enforcer's slimyboy thoughts

you know how when you're congested and your teeth feel like they're corroding? 0/10 occupying a body is a curse

Fuck 2/3 of my instructors, and fuck this "positive guidance" class.

Some reasons for kids "not going outside" / "not playing" / "not having social connections" / "eating junk all the time" other than phones or parents on their phones:

• you live in a food desert or have been priced out of groceries

• parents have to work multiple jobs so don't have time to cook or play with kids

• there aren't safe sidewalks or parks near you, or the traffic or air quality is too bad

• you're renting, or live in a tiny apartment, and don't have a yard or space for free play

• family can't afford or qualify for treatment / accommodations, and there are no viable community services to address behavior. however, intentionally addictively designed platforms are free.

• no adequate clothing for weather

• no one to play with

• lack of viable transportation

Maybe if you live in a bubble, it's reasonable, but blaming "eating too much junk food", "not playing outside", "not socializing with parents", etcetera on the parents, or on phones, is literally just victim blaming. I'm sorry, Canada is not a utopia where every kid plays outside and has adequate access to healthy food if their parents weren't on the damned Tiktoks. Lisa considered "some kids can't go free play because they live in housing projects or tiny apartments with no space, or the air quality / weather is bad" with "uh, there is nothing like that in Canada; we take kids out no matter how cold it is" and accused me of "fixating" and arguing with her.

Lisa is out for the next 3 weeks, but Pam, her temporary replacement, is no better.

Lisa basically told me that my observed life experience didn't happen or "oh that's not a thing..."

Yes, it is. Food and housing being intentionally priced out of most people's reach is an international problem.

Free play may be more than playing outside, but if you share a one bedroom apartment or there are no kid oriented public spaces where you live, or your parents work from home...Also, the concept of "what kids are doing now isn't True Play" has been used on autistic people for decades. True Play is an entirely arbitrary concept. If they are actively engaging with something and making their own rules, that is play, damn it.

But I already did my rant about that.

We're paying lipservice to "some kids are in abusive families or foster care"... And then going right back to blaming the parents. Either omit people entirely or tell the truth. This just feels like "we need diversity bullet points on the syllabus but don't actually bring up systemic issues".

I Am Not There. I Did Not Die.

Inexplicable Song Stuck In Head #N+1: Basshunter - I Can Walk On Water (2009, links to YouTube)

how likely is it that new FIR merch drops are now solely on whatnot because they lost their printing contract due to no one buying merch / it not actually existing, so can no longer afford to make more than like 5 of each item?

either they can no longer make more than "print on demand" merch quantities outside of live shows, or Whatnot won't enforce if the merch isn't actually real; reputable providers will

I am filled with an uneasy restlessness (I have also been lying in bed all day and ditched my teams classes because I seem to have gotten sick)

ronnie coded

https://joshreads.com/2009/12/tuesday-quickies-11/

Researchy's e-bike is being redesigned for tarot purposes, which will probably carry over whenever I revamp and de-pixel her ref. I don't actually know how to draw vehicles, so presumably when I made her ref in 2021 I heavily referenced a photo, which I ended up doing now. The one in her ref looks super cool...and I clearly only intended to draw it once, because the combo of complex mechanical structure, 2021 pixel shading, and being mostly black means I have no idea how that structure was meant to connect. The simplified version is referencing dirt bikes more than motorcycles, but I'm keeping the color scheme and defining features.

The old WHATverse refs in general look legitimately good IMO especially for 2020-21, but because I decided to do pixel shading, and they were pixels lined over traditional sketches (because I didn't have enough skill to draw something detailed with a drawing tablet yet, and might not have had one), they have some clarity issues as refs. They're a low priority to replace because the WHATverse is mostly legacy and I do still think they look pretty nice, but there's a reason that best practices for ref images are not to shade them so it's clear what your character's base colors are.

real men bite people

I have placeholder code for the actual drawing of cards (which I pretty much took straight from that Yewchube tutorial, because it did what I wanted it to), and have decided on characters to illustrate and written up descriptions for the major arcana and the people cards for each suit. Apparently there is not pizza provided today; just tomorrow and Sunday, but now I want it so I'm going to take a break and walk down to get dinner, then return and start drawing some card art. Honestly, drawing 78 cards with original art is going to be the challenging part, although the number cards I can probably kinda half-ass. I'd rather not half-ass anything, though.

Also, I guess I should include some masks in the art somewhere because that's this year's game jam theme, but I intend to ignore that because I committed to this specific idea before I knew the theme.

I'm the only student here who isn't in game dev. and yeah, all the alternative-looking folks are in game dev or graphic arts. However, they have pre-established teams because apparently this was tied into some of their classes.

Also, let's be real; what I'm doing is an introductory Javascript exercise and a "game" in only the most abstract sense because I'd rather work on Javascript than a game engine I can't apply to my main project.

But if I have a deck of cards, I can maybe at some point code a card game with actual math in it that isn't just a dressed up random number generator. And it's a fun art exercise, and I think tarot is neat aesthetically. No metaphysical significance whatsoever, but it looks cool and it's a fun motif for fictional characters.

