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| <p align="right"><font size="6">[[Transition|<font face="Consolas, Courier new">claytoncastle.com</font> • T R A N S I T I O N]]</font></p> | | <p align="center"><font size="6">[[Transition|<font face="Consolas, Courier new">claytoncastle.com</font>]]</font></p> |
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| =[[2019.03.25 "That's not how it works."]]= | | =[[2026.01.17 Dad Thoughts Evolved For Today]]= |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| "That's not how it works."
| | So, I've written a bunch of Rants about my dad. Some as I realized he was mortal - which was a weird realization to experience as a rational being. More immediately when he died to metabolize my grief, and others over a period of a decade afterwards. Many of those were reminiscences of childhood defining experiences and mythologies for my own catharsis, and with burgeoning hopes of there being a way for my kids to know something of him. |
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| I'm squinting, even more than usual, struggling to understand. My huge, fuzzy Orbodun partner persist with the questioning. I can hear his fear underneath his impatience, and it echoes my own. "What? So you're saying that you don't have to know the plan in order to follow instructions?"
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| The medically incapacitated Takolee is only capable of conversing via direct contact with his internal comms, which might be what makes his texted responses come across as, shall we say, snippy?. "No, you towering mound of unreasoning fluff. IT knows what I'm going to do better than I do, that's the whole point. IT never gives me good instructions. Nev-ver. IT gives me cryptic suggestions, and I always end up doing exactly what IT wants. Every uncle-zarking time. There is no double-crossing. There is no second-guessing. Just the implacable hand of fate moving game people like game pieces."
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| "So, lots of mathematician stages?" I hear my partner state the obvious, but it doesn't fit the gravitas of the Takolee's desperation.
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| "Zarking NO. You think mathematician, and you think probabilities and really good guesses. I've done jobs to fuck with scary mathematicians, and while they tend to not make mistakes they are still limited by reality - you can get at them by sneaking in the really improbable cracks. This is more than that. IT isn't making shrewd calculations, IT just zarking <i>knows</i>."
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| Having this conversation purely in text means that I'm much easier to understand, even as it mutes the Takolees ability to emote. "Just knowing stuff... that sounds like a mentalist."
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| Itty bitty black eyes roll in my partners fuzzy face. "Missionaries are still robots, right? They don't get access to mentally-based abilities."
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| An awkward thought saunters into my few-track mind. "It could totally have arranged broad access to a powerful mentalist, though. Mix that in with a handful of stages of mathematician, and the big bastards going to - pardon me if I don't get the quote totally right - just zarking know a lot of stuff."
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| The long sigh that flows out of the Orbodun's nostrils is a ripe mix of appreciation and fear. For my own part, I deliberately verify my connection with my mini-missionary weapons to reassure myself that the monster isn't near. I have no idea of what to do now.
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| The Orbodun is laughing? I crane my head around to take a better look, to see how badly he's cracked. He's reaching up with a massive paw to wipe a mirthful tear from one side of his scarred muzzle.
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| "What's going on?" Oh, right - the Takolee can't actually hear anything.
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| My partner shifts his own guarded position to reach over and make his own direct connection with the limp Takolee in my satchel. "Sorry, I was overcome with the beauty of it all."
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| The Orbodun really has cracked, because that makes no sense at all. I feel an awkward lump in my heart as I contemplate putting him out of his misery.
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| He must have sensed something, because he catches my eye with his own gaze, and shakes his head meaningfully. He's got a look of pity about him. Is he pitying me, or the Takolee... or all of us?
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| "So, basically, this means that your master sent you specifically to get caught by us. Intentionally, so that you could say this to us." He's looking at me pretty deliberately. He's saying something more to me than just these words to the Takolee.
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| "Yeah, I get that IT basically sent me to die. I never thought the day would come, because I'm so useful, but I have never doubted for a moment that if I were to die it would be ITs will."
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| "Ha. No." A beatific smile creases the Orbodun's muzzle. "It sent you as a messenger."
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| Oh. Fuck.
| | I think he would have really liked them both. They have a lot of different parts of him, and his mom. |
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| "What message? That you're just as zarked as I am? Great. Glad to be of service."
| | Except doubts bubble up from the corners of my memory. And I find myself working through extrapolations of the son-ward facets I could see into the person he might have actually been. |
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| "Pissy, aren't we? We're going to let you go now."
| | Obviously, my dad was pretty cool. And I don't just mean that in the idol-worship way sons have for their fathers - which I kind of do - but also he seemed to have an effortless way of making people want to be his friend. I don't actually know where he fit in the Letterkenny Spectrum as kid - hick, skid, or jock (definitely not a native or a christian, or Québécois for that matter nor a degen from up-country). But the vast majority of people I saw him encounter already knew him, or of him, and respected him if not overtly expressing happiness at seeing him. |
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| We are? Dammit, I'm having a hard time swallowing this idea. Do a new sweep of the park to catalogue all potential observers and rank them threat-wise. It's a long list of small numbers.
| | All of which I couch as being the basis for assuming that he was pretty comfortable in our pasty-white mostly monoculture small-town circumstances. That sort of comfort breeds a sense of confirmation about one's own cultural identity. |
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| "You're going to do what now?" While the Takolee is incredulous, the Orbodun pings me to do the thing. So I extract the Takolee-damping dart after giving the RELEASE command.
| | And, honestly, while my dad was great at talking philosophy with me - especially about the why of things - whenever topics of other places or peoples came up he was consistently dismissive and unkind. And occasionally overtly racist, and sometimes simply xenophobic. |
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| The Takolee is out of the satchel so fast I have difficulty moving my various pointy bits out of its way so that it doesn't hurt itself (any further). Then it's behind a tree and lost to sensors in the blink of an eye.
| | Over the past decade, I've worried about how my boomer dad might have responded to the weird right-wing stumble of western civilization. If I try to comfort myself with how he was smart and would be disgusted by the stupid lies, it's hard to deny the persuasive power that hate has had over people. Especially boomers. |
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| In the subsequent stillness after that flurried moment, the Orbodun and I gaze worriedly at each other. Probably for totally different reasons.
| | It occurred to me to try to talk my hypothetical conservative father away from the lure of fascism, but it just hurts my heart too much to think about it too much. |
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| Yep.
| | But then I imagine how he'd react to his grandkids both being non-binary and fabulous. |
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| "So, where to first?"
