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_refugee_  ·  1071 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 21, 2021

I had a wonderful weekend hanging out with very good friends. It's funny. You don't realize how much of a narrow echo chamber you may have become ensnared into until you hang out with people from outside. It's so good to be reminded of the variety of opinions and the variety of people that can know you, and know you well, when you step outside of it.

I have been setting boundaries with my Nosey Neighbor and it has been going well!

I have begun Zee Online Dating. I tried OKC briefly, not much luck, am moving on to Hinge. Here's to hopefully meeting new people in person soon.

I drew some more badass tattoo inspired art. Hope y'all like it, Hubski !! --

_refugee_  ·  1072 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Happy 420!!!

today was a day of pajamas and trash tv watching, it was perfect

_refugee_  ·  1125 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 24, 2021

I ran 16 times and 50 miles in February, which is right in line with my goal. For March the goal will be ~65 miles, 19 runs. I think somebody fixed the formatting in this post for me. glares suspiciously I know it was you, mk

It is funny, getting used to the south. I have a friend who really, really wants to be close friends with me and sometimes she does things which turn me off but which I believe are really just part of the hallmarks of southern hospitality — there’s a lot of offering of food and such — and I’m certainly getting my practice in saying the word s “no, thanks,” firmly but nicely. It’s good practice for just about anyone, I think.

I found this podcast called Radio Rental. true stories of crazy, weird, scary experiences people have had. Most of the stories or at least some have been sourced for Reddit. There’s only 12 episodes and I was hooked right away. I have one left!

I have been arting quite a bit. I finished the hobbit and now I’m rereading the Kahnemann. After that I may go to LOTR, or — the sandman graphic novels 1-3 AND swamp thing 1 are both in the free kindle library. I might have mentioned a while back I have an idea for a second issue of my Transcendental Realty comic. I think doing some research by revisiting some great comics is definitely required, right?

Hope y’all are well! Spring is coming.

_refugee_  ·  1183 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: December 30, 2020

It’s beautiful.

I think I need to make a final 2020 Etsy shop update. All good news, but mostly lots of sharing pictures of finished product. I’ve been having a lot of fun with the little sticker drawings lately, they’ve been pretty successful.

This is my original Kermit sticker drawing from 2 years back or close enough. Fun, right?

The reboot, today.

I’m feeling pretty proud of the drawings I’ve knocked out recently. My tattoo artist shot me a compliment on Insta, I can bask in that for a while too.

:)

126 sales year to date on Etsy as of today. :)

Just gonna keep on trying incremental improvements as I see and can convince myself to work on them.

_refugee_  ·  1211 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: HUBSKIVERSARY

Yay. I wanted to know when our next virtual hangout was.

_refugee_  ·  1220 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: GSA Ascertains (finally)  ·  

The bad Emily

_refugee_  ·  1354 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Trump trumps the trump - Roger Stone sentence commuted

I’m real into limiting “what I care about” to “things that I personally can make an impact on” these days.

_refugee_  ·  1411 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: May 13, 2020

I made bluebirds.

And I tesselated for the first time since middle school math class.

Bluebirds in black (I was experimenting to see if I liked them this way better/inadvertently figured out that they are going to look much better using the ink technique I used for the black prints vs. how I did the blue ones)

_refugee_  ·  1449 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 8, 2020

Two months ago, I was planning to move about 4 hours away to the fair state of VA when my lease was up on 6/30. I was tired of living with my younger sister, who wasn't great about doing chores and in general being responsible, and couldn't wait.

One month ago, COVID started happening and by three weeks ago my sister was out of a job. We were rapidly moving towards shelter in place. At that point, I said, "My sister's on the dole, I can't exactly just move out and leave her in the lurch, I won't be going anywhere until she gets a job." My sister expressed being fond of the amount she was going to receive from unemployment (thanks Trump) and said she didn't want to look for a job, she wanted to save that extra $600 a check for the four months she would get it. I said, "Sister! I'm stuck here until you do something. Our lease is up 6/30. I just really would like to know what my options are and right now, you're telling me I just don't even really have any options because you're going to float aimlessly along and hope you can last it out until restaurants re-open and you can just go back to your serving gig."

This week, she comes to me. She's found a roommate with a place to move into 8/31. She'll have down payment saved due to unemployment, she knows the girl, she's doing it. (I think the girl's a bad influence and the apartment complex she's moving into is both gross and tiresome, but my sister needs to make her own mistakes. God knows, by 25, I had made all of these sorts of mistakes myself already, and she needs to get off the graduated learner's plan system we have going where she's not technically living with her parents but she's still sponging off our familiar connection to get a maternal/adult figure who takes care of 85% of household shit for her.)

