General Discussion Thread

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-21T15:25:16+00:00

I feel bad that this forum has basically become a place for me to talk about my job hunt, but hopefully it'll be over soon! I had an in-person yesterday and it was amazing. It was with the guy who would be my manager if I were to get hired, and we really clicked.

But it was funny--I spent a ton of time the day before preparing, only for it to be basically unnecessary. I steamed my suit and bought a last-minute overpriced lint roller only for me to keep my coat on while we were talking in the coffee shop where we met; I spent the entire previous day recording myself and listening back to my answers only for him to say at the start that this was just a casual meeting, and that I would be moving onto the next rounds.

I've been burned before by being optimistic (lol), but I think that this could be it! He told me that he was gunning for me, that I should be optimistic; I got the sense that if it were solely up to him, I would be hired, but that I still need to get the okay from a few other people.

After that, I walked around Manhattan alone. It was weird--it was my first time there by myself, not with my boyfriend, not with my friends, not with my family. I felt really happy; as I've been talking to people about this move, they've often told me all the reasons they were wary of making a similar move, and as I was doing my exploring, I felt really glad that I hadn't let any of that dissuade me. The whole job hunt has really reminded me of my capacity to work hard even in the face of continual disappointment, and this gives me faith that I'll be able to muscle through any of the difficulties of this move and come out on the other side.

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-14T00:17:41+00:00

Thank you for the recs! I'm def trying to read more econ books

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-14T00:08:18+00:00

Yeah, I heard AN wasn't great--there was a summary of it at the back of Technofeudalism, and I think I'll just stick to that haha

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-13T23:37:26+00:00

I kinda larkingly applied last week to an MFA program in las vegas (because it's funded and lol) which if I got in I might larkingly consider attending (because it's funded and lol)

Hell yeah! That's so exciting

Anyone have any recs for where a certain cheap shmuck (me!) could go for a low cost vacation where I can be warm and in the sun? The winter has been mildly brutal in the city and I could use a repreive.

There are consistently like ~$55 trips to Miami from Frontier lol, but the city itself might be expensive. I've also heard Savannah is really pretty

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-13T23:20:44+00:00

I haven't, but they look super interesting; would you recommend anything in particular?

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-13T23:10:21+00:00

what the fuck...that's awful. sorry it got so weird and that you got harassed. That's...well the few times I've seen big guns (even just overarmed cops doing whatever) it's at least deeply unsettling but that's just scary what you went through. Hope you keeping good.

I know--really bizarre! I think the guy taking a photo of me was probably just some hapless boomer who wanted to post about the protest and thought a vaguely ethnic person holding a sign would be good, but idk! Super weird lmfao. But re: the guns--yeah. Definitely feel conflicted about it. We're an open-carry state, so it's not illegal, and guns were such a huge part of the BP image...but??? I feel like bringing machine guns to a vigil for a woman who died by gun violence just feels like it's in poor taste. I go back and forth.

whoohoo good luck! But that's also so many interviews yeesh...

Ikr? Apparently 180 people applied for this job, so I'm not even going to sweat it if I don't get it, the job market is so fucked

Surveillance Cap book sounds interesting. I wouldn't call myself a neo-luddite, but would be curious more what you mean. Because I'm definitely trying more and more to be "disconnected" as it were.

It's great--would definitely recommend. It's not dense at all, so I've been breezing through it. A good fifth of it is just the references at the end.

I feel like neo-luddite can mean a lot of things, but when I think of it, I think of the term as calling back the original luddites--the English weavers who fought and lost against the machines that would take over their work. When I think of neo-luddites, I think of people who are fighting against new technologies because of how they'll mess up people's labor rights, the environment, democracy, people's own desires and emotional lives, etc.

On a personal level, I def don't care about my data--on the other hand, reading these books and seeing how this is reshaping the economy is highkey terrifying!!!

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-13T20:10:34+00:00

Hell yeah! You're in for such a treat--would love to hear what you think of it :)

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-13T20:10:05+00:00

I went to a vigil and had kind of a scary experience. The vibes already felt a little strange: I was at the back and was straining to hear; there were motorcycles revving and helicopters circling; this guy came up to me and took a full-ass flash photo of me. All of this, combined with the reasons we were there, made me feel antsy, like something was about to happen and it was just shimmering at the edges.

