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Hi all! It's my birthday today, but I'm feeling a bit shitty as I haven't been in a good headspace lately. Got some messages from friends but not really in the mood to do something or see them today. But that's OK I guess, there always comes a time where I'm more in the mood to be social, just a strange situation to be in on your birthday.

I have been enjoying digging through Blue Prince though, so I guess I'll do that tonight with some pizza and maybe a chill podcast.

I've also been reading a bit more lately, currently going through Gate of Ivrel by C.J. Cherryh and A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. These were bought with my first wage (from a small part time job in a supermarket) in a long time. I'm trying to read more woman writers in science fiction, and I'm super impressed with both.

Enjoy your day and look at the small stuff that makes you happy!

currently reading: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Tonight this has crushed my soul

I fell into the field. Had my roommate not wanted to watch a particular channel at a particular time, y'all would have a rather different U.S. News community.

This was spring 1998, so at least we were past Braveheart running on some HBO channel 24/7 such that walking down the hallway to pee meant hearing it yet again.

Early on in my time as a columnist, I took aim at the administration, as I already saw what was happening. We were sold an amazing undergrad, but as things went on, it became increasingly clear we were just this pesky thing stopping UW from being able to fully focus on important things like research.

By underpaying grad students, of course.

As opinion editor a year after actually steeping myself in the newsroom (and production room), I stepped up my assaults on the administration; by this point, I was calling out individual administrators for their actions.

A year later, I was managing editor and at this point had no fucks left to give. I raked the university president over the coals over, and over, and over. Not weekly via my column, as that would have been tedious, but I was running the editorial board, so I could certainly do it anonymously with some frequency.

We had those times where College Republicans would steal and burn issues of The Daily just outside the Communications building. Thing is, they didn't do enough research to figure out which side of the building the newsroom was on, so they were burning shit outside of professors' offices with all of us blissfully unaware until someone needed to take an unusual path (usually via the health center) to grab lunch.

There was a vice-provost who had to endlessly come to my defense throughout my time there, from contributing writer, to designer and columnist, to opinion ed, to managing ed. It wasn't that he agreed with me; he thought the purpose of the university was to foster an environment where ideas could be exchanged.

When we remove this from campus, it is questionable what universities are doing. At that point, it's an unapologetic trade school, shitting out good little bitches for corporate America.

I never intended to go into journalism, everything my parents did to the contrary, from getting me a rubber movable-type setup -- which I loved -- around 4 to a copy of The Newsroom, software for the Apple ][+ that allowed one to take copy and art and design a page crudely.

Right, this is normal for being 8. But I'm named after a WWII journalist, so despite their protestations when I went off the reservation in college and starting prioritizing my time in the newsroom over being fucked to go to class, surprised Pikachu.

There is no purpose in a college newsroom where the opinion page is Dear Leader approved.

It's nothing new, private companies love to use governamental resources. It doesn't matter how they gain access to them. In this case, it's news about the biggest health insurance provider in Brazil deciding it's cheaper to outsource procedures to the public sector and then pretend they will pay their debt later. They won't, but they would profit anyway, because the government works with outdated numbers and charge less for the same procedures provided by the private sector.

• The company finding a way to recover when their stock drop when the government forces them to improve their plans: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/brazils-hapvida-corrects-accounting-balances-renegotiates-debt-2025-03-19/

• News talking about how health insurance providers had 430% increase in profits and the practices that allow that (in Portuguese): https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/hapvida-desenrola-divida-com-o-sus-e-tem-perdao-de-866-milhoes/

The text "AI ART & intellectual property" in blue, next to the ancom flag with a green brain made of circuits over it. This is all on a digital art wooden background featuring individual textured planks with varying distances between them lined up as a wall.

Ran into an old Reddit post (December 2022) on an account I no longer use. It's funny how this sort of writing has a binary chance of aging well. There's never like "meh, I don't see any relevance today." Without further ado ...

Today's "Jesus fuck, I wouldn't have run that" in the Post was apparently my lightbulb moment on how the desk — and the recurring rounds of layoffs on what remains — had a far larger impact than anyone seems to be acknowledging widely enough to have hit my radar. If you've got links to stories or studies, I'd like to see them if the hed doesn't start with "Here's"!

As fev has been pointing out for years, the most important function served by the copydesk in its late-20th-century incarnation was the framing. Usually, we see this writ small, sort of easy to identify and purge at the unit level: the individual story, where we call it removing bias.

Something I'm just coming to understand is great copy editors I've worked with knew their fucking framing. And as the word itself implies, everything else is inexorably tied to that skill. Bias, tone, when to turn off proofreading (and yes, there are times to run intentional errors), page composition from a content perspective, when to use uncensored vulgarity.

When to spike. I'd go so far as to consider framing the central pillar of the always-nebulous "editorial judgment."

I think we've all gotten the regurgitated press release from the green reporter we knew was coming from the time we saw the incredibly vague photo assignment. That doesn't need to be spiked, but it sure as fuck ain't running tonight.

What does need to be spiked is naked propaganda like the Post is putting forth in its breathless crusade for a recession at the same time we're finally wising up to the fact that modern recessions are engineered and necessary to transfer wealth from any pesky middle class that are just about to or just bought their first appreciating asset by tanking its value and buying up the fire sale in classic rent-seeking fashion.

I know of no competent copyeditor that would have allowed that shit to print where it did. "Did Editorial accidentally drop this in the A1 queue?"

When you've nailed your framing, you're just using tools to do a job. Everything else can be learned through pattern recognition, which is why most jobs seem so easy after several years.

Here's the thing: If you're doing a job you know you're good at, you're focusing on different aspects of it than a novice. If you navigate InDesign using mostly hotkeys, you have exponentially more time to devote to design and editing than someone looking for the right dropdown menu every few seconds.

When you've gotten 10-inch spot news down to a five-minute science, you have more time to see if the 34th Ld moved before sending A11.

In all cases where you save time on the technical end, not only does the product improve, but you also gain time to ask if you should be proceeding as directed. And if a red flag goes up, no matter how small, the answer is "no."