Well, fuck. I was all freaked out about "What I was gonna do next?" and she went and made a plan. Now what am I going to do?

I don't want to move out of state if we are still shelter in place (or back to it) come August. However, the cascading effect of this is that if I don't move out of state this August, odds become less and less likely that I will at all. (This becomes a mathematical problem of how many times I want to pay to move on a yearly basis for multiple years, among other things.) I've made a pros and cons list. I'm trying to really figure out what I want to do/what's best for me. I don't know. And COVID-19 clouds all of it regardless.

Also, I realized this weekend that damn it, I am going to miss living with my sister after all. COVID's brought us closer. (Inevitable, right?)

The only real answer to my conundrum, besides pro/con lists, is "wait and see." 8/31 is almost 5 months off; no one even wants to show you an apartment unless you're trying to rent in the near future -- 2 months, 3 months absolute maximum.

But I'm the gal with all the plans, see. The single gal, might I mention? So today here I am. No known future. No partner and no ability to even try and date -- dating doesn't exist in COVID-19 world and you're stupid if you try -- just a big ball of "I don't know" and saving money while I still can. My work even got rid of mid-year performance management for everyone, so I can't even try to work towards that. I guess I'm lucky. My dad's work cut everyone's salaries 10% across the board. (I predict that getting rid of mid year performance management at my job might lead to no year-end reviews, which would mean no raises or bonuses across my company in the long run for 2020 -- I don't think my prediction quite makes me and Dad even-steven in the moment, however.)

I'm trying to do the best I can every day. I've run over 25 miles so far this month. I started yoga and factorial push-up sets. I'm reading a lot and making a hell of a bunch of stickers and I ordered like 5 paint by numbers and by god, I have watched so much TV and netflix. Podcasts. I'm even, finally, getting into freakin' podcasts. My family and I played Scrabble and Boggle this week. On separate occasions, even.

I still have to bite down this instinctive, initial rising anger whenever people in my life, who I call family and friends, attempt to reach out. To Facetime, to have us come for dinner unexpectedly (my parents are the only people I see), who ask me on the work chat, "How are you doing today?" I reinstall instagram to post on my art account and then I delete it again. Facebook? Dead to me.

I am that type of person that goes into quarantine and just wants to be left the hell alone. Except of course I'm not. Of course I'm angry because all of these attempts to reach out are abnormal, atypical, hell if you want you can call 'em false (and I promise, at least 90% of the reaching out done at work feels entirely that way to me). Each call is a reminder things aren't normal and, at the same time, a frustrating reminder, every time someone else asks me, "So how's it going?" or "What's new?" that really? It's a big fat old nothing. And you know it.

I'm doing the best I can, and I'm tired of self-pitying myself with weed and alcohol and overeating. I'm going to get my hands around this quarantine. I'm going to take advantage of it. One day at a time, everybody. I succeed if I succeed today.

And that, my friends, is how I'm gonna get through it.

Also PS yes consciously trying to accept the friendship and phone calls of other people who are only "bothering me so terribly" because they care about me and want to make sure I'm doing OK. And because we r frans and stuff and all that, so on.

Thanks for letting me get all that off my chest, Hubski. I don't believe I have it that bad even out of the stories in this thread. But that bad or not, doesn't make much of an impact on my feelings.

_refugee_  ·  1470 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: March 18, 2020

OK, it's here -- now the question is, for how long?

_refugee_  ·  1477 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: March 11, 2020

Well we are on full time work from home now until indefinitely. Great for our physical health not great for my mental health. I am allowed to continue using the work gym — a service that I pay for — and will probably up my attendance to 3x a week. I’m going to tweak my schedule in other ways, like doing my runs in the morning, to help proactively avoid some of the issues I tend to run into when full time WFH.

Issues like? Why shower, you’re not leaving the house today so why bother. Why get dressed, no one will see you today, why bother. It’s great that many people have the executive functioning and overall mental strength to continue these sorts of self care routines when no one else is there to see them, but historically, I don’t. I’d love to believe I’ve become a healthier person mentally since the last time I fell into those traps but the last time was definitely still within the past 3 years so, proactively changing my schedule to help force some of that will certainly not harm me.

