Reading

(no subject)

The story is posted!

Tell Your Park Fire Story

I have to take an unwanted BYE in Idol this week as the story and work has kept me too busy to pen anything fictional and fun. Next prompt.

therealljidol, wheel of chaos: prompt 4, "figure of speech"

( under the jump. )

Mission accomplished

We are essentially done at Mom’s flat. I didn’t have a lot to do today, but am still tired. We will decide tomorrow what if anything we want to do.

Leaving for Boston Monday afternoon.

We had Chinese food delivered tonight, and it was basic good Cantonese food. They included a small bag of those weird shrimp chips, which I turned out to be in the mood for.

Entry tags:

We expected to finish going through Mom's papers, photos, etc. yesterday, but despite me and \mark both pushing hard, we realized in the late afternoon that we were both badly worn out, so we stopped. He left, and I got Adrian and Cattitude to tale care of me. I was worn out both mentally and physically; Adrian pointed out that \I hade worked steadily for longer that the previous couple of days. Mark will coming back to the flat a bit, but we did not set an alarm, because I needed the rest.

We reached a point yesterday that I could be satisfied just packing everyting the three f us have decided to take--photos, the gorgeous candlesticks Mom left to Adrian (officially tp me, but she had discussed them with Acrian), and a few other s,mall mementoes, but there's a stack of paper that Mark wants to take a second look at: he was lookinmg both for financial paperwork as well as photos and other mementoes. It felt like it might be 45 minutes more work today, but could take tjhree times as long if we had tried to push through last night.

I told Andy and Adrian to go out and play yesterday, so they spent the afternoon at Kew Gardens. It is raining steadily now, and foercast to do so for several hours. I#m thinking I want to do not much today, just finish the tasks here, and maybe go out and do something interesting tomorrow, before leaving for Boston on Monday.

I am very glad we saw

liv on Tuesday, when we were still feeling energetic.

ups and downs.

This week at work was not worth talking about.

Yesterday, I got into my car after I got off-shift, sat down in the driver's seat, and just bawled for a solid five minutes. Sitting in the fab parking lot, crying like a little kid that just dropped their ice cream. Stress release, I guess?

Anyway.

That's the most you're going to get about that, suppose.

(It's not worth talking about — a lot of "things aren't working because of factors that are beyond my control" combined with "but people think it should be under my control", and that's just a fucking miserable place to be. Eventually it will either be determined that there is fuck-all I can do to make e.g. certain shit work, because God Themself could not do it, or I will leave to "run an errand" and simply never come back. Both are acceptable at this point.)

My car is apparently paid off? I know because I got a call today from the bank asking where they could send the title to. The address they had on file was evidently incorrect.

(I bought it in late November 2021, so when we were still living in the duplex in the north of town, oops.)

I gave them the address, the title guy went, "congratulations!", and...that was that, I guess? I am now the full owner of a '22 Hyundai Elantra SE. Of course, with the job stuff, my brain immediately goes to, "so if you need to, you can sell it and that's a few months' worth of mortgage payments!" — but, you know. (Truly, things would have to be very dire for a period of roughly TWO YEARS before I had to go, "ACK" and think about e.g. selling the car, but lizard brain does what lizard brain does, I suppose.)

This does mean I'm out of debt save for the mortgage, which is a nice feeling, I guess? (Well, and the balance currently on my credit card — I put everything on it, so therapy, groceries, all the utility bills for the house, etc — it's at about $1100 right now — but I also pay it off at the end of each month because fuck paying interest.)

It occurs to me that with the car paid off my expenses for living pretty "extravagantly" (getting takeout like 1x/week, buying myself coffee on Fridays and Sundays, purchasing 1-2 ebooks per month) are back down to ~$2000/month, with two thirds of that being my half of the mortgage and bills.

Weird.

Today at work was fine. I was alone in the lab, which was great. Got coffee (FRIDAY RITUAL), came in around 9, worked on only what I wanted to work on. Actually managed to get something maybe working? which was a surprise to me, but oh, well.

Week ended on a high note. Did some metrology and data analysis, uploaded everything, drove home. At the house Max let me know that he'd ordered pizza from the new place that just opened literally two blocks away from us, and when I said, "so...we're sticking with the plan I made last week?" (to eat pizza from there and watch "Sinners"), nodded.

