![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
thebloggess_feed![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jesse_the_k posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
access_fandomMarissa Lingen (mrissa here) is a disabled SF writer. She’s been publishing short stories since 2001—over 200 so far. Most of her work is quite short, and I’m delighted at how her subtle implications generate detailed worlds and relationships.
Her disability experience informs her work. One of my faves is “A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places”, free to read in print or in audio at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Like the author, the viewpoint character has vertigo.
Her monthly newsletter alerted me that she’s
leading a writing workshop where people can process their vertigo experiences through the written word.
FREE
23 November 2025 1700 GMT
must register in advance or more info
ar220@st-andrews.ac.ukFULL DETAILS:
https://dateful.com/eventlink/1965359842
She’s eager to spread the word to people directly or indirectly affected by vertigo—please share the Dateful link far and wide.
in_the_pipeline_feedI’d like to take a bit of time to note this paper and its authors. It was published in May of this year in JACS, and it was about the conversion of carbon dioxide to methane. That’s certainly of great interest - it’s basically “reverse combustion”, and as you can imagine there are a lot of people interested in taking industrial carbon dioxide emissions and sending them back around by such a process. You could even imagine a technology that could strip it from the Earth’s atmosphere, although that’s a truly difficult problem for reasons of scale and because of the comparatively low levels of CO2 that you’d be trying to target (low, but unfortunately rather meaningful for the Earth’s climate!) The paper specifically was looking at electrochemical reduction of dilute carbon dioxide, though, which is good. Was good.
You’ve probably guessed the reason for all that switching in the past tense. The paper has now been retracted by its authors. They had been working further on their reaction system and found inconsistent results, prompting them to go back over things. One of the crucial pieces of evidence was from the use of 13C-labeled CO2 (which was shown at the time to produce labeled methane, which would be a very strong piece of evidence indeed). The mass spec equipment they were using, though, was not calibrated correctly, and when that was fixed the methane produced from their system had no isotopic label at all (!) So that makes you wonder where it was coming from then, doesn’t it? The story gets more painful: the THF solvent they were using turned out to have very low levels of dichloromethane in it as an impurity, and that’s what was getting electrochemically reduced to methane. Cleaning up the THF led to no methane being produced at all.
Now that is a painful result, and I have a great deal of sympathy for the UC-Irvine researchers who had to experience this. There are a lot of variables in the chemistry business, and once in a while you get wrong data that all point in the same (wrong) direction, perfectly mimicking what successful experiments look like. I’ve experienced this, and I’ll bet a number of readers here have as well. One big difference of course is that I had not published a full paper in JACS before discovering the problems, but to be fair being in industry insulates you against that to a degree, since publication in the journals is not a priority for us.
But I wanted to congratulate everyone involved anyway. They realized something was off, and they kept working until they found out exactly what it was even as it undermined the entire idea behind the whole effort and the published paper. And they quickly and publicly corrected the record: the paper came out in May, and the retraction in October. This is how science is supposed to work, and this is the work of real scientists, people of honestly and integrity, and I am glad they are doing this research and doing it with such respect for accuracy and truthfulness.
I only wish that more people would live up to these standards. There are a lot of papers out there that have deserved to be retracted for years. In many of these cases, readers have flagged obvious problems at post-publication sites like PubPeer. In a subset of those, journal editors and institutions have tried to take action. But what is rare, rare indeed, is when the authors themselves look at their own work and agree that yes, this needs to be retracted. Many of them ignore all such attempts, actively resist any inquiry into their work, or impugn the motives of anyone who dares to suggest it.
But in this case the authors were the ones who caught their own (honest) mistakes and did the right thing as quickly as possible. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I wish them every success in the next iteration of this research.
aam_feedA reader writes:
Our local business group/Chamber of Commerce had a luncheon today to hand out awards to the business community. My business was nominated and picked for an award.
As I only have four employees, I closed the business for the afternoon and had them join me for the lunch and award ceremony. As the luncheon was finishing up, I left the room to go get my picture taken with the other award winners and then left. I had let my employees know they could leave at anytime and would see them tomorrow.
Shortly after I got back to my office, I received a text from a fellow friend/business owner, saying I had better check out the Chamber’s Facebook page. When I looked, to my horror there were multiple comments and pictures about a lady who had almost physically cornered our mayor and a state representative and was getting very vocal in her questions and her opinions to them about some political hot topics. It was “Teena,” who works for me!
I am beyond embarrassed. Luckily, she wasn’t wearing one of our company’s logo shirts, so just looking at the pictures you may not know who she works for, but I am sure word got around to who her employer is and I am worried her actions will hurt my business’ reputation in the community. I am not so naïve that I don’t realize some political talk goes on at this event (I myself had talked to others about an unpopular decision the city council had made about closing a parking lot for redevelopment and how that would affect business owners near the lot), but I didn’t get into a loud argument with anybody.
Is there anything I can or should do about this situation with her? Her actions were outside the office but were at a company event that she was getting paid to attend. Any suggestions for “damage control” if I get questioned about my employee’s actions or I lose an account(s) over what she did?
I’m all for people asking questions of their elected representatives, and there are certainly things happening that warrant being impassioned about those topics — but the time to get into it with legislators is not when you are being paid to attend an event on behalf of your employer. I suspect that distinction was completely lost on Teena, and it’s reasonable to have a conversation with her to explain it.
Sample wording: “You’re of course welcome to advocate for your political views and to lobby our legislators on any issues you’re concerned with, but when you are attending an event as part of your job, you are there as a representative of our business, and your actions reflect on us. You can bow out of attending those events in the future if you don’t want to be constrained in that way, but you cannot accost legislators at events you’re attending for work or in situations where you will be perceived as representing the company.”
As for damage control if it comes up with others, it depends on exactly what she was saying and how poorly it reflects on your company. If it was something wildly offensive to your average person, you have a different problem than if it was more mundane. For the latter you could simply say, “She misunderstood that she was attending as an employee, not a private citizen, and it won’t happen again.”
The post my employee chewed out local officials at a business event appeared first on Ask a Manager.
senmutSometimes Jazz isn't smooth
aam_feedA reader writes:
I run a small business that supplies a product to major companies. To keep the details anonymous, let’s say that we supply garments to a few mid-tier clothing retailers that you can buy in the mall. The problem is that one of my employees two levels down (he reports to someone who reports to me), Dave, behaves as though we’re making clothing for Gucci or Prada. This causes enormous production headaches. It means everything moves much more slowly through his department, because he is extremely conscientious about quality. That is admirable, but it results in things like being short with our subcontractors because they have not produced the products to his standard, even though they have produced them to industry standards. We’ve lost freelance designers because they’re being asked to make Prada-level clothing for Old- Navy-type wages. He also causes many things to be done over or redoes them himself. This dramatically drives up the cost of what we produce. He should be producing 5,000 items a year in order to justify his salary but he only produces 3,000. This means we have gotten to a point where it actually costs us more to produce these products than we are being paid for them.
Both his manager and I have attempted to tell him directly that he is overdoing things. This angers him and causes him to dig in his heels. We’ve said, “You don’t have to redo this work. It was fine the way the freelancers produced it. Just concentrate on the big issues like the overall cut of the fabric.” What he apparently hears is, “What you do doesn’t matter. You’re wrong to be concerned about quality.” His reaction is to stay up all night and work through the weekend to try and increase his numbers instead of just not doing everything twice.
Dave’s heart is in the right place. This is tricky because it’s not like we’re asking him to do X and he refuses. We’re asking him to do X, and he does X twice and then adds Y and Z! How can I motivate Dave to take a step back and be more in alignment with the market tier we serve instead of driving up cost and increasing everyone’s aggravation by overdoing things? Or perhaps he is just a bad fit for this job?
I answer this question 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.
The post my employee overdoes everything, and it’s costing too much money appeared first on Ask a Manager.
james_davis_nicoll
runpunkrun posting in gluten_freeaam_feedA reader writes:
I found your site a few months ago after receiving an angry, almost violent letter from a former employee of mine.
I used to own and operate a small bed and breakfast in a resort community. She was a maid, cook, and sometimes bookkeeper.
I have always known that I’m a difficult person and would warn new employees that they were on probation for them to get to know me as much as for me to get to know them. I have always found those who can’t handle me to be weak or too sensitive. When I got her letter, I was shocked, angry, hurt, defensive, and ready for war. However, after taking some time to read through your past letters, I now don’t know how to feel or what to think.
This employee worked for me for a little over six months and ghosted one day, never to be heard from again. She was a good employee and at first I thought she was one of the few who didn’t take my personality personally. At the time I received her letter and for years afterward, I found her to be childish, immature, angry, and emotional. Why not come to me to tell me she had a problem? But reading your blog has made me aware of the fact that I was probably considered an abusive boss — and to be honest, an abusive person overall.
Her letter outlined bad treatment from me and how much it impacted her. She reminded me of almost every slight from the time I screamed at her for getting up out of her chair while I was training her on some software (she needed a pen to take notes and it annoyed me that she wasn’t ready to learn) to the time I reprimanded her for using what I found to be a too-small wad of paper towel to clean a mirror. She reminded me that I got upset at everything and anything. She called me petulant. She reminded me of guests I was unkind to by linking to bad reviews online. She told me she wishes her departure caused trouble for me. She told me I deserved the online hate from past guests of my B&B (I didn’t have a good reputation on Yelp). She told me it took a long time to get over how I treated her and sending me this letter was part of how she chose to heal.
At first, I was very defensive. I wanted to write back and tell her she was a child, sensitive, and obsessive. That she must not have a fulfilling life if she felt the need to write to a long-ago boss.
However, each time I consider writing back, I realize she can counter everything with fair evidence that I was, in fact, a monster to work for. She’s right. I’m not different now, but I am no longer working. I am retired and live in a different state. I no longer have reason or opportunity to treat people like I treated my employees and guests. I had to close my B&B after too many years of trying to make it work.
If you were me, if you had made these mistakes and really were as bad as my old employee said, what would you do here? Would you write back to apologize? Ignore it and try to move on?
It would be an act of incredible graciousness and growth to write back, thank her for her honesty, and apologize how you treated her. You could acknowledge that your initial reaction upon receiving her letter was defensiveness but you sat with what you she wrote and you see the truth in it, and you were indeed terrible to work for. You could tell her that you’re no longer managing anyone, and that you hope she has landed in a better place. And you could thank her for the self-reflection her letter prompted.
Because it is a gift for someone to give you such an unvarnished look at yourself — and I also believe it is a gift to you from yourself that you were able to see the truth in it. You could have gone on feeling defensive and blaming the employee and thinking she was overly sensitive, but something in you pushed past that.
Can you go a step further and really grapple with what you’ve realized (not in the letter, but on your own)? That could mean exploring why your natural default was to the type of behavior you described (for example, did you grow up with a parent who was hyper-critical and punitive and that was your model for how to relate to people? or in an environment where extreme control over every detail was the best way to survive, and you carried that onward after it was no longer serving you? did you learn growing up that anger was a default state of dealing with the world?) and what the impact of that has been on important relationships to you throughout your life … and what it would look like and feel like to do things differently.
There can be incredible liberation in dropping your defenses, accepting feedback, and committing to doing things differently. If you don’t let yourself go into denial mode (which is a form of self-protection), it can even feel good to confront that stuff — not good like “eat your vegetables, they’re good for you” good, but good like chocolate is good. (Both, really, but people tend not to realize the almost physical pleasure there can be in facing hard things head-on in the service of moving toward a more peaceful place.) If you are willing to do that work, it can dramatically change the kinds of relationships you have in your life, the amount of peace and happiness you feel internally, and your day-to-day quality of life.
Which is why I say you should write back and thank your former employee. What she offered you is a gift if you want to take it. She most likely didn’t intend it to be one, but it very much can be that if you choose.
The post I was the abusive boss appeared first on Ask a Manager.
cakewrecks_feedI know they keep pushing back the retirement age, but this is ridiculous:
Worst. Retirement package. Ever.
Clearly this "celabrate" you speak of refers to an activity with which I am unfamiliar.
Ever notice what a difference an "e" can make?
Ouch.
Or the lack of proper spacing?
Woohoo! Uric acid-induced arthritis! Yeah!
At first glance I thought this next cake said "gobbles," which you must admit would have been perfect on an edible baby cake.
Of course, if you say it fast enough this actually almost sounds right.
And, poof!
Just like that, I got you all to say the word "Gobbless" under your breath.
BOW BEFORE YOUR PUPPET MASTER!
Ahem.
And finally, a reminder of the importance of commas:
"The first 102rd moms were just so-so, but number 103th? BINGO."
Thanks to Bethany V., Clare P., Jason T., Angela L., Erin L., & Rachel M., and whoever first put an "rd" superscript over a number two. (Seriously, just try to pronounce "2rd" without giggling. Go on.)
*****
P.S. In case this post wasn't painful enough:
Exceptionally Bad Dad Jokes
There are a lot of "dad joke" books out there, but this one has awesome ratings AND the word "spiffing" on the cover, so it's a clear winner.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
oursinThought I had some lovely free unspoilt time to get to grips with review I am writing.
There have been Problems with partner's internet connection in downstairs backroom, and after faffing around endeavouring to reset the TP-Link Powerlines, I came to the conclusion that they are ex-Powerlines and should be given a suitable funeral with relevant honours.
Have ordered new ones from Argos. Upside: next day delivery means they are coming today. Downside: but not until the very end of the pm delivery slot, i.e. the evening, Bah.
This is all generally distracting from concentrating the mind on the sleazier reaches of the Victorian booktrade.
Plus, I had a demand for my US tax details. Fortunately, many years ago, I was obliged to acquire an ITIN in connection with receiving a research grant, which makes the whole thing a lot simpler.
This all also rather distracts my mind from upcoming book group discussion of the next volume in Dance to the Music of Time. Though, in unexpected Powelliana encountered during the week, who was a massive fangirl? Eve Babitz was a massive fangirl! ('much less leaden than John Updike... a downright souffle compared to just about anyone').
runpunkrun posting in fandomcalendar
fancake is a thematic recommendation community where all members are welcome to post recs, and fanworks of all shapes and sizes are accepted. Check out the community guidelines for the full set of rules. mecurtin
james_davis_nicoll recently reviewed it, I missed it when it was new.tcampbell1000 posting in scans_daily
trobadorararepairexchange author reveals happened this night! I wrote Word of Honor femslash. :Dotw_news_feedEvery month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today’s post is with Julie Bozza, who volunteers as a Senior FSHP Volunteer and project manager for the Open Doors AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP) for Open Doors.
How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I first did a Five Things in March 2022, for my role as an Open Doors Administrative Volunteer. Back then, Open Doors’ main focus was on preserving fanworks from digital archives that were at risk of being lost. We had also established the Fan Culture Preservation Project (FCPP) which helps fans looking for a new home for their physical fannish artifacts to get in touch with interested collecting institutions, such as the University of Iowa Libraries.
Since then, I’m delighted to say that Open Doors partnered up with the fan-run preservation project Zinedom to create the AO3 Fanzine Scan Hosting Project (FSHP), which runs as part of FCPP.
The OTW is keenly interested in preserving and engaging with our shared fannish history, and making fanworks available to our community. I love the thought that someone might be browsing through Fanlore, or reading an issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, and get curious about a particular fanwork – maybe dating back to a zine published 50 years ago —and then be able to find the text and related artwork preserved on AO3.
What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?
We have a number of fanzine publishers and individual creators who are already working with FSHP to import their fanworks to AO3. The import process can be quite lengthy, and has numerous steps, so a typical week might involve anything from exchanging emails with publishers or creators, to setting up a formal agreement with them, scanning fanzines and using OCR to convert the PDFs into editable text, proofreading the text, creating AO3 archivist accounts and collections, and so on… At some point we start the actual importing of works as well!
The Open Doors team has a few informal working meetings during the week, so I do my work then and keep an eye out for any FSHP-related questions. We have a large team of volunteers who help with the various tasks, along with their other OTW work, so all sorts of queries can arise.
What made you decide to volunteer?
I used to publish fanzines myself, starting in the late 1980s, and I wrote for and read other zines. As the decades-old badge on Fanlore’s Zine page announces, “FANZINES ARE FANDOM”. That was certainly the case for me, especially here in Australia, which can seem a long way from anywhere! There were wonderful events and conventions, and a group of Australian Buckaroo Banzai fans who would meet up for film screenings and Mongolian meals, but for me the heart of fandom was not only in the people but also in the creativity to be found in zines.
When the task came up of developing the idea of FSHP, writing up the necessary policies and processes, and getting the project underway, it made perfect sense to me that I would volunteer to help drive that.
What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?
We love spreadsheets in Open Doors, and couldn’t organise our imports of digital archives so well without them. But we knew that FSHP was going to be more complicated still, and we needed a database in order to manage a creator’s fanworks across a range of fanzines – and a publisher’s fanzine content across a range of creators – while dealing with different processes for word-based works and visual-based works.
It was a challenge—but an enjoyable one—to design and map a useful database, with helpful hints and tips from other OTW volunteers. And then to build it. And then to transfer across a whole lot of data from a number of spreadsheets that varied in content and organisation.
What can I say? I loved it! We’ve started using the FSHP Database for real now, and so far (luckily) the complaints have been minimal.
What fannish things do you like to do?
What I love most is writing, but alas I don’t do so much of that anymore. I love The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and the related tv show, so re-reading and re-watching those is entertaining. Otherwise, Fandom is my fandom – and, now that I’m retired from the day job, I’m devoting many of my hours to supporting OTW’s work in the world. The only thing that could possibly be nicer than that would be for me to be writing again as well!
Meanwhile, if you are a reader, creator, or publisher of fanzines – and there is zine fic or art that you’d like to see preserved on AO3 – please do get in touch with Open Doors. We’d love to help!
Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you’d like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.
thebloggess_feed - What’s your street name?jesse_the_k in access_fandom - Marissa Lingen's Writing Workshop Processing Vertigoin_the_pipeline_feed - Taking It Back, The Right Waycyberghostface in scans_daily - The Walking Dead Deluxe #122aam_feed - my employee chewed out local officials at a business eventjames_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: Monarchies of Mausenmut - 30 in 30: Transformers G1aam_feed - my employee overdoes everything, and it’s costing too much moneyjames_davis_nicoll - Five Ways Science Fiction Can Expand Beyond Homo sapienscyberghostface in scans_daily - Huck: Big Bad World #5runpunkrun in gluten_free - Recipe: Rice-Free Flour Mixaam_feed - I was the abusive bosscakewrecks_feed - Say What?oursin - Isn't it the way, though?runpunkrun in fandomcalendar - Fancake Theme for November: Mystery & Suspensemecurtin - Purrcy; Walter Jon Williamsjames_davis_nicoll - The Care and Feeding of Seriestcampbell1000 in scans_daily - More Like the CHOKER, Amirite: Justice League International Annual #2 (JLI 18/?)trobadora - FIC: forgetting any other tie but this (Word of Honor: Liu Qianqiao/Luo Fumeng) [M]otw_news_feed - Five Things Julie Bozza Saidbranchandroot
