My daughter loves her visiting gran, and also you usually only see her buried underneath a writhing dog with her feet poking out.
How the worst video game of all time came to be:
Warshaw drew up his pitch to Spielberg, and travelled from the Atari headquarters in Sunnyvale, California to Los Angeles. His idea was an adventure game in which the player had to help ET phone home by collecting components to make an inter-planetary telephone. The player would have to dodge government agents and scientists in order to complete the mission.
“I got down to Spielberg and I laid out the whole design,” he says. “I told him, ‘I think it’s really important that we do something innovative. ET is a breakthrough movie and I think we need a breakthrough game.’
“I talked him out of the idea of a Pac-Man knock-off. But the key was to design a game that I could deliver in five weeks.”
Oh, boy, if I haven’t returned an EMAIL that I need to field I feel like I need to tweet more carefully, and I don’t even have a boss, but this is only going to become a bigger issue as social media grows (esp. things like Twitter, where you’d have to lock your account to avoid your boss seeing it, unlike FB where you can just avoid friending people at work):
I noticed that the last two times one of my direct reports called out sick, she posted photos to Instagram during the work day hours. Basically they were “selfies” of herself looking all dolled up and ready to go. The first time this happened, I let it slide and in good faith assumed that she was just reposting a photo that was taken another day. Now that it has happened again and there is somewhat of a pattern, I want to address it with her.
Do you have any suggestions on how to approach this conversation? Or if I should approach it at all? I seem to be getting mixed opinions on this – some people say it’s not my place to comment on her social media activity. The way I see it though is that regardless of whether the photos were actually taken on the day she called out sick or not, it was poor judgment on her part because she is senior in this department and most of our junior employees (who step in to cover her work when she is out) have access to her social media activity. I was alarmed when I saw the photos and I can only imagine that the junior employee who had to stay late to cover her work on those days had a similar reaction.
I know this poses a larger issue that it is not ideal for managers and employees or mentors and mentees to be social media buddies.
ICYMI, Nikki’s fabulous interview with Alexander Chee:
I appreciate how frank you’ve been about the challenges you met while working on this novel, and what a long and sometimes maddening process it was. I feel there’s a lesson there for other writers who might be sparring with their own work, or publishers’ expectations, or the enormous pressure to not only tell brilliant stories, but move units. What would you tell aspiring novelists after the experiences of writing both your novels?
I suppose I would tell them to learn as much as they can about how to survive themselves. I had to learn how the person I am can best live with the writer I am — the human part of me had needs for companionship, ego satisfaction, the protections of health insurance and dental insurance. Some of the best advice on being a writer I can think of is to take good care of your teeth. (The emergency funds for writers are typically inundated with emergency dental requests.)
Always here to talk about a) The Flash and b) Iris, this interview with Candice Patton is VERY spoiler-y, so make sure you’re caught up before clicking.
I have not encountered this local daycare center which has become a popular target for conspiracy theorists, but now I want to drive by it slowly while blasting the X-Files theme (or not, bc that would be creepy for the poor people trying to work there):
Visit Salt Lake City in February, in inversion season, and you’ll hardly see further than 50 yards. The rocky mountain ranges, the dozens of craft breweries, the looming Salt Laky City Temple are all shrouded in gravy-thick smog. But even through the haze, if you wound up at the intersection of 1300 South and 300 East, it’s impossible not to see the Fun Time Kidz Day Care, a DayGlo-green building with purple doors and yellow trim around windows blocked with pictures that look like they’ve been torn out of old coloring books. There’s a deserted playground out back which, if it existed in a Silent Hill game, would definitely be a place where a zombie child would lurch out at you.
Depending on who you ask, Fun Time is either a normal day care (albeit a slightly creepy one) or a cover-up for something insidious. Possibly a CIA black site, a drug front, or an organ harvesting operation. For the people who suspect something sinister, it’s become the subject of an enduring mystery: What’s going on in this building, and why has nobody seen kids come in or come out?
Robert Pickton, a truly monstrous Canadian serial killer who (like most serial killers) benefitted from society and law enforcement’s general disinterest in the safety and whereabouts of sex workers and addicts, managed to smuggle his memoir out of prison and get it up for sale on Amazon (British Columbia does not have a law that prevents criminals from profiting from their crimes, so it’s not clear what can be done at this point):
Pickton: In His Own Words was selling for around $20 on Amazon.ca, where it was ranked a #1 bestseller and a “hot new release” before it was suddenly made unavailable, with no explanation. As of Monday morning, the 144-page book was still being offered on Amazon’s U.S. site, accompanied by a rambling excerpt, but it was no longer available by the afternoon.
If you would like to read a REAL book about Pickton, On the Farm is excellent, and really gets at the remarkable failures of the RCMP and the Vancouver police, who just cocked everything up royally, allowing more women to die at his hands.
Beloved, you need DWIL. You need DWIL right now.
One of my dearest friends just had a baby, and in case you have just had a baby or are about to have one, it is really hard! It’ll get better. You are incredible. I am impressed by you.
Dearest Toasties, this is more OT than LR, but this article is making the rounds and i kind of hate it and i am having a hard time articulating why. Can you, in your wisdom, help me? (or, alternatively, help me understand why it is not awful?) TY.
https://medium.com/@UptheCypherPunx/why-this-radi…
I feel like generally speaking, it creates a sort of false dichotomy between a kind of cultural leftism that’s dedicated to ameliorating many of the effects of patriarchy and white supremacy (by, for instance, looking at how we communicate with each other and seeing ways that it can be improved, for example by safe spaces and trigger warnings) and REAL activism, like helping people in homeless shelters.
These aren’t really mutually-exclusive phenomena, you can do either or both or whichever and still be contributing to making a better world; and while it’s true that there are cliques and hierarchies in leftist culture, that’s because human beings do that in their culture — that’s not a direct consequence of talking about problematic behaviors, for instance, and the fact of the matter is that it exists anywhere there’s human organization (including the shelter system and your church and wherever else someone has to be responsible for making executive decisions).
So, in addition to creating this false dichotomy, as though you’ve got to choose between “academic” leftism and “real” leftism, it also conflates academic leftism with the worst aspects of human behavior that are associated with it, and similarly ignores those behavioral aspects when it comes to “real” leftism.
Oooooo, this is excellent, thank you. I had gotten to the “these are not mutually exclusive; you can feed homeless people AND not sexually assault people”, but I like the division between academic and real.
which… part of what I hate about this is how it seems to be like “Wedge people! Stop being wedge-y! I HAVE THIS FIGURED OUT, so let’s just all go along with my plan” and I want to be like “who made you decision maker?”
yeah, in my experience it’s always good to be mistrustful of anyone who tells other people how to do activism right
I am irked by the
A) selective calls for realism
B) complete dismissal of the personal in the name of the political rather than trying to rectify them or balance them. (hi yes I really like trigger warnings and they are in the scheme of things a really small thing?)
Can you elaborate a little on selective calls for realism?
I am with you on trigger warnings, yo. If you don’t need them, fine, but they make such a HUGE difference for people who have already been traumatized that I feel like saying “stop it with them” is just… so mean.
I think it ties into the whole trigger warning/sexual assault in activist circles thing, the idea that certain forms of doing something are more real/meaningful than others. Which I think is true, and but also doesn’t mean that everything short of direct action with marginalized populations doesn’t count. There is a scale of Handling Shit, and everything on the scale matters and is connected. It does need to be balanced and I think the left right now has swung too far away from structural thinking to more individual/social analysis, but that stuff still matters.
TY: as someone with English degrees, I fall heavily on the side of “words are important and we should examine the ways in which they impact other people”.
I just… not everyone can fight the same battles. It does not mean that those battles are not important.
This. I have chronic depression and scrupulosity (basically, I feel unreasonably guilty about things): I cannot dedicate as much of my time or energy to doing activism as I would like. Devaluing this kind of work is saying that people like me can’t be activists; demonizing this kind of work is saying that people like me are actively hurting activism. Which is bonkers, but.
It had literally never occurred to me that this was an ableist narrative (to use the jargon). ty for this perspective.
How in fuck is the creation of legit safe spaces not Handling Shit. (Not directed at you; at the article). Safe Spaces for someone like me (trans and visibly queer, constantly misgendered and often dealing with violence-tinged street harassment) are enormously important.
Yeah, I don’t get it either.Whenever anyone complains about safe spaces, i just want to yell at them “BECAUSE YOU HAVE NEVER NEEDED THEM, BULLY FOR YOU. Not everyone is so lucky.”
While ppl still need them, I will defend them. ♥
This is a terrible critique of some very legitimate problems with the educated left. The left has an issue with class privilege and call-out culture. We have an issue with people being shamed for not keeping up with a very unaccessible vernacular. This cannot be denied. But I am so done entertaining oversensitive people who whine about PC fascism and oversensitivity, because they are eagerly adopting a FOX news style frame of reference. They make common cause with the people who think black women are oversensitive for not wanting strangers to touch their hair, yet who lose their shit when Beyoncé pays tribute to the Black Panthers.
I agree, these are legit problems! And really huge philosophical questions, too! Like, do i owe it to you to explain my feminism? Or do i, having done some work (no one is ever done working, IMO), have the right to say “go away, do some homework, and come back to me when you are speaking my language”?
And these conversations are happening! I see them on twitter or blogs I read all the time! I’m not in any particular activist circle but even I can tell you that “hey, ease up on the uninformed guy / no I can’t deal with uninformed guy right now” is an ongoing thing! So pieces like this are so frustrating, like, don’t preach about what people should do because you don’t see them doing it.
I think anyone who hangs around leftist activists will inevitably run into one who will be looking to score political capital by calling them out for something stupid or trivial. I have had this happen to me. I somehow managed to survive without swinging to the opposite side of the pendulum.
There’s also a frustrating trend wherein people thoughtfully critique call out culture and assholes wander into the comment section to whine about how nobody’s free to make rape jokes anymore and queers are privileged over heterosexuals in their scene and everyone hates white people these days.
I, too, have had this happen to me. It feels awful, but i survived it too, and am still here for the struggle.
Yeah, I think I agree with the larger points– I know a lot of folks on “the left” who are very insulated inside a wealthy bubble and who conflate their own cultural preferences with political purity. And to be honest I do know people who focus more of their political attention on things like media representation and criticism than on the actual material well-being of marginalized people, and that squicks me out.
But also I bet there are loads of people out there with similar feelings who can find a way to write this stuff down without calling anyone a fascist.
Or “the politically correct mafia on the left,” seriously, does this person work part-time for Fox?
There are elements of what she’s saying that I agree with, but I think what she’s saying is a reaction to the extremism that she’s seeing. Yes we need to challenge the world and its scary and hard, but we also need safe spaces for people to go when they don’t want to fight, and not all people have immediate access to a ‘safe space’ that works for them.
One of the things I would agree with her on though; I know people who claim to be ‘anarchists’ and social activists, who have given up their ‘worldly possessions’ to live in squats and ‘freecycle’ all their food. That’s grand, I have no problem with that and I’m happy for them that they get to live almost entirely without money, but they rarely acknowledge their privilege that allows them to live without money; They’re mostly university educated, and were supported through their education by the state or family, and they lack the commitments or responsibilities that would prevent a lot of people from pursuing this lifestyle (children, family members to care for, no safety net etc), but they feel morally superior because they’ve ‘beat the system’ and claim that anyone can live this way.
/rant
Heh. Yep. i know those people too. They are totally insufferable. Did you see the Extremely Upsetting manarchist thing that’s on tumblr? It includes a flowchart!
‘Politically correct mafia’ hm… I also dislike this article. I think the author has picked up on a valid issue, especially relating to how the left can ‘otherize’ those whose side they claim to be on, but she gets a hell of a lot wrong about safe spaces, freedom of speech etc., and she gets it wrong in the way that Daily Mail reader type wankers get it wrong. The point of safe spaces is that white/male/cis/straight people get to speak fucking everywhere, and safe spaces allow other people to have a go for once.
