This week in squirrels…

From Sun May 10th to Sat May 16th

Summary

  • Family Visit
    • I visited somebody else’s home for the first time in four months!
    • A lot of family has been in town for the last week, so my parents held a little “before y’all go” pool party.
    • It was amazing to actually be OUT and in the sunshade (I am not allowed much sun due to the chemo)
    • But socializing was the best. I have been using my increased energy to try to be more chatty and social again.
    • It did suck seeing family I haven’t seen in a year looking like I am right now. It was right after a dose of chemo to the spine, so I wasn’t 100% either.
  • New Thai Restaurant
    • A friend found an amazing new Thai place nearby that opened in February called Table Thai.
    • Their spice levels are pretty intense. The scale is 0-5, and I found that eating one was enough to have big consequences.
    • But their panang is heavenly! At one out of five, it was still so good. I feel like I could do this at a two.
    • Their tom yum is a one out of five slaps, so much with a serotonin-engaging amount of sweet and heat. However I think that’s as hot as I can go with that dish.
    • I now want to try their tom yum without spice…. soon.
  • Blog work
    • Started the week by getting my blog post out fresh on Sunday.
    • I also merged all the new updates to my theme PaperMod. For the longest time, the dev had really stopped work on the theme, and that was fine with me since it was perfect as is and I had added all my own tweaks.
    • Still a lot of the work looks great, and I was able to remove a bunch of my custom changes and bring it a bit closer to upstream.
  • Helped a friend catch somebody scamming them.
    • I was hanging out in chat with a friend who is brand new to streaming and saw some extremely sus behavior from somebody else in chat.
    • At first, I popped off in chat, but then backed off and engaged in the “stream-team-and-mods” chat of our crew to help look into this person, and sure enough, scammer!
    • The scammer was using AI and bots to help love bomb this brand new streamer, get the streamer to “commission” them for stream assets, and then try to get themselves mod/supermod on the stream.
    • This is a big reminder that scammers are getting GOOD and can build out portfolios, bot armies of “friends who also want to support you”, and lots of resources to trick you. Before giving anybody on the internet money, get some friends to help you vet them. No Shame in the game of being safe.
    • You can also use sites like VGen, Artconomy, Commishes, or Commiss.io. Commission sites come with fees, which means it can cost more. But instead of trusting randos messaging you or hunting all over social media for somebody maybe open, artists list a portfolio of past commissions, what they are open for, and prices up front. More importantly, these services escrow payments to ensure artists get paid, and clients get what they paid for. No platform is scam-proof, but these companies’ primary value proposition is to prevent and remediate scams.
    • Y’all be shocked how many people come into my messages because I am a small streamer and they claim to be a are small artists who would love to help me by getting better streaming assets and growing my audience. Every time my answer is “I’m down to take a look, but I only commission through vgen, so send me your vgen profile, and I will check it out. No exceptions, and I’m not gonna click your socials to take a look just in case.” They never reply.
  • Cannabis vs Chemo
    • I was recommended to try cannabis to help some of the symptoms of chemo, and my doctor OKed it. He seemed more ambivalent than enthusiastic, but said it helps some people.
    • One of my first life lessons in this is that I really hate taking it before bed. Even at small doses of edibles my tolerance is too low and I get so high it wakes me up and then I have the turbo munches at like 01:00.
    • I think this is linked to the fact that I don’t enjoy the high of edibles very much. I talked to a friend of mine who is a huge smoker and they said it was pretty normally for people to experience the different ways cannabis is processed differently, and most big weed people prefer flower.
    • It has helped when used in small amounts before meals. A small hit of vaped flower makes me feel more enthused about eating and a bit less picky feeling, which I have complained as a problem. So far it is helping me re-engage my love of food.
  • New Indie Media Sites
    • I have been trying to spread my RSS reader out to pull in new and interesting news sources alongside all the blogs and videos, and remove some sites that are essentially duplicates. Sorry Verge tech I swear Ars covers everything you do that I care about.
    • I decided on a one-year subscription of Hearing Things since I love finding new music, and the discounted access to news reviews, discussions, and info might be more than worth the cost of a single meal on GrubHub.
    • I am considering also adding The Flytrap, but they are very newsletter-based, and I want my RSS feed.
    • Mothership also looks really cool as a feminist focused game site but I don’t know if I play enough games to justify 70$ a year AND still don’t get a full text RSS feed. I am going to follow their free feed and see if I really like them.
  • Errands and Gas Prices
    • I got in another round of getting out for errands, getting out for groceries and car-washes when it’s a slow time.
    • Gas is anything from $5 to $5.50 on my side of time and it’s mind-boggling that everybody isn’t absolutely losing their mind over this. Or maybe they are and I am missing.
    • With how astronomic prices are, it makes me want to find those Biden “I Did This” stickers people used to put on pumps and restart the pump stickering campaign. However, I don’t think anybody would understand the irony or humor in it.
  • The silent death of libfunnel, spout2pw, and obs-pwvideo
    • On April 22nd, the amazing suite of software by the talented developer Hoshino Lina for enabling Linux streamers to use Spout2 was silently archived.
    • I searched to see if there was a publicly shared reason why this was abandoned, but I could not find anything on any of her socials, the repos, or anywhere else. I did see she is now posting both about the new exciting project she is hacking on and is exploring alternatives to streaming without vtubing.
    • It’s her right, but the timing is frustrating because Proton has moved on from Wine 10 to Wine 11. I gave it a ill test and it seems Wine 11 breaks things and likely she didn’t want to deal with that.
  • Awkward Hello
    • Saw somebody I haven’t seen since the very beginning of the pandemic. I ran into them leaving from an infusion, a hard time to bang into an old friend and explain what is going on.
  • The energy drain.
    • I was feeling like it was about to go this week of huge infusions without this round taking me out, but I was wrong, oh so wrong.
    • Then Saturday evening hit, and I am back to struggling to move around without being dizzy and exhausted, and by Sunday, the act of standing up anyway, but as slow as my aching body and knees will allow, puts me right back down.
    • While my energy is still on a struggle during the beginning of the week, I am working on my stamina and actively trying to be on the computer for longer and longer times.
    • My body is working against that, though. I have challenges still fighting me from exhaustion, tired eyes, and intense swelling in my legs to the point where they hurt.
    • But over the week, I am putting more and more hours in and on Saturday, I got to my home office and spent most of the day on the computer, then more time working on music in my bedroom! I went the whole day without lying down.
    • No inpatient challenges still winning.

Books

  • Rainbows After Storms 9 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
    • This whole volume feels like a setup for the end. There are several “victory lap” chapters recalling lots of their best events in the past, and even B-characters getting some of their own wins.
    • I was flailing on this story a bit, but now that it’s gone into this phase, I am excited to see it through.

Music

  • Keecap’s “FENIAN”
    • Do you need more Irish revolutionary hip-hop in your life?
    • Do you like it when the beat goes so hard?
    • Have you ever wondered what rapping in Gaelic sounds like?
    • This album has been so fire, I haven’t listened to much else at all.
    • Huge recommend
  • Sophie Hunter - Break Shit (Official Music Video)
    • Sophie Hunter is back with FIRE, and I am here for it.
    • I do find it funny this dropped weeks after Lauren Sanderson’s “CUM SAY SOME.” I now want them both on a track, trashing the place.

Reads and Videos

Quote of the Week

Marcus Aurelius has already released you from the obligation to have a Take.

- The Meditations By Marcus Aurelius

In fact, please don’t have a Take.

- The rest of the internet