There’s a stack of things I mean to blog building up in my notes file for such things, but Manu had to go and blog about shoes which means I’m constitutionally required to take advantage of the opportunity do the same. Shoes will never not be a hassle and a half. | Continue reading
Earlier this year, after basically two decades of searching, I finally had an internal backlinks solution thanks to an arduous process involving ChatGPT. It solved one of my two longstanding needs when it came to blogging. | Continue reading
Late in 2021, I responded if not with exuberance then with acquiescence to the proposed “profound autism” label, an opinion I’ve referenced more than once. As of this post, I renounce and reject that position. | Continue reading
Earlier this week, I detailed how a trip to the zoo was cut short by the “aches, pains, and tweaks” I’ve increasingly been experiencing in my back, and the psychological hit I took as a result. There’s already some need to follow up. | Continue reading
There’s been a slowly-growing list of links in the notes file I keep to remind myself of blog posts I want to write but with which I haven’t yet quite come to terms. This is one of those posts, and I’m not entirely certain I’ve figured how to bring it all together. | Continue reading
Earlier this year, I juxtaposed some articles on using A.I. and fMRI to recreate people’s thoughts and on the reported detection of conscious activity during death. I’d wondered just how far away we were from the movie Brainstorm. | Continue reading
Mandy Brown’s thoughts on writers and talkers—which, weirdly, I only seem to have mentioned it before in a post about my Social Security debacle—came to mind again recently. In this case, it was Jake LaCaze posting about introverts. | Continue reading
Whiona last month wrote an interesting post about web design and ableism from the standpoint of websites that refuse to offer any real sort of mobile experience whatsoever. Mostly I just wanted to point you her way in case this isn’t a perspective you’ve run into before. | Continue reading
If you’re thinking of doing any Bixday shopping this year, now would be a good time. The newest iteration of the Beats Studio Pro is on sale for just $179 during Prime Big Deal Days, but that means this price ends Tuesday. (This is not a promotional or Amazon Affiliates post.) | Continue reading
I’m not sure if it’s seasonal or somehow otherwise cyclical but suddenly in recent days I once again was running into talk of aphantasia everywhere I turned. I’d first discovered the condition in early 2020, likely on MetaFilter, and shortly thereafter the corollary severely defi … | Continue reading
If you’ve been reading along, you know that I keep talking about blog anniversaries, because a lot of them have been happening lately and because long-term blogging obviously is on my mind given the restoration project here. | Continue reading
My homepage for awhile now has indicated that my public transit trips all the way across town and back in order to visit the zoo are “increasingly infrequent due to resource levels”. Today, I challenged my body to make the trip, and it didn’t go especially well. | Continue reading
Last month, I laid out in some detail over the course of three posts the latest experience I was having of the Social Security Administration in the ongoing post-diagnosis process of trying to obtain disability benefits before my familial financial support eventually dies someday … | Continue reading
Almost a full month ago, I wrote about the camera I need, something I’ve thought a lot about since getting the refurbished Apple Watch. I even designed it, sort of. | Continue reading
Two years ago today, after catastrophizing over the possibilities, I savaged the most recent novel by Richard Powers, saying that it seemed an “argument that being autistic is a bit like being artificial: dropped down halfway and so not worth the living”. | Continue reading
I’ve spent the better part of the week working to develop a custom “classic” WordPress theme that would strip things down along with disabling Gutenberg and it’s HTML bloat. | Continue reading
Just a brief note that things might or might not go quiet here for a bit because I read this Kev Quirk post about moving to Kirby, and I’m spending some time looking into it. | Continue reading
Yesterday, I finished a memoir by an astronomer and astrobiologist. It’s interesting and engaging but as sometimes happens in science memoir eventually the subject of religion comes up, and this is where I get frustrated. | Continue reading
While I’ve no interest in having comments here, I do like knowing if someone’s blogged something I wrote, so I sat down once again to look into putting webmentions back in place on the blog. | Continue reading
Apply here the usual disclaimers that I’m not engaging in armchair diagnosis. Someone can have what could be seen as autistic traits without themselves being actually autistic. I just find parallels interesting. | Continue reading
Ben Werdmuller is wondering how the age of the internet affects parenting and I’ve nothing to say on that point. I once nannied for a friend’s kid and the most screen-time I remember him getting was repeatedly watching Mary Poppins or Yellow Submarine. On the television set. | Continue reading
Ben Werdmuller takes the opportunity of Tracy Durnell’s blogging anniversary to make some remarks about identity which, it won’t surprise readers here to learn, are of interest to me. | Continue reading
There are a few things I wanted to come back to follow up on last week’s double whammy Social Security situation that left me somewhat psychologically gasping for air, because they’re important to understand. | Continue reading
If you’re watching my list of recently read blogs, you might get a preview of something I’m going to blog here. Often, it’s entirely an accidental result of reading several things in close succession which turn into something connected in my head. | Continue reading
