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Relief is a kind of magic

About three weeks ago I was in kung fu, business as usual, and something in my right shoulder spontaneously imploded. The pain wasn’t nearly as bad as how much it scared me. I had surgery in my right shoulder a little less than a year ago. The smallest creek and pop in that shoulder makes me nervous because shoulder surgery sucks so horrendously I never want to do it again.

And the surgeon promised. The surgery would fix everything. This wasn’t supposed to be happening.

I went to my GP and she wasn’t comfortable making any kind of diagnosis, so immediately referred me to my orthopedic surgeon. I think after someone’s artificially reconfigured a part of your body, it permanently becomes their baby. But getting an appointment in orthopedics takes some waiting time.

The pain slowly retreated to soreness, but that never completely went away. It’s been like a cloud that’s hung over my head, day and night. I was terrified something had gone wrong, I’d need more surgery, and that I’d also have to permanently quit kung fu. That this would be it, just out of the blue, when I’d been doing everything the physical therapist told me. It wasn’t fair. (Life isn’t, but pain turns anyone into a six-year-old in their head.)

Well, I had my orthopedic appointment today. They did an x-ray series and my surgeon looked them over. He had me do all the little tests – push my hands down, flex my arms apart, reach behind me. Everything was all right. He showed me my new x-rays, and my old ones. In the old ones there was no space between my clavicle and shoulder joint, the ghostly images of my bones apparently connected. In the new x-rays, the artificial gap he created is still there, just as it should be.

Everything was fine, he said. I hadn’t undone anything, or created a new horrible twist in my skeletal system. It was probably just a muscle strain.

I felt lightheaded. I almost started crying, that was how good it felt to have the surgeon tell me that it was okay. And then he said I should go to kung fu tonight, and just take some ibuprofen and ice my shoulder later if I needed to.

And that’s what I did. My shoulder’s a little sore now, but I know I don’t have to be scared.

Having someone take away a fear is a kind of magic.

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Weight loss myths

I think I’ve made my position clear before – losing weight sucks. The process in general sucks, the mental gymnastics suck, the frustration sucks. Probably what sucks the most are the people constantly on your back about weight loss. Particularly since they’re largely full of shit and just trying to make you feel bad.

So about them being full of shit: Myths of Weight Loss Are Plentiful, Researcher Says

Now, he is trying to set the record straight. In an article published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine, he and his colleagues lay out seven myths and six unsubstantiated presumptions about obesity. They also list nine facts that, unfortunately, promise little in the way of quick fixes for the weight-obsessed. Example: “Trying to go on a diet or recommending that someone go on a diet does not generally work well in the long term.”

This article isn’t so much there to tell you what bits of weight loss canon are bullshit – though there’s a handy-dandy quick list at the bottom of it you should really read – but to point out what a shambles research into weight loss seems to be. And it should highlight that if anyone tells you they have all the answers, they are probably full of it, or outright lying to you.

At this point I’ve managed to lose the magical 25% of my starting bodyweight. It actually makes me feel a lot better to know that it’s not unusual at all that I’ve plateaued. Sometimes the truth isn’t what we’d like (sure, I’d love it if riding my bike literally melted fat, but how about I just ride my bike because it’s fun) but it’s better than beating ourselves up over a misconception or a lie.

Beating yourself up at all doesn’t accomplish anything. There’s plenty to fight out there, and none of it should be you. So don’t do it, okay?

Speaking of Gina Kolata, she’s written a book about weight loss research, which I own – Rethinking Thin. At five years old now, it might be getting a little dated, but it was a good book to read since it’s all about where the science was at. (Or wasn’t at, as the case often seemed to be.) I can’t say I exactly enjoyed having that many not-fun truths dropped on me, but there’s a certain power to, after having been struggling up a mountain for years, having someone confirm that yes, it’s a fucking mountain. Losing weight does suck.

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Following Kevin Bacon Again (spoilers)

Kevin Bacon was still quite Kevin Bacon in this second episode, though he was also around a lot less, thus lowering the KBQ (Kevin Bacon Quotient) to dangerous levels.

Honestly, the best part the entire episode was when someone in a hilariously awful Edgar Allan Poe mask attacks Kevin Bacon in a creepy serial killer house (you can tell it’s a serial killer house because there’s writing all over the walls) and it was just sort of laughable and pathetic instead of worrying.

