Random Thoughts, December 14 2025

Four fingers with sparkly dark red gel polish
 and a snowflake on the ring finger

How do they not see it? Or maybe they don't care, as long as they've got theirs. That does seem to be the pattern.

We're at that point in the ongoing crisis in my country (it seems cyclical), when I'm snoozing even people I like and/or agree with on social media, because I can only take so much outrage before I need to go suck my thumb in a corner.

Speaking of thumbs...

Why, yes, my daughter did get me a pre-holiday full set of acrylic nails with sparkly dark red gel polish and snowflakes on my ring fingers for an early Christmas present. The thumbs are done, too, but none are in the picture.

I forgot how hard it is to type with nails that extend past my fingertips, as it's been years since I've had them this long.

Actually, I forgot how hard it is to wrap gifts, rub my eyes, roll my socks up my legs, and pop open a can of seltzer water with nails that extend past my fingertips.

People who would rather snipe about taxes than actually respond to requests for help during unprecedented flooding in my area make me want to slap them. Of course, I'd have to get within six feet (these people, in my experience, are also generally antivax and antimask), and I might accidentally gouge one of their eyes out with these nails, so I'll have to content myself with helping those in need and merely fantasizing about slapping the selfish assholes instead.

Wow, my skin looks extra super dry in that picture up there. Must use extra lotion.

Tomorrow is Accessory Day at my workplace. Hanging with bus drivers in reindeer hats and light-up garland necklaces is always a fun time.

I'm sure glad Abby made it home for the holidays before the flooding started in earnest. The area between her school and our house is pretty wrecked.

I'm also glad that my workplace is collecting warm coats and the like, in addition to the food drive.

Must wrap the last gift for my Secret Pal for this quarter. Should've done it when I had all the stuff out for the kids' gifts this morning.

While I was writing this, Lizzy announced a charley horse in her right calf and we looked up the origin (unknown but likely from 1880s baseball slang comparing players' leg cramps to old horses), and she is both amused and slightly annoyed by the fact that the treatment I recommended (a banana and hydration) actually is the approved treatment.

That's all I've got this morning.

Tech and the Student in 2025

Bitmoji cartoon of a brunette-with-grey
woman wearing a doubtful expression
with the caption "ummmm..."

I participated in a Facebook post this morning about how the more tech we have in schools, the less well students perform. 

I had a few thoughts. 

More than a few, actually, and it got so long I thought it would make a decent-length blog post, refreshingly not (primarily) about the horrific things my government and their lackeys are doing. I'm pretty pro-tech, having worked in the industry, and I also believe that content is more important than time spent. Not to mention the irony inherent in complaining about technology on Facebook, of all platforms.