A competent desk functioned as a bit of a hive mind, with earlier members teaching new members data points as they come up, eventually getting everyone to at least 90% competence and at most 10% questions. If you've ever been floored that a seasoned editor didn't have an answer to something, it wasn't that the desk didn't know, this was just on the long tail ("Well, last time that happened here was '84, and Larry wasn't here yet, so I don't know.").

So while the tone and goal levers were set from on high, the desk was the engineering crew deciding what the levers did within the less-than-technical spex provided.

While no desk is a democracy, and style dictates do arrive without recourse, I found desks to be surprisingly egalitarian when it came to new ideas, even on desks with burned-out reporters. If the data proved that Method Y was unequivocally better than Method X, Method Y became the new SOP. No one sat around defending inferior methods, even if there was grumbling about relearning. When new data debunked standing policy, policy was changed. The elephant was acknowledged and escorted out of the room. Almost everything not AP Style-related was unanimous consent.

In effect, this led to the desk having a much larger role than I certainly realized in the beginning. If a copyeditor was overruling the city ed and spiking a story, that was it unless they wanted the ME involved, because bringing up a spike meant the desk would not run it, and that is a large problem when it comes to publication.

For those of you for whom this sounds foreign (and you're picturing it in black and white), this was still the case less than 10 years ago, but dying rapidly because buyouts targeted those with the longest service (most expensive), and there were several rounds of those before centralization, furloughs and the layoffs even started.

Copyeditors became superfluous as soon as being first became more important than being right (both are, of course, important, but only the latter must be true). Desks were wound down and centralized, copyeditors forbade from reading copy (Gannett/GateHouse policy from at least my joining in 2015) and turned into movers of rectangles on larger glowing rectangles instead of designers.

And that's all shit we have to deal with for choosing this field in college.

But the impact to society at large is unmistakable: reputable outlets publishing stories that a 20-year desk veteran would have spiked was only made possible by killing the institutional guardrails that underpinned local and national media's gravitas. When everyone's in the first five years of their career, you're not running an established newspaper; you're running the college daily 2.0, clickbait, propaganda and all, because that's all they know.

It was pointed out to me that the following post was inappropriate for !lgbtq+. I said I'd not repost, but as with all useful things in life, the first time is never effective. I'm a biased opinion, but I believe this lies at the intersection of that being appropriate and larger impacts in interaction.

And, I mean, fuck it, if I wrote it, may as well keep it published.

---

My first kiss was under a table in kindergarten with a girl with short hair.

It would later turn out, as discovered via Facebook, that she’d gone full alt butch. Which, uh … well, that’s my type. The die was cast at 5. I liked her because she didn’t want to act like a girl – the rest were somewhat boring, and I found myself already drawn to the idea of equality sted gender roles.

Not that I knew this at the time. It was 1984 (no, not that one), and I just found myself drawn to her being someone who was fun to hang out with because we didn’t have to play any of the games surrounding other interactions. I have a bit of a guess about what her family structure was like, but such things were not discussed back then and would have anyway been inappropriate for 5-year-olds.

So when I met the girl at 17 in the dorm my first summer in college who’d introduce me to the rave scene that year and play a major catalyst role two years later, scrambling my seemingly direct journalism path I’d only stumbled into eight months earlier, it wasn’t unusual but rather a return to form. She ended up marrying a guy (and becoming a professor), so not fully on brand, but that’s the joy of being bi.

We never got together, much to my consternation. But I pulled up an email she sent about how the path meant for me was not what society expects when I dropped out of college for the first time, in fall 1997.

"you're braver than i shall ever be.

remember to follow the sunset - not the sunrise. it can only blind you and lead you where only the teachers and preachers want you to be.

always take that shadowed path. that is where you will find happiness. not many find it there, but you are one of those few - i know. whether it be early in the morning, downtown in a strange place with some bizzare chick...

good traveling.

this is is your life. i am so jealous that you are taking it upon yourself to be your own life. someday i will be that brave...

i wish you all the luck in the world."

Quite a bit to take in at 18, with years to unpack. And, indeed, the role I settled into in journalism would not be a byline but rather getting shit done without recognition on the desk.

I’d then finally get laid at 18 by a woman who had short hair and would go on to marry a woman years later. She's cheated on her wife twice with me over the years, in addition to having come out (no, she wasn’t there yet) to visit me in Virginia for a week before she met her wife. She was crucial as another catalyst, as without her getting me a hotel room, I’d not have met my second ex-wife.

I’ve never had a relationship with a straight woman. I just can’t understand this obsession with things like makeup and celebrities. Those are uninteresting topics.

So, we have all this backstory, and then the college newsroom happens and I’m living with my boss within days. There’s a community where this is a meme, but it rarely involves men. The raver shows back up and shatters this, and while we still never were directly involved, this leads to chartering an international flight after missing a ferry to meet a woman. That girlfriend was the only one I’ve had a threesome with.

The hits keep piling up. After a few years in the wilderness relationshipwise working on my career, I get a note of interest from a woman with hair shorter than mine on OKCupid. Within a week, well ... we went directly from Starbucks to her dorm room.

And the same week, I reached out to a woman with a collar in her profile pic who wanted nothing to do with me and was hours out of town. I married both, just not at the same time. The second had a five-year gap from that first contact, and neither of us was actually aware we’d communicated in the past because she'd created a new account.

I moved in with her after 12 days, which involved jettisoning her boyfriend Christmas Eve, and three days later, the penny dropped when she showed me an old photo ... the one I'd messaged in 2004.

The second ex had a girlfriend for much of our marriage, as denying her pussy access seemed unfair.

The day that marriage fell apart, I was again in my boss’ bed. Lesbian, of course. I’d no idea she wasn’t straight, but I damn well should have from prior art. She was a femme (and likely still is), but I was attracted to her competence and saw my marriage collapsing from outside factors, and she had that “get shit done” attitude that’s an aphrodisiac.

After cohabitating for a time, my kink side reared its ugly head. She was as vanilla as they come, which strained things to the breaking point.

I’m heavily aware of my needs at this point and thus not interested in unmodded straight vanilla women. This generally leads to bad outcomes via batshit, but the heart wants what it wants.

