No one wants to talk in this thread, even though it's Thanksgiving. :(
I'm thankful I get to avoid all the holiday chaos this time. Wait, I'm doing this wrong, aren't I?
You know what I want for Thanksgiving? I want OH NO ROBIN HANSON to become as widely known as OH NO JOHN RINGO, in recognition of the toxic worker-hate (and general fucko stupidity) here:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/11/working-class-futures.html
To go all Bob McManus for a moment, if he said this shit about blacks, women, gays, Latinos, Nate Silver, yadda yadda yadda...his arse wouldn't touch the ground. zero to a greasy mark on the pavement in eight seconds. no amount of Koch money would save him from being called out for his creepy inappropriateness and terminated.
but he talks about the US working class - the economic majority, if you will - like the dimmest meathead in the South African police in 1982 talking about kaffirs, or indeed the dimmest meathead in the Alabama police in 1957 or 1860, and....it's OK.
Snobbery is the last tolerated hate crime.
OH ROBIN HANSEN NO doesn't chant as well, meseems. ROBIN HANSEN PECKERWOOD?
although it turns out I was thinking of Victor Hansen & you can hate me now, because the article you linked strikes me as about adaptive strategies, not essentialist. I'd easily read it as confirming that UMC childrearing is for the benefit of class structure &, on average, bad for UMC individuals. (We're all mad here.)
Jammies' fancy electric meat thermometer isn't the kind that you just park in the turkey while it cooks for hours. It turns out. Actually it's more accurate to say it's the melted blob of plastic and wires kind of meat thermometer.
Did you remember to take last year's turkey out of the oven before you put the new one in?
The dude is into cryonics. That's all you need to know.
We're having working class people for pie after dinner. Should we break out the plastic seat covers?
8: not fair. That's only happened twice.
11: I don't see why, as long as you're careful when eating them.
How to serve the working class.
You serve the working class by moving the time of Thanksgiving dinner to accommodate those who have to report for duty in retail establishments this very evening.
10: This Hansen? I think of cryonicists as a neatly self-limiting problem.
17 AUUGH PITCHFORKS. And moving dinner as convenient, including to next week.
Certain working class people are really getting up my nose right about now. How fucking fucked up do you have to be to be one of two sets of grandparents who would rather see their kid and grandkid go to a homeless shelter than figure out a way for them to be housed? Lazy, shiftless motherfuckers who think they're too good to work, that's the problem. Now my basement reeks and I can still smell the diaper pail all the way up in my room. And I'm really hungry but also nauseated. Don't even get me started about how people treat their kids on the bus. Being working class used to mean something. Now it's all mixed in with stupid fucking prosperity gospel horseshit and media saturation and aspirational nonsense. I hate everybody.
I think I just had the least Thanksgiving-like Thanksgiving meal of my life. At least the time I was in Scotland on Thanksgiving there was some rough parallelism between the types of food.
I suppose I shouldn't really count my cousins as working class. They've all graduated college.
23: our Thanksgiving tradition since moving to California has been to go to Pacific Grove/Monterey and tidepool/hike/visit the aquarium for a few days. For the holiday meal itself, we've typically gotten truly excellent sushi from this one place in Monterey, though one year we took the kids to a Japanese steak house (featuring all the usual nonsense), and another year we picnicked on the beach with turkey from Whole Foods. That was actually quite depressing. The sea lions and otters seemed to be laughing at us. This year we're stuck at home, so friends will come over for a catch-as-catch-can feast of sorts.
Lazy, shiftless motherfuckers who think they're too good to work are not actually members of the working class.
I didn't realize Walt knew Moby's cousins.
Or was he speaking of college graduates in general?
What are you talking about, Eggplant?
Eggplant is accusing all college graduates of being lazy. Glad I could clear that up for you, Eggplant.
I'm thankful to have realized I can stream US TV using my employer's VPN. Now, to catch up on The Good Wife episodes I've missed.
I know it's turkeyday, but couldn't someone give Hanson more of a hard time? Paennim? McManus? Where is your revolutionary class consciousness?
Somewhat mollified after several hours of baby.
26: Well, we're certainly not having them in the lumpenproletariat, thank you very much!
32: Yeah, that was certainly the perfect intersection of Murray-ite determinism and ev-psych bullshit. But dressed up real nice in more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger drag.
3 32
I am mystified about what is offensive about the linked article in 3.
32:I live only to heighten the contradictions. If you thought that was bad...
Hipsters on Food Stamps Pt 2 The Last Psychiatrist
Sounds sublime. But Gerry already had a living wage-- he spent it on the University of Chicago, 41 years of food stamps in 4 years. If everybody knew in advance the outcome was going to be unemployment and living wages, then why doesn't Frase challenge the capitalist assumption that college is money well spent-- could have been used differently? He can't. This thought cannot occur to him, not because he is dumb, he clearly isn't, or because he is paid by a college-- money is irrelevant to him. He can't because his entire identity is built on college, academia. He is college. Take that away, he disintegrates. So in the utopia he imagines, college still exists AND people get living wages. Call me a Marxist, that's what we have now.
Happy Turkey Day and Unbridled Consumption weekend, everybody! Don't get trampled by the hordes.
Bob, up 200, west 5, at my URI, 15 rounds point detonating HE, TOT 20 seconds, and fire for effect.
32: I'm generally happy to given Robin Hanson a hard time, except that it would require reading him closely enough to figure out what he's talking about. Skimming that post it's hard to tell who he's quoting where and which parts are his opinions versus someone else's. I'm too lazy.
Happy Thanksgiving! I'm grateful that the ceasefire is holding, so the Israelis and Palestinians can enjoy their traditional Thanksgiving meals.
36: Second prize is a set of steak knives.
I just had to deal with some traditional Thanksgiving family racism at the dinner table. This year it took the form of "Did you know the most popular boy's name in England is Muhammad?" So I've got no energy for Hanson; besides, cryonics is all you need to know.
39: One for Natilo to check out and report back.
40: And just in time for shopping tomorrow!
43: Oh no, haven't you heard of Dr. E. Normous-Johnson brand tongue-depressors? There were promotional T-shirts for them on sale at the Mall of America.
Can someone explain the last psychiatrist to me?
Well, there used to be a bunch of other psychiatrists, but then he killed them all.
So now he gets to say whatever the fuck he wants.
I'm wondering if I'm just not getting the persona, cause he reads like a unpleasant crazy person to me, but I don't get the feeling that's other peoples take-a-way on him.
42: The most popular boys name in Syria is Nigel.
49: as opposed to all the other psychiatrists who are full of reticence?
The most popular psychiatrist name in England in Szasz.
Hanson's funny, I like it when he worries that nano-machine AIs might have left berserker probes in our solar system to wipe us out
42: "That's a nice name! And Muhammad Ali is such a popular athlete, I'm not surprised that people would want to name their kids that!"
45: Yes! I just hope they have time to stock up the Gaza Walmart!
|| According to the pope's research, there is also no evidence in the Gospels that the cattle and other animals traditionally pictured gathered around the manger were actually present.
Impressive research! I guess this means Benedict is the first Pope to actually read the Gospels. ||
A pope reading the bible! That can't be good news.
The Last Psychiatrist is a blogger with two themes. One is your standard "I may be an asshole but I'm just saying what you're too cowardly to say, at least I'm not a coward" libertarian rap. The other one is diagnosing public figures with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
You know, when I first heard Alice's Restaurant in high school, the idea of protesting a war seemed so distant and far away. The Gulf War skirmish hadn't registered in any real way. Protesting Vietnam was real and romantic or whatever, but not something that happened in my life.
It still doesn't happen, but now when they get to the protest part of the song I've got a real visceral sense of existing wars that my country is inflicting on other countries, and the song seems much sadder.
55 What makes it especially infuriating is that I've got a Master's degree in Islamic Studies and had spent a few years living in Morocco studying Arabic and a spent a bit of time in Egypt and Turkey.
Nia is really missing her big family Thanksgiving so instead of trying to do the same thing but with my family, we did a riverboat cruise. I'm not sure if that counts as exploiting the working class, but Mara ended up sick anyway and we would have missed out on anything more exciting.
We did watch a little of Top Chef, though the girls prefer Chopped. Mara said, "When I get big, I never goimg to lose on a cooking show." I asked if she planned to win. "Yes, or I hit him with a hammer and make he blood." So, um, watch out, Tom Colicchio! Yikes!
55 is basically Jammies' origin.
60:
In Vietnam, a 19-year-old Vietcong soldier screams that Americans should leave his country as he is shot by a government firing squad. His American counterpart meanwhile is staying up nights thinking up ways to deceptively destroy his health, mind, or virility to escape two years in a relatively comfortable army. Free enterprise strikes again.
Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! The NLF is gonna win!
65: Of course, Ochs said that before irony destroyed our capacity for rational thought.
64: She did really well and is now asleep. She had a good day, bt holidays are often hard. I guess it was three years ago we first hosted Rowan.
61: were they consciously trying to annoy you, or unconscious, or oblivious ?
My Jamaican cow-orker invited me over for Thanksgiving; I just got back. It was nice.
42 - that must be on the seekrit Muslim baby name charts. All the faked official ones say Oliver or Jack or something.
I linked to http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/episode/b01nwp2j the other day - about going to the town where Alice et al lived.
Anyway, sod Thanksgiving, I have a 16 year old daughter today! Wtf?
I was at my favorite bar, the bartentder(22) asked me what I was reading. I said, oh about the afghan war. He said the war was over ( he was talking about Iraq). Not only did he not know the Afghanistan war was still going on he (seriously) had no idea we had ever been in a war there. At first I thought to be dissapointed in what the american education system had done, but after a moments reflections, I knew I would of been disappointed if it had done anything else. (when told about the current state of the war he asked why we have not nukes them)
That is equal parts depressing and unsurprising. He was, after all, 10 the last time anyone probably meant Afghanistan and not Iraq if they just said "the war".
After two hours of insomnia, I finally decided to get up and be productive. Awesome.
I've already bought shoes off ebay and played on Baby Name Voyager Wizard. Now make me some coffee.
Maybe you could take advantage and get a prime spot queueing up outside a Best Buy?
Baby name voyager sounds like the worst star trek spinoff ever.
How have they not made an animated Star Trek series of child versions of a Star Trek crew, a la Muppet Babies?
I should have hired out my insomnia. I don't want anything from Best Buy but I could have stood in line on behalf of the highest bidder.
At least coffee is now brewing.
Baby Name Voyager Wizard, while it has been discussed here before, is too much fun not to link to.
There was the one tng episode rascals which wasn't terrible.
85 sadly I cannot play it on my iPad so it will have to wait Tim I'm back home.
A goddamn mosquito just landed on my pen, inside, at 5:30 in the morning in November. What an affront.
I didn't kill it, either, because a pen is a hard surface to smush on.
Pen. Is. That's the only hard surface to smush on that I'm talking about.
Now the bastard is dead. The fool had the audacity to land on my hand while I was writing. Die yuppie mosquito.
Why is the coffee taking so goddamn long to brew.
Did heebie-heebie wake you up with his or her typing?
Heebie-heebie and I appear to be the same person, do we not?
Well, I've never seen you and heebie-geebie in the same room together.
This is an old refrence but I did just unironically (none of them read the blog) use that's heebie for that's been done right at a work site.
Aw, that's nice! Maybe being "Asteele" should mean being nice.
69 I vote for C, "oblivious".
In other news, my TV broke the other week and I need a new one. I've never done Black Friday before, do I dare it? How much would I really save? (It's a Best Buy I have in mind.)
The Baby Name Wizard is how I come up with most of my fake blog names. It's so much fun!
95: No, why would I think that?
All I know is that heebie-heebie posted, and two hours later, you posted saying that you'd had two hours of insomnia.
I've been to the baby name wizard space odyssey and have two observations:
(1) "Charlotte" really takes off in the 2000s even before the movie adaptation of Charlotte's Web came out. I wonder what happened.
(2) All the "Flo-" names are safely obscure: Flora, Florence (male or female!), Florene, Florida, Florian, Florine, Flossie, Floy, Floyd. Take your pick!
I am also confused about 3. My honest best guess (with low confidence) is that Alex thinks it is evil and hateful to make any generalizations whatsoever (or at least ones ey disagrees with) about the attitudes of different groups of people facing different circumstances.
I'm also not sure why it's helpful to link this post in isolation , without the posts where Hanson explains the farmer/forager dichotomy he's referring to, that he thinks the future belongs to the farmer types, and that he doesn't think this is such a terrible thing.
Neither Flora nor Florence are obscure here. My niece is Flo.
104: My mother in law is Flori/n/e. She's right here at the table with me.
All the "Flo-" names are safely obscure
The attitude of the enlightentsia towards given names is one of the pieces of data that makes me pretty sure that homo sapiens will not contribute in any positive way to the long-term evolution of life in the universe.
Stormcrow's just pissed because he thought he was being sneaky when he named his kids Aiden and Cooper.
106: You googleproofed her name because she's so highly reactive?
Learned yesterday that apparently Jacqueline Kennedy pronounced her name to rhyme with gasoline.
If you name a kid anything starting with 'Flor', you can sing them this as a lullaby:
``How you bore me, Florrie,
With those eyes of vacant blue;
You'll be very sorry, Florrie,
If I marry you.
Though I'm easy-goin', Florrie,
This I swear is true,
I'll throw you down a quarry, Florrie,
If I marry you.''
Flo Rida has enjoyed a recent surge, however.
113: Even has a ready-made theme song.
If you name a kid anything starting with 'Flor', you can sing them this as a lullaby:
Probably best not sing them Dear Little Flo.
It's probably common to have an Aunt Flo.
I really like the idea of names that end in -ette and -etta, and I like to throw names like Wallette, Clarinette, Cigarette, etc onto the Excel spreadsheet. But I can't find any real -ette or -etta names that I'm that fond of.
108: Stormcrow's just pissed
Not pissed, just a bit melancholy, for God has granted me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.
Florette just sounds like cauliflower.
I was just looking to see what Etta Place's given name was. They don't know. Maybe Ethel.
We'd have to spell it "Twalette".
Wiki says Ethel, changed to Etta when she and the Sundance Kid moved to South America on account of Spainsh speakers trouble with th.
"Martinette" would be such a good/terrible name.
109: She is reactive, but not combustible. I quite like her actually.
Martinette would be a good pseud. We should start suggested it, along with wry cooter.
Flippanter may wish to jot down "Luncheonette" for later possible use.
It's probably common to have an Aunt Flo.
Not if you're about to have a kid.
I would like to bitch momentarily about a colleague's husband who seems to think it's really fun and awesome to pick fights at Thanksgiving dinner because like we need more argument in "our culture" because "our culture" is so segregated by ideology that "we" don't ever interact with people who disagree with "us." So he spent the whole night picking these dumb fucking fights that did nothing except expose that he doesn't understand the problems he's addressing, and which led to extremely stressful and boring conversation in which someone is trying to babystep him through Topic 101 and he just keeps saying, "I don't get it though. Isn't that morally wrong?" as if the academic study of Topic is all about trying to make moral decisions for students.
It was stressing/boring me so intensely that I had a panic attack trying to cut the pie--who is this guy to ruin my evening with my friends by dragging them into this shit?--and he saw my hands shaking and is all "AWB? What's wrong? Do you need help? You seem very upset! Hey everybody, AWB is super-upset; what's wrong with her?" Um, fuck off? Also, why am I spending the whole night trying to keep your baby from eating screws and splinters while you entertain yourself by stressing/boring me to death?
And of course, he was the last to leave, sending his wife (my friend) home early with the baby, and then wearing all the other guests down one by one, and when I told him I needed to kick him out, he stayed another hour because he really wanted to explain evolutionary psychology to me in a way that I might understand it (he read a whole book one time? so he really knows this stuff?), and also--what is wrong with me that I got all shaky earlier?
141: He sounds like a very confused person.
He sounds like an old fashioned wanker, and a sexist prat to boot, sending his wife home with the baby so he could carry on grandstanding. I hope this doesn't make things awkward between you and your friend.
Did said colleague seem mortified by the husband's behavior? If so - if not for the baby whose presence screws with my Nate Silver-like divorce statistical calculator - I'd give them 6-10 months.
Babies are like Diebold voting machines.
They have a sort of anti-method of child-rearing that insists that nothing should ever be removed from a child's hand, and the child should never be physically redirected in any way; the child (who is about 18 months old) should be reasoned with carefully and compassionately. They manage surprisingly well, but if you're setting this child loose on a very hectic dinner at someone else's house and expecting a bunch of people to watch the kid for you, I'm not sure you get to be so picky about whether someone, say, removes the rusty screw from the child's hand before he shoves it in his nose.
My friend and he seem to get along fine, actually. In general, he comes across as a sort of lazy hippie type, which would drive me nuts, but he can be really observant and thoughtful--he doesn't lack empathy. But his irritating qualities are based on some need he has to piss people off, which he justifies because "we" are too conciliatory. The last party I was at, he ruined by telling all of us that, to him, we're all small-town people, but see, he's from a real city? So he's just never going to make friends with any of us, because we're not in a real city where real people with real feelings and thoughts are. I helpfully pointed out that he's in a room with people from NYC, Los Angeles, Taiwan, Seoul, Nashville, Chicago--all, to some extent, cities. But it's just not the same, he says. He's too picky about people to make friends outside of a city.
what is wrong with me that I got all shaky earlier?
Your undermind wanted to stab him with the pie-slice and your overmind was wrestling. Anyone would have quivered.
Where does he think is a "real city"?
We're in a town of 9000. His point was that we were all sitting around talking about how lovely it was to move here and discover one another--a community of really fun, nice, funny people who look out for one another--and he wanted us to recognize that we are all actually just friends of convenience--a group of random, desperately lonely folks thrown together by employment into a place where we have to get along because you can't be picky about your friends in a small town. I agree with some of that--there are certainly people here who I'm friends with here with whom I wouldn't really be close given 9 million people to choose from. But that's also one of the good changes I've felt happening to my character; I am a lot more open here to people who didn't immediately appeal to me as "my kind of person." I really don't think that the NYC model of socializing (Are you immediately obviously exactly my type in every possible way for the entire duration of our initial interaction? If so then I might half-heartedly endure your company a second and third time, during which you are still being held to this standard, and if you fail I will never acknowledge your existence again.) is healthy or superior to what I have here.
He's the first one I'd throw out of the life-boat.
It's also shitty to ask people who are talking about how much they like each other to distinguish between which of us are "real friends" and which of us are just putting up with each other. No, I don't have 15 best friends here. But I do have five or six people I'd feel comfortable inviting to spend time with me by ourselves, which is more than I've ever had, and about 15 more who I am glad to see and invite to hang out in groups.
Ah.
The older I get the more evidence I have that we can only optimize for one thing, and should recognize that and satisfice almost all the time. (Since we can only optimize for one thing, being perfectionists about foodieism or our workouts or whatevs is preventing us from working on the really important thing (our terrible novels)).
149 et al are making me tense. AWB, dude! You need to stab him! Stab!
Actually stabbing someone would be too wrong, but were any of these cream-pies? Inna FACE, annoying guy.
cream-pies? Inna FACE
I must be confused about porn terminology.
Hee, essear.
I'll have to ask my other friend who was there last night how he felt about it. The annoying guy isn't ever venomous or cruel to me specifically, but he is really hard on this other guy who was there (the one with whom I spent a Dramatic Evening a while back--we've talked a lot about our feelings and are now intimate friends with very good boundaries) in ways that I find unfair. While annoying hippie guy thinks of himself as the put-upon defender of the weak and downtrodden, he makes a lot of limiting assumptions about my friend that I find hurtful and small-minded. Actually, annoying guy does this to another very close friend of mine, too.
People suck. Holidays that make you spend a lot of time with people are often a bad idea.
114 - broken link? I try very hard not to associate my niece and that song in my mind!
That guy sounds pretty obnoxious. Don't stab, but feel free to spill. "Oh I am so sorry. You'd better go home and get some soda water on that."
If he's really obnoxious, he'll think that she's trying to get him out of his clothes so she can sex him big time.
intimate friends?
I find this word choice ambiguous given the context.
Intimate. We share our private feelings with one another, and don't have sex. I've been celibate for well over a year now. It really frees one, in some ways.
Glad to hear you sorted out that awkward social situation just in time to end up in a new one with this other guy.
My intimate friend? He's the same guy from the former dramatic situation. Earlier, when I opined that I should try sleeping with his very reasonable friend, it began to occur to me that the very reasonable friend is extremely attractive and super-nice, and he and I have been seeing each a lot of each other with much doofusy grinning and confessions of feelings, but no physical stuff yet. I've never done that before, coming from the NYC context of fucking as immediately as possible.
My intimate friend? He's the same guy from the former dramatic situation.
Yeah, I got that. I meant the annoying jerk from Thanksgiving. Maybe that's not really an awkward social situation in quite the same way.
Yeah, it ain't no thing. I don't see him much more than once every few weeks. I learned tonight that another good friend won't go places where he knows the annoying guy will be because he's so awful, so I suppose I'm not alone.
