Tuesday’s Workwear Report: Fleur Motif Silk Top

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A woman wearing a brown long sleeve floral printed top and brown trouser pants

Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.

How gorgeous is this floral top from LK Bennett? The silhouette is beautifully feminine without being too juvenile and the florals are just beautiful.

This color would look fantastic with any of the chocolate-colored trousers and skirts I’ve been seeing everywhere this winter. This chocolate suede skirt from Tuckernuck is immediately coming to mind as a great option. 

The blouse is $375 at Nordstrom and LK Bennett, and comes in sizes 2-16.

Hunting for silk button-front blouses for work? As of 2025, readers love Boden, Everlane, Amour Vert, MM.LaFleur, Club Monaco, and Lilysilk. For more affordable options check Quince ($69!) and Grana; for fancier options check L'Agence, Equipment, and Vince. We've also rounded up other kinds of silk blouses (tanks, popovers, etc.)!

Sales of note for 2/7/25:

  • Nordstrom – Winter Sale, up to 60% off! 7850 new markdowns for women
  • Ann Taylor – Extra 25% off your $175+ purchase — and $30 of full-price pants and denim
  • Banana Republic Factory – Up to 50% off everything + extra 15% off
  • Boden – 15% off new season styles
  • Eloquii – 60% off 100s of styles
  • J.Crew – Extra 50% off all sale styles
  • J.Crew Factory – 40% off everything including new arrivals + extra 20% off $125+
  • Rothy's – Final Few: Up to 40% off last-chance styles
  • Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
  • Talbots – 40% off one item + free shipping on $150+

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490 Comments

  1. And now almost all federal grants, loans, and other payments have been paused pending review. This is so bleak.

    1. What I want to know is wtf the Democratic Party brass are going to do about it. Has a single exploratory committee to identify 2028 candidates been set up? Has anyone said “hey, maybe we should immediately reverse course on the deeply unpopular positions we keep shoving down people’s throats?” Is anyone getting fired there, or is it just ordinary people getting affected by their total incompetence?

      My job (federal contractor) is almost certainly at risk now. My husband’s might be as well.

      1. What can they do though? The whole thing is terrible but I don’t really blame the Democrats because what can they do? People voted for this.

        1. Something better! So many people have been screaming from the rooftops for years that Biden needed to not be the nominee in 2024, to name one thing. Coming out and saying “we were wrong, male rapists absolutely should not be housed in women’s prisons after all” would be another good start. Those social issues don’t feel niche to people – they feel like blaring signals that the Democrats are unmoored from reality. If they can be so wrong on that, what else are they wrong about? They also come off super hypocritical when they claim to be the party of science.

          1. I agree on backing away from some of the hot button social issues in the big picture, but I meant what can they do now, specifically about this?

          2. Can you say more about why you think the Democratic party claiming to be the party of science is “hypocritical”? Do you think Republicans, with climate change denial and whatever RFK Jr is have more science creds?

          3. I want to know who our bench is. Mayor Pete can’t be the only one who comes to mind when I ask myself the question. He’s fine, but I’d like stronger resumes.

          4. That was such a dumb talking point and not at all reflective of anything–but it stole attention away from things that matter, so I won’t discount its importance. Until we have a strong stable of messengers, the message won’t matter and we’re just going to keep letting the other side make their dumb talking points and we can’t do anything to stop it.

          5. It’s hypocritical because Democrats love to sneer at Republicans for being uneducated and saying dumb things (let’s face it, a lot of them truly are dumb things to say/believe), but then they’ll turn around and say equally dumb things while claiming to be the party of science. “What is a woman? We don’t know!” Is exhibit A. A lot of the discussion of masking during the pandemic was also bad – stuff like masks don’t work but save them for health care workers, stay home to save lives but it’s OK to go to large protests for Democratic causes, etc. Voters hate hypocrites (except for Trump, sadly), especially when they’re also elitist.

          6. Chuck Schumer came out immediately with a very strong statement that called the freeze out on being unlawful – it was in the news articles I read about the freeze. So at least there’s that.

            I haven’t listened yet, but Pod Save America’s newest podcast is about

            I think it is interesting to think about the ways that the Democrat leadership retreated. While I did not want Harris and Biden to deny the results or the peaceful transition of power, Harris or some other Dem leader could be leading a louder resistance right now. We don’t have to borrow all of Trumps denial playbook to admit that there is value in the refusal to just give up and give in and go away.

            This is what I want from a Dem leader right now – put together a symbolic “resistance cabinet” – for every Trump cabinet pick, a Dem leader could have selected a symbolic cabinet pick and every time they did something terrible, there’s a designated person to directly rebut them. Preferably with some firebrands in there so that they actually make news and grab attention. I would have loved for this Dem leader to be Harris but not sure that’s happening.

          7. The problem is people hate nuance. If you know anyone who has fully transitioned, you can’t necessarily tell if they don’t tell you. So yes the attention grabbing point is male rapists in women’s prisons. But what do you do about women who have fully transitioned to men? Because if you go by gender at birth, they will be in women’s prisons in a transitioned body. Also, truly this is a less than 1% of the general population point and is solely rage baiting.

          8. I love the idea of a shadow cabinet.
            I think Chris Murphy is a strong choice, Chris Coons, I like Pramila Jayapal but might be too progressive for some folks. Amy K again? Looking at some of the ones from last time, which I thought were strong – Steve Bullock, Michael Bennet. I’m ready to get behind someone.

          9. So what the democrats should do now is go back in time and prevent Biden from running? Ok, Terminator.

        2. I blame Democrats for not listening to people’s anger and frustration for so long now. People are angry, and when people are angry, they don’t prioritize self interest. I think Democrats are over unless they can overcome their tendency to get defensive and blame people for being angry about all the problems their donors are telling them not to address:

          https://www.psandman.com/col/Barriers.htm

      2. What would you advise reversing course on? The biggest dem platform items I see people viscerally reacting against are DEI and transgender rights. They are not pocketbook or existential issues for me, personally, so I wouldn’t mind if they were de-emphasized, but a “course reversal” would look like MAGA.

        1. I think Democrats need to issue a straight-up reversal on some of the T issues, ASAP, and admit they were wrong. It IS wrong to house male rapists in women’s prisons. Why is that even a question, much less a hill to die on?

          Otherwise I think the course corrections are more subtle – coming up with better economic talking points, for example.

          1. The T stuff isn’t 1% of the population. It is an exploding social contagion in middle and high schools. Kids with mental health concerns and conditions and genuine distress are getting the message that transitioning will fix their distress about their bodies and anxieties. Teachers social transition many kids in each classroom and refused to notify parents in violation of state laws. It seems very high in my kids’ school with girls on the spectrum. Like in one classroom, 3/3 ASD girls are now claiming to be trans, which I find unlikely. I believe Caitlin Jenner who made an adult choice after living fully for decades where she had sampled a bit of life. I do not trust the medical conclusions of these teens who hit puberty during COViD and have had mostly screen time and few actual friendships. I get that parents are outraged. If they were claiming to be cis, this would be awful creepy grooming.

          2. As the parent of a teen I agree with 10:26. Kids who hate themselves and would in previous decades have chosen to express that through an eating disorder or goth or grunge are being told that they are just unhappy because they were born in the wrong body and that if they tr@nsition or go nonbinary their problems will all be over. There is also a ton of social pressure on girls to declare themselves nonbinary just to show that they are cool and open-minded. Even here in MAGA country it’s a huge issue in our public high school. If you don’t have teens in school you would have no idea. My liberal daughter was bullied for two years in high school just because she was sure she was a straight girl.

          3. You really have to be a middle school or high school parent to appreciate the scope of the problem.

          4. I believe you all that this is a problem, but I think a lot of the root of this problem is in recent generations’ insistence on gendering everything so starkly and conservatives, Rs, and Evangelical Christians are in no small part to blame for this. Liberals are at fault for them taking up the mantle and making this a sensitivity and diversity issue and “making space” for all these kids to “explore” themselves without asking some tougher questions.

          5. We need to go back to “free to be you and me.” Boys can do whatever they want and still be boys. Girls can do whatever they want and still be girls.

          6. Interesting. My middle schooler is definitely a boy, but I’ve noticed a much higher than expected portion of LGBTQ+ youths in our church youth group. I never thought of it as social contagion, just assumed our “reconciling congregation” was skewing selection. I also know one child who, at age 7, decided to use a different name and pronouns opposite of the sex they were born. TBH, both parents kind of loudly flout gender stereotypes in their personal style, and I have wondered whether that influenced the child’s decision. HOWEVER, I fundamentally believe transgender individuals exist and deserve human rights, and people’s choices about how to live or express themselves aren’t my business, so I use the names and pronouns they prefer and move on. I don’t think it’s fair for trans girls/women to compete against biological females in most sports, but I also don’t think Congress should waste its time legislating that; leave it to the governing bodies of sport.

          7. Ha. My original comment, which wouldn’t post, specifically referenced William, the boy who wanted a doll.

          8. As a layperson in church leadership I find the reconciling congregation thing highly problematic. On the one hand, of course we accept all humans. On the other hand, why are we prioritizing acceptance of one group over acceptance of all others, and why are we engaging in performative virtue-signaling?

            I do think you’ve got some selection bias going on as a reconciling congregation, but it’s an issue in all youth spaces of all political stripes.

          9. Yeah, I’m not sold on the reconciling congregation thing, either. On one hand, I’m United Methodist and prefer it to the alternative. On the other, I find it performative and a little off-putting that our lay leader or sometimes one of the pastors reads out a welcome message each Sunday affirming that we welcome everyone of all race, creed, sexuality, gender identity, etc etc. it’s also printed in the order of service. Naming possible differences feels less inclusive to me. Like, just say “all are welcome” and leave it at that! Although, all are not welcome, the previous head pastor (whom I really liked) was run out because he was too traditional.

          10. Ugh. My daughter is T. You would never, not ever, know unless she tells you. Putting her in a man’s space (bathroom, prison, etc.) would lead to pretty much immediate, horrific physical harm to her.

            I do think Ds went too far with it though. I wish they would have left the issue/her alone, and moved on. And because of that, the heartbreaking truth is that my daughter and people like her will be political casualties, or, what everyone in my world currently fears, actual casualties, emboldened by the horrific hate that MAGA has encouraged and enflamed.

          11. The way I view it is if you’re trans you can’t be a competitive athlete, just like if you’re colorblind you can’t be a pilot. Sure it sucks and is unfair, but you can find another dream.

          12. And trans men are not men. They have all of the marginalization and size differences of women, plus they will never be competitive in men’s sports. They can identify as they wish, but is to their danger that we pretend that men’s spaces are safe or appropriate for them.

            Everyone ignores this in all of the T noise. Again, something else that makes the world less safe for women.

        2. I just didn’t see Dems emphasizing trans issues or DEI during campaigns. Where is this coming from? The Biden administration sought to ensure that everyone has a fair shot at programs, funding, etc, but this was nothing compared to work on infrastructure, wars in Ukraine and middle east, etc. I saw Republicans making a big deal about trans rights, and sayin this was a Dem thing, but that just wasn’t based in fact. Where is this coming from?

          1. I think a lot of it was coming from culture wars in people’s real life communities. Things like getting reprimanded for using gendered language at work, pressure to state pronouns in signatures, workshops on white fragility, etc. and then this all getting politicized?

        3. Disinformation is winning…there’s a real lack of knowledge, and the GOP seizes upon it.

          Supporting trans rights doesn’t mean rapists in women’s prisons. I had a colleague who was trans at my firm. I had NO IDEA until he disclosed that. He literally looked like any other man. The idea he should use a women’s bathroom is ludicrous. If I saw him in one, I’d be creeped out at the man in the bathroom.

          Similarly, disinfo has convinced America that “gender affirming care” means kids getting sex changes at school without parental consent. Yet the fact is, the most common gender affirming surgery among youth is cisgender straight boys with breast tissue who remove breast tissue to affirm their cishet identity.

          1. There is a huge difference between allowing a tr@nsman to use the men’s bathroom, which I would agree is appropriate, and what’s going on in high schools.

