Batfort

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The Reader: Autoimmune Disease, Biotech Mergers, and the Global Immune System

2019-04-14 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

“Do not strain for perfection. It will be made plain if you are ready earlier.”
-Abbot Radulfus, Cadfael

» Bristol-Meyers Squibb and Celgene have merged. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I doubt it’s good people when it comes to healthcare.

» An interesting take on the US-Mexico border problem.

» Sarah Wilson has been writing about living with autoimmune disease for years, and her experience was one of the touchstones in my pursuit of health.

I’ve arrived at a point where I know with all my heart I got AI because I needed to. Yes! I was burn out and over myself. But I couldn’t stop (drinking coffee, knocking back half a bottle of wine each night, working 15-hour days, enduring the nastiest breakup in Christendom, not sleeping, striving and climbing higher because I didn’t think I was enough on my own…). It was a habit I was scared to break. I really wanted to live a different way. But I was worried that if I slowed down, everything would unravel.

So I was forced to.

My body ground to a halt so I couldn’t go any further until I’d woken up. It collapsed in a heap, effectively saying to me, “Well, if you won’t stop, I will. And I’ll collapse right here, in the middle of everything and prevent you from going any further down this path until you get a grip of yourself”.

The lifestyle changes I’ve had to make have changed my life. I’m happy these days. And clear. And for this I’m glad.

» Conservatives need to start taking art seriously

» The battle isn’t right vs left, it’s statism vs individualism

» Google gets scarier by the day

» Julian Assange as sacrificial lamb

Colorful, floral, primary, layered book covers

2019-04-10 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

It is a truth universally agreed upon that wandering the stacks of a bookstore is one of life’s small pleasures. I was partaking in this little bit of joy this week when I began to notice similarities in some of the books I was seeing.

Another of life’s small pleasures is the ability to pull out my phone and document visual oddities such as these.

The Ensemble is perhaps the most representative example. Note the bright background, the naturalistic spray of florals, and the color palette. Note also how the text overlaps and interplays with the illustration.

No florals on this one, but it has a similar interplay between the illustration and the text—which has softer edges. I would hope so, because sharp edges on top of that dynamic background would have been a LOT visually. Like, assault-level.

These two have deviated a bit from the multi-layered color palette, but still keep within the general theme even though they are more focused in color story. Again, we see the large-scale floral that interplays with the text.

Now we’ve introduced texture into the typeface, instead of the typeface interacting with the illustration. Still—say it with me now—bold, bright, naturalistic floral.

This cover doesn’t feel as integrated, as thought-through, as the other covers.

This one doesn’t fit the floral theme, and certainly introduces a new element of the dark background instead of a bright one, but it fits with the general rhythm of the text. The color palette stands, even with the black. The juxtaposition of all those different typefaces over each other echoes the interaction of the text with the floral illustrations, even if they aren’t exactly analogous.

Which brings us to this final offering, which is perhaps my favorite. Pink and yellow is so WEIRD and yet delicate, I’m intrigued by this book. Good job, book designer.

I have no conclusions, no grand narratives. Just a collection of books that caught my eye and the patterns that drew them together. Sometimes it’s just fun to look, and to draw lines between similar elements.

PS. Are all novels now branded “a novel”? Do we not trust that books in the fiction section are, in fact, novels?

Becoming Boss

2019-04-09 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Back when I first started this blog, I made a list of ways that I could prove to myself that I could be a good boss. This is a personal list, tailored specifically to me and my own personal failings.

You see, somewhere along the line, I realized that in order to work for yourself, one must be both BOSS and EMPLOYEE. One must to figure out the work to be done, and then do the work.

If I never behaved in the manner of a good boss, I could never hope to trust myself enough to start a business on my own.

I want to eventually work for myself, so I decided to see if I could become the kind of person who could leader herself (and eventually others) effectively.

About a year ago—as I had forgotten about the original list—I checked back in. I was doing okay, and certainly made strides in some areas, but nothing spectacular.

I was reminded of this list again recently. Let’s see how I stack up.

