Weird dream hiding

2021-10-16Posted by xaminmo

Dream, running around, trying the key fob at night in a sketchy hood. Can’t find the Lambo my roommate bought.

As the dream unfolds, I’m slinking around at night with a hitman gangster (broad shouldered, Italian muscle man) looking for my roommate because he STOLE the car, and a wireless access point, from some rich kingpin.

We’re peering through dead vines crowding a light pole, and climbing over crumbling fences with house demo trash trying to not be too visible to the choppers searching.

Too hot for both of us, so trying to gtfo. We go into his apt, looking fot his keys. His apt is an old Crab Shack, but they don’t sell crabs anymore, only pig lips and assholes.

Anyway, this guy can’t believe the roomie is impossible to find, but just wants out. Song plays like a Vegas show “I ain’t got no… GASOLIIIIIIINNNNNEEE”

Meanwhile, I’m pissed at the roommie, but this ass hole will never find him anyway. My roommate is me, just an alternate personality.

Keep your enemies close, eh?

Surgery Dream

2021-10-09Posted by xaminmo

This waking dream, I was performing heart surgery on someone with a redundant brachial artery. I used foreceps to clamp parallel to the aorta, and began dissecting from the patient’s left side. Two stitches, then reposition the foreceps to expose the middle third, repeat. The last third, I clamped the edge of the aorta already stitched to keep it flat.

Once done, the aorta was perfectly round, and had just a small axial incicision, with 6 stitches. In the dream, I researched making a stepped incision, but I didn’t like the pressure dynamics of how that could rupture.

In waking, a mesh or felt patch seems like it would be appropriate. I don’t know where the redundant artery went, and whether we were going to dissect it distally for removal, or just leave it and let it slowly resorb over time, or what…

I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream of performing medical procedures before, and I’ve not been watching related things on TV either.

Immortality and Feet Creek

2021-09-18Posted by xaminmo

I had a weird dream this morning where I was with an immortal guy, but he was so old, he forgot he was immortal. Business people burned down his big house, and he wandered out back in the moonlight to the water’s edge… Further down the shore were some stone ruins that were his house from when the peasants burned his home for him living too long… There was a short woman who helped guide us through time travel back to each stage in his life, until eventually learning about how he’d started as a wildling in these very woods. We were sitting at a table as she helped him remember. I told the 4th person there with us that I was hiding my feet in the leaves, because the moist clay was so cold.

Erica told me she was sorry she woke me up, but I advised I probably eould not have remembered or experienced the dream. I woke from the floor creaking under her feet, but I said “I woke from your feet creak.”

And for the last three hours, we have been talking about the majesty of Feet Creek, and how only the freshest feet will do. The freshest feet with bulbous heels are served, but the bony parts are gifted to the peasants to make feet stew. We are all grown from feet, and I was lucky to have been grown from the freshest feet. Feet are inexpensive here near Feet Creek, but people far away often struggle due to shipping delays. Instead of being moist, spongy, with soft cartillage, they are tough, dry and bony.

feet.

feet feet.

Connections

2021-08-26Posted by xaminmo

Introspection is important. There does not seem to be a “solution to self”, because we are not problems to be solved. We might HAVE problems that bother us, but WE are not those problems.

Over time, and with work and luck, we can give up some worries just enough to be casually okay with who we are, and how we experience life so that we are not constantly stuck in that worry.

Worry is not banished. We just carve a new desire path slightly away from the worry about worrying.

Worry helps us reassess (second guess), which has a valid purpose, but we don’t need to second guess the fact that we second guess things (worry about worrying).

Double-worry can lead to questioning our whether we are entitled to exist, or imagining judgement from others about our right to exist.

We don’t need to second guess whether we have a right to exist. We exist, and that’s all that matters.

Hopefully, we can all find some joy/love/bliss now and again, and can avoid stomping on others when we’re feeling unwanted.

Everyone is weird to someone

2021-08-22Posted by xaminmo

A lot of people have great, enriching experiences through scouts. I love that. A lot of life skills are available to be learned.

