#especially since some people just are fast/slow typers

[maideninorange]

How fast can the Len'ens type?

I dunno! But if I had to theorize...

I'd say Tsubakura, Suzumi, Kuroji, and Haru would definitely all be pretty fast typers, due to their respective lines of work often requiring one to type reports up and what not. Clause might also be pretty fast, though considering their penchant for rambling I doubt that's very comforting for many. Quite the opposite, really.

Hooaka and Kurohebi are both average. Neither really bother too much with computers, so they aren't going to be typing too fast, but not as slow as some other. (Not much more to say here lol.)

And then Aoji, Yabusame, and Hoojiro are all very slow at the keyboard. Aoji simply has always been very slow overall, but Yabusame is slow because they are used Tsubakura typing up reports. As a result, they're not very fast (though they usually take forever for other reasons, like grammatical errors and odd side tangents). And Hoojiro? Hoojiro can barely work tech as it stands. She's gonna take her sweet time when typing and checking over errors lol.

As for everyone else, I doubt too many know what a computer even is. As a result, I really can't say on them (unless Devanagara has keyboards, but I don't have the brainpower at the moment to headcanon the specifics at the moment). I will say that Tsurubami definitely isn't having an easy time with typing though!

[theamberfang]

Journal 170

I’ll just start off saying that my wrists have still been hurting, so I’ll try to keep this short. A thought that’s occurred to me is that it could specifically be the use of this new keyboard since the one on the laptop lost the D-key. I’d probably have to look through my journals to see if I was experiencing wrist problems before I switched keyboards. If the keyboard switch happened before my wrist problems, then I might be able to attribute things more to the ergonomics of the keyboard and where I have it on my desk.

Another possibility that occurred to me is that it could have to do with the way I type. I’m actually a reasonably fast touch-typer, and what slows me down has more to do with my mental processing than my fingers. When I type, it’s in bursts of words with pauses where I mentally catch up with what I want to type; even in typing speed tests, my fingers outpace my mind’s ability to translate what I’m reading into commands. To make an analogy to running, it’s like how sprinting for a short amount of time is much, much more taxing than jogging at a slower pace, even if there are breaks between sprints compared to a continuous jog. I could be well served by consciously typing slower instead of pushing my hands to the limit all the time, as if I had something to prove.

Anyway, these continued problems did mean I didn’t message Wan. I did do more work with Khan Academy though. Actually, the most I’ve done in a single day thus far. Just Grammar though: I figured programming would ask me to code, which involves more typing. Grammar is mostly watching videos, then clicking a few times for the multiple choice exercises.

Something else I started today - and was doing just prior to writing this post - was watching the original Aggressive Retsuko shorts. They actually preceded the Netflix series and are only a couple minutes long each. I imagine they were used as commercial bumpers for some TV channel in Japan, sort of like these shorts that I recall from Cartoon Network where different cartoons interacted in the same city. There are quite a few differences from the Netflix adaptation, especially when it comes to the characters, but that’s to be expected with such a drastic change in format.

More importantly, it’s put me into the right headspace to remember a couple of critiques I had after finishing season 2 (but had forgotten by the time I was writing that day’s journal entry.)

Aggretsuko has had two seasons on Netflix so far, and near the conclusion of both Retsuko’s boss, Ton, has come to her with sage wisdom that helped her resolve her conflict. The problem I have is that he’s otherwise extremely misogynistic and abusive, so him coming in to help save the day at the end of the season kind of undercuts that reality. Admittedly, if you measure things in minutes, her boss does spend more time being the pig he is (figuratively as well as literally here), but I’d argue that playing such a large role in the resolution of each season has so much more narrative weight. It’s as if the show is trying to make him out to be an okay-guy overall, despite the abuse he hurls at Retsuko on a day-to-day basis.

To be clear, it’s not that I have an issue with Ton being shown as a multifaceted character that isn’t only an abusive boss. My issue is more specifically with the way the display of his good side is given so much narrative weight at the end of the season that it threatens to eclipse the what he’s done earlier in the season. I don’t like the idea of some people coming away from the show thinking “it’s okay to be an abusive misogynist as long as you treat your target decently sometimes.” In other words, I do not think Ton’s general behavior should be forgiven just because he gave Retsuko good advice a couple of times, but because his good moments have been the last things we see of him each season, we finish off thinking of him positively and may be tempted to forgive him anyway.

