Hey hubcaps, it's been a while! Just landed a job where I'll be earning 2.5x what I used to make (but I laid myself off in May), which is great but I do expect some culture shock as this will be the very first corporate role I've held. Also, my partner is now wondering what it would be like if we lived in NYC, which would probably be cool as we have lots of friends and family there, but like, even though I just got a big pay bump, I'll basically be back to my old buying power if/when we move, but them's the breaks. Honestly, after living on the West Coast for a bit I really miss the walkability of East Coast cities. Personally, I think my partner also wants to live in a place where she can wear her collection of vintage fur coats she's been amassing FOR NO REASON, but whatever.

Happy New Year! I got a raise today! It’s not a huge raise, but it’s nothing to sniff at either.

Maybe the bump in income will help me to weather whatever shit storm is brewing.

Things have been bumping along in weird, but ultimately good ways, though not without stress. My girlfriend's dad died of COVID and long story short, we weren't sure what was going to happen next, since she had to return to her home country and her visa was expiring soon after. All that worked out as best it could, so I'm glad about that.

I guess I also have an interview show now, which is pretty fun I have to say, but it's something totally new for me. Some questions that have come up for me are of course around how to keep output flowing,

The only other update from me is that I've been taking this course with a guy I met through work. Basically, the premise thus far is that democracy is necessary for peace, democracy is imperiled, and everything that people think is helping, actually is not. I like this dude, but I keep waiting to see if he's full of shit. And of course, that could be coloring my time learning with him, but an open mind is something that needs constant work.

I forgot how much I like your voices and through listening, I missed you all. Some other thoughts: “humanodon was born here” is maybe the most concrete endorsement of my citizenship other than my birth certificate, so I really appreciate that! Also, Trump’s shoulder seam on his suit is wicked gross. Don’t do that shit hubski.

Also: really nice job editing both video and audio!

Steve’s words really resonated with me. At work, one of our values is Collective Care:

We do not subscribe to the concept of self care by itself. We believe in collective care. We have to take care of each other, create the space for people to take care of themselves, and hold each other accountable for taking care of themselves and each other.

This has been my experience with hubski. Users here have privately contacted me when I’ve been down and out, offering to make connections for potential jobs, supporting me when I’ve been bent on being too hard on myself, and one user even asked me to do them a favor by reading a book that they sent to me, inside of which, I found $100 when I really needed it.

I keep coming back here and I’m so grateful that this group of people has come together.

Learning a lot of shit in my new role at a diversity and inclusion consulting firm. A lot of it is really interesting, though quite a lot of it is over my head. If anyone knows anything about automating workflows, Zoho, LMSs, or online learning, I'd love to have a chat.

I know that I'm not super active here anymore, but I do come back! One of the things we're trying to accomplish with the online learning platform is a community for thoughtful, engaging discussion. If anyone would like to chime in to give their perspective on what makes hubski the kind of place that people want to come back to, or to engage with one another, I'd really like to hear those points of view.

For me, part of the appeal of hubski is the individual personalities, and the space to interact with various, recognizable personalities over time. I also really like the willingness of the community to take ideas and run with them, whether it's the threads where people are collaborating on things just for the fuck of it, or continuing discussions over a number of threads over time. It would be great to get something similar going on in a more focused way, but I'm not sure if such a focus might have a negative effect on engagement. If anyone has thoughts on this point, I'm happy to hear those perspectives too!

Name: Rico

Location: Library

Age: Drinkin'

Current Preoccupation: I don't really want to get a Ph. D, so why are so many things in my life pointing to a Ph. D?

I make food. Mostly salad dressings, sauces, and soups. Today I made some burgers because some steak cuts were cheaper than ground beef. I write poems, but less and less lately. I write things that almost make it into academic journals. I make mistakes. I make connections. I make my bed in the morning, even though I know that the dog will unmake it. I make time to do a lot of partial things. I make a lot of jokes. I make do.

I defended my thesis. I am told by my committee that they're willing to work with me to get it to publishable standard and that they are interested in supporting my development of a theoretical framework. According to them, I've done 80% of a possible dissertation, with another subsection of my thesis showing promise for the development of a separate paper.

I'm still broke though.

1) I study conflict resolution with a focus on organizational conflict

2) I gossip like a motherfucker

Personally, I take these things to be indicators and try to take a qualitative research tack. What nodes keep popping up? If everyone says Carol is a bitch, what's up with that? As for shame, what's going on there? Maybe digging into those feelings through something like writing out your thoughts (by which I mean, writing without self-judgement in an effort to map feelings, tensions, and potential inciting incidents) might be helpful.