          2. On the other hand, school’s socially transitioning your child and hiding it is terrifying. As is the idea that you could lose custody because you question a distressed teen’s demands to transition. All it takes is that one story from the DM of the woman in CA who lost custody of her daughter to galvanize suburban parents, particularly moms.

          3. From the Mom above, yeah, this. 11:58 is also correct. I’m unbelievably heartbroken that it’s become front and center for politicians because the consequences are going to devastatingly harm a vanishingly small percentage of people, and make no difference in the vast majority of people’s lives.

      3. They can stand back and let it fail. America voted for this. The Democratic party offered a viable alternative and America turned it down. There is a rot in American culture and that’s not the Democratic party’s fault.

        1. I’m angry but also tend to agree with this. I still stand by most of the democratic party platforms. We lost, but not because we were wrong. We just have no authentic and strong leadership.

        2. Yes, this. If you want any sort of opposition, it’s going to have to come from the congressional Rs when they hear from their constituents and are worried about their job security. It’s only going to get worse until then.

          I don’t understand the whole rationale behind the actions — but the thinking seems to be to try to break as much as possible, as quickly as possible. When people are worried about their livelihoods and let their elected officials know, maybe you’ll start to see some changes. I’m not optimistic but the best path we have is for the GOP to split into factions.

          (I also feel completely impotent in a blue state, so if you are in a red state, I’m looking to you for help.)

          1. I’m a moderate Dem in Pennsylvania and my MIL and SIL are full blown MAGA. It’s incredibly frustrating but I’m taking the advice from someone here and viewing them as though I’m an anthropologist. In that vein, it’s a fascinating look at the psychology of MAGA. I can assure you that they simply do.not.care. MIL is a retired secretary and SIL is a nurse. Their lives are not at all affected by federal cuts and they don’t have the critical thinking capacity to consider the ripple effect of cuts to things like research. Truly if their day to day lives aren’t affected, they do not care. Empathy for others is irrelevant; they have none. Understanding the geopolitics of foreign aid? Forget it. They assume that all govt workers are wealthy elitists who get paid big salaries for doing nothing.

          2. Similar – my in-laws are MAGA and they just hate the government, so they assume that anything that happens to cut the government is (1) good, and (2) it won’t affect them personally, because “everything they have, they did for themselves.” I hate it.

        3. Unfortunately, I think this is the only way things will change. We are beyond the point of implementing change through rulemaking; the entire system has been fractured for far too long and is now being dismantled before our eyes. No amount of propping it up will fix it. I think our only real solution is to hope enough survive the collapse and are willing to come together after to build something better.

      4. This again? This is a niche issue that has never been a topic of focus for a national Democratic candidate. Instead, it is an issue that Republicans obsess over and return to over and over and over again and pretend it is a focus of Democrats in order to drum up fear and play on the most gullible. Suggesting that reversing course on this is the answer to avoiding a 2028 loss is intellectually dishonest.

        1. No one said it was a topic of focus, just that it’s a topic that Democrats have taken a ludicrous position on and now they’re reaping what they sowed. They just keep teeing up the hole-in-ones for the Republicans.

          1. Where? Which Democrats have taken ludicrous positions on this? I’m looking for names, dates, and positions, not just “Oh they all support r**ists in prisons.”

          2. NPR is a huge culprit and the NYT to a lesser extent. Not that those outlets are official publications of the democratic party, but they set the tone of the discussion.

        2. Democrats chose to spend less time and effort on issues that affect ordinary working people so that they could court donations from Silicon Valley and Wall Street. To maintain the moral high ground, they chose to point to niche social issues where they’re less backwards than their opposition.

          Then they act surprised when people start to get frustrated and resentful about the niche social issues.

          1. This, but also, sometimes the Dems are the backwards ones. Makes their sneering superiority even harder to witness.

          2. I agree 100% that Dems forgot to focus on the kitchen table issues and catered to monied interests, but I don’t recall either Biden or Harris raising fringe social issues at all, just being on the receiving end of pummeling rhetoric.

        3. Democrats could have come out with a strong position on women’s sports being for women. That would have done a lot.

          1. THIS is your reaction to what’s going on?

            Picking on trans folks isn’t going to give us back research and WHO membership or stop raids on no -whites, my friend.

          2. I’m pro trans people but I do think that part of things had a huge effect on voters. The pronouns, the “pregnant people,” the drag show reading circles — it was all way too much. But the Republicans were the ones who kept bringing it up and made this small issue a huge part of the “Dem platform” — what were the Dems supposed to say? trans people don’t have rights? they don’t exist?

          3. +1000. Something like 80% of the voting public wants women’s sports to be for women only.

          4. The Dems should say that they do exist and have rights, but those rights don’t trump the rights or existence of women. There is a place for everyone, but women’s sports are for women, the womanhood of mothers should be acknowledged, etc.

          5. Except they can’t do that, can they? Can the United States government dictate if any of the Olympic governing bodies decide to allow trans people to play in a woman’s sport? Can they dictate to any of the professional leagues? No. It’s not their place. That then trickles down to college sports and they don’t control the NCAA either. Probably the most they could do is restrict Title IX. Is your school team not dictated by your school board? So, local government. Elect local reps who share your views then. If they don’t, move. What Democrats have said is that trans people deserve equal rights not Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

            And rights are not pie. Someone referring to themselves as a pregnant person because they are non-binary and don’t want to use the word mother is not infringing on your womanhood.

          6. Our school board got sued by the ACLU for not letting a boy play on a middle school girls’ team. It’s not up to local government.

          7. A person can individually refer to themself as a pregnant person. But calling all pregnant women pregnant people does indeed elevate the concerns of a vanishingly small minority above the concerns and personhood of a vast swath of women. The right wants women back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. One insidious way to accomplish this is to erase all discussion of women’s issues and make it all about T issues.

        4. Exactly. The Dems expressed empathy for an affected group, and the Reds over exaggerated and ran it into the ground.

      5. +1000. We blew it in this last election and I don’t see anything changing soon. Furious at my own party.

        1. i mean, be furious at the massive disinformation that has gone unchecked for years and years from Fox News and the right and online social media idiots. be furious at the people who hate all the social progress we made over the past few years because they want a white Christian male world. the Dems aren’t enough to overcome this massive wave of hatred and stupidity.

          To quote George Carlin: “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

          1. Like people who say pregnant person? Like are you just trying to bait people and have the middle flee to the extremes? Because that is what got us here.

      6. My two things I want to see from Democrats are:
        1. Double down on good governance in blue states where Dems have a governing majority. Make it obvious that they know how to actually run a state and its institutions effectively. Show me you can actually implement your policies in a stable way that makes people’s lives better, not get bogged down in infighting.

        2) At the party level, be building your bench NOW. You don’t need to pick your 2028 candidate now, but I want to see the party putting people in leadership roles (shadow cabinet mentioned above is an interesting idea) and see who stands out

        And a bonus #3 – for the most critical stuff, dems need to provide cover for moderate republicans (or even extreme republicans!) to break with Trump. There are weird horseshoe overlaps they can take advantage of – eg. I think they could have found a defense hawk or two to oppose Hegseth

        1. #2 is exactly why we are in the situation we’re in. The previous generation of Democrats kept hanging on out of a sense of entitlement, blocking the development of better candidates. Clinton should have bowed out gracefully after losing the nomination in 2008. If she had gotten out of the way, people like Warren would have come out as viable candidates in 2016. Same with Biden. He should have announced at his inauguration that his goals were to clean up the mess we were in and set Harris up to be elected in 2024. Instead, he gave her all the no-win jobs, clung to his re-election bid for too long, and set her up to fail. If we weren’t going to get behind Harris for 2024 we should have been getting behind Whitmer. Etc.

          1. That’s an assumption that people would vote for a woman. Not happening anytime soon at the numbers needed. Same with Pete being gay.

          2. Do you think America is progressive enough to vote for a gay man or a woman? I certainly don’t.

          3. Straight GenX men like Ron DeSantis and all these Project 2025 ghouls? Nope, genX has gone the way of their parents.

          4. How many potential leaders from Gen X are out there that we never even heard of because the Democratic party was focusing on Clinton and Biden?

          5. 11:35, that’s some weird logic. You must be a millennial–would you agree that millennials are all evil because a bunch of your young men voted red?

          6. There’s a deep bench, but it’s just not being developed. Whitmer, Raimundo, Shapiro. Harris herself wasn’t developed. I agree there’s a big problem with the boomers refusing to move on.

      7. Ok so we voted in a Republican who said he was going to do all of this, and now it’s Democrats’ fault for not fixing it?

        Elections have consequences. You’re blaming the wrong party.

    2. Soooo bleak. My husband is a professor at an R1 and I work on the staff side of the same school. My husband isn’t in a lab science, so he only needs NSF money for conference travel and his summer salary, and we can survive without those things, although our quality of life will take a hit. But the grants provide so much overhead funding to the university, that I don’t see how the university will avoid major staff layoffs and some universities may struggle to stay afloat at all. It’s pretty clear this admin wants to destroy higher education.

      1. Some of the national labs are administered through universities as well, including the one my spouse works at. It’s unclear to me whether any agencies (national labs are DOE) might be somewhat protected because they align better with Trump’s priorities. So bleak.

    3. I’m a director at a specialty contractor in water and wastewater and I’m very interested* to see what happens with all the projects bidding right now – I told my project managers today to watch for addendums, but I’m so curious* what the addendum pausing the bidding process will say. Or if they’ll pause them at all – but I feel like they have to with that EO wording.

      *interested and curious are my chosen emotions today because I’m choosing to ignore the screaming in the back of my head. It is not the same scenario, but my optimism feels very early March 2020 when I couldn’t imagine everything shutting down…and then it did.

    4. But, isn’t it illegal to not disperse the funds Congress has allotted? Should we be looking for a lawsuit/injunction, or what?

      (Though my extremely petty side knows of several new college students who gleefully supported Trump and I’d love to see their Pell grants and loans not get dispersed… but, knowing that screws most every college student, I’ll mostly hope things turn out okay)

        1. But many grants and loans are dispersed directly to the school, so it’s an extremely gray area right now

        2. It’ll be interesting how this plays out on the farm side. Even small farms are organized as businesses. It’s not meemaw, pawpaw, a cow and a garden. These are small businesses whose owners overwhelmingly voted for this.

      1. Yes, it is illegal and Chuck Schumer’s statement immediately called this out.

        The NYT article I read about it this morning said that almost certainly lawsuits would be coming, especially if they try and reverse executed contracts.

      1. Right!? Even if you don’t care about actually funding research this is going to destabilize the American economy in a big way.

  2. Wow, I love this – wish it was offered in a navy. Whatever “season” I am, it is the oppos-te of being flattered by this shade!

    1. Just coming here to say the same thing. Curious what types of skin tones can pull this off – olive, maybe? Wondering as I see so many things in this color now, and it doesn’t strike me as one that a ton can wear.

    2. Don’t think the model’s skin tone is it. Very dark skin or very light and rosy? Skin tone that has more contrast against the tan of the fabric?

      1. Not light / rosy. Team Rosacea writing in to also wish for navy.

        Also: I am Gen X. I remember blouses like this that my mom wore. But maybe in powder blue with eyeshadow to match. Everything comes back.

      2. Not light and rosy. That’s me, and I look like a cadaver in this color. I think very dark might be it, though.

      3. I think it would have to be a very dark, warm skin tone that contrasted significantly with the value of the outfit while also having the same warm undertones. The warm color would make anyone with cool-toned (rosy) skin look ill. And it’s the kind of medium tan that is apt to wash out most skin tones, from light to medium-dark.

        1. Yeah, I always think of this color for people with extremely dark skin. It looks gorgeous on them, but not for my British isles, scared of the sun, complexion.

      4. I think it would look good with medium to very dark, cool toned skin. As a ruddy Casper the ghost, this blouse would make me look like I need an organ transplant.

