(no subject)

Things that didn't post on DW/LJ for some reason.

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Absolutism is something that, in almost every case, raises warning flags for me. I immediately assume that there are aspects to the absolutist belief that are not being considered.

Thinking about guns today though, I realize that my thoughts lean toward absolutism. When I learned that a group of Pride marchers I had the opportunity to walk with included two people who would be armed, it made me glad that I turned out to have other plans.

In a strictly personal context, and outside of the wider contexts of social ethics, morals, law, and safety, I don't want to own firearms or weapons in general. I do not like being around firearms. I would rather that people who choose to carry firearms do so without concealing them so I can make informed choices about whether or not to be around said firearms. I think I'd feel less uncomfortable about carrying guns being legal if concealed carry was *not* legal.

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I've never tried any of those augmented reality games. Even though when Ingress first came out it seemed like it could be a lot of fun, I just never got around to it. But Miriam has started playing the Harry Potter game and I thought I'd get it too. I'd love excuses to go for walks with her and the dog to get outside and have a little fun in the Summer.

I tried to find it on Google Play. I got all sorts of results *related* to it, but not the game itself. Finally I gave up on that and just Googled it. I found a download link and followed it and got an error saying that "This item is not available in your country."

What country do you think I'm in, Google? You could at least tell me that...

ETA: Ok, it appears that my phone is not cool enough for that game and that incompatible phones get that rather misleading error message.

That sucks. I was really looking forward to playing this with her.

ETA: Thanks to Erik, I found a place to download the install files outside of the Play Store and have it working. Sort of probably.

(no subject)

Following up to my post about weapons at Pride and a discussion on Facebook:

So what if gun laws mandated open carry for all guns? I can find lots of discussions about where open carry is allowed, whether it should be allowed, how to get a license, and things like that, but nobody's talking about the idea of making concealed carry simply illegal and allowing open carry everywhere guns are allowed. It would make it a lot easier to enforce rules and laws about being armed, and for people to make risk assessments about their location and activities in regard to the presence of weapons. "I see a bunch of people with guns. I'm going to leave now."

(no subject)

As I learn math, It feels important to me to get a solid grasp of theory rather than just memorize rules. I see it as a language, and I want to be able to confidently read sentences instead of piecing out words, letter by letter, as I go. I guess I'm limited in that approach by a certain factor I don't have a name or description for: it's the ability to turn rote rules and explanations into a visual-intuitive concept.

When I last looked at Khan Academy, before a stretch of stressy days kept me away, I was working on internalizing how to create an equation for a function that describes another function with x and y offsets. It's straight forward enough to do by following the rules, but I didn't want to move on until I could look at related graphs with one equation and do the mental translation into a second equation just based on theoretical understanding.

I kept getting stuck on that bit of mathematical vocabulary, for quite a while. Today, I can almost speak it fluently. Yay! On to the next bit of metaphorical grammar.