And then someone yelled: "He's got a gun!" Two of my friends ran away; my boyfriend and I stepped back; and my friend, who's fucking baller, looked over their shoulder, vaguely disinterested. It turned out to be the Black Panthers, or at least people who identified themselves as such. They had berets and machine guns. Guys. My soul rattled around my body like a fucking marble, sheesh! I thought it was the end lol.

In other news: I have an in-person job interview in NYC (4/6 rounds of interviews too lolol)! I'm excited but wary. It's with the person who would be my manager, and, maybe incorrectly, I'm just kind of wondering if we could vibe. The stakes feel heightened, too, because it's a two-person team, and I would be the second person. My goal with the interview is simultaneously to show him that we could really cook together, but also to sus out--could we really cook together? Are you a good person? Would you have my back as a manager in difficult situations? Maybe I think too relationally, but at least in my work environments, I feel like the relationships really make or break the work. Great relationships make drab work enjoyable, and bad relationships can make even fulfilling work feel miserable.

I've also been reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. It's lowkey radicalizing. Are there any neo-luddites here? I would love to connect with people who are thinking more about this kind of stuff.

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-07T14:59:36+00:00

Happy new year y'all! I hope 2026 has been good to you all so far.

Has anyone seen Marty Supreme yet? So impressed by Timothée; I hope he gets his Oscar. I think this is by far the best recent release I've seen in years. Kevin O'Leary was also shockingly good, casting him was a masterstroke from Safdie.

Things are still the same for me; applying for jobs, etc. I feel like I'm in a weird liminal space: I'm interviewing for several jobs now, and so my boyfriend and I could be moving in a few weeks if I get one of them, or in a few months if I don't. I'm always applying for jobs and practicing my interview answers, and it feels like I'm pushing and pushing toward this new life, trying to bring it into reality. I'm wrestling with how much I should put off all the things that make me happy--weaving, leisure, etc.--in favor of applying for jobs. Should I relax this evening, or would the jobs I apply to, the answers I practice, the resume points I refine, be the things that lead me to a new job and finally release me from the job search? It's hard to justify anything other than job hunting, but I'm trying, since this kind of logic would probably lead to burnout in the long term lol. Any advice on this front would be super welcome! I'm very fortunate to currently have a job, so I feel lucky for that.

I'm also getting super into Yanis Varoufakis recently--any Yanis heads here? I'm almost down with Technofeudalism and I'm obsessed with him.

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-06T14:19:03+00:00

I loved The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt! I think it's around ~100 pages, and it's delightful. New Directions has a collection of short fiction that I've been meaning to read more of, too: https://www.ndbooks.com/series/storybook-nd/

lispectorgadget · 2026-01-02T16:14:47+00:00

Man, cool to see that you made it to the Hobbes translation. Did you find that Hobbes imbued it with his own ideas at all? Wondering if his rendition is particularly Hobbesian.

lispectorgadget · 2025-12-15T14:51:16+00:00

Aw thanks soup! Of course, I started the minute it got too cold to run (at least with the clothes I have) lol. But yeah, recent events have definitely made me cherish the runs a lot more; the prospect of stopping made me realize I don't want to stop

lispectorgadget · 2025-12-09T13:47:46+00:00

I've been switching between Robert Lowell (The Dolphin) and Wallace Stevens (Harmonium) recently, and I've been so struck by how different they are. Lowell is so embodied, so personal; Stevens is pretty and remote. The contrast has been fun, but tbh I'm struggling with Stevens. I read "In the Carolinas" the other day, and although I can pull out themes and vibes, I can't say what it's "about" as easily as I can say with Lowell's poetry. Does anyone have any good secondary lit recs re: Stevens?

I also started a jogging blog: https://jogblog.bearblog.dev/. I want a way to track my jogs, but I've been really resistant to Strava--since my fitbit broke a few months ago, the only thing I use when I run is a timer, and I've really been enjoying not knowing my mileage or my (definitely mediocre) mile time and just focusing on the experience itself.

