glowingfish

Was television for them like internet for me?

2026-07-21T20:19:33Z

This is kind of a random comparison, but I was born in 1979.

I wonder if television for people born around 1945-1950 was how computers and internet were for people born around 1975-1980.

Okay, a somewhat inaccurate comparison, the internet didn't become common until I was 15-20, and television would have been common when that generation was in their elementary school years. So maybe more like 1980-1985?

But how it went from being this obscure, fancy piece of technology you only caught glimpses of, to being something that was everywhere and that everyone was using.

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There are so many jobs and tasks that AI can't replace

2026-07-19T21:35:59Z

This is something that I have been considering for a while, and it isn't really covered in the many many discussions about AI:

There are just so many jobs that AI can't replace. Last week, I had to move a lot of furniture out of my house. I spent $300 so two men could load a couch, a chair, and a large table, along with other things, into the back of a truck, and then take it to the dump. This took some time, the table had to be dismantled, etc.

This is a job that, as far as I know, AI can't do!

There are a lot of jobs that require manual labor, but also involve a lot of decision making. In fact, that is what most jobs involve! Whether it is drawing blood, serving coffee, trimming a tree, moving boxes, mopping a floor, shelving books, fixing a roof, surveying a field or judging the value of collectibles, there are so many tasks that AI is almost totally irrelevant for. Sometimes it could provide some automation, but human judgment is still necessary. Or, you know, human hands.

The reason I don't think this occurs to many people in business who are fueling the AI bubble is that most of them have only had office jobs for a long time. When you work in an office, sorting through information and then restating it all day, that seems like what "Real Work" is, and so you think that AI is this gigantic breakthrough, because you can scan an email and then send a summary of that email to someone else, who will then automatically repost that information in another report, that someone else will then refine and email...and that is "Real Work". And all of these people honestly think that any job that requires interacting with the real world is stupid and frivolous.

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What do I do today?

2026-07-19T19:50:05Z

It is a Sunday. Here are the only things I need to do today:

1. Walk the dogs

2. Do laundry.

I like to wake up reading, And then I think, after an hour of that, "I should really get online to do some tasks and also maybe find something creative or expressive to do on this wonderful thing called the internet". And then, I end up looking at my email inbox, wondering where to start, and tabbing over to Reddit.

But now I am doing something expressive...writing about how I am not doing anything!

Maybe I will have a real entry later.

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Playing Civilization II for three hours is probably not the optimal use of my time

2026-07-18T07:17:21Z

So yesterday I started a game of Civilization II. If you aren't familiar, the Civilization games involve micromanaging the entire globe, and can last a week of real time. (Or in some cases, a dozen years, as one person played a single game for a decade). Civilization II is also 30 years old.

And sometimes, every couple of years, I will sit down and play it obsessively because it helps me turn off the world around me. This could be either escapism or maybe a good time letting my mind lay fallow.

Anyway, so that is what I did with my day.

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Well, now my back hurts (riding the bus a long way)

2026-07-12T23:23:52Z

My back hurts. My neck hurts.

In a previous post, I mentioned the passing of my father. Every few weeks, I have been travelling up there, trying to sort through stuff and clear his house. Mostly with success. But it is a lot of work.

I don't drive, so I've been travelling back and forth on buses, a variety of ways. The time before this time, I took an Amtrak train. Well, and then a rural minibus to the coast, where I live.

On Friday, I travelled back on local buses...kind of for fun, and because there can actually be less delays than on Amtrak. So 150 miles, more or less, on local buses. And between being cramped up, and carrying my backpack, my back and neck and head hurt yesterday, and still on today.

I am also strangely hungry for some reason.

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A trick I learned when I was older about sleeping

2026-07-08T18:02:41Z

I sometimes wake up earlier than I want to, and have trouble getting back to sleep.

And like a lot of people, that was compounded by feeling anxious and worrying if I would get enough sleep.

And so one thing I realized is that I don't need to worry about falling back to sleep. What I do in those situations is tell myself that I will lie in bed for 20 minutes. If I need to go back to sleep, I will. If after 20 minutes I still feel too awake, that means I can get up and start doing things. But the idea is that I don't worry about sleeping and whether I will have enough energy for the whole day, I just worry about the next 20 minutes.

I did that this morning before starting a trip...

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My Wednesday plans became my Friday plans

2026-07-03T17:50:51Z

So this Wednesday, I was going to go into the valley to do some things. Basically, to see something different. There is a single minibus with like 16 seats that makes the trip three times a day. And it is usually only occupied by 5 people or so. But on Wednesday, it was full! And I couldn't make the trip that day. So instead, I went for a walk in town, which was still a good walk.

