Cav's Place

Yes, it’s been this long. As of today, assuming that my calculations are correct, I have not only suffered after her longer than the relationship lasted, but more than twice longer. So I’m passing yet another “milestone” that I didn’t think I’ll make it to, that I most likely should never have made it to, and the situation is now not merely no better, but actually worse than before, seeing as she put me on ignore wherever she could as of a few months ago…
But let me check those calculations one more time, in writing this time, just to be sure. Not that a day or two would make much of a difference, but let’s see: If I am to consider the calculations for the previous such “milestone” to be accurate, then I first need to go three years, including one leap year, from December 13, 2008. Since there have been no leap years since then, that in fact means that I’ll have to go three years and a day after that, so not until December 12, but until December 13, 2011. Next, starting from the next day, December 14, I have to add two 31-day months. Since December and January are just that, that gets me right to February 13, 2012. And adding 15 more days on top of that will get me all the way to yesterday, February 28. So yes, if I didn’t somehow get it wrong now as well, as of today, February 29, 2012, I have suffered after her for more than twice longer than our relationship lasted. And it hardly was a short relationship, as you can see…

What’s next? I have no idea… All I know is that I’ll always love her and won’t stop hoping for a miracle, even if this hope is merely the false hope I’m required to create for myself because I couldn’t survive without it and I am, after all, still alive. And I also have to hope for that miracle, instead of either the miracle or death, because I have suffered far, far too long for death to be a welcome conclusion anymore. If I would have died within the first year after she left, or at most within a year and a half, then we’d all have been better off, but I was too much of a coward to kill myself then and afterwards it stopped being a suitable solution, so I wouldn’t even want it anymore.
All of this’d be worth it without as much as a second thought if we’ll end up back together someday and spend the rest of our lives, but no less time than we spent apart, together after that, both of us being fully content with our relationship and in good health. Actually being truly happy with how things are going would be even better, of course, but simply being content, as in not having any significant reasons to feel unhappy with our relationship or with each other, would be quite enough for me. And since the only thing I couldn’t accept even for her would be to have children around, considering my views regarding ovepopulation, this means that I have to keep hoping that she isn’t and won’t be involved with any, and particularly that she won’t have any herself. As long as this is the case, I’m at least left with that theoretical chance that I need to hold on to simply because I’m still alive, because I couldn’t survive without this hope.

At first I didn’t mean to mention this here, since it’s an entirely different issue, but I’m going to edit the post and add it too. I’m talking about the fact that I spent a good part of the day, or more exactly a good six hours, working on a reply that ended up having some 3750 words but may not matter in the least, and I can quite clearly say that I had yet another reason to feel particularly bad. But, of course, ending up sorely disappointed is exactly what happens when I somehow fail to expect the worst every single time.
My fault, of course, for allowing the good first impression and my resulting hopes to get the better of me and somehow fail to see it coming. I mean, why would it matter that she also admitted that the “moral” and “ethical” measures couldn’t be sufficient to solve the overpopulation problem in time? My views are obviously infuriating, frightening and appalling, I deserve to be locked up for them and the world would be better off without me and those like me. Which is, of course, the typical reaction, even from those who claim to also be worried about or even trying to solve this issue, but I somehow failed to expect it this time.
So this would be the other reason to be particularly unhappy today, after having my hopes of finally finding someone around here who doesn’t only seem pretty nice overall but is actually able to think strictly rationally about this issue and see what needs to be done about it dashed so thoroughly. And what made it even worse was that, after adding the fact that we seemed to very much agree on the importance of the issue to what had been a pretty good first impression, I was even starting to allow myself to hope that I had unbelievably stumbled upon a potential “real life” friend, quite a few years after the last time I thought this about someone and a full decade after I last had such a person in my life, even if very briefly.
But I guess I now simply need to make sure that I won’t be caught unprepared yet again, starting by making sure that I won’t allow myself to hope that we’ll somehow work this out, despite taking all that time to write that reply. Past this, my level of confidence in humankind’s ability to solve the worst problems it itself creates is already back to its normal value, namely only very marginally above zero, and the fight goes on, for this and any other truly worthy causes. And a translation of a good part of that e-mail should be turned into a post, perhaps as early as next week, so it wasn’t all for nothing even if nothing will be left of it otherwise.
(In case the person I’m talking about stopped by again and is reading this, well, there you have it. Just being perfectly open and honest, as always. And I did try to leave out any potentially identifying information.)