  3. Someone I know online-only died recently.

    We were friendly but not terribly close, surface-level acquaintances in an online hobby forum for the past 15 years. She went radio silent for an unusually long stretch over the holidays. It was well known in the forum that she had a number of serious health issues and no IRL family or local friends, so someone in the group dug up her address from a prior gift swap and called the local police to request a wellness check. She had died sometime in the past few weeks, likely shortly after her last post in those forums. There is no one to claim her body, no one to take care of her belongings, and her pets all went to the local shelter for adoption. It’s all so sad.

    1. That’s very sad, I’m sorry anon. Amongst the tragedy of it it’s lovely that your forum was close enough and aware enough to be able to have her found. I’ve been in an online hobby for many years and the connections are real. Your forum may not be able to do anything practically but through you all her life is still remembered, mourned, and honoured.

      1. Is there any merit in the community collaborating on an obituary? Perhaps use a starting point of when she joined the community and share some of her accomplishments, contributions, and her legacy in the space. Publish it in your community forums and let the ensuing thread be a place for people to contribute their stories as well.

    2. I am very sorry for your loss — I know you didn’t know this person in person, but I’m sorry all the same.

    3. I’m so sorry! Could you forum host an online memorial for her, since it seems like these were some of her closest people?

    4. I’m sorry for your loss! I know that sounds strange for an online-only aquaintance but these are real connections. It’s great that the forum noted her absence and misses her.

      1. This. Online friends can be real friends, too – it sounds like y’all were friends to her, and that mattered. I am so sorry for your loss

        1. Online friends are absolutely real friends. I met mine online in high school and they’re among my most cherished relationships to this day.

        2. I’m sorry for your loss, and also my heart is warmed that this woman, who must have been very lonely irl if her online community was the first to call a wellness check for her after weeks!, found friendship with all of you.

  4. I’ve been seeing the question “what is your unpopular opinion” pop up all over and not sure there has been a thread here. What is yours? Mine (which may not be all that unpopular) is that I hate with the fire of a thousand suns that men are have gotten into pedicures and pilates. At least, where I do them. For me, these were retreats from masculinity (toxic or otherwise) and I I don’t need their gnarly toes in my line of sight. I follow a ton of pilates instructors on SM and men are taking over, with tight tights (gross) and show-off moves and I just want to say : go away please. I deal with you and your egos all day at work. I want some places where there are just women. I don’t care if this makes me hypocritical. The heart wants what the heart wants.

    1. Mine is that people get their panties in a bunch over elite colleges for no reason.

      I’m in a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood with a fantastic job, great work/life balance, solid retirement funds, and don’t work very hard. Most of my neighbors are the same. Very few of us went to an Ivy or truly equivalent undergrad. In fact, my Ivy league neighbors have the most stressful and time consuming jobs. (To add, because it comes up, there is no family money in play).

      1. This is HIGHLY regional, and there is more to going to an elite college than getting a well-paid job.

        1. Yeah I don’t think elite colleges are worth the investment from a strictly financial perspective. But the experience of going to one can be pretty awesome. I wouldn’t take on major debt for one, but my parents could easily afford it for us and we can easily afford it for our kids and will be happy to pay for them to have that experience. (though it’s fine if they choose State U or SLACs too)

          1. My point is that you would think differently if you lived somewhere else. We usually call that ignorance, not an unpopular opinion.

          2. Wow— probably not the case, and clearly they don’t teach manners or the ability to understand others’ opinions in whatever Elite Institution you went to.

          3. I think they call YOUR opinion arrogance. I grew up/have lived in old money New England and tony NY and the people who believe top universities are the end-all, be-all are, in fact, myopic and elitist

          4. Case in point: I just got off the phone with the CEO of the company I just signed a contractor agreement with. I have been chatting with him by email but I was brought in by the CTO and the president- the CEO is sort of arms length formality. He hopped on the call from Costa Rica where he spends 3 months out of the year. I happen to know he’s sitting on easily $10M. Dude went to state school (and not a good one). No family money. Build a business, sold a business, built another business, sold that one. He’s got crazy strong people skills and I bet he was a ton of fun in high school.

      2. This. My husband and I both went to state schools for undergrad and grad. We are mid six figure earners, have started and owned businesses, held prestigious white collar jobs, own a beautiful home in a wealthy NYC suburb. We have the same jobs/roles as people who went to fancy schools. We come from solid middle class families.
        I hope to pass onto my kids the skills that are (imo) way much more important than the name of the university you attend: hard work, grit, dedication, interpersonal skills, intellectual curiosity, conscientiousness, humbleness.

      3. Yes, and the idea of spending $200K for private high school (not to mention middle school) so your kid has an upper hand at the best colleges is gross.

        If you have other great reasons why a private high school is the best fit, I can possibly see that (though it’s still an obscene amount of money). But to make your kids’ whole childhood about training for college (and the unspoken part: making sure they remain part of the elite class) is not a good look

        1. Private schools are more generous with financial aid than a lot of people realize. I think it’s common for something like 80% of students to not pay full price. I don’t disagree with the broader point that elite college isn’t the be all end all, but don’t assume most private school kids pay full price.

        2. Is it only for an upper hand for college admissions? Is it wrong to want your kid to have a better foundation?

          1. There was a thread yesterday about whether the poster could increase the odds of admits to Ivies and the like if she sends her kids to private school. That’s what I’m thinking of.

            My husband went to a religious prep school, as his parents thought it would shape his character in the best way. I think that motivation, and what you are referring to, are different cases. I’m not broadly bashing private education! Just the race to the top ethos

          2. This board tends to believe that you receive a stronger academic foundation at private schools than public schools. Outside of certain elite boarding schools and prep schools on the coasts, I do not think that is true. I graduated from a large public high school and did as well if not better than my private school classmates at an HYP, well enough to ace law school in the same tier. I sincerely believe that an AP/honors track in a decent public school district, often with healthy competition from motivated immigrant/first gen kids, is as good or better than your average private school.

          3. I know that actually good public schools compete with elite private schools.

            But a lot of well regarded, well funded public schools don’t compete, so I think that’s where the disagreements arise.

      4. Totally agree. I’ll go one step farther – I work with a lot of elite school grads. They’re not smarter than state school grads. The smartest people I know were from WVU. Kids who came from nothing who became chemical engineers, doctors, researchers, college professors, etc. Elite school grads have to cling on to this gilded reputation because it’s all they have.

    2. I really don’t like when neurotypical, able bodied, white, cis het folks speak about diversity. The number of times someone has tried to ‘correct’ me about my own disabilities or sexuality is too damn high. Stay in your lane.

      1. Genuinely curious as someone who falls in that category – I do care about DEI and believe that as an ally, I should use my voice to undo historical harms. Is there a way to do this that isn’t offensive to you?

        1. Person first language is generally pretty annoying to those with disabilities, take their lead and what they call themselves. Make things optional, for example mandatory pronouns are pretty uncomfortable for people in the closet.

        2. The usual advice is to lift up the voices of people you care about rather than speaking for them or about them.

          1. I don’t disagree with this in theory (nothing about us without us), but in the autism space it’s a million high-functioning self-diagnosed angry #actuallyautistic people screaming that they know what’s better for them as a whole and that parents of low-functioning nonverbal children with massive behavior problems are selfish to think they get a say.

          2. That’s privileged advice. If you’re so mildly disabled that you are verbal, that’s a privilege compared to people who are non-verbal/unable to communicate even basic needs. Telling their caregivers that their experiences are not valid, and their voices are unwelcome is shutting down those with the best understanding of day to day needs of people who are non-verbal and unable to communicate.

          3. The concern is that caregivers aren’t accommodating to the point that communication is possible or aren’t advocating for a full and adequate explanation of why communication isn’t possible despite accommodation. Currently nonverbal adults who were first able to communicate when given access to assistive technology are advocating on behalf of the nonverbal community for similar access.

          4. I’m not sure why you can’t acknowledge that there are plenty of autistic adults who are violent, non-verbal, non-communicative and regularly self harm.

            My aunt and uncle have moved cities twice to try and get better care. He has pulled so many strings with physician colleagues and friends of friends to attempt every therapy available on two continents. They have learned to accept that the violent, incontinent when angry, non- communicative behavior is their reality. Being constantly told to stop advocating because they don’t have autism themselves is additionally draining. It’s dismissive to imply that non-verbal/non-communicative adults just need to be handed an ipad and they can self advocate. What they need is respite care and resources to support their caregivers. The attempts to advocate for people who are less severely affected often diminish and dismissive the experiences of those who are very severely affected and their caregivers.

          5. Advocates argue that people who are suffering this much deserve a full work up for everything that is going wrong. Neurological, immunological, and genetic comorbidities are very frequently missed when everything is blamed on ASD, and people who have experienced improvement want that for others. Maybe medicine truly isn’t at the point where it can help yet. Everyone agrees that we need stronger, safer support for people who are severely disabled whatever the cause of their disability.

          6. Confused that you think either a total work up has not been completed or that it must be something else because autism cannot present this severely. Autism regularly presents severely. The voices of those caregiving people with this level of severity are frequently shut down by people who want to only talk about the milder forms.

            A total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication and hypo-reactivity (which generally manifests as non-reactivity to severe self injury) are part of the diagnostic criteria.

            Luckily my cousin does not also suffer catatonia which can occur so caregivers have been able to determine that his incontinence episodes generally relate to anger and act as a warning sign for increased risk of violence. But no one wants to hear about the challenges of hypo-reactivity when it is much more palatable to talk about managing hyper reactivity by finding clothes without tags or socks without toe seams.

          7. I am familiar with a lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication and hypo-reactivity including non-reactivity to self injury. The concern about thorough work up is because it’s rarely done; ASD specialists often don’t know enough medicine, and relevant medical specialists aren’t always accessible enough to ASD patients. Adults who are communicative enough often enough to able to see relevant specialists almost certainly don’t need less work up than severely affected patients, but they often end up getting more, a la https://allbrainsbelong.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Everything-is-Connected-to-Everything-Autistic-ADHD-Health-CLINICIAN-GUIDE-All-Brains-Belong-VT-9.20.23.pdf

            It’s not right when people who are less disabled end up getting more support and care from medical institutions, but it is what’s typical, even with extensive advocacy from caregivers. I know that sometimes nothing helps. But the medical system is very quick to pigeonhole our issues as psychiatric, and it’s a systemic issue.

        3. I have also been acting on the belief that those with the power need to do the work! Can’t put the burden on the one black colleague!

      2. I really don’t like when people identify a group that can’t have an opinion based on their race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability status.

        Your disabilities and sexual orientation do not entitle you to be an exclusionary bigot.

      3. My husband has ADHD and joined the neurodiversity council at work a couple years ago. He found a lot of meaning in participating in that community and organizing educational and outreach events, but he was so disappointed that a couple of the women on the council were openly hostile to a neurotypical woman who wanted to help. He thought they were being territorial and rude, and also short-sighted because… he saw the point of his work as increasing understanding, acceptance, and accommodations where needed for neurodiverse individuals. He thought neurotypical allies were an asset, but these women didn’t want normies stepping on “their” turf. He ended up eventually stepping down from the council because of their attitude.

    3. Aw! My husband has gotten into yoga, but he does it at home. He’s very big w gross toes and he’d never inflict himself in a small sweaty space on a group of people.

      1. Tell him thank you! When I did hot yoga for many years, the dudes…oh man, the dudes. In their tiny little speedos, no tops, sweating so much and having it fly all over, always grabbing an upfront spot so lots of us had to look at their crack. Maybe that is the reason I stopped?

      2. FWIW I own a yoga studio and we have a few men who come to my classes consistently, and I’m happy to have them. But my studio is not hot and not packed full of people, so that’s a key difference.

        1. I attend yoga classes and love it when folks other than “slim white smoothie ladies” are in class! This includes big dudes with gross (?) toes.

          1. To clarify, I also love the stereotypical yoga ladies too. Just that having other body types is inspiring to me, as someone who is definitely not the stereotype.

