One More Reason the Aliens Might Be Avoiding Us
Mar. 13th, 2026 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll
Is the current location of our Solar System the reason no one's coming to visit?
One More Reason the Aliens Might Be Avoiding Us
james_davis_nicollIs the current location of our Solar System the reason no one's coming to visit?
One More Reason the Aliens Might Be Avoiding Us
The Language of Liars by S L Huang
Mar. 13th, 2026 09:08 amjames_davis_nicoll
A linguist goes undercover to unravel a xenological puzzle whose answer is in plain view.
The Language of Liars by S L Huang
Care and Feeding: Parenting While Sick
Mar. 12th, 2026 04:40 pmcereta posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
agonyauntDear Care and Feeding,
I’m a stay-at-home mom, and my husband works outside the home. We have three kids and obviously we all sometimes get sick. However, for some reason (*cough* I wash my hands and he doesn’t *cough*) I usually seem to get a much milder case of whatever bug we’re all dealing with than my husband, or sometimes don’t get it at all, leaving me to care for sick kids without any help. I know I should be grateful that I don’t usually get as sick, but being under the weather and nursing sick babies while my husband sleeps all day is hard. I usually end up completely run down, exhausted, and sometimes even depressed.
Recently, we all got the flu, and this time I did get it pretty bad. My husband was still recovering, and the baby was still sick so my mom had to come stay with us for a while … and then she got it. My husband and I talked after we were all healthy about how we could better handle a house full of sick people and, uncharacteristically, we didn’t come to a great resolution. I’m tired of not being able to get significant rest time when I’m ill and being on my own with sick kids, so I think we should rely on help from family more and also that my husband should accept that being sick as a parent isn’t the same as being sick without kids. I asked him to really consider what help he could offer me while he’s sick and volunteer it more. I also admitted that I should do a better job of asking him to work from home occasionally when I need to recover from being sick. He agreed on the last point but didn’t accept either of the first two: He thinks it’s out of line to ask family to come help us and get sick themselves and isn’t willing to commit himself to doing more when he is sick. We’re all healthy now but I’m sure the next virus is just around the corner, so who is right? How do you fairly split the work when everyone doesn’t feel good?
—We’re Not at Our Best
Dear WNaOB,
I am always thrilled to hear anyone is out there, washing their hands, which is one of the best forms of preventive “medicine” we have. This may indeed help account for the times you manage to avoid the bug entirely but can have no possible relationship to the times you just have milder symptoms than your less fortunate family members.
Every illness is different. So is what “doing more” can mean. I’m glad you are on the same page about him working from home more frequently while you are recovering; I am not sure why it hinges on you asking as opposed to him making the decision based on the situation, but if that’s what it takes, fine.
On the family question, I’m torn. I would not ask an older relative to risk the seasonal flu, if at all possible. For minor bugs, if you are extremely honest that you are floundering and need a second pair of hands and that those hands may wind up catching whatever illness the family has, people can make their own informed decision about helping.
Sometimes everyone is sick at once. One of the worst parts of being a parent is not being able to retreat to the couch with a Gatorade, regardless of how terrible you feel, because a child needs you to hold their hair back or heat up some soup. It’s a good time to rely on food delivery for a short period (if anyone actually feels like eating), and I recommend having basic sickness prep ready to roll (children’s cold medicine to bring down fevers and help with sleep, Pedialyte, extra mattress protectors under extra fresh sheets so you can just yank off the soiled top set and have a pre-made bed ready to go, etc.)
You and your husband are not going to solve for all time the “but I’M sicker when I’m sick” argument. You do need to ask for what you need and to be specific with what those needs are. “Can you please switch the laundry to the dryer? Can you load the dishwasher? Can you bring home saltines and ginger ale?” It seems as though communication in your household has become contentious and now carries the weight of grievances from Ghosts of Seasonal Flu Past. He thinks you’re telling him he’s a malingerer, you’re drowning in gross tissues, etc. Please try to strip emotion out of these interactions whenever possible. Fake it like you’re on a team until you’re actually on a team here.