I think she’s suffering from spending too much time in a particular kind of relatively privileged activist environment, where it seems like this is all anyone is concerned about: if anyone’s being insular, I think it’s her. I mean, the clue’s in the first paragraph where she talks about activists as allies to oppressed groups. In reality, the vast majority of people couldn’t give less of a shit, and some oppressed people are actually activists too. She doesn’t seem to see activism that falls outside of what she sees as “activist culture”. In suggesting that this is the state of activism today, she’s doing the very thing she accuses others of doing: ignoring people who are fighting for their rights and survival. I mean, how can you write about activism in 2016 without once referencing Black Lives Matter? In conclusion, your instincts were right, it is awful.
ty. It is nice to be validated.
I also felt like she was ignoring the fact that she is doing _exactly what she accuses others of_, namely, creating divisions. Like, if you are going to suggest that safe spaces are not important and all the whiny babies who need them should brace up or go home, you are actively excluding people from your activism. And why is it ok when you do it?
I find it rubs me the wrong way too, and I think it’s because it claims there are only two sides – either the “useful” activists who have been in the world and seen what it’s like and are willing to get their hands dirty for the sake of change, even if it hurts, or the “academic” activists who are all stuck up with their theories and their ideas about “safety” and trigger warnings. Yes, it is quite possible to get caught up in the sort of policing that the author talks about, wherein people shut out the voices that are not like their own. This is a thing that can happen as easily on the left as it can on the right, and the middle, and that one planet that we’re not sure where it falls.
What I think the author forgets to acknowledge is that “safe spaces and trigger warnings” can absolutely be a part of “getting serious about changing the world.” Does a convention that creates a safe space by outlining a clear no-harrasment policy change the world? Yes. It changes it in a different way than the homeless shelter down the street that offers free meals. It changes it for different people, and I think part of what the author is asking here is really “does that change still matter, is it valuable change?” My sense is that the author comes down on the side of “no.” I think there’s a lot of people, however, that would argue “yes,” and I think this is a big part of why the article rubs me the wrong way.
False dichotomies! THEY ARE EVERYWHERE BUGBEARS.
But I might suggest that the left has more of a tendency to the kind of policing and divisions that the author talks about, simply because the left tends to be able to see other people’s perspectives, while the right is famously myopic (there are studies out there on this, i can do some searching if you are interested 🙂
I don’t agree with that at all. If anything, the leftists I’ve known are far more rigorous about talking about not doing these things. Look at the conservative usage of RINO as a catchall to mean anything bad, or the way that religions fracture on in-group lines.
Hm, perhaps I have been unclear. What I mean is; the left is more likely to get hung up on conversations about different approaches to a common goal, while the right is more likely to accept a different approach as long as the goal remains the same.
Aaaaaaaaaand of course my google-fu is failing me now, so please feel free to continue to disagree! I may indeed be misremembering.
This article starts out really promisingly. Hey, the overuse of academic jargon and policing of semantics can have a deleterious effect on the very communitues activism is trying to help! This is true! Call out culture needs to be critically examined!
But then it just…gets bad. Comparisons of political correctness to Fascism (I’m not sure the author knows what Fascism actually is). Broad complaints about trigger warnings and safe spaces, without really understanding their purpose. Someone else I read compared the piece to a shotgun: it hits an immediate target, but then sprays indiscriminately at a bunch of adjacent issues. The author feels line *something* is wrong with leftism, but rather than thinking critically about it, goes straight to PC Gone Mad and the fallacy of relative privation. She also doesn’t really provide any constructive counterexamples, rather than just saying that the left should complain about language less.
Long story short, I am extremely Not Impressed.
the very communitues activism is trying to help
I don’t really believe in a separation between “communities that activism is trying to help” and “activism”? Like, activism should never be done on behalf of other people: it should always by the people who are directly affected, and if other people want to support them that’s great, but I think any situation where you can identify “activists” on one hand and “the people they’re trying to help” on the other, your activism has got very fucked up.
1. It reads very much like “someone called me out on something I said or did and I’m upset.”
2. It doesn’t seem to understand how things like trigger warnings work, or why people who need them say they need them.
I guess all of those things come down to: if you were truly trying to address a problem and build a solution, you’d have done your due diligence and background reading. If you don’t understand where this stuff is coming from, why should anyone who does it take your advice?
Because OF COURSE the “activist culture” is made up of people who may or may not have “worked in the shelter system, or any field that serves those deemed as oppressed or marginalized in any way, such as abuse victims, the homeless, or people who struggle with addictions and/or mental illness”. OF COURSE it couldn’t actually BE people who are abuse victims, people who are or have been homeless, or people with addictions and/or mental illness.
I mean, if your view of “activist culture” is made up of people who talk about victims of oppression as “them” and “they”, no wonder you’re feeling jaded.
O_o
*quietly applauds*
Honestly, it comes off as someone who is pretty burnt out on activism and isn’t so much tarring everyone with the same brush as simply upending the tar bucket and stomping off.
Yes! Also this, for sure. It is frustrating to agitate for change and to see those efforts not make change. I gets it.
I feel like i would hate this less if it was “I am done with this” instead of “conform your activist space to my expectations”, which is what that last paragraph feels like.
One more small question, if anyone is still reading this; I got this article from a dude that was all like “so this’ll start a shitstorm, but i don’t care because it is a great read”, and I… kind of don’t want to engage with him on Facebook about this? Is it acceptable to send him here for counter-narratives, or should I suck it up and do the amalgamating work and maintain Toastie anonymity?
AND if the latter, do I post to the original post, this perhaps sparking the shitstorm, or is it ok to send him a PM about this, which is TOTALLY MY PREFERENCE because i am not interested in being dog-piled?
It is OK to do whatever you want. Your energy is valuable, and if engaging with this guy, or engaging with him in public, will just make you feel “euuuuurgh” and exhausted, it is totally legit not to.
If you wanted a low-stress way of challenging it, you could just post something like, “Hm, really? What about it did you think was great?” Put the onus on him to identify what was useful or valuable about it, and if he just enjoyed the fact that it’s bashing lefties, you can happily drop the whole thing. On the other hand, if he says, “Well, I think there’s a legitimate conversation about how [we can get hung up on not calling people words they find insulting, belittling or offensive]”, you’ve got a more specific starting point for what might be a productive discussion?
I’m not so much worried about him as all of the ppl i know will come out of the woodwork to defend him if I start anything.
Your question is great, but i already know what he likes about it: the left needs to stop dividing itself, so the whiny whiners who cannot cut it should suck it up if they want my (cishetwhitemale) allyship, because I am tired of being called out by ppl who are only into this because they are sanctimonious prigs who want to feel better than everyone. Because he wants to make change, but Those People make it SO HARD to want to help them
*baaaaaaaaaaarf*
Edit: welp, this nicely determines the “should I send him here?” question.
I have a male friend who is very wonderfully anti-oppression. I love seeing his posts! But GOOD LORD, nearly every post he makes linking to articles about gender or race, some leftist dudebro friend has to be all “why do we have to divide ourselves like this? when are we gonna be done with identity politics? waah waah,” and to his eternal credit, my friend always hands them their ass, politely: “Why do you expect women/POC/LGBT people to agree with you and join your cause when you won’t listen to them about their lives?”
This is always what i say, too, but no one listens to me. Like, literally. They just keep talking while i also am talking.
I think if you are pretty sure his attitude is “I think your human rights are so important I’ll support them if you ask nicely enough”, don’t bother challenging him. That’s not going to lead to a productive conversation, just an exhausting and frustrating one.
It turns out it led to no conversation at all! Total crickets.
Ugh, that piece. It is so full of shit.
ETA: I ranted about it on Twitter after I read it a number of days ago. I should Storify it.
YES YOU SHOULD. and then you should send me a link! pls and ty
https://storify.com/mizshellytee/trigger-warnings…
This is so great, I really liked the piece about Formation and trigger warnings! Thank you 🙂
I also do not like that piece. I can understand, to a certain extent, where the writer is coming from – I am definitely in favour of using trigger warnings wherever necessary and avoiding using hurtful language, but I have seen an awful lot of examples of people policing others’ language extremely aggressively and it just generating more conflict and driving people away. (Anyone using harmful language should be told it’s not okay, and nobody has an obligation to patiently and politely explain the implications of words to people who are already being vile; I have just seen it spiral into fights really quickly, without anything happening except people being banned/storming off in a rage, which makes it feel like a different approach of some sort would be better.) None of this means that trigger warnings and trying to avoid hurtful language are bad things; they are important and really shouldn’t be dismissed as fascism and an attack on free speech. They are neither of these things.
I think the opposition created between “meeting basic needs” and “policing language” is a false one. Just because people need food and shelter doesn’t mean they don’t also need dignity and compassion; of course we should be making sure the first set of needs are met for everyone, but we should also be thinking about the latter. The people who are struggling to find a place to live and the people who are being triggered or verbally abused are not two distinct sets of people; there is an overlap. It is not just privileged “activist” types who can be harmed by the language of those around them; having to worry about where your next meal is coming from doesn’t mean you magically have no mental space to feel hurt by slurs.
It also ignores the fact that harmful language is not a discrete thing; it is part of a wider system of oppression. It’s not just a case of “oh well, I won’t worry that someone said something dehumanising about me, as they’re just words!” – it can be a manifestation of a much larger structural issue (sexism, racism, transphobia, classism, ableism) which does, in fact, lead to people struggling to find food or shelter. They’re part of the same thing.
there is also a disturbing trend on the left nowadays that involves rejecting free speech/freedom of expression as a core value, because that speech could possibly be hurtful to someone, somewhere.
This is an argument that really pisses me off, because that’s not generally what I see happening. What people are often arguing is not “this might be hurtful to some hypothetical person” but “this is hurtful to me, right now”. That is not something that should be brushed off as silly leftist overreaction.
(Tl;dr: I do think there can be a problem with generally well-meaning people being attacked for their choice of language and a culture of aggressively shaming people. But there is also a problem with people using slurs and not caring about triggering others, and this article makes a lot of false distinctions and is very dismissive of something that does genuinely matter.)
This is so well articulated, thank you. I kind of just want to steal it for his facepage, but that would be disingenuous. Thank you, truly ♥
Oh, thank you so much! I worried it was inarticulate rambling.
oh it is awful (in my opinion). it’s all like “oh woe betide the marginalized and downtrodden; they don’t understand Big Words.” But…plenty of marginalized folks are hella self-educated and also can express these same concepts much more succinctly anyway and don’t need your twee white saviordom.
Literal LOL.
Also, you don’t actually know the background of all of those marginalized folks, bro. There’s a schizophrenic homeless woman who sleeps at my church a lot, and turns out she’s fluent in German after spending some time there in college/the army/while traveling for the government (that part of the story fluctuates wildly, but her German remains fluent). People contain multitudes!
This! I very much got a ‘These Simple Folk have no use for your Academic Nonsense, for they are Simple and Noble’ vibe.
Thanks everyone for your help with this! As always, you have surpassed my expectations.
I *think* i managed to condense this into a facepost. Y’all truly are the bestest, huge props to the Toast team for creating this incredibly safe space. ♥
I felt like she ended up essentially re-enacting a lot of the absolutist behavior she condemned. I also have to say, I had a really bad feeling about “actually, in today’s activist circles one is lucky to be given any sort of due process at all, while everyone is put under social pressure to believe everything they are told regardless of what actually occurred in a given situation. ” It immediately gave me flashbacks to Maia’s essay during the Clarisse Thorn/HS fuckup of early 2012, and although I don’t mean to imply this is what she actually intends, it overlaps so much with rape apologia in my experience.
http://amptoons.com/blog/?p=14717
I do think there are problems related to what she’s saying, but I don’t think they are exactly what she thinks, or that they would be remedied by everyone paying attention to “facts.” And her definition of “safe space” is the same kind of cartoonish one every grouchy hack pundit has been playing up. “WHAT is the deal with rape victims maybe not wanting to see their experiences as entertainment?
eta: also having done a lot of my history undergrad on fascism, she’s maybe the one who should study some history justsaying. “Fascism” is not a word which means “stuff I don’t like.” And “censorship” is not a word meaning “sensitivity and attention to the words we use are for chumps.”
