Some viewpoints of the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM) post-doc...

...when he got back into town and we went out for beers like a month ago:

1) He is completely baffled by how the current presidential administration is going after research and education. 

"Your country is famous for research and education," he was like. "Is he trying to destroy your country?"

That said, he did agree that there have been unhealthy tendencies of late in the American academy, like self-enriching admin, usorious tuition, and the replication crisis with quantitative studies. But, he sees the recent moves as contributing to and hastening the decline, rather than trying to solve the festering problems that have been around for a bit.

2) After he was encouraging me to find some way into academic employment with the one ancient language that I've been studying for a number of years now and have made myself into quite the expert in, I was like, "I don't think that's going to happen, some problems don't have solutions," and he was like "No, every problem has a solution!", and then I really got into how few departments and jobs there are -- he thought the local university might have a teaching position in that field, when they simply don't! -- and also how it's a huge risk for a field to acknowledge that their experts are wrong and an outsider who didn't even train through them got things right on fundamental mistakes they've made for like practically ever, and how because I'm an outsider I don't have the correct qualifications or even recommenders for many positions, and how on top of that there's a disproportionate amount of ill-will and sabotage in the field, with "the nice ones" even trying to advance their students and contacts, and after summarizing all of that for him, he was like, "Hmmm, I think you are right."

. . . 

(Also, when I illustrated some recent of research of mine through showing permutations of a[n English] verb, I was using "go," and he said to give him the paper, and he wrote variations of the word "suck," and then he showed me what he wrote and he said to use that example, it would help him understand better.)

Perspective and life-advice from a local artist...

...when I had coffee with this one local (animator) a few months ago:

1) She says because I'm free and owe nothing to no-one, I can probably do more interesting work (including on scholarly topics).

2) She pretty much has given up on animation, because computers can do stuff so quick that it just isn't worth it anymore, so she's re-focusing on handmade goods, instead.

She also says that back in the day, if you did something interesting, you could always find an audience, but now with the internet there's a glut of content and not enough eyeballs, so it's slog to chase to chase eyeballs, and she can see that as a reason to re-focus on scholarly topics and not go after popular writing and venues like I used to be able to find even just five to seven years ago.

3) Once again, she strongly recommended keeping my income low enough to get Medicaid, which she swears by.

. . .

It's so interesting to hear a perspective like hers.

Like, over the past number of years, I've had 3-4 different people I know tell me that I should try to start a YouTube or TikTok or whatever on some fun scholarly topic that I get enthused about, which I've never found viable since it's a huge time-suck with no clear payoff (what's the thinking -- some magical hope that I'd go viral, or a rough plan that I'd be able to monetize after several years of all my energy going into that? -- it just seems like a get-rich-quick scheme, where you're left holding the bag of wasted time and energy of years of wasted effort, if nothing panned out). 

Instead, she's like, the writing is on the wall, the ground has shifted, change with the times and re-focus, and most of all don't kill yourself chasing these new methods in order to try to make the old ways work.

Just refreshing. Like, when I talk with an artist-type like that, they say useful stuff that makes you think, even if you don't always agree with it.

A slow night, and its aftermath on another slow night.

A few months ago at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, it was extremely slow and there were exactly zero customers in the restaurant, so after a while of its being dead, I asked my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker about her recent hip-hop dance performance, and I said that she should teach us some dance moves.

And, she didn't want to, so I leaned on the one counter and bent over and kind of tensed my butt cheeks up and down left and right in turn like I was twerking, and then while I held that pose I turned my head back to look at her and was like, "Is that how you do it?", and she was like, "No," so I was like, "See, you have to teach us."

So, she taught me and my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones this one simple hip-hop dance move where you drop your shoulder on each side in a one - one - two - one - one -two pattern, while you bob your knees as your shoulder shifts out.

And, after a few minutes of us all practicing this, the one (husband) (Thai) owner of the restaurant calls up from the back office, and says we shouldn't dance while at work.

(He must have seen us over the security cameras.)

So, like the very next shift that I work with them, it turns out to be dead, too, but instead of asking for another dance move lesson, I just do a sudoku puzzle from the puzzle insert of a (British) tabloid that my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) had brought me from (England) as a gift.