It’s just crazy that this whole thing started when I was under a table at 5. Who knows their trajectory from then?

I'd like to work for you

I'm a moderator on beehaw.org, and one of the admins told me about your campaign. We're a bit of a leftist collective. I've seen some of your coverage and of course your announcement video. I'm inspired.

So, here's the hard turn: I was working most recently as a green-energy and -tech reporter, which came to a screeching halt for self-evident reasons Jan. 20. I'm currently homeless and unemployed in Texas, after winning national awards for writing decades ago. The country has gone to shit, and I left commercial journalism in 2020 (just before the pandemic -- bad idea) because I no longer believed we were serving the public good as the Fourth Estate.

I can't do something I don't believe in for very long.

I started in college as a columnist, veered into design and ended up opinion editor 17 months later because I was so pissed off with how being edited for the first time went that I said "fuck it, I'll do it myself."

My first editorial took first place from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, and I wasn't even aware it had been entered into the contest. It was about the redevelopment of affordable student housing, and not particularly nice to the UW administration.

I dropped out of college after hitting managing editor, as I felt there was nothing left to learn. I got my first copyediting job in 2001 and was second in command at a daily with yet another award-winning column by 2003.

So I know what I'm doing and how to talk to journalists. I'm not going to claim that I'm your guy for public outreach, but I've been playing this game since the '90s and can have that five-minute bonding conversation at the start of a call before heading into the actual content. And, of course, I can also write.

I really like what you're doing and would love to be a part of it. I'm also desperate and living in a van, so do with that what you will.

Regards, Pete Hahnloser

Today's fun time is that my internet billing date got moved (at my request), but incorrectly, and now they attempted to take out my automatic payment the day after the interest hit my credit card. So I'm sort of dead in the water, using my phone as a hotspot, but my data plan is very limited.

My mom is helping me out but on fixed income and can't do anything for a week (pension check hits the first of the month). ~~So I'm reluctantly making an explicit plea for assistance, as one cannot find work without internet access, and I've no money to buy anything somewhere with Wi-Fi (I do have a few days of food left, at least). If you have CashApp and are willing to help, please message me.~~

A friend came through with six times what I needed. I'm going to have a real dinner tonight, real dinner tonight! (god, I feel old)

To be very brief, I hate the coldest part of the winter here in Maine (January/February) and need a couple of breaks for my sanity.

I have a ‘plan a’ (visit my brother a couple of times) and a ‘plan b’ (take my eldest son with me to Boston a couple of times).

I would like to have a ‘plan c’ to ensure that I’ll have an avenue of escape.

If you would be so kind to provide me with any ideas, then I would appreciate it very much.

Preferably, the idea would include getting to a place with less cold/snow, be reasonably affordable and not being alone.

Thanks in advance and I’ll repost this, if need be, in a couple of months.

(I will preface this with saying that I'm rather high right now. But I do think the general sentiment will hold up in the morning.)

The older I get, the more I value interactions by the amount of kindness involved in them.

I've always valued kindness. Growing up, I was lucky to have good role models, so it was easy.

Unfortunately, I think many of us learn from a young age that there are many situations in which kindness is not particularly valued by others. So we don't really get rid of it, but we downplay it. It's very strange when you actually think about it.

Anyway, it's nice to be in a space where that sort of thing is actively curated. We're all free to choose to interact with people who are not kind whenever we want. I imagine that many of us intentionally do so, and that can be very worthwhile in its own way. But it's nice to be able to just be(e) and not worry about all that meanness.

I've been going on about kindness, and the rule is be(e) nice. I do think there's a slight difference, but I'm quickly losing the vocabulary to describe it. I think niceness is perhaps easier to achieve when interacting with people one doesn't know?

This hit hard because that's exactly the sort of shit my second ex put me through. To the point that I categorically refused to open any joint accounts. She would have just stolen the money.

You don't marry a copyeditor for the lavish lifestyle, hence why when a millionaire offered to buy her a house if she left me, I basically said "go for it," and we separated. It was a wrenching five years of recovering from all the forms of abuse she imparted -- in addition to the financial shenanigans, she was verbally, emotionally and physically abusive.

Karma being how it is, she never got the house because he was an abusive fuck. But there was no way I was taking her back, so she lost everything. I mean, she kept my name and inexplicably still wears my wedding collar despite getting divorced in 2016.

The downward spiral I'm now in was started by a call in August or September, with her telling me she was getting remarried. I didn't want her anymore, but it was unnecessary stress, exacerbated when she texted a month later to tell me what a fucking idiot I was for believing her. She wasn't engaged; she just still wanted to fuck up my life while the van shit continued going wrong.

Then the election, where it became clear my job had a shelf life, and now I'm so stressed I usually look like I have Parkinson's. Those 20-second stretches where I'm not shaking uncontrollably are a nice reprieve.

(this one, I'm lightly editing)

Service with a smile

How to make friends and influence people while standing behind a counter

by Peter Hahnloser

The Daily of the University of Washington

Dec. 2, 1998

I can see anyone who's read my prior columns thinking to themselves, "Who doesn't this guy hate?" So far, I've covered affirmative action, religious folk, and people who couldn't write themselves out of an acorn. I realize that this has probably given people the wrong impression.

I don't intend to single any group out; rather, it's the general public that concerns me. I feel that humanity is heading downhill, not because of politics, religion or misspellings, but because of my time in the service industry. The more exposure to the public I get, the less I feel I can trust people to do just about anything.

In December 1995, I was hired for my first job. I was 16, and a job allowed me to get a car. A Boston Market opened right next to my house and one day, as I was walking home from school, I was approached by a guy offering me a job there. They offered $5.75 starting pay, and that sounded good to me.

After a week of training at another store and a week in training classes, the store opened. Throughout January, I looked forward to going to work -- and then I realized the folly of my ways.

I got one testy customer after another, until finally, I snapped. I started using the customers for personal gain -- namely, stories to treasure for the rest of my life. The beauty of it is, few of them realized I was giving them anything but top-notch service. This pattern continued through a brief stint at Arby's and then again at the Market.