It’s not allways like that. Every great organization has flawed areas. I left scouts because my troupe fostered bullying of weirdos. I was and am a weirdo. Mostly, indifference, and lack of mentorship was the result.

What was supposed to be a pinnacle experience (Philmont was beautiful!) was met with disapproval, and bullying, and leadership punishing me for being upset, but not the bully.

Oh, I absolutely wanted to fit in. I’ve always been weird. Most people don’t care, and some support and encouraged me.

Yet, being odd attracts a lot of negative attention, whether it’s doing things wrong and causing hassle for people, or often just the dislike of “different”.

Not many people stand up to the negative groupthink. Even as an adult, it burns through social credit, mine and others’, just to exist.

Most people don’t want to be the one that others have to defend, or who is constantly in conflict, or the one who always has to step in. People want simplicity.

Everyone is compelled to be a way, and it’s so much nicer when our default self fits. When you don’t fit, it’s an itch, a distraction, a weight.

If you are upset, reassess your part in that. Obviously, if you are harmed, get safe, and feel the feels. But if you simply don’t like how someone is, don’t attack them. Don’t lie about them. Don’t punish them for not being what you expext.

When you see someone doing that, don’t be shellshocked. Forget being intimidated. Join the underdog, and tell the bully to back off.

No escalation, or retaliation. No defending return attacks. If there’s an authority structure, make sure they know, and that no retaliation happens.

And then, everyone moves on. Conflict happens, and as long as it’s not recurrent abuse of power, let it go.

But if it is a recurrent abuse enabled by strength, position, wealth, etc, then be willing to join in with your voice to balance the scales and stop the opportunities from being available.

We get into problems of trust systems here though. Politics is the interaction of two or more people, especially as it applies to trusted information, interpretation, and emotional interactions.

Power is never fully balanced. There is never just one side. Not everyone can escape or flourish.

Just, don’t be the one who harms others, no matter how justified your reasons.

Anti-Wealth vs Anti-Corruption

2021-07-23Posted by xaminmo

These space races bring technology and cost reductions to everything we do in the world. Consider we were struggling to maintain GPS (as in, we had outages in some places in the US and around the earth), but now it costs 10% to launch GPS satellites, and SpaceX has had 5 launches.

People complain about internet access all the time, but now you can pop up high speed internet anywhere on earth, meaning you can move out to the country and still be connected. Monthly is about $100.

Branson and Bezos space launches are $250k per person. The extra seats were auctioned off, and raised $28m which was distributed to charities. It didn’t cost $28m for a launch, though there has definitely been a lot of research money spent. Research money spent doesn’t trickle down to the poor, but it does pay salaries, and pays for manufacturing, mining, etc. This literally pulled extra money out of a lot of wealthy people and gave it to charities.

A recent complaint meme was a zinger that “these billionaires should be competing to solve global warming, not go to space.” We all know how to fix global warming. It’s about being more efficient in everything we do, which is what these technologists are motivating people to do. But, a billion dollars, or even 100 billion does not “fix it”. A billion dollars would provide solar power for 25k homes. Barely a scratch. But a billion dollars can drive the creation of a lot of technology, and motivate a lot more change and improvement than you can buy off the shelf.

What’s happening is that they are transforming technology and the way society works. That is more valuable than buying something now, today. You might think buying food for people would help, but it would be better to work on sustainable technologies and things which help make food production possible. If you buy up all of the food now and give it to people, you just shift money to other pockets, and make food so costly that others can’t access it. You shift the problem, not solve it.

As to their money, these guys don’t have $200b. They own companies that other people want to own. If you have 1 million shares, the first share sold at the highest ask price, and multiply that out, that’s how people come to their prices. But, if you started selling them (to whom?), the price goes down, because not everyone wants it that badly. And eventually, as you start giving up real money, you find that the pressure is 30+ times the actual value of the company. For a small company, you could buy the whole thing, but for some of the largest companies, the valuation is so artificially inflated that the supply of money becomes a problem.

