Lydia Schoch

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, photographs, poems, games, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Another Reason Why Thoughts Are Not Facts via Mindful_Living. This is still sometimes a stumbling block for me.

Fleeting Thoughts and Butterfly Nets via jdubqca. My longterm readers might recognize this blog. I’ve featured J. Matthew Waters poetry here a few different times in the past, but occasionally I have to mention his site again. It’s not only good writing, it’s consistently good writing. That isn’t easy to do.

Snow Rollers: Nature’s Winter Treat. There aren’t many things that I like about winter, but this is one of them.

Into the Light.  I sat and stared at this photograph for several minutes. It took that long to think of all of the incredible things that might exist just beyond its horizon.

The Chocolate Game. If I were a teacher, I’d play this game with my students.

From The Target Effect via JillinIL:

Do I have any real kids or normal kids?  All of my kids are real.  If you pinch them, they will make a noise.  (Don’t actually touch my kids, k?)  Normal is up for discussion.

The Rush: America’s Quest for Fortune, 1848-1853 is the first history book I’ve finished this year.

I learned about the California gold rush briefly in high school, but there was a lot about this time period that those classes didn’t have the time to cover. What I enjoyed the most about this book was how readable it is. You don’t have to know anything about this topic in order to understand what the author had to say, yet I never felt like he was talking down to me.

It was a great blend of historical analysis and storytelling. I’d recommend to anyone who is interested in learning more about this fascinating time in history.

What have you been reading?

Social media is still so new that I don’t think the etiquette for using sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram has been fully agreed upon yet.

For lack of a better analogy, I think of these sites as gigantic, virtual dinner parties. These are the rules I wish everyone would follow there.

Do:

Engage with your followers. Social media is a great way to build relationships with people you’d probably never meet otherwise. My favourite people on these sites are the ones who are interactive and friendly.

Share your life. I know that some people don’t appreciate hearing what their friends ate for lunch, but I actually really enjoy that aspect of social media. There’s something to be said for occasionally sharing the small, inconsequential moments.

Be honest. We all have embarrassing, sad, or difficult moments. It’s ok to talk about them if you feel comfortable doing so. I don’t expect anyone I follow to only talk about the happy stuff in their lives.

Post about more than one topic. Underwater basket weaving may be your passion in life, but there’s something to be said for branching out into other areas of interest. If the only things I ever tweeted about were writing and my love of the horror genre, the people who follow me would have an incomplete understanding of who I am as a person.

But bunny pictures are always acceptable.

Don’t:

Repost the same  links over and over again. Yes, I know that you want to guide traffic to your blog or website. It’s irritating to see the same thing posted multiple times, though, especially when it happens on the same day.

Send mass private messages asking for money or other favours. It’s tacky and rude.

Violate other people’s privacy. Anything you post on the Internet will be there forever. It’s not okay to share pictures of other people’s children, medical conditions, highly embarrassing stories, or other sensitive information without their permission. It’s never ok to post pictures of body fluids, oozing injuries, or childbirth photos that involve anything below the waist.

Engage the trolls. This one almost goes without saying.

This site rearranges the words of any text you feed into it.  Some of it’s sentences are gibberish, but others are pretty funny.

I gave it all of the written context of my last five posts here. This is the best of what it created:

There’s a friend’s cabin in that Cosmos TV show that has remained popular.

Now I stopped several deaths in so many different reasons: my mind. 

 but I would write “LOL” in a Universe of elderly

This is one year to me. 

I would like this instead of the actual news. 

swearing isn’t one of them but it’s a snowball fight or sweater

I also realize that this person I remember grieving over was placed on this blog. 

I have an elliptical orbit.

The last year, I know Christmas merchandise and terror.

I can tell that I don’t need to cook again for “earth-like” planets, but I stopped worrying about any of them

I’d love to know what it did with your words!

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Annabel Lee. There’s something about early November that reminds me of this poem.

Umbrella. Imagine that Rhianna and Jay Z were born 700 years ago. Maybe they would have performed something like this instead of the songs they’re currently known best for.

What Show Choir Taught Me About Life via KellyRWriting. My high school was so small that we only had one choir and it didn’t perform any musicals.

Who’s the Sexiest, and Why Do We Care? via LoriLSchafer.  What’s really weird about this phenomenon is that it’s seeping into the actual news. This is one of the many reasons why I avoid watching the news whenever possible.

The Diagnosis. This is what happens when you try to self-diagnose.

Lessons From My Choose Your Own Adventure Walks via empoweredlife1. I’ve talked about my love of walking a lot on this blog. This type of walking is something I used to do regularly, but I stopped several years ago. Now I think I should jump back into it next spring. There are still a lot of neighbourhoods in Toronto that I’ve never visited.