I’m writing this post after participating in the second scheduled protest against ACTA, which was attended by roughly 150 people, though over 3000 said on Facebook that they were going. In itself, the ratio was exactly the expected one, as two weeks ago some 40000 said that they’ll go to the first protest and only about actually 2000 did, but this serves to once more highlight a problem that already was obvious when it comes to protests organized through such social networks, at least over here.
Don’t get me wrong; nobody can deny the benefits of on-line social networking when it comes to protests, especially considering the key role such sites have played, and may still play, in the movements that took over the Arab world. However, while they do a wonderful job of spreading the word and facilitating communication, they also offer a way for people to express their grievances and vent that can replace actual protests in the eyes of those who aren’t exactly dedicated to the cause and are looking for the easiest way to apparently participate. As a result, a number of people who may otherwise have taken part in street protests will no longer do so and the discrepancy between the apparent number of participants on-line and the reality on the street is likely to discourage even more, plus that it will give the protests a bad image that will readily be exploited by opponents.

When you try to organize a protest by creating an event on Facebook or in any other similar manner, particularly when it will take place in an area that’s hardly known for the locals’ willingness to take part in such actions, you should know that you’re leaving the door wide open for a huge number of people who are unable or, more often than not, unwilling to understand how something like this is supposed to work. As such, they’ll either treat the event itself as something very similar to a petition or think that by selecting “going” they’re essentially just giving a “like”, either way considering that clicking to say that they’ll be going while sitting comfortably in front of their computers is a sufficient action to take. As I already said, some of those who are looking for the easiest way out may even consider this to replace actually participating in the protest, so they won’t go anymore even if they might have at least showed up for a few minutes if this option wouldn’t have been available.
What this does is artificially inflate the apparent number of participants and generate expectations that could never be matched by reality. On the one hand, this disheartens those who do end up going to the specified location, making some turn back, causing many others to manifest themselves in a significantly more subdued manner than what they would otherwise have been capable of, and almost certainly reducing the potential number of participants for the next protest on the same issue. On the other, in addition to making the media lose interest and give less or even no attention to any future protests on the same theme, it also allows opponents to easily say that the protest lacks real support and the entire movement behind it, if there is one, is based more on the “cool” factor than on real grievances.

Of course, seeing as people first need to know about a protest before they can attend it and on-line social networking is usually way better than anything else at spreading the word about such events, not to mention that such pages also allow people to quickly and easily exchange ideas and opinions, it’s quite true that the pros still far outweigh the cons. However, we need to keep in mind that there are some inherent problems with this approach and take measures in order to mitigate them as much as possible, and those measures may well include working with the sites that offer such services in order to make some changes aimed at reducing this discrepancy.
It shouldn’t take long to clearly spell out even before providing any further information that the event in question is not a petition or a call for virtual support, but is in fact created for an actual protest and only those who know that they will actually take part in it, in the specified location and at the specified time, should pick the option saying that they’re going. And it also shouldn’t be much of a problem for the sites that allow such events to be created, and of course I’m mainly referring to Facebook now, to add some options for those who want to express support despite knowing that they won’t actually attend, and preferably also give event creators the option of stating very clearly and visibly whether their event takes place on-line or off-line and possibly also include an optional warning for those who say that they’re going to off-line events.

