I appreciate the consistency, tbh. Not too many people speak this ol' name on the interwebs anymore. I keep thinking about doing another Reddit AMA for the 10 year anniversary of Saydrahgate, but I don't know if there are enough people on Reddit still who remember it.

Anyway, like KB said, still in LA. I quit the tech scene after one acquisition too many. I'm a writer now, won a medium-sized TV writing contest recently, did a little bit of work for some major companies, still trying to get a foot all the way in the door.

I am surprised by, but appreciative of, your consistent interest in my whereabouts. If you're ever in LA, KB knows how to reach me so we can wave hello.

Hey! BTW mk your notification emails are consistently getting spammed in Zimbra -- good fortune I checked my junk on a whim today.

I'm in LA, working for the first time since 2009 at a purpose-driven company, and it feels great. I'm a person who can derive a greater purpose from almost anything (a lawyer friend told me once, "You must believe your client to be a good advocate," and I took that to heart along with Indra Nooyi's advice on assuming positive intentions) but it's great to be in a place where everyone is on that page. I've found it very easy to live in LA so far. The weather is of course so fantastic that people poke fun at it for being so great all the time. The people are friendly. (Really, they are. LA stereotypes have been exaggerated significantly.) There's always something to do. ALWAYS.

Having a blast. But busy as hell growing a community of my own, so I've only been around others sparingly!

As far as I know there really has been a change in the lifetime of most beekeepers. That's what I hear from my uncle and from all the other beekeepers I know. That doesn't mean there haven't ever been other colony collapse events in history, but there have also been other volcano explosions in history and that fact wouldn't keep us from worrying about an erupting volcano in our backyards today, would it?

Detailed origami. You have to be very smart to be good at rectangular origami. (Or have a lot of time on your hands.)

Who the what?

Spontaneously? Almost never. Once in third grade when my teacher had a grand mal seizure during a lesson and conked his head on the blackboard. I got a pair of box turtles from my parents as a reward for having the presence of mind to go for the school nurse while the rest of the class was still panicking and milling in circles. They lived for ten years after that, not the 50+ I had hoped for, but they were probably wild-caught as adults, so that wasn't so bad. One of them might still be alive out in the wild somewhere -- he didn't come up from hibernation one year and I don't know if he died or escaped.

Other than that, a lot of planning goes into "spontaneous" moments like that for me. I spent 8 years volunteering intensively for an animal rescue group, including 3 years on the BoD. Went on a lot of cruelty calls. Called a lot of emergency vets. Occasionally grabbed a panicking horse before it hurt someone. Now I'm a victim advocate. I spend most on-call nights hoping the pager doesn't go off because I really don't want to be bothered in the moment, but when it does I always wind up glad that I was called, because I get to really help people.

Marx figured this out a long time ago. He was a damn good diagnostician but made lousy prescriptions.

I would still cut a bitch for a Tesla Model S. (Or spend a moderate amount of money on one when my current vehicle expires, which is more likely.) I don't care how many NYT writers pan it. It's a fucking Tesla that I can afford. I am getting one.

I gave it some thought on the way home, and I have swayed a bit more to your perspective, but I still think that a good attitude is a trait that it's simply lazy for any person who presents materials to the public not to cultivate. If you're SO brilliant that you really truly don't need to be liked, okay, but most people (even most brilliant people) are not. However, I acknowledge that the value of his work, though not best served by his presentation, is not itself affected by his presentation.

The thing that sticks in my craw is his need to announce that he thinks comments are harmful and that he won't participate. Just don't participate next time, guy. Nobody's waiting with bated breath for ya!

If one has that perspective on one's audience, one should probably not release materials intended to be persuasive to an online audience, which by definition cannot be hand-selected.

Well, because it affects how people receive your work, if part of your work is making a positive change by influencing others in some way. I have a shitty attitude a lot of the time and criticism of it has helped me grow. (And helped me make the decision to actually finally quit Reddit, with the exception of one novelty account I keep around for giggles.)

I like how he's rebutting criticism of his attitude by declaring that it could not possibly be valid and that criticism of his attitude and style are inherently harmful. It really speaks well of his personality, ego, and attitude that he is so hostile to criticism, no? However, I agree that the article link is quite useful.

Should have waited to post this on Valentine's Day :)

Women sometimes do this thing where they meet an acquaintance, think he's cute, and find opportunities to hang out with him, watch him, and evaluate him as a potential mate. Then presto, by the time they're done evaluating him, he's become integrated into their social group too closely for the girl to be comfortable asking him out because it'd now be awkward if he rejected her and all her friends found out. It's kind of the female equivalent of the stereotype-based-in-fact where men see a beautiful girl and immediately talk themselves into thinking she's out of their league and it'd be the end of the world to get humiliated by a rejection from her, so they might as well not even say two words to her and just keep standing over here awkwardly in this corner.

The annoying thing about the female version is, 99% of the time, the acquaintance-level guy would have accepted a date or at least been totally cordial and flattered if he did have to turn the girl's offer down, and if he then became a friend, it wouldn't be awkward at all--it'd have been just part of the story of how he became a member of the social group.

I don't mean to be rude, but is English a second language for you? If so it's much better than my French/Arabic/German/Spanish (I can order food in all those, but that's about it) but I still am having a little trouble understanding what you mean by "advanced." Do you mean like "make a romantic advance," or like "promote?"

In any case, on the subject of girls asking guys out, I always advise that when talking to girls who are having trouble meeting someone. You get a much better-quality dating pool of guys when you ask them than waiting for them to approach you.

My inability to write "self-conscious" ;)

Sorry, sorry.

