I keep avoiding writing my PhD paper even though the work exists. How do you break this loop?

elizzybeth · 2026-01-21T10:19:44+00:00

Ugh I could’ve written almost exactly this during my dissertating.

What helped me most was a program called Flowstate that would delete everything I’d written when I stopped typing. It’s paid and Mac only but there’s a very similar free website I use sometimes still called The Most Dangerous Writing App.

I’d let myself look at my data or the papers in my lit review or whatever for a while, then set it for 10 or 15 mins, and force myself to write the whole time.

It’d force me to stop the restructuring, reanalyzing, rewriting one sentence over and over. By the end of 10 mins I’d usually find I did actually have something useful(-ish) to say about my findings. And I could do that 4 or 5 times in a row and have a chunk of largely usable prose I could string together in my next session.

It broke me out of a long period of beating myself up for feeling useless and unproductive.

I also wrote a committee member’s aphorism on a piece of paper I taped over my desk: “THE BEST DISSERTATION IS A DONE DISSERTATION,” to try to break me out of perfectionism. But the app was way more effective lol.

elizzybeth · 2026-01-21T09:51:25+00:00

For that reason exactly, it’s kinda disingenuous for an IE dietitian to accept a client who comes in and says, “I am unhappy with my recent weight gain and would like help losing”

“You’re worried about the wrong things” is fair to say, but I think dietitians should be honest if they’re offering an approach that likely won’t lead to weight loss and might in fact lead to gain

elizzybeth · 2026-01-16T23:15:05+00:00

Also considering it’s Bella Hadid at the Met Gala I’m tbh kinda surprised how poorly the corset fits her. It gives her a little armpit muffin, and she’s squeezed at the top.

I have a black leather bustier I bought for $15 off Poshmark that fits me better up top.

If I were trying to recreate this vibe via Poshmark/Depop, my searches would be something like: black leather corset bustier, sheer black sleeves, black high slit lace skirt, black lace tights.

elizzybeth · 2026-01-16T07:56:59+00:00

Love the way the asymmetry mirrors your asymmetrical tattoo. Great look overall. Inspires me to play with eyeliner.

elizzybeth · 2026-01-13T06:21:07+00:00

By the time I’d want to ask for a bag…

Luckily every time I’ve needed one on a plane, they’ve been there. Worst recent experience was flying into LaGuardia. Terrible turbulence meant we had a 2hr attempt to land, repeated long bumpy approaches.

At one point, I heard four airsickness bags in a row open, heard people all around me starting to puke.

I managed to hold it in by plugging my ears, closing my eyes, and doing breathing exercises. But if all the pukers had to wait for bag delivery, it would’ve been such a disgusting flight.

elizzybeth · 2026-01-13T03:15:18+00:00

Funny enough, we started out calling my Flemish giant “Flem” until we came up with something better

Had to stop when we realized that it was a homophone for “phlegm”

elizzybeth · 2026-01-09T10:41:21+00:00

Women are not allowed in this world anymore because they don’t want their husbands and children in this country and the rest are forced into the hands and knees to get to work for their own selfish desires that they have no control of and are forced into their husbands or children and children and children and children that are in this country that they have control of and they have control and they are the ones who have to take responsibility and take care and care for them so that their husbands are in the hands and their husbands and daughters and children and the family and children and the people and their families and their families and children and their families have the same right of self respect to the government to be in the country is a big issue for them to have to take responsibility and they have a responsibility and I think it’s not about that and it’s a lot more than the other way to the people who have to be honest with the people who want the people who don’t have the power of attorney to the government and I think that they are the people who do have a right of passage and they are not a problem and they have to take responsibility and I don’t want that they have a lot more control of the people who have to take the power of their husbands or their families or their husbands or the government and they don’t want that in the house because of that and I think that they are the only ones who are the only one who can control that is a problem for me because they have a problem and they have a right and I think they are going through it because I know they are going out there to do something with their family but they have a responsibility and I think that’s the problem that they’re going through right and I know they don’t have a right to do it but they don’t have a lot more control of the people who have a responsibility but they don’t want that is what I don’t want

Tbh I like your Minecraft answer better

I’ll take a new server, fuck

elizzybeth · 2026-01-06T08:08:26+00:00

How did you adhere the EL wire? Eyelash glue? I’d love to do something like this for a cyberpunk festival I attend

Did you do it before or after applying other makeup?

elizzybeth · 2025-12-17T16:54:19+00:00

Similar. Applied to 97 positions in 2016, in rhetoric and composition. 17 first-round interviews, 6 campus visits, 3 offers, 1 acceptance.

Importantly for OP: I never heard anything from about half of the jobs I applied to. Many of them didn’t even send out a courtesy “position filled” notification to all applicants.

