Cav's Place

It starts well, pointing out the problems with the pursuit of happiness in itself and with this cult of positivity in particular, including the fact that it’s an industry but mainly that it doesn’t, and can’t, work, and in fact usually has the opposite effect. After all, happiness is the difference between reality and expectations, so raising expectations to extreme levels can only hurt, while focusing on meeting those expectations and on what can go right instead of thinking of what can go wrong and accepting limits is more likely to lead to great failure, and not of a kind that one can learn from. And then it understandably moves on to Stoicism, doing a good job of presenting its virtues, though it also presents the aspects that I’ll always reject, such as accepting reality as it is and agreeing with the proponents of positive thought in saying that what matters is how you view what happens. And while I’ll definitely always reject the non-attachment that the part about Buddhism focuses on, I rationally recognize its value and that it had to be stressed in this context.
Past that point, however, the author mostly rambles, presenting some discussions or a few examples. There are still valid points, but they tend to become rather few and far between, with a fair amount of bullshit and obvious flaws in the reasoning taking their place. For example, he somehow misidentifies discipline and structure as being the same as non-attachment, says that it’s difficult to identify problems affecting you in the present, or seems to conveniently forget that difference between reality and expectations when pointing out the happiness of those living insecure lives and mentions but then quickly dismisses the impact of religious, magical thinking. And admitting that nothing particularly bad happened to him rather negates his credentials, though he at least states that this negative path is a toolkit to mix and match and adopt pieces from, not to be taken as a whole or seen as a guide or any sort of guarantee… Which may, in itself, put it above the “competition”.

Rating: 3/5

I happened to stumble upon the press release about a proposed Nature Relationship Index just before midnight, so I initially ended up with the most basic placeholder for a post, only including the link. But, at first glance, the idea has some merit, depending on how it’s implemented, the index is intended to evolve over time, and UNDP is asking for feedback… The problem being that it’s hard to find actual details, seeing as the paper is behind a paywall… Which is actually a serious reason for concern in itself, bad enough to make me extremely suspicious about this, at least at this early point, seeing as we’re talking about a method meant to improve conditions not just for all people, but for all life on Earth, and yet the authors published the actual proposals and the concept behind them in a place that can only be accessed by those paying utterly insane fees.
Still, I did find some details posted by one of the authors, so I’ll be commenting on that and say that, if the idea was to calculate the positive impact people can have on Nature, then I’d have wanted something that actually focuses on that, more of a Nature Restoration Index, if we’re to stick to NRI, while this idea of showing how people and Nature can coexist and thrive together while keeping Nature accessible and “used with care” runs the very high risk of turning into something like “sustainable development”, so greenwashing, because there can be no infinite growth on a finite world and we’ve passed the limits long ago already. And it’s the very fact that at the top of the proposed dimensions is accessibility, followed by use, while actual protection and restoration are at the bottom, that makes that risk seem pretty much a certainty, and by design. And, when it comes to some of the listed specifics, on top of having a hard time believing my eyes when I saw “cultural burning” listed under using Nature “with care and respect”, I have serious doubts about the role given to Indigenous communities, because those tend to be whatever shreds of past societies managed to somehow survive the onslaught of modern man, and those past societies, at their peak, also exploited and destroyed the environment, and in some cases that brought their downfall even before colonists came along, and where they didn’t, and where it may perhaps be said that at present they don’t, it’s likely because of the low numbers and reduced development, or at least reduced use of modern technology and methods, so more because they can’t than because they actually wouldn’t cause harm, and there’s no basis to say that their experience and practices would still cause little damage, not to mention actually improve the situation, if applied to modern society at large.
Not that this concept, even in this form, isn’t much better than HDI, not to mention any of the utterly harmful measurements that only focus on financial aspects, and it’s clear that an index that’d focus solely, or at least primarily, on how well countries protect and improve the environment, repairing the damage already caused and aiding other species, without looking at the benefits that people may also derive from that, is likely to generate little interest at best, and most probably a lot of backlash, people being as selfish and shortsighted as they are. But if the authors honestly intended to show what can be done in this direction, and perhaps identify places where some of those things are already being done, then that’s the path they should have taken. And, even looking at the dimensions and points listed in that article, putting safeguarding Nature first and using it last would have been an important step… And it would be the important next step, if they’re serious about the concept evolving over time.