My original idea was Tyranu Evavu, but I decided I liked the tarot suits better than the standard card suits, so the monologue pointed out that I might as well do tarot drawing which also includes some fun writing for snarky (but accurate, folklorically speaking) descriptions. It's less computationally complex, but more fun for me personally and aligned with what I do with my website.

Honestly, I'm thinking of this more as an art challenge, because even if I half-ass the minor arcana (and I will create templates I can copy-paste and rotate for cups, wands, swords, and pentacles), 78 cards is still a lot and they're also supposed to have backgrounds.

Kingdom of Loathing://apparently the golden meat stack is not obtainable in ed the undying so I spent the last week farming for no reason. oh well. guess I need to do that again in a hardcore run that actually has a prism in the traditional sense?

Before extra pet slots: "4 pets per account isn't enough for all the colors / characters I want!"

After extra pet slots: "Now it's about hoarding instead of appreciating what you have!"

...if you hate everything Neopets does and contradict yourself on what you want, why are you still bothering to play?

Enforcer's Frathouse Adventures, #N+2:

I got yet another text from my landlord about the "excessive noise" coming from my room. Maybe I'm just not capable of living in a shared environment.

Hopefully I don't get expelled by May, and the transfer is able to take place. I can't live here anymore. I'm sick of this house. I'm sick of Redactedville. I'm sick of my housemates. I don't know what I'll do if the transfer doesn't happen. I don't think I can stay sane being here another year; this has been worse than I anticipated.

I also got blamed for not cleaning the bathroom and kitchen, which is not the case. I wash my toothpaste out of the sink and wash my dishes after use, or at most soak them overnight if residue is stuck and can't be removed effectively with a sponge. (Also, [Housemate1], the only person who uses the bathtub is you, so I'm pretty sure the rings around it are your fault.)

The chance that the noise is actually [Housemate1] is pretty damned high. I'm not the one who makes phone calls and watches videos well past midnight loudly enough that I can be heard down the hall. However, I suspect I'm getting blamed because I actually take feedback. If my landlord does pursue "tenancy process", then I'm going to defend myself in court because I'm pretty sure I'm getting blamed for stuff I'm not doing. This has been the case my entire life, so maybe I should just accept it.

I haven't been ratting on anybody because I didn't want to piss them off -- if I were to complain about [Housemate1], he'd know it was me, and there's no way out of that. Evidently, I'm the only one abiding by this truce.

I also wouldn't be surprised if [Housemate1] is the one complaining about me, since, well, he's one of two who talk to me and vice versa and [Housemate1] also seems fond of making dish complaints even though he doesn't wash his either. I guess his strategy for not having to change his behavior is to put the attention on someone else doing the same. Like someone else I "know"... (Ronnie)

I thought that "if I don't snitch on you, you won't snitch on me" was a universally understood moral principle. It's about how stuff worked in the dorm -- I regularly smelled illegal incense and weed, and even though it physically gave me headaches, I said NOTHING so as to not raise tensions. He isn't doing anything right now, but the next time I hear him on the phone after 10 pm being audible through a closed door on the other end of the hall, or he invites his friends over to drink while they're all underage, I'm texting my landlord because evidently the truce has been broken and I'm the one getting hurt by it.

Apparently the law of the jungle of "don't be a snitch and I'll put up with you as long as you're not directly interfering with me" is not a universal principle. Also, [Housemate1] HAS directly interfered with me and again, I said nothing because I didn't want to piss him off, since then I couldn't use his air fryer and I don't want him to be in the business of wanting to blackmail me.

Well, I want my own air fryer if I'm moving anyway, so.

did my (lunar) yearly cleanup of internet accounts I no longer use / where the sites ceased to exist -- took out over half my keepass database entries, and have finally freed myself from Gmail for sites I actually use (the ones that wouldn't let me change my email are also the ones I don't care about) and everything that doesn't expressly require it (online class provider that uses Google for classlists and Pokemon Go / Android stuff).

As of 2025, apparently Hylonomus probably isn't the "first reptile everyone agrees is a reptile", which it was last year. The current estimate is that it's a dead end from its own group, and more closely related to mammals than reptiles. I did not know this until I looked up its Wikipedia page on the fly to cross-reference.

At least Nova Scotia can still have regional pride for Paleothyris. There are a lot of proto-reptile things from NS, probably coming from the same petrified tree stumps. The leading candidate for "earliest reptile everyone agrees is a reptile" is Petrolacosaurus, who has a cooler name than Hylonomus but is less...inspiring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleothyris

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrolacosaurus

Still, they fall under the "that's an anole" category. Yes, they don't have the same skull holes as modern reptiles, but if you saw that crawling up a brick wall on a sunny day you wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

Neither of these little weirdos are a direct ancestor to any modern reptile groups vs. their own dead end groups at the stem, but the ancestor of all modern reptiles probably looked something like them so it's the closest we're gonna get.

At least Diplocaulus is still the first amphibian everyone agrees is an amphibian, so I can share my favorite piece of paleoart where it looks like a bullfrog that got run over by a Looney Tunes steamroller. And also Dragapult, which is the least plausible but most fun version of why its head is like that.

I tell my students not to use meme-based terms, but this is a creature with no thoughts. There is exactly one brain cell in there.