Realistically it's mostly my voice. My parents were told I needed surgery and speech therapy when I was five because I always sounded congested and they were convinced I'd get bullied for my voice. That never actually happened in school (kids have a funny way of not realizing something is abnormal when they've been around it since they were in kindergarten) but the damage was done, and it got worse when I got the acting bug in fourth grade and a casting director told me that I could be voice actor "like Chuckie in the Rugrats." He meant it as a compliment, because weird kiddie voices are fungible currency in Hollywood if you also actually know how to do voice acting, but I was crushed.

It's gotten better with age but I still sound unusual and have a slight lisp on top of it because my canine teeth are oversized. (Another thing "helpful" doctors wanted to "fix" because "she'll be bullied" that nobody but me ever bullied me about, in the end.)

I'm an "eat your fear" person, so I got into public speaking and I love it more than anything else now. I still hate my voice, but I love, love, love speaking. And I've even dated guys who tell me I have a sexy voice, SO THERE KINDERGARTEN PEDIATRICIAN. (They're lying, but it's nice of them to try.)

Not going to say it doesn't upset me, but I do my level best to be thankful for it. Failure is a gift, because when I fail it means I'm not yet the best I can be, and I'm not lazily sticking to things that are easy for me to accomplish, either. If I stopped failing, then I would be looking at a very sad and boring rest of my life where I didn't have anywhere left to grow or anything left to learn or any challenges to overcome. Or, I would have become a coward who doesn't take risks.

I hate failing. I sometimes lie in bed feeling like I'm going to vomit and going over it over and over again. I don't like to talk about it, and I often don't share risks I'm taking with my friends so that I won't have to tell them if I fail. But I have to stop, think, and be grateful for the failure, or I wouldn't ever get back OUT of bed and keep taking risks. There's a church down the street with a labyrinth (not minotaur style, it's just a maze made of stones) that I sometimes go pace around muttering to myself about the gift of still being in a growth state so that I can fail.

I enjoyed this comment greatly.

That's the idea, but all my money seems to end up going to my house in reality.... :P

I caused nine out of eleven WHAT? I'm dying to know, but I'll never find out because this is implemented and you're ignored. Kisses.

Since you asked for feedback -- please keep in mind I have NO talent for poetry or for putting my own emotions into words, I am a "critic who can't do," like the one in Ratatouille, so take this with a grain of salt.

I think there's a little too much metaphor here. It's almost distracting to the mental "eye." Might work for industrial or something of that nature where there's a lot of instrumental time between verses, but here I feel like the listener won't know what they're supposed to be picturing.

Also, I'd cut the "only exists in our dreams." That's like "It was all a dream!" in fiction. It can be inferred by the listener if they want.

"What a beautiful place We’ve found to call our own A hole in the ground Where the ocean rises up"

This is the best bit lyrically, IMO. I'd move it earlier in the song, and maybe limit the picturesque, landscape metaphors to your two reiterations of this "beautiful place" dealio. You don't need "flowery fields and melting plains" or "burning sun" (are there other kinds of suns?) when you have this lyric, which I find much more emotive. Or, you could move those descriptors into the final lines, in place of the "only in our dreams" thing.

This is probably my favorite thing on the Internet this year so far.

I'm doing exactly what I would like to do right now. I manage communications, community, and social media for one of the UGC arms of a household-name digital media company. The CEO inspires me every time I hear anything about her or see her on a webcast, my team is fantastic, and it's led me to an incredible number and array of opportunities.

However, the fact that I love what I do does not mean there aren't other things I'd like to do. Most immediately, I'd like a higher-level role and to be managing a team and/or product of my own, in the community/communications/social sphere. I've been doing director-level work since my director left in April, and my title doesn't match that yet. Eventually, I'd like to get to the C-suite, either CEO, COO, or CCO.

After doing that for a while I'd love to take a break from business and pursue my love of politics, and later in life, at retirement age, I have dreams of directing nonprofits in the mental health and animal welfare areas.

Point taken -- I guess the author had to use the terms people know to get their attention, but I don't like the categorization at all. You can't even add "bi" to it if you're both, like me. Biverted? That sounds like a bisexual pervert.

I don't see why it's necessary to categorize people into introvert/extrovert. (Then again, I don't agree with binaries in gender or in politics, either.)

I have traits of both, and I think most people do. If I describe myself to someone who is sold on the "upsides of being an introvert" thing, they'll use the fact that I'm sometimes awkward one-on-one but totally comfortable working a room or speaking to a crowd to tell me I'm an introvert. Anyone else will use the same thing to tell me I'm an extrovert. As far as I can figure, I'm a person who is sometimes awkward one-on-one but likes public speaking and networking.

Boo! Where ya been?

Hmm, I end up like that with people I was limerent toward after I come to my senses, but not with relationships that just had to end.

For a lot of reasons that are his business and not mine to share, I don't think it's exactly the same, but I've gotten comfortable with the fact that either possible outcome will end up being good for both of us. If things work out and I can be in love in a selfless way in the future, I really respect his character and trust him to be a person who will accept my love and return it. If not, I think the relationship has helped both of us learn about ourselves, and we're both people who have a history of being able to let go of resentment of past relationships and be friendly toward ex-lovers, so I think if we separate eventually we'll look at our relationship as having been a positive.

I totally relate. That's where I am right now, too. I know that putting someone else first right now would mean sacrifices I'm not willing to make, so I'm not sure I'm far enough in my own evolution to be in love. That doesn't mean I can't keep enjoying my relationship and considering it "loving" if not "in-love," for as long as the other person is willing to tolerate my not being in-love, but the big epiphany of all of these descriptions of love is that I don't feel them right now not because I'm incapable of any/all of them, but because some part of me recognizes that I AM capable of all of them and that I need a little more time to become a person I'm ready to offer to a love partner before I WANT to feel those things.