Happy Days in Random Chatter 10

[Portia]

My grandma lives in a multidenominational hotspot. Will report if I attend anything.

Already went to my hs Vespers service which is my religion, basically.

[Portia]

My family all deserted me so I watched this and might never have cried so hard in my life.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sXfzp296zhA

Looks like the wrong shall prevail after all. :(

[Digit]

I never played, but saw this in a tweet that made me laugh.
"How to include Dungeons and Dragons on your résumé:"

[yayfulness]

Carrie Fisher is such a tremendously important person and a feminist icon. I am not ready for her to be gone.

[Digit]

I read earlier this year that the voice of Admiral Ackbar ("It's a trap!") died this year too.

[wryness]

One of my high school buddies has become super duper alt-right and apparently I am the devil because I'm trying to stay centrist or centrist-leaning-left? He just called me a communist and I can't even process that... (Not that I think being a communist is the devil or anything, but for this guy that's pretty much the worst thing he could say to somebody.)

I keep thinking "what would Jesus do?" but it's hard to respond civilly to someone who spouts off conspiracy theories, rejects all mainstream media, and starts treating you with (what I perceive as) contempt. I wanted to stay FB friends with this guy to avoid my "echo chamber" but right now an echo chamber sounds like a pretty nice place to be.

[yayfulness]

My dream job (affordable housing developer) will basically cease to exist as we know it if Ben Carson decides to gut Housing and Urban Development. From what I've read, his confirmation hearing was uneventful and didn't really provide much in the way of answers about how he'll handle the job. I'll be paying pretty close attention, though; my approach so far to the new administration has been "assume I should worry until proven otherwise" and that's doubly true in a federally-funded field where I plan on making my career.

Ugh. I knew I'd be unhappy with any Trump pick for that office, and Carson is honestly probably better than a lot of the potential alternatives, but still... ugh.

[yayfulness]

I wanted to stay FB friends with this guy to avoid my "echo chamber" but right now an echo chamber sounds like a pretty nice place to be.

Personal opinion: it's not necessary to participate in your friend's paranoid conspiracy echo chamber in order to avoid entering an echo chamber of your own.

[Amity]

On the topic of Facebook echo chambers, if you use Chrome you should give the PolitEcho extension a spin. It analyzes your friends list and newsfeed and gives you a sense of the political leanings of both (interestingly, it says that my newsfeed leans more liberal than my friends list as a whole).

And yayfulness, I feel your pain. If I don't stay in academia, one of my backup career options was to head for DC and join a think tank or the federal government. Based on the hostile environment that Trump, his appointees, and Congress seem to be creating for federal employees (hiring freezes, reviving a rule that lets Congress cut the pay of federal workers to $1, disbelief in the fundamental mission of many federal agencies), and the ripple effect it's going to have on other employers in the DC metro area, I'm not so sure that's a viable option for me anymore.

[Portia]

My dream job (affordable housing developer) will basically cease to exist as we know it if Ben Carson decides to gut Housing and Urban Development.

Yeah, Shannon Hale has my dream career path and she and her husband benefited a lot form the ACA which will most likely cease to exist as we know it. I thought the GOP liked entrepreneurs. Not creative ones? Ugh.

I have to admit that Carson's nomination seems like it's trolling us.

[Emiliana]

Sometimes, when I have had a glass or two of red wine, I actually get tears in my eyes for how much I adore my honors sophomore class.

[Digit]

There are some cool free professor-written textbooks out there. Example. A physics I textbook on classical mechanics, but Page 12 (37 of the PDF), paragraphs 2 and 3 talks about blood sugar and the brain and how to leverage that knowledge to avoid a bad time to study. It actually goes quite a bit into neurology in that section for a physics book!

The whole first section entitled Preliminaries is very good.

[Marduk]

There are some cool free professor-written textbooks out there. Example. A physics I textbook on classical mechanics, but Page 12 (37 of the PDF), paragraphs 2 and 3 talks about blood sugar and the brain and how to leverage that knowledge to avoid a bad time to study. It actually goes quite a bit into neurology in that section for a physics book!

The whole first section entitled Preliminaries is very good.

The textbook we use for our freshman comp students is a free e-book, too. It makes me happy to see people sticking it to the textbook publishing industry.

[Portia]

Yeah so four days after a man confesses he loves me after as many years of knowing each other, he gets a job offer in Shanghai.

Okay, then.

Immediately thought of a book Whistler and I read at the same time.

“One can be very much in love with a woman without wishing to spend the rest of one's life with her.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil

[Whistler]

XD

[mic0]

Talked to a job recruiter for the first time in my life today! He told me that women in data science are pretty desirable and I should be getting paid more. He probably says that to everyone (duh, so you'll switch jobs), but it was very flattering and weird.

[TheBlackSheep]

It is pretty wonderful, right?

[Portia]

So I don't really follow the Bloggernacle anymore since it's not that relevant to my life; however, a lot of friends (some very close) do, especially on Woke Mormon Twitter.

Is it true that some of the mainstream blogs are now at least as liberal as I am except I guess technically Mormon, still? I find it surprising, and I'm wondering if that means there's a lot of polarization in people's wards/Mormon circles. The Mormons (ETA: in my non-digital life) aren't really any more or less woke than before.

[Marduk]

Is it true that some of the mainstream blogs are now at least as liberal as I am except I guess technically Mormon, still? I find it surprising, and I'm wondering if that means there's a lot of polarization in people's wards/Mormon circles. The Mormons (ETA: in my non-digital life) aren't really any more or less woke than before.

I could be wrong, but you strike me as pretty moderate. In that case I'll say sure (although I only read what people in my feed link to, when it comes to Mormon blogs.)

But that's nothing new. I think the Mormon Worker is still around.

[Portia]

Currently taking bets on whether this Neil Gorsuch lookalike will explain jazz to me. It's very, very exciting! :P