| | The deepest well of my hope is that he would have spent a lot of time knowing them all through their lives and see how their development into who they are becoming is a lovely and natural extrapolation of the brilliant and lovely potential they've always had. And that his love for them would ease any struggling conservative confusion he might experience so that he could be the same cool and inspirational patriarch for them that he was for me and my sister. |
| <pre>Not done...</pre>
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| | That doesn't change the fear that he would have not been as close, or as accepting. And that fear sits on my heart. |
| </font> | | </font> |
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| =[[2019.03.18 Love, Death, & Robots]]= | | =[[2026.01.09 Men With Hats]]= |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| [[File:Lovedeath&robots.jpg]]
| | http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_0138_copy.png |
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| Shout-out to my new online obsession.
| | http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/2675399054887965559_copy.png |
| [https://www.netflix.com/title/80174608 Love, Death, & Robots]
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| </font> | | </font> |
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| =[[2019.03.18 Hating Humans]]= | | =[[2026.01.02 First Day Of The New Job]]= |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| I've been trying and failing for a while now to translate my feelings regarding extremists, particularly white power, and have to admit that it's still mostly just incoherent disgust. | | Sadly, my epic new seat was not ready to set up. So I just admired the view for a minute - both out the across the river, and into my director's office at the giant Millenium Falcon LEGO set. |
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| But this [https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/whoopsie SMBC] strip is an amusing approximation.
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| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1552921321-20190318.png
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| </font> | | </font> |
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| <hr> | | <hr> |
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| =[[2019.03.15 Rocket Launch Seen From Space]]= | | =[[2025.12.30 - 2025 Wrap-Up]]= |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| https://youtu.be/B1R3dTdcpSU
| | ==Fredmas Crash== |
| </font>
| | On the wet and rainy morning of Fredmas, Ember and Violet were commuting to Hillsdale for school when they were the tail-end of a 5-car pile-up. Speeds were modest, and the 2018 Subaru Impreza did all the safety-engineered things to sacrifice itself such that neither kid was injured in any way. |
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| | Communication was not stellar, but Violet managed to let us know right away. So without actually having all the details up front, Amy and I knew they had a problem and could see that they were in the middle of the Fremont freeway bridge and jumped into Velma to go help. When we showed up they were the only ones there - shivering in the rain on the side of the freeway. Amy onboarded the kids to drive them the rest of the way SW, and I stayed in the shivering sideways rain for a couple hours with the wreck to wait for the tow truck. Fun times. |
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| =[[2019.03.14 The Closest Planet To Earth Is...]]=
| | Some lessons learned, and Ember has yet to get back in that saddle. Scheming about how to proceed with commuter vehicle plans is still ongoing. It seems like a logical time and place to make a plug for the replacement to be an EV, but probably shouldn't push too hard. Because reasons. |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new">
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| https://media.giphy.com/media/mJzrDOCwZB7wEZE4EK/giphy.gif
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| ...usually Mercury. | | ==Work Transformations== |
| </font>
| | December as a whole has been weird with trying to finish handing work batons to their new responsible engineers. It's been the longest that I've been in any group - 10 years! - and recognize that it's going to be a long time to ever fully extricate myself. |
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| <hr>
| | At the same time, the new Vehicle Level Engineering role is both exciting and boggling. Frankly, it's a lot. |
| https://www.tesla.com/content/dam/tesla-site/sx-redesign/img/model3-proto/specs/top@2.png
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| <hr>
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| =[[2019.03.11 Murderbot Diaries]]=
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| http://www.marthawells.com/Murderbot1250.jpg
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| Recently I've found myself sucked into a new science fiction series called "The Murderbot Diaries". Honestly, I felt it was worth peeking at purely for the title. That same irreverence is carried satisfyingly throughout the tone of the stories I've read so far. Also compelling is the very insightful way in which a sense of social awkwardness and profound introversion is lived by the main character.
| | Simultaneously, Amy is changing shifts to stop the 5 12-hour shifts in 6 days marathon every couple weeks and jumping into 3 shifts every week with her best non-Clayton friend. We're all very excited for the shift in energy. |
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| I give it two assault blaster rifles firing celebratory shots into the air (without consideration for habitat structural integrity). | | ==Other Stuff== |
| </font>
| | This winter break had been bookmarked for a bunch of reading and writing plans, all of which have basically unravelled as I'm actually spending most of my time just mouth-breathing my way through the exhausting cold/flu that Ember gave me. |
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| | Now that the kids are back, I do intend to inflict all kinds of old but beloved movies on them. So there's that. There's also a butt-tonne of sugary foods from all the sources to keep me overfed while I quietly lament how few bike rides I actually went on this year. |
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| =[[2019.03.03 De-Motivation]]=
| | So it goes. |
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| https://virily.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/DEMOTIVATION.jpg
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| It's hard to admit that all you see your company leadership does as being easily replaced with a simple set of annoying alarms and buzzers.
| | Things I'm looking forward to in 2026: |
| | * bunches of Amy+Clayton adventure time regularly |
| | * diving into a dream job (should probably write a separate post about that thought alone) |
| | * defeating fascism |
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| One more year of this shit, and I'm transforming all of my efforts for self-improvement outside of the company.
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| =[[2019.03.01 CX Champions]]= | | =[[2025.11.30 Movember]]= |
| [[File:Cxchampions2019.jpg|800px]]
| | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| | http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_0072_small.png |
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| | Not my best effort. I suspect that the grey makes it incrementally less impressive. Plus I kept trimming to avoid poking Amy so much, and the surrounding scruff softens the effect even more. |
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| =[[2019.02.27 Foxy]]=
| | Gone now, but not missed. Other than the daily startle of seeing my dad in the mirror. |
| https://i.cbc.ca/1.5035136.1551261452!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_780/fox-and-vole.jpg
| | </font> |
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| =[[2019.02.22 Path To Inner Peace]]= | | =[[2025.10.18 No Kings]]= |
| <blockquote>
| | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| http://www.kvankii.com/gallery/Quoteleft.jpg
| | 40,000 people in Portland sending a clear message. |
| <font size="6">The path to inner peace is<br>
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| not my fucking problem.</font>
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| </blockquote>
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| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | |
| This was my favourite quote after a week of collaboration training in Atlanta. The best parts were facilitated by a troupe called [http://www.bandingpeopletogether.com/ Banding People Together], which was a musically-themed approach built around a novel personality assessment resource. It was rather compelling, even to someone as innately skeptical as myself, and despite my being jaded by personality assessments as the spouse of a clinical psychologist inevitably is.