I guess you could call this an “indirect” milestone, since the “proper” one would be the day that’d have marked a milestone if we’d have stayed together, the “proper” milestone for this year being September 27, if I’m to take that date as the end. But the 20th lonely July 12 should still count for something… And I wasn’t yet 21 when she left, so I’m approaching the point when the time spent suffering after her will be more than half of my life, though that will actually come in September of 2026, so one more July 12 will pass first… Which means that both dates will be milestones next year, if I’ll still be alive by then, since it’ll be the last July 12 before that point and the first September 27 after it. Though, of course, the truly major milestone will be that actual date.
But, to return to the present, I’m writing this with two incomplete posts remaining, in fact being untouched, the post about the half marathon still containing only the first two paragraphs and the one about the Dream Trek still skipping over the actual run. And a year ago I was in a similar situation with the post about the Dream Trek, wanting to write directly but getting to this point without managing to do so and only having a few rushed notes about the actual run. But, if I was mentioning sleeping badly back then as well, now my sleep debt is quite extreme, and I also made a lot of effort this week, wandering around on only a few hours of sleep on Tuesday and Wednesday, in terrible heat on Tuesday and carrying a whole lot on Wednesday, still getting less than seven hours of sleep per day since then, and running yesterday. So the fact that I’m not feeling well is hardly surprising, but the specific symptoms concern me, since as of last evening there’s a strange taste in my mouth, today I’ve been feeling increasingly cold even though the temperature reached about 30°C, and now I seem to start feeling something in my chest as well, and dad is bringing mother again tomorrow evening and I really wouldn’t want to pass something to her, so I’ll be taking something tonight and I’ll see how things develop.
But this is starting to look like a regular personal update and that’s not right… On the other hand, it’s not like I have anything new to say on topic, and I didn’t even find anything new while searching today. Granted, no news may be good news, and at least it means that she’s still fine, or at least fine enough to keep her position, but it’s not like my worst fear is likely to be something announced through sites that cover professional, academic or scientific activity, and it’s the personal matters that interest me, about anyone in fact. But that first kiss, which I detailed in 2007 and 2008, when I really went through pretty much everything I could remember, was around 11 PM, as far as I recall, and since there’s little else to actually say at this point, this is probably a good time to post this.

Seeing as I generally add another post in this series when I really need to post something non-personal on a certain day, it should go without saying that this one is also rushed, but at least it really deserves the title, because the included bands are actual new finds, and I actively looked for two new bands after happening to stumble upon the first one and deciding to try to stick to the same country, which in this case is Brazil, for the other two as well. Not that I didn’t check the list first, and I even found a Brazilian band with new material released within the past year and not already included in such a post, but I left it for another time… While on the other hand I removed one which had split up several years ago.

The band that I just happened to stumble upon is Enorion, but the recent release that made me click when I noticed it among the suggestions is a cover, so I won’t link to that one, going with the self-titled song and Time to Understand, which is their first one. Then again, there’s only one other original song in between, and that features Fabio Lione as vocalist, just like that recent cover, plus a lengthy instrumental bridge that sounds pretty much like what you’d expect in one of that guy’s songs and therefore not something I’m fond of. Of course, they sing power metal and seem to aim for that sort of sound, but those two songs seem to sound a fair bit better to me, even those instrumental bridges being much more appealing, especially in case of Time to Understand, so I hope they won’t focus too much on their collaboration with Fabio and lose their own direction in the process.

The second band is BrightStorm and it’s just their recent release, The Awakening, that makes them the most interesting among the three from my point of view. Admittedly, their other songs are rather different, and I’d say that even the second pick, Vampire, isn’t exactly representative, but it’s not like I usually care for such things, the picks just being songs that I prefer. Either way, while not extraordinary, the vocals are good enough and that goes for pretty much the entire package. They do seem far less confident and polished than a bad that’s apparently been around for well over a decade probably should be, and that may also mean that this is pretty much all they can do, but it is also possible that there’s still room for improvement, and their newer songs do sound better than the older ones.

