zompist bboard

I'm sorry.

I haven't eaten anything today and I'm out of food. I should go buy something.

I can't seem to spend half an hour awake without thinking of something stupid or embarrassing I've done at some point in the past. Things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but about which I realized a few seconds or a few minutes or a few hours or a few days or a few weeks or a few months or a few years or a few decades later that they were actually pretty dumb. You know when you have "thought chains", where you think of one thing, which leads to another thing, which leads to yet another thing, and after a few steps you're thinking of something completely different from the original thing? For me, half the time I have such a "thought chain", it sooner or later leads to something stupid I did or said long ago. Stuff I don't want to talk about. Sigh.

EDIT: So, it turns out my grandfather was found breathing, but unresponsive rather than passed away. But, still, I don't think it's much longer...

Fuck the PiS. No law can change what many Polish people did to my people. No amount of Righteous Among the Nations awards erases the participation of many Poles in the murder of millions of Jews and Romani. And fuck them again for their deliberalisation of Poland and destruction of the rule of law. And fuck them a third time for their Islamophobia and Russophobia, for their war on women's rights and their war on minorities. Fuck them a fourth time for their persecution of LGBT. From the bottom of my heart and soul, fuck the PiS. May they burn in that fictional hell they try to avoid falling into.

The latest Skype rape-upgrade seems to have put off a lot of people judging by the amount of users I see online now, where did everybody migrate to?

mèþru wrote:their Islamophobia and Russophobia

That might be the only thing they're doing right though.

There is a difference between hating Muslim countries' governments and Russia's governments on one hand and hating Muslims and Russians on the other.

No religion of peace trucks have visited Poland or any of the Visegrad 4 countries, no safe/rape-free zones for women had to be created around Christmas in those countries.

Putin's approval rating is in the excess of 80% and that's according to independent pollsters such as Levada. Evidently Russians approve of their country acting in the most malignant and cancerous ways causing death suffering and destruction around the world.

Io wrote:The latest Skype rape-upgrade seems to have put off a lot of people judging by the amount of users I see online now, where did everybody migrate to?

The two major services I know of are Discord (my personal favourite since it's more like how Skype used to be) and Telegram.

Yeah, I started using Discord some months ago but I don't think many of the Skype contacts I have even know about it since it's still more of a platform for gamers.

mèþru wrote:Fuck the PiS.

You know, I didn't think I'd ever say this, but for once, I actually agree with Netanyahu.

I agree with Netanyahu much more than you do, but I agree. He's also awful.

To be honest, one of my best (online) friends is or at least was a Polish monarchist. He's the sort of person who thinks the PiS doesn't go far enough. Needless to say, I didn't agree with his political views at all. Nevertheless, we were best friends for completely unrelated reasons, and he was more than willing to put our political differences aside, so I tried to do the same. When he did talk about political issues, I'd basically just go "ehheheheh" because I've never had any idea how to respond.

I haven't heard from him in months. I tried e-mailing him but no response. I wonder whether he still thinks of us as friends. Maybe not, since now, he knows someone who does share his political views but also seems like a pretty nice person to him. I hope he's okay.

So, as somewhat expected, my grandfather ended up passing away on Sunday.

Honestly, I don't know how I feel: it's a weird mix of emotions. This is the first death of a family member I was semi-close to that I've experienced (my grandmother passed away when I was 5-ish and I never knew my other grandfather), and, while I wasn't that close to him, I tried to keep him updated with what was going on with me academically and in other areas and I would like to think that he was quite supportive of what I did. But he was quite obstinate, which led to a health scare almost 15 years ago (which I thought back then he would've passed away from), and he wasn't necessarily the most pleasant person to be around or to talk to, especially when it came to him trying to show up others.

Equally problematic with the whole thing is how I found out about my grandfather's passing, at least to me: nothing directly from my father (who moved back to Tex-ass to help take care of him), but all indirectly from my mother and brother and my uncle's Facebook. Which, to me, is a bit frustrating: why am I the last to know about things like this? My father has my phone number and other contact details, and it could just be as easy for him to get in touch with me as it is to send messages through other people. Even a simple e-mail would have been nicer than finding out secondhand.

Yay for dealing with family drama from a few thousand miles away.

I'm sorry to hear about this.

If you don't mind me asking, how often did you used to see your grandfather? My own grandmother died around this time five years ago while I was still in grad school, long after all my other grandparents. She was all the way in India, and it became increasingly difficult for her to travel, but I had visited her several times. Luckily, she had a long life nevertheless and died relatively painlessly, but it would have been nice to see her again since the last time I had seen her was over a dozen years ago. I hope someday, I can go see the lady who took care of her and her son again and see the house at least one last time.

Io wrote:No religion of peace trucks have visited Poland or any of the Visegrad 4 countries, no safe/rape-free zones for women had to be created around Christmas in those countries.

Is that due to more rape or more reactive government?

Io wrote:Putin's approval rating is in the excess of 80% and that's according to independent pollsters such as Levada. Evidently Russians approve of their country acting in the most malignant and cancerous ways causing death suffering and destruction around the world.

Yeah, probably because they believe his propaganda. Some people still believe Churchill was a good guy too, after all the suffering he caused personally in Afghanistan and policy-wise in India, among other countries.

I guess some are too dumb and uneducated and can be excused for believing all the state propaganda, but I know Russians who strongly opposed Putin even voted for Zyuganov in the last elections not because they're communist sympathisers but against Putin, when Crimea was annexed these people suddenly turned ALL HAIL PUTIN. I genuinely think they're something wrong with most Russians.