Also, I hesitate to tell a grown man to wash his hands during cold and flu season, but if he hasn’t grasped the repeated and unpleasant cause and effect at play here, you have my permission to tell him a professional advice columnist thinks he’s being a real tool.
I’m a stay-at-home mom, and my husband works outside the home. We have three kids and obviously we all sometimes get sick. However, for some reason (*cough* I wash my hands and he doesn’t *cough*) I usually seem to get a much milder case of whatever bug we’re all dealing with than my husband, or sometimes don’t get it at all, leaving me to care for sick kids without any help. I know I should be grateful that I don’t usually get as sick, but being under the weather and nursing sick babies while my husband sleeps all day is hard. I usually end up completely run down, exhausted, and sometimes even depressed.
Recently, we all got the flu, and this time I did get it pretty bad. My husband was still recovering, and the baby was still sick so my mom had to come stay with us for a while … and then she got it. My husband and I talked after we were all healthy about how we could better handle a house full of sick people and, uncharacteristically, we didn’t come to a great resolution. I’m tired of not being able to get significant rest time when I’m ill and being on my own with sick kids, so I think we should rely on help from family more and also that my husband should accept that being sick as a parent isn’t the same as being sick without kids. I asked him to really consider what help he could offer me while he’s sick and volunteer it more. I also admitted that I should do a better job of asking him to work from home occasionally when I need to recover from being sick. He agreed on the last point but didn’t accept either of the first two: He thinks it’s out of line to ask family to come help us and get sick themselves and isn’t willing to commit himself to doing more when he is sick. We’re all healthy now but I’m sure the next virus is just around the corner, so who is right? How do you fairly split the work when everyone doesn’t feel good?
—We’re Not at Our Best
Dear WNaOB,
I am always thrilled to hear anyone is out there, washing their hands, which is one of the best forms of preventive “medicine” we have. This may indeed help account for the times you manage to avoid the bug entirely but can have no possible relationship to the times you just have milder symptoms than your less fortunate family members.
Every illness is different. So is what “doing more” can mean. I’m glad you are on the same page about him working from home more frequently while you are recovering; I am not sure why it hinges on you asking as opposed to him making the decision based on the situation, but if that’s what it takes, fine.
On the family question, I’m torn. I would not ask an older relative to risk the seasonal flu, if at all possible. For minor bugs, if you are extremely honest that you are floundering and need a second pair of hands and that those hands may wind up catching whatever illness the family has, people can make their own informed decision about helping.
Sometimes everyone is sick at once. One of the worst parts of being a parent is not being able to retreat to the couch with a Gatorade, regardless of how terrible you feel, because a child needs you to hold their hair back or heat up some soup. It’s a good time to rely on food delivery for a short period (if anyone actually feels like eating), and I recommend having basic sickness prep ready to roll (children’s cold medicine to bring down fevers and help with sleep, Pedialyte, extra mattress protectors under extra fresh sheets so you can just yank off the soiled top set and have a pre-made bed ready to go, etc.)
You and your husband are not going to solve for all time the “but I’M sicker when I’m sick” argument. You do need to ask for what you need and to be specific with what those needs are. “Can you please switch the laundry to the dryer? Can you load the dishwasher? Can you bring home saltines and ginger ale?” It seems as though communication in your household has become contentious and now carries the weight of grievances from Ghosts of Seasonal Flu Past. He thinks you’re telling him he’s a malingerer, you’re drowning in gross tissues, etc. Please try to strip emotion out of these interactions whenever possible. Fake it like you’re on a team until you’re actually on a team here.
Also, I hesitate to tell a grown man to wash his hands during cold and flu season, but if he hasn’t grasped the repeated and unpleasant cause and effect at play here, you have my permission to tell him a professional advice columnist thinks he’s being a real tool.
How To Do It: I Pretended To Be Gay To A Female Friend.
