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Tiring day but I survived

Jul. 8th, 2025 05:29 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

I had to present on my work for my team and some other people this morning, and it felt impossible to pitch it at a level that would reach both the people who know next to nothing about the work I lead on and the people who have been most intimately involved in doing it with me.

I missed a section, even with notes, which I think could've made it make a lot more sense. But also my line manager sent me a message immediately to say I spoke very well? I don't get it but I hope she's right!

[syndicated profile] gallusrostromegalus_feed

xansmenageriereblogs:

gallusrostromegalus:

Feeling despair over the general state of things? Blorbo from your shows not enough to hold the horrors at bay? Need something healthier to be insane about? Need to go outside more?

Want to become a pokemon trainer like you dreamed of when you were ten?

MERLIN BIRD ID APP BY CORNELL UNIVERSITY

It’s a fun little app that lets you use your phone to identify birds by song. You hear a song, open the app, let it listen for a moment and it tells you what the hell is making that noise (if it’s a bird), and shows you a picture of the little feathery bastards, so you can squint at the surrounding shrubbery with a better idea of WHAT you’re looking for.

After thinking “Man, I wish I had that app to ID that lovely bird song!” and then completely forgetting that I wanted to do that by the time I got back to WiFi approximately five million times, I have finally managed to install it.

Friends.

I am becoming a pokemon trainer.

This is very literally like the Pokemon anime where Ash would find some godforsaken beast in the shrubbery and immediately whip out his Pokedex to Identify it. I will be out walking the dogs and will hear… Something? And now I can find out what the hell it is! Curiosity immediately rewarded!

And that’s one hell of a dopamine hit.

You can increase the immersion into the pokemon trainer by also having Dogs ™ with you. It’s like having a starter pokemon, if your starter refused to go in the ball and was less keen on battling wild pokemon so much as generally yelling at, attempting to micromanage, or just straight-up eating them.

My dogs (functionally an off-brand Houndoom and Yamper-if-it-was-a-psychic-type) are thrilled that they’re getting this much walkies, if somewhat confused by my stopping on the trail at random intervals to wave my phone around. They’re Very Excited by me taking new, circuitous routes around the lake to get closer to trees and bushes to pick up songs because my phone was old when the pandemic started and the mic sucks. I’m pretty sure it’s a matter of time before one or both of them figure out that I’m following birdsong and then I’ll really be up shit creek because they fucking LOVE going on a hunt for something, and know that if they alert at something correctly at least a few times, I’ll believe them when they pretend to alert at something. Like say, pretending they hear another bird, no I promise it’s real you’re just a comparatively deaf-ass human no I’m not trying to extend walkies how could you say that-

FURTHERMORE, Merlin Bird ID will keep a life list for you.

That’s right.

You can put Birds in your Pokedex to fill it out.

And boy fucking howdy does my autistic ass love collecting things/completing sets, and that “congratulations, new lifer!” Thing lights up my brain like nothing else. I saw a blue grosbeak for the first time ever last night because the app told me ITS BLUE LOOK FOR SOMETHING BLUE!! AND BEHOLD, IT WAS THE BLUEST OF BIRDS!! I sailed through breakfast with my in-laws, a normally harrowing experience, on that high and I’m still going.

Granted, once the Blue Grossbeak took off and I was released from its enchantment, I realized that Herschel was rolling in half of a dessicated fish carcass while Charleston was attempting to work down the other half at speed, but that’s just the joy of pet ownership.

…what I need to do now is figure out how to enter birds I can see that are not making noise into the list. There’s so many ducks here, and all of them shut the hell up whenever the hounds and I are near.

Anyway,

MERLIN BIRD ID APP BY CORNELL LABS!!

Go insane in a way that makes you go outside and touch grass!

Okay, so, entering birds that you see rather than hear! You have three options:

  1. Take a photo, the app will give the best guess it can as to what the bird is. It’s surprisingly good, I have taken some horrible photos where I knew the bird and it still got them right.
  2. Use the Step by Step “what colour is it, where was it, is it bigger than x” questions guide. Pretty solid, can be a bit of a faff if you’re not sure or if the bird is Not Where It’s Supposed To Be.
  3. If you know exactly what the bird is and just want to record it, there’s a search bar on the Explore tab. There’s also a list of Likely Birds In Your Area for lazy scrolling purposes.

