Network

Two similar letters, originally posted years apart

1. Dear Carolyn: My mom basically despises my boyfriend, “Tom,” because he didn’t graduate from college and works a blue-collar job. She is so rude to him, we can’t even be around her. She defends this by saying that looking at us together makes her feel disgusted, she can’t help how she feels, and she’s being as nice as she can given the intensity of her feelings. Tom actually cried after our last dinner with my parents.

Tom and I are 24, are independently financially stable and have lived together for six months — another source of my mother’s angst, but I suspect if I were “shacking up” with a more “eligible” bachelor, she would deal just fine. Although I am beyond furious at her treatment of Tom, I don’t want to lose her. Our relationship no longer resembles the mother-daughter bond we used to have. I’m also scared about what this is doing to my parents’ marriage. My dad is saying things to her in a tone I’ve never heard before — telling her that her behavior is unacceptable, that she needs to stop. She just gets defensive and yells at him. I don’t want my relationship to be their undoing.

I love Tom and could see us getting engaged in a year or two. However, I’m actually thinking about breaking up with him over this, although I know evil shouldn’t triumph. But I feel like he’s on one side, and on the other side is my relationship with my mom AND my parents’ relationship AND the potential to have it all if I meet a college-educated suitor. (I feel like a horrible person saying this.)

( Read more... )

******

2. Dear Annie: I am a 26-year-old woman deeply in love with someone my parents can't stand. He's not what they envisioned for me; he's rough around the edges, has tattoos, rides a motorcycle and works with his hands for a living. My parents like clean-cut, college-educated types in suits, and he's the complete opposite.

Yes, he has a bit of a "bad boy" past. He's made some mistakes in his younger years -- got into trouble, partied too hard, even had a brush with the law. But that was years ago. Since then, he's turned his life around. He's steady, loyal, hardworking, and treats me with more respect and care than anyone I've ever dated.

Despite all that, my parents won't give him a chance. They're polite when he's around, but I can tell they're just waiting for me to wake up and realize he's "not good enough." They constantly drop hints about finding someone "more suitable" or "more stable," and it's starting to wear me down. I feel caught in the middle -- between a man I love and parents I don't want to disappoint.

I'm not blind to his flaws, but I believe in the man he is now. How do I move forward when the people I've always looked to for support can't accept the person I've chosen? Am I being naive for thinking love is enough, or are my parents judging him unfairly? -- Torn Between Love and Loyalty

( Read more... )

The Hidden Provision in the Big Ugly Bill that Makes Trump King

The comments rapidly go off the rails, but there are three links there to go through.

There's more linkage here.

I genuinely do not have the energy to read all of this. I will be sending out an email to my senators, I guess.

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

Celebrate Sherlock Holmes Day with 21 Queer Detective Reads!

Today marks the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the most influential authors of modern detective stories. To honor his legacy, May 22 has been dubbed the Sherlock Holmes Day. Last year, we celebrated with a roundtable chat about the beloved sleuth. This year, we’re shifting our focus to his spiritual successors, wrapped in the rainbow flag. Enjoy the list of 21 Queer Detective Reads, compiled thanks to: Nina Waters, Shadaras, Owl Outerbridge, theirprofoundbond, hullosweetpea, Mikki Madison, Shea Sullivan, Dei Walker, Shannon, Rhosyn Goodfellow and an anonymous contributor.

Laura Spinney’s Proto.

Posted by languagehat

https://languagehat.com/laura-spinneys-proto/

https://languagehat.com/?p=17432

Laura Spinney, a British science journalist, has come out with a book called Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, about my former area of specialization, Proto-Indo-European. Not having seen it, I can’t say how accurate it is, but Laura Miller’s Slate review makes it sound like Spinney has been keeping up with recent developments, anyway:

It’s astonishing how much we’ve discovered about these languages that have gone unspoken and unheard for millennia. In the past two decades, new DNA analysis technologies, combined with archaeological advances and linguistics, have solved many mysteries surrounding the spread of the Proto-Indo-European (or PIE). For example, Anatolian, a now-extinct group of languages, was once thought to be the earliest offshoot of PIE, the first instance in which a new language split off from the mother tongue. But in recent years, genealogical analysis of human remains from the period shows no genetic connection between the people who spoke the Anatolian languages and the Yamnaya, a people of the Pontic–Caspian steppe region north of the Black Sea—now considered the source of PIE. The presiding theory now is that Anatolian isn’t the daughter of PIE, but its sister, with both being the products of an even more ancient lingua obscura. […]

Fortunately, Spinney is a stylish and erudite writer; it’s the rare science book that quotes Keats, Seamus Heaney, and Ismail Kadare. She also has a keen sense of the romance of her subject. Her vivid scene-setting takes us from the vast, grassy steppes where the nomadic Yamnaya grazed the livestock whose meat and milk made them exceptionally tall and strong to the perplexing Tocharian culture on the western border of China—whose capital was regarded by the Chinese as filled with “heavy-drinking, decadent barbarians,” famed for its dancing girls and “the flock of a thousand peacocks upon which its nobles liked to feast.” This latter culture—and not Sanskrit, as was long thought—may even be the source for the English word “shaman.”

Spinney illuminates the way that languages reflect the material reality of the world in which they are spoken. “Hotspots of linguistic diversity,” she writes, “coincide with hotspots of biodiversity, because those regions can support a higher density of human groups speaking different languages.” These are the places where the speakers of different languages are most likely to borrow words from each other, leaving clues to their encounters for later generations of scholars. […]

Genetic evidence has also revealed that while the Yamnaya did not venture all that far from the steppes where they domesticated horses and ate tulip bulbs, their more aggressive successors, the Corded Ware Culture (named for their distinctive style of pottery), carried the PIE languages all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. In much of Europe, this advance resulted in, as Spinney writes, “an almost complete replacement of the gene pool,” in particular the male chromosome. The Corded Ware men “had bred with local women and prevented local men from passing on their genes,” she explains; “Rape, murder, even genocide could not be ruled out.” However, a group of Danish scientists now believe that the replacement was not necessarily intentional—that plagues swept through Europe in the Late Neolithic period, diseases to which the newcomers from the steppes were resistant. In a related mystery, the population of Ireland is one of the few in Europe that has been genetically consistent since the Bronze Age, yet somehow Ireland also adopted (and still strives to preserve) Gaelic, its own Indo-European language. Usually genetic and linguistic change go hand in hand, but in this case, not.

Multilingualism predominated in the ancient world, where you might need different tongues to chat with your neighbor, perform religious rituals, and trade with the metal workers upriver. Monolingualism is a modern phenomenon, one Spinney links to the concept of the nation-state. Though in the 21st century humans move greater distances even more easily, languages seem to intermingle and influence one another much less than in ancient times. Spinney theorizes that “the desire to belong is as strong as ever, and as it becomes harder to see the difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’, linguistic and cultural boundaries are being guarded more jealously.”

I’m sure that, like any journalist, she makes mistakes when dealing with specialist material, but my heart is warmed by her desire to spread knowledge of PIE, and I like this quote:

“Prehistoric people undoubtedly had identities as complex and multi-layered as ours,” Spinney writes, “but we can be sure that nowhere among the layers was the nation-state.”

Thanks, Bathrobe!

https://languagehat.com/laura-spinneys-proto/

https://languagehat.com/?p=17432

Current Mood: annoyed

Entry tags:

economics,
news

Pennies

People are trying again to kill the penny. Just to add insult to injury, the law would require all prices to be rounded up.

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

Birdfeeding

Today is cloudy and cool.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 5/22/25 -- I set out the flats of pots and watered them.

I've seen a young fox squirrel.

EDIT 5/22/25 -- Of the 6 pots I sowed with Gaillardia 'Firewheel' seeds on 2/23/25, three sprouted. One of those has since died, but one of the remaining pots had two seedlings in it. I planted the survivors in one of the mowed strips of the prairie garden. So that's roughly 50% success if you count by pots, but less if you count by seeds since I put two in each pot. I plant them by pots, though, so it's not a terrible result.