Also, the question of "why is it yellow?" re: Flattened Bullfrog came up, to which my response was "uh, maybe it wasn't. there are fossils where we have chromatophores, but super-early amphibians and reptiles aren't among them, so all these colors are guesses based on the environment." And a sidebar about if an axolotl would metamorphose if you took it out of water (theoretically, shallow water CAN make axolotls morph along with hormones and toxins, but it's the most dangerous of any method and they're all dangerous, and if you succeed you have a tiger salamander so PLEASE DON'T).

Kids have values and beliefs before the formal operational stage -- they might not be able to answer "what if" questions or put things in philosophical / general terms yet, but they absolutely have things they care about beyond egocentrism and will speak up if those are violated. Heck, in preschool / kindergarten we have kids roleplaying what they want to be when they grow up, or which fictional characters they want to be -- that's a choice. That's motivated by what the kid cares about and what they understand to be important, and every career memoir ever pretty much has the kid being driven by something long before formal operational -- e.g. caring about animals, being fascinated by technology, and stepping in to defend others who are being treated unfairly.

As soon as a kid can exert enough cognitive control to do things for reasons other than fulfilling their physical needs and can choose what to do, they are developing values, and that's not solely the province of teachers and parents. This is based on my experience with gifted kids, who kinda obliterate the entire Piaget concept if you think about it too hard, but neurotypical kids can and do get involved in advocacy or helping their community of their own free will long before age 12-13ish when they're supposed to be able to think idealistically.

had to watch this for a class; it's one of the most generic things I've ever seen

Celebrate What's Right With The World (Yewchube / Invidious)

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so damned good at sociological perspective. Or maybe I'm just a cynical bastard. Not sure what the difference is at this point.

Celebrating what is right with the world must not cross a line into ignoring what's wrong with it and who's to blame -- it runs the risk of becoming inspiration porn and sugarcoating injustice. Everybody's so nice and their landscape is beautiful, so we're going to ignore the lasting scars of colonialism and threats of violence...National Geographic has improved, but has been well known for its problem with fetishizing Indigenous folks and cultures and "celebrating beauty" with a non-realistic perspective. And treating people as part of the beautiful landscape that exists to teach white people lessons...to this guy's credit, he does actually avoid "poverty porn" examples, so it isn't coming off for him personally as "these compassionate brown people taught me how lucky I am to be white!"

Every inspirational quote should have an asterisk that it doesn't work in an abusive situation or against folks who are acting in bad faith. There are plenty of people in the world who will take advantage of you "seeing the best in them" to mistreat you, and thinking you'll change them by thinking about the "good in them" is exactly what they want to keep you compliant.

The rate of change in society isn't being operated in good faith, either -- you can't ride something that is being stacked against you by powerful folks who want profit over everything else. Everyone DOESN'T have unlimited possibility, through no fault of their own. There are plenty of "changes" that specifically exist to LIMIT possibility for specific groups of people.

It's a lot easier to "put yourself out there with no regard for whether anyone will receive it" when you're famous and work for a magazine, so you know people will...

think I'm gonna do my lunar new year cleanup and delete a bunch of old accounts / PW manager entries. although I know I found some last time I did this that would not let me either delete my account or change my email

if nothing else, anything linked to my old college email can go bc that ceased to exist since I graduated last May

Do Not Pray To Me; I Do Not Appreciate Being Pressured. Do Not Place Demands On Me Or I Will Deny You What You Take For Granted

I Will Not Save You

It Is Not Your Sins, But Your Cowardice Which Have Damned You

got a pair of headphones that advertised having a "serrated cable" and I think that would be a funny name for a Darigan Hissi

unsure why I still "play" runetails; literally all I do is send the pets to school

the idea perhaps is that once I get the boys to level 25 I can do the runic versions of each venue and catch up on the battle achievements I missed?

I wish I could get more pet slots. I have 5/6 filled and the only other thing I want is maybe another wyrm. If I could get more slots I would not mind collecting snakes, axolotls, and/or turtles.

I also can't switch out Ronnie or Testudo because I am taking advantage of a glitch -- I had a month of premium because I wanted a Whulf, and kept the extra pet slot after it ended as long as I didn't move either of my pets. So now I can't if I want to have two active pets, which I do. So I can't get the low level training achievements I forgot about, because I got early xp for the kiddos with school and items with gathering.

you can validly make NGE4TIC references starting at -20, although that is actually not enough for bodily fluids to freeze in either major scale because Fahrenheit and Celsius converge and are briefly equal at -40. However, I don't think Ronnie understands either winter or Celsius now, and he certainly didn't when that song was written in ca. 2004. (Truth In Cliche being a band that he and/or a forgotten and nameless brief bandmate were in during the span in 03-04 where Ronnie ran off to LA for a year to sulk because Max chose his girlfriend over him. Which could be a heterosexual bros before hoes thing, but that phrasing was specifically used and that does not read as such. Nor does anything else about him and Max. And how he despised their "bros".)

no, darling, you have not been "rawdogging" ADHD because you have in fact been medicating with stimulants, just not prescription ones

I don't like the new Petpet Lab Ray UI. I get why it had to be changed because it glitched if you had a lot of pets, but now it's a lot easier to zap the wrong Petpet. (I just did, which wasn't a big deal, I guess, because it wasn't a perma, but I accidentally turned one of my lab-fodder stuck pets' cute little robot Gallion into soot...)

