would you hold in your urine? your shit?

no?

then why would you hold in your sweat?

i need to be able to sweat in the summer.

it's so weird and unnatural - and unhealthy - to stop yourself from sweating. i don't understand why anybody would do such a weird thing to their environment and their body...

i guess it's a male thing, in the end, isn't it? men are taught to bottle everything up inside - their emotions, their feelings, and, i guess, their sweat, too.

but, they need to let it out.

they need to relearn to cry and stink at the same time, it would seem.

but, i don't want to turn off my glands - i want to sweat. and i will.

i was feeling better earlier in the week when the humidity first came in and warmed the place up, but i've been tired and having difficulty focusing over the last few days, as the machines upstairs have adjusted. i'm going to keep the windows open as the humidity falls, in order to short them out. if i'm stuck with cooler air one way or the other, i'd rather have fresh air from outside than dry air from the refrigerants.

it's different this year. last year, i was able to get outside quite a bit, so that when i did come in, i didn't notice the air as much. this year, i'm going to be inside for 98 out of 100 days and i'm going to need to find ways to acclimatize the surroundings. otherwise, i'm just going to sleep all summer as i hide from the air under hot blankets, and i don't want to do that.

for right now, i'm going to try to warm the place up by using the stove and then taking a hot shower. hopefully, i'll be more alert and focused when i get out of it.

what cuomo just signed is legally equivalent to a "separate but equal" order.

the courts need to rip it apart. with force.

it doesn't matter if "they work" or not, it's a discriminatory policy, regardless. you don't have the right to tell me what to wear because "it works" in stopping the spread of a disease - that's a red herring.

i would be more likely to vote with my feet and boycott the business than launch legal action.

but, i hope somebody drags him through court over this and stops this process of legalized discrimination in it's tracks. it sets a terrible precedent that can't be allowed to stand in a free society.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/499942-cuomo-to-sign-executive-order-allowing-businesses-to-deny-entry-to

i'm so distracted.

i haven't touched this since yesterday.

focus, jess.

i have to warn you, though.

you need to expect massive levels of ignorance from the press on this issue, from all sides. we've been through this over and over - almost nobody seems to understand speech on this continent. the response from the aclu (who seems to lose every case they file, nowadays) is going to be just as bad as the response from fox news. it's just going to be complete nonsense from every direction...

if this ends up in court, the ruling will not be about political bias, and it won't be about first amendment rights - although you might stop to pause for a moment and realize that the precedent twitter would be citing would be citizen's united if it came down to it.

the question before the court will be about property rights, and the legal ruling in the end will be that there are no first amendment rights on private property.

that's what the issue here is.

don't let them confuse you.

ok.

i'm going to guess that this executive order is going to be political theatre. again - he gets my hopes up, but he's not going to follow through with anything substantive.

the claim from the whitehouse is that twitter is engaging in "political bias". but, so what? they own the servers - it's their private property. they have no legal obligation to maintain neutrality. and, that's the actual legal fact, here.

i think it's a lamentable reality, but it's the current legal order.

so, what is he doing, then? he's just riling up his base.

as mentioned repeatedly, i'd like to see a total reversal of the way this is approached legally, but it would require overturning the courts, so it would need to go through congress, and i don't see any hope of that going anywhere. 

just about all he can do is post a tweet condemning the censorship on twitter, and that's about all you're going to see actually happen.

there's a lot of ways that the state can approach something like this if it doesn't want to nationalize the servers, which is what i'd actually argue for. the thing is that trump isn't going to be interested in anything like that because it would undo his own relevance. i'm approaching this from a very idealistic perspective about the sanctity of speech; he's just looking to maximize marketing reach. 

it does open a lot of questions, though, about how speech advocates move forward in restricting corporate censorship, in the future. but, don't think trump is an ally, here. he's just in it for himself.

so, i've decided.

the last time i went through this, i was trying to find a way to work blueberries into my diet, decided on the juice and then couldn't find any actual blueberry juice for a decent price; everything at the store was blueberry-cocktail or blueberry-concentrate. so, i just started buying blueberries. but, blueberries make sense in my diet in a way that carrots don't. if i can't find a decent source of carrot juice at a decent price, i'm not going to start buying carrots. maybe, one day, if i ever get a juicer....

the more i look into it, the less sense that green peppers are making to me. as mentioned, i just always got the greens because i liked how they tasted better. i knew they were high in c, and that was of importance to me, but it didn't really cross my mind to look into the different vitamin profiles of the different colours of peppers. now that i have, i realize i should be getting the reds. can i find reds that are bitter, though? or can i adjust to the sweeter taste?

i'm going to give it a try, next time i'm out, and see how i react. the reds have more c, so if my goal with the greens was the c, i'm not losing anything by moving to the reds. however, they have 10x as much beta carotene, which you can't overdose on. this simple switch would be enough to get me up past the daily recommended value for vitamin a at what is probably a moderate price difference.

