[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Apartment manager sent out an email saying they won't be renewing any leases that expire in July, but residents will have the option to transfer to a newly renovated unit... at an increased rate. Now my lease doesn't expire until August so it doesn't affect me directly, but the new owners had plenty of people come in to evaluate my apartment for renovations, so I think there's a very high probability they're going to force me to move so they can do extensive renovations and sell it as a "luxury apartment"---or maybe a store front, since it's on the ground floor. And there's a strong chance that they won't have any other ground floor apartments that open onto the courtyard rather than a hallway full of other peoples' germs.

If I'll be forced to move anyway I might as well just move in with my elderly parents---I haven't been going out for the last few years because of the pandemic, and with Trump, DOGE, and RFK Jr it seems likely that funding for an effective intranasal vaccine will be pulled and we won't get one in the United States for the foreseeable future. Plus I'll save a ton of money. And my parents could use my help---they're getting close to the age when most elderly people need assistance, which can be very expensive. There are also some new cheap apartments within walking distance of them if I find I need more solitude, and then I wouldn't have to pay Philadelphia city tax. The biggest issue is that my elderly father has been recklessly going to stores and restaurants without a mask. I could sleep and eat in the garage. And I can put fast acting air purifiers through the areas of the house I go to, which combined with masking when in their proximity indoors might be enough. But unfortunately the downstairs bathroom doesn't work, so I'd have to put on a mask every time I want to go to the bathroom.

So these might be my last few months living in the city---there are some outdoor events I'd suppose I might as well go to. Wonder if there are any AirBNB's in Philadelphia where I wouldn't have to worry about getting covid or other diseases---probably not, unless it's a bring-your-own-tent type thing. Then again a groundfloor apartment that doesn't open onto a hallway or other apartments, with excellent air purification, would suffice.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 05 March 2025 - 11:07 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 27 February 2025 - 06:16 PM, said:

The deaths have now been ruled suspicious and have been deemed to require a full investigation.


- The front door of the residence was unsecured and opened and no gas leak (CO) present.

- Pills were found scattered next to Betsy's (his wife) head as was a space heater.

Died of natural causes but wife was dead for about a week before he died from heart disease... and dead dog was in a crate. Two other dogs survived on the property.

He had Alzheimer's, not hard to imagine how nightmarish it could be for someone with dementia and a failing heart to keep wondering where his wife was and why he's grieving and then discovering her dead (over and over again) though IDK why he wouldn't have contacted anyone... unless they didn't want him dementia dialing people or posting Alzheimer's musings---otherwuse I'd think they'd have a phone he'd still know how to use (implicit memory).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 07 March 2025 - 09:51 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Quote

A Haunting Coda: The 7 Days Gene Hackman's Wife Could No Longer Care for Him

[...] Hackman, 95 with advanced Alzheimer's, was alone for about a week after his wife and sole caregiver died.

[...] the timeline [...] raises the terrifying possibility that Mr. Hackman, a Marine veteran and actor of consummate precision and control, had spent days in the presence of his fallen wife, too disoriented or feeble to call for help — trapped, essentially, in the handsome, secluded home that had been his reward for a life toiling in the limelight.

https://www.nytimes....sy-arakawa.html

Horrible, though I'd imagine there are many cases in the United States where the sole caretaker for someone with advanced dementia dies---and that's very often a younger spouse, usually a wife (and no it's not divine retribution for the age gap). Although smart homes, wearables, and robots could prevent it from happening (for those who can afford them and choose to).

New York Times speculation fails to mention one of the most horrible parts---he'd likely keep forgetting she was dead, but since dementia typically doesn't impair implicit memory (like lingering emotions), he'd feel heartbroken but not know why, and then he'd keep discovering her body over and over... until his heart finally gave out.

I could imagine it as an advanced acting class exercise... like an acting exercise from hell made real.

No food in his stomach but he wasn't dehydrated---so he was drinking fluids other than spirits, but since his wife was controlling his diet (because of his heart disease) it's possible that the food was locked away.