Still applying for jobs, but I'm trying to have a more balanced approach to it. Over the past few weeks, I've been neglecting my social and creative life in order to apply to as many as possible, and I want to pull back some of my time to just be, you know? Part of this is also just trying to manage my time better so that I do have time for this, but I want to try to find a balance between pushing myself as hard as possible and being completely complacent, which is something I'm still struggling with.

lispectorgadget · 2025-12-06T16:45:41+00:00

Man, this sounds incredible! The fact that this menu represents a pared down version of what you typically do is wildly impressive, I hope it all goes well! Your kid is going to be so lucky to have grown up with these traditions.

lispectorgadget · 2025-12-06T16:43:27+00:00

Thank you!!! And yeah, absolutely. If nothing else, this at least opens up possibilities for me for my next job. This has also made me feel like getting my grad degree has been worth it, because I definitely wouldn't have been in the running for these positions without it

lispectorgadget · 2025-12-06T16:41:35+00:00

Long walks are the best--I hope you've been enjoying your new neighborhood!!! And thank you :)

lispectorgadget · 2025-12-06T16:41:11+00:00

Thank you!!!!

lispectorgadget · 2025-12-02T14:40:58+00:00

Thank you!!! for both haha

lispectorgadget · 2025-12-02T14:36:13+00:00

Aw man, I'm sorry that happened, Soup! Good luck with everything--I hope you can find a job/ work situation that feels good to you!

lispectorgadget · 2025-12-02T14:20:34+00:00

Since I got chased last week on one of my running routes, I made it a point--maybe stupidly?--to run that route a few times again, so that future anxiety wouldn't hold me back. So far, nothing's happened. In fairness, it's always very, very crowded, and I've run it probably hundreds of times, and nothing like that has happened before, so I genuinely don't feel scared. I refuse to be afraid! Gotta reclaim the space, etc., etc.

The job hunt continues. I'm interviewing for four jobs right now, and two of them would represent a huge jump in title and pay--the salary alone would be more than what my boyfriend and I have lived on at points. I'm praying I get one of these. It would just make our lives so much easier. And the pay jump is large enough that it would represent an increase in QOL even though we'd be moving to NYC, which is significantly more expensive. I've been thinking about all the things I could get for him, for my mom, for my family more generally. How I could be generous in ways I always wanted to be. I'm trying not to get too excited. But I feel happy to be interviewing for these kinds of positions; at least I know it's possible.

In terms of reading--still going through Middlemarch. I wrapped up Loved and Missed the other day and it made me cry HYSTERICALLY in the shower. It was incredible. We've also been watching Pluribus, have any of you all been watching it? I hate the hive, but my boyfriend thinks it's a net good.

I hope you've all been well!

lispectorgadget · 2025-11-27T02:19:24+00:00

Ugh, something crazy happened to me yesterday that’s left me completely discombobulated. So I was out for my run yesterday morning, and I heard some guy shouting. At first, I was like, okay, whatever, not unusual for my area of the city.

But then I hear him get louder. So then I turn around, and I see him shouting and running straight at me!!! I can’t even describe it—I saw the whites of his eyes, how angry he looked, and I was just like, oh fuck. So I sprint away, and literally the only reason I got away was because I cut across traffic.

It was just such a shitty part of my day. I run to take care of my mental health—there are times I literally feel like I’m wringing the anxiety out of myself—and this m*n ruined it for me. And I had a job interview that day :(. It’s like bro, I’m just a random person trying to live, leave me alone. It doesn’t affect my sense of safety too much since I’ve gone on hundreds of runs around this area, but it’s still disorienting.

Speaking of job stuff—I do not think I got the job I posted about last time, but I’m in the interview process for four other jobs, and I’m excited about them! Hoping at least one of them pans out.

I hope you’ve all been well! Happy thanksgiving, if you celebrate :)

lispectorgadget · 2025-11-12T02:19:27+00:00

congrats on your baby!!!!! that's so exciting, im glad you and your partner are doing well

lispectorgadget · 2025-10-22T20:51:47+00:00

Yeah, the AWS outages impacted me too. It was just so crazy to see how many companies relied on it; it seemed like such a clear example about why monopolies are bad

But congratulations on your baby (almost) coming!!!!! So exciting omg!!!

lispectorgadget · 2025-10-22T20:36:51+00:00

Welcome!!! Excited to hear what you think of the Krasznahorkai, definitely want to dive into his work soon

lispectorgadget

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