This person had the idea to create a basket of activities to do instead of reaching for her phone. I really like that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskWomenOver30/s/bmxLvBhDJN
What would you put in your Analog Basket?
The oath of fealty goes both ways
I’ve had this post in my head for a long time, and I don’t have the energy today to do it justice; but I’ll start adding in some thoughts.
The thought was kindled this morning when I read this Ask Historians post about companies caring about their workers vs caring about their shareholders. There’s a very good comment about the history of General Electric, which I’ll reproduce here:
In the United States, General Electric is a good example of companies that used to ‘care about their employees.’ Of course, keep in mind that this is likely a matter of perspective, as Shareholder Supremacy has been the accepted law of the land since Dodge v. Ford Motor Company in 1919.
But to my main point, General Electric began its life as a company that built things (electronics on the like). It was a place where its workers could expect to spend their entire career in the service of GE and in return they would be given benefits and a pension upon retirement.
Without going into the rise of his career, Jack Welch became the CEO of GE in the 1980s. However, by 1981 he had effectively taken control of the company and removed most of the old guard (who had more or less believed in the old contract between employer and employee).
Welch more or less turned the company into mostly an investment firm. During his tenure from 1981 – 2001 GE’s market value grew from $14 billion to $600 billion.
However, a lot of that came at the expense of the employer employee contract. His tenure was associated with the end of pensions, reducing payroll (layoffs and reduced pay), rank and tank (firing the bottom 10% of employees), factory closures, and the expansion of stock options as well as utilizing stock options in lieu of pay for performance incentives. This mostly benefitted those at the top, including Welch himself whose pay was magnitudes above his workers.
During Welch’s tenure he was lauded as being a business genius. He was called “Neutron Jack” for his perceived success. Famously saying to judge him for how well the company was doing 20 years after he left.
Now, even by Wallstreet standards Welch’s ideas are seen as a failure. Ironically, $100,000 of shares from 2001 (shortly before Welch’s retirement) would have lost 80% of its value when adjusted for inflation by 2021. But it should be noted that GE’s stock currently sits near an all time high of $316.75 as of 12/25/25.
There is always more to say, but it’s the holidays, I’m on my phone, and I’m trying to keep it brief.
The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America―and How to Undo His Legacy by David Gelles, 2022
Winning by Jack Welch (with Suzy Welch), 2005
-Edited to fix typo regarding GE shares.
In my experience, I’ve had a number of older people express dismay that young folks have no more loyalty to their employer. (This is usually in the context of the tech industry and adjacent fields.) My rebuttal to this is usually that my generation saw our parents laid off from companies they’d poured their lives into, so it’s hard to feel loyalty to a company that doesn’t care about you.
When people talk about loyalty, it makes me think of the feudal system. Yes, knights swore loyalty to their liege lords; but the lords themselves swore fealty to protect their people, too. If you’re a lord and you don’t mobilize your army to defend against bandits, then soon you won’t have any farmers and you’ll starve in your castle.
Companies that want their workers to stick around need to make sure they are incentivized to do so.
At some point in my notes file, I wrote down this Tiktok link as a good explanation of the issue.
And this, on Millennials and loyalty:
It’s weird how many of these social networks I no longer use.
So. Loyalty is a two-way street, is my point here.
“The categories were made for man, not man for the categories”
Many years ago, my friend shared this Slate Star Codex essay with me. It really crystallized a lot of my feelings around the concepts of trans rights and how ultimately, we should be able to be good friends and neighbors to trans people even if we don’t understand them on a deep fundamental level.
It may not be the full-throated “how dare anyone believe anything else” defense of trans rights that many might prefer; but I actually find it more compelling for that very reason. (And it’s okay if your mileage varies on that. It’s not personal for me in the way it is for many of you.)
Give it a read.
Tithes
Today on the Internet I saw a post that said this:
Leave your church today.
Tithe by helping someone in need
God is not in a building
I replied:
Even when I was religious, I considered any charitable donation part of my tithe.
I have a still-religious friend who considers the portion of his taxes that go towards social welfare programs to be part of his.
There are many ways to be the Body of Christ in the world.
And I stand by that.
I should do that calculation myself, sometime. The back-of-the-envelope that I just did (62% of federal spending, 15% effective federal tax rate) gives me about 9% of my salary Helping People via taxes. That’s not too bad.
