Ficus elastica

A combination of the aforementioned executive dysfunction + some appetite issues caused by my ADHD meds made it difficult for me to consistently make and eat a meal in the middle of the day, which usually caused me to put off lunch until I crashed out somewhere between 2-5PM with a wave of that so-hungry-I’m-nauseous feeling. Toby’s solution to this was to start bothering me every workday at around 10:50 (I work from home) and not chill out until I’ve at least TRIED to have lunch. If I sat down to eat but then got distracted by something on my phone for too long without taking a bite, he’d get upset about that, too. But I recently realized that he no longer bothers me about lunch. He’ll happily snooze through the day. I wondered why, until I remembered that a few months ago, I took some steps to address the root causes of this problem, which has resulted in me eating a proper balanced lunch consistently. He stopped reminding me because he trusts his big two-legged puppy to reliably feed herself now.

The three of us make the trip out to visit my parents for dinner about every other Saturday, always aiming to leave the house at 3:15, but lately, I keep underestimating how long it will take me to get ready and pull together everything we need to take with us, so I’ve ended up stressed and rushing out the door late. This past Saturday afternoon, after lunch, Toby was being all snuggly with me on the couch. I hadn’t planned on taking a nap, but he is very persuasive, so I dozed off without really thinking it through or setting an alarm. Meanwhile, Partner was totally engrossed in painting miniatures in the other room and did not have a timer set, either. To you, dear reader, this situation should have all the hallmarks of a looming disaster, and evidently, Toby shared that view even while asleep with his little pool-ball-sized head resting on my calf. I awoke some time later to him standing on my chest, stomping his foot, doing spins, and making those gentle little huff sounds that are not startling but will progress to loud whining if ignored. I checked my watch; 2:50PM. This dog woke me up at precisely the right moment to ensure I could get ready and leave on time without stressing—but wait, it gets better. Even after I’d gotten up, gone to the bathroom, and started to get ready, Toby still wouldn’t settle down. I tried taking him out, thinking he must need to go, but he just wanted to bark at passerby. I brought him back in, catching my partner’s attention, and we shared a laugh for how our little lying rascal woke me up right on time, after which Partner stood up from his painting and went to get dressed, too. Only then did Toby settle down. It wasn’t until we were driving home later that I figured it out: Toby did wake me up at just the right time on purpose, but he wasn’t satisfied until he saw me talk to Partner and Partner start taking steps to get ready, too.

Toby watched me cook my lunch, sit down, and eat it without ever going back into the bedroom to take my pill. I presumably also smelled different to him, or my heart rate was lower, or whatever other combination of doggy-detectable signals would suggest I had forgotten to do the thing I always do. And he did not hesitate to let me know he had a problem with that.

Before I was even finished eating, he came and sat beside me and stared at me very intently—not like he does when he’s begging for a nibble, but like he does when he’s trying to tell me something. I asked him what was wrong, and he did his little inside-voice “woof” and spun in a circle (the cue we taught him for “I need to go outside.”) He doesn’t normally need to go in the middle of the day, but he just wouldn’t settle down, so I humored him and took him out anyway. Once we were out there, he just stared at me and kept spinning, which made no sense. I brought him back in, developed a hypothesis, and walked into the bedroom with him on my heels. Picked up the pill bottle and showed it to him. Then I pretended to take one, even washing it down with a little water, and washed my hands after like I always do. Finally, I turned to him and asked, “Happy?”

me: yeah i know, they’re all primary colors, it’s perfect

When you go for an MLS (Master’s of Library Science, which is a thing, and which is usually required for “professional-level” library work [which is also a weird and contentious concept that I won’t go into here]), one of the things you study is the organization of information. This deals with how to determine what a book or other material is “about"—a concept we tongue-in-cheek call “aboutness"—and how to convey that to a potential user of the item and make it easy for them to find. Things like keywords and subject headings, do I put this book about how often wild birds attack aerial drones in with books about birds or with books about technology, if its a fictional novel do I put fantasy in it’s own section or mix it in with all of the other fiction, so on and so on.

OP is organizing books by how they would look for them. OP’s partner is thinking in terms of aboutness. This is a system that works for OP because it’s their personal library: they know basically what books they own and they only own books that are relevant to them, and if they know what the book looks like, that can be a quick way to find it.

