Goodbye, Major General Bill Anders

General

Astronaut Bill Anders died on Friday, apparently attempting to perform a stunt in a Beechcraft over the Washington coast. He was 90 years old. It’s just speculation that he was attempting a stunt; he was flying alone, and the crash is being investigated by

Bill Anders took the photograph now known as Earthrise while in orbit around the Moon, on Christmas Eve 1968. That same picture is the one I chopped up to make my header for this blog, so Major General Anders has had a direct influence on me and Lunar Obverse. I thank him for his service and for his place in history as part of the first crew to orbit the Moon in human history.

The picture he took inspired him to talk about how we should treat our planet better – like a fragile Christmas tree ornament, in his own words – and led to activists organizing the first Earth Day.

The world is lessened by his passing. Goodbye, Bill Anders.

The Acolyte E1 “Revenge/Justice” and E2 “Lost/Found”

reviews, TV

The Acolyte is a new Star War, and based on the first two episodes, I like what I’m seeing so far. Here are some non-spoiler thoughts about the setting, characters, and story. The show is set in the time period called The High Republic: 100 years before the prequel movies, during a golden age of peace for the Old Republic. Jedi have established themselves as galactic diplomats and protectors but there are rumblings among the underclass that the peace is built on a lie. In the opening crawl, we learn that there are emerging Force-users that are not Jedi, something we’ve seen a lot already but is presented here as a new idea.

I like this setting. It’s one I’m not that familiar with, not having read any of the novels or comics that have been released to date, so this show is my first exposure to it. The reason that’s built in to the lore as to why Galactic citizens would think only Jedi can use The Force is the ethically-dubious practice of Jedi taking anyone who shows Force sensitivity in to their temple, taking them away from their families and friends. Legalized kidnapping has got to produce a lot of resentment, boiling out there in the billion-billion stars of that Galaxy Far, Far Away (GFFA).

We get to see a mix of Jedi and a handful of regular citizens. The Jedi are space cops, and they’re being led by a politician: Master Venestra, played by Rebecca Henderson, spends a lot of her time on screen shutting down discussion, diverting investigation, and shielding the Jedi from political scrutiny for their role in a crime spree. Luckily for the plot, a rough and clearly emotionally-compromised Jedi by the name of Master Sol (played by international star Jung-Jae Lee) feels motivated to dig deeper, out of guilt and a remorse that is only hinted at in these two episodes.

Backing up Master Sol is Knight Yond (Charlie Barnett) who’s a stiff, by the rules type, but somehow likeable for it, at least to me. His strictness is a weakness but his honesty is a strength. And Yord steams his robes, an act that TikToker Written In The Star Wars has pointed out just leads to a new question about every Jedi: do they steam their robes, or not? Master Venestra would definitely order an underling to steam her robes; Master Sol could not even bring himself to care.

Rounding out the investigative team is Padawan Jecki (Daphne Keen) is curious, competent, and eager; she’s a great help to Sol, Yond, and, eventually, Osha. Jecki might steam her robes for specific purposes.

Sol’s remorse concerns Osha (Amandla Stenberg), a former Jedi student who now takes on dangerous repair work as a meknek for the Trade Federation out in the Corporate Sector. If it’s unusual for anyone with Force sensitivity to escape being taken to the Temple on Coruscant, how more unusual is it for someone to leave the Temple untrained? And did it involve steaming or not steaming her robes? She definitely doesn’t steam her work outfits now.

Her departure from the Jedi Order is where the central mystery lies and I am intrigued. My own thoughts about the Jedi and their place in the history of that GFFA have certainly evolved over time; when I was a kid they were kick-ass religious fighters, but eventually, seeing how the Jedi actual acted in the prequels and main stories, I’ve seen that they were arrogant, stubborn, and duplicitous, preferring to run away and hide than deal with the consequences of their decisions. The Acolyte, so far, looks ready to peel back those layers and show how that Jedi arrogance got its start.

The show looks great, especially the action sequences. As should be expected, the fights and escapes are well-shot, easy to follow, and high-energy. These are trained Jedi at the height of their powers so they fight like the professionals we expect.

I’m looking forward to more, and if you have an interest in a story that’s equal parts action and politics set in a well-developed fantasy setting, you should give it a try, too. It’s streaming on Disney+; new episodes drop every Wednesday in the US.

