I am skipping to say thanks for the Birthday wishes! I think I just finished my personal thanks on Facebook but I get wary of mentioning how we know each other on another platform. So I can’t say enough about how grateful I am for the Buffistas. You support me know through everything and I know I can always find support here…. Also I think I am meeting my sister ( discovered in 23 and me but also I already knew due to super sleuthing) for lunch soon!

Also, Cashmere, I want to time travel and smite people.

Happy birthday, Sophia! I'm excited about you meeting your sister.

I am trying to cut back on FB and spend more time here, but I did see something this morning that, unlike most things on FB, was totally charming: A German woman popped into a tag group to ask if there was a word in English for a particular kind of sexist, verbally violent white guy on the internet, because she'd seen a bunch of different interactions recently play out in exactly the same unpleasant way and she wondered if we already had slang for it.

All the English speakers asked, "Why do you need an English word? Isn't German already all over that? It's legendary for its infinite array of incredibly specific compound words for uniquely terrible people!"

To which she said, "Those are all very long and hard to remember even for us. You guys came up with snappy things like 'boomer' and 'incel.' I love that!"

And there the conversation went, down a mutual language appreciation rabbit hole with all the English speakers loving on Backpfeifengesicht and Taubenlecker and the German speaker swooning over the short sharp shock of Karen and dickweed.

JZ, that's really cool. I'm still never going back to FB, though: they are responsible for so many deaths and the potential failure of American democracy. (Also they won't let me log in without uploading a copy of my passport, and I'm not doing that, so I can't even delete my account!)

On edit: which is not to challenge anyone else's fondness for the platform! I have not used it much in years, but I know a lot of people for whom that's the only way to talk to a lot of friends/family. We all make those calculations, and I admit that I am on Instagram, so I'm a bit of a hypocrite.

In other news I just got back from a work trip to San Diego, where I sat in a ballroom with 50 other environmental people for 3 days, and drank too much with said other people at the poolside bar at the hotel for 4 evenings. My body needs a break. It was great, and professionally-useful: I got to hang with people I hadn't seen in several years, and met a lot of relatively new hires. But we were pretty much unmasked entirely because the ballroom was so big (you could play an ultimate frisbee game in there without interfering with the presentations), and while I did make sure to be masked in the airport and in Ubers, I'm still a bit worried... There was a lot of hugging when we all left.

Cashmere, I cannot believe your story: it's so horribly selfish. Even if your dad had been vaccinated, all his caregivers should be too! I hope he and you recover quickly.

In other news, I read that long piece in the WaPo about the GOP strategy and US politics going forward, and it was so disheartening! Makes me wish my family were more recent immigrants to the US, so I could try to get Irish citizenship. I'm really worried about this country.

I keep hoping to meet a nice Canadian or Irish girl or something, Consuela, because likewise none of my ancestors came over recently enough from Ireland. (Some others are more recent but don’t do the same “if your grandparent…”)

they won't let me log in without uploading a copy of my passport

What?!?! Wow.

Yeah, agreed that's unacceptable, and you are right not to do that.

I keep hoping to meet a nice Canadian or Irish girl or something

We've discovered that if we buy a certain amount of property in Greece we can get a Greek passport, and then EU citizenship. Considering JZ's family over there it's viable and tempting.

I really need to get on claiming my Irish and Canadian citizenship. I have Canadian, but because of the whole, "Wake up Canadian" things where they changed it and it retroactively got reinstated I need to deal with paperwork to get it done.

Irish I'm eligible through my grandfather. I need to track down requisite birth certificates for him, and for my father to prove lineage.

Pretty sure I don’t have any options for alternative citizenships. Kind of a funny concept to apply to the Russian branch.

I have quite a few people that I only have any contact at all with via FB and am not close enough to for exploring other means to be natural so I will probably keep on with it, but I am way less active lately, mostly just passively scrolling the feed. It’s awful but it’s convenient, my version of Chidi’s almond milk.

I need to complain that my work transition that was originally supposed to take place over 4-5 weeks starting in June, and then 4-5 weeks starting in July, and then 4-5 weeks starting next week, and then all at once next week, was confirmed as still going forward all at once next week but without buy in and training from Sales and with 1/4 of the team out of office which is all fine what is annoying me is that the email saying so was sent out yesterday after most if not all of our team (including me) was done working for the week (and almost half the team was OOO to start with). Monday is going to be awful.