I’m 12 years into my career. Since I finished grad school about eight years ago, I really hit my stride and I’ve excelled in my career. I’m a high-performer, get promoted regularly, get positive feedback from both in and outside my companies, have a great network, regularly am contacted for new job opportunities, etc. My career aligns well with my strengths, and I’ve had comfortable, supportive environments to learn and work on what I perceive as my weaknesses.
In contrast, though, before finishing grad school, I had a few short-term jobs and internships where my performance and approach to work was very different. I never did a bad job or acted out of line — I was just solidly mediocre and needed a lot of feedback and direction. I always took the feedback seriously and ended all of these roles with positive remarks about how much I improved. Looking back, I can identify the reasons for my poor performance — these roles were ambiguous and somewhat unstructured, I lacked confidence and decisiveness, and I was afraid to ask for clarification, all with a side of undiagnosed/unmanaged ADHD.
I’m proud to have overcome these challenges, but I still cringe looking back. I’m in a different offshoot of our field now, but occasionally could cross paths with former colleagues from these jobs. For any other contact in my professional network, I feel confident about reaching out for collaboration, networking, freelance opportunities, or open positions, but for these contacts, I feel ashamed and want to avoid them at all costs.
This has been top of mind recently because one of these former colleagues just started a job at a company I’ve been eyeing for awhile. I’d love to reach out and see how she’s doing, learn more about the company from an insider, and throw my name out in case a job within my current specialty ever came up. But I worry she’d just remember my poor performance as an intern nine years ago, and not see all the growth I’ve had since then, and I’d have a worse shot at a job than if I just applied cold. If I do reach out, what’s the best way to acknowledge my past poor performance and current career success? In general, do people tend to remember intern performance and hold it against them later in their career?
Well, first, a lot of interns need a lot of feedback and direction! That’s the point of internships. It’s actually pretty rare to find an intern who doesn’t need that. The fact that you took feedback seriously, incorporated it into your work, and ended up with positive comments on how much you’d improved actually says you might have been a pretty good intern. Keep in mind that interns are judged against other interns, not against people with the amount of experience you got later. You might have done a fine, even good, job as an intern, within the context of what they were expecting!
Now, maybe there’s more to it than that. If you were regularly dropping balls, forgetting important things, not taking direction, etc. — then sure, maybe this really was poor performance. But I’d encourage you to look at interns you’ve worked with in more recent history (as your more experienced self) and reflect on whether people really were likely to have seen your work as disappointing.
For the sake of argument, though, let’s say you reflect on that and you’re confident that nope, you were pretty bad. A lot of the people from that job might not even remember that at all. Unless you were spectacularly bad (or spectacularly good), most people won’t remember the specifics about an intern’s performance a decade earlier. Some people might remember you being kind of … middling, but because the majority won’t, it’s still worth taking the shot.
Also, when you reach out, give them a brief rundown of your more recent career. When you’re contacting someone after so long, it always makes sense to catch them up on what you’ve been doing recently to put your request in a more current context … and in this case doing that has the bonus of illustrating that you have in fact turned into a responsible, productive member of the field.
Need some help this month, who wants to commission me? Or really just fling a couple of bucks.
elanor is a fantastic, meticulous artist and also a great person! ive gotten a few commissions and they’re all done with impressive timeliness and communication. please treat yourself!
I work for a small company of about 25 employees with no HR. We’ve got two managers and a semi-retired owner. A while back, one of our managers basically forced the other out of his position and now he’s a regular employee, allowing the other to unilaterally make decisions. Unfortunately, she’s extremely reactive, and she works from home a lot, meaning she is out of touch with her employees’ experience living with her decisions — abruptly changing schedules and job descriptions, and more.
Recently we lost three long-time staffers due to her — two to extreme abuse at the hands of customers that could have been prevented had a manager been there instead of at home, and a third to overwork. The third is a sad case of our manager repeatedly calling her on her days off to cover shifts and answer emails, even though she was told to stop by that employee. We’ve got another staffer about to quit for that same reason.