I’m glad that I’m not the only one who made the Pokemon comparison, me and the Husbeast now go on walks where he’s running Pokemon Go and I’m running Merlin and the commentary from both of us is pretty much the same…

Ah, I needed to push more buttons, got it!

[syndicated profile] gallusrostromegalus_feed

Feeling despair over the general state of things? Blorbo from your shows not enough to hold the horrors at bay? Need something healthier to be insane about? Need to go outside more?

Want to become a pokemon trainer like you dreamed of when you were ten?

MERLIN BIRD ID APP BY CORNELL UNIVERSITY

It’s a fun little app that lets you use your phone to identify birds by song. You hear a song, open the app, let it listen for a moment and it tells you what the hell is making that noise (if it’s a bird), and shows you a picture of the little feathery bastards, so you can squint at the surrounding shrubbery with a better idea of WHAT you’re looking for.

After thinking “Man, I wish I had that app to ID that lovely bird song!” and then completely forgetting that I wanted to do that by the time I got back to WiFi approximately five million times, I have finally managed to install it.

Friends.

I am becoming a pokemon trainer.

This is very literally like the Pokemon anime where Ash would find some godforsaken beast in the shrubbery and immediately whip out his Pokedex to Identify it. I will be out walking the dogs and will hear… Something? And now I can find out what the hell it is! Curiosity immediately rewarded!

And that’s one hell of a dopamine hit.

You can increase the immersion into the pokemon trainer by also having Dogs ™ with you. It’s like having a starter pokemon, if your starter refused to go in the ball and was less keen on battling wild pokemon so much as generally yelling at, attempting to micromanage, or just straight-up eating them.

My dogs (functionally an off-brand Houndoom and Yamper-if-it-was-a-psychic-type) are thrilled that they’re getting this much walkies, if somewhat confused by my stopping on the trail at random intervals to wave my phone around. They’re Very Excited by me taking new, circuitous routes around the lake to get closer to trees and bushes to pick up songs because my phone was old when the pandemic started and the mic sucks. I’m pretty sure it’s a matter of time before one or both of them figure out that I’m following birdsong and then I’ll really be up shit creek because they fucking LOVE going on a hunt for something, and know that if they alert at something correctly at least a few times, I’ll believe them when they pretend to alert at something. Like say, pretending they hear another bird, no I promise it’s real you’re just a comparatively deaf-ass human no I’m not trying to extend walkies how could you say that-

FURTHERMORE, Merlin Bird ID will keep a life list for you.

That’s right.

You can put Birds in your Pokedex to fill it out.

And boy fucking howdy does my autistic ass love collecting things/completing sets, and that “congratulations, new lifer!” Thing lights up my brain like nothing else. I saw a blue grosbeak for the first time ever last night because the app told me ITS BLUE LOOK FOR SOMETHING BLUE!! AND BEHOLD, IT WAS THE BLUEST OF BIRDS!! I sailed through breakfast with my in-laws, a normally harrowing experience, on that high and I’m still going.

Granted, once the Blue Grossbeak took off and I was released from its enchantment, I realized that Herschel was rolling in half of a dessicated fish carcass while Charleston was attempting to work down the other half at speed, but that’s just the joy of pet ownership.

…what I need to do now is figure out how to enter birds I can see that are not making noise into the list. There’s so many ducks here, and all of them shut the hell up whenever the hounds and I are near.

Anyway,

MERLIN BIRD ID APP BY CORNELL LABS!!

Go insane in a way that makes you go outside and touch grass!

[syndicated profile] gallusrostromegalus_feed

archenarrow:

mouseonamoose:

abalidoth:

gayforcarstairsgirls:

“came back wrong” but it’s food that you heated up in the microwave

OK SO

For anyone who hasn’t heard my Microwave Rant:

Microwaves are designed to be used at a broad range of power levels. If you’re getting bad results reheating your food, and you’re doing everything on full blast, try a lower power setting! 50% power for twice the time, just give it a shot. It gives the heat time to spread evenly, and prevents overcooking of parts that are exposed to more radiation.