Thanks to my mom for sharing this video with me. It’s fantastic:

The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities stretched my mind. I took an astronomy class in college, but this was a nice refresher of just how unusual earth is in so many ways. It orbits around one, small sun instead of two (ore more) big ones. It has an elliptical orbit. It has continents. It’s rich in minerals.

Based on the projections in this novel, there are a lot of planets that have some (or none) of these qualities. Thinking about what those worlds must be like blew my mind. You sometimes hear about the search for “earth-like” planets, but what does this really mean? It’s entirely possible that life has evolved in places that are nothing at all like the planet that we call home.

If you had any interest at all in that Cosmos TV show that aired last year, I think you’ll love this book.

What have you been reading?

I wasn’t originally planning to blog anything today, but this TED talk is excellent.

“Everyone is the best at something.” I’m paraphrasing her here, but I really liked this sentiment. She goes on to say that we are all opportunity makers. It’s fascinating stuff.

Photo by Derek Jensen.

We all know people who don’t like hearing profanity.  If you’re one of them, stop reading now. 😉

There are a handful of things in this world that I find incredibly offensive. With one exception that I’ll talk about in a little bit,  swearing isn’t one of them for the following reasons:

1) Everything is inappropriate sometimes. Of course there are times when it’s inappropriate to use salty language, although the same thing can be said for a lot of different ways of speaking. No one who is serious about finding a new job would write “LOL” in their cover letter, but it’s completely ok to respond with that sort of thing when a family member tells you a funny story about their kid.

2) Sometimes they’re the best choice for how you’re feeling. There’s a difference between having a long, exhausting day and having a shitty one. A long day can still be filled with a lot of joy. For example, getting married or having a baby are life-changing events. You’ll probably end up feeling really tired at the end of them, but it’s a good kind of exhaustion. The memories you make on days like those are almost guaranteed to be warm and happy ones. The memories you make on a day when you nearly die in a car accident are probably going to be filled with pain and terror. Calling that experience shitty is completely justified.

3) It’s persuasive.  It takes a lot for me to become this angry (or surprised, or shocked). Anyone who knows me well can instantly tell that I have exceptionally strong feelings about whatever it was that riled me up based on that one little word alone. I don’t need to give a long, involved speech about what I’m feeling in those situations. It’s blatantly obvious.

4) They’re just words. The worst thing they can do is give you a temporary derpy expression if you weren’t expecting to hear them. I have an aversion to the word fester. It sounds so disgusting, but I also realize that it can’t actually hurt me.

Which brings me to the one exception I make in this argument: it’s not acceptable to use curse words against someone. There’s a big difference between talking about that fucked up thing so-and-so did and referring to them as a fucking *****.

Certain words have horrifically violent histories. They were – and are – used is absolutely reprehensible ways by people who intend to cause physical harm.

I’d never support any legislation that makes it illegal to use these terms, but I would quickly back away from a friendship with anyone who insisted on saying them around me. Having the legal right to say something doesn’t mean that other people have to listen.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

I Was Young via i_am_MattNorton. What this poet learned while working in a bookstore.

I Know a Girl via FaithSimone2011. This is really good.

The Beginning of Fall via everettpoetry. There is definitely something melancholy about autumn, but I usually don’t feel it in the air until November when the trees begin to go bare and the temperatures take a nosedive. Daylight Savings Time ending doesn’t help matters either.

The Walking Dread. Confession: I’m one of those fast walkers who gets annoyed with people who meander in large groups. By all means take a leisurely stroll, but please don’t block the entire sidewalk or hallway while doing it.

Do You Know About Jian. Jian Ghomeshi is a Canadian celebrity who has been accused of sexually and physically abusing multiple women. This was written by someone who knew him.

We Regret To Announce That Your Request Of “Gotta Hear Both Sides” Has Been Denied. I love this kind of humour.

Candy is everywhere this time of year. Halloween has just ended, and many more festivities are around the corner.

With all of these sweets comes people who moralize the eating of them. Good people – and especially good parents – don’t eat it. Or they eat it rarely. Or, at the very least, they talk about all of the healthy things they eat regularly in order to feel less guilty about eating something sugary.

How adults talk about food matters quite a bit. One of the things I appreciate the most about my upbringing is that my parents did a pretty good job avoiding this attitude. We didn’t eat candy or other sweet stuff regularly, but there were no guilt trips about cavities or diabetes when we did.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who has ever given or listened to a lecture about how terrible food X is for you. This is a great look at how damaging those kinds of conversations are for everyone involved in them.

What have you been reading?