If you buy a house or rent an apartment in the blue zone, that’s on you.
Rest of the flood plain maps for S’ólh Téméxw are here
also as of 11 am today Facebook and Instagram have been down for ages and I’m LAFFING SO HARDT
Category: Internet
Forbidden Vancouver
Missing John today
I offer my thanks and praise to the protectors of these lands and waters. It is a good day to be in MST country, stolen but never ceded, surveyed but never yielded. I live in a state of obligation and I am a guest and visitor here. For two foot and four foot, many foot and no foot, all the creatures and people, may it be a good day.
I hate it when I pay for a craigslist ad and the first person who answers is a scammer using a phone service in Spanish who can’t even answer a basic question about the lower mainland. I know I’m a delicate flower and sensitive to rejection but it just makes me want to borrow a nerf gun and go on a low casualty rampage. You will remember that it was a threat of violence (a slap…. not a gun shot, not hacking someone’s feet off and making them eat them, not machetes, or claymores, or eating Eatmores till you burst, or being turned into a skid mark under a halftrack, or being asphyxiated in a ten foot deep tub of glitter, or being made to watch the ten worst episodes of Supernatural in a row, or being bisected by a thermal lance, or being shoved off the Trümp Tower, or any such life ending stuff a slap people, that’s all I offered the racist piece of shit) that took me off twitter in the first place. No sign that I’ll ever get back on, unless I create a whole new persona. NNNNNOOOOO THANKS.
This morning at 10 am I’m going to do the same thing (but different) with Tammy as I did the last time she was in town, mostly because we enjoyed the hell out of it – Forbidden Vancouver’s tour of the historic sites of Gay Vancouver. (The last time was more of an architectural walk, and what an eye opener that was! Seeing the place opium was manufactured? Seeing where the anti Asian riots broke out… not a pane of intact glass in Chinatown!? Seeing the first skyscraper in Vancouver, in context… it was wonderful! Nearly getting run down by a woman cop driving a squad car and laughing immoderately up in her face! ah the pleasures!) Anyway, full report tomorrow, at the latest. And between 8 and 9 am I have to ensure that I have a proper carry seat, because Tammy was amazed how much more pleasant it was to walk all over hell’s half acre on pavement when you can whip out a chair and sit for 2 or 3. (We shared, like one do.)
I’m writing this at 5:15 to 6 am in the morning; I don’t have internet from 4 am to 7 am in an effort to ensure that I’m actually writing at that time of day, or at least not disappearing down that rabbit hole. Now that twitter (an aching gap in my day, which speaks alas more to my self-indulgence (verging on addiction) than to its utility… because really what I wanted was to have a bigger audience than I do on my blog, which simply isn’t interesting enough to have 500 visitors) is gone, I’m mining karma points on Reddit. I got 4000 points in two months, so you can tell I’ve been a busy lassie. And, as with this blog I have no freaking idea what people will respond to. It all seems to be timing.
The last time I was at the Junction Keith commented that the r/vancouver subreddit has cleaned up a great deal over the last, say, six months or so. Less overtly anti Chinese racist bullshit – still a lot of hate for the homeless, I’m still stinging from my dog pile of downvotes from the last time I stuck up for the unhoused, and fuck you, a certain user on reddit who would like to push the homeless around with ‘scoops’ like Soylent Green, I hope you think better thoughts and type less nasty words in future.
So looking forward to this morning!
I checked in with Stella the talking dog today and she used the word ‘mad’ after being told she couldn’t go play in the park until after mum and dad ate. She was very calm about it though. I love that dog. (hunger4words on instagram) Apparently ‘all done happy’ translates in dog to THANK CHRIST YOU’RE OFF THE PHONE
little bits of happiness
I’m still working through the throes of coming out of a twitter addiction but the results over the past two weeks are:
1 I’m no longer subject to strangers hitting me up for cash
2 I’m no longer getting live feed of people being killed by ‘their’ governments, drowning in floods, being shot by police, wildfires and other up to the minute disasters
3 I’m posting more to my own blog
4 My mental health has improved marginally – I feel less desperate and less oppressed by the state of the world
5 I’m writing more
6. I miss Pebble in the Sky and so many other people on twitter, I want to hear their voices in my head, I miss them so much. But I’ve been telling people on twitter for years how to get hold of me, so if they don’t, they’re busy, and that’s okay, or they didn’t make a note, and that’s okay too. I miss the funny ones, the writing ones, the dead serious about the working class ones, the technoweenie anarchists and the Ottawa grannies and the filkers and the local journos.
speaking of writing more, out of the 1500 words I sent to my mOm the other day, she unerringly picked out the single sentence of dialogue that encapsulated it and I just want to say publicly that mOm can claim to be suffering from mental deficits and I’m going to repeat what the cognitive scientists say; old people get to the same place as young people when given time for the tasks they must solve…. and when not subject to be hassled while they’re thinking.