Intermittent Internet Connection

Tech

This might be a short one tonight, but I will try to include as much information as I can. Consider this an open support ticket for myself in the future.

I’ve had intermittent internet connection issues at home for the past couple of months. About once or twice a week, my cable modem (an Arris Surfboard G36 that I own, not one I rent from Xfinity) will lose connection. The logs on the cable modem are essentially useless; there’s never anything in them, let alone anything that might point to a problem. Since the problem is at the modem, it affects everything else downstream on my network, wired or wireless.

I’ve seen this issue before and it led to me replacing the previous cable modem with this one, a relatively expensive piece of small-business kit. (Edited to add: this Arris Surfboard G36 was purchased on 19 April 2022 – Brian) I’ve kept a log of the dropouts in case I have to contact Xfinity support, but I’m trying to collect more information before beating my head against the wall with their support. The few times I’ve contacted them, I get a chatbot that tells me to reboot the modem. Because the dropouts clear themselves up if I just wait it out for 10-15 minutes, I can’t tell if rebooting just occupies the time necessary for the problem to resolve on its own. I need more information.

The cable modem does have some diagnostic tools: basic shit like ping and traceroute, and a DOCSIS spectrum analyzer. My problem is, I don’t know how to read the results of the spectrum analyzer. I don’t know what’s within spec. The cable modem also reports a lot of information about the different up- and downstream channels: frequency, power level (in dB), signal-to-noise ratio, lock status. Again, despite my trying to find out what all this means and what the numbers should be, I haven’t been able to self-tutor enough to sort it out. Of course, Xfinity’s support articles are incredibly basic, aimed at non-tech consumers, so they don’t publish or bury the information I’m looking for.

I did find, during today’s troubleshooting, that a coax cable signal tester is incredibly cheap; $20. That might help me figure out if there’s something wrong with the wiring in my building (I rent so I inherited whatever is already in the walls.) Maybe there’s a slightly-more-expensive one that will give more information than just yes-signal/no-signal.

Edited to add: My problems did settle down a bit after the last factory reset I did on the modem, which by my records was on 6 March 2024, which feels relatively recent enough that I’m loathe to try it again.

Today’s outage, though, turned out not to be anything to do with my cable modem or Xfinity. In doing science, a flaw, a human flaw, is only reporting positive results. Gotta report all results in order to figure out what’s going on. What I’m saying is that today’s outage was my own damned fault. I was confuzzled because only my own desktop computer was showing any connection issues and slowness. Every other device on my network was fine. I’ll jump to the end: I had forgotten that my desktop computer was using a Proton VPN connection and it was eating up my bandwidth, disconnecting from time to time, and causing a whole lotta latency, which did not affect any other network device. Mea culpa!

I have a small audience here; if anyone has any suggestions for troubleshooting a cable modem connection issue, I am all ears. Reply or send me a note, I’d love to hear from you!

Profiting from Human Suffering

Politics

The property management company that manages the apartment I live in raised my rent this year. Previously I was paying $1373 a month for a 2 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath two story townhouse in far outer Southeast Portland; after the raise it’s $1508/month; essentially a 10% increase, $135/month more. The last time my rent was raised was April 2022, when it went from $1250 to $1373, another 10% increase.

I am not a researcher, so I tried some google searches to see how the cost of living has increased in the Portland, OR area over the past four or five years, but google is useless now, full of crap results that are there because search is no longer a core feature of Google; advertising and artifically-generated plaigarism has taken the top priority. But I do know it’s gone up; it’s gone up everywhere in the US, by, like, a lot. And I can find that Portland currently has a cost of living index that’s almost 25% over the average for the rest of country. It’s expensive to live here, even more expensive here than a lot of other places.

And I have to point out that the cost of living index is calculated on prices for real things. The index is based on things like rent, utilities, groceries, gas; real things everyone needs to buy in order to, y’know, live. Saying “the rent has gone up because the cost of living has gone up” is putting the cart before the horse. Raising the rent has the direct effect of increasing the cost we all pay for living.

There’s another direct effect of increasing rent. Every time average rent goes up in an area, there’s a marked and measurable increase in homelessness. That makes sense, right? Don’t sit there and tell me that homeless people are just lazy and don’t want to work and are a drain on society, because none of that is true. People are homeless because they can’t afford housing. And they can’t afford housing because we treat housing like a reward. It’s not a reward. It’s a fucking human right recognized by nearly every nation on earth by way of the United Nations; a right ignored by the bully on the block, the United States, because our oligarchs can’t hoard our wealth if we don’t pay them for something that should be every human’s birthright.

