Well, he's the president. He can totes spend our money.

Which...would be like all the other presidents, not more or less.

Money ain't got no owners, only spenders.

Ohhhh, like everything the government does? Sure. If we're talking personal expenditures, his salary becomes his, as do book sales, etc.

I realize I do not need to tell you this.

I can't believe I've had corn meal in my house for so long and was still making corn muffins from a box. It was like two more ingredients, and slightly more delicious.

I need to be told things. Apparently no one believes children are born scientists, yet this needs to be debunked. Also, having your software say "in 1 second" is gold-plating, and what concrete value does NOT BEING WRONG have? (eta: grammatically wrong--I understand that no computer in the history of ever has correctly predicted how long a second that hasn't happened yet (measuring work your computer is doing) is going to span. Or not span.)

Hey! I'm leaving work before 6 today. And not just because my manager and boss aren't here, but also because I didn't sleep Saturday night BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE DIDN'T TAKE MY SHIT SERIOUSLY. I could have been back in bed by 2 (or at the ER, not trying to send work emails hopped up on dilaudid) if they'd taken me seriously when I said shit needed to be scheduled. Instead of telling me at 8:30am that stuff was pretty much done.

So I'm on hour 11 of parent teacher conferences and still have over 2 hours to go. I am ready for this to be done!

Oh, hey. I have a question about identity, minority, and majority. I just read:

"I grew up reading a generation of American and English people like [Saul] Bellow, [John] Updike or [Martin] Amis. Everybody’s neutral unless they’re black — then you hear about it: the black man, the black woman, the black person. Of course, if you happen to be black the world doesn’t look that way to you. I just wanted to try and create perhaps a sense of alienation and otherness in this person, the white reader, to remind them that they are not neutral to other people." Zadie Smith, discussing how she never mentions the race of any of the characters in her new novel, NW, unless they are white

The assumption here seems to be that white people don't mention race of white people. I can't work out if it is also that black people don't mention race of black people. How do Asian people deal? Are they in the book?

I'll probably tell you everyone's race or no one's, but unless it's a sooper sekrit NAACP meeting, probably not just the one.

So I'm wondering if her book is supposed to echo my experience or it's just supposed to mirror an experience for us of reading white-as-default books.

I keep remembering people realising the race of the protagonist in Anansi Boys because they only mention race when white, but that's not my black experience, so it confused me.

I have not read any of her books, but I thought one of her books featured a biracial person.

Shouldn't she just name everyone's race? I don't get any kind of naming/not naming if you aim to be progressive.

I'm confused. I'm pretty sure that Obama has made millions in the past years. His last tax return shows he made $789,000ish in 2011 with most of that coming from book royalties. So probably over the course of two years he's made at least a million. Good on him for spending some of it. He's keeping our economy going.

eta I looked it up because he has released enough returns. In 2010 he made $1,795,614, with only $395,188 from his presidential salary the rest from his royalties. So yes, he's made millions.

The assumption here seems to be that white people don't mention race of white people.

It is my experience that in books written by white people, only white people's race isn't mentioned, generally. If that was your question.

Also, in real life, I have found that black people mention either race or shade, but white people mention nothing. It is actually pretty funny to watch someone try to describe a black person without mentioning they are black. But teh black people I know will say "Oh, Katie, she's white, has red hair". "Oh Jessie, the light skinned one, not the dark skinned one.". Meanwhile the white people are all like "Jessie-- she has brown hair and eyes, kinda short..."