a pensieve of sorts

because there aren't enough open diaries on the net yet

[twinsfawn]

build-a-bear needs to start a cryptid collection. i want a plush mothman that makes squeaking noises and smells like campfire with a hint of fresh pine.

[anarchapella]

I have thoughts about the whole feminist anti-interrupting thing. Like I agree, men do talk over people and it is disrespectful, but I also think there are cultures, specifically Jews, where talking over each other is actually a sign of being engaged in the conversation. It’s something I really struggle with in the south, because up in New York, even non-Jews participated in this cooperative conversation style, but down here, whenever I do it by accident, the whole convo stops and it gets called out and it’s a whole thing. Idk idk I feel like there’s different types of interruptive like there’s constructive interrupting where you add on to whatever is being said - helpful interrupting, and then there’s like interrupting where you just start saying something unrelated because you were done listening. I have ADHD so I’ve def done the latter too by accident, but I’m talking about being more accepting of the former.

[anarchapella]

I think a lot of the social mores leftists enforce around communication tend to be very white. Like Jews are not the only group of people that have distinct communication styles. Like the enforcement of turn-based communication, not raising your voice (not just in anger but also in humor or excitement), etc. it’s always interesting that the most pushback I get about how I communicate come from white people (mostly women actually, white men just give me patronizing looks because they don’t feel like they can call me out in same way). Like I’ve been teaching these workshops, and a few of them have been primarily black people, and I’ve noticed black people will also engage in cooperative interrupting (and I love it!). This isn’t a developed thought and I welcome feedback. Idk I think there should be space in leftist organizing for more diverse communication styles.

Here’s a source:

WASHINGTON -- The next time someone accuses you of interrupting, you might want to explain that you are not being rude: You're actually enga

[madmaudlingoes]

As a linguist: overlapping talk is not the same thing as an interruption!

An interruption is specifically intended to stop another person from speaking so you can take over. Other reasons that talk might overlap:

close latching -- how much time should I give between when you stop talking and when I start? Very close latching can feature a lot of overlaps.

participatory listening -- how do I signal to you that I’m engaged with what you’re saying and paying attention? Do I make any noise at all, or do I limit myself to minimal “backchannel” noises (mm-hmm, ah, yeah), or do I fully verbalize my reactions as you’re going? Maybe even chime in along with you, if I anticipate what you’re about to say, to show how well we’re vibing?

support request -- this can shade into interruption as a form of sealioning, but if someone interjects a request like “I didn’t catch that” or “What’s that mean?” it’s not really an interruption, because they’re not trying to end/take my turn away, they’re inviting me to keep going with clarification/adaptation.

asides -- if there’s more than two people involved in a conversation, a certain amount of cross-talk is probably inevitable.

The norms around these kinds of overlaps vary -- by context (we all use more audible backchannel on the phone; an interview is not a sermon is not a casual chat), by culture, and yes, by gender, which is why it’s a feminist issue. But gender doesn’t exist in a vaccuum! Some reasons overlaps might be mis-interpreted as interruptions when they’re not intended to be:

norms about turn latching: someone who’s not used to close-latching conversation might feel interrupted or stepped on when talking to someone who is. The converse is that someone who’s expecting close-latching might feel the absence of it as awkward silence, withdrawal, coldness, etc.

norms about backchannel: if you’re not expecting me to provide running commentary on your story or finish your sentences (or if I’m doing it wrong) then you might feel interrupted. But if you’re expecting that level of feedback you might feel ignored.

neurodivergence: If I have auditory processing problems, I might take longer to respond to you than you’re expecting. If I have impulse control problems, I might blurt something out as soon as I think of it, but I don’t necessarily want you to stop. If I have trouble with nonverbal or paralinguistic cues, I might not latch my turns the way you expect, or my backchannel might be timed in a way you don’t expect.

Non-native speakers of a language may need more time to process speech; may speak more slowly and with pauses in different places than native speakers; may not pick up the same cues about turn-latching and backchannel, resulting in a timing difference; may need to make more requests for support. 

