Tinkering with Habits

After broadcasting love vibes, a group event, featuring cake, followed by fries and banger sausage (yeah that’s a thing), I woke up thinking a fast would be in order. 

That’s not a new thing with me. Intermittent fasting was kinda normal until pretty recently. I’ve reminded myself to get back on that bandwagon. 

YouTube is always ready to cough up endless advice on such matters, but I’m not so much in advice-seeking mode at this moment. Other times that’s what I’m after.

Tinkering with habits is the name of the game in a lotta ways. 

I’ve made it all the way through the day despite temptations, including an opportunity to eat out with some interesting people. But I stuck to the original plan. That’s a habit in itself: making a plan and sticking to it.

Another habit I’m cultivating is getting back into my considerable and somewhat esoteric book collection. I treasure it more than I experience it sometimes. 

Today I selected two to delve into: 

(1) Nietzsche and the Jews: Exaltation & Denigration by Siegfried Mandel. I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve explored its pages. I have a lot of Nietzsche books, as well as Wittgenstein books, thanks to AA.

(2) I got back into Matt Taibbi’s Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another. I’ve never been a cover-to-cover guy as much as a random access browser. I jump around. I got this copy at a street fair for $1.

Just to summarize these two readings: 

(1) Nietzsche was all over the map on the topic of Jews and Judaism, much like Jews themselves. Many authors have covered this topic but Mandel’s treatment is likely less simplistic than most. Easy stereotypes do not apply.

(2) the media is always ready to do our thinking for us; journalists specialize in doing that while pumping the wheels of commerce (news is itself a product). Divisiveness sells. I liked his exploration of pro wrestling with its bad and good guys, the heel and face, in connection with the 2016 battle for the trophy: a desk in the Oval Office.

I’ll be breaking my fast on the morrow, and plan on doing some more book browsing. I’ve long considered myself an avid reader, but looking back I see screens have overtaken the printed page.

Speaking of books, I ordered two new ones, from Amazon:

(1) Boiling Point: How America Brought the War to Ukraine, by Stephen Kinzer (hardcover)

(2) The Epstein Wars: How the West is Setting the World on Fire, by Alexander Dugin.

Both should be here by Wednesday.

I’m still looking forward to American Sons especially given the prospect of getting to meet a couple of its co-authors someday. Maybe I’ll start into it tomorrow.

Another Day in the Life of an Astronaut Nomad

Hah hah, I'd left Vivaldi looking through a Polish VPN so when I got to editing my own blog, I had to read about cookies, in Polish no less. I let Blogger lay its eggs (it's not like I'm allergic to em).

The picture won't win any awards. Some pro photographers were on the bridge with me, with expensive cameras. I was doing my usual point and shoot. I did walk almost to the first arch, from the St. Johns side, pretty close to Wildwood on the other side.

I could play up how whimsical this all was, me taking the 75 from near my house to this spectacular vista, just for a few photos. In actuality, though, it had been in long in the planning. Seeing Wildwood proved catalyzing. The last time I came with RB (another Wanderer) to check out the Naga statue.

And of course the water towers.

Coming home, I took the 75 only as far as the Lombard Transit Center, where I made the smooth transition to a Green Line Max, just then due. At this point I started fumbling with my iPhone and not-Apple (yet compatible) earbuds, starting with some techno dub, then transitioning to Tim Dillon, a Saturday morning comedian (like cartoons!) I sometimes sample, to feel the pulse of the nation.

From Moda Center I switched to Red Line, but only after walking east to the Oregon Convention center.

I closed my Exercise ring (green) with all the walking, which is part of the objective. This is what flaneurs are all about: wandering. It's a passtime accessible to seniors such as myself, still nimble enough to use public transit (with a senior discount). I also still drive a private car.

Speaking of private cars, most inexpensive gas anywhere around here is at a nearby Arco, which is always crowded with gas guzzlers like mine (mostly newer), except in the wee hours. Ideally I'd go around 4:30 am, but today I was there around 6:30 am. It was starting to get busy put a found pump 6 available almost as soon as I got there. Not too much over $4 a gallon.

