A fascinating thing about being a woman in this line of work is how you get this crew that you’re fiercer about than your own family
And not even people you know well, but people you have watched in the minutes that counted. You know someone’s heart when you see them in action.
Watch who people risk themselves for. Watch who they step in front of and protect.
How people politically define themselves, how full of theory or not they are, even whether they understand what they’re fighting for is unimportant if you have seen which hills they’ll die on.
2019 isn’t gonna be less weird than this year is. Don’t trust someone just cause they say the right things. Trust them when you have seen them *do* them.
I don’t habitually have public thoughts about things happening in the hip-hop world but I’ll say this much: if you have never had to hire a publicist than you are probably missing many layers of what’s happening here. And you should default to “don’t fuck up a performer’s set.”
When women tell you there is a pattern, you listen or we all have to hear eventually about sad dudes jerking off into plants or whatever and that many more women get hurt.
So one of two things is happening: publicity or public humiliation of a woman. And.
If it’s the latter, you shouldn’t be having opinions about her in public. Even megastars can read their mentions. They’re people.
Or she’s been told that she has to playact humiliation in order to make some professional advance for one or more careers.
I typically try to buy almost-expired meat and just freeze it immediately, or I cook it when I get it and refrigerate the cooked meat. There is no fully safe date after expiry, but if it smells and looks okay it *probably* is. Also the expiry days are weirdly arbitrary.
like, chicken gets slimy when it's bad, and beef changes color, and pork smells weird.
I typically think something's okay for a week or so past the date if it still seems fine; but if it's questionable I use it in an overcooked recipe like shredded bbq or something.
(by "questionable" I mean that it smells fine and the texture is okay but I'm questioning the printed date.)
Mix of downwardly mobile young adults and their parents, who assumed that their precious children would never need to know this stuff because that's why you hire a cleaning service/mechanic/trainer/landscaper/tailor/etc
and tbh I'm so mixed about this because you have this whole part of my generation whose parents raised them to be "better" than me and taught them that people who had my skills were mere servants-for-hire
so I am *struggling* here to think kind thoughts.
like for decades now I've had people tell me that if I had skill or talent I'd have some midrange office gig
and now there's classes because holy shit most specific tasks take skill, that's what skill is, accomplishing a task well
you know I've had a ton of people ask over the years if I'd do something on poverty hacks or life skills and TBH I can't because they're so ingrained and I'm not a fab teacher of those things. IDK what I know; I just know how to keep the house moving and the kids fed.
It's like being a native speaker; I have no idea why we use this word for this thing but there we are. IDK why this thread for that project, nor this cleanser on that surface, I just grab the right thing and do it real quick. A good teacher can explain the why of it all.
I've been thinking about this against the backdrop of the "adulting class" trend pieces. It must be staggering to be an adult and think "shit now I have to learn to sew and cook and mend and do maintenance and prune trees properly," if you break it down by task it's daunting!
So I realized last night that really I have to catalogue all these things in a way more organized fashion. I’m doing that now, and I’m seeing a lot of things that I hadn’t realized were themes or didn’t realize how frequently I heard something.
LIke, I’ve had to make a tab in this spreadsheet to contain all the “well you’re trans you WOULD say that” tweets. My avi typically only shows half my face and apparently that combined with short hair reads as “trans” to people who are bigots.
What’s particularly interesting about that is it’s gotten progressively more frequent through the year. And I don’t tweet any more support than I did this time last year so it’s not them looking past my feed and seeing a thread about trans stuff. It’s an organic change.
So, a few things at 0330 as I start this project back up again:
1. I’m afraid to tweet anymore because then I will have to scroll past this, my god, I have to read all the tweets AND my replies to other people, which.
Do you know how many of you I have said cheers to this year
2. I don’t think that internet chatter changes minds: I think it moves the Overton. I also think it’s where we develop new ideas and understandings in real-time.
That said. The trolling, I am sad to report, has degenerated in quality this year, if not quantity.
3. Wow, have things just gotten monumentally worse
Corollary: wow, do we not remember how bad things were then
Counterpoint: well, I suppose if it had been the national discourse, we might have, only it wasn’t. The discourse was on taking the high ground and not overreacting.
Okay people, I have sorted out the location and the wifi and the drink, and now I am just trying to figure out whether I didn’t tweet at all in January or if I can’t work this thing properly!