How do I tell her that she needs to back off a bit before we lose the rest of our staff? She has a habit of ignoring unpleasant truths, especially since she was explicitly told why those people quit and she changed nothing.
I answer this question — and two others — over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.
Other questions I’m answering there today include:
My boss is insisting I do video calls with my staff
Pushy candidate won’t take any of my advice but keeps asking for help
Announcement: the audience for these has changed, so I’m going to do them once every three or four months instead of monthly. So please come to this July one if you’re interested, there won’t be another until probably October.
26th July, 1pm, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, SE1 8XX.
We will be on Level 2 (the upper levels are closed to non-ticket-holders), but I don’t know exactly where on the floor. It will depend on where we can find a table.
I have shoulder length brown hair, and will have my plush Chthulu which looks like this:
Please obey any rules posted in the venue.
The venue has lifts to all floors and accessible toilets. The accessibility map is here:
Click to access 21539-24-Access-Updated-Access-Map_Proof-2.pdf
The food market outside (side away from the river) is pretty good for all sorts of requirements, and you can also bring food from home, or there are lots of cafes on the riverfront.
Other things to bear in mind:
1. Please make sure you respect people’s personal space and their choices about distancing.
2. We have all had a terrible time for the last four years. Sharing your struggles is okay and is part of what the group is for, but we need to be careful not to overwhelm each other or have the conversation be entirely negative. Where I usually draw the line here is that personal struggles are fine to talk about but political rants are discouraged, but I may have to move this line on the day when I see how things go. Don’t worry, I will tell you!
3. Probably lots of us have forgotten how to be around people (most likely me as well), so here is permission to walk away if you need space. Also a reminder that we will all react differently, so be careful to give others space if they need.
Please RSVP if you’re coming so I know whether or not we have enough people. If there’s no uptake I will cancel a couple of days before.
Beverley and Trevor are very proud to share that after Trevor’s Official Announcement last night they are now definitely a girl (Beverley) and a boy (Trevor)! This means Beverley will be up to 10cm when she is finished growing, and Trevor will stay a bit smaller at up to 6.5cm!
I’m a manager of individual contributors on a client-facing team. We have a strong culture of empathy and support on our team and across the org, especially for our parents of young children. I’m struggling because one of my direct reports (we’ll call her Jackie) is going through a tough period with her one-year-old and it’s affecting her job performance. I’m wondering how to give feedback that balances empathy with high expectations.
Jackie’s child just started daycare, and of course, that comes with lots of daycare illnesses! Because Jackie’s job is flexible and her husband’s is not, she often has to adjust her schedule accordingly. She generally has to leave 45 minutes early each day to pick up her child from daycare on normal days. I was also alerted by one of Jackie’s friends at work that she is worried about her child’s development. All to say, Jackie has a lot on her plate. I’m not a parent myself, but I have a lot of compassion for her situation. I’ll also note that this is the first time I’ve had a direct report who is in this particular stage of parenting — my other direct reports’ children are slightly older.
Jackie has shared that she is afraid to be seen as “dropping the ball,” but unfortunately, she’s having a lot of trouble completing day-to-day tasks in a timely manner. This is made more complicated by the fact that she has an externally-facing job, and sometimes has to meet with clients on Zoom with a day’s notice. This struggle is affecting her revenue numbers — she’s nowhere close to her quota, and in fact is significantly below where she needs to be, and I’m having a hard time justifying why to company leadership.