People complain about reheated pizza a lot – that’s bc overheating the crust makes it tough and chewy. I usually do pizza on 30% power for THREE times as long because it’s especially vulnerable – and my crust always comes out nice and tender.

I think there’s a good metaphor for Came Back Wrong here too: if you actually take the time to do your necromantic ritual and/or unholy experiment right, and don’t rush it at 100% power, you’re likely to get better results.

Since reading this post and following its advice, my microwaved good comes out so much better.

Since reading this post a d following its advice, my necromantic rituals have come out so much better.

[syndicated profile] gallusrostromegalus_feed

kactusnz:

hollowedskin:

captainkirkk:

captainkirkk:

Never realised how cursed kangaroos were until last night. I’m camping and ¾ of my tent is surrounded by bush which must’ve freaked out the local wildlife. Waking up in the middle of the black night to the sound of HOPPING and shuffling outside your tent then a little nose loudly sniffing right near your head is a uniquely horrifying experience. Totally forgot I was Australian for good minute and thought I was going to be taken by something from the Blair Witch Project before I remember kangaroos exist

I’ve informed by our camping neighbours that one of the animals ruffling near my tent last night, keeping me up, was actually a bandicoot

THIS motherfucker


When I was a kid my elderly neighbor called up my house at like 10pm to tell us that she caught our pet rabbit in her yard, and that she must have escaped.

We get out of bed and go over and she hands us a live bandicoot, barehanded. Just. Holding him like Simba, hands under his little arms.

This happened multiple times a month. We would be like. Are you sure it’s our black lop-eared bunny? She would say yes it’s definitely the rabbit. Nope. Unnaturally patient bandicoot again. Being held like a little baby. Visibly brown and pointy.

She was upset at us for letting our rabbit get into her vegetable garden and would not accept that he was a wild animal owned by no one, that ate insects not cabbage. We showed her the rabbit. No. We showed her his teeth. No. The cabbages had been eaten by something (snails, also shown to her) so it must be our rabbit, the bandicoot. If we didn’t go pick him up she would put him in the bathtub and bring him over in the morning. Could not convince her that he wasn’t a pet.

We named him Bruce and just released him into our yard every time because we were worried she would put him in the hutch with the rabbit if we didn’t, and we didn’t know what the rabbit would do.

Pretty sure it was the same one every time because apparently she would just walk over and pick him up off the ground and everything. No traps no gloves.

VISIBLY BROWN AND POINTY

[syndicated profile] gallusrostromegalus_feed

rachelillustrates:

laughingpokemon:

duckbunny:

aropride:

aropride:

“nothing is real atoms never touch each other youve never touched anything in your life” ok. well when i pet my dog he is soft and when he licks my hand it is wet and that is far more real to me than whatevers going on at an atomic level

what my atoms are doing is their fucking business man i’m busy trying to stop my dog from eating tissues directly out of the box

nuclei don’t touch, but the nucleus is not the core of reality. reality is made of electrons dancing. reality is made of bonds.

you pet your dog and the atoms that are you brush up against the atoms that are him, and the electrons that are you press into the electrons that are him, and both of them change their movement.

electrons of course are not really particles and do not really move.

you pet your dog and the electron-orbitals of your skin overlap with the electron-orbitals of his fur, and both are changed by the contact. you are not made of little motes floating alone in a void. you are a single unfathomable chord formed of a trillion vibrations, and so is he. and the note you play is changing at every moment by what you touch and how you breathe, and so is his. and atoms do not really have edges, and to touch is to interact, and when you put your hand on your dog the universe does not know that you are separate. the song expands to hold you both.

and when you put your hand on your dog the universe does not know that you are separate. the song expands to hold you both.

[syndicated profile] gallusrostromegalus_feed

delanokeay:

redstonedust:

having anti punitive justice morals sucks because you want to say “man that guy sucks he should get hit with hammers until he dies” but you also want to make it clear you don’t think anyone should be put in charge of the ‘hit people with hammers until they die" machine.

Wait…is this going to work?

