Speaking as a bi-coloured-python-rock-snake

Long music post is long

drwex — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 16:48:55 GMT

I know this is going to take a while to do, if only because I want to re-listen to all these sets in order to comment on them. So I'll say I started this on Jan 3 and let's see when it posts.

https://soundcloud.com/tahrei/ruminate-your-fate-mix
Following up on last time's non-US music post here's two hours of very chill global music. I'm not normally this big a fan of chill, but this is good nighttime music. It's a style I call "liquid" which probably makes no sense if you're not listening to this and not me but it's the word I have to describe how Tah Rei makes the music flow.

https://soundcloud.com/markusschulz/yearinreview2017
Markus Schulz brings his "global DJ broadcast" mix for 2017 year-end. It's 40 tracks that are pulled from the previous year. It begins with Kate Bush and ends with Linkin Park and includes a couple of Schulz's own works but mostly pulls from a variety of names. Stylistically, it's a lot of tech-house, vocal trance, and chair-dancing fun.

https://soundcloud.com/cmc-silenta/cmcsilenta-shambhala-fractal-forest-mix-2017
CMC and Silenta have their 2017 Shambhala mix up. It's a lovely hour-and-a-half of electro dance. A bit heavy on the fuzz and wub but I don't mind it so much in context with other things in the mix. In particular, this mix has some nice reggae and funk entries and that's always a way to get on my good side. I have a couple more Shambhala mixes I want to post but not all at once.

https://soundcloud.com/user-457571129/ummet-ozcan-presents-innerstate-ep-156
Ummet Ozcan continues to produce interesting sets under his "Innerstate" logo. I could pick one as easily as another, though I've been avoiding blogging a lot of them because they're overrun with wub and at some point I turn it off. I figure if I'm not even able to get through one listen I shouldn't inflict it on you. This one has a much higher dose of disco than usual but push through that and you're rewarded with a couple real gems. The first is Sonny Zamolo's "Arslan" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqpJbTOBjKw) and then Showbiz, Divolly Markward Vs Balkan Beat Box doing "Smatron" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxCJWG6cEE) which has some quintessentially BBB riffs in a hot fun wrapper.

(and now it's nearly a week later and I hit post)

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End of year music in non-US styles

drwex — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 16:13:00 GMT

In other years I've had more organized end-of-year music things. Lots of DJs and producers put out year-end compilations or mash-ups but I've not kept up and also fuck 2017 right in the eye-socket. So instead I'm going to give you a set of things that (for the most part) are not your traditional US-centric sounds.

https://soundcloud.com/ivoryoasis/giraff-raining
I feel like I've been hearing this song off and on for longer but Soundcloud tells me it was posted about 7 months ago. Giraff's "Raining" is a gentle EDM banger that's sometimes categorized as "summer house" - the kind of thing one would want to dance to on a warm moonlit beach. Sounds beautiful right now. (It's single digits temp outside right now where I am.)

https://soundcloud.com/angelikavee/angelika-vee-coco-jambo
While I'm on the summery tip, here's Angelica Vee's rework of "Coco Jambo" (or Jamboo - it's listed both ways), a mid-90s summery hit. The original was more Afro-Caribbean and featured Mr President's rapping over the base melody. Vee's remix is sped up a bit and has the male vocals stripped out. Not a bad remix, as these things go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7UnH-3Hgp4
Sagi Abitbul (https://www.facebook.com/pg/sagiabitbulofficial) is located in Israel and much of his work features Mediterranean, Arab, and Middle Eastern styles and vocals. This track starts off pretty traditional until about 1:15 when it drops in a fast house beat. I really like the style and tempo changes. Just when you think you know what this track (Stanga) is going to do it doubles back on you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ciLHgyzGbs
Mascota (DJ Mascota - https://www.djmascota.com) is a Bulgarian with a lot of local credentials but not much American exposure that I could find. Here he's doing some nice deep house sounds fronted by Poli Hubavenska (https://www.polihubavenska.com) another Bulgarian. Hard to be sure from the pictures but she might also be the woman in the video. Interestingly, web searching her shows some links with Matan Caspi, who often appears in Groovelectric mixes. Possibly that's where I originally got this track.

https://soundcloud.com/el-buho/toumani-sidiki-hamadoun-toure-el-buho-edit
Toumani Diabaté is a Malian traditional-music player known for the kora, a unique instrument that is kind of a cross between a lute and a harp. The original track was done with his son Sidiki and it's in a complex counter-beating style that I can't compare to anything else. This version is a rework by El_Búho, a Latin American remixer (https://www.facebook.com/ElBuhito) who also has an unusual style of electronica. I imagine if I was better versed in these genres and styles I'd have something intelligent to say but as is all I can tell you is "this is cool; you should listen to it."

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at https://drwex.dreamwidth.org/971367.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

Bam-a-lam (music)

drwex — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 21:09:28 GMT

Both the business of work and the dreadfulness of the US government's behavior have cut sharply into my music listening. What I have is a hodgepodge of good and OK things to report back on. But today I turned on my Soundcloud stream to find a nice Father Funk set (patience; it'll appear) and that reminded me it's been nearly a month since I did a music post, so here goes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjqs-qmkNug
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_JxMb8RLEY
I'm still enjoying electro-swing. I have a Pandora station that I'm crafting to give me stuff I like, though their source selection just seems too limited. This one was actually posted by a coworker whose musical tastes don't overlap much with mine but I tried it anyway, and the first thing to fill my headphones was Caravan Palace's electro-swing take on "Black Betty". Find it at the second URL above. I've long ago lost track of how many variants of this Ram Jam classic I've posted. It's been remixed and reworked thousands of times and it's a perpetual favorite.

The mix has a lot more of a Roaring 20's feel than I'm used to and that's a nice variation. I tend to think of swing as originating in the 30s in Harlem but in the broader sense it goes back to uptempo jazz and the Charleston of the 1920s. I'm just biased because my parents used to play Cab Calloway and contemporaries.