---

Weekly Report On Ronnie Nonsense:

---

1: Slime Alert

Ronnie Slime is Real and a Threat; his paid merch friend did not look nearly that slimy when he was first hired in, like, November-December-ish, and I think he's even transformed over the course of the megastream.

Everyone who hangs out with Ronnie for any extended period ending up looking like him has been a known phenomenon since EtF, and isn't explicable solely by genre. Nor do I think he's pretty or charismatic enough, or that his hired friend likes him enough, to intentionally try to imitate him, so why does this keep happening, assuming Ronnie Slime isn't real? Blackout sleeves are damned expensive, and still a relatively niche phenomenon even in spaces where tattoo sleeves are both normal and expected. As my mom pointed out, they're also rather all or nothing. Standard tattoo sleeves can grow organically.

what gets me is that it isn't just the sleeves, like, maybe it's just confirmation bias, but body language / vocal intonation / I think even facial outlines seem to be affected, and while that CAN happen over time with people who are really close, which is probably why Max is still like that now, it doesn't happen that fast nor do I think Ronnie's employees like him that much.

Also, COMPETENT blackout sleeves don't look like what Ronnie has going on -- they're usually actually patterned or very thick lines to avoid the slime effect -- and I doubt that he and his friends all go to the same tattoo artist. To Tyler's credit, his actually are competent, but he does kinda have the face as of his departure.

Presumably, assuming Ronnie Slime isn't real, Ronnie peer pressures everyone he hangs out with into resembling him, although I have no idea why they're listening to him. Max and Tyler make some degree of sense because they actually seemed to like him and vice versa. Other FIR guys, and his hired friend, don't have the same explanation.

or Ronnie Slime could just be real, which would explain why whatever he has going on doesn't respond to light like you'd expect tattoo sleeves to, why he always looks greasy, and how it spreads to everyone he's in contact with. I've got the utmost confidence that despite everything I know about tattoo ink, if you shook his hand, it would stain.

also, art contests are a scam and I despise God Is A Weapon, nor do I think this one will actually happen, but part of me wants to enter if it does with something openly derogatory just because Ronnie has to look at it. finally draw the intentionally bad "original character do not steal" interpretation of ronnie's sona...

another view of the slimed merch guy, and adding this to the "Ronnie openly calling himself gay" category. Note that this is Just Like You era, i.e. My Heart's To Blame. It's after Bury The Hatchet, which is the "literally homosexual"-est FIR ever is, but, well, here you go. This is pretty blatantly about EtF / Max given the motif of the rest of the album.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/fallinginreverse/myheartstoblame.html

If that's just on glossy paper and it's been sitting unprotected for 10 years, I really hope it gets laminated before shipping; otherwise, I don't think it's going to make it there especially intact. i wonder if he washes the clothing items before shipping; I suspect to the poor souls who buy them, smelling like him would be a plus

I would totally buy a vintage tour poster or an original stage outfit if it were on a better platform, not going straight into Ronnie's pockets, and I trusted it to actually arrive. (in part because I kind of consider the Good Girls / Bad Guys scenario to be eminently plausible and wouldn't exactly object...)

The issue is that I don't want to sit on a livestream for hours of Ronnie nonsense, for the slight chance that I have less than a minute to buy something interesting at inflated prices. While I can't justify spending hundreds of dollars on a jacket, and don't like the concept of financially supporting Ronnie, even if they were just on an eBay-alike without the video component I'd consider it.

But I also just kinda dislike livestreams in general; even from the one Yewchube channel I like I only watch them after they're over and I can pause and resume at my leisure.

2: He's making progress, maybe.

good news: Ronnie is officially open about having ADHD, which I think is the first time I know of he's used a diagnostic label outside of the "I've got a bad case of ADD" in Just Like You (song). Ritalin also gets contemptuously mentioned in Watch The World Burn.

Bad news is that he's still insufferable and every other part of his tirade here is incorrect.

Buddy? Pal? I regret to inform you of this, but your cocaine -> caffeine -> hatred -> gambling / scamming your fans addictions are still self-medicating with stimulants. Just because it isn't prescription doesn't mean that isn't what you're doing.

His being open about that in a non-joking context, and being willing to stim onscreen with his wiggles and the floss picks and such, is a recent (as of 2024) development from what I can tell, and I think a generally positive one. Just wish he wasn't so insufferable about it and spreading medical misinformation...while whether ADHD meds work for a given person is up to a lot of individual factors, and medicating small children especially if they don't actually have ADHD is a concern although not as much of one as missing the diagnosis especially for girls, flat out saying "don't take anything" is just wrong and actively harmful.

I can't prove this, but I think that post-the mid-00s or so, there are a lot more kids who actually have ADHD and are being missed due to not fitting the image of said than there are kids who are being medicated for being kids. And I'm not totally convinced the latter ever really happened as much as concerned parent groups claimed it did. I want to say that Ritalin / Adderall / etc. stopped being the standard ADHD meds in the early or mid-2000s. (which is about where Ronnie's understanding of reality stops, at the most generous estimate.)