Jul. 8th, 2025 07:38 pm
[syndicated profile] thebloggess_feed

Posted by thebloggess

I have not been ignoring you but my blog has been broken and giving error messages every time I try to write, but I think maybe it’s fixed? I guess we’ll see if this goes through. I’m too tired to be entirely cohesive or funny but I wanted you to know that Hailey is homeContinue reading "Wait…is this going to work?"
[syndicated profile] aam_feed

Posted by Ask a Manager

A reader writes:

I am in a niche entertainment field and have a fairly high-profile job within that field. This means that what I do or say online is relatively visible and, for better or worse, carries some weight, at least in my very small area.

Lately, some of my colleagues have taken to posting their thoughts about all the *waves hands helplessly* going on in our country (U.S.) right now. I post every once in a while about something, but I choose those posts carefully and strongly limit what I choose to put on social media. I do work in my community for causes I care about, and I go to protests when I can, but I am not very public about a lot of my personal views online.

Lately, though, many people in my field, including colleagues with jobs that have comparable or higher visibility, have begun to publicly excoriate those of us who have chosen to be more selective with our social media presence. They say that we have a platform and therefore a responsibility to speak out, as we will be listened to more than others and our words will carry more weight. They say that people who don’t choose to do this are valuing their own careers more than our moral responsibility to speak out, that we “will not be forgiven” and history will look poorly on us. These declarations are usually followed by hundreds of likes and comments praising the poster’s bravery and expressing disappointment and disgust with people who are not courageous enough to do the same. Some comments are from people I work with, as well as contractors I have hired. I have not been specifically named, but I can only assume as someone who is selective with my social media that I am among them.

In my view, there is a performative aspect to all this, as well as a lack of nuanced thinking regarding people’s work situations. In my case, while I am in a position of relative power in my field, I do not have safeguards on my job. I make just enough money to live modestly but comfortably, and everything I do reflects on my organization. My contract is not long-term. I can, in fact, be fired if I do something that my board feels reflects badly enough on the organization to warrant it. I think this is actually way more common than people understand, and I feel that it is really easy to look at people like me, assume my career and living situation is totally safe, and that I am a coward for not posting frequently on social media about various causes. The reality though is that if I lose my job, I would lose my home. And in my field, where jobs are scarce, I couldn’t just interview for another. So while I do speak out to the extent I feel comfortable, I do also consider my livelihood in the process.

I guess my question is whether this makes sense, or if I have my priorities skewed. I do recognize that there is another side to this coin; being raised Jewish, I know deeply the consequences of not speaking out until it’s too late. Am I being one of those people? How do you balance speaking out against injustice with the very real dangers of losing one’s job and being in a compromised situation? Or is this exactly the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place?

I do think there’s a moral obligation to speak up if what’s happening around you is wrong and you are positioned to act against it.

But if anyone is arguing that posting on social media is at the top of the list of most important actions someone could take, that’s absurd. So is the belief that if you’re not posting on social media, you must not be doing anything else that matters (including things that matter a lot more than posting on social media).

And yes, posting on social media can come across as performative … and will often only reach an echo chamber of people who already share your views anyway. The effort it takes to do that is pretty damn low, particularly compared to the effort it takes to do things that are likely to have much more of an impact, like lobbying legislators, organizing/attending protests, writing letters to the editor, speaking at town halls, participating in rapid response networks, helping voters get to the polls, showing up at school board and city council meetings, volunteering with groups that provide legal aid, health care, and food assistance, and on and on.

In fact, if you look at the organizations spearheading resistance movements right now, posting on social media appears at the top of exactly none of the many lists of things they’re ask people to do to help (for that matter, it doesn’t appear anywhere on most of them).

And that’s before we get into the issues you mentioned of people needing to make their own decisions about what they safely can and can’t do without jeopardizing their ability to support themselves and their families.

I’m not trying to discourage anyone from posting on social media if that’s what they feel called to do. We need people speaking up in all venues and in ways that they’re inspired by and well positioned to do. But I’d take 10 Oskar Schindlers or Irena Sendlers over 10,000 prolific posters on Twitter.

Ultimately, everyone needs to take their own moral inventory and decide if they’re doing enough and if they will regret in the future not doing more. But no one deserves to be excoriated for staying out of it on social media.

The post my colleagues are upset that we’re not “speaking truth to power” on social media appeared first on Ask a Manager.