Yeah, like this but less festive.
Yeah, like this but less festive.

There was relatively little murder of pretty blonde girls this time around (just a bit at the beginning that I barely noticed) and then most of it was flashbacks of Kevin Bacon hooking up with the master serial killer’s wife, or two of the main bad guys hooking up over a romantic dinner where the lady serial killer knifes her mom in the back with great precision, having had her haircut criticized one too many times.

The most forehead-slapping bit was when Kevin Bacon and the utterly worthless police crew walked through the serial killer house and paid careful attention to all the quotable Edgar Allan Poe scrawled on the walls.  Apparently our serial killer mastermind in prison has made a religion or something out of Poe because: “…there’s a pathology to our modern internet-bred minds. It creates a vacancy in our humanity…”

All I can think of is… oh if only the antisocial sector on the internet was actually as literate as this show makes it out to be. Then: and really, we’re going to go with the “internet makes us disconnected and therefore sociopaths” thesis here? Do the writers not read anything but the frothiest of subreddits?

Kids these days, with their internets and serial killings and so forth.

The second most forehead-slapping bit was when they realized (gasp) the main serial killer wants to kill his former wife Claire! So instead of, I don’t know, getting her out of the fucking house in light of the fact that in last week’s episode someone got snatched directly from her own home and horribly killed, they just left her there so daddy’s special little serial killer could take a shot at her and gosh, you almost ended up feeling bad for him.

You’re losing me, The Following, for anything but comedy value. All you’ve got is Kevin Bacon. He’d better keep on Kevin Baconning his tush off or I’m going to give up entirely and watch Law & Order reruns on Netflix because they’re measurably less silly.

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Gay marriage at the supreme court – the smell of desperation

I’m sure getting a whiff off of this:

Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can “produce unplanned and unintended offspring,” opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court.

So let me get this straight… one of the strongest arguments the opponents of gay marriage think they have at this point is that only heterosexual couples can have “oops” babies? Seriously? And gay people don’t need marriage because they have to plan their babies? I just. I can’t even.

First, I’m sure given the glorious spectrum of human sexuality, this line of argument is not true anyway. For example, John Scalzi pointed out on Twitter that:

Polyamorous bisexuals in same-sex open marriages might wish to dispute this line of “reasoning”

And of course, infertile couples, childfree couples, etc etc etc. But I don’t think we even have to go that far. We should just take a step back and gaze in wonder at the utter, majestic stupidity of that line of argument. We’re boiling the supposedly inviolate and super special institution of state-sanctioned marriage down to trying to get people to legally hitch themselves together because of accidental pregnancy? Because accidental pregnancies out of wedlock place a burden on society but ones within a marriage can’t? (…how’s the weather on your planet?)

Instead, they argue that it is reasonable for the law to steer opposite-sex couples toward marriage, including by giving them extra benefits. “It was rational for Congress to draw the line where it did,” Clement said, “because the institution of marriage arose in large measure in response to the unique social difficulty that opposite-sex couples, but not same-sex couples, posed.”

I just… what? I’m guessing they’re still hammering the oops baby point here, which doesn’t really paint marriage in such a great light. Oh look, marriage is an easy solution to unintended pregnancy – how about rape as well? This is something that still happens in the world and is horrifying. Or maybe I just missed the bit in world history where they told us about how same-sex couples have always had it easy and opposite-sex couples faced unique social difficulties of other sorts.

If all you can come up with once you’ve stripped way the overt homophobia is something that brain-lockingly dumb, maybe it’s time to just quietly pack up the briefcase and go home.

In another part of their brief, they argue for the high court to stand back and to let the “democratic process” resolve the dispute over gay marriage. Both note that voters in several states recently approved same-sex marriage, and opinion polls report that most Americans now favor it.

So basically “please let the dinosaurs draw it out in a lingering, painful state-by-state extinction.”

History called. You’re on the wrong side.

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Adventures with eBooks and DRM

Alternative title: I now totally understand why people might go pirate, and it has nothing to do with wanting free shit.

My husband and I bought each other Nooks last year as a combination birthday/Christmas present. I’d been really wanting an e-reader since we’ve long since run out of shelf space, and I didn’t want an actual tablet since reading on a backlit screen makes my eyes get really tired after a while. For the most part, I’ve liked having a Nook, and have happily just bought stuff from the Barnes and Noble online store.

