cyphercrypt

I feel unsettled. Too much caffeine, maybe, but I was still drowsy after my first serving, so I had another.

I was on the state dept.'s website looking at travel information and noticed that there was a Careers web page. So I ended up on usajobs looking for government jobs in Taiwan, which I should not be going to, but I'm having a hard time letting it go. There were no such jobs, however, there were quite a few in Japan and South Korea, and not just specialist jobs that almost nobody qualifies for, but entry-level jobs like barista and grocery store stocker.

I was surprised to see so many jobs in s. korea, so went searching for the number of u.s. military bases in the country. There are at least five;

https://installations.militaryonesource.mil/view-all

this website doesn't list all the bases. Plus, some of them are joint efforts with the Korean government, so it's not clear how much the u.s. is contributing financially to maintain these bases.

Japan has even more than that, which seems insane for such a small country.

The United states does not need so many bases around the world. They're useful for citizens who want to see the world (I remember near the end of tech school a fellow airman being SO happy when he found out he'd be station in England), but there's no way it's necessary for protection of our country, and it's probably overkill for protection of other countries. It's kind of wild that we have millions of usians living in poverty while all this money is being spent on foreign military installations. This country is loony toons.

So after I'd spent a long time considering whether I should or not, I bought the protein powder. I had my first serving a couple of hours ago, for my midday snack. The snack didn't go so well, probably because I didn't get enough absorbable carbs. My head was still hurting, so I had a hash brown for the grease, but I don't absorb carbs well when they are paired with oil, so I still sort of feel hungry. Dinner is in one hour, so I'll be ok, but I won't do this again. I need non-oily carbs to make this work.

I'm going for less than two hundred calories at snack time. Half a serving of protein powder is sixty calories and 12 grams of protein. A banana and a pat of peanut butter, or some berries and applesauce, shouldn't add up to much more.

For lunch I had a delicious tofu sandwich. I remember thinking as a kid that mcdonald's burgers tasted so good. As an adult, I wanted to re-create that flavor without the greasy bit of animal corpse, but I didn't know what made them taste so good. Then one day it hit me: the combination of ketchup and mustard. So simple. So that's what I had on my tofu sandwich. I don't normally like ketchup on any kind of sandwich-like food (to me it is a condiment for fries), but what makes it good is being mixed with an equal amount of mustard, so that the whole doesn't taste too ketchupy.

My counselor says that dor doesn't cover the cost of a DL unless it's the consumer's first DL ever and it's for a job. Kinda doesn't make sense because only young people will be going for their first dl ever. Maybe I will try rephrasing the question; I don't think she understands that I have no valid ID. I get so tired of having to explain basic shit to people in bureacracy.

Next to nothing is getting done this evening because I'm miserable again. Triggers everywhere.

I keep forgetting to pick up my medication even though I've been having migraines every day. Right now I'm trying ibuprofen alone instead of along with the anti-pain/anti-nausea med that messes up my mood.

I got kind of a weird email from this guy on one of the dating/social sites I'm on. One challenging aspect of being on these websites is that everyone is at a different level of...development, I guess. I don't know how else to put it. Maybe this is especially true of autism, which is supposedly a developmental disorder, even though some of us cannot access the state benefits for people with developmental disorders because we aren't disordered enough.

But it's really true of any website. Normies' 'social skills' aren't as great as they think.

Anyways. I know that sending something super long, literally one's life story, as a first message is a faux pas. But I guess this guy doesn't know that, because that's what he sent me. Or maybe he does 'know' it but he's thrown typical social rules out the window because we're in an autistic space.

It's not a terrible thing, this long message. It's just a slightly depressing reminder that being on the same page takes work, even when I restrict myself to the group of people I hope to connect with the most easily. Social effort becomes tiring after a life dealing with normies and getting nowhere.

He wants to be penpals. I've kinda been wanting a penpal, but mainly out of boredom/not having a boyfriend, so I'm not super enthusiastic about it, especially given what's written in the message. One or two parts are stilted; no big deal, but some of it sounds pretentious, almost fake, but that's probably not out of the ordinary with autism.

I try to not sound stilted but sometimes I'm like 'these are the most accurate, precise, and efficient words so I'm just going to use them.'

The thing is that this guy said somewhere on the site that he's looking for someone who is "high-functioning." Maybe I just assumed that he's also "high-functioning"? And maybe I expected a more typical communication style, in text at least, from someone who is "high-functioning."

Also, he has adhd. I'm thinking that won't be something that comes into play in a text-based format. But it might. I think I don't like adhd shit. My experience in life having been that people don't listen, people who can't listen, or struggle to do so, or are disinclined to do so, is the last damn thing I need. I don't know what to expect.

I think I may have wanted to talk to this guy more in the past, but I never would have thought he'd approach me like this. Maybe I'm just not in the mood at this time; my endo has been on my mind a lot lately. Except he's not my endo any more because I'm not going back there. I've thought more about asking him for the seventy-two hour fasting protocol, but that is the last damned thing I want to think about now that I'm having migraines every day.

My debit card was lost for days; I was beginning to get agitated but I found it in my bedclothes this evening. I need a smaller wallet. I take my cards out of my wallet and put them in pockets because I don't want to carry the bulky wallet. I need a kid's wallet.

Speaking of kid's shit, the pants I just bought a month ago are now so loose that I have to fold over the waistband to keep them up. This is after I'd washed them for the first time, at which point I would have expected them to shrink if anything. Next time I'll wash them in hot water and put them through the dryer.

I'm so sick of these hot flashes, I've been skipping my iron supplements so that I can go back to feeling cooler. I'm afraid this is going to go on for months or a year.

Feeling weird tonight. Sick of azure speech to text because it's taking only wave files and the garbage website's code snippets are never properly explained, so I have to fiddle with the code forever. Do I spend my time converting my audio files to wave or do I spend time editing the code so that I don't have to convert them? The most time-conserving thing to do is to stick to the podcasts that come with transcripts so that I don't have to convert any speech to text, but I get tired of studying just one media source plus I don't get to acclimate to different voices/pronunciations. But azure's speech to text has errors in it anyhow.

I'm going to try to cut calories by having protein powder for my midday snack.

The treadmill

should provide e nough voltage to stop my heart.

gonna hafta cut through this thick insulation though.

literally everythingis a pain in the ass

Stomach cramps, gonna post instead of studying.

Been slacking on the iron intake, so I've been cold again these past two or three days. Tired of this bullshit. Still having hot flashes though. I get cold and hot at the same time.

I almost never have cavities. I think I ended up with cavities because of all the coconut sugar I've been eating. I don't normally eat sugar. I'm going back to sweetening my oatmeal with applesauce and fruit juice. When I have chocolate oatmeal, I'll use the low-cal stevia sweetener. This should save me some calories.

The pih around my mouth seems to be fading, but I'm a little afraid that it's just my imagination. Aside from a fading mark between my eyebrows, the rest of my face doesn't look much different.

Korean is starting to take over my life a little bit, so I need to pull back. I need to focus on my future instead of getting too engrossed in a hobby.

I got through a backlog of Mandarin flashcards last night. Most of the cards that were in the learning stage had to be downgraded to basically new cards because I had forgotten them. I studied these 'new' cards after breakfst this morning, which is when I used to study new Mandarin flashcards upuntil about a week ago, and it felt kind of nice. It felt productive. More productive than trying to read with the pop-up dictonary. Maybe I just needed a break; maybe I'll go back to it, perhaps with fewer new cards per day. I was hellbent on learning about sixteen new terms per day, and that took a lot of time.

Not sure what to do about the sleep. The amount of melatonin I take doesn't seem to matter. Tonight I'm trying some glycine, which tends to keep me drowsy all day, but I had a tiny amount.

Thinking about my tentative plans to study applied math, I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to help anyone build anything. I want the world to de-industrialize, not build/erect/engineer more shit that's going to pollute the environment, displace people, or destroy. I can't think of what else I might be working on with an applied math degree. It's essentially an engineering tool.

On the other hand, I cannot think of anything else that's both minimally interesting to me and a source of easily marketable skills. STEM shit is always in demand, and I've had so much trouble finding work, I want to make the job search easier on myself.

Software engineering is an option, but I'm honestly not that good at it (although great compared to the average person), and I'd end up in a support role for some shit that's already been built and is making life more difficult for people or polluting the environment, for example, these garbage modern websites that track users all over the internet and secretly send data to Facebook or some type of fossil-fuel eating vehicle. I thought about going into aerospace programming, but aerospace vehicles are some of the most polluting things in existence, plus I don't know how easy it would be to find a job with a company that is not involved in defense aka war aka killing and destroying.

It would be great if I could find work doing something to make the world a better place. Outside of medicine and education, however, there aren't many jobs that make the world a better place. What would make the world a better place is convincing people to stop destroying the earth, other animals, and each other, or preventing those things. Not a lot of ways to generate money from that, however.

I think the closest I could come is some type of environmental science, which I don't think I would be good at or even terribly interested in. Plus, politicians and corporations, the biggest polluters of them all, don't necessarily listen to scientists. There's no way for me to be a scientist anyhow; it takes too much time and social bullshit. But perhaps some kind of support role.

