nyyki

RIP, rwoodnumber6. You were a great friend of around 33 years, with my memories holding lots of guitar discussions, talks about music, talks about books, the second row at Pink Floyd at Reunion (there was a not very nice pig right over our heads for "One of These Days"), and so much more. I still remember that day when I introduced you to your spouse, and that succeeded well since y'all celebrated your 34th anniversary a day or two ago. To say you will be missed is a gross understatement.

Farewell, great friend.

A few things that have been popping up in my head during the last week or two…

I woke up last Sunday and for some reason I was missing the sounds I used for Trillian to let me know when friends logged on our off. I miss instant messaging, and the Zuckerbook system doesn’t come anywhere close to filling the bill. Trillian’s interface and how it amalgamated the features of several messenger protocols/interfaces shows up in the first Love Meme? novel.

I’m 209 pages into the third and probable final Déjà vu novel, Presque Vu. I’ve finished part 1 of it. This is a situational project, so I don’t have much in the way of plot points. I’ve started setting up the plot for Love Meme? 3, and it’ll be way different from the first two (as it should be, because I don’t write formulaic novels). I’m up to part 13 of Z’s Story, which I’m writing at a thousand words or less a month using prompts given to us. Oh, and www.magnetsandladders.org has two of my stories in their current issue.

If any of y’all want to do a little writing on a monthly basis, let me know, because the Brainz group is looking for more members. One thousand words or less, but it can be nonfiction, fiction, poetry, or whatever else. This’ll also give you access to the monthly compilation; right now this is pretty much the only way to read my story of Z, a for the most part gender free set of stories about someone struggling with ADHD and also romantic relationships.

In the March 2025 issue of Scientific American, there’s an article about how choral, which people tend to think of as a fixed genome when the larvae become “adult”, are more adaptable than science has reported in the past. Corals in tropical waters are showing increased heat resistance as they experience dangerous warming periods. The interesting thing about this is that it’s easy to see when coral dies, because it bleaches out, but this isn’t happening as expected because the coral are adapting, up to and including releasing the algae used for coloration and bonding to other things that are more heat resistant. Cool.

In the same issue there’s an article about brain throughput, and recent studies have revealed a couple of things thought to be different – first off, cognitive throughput is at a rate of 10ms, or one hundred bits a second. This means that wiring someone’s head to a computer won’t be much faster than a telephone call. This bandwidth isn’t what we use for acquiring stimulus, so we can collect information much faster than we can act upon it and think about it. Another bummer for modern concepts of cognition, the studies have also shown that we’re not wired for multi-tasking or multithreading, it’s all single focus switching for those who can create the illusion of multi-processing. The same article discussed how much the ability to take in information is a function of sensory systems. This makes me think about the discussion I had with the professor teaching the Learning and Cognition course I took at TWU about eideticism – it’s the common belief that nobody has a tape recorder or video camera in our heads, we chunk in data, and how much data we chunk and the types of it is the “real” kernel of memory. In that discussion she floated a theory that eidetic individuals stored data better, so there was less interpolation involved when someone is accessing a long term memory, so the mind has more to use in bringing up something remembered. This seems to indicate that sensory input is also a factor; I know, for instance, that I’m not taking in much visual data these days, so it doesn’t factor in memories for me since 2003. But everything else seems to be on board and working the job.

Desire is so annoying.

Which one of you let Insomnia out of the jar again?

I wonder if they're feeling joy at what their action did ten days ago. Do they take pleasure in their decision to make my life look bleak? Or is this some sort of lesson they're propogating that life is hard and we're all flawed and happiness isn't real for humans?

A friend of mine (waves at friend) has me reassessing some elements of my life. I went through my contacts list this morning, looking for connections that aren't being nurtured by me. I came up zero there -- most of my entries in the contacts list are businesses. The few who are left after I culled the ones that were dead or no longer welcoming contact are either folks who aren't local or they're not someone I can call on in a crisis.

I'm weary of all this. On one hand I agree that those of us in this hate state (and BTW, I'm way pissed they're doing this to my ancestral home) need to be here so they don't think they've run us all off or pushed us past the grave. But there are limits to how much someone can be asked to take. I don't think of myself as someone with vast reserves of fortitude. And this kind of stuff reminds me that I've been swinging at the ball alone for a decade and a third at this point, so there is no close in support. I know that can change, and since we live in a universe of constant change it can happen anytime, so the likelihood is equal that it happens never and at 12:21pm today. But the preliminary steps for that aren't done, and I don't think I can muster the mental strength to do any of those things.

Yeah, I'm down today. I accept that feelings are ephemeral, and without thought they also tend to be brief, the spark that fans the fire of the mind. Still, either I'm getting hit over and over again with the feels or my brain is trying to kill me.

I'm considering disconnecting from all new inspirations so I can finish what I've got hanging out there. That will free me to no longer expend the effort, and I can get done with this struggle. And I bet some of them will smile and make another tic mark on their tally sheet, looking forward to the day when all of "my type of people" are gone.