LastThursday

The saga with my dad continues, he is still in hospital but due for imminent discharge. He's still very weak but at least able to dress and bathe himself now. He won't have anyone at home after discharge, albeit for one day perhaps. I'm back in the UK (thank god), but I'm very concerned for him. I could have stayed, but that would have been for an indefinite amount of time, and I had to draw a line in the sand somewhere. I feel bad for doing it, but also hugely relieved. Selfishly I have to look out for myself first, otherwise the stress and worry will make me ill and/or make me unable to help my dad in the longer term. At some point he will probably need to go into home, especially if he loses any more mobility. His flatmate (she only temporarily stays there and can't look after him long term), is a nightmare. She's very domineering, combative and only thinks about getting her own way, and is completely dictating how the situation should be handled, and my dad is too soft to stand up to her. I for one don't want to deal with her too much, I need time to think and plan and not be consantly hounded - she has caused me more stress in the last three weeks than my dad's condition has. Effectively, the situation is simple, he either goes home and largely copes by himself or he doesn't and goes into a home - all this extra drama and hysteria is completely unwarranted. My sister pointed out that both his flatmate and my dad have not really planned or thought about this eventually at all. The flatmate runs a business with him also, and there's about 35 years between them. It was obvious that at some point my dad may get ill or infirm and that would be it. So, in effect I'm in the middle of it picking up the pieces and fielding communications left right and centre. I think my dad will just about cope with living at home, and it will get easier over time as he regains his strength after lying in bed for three weeks. And if so, that my dad will seriously consider his options, he still has his faculties thankfully.

I think it'll be good to get out things that arise and put them down in written form. I have so many lost thoughts and ideas, and some of them were very good.

I see some advantage to putting the white Rook on E3 first, but not much. Otherwise just take the black Knight with white Knight, then White Queen to H5 (whatever happens), since pawns in front of black King are pinned, then in a better position for mate.

Bear in mind high IQ is orthogonal to happiness. Normally it's inversely proportional. Ok ok stupid people are happier and get more sex.

If I was playing Blitz my instinct would be Knight F6 to E4, exposing the queens. Instinct would be to exchange queens after, but may as well take black bishop. But then black Knight F2 for check, but white can counter with taking it with their Knight, and I retaliate with black Rook. But then what? My other instinct is the Black Queen + Rook diagonal pair is the crux of the puzzle. But I can't work it out.

Bear in mind high IQ is orthogonal to sexual prowess. Normally it's inversely proportional. EDIT That's my usual chat up line.

Do what you love? Otherwise, DON'T work 10 hours a day.

More random stuff from @LastThursday please bear with me, loading... Tom boy A-Ha on CD repeat Out of Blue Comes Green Auburn hair Lulu Short hair Excitable Stripey Tights Stick insect Milton Keynes Bowl Was Not Was Big watches Sexual exploration Innocent love Jealousy Crying Kabooey Gillygogs Running round and round Weightlifting In bed kissing all day T'Pau: China in Your Hand 1988 Wet T-shirt, yikes Summer high jinx Shooting GF's brother with air gun (oops) Soul II Soul Crow (Lindsey!) Kissin' on a bench Empty tube trains home The Venue: clubbing and dry ice Fool's Gold Barrowboy (f**k him) Garry (f**k him) KFC Chicken Burger ... South Kensington Sick (original) parquet flooring Encyclopedia Brittanica (Fourier Transforms!) Fish tanks Curry and Coca Cola (bliss) Frisky Bull Dogs Glow in the Dark Stars Gladiators The Twilight Zone The Nuns of Monza (!) The Lost Boys 9.5 Weeks St Etienne: Only can love break your heart Gladiators Go! Apple IIgs Airheart Bard's Tale (mega printout colouring in felt tip forever) Spinning 8-bit wireframes A-ha cubes Jangling keys opening schools at six o'clock (nearly killed me) Mopping floors Hydrochloric Acid + urinals Super Dodgy Woodpecker council estates Drunken taxis Getting mugged Getting to know my mugger Walking home for two miles Getting away from home Network 7 The James Whale Show Get Stuffed! Impromptu naked duvet discovery (and nearly misapproriating an illegal cherry) Nosey sisters Officious ginger brother The Dew Drop Inn Close to Me: Cure 15 going on 16 Unbearable holiday wait Will you go out with me? Green chequed shirts Drainpipe grey jeans Basketball shoes Have my cherised calculator (supernerd) New girlfriend meet old girlfriend Baggy happy acid hoodies Paisley shirts!! (I loved them) Hi Tec Badminton

@Someone here I'm happy to choose whichever angle suits the conversation. I say "non-living matter" within the context of the OP and you understood what I meant. Of course I didn't actually say those things. I'm equally happy to say that everything is within consciousness and leave it at that.

