2026-03-26 03:22:31
Yaknow, it's my all time favorite book. I love it. I love bears. Many pictures of beautiful and cute and perfect bears. Such wonderful photography.
And it is educational, but in a very ... approachable way. Like it's not that dense with information, but you definitely learn a fair bit about bears.
Here's one photo of a bear.
& one page of information - this is one of my favorite facts I learned from the book.
Check it out from your library & or buy it to keep one for yourself or buy one and send it to me (except you don't have my address please don't stalk me its just a joke)
2026-03-26 03:10:00
This is the sequel to When Justice Sleeps, and it improves on the first in almost every way.
In the first book, I was a big fan of the overall plot. It was interesting & reasonably complex & that was the main thing that drove me to finish the book. I had some complaints about dialogue, cheesy things that just didn't work for me, and several style choices in the writing - mostly having to do with being excessively elaborate & using vocabulary that was too advanced.
This second book has the same main selling point - it has an interesting main plot. But the dialogue didn't feel off to me (I have no thoughtful notes on the dialogue in either book, really. Its just a vibes thing mainly), the cheesy chess metaphors were gone, and the writing style was much friendlier.
She still uses a strong vocabulary & some elaborate descriptions, but it was done in a way that didn't make me feel ignorant or uncertain of what she was trying to communicate. The high-level vocab was more spaced out & had better context clues. Though I'm still entirely lost on certain visual descriptions she gives, as she references things that are, I think, quite posh, like very specific styles of dress or something. There were many of these in the first book and very few in this second book.
I'm still ... so annoyed at the technology / hacking type stuff. Some of it is very plausible. And some of it is utter nonsense. (this problem, too, was worse in the first book) But one example from the second book is:
There's a room that was purpose-built to jam signals. Super valid, super legit, real thing. But then they reconfigured the room to only "distort" signals. The purpose of this was so that encrypted messages could be sent without being traceable. And this is utter garbage. It's not real. I'm not an expert in this space, I am a professional programmer, I am tech savvy & keep up with tech news. So there's a very small possibility I'm wrong here, but man no this was garbage.
If you distort a signal, it is no longer carrying the same information that it was carrying when you sent it (unless the receiver has a way to un-distort it, ig). She could have said that it was re-configured to re-route signals through remote VPN tunnels or something. It's a little unlikely (especially because of encryption), but it's much more plausible than distorting a signal.
The book was really good. I have strong feelings about technology representation in media, and so I'm basically always going to complain about it. I like complaining about it.
This book doesn't make my all-time favorites, but it is very good, and it is a strong recommend. The first book is a medium recommend, but you really should read it first anyway. The second book works without having read the first, but still, it's a sequel, yaknow?
2026-03-20 15:20:00
I've kept journals for many years. I have a lot of the old ones still. My current journal began October 3rd, 2023 ... cuz I haven't journaled much the last 2.5 years. That's okay, though. It's there for me when I want it, as i have more recently.
Well tonight, I was journaling - relatively mundane stuff - and a bunch of stuff fell out of the back of it. When I get some piece of memorabilia I want to hold onto, I just stuff it in the back of my journal. It's not a folder LOL so its a bad spot. But it's my journal so it's a good spot.
And it was just so nice. To pick up my things, and read a February (February is spelled stupid) 2024 entry talking about brain fog, no brain mud, no spikey brain mud is what I decided to call it lol. It wasn't describing a good day, but it was good to look back on.
Sidenote: I was reading The Black Tongue Thief, which I FEEL was excellent, but I do not remember it.
I said sidenote, but that's kind of the point. Seeing that glimpse was nice.
I read an old (2024) letter from my therapist. We had to end counseling because Lifestance Health bought out a bunch of clinics nationwide and they chose to kick medicaid patients at my clinic. It was a while before I got a therapist again (because I require help with that kind of stuff & my care coordinator was utterly useless). But anyway, she wrote some really nice things to me, called me genuine and talented and something else nice. It was a pleasure to read again.
A friend drew a couple big dicks and wrote "Reed loves Ogre cock". I think we were talking about Shrek that day. I never liked Shrek. Idunno why.
I had scoresheets from playing Rummy and Farkel with a different friend. A mundane but nice note from my mom. A mundane note from my sister. Just little shit.
I had this thought "analog is nice" and it made me wanna blog about it. The journal & the physical medium have a qualia that digital doesn't have (for me). And it is much more limited, which makes perusing old memories much more desireable than a vast collection of hundreds or thousands of photos.
