That's a bit heartbreaking. Gastineau is holding tight to the sport he loves despite what it (and boxing) did to him, and it's just tough to watch.
Certainly heads up will help quite a bit, but man, even if you avoid the knock yourself out concussions, every single time you just incidentally bang into someone on the line, you're jarring your brain.
Of course, that decision to hold on to the sport is made with a brain that's been damaged by it.
Eeg. That's an uncomfortable truth.
Filed to the home ownership is awesome file:
Getting quotes for a new hot water heater today. That will replace the last appliance in the utility room that was here when we bought the house just over a year and a half ago. On the bright side, everything will be modern and efficient. But man, that's a lot of money to shell out in a relatively short amount of time.
Thinking about going tankless? I really wanted to, but when ours went out (covered under warranty) we didn't have enough flex to restructure the utility room to put a tankless heater on a wall where it could be easily vented.
I'm worried about when this shoe is going to drop for us. Both the furnace & A/C were installed in '89 (house was built in '63). I'm not sure when the garage door openers were installed. Roof's from sometime in the '90s but still in decent shape. I go up at least twice a year and walk around with the leaf blower to clean out the gutters.
I really wanted to go tankless, but to do it right we should do two, our natural gas feed would need boosting...just not cost effective.
Depends on the difference in install price. I might be in the same boat, it is something I'd like to do but not if it is going to take a lot of other work to make it happen.
Thankfully the house got a new roof while it was on the market.
We had to replace our AC a couple of years ago, and chose to do both at the same time (both the furnace and the blower are in our attic, so it made efficiency sense to do both at once).
Right now, we are having Fun With Leaks. Big (and gonna get bigger) cut-out of the drywall above our kitchen window as we try to ID the source of a leak around the window. Because it's apparently not from the window itself, but migrating to the window from elsewhere.
Last night, we thought we had it solved -- a leaky seal around a second-story window in our bathroom. Well, the seal has been fixed, but not the downstairs leak. Maybe the 30+ MPH gusts and driving rain having something to do with this.
Also, a second leak, showing up as some warping in the flooring in our family room. Craptastic. This floor (laminate) was only installed like 18 months ago. Luckily it's a floating floor (tongue-and-groove assembly) over slab+moisture barrier. Unfortunately, the moisture barrier apparently isn't. So we're gonna have to deconstruct lots of square feet of flooring to try to ID the source. Not sure whether I want it to be due to seepage up through cracks in the slab (from recent over-saturation of the ground).
Did the hot-water heater in Scandia this year - had been having pilot issues and manually lighting the sucker with a long-stick lighter 3-4 times a weekend - that gets old. What's real old is standing buck naked in the cold shower waiting for the water to heat up which it doesn't.
Went conventional as we are only there 5-6 times/year. Brand new Energy Star (hmm, tax credits?).
One term I've first heard in the past couple weeks that has me rolling my eyes:
I have...strong thoughts on this topic built up over several years that I won't share.
I... also have strong thoughts. I suspect I'm right there with you.
Oooh. Connecting the threads from John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity" to American Exceptionalism and to Manifest Destiny, Wilsonianism, and American imperialism might be my favorite lecture to deliver.
Religion and politics! It's like the best of both worlds!
You clearly haven't lived in rural texas. That 'theory' is pretty pervasive in central texas, and is easily tuned into a tool to explain why other people are better off than you.
that character was a "him," but who's counting? Star Wars: Game of Thrones Edition.
I don't think the force is going to help.
Well, given how many millions of rebels died, it didn't always work for them either
If this were college, we'd have a shot every-time the Donald called something A Disaster. Of course, we'd be sotted all the time.
So all four of us are off work and school on the same day in quite a while. Five minutes into our first carload to the new house, Skim vomits everywhere.
We will get everything moved into the new house. We will get everything moved into the new house.
Experimenting with deactivating my Facebook account.
I realized that the only thing I enjoy about Facebook week to week is my OOTP league discussion. That didn't seem reason enough to keep on with it. Especially because I inevitably end up looking at my feed and almost invariably am confronted with words that effect my mood and happiness.
Last week my mother-in-law had an accident such that she needed surgery. My wife, as a registered nurse and an extremely caring individual, left our home for about five days to help her mom and dad. During the going home from the hospital stage, my wife's sister made a passive aggressive comment to her recovering mother via a comment on her mother's Facebook post. It caused a stir and my wife, who was exhausted beyond thinking straight, had to help deal with it. She had had enough and it really caused her great pain to deal with such a petty thing during all of the real problems she was in the middle of solving.
So this week we went over to her sister's home and had a long discussion with her sister and her sister's husband about the hurt that was caused. Each side had some more information to share about the context of what went on. Three of us eventually felt we were communicating pretty clearly. We were understanding the complication of the issue, understanding that my wife was hurt, sorry for the hurt caused, and ready to move on. My wife's sister never did get it, though, even after two hours of discussion.