So, if you have a job in the service industry, or have a temp job for the season, read on, and find out how you, too, can come up with entertainment at the expense of others, getting paid all the while.

Fun with menus

These days, many chains have modular menus -- you can move items around to change prices and available items. Beware, though: A fake price is false advertising, so be subtle. We had a modular drink board, so one of my shenanigans was making the free refills run 99 cents each. Sure, it makes no sense, but no one caught on for nearly three weeks, and we enjoyed the puzzled faces of customers who knew something wasn't quite right, but were too timid to say anything.

Labels everywhere

Sometimes you need to point out the painfully obvious to customers. I once was given the task of making cutlery labels, and produced "forks," "spoons" and "knaves" -- this went unnoticed for more than two months.

Affirm the customer's stupidity

When the customer asks a stupid question, it can be a reflex to laugh and say "Damn, are you stupid!" However, this has a generally detrimental effect on your job status. The key is to follow the customer into the land of the absurd.

One night, I was working drive-thru when a customer asked "That carved ham ... is that the same as a Ham Carver?" For those unfamiliar with the Boston Market menu of the time, one of these is a meal, located on the "meals" board, and the other is a sandwich, located on the "sandwiches" board.

Here's the kicker: One was, at the time, $5.49, while the other was $3.99. So how could they be the same? Well, I didn't want to tell the customer he was wrong, so I replied "Yes, sir, that's why it appears on the menu board two different times, and each time with a different price."

Someone else came on and corrected me, but by then I'd had my fun and went off to stock the knaves.

Point out the obvious

Early in my service career, a newlywed couple came in -- they still used terms of endearment profusely.

"What do you want, honey?"

"I don't know, sugar, what do you want?"

You can imagine how this continued. Eventually, the woman tapped on the cold case glass, pointing at the cranberry sauce, and asked, "What's this here?"

My immediate response: "That's glass, ma'am."

Her husband fucking lost it, head first into the glass laughing his ass off. I hope I didn't cause a divorce.

Yes, we don't have any

One night, a woman came in hell-bent on getting tortellini salad, which we had run out of 30 minutes earlier. When ordering her two sides, she pointed an accusatory finger at the cold case and asked as to the whereabouts of the tortellini.

I explained that we were out, and she asked if I was sure. Considering that we had this nasty habit of checking in back for more when we ran out of a side, I was pretty sure that we were out, but she assumed this was only a ruse.

"Can you check again?"

"Sure," I said, and proceeded to go in back, grab a soda and kick back for five minutes before I returned and announced that -- lo and behold -- we really were out of tortellini salad.

She went ballistic at this point -- started shaking and whatnot -- and said shrilly, "You're telling me there's no tortellini salad in the entire store?"

Essentially, yes, that's exactly what I was telling her, but this had gone on long enough, and I tired of her attitude quickly, so I responded with "There may be some out back in the dumpster, but I assure you, there's none anywhere else."

I almost got fired.

The customer is always blind

Funny thing about chickens, they all look the same once plucked, and they all have the same anatomy.

Yet a customer who ordered a quarter white declared that his meat had no skin. I quickly explained that there was skin o' plenty on the ridge of the breast, where it is commonly found.

This simply wouldn't do -- he wanted skin on the part of the breast where it met the thigh (and where, consequently, there was none). Even after explaining to him that no such chickens existed, he demanded another piece, which he then accused of also being skinless.

I finally gave up and rang him up, ignoring his shrieks of displeasure. He threatened to never come back. Darn.

Can you hold on?

Oftentimes, especially in drive-thru, a customer will ask if they can have a second to decide. A good response to this has always been "I'm sorry, we're fresh out of seconds -- would you like to try a minute instead?"

Au jus night

Alright, so this isn't really something everyone can apply to their jobs, but it should be a good starting point from which to brainstorm. It takes the ability to keep a straight face under duress, but it pays off.

The store I worked at was a very slow one, and there were only three people working at any given time. I was working drive-thru one night and decided to have a little fun.

Arby's serves french dip submarine sandwiches that come with a cup of au jus. To portion the au jus out, we had a vat that held about two gallons from which we poured these cups. In an average night, we'd sell two french dips, accompanied by two cups of au jus.

I realized that we were wasting a lot of au jus in serving only 16 ounces of the 256-ounce capacity, and decided to organize au jus night, an evening of fun and festivities wherein all drive-thru customers were offered a cup of au jus with their order.

Perhaps "offered" is a bit misleading. When repeating their order back to them, I'd throw a cup of au jus in the middle, and only one person caught me in the act -- out of around 60 orders.

When the customer would arrive at the window, their order -- complete with au jus (at 30 cents a cup) -- would be waiting. This included those who only got a beverage, and these people would invariably be surprised at the small sack accompanying their cup.

"What's that?"

"Your cup of au jus, sir."

"I didn't order a cup of au jus. Why would I want au jus with a drink?"

"Frankly, sir, I was wondering the same thing myself, but I figured you knew what you wanted."

"Well, I don't want au jus."

"No problem, sir."

Admittedly, I had to refund most of these drink-only au jus orders, but I kept the declined au jus container close at hand for the next person.

I emptied two vats that evening, and I thought for sure that the fun was over, but I later learned that the management had caught wind of my escapade.

They saw an errant amount of au jus being sold for the evening, and I think they could have seen at most two explanations: one, an employee was fucking around, and two, there was a sudden increase in demand for au jus.

Management being how it is, they took option two, and proceeded to purchase six months' worth of au jus for the next week. I got another job three days later. They probably still have the au jus.

As you can see, with a little imagination, a little confidence, and a lot of spiteful feelings, your customers can be your playthings. But, as always, be careful: It's all fun and games until someone loses their job.

Then -- it's just fun.

I'm not editing this, as it was already edited, and capitalization on ethnicities were wildly different in 1998. This is my first published piece, the one I swore I'd never share, but it's actually not as bad as I feared. This is how I got into journalism, and while I don't agree with all of it now, it's pretty fucking clear I wasn't bad at this to start.

