malka

I, like many people, have minor hallucinations when I'm tired or stressed. Nothing big, just flashes in the corners of my eyes and thought-I-saws in the shadows.

Sometimes those minor hallucinations are people. Not threatening people or dangerous people, just people, minding their own business. Actually, that's phrased wrong. Sometimes nearly 100% of those hallucinations are people; sometimes nearly 0%. It's very binary.

I think I've figured out one of the determining factors. Yesterday I spent all day at work talking. I argued and tried to convince and figured out and explained and asked and laid out and worked through and generally spent my whole day in small-group or 1-on-1 active communication. Then I went to a small-group event in the evening with interesting people and had active and lively communication. By the time I went home, there were people in every fencepost and pool of shadow.

When I was about ten, my family gave me a kit for making balloon animals. It had an instruction book, a hand-pump, and a bunch of long thin balloons. I loved that kit and I spent most of the day playing with it. When I went to bed that night, I could still feel the smooth curved pressure and the almost-squeaks of balloon-twisting in my hands. My pattern-matching brain had been trained to expect the tactility of balloons.

I think the people-based hallucinations may be caused by a similar mechanism: if I spend much of my waking attention focused on people, then the lazy pattern-matcher in my brain will continue to overlay people on all of its interpretations. Then, when it's reaching for ridiculously under-informed snap judgements (which is what my hallucinations seem to all be), it knows what to fill in. People, people, people.

And I say this as someone who has trouble with photographic two-dimensional images -- drawn or moving images are much easier for me to take in, and written words and hand gestures are easier yet.

Still, the second half of today's Sociological Images is a very well-done argument done in pictures.

(The blog is generally a good read, although they don't moderate comments strongly enough to make the comments worth reading. I think it's also good passive training in how to make a concise, interesting, and lay-accessible argument in an area where you have enough depth to get arbitrarily jargon-y.)

This conversation happened in my head this weekend. I love it, but I have no direct use for it. Free to a good home.

Protagonist (as part of an ongoing conversation): I feel hurt and upset by [topic of conversation].
Annoying person: Citation needed.
Protagonist, promptly: Personal conversation with [Protagonist], July 15th 2012.

Whee, Wiscon!

I don't have a lot of coherent responses to it, but I enjoyed it greatly. I met up with known friends (some really unexpected) and met new people (and failed to get concise contact information, which I regret, even though I know the entire Kevin Bacon path between us and could acquire information that way).

Identity-correlation info: I was spinning on a spindle a great deal during various panels and standing-around times. (As far as I know, this is a unique identifier. It's still a niche hobby and an incredibly niche lifestyle choice[1].)

[1] I'm setting up an axis between a hobby and a thing which one is always doing in a way that's fully integrated with one's life. For instance, many fans read as a lifestyle choice, not just a hobby. I'm maybe 20% of the way to having spinning as a lifestyle choice instead of a hobby, with a fair bit of variance.

The strange lump in my bag turns out to be a scrunchie and a very stale Twizzler. Something tells me that my impulse to make a spindle out of them should be avoided.

Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Socrates is mortal.

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Peter Pan refused to become a man.
Peter Pan will never die.

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Queen Victoria...
...was a kick-ass woman.
...is a vampire?

I swallowed a gnat.

Note to self: acquire cough medicine that is not "non-drowsy", for use at bedtime.

Second note to self: acquire new lungs.

Netflix informs me that a particular show is "[a] family-oriented retelling of the King Arthur legend".

Do you even have anything left if you take out all the bits generally not considered "family-oriented" by American culture? I guess the first part of T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone might count, if you took out the more gruesome parts of his adventures in animals and a fair bit of miscellaneous other stuff. Maybe.

Two recent stories about Congressfolk who have made valid and well-presented points:

From Janet Howell, an equal-treatment amendment that requires men as well as women "to have totally unnecessary medical procedure[s] at their cost and inconvenience".

From Ryan Dvorak, an equal-treatment amendment on drug-testing and welfare recipients. Best quote: "If we're going to impose standards on drug testing, then it should apply to everybody who receives government money."

Ma'am and sir, well done. Everyone who supported the original bills: try to have at least one of a heart or a brain.