Last night, I decided to do something a little different. I wanted to buy an ebook through the the Tattered Cover, because they’re the local independent book store and I want to support them with my money. A two hour adventure ensued in which I tried to figure out how the fuck to even download said book and then get it in my Calibre library. Because I had this, in retrospect, terribly naive thought that I’d buy the ebook, I’d get to download it, then put it on my Nook and yay, new book!

Oh no.

The Tattered Cover referred me to a store called Kobo. Which tried to then make me install their proprietary reader. But I wanted to just download the book myself, so ended up with an .acms file with absolutely no explanation what that even was. Well, it’s an Adobe DRM format, which meant if I wanted to download the book I then had to install the Adobe digital edition software, which then didn’t let me put the book in Calibre anyway because DRM you filthy disgusting pirate.

I was ready to just chew on things. I’ve now installed (non-sanctioned) plugins for Calibre that let me strip the DRM off the files, because goddamnit I paid for them and I can do that. But talk about ARGH.

Oh, and in the process I discovered that the B&N website downloads your ebooks into a hidden partition of your Nook so that you cannot even see them when the device is mounted to your computer. SO THAT’S NICE.

Other fun B&N anecdote: my husband has some ebooks from Barnes and Noble that contain a page with the message that the book was provided DRM free by the author. And then B&N added their own DRM anyway. Classy.

I want to be able to buy books from any site I want and not have to screw around with a different proprietary reader for each one. I want to not have to do google search adventures every time I want to figure out how to download my goddamn book and look at it. And in that sense, I totally understand why someone might turn to book piracy out of the desire to not have to deal with this bullshit, because just give me my fucking .epub and let me get on with my life. By the end of the experience I felt like crying out to the uncaring sky I JUST WANT TO GIVE YOU MY MONEY AND READ A BOOK WHY WON’T YOU LET ME.

I imagine various shops want to force customers to stick with proprietary software and formats, since it makes it more likely that people won’t stray from them and spend their money elsewhere. But I didn’t buy a Nook so I could be effectively owned by Barnes and Noble and badgered into shopping only at their store. I bought a Nook because I liked the specs and because I wanted to, I don’t know, read some fucking books. Isn’t the profit margin better for everyone with ebooks? Then why the hell make them more difficult to use than dead tree books? Why make an ebook a less liberating purchase than a physical book?

The people this fucks in the end – other than readers like me who spend hours ranting and sobbing at their computers – is the writers. If you make buying and then using something utterly painful, maybe that will keep some customers from straying. But it’ll make others stop buying it. I want to see my favorite writers get money. But I can’t say the temptation wasn’t there during the battle with the Adobe DRM because I was getting so damn pissed off.

Most of the time, writers have no control over if their ebook has DRM on it. I just wish the corporate paymasters would figure out that treating your customers preemptively like criminals makes the illegal option feel like the path of least resistance. I refuse to be in abusive relationships with other human beings. I sure as hell won’t be in an abusive relationship with a store.

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Being last sucks, I admit it.

Today was the first group ride I’ve done in 2013, a 45 mile roundtrip to Gunbarrel that was relatively flat for Colorado. Which really means fuck you hills, I hate you so very, very much. To say I survived it is probably charitable.

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This is me, post-ride on the ugly carpet of my living room. I am probably dead by the time you read this.

I learned several things from the ride today:

1) A no-drop ride does not mean the same thing for every group. Technically, I was not dropped, thank you everyone who put up with my slow ass. But there were times when it was just me and the sweep rider and no one else was in sight because they had outboard motors on their bikes or something. (I managed to average ~15.5 mph over the whole 45 miles, which was in the speed range of 15-17mph the ride organizer told me. The average for the main group was ~18 mph. Yeah.)

2) You can ride when it’s 40 degrees out, and do distance. Your lungs will just rise up and try to choke you when you’re done.

3) Even if you’re the slowpoke, most other cyclists won’t be dicks to you. In fact, everyone was very encouraging.

4) God I hate being in last place. Well, who doesn’t, right? But I’m such a naturally competitive person that it was an extra side of frustration.

