Health rant (brief)

[eekee]

In another post, I started explaining why I never got around to learning something and it turned into a rather dark rant about health, so I separated it out to here. You know how some peoples' bodies absorb a certain class of chemicals? That seems to be my problem, and in the last few years furniture has started to affect me a lot more. I've shut most of my furniture -- especially the new stuff -- in a spare room and ordered some "organic" furniture yesterday, but it won't be with me for a few weeks. I dislike modern "organic" culture, but I had to go with it because what else is there? I should probably get rid of my 80s & 90s electronics too, and I don't know about 00s and 10s stuff. They recently found a plasticizer used in monitor casings can cause birth defects. Awful world this is; stupidity on every side! I can't help noticing that there are many problems which only affect some people, leaving others free to blame the affected individuals.

[eekee]

I've got some somewhat good news: I quarantined my computer chair with the rest of the affected furniture, and in the next few days I coded much of a Forth interpreter, including the most difficult part which I could never get my head around before. I'm not completely cured; I still get fatigued very quickly, but it's surprising what I now can do in between having to lie down. I've put the interpreter on hold as I deal with other more important life matters, but those won't take too long.

I'm not sure how much to say about which items affect me and how, because the details are very disturbing. My remark about birth defects above was intended to indicate the severity of what these chemicals can do to people who are sensitive to them. I'm likely more strongly affected than most due to liver damage, but when I look back at my life I see I was affected before the liver damage. Resdue left by fabric detergents has been affecting my gender identity since the 80s. Carpets with stain guard have been causing me fatigue and a degree of depression since the 80s.

The formulae of stain guards and plastics additives have changed in recent years. After a year or so of trying to ignore the issue, I had to admit that my recently-purchased sofa-bed was causing me gender identity issues. Digital devices, having a far smaller surface area than the sofabed, affect me on prolonged contact and their age also matters. My Thinkpad T480 (made within the last 5 years) causes me gender identity issues when I rest my wrists on it for typing. The plastic rear of Samsung tablet affects me in the same way, the front is glass and I put it in a case which is fine. My older Thinkpad T440 laptop has a lesser, partial effect on my gender identity, but also creates a faint unpleasant sensation slightly reminiscent of some digestive problems. It may be partly responsible for the fatigue I experienced while writing my Forth interpreter, but I can't be sure without some more time and changes. I haven't yet tested my other laptops which are older still, and my newer phone needs fixing before I can test it. My old phone produces a very light effect, presumably because it's light-weight and doesn't press into my fingers in the way that my wrists rest on laptops.

In better news, my trackball doesn't seem to affect me at all, though it's very old now and urgently needs replacing. It's a SpeedLink Aptico SL-630001-BK which may be still available, though I should note that the plastics additives may be changed. Perhaps I'll get another anyway. I'm typing this on a new Kinesis Freestyle 2 keyboard which doesn't seem to be affecting me, though it's too early to really tell. I don't have wrist rests for it, so the only contact is the intermittent impacts of my fingertips.