But today, I am heading out again. Lets see and hope that the bus has enough seats. Especially on my way back! I don't want to be trapped in another city!

Also, did I mention I have a YouTube channel? Because I do!

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I keep on saying we should break the chains and go for the moon shot and just flip everything upside

2026-06-28T07:50:48Z

...down,

But I also don't know what that means.

This year has been terrible, and along with the chaos, there is just boredom. Enshittification has made the internet boring and stupid, and I keep on thinking "lets break out of all of this and be creative!", but what exactly does that mean? Because for something to be creative, it also has to be meaningful. Like, I can go and noodle around with image or video editing, but that isn't a revolutionary cry, is it now?

I know some day this stultifying boredom has to break...but I can't just force it to happen.

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I discovered the moraine family groups

2026-06-28T03:05:36Z

I don't know what mathematicians call the moraine family groups, but I call them the moraine family groups. I think about them while I am meditating or trying to go to bed.

For example, 2,3 and 5 are part of all prime numbers -1 moraine family groups. 7 is in a -2 family group for all numbers it isn't in the -1 family group for.

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This is a common pattern:

2026-06-27T06:54:12Z

I get up early, start reading, and realize that when I am focused, the pages fly by! And that it is 11 AM and I've managed to read 100 pages of a substantial book. Then I get up to check one thing on the internet or eat a sandwich, and then suddenly, its 5 PM. Okay, okay, I did do some other things, but yep, those non-focused hours flew by.

I did finish the book though.

Took a nap, and now it is a few minutes to midnight...

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Continuing from the last post: Clarence Thomas and Magic Johnson

2026-06-18T21:36:18Z

So this is a post about two things that happened a month or two apart, a few months after I had turned 12. I am sure that someone, somewhere, has covered these events and maybe tied them together, but this also follows the fact that I was specifically 12 years old. Also, by chance, both of these things involve African-American men, but that doesn't directly bear on how it affected me...

In 1991, Clarence Thomas was nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice. Shortly afterwards, a former subordinate, Anita Hill, came forward, and revealed that she had been sexually harassed repeatedly by Clarence Thomas. He was still confirmed.

Sexual harassment has been a periodic thing, probably the last time it came to the fore was "#metoo", which I guess at this point is almost a decade old? But this was one of the times when it came up the strongest. I was a smart 12 year old and read the newspapers, and followed the story.

A month later, in 1991, Magic Johnson announced that he had HIV. This was pretty dramatic news. It might be hard to believe now, but at the time, HIV was still mostly called "AIDS", and it was still very much a "gay disease". The idea that someone could get HIV from heterosexual sex was pretty shocking, and it allowed things that were formerly forbidden to be discussed openly...stuff like using condoms!

But for me, both of these things were pretty difficult, because I was 12 years old, and a pretty awkward 12 year old at that, and while just dealing with the most basic giddy preteen crushes, this started happening in the background. Just as I was trying to figure out what the rules were for flirting, and thinking about whether I would ever maybe hold hands or go to a jr high dance...the cultures rules were changing. I was trying to figure out the "normal rules" for developing, but suddenly, and dramatically, those rules were changing.

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They did a lot more, but knew a lot less

2026-06-18T20:54:41Z

This is a post that discusses sexuality and the like. Not in detail, this is more about relationships, but I will make a cut anyway...

( Sexuality and Relationship Discussion )

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Scavengers work fast.

2026-06-18T00:02:02Z

I will cut this for gore and animal death (no cruelty, just nature):

( Cat left an animal on my doorstep... )

Of course, it was a bit unpleasant, but I know predation and scavenging are part of nature.

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Just worked at my ridiculous job for the first time since December. For one hour.

2026-06-14T23:39:09Z

I forgot if I mentioned this before, but I have a gig job that pays 17 cents a minute. What I do is sign up, and when people call in, I get pay 17 cents a minute, for a 15, 30 or (sometimes) 60 minute phone call. And, more specifically, I am giving them English conversation practice. I am an ESL teacher with a real job, but I used to use this between classes. During the pandemic, it saved my sanity!

I can also sign up for something called a "Priority Hour". During this time, I agree to take all calls, and if I don't get any, it defaults to 15 minutes of pay. And today...there were no calls. So I sat at my computer for an hour reading, and then got paid $2.55

This sounds ridiculous, but I basically did it because I wanted to make my day into a "work day", like I feel better that I tried to work in some way.

