fun fact:
i live on an unlisted path, off an unlisted road, in a barely recognised little village next door to Boaventura in #madeira
i've made a change to the delivery of my parcel from italy from nostr:npub17nd4yu9anyd3004pumgrtazaacujjxwzj36thtqsxskjy0r5urgqf6950x but i'm a bit concerned the UPS driver isn't going to know where to stop and probably won't speak very good english. the postal delivery guy who has been bringing my amazon packages to the cafe/bar in town speaks no english and i just have to sorta hope he said what i thought he said and say "sim"
i hadn't got anything from amazon in the 5 months i've lived in this place up until last week, and now i'm trying to do it, man, so frickin complicated.
last thing before that was a shirt i ordered from the space weather news guy of their last edition of the "suspicious observers" tshirt but i got no call and they sent a customs extortion love letter to the address and it was already long gone and destroyed by the pigs in lisbon
the only positive experience i have ever had with ecommerce in europe has been in england and the local ecom networks and couriers in bulgaria, everywhere else has been utter shit, and anything coming from outside of europe is a total nightmare of bureaucracy.
i can't wait for europe to finally fall apart
they are fast-tracking the CDBC like they think they can save their hides by stealing peope's money directly from their bank account, or try to force people to spend their money by putting expiry dates on it
hurry up and shoot yourself in the foot already brussels. also, i'm getting really tired of the corrupt government "services" here in portugal altogether... the post, the tax office, it's all a clown show circus dog and pony extravaganza of retardation.
i am so grateful for having been able to get myself resided in such a beautiful place as #boaventura #madeira
i wanted a cat again since i had to let my little hochi go back in Varna, i never even hardly got to see him grow up, he was like maybe 3 months old when i left, after the war started in ukkraine
i can make complaints about how the vet did not seem to understand that i knew my little #mochi the #catstr was in a moderately painful position, but i won't, i will more focus on why i knew - i adopted a rescue cat, a little medium hair black female, i called her "bastet" after the egyptian goddess, and she was pretty awesome but she was not entirely happy
i also had to leave her behind, and my mother was kind enough to allow her to stay in the house and at some point for reasons i forget, she got some doctoring and they said she needed dental care because she had a case of chronic gingevitis
my mother reported to me that after getting the surgery, she became extremely cuddly and was so much in need of her lap that my mother found it problematic because she was interfering with her ability to do her main activity, being textile arts, spinning and knitting mostly, and she ultimately sought a new keeper for her and bastet went elsewhere...
this was ... hmm so i think she was a year old about 2008, i recall that year clearly, because i did a lot of forex trading that year and mastered making a consistent profit, and i learned not to be mean to cats that year, after one day getting cranky at her for crying to me... because her litter tray was dirty and i didn't know this but girl cats can't stand to use a litter tray that they can smell their pee in
so, yeah, i miss her, and i wish i could show you a photo of her beautifully posed sitting on top of a rolled up futon with her arms (haha, front legs) crossed looking so pretty
and she had an ongoing problem with her gums that once it was fixed, she became an extremely adoring little girl, and i'm sure that the people who took her loved her, because after she was rescued and i took her and she got her gums sorted out, she would have been a totally adorable little lap kitty for anyone whose work did not make that problematic
girl cats are also extremely affectionate, they need pats more than boy cats
so i'm quite looking forward to when this little one has his dental problems sorted out because he will be a constant pest jonesing for my lap as i work on my computer and bugging me with a chirp every so often to indicate he needs pats
the prognosis for his health is good, just that the level of pain he gets from his nasty gum problems is really quite extreme, i have never seen such a horrible thing inside a cat's mouth in my life, and my sympathy for his pain grew a lot this morning seeing it
as regards to this concept of sympathy, i also have realised that it's a synonym, exactly, for the latin word "misericorda" - to feel another's pain, and the word that is translated to english as "mercy"
so, i thought i was plagued with some kind of autistic problem but i'm plagued with mercy.
i find it extremely difficult to not sympathise, or feel the pain, of other people, and it has been almost the most strong element of my motivation in my life
i'm not averse to causing pain to others though, in my mercy to those they have caused pain to, but i walk the path of peace and when i do battle with such that cause pain i take the path of soft war, i have long wished i could get more people to understand how much that cruel, and violent people are really just seeking attention and the most effective method to keep them at bay is to simply ignore them, not to react, not to fight back... unless the violence is happening in the moment, and defense is needed, then ok, retribution must take place but the way you fight against evil is to corner it and starve it
anyway
just thinking about all the stuff tied to the current state of my kitty and how much gratitude i will feel when his pain is over and he can be my lap warmer and constant pest of my obsession, to make me pay attention to the world outside my little task, not just his needs but to remind me to switch gears sometimes to attend to other things
yeah i'm just gonna say it tho
the secret sauce in the mochi-healing was this
BEEEEEEEEEF
cow meat is medicine
i mean, i honestly can't get over how quickly he is responding to this medicine i have been giving him, he's like almost starting to play with me, still runs away when the play starts but he's getting better
also i just gotta say, i forgot how nice it is in machico... but i'm not fond of any part of this island on teh south, but i might say machico is the nicest town in the south of #madeira
also having driven past faial i'm quite interested in that massive rock and there is a bunch of houses on the west side of that rock, it's an amazing stone that rock at faial.