The above are only some simple observations and suggestions, of course, and I’m sure that, on the one hand, other ideas could perhaps be even more useful and, on the other, most of the problem has to do strictly with the people who say that they’ll attend and then fail to show up and not with the organizers or the sites used. However, we need to do something to mitigate these issues as soon as possible and I’m quite sure that these simple measures would be a very good place to start. After we’ll implement them, we’ll be able to observe their effects and determine what, if anything, should be done next.
True, we’ll never be able to completely eliminate this discrepancy or its disheartening effect, but it’s simply a question of figuring out how to maximize the benefits and minimize the drawbacks of what is quite clearly a very good method of spreading the word about and even organizing such events. It’d certainly be a bad idea to start shunning such sites due to these inherent issues, but we need to keep them in mind and act accordingly… And hope that, in time, people will learn to lie just a little less…

For the past few years, February used to be the “action month” for the Global Population Speak Out movement. Those who pledged to act were supposed to do something for the cause at some point during the month and then report the action on the site, where it would be posted after being approved. It served to make the movement more visible, by concentrating the actions of the extremely small number of people who think with their brains instead of their gonads when it comes to this issue and are actually willing to do something about it into a relatively small amount of time, so they would be somewhat less likely to be drowned out by the overwhelming opposition.
This year, that all changed, as the organizers decided to spread out the actions over at least half a year. That’s supposed to cover the entire period between two different estimates of the date when the world’s human population will reach seven billion, but all it really does is dillute and dissipate the movement. What’s more, the actions can no longer be reported directly on the site and, while I got something in an e-mail saying that they would now need to be sent to a certain e-mail address, they don’t seem to be displayed anymore either, so activists can no longer see how their effort, be it big or small, is an integral part of a growing movement.
Then again, seeing as the listed number of pledges is lower than last year’s, that part about “a growing movement” doesn’t seem to be true anymore, and that’s hardly surprising, considering both what’s been going on over the past year and the direction the movement is steered into by those who are currently behind it. More than anything else, I’ll say that GPSO had some amount of potential at first just because it welcomed the more radical opinions and therefore also the people truly dedicated to the cause, who weren’t about to back down even when faced with the terrible backlash that is to be expected whenever somebody expresses any rational opinion when it comes to the issue of overpopulation. But since that’s certainly no longer the case, all that potential energy is being dissipated and, at best, the movement loses most of its real strength.

So what’s going on, you ask? Well, since the Population Institute started administering GPSO, all I’m seeing is a push for a politically correct rhetoric that supports projects that probably sound nice and could be appealing to a rather large number of people but are certainly not sufficient and, in completely objective terms, not even necessary to achieve the goal of reducing the world’s human population by drastically lowering the number of births. Not that one could even be certain that they’re aiming for any sort of reduction anymore, as you see them mention an eventual stabilization, but then lose themselves in stressing terms like “voluntary” and “human rights” so much that any further plans become little more than jokes, seeing as the vast majority of people can never be trusted to consider the greater implications of their actions.
The very best that could be said about their behavior is that they’re afraid of the outcome if they’ll mention the measures that would actually need to be taken if we’re to have any chance of reducing the population to sustainable levels in any foreseeable future. The worst would be that they’re doing this on purpose, specifically to waste the efforts of the few who can see what needs to be done and alienate them even more. The most likely explanations, however, are either that they’re wrongly convinced that the measures they support would be sufficient or that they’ve resigned themselves to the idea that nothing more could possibly get done. Which means that, at best, they’re unworthy of spearheading a movement that could possibly have any chance, tiny as it may be, of eventually solving what certainly is the world’s biggest problem.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m certainly not saying that education and raising the standard of living of the poor are ineffective measures, but merely that they’re far from being sufficiently effective. These are things that should be goals in themselves, simply because people should receive proper information, their reasoning abilities should be developed and those who aren’t guilty of serious crimes should have the right to a decent standard of living. These should be a given and the whole of humanity should work towards these goals, no doubt about it, but to say that they’re the way to solving the overpopulation problem is naive at best.
We’re looking at a population that’s already well over twice the highest sustainable number, which would be around three billion, so any efforts to solve the problem should be focused on the measures that could rapidly reduce the number of births all the way down to the required level and leave the rest to others. Our goal needs to be to reduce the human population by more than four billion by the end of the century, and sooner if at all possible, without increasing the death rate among those who don’t specifically want to die and without otherwise harming any except those who intentionally worsen the problem by specifically choosing to have children without possessing truly extraordinary qualities that would objectively be worthy of being passed on to the next generation. Anything less than that is unacceptable and therefore the only approach we just might still have time for is a “the ends justify the means” one.
With that in mind and seeing that, regardless of the level of education or the standard of living, there is currently no place in the world where the fertility rate is low enough to allow this goal to be reached and, in fact, you can even count the countries where it’s less than twice the required value on your fingers, it’s clear that efforts to promote education and combat poverty are far from the best way for those who focus on solving the overpopulation problem to use their time and resources. We could and most likely should work with those who dedicate their lives to humanitarian causes whenever possible, but our real focus absolutely needs to be on those radical and drastic measures that could actually have a chance of achieving the goals we need to achieve. Yes, the resistance will be tremendous and we may never even get anything going, but trying means that at least we have a chance to do what needs to be done. If we shy away, we have none.

