I guess what I mean about it being a tricky issue is: where is the right place for me, as an upper class* white person, to move that doesn't contribute to further segregation and doesn't push lower and middle class blacks out of their neighborhoods? (And keep in mind that as a new resident to the city, I had little sense of the history.) From my POV, it seems like segregation or gentrification are two of the main options. I guess I chose the latter, but it's not like I was hanging around in the suburbs, waiting for black folks to get pushed out before I moved in.
My perspective as a new resident is very different. I have been told that 20 years ago, my neighborhood was in the thick of the crack epidemic and was not a nice place to live. It's still not perfect (knifepoint robberies, say what?) but most of my neighborhood interactions have been great.
*I may be up to my ears in student loan debt, but I'd still consider us upper class based on our educations, professions, and income. I "feel" middle class but don't believe I actually am.
I don't know if this makes any sense. I'm not trying to convey a sense of exasperation or helplessness. It's more that I have learned a lot from race conversations on this board, so I find myself really trying to consider what I can do, particularly in light of the point this piece makes that no, as a white person, I can't ever fully understand your experience.
Did you want to move to a more diverse community or did you want to live more in the city? I ask because that's really what I've seen from people I know, not to call you out, this shit is hard. My understanding in the Boston area at least is that white people used to make up the cities, then they decided they wanted to be in the suburbs, so they pushed POC into the cities, now white people seem to want back into cities and communities of color are being pushed out.
As for how to live in a more diverse community and not be part of the problem ... I think the key component is how you act once you're there. If you move into a community you should actually want to live there and be invested in the community and not be looking to change the community to look like a upper middle class white neighborhood. For example. When Whole Foods wants to move into the area, are you going to want it there (or say nothing) or are you going to fight to keep your community how it is with the grocery stores that have been there for years? Once Whole Foods comes in, the community has likely gone to white people. You need to actively be working and fighting against racism.
A couple years ago I was having a conversation about racism and I came to the conclusion that as a white person I'm racist by default. I don't have to do or say the things often associated with racism, I just have to exist. As a white person I am afforded many advantages in our society and you know what, I take them. I may not even realize I'm taking them, but I am and if I do nothing and just go on about my day that's me being ok with systemic racism. That's me giving passive approval for racism to continue. It was a pretty massive realization and one that has really put pressure on me to stop being as passive and to try to be more aware of how all of my actions may affect other people.
I just pulled up the average teacher salary for the town I working in; it's $73k a year. They get 4 weeks off during the school year in larger chunks (.5 weeks for Thanksgiving, 1.5 for December and one week each for February and April vacation), all of the one day/regular holidays, and they get some time off in the summer. My boss's daughter right out of college was making 50k+. The average HOUSEHOLD income in the town is $77k. Nothing about that feels like we're not paying people decently well to be teachers especially because it's not like the current pool of teachers is made up of the best and brightest.
Avg. pay is not really informative (lies, damn lies, and statistics. An avg tells you nothing real because you could have 25 admin board staff making 100,000 and 100 teachers making 30,000). What is more interesting is the first year and 25 yr pay rate for teachers. And how do you expect to attract the best and the brightest when we pay them for a tiny amount of the time they put in, most have to spend personal money on supplying their classrooms, and they get paid for 10 months so they also have to save for the months they are not paid/working.
So, even though this says average teacher salary and defines average teacher salary as "Total teaching salaries, divided by the number of full-time equivalent teachers, equals the average teacher salary." They lumping non-teachers in? Bastards.
I think we can all agree that teachers shouldn't be the ones paying to stock their classrooms, they should have the option to be paid over 12 months (around here that is not uncommon) and that we're certainly not attracting the best and brightest with 30k a year salaries, but a 50k a year starting salary for first grade feels pretty damn good for 10 months a year and that was the starting salary here 3 years ago. Am I wrong or should we legitimately be looking to go even higher than that? How high?
Post by PinkSquirrel on Jun 17, 2014 15:06:52 GMT -5
What would be a good salary for a teacher?
I just pulled up the average teacher salary for the town I working in; it's $73k a year. They get 4 weeks off during the school year in larger chunks (.5 weeks for Thanksgiving, 1.5 for December and one week each for February and April vacation), all of the one day/regular holidays, and they get some time off in the summer. My boss's daughter right out of college was making 50k+. The average HOUSEHOLD income in the town is $77k. Nothing about that feels like we're not paying people decently well to be teachers especially because it's not like the current pool of teachers is made up of the best and brightest.
