Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org

@RonBaxter
Wow! When I saw "fonts," I briefly thought of something other than that.😉 Those are wonderful.

@jayarava
That's interesting! I've never experienced anything that could be thought of as magical, or at least not in a typical supernatural sense, so never gave the possibility of supernatural occurrences any serious consideration. When I was briefly exposed to Sunday School, it was nakedly obvious to me that they were making that stuff up, and the fact that other kids seemed to take it seriously confused me. It was obvious that the adults didn't really believe what they were saying. They used that fakey-fakey nice-nice tone of voice, and that was all I the clue I needed. 🙄

The garden variety mystical experience I reckon most of us have had to some degree reinforces that "it's just this, nothing more" view, for me anyway, despite being astonishing at first. (Not that "this" isn't plenty. 😉 )

The section in Tunnel that talked about mind/brain representation, like where a person can be convinced they have an extra hand or that it's located somewhere it's not, amazed me. I later read of the neurologist Ramachandran's success with treating phantom limb pain through trickery with mirrors, equally amazing.

Part of my current illness is a brain tumor (left parietal), and I thus have a little first-hand experience with what lesions can do to the mind-body. Not as dramatic or unsettling as some of, say, Oliver Sacks' tales, but interesting to examine and test, for me at least. (Last radiation session is in a couple of hours, so almost done with that one.)

Apologies for the disjointed keyboardorrhea, I'll blame the steroids. Started typing and couldn't stop.

@jayarava
Ooh, thanks for the pointer! Will have a look. Have read a fair amount on emotion as it relates to sense of self (The Ego Tunnel and various things from Dimasio have really helped).

@CaroCrow
I agree, and well put. What is there to resent, really? Reality is as it is, and doesn't much care whether one has emotions about it. Why cause myself suffering by getting upset about something I can't change?

When I saw my palliative doctor last week, he mentioned that he has a number of patients who have deliberately chosen denial as a coping mechanism. On purpose, all the while knowing that denial is what they're doing. None of my business, I guess, but that makes me a little sad.

I can honestly say that my life is fuller and far more interesting than it ever was in all the pre-diagnosis years, and I'm thankful for that. I didn't have to struggle to find acceptance, it just happened by itself.

@Chapps
That's marvelous, and makes me wonder for the billionth time what the heck happened that representational art seems to have just disappeared during the Middle Ages. Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, and so on had beautifully executed work scattered all over the world and then somehow everybody forgot how to do it. Even though examples to imitate were everywhere.

@garethwilliams @gcluley
BitWarden is what I finally settled on after trying several out. I was able to import without much trouble, though I did have to scan through the list to catch a couple of garbled things here and there, like truncated IP addresses. Was just as well, gave me a chance to whack all the useless stuff that had accumulated over the years. 😀 All I really miss is the credit card autofill, though my browser handles that well enough to not present a real problem. BitWarden feels a little clunky sometimes because it doesn't always recognize subdomain variations, but just knowing to look for that usually fixes whatever the trouble was.

Yeah, the "we can't see it" approach turns out to have been the right way! I share your admiration for that.

@jayarava
That's not a practice I do, but I think I could at least tell your examples apart. Get more fine in the grading and I'd be lost.

I've had this conversation with therapists many times:
T: How are you feeling?
Andy: I have no idea.
T: Okay. But how do you feel?

And so on. If I'm not actively angry (that's the easy one) or afraid, I'm at the limits of what I can identify with any certainty. To make things worse, my brain will just pop in some unidentifiable vague emotion for no reason whatsoever. Not often, fortunately. I'm only half-joking when I say that trying to identify an emotion is usually the cause of the emotion.

Thinking about this feelings stuff just now made me realize I haven't had any actual fear for a long while, like maybe May of last year, about a month after getting a terminal diagnosis. (It's not a big deal to me now, completely used the the idea and fact). Kind of the opposite of what I would have expected, but there it is. 😉

@JoParkerBear
The first season was not horrible. This new season? If you removed cliches, there'd be no script. I think they brought in Mrs. Fedler's third grade class to do the writing, too-- nothing against Mrs. Fedler-- perhaps all that travel for filming left them with nothing to hire scriptwriters with. The poor guy just hasn't discovered these things yet. My condolences.

@gcluley
It's such a damn shame. I used LastPass from its early beginnings after hearing about it on Steve Gibson's show. I recommended it to everybody in both personal and professional capacities (former SysAdmin). Set our office up with it and showed everybody how to use it. It was easy to use, cross-platform, and the owners were open about everything they did.

When Logmein bought it in 2015, I was a little concerned, but had seen assurances that the original team would continue to run things. So I kept on with it, as updates and improvements continued if a little less frequently.

And THEN, end of 2019, Logmein sold itself to an investment firm whose apparent purpose was to milk it a long as possible without actually doing anything other than raking in cash. Development ceased. That's when I started scrambling to find something else, because the writing was on the wall. I did find something I like, but it's not as feature-rich.

I'm a little sad about the whole thing because there are probably many people out there who won't be aware of this news and continue merrily along with it, some of whom are my fault. I retired at the end of 2019 and that employer closed operations, so at least I had a chance to handle the company's last moments with LP gracefully.

Anytime you see a running business sold off to an investment firm like that, it's over and time to go.

@JamesGleick
Just finished re-reading The Information! Great to have you here., and that book is in my permanent top ten.

@jonathanbaran @drewharwell @geoffreyfowler @databae @willoremus @cqz @rachellerman @nitashatiku @jeremybmerrill @hamzashaban @cristianolima @alyssafowers @gbrockell @tonyromm @Shira

What a nice thing to do! Already subscribe, but thanks for the notice-- am boosting to spread.