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Hips Don't Lie
Jan. 31st, 2026 10:13 pmChapter 3 of Are Prisons Obsolete?, Imprisonment and Reform, tells some history of changes, both positive and negative, in state punishment in the u.s. I don't know how this chapter is relevant to the topic of the book.
Today I re-introduced anti-constipation meds, which helped me greatly. Stomach cramps were relatively mild but still disruptive. I managed to forego dicyclomine.
I've noticed several times that my comforter is no longer lying over my body when I wake up in the middle of the night. Perhaps if I make sure to secure it, I won't get cold enough to wake up. That's tonight's hope. I'm ever hopeful that my next sleep trial will win me a full night of sleep.
The speech-to-text service I've been using has stopped working, so, to keep up my pace of study, I have to abandon the native Mandarin podcast I recently began studying (it comes with no transcript). Now I'm back to one of the intermediate Mandarin podcasts, which all have hosts with less-than-pleasing voices. I'm working on one spoken by the guy who sounds like he's constantly smiling, the most bearable of these podcasts. His voice has grown on me and I'm quite curious about what this episode is about, but his pronunciation of certain sounds makes comprehension more difficult for me. In particular, he doesn't pronounce -ung the way I'm used to hearing it.
Studying math at the end of the day, when I'm drowsy, is not a good strategy, yet that's what I've done yesterday and today. I should swap the math study session with the flashcard creation session because I don't need much brainpower to create flashcards; it's mostly copy and paste work.
I LOVE short haircuts. I cut my hair this afternoon, and I feel a surge of desire and well-being every time I run my hand over my head. I guess I feel desire because I'm attracted to the same types of haircuts I get. I'm not sure why I feel well-being either. That's not even the most accurate word, but I don't know what else to call it. It just feels very right to have short hair, to feel the curve of my scalp when I touch my head.
I'm thinking about trying to immigrate to Hong Kong instead of Taiwan. I've been trying to find a university there that offers a graduate degree in applied math, but I haven't much progress because I search while I have stomach cramps. Actually, I just started searching yesterday; before that, I was searching for the same thing in Singapore. I'm not sure which is better. I've found one article one the topic which pushes me in the direction of Hong Kong, but only slightly. I need to know how much Hong Kong is like China in terms of government.
In my mind I've built up my skin problems to such an extent that sometimes I'm surprised that my face doesn't look worse when I actually look at it in the mirror. My face doesn't look terrible; my dating prospects are just terrible.
Just after I exited the shower today, I touched my hip and noticed how hard it was. Fat has melted away and left the hipbone more prominent. At first I felt positively about that; then it occurred to me that this means that the width of my hips will not significantly decrease (because there isn't much more fat to lose). That bothered me because my hips look rather wide. They aren't wide; they're just wider than I want them to be. They could be much worse; I'm not really curvy, thank goddess. But I'll never be hipless :(
Today I re-introduced anti-constipation meds, which helped me greatly. Stomach cramps were relatively mild but still disruptive. I managed to forego dicyclomine.
I've noticed several times that my comforter is no longer lying over my body when I wake up in the middle of the night. Perhaps if I make sure to secure it, I won't get cold enough to wake up. That's tonight's hope. I'm ever hopeful that my next sleep trial will win me a full night of sleep.
The speech-to-text service I've been using has stopped working, so, to keep up my pace of study, I have to abandon the native Mandarin podcast I recently began studying (it comes with no transcript). Now I'm back to one of the intermediate Mandarin podcasts, which all have hosts with less-than-pleasing voices. I'm working on one spoken by the guy who sounds like he's constantly smiling, the most bearable of these podcasts. His voice has grown on me and I'm quite curious about what this episode is about, but his pronunciation of certain sounds makes comprehension more difficult for me. In particular, he doesn't pronounce -ung the way I'm used to hearing it.
Studying math at the end of the day, when I'm drowsy, is not a good strategy, yet that's what I've done yesterday and today. I should swap the math study session with the flashcard creation session because I don't need much brainpower to create flashcards; it's mostly copy and paste work.
I LOVE short haircuts. I cut my hair this afternoon, and I feel a surge of desire and well-being every time I run my hand over my head. I guess I feel desire because I'm attracted to the same types of haircuts I get. I'm not sure why I feel well-being either. That's not even the most accurate word, but I don't know what else to call it. It just feels very right to have short hair, to feel the curve of my scalp when I touch my head.
I'm thinking about trying to immigrate to Hong Kong instead of Taiwan. I've been trying to find a university there that offers a graduate degree in applied math, but I haven't much progress because I search while I have stomach cramps. Actually, I just started searching yesterday; before that, I was searching for the same thing in Singapore. I'm not sure which is better. I've found one article one the topic which pushes me in the direction of Hong Kong, but only slightly. I need to know how much Hong Kong is like China in terms of government.
In my mind I've built up my skin problems to such an extent that sometimes I'm surprised that my face doesn't look worse when I actually look at it in the mirror. My face doesn't look terrible; my dating prospects are just terrible.
Just after I exited the shower today, I touched my hip and noticed how hard it was. Fat has melted away and left the hipbone more prominent. At first I felt positively about that; then it occurred to me that this means that the width of my hips will not significantly decrease (because there isn't much more fat to lose). That bothered me because my hips look rather wide. They aren't wide; they're just wider than I want them to be. They could be much worse; I'm not really curvy, thank goddess. But I'll never be hipless :(