Said that we ought to pick up the stuff to do Aperol spritzes, so we did (we didn't have soda water! we usually do! somehow that was the only thing we were missing!), grabbed the pizza, came back, fed the cats, and —

Okay, so apparently he did not know anything about "Sinners". I filled him in on what little I knew (vampires, 1930s Mississippi, Michael B. Jordan plays a pair of twins), and we watched it.

No spoilers, but y'all, it was wonderful.

I think I can best sum it up with the following exchange:

MAX: You know, I really liked [STYLISTIC CHOICE], but I found [SPECIFIC PART] anachronistic. Like, damn, they almost had it.

five minutes later...

ME: So do you understand why they included [SPECIFIC PART]?

MAX, completely and utterly stunned: I take that back, I should have let him cook.

(I love the reviews going, "this felt like two different movies to me", like — it was clear as fucking day what the story was and how it tied together, and if you paid even a millisecond of attention, you got it. It's a movie that rewards careful watching, for sure. LOVED the midcredits scene, too ♥ )

Tomorrow we are going WINE TASTING with my LOCAL QUEER FRIENDS, which is A THING, but I get to WALK TO THIS ONE, so if I get WINE DRUNK at 4pm, it'll be FINE.

Probably. :)

As a final note I suppose I should say, the work-in-progress noted as point 1 of this entry has been split into three parts.

Part 1 ended (without any editing!) at 131710 words.

Part 2 is at the midpoint (roughly), and sitting at 65059 words.

Apparently all it take for me to write like there's no tomorrow is for someone to go, "what about...", at which point I will go, "OH YEAH" and write literally 100k words in a month.

Well then.

(Are they good words? I mean, it's a rough draft and it's being written incredibly fast, so it has all the plot and structure of hot wet jello, as my mentor liked to say when I was in graduate school, but I'm having fun and the sole person reading it is also enjoying it, so.)

Entry tags:

travel

The Rain in Spain - Foreshadowing

I'll be posting a summary of my trip to Spain shortly. I might even talk about some things that happened between December and now. But first, I want to address an actual serious issue. Those of you who know me are probably already on the phone filing an identity theft report. But hear me out.

( While I have plenty of faults, I am not as bad as this story implies. )

(no subject)

My 4-year-old transitioned to a big-kid bed more than six months ago. Since the switch, every time he wakes up (at night, super early in the morning, etc.), he comes into our room needing us (and waking us up). Sometimes he is crying because he is scared, but often it just feels like an automatic thing he’s doing. We always march him back to his room and don’t let him get in bed with us. We have tried what feels like everything: a reward chart for a bigger reward he gets to pick, a small reward each day he stays in his room, a light that changes color when he can come out of his room, talks at times other than when we’re dealing with it in the moment about staying in his room, some books about being afraid of the dark, a special box of toys to play with when he wakes up, a fun galaxy light, a Yoto he can listen to … nothing has worked.

I don’t want to lock him in for a variety of reasons. I feel like we’re almost back in the baby stages of being woken up at night! I was hoping it was just a phase we’d get through, but it’s really dragging on at this point. He’s also been tired during the day so he’s not getting enough sleep. Any ideas?

—Mom in the Land of 10,000 Yawns

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

Ask a Manager: Failed Religious Training At Work

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

london

London, Thursdauy morning

We got a lot done yesterday and today, Mark and I sorted through a bunch of stuff on Tuesday, and talked to Ralph (Mom's stepson) and figuring out which things are his/his sister's, and then which withim that what people actually want. Legally, he and Liz own the flat and some of the contents (specified\). In practice, there are things none of us want, partly because of geography: Ralph doesn#t need furniture, and he's the only one of us who lives anywhere nearby. So it's mostly what has sentimental value, like Simon's family china.

To our London friends: If we get enough done today, we might still be able to see people tomorrow or Saturday, but I don't know yet.

I also got into a stupid argument Tuesday afternoon with Ralph's wife Jenny, who was trying to convince me that my brother and I had some koind of obligation to arrange for clearing out everything that nobody wants, so Liz (Ralph's s sister) can sell the flat. This started with me telling her that we hadn't traveled from the US to be unpaid labor clearing out a flat for someone else to sell, and then on the third time she cirled back to telling her that by insulting my recently deceased mother she wasn't helping. |She said she wasn't trying to help, I told her to at least stop hurting then, and walked away from the conversation. My brother is one of the executor's of the will, so maybe has some obligations here, but Ralph and Liz own the flat now--my mother had a life tenancy and then it went too her stepchildren. I emerged a while later to find that Mark, Ralph, and Jenny had made a bit more progress in figuring things out.