Just get it out Guillermo. I continue to be in Dublin and having to sort out things for my dad, whilst he is still in hospital. He's due to be moved to another hospital for rehabilitation for his mobility. As it stands there is no way that he can live by himself. The hope is that he recovers enough mobility to be able to do that, but even before he went into hospital he was borderline, and was struggling to think clearly and keep on top of things. Saying that, he's a lot more compos mentis that even before he went into hospital. My dad's always been a dreamer and getting him to be practical and pragmatic is a real effort. Getting him to help himself is even harder. Your parents bring you up and then they turn into children and you become their parent. I really just want to go home and to stop having my dad as the focus of all my attention, it feels artificial and unnatural. And I want to stop living in his flat by myself. Why is it me that's on the hook for his care? Don't my siblings give a shit? Why does his own brother not give a damn? And for the love of god why don't the hospital find him a place for rehab, being in limbo is slowly killing me. The last few weeks has felt like months. Over and out.

You can separate out the emotion from the act. You're right that your mother just wants the best for you, and you should see her actions through that lens, and forgive her when she doesn't get it right. Take her advice only if it feels right to you. Of all the people in the world that can trigger you most emotionally, it's your family. Just allow yourself to be upset, don't try and rationalise it or ruminate on it, let it pass naturally. If the emotion is too much, just say to your mother that you will talk to her another time.

What is the right way to live life? The answer: there isn't a right way. The world and their brother will tell you what to do and what you should be doing, and they're all wrong.

This is the genius of life, it is simultaneously separate and an integral part of the universe. It's separateness comes from its ability to maintain a set of patterns of matter through time. The actual matter itself rushes like a river through an organism, so it isn't the matter that is alive, it is the patterns it makes. The patterns have a type of will, but like a fractal have a repeated structure through time as well as space. That fractal is able to "absorb" being disrupted by that rush of matter and recover. A fractal is a never ending feedback system, that creates unlimited complexity from simple ingredients: matter and laws of nature.

In the semi-light I stumble. Through the dimness I make out wooden floating stairs leading up. Above a breathing presence, barely there. I stand still a moment straining to hear. I shouldn't have entered. I feel forward and grab a step, feeling its solidness in my grip. In that way I fumble my way round to the bottom and begin to climb. Movement stirs above, but my feet continue despite me. I suddenly stop half way up, as the bright full moon peaks through the blinds and casts my breathing shadow on the wall opposite. I breathe deeply. Should I go? No harm done, just a figment of an imagination. Taking another step up, I am level with the floor above, and automatically push myself on my toes to see. Nothing but sombre darkness. No sound except my clenched breath. Do I say something? I continue looking up all the while, until I'm at the top. My eyes slowly adjust. A large bed sits squarely in the middle of the upper floor, covers strewn wildly. I can barely breathe. Below me the stairs are illuminated in pale moonlight. I take a single step towards the bed arms out groping for an answer. I misjudge the edge of the bed and fall face forward into enveloping softness. I lay very still in embarrassment and in fear, arms and legs out, face down. Suddenly I feel a warm rhythmic breath on the back of my neck. I yank my head round to see what it is. It touches my lips with a single finger in a motion of silence. "I've been waiting".

@Breakingthewall obviously we're not going to solve "life" in a few paragraphs on a forum. My intuition tells me that there is a continuum between dead and alive matter. Viruses for example are on the cusp and maybe there's matter more dead or more alive than a virus. All life seems to have the ability to overcome disruption and keep itself intact. In digital communications it's possible to have forward error correction on a message, so that if it is corrupted in transit, then the original message can be recovered. For life to be self-sustaining against being corrupted, all it would need is an error correcting mechanism. If the error correction was strong enough it could sustain itself indefinitely. In a sense an organism "knows itself" so that it can "correct itself", it has an identity. Non-living matter in general doesn't have this self-correcting ability.

@Breakingthewall I enjoyed that. As I like to say: life is matter with an identity. Life is also an epiphenomenon, it is made of dead matter that is constantly flowing and self-organising, the patterns it makes is life itself. Life resists entropy and change to maintain itself. But fundamentally all matter has mass which also resists change of motion: inertial mass is in one sense "alive". Matter has the identity of "mass".

@Butters the obvious question is what do you mean by original? A thought can be the an arrangement of previous experiences in a new way, like a small pink elephant. That would be original in some way. A thought could be of a person you've never met before, the idea of a person is not original, but the particular manifestation is. But to be truly original the thought would have to be of something not in your experience. But then, how would you be able to interpret it if you have no prior experience to base it on? Maybe you'd say it was a "mystical experience", I don't know.

@CARDOZZO nothing mindblowing unfortunately just lots of low level weirdness over the years. I think it's even hard to disentangle cause from effect with supernatural stuff or magick. For example is telepathy an exchange of thoughts, or is it just looking into the future? Or retrocausality, did the future event cause you to make a decision in the past, that forced the future event happen? And for me the more I try to consciously control things, the less effective things are. But also I probably haven't tried to study it closely enough. Sometimes things I've wished to happen take a very long time to manifest, and it does so in convoluted ways. I've learned patience.

