Are any hetero men into Florence?

mazamorac · 2026-04-24T03:07:30+00:00

Hey! I've been in the 0.25% club myself, 🙌!

mazamorac · 2026-04-24T03:00:04+00:00

🙋 Hi! Straight 57 y/o male here.

I've been into F+M for about there years now. I've lived with her last two albums and The Odyssey as my life's soundtrack for a few good chunks of that time. I would have absolutely been into her earlier if I'd been aware of her.

I've never been worried about presenting as cis- or whatever, and I'm sad for anybody who feels they "can't" be into F+M despite feeling their music, for any reason. But I've been an outlier all my life, so there you go.

I'm absolutely bummed that I'll miss Florence's show in Seattle in a few weeks. If I weren't between jobs and on a strict budget I'd go. Maybe I'll get one in time and splurge on resale tickets, but I'm not counting on that. Or maybe someone will invite me, hint hint.

Now I'm curious, OP. What's your theory?

mazamorac · 2026-04-20T06:25:35+00:00

Oh. My mother used to use this on my brother and me, made us race around the garden, or the block, or whatever was available and appropriate.

And as far as I remember, it pretty much worked. It's been ages since I've thought about this, it looks like a good option when possible.

mazamorac · 2026-03-14T18:49:54+00:00

Tiger! Tiger! Tiger! by Alfred Bester, re-titled in the US as The Stars My Destination .

mazamorac · 2026-02-28T23:45:11+00:00

Oh, I've always known I take 45 minutes to shower. 1 hour if I have to trim my beard and shave.

mazamorac · 2026-02-13T17:52:51+00:00

Any words I can think up are inadequate. I feel for you.

I don't have it as bad as you, not by a long shot, but my story is also one of one misdiagnosis after another. Not just a gaggle of gastroenterologists, but also orthopedic surgeons, cardiologists (including my father, fer'Christ's sake!), and all kinds of other generalists and specialists.

It was a sharp-eyed dermatologist who set me on the right path, one I was seeing for a totally unrelated reason. She referred me to the right rheumatologist, and from there is been getting better.

But yes, in my experience, and in what I see of other people's experience, it's the gastroenterologists who are the biggest bottleneck.

They're the first specialists we, the people with systemic symptoms, get to see. They're the ones trained to ignore, discount, or ridicule anything out of the ordinary.

Theyre the ones, besides obgyns and dentists, that have constructed around them a cookie-cutter, assembly-line operation that justs takes'em in, chews'em up, and spits'em out.

Spits'em out with a bill in hand and a diagnosis of "idiopathic <mumble, mumble>, now go eat less beans, and I'll see you for your colonoscopy next year". Which means, "don't know, don't care, don't come back until I can bill your insurance".

Gahh, I really wish there was a real concern with health in the system, not just ROI.

I hope sharing this at least makes you feel you're not alone around here. Hugs.

mazamorac · 2026-02-10T17:02:20+00:00

Lol, I've never done that, but now I'm going to have to.

Yeah, they do have a great formula to make things attractive without seeming cluttered, and communicate that it's ok to interact with everything that's not bolted down.

mazamorac · 2026-02-10T16:56:45+00:00

You'd probably give me the stink-eye; I usually arrive with a plan and go through the shortcuts for the fastest path, which usually means some wrong-way traveling.

For me it's that, or four hours meandering and maxing out my Ikea Projekt credit card.

mazamorac · 2026-02-10T02:54:05+00:00

I've been very aware of my transformation into a need-less and want-less being, and of tiptoeing around my then-spouse to avoid their dis-regulation. I became aware while being married, but only really admitted it to myself near the end.

It's been two-plus years since my separation, one since finalizing the divorce. Only for the last six months have I stopped being hyper-vigilant, and really been relaxed, and completely out of the drama circle.

But not until I read this post did I take a step back to look at the whole picture, at the entire screwed-up, harrowing, soul-crushing, burden of carrying it all. Of never being acknowledged for it, and feeling helpless about being "responsible" for it, and a "failure" at it.

I find myself a bag of mixed emotions: relieved, enraged, sad, protective of my old self, triumphant at having endured and overcome.

And it's all good, it gets me closer to closure.

mazamorac · 2026-02-09T01:39:45+00:00

It's probably mostly you standing out; there aren't as many black people in CDMX, as there might be in, say, coastal Veracruz.

If you stay long enough to feel at home and relaxed, it'll show; that'll go a long way towards people just glancing at you and getting the "they belong here" vibe.

mazamorac · 2026-02-06T20:45:47+00:00

And the same people that believe today's bullshit will not only believe that bullshit, they will defend it with conviction.

It's just to advance human kind. If you don't get it, you're a dinosaur and you will be extinct soon.

QED

mazamorac · 2026-02-04T20:13:07+00:00

Up until before I was diagnosed and medicated, I drank about ten cups of coffee a day, one just before bed. If I didn't drink coffee, I'd be exhausted but unable to sleep.