So far, I’ve tried the following:
1. Interviewed parents on externally-facing teams to ask about their strategies for balancing their weekly workloads and childcare responsibilities
2. Conducted a “capacity audit” with Jackie where we identified how long each task takes to complete and how many hours/week she spends on different tasks
3. Came up with a weekly calendar for Jackie, which includes 2-4 hours of work time/day to give her enough time for tasks while still preserving (some) flexibility for external calls
4. Established weekly Friday check-ins (in addition to our weekly Tuesday 1:1s) to take stock of what tasks she accomplished this week, what she’s carrying into next week, and create a plan for how to get the work done
Whenever I see a performance issue, I name the issue, then ask lots of questions, build an understanding of the context, and collaborate with my direct report to come up with a plan to address it. I feel like I’ve done as much as I can to make her 9-5 as seamless as possible while preserving her autonomy and not taking on her tasks myself. The problem is, the plan isn’t working, and she still isn’t meeting the mark. How can I give feedback that conveys empathy for Jackie’s situation but makes it clear that she isn’t meeting the core competencies of the job?
You’ve done what sounds like a really good job of trying to collaborate with Jackie to find strategies that will work. The part you haven’t done — and the part it’s time to do — is to let her know that, while you understand the challenges she’s grappling with, her work is significantly below where it needs to be, and you’re at the limits of what you can do on your end to help.
That’s really relevant info for Jackie to know! Since you’ve been so flexible with her, she might not realize that things are approaching a dire point; she may assume you’re willing to continue being as flexible and accommodating as you have been. I suspect you’re thinking there’s nothing else she can change, but we don’t actually know that. If you’re up-front with her that her work is not currently meeting the team’s requirements and her performance needs to change, it’s possible that she might make different arrangements for daycare pick-up, push her husband to cover more of the sick leave, or otherwise do things she’s not currently doing because she doesn’t realize she needs to.
It’s also possible that she can’t change anything else — but even if that’s the case, she deserves to know where she stands so she can make a clear-eyed assessment of her options.
For example: “I know you’re struggling and in a tough period, and I’ve tried to help as much as I can. I want to be up-front with you that your performance is significantly below where it needs to be (give specifics here), and we’re at the point where something needs to change. I can see there are no easy answers and if there’s a different way I can support you on my end, I’m very open to hearing your thoughts, but I do need you to ___ (name specific changes) by the end of the summer (or whatever time period makes sense).”
Coming against the backdrop of how actively you’ve tried to help, I think that message is an inherently empathetic one! You’re recognizing that she’s not slacking for the sake of slacking and she’s in a hard situation, and you’re being honest about where things stand. From there, she may need to decide if the job is still well aligned with her needs or not.
One more note: you’re absolutely right to invest in supporting working parents — too few workplaces do enough of it — but you’ve also got to make sure it doesn’t come at the expense of other people on your team. It’s reasonable to expect people to help pitch in when someone has a short-term situation affecting their work, but if it becomes the long-term plan, you’re going to have people resenting having to pick up the slack (and doubly so if they suspect Jackie is getting more grace than they would get if their own performance were similar).
Greetings from Kurfurst Matthias Grunewald, East Kingdom Deputy Seneschal for Alternative Crown Formats,
A final report on the Spring Crown using rapier has been submitted to the SCA’s Board of Directors. It includes data about the tourney participants and attendees, tournament information, and reports from those in charge of areas impacted by the change to rapier. It’s interesting reading if you want an overview of how the day went.
The report is also a reminder of the work that made this possible. Every volunteer, participant, and survey responder contributed to what happened that day. It wouldn’t have been possible without you.
By Brick Barrientos: SCANDAL is an all-female Japanese rock band that formed in Osaka in 2006. This is not the Scandal fronted by Patty Smythe in the 1980s with such songs “The Warrior” and “Goodbye to You”. They are sometimes … Continue reading →
1. My manager disclosed medical information about my child to my coworker
I’m in the healthcare field, and my role necessitates adhering to confidentiality with clients. In a moment of vulnerability, and as a way to explain an increase in requests for time off, I told my supervisor about a diagnosis my son had just received (I work in pediatrics and my son was diagnosed with a condition we treat at my facility). I explicitly said that I did not intend to tell my immediate colleagues and her response was, “Yes, don’t tell them.”
Days later, she — to my shock — disclosed to me that a colleague was miscarrying. She prefaced this with, “I don’t want you to think that because I am telling you this, that I’m about to spread your business.” I, of course, immediately started to worry that she would.
Fast forward about six months, and I have been feeling more and more queasy about her disclosure of my colleague’s miscarriage. I asked a third colleague whether our supervisor had ever shared personal information about me, and she confirmed that, less than a week after telling me she wouldn’t “spread my business,” our supervisor told my third colleague about my son’s diagnosis.
I’m feeling very frustrated and betrayed, and I’m not sure how to evaluate what next steps to take. Do I report to HR, and risk her being fired (I work with the person who would be promoted into her role, and she is equally toxic)? Do I talk to her directly (though I’m not sure what I would ask for? An apology? A new supervisor?), and risk her retaliating against the coworker who answered me when I asked whether this information was shared? I’m looking for new jobs, but I love my work and the broader team. I’d love to stay, but I’d prefer a competent manager, who doesn’t gossip!
At a minimum you could talk to your manager and ask why she shared your child’s personal medical information after explicitly assuring you that she wouldn’t. You don’t need to be asking for any particular outcome to do that; you’d simply be putting her on notice that when she violates people’s confidentiality, they may find out about it and be unhappy — a useful lesson for her to learn. It won’t necessarily change her behavior (although it should!) but you’re entitled to have that conversation.
It’s also something that would be very reasonable to report to HR, particularly given that confidentiality around medical info is a very big deal in your field! It’s very unlikely that reporting this to HR will result in your boss being fired, unless there have been previous complaints and she was already on thin ice. Typically in a situation like this the person gets warned (and ideally re-trained on confidentiality), not fired.
But if your goal is to get a competent manager, it doesn’t sound like that’s likely to happen at the moment.
2. How to tell coworkers I don’t work for free
I’m a teacher in the adult education sector (not in America). Paid admin hours are calculated based on teaching hours and range from 0-6. As with most teaching jobs, there’s way more admin than you can do in your paid admin time.
My position is: I’m not a volunteer. My employer is not a charity. I don’t work for free. I’m working 5-10 teaching hours a week, so I get 0-1 hour of paid admin. I get my admin done in class time while the students are occupied and I walk out the door on time.
I’m surrounded by martyrs who stay later or take work home, etc. (It’s 99% women and quite a few see teaching as a “vocation” and not a job). I have tried to explain that they’re doing themselves (and their coworkers) no favors by not pushing back. All they’re doing is teaching the powers-that-be that all the work somehow magically gets done, so why not pile on more? Why hire any more staff? It’s like talking to the wall. (Mind you, it doesn’t stop them constantly whinging about the workload!)
So I can’t persuade them, but I am being strict about leaving on time and not working at home myself. But, come the end of the term, I get, “Oh, can you just do this or that?” I’ll say, “No because I don’t have any admin hours.” They say, “Oh, but we’re all working extra hours.” Can you suggest a polite way of saying, “Well, you shouldn’t be, but if you won’t stand up for yourselves, that’s not my fault. See ya”?
“I feel strongly that sticking to our paid hours is in the best interests of the students, since otherwise the administration can’t allocate resources correctly.”
The potential weakness of that response is that it frames it as about the best interests of the students rather than about teachers deserving to be paid for their work (which is ultimately the point I think you want to make), but that’s arguably a strength too, since it makes it harder for people to argue. Either way, it’s a reasonable explanation.
3. Should I always answer emails to confirm appointments?
I am almost done with grad school and in the process of looking for internships and considering jobs. I don’t have any experience of working in an office, so I have question concerning emails: do you always answer an email to confirm meetings, appointments, and short suggestions?