I wonder if the people who work in the property management company that manages my apartment complex make that connection when they drive to and from work, past the encampments and crumbling motorhomes and cars parked surrounded by the trappings of people trying and often failing to live their lives. Do you think they realize that raising rent for me and my neighbors directly results in more homeless people? I know it nearly put me out on the streets; luckily I have family to fall back on for now, and I (probably) have skills that an employer will need and hopefully eventually agree to pay me to use on their behalf.

If they do, I hope they feel shame, at the very least. It won’t stop them from increasing rents, not soon. The sickness of feeling entitled to make a profit off of things human beings will die without is endemic to our society and it would take a lot of long-term effort (and probably violent protests, if past human rights fights are any indication) to alter that entitlement. But here’s the thing: the people that work for the property management company might not have been the ones to decide to raise the rent, and they might not have picked the amount the rents go up. They might have offloaded that decision to… an algortithm. They get to keep their hands clean, and at least one company, RealPage, can make a profit by charging profit-making landlords for the service of abstracting their profit-taking. This is the horrible cyberpunk dystopian future I read about back in the ’80s.

Haha, sigh.

Major League Baseball vs. Unlucky Gamblers

Sports

I probably have a few words to say about today’s announcement by Major League Baseball about a disciplinary action. Have you seen it? Link here, but here’s the key paragraph:

In March 2024, MLB learned from a legal sports betting operator that it had identified past baseball betting activity from accounts connected to multiple Major and Minor League players. MLB obtained data from that operator and other sportsbooks, including authentication data for bets. None of these players played in any game on which they placed a bet. Further, all of the players denied that they had any inside information relevant to the bets or that any of the baseball games they bet on were compromised or manipulated, and the betting data does not suggest that any outcomes in the baseball games on which they placed bets were compromised, influenced, or manipulated in any way. None of the players are appealing their discipline.

Press relase from Major League Baseball, dated 6 June 2024

Major League infielder/outfielder Tucupita Marcano has been ruled ineligible for life, and Major League pitcher Michael Kelly and two Minor League players have been ruled ineligible for one year, for participating in sports betting. That terminology is legalese; it means they’re banned from participating in major or minor league baseball play for the time period noted, which is the highest form of punishment MLB can dish out.

That means a player “ruled ineligible” can’t play in games, can’t manange or train other players, can’t work in the front or back office, and will never be able to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Betting has been a cardinal sin in baseball going back a very long time. The leaders of the league hated the scandal that fans and historians call the Black Sox. Back in 1919, players on the Chicago White Sox were accused of fixing the outcome of the World Series for a payout from a mob boss, Arnold Rothstein. In response to the scandal, team owners created a new office of the Commissioner of Baseball and the person selected, Kennesaw Landis, demanded full power over the game and the players, includingi the ability to permanently ban anyone. Despite the players being acquitted in court, the new Commissioner of Baseball, flexed that ability by banning all eight White Sox players forever.

If this sounds familiar, it’s backstory for one of my all-time favorite baseball movies, Field of Dreams. Ray Liotta played a very sympathetic “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who would have been a Hall of Famer for triples and career bests in home runs, except for this little scandal.

The list of people ruled ineligible isn’t that long but there are some famous names on there. Willy Mays in 1980 and Mickey Mantle in 1983, of all people, were banned after they were retired, all because they took a job promoting a casino in Atlantic City. The bans were eventually overturned.

George Steinbrenner, owner of the Fucking Yankers, was banned for trying to blackmail a player, 12-time MLB All-Star, seven-time Gold Glove Award winner, and six-time Silver Slugger Award winner, Dave Winfield. What a fucking mess. I’ve never understood Steinbrenner’s motivation here; just an enormous asshole. When Bud Selig took over the Commissioner’s seat, he reinstated Steinbrenner, creating a stain on both of their tenures.

Marge Schott, owner of the Cincinatti Reds, was banned in 1996 for being a fucking racist in public. That’s all that needs to be said. Bud Selig was the one who declared Schott ineligible, which just proves even a broken clock can be right sometimes.