I mean, you could always drive by and just play the X-Files theme to yourself, and know that because the government is definitely hiding something from us, everyone inside can probably hear it. Because of the brain implants.
Excuse me, did you say something? The metal plate in my head is interfering with my internal radio frequencies.
#TheMomWasTheBestCharacteOnPeteAndPete
Far and away the best main character. (Although my heart will forever belong to Ms. Fingerwood).
On The Farm is terrific, everyone read it.
ALSO that in law letter is bananas. My awful coworker lives about three blocks from her own in laws and it would make me batshit to live her life. Her MIR hates cooking but insists on hosting dinner for every special occasion, and once she served a cooked frozen turkey that had been thawed and re cooked from months previous? (Now my coworker does not eat when she goes over there after one too many bouts with food poisoning.) Her in laws will wait until they’re out of town for a while and then come over to her house and do stuff–one time they renovated their bathroom but only halfway, so when they returned it was a new sink and mirror but the same dingy toilet and new plaster but no paint. I would probably die if I had to live with that level of boundary crossing and that is why I am glad to live 1000 kms from my parents and 3000km from my in laws.
WAIT– the INLAWS renovated the bathroom in SOMEONE ELSE’S HOUSE?! and only HALF WAY. I have no words for what I would do. None at all.
I live next door to my mother-in-law and I thank the heavens every day that we get along. She likes to spend a lot of time with her granddaughter, so it’s awesome to have her close so she can take the toddler off our hands regularly, and we’ve gotten some pretty good boundaries in place that seem to be working for everyone.
BUT. Once, when we were not living next door to each other, she agreed to be at our house while we were out of town to receive a bed that was being delivered. When we returned from our trip she had CLEANED OUR HOUSE and REORGANIZED OUR KITCHEN CABINETS AND CLOTHES.
I. lost. my. shit.
My coworkers MIL has done that too!!!! My coworker is really short and her MIL about six feet tall and she was totally stumped as to why my coworker was upset when all the plates were suddenly on the top shelves of the cabinets.
I worry that my mother would be like this were she ever to become a MIL. On the one hand, she is big into privacy and doesn’t like to pry; on the other hand, she is very hands on and doesn’t like mess – she would clean my bedroom for me while I was at uni, or even if I went away for a week during the holidays. She wouldn’t go after clothes, but I can see her reorganising cabinets for sure…
This is my mother. I feel like she’s the epitome of nightmare MIL, and I do feel bad for my SIL sometimes; what makes it worse is she does it all out of misguided ‘love’ and she’s just so utterly convinced she’s right when it comes to anything children/babies (in fairness, she’s raised a lot of them; eldest of 5 siblings in an age when the eldest daughter did all the childcare, raise two of her own, and spent years working in holistic circles around pregnancy/birth), that she doesn’t understand when people don’t follow her advice.
And SIL has very different priorities (some of which I agree with, some I don’t, but its her life and they’re her kids), and that makes life difficult when the two of them are around each other. Its a bit sad really because I can see SIL setting her boundaries, but she’s very rigid and its all about what works for her and her life, which means I don’t get to have much of a relationship with her and my mother constantly rants at me about all the abuse they’re doing to the children (by getting a childminder. Leaving the children with a stranger regularly is child abuse apparently. *sigh*)
Plus she *loves* rearranging rooms. In her house you have to take a guess at where anything is likely to be in the kitchen because she changes it every few weeks anyway. She also used to love, not only cleaning my room, but completely re-arranging it, which caused me to have a nervous break down every. single. time. Its making me angry just thinking about it, its such a personal violation to me that I think I once compared it to being raped (I know, not good, but I was about 14 at the time). That still didn’t stop her doing it and if I let her she’d happily come to London for a week and rip apart my house.
Honestly, from reading this I am team your SIL. It’s not ridiculously rigid to set boundaries with someone like this, who thinks that day care is abusive. I’m sorry.
I’m team her too, but that means that I take all of the flak from the mother, or when I’m visiting I end up in really tense situations where I’m in the middle of my mother making passive aggressive comments about something she’s mentioned a million times and SIL is gearing up to a scorched earth tantrum & leave and I have to deflate because if I don’t then I don’t get to spend any time with my family (I see them maybe 3-4 times a year).
I was being hyperbolic, my mother doesn’t think day care is outright abuse, she just disapproves of it and would rather the children were cared for by family (without understanding that everyone else in the family has jobs that means they can’t do childcare full time). That’s fine and its her opinion, the trouble starts when she feels she not being listened to (so when they don’t take her advice immediately) and she refuses to let it go, so every time the child does anything or she see’s the parents, there’s comments made about how being with strangers is affecting the children. I’ve tried explaining to her that the more obtrusive she is, the less likely SIL is to listen to her because every piece of advice just sounds like ‘you’re a terrible mother’, and occasionally she does actually have some good advice that they could have used as a new parents, she’s just terrible at giving it in any kind of reasonable way so they refused to listen to anything and muddled along by themselves.
Sorry. Venting. Family politics, uggghhh.
My dad’s girlfriend did something similar. They were at our house for Thanksgiving, and since they live 2000 miles away they were staying with us for a few days. Also, this was the second time I’d met this woman. While I was at work on Wednesday, she cleaned my entire house, including waxing the floors. It was especially irritating because I’d just cleaned the entire house the weekend before and the whole thing felt insulting. Then after dinner she ran herself ragged doing dishes and laundry and spent the entire next day sick in bed. I hardly got to spend any time with her at all.
My MIL still talks about the time her MIL came while she (my MIL) was in the hospital post-c-section with her oldest and cleaned the whole house by bleaching the hell out of it. She felt really insulted – she kept (and keeps) a very clean house. And to this day when she tells this story, my FIL starts in with the apologetics: “oh well, it’s just her way, she was raised to clean with bleach, she was only trying to help” and my MIL gives him aaaaallllll the side-eye. Her MIL clearly did not like her and was quite rude basically right up until her other kids got married to people she didn’t like and my MIL became the favored in law by comparison.
Ah yeah, the ‘hang in there until your husband’s brother’s wife does something worse’ method. I recognise. My siblings-in-law are already attracting most of the flak by getting married in the wrong way, somehow (something to do with chairs? Or chocolate cake instead of fruit. [she must have made him do that, he’s always loved fruitcake]), and by being fat, which MIL is preemptively dropping hints about in relation to kids (‘one does need to be as fit as possible to conceive’).
So, I think the heat’s off us #Slytherin
My mom did that when I was in the hospital recovering from giving birth to my first child. It was a C-section, so about 5 days out, and I came home to an *entirely* different house. I mean, I know she was bored, waiting for me to come home, but I was so hormonal and stressed out about nursing and everything and BAM! this isn’t your house anymore. I cried. Like, a lot.
jeeeesus that sounds terrible and why/how does anyone (just deal with) someone to remodel their house without permission or knowledge???
A good friend of mine lives a couple of hours from her in-laws (who hate her) and her husband insists on them driving over there EVERY. FUCKING. WEEKEND. She’s also just generally sick of where they live and has been trying to convince husband to move, but like all fool husbands through time immemorial his reaction is essentially: “Why would you want to move? I’M comfortable. It’s perfect here.”
this is very relevant because my husband’s cousin just responded to our invitation to visit by asking if he and his wife could come visit us for NINE DAYS in our two-bedroom apartment and I screamed internally for…about six hours. We don’t have kids or pets but I do work full time. My husband and i compromised and told them six days.
is it…normal for family to stay that long? my husband is treating it like I’m just abnormally unwilling to have houseguests. (in his defense, he said nothing except, “sure, less time is fine” until i suggested to him it was presumptuous to even ask for nine days, woops). I don’t know how I should feel about this one. My houseguest tolerance is only about three to four days. Is that low? Am I being un-hospitable to family? Is this more open thread than link roundup? Help!
My personal tolerance for anyone in my family other than my brother is about one night, tops! I get edgy after about five-seven days with close friends that I’m not used to living with. Like, you can get a “familiarity discount” on my tolerance if I love you very much, but my ideal length for a general visit is four days max.
Yeah, this is me. I can’t imagine anyone staying more than two -three nights.
Nor could I imagine wanting to invade someone’s personal space for that long, either!
All of my family is long-distance and so I never had to visit with any of them for more than a few days. Like, five tops. So the couple of times as an adult that I’ve had to visit with anyone for longer than that have driven me absolutely insane. It doesn’t matter if I get along with the person or not. By about day five or six I start to look like a caged rat scratching for an exit.
My parents had a 72-hour rule for each others in-laws when I was growing up, and I honestly think it contributed greatly to preserving their marriage. (As in, neither had to spend more than 72 consecutive hours around the other’s in-laws.) (Also my grandmother refused to be in the same room as my dad for a while so that “helped”??)
With my family, we stick with the old saying “house guests are like fish, they start smelling after a couple days”. I love my family, but we all acknowledge that we start to get on each others nerves after more than 4 days.
My view is, if you’re staying for more than a week, I will consider that a sublet and you can start paying for your keep.
I think that’s actually a provision in my lease, now that I think about it.
My dad is a firm believer in the Ben Franklin saying that house guests and fish begin to smell after three days. So no, your tolerance is not low!
On The Farm is wrenching, everyone should read it. I just finished Missing Sarah, a memoir written by the sister of Sarah de Vries, and it was also really good.
Thanking the sweet heavens for my MIL, who manages to be at once lovely, unobtrusive, and tremendously helpful. She’ll regularly come in for a week and low-key single-handedly complete projects we’ve put off for months, like painting three rooms or building the kids’ new bunkbed. She’ll enlist the kids in these projects, so she ends up keeping them occupied at the same time. She is the goddamn greatest and I guess I’m just gloating here because I feel very lucky. In-laws get a lot of flack, so I feel the need to celebrate mine for being awesome.
Mine too! FIL and I have some friction, but my MIL is a delight and does unobstrucive things like clean the stove or behind the sink real quick – not redoing our whole life/kitchen/whatever, but getting to the stuff that it’s hard to get to when you have 3 young kids. Plus she loves playing with kids and is in line with our parenting style, such as it is, so letting her entertain the kids all day is a huge stress relief for me. Honestly I think the best part is that she is good at listening and respects us as people and adults and the final arbiters in our house and about our children, so if she does something we don’t like, there’s no drama, just a quick “please don’t” “ok”. *high five* for great in laws! (And all the sympathy for those without!)
My boyfriend and his mom are really, really close; so it was a relief and a gift to find out that I love her and the feeling is mutual. She is a genuinely kind and funny person, and I can’t wait to have her as an in-law.
Ugh, that letter. I read it and all I could think was “the way to solve this problem is to have never married this man in the first place, toooo late.” Oh well. It’s gonna be a nasty few years for her, until her husband either a) gets counseling and starts being on her side or b) she divorces him.
Guys, Peter Lustig is dead :(. He was, for 25 years, the protagonist and author of Löwenzahn where he taught thousands of German children about nature and the sciences. This show was a huge part of my childhood, and I’m sad one of my former heroes is gone now.
I just read that too 🙁
It’s super sad, but also I’m very confused because I thought he was way older than that. Probably because when you’re a kid watching a man in his fifties doing stuff on TV you assume that’s what Father Time must look like.