For example, I was invited to an interview and asked for my availability. I responded with multiple options and have now received a confirmation for one of those options. Do I reply back to acknowledge that I have seen the email and that the appointment time still works for me? And do I include the people that were cc’d? The whole exchange happened within two days so nothing has changed about my availability. I don’t want to unnecessarily flood people’s inboxes and I have a hard time writing a one-sentence confirmation email that still looks polished, but if people generally expect a reply in these situations it may look like I haven’t seen the invitation.
Are there different norms for this when you’re applying for jobs and when you already work somewhere (and perhaps have build up the reputation that you don’t miss emails)? Have I been ignoring my professors by not emailing them a quick “thank you” after every short question I’ve sent? Maybe I’m just not yet used to email being a medium through which entire conversations are held!
Yes, you should answer emails confirming appointments to close the loop on your end. You offer a range of times, they pick one, and then you confirm on your end with something like, “Great, I’ll plan to talk with you at 2 pm ET on the 30th. Looking forward to it.” If you don’t do that, some people won’t notice but others will and will wonder whether the call is confirmed or not, so closing the loop that way is more polished and professional. You don’t need to include the people who were cc’d, but generally you should. If they don’t want their inboxes flooded with that kind of thing, they’ll ask the person who initially cc’d them to stop including them; you don’t need to worry about it on your end.
The rules aren’t as concrete for non-appointment-setting emails. You don’t need to send a quick “thank you” for absolutely every response you receive, but when you’re in doubt you should. It gets less necessary when you’re emailing with someone multiple times a week; it’s more necessary when you don’t talk to them that much. Think of it as letting them know their info made it to you and was appreciated and that now the interaction is complete. (You do not need to do this with many group emails, though.)
4. Should I drop out of this interview process because of how they’re handling travel?
You actually answered my question about 11ish years ago about applying for a job and not initially being picked as a finalist but then being asked to interview since someone had dropped out. I wasn’t sure if it would be worth it to go and you said: “Of course it is! This happens all the time!” So I went to that interview, was hired, and have been in that job since (and absolutely love it, btw).
I am always looking for opportunities to grow in my career even though I am very comfortable where I am. So, I applied for a director level position at an organization located several states away. I have interviewed a few times in the last few years and have always worked with a recruiting company who had me book my travel arrangements and they reimbursed me. This org apparently has a travel agent on staff who is doing all the travel arrangements. When they initially contacted me a few weeks ago to ask if I wanted to interview, they connected me with the admin who would be getting me my travel information.
We are now less than two weeks from the interview and, while they confirmed my name and birth date and other info for the plane tickets and flight times, I have not received any confirmation of my flight or any details on how to get my tickets/boarding pass (the confirmation they sent was a screenshot of them booking the flight). They also have not sent any hotel confirmation and, when I asked, she said the hotel was booked and gave me the name of it but said she was still waiting on a confirmation. They also said they weren’t sure I would get a rental car, which seems odd since the org has several different facilities that I would typically want to visit. They also only have me in that city for about 24 hours, which is not enough time for me to really get a feel for the area or know if I want to move there.
I’m at the point where I don’t even think it’s worth my time to interview. I’ve found the process disconcerting and have become very unsure if this is a place I even want to work, but I’m concerned they’ve already booked my flight and dropping out now would look bad on my part. Do you think I should just suck it up and go through with the interview even though I most likely will say no or do you think I should save everybody’s time and just email them now that all this disorganization and back and forth about travel has made me change my mind about interviewing? Am I way off-base that not having my travel information confirmed less than two weeks before my interview is kind of wild?
Yes, you are off-base! You are reading way too much into pretty normal stuff. You’re still nearly two weeks away from the interview; there’s plenty of time for them to get you final details (particularly since they’ve already booked the flight and confirmed the times). When you’re one week out, contact the person again and ask if she can forward you the remaining info so that you’re ready to go.
As for the rental car, unless it’s standard in your field for candidates to visit all the facilities in the area, I wouldn’t assume they know you’d like to do that (or even that they are planning to coordinate that). You can ask about it, but it might not be something they do, or do at this early stage.
If you’d like to spend more than 24 hours in the area to get a better sense of whether it’s somewhere you’d consider moving, you can ask for that. A lot of candidates want to get home as quickly as possible, especially after a first interview (as opposed to a meeting later in the process), but you can speak up and say, “Since this would be a relocation, would it be possible to extend the stay by an extra night so I can check out the area?” It’s probably not realistic to ask them to cover the hotel for longer than that for a first interview (when they haven’t decided you’re a finalist yet), but there’s nothing wrong with asking for an extra night.
Do not cancel an interview over any of this! (It’s interesting how similar this is to your question 11 years ago, when you were also ready to drop out but ended up being glad you didn’t!)
5. Motion sickness and work travel via bus
I’m pretty new to my company (about six months) and am invited to a training session at our secondary site, about three hours away. There is a shuttle bus that goes between the sites. Here’s the thing — I get extremely motion sick, especially on buses. I even wear sea sickness bands on airplanes. I’ve tried motion sickness pills, which can help, but they make me tired; we are traveling the morning of, so I don’t want to be tired for the training. Additionally, I live about an hour from where I work, and not on the way to the secondary site.
Can I ask to drive myself, and how do I ask my boss? The company preference when driving is to get a rental car.
Yes! Say this to your boss: “I get extremely motion sick, and it’s worst on buses. Could I plan to drive myself?” You don’t need to get into the motion sickness pills making you tired, etc. Just state the situation and what you need. (If you’d be up for taking others with you, you could offer that too, but you don’t need to.) If they want you to get a rental car to do it, they can let you know that.
(1) EMMY IN, EMMY OUT. The 2025 Emmy Award Nominations came out today – Severance led with 27. Meanwhile, the New York Times list of “Emmy Nomination Snubs and Surprises” includes these genre items. (Behind a paywall). Snub: ‘Squid Game’ … Continue reading →
I’ll get back to the catch-up soon, but quarterly posts should be more timely, so here goes one.
Books:
Only 7 books this quarter, alas.
Agatha Christie, The Man in the Brown Suit. I’d read this long ago but reread it for my travel book club. The plot involves a young woman who sets out to solve a mystery that starts in London and takes her to Southern Africa. It’s as much a romance as a mystery and does have a bit more “had I but known …” than I’d prefer, but it was still entertaining. It’s also the first appearance of one of Christie’s lesser known recurring characters, Colonel Race.
Jasper Fforde, Early Riser. Set in a future where people hibernate through the winter (so, sort of like my condo), a young man is recruited to be a Winter Consul, watching over the sleepers. He is specifically charged with investigating an outbreak of viral dreams involving a blue Buick, but there are other nefarious goings on. I wanted to like this book but it didn’t quite work for me. I think the problem was that there were a lot of cultural references, mostly to Welsh things, that I missed. I did, however, really like some of the folklore Fforde created for this. For example, there’s a creature called the Gronk who likes to fold clothes and listen to Rodgers and Hammerstein songs.
Talia Carner, The Third Daughter. I read this for my long-running book club. The story involves a teenage girl who is trafficked to Buenos Aires under the guise of marrying a wealthy Jewish man. Instead, she spends five years in a brothel, where she learns about Tzvi Migdal, the pimps’ union, and gets involved in Baron de Hirsh’s organization which is trying to bring them down. It’s clear that Carner did a lot of research and the result is a satisfying (but disturbing) story.
Marcia Cohen Ferris, Matzoh Ball Gumbo. This book covers the history of Jewish life in Charleston / Savannah, New Orleans, Atlanta, the Mississippi Delta, and Memphis, with an emphasis on food. That includes a lot of non-kosher food, though there are discussions of kosher shops and delis and caterers. There’s also a lot of interesting material about the relationships between African-American cooks and the Jewish families they worked for. I had no desire to make any of the recipes included, but the book was worth a read, particularly for people who (like me) have a lot of Southern Jews in their family trees.
