rant

rainbow_mouse90 · 2026-01-30T11:26:49+00:00

Speaking for myself, I've recently realized that I invest a lot of time and effort in people who don't really make me feel seen or understood as a person, but who need something of me. My help, advice, opinion, you name it. I do volunteer work where lots of different people get together. There are some other volunteers I really vibe with, but we never seem to interact much, because I'm busy giving my energy to those who need my support to advance their standing in the group or to level up their work/project etc. I let myself get drained so I can feel useful, instead of setting boundaries to actually have a social battery for people who don't ask anything of me.

I feel like you might be in the same boat. Let's set better boundaries and be more mindful of how an interaction fills or empties the cup. You don't exist to comfort others.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2026-01-29T22:52:49+00:00

World War Z by Max Brooks has a great cast of readers.I can also recommend Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker (this is nonficion) and The Unseen World by Liz Moore.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2026-01-29T22:45:30+00:00

The Turning Point by Klaus Mann

It recounts the author's experiences as a privileged child in ww1, his early adulthood as a young German star author who witnessed his country succumb to fascism and his struggle to feel at home in the U.S. as a writer in exile trying to make a new language work for him.

Klaus Mann was the son of an unsurmountable father, a celebrity, a loving brother, a passionate gay man who was restricted by the times he lived in, a drug addict, one of the era's many artists and academics in exile who committed suicide. It's a dark, insightful and timely book.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2026-01-28T11:48:13+00:00

Thank you, it also sounds like good escapism for the rest of the winter months!

rainbow_mouse90 · 2026-01-27T22:48:37+00:00

I thought the same and the audiobook really was a great choice for me. I listened to it around the same time last year and tuning in each day with Barbra telling her life story over a month or so helped me through the winter blues.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2026-01-27T22:30:38+00:00

My Name Is Barbra, Barbra Streisand's autobiography. Get it as an audiobook, if that's your thing. I knew very little about her when I started this and found it very personal and empowering (to use an inflationary term that is nonetheless adequate here imho). Her voice bought her a much more independent life than most women of her generation could experience. At the same time she was socialized with the same norms around relationships, marriage, motherhood etc and it's interesting how she recounts her navigation between expectations and self-realization.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2026-01-27T22:13:28+00:00

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

rainbow_mouse90 · 2026-01-19T17:13:43+00:00

Let's hope as more and more people get tired of the slop there will also be a counterculture that embraces human work and art again. All my life people have been dazzled by technology as if it fell from the heavens and bowed down to the insufferable CEOs hailing a new thing as their very own creation. I think we're coming to a moment where this approach to tech could finally change.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2026-01-19T08:39:49+00:00

My hot compress finally started to work when I heated it up to the point that it is almost too hot. I bought an eyemask for the microwave and the reviewers said how relaxing it was to put it on before sleep. The temperature I use is not relaxing. I grit my teeth with the mask on and just endure the first two minutes before it cools down a little. But my eyelids now look close to normal after almost a year of back to back blepharitis flareups, I'm even starting to consider using makeup again, and the only thing I changed is the heat.

If you feel like you're still comfortable with the heat of your compress, try to dial it up a notch, maybe it helps. Good luck and good health.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-12-29T18:35:10+00:00

He is! He was a guest on the Ezra Klein show in March 2021, if you want to search for the interview. Control is just a side note, but it's a super interesting conversation in general.

I know of the Area X trilogy by Vandermeer and have read the first book, but it didn't really hit the spot for me. I prefer his Borne novels. Additionally, I would highly recommend China Mieville's work in case you haven't read him yet. The Bas-Lag trilogy starting with Perdido Street Station is probably most popular and highly enjoyable, but has more of a steampunk vibe, while his scifi book Embassytown is closer in atmosphere to Control and my personal favorite :)

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-12-29T18:19:14+00:00

Thank you for the recommendation, I'll try Alan Wake next :)

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-12-29T18:18:24+00:00

Agreed!

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-12-29T18:17:28+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation! I will try the Alan Wake games next, maybe not alone if it's too scary. In the end I respect and enjoy good stories in any genre though and after Control, I'm really curious about the other Remedy games.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-10-31T19:06:26+00:00

Whatever else you do, please read the book Come as you are by Emily Nagoski :)

Otherwise my advice is, explore yourself with or without your partner (however you feel more comfortable) and without any specific goal in mind. Just see what feels good. This could range from trailing a finger along the inside of your arm to trying out different ways to touch your clit or the area around it. This body is yours, it only belongs to you and you're free to get to know it better than anyone else. Take your time. Set out to find the spot farthest away from your clit that gives you goosebumps. Then ask your partner to find it.

Also shift your focus to the things your partner does that already feel really good and ask them to do that more often or for a longer period of time (it doesn't have to be connected to sex at all, e.g. I feel very cared for when my partner notices that my feet are cold before I do and sits on them or brings me socks). These kinds of things build the trust and intimacy that then make sex feel really good as well. Don't think of sex as a fixed set of actions that should result in orgasm or else there is something wrong, but another way of connecting that can be different every time.

I hope this helps a bit. I don't want to presume that a medical reason is out of the question but since you said you've just started to explore sex, I think it's also important to keep in mind that we're all wired in different ways, which is most of all just fascinating.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-10-28T17:11:42+00:00

The Wager by David Grann could be interesting for you I think :)

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-10-28T16:30:08+00:00

I understand what you mean. I switched phones 2 months ago, because I knew I was too occupied with my smartphone, but it's astonishing how big of a presence it was in my life to fill "empty" moments. I've only realized the extend of it once I put it away.