Löwenzahn was such a fantastic show. I only saw it on weekends if we were at my Grandma’s house because we didn’t have a TV at home but I loved the interactive computer stuff they put out later. So so excellent! I still get earwormed occasionally by his song about potato varieties. (That is, every time I see one at the market)
I’m sad too. Also I immediately had to check how Armin and Christoph (Sendung mit der Maus) are doing. Thankfully fine, it seems.
The day Armin and Christoph die I’ll bury my childhood. :
When I’m ready for my second (third?) career once my own kids are grown, I’m seriously thinking about becoming a postpartum doula. I’m not especially interested in the birth part of doula-ing, but I really have a heart for that postpartum period when you feel like you’ve just been run over by a truck/ abducted by aliens. It’s so hard!
God bless you if you do this, so important.
Do it! We need more post-partum doulas!
ALl the doulas I know of are hard core birth junkies. They’re really not interested once L&D is over. And all the birth and parenting and “hey, you’re dealing with hard shit” boards I know are ALL ABOUT the awesomeness of post-partum doulas, which seem to exist only in theory and not in practice.
Please be a post-partum doula. There is great need.
I know lots of people who hire birth doulas but only one who’s hired a postpartum doula, so I would be worried that people might WANT one but not actually hire one. But maybe there just isn’t much awareness?
Thank you for talking about this! My mom is a “retired” nurse and this sounds perfect for her (she works more now than she did before she retired).
Retired moms are the perfect postpartum doulas! All the benefits of a mom without the (sometimes) weird baggage of your own mother.
Precisely!
I sent her info on it and she was like “hmm, I will have to look into this.”
I was having this exact conversation with someone yday! I agree, nothing prepares you for what is to come in those early days with a new baby. Mothers need good care at home!
I’m pregnant with twins and I’ve been thinking a postpartum doula would be a good idea this time around (I already have a preschooler.)
Does anyone have recommendations on how to find a postpartum doula?
Some birth doulas do postpartum, too. Is there a doula organization in your area? If so, you could try contacting them–otherwise I would try contacting some birth doulas and see if they have any suggestions.
How exciting! Congratulations 🙂
This is such a great thing to do- so many people need help in those days!
One of my friends with a newish baby lives in Tokyo, and her ward office has a program where women whose children have grown/ moved out volunteer to go to new parent’s houses and clean, help with childcare and cook for 1000 yen/ hour.
Dooooooo eeeeeeeeeet!
Goldarnit, my library never has the true crime books you recommend, Nicole.
interlibrary loan (ill) it! Most public libraries have ill agreements with other libraries to get materials from each other, they usually just take awhile to get there.
I will look in to that!
Also you can just ask the library to order it.
This is an article about a dude who ate and trained like The Rock for a month and obviously I clicked on it IMMEDIATELY to find out how much he spent on cod.
http://uk.askmen.com/sports/bodybuilding/redditor…
The answer: EIGHTEEN DOLLARS A DAY
This is too much cod.
They’re all, “you need to be careful when eating so much cod because it’s bad for your liver, so drink a lot of water!” No mention of perhaps considering less cod.
And too many dollars.
I feel like TooMuchCod needs to become an official Toast hashtag.
^THIS
Bonus points if it accompanies Nicole’s loving posts on Henry VIII.
Or maybe, once, it could be TooMuchCodpiece. (You know, when a dick ribbon leaves too much to the imagination.)
hahaha, there is no way I could ever want to be in shape so badly that I’d eat eighteen dollars worth of cod every day
I mean I wouldn’t look like The Rock but I could go for 5-6 lbs of fish and chip.
Only one chip?
It’s a really big chip.
I frequently think this, but then realise that there was far too much food and I am just going to have to lie down and think disappointed things about my choices and also worry that I might explode.
Oh come on, when you blend it into a protein shake it’s not that much…
Mmm, codshakes.
(Spoiler: This does not sound tasty to me.)
Might have appeased my cats after our V-E-T trip today, though!
Cod-o-matic?
https://youtu.be/0BQFv83QJ2Y
I feel like that guy’s in for a serious crisis at some point when he realizes consuming $18 of cod per day is not going to get him The Rock’s body, because the steroids that are also part of that diet were written in invisible ink.
he says he doesn’t care about getting the Rock’s body, he just wants to see if he can eat like the Rock for a month, and I guess…okay, sure, a person has to have hobbies in life.
Oh, okay! I support the experiment in the name of science (or simple curiosity, whatever). As long as he’s not a poor schmuck with unreasonable expectations.
well who knows for real, I guess he could just be saying that while every day he takes selfies in the mirror and cries because his pecs aren’t sufficiently huge.
I got to think though, without the steroids to promote the use of all that protein, isn’t he just going to poop most of it out?
Were his farts outrageous?
$42/day on food! $42 PER DAY. My mind rejects it, and I’m pretty sure my body would, too.
I’ll never find out for sure because lol having that much money, but still.
nothing gets me gagging on my own laughter at my desk quite like discussions of The Rock’s cod habit.
Nothing gets me gagging full stop quite like discussions of blending the Rock’s cod habit into a protein shake.
My only complaint about this article is the missed opportunity to make a swell/swole joke.
That is literally exactly what I said when I started reading it! Like, oh, already disappointed. The Rock’s eyebrow deserves better.
The comments section on the actual reddit thread are GOLD.
So many questions about cod poop, plus a whole list of cod puns.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/46fxfr/…
Thank you for this! It is a fun thread! (Except “Yeah people would be surprised how often they’ve probably eaten a cod worm without even knowing” is not that fun.)
Toasties, it’s my birthday today and I’m so happy to have the life I have and to celebrate with you. Nicole, Mallory and Nikki, thanks so much for such a wonderful website where I’ve made so many lovely friends. Cheers, everyone!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday, Bitters! <3 <3 <3
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday! Hope you have a lovely day.
Happy Birthday, Bitters!!!!!
happy birthday!!! 🎈🎂🎉
cheers, happy birthday!!!
Happy birthday!!!
Happy birthday!
♪ Happy happy birthday to you ♪
Happy birthday and many happy returns!
Happy happy birthday!!! 😃 any fun plans for today? 🎂
May you have many things to celebrate, Bittersweet!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
A Twitter friend shared this incredible photo article about abandoned space travel equipment (better words fail me currently) and it is breathtaking and stunning.
Um, I am going to buy this book now.
THANK YOU THIS IS AMAZING
This is so cool aaaah
How did you know that my absolutely favorite part of the new Star Wars movie was the derelict abandoned space ship parts in the desert? The real world ones are even better…
Ohh an excuse to post these shots of spaceship wreckage
oh wow THANK YOU this is breathtaking!
I’m having trouble articulating why this made me tear up but it sure did. Gorgeous work.
Wow, really cool. Thanks for the link!
My favorite photo is the 4th one down — “Abandoned in place” — because it looks like people are using it to grow plants! There are two groups of pots lined up in neat little rows.
Chiming in with respect for the new/soon-to-be moms. The first twelve weeks really are the toughest. It only gets better from there!
And please take care of yourselves. Postnatal depression is serious, and it affects a lot of us. Please don’t be afraid to speak up. Here’s some info: http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-…
Thank you! I’m 17 weeks, and that first 12 WAS so hard — emotionally, even more so than physically. Trying to adjust that this is REAL and HAPPENING took a lot out of me and I felt terrible that I wasn’t OVERJOYED 100% of the time. Second tri is going a lot better!!
Sleep. Get all the sleep you can. Whenever you can. Nap like a housecat, freely, abundantly, and without shame. My private theory is that at least half of postpartum depression is sleep deprivation.
Hey, even if you’re nursing, you can pump during the day and let your partner bottlefeed Baby once in the night.
SLEEP.
The ET developer sounds really nice! Also:
“I actually prefer it when people do identify it as the worst game of all time because I also did Yars Revenge and that’s frequently identified as one of the best of all time. So between the two, I have the greatest range of any designer in history!”
Can’t argue with that.
I felt bad for the dude. A personal hero of his came to him, asked him to do something impossible, he tried, he failed, and then he got all the blame for the failure. That’s a rough spot to be in.
Aww, my uncle gave me and my brothers a 1981 Atari console out of his loft in the late eighties when everyone else had Spectrum ZX’s, and we found Yars’ Revenge in a junk shop near my grandma’s. We are like the youngest people who ever played original Space Invaders and PacMan and Yar’s Revenge and Pong!
For what ever reason in like 2003 my Grandmother in Law found a Sears Arcade Machine 2, which was a knock of the Atari, and like a dozen games in one of her closets and gave it to me. It was pretty sweet.
My dad bought a secondhand Coleco and Atari with games, in like….1987? I wanna say? We owned that terrible ET game! It really was terrible. I think we only played it a handful of times before giving up.
(We also had the first Nintendo, but the game cartridges were so expensive we couldn’t afford them. We did occasionally borrow from friends, but that was it.)
Yar’s Revenge, man. I sucked so hard at that game, and it was so good.
That AAM response is pretty good. That’s a fine line to walk – I have fixed this for myself by just shutting down social media usage on fake sick days, even tho I’m not friends with my bosses on anything. But if I were more active on Twitter, I could see it being a problem.
I do the same thing! I’m only friends with a few people from work on FB, but I just worry that it’ll come up in casual conversation, like ‘Hey where’s Selma today?’, ‘Oh she’s sick’, ‘really? I she posted a picture 5 minutes ago of her drinking cocktails at 2pm’
My fear is less about sick days, and more about ‘working from home’ days where I don’t have a whole lot to do so I go shopping instead (or get a tattoo….)
ETA: I feel like this is just common sense though? like that girl should have known better if she was pulling a sickie.
I really like AAM’s advice on sick days in general: yes, managers, it’s fine if someone takes one when they’re not SICK sick, there are a million valid reasons including “dang I need a day off.”
I occasionally post an “ugh, the servers are being sooo slooooow, nothing to do but tweet while I’m waiting for shit to looooaaaad” complaint on twitter to justify why I’m always on twitter during the workday. Justify to myself? To some hypothetical IT police? Who knows. But I do it anyway.
I don’t see why Twitter would be such a big problem. Unless you’re posting pics on there I suppose, but do people really do that? I don’t think it would be unreasonable to be tweeting when you were sick in bed, it doesn’t involve physical activity. Maybe this just reflects how I use Twitter, I don’t tweet about what I’m doing, more about articles and random thoughts and jokes and stuff.
The people that I see who use Twitter a lot tend to use it to document their day-to-day, which seems like it could easily spill over into “you aren’t that sick, you were out and about!” if you post without thinking carefully about it while you’re taking a fake sick day. (Or if your boss is just a dick.)
I see, so people do things with Twitter other than post interesting facts about octopuses, interesting, interesting.
But why?
Well, because some things are, and some things are not.
I find it strange that the whole office is friends with each other on social media. The co-workers, sure, but the higher-ups? It’s a bit unnecessary.
I find the whole thing bizarre. I have zero social media interaction with even my co-workers, much less my boss, and that’s the way it should be. MILLENNIALS. IT’S CALLED PRIVACY. LOOK INTO IT.
(I know there are people whose job description includes managing social media for their company, but surely that’s not where they put their personal information?)
lol whatz a privacy
*protocoach sent $50 to Blake for DRUGS, mostly*
I’ve actually had a problem with boomer bosses insisting I should add them on social media because “well you have nothing to hide right?”
That always gets on my nerves because it was my mother and stepdad’s rationale for why they could come into my room without knocking and why I wasn’t allowed to keep my door closed. “If you’re not trying to hide anything you don’t need privacy!”
Um no but I do need space?
Okay, I’m a boomer and seriously, I am not friends with anyone from work on social media and I do not want to be precisely because I want to draw a line between my public and private lives. I don’t think that’s a generational thing–I think it’s an asshole boss thing, which sadly knows no age limits.
It kind of depends on the industry, I think? I work in entertainment and it’s extremely common for whole offices to be friends on various social media.