Mar. 12th, 2026 04:07 pmcereta posting in agonyauntDear How to Do It,
I made a mistake. I have been very close with my friend, who’s a woman, for the past three years. I am a man, and for the most part, I’ve been able to convince her that I am gay.
At first, I just yearned for the platonic affection that only a woman can offer; nothing obscene. But now … I am enticed by her smooth skin and curves. I’ve seen her naked several times, and she’s always felt safe around me because she thinks I am gay. How can I proposition her so that she’ll forget all about my so-called gayness? Should I pretend to be bisexual? HELP!
—Cross My Heart and Hope to Die
Dear Cross My Heart and Hope to Die,
Did you consult with any media before deciding to pursue opportunistic identity impersonation? With icing on her face, Mrs. Doubtfire would have shrieked at you, “Hell noooooo!” You have placed yourself in a farce that rarely works out as intended. You purposely deceived someone in order to make a connection, and now that you have that connection, you want more. Meanwhile, your friend will end up with less. It is safe to assume that her attachment to and comfort around you are predicated on your lie. You’re asking what to say to make her forget, as if I’m a wizard who’s been holding out on revealing a magic technique for mind-editing and not just some guy sitting on his couch in Brooklyn.
Here are your options: Keep up the deception and forget any kind of romantic pursuit because to her, you are as good as gay. You will have to keep up this deception for the rest of your life and/or friendship (whichever ends first), which seems exhausting and doomed to fail. Or you can come clean and hope that she is already in love with you and has been secretly wishing that you would just turn straight already. Unless she is under love’s spell, she is likely to be angry when she finds out that you have deceived her. Since your relationship is built on a lie, you can expect the relationship to collapse once the lie is dismantled. I don’t think there’s any way around that, but at least now you know what not to do next time.
I made a mistake. I have been very close with my friend, who’s a woman, for the past three years. I am a man, and for the most part, I’ve been able to convince her that I am gay.
At first, I just yearned for the platonic affection that only a woman can offer; nothing obscene. But now … I am enticed by her smooth skin and curves. I’ve seen her naked several times, and she’s always felt safe around me because she thinks I am gay. How can I proposition her so that she’ll forget all about my so-called gayness? Should I pretend to be bisexual? HELP!
—Cross My Heart and Hope to Die
Dear Cross My Heart and Hope to Die,
Did you consult with any media before deciding to pursue opportunistic identity impersonation? With icing on her face, Mrs. Doubtfire would have shrieked at you, “Hell noooooo!” You have placed yourself in a farce that rarely works out as intended. You purposely deceived someone in order to make a connection, and now that you have that connection, you want more. Meanwhile, your friend will end up with less. It is safe to assume that her attachment to and comfort around you are predicated on your lie. You’re asking what to say to make her forget, as if I’m a wizard who’s been holding out on revealing a magic technique for mind-editing and not just some guy sitting on his couch in Brooklyn.
Here are your options: Keep up the deception and forget any kind of romantic pursuit because to her, you are as good as gay. You will have to keep up this deception for the rest of your life and/or friendship (whichever ends first), which seems exhausting and doomed to fail. Or you can come clean and hope that she is already in love with you and has been secretly wishing that you would just turn straight already. Unless she is under love’s spell, she is likely to be angry when she finds out that you have deceived her. Since your relationship is built on a lie, you can expect the relationship to collapse once the lie is dismantled. I don’t think there’s any way around that, but at least now you know what not to do next time.
Landslide, by Veronique Day
Mar. 12th, 2026 12:59 pmrachelmanija
A French children's book in translation from 1961, in which five children are trapped in a cottage by a landslide.
14-year-old Laurent's family is concerned that he spends all his time reading and doing chemistry experiments, and isn't engaging with other people. So they dispatch him to stay with his younger brother and sister in a cottage only occupied by a 14-year-old girl and her younger brother, who are alone because her mother is having surgery. The idea is that Laurent will have to take care of the other kids, and this will make him come out of his shell more. His parents do leave him the out of being able to pack up his siblings and return to Paris if he really hates it.