---- the tracks below come with earworm warnings; I find each of them capable of getting stuck in my head. you've been warned -----

https://soundcloud.com/dopezoundmashups/you-dont-push-the-feeling-discosid-mashup-1
Discosid does his version of Jax Jones' very popular "You Don't Know Me." Another track that's been mashed and mixed a lot, and that I find gets stuck in my head in most every form. This is a fun little electro-bounce variant.

https://soundcloud.com/djbillythekit/billy-the-kit-macarena-free-download
Yes, it's a "Macarena" variant. Sue me (or "die mad" as my favorite cow orker says). The original was stupid levels of overplayed, but having excised it from my rotation for a few years I find it tolerable. There's a reason the original was popular - it's catchy. Billy The Kit's version is kind of a big-boom take on the original.

https://soundcloud.com/rac/the-naked-famous-higher-rac-mix
RAC does what he does best - take a popular track and give it a high-production EDM spin. In this case, it's The Naked & Famous "Higher" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCsyXSr7u-Q - in case you've somehow forgotten what the original sounds like). It's a modern power-female-voiced ballad that RAC smooths out and lengthens. I think it's an example of his style at its best - the remix retains the good parts of the vocals and if you can get past some of the lyrical bits (sorry, but 'genuine' and 'skeleton' don't rhyme the way I pronounce them) it's a good song. But definitely an earworm for me.

https://soundcloud.com/free-download-friday/the-muppet-show-dj-zsuzsu-wolfgang-lohr-remix-free-download
And what would any earworm section be without a Muppets Show theme song? Poorer by a lot, that's what - hush, you in the back. DJ ZsuZsu give us a very swing-influenced show tune that, say it with me, is going to get stuck in your head.

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We saw VNV and it was JUST what I needed

drwex — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 20:41:41 GMT

This is my church
This is where I heal my hurts
"God is a DJ" - Faithless

If you've seen VNV before, then I'll just summarize by saying that Ronan was absolutely on and the sold-out Sinclair audience was totally into it. The tour was specifically built out of two of their albums (Automatic and Empires) so I didn't get to hear some of my favorites but the show was energetic and emotional and engaging and funny and very much like being at a party with 400 of your closest friends.

I can't find the earliest records in my blogging archive, but I'm pretty sure I've been going to VNV shows since 2005 and this was probably the second-best I've seen. The venue is good (if a bit small) and for the first time in living memory I was able to go without earplugs for almost all of it. VNV are not quiet and the music was loud, but not deafening.

The crowd was definitely a large part dressed-up goth/industrial but not a total sea of black. I happened to be wearing a gray tee shirt and I recalled that at our very first VNV show Pygment was able to find me because I stood out against the sea of black. This time I was visible but not uniquely so. It was nice to see a good share of younger fans there as well as several older familiar faces.

If you haven't see a VNV show I will contextualize by saying that Ronan does a running patter with the audience before and between songs. He doesn't want people just standing there staring at him - if you go to a VNV show you should expect to sing, dance, shout, move your body. Something to send the audience energy back to the stage.

The crowd at this night was very much in tune with that, and Ronan appreciated it. He remarked several times that he loves doing shows like this and he wasn't afraid to talk on stage about how the intensity of feeling from our side affects him emotionally. Of course, having him respond to us that way only encouraged us to participate more fully, leading to a great feedback cycle. There are a lot of electro-industrial acts out there and lots of them are quite good. But I don't know any other act that co-creates a show with its audience this way.

It's far from heavy and serious, though. Ronan is from Dublin and loves to joke about that and his Irish traits, including making a joke of everything. We were in stitches even before the first song started. The show has lots of little interludes of this banter. Here are a few that stuck with me from this show:

During the opening discussion, where he tells the audience about the participation he expects, and explains that people taking photos or videos need to keep their phones in front of their own faces, not high up blocking other peoples' vision, he asked for lights. The board op killed the stage lights and flipped on some plain white wash. Ronan said something like, "Oh, very good. Got it right and promptly for once."
*DARK* as the board op cuts the lights.
Ronan: Oh, so it's going to be like that, is it?

At one point he was teasing the younger members of the audience, saying there "...used to be these things called singles. And EPs." Then he went on to name-check Manray, not in the sense of "oh yeah it's a thing that people here will recognize" but talking about his own time there and how he misses it. Way to endear yourself to the Camberville goth crowd!

In talking up how people in the crowd liked VNV he noticed that the on-floor bartender was wearing a VNV fan tee shirt and Ronan mentioned how nice it was to have the staff liking the act as well. At which point the bartender held up a bottle:
Ronan: I'm from Dublin and I don't drink Irish whiskey.
*bartender puts away bottle*
Ronan: Now if you had some scotch...
*bartender pulls out another bottle and holds it up*
Ronan: Ah, that's the good stuff

He then goes back to his usual banter. Meanwhile the bartender pulls out a cup, pours several fingers of scotch into it, and passes it to a fan who passes it to another. Eventually it ends up in the hand of a female audience member (dressed like a goth ballerina) who clambers up on the speaker on the side of the stage and holds out the cup with a very Vanna White flourish. Ronan comes over and takes the drink, thanking "...the peat fairy."

I don't know if any of these things will translate to you, dear reader, if you were not present. Just take as given that the show was way more fun and funnier than you would ever expect an industrial show to be.

And Ronan says they'll be back next year with a new album. Can't wait

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Here's a soundtrack for this week

drwex — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 20:02:45 GMT

Four full sets in here that you can pick and choose from. Like any other sets they're going to have better and worse parts and since they're mostly live, none of them is perfectly polished. I've tried to pick sets that have different styles to suit different moods and needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ctN6DO9Wf4
Dmitriy Redko (AstroPilot) put out a nearly two-hour live psychill set last year. I confess I don't find a huge difference between psy-chill and psy-trance, if you know that style. This is not exactly downtempo, but it's airy, breathy, relaxing. Someone I played this for called it "floaty" music and I know what they mean. Good for destressing, or keeping your head down amid ongoing chatter.

https://soundcloud.com/thedolab/woogiewknd-pumpkin
Pumpkin uses a lot of what's good in Motown, rock, country (yes), and hip-hop from the last couple decades. Some of it is just sampled, some is updated and covered in the course of these two hours. It's fun to listen along and see what you can pick out. Some of it is really obvious (Paul Simon and Talking Heads, anyone?) and some of it is recognizable to people who listen to a lot of EDM (e.g. Zhu's "Faded"). Generally a lot of fun and keeping-you-going tempo without being overwhelming or hard-driving.

https://soundcloud.com/young-nrg-productions/nrg-live-show-uk-2years-w-dj-stex-feat-guest-mix-by-ale-tosses
NRG's live show also clocks in a bit over two hours, filled with tracks from other people and their own remixes. It's much more reggae, rap, bounce, and hip-hop than the previous two, featuring names like Defunk and Tribe Called Quest. The style is more scratch, electro, and breakbeats than my usual but I found it a nice contrast to what we've had so far.

