Ang's Journal

My self-image is that I am a rational person. I consider myself intelligent, well-educated, & curious. When I need to make a decision, I gather information (considering the source's expertise & bias & trying to find as many opinions & lines of evidence as possible), I look to history for information on previous, similar situations, & I try to identify my blind spots (cultural cluelessness, my own biases, areas of knowledge where I have zero experience or understanding). I draw a conclusion, but then I try to remain open to changing my mind, if I am presented with more input. BY NO MEANS do I consider myself a perfectly rational decision-maker, no one is. But I think my methods have given me a fairly decent algorithm by which to discern fact from fiction, to predict effects from causes, & to navigate the world.

But now, I am living in a world where facts are... whatever someone chooses to believe, I guess. Or rather, facts are whatever are being promoted as facts in a person's particular social niche, media bubble, or information silo. If you are a progressive, blue, Democratic-leaning voter in the USA, then facts include:

• The election system in the US is not perfect, but it is generally secure & correctly reporting the will of the voters.
  
• Sexual orientation & gender identity are complicated processes, & cannot be simplified to "conform to the norms of the majority or be considered evil".
  
• Human activity is contributing to global climate change, primarily via the release of carbon dioxide & methane to the atmosphere.
  
• Etc. etc. etc. It's boring to list them all. They even made signs to put in your yard that displayed an abbreviated list of "progressive facts".

But my point is that I believe these statements to be true because I have reviewed evidence that I find credible supporting these assertions, & I have not encountered much evidence that disproves them.

But if my method is solid, & I'm actually following it, then why did I have a conversation last week with A* that went like this?

Me: Can you give me one thing to look forward to from the next Trump Administration?
A*: Improved economic conditions.
Me: How will that be achieved? Through tariffs?
A*: No, I don't really understand how the tariffs are supposed to work.
Me: How then?
A*: Through energy independence.
Me: Even though the US is already the world's top producer of oil & natural gas...?

But instead of trying to argue, I sat quietly for a few minutes, thinking through my response to this reasoning. (Side note: it took an immense amount of effort to NOT argue based on what I consider facts.) I realized that I would never support the Trump Administration's approach to "energy independence", which (without a doubt) will be to promote increased extraction of & reliance on fossil fuels. So then I asked:

Me: Do you believe that human industrial activities contribute to global climate change?
A*: I don't know.

And there you have it. A* is an intelligent person. He worked in journalism for more than three decades. He's certainly seen the arguments regarding human impacts on the atmosphere & the consequences, but he doesn't believe the data that seems so irrefutable to me. But because he doesn't believe in the connection between releasing carbon dioxide & methane & dangerous changes to the global climate, he isn't going to worry about supporting an "energy independence" policy that will increase the burning of fossil fuels.

This realization has sent me spiraling. We had a near-fight earlier this year when I asked A* if he thought Haitian immigrants were eating dogs & cats in Springfield, Ohio & he also said he didn't know. How can he not know? How does he determine what is true & what is false?

But on climate change, it hurts more. I am literally a professional environmental scientist. While the global climate is not my specific area of expertise, I am knowledgable enough to have a pretty good grasp on the data & the arguments. But apparently, my husband doesn't believe me when I say that data models have predicted for DECADES that continued release of carbon dioxide & methane into the atmosphere is going to have horrible consequences for humanity (well, for the entire planet), & that so far, real-world observations either confirm the predictions made by modeling or suggest that they were too conservative & things are actually getting worse more quickly than predicted.

So, does A* believe anything I say? Does he think my career is just some big joke? What is he thinking when I prattle away about my models of natural attenuation of dissolved-phase contaminants in groundwater? Does he want to pat me on my head & tell me to just go back to the kitchen & stop worrying my pretty head? Poor deluded little girl, thinks she knows something about how the world works! It's cute!

I don't know how to live in a world where - it's not even a world where we don't agree on facts, but a world where we don't even agree on how to determine whether something is true or false. I don't know how to talk to people. I don't know how to process any incoming information or answer any questions. There's doesn't seem to be a point to doing those things anyway, because how are you supposed to decide what you should be doing, if you don't know what's true?

In this mindset, the mental obliteration promised by a long, hard drinking session sounds really good. So do other forms of annihilation. I'm not there, but it's been a long time since those things seemed so tempting.

