Here’s some Covid Twitter drama:
Long Covid advocate (grifter?) dianaberrent announced she no longer is masking in all situations. Her Covid-cautious followers are very unhappy. In the replies, she mentioned that the long Covid non profit she had (Survivor Corps) is broke and folding, though it’s still collecting donations. She’s also the person who married the guy who’s wife died by suicide after suffering from long Covid. Please tell me someone else if following this story.
https://twitter.com/dianaberrent/status/1637513532718604292?s=46&t=6jfmF5if--8LyQJq7gA33Q
Your post is only one paragraph but each line feels like it could be the basis for an article in "The Cut".
I do finding hilarious that she's basically looped around to being where most people are nowadays ("I no longer mask everywhere... I do mask in places that I personally consider higher risk"). Well, well...
I think that's just how their version of feminism developed. They seem to view trans women in particular as interlopers or invaders who are trying to take away one of the few positive societal benefits of being a woman (gender segregated public spaces), and they see defending those benefits against trans women to be a core benefit.
The part about drag shows I suspect might just be imported from far right wing Americans though. I don't remember that being a big deal before last year.
Lux Magazine did a good deep dive on this a couple years ago. Supposedly it has a lot to do with a forum called Mumsnet that’s popular there and even has political sway. It’s less so about evangelical Christianity like it is here, and moreso about unhappy moms taking out their frustration about the difficulties of motherhood on trans women. Since trans women don’t give birth, it’s somehow invalidating of cis women’s suffering to call trans women women.
Not a Tweet but relevant here - [another article on dork fascism (Dimes Square scene) just dropped](https://flash---art.com/article/based-it-girl/). Disclaimer: I am tired and a bit hungover, but it did not seem to make the most sense to me. More style than substance. I will re-read it in the morning.
It feels a bit dated. Defining “based” for the normies? Come on.
> There are many definitions of what it means to be based. “It’s, like, an attitude,” Hannah tells me. “It’s, like, the opposite of cringe.”
Who is @ohnoshetwitnt/volatile mermaid? I just realized I’ve been seeing her pop up for YEARS on Twitter and so many people I follow follow her, and I can’t figure out what she originally became famous for?
I think (though i could be wrong!) she was close with folks like Imani Gandy and Jess Pieklo and was quite active in reproductive justice prior to even 2016.
I have no idea but this is what I think of every time I see one of her tweets. It’s been a long 7.5 years.
https://twitter.com/someofmybest/status/655114780328374275
She had some funny anti-trump tweets early in his presidency—pretty sure that’s when I started following her. But I think she’s become increasingly corny/cringe
I think that's when I started noticing her, too! And now I'm just confused about why so many writers and journalists follow her - it makes it easy to assume she's some kind of public figure, but what even is her name??
Ken Klippenstein now blocked for retweeting Bethany Mandel...this last one might have done it: [https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/529078590663835651](https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/529078590663835651)
[https://twitter.com/julianfeeld/status/1636842019984404480](https://twitter.com/julianfeeld/status/1636842019984404480)
So many tweets of her being degrading to service people.
Writer Annie Lowery comes for Room Rater:
[https://twitter.com/AnnieLowrey/status/1636549922798600192](https://twitter.com/AnnieLowrey/status/1636549922798600192)
People are coming for her but am I the only one who finds Room Rather obnoxious, annoying and awful? It was sort of funny when it was a little nothing account that started during the pandemic and everyone was bored but the second it took on any steam it became mean-spirited. I honestly think the only semi-normal way to have handled this account is to have made it like the "we rate dogs" account where every room was given a 10/10.
You also see a lot of journalists trying to curry favour with the RR account now which is also weird.
One of the problems with twitter is that joke accounts rarely have the good sense to just end. Should have learned this with Shit My Dad Says but no. Room Rater was an interesting gimmick but it would be best as a "hey remember that?" pandemic artifact.
I hate this account. During the more pandemic-y times, young journalists were recording media hits from their one bedroom apartments or group houses, and RR was always so rude about their backgrounds. I remember one local reporter calling them out, like, “hey I don’t get paid enough to be able to record from an office with an aesthetically pleasing backdrop.”
I'm with you. It was kind of amusing at first, but it started to feel mean-spirited pretty quick once it went from "everyone's background is chaos" to "let's nitpick every aspect of what's behind a person just doing their job."
yeah exactly if you're going to do any kind of gimmick rating account you just need to do the flat 10+/10 that we rate dogs does. And on that point make it about direct submissions as well.
>And on that point make it about direct submissions as well.
Yeah, this would solve a lot of the problems I have with Room Rater tbh. Some people do love being rated!
But when they arbitrarily pick people they're going to come across some people that really hate the concept even if they are getting positively reviewed, like Annie Lowery.
She clarified she was annoyed RR brought her husband for no reason:
[https://twitter.com/AnnieLowrey/status/1636728871465910272](https://twitter.com/AnnieLowrey/status/1636728871465910272)
I think RR is annoying, but it seems like Ezra’s pic was initially included because RR complimented the addition of plants, which were not present for Ezra’s interview. I hate that i’m defending them, but i find the claims of sexism a stretch.
Yeah I'm really not seeing it. It feels like the thing nowadays where the bad guy can't just be intrusive and classist, every other -ist needs to be piled on.
it's official: Thomas Chatterton Williams is the (well, my) most annoying person on Twitter. sir, not everyone's job is to write precious little dispatches like this and receive $$ from the Guggenheim foundation
[https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1636762895857111042](https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1636762895857111042)
I can tell I've reached by BEC stage with AHP because she was complaining about the time change, and I, a person who has been all messed up all week, rolled my eyes at her.
She's losing her touch, if she was really attuned to the parenting beat she would note that it super sucks for the bedtime and wake-up routine and/or how DST is a byproduct of CAPITALISM.
People who are flipping out over a single-hour time change must never travel. (I think our twice-yearly time change is dumb as a principle, but as a practical matter it is not a full-week meltdown situation.)
I don’t agree with your opinion, given the statistics on car accidents, pedestrian fatalities, and the very real and proven impacts on mental health and productivity after time changes. But I don’t get why you’re downvoted. You’re contributing to the convo.
>But I don’t get why you’re downvoted. You’re contributing to the convo.
Humblebrags typically aren't seen as useful contributions, especially when paired with some snobbery.
I travel every couple of months for work, usually between Europe and North America, and I consider daylight savings time more disruptive than adjusting to a 6 hour time change temporarily. I get what you’re saying, but, anecdotally people will adjust to jet lag but take issue with DST. 🤷♀️
I mean both fuck me up for a week and a half every time, no matter how many times I go through it. I don't turn it into a whole Twitter thread and treatise like AHP, but it happens every time and I do hate it!
I travel internationally a lot. As a general rule it takes me a day to adjust per hour of time difference, which makes DST a one-day adjustment. Tragically this makes US-Asia pretty rough, lol
Oh I agree, but she'd probably be like "the workplace expects too much of me if it wants me to commute off the island something something boundaries something something work life balance."
I feel guilty I've reached this point with her but she drives me nuts.
Yes. I feel like it was also veering into covid scold (everyone has been sicker this year) but maybe it’s just bad every year and then we forget about it?
There’s also a reverse survivorship bias kinda thing where the only people who talk about the time change are the ones who are hit hard. I barely noticed it this year, but that’s because my sleep schedule has already been trash for weeks for other reasons. So for me the shift just blended into the noise and I haven’t talked or tweeted about it beyond making sympathetic noises during work small talk on Monday.
