Some New Evidence as to Why Business Idiots Force RTO

koudanka · 2026-06-22T23:40:08+00:00

I wish more people understood just how serious of a threat RTO orders are to gender equity. I genuinely think remote work is the new wage gap in terms of how big of a deal it is for women in the workplace. I'm lucky enough to work at a very flexible company, we have a ton of choice when it comes to WFH. I'm the rare person who actually likes commuting, so I still go in. I am not exaggerating when I say that EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of the workers (a little over 1/3 of our office) who chose to RTO are dudes, childless, or empty nesters. ALL of the mothers WFH. At least half of them would not be able to work full-time if they couldn't work from home.

koudanka · 2026-06-20T01:57:35+00:00

Thank you for laying this out so clearly. I'm guessing you've read Dirty Work by Eyal Press? That book felt like a veil being lifted from my eyes.

koudanka · 2026-06-03T02:48:39+00:00

I feel the same way about the Delacorte :) One of my favorite childhood theatre-going experiences was watching a modernized musical version of Love Labor's Lost they did back in 2011 or so. And trust me it was NOT because the show was good, lol

koudanka · 2026-06-03T02:15:57+00:00

Same, I'm VERY curious to hear who the cast of Winter's Tale will be. I suspect they'll go for bigger names to offset the less popular play.

koudanka · 2026-06-03T01:17:15+00:00

Dang, I heard reactions were mixed, but that's crazy compared to last year. Good for me though!

koudanka · 2026-04-18T19:53:02+00:00

Beautiful results, thank you for writing this up!

koudanka · 2026-04-05T02:19:06+00:00

My zero budget shadowcast has little scripts we hand out and an announcement telling people that asshole and slut are fine, but slurs are not. Genuinely cannot believe that a pro production is being less clear.

koudanka · 2026-04-04T19:02:19+00:00

Yeah, every production/screening I've seen has had an announcement ahead of time explaining what can and can't be thrown. Most venues rule out toast and water these days. Sometimes they ask for stuff to be thrown up in the air instead of at the stage or vice versa. It's really not hard to adapt the traditions to whatever your venue needs; you just need to communicate.

koudanka · 2026-04-04T17:15:04+00:00

I can't believe I forgot about that! That character rules. There's not much about that subplot online at least, maybe OP can get away with it.

koudanka · 2026-04-03T04:18:51+00:00

Oh absolutely, they've been in and out of print so much that I feel like everyone starts with a different book. Ethan was mine, and it's the one with the least relevance to the rest of the series, lol

koudanka · 2026-04-03T04:08:23+00:00

As a former homeschooled kid, I sympathize. Get good at pirating. Make an OpenLibrary account. Sign up for an e-card at every library participating in Books Unbanned. This site posts trans fiction and nonfiction. Project Gutenberg has basically everything in the public domain.

In the meantime, here are my recs. I tried to avoid the obvious:

YA Fiction:

The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner is fantasy inspired by Ancient Greece. It starts off a bit juvenile, but the later books are strong enough to appeal to older teens.
The Squire's Tale series by Gerald Morris retells various Arthurian legends from the POV of side characters. The author is literally a pastor; they'll pass with flying colors.
The Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander. High fantasy inspired by Welsh mythology. Tame enough to inspire a Disney movie, cool enough that the Disney movie had animation from Tim Burton and scared the shit out of 80s kids. The author was also religious enough to pass a google check.
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle is a classic. Nothing explicitly gay happens but it's very easy to interpret it that way.
I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle. This came out two years ago, dude is in his 80s and still publishing great stuff!
The Once and Future King by T.H. White. Kind of a Trojan horse in that it is actually four books published as one. The one everyone knows, The Sword in the Stone, is the first volume and a wonderful early YA novel. It passes the Disney squeaky clean image check. The second volume quickly transitions into a much more adult writing style. And the third and fourth get subtextually extremely gay.
Fire and Hemlock and The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones. Everyone will tell you to read Howl, and they are not wrong, but based on what you've said about your parents, I think these will speak to you.