I am honestly not sure if it was even vaguely normal in 60s France for five kids ages 14-5 to stay alone in a remote mountain cottage for ten days, or if this was just a literary convention. Anyway, Laurent unsurprisingly hates it and packs up his siblings to leave. But while they're on the train platform with the other kids, he has a change of heart and they all head back to the cottage. But they stop in the cottage of a family friend, who is out at the time.
It gets buried in a landslide! They're all trapped in pitch darkness! In an only vaguely familiar house! They can't use the stove because it already nearly suffocated them with carbon monoxide! Their only air is from a narrow shaft leading to a giant canyon! There's very little food! No one knows they're in trouble because one of the kids wrote ten postcards dated for every day of the vacation, then arranged with the post office to send one per day!
The kids having to do everything in total darkness for most of the book is a really cool twist on this sort of "trapped in a space" book. (One of my favorite moments is when enough dirt slides away that some light gets in, and they see that they've been half-starved in pitch darkness with two huge hams and a lantern hanging from the ceiling.) It has some cozy elements - they're trapped with goats, which they can milk but which also get into everything and poop everywhere, and one goat gives birth to twin kids - but gets desperate quickly when Laurent gets an infected cut and the main milking goat drowns in a flooded cellar. But it all ends up okay when they first signal with Morse code in a mirror (in a nice touch of realism, it takes a long time for anyone to figure out the message as the kids get some of the letters wrong, including signaling OSO instead of SOS) and then make and set off gunpowder!
Not an enduring classic, but an entertaining read.
Okay, he thinks SMUT TROVE, I think, 'curatorial nightmare'
Mar. 12th, 2026 04:25 pmoursinNaturally, from various angles of my interests, I am going to click on a link like this, no? Pornucopia: The World’s Largest Collection of Smut, and You Can’t See It.
And while I have a certain historianly interest in the contents of the collection (though I was having a conversation with somebody a little while ago and we reckoned we would love to take a gander at Antony Comstock's Private Cupboard, because a leading smuthound must have accumulated a really outstanding filth collection, hmmmm?)
- I was going to myself with my archivist hat on, OMG, this is so many problems - there must be HUGE conservation issues, I just hope none of those porno movies are on nitrate film, but I do not think the smart money would be betting on it, and a lot of those relics are on degrading media even if they're not going to spontaneously combust. Some of them I wonder if there are actually means of playing them still.
(Tangentially I mention my wince when hearing thrilled younger scholar recount how they had listened to a 78 rpm recording in a sound archive, and I was, really???)
Then it sounds as though they are Not Keeping Up With Basic Processing ('embarrassed about the unorganized conditions', heh) which sounds as though ambitious collecting agenda has totally outrun capacity of institution to keep on top of it (should I add 'fnar fnar, nudge wink' at this point???).
Plus on the access thing and being not entirely welcoming to visitors, while - perhaps - historically collections like The Private Case (in the BL), L'Enfer (Bibliotheque Nationale), etc, were only made available to selected readers for fear of contaminating the public, in more recent days this is because this material is particularly vulnerable to to being mutilated - pages torn out or defaced, etc - which is why if you want to consult Cup. classification material in the BL you have to do so under the eye of the Librarian's Desk.
I suspect also in play is a probably legit fear of persons presenting themselves as SRS Scholars who once they are in will go BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES on the place ('wary about divulging warehouse locations', totally figures).
Over here, being niche.
Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson
Mar. 12th, 2026 09:10 amjames_davis_nicoll
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in a very different grave in a very different North America.
Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson
tofu and non-vegetarian dishes
Mar. 12th, 2026 03:27 pmmindstalkDiscussion on Youtube opened my eyes to something: the US, tofu is largely considered an alternative to meat, something used by vegetarians and vegans. But in Asia, according to the comments, it's often complementary to meat. Most famous example in the US might be ma po tofu, recipes for which are often "2 parts tofu, 1 part ground pork." At Philly's SE Asian market, one of the skewers I bought was a mix of fish cake and tofu. And just now, I had some miso noodle soup, that was pork slices, meatball, fried egg, and tofu (not much tofu, less than anything else).
