Because, basically, special-education prepared me to live on Sesame Street and that's about all. Or in one of those movies when we were kids where somebody loved the dork after she showed what was inside.
Natter 74: Ready or Not
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, butt kicking, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
On the plus side of things, I just had some really damn good pizza.
For those of us missing Cute Overload:
I've become rather fond of WeRateDogs.
Just because someone else gets angry doesn't mean their anger is your problem. I have very little interest, for instance, in mending fences with the six people who twitter-teamed me about bathroom laws, and they were totally angry at me, probably because it's a strain for six people to have one brain.
The internet bums me out a little because it does away with the best piece of advice I heard from an old boss. She used to run a group home for people with brain injuries, so there were a lot of interpersonal conflicts. She would tell residents, if one person gives you a piece of feedback, it could be their issue, not yours. Even if two people give you the same piece of feedback. But when three people tell you the same thing, you should seriously consider if it is something to work on. I still hold on to that!
On the minus side, I ate too much pizza.
The whole thing where Trump tried to convince the world that he's sacrificed things got me thinking about the meaning of the word, in kind of a modern context. Obviously, the military and their families probably make the most obvious sacrifice for the country.
But what else is a sacrifice? Can we say that politicians make sacrifices? They get paid, but so do members of the military.
Parents sacrifice things for their children, and family members for each other. They go without so that the other person can get something -- food, money, clothes, entertainment, a whole range of things. And the higher up the income ladder you go, the degree of sacrifice probably gets less and less.
So that gets you to Trump. What about someone like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or Mark Zuckerberg, who've pledged huge amounts of their wealth to charity? It still leaves them with enough to live in plenty of luxury, so is it really a sacrifice?
Anyway, I was thinking that as a childless person who's been incredibly lucky and always financially secure, I'm not sure I've ever done anything you could call a sacrifice.
Trump does back down. First he aggressively counterattacks, but if it looks like he will lose (see lawsuits), he settles. I think most of his lawsuit settlements have remained secret and involve him admitting no guilt, but he does settle.
Not sure what the equivalent is to this mess we are in.
Oh my god, my author doubled down and replied to my email and said "Frankly, I do not endorse any of the changes made to the article, which was clear and understandable as written." So now this gets kicked up the food chain, because we do not run un-edited articles. Even Pres. Obama was edited!
I know the senior editors/staff know that some authors are always going to be shitheads, and this doesn't reflect poorly on me, but this is fucking ridiculous. The author is saying that her article should not have been edited. What the hell. She's not Anne Rice.
Even Pres. Obama was edited!
You'd think that would be convincing enough.
Not knowing Gates' history my gut would guess he sacrificed in the early years by working for no salary to build a company. That is all I could guess though.