      1. I should clarify I am not aiming this comment at you, OP.

        I’m thinking of the dozens of people I encounter in the wild who just seem to have zero idea about how anything actually works and no desire to learn, in spite of having resources to educate themselves. Even simple tasks of daily life, like brushing all sides of their teeth.

        1. OP here and I did not think it was directed at me!

          The best example: when the night shows (Kimmel etc) go out and ask “man on the street” questions and people are just so clueless. It’s alarming. I do believe our current political situation is partly due to a failure of public education, as there is simply no critical thinking in so many parts of the country.

          1. I posted above regarding my MAGA in laws and you hit the nail on the head! No critical thinking or curiosity to learn is my BIGGEST peeve.

          2. My dad and I have a disagreement about Kimmel’s street segments. I think they’re fake (scripted). My dad thinks they’re real. You think people can really be that dumb??
            (For those who don’t know a recent example is he asked people if it was rude of MLK Jr to not attend the inauguration and many said yes it was terrible that he wasn’t there. So we’re not talking just ignorance of current events or intellectual stuff, but lacking incredibly basic knowledge.)

          3. I don’t think the Kimmel segment is scripted. Have you really never met anyone who is dumb as rocks? They’re shockingly common if you move beyond small talk and have any substantive conversation with the general population. My retail days we’re eye opening to the general dumbness of the population.

          4. It’s also possible that Kimmel interviews dozens of people and only keeps going with the few loons.

          5. Please stop with the “there’s no critical thinking in so many parts of the country.” There are brilliant, curious people everywhere. There are people who are as dumb as rocks in NYC, and in elite college towns. I know that because I’ve lived in both, as well as in my current midwestern hometown.

          6. I live in a fairly rural area of a red state and no, I’ve never met anyone who thinks MLK is still alive. Do I know some people I think of as dumb or uninformed, sure. But that is a stunning level of ignorance for an American over the age of about 6.

          7. My brother has Karl Marx hair and beard. Too many people have never heard of Karl Marx, arguably one of the most influential people of the past century.

        2. Among other things, I attribute this to ubiquitous internet/phone culture. It appears as though your world is large because of all the people you can interact with and things you can “do”, but really it makes our lives so small. Scrolling the same apps, getting stuck in echo chambers, living in 2D instead of taking in the wider world.

          Plus, you don’t sit with friends and wonder about the answers to things — existential or basic trivia — because you can just look it up. That was good curiosity training that we’ve lost!

    4. Breast isn’t best.

      If you say you have autism but you attended an Ivy League school and you made six figures out of the gate, I think your condition needs an entirely different name from the condition for people who are non-verbal, dependent for their care, and prone to self-harm.

      1. Gosh you’re so much smarter than all those psychologists who specialize ein autism. There’s a reason it’s ASD 1, 2, and 3. Just because you don’t see someone’s support needs doesn’t make them not real.

        1. Even within ASD1, there is a wide spectrum. I read early on that maybe only 30% of those kids manage to hold down jobs as adults and the average life span of an autistic person is in the 30s (likely all ASD people, likely from drowning / eloping as very young children but still so, so concerning). F

          1. That’s those *diagnosed* with autism. How many quirky professors are entirely incapable of taking care of themselves, but their housewife makes sure they function?

          2. My kid’s autistic Dx means that she was categorically excluded from many area private schools where she would have thrived in smaller classrooms, more direct teaching, and fewer behavior problem students. Instead, she had public school classrooms with 30 kids per teacher, 2-3 serious behavior problem kids per classroom, and so much disruption that there was often little learning. Private schools imagine one kind of autistic person and had she been a boy, she likely would have flown under the radar b/c her quirks are more common in nerdy boys vs chatty chatty girls. I’m sure autistic kids are there, both boys and girls. She wasn’t even identified until she was 10. People hate nuance.

        2. This is an unpopular opinion thread, not an argue with someone for having an unpopular opinion thread! Jeez.

          FWIW, I am married to a highly successful man on the autism spectrum, and we have a daughter who is also on the spectrum, and I don’t entirely care one way or the other if you call it “very mild autism 1” or Asperger’s, or something altogether different. I do think it’s helpful to know if “I have an autistic child” means “doesn’t follow social norms and doesn’t have the expected range of emotions in response to you” or “nonverbal.” I don’t even discuss my child as autistic because she’s fully functional, just needs some social supports to be “normal” (which…is it’s own discussion). Frankly, I have only told her girl scout leader who happens to be a psychologist because I thought she might find it helpful (which she did). Her school knows but it doesn’t matter since she’s fully functional and gets/needs no real supports outside of the standard SEO stuff our school is super strong on.

          1. The arguing thing is why I never post on these types of threads anymore.

            There was one once about what is your annoying trait. I posted about mine (that I’m aware of and working on!) and a ton of people called me toxic.

      2. I definitely agree that “autism” needs to be split into two more more diagnoses. It is very real in both cases! But very different.

      3. Don’t assume that people who attended good schools and make good money don’t depend on caretakers or that they aren’t prone to self harm. Also don’t assume that non-verbal people couldn’t do the same thing if fully accommodated. We need more research into the factors that go into more and less severe presentations, but people can and do swing back and forth between them at different times in life. Also be aware that sometimes the “entirely different name” that is needed is the name of a comorbid LD, mitochondrial condition, etc. that is contributing to greater struggles.

        1. I’m one of those high achievers. I self harm all the time, but I’m not telling my colleagues about it. I have a whole host of supports and a very rigid food system in place to care for myself, but again I don’t tell my colleagues that because I don’t need them to be even more discriminatory towards me.

        2. I’m sorry, but a non-verbal child with an IQ of 75 who needs physical restraint to avoid repetitive head banging into concrete isn’t one accommodation away from Harvard. It’s an incredibly different condition.

          1. Both high and low IQ are comorbidities of autism. There are a higher percentage of geniuses with autism than would be found in the general population. The term twice exceptional exists for a reason.

            I’m sorry you find parenting your child difficult.

          2. From an moving essay by Jill Escher, a parent of two children with severe autism:

            “In recent years we have seen autism take on an absurd umbrella aspect that can cover quirky people like Elon Musk, sensitive artists like the singer Sia, and even elite athletes like Tony Snell. Some people, who are so high-functioning I would consider my kids completely cured if they had similar abilities, call their autism a “gift” or even a “superpower.” But for the majority of people with autism, it’s a devastating, or at least extremely life-limiting, disability. You may see The Good Doctor—a drama about a genius surgeon with autism—but you probably don’t see news coverage of adults like P., who must be helmeted to prevent brain injury from constant self-harm, or even my friend Z., who will bounce around a restaurant stealing food from other diners’ plates, or teens like T., who has broken every window in his home, using his head.”

            Two different conditions. Change my mind!

          3. What you’re missing is that a lot of kids have multiple conditions at once.

            When children are diagnosed only with ASD when they have additional disabilities, that’s lazy and discriminatory doctoring. A lot of kids literally have an incredibly different condition from ASD, whether it’s intellectual disability, TBI, PANDAS, etc., in addition to ASD.

          4. It’s like a minimum of two conditions. We can’t even find a support group because it’s so finely segmented. We can’t really speak freely because then it gets to be awkward: we have a teen who got her license but hasn’t driven independently yet (but that’s the goal). But I get that some people don’t see that as a problem because it’s not relevant to them. It remains relative to us though. She wouldn’t qualify for institutional care so must gear up for independent living since we won’t live forever.

      4. Agree on both.

        Also the inclusion of special needs students in general ed classrooms all day every day does a disservice to all of the students.

        1. Absolutely agree. And it says something really ugly about society if the only way to avoid neglect and abuse is mainstreaming.

        2. I strongly suspect that the insistence on inclusion is also about money. A dedicated special ed teacher is more expensive than an aide that makes minimum wage.

    5. Men. Speaking. At the fertility clinic. Pls respect the social mores of the waiting room! It is time for sitting in silence having time with your phone, not randomly talking about your latest high protein diet food.

    6. The language of modern parenting is totally unhinged. Kids aren’t having tantrums – they’re “dysregulated.” Parents aren’t soothing – they’re “co-regulating.” Kids aren’t adventurous – they’re “sensory seeking.” Vom.

      1. I have a kid on the spectrum and this is how the OTs speak. I’m not an OT, so say my kid and / or dog gets the zoomies.

        1. I am not a millennial and I call my dog a dog, not a “doggo,” but “zoomies” is an excellent addition to our shared language. It describes, well zoomies, better than any other word I’ve ever heard!

      2. oh I’ll add to this – modern parenting in general is totally unhinged. I do not blame the parents – it’s the culture you all are parenting in now, and it looks insane from the outside but I have no idea how I’d do it differently in this culture (DINK by choice). I am not judging, I’m just generally windblown.

        Related but different point, travel sports are obnoxious and out of control.

        1. I’m a parent, and there are times I feel like my parenting is totally unhinged and that I can’t choose differently.

          Fortunately, my son is not interested in sports and doesn’t have any natural ability there, so we’re not in the travel sports loop.

      3. A bit of nuance: I have 3 kids, all are over the age of 7. Two had tantrums as toddlers, “moody behavior” as tweens. One gets dysregulated. She’s 10 and clearly has an impaired ability to regulate her emotions relative to peers. It’s closely related to her ADHD and giftedness and very very different than her siblings and peers.

        In general though, I completely agree. A toddler is typically tantruming (which is being age-appropriately unable to regulate).

      4. This seems like the same mistake as the implementation of Common Core math. The terms that professionals use to analyze what’s going on aren’t and shouldn’t be the same terms as what people use to learn!

      5. another mom with a kid on the spectrum and this is definitely our language, but i didn’t think it was common outside the space

          1. In certain progressive, online circles, maybe. I’m a mom to two elementary age kids and have never heard anyone talk like this in real life.

    7. Oh, I have another!

      Junior level employees with ridiculously tall Stanleys in hand while they shuffle around our office in salt-stained Uggs, full length puffer coats, baggy pants dragging snowy slush across the carpet, and giant headphones blocking out so much sound they are like emo zombie waifs floating through the hallways.

      Our office is a recently constructed building that is well insulated, not drafty, and is consistently heated to appropriate levels for normal amounts of clothing. It’s not self-care, or self-acceptance, or whatever the current label is. It’s lazy and makes it impossible to take them seriously, especially when they want to jump to an open role in my department but can’t be bothered to hold a professional conversation without lugging in all their latest aesthetic accessories to the interview. No, you can’t expect to sit in a board room and represent our firm like that. If that’s the hill you want to take a stand on, you are going to be relegated to doing so from the file room in the basement forever.

      1. Agree. But also seem to remember that we all dressed inappropriately to some degree and were completely immune to critique. They’ll learn from their sartorial mistakes the same way we did.

        I remember being a 19 year old temp during college trying to convince the HR manager that my leather reef flip flops were $50 and therefore completely appropriate.

        1. If I thought about all the stupid stuff young teen / early twenty me did and wore, I’d crawl into a hole. For forever.

    8. My unpopular opinion: Your self-diagnosed autism or ADHD does not entitle you to act like an a-hole. Looking at you, my dear colleague B.

        1. This is true, but it’s also true that not acting like an a-hole won’t prevent the perception that someone is an a-hole if they’re ND enough. There are studies on how people make knee jerk assumptions about ND people’s character within moments of meeting them, without them ever having done some a-hole thing.

          1. Yes this! There are so many studies on thin slicing and how NT folks make snap judgements and automatically dislike ND folks no matter what they do.

          2. Seeming “off” is not the same as purposely stomping on other people’s needs and feelings and then saying “oh, I’m ND so I didn’t know!” This unpopular opinion is about the latter.

          3. Again, that is a totally different issue. This unpopular opinion is about “ND” people purposely being a-holes.

          4. I’m starting to form the impression that the ND person really didn’t know in this scenario. You might be surprised how little ND people notice about others’ needs and feelings especially if they’re not explicit about them. If they do better once it’s made it explicit, what more do you want? It’s the next steps after “I didn’t know” that matter, because now they know.