Set up a (big) project, plan it out, and complete it within a deadline
- Done. July 2018.
Clean my room, Jordan B Peterson style
- 8/10. There is still some clutter to banish and closets to organize, but I am comfortable having people over on short notice. For me, that might as well be 10/10 but let’s not lose sight of reality.
Address my resentment of tracking time, and start using time to my advantage
- In the past year, I have realized that this is a futile way of looking at things. I am a task-oriented person, not a time-oriented person. I now view my life as a series of open and closed loops. When I set an intention, I open a loop. My goal is to close the loop as quickly as possible, or work diligently at the sub-goals to close it—if it’s a large problem. Immediately working on a task that is available to me is 100% easier than fretting about some mythical ideal of time usage.
Stick to a consistent sleep time and wake time
- 5:45 am wake up for the past month. Bedtime is still variable.
Continue to publish a blog post every day until we hit a year
- Done.
Work out consistently
- This one I’m either consistently ON or consistently OFF. I got back in the gym last week, and hope to be ON for a while. Going to the gym is kind of tiresome, so once my membership runs out I may go back to Naiman workouts on my living room floor.
Get out of bed immediately upon rising, instead of languishing in the half-asleep/half-awake stage that I love so much (this will legit be a sacrifice)
- Done.
Design a daily schedule for myself that incorporates all the projects that I plan to complete, along with the self-care that my chronic illness demands, and stick to it
- I’m less concerned with designing a perfect schedule and more concerned with getting things done. Since I’ve added much more to my life—socially and side-projects—since last year, my schedule shifts but it’s the tasks that matter.
Finish the Self-Authoring suite
- I’m no longer interested in this, as I have discovered JBP to be unhelpful at best. However, I have launched a project to write my memoir which has been much more helpful than “Past Authoring,” which didn’t even scratch the surface.
Complete a plan for my future, with action steps and deadlines
- This one is more like building the tracks out in front of the train, but it’s happening.
Sell a product online that people buy on a consistent basis while still employed full time by someone else
- Working on this right now, with another idea in the hopper.
Tackle the reading list that I’ve had in my mind for years
- Reading more, yes. Reading that list, no.
Define what success means to me
- Dwelling next to running water with moss and rainbows, and nobody to dictate to me how to spend my time or my efforts or my words. Doing good work to lay at the feet of the Almighty at the end of days.

Out of 13 shots, I give myself 8 wins. 66%. Those are some pretty big strides in a year. It’s true that I’ve had a tremendous amount of growth, of pushing myself and rebirth. I almost don’t recognize myself from a year ago, even though my goals and personality are largely the same.

There are things that have surprised me—like this blog. Going from “one post every day for a year” to the growth I see now has completely astonished me. I never realized that being diligent will actually pay off.

If I want to be my own boss, it now looks like I’m going to have to draft some new criteria. More focused criteria. Criteria that has numbers and targets and goals.

Or maybe I’ll make a new list, of ways to prove to myself that I could be a wife.

The Reader: Reactionaries, Quitting ‘Should,’ and Yin Yoga

2019-04-07 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

One week ago, I chose one to act on one of my ‘musts’ (see below). I made the commitment to myself to work on it, to see it through. Really, it’s been a creeping idea for years and years and years, but last week’s strange loop was the spark that set fire crackling through the tinder that I had been building up in March. There’s a message that I want to build up into a roaring fire.

Essentially, I’m not keeping quiet about my struggle against/with Crohn’s disease anymore. I want to share what I’ve learned and help other people know that they don’t have to stay sick—a prisoner of the healthcare system. If you want to sign up for my email newsletter to that effect, head on over and sign up.

And if you read one article this week, make it this one:

» The Crossroads of ‘Should’ and ‘Must’

At Mailbox, we adopted a well-known practice from Amazon to write our future press release. That’s right, we wrote a real press release about a nonexistent product — the one that we wanted to exist in the world. We envisioned the headlines. We dreamed of what would happen if all of our wildest dreams came true. We even taped it inside of a magazine and put it on the coffee table. Most of us do this kind of big scary dreaming with our products, or our companies, but very few of us do it with our lives.

» Pray for Martin Shkreli, y’all. And everybody else in solitary confinement.

» An example of how sometimes people on “both sides” can see the same problem, just have completely opposite ideas of how to fix it: “Only 7 percent of men globally relate to the way masculinity is depicted in the media.”