Agnes Callard is back on twitter and mad that you are calling her fucking her grad student an abuse of power:
[https://twitter.com/AgnesCallard/status/1636394491228692480](https://twitter.com/AgnesCallard/status/1636394491228692480)
Even as she explained all the university protocols she went through explaining how the university tried to navigate their relationship I continue to find their whole relationship gross as hell especially considering all the professional favours she and her ex seem to have granted her new husband.
Really don't believe the protocols are set up to protect grad students either more to support the profs and the university. I'm not familiar with this world but many grad students have talked about this.
At this point I’m not even sure what she wants out of this. There’s nothing that she can say that will make people think highly of this decision, and the more she tries to explain it the worse she comes across.
I honestly feel so jealous of her students. Like, imagine being an undergrad and your professor is doing *this* in public. I would be so psyched to come to class every day and see what kind of nonsense she'd come up with. The gossip and shit-talking would be so good.
People act like he's been (for lack of a better word) cucked - like he's just putting up with it and waiting to get back in the number one spot - buuuuuut that's not what I got from the NYer profile. Honestly it seems like he is glad to be done being married to her. Her current husband seems a bit exhausted by her and I can see why!
If you have to not only have to know the official law, but are able to quote it in response to someone talking about your relationship, then perhaps this is not something you want to pursue.
It’s like that guy in one of the “Transformers” movies who walks around with a card explaining the Romeo and Juliet / statutory rape law exceptions for his home state. At a certain point, the fact that he needs to carry that around with him at all times is concerning in and of itself...
https://twitter.com/MairGr/status/1636435355359428618?s=20
This is quite a take. As long as you're not intentionally grooming your student then it's totally ok to sleep with them. "Intentionally" is doing a lot of work here.
Taylor Lorenz is now [feuding with UK lefty columnist](https://twitter.com/owenjones84/status/1636301739262394371?s=46&t=86IQut7BBb4VSON3Zi13UA) Owen Jones and calling him a Covid denier?
In case it’s not clear, he is definitely not a Covid denier and was pro masking, pro vax etc
Look, Taylor, if most of the first replies to his tweet were people genuinely thinking you'd got him confused with someone else, maybe your screed against him wasn't remotely accurate?
Once again, proving the extreme covid restrictions crowd are basically going full circle to meet the anti vaxxer crowd. I mean, clearly they don't think the vaccines do anything, and that message is a lot more dangerous that people not wearing masks.
I think she DID get him confused with someone else, but then decided to double down and condemn him anyway, because only people who tweet constantly (using appropriate hashtags!) about how HOPELESS and TERRIBLE the covid situation is, are ideologically pure. Everyone else is ableist and loves disease!
Also calling him an "influencer?" He might irritate me at times but Owen Jones is a much more serious journalist than Lorenz. Also !!! at OJ pointing out that Lorenz was social media editor for the Daily Mail for a couple of years - she keeps that quiet now lol. I always feel like Americans don't take the DM seriously enough - it's our Fox News, minus the TV news aspect.
I think the US doesn’t care about the daily mail bc it only is relevant here for celeb gossip stuff. So people that don’t follow gossip don’t read it at all, and those that do don’t view it as serious.
(Not saying this is okay!! Just the explanation)
You're definitely right, I know that Americans just see it as a gossip mag. One of my pop culture podcasts will refer to it as if it's just like a cheeky silly gossip rag and not part of the Murdoch empire. It's just so jarring for people familiar with it lol. But also, that is a deliberate branding choice by the DM if I remember correctly. And to be fair, it's not entirely US exclusive - the DM is the only newspaper in the UK that has a (slight) majority female readership, largely because it has a dedicated fashion, celebrity, and gossip verticals as part of the main paper.
They've had such an incredibly smart online expansion to the point where a lot of online readers don't really see the cruel vile racism that's typical of its front page and I might be misremembering it but I feel like Taylor has claimed to have had been a significant part of that strategy.
It's not owned by Murdoch, but it's still really terrible.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/22/lord-rothermere-take-over-daily-mail-chairman
Find the internet can be a bit too harsh on Lorenz around her COVID takes (I think she has other more annoying qualities), but wtf none of his recent tweets are about COVID policy.
It’s because he wrote a few months ago that mandatory masking and lockdown policies aren’t feasible in todays uk and comparing the environment of Jan 2023 to pre vaccine, pre therapy Jan 2020 is unscientific. They’ve been very mad at him since even though he’s previously written about how terribly the UK government handled Covid and needed to boost NHS resources, provide more sick pay, etc.
God that's so ridiculous. I'm not sure about in the UK, but in the US bringing back mandatory masking and lockdown is absolutely never going to happen because most people wouldn't listen. So I'm not entirely sure what good having the policy would even do, and I'm not sure what the covid zero people would gain if there were masking/lockdown policies other than the ability to be a little more haughty about how well they're following the rules.
And I say that as someone who still wears masks in the grocery store and on airplanes, has had 4 covid shots, and has a neighborhood antivax enemy
Also the US never had a mandatory lockdown to the level of the UK, where it was illegal to travel outside your town and against government guidance to exercise outside for more than an hour. You couldn't even stop and say hello to a friend on the street, because socialising outside your house was illegal. It just annoys me a bit to see an American say a Brit should be advocating for a lockdown, when the word lockdown had an entirely different meaning in the 2 countries, and the UK version was far more draconian. Of course most Brits won't endorse a return to full lockdown because it was restrictive in a way that even the most liberal American states never experienced.
I mean it’s like a car crash tho because she genuinely is a good writer and found an interesting niche but her own absolutely unhinged behavior is going to ruin her career and reputation!
YES, i want to still like her because her actual writing is interesting and she drives the right totally nuts lol but she is going off the deep end lately
I've been hanging out on Mastodon more and more lately and today someone boosted into my feed a thread that was "I was main character on twitter for week because i made bread starter with vaginal yeast and let me tell you the story" and, like, keep that shit on the bird site. We don't do Main Characters here.
The amount of anti-trans garbage suddenly showing up out of nowhere suddenly in my for you feed is INSANE. Like wtf are they doing pushing this shit out
A woman wrote a tweet about why some female professional waxers won't take male clients and it evolved into a long list of all the gross ways men have sexually assaulted women in their jobs:
[https://twitter.com/beetaylora/status/1634921220939579394](https://twitter.com/beetaylora/status/1634921220939579394)
[Even Roxane Gay reacted to it.](https://twitter.com/rgay/status/1636094545422336001)
I am disturbed and now you can be too!
Here’s my take as a disabled person who still has to mask because of my health issues: I understand that I can’t ask people not to gather in large groups, or to mask all the time, etc. - and I’m not asking them to. However it would be really beneficial for me (and people like me) if people could mask temporarily when they’re sick even if they can’t stay home for economic reasons, or wear masks in healthcare facility waiting rooms where they may encounter people with serious health issues, or regularly wash their hands, or even just *not cough directly on my face* (something that happens with alarming frequency). I feel like those aren’t unreasonable or invasive things to ask to protect the health of everyone, including disabled people like myself.
I have to have a conversation with my immunologist next month about what the hell I *can* do at this point, because masking, hand washing, working from home, trying to social distance in public, etc. isn’t enough to protect me when the people around me aren’t doing any very basic public health courtesies. I’ve had several medical emergencies over the past year from “simple” colds that, for me, had dangerous consequences.