They left here at about five, and Cattitude and Adrian went shopping to buy a few groceries.

liv, who is staying part-time in a flat half a mile from here, came over for the evening, and we had a very good, long visit. Adrian cooked dinner in an unfamiliar kitchen; I'd checked with Live a fw hours earlier about dietary restrictions. The original plan was just for her to come over here, where we can sit in the back garden, but one advantage of that is being able to comfortably share meals with people.

Wednesday was productive, sorting through papers and Mom's jewelry and a few oddments. The will leaves a few specific pieces of jewelry to Simon's daughter and two of my cousins, so we need(ed) to locate those. Beyond that we can do whatever seems good, and had agreed to offer things we didn't want to our cousins. We've found one piece Adrian is taking, and there's a bracelet of Grandma's that my cousin Janet asked us to sell her. If we find it, it's Janet's, as a gift.

After Mark and Linza left, the three of us decompressed a bit. After supper, I sorted through a bunch of [photos, pulling out a few that \I want and/or thought \mark would want to least see. My mother's youth hostel card, signed by her and Grandpa, was in an envelope, along with a 1949 student discount subway pass, which got her free or discounted trips home from school. Thirty-odd years later, they were giving us passes good for free trips both ways, but only after the first few weeks of the semester.

In going through papers, and figuring out what we need, including things the executors and Mom's account might need, we have so far found four social security cards. What seems to be the original has a number stamped on it rather than neatly printed. One of the others makes sense in that it has her second married name on it--Eve Rosenzweig Kugler--but four still seems like a lot.

I'm going to post this and have some breakfast

Still fangirling six days later

The MCR concert was amazing. They are performing the entire album of The Black Parade, but they've turned it into a weird theatre show with a different storyline than the usual album. The theme is kinda-sorta a fever dream of cold war Russia? With the band being state ordered performers to distract the masses? There's a mock election that the audience participates in, there's a "state official" who comes on stage to hand Gerard some sort of papers that Gerard rips up, there's fire, there's flashing lights, and it's all very weird and fantastic.

The band themselves were obviously having a fantastic time. Ray Toro (lead guitar) kept smiling all night, and Gerard was glorying in his punk rock theatre kid dream. And the sound for the show was some of the best mix I've heard at concerts.

After they finished with The Black Parade, the encore was songs from their other albums, letting them flail around even more. The high points for me were "Heaven Help Us" (a b-side from The Black Parade), and my two favorite songs from their first album, "Our Lady of Sorrows", and "Vampires Will Never Hurt You". MY SONG THEY PLAYED MY FAVORITE SONG. I was hoping for "Thank You for the Venom", but the other three songs made up for it.

In other words, MY G-D the show was amazing, and I am ecstatic that I'm going to SF this weekend to see them a second time.

(Oh, and Gerard is still cute. My precious rock star crush object!)

Entry tags:

meme

Meme stolen from @otter

What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.

1. Getting my car fixed for inspection yesterday, they found an expensive-to-fix but dangerous thing going wrong with the struts. I will soon be much safer on the road, which is good, even if it is money I wanted to spend doing a dozen other things.
2. My people are functioning and doing mostly okay despite The Horrors. Thank you for taking care of yourselves, and me, and each other. It makes me so relieved and proud and grateful to know you.
3. I am doing well at school.
4. Mom and Step-Dad are doing well as far as their physical health, and Mom’s gigantic bruise on her thigh from falling through the hole in the front porch is mostly healed now.
5. Step-Dad washed my car and it’s all shiny and cute again.
6. I am reading a smidge of BatFamily crack again, now that I have a bit of free time, and it makes me smile, giggle, and sometimes meanly snicker at Batman’s expense.
7. The couch-napping quilt is over 1/3 of the way done!
8. I made good progress on fixing Merlin’s stockings during the summer break. They should be ready to send by the end of July. 🤞
9. I have a call to make today to chatter with

nyyki about the ten thousand things.
10. I get to talk to Merlin tomorrow night, with any luck.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: The Rookery
Current Music: Tangerine Dream, Mars Polaris

