deathmtn

Junior calisthenics ✔

In Washington state in 2002, Lydia Fairchild nearly lost custody of her three children, when a test revealed that none of them shared her DNA. It turned out that Fairchild’s body was populated with cells from a non-identical twin she’d unknowingly had before birth, making her, in effect, the biological aunt of her own children.

The technical term for Fairchild is a ‘human chimera’: a human being composed of cells that are genetically distinct. The phenomenon can happen artificially, through a transfusion or transplant, or naturally, as in Fairchild’s case, through the early absorption of a twin zygote.

I don’t know if this is a widespread practice among twins, but the author refers to non-twins as “singletons”.

Finished Seizoen 7 of De Mol: Once again, the finalist I thought least likely to be De Mol was De Mol!

The first time I opened Voice Memos after updating to iOS 17, it crashed. I think of them as not that important, but I would have been pissed if it lost my 1232 recordings, so I guess they actually are.

Back stuff and junior calisthenics done. Almost started sweating during the judo push-ups. I got junior’d!

Urban funerary professionals often told families how to counter the ghostly energy, considered ‘yin’ in the yin/yang dichotomy, that permeates places like funeral homes and cemeteries. This yin energy can be countered with yang activities, including drinking warm, sugary liquids, going to places that brim with people, or performing a fire-stepping ritual. In Shanghai and other cities, places for stepping over fire are built into the exits of funeral homes.

After observing a funeral in Nanjing, I watched a funeral professional light a small grass fire on a metal platform they had set up in the parking lot. The mourners all stepped over the fire before leaving to absorb yang energy and counter the yin that comes from spending time around the dead. I never saw such a ritual at a rural funeral.

People in China’s major cities, it seems, fear dead bodies and burial places more than people in rural areas.

The ancestors vs. ghosts distinction is interesting.

I finished reading Post-Growth Hedonism for an Alternative Hedonism, largely skimming the parts about why we need post-growth hedonism. It was disappointing.

First, it was hard to read. The language was academic. It felt like a thesis. This might not have been meant for the general public, which is me.

But most importantly, there was very little about the hedonism. There was a lot about how we can’t sustainably count on infinite growth, which is something I already know and this wasn’t interested in reading about. It did make the point that that’s not only a capitalist thing — it’s the communist dream for everyone to be abundantly provisioned. In Architect or Bee? it’s pointed out that Lenin thought that Taylorism (Amazon-style worker metric maximization) was a good idea.

How can you live well without more? That was what I was most curious about. All this book had in that was:

- It’s nice to have more time to yourself.
- Riding bikes is fun.
- Walking is fun.
- Local vacations can be fun.
- Instagram consumer culture is bad and makes people want things they don’t need.

All of these things are true. However, I still wonder:

- What if you need to visit family that is far enough away to require plane travel?
- What if you live in a school district in which there is the real threat of violence in school? Should you strive to work less or work more to try to earn enough money to move? Is there a hedonic way out of this that benefits both parent and child?
- What do you do about products that have actual utility? Should you get a space heater and consume more resources to be warm? Is there a way to be hedonic while being cold?

I do want to believe in the possibility of post-growth hedonism. The thing is, the suggestions for it tend to sound like “do more with less” which is usually impossible. There is a lot that can be done to avoid waste like not buying phones every year and skipping the latest cool sneakers from social media. But I think people need more to reach a reasonable “hedonic level” because basic needs are not met via redistribution of the collective wealth we already have. If all the schools were the same, and all the homes had the same basic features, then sure, almost everything is optional, and you could say, nah, I’m going to paint today instead of earning more money so I can get some product.

I guess I can say for the book that it did at least get me thinking.

Realization that I think a lot of modern game designers won’t like: I think kids actually like grinding. It’s comforting to them. And it’s not really a grind if the mechanics and sensory aspects are still novel, even if they’re doing them over and over.

The guy gets 30 minutes of screen time a day. He’s used his last three sessions going back into the same cave in Pikmin 4 to beat the Arctic Cannonbeetle over and over to get raw materials, which he can use to acquire gear from the lab, which I suppose will make it easier to go through the last levels of Cavern for a King. Though I’m not sure the utility factors into it.