anyway, just gonna say
if you carnivore, and understand beef is medicine, you should feed your carnivore pets also with beef, it makes them so strong, i mean, seriously, i did this, even grain fed argentine beef, and this little monster is incredibly fast healing
i saw a lot of the north-east parts of #madeira today on a trip to the vet for my #catstr #mochi
there is an epic giant rock between Faial and Santana that has to be seen
the other side of Boaventura is a lush forested place that you don't really see it properly from afar, when you are in it, mmm it's almost like rainforest
i'm fine to stick here in unwanted, damp, moldy boaventura, and the people here are mostly hermits, who like the relative isolation, but i was told that there is marinas in Ponta Delgada and Santana so when i get to having a boat, idk, i'm probably gonna go with Ponta Delgada because it's only a 40 minute walk away, but it's nice to know that indeed i could keep a sloop docked so close to me and me and the mochi could go get onboard and go sailing on a nice summer warm day and catch fish and feed my kitty raw, just barely ded cod and tuna
it's not a life for everyone, i'm adventurous, and this is what i want
now, i just need to figure out a way to up my pay grade so i can do less hours for more fiat.
i feel like this new work building recommendation/matchmaking engines might lead somewhere forwards in the future
i'm kinda pleased that it turns out that my initial vision for my relocation to #madeira was not far from correct, in that, this is where i want to be
and that the place i want to live, set up shop, is literally nearby the first place i slept on this island
for now, i am embedding into this little non-tourist town of boaventura, i am acting on my desire to be part of a local christian community, will be doing confession (which actually should be called counselling) tomorrow, and the people are seeing that i care about the small things and care about my neighbours
i may well even set up my hermitage not far from here, as far up into the gully near me as i can get, but i think, overall, from what i know about where is approved to buy and build that camacha and the upper reaches beyond it towards the area of the observatory are the most ideal
and park my boat down in the nearest marina, which i think is probably going to be in the lower parts east of Santana
lining up my ongoing residence here currently, i should be able to swing another 14 months, i love this little cottage, as much as it is cheap and shitty, its location is stellar for my needs
i never would have guessed that i was gona turn catholic... i was raised in some crappy american seventh day adventist religion but i hate it and i am kinda weirded out a bit by some parts of the catholic dogma i'm rolling with it because i can deal with it, i think if you understand the exoteric/esoteric of it all it's actually still very close to the best picture and most importantly, the apocalypsis... that is on the horizon
#madeira #asknostr any tips for a vet who can deal with a cat that has bad gingevitis, eye- and ear-mites
i've brought his condition up a lot by feeding him a lot of good argentine beef but it feels like he needs dental surgery to fix the problems in his mouth and some more strong interventions to deal with the eyes and ears
i mean, his fur is mostly silky, now, but just these last items in the list, idk what to do to get them solved... and the sao vicente vet inspired zero confidence from me, ok, he did a good neutering but that was it, the rest, the antibiotic, the general care to assess his health issues, zero, nada confianca
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X21005896
as i sit watching the epic seas of the current moment driven by high winds blowing south from the north/north-east on #madeira - that has been sufficiently strong that it threw a corrugated steel roof section around right near my cottage, up the hill, and the other night a collapse of a very large rock in the midst of a lot of relatively loose soil and sedimentary rocks
i am thinking about what level of risk there is, objectively, for me to find myself in a full washed-away tsunami at my position (about 200m altitude, 500m from the coast)
the incident mentioned at the top, the most notable one in recent history, was a tsunami on a very tall section of coastal land called Cabo Girao, it is adjacent to Camara do Lobos, one of the first large urban areas you reach on the road from Sao Vicente going towards Funchal
i took the route over that hill of Cabo Girao a few months back when i bought that mountain bike that is sitting mostly idle in my front yard, and it is hella tall and steep, and indeed, it has quite a steep cliff face on one side, the most notable thing i encountered on the way up there was a british owned holiday accommodation complex, a sprawling place with dozens of two and three storey buildings...