Whether Asian cooks are motivated more by "meat is expensive, stretch with tofu" or "tofu is good for you", I don't know. Today's tofu didn't seem abundant enough to count as stretching...
The Luminous Dead, by Caitlin Starling
Mar. 11th, 2026 03:53 pmrachelmanija
Gyre explores the tunnels of an alien world in a mechanical suit, her only connection to the outside world the voice of Em, her handler who she’s never met, who may or may not have her welfare in mind, and who definitely has boundary issues.
Gyre has less experience caving than she claimed, and caving is extremely difficult. There are sandworm-like creatures called Tunnelers that will kill multiple parties of cavers for unknown reasons, so cavers go in alone, unable to take off their suit for weeks on end, with their handler as their only link with the outside world. Em can literally take control of Gyre’s suit/body, can inject her with drugs, etc - and not only has little compunction about doing so, but won't tell Gyre what the actual purpose of the mission is.
Spoilers! ( Read more... )
This is a type of story I don’t see very often, in which there’s one main science fiction element – in this case, the mechanical caving suit – which is explored in depth and is essential to the story, and it’s also set on a (very lightly sketched-in) other planet. Generally the “one science fiction element” stories are set on Earth. Apart from the Tunnelers, this novel actually could take place on an Earth where the suit exists.
The Luminous Dead, like The Starving Saints, has a small cast of sapphic women and takes place almost entirely in the same claustrophobic space; if it was on TV, we’d call it a bottle episode. I normally like that sort of thing but unlike The Starving Saints, it outstays its welcome. It has about a novella’s worth of story, and while it’s very atmospheric and any given portion is well-written and interesting, considered alone, as a whole it’s very repetitive and over-long. I would mostly recommend it if you like complicated lesbians with bad boundaries.
Wednesday refuses to be an AI 'subject expert' perish the thort
Mar. 11th, 2026 06:08 pmoursinWhat I read
Finished Death in the Palace - was not sure at first about the introduction of the actual Marx Brothers into the cast, but felt this had meta-textual resonance as there was something very Marxiste about the whole making-a-movie shenanigans (especially when it's this dreadful costume epic) + murder mystery going on.
Then went straight on to Cat Sebastian, Star Shipped, which was fine but perhaps didn't quite reach the high bar set by After Hours at Dooryard Books among her recent history/contemporary set works.
Returned to TonyInterrupter, which had perhaps lost some momentum from the hiatus, but nonetheless, I may try more Nicola Barker at some time.
Georgette Heyer, Regency Buck (1935) came up as a Kobo deal, and I realised it had not featured in the Heyer re-read binge a few years ago. Gosh, it shows a certain early style, what? with the massive amount of Mi Research, I Show U It, re prize-fights, phaeton-racing to Brighton, the interiors of the Royal Pavilion, the members of the House of Hanover (how right Mme C- was in advising to keep well away, no?). Also, this cannot be, can it, the first outing of the Apparently Dangerous Alpha Male vs the Civil and Sympathetic Beta Male who turns out to be a conniving sleaze? (not unique to Heyer.)
Also finished the book for review.
On the go
Also picked up as a Kobo deal, Fern Riddell, Victoria's Secret: The Private Passion of a Queen (2025). I have considered the author, as a historian of Victorian sexuality, sound on the vibrator question, if perhaps a bit too much in the 'Victorians were cool sexy beasts really' camp (It's All More Complicated), but I was interested to see where this would go. It's very good on the way things are with the Royal Archives, for which 'gatekeeping' seems too loose a term. But I'm still not entirely persuaded. It's a bit repetitive. Okay, it's quite good on the tensions within the actual Royal family (though can it really be that Kaiser Bill-to-be had Oedipus issues?). But still have a way to go.
Up next
Maybe the latest Literary Review. Otherwise, dunno.