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Back in the day, we used to have something called the FNNLC...

2026-06-13T01:26:33Z

So back in the 20-zeroes, on LJ Damnportlanders, we used to have something called FNNLC, the Friday Night No Life Club, where we would all just post about whatever was going on. It was the height of frittering away time on the internet.

But I miss it.

...are there any communities on here that might be in need of such a thing?

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At some point, did something go wrong in your life?

2026-06-11T04:31:26Z

Well, that is an eye-catching title!

I was going to ask a more narrow question, but I thought about it more until I decided to phrase it this way.

Do you feel there was some axial period of your life, some juncture or turning point, where you were supposed to grow and mature, but you didn't? Some lost opportunity, either from external or internal factors, that didn't happen, and you are trying to reroute around it since?

I guess the reason I ask is that for me, it seems this is the case, and I kind of took it for granted that everyone would have a similar story. But maybe it doesn't come up for other people.

(My original question was going to be specifically about adolescence, but maybe that wouldn't be the turning point for other people).

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I felt old when I realized there are now two generations of pop culture after me

2026-06-07T19:30:03Z

I might have posted about this before?

Or put it in a comment?

But I might as well write it again, since it has been on my mind.

I am 47. I often don't feel too old--its weird, sometimes I have relationships and activities that are a continuation of things that went on while I was a teenager. Sometimes I will think to myself about sharing in-jokes with my friends...who I might not have seen for 30 years.

But the one thing that really made me feel old is that there was a generation of pop culture that happened after I was an adult, but that is probably old to young people today. There are a lot of examples of this (Lady Gaga's first album came out 18 years ago!), but one of the biggest for me is the fandom culture of about 2010-2015. In 2012, when I was 33 and starting a job as a college professor, I started reading Homestuck. And got really into it. At the time, that was a fandom that was mostly older teens. I know that might be taken as weird, but I was just curious about a lot of these things that were popular on tumblr---Homestuck, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Welcome to Nightvale, Doctor Who, etc. (okay, obviously, the Doctor Who fandom existed long before tumblr!). I liked the attitude of the late Millenials, which was a lot more light and optimistic than the cynical Generation X that I had grown up with. Light, but also serious, in that I felt that younger people were more aware of the world in many ways. So as someone born in 1979, I kind of shifted my allegiance to Millenial culture, such as it was!

But I am kind of lost about what the popular culture even is today, and for a lot of young people---including people up to graduate school age, the internet and its vibes from 2010-2015 would now be before their time. So that is the one time I feel old, realizing that there are two steps after the pop culture I grew up with.

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Xeno's Paradox and Moving

2026-06-07T07:30:25Z

If you have ever moved out of a house, or cleared out a house, you might know about Xeno's Paradox:

It seems easy enough to remove 50% of the things from a house. But then you just keep removing 50%, and it never gets done. No matter how much clearning and cleaning you do, there is always a matchbook left rattling around in a cupboard.

I walked 16 miles today.

2026-05-30T06:16:27Z

I walked 16 miles today. More or less. Which is 26 kilometers.

I also turned 47 yesterday. Every year, on or around my birthday, I go out on some sort of trip. Some years it has been an overnight trip to another state, other times, it is more modest. This one was just a day trip, but it was ambitious.

I walked from Grand Ronde to Rose Lodge, over the Oregon Coast range. Meaning I went from the Willamette Valley to the Coast, or I went from places where the waters drain through the Willamette to places where they drain directly to the ocean. The pass is not that high, only 760 feet (220 meters, probably?), and in all, I went up about 550 feet and down about 700 feet (150 meters/200 meters). I was walking along the highway, so it wasn't that scenic, but it was also safe. And surprisingly easy, once I got into the rhythm of things. Since it was a linear trip, I just got my momentum going and kept going. Also, I should correct "not that scenic", I mean, this is the Oregon Coast range in May, so in general, yes, it was very scenic, but the views from the road weren't specifically so.

So why did I do this? Well, I have a long term goal of walking everywhere between Portland and the coast. I am actually pretty close to that. I have done that before in Oregon, between Portland and Eugene (took me well over 30 years), and so I decided to do the same thing on the coast. One of the reasons I do this is that, instead of seeing places as different, discrete regions, I see them on a continuum.

And also, I just like the floaty feeling after I have done something big. But my feet are going to hurt tomorrow.