So I have been working from home full-time since the beginning of December, more or less. If I'm not in the field, I'm in the spare bedroom. I haven't been in the field very much (a total of two weeks), so I've spent a LOT of time in the spare bedroom. Alone. I'm an introvert, & generally happy with my own company, but it's been a bit much even for me. When hotpantsgalore was in New Orleans for the last month, I was going days without talking to anyone but my neighbor Steve (& Shadeaux).

But THIS week my isolation has been broken! Bobo Bro is working here until his internet sitch is resolved. HPG got home yesterday afternoon, & even though she works outside of our home herself, she is around in the mornings & evenings! And we have had the landlord, repairmen, & delivery folks in & out of the kitchen, trying to fix all the crazy shit that's going on in there. I had my book club over last night for our monthly discussion group, & we had a lovely evening discussing Outlander.

Even more amazing, the Denver environmental group invited me to their monthly meeting today! It is a sign of how starved for human company I am that I was really excited to go to a meeting. But it was nice - I finally got filled in on a lot of the details of the URS/AECOM merger (seriously, I have missed so much). I think I got some project work here in the Front Range. A PM asked me to help him write a proposal. And I was scheduled for some Chevron training so I can help on a big ongoing project in Colorado & Kansas. PROGRESS, FINALLY.

Tonight, HPG & I are going to a pub quiz over in Lakewood, where - one assumes - we will interact with EVEN MORE PEOPLE.

Can't a girl get a moment to herself around here?

Sleep: superb. I even had a lie-in this morning, reading my Kindle with hotpantsgalore curled up on one side & a contraband Puppeh tucked in under the covers on the other side. 10 PM - 7:30 AM, laid in until 8:30 AM.

Breakfast: Rupert's at the Edge. Scrambled eggs, sausage, potato pancakes, canteloupe. I love this restaurant. Friendly, fast, decent prices, & a great view across Sloan's Lake of the downtown skyline.

Lunch: ummmm, a bunch of garlic-stuffed olives. FAIL.

Dinner: super-fail! hotpantsgalore & weedweasel, assuming my Whole30 is over, made plans for us to go out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I tried to stick to legumes, but I broke down & had tortilla chips & corn tortillas. I will have to change my reintroduction schedule - maybe 3 or 4 days back on the Whole30 before resuming introductions.

Later: went out to El Chapultepec to see Sammy Dee wail some blues. One gin & tonic, two tequila shots. Oh boy.

Reintro notes: I didn't notice any ill effects from going off-plan, other than feeling like a cheat. However, I want to make sure I do this carefully. So starting tomorrow, I'm going to do three days of Whole30 eating & then do a proper reintroduction of non-gluten grains. Mmm, rice!

I learned that Houston has a dog park with a bar: The Boneyard Drinkery. BRILLIANT.

And as a note for myself: Shadeaux will need a pet license when we move.

Last night Heather convinced me to go with her to a VERY important student society meeting ... the Whiskey Society! Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like: a student society that meets to try different whiskeys. What it boiled down to was, you pay £5.00 at the door & then you get served five doubles in two hours & go home completely pie-eyed.

At first, the whole group of neophyte whiskey-tasters (this was the Society's first meeting this term) seemed to be having trouble with the concept of liking the taste of the stuff. When the head taster asked us to say out loud the tastes we detected in the whiskey, the returning society members were saying things like, "Vanilla!" or "Fruit!" & us newbies were shouting out things like "Smoke!", "Pain!", or "Poison!" But in truth, the meeting was very informative. I discovered that I can actually tell the difference between Lowland, Highland, Speyside, & Island whiskeys. I found a couple of whiskeys that I even enjoyed. So while I'm not ready to join the society, I may just venture back for their special events, like a Christmas feast or the Robert Burns dinner.

As it turns out, I didn't go to bed after posting last night. Instead, when I got up to my floor, it turned out that my floormates had appropriated all the leftover wine & were carrying on in our kitchen. Before I knew it, a glass of red was in my hand, we were talking ... & suddenly it was 2.00 am.

Morning came early & unfriendly today. And now I'm supposed to be learning UNIX.

OK, Im drunk. Stacy is asleep. I'm drunk & angry, I might add. In case you haven't noticed, my entries lately have been mostly accompanied by bad-mood emoticons (even if the anxious one doesn't really look very anxious, I've been plently anxious).

Something. Is. Wrong. Something big. I'm either too afraid to confront it or too stupid to identify it. FUCK.