Of course I'm paying attention to global affairs, which maybe makes me a globalist, a demonized category in some vocabs, but I always say there's more than one flavor of any "ist", including nationalist, often conceived of as opposing the globalists for some reason, as if these were mutually exclusive categories. As I was writing to a WILPF lady:

As the fog of war clears, the youngsters are becoming increasingly aware that no one older than them has the right to mandate their death in service of some lost cause. It's not like we won't have countries (we could have thousands), but we won't have to define them in that awkward cattle ranchy way that entails always stoking unnecessary hatred against tourists (visiting consultants, whatever), in the name of self preservation.

I could've said refugees (vs tourist-consultants), but that word doesn't quite capture it either. Gypsies? We're all nomad-astronauts aboard Spaceship Earth, co-spiralling with our power plant (Sun) around the galaxy (Milky Way).

Platform Plank

Climate Change

I’m quite suspicious of the “climate change” rhetoric, as many readers will know. 

For one thing, I think the word “climate” narrows attention to just a few factors, such as global average temperature, or CO2 levels. 

What about the presence of plutonium in a form designed to mass murder?  What about toxins in the food chain?  Is the shift from worrying about “pollution” (1970s) to worrying about “climate change” an improvement, or a dumbing down?

For another thing, I think the climate is always changing. The long term state of the biosphere has never been a constant. Being “against climate change” sounds too much like being “against gravity” or “against change”, as if there were a choice.

Finally, is the climate we have now, with all these toxins and nuke WMDs a climate we wanna keep? I’d say I’m pro climate change, as the current climate is unsustainable.

If we do wanna focus on global temperatures, then I’m fine with saying I’m pro not overheating or overcooling. That makes sense. What strategies make the most sense to keep the planet a great place to live? Home economics. 

But I don’t wanna go around saying “I’m against climate change” as that sounds too insipid and milquetoast, toothless, neutered. 

I’m pro climate change in the sense that I think it’s high time to ban nuke WMDs, or WMDs more generally. Our species is still juvenile bordering on infantile. That’s what’s wrong with the climate. It’s still a Planet of the Huboons.

Reaching a Turnaround Terminus

:: end of the line ::

I wasn't sure, going out the door, exactly what my route would be. 

I decide when I reach a decision point, such as whether to follow the Eastside Esplanade north to the Steel, or turn south and follow the Willamette along Springwater Corridor, though Oaks Bottom, by Oaks Park, and through Sellwood neighborhoods on SE Linn, to the Tacoma-Sellwood Max station. 

That particular decision point is at the Tilikum / OMSI station. OMSI = Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

Today I choose the Sellwood route but then, instead of leaving the trail for the Max station as I usually do, I elected to continue all the way along Johnson Creek, past Precision Castparts, to I-205 and another decision point. 

Straight onward would take me to Gresham, but on a slight incline, which is why I prefer coming the other way. 

Left would've been north, and the route I'd often take years ago when training for Seattle-to-Portland (STP). 

However I went south, to the right, and then instead of waiting for the Green line Max at the Flavel station, something I've done a couple times, I continued south into unexplored territory.

When I say unexplored, I mean the bike trail, as I've driven I-205 countless times, including last Saturday to Oregon City. The trail went along it, to Clackamas Town Center, a major shopping mall. 

However, I only went as far as the last Green line station, snapping a picture of the above terminus. 

Then I rode the waiting train to Gateway, transferring to the Blue, through Hollywood, over the Steel, to Pioneer Place. From there I boarded the FX2 bus, this time not forgetting my helmet. This bus is articulated and the back section has room for two bicycles inside. Neither was taken.

While at my office workstations, before and after this escapade, I pressed ahead with my communications, running rhetops by my principal WILPF contact (cartoons mainly), while updating various archives. 

In the background, I've been previewing a draft of an Intro to Quadrays video, not by me, something outta Canada, by a Synergetics-savvy architect. I'll be sharing more about that video downstream, and through the QuadCraft Project notebook in my School of Tomorrow repo.