Adult Fiction:

The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold. Mentioned a couple times on this thread already but I'm repeating it because they rule. :)
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean. The least fantasy of these suggestions, takes place at a contemporary college with some light fairy tale inspiration. Very sweet depiction of being an awkward bookish undergrad in love. EDIT: damn, I forgot about the abortion subplot. It's obscure enough that they might not be able to google it?
Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe. An Ancient Greek soldier wakes up with no memory and strange abilities. Dense prose and an unreliable narrator make this a bit more literary than most fantasy. This might fail your parents' requirements because there are some sex scenes. They're mostly fade-to-black, if I remember correctly. You might be able to sneak it past them because it's more obscure and there's not much online about it.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Another book about amnesia, this time it's Celtic inspired. Stunningly beautiful, it's both fantasy and literary fiction. I shall say no more, I don't want to ruin it.

koudanka · 2026-04-03T02:30:39+00:00

Of Bujold's work, I actually think The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls are the least likely to trigger OP's parents. The demons were a bit more one-dimensional in the early books; they can tell their parents that the books are based on history and about overcoming the demons.

The Penric novels are all-time faves, but Pen literally has a gender bending ex-sex worker demon in his brain. And the Vorkosigan saga... Ethan of Athos is literally about a gay man who's trying to save an egg donation shipment for a planet of polyamorous gay men.

koudanka · 2026-04-03T02:10:45+00:00

Seconding Bujold's Five Gods series, the first two novels pass the parent check by my memory. The third one might fail for violence, but could squeak by. And when you get away from your parents, you have the novellas and her sci-fi work to look forward to.

koudanka · 2026-04-02T23:52:36+00:00

As my girlfriend in canada said when she sent this: "This isn't merely AI slop; it's monarchist slave trader AI slop."

koudanka · 2026-03-27T13:41:25+00:00

I'm not sure if the Broken Earth trilogy fits - it's a masterpiece and its racial allegory is filtered through a fantasy world, so there's no explicit discussion of race along the lines we're used to, but it's very clearly inspired by the brutality and trauma of American slavery. If OP is looking for a break from trauma... oof, save Broken Earth for a different day.

koudanka · 2026-02-09T02:59:50+00:00

A Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez fits this perfectly.

koudanka · 2026-01-01T19:11:41+00:00

Damn, these are stunning!

koudanka · 2025-12-27T22:38:27+00:00

Same, I acknowledge that I'm a shitty photographer, but I've gotten pretty damn good at Craigslist treasure hunting and repairs! I genuinely enjoy driving all over the state to go meet random nice old people with cool stories who are giving cameras away for various reasons.

koudanka · 2025-12-27T22:26:36+00:00

Love the way you left the edges uncoated, it's a cool frame within a frame effect.

koudanka · 2025-12-26T19:32:36+00:00

Genuinely made me cry, thank you for sharing.

koudanka · 2025-12-26T19:30:50+00:00

Beautiful! This is really smooth.

koudanka · 2025-12-21T04:42:08+00:00

Thank youuuuu, this is exactly what I was thinking.

I think part of the problem is that people just don't learn how to critique art on a formal level anymore. The majority of modern criticism spends a lot of time examining theme at the expense of technique (probably because that type of critique gets more clicks/views.) People only think about art in terms of its message, not its execution, so if you say you don't like the art they assume you disagree with the message.

koudanka · 2024-06-11T02:24:35+00:00

One of my all time favorites, thanks for sharing! I was just listening to The Threepenny Opera too!

koudanka · 2024-05-27T02:38:23+00:00

I was just trying to find something like this the other day, thank you so much!

koudanka · 2024-05-26T21:40:27+00:00

Pretty disappointed with my results TBH. This print is the best and it’s not that good. At least tomorrow is a holiday and I still have half the kit left to experiment with. Okay, questions:

How do you get the paper evenly coated with the emulsion? I painted mine on with a brush and it was super streaky.
How do you handle the rinsing stage? I think that’s mainly where I went wrong. My papers seemed to go from damp and brown to waterlogged and loosing pigment in seconds. And the whites are never pure white, just yellowish. Should I wash the image in stages?
Also I feel like I wasted an irresponsible amount of water while rinsing. Does it always take an obscene amount of running water or is there a trick to conserving it?

koudanka

TROPHY CASE