From one perspective, I’ve been a glorified customer service person for the last two years. And some customers are the WORST once you tell then you’re not gonna be around much longer. Like one guys has always been high maintenance, but it’s a disproportionate downer to have him suddenly be distastefully resentful about everything.

Also my supervisor has been doing some very unethical, very illegal shit to my coworker. That’s not the reason I decided to leave, but it sure validates all my misgivings.

Really, really looking forward to the move after next week. The new apt and new job are legitimately cool and exciting, so I’m not just looking forward to the escape aspect of the move. I’m very excited about the next few weeks.

I got a crown last week and I'm starting to worry that it's not taking well.

Ever have one of those dentists/doctors that just jumps to the worst thing? Like, I get an xray of a chipped tooth and as soon as she walks in and sees it she says root canal. Any pain? No pain? Well then, crown I guess.

But now that I have a temp crown on there, there's pain/pressure/sensitivity that hasn't totally gone away in almost a week. It's a molar that goes almost to the sinus. Allergy pills make the pain go away mostly, so I don't know if I should blame my tooth or sinuses or what.

I guess I'm having a great time with this semi-quarantine thing. I'm super productive, did a ton of stuff around the house, washed the cars, cleaned, been creative, made bread, lots of home cooking, and I have zero work anxiety right now

Naan seems like a hard one. Never tried it myself. I've always been under the impression that if you don't have the crazy heat of a tandoori oven, you're gonna get a wonky imitation of naan.

I went out to get flour and there was none. TP-hoarding flour-miser bastards got it.

I have this model bass that I got as a Christmas present which I've been sloooowly working on, and I never remember to take a picture. For reference:

The body is mostly done on mine. It's not all that complex or big, but it's a bit tricky to make given how small it is. I can't find my needle-nose pliers so I've been using tweezers.

This sounds like a story that needs to be told.

I’ve been having a lot of rough days lately. One of the trends that I’ve noticed is that when things turn around or aren’t going so badly, it usually when I’ve had some fresh coffee. Keep that pour over coming.

I kinda missed the boat on this round, but this thing is super cool though. Next time I'll break out the leatherwork.

Hubski pt. 2:

Holiday stuff: I do a half day at work today, then I go home to make cranberry sauce to bring down to San Diego tonight. Work has been slow recently because 1/2 of my instrument setup took a shit and died a while ago. We placed the order for it's $65k replacement which just arrived right now, so I'm stoked!

Maybe it's because I just read a couple essays about this, but I'm seeing the Legibility problem everywhere:

Well, that's the first I've heard of white coffee. I guess I'll keep an eye out for it to inevitably pop up in one of the many trendy coffee places around here.

IIRC, we're coming up on time to discuss The Dispossessed.

I'll admit I haven't actually finished it yet. I'm most of the way through it, but I just haven't been doing a lot of reading lately.

I can't keep from thinking that this whole experiment is a spin-off of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

I've been playing a lot of raquetball and I've been getting better at it. I'm closer to the raquetball gym at my new job, so that gives me more opportunities to play and work out in general. Overall, I think the new job is working well with me lifestyle-wise. Things at work are starting to fall into place, the band is heading back to the studio next month, everything's coming up Milhouse.

Before everyone else piles-in, I wanted to remark on the cultural 80'sification that Stranger Things has marked. There was a point where I hated everything 80's--music, style, etc. I'm pretty much entirely flipped on that now. It didn't entirely start with ST though. For me, before that it was watching Twin Peaks for the first time, vaporwave, unomoralez's tumblr, early X-Files episodes (though that was more 90's), an obsession with synths, and so on. I suppose the 80's revival was always inevitable, but it seems like a thing that should be included in an ST discussion.

Reddit events, generally. Whenever there’s a flare up of “rah rah reddit is terrible” in response to some policy change etc., and in the event that someone mentions Hubski somewhere, there’s a small surge of users. Although sometimes people mad at Reddit because they banned r/fatpeoplehate are poor Hubskians.

I, for one, am super interested to hear what you’ve recorded.

Does international political influence and espionage count as new and innovative use? Lets make hubski the hub for the pro-California secession botnet.

I’ve been playing racquetball a decent amount lately. I’d actually play it more often if it were convenient to, it’s been pretty fun.

