Lifelogging, aka Them Making Money Off You?

It's not until I'd moved to Georgia that I'd really, really started hearing an almost hate for anything that would use your labor, however, inane, small, or otherwise not-so-energy-taxing/zapping, to make money.

I'm a lifelogger, which essentially means I'm able to go into an app and actually look back at where I've been for about 8 years now because I'd recorded my whereabouts. Looking back is nostalgic, and looking at the map of plotpoints is pretty cool, honestly. Still, it's free, and the companies (because there are multiple) are probably using this data to sell to companies who can use it to their devices.

And I don't mind that, really. Sometimes one hears of how many people go somewhere, or at what time, or during certain circumstances. It's pretty neat to hear, actually. These lifelogging tools partly make that possible. I'm also kind of helping artificial intelligence on its way in just a little way.

Because it's not like my life is oodles of fascination anyway...

“Is It Something You Do?”

I’ve been training a new guy at work and he has asked me this question quite a bit. I tell him something and he asks me if it’s something I do [myself]. It had annoyed me a little bit because I’m the type of person who wouldn’t (although my lack of wanting to say that I’m 100% certain of anything leads me to want to interject “most of the time”) say for someone to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself.

I’d kept /I keep wondering if it’s a cultural thing for him, or something that perhaps has bitten him in the back previously. Perhaps he may be a bit suspicious?

I don’t know.

I have been thinking about how people see things lately. My cousin and one other person had told me off because I typed out “[shrug]” as a response in a chat. I’d meant “I don’t know/I’m not sure”, but they’d interpreted it as “I don’t care/give a fuck”.

People at work have interpreted when I have my earbuds in listening to podcasts (and even then, most people seem to think I’m listening to music rather than podcasts) that I don’t want anyone to talk to me. I’ve literally had to say to people they can indeed approach me whenever I have earbuds in because I don’t mean for them to think I don’t want to talk to anyone. Whenever anyone’s walked into a room while I’m wearing them, I’ve greeted that person.

Yes, I’m an introvert and have some social anxiety, but it doesn’t mean I’m standoffish or wanting to be/seem rude intentionally.

It’s just strange how so many social cues that I suppose people use in one way to be passive-aggressive (passive-aggressiveness being something I’ve come to about loathe lately) I somehow use innocently and people may think I’m using them the same way. I’ve often not even thought of it until someone brings it up.

It may be just a slight removal from someone being unaware the way they use a phrase may actually offend someone. We humans interpret things in different ways. But fuck-all if it’s annoying.

iOS 11, Day 1

I’ve never been an early adopter of most things, often either letting other try it so see how it’s worked for them, or just that I’ve not gotten around to something/couldn’t afford to time or money-wise.

iOS releases, since I’ve had an iPhone, have been the rare exception to that. Probably my favorite iteration is still iOS 6, but here I have five full versions later.

I’d gotten home and downloaded it directly via my phone while the backup was processing; the entire download took about 20 minutes. That’s mounds more admirable than a few versions ago, where it had taken about 3 hours (it may have been the first version they’d introduced over-the-air updates).

I’m getting used to some of the revisions they’d done, such as accessing notifications on the lock screen, and the look of the play screen. I don’t like what they’d done to the Podcasts app, which essentially stopped the ability to play podcasts automatically in the order they appear without having to add each to a “Play Next” queue. I’d readopted Stitcher Radio partly because of this, even though I have to sacrifice a few local news outlets’ feeds to do it.

I have yet to try the Screen Recording feature, though I think that may be trouble for some people in the future (even though I’d like to believe most apps to what this would be relevant might either have some kind of notification or lockdown for it. I have yet to try that, though.

Since I’m working on a 6 Plus, it’s naturally a little slow at first, and it will be since this is probably the second-lowest tier of Apple phone still in support. It’s okay; I’m not in any particular rush for a new phone, so long as it does what I need it to do.

I’m glad they’d worked on the on-device Library portion of the TV app, because its bugginess in iOS 10 was bothering the fuck out of me. They’d also re-enabled landscape views, for which I’m thankful. The disintegration of the Facebook/Twitter apps from the core is slightly surprising, but they’d also done that with iOS 7 from iOS 6 (the accessibility of both for status updates immediately as a widget in iOS 6 was another thing I’d liked.

Let’s see what else I discover as the days and weeks go by, since it seems this version they’d catered more to the iPad than iPhone anyway…

Why I Chose… Vanilla

I love the flavor and smell of vanilla.

When I was a kid (and even as an adult when I'm around my mother baking) I'd love when my mother poured Benjamin's vanilla extract into the batter. The sweet aroma of the thing, along with the buzz of the small amount of alcohol, were addicting.

Whenever we'd get vanilla ice cream, I'd eat helpings of it by the soup bowl. Whenever we'd get Neapolitan ice cream, I'd eat the vanilla part, my sister the chocolate, and my brother the strawberry. I'd eat the strawberry too, sometimes, but the vanilla was my thing. Chocolate, it just had too overpowering and bitter a flavor. That's something I still feel.

I think it's partly because vanilla soothes me why I love it so.

The Biggest Wuss

Okay, maybe not the biggest…

I'd lost power two days ago because of Irma, and the way I'd spoken about it, bearing in mind there are other people who'd had it worse or who go through worse, it was almost a tragedy. One could interpret my words that way, at any rate.