I want to have sex with my endocrinologist so bad. I've been thinking about him a lot again lately.

I wonder how the environmental effects of the construction and disposal of electric car batteries compares to gas-powered car emissions. Electric cars were supposed to solve the problems caused by gas-powered vehicles. People wouldn't have to drive so much if cities weren't designed with shopping, workplaces, etc. so far away from residential areas and so spread out. But that's a difficult thing to fix because so many places would have to be torn down and rebuilt. If public transportation could be improved, it would become a viable alternative. The government would have to invest in it up front because all the people choosing to drive or carpool instead of taking public transportation are not paying fares, which would go towards improvement. The world is just such a mess.

And it's bedtime now.

Bottom line is that I don't want to get more qualifications just to continue to deal with the stress and poor job choices that currently characterizes my employment horizons. I want to do something peaceful, sustainable, healthy, something genuinely helpful, something I can feel good about.

The dentist said the anesthesia would wear off in an hour. It's been two and a half hours since my dental appointment, and I'm still waiting. I think I've bitten my lip; there's a red mark on it that wasn't there before. I can feel the lip, but the sensation is off; it feels larger than it is, like it's in a spot that it shouldn't be in, or is swollen beyond it's normal size, but it doesn't look swollen in the mirror.

I've given myself another headache by going out for a walk after under-eating, so I came back from my walk early and now I'm having a small soup. I did some research on preventing fasting headaches (even though I'm not really fasting, just eating less than my body wants or less than my brain can handle I guess). I came across a suggestion to take electrolytes, but I don't think that's going to work. It seems like I would have tried that before, and that I failed, and I don't want to risk yet another headache by trying it.

The organization that offers the scholarship in Taiwan also offers one in south Korea. Because I like Korean and would enjoy speaking it well and want to get out of this country, I took a look at the scholarship. It's for only a ten-month long research project, not a full degree. The description mentioned that the research project should be relevant to S. Korea, and I thought that work on how to fix the country's shitty air quality would be quite relevant. I looked up dealing with the air in the country and came across this Reddit thread that makes it sound worse than I'd imagined:

https://old.reddit.com/r/teachinginkorea/comments/9yk273/what_is_it_like_living_in_south_korea_with/

Imagine never having had asthma before, then developing it after a short period of time in a new country. I would be pissed. I've read somewhere that s korea's transformation from a poor country into what it is today is admirable. I don't find it so admirable seeing as how the county has paid for that transformation with terrible air quality. It's better to be an unsophisticated agricultural society where people can breathe normally and enjoy seeing the sky without some filthy haze blocking their view. I hate that human health is considered less important than money and industrialization. The same goes for China. I think that seeing the sky is probably important for human health, and not just for sun exposure.

The latest in male sociopathy is the Alpine Divorce:

https://metro.co.uk/2026/02/28/alpine-divorce-chilling-breakup-trend-men-subjecting-partners-27139129/

Men abandoning their female partners in isolated places in the wilerness. One womon died of hypothermia after being abandoned on a freezing cold mountainside. Her garbage partner was charged with negligent manslaughter, but I read in another news report that he was given only five months suspended sentence.

That goddamned headache has messed up my mood, and it's worse even after I've eaten. Perhaps I'll treat myself to a frozen pizza. I've got to stop doing this shit to myself. I don't even have my migraine meds. So many headaches that I ran out before I could renew it.

I remember now why I was having espresso instead of black tea: I have to make the tea strong to reap the energizing benefits, and strong black tea tends to make me nauseous. I think the espresso is unhealthier, though, because it's roasted and therefore probably contains acrylamide, which is carcinogenic. I know that acrylamide is carcinogenic because signs in fast food restaurants say so, warning about fried foods.

I burned the crust of the first half of my pizza. I ended up eating the other half as well, so my headache is mostly gone.

I'm having a difficult time finding scholarships for studying in Taiwan. The Taiwanese government's scholarships don't pay enough and the u.s. one I've been planning on requires me to do a full degree that I'm not really terribly interested in. I'm not interested in classical Chinese; traditional Chinese literature might be interesting for like five minutes, but I don't want to study it.

Hong Kong is rated caution level 2, 'exercise increased caution,' on the u.s. state department's website. 'Arbitrary enforcement of local laws, especially exit bans' is the reason. I don't know what the hell is an 'exit ban.' Do they prevent foreigners from leaving? That doesn't seem like it's in their best interest. Anyways, Hong Kong is out of the running. It's interesting that the Canadian website rates it 'Exercise a high degree of caution,' higher than the u.s. rates it.

https://travel.gc.ca/destinations/hong-kong

'You shouldn’t expect internet privacy.' lol. shithole county. Previously, I wasn't clear on Hong Kong's relationship with China. But I think I see now that they are too closely related.