The idea that overdiagnosis exists, and therefore refusing to get your kids tested or accommodations (whether they actually qualify as having ADHD by the DSM or not!), is I think more harmful than a theoretical misdiagnosis, especially since in modern times, I don't think stimulants generally get prescribed before puberty.

And also, it flirts dangerously closely with anti-vaccination and indigo children bullshit.

I don't think it's that likely for a kid to get misdiagnosed with modern testing and assessment methods, provided they are going to an actual psych, and (a) I don't think that ADHD meds and diagnosis coming from pediatricians, which I think was the concern in the 90s / 00s, is as much of a thing anymore and (b) I think more pediatricians know what to look for now.

And if your kid DID get misdiagnosed and put onto ADHD meds they don't need, then they're going to rapidly be taken off them because there will be physiological and/or behavioral bad results, like how there's basically no risk of someone who isn't actually trans staying on HRT for long.

I think the issue with ADHD misdiagnosis these days has much more to do with folks who have multiple things going on and have one or more getting missed in favor of the others, or demographic issues since the standard ADHD archetype is a basic white boy...which Ronnie very much is, and he does seem to respond to stimulants well in that he literally states in ICE that he needed absurd amounts of coffee to stay focused when he was trying to stay "clean" over DIYLF, and accounts from bandmates that "he's an asshole when he's high but he's also an asshole when he's not and he gets more done when he's high".

I'm pretty confident he would be both happier and more effective as a musician if he did seriously look into ADHD meds, coupled with other accommodations. He's got some legitimately good ideas, but never follows through on any of them, and I think part of the problem is that actually recording songs is boring and gambling and yelling at people isn't. Now, ADHD meds won't fix his spiral into blatant incitement of violence against demographics he doesn't like, or the steroids.

I also don't think he can actually get anywhere improving as a person without (a) getting rid of FIR because nothing about his "brand" and the behaviors it reinforces from him are healthy, and he quite clearly hates it and has for years and (b) doing something with his ADHD because it's hard to improve if you can't sustain effort. That doesn't necessarily mean meds, but he needs to do SOMETHING other than displacing his chemical addictions onto gambling, because that's not sustainable.

one of the things he does offscreen after Ronnie Redux is actually getting assessed and onto ADHD meds, and turns out that staying clean, his job, and going back to school is a lot easier and more enjoyable on them. inspired by Arlo and his having an openly also ADHD friend who can dispel some misconceptions

(It's mentioned in regards to what he got up to in between Ronnie Redux and Where You End.)

Arlo is canonically AuDHD to emphasize his parallels to Candela, even if much of him is projected from me. He's also well-managed, including having a job that lets him do independent research projects and serves as an outlet for his non-Ronnie special interests. IDK if he's specifically medicated because it's never come up and doesn't really matter since he's found a system that works for him (and post-Reverse Mode III, has some productive tools to deal with the trauma bundled with his rest of him).

Ronnie Redux / the RRverse in general is Arlo extending the support he got from Spark and to a lesser extent, TGR in general, to his special interest. And also getting to kiss a little.

ah shit i've gotten blurry again

wonder if I should watch yu-gi-oh again...I watched some of it back when EE was around and really enjoyed it, but stopped 'cause it gave her Ideas, but I think Ronnie might be more receptive

If I can't talk to anyone in person, go somewhere else, or go for a walk, I could at least play video games or do angry HTML or listen to music or something in my room. And now I feel like I can't do that without wondering when the next time I'm going to get harassed is, or hoping no one overhears me referring to myself as queer when talking to myself...

okay I should add more shit to my site blocker plugin for when I get turnt up because I kinda posted a tirade about plushie rarities to the virtu.pet boards and got justifiably chewed out for it because it wasn't actually a bug report. Felix (site admin) had every right to call me out. I deleted the thread not to be a coward, but because it wasn't a bug. I was also kind of mean.

I don't like that I've regressed to taking out meatspace frustrations on people online, but I feel like I have no other options. I don't have anyone to talk to in person, there's nowhere to go, and I can't even take out frustration physically by walking around because of ice.

I feel like I have been spending all my time when I am not in class online, and I don't like that, but not going insane is the priority.

Still, I should add a set of rules to my site blocker for when I get turned up / possessed that I am not allowed to be on ANY social website including forums or my Neocities profile. If I want to write down frustrations somewhere that feels more communicative than a diary, they go on my thoughts.page into the void (which no one reads, and I can not only delete things, I can alter the CSS so nothing is visible even in source code until I cool down and can filter) or to my personal friends.

And looking at it, yeah, it wasn't actually about Techo plushies; it was about that I can't chew out Housemate1 and his friends and didn't want to get driven out into the snow waiting for them to leave, so I latched onto something arbitrary and got mad at it instead.

I was doing reasonably well with just how much I hate being in Redactedville / being bored, but this recent set of annoyances has pushed me much closer to the edge. I could at least count on being safe and being able to be myself in my room, and now I can't even do that.

He's also several times forgotten about pans of meat and left them on the stove overnight. At least he's remembering to turn it off now.

