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*supposed* to be a sapient lizard planet but apparently my copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide was sixty-five million years out of date, so I've made do with the species that at least has smartphones.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.

noun: potato

verb: potate

Btw, who around here does use #VRChat? I go by Kistaro on there, too.

I am still upset with myself for not making more of an effort to stay in the inflatables meet and talk to folks, and on top of this I am now sneezing, headachey, and lung-achey, so... yeah, not in the best headspace right now. I want to get in a better state of mind so I can hop back on VRChat and try again at this “being sociable” thing but I’m having a hard time.

one event I'd been looking forward to on the Furality VR furry convention since the event slate was announced was the inflatable/pooltoy furry meetup, I lasted less than 25 minutes before bailing out and I left with a _shorter_ VRChat friends list than I came in with and I kind of hate myself for failing so intensely at socializing, in literally a best case scenario for a social event of that nature (I'm actually at home, I get to see people as they want to be seen and not as humans, I can control the volume, I know some people in the event, etc.).

"Toast, being an inanimate object, lacks both the ability and the desire to right itself.". --Important information from Wikipedia

Rakeela now has the classic symptoms of early COVID-19 other than fever. We can’t get a test because we don’t have a car. I have had extraordinarily mild similar symptoms for a while.

If we’re lucky, everything will stay very mild and we’ll fight it off and have immunity. I don’t like relying on luck.

Furality: just like a furry convention, including the part where I'm surrounded by strangers and I don't know how to interact with anyone, except at 5 FPS

my poor graphics card. my poor brain, strapped into a headset at that framerate...

So here's something for @Leucrotta and @ceralor if y'all ever try VRChat: https://gumroad.com/l/NiKnP

I am developing increasingly visible muscle from Ring Fit and Beat Saber. I feel like this is *supposed* to cause dysphoria because visible upper body muscle is a guy thing, and I don’t like being immediately pigeonholed as male, but it’s not. It’s making me feel better about my body and the work I’m putting into my own health. I prefer athletic body shapes and I’m gratified to see myself looking more like I’d like to.

I would still rather be a vaguely athletic lizard creature than a vaguely athletic primate creature, but I’ll take what steps I can get.

And no, “athletic” to me does not mean “roided” for men and “anorexic” for women. It means a solid build capable of moving with strength. This opinion may be affected by my spending years learning judo from a 50-something-year-old 300-lb Japanese woman who often wore (and, as far as I know, still wears) a “World Bench Press Competition - Champion” T-shirt under her gi.

(Not that I know exactly that she was 300 lbs, but I know who in the class was 240, and having lifted and thrown each of them - with obvious difficulty, and their cooperation, but still - yeah, Eiko Shepard was the heavier of the two and it wasn’t close.)

Atari is now sending me spam advertising how the cryptocurrency they’re launching, with which to launch an online casino, is now being integrated with Litecoin to make it easier to get started with Atari Token.

How the mighty have fallen.

a ferrous wheel

housecat: n. A small carnivore that, over the course of centuries, domesticated humans to act as their servants