As for the third band, that’s Inside Shadows, they just have three songs and the first one has some growls, so I’ll obviously go with the other two, Torn Apart and Against the Time. There are moments when the vocals do sound somewhat “broken”, but the overall sound and the instrumental parts are good enough and, even though they seem to have been around since 2019, at least in some form, they’re clearly just starting out in practical terms, so there should be plenty of room for improvement.

While I managed to write everything that comes after walking away from University Square, after the Dream Trek, I can’t just post that and leave the part about the actual run for another post, especially since July 12 is next week and it’s 2025, so I’ll need to edit this in order to add the rest at a later time, the initial form of the post skipping ahead after the first two paragraphs. But now I’ll just pick up right from where I left off and say that it was a few minutes after 8 PM when I rushed out the door… And then I saw that the area around the stadium was closed because of a food festival, entrance seeming to require tickets, so I went around and jogged that part of the way… Not that I should have bothered, since it wasn’t even 8:20 PM yet when I reached the place where we were supposed to gather, which was once again that store from that mall, only a handful of people were there at the time, most showing up after that point, and Radu only started his speech at 8:43 PM, 20 minutes before the scheduled start time. And then, probably because of what happened last year, a quick warm up was done right there, and I missed it because I went to pee. But I didn’t miss the picture.
The “formal” start of the run was actually right at 9:03 PM, at sunset, and from there, since we jogged our way to the exit, making a short pause once we got outside, to wait for everyone to regroup and, I guess, to allow the organizers to make sure that everything was ready. But I didn’t know how long that pause was going to be, so I got the slip of paper and the pencil out of the running belt again, meaning to write a few more notes, but the signal to start running again was given while I was trying to do that and that bottle made it hard to get those things back in there quickly, so I struggled to do so while trying to at least walk quickly, ending up pretty much at the back of the group by the time I could run again. But that wasn’t a problem, so I still took it pretty easy, and the fact that only a few hundred meters later we had to wait for quite a while at a stoplight meant that everyone ended up back together again anyway.

After picking up a couple of recyclables from the underground passage, I took the metro for one stop, putting everything in a cabinet when I reached Carrefour Unirii, buying a few things, and then retrieving what I had in the cabinet and returning to the metro station, getting back here just after 7:35 AM. Then I put the purchases in their place, washed what was in the kitchen, ate a bag of chips, getting over 650 calories just from that, and left again when it was almost 9:25 AM, with the recyclables with the deposit symbol, picking up a few more from the garbage room, and some pretzels that I gave to a beggar who was in front of the metro station, since I took the metro for one stop instead of walking to that store… And that beggar was holding a message that I didn’t read, but I saw that it had a cross at the top, and when I handed him the pretzels he asked whether it was “in the name of the Lord”, so I shrugged and said “as you wish” before walking away.
When I reached that store and was initially told, by a cashier that I hadn’t seen before, that the machine had stopped working and that people keep coming with many recyclables and it can’t handle all of them, I feared that I’ll have to turn around and take them back, but then she told me to try to use it, maybe after exchanging a few words with someone else, I’m not certain, and I saw that it did work after all, and I assume that it had just been emptied, because I could put everything in without it stopping, so I just split into two, to have dad’s on one voucher and mine on another. And when I told the cashier what the total should be, including the bonus, she said that she trusted me and will just give me that amount, though she then asked whether she should trust me, having a look at the vouchers, and I did the calculation on my phone as well and showed her the result, receiving that amount.
Then I took the metro to Carrefour Pantelimon, washing my hands when I got there, entering with the few recyclables picked up on the way, and getting the year’s first watermelon, even if it was imported and more expensive than I’d have wanted, since it wasn’t large and at least it was from Greece instead of a non-EU place and still a little less than what dad tended to pay for the watermelons he got from the market, mainly for mother, even in the middle of the season in previous years. Either way, I also got a little more cat food… And then I saw that they had finally added self-checkouts that accept cash in that location as well, so I used one before arranging my things, picking up another recyclable, and deciding to test my luck by getting an instant ticket from the Lottery place that was there, though I just lost the money, not winning anything, and they had increased the price of those tickets in the two and a half years since the previous time I got one. But at least there was no bad luck on the way back, so I took the metro, I think finding another recyclable somewhere, and when I got here I saw that I had time to quickly check the nearby Mega Image as well, entering with everything, though I didn’t find anything to get.
I got back again a little after 12:05 PM… And then I bumped my head after putting the found recyclables on the balcony. But it’s not like bumping my head is unusual, which will be proven even a little later in this very post, so I then washed the watermelon, ate some of it, put it and the cat food in the fridge, made tea, did the day’s squats, went to the toilet and to wash, and then went to bed… Only to sleep for less than two hours before waking up and being unable to get back to sleep, and even the feeling of being sleepy was just going away as time passed, so I eventually gave up and got up. Then, since I needed a second post that week, I quickly played No Response and wrote the quick review while eating lunch… And just before going back to the kitchen at night I decided to lie in bed a little more… And ended up falling asleep for probably about half an hour, so it was past 1:20 AM when I woke up, and a little later I actually came back from the kitchen to get back on the computer for a little while, ending up eating dinner between 4:10 AM and 4:55 AM and getting back in bed at 5:40 AM.