And of course, the most famous player banned from baseball is Pete Rose. I’ve always been on Pete Rose’s side in the story; he did bet on his team, the Cincinatti Reds, but never betted against them. But as I said, betting is the worst sin. Rose’s case is unique in that the ban wasn’t unilaterally given by the Commissioner; Rose agreed there was a case, and it was instituted by mutual agreement. I hold out hope that this be overturned at some point but it’s unlikely and sad.

The characters are the heroes of the story

DnD, Gaming

One of the recent recurring topics around here is my D&D game, which is a bright spot for me and my life right now. I love creating and writing settings, characters, and events/ my players are all great at playing games collaboratively and creatively, and are invested in their own stories and their place in the world; and the game sessions are one of the few times I get to hang out and chat with other people (living mostly alone and far away from my friends and family and being unemployed means I don’t get out much.)

So I spend a lot of time writing notes, thinking about what might happen next, creating characters and making maps, picking monsters and treasures, and all that comes under the umbrella of prep. Prepping for a game is one way that a Dungeon Master (DM) engages in play. Worldbuilding is all by itself a way to create.

I can get lost in my worldbuilding, much as anyone else who loves outlining fictional worlds. When I feel my imagination running away, though, I try to reign it in by focusing only on what would be important at the table. I try to only make notes about things the characters, and my players, care about. I try to focus on the characters, and treat them as the heroes of the story. I do sometimes get lost but I can nearly always pull myself back from the brink.

Where did I learn that? I learned it from other, more experienced, Dungeon Masters.

First, Matt Colville. He has a lot of excellent advice for Dungeon Masters, and in the years before I started this new campaign, I watched every single video in his Running The Game series, and many many more from his channel. And one of his philosophies about table top role-playing games is, the game should center around the players and their characters. “Be a fan of the characters” is one way to phrase it. I can’t find exactly where he said this, and linking to a video in a text post isn’t idea, but he does touch on it in this particular video, “The Sociology of D&D.” He says at the beginning of the video that he, the DM, had fun if the players had fun, regardless if they engaged in his plots and plans or not. I’ve internalized that idea.

I will mention Ginny Di, from whom I have also learned a lot about running a game. She has a hot take, though, on prep for DMs, specifically the common “don’t overprep” advice that seems ubiquitous. Her complaint boils down to two points: that trope doesn’t say how much prep is too much, and it doesn’t help a new DM decide what kinds of things to prep or even what counts as prep. And she’s right. It’s helpful to have some kind of advice on how to get ready for a game with your players.

Enter, Mike Shea, a.k.a. Sly Flourish. I’ve read so much of his work but I can point to the main idea I’m elaborating on, about focusing on the characters, because in his work he literally makes that starting point in his seven step Lazy DM’s Prep list: Step Zero, Review the Characters. His other steps flow from that initial act of prep. Once you know who the characters are and what they want, create events, fantastic places, and challenges for them specifically.

Also, Jason Alexander, a.k.a. The Alexandrian. The philosophy of including the characters and the people who play them in the flow of the game as it exists at the table infuses nearly everything he writes. When he says “Don’t prep plots, prep events” he means that you, the DM, only control the starting point, the first encounter, the hook that draws the characters into the world; the story is what they do with those hooks. By following his advice, I can be surprised by what happens next, once the other players have found out what’s going on. They react, and interfere, or push, or ignore, and we’re off into terra incognito for everyone, myself included. The campaign becomes a virtuous circle; I give a hook, the players do… something with that… and I have to take that and decide how my NPCs and the world changes and reacts. This automatically centers the players; they’re shaping the narrative by what they focus on. It’s led amazing places for me. I had no real idea when I started this whole thing that we would end up where we are now.

It’s good for the DM to be surprised, along with everyone else at the table. It’s fun, and games should be fun. And it’s because “I am a river to my people!”

Couple of Early Tips for Fallout 3

Gaming

I’ve been playing Fallout 3 for a while now, inspired to get back into a Fallout game when the TV show turned out to be good, actually. I’ve got two saves going, one for streaming where I’m trying to play as myself and make decisions I would make in the game, and another save that’s just for goofing around, testing things out, finding good ways to resolve quests, and figure out where to find all the good treasure and loot (and be evil if I want to.)

Side note, you should definitely subscribe to my YouTube channel and come watch me play. Right now I’m aiming for streaming at least twice a week, on days I have named Wasteland Wednesday and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Sunday, unless I stream on another day. It’s fun watching me mess around, and sometimes the game or my streaming set up or my home internet breaks in hilarious and not-at-all-angering ways while I’m trying to be smooth and professional and fun and not angry. Come watch!