https://soundcloud.com/markusschulz/transmissionasia2017
After featuring a good bit of Markus Schultz's work last time I went looking for a sense of what he's like live and found this, a 90-minute set he did earlier this year. This is a pretty straight-up club trance set, with mostly Schultz's own work on original tracks as well as remixes/mashes. High energy, high BPM even when he's using Sarah McLachlan.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/964957.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

Idly smashing tunes

drwex — Thu, 31 Aug 2017 19:48:37 GMT

Cancelled meetings today means let's put some effort into a music post. I've been listening to more "chill" music than I usually do. Often after reading some rage-inducing what-the-actual-fuck thing from my news feed. I also have a lot of long sets to post but I'll split those off into their own thing (or two).

https://soundcloud.com/markusschulz/running-up-that-hill-chillout
https://soundcloud.com/markusschulz/winter-kills-me-chillout-mix
https://soundcloud.com/markusschulz/running-up-that-hill-extended
The first of these is a Markus Schultz "chill mix," though its somewhat more intense than a typical chill track. Fronted by Victoria Horn (as Lady V), it has many of the same tonal qualities as the remixes below, but is more complex and intricate. I like both the vocal presence and the complexity of the mix - it's interesting without getting frenetic.

The second is an unusual track in that you don't find a lot of Kate Bush remixes around. "Running Up That Hill" is one of her most popular and accessible songs so if was going to remix any of her tunes this one would make sense. As remixes go it's not bad. Bush's tunes rise (or fall) on her vocal performance and here you get a lot of that. The backgrounds are almost minimalist in places - a single piano note.

If you're interested in the non-chill version, you can also listen to an extended mix at the third link. I've noted before that I tend to like extended mixes and this one carries its extra weight pretty well, even if it does rely on a bog-standard club-dance build halfway through. Where the first version was spare, this one has a lot of extra layers thrown in. The mix keeps them under the vocals for the most part so that's good, but I'm not convinced they add all that much.

https://soundcloud.com/iamsidmoore/mandelbug
Chill electronica often blends into some of the dark film-track pieces I like and this is a great example of that. Mandelbug (https://fanlink.to/mandelbug) puts together a mash here that wouldn't be out of place in many movie soundtracks. It's the sort of thing you hear as the camera follows the protagonist through a dark and crowded scene in some location Americans would consider 'exotic'.

https://soundcloud.com/dirtwire/lost-highway-1
If you start playing this and think... wait, that sounds a bit like Beats Antique, you're right. This is Dirtwire (https://www.dirtwire.net) the side project of David Satori of Beats Antique. It's got that amazing fiddle sound and interesting rhythms galore. The track notes credit Ethiopian electro, a thing I didn't even know exist and now must find more of. Of all the Beats' side projects I like this one best so far and I'm sad they didn't get to this side of the country on their 2017 tour. Maybe next year.

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I swear I'm going to write about music if it takes forever

drwex — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 20:36:17 GMT

I have a whole stack of things I've wanted to write but that got backed up behind the Charlottesville and fucking Nazi aftermath. So let's see if I can put this one together quickly; apologies if it's not as well-researched as I usually try for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-sZyfFX4F0
This came to me via my subcription to Aron Chupa's YouTube channel, which I set up after finding the delightful electro-swing piece from Chupa and Little Sis Nora. Here she is again, and the video is totally worth watching. I have a hard time classifying this music - it's definitely got a few swing beats in it, but it's also electro, and found-sound, and dance, and hey if you haven't ever heard someone rhyme Calvados then you should watch for that alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bznxx12Ptl0
And if you think that's fun and don't mind your lyrics a little uncensored, here's Chupa again from an older (2014) track using the same linguistic twist. Here Little Sis Nora isn't directly credited but down in the video info you find a vocals credit for "Nora Ekberg", which I dig into a little further and find out is actually Chupa's sister. This track has some of the swing hints to it but is more typical electro-bounce. Still a lot of fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMCpfwpOhY
It feels like forever since I've written about funk, though I've been listening to a fair bit of it, as usual. Here, in a track from last summer, Big Gigantic (https://www.biggigantic.net/) do their "Bring the Funk Back" (like it ever left?). This track is a lot of funk and a lot of electro slammed together; I could do with less of the latter but I still found it worth blogging. It's interesting and ironic that this track comes off of Brighter Future an album dedicated to envisioning and making music for a brighter future something we need this year even more than last.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oexhZ7FKLdU
Todrick Hall is someone I hadn't heard of - I followed a curiousity link for Ru Paul and landed here, on "Low" by Hall, but featuring Ru Paul. Web searching tells me that he has been on Ru Paul's show "Drag Race" (see what I miss by not having a television?). I love the visuals in this video - lots of deep saturated lighting, fun dancing, and intense costumes. The rapping is good, but I find listening less fun than listening while watching. Those pyrotechnics and acrobatics would be particularly intense in person, I bet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2b2HFHPwGo
A variation on this 2014 track appeared on my stream and sent me looking for the original. The track is "Tortuga (Club Mix)" by DoubleV & Formal One, an instrumental club dance number with obvious overtones to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, particularly in the whistled bits mid-track. I'm not in love with it (like I am with Chupa/Nora) but I liked it enough for a blog entry.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/964051.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

OK it's Tuesday but it's still music

drwex — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 16:24:12 GMT

This will likely be the only music post this week. Next week I'll begin chipping away at the backlog. But this week I found something enjoyable enough I jump it to the head of the queue.

https://soundcloud.com/user-457571129/ummet-ozcan-presents-innerstate-ep-142
Start with another of Ummet Ozcan's "Innerstate" sets. I have a few of these sets marked that I might say a word or two about but in general these haven't excited me too much. Like a lot of the things I've been listening to they're often overrun with pointless glitch and wub and I click off about halfway through. This one I stuck with and that's a good thing.

I recommend listening - midway through there are two of Ozcan's own tracks - the "You Don't Know Switch" and "Something Just Like This" - that I think are quite good but I couldn't find separate linkable uploads for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccfEUIhxKvs
The real payoff is at the end, though because you get back-to-back goodies. The first is this edit by Dmitri Vegas and Like Mike based off of "Renegade Master" a track popularized by Fatboy Slim (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyWqeJ1vLWo) though it was originally created (but never released possibly due to copyright issues over samples) by a DJ known as Wildchild. This new edit is actually based on a recent mash done by two other producers. It's a fun bouncer of a track and a study in how music travels and mutates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJhn-sicZgU
Then finally stuck on the end like an afterthought - or maybe saving the best for last? - is this gem. "Mariko" by Sagi Abitbul (https://www.facebook.com/sagiabitbulofficial and also https://soundcloud.com/sagiabitbul). Near as I can tell, Abitbul is an Israel-based DJ with origins in eastern Europe (Serbia?). The track is a hot crash of modern EDM sounds with traditional east-European vocals and instruments - can anyone identify the stringed instrument shown briefly at 1:19?