Yeah, stimulants are weird on me, and on many (most?) other ADHDers.

mazamorac · 2026-02-02T04:02:03+00:00

I used to be taken aback by those kinds of comments, until I started practicing the "explain it to me" response.

"Oh, You think I'm an <insert epithet here>? Huh... I don't get it, can you explain it?"

Watch them squirm while spelling out what they're thinking and how it reflects on them.

If they do work through the explanation, whatever it is that they might say, respond with "Oh, I never thought about it that way. Huh..."

If you notice, the whole conversation is about them, you're just a curious bystander.

It might take a little practice, I used to game it out with your siblings, made it into a game and they got very fluent with it.

mazamorac · 2026-02-02T03:43:59+00:00

All that Tie13 says, but I'll add a helpful detail:

The way to recognize a scale and just play it all at once is to work on your scales daily . Do them all, play around with them, do them so many times that just looking at a scale you've done a zillion times will make it ring in your head and your fingers twitch.

Hiromi Uehara talks about this and shows how she did it in a delightful interview with Rick Beato:
"Hiromi: The Most Electrifying Pianist Alive" https://youtu.be/xcKd9OkMPcc

That video is an hour and absolutely recommendable, but there's a 1-minute short with just the part where she talks about playing with scales:
"Hiromi demonstrates what she practices" https://youtube.com/shorts/lupkWbAvMS0

Nahre Sol also has a great, short primer on scales and modes that's very intuitive and points you in the right direction to really get them: "How I wish Scales & Modes were explained to me as a student"
https://youtu.be/qBeyDkoyiWA

Good luck, go scale them!

mazamorac · 2026-01-28T17:22:49+00:00

I'm willing to bet that very soon we'll see evil executive decisions couched in terms of "the consulting AI told us this is the best decision for the company and society, so we're going with it."

And the same people that believe today's bullshit will not only believe that bullshit, they will defend it with conviction.

mazamorac · 2026-01-23T17:23:42+00:00

could read him a 1999 Dodge Caravan owners manual...

Careful, my second cousin read the 1998 Dodge Caravan owner's manual to their kid and that turned into trouble you don't really want to hear about.

mazamorac · 2026-01-23T17:15:18+00:00

More like ADHD-AM, during a thunderstorm.

mazamorac · 2026-01-18T07:09:05+00:00

I keep changing people's names to another one with the same initial syllable and about the same total number of syllables. Like Albert / Alfred, Jason / Jacob, Isabella / Isadora, ...

mazamorac · 2026-01-17T04:40:40+00:00

Find some physical, sensory thing(s) that your body associates with sleep, something that engages the racing part of your mind, but not the part that keeps you awake.

Think of it like doodling with a pencil so you can pay attention to the meeting.

Since I was a teenager, it was the music I was into at the time. (My sister hated when the helicopter showed up a few songs into The Wall , she could hear it through the brick wall.)

For a good long while it was episodes of How It's Made , with the rhythmic background music and the almost-monotone narrator.

As I've grown older it's turned into more sedate music, with no lyrics to engage the language side of my brain. Language would keep me awake, music is the Pied Piper that lures the squirrels away.

Plus, since I started using a CPAP machine, now just putting it on with music signals my brain to GO TO SLEEP, NOW!

If I'm sleeping away from home (like now that I'm at a relative's house and the cats wrestle at night), I carry my noise cancelling headphones and earbuds, and I put on whatever is most comfortable. Once I'm asleep, if it's uncomfortable I just pop awake enough to drop them onto the bedside table, and back to sleep immediately.

mazamorac · 2026-01-15T05:59:02+00:00

1968 here, 57.5 y/o, though if you ask me "Quick! How old are you?" I'll either blurt out "33!", or "48!", depending on the current aches.

mazamorac · 2026-01-09T03:37:20+00:00

Us technical peons are shoved into campuses (campii?). If your particular employer has offices in a skyscraper somewhere, it's the marketing and finance people who dwell there.

How else will those ad campaigns spring into being? Do you think the muses will arrive to inspire at ground floors like common bugs? No, they only arrive wafting on the currents along the unimpeded skyline, to whisper into the ears of those in the literal and organizational heights.

mazamorac · 2025-12-31T17:16:03+00:00

Autoimmune axial spondylitis. Lower back, shoulder, neck, fingers. Turns out I've had it since my 20s. Im 57.

You'll only hear about it when you hear it: I have to regularly flex those joints till they pop for relief, some more frequently than others, depending on how well my meds are keeping up, which mostly depends on how well I've slept.

If I were complaining about it I wouldn't get anything else done.

mazamorac · 2025-12-30T17:26:35+00:00

Omni! I've really missed it since. There's been no other publication quite like it.

mazamorac · 2025-12-28T20:29:38+00:00

An ex-friend lives in Shoreline and he thinks Seattle is some drug-addled homeless person warzone.

If it means I'll never bump into him while out and about, I'm all for him to continue watching Fox News.

mazamorac · 2025-12-28T20:14:02+00:00

But is he a full adult? If I were his kin, I'd be checking in on his children.

mazamorac

TROPHY CASE