how's it going

My grandmother was one of my most favorite people in the world. I've often felt regret that I only knew her as a child. She left this world when I was about twelve, quite a few years before I could interact with adults as an adult and really get to know them. I understood things differently as a child. Children don't ask how you're doing when they say hello, because they don't really care yet.

Another great person who passed much more recently was her brother. We conversed many times as adults, although never as much as I would have liked. Still, in some sense it feels like I never interacted with him as an adult, either. I was so wrapped up in myself, even ten years ago, I was like a kid that just wanted someone to tell stories to. 

I had trouble with greetings like "hey, how are you" because it felt insincere. People don't really want an answer, right? Only now does it occur to me that I felt that way, because I was the one that didn't care. If someone was hurt or needed help, I cared in that sense. I just didn't want to hear anyone else's stories. I was incurious, at best. 

I tried to be a good listener, but I certainly wasn't proactive about it. I also had a very hard time asking questions. I'd think because it felt too aggressive or something, I wasn't sure it was appropriate. Beneath all that, it never occurred to me that questions weren't just a good social skill, but that I should take interest in the answers. I didn't even notice the deficit. It becomes easier to ask, when I actually care.

Even engaging with people I've known more recently, I've been more walled off than I'd even realized. In my own world to a great extent, like my father was. Something seems to have shifted in me, coming out of the pandemic. It's distressing to realize how little I've really been present in my interactions with people all my life. I could have had so many questions, but couldn't think of even one.

I don't know why. I was always trying. For what, I was never sure. I'm still quite lost. I'm not sure how much progress I've really made, but this past year has been substantively different. Before the pandemic, I was always hiding in the corner of the gym. Of course I wasn't going to ask anyone how they were doing. Then they'd just try to talk to me. 

Now I say it all the time. Turns out, people often do have real answers.

ministry of truth

"When fascism comes to America" it will come from those calling everyone else fascists, apparently.

"The next war in Europe will be Russia vs fascism, only fascism will be called democracy." -Fidel Castro

Liberals have been crushing dissent with censorship and media control for years, under the guise of fighting misinformation but now they're taking it a step further, making it official. The Department of Homeland Security now has a new arm, the Disinformation Governance Board.

As I've gone from following the news in different ways over the years, I've thought a lot about why people disagree. Often people with fundamentally similar principles will be at each other's throats over differences in the stories they've been told. 

Some people believe Putin has been a great leader. Others think he's a mad dictator whose done nothing but evil. The truth isn't merely somewhere in between. It's not that some people think murdering journalists is ok, and others are against it. People are being told entirely different stories. Why are you being told these vague stories about Putin killing journalists but nothing about Julian Assange? You can't even directly challenge any individual piece of the story, because they're all intertwined into a whole narrative.

It's also a mistake to think THEY'RE being fed propaganda, while I'M watching a free press. Russia isn't North Korea. They have access to the internet, they have lots of different media outlets, alternative and opposition media. Much like us, they can choose to believe what they're told, or they can choose to dig deeper. Much like us, they mostly choose to believe what they're told, including most media outlets.

This is why it's so powerful to control the media the way our corporations do. Instead of state propaganda, we have corporate control over both government and media. They fell behind for a few years with social media taking off, but now they've got it back under control. I don't have much faith in Elon Musk, but it's been amusing watching the liberal freakout over the prospect of losing that control on even a single major platform.

So, this is why we disagree. I follow media that the Ministry of Truth would call disinformation. Liberals seem to think that it makes sense to crack down on anything that runs counter to their narratives. Look how problematic all this dissent has been, right?

Biden has the lowest presidential approval rating in modern American history. They'll tell us that's just misinformation too. Putin has an approval rating in the seventies. More misinformation, I know.. He doesn't need to throw his political opponents in jail. It's the US that's had to manipulate elections such that we keep electing people everyone hates. There's an argument to be made that the US has become less democratic than Russia.

I think it's rising fascism. We're an empire in decline, with the largest military in the world, which we use to brutalize country after country, far worse than anything Russia's doing. According to the array of stories I've chosen to believe, it's the US that needs to be stopped.

Crazy implausible that we could be stopped, except that it may happen naturally in the near future. With the US in decline, as China is ascending, they may overtake us, taking over the world economy. Sanctioning the US if they have to. Most of the world would switch to their side in a heartbeat. Our economy will be smoldering rubble. We won't take it well. There will surely be lots of chaos, maybe even balkanization. These things happen.

