I also suffer from insomnia - I regularly get 3 hours of sleep per night, and rarely get more than 6 (rarely as in 1-2 times per month). For a week and a half or so, though, after a death in the family, I was getting between 0 and a half hour per night, with obviously no deep sleep.

I developed severe ataxia (I couldn’t walk without a cane), I lost the ability to speak coherently and it would take me minutes to form a sentence. I couldn’t follow conversations, and my appetite decreased to the point where I was down to about 50-100 calories per day (eg, I could sometimes manage a can of coke).

When your brain starts to shut down, things really go south pretty fast. I managed to kickstart things using those meal substitute drinks (which I’d consume by chugging it in one go), and eventually my eating and normal 3-6 hour sleep pattern came back, but I was probably about 24-48 hours away from needing an ambulance.

Luckily I live with my partner and although I put them into a panic, I didn’t have to manage the house/pets and just took sick leave from work. Even after going back, it took some time to return to my normal level of working. At the peak, I would have been absolutely incapable of operating if I lived alone.

Freddy Mercury as a fireman was never a fantasy for me until now. I have to go take a shower.

I’m calling 1 year on the over/under for the introduction of blue check marks.

Satan sucks!

He also does this thing with his tongue that’s absolutely amazing.

The Blind Swordsman is a massive trope in fantasy literature. Take a look at David Carradine’s character in Circle of Iron for an archetypal example. It’s a staple in many kung fu movies - the Master uses their hyper developed senses for sounds and for movements in the air to sense and react to their enemies. Or take Luke Skywalker fighting the drone with his eyes covered by using the Force. Hodr was the blind son of Odin.

Blindness also occurs throughout mythic traditions, sometimes as punishment by the gods. It occurs in Greek and Jewish myths. The witch-woman in Hawk the Slayer was blind (played by the great Patricia Quinn, who also starred as Magenta in Rocky Horror).

I think it makes perfect thematic sense to include blindness in characters. A blind beggar, a blind prophet, or a blind samurai are all staples of the fantasy tradition. I’d actually love it if we had to work out a player character who is blind, but that would take a fair amount of effort. I think the payoff would be remarkable and memorable, though.

Back in the olden days, there used to be a variety of free software called postcard-ware. It was free to distribute and use, but if you wanted to you could send the author a postcard.

This is why I cannot consider the so-called leftists who oppose taking action against a fascist like Putin to be actual leftists. Putin is a hard right dictator who violates every principle of human rights at every turn.

shit heal

Chaotic evil clerics are the worst.

I have a question for my Canadian sisters, brothers, and others.

How much of this shit is actually organic to Canadian culture, and how much creeps in because the assholes there see what the assholes in the US are exploiting and decide to give it a try there?

This.

One of the reasons indexing starts at zero is because back when we used to use pointers and memory addresses, the first byte(s) of an array were at the address where the array was stored. Let’s say it is at 1234. If it was an array of bytes, the first data element was at 1234, or 1234 + 0. The second element would be at 1235, or 1234 + 1. So the first element is at location 0 and the second at location 1, where the index is actually just an offset from the base address. There may be other/better reasons, but that’s what I was taught back in the 90s.

Counting always starts at 1 (if we’re only using integers). You don’t eat a hamburger and say you ate zero hamburgers.

I was very surprised and a bit weirded out when I saw companies like Lockheed and Raytheon marching in Pride. I’ve even supported banning some groups - like some police groups - from marching due to their history or policies.

I am really conflicted on rainbow washing, though. I’m one of those people who has been around for a long time. I marched with ACT UP in NYC to get the government to conduct AIDS research, and I was beaten up pretty badly several times by people who just wanted to bash some queers. I remember when the only gay people we saw on TV were “not gay” gay-coded actors like Vincent Price and Rip Taylor, and performers like Elton John. Everyone denied that they were gay. It wasn’t allowed to be openly acknowledged. And that’s just the “open” folks - people like Rock Hudson were completely closeted. I know a guy who got booted just as don’t ask don’t tell was coming into effect because someone told on him, and I almost got fired from a national security job.

All of which is to say, I am really glad we’ve reached this level of representation. Lockheed doesn’t march in Pride so that gay generals are more likely to buy their weapons. There might be some publicity victory they’re getting, but Lockheed was doing just fine when all they did was make weapons (I know that’s not all they do).

When Lockheed marches, it’s because of their LGBT employees. The employees organize, start a resource group for mutual support, and do things like put together programs about trans healthcare in the employee insurance system. I respect that. It’s honestly the same thing for companies like Google and Netflix (Amazon’s group is called Glamazon). They get a bit more mileage out of it because they’re Bay Area companies, but it’s still more about the employees (current and candidates) than it is about the company.

One of the more openly homophobic companies (known for openly supporting right wing candidates and causes), Coors, was among the first to recognize same-sex partnerships as qualifying for benefits, solely as a result of employee action.

And, honestly, even if it’s just rainbow socks - I will take it over where we were and where we seem to be heading. Naomi Klein wrote a great book called No Logo back in 1999. One part that always stuck with me was that despite her very anti-corporate stance, she recognized that even obvious campaigns like United Colors of Benetton were doing good by making high end ad campaigns with a broad spectrum of people. Will and Grace was huge. Brothers (a Showtime show I had to watch late at night so I didn’t get caught) had a gay character whose beer drinking homophobic brother learned to accept. Queer as Folk. Ellen coming out. All of those things were absolutely huge.

We’re moving away from that now. I’m not expecting a big Pride presence from Budweiser this year. The LA Dodgers came close to pulling part of their Pride fest over complaints from a congressman from Florida. Target pulled rainbow-bearing clothes from their shelves under the threat of being bombed by christian domestic terrorist groups that act with near-impunity across the US. People are showing up with AR-15s at children’s libraries to threaten staff members, often without consequence. Transphobic and homophobic rhetoric is completely dominating half of the political spectrum - it’s literally the major plank in their 2024 platform. It’s bigger than tax cuts or terrorism this year. We are the number one target.

We’re going to have to fight to get back to the point where we can be cynical about Lockheed rainbow socks and rainbow Pepsi bottles, and it’s not going to be fun. And it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Yes. Fuck you.

Fuck you for not giving a fuck that a shit ton of people do fucking care that queer people exist and are actively trying to drive us out of of society. Fuck you for not caring that the standard rule on the right is now to refer to the LGBT community as pedophiles - criminal rapists of children. Fuck you for not caring that people are showing up with fucking AR-15s in the children’s section of libraries to defend kids against us.

That’s what fucking Pride is about. Pride is about saying No to shitheads like them, but also shitheads like you who have the privilege to not care.

So, yes. Very much. Fuck you.