Echoes

you pet your dog and the atoms that are you brush up against the atoms that are him, and the electrons that are you press into the electrons that are him, and both of them change their movement.

electrons of course are not really particles and do not really move.

If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine

And at the same time, Company SecUnits are treated much worse than Three by virtue of being rentals. Many--if not most--of Murderbot's clients didn't want to have any SecUnits, but were required to take them per Company rental agreements for other equipment. Even the ones who specifically did want SecUnits didn't have any investment in what happened to them. They were the equivalents of the U-haul you'd rent to move your couch across town. They just needed to do a job briefly and hopefully be in good enough shape to get their deposit back at the end, but if not, eh. No big deal. Murderbot has never had the same clients for very long, and it's never had to work with the same SecUnits for very long. Every contract changes. Nothing lasts.

I’m an introvert but I have no problem talking with strangers. I’m the type of person who doesn’t mind making a fool of myself in front of people I don’t know for a bit of fun. I’ll happily make a phone call. I worked at a call center and loved talking to the customers so much my boss told me to get through the calls faster. Even if people are mad and yelling at me I’ll respond with double the intensity and I’ve made big tough guys who thought they could bully me back down just because they didn’t expect a chubby little lady to walk towards them with murder in her eyes when they talked shit to her.

And yet parties are the most draining thing you can possibly put me through. If I’m invited to anything I’ll spend days thinking of excuses not to go, decide that I should go anyway because I know I’ll have fun, but I’m also the first person to start zoning out and eventually leave, often with a single hand wave to the room because I have no energy left to say goodbye to individual people. Sometimes even a chill hang out with one or two friends feels like too much but I force myself to go anyway, have fun, and leave earlier than expected.

My mom think I’m an extrovert because my siblings have social anxiety and sorta shuts down when strangers talk to them while I’ve always chatted away with weirdos I meet at the carnival. Just please don’t expect hours long engagement from me or I’ll crash.

I really wanted to make a post about it because I feel like being an introvert is being misrepresented when people think it’s the same as social anxiety. It’s just about whether you recharge alone or with other people, and despite loving people I spent most of my free time alone because that’s where I recharge.

Typing this from Graphene now, in fact. But, both of those take the Android Open Source Project, without all the bloatware--and largely de-Google the whole thing. They give you much more control over privacy and what the apps you choose to install can do and access on your phone.

I know Graphene sandboxes everything, including the optionally installed Google Play Services which a lot of apps unfortunately require to run. (Lineage uses an alternative to Play Services instead.) So, you can install what would normally be unacceptably intrusive apps and just lock them away from pulling any funny shit with your data, or phoning home. Including the couple of Google things I do still keep around.

I also prefer running much more transparent, privacy-respecting open source apps where possible. Besides the transparency, I'd rather avoid the shitty tech corps entirely where I can. There are pretty good alternatives available for a lot of the usual suspects.

An alternative app store:

The quiet magic of forest light

Louisiana Cypress Swamps