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| The quote, however, was actually from one of my fellow participants. There were about 200 of us, from all corners of Daimler and Mercedes in North America, and it was an impressively high-functioning crew.
| | Awkwardly, the current administration has also been sending a clear, fascist message. |
| </font> | | </font> |
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| =[[2019.02.02 Wo-PAH Driving]]= | | =[[2025.10.04 Federal Troops In Portland]]= |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| As an avid consumer of stylized violence in my entertainment, I have a diverse and detailed understanding of how fighting can be shown. The purpose of the myriad of styles is to convey feelings rooted in some primal corners of the human brain. Such fantasies have a lot of ways to be interesting.
| | It's really weird. Just, you know, profoundly weird. |
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| My rather limited understanding of actual violence is pretty radically different. It's probably abrupt, and efficiency is likely key.
| | Acknowledging for a moment the footage from 2020 looked bad - as shown on cable news. But even then that was basically constrained to a couple blocks downtown for actual protests. Meanwhile there were other simultaneous marches about police brutality throughout the city that were completely peaceful and not newsworthy. |
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| As an avid driver of performance vehicles, I've experience many sorts of vehicular thrills. There is definitely a trend in the newer performance vehicles I've sampled, they do tend to have generally more peak capability. And that additional capability has been engineered in the manner of a movie fight scene. The throat-clearing downshifts lead into the exaggerated wind-ups of the building forced induction follow through to the augmented raucous exhaust note battle yells.
| | I suppose that if one were to conflate the "hundred days of protest" in 2020 with the rising homelessness problem, one could squint and see the folks cowering in tents and vehicles and pretend there's a direct connection of some kind. I mean, other than the systematic violence done to the worker class both strip mining us for wealth and trying to overtly pit us against each other. |
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| Now, I am partial to a certain amount of theatre with my hooning, because I'm a child. But the sharply artificial rattle-barking of an over-fueled AMG 43 merely rolling through a parking lot is kind of stupid. And, if I'm totally honest about it, even my beloved Porsche 911 had a certain Bruce-Lee tension to it as you could feel the increasingly available power as the engine RPMs climbed.
| | But in context of what is actually happening right now - which amounts to a group of 6-16 people regularly taunting ICE agents at a single building - it's wildly disproportional. Especially with the Portland Police Department stating, in court, that all the altercations they have evidence for so far are mainly cases of untrained federal agents trying to instigate meme-worthy moments with the peaceful protestors. |
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| And if you can get it right, there's a satisfaction in that too. Because it takes talent to drive fast well. Not just driving fast, because that's stupid outside of a racetrack, but driving fast well. You've got to be attentive to your settings and circumstances and all the vehicular variables and so on with the foolish hooning black arts.
| | So the federal activation of 200 National Guard to "pacify Portland" is, well, purely for show. |
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| But then you get used to driving a decent electric car, like GHOST. And it's not even a little bit about theatre. It's all about just getting it done efficiently. It's actually really fucking easy to drive fast well, because it's less variable and with less distracting show. It's all so accessible, and I do dearly love control of that kind.
| | Which makes Portland's main reaction one that endears this city to me even more: to be silly. Dressing up in harmless costumes, dancing, and handing out cookies. Doing whatever it takes to make the video bites nearly impossible to weaponize politically, as the fascists so clearly desire. |
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| In the movies, the fighters are mostly these body-builder types with showy muscles. But you have to know that, in real life, the deadliest special forces badasses are lanky efficient monsters who quietly end fights before others even know there is a fight.
| | And to the person in the inflatable costume that had the inlet of their suit sprayed with pepper spray: I hope you are OK. As much as that must have sucked, and possibly could have caused serious medical repercussions, you embodied the shallow idiocy of their position. In no way could a bumbling inflatable costume be considered a threat, and to assault you was to show the cowardly and loathsome depth of their antisocial motivations. |
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| Driving around in the Porsche, every asshole would try to race me and every police officer would mentally consider if they had an excuse to pull me over. But now that I skulk around in GHOST, I just succeed at speeding without anyone having much notice.
| | To the federal fucknugget that used pepper spray on an obviously-harmless person in an inflatable costume: Now we all know why you have no real friends and your life is empty of meaning. You obviously don't belong in Portland. |
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| =[[2019.01.29 Pole Machine]]= | | =[[2025.09.17 Bertrand Russell On Fascism]]= |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| http://kvankii.com/gallery/Pole_Machine_frame.jpg
| | As mentioned on BoingBoing today:<br> |
| | | In 1962, Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, invited Nobel-winning philosopher Bertrand Russell to a debate. Mosley aimed to persuade Russell of fascism's merits. |
| Ummmmmm. It's hard to even start with how cool this thing is.
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| The Nordic Bike Gods over at [https://polebicycles.com Pole] made this model called the [https://polebicycles.com/machine/ Machine]. Instead of using carbon fiber, they decided to use 7075 aluminum - which can't be welded without losing its temper. So instead they press billets of it into approximate shape and CNC the final surfaces. Hence one facet of the name "machine" is from it being machined. It's geometry, which is on the "hold my beer" end of aggressive also qualifies it for being quite a machine.
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| Glorious. If I had unlimited funds, some of it would be spent on this.
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| </font>
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| =[[2019.01.27 Portland International Auto Show]]=
| | Russell, who was 89 at the time, replied: |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new">
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| Honestly, there wasn't much time for exploring the show this year. Because #w*rk. So there really was only opportunity to peek at a couple highlights before fleeing back to meetings.
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| A brief shout-out to [https://www.subaruofportland.net/ Subaru of Portland] for gifting me two free tickets. It is appreciated, and their customer service is one of the reasons we've had so many Subarus.
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| <blockquote> | | <blockquote> |
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| Our first mission was to team-investigate various candidate next-steeds for [https://www.instagram.com/gnarthaller/ Gnarthaller]. Which is amusing because they're all various flavours of Toyota utility vehicles. Meanwhile, the only actual photos he posted from the show were of a moldy-green muscle car. Typical.
| | Dear Sir Oswald, |
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| ==Jeep Gladiator==
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1748-web.jpg
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| Several of us were curious about this long-coming cargo-capable stretched wrangler. It was exactly as we imagined it would be. As you might be able to discern from the picture, Gnarthaller didn't like it.
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| But why? Because it's a half-assed idea executed half-assed-ly, and would simply not meet the goals of utility and reliability he probably wants. It's probably going to sell great. #MERIKA.