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I changed my homepage to duckduckgo

2026-05-26T18:51:39Z

It might seem like a minor thing, but with continuing skepticism of the direction that google is taking, I changed my starting homepage/search engine to duckduckgo

I remember when google was...fresh, for lack of a better word. And crisp. There was just an aesthetic to it that was nice. Now it just feels bloated. So this is not about google's business practices (but I have some questions there...), but just aesthetically, it doesn't work for me anymore.

Also, minor complaint, but I wish DuckDuckGo had a easier and less silly name.

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Done with dog sitting

2026-05-23T20:48:39Z

For the past three weeks, I was dog sitting for my step-mother while she was on a trip. Did I mention that? I might also not have mentioned that I live in a ADU (carriage house) behind her house. I guess this is some context I should mention!

Anyway, so this morning she came back, and I returned to my apartment.

I like dogs, but taking care of dogs can be a lot of work---especially one of the dogs was some type of shepherd mix, and insisted on following a foot away when I got up to get a cup of water. And little things like "Did I leave a door open? Did I leave a window open? Will they jump out a window to follow me if I leave the house?" caused me a lot of worry.

So now I am back in my apartment, and responsible for no one but me.

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I had a visitor today...

2026-05-18T21:54:14Z

I came back from teaching a class in my apartment to find a bird in the house. I think this is a type of chickadee. I was worried about the bird, as it flew around, trying to get out, but hitting against the windows. I opened the door and some windows, but it couldn't find its way out. Surprisingly, it let me get close, and I explained, as well as I could, that I didn't want to hurt it but that I could help it. Finally, I reached out and put my hand around it, and carried it and released it, and it flew off.

I hope that it hadn't already hurt itself.

Chickadees are smart birds.

One of the things I liked about this is that someone believed me. I explained to the bird what the problem was and that I had a solution, and the bird, such as it could, believed me. I wish I could have this interaction with people.

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I am so tired

2026-05-14T08:11:20Z

I am so tired. Exhausted. See last entry for the reason why.

Or one of them. Things seem like quite a grind. There always seems to be one more task to do, and one more thing to go wrong. Things seem to get broken and get lost, and stuff keeps on popping up. I am hoping for this phase of exhaustion to go away, eventually, but it looks like there might be some things I need to do first.

Also, for context, I usually have a lot of physical energy. In fact, I usually need to walk a few miles every few days or I get antsy. But right now, I just feel exhausted. I don't know if it is physical. Maybe physical activity would make me feel less exhausted. After dog sitting ends in a week or so, maybe I will be able to go out and exercise without hindrance, and then I will feel better.

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So for context as to what has been going on

2026-05-14T07:57:03Z

I didn't mention this at first because I don't want to get too personal on Dreamwidth, and not fishing for sympathy or anything, but my father passed away in early April. It wasn't expected but it wasn't unexpected, either. He was 72 and in poor health, but it was still a surprise.

And this is something I am dealing with, and will make the next entry make more sense.

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How I started to detach myself

2026-05-10T19:29:01Z

This is something I've been thinking about writing for a while, and the main thing is, I don't know where to start, exactly...

So, when I came back from Chile in 2019, after three years of teaching English in Chile, I thought I would get some type of higher education job. I certainly had the work experience and education! So I was looking around for that, and then the pandemic happened. Luckily, working online was an option, so since 2020, I have been teaching English online. Especially during the depth of the pandemic, this seemed like a good deal. And then once things "returned to normal", I just kept doing it.

Also, things about me: I don't have a car. I don't have any health conditions. So my expenses are generally rent+groceries, plus whatever spare change I need for other things. I don't order food (in fact, I never have done this, which I know is a rarity!), and I don't have any streaming services. I watch YouTube and go to the library.

And since moving here in December, I don't have any rent. Which also means that I can literally work a few hours a week and it pays for my groceries.

So I am pretty happy at that.

But what has happened is that once I have detached myself for the immediate need for things, other things seem less important.

For example, people who have jobs usually need cars. And they need to keep their job to have a car. And then, during all that mandatory time spent in traffic, they start listening to podcasts (I never listen to podcasts), and then when they get home from work, they are so tired the need to order food and stream something to relax is very important. And because they usually are working sedentary jobs with packed schedules, they need to specifically pay for gym membership. And because the stress and sedentary lifestyle aren't healthy, they need constant physical and mental health care.

I am not saying there is anything bad about these things, just saying that at a daily level, none of those are things I usually think of myself as needing, and a lot of the talk that I see on social media about ordering ubereats and then binge-watching Netflix...just doesn't match my life.

Well, that is part of what I had to say...

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