EDIT 5/22/25 -- I started trying to trim grass around the septic garden, but the grass shears broke. >_< Fortunately I had an older pair that I could use, but I need new ones. I did get one section trimmed. I'm taking advantage of the cool, cloudy weather for a laborious project.

EDIT 5/22/25 -- I trimmed more grass around the septic garden.

I've seen a mourning dove, a phoebe, and two young ground squirrels.

The first peas sprouted a couple days ago and more are up now. :D The 'Chocolate Sprinkles' cherry tomato has the first green fruit, although it's among the last ones I planted, just over a week ago.

.

Entry tags:

books

Some reading related stuff

Libby now has volume 2 of Meng Xi Shi's Thousands Autumns, so I'll probably end up checking that out once my hold comes through (and it looks like they've added more danmei series too).

Rosmei has released cover art for The Creator's Grace, which hopefully means preorders aren't too far away. I wish I liked the art more - it feels a bit generic to me (it might just be that I'm comparing it to the cool looking art I've seen for the audio drama).

I seem to be bit and miss with novellas at the moment - I'm kinda sad Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame by Neon Yang didn't really work for me (especially since I enjoyed their Tensorate novellas), but I did really like The River Has Roots by Amal El- Mohtar.

I like pennies. I use pennies.

https://apnews.com/article/us-mint-treasury-department-penny-end-production-daf6367d7e8d31d6783720d5d4667115

House Bill Drops Public Lands Sales, But Seen As Harmful To Parks, Wildlife

Posted by Kurt Repanshek

https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/05/house-bill-drops-public-lands-sales-seen-harmful-parks-wildlife

While a massive budget reconciliation bill passed by the House no longer contains a provision to allow for federal lands to be sold, critics say it contains provisions damaging to the National Park Service, wildlife, and the environment in general.

https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2025/05/house-bill-drops-public-lands-sales-seen-harmful-parks-wildlife

Current Mood: sore
Current Location: Rat te Kāinga
Current Music: Cicadas

Entry tags:

Self propulsion is a crock

Muscles are annoying. I understand the biological method by which we develop our muscles after using them; they're still annoying when the delayed onset muscle soreness hits. Which it has, and now my hips and quads and hams are in misery.

I am working on pullups as well, and my deltoids hate me. That's fine, I can hate them back just as equally.

On the more cheerful side of working a body and being reasonably good at it, I have had several people ask me to teach them stretching so they don't do anything awkward to themselves during high impact activity.

Entry tags:

prompt: #443 - ambrosia

Spooks (MI5) - Tinned Rice

Title: Tinned Rice
Fandom: Spooks (MI5)
Rating: G

( What are you eating )

Entry tags:

Oddments

I initially saw this because somebody on Facebook posted the video: Boyfriend proposed during the marathon she trained 6 months for, and in the list of Inappropriate Times and Places to Propose, while she is actually running a marathon is very near the top, right? it's bad enough for bloke to be waiting with ring and maybe flowers at the finish line (for many observers, marathon proposals are about men stealing the spotlight).

Run, girl, run.

***

To revert to that discussion about The Right Sort of Jawline and Breathing Properly the other day, TIL that mouth taping is (still) A Thing, and Canadian researchers say there’s no evidence that mouth taping has any health benefits and warn that it could actually be harmful for people with sleep apnea.

***

Since I see this is dated 2020, I may have posted it before: but hey, let's hear it for C18th women scholars of Anglo-Saxon Elizabeth Elstob, Old English scholar, and the Harleian Library. I think I want to know more about her years in the household of Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715–1785), duchess of Portland, who I know better through her connection with Mrs Delany of the botanically accurate embroidery and collages of flowers.

