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So I’m done with my dissertation and defended - I am a for realzies Doctor of Disasters now - and my next step on publishing involves reaching out to a professor I found out about on Reddit going ‘hey I heard you open your classes with info on your intro slide about how you and your husband were in a horrible fire and he died, wanna write an article about it?’

#chiomi’s a professional disaster #awkward conversations will abound #though since she includes it in her intro I’m not sure if it’s more awkward to reach out #or more awkward that I know just from the death that her husband was a brass player

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Highlights from the conference room where they nominated contenders for Word of the Year 2023:

• They put Skibidi Toilet on the projector to explain what “skibidi” means.

• Baby Gronk was mentioned.

• We discussed the Rizzler.

• “Cunty” was nominated.

• “Enshittification” was suggested for EVERY category.

• “Blue Check” (like from Twitter) was briefly defined as “Someone who will not Shut The Fuck Up”

• The person writing notes briefly defined babygirl as “referencing [The Speaker]”. He is now being called babygirl in the linguist groupchats.

• MULTIPLE people raised their hand to say “I cannot stress this enough: ‘Babygirl’ refers to a GROWN MAN”

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The tailors at Colonial Williamsburg made a suit for their cat

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Okay so fun fact: I didn’t learn to read in English until the summer after second grade.

I’m a native speaker, but at home I was read to and my dad did the voices and school was French immersion. I had no motivation to learn to read in English.

Until I started running out of books. I was 7, and the library gave me options of grown-up books in French with content I didn’t care about or learning to read in another language.

(18 months later I tested as reading at a post-secondary level, because when I commit to anything I am all in, but this is not a story about my lack of brakes)

So anyway, in third grade I got obsessed with Goosebumps. I read all of the ones I could get my hands on in English. I read all of the ones I could get my hands on in French. Finally, the last Goosebump standing was a copy my school library inexplicably had in Italian.

I was 8, and had no concept of either #YOLO or ‘fuck it,’ but no one had told me I couldn’t, and it was a Romance language, how hard could it be?

Less hard, my 8 year old heart said, than finding a new series to care about and devour. So I puzzled through that book in Italian, gleaning things from cognates and context.

I don’t speak Italian now, but I do endorse this model of ambushing a language as a really fun time.

Spanish is also way easier to learn than French

I'm kind of tempted to just learn a whole language in 100% savage mode, grabbing a book that I haven't already read in a language I don't understand and a dictionary, and reading through it by looking up every single word I don't recognise. Focus fully on reading comprehension and learning vocabulary, only occasionally learning things like grammar on the fly by happenstance and luck.

Just stringing words together into incomprehensible monstrosities that can barely be called a sentence. Yeah I can grasp what you're talking about but good luck figuring out what the fuck I just said.

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I'm fascinated by the logic of those Return To Nature "your ancestors would be ashamed of how weak you are" kind of dudes. Like you really think that? You think that your ancestors would see you, being nobody's slave and nobody's serf, survived into adulthood, reaching 30 while still having all your teeth, having never had a child you didn't want or buried one you wanted to keep, never had to starve through the winter wondering how many of your kin will be alive next solstice? Like do you really think they would hate you for not having suffered like they suffered?

I mean I know mine would, but they were a bunch of bitter and petty crabs in a bucket who would seethe at the idea that someone else had better luck than they did, without ever getting the chance to ruin it out of pure spite. No idea what you did to offend yours.

#due to a strange concentration in ancestry #I think there’s a good couple centuries of ancestors who’d be disappointed I’m not an engineer and have no patents #but I think most of them would get over it when I explained Creative Commons licensing and software #in general #they would be wildly enthusiastic about my quality of life #and access to spices

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Tristan: my stealth modifier, by the way, is 9

Me, who earlier announced our presence to the first cultists by yelling ‘hello’ and to the second ones by telling them they could lay down their weapons: my stealth modifier is paladin

#chiomi’s problematic conversations #dnd

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Yeah, I’m the type of person who on told something is impossible will start taking notes on how, make a spreadsheet, and have a step by step guide next time you see me. This makes me invaluable in some contexts!