Realizing that, I'd felt like a wuss. I'd felt like, me having grown up mostly in the United States, having accustomed myself to the conveniences of coming home and having a relatively set routine with relatively no interruptions, I was not adapting well (even though I suppose I somewhat was; my sister had told me not to be hard on myself).

I'd made a Facebook post about marveling that I'd still had some hot water though the power had gone out. The next day I didn't have that fortune. I'd gone to bed early because there was very little to do, and I was conserving my phone's power. I didn't have my podcasts. I had little light to read the few books I'd elected to keep after purging my collection.

I'd felt like the type of American person Jamaicans scorn as being soft and inflexible. I didn't/don't want to be that person. I don't want people thinking I don't or couldn't measure up.

The power returned yesterday, and so continues my life of relative comfort. #firstworldproblems

Recommended Reading

I've, for quite a bit of my life, described myself as an information vampire. Whenever news apps like Flipboard and Apple News, as well as the Google Search app, have asked for my opinion on keywords and/or topics I'd like to see more of, I'd found myself tapping on many of them. I'd wanted to know about a lot of them (especially with countries/states that I don't hear about often, as I'd talked about somewhat before), even though there were limits to what I could read, or that the app would allow me to read in the case of Apple News.

There's only so much information I can take in because of biological need to sleep, limitations of my mind, and lack of desire to read certain stories (usually reality TV- or sports-related). Still, sometimes because something is "trending", it may still appear on my dashboard, which is a little annoying.

I'm generally not inclined to read sports just about as much as I tend to not watch certain videos. I don't want to outright say, or put into their minds, that I don't want to see those types of recommendations, but I don't really care to see them either.

That rationale sounds rather familiar ("I'm not racist, but I don't date Black/Asian/Latin@/White/whatever else people."). I guess this mindset comes in all kinds of forms, except some people just block people rather than have to possibly deal ("all the time") with having to reject someone because they don't fit your definition of "ideal".

We're hurtful creatures, humans.

Ultimately Why We Work

Yes, this is not scholarly. I have no sources, and have done no research. It's not even original. It's just what I've been thinking about on the way home... from work.

We work, though, because we, somewhat, fear what idleness can do. I'm certain when we all didn't work, when we meandered and thought, socialized and did whatever else idle humans do, we got into trouble. We see sometimes how children behave when they can do whatever they want, and I suppose even adults may do the same. We'd found we could do things, construct things, put things together, and went with that.

Someone worked, and then eventually more worked. Then we'd started deciding things had relative worth, and that we could trade one thing for another. We got the idea of fairness, because this person shouldn't have to work harder than someone else and not get more out of it than that someone else.

We began having an ethos of gaining things, wealth. Our populations expanded, meaning we had to make sure resources lasted, even though people with more wealth could buy as many resources as they wanted, leaving others without. Or they would sell those resources to gain more wealth. We created governments as we'd learnt about power and resource apportioning, including that governments could raise funds from land just as individuals found they could.

People who don't want anything to do with the regular scheme of things -- working for pay, having a mortgage, living in a proper house, creating more humans -- don't propagate the system humanity has created. Other human beings sometimes look at those who would take what they have and go out on their own with some amazement and some jealousy. "Why does he get to not work? I don't want to work." The person striking out on his own would have a time trying to do that, though, because the system wants everyone to pay for land.

The system has budgeted that so many people who make money will put a certain amount of that towards the system to keep it going. Having less people doing so undoes the system. People can't have tiny tracts of land for tiny houses because the system wouldn't make enough to sustain itself, so they'd set rather large minimum plot sizes.

Minimalism in a culture that treasures having more is a sin, something awkward and unseemly.

We work to keep ourselves busy and because it keeps the system that developed out of keeping ourselves out of idleness going.

Creepy Revenge

	Kristopha Hohn (@seishin17)
9/1/17, 7:26 PM I really don't get the mindset of not-clinically-crazy people who *save* excrement (liquid/solid) specifically to use it on/against someone.

I'd written this after hearing that, apparently, sometime fairly recently a guy had thrown a cup of pee at a bus driver. The guy was on a bus... and had a cup of pee ready to throw on a bus driver. That's... insane.

It's about as insane as this woman I'd heard about who'd been having a conversation/argument with her husband. He'd fallen asleep, so (naturally) she'd set him on fire and then put out the fire with some urine she'd had conveniently. At least with this one, they were at home, so she conceivably could have had a bedpan or something to put it out. Setting him on fire and then putting it out with pee, that's... interesting.

I'd also had on the thought docket the anecdotes and comedy movie fodder I've seen over the years of people putting bags of dog feces in front of people's doors, lighting it on fire, ringing the doorbell and then running. This leaves the occupant of the house to open the door (almost always male), see the flames, and stamp on the flames (and the bag of shit) to put it out. What person waits for their dog to need to defecate, collect it in a paper bag, and then store it (somehow) until it comes time to play the prank? What person?

I've heard of really extremist (and, in my opinion, cracked) PETA folks throwing combinations of feces and urine on their targets.

Then, this still doesn't give me reasons on my tweet: what non-crazy person does this, and why?

Well, the why, I can understand somewhat. Excrement is something we as humans really dislike for the most part. We want to get rid of it. We want nothing to do with it, and we want to remove ourselves from it as quickly as we're able. I've said excretion is one of the vital human functions I'd rather not have to do (along with eating, and most times, sleeping). Using excrement against someone is a giant insult to that person, then, or at least a way to demean that person.

The storage of it, though, that's... dedication.