However, I think being in last place was also good for me. It meant that I worked my ass off, trying to catch up with the others or maintain a reasonable speed. That’s why I like group rides anyway – I have a tendency to challenge myself more in them. When I’m riding by myself, I’ll put in the miles (I did a 30 mile ride on Monday, for example, all by my lonesome) but I tend to just cruise along, listen to my audiobook, and not really work it.

So this was good for me. Very good for me. It gives me incentive to do more rides and work harder, so I’m not in last place any more. If I keep repeating that, maybe my quads will stop their shrill, pathetic screams.

And by the way. You, Hill on 95th between Kestrel and Phillips. You may think you’ve won this time. But you have no idea who you’re fucking with. I’ll be back.

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Little girl gets boy underwear

I found this story very cute: Why I Bought Boys’ Underwear For My Daughter. Of course, the point is kind of that once again, gendered marketing strikes. Little girls only get appropriately feminine underoo options, little boys get Star Wars and the like, and there seems a total disconnect over the fact that little girls can appreciate “boy” things and enjoy them. No! You will wear pink! Nothing but pink! If you want a telescope it will be pink! Girls are only allowed to like girl characters! Etc!

So yeah, good on the dad.

This is the other thing that struck me. All of the comments on the article are positive. Pretty much along the lines of what I said – go dad! Woohoo! Now, the internet’s only had a day to blemish the comments so maybe people will be frothing in them soon about how boy underwear will turn that girl into a butch lesbian or something. But I would almost bet not.

Whereas, say, when you get an article about a little boy wearing awesome pink shoes – shoes! Not even something as intimate as underpants – there was definitely a lot of negative reaction in the comments. Plenty of “go, mom!” as well, but it wasn’t so unilaterally positive. Maybe it’s more okay for a little girl to like “boy” things than it is for a little boy to like “girl” things. I don’t know. I do get the impression that it’s much more okay for a little girl to be a “tomboy” when she’s young, so long as she straightens up and hews to the gender norm by the time she hits puberty (or risk getting picked apart by her peers). That was certainly close to my personal experience – no one really gave two shits about what I wore until suddenly there were boobs and makeup became a thing.

Though I also do wonder if the baggage is in there where it’s more acceptable for women to like “man” things than vice versa, because there’s still the idea of masculinity being superior.

Anyway. Awesome dad. Enjoy your Star Wars undies, little girl. If they made decent Avengers underwear for women of my size and shape, you can bet I’d be all over that shit too.

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Steampunk Nominations!

Steampunk Chronicle’s Reader’s Choice Awards NOMINATION Page: for fun, for steampunk. I love that there is a best goggles category.

And because, selfishly, I wrote a couple of short stories in 2012. ;)

And was in the Steampunk edition of Penumbra with a bunch of other amazing stories!

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cats

WordPress test post

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Just seeing if WordPress is working right and posting everywhere it should. (And includes an adorable picture of my cat… as it should.) Carry on. :)

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politics

Assault weapons ban press conference

Today Senator Feinstein proposed her new assault weapons ban. A friend of mine went to the press conference for it and this is what she had to say afterward:

There were a lot of good speakers; both Conn. Senators, the CT Rep from the district that Sandy Hook is in, survivors of VTech, relatives of victims of VTech.
Officer Charles Ramsey from Philedelphia had one of the most powerful speeches; he was really passionate about it.
They also had some examples of the weapons that would be banned on display: all of them are military style and don’t belong on the streets.
Also, notably, the bill includes clauses that explicitly protect guns designed for hunting or sport, or require manual operation.
Call your representatives, call your senators, demand that they vote for it.
Well, it was a press conference, not an actual Senate meeting.
Also the NRA is throwing a bitch fit about it. Even though 74% of their membership support an assault weapons ban.
I want to call the NRA and throw the whole ‘guns don’t kill people’ thing in their face.
People kill people. They just are able to kill a lot more people with assault weapons.
These are not weapons designed for sport, or hunting. They are designed to kill as much as possible, in as short a time as possible, with minimal reloads.
True, in the military they are used more for suppressive fire in combat, but the shooters in the mass murders of recent years always aimed to kill with the weapons.
40% of all mass shootings in America’s history have happened in the last nine years since the expiration of the 1994 assault weapons ban.
Oh, also: there’s a march for assault weapon control on Saturday in DC.

Re: inevitable argument that guns are just tools, guns don’t kill people, etc etc: