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Misc. comments 33
More comments from elsewhere:
In response to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mactavish's (friends-locked) discussion of names and internet anonymity:
A heads-up to people who think they're not visible online: there are at least two people of my exact name in the United States.
I know this because I heard from the other one, after a friend asked her if she was the $our_name who had done x, y, and z, and had thus-and-such stuff online. And all of it was me.
Neither she nor I is anonymous in that sense. Yes, if someone goes as far as asking us "Are you the…?" she can honestly say no, but some percentage of people who google to find out about new acquaintances or job applicants won't ask.
In response to a post about depression and illness byxiphias:
"My disease is worse than yours/theirs" is problematic in any number of ways. At the same time, "this flu is/isn't as bad as the time I had X" can be useful, and I suspect that the comparison you offer here may help someone think about this question from a different angle.
Those are global/long-term comparisons: it makes entire sense to me and my loved ones for me to say that right now, I'm in better shape, so you decide whether we're going straight home, stopping for groceries, or sitting down somewhere and having tea while you recover.
If you (collectively) have reached a reasonable (for you) emotional balance on this, it's also useful to be able to think about okay, A needs days of doing nothing physical on a regular basis, B sometimes has zir back go out and will need time to recover, C's balance isn't so good and so zie shouldn't be asked to do certain things, and so on. That works for us, most of the time, because it's closer to dividing tasks and scheduling than to any sort of well-ordering of strength, health, or need for care.
In response to a post byjenett about libraries and collection development (friends-locked, part of a series):
I have a sneaking suspicion that people are missing the distinctions between archive and library; between "we've been collecing stuff for two or three centuries, and have lots of room to store the oddities that someone will want every twenty years" and "this is a branch library, one of many"; and between things that, if my local library doesn't have them, I can find cheap used copies of, and things that aren't going to be available that way.
I was delighted, when in college, to be able to come down to New York on my Spring break and read copies of speeches from an 1876 city mayoral campaign, which the NY Public Library (Astor, Lenox, and Tilden [1] Foundations, the place with the lions) had probably had sitting there since 1876 or '77, knowing it might be wanted every 20 years. I would have been astounded had my university, in another state, had those documents. And if they'd somehow been at Columbia and not the NYPL, I'd have looked into ILL.
If they don't have a particular Nero Wolfe novel, I can read copies when visiting the friend who recommended them, go to a used book store, or try ABEbooks. It's a different kind of need.
[1] What did Rutherford B. Hayes ever do for library science?
In a![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metaquotes thread on tools, responding to someone asserting that screwdrivers are nongendered because everyone uses them:
Tools that everyone uses:
Knives. (Forks and spoons, for that matter.) Containers. Pens.
Clothing. At this point we're getting into stuff that many people don't even recognize as tools, they're so much part of our lives and cultures: clothing and tables and books.
In a discussion inbisexual that started with books, I said something about genre, and then ann_amalie replied "Of course, in real life there are all those issues of jealousy and mistrust, not to mention the fact that it's probably impossible to love two people equally, so one partner is always going to feel like s/he's getting the short end."
The relevant part of my answer:
Out here in real life, I don't know what it would mean to love two or three people "equally", because they're different people, and the relationships are different, and I'm not good at quantifying emotion, nor particularly concerned with doing so. Done right--and I think we're doing it right--the question of whether I love them all the same amount doesn't matter, because they each get enough of my love, and time, and attention, and understanding, as do I from each of them (my partners also have other partners). And if it wasn't enough for one of them, knowing that I didn't love anyone more wouldn't make it so: it still wouldn't be what that person needed.
In response to
mactavish's (friends-locked) discussion of names and internet anonymity:A heads-up to people who think they're not visible online: there are at least two people of my exact name in the United States.
I know this because I heard from the other one, after a friend asked her if she was the $our_name who had done x, y, and z, and had thus-and-such stuff online. And all of it was me.
Neither she nor I is anonymous in that sense. Yes, if someone goes as far as asking us "Are you the…?" she can honestly say no, but some percentage of people who google to find out about new acquaintances or job applicants won't ask.
In response to a post about depression and illness by
xiphias:"My disease is worse than yours/theirs" is problematic in any number of ways. At the same time, "this flu is/isn't as bad as the time I had X" can be useful, and I suspect that the comparison you offer here may help someone think about this question from a different angle.
Those are global/long-term comparisons: it makes entire sense to me and my loved ones for me to say that right now, I'm in better shape, so you decide whether we're going straight home, stopping for groceries, or sitting down somewhere and having tea while you recover.
If you (collectively) have reached a reasonable (for you) emotional balance on this, it's also useful to be able to think about okay, A needs days of doing nothing physical on a regular basis, B sometimes has zir back go out and will need time to recover, C's balance isn't so good and so zie shouldn't be asked to do certain things, and so on. That works for us, most of the time, because it's closer to dividing tasks and scheduling than to any sort of well-ordering of strength, health, or need for care.
In response to a post by
jenett about libraries and collection development (friends-locked, part of a series):I have a sneaking suspicion that people are missing the distinctions between archive and library; between "we've been collecing stuff for two or three centuries, and have lots of room to store the oddities that someone will want every twenty years" and "this is a branch library, one of many"; and between things that, if my local library doesn't have them, I can find cheap used copies of, and things that aren't going to be available that way.
I was delighted, when in college, to be able to come down to New York on my Spring break and read copies of speeches from an 1876 city mayoral campaign, which the NY Public Library (Astor, Lenox, and Tilden [1] Foundations, the place with the lions) had probably had sitting there since 1876 or '77, knowing it might be wanted every 20 years. I would have been astounded had my university, in another state, had those documents. And if they'd somehow been at Columbia and not the NYPL, I'd have looked into ILL.
If they don't have a particular Nero Wolfe novel, I can read copies when visiting the friend who recommended them, go to a used book store, or try ABEbooks. It's a different kind of need.
[1] What did Rutherford B. Hayes ever do for library science?
In a
metaquotes thread on tools, responding to someone asserting that screwdrivers are nongendered because everyone uses them:Tools that everyone uses:
Knives. (Forks and spoons, for that matter.) Containers. Pens.
Clothing. At this point we're getting into stuff that many people don't even recognize as tools, they're so much part of our lives and cultures: clothing and tables and books.
In a discussion in
bisexual that started with books, I said something about genre, and then ann_amalie replied "Of course, in real life there are all those issues of jealousy and mistrust, not to mention the fact that it's probably impossible to love two people equally, so one partner is always going to feel like s/he's getting the short end."The relevant part of my answer:
Out here in real life, I don't know what it would mean to love two or three people "equally", because they're different people, and the relationships are different, and I'm not good at quantifying emotion, nor particularly concerned with doing so. Done right--and I think we're doing it right--the question of whether I love them all the same amount doesn't matter, because they each get enough of my love, and time, and attention, and understanding, as do I from each of them (my partners also have other partners). And if it wasn't enough for one of them, knowing that I didn't love anyone more wouldn't make it so: it still wouldn't be what that person needed.
no subject
It can also be used in treatment goals. "What level on the scale, for you, is annoying-but-bearable pain? Can we adjust your meds to get you at least to that point?" [Yes, ideally, we'd aim for no pain, but the side-effects of most of our analgesics make that impossible in many circumstances.]
At least when I was taught to use this scale, we were taught to define the end points for the patient (...where 0 is no pain and 10 is the worst pain you can imagine) and that the scale was completely subjective and the end points would be different for each patient.
no subject
So consequently I have no way of knowing where 10 is, and consequently can't say where 6 is either. "Less than before" and "more than before", which is what your comparisons are actually saying, I can say.
no subject