A lesser issue I had after finishing season two had to do with Retsuko’s love interest from the latter half: Tadano. It actually has nothing to do with the way their relationship was handled though. I think it was done reasonably well: Tadano is young, so, despite his prodigious nature, he naively thought he could just provide his girl friend with literally anything she could want in life and that she would be happy with it, and Retsuko rightly broke things off to avoid being overly dependent on him. They talked like a pair of mature adults and decided that they weren’t compatible for a long-term relationship. Well, if I had to be honest, I would have preferred if Retsuko specifically wanted to maintain her own autonomy rather than it coming down to a disagreement about marriage (to be clear, she wants the marriage, not Tadano), but it’s not terrible as is.

The issue - maybe not even issue, more like “thing I found weird” - is that Tadano was the character to bring up the failings of “late stage capitalism.” Yes, he’s the high-minded genius, so it makes sense in that way, but he’s also a capitalist superstar in the tech industry, analogous to the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and the like. It’s a really weird combination here. It’s as if the show is saying that we can rely on the people at the top of the capitalist hierarchy to topple the systems that put them there, which is absurd.

The only alternative to capitalism presented by the show really was that Tadano’s AI would replace the working class, with the suggestion that Tadano could personally subsidize the lives of everyone that he puts out of work. Essentially, Tadano would have control over the lives of so many people that he would practically be a king. It wouldn’t be crazy for that to be the end-game of some kind of supervillain, yet Tadano is presented as an aspirational idealist. It’s almost like the message here is that while late-stage capitalism sucks right now, if we can ride it out until a god-king is crowned with literally all of the money, then he will be the one to save us, so we should still stick with capitalism.

My best hope is that simply mentioning “late stage capitalism” might have prompted some people to look it up and that the idea of a super-capitalist saving society from collapsing is just forgotten because of how absurd it is. Oh, and if it wasn’t clear by now, I’m ideologically pretty far to the Left. I haven’t done enough research into politics and government to know precisely what I am, but I mean, I’ve written about being opposed to Free Will as a concept because of the connection it has to rampant Individualism, so I’m pretty sure I’m well over there to the Left.

Tomorrow Goals:

Dance for exercise; somewhere from 1000-1100 (I even set my alarm 30 minutes earlier at 930 so I can really wake up for it)

Email about the transgender group; 1200 (I shouldn’t have to type too much regardless of my wrist condition, but hopefully I can contend with my anxiety)

Message Wan, as wrists allow; 1500

Khan Academy; 1700

Extended Goals:

Mow the lawn on Sunday

Look into other support groups, especially LGBTQ+ ones

Start thinking about other long-term goals unrelated to support groups

[lovemesomesurveys]

When did you last go to the library? What book(s) did you check out? Sometime back in 2014 for school. I didn’t check out any books, though.

Would you consider yourself an interesting person in general? Ha, no. Not even a little.

Have you ever gotten in trouble for running up your phone bill? No. Do you ever make surveys? If so, are they long or short? Nope. When is the next time you’ll change your hairstyle? Will you color it? I just need a trim and to get it dyed again. I’ve been dying it red since 2015 and I’m quite happy with it.

Has anyone ever called you fake? Do you agree with them? Jokingly my brother and I say that to each other sometimes.

What’s the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your entire lifetime? I’ve experienced physical and emotional pain, but it’s the emotional ones that hurt the most. When will you next see the person who can always make you smile? I could go out into the living room and see my doggo right now. Do people normally say you’re a fast typer, or are you rather slow? Fast. As a child, what was your favorite game to play? House and school with my cousins.

When was the last time you went to a department store, like Wal-Mart? Earlier this month. Do any of your siblings have significant others? Do you like them? My older brother does. Yeah, he’s cool.

Are you happy about the grades you’re currently making in school? I’m done with school. What jobs do your parents have, if they are currently employed? My mom works at Walgreens and my dad works at a car repair shop. Who was the last person to see you cry? Is this person special? My mom. Yes, she’s very special to me. What season would you like the world to experience year-round? Fall.