In a library that assumes the public (or people who do not own that particular collection of books) are using the collection, that doesn’t work. Books are often re-issued in multiple covers, or re-bound in new covers when they get worn out, and if the user doesn’t know what the book looks like or is expecting a different cover, they’re lost. That’s why non-personal libraries used standardized cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress System to organize a book by what it’s “about”, and then put books about the same or similar topics together, marked with labels and signage so a person unfamiliar with the book or collection can find their way to it.

Basically, OP’s system works for their own personal library, because it’s best suited to how the primary user—OP themselves—looks for books. OP’s librarian partner is coming from a background of thinking in terms of a public-facing collection, where aboutness is the key criteria and communicating it to a user unfamiliar with the collection is the priority.

obviously how effective this is varies wildly based on the relationship, or lack thereof, that you have with the other person. but I find it effective with people who are In Your Life but don't meaningfully have any control over you. quite often it DOES result in increased directness in the future, especially if it's something I end up doing fairly often. and it's not rude; I'm just politely seeking clarification about what is being communicated. it makes the person have to think about what effect they were expecting their behavior to have on my behavior, and then just... tell me straightforwardly. but without escalating the situation or making the person feel 'called out' most of the time.

She frequently makes requests by telling me what I want, eg "oh wouldn't you like to.." "don't you think it's be nice if..."

It used to drive me up the wall, but now as an adult with better understanding of what's happening I say "Actually I'm fine with x, but I'd be happy to do y if that's what you want?"

One day she actually asked me, "Why is it so important to you that I say that y is what I want?"

and i got to say "Well I don't like being told what I want. I have enough life experience to know my own desires and limitations, and I can advocate for them when I need to. However your opinions do matter to me and I want to take them into account. It's much less stressful for me to do so when I'm not guessing what's in your mind."

And folks, she Actually Listened.

Later that day she wanted something that ended up not being possible, but because she said so directly I was able to help her find a different way to achieve the same goal!

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

This year’s is different. They are now federal REQUIREMENTS, which means there’s no flexibility. As was said previously, the 400 pages are not singularly devoted to being absolute shitheads to trans people. Theres a lot of stuff in there, some of which is the standard dry boring grants stuff, some of which is the horrible ideological warfare outlined above.

This document is issued by the OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, which is currently lead by fucking Russell Vought, the principal architect of Project 2025. This is how they’re going to implement all the horrible shit in there that wasn’t covered by Executive Order. Russell Vought is actively coming for my job, my marriage, and my kid, and most of my friends lost their jobs last year because of him. He is the fucking arch villain behind the heinous shit the current regime is doing.

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.

For those of you who aren't familiar, I live in an exceptionally flammable part of the United States, and despite the fact that every goddamn year multiple parts of my state catch fire, destroy homes and kill people, the local assholes insist on getting drunk and setting fire to a bunch of illegal explosives anyway. In 2023, God granted me a Miracle that prevented my house from burning down.

Last year, I had to resort to Psychological and Chemical Warfare to keep the patriotic arsonists at bay.

This year is apparently An Important Birthday for the clusterfuck we have the nerve to call a nation, so despite the fact there is so much smoke in the air that the sun has literally been blood red for the last week, the pyrotechnic fetishists are out in force.

Last year, I hit upon the concept that if my neighbors were going to act like problem animals, it would make sense to use the management techniques on them that you might use on say, a Bear that was doing serious property damage. Thusly, I created The Stench, a nontoxic but FOUL smelling concoction that I could discretely spray around the flammable gatherings and render the area extremely uncomfortable to occupy for the rest of the night, forcing them to give up or move on.

If this seems harsh: There is no story from 2024 because a grass fire was started by fireworks less than 12 miles from me and the high winds put me in the evacuation zone in under an hour. Over fifty people lost their homes. Errant fireworks burning my house down is a very real possibility, and I pay the price in anxiety and insurance premiums.

The Stench is noxious but harmless, and also very effective at building a buffer zone around my home. But sneaking up to parties on foot in this heat is both exhausting and nerve-wracking. There have to be more effective ways to do this

-And there is! It involves Weeds and Business Cards :)

On one hand: FAR fewer fireworks parties this year!

- Only nine to last year's thirteen - three of them had the good sense to be firing their recreational explosives out over the local reservoir - That's far from foolproof - and really bad for the fish - also y'all are RIGHT NEXT to where the Bald Eagles are nesting - but congratulations on at least attempting some risk mitigation!

On the other hand.

for any address to twitter you can replace the “x.com” with “nitter.net” and you will be able to browse as if you have an account. Lifesaver.