Post by PinkSquirrel on Jun 16, 2014 21:57:17 GMT -5
My MIL straddled my face while sitting on a stool designed for oral sex at one of these parties. That should tell you everything you need to know about how I feel about these parties.
Well to be fair, for prisoners all of their healthcare services of any sort are paid for by the government and they don't have a choice/ability to use anything else. If government didn't pay there would be no way for them to get one.
That's not always true. I've been part of getting people abortions in prison when it's not covered by state prison insurance.
I...actually didn't know that either. I know the gag rule goes back and forth depending on who the president is, but guess I didn't think federal government-sponsored health plans covered abortion at all.
The Hyde Amendment allows it under cases rape, incest and life of the mother. There's actually a decent chunk of people in the US who technically qualify for free abortions under Hyde, but the process of getting approved is something no one bothers with because of the hoops involved. It's easier to just call your local abortion fund and none of us bother trying to work around Hyde.
What do you have? We're thinking of switching to CenturyLink.
That article is dead on. They pulled that bullshit over New Years Eve when we'd paid a lot of money to stream a four night concert in HD. OMG we were so pissed! The *only* solution was to send a tech - 14 days later!! Magically, the problem resolved itself before he ever got there. Magic! The tech, by the way, visually examined that the wires were all properly connected (because maybe we're idiots who can't figure out how to plug the modem in). He didn't see any problems, and since it was working fine now, his work was done! Magic!
This crosses the line. You do not mess with couch tour during the NYE run.
Post by PinkSquirrel on Jun 14, 2014 22:19:25 GMT -5
Yep.
The Dead used to be my favorited, but Phish has totally stolen my heart. MGB SCI moe. Mule The Breakfast Strangefolk will always be one of my first loves
And not jam, but if you like funk ... check out Big ol Dirty Bucket
I too am pretty meh on WSP. I don't hate them, but I certainly don't love them either.
ETA I hate the Disco Biscuits with the most firey of passions
Post by PinkSquirrel on Jun 13, 2014 23:43:26 GMT -5
Obama made some pretty strong statements about guns this week during a Tumbler Q&A of all things. He says it's his biggest frustration of his presidency, but also sounds pretty pessimistic about things changing.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I have to say that people often ask me how has it been being president, and what am I proudest of and what are my biggest disappointments. And I've got two and a half years left. My biggest frustration so far is the fact that this society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can do just unbelievable damage.
We're the only developed country on Earth where this happens. And it happens now once a week. And it's a one-day story. There's no place else like this. A couple of decades ago, Australia had a mass shooting similar to Columbine or Newtown. And Australia just said, well, that's it—we're not seeing that again. And basically imposed very severe, tough gun laws. And they haven't had a mass shooting since.
Our levels of gun violence are off the charts. There's no advanced, developed country on Earth that would put up with this. Now, we have a different tradition. We have a Second Amendment. We have historically respected gun rights. I respect gun rights. But the idea that, for example, we couldn't even get a background check bill in to make sure that if you're going to buy a weapon you have to actually go through a fairly rigorous process so that we know who you are, so you can't just walk up to a store and buy a semi-automatic weapon—it makes no sense.
And I don't know if anybody saw the brief press conference from the father of the young man who had been killed at Santa Barbara. And as a father myself, I just could not understand the pain he must be going through and just the primal scream that he gave out—why aren't we doing something about this?
And I will tell you, I have been in Washington for a while now and most things don't surprise me. The fact that 20 six-year-olds were gunned down in the most violent fashion possible and this town couldn't do anything about it was stunning to me. And so the question then becomes what can we do about it. The only thing that is going to change is public opinion. If public opinion does not demand change in Congress, it will not change. I've initiated over 20 executive actions to try to tighten up some of the rules in the laws, but the bottom line is, is that we don't have enough tools right now to really make as big of a dent as we need to.
And most members of Congress—and I have to say, to some degree, this is bipartisan—are terrified of the NRA. The combination of the NRA and gun manufacturers are very well financed and have the capacity to move votes in local elections and congressional elections. And so if you're running for office right now, that's where you feel the heat. And people on the other side may be generally favorable towards things like background checks and other commonsense rules but they're not as motivated. So that's not—that doesn't end up being the issue that a lot of you vote on.