I think I've said this before, but in your own private bathroom, I have no objections to not flushing if you're only dispensing liquid waste in order to conserve water. However, if you are in a shared house, or a public restroom, FLUSH.

I should expect this from a guy who makes loud phone calls late into the night, doesn't inform me before his friends come over and harass me, leaves his dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, and leaves dishes in the sink with meat dregs in them for a week+, I guess.

Only problem with that is that my current phone's USB-C port is no longer capable of transferring data. I dropped it in the toilet last October, and while I was able to take it to a repair shop where they cleaned it out and made it capable of charging again, ever since, I've been unable to get it recognized as a data transfer device by any computer I have. It also can't charge off of certain cables, namely anything connected to a USB-C port. USB-A is fine, but it won't transfer data off any cable I have, across multiple ports and computers, so I think that's the phone. So if I were to keep using it as a game console / camera / music player / mini drawing tablet after its death as a phone, I would need to do file transfers via WiFi.

That's an annoying technical problem, but not one that warrants going back to the repair shop. It's working for what I need it to do, so that isn't worth going without mobile data contacting for a week and risking breaking it further. Also, there is only one phone repair shop in Redactedville, which it has already been to, and it's on the wrong side of the bridge. Or rather, I probably am. But so's my college.

I intend to use my 2023 model year Moto G Stylus until it experiences catastrophic hardware failure preventing it from functioning as a phone, because if Pokemon Go or what have you out-softwares me, I really don't care.

I do kinda like the idea of, if my current phone experiences a hardware failure preventing it from functioning as a phone but that still lets it function as a computer (e.g. my last phone's SIM card slot breaking), of keeping my fun stuff that doesn't require mobile data (emulators, music, camera, etc.) on a phone with no SIM and separating that from my contact device.

I think that's more practical than buying a bunch of separate standalones, although I should check if Android File Transfer Linux works to make the Zune more manageable. (I still wish you could make playlists or delete files on the Zune better locally, though.)

I do also use my phone's built in camera app because the Fossify camera kept crashing. But I think that's Motorola vs. Google Cloud. All my google cloud things except Play are disabled / uninstalled and running off Fossify versions from F-Droid.

As discussed, I can't change to a custom ROM because I need a phone that works as a phone. Custom ROMs will break your phone plan, and carriers won't fix that. I'm also still on a US phone plan with US + Canada coverage, so I can't even get to my carrier locally. There's also a disturbingly high probability of bricking your phone, and unlike Windows, you can't make install media for Android to get back to how it was before.

The phones that come with custom ROMs are both expensive and usually carrier locked to carriers that don't live here if they work on North American towers at all, which many don't. I'm not spending 500 dollars on a phone if I can avoid it, and definitely not for one that probably doesn't even work reliably on my towers.

It's...wiggly. I hate it. This makes me extremely uncomfortable. When did they change this and for the love of the gods why. (Talkatone, which was basically my only source for a Canadian phone number [needed for 2FA from Canadian sites and government services] besides buying another phone or giving up my US number, won't run without Google Play installed so I'm stuck with it. But outside of that and Pokemon Go, Maps is the last Google app I use semi-regularly so it'd be real nice to be rid of it.)

gonna try HereWeGo maps...Apple is worse, Waze is very car-centric, and OSM, even in areas it actually has good coverage in (which No Funswick is not), gives unsafe and/or impossible walking directions (and both OSMAnd and Organic Maps were really slow), but supposedly HWG has some decent live navigation. I'll be able to field test it over spring break in Toronto. I only really need to do live navigation if I'm travelling or going somewhere unfamiliar, but I will get lost without it especially if I'm driving / biking and can't look at my phone.

I had a super cute RRverse vignette idea on my way to bed last night, but my plans to write that were thwarted by the aforementioned frathouse bullshit.

I haven't been doing a good job at creative output lately. My general malaise has persisted and increased, because it remains cold and gross and both the classes and the housemates have gotten more annoying. At least I get to hang out with meatspace bestie in Toronto over my "spring" break (during which there will still be snow on the ground) in February so that's something to look forward to. I'm basically doing my required daily duties, then curling up into a sullen ball of slime.

Oh, and Enforcer's Frathouse Adventures, #N+1. Originally logged between 5:43 and 7:08 PM Atlantic.

is it just me, or does this new recolor look rather...kinky? I don't think the original gold version would have as much, but I actually think I might need this. I think it's the thickness of the collar, and that maybe it goes a little too far down.

Also, today I learned that copy and pasting images directly onto the File Garden uploads page works, so you can share on the fly screenshots without having to locally download them. Neat.

dragging dead bodies in blue bags up really long hills has been stuck in my head nonstop for the past 3 days and i'm not OBJECTING but this is an atypical experience for me; I don't usually get a single song lodged in for an extended period

this is one of the cutest websites I have ever seen and I might be stealing their tiled background

http://www.naturenorth.com/spring/creature/garter/Narcisse_Snake_Dens.html

concept, which I won't do because I don't think my instructor would appreciate it: apply this form to one of Ronnie's livestreams...I started thinking about him as soon as I saw "makes odd noises".

yes, I'm aware that this is for elementary schoolers. however, I'm still very confident that if assessed on one of his extended streams (which is the closest thing to an observation period of what he does autonomously we can get), he would fall under needing substantial social skills supports.

fanfic concept that I'm probably never going to write: Zane gets an ES referral. I hold that they are also ADHD 2e (and I suspect that whether I intend it or not, my version of Ronnie is a little more Au/DHD and HG+ than he probably is in real life. I suspect he's one G gifted at most.) on grounds of being genetically identical to Ronnie.