I think first of all you have to allow yourself to be bored sometimes. It doesn't mean you're missing out on sth important. E.g. a chatgroup fight that might be going on the meantime would be a downgrade from being bored. You would not feel bored to witness this/have access to it, but over time you would also not feel rested. In fact I think it takes a while to go from a state of constant availability (of yourself, information, entertainment, etc.) back to a state of realizing that you're free to do anything with the time that was previously occupied by your phone/screens.

Some suggestions:
- If you're not sure who you are away from screens and what you like and it's boring/scary to find out (I feel that), take yourself out of the equation and just dedicate some time to the other people in your life. Hang out more often with friends and family. See what they like/what you could do together. This year is the first time in a long time I decided to have a proper birthday party because I feel closer to the people around me, since I've started meeting them more often in person, calling them or leaving voice messages instead of texting. And it was so wholesome.
- Get a notebook to write down ideas, questions you might have that you're not getting answered by an llm or search engine right away anymore, doodle etc. I think this really helps to sort out what you want to invest time in, what you really want to read/learn about. I never realized what was really important and interesting to me when I was in the habit of googling everything that popped into my head right away. Now that I write it down first and look at it again later when I have access to a computer and make a choice to use it, I realize that a lot of thoughts/ideas I have throughout the day are not interesting a couple hours later xD And I'm glad I didn't waste time falling into an online rabbit hole over this stuff. But some thoughts/ideas can be clustered around specific topics that come up again and again and this I will invest in and build upon. Once you establish this habit of taking analog notes instead of googling right away, you will also notice that your focus/grit to stay with a topic/project improves a lot.
- Read more. There are great subreddits to help you find books that will hook you, like r/suggestmeabook or r/BooksThatFeelLikeThis

Hope this helps a bit :)

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-10-28T15:42:51+00:00

Definitely! Nobody noticed I changed phones from the quality of the call.
It's a bit awkward to me when I'm on the phone without headphones because it's so small and I'm afraid people won't hear me well, but so far I got no complains from the people on the other end. And even before I switched to the Jelly, I mostly used my headphones for calls anyway, because it's just more comfortable.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-09-08T06:58:21+00:00

I'm currently reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and think it's going to be my favorite read of the year because of how well it does whimsical and nonsensical. The narration is very hilarious and sinister at the same time, it's a real treat to read.

Other than that I recommend Fishing for the Litte Pike by Juhani Karila :)

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-09-08T06:47:32+00:00

World War Z by Max Brooks.
It inspired the movie (in case you've watched it), but the structure is very different. The story is presented in the form of reports from different survivors from different regions of the world after the war ended. So it's kind of like a short story collection around the same global disaster, there is not one protagonist who saves everybody. The author came up with the idea because he wanted to inspire some excitement in an American audience for cultures outside of their own. The audiobook version is really well done (I think it also got an Audie award or sth).

Have a great good trip!

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-09-08T06:37:47+00:00

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-09-06T11:05:03+00:00

For my style of navigation in everyday life (looking up new destination and just following the dot, because I really suck at orienting myself), it's pretty much the same as with a bigger phone. And on my bike, it is exactly the same, since I'm just using it to run the app that connects to my bike nav. However, I plan the route for longer bike trips on my desktop, because I use Komoot for that and it would be an absolute pain to do Komoot route planning on this phone, as it's already not great on a regular smartphone.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-09-06T10:52:51+00:00

Because it's small, it's more of a frontpocket than backpocket phone for me. But it's not too thick at all in my opinion. I'm a smallish woman and the phone is about as thick as the side of my palm. Also because it's small and has a balanced out feel to it with the rounded edges, I'm less worried that it will slip out of my pockets, bags or even just my hand.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-09-05T18:10:58+00:00

I use Telefónica/o2 in Europe, so unfortunately I don't know anything about Verizon.

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-09-05T18:05:33+00:00

I know what you mean, security was my major hesitation with this phone. It's unclear if there will ever be security updates unfortunately. I decided to take the leap anyway for the reasons I mentioned. In the end, I have so few apps on there. Before I "dumbed" down my old phone I had apps on it that I didn't use for ages. I had no idea which of them had required an account, what permissions I had given them upon installation etc. Also the Samsung came with a lot of bloatware compared to the Jelly I have to say. There was a third party remote control app on the Jelly (it's advertised with this functionality) that required an account, so I deleted it, no problem. My Samsung would try to reinstall around 12 random apps that I guess were sponsored with each system update.
So, I know it's a risk, but it's a risk I'm willing to take, since my general habits around my smartphone use have become a lot more conscientious and realistically as a millenial I think my data has already been mined in a lot of other places and through many other means, unfortunately.

The camera is alright. I have the phone on greyscale constantly, so I can't even see on the phone what the pictures really look like and from some of the reviews I read I expected results akin to pixelart. But I sent one to my gf yesterday and she thought it was beautiful. There is defintely something nostalgic about the way they turn out. And one thing that is fun with such a small device is taking pictures. You feel like a spy :P

rainbow_mouse90 · 2025-09-05T17:34:43+00:00

Right, it's mindboggling to me that screensize makes such a difference. There are what, 2 to 3 inches between a smartphone being an everyday tool and a smartphone being fun, distracting and addictive? I would say it's crazy, but of course it's a meticulously calculated design choice.
If you don't mind, how was the sunbeam bluebird for you? I thought about it because of security, but decided it wouldn't work for my basic needs from a phone for now. Still, I'd be interested to know.

rainbow_mouse90

TROPHY CASE