Friday Five: Five things make a post

[capri0mni]

One: For reasons I may (or may not) go into in my "Disability Discussion" access filter, I was recently handed a pamphlet from my city's Adult Protective Services. which includes the following definition:

Self-Neglect: Self-Neglect is when an adult is unable to meet their own essential physical, psychological, or social needs, which threatens their safety and well-being.

Oh. So you mean every single human being who has ever lived on this planet, who will ever live on this planet, or who may, one day in the far future, live on other planets?

2: Speaking of which, I have very mixed feelings about the recent Artemis 2 Moon Mission. On the one hand, I am grateful that human beings are willing to take the risks to explore beyond ever-expanding horizons, and show us portraits of Home that prove we really are in this together. On the other hand, I hate how this stinks of colonialism and capitalist exploitation. On the one hand, we dream of finding life on Mars (even simple, unicellular, life); on the other hand, if we follow our Elon Musk's other dream of building a colony on Mars, our very presence could cause the extinction of whatever life is there.

Three: Speaking of which (again), I think this is my favorite photo taken by someone on the Artemis crew. That faint blue crescent is us - all of us (who each need help meeting our physical, psychological, and social needs).

IV: I've been watching a lot of YouTube. One of my favorite channels is PattyCake Productions. Located in Orlando. Florida, their bread and butter is fully cinematic parodies of Disney fairy tale classics, told from the P.O.V. of side characters and villains. All their songs and music are originals. This is their latest. With properly human-edited closed captions (the [cc] button is in the upper right):

Watch on YouTube

Five: I've been getting the itch to write prose fiction again. But the last few years have been (barely acknowledged by me) emotionally and cognitively draining, and I'm having trouble getting over the hump of inertia.

Comments

[spiralsheep]

One. Lmao! Never a truer word! :D
But I'm sad that (whatever happened). :-(
Good to know the usual crack team of emergency leaflitters reached you in time tho. Leaflets being the bestest medicines and carers combined!!1!! /sarcasm, obv

2. I'm gonna be a spoilsport and say there's no evidence for life on Mars, and I'd be happy to help Musk travel there on the inevitably one-way ticket with his brainwashed cultists, but we all know he doesn't intend to go himself.

Three. Yes, we live on the tiniest fingernail imprint in the unimaginably vast void of space, and we need to understand and behave like it.

IV. For me this shows up with the only good youtube ad - for prettily painted home interiors with an Old English Sheepdog. :-)

Five. Good luck!

[capri0mni]

Five: Thank You.

IV: Huh. *Puzzlement* I'd understand, if you don't have an ad-blocker running, that you'd see a pre-roll ad before the video proper... But to see only the ad? hm. :-/ Anyway, here's a link to the video on YouTube: Charming (ft. Jordan Litz) - Disney Princes Are FED UP! (Original Song)

Three. Yes.

2. I don't believe there's life on Mars, either. Though there may have been something bacteria adjacent 3.5 Billion years ago. Mostly, I'm frustrated with our collective, cultural, fascination with the so-called Fermi Paradox. Maybe the truly intelligent aliens out there realize that life, and whichever planet it evolved on, form an integrated Whole. And one simply can not be separated from the other at scale.

One: It's mostly fine, now, besides *gestures vaguely at the Christo-fascist state of my home nation, right now.* The irony is, the fact that I had the knowledge and ability to reach beyond my usual support network when my S.N. got A.F.U. (thus drawing attention of Anonymous, who contacted my city Bureaucrats) is evidence that I am not, actually, suffering from "self"-neglect.

[spiralsheep]

IV. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean the video doesn't play. It does. I just meant that the associated ad beforehand is the only good one on youtube.

2. NASA keep claiming they've found traces of organic material on Mars, while all the geologists I know think the same chemistry is from volcanic geology. I want there to be or have been life that we can find, but I also have to acknowledge NASA have a vested interest in finding exciting results using their extremely expensive toys.