At least it was past 5:20 PM when I finally got up, though I did go to pee twice before that point, also spent a little time on the computer on the first such occasion, and only actually slept for a total of about seven hours, if even that, since there was a little drilling from above just after 11:30 AM, and while it stopped quickly, after that point I had a very hard time getting back to sleep and quickly woke up whenever I finally did. Either way, I’ll also mention here that, since a discussion on the GOG.com forums had made me have another look at what was available and I finally spotted a monitor that seemed to be just what I’d want in case I ever had to replace the one that I’ve been using for some 18 and a half years, and it seemed to have the lowest price it ever had around here and the store offered an additional 10% discount on monitors those days, I decided to go for it, also adding a few accessories for the vacuum cleaner to the order and dad paying by card. And at night I ended up starting to eat dinner at 3:35 AM and it was past 4:25 AM when I finished getting what was stuck on the plate.

After having to get up much earlier than I’d have wanted, since I was scheduled to have that lost filling replaced at 2 PM, I just managed to walk out the door seconds before that hour, so I jogged, getting there pretty much right away, and I had a few minutes to wait anyway. And they did confirm that it was the same one which had also fallen in May of last year, being replaced on the 15th of that month, but I was charged for it in full anyway, the dentist saying that the shape probably makes it hard to stick in place, but she’d rather not drill more into the tooth and risk harming it when she doesn’t need to, since no new cavity developed, and she actually praised me for how well I had cleaned, saying that she basically had nothing to do except put a new one right in the hole, and that I had no other problems either, except plaque of course, but I still ignored the strong recommendation to make an appointment to have that removed. On the other hand, when I stood up I banged my head against the light, which hadn’t been moved out of the way.
The good thing was that the delivery, which was scheduled for that day, was supposed to be made later, so after having a quick look in the nearby Mega Image and picking up a few recyclables on the way back, I waited for it, rearranging my books a little during that time, since I had kept meaning to do that ever since receiving the new books, almost five months ago. And after it did arrive I obviously took the time to set up the new monitor, arranging things so the old one could stay connected as well, though I changed the settings so only the new one would be used, and then fiddling with things for a while, finding that if I used the “Economy” preset, which also means sRGB, HDR and any of the gaming enhancements except adaptive sync being off, and set the refresh rate to 60 Hz, or in fact up to 120 Hz, its power use is exactly the same as the old one’s, albeit with that one having sRGB on and a refresh rate of 75 Hz… And turning sRGB on makes this one’s power use increase massively, so I’m keeping it off. And I also keep Ambiglow off, though when I tried to leave it on while watching TV for a while, it didn’t seem to make a difference… But, speaking of differences, the difference in size and resolution will definitely take some getting used to.
On the other hand, what caught my attention even more was that, while the CPU temperature had reached a high of 61°C while processing some images or checking other games and the fan speeds continued to remain fixed, when I started Lords of Xulima, since I quickly checked how the installed games worked at this much higher resolution, and it reached 62°C, the fans suddenly sped up! I heard it, and was monitoring the system, so I saw it reported as well, and that has pretty much been the rule since, and in fact a couple of times I noticed them starting to speed up a little when the CPU was reporting a few tenths of a degree less than 62°C. So it’s not that the system can no longer react to the temperature, but that it ignores my settings and uses different ones that make it only increase the fan speed at higher temperatures, or maybe only under certain scenarios. At least that means that there should be no actual risk of overheating, but it’s definitely strange, and it remains a concern, especially when temperatures are about to go over 40°C.
