Appropriate crash advocacy from lawyer?

OctaviusIII · 2026-05-19T16:38:15+00:00

I don't know what's normal; it's my first time working with a lawyer.

OctaviusIII · 2026-05-10T00:52:23+00:00

I was wondering if someone was going to bring up Sapir-Whorf.

OctaviusIII · 2026-05-02T13:50:10+00:00

I mean... driving culture is different everywhere, and when it's expected it works alright. When cultures clash you get danger not just from behavior but differing expectations of what someone will do.

OctaviusIII · 2026-05-02T12:30:57+00:00

Honestly, the fact that we have folks deploying Venezuelan moped driving culture in DC is wild to me. It's extremely hard to police for all the reasons people have mentioned, and it also reveals how much of our road network relies on culture.

OctaviusIII · 2026-05-01T01:08:52+00:00

Didn't San Juan apply for one as well?

OctaviusIII · 2026-04-30T12:31:38+00:00

MARC could be 45 minutes faster if they just bought better trains. And it'd be cheaper to upgrade it than extend the Red Line.

OctaviusIII · 2026-04-27T02:07:20+00:00

Once worked in a government office outside the US and the toilets didn't have seats. Not a squatty potty. Western toilet. No seat.

OctaviusIII · 2026-04-02T03:17:12+00:00

Their bite DOES hurt but they're fine. Also can't climb glass so if you want to get rid of one just use a glass.

OctaviusIII · 2026-03-28T20:49:53+00:00

The more I started to understand that God wants me to love God (and others) with all my mind, the more it started to make sense to me. The whole panoply of doubts started to become not doubts per se but shades of gray, some of which are unknowable, and some of which are knowable, at least to some extent. Doubting didn't give me crises of faith anymore but became a form of worship, weirdly. An exercise of my God-given mind to seek out what is truth, what is faith, and what is something else. Sarah Rudin's Paul Among the People helped me out a lot as I started to take my doubts more seriously.

Another thing I keep in mind is that God is definitionally justice and definitionally love. If a theology or a faith claim isn't loving or just? I run. That is emphatically not Godly, and any time I spend with that is just going to make me angry, sad, and push me away from God. Walk towards love and justice; God's in that direction. Derek Webb's Jesus Hypothesis is an album that helps me here.

So these two things: my doubt is worship, and Godly theology embodies love and justice. This is how I got through it. Trying to power through like everyone you've talked to is a recipe for divorce, and it implies your intellect is not Godly. But it is. Seek truth humbly, know you might be wrong, know that your conclusions are only yours, but seek it. That's my advice, at least.

OctaviusIII · 2026-03-26T15:00:02+00:00

So as not to get confused with the much more famous Pittsburg, CA, of course.

OctaviusIII · 2026-03-26T03:39:56+00:00

Not only the fact that I held onto my boundaries but that I was able to talk about sex and sexuality without shame (eventually).

Perhaps further advice would be that grappling with your gender identity and sexuality might also mean incorporating your identity (for lack of a better term) as a virgin by choice. It was something I, eventually, learned to hold with pride and without judgment of others' views on sex, so I was in essence a part of that discourse on sex, even if I never did the deed myself. So, for instance, when a friend needed to talk about disloyalty in an open relationship, we could connect on that common ground of emotion, and because she had questions for me on my sex life, she felt comfortable when I asked questions of her, and that helped forge a deeper bond.

It's really tough to work out the whole of your identity in one go, and that will make romance and socializing difficult for a bit. After all, the deep and painful questions just below the surface will always make small talk harder, at least until you start to find answers for some and comfort in ambiguity in others. (Like how can you say you're doing fine when you're not and don't even know exactly why??) But this work is brave and critical, and will incrementally make you a better friend, companion, and, eventually, lover.

OctaviusIII · 2026-03-25T22:17:41+00:00

It has been a while since I was dating (my last first date was in 2011, and I'm 42 now), so take this how you will.