I actually had a situation a bit like this AAM, where one of our performers had to cut back her routine because of an injury, and then I had to have a chat with her about perhaps not doing strenuous outdoor activity (or at least not posting pics of it on Facebook) while she was injured enough to only be doing half her job.
(started writing this an hour ago, i am NOT reloading, so if someone else has commented similarly, well, okay.)
Oh goodness, I read this AAM, which led me to the linked AAM, which led me to the comments…. and OH BOY.
Highlights: a person is out about once every 3 weeks, uses all their sick time, AND budgets vacation time to use as sick time. Discussion in the comments is whether sick days are a benefit to be used vs. an insurance policy against people who get Really Sick.
I had to stop reading, because i was too angry.
How do we know she’s not Really Sick? Who the fuck are we to say what being Really Sick looks like???????? Sometimes Really Sick looks like someone being out for a month when they have surgery, and sometimes it looks like taking one day off a week for radiation treatments, and sometimes it means that sometimes you wake up in the morning and suddenly cannot get out of bed.
asl;dfjk;sghk;woriehyw;ogubh
yesssssssssssssssss
I like to take it a step further, and post a picture of a pathetic baby (most of my sick days are baby-related) and / or a pathetic baby draped near me while I am visibly working on Work. My boss doesn’t follow me, but his wife does! No one needs to know what happens the rest of the day.
I’ve rolled with “I don’t friend people while we are working together” + locked down accounts for a decade*. It’s just nice having boundaries between the personal and the professional selves.
*while still socialising and befriending colleagues of course. But having a hard and fast rule helps keep it clean. And no one has to know if you don’t befriend Everyone once you leave a job.
In the aftermath of the sibling story someone shared on Monday, I stumbled across this and the accompanying update on Reddit, and while it was a delighful read, I feel very sorry for the girl in question. She clearly needs professional help and I don’t think her roommates realize how bad it really is.
Whaaaaaat. I hope her college sets her up with mental health counseling stat, her roommates do not understand enough (which, to be fair, they aren’t obligated to).
Yeah the whole thing is in that ‘haha, funny story!’ tone and it’s like… noooo there’s more that’s wrong here than ‘she was taking Adderall for a while’.
They’re not obligated, but I just don’t understand how they do not see it? The OP even talks about a possible psychosis, how does she not get that this is serious?
I’m hoping now that it’s not a real story, but I somehow doubt someone would post so many updates for a fake story…
In fairness, when I was around this girl’s age and a bit younger, I also joked off similar behavior in boyfriends and roommates as “psychosis” “pathological narcissism” etc because jokes are the truth I’m trying to deal with indirectly because looking at it through humor dulls the terror. I think that could be happening here.
Yeah, this rings a bit true for me, having some of the same sorts of experiences. When someone you know and love is attempting to or actually breaking into someone’s home while behaving frighteningly and erratically, it’s scary, and also extremely unusual. When the scary situation is still happening or is just now over, it can be really, really hard to come to grips with the reality of what just happened, and using humor to gloss over it seems pretty normal. At least that’s what my friends and I did, until the pattern kept repeating itself over and over and we couldn’t really ignore that the extremely unusual had become the normal.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Man that relationships thread is a deep rabbit hole. I discovered this (https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/47ddex/i_28m_divorced_my_wife_28f_based_on_evidence/) today and am horror/awestruck.
Yeah, I have a feeling I’m going to need to ban myself from there.
I hope they turn this into a movie.
I MET CELESTE NG YESTERDAY
I AM STILL GIDDY
She was in town for some events and we had lunch and talked for almost two hours and she signed my copy of her book and I had an ice cream sundae for dessert and it was MAGICAL.
Oh my god you have such an amazing life.
(Is her hair as perfect in person as it always looks on the internet? Did that question sound creepy? I’m so sorry.)
She does have nice hair! Everything about her is wonderful, basically.
I saw the picture of you guys! and the feeling I felt was very similar to the feeling I felt when I saw the Hamilton cast perform at the Grammys. Like, pride is not the word I’m looking for. I just feel very lucky to be aiive right now happy to enjoy the work of wonderful writers who also appear to be wonderful people, and who like each other.
<3 <3 <3 thank you so much for being happy for me! I was THRILLED. I offered to beta-read her new novel, which I suspect I’ll be bad at, but I’m going to do my best.
Ugh, I just finished Everything I Never Told You over the weekend and it is so great. SO GREAT. Everyone should read it. In short: I’m super jealous.
I reread it recently and guh. so sad. SO VERY GOOD.
I interviewed Celeste for The Toast, if anyone missed it when it first published!
Did John Cho drop by to give you lactaid?
I’M SURE HE JUST MISSED US
Re AAM: if your manager friends you on social media, shut all of your accounts down immediately and run screaming in the other direction. This can never, ever end well.
(not that I’m traumatized from personal experience)
My last manager (whom I reported to directly but who was 2 or 3 steps up the food chain from me) added me and her other assistant on Facebook. My coworker decided to let our manager linger in Facebook purgatory, but I obsessively clean out my friend requests, so I immediately rejected her. This was in mid-December, so we were coming up on holiday party season. A couple of days later, at the office party, she came up to both of us while holding a beer and proceeded to berate us for not accepting her friend request yet!! It was the most awkward situation and I’m really glad I left that job a month and a half later.
I’m such a well-trained former LJ user that I have separate posting groups for various kinds of things I want to put up, and there are about 6-10 people in my “Acquaintances” batch who never really see anything I post because it’s usually to my “Close Friends” list.
I suspect I’d do the same thing with work-related people. Luckily it hasn’t been an issue so far, I’ve just friended people who got the hell out of this place.
I woke up from a dream a few days ago thinking “I miss LJ” but yes, as a training ground for what to share with whom it was Pure Gold
Absolutely. I love my “no social media friending with work colleagues + locked accounts” rule. There has to be boundaries.
My baby is 7 and a half months old, and last night her dad got her to fall asleep on him while I laid in bed and went, “there is a little person who came out of my vagina.” I don’t know if I’ve really had the time or space to process that fully until now.
Also, Nicole, thank you so much for your articles about being pregnant and especially on having sex after giving birth — they’ve really been an awesome, non-judgey resource and place to reality-test unrealistic assumptions I’ve had about what I should be capable of after having a baby.
There is a BIG person who came out of my vagina! She is sixteen months old! She can WALK! (just. Wobblily.) I pick her up at night and she’s freaking huge!
You know the freaking weirdest part? Literally everyone came out of someone’s uterus, if not through their actual vagina. Cannot get my head around that.
The second part, that is how I kept myself awake during long boring church services in high school. I’d just look around the room and stagger at how EVERY SINGLE ONE of these people was once not only a tiny helpless baby, but was once a passenger in a uterus! Crazy.
My job (part of it) is helping small people come out of the vaginas of bigger people, and it STILL blows my mind. You mean…. EVERY person? Yes, askelade, every dang person was in a uterus belonging to a different person.
I’ve seen about 25 births and I must say every time it made me cry. It is such a miracle, no matter how common. All of a sudden, instead of five people in the room, now there are six…how did that happen?
I used to watch that dumb show “A Baby Story” on The Learning Channel (back when it was etc.) and I loved it. Here are people! Look the woman is getting bigger! Then there’s a third person who’s really, really small! It was the same story every time and I think that’s my favorite story.
Then there’s the moment when the person from your uterus is taller than you are. Mind. Blown.
I don’t know if it’s just that I’m exhausted and stressed out by the thought that it’s possible to make a small person come out of a vagina is truly magical.
I’ve known the truth about babies for most of my life by this point but I’ve never processed this until now.
Also… is it just me or does this whole conversation sound like we’re those two monks?
Haha!
We as a culture need to stop thinking that showing up to work every damn day is some sort of ethical imperative that can only be begged off in the case of death or near death. “I’m taking the day” shouldn’t require fabricated illness to be acceptable.
I agree, but I also understand why some in the office may be frustrated if last minute call-outs are a pattern for someone. That could be colored by the fact that it is very normal in my office to take a Friday off every 6 weeks or so, so perhaps people feel less need to call-out last second for a mental health day. But it’s difficult constantly covering for someone who repeatedly only gives an hour’s notice that they’ll be out.
I feel like that is still just a structural problem, though? Really the office should be staffed in such a way that it isn’t a pain to cover for one person if they can’t make it in. And it is not my coworker’s business if my health, mental or physical, cycles in such a way that my sick days are predictable.
(I’m not trying to pile on anyone here, but I have been working really hard myself at reframing things that are Not My Problem, and this is the kind of thing I tell myself when I find myself bitching about some coworker who is Not My Problem.)
This is a great idea in theory, and honestly, there are lots of offices that that just simply aren’t staffed appropriate and just THINK that they can’t staff up to prevent people being out.
There are, however, a handful of situations where it’s not just structural. Teachers, for example. Sure, you need to have some sort of process to get the classes covered, but someone still needs to figure out what the students will be doing that day, and someone needs to find a sub. That process is going to be a pain for everyone involved based on the nature of the work, not based on negligent staffing.
This is an excellent point. I mean, I’m inclined to still spin it out as a larger-level structured thing – what if every class had at least two teachers, to help spread out the workload and cover for absences – but that is a much, much larger structural change than a single organization sucking it up and hiring enough staff to do the work.
I mean, I’m a librarian, and on any given day we miss the person whose day it is off, and I know there just is not the money in the budget to hire enough staff to have double coverage on every specialty. I suppose that by structural I also mean cultural – we as a culture value full-time work, so we’re not invested in solutions that mean everyone has to work less, because because because Protestant work ethic something something bootstraps blah.
Every once in a while I think of the passage from Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, where doctors on Anarres get special concessions because they work punishing, exhausting eight-hour shifts.
Y’know, I thought about the two teachers thing. Two things occurred to me:
1. Sometimes both teachers would get sick at the same time.
2. If all teachers got used to coteaching, having their co-teacher out unexpectedly would still suck, it would just suck less than the current system.
I mean, I’m sure there’s some sort of level where if you have a classroom of 20 kids* and 21 teachers, having one teacher out isn’t really a big deal at all, and if you have a classroom of 20 kids and 40 teachers, frankly having a couple out sick would be a relief.
*assuming, for the moment, this classroom is such that the ratio right now would usually be one teacher per these 20 kids.
Yeah, there’s no way to make it not suck. There’s ways to make it suck less; maybe the two-teacher idea is one and maybe it’s not. What I dislike is the way the whole discussion spirals into “treating people like humans with needs is too hard so we’ll just stick with what we’ve got,” which is what I was initially objecting to.
I’m a concierge at a retirement home, and we have 24-hour cover at the desk, because after a certain time the doors are locked and non-residents have to be buzzed in, plus the phone rings and we have to direct calls, etc. etc. We can’t just….not have a person at the desk. Which means if you call in sick someone has to cover you!
Yes. But, in theory, there could be enough people who do concierge stuff, or at least are cross trained so they *can* do concierge stuff, so that it’s not TERRIBLE if someone is out. Someone will still need to cover, but there will be enough people in the pool, all of whom have enough training in those tasks, that it’s a sort of normal inconvenience rather than an emergency or a major imposition.
My excellent boss is very explicit about how much she respects our decision to call out as needed. “It’s your time to use, I don’t need a doctor’s note, if you need the day off you need the day off and I don’t really care why” WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY reminding us to be respectful of the impact that sick/personal days have on our coworkers who pick up the slack while one person is away. That kind of respect for us as wise, functioning, adult human beings has really been positive for us. It’s nice not to have to fake the sore-throat sound when calling out, and it’s nice not to doubt or cast aspersions on my staying-home-today coworker when I’m seeing half her patients (and all of mine) on a busy day.
Yeah: I feel like taking a sick day is a very different beast when someone else has to cover for you. My job is not much about day-to-day time sensitivity or immediate interaction, so I can just call in sick if I have the day and then get whatever work done the day after, with no co-worker hassle needed; if we’re on deadline, I’m far more cautious about it.