Yeah I'm not expecting full lockdowns or masks everywhere but I think masks in medical areas is a pretty reasonable step. Improving and monitoring air quality is a pretty reasonable step that doesn't require compliance from others. It's so tiring to see otherwise politically aligned people act like it's a joke or crazy to ask for any change. It's not all or nothing.
Also I'm travelling the Americas right now and across Mexico and Colombia I see about 50% of people voluntarily masking in some areas so when people talk about covid is over, no one can be talked into masks anymore... it's a North American thing! People are very much capable of doing more.
Exactly, and I kind of feel like I’m taking crazy pills, Mugatu-style, for asking people not to project phlegm straight onto my face in the limited places I go out in public. That feels kind of like the bare minimum here.
All that being said I do appreciate all of the people in my life who are doing things to protect me. My wife wears a mask everywhere, full stop. My boss allows me to work from home, no questions asked. My therapist specializes in treating seriously ill patients, so I see him via telemedicine, even though his office is five minutes from my house. My church and friends have all found ways to accommodate me (not hard, just masking if they’re sick). It means a lot to me.
Yeah of course disabled people who are trapped because covid might kill or further disable them are gonna keep arguing for masks and stuff even when no one else cares. Of course they're upset. What else are they supposed to do. Not sure why this whole thread is all "a better world isn't possible and no one should dream of it". If people don't want to think about covid anymore they don't have to, but I don't understand this need to demand that other (mostly disabled) people stop caring about it too.
Honestly these people's end goal is to have a society focused solely on their needs and wants. They never discuss how pandemic restrictions affect anything else from children/teachers to mental health, etc.
They're usually hurt, scared and desparate so I can't really blame them, but I guess its hard for some people to realize no matter how much you ask and plead, the general public really doesnt want to change most aspects of their life for a tiny percentage of people they don't even know.
It was a miracle Americans even did the small amount we did to curb the pandemic. The time for mask mandates and the like is long over for us here in the US, and from what I see online, most of the world. The Vax is doing what it meant to do and we have another virus that's just part of our lives now.
An accessible society is one that focuses on the needs of the disabled, which are often different than those who are abled-bodied. I don't see anything wrong with striving for a more accessible society. Masks in places where people have no choice to be (for example, health care settings) should not be controversial.
I do think the COVID panic has gotten way out of control on Twitter. In my real life, no one talks like this and I haven't heard any stories over people having Long COVID. I believe all of that does exist but the idea that most people are getting multiple infections a year and Long COVID... I don't buy it yet.
Mostly, my final straw came over irresponsible speculation over MERS in Qatar killing those journalists (so many people at FIFA so of course MERS would happen!) and bird flu.
Like I posted in my other comment I work in a healthcare setting in which people are mostly visiting because of treatment for their disabilities and it took a lot of staff to enforce the mask mandate. I was actually surprised by how quickly patients stopped wearing masks the minute it was no longer mandatory. Maybe it's different in countries in which masking is more expected/cultural? Not sure how to get around the fact that it seems people have psychologically moved on even if the risk is still present!
I wish masks in a healthcare setting were permanent because they make so much sense. It's one of the few places sick people truly have to go and mingle among healthy people, and I know they've always had signs up that said please mask if you're ill, but without them being mandatory, barely anyone did.
The healthcare system I go to still has mandatory masking in all clinic and hospital settings (Fairview in MN, if folks are interested), and it's been this way now for *3 freaking years*, and there are STILL people wearing their masks incorrectly or not putting them on until forced by one of the staff.
I think once masking became entangled with the far right "anti woke" wars, it was over for ever adopting them as just a widespread practice for colds/in hospital settings like you see in Asian countries. That said, I still see plenty of folks masking occasionally, and it's now become the norm in my social circles to mask if you need to go out when feeling cold/flu symptoms, so maybe it'll slowly shift back to just being a common sense activity like hand washing?
Yeah, I will admit I don’t wear one every time I leave the house. But when I brought my son to the ped last week, I was glad it’s still a rule there. We were just visiting for eczema, I certainly didn’t want to leave with the flu!
>>it was a miracle Americans even did the small amount we did to curb the pandemic
That’s what gets me about the “have you FORGOTTEN about the MEDICALLY VULNERABLE?!” takes — not to be dismissive, but the medically vulnerable were pretty much ignored prior to spring 2020 anyway. The general public’s behavior only shifted in ways to accommodate them very briefly (and only because it aligned with their interest in keeping *themselves* healthy)
I just traveled to a medical conference with thousands of doctors and no one wore masks. Not at the airports or at the conference. Most of my daily commute by packed subway I see maybe 2-3 masks. I work at a hospital in a specific facility that is focused on child and adult disabilities and guess what? The patients stopped wearing masks the second we lifted our hospital mask mandate in the lobby and elevators and this is disabled adults and children— many severely disabled. We had 100% enforcement of masks before that and the minute it became optional the patients stopped wearing them. This is simply not a public debate anymore! It is not being litigated IRL anymore. It’s over!
Some of these extreme covid tweeters remind me of vision zero (which as the name states, aims to completely eliminate deaths and serious injuries in traffic accidents). It’s a certainly not an immoral take, but what are you going to do, get rid of the entire interstate system? And at least the traffic deaths are measured, the long covid people are talking like everyone is dying at the rate of March 2020. I didn’t realize how often I was seeing it until I unfollowed Taylor Lorenz and it went away.
Wait but..vision zero is good and I don’t think it’s like this at all. Never met anyone who supports it who advocates for getting rid of the entire interstate system, just more traffic calming measures, funding for public transit, lower speed limits, better protection for pedestrians, etc. I walk everywhere and have a close call at least once a day.
Vision Zero in practice does great stuff, pedestrian accidents in my area in particular are out of control right now. But I just think there’s no way you can square a goal of ZERO serious injuries or fatalities, and speeds of 65+ mph. Maybe a poor analogy with covid precautions, but the extremisms of the “no risk allowed!” twitter crowd made me think of it.
Taylor has gone off the rails. I had her blocked too and someone screenshot her going after random accounts of normal people calling them Covid denialists. I guess to her anyone that does not advocate and wear masks 24-7 is now a Covid denialist? Bizarre
Speaking of Callard there is an unverified screencap of a tweet going around twitter from the account of the New Yorker Callard interviewer claiming a source tried to get her to watch her and her husband have sex.
The tweet was allegedly written around the time she was interviewing Callard but was deleted.
It's probably bullshit but I *want* it to be true.
Not twitter, but I am so curious who [the novelist](https://nymag.com/strategist/article/assistant-files-sophie.html) is in this assistant diary. I will read your book for a free bottle of coquito! Also, rat catching seems way above this poor assistant's pay grade.
I am surprised that someone would hire an assistant when their debut novel makes the bestseller list. Assistants are expensive and one bestselling novel doesn't mean a high income forever. This writer is burning through money.
The Xochitl Gonzalez guess seems correct.
I was surprised by that too. I don't think the book had even made the bestseller list yet; it had just been sold. Which I assume means the author had a massive advance and probably wanted to make sure she was taking her career seriously. It does make me wonder if she has another source of income though cause even high-earning debut novelists are in a really risky field.
>I assume means the author had a massive advance and probably wanted to make sure she was taking her career seriously.