***

I like this report on the 'Discovery of Original Magna Carta' because it's actually attentive to the amount of actual work that goes into 'discovering', from the first, 'aha! that looks like it might be' to the final confirmation.

follow-ups

My main goal for today is to clear all the dozens of tabs from the laptop as part of getting ready to take it to a person who will install Linux
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/956812.html
despite this article
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-1-built-for-control-but-not-for-people/

The rust was removed from my car. It looks nice. I didn't see anyone being snatched by ICE while in the area
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/957219.html

One other thing about the Kdrama "Resident Playbook"
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/956991.html
In the final episode, a character recommended a paper about ovarian cancer and mention the lead author's surname as Ryu. This seemed very specific to me. There were no other authors or paper titles mentioned (just the person speaking explaining her spreadsheet system of keeping track of what she's read).
I went to Pubmed. There are several people with that surname who do ovarian cancer research. Is it Ji-yoo, who is at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul? Or Jae-Sung at Korea the Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology? Or Jai Min at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul? Why do all their names begin with J?
It's time to stop looking, but there was also someone I found yesterday at the Mayo clinic.
A few weeks ago, SF author John Wiswell was auctioning off the chance to name a character in the next book for a worthy cause. Did the writers of "Resident Playbook" do something similar? Were they just going for verisimilitude? Was this Ryu some sort of consultant for the cancer parts of the series?
Relatively early on in the X-files, there was a list of passengers on a flight. It was only onscreen briefly, but long enough for some of the regular posters on alt.tv.x-files to see their names used.

auberge

auberge (oh-BAIRZH; French oh-BERZH) - n., an inn or hostel.

Or sometimes a restaurant, because some inns also serve food, but more strictly it's a place to sleep for the night. Dictionaries wildly disagree on when this was taken on from French, ranging from the 15th to 18th centuries, which highlights that dictionary compilers have very different databases. The French word is taken from Provençal, with alberga/alberja attested from the eleventh century, which okay would technically be in Old Provençal, at which point it also meant an encampment/hut as well as inn, from a Germanic root (compare Old Saxon heriberga, army shelter, and Old High German heriberga, army headquarters) that also gave us harbor.

---L.

Current Mood: amused

Watch out, Orangutans!

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: cynical

Farming In America

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

The Voter Experience

Posted by Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/05/the-voter-experience.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=70286

Technology and innovation have transformed every part of society, including our electoral experiences. Campaigns are spending and doing more than at any other time in history. Ever-growing war chests fuel billions of voter contacts every cycle. Campaigns now have better ways of scaling outreach methods and offer volunteers and donors more efficient ways to contribute time and money. Campaign staff have adapted to vast changes in media and social media landscapes, and use data analytics to forecast voter turnout and behavior.

Yet despite these unprecedented investments in mobilizing voters, overall trust in electoral health, democratic institutions, voter satisfaction, and electoral engagement has significantly declined. What might we be missing?

In software development, the concept of user experience (UX) is fundamental to the design of any product or service. It’s a way to think holistically about how a user interacts with technology. It ensures that products and services are built with the users’ actual needs, behaviors, and expectations in mind, as opposed to what developers think users want. UX enables informed decisions based on how the user will interact with the system, leading to improved design, more effective solutions, and increased user satisfaction. Good UX design results in easy, relevant, useful, positive experiences. Bad UX design leads to unhappy users.

This is not how we normally think of elections. Campaigns measure success through short-term outputs—voter contacts, fundraising totals, issue polls, ad impressions—and, ultimately, election results. Rarely do they evaluate how individuals experience this as a singular, messy, democratic process. Each campaign, PAC, nonprofit, and volunteer group may be focused on their own goal, but the voter experiences it all at once. By the time they’re in line to vote, they’ve been hit with a flood of outreach—spammy texts from unfamiliar candidates, organizers with no local ties, clunky voter registration sites, conflicting information, and confusing messages, even from campaigns they support. Political teams can point to data that justifies this barrage, but the effectiveness of voter contact has been steadily declining since 2008. Intuitively, we know this approach has long-term costs. To address this, let’s evaluate the UX of an election cycle from the point of view of the end user, the everyday citizen.