Turning the Tables of Discrimination

by Peter Hahnloser

Contributing Writer

The Daily of the University of Washington

April 14, 1998

I'm proud of my heritage. This is a good thing, right? I mean, considering that whenever television news reporters cover minority rallies, we invariably hear from the leader of the rally, "We're here because we're proud of our heritage, and we want to encourage our fellow (insert race here) people to stop putting up with being treated differently because of their race." And then the reporter on the scene mentions how he's glad that people are gathering like this to show unity. Television programs like to stick to this format to make sure they appear to appreciate people of different races.

So then, what's wrong with my being proud of my heritage? I'm white. I mean really, really white. I don't even tan. Consider dead people: I'm pale by comparison, that's how white I am. Here's the problem: The fact that I'm proud to be who I am makes me inherently racist in the eyes of many. If I were black, I'd be cheered for giving the system the finger by being proud of my heritage. Since I'm white, the NAACP (once they read this) will ask that all blacks cease associating with me.

While I'm still warming up, I'll mention that from this point on, I won't be using any politically correct terms. This means "African Americans" will be "blacks" and "Asian Americans" will be "asians" -- and of course, "Persons of varying Hispanic Heritage" will be "hispanics."

Think this is a racist language to use? When's the last time you heard a white person referred to as "European American"? Answer: you haven't, and it isn't hard to understand why not.

Think about it for a moment: A European American would be someone who is simultaneously from America and Europe. I can't imagine this as being the correct term even for someone who was conceived while his parents were in France on their honeymoon, then was born in California. Any compound phrase consisting of two continents is equally invalid.

A few days ago, I made the mistake of referring to asians as "asians" when talking to a Chinese friend of mine. She immediately got on my case for "grouping all asians into the same category." Well, how do people refer to whites? Usually, it's "white" -- or for the more sophisticated, "caucasian." This terminology is equally guilty of grouping all whites into one category.

Then there is the heinous beast that is the means of referring to hispanics. Having just been admitted into the UW a year ago, fresh in my memory is the "ethnicity" box on the college applications I filled out. The list of options an all of these applications was almost the same: white, black, asian, and then at least four dozen sub-categories for hispanics. Why is this necessary? Do blacks specify "Black -- Zimbabwe?" Should we include a "White -- Ohio" check box? Or a "Black -- Ohio" box?

I can't get over the irony of the fact that we live in a time in which society is supposedly pushing for the erasure of race in people's minds, and yet new sub-categories of race are appearing almost daily. How can unity possibly stem from further separation by classification?

After I filled out the 10-page application (eight pages of which were racial checkboxes) to get into the UW, I joined the masses of other freshmen admitted for Autumn 1997. I remember the omnipresent statement of non-discrimination -- followed by a strict policy of Affirmative Action.

This, of course, is another contradiction. The university seeks to have an ethnic breakdown which is identical to the ethnic breakdown of Washington state. But using the UW's own formula, the most underrepresented race at the UW is "White/Caucasian."

Essentially, those wily folks in Admissions are breaking their own "strict policy," but since they're only discriminating against whites, it's OK.

The explanations for why this is acceptable are numerous, and usually involve the history of the United States -- specifically, slave trading or something about blacks having to sit in the backs of busses in the 1950s. I do not endorse the decisions made by "my forefathers" to these ends, but at the same time, I'd argue that the past is the past and that I haven't personally owned black slaves (or slaves of any race, for that matter), nor have I sent anyone to the back of any bus.

The UW administration says it wants an ethnically diverse campus. Yet in just three quarters, I've discovered that segregation on campus is the norm. The average walk from Haggett to Schmitz Hall will take one past groups of blacks, groups of asians, and groups of whites, all happily talking exclusively to people of the same race.

So how is our ethnically diverse campus helping students understand the cultures of people of different ethnicity? Simply putting people of various ethnicities onto a campus does not mean they will interact, and looking around campus, it appears it doesn't happen at all. "Well, you're not as qualified as our hispanic, black, or asian applicants, but since we need another white to have similar demographics to the greater Seattle area, we hereby offer you this job."

No, I've never heard that sentence before, but if I ever do, my response will be a gesture involving my middle finger and a simple "Go fuck yourself."

This is Affirmative Action (AA). Never mind qualifications -- "We need another hispanic." Who cares about education -- "We need another black." Forget experience -- "We're looking for asians."

These are ludicrous excuses used by companies and universities across the country because it makes them look accepting and progressive.

Plenty of people would argue with me to the bitter end that AA does not mean quotas. The argument is usually that it encourages companies and universities to hire (or accept) anyone but white males. Alright, I'll accept that, tentatively. Consider then, that some sort of standard must be introduced in order to decide just how many people who aren't white males need to be employed, since few companies or universities would plan to phase out white males completely.

Let me rephrase that: quotas.

I'd be insulted to be hired for or accepted by any organization solely on the basis of my ethnicity. Ignoring my strengths and abilities would be patently offensive. I fail to understand how anyone could support laws that force this way of thinking upon society.

Let's bring the NAACP into this again. When California recently outlawed AA, a representative from the NAACP gave a press conference in which he encouraged blacks to boycott universities without AA. Why? Because these universities would only accept blacks to support their athletic departments. This way, blacks could defeat the nefarious schemes of the whites who want their schools to have impressive football teams.

Being a spokesman, the NAACP representative worded this so it sounded noble, but even if it were, how does this help the greater goal of equality and understanding? All this does is bring us back to the same old story of blacks vs. whites.

What's wrong with using academic merit as the only consideration in college admissions? Unfair to minorities? No. It is unfair to people who could not access a good educational system for secondary education. It is unfair to people whose lives at home made studying impossible. Economic considerations need to be made, but not racial considerations. Whites from the inner city are similar to everyone else from the inner city, and blacks from the suburbs are similar to everyone else from the suburbs.

The perception of equality cannot be achieved by AA. If anything, it further endorses discrimination, albeit in a sense different from the historical one. But hey, why not discriminate against the white babies born today? Just look at what their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents did.

I'm not really sure how well this aged. Some parts, sure, but others ...

Oops, I'm voting Republican

by Peter Hahnloser

Managing Editor

The Daily of the University of Washington

October 25, 2000

Oh, the thrill of voting. Where is it?