I love this kind of thing - mining a variety of traditional styles for modern inspirations. Damned if I can figure out the language, either; Google thinks it's Bulgarian. Anyway, that led me to find this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NejMwMeZyag
Sagi Abitbul again in collaboration with Guy Haliva (https://www.facebook.com/Guy-Haliva-670327543003366/ and also https://soundcloud.com/guyhaliva) another Israeli. This one I recognize the sounds as being more Israeli/Middle Eastern but the lyrics are likewise a mystery. I've seen claims of Bulgarian, Serbian, and Turkish but damned if I can tell those apart. Still a fantastic sound and I'll be following both these guys to see what else they do.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/961494.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

Still talking about talking about (watching?) music

drwex — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 18:23:41 GMT

Yes, I will be posting music entries Real Soon Now, I promise. Probably next week. But first I want to unload some of the stuff in the mental backlog.

I really appreciated all the commentary on the last post. If y'all want to chime in about this one I'd likewise appreciate it. The topic is "Music video WTF" - as in, should I link to videos if I like the song but not the video?

Here, let me give you an example that sits right on the borderline, two videos for "One On One" by Tujamo, with vocals by Sorana. Tujamo is a German producer and EDM spinner; Sorana is an eastern European singer (near as I can guess, Romanian) and this is her first big team-up with a "name" producer. So, OK, great. It's a fun tune and I like her voice, though as with a lot of these things I think it's over-tuned.

First up, the official video for the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y19FzsqM1as

Minor warning: it's a PoV video done in the style of a lot of porn these days where you, the viewer, are invited to have the gaze of the (male) camera in intimate interactions with a small, very conventionally attractive woman through a series of scenes, including bedroom. There's nothing actually X-rated about this, but I was uncomfortable watching it. In case that gaze isn't intimate enough for you, there's even an official 3D-VR version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx6OeuZ-mLE

Plus side: she's smiling and active throughout. She appears to be not only enjoying the interactions but initiating things. But if voyeurism isn't your kink (it's not mine, at least not for strangers) then you may (like me) find yourself unable to watch this video and see if there are other alternatives. Here's one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gVZnnxvf38

At least that's just a static conventionally-attractive-skinny-chick-half-dressed-in-provocative-pose. You see that kind of thing selling pretty much any product under the sun everywhere in the industrialized world. But, seriously, what does this have to do with the music?

I usually try to link to SoundCloud for my music choices but lots of things aren't up there and are on YouTube or other visual media.

So, dear readers, what do you make of this? Would you rather I didn't blog video music that sets me off, or blog it with information so you can judge for yourselves?

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/960909.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

But first a little talking about talking about music

drwex — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 20:40:42 GMT

Once upon a long ago I used to merrily blog music. Yay, it was fun. Sometimes people would leave comments telling me they liked this or that or otherwise indicating that I wasn't just blogging into the void. That's always nice.

Then mizarchivist pointed out that LJ has these things called "tags" and I could tag my music entries. This is helpful to know what's going on, and particularly helpful for back-reference and finding things that are particularly notable. Eventually I got enthusiastic enough to go back and tag my existing couple years' worth of music entries... at which point I promptly ran out of tags. This more than anything else prompted me to move to a paid LiveJournal account because I needed more tags. All is fine until the company owning LJ decides to move the servers into Russian airspace and I decide it's time to move over here to DreamWidth. Which, I shall not bore you with details, will not allow me to have unlimited tags, even if I do pay them.

For a while this has stymied me. I really like the convenience of being able to go back and revisit things I've blogged in the past, and I blog a lot of new artist/DJs in a given month so the list of tags grows with no obvious way to condense them. I'm tired of being stymied though and it finally penetrated my thick skull that this convenience I've grown used to is just that, a convenience. I don't actually have to tag music entries in order to write them. So I'm going to start blogging music again, only with erratic-to-nonexistent tagging. You've been warned.

I realized this because I have re-remembered (I keep forgetting, somehow) that music is important in my relationships. Intimate, certainly, and otherwise. If you and I don't share some musical taste or other, it's likely we're less close of friends than we would be if we did share. For example...

This morning Pygment and I responded to a wedding invitation that included a request to list something that would cause us to get up and dance. At first I snarked that my music tastes would appall most people and DJs wouldn't play it at weddings anyway. Pygment agreed and said something like, "Yeah but imagine if they would, we could get them to play..." and in two clicks I had the track linked below, which we put on the RSVP card. I'll let you know if it plays at the wedding because I will sure as shit be dancing if it does.

We Can Make the World Stop

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You know I don't care much for birthdays, so let me try something different

drwex — Thu, 18 May 2017 21:41:06 GMT

https://my.oxfamamerica.org/AWbday

Normally a birthday is about the person celebrating the occasion. This year I'd like my birthday to be about one of my chosen issues.

With the help of Oxfam I'm putting out a request for money. If you're the sort who cares about food shortages, meeting the needs of refugees around the world, and who would consider doing something for my birthday please visit this URL. It's the home page for my birthday fundraising campaign. If you would normally get me something please consider giving that money to Oxfam. If money isn't your thing please help me by spreading the word. Obviously this appeal is to my friends and family and people who care about my natal anniversary but anyone who feels moved as I do can join in.

Sharing the things I care deeply about is one of the best birthday presents I can imagine.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/952466.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

For those in MA

drwex — Wed, 03 May 2017 00:56:10 GMT

especially if you have, have had, or will have school-aged children, please consider adding your name to this petition to set Massachusetts Middle and High School start times to 8:30 AM or later.

We have had two children go through this. One managed/manages it, but would enjoy life more if it wasn't a requirement. The other is just not coping with school starting at 7:30.

There is reasonable scientific evidence that these hours are not beneficial for children, particularly as they approach puberty. And frankly it'd just be a lot less stress on parents.

Thanks for your consideration.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/950721.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

Hi, I'm back(logged)

drwex — Mon, 01 May 2017 15:47:40 GMT

So, April was indeed the smoldering crater I figured it would be. I'm back and hoping May will be slightly more sane. I'm still going to try to get the other two April posts written and done. They'll be about family and work mostly so will be f-locked. I think I've caught up on all the posts I didn't read last month but if you put out something you'd like me to see and I didn't comment on it please do leave me a link.

