In the past year, Twitter has become MUCH less useful tool for me to identify emerging hot topics in education and to interact with other writers. It’s hard to tell if the other writers left Twitter or left the profession entirely. I’ve seen a difference in 1 year, which I think started before Musk. The smart people left and started a substack.
It’s okay to pay disabled workers $1.50 an hour. Ian works at “internships” for FREE. He’s made pizza boxes for two hours, stocked shelves, removed expired items from shelves, and so on. And we’ve been told that he’s lucky to have those opportunities. Most disabled people have no work opportunities and just sit on a sofa eating pizza and dying of heart disease by 40.
I did two posts at my disability newsletter this week. I’m writing short pieces with bullet point to help for parents as their children transition to adulthood. Other parents can’t do what I did, which was spend an entire year watching webinars to learn how to handle this mess. Maybe it will become a book.
Mental health is going to be a major public policy issue for a long time. The 74 has a great article about one student’s journey into depression during the pandemic.
Would you date Pete Davidson? Other silly gossip links here:
Watching: Derry Girls, The Crown, White Lotus, Rings of Power, Wakanda Forever (too long), On deck: Yellowstone
Traveling: New York City gallery and dinner. Check out the Anselm Kiefer exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery. We’re going to Boston for a long weekend, starting the Friday after Thanksgiving (a surprisingly good time to get deals on hotels and visit empty museums).
Reading: Michelle Obama’s new book
Cooking: Bourbon chocolate pecan pie
Shopping: roasting pan for the Thanksgiving turkey, meat thermometer, cooking string, a great serving platter
Apt. 11d 
I stopped using Twitter regularly many years ago. Deleted the account after the Paul Pelosi tweet. I’m trying to be on the internet less anyway.
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Kevin Drum had twitter’s number years ago.
I don’t understand why people are wringing their hands over the demise of Twitter. I have lived a blissful twitter-free life and have never suffered either personally or professionally. It serves no purpose except to coarsen and degrade our discourse, make dumb people even dumber, and provide manifest opportunities for people who would have been thought of as smart to show how stupid they actually are.
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I’ve been reading about the collapse of FTX.
Twitter has been very helpful in collating articles about the collapse of the ponzi scheme run by young “smart” people. Molly White and Autism Capital are worth reading.
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I’ve actually quite enjoyed twitter when I don’t spend time too much time on it. It has connected me to nerdy interests on weather, economics, education, embroidery, photography. And, I get the occasional activist information (though that’s an area where I could end up sucked in).
And my twitter does not look at all like Jay’s “It serves no purpose except to coarsen and degrade our discourse, . . . .” (Ramon Y Cajal embroidery, pictures of Rainier, data on smokey days, tweets on social capital, new papers on visual representation. . . . do none of those things). I blocked lots and I follow judiciously.
But, I’m not going to weep tears if it goes under; I won’t pay; and I won’t stay if its unpleasant.
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At this point, I’m feeling class consciousness connecting me to the workers he’s fired or trying to get to manage with half of their colleagues gone.
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bj said, “I’ve actually quite enjoyed twitter when I don’t spend time too much time on it. It has connected me to nerdy interests on weather, economics, education, embroidery, photography.”
Yeah, niche twitter can be really helpful.
What I really hate is the days where everybody on normal political twitter is tweeting the EXACT SAME facts and opinions, perhaps in chocolate and vanilla flavor.
I also hate the way that for a while now, twitter has been trying to herd me into signing up with them by cutting me off after I’ve read a certain number of tweets in a feed. I miss the old days when you could just scroll…There are occasions where I’d like to say something on twitter, but not often.
I’ve gotten much more into youtube since the war in Ukraine started, although I hate the fact that even fairly solid sources use clickbait titles.
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I have a “faux”email I used to create and access Twitter.
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I honestly don’t know why any of the women who have dated Pete Davidson have dated him. Many seem to have power and money (unlike the women who dated Trump) and Davidson seems squirmingly icky, damaged, and a diva.
(but, I’ve never been attracted by the bad boys who treat you badly and thought I could save them)
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Pete Davidson looks skeezy and is not my type, but he is apparently pretty nice to women. Definitely damaged, but that’s probably why the relationships break up eventually.
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I follow political twitter more than I would like, but never created an account or downloaded the app. I do worry about certain kinds of collaboration – the husband of a good friend is an infectious disease MD and posted a lot of links to articles, studies, etc. during Covid. I’m sure he can keep in touch with anyone who is important but think it was likely helpful for MDs in other parts of the world.
I read that students at UVa were uncertain about whether the UVa twitter account they were receiving information from during their lockdown was authentic. All sorts of problems like that could arise. Awful.
On the lighter side of things (which I appreciate!): My guess is that Pete Davidson has some sort of visceral appeal in person that definitely does not make it through the screen. He seems flat-out unattractive compared to the model-types he dates, so there must be something like that.
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I think it doesn’t come across through the screen because you have to wear pants to get on screen.