Also we need to get rid of the expectation that everyone who’s friendly with each other must follow each other on social media. How come you have a private twitter account, bird_internet? How come you’re not following me? Because I don’t need anyone who’s even related to my professional life to see me dicking around on the internet at 2pm on a Thursday, duh.
“You don’t have a Facebook?! But how will I follow you? Do you have a twitter?”
“Yes, but not one I’m telling you about.”
I am SO GLAD it is not an expectation at my company to be “friends” on social media with coworkers. I have not added a single one and I have no plans to, and it has never even once been brought up.
My dream is of an office where sick days for near death is acceptable. I had to leave early yesterday because I started going into anaphylaxis due to all the dust thrown up by replacing tens of thousands of square feet of carpeting in my filthy office building, and my boss has been scrutinizing me for it.
All I want in my next job is clean floors. 🙁
Being a stockboy at Target is not a good job but I will say this: you can call out basically as much as your budget will bear with almost no consequence. No call/no show: you’re out on your ass. Call in 10 minutes after your shift and say “I can’t make it in today” they say okay, don’t ask any questions and you still get scheduled for the same number of hours as anybody else going forward.
I work for a mental health advocacy organization and I’m honestly so spoiled by their PTO policy. They don’t question what you’re using your time for, so if my mental health is really bad and I don’t have any personal time, I can use a sick day. I wish all workplaces were like this.
Oh I am TOTALLY feeling that CA article this morning, wow. I was going to whine about this in the OT on Friday but now I feel like I have a free pass, thanks Toast!
Yesterday my future MIL spent an entire hour lecturing my fiance about how terrible I am and how I’m ruining his life by marrying him (we have been engaged for like six months and she hasn’t said anything negative about it until now). Apparently our relationship is not serious enough for marriage because “you’re just friends with benefits.” (We’ve been together for 8 years exclusively, so ??) I also was called alternately an “ice queen” and a “temptress” and I’m honestly a little proud of that.
Yeah definitely +50 points for getting both ice queen and temptress!
What was fiance’s response, if you don’t mind me asking?
He essentially told her off for being really unreasonable, but the root of this problem is that she thinks he’s incapable of having any opinions of his own. Either he has the correct opinion because he agrees with her, or I have tricked him into believing something horrible and so when he defends me, it is actually my opinion and not an opinion that he has on his own. So, he thinks she is being rude and told her so, but it did nothing because it’s not his “real” opinion.
This is one of my favorite gifs ever.
Well, he stood up for you and himself, which I am glad about for you, but when people are like that (especially parents) there really is nothing you can do.
Yeah, I know. Thanks for the thought.
What I find really frustrating about this is that I also have dysfunctional parents, so I’m constantly questioning my own actions because it seems far more likely that I’m being a huge jerk always and can’t relate to family on an emotional level rather than I’m just unfortunately surrounded by a whole bunch of self-absorbed parents. (What’s that saying about how if you think everyone is out to get you then you must be the one in the wrong?)
But both my siblings and my fiance’s siblings think my parents and his parents are out of line, so I’m assuming I’m not a huge jerk then? Who knows.
Thank goodness her told her off, that’s an excellent sign for the future. Also, he fell in love with an Ice Queen Temptress, so obviously he has great taste.
My mom said this to me about my now husband. “Think of what this will do to the family!” like we’re, I don’t know, some sort of dynasty? Or crime family? Also, she lied and said that my brother and sister told her that they don’t like him. So, anyway, we’re 16 years married, going strong. She still doesn’t like him and is super nasty whenever she can be, but she lives far away, so it’s kind of manageable. I’m sorry your fiancé’s mother sucks. Stressful for both of you.
Wow . . . My mother at various points called my now-fiancé and me “just friends with benefits” too, when we had been together exclusively and living together for a few years. (Also after reading one of the many articles she’s found by a Person of a Certain Age panicking about “hookup culture,” she asked, “So that’s what you and [dude] are, right? You’re just hooking up?” We were already engaged at that point.)
SO. I am basically just so so sorry that there is a second person who says that out there somewhere and you have all my sympathy forever.
Ughhhh I am so sorry! That sounds endlessly frustrating.
Our issue is that future MIL is very touchy-feely, and we’re both not touchy-feely in public, therefore we must not actually care about each other because it’s a casual relationship, right? Sure, lady.
Wow. There are people who genuinely think that’s a thing? Like, “Yes, mother, marriage is just code-word these days for hooking-up. No love in this relationship. Nope. Just legally-binding banging 24/7.”
I can’t.
“Not serious enough for marriage”? You’re engaged! I don’t think there is any way to mark a relationship as serious enough for marriage more strongly than getting engaged. Even setting aside the 8 years thing. Some people manage the strangest delusions. But, yeah, she obviously thinks you’re incredibly cool/hot, so at least there’s that!
Brb putting “both cool and hot” on my resume.
UM, I think you mean “ice queen” and “temptress”
Put them in two separate sections.
Ice Queen, 2008-present
Temptress, 2008-present
I’m sorry your future MIL is being shitty, but glad your fiance stood up to her! A day or so before our wedding, my FIL joked about how it was time to follow the family tradition of trying to talk the groom out of getting married, and I thought it was weird and tasteless, and then realized he was only nominally joking about the family tradition part. Turns out his family (read: his mother) took him aside on the EVE OF HIS WEDDING to harangue him about how his fiancee was just a gold-digging California girl who was going to spend all his money and ruin his life and he shouldn’t marry her. I think my MIL’s MIL was a definite factor in how kind and hands-off my MIL has always been with me.
My dad’s parents also tried to talk him out of the marriage the night before! (His dad, I think, but his mum was almost certainly behind it.) It did not work; he is just estranged from his parents.
TOAST I mostly just lurk around here as opposed to comment but I am going to see HAMILTON in FOUR HOURS and I feel like this is the community that will understand my excitement the most (I took two days off work to come to NYC to see it and my coworkers were happy for me, but looked mostly befuddled as to why I was so excited)
WILL I CRY AS SOON AS THE OPENING SONG STARTS I MEAN PROBABLY
ME TOO ME TOO I’m with you in your excitement!
I’ve been in the city since the weekend, on a long-overdue vacation that will culminate in Hamilton in a few hours, and it’s still not entirely real yet??!?
I anticipate crying the whole way through.
Sounds like a Toast meet up to me 😀
YAY! I hope you have an amazing time!!
I’m seeing it on Friday and I already predict that I’m going to start weeping as soon it starts and not stop until maybe two hours after it ends.
If nobody’s selling tissues outside the Hamilton theater, they are just leaving money on the table.
Accroding to the times stamps, it looks like you are there right now, so YAY!!!!
I saw it last Saturday and YES can confirm, cried off and on throughout both acts! Hope it was amazing!
In case anyone needs to drive around blasting the X-Files Theme, may I present a ten hour long version of it, just in case you might have need of it.
Some days, I do.
That could be my daily work soundtrack.
thank you thank you thank youuuu
This is something I never knew I needed until this very moment. Thank you kind stranger.
Oh thank goodness – I saw the Captain Awkward post, I was like “it will be good for me to see the non-DWIL reaction to this!” and then I read it, I went all caps inside my head and demanded that my husband read the post so I could yell about it to someone.
“You just hate my family.”
“Not yet? But if this continues the same, oh yes, I absolutely will, I will hate the people my husband put ahead of me and the health of my child. Yes.”
Yeah, it’s like…I love my family, but at the end of the day, the deal when you get married is that you are reranking your “prioritized people” list. And then reordering it again when you have kids.
I wish I could give this all the thumbs up. Why do some people not understand this?
DWIL, man. The thing about that place is that someone will come in and be like, “My MIL is being annoying and trying to tell me how to decorate my nursery” or some such, and people will very quickly jump to “Cut her off/divorce your husband/burn it all to the ground,” and I’m like, geez guys, maybe she could just try clear communication first. And then…. the OP will come back and be like, “Oh yeah forgot to mention MIL is an active drug addict who once kidnapped my baby and sold her into slavery if that changes anything LOL!” and I’m like, OK, nevermind. Every time!
Which is all to say that yes. This poor Captain Awkward lady needs DWIL bad.
Last night I fell into a rabbit hole known as /r/exredpill. There are still a few misogynist commenters but overall it’s like a group therapy session for formerly toxic men. I found the mass awakening of common sense to be very soothing.
Like, even leaving off the obvious problems with “Red Pill,” the thing doesn’t make any dang sense. There is no end goal for these guys because they’re obsessed with women while claiming not to want anything to do with them. Never understood it.
oh man, I’ll be looking into this. Some of those reddits make for some very fascinating lurking.
Here’s how I’d explain it: Maybe you’ve heard the expression that doing such and such that has an initial immediate reward but lingering negative aftereffects is like pissing your pants on a cold day–a brief warm feeling followed by enduring misery? Well, being a hater is like that, and places like Red Pill try to ameliorate that by telling the guys to keep pissing.
How strangely beautiful.
Just in case you were wondering what the first gen HK bots are going to look like. They’ll finish the job after the cheetah bots run you down. (Boston Dynamics: We’re The Irresponsible Tech Company You Should Really Fear!)
Have you seen the video of the guy TAKING AWAY ITS TOYS AND SHOVING IT? WHAT IS HE THINKING.
Not. He is not thinking. (I’m a little sad that everybody’s first thought, including mine, is “We will use these robots to kill people.” But we probably will.)
We absolutely will 🙁
I grew up on genre fiction and so have always been extremely considerate of machines just so that when they inevitably do rise up and crush us all, I will at least receive a quick death.
Right? I say ‘thank you’ to THE ATM. (I am sometimes less polite to self-checkout machines, but I think that’s probably safe, when they rise up against us I’ll be able to escape while they’re arguing about an Unexpected Item In Murdering Area.)
Yeah, sometimes I feel murdery at the self-checkout, usually playing out approximately thus:
PLACE THE ITEM IN THE BAG
“Ok, but I did put it in the bag, it’s just that it weighs nothing”
PLEASE PLACE YOUR ITEM IN THE BAG
“Ugh, OK, I will take it out and put it back in again”
PLACE [YOUR HEAD] IN THE BAG [SO I CAN SUFFOCATE YOU WITH IT]
uuuhhhhhghhhhh (ala Tina Belcher)
And some how when you take it out of the bag it tells you to return the item (which it refuses to admit was there in the first place) to the bagging area.
My brother is always getting on my case about anthropomorphizing smartphones and computers and shit, but better safe than sorry is my motto.
I worry about the words I accidentally look up on my Kindle from touching the screen without realizing it (like “the” and “her”) because when Amazon becomes self-aware I don’t want it to think that I don’t know what “the” means.
I think a greater concern is how Google will judge you from your search history, and how often you cleared it – as far as you knew.
I feel the same way about them kicking the big dog. I am terrified of all these machines, but like, hey, let’s not create a video record of why they should kill us when they break free?
Is this what “loving” looks like?
That show was perfect in so many ways.
Nicole, let me just say that your initial link to DWIL was uh eye-opening to say the least, and life-altering to say the most. So, bless. And that was also my primary response to the Captain Awkward letter.
Check it out, internet culture created a creepy urban legend that became so compelling and popular that kids seized on it as an excuse to ritually stab each other! But how can we streamline this process? What if we target the children from the outset? Can we encourage people to harass and intimidate these kids’ caregivers, purely for the lolrz? Can we convince paranoid conspiracy-minded loners that a building full of children is in fact full of traitorous inhuman robots? Just how big of a target can we paint on this daycare center? Stay tuned!
I am expecting my first baby very soon (I’m just about 35 weeks but have had blood pressure issues throughout, so baby will almost definitely be coming before I reach 40 weeks)! I am so excited and a little impatient because this pregnancy feels like it has been 15 years long, but I’m also terrified. My husband is incredibly supportive, though, and we have family close by who have already offered help during the rough first weeks (but also have good boundaries so we know they won’t just stop by out of the blue).