          5. OP here. Let me assure you that my lovely colleague does this on purpose. Repeatedly.

    9. We have a couple very nice, normal guys who are regulars at my Pilates studio. All toes are covered and they wear gym clothes. They’re cool. But that’s not what you are talking about. I know EXACTLY what you mean, and I agree with you!

      1. Years ago, we had one in Pilates and called him “The Peac*ck” that no one wanted to see. He was also responsible for instituting rules about speedos in the non-lap pool

    10. My unpopular opinion is that we should in fact not want Chinese apps that influence us on our phones. I get that TikTok snuck into everyone’s dopamine addictions without fully realizing it was Chinese, but I do not understand the rush to download and defend RedNotes and now DeepSeek.

      Yes American companies suck too. But they’re American. I’m patriotic enough to think that counts for something.

      1. I didn’t even know about RedNote until someone started a thread here about downloading it in response to the TikTok ban. I thought that was completely irresponsible. You can’t live without the next big social media? Grow up.

      2. Yeah you sound chauvinist. I’m going to keep playing my Chinese phone games and watching my Chinese TV because I’m American who enjoys not being censored the way Chinese people are.

        1. You’re really going to back OpenAI against DeepSeek even if the former is many times more costly to the grid and the environment and isn’t open source?

          To me patriotism is about my rights and freedoms, not about loyalty to corporations that are always trying to get out of paying taxes anyway.

          1. I don’t want anything to do with OpenAI either. I just think most Americans underestimate how bad the Chinese government is.

    11. Therapy is a crock and therapy culture is toxic. If you didn’t have a perfect childhood with parents who catered to your every whim and completely subverted their own personhood, you are not a victim of childhood trauma. What people call “boundary-setting” is actually making self-centered demands of others. If you have a real mental illness, take the dr-gs that will balance your brain chemistry. If you had genuine childhood trauma, move on and get over it. You’re just not that special. Take some responsibility for your own actions.

        1. May *you* be humbled. I’ve paid for and witnessed more therapy than most people ever will in their lifetime and it never fixed anything. It just made it worse.

        2. Hi – Victim of childhood s*xual abuse that went on for years here. Is that “humbled” enough for you?

          For me, therapy was absolutely a crock and I 100% co-sign “get over it and move on” as a valid response to people who want to spend their lives wallowing in their “trauma” and using it as an excuse for every bad choice they make and everything that goes wrong in their lives. You are an adult. At some point you need to look at yourself in the mirror and say “you were a victim; you are not still a victim.” Take responsibility for your life, your choices, and your thoughts. And my experience with therapy was that it supports an endless victim mentality.

          Now in the short-term or to address harmful behaviors, it might well have a place. But the endless naval-gazing, blame shifting, wallowing is just self-indulgent and is needlessly supported by an industry that has no interest in people actually getting better.

          Nobody is perfect and life is not fair. Get over it.

      1. ooh I’m not quite so vehement but I agree with a lot of this. I think that therapy is wayyyyyyyyy overprescribed as the answer for everything. And the overprescription for it completely dismisses that good therapy is rare, hard to find, and expensive.

        1. This is mostly where I land. I know that therapy can profoundly help people, but I think people really underestimate how often it does harm (sometimes harm to the individual in therapy but sometimes harm to their whole community!).

      2. Therapy fills the void for people unable to have meaningful and deep conversations with their social circle. That’s a part of the culture of loneliness we’ve built.

        I’m often amazed at people who are so unable to move on from something. I just assume I don’t understand what it means to be in so much pain and count myself as lucky. But I believe they are also doing themselves no favors by not making the conscious choice to take a deep breath and bury that emotion so that they can move forward.

        Some things can’t be healed and have to be carried.

        1. “I just assume I don’t understand what it means to be in so much pain and count myself as lucky. But I believe they are also doing themselves no favors by not making the conscious choice to take a deep breath and bury that emotion so that they can move forward.”

          So you recognize you don’t understand it and yet still see fit to pronounce that they’re doing it wrong, and that you know what would be a better approach?

          Wow. This is repugnant and I hope you keep this to yourself for the sake of people in your life.

          1. Obviously if they could move forward they would. This is an unpopular opinion thread, not an opinion I’m shouting from the rooftop thread.

          1. I have real, diagnosed PTSD related to a trauma most people would not be able to one-up (most people, not that it stops a select few) and have had therapy for it. But at some point, I agree that “oh I’m a victim” doesn’t work anymore and you do have to do the work to get on with your life. I have done so.

            And very few people in life who are not my besties and nearest/dearest even know about the PTSD, much less the T. This is not what makes me “special,” Gen X style.

        1. Ha! My parents/inlaws/aunt firmly believe that their bad behavior as parents (lots of physical abuse plus s*xual abuse in some cases) should all be ‘carried’ and that they should have to take no responsibility and face no consuquences. Uh, no.

          1. Sure, they should face consequences, but why should you let their bad actions ruin your life?

        2. Actually, I think it’s my mom. She’s completely OK with medication for stuff like depression, but God forbid you talk to somebody about it.

      3. Agreed. I watched therapy do immense harm to my father and the only answer anyone can give him is more therapy.

      4. Ohhh yes. I’m now moving on and getting over that time I witnessed my mother be murdered. Thank you for your compassion and understanding.

          1. Thank you <3

            I’m actually in a good place now due to DBT prolonged exposure therapy. People like the OP of this opinion literally ruined my life until I was able to get the DBT help in my 30s. I’m high achieving and generally sociable, though, so I don’t inflict my yucky trauma on others.

            But the idea that a person experienced real trauma and can just pack that away and move on without help is… not it.

        1. One of my friends’ dads refused to attend her wedding because he felt he wouldn’t be the center of attention (a long-standing pattern with him) despite her begging him and making every accommodation he demanded. He got everything he wanted, and then just didn’t show up.

          Currently he has somehow met a therapist, years later, who has advised him that he is correct to cut his daughter, and now grandchildren, out of his life because he was “excluded” from her wedding.

      5. It’s amazing. You would actually be a less terrible person if your life completely exploded tomorrow.

    12. i want the right to be ashamed of being fat. to want to not be fat. to actually hate my body being fat.

      this whole “just accept your body! love yourself the way you are!” just adds another level of shame.

      1. I understand, having been a range of sizes throughout my life! We’re allowed to do our own inner and outer work and sometimes that genuinely requires people butting out.

    13. My unpopular opinion is that the modern conception of dog breeds is stupid and shouldn’t exist. “Purebred” is just a more expensive dog that’s going to have more health problems and die young.
      If they open their studbooks so that breeds are based solely on appearance and behavior, allowing for healthy cross breeding I’d be willing to revisit my opinion.
      Also, I will never ever own a “doodle” of any kind and I hate how popular they are.

        1. I’ll go a step further and say no one should be allowed to own pit bulls and live with or near children.

          1. Please define “pit bull” in a way that is clearly delineated and I might agree with you.

          2. You realize the UK literally does this right? They had to go back and ban XL bullies after people tried to get around it. Weirdly, after they did it, people stopped being eaten in the streets.

        1. Breeding of dogs is where dogs come from. Only PETA wants to eradicate domestic animals.

          That said I wouldn’t trust anyone AKC registered with the responsibility. But I also don’t trust “dogs” with it.

          1. +1 to this. Modern dog breeders are mostly unhinged, but just letting dogs procreate with whatever other dog they come across is not the answer.

          2. We have a rescue from a backyard breeder of livestock guardian dogs and our dog is some mutt from an accidental litter with who knows what other dog. We got him as a puppy. He is now an a$$hole dog with serious dog aggression to most new dogs in our neighborhood. I get a workout walking him. But I don’t trust my teen children to walk him and IMO he is a pet not suitable to live in a city. But he was a cute very small puppy when we got him. I am not sure I’d get another dog except for an adult one of 40-60 pounds max. This dog is twice that size. We do not need more Great Pyrenees mutts. We have too many, like the Jack Russell glut of 25 years ago. Backyard chickens led to this in our area.

    14. I have another one specific to this site; I’ve been here off and on for over 15 years. It was better when people used consistent handles instead of the posts being 90% “Anon” and “Anonymous”.

      1. Maybe, but users of this site aren’t immune to call out culture, and many of us have jobs that require us to have a very low profile online.

        1. the call out culture thing is totally fair, and I have switched handles because of it.

          RE the jobs thing, do you think that I go by pink nails in real life? ;) If I think I start to have shared too much under one handle or been too called out, I make up a new one.

          But I stick with one for a long period of time and think it’s a nicer place when people do that. but it’s a clearly unpopular opinion :) which is fine, just fits the thread.

      2. That’s not going to happen while commenters regularly tear people to shreds and sometimes even cyberstalk posters.

    15. Haven’t read the rest but my unpopular opinion is that private schools should not be allowed and home school should not be allowed unless students are tested to the public school standard by third parties at least twice yearly.

      And all schools should receive equal funding on a national basis per number of students. No rich districts and poor districts.

      Part of the reason this country is falling apart is the failing education system. No one is invested in broad based quality education for an educated populace. Education is key to stable democracy.

      1. I think some countries have laws banning private schools. I think charter schools are completely immoral and everyone involved in founding one or sending their children to one should be ashamed of themselves.

        1. I don’t get this — in our state, they have to take all who come or have a blind lottery. A lot are much better than the failing schools where people are desperate for their kids to have a good education but can’t afford to move to neighborhoods where schools are less chaotic (hence “better”). I have options because I have $ — I could move or send my kids to a private school. Not everyone has those options but they have the same need and deserve the same thing from public schools.

      2. USA spends a lot of money per student on public education. The problems are so much bigger than this. There’s only so much school can do if people don’t have safe, stable, and secure living situations, healthcare access, peaceful sleep, and nutritionally complete food outside of school. Teachers need more than pay (they need respect, enough autonomy to implement their expertise, and they need content expertise).

        I understand you want more people to have skin in the game, but there’s no such thing as one model of education that meets every child’s needs. Just at how the K12 suicide rates plummeted when school was out.

      3. I fully agree about homeschooling. Especially with the new trend of “unschooling.” People are just not educating their kids at all, and it’s going to cause a lot of problems down the road when we have a significant percentage of the population that can’t think critically at all.

        1. If I compare educationally neglected kids who were unschooled vs. those who spent their time in public schools, it’s really not clear to me that the latter have an advantage.

      4. I completely agree.

        It is SHAMEFUL how property taxes are what underscore public school funding generally. If you were unfortunate enough to be born into poverty, your school trajectory will in most cases be grim.

        In fact, this is discriminatory and should be argued as unconstitutional.

        But it wont. Because even the educated liberals will do just about anything to make sure their kid gets the best education. Even if that means sacrificing the education of other children

      5. If public schools were consistently great, they wouldn’t have competition. They aren’t. Why would you want to force everyone’s kids into a system you acknowledge is failing?

    16. All students in public school should be tracked beginning in kindergarten.

      No one should receive a high school diploma without passing college-level introductory microeconomics and macroeconomics courses. If everyone understood that tariffs are actually borne by consumers, that “free” markets aren’t really free, what a public good is, etc., they would vote differently.

      1. Agree! I think students should all have some sort of a media literacy and methodology class too as to prevent kids from falling for misinformation and media talking points to assess the validity of sources.

      2. I strongly disagree on tracking in early elementary, as someone who was identified as gifted myself and has kids who qualify for gifted programming. Gifted identification in early elementary school does not identify truly gifted kids. It identifies kids who are reasonably smart and who have good home environments. (Even beyond early elementary, there’s a real question of are you screening for actual IQ or are you screening for a good environment at home. I have a kid who easily passed the test to take algebra in 7th grade, because she had a STEM professor dad who taught her basic algebra concepts in a game-like way beginning when she was in first grade. Is she smart? Yes. Is she smarter than every kid who didn’t pass the test for algebra in 7th? I doubt it.) I do think tracking at least in math is necessary by the middle school level even if the screening is imperfect, but I think we introduce formal academics too early and K-3 should be more focused on play and social-emotional development, which doesn’t involve separating kids by academic ability.