I'm well aware that my sources aren't perfect though. The narrative I've pieced together may be flawed. We do the best we can.

what is fun

I've often wondered about how unfamiliar I am with having fun. I'd think about my various leisure activities and, am I having fun with any of them? Not really, no. Entertained, passing the time, but what is this "fun" I keep hearing about?

Sparring and grappling can be fun. That was a clue. Maybe I'm not biologically incapable of it, after all. So, why do I suddenly find myself capable of having fun, only in this narrow way? Well, it's the only thing I do with other people. 

Who sits around and has fun by themselves? Maybe you enjoy yourself and can keep yourself amused, but is it fun, exactly? Really? Probably not something most people have any reason to think about. You don't need to be having fun all the time, but you know what fun is.

Or rather, you've experienced it, but probably don't think much about what it is. How many examples of it just happen to involve being with others? Take examples that don't seem social at all, like riding a roller coaster, and imagine riding it alone. Something would be missing.

Some would push back on this, while others might think it's just common sense, but it occurs to me that I haven't had much fun in my life, because it's not something people generally feel when they're alone. I've had so little fun in my life that I've thought my brain defective, when really the internal chemistry is lacking, because it's predicated on external experience that's lacking.

This is a hard problem though. Even setting aside my myriad social issues, it's common for people in this country to find themselves isolated from any semblance of community, lacking friends or people to do anything with. Loneliness is an epidemic in the US, for all sorts of reasons, while I'm here still struggling just learning to speak human.

overcome

I'm not sure it's a good idea, but I find myself wanting to tell everyone how sick I used to be, even with the caveat that I'm not entirely better. I always want to share my excuses for not excelling at everything, so that people will cut me some slack for existing, but this is a little different.

Rather than see me as a normal person with poor social skills, I want people to know I was an agoraphobic type who barely left my apartment for decades, rarely interacting with humanity at all. 

This probably needs explaining, but in conversation, everything needs to be kept simple. I did step out of my shell on occasion. I was capable of it when it had to be done. I just really hated it. If we're measuring the amount of time I spend out in the world, it could be a rounding error. Somehow I moved around the country, but never left my apartments. How little I interacted with people has been shocking to me, looking back on it. 

In the moment, there are always reasons. Every moment can feel like a special case. For countless different reasons that were all really just one reason, I've gone my entire life without meeting people. Of course that's going to have negative consequences. 

I've been alone much more than not, but to be clear, I have had a few relationships. A few years ago, it struck me that they all started online, aside from the one that started in a mental ward. I was never out in the world, such that I'd ever meet and interact with people. When I lived with someone, they were the only person I'd interact with. Aside from being unhealthy for me, it was also not healthy for said relationships.

I'd make them answer doors and place orders, while I hid nearby. I'd only go grocery shopping if they went with me. I never held a job, because I couldn't even order a pizza, let alone dare a job interview, let alone most jobs. Still feeling bad about the whole job thing, so I want people to know how disabled I actually was. I remember sitting in the parking lot of a community college when I was in my twenties, paralyzed with fear of even getting out of the car. People my own age in all directions. They all looked so grown up.

Ever since going back to school, I've been having this recurring experience wherein I open my mouth in an attempt to express what I'm thinking, only to realize I don't know how to put it into words - but too late, I'm already trying to say things. Isn't my brain supposed to do this automatically? I'm practicing, I guess.

I have a ways to go, but I wish people knew where I was coming from. Now that it's behind me, I'm able to admit just how bad it really was. I was terrified of people. Now it's more accurate to say they make me anxious. I spent my whole life avoiding humanity, compounding the problem, but now I'm working on overcoming it.

If I do well enough at the kickboxing and judo, I have this notion that I'll get some extra slack. I hope it makes up for botching the talking to people bit.

progressive decline

I've been making all sorts of progress lately, but it's never enough. I never know where I'm going or if I'll get there in time. I'm not sure any of it matters, but I'm terrified of losing whatever I can scrape together. Almost there.. Almost.. where again? 

I've kept a lot of it to myself. As much as I lay it all out here, it's difficult to convey just how bad it's been. When I moved into this apartment, I never met the woman who lived upstairs. I'd see her come and go from work every day, but almost never went outside. We never ran into each other. I made sure of that. A year later, she was gone, a new tenant in her place. Never met him, either. Or the woman he lived with, who lived there alone while he was being held in immigrant detention. I never found out what happened with that. I was terrified of them all, for no good reason. They're long gone now. 

