thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.
My name is Tominaga Haruka. I was chosen by a magical talking animal, and for the last 29 years I've been Earth's one and only... Wonder-Sparkle Princess.
she's been fighting the same villains for three decades and they are also tired of it. Most of them aren't giving it their all.
Half of them are in a groupchat they've added her to where they schedule their evil plans to make sure they don't interfere with each other, or more importantly, with *her*
Xalkrax the space demon from outer space decided to attack the city when she was taking her vacation time once, and now he's dead, because even the power of friendship and redemption can't save you if you interrupt her rare vacations
"When you can't keep women out anymore, and you can't force them all to become secretaries or teachers because modern social politics demand that you at least pretend to support gender equality in the workplace, what can you do to keep women out of powerful positions in business? You can set them up to fail- or, to be more accurate, you set them up to fall.
It's called the glass cliff, and it's a phrase that was first coined in 2005 by University of Exeter researchers Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam. The research was inspired by an article in the Times (of London, not New York) that suggested women leaders have a negative impact on stock performance. Perhaps Ryan and Haslam smelled the whiff of bullshit coming from the page. They wondered if it was actually true that women brought doom and gloom to the businesses they led, or if there was some other reason why women were more likely to be found in leadership positions at troubled businesses.
They found that women were indeed more likely than men to be in leadership positions at distressed companies, but they also found that the problems were not the women's fault... These firms had shown months of decline and seemed at risk of failure prior to adding women to their boards.
When Allison Cook and Christy Glass at Utah State University followed up on this research by looking at US companies, they also discovered disturbing patterns impacting women and people of color in business: women and people of color were most likely to be placed at the head of a company when it was already at risk of failure; white men were less likely to accept leadership positions when companies were at risk of failure; and when women or people of color fail to quickly turn around the struggling company, they were most likely replaced with white men.
Women and people of color are often only given the opportunity to steer ships that white men have already rammed into icebergs. Then, when the ship sinks, the media reports that women make bad captains."
âŚ..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment
likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post
the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like.Â
Not shaving and not wearing make up are literally nonbehaviors. Theyâre a complete lack of action. But doing nothing is considered masculine because women are not allowed to just be. this goes double for trans women.
In the middle of Trump's growing media empire we finally got one teeny tiny win. The Onion now owns InfoWars, which used to belong to Alex Jones. Alex is the scumbag who said the Sandy Hook (I think that was the one) shooting was fake. He was later sued by the parents.
Anyway The Onion's InfoWars has just updated its logo and it's incredible.
have you noticed. ableds seem to operate on some kind of strange video game logic where doing something at least once unlocks the ability to do it with ease forever. if you can walk unaided once then you can walk! if you can eat that food you're intolerant or allergic to once then you no longer have that dietary requirement! if you can say one word at least once then you'll be fully verbal and speaking! like. it doesn't work like that bestie beloathed
I have to explain this to judges and prosecutors and other defense lawyers a lot. I have some shortcuts:
âThe fact that he canât do this consistently is a sign of an underlying problem or disability.â
This is a big one. And once they get what Iâm saying, it makes their brains light up. Ahhh!, they think, they canât do it all the time and thatâs how I know something is wrong with them!! (Ugh.)
âIf she can do this in some situations but not others, there is something about the situation that is impeding her.â
In other words, they can blame the problem on something else. If a kid I represent can do this task at school, then I insinuate that the parents are perhaps not giving the child the environment they need (or if I really like the parents, that school is draining the kidâs energy to zero.) if they can do it at home but not school, blame it on bullies, ignorant teachers, or (if feeling generous) the poor underpaid staff whoâs just trying their best under a mountain of work.
âHe only manages this when (well rested, medicated, fed, hasnât gone to school yet, isnât emotionally distressed, etc). It sounds like ensuring consistency in (rest, medication, etc) is what weâre really trying to do.â
Again, shifting the narrative from Those Lazy Kids to Someone Elseâs Fault, this time with overtones of Untreated Medical Problem. Perhaps add in a touch of âthe more he picks up these foundational skills, the easier it will getâ to make them feel like progress is being made.
âLook how hard she worked to get this done (one time)!â
Related: âHeâs made so much progress!â
Able-bodied people love shifting goalposts. But this also reframes the problem centering effort and not success, which is tbh the way it should be judged.
Overall, they can be trained⌠you just have to remind them in subtle ways that their own skills are also context-dependent and support-dependent. People who run marathons canât run a marathon every day. Once able bodied people shift into that mindset, the dividends start paying off.
Side note but I also do want to say: the attitude in OPâs post always seems to come along with the idea that people canât learn big new skills. Like, doing something is proof that you could do it all along, not that something was Learned.
