Ten pounds of personality in a five-pound bag
One of my friends this weekend said that it’s rough being the parents of a Dalmatian child when your friends have Basset Hound children, because we end up giving them useless advice, like “Why not just have them sit and play video games?” when the kids will not sit still for that.
(This came up when I expressed surprise at a hotel room/suite not being sufficient for a family trip. My child is a quiet Basset Hound.)
As I told someone earlier today:
This is not an “others have walked so that you can run” kind of situation. This is more like, an “others have run straight into the electric fence, so you should strongly consider walking” kind of thing.
This can apply to many things.
Go slowly. Make careful, measured decisions.
Really excellent essay here.
But that’s not surprising. The first essay I ever read by John Scalzi was “Being Poor,” twenty years ago; and it stuck with me.
Then someone in the comments posted this Substack link, about 100k, which is MUCH easier to feel poor on! You just have to live in a HCOL (high cost of living) area, and boom, you’re cooked. As the kids say.
And so now, let’s tug on that loose thread… I’m sure many of my left-leaning readers will say, “This is obvious, we have been talking about it for YEARS!” Yes, many of you have; but you were using language of emotion (“Pay a living wage!”) rather than showing the math. My bad for not paying closer attention; your bad for not showing your work or coming up with workable solutions. Let’s rectify it rather than cast blame.
The bit about how “a living wage” is not a useful phrase is spot on. We have to do math for this part. A living wage in NYC is not a living wage in Galax.
I had seen a quote from that Substack going around on Bluesky the other day, and I do have some quibbles with it. Specifically, the 21k for “other essentials” part, plus the fact that it doesn’t control for location. But for my part of the country? It’s pretty much there.
Being wrong is a skill that can be practiced. It takes a lot of effort and awareness to be able to just shut up and step off.
Practicing “Oh, I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective” or “I’m going to step back and think about this for a while, thank you” is a really useful thing to have in your social skills backpack.
My friend’s sister makes these and they are so cute!
https://bromstadprinting.co/products/aww-thanks-cat-risograph-greeting-card
Aww. Thanks, cat.
Today’s shopping note brought to you by the dead cricket my cats traumatically presented my kid yesterday.
My thought of the day: high-control religions are likely to produce high-control apostates.
If you grew up with an extremely rigid and strict religion in your upbringing, you’re very likely to carry that forward into adulthood.
This explains people who leave the Church, and then insist that everyone who stays in the Church is obviously buying into every single interpretation that they themself believed. And it explains people who leave the Church and become, essentially, Fundamentalist Atheists. (This latter was very common during the ascent of the Four Horsemen of Atheism. All the online discourse about “Magic Sky Daddy” or “Sky Fairy” came from this kind of attitude.)
In reality, religion is a product of humans, and humans are varied and mutable. Someone can be a member of a religion you dislike without necessarily espousing every aspect of that religion that you dislike.
If you have left a high-control religion: that is okay. Just try to moderate your reactions to other people’s beliefs, and really analyze why you assume certain things about them.
I think the marker for middle age and/or maturity is “when you start having opinions about Bradford Pears.”
A few weeks ago, a friend of mine described herself as “incrementalist.” I think that’s a very good word.
Today, I saw this skeet. I’m going to copy the text here in case it gets deleted.
The way I’ve heard it explained is that there are people who are
1) actively against you
2) passively against you
3) don’t care
4) passively support you
5) actively support you
You’ll never get from 1 to 5 in one jump, so you want to move each person 1 notch more supportive. 1→2, 3→4, 4→5, etc
And that’s a very good explanation of how I view political discussions.
In a work context, “We’re all going to lunch” usually carries the implication of “Would you like to join us?”
If you’re still not sure if the implication is present, you can ask “Mind if I come along?” Or “Do you have space for one more?” Or something similar.
Here is an Instagram video about this!
Emilybook 