#your support really means a lot to her for these appointments...and i've gotten to where i depend on it too! ;-;

[princesskealie]

if you have a second as you pass by, please send any good vibes/prayers/thoughts my mom’s way~ 

it’s time for her to go back to the doctor tomorrow, and it would be really great if we don’t get thrown any curveballs! ;-;

(my goodness, that 3 months flew by... o.o)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Lost Cause prologue, Part V

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

In my upcoming solarpunk novel The Lost Cause (Nov 14), we get an epic struggle between the people doing the repair and care work needed to save our planet and species, and the reactionary wreckers who want to kill the Green New Deal and watch the world burn:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

Amazon refuses to carry my audiobooks, which means that I make my own indie editions and pre-sell them on Kickstarter, along with ebooks and hardcovers. I narrated this one! It came out great! You can back it here:

http://lost-cause.org

This week, I've been serializing the prologue to give you a taste of what you can expect from the book, which Bill McKibben calls "politically perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."

Here's part one:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/06/green-new-deal-fic/#the-first-generation-in-a-century-not-to-fear-the-future

And part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/07/met-cute-ugly/#part-ii

And part three:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/09/working-the-refs/#lost-cause-prologue

And part four:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/10/weaponized-interdependence/#super-soaker-full-of-hydrochloric-acid

And now, part five:

Look, I had weeks to go until graduation. I had a life to live. I had stuff to do.

Gramps and his friends would stew and shout. Idiots on the internet would make dank memes out of Mike Kennedy and deepfake him into a million videos, turn him into a main character whose image would be around long after he left the world.

I just had to keep my head down, collect my diploma, and get the hell out of Burbank. I’d already been provisionally accepted for a Blue Helmets AmeriCorps spot down in San Juan Capistrano, helping to rebuild the city’s lower half a mile inland, up in the hills. I was going to do a year of that and then go to college: I had applications in to UCLA, Portland State (they had a really good refugee tech undergrad program), and the University of Waterloo, where my mom did her undergrad in environmental science. They’d let me declare my major in my second year, so I could take a wide variety of courses before settling on something, and if anything, Canada’s free college was even more generous than the UC system or Portland’s, with a subsidy for dorms and meals.

To tell the truth, I’d be glad to go. My senior year hadn’t been anything like I’d anticipated. Gramps’s health had gotten a lot worse the previous summer and his shitty sexist and racist remarks chased away any home help worker Burbank sent over within a week or two, so I’d been trying to keep my grades up while picking up after Gramps, getting him to take his meds, washing his sheets and cleaning his toilet—­not to mention making sure he made his doctor’s appointments and even bringing him into the office a couple of times a month for the kind of exams you couldn’t do by telemedicine.

I wasn’t sure what Gramps would do without me to take care of him, but at that point, I was running out of fucks to give. Let his asshole Maga Club buddies look after him, or maybe Gramps could figure out how not to offend everyone that came over to wipe his ass and do his laundry. He was—­as he was fond of pointing out to me—­a grown-­ass adult, and this was his house, and he was in charge. So let him be in charge.

I put myself to bed stewing about all of this, thinking of San Juan Capistrano. Some of my older friends had graduated the previous years and had gone down there and I’d followed their relocation of the old mission on their feeds. It looked like hot, sweaty, rewarding work, the kind of thing where you could really measure your progress.

For the second night in a row, I was woken up at 2 a.m. This time, it wasn’t my screen, it was Gramps, who’d stumped into my room with his cane, flipped my lights to full on, and started shaking me and calling out, “Get up, kid, get up!”

“I’m up,” I said, getting up on my elbows and squinting at him.

He was shaking, and he reeked—­of both booze and BO, and I felt a flash of guilt for not getting him in the bath that day.

“God dammit,” he said, and staggered a bit. I leapt out of bed, pulling the sheets off with me, and steadied him at the elbow.

“Calm down, okay? What’s going on? Are you all right?”

“No, I’m not all right. No one is all right. Fuck all right and fuck you.” I’d had Gramps tested for early dementia the previous year, by showing his doctor videos of moments like these. The doc had run a battery of tests before pronouncing, “Your grandfather isn’t senile, he’s just ornery.” Which was undeniable, and also pissed me the hell off. “Ornery” was a polite word for “asshole.” What the doc was telling me was that Gramps didn’t have to be cruel. He was cruel by choice.

I untangled myself from the sheets and piled them on the bed.

“What is it?”

“It’s Mike Kennedy, that asshole. Someone shot him.”

“What?”

He shoved his giant screen into my hands. I tapped the video window. It was from the POV of a car cam, that weird fish-­eye view of a self-­driving car, split-­screen with the passenger in the front seat, and it was Mike Kennedy, looking even worse than Gramps, bloodshot and trembling, with that under-­chin camera angle that makes everyone look like they’re half dead.

I tried to watch both halves. There was Kennedy, whispering something to him. There was the cul-­de-­sac he was parked in, false-­lit with IR from the cameras. The timestamp was 1:17. Less than an hour before.