They do have multiple billions in assets, but they don’t earn billions. The memes saying “They made $16m today. Pay your taxes!) They didn’t make that money. That money doesn’t exist. It’s an artificial valuation based on the whims of people deciding whether they like a company or not. You want to tax someone highly on something they own being increased in valuation, then you have to refund them when the real value is less. This is why you tax people when they sell assets. Otherwise, your house went up in value. Why didn’t you pay 28% on that increase?

What’s happening here is that people see “He has money. I want money. Gimme.” It’s a propaganda war against people owning things and being a threat to other people who own things. Aim your frustrations at the real problems. It’s not someone owning property that other people want to buy.

Fight their anti-union stances if you want. Fight for higher wages and better benefits. Fight for higher minimum benefits, and protections against price gouging in pharmaceutical research. Fight for no more superPACs and no more lobbyist bribes and fight for ranked choice voting. Real things, not “big money is big bad.” It doesn’t mean anything coherent to say that.

Fight for changes in the way the economy works if you want. If you want no private ownership, be honest about that as well, but consider what happens when you have a horrible boss and no other job prospects. That’s what you’d be setting up.

It doesn’t make sense to say “ah, stop improving aerospace technologies. Liquidate their assets and spend it all right now.” Because then you don’t have the company doing the improvements, and you don’t have the money or assets for the next time you want to spend someone else’s money. But you would have all of the power of ownership consolidated into a much smaller group, which would have even less incentive to consider anyone else’s needs.

Travel dream

2021-07-14Posted by xaminmo

I was given an assignment, and had just traveled. I was in an auditorium at the travel center near the air terminals. Talking to people while waiting to be clearerd in, and I looked at my watch. I suddenly realized my mother was alive in this year. I showed my excitement, and gathered my things. I had just enought time to visit.

I made my way to the sky train that would lead me to the exit, but I was denied entrance. My wallet had a small bit of wear inside one flap, and these two said it was a fire hazard. I could not tell if they were toying with me to be rude, or because their friend worked at the wallet shop. They warned me to not try to sneak my wallet past them in my luggage. There would be penalties.

Angrily, I made my way out of line, and let GPS figure out where I was. Only two shops available. One closed 15 minutes ago. The other was open. It was a strange but well appointed place, yet they had no slippers. I had to walk around in my socks. They had only one wallet. I could poke my finger through it, and it had no RFID shielding. It was expensive, and would never pass scrutiny. They did have a large portfolio, but I had no way to carry that.

By the time I was done, I had no wallet, and no way out until those two changed shift unless I was willing to throw away my wallet in front of them. I was missing my chance. I marched up to them and sternly told them they were a disgrace, and dishonored their families.

And then I woke up.

Pride

2021-06-02Posted by xaminmo

June is Pride Month. Pride is about awareness and community where people can find some manner of safety from harm for being different from the majority expectation.

Roughly 10% of people in western society are not strictly heterosexual, with variation from 5% to 17% depending on region and other demographics. This is for people willing to privately identify as non-heterosexual.

There are numbers of mostly-straight people who don’t self-identify as less than fully straight. There are people who engage in same-sex relationships who do not identify as LGBTQ+. There are people who are asexual, non-binary, intersex, or other variations of gender and sexual characteristics, identity, etc. who may not identify as non-hetero.

This is not new either. As far back as the 1940s, we find surveys that show a little over 11% identified as K3 (equal attraction to “both” sexes). Plenty has changed in terminology and understanding since then.

While you may think “the gays” are a weird, fringe group, that’s really not the case. It’s more that many people are private about their identity, orientation, and activities. Private does not mean ashamed. It means none of your business.

It becomes everyone’s business when bigotry and propaganda is used to oppress the free expression of constitutional rights, or is used to actively harm others. Then the greater community, including allies, has to stand up.

Plenty of people disagree, including some people in positions of authority or power.

If you value the rights and freedoms of this country, then even if you disagree wholeheartedly with LGBTQIAA+ lives, you still owe it to yourself to help stand up for the rights of Americans, lest you find there is no one left to stand with you when your rights are under attack.