I found this when I do hard work at improving something like painting, when I do a lot of practice and show people theyâre like âwow I had no idea you could do that!â lol I couldnât. Girl this is new. âNo way!!!â Yes way and you can learn it too.
What a sad static world. Everyone is working on learning Spanish but no one ever learns Spanish. If life has video game logic, then they should be leveling up!!
Yes, yes I do. Because I AM all of those words. But because of anti-Black racism and sexism, Black women are denied the very basis of femininity. We arenât allowed to hurt. Weâre supposed to be able to âdo it all by ourselvesâ and never show weakness and parade around acting like weâre made of teflon coated adamantium.
Aw⌠Black women want to be infantilized like white women are?
But really, youâre ahead of the curb. Thatâs what REAL equality feels like.
Thatâs how most/all men feel all the time.
But at least your worth isnât measured by both men and women by how confident and invulnerable you can be. (Or⌠ONLY vulnerable in a romantic context after youâre already in a relationship founded on how invulnerable you areâŚ)
How about extending that genteel, fragile, delicate/dainty stuff to US.
(Specially black men, their hardness expected of them is off the charts.)
At the bolded, thatâs not my intention. Your last sentences are what I really want in terms of giving Black people humanity. We are always supposed to be âhard,â both Black men and women. Weâre supposed to be able to take any and everything and shuck and jive it off like good little Mammies/Uncle Toms.
As I said in another post, we take care of things that are deemed âdelicate.â The care is what I focus on, not the sexist infantilization of my womanhood.
There is a level of condescension that comes with infantilization. One can treat me as a delicate individual without acting as if I canât do anything for myself.
Just as one can treat a man as a delicate individual without insinuating that his âmanhoodâ is in jeopardy.
But I donât imagine we should idealize/foster female delicacy, or delicacy as a female trait, right?
And I donât think initialization necessarily means condescending.
I donât think I normally use a condescending tone with small children or young adults.
I think of them all as my equals. Even babies. Just people like you and me⌠who just happen to not know how to do anything beside cry and writhe.
My issue is the fact that Black women are denied femininity PERIOD, and thus my post may come off as gender essentialist in some ways.
Because delicacy is denied to me as a black woman, it should be fostered in a healthy manner that does not hinder my functioning as a decent human being.
girl, these niggas. i aint even going there with eyan-jâs tom ass. *smh* they cant even interpret the base post because they just donât fucking get it. cause i never saw you wanted to be infantilized and i certainly do not think the way Black women are treated makes us above or close to equal to anyone at all, shape or form. and then to turn it into a boohoo what about the brothers (extend that to us, fuck you) type shit? misss the fuck outta me.
that lil danyphantom negro and eyanj w their antiblack misogyny, all butthurt and writhing in anger at black women wanted to be considered as delicate as anyone else?
theyre repeat offenders.
that lil danyphantom shithead used to comment on my shit all the time, ALWAYS on some condescending PRO-WHITE, PRO-MALE bullshit, told him to stop bothering me or heâd get blocked, and he continued doing so several times after being told off til i did block his ass.
and eyanj stays on some antiblack misogynist âboohoo males are the true victimsâ bullshit, talmbout âwhy do these women have to talk at allâ every damn day.
its just like real life where the only way you hear from negroes is when theyre gonna come shit on you.
you can scream and holler in pain coz everyones killing you
and they will sit there and file their nails til its time to join in on ravaging you.
Aside from arguably the word âfragileâ thereâs not a goddamned word on that list that indicates a lack of strength or personal conviction. Thereâs nothing infantilizing there - unless youâve already bought into the belief that femininity is inherently infantile.
And Fragile? Know what fragile in this sense indicates? WORTH OF CARE AND PROTECTION. If you think that something thatâs fragile canât also be strong, or that even if it isnât also strong that itâs not worthy of respect, you are a horrible human being.
What the OP wants is access to the same variety of available identities and social attitudes that white women have access too.
To be motherfucking dainty
And delicate
And Elegant
And Poised
And yes, Fragile
And Genteel
And Graceful
Because blackness should not be a fucking special and marked category of femininity.