And a terrifying steamroller in others. I like helping! It will sometimes escape me that help was not the preferred response.

When it comes to high-context and low-context cultures, where one has the expectation of people understanding specific subtle nuances of what someone says, and the other has the expectation that everything needs to be explicitly said to be understood, I've heard plenty of people from low-context cultures ask "why not say what you mean and mean what you say then, why would you have to speak in riddles?" about high-context ones, like people of the latter type are just being cryptic and esoteric on purpose.

But culture does not consist of things you do on purpose, it is just the way things are done where you were raised. And when you were raised in a high-context culture, the thought of needing to explicitly state something instead of using some phrase or expression that you've learned to use comes as a culture shock, too. It's not "fuck you for not correctly understanding my riddles three", but "oh shit, I hadn't occurred to me that I would need to say that out loud."

The first time I went on a business trip to the US, my partner came with me, and we immediately discovered that he does not fare well on long flights. So when my publisher asked me about future trips, inquiring whether my partner would be coming with me, I asked him. He said that he would, if the flights weren't such a problem - he would need to travel in some way where he could get his feet up or lay down during flights, like business class or first class. Being also a finn, I understood what he meant and relayed the message as is to my publisher, not considering that they might not.

To both of our surprise, they started to actually look for first class tickets for us.

Finnish culture is a high-context one, people don't talk much and aren't very confrontational. Being demanding and putting someone else into a position where they're forced to be upfront or demanding is rude. And in finnish, saying "this would only be possible if these entirely absurd/completely impossible conditions were met" is a polite way of saying "no". You are simply explaining why something cannot be done, without either saying an explicit "no" or seeming like you're making up excuses. It offers the other party an opportunity to agree that these conditions cannot be met, so neither party will come off as confrontational or demanding.

Both me and my boyfriend considered it self-evident that the request was absurd, and could not be read as anything but a polite way to decline. It had not occurred to me that an american's natural response to "it would be impossible to do this" is to start figuring out how to do it anyway.

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Slightly wild counter-example: there were like 5 years in the late 80s and early 90s where California only recommended one MMR vaccine as opposed to the standard 2. It was a very California thing, but, well, that’s where I got my early childhood vaccines.

Thus, at 27, starting grad school, because I didn’t have both, I had to get a blood test before I would be allowed on campus. And my immunity was fine.

Probably need to get it tested again, but immune systems are fucking wild and individually variable and we should all stay on top of our vaccinations because there are irresponsible fuckwits enough that our immunity may become relevant.

Had a doc appt (just my yearly checkup) a couple days ago and I asked her about checking to see if my measles vaccine from when I was a kid was still good, since I’d heard it could lose effectiveness over time. She nodded and had a lab done and turned out I was NOT still immune to measles, so got my booster today.

Get your vaccines, folks!

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no nuance option for well sort of kind of we’re friendly!!!!! make your own call on what you define friend as

#I had a super tight friend group in high school #and a few people I was friends with but they weren’t in the core group #due to being at the wrong high school or the wrong apparent gender #still good friends with those two peripheral people #and one person who at the time I only knew online #haven’t spoken to the rest in years #though I’m still Facebook friends with a couple

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@ereborne tagged me

Name:  Eileen

Nicknames:  Chiomi

Gender:  I have socks that say "I'm a delicate fucking flower" and a perfume called "Don't be a lady, be a legend" and have landed generally in 'female'

Star Sign:  Leo

Current Time:  9:26 am

Favorite Artists:  Ivan Aivazovsky, Johannes Vermeer, Fyodor Vasilyev

Song Stuck In My Head:  “Seventeen” – Sharon Van Etten

Last Movie I Saw:  Fatal Journey - the Untamed tie-in movie about Nie Huaisang ultimately choosing violence and deciding that no laws - whether natural or manmade - were going to get in the way of his ruining someone's whole life.