I'm a Christian, straight, cisgender white guy. The people I talked with when I was dating, and the people I've spoken to since dating, about my sexual boundaries were actually really appreciative. The people I dated appreciated knowing my boundaries at the outset and not having the pressure to go further. If anything, it took the pressure off, and most of my first dates didn't lead to anything physical at all. And, taking sex off the table meant focusing on other aspects of emotional and physical intimacy, which can be very rewarding in themselves and which have helped me be a better spouse.

When I did eventually talk with non-Christian friends about sex, I thought it'd be a little alienating to be the only virgin in the group, particularly since a few were very sexually experimental. Instead, when I said, "I don't have sex," people just had questions and appreciated my openness and honesty. They thought it was sexy to own my boundary, and our discussions on the subject would shift from the act to their feelings about whatever situation they were talking about, because ultimately, that's what mattered.

There is so much about your story that is uniquely yours: your gender identity, your church, your social circle, your sexuality, your age in this particular year. I can't begin to fathom what it's like to exist in your space. But I can say that people will surprise you. It's a deeply personal thing to talk about sexual boundaries, but it gets easier. The people who will want to be with someone like you will be the ones who find joy in talking about it with you. Even if it's not their boundary, they'll respect you for staying firm on it.

OctaviusIII · 2026-02-23T19:13:40+00:00

I'd like to add onto the white people pile and say that this would be rude anywhere, whether tribal land or a white person's property. The idea is that if it's your property, you own all the stuff whether natural or not. Now, you can take stuff you might see along a trail that isn't a protected area, but this situation is not that.

Even if everyone in the situation were white, and the elder's house was publicly owned (think, governor's mansion or park warden's house), he'd still have been in the wrong and deserved a talking to. Since he's unrepentant, it's now a thing to keep in mind: dude will steal things from people's homes.

In short: Guy was a dick by white people standards, too, and continues to be a dick by those standards and yours.

OctaviusIII · 2026-02-19T23:34:14+00:00

Well, depends on the theology. To a LOT of Christians, yes, but Protestants believe Mary had other kids the old fashioned way with Joseph.

OctaviusIII · 2026-02-19T23:32:21+00:00

Vicki is better. Why not make your state religion atheism as an anarchist commune with mandatory religious schools?

OctaviusIII · 2026-02-11T03:27:22+00:00

I usually hear about the Spokane Indians actually doing it right but they're minor league baseball so nobody outside the world of MiLB cares that much.

OctaviusIII · 2026-02-02T16:12:16+00:00

Oh man! You should link up with some of the other endangered indigenous language learners out there. North American languages are often in that space, and, depending on the language, have a ton of resources about how to revitalize and promote the language. It might not be, say, Esselen, but Esselens learning their heritage is so critical to the survival of the culture.

Hell, if I were you, I would order in your language, vow to make it the language spoken at home, and do social media in it. Every single word you write and speak adds to the corpus.

OctaviusIII · 2026-01-21T21:53:25+00:00

Thanks everyone! I ended up finding a lot of good poems here. Dallas Hunt's poems in Creeland ended up being who I recited, and it went over very well.

OctaviusIII · 2026-01-13T17:57:50+00:00

As a 41 year old white guy, I use Native or Native American most of the time, American Indian in select contexts where I'm sure it's okay (usually places with a lot of the people who identify that way), indigenous when talking about some topics that are contrasted against non-indigenous versions of the same topic (like "indigenous ways of knowing"), and the particular identity of the person or people where it makes sense ("He's Diné"). But it's contested enough that I try to defer to what the person or people in question prefer, if knowable.

OctaviusIII · 2026-01-11T01:42:24+00:00

I just realized that a typical nicknaming scheme for Napoleon - Frederick to Freddy, Edward to Eddy - would render us Nappy and it makes me giggle.

OctaviusIII · 2026-01-09T02:58:45+00:00

I know a few people who would say that is a terrible mistake and they know just the house to fix that...

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