if i don't like the sweet peppers in my pasta, i'll switch back. and, then what?

what i'll do is go shopping for carrot juice and see what i can find. the point of this is to get a lot of vitamin a, so i'll need to make sure i can actually get what i want. if all i can find is, like, v8 mixer and shit, then i'll need to find something else.

what if i find pure carrot juice and it's expensive? well, maybe i can add it in, without replacing the apple juice explicitly. the pure carrot juice will give you 300% of the rdi in a small glass. so, something i could do is mix the carrot juice with the apple juice. that could stretch it out and make it more affordable.

yes - i get 1000x more c than i need, but i kind of want to keep it that way.

let's hope i can handle the switch to the reds to start with. then, the carrot juice is just an added benefit on top of it.

there's a third reason, and it's ethical.

"it's ok to eat bugs, 'cause they don't have any feelings."

they literally have no brains....

https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/insect-bug-eating-guide/

on second thought, i seem to be overestimating the amount of vitamin a that is in a serving of milk. it's only 6-10%. the soy i buy is actually 10%, which would be better than fortified cow's milk.

again - i just prefer the taste of soy milk more than anything else. it's a habit that stuck from a vegetarian phase i went through years ago and had to reverse because i just wasn't absorbing enough plant iron, and might not have been getting enough b12. that's not a universal condition - some people can be vegan, and, frankly, i actually wish i could be, too. but, it just left me anemic.

so, i buy small amounts of processed meat, and just eat enough of it to keep my b12 levels up. i might buy a burger at a fast food restaurant once in a while, and i'll buy bacon once every couple of years, but i'm actually almost 40 years old and have never purchased actual meat, ever, in my whole life. no steak. no ground beef. no chicken. no ham. nothing - ever.

what i actually want to do in the long run is move to insect protein, so i've been waiting for years for something to come up and it just hasn't materialized. if i could replace the salami in my pasta with caterpillars, i'd feel a lot better about myself....

the eggs & milk don't bother me in principle and at the end of the day i'd rather the animals get eaten than wasted. i'm more about minimizing suffering; the reality as it exists is largely unnecessary, and we're only harming ourselves by doing it. i mean, look at what's happening just right now - people are dying by the thousands of diabetes-related complications as a consequence of a virus that is essentially a mutated common cold. it's as much about their lifestyle choices as it is anything else. at the end of the day, the unavoidable consequence of strict veganism adopted en masse is that you're going to have to kill billions of animals and dump them into mass graves. so, if you really want to do this right, you want to move towards co-existence, which means toning it down more than cutting it out.

so, i'd be happy with myself if i could get my daily protein from insects and just rely on eggs and milk for the rest of it.

for the a, specifically, moving to carrot juice is probably the best approach. i get enough c from my daily fruit bowl - i don't need the apple juice.

they fortify cereal with vitamin a, but i'm an adult, i don't eat cereal.

they should fortify the pasta with it.

so, i never really refocused after eating yesterday morning, then i slept a while, and got up and finished eating. i want to get back to it.

but i'm wondering this morning if i'm getting enough vitamin a.

i don't drink milk, and i don't eat much of any kind of processed food at all so i'm not getting it fortified anywhere. i eat a lot of cheese, but it's actually not stated how much vitamin a is in it. also, the amount of vitamin a in the soy milk i buy is actually disappointingly low.

i eat four eggs/week, in one sitting, and i eat a lot of tomatoes. your body can at least store vitamin a, so eating a bunch of eggs all at once should be a good start, at least. but, i'm crunching the numbers, and it seems a little low, regardless - four eggs in one sitting is more like a daily amount than a weekly amount.

the reason i'm wondering is that my eyesight has been declining. i've been nearsighted since i was a kid, so it's nothing new, but it doesn't seem to have recovered fully from the last round of migraines. i eat a lot of fruit, but hardly any vegetables. i don't drink milk. i hardly eat any meat, and the little bit i do is mostly for the fat content. i'm not sure where i'd work more vegetables in, except maybe the pasta.

my pasta plate has one tomato and one green pepper, and i eat half the plate, six days a week. so, six out of seven days a week, i'll have roughly half a tomato and roughly half a green pepper. i've mostly been worried about c rather than a, but the actual truth is that i prefer the more bitter taste of the green peppers over the sweeter taste of the red peppers and that's really the reason i buy the greens - i just like the taste better. but, an easy way to boost my vitamin a would be to buy red peppers instead of green peppers.

i could also consider replacing the apple juice (which, again, is for vitamin c) with carrot juice. i'm sure i can find some carrot juice with some vitamin c in it.

i just didn't really realize how low my vitamin a intake actually is. i'm kind of surprised by it, actually. i should adjust to that....