And until that changes, until there is a fundamental shift in public opinion in which people say, enough, this is not acceptable, this is not normal, this isn't sort of the price we should be paying for our freedom, that we can have respect for the Second Amendment and responsible gun owners and sportsmen and hunters can have the ability to possess weapons but that we are going to put some commonsense rules in place that make a dent, at least, in what's happening—until that is not just the majority of you—because that's already the majority of you, even the majority of gun owners believe that. But until that's a view that people feel passionately about and are willing to go after folks who don't vote reflecting those values, until that happens, sadly, not that much is going to change.
The last thing I'll say: A lot of people will say that, well, this is a mental-health problem, it's not a gun problem. The United States does not have a monopoly on crazy people. [Laughter.] It's not the only country that has psychosis. And yet, we kill each other in these mass shootings at rates that are exponentially higher than anyplace else. Well, what's the difference? The difference is, is that these guys can stack up a bunch of ammunition in their houses and that's sort of par for the course.
So the country has to do some soul searching about this. This is becoming the norm, and we take it for granted in ways that, as a parent, are terrifying to me. And I am prepared to work with anybody, including responsible sportsmen and gun owners, to craft some solutions. But right now, it's not even possible to get even the mildest restrictions through Congress, and we should be ashamed of that.
Post by PinkSquirrel on Jun 13, 2014 23:24:56 GMT -5
The WSJ created brackets to show how things would play out if the World Cup countries were competing in things other than soccer. They run the gamut from team height and twitter followers to more CEP things like speed of population growth, murder rate, military spending etc. They're really interesting
How many posters would be happy with a homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk in front of their home?
From time to time we have a local homeless man who will get really drunk and pass out under my back stairs. I'm not mad about it. I do call the police every time because he's often so out of it and there for so long it can be concerning. He's perfectly harmless.
The cops know him well and call an ambulance and he spends the night at the hospital until he's sobered up. I've never been angry or upset with him, though every time I am sad as fuck that the only resource we seem to have for this man is to send him to the hospital which does nothing to improve his situation. If we spent the same amount of money caring for him that we spent on his ambulance trips he would likely be in a better situation
Not washing my hair does not work for me unless I want to rock a drugged out heroin chic homeless on the streets look.
This was me. I tried to "train" my hair to not need daily washing by wearing it up and greasy for days. It didn't work.
I started my makeup bender right before The Thread, and ended up at Nordstrom right before some beauty event. The woman I was talking to worked at the Aveda counter, so I booked a makeup slot and one with Aveda. When I sat down and we were talking about my hair I explained my greasy issue. They recommended their new Invati line. It's made for people who are losing their hair (I am not) and exfoliates the scalp. The exfoliating can be good for grease. They also said that most volumizing products require heat and their Invati line doesn't.
I've honestly been amazed at how well it's worked to keep the grease under control and the longer I use it the longer I seem to be able to go without washing. I bought a relatively small bottle in January and there's still a third of the bottle left. The conditioner I go through more regularly.
Post by PinkSquirrel on Jun 13, 2014 11:13:55 GMT -5
I want to take a nap. I got screamed at during a meeting last night (by a new member, I am the most Sr.) for completely unnecessary reasons. After the meeting I was talking to one of the other people for an hour about the shit show that had occurred. At 10:30 I finally start heading home and there was construction the entire way and it took me over an hour to get home. I have a ton of shit to do for work in the next 2 weeks, I have to write an email to someone who was caught in the crossfire last night and I just need a fucking nap because I got my shots for Tanzania and Rwanda yesterday and am running low on energy. Also, it's raining cats and dogs. I just want to crawl in bed for a few days.
It is far from my ideal proposal, but had G done this I would have laughed for years. He is just not outgoing type and it would have been hilariously terrible and would have made for a fantastic story.
Where have you been?? Been missing you. (heart)
Ha I don't even know. I just realized I never responded to your last FB message. I was somewhere I couldn't respond and completely forgot.
