Happy Valentine's Day
Anonymous, thank you so much for the Valentine’s Day kindness -- I’m not posting regularly, but I am around and your words are greatly appreciated. As God is my witness, I will be fannish again!
Jacob Tomsky, Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality: Enjoyable, breezy read of how Tomsky learned to hustle, and to love the union. In Tomsky’s world, people usually strive to get over on each other, but respect for everyone’s need to feel acknowledged/rewarded can limit this to acceptable levels that in fact grease the wheels of human endeavor (this is where the union comes in, at least when destructive hedge-fund management takes over his hotel). He has advice on how to get upgrades/free stuff from hotel employees (hint: it involves cash) as well as advice on how not to get mistreated. The hotels I stay at are much lower-end, but I’ll be keeping some of his stories in mind.
Marvin Ammori, On Internet Freedom: Short book on why internet freedom matters and what individuals can do to preserve it. Written in clear language for a nonlegal audience; explains which “free speech” arguments make sense and which don’t when it comes to things like Facebook’s terms of service, net neutrality, and the like; also discusses Aaron Swartz and the law used to drive him to suicide.
Helaine Olen, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry: Depressing but important messages: you are not one latte a day away from financial security; the key things that make peoples’ savings insufficient and insecure are structural and can’t be fixed by individual self-management. People who tell you that there is an easy solution are selling something. Pensions have disappeared, replaced by uncertain stock investments (topped by fees that greatly cut into gains from saving); an annuity is unlikely to be a good idea for almost anyone, and even if it is, the people selling them will try to steer you into ones that are lucrative for them but not necessarily right for you, and it will be very hard for you to figure out what the costs and benefits are. Again and again, Olen emphasizes the importance of the overall economy; individuals can’t reliably escape just by being fiscally virtuous (for example, having a savings plan won’t do much good if you earn 77 cents on a man’s dollar and are also a primary caregiver for an elderly parent).
When We Were Free To Be: Looking Back at a Children’s Classic and the Difference It Made, eds. Lori Rotskoff & Laura L. Lovett: A collection of short essays on the general topic of Free To Be You and Me and feminist ideals about childraising and gender socialization in the 1970s, including reminiscences from several of the key people. If you think pop culture doesn’t matter, you probably aren’t reading this, but the book offers direct testimony from children and adults who were profoundly affected by the messages in the book. William’s Doll shows up most often, probably, both as promising vision and as unfulfilled promise given that masculinity’s hold seems to have loosened less than femininity’s in many ways.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Jacob Tomsky, Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality: Enjoyable, breezy read of how Tomsky learned to hustle, and to love the union. In Tomsky’s world, people usually strive to get over on each other, but respect for everyone’s need to feel acknowledged/rewarded can limit this to acceptable levels that in fact grease the wheels of human endeavor (this is where the union comes in, at least when destructive hedge-fund management takes over his hotel). He has advice on how to get upgrades/free stuff from hotel employees (hint: it involves cash) as well as advice on how not to get mistreated. The hotels I stay at are much lower-end, but I’ll be keeping some of his stories in mind.
Marvin Ammori, On Internet Freedom: Short book on why internet freedom matters and what individuals can do to preserve it. Written in clear language for a nonlegal audience; explains which “free speech” arguments make sense and which don’t when it comes to things like Facebook’s terms of service, net neutrality, and the like; also discusses Aaron Swartz and the law used to drive him to suicide.
Helaine Olen, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry: Depressing but important messages: you are not one latte a day away from financial security; the key things that make peoples’ savings insufficient and insecure are structural and can’t be fixed by individual self-management. People who tell you that there is an easy solution are selling something. Pensions have disappeared, replaced by uncertain stock investments (topped by fees that greatly cut into gains from saving); an annuity is unlikely to be a good idea for almost anyone, and even if it is, the people selling them will try to steer you into ones that are lucrative for them but not necessarily right for you, and it will be very hard for you to figure out what the costs and benefits are. Again and again, Olen emphasizes the importance of the overall economy; individuals can’t reliably escape just by being fiscally virtuous (for example, having a savings plan won’t do much good if you earn 77 cents on a man’s dollar and are also a primary caregiver for an elderly parent).
When We Were Free To Be: Looking Back at a Children’s Classic and the Difference It Made, eds. Lori Rotskoff & Laura L. Lovett: A collection of short essays on the general topic of Free To Be You and Me and feminist ideals about childraising and gender socialization in the 1970s, including reminiscences from several of the key people. If you think pop culture doesn’t matter, you probably aren’t reading this, but the book offers direct testimony from children and adults who were profoundly affected by the messages in the book. William’s Doll shows up most often, probably, both as promising vision and as unfulfilled promise given that masculinity’s hold seems to have loosened less than femininity’s in many ways.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.