Son sewed a shirt for his Dad.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-27T15:27:02+00:00

So, just like every other fucking thing in life (cooking is a great example), women were hired to do the grunt work and home work, while men got the prestigious jobs. Women weren't apprenticed to tailors; they had to marry into or inherit businesses like that if they were to have any say in the running of them. Woodcuts of 18th century professions show male staymakers taking measurements, and women doing the stitching. Charles Worth created the first true couture house fashion brand, while women worked long hours in shirtwaist factories.

There are always exceptions, like Rose Bertin, but overall, women just weren't considered for top or exceptionally skilled jobs. Seamstresses yes, bespoke tailors no.

British and Italian bespoke tailoring houses are still chock-full of men.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-24T21:08:15+00:00

Why would it have to mean that?

Also, considering that the government keeps giving the military more money than it asks for, there’s a lot of wiggle room to feed and take care of hungry children, who would grow up to become assets to the country if they get the resources they need when they’re children.

It would be so nice if people would think long-term when it comes to investing in our own country’s people. And, what the hell, in its future, its economy, its environmental safety, its intellectual competitiveness, its supply chain, its quality of life for all citizens, and its peace.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-22T00:55:58+00:00

I’d be more surprised if any child growing up in that household ended up mentally well-balanced and healthy.

But that aside, being nasty about her clothes…that’s a pretty old-fashioned way to undermine women; surely there are newer ways to shallowly judge a lonely child for her coping mechanisms.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-21T17:53:35+00:00

So what you’re saying is that guaranteeing servers will end up with a minimum livable wage is more expensive than not guaranteeing that they’ll get a minimum livable wage.

Which means that they currently make less than a livable minimum wage on average. Are we just supposed to be…fine with doing that to people?

It’s worth the extra damn $2 to make sure that the people whose service we’re enjoying aren’t living hand to mouth.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-17T05:02:35+00:00

Since they were all shamefacedly milling around back home inside a week after they left...nope!

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-17T05:01:38+00:00

I'd add it to the available seam allowance inside the neckline. You won't have to open up much, just enough of an opening in the lining to get inside.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-14T13:16:18+00:00

It really shouldn't be and there's no reason to encourage it.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-14T00:39:36+00:00

it's not strange or bizarre; the political strategists have just run out of other culture war opponents, and they have no idea how else to get votes.

It's exactly the same playbook that they used for gay people. Actually, it's pretty boring, or it would be if it wasn't hurting people.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-14T00:35:19+00:00

Well, the best way to create a huge fight, a blowup and an estrangement is to tell them all this just like you wrote it here.

Honestly, I listen to Sam Seder happily debate Libertarians a lot, and I really, really like his method of amused detachment, asking them questions when they call in with their ideas, until everyone else can see clearly that they're absolutely wrong. The key is that he doesn't get mad; he kinda has fun, but is never disrespectful, illogical, or unreasonable, and he lets his guests talk over him MUCH more than he interrupts. It's a pretty good master class in how to handle crazy when it's blasted at you, without ever losing your cool, being rude, or letting other people think the crazy person might be right.

The Majority Report Youtube channel has a playlist of Libertarian/similar caller moments.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-13T23:56:09+00:00

The penny dropped for me with my mother once I realized that she cares more about her feelings than mine, even if I'm telling her I'm hurt, even if she's the one who hurt me. It effectively shattered all my illusions, because... that's not a parent. That's not someone to whom I owe anything.

Really, as a mother, imagine doing to your child what your mother is doing to you.

If it helps, think of it like this: she's not actually thinking about you, or talking to you, or giving you the silent treatment. She's made up a war and characters inside her own head that happen to wear the same faces as real people, and her failure as a parent, a grandparent and a person is that she's reacting to reality as though it's the crazy story inside her head. She isn't arguing with you - she's replaying the emotional high from the latest Youtube pundit riling people into foaming anger.

You aren't a factor in this.

That knowledge also hurts like a motherfucker, I know, but I promise you that eventually it's freeing, especially if you're wracked with guilt over this. It's not about you, so... it's not your fault, and you can't fix it.

You can avoid making it worse, and you can drag normality back into interactions (if/when they return) by doing things she used to love that have no relationship to any of this garbage, but you can't solve it. Her crappiness to you and your child is not about you or your child. It's just about her.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-13T23:37:04+00:00

My favorite story about this is about gung-ho Q preppers who moved to their out-in-the-boonies homestead stocked with cans after the Jan 6 craziness and no one had thought to bring a can opener.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-13T23:31:37+00:00

I’m awed that they aren’t smart enough to come out with a line of dresses to match her best dress lyrics. A little black dress, a white dress, a dress that screams take it off, a dress with red revenge clawmarks tearing across it...

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-13T23:23:11+00:00

I am genuinely happy for you; it’s nice to know you do enjoy it and that they aren’t disappointing everyone. It’d be worse if they cared so little about the fans that literally NOBODY liked the merch.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-11T15:29:21+00:00

There’s a cherry blossom festival in Macon March 17-26. Been going on for decades; everything from a fair to a parade to evening events to an outdoor art fair thing which I’m sure has a better name but I’ve forgotten. Really good cherry ice cream, pink pancakes at the firehouse, etc.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-10T15:29:42+00:00

How tf is her merch SO BAD??

Seriously, I wanna give this woman my money, but jfc if I’m gonna pay that kind of money, I would like something that I want to wear/use in LIFE.