March: Pusekätzchen
Mar. 11th, 2026 04:24 pmbookscorpion posting in common_natureI went out for a little walk this morning and found the first willow catkins - Pusekätzchen! They are an important flower for bees at this time of year, not just for honey bees but for solitary bees, bumblebees and solitary wasps.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Taipei, Mar 11
Mar. 11th, 2026 09:56 pmmindstalkWent to the Taiwan National Museum. I failed my research, I thought it was going to be a big art museum. It's a natural history and anthropology museum. Big hall on Taiwanese butterflies and moths, one on fossils especially rhinos. I went to skim-mode after that: 2nd floor has an indigenous peoples hall, and more fossils + geology. 3rd floor is "Discovering Taiwan", the history of local natural history studies, with a lot of Japanese role there. Basement is children's section, which might have stuff worth checking out; also has the normal toilets, vs. the squat toilets above.
( Read more... )
Seven Years of Darkness by You-Jeong Jeong (Translated by Chi-Young Kim)
Mar. 11th, 2026 09:01 amjames_davis_nicoll
Who is stalking the son of the man convicted for causing the Seryong Lake Disaster?
Seven Years of Darkness by You-Jeong Jeong (Translated by Chi-Young Kim)
another big swing from a young hitter
Mar. 10th, 2026 10:08 pmmusesfoolI don't love that Nolan McLean gave up 2 home runs in the same inning in this game, but I do love that Team Italia celebrates with an Armani blazer and an espresso (they literally have an espresso machine in the dugout and if someone hits a homer, he gets a shot) and then the team captain kisses the guy while everyone else does this: 🤌
*
Work is currently bananas. Listen, I have a whole document I wrote on how to change/streamline board stuff to foster discussion and engagement, but we were supposed to do it methodically and not implement it until the June meeting, except now we are doing it NOW, and everything got upended in the stupidest way possible. I maybe kind of couldn't control how irritated I am about it because it is basically making me do double the amount of work and is seems to me like it is just going to achieve the exact opposite of what we want it to, but apparently this is coming directly from the new board chair. I told my boss that if I am right, and that this doesn't do what they think it is going to, I might not say it, but I will be thinking the world's biggest "I told you so." And she was like, that's fair. Sigh.
*
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Work is currently bananas. Listen, I have a whole document I wrote on how to change/streamline board stuff to foster discussion and engagement, but we were supposed to do it methodically and not implement it until the June meeting, except now we are doing it NOW, and everything got upended in the stupidest way possible. I maybe kind of couldn't control how irritated I am about it because it is basically making me do double the amount of work and is seems to me like it is just going to achieve the exact opposite of what we want it to, but apparently this is coming directly from the new board chair. I told my boss that if I am right, and that this doesn't do what they think it is going to, I might not say it, but I will be thinking the world's biggest "I told you so." And she was like, that's fair. Sigh.
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It's a 15 minute presentation, dammit, in a fortnight's time
Mar. 10th, 2026 08:25 pmoursinSo really, there isn't a lot of point in going diving into the rabbit-hole that's just opened up.
I.e. I am revising my old piece of work for the Fellows' presentations session, and I thought, why not just see if name of author of obscure feminist work cited appears in British Newspaper Archive, which at time I was writing was less in habit of habitually consulting on odd points (did not, I think, have a subscription, for one thing). As otherwise I had no info on her at all.
And, blow me down, she may only have written one book but seems to have committed the odd journalistic opinion piece, and furthermore, is listed as being one of the founders of an organisation set up by Old Suffragettes (or possibly -ists).
Which I find someone has Has Writ A Book About, as one of those women's orgs that have been condescended to by posterity as about the little dears getting together to chat, bless the ladies, and turns out to have been rather more activist in its sphere than one reckoned.
Library to which I have access has copy, but will not let me have online access to ebook for some reason, sigh.
And really, I do have other things to do (thesis to read, book to review, have been solicited to do a podcast, must try and put together a powerpoint for my talk) than dash off down to LSE to look at the archives of the org, right?