I don't know your situation, particularly as some of the information is apparently sensitive, but I am curious about the role of leadership within your organization. What kind of leadership exists? Are there underlying sources that result in gossip? Can you talk to anyone in the leadership about this? What avenues exist for you to try to address this issue of morale?

Often, with top-down leadership, there is a great deal of power distance, resulting in a lack of employee buy-in, inclusion, and belonging. In organizations where power-distance is minimized and employees tend to have a lot of trust from their leadership, we see a lot of decision-making ability and thus, empowerment. When people have this ability, creating employee/"follower"-based solutions is often an option, which tends to improve morale.

In my view, gossip tends to occur when people don't have outlets that are sanctioned as legitimate for grievance within organizations. Often, this results in employee turnover, a lack of trust, and overall, greater expenditures in training and ineffectual interventions, such as diversity and inclusion programs rooted in compliance to Title VII and affirmative action, as opposed to employee empowerment. We also see litigation more often in these types of environment.

In short, avoidance of gossip or conflict tends to have adverse effects. However, engaging in conversations to address morale can also have adverse effects for employees as organizations are inherently conservative and interested in avoiding litigation and so may be prone to retaliation or attempting to sweep things under the rug. Of course, my advice would be to seek the help of a professional; a facilitator, a mediator, or someone who can help with conflict, but then, I have an interest in promoting the industry I'm hoping to be employed in. The one thing I can tell you, is that there is no need to be ashamed for feeling like things can be better, or for regretting a contribution to negative dynamics. It sounds like you have a clear idea of what the problems could be and that there might be a real need to address them. Who can be engaged to work this out?

My mom asked me if I had a big date planned for tonight. I finished my first draft of my thesis just now, so maybe now I can think about dating again?

Apparently I will be on a boat this evening. For what purpose, I do not know. According to my boss, I can bring a plus-one, so I don't think they're trying to kill me, but who knows these days.

I don't trust white people

If you set it on fire, you might have a shot at winning #grubski

I'm equally shocked Bernie won Oklahoma and lost Massachusetts.

I'm not. Lots of old people here, lots of career democrats here, lots of old democrats with money here. Further, several people of color that I spoke to yesterday expressed to me that voting Sanders was simply too risky, or that Sanders was an unknown quantity. A friend even joked that I was only saying that I had voted for Sanders in order to cover up my vote for Trump, which made my blood boil.

What truly shocked me was the margin by which Trump won.

I can't watch Bill Maher, or any show where people are just constantly interrupting one another. It's so . . . tiresome.

I hate power plays at work. I once worked a corporate gig where the new boss didn't introduce herself for two weeks and then had a meeting where she wanted to Lay Down the Law. During this meeting I basically said, "hey, my name is humanodon and we've been doing just fine without a boss for six months and are actually more profitable than any of our other eight locations, so who the fuck are you?"

Anyway, that resulted in more strong-arm tactics and within a month those of us that were bringing in said profits, had quit. Now before I quit, head office decided to have the new boss lady observe me over several days and in the end they found nothing wrong (and in fact found that I was not only accomplishing their goals, but exceeding them) but accused me of prepping the observation sessions, thus skewing the results.

I then created a program at another company that ate into my original company's profits significantly and many of my clients followed me to my new place of business. Make all the power plays you want to, but in the end services are all about people.

It's the tone, sport.

Hey Melrabo! If you've seen my name around the site, you may have read that I teach English to people trying to go to university, or for business purposes. Anyway, today my class was supposed to turn in some short, narrative essays. Frankly, this is better than most of the essays I received, both in terms of language and also in the depth of the narrative.

It's pretty interesting to me to get perspective on issues like gender identity, particularly through the lens of other cultures and professions. I think that to some degree gender stereotypes cause confusion universally. The more I learn about what goes on behind the scenes in porn, the more stressful it seems. On the other hand, it makes me feel less weird for putting personal relationships on hold for a little bit while I figure out some shit.

Cheers for the write-up.

This is where I am right now. I have a very dear aunt who is very business-minded and was fortunate enough to be an investment banker in the '80's and '90's. She's been rich for a long time and can't understand why my uncle (who runs a little food shop in the Philippines and drives the equivalent of a school bus on the side) can't ever seem to get it together. Now, this uncle works harder than anyone I know and in fact, his wife worked so hard that she thought that the pain in her neck and shoulders was nothing but work related fatigue until it turned out to be cancer.