I am old too, you know. I’ll get there eventually. And in the meantime I’ll quit telling her to respond fast, I’m stepping on my own cloak there.
of all the things
I’ve been locked out of my twitter account. I could rant at length about how unfair it is, but it’s like everything that’s free, every once in a while what was free becomes scarce, as when your murderer stands on your windpipe and the air that for so long was free becomes unavoidably rare.
It’ll probably be the best thing that ever happened to me. I know I’m not going back on Fehbook, so I guess this is the end of my foray into social media, except for AO3 and this site. Except of course, that there’s nothing social about this site; I provide content and you peruse it, and you don’t have to read ads or fend off bots while you’re here. I would love it if the people who read this blog would engage with it, but that’s not the audience I draw, and whining about it won’t change it.
Anyway, I said I wanted to slap the girl on reddit who didn’t want a 98 year old woman (this would be the only grandchild wedding reception she likely would ever attend) at her wedding reception because she didn’t want her at ‘her party’.
Since this woman posted anonymously on reddit I can’t have engaged in ‘targeted harassment’, but fine. If Jack don’t want me making free content for him anymore cool cool cool. If the only playing field I have a hope of levelling is the one I have to pay for, ainsi soit-il.
Dylan has been sued civilly for grooming a 12 year old girl about when I was that old. What men get up to, when they get a chance.
I made fried chicken breast on a bun with onions lettuce tomatoes and cheese. It was nom.
why do I love this person’s account
From @PasturesPolitic ‘s account this am:
if you ever want to know how you’d react in a scene out of a horror movie, move a storage box you forgot had music boxes in it and you’ll see when the slow creepy music starts and dies away out of nowhere
where no good deed is punished HEY mOm
Jan says through Instagram OMG allegra.sloman This is the best package of fabric off cuts EVER! Holy crap, my brain is spinning with all the things I can do with these… thank you, my darling, for a much needed surprise and the excellent mood elation! So gorgeous and rich. I will do your mum proud.
And now I must ponder how to best utilize the space babes…
here’s the pic, photo credit J Maxwell, from instagram
Hey mOm isn’t that a little shot in the arm!? I decided I wasn’t going to do anything with and actually gave it to someone who could and the world is now officially a better place.
aw shucks there’s more
she says she’s rich with opulent schmatta, these fell behind a chair LOLOL how can you tell she’s my fRiend
my last public words on the subject
updated 25 nov
I told Jeff that watching Supernatural was like having an abusive boyfriend for 4 years (I only started watching late in 2016)
If I’m posting word counts in future it won’t be for fanfic.
Somebody made a canonical list of all the queer people that were killed in the show
I was wrong about it being Jensen’s fault, but everything else I got right.
Happy endings are for chumps.
But hey, don’t take my word for it, the aggregators are speaking!:
not for me thanks
trending on twitter
this coffee table book is currently trending on Twitter
mOm and pOp of course recognize it – it’s been floating around their living room since the year it was published. At the time, the concept did not exist – that hundreds of photographers, professional and otherwise, were supposed to go forth and take a picture on the same day for curation and collection as a snapshot of the zeitgeist.
Since then, dozens upon dozens of books have been published along this theme, for dozens of countries. This kind of omnibus album became popular.
People have been posting pics from inside the book and making hilarious, occasionally anxious comments about them. It’s great. And that poor cat. And what is the baseball for? is she going to talk to the priest about his handsiness? it looks like a confirmation dress…
and Canada, it was qwhite something then
Also from social media, figureoutthesea AKA Nicolas Demers on Instagram took this at Deer Lake – quite the action shot eh??? He has tons of amazing bird photos, the abovenoted link goes to his blog with better res pics hint hint mOm.