I've had many conversation with the guy who lives upstairs from me now. He's been there since before I tried going to college. Around that time, I stopped hiding from people. I was proud of myself. What do I do? I'm going to college! It helped me find the courage to start facing people. It's happened gradually and I still have a long way to go, but I'm doing a lot better. This is just one example. 

A few students volunteer to mop the gym mats at the end of classes. Before the pandemic, I made excuses, and never helped. It made me nervous. When I got back, I just started doing it, too. As I've been warming up to the notion of competing, it occurred to me that a year ago, I wouldn't have even considered it. A year isn't that long, and there have been setbacks.

I'm getting pretty good at BJJ, but at participating in the community too. Going to events, asking for rides when I need to. There's an annual barbecue coming up, after being suspended these last two years. I never went before. Why would I want to? How would I get there? Do I even want anything to do with it?

Now, I know I can just ask for a ride, hang out, get to know some of my training partners better, drink beer. Why not?

I miss thinking I was going to college, getting a career, bee-lining for adult human normalcy, but I think it was always a fantasy. The way things were going, I would have finished my associates degree without any idea of where to go from there. An achievement, sure, but hardly all that motivating on its own.

This progress I've been making instead, I don't know if it's leading anywhere either, but it's more fundamental. I've realized that I need to be honest about just how much of a deficit I'm trying to overcome, here. I talk to people regularly these days. That's not a baby step.

presumptive matrix

As I've fallen back into arguing about the news a lot, I've been thinking about why almost nobody ever changes their minds. Those that do, generally take a long time to come around. It takes a long time for the influx of new evidence and ideas to outweigh everything we've cobbled together already. Not just everything about any given argument, but the entire worldview of context it exists in.

If we're arguing about a given conflict, every piece of the puzzle we throw at each other will be understood within the context of our ideological adversary's existing understanding of the whole situation; everyone and everything involved in that understanding, reinforcing it.

On every issue, there are competing narratives. Entire stories built on countless instances of deceit by the bad guys, and heroic deeds by of our allies. Each event, such as a missile attack on civilians, where both sides blame the other. No matter what the facts suggest, if you're standing with Ukraine, it's going to sound highly implausible that they'd do anything like that - while of course Russia would. 

"In the face of so much horror, Europe cannot turn away!"

A whole matrix of presumptions reinforces our understanding of any facts or events in question. If you've only been getting one side of the story, event after event, hearing the other side will sound preposterous. Our ingrained understanding of context outweigh the evidence, such that contradicting information will look like deceit; Russians trying to frame Ukraine, or vice versa. Every opposing detail in the narrative can look like misinformation.

Argument becomes pointless, tedious, and frustrating. As long as someone is following the same media, that will offset other perspectives they encounter. The countervailing information coming in will have much further to go to ever exceed the reinforcement of the established narrative. Changing minds takes time, but it's also rare that it happens at all. 

I don't know why I care so much. We're all just animals scurrying about doing the best we can to live our lives. Following world events can be a fine hobby, but it doesn't matter so much that I should get all upset about everyone else's terrible opinions.

I'm unstable, reactive, and emotional, vulnerable to negativity. I get wrapped up in it, addicted to grappling with it. I have nothing better to do. When mental health is stronger, mountains become mole hills. So I think a lot about what's making me unhealthy. Loneliness is a good bet, but it's all speculation. I often fear it's just an excuse. I shouldn't need people like this. I should be stronger.

Others seem to take each other for granted though. How important it is to have people to go through the good and the bad with. Not just people to spend time with, but people to lean on when life gets traumatizing. Trauma disorders occur not only when we experience a traumatic event - many people survive such events without developing disorders. The number one difference between severity of outcomes has not been found to be the severity of trauma, but whether victims of trauma had supportive people in their lives to help them through it.

I'm not special. It just really sucks that everyone else has such terrible opinions.

bad days

The Buddhist koan of the original face is about questioning who we are, with every layer of circumstance peeled away. Koans are typically unanswerable, intended to be pondered indefinitely, as a practice of mental focus. There is no original face to be found.