Stewardship

Several years ago, I was visited by John August of the Pirate Party as I was hosting a special dinner for visitors, and he watched with keen interest as I put together a four-course French dinner with paired drinks, music, and a multi-layered laminated menu. "You have a very organised mind", he observed kindly. Cue last Friday, and I find myself in the company of Liza D., at a multi-narrative arthouse theatrical production, "Art, War, and Other Catastrophes". It was quite an interesting show, with unexpected convergence of the past (hello Helen!) afterwards, with our discussion venturing to a slightly wayward younger friend and my consistent efforts to encourage their intellectual insight. "You would make a good father", Liza remarked, which is probably one of the nicest things that one could say to a man of my vintage. Between the two events, a moment burned in my mind is Karl B., discussing life-skills referred to what he called "shit-togetherness", the ability to manage everything from one's own mental states, to personal and household budgets, to community groups, and beyond. Karl was expressing some concern that many don't seem to acquire this skill and knowledge until their thirties, if at all.

I suggested to Karl (inspired by the skill in the Pendragon RPG, no less) that the most appropriate term was "stewardship". The word, from Old English (stigweard) itself, originally means "hall guardian". It has semi-religious overtones as well, an trend in the Judeo-Christian tradition that represents an active and responsible engagement with the environment, a point I strenously made in an address to the Unitarian Church some eight years ago, and one which our political and economic leaders have manifestly failed; we are supposed to "serve the garden in which we have been placed" (Genesis 2:15). There is a grim irony that an rational atheist and emotional pantheist finds himself appealing to Biblical verse when our nominal leaders profess a faith that they do not seem to even aspire to practise. But of course, there are very profound secular reasons as well why stewardship is the right noun to describe human interaction with our environment, rather than a protectionist laissez-faire or indifferent exploitation.

Stewardship most of all entails a sense of responsibility. Starting from oneself, it entails a sense that one will not engage in self-sabotating behaviour and put effort in making the best use of one's mind ("the mind is a terrible thing to waste") and time ("Life is short, death is long, use your time wisely"). Extended to households, whether shared or singular, it means being responsible for creating an home that is both stimulating and a sanctuary, and extended to the social world, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, it is engagement in the public realm where social freedom, through action and dialogue, becomes manifest, within the context of the natural world as a whole. Ultimately, stewardship is the responsible and ethical planning and management of resources, whether personal, social, or environmental, and as Lamb pointed out, the greater the power, the greater the responsibility. How careless are our rulers! As Frankl remarked, without responsibility, freedom degenerates into arbitrary whims, these rampaging childish pathological monsters who crush others underfoot with their indifference.

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: free guy

Entry tags:

i'm very excited to go on vacation in a week

happy bastille day, flist! it's also apparently national mac&cheese day in the us. chop off some heads, enjoy some delicious pasta and cheese sauce.

still hot, also.

so on wednesday one of my groups at work (technically one of my groups and a larger group that it belongs to) is hosting a summit through friday and so far it has been a massive pain in our butts. the project manager keeps saying this is the last year and she is not kidding. we still haven't printed the name badges yet because people keep registering. it starts wednesday! we're fully booked! registration is closed! and yet one of the pi's organizing it (or more accurately, one of the pi's who's going to get credit for it but who isn't actually doing anything) keeps telling people they can come. we can't feed them. there's nowhere for them to sit. we're full! but no. on the plus side, we weren't expecting to do better than last year (about 350 people) and until a couple weeks ago we thought we'd be lucky to break even. i mean, no one wants to come to the us and can you blame them? and then suddenly we were fully booked. wtf.

(this morning a woman in another group involved in the summit basically gave me a heart attack by saying "so does the minister [one of the keynote speakers] have transportation from the airport to the hotel?" implication being that the minister was already here - i pictured this poor woman stranded at the airport - even tho the ticket that i booked for her got her in at 7:40 tonight. she did not have a car booked to take her from the airport to the hotel because a. that's not a thing we offer to do for anyone at the summit, and more importantly b. no one told me i needed to do it. turns out she didn't arrive ten hours early. her assistant panicked. and then this other woman involved in the summit panicked. and then she made me and another admin panic. and suddenly the minister's not even here yet and we're all panicking for no reason. the other admin booked her a car and i haven't heard anything so i assume she got here in one piece and got to the hotel in one piece and to be honest i'm glad it came up this morning and not tonight because i sign off at 5:30 and would not have been checking my email if the minister got here and everyone freaked out because she didn't have a car to take her to the hotel because no one told me i needed to book her one.)

booking travel is legitimately part of my job but summit travel is A Lot. the summit is just A Lot. at least i get overtime, and they'll feed me.