I'm going to try again with Bhutan. Last time I looked into it, I ended up going in circles trying to find information about becoming a citizen or permanent resident. I think there is no official pathway, maybe an expat (I hate this word) who has a job there just keeps getting the employment visa renewed. That would be good enough for me. It's an unsure life but this life I'm living here is unsure. I feel reassured by the low cost of living in Bhutan, however. Like I could actually afford rent with my measly veteran's benefits. Assuming what I've read is accurate. It's difficult to find information on this country. In a way, that's a good thing: the place isn't crawling with 'expats' and won't be for the forseeable future. But it also puts more of a burden on me to figure things out.

I would do my schooling in Taiwan and then try to have Bhutan as a back-up plan, hoping China doesn't invade or at least doesn't get violent for the three-year duration of my master's degree program. Unless I get a remote job and can stay in Taiwan on a digital nomad visa and take Mandarin lessons instead of doing the master's degree.

Bhutan is in need of IT workers, so maybe I should work on developing some computer skills. Visiting costs a hundred bucks a day, so that's something that won't be happening for a while. That's ok; it's good that they prioritize their citizens and environment.

I didn't sleep at all last night. How long can this go on?

Apparently the Trump administration is now at war with Iran. Perhaps 'war' is not the best thing to call it; I'm not sure that Iran is fighting back. Yet. This is the world when men are in charge: endless violence.

According to cnn, Trump decided to strike because Iran continues its nuclear weapons program, and Iran is not to be trusted with nuclear weapons I guess. A pre-emptive strike. Sort of what I promote that womyn take towards the male sex, except that the latter has been pummeling us in their war on females so thoroughly and for so long that such measures would be fundamentally more defensive than pre-emptive. But they're pre-emptive in the sense that womyn would abort, infanticide, or males before the latter individually have the opportunity to become violent, as all of recorded human history shows that many of them inevitably will.

The thing that's on my mind is that there will be people who say that Trump's pre-emptive strike is a sensible thing to do in terms of protection, even though the bombing will cause death, injury, and destruction. But those same people wouldn't have the same attitude towards pre-emptive strikes to prevent male violence even with far less dire results and a far more present threat. Because males are for male fredom, not really for human freedom.

Lots of time wasted today: Someone called about re-doing the plaster that fell from the ceiling, but didn't call back at the agreed-upon time, which I was waiting for; then I went to a laundromat that ended up costing a fortune and my laundry didn't even get dry. So I came home, had dinner, then went to another laundromat. I usually do my laundry here at the apartment complex, but I have to go to the bank for quarters to do that, and I've decided to avoid going to the bank, particularly since the bankers keep asking me for updated id, which I don't have. But I've always hated interacting with the bankers, so I intend to keep using laundromats even after my ID gets updated.

I've been getting caught up in the n+1 sentence mining game as I create Korean flashcards. I spend too much time looking for Korean sentences that contain just one unknown word. It's a way to increase one's vocabulary without getting bogged down in content that is too difficult to understand, but of course the vast majority of Korean sentences contain more than one word that I don't know, so I end up trying to reduce n+2 and n+3 sentences down to n+1 by finding n+1 sentences for the extra unknown words. In many cases, this ends up being a never-ending search and I have to simply give up to avoid spending half the day looking for just a few usable sentences.

I called the post office and got my glycolic acid today. Half of my apartment number was missing from the mailing label, and there was a new mail carrier on my route, so she didn't know where to deliver the package. I had to force myself to be conservative about the amount of acid I added to my homemade serum. If it doesn't sting too much, I'll add some more in a week or two.

I would like to post about more interesting and important things on this blog, but I keep ending up composing while I'm sick/sleepy, and I don't want to stop studying or doing more interesting/productive things when I have more energy. I would like to post about, for example, what I read in Zerzan's book today. What stands out in my sleepy mind, however, was the profound sense of loss I felt as I read about the differences between civilized and non-civilized society.

And something I just noticed as I stand here typing this: female oppression is mentioned clearly and openly in what I've read so far. It's something of a breath of fresh air, although the subject matter itself is quite suffocating. Usually men refuse to admit that this phenomenon is even real, the hostility and disrespect of their refusal itself providing more evidence of their misogyny. This I think is one way to tell whether a guy is a piece of shit or not: if he's hostile towards feminism or believes feminism is no longer necessary, he should be jettisoned. It's something I intend to ask very early on if I ever get the point of considering dating a guy. But it would be so much easier to date a womyn. I really don't want to come into contact with semen.