Other write-ups

Feeling "pretty" is completely new to me. I was always a NEGRO FEO (black, ugly) and I always thought I was particularly ugly. I wasn't. I was normal, I just had darker skin that most people in a culture that values whiteness. I only realized that in my early 40s.

At the same time, I feel every day more convinced that there isn't a total ordering from the most desirable to the least. Yes, there are a lot of people that most would consider attractive and a lot that most would consider unattractive, but the middle ground is huge and it's really chaotic.

Over the last couple of years, I have become less attractive to gay men as most of them admire masculinity. I have become less attractive to straight women for the same reason.

But to my niche, to the queer bisexual people, OMG I'm fire :-)

I feel powerful, seen, attractive in queer spaces, and that's a completely new experience to me. I have embraced it. I don't care that conventional people don't like my look. I don't dress up or put my make up for them.

I do it for me, and for my people.

Last night I dreamt that there was a crowd of people outside the building where I work, so to get to my office I had to go through the underground parking lot. While I was crossing it, a limousine arrived and Ariana Grande got out... so I made a joke and greeted her "Hey Miley!" and she angrily replied "It's MARIANE!" [for reasons that will be obvious in a moment] ... to which I answered "I know, just kidding". I didn't know what to say so I said something like "people seem to be very excited to have you here", to which he replied "whatever, did you know so-and-so was signed today by so-and-so " to which I replied "by whom?" And she said "DMG Records" and I pretending to know who she was taking about was like "Wow, that's huge!" [Note: DMG is a label from the 1980s, for years now it just manages a back catalog] and she said "You didn't know?!" and me smiling "No, some of us have jobs, you know, which reminds me of ...", and I made the gesture that I had to go, "... so have fun!" I said bye and went up to my office.

I wanted to tell my co-workers, but I couldn't remember the name of the artist and, oddly enough, in my dream I knew that "Mariane" was wrong, so I looked online who was in the cast of "Don't Look Up", there I found her name "Ariana!" and woke up. In my dreams, I've internet access :-)

My Christmas message is this: if you are analyzing data don't discretize a continuous variable *just* because you're way more familiar with tests and methods for categorical variables than for continuous variables. I'm not saying don't do it, but don't do it just for that reason. It's a bad habit of computing people, I find myself doing it all the time -- but others such as economists don't do it as much. Learn methods that can handle continuous variables and use them. Ho ho ho.

It was just a brief moment so I left the car doors unlocked while I was buying something. I kept looking at the car several times to see if someone was going near it, but when I left the store, the car was not there. It had been stolen! I thought while I ran desperately. Then I woke up. As any normal person, I thought "I've to get out of bed and go check if my car is still there." The thing is, I don't have a car.

Both right-wing (PP, Cs) and social democrats (PSOE) are suggesting to suspend Catalonia's autonomy and replace their government. People don't seem to remember what happens when you replace a government by force.

Well, I do:

• People die
• People are injured
• People go to jail for years; not only their leaders
• Common people are written into loyal and disloyal lists that determine their options and those of their family
• Newspapers, radio, television, give you a very homogeneous message, those who deviate go to jail
• Misterious caches of weapons or money are found in the houses of the disloyal, who then go to jail
• Those inclined to violence on both sides exercise it in various ways, none of them pleasant
• Divisions, hatred, and injustice persist for generations

Please, don't follow that path, and don't endorse those who want to follow that path - the end doesn't justify the means.