Specifically, how might we define the UX of an election cycle: the voter experience (VX)? A VX lens could help us see the full impact of the electoral cycle from the perspective that matters most: the voters’.

For example, what if we thought about elections in terms of questions like these?

How do voters experience an election cycle, from start to finish?
How do voters perceive their interactions with political campaigns?
What aspects of the election cycle do voters enjoy? What do they dislike? Do citizens currently feel fulfilled by voting?
If voters “tune out” of politics, what part of the process has made them want to not pay attention?
What experiences decrease the number of eligible citizens who register and vote?
Are we able to measure the cumulative impacts of political content interactions over the course of multiple election cycles?
Can polls or focus groups help researchers learn about longitudinal sentiment from citizens as they experience multiple election cycles?
If so, what would we want to learn in order to bolster democratic participation and trust in institutions?

Thinking in terms of VX can help answer these questions. Moreover, researching and designing around VX could help identify additional metrics, beyond traditional turnout and engagement numbers, that better reflect the collective impact of campaigning: of all those voter contact and persuasion efforts combined.

This isn’t a radically new idea, and earlier efforts to embed UX design into electoral work yielded promising early benefits. In 2020, a coalition of political tech builders created a Volunteer Experience program. The group held design sprints for political tech tools, such as canvassing apps and phone banking sites. Their goal was to apply UX principles to improve the volunteer user flow, enhance data hygiene, and improve volunteer retention. If a few sprints can improve the phone banking experience, imagine the transformative possibilities of taking this lens to the VX as a whole.

If we want democracy to thrive long-term, we need to think beyond short-term wins and table stakes. This isn’t about replacing grassroots organizing or civic action with digital tools. Rather, it’s about learning from UX research methodology to build lasting, meaningful engagement that involves both technology and community organizing. Often, it is indeed local, on-the-ground organizers who have been sounding the alarm about the long-term effects of prioritizing short-term tactics. A VX approach may provide additional data to bolster their arguments.

Learnings from a VX analysis of election cycles could also guide the design of new programs that not only mobilize voters (to contribute, to campaign for their candidates, and to vote), but also ensure that the entire process of voting, post-election follow-up, and broader civic participation is as accessible, intuitive, and fulfilling as possible. Better voter UX will lead to more politically engaged citizens and higher voter turnout.

VX methodology may help combine real-time citizen feedback with centralized decision-making. Moving beyond election cycles, focusing on the citizen UX could accelerate possibilities for citizens to provide real-time feedback, review the performance of elected officials and government, and receive help-desk-style support with the same level of ease as other everyday “products.” By understanding how people engage with civic life over time, we can better design systems for citizens that strengthen participation, trust, and accountability at every level.

Our hope is that this approach, and the new data and metrics uncovered by it, will support shifts that help restore civic participation and strengthen trust in institutions. With citizens oriented as the central users of our democratic systems, we can build new best practices for fulfilling civic infrastructure that foster a more effective and inclusive democracy.

The time for this is now. Despite hard-fought victories and lessons learned from failures, many people working in politics privately acknowledge a hard truth: our current approach isn’t working. Every two years, people build campaigns, mobilize voters, and drive engagement, but they are held back by what they don’t understand about the long-term impact of their efforts. VX thinking can help solve that.

This essay was written with Hillary Lehr, and originally appeared on the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center’s website.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/05/the-voter-experience.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=70286

Entry tags:

Interesting Links for 22-05-2025

1. I am so sick and tired of "AI": (tags:ai )
2. How do we know mRNA vaccines are safe and effective? An explainer: (tags:vaccines safety research viaKenny )
3. Reminder that you cannot trust anything that you see or hear.: (tags:ai video )
4. Why elephants have low cancer rates and what it means for humans: (tags:elephants cancer )

Entry tags:

micropost

Today's annoyance

Companies that email you "Your parcel is on the way!", but it turns out that actually they've just reserved a tracking number and aren't physically sending anything for another day or two.