there was 19 fatalities from this incident, which isn't really relatively that hazardous, but being that i am close to a relatively steep part of the edge near the coastline, there is some danger of landlslides
thinking it through, i think that probably the chances are pretty slim that a big enough chunk of rock might fall off the peak across the gully from me, Arco Sao Jorge might drop a big chunk into the water and cause some big waves here
additionally, precisely because this island is so steep around its foundations under the water, dropping to hundreds of metres deep within less than a hundred metres of distance, really big waves coming in at us from afar have a really big area to push on before they actually ride up the side of the mountain and potentially wash away loads of loose soil
it's just a mental exercise for me to model what my risk level is, and i think it's pretty low overall, and landslides, also, prettyt low chance of a problem since it's only another 50m further up to the peak and it's quite a small body, and i think its shape is more steep on the other side than here, so a landslide up there is unlikely to have much effect down here at all
i still would be screwed in a pole shift if the water sloshed up more than 200m though, doesn't have to be fast, if it's big and powerful
wild winds here this morning in #boaventura on #madeira island
the waves are pretty epic down there too, when the winds are in a lull, the sound of the waves is loud, and even can be heard above most of the wind noise even with all the windows closed
power went out this morning several times and i'm paranoid that it's going to blip out again today because the winds have barely calmed at all compared to how they were when the power went out... makes me wish i had a meaty UPS for my workstation so i can keep working if it goes out for an hour again like this morning
hopefully though, whatever glitches were with the grid out here this morning have been patched up correctly and there isn't an escalation to stress other not quite so glitched installations causing ground faults, i assume this was caused by a ground fault throwing an overload switcher
winds on this island are funny, it's like, not really very windy, and then often really sudden, fast bursts and then nothing again, and yeah, between october and may, this is frequent weather here on the north, the worst weather is february and march... like it was in balkans, Baba Marta is one mean old lady and it isn't until april that spring becomes nice and friendly
#photostr
https://youtu.be/Iq0_7bDHJCQ
a new presentation from space weather man
and i kept watching the part where he shows africa in the centre of frame and i was like
ooh
east coast of africa the water runs over us to the north, north east, more or less, but that then blasts over spain and into the mediterranean and across slovenia and switzerland and southern germany, to then come back
oohhhh
so actually, while it's probably bad to be too far near the sea level on this island when this happens
almost anywhere over 1km altitude (ie, camacha) and probably most of the north-east of the island is relatively less likely to have bad slosh back because there's so much land in that direction
i may have to revise my plans, and actually try to get myself a patch on the north east of #madeira because i think this is probably the best place to be within 100km of where i am right now... the centre of the island is 1.8km tall and if the waves are ~1km tall then ... probably just need to have a cave dug into the mountainside
continuing to add inputs here, but if you watch the part where he shows the tilt with the arrows and africa, you can clearly see that we don't have a lot of water northeast of us, not very much at all, so once the first round is over the reprise is pretty mild
i've been observing very close the stone bones of this island, and they are extensive, because this is a relatively new landform, maybe under 50k years, idk exactly, you can see it when there is a lot of rain, what gets washed down, and what stays behind, and people have lived here for at least over 600 years and obviously in that period all the extreme weather has kinda skipped this place, mostly
south side had a bad heavy rain in 2010 that led to a lot of loss of property and some loss of life, but i really think that ... hmm yeah, north east of madeira might be a really good place, if you can get a patch over 1km above sea level
i spotted a herbal tea at the shop today labeled "Funcho" and i was like, ooh, what is this, i wonder if it has anything to do with the name of the capital of #madeira #funchal
the girl at the shop seemed to think not, but then, my old taxi driver neighbour last name Silva didn't think that Silva had anything to do with trees
this region, Sao Vicente, is known for its Laurel trees, which are called "Larressilva" so i think that a grown man who is in his early 30s doesn't know his family name relates to forests, probably the 20 something girl doesn't know that funchal is named something to do with the herb fennel, which is sweet a lot like licqorice
fennel is quite famous in greek history for being said to give courage to warriors, and it has been found that its oils are insecticides
soooo
sweet, and probably antiparasitic, as what kills crawlies often also kills wormies (which are a class of animals themselves as well as being the infant form of most insects)
i'm going to make me some tea and drink some today
the robins of #madeira have become my sunrise and sunset heralds
one alights on either the tree in front of the window behind my pc monitor, or the light pole next to my front gate, and twitters his little heart out for about 5-10 minutes at dawn and at sunset every day
it is a plaintive song, not so silly as the blackbirds, and often they sound out in the distance, in parallel, but the robin is my herald of the changes of day and night
literally, when i am laying in my bed in the morning, and i hear the robin start, i'm like, "ok mister robin, i'll get up in a minutet"
https://img.madeirabirds.com/wbx9ek-european-robin-erithacus-rubecula-rubecula.png?fm=jpg&w=850&q=95&dpr=1
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