Gaashk
4mo ago
It's not like she said anything at work
She didn't? Admittedly, I keep the volume off and don't have an Xer account, so maybe I misunderstood what the whole thing was about, but it looked like she was at work?
Gaashk
4mo ago
I felt that trying to read Tracingwoodgrains' recent post and resulting comments. It's not that I'm unfamiliar with his persona -- I was following the Reddit when he used to post there all the time, and then left to found the Schism. Or that he didn't work at explaining the drama. But it still just came across as impenetrable.
Gaashk
4mo ago
Now that you mention it, I can't recall ever hearing anyone saying that in real life.
When I say it in my head, it sounds like the maga in magazine. In my head, MA like in mall sounds vaguely British, but I have nothing to back this up.
Gaashk
4mo ago
Interesting observation.
And I'm not sure why they abandoned them.
Probably for barber pole of class signaling reasons, combined with physical objects like suits becoming reasonably cheap and accessible to the working classes.
I don't really know people with nice handbags or jewelry, but for the kind of store that has representatives in malls, it seems to be at least as much a matter of motivation as class. Tradesmen can and do buy $100,000 trucks and $500 boots, and would probably buy their wives some nice jewelry or a nice bag if they really wanted that. They might be more likely to just walk into a store and buy the thing than someone in a higher social class, but who isn't embarrassed to take notes and go look for a better deal online.
Customer service people probably can tell underclass and teenagers likely to shoplift from body language and speech patterns more than by clothing. That doesn't necessarily suggest higher trust, simply that the class markers have changed.
Gaashk
4mo ago
On (1), it's probably people from other regions of the US as well. Especially California, but the entire West has been informal for multiple generations now. When I was a child, men could dress up for going out either Hawaiian or Texan, and the women would wear their normal dresses, but add some artisinal turquoise and silver jewelry. My family usually dressed Hawaiian -- you can just wear shorts and sandals instead of needing nice boots and maybe a nice belt buckle as well.
Gaashk
4mo ago
Yes, this has been a pretty big annoyance when taking children into city downtown areas, especially. It isn't trivially easy to locate, then walk to, then order at a coffee shop or something, then get and remember the code in time.
Gaashk
4mo ago
The traditional solution is a very legume heavy diet. My experience with beans in the Balkans is that they tend to be terrible and hard to eat much of, and recommend looking at Mexican recipes. I remember hearing something about rice and beans together making the protein better somehow, but don’t remember the specifics. And North African recipes for lentils. Second the eggs recommendation.
Gaashk
4mo ago
I don't think people so much react badly to alternative upbringings and backgrounds, as they do to attempts to "speedrun" their culture. Consider participating some events -- a concert, a hike, whatever kind of thing your colleagues seem to enjoy.
It's useful to read some stuff (for historical things, I recommend the Saint John's Reading List), listen to some stuff, subscribe to the New Yorker or something -- but most especially, it's useful to be genuinely interested, ask questions, and follow up on those questions by actually engaging with the cultural artifacts presented.
If someone enjoys the Beetles, they would probably be pleased if you listen to some albums on your commute, and come back with "I listened to some albums, and enjoyed [this song, or this quality]." Or even "I listened to some albums, and don't really get it, could you help me understand the appeal?" This is an opening for them to share something they like, which people enjoy doing. They would likely not be very happy if you listened to an audiobook about The Beetles Phenomenon, and proceeded to act like a know it all about it. If they are a woman, "mansplaining" might enter their mind at some point.
I'd be able to discuss at length untranslated Japanese visual novels, Magic the Gathering meta, Super Mario 64 speedrun strats, Nijisanji vtubers
Conversely, this description of your own interests presents, to an outsider, a brick wall, erected to keep them out, and perhaps a bit of embarrassment about what's inside. I assume this isn't actually how you describe your interests to your colleagues? This is actually how my brother describes his interests, and so I still have no idea what he's talking about most of the time, despite decades of polite questioning. This is bad.
I have some history and linguistic nerd friends, some of whom are more socially successful than others. The key is to focus on the relatable human side of things, not the deep rabbit hole side of things. This is why people who are not especially nerdy love things like the Inklings, or the bits of Kabalah in Unsung. There are probably things there that your colleagues would find interesting if they were presented as an interesting story you heard, or some bit of linguistics that's kind of neat.
Gaashk
4mo ago
The wrinkle here is that every person who exercises has the experience of using their willpower to overcome the impulse to be sedentary.
Do they, though?
My husband and daughter are fidgeters. If they eat more than they need, they will find some way to move more, subconsciously. They will pace, walk around naked in the snow, run around in circles, then jump up and down, then run and jump until everyone else is upset about it (OK, that's just my daughter, but her father also probably did it as a child). They have been known to run slight fevers for no apparent reason sometimes, or take cold showers in winter to get their bodies to produce more heat.
The other daughter and I are nothing like this, at all.
Gaashk
4mo ago
I planted a (very messy) garden with the kids. Onions have come up. Squash seedlings have come up and produced some leaves, and decorative bulbs have come up. Other seeds may or may not have gotten washed away by a heavy storm, but I'm still somewhat hopeful it will produce something, anyway. Onions at least.
Gaashk
4mo ago
Taxes and insurance are often included in US mortgages, in the form of escrow.
