The National Labor Relations Act means that employees are absolutely allowed to discuss their pay, and trying to prevent them from doing so is literally a crime.

Yes.  For those who don’t know: if you’re in the U.S., you have a legal right to engage in concerted activity to improve your working conditions, which explicitly includes discussing your pay with other employees.  These rights apply to you whether you’re in a union or not - you do not have to be unionized to be protected from retaliation for engaging in concerted activity.  Do note that the NLRA specifically excludes some industries and employees - supervisors, government employees, transit employees, and independent contractors are not covered.  For the rest of us, here’s some more info on concerted activity from the NLRB’s website:  

If your employer pulls this shit, or your manager verbally tries to discourage you from talking about your pay or other material working conditions (benefits, hours/scheduling, safety, etc), write down the details (time/date/who was present/what exactly was said) and file a charge with the NLRB via your local field office.  If employers aren’t held accountable for their bullshit, they’ll keep on doing it.  

Find your local field office here.

How to respond when someone tries to drag you into shipping or kink discourse when you don't want to

Copy and paste the following:

I understand. You found paradise in America, you had a good trade, you made a good living. The police protected you and there were courts of law. You didn’t need a friend like me. But, now you come to me, and you say: “Don Corleone, do you support this ship/kink?” But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you ask me to get involved in your discourse.

I made some alterations…

I understand. You found paradise in [fandom], they had good stories, they made fun content. The AO3 protected you and there were no flame wars. You didn’t need a friend like me. But, now you come to me, and you say: “Don Corleone, do you support this ship/kink?” But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to rec me fics. Instead, you come into my inbox on the day my WIP is to be updated, and you ask me to get involved in your discourse.

This is brilliant

i’m so bad at remembering the average age for baby milestones like someone will be like “she’s 18 months (:” and i’ll be like “right what can she…… do? teeth? are there teeth?”

“stats?”

Can the person who has me trapped in their tamagotchi make me do some basic tasks today please.

angst with no happy ending ???? in this economy ????

*stabs you through the toga 23 times* vibe check

BRO

Office emails, decoded

I was musing on the everyday passive-aggression of business emails at work the other day after a particularly pissy back-and-forth with my least favorite coworker, in which we basically told each other to fuck off in plain view of both our bosses (who were cc’d on the whole thing), but because we did it in professional language we can get away with that. So, I decided to make a list of the most common code-words and phrases and what they really mean, for anyone entering their first white-collar business environment who might want help translating or need to know how to deliver a polite, professional “fuck you”.

The only one of these I will never use is “Maybe we could schedule some time to discuss this over the phone”. Even if it takes a thousand messages, email whenever possible, because phone conversations don’t leave a paper trail and in a month you’re going to be sending out another email anyway demanding to know why the asshole in question hasn’t done what they said they’d do and you won’t have anything to back it up.

I’ve learned my lesson on that one.

True, but there *is* a way to make it work. I do that one as a two-parter: call and go over whatever it is, then *immediately* - literally 30 seconds after hanging up the phone - send a follow-up email “just to confirm, we discussed X, Y, and decided to do Z by N date. Did I forget anything or leave anything out?” That way you can pin them to the metaphorical wall and force them to stop avoiding answering your question by calling them and having a voice-to-voice conversation, but *also* have a paper trail to go back to. And, for bonus points, ending the email with a question like that pretty much forces them to reply and commit themselves to having confirmed whatever the discussion included and the decision was, and they can’t go back later and say “but you didn’t include ABC!” because you already gave them the opportunity to address any missing agenda items from the call in your initial email. (This is a technique I was literally explicitly taught by my supervisor, an HR manager with like 15+ yrs of experience, and I’ve seen it used to excellent effect several times. 10/10 do recommend.)

I’m trying to remember the code for “I already did that 15 minutes ago, boss, try to keep up”…

If it was an email, "let me forward that to you to bring it back to the top of your inbox." If it was a task, "already took care of it, no need to worry!"

