Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I just found out, in online chat, that during the pandemic T-Mobile is offering free international calls to a large number of countries, though not all (and sometimes only to landline numbers). This isn't something T-Mobile bothered to tell us about; I happened to be talking to someone else who lives in the US and has family in Britain. I have emailed my mother to let her know that if she sees my number as incoming, it doesn't mean there's a crisis worth paying $3/minute to call her rather than emailing and asking her to call me (which is cheap).

Their website has a list of countries this offer applies to.

ETA: My informant says that they got a text from T-Mobile saying that they are being billed for their recent call but also will be credited for it, so fingers crossed.

ETA: DSL is back, at least for now.

I am going to be mostly offline for an unknown amount of time. We have a second phone line that we use for DSL and faxing, and for a while it was just DSL because I could fax from my office; we got a new fax machine a couple of days ago, installed it, and found that we had no dial tone. (The DSL has been a little spotty for a while, but mostly okay.) We tried some stuff ourselves, like replacing an old phone wire, and then I called the phone company. They tested the line, and then asked me to try unplugging the phone for 15 minutes, letting the line reset, and then checking.

Doing that got me from DSL but no dial tone, to neither DSL nor a dial tone. The person on the phone moved my repair from Friday the 17th to "ASAP" and promised to send me text message with any updates. That was a few hours ago, and I've had no text messages.

I'm typing this from my laptop (which is my usual machine, but with the nice big monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. unplugged) in the cafe downstairs. That worked for checking and answering email, and catching up on DW/LJ, but I won't be randomly on IM, or able to look up things that occur to me, for a bit.

The main phone line is still working, as is my cell phone, and I'm mostly happy to talk to people. (If not, I won't answer.) But I suspect it's going to be a weird and slightly antsy weekend.

ETA: So, we're back where we were before I called Verizon: DSL, but no dial tone on that line. Not sure what to do next, and may wait to consult Cattitude.

More saved comments: ( attitudes toward atheism, comparative oppression, applying theory to the past, quotes, what feels difficult, online and in-person communication, talking about literature )

More saved LJ comments: ( feminism, communication, attitudes to one's body, 'long war', aesthetics, well orderings, gender )

This was prompted by rmjwell and cakmpls discussing whether it is the job of people in oppressed groups to educate people outside those groups:

One of the things people mean by "it's not my job to educate you about X" is "I've done this already, I've answered these questions a hundred times, I refuse to spend my life doing so because so many people won't pick up a book on the subject, or watch a video."

That's doubly so either when it's a relatively small minority experience--there are a lot more heterosexuals who need to educate themselves about what it's like to be queer than there are articulate, out lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men to do the educating.

It's doubly so when the thing that people need to understand is in itself a major burden--someone mentioned having a child with Asperger's, for example.

It's doubly so when part of the burden is being looked at as an outsider, and the questions are phrased as "tell me about your people" rather than as "you're one of us, I'd like to understand this aspect of your life better."

"I don't want to discuss this topic now" does not mean "Go away, I don't want to talk to you."

It's not that the job, or even the commute, is terribly draining. It's that there are only so many hours in the day, and I'm not online for many of them during the week, anymore.

That means far fewer random AIM chats with D (WINOLJ), and far less email with, well, almost everyone. I may be using the telephone more; I don't know yet.

To yonmei, in response to her post "Reality is who you argue with":

This makes sense to me.

Argument is a species of conversation. It combines thought and emotion. Of course if I've argued with someone, they're real. I might not respect them--especially if I discover later that they were arguing just to try to get people angry--because some of the real people are obnoxious or stupid. That's true offline, and I wouldn't expect it to be any different online.

---

To pleonastic, who was writing about what defines polyamory:

You are a wise fish.

That said, I think that there are weird, fuzzy boundary areas--for example, the people whose approach to serial monogamy is to continue with relationship A while shopping for partner B aren't really poly, because they don't actually love more than one person, they just want to hang on to the security, financial convenience, or sex with A whom they no longer love, or no longer love in that way. I'm also inclined to exclude the sort of cheaters for whom the secrecy is part of the allure: the ones who run away when a poly person says "yes, I'm interested, let's talk to my partner."

And I agree that acting on it isn't necessary to being polyamorous: lack of partners doesn't make someone not gay, or not bi, or not het either.

And my comments to elisem's post that sparked pleonastic's post (this version has been modified after thinking about an excellent comment papersky made to me. Addenda in dark blue):

The thing about defining polyamory as zie does there--as the capacity for romantically loving more than one person at a time--is that I suspect that's the default/common human condition, which we are trained not to act on, or to be guilty and secretive about (cheating is far more widely understood than open, honest, polyamory). This doesn't mean everyone wants, or has the energy for, more than one relationship at a time (some don't want any, and some happily choose to focus that energy on one person), but that many, perhaps most, of us can and will love more than one person at a time, though we may not act on all those loves. Given the history of the term, and who's using it, I think "polyamorous" does, and should, carry the meanings of "multiple acknowledged relationships". This doesn't mean you have to be out to the world; it does mean your partners all know about each other.

Communication is, imho, an essential tool for good relationships, poly or mono (and whether or not there's a sexual/romantic component), but I don't think it's inherent to the concept of faithfulness. Trust, consent, and communication connect to each other, and are all powerful, but my model doesn't have a single term for all three.

[At this point, a nod to Whitman's "Very well, I contradict myself".]

---

In response to a long, thoughtful post by misia about writing, reading, and the choices made in those processes:
And if facts are like pearls, not only can they lose their luster, but it matters which we pick up, and what order we string them in. (I may have now confused everyone except misia, by continuing with the Le Guin quote.)

---

In response to a comment by rysmiel to Misia's above-mentioned entry, and the question of how much the writer can, and should, describe/say/explain:

A consistent, coherent narrative, yes--though there are times that reality itself seems to be failing at that aim.

Sorry, where was I? Right. Consistent and coherent, but not necessarily complete. (Paging Kurt Gödel....) As for relevant, there's both "what does the reader find relevant?" and "How much am I prepared to share, or to explain?" With the former, the reader may not care about my aunt's hybrid cat, who lived to the age of 22--though if I mention that Dixie was bred by my aunt's ex-husband who also raised tigers, that may make it more relevant. Or may take us off to a digression on tigers and Duke and lemurs. The latter hits both "None of their business" lines and "I don't want to explain this, because most people already know it and will be bored."

This temp job gives me Web access, but not my email (no telnet or ssh), and I'm feeling oddly detached. Not as bad as the point this morning, wrestling with Word, when I was thinking "I have no google, I have no rassef, I'm trapped inside my brain."

Word, by the way, fought us to a standstill by producing dishonest error messages, so we extracted the data and used Filemaker Pro to create labels. So now I'm putting them on envelopes, which I will then get to stuff and put postage on. Extremely modified rapture.