[syndicated profile] in_the_pipeline_feed

Covalent drug discovery has been making a comeback so many times over the years that they’re all starting to blur together. But by now I think we can all agree that it’s yet another perfectly acceptable tool in the kit, given the number of approved drugs that have been specifically designed with such properties (and given the number of legacy drugs that also exhibit covalent behavior!)

For those outside the business, what we’re talking about here is contrast with the “traditional” sort of mechanism where your drug binds to its protein target by reversible means. These include hydrogen bonding, pi-electron interactions, dispersion/hydrophobic interactions, what have you. But no permanent bond is formed, and there is an equilibrium between the bound and unbound state. A covalent drug, on the other hand, makes a real chemical bond to the protein it’s targeting, generally by having some fairly reactive chemical group in its structure. And while there are some reversible-covalent mechanisms, in many cases the reaction is effectively irreversible: you have modified your protein target in vivo with a chemical reagent. If this happens at the active site of an enzyme, the near-invariable result is the inactivation of that particular enzyme protein molecule (the so-called “suicide inhibitor” technique). At other sites on a protein, you can modify its activity, properties, or interaction with other proteins in all sorts of ways.

But one thing you’ll want to watch out for is that the new modified protein you’re creating is not immunogenic. Keep in mind that the active compound in poison ivy (to pick one example) causes its trouble in humans by covalently modifying proteins into species that then set off an immune response (redness, swelling, itching). And in general you also don’t want to have a covalent “warhead” that is so reactive that it hits a lot of other proteins other than your target - that increases the possibility of that immune system trouble, and it certainly increases the chances of unwanted toxicity and side effects. But done properly covalent drugs can be very effective indeed.

The thing about covalent drug discovery is that it’s been pretty empirical, and that’s even as contrasted to traditional drug discovery, which is not exactly a domain ruled by cool rational calculations all the time itself. “Try it and see” is almost always sound advice in the business, and thus the adage to never talk yourself out of an easy experiment (or an easy analog compound). There are some recent efforts to prepare libraries of covalent drug-like molecules de novo and screen these across a variety of targets, but the most common way that covalent drug candidates have been developed is the other way around: you find (by conventional means) a small molecule that binds into protein site that itself has a nearby residue that might be a partner for covalent modification. Then you add a covalently reactive warhead to your scaffold, using whatever structural information you can get to try to point it in the right direction to pick up your desired residue on the protein itself. Repeat as necessary! 

One of the impressions many people have is that the molecules in these situations need to be optimized for strong binding before making that covalent jump - that’s supposed to give you better selectivity, and also allow for using a more weakly reactive covalent group in general. That also is supposed to cut down on unwanted side reactions, and you can get away with the less reactive group because ideally it’s going to be stuck in such close proximity to your desired residue and will have time to do its thing. But this paper is a useful call to rethink some of these assumptions.

The author, Bharath Srinivasan, is also reminding everyone of some of the fundamental facts about enzymes. First off, a lot of interactions between an enzyme and its natural substrate are simply not productive and don’t lead to the catalytic step that the enzyme performs - one estimate is that perhaps only one out of every ten thousand such interactions leads to a reaction (!) This means that enzymes that have higher affinity for their substrate are almost surely going to show higher rates of catalysis: the substrate is spending more time “in the zone”, and it needs all the time it can get. This takes us back to Michaelis-Menten enzyme kinetics - recall that Km is the concentration of substrate at half of an enzyme’s maximum rate as you increase substrate concentration. But, keep in mind that it doesn’t work for the substrate affinity to get too high! Enzymes work by lowering the energy of the transition state and speeding up the reaction, which means that what really counts in their affinity for the transition state (and that that’s much higher than their affinity for the substrate - or certainly for the product, which has to get the heck out of the catalytic site for the next reaction, anyway.  All this means that the best inhibitor for an enzyme is a molecule that most closely mimics the structure of the transition state, and that’s a time-honored principle of drug design. 