[thread]

I think it’s worth looking at why bad endings ruin stories. This will be a big rambling thread I’m gonna chip away at so feel free to mute if it’s not your cup of tea #storytalk

I was inspired to write this after @MagnoliaPearl posted something about the ending of Parks & Rec. Which was abysmal. To the point where when I rewatched the series, I stopped before the last season. It’s an ending that felt like a betrayal even though it was a “happy” one

You can’t just toss in good things happening to characters that they haven’t earned. Everyone can’t win the lottery in the last episode. That’s not a happy ending, it’s Deus ex machina that betrays all the things the characters actually struggled for

If you were to draw a story curve, in general a happy ending is one where the characters end up better than where they started but really not too much better. It really depends heavily on how wildly the rest of your graph swings during the rest of your book

Here’s an entertaining clip of Kurt Vonnegut explaining a little tongue in cheek bit about graphing stories that’s actually pretty helpful for explaining what I’m getting at

If you look at P&R that way, it’d probably look a little something like this. It’s easy enough to see where reality breaks

It’s a bit of an exaggeration but not much. The point is, you probably shouldn’t swing too far up from whatever was your highest point during the story. If your previous high was “couple gets married,” then “couple has baby” is a realistic ending. “Couple win lottery” maybe not

Actually, never have anyone win the lottery after the first act. Unless it’s an inciting incident that forms the foundation of the entire story…no lottery. That’s a good rule

But the thing that really got me thinking was why does it matter? The show is over, right? It’s not like I’m then forced to then watch a show about Leslie Knope being President. I think it matters for a few reasons and bear with me here cuz I’m making this up as I go…

One is what I’ll call the Evergreen Ending principle. Which is that even though the story has ended, you need to be able to imagine the characters are continuing to have similar adventures forever. That’s part of what makes an ending feel good, especially for serialized media

Obviously, things will be different because the Real Story already happened. But it needs to be easy to imagine how these characters go on doing essentially the same stuff forever. The only thing worse than the ending P&R gave us would be one where Leslie retires, for example

This is also why I hate epilogues. Like the ending of Harry Potter where they all old and have kids. Let the audience imagine what happens next. That part isn’t for the creator to say. Back off and let your audience take over

If you change too much, even for the better, you’ve also ruined any possibility of the Evergreen Ending. You’ve essentially created a whole new series where everything is different, which only works if you’re then planning to tell that new story

Bad endings can never be fixed. Every other story problem can potentially be resolved. Which I think is why those moments tend to pull back the curtain on a writer’s failings. It’s why writing endings is so stressful

But here’s what I think works. And this is obviously just my opinion and who the hell am I? But I think that when you reach the real end of your story, your plot should be on autopilot. If you’ve done your job, the story will just fly home itself

Don’t try to solve any more problems with plot. Unless you have a twist ending, accept that it’ll be a somewhat predictable finish and that’s okay. The only thing you need to tend to is the audience’s emotional needs. And have those needs reflect themselves in the characters

A real happy ending is knowing the characters are going to be okay. That they’ve finally found a little bit of balance and ended up better than they started. That who they are is good enough and always has been. And that they can handle whatever comes next.

Sometimes anxiety and executive dysfunction just Be Like That.

[image id: black text on a white background that reads “Reblog if your first or last name is always spelled or pronounced wrong” /end id.]

Bonus:

more art by Andrey Surnov

Ye olde Windows screen savers.

There are probably kids on this website who are so fucking young they’ve never seen these in the wild

tiny doomcookie 90′s me refused to change it from the creepy house. i liked space and mazes well enough, but creepy house

Those pipes were my childhood

I just went back 15 years ago

Our elementary schools had these screensavers. Could never pay attention to the teacher because I was hypnotized by the screensaver.

I remember

Thanks, I hate it

what does it say about us as a culture that most of our microwaves have a dedicated popcorn button

i dont know but whatever it says, its magnified by literally every bag of popcorn saying "don't use the popcorn button"

i find it v cute when rpgs offer me, someone whose sole strategy is “attacking enemies,” status changing effects. “this lowers your enemy’s speed” you know what else would lower their speed? being dead, from my fists

Just some ADHD moods:

……

…fuuuuuuuck…

How did it take me over 2 decades to realize I gots ADHD

The Animals - House of the Rising Sun (1964)

Silver Jews - New Orleans (1994)

wdhmbt’s tumblr post (undated)

there are at least three houses in new orleans

being a writer is just like *idea* *imposter syndrome* *fear of people reading your work* *fear of people Not reading your work* *a single aesthetic* *idea*

Fear of people reading your work and fear of people not reading your work at the same time is both hilarious and anxiety inducing lmao

The most accurate part of this is that *writing* is not on the list.