Gaashk
4mo ago
That's possible, but then one would like mainstream society to be sending a message like: it's perfectly alright to be a nerdy masculine woman or an effeminate man!!! You definitely do not need to go on hormones and cut off your breasts or other parts to deal with this! Go find yourself a supportive community in a big city, they totally exist!
Mainstream society should definitely not be sending a message that medical procedures and messing with puberty are a good way to deal with the situation, or at least not until they've tried other things like finding a supportive subculture, finding their own preferred aesthetic, etc.
Gaashk
4mo ago
Although, now that you mention it, I could see it having something to do with the rise of surrogacy, where the surrogate mother is sidelined. I remember some uncomfortable pictures a while back with gay men celebrating their upcoming baby, and the surrogate mother standing awkwardly behind them like some Handmaid's Tale character.
Gaashk
4mo ago
Why would a lesbian be bothered by just listing two mothers, and identifying which is the biological mother for medical history reasons? That seems very easy, like it would involve more use of "mother," not less.
Gaashk
4mo ago
I've encountered this a few times in medical contexts, such as being asked about my gender when in a hospital, about to give birth, and "birthing parent" language. I think also on some insurance documents. It seemed pretty dumb, I would expect a dedicated trans man to avoid giving birth. That was over two years ago.
Gaashk
4mo ago
Jobs mostly aren't meant to be perpetual. Men should come home to their wives nights and weekends, and things like being a sailer are unusually stressful largely because that isn't possible.
Perhaps guys in tech/finance are working too much.
Gaashk
4mo ago
-
Peterson should know by now that he's really bad and unpersuasive at X-posting. Every time he gets in an argument there he comes across much worse than when he's talking.
-
As is often then case with X threads, it's kind of hard for me to evaluate what's going on. It's like everyone is sitting around drinking absinthe and yelling at each other (in free verse? And drawing angry pictures?), I walk into the room for 5 minutes, and then walk right back out again thinking that maybe I prefer social contexts with babies and tea after all. Except that it's conducted in a public online venue, which is weird and probably not a good idea.
Gaashk
4mo ago
Trump did over a decade of reality TV, which is plenty of time to experiment with what people like to see broadcast, anyway.
Gaashk
4mo ago
We went to our local village parade, where people decorated their trucks and ATVs, put on some glittery headbands and glasses, and threw candy to the kids. The neighborhood church grilled sausages and put up a bouncy castle. It was charming. We'll light some small fireworks and grill burgers tonight.
Gaashk
4mo ago
This is the first I've heard of Fishing Picture discourse, but I will say that a (not very strenuous) hiking picture seems like it would be much better. Hiking suggests trees, mountains, nature, touching grass, and is way more girlfriend friendly. You can go on a little hiking picnic together! She will definitely not be expected to help gutting fish. She will not be asked to have an opinion on the size of their fish. There's no thought of "I wish I had rubber boots and overalls for this activity, but not enough to actually buy them, so I guess my shoes will just smell like fish now." Just overall better. If the guy isn't going to invite her fishing, then it's just as bad -- he can be expected to spend a lot of weekends with his fishing buddies instead of with her.
FWIW, I have been fishing. The one time I caught some fish was a salmon run. Then someone had to teach me how to clean the fish, I froze it, and had to keep coming up with meals that could use poorly filleted salmon for several months until I had eaten said fish. It was... fine. It was almost free salmon. But there was really no opportunity at all for it to be romantic.
Gaashk
4mo ago
I'm curious to see how Coppola's new film Megalopolis comes out, especially as he's sinking so much of his own money in it. Not curious enough to try to find someone to watch my kids, probably, but in other circumstances I would actually go to the theaters for it, something I haven't done for about 8 years.
Gaashk
4mo ago
They are a similar level of cleanness for the sort of person with only tile and machine washable rugs in their house, who always wears their shoes indoors, such that their home, sidewalk, car, and office are all cleaned more or less the same. I do not personally like this. I've been in homes where I couldn't walk around in bare feet because the floor feels grimy, there are little bits of debris everywhere, and I didn't like it. I've also been in a home with (old, deteriorating) carpeted kitchens and bathrooms, and didn't like that either. I have no idea what the people who installed it thought they were doing. I had to wear shoes at all times for ickiness reasons. But they do demonstrably exist. It does seem to be the case that once shoes are allowed, they very quickly become necessary.
The Mud Room houses were interesting. You have to do a complicated little dance to get your boots off without accidentally stepping in the muddy puddles generated by dirty slush melting off of other boots, so there's a gradient of dirty and wet going across the space between the outer and inner door, and then navigate it again while trying to put your boots back on. One had a cardboard box with unprocessed deer legs in it.
I have sometimes gotten the impression that other people, my neighbors, in roughly the same environment as me, just have a completely different experience with the ground and their shoes than I do.
I run a children's art studio. I wear brown hiking boots there at all times, because there are children stepping on chalk pastels and whatnot. Sometimes a child comes in wearing new white tennis shoes, gets a drop of paint on them, urgently tries to clean them with paper towels, and then cries about it. Every time, I find this incredibly perplexing. These are shoes! That you have chosen to wear to art studio! How is this a surprise!?! And yet it is.
Ah, ok, I guess I misunderstood the link, then.
More options
Context Copy link