So here goes (expanded somewhat from the initial response).

~~~~

I suspect (from observation as a former student, current parent of a high school senior and a college senior, techie, all-around geek, intercultural communications graduate (online, no less), and McKinney-Vento driver for my school district) that it's several things.

• The tech: sure. It came very fast, and it's very engaging/distracting. It has its good points, like easy access to information or the ability to communicate in ways we haven't before or spell check, and its bad points, like easy access to misinformation, internet bot trolls, and Grammarly nagging me about sounding more professional on my personal blog 🙄. Most of the other bad and/or inappropriate stuff is blocked on school devices by district IT departments. And also the tech was aided and abetted by...
• The pandemic: yep. The surge to techify wasn't out of nowhere; if we wanted them to have school at all, it was through this medium. We required teachers and students to do it the technological way, and then when it was (mostly) safe to come back into the buildings, we expected everything - including the kids - to revert seamlessly. Even those kids who started school over Zoom. And also...
• The performance: this too. If we're expecting identical performance output when the method of input has changed, that's highly unlikely to happen (case in point: the loss of cursive in much of GenZ and Gen Alpha), as well as...
• The disconnect: the way it's traditionally been done does not work for everyone, and yet here we are, refusing to change with the times. The tech is here. We can't just stuff it back into Pandora's Box at this point.

So here's the thing. I believe the tech is here to stay, and we can try to go back to the old ways all we want to; it may work in small pockets, but it's not the be-all and end-all. There's a difference between tradition and stagnation. How many people, even in my generation (X), were ever required to, say, diagram a sentence? The only time I've seen that was in literature set in the 19th century or earlier. We have regained some older skills, and let others slide, and that's... well, it's evolution, really. Progression. 

It's not intrinsically bad. Like most things, it's the way in which it's used.

"No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Die"

A bitmoji cartoon of a brunette with grey
woman, pinching the bridge of her nose, as if
to stave off a headache.

You know, everything going on in and around my country right now would be funny in its over-the-top ridiculousness if it weren't so dangerous and scary. 

It's like my government is currently made up of a Bond Villain - or even one of the many many parodies of the same - and his lackeys. Except that most of them aren't as smart or as classy as Bond Villains.

But no, they have to take it and go full on HYDRA instead.

Yes, I am using various fandoms to illustrate my point here. The "OMG-it-went-woke" crowd doesn't have a monopoly on that, no matter how wrong I think they are, as the fandoms they bemoan (many different comics, Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, etc., ad nauseum) as being "suddenly woke" have always been that way. At least for the times in which they were written.

But the Bad Guys in these (HYDRA, for example, or The Master, or Nehemiah Scudder, or the Galactic Empire, or any of the assorted authoritarian/batshit people/organisations in much of science fiction) are not meant to be blueprints, you numpties.

These were meant as cautionary tales, much like fairy tales in their early incarnations. Or even in some religious works.

Don't stray from the path. Be honest. Have integrity. Be kind. Love thy neighbor.

It's not that hard to be decent. Unless you're never ever satisfied.

Shame

A bitmoji cartoon of a brunette with grey
woman, pinching the bridge of her nose, as if
to stave off a headache.

I have used SNAP benefits in the past.

I am on the client list for a local food bank, though thankfully I don't need their help right this minute. I don't have enough money or bulk goods to donate, but as long as I have an Internet connection, I can boost a signal.

Some of this is due to my own poor (or uninformed at the time) choices, but a lot of it is from things out of my control.

I donate when I can, and accept help when I need it, but it took me a long time to swallow my pride and ask for that help, because our so-called society considers the almighty dollar to be the be-all and end-all, and sees poverty as shameful. In some ways, they're right, but not for the reasons they think. It is shameful that we have such poverty in this allegedly great country, but it's not because of the poor. 

It's because (most of) the rich are too selfish to share.

Most adults who can work but still need this help do work, many for companies that pay them a pittance but make record profits every year. About 65% of SNAP recipients are children or elderly folks, and/or disabled people. Sure, there are a few who take advantage of the system, because, y'know, they're people and people are fallible. But it's less than one percent, from all reputable sources. They are not the ones tanking the economy. That would be the major corporations not giving a single shit.

I see more of this than a lot of people, due to the nature of my job. Many of my students qualify for assistance of one kind or another, over and above my services.

And it's mostly due to corporate and political greed, rather than their own bad choices.

A Little Lighter for Mental Health Purposes

Green ribbon for mental
health awareness

LINK HEAVY POST

Because of all the incredible, ridiculous, dangerous, scary horseshit that has been happening lately, I have been retreating more and more into myself and my personal circles, and out of social media. I'm still there a little bit, because a) I still need to know what's going on in the world, and b) I have some very dear friends whom I only see online. But in addition to the aforementioned (click any recent post) time restrictions that I put on my Facebook app (the other platforms are not generally an issue), I have now turned off notifications as well. So if I want to go there, I have to do it deliberately.

In any case, this post is about what I do to keep myself from huddling in a corner sucking my thumb. I suppose it's technically dissociation, although not in the clinical sense. It's probably better defined as my old standby, conflict avoidance. I'll be 57 next week, and I'm just tired of dealing with... well, with all that out there.

I write, of course. Mostly here, or the nightly write-down-my-worries notebook that I have picked back up again. I'm currently not writing fiction, fan- or otherwise. Don't know why.

I'm rereading old childhood favorites. For a while it was Agatha Christie's not-Poirot-nor-Marple novels, but many of those are political or spy thrillers, and are therefore unsettlingly close to what the world is like right now. Though I suppose if I wanted an actual taste of what the world is like right now, I'd have to pull out some Ian Fleming; some of our current crop of political types are one fluffy or hairless cat away from being Bond Villains. I have no objection to Poirot or Marple, but I want to read them in chronological order, and most of the early ones are on hold in my Libby app, as other people are reading them right now.