THE INTERNET HAS A CAT AND IT PURRS headphones or good speakers required.
an anonymous wikipedia edit
Someone really useful on twitter just blocked me because I ‘sexualized their feed’ well THEY WERE THE ONE TALKING ABOUT SLOPPING DOWN FORTY GALLONS OF HUMMUS lands’ sakes. That has nothing to do with this:
Wikipedia editor MN070 is responsible for this gem, which has probably already been edited back out, but isn’t it a sweetie? someone with a lot of neck in Irish slang is a chancer, someone with a lot of nerve, who takes liberties….
oops yeah no
seven mutuals toasted
That means nothing to you but
I’m on twitter
I follow people on twitter
I find out that other people on twitter are following a writer who gives the most disgustingly ableist writing advice I’ve ever seen. Rants ensued. I read the advice READER IT SUCKÈD
So I found the person who gave the advice on line, found who follows me who follows her, and unfollowed them all (and I know one of them IRL, although I doubt like hell she’d remember me). They were all middled aged white writers.
that was easy, and I still follow hundreds of people
the Indigenous people I follow on twitter put baby Yoda beadwork and yawning bobcats into my feed, not pathetic ableism
the Black people (especially the disabled Black women, my god) I follow on twitter make me feel before I think new thoughts because I can’t hyper intellectualize my way into a better world
and that’s good because science says that white people are less empathetic than people who aren’t white, AND WHY WOULD THAT BE
just called twitter a gunnysack full of weevils
in response to this. If the link disappears, here’s the skinny, written by Catalin Cimpanu for Zero Day; reported on line 3 Feb 2020
In an email seeking clarifications about the incident, Twitter told ZDNet that they became aware of exploitation attempts against this API feature on December 24, 2019, following a report from tech news site TechCrunch. The report detailed the efforts of a security researcher who abused a Twitter API feature to match 17 million phone numbers to public usernames.
Twitter says that following this report it intervened and immediately suspended a large network of fake accounts that had been used to query its API and match phone numbers to Twitter usernames.
During its investigation into the report, the social network told ZDNet that it also discovered additional evidence that this API bug had also been exploited by other third-parties, beyond the security researcher at the heart of the TechCrunch report.
year end round up – all the best up to the number of 50 which is so freaking arbitary
- Jeff
- Recovering a normal digestive schedule after getting rid of my ulcer last year
- Wrote a lot of songs (melodies, airs and instrumentals) this past year
- Published Upsun
- Alex
- Mike
- Peggy
- mOm and pOp
- Keith continues to challenge himself and the results are wonderful
- Katie is a safety officer and if someone had told me that when she was 15 I’d have fucking choked to death laughing, or possibly crying, or walking into a door from just the utter strangeness of such a happening
- Reconnecting on twitter with my second oldest friend, Liz GOD WE ARE LAUGHING NOOOOOW
- The Black, Latinx, trans, disabled, Indigenous and combinations thereof activists and academics on twitter who hold me to my oath to improve my understanding of gender and race every damned day
- @GreatDismal is great on twitter (William Gibson of Neuromancer fame) because he supports his wife and children in their endeavours, reposts the coolest damned stuff, and is fucking hilarious in that standard low key way of his.
- @DecolonialBlack – his tweets are one third pure fire, one third reasoned argument and one third hilarity through a very fine lens and all of it educational as hell
- @cricketcrocker I won’t say she’s my fave Indigenous person on twitter cause I still think
- @apihtawikosisan is that person mostly because of how she talks about her kids and also her clarity with language is like drinking elfin wine
- @ConnerHabib is my fave male sex worker / cultural commentater on twitter
- @whoresofyore is so wonderful in so many ways she gives me life ALSO she does everything she can to repost pictures of non-white sex workers and also men wearing allied uniforms in wwII which is like freaking awesome. Some of her reposts are racy as hell, and it’s very nice to see some black and white booty for a change in a full colour race toward hell
- @SFdirewolf is getting me on board with disability rights – she is FYYA (FIRE)
- LOVE @ZoeSTodd although sometimes I find her challenging
- @StephanieCarvin is about as politically correct as a hand grenade in a barrel of refugees but she sure has a lot of well researched opinions about Canadian security and so as long as I’m writing about asymmetrical warfare in Vancouver I kinda hafta pay attention – and she is grimly feminist and no chump, so I accept her as she is
- @Olivia_Graciela AKA Auntie Carpet Weed is freaking awesome. If you’re on twitter follow her and get dragged into the light Indigenous women are holding up over their challenges
- @xodanix3 another amazing person worth following. She has a mean streak I quite like.
