Category: Life

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Guys, “Check your privilege” isn’t a moral judgment against you, it’s a reminder that we all have blind spots.

The human brain is very good at downplaying or dismissing problems that we don’t see much ourselves to focus more energy on those that we do. It’s the same psychology that makes Douglas Adams’ “Somebody Else’s Problem Field” work in his books and ring true to the reader.

We all do this.

The statement is just to remind us that we need to try to push through that SEP field to really look at what’s behind it.

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In advance of Google shuttering their third(?) attempt at a social network, Google+, I’ve retrieved a full archive, and I’ve trawled through it looking for anything that I want to keep online after the shutdown. Most of them were cross-posts of one sort or another, or (early on, especially) the kind of random social media status that maybe has value in the moment, but not down the line. I found around 30-40 posts worth keeping. Some had their own merits, some fit in with other posts here on the blog.

Rather than just import them verbatim, I’ve decided to do some minimal cleanup. No major rewriting or anything, just the kind of things that I’d be willing to silently change on an old blog post that was already here:

  • Fix up the formatting
  • Fix typos
  • Link to related posts
  • Add a quote to linkblogging posts if they need more context

Yeah, it’s slower than copy-paste or direct import (I never did get around to writing the converter I wanted to), but there’s no rush for old news, and I’ve got copies to work from even if I’m not done by April 2.

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Tonight’s waxing crescent moon, taken with the really long telephoto lens. It’s passing in front of the Hyades star cluster right now, which I’d love to get a photo of, but the moon is just waaay too bright to capture the background stars! Plus I’m still getting used to the controls on this camera.

And here’s another moon shot I took in January, about a week after the lunar eclipse. I used a different camera, while it was in a different phase, on the opposite side of the sky…

Same moon, though! 🙂

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Blurry leaves on a twig in front of an even blurrier background.

Super camera telephoto lens is out of focus
Even though the tripod’s set, the blur is really bogus
If you use the automated setting hocus-pocus
Still the telephoto lens is slightly out of focus!

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(The background is supposed to be blurry, but I had a lot of trouble focusing on the foreground with this lens. I guess it’s just going to take practice.)

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“Please sign this petition about X!”

“OK, I care about X, what’s the petition actually say?”

“It’s about X!”

“Right, but what’s the actual wording? Am I putting my name on supporting a specific action? ‘Cause I’d support some actions but not others.”

“It’s telling them to do something about X!”

“Yeah, I got that. What is it telling them to do?”

“Solve X!”

“Just look for solutions?”

“No, it’s telling them what we want them to do about X.”

“Which is…?”

“Fix it!”

“Sorry, but I’m not signing my name to a blank letter.”

“Why don’t you care about X?”

*sigh* *delete*

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I’m totally willing to sign petitions when I can see the actual wording and it’s something I agree with.

But if the petition website doesn’t say what they’re actually delivering? I don’t want to put my name on something that might be advocating what that I consider to be a bad solution, even if I agree on the problem.

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“Not loyal.” Two years in and the President still doesn’t understand (or more likely, doesn’t care) that officials owe their loyalty to the country, not to him personally.

I had a lot of problems with Bush, his policies and his priorities, but I never doubted he understood that the job was about the nation, not about him.

This guy? He’s never given me reason to doubt the opposite: that he thinks it’s all about himself.