I’ve also been tearing through some paperbacks I got from a used book store a couple weeks back. Right now I’m on this odd illustrated novel by Frank Herbert: Direct Descent. Every couple pages it has a full page illustration and it is very 80s. I’m not far in yet, so remains to be seen if it’s any good or not.

I’ve also been watching Chernobyl on the tail end of our GoT-mandated HBO online subscription and I’m hooked.

Ok, so the other night I finished The Gray Prince by Jack Vance and have to vent my frustrations with it. The premise of the story is you have a planet colonized by humans ages ago, then more sophisticated, advanced humans conquer some of those “native” humans and establish a semi-legal domain over their lands and people. The whole thing is very much a stand in for colonialism and especially the status of Native Americans and whether they should have the right to regain their seized lands.

Through most of the novel, the narrative seems to approach this with nuance and faults that affect both sides of the debate. On the onset it seems like you are getting into a situation with many shades of gray nopunintended. However, quite steeply in the later part of the book, Vance goes through great lengths to strip the scenario of any nuance and paint the ruling “land barons” as unequivocally right. Really, looking back the whole book was a fraud. It never intended to handle this topic with any complexity, but sneakily wanted to make a might-is-right wet dream scenario. The land barons only look racist, but actually they’re wholly 110% benevolent and actually understand and respect the native cultures far better than the naive and idealistic liberal urbanites. And the natives unconquered by the barons are savage and unredeemable whereas the same people under the land barons are civilized and happy. ... ugh. The narrative itself was enthralling enough but the substance was grotesque and left me with a betrayed feeling upon finishing it.

NPR has been having a series in the mornings where they look into stories of elderly being targeted by financial scams. Even with no signs of dementia, people get more susceptible to these scams as they age and lose their ability to discern trustworthiness.

Not related, but my SO and I were walking by the bust stop one day and a guy came up and said he needed some particular small amount to make the bus. My immediate suspicion was that the story was bunk, but my SO had already given him the few bucks he supposedly needed for the trip. We weren’t even out of earshot before he was asking someone else for the change he just received.

Happy new year hubski. I'm counting calories again. That's not specifically a new year's resolution, it's just a necessity of the season.

I also removed a bit of my finger with a vegetable peeler the other day, so typing right now is a bit slow. It will also be kinda hard to play bass until it grows back.

Already sent in my mail-in ballot. Nervously awaiting to see what happens.

The entire cult of those who open their ketchup cups is built upon lies, misinterpretation and shitty journalism.

I wish every moronic lifehack got a takedown like this.

Cool! I actually finished the second book not long ago, and I'm curious to read the other installments by Herbert. I would say the second book actually goes into more detail of the aspects that intrigue you. The prophetic messiah story is very present, but there's also a lot more scheming and politics that are enjoyable to read.

I mentioned in #pubski I've been reading Dune for the first time, and it's easily one of my top-favorite books now. I'm inclined to go back and watch the 80's movie, and also the miniseries which I'm not familiar with. Is the miniseries any good?

I've also been reading some Harlan Ellison short story collections which I really like. The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World collection is pretty great.

Car shopping time. My gf’s Saab 9-3, which is nearly identical to mine, had the water pump/thermostat eat shit, and the repair bill is bordering 1k.

She’s looking at a certified pre-owned Hyundai Sonata from ‘15-16. If she gets a cheaper one, she may repair the Saab anyways and keep it as a spare, cause god knows if my car hits the same snag I’m SOL. I just passed 200k too.

Either way I’m totally stealing her cup holder to replace my broken one.

This is one area (of many) where I blame the ever growing academia bubble. We’ve spent so long as a society championing the sacred virtue of learning and knowledge, and it’s enabled a vampiric money-sucking approach to take over even the public education institutions. Everyone get a degree! Yes you can do it! $80k in debt for that art degree? Sure thing! There’s nothing curbing this irresponsible pursuit of financially ruinous education, and more and more fields are going to get swallowed by it.

Library Sciences and Art may have been questionable degrees from a long-term financial perspective since a long ago, but since tuition is steadily rising and salaries aren’t, every degree is going to fall in this pit if nothing changes. I find myself wondering if I’m in that trailblazer group whose advanced STEM degree was one of the first to be not worth it.

So yes, we are churning out artists with no regard as to whether they should be artists or not, but we do that with everything now.

Makes me think of 50's jelllo abominations. Just because you were conditioned to accept something from a young age, that doesn't mean it's not objectively horrifying.