Fuck Dephoning #N+1 -- the monologue came up with that it's the VSCO Girl metal straws etc. view of environmentalism, or the self-care industry, as applied to tech, and that seems about right.

Unless you are lucky enough to get all your hardware at a thrift store or pawn shop, or have an indie standalone tech devices store in your area (which if you don't live in a large urban area, you probably don't), you are going to be ordering your digital camera / game console / MP3 player / standalone car GPS if you need to navigate online. So, all the big advertising databases are going to know that you're the kind of person who is into all those things, which is probably more telling about your demographics and politics than your phone is. You're also likely to be ordering those things from somewhere far away from you, and you're STILL going to be replacing them every couple of years because batteries wear out. Which is terrible environmentally and economically. Screens and lenses get chipped. If you carry a device around regularly, it is GOING to get water damaged or dropped onto a hard surface eventually, and the more specialized your hardware is, the fewer repair options there are.

And of course, the core problem is that I haven't seen any dephoning sites actually give a citation that the "your phone is constantly broadcasting even when it's on airplane mode" bit is actually happening, or talk about actually addressing systemic issues given that there exist people for whom their only source of Internet access is a phone, or for whom it's an essential piece of assistive tech. Obviously the solution is fashion statements and LARPing an imagined version of the early 2000s.

Honestly, my thought is that if you really don't want your fun stuff on the same device as your contact, wouldn't you get the same benefits from an Android phone or tablet without a SIM card? It's not broadcasting if you don't put it on a network. Have your phone with a SIM only run things that need to be a phone. Take your music, photos, emulated games, etcetera onto and off of your Android device with no SIM that if it needs Internet, only connects to your secured WiFi, via USB off your computer. Hell, you can install a custom ROM or Ubuntu on it if you're that worried about Google Play services. (And I've concluded that said is what custom ROMs are for, because every guide I've seen says that installing one WILL break your phone plan, and your carrier isn't going to work with you to fix that.)

You get all the benefits of having your contact / constant Internet access and your fun stuff being separate, while having more repair options, generating less e-waste and shipping waste, and being less conspicuous. But I guess that doesn't go with the Neocities aesthetic.

but they also think that "creative innovation" is possible with bullshit generators, and that "open AI" is possible, so they're a good source of resources / software to try out and news about relevant internet legislation, but fuck them as an organization

re: my beef with the EFF, kinda fucked up that whether they intend it or not they're funneling people into conglomerated platforms (and federated ones are not exempt). so, they're advocating for and want you to prevent your profile from being searched and shit on socials, but don't think website authors should be allowed to opt their sites out of scraping? just say you're against personal websites, which is a part of a "free and open web" which anything you say being scraped and used by anyone against your will isn't!

and, like, if the concern is about big bad corporate entities using website signals to suppress information, there are ways around that...you can keep right to repair and shit without telling anyone who wants to make their own website that they can't control their own work

Outside of anthro fiction, fuck "animal rights". Animal welfare, yes, but the "animal rights" movement is too separated from actual animal welfare and biology for me to be willing to support it, how it's often terrible to folks who are trying to be part of a social contract aside. (e.g. attacking indigenous farming practices and folks who are culturally reliant on meat / fur / etcetera, comparing animals to racialized or disabled folks, using acts of hate-motivated genocide tastelessly)

"Animal rights" folks also tend to be blatantly against reptiles and amphibians. I remember the ASPCA, I think, saying post-Lacey Act that "reptiles are not pets; they are incapable of love and if you have a pet reptile you are a bad person" and it pissing me off to the point that I still remember it 10 years later.

If you think cows are cute and get sad when they're killed, that's fine, but any actual system of animal welfare needs to take into account

(a) not imposing our values onto animals [and not being an asshole to sapients who are trying to be part of a social contract -- we can talk about animal "rights" when a cow wants to get Medicare]

(b) ALL animals -- plant based foods are not a solution if they aren't being farmed sustainably, and captive breeding and animal research are necessary parts of long-term ecological solutions!

...which "animal rights" discourse doesn't do.

Factory farming is terrible for numerous reasons, but monocultures of soybeans and preventing indigenous people from practicing culturally (and environmentally!) vital land stewardship and agricultural practices, and pricing people out of their staple foods, isn't good either.

At this point, I'm vegetarian because it's the most effective thing to get me to eat vegetables and have a more balanced and varied diet, and to overcome my sensory issues regarding food, that I've ever done. And because meat is pretty well-known to cause digestive troubles even in folks who aren't genetically predisposed to them, and I know I get acid reflux. Maybe it's also better environmentally, but who knows. That's all dependent on systemic factors I can't control. I'd like to get more into local agriculture, but since there are a lot of vegetables I just don't texturally like (and I know the rest of the house won't eat them), if I got a CSA box, most of it would probably go uneaten.