This year's presidential choices are dull. No matter who wins, four years of blah will ensue domestically, and if the United States decides to get into a war, the forces will be led by someone who has no idea what he's doing.

So nix the presidential race as a reason to go out and vote. There are still plenty of reasons left, however. The gubernatorial race and popular state initiatives should compel people to bother leaving the house on what is almost guaranteed to be a rainy, unpleasant Tuesday in November.

In the race for the top state office are an incumbent and - for all intents and purposes - a political greenhorn (yes, yes, and the myriad others who will receive embarrassment for losing by such a margin). Not surprisingly, one is a Democrat and the other a Republican, even though these days that means relatively little. The problem is, there's really only one choice.

And, as I'm a registered Democrat, it's somewhat annoying that the clear choice is John Carlson.

I've lived in Washington for more than three years, and in that time, Gary Locke has made a number of major decisions. I'm thinking of a round number - specifically, zero.

Now, I'm not all for this "more cars will reduce traffic" theory the Republicans are hell-bent on, but I'd rather see a governor go balls-to-the-wall on an absolutely asinine decision than do absolutely nothing. At least things will change under Carlson. Not necessarily for the better - but then we'll finally have something going so horrifically wrong that in four years, we can get a do-something Democrat to set things right again.

Indulge me in this pop-quiz: What's the last thing Gary Locke did to affect your life? Yes, you can have a few more moments - any answer would be a miracle. It seems Locke has been busier effecting lives than affecting them, given his no-longer-childless status.

So, you ask, we have a useless governor - why does that necessitate electing a Republican? It does for the same reason I-200 was a good initiative to get on the ballot: A scary number of people don't see anything going wrong until it slaps them in the face, thus forcing them to act.

With nothing going on in the governor's mansion, we have nothing to support and nothing to protest. Democracy literally flies out the window for the simple reason that no measurable amount of public opinion is expressed.

A good example of a take-action-right-now-and-always-in-the-wrong-direction leader is Seattle Mayor Paul Schell. Between his performance through the WTO conference, his nullification of the All-Ages Dance Ordinance and his failure to veto the city council's scrapping of the initiative-spawned monorail project, he's demonstrated an uncanny ability to fuck up every single decision.

As a result, people are outraged, and it's become pretty clear that Mr. Schell is a one-term mayor on a nonstop trip to obscurity.

So, give Carlson a chance - in the unlikely case that he improves life in Washington, we all win. And if he doesn't - damn will we have a good race in four years.

In that time, Locke's biggest accomplishment will probably be having another kid.

beginning this week's reading:

The column I referenced in my desperation post.

I never thought I'd complain that cigarettes weren't killing me quickly enough.

Everyone's life sucks -- so it goes, and so we've grown accustomed to it. A few people get to the point where they just can't handle it anymore, and try to speed up the death process. We label them as crazy. Sane people don't try to commit suicide.

I guess that makes me insane.

As I came to, I was only vaguely aware of existence in general. I knew I couldn't move any of the muscles in my body, and I thought I was watching ceiling fly past my eyes -- inasmuch as I could open them. It felt like a hospital, and I heard someone talking about ecstasy, GHB, Valium and alcohol before everything faded away again.

There has been much talk about MDMA in recent months -- it seems the media finally caught on to something ravers had known about for quite some time. For the most part, we were warned about how much more damaging ecstasy is than most people think. And all the reports seemed to end with an abrupt "no one knows about its long-term effects."

I do.

I've taken nearly 100 tabs of ecstasy in the past year. In fact, when people ask me what I'm on, I don't say "E" -- that's not nearly specific enough. Maybe tonight it's a white diamond, or a triple-stack smiley or a shamrock. More likely, it's more than one of those.

From my humble beginnings in August, one gelcap of an unnamed variety, I made it up to six per week by February, usually two on Friday, three on Saturday, and one sometime during the week. I once did E at the Sunset Bowl.

Rolling and bowling -- an explosive combination.

What started out as a pleasurable escape from the monotony of "real life" that allowed me to be more open with people I didn't know became real life. The days I wasn't rolling became the fiction, fraught with depression. And the only way out of that funk was another E-bomb.

Another party, another night of empty fun -- I no longer knew what love was without drugs. I spent the weeks waiting for the weekends, and considering that by January I'd dropped out of school and lost my job, there was plenty of weekday time to spend thinking about it -- and to become more depressed.

It's amazing what a lack of serotonin can do for one's social skills. I became unable to communicate with anyone unless they were on drugs or we were talking about drugs. And, of course, in the latter case, we'd ignore the fact that drugs were slowly chipping away at our lives.

Finally, it became overwhelming. Blaming my problems on random factors wasn't working anymore, and by March, I realized I had to stop with the E. I went on vacation, stayed drug-free for a week (for the first time in six months), and when I got back into town, pulled my life back together -- I got back into school, got a job and pretended to be back in the swing of things.

And so life got manageable again. Enough so that I was confident that I could do E responsibly. As if such a thing exists.

One tab a week became two, and two became four. And with the E came the warped impression of the world again. I thought I'd fallen in love like never before after taking a few weeks off from partying and dropping one tab. But ecstasy is not the happy pill many believe it to be -- it merely enhances one's feelings, so when depression set in again and I took four tabs on Saturday, it was a recipe for disaster.

Actually, it was the appetizer; the list read off by the doctors at the hospital rounded out the meal. By the time I really came to, I found myself unable to talk because I was on a respirator. My right lung had collapsed. Something was going into my arm via an IV, but I didn't know what. And the uncomfortable feeling in my crotch was thanks to a catheter.

I know a number of people who have done E for longer than I have and never tried to kill themselves -- but then again, I'm not the first to do it.

Ecstasy can facilitate amazing experiences, but they aren't experiences I feel like opening myself up to anymore. I may be half Swiss, but I don't feel comfortable having so many holes in my arm.

I first tried to kill myself in 2000, and writing about it of course resulted in another fucking award from Columbia.

My drug dealer broke into my apartment, found my phone, called everyone he'd ever heard me talk about, and then finally 911. I'd been thorough.

At that point, it was merely personal problems; we now have systemic ones.