@CARDOZZO read Advanced Magick for Beginners on the Internet Archive. It's an easy read and might give you some ideas: https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/0/items/advanced-magick-for-beginners-alan-chapman/advanced-magick-for-beginners-alan-chapman.pdf The gist of the book is to be creative and experiment a lot, but also to be methodical and write down what works and what doesn't. This will give you a good idea of what you're able to do. For example in my life, I will often realise that I'm idly thinking about someone, and they then contact me soon after. It's happened so many times that it's not coincidence. The trick is, can I force it to happen? Maybe, maybe not.

The belief that my conscious experience is generated by my brain. But it is super obvious to me that it is in fact the other way round, and it's not a belief, because it's there right in front of me all the time, it's an absolute truth.

@Something Funny but be careful with being "fully actualized". You could be a fully actualized hermit, and that still will not make women chase you. You still have to play the game of attraction and provide the value that women want in a man. In fact providing value in general is the number one way to make you more visible to people. Work out what women value and then things will become a lot easier.

The bit in bold is the important bit. You are already yourself now, not tomorrow. When you actually become the best version of yourself you can, then women will chase you. Believe me most people are nowhere near their full potential. It would be amazing if we could all be loved for who we are now, but in reality we are invisible to 99.9% of the people around us, they are indifferent to us. To get noticed, and to get love, you have to shout quite loudly, wave you arms around and jump up and down, all the time. Even then only a few more extra people will notice you. Only your parents will love you for who you are. The whole point of pickup is to improve your chances of getting noticed, that's why it's called "game", because it is a game you play. I will say though, that if you are fully aligned within yourself, and in charge of your life in a sovereign way, then people will subconsciously pick up on that, and that in itself will get you attention. i.e. when you're fully "actualized" as a human.

@Something Funny you are hitting on the correct mindset, but having mindset is not enough. Women chase men for different reasons that men chase women. You have to externalise your "I am high value" mindset. But also you have to understand what "high value" means to most women, not what you think high value means to you.

I'm a hermit most of the time, and I mostly don't mind it. Up until my mid-thirties I was always around people and I didn't mind that either, but that changed as my friends had kids and so on. It was a shock at first to be alone for so much of the time and it affected my mental health a lot. But I came out of it and I've got to say this period of being a hermit has been the most productive in terms of self-development and maturity. I don't know for how long I'll carry on being a hermit.

Dear diary. The last week has been a crazy one. My Dad got taken ill with flu, which even for a healthy person would be an unpleasant experience. Instead his flatmate phones me and says he's unable to move at all, and that she's very concerned for him. My Dad had a second major heart attack last month, and this really zapped his physical strength and mobility. Having flu on top of that has nearly killed him. I understand now why flu is taken so seriously for older folks. Dad ended up going to hospital and has been there a week now. The biggest issue is that his flatmate would be out of the country for weeks, and he had no one else to care for him. My uncle lives fairly near to him, but he is old himself and had mobility issues also, so that wasn't going to work. My sister is in America and my half brother hasn't got two pennies to rub together. So that only left one person, AKA me. If I had been working this would have been a nightmare, as it is I haven't worked for a few months. My full intention was not to work at all for an extended period, perhaps even up to a year. Primarily I stopped so that I could decompress, destress and just "do nothing" - but also to think about my options and what I could do with my life "the big stuff". Of course, reality doesn't play by our rules and as Americans say sometimes you're dealt a curve ball. I could simply have said "nope I'm not dealing with that fuck off", but I couldn't bring myself to do that. So, here I am in a foreign country, in the middle of Dublin sorting shit out. My aunt and uncle put me up for a short while. I felt incredibly awkward as we are effectively strangers, I only having gone to their place once before. I've probably seen my uncle twice in about forty years. But luckily we got on well enough. And, as soon as I had the chance I relocated my Dad's flat. His flatmate is back briefly for one day (today) before she goes to Poland for Christmas. Seeing my Dad daily in hospital has really emphasised how fragile we can all be at times, and how we can go from being functional to nearly non-functional very quickly. I've kept my visits brief and some days he hardly acknowledged me at all. I'm a fairly stoic and not prone to "over emotion", but my body has been telling me it is stressful, even if my mind is not overwhelmed - I feel tired. I really really don't want to be doing this shit at all, not out of lack of compassion, but because I'm just not in the right space to be doing so. Effectively my dad will need a carer if he ends up being imobile, and a lot of things will have to happen to re-adjust his living circumstances. I'll do what I can do, but I absolutely refuse to be his carer in any way, I had enough of that shit with my mum for too long. He'll go into a home kicking and screaming if it comes to it, and he'll pay for it out of his money. So for the foreseeable next few weeks I'm stuck in cold wet Dublin. I should be thankful, back home there are problems with the water supply and thousands of homes are without water, probably including mine, some problem with the water treatment works. The universe works in mysterious ways, and it's fucking annoying. Diary out.