Friday Night Cat Hat Open Thread

Thanks to everyone for your kind words. My friends are able to say all the right things, but you are all right in saying that it’s impossible to understand until you’ve experienced it. Hearing your stories is a healing balm. Everyone’s words are so appreciated. I know I don’t need anybody’s permission to grieve but it really helps to hear it anyway.

I’ve pulled back from stuff at work and dropped what I could. Leave isn’t completely out of the question, but I find joy in my work. It’s not the healthiest coping mechanism, but I’m not doing anything apart from the mandatory stuff so I don’t work myself to the bone, just enough to give me purpose and meaning.

@Ledasmom, I’m sure there’s nothing retained. I would have had symptoms by now and I have been hawkeyed for them. D&Cs aren’t fun, I was fortunate for everything to pass quickly and intact. I have enough psychological horror from passing the gestational sac, I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been to pass it in pieces.

@Gallivant, I’m high risk for an ectopic, and that is part of my fear about another pregnancy. I was so relieved when the ultrasound showed a pregnancy that was both single and intrauterine. Going back to the beginning means fighting those odds all over again, in addition to the infertilty ones. It’s a tough call, and I don’t have stepchildren, but we do have a bunch of pets, so that’s also good enough for me if that’s what happens.

@mildlymagnificent, your words moved me so much. I’ve tried many things as distractions, lots of intentional self-care, but it’s been a flotation device more than a rescue. As my psychologist reminded me, often the only way out is through, so here I am. I’m not okay, but I will be okay.

What an excuse not to get out of bed this morning…We Love Economic History, part 2 of 3:

http://weloveeconomichistory.blogspot.co.uk/

eli, I’m interested in your project; are you happy to share any details? I specialise in English history, but I know lots of people are working on social networks now all over the world–am trying to remember the person who’s writing about jewellery making in Italy so I can mention to someone else, but am too lazy to trawl back through the issues of Business History to find the review….

Flora: Ah, good. Sorry to be a noodge about it, but literally the only symptom I had was prolonged bleeding – not even very much at a time – for several months, and then not being able to go for a walk without having to sit down for a while after. I was lucky enough not to pass anything recognizable. Big sympathies there.
I do not know if anyone else finds this amusing, but back when it happened, I had to cancel dental work because I was having an urgent D&C done. It seemed to me that, in a better-organized world, the dental could have been taken care of while I was out. I hate having hands in my mouth.

I hope you don’t mind, but this is one of the very few places where you’ll understand why I’m so bone-deep-disappointed and probably feeling even more gutted than I should; the richest and most successful (if their emails are to be believed; we haven’t met for years) of my siblings – followed at least in part by the next-most – not only thinks Trump is better than Clinton (yeah, better for whom?), he also turns out to be an anthropogenic-climate-change-denialist. jesus h christ on a bike. These are people I grew up loving, people with access to all the information in the world, just about, and I see them (well, mostly 1, but t’other is right there) spouting clichéd right-wing verbiage … it kind of makes me want to cry, tbh. They were different once.
Oh, and of course they also think anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid/naive/living in a bubble etc. etc. etc., which is always nice. They are smart, you see, and have degrees, money etc. to prove it.
I know a lot of you have been there :-s
(The other siblings disagree, I’m glad to see at least, and quelle coïncidence they are the ones with the more relevant scientific background.)

Totally utterly and completely OT and trivial: do any Brits here happen to be following the fluffy history-and-food prog. that is (afaik – I confess I’ve never seen it yet) “Back in time (for Dinner)” on BBC2? (a modern family is “transported” to different periods of history; they exclaim in amazement at period food and quaint household technology). Spawn#2 (completely anonymous and invisible of course) one of the bunch who did the background music for next ep tomorrow 🙂
Not a big deal (not even a small one, in fact!) but I’m clutching at straws of cheer so I’ll take what I can get right now :-s

@guest, I certainly agree that “smart” is not necessarily any defence at all against abusive dynamics. Sometimes if anything it can lull you into a false sense of security precisely because you think it can’t happen to smart people, even. (I don’t know if that plays in sibling’s case, though :-s )

I’m very glad you had that luck, regardless of whether or not it was really ‘only dumb’

Thank you for linking to the excellent post on Adam Smith! I had no idea that his elevation to ultimate authority by the extreme right was so mired in misconceptions.