I don't keep all notes. I don't journal every event. But I do date everything I keep now. I'm 33 now & my memory just doesn't hold everything well. I like having the dates. And I like the happy accident of stumbling upon old notes and things, stumbling upon old memories.
2026-03-20 15:08:36
This stupid situation where the guy and gal are friends and then one catches feelings and they either fall in love or suffer unrequited feelings is just so tired and old and unnecessary and I just want to see real, deep, meaningful co-ed friendships be modeled in my entertainment.
A Hulu show I'm watching had a "best friends" situation but LOW AND BEHOLD the fucking guy is in love with her.
Like bro, just once, just let it be normal and healthy and good.
(not just once. Like, deep co-ed friendships should be the norm, and the love stories should be the exception)
2026-03-18 08:45:00
Primaries were today in my state, and among like 10 or so races (many local), I had 3 actual choices to make on the Democrat ballot.
One I outsourced to my bestie who's a politics junkie ... that race had like 8 candidates and well frankly I didn't realize it was voting day until another friend texted that she just voted! WHOOPS I knew it was coming but iiii lost track of time. But that's a lot of people to read up on.
Comptroller had 4 choices, and my congressional district had 4 iirc. Each of them had campaign websites, and I didn't go any deeper than reading their platforms.
For each race there was only one candidate I particularly liked, and the choice wasn't hard to make. But it felt like I was actually making a choice with a reasonable amount of information & that was nice.
Now ... most of the races were uncontested, including Governor, County Board, and several others. That's not great.
But idunno. I felt good about my votes. It felt like I was making an actual choice, rather than rubber-stamping approval. And it just invigorated me.
Honestly, I think it was more the homework that invigorated me than anything. I kinda liked reading up on them.
I wonder if this feeling will last. I hope so.
P.S. My favorite part about their platforms was the boring and specific stuff. Such-and-such city needs a new water tower. I support bill SB1234 because it does this. I'll protect your privacy and here's my specific experience with that.
2026-03-06 15:23:00
I'm 33, and age hasn't been the kindest to me, but I take better care of myself lately, so most of my pains have subsided. But, I won't grow back the two inches I lost to osteopenia, caused by a Vitamin D deficiency I failed to treat for years due to poverty and the cost of vitamins (and poor decision making).
Well tonight I was eating chips & salsa and my fucking tooth broke. It's a little bit black inside. Thankfully, it doesn't hurt. But the feel of the inside of my mouth is different and I hate that. It makes me anxious, and I'm obsessing over it & constantly poking it with my tongue.
I was really upset when it happened though.
Idunno. You just expect yourself to be whole, to stay whole. And then part of you breaks, breaks off of you. It's gone & there's no getting it back. Maybe I can get a filling, maybe I'll have another blank spot in my bottom row of teeth. My family might be able to afford getting me an implant, but I probably won't ask that of them.
I wallowed and sulked and complained a bit. It sucks. But the sadness mellowed. And then I've been miserable for the last 2 or so hours because of the anxiety. Some yoga helped with that, and maybe I'll meditate too.
It just fucking sucks though. It's bullshit.
Probably wouldn't have happened if I had regular dental care. Something I could have been more proactive with. BUT ALSO. I live with mental disability, and it had been really bad for years. For YEARS I tried to get a care coordinator through my health insurance (they said they offer it!), and they failed to provide one. FINALLY, after much nagging and repeated phone calls, i was finally assigned one.
Well she was fucking worthless. She literally wouldn't coordinate any care for me. She didn't even try. I asked for a new coordinator and nothing ever came of it.
Medicaid technically covers dental, but the dentist in my area yields only horror stories, people leaving worse off than when they arrived. Nobody else takes medicaid.
I'm sad, and I'm mad, and I'm anxious, and I'm annoyed. But it's also ... okay?
I still have most my teeth. I'm not in pain. I can chew. I am mobile. My mental is better than it has been in years. And I'm alive, dude. We get such long lifespans in our modern world, and I am just so grateful to have made it this far. So grateful that I get to keep going. But mannn some of the bumps along the way are BULLSHIT lol
have a great day, brush your teeth, floss, go to the dentist, invite friends over to hang out, and just take a deep breath and smile sometimes, just cuz you can & it usually feels good. Breathing and smiling is freedom.