Pride Month is about being proud to be yourself, and supporting everyone else’s right to be themselves, no matter if it’s low-key or freaky. It’s the whole month until everyone can be proud year round without risk of being killed, fired, ostracized, or otherwise mistreated simply for not meeting expectations of others.

Happy pride month to all!

Modern Crusade Dream

2021-06-02Posted by

We were at a Western hotel in Mumbai. The staff were white, and everything catered to the wealthy. Business was off, so we got to visit sometimes for lunch. Something happenned to the staff, and the east side dining hall got no service for hours after seating patrons.

The manager comped four tables, including ours, and gave us a his card. It said we could come in after 11:30pm and before 2:30 am to get leftovers and seconds (errored orders) buffet style for free. But, really, we could come in by 9:30pm, and until 5:30am. Lots of leftovers due to slow business.

This helped because we were always busy in the slums, and never knew when we’d get back. We were a mercenary tactical / investigation team, with not as much budget as we’d like, but enough to get what we needed. A bit of extra time in the fancy hotel was welcome.

We were at odds with the CIA, so we were on alert when we found the two familiar agents standing in our equipment room. They were fatigued, and just said, “load up.”

A Christian extremist group was hunting internationally, kidnapping members of our team, and forcing them to call in warnings. “Do not touch us! Do not touch us!”

We would find the team member, and we would have 10 minutes to query them, look through pockets, etc. Then they would get confused, seize, foam at the mouth, and die. If we touched them, it was contagious, and would get the next person. There would always be awriting, in Arabic, that said “do not touch us”.

This time, they needed our help. The extremists seemed nearly impossible to identify, but always left a subtle clue. We needed more than just that they hated Arabs, they considered themselves Christians, and that they were very well funded.

Safe spaces for identity

2021-05-09Posted by xaminmo

The Internet has given people the ability to find safe spaces. I don’t mean impotent bigots who group and commit violence. I mean people who would typically be abused or killed for being “different.” Many distinctions are not “new”; they have just not been as repressed in the last 30 years.

A prime example is terminology around gender and sex. Binary simplicity is not natural. It is just all some of us learned as kids. No one likes feeling like an idiot, so here are some terms to help go through the mental adjustment privately without having to defend what was socially accepted when we grew up, nor a need to attack the “new” concepts.

Sex – This is body parts. This is not binary. About 1.6% of people are born with some kind of combination. Some is visible, but some is not. Genes, environment, and random chance all have complex effects. Some people even change parts naturally when they go through puberty! This is not unique to humans.

Gender Identity – This is in the mind. Maybe machismo, or maybe delicate behavior. Maybe things match the body, and maybe they don’t. Just like you have a preferred name, and sometimes people call you the wrong name, people have an internal identity that may or may not match external expectation or physical traits.

Gender Role – This is the part you play in society. It may or may not match the above two. This can be complex. Even as simple as liking the outdoors, or not, can be seen as somewhat gender aligned. “The Man” or “The Woman” of the house are common, simplified terms.

Orientation – Who and how you like people. The social expectation is a pile of traits for one gender, and a different pile of traits for the other, with both only being attracted to the polar opposite. In reality, it’s much more complicated, and both personal and social barriers affect the expression of this. Some people have only emotional intimacy, but no romantic or sexual intimacy. Some people are attracted to people more or less like themselves. Etc etc. Any combination is possible. This can absolutely encompass any kind of relationship, but typically is used to address people for whom you have extra appreciation or affection beyond casual acquaintance. This can be as simple or complex as required.

Someone’s identity should never be a threat to you. If you are confused or threatened, consider why, and sort out how to be a nice person about it. Asking questions can be okay if you are genuinely concerned for your own comprehension, but not if you are spiteful or dismissive, or trying to trap or demean someone for not meeting your expectations. A religion is NOT a valid excuse to treat people with hostility nor deprive them of rights for being different.

This is by no means comprehensive. This is more than enough to get some gears turning.

As Star Trek says, there is “infinite diversity in infinite combinations”.