Right now, my in person TX interview is still on. I hope it stays that way. I want to be my most charmingest for this, and no one is at their most charmingest when they’re talking on the phone.

Yours in resignation and while eating many chicken wings (f you, I went hard on leg day today and squatted the most I’ve ever squatted),

Refugee

_refugee_  ·  1529 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Michigan Hubski meetup!

I can’t believe it’s a little over 7 years on hubski and probably not that long from our first meet up in DC (where many of these fine folk also were). Thanks for help inviting people out last night, mk. This was a really great experience!

_refugee_  ·  1580 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: November 27, 2019

I am late to the party. (I don't mind.)

I've run 5x/week every week this month. This statement will become true so long as I get my run in today. I'm holding steady at 21 miles/week right now. I'd like to get it up to 25 in December. I have a 5k (my 2nd race since re-re-re-re-starting running this go around) on Friday. I would like to PR, which would require a sub-29:26 time. I am pretty sure I can manage that. I hit 29:26 on a 5k exactly a week ago today (Why did I sign up for 2 races so close together? It was not driven by sense, I tell you) and in training since then I feel really confident that I can go faster than that this time around.

I'm single again! As it often happens with me, I am glad to be single; I am single because I decided I did not want to be in the relationship any longer. I regained solo dolo status a little over a month ago, so while this is news, it is not fresh.

I enjoyed Thanksgiving with my grandmother, an aunt and uncle, and my parents. My sister went out Thanksgiving Eve and became so successfully hungover that she missed Thanksgiving, which is a definite first for our family. I skipped a Mother's Day in college once, which is my closest personal equivalent.

I have read four books this month and, often when I get home after work, like to refuse to turn the TV on and entertain myself with at least one less screen. I do love the internet and laptop, although I try to spend my time there reading about as many legitimate news articles as I do r/relationships and r/AmITheAsshole shitposts.

I am grateful for you all. I am glad you came by here and said hi. In fact, I'm grateful for Hubski.

Whatever time of day it is where you are, I hope you're having a great one.

- ref

_refugee_  ·  1846 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The People Who Eat the Same Lunch Every Day

I eat soup and salad for lunch almost every day (and definitely every day I am in the office). The soup can be any soup. I can buy from work or I can bring my own that I’ve made. Salads, being harder to keep fresh without multiple compartments to separate ingredients, I buy at work — they’re subsidized as part of our eating well program.

I find it’s a way to maintain a routine while also providing opportunity for great variety, should I want it. And most importantly, it helps ensure my poops are wonderful.

_refugee_  ·  1874 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 6, 2019

My life feels so good right now that to try to talk about it seems sickening -- and that's with having broken up with the latest boyfriend in the past week. Part of the reason it feels so good -- I value myself enough not to put up with bullshit!

There's many vectors in which I'm still improving - still trying to improve - that will never end. But things are already so, so really great that the improvement is just exciting, interesting; a challenge I can't wait to meet.

Life is great. :)

_refugee_  ·  2009 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 26, 2018

I simply don’t have the energy today I need to; watch this space because there are things I want to share with Hubski — just tomorrow.

__

I'm self-releasing another arty chapbook! It's called queen in pieces, queen made up of folded parts. many esteemable presses have already rejected the book in part or in whole! it comes with fresh illustrations. i think it's great.

_refugee_  ·  2023 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 12, 2018

Work switched over from Microsoft to G Suite. it's been a trip, let me tell you. They released several paragraphs about how they believe G Suite is poised to become the industry leader for productivity software (never mind that none of the people with those beliefs are actually tech people - we're a bank, remember) and admitted in the last sentence G Suite is also cheaper.

As far as I can figure it's like 50% cheaper.

So yeah I can't totally fault them on doing what they did considering other circumstances but just quit with the BS, man.

I'm reading Prayer for Owen Meany. I wanted to read Ciderhouse Rules first, which I swearswearswearswear SWEAR I have a copy of, but can't find. And couldn't find at either of the two bookstores or two libraries I visited. And I didn't want to wait until whoever checked it out from the only library in my country who has it to return it to continue reading as a whole, so Owen Meany it is. So far, Owen Meany is a strange book. A bit more fantastical than most of the other Irvings I've read so far, it feels like.

I have to watch Vertigo this week, it's a friend-assignment. I'm looking forward to the time when I sit down and do it. I know I've watched pieces of it, but I don't think I've ever seen the whole thing in one go. Can't remember it, at least.