Then the external image flickered for a second and resolved itself into a man, who phased in and out. He was wearing a ghillie suit like the one Kennedy had worn on the roof, covered in telltale CV dazzle stripes, designed to exploit defects in the computer vision system. You had to wear a different specific pattern for every algorithm, but if you got the right matchup, the computer would simply not see you. The man was flickering into existence when his posture crumpled up the ghillie suit and made the pattern stop working, then out again when he straightened up.

He straightened and disappeared and Mike Kennedy’s eyes widened as he noticed the man for the first time—­computer dazzle worked on computers, not humans—­and he started to say something and then a round hole appeared in his forehead, his head snapping back against the headrest, then careening forward. The flickering phantom appeared again as the man in the ghillie suit turned and disappeared.

I dropped the tablet to my bed.

“Jesus Christ, Gramps, I didn’t need to see that snuff movie—­”

He tried to smack me then. I was ready for it. I was faster. I stepped out of his reach. I was shaking too.

“You don’t get to hit me anymore old man. Never again, you hear me?”

He was purpling now, and a decade’s worth of fleeing and defusing his rages rose in me, made me want to apologize. After all, I rationalized, he’d just seen a friend murdered.

But I’d seen that friend murdered too, videobombed with a snuff flick at 2 a.m. without warning or consent. It was a traumatizing, selfish, asshole move. I’d be watching that movie on the backs of my eyelids for years to come. And the friend who’d died? He’d been ready to kill me. Gramps had no right. He was a grown-­ass adult. He had no right.

“Listen to me, you little shit, you think you can live under my roof, take my charity, and talk to me like that? Now? With all the shit that I’m going through? No sir. No. Get out, you little bastard, get out now. Get out before I kick your goddamned teeth in.” He was vibrating with rage now, literally, actually shaking so hard his wispy hair swished back and forth across his forehead.

I didn’t say another word. I picked up some jeans and a jacket, put a pair of socks in a jacket pocket, and jammed my feet into a pair of sneakers without bothering to unlace them. I shouldered past him—­still vibrating, stinking even worse—­and banged out the back door and stomped through the nighttime streets.

My feet automatically took me up to Verdugo, and then across the empty road. I turned toward school—­as I did every morning—­and autopiloted in that direction. By the time I reached the Verdugo Aquatic Facility I had calmed down enough to realize that there was no reason to go to school at two thirty in the morning, so I stopped and headed for the playground in the park behind the pool. I sat down on a bench and kicked my shoes off and shook out the playground sand, pulled out my socks and put them on, then put my shoes back on properly. I was still furious, but now I could think straight and my hands weren’t shaking. Gramps and I hadn’t had a blowup like that in years, mostly—­ okay, entirely—­because I’d backed down every time we’d been headed in that direction. I wasn’t in any mood to back down. Not ever, to be fully honest.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/11/equal-opportunity-class-war/#part-v

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[donnerpartyofone]

I've found myself looking at my relationship with my sister in a new light and wondering how to deal with drawing a line. I get along better with her than anyone I've ever met, but it really struck me how her anxiety reaction really conditioned me in a way that makes me walk on eggshells and focus on accommodating her above all else. I feel bad because I can't blame her for her anxiety but she can get somewhat abusive when she can't communicate what she needs and I don't know how to help her.

that’s really rough, thanks for talking about it. that definitely sounds like a situation you truly can’t do much about, if anything, it’s just a test of your character. i admire your perseverance. this might be way beyond your means, but it seems possible that some kind of joint counseling might be in order, to try to help her develop some better communication skills, and help you figure out how to put your foot down in a healthy productive way. i’m just speculating, though, that sounds really difficult.

i hope you won’t feel offended when i downshift into something much more casual. i’ve been obsessing over it and can’t think of what to do but vent. i’m struggling with this situation where i guess i COULD just say “you know what, i love you, but being friends with you takes away more energy than i get back.” i’m just kind of unwilling to do that, yet, and i don’t have a lot of experience separating from a friend in whom i still have a lot of emotional investment. ordinarily, i cut difficult people out way before they’re close enough to me to cause even slight problems; the only really dramatic rifts i’ve ever co-created were in romantic relationships. i’ll probably delete this in a bit, since it doesn’t really serve anything here, but for now i my erupt.

this dear friend of mine has really serious ADD and a complex of other problems for which she is medicated and sees several different mental health professionals. almost every time we interact, i have to think very deliberately about how she’s not ignoring me or taking me for granted or being argumentative or making laborious requirements of me on purpose, she has legitimate problems focusing and prioritizing, or noticing when she’s being destructive. we BASICALLY get along great; she’s extremely lovey dovey with me to the point of adulation, and we’ve shared a lot of hard times and personal secrets, so i know the relationship itself is real, even during the times when i can’t seem to get her respectful attention. it’s curious because she’s really pretty successful due to her genuine talent and charm, but once in a while she’s so disorganized and demanding that i think HOW COULD YOU HAVE POSSIBLY GOTTEN TO THIS PLACE IN YOUR LIFE.