Norms around conversation tend to be super white/Western/male/NT; even among linguists, the way we talk about analyzing talk usually presupposes discrete turns, with one person who “has the floor” and everyone else listening. It even gets coded into our technology -- I thing the account’s gone private, but someone recently tweeted, “For the sake of my wife’s family, Zoom needs to incorporate an ‘ashkenazi jewish’ checkbox” because the platform is programmed to try to identify a “main speaker” and auto-mute everyone else. Most of the progress on this front in linguistics has been pushed by Black women and Jewish women, or else we’d probably still be acting like Robert’s Rules represent the natural expression of human instincts.

And it’s very White Feminism to recognize how conversations styles have disparate impacts across gender lines without also recognizing other axes along which conversation styles vary, once that empower us as well as oppress us. Just because I feel interrupted doesn’t mean I am interrupted, and it definitely doesn’t mean I have the right to scream “EVERYBODY SHUT UP!!” until I’m the only one talking.

I don’t ... have a great way to end this? Just that it’s good to recognize competing needs in communication, and have some humility and intentionality about whose needs gets prioritized and how.

[kvitoya-deactivated20210415]

Even if you don’t like Halloween you have to appreciate its position as the sole thing keeping Christmas from advancing even earlier into the year like a cancerous growth

[saleh-nix]

The goth kids hold the line.

[zimbites]

Shitty choking back tears and patting Jack on the back: “I understand what you’ve gone through as a man who likes men dude. My last girlfriend pegged me.” 

[zimbites]

Shitty “Queering up heterosexuality” Knight 

[dontthinkaboutzimbits]

Okay so I absolutely hate that I had to read the words “queering up heterosexuality” with my own eyes in the year of our lord 2018, so kudos for that.

Second, I cannot believe you’re implying that Shitty isn’t regularly pegged by his current girlfriend.

Third, who’s going to supply me with Jack’s reaction to that whack ass statement??? Do I have to do everything in this house myself????

[zimbites]

1) I only post the WORST content. Thanks

2) you’re absolutely right…

3) I honestly think Jack just nods and goes back to eating because Shitty had to loudly talk about the benefits of a healthy prostate gland at Jacks favorite (aka he never gets recognized because it’s kind a hole in the wall) diner and if this is the last time he gets to have their Hash browns then he’s gonna make the most of it

[whoismitski-deactivated20190304]

[incorrectcheckpleasequotes]

Bitty: I recently joined the 2 step program. The first step is admitting you have a problem. The second step is ignoring it.

[flannelizard]

Julie and Julia au where (non hockey, maybe history teacher?) jack’s therapist suggest he starts a blog to be another hobby for him outside of teaching and working out. jack decides he wants to learn cooking as well, so he decides to cook his way through Eric Bittle’s cookbook and he writes a blog about it that becomes super popular. 

So popular….that the author himself finds out about it. 

[themetaphysicalgoalie]

throwback to one of my all time fav lines from jack

[shitty-check-please-aus]

AU suggestion

As captain, Chowder definitively ends the prank war with the LAX bros by filling their air vents with ten industrial bottles of glitter

[shitty-check-please-aus]

au where bitty runs an etsy shop selling various accessories (pins, buttons, hats, aprons etc) with baking puns and jack bought an apron for his dad when bad bob took up baking but the little note bitty put on the email recipe was so cute jack keeps buying shit he doesn’t need and now there’s an entire drawer in his dresser dedicated to baking-themed enamel pins

awwwww love it!

[fightmekentparson]

ok but WHAT IF

Jack gets his mail sent to a PO box, not to the Haus, for the sake of privacy, and also orders things online under a fake name for the same reason

Bitty doesn’t tell anyone at Samwell about his little etsy business because he doesn’t want anyone buying his stuff just to support him. also, he runs his shop out of his Georgia address, so Jack couldn’t recognize the return address.

so there’s like. a whole year where Jack keeps buying enamel pins from Bitty and they leave each other little notes through the ordering process but neither of them know the other’s true identity (!!!!!)

and then one day Jack and Bitty are like doing homework or something and Jack is like “oh yeah you can go grab my notebook (or w\e) it’s in the top drawer on my desk”

so Bitty goes to get it and opens the wrong drawer and finds like. hundreds of enamel pins

and his first thought is like “oh Jack found my store and he’s buying pity pins from me”

and he’s kinda pissed because he doesn’t want Jack’s charity

(it doesn’t cross his mind that this could be the guy he’s been weirdly chatting with bc Jack’s straight, right???)

so Bitty grabs handfuls of buttons and dumps them right in front of Jack and Jack looks up and Bitty’s like “what the fuck is this?”