And GENERALLY speaking, for folks who get their food from the grocery store, plant-based foods have lower emissions. That's how I morally justify flying in order to see family and friends, along with there being no other viable option. If you only get a week of break and it's essential to your mental health to see people you care about, and it isn't safe to live near your loved ones, taking a train or bus for days on either side isn't an option.

i need a love interest / house-partner for the following reasons:

1. to do switching vocals with me at karaoke; Situations and Sarcasm hit squarely in my vibes and vocal range but have some awkward transitions since they both sorta have two vocalists (some of the cute little noises are Max)

2. to eat CSA vegetables I won't

honestly, even outside of vegetables. what I'm looking for in an aroace partner is someone who's exactly like Vincent except not Vincent because NO; whatever feelings I have towards them they are not of the same kind I have towards, say, the young version of Max; my response to the thought of making out with or sleeping with them is aversion someone who has different food sensory issues than me, because I feel bad wasting food or having it be remade, but there are things I simply can't eat.

girls with really long hair and/or guys who look like me in different fonts (need to be either trans or open-minded, gay, and girlier than I am) who like mayonnaise, mustard, and celery hit me up

webinar reflection (you will never get to know where I teach):

I should totally put the Linnaeus "reptiles are abhorrent" quote onto its own slide just to discuss.

I ended up giving a passionate description which was also kinda a gender / neurodivergence allegory about how reptiles, and herpetology as a field, have historically suffered because they were considered "primitive", "dumb", or actively harmful. Heck, even Linnaeus and the "herpeton / bird / beast / fish" model considers them a wastebasket taxon. And a huge part of that is that intelligence tests, and how humans including researchers relate to animals, weren't built with reptiles in mind -- a lot of early poor performance of reptiles on tests was just because they were cold at 72 F, or the sensory cues weren't right for animals who aren't predominantly visual. Actually observing herps in the WILD or with conditions that work for THEM tells a quite different story.

I don't like conflating my relationship with snakes with being autistic or queer, because I knew myself to be a snake person before I knew I was either of those things, and while I understand why a lot of autistic people find it affirming, it edges a little too close to "autistic people are the reincarnated souls of animals" space-messiah indigo child magical disability bullshit for my comfort. But they are absolutely related, both in regards to "my special interests are me" and in regards to WHY I connect so strongly with reptiles and how they've been historically considered creepy, primitive, or unintelligent because of behaviors and physical traits that work for them and just don't jive with mammals. Yeah, I don't blink. Get used to it.

And, well, see this blog post about baby me's first realization that the US government didn't care about protecting me or my friends, and that fearmongering was more relevant than actual science. Which I'd love to say in class, but can't for obvious reasons.

https://draggianuniverse.neocities.org/miscellanea/pythons

Anyway, it was great. They actually talked! And anticipated some things, to which I responded with "keep that in your back pocket for later", like turtle eggs as an example of how reptiles are absolutely necessary for climate research given how their entire lifestyles rely on outdoor temperature, and "wouldn't the poison on frogs' skin kill germs?" ...yes, kind of.

I got to use the allergy lit review I did last year, with both the fun fact re: why herpetologists and icthyologists get along that some people who are allergic to fish are also allergic to reptiles, and the absolutely horrifying revelation that we as a scientific community don't really understand reptile immune systems. Like, can reptiles get allergies? No one knows. It's not just the detailed stuff; basic biological questions are being overlooked because of the historical wastebasket taxoning and blatant discrimination.

I know this probably doesn't mean much to my students who are younger than my Neopets, but I love the completely true statement that "the first albino ball python wasn't bred in captivity until 1991", which I added to since one of the kids (new in the past week; Ilan's mom shared the class on local groups and I thanked her for it) mentioned having an albino corn snake that "the couple who basically invented modern corn snake breeding are (AFAIK) still alive and I talked to them on a forum in 2011". Even fancy rats, goldfish, and bunnies have centuries of history. Reptiles and amphibians don't. As much as I detest using generational terms, folks born after 2000 and really after 2010 (I remember the "pets" forever stamps and Sanjay and Craig being HUGE deals because they were some of the first time I'd seen snakes as pets in the mainstream; "sneks" were not a thing when I started the class in '17 outside of reptile-specific circles) are the first generation growing up with reptiles as pets being an accepted normal thing and that's fucking huge.

Re: the times and dates for how reptiles in the pet trade and snakes as mainstream are incredibly recent, I have not yet had a student for whom I've been teaching since before they were born; latest birth year I've had is 2016, but given my classes' general demographics that's going to happen any time. But I also started younger than most instructors, even JIs, so.

I need to watch Zootopia 2, even though I don't trust Disney in 2025 to do a good job, but the fact that it has a snake as a main character is major. There's also Sahara (2019) and The Bad Guys. We're at the stage of representation where snakes can be protagonists, but their arcs are still about overcoming discrimination related to them being snakes. Again, animal representation correlating to human demographics is debatable at best because generally, snakes aren't trying to get their rights as snakes recognized in a social contract, but it's a similar process of "nonexistent" -> "villains by default" -> "can be protagonists, but their stories are about overcoming discrimination / people assuming they're evil even when they aren't" -> "just part of the world".