I know, I’m writing two personal posts in one week once again, but now I actually found myself working on something for a change, so the site is being updated. You can’t see it at the moment and it may be a while until I’ll link to it, because I’m just learning as I go along and there are still things to figure out, but I’m actually making that new index page and the author pages for my little fantasy art gallery and it’s going pretty well, seeing as I just started playing with it last night and I basically already have the scripts themselves.
The first problem that I still have to deal with is the fact that, seeing as I’m just using PHP to determine which bit of JavaScript to put on the page and to pass the variables to said script, I have both PHP and JavaScript handling errors, which currently results in different outcomes when in fact the issues are similar. Of course, there would be no errors if people’d just click on links, but I want to make sure that my scripts can handle being messed with as well, so I first struggled to implement error handling and now I want to have the same result regardless of which scripting language catches the problem.
Still, I should be figuring out how to do that today, leaving me with just some content and design issues to deal with, such as whether or not to add a short description on the author pages or whether to even keep a separate “picture” script or simply display the selected image before the full list of thumbnails on the author page. But there’s certainly no rush, so I’ll probably be trying a few different options to see how they look and then decide which one to keep, though I’m also considering allowing the user to choose, which should be easy enough to do.

What this means for the blog is that I’ll once again need to write two non-personal posts next week, but at least it’s quite clear what one of them will be about, so I hope I’ll have it by Wednesday. The other will be more of an issue, as I don’t currently have a clear idea for it, but it may be something about “piracy” again, seeing as I’ll be going to the next protest against ACTA on Saturday. Then again, for the same reason, it may be about the fact that, whether we’re talking about terrorism or copyright infringement, we’re all now considered to be guilty until proven innocent.
But I’m not exactly known for managing to do what I set out to do, especially when I’m in such a mood, and the blog isn’t exactly a priority, so let’s see what happens. If I’ll manage to write those posts, great, but it won’t be that much of an issue if I won’t either. I still have two “slots” for personal posts and have been right at the limit in the past, after all, so it can be worse.