So I regressed even further into childhood and am reading Nancy Drew. Now, the ones I used to own (about fifty each of the Nancy Boys and Hardy Boys series) and the ones I'm reading now (on Kindle through the Libby app) are rewrites (from the 1960s) of the original stories (from the 1930s-1950s), to update some technology (like Nancy's convertible car) and some language (there are a few words in the early books that would be considered slurs today, and even the 1960s ones are not great by today's standards). Aside from these issues, and the formulaic nature of the stories (Nancy & friends come across a person who has been Done Wrong, Nancy vows to investigate, Bess gets scared, George shows off her "tomboy" strength, there is a Dangerous Situation involving kidnapping or flood or fire, and then they catch the Bad Guy), there is a lot that I notice as an adult that was not at all evident when I was a kid or even a young adult. 

Leaving aside the Mary Sue that is Nancy Drew (she can do just about anything), there are these elements in almost every story. George is there to be the muscle if there aren't any boys around. She also mildly fat-shames Bess at least once a book. So does the narration, as Bess is invariably described as "slightly plump, but still pretty." Ewwww. All three girls, and Nancy especially, have had a truly alarming number of traumatic brain injuries, ranging from the accidental (Bess gets swept overboard by the boom of a sailboat clocking her in the head) to the deliberate (Nancy gets hit over the head by a Bad Guy or indirectly by an Elaborate Trap with everything from decorative furniture to cannonballs about once a book). These head injuries are always cured by a cold cloth to the forehead and a "good nap."

Anyway, reading childhood favorites is a relatively safe and healthy way to keep myself out of the fray, and has been approved by my therapist. Even if I do cringe at most of the stuff up there. It's safe.

I have been looking for (additional) work fairly regularly, as my job (which I love) isn't enough on its own in our hypercapitalist hellscape of a country. I've had a couple of one-day side gigs, but that's not enough either. I can write, proofread, and edit; I could even do simple data entry. Everyone seems to decry my "lack of ambition" because I don't want to be a CEO one day, but really, I just want a job where I can do things that need to be done, in between my day-job shifts. But apparently, that lack of ambition is incomprehensible to hiring managers. I wonder if they think I'm lying in wait like a spider, trying to steal their job; it would not be the first time that people mistrust me because I "seem nice."

 Also, do you know how expensive car insurance is for a single, widowed, fifty-something mom of a 22yo and an 18yo? The 18yo only has a learner's permit and is never driving alone, and the 22yo only drives during school breaks, but that matters not to insurance companies. I'm a teamster with a good enough driving record to be considered safe to drive Other People's Children to school, but that doesn't matter either. Yes, I am shopping around.

Also, video games and TV. Genshin Impact, mostly, the trio of Wordle/Connections/Strands (posted on Bluesky), and stuff on my phone. I've discontinued my Duolingo subscription because I'm poor and I'm annoyed about their switch to AI, but I may as well use it until the subscription runs out. I swapped out Spanish for Chess over the summer there, but I'm back on Spanish now. I'm watching a bunch of those Netflix cooking competition shows (Is it Cake, Cook at any Cost, Easy Bake Battle, etc.) they made in like 2022 because they're fairly light and fluffy. I'm excited about the new season of Call The Midwife, but again, I'm avoiding the heavy stuff right now.

So I didn't manage to be super light here, because of the reasons for the required lightness. But it helped me feel a little better, so I declare this a successful blog post.

I CanNOT Understand This

A bitmoji cartoon of a brunette-with-grey
woman dressed in blue pinching her nose
with incipient headache.

Yes, today's topic is the same old same old.

Again.

Or at least a variation on a theme.

Immediately after the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, the usual suspects (in this case, primarily the man sitting in the White House and the inner circle of his fan club) started saying that the <spins wheel> "transgender libt*rd antifa" was the cause. Dogwhistle terms were flying fast and furious, "the demon-rats" were being called domestic terrorists, and the larger fan club started threatening historically black universities. Because that makes sense to them, I guess.

Less than 48 hours later, we find out that no, he was a Good Mormon Boy. None of these people has retracted their statements. Some are doubling down by either doing "la la la I can't hear you" with their fingers in their ears, or by outright fabricating statements that 90% of mass shooters are from the "party that wants to take my guns."

I can only assume that this makes sense to them, too.

Look, I'm not sorry that Chirlie Kirk is no longer on this earth, but I'm not glad about it either. I am sorry (in spite of the massive irony of a superficially civil gun nut being shot in public) that it happened this way, partly because of those people described up there. And partly because in my country's twisted love affair with guns, this somehow justifies more guns. I don't believe in the death penalty; I think it's barbaric. But I do believe that actions have consequences, whether you call it Karma or something else. 

"Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows," (Galatians 6:7) is another way to put it, and that one is repeated several times in other ways in the same holy book that CK and all those folks up there in that earlier paragraph purport to believe.

I do know several reasonable Christians (a family member or two, a few friends both online and off-) who try their best to actually follow Christ's teachings instead of the weirdly ass-backwards Christian-Nationalist version. I treasure these people. They are, however, as a group, neither powerful nor loud enough to drown out the bullshit giving them a bad name.

The other groups I do not grok are those whose faces are likely to be eaten by leopards at any moment, but don't think they will be the victims of the face-eating-leopards party. MAGA people of color, MAGA LGBTQ+, MAGA immigrants, etc. Oh, honey, they hate you too. They just hate you slightly less than their current scapegoats. Don't worry; they will eventually get around to eating your face too, if you're a good sycophant and lackey.

Other shootings - those of more than just one MAGA media darling - happened this week, too, but we don't hear nearly as much about those, of course. The Epstein files are still out there as well, and CKs death has served as a handy distraction from that. I have heard some people say that it was deliberate for that purpose. Whether or not that is true, it's still a distraction. Weirdly, some of these same MAGA folks seem to think that, "What if <insert democrat> person is on the list? Huh, bet you never thought of that!" is some kind of gotcha, but honestly, if there is (and I can certainly think of a few who might be) then they should go down too.

I'm finding this timeline to be very stressful, in spite of my self-induced social media restrictions.