I love lying to my landlord. âWeâre currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease hereâ and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, Iâm gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that Iâm not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlordâIâm just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease Iâve ever signed. (Also, Iâve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether theyâre corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their assetâthe propertyâis a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time itâs sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.Â
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goalâand because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent moneyâtheyâre almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, itâs actually in their best interest to give you a better price.Â
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an âAVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAYâ sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says âFirst month freeâ? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says âcall for availabilityâ? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.Â
You have the least leverage if youâre a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that arenât even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if youâve already signed a lease and youâre in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so youâre stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if youâre a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and youâre being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, theyâre also probably going to have to put in some work to âturnâ the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, itâs still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. Theyâre probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know itâll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if youâre a prospective new tenantâif they canât get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, thatâs $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and theyâll never get it back. Itâs a perishable item about to spoil.Â
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number theyâll quote you for the rentâthe sticker price that youâve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, theyâve built some buffer into that number. Thereâs almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people donât!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Donât reply to their initial offer right awayâunless thereâs a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you arenât desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when weâre talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when itâs time to send out renewal offers didnât get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they couldâve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!Â
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)Â
Hereâs the tricky part. You need to write an emailâalways negotiate over email if you can, itâs too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isnât in writing means nothingâwhich simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, youâd delete those other hoesâ numbers forever! Hereâs the rough script I use every time:
â Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I shouldâve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number thatâs higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; youâve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and theyâre likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firmâin which case, guess what? You still didnât lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didnât mention it above because I just couldnât fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically âprice firm :(â, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, âactually, nvm, howâs $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?â
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
I've found that the best scientific way to get rid of hiccups is to activate your vagus nerve so it relaxes your diaphragm.
The way to do that (or just relax your body in general) is with '458'.
Gently breathe in for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 5 seconds, then slowly breathe out for 8 seconds. Keep repeating that cycle and the hiccups should stop fairly quickly.
First, I would like to congratulate and thank @tumblr for their decision to roll back the most recent @changes in light of the backlash. This was clearly a massive change that had been in the works for some time, and was/is part of a much larger plan to attempt to modernize the site and make it more accessible to users from other platforms, and, I think this is very important, keep it financially stable.
We had it confirmed last year that Tumblr is in sustainment mode. That means, in tech world terms, that they aren't trying to grow massively or make fancy new updates or features for the hell of it. They're trying to make enough money to justify keeping the lights on so the entire service isn't shut down like Vine.
In the last month this site has been flooded with love, adoration, and support for the AO3 volunteers working around the clock to keep that site stable and functioning during outages and major updates, fending off bots, updating crucial infrastructure, adding minor new feature changes, search improvements, all of the things that Tumblr has been doing too, with what we hear now is only half a dozen or so paid employees.
But AO3 hosts text pages only. HD gifsets, a dozen sideblogs, uploading videos directly to your blog even if it takes forever to process? Those server costs have to be insane. And with AI those costs are skyrocketing and only about to get worse.
I have seen a dozen posts float around yelling that if you pay for Tumblr you're a sucker. Very rarely have I seen an equivalent for those posts like the ones that defend AO3 donation campaigns. So here goes mine.
I like paying for Tumblr premium.
The main reason is that I don't have to see ads, and I do everything I can in my life to avoid seeing ads. The second reason is I want this site to not crumble into the aether with no warning.
I rarely ever use the monthly free Blaze feature, but I really appreciate that I can when I need to, on my own posts across any sideblog, or someone else's post I want to highlight.
I definitely use this hellsite enough to want to support it for $0.19 a day.
I know people are upset that the cost raised, and that not everyone can afford the annual discount, but $70 instead of $7 a month is a whole two months off, which isn't just a good deal, but also say to me that Tumblr is prioritizing longer term funds over month-to-month.
The fact the cost raised means that the program was moderately successful, but that they are still struggling to keep the lights on.
My suggestion to Staff is to read your loyal, vocal, and dedicated audience. If you are in maintenance mode, we understand, and we will support you.
To @tumblr Management, as a simple and cheap monetization model based on other sites, I would sincerely suggest there is proof Tumblr users would respond well to a transparency campaign modeled after non-profit entities like AO3 & Wikipedia, with rough estimates of server costs and staff salaries, and an ability to pay/donate more flexibly than a monthly subscription.
Note: There are all kinds of ways to set something like this up, maybe rewards like a system for prioritization on bug fixes and new feature implementation like free users having five votes, premium users ten, and either having the ability to buy more, all filling the collective annual/quarterly budget. While Tumblr is not a non-profit, a sustainment SaaS could work well in the Kickstarter stretch-goal model right now.
So because we're going to be cranky in the coming days, because there's not great communication on what the long term roadmap is yet, and we're all stressed and anxious about one safe-ish spot we have in the world getting threatened, because this shit happens when there's only half a dozen people left to run a site that's fifteen years of chaos on every level and we forget while we're in our little bubbles, let me say it now:
We know we're not always the easiest cats to herd, and working here is somewhat of a thankless job these days. So Thank You @staff, for all you do, and thank you for keeping the lights on.
Oh, Hi! Donât Mind Me⌠@gettingovershame - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
