before dawn

October 8, 2026

Every morning since we got here I've been up hours before sunrise. That's why I have been posting more these days. I'm not sure if I'm justifying the increase in posts, or if I'm apologizing. Just stating a fact I guess.

I don't mind being up so early. Just noting the slight complication of doing things in the dark. I don't have that issue at home. The city is never dark. Of course I could turn on lights. I always prefer to turn on one dim lamp in the corner. I'm the same at home whenever I can be. Just enough light to see what I'm doing. All the ceiling fixtures here are those cold white LED bulbs that I can't stand. I find them really harsh and unnecessary. Like lingering too long after last call in a bar, and they turn the lights on to make you leave. I don't even know if they still do that like they did 30 years ago... the last time I was in a bar after last call. Rambling. Whatever. The lights are too much right after waking.

I notice tinnitus a lot more, and more often when I'm here. Now that I'm typing about it I'm remembering the things about it that I know. Normally I don't give it much thought really. I know that the right side is higher pitched than the left. The intensity of it can be somewhat minimized with proper diet, sufficient rest, and lower caffeine intake. By minimized I mean that it is slightly less if I consistently maintain those things, and is more if I do not. It is always there though. Whether more intense or less is completely irrelevant. It's always fucking irritating. I've had it since my 20's. Between then and now I have looked online occasionally to see if smart people have figured out any new things. After wading through the pit of clickbait last time; I found that they have determined it stops during sleep. I don't remember how they determined that. Don't remember? Don't care? If it was any use to me I would have remembered more details. It was an interesting read, but at the same time I found it annoying. I want to know how to turn it off, not about how it actually does turn off every night when I go to sleep.

I haven't looked online for things about it lately. I feel it is safe to assume that it is probably now like most things online... in that A.I. has likely sucked up all the information it can find about tinnitus, and is now puking up worthless slop about it in vast quantities. I suppose its creators would tell me that A.I. is likely going to find the cure. It can do everything! lol ffs I don't believe them. I won't believe it unless tinnitus is actually gone from my own defective head. But (hypothetically) if so, I say, who fucking cares if it finds the cure tomorrow, or if it already has? If the thing does figure out the cure to tinnitus, the worthless fucking scumbags in charge of it will make sure that the vast majority of the population can't afford it. They would only reveal the cure if it makes them richer. They can all go fuck themselves.

Now I'm sitting here thinking about A.I. and the possibility of it finding a cure to tinnitus. It won't. I would love to be proved wrong about it. But further thought on the useless subject is that if I had to choose between having tinnitus for the rest of my life and forests being bulldozed, communities having all their water drained, the sky being heated, etc. all for data centers; of course I would 100% choose to keep the tinnitus.

A.I. could have been used for good things if it was done right by the right people. The ones in charge of it are stupid awful people with too much unregulated power and too much wealth. So it is just shit, like everything the put their grimy hands on.

It is nearly noon now. Looking stormy, and is starting to rain for the first time since we arrived.