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Weighing in on tv as per “Watching: Derry Girls, The Crown, White Lotus, Rings of Power, Wakanda Forever (too long), On deck: Yellowstone”
We just finished The Crown last night, and it was not as strong as previous seasons due mainly to Dominic West being wildly miscast as Charles. I mean, I *love* Dominic West, but I do not love Charles. And the show wanted me to like Charles. Just … no. And my husband and I really are not interested in a lot of the Charles/Diana drama, so we were happy with the non-C/D focused episodes, whereas many critics (thinking of Pop Culture Happy Hour) seemed to hate the non-C/D focused episodes.
Derry Girls’ final season was a joy, even if the actresses are way too old to play the roles in anything but a self-conscious way (a la PEN15). The final episode was perfect.
We are back to The White Lotus. Tough show to watch, knowing it’s about how awful rich people are. I am already predicting who will die and who will survive based on how awful the characters are.
Haven’t had time to go to movies lately, but Wakanda Forever and Banshees of Inisherin are on my list. (Banshees reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson from In Bruges, which is a favorite of mine.)
We are also watching the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions, which is great fun and satisfyingly difficult.
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The below minimum wage workshop is a tough space for me. It’s not the same as an internship, because unpaid internships are not supposed to be forever (though maybe sometimes they are, especially for some who may go from one unpaid internship to another). Only not-for-profits can accept volunteers (who do work, potentially permanently) for free.
The history of some (many?) “sheltered” workshops is ugly to the point of evil but, I when Walsh Moore says “When we start putting a literal value attached to certain types of people — which is exactly what we’re doing when we say, ‘You are worth this, but you are only worth this” she’s setting up a straw man. It’s not the person, but the work that’s value is being evaluated.
But, the point of minimum wage is also that we are setting a minimum and, if that minimum doesn’t apply to a particular person because of their disability (while it would for others, even others who do less work per hour) it’d be reasonable to question the concept of minimum wage for other people, too (young people, trainees, poor workers?).
And, I’ll note that these below-minimum wage workshops for people with disabilities work in the same space as other businesses, which cannot pay below minimum wage.
This is an issue we grapple with in our organization which provides skills training and work to refugee women. We have to pay minimum wage which means we have to monitor the work hours that the contractors take to make the product. We do not serve people with disabilities — the challenges the women face are language and caretaking responsibilities that make work that can be done at home and flexibly a high priority, so we are not eligible for the minimum wage waivers (which our locality doesn’t grant, anyway, for disability based workshops).
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I just watched most of the first season of Warrior Nun. I feel like they’ve added a few too many twists in the drama and fast changes of character (maybe they were uncertain of renewal?). But, I like the all the main characters and the woman centered action drama (which includes a scientist mom, a destined warrior, a classically trained convent girl, and a strong black woman, in addition to the quadraplegic with a quirky humor turned the titular warrior nun).
Also enjoying the Durrels of Corfu & I liked the Wheel of Time first series (it muted some of the sexism of the book and wasn’t too violent).
And, Attorney Wu is now dubbed in English, potentially making it more accessible.
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I do think there’s ideologically driven opposition to sub-minimum wage workshops, calling certain disability accommodations (like paying a sub-minimum wage) “ableism” and opposition to segregation of people with disabilities (because, that was the primary method of dealing with disability through the 60’s, to put your child in an institution and forget about them).
But, there’s also an unwillingness to grapple with the idea that some people’s work really is worth less to the market and that supports can be expensive thus making market-based work a fiction for some workers.The issue also interacts with opinions and ideology around a system of capitalism and what protections we should have in labor markets.
(I mean, say, isn’t the “pledge” Twitter is asking people to sign effectively we are going to make you work unreasonable hours for your pay. I guess they’ll still be making more than minimum wage, since they can’t work more than 24/day)
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The Twitter pledge strikes me as a good way to run a company into the ground. You’re asking people to take a huge cut in effective pay to keep a job with a company whose future looks less and less secure. I’d think you’ll lose everyone who can readily find a new job, which is to say all of your best programmers.
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bj said, “But, there’s also an unwillingness to grapple with the idea that some people’s work really is worth less to the market and that supports can be expensive thus making market-based work a fiction for some workers.”
There are two disabled workers at the grocery I go to that are significantly slower than other baggers. I grin and bear it…but yes, their productivity is lower than peers’ productivity.
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Self checkout lanes are proliferating in our neck of the woods, including in high end, expensive, all organic markets. I hate self check out, but did it today, after encountering someone doing a full shop at the market with only one checkout lane. I did OK with the things with labels but was pretty annoyed dealing with finding the kind of grapes I was buying on the machine.
I find slow checkout (even when I’m doing it) extremely frustrating, and my spouse is unbearable when he encounters it. I’m willing to pay more for a product to reach other aims (livable wages, environmental concerns, supporting my neighbors), but I’m not very willing to get a substandard product (including slow checkout).
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