customers are rare. Nowhere I've worked has had a stabbing that I've heard of, though one of my colleagues was brutally raped not long before I started. In my whole career, I think the worst things I've ever personally had to deal with were a non-serious death threat, scary fights where we had to call security (luckily that library had security to call), someone who locked herself in the bathroom for an hour while smearing unpleasant things all over it, and watching out for child pornography/kids accessing pornography/just generally dealing with complaints about pornography. (I'd really appreciate you not watching porn in the library, folks. Those conversations are unpleasant for everyone.)

 

14 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Wow, I really love that idea.  I hadn't ever even heard of it before

12 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

This is really cool and made me happy to read. My inner cynic needs to be reminded that the majority of the human race actually are not self-centered assholes.

I love it too! We had a sponsored family near us and it is nice to see immigrants coming into smaller towns not just the big cities.

 

I deal with the cognitive dissonance of "lots of people suck and are horrible" and "actually a lot of people are pretty great" as well. I can only resolve it by figuring that these are the same people, because people can both suck and be quite decent at the same time. Like, if something I care about deeply is way down their priority list, they might seem pretty awful to me in that moment but might be awesome in other situations. Or like, even when close family hold awful opinions, we know that's only a small part of them so we love them anyway because we see all the good stuff in them too. We're complicated creatures.

 

17 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Then again, "mixing" is not something people do in Finland anyway which makes the whole train of thought a bit moot. 😆

How do Finns meet new people?

 

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I have started the s-l-o-w process of separating the saleable books from the ones that are heading to the donate and recycle piles. I really hope there's a way that I can upload a spreadsheet of descriptions rather than listing them individually without paying for FBA, because individual listing is so tedious. But that is a problem for another day. I'm hoping to get my largest category done today, but I don't think I'll be able to, because....

 

It's exercise day and I'm committed to getting back on the wagon as soon as this post is done!

 

STR: soon...

DEX: not today.

CON: to the bridge and back.

INT: More Dracula while warming up from the walk.

WIS: not yet.

CHA: bridge outing with bonus sliding competition.

Occ.: oh crap. No. Not yet. I'm not doing well here this week.

Art.: I am making progress on Yankee Doodle. I think I've got the first bit more or less if I don't go too fast, but the last few bars are tricky still at any speed.

Lang.: Yes, done. Started looking for a few sources for reading/writing/listening/speaking for Esperanto and French.

 

Good news item of the day:

Agbogbloshie is a slum area of Accra, Ghana, which is home to the world's largest e-waste dump. It is also one of the most toxic places on earth due to things like leaking batteries and tires and styrofoam being burned by people recovering copper from the waste. This sounds very grim, but it is only one part of the story. There is a thriving economy built around this dump by people who recover not only copper, but all sorts of other materials that can be transformed into other things. Refurbishers fix up old computers and TVs to sell to the local population, and makers create welding machines, barbecues, and all sorts of neat things. So that is the starting point: very toxic and poverty-stricken place with lots of makers using the dump as their resource.

 

DK Osseo-Asare and Dr. Yasmine Abbas realized that there was a lot of potential here. While the knowledge of the makers is being passed on and they are experimenting and creating in impressive ways, they have had little formal education in science and technology and their creative powers could really be let loose with more access to information and training. So they created the Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform. It's a whole bunch of things in one that are designed to push innovation in the area (and throughout Africa) to the next level. They made mobile makerspaces that connect hands-on makers with universities so that both kinds of knowledge can be harnessed. Through the makerspace, makers get borrowable tools, blueprints, and new ideas. There are also plans for an app that will let the makers connect with each other, with ongoing education from the universities, and with customers who need innovative new products. They're prototyping new designs for recycled plastic tiles, building french fry machines and drones, and finding markets for copper that hasn't been burned. It's creating new opportunities for the makers, new products for the general population, and hopefully in time, a less toxic environment too.

[Mad Hatter]

2 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

he slid 13 feet on his best run and I got to 18 feet.

BOOYAH!

 

2 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

Nowhere I've worked has had a stabbing that I've heard of, though one of my colleagues was brutally raped not long before I started. In my whole career, I think the worst things I've ever personally had to deal with were a non-serious death threat, scary fights where we had to call security (luckily that library had security to call), someone who locked herself in the bathroom for an hour while smearing unpleasant things all over it, and watching out for child pornography/kids accessing pornography/just generally dealing with complaints about pornography. (I'd really appreciate you not watching porn in the library, folks. Those conversations are unpleasant for everyone.)

😬

 

Ok I promise I won't watch porn in the library from now on. 😜

 

2 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

How do Finns meet new people?

You see, there's a special clause which allows for social interaction between strangers. It's commonly referred to as "getting shitfaced". 

[juliebarkley]

9 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

You see, there's a special clause which allows for social interaction between strangers. It's commonly referred to as "getting shitfaced". 

So what you're saying is I'd never talk to a single person if I ever moved to Finland? Noted.

[Mad Hatter]

Just now, juliebarkley said:

So what you're saying is I'd never talk to a single person if I ever moved to Finland? Noted.

Of course not, you'd talk to me.  You miiiiight also be somewhat exempt from the rule based on the foreigner clause. I can't use that because I grew up in Sweden, but you might. Personally I had to rely entirely on other foreigner friends and colleagues. And no I don't meet a lot of people, even before the pandemic. Which incidentally makes spontaneous dating virtually impossible at my age (where everyone I know has partners). I'd have to succumb to Tinder and so far that's been way more off putting than my desire to meet new people. Buuut now I'm getting very off topic.  

[Scaly Freak]

7 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

So what you're saying is I'd never talk to a single person if I ever moved to Finland? Noted.

 

Not necessarily. The north of Sweden has a similar clause, but it doesn't really require everyone involved in the social interaction to be shit faced, only the majority. If the socializing group is limited to two people, only one of them needs to be shit faced for the clause to apply.