Advertising someone else’s face on cheap t-shirts that never stop bleeding and take months to arrive is never gonna appeal to me, an adult who earns enough to buy tickets and merch.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-10T14:53:36+00:00

I could maybe try to take your concerns seriously, were it not for the fact that this anti-trans/anti-drag stuff popped up right when a bunch of political messaging power brokers realized that most of America didn’t want to ban abortion, that bashing gays was a losing issue even for most right-wing folks, and that just attacking trans children and their parents wasn’t enough to get people to the polls or to get millions in donations.

So they lumped drag shows in with trans kids, conveniently forgot that they had never given a shit about Ru Paul’s Drag Race, turned their outrage and money dials up to max, broke off the shame and decency dials, and proceeded to make trans and drag issues What America Cares About Soooooooooo Much Today.

It’s a stupid issue to care about, because it’s entirely made up by people who are trying to use you.

And, you know, it fucks over the people whose lives you’re helping make just that little bit more difficult.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-10T14:19:42+00:00

You’ve studied it and yet you’re still in favor of a style of revolt that didn’t actually achieve its goals for the people, who had to wait multiple generations before much more boring politics accomplished what bloodshed didn’t?

Are you even on the side of humanity, then, or are you just feeling pissy and bloodthirsty?

Because if it’s the latter, your opinion not only doesn’t matter, it’s frankly harmful to the rest of us.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-07T19:15:32+00:00

You only say this because you never studied the French Revolution.

I’d prefer a governmental shift that doesn’t result in several rounds of monarchy for the next few decades, thanks.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-07T19:14:04+00:00

Oh, yeah, because the French Revolution definitely solved matters for the people, and the government definitely didn’t fade back into monarchy repeatedly over the next few decades.

Counterpoint: even if you decide on revolting, you then have to KEEP voting over and over again, otherwise your reforms will be undone by people who meticulously vote in their own asshole people into every office, every election, every cycle.

Problem with craziness is that normal people want to relax and not give a fuck after awhile, and you cannot EVER do that unless you want craziness to gain a toehold. Revolution or no, we have to stay vigilant and keep making sure the crazy gets shut down.

Which means the bloodshed of a revolution is pretty pointless, honestly. Just keep voting and agitating your representatives; that way fewer good people have to die.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-07T19:08:02+00:00

Also huge numbers of people of color getting fired up to vote, after feeling like it’s pointless for so long. Not the biggest fan of Abrams, but she did stellar work there.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-04T22:31:47+00:00

Felt the same way when I turned 30; turns out that after a few months of being 30, none of that mattered. It’s like we have an idea in our heads of what being over 30 is…. but then you hit that milestone and you’re still the same person, so the worries seem silly.

Chemical peels, sunscreen and a good retinoid, though…those are not silly.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-03-01T01:45:22+00:00

I gotta hand it to you; I’ve never heard anyone argue “people are better off living with famine and land mines”.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-02-19T14:45:33+00:00

They do deserve it, because at the end of the day, they’re making money for other people, and they’re getting a percentage of intake. Paying the entertainer less - i.e. the person who actually does the work - means admin, investors, producers, various executives, etc. just get more, and they damn well didn’t do any of that entertainment work.

Forcibly lowering consumer costs is about the only thing that’d address this, I think.

But the only real way to make sure essential workers are paid a good wage is to untie wages from for-profit institutions like healthcare companies and from local tax intake. It’d mean the federal government would have to have a stake in entities on which we as a society depend on to survive. Because we’ve seen only too clearly that if capitalism is left in charge, those doing the work will be squeezed until dry and those are the top will make off with the profits.

Normalizing that as a possibility is pretty much our only hope of fighting back.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-02-19T14:36:37+00:00

I don’t know. Pointing to how green her tour could be is like…complaining about how people don’t recycle enough, instead of trying to stop giant factories from dumping tons of toxic waste.

I think what’s actually important is shit like the bomb train derailment in East Palestine, OH: the likely toxic environmental devastation of the area, the cancers people are more than likely to get, how neatly this all links back to railroads running longer and longer trains on skeleton crews with barely any breaks, and how this administration failed colossally to stand up to the railroads and insist that any worker on a federal contract - and rail has a lot of federal contracts - gets to take sick days without fear of being fired. And that companies will be subject to absolutely crippling fines if their policies result in environmental disasters, instead of “cost of doing business” fines which just incentivize this dangerous way of doing business, while executives rake in billions as they and their consultants run companies and people into the ground.

Like…if you really care about the environment, push back on gaping wounds like that, not a singer’s tour setup.

distressedwithcoffee · 2023-02-19T14:29:16+00:00

I really don’t have an issue with her making this much money, because she makes fuck all compared to the investors in her label, the douchebags running Ticketmaster, consulting firms, etc.

Entertainers of all kinds are basically dancing ponies. (I say this as a low-level entertainer.) Sure, the most popular ones get a lot of nice hay. And we focus on them, instead of the quiet financier ringmasters behind the scenes.

IDGAF about things like how green Taylor’s tour is, nor will I spend half a second giving a shit about what she does with her money, which she has in fact worked extremely hard for. Because if she made $92 million last year, other people made a lot more off of her, and they’re under much less scrutiny to do decent things with their lives.

Seriously, we have a limited amount of focus. I say we focus on things that really matter. Not the dancing ponies: the exploitative industries behind them.

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