So let’s explain what I’m doing here: half my best work is on this site.
I have better ideas when I’m thinking socratically, and you can only have so many imaginary conversations in your head. That’s where you people and this site come in!
I, being a noted intellect, lost my master spreadsheet of what topics I hit on what days.
So now I get to go through the whole year and pull out the thoughts I wanted to keep or reference.
As I said, noted intellect.
Still, I told ~5 people about this bullshit workload and I have been asked to do this where folk can see it, and thusly:
You guys. I am taking a brief stop so my kids can eat breakfast cause I’m taking them to Ohio for Christmas today
I hadn’t left the city in months and I think my heart might be healing just driving through all this empty land
No noise, no rush, no angry strangers. Just land.
I hadn’t realized until like an hour ago when I hit the sticks that holy shit I’ve been trapped in concrete and glass for whole months. I’ve never in my whole life gone that long in an urban place.
Christian fundamentalists wanting to talk about where Jews live is a familiar American political phenomenon. They believe that Jesus can’t come back until Israel is gathered.
Note the concurrent rise in complaints that actually it’s Aussie *Christians* being persecuted.
It’s all well and good to say that One Nation and its orbital flotsam parties are anomalous in Australia (and most Australians will insist on this at length) but you have to have seen how those factions have been taking over the Liberals’ will to independently exist
We called that the Tea Party. They also were laughable marginal figures who pulled stupid stunts on the floors of Congress.
Anyway that’s culminated in Trump so maybe check that trend instead of assuming it is no threat and never could be.
I really need you to understand that you are not that far behind the United States. Here is how I know: Trump does stupid shit, and within months the Coalition government is on the same stupid shit. Like clockwork.
I have been in Australia saying this for years, because from the first day I landed in the country I read the papers and saw a country headed on the path that we were at the time, only some years behind us. I said it on @QandA. I said it when I lectured.
If I’m honest, I’m not participating in the 2020 process. I’m kind of tired of being stalked by candidate committees for donations and chased around social media by rabid packs of superfans who cannot articulate a politics besides “if you don’t vote for me you’re evil.”
I was a political organizer for a long time; I understand that especially in heated cycles you cannot control your volunteers. I’m a public figure now, and I can’t control my fans.
But 2016...godDAMN you people fucking suck at bother retention and recruitment.
A couple things: if you are looking for christmas gifts here is a badass sweatshirt made by a friend of mine, who will also make caps and T-shirt’s and all sorts! Go buy this!
And now I have a language nerd question for anyone who does class or race theory or both:
What are the equivalents of “ratchet” in other cultures or languages? For poor white folk you’re either white trash or a redneck, though neither of those translate well. I can’t think of a word that does.
So I’m curious about classed language and self-identification.
(I am an utter utter nerd for language, you guys have no idea how much I love this stuff, please tell me all your idioms!)
Depends on how you look at it. Also I was only ever in one sector of the industry, idk how high-end joints work in the back.
But most kitchens I have ever been in are...not polite environments. This isn’t always meant or seen as “berating” as much as “letting off steam” perhaps
My favorite boss in the whole world would break his own back to get you out the door if your kid got sick. He didn’t let customers give us shit.
He also liked to greet us with “oh it’s you fuckfaces. Go make some fucking pancakes, assholes!” or the like.
once he tried to rack up lines of powdered sugar on my workstation and blame me for it for a prank cause I was young and terrified of street drugs or getting in trouble
An hour later he fired a guy for getting handsy with a waitress who wasn’t into it.
Finance bro is still in my mentions trying desperately to convince my followers his job has inherent value that other jobs lack
And like
Sometimes I wonder whether people realize that “finance” and “currency” and “value” and “worth” are not synonyms
Whatever, he can prove his worth to the ether cause I got a mute button. But it’s really fascinating how this dude *needs* strangers to pretend like his work is worthy of a human life. Not just useful or needed or filling a niche. Inherently valuable on its face.
Paperwork.
Of course that has always been what creeps me out about money or status cravers
Do they not have hobbies, dreams, loves, friendships, a garden maybe? How do you just sit around all day terrified that every passing stranger might not know how much you have and not die of stress?