Incrementalism
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.
Word of the day: Generalization
My friend just used the word “genderalization” and I think it’s a really clever portmanteau of gender-based generalizations.
Burned Haystack dating
Today I learned that this concept has a name – Burned Haystack. (I’ve heard of it before, but it didn’t have a name.)
Basically, the idea is to be as raw and honest and true as possible on your dating profile, so that you don’t waste time with incompatible people. It might take longer to find a person who meets your parameters, but they’ll be a better fit for your life and goals.
The metaphor is that if you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, it can be better to just set the hay on fire and then look for the needle in the ashes.
20+ years ago, advice columnist Carolyn Hax called hairy legs “a built-in doink filter.” I’ve always remembered that.
How do you know what you want?
One of my friends recently wrote on Facebook “how do you know what you want?” and I ended up writing a fairly long response. Posting it here, too.
You know, one of my friends just asked me this too, and I don’t know the answer for sure.
I think part of it was after a young lifetime of being a perfectionist and also a people-pleaser, I had to get good at satisficing or I was going to burn out. Going to progressively more difficult environments (high school to college to a job) meant that I was surrounded by an increasing concentration of people smarter than me, and that was something my ego had to adjust to. But learning that I actually *wasn’t* always the smartest person in the room also freed me from having to always Be The Very Best. I could just be Good Enough, and that was okay too.
So I was able to apply that to my own decisions as well. Is this thing the Absolute Best Option I Could Possibly Choose? Well, maybe, maybe not. But the marginal benefit of obsessing over Relentless Optimization is so stressful to me that I had to Just Pick Something.
And now that I think more about this: I think I cut my teeth on this skill with choosing restaurants with friends as a young adult. I get hangry when I don’t eat (it doesn’t seem to be a disorder, I just have/had a fast metabolism), so when people started dithering about where to go, it meant that I was risking a fainting+nausea spell. So I started doing Executive Decision Making for the whole group, and for the most part it turned out fine. Some people don’t like me telling them what to do, but Oh Well Their Loss.
Like a lot of skills, practicing in small ways helps build up the muscle (literal or metaphorical) for bigger tasks.
Anyway, IDK if this is what you were asking about, but I hope it helps! 
The Rural Idyll Fallacy
A couple years ago I was complaining about people who romanticize The Countryside™️, and coined (?) the term “Rural Idyll Fallacy.”
Basically, it’s that if many people move to an uncrowded rural area, it becomes crowded and loses the charm that drew folks to migrate there.
(As a side note: development needs to be carefully planned! Dense urban development with transit + old town areas continuing to exist is much better than miles and miles of cookie-cutter foam mansions sitting in former cow pastures. A McMansion doesn’t get better if you put it on 2 acres of monocrop fine fescue. Now get off my lawn, I want to grow a forest again.)
Enough is, in fact, enough: a meditation on Pieces of Flair
Today I was coloring in a bookmark that had the quippy little motivational message, “A Winner is a Dreamer who Never Gives Up.” — Nelson Mandela
“A Winner is a Dreamer who Never Gives Up.”
Nelson Mandela
And it made me think: is that really accurate? No, it’s not. Or, more to the point: it’s incomplete. A winner is a dreamer that never gave up and also scored better than all of the other dreamers who also never gave up.
But that doesn’t make the non-winner any less worthy of respect and admiration!
I have always hated the old “joke” about “What do you call the guy who graduates last in med school? Doctor!” Frankly, I don’t care what my doctor’s rank in a classroom setting 30 years ago was; I care that they know enough to be a doctor. If this person was actually too stupid to be a doctor, they would not have graduated.
Likewise, and I think we’re better at recognizing this side of things, an Olympian who doesn’t win a medal is still a goddamn Olympian. The person who finishes last in a marathon still ran a goddamn marathon. That’s far more than any of the armchair haters will ever accomplish.
Being told you have to be the best just to be good enough is a stupid (and, frankly, toxic) attitude to take. Do the thing. Do it well. Don’t worry about your relative ranking compared to others.
(Bonus note: this is also what I told my fellow new parents when my daughter was a 99th percentile chonker. Everyone has to be somewhere on the percentile chart, and every percentile has to be filled. It’s just the pigeonhole principle. It’s not a referendum on the quality of your baby.)
Emilybook 