Giles Milton, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg. This is an interesting account of the economic battle between the Dutch East India Company and the Brtish crown over the island of Run. Nathaniel Courthope played only a minor role in this, but I guess alliteration helps marketability. The end result of the spice wars was Holland getting Run, essentially leading to controlling the Spice Islands, and the British getting an insignificant island named Manhattan in exchange. I thought this was a really interesting book and I think the members of my travel book club enjoyed discussing it.
Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling. Written in 2015, Bryson set out to revisit some places he had written about in Notes from a Small Island, as well as explore other parts of Great Britain. It’s very funny much of the time and often enlightening as Bryson records trivia about the some of the places he visits. Thoroughly delightful.
Sam Haines, 100 Curses on Trump and Musk. Sam Haines is a pseudonym used by Martin Berman-Gorvine for his humorous writing. This is a collection of Jewish curses (all in English, with many translated into Yiddish.) Many of them are just adaptations of familiar curses, e.g. “He should turn into a chandelier, to hang all day and burn all night.” My favorite was “May he turn into a centipede with ingrown toenails.” Mildly humorous, but overall this should have been much funnier.
Movies:
I saw two movies in theatres and 3 on airplanes this quarter.
The Penguin Lessons: This movie is based on Tom Michell’s member about his experiences teaching in Argentina during the 1976 coup. He rescued a penguin from an oil slick in Uruguay and brought it back to the school, where it helped Michell overcome his disillusionment with the school. There’s also the political situation in Argentina at the time to deal with. While it was advertised as a comedy, it won’t feel like one to anyone who knows anything about the history of Argentina. I recommend it, but bring plenty of tissues.
Eephus: I admit to being shallow. I went to see this movie entirely because of my boundless love for Bill “Spaceman” Lee, whose participation in it was heavily advertised. The expectations that were raised were, alas, unmet. In short, they gave the Spaceman pretty much nothing to do. He shows up mysteriously, pitches one inning, and disappears just as mysteriously. The movie is really about the friendships between men as seen in a final game before a ballpark in a small New England town is going to be demolished to make room for a new school. If you go in with that in mind, the movie isn’t terrible. But I was there for the Spaceman and I wanted more than 3 minutes of him.
A Complete Unknown: I had intended to see this in a movie theatre but never got around to it. So it was a natural choice to watch on my flight to Athens in June. It was reasonably interesting, but, sheesh, I didn’t realize Bob Dylan was such an asshole.
Conclave: I watched this on my flight back from Greece and found it very interesting. It was, of course, timely given the recent papal conclave. I found the political aspects very interesting. I also thought it was particularly well acted, which is hardly surprising with Ralph Fiennes in one of the starring roles. I did, however, find one aspect of the ending pretty unconvincing.
The Persian Version: I had some more time on my flight back from Greece and was getting a bit tired of reading. I’m not entirely sure why I chose to watch this semi-autobiographical film by Maryam Keshavaraz. It’s pretty weird. The main character, Leila, is a lesbian who ended up getting pregnant from a one night stand with her gay male friend. This leads her to try to reconcile with her mother and along the way she learns her mother’s story. There’s a lot going on and it’s sometimes hard to follow, but it does have funny moments and I liked the music, which includes a Persian version of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”
Goals:
My plans for a westward circumnavigation are progressing, but I haven’t booked anything yet.
I have tickets for 2 minor league baseball games.
I am about 2/3 of the way along on one crafts project.
I’ve read 18 books, so I am behind on my attempt to get to 80.
I still need to find the box with my parents’ slides.
I did find the last version of my life list so I should be able to update it soon.
My efforts to learn to read Hangul are progressing very slowly.
I’ve not really made any progress on organizing my genealogy files. Nor have I really done anything about going to any national parks. I had good intentions regarding cassette tapes but didn’t get further than taking out two to listen to before deciding on their fate.