Either way, it was 7:50 PM when I finally went out again, deciding to go straight to the Carrefour and Kaufland that are next to each other, despite initially meaning to either go in the other direction or at least make a detour to also check Penny. And I’d have had time for that detour, and I still had to go around the area that’s around the stadium anyway, since it was still closed even though that food festival had finished two days earlier, but I couldn’t have known any of that. So, after putting the few recyclables that I picked up on the way in a cabinet when I reached Carrefour, I got what I wanted plus two expiring products, then arranged those purchases, retrieved the recyclables, and continued to Kaufland, putting everything in a cabinet, washing my hands, and entering the store at 9 PM. But I didn’t see evening discounts that I cared for, so I only picked up a bundle of radishes in case the discount would increase, then got some other things, including some canned tomato paste that was at half price, I’m not sure why… And while I was wandering around I heard an employee say something about 11 PM and there were no closing announcements, so I waited until after 10 PM before going to the self-checkouts, and there were still no announcements. But there were no new or increased discounts either, so I left the radishes there, then retrieved my things and arranged everything just enough to be able to carry the stuff to that Mega Image, where I put the purchases in a cabinet that I locked and the recyclables in one that I didn’t, then took a packaged bread for dad and a pretzel for mother, both being discounted by 90%, and a small pack of cat food. Then I retrieved my things and went to a bench outside, taking my time to arrange everything properly. And then I remembered to check and saw that the closing time for that Kaufland was listed as 10:30 PM at the entrance, though the large sign still listed 10 PM.
I got back just before 11:15 PM, with almost 12 kg. Then I put the purchases in their place, also showed dad the new monitor, spent some time on the computer, ate a little chocolate and some watermelon, washed what was in the kitchen, waiting for dad to go to bed since he had to wake up very early but still had things to do, did the day’s squats as well, and finally went to wash at 1:40 AM. I was done at 2:15 AM, but then I noticed that one of the two remaining bananas had gone completely soft and had leaked in that basket, so I cleaned up, throwing away the paper bags that it had leaked on and washing the plastic ones a little, and also tried to see whether any of it was still usable, eating a couple of tiny bits that still had a trace of something that didn’t look completely spoiled. That meant losing a fair bit of time, so I only took a first bite of lunch at 3:15 AM, but it was quite some time later when it could be said that I actually started eating it, on and off, while working on dinner. And I also moved the olives into a jar. Either way, I finished lunch at 4:20 AM, ate dinner between 4:35 AM and 5:30 AM, and got in bed at 6:05 AM, just after dad woke up. And one annoying, and somewhat worrying, thing was that a spot on my right thumb had kept itching all day and, if anything, it seemed to be getting worse at night, though I couldn’t see anything there.

I woke up a little before 9:30 AM and decided to go to pee, and then I wanted to check something on the computer and ended up fiddling with things again, so I was still there a little after 10:20 AM, when there was some more drilling from above, and at a later point somebody rang the doorbell as well, by which point I was trying to check the route taken during the Dream Trek once it started changing and, while I’m not sure of some details, I pretty much confirmed that the different options hardly seem to make any difference at all in terms of distance, making that estimate of 45 km quite accurate either way. But checking that took quite a while, so it was 12:10 PM when I finally got back in bed… And, while it had been relatively quiet for a little while before that, more loud noises started coming from above moments later, as if heavy things were thrown or falling, my bed shaking quite noticeably a few times. That didn’t last long, but various lesser noises continued, so it took me quite some time to fall asleep again, and at 1:50 PM I was awake again, going to pee one more time and having another quick look on the computer before getting back in bed yet again and catching a few more naps, though I had been awake for quite a long time when I finally got up, a little after 4:30 PM. And then I noticed the image shifting a number of times, so I started to look through settings to see whether I could figure out what was going on and spotted something called Pixel Orbiting, which a quick search told me I correctly determined to be the culprit, but for the time being I’m leaving it on. On the other hand, at night, after making mamaliga, I saw quite a number of ants in the living room, helping themselves to the breadcrumbs scattered by dad… But now I’d consider the fact that we definitely have fleas again to be the far bigger problem.