So the two surviving dogs went not only about a week after her death but another eight days after his death. Wonder how much longer it would have been before they got hungry enough to devour their corpses. Would they starve before eating their humans (or trying to eat each other)? If Hackman was starving to death did he ever consider trying to eat the dogs (I'd guess he wouldn't try to eat his wife's raw corpse---romantic as that might be from some perspectives)? And if the dogs had eaten them (well, most of them, probably not the bones---though they do like to gnaw on bones), would the coroner still have been able to determine they died of natural causes? Or would the headlines for history blame the dogs for just randomly eating them?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Visited my elderly parents and started preparing for the probable move. Thought the air quality would be better out in the suburbs---there are certainly far more trees, and significantly less traffic on their street---but the air was wretched with the stench of smoke. From burning wood. Because the next door neighbor, and another one two houses down, and probably even more of them, like to burn wood. Breathe in all that wonderful carcinogenic stench (while proximity to the fire, without proper eye protection, is probably slowly giving them cataracts). Well, good thing I have my P100 masks....

There's less space in the house than I thought, and I have a large number of large

Spoiler

paintings and small sculptures to move. Plus the basement occasionally floods a little. Basically there's a large ground-floor recreation room adjacent to the garage, with a nonfunctioning bathroom (horrible sewer issues decades ago), and stairs leading down to a basement/laundry room with a working sink. My elderly father, the one recklessly going to restaurants, supermarkets, and offices without a mask, never uses any of them, because there are short steps leading to a front door on higher ground. So I'll use foam and draft blockers to minimize airflow between the rest of the house and the recreation room (I could go further and try to seal it off, but I'd like to be able to use the door in case of emergencies). Unfortunately only one of the screen windows in the recreation room works properly, but they're willing to have new screen windows installed for the recreation room, laundry room, and the bathroom I'd use in the main house, and I'd place high-powered air purifiers in that bathroom, the recreation room, and the laundry room, and maybe also right outside the door leading from the main house to the recreation room (AKA the wreck room).

I've considered decorating the door to make it look like an air-lock (trompe l'oeil 3D, perhaps), the recreation room to look like a space station (the interior of a space station, that is---not, like, standing on the outer surfaces), and the laundry room to look like a dungeon. (I would be doing their laundry, so they don't contaminate my air space.) But I'll probably just let that be my head canon for time being. Especially with all the massive paintings. (Which, for better or worse, are not of the interiors of space stations, nor of dungeons. Though most of them are pretty abstract, so technically it's open to interpretation... "you see that painting? It's actually supposed to be a nebula! And that over there? It's the interior of a space ship. But the essence of it. And that over there? That's another space ship. They come in all sorts of different forms.... And those down in the laundry room? Those are demons and torture devices. Yes, they come in many different forms....")

More ominous signs from my apartment's new owners: they're ordering current residents to remove all their bikes from the bike-rack by a certain date or have them confiscated, explicitly to make room for new prospective tenants. Seems like they want to get rid of the current residents to replace them with higher-paying "luxury" tenants. Or perhaps they want to con new residents into thinking there's plenty of space among the existing bike racks when there really isn't.

OTOH my elderly mother pointed out something I had somehow never realized---ground floor apartments generally cost less, and it's apparently typical for people to associate "luxury" with a nice elevated view and higher floors. Whereas my apartment is half on ground level and half underground (built into the side of a hill, so the entrance is ground level from the courtyard, and the rear is half beneath the streets). Combined with the extensive water damage through almost every room of my apartment and the more than 20 year old appliances my apartment would probably be one of the least lucrative to try to renovate into a "luxury" apartment. So mine might be one of the last, if they even bother with it at all.

Trump's disastrous policies will probably make it harder for them to find "luxury" tenants and more expensive to renovate. Most of the current tenants are college students, many of them foreign, and I'd guess most of them are from the nearby third-rate school that many people go to because it's comparatively cheap and has classes year-round to get through a degree faster (and cheaper). Granted, there are probably also some University of Pennsylvania students (second-rate Ivy, with a few first-rate graduate programs) who tend to be more affluent, but aside from the science center most of the Penn buildings are a more substantial distance away. So I'd imagine that most of the higher-paying tenants they're imagining would be associated with the biotech hub that the city has been trying to create nearby. But Trump's freeze on grants, his tariff proposals, the chaos of his flip-flops, and again his hostility towards noncitizens is probably going to have a substantial negative impact on the local biotech industry as well, with few people looking to move into new luxury apartments.