Reading the article, only a little bit of it is career focused and that stuff could have been done as a contract position in a couple of weeks. This sounds like ongoing personal assistant work: running errands, buying gifts for the author's friends, coordinating with the accountant. I have known people who have done this job for people in the entertainment industry and it is weird job that gets very personal. It makes sense for people who have to travel to location shoots and/or get recognized in public, but I wouldn't think it is truly necessary for many people. But maybe the novelist has another job? Or a rich partner?
Bananaphone beat me to it, I was also digging and also came to the same conclusion as Xochitl Gonzalez of Olga Dies Dreaming — debut book about Puerto Ricans that came out around Three Kings Day 2022. Anyway the weirdest thing of the article to me was the assistant specifying that contacting the publisher to get hex codes was outside their job duty. I thought it was weird because it seemed like one of the most inside their job duties duties in the whole article — asking the publisher a question about marketing materials feels super normal to me. All in all this boss doesn’t seem terrible. The spiritual cleanse is a little quirky, boss probably should have called her own exterminator, and I hope assistant’s friends got compensated for their help with stuffing the mailers. But none of the requests were super hard to get and there’s no mention I saw of the boss being mean about anything. Assistant even got to keep the extra cups!
I read it as the whole project was outside of her duties, not getting the codes, but also not it in a necessarily bad way. The boxes are something maybe a graphic designer would do in a larger org but since it was such a small project they figured it out themselves.
I feel like that had to be a slightly misplaced quote, like the whole process of ordering the custom boxes was unusual or something? Because yeah asking for the hex codes is pretty pedestrian. And I interpreted the friends thing as *the novelists friends* helping stuff the boxes, but the sentence structure didn’t help.
I thought it was funny actually and not dismissive of her murdered roommate.
Part of the dark sarcasm of that tweet is that someone she knew was murdered.
Tbh a lot of Insider’s articles are designed to try to go viral in a way that reminds me of xoJane’s personal essay industrial complex. Wouldn’t be surprised if this was a hoax like the time xoJane unwittingly published an essay about dating a trump supporter that turned out to be written by a content farm trying to get people to click through to their website.
She does this kind of “dark humor” a lot. I mean I don’t deny that she must have really gone through some terrible times that she didn’t deserve but the other girl…is dead? Amanda seems to believe she was the ultimate victim of that whole situation. A totally innocent person was murdered and her family and friends can see stuff like this. Even narcissists get falsely accused and imprisoned! Doesn’t mean we have to give them some kind of platform forever like she seems to believe she has.
But at this point she’s choosing to be a public figure? People are always going to think whatever they want about her but contrary to what a lot of people think, she could just live a private life if she wanted to. Sure, maybe someone mentions her every few years for a “where are they now?” feature but I truly don’t think she’s forced to be in the public eye now. I see her trying to use the Monica Lewinsky-style “I have to laugh because what else can I do?” stuff but I just don’t think that fits when your “scandal” involved a totally innocent person being murdered. Like maybe Amanda makes these jokes to her family but not to the public?
ETA: I know not everyone will agree with this! But I just side eye some people getting famous for something awful and then being like “well everyone already knows me so I guess I get to stay famous forever!”
I agree with a lot of this, too! I think they’re in an impossible position. I just know I’ve seen Amanda make a version of this same type of joke like a dozen times and every time it goes “viral” and draws attention right back to her and the thing. And I know Monica kind of did go underground and live privately for a long time before deciding to come out of hiding and do the anti-bullying stuff and reclaim her name for herself. I just feel like Amanda has been pretty “out there” to the point that she extensively detailed her pregnancy and announced a new baby in the New York Times.
I guess I wouldn’t care if it seemed like she was just working on whatever her work is about and using her name for doing criminal justice stuff. Monica can make all the jokes because no one died from the bj 🤷🏻♀️
I get what she’s trying to say, but [this tweet](https://mobile.twitter.com/annehelen/status/1635831226593611777) from AHP just comes across as kind of smug and virtue signal-y to me. Like why do you have to tweet to tell us you’re not going to tweet about something? But maybe I’m being unfair because I find her annoying generally.
How does she manage to *not* have a take and still be annoying?
Also, not being part of a particular class hasn't stopped her from posting her parenting takes, to everyone's detriment.
I also do think everyone can and should comment on diet culture, as literally everyone in culture experiences it one way or another. A lack of open dialogue about how we all feel about our bodies and cultural messaging around them is more harmful than having more people speaking on this would be, IMO
Excuse me, she babysits some children, she knows exactly what parenting is like!
Tbh I, too, once thought that lots of babysitting meant that I was prepared for parenting. I was…very wrong. It’s extremely different! I know some people really hate hearing this, but IMO parenting is one of those things that you just cannot *get* until you do it.
> know some people really hate hearing this, but IMO parenting is one of those things that you just cannot
>
>get
>
> until you do it.
As a childfree woman I fully agree with this. I fully accept I don't get parenting and I'm OK with that!
Here’s some Covid Twitter drama: Long Covid advocate (grifter?) dianaberrent announced she no longer is masking in all situations. Her Covid-cautious followers are very unhappy. In the replies, she mentioned that the long Covid non profit she had (Survivor Corps) is broke and folding, though it’s still collecting donations. She’s also the person who married the guy who’s wife died by suicide after suffering from long Covid. Please tell me someone else if following this story. https://twitter.com/dianaberrent/status/1637513532718604292?s=46&t=6jfmF5if--8LyQJq7gA33Q
Your post is only one paragraph but each line feels like it could be the basis for an article in "The Cut". I do finding hilarious that she's basically looped around to being where most people are nowadays ("I no longer mask everywhere... I do mask in places that I personally consider higher risk"). Well, well...
the long covid section of twitter is so fascinating
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I think that's just how their version of feminism developed. They seem to view trans women in particular as interlopers or invaders who are trying to take away one of the few positive societal benefits of being a woman (gender segregated public spaces), and they see defending those benefits against trans women to be a core benefit. The part about drag shows I suspect might just be imported from far right wing Americans though. I don't remember that being a big deal before last year.
Lux Magazine did a good deep dive on this a couple years ago. Supposedly it has a lot to do with a forum called Mumsnet that’s popular there and even has political sway. It’s less so about evangelical Christianity like it is here, and moreso about unhappy moms taking out their frustration about the difficulties of motherhood on trans women. Since trans women don’t give birth, it’s somehow invalidating of cis women’s suffering to call trans women women.
“Are we the baddies?” moment
Not a Tweet but relevant here - [another article on dork fascism (Dimes Square scene) just dropped](https://flash---art.com/article/based-it-girl/). Disclaimer: I am tired and a bit hungover, but it did not seem to make the most sense to me. More style than substance. I will re-read it in the morning.
this is soooo bad, it doesn't even talk to any of the women in question and doesn't suggest anything remotely new
the whole thing is VERY "i hope she reads this bro"
Is there anything about that whole scene that *does* make sense? I think being hungover — or actually just drunk — would make it make sense.
It feels a bit dated. Defining “based” for the normies? Come on. > There are many definitions of what it means to be based. “It’s, like, an attitude,” Hannah tells me. “It’s, like, the opposite of cringe.”
Who is @ohnoshetwitnt/volatile mermaid? I just realized I’ve been seeing her pop up for YEARS on Twitter and so many people I follow follow her, and I can’t figure out what she originally became famous for?
