Kistaro Windrider @kistaro@dragon.style

This seems like as good a time as any to remind folks that I'm otherkin. I don't need to preface this with some explanation about how identity is all in your head and is whatever you make it; my cosmology allows for past and parallel incarnations, a universe that we can only begin to glimpse at from over here while physically incarnate on earth, and allows souls to acquire a form - which does not have to match their incarnation. I am a dragon, I have been a dragon for aeons, and I will continue to be a dragon after this planet's star burns no more.

None of us are bound to any one place or time forever. Incarnation is transitory, but souls are eternal; a consciousness is an indivisible spark of will and experience, but it has no power to act or experience anything on its own; incarnation is the only way out of an insensate hell. (Or an insensate nirvana, if you are better at keeping company with only yourself than I am.) Incarnation is, to a first approximation, recursive; I am a soul, incarnated as a complicated crystalline being of fractal nature that exists alongside itself in a multitude of places and times, which again incarnates to experience and explore forms of the universe that it cannot exist in, which incarnate and reincarnate subject to local forces and whatever passes for "metaphysics" (or just plain physics) wherever it happens to be. What else is there to do, but unwind the mysteries of the universe? We're here, we might as well figure out what "here" is.

Most of the time, I incarnate in something that at least resembles a dragon, for reasons of comfort and personal preference. This was *supposed* to be a sapient lizard planet but apparently my copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide was sixty-five million years out of date, so I've made do with the species that at least has smartphones. I can exfiltrate some brilliant works of engineering, electronics, and reinventing the process of logic for the benefit of machines - pure machines, with no souls, engaging in reasoning! Few places have laws of physics so strict that there's no easier way to do it, leading to spectacular development in large-scale mathematics and hyperminiaturized electronics, all of which can be re-applied to places that don't *need* it so didn't develop it, but could use it.

So perhaps I'm a little "old-school" by local standards, because not a word of this is figurative. I have beliefs that I freely agree are unusual, and a self-consistent and unusual cosmology to match. I read Tarot (although I'm badly out of practice) and am reasonably convinced that it works, when applied well. My consciousness is not primarily local, although it's running on a monkey meat computer that I'm not entirely happy with (but who is?) but I make it work and I know it's doing its best.

I neither require nor expect people around me to believe that my view of the universe, and my place in it, and my nature, is accurate. I believe it to be accurate, however, and I will not make psychological excuses for why; it is a reflection of the sum of what I am and have experienced and perceived; it is not abstract.

so, @chr and @Veladynee and @flyingfox and @Canageek and @rockario and @storm and I were discussing VRChat avatars and later conversation (that not everyone was present for) mentioned how Japanese avatar creators tend to have better dragon options than North Americans. I have been browsing around booth.pm a bit and now I have a huge unsorted pile of dragon or lizard-person avatar links, take a look:

https://booth.pm/en/items/1694244
https://booth.pm/en/items/2476450
https://booth.pm/en/items/1797651
https://booth.pm/en/items/2374416
https://booth.pm/en/items/2412575
https://booth.pm/en/items/1352300
https://booth.pm/en/items/1482055
https://booth.pm/en/items/1418065
https://booth.pm/en/items/2115509
https://booth.pm/en/items/1436088
https://gigasuke-shokai.booth.pm/items/1934902 (khr linked this one first!)

Lots of good options here.

1. log in
2. durdle around in an avatar world that had something I was curious about
3. join a friend who had announced their availability on Mastodon
4. AAAA there are like twenty people in this room
5. immediately log out
6. feel stupid about it
7. log in
8. look at VRC friends list
9. find someone who is in a Friends instance who I would be interested in talking to
10. get paralyzed by anxiety about whether being mutually friended on VRChat really makes it okay to just appear in the instance of someone I don't talk to much but would like to
11. log out

I'm not very good at VRChat

haven't picked up Shenzhen I/O for years. It's satisfying to open it up and solve a puzzle. Sure, my power consumption was terrible and I used more parts than either of the other folks who play it on my Steam Fiends List, but it's still fun to tinker with fake microcode and make something pretend to work.

Wikipedia is 50% encyclopedia and 50% an experiment in self-governing debate club.

This is a long shot, but does anyone know of - or happen to be - a neurologist willing to discuss a long weird medical history with someone who has been spending years researching and looking for solutions because of repeated failures getting doctors to actually investigate anything? That’s going to require patience for someone getting surprising results from various questionable approaches, who suspects those surprising results warrant follow-up but has never been able to get doctors considering those results long enough to take them seriously - they just get discarded and the doctors go to their usual diagnostic sequences, which usually involves a lot of repeating stuff that didn’t work and then just dead-ends from there. That’s what we want to avoid.

We’re definitely in “would pay actual money to just talk for a while to figure out and discuss what next steps should even be” territory here. Neurology doesn’t strike me as a telemedicine-friendly pursuit but maybe it is...

deepfakes are a necessary technological step along the way to Star Trek matter replicators

I've discovered that the less affected I am by social anxiety, the closer my communication style becomes to "radical honesty". My *only* interest in not disclosing things is anxiety, and a sense of propriety, but not enough propriety to stop me from saying honest things that people typically do not mention if it wouldn't hurt anyone, including myself in "anyone".

Anxiety is closely tied to "will this harm someone?", but I realize now I can safely be free of it, because I still limit my behavior reasonably without it: I choose to respect other peoples' boundaries and that is not related to anxiety. My judgment about what could harm me seems *more* acute when anxiety isn't falsely amplifying it.

Without it, I just say true things, because I see no sense in keeping anything from anyone if it's not harmful not to do so. I keep secrets, because betraying someone's trust is harmful, and there are people I will not tell anything to or will deceive, because they would do greater harm if treated honestly. (see also: "don't talk to the police") But I don't *want* to have a hidden agenda, so why should I when there's no use for it?

This is kind of eccentric, and I think I developed social anxiety because I grew up being shamed and bullied for it, and now I am starting to get over that and I am simply back to being eccentric. I can own that.

underrated song of the day: https://jimsbigego.bandcamp.com/track/lionel-say

The entirety of “More Songs About Me” is brilliant, but this song specifically seems relevant lately.

once again, controller wrist straps have successfully prevented me from Yeet Saber

The Washington State standards for interpreting imperfect ballots are interesting to me: https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/administrators/2018_voter-intent_web.pdf

It’s this intense study of how to formally discern meaning from arbitrary errors. It’s fascinating to me to see how “common sense” about “what a mark really means” gets codified into law and a common standard.

Profane URLs are a useful tool for memorable, quick access to guides on how to deal with common software developer aggravations - and they also suggest clear room for improvement in the tool they refer to.

Let’s not talk about just how often I need to visit www.fuckingblocksyntax.com or www.ohshitgit.com because I fucked something up again

Periodic PSA: Go turn on 2-factor authentication for every single account you have that supports it. Almost all major tech companies support it, as do many banks and assorted other web sites. The risk of account hijacking drops by several orders of magnitude if you have 2-factor auth enabled.

SMS is the worst kind of 2-factor auth because customer service agents at phone companies are typically a weak link (and will reassign your number to the hijacker when they call). A physical FIDO key (YubiKey’s products, for example), the Google Authenticator app, or Authy are all better substitutes; many password managers also have 2-factor auth management.

Packaged meat products that require refrigeration but have a “use-by” date suggesting a many-month shelf life vaguely disturb me.