I'm still crashing with a friend but return to the marginally movable trash can tomorrow.

I don't know what I'm looking for by posting. I just know "not this" is where I'm at in life, and one can only spend so much time with the crisis line.

Sorry not sorry

Hi! I'm newer to the Fediverse and brand new to Beehaw. I've used Reddit for years, but I'm seeking greener shores as big tech has gotten real weird.

When I'm not reading, attempting to be a guitarist or fooling with fountain pens, I like to paint my nails! Do I color in the lines? No. Do I do a perfect job? Also no. But I pick fun colors and always, always, always add glitter. Did you color your nails? I wanna see!

(Side bar, I low-key wish the Fediverse had more places for beauty inspo. Let's see pretty nails, hair and outfits, please!)

Maybe I should already be writing my memoir. Apologies for any inconsistencies on editing or tense. This was written while things were going well, and I've tried to before posting make some upgrades, but a 98% success rate as a copyed is off the scale. This is a lot of copy to revisit, and if people were able to edit themselves, not much point in the role.

Back in 2004, I'd been living in Oregon for about a year after being in Virginia for my first two jobs. I grew up in Phoenix and went to school in Seattle, so the West is my natural habitat, but I didn't really know anyone in town (population 20,000 -- the smallest town I'd lived in at that point). I'd just broken up with my first girlfriend in four years, and a girl I'd met online when I was 15 who I still talked to (we ended up in Phoenix at the same time in 2002 and finally sealed the deal, as it were) suggested OK Cupid as a good site to meet the type of chick who likes nerds.

So I signed up, made a profile, took some tests and answered a couple thousand match questions. I was bored. I talked with a few of them, sometimes for a few months, other times I'd e-mail with an expression of interest only to be shot down or ignored. And then there was one who contacted me: my ex-wife.

There was one chick that I had a total crush on, short hair, into S&M, cute as fuck -- I hadn't really had a chance to do anything about the curiosity I had about kink, and said as much. I don't remember if she even responded to me when I admitted I was curious about learning. I think I got a one-line "I don't have any interest in teaching someone" response.

If there's one thing I know in life, it's when I've been shot down, so I gave up. My ex-wife and I got serious soon thereafter, so it wasn't something I gave too much thought to.

She and I got married in 2007, I got laid off a few times (the newspaper industry isn't the most stable), we lived apart for about eight months later that year into 2008, and when she finished school in Ashland, we were together again -- but it was never the same. After another threatened layoff, I took a job in Taos, N.M., as the special sections editor for the local paper, and things unraveled rather quickly (She grew up in Idaho, and Ashland was her first foray far from family.).

I had a nervous breakdown, quit my job and she left me. Thus began more moving around, first moving in with my mom in Santa Fe, N.M., (I'm not appending states because I think folks don't know; I'm just following AP Style) then getting an initial interview for a copy-editing position for a medical publishing company in Walla Walla, Wash. After the phone interview went well, they told me the next step was an in-person interview, but I'd have to pay for half the flight.

So, as I'd done once before (my interview in Virginia was in October 2001, and as one might imagine, flights were hard to get at that time), I packed up everything I'd need to get my new household going into my Civic and drove up to Portland to await the next step. My college roommate was from the area, and I originally thought I could stay with his parents (I'm more comfortable around them than around my own), but with the economy already having gone south, not only were him and his brother back home, but pretty much everyone of our generation had moved back in with their parents. So, I lived in a hotel for a couple of weeks as other things kept going wrong.

The medical company got back to me and said they had no interest in talking to me further. So, I was royally fucked.

One of my groomsmen was also my former boss (first layoff) at a copy store in Ashland. I got a hold of him from Portland and asked if I could crash at his place for a week or two while I worked my network and found a job in the Medford, Ore., area. We hadn't seen each other in a couple of years, but he agreed to it, so I went to his place in mid-October last year.

I spent a third of the time looking for jobs that didn't really exist. Interviews went nowhere. Another third, we had very serious discussions about going into business together. The other third, we drank.

We had a blast. I lived on his sofa, and his kids lived at the house every other weekend. I'd never had small kids around, and they were very well-behaved, so I adapted to the idea of children in the house. We both love cooking, so we were almost in competition to make the best meals, and thus ate well. But by Thanksgiving, a week or two had stretched to nearly two months, and while we'd talked about being roommates, it was becoming clear that he wanted space with his boys and I'd outstayed my welcome.

Now a good thing to mention here is that the girl I lost my virginity to in 1998 got in touch with me through Facebook last fall. She came down from Seattle to visit in November, and though married for over a year to her wife (I never realized my thing for bi chicks went back that far -- she was straight at the time -- it's more of a matter of practicality: I don't like makeup or any of that girly shit), we had sex at a hotel room she got in Medford. But as soon as we did, she started crying about cheating on her wife and left -- driving another seven hours home at 10 p.m.

This is just about where everything had to happen exactly as it did for the rest of the story to be possible.

There was a new profile on OK Cupid that piqued my interest -- hot chick, piercings, tattoos, into kink -- she said she worked in computers, and since I build my own, I sent a message asking what she did in the field.

The former boss and I agreed the first Monday in December that I'd move out the following weekend. I talked with the lesbian ex-girlfriend (we'd still been talking; she was quite apologetic for the abrupt departure), and since her sister worked for Marriott, she was able to get me a hotel room in Tacoma, Wash., for four nights starting Sunday night to let me have a base of operations to look for work up there.

The new girl on OK Cupid didn't get back to me. After about a week, I sent her another message, "Just noticed you were online and as I hadn't heard back from you from my e-mail, thought I might give it another try. Of course, I'm not so dense as to consider that I didn't hear back for a reason."

As she tells it, that was the message that got her attention. We exchanged a couple of e-mails.

That Wednesday, my "roommate" mentioned via text that he was still expecting me to be out before he got home from work that Friday. I'd assumed the weekend meant Sunday. He stood firm (I did pay him rent for November, mind; I wasn't freeloading), so I had two nights that I was homeless.

