Journal 33 More Christmases, PFAS in Contacts, Wheeled Robots on Public Sidewalks

Hi there. Wow what a time it has been. Blogmas is really fun, kind of crazed, but fun!

In the week leading up to Christmas, I actually had some visiting relatives stay at the house. It’s hard to balance the happiness of the guests with some of my eccentricities. The two are incompatible, and I prioritize the comfort of the guests, so it was a rough week.

The part of the house where I sequestered didn’t have a bathroom, so not being able to access facilities easily was the hardest part. In the end though, I’m glad they had a nice time.

Do you know I never did put up the Christmas tree? I’m not kidding when I say I have little free time! That’s okay, Christmas and Christmas-like celebrations are still happening for many people. There is Christmas-y New Year, January Christmases, and I recently learned from one of my favorite YouTubers that they celebrate Christmas for 40 days! Wow! Cool!

I usually keep the tree up, unadorned, into March to psychologically have some nature in the house. My cat really enjoys it. She really likes to brush her teeth on the bottom branches. It’s an artificial tree from Ikea, so hopefully it’s okay, but I do worry about chemical coatings.

Speaking of chemicals, I recently learned that contacts can have extremely high levels of PFAS. What is this? The new chemical of choice? Eh, since we now know about it, they’re probably onto something else. Special chemicals in municipal PVC pipes? “To prevent damage during frost and defrost cycles”? Will take decades to phase out? Screens that cause rapid eye cancer, for “picture quality”? Cellular boosters installed everywhere, for “convenience”?

I really like contacts because they don’t distort my vision. With glasses, it’s disturbing to get a false sense of the size of objects. Messes with my brain. And contacts let me do strenuous physical activities without worrying about my glasses falling off. I haven’t worn contacts in about two months, and it has been driving me insane on a low level.

Pretty much everything that drives me insane is on a low level. These are the times we live in. Try to talk about it, and you sound nuts.

Oooh! I recently saw a commercial for some sort of ground delivery robot. It was scooting along the city sidewalk. Where to begin?

The few public spaces deemed allowed for humans to exist on are now going to be shared with machines on wheels. I am not against innovation, I am not inherently against a robot on wheels. The troublesome part is that these new toys will be deemed more worthy to exist than humans.

The problem is that they are going into an infrastructure system that puts normal people last. Rich men have wide lanes, big cars, driveways, parking garages. Their wives and kids can use these too, but their needs and wants are not prioritized in this design.

But the state of pedestrian and public transportation infrastructure is bad, oftentimes by design. It took me my entire twenties to come to that very sad fact. It is built to be miserable and bad. I don’t understand how a person or a group could design with such an evil intention.

And now, that precious little public space is going to have Corporate Robots taking up space. And because corporations with flashy new things are deemed important, perhaps then people will say, “Oh my gosh! Look at that crack in the sidewalk! The Corporate Robot is having a hard time! We need to fix these sidewalks ASAP!” Nevermind that children on bikes, mothers with strollers, and old people in wheelchairs have faced that crack for 30 years without the town giving a shit.

Maybe it’s for the best. The people will demand for the convenience of the Corporate Robot to come to their town, so the town will finally fix the sidewalks. Hopefully they will be widened and set back. Maybe the people will give up a yard or two or three of their precious front lawn. You know, the front lawn where I always see them having picnics and playing croquet... NOT! Alright, perhaps I am on a bit of a rampage, so let’s just end with hoping the Corporate Robots will lead to rebuilding and improving of public infrastructure.

I think one way to accomplish this is for towns to say, “Wheeled robots can ride on the sidewalks, within reason as to their numbers, if they do not violate the privacy of households or harvest any personal information of pedestrians, and if companies pay for rebuilding the sidewalks they are going to use. Companies must also pay a tax to pay for sidewalk maintenance.” I’m not a professional law writer, but something like that. People have to start telling Big Tech how to behave, not the other way around.

Lastly, I made more cookies! Made some more cookies from our usual Christmas cookie list and did another round of meatballs because they were so good the first time.

Thank you for reading!

Asya Carrino