only fools and horses

Last fall I ended up spending most of a week in Aruba due a friend's access to a family place to stay. I still find myself musing about the social and economic structure and general vibe of the place.

In some ways it reminds me of Las Vegas. There are a few areas along the coast offering a very packaged experience with a lot of service and a bunch of shopping that goes at high-end as you want. Turn at right angles to the axis of the tourist strip, and it's a whole other world.

I think I'm pretty good at noticing class and racial tension, though, and it wasn't like anyplace I can recall being. We ended up pretty far from the beaten track at times, and in dealing with people there was neither a "wtf are you doing here?" vibe nor a subtle deference. Interactions were... matter-of-fact, perhaps?

I've been thinking for much of a year about how to distill the vibe and I still don't have good words for it. I don't necessarily buy the "One Happy Island" that's the ubiquitous tagline, but they do seem to have something good going.

PS: As far as all the usual tourist stuff (filtered through my interests of course) goes, they have a lot of horses and it's a good way to explore the backcountry, but it's too damn hot for my taste. I'm told they either have no wind or All The Wind, and if it had been a no-wind week I think I'd have been doing the poolside-fancy-drink circuit instead of exploring. Even so we had saddlebags full of water bottles that started out frozen. My favorite place to eat is probably Indo (Surinamese place in Noord), with Kamini's Kitchen (waaay down in Seroe Colorado) good for a Nice Meal Out. The National Archaeological Museum was closed when we were there, but the Historical Museum of Aruba seems almost completely ignored but had a really thought provoking exhibit about the history of weaving in Aruba with a bunch of history and culture and social commentary viewed through that lens, some very contemporary; highly recommended.

I'm just now doing some housekeeping for a more complete lj-to-dreamwidth cutover. I'm the same me in both places. (At least as much as I ever am!)

I'm trying to figure out this whole "Where I slept in 2014" meme. I'm not great at remembering the past in a linear date-tagged sort of way so I bet this is incomplete.

I'm more than happy to answer "why the heck were you in...?" sorts of questions; I don't mean to be supervague, but neither do I want to write up a travelogue for the whole year!

So far I've got:

• Boston, Massachusetts
• Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Melrose, Massachusetts
• Somerville, Massachusetts
• Wilmington, Massachusetts
• Troy, New Hampshire

• Augusta, Maine
• Ellsworth, Maine
• Portland, Maine
• Bangor, Maine
• Waterville, Maine

• Seattle, Washington
• Tacoma, Washington
• Vancouver, British Columbia

• San Francisco, California
• Berkeley, California
• Mariposa, California
• Lee Vining, California
• Livermore, California
• Las Vegas, Nevada

• Cooperstown, New York
• East Greenbush, New York
• New York, New York
• Westford, New York

• Madison, Wisconsin

These are long-haul trains that I slept on; I'm not sure exactly how you'd count that. Lots of airplanes, too, but those are relatively boring and hopefully you don't interact with the landscape much:

• Boston-Chicago (Lake Shore Limited)
• Chicago-Seattle (Empire Builder)
• San Francisco-Seattle (Coast Starlight)
• Vancouver-Seattle (Cascades; wasn't an overnight but I needed it)

In the last few weeks I've had a whole bunch of crap going on (some of it rather closer to my life to other bits) that's been some combination of appalling, distressing, awful, and at the very least intensely distracting.

I'm not writing about any of that. I'm writing about this, which I didn't know about until a few minutes ago, because writing about relatively happy things is so much easier:



Diana Wynne Jones left behind a manuscript, since completed (apparently quite competently) by her sister, with the book published a few months ago. This seems to have been a happy surprise for more than just me, so I thought I'd warble about it, so there you go.

Also it has a cat on it.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/nsl-found-unconstitutional/

Even the existence of National Security Letters bother the fuck out of me. I do not like secret government and secret law enforcement by secret police one damn bit. Happily I have never been served one, though I suspect at times it's been a near miss. Still, how would I even know?