last thursday i met some folks from writing group for pizza. it's nice to see them in person since we're still virtual. pizza was good - i split an onion and sausage with writer g who moved to california but comes back for like a month every year - company was fun, getting home was a trial because a bunch of t stations were closed because they were doing work on the line and when i got to an open station... it was closed. whut. even the t employees didn't know what was going on. it took me like two hours and twenty minutes to get home which is absurd. glad i went tho.

saturday unpacked some, dicked around some, met my sister for dinner and superman which i have mixed feelings about. ( spoilers! )

and sunday i bought a suitcase! i need a big one since my other one broke when i went to italy. it has oranges on it. :D

h-e-b is a texas grocery store chain and one girl went viral on tiktok for taking 200 h-e-b tortillas through airport security in her backpack. the store totally leaned into it. apparently it's a thing and lots of people have taken h-e-b tortillas onto planes in their carryons. i find that incredibly adorable and also delicious.

Entry tags:

The Only Way Out is Through?

A part of me envies my mom's lack of memory these days. I was telling her about some of the latest bullshit going down in DC, and she was incredulous, but she won't remember how fucked up everything is. I just have to try not to think too hard about it all day every day. At least I have plenty to keep me busy.

On a sunnier note, had my annual review today and they still like me a lot. My boss is probably going to be stepping back, as he gets older and has his first grandchild on the way. I got asked if I'd be willing to step up. *gulp* I don't think I can do all of it, but I can try for at least part of it. I'm so swamped already, though. I need to figure out some efficiencies, or just do a little less -thorough- a job on some stuff.

Broader changes are also coming down the pike, as we're in the process of being acquired in a few months, after some legal stuff clears (like changing ownership of our US ground stations for licensing purposes). It's a little scary that the head of the acquiring company knows my name (in a good way)!

I still have no idea where I'm going to carve out time to get Mom living somewhere safer. Furnace guy came out and checked everything out, but didn't find anything, so the stove's gas supply is staying off. This week and next are full of Mom's doctor appointments, Lillian's ceramics class, another class the week after next, one customer's launch, another customer's final integration testing prep, and Josh's parents coming to town for most of a week. I finally got work's monthly invoicing & reporting cycle closed out tonight, but the next one's coming quick. I notionally have a few days off to spend with the in-laws next week, but one of them is likely to be launch day, so that's at least one day down. And then a week after they leave, Lillian's grandfather is coming for almost 2 weeks.

Entry tags:

i love a low-stakes question

Dear Miss Manners: The neighbor who lives directly across the street from me parks in front of my house. If this was occasional, I wouldn’t care, but it’s become the daily routine. I can’t imagine consistently doing this.

I enjoy looking out my window in the evening, but now my view is a car every night.

Today a work truck parked in front of my house, so the neighbor parked in their own driveway (which is always clear, as is their curb). When the truck left, they moved their car back to my curb, leaving their driveway empty the rest of the day.

I realize this could sound petty, but our other neighbors respect this unwritten rule.

In addition to unwritten, the rule is possibly unknown to this neighbor. Miss Manners trusts that you don’t think the car is purposely parked with the intention of blocking your view, and that you realize that others have a legal right to park on a public street.

Therefore, the neighbor would be doing you a favor by refraining from parking there. And to ask a favor requires purging any annoyance you feel and admitting that complying would be a voluntary kindness.

An amusing confession of your staring-out-the-window habit would be more effective than an admonishment for violating neighborhood expectations.

Really don't think The Ethicist was the right columnist for this question

I’m a 20-year-old male college student who met someone new this spring. We clicked instantly and have been dating a few months. He visited me at college, and we’re both living in New York this summer. We enjoy lovely dinners and each other’s company with almost no issues, except one major sore spot.

I recently let him know I’m not interested in monogamy right now. Having been in a long-distance monogamous relationship before, the pressure and trust issues made me skeptical of that norm. I explained that because of my past, I struggle to feel deeply sexually attracted to someone I actually care about. We have OK sex, but it lacks the fire of casual hookups. I also explained that my interest in nonmonogamy was less about actively seeking others and more about lessening the pressure around potential lapses during travel or because of distance.

He seemed to take it all right, but I later discovered that within two weeks, he slept with three people without telling me — supposedly to avoid getting cuckolded or looking foolish. I haven’t seen anyone else in the meantime, so now I guess I look foolish. When I confronted him about acting out of anger rather than communicating, he immediately blamed my original sin of wanting nonmonogamy, which he says is for “hippies and sex addicts.”