Halloween approaches! Tis the season.

I had another friend who called me combative for apologizing to her. We're not gonna be friends any more. This is the same person who told me a headshrinker was specifically a psychiatrist, a doctor who prescribes drugs, and definitely did not mean anything else such as a a counselor or a psychologist or a therapist. And when she did even though I knew she was right I didn't take a screenshot of the definition of this SLANG WORD, btw, so right off we know it has variable meanings, and send it to her because I was being an adult and having friends and not petty.

I couldn't sleep til 3 am ln after our disagreement and I just don't need to spend my time having pointless conversations that end in me trying my best to be patient and smooth over disagreements in the interest of friendship and getting called combative for it.

I hope I don't sound too negative. Life is still and again mostly pretty good and I continue to try and make it and myself better. I went on a date this past Friday -- we seem to have mutually decided we're not interested, but hey, I went on a date! That's trying. That's more than I have been. (The problem may be that I'm not really interested in dating at all. If that's the truth, it's not a problem, really -- just something I need to realize about myself and accept.)

_refugee_  ·  2036 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 29, 2018

Jesus god I logged on here thinking today was Wednesday.

Please allow me to vent about two things going on in my life right now. these are things i'm trying not to talk to a lot of people IRL about because, well, the first one is pretty dramatic and kind of shocking and also a little private. and the second one is a scenario i need to navigate by myself somehow as an adult, without poisoning all my friends with my griping.

1) my aunt was murdered last week. my cousins are using this as an opportunity to set up a gofundme asking for $15k from, well, whoever on facebook is a sucker enough for their very long sad heartstringy post about how she's a veteran who was cruelly ripped from life.

this upsets me. i guess this could sound like a kind of reasonable thing to do, maybe, to an outsider. turns out there's all sorts of nifty things you learn once you have a family member who's been murdered, which includes the fact that in general, states have Victims Funds which are designed to pay out money when, you know, someone gets homicided. And did i mention my aunt was a veteran? which means she also qualifies for VA funeral benefits which includes the cost of a plot and money towards transporting the body to the funeral. i don't want to get into numbers but I know for a fact that several thousand dollars, enough to cover the (significant) majority cost of an average funeral, has already been put towards my aunt's internment from those funds.

generally life insurance covers homicide.

my cousins have a history of being grifters, and one of them has a history of pill addiction which extended to breaking into her own siblings' homes and stealing from them to buy drugs.

guess which cousin has posted this memorial fund.

it bothers me.

2) my sister seems to think that because we are sisters, i should do for her whatever she wants.

for instance, this week she asked me to pick her up from a house which was walking distance from our apartment. i did, immediately. she told me she was hungover.

she got in the car and picked a fight. about my "tone."

i told her she could get out of the car if she didn't like my tone. this, by the way, is at least the 3rd last minute ride she's asked me for in the past year. i really don't mind going and picking her up from somewhere once in a while if it's an emergency. what i mind is she needed a ride because she had taken an uber to that house last night and left her car at our apartment.

like what was her plan for getting back the whole time? and why couldn't she walk less than a mile on a sunny, 80 degree day?

well, yesterday she asked to use my laptop for school related stuff for the second time in two days.

she has a laptop.

do you know where it is? it's at her boyfriend's house because 4 months ago his laptop stopped working and she wanted to help him out.

when i told her i'd prefer she not use my laptop because i let her do it yesterday, she has her own, and i didn't want to establish a precedent of her getting to use my laptop for whatever whenever she wants, she told me that she felt, because we were SISTERS, if she had a laptop, and she wasn't actively using it at the moment, she would let me use her laptop whenever with no questions asked. that's just what sisters do.

it's so convenient that the only reason she doesn't have a laptop is because she chose to give it away to someone else.

did i mention i bought my laptop with my own money and she got hers from our parents? i feel like maybe things would be different if she had to pay for her own. but who knows.

devil's advocate.

edited to add oh also. did i mention? today's august 30th. she still owes me $52 for August rent.

_________________-

Don't get me wrong. A lot is going good in my life. I'm going camping this weekend with some friends (away from my sister) and really looking forward to it. I'm about to pay off my car note early. i'm on track to be promoted at work EOY. i'm planning an adventure trip to centralia. my brother set a date for his wedding. I'm reading my 5th john irving book this year, i'm knitting a sock, etc etc.

unfortunately this morning i am just also very hung over.