Meanwhile, the cost of materials for apartment renovation has in some cases already gone up substantially:

Quote

The [effects of tariff proposals] have been felt not just in ground-up development but also in the multi-billion dollar industry for interior work and renovations.

Richard Jantz, an executive at Cushman & Wakefield who leads its project and development services team in the tri-state region [New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania---I live in Pennsylvania], said that a large office tenant recently put a roughly $20 million renovation of a space it occupies in Manhattan on hold because of cost escalations that coincided with the tariffs.

The duties have cascaded through the supply chain, Jantz said, raising the price of items like ceiling and acoustic tiles, which often use China-made fiberglass, or lighting systems, which can have internationally sourced components. [...]

[...] "That is largely based on the tariffs and a little bit of greedflation that we're seeing," Jantz said, referring to domestic manufacturers and suppliers who have been opportunistic by raising prices because foreign competition has grown more expensive.

The higher costs have also had an impact on the construction of apartments

https://www.business...truction-2025-3

So if they can't find enough "luxury" tenants for their first sets of renovated apartments, they might decide it's not even worth it.

OTOH the company that owns my apartment might correctly guess from my history that if they just jack up my rent as if they'd renovated but don't actually bother to renovate I might stay on if it's not utterly exorbitant or beyond my means---at least for another year or maybe two. But since I've barely been leaving my apartment (because of the pandemic) there's little point to me living in the city when it would be much cheaper to live with my parents and help them out in their advanced old age. And it turns out they're even older than I'd thought.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 14 March 2025 - 10:57 AM

[QuickTidal]

Fuck. Émilie Dequenne died. 43. A rare form of adrenal cancer.


Goddamn that's too young. I should pop the bluray for BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF in the player in honour of her.

[Macros]

Fucking hell fire

Munich Airport, en route home, €9.20 for a bottle of bastard water at a restaurant.

Never even thought to ask when the waiter asked if we wanted water for the table

9 fucking euro!

[Cause]

Azath Vitr (D, on 05 March 2025 - 10:34 PM, said:

Apartment manager sent out an email saying they won't be renewing any leases that expire in July, but residents will have the option to transfer to a newly renovated unit... at an increased rate. Now my lease doesn't expire until August so it doesn't affect me directly, but the new owners had plenty of people come in to evaluate my apartment for renovations, so I think there's a very high probability they're going to force me to move so they can do extensive renovations and sell it as a "luxury apartment"---or maybe a store front, since it's on the ground floor. And there's a strong chance that they won't have any other ground floor apartments that open onto the courtyard rather than a hallway full of other peoples' germs.

If I'll be forced to move anyway I might as well just move in with my elderly parents---I haven't been going out for the last few years because of the pandemic, and with Trump, DOGE, and RFK Jr it seems likely that funding for an effective intranasal vaccine will be pulled and we won't get one in the United States for the foreseeable future. Plus I'll save a ton of money. And my parents could use my help---they're getting close to the age when most elderly people need assistance, which can be very expensive. There are also some new cheap apartments within walking distance of them if I find I need more solitude, and then I wouldn't have to pay Philadelphia city tax. The biggest issue is that my elderly father has been recklessly going to stores and restaurants without a mask. I could sleep and eat in the garage. And I can put fast acting air purifiers through the areas of the house I go to, which combined with masking when in their proximity indoors might be enough. But unfortunately the downstairs bathroom doesn't work, so I'd have to put on a mask every time I want to go to the bathroom.

So these might be my last few months living in the city---there are some outdoor events I'd suppose I might as well go to. Wonder if there are any AirBNB's in Philadelphia where I wouldn't have to worry about getting covid or other diseases---probably not, unless it's a bring-your-own-tent type thing. Then again a groundfloor apartment that doesn't open onto a hallway or other apartments, with excellent air purification, would suffice.