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| <hr>
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| ==McLaren==
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1749-web.jpg
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1750-web.jpg
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| Something something longtail, and I can't remember which what how other one. What doesn't translate well is how small and jewel-like these vehicles are. The previous generation of MP4C and even P1 variants were impressive and other-wordly, but in person had an aura of plastic posering on top of a racecar in order to pretend to be Ferrari-ish. Not any more; now they out-Ferrari Ferrari at the sense of concentrated special-ness. Very nice.
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| <hr>
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| ==Ferrari==
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1752-web.jpg
| | Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one's own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism. |
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1753-web.jpg
| | I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us. |
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| There was a berlinetta, which is historically my default lust-magnet. And there was the most-modest variant (Portofino?) which almost allows someone such as myself to whimsically consider. I didn't even bother taking pictures of them.
| | I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement. |
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| Instead, I felt the need to capture the brawniest Grand Tourer ever - mostly because it felt odd to have a Ferrari seem hulking compared to the nearby McLarens - and the fabulous shooting brake. That almost-wagon version of Ferrari is very intriguing for me, much to the scorn of my peers. I think it's because I have a better grasp of what it would be like to live with a high-performance car. The single mission of LOOK AT ME gets dull; I am more curious about something that would rock a road trip too.
| | Yours sincerely, |
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| <hr>
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| ==Porsche==
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1755-web.jpg
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_1757-web.jpg
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| The Porsches were automatically more memorable than either the McLarens or the Ferrari's because you could sit in them. The 718 (ex-Cayman) telegraphs hysterical joy through its taut steering wheel; none of us could repress brilliant smiles from just being in it. The Panamera Grand Tourismo took the do-everything roadtrip vibe and dialed it up to 11. Fantastic.
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| <hr>
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| ==Everything Else==
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| Nothing else was worth spending time to photograph. Even so, skipped a lot of manufacturers.
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| ===BMW===
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| No M3? Fuck you.<br>
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| The M2 felt OK. M5 was locked - fuck you.
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| ===Volvo===
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| Seriously pleased with the look and feel of the V90. I could see myself getting one of those for the family - if I couldn't swing a Mercedes E-class wagon.
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| ===Audi===
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| Didn't even bother sitting in any of them after determining that the R8 was locked. The cowardly thing sat huddled and unappreciated looking out through double-doors at a Porsche Turbo tackling a line of ardent fans rotating through its cockpit.
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| ===Mercedes===
| |
| Didn't even walk through the section. Like I need to look at the vehicles I don't want to lease.
| |
| ===GM===
| |
| I don't care what Gnarthaller thinks, your muscle cars misunderstand what driving is about.
| |
| ===Ford===
| |
| The Fiesta ST is obviously a hoot. Now try making a Mustang that spends less effort posing and more matching its siblings intent to entertain.
| |
| ===Kia===
| |
| Stinger. Dudes, well-played.
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|
| | Bertrand Russell |
| </blockquote> | | </blockquote> |
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| =[[2019.01.20 Leslie Odom Jr.]]= | | =[[2025.08.15 If Not Stupid, Then Why Stupid-Shaped?]]= |
| https://www.portland5.com/sites/default/files/styles/event_square_large/public/events/2018/05/01/19_SP0120_Leslie-Odom-Jr_438x400.jpg
| | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| | | Seriously, there is so much political stupidity going on. |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | |
| As part of S's adoration of Hamilton, she got tickets to see Leslie Odom Jr. at the Schnitz. His performance was pretty magical. The renditions of his heartbreakingly poignant songs from Hamilton were amazing, as one would expect, but his other songs were special in other ways. Classic jazz covers laid down the deep connections and talent. Songs from his album were contemporary and brilliant. Particularly entertaining to me was a cover of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mq4UT4VnbE Minnie the Moocher by Cab Calloway].
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| </font>
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| <hr>
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| =[[2019.01.17 Robert Frederick Castle Choate]]=
| | ETA:<br> |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | | Examples? Hell no. It would be like admitting a vampire into your home to post anything like a meaningful set. |
| Today I became a great-uncle. My little sister's youngest child just had a child. Man I feel old.
| |
|
| |
|
| Welcome to the world, little guy.
| | If there is permitted to be accurate news and history recorded of this era, simple searches will reveal enough to explain. |
| </font> | | </font> |
|
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| <hr> | | <hr> |
|
| |
|
| =[[2019.01.11 Tulsi Gabbard 2020]]= | | =[[2025.06.25 Corporate Culture]]= |
| http://kvankii.com/gallery/tulsi2020.png
| | <font face="consolas, courier new"> |
| | Big changes at work. Not going to talk about that overly much - it's too boring to even write out. |
|
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| <font face="Consolas, Courier new">
| | BUT. An aspect I find interesting is who is excited about these major changes, and who is worried about them. |
| I've been mulling the need to participate in the democratic process here in the United States. This has been simultaneously urged and thwarted by Cheeto Hitler. On one hand, his election demonstrates the need for people to clearly express their representation and the pitfalls of leaving decisions to the lowest common denominator. On the other hand, it is hard to want to intentionally join a country that elected a sexist racist moron.
| |
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| |
|
| But then there's Tulsi announcing her intention to run. <br> | | Now, obviously, both reactions are simultaneously valid and possible. I feel both myself. But whether the excitement is more important compared to the various individual level of concern does speak to where many of us are. Which, in turn, is strongly indicative of the sense of trust we have with the company - or our sense of trust in ourselves to offset any lack of trust in the company we have. |
| That's pretty exciting.
| |
| </font> | | </font> |
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| <hr>
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|
| |
| =[[2018.12.23 Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse]]=
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| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/Spider-Man_Into_the_Spider-Verse_%282018_poster%29.png
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| <font face="Consolas, Courier new">
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| It seems like an awkward revelation: that a great way to do a comic book movie is with... animation. Because, <i>DUH</i>.
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| Yet, it really isn't that obvious. Partially because of the thundering dominance of live-action comic book movies (mostly Marvel), and the entrenched third-tier-ness of other animated comic book movies (mostly DC). Indeed, most people reflexively under-estimated SM:ItSV precisely because of its animated nature. Anecdotally, this prejudice is part of what drove the creative team to ensure that they made are really great movie.
| |
|
| |
| And it is a really great movie. I'm easily amused by most imaginative-action movies, but it also blew Simon's socks off. OK, maybe that's not super hard to do either. But we are clearly the core of the target demographic, and they succeeded brilliantly. There really isn't a moment of the movie that doesn't suck you in, thanks to a rich tapestry of clever detail both visual and audible. Plus the story is sublime, with masterfully considered characters. All this, stuffed into an animated framework that actually helps tell the impossibly visual story in a way that simply couldn't be pulled off as well with live-action.
| |
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| Back when I was considering art school, I stumbled on the conundrum of being pushed towards sculpture but being drawn towards 2-dimensional work. How could 2-dimensional depict something better than the 3-dimensional? When what you were depicting wasn't possible, even though you could see it.