_refugee_  ·  2064 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 1,2018

OK I figured out what I want my next career to be (besides tattoo artist).

VERY SERIOUSLY NOW HUBSKI, I want to work with animals. I want to do something around rescuing or studying or ANYTHING TO DO with animals.

I know they're not all cute and they poop and they smell and they bite. That's ok.

Help me figure out what I can do (without a degree in bio) and how.

Please thanks any suggestions appreciated. I know, I'll end up poor. That's ok.

Luh u bye

i hate vacations they just fill me with existential dread

god if shoes could actually make me fast at running. WORLD WATCH OUT

wasoxygen if you haven't seen this - oh just saw. you beat me to it

i think i'm picking running up again this fall. but not $250+ shoes

_refugee_  ·  2162 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dr. Huxtable

does it help if you refer to him as Pill

it helps me

_refugee_  ·  2240 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: In The Game: The Game, It's You Vs. Pick-Up Artists

Ehhhhh Uniton’s still right tho

_refugee_  ·  2302 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: December 6, 2017

Do you want to get in a room and talk about the problem, or do you want to get in a room and talk about how to lessen the problem? That's how I feel about it.

Grassroots groups of women (or any gender) can't really effectively find the predators and make them stop predating (legally). That 'solution' isn't an option. But educating yourself and others is. You can't fix the people coming after you, but you can try to prepare for/against them - it's a fact that people will predate, why should would-be victims embrace ignorance? Because people shouldn't prey on others? You can argue 'should' until you're blue in the face but if I am going on a battlefield I will put on armor, whether we should be at war or not.

edit - we agree, and we know we agree. I think we are united in our distaste for this other set of people. So to confirm...we are ranting together here :)

edit 2: as for me, disparaging superior commenters who had no real life knowledge of or engagement with the situation being discussed (on FB) enjoyed dismissing me as a "brainwashed idiot so subsumed by the patriarchy i couldn't even see how wrong I was". which i'll take this moment to ask, why is it that when you're a woman and you disagree with a radfem, their immediate response is typically to rob you of your agency and any independent thought by declaring that "the only way you could possibly have that opinion is because men made you do so! with patriarchy! and structures! huaaah!" like it's quite ironic, it's only the self-professed ultra-insane-feminists online that insist, when another woman disagrees with them, it can't possibly be because said woman has formed independent cogent thoughts.

_refugee_  ·  2309 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: WTF?

I could make a joke about how Russian literature and meat cleavers prove inherently similar, but I lose my punchline at the stethoscope.

_refugee_  ·  2315 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

Honestly, non-snarkily, I really like the idea of living off the land and farming in such a way so as to meet (most of ) a person/family's nutritional needs - kickin' it old school. The idea has always had a lot of appeal to me. My brother and I used to dream-talk about going in together on that sort of communal farm endeavor.

Philosophically speaking, I've always found it a fair shame that our society basically prohibits a person from picking up, finding a patch of land, putting down roots (literally) and living off the land for long-term sustenance. Unless you inherit some property and have a few buckets of cash saved away, there's just no way you can maintain a farm-based life without some kind of scheme to generate profit. Property tax and what not.

Generally speaking I'm a fan of taxes, don't get me wrong.

I know the difference between ideals and reality though, so I know I find a lot of appeal in these ideas...but the life would be p tough. That's why I really do think the ideal way to farming/self-sustenance does require at least a small band of physically capable, committed adults for successful execution.

As for seven sections of corn - yeah. We ain't talkin industrial farming here. Industrial farming of cash crops funded by gov't subsidies is no kind of farming I'm interested in at all.

I guess thank god for Michael Pollan and everyone else who helped get us here, right?

Full article got behind a paywall for me like wamp, but hey thar's my opinions.

_refugee_  ·  2317 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: November 22, 2017

Recent life, in two photos:

Almost there. It's my MyFitnessPal streak, for those of you in the dark. My 1 year chip officially comes in the day after tomorrow.

The bittersweet photo #2, aka, I don't believe I'll be running my December 1st 5k.

But that is OK. There are plenty of 5Ks. And I will still be picking up my race packet and getting the shirt for this one. (The whole reason I'd been set on running this particular 5k was because I ran it 2 years ago and never got the shirt. I wanted the shirt, gol dang it. So fractured/sprained/broken toe or not, this year, I'm getting it.)

_refugee_  ·  2365 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 4, 2017

With the kind and magnitude of work that Work is throwing at me (has been throwing at me steadily, ramping up from at least midyear on) - I'm probably crazy AND stupid, but it's possible I could see a promotion come Q1 2018.