- @BorschtSiouxp is likewise full of bright beauty and hot takes and awesome
- @IvaCheung takes on user guides, grammar, social justice and life in general and I love her with whatever my gristly heart can beat out
- @Inked_Archivist who not coincidentally is my biggest fan (Upsun series) and posts fantastic SJ stuff from Europa and the Netherlands I wouldn’t otherwise see.
- @GeorgMir is my dose of Austrian game making fandom – a beautiful soul who wants the best for the world and ain’t takin’ no shit in the process
- @APebbleInTheSky is my favourite anarchist
- @rechelon is not my favourite anarchist but I need him because he’s the only anarchist I know of who is remotely consistent in his personal and political life
- @cjane87 is an amazing writer and opinion leader and her comments on sports events especially football have given me more laughs than I can count
- @bogiperson is an amazing writer and anthologist and I’m a better person for reading their posts and links
- @SpicyTunaRo not exactly as spicy as advertised but has given me plenty to chew on regarding Indigenous rights and history
- @MikeStuchbery_ is so wonderful I’m just going to tell anyone who is on twitter to follow him. He’s not always right but he’s edumacational as all get out.
- Alex not drowning on my watch at Edmonds Community Centre
- Paul driving back from Seattle in the rain to housefilk at Cindy’s in January and Paul in general and I hope his ears are burning over what we said about him today, all nice except his driving of course
- @LuxAlptraum, not perfect always perfect for me
- @gerdurhalldora is the magical Icelandic woman who showed me around a very small part of Reykjavik and I’m SO HAPPY I MET HER
- The Iceland trip, all of it. The landscape, the people, even the food although I’ll eat fermented shark in hell and not before…
- This message on facebook was about me. IFUCKINGROCK screw the haters
This morning, I had the longest facebook messenger convo of my life and it was, with little exaggeration and without getting into personal details, a life saver.
Technology really can overcome distance and give you meaningful connections with people far away.
Reach out to your friends, and you will get and give support in ways you can’t imagine.
We all need each other.
I am grateful and thankful for the love and support of my girlfriends. - the picture of the grandson of the above noted friend HAPPY SIGH
- really feeling like I’m coming around from this depressed period. writing at least 300 words a day
- Starting to meditate – still not consistent at it but I am enjoying how hard it is
- published 114000 words of fanfic on a03 JUST THIS YEAR if you think I haven’t been writing I basically never stop
- Rawd’s package came for mOm and what a bonanza of family history
- mOm fell down and got a hip 18 months faster than she was booked to, got the surgeon she wanted and got a private room — this is like hitting a hole in one from the moon even if you live in a major metropolitan area in Canada
- season three of The Expanse
- My mOm, just now, reading A PURE FIRE LETTER FROM FAMILY HISTORY ABOUT THE HORRORS OF FUNDAMENTALIST CHRISTIANITY YUP YUP YUP
- Margot dying was horrible but how kind we tried to be about it was not and what happened with Deimos was a fucking tragedy but it was not made worse by the people around me and that’s not nothing
- Mike, who needs two mentions
- Jeff, ditto
I posted the first para on fb, now look what my friends said.
I have now learned what happens when you put bubble tea in the fridge overnight, and I have a big first world sad. The tapioca pearls become tasteless rabbit pellets of regret.
Kevin M said: Yuck
Shane said : Rabbit pellets of regret. BAHAHAHAHAH!
Diane said: Become?
Allegra Sloman said : I swear it was translucent and looked like fairy snot not six hours ago.
Andi said: And that was….better???
Juliana said: Personally, I think it starts out that way but YMMV.
Andi said: I don’t drink lumpy drinks.
Debbie said: Man, you kill me, Allegra.
Lynn said: Interesting. I tried making bubble tea at home and wound up with a pot of lumpy tapioca paste (and no, I did not use the microwave!).
Janice said: Oh! That’s what regret tastes like!
Allegra said: Believe me, regret has *many* flavors.
Kevin said: I’ll have the rabbit pellets of regret please. Unless the leftover stir fry of soggy disappointment is on special
Lois said: Leftover stir fry of soggy disappointment……..Yum!
Erin said: That’s the best thing I’ve read all day!
Miles Vorkosigan said: The Tasteless Rabbit Pellets of Regret is now the name of my Robin Thicke cover band.