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|
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| =[[2018.12.18 Fredmas]]=
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| <font face="Consolas, Courier new">
| |
| While Fredmas is a logical time to be thinking about my dad, I have also found myself thinking about him quite often recently. I suppose that it is impossible to know who he was to himself - the person he thought himself to be. It wasn't the sort of thing that he communicated. Most of my impressions are about how he affected me, and the many things he thought aloud.
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|
| |
| From the perspective of my young self, he was an unknowable force of raw purpose - working and playing. Even his frequent rests, to consume books and beer and televised hockey games, were all done with relished deliberateness. It gave me a depressed sense of never being able to live up to his example, but it also gave me a clear direction to try to grow. As I grew into adulthood, I could see more about how he was always working with what he had. His lack of expressed regrets and regard for what to work towards is something I've adopted wholesale, as much as I can.
| |
|
| |
| Now, as a middle-aged father myself, it is clear to me that he was totally making it up as he went along. There is an innate urge to try to mimic his parenting style, his approach to life even. But there is this odd aspect by which having lost him so soon before becoming a father has allowed me to be open to honest reflections about what was good. And there was a lot of good. But perhaps thanks to our tender wind-down as father and son, I can also see how I can do better.
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| The realization that I am best when considering what utility I can have to the people and ideas I care about, I think I finally understand the source of his purposefulness. Thanks dad. Happy birthday.
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| </font>
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| <hr> | | <hr> |
|
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|
| =<font face="Arial">[[2018.12.12 Insights on Mountain Biking and Parenting]]</font>=
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| It has occurred to me that there are some striking perceptual similarities between mountain biking and having children.
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| Attempts to explain this have not gone well in person, but maybe a somewhat more deliberate construction here might work better. It goes something like this:
| | <br> |
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| From an objective point of reference, it is entirely reasonable to evaluate idea-X as being characterized primarily by risk and unpleasantness. Further, there is a somewhat disconcerting difficulty for a non-X-inclined person in comprehending the ascribed benefits and joys attributed to idea-X by X-committed individuals. Even worse than that, the testimonials of the X-inclined people seem to revel in the objectively worst parts of idea-X.
| | <br> |
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|
| You take that paragraph, and you can plug in both "mountain biking" and "having children" with equal ease. For people who are not one or the other - parents or mountain bikers - this might not be obvious. But as a person who regularly tries to describe the painful joys of parenting to non-breeders, and the treacherous thrills of mountain biking to sane people, they share some very similar variability of interpretations.
| | <br> |
|
| |
|
| For example:<br>
| | <br> |
| When I comment on being exhausted from being woken up in the middle of the night by my spawn, non-breeders interpret that as a cautionary tale about the horrors of sexually-transmitted parasitic primates. Whereas other parents smile and nod wearily, knowing the sensation of worthy sacrifice for these beings we adore.
| |
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|
| For example:<br>
| | <br> |
| When I share tales of facing down a steep treacherous track while traveling at a speed guaranteed to hurt if I make contact with the plentiful trees and chundery rocks, non-mountain bikers wince and think me very foolish to have gotten myself in such a predicament. However mountain bikers look for the opportunity apply a high-five in appreciation of the base-of-the-brain adrenalin from using skill to overcome fear.
| |
|
| |
|
| For example:<br>
| | <br> |
| When I reflect on the price of, well, everything to do with having children, not-parentally-inclined folks laugh and imagine all the things they don't want to give up. Instead, other people who have kids laugh about the realization that it's all wasted anyway.
| |
|
| |
|
| For example:<br>
| | <br> |
| When I kvetch about the misery of slogging uphill through the rain, mountain-bike-averse persons hear a tale of misery. The alternate assumption of a veteran chunder-seeker is that this was an investment that would certainly prove worthwhile for the gnar-filled joy to be reaped from the vert.
| |
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| |
|
| And so on.
| | <br> |
|
| |
|
| It makes me contemplate some possible similarities of questionable evolutionary biology theory to explain how these altered states of perception might make sense. For the case of parenting, it makes evolutionary sense for humans to have altered neurobiology regarding the having of offspring - because fondly care-taking our young despite the bottomless demands they require helps the fundamental success of the species. Likewise with mountain biking, it is the same foolish wellspring of enjoying overcoming fear with talent that allowed our species to (occasionally) successfully transition from being cave bear chow to wearing cave bear pelts.
| | <br> |
| </font> | |
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| <hr> | | <br> |
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| =[[2018.12.08 Some Chunder Gnar]]=
| | <br> |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | |
| Another cold wintery bike ride today. Still fun, but not a great display of skill or bravery. When things are going well, I have a sense of flowing or flying, and there were indeed moments of that. A far greater proportion was spent feeling like I was just clunking along, trying not to crash in the slippery bits of frost built up on the previously-moist parts of the trails.
| |
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| |
|
| It was good to ride with Danny again, not least of all because he was able to give me a ride up the mountain while I'm bike-rack-less. The rest of the squad is young and fast and skilled and invincible and I didn't see much of them other than when they waited for us to bunch back up.
| | <br> |
|
| |
|
| The sketchy bits of ice on the upper trails were preferable to slushy mud lower down. The large knobby tires felt like they were shredding the trail on the bottom half, and a terrifying heaping of chunky mud bits were liberally distributed over me. The mud churn was also disappointing in how it made cornering nervous and bled all momentum from the flowing lines of Lower Hide & Seek. But, as alluded above, even the worst mountain bike riding is still pretty good fun.
| | <br> |
| </font> | |
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| =[[2018.12.03 Goodbye Lily]]=
| | <br> |
| https://scontent-sea1-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/4c04a8a67e3388d9820c6f015f576b54/5C99CFF5/t51.2885-15/e35/47178375_1883880425044535_381892281734777428_n.jpg
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| =[[2018.12.01 Christmas Wheels]]=
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| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | |
| As is our annual family tradition, we headed out to murder a tree to decorate our living room with. While we were driving out to the tree farm, there was a noticeable vibration in the car.
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| S [driving]: "There's a weird shaking in the car."
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| Clayton [trying not to be a terrible passenger]: "Yeah, I can feel the vibration too."