Im not familair with the backstory. Why cant you get an injected vaccine? Are you immuno compromised?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 19 March 2025 - 10:19 PM, said:

Im not familair with the backstory. Why cant you get an injected vaccine? Are you immuno compromised?

I don't want to get long covid, even if there's only about a 1% chance of that happening.

Have more than enough bouts of brain fog-gyness (or haze) as it is, pile long covid on top of that and I might as well be a decaying zombie. Don't have time to be lost in bottomless brain fog.

Not to mention the damage that even mild infections tend to do to the brain and the rest of the body.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 19 March 2025 - 10:56 PM

[Macros]

And they seem to have lost our luggage

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

And long covid brain fog isn't just like ordinary mental haziness... many people report that it cuts off their creativity as well as their mental acuity and ability to reason quickly and clearly. Where there used to be spontaneous visions and ideas, there is just dull blankness.

To use a WoT analogy... for me it would be like being cut off from the Source. Potentially for a year or more. And I may not have all that many years left before age causes my brain to start to decline more precipitously.

I am optimistic that GenAI's creativity and ability to reason, paired with improved VR/AR (perhaps including direct brain stimulation, either through non-invasive electromagnetism or implants or something else) will eventually give almost everyone who's willing access to boundless creativity, rigorous logic, and ecstatic visions of beauty and the honest rigorous search for truth (and the truth of good practical solutions). But I'm not particularly optimistic that it will get good enough within the next year, or even two years, to substantially take over from my unconscious faculties.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 20 March 2025 - 11:30 AM

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 19 March 2025 - 11:06 PM, said:

And they seem to have lost our luggage

Brutal. Did they find it? I hope you didn't have to wait too long for it.

[Macros]

Apparently they have found it.
Working on getting unit to us.

In fairness Lufthansa are a great airline compared to the likes of Easyjet or Ryanair, can't really fault them for their customer service over the whole thing

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 20 March 2025 - 02:26 PM, said:

Apparently they have found it.
Working on getting unit to us.

In fairness Lufthansa are a great airline compared to the likes of Easyjet or Ryanair, can't really fault them for their customer service over the whole thing

Well that's good at least.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Macros, on 20 March 2025 - 02:26 PM, said:

Apparently they have found it.
Working on getting unit to us.

In fairness Lufthansa are a great airline compared to the likes of Easyjet or Ryanair, can't really fault them for their customer service over the whole thing

You can probably guess what I'm going to say (now that I've said you can probably guess)...

Skynet will fix it.

In all seriousness though, I'm glad it wasn't stolen at baggage claim (or if it was, perhaps that means they have located the perpetrators---with your luggage---and are closing in...). That whole system seems a bit insane. Personally I always marked my bags with something that would be very difficult (for most humans not wielding strange tools) to quickly remove or unobtrusively obscure without seeming suspicious to onlookers or video surveillance (which would hopefully flag it---another application of AI, with the flagged video being reviewed by a person before sending in the taser-wielding drone swarms and unleashing the floor's retractable tentacles).


[Edit: of course the markings should also be unique, highly visible, and not suggest that your bags might contain anything that might be economically valuable.]

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 20 March 2025 - 03:02 PM

[Macros]

Yeah Arnold delivered it directly to our door

[worry]

[Abyss]

worry, on 21 March 2025 - 05:44 AM, said:

I take issue with your Carl Weathers erasure.

[worry]

Imagine it's a movie poster. Schwarzenegger is playing the role of Arnold the luggage return guy, and Carl Weathers is playing the role of Arnold Schwarzenegger (a semi-fictionalized amalgam of the movie star + Macros and his family).

[QuickTidal]

When we moved we needed new aftercare for the kids after school. When we lived in Toronto this was the YMCA, and they were incredible for all then years were were there. In our new town we went with the one that exists at the school the kids attend, so that was an easy choice as it means they leave class and head to another classroom for aftercare.