Do you believe in the concept of global warming? Kind of hard not to. When was the last time you took a picture of something? Was it yourself? I don’t remember. Are you currently drifting away from anyone? Who is it? It already happened. I’ve drifted apart from everyone over the past few years outside of my immediate family. Would you say you are really close to the members of your family? My mom and younger brother, especially.

If you have a cell phone, describe it to me: It’s a coral iPhone XR. Is there anyone who lives in the same house as you, that you can’t stand? No. What would you consider your favorite movie of all time? I have a few. Favorite lyrics from your favorite song: I have a lot of favorite lyrics.

Have you ever been in love with someone? Are you right now? Yes I have. No, not currently. Have you ever been considered the ‘smartest person in school?’ No. Do you honestly think you’re better than some people out there? No.

Do you have any pets? If so, where are they right now? Yep. She’s in the living room on her couch. Yes, her couch. ha.

Does it bother you when you wear the same thing as someone else? I don’t care.

[skidar]

SO About Net Neutrality

I’ve been more or less going through the motions with little passion on this hellsite. E-mailing my reps, signing petitions, reblogging loud all-caps posts talking about being shut down and the world is ending and all that rot.

But I never actually looked into the researching the plans for the revisions to the net now for myself.

The thing about tumblr is that its aggressive and hyper-librel. On here its far easier to reblog and go with the flow to appease the loud typers with their huge font sizes and all-caps. 

The thing is, for the most part, tumblr has a very unhealthy relationship with looking at both sides of a situation. Its fed by mass hysteria and has to be soothed by those with the time and patience to fact-check for themselves instead of blindly agreeing and following. 

Those that do a lot of the shouting have a very ‘fingers-in-ears’ approach to learning from the side they disagree with and like to paint said side like a huge, terrible villain.

I’ve been kind of lax about the whole thing, mainly ‘cause I’m already addicited to the internet and some small part of my thinks my life might improve if I wasn’t on it all the time. However, that’s small minded so I started to read into the issue myself.

So be prepared for some unpopular opinions accompanied by links.

To start with, Ajit Pai is not an evil bad guy mc-dictator. He’s a chairman for the FCC, which stands for the Federal Communications Devision. 

Think of the FCC as a sort of ACLU for the internet. It has rules and regulations and providers and site holders go to them to solve problems. However, it does not have unyielding power and say-all.

Say a provider does what we’re all fearing, they block you from viewing content in an effort to boost their own content. This actually happened in 2005:

“The most famous example of an ISP acting badly was a company called Madison River Communication which, in 2005, blocked ports used for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, presumably to prop up their own alternative; it remains the canonical violation of net neutrality. It was also a short-lived one: Vonage quickly complained to the FCC, which quickly obtained a consent decree that included a nominal fine and guarantee from Madison River Communications that they would not block such services again. They did not, and no other ISP has tried to do the same; the reasoning is straightforward: foreclosing a service that competes with an ISP’s own service is a clear antitrust violation. In other words, there are already regulations in place to deal with this behavior, and the limited evidence we have suggests it works.“

Thompson, Ben. “Pro-Neutrality, Anti-Title II.” Stratechery by Ben Thompson, 29 Nov. 2017, stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/.

The FCC ruled that yes, that behavior was bad and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen. It has only happened once in the past and the FCC made it clear that it does not support that. So, lets look into the sort of things the FCC is looking to change, in their eyes, for the better of the internet.

Despite what we’ve been reading the FCC isn’t hellbent on giving money-grubbing cable companies the keys to the internet to regulate the sites we go on. Rather, its more like a phone plan where you have different stages you can pay for in order to have different things. This is something we’re already accustomed to, data plans. Most of us have a phone with a data plan, right? And your provider probably has a variety of data plans to choose from with data caps at a certain about of gigs up to more expensive plans that offer unlimited gigs. Your access to the goods provided on your phone are not limited, you are only limited by your gig usage. Ex: my two brothers and I shared a data plan together because it was cheaper to split it that way. Through this data plan on our phones we all, collectively, had 5 gigs of data that we could use per month. Not very much huh? Well, we’re cheap. And you know what? It was fine. We used our data sparingly and hooked our phones to wifi when we could. If we went over our data we got a warning that we would have to pay $x to get an additional gig to ride out the month. We still had access to whatever we wanted: internet, spotify, netflix, youtube. We just payed for the cheapest plan that had a small data cap. Eventually we got sick of the data cap and upgraded to unlimited.