Last Thing I Googled:  Russian landscape painters, because despite writing a whole ass paper in undergrad about Vasilyev I was forgetting his name

Other Blogs:  @herebedragonflies which is actually my default account but is a crossover comic between Homestuck and Kagerou

Do I Get Asks:  not much

Reason For URL:  tristan and I are always together and this was also originally conceived as a joint account

Following:  108

Average Sleep: like 7

Lucky Number:  7

Currently Wearing:  t-shirt and underwear because i had a meeting that i'd forgotten about so i'm totally presentable (mostly) from the shoulders up

Dream Job:  tbh my current job? i get to play with spreadsheets and tell people what they're doing wrong

Dream Trip:  Europe with Tristan, flying in comfort and then trains and hostels

Favorite Food:  Sushi

Instruments:  vaguely guitar, vaguely piano, a variety of drums but not a drum kit

Favorite Song:  it varies! I like a lot of music. Sort of a perennial 'this represents me' song is Dessa's 5 out of 6. I get it stuck in my head sometimes after team meetings

And I'm running a tight ship Every deckhand here has a five-year plan And a ice pick

#about me #personal

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Hey, kids, want an example of eugenics in action? Because I typed up detailed notes on my recent meeting with upper management - off the record, without recordings or other witnesses, so he was actually saying what he meant without fear of legal repercussions.

Background:

I have dysautonomia (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome). It's a big part of long covid, but mine is genetic.

The relevant part is: I can't be in the heat without symptoms. Dizziness, fainting, tachycardia, heart palpitations, heat exhaustion.

And by 'the heat' I mean 'pretty normal temperatures'. I've gotten heat exhaustion in 15 minutes, in 80F weather with low humidity, going for a gentle walk. As a teenager, I would get dizzy and fall down the stairs 4-6 times every day at school; because of a particularly bad fall, I use a wheelchair outside the house because my hip won't let me walk far.

It's gotten worse as I've gotten older because heatstroke and heat-related illness lower your heat tolerance, and I've had them over and over.

At this point, I'm pretty much housebound, since I live in California and it's notoriously hot here - even indoor temperatures around 75F are enough to make me sick, nevermind my commute.

I filed for a reasonable accommodation under the ADA over three months ago. Mandatory in-office work started a month ago, and as predicted, every in-office day makes me quite ill. The Civil Rights Department enforces the ADA, but they're so underfunded that it takes four months to even talk to someone. Attorneys have told me that local judges aren't super sympathetic to disabled workers, and as long as HR is ~~~following the process~~~ I'm not likely to win a legal suit, even if they're doing it in the most drawn-out and ineffective way possible in hopes that I'll go away.

Meeting notes:

30 minute meeting with CIO.

He asked how I was feeling today. I expressed my symptoms (moderate dizziness, headache, hand blisters, hip pain, concern about fainting the next day). He expressed some concern about whether my hip pain was due to my wheelchair, and I repeatedly expressed that I believed it was due to muscle tension from being otherwise in pain causing mild hip dislocation.

He got down to business and expressed that there was no chance that permanent work-from-home would be approved by HR.

I asked whether this was a policy coming from above him, or if this was something he personally was instituting. He said that it was 'both', and that he personally agreed with it. I asked him if he was ok with the fact that this would be pushing people with disabilities and anyone else who couldn't comply out of the department. He agreed. 

He kept going on about how virtual collaboration is possible, but is it the best way to get things done? Asked him if he thought the inconvenience of virtual collaboration - given that we have team members in other parts of the state and contractors in other states who we only collaborate with virtually - was more significant than the perspectives and skills disabled people bring to the table. He said he believed it was, and that because team members in other parts of the state must report to their own headquarters twice per week, their virtual collaboration with us as team members wasn't relevant - they were being held to the same standard and that was what mattered.

He confirmed that there was no chance that HR would be approving permanent, fully-remote work, no matter what the disability or need involved. He said temporary accommodation was possible though not guaranteed and may be worthwhile to explore in the interim.