Now, I love my aunt, but she's been rich a long time, as I mentioned. She's super smart and has a deep understanding of the way her world works, but doesn't really get it when her world and the world the rest of us live in collide. Her advice to me two years ago on moving back to the U.S. was to move to NYC, because "it's really a very livable city . . . once you resolve your housing problem." Now . . . her apartment cost $1.3 million in 1998 and well . . . I'm a teacher. I'm oversimplifying of course, but still.

Dude. Your youngness is bumming me out . . .

You should build her a house-- then you could be BLOB_VILLA.

All jokes aside, that's pretty cool. Good for you!

YOU HAVE BEEN DEMOTED TO 7BITS. THAT IS ALL.

This is a complicated question that linguists have broken down into smaller, more specific questions. I'm not a linguist though, so I can't tell you the ins and the outs of the various aspects of those discussions. But, I can give a good example (I think).

Since we're all familiar with English, have you ever noticed how specific the language is in regard to time? When speaking or writing English, it is generally clear when things are occurring. For example, I am now using the present progressive and simple present to express my thoughts. We also regularly construct sentences like, "I would have brought her lunch but I remembered her telling me that she would be going out for lunch with her boss".

Yes, this is entirely possible in other languages, but kind of difficult (no matter what the language) and perhaps might phrased more along the lines of, "I did not bring her lunch. Earlier, she told me she would go out to eat with her boss" which serves the same general purpose, but does not convey the idea of intent, the conditional nature of that intent, nor the idea of the future from a past perspective.

Language is inherently limited and imperfect. Perfect communication might be something like telepathy, where the exact meaning and feelings attached to meaning are flawlessly received and broadcast, but as things stand, that's not what we're working with. Notice how in English, it's entirely normal to ask someone to clarify what they mean, either in conversations in person, or in exchanges of text as in e-mail.

I have secured two ESL teaching jobs and I work Monday to Thursday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. with a 1-1 student (for another week) from 1:40-2:30 p.m. I also work Monday to Wednesday from 6-9 p.m at the YMCA. This would give me a nice break, but the train I have to take to my house takes 45 minutes, so 45 minutes home, an hour or so to walk the dog and chill, then back downtown to teach in the evenings. A bit punishing, but I make rent and have some money to play.

This week I am teaching a group of Italians for two classes and today during the the beginning of a class, I was going around and asking students how their day was yesterday and all that introductory, warm-up jazz. This absolutely gorgeous 18 year old girl looks me dead in the eyes and says, "yesterday I went to Victoria's Secret" and the whole time I had to think about how my orientation for that school skipped over all the boilerplate shit and went straight to the sexual harassment policy, which they asked me to read very carefully. Oh dio . . .

The YMCA had me read skim the boilerplate but then made sure to carefully read the "I am not a child molester" portion, so between that and my other job, I don't know what vibes I am throwing off. In all seriousness though, I don't think that they (either "they") think I am a deviant, but obviously they have had problems of that nature in the past.

I need to find time to work out regularly and some time to meet some girls. The dog helps, as does wearing professional clothes, but I am a results driven dude. Been trying to get back in touch with people and get involved with friends who are productive and not just getting fucked up all the time. It's going pretty good, but to be honest, all I really want to do is ride motorcycles and bone. I am applying to grad schools though (and do shit like get my driver's license converted and whatever) and so I find myself very busy, but in good ways.

Maybe it's just that I've been around for a little bit, but I've seen what seems like an increase in it and I'm not in favor of it. It's one thing for users to ironically badge things in the spirit of fun (at least I think that's how I got some badges), but using it to spotlight something the badger deems worthy of derision or ridicule seems on the cruel side to me.

. . . but let's not have this turn into an "issue" . . . please.

Oh, the lurkers lurk because they want to (or it seemed that way in a thread I can't find at the moment). Anyway, I wish there were something in the "create account" process that reminds users: Please, don't reddit on hubski.

Also, no one knows how to navigate the site because it's always changing.

"Hubski: the handsome web"

Wouldn't it be great if people started thinking it was a dating site?

Either way I left the party very early, and relatively upset, without really knowing why.

This might be good for you to try to understand.

"And this is my boyfriend, Alex!"

This is going so well right now

Did you go because you thought there was something with this girl?

I think I can understand where you're coming from, but I also think that trying to see things from another perspective would be helpful. It's pretty easy to judge things and frame things negatively when we haven't seen the inside, or considered that what we see is not all there is.

I love that it mentions that water from Oreos is extracted to use in rivers.