I’m really loving guest‘s teaching. It’s not just that I’m learning so much, it’s finding out that what little I thought I knew was so wrong. I’ve already got some fantastic “Well actually…” material for next time someone brings up some economics talking point. 🙂

It’s also stimulated so many jumping off points to other issues. It’s like a mental ‘wiki-walk’. The Chesterton stuff has already got me thinking about how PUAs treat women as ‘Ventler’ goods.

(Hope that’s the right word)

@ guest

Are you thinking of the crabby and eccentric economist Thorstein Veblen?

*Reads linked article*

Apparently ‘yes’ 🙂 (knew it had a ‘V’ in it)

Rhuu’s point about emulating the rich has also got me thinking. Of course it gets very complicated. There is the whole conspicuous consumption thing, as set out by some economist, Veblen I think his name was (nice one Al, think you bluffed your way through that). But the flipside is that whole ‘the rich dress poor and the poor dress rich’ thing and related concepts like ‘shabby chic’ and virtuous austerity. Wonder if it’s related to the ‘new money’ snobbery? And to go off at yet another tangent how ‘genteel’ poverty is acceptable in the upper classes but poor people’s poverty is down to them being lazy.

(just random thoughts for a Sunday afternoon)

@ guest

*warning for name dropping* 🙂

I once got to spend a weekend in a real royal residence. Not the big formal ones, this was in a park where they actually lived when not ‘on duty’. What amazed us was how scruffy it was. Battered old couches with loads of mismatched hand knitted cushions, dog hair everywhere and muddy footprints in the hallway. Thing is, it was really comfy and relaxed. You could just kick off your muddy boots and walk around in your socks or slob with your feet up. But we did comment on the contrast with typical ‘Hyacinth Bucket’ (“It’s pronounced Bouquet!”) middle class pretentiousness.

On a completely unrelated topic, your comments about temple money triggered yet more musings. Are you familiar with how the Romans tried to boost the economy after Caligula got assassinated? He’d almost emptied the Treasury and, because he’d executed a lot of wealthy people to nab their cash, people had pretended to be poor so the economy stagnated. The new government did a lot of things that we’d now talk about in terms of ‘confidence’. Very visible public spending, tax breaks for business etc. But they also melted down votive offerings to the temples so they could mint a lot of new coinage. The theological justifications for that are quite amusing.

“So Apollo is like really Hermes, and Hermes is the patron deity of entrepreneurs and they do best in a booming market; so really we’re just doing what he’d have wanted. In fact, this is like honouring him really!”

No, I don’t have it. It’s not working. Or am I filling a moderation queue with “test” messages?

Fast question for the French Mammothers:

There is a French comic I read years ago (like, mid-1980’s) that was about the adventures of a hamster. I recall the drawings done with pen and ink in a realistic style, and the pages having no dialogue in them. They were full-page strips that showed the hamster doing things like pulling a violin from his cheek pouches and playing it, just fun things like that.

I am wanting to say the hamster was named Herman, but that could be the artist’s name instead (a search for a French comic called Herman the Hamster turned up stuff that was done far more recently than the strip I’m thinking of). I would search my local library for the collection to see if they still had it (or search the Internet for a copy myself), but without knowing the name(s) I need, the search would take forever to do.

So, any ideas for what old comic is now demanding I go find it NAO?

Well, I finally found out why there are so few game controllers for PC. Apparently there are emulators to use pretty much all console controllers on PC. I’m going to play Killer Instinct tonight. /happyface

Thank you, eli 🙂 (I managed to get the broadcast date wrong – it’s tues 7, not tomorrow. It’s just a bit of fluff, but it’s a happy thought!
(especially because I’m still feeling stupidly bereft on realising my pro-Trump sibling must have been someone I don’t know for years, and I just never wanted to see it. I just remembered today, hearing him say years ago that thank goodness his daughter was good-looking, this was the only thing that really mattered for her, so she could get someone to marry her (she was a young teenager at the time) – knowing how much he values “smart”, I really thought he was kidding. I think now that he wasn’t).)
Sorry, I’m havering on again!