I worked my network: Old family friends had moved to Ashland in 2006, but outside of town up the mountain. They were happy to host me, but heavy snow was forecast on the Valley floor; heading up 1,500 more feet would have been disastrous. Another expat from my paper there (who lived at a lower elevation) offered me lodgings for a single night on Friday.

The entire I-5 corridor had ice forecast on Saturday, so I looked at every option I had, and one -- a long shot -- looked best. The girl I'd been talking to for a week and a half lived on the South Coast, where it would be far warmer (above freezing). So I e-mailed her and asked if she'd "fancy a visitor." There was apparently another online guy that asked her the same thing for the same weekend -- she doesn't know why she said yes to me.

We talked on the phone the night that I was at my former co-worker's to finalize plans, and she asked point blank if I was coming by to make new friends or to have sex. While I found her hot as hell, I didn't really think a hook-up was what I needed -- just a way to avoid the frozen freeway and have an adventure.

I came by the next day. Since her brother lived with her, she came up with a story of how we'd met years ago when she was living out of town, and she was doing a favour for an old friend. I agreed to it while on the road.

Upon entering the house, the refrigerator was in front of me (back door), and as soon as I saw what was on it, I knew at the gut level that this was not the last time I'd be in this kitchen. Like, right then. I'd been in the house for all of perhaps 10 seconds, and I already knew, and it had nothing to do with her. Which dialed up some apprehension about whether we were really going to succeed at this being a platonic adventure.

We played some Guitar Hero, smoked some cigarettes and had a generally good time. If anything, her profile pics undersold how hot she was, but at this point it may have been pheromones, because it wasn't just the fridge items casting a bit of an electric current in the room that I'd only experienced once before with my boss in college. I wasn't here to have sex, so I kept resisting what was clearly happening in my mind but at that point was not aware we were already on the same page.

For perspective, we never formally agreed on what day we got engaged. Estimates have ranged from the moment we met to the blathering conversation I start with "of course I'm not going to ask you to marry me" after my divorce finally went through in March, and after letting me ramble for several minutes, she pointed out that when she'd gotten me a ring out of a quarter machine at a pizza place because I complained that my ring finger felt weird without one, she'd already claimed me. That's less than a week after moving in, so do with that as you will.

She had two boys, so after dinner, we watched both movies they were named after characters in. The first one was one of my first memories as a kid, at a ski lodge (in Taos, of course) where the kids were shunted away to a back room while a TV was wheeled in so the adults could drink back in the common area. We're sitting a few inches apart on the sofa while we watch when she turns to me and says "you know you can touch me, right?"

I would later learn that this was wildly out of character. She does not like to be touched, and this again ends up binned with "I have no idea why I did this" alongside letting me show up in the first place. In fairness, she assumed I was gay from my profile pics and therefore thought I was safe.

This sense of safety evaporates when I touch her hand, and this is where everything assumed and discussed goes off the rails. We both had the same reaction ... it didn't feel like touching someone else, but rather just an extension of each others' bodies. We have to go out on the stoop and chainsmoke after the second movie finishes, pretending what just happened had somehow not. But we still were desperately attempting to operate under the original guidelines.

When bedtime came, she asked if I wanted to push the sofas together, and I said I wouldn't mind. She said she slept naked. I said the same.

We went to bed. We cuddled, and we were talking, and I noted that the bridges of our noses were touching. She said she never made the first move, and I did the only thing that made sense: I kissed her. And then we had sex. Again, the way she tells it, it was the most awkward sex she's ever had.

We had sex again in the morning, and I left for Tacoma. The ex met up with me at the hotel, and we had sex and then went to dinner. She was planning on coming back every night, but she ended up with stuff she had to do with her wife, so I didn't see her again. Which was sort of fine, since I'd been texting constantly with the girl I'd just met, as well as talking to her for at least two hours a day. I was falling for her, HARD. On top of everything else, she asked me what I was into sexually, and I listed everything but the one I thought was too out there. She then asked if I liked my main kink, which I've removed for Beehaw's pleasure. That was the one thing I didn't want to bring up.

She worked at the time for a call center here and mentioned that they hired just about anyone and paid well. So, whiffing out with anything I could find in the Seattle area, I convinced my parents to bankroll a hotel down there once my time in Tacoma ran out. I looked online and booked, not realizing that the hotel I found was essentially across the street from her house.

One of the reasons sex wasn't originally an option was the fact that she had finally gotten involved with her best friend of 12 years. He was coming by a few days after I left, and she'd been saving herself for him.

I showed up again on Dec. 17 -- got a weekly rate and settled in. She was fired the next day. But with her boyfriend staying with her, instead of telling anyone she'd lost her job a week before Christmas, she came to the hotel room every day. We talked, fucked, and listened to "There's a Hole in My Bucket" -- I have eclectic music on my netbook -- we fell in love. And after showing her boyfriend the damage I did to her backside (she was a masochist ... she was literally asking for it, and not in a red-pill way), he left in a huff early Christmas Eve. That was when my week at the hotel ran out, so I went to Christmas dinner with her family (and also learned that bringing a side dish to a stranger's holiday dinner is weird to them) and moved in while looking for work.

The second or third day I was there, she used her brother's girlfriend's laptop to get online. She signed onto alt.com with a username that seemed entirely too familiar. I looked at her, dumbfounded, and said "Wait, that's you?" She looked at me just as dumbfounded. I mentioned that was the username I tried contacting in 2004 on OK Cupid.

She stops and asks what I sent her. I told her I'd been looking to learn about kink, and her response was "I have zero interest in teaching anybody." After an eyeroll. she says "yeah, that's exactly what I would have said." The first tattoo she did representing me was my stuffed animal -- sleeping with one still is the only reason she deigned to respond this time -- sitting atop my SBB watch, but complete with broken springs to represent how fucked we'd been on timing.

So, that's how we met. It only took five years. Well, five years, meeting someone online in 1995, losing my virginity to the person I did, having the college roommate I did, having my marriage fail, having my former boss let me move in, having the job in Walla Walla fall through, having I-5 freeze, having the balls to say I know I'm not the most interesting person to respond to, having awkward sex and having her best friend leave in a huff.

it's time change season so now my internal clock is completely fucked up