Second, there’s an upper bound to just how efficient that enzyme catalysis can get, and that’s when it gets up near the “diffusion limit”, which is the speed that molecules can physically move into and out of position. Determining that rate is not trivial, because it can (and does) vary according to the molecule and the medium. The standard number is 109 per meter per second, but protons in water can move a hundred times faster than that, while other larger molecules in more viscous conditions can easily be much slower. As the paper notes, a value of about 106 or 107 /m-sec is probably realistic under cellular conditions - i.e., well below the ideal values. Now there are certainly enzymes that have rates faster than that, but on closer inspection these seem to be either extracellular (like acetylcholinesterase) or part of multiprotein complexes where things are handed around outside of the bulk solvent world. The paper notes, though, that you should never compare the catalysis rate of an enzyme (kcat) directly with the diffusion limit (the units are different, for one thing). But a large comparison of enzymes plotted as kcat/Km shows a Gaussian distribution with a median around 105 or so, which probably does really reflect the limits of real-world diffusion.

The paper makes an explicit analogy between the relationship of kcat and Km and the relationship between kinact and KI for a covalent inhibitor. They’re quite similar indeed, with the biggest difference being that the covalent situation gradually decreases the concentration of active enzyme as things proceed! And in the same way that kcat and Km have a reciprocal relationship in classic enzyme kinetics, when you get up to the diffusion limit in a covalent setup, any attempts to increase inhibition by optimizing kinact are going to end up decreasing the noncovalent affinity as a consequence. They have to - mathematically there’s nowhere else to turn. So if you’re concentrating on increasing affinity (for example), you can probably get that into the hundreds-of-nanomolar range (more or less) without messing with the rate of inactivation. But the limits of the rate of diffusion won’t let you push it much more. The reactivity of your covalent compound is going to have to decrease as the affinity gets higher: you can’t have it all.

So optimizing a covalent inhibitor needs to be done by paying attention to both the binding affinity and the rate of inactivation at the same time - in fact, the paper recommends that for cases with rather flat, featureless binding sites (as with many “hard-to-drug” targets where people turn to covalent ideas in general!), you may well end up driving selectivity mostly by kinact, because you’re going to be hard-pressed to get the intrinsic affinity numbers up high due to the suboptimal binding sites.

Put another way: a good enzyme substrate has been evolutionarily optimized to strike a balance between binding and turnover. If the binding is too low, there won’t be enough enzyme/substrate complexes formed, and if the binding is too high, they’ll form readily but they’ll be too stable to go further! Evolution will have selected for an optimal kcat/Km. So when we’re stepping in to engineer covalent inhibitors, we should also never optimized just for binding or just for reactivity, because we too are looking for the optimum balance. And focusing on just one of those parameters with a promise that you’ll go back later and fix the other is a real mistake that the mathematics of enzyme kinetics will not take kindly to!

The paper goes into several real-world examples of these effects, and is highly recommended reading (and not just for covalent drug discovery folks, although they’ll definitely want to make sure that they’re thinking the right way about their work). There’s a lot more about benchmarking with so-called “standard” nucleophiles like glutathione that are worth a post of their own, too, (see here) but in general you shouldn’t be making too many assumptions about the reactivity of your warheads. Try them and see! It all comes down to that, once again. . .

[syndicated profile] aam_feed

Posted by Ask a Manager

A reader writes:

I am retiring after 35 years with my company. I was fed up after seeing others get promoted or hired in above my pay without the same experience.

I gave them 10 weeks’ notice because no one else can really do my job. I do have a coworker who does similar work part of the time, but only for about a third of their work. Plus, while that person has been working with me for the past four years, they have never really taken it seriously and learned everything they should have.

Now that it’s close to my last day, my colleagues – mostly coworkers, but also my manager – are asking if they can contact me after my last day to ask questions about the projects that I’ve been the one responsible for up until now. I don’t want them to. I want to leave and make a clean break.

A complicating factor is that I’m friendly with some of these coworkers, both in real life and on social media, which makes me think I’ll have a hard time not answering them. Really, I’d like to block everyone’s numbers after I leave, but that seems so rude.

Any advice on how to handle this? A former coworker who retired three years ago still gets questions and I don’t want that!

You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.

The post do I have to answer questions from my company after I leave? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Superman #31

Jul. 8th, 2025 06:05 pm
iamrman: (Franky)
[personal profile] iamrman posting in [community profile] scans_daily

Writers: Roger Stern and Tom Peyer

Pencils: Paris Cullins

Inks: Dennis Janke


With Superman in exile, it comes to Lex Luthor to save the day when Mr. Mxyzptlk comes to town.