        1. I was a gifted kid and am the parent of a gifted kid. It was obvious even in the 1-year-old classroom in day care that my kid was different. It was absolutely not fair to put a kid who had been reading chapter books for two years and could do quite a bit of arithmetic in a kindergarten classroom with kids who barely knew their letters.

          1. I was at a 9th grade reading level in 1st grade, I was assigned to be reading buddies of older children to teach THEM how to read. It was not healthy for me nor the older students I was teaching. I was bored to tears in class and it was really not good for me to be with normal students

          2. Kids who read chapter books at age 3 are so rare no school has a class full of them, so that’s kind of a special situation. But I actually think that’s a perfect example of why K and even 1st and 2nd grade should be more play-based. If they aren’t doing as much formal academics, the vast differences in reading ability wouldn’t matter as much.
            And again, at that age it’s really about home environment and preparation, not innate ability. Some profoundly gifted kids may learn to read by osmosis, but most children who enter K reading had parents who did serious prep work at home. I have kids who consistently test 98th-99th percentile on IQ tests and have been identified as gifted since K and they entered K knowing nothing beyond basic letter recognition because they were to play-based preschool and we didn’t push reading at home. They clearly didn’t lack ability and it would have been ridiculously silly to track them into a “dumb kids” class because we weren’t tiger parents. It’s not until maybe 2nd grade that reading ability begins to approximate IQ, and even then you have to account for learning differences like dyslexia because there are plenty of very smart, STEM-brained kids who can’t read well.

            I do 100% agree on not using kids as peer tutors, which creates a horrible dynamic. But you don’t need tracking to avoid doing that.

          3. I mean in a big city maybe you can do something to accommodate that very gifted kindergartener. I’m from a town of 12,000 people and there is no magic classroom for very very smart 5 year olds and there are not extra teachers to teach it. Your child would probably be at most one of 3 in it and all the other classrooms would be 35+ instead of 28-30

          4. I am the person who read at a 9th grade level in 1st grade and my parents were certainly not tiger parents, I’d actually call them neglectful.

          5. You may be an exception, but statistically reading early is much more correlated with having affluent, educated (i.e., involved) parents than with a high IQ and labeling children as smart or dumb based on how well they read at age 5-6 is silly and damaging to both the kids who get improperly tracked as gifted and the kids who get improperly tracked as non-gifted. I’m “profoundly gifted” by most definitions (IQ 155+) and don’t have any reading disability and I learned to read in mid-first grade along with the majority of the class in my fairly generic public school. I know many other people with exceptionally high IQs who didn’t read especially early, and I even know some who read later than average. The difference is that we were typically reading on the college level by second or third grade, whereas other kids stayed at the elementary school level. I say this not to brag but to say that early reading isn’t the measure of giftedness you think it is, and has way more to do with how much parents have worked on reading at home. Things typically even out by 3rd grade or so, and at that point kids who are reading way above grade level are more likely to be actually gifted.

    17. GLP-1s should be much more expensive and much more difficult to obtain. Only people with true metabolic disorders such as severe diabetes should be able to access them. My sister and SIL should not be able to use compounded GLP-1s to lose the excess weight they gained through eating doughnuts and lying in bed all day (sister) or drinking like a fish (SIL) and then smugly lord it over me while I am over here watching every morsel I eat and exercising for hours a day and not losing an ounce.

      1. This is the unpopular opinions thread so not arguing with you – just asking, why do you think that? I look at it like hormonal birth control – I don’t *need* hormonal birth control to avoid conceiving, I could carefully arrange my life to temp every morning, chart my cycles, and avoid intercourse when I’m fertile. Plenty of people do this successfully, it just takes constant diligent effort. Or I can use an IUD and not really think about it. I’ve done it both ways.

        Same thing with my semaglutide – I don’t *need* it to lose weight, I could carefully arrange my life to meal plan, weigh my food, and go to bed hungry – plenty of people do this successfully, it just takes constant diligent effort. Or I can use Wegovy and not really think about it that much. I’ve done it both ways.

        1. You reminded me that my unpopular opinion is the BCP is a scourge on society. It masks infertility and other serious conditions for millions of women, and physicians/researchers have no motivation to dig deeper because they can just prescribe this bandaid.

          As an extremely fertile person, condoms work! (And if you are in a situation where you are pressured for sex without protection, you have bigger problems. The BCP does nothing for STDs)

        1. Why should I have to take a drug that could very well have terrible long-term health effects, just to keep up with the cheaters? The playing field should be level.

          1. But it isn’t level.
            Crappy food is also addicting, and it sounds like that additive tendency runs in your family.

          2. That’s a cop-out. You choose to become addicted and can choose to overcome it. I didn’t choose to have a cr@ppy metabolism, but I’m not going to cheat by taking drugs to overcome it.

          3. Who says you have to keep up with them? Do you think it’s a competition? For what? What rules are the breaking? How are they cheating?

            Sounds like you just want them to suffer so you’re not suffering alone, which is pretty awful.

            “The playing field should be level.”

            I mean, are you dense? The playing field isn’t level, it can’t be level, it will never be level. We all have different genetics, different medical conditions, different circumstances in life that impact outcomes.

      2. There’s no moral high ground in doing things the hard way, friend. It’s a tough lesson to unlearn – I hope you get there.

          1. It’s actually worse. Because it’s wanting to inflict suffering on others.

            I’m not on medication (too expensive and still wary on compound pharmacy use), but I’ve gained 70lbs since losing part of my colon to cancer (I crave ALL the salt now). I’ve been working with a nutritionist. It’s brutal. There is so much more to weight gain than just calories and exercise. And now I get to either be fat shamed like I am currently…or considered a “cheater” lacking in morals. Ahh, gotta love humanity.

      3. Compounded terzepatide took my lab work from diabetic to just barely prediabetic in about two months, and this was prior to significant weight loss. So it wasn’t weight loss that did that, it was the meds. These meds don’t just make some of lose weight, they make us healthier by correcting a body that is not functioning properly.

        Given your opinion, I am trying hard to refrain from wishing you into insulin resistance so that you too can experience the misery of dieting very strictly and exercising daily and losing maybe a pound or two a month because your body won’t do digestion correctly.

        1. I am OP. I am now experiencing the misery of ineffective diet and exercise and I think people with legitimate metabolic disorders should get the appropriate medication. But not my mean, smug, lazy relatives.

          1. Well, I get it. Nice to hear everyone on here happy with their medications. I tried to get some too, and they wouldn’t prescribe it to me based on my BMI (which, by the way, I have been whiteknuckling life to get to). But there are plenty of people who shouldn’t have it based on their BMI and either lied to the doctor, or shopped around until they got a prescription. I’m not willing to do that, so I guess I get to watch everyone else get gorgeously skinny, and just sit over here and white knuckle it.

          2. You’re not going to get a prize. I shouldn’t have it either based on my BMI, but I got it. And I am so glad I am not white knuckling anymore. I’m happy and free.

        2. This is a random unsolicited opinion, but it sounds like you need minimal contact with mean, annoying relatives and a scrip for a glp-1! Come join me in making healthy attainable.

    18. I’m fine with the issue of birthright citizenship being looked at. It needs to go through the proper channels, i.e. the Supreme Court and/or refining the constitutional amendment. I don’t have much sympathy for people who come here to have a baby and then leave (my company has given people visas to do this!). Also, people who keep extending their H-1B visas and complain about not getting citizenship quickly enough to suit them and demanding that their children are citizens. First, we need to stop extending visas, and second, if you don’t like our immigration laws, leave.

      1. yeah, I understand you’re in a tricky spot if you took out USD student loans assuming you’d get a USD salary on H1B after school but… the number of people in my circles advocating that companies need to prioritize hiring candidates on H1Bs, or protecting them during layoffs, (because they have to most to lose if they don’t get another job with sponsorship quickly), reflects a widespread lack of understanding of the criteria. If we want to import lower cost sw engineers, let’s just offer people a non employer tied visa with a guaranteed green card –> citizenship track; but it’s just evidently not true that “H1Bs are only for jobs where there are NO qualified Americans”

        1. Yeah, its not true. Those visas and workers are totally being abused. My relatives are all programmers.

          1. and for the record, I think the H1B program is a net positive for the country! but the current iteration of the program isn’t serving anyone all that well– not people who are stuck in a 12 year wait-list for green cards and can’t plan for the future, not their kids who are wondering if they’ll be able to stay in the country they grew up in, not small companies (it’s easier for a large company to add their 1001st H1B hire, than a little company with part time HR figuring it out all from scratch), and not American tech workers. It IS working well for large companies who want less workforce mobility without offering correspondingly good terms

      2. I’m married to an immigrant and wow this one is awful. It is so so hard to come to the states legally, and our culture and economy are enriched by immigration.

        I really hope you think these beliefs through again.

      3. it seems cruel for any changes to apply retroactively. same thing with DACA. I can understand making rules going forward starting on X date, but it is not a 2 year old’s fault if their parents brought them into the country illegally and they are now 18 and just learning about this for the first time.

      4. I am against birth tourism for women who can afford to come to the US heavily pregnant, have their child and go back to their country immediately. The American organizers are prosecuted for fraud in California cases. I think specifying that the child has to have lived in the US for some period of time (or be born to an American parent if living abroad) makes more sense. However, I can’t imagine we’ll come to any kind of reasonable agreements in the current climate.

    19. Hormonal BC is a conspiracy to keep women fat, depressed, and available to men, to allow doctors not to bother to investigate women’s health problems, and to financially benefit drug companies.

          1. Those are significantly less effective than hormonal BC, and I say that as someone who’s been a very happy barrier method user for almost 2 decades!

          2. Condoms are 98% effective with perfect use and the BCP is 99% (slipping to 89% and 91% with typical use). Basically the same, and it’s a lot easier to remember to put on a condom in the moment than to take a pill every day. (I know IUDs are in a different category, but they are also harder to access by virtue of needing to have a procedure and pay for it)

          3. Congrats on falling victim to the TikTok tradwife content. A sucker is born every minute I guess.

      1. My gyn suggested to me that I might want to keep my IUD because the hormones will help pre menopause? I don’t need it for bc anymore.

    20. That because the majority of many Americans are overweight or obese that we have lost perspective of what bodies used to look like even one generation ago. BMI is a rough indicator at best, but it only takes looking at pictures from the 1980s or 1990s to realize how things have changed. We accept knee and hip replacements in middle aged people as normal and ordinary.

      1. This is definitely true (Americans sometimes even think that healthy weight dogs are being starved!).

        And it’s not like everyone had a pristine diet, exercise regimen, or superior moral character back then either; something else changed.

          1. My dad was a smoker in the 1990s. It was not common to smoke then.

            I blame drive thrus and food delivery. Pizza delivery used to be a treat. Now it’s normal practice to eat while driving or to eat take out multiple times a day. So many people think ‘I only got take out once’ but their meal with like 1200 calories which is most of the day’s calories in one meal.

          2. Yes smoking (1970s and before) and cocaine in the 80s definitely kept people thin.

          3. The reference was to the 1980s and the 1990s. Things have changed vastly even in the last 30-40 years.

          4. I feel like there was a lot of recreational adderall use in the 90s. I definitely feel like pills are a factor. Also we had crazy (unhealthy!) beauty standards, eg Kate Moss and the whole “her0in chic” look.

        1. I heard an interesting take on this that I need to research more, but I do trust the source (Marketplace Make Me Smart podcast, last Tuesday’s episode, guest was a PhD nutritionist & researcher): Regan era agriculture policy incentivized consolidation and industrialization of agriculture and production and marketing of cheap and low quality food. Basically, the population lost access to inexpensive locally produced and minimally processed ag products, and got inexpensive ultra processed food instead.

        1. On the one hand yes, and on the other hand I am always struck by how little muscle tone people had in old movies and photos.

      2. I am 44. In the past two years, two people injured me, severely. The attitude is “oh it’s normal to be 44 and hurting.”

        It wasn’t my normal and it shouldn’t be someone else’s normal, absent massive bad luck.

        I kept myself in great health. It isn’t that hard.

      1. Is it really the Olympics without chariot racing?

        But seriously I think equestrian sports need an ethics overhaul whether they’re in the Olympics or not. If anything the Olympics could help enforce.

      2. Agreed! Unethical all around, the way they fly these horses around the world is such a climate crime too.

    21. A lot of these seem to have the theme of someone taking issue with a sacred cow.

      I wish more men would work on making their toes less gnarly. Maybe those hokey millennial tough guy hair salons should start offering pedicures.

    22. My unpopular opinion is that “unpopular opinion” posts are a chance for people to attack the unpopular position holder. Similar to putting a “kick me” sign on someone’s back, only here you hold it up yourself.

  5. I am overwhelmed. Personally (parent has stage IV cancer), and more meta (executive orders are coming fast and furious and work-adjacent). I took it easy from work all month trying not to burn out but I really can’t afford to do that any more (need to save some PTO, things are ramping up). I guess I just don’t have the oomph to go attack my list of to-dos. Anyone successfully force themselves?

    1. Sometimes it helps me to remind myself that completing a task actually releases dopamine, so I will chemically feel better after I do it – it can help me get over the hump.

    2. I read somewhere a couple weeks ago that we all fill our lives with productivity, and then fit in some rest in in between, when really our bodies are designed to rest until it’s time to be productive and that really had a huge impact on me.

  6. Popping in with a quick update because I got emailed and asked…

    1. I’m graduating with my MBA on Friday
    2. Looking for a new role, possibly something like Sr. Director of People or Chief People Officer or a Deanship or the like, though also open to adding more adjuncting roles but the role has to be fully remote. (Hoping to network or pick brains here… does anyone have a connections?)
    3. I passed the 14 month mark from my brain surgery so only 10 more months of healing til I’m hopefully all clear.
    4. In a forever relationship now, 18 mos in and living together, and got a stepson and his partner in the deal which has been awesome to experience.
    5. Thinking about moving to Denver sometime before 2025 ends; anyone there who wants to connect or anyone with info to share, I’m all ears!
    6. Most important thing for last… I spent a day with Senior Attorney and it turns out she’s a total fraud… she is actually even more amazing and kind and wise in person than here… who knew that was even possible?!

        1. Yeah, absolutely nothing against SA who I’m sure is a great person but the parasocial relationships some have with certain “esteemed” commenters is wild.

          1. +1. The level of hero worship is really odd to me. Other commenters have gotten tarred and feathered for literally saying the same things SA says. I’m sure she’s a nice person but no one is an idol.

          2. Parasocial relationships are one sided, commenters interact with SA and therefore are not parasocial. Online friendships are real too.

          3. I don’t think it’s parasocial if like OP you’ve actually met her or interacted with her directly. But many of the people here who worship her have never interacted with her beyond reading her words on a message board and that’s definitely parasocial!

          4. If you’re posting anonymously it’s not a mutual interaction and she doesn’t “know” you, even in the virtual sense. Internet friends can be genuine friendships even without an in person meeting but you’re not Internet friends if you post using the same “Anon” screen name that hundreds of others use.

          5. I’m sure she is a very lovely woman, but it is weird how much people worship her! She could shoot somebody in the middle of 5th Avenue and you guys would defend her.

          6. Yes! I’ve seen people get raked over the coals for saying something that’s suddenly popular when Senior Attorney says it. This is not a criticism of her, but there is really a Trump-like cult of personality around her. (NOT saying she herself is like Trump – I’m sure she is not. But the cult worship reminds me of the cult worship of him!)

        2. And you do? SA has given me life changing advice, and whether or not I “know” her, she can be my hero. I have not many of my heroes, by the way…what a weird comment from you.

        3. interesting to have this conversation on the same morning as the one above, about a woman whose entire social life was online and her online friends noticed her absence. Maybe that’s not the same as a real life relationship but it’s *a* relationship.
          Certainly SA interacts on a personal level here. Other people idolize celebrities they have never interacted with.

          1. Heh, right? Anyway it was a super fun day in NYC with Dr. The Original (not far from 5th Avenue but there were no shootings so there’s that), and she and her beau are as lovely as you could possibly imagine!

          2. Exactly what I thought too. So good to hear from Dr. Original and even better to hear about meeting SA!

      1. nope, she told me she “feels sorry for my children” once and I think about it at least once a week.

        1. I tried to meet with her once when I was going through a really, really rough patch (we live in the same town) because she seemed like such a helpful person, and not only did she ignore my email, she said “Oh, I don’t remember it” and didn’t offer to get together anyway. I figured some people are more acceptable.

          1. I am so, so sorry to both of you. I’m just a person on the internet who screws up just like everybody else. Swear to God the only difference between me and everybody else on here is that for some weird reason I’ve been posting under the same name for years so people can keep track of my screw-ups.

            Anyway, 5:19 I am beyond positive that your children are lucky to have you and I implore you to get my careless words out of your head.

            And 5:44, I am so sorry to have dropped the ball when you needed a friend. I’m sure it’s far too late but if you wanted to give me a second chance I’m still here. seniorattorney1 at gmail

    1. There is no way you can be a successful Chief People Officer or in a senior HR role and be fully remote. That concept is just incompatible with what that role requires. The only conceivable way it works is for a fully remote company and those are few and far between. You also do not jump from graduation to the c-suite. Congratulations on your successes so far, but just bringing some realism here.

      1. The only fully remote company I know isn’t going to hire an American for their chief people officer role due to expense and administrative burden.

          1. Purdue Online (not to be confused with Purdue Global aka Kaplan) is legit. Not as prestigious as the flagship Purdue campus in Indiana but not a scam. I think ASU has reputable online programs too. Several friends got exec MBAs there.

          2. I’m more familiar with K12, but there are a lot of great fully remote high schools. If there are no successful colleges on the same model, it’s not because it can’t be done.

      2. I think the bigger problem is that Dr. The Original has a very deep education and has written several books, but does not necessarily have a lot of corporate work experience. So she’s likely both over- and under-qualified for a lot of jobs.

        1. Unfortunately for my industry, an MBA would not be a springboard without relevant work experience. My advice would be to highly highly take advantage of any MBA hiring help that your university offers and searching your tail off for MBA specific pipeline programs at F500s. Otherwise, my industry does not seem to be receptive to the degree in lieu of work experience.

    2. Congratulations!!!

      Brain surgery….??? I hope you’re okay.

      So glad about the partner and stepson.

      I know a LOT of people who love Denver. More importantly, I don’t know anyone who really hated the city or the people.

  7. I have somewhat succeeded in limiting my information/news diet since the election. But I am now in a position where I feel like I need to get more acquainted, mostly to navigate some social interactions I am now having. Is there a website or something that is just listing EOs and other actions, like appointments and agency directives?

    1. I read BBC news once a day for DJT round 2 updates. I try to read it as a part of world news so that I also focus on what’s happening outside of the US.

      1. BBC might be a good choice
        For reasons, I am trying to get as little commentary as possible, at least for now.

  8. For fellow people whose jobs are losing funding and need to change fields … what’s your plan?

    90% of jobs in my field are grant funded so switching jobs isn’t a safe option.

    My skills that aren’t industry specific are pretty generic – I could probably shift to something Comms related but so could a lot of people so competition will be stiff.

    I made a career pivot ~ 6 years ago from a very closely related field , but a) that field is also grant funded and b) I’ve been out of the game long enough I doubt I’m competitive anymore (it’s a very competitive field).

    I just finished my Masters, so I’m reluctant to go back to school. But also, I feel like nursing or teaching are the only safe options in my potential wheelhouse and those would necessitate going back to school

    1. I’m a federal consultant and I’m going to update my resume again this weekend. The challenge is knowing how extensive the funding cuts go. Those will impact private sector too so I don’t know what safe will look like.

    2. I’m not sure teaching is safe as I think public education is losing funding/getting torn apart also.

    3. If I lose my job, I think my next move (late in my career now) might be some sort of teaching. I have a masters but not really qualified to do much different than my current role. I could do freelance writing but I know it won’t pay enough to make it and need healthcare benefits.

  9. I’m going to visit my parents for a long weekend soon. They are getting older and I’d like to spend some time interviewing them and recording their stories. Any thoughts on the best way to do this? I would be ok with just audio, as I’m aware video would require significant storage space. What equipment would I need and there anything I should consider? Not sure I’d have the chance to do this again. TIA!

      1. I really want to give StoryWorth to my parents. Neither is very big on writing or starting new habits, though. Is it accessible enough to encourage even the reluctant to participate?

      2. OP here: StoryWorth is exclusively writing though. I’d like to record their voices at the very least, and do it by interviewing–writing can be laborious for people who aren’t good writers or don’t enjoy it.

    1. When you simply record with your phone, does that give you a high-enough quality for your purposes? If so, start there.

      Next stage is a simple lav mic that connects to your phone via bluetooth or a cord, or a table mic that records several people at once. To find info, google “how to start a podcast” and you’ll find people talking about entry-level mics and cords.

    2. Get a tripod for your phone and aim it at your parent and ask them to look at you
      Look up questions but start small
      Tell them what story you recall and ask them to correct and explain to you what it meant to them
      Ask them about a tough time period you recall – or a historical event, or if a national person or policy affected their lives that they can think of
      Ask if they saw a president in person and when
      Ask if they watched big moments – the moon landing, etc. on TV or where they were then

    3. I did Story Worth for my dad. I interviewed him once a week over dinner over the course of several months. Sometimes it took forever to get a story out, but little by little we did it! Printing it took only a few weeks. I ordered several copies and we handed them out to relatives at his 90th birthday party. They loved it! We were able to include pictures and they discovered parts of him they did not know. It was amazing and I highly recommend it. Best money ever spent.

  10. i have to attend an engagement party in Atlanta in late March that is being held at a hotel rooftop bar and the dress code is “snappy casual” – what do I wear?

      1. No, this is a super Southern term for preppy-dressy. For men think blazer and pastel button down. For women a dress – if a daytime party definitely colorful a la Farm Rio or Lilly, if evening maybe darker but like, Tuckernuck-c-cktail, not slinky.

        1. Well then I am glad my suggestion isn’t posting. I guess I exist in a different segment of Atlanta culture from this couple.
          Is the bar actually in Atlanta, or is it in a suburb near Atlanta?

          1. Yes, it is. That is a great spot. Ordinarily it is not filled with preppy, but I understand the couple would like to curate their guests’ attire regardless of venue and I understand the OP’s desire to match the required aesthetic.

    1. For some reason the word “snappy” makes me think of the kind of getups Broadway dancers wear to rehearsal, but I don’t think that’s it.

    2. I would wear a dress. Something from Tuckernuck or Farm Rio or Cara Cara. If you’re not a dress person, I would probably wear white jeans and a colorful top from one of the retailers I suggested.

      1. Yep, it’s Tuckernuck. I agree except I wouldn’t do jeans of any kind, even white ones. If you don’t do dresses, do dressier pants or a jumpsuit.

        1. yeah I learned this the hard way in similar circumstances, which is why I commented above. Like “snappy casual” to uneducated me meant cute jeans and a dressy top… and every single other woman was in a colorful dress.

    3. maybe i should also add that while party is in Atlanta bc that is where bride is from, bride and groom currently live in Seattle and took engagement pics in plaid shirts and jeans

      1. oh gosh, well, if they have other friends coming from the PNW, you can take comfort that you will not be the one who misunderstands the dress code the most. Southern + West Coast have very regional dress terms that…don’t mesh

    4. Hi from a native atlantan who could totally see an invite like this from former sorority sisters. Agree with others that this is a colorful dress but not full cocktail attire. You don’t need to do cliche southern prints or brands like lilly pullitzer if thats not your style but I imagine most of the women will be in colorful dresses

  11. Another probationary fed thread. Have you all heard anything? Still nothing from the Treasury, but Secretary of the Treasury was confirmed last night. My leadership seems to know nothing.

    1. Nothing at Ag.
      On an unrelated note, they killed the logo on our learning platform, which was pretty and always made me smile. This administration really is out to suck any joy from the workplace, even if it’s free.

