Lovecraftian Competence

I just got home from the gym to a house full of panic. My own mainly. A missing elephant.

It was a bit of a bonus weekend, a professional development day after parent teacher interviews meant an extra morning with my worlds.

A pair of tickets, purchased in the before times, meant an extra day and I'd just waved them off in the drive way a few hours prior.

We'd had the best of days really. A trip to Tim's, reminiscing disguised as treat. The location one also from the before times, back when I was first discovering what it felt like to move again after so long. My son had discovered t-ball that summer and proudly brought his very own helmet and bat to the indoor sort - the kind played at the local Catholic school gym, where three or four kids took turns having a hit, running the bases and playing catch with Mom or Dad. In other words - incredible. And afterwards, a trip for a treat. And around Christmas, the corner table would be replaced with a tree and we could sit and count the stars. He remembered where it used to be when we stopped yesterday.

Today, another trip to hockey and off to church. Tablets for them, a phone for me. Something to distract my eyes while my mind listened to Lisa's sermon, the reverse with the remainder of the service a vague memory between bouts of joyous song.

The couple in front, a vague recollection of friends. A couple met at church months prior and remet every weekend morning at the arena, a bond established over shared love of watching relations fall on frozen water. Theirs grandchildren having committed to decades of the sport.

And kind too, his recollection brings fragments of warm Christmas evenings as a very similar archetype - this one played by a family friend, the local librarian and transplanted Newfie - and the type of man you respect for his deep commitment to transparent honesty.

Today, my daughter was typing. As she does. No real words emitted, just the shape of language. As a child we had a Commodore 64. It had the ability to emit symbols as well as letters and numbers. I spent hours "programming" shapes on to the screen.

I am a pattern matcher.

And by communion, as the end drew near, I found myself with her curled into my lap, and my head down on hers, gently rocking. And then a hip ride up to the alter, our favourite place (on my hip, not the alter - though did you know you can kneel, take communion and rise again, all whilst carrying a 5 year old in one arm ;)). And back again for more calm care until the promise of cookies at tea time broke the spell.

And that leads us back to elephants. The two in tattoo form on my chestm, the two in metaphorical form in my heart, and the two in stuffed form that should be on my ottoman. Their primary representations of objectified externalization. Their primary stuffies in other words :)

And Ella was missing. I'd acquiesed when my daughter had requested to bring her this morning, normally the primaries aren't allowed out of the house - the risk is real when replacement is an expensive trip to e-bay ;) And after returning from working out watching them leave, I had a panick because I'd not thought to ensure her presence before my daughter left.

The things we run for.

And of course, right where she should be. On the ottoman, without even having had to ask. I'd told her last time they were here where I kept their talismans when they were gone.

She doesn't say much.

She says everything.

wait_isnt_this_a_tech_blog - why_am_i_crying_yaml

We were at the Santa Claus parade in town last night, it was lovely. A good proper parade, full of tractors, old pickups - pretty sure the town pulled a vaccuum pump decorated in lights being ridden by the Grinch - and Santa on a fire truck. And oh my goodness the candy, I mean seriously? It's been two weeks since Halloween, we just emptied the bowl... and it's full again :(

We'd had a choice, a trip town to the town before, where it was the lighting ceremony or to stay in town for the parade. As a daddy I let them make a choice. As a person, I desparately hoped parade was it. The town before had a big light show in the parks, it was lovely. And the lighting ceremony too, the town square packed for the tree lighting, the entire square surrounded in multi-coloured splendour at once.

For someone like me - oh my goodness.

For someone like my daughter, a bit much. Especially the fireworks (???) at the river afterwards. Beautiful but full of whelm.

Like daddy like daughter we tended to wander off, back through the town to solace - "before the crowds got bad".

he_does_what_at_a_party - whos_the_blacksheep_whats_the_blacksheep

I've been stuck on the birthday party circuit this year. I didn't even know there was one in the before times. But since school started this year, I think they've all conspired to have their friends born on daddy days. My little time travelling wonderphants.

So off we trapse, often the same parents with the same kids.

And I've found connection here and there. Oddly at times.

And a link to the past. In many of the worst ways. Daddy doesn't save his own overwhelm for dinner parties. From a quiet observation post, just immersed in the interactions. The parents and the children, learning the lay of the land. Who to be wary of - for both of us. Who to reach out to, who to teach the children to be safe with.

And oh my goodness little girls can be bossy. My pink elephant heart mourns in advance for what she desparately hopes to prevent.

And then surprises.

a_heart_so_warm_a_place_so_cold - know_not_who__iam_or_when_im_coming_so_you_sleep

My pink elephant daughter likes to roam the arena while her brother plays. Free time with daddy. Up to the mezzanie today, a trip in the elevator I'm sure the actual goal. And today, a face from the locker room earlier, and from many of those parties. The mother of a child known to us since preschool.