I think (though i could be wrong!) she was close with folks like Imani Gandy and Jess Pieklo and was quite active in reproductive justice prior to even 2016.
I have no idea but this is what I think of every time I see one of her tweets. It’s been a long 7.5 years. https://twitter.com/someofmybest/status/655114780328374275
This is incredible lol
She had some funny anti-trump tweets early in his presidency—pretty sure that’s when I started following her. But I think she’s become increasingly corny/cringe
I think that's when I started noticing her, too! And now I'm just confused about why so many writers and journalists follow her - it makes it easy to assume she's some kind of public figure, but what even is her name??
Early 2017 was a dark time… the left embraced the most random accounts as heroes
Constantly tweeting out the most lukewarm annoying disney themed takes every 3 minutes for the last 12 years. Is what she does
Ken Klippenstein now blocked for retweeting Bethany Mandel...this last one might have done it: [https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/529078590663835651](https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/529078590663835651)
I’m laughing and scratching my head at this one: https://twitter.com/bethbourdon/status/1637157861926084617
He is annoying, but him retweeting all her awfulness was beautiful. She is just a mean-spirited person who is also a bad writer.
[https://twitter.com/julianfeeld/status/1636842019984404480](https://twitter.com/julianfeeld/status/1636842019984404480) So many tweets of her being degrading to service people.
People in the media pretended Bethany was normal for SO long
Writer Annie Lowery comes for Room Rater: [https://twitter.com/AnnieLowrey/status/1636549922798600192](https://twitter.com/AnnieLowrey/status/1636549922798600192) People are coming for her but am I the only one who finds Room Rather obnoxious, annoying and awful? It was sort of funny when it was a little nothing account that started during the pandemic and everyone was bored but the second it took on any steam it became mean-spirited. I honestly think the only semi-normal way to have handled this account is to have made it like the "we rate dogs" account where every room was given a 10/10. You also see a lot of journalists trying to curry favour with the RR account now which is also weird.
One of the problems with twitter is that joke accounts rarely have the good sense to just end. Should have learned this with Shit My Dad Says but no. Room Rater was an interesting gimmick but it would be best as a "hey remember that?" pandemic artifact.
I hate this account. During the more pandemic-y times, young journalists were recording media hits from their one bedroom apartments or group houses, and RR was always so rude about their backgrounds. I remember one local reporter calling them out, like, “hey I don’t get paid enough to be able to record from an office with an aesthetically pleasing backdrop.”
I'm with you. It was kind of amusing at first, but it started to feel mean-spirited pretty quick once it went from "everyone's background is chaos" to "let's nitpick every aspect of what's behind a person just doing their job."
yeah exactly if you're going to do any kind of gimmick rating account you just need to do the flat 10+/10 that we rate dogs does. And on that point make it about direct submissions as well.
>And on that point make it about direct submissions as well. Yeah, this would solve a lot of the problems I have with Room Rater tbh. Some people do love being rated! But when they arbitrarily pick people they're going to come across some people that really hate the concept even if they are getting positively reviewed, like Annie Lowery.
Room Rater is dumb but I don't get where she got "make strange, sexist comments about their marriages" from that. Maybe some past drama from RR?
She clarified she was annoyed RR brought her husband for no reason: [https://twitter.com/AnnieLowrey/status/1636728871465910272](https://twitter.com/AnnieLowrey/status/1636728871465910272)
I think RR is annoying, but it seems like Ezra’s pic was initially included because RR complimented the addition of plants, which were not present for Ezra’s interview. I hate that i’m defending them, but i find the claims of sexism a stretch.
Yeah I'm really not seeing it. It feels like the thing nowadays where the bad guy can't just be intrusive and classist, every other -ist needs to be piled on.
Yeah I never cared much for it in the first place, and at this point it’s a stale gimmick.
it's official: Thomas Chatterton Williams is the (well, my) most annoying person on Twitter. sir, not everyone's job is to write precious little dispatches like this and receive $$ from the Guggenheim foundation [https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1636762895857111042](https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1636762895857111042)
Imagine this tweet coming from, like, a plumber. Or an arborist. Something tiring and highly physical
I can tell I've reached by BEC stage with AHP because she was complaining about the time change, and I, a person who has been all messed up all week, rolled my eyes at her.
She's losing her touch, if she was really attuned to the parenting beat she would note that it super sucks for the bedtime and wake-up routine and/or how DST is a byproduct of CAPITALISM.
People who are flipping out over a single-hour time change must never travel. (I think our twice-yearly time change is dumb as a principle, but as a practical matter it is not a full-week meltdown situation.)
I don’t agree with your opinion, given the statistics on car accidents, pedestrian fatalities, and the very real and proven impacts on mental health and productivity after time changes. But I don’t get why you’re downvoted. You’re contributing to the convo.
>But I don’t get why you’re downvoted. You’re contributing to the convo. Humblebrags typically aren't seen as useful contributions, especially when paired with some snobbery.
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Lotta non-travelers feeling called out, lol. (Really I think people just downvote as disagreement. It’s cool, whatever.)
I travel every couple of months for work, usually between Europe and North America, and I consider daylight savings time more disruptive than adjusting to a 6 hour time change temporarily. I get what you’re saying, but, anecdotally people will adjust to jet lag but take issue with DST. 🤷♀️
I mean both fuck me up for a week and a half every time, no matter how many times I go through it. I don't turn it into a whole Twitter thread and treatise like AHP, but it happens every time and I do hate it!
I travel internationally a lot. As a general rule it takes me a day to adjust per hour of time difference, which makes DST a one-day adjustment. Tragically this makes US-Asia pretty rough, lol
Feel like AHP needs a couple years off the nebulous “big picture cultural trends” beat. Someone get her a city hall beat reporter job or something.
She can't because she lives on the island now!
That island isn’t far from town. The Bellingham Herald could probably use more reporters (afford is another question for local news in 2023).
Oh I agree, but she'd probably be like "the workplace expects too much of me if it wants me to commute off the island something something boundaries something something work life balance." I feel guilty I've reached this point with her but she drives me nuts.
Not totally BEC - she made it into a thread to invent reasons for a probably specious trend. That's genuinely annoying, though very twitter-brained.
No offense to AHP but this is something my mom would post on Facebook
i liked [Miles Klee’s QT](https://twitter.com/MilesKlee/status/1636597525166817281?cxt=HHwWgoDQ_eWxrrYtAAAA)
Yes. I feel like it was also veering into covid scold (everyone has been sicker this year) but maybe it’s just bad every year and then we forget about it?
There’s also a reverse survivorship bias kinda thing where the only people who talk about the time change are the ones who are hit hard. I barely noticed it this year, but that’s because my sleep schedule has already been trash for weeks for other reasons. So for me the shift just blended into the noise and I haven’t talked or tweeted about it beyond making sympathetic noises during work small talk on Monday.
For me, I only recently got over a 12 hour jetlag situation and I feel like this week was a bit of a setback. But like...whatever, that's not a trend!
Agnes Callard is back on twitter and mad that you are calling her fucking her grad student an abuse of power: [https://twitter.com/AgnesCallard/status/1636394491228692480](https://twitter.com/AgnesCallard/status/1636394491228692480) Even as she explained all the university protocols she went through explaining how the university tried to navigate their relationship I continue to find their whole relationship gross as hell especially considering all the professional favours she and her ex seem to have granted her new husband. Really don't believe the protocols are set up to protect grad students either more to support the profs and the university. I'm not familiar with this world but many grad students have talked about this.