It's what I've been working towards for a long time.

They're throwing good things at me and I'm trying to run with it. Well, I am running with it. I'm just holding myself back from running with these things without thought, direction, consideration, or pulling in others.

(I want to. They want me to automate things and I see how and where and I want to just dive in. But they're right: this is a project that will go much better if I pull a few others in to get wit me.)

I would fully want and deserve my promotion, if they gave it.

But also I have a coworker and friend (she sits literally next to me) who has seniority (like she's about 12-15 years older than me) (has been working at the same level as I have, in this same department, for longer) (then again I was this level in a different department beforehand) and a consistent, determined "slow and steady wins the race" approach to work which I wish I had, & to her same degree. I told her last year that I thought, if anybody got promoted that year [that wasn't me - but I knew I wasn't going to be promoted then] that it had to be her. I was pissed for her at who got promoted instead and I felt her value was not appreciated, that flash and bombast got chosen over her consistent, thorough, and considered approach.

But like, I don't think this year's her year.

I'm going to feel awkward and somewhat shitty if it turns out it's mine. I'm going to feel bad.

Of course, I'd never feel bad enough to turn down my own, and well deserved, advancement. Just bad enough to feel awkward when we make small talk in the morning for a couple of weeks, or months.

She isn't glamorous. The work she turns in doesn't light the world up or flash or make loud noises. But, more importantly, you can trust it. I'd work with her again in the future, anytime. I'd put my back to her.

That's just the way it goes.

_refugee_  ·  2387 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 13, 2017

I'm at my friend's house with my sister. We decided "Wednesday is for the girls!!!(dance moves)" It'a all Papa Johns, Shocktop and Rick and Morty. Well, my friend is drinking Seaquench with a tequila floater, but some of us have been under the weather all day and hard liquor is beyond our capabilities.

Friend's got a great dog, Rosebud - but, in the nature of nicknames and especially nonverbal animal nicknames, Rosebud lately often becomes "Ro-butt" or even "Robot." I've got a great (fat black calico) cat called Ruth, and I live with my sister. Ruth often becomes "Roofie" or "Woof" (lately, even, "Woo"). Guess what we keep accidentally calling the dog.

Moments in a life. The older I get, the more I fully realize this is my only body and all of its past becomes part of what I carry through each future day. But that's not morbid...it's kind of interesting and cool. Besides, it's probably the best teacher of cause and effect I could have.

_refugee_  ·  2422 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What happened to ThatFanficGuy?

| say it face to face, or not at all

That's not really an option for a community which is grounded 100% in the virtual space. At least, not literally - none of us can speak to TFFG'a face.

if we take the idiom, "face to face," and apply it less factually here/to Hubski, then "say something face to face, or not at all," has a few possible translations. Either - attempt to say your thoughts in direct contact with their subject (DM, email) - if possible - in this scenario, it's not; or, at minimum, say what you have to say publicly on the forum in a way and place that TFFG can be assumed to view it.

All our names are attached to our comments; history lends us naturally to the assumption that if it's a post on the front page of Hubski, TFFG will see it; it's hard not to argue that this is the closest to face-to-face that Hubski gets. Especially when you deactivate and thus remove any other direct contact method.

Besides, you can't possibly learn from knowledge others may have if you leave them out of the conversation.

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As for the bid to stop taking sides and forming opinions - ... why are we all on this website again?

Right, I must've forgotten: like the judge said, jus' the facts, ma'am, & nuthin else. We could make a sarcastic remark here about who's facts are most important, but I prefer to point out the opportunity and keep my opinions to myself.

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Besides-besides, we can't have conversations about what needs work on hubski, or what does work, or how to engage users, or basically anything meta about "what's right/wrong and how to improve/fix it" if we don't take a look at and have an awareness of who leaves hubski and what contributing factors may be identified.

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If the community drove TFFG away from hubski in part because some members publicly said negative things about him such as what's been mostly deleted in this thread, that's our answer.

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Maybe the community is shitty. Maybe everyone doesn't fit in. Maybe a little bit of both. (Maybe some users are shitty. Maybe, but who?)

Don't ask me, but this thread isn't a black hole contributing nothing. Question is who sees the value and are they seeing the right one.

You can pick up what I put down or you can pick up any other refuse instead. All I can do is put what I've got to put down and see if anyone differentiates.