But because my stream playthrough is only a couple of hours a week but I can play the other save whenever I have some downtime while I desperately look for a day job and struggle to pay my bills and make sure my dad is comfortable and entertained and healthy while he’s staying with me… where was I? Oh, right, my offline save is far more advanced and leveled up than my stream character. And I’ve figured out some good early things to do. Here’s some basic advice if you want to be better at things.

Bring tech to the Outcasts. Find Fort Independence, make the deal with Casdin, and then get as much 5.56 ammo you can get. Ammo doesn’t have any weight so you can carry all of it whereever you go, and having 1000+ rounds for your assault rifle (or, if you can find one, a Chinese assault rifle which does more damage but breaks faster and is a little less accurate) makes taking on raiders and ghouls so much easier. I managed to take down a couple of Enclave soldiers and you can get, like, 600 rounds for the armor and helmet from Casdin. It’s great!

Get the dart gun schematics! You can buy them in the shop at Tenpenny Tower. If you don’t want to go there, there’s a power station way up in the northwest of the map at a power station (MDPL-05) but it’s way out in the wasteland and might be hard to get to at lower levels. Tenpenny Tower is close to the Robco factory you have to go to for Moira’s wasteland survival guide quests. Dart gun will cripple the legs of creatures, which makes them slow and prevents them from closing with you.

I’m having a lot of fun roaming around the wasteland, even though I’m burdened with narrative dissonance from not caring about the main quest, which is to find my dad who sort of abandoned me for reasons. But that’s normal for the Bethesda Fallout games (strangely it’s not an issue in Skyrim or Oblivion or Morrowind.) I love the feel of the Capital Wasteland and it’s evocative; lonely, blasted, eerie. That mood is what Fallout 3 does well.

June is Pride Month

General

Before I begin, wanted to state up front: I’m typing this from my own brain. This post is from my own experience and my own mind, and written without deep research, so take it with that in mind. If you want a more objective definition of Pride and it’s relation to the month of June, I’d suggest starting on Wikipedia, and further than that, reading and listening to gay voices and scholars and historians. Before I get started with my own thoughts, below, here are a few of those voices, a place for you to start. It’s an incomplete list; feel free to let me know of others you know of. I know enough to know that I don’t know a lot of queer history. I’m happy to learn more.

Today is June 1st, which marks the start of Pride Month. If you’re not aware what that means, the pride is specifically gay pride, a time for the community of people of all queer orientations to celebrate their community, to be out and remind everyone that they exist, they deserve the same kind of safety and visibility and rights that belong to all human beings.

I am absolutely in favor of everyone to have full access to the rights and privileges of society. I don’t care what your orientation is, you can live your life in whatever way you want without fear of being ostracized… or assaulted, hated, legislated against. So I am one thousand percent happy to see the month of June be a time for LGBTQ+ people to celebrate themselves and their peers.

This blog is a safe space for marginalized identities. Hate and bigotry are not welcome here. Just want to say that up front. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, pan, trans, asexual, aromantic, plus all others I’m not even aware of, basically any and all of you: I love you, I see you, the world is better with you in it, I stand with you.

A question that might come up, since I’m talking about pride month right now, is: do I consider myself part of the LGBTQ+ community?

That’s a good question. It’s one I don’t have a clear single answer to, though. I’ve been attracted to such a wide variety of people and representations, but my attraction is often mild and intellectual, which makes me think I might be asexually pansexual, if that makes sense. I don’t really know if that orientation has evolved over time. It’s possible that when I was younger and just learning about sexual attraction, I fell in to the default societal binary, and that I have spent the decades of my life unlearning that binary and becoming more in touch with who and what I am. Would that be evolution? I don’t know. I’m loathe to apply any specific strict rules to the undiscovered country of my own mind.

I’m just me. I don’t know that any specific label feels correct. That being the case, I’m probably less comfortable with the gender binary, which means I’m somewhere in the circle of the Venn diagram that includes LGBTQ+ folks. Take that as you will.

Feelin’ that way

General

Tonight’s post is brought to you by the letters F and U, and is about the inability to write something specific.

I have another domain that I intend to use to post my many, many, many stories about working in customer service, help desk, and tech support. It’s basically set up, it’s just waiting for me to start posting things so that when it does go live, there’s more than one post on it. I probably want to start with 3-5 longer posts before it actually launches.