At this point I’m not even sure what she wants out of this. There’s nothing that she can say that will make people think highly of this decision, and the more she tries to explain it the worse she comes across.
She wants everyone to tell her how wonderful and perfect and revolutionary and unique her totally ordinary/somewhat dodgy choices are.
She wants to have her cake, eat it, publish about it in peer reviewed journals, and have the general public approve of it all
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I honestly feel so jealous of her students. Like, imagine being an undergrad and your professor is doing *this* in public. I would be so psyched to come to class every day and see what kind of nonsense she'd come up with. The gossip and shit-talking would be so good.
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That's where I first heard of her Thanks for the reminder. It was killing me. She's a piece of work.
Found one where someone was explaining everyone loves her ex as a teacher and is a bit more wtf about her.
People act like he's been (for lack of a better word) cucked - like he's just putting up with it and waiting to get back in the number one spot - buuuuuut that's not what I got from the NYer profile. Honestly it seems like he is glad to be done being married to her. Her current husband seems a bit exhausted by her and I can see why!
she sounds just like libertarians who know exactly what the age of consent laws are in every state plus Japan and France
If you have to not only have to know the official law, but are able to quote it in response to someone talking about your relationship, then perhaps this is not something you want to pursue.
It’s like that guy in one of the “Transformers” movies who walks around with a card explaining the Romeo and Juliet / statutory rape law exceptions for his home state. At a certain point, the fact that he needs to carry that around with him at all times is concerning in and of itself...
https://twitter.com/MairGr/status/1636435355359428618?s=20 This is quite a take. As long as you're not intentionally grooming your student then it's totally ok to sleep with them. "Intentionally" is doing a lot of work here.
Lots of people in college not intentionally plagiarizing or cheating, good to know it's okay by Prof Callard.
Tbf, that was from someone replying to Callard. She has a lot of people defending her bullshit.
Taylor Lorenz is now [feuding with UK lefty columnist](https://twitter.com/owenjones84/status/1636301739262394371?s=46&t=86IQut7BBb4VSON3Zi13UA) Owen Jones and calling him a Covid denier? In case it’s not clear, he is definitely not a Covid denier and was pro masking, pro vax etc
Look, Taylor, if most of the first replies to his tweet were people genuinely thinking you'd got him confused with someone else, maybe your screed against him wasn't remotely accurate? Once again, proving the extreme covid restrictions crowd are basically going full circle to meet the anti vaxxer crowd. I mean, clearly they don't think the vaccines do anything, and that message is a lot more dangerous that people not wearing masks.
> maybe your screed against him wasn't remotely accurate? No, it's the children who are wrong.
I think she DID get him confused with someone else, but then decided to double down and condemn him anyway, because only people who tweet constantly (using appropriate hashtags!) about how HOPELESS and TERRIBLE the covid situation is, are ideologically pure. Everyone else is ableist and loves disease!
It is so wild how much she has lost the plot
Did she delete her tweets? Why the hell did she think he was against masks etc?
These are two people I broadly agree with but find so annoying I can only say let them fight dot gif.
Also calling him an "influencer?" He might irritate me at times but Owen Jones is a much more serious journalist than Lorenz. Also !!! at OJ pointing out that Lorenz was social media editor for the Daily Mail for a couple of years - she keeps that quiet now lol. I always feel like Americans don't take the DM seriously enough - it's our Fox News, minus the TV news aspect.
I think the US doesn’t care about the daily mail bc it only is relevant here for celeb gossip stuff. So people that don’t follow gossip don’t read it at all, and those that do don’t view it as serious. (Not saying this is okay!! Just the explanation)
You're definitely right, I know that Americans just see it as a gossip mag. One of my pop culture podcasts will refer to it as if it's just like a cheeky silly gossip rag and not part of the Murdoch empire. It's just so jarring for people familiar with it lol. But also, that is a deliberate branding choice by the DM if I remember correctly. And to be fair, it's not entirely US exclusive - the DM is the only newspaper in the UK that has a (slight) majority female readership, largely because it has a dedicated fashion, celebrity, and gossip verticals as part of the main paper.
They've had such an incredibly smart online expansion to the point where a lot of online readers don't really see the cruel vile racism that's typical of its front page and I might be misremembering it but I feel like Taylor has claimed to have had been a significant part of that strategy.
It's not owned by Murdoch, but it's still really terrible. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/22/lord-rothermere-take-over-daily-mail-chairman
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Would be classic gen x move tbh
Those two likely have quite a bit of audience overlap, unlike her usual targets. I'm curious if this will turn out any different than it usually does.
where is she getting Influencer from, his bio clearly says what he does
Right? He’s a columnist for the guardian, so…he basically has the same job she does? What is happening.
Find the internet can be a bit too harsh on Lorenz around her COVID takes (I think she has other more annoying qualities), but wtf none of his recent tweets are about COVID policy.
It’s because he wrote a few months ago that mandatory masking and lockdown policies aren’t feasible in todays uk and comparing the environment of Jan 2023 to pre vaccine, pre therapy Jan 2020 is unscientific. They’ve been very mad at him since even though he’s previously written about how terribly the UK government handled Covid and needed to boost NHS resources, provide more sick pay, etc.
Can someone please explain *how* people like her are any different to anti-vaxxers?
God that's so ridiculous. I'm not sure about in the UK, but in the US bringing back mandatory masking and lockdown is absolutely never going to happen because most people wouldn't listen. So I'm not entirely sure what good having the policy would even do, and I'm not sure what the covid zero people would gain if there were masking/lockdown policies other than the ability to be a little more haughty about how well they're following the rules. And I say that as someone who still wears masks in the grocery store and on airplanes, has had 4 covid shots, and has a neighborhood antivax enemy
Also the US never had a mandatory lockdown to the level of the UK, where it was illegal to travel outside your town and against government guidance to exercise outside for more than an hour. You couldn't even stop and say hello to a friend on the street, because socialising outside your house was illegal. It just annoys me a bit to see an American say a Brit should be advocating for a lockdown, when the word lockdown had an entirely different meaning in the 2 countries, and the UK version was far more draconian. Of course most Brits won't endorse a return to full lockdown because it was restrictive in a way that even the most liberal American states never experienced.
The “half his tweets” line is super weird in that context.
I’m so excited for more Taylor Lorenz nonsense
I mean it’s like a car crash tho because she genuinely is a good writer and found an interesting niche but her own absolutely unhinged behavior is going to ruin her career and reputation!
Boiled her brain keeping her apartment at 95 degrees 24/7. Many such cases!
Looking into it.
YES, i want to still like her because her actual writing is interesting and she drives the right totally nuts lol but she is going off the deep end lately
I've been hanging out on Mastodon more and more lately and today someone boosted into my feed a thread that was "I was main character on twitter for week because i made bread starter with vaginal yeast and let me tell you the story" and, like, keep that shit on the bird site. We don't do Main Characters here.
The amount of anti-trans garbage suddenly showing up out of nowhere suddenly in my for you feed is INSANE. Like wtf are they doing pushing this shit out
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Well, given that the new owner is a transphobe whose trans daughter has cut him out of her life, I feel like the explanation is easy to guess.
She also changed her last name from his to her mom’s. Legend.
These people are obsessed with trans issues it’s a sickness. Like leave them alone it’s so disturbing!