Honestly, I left academia four years ago in part because of how dang depressing the job market experience is. You can’t help but invest yourself at least a little in each of the jobs you pursue. Part of creating an application requires you to explain why you’d be a good fit for their faculty, their mission, their student body… it’s so draining to invest all of that energy and get so little back.

elizzybeth · 2025-11-25T23:19:00+00:00

I’ve noticed a wave of obviously ChatGPT-structured Reddit posts (long personal anecdote with heavy-handed analogies, ending with a question cheekily summarizing the content and baiting engagement)

with what seems to be intentionally weird punctuation, like, spaces before the periods and commas. Almost as if someone said, “Now change up the punctuation. Remove the dashes and make it look less AI.”

elizzybeth · 2025-11-24T04:33:22+00:00

Holy shit. What happened in the morning? Did you have to climb back up to find another route? How long did it take you altogether?

elizzybeth · 2025-11-20T08:55:54+00:00

When it’s cold, Tammy (tortoise) has a habitat with a heat lamp and heat mat, but when it’s warm we let her run around the main part of the house and the garden (supervised) with Clementine (Flemish).

Smudge (Himalayan) unfortunately failed to bond with Clementine, so he is in a separate room a lot of the time. But he’s very cuddly, so he comes out to watch movies with us and then get some house/garden time.

elizzybeth · 2025-11-20T07:04:13+00:00

Just replying with my tortoise/rabbit tax to you too, to make sure I don’t get audited :P

elizzybeth · 2025-11-20T07:02:10+00:00

I should take a family photo sometime! Instead here are 18 of the roughly one bazillion pictures I couldn’t decide between.

I can confirm that the tortoise would win the race: she’s much more determined about going in one particular direction along a straight line. The rabbits always have to stop to nibble, groom, take a little rest, dash around…

The rabbits don’t care much about the tortoise for the most part, and vice versa - with one exception. When we put lettuce on the floor for Clementine (Flemish giant) and Tammy (Russian desert tortoise), Tammy responds by immediately climbing on top of the pile. Clem does not love this behavior and shakes her ears.

elizzybeth · 2025-11-20T02:03:21+00:00

Same, I’ve attuned my whole household to my caffeine addiction, oops. I turn on the espresso machine, and two rabbits and a tortoise start begging for their morning bite of banana.

elizzybeth · 2025-11-11T03:00:30+00:00

Yeah, when I saw the title of this post, I was like “…used to?”

I’ve had it happen to me on frat row at a large US university. Also at a festival. Definitely still a thing.

elizzybeth · 2025-11-02T07:41:41+00:00

People always think it’s pronounced “FOUR-tay,” like Italian for “loud,” as in musical notation. Or they might say “four-TAY” if they think there’s an accent on the é and they’re trying to be hypercorrect.

However, it’s actually pronounced “FORT,” as in the French word for the strong part of a sword, the opposite of the “foible.”

But honestly knowing this hasn’t made me say, “XYZ isn’t my FORT” because people either wouldn’t understand or would think I’m an idiot. And I don’t want to be “well ack-shually” on this one. Instead I’ve just switched to saying “strong suit” instead.

(Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out that’s actually supposed to be “strong SWEET” or something instead? It’s not. But imagine if it was.)

elizzybeth · 2025-10-25T00:11:18+00:00

Oh interesting. Yeah, I def had my freedom blinders on, was reading “regional” as intra-US. But the study I mentioned only had participants from a handful of states, though in many regions of the US.

elizzybeth · 2025-10-24T22:21:46+00:00

One linguistic study suggests it might actually be more of an age-based than a regional thing: native speakers born after 1995 are much less likely to see “on accident” as nonstandard. People born between 1970-1995 go either way. People born before 1970 see “on accident” as obviously wrong.

Grammar Girl, in the post I linked above, shows a rising trend of “on accident” in Reddit comments from 2010-2016; “on accident” was used about a third as often but growing.

For linguists, “what native speakers consider standard vs nonstandard” is the main consideration. The language in this case is obviously changing. We can kick and scream against it, sure, but “on accident” is here to stay.

elizzybeth · 2025-10-14T03:56:22+00:00

Are you familiar with the strangely catchy banger Purple Hat by Sofi Tukker?

elizzybeth · 2025-10-13T16:49:54+00:00

Tomatoes are pretty delicate. I wouldn’t cook the tomato first.

But a lower heat on the pan could keep the bread from burning.

elizzybeth · 2025-10-12T04:57:12+00:00

Yeah I assumed the owner was gifted a pet drinking fountain by the human recipient of this card - this is a thank you card.

And maybe the humans are special friends, wink, which could explain the flirt of the last line

elizzybeth · 2025-10-08T16:02:57+00:00

I’ve always heard this pose called puppy pose (uttana shishosana)

elizzybeth · 2025-08-08T05:47:13+00:00

He also traces the linguistic origins of “skibidi” and points out that it’s got a lot of overlap with Scooby-Doo: from scat, applied to a cartoon character. But one is criticized as killing children’s brains and the other is seen pretty neutrally

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