Toward the end of 2022, my coffeeshop allegiance shifted to a place that appeared from the mists of the former See See Motor Coffee in downtown St. Johns: Wonderwood Springs, brainchild of local whimsy-artist Mike Bennett. | Continue reading
It’s difficult to remember a time in Portland when getting almost hit by a car when I had the pedestrian right of way wasn’t a fairly regular thing. Certainly at least since moving to St. Johns it happens at least weekly. | Continue reading
Yesterday and today, I’ve been trying to find out from the Social Security Administration whatever happened with the Request for Reconsideration I’d filed back in March to a non-medical denial of my disability application before I’d even progressed beyond the initial, introductor … | Continue reading
This past February, I finally sat down to take another stab at filing for disability benefits. I’d originally done so, and been denied, back in 2018 after my vocational rehabilitation job placement spectacularly blew up in my psychological face. | Continue reading
First, they were thwarted by a global pandemic. Then, they had safety concerns. This weekend, for the first time since 2019, the Portland Polish Festival rematerialized in North Portland. | Continue reading
This week has brought with it a series of aches, pains, and other symptoms that in some cases might be and in one case is related to my daily, evening walks. For the time being, I’ve been seeing them as an artifact of nearing or reaching my resource limits. | Continue reading
Since I’ve recently rethemed this site, I thought I’d give a briefish rundown on how things are set up, because I’ve finally hit on an overall structure where I think the restoration project makes sense without being overbearing. | Continue reading
To celebrate Red Sox ownership finally cutting loose Chaim Bloom, I’m once again returning to the matter of Rafael Devers. I’ve said more than once that someone or something appears to have stopped Devers from self-regulating at the plate between pitches. | Continue reading
Even well before my blog restoration project, every now and then I’ve wondered what became of various “main characters” from previous incarnations of my blogging. I thought I’d take a brief tour of what Google has to say about it. | Continue reading
Recently as an early combination birthmas present (I was born in October, and then there’s that whole thing in December) I got a deal on a refurbished Apple Watch, specifically a Series 6 because it was the earliest model with all the current biometric sensors. | Continue reading
Brian Koberlein earlier this month, on using Earth to predict JWST’s ability to detect signs of life on exoplanets; and NASA just this week, on JWST detecting atmospheric elements on an exoplanet.… | Continue reading
Colin Walker makes a very important point about engaging in therapy that seems worth mentioning here given my three-year therapyversary last week. | Continue reading
Last year, I wrote about how I’d like to get off the DSLR in favor of just using my iPhone, except that there’s limitations to the latter that keep me having camera-only devices around. | Continue reading
Over the past week I managed to binge all of From during a trial of MGM+. It’s mostly a sort of Lost meets Under the Dome meets Wayward Pines, and while I found it diverting enough I’ve one enormous quibble. | Continue reading
It doesn’t matter how satisfied I am with any particular redesign of the blog, it seems inevitable that sooner or later I will start to feel literal anxiety sensations when I open it up and will need to change it up all over again. | Continue reading
Despite my introverted and asocial nature, it’s nonetheless true that I enjoy having regular haunts even if my interactions there don’t tend to deviate from the basic social scripts of pleasantries and ordering. | Continue reading
Late on Tuesday morning I received word from The Belmont Goats that Atho, one of the four goats born into the herd early in its existence, had passed overnight. This is the second goat to die this year, the herd’s tenth anniversary. | Continue reading
Late on Tuesday morning I received word from The Belmont Goats that Atho, one of the four goats born into the herd early in its existence, had passed overnight. This is the second goat to die this year, the herd’s tenth anniversary. Readers here will know at least two things abou … | Continue reading
So, I don’t know how it came about, exactly, but a week after The Belmont Goats hijacked a fundraiser in order to raise $5M to buy the Blackberry Castle and then backpedaled and misrepresented what they did, somehow The Oregonian picked up the story and decided just to run with t … | Continue reading
Let’s say one thing up front: if, as was the original idea, a for-profit entity wants to purchase the so-called Blackberry Castle property and then invite The Belmont Goats to live out the rest of their existence on a spare three acres, that’s fine. I mean, it’s a vaguely ridicul … | Continue reading
Not long after my midlife diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive features in late-2016, I attempted an application for disability. After a consultive exam through my state’s Disability Determination Services, I was denied for not being disable … | Continue reading
Lately I’ve been reading a number of books about animal consciousness, intelligence, or sentience, and they all seem to have one thing in common: nearly every one at some point gets around to citing philosopher Thomas Nagel’s question, “What is it like to be a bat?” These sorts o … | Continue reading
Scattered throughout the most recent years of this blog are citings of L. M. Sacasas’ newsletter, The Convivial Society. While an onging work of the philosophy of technology, it’s come up here more than once in the context of my writing about burnout in its various but related fo … | Continue reading
It eventually came in over the Arabian Peninsula and crashed near the Maldives, but I failed to take Marina Koren’s advice not to “fall to pieces just because China’s rocket is”—notwithstanding Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Jonathan McDowell telling Koren … | Continue reading