I have a long document that’s got all my notes collected over the years; weird things customers have said to me, observations about tech and customer behavior, quirky problems I found the solution for. I just have to, y’know, pick a few, flesh them out into a post, and post them to the tech blog. I just… don’t.

I don’t know why I don’t. My brain, my motivation, my habits, are an undiscovered country to me. Although I believe, on an intellectual level, that were I to pursue a diagnosis of ADHD, that I could succeed in getting one, I don’t actually have that diagnosis. What I do have is a feeling that my brain would probably fit many, if not all, the criteria for that diagnosis, which has been garnered from reading posts by other people that do have that diagnosis talking about the way they think and react. Those posts remind me of me and how I act. Which means, at some level, that I believe I can’t be motivated the same way a lot of other people are. I need more stimulation, more urgency, or more interesting things to focus on.

Is that why I’m not writing these posts, though? They are stories I’ve lived, stories that, at the time they happened, were interesting to me. And I do need some income, which, in theory, this blog could generate for me, through ads, affiliate links, or eventually becoming the source for a book collecting these stories. And my financial situation is dire, more dire than it’s been for a long time. I need income and the normal “apply to jobs, get interviewed, get a job offer” process is not working as well as it has in the past.

For whatever reason, though, the interest and urgency and personal nature of these stories is not getting me to sit down and even start writing one. Maybe… maybe that’s the trick I need to do. I just need to set a timer for 20 minutes, open a blank document, and start writing. See how I feel once I get something down into words. “Just write” is advice I’ve gotten from amazing, talented, and successful writers. I just need to start.

As just one example, I’ve managed to turn this whole complaint about not being able to write into a 500-word post. And I think I’ve said something real, something true, something… vulnerable, ugh. How did I do that? I opened a blank page, put my fingers on the home row, and started typing out what I feel. If I can do that for this topic, I can do this for any topic. Starting is the best motivator.

Tracy’s gone ’round the sun 54 times today

General

Today is my bestie’s birthday. Tracy, I hope today was your best day yet, but not your best day ever. Many more and better to come!

I was going to write about the misunderstanding that pretty much sparked Tracy and my friendship, a friendship that has lasted for more than 24 years, but it turns out I’ve already written about it, briefly, at the start of this post, back in 2007:

Dream time

It’s a good post, but the focus there isn’t on Tracy, which is what it should be on her birthday.

When Tracy and I first became friends, we each admired the other’s honesty and bluntness. We quickly found out that we could safely say whatever was on our mind to each other, good or bad, and the other one would not take it the wrong way or get upset. Well, most of the time. But it was easier with each other than it was for other friendships, at least for my part.

Tracy was religious when we first met, and she might still be, but back then, to her, religious meant Christian, and specifically that weird modern American evangelicalism. It was the culture she was in, more than any kind of philosophy that she’d examined and concluded was right for her. And because of that, when she found out that I was an atheist, she was curious. She told me once that I was the first athiest she had ever known in her life. So she would ask me about it.

My memories of those conversations are fuzzy now. It’s entirely possible that I was overly proud of my rational lack of belief in God, or any gods, in a way that I would personally find insufferable if someone did that to me, today. But I liked Tracy, and we worked together, and so I worked really hard to just explain what I thought about things, and not poke Tracy’s beliefs that much. I do remember that she was surprised that I had actually read the Bible, in at least two editions, cover-to-cover. I pointed out that Christians don’t tend to read the Bible the way someone reads a novel, they study it, in sections, lead by a pastor or other authority figure, who picks out passages and explains the meaning they want the Bible Study Group to understand.

And over the years, Tracy has lost that specific kind of American Christianity worldview. I’m sure she believes there’s something out there, but she’s also aware that it’s probably not the evangelical conception of God. The world we live in is bigger than that.

I wish I could remember those conversations because those were the moments where I really got to understand Tracy. She’s got a big heart, and endless curiosity, and also a strong sense of justice. And infinite loyalty to people she sees as worthy, which, astonishingly, includes me, somehow. I’m a mess, and selfish, and weird, but she’s always got my back.

And I have hers. I would never knowingly let her down. She’s the best bestie.

If you’re reading this, take a moment to send Tracy some good thoughts. It’s not prayer, probably. Just positive vibes.