That’s it, that’s the post.
https://bsky.app/profile/kenjennings.bsky.social/post/3mbuedepurs2x
No doom.
Go to bed, Emily.
Call your Senators tomorrow.
Very minor and silly epiphany
I realized today that a big part of why I never got into fanfic is that so much of it is so poorly edited I can’t get through it.
I almost put down ACOTAR because of “parameter” on page 1. I’m not exaggerating. (I instead got out a pen and corrected it.)
I read Manacled because the text was, by and large, legible. I bounced hard off another fanfic my friends recommended because it was not.
And I want to be clear: being like this does not make me morally superior. It just makes me someone who needs the writing to be basically invisible in order to suspend disbelief and immerse myself in the story. Poorly edited copy takes me out of that world as I try to figure out what the author was trying to say (usually by converting the letters into sounds in my head to guess what the homograph or malapropism was supposed to be).
I wonder if this is related to how, when I hear a word, my brain converts it into the visual “word on a page” in my head?
Blocking is not real life
Short opinion.
I think that the reason people treat blocking (on social media) as this Horrible Unforgivable Crime is that to them, social media feels like real life; and in real life, Shunning and Ostracism are genuinely punishments for horrible crimes.
But the Internet is not real life.
My half-baked hypothesis is that people think this way because young adults right now had their formative years during COVID, when things forced us online much more than even the most dysfunctional people, and it exacerbated and accelerated a lot of already-bad social trends.
Being wrong is a skill
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.
High-control apostates
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.
Milestones
I think the marker for middle age and/or maturity is “when you start having opinions about Bradford Pears.”
Your son might work bagging groceries for the rest of his life.
Saw this Substack post today.
https://substack.com/@carriecariello/note/c-166796284?r=2ng1ln
“Your son might work in a grocery store bagging groceries for the rest of his life.”
And? So what? That’s an important job. Grocery stores are fundamental in keeping our society running.
The people who work in our grocery stores are an important part of our community.
And they should be able to afford to live in any community in this country.
This is why I support subsidized housing in my neighborhood. Because people like Jack deserve to live among people like me.
Don’t be an ableist, classist shitheel. Support integrated subsidized housing.
Proxy wedding season
I’m old enough that the wedding rate has slowed; but I want to state for the record (and after hearing a friend’s ridiculous story) that zero weddings should require attendees to purchase entirely new clothing.
Members of the wedding party, sure. That’s an honor and obligation that can always be turned down. (And I think requiring expensive extra trips there is inappropriate, too.)
But it’s beyond inappropriate to tell your guests “go buy a new outfit all in orchid taffeta” or whatever.
Just my curmudgeon opinion. 😁
Clopens
If a business schedules an employee for a Clopen (where, for example, they close on Tuesday and open on Wednesday), that employee should receive overtime pay for both Tuesday and Wednesday.
Having to clock out at 11 pm and clock back in at 7 am the next morning is inhumane.
Just an idle opinion I had.
Money is not morality
While shooting the breeze with a friend tonight I realized that “Poor people are degenerates” and “Don’t tell me I can’t afford something I ought to be able to afford!” attitudes are two sides of the same coin.
The first position, commonly associated with rich assholes who think they are self-made, is a mistake because it assumes that someone’s income or wealth is solely a factor of their moral character, i.e. their willingness to work hard to accomplish their goals. However, that is not the case. Not all hard work is equally remunerated; the free market doesn’t care how hard you work, but only about the supply and demand of your skill. It’s fundamentally amoral. (Remember, don’t confuse “amoral” with “immoral.”) This is also the primary reason why we should not trust in the market to take care of people. The market does not care if you live or die.
The second position, which I see more in people on my side of the political aisle, is born out of a place of frustration and anger. It’s the idea that “if I can’t buy a house on 30% of my income, then that guideline is wrong and bad and shaming! Don’t shame me!” But having or not having money is not (or shouldn’t be!) a locus of shame or pride. It’s just a matter of numbers. But people see “you can’t afford to buy a house yet,” and they take it as a moral attack on their value as human beings.
Neither of these attitudes are good. If you find yourself falling into either one, please try to remind yourself: money is not a measure of your inherent worth as a human being.
Emilybook 