I got to the gym on Monday, and again yesterday. Skipped today. I woke up feeling miserable this morning. I have no idea why. I haven't been sleeping well. I keep trying to take naps because my sore joints and muscles really need it. I find it impossible to care about anything or to want to do anything, except training. The scrap of driftwood I cling to in an ocean of despair.

I couldn't seem to pull out of it all day. I wasn't very creative in my efforts to try, only occurring in retrospect that laying around doing nothing was probably the worst thing I could do. As is typical of such states, I didn't think of anything better at the time. I was too apathetic and distracted by feeling sorry for myself, hoping it would just go away.

Depression is another aspect of who I am that I find difficult to feel very good about, in large part due to how rare it is for anyone else to feel good about it. I dabbled in the goth thing decades back and still tend to dress in black, trench coat and all. Holding on to some piece of myself that had a lot to do with trying to see something good in being miserable. Hoping to find people who could see it that way too. People like me.

Who I am, based on circumstances, like how depressed I am when I wake up in the morning, and my brain's malfunctioning abilities to manage that. I understand why part of me tries to embrace it, but it's not good at all. My whole life has been shaped by it, mangled by it. It's not fair that this is such a consequential part of who I am, but so substantial that I'm rendered socially worthless for it, to anyone who isn't in the same boat?

This is where I've realized it's possible I've been getting it wrong all my life. I don't know that people disregard everything else about me, because of this and all its consequences. People see things in all different ways, not everyone being all that judgmental. It's a difficult and frightening question, but the blanket generalization I tend to make has to be at least somewhat wrong. Self-esteem involves such deeply rooted presumptions.

Unfortunately, that has a lot to do with my actual experiences with people. In particular when I was young, my brain still developing, but as an adult, it becomes a strange question. People like each other in all different ways, and there's very little playing with toy trucks or stuffed animals. Nobody asks me if I want to play, and I don't like most of their games anyhow. I go to the gym, and people ask if I want to spar, and that works, but has its limitations. 

I don't feel like I want much else from them, but I still keep falling into depression. It's a warning light that won't stop going off, in a vehicle that's painfully just sputtering along. In theory, connecting with peers would counteract this substantial part of myself, making for less of an obstacle to being someone I'd prefer to be. That seems to be the basic mechanics of it.

Granted, it hasn't worked out that way much, but for most of my life, I was getting everything else wrong, too. Possibly for endocrinological reasons, but I've also had so much to learn. I don't understand why this is all so hard. Except that I do. I just try not to dwell on all the shit that's gone wrong, because that sure doesn't help. 

It doesn't help, but not dwelling doesn't make it go away, either.

original face

Sometimes I'd read old blog entries and think to myself, this is really good. I like the person who would write something like this. These are my thoughts, surely one of the best reflections of who I am? To like the person as I express a persona here, that is to like myself, right?

Around people, it's amazing how much I stumble to express myself. Not entirely due to ineptness. There are a variety of considerations. It would be inappropriate to tell people all about myself, when we're training together. Still, how I express myself, in that interaction, is also who I am. Arguably more so, in any consequential sense.

That person writing blogs seems largely irrelevant to who I am when it actually matters. Very little of this filters through. I try, but so much of it is just reacting. Moments of insecurity, overcompensating, anxiety. Imperfect in all sorts of ways that aren't an issue when I have time to think things through without people everywhere. This version of myself, I have more trouble reconciling with. 

Allegedly I'm responsible for this person, but I don't understand how that could be true. That I'm finally able to get myself to do anything at all is still pretty new, and to my incessant horror, relapsing these days.

Speaking of being unhappy, it feels like WW3 is coming. This time, we're the Nazis, and we've got Japan, Germany, and all of NATO on our side. It's so fitting that Ukraine is Nazi central. The new Nazism is less about Jews or Aryan supremacy, and more about western supremacy, capitalism, and murderous on an even more massive scale. It's interesting how Ukrainian lore conflates Jews and Bolsheviks though. Jews, Russians, Communists, whatever. First, they did not come for the capitalists.

On the other side, the other half of the world. We in the west are told we're the whole world all the time, but there are a number of other really big powerful countries out there. If they can't stop us economically, they all have nuclear weapons to fall back on, too.

I want to stop worrying about it. It's amazing how not engaging with any of it can make it seem like everything is fine. It feels so much more real than something I have to go out of my way to learn about. If it's not fine, worry about that when it comes, my sister would say.

