the important thing to remember about corporations is that they are so so stupid
this post brought to you by my ex employer claiming that they can't have done disability discrimination against me because there's no proof I had PTSD in January 2025, although they do admit I had it both four months before and six months after that
asked my lawyer if this was the dumbest thing she'd ever seen and she gave me the ol' dead eyed stare that has watched a thousand civilisations fall
need people to understand that feeling guilty you harmed someone isn't the same as being harmed. and treating those as equally bad is incredibly audacious
I don't need the chatgpt random algorithm to write emails for me because I already have a custom and 100% flawless algorithm called "writing the exact same three emails with the names changed"
#1: "hi [landlord], hope you're doing well! [apartment thing] is [broken/a problem]. we need it [fixed/replaced/handled] by [date]. let us know when you'll send someone over so we can be here to let them in. thanks so much, [op]"
#2: "hi [professor], hope you're doing well! unfortunately, I'm [sick/stuck at work/dead] and won't be able to submit [assignment] by [due date]. could I please have an extension? if not, is there anything else I could do to make up this credit? thanks so much, [op]"
#3: "hi [customer service person], hope you're doing well! unfortunately, [product] [didn't arrive/is broken/wrong color/gave me a rash/poisoned my crops] and I'd like to receive a [refund/replacement]. here is the documentation of the order and photos of [broken thing/wrong thing/my rash/dead crops]. thanks so much, [op]"
"but op I work in an office I have to write way more emails than you" well that's your fault for working in an office i got nothing to do with that
Writing an email is so easy and I will tell you how it's done. This is the advice is for everyone with an email job, but you can apply it to normal human interaction.
The FIRST SENTENCE is the thing you want the recipient to do. Do not make them guess.
People do not want to read an email and even if they do read it, most people are skimming and not interested. Tell them what you want first, then provide context or other information (when you need a thing is often key). If the email is informational, you can even add "you don't need to do anything, this is just to keep you informed!" People will appreciate not having to figure out what you want from them.
If you can't articulate what you want the recipient to do with the message, you are not ready to email them. I read too many emails where I have no idea what the person wants from me.
Put the most important thing first and everyone will be impressed! AI cannot do this for you because it can't tell what's important! Only you know that, which is why you must write your own emails.
to everyone who wants help with emails: go through the notes of this post. there are ideas I've never thought of and plenty of scripts for all kinds of situations/jobs
Next up someone is going to claim that the Narnia series isn't kids books.
Kids books is probably not the best way to word it, you can enjoy them at every age, including your childhood, as you get older you may find new truths in them, but they're still good for any age.
I want you to understand this. I NEED you to understand this. My mother read me the hobbit as bedtime story, and I started pushing myself to read before pre-school so I could in fact read the hobbit for myself instead of having to wait for bedtime.
I didn't do so right away but jesus wept I PUSHED myself to learn to read SPECIFICALLY so I could read The Hobbit! It is, in fact, a children's story! And children only see page count as 'there is a lot of this fun story to read!'
i’ll be honest learning about behaviour modification and canine psychology has really helped me process my own feelings and emotional responses
i find so much therapy talk aimed at humans has too much flowery abstract prose about mindfulness or whatever but for myself I really prefer an approach focused on hard science and what biochemical processes are responsible for me feeling this way, especially anxiety. Also why i prefer listening to lectures given by psychologists or counselors made for other fellow psychs and counselors.
But yeah I feel like there’s lessons anxious humans can take home from anxious dogs
I simply miss when romantic leads in movies looked like they were actually made of meat. by which I don't mean any particular physique, I just mean that every body you see in a marvel product looks like an idealized silicone version of itself and the lack of sexual appeal is profound.
this does include the very rare fat characters you actually see btw. fat thor would have been hot if they didn't achieve it with the most weird bad plastic-looking fat suit imaginable.
friend of mine recommended a video essay that's like 5 hours long about why it's currently a whole Thing for fascists to claim they only eat meat and demonize vegetables etc etc, and it's genuinely quite well researched in many places and contains some fascinating history and has made me feel very weird about my status as an adult who enjoys drinking milk. but I've not finished it and I genuinely don't know if I will because at one point the ol' "you can't say you care about animals and also eat animals" chestnut got dropped by the white vegan essayist and it put such a bad taste in my mouth that I had to leave instantly
like idk man it just feels genuinely parodic to dedicate hours to analyzing how foodways have frequently been used as white supremacist propaganda and then casually toss out an argument that pretty invariably demonizes indigenous hunting practices with 0 regard for traditional knowledge and land stewardship guiding those practices
Every time I hear a white vegan say that I want to throw the rubble of the Klamath Dams at them.
The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.
The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.
There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.
The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.
I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.