Read more... )

[syndicated profile] alexwlchandotnet_feed

Posted by Alex Chan

About six weeks ago, Glitch announced that they’re shutting down. Glitch was a platform where you could make websites and web apps, with a heavy emphasis on creativity and sharing. You could read the source code for any project to understand how it worked, and remix somebody else’s project to create your own thing.

Unfortunately, Glitch is shutting down project hosting today. If you had an app on Glitch, it’s about to stop running, but you can set up redirects to another copy of it running elsewhere.

I’ve created redirects for all of my apps, and moved them to the web server that runs this site. This was pretty straightforward, because all of my “apps” were static websites that I can upload to my server, and they get served like the rest of my site:

Not all of my Glitch apps made the jump – I deleted a couple of very early-stage experiments, and I have yet to spin up new copies of my Chinese vocabulary graph or the dominant colours web app. I might port them later, but they’re not static websites so they’re a bit more complicated to move.

Glitch felt like a throwback to the spirit of the early web – the platonic ideal of “view source” and “anyone can make a website”. I always liked the idea of Glitch, and I enjoyed making the fun apps that I hosted there. I’m sad to see it close – another space for playful creativity crushed by the commercial tide of the web.

[If the formatting of this post looks odd in your feed reader, visit the original article]

[syndicated profile] aam_feed

Posted by Ask a Manager

A reader writes:

I’ve been working at a university library for a little over a year now and have had a hard time making friends. Shortly after I started, I befriended a coworker, “Morgan,” who is also relatively new, and it has been nice getting to know them and commiserating about how hard it is to make friends in a new city and workplace.

Over the course of our friendship, Morgan has opened up more and more about the interpersonal problems they’ve had with our colleagues. They describe scenarios where collaborative projects get stalled because other stakeholders stop communicating with them, coworkers they were getting lunch with on a weekly basis suddenly stop responding to chats, and other frustrations with navigating bureaucracy that interferes with their work. It’s hard to tell if Morgan is becoming increasingly disgruntled or if they are now very comfortable with telling me their unfiltered feelings.

I’ve also had to navigate some fairly horrendous problems as a new employee, so it’s been nice to have a coworker who understands and sympathizes with our (somewhat) dysfunctional workplace culture. Morgan has made it very clear to me that they are only here for the time being and have already decided that this is not the city they would like to stay in long-term. Personally, I want to retire here and have worked very hard to improve my situation. It feels very different for me today than it did a year ago, which is why it’s become increasingly difficult to navigate Morgan’s constant negativity.

Morgan can be a lot of fun to talk to, but they’re in an increasingly bad mental space at work. They frequently come to my office to gripe for an hour or two in spite of how busy I am; I’m always actively working and trying to concentrate when they pop into my office. To my fault, they ask if it’s a good time to chat and I always say yes because they’ve been so hurt by our coworkers pulling away and I’m afraid of upsetting them. On top of this, they’ve become increasingly argumentative with me when they’re looking to talk. Again, I would say this is my fault because they are looking to vent and I’m always trying to provide solutions, so I think it’s taken as invalidating Morgan’s feelings.

Morgan is in such a bad mental space at work that seemingly any type of feedback or dialogue that they disagree with comes off as an attack. One of the issues they’ve had with multiple colleagues is that they invalidate Morgan’s feelings. Morgan has described situations where they complained about something to a colleague and rather than agreeing with and consoling Morgan, they essentially said to look on the bright side. For example, Morgan was upset about a change made to their office and the coworker responded with, “At least you have your own office.” Morgan has many examples of conversations like this and cites it as a workplace culture issue. In addition, Morgan holds on to comments like this (that took place months and months ago) and often refers back to them as examples of how bad things are. At this point, I am very afraid of upsetting Morgan because I like them, and their hyper-sensitivity is a bit triggering in light of all the reparative work I’ve done for my position and unit.

One more detail about Morgan that I think plays a factor is their odor. Morgan has a strong mildewy smell wherever they go. The odor fills a room and I can often tell if they’ve recently been in a space because of the smell. I believe Morgan maintains good hygiene practices, but that they are unaware of the fact that a lot of their clothing has developed a pungent mildew odor. Depending on how strongly they smell, it can be very difficult to spend extended periods of time with them. I’ve avoided spending time with them outside of work, like inviting them to my home, because the smell is so off-putting and am wondering if it has contributed to their interactions with coworkers.