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| S: "Is this going to be OK for me to drive to Hood River today?"
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| Clayton: "Well, I'll have to take a look to be sure." Meanwhile, I'm thinking to myself about how I'll make room in the garage to use my sweet sweet hydraulic floor jack and find some minor imbalance-causing thing and be a total hero. Or possibly find something that I cannot fix myself, but at least ensuring the safe operation of the Moobaru.
| | <br> |
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| |
|
| A short time later, while still driving, S slaps me in the arm. "Oh! I remember - there was a thing that I ran over yesterday. I thought it was, like, just a plastic bag. But then it was all bang thump under the car."
| | <br> |
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| Clayton: "Ah."
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| A few minutes later, when we stop at the christmas tree farm. Clayton: "UUUUH. That's a big, obvious dent in the wheel. How is the tire even staying inflated?" I also had a stray thought wondering about some sort of karmic connection between our cars, because I also managed to get some curb rash on Ghost yesterday (something that I basically never do).
| | <br> |
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| |
|
| After murdering the tree the furthest from the parking lot, we coordinated with a local Subaru dealership to find a replacement wheel. As a bonus surprise, when we got to the tire store we noticed that whatever had smashed the front wheel also managed to take a bite out of the rear wheel. Fun.
| | <br> |
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| Luckily, the tire store had some used steel wheels and had an open lift. So we used the time to introduce the kids to a magical land called <i>Olive Garden</i>, which basically blew Simon's little pasta-loving mind.
| | <br> |
| </font>
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| =[[2018.11.25 Murder Elf]]=
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| While still maintaining a regular AIF night with Dave, I've also started playing some Dungeons & Dragons lately. The more important game is running an adventure for Simon and a couple of his buddies, who are all brand new in the realm of role playing games and discovering all the exciting aspects thereof. In addition to all of that, I've also managed to join a semi-regular D&D game with some of the 'dads' and other adults. It is particularly amusing to see these assorted personalities come to terms with my roleplaying.
| |
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| They're all adept at roleplaying, and a couple of them are good at optimizing the rules for their character effectiveness. But when it comes to combat, none of them quite hold a candle to my enthusiasm. This is where Dave would just grin in an unsettling way and nod knowingly.
| | <br> |
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| My wood elf ranger has earned the title "Murder Elf" among the crew. I think they meant it to jokingly shame me, and were then quietly alarmed by how much I liked it.
| | <br> |
| </font> | |
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| =[[2018.11.11 Centenary of Armistice]]=
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| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | |
| It feels hard to believe that we have had 100 years of resolving to avoid the horrors of modern war.
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| There are many things that human society is very poor at learning. Remembrance of the wastefulness of violence is merely one of those things.
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| http://clipart-library.com/img/1981314.jpg
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| </font> | |
| <hr>
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| =[[2018.10.16 Marat / Sade]]=
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| https://www.twilighttheatercompany.org/uploads/7/9/8/0/79802950/marat-sade_2_orig.jpeg
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| LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!
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| </font> | |
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| =[[2018.10.25 Desired Jerk]]=
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| <font face="Consolas, Courier new">
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| The derivative of position with respect to time is velocity.<br>
| |
| The derivative of velocity with respect to time is acceleration.<br>
| |
| The derivative of acceleration with respect to time is... jerk.
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| No, really. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerk_(physics) It's a physics term].
| | <br> |
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|
| This was relevant to me as I was delighting myself driving GHOST to work this morning. Because, while it is true that GHOST's acceleration is awfully nice - and what gets measured by all the numbers-obsessed - it's the broad prowess to adjust that acceleration that really is a driving delight. Because that's what engaged driving is really about for me: control.
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| I'm not too bothered by the double entendre, either.
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| </font> | |
| <hr>
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| =[[2018.10.21 Henry Rollins]]=
| | <br> |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | |
| Went and saw the Henry Rollins Slideshow Tour today with my favourite architect neighbor, Lori. While not the most thorough Rollins fan myself, I haven't witnessed anything he's done that I haven't at least respected. Lori had never heard of him. His songs take a certain mindset to enjoy, which I'm rarely in these days, but his spoken word is always entertaining to me - that is what we got to have for this show. Listening to his radio shows and podcasts do tend to be a bit wearying if you try to binge them; he has a lot of energy, and a sanctimoniousness that is low grade but cumulative. This show was just about the perfect dose of Rollins, however.
| |
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| He warned us, right up front, that he was going to keep changing directions to keep us engaged. And that he did. It landed a few solid gut punches while also managing to share intimate facets that were simply lovely, all the while being delivered with delightfully self-deprecating humour. He showed us the world, his thoughts and hopes about that world, and how it reflected on him in such a way that let us reflect on ourselves.
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/mummy.gif
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| =[[2018.10.07 Amateur Plumbing]]=
| | <br> |
| <font face="Consolas, Courier new"> | |
| This is really a tale about how I'm glad I have a cushy desk job instead of being a "skilled" labourer. But before I get into that, let's go back about a year. That's when the kitchen sink started leaking quite badly. A quick inspection suggested that it would be a pain in the ass, and I didn't have time to address it right away. So, in order to buy a couple days until the weekend, I tried wrapping the pipe in some cool hydrophobic tape I've got. It worked. A little too well. I had hoped that it would reduce the pour to a containable leak (a shallow bucket was appropriately situated). It completely contained the leak instead. Which meant that when the weekend came, and I got a better idea of how much of a pain in the ass it would be, I felt able to procrastinate. As more time went by, the more I felt complacent about the patch job.
| |
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| |
|
| Alas, even the coolest hydrophobic clingy tape can't hold a badly corroded pipe together forever. And this past Friday the leaking resumed. So Saturday was my day to finally address the fix properly. At which time, it becomes appropriate for a hypothetical flashback to the last time this was fixed - before we bought the house. Due to the extremely awkward location of the pipe, it is rather difficult to get leverage on a modest-sized pipe wrench that can fit in the space. Gazing at the deep gouge marks on the fitting, it's easy to imagine how ardently the previous plumber tried to dislodge it. Worse, looking at how the now-leaking pipe was crudely soldered onto the remains of the compression fitting, it becomes obvious that they gave up trying to get it out, and instead hacked off the old pipe and welded the replacement directly on. I also like to imagine that the previous plumber felt some quiet shame, for the mess that the next plumber would have to face when the thin-walled pipe they installed invariably rusted through.