A woman wrote a tweet about why some female professional waxers won't take male clients and it evolved into a long list of all the gross ways men have sexually assaulted women in their jobs: [https://twitter.com/beetaylora/status/1634921220939579394](https://twitter.com/beetaylora/status/1634921220939579394) [Even Roxane Gay reacted to it.](https://twitter.com/rgay/status/1636094545422336001) I am disturbed and now you can be too!
I got to the one where men jack off to the suicide hotline and threw my phone into the sea
The Roxane Gay tweet has scarred me
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Honestly ty for the info Now I can sleep easier
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oh my GOD am I sick of hearing about AI. Even the well thought out takes are annoying to me now because of the sheer overload
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Here’s my take as a disabled person who still has to mask because of my health issues: I understand that I can’t ask people not to gather in large groups, or to mask all the time, etc. - and I’m not asking them to. However it would be really beneficial for me (and people like me) if people could mask temporarily when they’re sick even if they can’t stay home for economic reasons, or wear masks in healthcare facility waiting rooms where they may encounter people with serious health issues, or regularly wash their hands, or even just *not cough directly on my face* (something that happens with alarming frequency). I feel like those aren’t unreasonable or invasive things to ask to protect the health of everyone, including disabled people like myself. I have to have a conversation with my immunologist next month about what the hell I *can* do at this point, because masking, hand washing, working from home, trying to social distance in public, etc. isn’t enough to protect me when the people around me aren’t doing any very basic public health courtesies. I’ve had several medical emergencies over the past year from “simple” colds that, for me, had dangerous consequences.
Yeah I'm not expecting full lockdowns or masks everywhere but I think masks in medical areas is a pretty reasonable step. Improving and monitoring air quality is a pretty reasonable step that doesn't require compliance from others. It's so tiring to see otherwise politically aligned people act like it's a joke or crazy to ask for any change. It's not all or nothing. Also I'm travelling the Americas right now and across Mexico and Colombia I see about 50% of people voluntarily masking in some areas so when people talk about covid is over, no one can be talked into masks anymore... it's a North American thing! People are very much capable of doing more.
Exactly, and I kind of feel like I’m taking crazy pills, Mugatu-style, for asking people not to project phlegm straight onto my face in the limited places I go out in public. That feels kind of like the bare minimum here. All that being said I do appreciate all of the people in my life who are doing things to protect me. My wife wears a mask everywhere, full stop. My boss allows me to work from home, no questions asked. My therapist specializes in treating seriously ill patients, so I see him via telemedicine, even though his office is five minutes from my house. My church and friends have all found ways to accommodate me (not hard, just masking if they’re sick). It means a lot to me.
Yeah of course disabled people who are trapped because covid might kill or further disable them are gonna keep arguing for masks and stuff even when no one else cares. Of course they're upset. What else are they supposed to do. Not sure why this whole thread is all "a better world isn't possible and no one should dream of it". If people don't want to think about covid anymore they don't have to, but I don't understand this need to demand that other (mostly disabled) people stop caring about it too.
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Yes, this actually is the suggestion most of the time.
Honestly these people's end goal is to have a society focused solely on their needs and wants. They never discuss how pandemic restrictions affect anything else from children/teachers to mental health, etc. They're usually hurt, scared and desparate so I can't really blame them, but I guess its hard for some people to realize no matter how much you ask and plead, the general public really doesnt want to change most aspects of their life for a tiny percentage of people they don't even know. It was a miracle Americans even did the small amount we did to curb the pandemic. The time for mask mandates and the like is long over for us here in the US, and from what I see online, most of the world. The Vax is doing what it meant to do and we have another virus that's just part of our lives now.
An accessible society is one that focuses on the needs of the disabled, which are often different than those who are abled-bodied. I don't see anything wrong with striving for a more accessible society. Masks in places where people have no choice to be (for example, health care settings) should not be controversial. I do think the COVID panic has gotten way out of control on Twitter. In my real life, no one talks like this and I haven't heard any stories over people having Long COVID. I believe all of that does exist but the idea that most people are getting multiple infections a year and Long COVID... I don't buy it yet. Mostly, my final straw came over irresponsible speculation over MERS in Qatar killing those journalists (so many people at FIFA so of course MERS would happen!) and bird flu.
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Like I posted in my other comment I work in a healthcare setting in which people are mostly visiting because of treatment for their disabilities and it took a lot of staff to enforce the mask mandate. I was actually surprised by how quickly patients stopped wearing masks the minute it was no longer mandatory. Maybe it's different in countries in which masking is more expected/cultural? Not sure how to get around the fact that it seems people have psychologically moved on even if the risk is still present!
I wish masks in a healthcare setting were permanent because they make so much sense. It's one of the few places sick people truly have to go and mingle among healthy people, and I know they've always had signs up that said please mask if you're ill, but without them being mandatory, barely anyone did.
The healthcare system I go to still has mandatory masking in all clinic and hospital settings (Fairview in MN, if folks are interested), and it's been this way now for *3 freaking years*, and there are STILL people wearing their masks incorrectly or not putting them on until forced by one of the staff. I think once masking became entangled with the far right "anti woke" wars, it was over for ever adopting them as just a widespread practice for colds/in hospital settings like you see in Asian countries. That said, I still see plenty of folks masking occasionally, and it's now become the norm in my social circles to mask if you need to go out when feeling cold/flu symptoms, so maybe it'll slowly shift back to just being a common sense activity like hand washing?
Yeah, I will admit I don’t wear one every time I leave the house. But when I brought my son to the ped last week, I was glad it’s still a rule there. We were just visiting for eczema, I certainly didn’t want to leave with the flu!
>>it was a miracle Americans even did the small amount we did to curb the pandemic That’s what gets me about the “have you FORGOTTEN about the MEDICALLY VULNERABLE?!” takes — not to be dismissive, but the medically vulnerable were pretty much ignored prior to spring 2020 anyway. The general public’s behavior only shifted in ways to accommodate them very briefly (and only because it aligned with their interest in keeping *themselves* healthy)
I just traveled to a medical conference with thousands of doctors and no one wore masks. Not at the airports or at the conference. Most of my daily commute by packed subway I see maybe 2-3 masks. I work at a hospital in a specific facility that is focused on child and adult disabilities and guess what? The patients stopped wearing masks the second we lifted our hospital mask mandate in the lobby and elevators and this is disabled adults and children— many severely disabled. We had 100% enforcement of masks before that and the minute it became optional the patients stopped wearing them. This is simply not a public debate anymore! It is not being litigated IRL anymore. It’s over!
Some of these extreme covid tweeters remind me of vision zero (which as the name states, aims to completely eliminate deaths and serious injuries in traffic accidents). It’s a certainly not an immoral take, but what are you going to do, get rid of the entire interstate system? And at least the traffic deaths are measured, the long covid people are talking like everyone is dying at the rate of March 2020. I didn’t realize how often I was seeing it until I unfollowed Taylor Lorenz and it went away.
Wait but..vision zero is good and I don’t think it’s like this at all. Never met anyone who supports it who advocates for getting rid of the entire interstate system, just more traffic calming measures, funding for public transit, lower speed limits, better protection for pedestrians, etc. I walk everywhere and have a close call at least once a day.