It's also a dopamine fix to be on the edge of our seats, rooting for the good guys. Knowing western belligerence though, compounded by increasingly incompetent governance, there will be no winners. Team USA may keep escalating, the closer Russia comes to winning. All the way up to attacking them directly, starting a nuclear war. 

Hell, there may be a chemical attack tomorrow, and nuclear war the next day. I'm not saying it's likely, but jfc it's not supposed to even be a remote possibility.

like me

Since I was young, I've had this idea that I've taken a part of each person I've spent much time with, as part of myself. I adapt as well as I can, and in so doing, evolve to incorporate elements of who I perceive the other person to be. There are numerous pitfalls to this, and I'd like to be able to stop. 

Whenever I'm around people, I'm hypervigilant about trying to figure out where they stand, because I fear that any deviation from their values or worldview might set them off, ruining my chances of being liked. I stumble a lot, as I try to get ahead of every interaction. I awkwardly say nothing when I don't have enough information to know what's safe to say. 

I warm up to people, I relax, as I develop a basic sense of how to adapt to whatever biases they have. I stand firmly by my beliefs, by not talking about them when it won't go over well. Even my firmly held beliefs change and evolve such that I may not believe them tomorrow. I'll even set them aside to a substantial degree, in my efforts to get along with people.

In trying to figure people out, in trying to figure my self out, I've become confused as to what the self really is. The idea that we need an identity is itself nonsensical. People have attributes and characteristics, we have preferences and interests. We might prefer someone quiet, or someone loud. We might try to adjust our own volume, if we want to be liked. 

Or we might say fuck off, this is "who I am." That has often been a mindset I've strived for, going all the way back to my mohawk as a teenager. I bristled at the very notion of conformity, but that was just a positive spin on a more fundamental problem.

Someone with more social confidence won't change their behavior for others, not because they're already the same, but because they fundamentally believe that being different is not going to pose problems. I was obsessed with [non]conformity because trying to be social made me feel compelled to conform. I felt that I wouldn't be liked if I didn't. I've longed to meet people "like me" because that's the only way I'd be able to finally relax.

That I've been so antisocial for so long has compounded the problem. It doesn't help uproot the problem when I'm not exactly well liked. I'm tolerated, I'm at times respected for my abilities, but I'm also a bit weird and off-putting. It's strange trying to sort this out from self esteem. I don't think that's a reflection of how I feel about myself. It's just my assessment of the reality of it. To some extent, a self-fulfilling prophecy, but knowing that doesn't seem to change anything.

When I interact with people, I do my best not to think about it, to put myself out there as if maybe I'll be liked. I know that assuming otherwise can't possibly go well. "Be myself," though, I don't think that means anything. I try to be someone that will be liked, but realize that's a contradiction, to even try. I'm supposed to be genuine. I need to put forth more of an identity of my own, or there isn't much to like or dislike.

I can't go lecturing people at the gym about the difference between Tochka-U and Iskander missiles, or the linguistic demographics of Ukraine, in my efforts to explain why I think Putin is the good guy. Maybe most people wouldn't really care that much one way or another. At least it would be a personality, right? Or maybe they'd throw me out of the gym for being a commie. I don't know.

I'm supposed to be myself, but wait wait, not that self.

v * Z * v

In any case, the latest bit is bullshit too of course. Ukraine blew up their own train station. Russia had no motive at all.  Tochka-U fragments strongly suggest it came from Ukrainian military. These were people trying to leave for Russia, which Ukraine has been doing everything to prevent. Even claiming Russia is abducting people, when they take in refugees. The Ukrainian battalions have been shooting Ukrainian civilians if they try to use the humanitarian corridors, but now Russia controls much more of the whole area. 

Russia gave out food and humanitarian supplies in Bucha. You can see the packaging in many of the gruesome photos. Imagine learning that the people you'd given it to were executed for it, as soon as you left. It should be noteworthy that the media doesn't even ask the question. It's just assumed that every attack must have come from Russia. At the very least, acknowledge the possibility.

Western media leaves out this massive piece of context; Ukraine is a deeply divided country. So divided, they've been having a civil war since the US-backed coup drove a massive wedge into the existing division. From Odessa to Donbass, Ukraine is Russian-speaking, and their government was turned against them.