| | <br> |
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| While I could probably have managed to saw off the pipe in the same sort of way that the previous plumber did, I lack both the tools and the skills to braze, solder, or weld on a pipe in a leak-free manner. Plus, I'd much rather fix the pipe with some corrosion-free plastic. Thus I began my attempt to unfasten the fitting that the previous plumber had given up on.
| | <br> |
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| It did not go well.
| | <br> |
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| After five hours, I had managed to turn the damn thing just 15°. Admittedly, most of that time was spent with the fitting not moving at all. And 2 hours were spent nursing an array of self-inflicted wounds while watching the Matrix. The awkwardness of the location of the fitting prevented easy access to leverage. The confines and the elasticity of the plumbing meant that impacts had no effect in budging the pipe wrench. I nearly maimed my face several times trying to use a crow bar on the handle of the pipe wrench while jammed under the sink. Until finally I came upon a method of bracing bits of lumber as adjustable fulcrums to use a length of square bar to inch the pipe wrench along.
| | <br> |
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| Once the fitting was out, it was a 10-minute trip to the local hardware store to buy $16 worth of parts, and a further 2 minutes to install.
| | <br> |
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| Whatever pleasure I might have for accomplishing this trivial piece of plumbing, even though I overcame what the previous plumber seemingly left as a booby trap, is utterly drowned in the aching discomfort of it all. Craning and straining and slipping and smashing and accidentally banging in a confined space with unyielding surfaces sucks giant donkey balls. Yes, I used my cleverness to do something difficult. But I have the joy of getting to employ my cleverness every single day at work - at my comfy desk.
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| =[[2018.10.01 Ongoing Tesla Testing]]=
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| More detailed exploration of the performance envelope of GHOST has revealed further insights.<br>
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| * The review mirrors are really quite puny. Makes for a nice low Cd, but I'd personally trade that for improved sensor capabilities over my shoulders.
| | <br> |
| * GHOST might be lighter and more nimble-feeling than a Model S, but she's still a hefty girl. Momentum must be considered.
| |
| * Further to that, stickier tires will be required. Mostly to improve turning and stopping; not that GHOST is a slouch at either, but rather to carve out more safety factor for my enthusiasm. Though it is rather entertaining feeling the whole chassis squirm under full thrust with the current shoes.
| |
| * The turn stalk has a marginal flaw: the left "tap" sensor is mis-calibrated such that a simple triple-blink lane change is hard to get instead of continuous blinking.
| |
| * Overall, this might be the exact right embodiment of my car-self. A bit heavier than ideal, but more powerful and smarter - and carrying more baggage. And still quite silly.
| |
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| =[[2018.09.29 Meet GHOST]]=
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| Five years and one day after selling Richthofen, my beloved Porsche 911 C4S, I picked up a new alter-ego-class car. It's a 2018 Tesla Model 3, long range battery, dual motor all-wheel-drive. White. And we named it "GHOST".
| | <br> |
| <blockquote>
| |
| ==The Name==
| |
| This was simply a family vote.<br>
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_8955_web.JPG
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| It might have been nice to continue the monster motif set by "Grendel" by using "Wendigo" from the spooky campfire stories my dad used to tell. TESSA was a lovely runner-up, losing only the all-important Violet vote - who simply insisted on "Ghost". Even though I thought for sure she might also vote for "Princess Sparkle Prancer", but no dice. Only Simon was suitably amused by "Tesly McTeslaFace". And ForAytToo might have had a chance, if we had learned the VIN soon enough give it momentum.
| | <br> |
|
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| ==The Colour==
| | <br> |
| The thing that most people seem to question is the colour I chose. Perhaps because I have generally terrible taste in colours. Even so, I do have preferences. Seeing the car in person, in white, it makes a lot of sense. The bright trim fits better than with anything dark. Plus, only black and white are available without metallic flakes - a feature that has come to annoy me for no good reason.
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| http://kvankii.com/gallery/IMG_3716_web.JPG
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| ==Stupid Grin Driving Glee Factor==
| | <br> |
| Tesla isn't totally transparent about some specifications for the car, but my (unofficial) understanding is that it's got two 191 kW (256 hp) motors, but that the actual power it can apply is limited by the current output of the non-Performance battery management system. It's supposed to be able to do 0-100 km/h in 4.5 seconds; it feels like less. It is significantly faster-feeling thrust-wise in all real world situations than Richthofen was, which feels important in my withered soul. So, while it officially lacks access to "Ludicrous" speed, it is certainly consistently hilarious. The delighted shrieks of terrified joy from the kids when we merely go in a straight line are simply dad-tastic.
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| It's quite an experience, and I have a lot more soaking in to do. Which will naturally translate into more writing. But for now, it is a fabulous introduction.
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| | <font face="consolas,courier new"> |
| | | RESISTANCE STATUS: |
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| | * US citizenship: APPLICATION (still) PENDING |
| | | * local politics: NULL, homeless situation correctly one of the main foci |
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| | * global politics: NULL, wait - Justin is dating Katy? Nice. |
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| <hr>
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| =[[2018.06.13 Fuck]]=
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| <font face="Consolas,Courier New">
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| Fuuuuuuuck.
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| </font> | | </font> |
claytoncastle.com
So, I've written a bunch of Rants about my dad. Some as I realized he was mortal - which was a weird realization to experience as a rational being. More immediately when he died to metabolize my grief, and others over a period of a decade afterwards. Many of those were reminiscences of childhood defining experiences and mythologies for my own catharsis, and with burgeoning hopes of there being a way for my kids to know something of him.
I think he would have really liked them both. They have a lot of different parts of him, and his mom.
Except doubts bubble up from the corners of my memory. And I find myself working through extrapolations of the son-ward facets I could see into the person he might have actually been.
Obviously, my dad was pretty cool. And I don't just mean that in the idol-worship way sons have for their fathers - which I kind of do - but also he seemed to have an effortless way of making people want to be his friend. I don't actually know where he fit in the Letterkenny Spectrum as kid - hick, skid, or jock (definitely not a native or a christian, or Québécois for that matter nor a degen from up-country). But the vast majority of people I saw him encounter already knew him, or of him, and respected him if not overtly expressing happiness at seeing him.
All of which I couch as being the basis for assuming that he was pretty comfortable in our pasty-white mostly monoculture small-town circumstances. That sort of comfort breeds a sense of confirmation about one's own cultural identity.
And, honestly, while my dad was great at talking philosophy with me - especially about the why of things - whenever topics of other places or peoples came up he was consistently dismissive and unkind. And occasionally overtly racist, and sometimes simply xenophobic.