The young woman in charge of the room my kids are in is MAYBE mid-20's and super awkward. The kids DO NOT like her, but there is not much we could do. We needed aftercare as our work simply doesn't jive with school ending at 3PM.

Things that have transpired since they began there in January:


Sidepiece: The days the kids started a helper woman was there and the next day she was not, and two CPS officers were there to observe....turns out that said woman was physically abusing kids. She was fired. She was not the woman I'm talking about. But a valid pre-point to note about the place.

Anyways, the young woman who looks after our kids:

1. She came to us DAILY about my son, who has ADHD and we are trying to regulate with meds, and how she didn't know how to handle him and that he was always "going going going"...and asked us what to do...to which we wee both like...um, sorry, aren't you trained in this sort of thing?

2. She told my wife openly one day that she "Doesn't like to yell at the kids as it makes her looks bad"....I'm sorry, what?

3. My son apparently related to her that my wife called her rude (which, she may have done, but in private to me probably, we don't recall)...but this woman confronted us about it like this..."So I hear you think I'm rude?".....us "Um....what?" her "I HEAR YOU THINK I'M RUDE?"...Me: "Uh nope." my wife was dumfounded and could not speak. It was SUPER confrontational for something a 6 years old "told her".

4. (This is the big one) The kids (varying ages like 6-9) were randomly talking about America and she piped into their conversation with "I'm so glad that Kamala Harris didn't win that election and that Trump did. Trump is doing great things. He's arresting people at the border who do bad things. He's good".....it's probably a good time to point out that this young woman is a POC so her Trump support is wild already, but I'm sorry, in what universe do you feel it is perfectly okay to talk to ELEMENTARY SCHOOL students about your political views....nevermind that those political views support a felon, rapist, racist garbageman....like what was it in your head that said THAT was an okay topic? We only know this because my daughter said to me "Ms _____ said that she likes Trump" last Friday and I did a double take.

5. Newest incident is that I was coming to get the kids on Monday and I aimed for the door I'm meant to get them at bu they were at the gym which is a different set of doors. The care worker leaned out the door and called out that this was where they were, I turned around and jogged towards the door and she let it close (it locks when it closes...so WTF) and my son was standing there so he popped it open for me and she shouted at him for doing it...I kept my cool and didn't say anything, but then I felt bad as my son looked at me with wide eyes as she did (like as if to say, are you going to defend me?) and I bit my tongue as I don't want to lash out and make a problem worse, but I swore to him afterwards that this was the last time I would let someone shout at him like that and that if she does it again, I'm going to tear a strip off her for it. Not the least of which is she was the one who beckoned me over and then closed the door in my literal face.

I loathe this woman. My anxiety spikes when I go in to get the kids from her.


We have been advised by other parents in the group and by a teacher at the school who befriended my wife that we need to contact the owner of the whole care system we are using as she already does not like this care worker and would apparently "love" to hear from us about these things. I feel like we are headed towards being the straw that breaks an already struggling back with this woman's employment with this care company...ESPECIALLY since they JUST got rid of someone who was physically abusing the kids. This woman does not have the skillset to deal with children. She treats the job like she's a barista at Starbucks and not someone who is essentially an ECE...a glorified angry babysitter.

Anyways. It's shit. And I hate dealing with it.


Fun Fact: One day when this care worker was off for a day, they had a substitute woman in, a wonderfully impressive and sweet older Caribbean woman who the kids ADORED (my son actually hugged her when he left that day)...and I'm now wondering how we get her into that position full time as she really knew what she was doing.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 27 March 2025 - 01:25 PM

[amphibian]

I have to go to NYC every now and then. My boss prefers to go in her modified van because it's the most accessible form of transportation to her. She then gets me to ride in the backseat of the minivan and unfortunately, it is the single worst seat I have ever say on for an extended period of time.

I have sat on old plastic lawn chairs that broke under me that were more comfortable.

It's so bad that I'm legit hurting several hours later. I have to not do this again - the work I put in to travel elsewhere is worth not feeling like this.