Phoenix

Welcome back!

So, I fell asleep watching the first Blade Runner a few years back. The sequel, Blade Runner 2049, is getting rave reviews. The sequel's director, Denis Villeneuve, previously helmed the excellent Arrival and is planning a new Dune adaptation next, which has me very excited. Blade Runner 2049 also has Hans Zimmer on the score, so I'm certainly interested. Should I give the original another shot?

This element of the larger picture fascinates me. Birth rates are way down in advanced industrialized areas, so it stands to reason that an outcome of that trend is changes in gender. Other sorts of situations that don't match up with the old concept of a nuclear family (e.g., a homosexual couple with children) are increasingly common. Although with the way social safety nets are constructed, it remains to be seen whether there will be pressure to be churning out babies in the coming decades, I'm still very interested to see how gender evolves in this century. Personally, I know I don't identify as strongly with masculinity as a lot of men. That might have a lot to do with me not planning to have children. I don't identify with femininity very much though, at least Western society's concept of it. Plus I'm far too lazy for female garb and makeup.

Welcome back!

No, coming back here hasn't been a problem. Well, maybe a little bit of anxiety. You know why. But it's helped to distract from my physical pain, which is my modus operandi right now. I'm actually not terribly worried about the world at the moment. So much is out of my control so I let go of all that. Recent events have brought discourse on white privilege and, really, American privilege to the forefront, and I've reflected on how fortunate I am despite my health problems. It was looking like Congress may have put my medical coverage at risk for a while there, but we're probably in the clear now.

I was okay with how Wheel of Time ended, but I wasn't a huge fan of the series or anything. Just thought it was not bad. The writing style felt pretty close. The ending for Dune, on the other hand, my god. That was so awful. I'm pretty sure Song of Ice and Fire is already fucked, though. Martin clearly hates the process now and sees the mainline series as an albatross, and there's no way that doesn't affect the quality. Maybe I'm wrong and Winds of Winter will be amazing, but unless he gets into it again there's he won't finish the last book before he dies. I figure I'll probably be satisfied if it's only the show that finishes the story--even if the writing is just as bad next season, I still love pretty much all of the casting. I guess no promises if another author finished it I wouldn't at least try it (or two books, for they will surely milk it).

Yeah, and my brain is quite good at inventing people or putting familiar faces to those people screaming at me, inaudibly. Looking back, it may actually have been the new hypertension meds. That day was the first time I've forgotten a dose. It's just one data point, but man, if that does happen when I miss a dose. That's going to be a hell of a withdrawal if I have to go off of them, and they probably will put me on something else since it's not getting my numbers down.

Ugh, not a good time to be a Bears fan.

Taste the rainbow?

Pssh. I haven't even been in there. I spend too much time browsing threads as it is!

My favorite character, by far, is Arya, but I fear her best moments in the show are behind her. Her arc through the riverlands was one of few ways the series actually improved upon the books, but not so much lately. Overall, even with the hiccup with the Dorne plot in Season 5, the show was in the running for my all-time favorite TV show until this past season. The writing became so disappointing. This season actually got me looking forward to The Winds of Winter again, to see how much better Martin handles it. I just hope he doesn't croak before getting the last book out.

Yeah, like looking at a phone. In any case, a typical Chicago driver behind you at a light will lay on their horn if you don't immediately go on green. I imagine "staring at a green light" means not entering the intersection within two seconds.

Damn it, man, I know you're too shy to post your own thread in here so I'm doing it for you. How's you? How goes the cooking?

Wow, damn. Hugely influential dude.

Oh man, this probably changes every week. Here's what I can come up with right now: 1. Pulp Fiction 2. The Shawshank Redemption 3. The Dark Knight 4. Heat 5. Lost In Translation 6. Goodfellas 7. Seven 8. Seven Samurai 9. Princess Mononoke 10. Memento

Yes. I worked at a place that had a fantastic green Thai curry but I haven't been able to find a paste or powder at home that comes close. I've been digging a Japanese curry lately that a local Korean market sells.

I have all the katakana memorized, so I hadn't thought about that. I suppose one could set up flashcards for them easily enough, though; flashcard creation is pretty simple. And yes, I could import other sets if I wanted. There isn't an easy way to export my set, though, which bothers me since that's a lot of unrecoverable work if I had a hard drive crash or something. I should probably go digging into the files and manually back up my set while I'm thinking about it. Haven't done that in a while. The learning's going slow, which is my fault as much as anything. I had a lot of zeal for it when I first started earlier in the year but that's subsided a bit. It's also a lot more challenging now than it was when I was in full review mode, too. I probably need to spend some time reviewing my process and seeing what I can add and/or streamline. That just requires so much work, though!

It definitely has a slow start. I don't think the war even truly starts until the fifth season or thereabouts, so until then you have to like the grittier, frontier-like nature of the station. I'll admit it does feel more like Trek when they get the Defiant and they have episodes where they actually start going out. What I loved about the series is the political intrigue, which I adore in fiction, and the series did it as well as I've seen it done in sci-fi. I also really liked the characters--Garak might be my all-time favorite Trek character (again, going back to the intrigue), and I'm a fan of Dax. Many of the antagonists were kinda meh, though.

Gabapentin? It helps. I feel like a zombie when I'm on it some days, but it helps. I had a bad disc in C5-C6 before I had it removed, but the one at L5-S1 is still causing trouble. Have you looked into meloxicam? With it I'm able to take one pill a day instead of guzzling ibuprofen. Much easier on the stomach and the kidneys, which I'm concerned about since I may have to take NSAIDs the rest of my life.

Well, speaking with my sociologist hat on, the problem with that is that biologically, humans are going to have different needs. Whether or not those needs have to come with attached genders is a separate issue, but as long as there are humans with different needs, sociologists, doctors, and others are going to need to be able to identify those groups of persons somehow so they can conduct scientific research on how best to meet those needs.

Yeah, Illinois is far behind, too, despite also being a blue state. The "War On Drugs" anti-drug culture took deep roots here, so any illegal substance still gets demonized. I believe within Chicago city limits, marijuana possession (up to a certain amount) is just a ticket now, though. I'm all for legalizing any substance that's less dangerous than alcohol, and marijuana isn't even close to being as dangerous.

Sex is either male or female, yes, in 99% of humans--it's a biological concept. Gender is a social construction based on sex. This often means just masculinity or femininity. Of course, there are a variety of transitional types, going from those that choose to move permanently between the binary genders with surgery, to those that are more genderfluid, meaning that their gender identities fluctuate. You may also have heard the term cisgender, which simply means that one's gender matches the sex one was assigned at birth. It's a term more common in scholarly research used with respect to transgendered persons to avoid terms like "normal" gender, but it's found its way regular discourse as well. As for more on the non-binary genders (sometimes called genderqueer), I'd probably best leave that to someone more expert than I, as I'm not terribly familiar. I believe they tend to be either a mixture of masculine or feminine or identification as agender, or without gender entirely. Edit: After seeing the post by@Moonhawk I should mention that sexual/romantic orientation is also a separate concept from gender. Trans or genderqueer persons have a variety of orientations just as the rest.

Do you mean the people?

Right. Well, one of these days when I have the health and money to travel I'm going to get out there and back to Osaka again.

Oh, yeah, I haven't done it with paper in years. lol