Now, you’re probably thinking: I don’t WANT to spend more to access the same stuff I LIKE the internet as it is

Well, lets keep digging.

the internet we have now already has certain data caps and exceeding it already causes our internet to move slow, especially with streaming videos, downloading huge files, etc. Our internet providers’ biggest selling point is fast download speeds and instant streaming. They offer a variety of capped data plans varying speeds for different prices. Again, we STILL have access to all the SAME content, just at varying speeds depending on our own needs and willingness to pay for certain plans. 

ie: my mom skims facebook every other day and checks her e-mail on weekends. She doesn’t need high speed for that, she’s content with what she has. Now, my dad and I use the internet to create videos, stream and teleconference. We need faster internet speeds so we pay for more gigs.

That is how the internet currently is.

So what does the FCC want to change?

The FCC actually wants to rollback some of the harsher regulations that have been set in place since 2015:

“The Federal Communications Commission has announced a total repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules, a sweeping rejection of Obama-era rules meant to keep the internet a level playing field and prevent companies from charging additional fees for faster internet access. US telecoms have pledged to broadly respect net neutrality principles, however, and this ruling will give internet service providers the freedom to experiment with new pricing models and prioritization of content.”

Coren, Michael J. “Without net neutrality in Portugal, mobile internet is bundled like a cable package.” Quartz, Quartz, 30 Oct. 2017, qz.com/1114690/why-is-net-neutrality-important-look-to-portugal-and-spain-to-understand/.

Now I know you read that and are jumping to THIS scary image”

Which, by the way, is fake. It’s from 2014 and it was a mock up image for fake ‘internet plans’

The phrasing is also off. What we need to think of is that cable companies are competitive. The ones with the lowest prices get the MOST customers. So say Verizon says ‘hell yes, I’m gonna charge you $45 extra bucks to let you get better streaming speeds to youtube and netflix.’ but then over there in the corner Comcast is like ‘huh, that’s a lousy deal, we’ll let you keep accessing those speeds for $15 a month!’ and then At&T is like ‘Screw that, you guys can keep those speeds for no extra cost!’ That’s business competition, and yeah, some providers aren’t available in certain areas and that price gouge can be obnoxious but we’re already dealing with that in my city where certain neighborhoods have this provider and some have a different one. 

What you might be fearing is ‘well, what if they all raise their prices astronomically and don’t back down?’ Well, that’s a monopoly and those are very illegal. Remember how the FCC busted Madison River Communications? You bet your butt they’d bust a monopoly. Systematic abuse is already not tolerated and evidence suggests that its not the goal of the reform.

So what IS the goal of the reform? 

The reform wants to roll back some heavy regulations that occurred over the past two years (like speed regulations, data caps, etc) to allow the internet to expand it broadband and development like it did before 2015. Sounds ok.

Personally, I really not worried about this. The more I read about it the less horrible it sounds. A lot of posts have brought it way out of proportion and yes there are some aspects about this that I really really don’t like. 

I DON’T like that verizon censors tumblr posts about Net Neutrality. 

I DON’T like algorithms that filter people into their own niches and don’t allow them to think for themselves (show the people what they want and they won’t complain about what they don’t see)

I’ve taken a wait-and-see approach now that I’ve read up on plans and FAQs and the various debunked rumors for the reform. 

Honestly if the cable companies screw around the people will just drop them and go with the least scummiest one. Hit ‘em where hurts, in their wallet.

This ends my insanely long piece but this IS tumblr so I implore you to not just take my own research at face value. I want you to look things up for yourselves and make a well-reasoned and educated decision. 

Yes I’m for an open and free internet, so is Ajit Pai, he just wants to change some things to make it better.

Some useful links:

What is said vs what is heard

https://qz.com/1114690/why-is-net-neutrality-important-look-to-portugal-and-spain-to-understand/

Great article that breaks down Title II and Net Neutrality past and future

https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/

Myths and Facts about Title II and Net Neutrality

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db1128/DOC-347961A1.pdf