» ‘Chemical burns’: Delta flight attendants say new uniforms cause rashes

» Running a business whilst managing a chronic illness

» Interesting take: Regulations are mechanisms to preserve cartels

» Always always ALWAYS pay attention to the consequences of your actions

» A Pro-Choice Review of Pro-Life Film “Unplanned”

» SOMEBODY ANIMATED THE VIRGIN AND THE CHAD

» Parsley has a fraught history

» It may be that the principles of progressive overload don’t just apply to weightlifting. I recently discovered Yin Yoga, and though I’m still new to the practice, it has profoundly impacted my mental and physical health.

In Yin Yoga, we are mainly interested in the effects of compressive and tensile (stretch) loads on our tissues. The sensation you feel in the low back during sphinx or seal pose is a result of compressive forces on the soft tissues and vertebrae. When you fold forward in butterfly pose, you are stretching the back.

The fibroblast cells will adjust the production of collagen, elastin, and ground substance to create an architecture best suited for the demands placed on them (Benjamin et al., 2005). These loads need to be progressive (appropriately increased) and occur over an extended period of time. When it comes to remodeling connective tissue, lengths of time are measured in months and years (Schleip 2012).

Researchers have found that the fibroblasts in tendons and ligaments adapt to compressive forces by producing strong, fibrous collagen that can withstand additional forces (Benjamin et al., 1998). Without specific research, we can reasonably conclude that compressive Yin Yoga poses contribute positively to fascia health.

Hours, 2019 edit

2019-04-06 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

I did a post on the Hours a while back. Now I’m curious to see how my day stacks up.

+++

Matins: The wee hours

Sleep.

Lauds: Dawn

I look up from my desk, take a sip of my coffee, and look out through my eastward kitchen windows at the dawn. It’s been cloudy this weekend, so the light is dimmer and not as spectacular. Still, the rising of the sun is always a beautiful thing. Lately I’ve been rising at 5:45 am to write, contemplate, and pray before my day begins.

Prime: Mid-morning

My original plans for today included heading to the gym shortly after my writing session, until I discovered that on weekends my gym doesn’t open until later. Instead, I used the morning to write—tomorrow’s blog post, my secret side project. At 10am, I stake out tickets for the upcoming NCT 127 concert in Vancouver, BC. Success!

Terce: Late morning

With tickets secure, it’s time to head to the gym.

Sext: Noon

Now I’m in the gym. It’s posterior chain day (my favorite), so I’m probably working on my stiff-legged deadlift or a deficit sumo squat. Today’s workout also includes fun ropework like face pulls and those ab accordion things, so I’m happy. I stop by the “sauna” afterward and am dismayed to find that throwing water on the burner is outlawed. What good is a sauna without steam?

None: Mid-afternoon

I take my laptop to a coffee shop, hoping to get some work done before meeting a friend for conversation. It’s not much, but I get some ideas fleshed out before we launch into wide-ranging conversation. Before we sat down, I ordered a full-caf Americano. This may have been a mistake.

Vespers: Sundown

I’m curled on my couch, watching Cadfael and feeling my weary muscles. Today has pushed my physical muscles, my brain muscles, and my social muscles. I am grateful to take time to rest, and grateful that I’ve begun to put in the work to make my little house a cheerful, peaceful place. My living room is glowing with the lights of paper lanterns and a salt lamp, scented with Rose Petal Ice Cream candle. (Yes, really.)

Compline: Late evening

Late evening I’ll have moved to my bed, nodding off for the night. My new early-morning ritual has dictated a much earlier bedtime for me—something I’ve never been able to accomplish through willpower. It seems the sheer joy of doing something I love in the morning is stronger than any willpower or discipline.

Unicorn Comix, According to Science

Lettuce take a break from reading old comics of mine and learn, scientifically, why exactly it is that the Unicorn Express Delivery Services can run infinitely long on rainbow farts.

I hung some prisms in my windows last weekend, and in doing so discovered an essential truth: everyone needs more rainbows in their life.

God’s promises abound.