I told him how I’ve seen relationships, including my parents’, destroyed by infidelity and deception. I asked whether he would prefer a relationship filled with lies or one built on honesty — to which he said he would rather not be with me at all, which definitely hurt.

To ease tensions, I agreed to four months of exclusivity to see where we stand. I emphasized my reluctance to rush things, especially because I haven’t felt deep love or trust yet and can see that he is much more into me than I am into him. Continuing, even not in my preferred way, seemed better than cutting off someone I care about.

But I’m still curious about nonmonogamy, especially while I’m young and good-looking and trying to understand which relationship styles work for me. Should I suppress my bohemian urges and go along with his desire for exclusivity or attempt another structured conversation about it? Am I too young for this to matter or is this actually the best time to test boundaries? Any thoughts on examining this situation and mending resentments before they spiral?

( Read more... )

(no subject)

Dear Carolyn: I have an older sister, “Amy,” who was prettier and more outgoing than I was, so I kind of lived in her shadow, but I adored her and she was always my best friend growing up. Her sophomore year of college, I found out from a friend at her school that she was doing drugs and her boyfriend was a dealer. She’d secretly dropped half her courses and was barely passing the rest. I offered to find her some help, but she just ridiculed me. As things worsened, I was worried about her, so I told our parents. She lied and said I’d made the whole thing up because I was so jealous of her. My parents believed her and even said I might need therapy for telling a lie that big, until she was arrested a few months later and the whole truth came out.

For years following, she kept lying, stole so much money from me, wrecked my car and said/did many other horrible things to me. I moved away and cut her out of my life. She skipped out on her treatment program and got arrested again.

Last year, Amy completed rehab and is supposedly clean. She also had a baby last month, has minimal support from the father and is back living with my parents.

They want me to forgive and forget and be part of my nephew’s life, but I see it as insisting I give Amy another chance to hurt me. I still have so much resentment against her. I don’t want to take it out on her son, but I can’t stand the thought of being around her. She never apologized or tried to make amends for all she put me through, and I’m not sure I could ever trust her again. Is it even worth trying to be a part of my nephew’s life when I feel that way about his mom?
— Distrustful

( Read more... )

I genuinely don't know how LW hasn't smothered their mom yet

Dear Annie: I have a frustrating problem with my mother. I'm 40 years old, but she still treats me like I'm a teenager. She expects me to answer every call immediately and freaks out if I'm unavailable, often roping in my cousin to text me if I don't respond since my mom doesn't know how.

This has been going on since I was a teen. When I was 18, I was expected to call when I left or arrived anywhere. I once forgot to call her after leaving a bookstore, and by the time I got to the library, I was accosted by three separate employees saying my mother had been calling. My aunt and cousin think it's a cute story, not infuriating like I do.

Last year, I mentioned I was heading to Walmart. Remember that I'm 40. I didn't check my phone for 10 whole minutes, and in that short time, my mom called several times and had our cousin text to "see if I was OK."

Most recently, I missed a text and then a call from my cousin -- she was picking me up -- because my phone was on silent after I got home from work and I'd stepped into the bathroom. My mom later confronted me about the "stunt" I pulled, how it was so rude I'd done that and told my cousin they shouldn't pick me up anymore.

How do I explain to her that she's suffocating me? I know she worries, but I'm 40 years old. I'm not a highly sought after princess the world is about to kidnap at any moment; I'm just another random person, not a highly coveted commodity. The more she does this, the more she pushes me away. -- Smothered in a Small Town

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

political

meanwhile...

Quoted in the Yale alumni magazine: "You know the world is going crazy when Yale alums are making donations to Harvard!"

(This Yale alum donates to the United Negro College Fund, because they need it more than Yale does.)

Entry tags:

links,
science

Family resemblances are complicated

via

oursin, something I found interesting: We still don't understand family resemblance, and some of what we thought we knew is mistaken, or might be.

This article describes research that used data from almost a million people: every Norwegian student who took a standardized test from 2007-2019.

Quoting the article: "The resemblance of twins cannot be reconciled with any model....The resemblance of adoptees cannot be reconciled with any model."

Adjusting a model to account better for twins makes it a poorer match of adoptive relationships, and vice versa. Any attempt to account for one of these moves the model away adopted siblings makes it fit twins less well, and vice versa.
( cut for length )