Of course Ukraine would bomb their own people. They've been doing it for eight years already, killing thousands of civilians. This is a well-established, highly relevant and important fact, and that western media never mentions it is insane.

agitated outsider

I just remembered the name of my old Twitter handle. It's strange that I couldn't even remember. I get flak on Twitter sometimes, because my new account is so new. A less established account can be a red flag for all sorts of nefarious Twitter doings, apparently. One reason Twitter is such a cesspool is that it's a perfect format for arguing. People get in the habit of thinking the worst of each other, as soon as possible.

Sometimes I've explained that my old account was deleted long ago. It's made me nervous that if they should ask the name of my old identity, I'd have to concede that I couldn't even remember. I changed it a few times, as is Twitter custom. I tried to use my real name for a while, to appear more serious, and avoid the need to come up with something clever.

It's just argue-media Twitter though. Unless you're a famous brand name blue check, who you are exactly doesn't matter. It's all a bunch of one liners. A few months before leaving, we were having the police brutality riots around the country. The phrase, "outside agitator" was coming up a lot, so towards the end there, I was going by "agitated outsider." 

Nothing good ever came of that, by the way. They just beat the shit out of the protesters month after month, until they stopped. All that going on in the middle of a pandemic, too. Crazy times, and they're only getting darker. Speaking of which, I'm still feverish. Ordered some free covid tests a few days ago. I'll probably get them in 6-8 weeks, because our government is a few decades behind on everything.

Aside from the fever of about 100-101f, I have no other symptoms. Just a little sore in all the places I've had reoccurring issues. My ribs, my knee, my wrists, both shoulders. I wasn't initially inclined to chalk that up to being sick, but it's a little strange given that I haven't even been getting to the gym. I've been depressed and lethargic, but that's typically what happens when I haven't been getting to the gym.

I used to think it was important to be reassured when in doubt, to be calmed when afraid, to be cheered up when feeling bad. I figured whatever our problems may be, feeling bad only makes our chances of overcoming them worse. I believed in trusting that if we feel better, we'd be strong enough to make the difficult choices and do the harder things.

Negativity was my nemesis, causing depression and fear, making it more difficult to do anything. The worst way to get a person to do anything is to make them feel bad, right? Essentially, I had this idea that achievement comes naturally, if we don't obstruct it. A lesson learned in childhood, when it was closer to the truth. Someone should have beaten it out of me early.

I look back on my life, and wow, I really fucked up. I spent forty years making excuses for doing nothing. How I felt in the moment seemed like everything. Now it seems more apparent that we should be less concerned with how we feel, and more with what we're seeking to experience and achieve. We shouldn't be afraid of pain, suffering, or feeling bad. This is just life. The real tragedy is in a life unlived.

It feels like my options are a lot more limited than they used to be. I am taking my own advice to some extent, but still making excuses. I've been making progress, but I'm just about out of runway. Sucks. I have all sorts of great excuses. I ask myself though, is this really the best you could do? Is this the life you want to claim as your own? Looking at everything that went wrong and went right, at who I think I am.. this? Really? 

Fuck you. That's insulting as hell. I should have done so much more than this. Whatever my limitations, I should have become so much more than this.

I compared my situation to that of an old plant, recently. One that's overgrown and dying because it hasn't been well taken care of or pruned. Sometimes the best way to save it to prune almost everything away. Refocus all its energy on the healthiest parts, by getting rid of everything else. That's what I've been doing with training. I cut almost everything else out of my life. I've barely even been taking care of my plants. I devote every bit of energy I can to getting to the gym as often as I can. Which is to say, not nearly as often as it would be if I were younger.

Sometimes it's too late. You do everything to save a plant, but it's a process, and sometimes the countervailing processes of atrophy and death come along more quickly. For quite a while, it can be difficult to tell which way it will go.

v * Z * v

The Bucha Massacre is a propaganda operation by Ukraine to frame Russia for a massacre that never occurred. Your first clue should be the media frenzy to escalate the conflict. Working as intended. Second, look at the original claim that Russians executed these people before leaving, proven by satellite imagery showing the bodies have been there for weeks? Uh, which is it? 

Why does it matter? Weeks ago is a whole other story, and it only explains some of the bodies. Many of them seem to be the Russian sympathizers and "saboteurs" killed by Ukraine after Russia left. Others are random victims of shelling and the like. In other words, they're getting bodies from anywhere they can to concoct this story. There's no evidence of an actual massacre.