Because given the limitations on what it's for, at the moment - however the work in question will develop - it will be a sentence at best, because of time constraints.
Frustration.
a moment of hilarity
Mar. 10th, 2026 12:03 pmthistleingreyMy mother has recently upgraded her phone. When I tried moving the SIM card from the old one to the new one, my fingers couldn't get it seated properly. The old one has a proper tray; her new one has a slim, bottomless frame. Perhaps they've changed the SIM spec and we need to swap the little card, I thought (that's what was wrong the last time I couldn't lodge a SIM in a new phone). My mother and I agreed to meet at the phone carrier's nearest retail shop.
The staffer at the shop was neutrally matter-of-fact as she clicked the SIM into its frame. Thanks, kind staffer.
Just my fingers' insufficiency of sensory feedback, and my long habit of being gentle with tiny bits of hardware, lest they snap. I guess the positive part is that while repeatedly mis-orienting the SIM, I could tell that my fingers were about to snap the little frame, but it feels like an enormous waste of time to have had to go to the shop, after I'd set up everything else on the new phone. (Less than an hour round trip, including my stop for a takeout lunch on the return, but still, a waste.) I apologized to my mother afterwards, and she shrugged and gestured to my cane; for her, those things go together. For me they don't!
OTOH, these are ways that one may learn about current capabilities and limitations, while still taking classes remotely and before attempting to find a paying job likely to be less kind about unexpected physical deficits that almost no one my age who can walk into an office would have. I've applied to a few long-shot jobs over the past year, and that's done.
From another angle: I've had the good fortune to seek employment in each decade of my age so far. IME, folks who sought new jobs mostly in their twenties---and not since---are likely to have the unadjusted false idea that one looks for whatever one can do. In middle age, one checks also for what one cannot reasonably do, to save some time/effort all around: if a hiring manager wouldn't believe in the possibility, there's not much point in trying to convince them. Atop that, I guess, is stuff like abrupt gaps in dexterity for a person with otherwise (even now) above-average dexterity.
(Once, as hiring manager in lieu, I declined to interview a former stay-at-home parent reentering the workforce who posited in a cover letter that homeschooling several kids was equivalent to managing multi-month office projects. No, it's also challenging, complex work, but one mode doesn't confer the skills of the other mode, and the open job req wasn't entry level.)
The staffer at the shop was neutrally matter-of-fact as she clicked the SIM into its frame. Thanks, kind staffer.
Just my fingers' insufficiency of sensory feedback, and my long habit of being gentle with tiny bits of hardware, lest they snap. I guess the positive part is that while repeatedly mis-orienting the SIM, I could tell that my fingers were about to snap the little frame, but it feels like an enormous waste of time to have had to go to the shop, after I'd set up everything else on the new phone. (Less than an hour round trip, including my stop for a takeout lunch on the return, but still, a waste.) I apologized to my mother afterwards, and she shrugged and gestured to my cane; for her, those things go together. For me they don't!
OTOH, these are ways that one may learn about current capabilities and limitations, while still taking classes remotely and before attempting to find a paying job likely to be less kind about unexpected physical deficits that almost no one my age who can walk into an office would have. I've applied to a few long-shot jobs over the past year, and that's done.
From another angle: I've had the good fortune to seek employment in each decade of my age so far. IME, folks who sought new jobs mostly in their twenties---and not since---are likely to have the unadjusted false idea that one looks for whatever one can do. In middle age, one checks also for what one cannot reasonably do, to save some time/effort all around: if a hiring manager wouldn't believe in the possibility, there's not much point in trying to convince them. Atop that, I guess, is stuff like abrupt gaps in dexterity for a person with otherwise (even now) above-average dexterity.
(Once, as hiring manager in lieu, I declined to interview a former stay-at-home parent reentering the workforce who posited in a cover letter that homeschooling several kids was equivalent to managing multi-month office projects. No, it's also challenging, complex work, but one mode doesn't confer the skills of the other mode, and the open job req wasn't entry level.)