[Content notes: UK politics, disability, gender]
( Read more... )***[Content notes: state violence, policing, incarceration, white person discovers racism]
( Read more... )***I've had time to read because I am fairly emphatically Taking This Week Off in the Peaks, after three frustrating days on the mass spec last week (resulting in 0 usable data). I am fairly shortly setting off to spend the afternoon at
Biddulph Grange Garden; I found it by looking through National Trust properties within striking distance of the cottage we're staying in, and then realised it was ringing a faint bell. I eventually recalled that
nanila had been singing its praises remarkably recently, and thus the decision was made.
I have also been playing some more board games; less than I expected but more than zero, with the big
obvious progress being that when Our Host expressed doubt over whether I'd get on okay with
Avalon I checked in with A, and then pushed to play it anyway. (My side lost! But I did well at my role.) The less-obvious progress is that I'm reaching the point where I'm not spending new-to-me games mostly focussed on managing my anxiety, and consequently am beginning to very tentatively build a model of
why People In General enjoy board games. In particular, I'm tentatively beginning to see how people might enjoy them in a way that isn't centred on self-aggrandisement and competitiveness; instead, I
think I am beginning to understand the use of games as combination social vehicle and, mmm, experiments in collaboration and problem-solving and exploration: collectively enjoying investigating How This Works, and How It's Different, in a similar fashion to talking about what Interesting And New things a given book is doing.
I'm not certain about this yet! But it still feels like progress to be moving from "panic" to "tentative modelling", and I suspect that once I'm secure enough in my modelling I'll be able to start working out whether
I enjoy the games.