Jack turns red because he’s embarrassed about his crush on this mystery etsy guy, not putting two and two together

“oh, uh… they’re pins?”

“yeah, duh. they’re my pins. why did you buy a whole drawer full of my pins? you don’t even use them. i know i’m not as rich as you, Jack, but i don’t need your charity. how’d you even find my shop, huh? how’d you know it was me?”

Jack’s brain broke at “my pins” and didn’t hear the rest of the lecture

“wait…. your pins?”

“yeah”

“so i’ve been talking to you this whole time?”

and Bitty’s like “??????”

and then Jack says something that references the conversations they’ve been having through these little notes and Bitty’s like “holy shit”

so Jack’s like “i liked the note you sent in the first package, so i just kept buying pins so i had an excuse to talk to you. if i’d known it was you, i would’ve just asked you out.”

and Bitty’s like “well then do it now”

so they start dating and Jack gives everyone enamel pins because this dude literally has like 500 enamel pins

like he’s still getting rid of them at their wedding.

the end

[such-a-lonely-word]

Bitty: If you can't say anything nice, do what I do: say something that seems nice but later, they're like, "Hey, that wasn't nice." Buy some time.

[such-a-lonely-word]

Holster: I am a man with one simple mission in this life: To upgrade this fracas into a ruckus.

[shitty-check-please-aus]

building from previous ask -> au where your soulmate (dex) falls from the sky when you're in crisis but on college campuses this is difficult as everyone is Strossed™ during finals and they can't figure out who dex is supposed to be with ... Alternatively Yvaine!dex stardust au

uhhhh I need that stardust au like yesterday

would he still be wearing flannel or the ethereal star robes

[smh-at-nursey]

I havent reread the old omgcp fics in yonks but i think there’s an old stardust based nurseydex au there somewhere

[shitty-check-please-aus]

if anyone knows of this fic please, please send me that link

[smh-at-nursey]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/4183296

Found it

[shitty-check-please-aus]

Time to read!

[shitty-check-please-aus]

aw, it only has 6 comments. If you have a minute, read it and add one!

[shimmermann]

One day Bitty wants to use Jack’s computer to reply to an email only to realize the keyboard is in CMS (Canadian Multilingual Standard) and he can’t figure out how to type punctuation anymore. Like a cruel game of hide and seek. The ? key suddenly types out an é. And where even are those English “quotations marks”? They’ve turned into È. And the apostrophe? Types out a small è. Nothing makes sense. The keyboard is a lie. Bitty ends up throwing the computer across the room.

[omgeverythingplease]

Tweet 1 - 2 - 3

[gutsybitsies]

Jack: so bittle loves me and im number one in his life

Marty: what brought about this self confidence?

Jack: he chose my game over beyonce.

Tater: maybe that mean he love US.

[garden-of-succulents]

I LOVE THAT THE ZIMMERMANNS ARE ALL WORRIED ABOUT BITTY’S RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS PARENTS.

[itsybittle]

You know those petty revenge blogs where people share stories of their, well, petty revenges?

Lardo starts running one for the lols, Jack is her reluctant proof reader. He notices there’s an user who basically is taking petty revenge every week on somebody or another, it’s pretty harmless stuff and sort of amusing.

He looks forward to reading his stories, if only because it’s very ridiculous, like stealing one spoonful of sugar from a friend baking a pie so their pie is never perfect.

Or moving all their coworker’s stuff an inch to the left anytime they arrived late, or the time he went out of his way to park on the favourite spot of a friend, despite then having to walk 15 mins to his place.

Then one day Jack recognises the story, because he was the victim of the petty revenge!

So this is why his local grocery was out of his peanut butter!!! This guy literally went and bought all the stock because apparently Jack has been rude to him every time they run into each other in the hallway of the building.

Jack is annoyed because he didn’t have his PB&J sandwhich before the game and then they lost the game. Clearly this calls for retribution.

But first he needs to find who this guy is, which turns out to be harder than expected because apparently he’s been accidentally rude to a lot of his neighbours… ups.