Category: notes

Good Manners by the numbers

Inspired by the Atlanta ACX group’s list of jargon by the numbers.

  1. One way of demonstrating that you were raised upper-class.
    ex. understanding which fork to use first at a high-end restaurant, what white tie attire is, and which shoes to avoid wearing on a boat.
  2. Actively being emotionally aware and considerate, and making sure that those around you feel comfortable and appreciated.
    ex. drawing shy people into conversation at a party, providing vegetarian food if you’re throwing a dinner party and you’ve invited vegetarians, being nice to service workers
  3. The ability to follow the implicit social scripts of the current culture.
    ex. in speech, appearing interested and not bored in boring conversations and asking appropriate follow-up questions, saying please and thank you at appropriate times

    ex. in action, knowing what to wear to church/a graduation ceremony/your white collar workplace, digital conventions such as not double texting and calling instead of texting only for emergencies (millennials and younger only), bringing wine or dessert to a dinner party

    ex. being able to competently code-switch to match different cultural contexts.
  4. 3, but specifically western scripts from the mid-20th century.
    ex. calling older people sir/ma’am, not asking women their age, sending a perfunctory thank you letter for each birthday gift received, avoiding wearing hats indoors
  5. Following sanity preserving norms for living/existing with other people in groups.
    ex. cleaning up after yourself, avoiding behaviour that is actively disruptive/unpleasant towards others such as playing music on speakerphone on a bus, staying on the right of escalators if you’re standing still, avoiding being drunk, high, or otherwise impaired in public.
  6. Maintaining a fiction of the non-physical self; minimizing bodily awareness.
    ex. going to the bathroom discreetly, hiding the fact that you’re on your period, showering regularly, using deodorant and perfume to mask animal scents, chewing quietly, avoiding burping, farting, and picking your nose in public.

Video Games I Like

I’m not a super hardcore gamer, but I’ve probably played more games than most people you know. I only picked the hobby up at 16 – way too late to develop any sort of intuitive control for any kind of controller or joystick, but games absolutely fascinate me as an art form and a method of storytelling. I keep my eye on the IGF and play my way through the finalists and honourable mentions that look interesting every year, and pick my way through itch.io offerings on an regularish basis as well – although I’ve been playing less in recent years, so these recs are going to be a bit dated. Besides desktop games, I also love my trusty old 3DS 🙂

In games, I most value artistic beauty (I’m particular about art style though and tend to dislike pixel graphics), well written narrative/dialogue, and, well, being fun to play. I don’t enjoy PVP games, and most 1st and 3rd person POV games make me overwhelmed and nauseous.

For those reasons, I suspect my game recs would work well for lots of people as a list of games that you can play together with your girlfriend.

Games are PC unless otherwise marked.

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My Apartment Art Commission Process

When I know that I’m going to be moving out from an apartment soon, I commission a digital artist to draw it for me. Then I print it out and I have a cool art piece. If you love your current place but you don’t think you’ll spend the rest of your life there, you should consider doing the same.

Digital artists are much cheaper than I think they should be. I’ve paid artists between $200-$500 CAD for my commissions1, generally spread across one or two additional housemates. (You should expect to pay more – I limit my own commissions to the common areas since my bedrooms tend to be very plain, and solely used for sleep and other private activities. Also inflation exists.)

You can also consider hiring artists from developing countries if you want your dollar to go further, but I don’t have any advice on how to seek those folks out specifically.

You’ll be looking at around 10 hours of effort on your end, frontloaded but spread out across 2-4 months. I detail my process below.

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