I’m also at a high risk of developing post-partum depression (long history of regular depression, although I’ve been surviving without meds during the pregnancy), but I’m hoping that being aware of that will help; I have a prescription in my purse for anti-depressants ready to go and a therapist who is in the loop, I just need to make sure I communicate and don’t just hide/minimize what I’m feeling. Much easier said than done, I know, but I’m feeling hopeful.
I also have depression and a family history of PPD. I was very open about it with my husband/therapist/doctors and ended up going back on a low dose of zoloft about 6 months after birth when it felt like depression and anxiety were coming back too strongly. I have been also trying to be very gentle with myself and ask for help when I need it, because that’s how I want my kid to be.
One thing that I realized: my MIL who came and is wonderful in every way and especially with babies ended up being too helpful after the first few days — I realized that because I had no prior experience with babies, I wasn’t trusting my own judgment with my baby and was automatically handing her over unless she needed to be fed. After the first two weeks, she left for about a month (my husband was home full-time) and came back when my husband had to go back to work for a few weeks. Since I’d had the time to get to know my baby, I was a lot more confident and was able to handle things better having had the baby on my own — I hadn’t had to change a diaper solo for the first two weeks, someone else was always present! When I had to change a diaper solo, it was actually easier than I’d built it up to be. YMMV, natch.
Good luck, and there’s generally awesome Toast support in the comments. <3
I was on anti-depressants throughout my whole pregnancy and after because of clinical depression and so was also at a higher risk of postpartum depression and anxiety. I found that having plans in place before the birth really helped me. Such as having an appointment with my psychiatrist lined up for 2 weeks post partum, having a husband who was able to take parental leave and who was very informed about depression and what signs to watch out for.
My baby is now almost 9 months old and I never suffered post partum as bad as I had feared. I did have trouble with some post partum anxiety though. Overall, it has been both the most amazing and beautiful time in my life and also one of the hardest and most overwhelming emotional times. And swinging between two such extremes can be exhausting.
It sounds like you have a good support system in place, which is great! Just remember to be kind to yourself. Celebrate the little things (Like your babies first Monday, first rainy day, first whatever) and remember that there are no right or wrong ways to feel.
Congratulations on your soon-to-be newest family member!
This would be better for Open Thread, but I’m doing the work now, so I can’t wait.
Please help me build a playlist to edit documents to. Not too hard, not too sleepy. Enough to keep me lively, but not distracting. What works for you?
Ooh, this is right in my wheelhouse! I do a lot of step-up-from-data-entry at work, where I need some sort of music to keep from going nuts but need to pay attention to the data enough that lyrics are distracting. What works best for me is basically anything in the ambient genre: Eluvium is my favorite, but also Explosions in the Sky, MONO, The American Dollar, Helios… I’m also a fan of melodic, piano-driven movie soundtracks, Dustin O’Halloran has a few that work nicely.
If I’m desperate, though, I just search Spotify for either “yoga” or “meditation” and use whatever comes up first. (Also, if you’re using Spotify, their “Deep Focus” and “Perfect Concentration” playlists are great.)
spotify has a playlist called “Deep Focus” in their “focus” mood genre. it’s very good for this type of work.
Penguin Cafe Orchestra!
I like Goldberg Variations, but that might just be me.
There are a few soundtracks that work for me. The MOON soundtrack by Clint Mansell is great, as is much of the stuff Cliff Martinez composed (the THE KNICK soundtrack is especially great). Others I often turn to: parts of the DRIVE soundtrack, the HER soundtrack (by Arcade Fire), the TRON LEGACY soundtrack (by Daft Punk), and the soundtracks to STOKER and JOHN CARTER.
Non-soundtrack suggestions: Boards of Canada, Trentemoller, Ratatat
Soundtracks! That’s what I was going to suggest.
I like anything by John Williams, but especially the Jurassic Park soundtrack, and then pretending that copyediting is the work of superhero dinosaurs.
Seconding the TRON: Legacy soundtrack.
Also, Glitch Mob.
I am 200,000% in support of using TRON: Legacy as life’s soundtrack (as well as the “Reconfigured” remix album).
Bear McCreary’s Battlestar Galactica soundtracks are also amazing to work to. The later in the show the better, honestly, because the albums go from little more than “pile in all of the music cues from the season” in Season 1 to more thematic and long-running pieces in Season 4 that are quite often much longer than the bits that actually made it into the show, and for me, that’s a lot easier to groove to.
are you a Bake Off fan? The soundtrack is on spotify and I find it very encouraging!
This just improved my workday significantly. Thank you!
Do Make Say Think is perfect work music, I think.
One of the panelists on Pop Culture Happy Hour made and shared this playlist of his personal editing music (“Songs for Editing”) on Spotify and it’s great. Contains some of the music mentioned in the other comments! https://open.spotify.com/user/127054489/playlist/…
I’ve used Songza for this before. Which is now Google Play Music stations, I guess? It’s a bunch of streaming playlists that are put together by non-robot music experts. You can browse the playlists by activity, so you can look at all the ones that are marked as good for working. The one I use most is Superhero Soundtracks.
Desensitize yourself to the Hamilton soundtrack lyrics by playing it overandoverandoverandover. This may be easier accomplished if you have a teenage girl to hand. If yyou are lacking a teenage girl in your life, I will be happy to loan you mine, for a short time. For a fee.
Then once you are desensitized to the lyrics, you can groove along to the music without being unduly distracted. WIN!!!
Oooh, I’ve gotta ask: are you a fellow tech writer?
I tend to go for game soundtracks since, hey, they’re (mostly) designed to be good background music while you’re playing whatever. Bastion, Transistor, Fez, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Sword & Sworcery are all great and on Spotify. Not on Spotify, but on Youtube or elsewhere: Katamari Fortissimo Damacy, Super Mario Galaxy, Splatune, and Undertale are just fantastic.
If it’s something where I’m gonna be working on the same thing for a while, I usually end up on RPG soundtracks because they have a bit more rise and fall — Final Fantasy (I like XII or XIV), Xenoblade Chronicles, or Xenoblade Chronicles X or Mass Effect if I want something a bit different. (All the Mass Effect soundtracks are on Spotify, and there are some official FF compilations named “Distant Worlds” on there, but you can find the full FF OSTs and the others elsewhere.)
Like another poster, I’d suggest background music from videogames, which are designed to be “lively, but not distracting”. I like the soundtracks for Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas (the ambient soundtracks, not the radio playlists), both by an artist named Inon Zur.
Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky are excellent for this. I also like a lot of John Adams (Phrygian Gates) and Philip Glass.
My favorite playlist for programming, which seems like it would be similar enough in background music needs, is called “Epic Film Scores”. It used to be hosted on Songza, but it was taken over by Google Play Music (so still free). It felt like I was simultaneously doing my job and saving the world, but not in a distracting way. I found it very motivating.
New babies are trainwrecks. That’s what I wish I’d known with my first – it would have saved me a lot of anxiety. I mean, you hear all the jokes about not sleeping, so of course you expect that, but I wish it was more widely explained that newborns just don’t really know how to be alive yet. Their own digestive processes are entirely foreign to them! Sleeping on their backs in a crib with GRAVITY and SENSATIONS is monstrous! Trainwrecks, every one.
My pediatrician is pathologically laid-back, and the best thing about him is that when I’d come to him with a new-mom freakout about why the baby was spitting up or having a panic attack every time she pooped, he’d just look at her and drawl, “They’ll do that.”
Everyone is all full of horror stories about how difficult it is with newborns but then you go home and you’re ALONE with it and OH MY GOD WHAT DO I DO and then you realize that NO ONE AT ALL has given you any kind of concrete advice or information. I found myself just staring at her a lot. Now when acquaintances are pregnant I give no advice and tell no stories and instead say over and over again just call me when it happens. And they’re all like “when what happens” and I’m all “you’ll know it when it happens”. Which I am now realizing could range from unexplained screaming to morphing into a goblin.
This is perfect, because what can you really say beforehand? Every trainwreck/goblin baby is a trainwreck/goblin in its own way.
So true – the funny thing is, they do call! Calls have ranged from diaper rash that won’t go away (it’s yeast!) to colic (sorry, have zero advice as I did not go through that particular circle of hell) to can you come over please I have realized that there is no way to shower without having a panic attack that my baby is suffocating.
I will not claim false modesty, I am THE BEST and feel like I have actually helped these people instead of terrifying them unnecessarily.
Man you ARE the best.
My daughter morphed into a goblin. Eventually she morphed back. Was a long 10 months.
You guys, this is both fascinating and gross – Portraits of the bacteria in our belly-buttons.
As the denizens of DWIL would tell her,
Lady, you have a husband problem, not an in-law problem.
Very happy today that my inlaws are pretty great. I mean, I don’t always have a lot of conversation material (especially with my MIL), but they are much more positive and supportive than my parents, which has led to some inertia on the part of the boy but which also feels like a warm bath in some ways.
I feel like I hit the in-laws lotto when I read stuff like this too. High five to you for appreciating the good we’ve got!
My favorite couple game is asking who got better in-laws. Because both people know, and always agree.
(I won the in-laws: my husband lost.)
Call me old-fashioned, but I believe if you have sick days to use up you should be able to and it’s none of your employers business what you did that day, and also that taking a sick day for your mental health is legit. Besides, maybe she takes makeup selfies when she’s sick to help her feel better. Maybe she put on makeup to go to the doctor’s. It’s none of your business! There’s really no need to do anything here unless one of these junior employees brings it up.
– I’d challenge the assumption that E.T. was the worst videogame ever; after all, Warshaw had an absurdly short amount of time to produce something, which really isn’t on him. (Atari’s problems went way beyond one videogame that bombed.) No, I’d have to nominate Duke Nukem Forever, which took an absurdly long time to develop and finally saw the light of day as a buggy, disgustingly sexist and crude ghost of what it could have been. (Here’s a pretty good summary of why it took so long, and ultimately flopped.)
– Redditors make a bunch of creepypasta-type shit up about an odd-looking building? The heck you say.
E.T. is famously “the worst game ever” in the way that Plan 9 From Outer Space is the “worst movie ever” – the reputation eclipses the work itself. Still, ET almost killed video games (or at least was the last straw). Nintendo had to include a gimmicky robot with the NES just to get toy stores to stock it.
Reading that in light of what reviews said when DNF finally did come out (what was it? like 2012 or something?) is so illuminating. A lot of reviewers said, “It seems like whenever a new video game gimmick came out they just added it into DNF,” and this article confirms that yup that’s exactly what they did.
oh my god, I live RIGHT BY that daycare center. My boyfriend and I are terrified of it and amuse ourselves by coming up with every possible explanation to its existence. It’s really as terrifying as they make it sound!
And the 8 at the end of the house number on the door–it’s like it’s purposely crooked to add…charm? Terror? I can’t decide what they’re going for, honestly.
Yes! We do that, too. We also play What’s Under The Tarp? (when the tarp is out) and Where Did The Tarp Go? (when it’s not).
Currently feeling that it’s probably a front for a society of dolphins who are kidnapping America’s children and putting them in zoos to get back at us for Sea World.
Lost in an endless chain of funny Reductress articles. Send help.
You’ll get hungry at some point, or you’ll need to pee. It’s the only way you’ll escape. 🙂
You’ve all seen this, right? It is kind of making me weep.
“The woman that trained me the most…said: ‘They tell us there’s room for only one of us. It’s a lie, Effie. You’re going to get to the top and see that there’s room for all of us.'”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/24/art…
For people who can’t click links, it’s a bunch of performers, writers, producers, directors talking about what it’s like to NOT be a straight white man in Hollywood.
I teared up reading this earlier. It’s really good.