It's war, so of course it's tragic. The images are horrifying, of so many people who died in terrible ways. So many lives abruptly unlived. This is why the US should never have been fucking around in Ukraine in the first place, and why Zelenskiy needs to take Russia's peace deal.

thermometer

Finally bought a thermometer last week. I've been meaning to do that for a few years now. Never got around to it until now, years into a pandemic. I feel like this is a good illustration for how dysfunctional I am. Whatever else I might say about why I never get around to shit, I wonder if there's something fundamentally off about how I live day to day.

Sometimes it seems like the small things, the easiest things, which make the best examples. I've been to the pharmacy many times. I make a list, I have prescriptions to pick up, an immediate need to go, which I have no problem with. Thermometer just never made it onto the list for some reason. I never get anything, unless I remember to put it on the list before I leave my apartment. I've learned to cope, but things can still slip through the many cracks in my organizational efforts.

Picking up a thermometer was always in the background, but it took a really long time for it to click that the pharmacy was the best place to pick it up. It's not merely that I never got around to doing it. I never even got around to thinking about it. There were many times these past few years that I've thought it would be nice if I had a way of checking my temperature. Now imagine how much worse I am at dealing with bigger issues.

Now that I have it, I'm not sure it's accurate. Don't these things have to be? It will tell me 101.8, and then 100.3 a minute later. I keep checking because it gives me a different reading every time, but it's always been elevated. I miss the simple glass tube filled with mercury. I'm like an old man who can't figure out this newfangled technology, but it's not that complicated. I'm not sticking it in different places every time, or trying it after a cup of tea.

I don't really have any symptoms, aside from feeling run down. Feeling the worst today, but fever finally seems to be mostly gone. Which is to say, I have no symptoms at all now, aside from feeling vaguely crappy, and that could mean I'm back to normal. Sometimes being sick feels like a break from feeling normal. It can be hard to tell if I'm feeling sick, or just crappy for no reason. So, finally I have this thermometer which was supposed to clarify things.

z * Z * z

Everything is an information war. It's really incredible that even now, almost every argument I get into immediately exposes complete ignorance of the Euromaidan. You know, the US backed far-right coup in 2014, that replaced Ukraine's government with Russia-hating fascists? You know, the civil war that's been going on ever since? 14,000 dead Ukrainians? Doesn't ring a bell?

What, you don't know anything about it, but think it sounds like Russian propaganda? 

There's no getting around that. It's just sad. People largely trust mainstream media, and think others are nuts for trusting random YouTubers, instead. I figure that must be how it looks, but no, there's a little more to it than that. Finding an array of independent journalists and following their work across various platforms can be more of a process than flipping on MSNBC every night.

It bugs me to get into any clashes about which side is winning. From what I can tell, Russia is winning by an overwhelming margin, but taking more losses than what some may have expected. There are reasons for that, but it doesn't say much about the overall direction of the conflict, in which Ukraine is severely outmatched. I hate being put into a position of talking about death and destruction as if I think any of it is good or positive.

It's surreal how many people think Russia is losing though. I don't want to argue, like we're talking about sports teams, like I'm trying to gloat about how well my preferred side is doing. The western propaganda machine seems to be pushing this crazy narrative of Russia being massacred left and right, when Ukraine is actually losing TEN TIMES as many combatants. 

They're pushing this narrative so that we keep pouring weapons and funding into prolonging the conflict. They don't care how many Ukrainians have to die to drag this out, but they have to sell billions in war spending to a populace that might care how futile it is. So there's all these Ukraphiles gloating about how Russia's getting smashed. It's disturbing to see so many cheering a winning team that's actually being massacred. 

Ukraine may be winning the information war, but Russia's busy fighting an actual war. We hear these phrases over and over; that it's "unprovoked" and a "war of aggression" because those are the precise terms which make it a war crime. It's a lie though. It was indisputably provoked, but more legally significant, it was not a war of aggression. It was a war of collective defense, of the Ukrainian separatists along with thousands of civilians being killed by the Ukrainian military in Donetsk and Luhansk. That's why western media tries to sweep that entire part of the story under the rug. Nothing to see here, pretend it never happened.

Seems Russia may have to take Donbass by force, but they've nearly succeeded at that. They were never after Kiev. This will leave nothing left to negotiate but NATO neutrality. Meanwhile, the west can't stop shooting ourselves in the foot economically, while Russia succeeds with their new gold-backed petroruble.

My hope for humanity now lies in the downfall of the US and western hegemony.