here are a couple of good examples of what it can often be like to know her:

- she cuts my hair. i pay full price, as an actual customer, for this service, and it’s invariably complicated and maddening. i don’t want to stop going because she’s the only stylist i’ve ever been satisfied with, and also it would definitely cause emotional problems between us. but, she rearranges her schedule on me constantly, up to the very last minute, to the point that i’m standing around her neighborhood killing time and watching my phone to find out if and when i’m going to actually be seen. most recently, to try to avoid the usual problems, i emailed her more than two weeks in advance of the 26th, by which date i NEED to have my hair cut for a wedding. she told me to text her instead. i repeated the question via text, and she asked me repeatedly if i’m available saturday. i reexplained that, no, that would be a week and a half too early, i need it as near to the 26th as possible. she told me she’ll be out of town around then, but she’ll give me her latest availability. i never heard back. a week later my fiance texted her to ask if she can fit us both in for an appointment close to the 26th. she told us that she’s “waiting on a confirmation” from someone else (even though i had asked her a week prior), and then offered us “wednesday”. he asked if she means the 17th or the 24th. we didn’t hear anything for the rest of the day, even though the 17th was in less than 24 hours. at midnight she finally replied that she meant the 24th–exactly what i asked for in the first place.

- the following event, which could have taken two minutes, took place over about two weeks: she was working on a writing project. i offered to read it and give her some friendly feedback, if she wanted. she passionately insisted that she could NEVER take advantage of my talent for free, that she MUST pay me. i reminded her that i’m not a real editor, and i was just being friendly, but she INSISTED. so i say ok, what would you be willing to pay for this? she said she CAN’T decide what to pay me, I HAVE TO decide what my services are worth. i suggested that we could just trade for haircuts, but that was deemed to be too unprofessional for this imaginary reward she thinks i deserve. inventing a rate was difficult because i don’t deserve a professional rate, and i don’t even know what it would be. so, hypnotically embroiled in this stupid conversation, i did all this research and this fake math, and came back to her with a rate. she dramatically declared that she CANNOT afford it, and is therefore unworthy of my illustrious services. at this point i’m sitting there thinking…how the fuck did i get into this? all i did was offer to read her thing if she wanted a fresh pair of eyes. now i’ve spent two weeks negotiating and doing this pointless research project, just to build myself up to something that i’m not and don’t want to be, only to have her like sort of grovellingly fire herself from the situation because she’s so undeserving or whatever. of course, she wound up trading me haircuts. once the writing finally started, any time i gave her notes, it was a nightmare. if i was critical, she wouldn’t really buy my suggestions. if i was encouraging, she’d borderline call me a liar, as if i were ripping her off, and angrily insist that i be “brutally honest” and “tear her to shreds” etc. at that point, i would re-remind her that i’m not an editor, and it sounds like she knows what she needs–a real editor. eventually she let me off the hook, but almost only because she backburnered the project indefinitely while she works on something else.

this makes it sound like all i have to do is not get involved in anything vaguely professional with her, but it’s more pervasive than this. like, i’ll ask if she wants me to bring anything when i come over, and she’ll ask for a couple of small snacks, but then when i show up with them, she spins out into this thing about how i’m SO WONDERFUL and she feels SO BAD that she MADE ME bring her food, and her solution is to try to force me to keep the food, which was very cheap and which i don’t even want. i’ll have to argue with her about it intermittently for the rest of the night, and there’s nothing i can do to convince her that having this insane fight, about something i volunteered to do, is a much bigger inconvenience than the $3 i just spent on cliff bars for her. i suppose i could simplify all this by saying she’s the kind of person who will ask if you’re mad at her or something, and you say you’re not because you’re not, and then she’ll ask you again and again until you really ARE angry, at which point she thinks she was right all along. my fiance has noted that she doesn’t behave this extremely with him, and we often suspect that she’s instinctively recreating dramas that took place between her and her mother, or her and her ex-girlfriends or something, and i just happen to be a really good proxy for whatever the story was there. being tolerant of her makes her suspicious of me, but if i get aggravated, then i’m being untrue to myself, and getting wrapped up in some sort of mythology that isn’t actually about me.

she is fundamentally an exciting and affectionate person; she has tons of admiring friends, and interesting people always want to support her projects, for good reason. i value her friendship, and i don’t THINK i really want to part ways with her. however, i also don’t think she has the emotional stability to have a constructive conversation about her behavior (especially when she really craves for me to hate on her or something), and i haven’t seen her demonstrate an ability to change and control her behavior anyway. being the kind of person i am, i constantly fantasize about tying her to a chair and describing all the stuff that she does, how it doesn’t help her, and how it negatively impacts our relationship (and i’m sure many of her other relationships), and just totally deprogramming her with my brilliant logic–but of course that’s all complete nonsense. since i’m the one with control, i think i just have to train myself to stop getting so wound up and trying to envision how to “fix” her. i don’t even have to see her more than once a month, sometimes not even that often. i gotta get a grip.