It's my dad's birthday. He would have been 65.

He didn't do everything right, but he did everything with the right intentions. Some of what he did wrong was his fault. Some of it wasn't. He was human.

I love him. I miss him. I stopped putting "still" in there because I understand that I always will.

Everyone in my house is vaccinated and takes precautions, and this is still the second time I've had covid. Third time for another family member.

I'm open about it because this is bad enough, but could be so much worse without the vaccine and precautions.

Today, fever is the highest it's been so far. Breathing is fine, but nothing else is. My whole scalp is turning into a giant stress hive. And I spent probably half a hour, but maybe just 10 minutes, ranting to my cat about Tycho Brahe.

I need to figure out how much I would have to pay someone to not like me. It is difficult to collect info on this. People either don't like me for free, or insist that they will continue to like me and could not possibly be paid to do otherwise.

I didn't expect I'd be able to get any writing done while sick, but I'm up to 24,404 words now for #NaNoWriMo !

My grandfather did recon photography in WW2. My grandmother's brothers were on the ground in Europe. They taught me that bigotry invites tyranny. That diversity is necessary because weakness is magnified when everyone is the same since no one is perfect.

They had misguided views, but they also hoped my generation would do better. They didn't want us to settle for what they gave us. They wanted us to show gratitude by making it even better.

From what I've seen so far, CoSo mostly doesn't care if you stay or not when you first get here. You are welcomed, and if you want to be part of the community, that's great!

Nobody's begging you to stay if it's not for you, though. Be suspicious of platformd that do that. They have motivations that are not about what will make you happy.

And there's no need to demand that CoSo convince you that this is THE place to be. When other platforms do that, it's been part of trying to convince you to be there so you can be the product sold to advertisers, and contributing to the number that attracts investors...who want you to be sold to advertisers.

So it's kind of like telling somebody, "These people's house we're going to? Do NOT say 'hello', try to shake hands, or call anybody by their name." But that's all they know for "properly" greeting someone when you visit them.

It's also on us new people to ask, "Okay, how do I greet them?" Long time CoSoNauts are offerings information.

I also understand some of the other new people may not really grok that yet, even when told there's no algorithm. The Algorithm doesn't just exist in the bird app. Social media has just been getting us used to "engage properly in order to be seen".

Some people don't know any other way. By the time they got on IG or Twitter that was already how it was.

I'm doing CoSo (CoSoing?) on mobile, so things like pinning columns aren't happening for me. And I'm actually good with that. I like hanging out in the firehose, then checking my mentions and people I follow now and then.

I love just being able to interact and not having to worry about doing it in a way that will play The Algorithm in my favor. 'Cause...no algorithm!