Yes, I actually went to the protest against ACTA on Saturday and stayed there until around 8:15 PM, when it was announced that the “regular schedule” of protests will begin, as the chosen location was the one where protesters have been gathering every evening for a month straight. This means that I can finally say that I took part in a protest, seeing as there was only one other that I actually went to and then only sort of wandered around the protesters, pulling away when asked by one of the organizers if I wanted to take part and then leaving shortly after that.
I got there around 3:20 PM and ended up in the wrong place, since nobody bothered to specify the exact location and the few others who were already there had chosen to gather in that spot, next to another group of protesters who have been gathering for a month straight and who were also there at the time. I didn’t stay, however, instead getting back into the underground passage to wait for a few more people to gather, coming back out around 3:45 to more or less hide behind the small group that was forming and dodge cameras.
Shortly afterwards, a guy came and told two of the ones who were holding banners that the protest was actually supposed to take place on the other side of the road, convincing them to go there with him after a brief discussion. The rest of us stared in confusion, but a couple of others, who had been there even at 3:20, decided to go after them a few minutes later, and then so did I. That meant that I was in the proper location around 4 PM, trying to find my place among what was starting to become a small crowd, aided by the fact that the others who were still on the wrong side of the road after I left also decided to move over the next few minutes.
While people kept gathering, the vast majority didn’t seem to know what they were supposed to be doing any more than I did, so we were mostly wandering around and occasionally looking at those who seemed more prepared, waiting for some sort of signal, which probably came around 5 PM. By then, a few hundred people had gathered and the few reporters who had been sent there were also trying to catch a few shots and take a few interviews, unfortunately leaving soon afterwards and broadcasting or publishing small pieces that only mentioned what they could see at that time, few bothering to take shots and make estimates later, though the peak was around 7 PM, when the protesters numbered around two thousand.
For my part, I tried to stay close to a tree, for what little protection it could offer, and that made me end up quite in the middle of it all, having to step back a couple of times to avoid ending up right in front of the reporters while they were still there. That also meant that I was only a few people away from Claudiu Craciun, who tends to lead the protests that take place in that location every evening, when he came to help put some order into this one as well. As a result, I was in a group of people who were probably quite used to protesting and were therefore more likely to shout and jump, meaning that I could get carried away with them and actually take part in the protest instead of simply sitting around, as I’m sure I would have done if I’d have been closer to the outer edge of the crowd.
In the end, what I can say is that it certainly went better than I thought it would, the crowd was quite nice and I also managed to withstand the cold reasonably well. Seeing as it snowed constantly and the reported maximum temperature was -12°C that day, obviously only getting colder as the evening fell, that latter part was largely thanks to all the clothes I had on me, among which I could mention two sweaters, two pairs of pants and three of socks, but all’s well that ends well and I’m planning to take part in the next protests as well, on the 25th.

The few days that followed the protest were hard for me, though for different reasons. At first I was worried that I might have gotten another cold, seeing as my throat was slightly sore once again, but that seems to have passed since then and there don’t seem to be any other issues. However, a far bigger reason to feel like shit was Andra’s birthday, when being ignored meant that I probably couldn’t even send her a message despite making two attempts, followed by that annoying and overcommercialized day when everybody gets bombarded with images of happy couples.
Still, something good came out of those days, as looking for something that would keep me busy without really requiring me to focus meant that I ended up making new thumbnails for my little fantasy art gallery, cropping them to fixed sizes instead of simply having the full images resized to a certain width. This will be very useful if I’m to add more artists, because that will require me to make separate pages for each of them instead of displaying all the thumbnails on a single page, in which case I want the script for the new index page to randomly select two thumbnails for each artist, which would look very weird if they’d be of very different sizes. But don’t hold your breath for that, because adding new artists means going through all their works, looking for the best quality versions I can find and then selecting just a few to add to the gallery, which is a process that I’m not keen on starting and, as you can see from the very small number of artists currently included, very unlikely to finish.

Otherwise, still playing Battle for Wesnoth and still struggling with my story. Since I still don’t know how to get from the current situation to the two events that must happen during this part of it, I keep wasting time and space by writing more or less random things while waiting for something to click into place and hoping that someday I’ll get to the next interesting parts that I have in mind. At this point, I’m not sure that I’ll make it that far, but I’ve been struggling with it for too long to give up now, so you can say that I’m currently pushing forward out of sheer stubbornness, even though I need to write about things that my brain’s simply not wired for.