skruffie

[skruffie]

My mom calls this the day of courage. We had these little mini tournaments at Karate and on this day my sister unexpectedly started her period shortly before she was supposed to go up for her turn. Naturally, a change of clothes wasn't available, and she ended up going through the whole kata with blood on her uniform. I know at least when I was growing up it was easy to gross out teenage boys by talking about periods and I imagine her as a teenager it would've been similar... one of the student teachers there around her age was thoroughly impressed. He said it was one of the bravest things he'd seen. Sometimes I wonder how she'd feel about us just blasting this story all over the internet now but I do think there's something special about a teen girl just getting up there, finishing through the tournament calmly, and then taking care of whatever she needed to do next.

Mom posted this earlier and she's friends with some of the nurses that helped take care of Nicole. One such nurse worked for 34 years and was talking about how she's had countless patients, many she can't remember, but Nicole is among the few that she remembers quite well. It's been over 20 years and it was really nice to see that the people around her until the end still remember her fondly.

#sibling grief

[skruffie]

the store visit better be tomorrow and not actually today because I just really cannot muster enough fucks to smile and nod at the CEO on the anniversary of my sister's death.

#tales from the clinic #at least we finished deep cleaning the store and it just feels nice #regardless of the reason doing it

[skruffie]

something I've really come to realize sensory-seeking wise is that I fucking love having something crunchy on the side with every meal, so when there is a lack of crunch it just seems incomplete.

#learning about how and why my brain is

[skruffie]

one of the lines in Hamilton that gets me right at the end when Eliza sings "I live another 50 years, it's not enough". Doing the math, I'm only going to be 61 when I hit year 50 after sibling death. It's really weird.

#I almost said 'when WE' but realized hm #sibling grief #it's just about anniversary posting time so

[skruffie]

More stories from hell (retail) today I was ringing up this lady and she goes oh I want to do part of this on a gift card and the rest on normal card and I go ok and then she hands me a folded piece of paper. I think oh OK it must be folded around the gift card, right? Wrong. It is a folded sheet of 8×11 printer paper with "$40" written on the inside in ballpoint pen. I go what is this. She says a gift card. I say this is not a gift card. She says yes it is. I say this is a piece of paper with "$40" written on it. She says "well it's a gift card." I say it absolutely is not. I am grinding my teeth. She says well I want to use it. I say you physically cannot do that bc it is a piece of paper. I cannot scan or swipe it. I apologize, as if this is my fault, and not because she is completely insane. I hate it here

#congratulations on leaving hell op #you are a stronger person than i bc this was posted a year ago #and i would have quit on the fuckin spot

[skruffie]

You have those moments where you finally find the words for something and you write it and you're like "well fuck, that's bleak isn't it" and start to think that these inside thoughts should be outside thoughts in like, a therapist's office?

[skruffie]

I hope the kids growing up on today's internet are still getting to share that experience of finding some out-of-context AMV featuring an implied narrative of characters they know nothing about and having it become a keystone of their brain forever

#there was an incredible revolutionary girl utena one set to past the mission by tori amos #i remember specific beats clearly

[skruffie]

In light of the situation that happened with my manager, she informed us today that she is planning to move back farther south where her primary community and support system are. I think we all saw this coming; the doctor predicted it like the day after we got the news about what was going on and for privacy's sake I'm not going to expand on it here even if I'm not naming names. It's the kind of situation where nobody would blame her for wanting to no longer live in that house.

She hasn't told her boss yet. The typical situation here is that the assistant manager would take her position and that would potentially put me in as assistant manager since I'm third down from the top, but our assistant manager is not enthusiastic about this idea. He moved up to WA to go to school to be an optometrist, not an optician, but was already kind of talking about moving again maybe in a year or two where there are better schools. They wouldn't promote me to general manager from my position just yet, especially without actual management experience, but I know when I started with this industry I showed a lot of promise and there were conversations had about what I wanted my future to look like. I'm not sure if I am ready to be a manager but I would feel comfortable as assistant.

This then leaves the potential they bring in someone from a different store, which is what I would prefer over an outside hire. The tech and I were talking this evening before they went home about how they're hoping whoever will take our boss's place will still be just as queer friendly and chill with our various disabilities, and that would be ideal. I've become a much more fully embodied worker with this team where I don't have to mask any aspect of my personality with who I'm working with--do you know how rare that is at a job? An outside person isn't going to be able to put that light out, and I already said outright that if they pick someone shitty I am absolutely not afraid to leave. I love my job, but I have a feeling they're going to be hunting for someone who is a lot more aggressively sales focused since we haven't been doing too well.

What we've been trying to tell the higher management is that the demographic of the area we live in is a lot more low income than the newer locations they put out. It's not really much of a secret but part of optical, especially at retail chain locations, is exam conversion: we want you to both get your exam done and also purchases glasses and/or contacts with us the same day. Everybody gets their prescription to take home with them regardless if they actually buy anything or not, but we stay in business when people buy. That's how it is with any retail industry.