I am going to spend a happy day cleaning this house and imagining every stuffy fuck who ever talked down to me being told “that’s not how you sweep. Did you not have a mother? Do it again and stop wasting time!”
“This isn’t your time. This is the company’s time. You need to clock out three minutes early to even that out and next time don’t be so long in the bathroom”
Specifically to that dude who once told me at a lecture that he shouldn’t have to listen to me because he pays for class
New plan: when the next crash hits I’m going back into food service just to watch this play out. I’ll scrub the dryers every night and the hoods too without complaint if I can watch the recently-uppity get told off by some entitled kid over a dollar soda promo
Just wait. Here in about a year, maybe two, we’re gonna get to watch a lot of people have to learn how to do things for themselves because they won’t have convenience money.
I await this phenomenon with a mixture of dread and glee.
Seriously I don’t think people have thought through the next crash. We’re already hollowed out; when credit can’t fill the gap because folk already ain’t paid down the debt from the last time, we’re gonna see a lot of people who nearly literally do not know how to survive.
People who have always paid theee dollars more a pound for meat “because that’s the grocer on the way home” likely don’t know how to find all the sales within a few miles every week. They don’t know where to look for that pricing information.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you this morning’s master class in how to deal with some chucklefuck who would like to condescend to you based on nothing more than what they think your background is.
Actually, I don’t have time to explain anything to you this morning. I have to finish the paperwork for my next lecture at Harvard. Which, funny enough, is where I will teach would-be finance professionals how “labor” works.
You can also find any of my previous lectures online:
One assumes, @JordanStarr8 that you will have heard of the maxim “don’t shit where you eat” but I gotta say some finance dude trying to explain to someone who occasionally lectures as an expert at the London School of Economics how labor or finance work takes the cake.
Lord save me someone has just said that cooking is low skill, which. Dumbass, but okay.
The real topper is what they think takes ACTUAL talent: financial analysis.
y’all do business majors include mandatory lobotomies, or how do you explain that?
Like, that consistently blows my mind. Some dude with a mid-range rack suit will have himself utterly convinced that knowing how to plug numbers into a proprietary database is rugged skill like he just brought down a lion with his bare hands and that he is a god now
Anyway, right about the time someone says “what do you mean physics, there’s no physics in a kitchen!” that is when you start to treat them like a particularly simple kitten.
It is dangerous to let people like that think themselves intelligent. They’ll hurt themselves/others.
Very briefly though: tonight has been one of those wonderful ones where I am gaining and losing followers at roughly the same pace so let me just save us all some time:
Welcome! Around here we do politics and whiskey
Whatever your politics are, I don’t share them.
If you just followed me off that thread about how neoliberalism is bullshit and our elders only deserve the respect they have earned
Let me say that I am not a socialist actually and I don’t care which philosopher has most influenced you!
But also
If you just followed me off that earlier thread about how actually Bernie can go fuck himself (and I say that as a person who likes him IRL from the little I know him) may I just say that there is not a woman alive who annoys me more than Hillary Clinton! She should go away!
There are people wondering in my mentions why I say my ex is a good man, or if he *is* a good man why we split
And y’all. Choose better in the first instance. Marry someone that you trust to be your friend and coparent if the marriage breaks.
Why marry a not-good man at all?
Anyway I could list his faults and flaws or I could just accept that we couldn’t quite fit our lives together comfortably and that sometimes happens to good people who love each other and want each other to be happy.
Besides, let’s not give him an excuse to list mine.
One can never know how another defines a word as vague as love but sometimes I am really confused by how people express it.
I have two exes I don’t speak to. The rest are lifelong friends. Cause we love each other but shouldn’t try to be together in that one specific way.
City life so often feels like. Choose your own adventure game
For instance. You hear someone with a can of spray paint tagging your alley. Do you:
So you did what apparently nobody but me would do and checked it out. Turns out the tagger is actually a pretty cool kid making legit art on a previously shitty wall.
Do you:
I just.
Like, until I lived in a city I could go have a cigarette at nearly 11pm and NOTHING HAPPENED.
I cannot believe how cheap food here is. Seriously, I can spend a day a month doing a big shop, and about three hours weekly nipping off to the corner market for milk or whatever.
I’m used to having a single place within twenty miles to go for food.
I consider eight different food stores to be “where I go.”
All of them are within ten miles of me. I can barely understand the abundance.
