furishin forever

"Maybe not every household needs its own industrial-grade leaf blower."

"Maybe we should accept denser housing and shared infrastructure."

"Maybe private lawns should become community gardens."

all the way to

"You don't get control over your schedule."

"You don't get privacy."

"You don't get to choose your own aesthetics."

"You don't get to decide who has access to your emotional life."

"You don't get to opt out of communal activities."

"You don't get to have tastes that aren't socially approved."

Those are not remotely the same category of thing.

Some people treat all preferences as interchangeable units. They imagine a giant pile labeled "individual desires" and then talk about reducing it by 15%.

But preferences aren't equal.

Wanting three power drills when one shared drill would do is different from wanting control over your schedule.

Wanting a third car is different from wanting a bedroom door that locks.

Wanting a private yacht is different from wanting the ability to listen to music nobody else likes.

Wanting a 10,000-square-foot mansion is different from wanting to spend an evening alone.

The fact that these get lumped together is what makes the discussion so frustrating.

Because someone says, "Well, people will have to make sacrifices."

And I ask, "Okay, what sacrifices?"

And they think I'm being difficult.

No, that's the entire question.

There is a vast difference between "You can't get out-of-season produce on demand, because the resources needed to make that available are unsustainable" and "You can only eat food obtained locally or grown yourself or cooked yourself."

There is a vast difference between "We don't need multiple iterations of the exact same product under different brand names" and "We don't need gluten-free or high-protein or low-fat or vegan or kosher or other specialized food because those things don't' matter."

There is a vast difference between "Fast fashion with oil plastic fabrics made in sweatshops with quasi-slavery conditions needs to be abolished" and "People should only wear handmade bespoke clothing."

There is a vast difference between "Everyone should have the free time and space and resources to pursue hobbies like gardening, canning, cooking, sewing, knitting, and other crafts" and "People should have to rely on small-scale crafting to survive."

its fun

i can do literally whatever I want

cons of writing

There was one episode with a trans woman getting different gender-affirming operations, including breast implants. It showed the procedure, and (what I found so fascinating that it's stuck with me for decades), as soon as the doctor put the implant in, a censor blur popped up on the nipple.

And you just know there was a meeting between the TLC lawyers and the editors and producers of the show to discuss what the difference was between a "man nipple" (can be shown) and a "woman nipple" (no no must obscure, 'tis naughty). And they decided that as soon as the implant goes in and the nipple has more mass behind it, that's the moment when it becomes a woman's nipple and must be hidden to comply with TV rules.

But it's the same nipple. On the same person. I know what it looks like; I just saw it. But TV and obscenity rules are rules, and the rules say woman nipple = sexual and therefore explicit, but man nipple = neutral, just fine.

Attention:

And it pissed me off so badly that I spent the ENTIRE WORK DAY today compiling evidence from every project my team has ever done for her, pulling past emails she’d sent us, putting together an entire case proving that she had been the problem all along. That she got projects mixed up, that she’d made requests that were nonsensical, literally everything you could possibly imagine. Screenshots of emails, reports we’d submitted, EVERYTHING.

This woman in particular has been terrorizing my team for years, her name is almost a slur in my office, I had simply had ENOUGH of her.

I put all of this evidence together and sent it to all of my bosses at 4:30pm. Then I took a long break to eat a sweet treat and drink some tea.

After my break, my bosses all called in an emergency meeting with me and they said they read my report and fucking loved it. And I sat on a teams call with my boss’ boss as she wrote my nemesis the scathing email I had always fantasized about sending, using the evidence I’d compiled, and hit send.

Alrighty then