Some (maybe many?) people in this world are always victims. Their apologies usually are of the form "sorry I'm a terrible person" and not "sorry that I contributed to something that hurt you." And so two days later comes an essay-length Facebook post about how hard it is to deal with unintentional hurts you caused and how one is made to feel like less of a person, but one will hold one's head up high and say "I am a good person. I am enough!"
At that moment I decided that I no longer wanted to not be confronted with Facebook posts. I would be happier having never seen this. Thankfully I didn't read all of the comments her sister bathed in from that post. I imagine they are of the form: "You go, girl." "F*** the haters!" "You need to cut that person out of your life!" I cannot imagine where my wife's sister would be today without all of the building up and support my wife has given her over the years! I can almost guarantee if we confronted her with the hurt such a post could cause, she would not understand in the slightest.
My wife has spent nearly 40 years walking on eggshells around her sister. She has spent countless hours repairing hurts and swallowing her tongue and never once asking her sister to apologize for the hurt her sister caused. The one time the subject was broached…well, her sister would not even give my wife that one time.
It has felt good seeing my wife turn the corner on this. She has released herself from expecting so much of her sister. She has released herself from helping clean up the messes her sister causes with the rest of the family. My wife even has started to admit that allowing a thing like Facebook to be able to unload hurt on her without warning might not be a good thing to have in her life. I have doubts my wife will step away from Facebook, but I honestly hope she can because "seeing the children of people we went to school with" is not worth seeing the bad side of people she loves at completely unpredictable times.
Sorry. I needed to write.
Preach it brother.
I have a facebook page that operates as a piece of conceptual art (essentially me giving the middle finger to social media) so I don't engage, but I've seen first hand the harm that facebook can inflict. Dr. Chop's family doesn't engage too much, but there have been the occasional flare ups around politics one of which resulted in threats of assault. I have no idea why people feel that the mediated space of the internet gives them license to act like jackasses.
Thank you for sharing. We certainly have someone in the family that sounds like her. It also reminds me of ongoing training we are doing at work regarding racism. Jay Smooth talks a lot about how to talk about racism, and how hard it is because people instantly get defensive and want to yell, "But I'm a good person!" He likens it to telling someone they have something stuck in their teeth or a booger hanging out of their nose. The other person doesn't say, "But I'm a clean person!" and then ignore the booger.
Some people have a harder time than others being comfortable with being a flawed human who makes mistakes constantly. Their whole lives are spent on the defensive to prop up their self-esteem. It's really sad, and while modeling mature behavior is great and I applaud you, I agree that letting go is probably the best things you guys can do.
Facebook is such a silly, useless aggravation that I often wonder why I have it. At this point, I've muted a large number of people from my feed. I don't want it to turn into an echo chamber, but I still feel like Facebook itself does provide somewhat of a (very deeply flawed) service.
I'm not particularly voyeuristic my nature, so the whole "Facebook creeping" thing is not something that has ever appealed to me, but I do like little posts like finding out that my ex-coworker is going to have a baby soon. We haven't kept particularly close, and you could argue that if it mattered to me or her that she could've picked up the phone to tell me, but I think that's a faulty way of thinking about it. Small moments of shared joy are worth a lot of the garbage (though obviously nowhere near all of it, which... again... "mute" feature) that I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Plus, I have some funny, insightful friends. If I have to mute a few idiots to keep that, I'll gladly do it.
Yeah, I've treated it the same way. I probably should at least take the step of deleting it from my phone so I don't waste time looking at memes. My favorite part right now is probably being a member of the Effectively Wild FB group; it's not the WGOM, but there's a lot of reasonable people who chat there about baseball, so.
I have something like 750 friends, and three-quarters of them are hidden. Easy enough.
I also have one of these in the family. She's tearing the family apart at the seams right now, which is impressive since she's married into the family, and not born into it.
I don't have anything clear to offer here, as I haven't spoken to this aunt in ten years, and this is the only solution I've found that works for me.
Initially with a little guilt (got over it), I've been unfollowing people left and right (even close family) on Facebook. Don't want the religious, political, stream-of-consciousness posting, kittens, etc.
I went this as well. I try not to interact much with the stupid thing, but when I do I've got no desire to see the views of certain relatives.
I don't mean to make any accusations (and I trust this crowd to be better than that anyway), but it might be worth saying that content-based cuts based on disagreement can lead to the echo chamber effect. Cuts based on offense might be different, depending on what one takes offense to, I suppose. I also like the idea that the best response to bad speech is more speech. Engagement takes effort, but it is usually the only thing that corrects. And, when it comes to public FB conversations, you might end up helping others who are reading but not posting. Just some food for thought.
I don't disagree with what you say, but will say that the relatives and past acquaintances I've blocked only send to be able to communicate in meme form.
and the straw to get me to finally just block it all was a really, really offensive post about Sandy hook that, to this day, disturbs me to think about.
Oh yeah, you can't engage with a meme. I block some of those too...
I get grief from Runner daughter, but there are many I don't even accept friend requests from on FB. Why should I? I see them on a regular basis, and really I'm on FB to keep up with family/friends that I don't see regularly.
There you go.
Personally, I find facebook to be an incredibly useful forum. Like any forum, the other people who are using it are going to effect the output. A few years ago, I got very angry, very often, at things on facebook. I couldn't let anything go.
So I gave up talking politics on facebook for Lent. Not all of facebook, just that piece of it. Since then, I have been so much happier. Not because I don't talk politics - oh goodness, do I (as many here are aware)(and I love it!) - but because I know I can step away.
Since that time, I have had so many productive political conversations in that forum. I feel free to let people know they aren't contributing in a good way if they're being jerks, and I am generally quite happy with how things go on my wall and the walls of others I engage in. I know who I can't engage, and I always stay away from memes, unless it is to say "you know, I don't think memes are helpful." It's not always easy, and it almost always takes a lot of work, but... I guess what I'm saying is, it can be a good thing, but, like any tool, you've got to know how to use it.
A bit tangentially...
Most of my facebooking over the past year has been on limited-scope private or closed groups, dealing with wildlife and fungus ID. If those types of groups are well-managed to eliminate the off-topic stuff, they can be a lot of fun. Like this site.
EAR told me about how she'd gotten into some groups there, too, dealing with fashion (not haute: just how to dress oneself for body shape, body color, and personality type).
Because both topics are set up as ways for learning and developing visual skills, and as facebook is a good place for photos + comments, it works really nicely. Both of us feel that our abilities in these areas have greatly increased since we've been active.
I can imagine artists or craftspeople could find similar groups for their interests. (Local examples would be a certain printmaker and knitter that don't use the service. [That's not pressure to join. I like that people of my generation refuse some of the technologies they feel don't meet their desires.])
The more various stuff on the main feed got heated and frustrating, the more I'd retreat to identifying mushrooms and birds from photos.
EAR was also active in some homeschooling groups that weren't controlled and devolved into heated political debates, and she eventually left them. One mushroom ID group I'm in occasionally goes that way, too, but I keep it out of my feed (only going to it when I want to), so I can easily skip any posts with like more than 10 comments (unless it's a particularly curious specimen... there actually could be that much debate). It takes a bit of self-control to stay out of the debates, more for my wife than myself.
BTW, if anyone's interested in a stellar example, Hawk ID is the best one I've come across. A few others can get folky (anthropomorphising), insular (not responding to beginners), descriptivist (just giving answers without guidance), or have people who think they're experts when they aren't.
I like that people of my generation refuse some of the technologies they feel don't meet their desires.
Glad to have my dumbphone, and don't see a need to upgrade.
[taps nose]
Mine could be smart, but I don't use it that way.
Touchscreens are stupid for northern winters... wish I could go back to my old slider (but with texts arranged as conversations).
Like with most of life, selective use of tools and interpersonal interactions is always advisable.
I've certainly been in my share of conversations-gone-wrong on the Bookface, and seen plenty of the "look at me and pity/celebrate [pitybrate?] me" posts and humblebrags and all the rest. But I also have learned a lot, reconnected with people I would not otherwise have had much contact with, kept in closer contact with people I wanted to keep in contact with but find hard to do synchronously, and enjoyed lots of humor.
It's a tool. It's not a way of life. If it has become on balance a negative rather than a positive, by all means cut the tie.
knitter
Ahhhhh, but I am part of another "social network" that's tailored to knitters in a way FB will never be. This may be overstating it, but Slate called it "the center of the knitting universe."
That said, I've enjoyed following this FB discussion today as it's interesting to hear different points of view about it.
Thanks for all of the responses, friends! It really helps, gives me a little context, and has me saying "yeah, but" in a good way. The "yeah, buts" are about recognizing my own personality, how it might differ from each of yours, and the way it impacts how I use the tool. I also like the honesty of leaving Facebook. It lets my sister-in-law know that I definitely do not see all of her BS. It lets me sort of assume that there isn't so much manipulative BS going on. (And certainly there isn't going to be as much BS going on between me and her anymore if I leave Facebook! Well, the BS will have to be flung directly in my face and we can address that rather quickly.)
I also haven't been someone who gets enjoyment from creeping. I'll admit I've done it at times, but I cannot remember any particular one of those instances other than thinking back about how I wasted some time one night when I could have done something else. This tells me it's not of value to me.
At this point in life, I'm generally OK with past friends becoming good memories. I'm OK with past acquaintances having their own life without my knowledge of its goings on. Between dealing with people at work and my first of three kids entering her teenage years, I think I'll have quite enough emotional challenges for the next 10-15 years. Maybe after that has all passed I can reengage.
Thanks again!
I guess I'd just caution you to remember that Facebook is just another bar at which to hang out. Leaving it won't solve the problem of people being...whoever they are.
You're right and I'll watch for that.
It does solve the problem of certain people bringing their sh*t to my party, intentionally or unintentionally, whenever I so happen to open that browser. Eliminating Facebook gives me (us) a little more control over when things can come into my space and hopefully makes others have to think a little more before they speak.
OK, "solve the problem" is an overstatement, but it does reduce the surface area. I understand that we can still get that group text message that screws with our whole night or whatever. TBH, I've actually suggested a much broader set of restrictions around technology in our home than just something as simple as leaving Facebook. All to address the impact these intrusions have on my family proper. I don't know if we will, or even should, get there, but I am happy the pendulum is swinging back that way a little.
For what it's worth, you're not alone with that type of family member. My wife has endured similar behavior from her mother for most of her life, to varying degrees. She's learning to let go of her mom's moods, a little, but it's hard to shake of a parent's angst. Multiple times per week, sometimes, Wife will get vented on in a one-way conversation for an hour or more about MiL troubles and worries, then have nothing left in her tank for our family. But her mom doesn't get it, and never will. She means well, and likes to be a part of our family, but this downside is part of the package. I've not friended MiL on Facebook, though, or I'd probably have to block her.
Wow, I think that's especially difficult to square with a parent. I think it is more than fair to distance oneself from a sibling to a degree. Ideally one isn't disowning a sibling, but letting them live their life, letting them make and deal with their own mistakes seems appropriate. Distancing from a parent is certainly a trickier game to play.
I've been banging the drum with my wife for about 5 years that our family is top priority. Some situations I talk about feel inconsequential or trivial to her and thus she's pushed back on my preferences to a large degree. This particular set of events will probably open her mind to the idea that some of the things she thought were not choices on the table in fact are choices on the table.
With a parent, man, it's tough. I definitely am trying to take all of this onboard so that when we are 60-year-old parents we are aware of the burdens we put on our children by things like fighting for traditions whose time has past and using our children as therapists. I have hope, but I also see in my parents that promises from 20 years ago seem to have been forgotten. I do challenge all of us to try to have some of these conversations with our parents, though I know generally they tend to fall on deaf ears.
(I should mention there is already a corollary to what is going on. That is both of us are going to be less wiling participants in the inter-family gossip and complaining that happens. I have a coworker who, in his very nature, is inclusive and respectful. He handles gripes from colleagues with a "Sorry, but I'm not going to engage in this conversation. I'm not interested in complaining about Person X." We are going to learn that lesson a bit, making a clearer point that we are not interested in disparaging others. We never have been, but our past response of feigned interest or trying to explain the third party's behavior didn't make that very clear.)
Question for the more computer savvy than myself:
I would like to backup everything I have stored on a computer, regularly. Say... daily. I have a large external hard drive specifically tabbed for storage purposes, and have set up my "file history" to save to it every hour (because that is the default). But since I'm using a laptop, I'm often on the go, and not always around the external HD... what happens to the auto-saving feature of "file history" if it's not plugged into the thing it's supposed to save to? What if I wanted to duplicate my saving, such that I was saving everything to two different external hard drives? Is there a good way to get your computer to automatically save to multiple locations?
I hear that clouds store more than just moisture these days.
Yeah, I do some of that too, but I'm in a rural area without broadband, so anything cloud is less reliable than I'd like.
There are some pain points in using a cloud service as an attorney/doctor/whatever.
I left off the Luddite hashtag.
It'll run the next time, so you won't have quite the same file history, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue so long as you are good about connecting to the drive.
And yes. Mac/PC/Linux? Having multiple hard backups office/home is always a good idea.
PC, latest Windows, etc. From what I can see, I might just have to occasionally hook up to another external, and either change my file history settings or just drag'n'drop? Is that the easiest way to add a second backup?
I'm not at my pc, but I believe it'll ask you when you connect if you want to turn on file history on that drive. Drag and drop always works too, but then you have to remember to do it, though if you already have to remember to plug in the drive maybe its not a big deal
I'm on youtube, listening to a Giants/Cardinals game from 1962. Willie McCovey just hit a broken-bat home run. The only reason I mention it is for the next time someone hits a broken-bat homer and someone says "The ball must be juiced! Or the players have to be on PEDs! This never happened in the old days!" Well, yes it did.
*steps back quietly off the lawn*
So my employee who I thought was just faking attempts to see clients? We now have proof that she actually faked actual meetings while she was at home. And now that she's been on leave and other people are picking up cases, more evidence of just general poor care is rolling in. The pleasure of firing her next week will be muted because I really just want her in jail. That ain't going to happen, though.
Well, so much for our weekend. The boys were heading off to church winter camp this afternoon, or at least they were supposed to. Just got a text alert saying that it's been canceled due to dangerous roads on the way up there because of ice and snow. It's been raining all day here and we are under a flash flood warning for the next couple hours. I've never seen our back yard under this much water, which is still just a couple inches in most areas, but I'd hate to see what areas prone to flooding are like. When this drought finally ends, the conditions here could get really bad.
Has anybody been watching The Good Place? Nice Shat reference this week.
I don't think I've laughed harder in the last few years than during the episode where Janet kept handing Michael cacti.
That was pretty good.
I really enjoy the list of "bad" things the characters did on earth.
The opening exchange between Al Franken and Rick Perry -- kamadey gold.
More NFL ugh.
That's a bit heartbreaking. Gastineau is holding tight to the sport he loves despite what it (and boxing) did to him, and it's just tough to watch.
Certainly heads up will help quite a bit, but man, even if you avoid the knock yourself out concussions, every single time you just incidentally bang into someone on the line, you're jarring your brain.
Of course, that decision to hold on to the sport is made with a brain that's been damaged by it.
Eeg. That's an uncomfortable truth.
Filed to the home ownership is awesome file:
Getting quotes for a new hot water heater today. That will replace the last appliance in the utility room that was here when we bought the house just over a year and a half ago. On the bright side, everything will be modern and efficient. But man, that's a lot of money to shell out in a relatively short amount of time.
Thinking about going tankless? I really wanted to, but when ours went out (covered under warranty) we didn't have enough flex to restructure the utility room to put a tankless heater on a wall where it could be easily vented.
I'm worried about when this shoe is going to drop for us. Both the furnace & A/C were installed in '89 (house was built in '63). I'm not sure when the garage door openers were installed. Roof's from sometime in the '90s but still in decent shape. I go up at least twice a year and walk around with the leaf blower to clean out the gutters.
I really wanted to go tankless, but to do it right we should do two, our natural gas feed would need boosting...just not cost effective.
Depends on the difference in install price. I might be in the same boat, it is something I'd like to do but not if it is going to take a lot of other work to make it happen.
Thankfully the house got a new roof while it was on the market.
We had to replace our AC a couple of years ago, and chose to do both at the same time (both the furnace and the blower are in our attic, so it made efficiency sense to do both at once).
Right now, we are having Fun With Leaks. Big (and gonna get bigger) cut-out of the drywall above our kitchen window as we try to ID the source of a leak around the window. Because it's apparently not from the window itself, but migrating to the window from elsewhere.
Last night, we thought we had it solved -- a leaky seal around a second-story window in our bathroom. Well, the seal has been fixed, but not the downstairs leak. Maybe the 30+ MPH gusts and driving rain having something to do with this.
Also, a second leak, showing up as some warping in the flooring in our family room. Craptastic. This floor (laminate) was only installed like 18 months ago. Luckily it's a floating floor (tongue-and-groove assembly) over slab+moisture barrier. Unfortunately, the moisture barrier apparently isn't. So we're gonna have to deconstruct lots of square feet of flooring to try to ID the source. Not sure whether I want it to be due to seepage up through cracks in the slab (from recent over-saturation of the ground).
Did the hot-water heater in Scandia this year - had been having pilot issues and manually lighting the sucker with a long-stick lighter 3-4 times a weekend - that gets old. What's real old is standing buck naked in the cold shower waiting for the water to heat up which it doesn't.
Went conventional as we are only there 5-6 times/year. Brand new Energy Star (hmm, tax credits?).
One term I've first heard in the past couple weeks that has me rolling my eyes:
I have...strong thoughts on this topic built up over several years that I won't share.
I... also have strong thoughts. I suspect I'm right there with you.
Oooh. Connecting the threads from John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity" to American Exceptionalism and to Manifest Destiny, Wilsonianism, and American imperialism might be my favorite lecture to deliver.
Religion and politics! It's like the best of both worlds!
You clearly haven't lived in rural texas. That 'theory' is pretty pervasive in central texas, and is easily tuned into a tool to explain why other people are better off than you.
Well, here we go...
May the Force be with us.
Well,
I don't think the force is going to help.
Well, given how many millions of rebels died, it didn't always work for them either
If this were college, we'd have a shot every-time the Donald called something A Disaster. Of course, we'd be sotted all the time.
So all four of us are off work and school on the same day in quite a while. Five minutes into our first carload to the new house, Skim vomits everywhere.
We will get everything moved into the new house. We will get everything moved into the new house.
Experimenting with deactivating my Facebook account.
I realized that the only thing I enjoy about Facebook week to week is my OOTP league discussion. That didn't seem reason enough to keep on with it. Especially because I inevitably end up looking at my feed and almost invariably am confronted with words that effect my mood and happiness.
Last week my mother-in-law had an accident such that she needed surgery. My wife, as a registered nurse and an extremely caring individual, left our home for about five days to help her mom and dad. During the going home from the hospital stage, my wife's sister made a passive aggressive comment to her recovering mother via a comment on her mother's Facebook post. It caused a stir and my wife, who was exhausted beyond thinking straight, had to help deal with it. She had had enough and it really caused her great pain to deal with such a petty thing during all of the real problems she was in the middle of solving.
So this week we went over to her sister's home and had a long discussion with her sister and her sister's husband about the hurt that was caused. Each side had some more information to share about the context of what went on. Three of us eventually felt we were communicating pretty clearly. We were understanding the complication of the issue, understanding that my wife was hurt, sorry for the hurt caused, and ready to move on. My wife's sister never did get it, though, even after two hours of discussion.
Some (maybe many?) people in this world are always victims. Their apologies usually are of the form "sorry I'm a terrible person" and not "sorry that I contributed to something that hurt you." And so two days later comes an essay-length Facebook post about how hard it is to deal with unintentional hurts you caused and how one is made to feel like less of a person, but one will hold one's head up high and say "I am a good person. I am enough!"
At that moment I decided that I no longer wanted to not be confronted with Facebook posts. I would be happier having never seen this. Thankfully I didn't read all of the comments her sister bathed in from that post. I imagine they are of the form: "You go, girl." "F*** the haters!" "You need to cut that person out of your life!" I cannot imagine where my wife's sister would be today without all of the building up and support my wife has given her over the years! I can almost guarantee if we confronted her with the hurt such a post could cause, she would not understand in the slightest.
My wife has spent nearly 40 years walking on eggshells around her sister. She has spent countless hours repairing hurts and swallowing her tongue and never once asking her sister to apologize for the hurt her sister caused. The one time the subject was broached…well, her sister would not even give my wife that one time.
It has felt good seeing my wife turn the corner on this. She has released herself from expecting so much of her sister. She has released herself from helping clean up the messes her sister causes with the rest of the family. My wife even has started to admit that allowing a thing like Facebook to be able to unload hurt on her without warning might not be a good thing to have in her life. I have doubts my wife will step away from Facebook, but I honestly hope she can because "seeing the children of people we went to school with" is not worth seeing the bad side of people she loves at completely unpredictable times.
Sorry. I needed to write.
Preach it brother.
I have a facebook page that operates as a piece of conceptual art (essentially me giving the middle finger to social media) so I don't engage, but I've seen first hand the harm that facebook can inflict. Dr. Chop's family doesn't engage too much, but there have been the occasional flare ups around politics one of which resulted in threats of assault. I have no idea why people feel that the mediated space of the internet gives them license to act like jackasses.
Thank you for sharing. We certainly have someone in the family that sounds like her. It also reminds me of ongoing training we are doing at work regarding racism. Jay Smooth talks a lot about how to talk about racism, and how hard it is because people instantly get defensive and want to yell, "But I'm a good person!" He likens it to telling someone they have something stuck in their teeth or a booger hanging out of their nose. The other person doesn't say, "But I'm a clean person!" and then ignore the booger.
Some people have a harder time than others being comfortable with being a flawed human who makes mistakes constantly. Their whole lives are spent on the defensive to prop up their self-esteem. It's really sad, and while modeling mature behavior is great and I applaud you, I agree that letting go is probably the best things you guys can do.
Facebook is such a silly, useless aggravation that I often wonder why I have it. At this point, I've muted a large number of people from my feed. I don't want it to turn into an echo chamber, but I still feel like Facebook itself does provide somewhat of a (very deeply flawed) service.
I'm not particularly voyeuristic my nature, so the whole "Facebook creeping" thing is not something that has ever appealed to me, but I do like little posts like finding out that my ex-coworker is going to have a baby soon. We haven't kept particularly close, and you could argue that if it mattered to me or her that she could've picked up the phone to tell me, but I think that's a faulty way of thinking about it. Small moments of shared joy are worth a lot of the garbage (though obviously nowhere near all of it, which... again... "mute" feature) that I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Plus, I have some funny, insightful friends. If I have to mute a few idiots to keep that, I'll gladly do it.
Yeah, I've treated it the same way. I probably should at least take the step of deleting it from my phone so I don't waste time looking at memes. My favorite part right now is probably being a member of the Effectively Wild FB group; it's not the WGOM, but there's a lot of reasonable people who chat there about baseball, so.
I have something like 750 friends, and three-quarters of them are hidden. Easy enough.
I also have one of these in the family. She's tearing the family apart at the seams right now, which is impressive since she's married into the family, and not born into it.
I don't have anything clear to offer here, as I haven't spoken to this aunt in ten years, and this is the only solution I've found that works for me.
Initially with a little guilt (got over it), I've been unfollowing people left and right (even close family) on Facebook. Don't want the religious, political, stream-of-consciousness posting, kittens, etc.
I went this as well. I try not to interact much with the stupid thing, but when I do I've got no desire to see the views of certain relatives.
I don't mean to make any accusations (and I trust this crowd to be better than that anyway), but it might be worth saying that content-based cuts based on disagreement can lead to the echo chamber effect. Cuts based on offense might be different, depending on what one takes offense to, I suppose. I also like the idea that the best response to bad speech is more speech. Engagement takes effort, but it is usually the only thing that corrects. And, when it comes to public FB conversations, you might end up helping others who are reading but not posting. Just some food for thought.
I don't disagree with what you say, but will say that the relatives and past acquaintances I've blocked only send to be able to communicate in meme form.
Oh yeah, you can't engage with a meme. I block some of those too...
I get grief from Runner daughter, but there are many I don't even accept friend requests from on FB. Why should I? I see them on a regular basis, and really I'm on FB to keep up with family/friends that I don't see regularly.
There you go.
Personally, I find facebook to be an incredibly useful forum. Like any forum, the other people who are using it are going to effect the output. A few years ago, I got very angry, very often, at things on facebook. I couldn't let anything go.
So I gave up talking politics on facebook for Lent. Not all of facebook, just that piece of it. Since then, I have been so much happier. Not because I don't talk politics - oh goodness, do I (as many here are aware)(and I love it!) - but because I know I can step away.
Since that time, I have had so many productive political conversations in that forum. I feel free to let people know they aren't contributing in a good way if they're being jerks, and I am generally quite happy with how things go on my wall and the walls of others I engage in. I know who I can't engage, and I always stay away from memes, unless it is to say "you know, I don't think memes are helpful." It's not always easy, and it almost always takes a lot of work, but... I guess what I'm saying is, it can be a good thing, but, like any tool, you've got to know how to use it.
A bit tangentially...
Most of my facebooking over the past year has been on limited-scope private or closed groups, dealing with wildlife and fungus ID. If those types of groups are well-managed to eliminate the off-topic stuff, they can be a lot of fun. Like this site.
EAR told me about how she'd gotten into some groups there, too, dealing with fashion (not haute: just how to dress oneself for body shape, body color, and personality type).
Because both topics are set up as ways for learning and developing visual skills, and as facebook is a good place for photos + comments, it works really nicely. Both of us feel that our abilities in these areas have greatly increased since we've been active.
I can imagine artists or craftspeople could find similar groups for their interests. (Local examples would be a certain printmaker and knitter that don't use the service. [That's not pressure to join. I like that people of my generation refuse some of the technologies they feel don't meet their desires.])
The more various stuff on the main feed got heated and frustrating, the more I'd retreat to identifying mushrooms and birds from photos.
EAR was also active in some homeschooling groups that weren't controlled and devolved into heated political debates, and she eventually left them. One mushroom ID group I'm in occasionally goes that way, too, but I keep it out of my feed (only going to it when I want to), so I can easily skip any posts with like more than 10 comments (unless it's a particularly curious specimen... there actually could be that much debate). It takes a bit of self-control to stay out of the debates, more for my wife than myself.
BTW, if anyone's interested in a stellar example, Hawk ID is the best one I've come across. A few others can get folky (anthropomorphising), insular (not responding to beginners), descriptivist (just giving answers without guidance), or have people who think they're experts when they aren't.
I like that people of my generation refuse some of the technologies they feel don't meet their desires.
Glad to have my dumbphone, and don't see a need to upgrade.
[taps nose]
Mine could be smart, but I don't use it that way.
Touchscreens are stupid for northern winters... wish I could go back to my old slider (but with texts arranged as conversations).
Like with most of life, selective use of tools and interpersonal interactions is always advisable.
I've certainly been in my share of conversations-gone-wrong on the Bookface, and seen plenty of the "look at me and pity/celebrate [pitybrate?] me" posts and humblebrags and all the rest. But I also have learned a lot, reconnected with people I would not otherwise have had much contact with, kept in closer contact with people I wanted to keep in contact with but find hard to do synchronously, and enjoyed lots of humor.
It's a tool. It's not a way of life. If it has become on balance a negative rather than a positive, by all means cut the tie.
knitter
Ahhhhh, but I am part of another "social network" that's tailored to knitters in a way FB will never be. This may be overstating it, but Slate called it "the center of the knitting universe."
That said, I've enjoyed following this FB discussion today as it's interesting to hear different points of view about it.
Thanks for all of the responses, friends! It really helps, gives me a little context, and has me saying "yeah, but" in a good way. The "yeah, buts" are about recognizing my own personality, how it might differ from each of yours, and the way it impacts how I use the tool. I also like the honesty of leaving Facebook. It lets my sister-in-law know that I definitely do not see all of her BS. It lets me sort of assume that there isn't so much manipulative BS going on. (And certainly there isn't going to be as much BS going on between me and her anymore if I leave Facebook! Well, the BS will have to be flung directly in my face and we can address that rather quickly.)
I also haven't been someone who gets enjoyment from creeping. I'll admit I've done it at times, but I cannot remember any particular one of those instances other than thinking back about how I wasted some time one night when I could have done something else. This tells me it's not of value to me.
At this point in life, I'm generally OK with past friends becoming good memories. I'm OK with past acquaintances having their own life without my knowledge of its goings on. Between dealing with people at work and my first of three kids entering her teenage years, I think I'll have quite enough emotional challenges for the next 10-15 years. Maybe after that has all passed I can reengage.
Thanks again!
I guess I'd just caution you to remember that Facebook is just another bar at which to hang out. Leaving it won't solve the problem of people being...whoever they are.
You're right and I'll watch for that.
It does solve the problem of certain people bringing their sh*t to my party, intentionally or unintentionally, whenever I so happen to open that browser. Eliminating Facebook gives me (us) a little more control over when things can come into my space and hopefully makes others have to think a little more before they speak.
OK, "solve the problem" is an overstatement, but it does reduce the surface area. I understand that we can still get that group text message that screws with our whole night or whatever. TBH, I've actually suggested a much broader set of restrictions around technology in our home than just something as simple as leaving Facebook. All to address the impact these intrusions have on my family proper. I don't know if we will, or even should, get there, but I am happy the pendulum is swinging back that way a little.
For what it's worth, you're not alone with that type of family member. My wife has endured similar behavior from her mother for most of her life, to varying degrees. She's learning to let go of her mom's moods, a little, but it's hard to shake of a parent's angst. Multiple times per week, sometimes, Wife will get vented on in a one-way conversation for an hour or more about MiL troubles and worries, then have nothing left in her tank for our family. But her mom doesn't get it, and never will. She means well, and likes to be a part of our family, but this downside is part of the package. I've not friended MiL on Facebook, though, or I'd probably have to block her.
Wow, I think that's especially difficult to square with a parent. I think it is more than fair to distance oneself from a sibling to a degree. Ideally one isn't disowning a sibling, but letting them live their life, letting them make and deal with their own mistakes seems appropriate. Distancing from a parent is certainly a trickier game to play.
I've been banging the drum with my wife for about 5 years that our family is top priority. Some situations I talk about feel inconsequential or trivial to her and thus she's pushed back on my preferences to a large degree. This particular set of events will probably open her mind to the idea that some of the things she thought were not choices on the table in fact are choices on the table.
With a parent, man, it's tough. I definitely am trying to take all of this onboard so that when we are 60-year-old parents we are aware of the burdens we put on our children by things like fighting for traditions whose time has past and using our children as therapists. I have hope, but I also see in my parents that promises from 20 years ago seem to have been forgotten. I do challenge all of us to try to have some of these conversations with our parents, though I know generally they tend to fall on deaf ears.
(I should mention there is already a corollary to what is going on. That is both of us are going to be less wiling participants in the inter-family gossip and complaining that happens. I have a coworker who, in his very nature, is inclusive and respectful. He handles gripes from colleagues with a "Sorry, but I'm not going to engage in this conversation. I'm not interested in complaining about Person X." We are going to learn that lesson a bit, making a clearer point that we are not interested in disparaging others. We never have been, but our past response of feigned interest or trying to explain the third party's behavior didn't make that very clear.)
Question for the more computer savvy than myself:
I would like to backup everything I have stored on a computer, regularly. Say... daily. I have a large external hard drive specifically tabbed for storage purposes, and have set up my "file history" to save to it every hour (because that is the default). But since I'm using a laptop, I'm often on the go, and not always around the external HD... what happens to the auto-saving feature of "file history" if it's not plugged into the thing it's supposed to save to? What if I wanted to duplicate my saving, such that I was saving everything to two different external hard drives? Is there a good way to get your computer to automatically save to multiple locations?
I hear that clouds store more than just moisture these days.
Yeah, I do some of that too, but I'm in a rural area without broadband, so anything cloud is less reliable than I'd like.
There are some pain points in using a cloud service as an attorney/doctor/whatever.
I left off the Luddite hashtag.
It'll run the next time, so you won't have quite the same file history, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue so long as you are good about connecting to the drive.
And yes. Mac/PC/Linux? Having multiple hard backups office/home is always a good idea.
PC, latest Windows, etc. From what I can see, I might just have to occasionally hook up to another external, and either change my file history settings or just drag'n'drop? Is that the easiest way to add a second backup?
I'm not at my pc, but I believe it'll ask you when you connect if you want to turn on file history on that drive. Drag and drop always works too, but then you have to remember to do it, though if you already have to remember to plug in the drive maybe its not a big deal
I'm on youtube, listening to a Giants/Cardinals game from 1962. Willie McCovey just hit a broken-bat home run. The only reason I mention it is for the next time someone hits a broken-bat homer and someone says "The ball must be juiced! Or the players have to be on PEDs! This never happened in the old days!" Well, yes it did.
*steps back quietly off the lawn*
So my employee who I thought was just faking attempts to see clients? We now have proof that she actually faked actual meetings while she was at home. And now that she's been on leave and other people are picking up cases, more evidence of just general poor care is rolling in. The pleasure of firing her next week will be muted because I really just want her in jail. That ain't going to happen, though.
Well, so much for our weekend. The boys were heading off to church winter camp this afternoon, or at least they were supposed to. Just got a text alert saying that it's been canceled due to dangerous roads on the way up there because of ice and snow. It's been raining all day here and we are under a flash flood warning for the next couple hours. I've never seen our back yard under this much water, which is still just a couple inches in most areas, but I'd hate to see what areas prone to flooding are like. When this drought finally ends, the conditions here could get really bad.
Has anybody been watching The Good Place? Nice Shat reference this week.
I don't think I've laughed harder in the last few years than during the episode where Janet kept handing Michael cacti.
That was pretty good.
I really enjoy the list of "bad" things the characters did on earth.