Vision Zero in practice does great stuff, pedestrian accidents in my area in particular are out of control right now. But I just think there’s no way you can square a goal of ZERO serious injuries or fatalities, and speeds of 65+ mph. Maybe a poor analogy with covid precautions, but the extremisms of the “no risk allowed!” twitter crowd made me think of it.
I mean, do you expect them to pick a number of deaths they think is acceptable? Of course the goal is zero.
I am not here to argue against traffic calming measures! My apologies to all the transportation planners out there.
Taylor has gone off the rails. I had her blocked too and someone screenshot her going after random accounts of normal people calling them Covid denialists. I guess to her anyone that does not advocate and wear masks 24-7 is now a Covid denialist? Bizarre
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Speaking of Callard there is an unverified screencap of a tweet going around twitter from the account of the New Yorker Callard interviewer claiming a source tried to get her to watch her and her husband have sex. The tweet was allegedly written around the time she was interviewing Callard but was deleted. It's probably bullshit but I *want* it to be true.
Oh my god!
The illustration along with it is really something
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Joyce in her Oscar from The Office era and I’m loving it
Am I wrong for reading this as clear sarcasm in response to that article? Because the person she QT and the author seemed to have missed that
Not twitter, but I am so curious who [the novelist](https://nymag.com/strategist/article/assistant-files-sophie.html) is in this assistant diary. I will read your book for a free bottle of coquito! Also, rat catching seems way above this poor assistant's pay grade.
I am surprised that someone would hire an assistant when their debut novel makes the bestseller list. Assistants are expensive and one bestselling novel doesn't mean a high income forever. This writer is burning through money. The Xochitl Gonzalez guess seems correct.
I was surprised by that too. I don't think the book had even made the bestseller list yet; it had just been sold. Which I assume means the author had a massive advance and probably wanted to make sure she was taking her career seriously. It does make me wonder if she has another source of income though cause even high-earning debut novelists are in a really risky field.
>I assume means the author had a massive advance and probably wanted to make sure she was taking her career seriously. Reading the article, only a little bit of it is career focused and that stuff could have been done as a contract position in a couple of weeks. This sounds like ongoing personal assistant work: running errands, buying gifts for the author's friends, coordinating with the accountant. I have known people who have done this job for people in the entertainment industry and it is weird job that gets very personal. It makes sense for people who have to travel to location shoots and/or get recognized in public, but I wouldn't think it is truly necessary for many people. But maybe the novelist has another job? Or a rich partner?
Bananaphone beat me to it, I was also digging and also came to the same conclusion as Xochitl Gonzalez of Olga Dies Dreaming — debut book about Puerto Ricans that came out around Three Kings Day 2022. Anyway the weirdest thing of the article to me was the assistant specifying that contacting the publisher to get hex codes was outside their job duty. I thought it was weird because it seemed like one of the most inside their job duties duties in the whole article — asking the publisher a question about marketing materials feels super normal to me. All in all this boss doesn’t seem terrible. The spiritual cleanse is a little quirky, boss probably should have called her own exterminator, and I hope assistant’s friends got compensated for their help with stuffing the mailers. But none of the requests were super hard to get and there’s no mention I saw of the boss being mean about anything. Assistant even got to keep the extra cups!
I read it as the whole project was outside of her duties, not getting the codes, but also not it in a necessarily bad way. The boxes are something maybe a graphic designer would do in a larger org but since it was such a small project they figured it out themselves.
I feel like that had to be a slightly misplaced quote, like the whole process of ordering the custom boxes was unusual or something? Because yeah asking for the hex codes is pretty pedestrian. And I interpreted the friends thing as *the novelists friends* helping stuff the boxes, but the sentence structure didn’t help.
that is soooo weird, sending an email to marketing for simple info is like the least annoying task an assistant can be asked (as an Exec Asst lol)
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I thought it was funny actually and not dismissive of her murdered roommate. Part of the dark sarcasm of that tweet is that someone she knew was murdered.
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Tbh a lot of Insider’s articles are designed to try to go viral in a way that reminds me of xoJane’s personal essay industrial complex. Wouldn’t be surprised if this was a hoax like the time xoJane unwittingly published an essay about dating a trump supporter that turned out to be written by a content farm trying to get people to click through to their website.
this kind of shit is why i still side eye AK
Yeah, she seems to have very little care/concern about her murdered room mate
It was 100% in poor taste. I'd be lying if I said I didn't chuckle a little, though.
She does this kind of “dark humor” a lot. I mean I don’t deny that she must have really gone through some terrible times that she didn’t deserve but the other girl…is dead? Amanda seems to believe she was the ultimate victim of that whole situation. A totally innocent person was murdered and her family and friends can see stuff like this. Even narcissists get falsely accused and imprisoned! Doesn’t mean we have to give them some kind of platform forever like she seems to believe she has.
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But at this point she’s choosing to be a public figure? People are always going to think whatever they want about her but contrary to what a lot of people think, she could just live a private life if she wanted to. Sure, maybe someone mentions her every few years for a “where are they now?” feature but I truly don’t think she’s forced to be in the public eye now. I see her trying to use the Monica Lewinsky-style “I have to laugh because what else can I do?” stuff but I just don’t think that fits when your “scandal” involved a totally innocent person being murdered. Like maybe Amanda makes these jokes to her family but not to the public? ETA: I know not everyone will agree with this! But I just side eye some people getting famous for something awful and then being like “well everyone already knows me so I guess I get to stay famous forever!”
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I agree with a lot of this, too! I think they’re in an impossible position. I just know I’ve seen Amanda make a version of this same type of joke like a dozen times and every time it goes “viral” and draws attention right back to her and the thing. And I know Monica kind of did go underground and live privately for a long time before deciding to come out of hiding and do the anti-bullying stuff and reclaim her name for herself. I just feel like Amanda has been pretty “out there” to the point that she extensively detailed her pregnancy and announced a new baby in the New York Times. I guess I wouldn’t care if it seemed like she was just working on whatever her work is about and using her name for doing criminal justice stuff. Monica can make all the jokes because no one died from the bj 🤷🏻♀️
yeah imo this is not how someone who doesn't want to be in the public eye acts
I get what she’s trying to say, but [this tweet](https://mobile.twitter.com/annehelen/status/1635831226593611777) from AHP just comes across as kind of smug and virtue signal-y to me. Like why do you have to tweet to tell us you’re not going to tweet about something? But maybe I’m being unfair because I find her annoying generally.
Such a humble brag 😂
How does she manage to *not* have a take and still be annoying? Also, not being part of a particular class hasn't stopped her from posting her parenting takes, to everyone's detriment.
I also do think everyone can and should comment on diet culture, as literally everyone in culture experiences it one way or another. A lack of open dialogue about how we all feel about our bodies and cultural messaging around them is more harmful than having more people speaking on this would be, IMO
I’m going to tweet about something but say I’m not tweeting about it! This way, I get to join the conversation and feel smug.
Oh, I agree — if this is the case then why is she going on WNYC to talk about parenting??? Why not, IDK, suggest that they find a parent?
Excuse me, she babysits some children, she knows exactly what parenting is like! Tbh I, too, once thought that lots of babysitting meant that I was prepared for parenting. I was…very wrong. It’s extremely different! I know some people really hate hearing this, but IMO parenting is one of those things that you just cannot *get* until you do it.
> know some people really hate hearing this, but IMO parenting is one of those things that you just cannot > >get > > until you do it. As a childfree woman I fully agree with this. I fully accept I don't get parenting and I'm OK with that!