He seemed concerned about my statement that nontrivial injury due to fainting or a fall was fairly likely (I gave about 60% odds of fainting Tuesday given past data) - talked a lot about 'taking care of myself' without giving practical options or expressing permission to leave the hot environment. The impression I had was that he was more concerned about the optics and expense of a workplace injury than my personal wellbeing. He said he and RA staff went around and measured the indoor temperature to be approximately 70.4F (I think, small chance he said 74F) throughout the floor. He said portable air conditioning units may be brought in in the future. He could not give a timeline on that. 

He did not have a resolution to the fact that it's still too hot (per my reasonable accommodation paperwork and doctor's note), the fact that meeting rooms will be outside any such portable A/C installed for me personally, or the fact that commuting in summer also poses a significant barrier because 20 minutes in a car when it's 110F even if I have the A/C cranked up is still going to mess me up. I expressed that I had been told by an attorney that contrary to what HR had said, disability-related commute issues may be covered under the ADA. 

I expressed that I and my doctor had explored every option medically available, without a resolution other than fully remote work which would allow me to safely and effectively complete my job. I am already bringing dozens of ice packs, a large fan, cold drinks, salt, the lightest clothing appropriate to the work environment, etc. I asked if he really thought HR was going to come up with some solution which satisfies these issues. I also expressed that my productivity is down to about 40-50% of my typical production, according to the metrics I personally keep, and that I was barely keeping up because I am so ill, and that the workplace is making me so ill that I am unable to engage in even basic functions (such as reheating leftovers) in my personal life, and that I am spending absolutely all of my energy and capacity simply keeping my head above water at work.

He claimed that accommodation is not a legal requirement to give disabled people the ability to engage as fully as possible in society - it's for the benefit of the workplace and they can set terms, including fully denying options like remote work even if they are possible with some inconvenience. I told him that is not how it works, that there are deliberately narrow definitions for 'essential functions' and 'undue hardship' and that I did not believe this would hold up before the inevitable legal case when people are seriously injured and file worker's comp claims or the civil rights department engages in enforcement, although I did not have the ability to stay long enough to see it fully resolved without serious health effects. He did not really engage with this statement. 

I told him I would be job hunting and leaving as soon as I found a position elsewhere, because I had no choice. I expressed that I very much wanted to stay, and I was very upset that [department] did not care enough about people with disabilities to suffer a mild inconvenience to allow us to stay. I started crying about halfway through all of this. I expressed distress that this was one more thing that disability had taken away from me, and that it was very upsetting to be forced to leave a job I loved because of it. He expressed vague sympathy ('I'm sorry you feel that way'). Meeting ended.

General tone was 'sympathetic' in a way which to me personally felt like he wants to be seen and regarded as a 'good guy' but that he feels he's fully in the right and is a true believer that in-person meetings with coworkers and stakeholders are in fact that important. He repeated "I can see why you feel that way" a lot without denying or arguing my points.

(Addenda: I brought a thermometer (Protmex HT607) on Tuesday after checking at home that it matched other readings from separate devices. I consistently found that the temperature at my desk was around 74.5F, and my cubicle neighbor mentioned unprompted that it was cooler than usual. My medical requirement is for a temperature of 72F at absolute maximum, and that's listed on my doctor's note.

My personal metrics are based on 30-minute pomodoros of focused work; typically, I'm able to complete 8-10 of these on an average day, and my average is down to about 4, often less. My interim manager (due to staff vacancy) has expressed that I've been meeting all of her expectations, but I still think the substantial productivity drop is notable, and it's certainly driving me nuts to not be able to work to my full capacity. Workdays are long when you're only able to actually complete work for about two hours in the morning and the entire afternoon is a morass of 'waiting for the day to end'.

CIO expressed that he plans to require increasing in-person meetings, including in-person collaboration with stakeholders, and large-scale meetings in the auditorium (100+ attendees). No discussion of covid concerns was made. No advantages to in-person collaboration were discussed; I believe we were meant to infer that it is 'more personable' or some other social advantage.

