today is the day

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mrspete:

It was suggested by folks I respect that this post may have been a bit too heavy for the Internet, and that I should include “trigger warnings” and such, so I decided to remove it. (If you want to read it anyway, it’s here.)

Instead, please enjoy an Internet-appropriate listicle of the thread of books that saved my life—this time—in the order they found me:

• Secrets of the Camera Obscura,  David Knowles
  
• Ghosts, Paul Auster
• A Fan’s Notes, Fred Exeley
  
• Sea of Fertility Tetralogy,  Yukio Mishima
• There Should Have Been Roses, Jens Jacobsen
  
• City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, Mike Davis
  
• The Question of Bruno,  Aleksander Hemon
  
• Lolita, Vladimir Nabakov
  
• The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth, Blake Gumprecht
  
• Drupal 7 Module Development, Matt Bucher and Matt Farina
• Out Stealing Horses,  Per Petterson
  
• Everything Matters! Ron Currie, Jr.
  
• Independent People, Halldór Laxness
  

And fuck LA, forever.

And no, things didn’t work out so great for Bjartur of Summerhouses. 

Reblogged from: mrspete

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I just bought a bunch of stuff from Lands’ End. Does that make me a bad feminist?

When I started working at the turn of the century, Lands’ End was the only company that offered a good selection of nice clothes plus-sized women could wear to work. Lands’ End helped me build my early tech career by allowing me to show up to work confident and focused– in something other than tent-like clown clothes. 

“But Land’s End clothes are so BORING” my skinny friends would laugh.  And I wouldn’t say anything, because I was and am totally fine being boring with my clothes.  I had work to do and stuff to build and bands to see and people to love and a kid to raise and hours to volunteer and so much other shit to do. Boring was OK because it meant I didn’t have to spend time shopping or thinking about something that didn’t matter much to me (fashion).

A few years after he sold Lands’ End to Sears (and a few years before An Inconvenient Truth), Gary Comer hired me to build a website that connected a team of scientists working on abrupt climate change.  I loved that project, I loved the science and the scientists, but most of all I loved Gary, and I loved working for him.  He cared more about the people who worked for him than anyone I’ve known. 

Even after he sold the company, he had so much respect for the Lands’ End customer, whom he viewed as smart, educated, no nonsense, practical.  How do we explain global warming to them? How do we make them care?  The Lands’ End customer would always be his ideal user story, because they read, they learn, they vote, they care about nature, they write letters.  They are not swayed by fashion or marketing or populism.

[Total side story: my husband met Gary only once, when we ran into him and his wife at Leo’s Lunchroom.  After a very pleasant exchange with the kindly billionaire (”You got a good woman there,” he said), Jim mockingly gestured toward his clothes, and noted how awesome it was he happened to be dressed head to toe in Lands’ End.  I cracked up so hard, because Jim was ALWAYS dressed in Lands’ End.]

The Comers don’t own Lands’ End anymore.  Sears doesn’t own Lands’ End anymore.  Lands’ End is again a publicly traded company, mostly owned by private equity funds.  It’s not Gary Comer’s Lands’ End, and hasn’t been for many years.

A few months ago, another Wisconsin-based retailer, Penzey’s, sent out a spice catalogue celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.  I loved it, but a lot of people had a cow, not unlike this week’s cow about Gloria Steinem. But Bill Penzey owns his company, and he can say whatevs and suffer the consequences, just as our local right wing tea merchant can horrify his lefty customers with random 2nd amendment lectures.  I love people expressing their opinions.  I love difference.  I love arguing ideas.  I really love his tea and will keep buying it even if I disagree with him on guns.  (Jim Oberweis and his milk can suck it forever though.)

It’s different for publicly traded companies, especially those led by Europeans who vastly underestimate the antiabortion fervor of the American religious right, and who apparently sell a lot of school uniforms to that audience.  Their primary allegiance is by definition to their shareholders. Their marketing department stepped into our dogshit politics and then tried wiping it off their shoes with velvet gloves, just spreading that shit around instead of making it go away.

Corporations aren’t people.  Consumerism is not our only means of political expression.  There are other ways to protest than with our dollars.

Monday I start a new job in a very nice office, after several years of working remote and wearing hoodies, jeans and sneakers every day. I will be working for my first woman CIO and first woman IT director.   As a working mom, my focus needs to be on doing my best work, leading my new team, building a great product, making sure my kid gets to swim practice and gets his math done, the dog gets walked and I am reasonably presentable.  

I don’t want to think about my clothes.  I want to look sort of cute, professional, and competent.  Not buying good quality cute boring clothes in my size is not going to fix inequality in our country.  

There is so much work to do and we keep getting distracted by this superficial, symbolic bullshit.

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tehawesome:

dang, looks like weather.com is going through some shit

I know you’re hurting, weather.com. I hurt too. Maybe we can still work this out.

Sincerely, Karen.

Reblogged from: tehawesome