The Fermi Paradox is a nonsense proposition ("Why does [this thing] we have no evidence for, even on Earth, not exist everywhere?" I mean, the answer is in the question there, lol), that also has multiple credible answers (and that is a paradox - being able to construct credible rebuttals to nonsense propositions - a real testament to human ingenuity!).

'Maybe the truly intelligent aliens out there realize that life, and whichever planet it evolved on, form an integrated Whole.'

I might reverse your proposition, if you don't mind, to also point out that as we currently understand life/organisms/us on Earth the overwhelming majority of life, and what humans categorise as individual organisms, presumably have no sense of separation: from each other or their surroundings. The least permeable barriers for most life are cell walls, which are permeable by necessity. The human sense of individualism is, frankly, odd and potentially catastrophic. So, yes, I agree with you but working from a different perspective. :-)

One. Just because arsonists are lighting trash fires everywhere doesn't mean some people aren't legitimately suffering from their house burning down, obv.

'evidence that I am not, actually, suffering from "self"-neglect'

Yes, this is what I heard you say the first time in your post. Systemic failures are not individual faults. I hope [whatever] improves for you over the longer term. <3

[capri0mni]

One: Yes, I think things are on a more stable (if complicated for additional, not directly connected, reasons) trajectory, now. Things were just a bit dodgy for about three weeks in a row. I also wish that whoever felt the need to make an anonymous report had simply been comfortable to ask me, directly, what I needed, or about what was going on (Fairly or not, I suspect disablism, and the presumption of incompetence, is part of the mix).

2. Given that, as complexity increases, physics turns into chemistry, and chemistry turns into biology, and also given that the rules of physics (as far as we can tell) are truly Universal, in theory, I'm a believer in panspermia. However, I'm also beginning to suspect that the Rare Earth Hypothesis is also correct, and that our planet is overflowing (literally), with life because of our unique Moon. 🌕💖

[jesse_the_k]

Re 1: sending sympathy. What bone-headed administrator thought that, if you were indeed neglecting yourself*, a pamphlet would be in any way helpful.

* knowing what I do, you need bureaucratic help to neglect yourself, rendering the whole business nonsensical.

Re 3: thank you for sharing that beauty

Re 4: Cool! Always seeking new YT recommendations.

Re 5: best wishes!

Another channel / music group recommendation...

[capri0mni]

1. Actually, I think the primary audience for the pamphlet are Concerned Citizens, who want to know if they should report something happening (or not happening) to Adult Protective Services, for investigation, not the individuals who actually need the help. The way that definition was written just shone a big red light on the Individualist/Capitalist bias in our culture that I likely would not have recognized 40 years ago.

4. You're welcome. The video studio is owned/run by a former and current member of the a cappella group VoicePlay, who've been posting regularly on YouTube for about 13 years, and consistently monthly for the last 6 years (prompted by COVID and parenthood to move from live concerts to studio/video work). Their newest videos are consistently captioned. And they've done covers of everything from Disney musicals to Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, and Louis Armstrong. They've had several member changes over the years; now, there are four main members, and a rotating cast of returning featured singers.

[merrileemakes]

Loved the Charming video!

I listened to a podcast this morning about the Artemis mission. One dude from NASA (I think) said we had a duty to go out and explore/colonise space because we could be the only life in the universe, and if something happened to use life would be lost forever... Seriously. Sigh.

Even if Earth was the only plant with life (doubtful) we're not exactly the only species here! Although the way we are going we're getting closer and closer to being the only species left...

[capri0mni]

Yeah. As you said: it's doubtful that we're the only life in the universe.

And also: even if this planet is the only home for life in the universe, then shouldn't we be spending the tens of billions of dollars on fighting pollution, and global warming, and protecting endangered species?

And then, I remember that we evolved as a pursuit predator: we're not faster than an antelope, or a bison. But we can walk after them until they collapse from exhaustion. So this drive to "Boldly go where no man has gone before," and always chase the next horizon, is hard-wired into our instincts like a prairie dog's instinct to burrow. I, myself, can feel that instinct kick in when I'm "hunting down" information for a story I'm writing, and going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. :-)