I'm stalled out on finishing my move to DW by the tag limit. Even their premium paid service is maxed at 2000 tags, which my music blogging has already exceeded. This means I can't put tags on any new posts I originate here. That's the last thing I need in order to shut down my LJ. I've written to DW support asking about this and we'll see what they say.

Project Social continues. We made it to a party this past weekend, despite both of us having a lot of inertia and household stress. Then we had people over for game on Sunday. This week will see a dinner with another couple who also need Adult Time and whom we only manage to see a few times a year. Then a date I've been looking forward to for several weeks and maybe a social gathering before SoS.

Next week has an Arisia Divheads meeting but nothing fun social. Likewise the week after that has Thing 1's birthday but no adult social. If you'd like to help alleviate some of this please let me know.

Political things continue to occupy a lot of my brain but not as much as to overwhelm other things. I'm awaiting delivery of a bumper sticker I designed for HIAS. If it comes out well I'll be submitting it to be included in their official line of merch, which is kind of neat. I continue to be concerned about the upsurge in hate and am still looking for a good political organization that I can volunteer with.

Porter Square Books is hosting a "how to get involved, how to volunteer" workshop at the end of this month that I plan to attend, assuming nothing more concrete to do has materialized before then. I'm trying to be mindful that this is a long-term effort but I still want to be doing more.

What are you guys doing to keep sane these days?

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/950251.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

Further in the resistance

drwex — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 18:21:43 GMT

I have put my first bumper sticker on my new car. It simply says "I resist". I have one or two more I can give away; if you'd like one, ping me here or personally.

Moveon.org are looking for volunteers to help find and contact the companies whose ads are appearing on breitbart.com - see https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d3uLPk-TfwmpWUozHwR3jh--n3VV0e6odT-47sQhm8o/edit for details and how to participate. You have to turn off your ad blocker, obviously, and if you want they have a convenient browser extension for Firefox and for Chrome to help you out.

These advertisers are called "hidden" because by and large they likely do not know where they are advertising. Instead a third-party ad broker sells spaces that these companies purchase from the broker. They simply collect revenue without any awareness of the context in which their ads appear. So goes advertising on the Internet now. The question becomes "Will these companies care once told that their ads are appearing on breitbart.com?"

If you'd like to help find out, check the Google doc linked above.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/949378.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

for SCIENCE!

drwex — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 16:31:06 GMT

If you cannot travel to Washington DC for the main March for Science on the 22nd, you may be interested in one of the satellite marches, of which about 600 have been registered. Find yours here: https://www.marchforscience.com/satellite-marches

The one in Boston, which I hope to attend, has not been well-publicized, at least outside Facebook. The event page is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/246381619134165/

Because Nature always bats last.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/949109.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

ObPassover

drwex — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 16:33:23 GMT

I didn't make time for my usual pre-Passover post this year, which is a little sad. Seder gets wrapped up in the I-will-make-a-post-soon-I-promise WTF weekend report.

But anyway, flexagon asked me "What are you... uh, passing over... for Passover?" which prompted me to get off my metaphorical ass and write this because I do like writing about Passover. Long-time readers will know that it's my favorite of the Jewish annual holiday cycle.

This year, Thing 1 pointed out that we four are being different levels of Passover-observant:

Thing 1 just doesn't care and eats whatever.

Thing 2 mostly tries to observe, except they "cheat" now and then because dessert is still dessert, after all. I pointed out that it was kind of amusing to be talking about observing Pesadic rules while eating bacon with breakfast. (Thing 2, not me. I still think it's nasty stuff.)

I tend to try to avoid obvious lumps of actual bread. When mizarchivist and I went to Bartley's for burgers last week I asked for no bun but I didn't fuss about whether there was leavening in the sweet potato fries. Likewise I avoided the nan with Indian food this weekend but acknowledged there was likely flour in some of the dish preparations anyway. So the thing I passed over was mostly anything that was overtly (leavened) bread.

pygment avoids gluten almost all the time anyway so the diet was little modified for her. The matzoh we got was made in Israel and apparently uses the European-style low-gluten wheat so that didn't bother her. It sure beat the heck out of the "gluten free" matzah we tried one year, which was basically a nasty-tasting cracker and not at all matzah.

Seder this year was generally as you'd expect. We delved into a few obscure corners of things, but the kids generally have the story down and understand the areas I like to poke at. We can't have a Seder without some discussion of gender and this year it came in the form of the "four children" to whom one is supposed to explain the meaning of Passover in different ways, depending on their type (Wise, Wicked, Simple and Unable to Ask). The Haggadah we used noted that in the original Hebrew a feminine form appears in relation to the Unable child, from which it is inferred that the mother is supposed to give the original instruction to children about these things. Make of that what you will.

I am interested by the Chabad discussion of these "children" (http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/1486118/jewish/The-Four-Children-Explained.htm) in which they note that even people who have no children are to give these explanations. From that they infer that one should not think of them too literally as children, but rather as parts of ourselves to which we talk. Within us we all have parts that are wise, parts that are wicked, parts that are simple, and parts that do not know how to ask. Indeed. More food for thought for next year.

For this year, I had (have) refugees on my mind and one of the important aspects of the Seder is that there is a commandment to make everyone welcome, even the stranger. In the text there are examples of what a stranger might be and one of the mentions is specifically of "the Ethiopian". The family talked about what it might have been like for tribal people who had no experience of strangers outside a handful of villages to see a person with markedly darker skin and I find it interesting that we (Jews) are specifically commanded to welcome this kind of person into our homes.

I connect this ancient commandment with my own upbringing during an era when it was simply understood that Jews would be marching with black people in their quest for civil rights and on into today when I simply cannot understand how any Jewish person could have voted for Drumph and his band of neo-Nazis.

I know that such people exist, but knowing and understanding are two different things.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/948878.html. Please comment there; this journal is winding down.

Going, going

drwex — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 20:04:28 GMT

This entry is LJ only and set sticky in hopes that if you see it you will find me under this name on Dreamwidth.

The state of the migration

drwex — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 20:02:30 GMT

I've moved about 80% to Dreamwidth. I need to get things finally organized so I can post music from here (DW) and do a final synch of entries. Right now the importer is backed up for days so there's no point adding to that.

I cancelled my recurring subscription on LJ. Due to bad timing it renewed last month so I'll coast on that for a year. No clawbacks allowed, oh well. I also need to move this thing to paid, which I believe will help with the tags issue.