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/03/opinion-analysis-justices-reject-publishers-claims-in-gray-market-copyright-case/

That one is more wonkish, but with the direction the world is pointed, first sale doctrine is getting more and more important to just about everybody and anything that weakens is is a huge problem. (The concurrence points out what might be a saner path.)

Readercon had a problem with an attendee. I consider their reaction to the problem (http://readercon.livejournal.com/21805.html et seq) to be a related but new problem of their own making, and I'm somewhat cranky about it all.

On the other hand, some of the commentary there about the nature and behaviour patterns of harassers and abusers is more useful and insightful than vituperative, and if the Readercon BoD reads it and does some thinking it's possible something could be salvaged out of this.

Which is why I haven't actually posted this there:
( not a cat macro... )

I don't watch any TV news to speak of, rarely read newspapers, and only sporadically read online news, which overall means that to a large extent I could be considered to live under a rock. (I do however have a lot of very well-informed friends, and somehow manage to have some idea of what's what in the world.) Thus it surprises me that there are two stories I've seen in the news lately that I hadn't heard about socially first. (Or at least the Uzbekistan situation hasn't been in the news that I've noticed for several years.) Both of these come from the BBC because I generally like both their reporting and website layout, but you can read much the same and more elsewhere.

So, if you need more rage about reproductive rights, go read about Uzbekistan's public health policies. In particular go read about government quotas for doctors that lead to coerced or completely nonconsensual sterilization; the article is somewhat heavy-handed emotionally but given the content I'm already maxed out on the rage-o-meter:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17612550

By way of small disclaimer I should point out I've never been there, but from everything I've read, Uzbekistan, human-rights-wise, is a shining example of doing just about everything wrong. The problem is that it's not just "those people over there"; given some of the public debate in the US lately about whether we control our own bodies this hit way too close to home. I still, still hear people say things like "nobody would ever really do that" when there are a few thousand years of contrary historical examples, and now here's a nice current one too.

Next up is the latest round in the ongoing legal wrangling involving prostitution in Canada:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17520140

I really like that the rhetoric here is all about protecting sex workers without turning it into some kind of bullshit morality play, though I'm sure I could find awfulness if I dug enough. The actual court decision is just so, so reasonable! I'm still really conflicted about the larger issues here, because my "consenting adults should be free to do whatever they want" impulses are warring with my observation of the larger coercive forces in society and the lack of real options that a whole lot of people have (context, as always, is key!), but I'm in any case pleased that this debate exists without having politicians falling all over themselves to bloviate in not-quite-but-almost-as-many-words about how the godless harlots are going to hell anyway so who cares?

There's a lot I like about the US, even still, but the larger political debate just gives me teh crankies. Grr.

If you haven't heard any paypal horror story, I'm mildly surprised; I've heard a bunch, and seen firsthand just how randomly sucky they can be, but just in case it's news the latest episode of the one that's been making the rounds lately is here: http://www.regretsy.com/2011/12/06/sooner-or-later-youll-pay-pal/

I have a really annoying relationship with paypal. In some ways it's really useful, and on the face of it the service they offer is of fantastic utility and does things that really weren't possible before, but their management of same is the very essence of arbitrary and capricious, and once you do anything that's at all different from what everybody else is doing they're liable to freeze every asset within reach with no notice and with very little particularly meaningful oversight or recourse unless you can manage a bunch of negative publicity.

From where I sit, that entire last paragraph works just as well with "google" instead of "paypal". The assets, one might note, are electronic communications and social networks instead of money, which surely makes a difference, but either way it represents value and I don't find either company particularly trustworthy. While most people have always taken some care with their money it seems rather more popular to put one's entire online identity into rather more shaky online edifice instead.

Consider this, perhaps, an urging to occasionally contemplate the nature of one's business relationships, particularly those with large companies with complex and opaque motives.

Friday: I was having a cruddy morning, then I walked by (and stopped briefly to observe) someone sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car who was playing with a kitten in her lap. They were both having a ridiculously good time, and it was contagious.

Today: my morning was not as cruddy, but was still improved by my unplanned walk through Justin Herman Plaza at the same time as the goofy happiness of the launch of the local World Naked Bike Ride.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring...