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The first time I visited Boston I was there for ten days and I jaywalked more in those ten days than in the previous 20 years of my life combined. They aren't just jaywalkers, they are PEER PRESSURE jaywalkers.

The entirety of Massachusetts

Submitted by Anonymous

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The book is this close to being done, and I have learned an important lesson about not leaving all the difficult scenes for last so that I can do the fun stuff first.

That said, writing a book about chefs has been fun overall. I love writing about food and coming up with weird new foods. This afternoon I got to invent all the dishes being served at the big Reclamation Day Cookoff (theme: Curried Chicken Salad).

He examined his tray, frowning. There were twelve entries, A through L, and a variety of foodstuffs -- the crisps, his sandwich and one other sandwich with basil garnish, three separate cups of relatively unadorned cold chicken salad, one small bowl of rice with warm chicken salad atop it, what looked like a cup of soup, a small dumpling of some kind with a dipping sauce, a piece of fried chicken, something that looked much more like seaweed salad, and a chocolate bonbon. He picked up the bonbon thoughtfully.

"It is possible to make a savory chocolate, but not easy," he said, taking a bite. He winced. The curry and chocolate went well together but there was onion involved, which did not work so well. "Ah, points for effort."

Fun fact I have had a savory bonbon -- mine had a bleu cheese cream filling -- and while I'd be more likely to have success with the fried chicken or the flavored crisps, as a home chef the chocolate-covered chicken salad is...tempting.

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Tomorrow I will have been in fandom for thirty years.

I can mark the anniversary very precisely because I know the name of the first fanfic I ever read, which is fortunately archived online along with the date it was posted, the same day I read it. I don't believe Usenet exists anymore and I've been here too long to believe that nothing ever disappears off the internet, so I know that archives are truly a gift to history.

I posted my first fanfic not that long after. It wasn't well-written but reading it today I can see that the narrative was sound. People said they liked it, which was kind given how extremely bad my grammar was. I was an awkward teenager with undiagnosed ADHD and praise was rare for me, but when I wrote fanfic someone always said something kind about it. Eventually a few of them took me under their wing and explained things like "where quotation marks go" and "paragraph breaks". Commas, I fear, are a lost cause even today, but they tried, bless them.

I thought about doing something big to commemorate the anniversary, but I couldn't really think what I might do and the world right now is pretty exhausting. I'm forty five and I'm tired. But imagine how much more exhausting the world would be without fandom -- how much emptier my life would be without my friends, this community, the writing I do, the art and beauty fandom exposes me to. So for now I'm just meditating on that a bit -- the richness of the experience, the gifts I've been fortunate to receive, the lessons I've been fortunate (if sometimes reluctant) to learn.

In another thirty years I'll be seventy five, if I live so long. Thirty years ago we didn't in any meaningful sense have digital cameras, let alone cellphones or smartphones, social media, streaming television, GPS. I did a report on the science of cloning for my high school biology class (on the suggestion of a fellow fan) a year before Dolly was cloned. I wrote my first fanfic using a computer running Windows version 3.1. I wrote it in Notepad, still a constant companion.

I hope I live to seventy five. As tired as I am, I'm looking forward to seeing where the next thirty years will take us.

I hope Notepad will still be there.

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Had a wild dream last night where I "woke up" into the dream because something soft had brushed my arm. I assumed it was Polk's tail because she likes to sleep on my chest, but when I opened my eyes it was actually an extremely soft, extremely colorful and enormous moth. Then I realized there was a whole flock of them flying around the bedroom, which sounds lovely in theory but was actually terrifying and irritating. Because yes they're beautiful ethereal magical creatures but they're also huge and INFESTING MY HOME. Like regardless of their beauty they are insects living in my bedroom.

I don't think it's especially symbolic or profound, it's just the image and its accompanying emotion have stayed with me so I figured I'd drop it on all of you as well.

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Now I'm just thinking of all the other creatures that could be based on Chicago icons. I want a pokemon that's like, Giardinito evolved into Grindar! Grindar evolved into Italianbeefing! Or Pizzpuffia which evolves at random into either DeepDash or Tavernstiletto.

There better be one you can only catch at the Art Institute, something like Peekcaso, which becomes Frankloid, which then becomes Caille-bot.

they should’ve never let me learn how to rom hack

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Oh gosh no -- no worries, I was being sardonic because I wanted to make a point about the length of the debate to back up your post, not because I'm still smarting over it. I can look back now and laugh -- yes it was awful at the time but that was fandom then, not you bringing it up now.

And it's experiences in fandom like that which helped give me a sense of perspective about certain things -- not even "the definition of a drabble", more like "how to interact with fandom when your experiences in it are outlier". We're good :)

Non-writers also free to weigh in.

There is a correct answer here by the way. I am a drabble purist but I want to know what other people think about this beloved format.

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Yeah, there's a reason I have "drabble" blacklisted on Tumblr.

2004 sounds about right. I believe a reader actually suggested 'flopsy' but it was created on my Livejournal and it was definitely in response to this debate.

The originating event was that I had promised to write a drabble, which by some common definitions at the time was simply a short fanfic, in exchange for each donation to a charity my readers documented. Someone got aggressive about a drabble being 100 words exactly and went through all the comments, word counted every drabble in order to post the Not Exactly 100 Words count of them, and berated me about writing 20+ fanfics for charity. So that was cool.

If you want the exact date of that, it did make fandom_wank on the original LJ community, which you may be able to search, idk if it's still around. The other person got most of the ridicule but not all of it, and being held up for public commentary over it was even more awesome than getting yelled at on my own journal for it, let me tell you. Great week to be me.

In any case, I've given up fighting about both the current and historical use of it -- life's too short, and the people who vocally insist "is and always was universally 100 words" tend to be unpleasant about it on multiple axes. There's not even really a live-and-let-live situation because people assert that the looser definition devalues the more rigid one, since in their view writing 100 words exactly is a unique and difficult thing to achieve. The less said by me about that the better, perhaps, but quod erat demonstratum the debate goes on with or without me, and has for many years.

Non-writers also free to weigh in.

There is a correct answer here by the way. I am a drabble purist but I want to know what other people think about this beloved format.

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someone incredibly perceptive who gives deep and meaningful reassurance to their friends and then 5 minutes later asks what a can opener is

I've never seen my buddy R summed up so succinctly. He's brilliantly insightful about politics, extremely knowledgeable about history, deeply perceptive about people, and is also the inventor of "Macaroni soup" which is boxed mac and cheese with twice the usual amount of milk.

i’ve heard a lot of people talk about the EXCELLENT potential of a high intelligence/low wisdom dnd character (i.e. an brilliant academic who keeps setting their dumb ass on fire because they always store their wand in their back pocket)

but i’ve not seen any posts about the equal potential of a high wis/low int character (i.e. someone incredibly perceptive who gives deep and meaningful reassurance to their friends and then 5 minutes later asks what a can opener is)

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Especially funny because Monday literally is a project manager, like that's her job title :D Eddie is a project manager in everything but name, but mainly because he loves a fuckin' project. Never without at least two or three projects, that one. It's wild that Catullus and Pisces Rambler raised a literal king, a project manager, a lawyer, and a firefighter. Ephraim got like, all of the free spirit genes of five children crammed into one poor youngest child.

Mind you, any one of the Rambler kids would also find it hugely funny to wear an airbrushed t-shirt featuring spongebob smoking weed on it. They're responsible, they're not squares.

NO DAD, air brushing unlicensed images of spongebob smoking weed on to t-shirts and selling them at a boardwalk was YOUR DREAM. i'm going to be a PROJECT MANAGER.

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The thrilling expansion pack, "I know it's in this room somewhere."

Evergreen adhd game of “I just had it. Where did it go”

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Reminds me of one of my absolute favorite food ads of all time, as featured on the delightful Gallery of Regrettable Food, one of the best relics of the early internet. Behold: The sack o sauce. Where's that sack? Oh, it's in the Can o meat.

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Hi Sam! IIRC, you've been diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma. Would you be willing to talk about it/the process for figuring it out?

Sure! Although I'm not sure how much help it will be. The process of getting diagnosed was pretty informal.

Basically, it began with tumblr -- someone asked how I dealt with leg cramps from running and I said I didn't really get leg pain too badly, most of the discomfort I had was in my chest and throat from breathing heavily. Someone else commented to say that it sounded like I had exercise-induced asthma, which I didn't even know was a thing. At that point the breathing issues had started to impact my stamina -- I was running less because I just couldn't breathe -- so the next time I saw my doctor, I told him what I'd been experiencing and brought up the idea.

My doc basically said it was likely and we could do tests if I wanted, but in his opinion the best test was simply to prescribe me an Albuterol inhaler and see if it worked. Two puffs, five to ten minutes before running, would at least ease the breathing difficulties. Albuterol isn't especially controlled and wasn't that hard to get at the time (2019) so it was a rational way to test, and it seemed to work. It didn't fully fix the problem but for a while it did enough.

For what it's worth, the actual diagnostic test is some kind of treadmill run stamina test. I've never had one.

In any case, the problem became that because I only used the inhaler sparingly, by the time I needed a new one, my prescription had expired. I kept either having to get a new scrip or just do without. Then the pandemic hit and inhalers became impossible to get for a while -- and honestly I wanted people who actually needed rescue inhalers to have them. But I couldn't run without something to help with the breathing issues, so I did a little research -- I was looking for over-the-counter solutions to the problem. What I did find made me laugh -- this was May or June of 2020, a few months into quarantine, and the solution I found in an article from 2014 was to wear a flu mask while running.

Well, I had plenty of those, so the next time I went running I wore one of the cotton covid masks I'd made, and sure enough it basically fixed the problem -- it worked even better than the Albuterol, because it was constantly cycling moisture back into my throat and lungs. These days I put it on when I start to run and I only take it off if my breathing has leveled off and been slow and even for more than two or three minutes.

So my advice honestly is to put on a covid mask -- it doesn't have to be fabric, a KN95 will work -- and exert yourself until you've been breathing heavily for a few minutes. If you don't feel wheezy/asthmastic, or at least feel less than usual, that's a pretty good sign it's asthma. You can talk to your doctor about an inhaler, but exercise-induced asthma is pretty predictable, so if a mask helps I wouldn't bother with a diagnosis -- just wear it when working out, and maybe keep a spare on your person if you tend to get out of breath in non-workout situations.

I feel a little foolish running on the street in a covid mask, to the point where I've been tempted to embroider "IT'S FOR MY ASTHMA" on the front, but at least I can run again when I'm wearing one.

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When I was a kid my parents had a cast iron popover/muffin tin that made pastries in the shapes of animal heads -- it's called the "lion and lamb" pan. It generally goes for quite a bit of money online because it's out of "print" and super whimsical, and nobody ever parts with theirs. Ours was lost at some point but I've kept an eye out for one of my own and found one for quite a bit cheaper than usual recently.

Because these usually go for $75+, knockoffs abound, but for $30 I'd take a knockoff, and having given it a once-over I'm now pretty sure it's genuine. The measurements and weight are all correct to the original, and when you run into one that isn't seasoned it's usually because someone received it and never used it -- knockoffs usually come seasoned to make them seem more used than they are. Unseasoned originals are starting to show up more often now, I guess, as people who got them as adults in 1984 are starting to pass on and their kids are selling or donating them. Either way it's an awesome pan.

I've seasoned it, but haven't had a chance to give it a try yet; I think I'm going to try muffins first, and if those go well, I'll give popovers a shot. You really do have to grease the hell out of these even with the seasoning, but the nostalgia is strong in me. :D

[ID: Two photographs of a popover pan, inverted to show the "base"; the cups for the popovers are alternating heads of lions and lambs. In the first it is a dull silvery color; in the second, a deep mahogany brown after being seasoned.]

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"the revolution will not happen without bloodshed"

Well not with that attitude it won't.

Don't buy into this bullshit. This is the excuse violent bullies will use to justify leaving behind the disabled and the unpopular and I have news for you: if you're on this website, you are in that venn diagram somewhere. Yes, even if you believe this.

If you think that there can be no utopia without violence, you and those you love will fall to that violence. Don't lie to yourself.

"Some of you will die but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make" is something that you will hear, not something you will get to say. If not you? Your parents, siblings, cousins. Your children.

If you're cool with my death and the deaths of my loved ones, don't forget: you're one of them.

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Thank you so much for your post on ADHD and managing communication. It was really interesting see your thought process and an example of how you set up systems that work for you. I was wondering if you'd mind sharing a little about how you handle task management (the “make sure you do the tasks promptly” part). This is something I (also only diagnosed with ADHD as an adult) feel like I really struggle with, especially at work. Thanks!

I wish I had as...systematic an explanation for that as I do for other aspects of my work and life management, to be honest. For me the most important part is remembering that I even need to do the thing in the first place, so I always focus on systems that will help with that. While I do have trouble starting projects sometimes, I rarely have trouble finishing them, so that aspect is not the most significant part of the struggle for me and not something I've spent as much time on. Still, I do have some advice!

For me the problem, when it happens, is almost always with getting started. I have a few strategies for that. The very first is to remind myself that it's never going to take as long or be as hard as I think it is. That kind of reminder has to feel true and that truth really only comes with time -- you have to be taught over and over, through experience, that "the task isn't that awful". For this the best I can recommend is, every time you finish something, take a moment to stop and reflect how hard it was to get started, and how once you got started it was actually much easier than you thought it would be. If you can identify "being scared of starting" as being the hardest part, eventually you can come to believe that the fear is normal and can be ignored because it's also your brain lying to you.

Another thing I do very often is break tasks I don't want to do (or am struggling to start) into extremely granular portions. If I have to make a powerpoint presentation, and I'm struggling to know where to begin, I'll take it really small steps at a time. Like, my to-do list for the presentation might read:

Open Powerpoint

Fill out the title slide

Gather all research into a folder (do not open any of it)

Start reviewing your research one file at a time

Start sorting your research into appropriate groups based on subject matter or where in the presentation they'll go

Look at the way your research is grouped, just look for a while

Which part of the research would you tell someone to start with if they're new to the subject matter?

That's slide one.

Usually at that point I'm in the "flow" enough that I can stop looking at those granular steps, but it's also fucking astonishing how often just opening the program I need to do the thing in can drop me into the project so deep I'll surface hours later having nearly completed it.

So my first step for any task, once I know it's time to work on it, is just to open the program needed and gather all my resources in one place and give myself permission to ONLY do that. Those two things, which are easy in themselves (they usually don't need much thought) trigger that "this is what I'm doing now" state and even if I don't finish the project, I will at least make headway. This works in non-digital, non-work ways too -- if you're going to paint a wall, gather all your supplies first in one place and make sure you have everything you need. In the process of doing that you start to become more at ease with the idea of actually doing it, and even if you don't do it right that minute, now you're actually feeling prepared for when you do.

And honestly even knowing all that I still struggle sometimes. That's just the nature of the beast. Adderall helps a lot, and age has helped because I know what I'm capable of and it's often more than I believe at the start. But it's just always going to take more energy for me than for some people. Making sure I'm fed, rested, clean, and medicated helps a great deal, so I recommend looking after yourself when you DON'T have a project looming, but I also recommend giving yourself some grace when you do -- these things are just the challenges we face.

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This cat will sleep anywhere but in one of the four beds I have procured for her.

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This is admittedly a little facetiously reductionist to say, but I do enjoy how so many of the Jewish holidays have prep that is very similar to throwing an elaborate dinner party. I mean aside from the fact that so many of them involve actual dinner.

You clean, you set out the specific good china, you make the signature dishes, the wine is very important, there's almost always an interesting theme. Everyone shows up and there's lots of conversation and a certain order to service, the food is admired, the wine remains important, there are sometimes speeches. You let the kids run around until it's time to sit down and learn table manners. The level of formality might vary but the structure is pretty intact.

There's such a a rich meaning to the Passover meal or Shavuot study or spending time in a Sukkah or even Shabbat dinner, but also I spent the day before both Passover seders this year in the kind of cooking and checklisting that usually I only associate with Thanksgiving, and I wasn't even hosting. It just struck me when I was packing up a massive bag of food to take to the seder how similar it was to watching my parents prep for a dinner party as a kid.