I'm still struggling a bit with access controls. I think I've subscribed and granted access to folk but I'm not quite sure if I'm actually reading everyone. They claim to have "reading filters" but in fact I think those things are "subscription filters". See http://www.dreamwidth.org/manage/circle/editfilters which has the text "Dreamwidth provides two types of filters: Access Filters, which are used for setting security on items, and Reading Filters, which are used for filtering your Reading Page"; however, the link is to "Manage your subscription filters". None of which makes clear what I'm actually reading, because the thing I had on LJ that was "default view" for my reading page now appears as an access filter.

So if you're reading this and I'm not commenting on your stuff please let me know. And if you're not reading this... um, I hope you see it on LJ and let me know because otherwise I iz lost.

jducoeur posted (only on LJ) a pretty cogent piece on why he's moved. Here, go read it. If you're reading this on LJ and haven't moved that's cool. I will stop reading LJ at some point, but before that I hope to have as much of my conversation network re-created over on DW as possible. If that's an option for you, I hope you'll consider it.

Although I am not myself targeted by Russian discrimination against political bloggers and LGBTQ persons I view it as a gesture of solidarity with those persons to withdraw my support from LJ.

I'll cease cross-posting soon.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/948119.html. You can comment here or there.

And this is (part of) why I like Warren Ellis

drwex — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 00:05:15 GMT

I'll just leave this here:

From here, the Nineties look like the bloody Enlightenment. Back then, we were just a hungover post-imperial nation that was expected only to fuck, take drugs, make art and dance really badly. Now, the fight for the future is on. The fight for diverse and conscious voices, the fight for privacy and secure communication and home automation that makes sense, the fight for news and the fight for art that gets to say what it wants and design that looks forward and anything that isn’t just there to please the reactionary forces of xenophobic chinless ex-bankers and the racist daughter of a vicar from Little England and an angry orange pensioner in the thrall of actual fucking Nazis.

From Orbital Operations, to which you can subscribe. I recommend it.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/947719.html. You can comment here or there.

April update, the first

drwex — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 17:48:13 GMT

April's going to be a crazy month and if I put off updating it'll be Too Much and I won't write it. So here's a bit of an update on what's been happening.

This week I drove in town three times in four night. Monday I went to a professional society talk at IBM Cambridge, which was OK. Good to know what people are doing.

Tuesday I met Pygment and I couple other folk at the hotel John Scalzi was staying at. We sipped Cokes and traded chit-chat with Scalzi and each other for about an hour before walking over to Brookline Booksmith for his reading and signing. I enjoy hanging with him - we swapped college-for-kids stories since our oldest is just a year behind Athena on that path, and how it is different for the kids from what he and we did when we applied.

Scalzi always reads something different than the book he's touring for and this was no exception. We were asked not to Internet-spoiler it so I'll just say it was an excerpt from a new work that I'm now quite looking forward to. Someone brought a ukulele so he played a song on that and told a story about himself and Krissy that was quite endearing, even if it did lead Pygment to poke me several times. I wanted to stay for the signing but as the line formed there was a press of more people getting more closer to me and I saw the claustrophobia about to set in so I bailed. Fortunately, Pygment and I had arrived in separate cars so she stood and got signatures and I went home after taking several deep breaths outside.

Then last night I headed back into Cambridge to meet up with my best cocktails buddy silentq. We had a plan to dine at Asgard and then head to a new place for cocktails. That was great right up until the heavens deluged the area just as we were finishing up food. Asgard was far too loud for catching-up conversations. We set out for what we thought was our intended target and ended up going the wrong way. Fortunately, Cambridge is chock full of interesting places and rather than try to backtrack in the downpour we adjusted plans to the new place, and took seats at their bar.

Sadly I forget the establishment's name, but the theme is very Spanish/Central American and on Mass Ave so easy to find again. Many of the staff spoke native Spanish (some with little or no English) and most of the drinks featured the bar's extensive collection of rums. I got something fruity, and silentq ended up with two drinks because the first one took forever to arrive and was made wrong. So they showed up with a free corrected drink unprompted. We passed on more food but did succumb to tasty desserts (flan and a dulce de leche thing that was entirely decadent).

Hanging with silentq is always fun, drinks or no. She's just back from her ski-and-Viking-death-metal vacation and... yeah, that's totally her and a thing that actually exists. My own stories pale by comparison and we have a good time catching each other up on life and relationships and families and houses and all the things.

The past weekend started Friday night with pygment(*) and I going out to dinner at Besito in the Burlington Mall. I was completely blown away by how good it was. I had a salmon with mole' and I cannot remember when I had a better-prepared piece of salmon. The entire meal was quite tasty - even the rice-and-beans were exceptional - and I ate too much. Definitely planning a return visit with anyone I can convince to come along.

Saturday I was wiped out so we stayed home and did house- and life-maintenance things and tried sleeping. You'd think after all these years I'd be better at it. But anyway. And on Sunday there was D&D and the party did not ALL die, but several bodies hit the floor in pretty rapid succession. We have yet to see the end of this fight but we're not going to be able to game for several weeks. So there's that.

(*) I've realized this is going to break for people whose names have changed between LJ and DW. Sorry about that.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/947518.html. You can comment here or there.

Another of my unpopular opinions

drwex — Fri, 07 Apr 2017 15:14:57 GMT

I support 45's decision to attack the Syrian airbase from which the chemical weapons strike was launched. Force is never right, but sometimes it is necessary.

A) I take as given, based on reporting from independent NGOs, medical professionals on the ground, and officials from multiple governments that:

1. Chemical weapons were used on a hospital, targeting unarmed civilians
2. When first responders rushed to aid the initial victims a second round of chemical bombs were dropped, striking the medical workers and civilian volunteers who were trying to aid the victims.
3. The weapons were launched by Syrian aircraft from the targeted base - they were seen on radar before, during, and after the attack.

I take as less certain, but do believe, that although a child killed by sarin gas is just as dead as a child killed by a barrel bomb, the reason chemical weapons were banned was because they are a qualitatively different type of assault than a so-called conventional weapon. Perfect would be to cease the murderous assault on civilians launched by the Assad and Putin regimes. The lack of a perfect solution should not dissuade us from taking action against a severe transgression of international norms.