Our exam conversion is actually pretty damn good but the average amount of money that people spend is lower than other stores and we don't get a lot of new patients. It was busier the first year this place opened but then they opened three new locations farther south and east and it took patients away because now there was a place closer to them. We've been trying to market up north where there are no other locations but it's a bit more of a schelp, especially now that one of the primary routes to get from city to city is going to be closed down for four months for construction. The area of the city we're in specifically is pretty low income and has one of those stupid reputations for being the "bad" part of town. We've had some of our luxury frames stolen. It's a thing. We have these magnets on the frames but over in one of the newer, more affluent locations, their lux collection has no security tags at all.

Optical is a niche industry and whenever I have my profile set on Indeed to "available to work immediately" I'm often getting messages from people desperate to hire me. Even without a license, I can still start an apprenticeship and be making a lot more pretty much anywhere else. I've stayed here because of the location and the team and I think quietly I've been emotionally preparing for knowing that can always change. I always had a feeling our manager would leave at some point because she also has a more specialized industry she left for this one + makes frequent weekend trips down to Portland for friends and keeping her connections, but the way this is happening is the worst fucking possible way.

#tales from the clinic #i SERIOUSLY need things to fucking slow down for like five minutes #i feel like i haven't had a moment to breathe and relax for months because life and work life have both been trading chaos

[skruffie]

literally what do you say when someone close to you texts to say she just found out that two people can now see thanks to a cornea transplant from the person she just lost three weeks ago because anything sounds like it is the wrong answer

#i went with 'that's amazing!' because like #yes that is amazing and being the fact we work in optical #we are in the business of helping people see #but also WHAT THE HELL DO YOU EVEN SAY

[skruffie]

#i fucking love ancient humans

[skruffie]

I had a thought about what feels inherently soulless about a lot of AI images, especially the ones that are made from prompts and styles stolen from illustrators and it goes back to the origins of Art Vs Artist. If you remember, Art Vs Artist started as a meme with someone saying "has anyone else realized that artists tend to look like their art" so then artists started posting a selfie surrounded by their work and I can kinda see it. It's hard to pinpoint why/how but what I noticed is that it can either be:

The facial features and style choices mimic the artist's own physical quirks

Aesthetic choices like hues, shades, etc

The rare few where they genuinely don't look like their art but it's still an extension of their personality, outlook on life, beliefs, and skills that have developed over years of practice

There's a screenshot that's making the rounds on twitter from a FB group of artists against generative AI where the guy works for a company that hired a bunch of prompters, and he points out that the new hires don't respond to professional critique well at all and also don't have the eye trained to catch those mistakes and therefore fix them. AI images are overly polished but with rookie mistakes, whereas emerging artists have a rawness in their work where even when there are obvious mistakes with anatomy, shading, whatever... the overall image is still cohesive because a lot of those mistakes and skills develop in tandem with each other. We all started off not knowing how to do anatomy properly, how to do lighting, how to work with colors, but as we keep drawing and developing our styles we improve in those areas sometimes all at the same time. Sometimes you put in a little extra effort in one domain by trying to really work on lineart and anatomy before you focus on color and shading, but once you develop the ability to practice then it gets quicker. You develop ways of learning that don't have to take as long as it used to.

Then you see this overly polished AI images that on a quick glance before you proof them seem fine, and then you just see some weird appendages or lighting that does not make sense. An untrained eye would think it looks clean and professional, but professional level work would not have a mastery of color and have glaring errors in anatomy.

Professionals still make mistakes and stylistic choices, but that's what makes it human. There's a similar concept that you can find sometimes in beadwork where one bead is slightly misaligned with the others in an otherwise perfect row, and that's called the spirit bead. It's meant to be a humbling gesture of our humanity, but when a computer does it there's not enough prompting you can do to force it to recognize the error. The AI training is only as good as the eye that is looking at it, and when they don't have the trained eye to see the errors, they can never fix it and learn.

#generative ai

[skruffie]

In Japanese, they don’t say “moon,” they say “tsuki,” which literally translates to “moon,” and I think that’s how language works.

[skruffie]

Saw a sibling poll and needed to expand it because I fit, like. Mid youngest, youngest in theory only child in practice, and adopted. And I think they all have their own unique parts in the sibling ecosystem.

#was actually surprised to see an other option and also pleased #do i still count as the youngest if my older sibling has been dead longer than they were alive?

[skruffie]

ive just been born into the world what are some good games for beginners

[skruffie]

I don't say this nearly often enough but I hope that you stick around.

#yes. you.

[skruffie]

Uh, so I just found out that one of my cousins on the Yurok side is buried in the cemetery that's about ten or so minutes from here. The same god damn cemetery that I was visiting casually to walk around with.

EDIT: correction, for some reason there's an entry on findagrave but there is a separate and more accurate findagrave profile including a photo of her headstone in Tulalip. That makes a lot more sense because I know we have a cousin or two out there.

#we are thousands of miles away and yet i am finding family nearby #ndn stuff tag

[skruffie]

>cousin attempting to enroll

>tribe says no

>cousin: yo this is my family so I'm appealing

>tribe: we don't know who this family is

MY COUSINS, IVE BEEN GHOSTED MORE TIMES THAN I'VE CONNECTED TO THE TRIBE BECAUSE IVE BEEN AT THIS FOR YEARS AND MAYBE IF YOU RESPONDED YOU'D KNOW WHO WE ARE

#ndn stuff tag