We'd been to their house, not long past. A midfall summer's day spent on a front lawn in suburban wonderland. A giant bouncy castle, a powerwheels... The type of boy I was desparately afraid of.

"How's he doing in school?" I found myself saying, as I sat down and reconnected from our earlier chat in the locker room. Report cards had just come out after all and it seemed a good opener. She responded more openly than I'd expected, a real concern about the language from the report indicating some struggles. She indicated that she just hoped for the middle for her son, with some learning and behviour difficulties been present since our first encounters.

Then she surprised me again. She indicated her other son, slightly older showed signs of neurodivergence - a gifted sort of attention deficit.

I may have surprised her in turn, myself as well, when I indicated that I myself exhibited those same traits. And then expanded that my children each showed different aspects of the same - my little multi-dimensional projections. Our conversation carried through to the aforementioned fireworks that had occurred the previous evening, the events of the day having caught up to her own projections, leaving them in a tender state. We spoke of our own history, of choosing to leave when my children indicated it desirable, of choosing not to attend in the first place at times. Her own thoughts of maybe not "keeping up with the Jones'" to attend every town ceremony echoing my past instincts.

As our sons left the ice and we rushed down to meet them to remove moist, frosty things, she surprised me again.

"I feel seen".

Maybe I should put words in my mouth more often.

burn_notice - wasnt_in_my_realm_wasnt_in_your_sphere

Empathy is understanding. I tried to teach that to a reiki once... her heart was in the right place. Mine was definitely not picturing myself in a boat floating down the river, or rather, while it defintely wasn't, my mind was and the rest of me was confused why we were watching me go down the river. True, proper empathy requires you to put on someone's mind for a moment. To comprehend their situation so completely that their actions and current course of events are completely understandable. Maybe not agreeable, but understandable.

For someone nearly pickled in cortisol from decades of executive override, who thinks in shapes and transforms, that's just called ordering lunch at Subway.

Why is it taking you so long to acknowledge me in line?

How much tip should I give you so that next time I come in you remember me and I don't have to answer so many questions?

Are you having a bad day? Should I act happy? Indifferent?

Emotional contagion has a role too, at some level. The same level that puts people like me on the edges at time, when we don't respond quite the same way as everyone else, or just a second or two too late. The same thing that would have endangered the tribe when the grass was moving but the wind wasn't blowing. The same thing that people like me are designed to watch for...

But that's not designed for building understanding, for building anything really. It can't, it bypasses all the circuits that let any of that work be done. Instead, just a reflex. A learned response constrained by experience. It struggles to be else, there's no room in the system for it.

A problem of empathy errupts at times when the two systems meet. Neither broken on their own, just the interface. Those at the edge content in their world, a world bN of patterns and logic and secrets - openly shared but inaccessable by all and so they remain. Misunderstood often, understood rarely.

Two empathies.

Double empathy.

new_growth_in_spring_is_a_promise_of_sensory_delight - knew_not_who_is_was_but_listen_here

I used to use all that energy, all that space in my mind, to understand each and every person I interacted with so I felt safe in a world that didn't belong to me. I felt I had to, because if I didn't some unknowable lovecraftian horror would set upon me.

Because it had. Many times before.

Each time I didn't know why what I had just done had resulted in the response it had. Subtle or otherwise.

Each time I had to work out, but brute force pattern matching at times, the rules to interact with the world outside my head.

Each time i failed.

But at some point I learned something. At some point we're all the little girl overwhelmed at fireworks or her father masking his own terrified unease. We're all the parent of children sprouting different to their peers, weird and wonderful and loving, but maybe not lining up with traditional developmental goals.

At some point we're all scared.

And it's how we respond that makes us who we are, there are so many switches and dials upstairs that can be adjusted and for many, they're set early in life never to change. The fear of being cast out of the tree when the lion comes. For not being accepted amongst your peers. Push the head below you to climb up the tree.

That's one way to do it. That's the emotional contagion talking again.

With understanding though, you can respond differently. You can see the pain behind the response, the fear - of being left out of the tree.

And of something different.

The lovecraftian competence being exposed, a glimpse of something just beyond understanding.

And you respond appropriately. Through teaching a new way of thinking.

Of teaching true understanding and not just reflexive response.

A bottom up approach to system design and support, teach the fundamentals of how the systems are built and operate; not just rote memorization and runbooks.

A bottom up approach to team design and support, with community the first principle that everything flows from; not just cargo culted agile rituals with meaning long lost.

An approach that's empathetic to all styles of thought.

mom_the_tech_blogs_broken_again - see_in_actuality_the_wonder_can_it_be

I guess this is supposed to be a tech blog, and I was posting on HN about MCP tonight so here's tonights "thing".

They were kind enough to put a citation block at the bottom of the report so I thought we should probably verify them. Combine this with the naughty things we're doing with MCP response injection and this should help keep us honest.

Might need to finish wiring up that search to our internal graph (we don't currently have any way to validate citations that don't include URLs or DOIs...).