As for the Israeli-Polish spat just over a year ago they were on the same page:

Polish-Israeli Intergovernmental Consultations Joint Statement

The Governments attribute great importance to their dedicated efforts in the field of education, particularly in eradicating false stereotypes on both Countries. Both Governments firmly oppose any form of discrimination on racial grounds and anti-Semitism, as well as any attempts at distorting the history of the Jewish or Polish peoples by denying or diminishing the victimhood of the Jews during the Holocaust, or using the erroneous terms of memory such as “Polish death camps”.

@vampireshark
The biggest virtual hugs

I am going through a similar situation myself. I want to go to Israel to see my grandfather while I still can and talk to him, but I don't think I can go currently.

It's creepy how so many of my life problems keep being written here by other people.

One parent is hopefully near the end of treatment for cancer.
So now the other parent may have a much worse cancer.

Too many people I know have, have had, or have died from cancer recently.

Also, my cat may or may not have cancer. But, *shrugs*, nothing much we can do about that one.

mèþru wrote:It's creepy how so many of my life problems keep being written here by other people.

That can also be an advantage, though! That way, maybe we can help each other get through them.

@Sal: I'm sorry to heat that. I hope all of them will get better!

hwhatting wrote:@Sal: I'm sorry to heat that. I hope all of them will get better!

Thanks.

Should be said, the new cancer is currently just at the "huh, something's going on there, we better do some tests!". Most of the things it could be are relatively harmless, apparently. It's just that it's a relatively short list of options and one of them is bad cancer. Hopefully it's just a precaution.

[the cat is being treated for its symptoms, reasonably succesfully. Either the symptoms are the disease, or there's an underlying disease that's probably cancer. Turns out the treatment is the same anyway (if it's cancer it's too advanced to do anything useful), and the tests would be horribly invasive for an old cat, so we'll just have to wait and see. Fortunately, quality of life seems only marginally affected.]

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On a lighter note: had a meal with my mother this weekend. To give a sample of conversational style: when given a zero-sum choice (I can't remember, 'which slice would you like?' or something like that), her answer is invariably along the lines of:

"Oh, I'm sure I'd be fine with [item X]".

This may not seem vent-worthy. Until you consider: what does this actually mean? Because it turns out there are two different, and markedly contrasting situations in which she will use such a phrase:

- she really wants Item X. She won't say so, because that would be Putting Herself Forward, so she's politely letting people know her preference and allowing them to take that into consideration, while not making a demand. However, if she is not given Item X, she will be very sad, and, without in any way overtly complaining, will make this subtly and sadly known through the hours or days to come;
OR:
-she really wants Item Y. She wants Item Y so much that she thinks everyone else must really want Item Y as well, so she Nobly Puts Others First by accepting the inferior Item X (or, she doesn't want Item Y, but thinks Item X is terrible so is obliged to save others from having it; either way, really). While, of course, using her less than enthusiastic expression of preference to subtly indicate to others that actually she would like Item Y, so if they don't really want Item Y they might consider giving it to her. If she's satisfied that the other person is glad to have Y, she can feel good about having sacrificed herself, but of course in the short term she's still left with the thing she doesn't want, while the other person may not care which they had. And if, of course, they then reveal that they didn't even want Y themselves, it's like stabbing a puppy.

Now, either of these would be fine. The problem is that she uses the same expression in both circumstances. Indeed, in order to avoid seeming to have expressed a preference and Put Herself Forward impolitely, she makes the two deliveries of the expression as perfectly identical to one another as possible, so that only long experience and minute observation can distinguish one from the other without the benefit of hindsight. This is irritating. Particularly because if she says something like that, we know that she DOES have a strong opinion - otherwise it would just be "oh, either would do!" or the like. But there's no way to easily tell WHICH strong opinion she has!

[this isn't just her, mind you. To varying degrees, this is true of all my female relatives.]


Of course, it could be worse. Last month I had lunch with her and a couple of her friends. Have you seen that bit in Father Ted where Mrs Doyle and her friends are disagreeing over who should pay for their afternoon tea, because they each insist on paying themselves? It's like that. No, honestly. Somebody backed down before they got to the punching-and-rolling-on-the-floor stage, but they quickly escalated to the voices-raised-sharp-words-dented-friendships-and-strangers-staring stage. Not for the first time. On other occasions there's been the "physically race each other (while maintaining dignified walking pace and not looking like they're pushing the other out of the way) to the till" and the "pay secretly during the middle of the meal when the other has gone to the toilet" strategies.

It's a trivial thing to be venting about, obviously. But... it does become frustrating at times.

Salmoneus wrote:Now, either of these would be fine. The problem is that she uses the same expression in both circumstances. Indeed, in order to avoid seeming to have expressed a preference and Put Herself Forward impolitely, she makes the two deliveries of the expression as perfectly identical to one another as possible, so that only long experience and minute observation can distinguish one from the other without the benefit of hindsight. This is irritating. Particularly because if she says something like that, we know that she DOES have a strong opinion - otherwise it would just be "oh, either would do!" or the like. But there's no way to easily tell WHICH strong opinion she has!

Are you absolutely sure your mother isn't Midwestern?

So as per last term I think my week 5 is happening in week 3. Again. Thankfully this time I think I'm on top of the work, unless I have an essay due which I haven't noticed yet in which case I am royally fucked.