My entire team has expressed that they have had only 1 in-person meeting in four weeks of hybrid work, which was an internal checkin and which several persons attended virtually. No further in-person meetings are scheduled until the all-staff in the auditorium next month.

The auditorium is currently being remodeled (presumably at some expense) to accommodate these large-scale meetings again; it is not currently functional. This adds to the multi-million-dollar expense of RTO, including new monitors and equipment, renovations, and work-hours spent verifying whether building amenities like ethernet ports function.

I'm doing ok. I do think it was cooler in the office this week than it has been - it felt subjectively like it had dropped from about 78F to 75F, though I don't have objective proof of that. I've switched from business casual attire to my everyday clothing which has helped a bit with the heat. Still exhausted, had some pretty nasty vertigo both Monday and Tuesday, headaches and hip pain, but I'm otherwise alright; came close to falling on Tuesday but did not actually faint. It's something of a load off my mind to have a solid answer - even if it's a negative one - and to know that no matter how well I present myself or follow the process, there's no chance at all of success. Lowers the stakes. Hopefully I'll be heading out soon. :( )

Discussion:

So he told me to my face that he is ok with me and thousands of other state employees losing their jobs, because we're disabled and that's inconvenient. There are about 100,000 of us in California, and every department is moving toward RTO this spring.

This isn't even getting into the thousands of workers losing their jobs because they can't afford thousands of dollars for a car/gas/insurance while they're financially struggling, so commuting isn't feasible.

It isn't getting into anyone who is afraid to drive because of the number of highway shootings here, or because they fear police brutality.

Anyone who doesn't have reliable childcare - say, parents who pick their kids up from school at 3:30pm and go back to work for a couple of hours, who now need their kids to be somewhere safe - and we also don't have enough funding for afterschool. Capacity is less than 1/4 of demand.

Anyone who lives farther away from the office because that's where their family was able to afford housing.

Disproportionately, the people affected are the ones always affected by eugenics: disabled, BIPOC, poor, and otherwise marginalized workers.

This is what eugenics looks like. He didn't tell me he hated people like me. He didn't wish ill upon me. He was slick and polite and superficially caring while unwilling to inconvenience himself even the slightest bit, even if it would literally save my life.

(Like I said: I use a wheelchair now because of a bad fall. There's every chance of serious injury - and that's not getting into the absolute fact that every time I get heatstroke or heat exhaustion, my heat tolerance drops a little more, and I'm a little more trapped in my house.)

Word is that this is all coming from Governor Gavin Newsom, another slick politician who says all the right things - right until it's even slightly inconvenient for him personally. See also: French Laundry.

They don't want us to die. They just want us to quietly go away, never have needs, and never need to be seen. Traditionally, that's accomplished via death or institutionalization - but Democrats in favor of eugenics are pretty good at being subtle.

The Republicans, of course, will just outright say that they want us dead. That's worse. But this is still bad.

If society is telling you that you're a bother, that you should just go away - that's the hand of eugenics talking. This is what that looks like in action. It's still really fucking common in the halls of power. I think we've all seen that in Palestine, but once you're looking, eugenics is fucking everywhere.

So, folks. Let's punch some Nazis in the face. And by that I mean: Don't let them get away with this. Say the quiet parts loud. If they already want us dead, and you can handle the retaliation that may come, call them out on that shit.

I'm going to vote for Newsom in the election if the other option is a Republican. But I'm not going to stop talking about how he's an asshole whose policies and vetoes harm the most vulnerable among us in a million different ways.

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I’m really obsessed with the idea of worldbuilding that refuses to clarify its relationship to reality

When we read books we instinctively try to categorize books based on the kind of book they are, oh this is fantasy, post-apocalyptic, etc. and we try to find out things and clarify what kind of world it is and whether or not the things in it are make believe and how make believe they are.

So what if I...Messed with that process?