B) I further believe that 45's act was illegal under US and international law. Congress has repeatedly refused even to debate authorization for military force, and the UN is logjammed by (among others) Russia, which I view as complicit in these crimes. So F them. It's possible that, if Congress had been willing to take up and debate a resolution on the use of military force, we as a country might have achieved further clarity in our policy around that multi-headed hydra of a war. Maybe the vote would have failed, in which case I would have opposed a President acting. But being unwilling even to put a resolution up for debate is an abdication of responsibility and unfortunately when Congress abdicates the other branches of government act. The perfect course of action is for the Executive to set out policy, the Legislative to debate and formulate that policy into law, and for there to be public clarity on both sides. As above, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

C) I believe, though with less conviction, that Obama's inaction and our lack of clear policy in regard to the war opened the door for Russian intervention and ultimately led to the escalation in civilian deaths we now see. I continue to be dismayed at how little we have done in the past five+ years to aid those victimized by the conflict. Our policy is unclear even in areas where I feel we would have great national consensus, such as funding healthcare, housing, food, and education for refugees living in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan.

D) So what happens now? The first strike is easy - what comes after is the hard part. The Russians have threatened to beef up Syria's air defense system. If they do so, I would support strikes to take out those defenses. I would support strikes against every Syrian military airbase or aircraft. As I said above, these weapons have been used as part of a systematic campaign against unarmed civilians. Deprived of such weapons, Assad will still find ways to slaughter people, but they will be fewer and harder and it will remove Russian plausible deniability. The rebels have been asking for anti-air weapons for some time now; I'm not happy about putting more weaponry into a war zone but taking weapons off the map I might well support.

IF, and here's the really big IF the US can put together a coherent policy. I don't hold out a lot of hope here - Obama's team couldn't, and the current bunch of militarists and amateurs isn't likely to do better. History has not been kind to American interventions in foreign conflicts and we often regret things decades down the line. But the future is uncertain and it does the victims no good for us to hand-wring about far-future consequences while the bombs are raining down.

We live in an imperfect world and I would rather live in a world with an imperfect, but at least publicly articulated and debated, policy. Such a thing might make recurrences of the past couple days' events less likely.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/947382.html. You can comment here or there.

Time for some wonky legal and important stuff

drwex — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 16:35:00 GMT

Yes, I mean seriously this is important. See my recent post on what I'm prioritizing. This could be a very important moment in securing legal rights for LGB(*) persons as well as a likely important test case I'd expect Justice Gorsuch to hear.

(*) I'm deliberately omitting "T" here because there's a cogent argument, currently being made by Lambda Legal, that this decision does not apply to or protect trans persons. That sucks and will need fixing but the perfect is the enemy of the good and right now this decision looks extremely good for millions of queer persons.

https://www.popehat.com/?p=27600
Popehat has an amusing Q-and-A style entry that eventually gets to the important points and is fun to read. They also point to this: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2017/04/05/seventh-circuits-hively-splits-the-circuits/ explainer. Both are worth reading.

tl;dr - a Federal Circuit court has finally held what I and some others argued during the debate over equal marriage: laws blocking same-sex couples from enjoying rights that mixed-sex couples enjoy are sex discrimination, likely illegal, and can be litigated on those grounds. In this case (Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College) the issue was employment/promotion/job opportunity but the core of the case is the same. You cannot deprive a person (in this case a lesbian) of rights on the basis that she engages in same-sex acts that would be unobjectionable if engaged in by mixed-sex couples.

The case turns on interpreting Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discriminating based on race or sex or religion in employment. If Hively wins this case (which she did at the Circuit level) then she does so based on exactly the grounds that her expressed behavior (having a same-sex partner) cannot be disadvantaged. That makes LGB persons a protected class and affords them a lot more rights and protections than they've had.

Since the law was passed in 1964, and in the past has not been interpreted in this way, it's incumbent on the Court to explain why it ruled as it did. The Court ruled en banc meaning all the judges were involved and en banc proceedings are the way to go if you're going to overturn existing precedent. Which they did. So that's very good and yay more rights for more people. I am happy about this and I hope more judges will be willing to see things in this light - discrimination on the basis of expressed orientation behavior is sex discrimination and illegal.

As Popehat then explains, the decision is doubly significant because the judges of the 7th Circuit laid out their case for why the 1964 law needs to be reinterpreted in light of our modern understanding. I'm not always a fan of Judge Posner's rulings, but in this case I think he's on the right side of law and history. In particular, I think this decision is written with an eye toward eventual SCOTUS review. Although it looks like Ivy Tech is not going to appeal, there are other cases that will likely cause SCOTUS to take up this issue.

What makes that especially significant is that the late Justice Scalia was notorious as an originalist which, if I may be pejorative for a moment, means he would rule by interpreting things as he thought they would have been interpreted at the time of writing. EG the Constitution is not a living document except where expressly amended and a 1964 law that didn't explicitly protect LGB persons could not later be interpreted to say that. Congress would need to amend it, in order to satisfy Scalia.

Drumph promised to nominate a Supreme Court justice to take Scalia's role, which brings us to Gorsuch. I am pleased that the Dems are willing to show some spine on his nomination but I think it's ultimately going to be problematic and won't stop him being confirmed. I believe that he'll hear the arguments on this (or similar) case when it reaches SCOTUS and we'll get to see exactly how Scalia-like he is.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/946890.html. You can comment here or there.

Because I am an evidence-driven person

drwex — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 20:03:57 GMT

I'd like my LJ-centric readers primarily to comment. I get far more comments there than here (dreamwidth).

Some of the people who migrated to DW after the LJ servers were initially moved into Russian territory, like myself, have been assiduously cross-posting and permitting comments there. Recently LJ pushed out a new set of terms, the only authoritative version of which is in Cyrillic. You can read their translation or Google's and you must agree to that translation prior to continuing to use your LJ account. At a minimum it seems weird to force me to agree to something that the author themselves asserts is non-authoritative.

People have used terms like "sketchy" to describe the agreement and the corporate behavior behind it. Nothing I read in either translation seemed particularly sketchy. And when you get down to it the fact that Putin's thugs now have physical access to the servers renders any user agreement moot. They'll take what they want and decide afterward how big a trail of bodies to leave.

Still, it's increasing the weight on the "get out of Dodge" side. Some people have reacted to that by cancelling and/or deleting their LJs. I'm likely to cancel my paid sub there once I de-lame. Another step has been to turn off comments on the LJ side, forcing people who want to comment to click through the link to the DW side where they can comment.

DW allows you to subscribe to, and give access to, LJ accounts so this behavior doesn't force anyone who wants to comment to create a DW account. The question, dear readers, is whether you'd object to or be less likely to comment if I took the same route and closed comments on the LJ side.