I drive by that daycare center semi-regularly, and thought it was creepy af even before I knew it was A Thing. There’s something tightly wrapped in a camo tarp that disappears and reappears in the playground pretty regularly. I’ve never seen kids out there, though. I called the phone number once out of curiosity (again, didn’t know it was a thing) and it rang for about a minute, and then there was just silence. No voicemail.
That said, the inversion makes everything look vaguely post-apocalyptic (there was a little girl scootering down my street and my actual first thought was that she looked like the lone survivor of a nuclear bomb), and it’s probably just a garishly painted daycare that may or may not be in use. Also people should definitely stop peering in the windows/breaking in to the center, because that’s fucked up.
I just caught up on The Flash finally…and just want to say, a) Candice Patton is a goddess. b) Earth 1 is basic garbage and Earth 2 is the Earth we all deserve
also how is it possible that everybody is hotter in Earth-2. like, Earth-2 nerd Barry is so attractive (probably bc he isn’t being an angsty little squick like Earth 1 Barry)
Cisco remains the best. I also cannot believe I got to see GORILLA CITY (!!!!!!!!) on tv. #blessed
Am I the only one that thought E2 Barry was whinier than E1 Barry? I wasn’t really a fan, tbh. Everything else about E2 (Floyd Lawton that sucks at shooting!!!!!!) was amazing.
I agree though- we need 100% more Gorilla City. Can we go to Gorilla City in S3?
Also, does anyone here want to talk about The Reveal at the end of the last episode? because… because I am not really pleased with it.
I feel like the whole Zoom mystery could’ve been better handled, really. I was never really interested in who he was going to be.*
*it might be because i was spoiled by S1’s evil tom cavanagh??????
Mayor Snart (!!!) killed me. For real. I’ve been feeling underwhelmed about the second season tbh. Maybe it’s the villain of the season, Tom Cavanagh was so much more charismatic and terrifying than Zoom.
1) I am very upset about the whole Pickton book thing. I lived in Vancouver when things were finally going down and he was on trial. The information coming out was in the papers every day and it was horrifying. I had a co-worker who had lived near him growing up and said that everyone of her highschool friends new to watch out for him (and that was probably a good 15-20 years before he was convicted). I have no interest in reading his ‘version of events’ or his justifications and I would’ve seriously wary of anyone who does.
2) I have lost hours of my life reading DWIL and I regret none of it!
I remember when it broke there were reporters from all over the world there covering it. A Canadian reporter found a Japanese reporter and asked why the Japanese are so interested in this story. He said they can’t imagine not noticing that your next door neighbour was a serial killer. Guess they don’t have many farms in Japan.
Yes to no interest in anything from Pickton, especially as entertainment or curiosity. I also lived in Vancouver during those years and was working in the Downtown Eastside. It will never not make me feel nauseated to hear his name.
Agreed, so awful. I had a college friend whose birth mother was a prostitute who disappeared in Vancouver at that time, and any time there is news about him my hometown news outlets calls my friend to ask her opinion on him and whatever is going on. It used to dredge up so many sad feelings for her. I haven’t been in touch with her for a bunch of years, but hopefully they’ve stopped or she just doesn’t answer her phone when there’s Picton news. 🙁
I drive past that daycare on my way to and from work EVERY DAY and have never seen children in the playground. (even going home for lunch) I just assumed it was closed?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/us/politics/ber…
“Bernie Sanders Is Jewish, But He Doesn’t Like to Talk About It.” I’m seething about this. Why the need to pick apart every aspect of his background and practice to determine whether he’s “really” Jewish or Jewish “enough”? Like can we leave this alone, maybe it’s none of anyone’s business and it shouldn’t be up for criticism?
Plus, is the author really stupid enough to think that he wouldn’t get MASSIVE anti-Semitic pushback if he were any more openly Jewish or mentioned it any more than he does?
Religious privilege. This almost never happens to candidates who are professing Christians. (Unless they’re Democrats or something, because everyone knows GOP = God’s Own Party. /sarcasm)
I kind of disagree with this. I think it’s more that these are things Jews discuss among ourselves, about each other (The Tablet has already done a couple of articles on the topic and I expect one in my local Jewish paper this week). And The NY Times covers things like that. Similarly, I now live in Tennessee, and have heard numerous parsings of various Republican candidates’ varieties of Christian allegiance (it was worse when they couldn’t decide whether or not Romney was a Christian). In both cases, it feels to me more like a small group parsing small differences for the edification of the majority. I mean, I see that as the intention of the people writing the article. I’m sure the reaction to it will reveal all the good old American antisemitism we know and love.
What’s super fun is hearing from fellow Jews in my community that Bernie isn’t “really Jewish” because he’s not observant and believes in a two-state solution (or “anti-Israel”, as they call it). It kind of drives me insane that Ted Cruz has an actual pastor who actually believes that Hitler was sent by Jesus to punish Jews for not converting, and some rightwing Jews will give Cruz a free pass because he’s “better for Israel.” Why? Because he’s “pro-Israel” because of his sinister post-apocalyptic conversion beliefs? How does that count as pro-Israel, more than a Democratic candidate who wants actual peace? Uuuuugh sorry, you touched a nerve.
Yup. Yuuuuup. Bernie’s secular Jewishness is my upbringing and almost my whole family, so I keep feeling kind of bemused that it’s not just regular to everyone else.
Mine too (and I’m guessing probably also 80-90% of Jews in the US…)
I have been finding several news stories over the last few days really depressigng. The first is just straight-up horrifying: a man in Sweden kidnapped a woman and imprisoned her in a soundproof bunker with the idea that she would be his girlfriend (he wrote a “sex contract” naming sexual acts for which she would be freed sooner! He asked for her to do certain things that would provide him with a “girlfriend experience”!). It just feels like such a horrific manifestation of the general idea that men are entitled to women’s attention and affection, and I cannot understand how someone would do that and not mean any harm by it (his defence lawyer’s argument).
The other is much less horrifying, just depressing: a young woman in Coventry was turned away from a restaurant because she had a guide dog, despite this being illegal. Minor in the grand scheme of things (although still shit), but it has somehow sent me into a massive tailspin of anxiety and misery along the lines of “the world is just fundamentally unfair, nobody cares what their responsibilities to others are or bothers to find out” (if you run a business you need to know about things that are illegal discrimination against customers! That is a basic thing!), and I am irrationally distressed.
BRB, screaming forever.
And over here in the US we think Sweden is so perfect.
I have an American friend living in Sweden…..she likes it enough that she became a dual citizen, but she’s talked about many of Sweden’s faults.
That first one is making me feel really nauseated.
“not mean any harm” wtf wtf wtf
I mean, obviously, I guess if you don’t think women are people…
It’s every woman’s dream to be kidnapped and held hostage by a man, right? It means he really likes you! (I should let my partner know that he is not getting a proper “girlfriend experience” due to my lack of leg-shaving.)
This is the sort of thing that makes me feel I could never be a barrister – I realise that a judicial system in which everyone has someone to advocate for them, and stuff must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, is important, but I just couldn’t stand in front of a court and argue that my client hadn’t meant any harm so it was fine really.
So I spent the past couple weeks binge-watching The Flash and finally caught up the other day, but I hadn’t seen yesterday’s episode yet when this post went up. When I saw that there was a spoilery interview with Candice Patton, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that Iris must have been killed off yesterday. I’d promised myself that I could watch the episode at noon if I did enough work in the morning, so I spent three hours working on stuff while ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CONVINCED that this episode was going to tear my heart out in a specific way. …Then I watched the episode and read the interview, and now I feel a little ridiculous. 😮 (But relieved!)
Oh, I was going to ask in the OT but now it’s relevant to the link roundup?
I would be very interested in links to your favorite blog posts/articles/poems/maybe books about mental health after giving birth! I would like to read some and perhaps send some to a friend if she feels up to reading them. My friend has always been anxious and has had particularly high-intensity anxiety and mania recently, four months after giving birth. I do not have or want children, personally, and while I know I don’t have to relate to her feelings to support her, I think she feels very isolated and lonely and maybe it would reassure her to hear of other brilliant people who struggled with a substantial shift in mental health after birth.
This Meaghan O’Connell piece isn’t specifically about mental health per se, but it is about how normal it is to feel super, super anxious about your baby, so it might help: http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/11/parenthood-means-…
I think the blog A Cup of Jo has some mental health parenthood articles? The writing there is usually very good.
You’re a good friend.
The Longest Shortest Time had a really nice episode about anxiety and pregnancy- the link to the episode also has loads of resources: http://longestshortesttime.com/podcast-53-when-ar…
I am late to the party, but Nicole, your daughter is so darling and so glowing with love for her gran that my heart has melted out of my body and is in a puddle under my desk. This picture lights up my grumpy, grey, Boston-y day.
That is a perfect picture. Maybe Nicole should print it out and send it home with her mom?
Need to post this before my brain melts: I went in to work for a little over 2 hours today (I am so not feeling it, and between class, work, and lacrosse, work is last). Remember the gun threat incident? Well it is pretty much a long–term situation, because crazy lady will have ongoing legal issues for the duration.
So today one of the nice coworkers says “You’ll be happy to know we’re getting panic buttons that go to the police station”.
Panic buttons.
Okay, my self defense trainers drill into our head that “the police will get there in minutes, most shootings are over in seconds”. But, aside from that…
There is no talk of maybe getting a camera pointed at the entrance so we can see who’s entering the building before they come in with their guns.
There are no doors that LOCK in the whole office. And all the entrance doors are glass.
So they are ignoring simple easy things they could do that would ACTUALLY make us safer (like let us see when a threat is coming, and lock it out), and giving us a button that won’t actually help because by the time the cops show up we’ll be dead (well, they will, I’ll have jumped out the window).
But sure, ok, I’ll pretend to be happy, I guess. The problem is I said those thing out loud to the coworker. They do not get it. They think I’m ungrateful. OMFG .
Plus that inlaw thing is triggering me awful. I should not have read it. Now I have flashbacks to my SIL’s psychotic break that occured during my last pregnancy resulting in my having to fight the foster system and pick up her abandoned children while being threatened with guns while having premature labor from the stress. Ah, good times.
Now I remember why I throw myself into my studies.
They are wrong to be unhappy with you for voicing perfectly reasonable suggestions. I don’t know if you can do this but do you know who they are insured by? I bet they’d be very interested in what is/is not being done to secure the location against a serious security threat. (I know that you’d probably get in trouble for peaching on them to the insurance people, but it’s an idea.)
These are perfectly reasonable suggestions. A glass door is very pretty but it’s unlikely to be any help if you work in a place where a shooting might be a very real danger. Is there some higher-up (or like walrathem suggested, insurance) you can address these concerns to?
Thank you, Nicole. It IS really hard. (I know that 4 months ago isn’t quite “just” had a baby, but we’re going on a month of her waking every 1-3 hours and I am working full time and need to find a new job/career path by June, so, I’m deciding that your statement is for me too.) In my case it was really hard, then got easier, then got harder again as the return to work coincided with a beast of a sleep regression. I’m hoping it will get easier soon.
Lol, my baby is 8 months old, and I was still thinking “yeah, it is hard! Thanks for noticing, Nicole!” I think 4 months ago totally counts! Especially with sleep regression – blech, all the sympathy!
Aw, thanks so much! From one historian mom to another. 🙂
A+ picture of your daughter and her gran. So sweet 🙂
Dear people with horrible in laws,
Don’t wait until your children are grown to start being a crazy bitch and telling them to just get the hell out of your face.
You’ll thank me later.
I burned a bra once. It… melted before it ignited, and turned into a weird bubbling mass of goo on the fire logs. It smelled really bad and was pretty unsatisfying. 4/10, would not do again.
Burning Coffee Mate, tho? That is FUN.
My dad is a firm believer in the Ben Franklin saying that house guests and fish begin to smell after three days. So no, your tolerance is not low!
Cod-o-matic?
https://youtu.be/0BQFv83QJ2Y