    2. I’m excepted service and nobody seems to know my current status but I’m pretty sure I’m on the chopping block

  12. DH and I are both feds in DC with 2 elementary aged kids. Neither of our agencies have been targeted yet, but we’re both losing our minds trying to strategize next steps. Anyone else in this situation? Are you planning to leave DC?

    1. I’m not in DC, but single and live alone and a Fed so I am my own safety net.

      Looking to getting my emergency teaching cert and go into teaching

    2. just sending lots of hugs your way. uncertainty is the worst. i’m still a bit perplexed as to how this will help the economy…. hang in there.

      1. It won’t help the economy. In fact, this uncertainty is destructive to the economy and more. So pointless, gratuitous, grotesque, and certainly not in service to efficiency. My only hope is that the administration over-reaches, as usual, and is slapped back, somehow, but being sick with worry and distracted to the extreme, I don’ t have the faintest idea how our country gets out of this horrible situation. (And to think i was self-inflicted by a portion of the voters.)

  13. did anyone else read that story in NY Mag about the young republican elite? it was like if the rich awful smug kids in the 80s movies are now back in full force except they’re all patrick bateman (from american psycho).

    i’m the mom to an autistic kid who probably would have been called an R__ not so long ago (even though his intelligence is above average) so this whole “it’s our right to say the R word!” is so triggering to me. (it was said way too many times in that article.) not that kids aren’t using “autistic” as the new slur in its place.

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/inauguration-trump-supporters-conservative-movement-post-maga.html

    1. The article is paywalled. What I found irksome is that NY Mag literally edited out all of the non-white people in that original photo. That alone makes me question the author’s intent.

      1. Okay, my unpopular opinion is people who complain about paywalls need to stfu. Content, especially journalism, isn’t free to create and you don’t deserve free access to anything you want any time you want it.

        1. If someone wants to discuss a paywalled article, they need to post a gift link. We all subscribe to some paid publications, but we can’t each subscribe to all of them.

        2. This is fair except I’m not spending a dime on anything not worth reading. The ball is in journalism’s court.

      2. Then they must have edited it back because I see several non-white people in the pic.

        And yes, I read the article and wanted to puke.

        1. I think they’re talking about the crop used for the magazine cover, there wasn’t ever editing, just what happens when you turn a landscape image into portrait.

          1. Anyone who knows anything about framing and visual balance would have cropped the very drunk white girl to be in the middle of the image, its not that deep or any sort of conspiracy. There’s only 3 POC there anyways. If we’re getting real pedantic you can see one of their arms on the cover.

    2. I actually refused to read this so my DH just sent me paragraphs until I got the gist. It felt very much like the more modern version of the early GW Bush years.

      1. I was in DC at the time, so maybe this wasn’t a more universal feeling. What was that special social media/listserv at the time for the “elite” DC kids?

      2. Yeah, this article felt like some of the Greek groups at the southern university I went to near the Bush years. These people aren’t new, and certain monied circles have never particularly changed their opinions. Also, that Wexler girl who is quoted a lot is on social media and trying to sell herself for followers, so she would have the inflammatory quotes.

    3. It is a reflection of the comments above about transgender people. Those ‘80s movies were an accurate reflection of culture even if we didn’t all grow up in suburbia with wealthy classmates. John Hughes focused on class issues but you could switch that out for anything else — race, gender, sexuality, etc. The adults on boards like this raised those kids. The young adults who are so bent out of shape they can’t call someone a slur. Not that their future is secure, but that someone thinks they’re mean for bigoted views. But this is not new. They want to return to exactly who their parents and grandparents are which is bigotry is fine as long as we’re all civil. You know, with the “good ones.”

    4. Breaking news! It’s fun to be mean! What a revelation! We knew this. We’ve always known this. At least the article made it clear that this really is less of a “political movement” and more of a deep sigh of relief from people who have always been awful and cruel and now feel like it’s socially acceptable to embrace their very worst tendencies. Whoever once described MAGA by saying “The cruelty is the point,” could not have been more correct.

  14. i used to use plastic bags from the grocery store etc for my garbage cans and litter box. Now I use what i can from packaging buy my own to supplement. What bags do you use in your kitchen garbage cans that are greener than plain old hefty bags?

    1. I use the generic cheap bags (not banned-brand Hefty). What I think is more impactful, though, is that we limit our garbage creation. Compost what we can, minimize food waste by eating leftovers before they go bad and need to get tossed, buying real intestines and not highly processed stuff that comes with lots of packaging. Outside of food, we are recycling what we can outside, and generally just buying less stuff. We have a normal sized rollout bin that we could get away with having picked up once per month. There are three of us in my house.

    2. We have switched to biodegeradable trash bags on the theory that every little bit helps. Bonus: They are green and look prettier than the old white ones when I pull out the pullout trash drawer! You can search for “biodegradable” or “compostable” trash bags at your favorite shopping place.

      1. I used to think those were good, but where I live the compostable bags do more harm* than good when used for regular trash, so do some research about the recycling and garbage facilities in your area before you choose those. Where I live free compostable bags are used for council issued food waste recycling bags, those are going to specific faciliites to make biofuel. The plastic that I’ve seen recommended for home trash bags is LDPE, low density polyethylene.

        *A local to me (Nordic) environmental certification organisation does not recommend compostable bags at all for general trash. The reason being that most of them can only be composted in a purpose built industrial setting at specific temperatures over a long time. And if this plastic is introduced in the regular plastic recycling chain it can harm the recycling facilities and keep other plastic from being repurposed, because it melts at a different temperature and can clog the system.

        1. Yikes! We don’t use them for the recycling stuff , just the regular trash. It was my husband’s idea and I think his thinking was it might be less awful in the landfill than regular plastic. But this is just mostly confirming my long-held belief that recycling and related endeavors are largely a scam, at least where I am.

  15. i used to use plastic bags from the grocery store etc for my garbage cans and litter box. Now I use what i can from packaging buy my own to supplement. What bags do you use in your kitchen garbage cans that are greener than plain old hefty bags?

    1. I compost everything I can and eat almost no meat. That keeps stinky stuff out of the trash can, so there’s no need to take it out until full, which can be a couple of weeks for one bag. With that in mind, I just use plain store bought trash bags and use the bare minimum.

      1. This is precisely my approach, though vegan, but yeah everything gets composted we produce one bag of actual trash a month.

        1. I’ve gotten ruthless about food waste since moving somewhere pretty remote and it’s to the point there really isn’t even all that much for the compost.

      2. +1 I’ve tried a few brands of compostable garbage bags and they just fall apart, so I just stick with normal garbage bags but try to minimize how many I’m using.

    2. I try to use my own bags at the grocery store, but inevitably the grocery store plastic bags make their way into our house. We use those for trash also. We also use larger bags that we get from packages, like sometimes the bags that stuff comes in from Amazon/Target/etc. are big enough to hold a few days worth of trash and often have strips to seal them up when they’re done. Finally, we buy toilet paper and paper towels from Costco – the big bags that the bags of paper products come in are great for kitchen trash. They’re huge. We also often use the smaller bags that are holding six or eight rolls of TP to line bathroom trash cans. They’re much smaller and weaker but bathroom trash is usually light weight and small.

      We are DINKS who don’t produce a ton of trash, but we haven’t bought trash can bags in literally years because we probably use one actual trash can bag per year.

    3. I live somewhere with a plastic bag ban so bin of cloth bags in each car and pantry for shopping plus we buy rolls of plastic bags at Costco that fit our specific garbage cans (bathrooms and kitchen).

  16. I was able to leave my job which I don’t enjoy (underpaid, undervalued, overworked) for a much-needed vacation for a few days…but unfortunately the vacation didn’t magically solve my problems and now I am back at job where I don’t want to work. I’m actively applying for other jobs, but in the meantime, how do I handle this? Every day I fantasize about quitting but I can’t for financial reasons.

    1. Here is my approach for hard things that need to be gotten through for Reasons:

      Gratitude list:
      What about the current situation/role is even the smallest bit pleasurable ie; a beautiful coffee cup on the desk, a nice walk from transit to office, food in your belly, a roof overhead. A fresh shower, anything to put the focus on the positive while you wait out the next opportunity.

      Lastly, fantasize about the next vacation you want to take, and it can be a tourist in your own town type of vacation. The tourist in my town approach has really helped! Find all the close to / free things you can do locally…then do them.

      1. just disconnect. do what needs to be done and no more. spend all that excess energy into getting yourself a new job. this is not the time to work through lunch, go in early, or bring things home to read over the weekend. good luck!

  17. Help. I have dandruff all of a sudden. So far, it is only on the top of my head, especially near my hairline and part. I’ve never had dandruff before – what brought this on and what do I do?!

    1. i suspect that you don’t actually have dandruff because it would seem unlikely that it just randomly showed up in an an adult. I would think more likely you have dry scalp (like the skin is dry like everywhere else on the body in winter) or an allergy. there are all kinds of scalp treatments you could google and try. I use coconut oil on a day when i’m home, rub it in your scalp and hair dry let it sit for a bit and then wash normally. t

    2. Ketoconazole shampoo. You can buy it at the drugstore. I developed dandruff in my 30s and use this a couple times a week when it is acting up. Sometimes I can go several months without flakes or dryness so it’s highly variable.

  18. Ugh. I am probably losing my job if this grant nonsense isn’t worked out, I am traveling to go to a wedding this weekend where I’ll see my ex for the first time since we broke up and many of our friends, who are also going to this wedding and whom I am sharing a hotel with, are more sympathetic to him in the break up (we both wanted to break up, but he was a total jerk about how he handled it – my friends are like yeah but you also wanted to end the relationship so why are you upset? Because he was a jerk!!! And everyone agrees he was a jerk!) A loved one’s cancer has progressed. I’m injured and a) can’t work out b) can’t do my hobbies and c) have as a result gained weight. I just got my period. I hate everything this week.

    1. Ask for your room to be far from the other rooms in the wedding block. We do this all the time to have some privacy.

  19. Higher ed folks: has anyone’s university put out any sort of statement or offered any guidance yet?

    1. Copy and pasted from an email I got from my university (as an aide, I run NIH-funded research, 25% of my salary is NIH funded, and have many people I am paying with NIH money – so I am worried). Somewhat vague but better than knowing nothing.

      Last week NIH did pause scientific meetings, communications and travel for NIH employees. The takeaway from that was that it would not impact existing awards or proposal submissions. However, it did interrupt some grant decision meetings we had scheduled.

      Last night’s OMB memo halted federal aid disbursements, which is indeed alarming, but also confusing. There has been quick legal action because there is question over whether the executive branch even has that power. But nonetheless, it is something universities are taking seriously and monitoring. The memo states that the pause does impact disbursements,so there could be some delays. But there is contrary interpretations that say this won’t impact “obligated funds.”

    2. Nothing official, but unofficial guidance: my husband is in a STEM field, with his and his grad students’ academic year salaries paid by the university (in exchange for teaching), but he gets NSF funding to cover his and his students’ travel and his summer salary. He was told his current grant money is already in the hands of the university so he can continue paying for planned conference travel for him and his students for this academic year and summer. His grant is expiring and he would need a new grant for summer funding this year and conference travel starting from next fall, and we’re assuming that’s not happening, which means about a $30k pay cut from last year. But that could have happened even without this chaos (he’s very successful, but it’s hard to get grant funding).

    3. Lots of them have on the federal funding issue-this is from COGR website:

      Federal Funding Updates Under the New Administration (Arizona State University)
      Federal Funding Under the New Administration – General Updates (UMass Amherst)
      Tracking Federal Changes 2025 (University of Michigan)
      Federal Research Updates 2025 (Columbia University)
      Federal Funding Updates: Stay Informed (Washington State University)
      2025 Federal Administration Transition Guidance (University of New Hampshire)
      New Administration Federal Funding Updates (University of Hawaii)
      Federal Funding Updates (University of Houston)
      Update on Federal Funding (University of Utah)
      University Resources to Navigate the Federal Research Funding Landscape (Boston University)