What say ye?

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/946487.html. You can comment here or there.

We take this moment to remind ourselves that not all wrong news is "fake"

drwex — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 15:14:06 GMT

Right now there's a lot of airplay being given to a discovery in the UK of which this headline is typical: "Graphene Sieve Makes Seawater Drinkable".

Um, no. It does not. That's not even close to what happened. What actually happened is some dudes in a lab have a theoretical solution to a really serious problem. It's a very interesting solution in that it appears to show how a particular set of structures and temperature control can permit a graphene-based system to filter very small salts from a liquid without significantly impeding water flow.

But let me list a few of the problems here:

There's more than just salts making seawater undrinkable. Desalination is an important and necessary step, but it's not sufficient.

The lab dudes haven't actually desalinated any water yet, never mind doing so at scale. Mass producing the necessary graphene structures and getting them to behave in real life the way the lab model says they can behave are unsolved problems.

The lab dudes haven't actually tested their innovation on any messy real-world molecules. Instead, they've run "molecular dynamic simulations". In English that means they wrote some computer programs to model how they think things will behave. I happen to work with a lot of very smart chemical engineers and talked with one who did a ton of MD simulation for his PhD. He pointed out that MD simulations involve a number of simplifying assumptions, which you have to tweak to make your computer codes run. How well the result aligns with reality is something still to be seen.

If you read the paper (you should - it's a good paper and it's linked from that Yahoo article) you see there are also interesting discussions of the role temperature plays. In lab simulations you can get temperature to behave exactly how you want; in the real world not so much.

Even if all the above works out, thermodynamics still exists. AFAICT the lab work does not calculate the energy needed to manufacture and operate this system. That alone could be too high (especially if precise temperature control is needed) to make it economically feasible at scale.

This is why things take 20-30 years to go from hairy lab prototypes to actual commercial systems and this thing isn't even at "hairy lab prototype" stage, yet. If you want to see the state of the art in actual desalination it's still RO, and the Israelis put the biggest RO plant in the world online a couple years ago.

So the news stories stating that this discovery is going to lead to (more) drinkable sea water are just wrong. Not fake, but just wrong.

See also Popehat's takedown of recent political wrong news which I won't repeat here. But having two extreme examples of this sort of thing cross my news feed in one morning prompted me to write. We now return you to the ongoing shitshow...

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/946410.html. You can comment here or there.

Whatcha been up to anyway?

drwex — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 17:37:06 GMT

I've been noticing the expected drop-off in content and then realized "hey, you're contributing to that, y'know." So I'm going to jot some notes about what's up in my life and I encourage you to do the same.

1. Pygment and I seem to be super-solid these days. She's having a lot of health challenges and we're trying to navigate those. She's listed the various plates she's got spinning and the stresses involved in that. But her-n-me? That's freakin' awesome.

2. Kids. I wrote a longer piece about this under lock because I'm still a private person but generally things are middling-OK to good. Thing 1 has one more college to tour and then we head into the summer. Thing 1 is continuing to bust ass doing schoolwork and grades seem good. There's a gap in extracurriculars but we've never pushed that on the kids and aren't going to start now. Thing 2 continues to have issues with the current school system, particularly one teacher who seems unwilling to play by anyone's rules but her own and Thing 2 is treating that situation pretty much exactly like you'd expect if you know Thing 2 or have been reading my past entries.

On the plus side the first meeting with the town high school went much better than expected. Thing 2 would still like to go to the tech HS that Thing 1 has been going to but that would require an actual G-d created miracle of Thing 2 getting up for an early bus every day. We can pray for miracles but plan for other options.

We went as a family to a bat mitzvah this Saturday and while I did not like the service(*) I liked doing this thing with the family. We have great kids and we're doing as much as we can to support and love them through this stage of their lives. We've made a couple adjustments to the support teams for both Thing 1 and Thing 2 to get folk with the right attitude, expertise, and approach on board.

3. Social. I keep thinking I'm not as social as I'd want to be then I have problems scheduling things when people say they're available. Ewps? I think it's a factor partly of April having large chunks carved out of it by Passover and a planned trip to Philly (Thing 1's final visit, celebrating my Dad's b-day, more below).

That said, I would like to spend more time with people I don't see often. We had a former D&D gamer/friend come by for a visit recently and that was quite nice. I have two friends whom I see regularly every 6-7 weeks and I really appreciate that both of them help keep up the connection. If you're interested in social, let me know.

4. Social+. The long-distance girlfriend will be returning to town in a couple weeks for what ought to be her final divorce court date. That's not the best way to get to see someone, and the timing is super-awkward so we aren't going to get the time together that we'd like but it is what it is. I'll probably try to arrange to visit her (or meet her somewhere).

There's also one possible + that would be crazy-awesome if it could actually happen but things are Complicated and I'm working on being a Reasonable Patient Adult. Sorry for the vaguebooking but that's all I'm willing to say at this point.

5. Arisia. I organized and ran a reasonably successful brainstorm to try and figure out what we're going to do about publications. I need to get that written up and distributed and I think people felt like we accomplished a lot in a fairly few hours. I have one key position filled and offers out to two people I would be very excited to work with in two other key positions.

I do need someone who is interested in doing marketing - basically, organizing the selling of ads in Arisia publications. If you or someone you know is interested in doing work pre-con (and getting a free membership) ping me and let's talk.

--- There's more but this is already long; go forth and write! ---

(*) The service was Reform and the prayers were accompanied by a LOUD piano that felt very distancing. I got the sense I was at a performance (the cantor had a good voice and was well-trained) rather than participating in a service. Also, the fact that seemingly every new melody seemed cribbed from a B'way musical rubbed me the wrong way.

To get into the synagogue we had to use a buzzer system, and the service was amplified. Now, I'm not a religious Jew by any means, but electric amplified sound system and electric devices you're required to use in a synagogue also rubbed me the wrong way. The woman who came to open the door made some remark about "security" which seriously set off my "do you have any idea how much privilege you have, lady? hackles.

I mean, I get that antisemitism is on the rise in the US, but you're a white congregation in a white town in a very liberal state with a significant Jewish population. If you're that concerned about security, hire a Shabbos goy to sit by the door. The only good thing about that was I found a table in the foyer covered with flyers for a Jewish-centric organization that assists refugees. I have already written to them and filled out their volunteer form; we'll see if something comes of that and I'll write more when Passover gets closer.

Cross-posted from Dreamwidth, at http://drwex.dreamwidth.org/946124.html. You can comment here or there.