The inevitability of internal pushback

2019-04-03 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

I started a new project this month. A challenge. Something I’ve never done before. (Something not on the blog.)

And with a new project—the new actualities that never match up to the potential in my head—comes the avalanche of negative thoughts.

When you know they’re coming, they are easier to ignore, but it’s still difficult.

From Romans 7:

⁷What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet ifthe law had not said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. ⁹I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. ¹⁰The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. ¹¹For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. ¹²So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

¹³Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. ¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. ¹⁵For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. ¹⁷So nowit is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²²For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

A Very Personal Review of EXO Chen’s ‘April, and a Flower’

2019-04-02 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

Chen’s solo album flows like cool water. It’s a clean break from the EXO R&B vibes—Chen continues exploring his own musical personality with his first mini album, April, and a flower.

Our ‘Nature Boy‘ comes through with simple arrangements, focused mostly on piano and vocals. He wrote the lyrics for one of my favorite EXO songs, ‘Lights Out,’ and again contributed lyrics to ‘Flower’ on this album.

Chen shines in this arena. He’s at his best in songs like ‘Nosedive,’ with a focus on rest and refreshment.

I wouldn’t exactly call April, and a Flower an album of lullabyes, but it is a very easy album to listen to. ‘Lights Out’ was my go-to sleepytime music for a few months, and this mini-album is just the thing to put in your ears when you’re tired and worn down.

For a few minutes, you can run with Chen’s voice over sunlit, grassy fields with the wind gently blowing your hair.

Part of me was scared that this mini-album would be full of overwrought, cheesy ballads—but it is not. A+++ for keeping the arrangements sparse, keeping with the spare and natural visual aesthetic.

This mini-album’s biggest weakness is the flipside of its strengths. The songs flow a little too easily. They don’t stick in my head, but slide through in a moment of peacefulness that I can’t remember five minutes later.

I’m not sure that I would remember the title track, ‘Beautiful Goodbye,’ if I heard it out of context.

That said, the album has a great shape, building from lighter songs through an ~emotional journey~ to more impactful songs at the end.

On ‘Sorry Not Sorry,’ I’m happy to hear a descant above Chen’s vocal line. He usually takes care of high notes and descants in EXO’s material, so it’s nice hearing him get to take the melody for once, with the string sections getting the harmony.

I could swear that Chen is channeling Big Bang’s Taeyang on ‘Love Words.’ The song is great—perfect execution of drums in a ballad—but it gives me such Taeyang vibes. Maybe that’s the influence of the songs’s composer, Kenzie.

My favorite song on the album is ‘Portrait of You.’ It’s cinematic. It’s emotional. The melody moves through so many different textures and sections—the piano is a voice, not just accompaniment. (But this is expected: it was written by the brilliant Andreas Johansson.)

Such a perfect ending. I’d drift off to sleep to that song anytime.

Overall, I think this is a very Chen album, which is a good thing—though I wish that somehow they had worked enough hooks in amongst the calm to help me grab onto the songs. It’s good for him to differentiate himself from all the hype that surrounds EXO—and this album is about as opposite as you could get from that.

I have a feeling this will grow on me. It’ll definitely have a place in my earbuds the next time I need an oasis of calm.

The Reader: Strange Loops and the Cult of GOOP

2019-03-31 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

source

I’ve been tidying and decorating my house. This morning, I hung some crystal garlands in my windows and delighted in the tiny rainbows that danced over my walls. As I was hanging a Japanese paper lantern in the corner of my room where I write every morning, I flashed in some sort of strange loop back to a memory of myself in 2013. I was living in a tiny studio apartment in NW Portland, and I had an idea about a blog. As I worked to create the look and feel of this blog—about living with Crohn’s disease—I stopped for an Instagram break and was struck by a picture of women, in a garden covered with green growing things, surrounded by prisms. The atmosphere was almost magical—something that I desperately wanted in my life at the time.

It hit me, today, in 2019, that I am now living the life that 2013-me wanted so much. I’m surrounded by green growing things and tiny dancing rainbows, sustained by joy and completely remade into a healthy human being, body and mind.

I wish I could reach back through time and pull 2013-me through to today, but without that six years in between—six incredibly tough years in which I learned some of the hardest lessons of my life—I wouldn’t be here now.