Reality Check

:: elite academy maths (high school level) ::

XREF: Substack version

When in Rome...

from the Oz Series

Wildwood (movie review)

I should be upfront with my biases: this movie shows off Portland in a way a lotta Portlanders love; they’re flocking to the cinemas, the shows are sold out (I got turned away the first time, at The Bagdad, not having bought my ticket in advance online). So yeah, as a Portlander, I felt onboard with it, including the part about staying out of Forest Park and leaving it to the magical animals. Good policy.

This is a coming of age story of course, aimed at the same audience as Inside Out and Inside Out 2. Also the Narnia series, more than Alice in Wonderland, although it has elements of both. The sister-daughter, who is coming of age, has to grapple with a whole Other World, one with its own long term tensions. As the forest people keep telling her: what’s going on here is way bigger than you, so don’t take on some Atlas complex and think you’re driving the plot; you’re just a plot element.

She’s snapping out of her childhood fantasy world, waking up to the bigger world, the adult world, only to find the adults are as steeped in fantasy as the kids ever were, just with higher stakes, including her brother, who was always intended for a Forest Park client. The mom was a surrogate mom for her number two, in exchange for her number one. That’s a bit of a spoiler, sorry. My reviews tend to be aimed at those who’ve already seen the movie. More spoilers ahead.

I say more Narnia than Alice in Wonderland because Narnia, like Middle Earth, is a violent place, with lots of death and destruction, meaning it’s an Adult World (rated A for Adult). What it takes to survive here is a lotta courage and both the sister and her boy sidekick, less mature (girls mature faster than boys at that age), have courage, which they exercise (display) in different ways. The boy isn’t sure if he’s a pessimist or a pacifist (he’s still learning his native language) but he’s definitely stepping into his future self by becoming more of warrior (self awareness is part of it).

The ivy plays a major role as the rhizome (a philosophical term), the archetype of Entropy, claiming whole civilizations by tearing them down, reminding us of mortality on a big scale, as well as on a personal scale. We take it personally when civilizations go under. Fortunately Portland itself is under no real threat in the movie, nor for real at the time of this writing, Cascadia not having been party to WDC’s ill-advised misadventures.

The sister is separated from her brother, but in a way in which she’s semi-complicit, but only because her dad seems like a bit of a nutcase. If she lets his edicts rule her life she’ll grow up inhibited and damaged, she can sense that. She displays normal tween-to-teen defiance. But her dad has withheld critical information. Had she had more context, she would’ve tempered her defiance. She was unaware of the true dangers.

From the point of view of adults, kids seem too flush with their own sense of immortality, leading them to take foolish risks and risk means failure a lotta times (kind of by definition). When the prince in Forest Park, one of the magical characters, rushes off on a horse, unsupervised by his parents, he gets into trouble, and that makes his mom cuckoo. Our protagonist has to confront the phenomenon of cuckoo moms, another A-rated topic.

The claymation itself is lovingly rendered and all the characters are portrayed with enormous talent, endowed with textured and credible personalities, even if we’re immersed in the world of archetypes and fantasy beings. Teaching about the world through talking animals, fairytale style, is not “childish” if it’s about the real stuff. Keeping it real while diving deep into dream worlds is a high art, and this studio is up to the challenge in my view. Again, see first paragraph: I’m somewhat biased.

My late wife Dawn Wicca was a connoisseur of coming of age stories like this one. My sense is she’d’ve appreciated this film at least as much as I did. I wish we could have seen it together. As it was, I had three seats to myself for this noontime matinee. 

I needed a quick break during the parental confession scene (just the first part) and The Bagdad pipes the audio to the restroom (an advantage of not being a multiplex) so I wasn’t missing out on plot developments. I was back in my seat for the St Johns bridge scene (one of several), wherein the 2nd child was promised to the client. The mom was hellbent on having a first (the sister, our protagonist). Also, she had no idea her client was a psycho and that her 2nd (the little brother) would be in physical danger in her care. Child abuse is another theme.

Revisionist History

 The way it never was…

Quaker Heritage