LJ friend groups

I'm cleaning up old LJ friend groups.

Am I right that if you cross-post from DW to LJ, and the post has an access filter, it will apply a friend group of the same name in LJ if there is one?

Is there any way of finding old posts with a particular access filter? (Or any access filter other than "public", "private" and "friends only"?) There's a few made for a one-off situation when the post might as well be public now, but I think if I delete the friend group, the post goes private. I won't waste any time worrying about that since no-one else ever wants to read old posts, but I'm curious if there's any way of finding the entries which are affected.

Negotiations, monopolies and unions

Thinking about negotiations recently, it occurred to me a lot of the negotiating advantage goes to the party with more of a monopoly.

If you have two or three widget companies, and millions of widget-makers, the power is largely with the company, because if the company proposes an insultingly low wage, the widget maker's options are (a) accept it or (b) not have a job. The company can assume that sufficiently many widget makers will accept the deal. The same thing may happen even if there's a shortage of widget makers, to a lesser extent.

Conversely, if all the widget makers join one union, the companies are at a similar disadvantage.

The phenomenon of monopolistic companies and monopolistic unions is exactly the same from a game theory perspective, even though they can have very different social effects for practical and historical reasons. But it's easy to get polarised into "companies good, unions bad" or "companies bad, unions good" depending which examples they've seen a lot of in real life or propaganda.

Gloves

Damnit, I had gloves in February, where did they go? I can't find them in a cupboard or in a coat pocket or in the car.

Gym: minimum

This week I spent most of my time worrying about house stuff and did what I told myself was my minimum gym routine (at least twice, at least one session of running or other machines not swimming and preferably two).

I feel proud I made the sensible decision: I think if I'd told myself I'd always go four times no matter what I would have failed this week and lost my motivation, but instead, I feel pleased I did the minimum, and eager to get back up to a higher standard.

I think other people motivate themselves with other psychological tricks. I keep expecting people to jump out of the bushes and yell "you must set yourself unrealistic unachievable targets or how will you motivate yourself to improve?" And maybe that's best for some people. But I don't think it actually does help me, I think it comes from a couple of reasons:

1. What's an unrealistic achievement for me might be a normal day for many people, so in an attempt to jolly me along, they pretend I can do as much as they can, which just makes me depressed.

2. If I say "I'll do this every week" (except when I'm away), I mean "I'll do this every week". I think other people might assume my absolute minimum is a minimum for a week when I just don't feel like it, and there's an implicit exception for "but I'm moving house" or "but I'm getting married", on top of that. But no, I mean, that minimum amount is what I do when I'm stressed out. Of course, often I'm stressed out all the time because my life is a bit of a mess some years, but that's the way it is. If they say "the minimum is three times a week", then I'll think "I know I can't do that when I'm extremely stressed and need to spend every evening doing X, so I've already failed, so I might as well not start".

In fact, people have been remarkably good at being encouraging and not judging me in annoying fit neurotypical ways, so, um, yay friends family and everyone else, thank you, you really really helped!

(In fact, I should have another except for actually being too ill to move, I forgot that).

What I post to LJ/DW

When I started an LJ (about 10 years ago), I told myself I would only post things I thought people would actually want to read, and not just blog whatever came into my head. I think that fell by the wayside embarrassingly soon.

Buy more gloves

OK, I bought more gloves. From the internet.

I always forget that that's a sensible option. I just get used to what I have, and never stop to think "could this problem be solved in less than £10 with no additional effort", even though if I did the answer would be obviously yes.

And if the old pair of gloves turns up, I'll have spares. Go me!