I've been celibate for well over a year now. It really frees one, in some ways.
It gets far less liberating after about nine years.
another good friend won't go places where he knows the annoying guy will be
And annoying guy's circle of acquaintance gets smaller and smaller and less well-connected, and he doesn't ever make real friends in a small town, unfortunately reinforcing his original opinion. I wonder how the kid will adapt to not being the most special kid of the most special people in the room.
I had brunch today with the intimate friend and we discussed how to think about the annoying guy. There is the distinct possibility that the kinds of conversations we're used to having are guided by certain academic rules-- E.g., Be willing to recognize when someone knows more than you, listen to them carefully, and then respond by offering something that you feel confident that you know about. No useful argument happens where one person has studied the topic for 10 years and the other person read a few op-ed columns about it and wants to scream about it. If I am willing to learn how people who do know something about a topic think, then maybe I can argue from a knowledgeable position why they are going about it in the wrong way.
That's the kind of argument I enjoy, and it doesn't involve calling my interlocutor an asshole because he represents some much larger flaw that I see in "our culture." (I might call him an asshole, but only when he's actively being an asshole.) Or, as my friend put it, "[Annoying Guy] says he's an atheist, but he definitely talks as if there is a war in heaven and that it has something to with what he thinks about [topic]."
Be willing to recognize when someone knows more than you, listen to them carefully, and then respond by offering something that you feel confident that you know about.
I don't have anything further to add to this. I just wanted to repeat it. If only everyone knew this rule...
I think the thing is that Annoying Guy enjoys the kinds of arguments where people get really mad immediately and bullshit each other with righteous hysterical fury. I see these kinds of arguments in bars and they look just awful to me. Or, to be clear, I have occasionally enjoyed this kind of fight about things that both of us who are fighting are ignorant about. (That can be fun in its own way.) But if you're 98% ignorant about a topic and you think that the moral clarity that ignorance gives you should be preserved at all costs against the knowledge someone else is trying to share with you, that's not a fun argument. (This happens to me a lot with the porn argument. Obviously, people who know almost nothing about pornography have the strongest and least complicated moral positions about it.)
Indeed. I've been ensnared in or on the sidelines of many of the sort of arguments of which you speak. They are not fun, not fun at all.
I agree with 173. But then, I would.
I would also like to say to the haters that I just went to my friend's house while his wife was out of town, and brought him dinner, and we got hella drunk (alone) and talked and talked for like seven hours and had a great time and neither of us tried to have sex with each other at all. Celibacy is excellent. I can totally be good friends with men without ruining anyone's life. I don't think I've ever managed this particular feat before.
What haters? I think we're pretty much all on board with this.
Although I will note that this sort of platonic friendship doesn't necessarily require celibacy in general. You could, in theory, have close non-sexual friendships with some men and have sex with others.
That's kind of you, teo. I thought the consensus was that it's really fucked up of me not to drop this person like a hot rock because he's obviously dabbling with bad stuff and I was going to end up murdered. (Last weekend when he was out of town I introduced his wife to my parents, so there is a sort of symmetry.) Anyway, thoughtful people are nice is the point and we can talk about our relationships and not stab each other.
177: I actually think that might help, but I have experienced myself as perceived as dangerous insofar as I am a single person.
I thought the consensus was that it's really fucked up of me not to drop this person like a hot rock because he's obviously dabbling with bad stuff and I was going to end up murdered.
Well, that was based mostly on the way you had described the situation, I think. It sounded like he was a really problematic sort of guy from that, but clearly that doesn't seem to have actually been the case. Obviously you're in a better position to judge all of this than any of us.
I don't think I was. It could have gone south, of course. It just hasn't. It's funny; up until now in my life, I always betted that people would turn out to be better than the worst and had so often been wrong, and here I find that people respond to my nervousness with surprising compassion and care. I don't know if that's a change in place or job or community, or even just a change in me, but it's really nice.
Huh. Maybe (some) small towns really are friendlier than big cities.
181 makes me happy. You deserve compassion and care, awb. I am so glad you are finding it.
Late to the party, but this:
he really wanted to explain evolutionary psychology to me in a way that I might understand it (he read a whole book one time? so he really knows this stuff?)
is perfect. Somehow it had to be evolutionary psychology.