Over the past decade, I've worried about how my boomer dad might have responded to the weird right-wing stumble of western civilization. If I try to comfort myself with how he was smart and would be disgusted by the stupid lies, it's hard to deny the persuasive power that hate has had over people. Especially boomers.
It occurred to me to try to talk my hypothetical conservative father away from the lure of fascism, but it just hurts my heart too much to think about it too much.
But then I imagine how he'd react to his grandkids both being non-binary and fabulous.
The deepest well of my hope is that he would have spent a lot of time knowing them all through their lives and see how their development into who they are becoming is a lovely and natural extrapolation of the brilliant and lovely potential they've always had. And that his love for them would ease any struggling conservative confusion he might experience so that he could be the same cool and inspirational patriarch for them that he was for me and my sister.
That doesn't change the fear that he would have not been as close, or as accepting. And that fear sits on my heart.
Sadly, my epic new seat was not ready to set up. So I just admired the view for a minute - both out the across the river, and into my director's office at the giant Millenium Falcon LEGO set.
Fredmas Crash
On the wet and rainy morning of Fredmas, Ember and Violet were commuting to Hillsdale for school when they were the tail-end of a 5-car pile-up. Speeds were modest, and the 2018 Subaru Impreza did all the safety-engineered things to sacrifice itself such that neither kid was injured in any way.
Communication was not stellar, but Violet managed to let us know right away. So without actually having all the details up front, Amy and I knew they had a problem and could see that they were in the middle of the Fremont freeway bridge and jumped into Velma to go help. When we showed up they were the only ones there - shivering in the rain on the side of the freeway. Amy onboarded the kids to drive them the rest of the way SW, and I stayed in the shivering sideways rain for a couple hours with the wreck to wait for the tow truck. Fun times.
Some lessons learned, and Ember has yet to get back in that saddle. Scheming about how to proceed with commuter vehicle plans is still ongoing. It seems like a logical time and place to make a plug for the replacement to be an EV, but probably shouldn't push too hard. Because reasons.
Work Transformations
December as a whole has been weird with trying to finish handing work batons to their new responsible engineers. It's been the longest that I've been in any group - 10 years! - and recognize that it's going to be a long time to ever fully extricate myself.
At the same time, the new Vehicle Level Engineering role is both exciting and boggling. Frankly, it's a lot.
Simultaneously, Amy is changing shifts to stop the 5 12-hour shifts in 6 days marathon every couple weeks and jumping into 3 shifts every week with her best non-Clayton friend. We're all very excited for the shift in energy.
Other Stuff
This winter break had been bookmarked for a bunch of reading and writing plans, all of which have basically unravelled as I'm actually spending most of my time just mouth-breathing my way through the exhausting cold/flu that Ember gave me.
Now that the kids are back, I do intend to inflict all kinds of old but beloved movies on them. So there's that. There's also a butt-tonne of sugary foods from all the sources to keep me overfed while I quietly lament how few bike rides I actually went on this year.
So it goes.
Things I'm looking forward to in 2026:
- bunches of Amy+Clayton adventure time regularly
- diving into a dream job (should probably write a separate post about that thought alone)
- defeating fascism
Not my best effort. I suspect that the grey makes it incrementally less impressive. Plus I kept trimming to avoid poking Amy so much, and the surrounding scruff softens the effect even more.
Gone now, but not missed. Other than the daily startle of seeing my dad in the mirror.
40,000 people in Portland sending a clear message.
Awkwardly, the current administration has also been sending a clear, fascist message.
It's really weird. Just, you know, profoundly weird.
Acknowledging for a moment the footage from 2020 looked bad - as shown on cable news. But even then that was basically constrained to a couple blocks downtown for actual protests. Meanwhile there were other simultaneous marches about police brutality throughout the city that were completely peaceful and not newsworthy.
I suppose that if one were to conflate the "hundred days of protest" in 2020 with the rising homelessness problem, one could squint and see the folks cowering in tents and vehicles and pretend there's a direct connection of some kind. I mean, other than the systematic violence done to the worker class both strip mining us for wealth and trying to overtly pit us against each other.
But in context of what is actually happening right now - which amounts to a group of 6-16 people regularly taunting ICE agents at a single building - it's wildly disproportional. Especially with the Portland Police Department stating, in court, that all the altercations they have evidence for so far are mainly cases of untrained federal agents trying to instigate meme-worthy moments with the peaceful protestors.
So the federal activation of 200 National Guard to "pacify Portland" is, well, purely for show.
Which makes Portland's main reaction one that endears this city to me even more: to be silly. Dressing up in harmless costumes, dancing, and handing out cookies. Doing whatever it takes to make the video bites nearly impossible to weaponize politically, as the fascists so clearly desire.
And to the person in the inflatable costume that had the inlet of their suit sprayed with pepper spray: I hope you are OK. As much as that must have sucked, and possibly could have caused serious medical repercussions, you embodied the shallow idiocy of their position. In no way could a bumbling inflatable costume be considered a threat, and to assault you was to show the cowardly and loathsome depth of their antisocial motivations.
To the federal fucknugget that used pepper spray on an obviously-harmless person in an inflatable costume: Now we all know why you have no real friends and your life is empty of meaning. You obviously don't belong in Portland.
As mentioned on BoingBoing today:
In 1962, Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, invited Nobel-winning philosopher Bertrand Russell to a debate. Mosley aimed to persuade Russell of fascism's merits.
Russell, who was 89 at the time, replied:
Dear Sir Oswald,
Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one's own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.
I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.
Yours sincerely,
Bertrand Russell
Seriously, there is so much political stupidity going on.
ETA:
Examples? Hell no. It would be like admitting a vampire into your home to post anything like a meaningful set.
If there is permitted to be accurate news and history recorded of this era, simple searches will reveal enough to explain.
Big changes at work. Not going to talk about that overly much - it's too boring to even write out.
BUT. An aspect I find interesting is who is excited about these major changes, and who is worried about them.
Now, obviously, both reactions are simultaneously valid and possible. I feel both myself. But whether the excitement is more important compared to the various individual level of concern does speak to where many of us are. Which, in turn, is strongly indicative of the sense of trust we have with the company - or our sense of trust in ourselves to offset any lack of trust in the company we have.
RESISTANCE STATUS:
- US citizenship: APPLICATION (still) PENDING
- local politics: NULL, homeless situation correctly one of the main foci
- global politics: NULL, wait - Justin is dating Katy? Nice.