And, just as the sudoku puzzle is starting to crack open and it's late and it seems like no more customers will come in so I can finish it, this table of four nice (young) (hipster-ish) (white) people come in and ask if we're still open, and I'm like, "Yes, but you're interrupting the sudoku puzzle that I'm doing!", which statement they find mildly amusing, and after helping them, I begin to return to the sudoku puzzle in fits and starts, only to realize that interruptions from that table somehow made me make a mistake somewhere and I'm not sure where it is, and when I begin to erase it, the newspaper underneath the puzzle tears and the entire puzzle is ruined.

So, I take it up to the table and show them and tell them how the interruptions made me make a mistake and when I tried to erase, the puzzle was ruined.

"See what you did!", I was like, again to their mild amusement, and one guy being like, "The good thing about sudoku is that there's always another puzzle the next day" ("But this was a special puzzle from Britain," I was then like, etc.).

After that, too, I tell my (Thai) coworkers that I wasn't able to finish the sudoku puzzle, and that I wish that we could have had another hip-hop dance lesson again.

"But," I'm like, "If we do that, [the boss's first name] will call us up on the phone and be like, 'What are you doing, I pay you to WORK,  I don't pay you to TWERK,'" which statement elicited mild amusement from my coworkers.

Two tidbits:

1) Last month on a nice spring day, I had many windows in my cottage open in order to air it out, but I then closed the curtains over them so that I could make a quick trip to the one local bakery and to the grocery store, and then, just when I'm going out the door, I open it, and what do I see but the air shift in my cottage, and the curtain covering the (open) kitchen window blow into the window, since the air from the displaced door had to go somewhere, and it tried to go through the open kitchen window but the curtain was over it, so, what do you know, it went right through it and took the curtain with it, as far as it could go.

2) So, I finally work again with my two (Thai) coworkers after that one night that I left the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now and after leaving I had seen a very strange (homeless) guy heading in the direction of the restaurant just as they were about to leave, and I tell them about it, and they immediately know what I'm talking about, since my one (older) (Thai) coworker who's a whiz at the phones had seen him through the window and told our (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker, and they both headed out the front door extremely watchful without trying to seem like it, it turns out, and they also made sure to try to get to their car as fast as possible without seeming to run, and they were extremely aware that that guy was out there, the entire time they were outside the restaurant after it closed.

Religion story (2 of 2): (Thai) Buddhism.

Like last month at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I was talking with my one (taller) (newer) (Thai) coworker about how I had decided not to think about other jobs or the future so much, and she approved of that advice and said she doesn't think about the future so much, either, it's a good way to live, she stopped after her one last big relationship collapsed, and everything she thought she had changed.

I told her that our one (chubby) (Thai) coworker had given me that same advice, and I then said that there was something very (Buddhist) about it.

And, she just looked at me like, WHAT, and shook her head.

"But it's like not being attached to the future," I was like.

"No," she was like, "Buddhists like to know about the future," and she proceeded to tell me about how in (Thailand), (Buddhist) people consult about the future all the time at temples, including monks, because they want to know about it.

. . .

Religion story (1 of 2): An old anecdote.

A number of months ago, a(n Irish from Ireland) friend was telling me this story of one of his friends from years ago, that somehow he had never told me before.

Anyways, when his friend was backpacking in South America either in Colombia or Argentina, he was getting to know these other people in the common area of a hostel one night, and they all started introducing themselves to one other.

And, his friend was like, "I'm Irish and I'm an engineer."

And, this woman was like, "I'm from Germany and I'm a lawyer."

And, this British guy was like, "I just got out of prison for killing a federal agent, and I don't want to talk about it."

. . .

. . .

. . .

So, they didn't, but then when his (Irish) friend was checking out of the hostel, it was right after the (British) guy had checked out, so he asked the desk-workers there for his name, and he said that they had meant to exchange email addresses and keep in touch, but the guy had forgotten to leave his before he left.

So, he got the (British) guy's name, and he looks him up, and he was like the right-hand man of David Koresh.

. . .

. . .

. . .

(Like a third or more of the Branch Davidians were actually British people, because they were from the same Seventh Day Adventist tradition that Koresh was a part of and drew from...  I also looked this guy up, and he got out of prison in the U.S. and was deported like early to mid-2000s, which was right when my one [Irish] friend's friends were all backpacking, he said, so that all checked out, too.)