Post by PinkSquirrel on Jun 12, 2014 16:19:13 GMT -5
I doubt my husband is so lucky. Actually, I know it’s next to impossible to take in images like those and erase them from his mind. Because our men are much less emotional and are much more visual. And as quickly as I can forget your picture, it is filed away in his mind, ready to be pulled back out whenever he so chooses.
I have a vagina and a spank bank and somehow I manage FB just fine.
Hi all! I've been lurking this thread for a month now so I decided to intro. I'm an April '12 reg (with a new name), been on the boards maybe 3-4 years now. I'm a SAHM so I don't do makeup every day but I love playing with it.
Question for you--does Sephora ever give you a hard time for returns? I'm a VIB member, tried to return mascara I used once and hated (my second return ever in years of purchases) and the cashier was nasty about it. Made me not want to return again, which makes me not want to buy new products. Ugh.
Welcome!!!
The only issue I had was with the bitchy manchild who didn't know how to match foundation. He insisted a color that made me look like Casper was the correct color simply because someone at Sephora had previously matched me with it. He wasn't pleased I wanted to exchange it for a color that matched. It was weird. He tried to convince me the color was fine, by substituting in the shade darker thinking I wouldn't notice. Then when it still wasn't right he tried another one that was close enough I took it just so I didn't have to deal with him anymore. I ended up returning it a week later because it was wrong. So, in an effort to not get me to return, he got an extra return out of it. Nice job buddy.
But, if you return too many times without a receipt they can stop you from returning items. I don't know the exact deal with their algorithms (and I hate math), but they pissed off a lot of their best customers in the process. Everyone else doesn't really notice because they're not returning often enough to be flagged
I've tried a crapton of subscription boxes over the years and in it's earlier form Ipsy was not good, but I've been really impressed since I resubscribed a few months ago. It's also one of the few boxes that's really all makeup.
not to inject politics into this... but I've been looking up their stuff, and there's this focus on 'whitening' ... this creeps me out and makes me not want to buy it.
Don't forget the snails. They love snail slime.
I've bought a few of the meme boxes (korean subscription box) and the whitening products are all in the giveaway pile.
Try Paula's Choice. They have a rosacea line and they have a ton of info. My rosacea isn't my biggest concern, so I don't use their rosacea line, but my rosacea has improved using their non rosacea products. They do $10 off $15 purchases for new customers if an existing customer sends you a link (they get $10 too) and they have a ton of samples and are really helpful if you have questions. pinkplasticdoll was recommended products from another line when they didn't have something that would meet her needs.
If you want to try them I can send a code. There are no codes floating around for that kind of discount, I looked when I was placing my sample order a few months ago
Hey you, I don't need a code at this time, but if it's ok with you, I am going to take you up on that at a later time. I have some products I need to use up but have been planning on switching to PC for skin care in general (not rosacea specific). I check PC reviews for EVERY SINGLE PRODUCT.
Post by PinkSquirrel on Jun 12, 2014 12:04:57 GMT -5
Charles C. Johnson @chuckcjohnson
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"School shooting" listed by Everytown was accidental discharge by buddy from bullet that ricocheted off floor. Oops. www.youtube.com/watch?v=91nOjXqoVvA …
What the shit is this "Oops" nonsense? There should not be oops accidents with guns at schools.
I'm intrigued and I think I want one, but it's so hard to tell what they are like by looking at swatches online. My Sephora doesn't carry much Becca stuff in store. I'm wondering if I just need to find another Sephora to swatch them.
I haven't tried these, but I hated their regular beach tint with a passion. It looked and felt gross on my lips and it was only ok on my cheeks, but I could feel it on my face.
I am so in need of new skincare products. My skin looks terrible.
I need rosacea products and it seems almost no companies make a good one. This is a common problem in the US!
I'm pretty sure the expensive Philosophy products I got need to be returned. I suspected by the smell alone they had something irritating in them.
Try Paula's Choice. They have a rosacea line and they have a ton of info. My rosacea isn't my biggest concern, so I don't use their rosacea line, but my rosacea has improved using their non rosacea products. They do $10 off $15 purchases for new customers if an existing customer sends you a link (they get $10 too) and they have a ton of samples and are really helpful if you have questions. pinkplasticdoll was recommended products from another line when they didn't have something that would meet her needs.
If you want to try them I can send a code. There are no codes floating around for that kind of discount, I looked when I was placing my sample order a few months ago