I’m so glad to see AO3 making it absolutely clear that none of these things are allowed to even be HINTED at.
Here’s some of the language from the new post about AO3’s police on commercial promotion:
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There is a wide variety of things that are not allowed under AO3’s non-commercialization rules.
Any other language which one might interpret as requesting or having requested financial contributions, whether for yourself or others. This covers indirect references, euphemisms, or other language intended to get around the TOS. Some examples of this include:
Thanks for the coffee!
My ☕ username is the same as my username here
This chapter is brought to you by my patrons
You know where to find me if you want early or bonus chapters
Check out my Twitter to learn how you can donate to me since I’m not allowed to discuss it here
If you want to hear more about my ideas, talk about fandom, or find more of my stuff for a coin, visit my Tumblr
Solicitation is not allowed, whether it’s for yourself or on behalf of someone else.
Here’s the crazy thing, folks. You *can* day things like “My Tumblr is [username], come over and scream into the void about these blorbos with me!” And then plaster your kofi all over your Tumblr. You can say “Thanks to [someone] for suggesting this fic! I listen to people’s suggestions all the time on Tumblr!” for literally any reason someone told you to write a fic.
It’s not hard to filter out the things you shouldn’t say based on environment. Back when I was in high school you’d hear about all the fun someone had that weekend, but they wouldn’t say there was drinking and weed and throwing firecrackers into a campfire where a teacher or parent could hear them.
The reason we’re not allowed to post monetary links or use any language alluding to it on AO3 is for our protection. If a copyright holder wants to sue a fan writer for making money or demand their work be taken down as “property” of the copyright holder, AO3’s lawyers need to be able to defend us by saying money isn’t being made and not perjuring themselves.
It’s a LEGAL issue. AO3 has no issues with writers earning money. Just not directly via their platform. Not enough people seem to understand this. There’s a very long history of copyright holders throwing their weight around and taking a hatchet to fandom spaces using legal backing, and we’re trying to avoid that.
It’s more than that though. It’s not just about protecting their asses, legally. It’s also about the principles and values upon which AO3 was built.
AO3 came out of an exlicitly anti-monetization fan culture. You will hear the founders of AO3 use the term “gift economy” a lot if you follow any of their socials, which is another way of saying “mutual aid economy.”
AO3 is a non-profit organization built and coded and maintained by volunteer labor and charitable donations.
Understand that when you try to use the AO3 platform to monetize, you are not just monetizing your own labor as a fan creator. You are also monetizing the volunteer labor of everyone who built that platform.
And they will tell you that they are NOT OKAY with you exploiting THEIR LABOR, THEIR HOURS UPON HOURS OF CODING AND TAG WRANGLING AND ORGANIZING AND FUNDRAISING, for your personal gain.
Stop trying to sell books in the middle of a library.
See this? This is the trap. This is how they get you. You appeal to outrage and emotion, you make a bold statement like “sex offenders don’t have rights” and whip up that righteous anger, get people all thirsty for blood and punishment, right? And that’s their foot in the door. Once you’ve decided that there’s a class of people it’s okay to do this to, there’s no clean line in the sand anymore, is there? Now chemical castration (or whatever fucked up shit you wanna bring into it) is an option on the table.
This is how fascists talk, this is how fascists think, and this is how fascists appeal to you to get what they want. Because once you’ve given them that inch, they can use it to take a mile.
Alan Turing (as in the Turing test) was chemically castrated following a conviction for “homosexual acts” in 1952. He committed suicide as a result.
This absolutely could get used on innocent people at some point and for some people pushing it as a solution, using it on innocent people is in fact the intention.
Severance leads the nominees for the 2025 Emmy Awards with 27 as many genre works received recognition in today’s announcement. The Penguin was next with a total of 24. The Last of Us is nominated in 16 categories, Andor in 14 Severance, Andor, … Continue reading →
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seananmcguire_tumblr_feed at 11:41am on 16/07/2025
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