Archive of ‘personal’ category

21
Nov
2020

In “this doesn’t surprise me one bit”…

categories: personal; word count: 248 words

I put in an appeal as soon as my Twitter account was suspended, and Twitter still has not gotten to that appeal. They haven’t even sent me e-mails about the status of my appeal aside from the first one acknowledging that I sent in an appeal in response to my account’s suspension. One of my friends said that this happens a lot, that Twitter simply suspends accounts and does not make any effort to respond to appeal requests, essentially — no, completely — indefinitely ignoring them. That being said, I can see why people have found ways to circumvent account suspension by creating a new account with different contact details if Twitter is going to be this deceptive offering the opportunity to appeal one’s account suspension and then proceeding to do absolutely nothing about it. It reeks of absolute unprofessionalism, all of it does.

Facebook and Twitter do not seem to like leftist advocates, especially if they are AFAB (assigned female at birth) or are women. Conservative white men, especially religious conservative white men, can get away with anything on these sites and face absolutely no repercussions for their actions short of them blatantly being illegal or threatening. This is something that needs to change, even if the change commands or results in a new social networking site getting off of the ground, attracting that volume of people, and then not behaving in manners that Facebook and Twitter have. (And no, Parler is not the answer. It never will be.)

20
Nov
2020

That didn’t go that bad… I hope it didn’t.

categories: personal; word count: 359 words

I feel like my disability hearing went alright. It could have been a lot worse than it actually was, but I’m bracing myself for the potential impact of being denied and having to continue to fight for disability benefits by putting in a new application after the sixty days that I can appeal the judge’s ruling have elapsed. Just as with the presidential election, I brace for the worst possibility and hope for the best. I’ve begun to see the local pain management clinic, and they put me on Gabapentin since I had been on Topamax for years and… well, it didn’t seem to be working that well if I was having migraines at this frequency and severity. I was also put back on Fioricet, which has worked better for me than any triptan ever has, although I’m to take less of them a month. I guess that’s because we don’t want this to stop working like the triptans obviously have.

We’re also in the midst of another COVID-19 (coronavirus) spike, presumably because people still took their kids out for Halloween in spite of the consequences and risk. Bub and Monster stayed home with a bag of candy that I had intentionally bought for them to give to them on Halloween, and I had to explain to Monster a few times that we weren’t going out for Halloween this year and why in a manner that he could more easily understand. I don’t think we’re going to have any problems come the Thanksgiving that we… don’t celebrate for ethical reasons, simply because we’re not inviting anyone over or really even going anywhere.

I need to fix my treadmill, too. The track that you walk on (do you call it a track? I’m not going to look this up right now)… moves from left to right as you walk, if that makes any sense, rather than staying firm on the treadmill and only moving backwards when you walk. This has contributed to me being clumsy on the treadmill. I’m going to get a lot less out of it if I have to walk slower and constantly watch myself using it…

19
Nov
2020

Only one of these things surprises me.

categories: personal; word count: 379 words

So Twitter actually suspended my account for criticizing new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which surprised me… because of all of the things to crack down on, let alone suspend me over, it was that criticism that broke the camel’s back. I appealed the suspension as soon as I became aware that it had happened and began e-mailing Twitter support after they initially e-mailed me, once per day when it became apparent that they could expedite my “permanent” suspension but not bother to have someone take a look at it to see whether or not it was justified (it wasn’t). But it honestly figures that they can expedite a “permanent” account suspension (and not allowing me to create new accounts in spite of the fact that sorting this out has taken forever), but slow-walk an appeal. We really need better social networking sites.

I am also sitting on a Facebook post block that expires at the beginning of next month for telling someone who is extremely religious not to evangelize to me. They also criticized the fact that I am a leftist, so I criticized them for blindly following their religion of choice, and look where that got me. Both Facebook and Twitter seem to “crack down” harder on users that they can, with reasonable suspicion, ascertain to be AFAB (assigned female at birth) or female, going to almost herculean lengths to protect straight white men… and religious, straight white men at that. I am honestly not sure which of them, between the two, is worse.

I’ve begun to be seen at the local pain management clinic for my migraines with the goal being to start Botox at… some point. We’ll have to find out which point that is. In the interim, I’ve been put on Gabapentin to see if it would be a better preventive medication than Topamax and Trokendi… weren’t, and what I’m pretty sure the rest of my preventive medications have been. I’m not sure how well it’s working because I literally can not feel most of my left hand, the back of my left foot, and random, smaller areas on my left side.

So now I have to sit here and think about what I am willing to “trade” for less migraine pain. Wonderful.

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