workweek reading recs (13 January 2025)

[matsushima]

Hello and welcome to another week!

• The Case Against Budget Culture (2025/01)
• "I Was Trapped Forever in This Present Tense" (2019/11)
  Content notes: domestic violence
• Laziness Does Not Exist (2018/03)
• Fiction: Mother Tongues, by S. Qiouyi Lu

Bonus link because I spent a lot of time reading Ask A Manager last week trying to figure out the best way to phrase my request to be allowed to wear sound canceling headphones at work:

• My Coworker Wants Us to Call Her Boyfriend Her 'Master' (2016/09)

… an internet classic, honestly.

Comments

[raspberrysweettea]

Oh, Mother Tongues makes me want to cry!

About that last link:

" My instinct is that there’s a very big difference between insisting that colleagues acknowledge that you’re in a gay relationship and insisting that they refer to your partner as “your master,” and that it borders on involving other non-consenting parties into your relationship - "

No, that is involving people in your kinks without their consent. (And thank goodness the responder made it clear.) For her to try to compare it to the discrimination against gay relationships is so tone deaf, selfish, and rude. Nobody's discriminating against you, ma'am! You're the one sexually harassing everyone else!

[matsushima]

"Mother Tongues" messes me up every time. I'm constantly recommending it to my coworkers because our school language of instruction is English and 99% of our students are EFL. I think it's something we need to keep in mind.

[zana16]

Oooh thanks for that first link!