For instance. A book is set in Ohio. We mention the names of cities in Ohio and pieces of Ohio’s history and famous landmarks in Ohio and it’s incredibly well researched, even down to the names of museums in Cincinnati or something. We’re talking very firmly established in the facts of a place. It’s kind of an eerie book and in some ways the setting seems weird or cloudy or dreamy but it seems grounded in just the amount of facts that are in it about the setting.

There are little factoids dropped here and there. At first very boring ones. Something that happened at an Ohio water treatment plant in 1995. What it takes to serve on a jury in Ohio. Ohio laws about spraying pesticides on corn. Facts about corn itself. Probably one of those cutesy little facts about weird local laws.

They start to get...stranger. The little bits of worldbuilding. Did you know that Ohio has had more nuclear power plant accidents than any other state? In this small town in Ohio, you used to need a license to perform an exorcism! This charming small town’s mayor is a ghost. In Ohio, it is legal for doctors to draw more of your blood than they need to sell to third parties. There are no Dollar Tree’s in Ohio. (Have you ever seen a Dollar Tree in Ohio? Are you sure?)

At some point the reader catches onto something that is clearly not right. Maybe the book states at some point that Indiana is to the east of Ohio instead of the west. This is clearly a mistake, and they move on.

Some things about the everyday realities of the setting seem peculiar. There seem to be quite a bit of packs of wild dogs about, and mold seems to grow a lot quicker. Grass is described very strangely—a shade of green that isn’t very characteristic of grass. There seem to be a lot of cults, and there are a lot of empty lots in town enclosed with razor wire for no apparent reason. Sometimes a character’s hands grow suddenly cold, and they panic and hasten inside. Frostbite? Is it the climate? Why does the author write that way?

At some point, though, it becomes clear that the author is fictionalizing a bit. It may certainly be the case that nuclear accidents have occurred in Ohio more than any other state, but the tale of how deer from that area glow in low light is probably made up. And though that famous televangelist existed and it seems plausible enough that he owned tigers, like some kind of janky drug dealer would purchase, it seems implausible that he regularly fed people to them.

As the story continues, more and more facts seem a little off, though. The spatial relationship of Ohio to its surrounding states, and the shape that Ohio is (it’s described at one point as having a panhandle, and as bordering East Tennessee) seems to make less and less sense. The wild dogs are massive, and have smoldering eyes like hellhounds. One nuclear disaster apparently wiped out a full sixth of Ohio’s population. The deer, plagued with cancer from the radiation, have turned carnivores. The wild horses run under a red sky—the sky is always described as red. The original capital of Ohio is lost, its stones dashed down in the war that made its citizens turn to cannibalism. The invasive plants of Ohio can pry open windows, and once choked a woman in her sleep. The people of Ohio dream more frequently of birds of prey gouging out their eyes than people in any other state. There are plagues of rats in Ohio that sometimes devastate towns. In Ohio, unexplained disappearances are rarely investigated. There are eagles in Ohio—their wings blot out the sun. Ohio briefly seceded from the Union in 1922, and there are those that still believe in the Free People’s Empire of Ohio. Ohio shares a border with Arizona. Ohio has a coastline on the edge of a dark and perpetually cold sea.

It becomes abundantly clear that this is not Ohio. It is something else, named Ohio and superficially wearing Ohio as a skin, but it is not Ohio. And looking back, it is hard to tell when it stopped being Ohio. When it stopped being just quirky Americana and an eerie mood and started being...this. Small details were off early on, but these were not noticed, because they seemed so normal. The sky was always described as red, but that was because it was supposed to be sunset...right?

The governor of Ohio has been struck down. All bow before the God-Emperor of Ohio. The black wolves of Hell await those who will not bow with their teeth.

#I am not from Ohio #but my dad is #and I’ve had to go through it so many times #this is all on point #Ohio is the only state with both Waffle House and Culver’s #maybe that explains it

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This tweet came for me.

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#what the actual everloving fuck

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Happy “Sherlock Holmes Can Legally Be Nice To Women,” day to all those who celebrate.

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Fire tornado soap bubble