Back in 2013, I started a blog but couldn’t sustain it. I didn’t have the energy, or the deep confidence that only comes from knowing that I’ve been to hell and back. Now, I can do anything.

I’ve set some big challenges for April. Watch this space.

» Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop is cashing in on the booming women’s wellness market

» Vegan YouTuber risks entire career to treat bacterial overgrowth. SIBO is real, y’all. (For reference, I had to quit eating plant foods altogether to heal from SIBO.)

Ayres, who lives in San Diego, claimed she continued to have digestion issues and was diagnosed with SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and was advised by a doctor to start incorporating eggs and fish into her diet, which she did.

In the video, Ayres explains how her digestion problems have been relieved since leaving the raw vegan diet and espouses that all bodies are different.

…

“So you’re saying you would rather eat animals and their products then take an antibiotic pill? That’s unbelievable. Wow,” another wrote, commenting on Ayers’ statement that a doctor said she could continue a vegan diet if she took an antibiotic. Ayers refused, stating in the video that she wanted to heal as “naturally” as possible.

» Matching your workout to your menstrual cycle

» Elisabeth Hasselbeck on rest

» The shitposting epidemic has hit the floor of the US Senate.

» I didn’t know about the movie Unplanned until this week. Now you know, too. You won’t find out from the mainstream media.

» Spygate: The Inside Story Behind the Alleged Plot to Take Down Trump

» Man, I wish I had known Rollo Tomassi’s thoughts on experimentation vs observation back when I discovered the ‘Manosphere’ in 2010. It would have saved me a world of self-doubt.

» Recycling in the US will survive — despite the media narrative

Observations

2019-03-30 / childlike empress / 0 Comments

I just watched a documentary on Nora Ephron by her son, called Everything is Copy. That was her motto—that everything in life could be spun and used for comedy or essays or the movies. It reminds me a lot of things that I’ve heard about mindset, or how to make money on line. “Content mindset.”

I was also struck by the observation that everything obviously wasn’t copy to Nora, as she told absolutely no one about her cancer. The comment was made that “everything is copy” applied to the things that you were done with, the things that you wanted to reframe, the things that you didn’t like anyway. The truly special things in life—those were not copy.

In a way, I agree with this. I haven’t made everything copy on my blog, but certainly there are things that I’m open about and those are usually the things that I don’t care too much about. The things that I really love, I don’t talk about.

Also, somehow I never noticed that Nora Ephron wrote Mixed Nuts, which is utter insanity and yet somehow one of my favorite comedies.

There’s a truism on the internet (or rather, in the Twittersphere) that everything comes from compound interest. That’s one way of thinking about it, but lately I’ve been mulling over the idea that most problems are this really complex web of interlinking parts. In order to solve the problem, each one of those linking parts also has to be solved. It takes time to build momentum, and you’re just solving one small issue after another, until the day that all the small problems are solved—and then *poof* you level up.

That’s why you get so many people who say “oh, it’s easy, just do ______” when it’s really not that easy. Finding that one missing piece only works after you’ve assembled the other 999 pieces. The hard part is doing the work, not figuring out the work that needs doing.

Speaking of which, I got to experience the results of my ‘spiderweb’ approach today. I’ve not been happy with my social life, especially after moving to a new area of the world. I’ve never been much of a social person, and I really fell off after I got pneumonia three years ago. Time for a change.

So for 2019, I gave myself a challenge. Each week, I had to do something social. It could be as small as having coffee with a coworker outside of work, or it could be throwing a party. Anything recurring only counted once, such as the small group that I joined at my church. I gave myself as much latitude as possible to ‘win’ each week.

At first, my social interactions were still few and very small. Then gradually, as I remembered what it is to interact with people and weave together a social life, the asks became more and more frequent until this week I found myself with a real, live social calendar, including a hike and lunch today. And it’s only March!

I’m not letting myself off the hook, because the challenge is to be more proactive and deliberate about my social life. Gotta take responsibility.

Still, it’s gratifying to watch the results of one’s actions.

All that talk about Nora Ephron’s keen powers of observation and her allegiance to the written word make me wonder if I have the chops for a column like hers.

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