How do I take a step back with Morgan without further inciting them?

I don’t think “without further inciting Morgan” is the right goal! The right goal is to treat everyone reasonably and respectfully while not letting them trample your boundaries or your time and energy.

It seems like you’re navigating your friendship with Morgan from a position of fear more than anything else — fear of inciting them, upsetting them, or making them feel challenged (to the point that you’re spending one to two hours at a time letting them vent when you’re supposed to be focused on your work).

Obviously it’s good to avoid upsetting people when you can, but when someone is going to be upset by your completely reasonable behavior, that’s on them, not on you. You like Morgan, but the relationship relies on you tiptoeing around to avoid setting them off by … doing your job? Being honest about where you see things differently?

Interestingly, at the same time that you’re prioritizing Morgan’s feelings above your own needs, you’re actually not treating them very respectfully! You’re misleading them about what you think and secretly resenting the time you’re spending with them, without setting the boundaries that could allow you to actually enjoy your time talking with them. Imagine if the roles were reversed; you’d probably be a bit mortified if you found out that someone you thought was a friend was secretly frustrated with you but continued to let you go on obliviously doing the things that were annoying them. I want to stress that I’m not saying that to blame you — you’re already blaming yourself far more than you should be — but to point out that your current framework for the relationship isn’t serving either of you well.

It’s probably worth digging into how you’ve gotten here (in particular, whether you have a pattern of people-pleasing tendencies that subvert your own needs), but let’s talk practical steps.

First and foremost, stop telling Morgan you’re available to talk when you’re actually busy. Morgan is asking if it’s a good time to talk! Take advantage of that and respond honestly: “Actually, no, I’m on deadline right now” … “I’m swamped today, hopefully later this week!” … “Sorry, can’t, need to focus on what I’m working on” … etc. These are all very normal things to say in an office. If you’ve literally never set those boundaries with Morgan before, you might feel a little awkward about it at first, but — again — these are normal things to say while you’re working. If it helps steel your resolve, remind yourself that at some point your boss or other colleagues are likely to notice you spending one to two hours at a time socializing instead of working and it’s not going to look good.

If Morgan is upset that you’re not as available anymore, that’s okay. You’re at work to work. If it helps, you can say something to explain it — like “I’ve realized I’m spending way too much time socializing and I’m worried my boss is noticing,” “I’m slammed lately, can’t spend as much time talking as I used to,” “I’m finding it rough to spend so much time on the negative parts of working here; for my own mental health, I can’t spend so much time complaining,” or whatever you’re comfortable saying.

If Morgan has feelings about you setting boundaries on your time, that’s something they’ll need to work out on their own. You don’t need to apologize or feel bad for needing to focus on your job or putting limits on your own emotional energy.

It sounds like you’re worried that if you set these boundaries, Morgan will lump you in with everyone else who has “invalidated their feelings” (by having a different perspective than they do) or who has pulled away from them. And they might! You can’t control that. But you’re not doing them any favors by handling them with kid gloves. Behave reasonably, expect other people to respond reasonably, and if they don’t, accept that that’s theirs to work through. It’s not your responsibility to insulate Morgan or anyone else from reasonable actions.

Last, the odor! Mildew is actually one of the easiest odors to address because it’s less personal than trying to address body odor. For whatever reason, “Oh, I think that coat might smell mildewy” tends to feel less like a personal critique. Any chance you’re up for mentioning it? It’s not your job to do that with someone who has already demonstrated they’re prone to feeling attacked — but it would be a kindness if you’re willing to.

The post how do I step back from a friendship with an intensely negative and argumentative coworker? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

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[personal profile] liadt posting in [community profile] unconventionalcourtship
It's the end of another [community profile] unconventionalcourtship round! Many thanks to all that participated this year. Whether you wrote fic, read fic, signed up, made banners, promoted the fest or fell down the UC Generator rabbit hole your participation was very much appreciated.

Now the fest is over here is this year's masterlist to peruse while you give yourself a pat on the back!

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