Datepalm

I'm on a zoom where one person has a full set of 1990's Wheel of Time paperbacks on the shelf, which, given how much those tended to fall to pieces in your hands as soon as opened, I find pretty impressive (they also have the 4-book ASOIAF set).

I've seen them very occasionally where I've lived in the US - urban-ish (by US Standards) parts of the East Bay and Boston metro - in the past few years. Here in Toronto they really seem a regular part of the landscape. I walked past multiple ones just running errands yesterday. Apparently this is still 'recovering from Covid", according to a man who foisted a cupcake tree on me (anyone need a cupcake tree?). Buy-Nothing facebook goups were massive in Boston though, during COVID anyway. ETA - hard to say about the junk level - I own literally nothing in household stuff, so I picked up some glasses and a coffee press for a dollar - basic but lovely when starting from scratch. Saw books, kitchen things, shoes, clothes, household appliances, and lots of kid stuff, all doing reasonably brisk trade. ETA2 - I haven't watched the show (it seems like a nice enough bit of fanfic, I guess?) and I am still actively waiting for the next book. And by god y'all had better be here to argue about it.

In a complete change of subject for this board, I just saw a kid, maybe 12-13 years old at most, walk away from a yard sale with the whole box set of books 1-4*. He'd never seen the show nor read GRRM before. It was fun to see. Also, Canadians are really, really into yard sales. There seem to be multiple ones on every block in Toronto every single weekend. *I like that box set. It's pleasingly cubical.

This may be a contrarian take, but now the ink is dry (haven't quite worked up to adding "Dr." to the email signature, I assume that's when it actually takes hold?) honestly I had a pretty great time mostly. That was with Covid, dodgy funding in high cost of living area, etc. I mean, there were rough patches, but honestly, your advisor catching you crying in a corner at least once is basically a program requirement. I got to do pretty much everything I wanted to, and going in with low - or, at any rate, non-romantic - expectations and some experience of, uh, having worked actual jobs probably helped, as well as all my academic experience being in large, chaotic public institutions where no one gets quite what they want but everything sort of muddles by. This may be different in lab-based fields, but in social sciences where you're more on your own, I found that I sort of had to just go for stuff (publications, funding, research gigs, teaching, travel, etc) without expecting the program or advisor or anyone to tell you when to do what and how - because they won't. And I had a fantastic advisor, but it was still mostly me coming to him with whatever my latest tangent was and asking him to sign some form for some project about parking spots I was already half way through (possibly a bit cat-with-dead-mouse, from his pov.) Think of yourself as a project manager - the project being your PhD, but also longer term career, academic or not - rather than as a student.

Muddled through all the Karen Pirie's (except the first one as I'd seen the show). Enjoyed them a lot, despite finding a lot actually quite annoying. Several, especially the 2nd and the 6th have weirdly easy-to-solve mysteries - which I generally pay no attention to and make no effort to solve. But here they were just sitting there. Karen is also hella preachy and repetitive sometimes, with a touch of that Mary Sue thing where all her superiors are comically incompetent and venal, in a slightly absurd register that no other aspect of the books has. That subplot in each book always sucks and always ends with Karen getting a snide one-over on them. (Makes me really impressed with the Cupidi books where she has a boss who has to mind the politics and the media etc and is sometimes cautious or at odds with her, but nevertheless bears a passing resemblance to an adult human in a professional setting.) There's always an odd level of focus on her clothes or her weight in a way that doesn't really add anything, but whatever - still enjoyable.

I shaved a few times at some point because I lost my tweezers at some conference in the middle of nowhere* and my skin loved it. Still do it once a week or so instead. Way quicker too. *OK, I can't complain, it was on a beach in Brazil. But there weren't any useful stores anywhere nearby.

I got some 0.25 retinol about a year ago (it was over the counter in, uh, I think I was in Uganda?) and have just finished the tube, but I did get some 0.5 in Mexico at some point, so now starting that, a little nervously. My skin seemed really fine with the 0.25 (including eye area, which maybe I should be more careful with) every other night with a few breaks. I think it's helping, and overall I think my skin has definitely chilled the fuck out a bit, but I've also been ok with sunscreen and moisturizer.

New thread, armchair detectives. Recent reads - I went through William Shaw's Alex Cupidi mysteries quickly. I think he's done at 4 (or 5, depending on how you count the sort of series kickoff, which technically isn't a Cupidi book) and they seem to be done. Set in Dungeness, this fills the Ruth Galloway shaped hole in my mystery readings - moody coastal English setting, single parent detective, low-key local mysteries, a lot of attention paid to landscapes, animals, local histories, etc. I read a couple of Mario Todd's Clare McKay as well, set in St. Andrews. Same vibe, though slightly less well put together and less atmospheric, also a little gorier/more violent, which rarely adds much for me, but still enjoyable. MS Morris - Aspire to Die - Oxford University set murder, scandal amongst the privileged, yaddi yadda. Not very good. Another single parent of teenager female detective, which was ok, but the actual story is poorly done - very boring characters and not much done with the setting. Bad Summer People - meh. Not great either as satire or as mystery. The Paris Apartment - Lucy Foley - I like her earlier murder in a remote setting books, but this one is more of a straight-up crime thriller and is just annoying. Everyone is dumb as a brick, the structure and the writing boringly manipulative to keep up from learning the answer, there's all this supposedly dark and raunchy sex, prostitution, illicit affairs, etc, stuff that reads like a teenager writing fanfic, etc. I started the first WM Craven Washington Poe book and actually abandoned it after a few chapters - pretty rare, for me. It's got the usual murder in an English country setting thing, but is pointlessly gory and violent, and the main detective is a Gary Stu surrounded by idiots and bigots, and the whole thing is a chore to read.

murals worry me a lot.

I actually have a pillow! It's under my desk at Berkeley, not sure when I'll be able to pick it up, but it is there. I'm a grownup. It's from Target. Kind of excited to go poke about cosignement stores this weekend now!

There's definitely shops and markets, but this practice of sales out of someone's home/garage is a lot less common, than I know of. I'm sort of curious just to check it out while I'm here (also I'm a bit bored - teaching a class online so I have to be in the US.)

This is interesting - I'm suddenly facing the ominous prospect of probably needing to find a place to live and put furniture in it. I'm well over roommates and I've lived in more quirky spots with spaces full of character and over-present eccentric landlords than a full young adult library section over the past few years and a boring small apartment managed by a boring leasing company sounds like heaven. So, actual furniture, probably. I'm trying to basically no longer buy new clothes and thrift/poshmark just about everything practicable, and I'm wondering if it's possible to take the same approach with home stuff. Estate sales sound intriguing, but aren't a thing in Israel (I think?). Can I just go check one out to get a sense of it? I'm in Boston for a couple of weeks...

Thanks all! I got the counter-offer from Big City and they did the salary match and the 40/60 split, so I said yes. There's even a bit extra conference travel money tossed in, as they couldn't do relocation benefits, which I didn't even ask for, since I would maybe have been able to take advantage of 30% of that at most, and only by really coming up with the most expensive and probably inconvenient (to me!) way imaginable of moving two suitcases. @IheartIheartTesla point about being in much more of an ecosystem than Small Town, however large the university itself definitely also played a part. I also had a nice candid chat with a friend-of-a-friend there who described it as "frozen hell if you're single" and "get a dog, or a robot dog if you're not a dog person" right as I got the Big City email (also, damn, this is nice networking - I may have an invitation to come do a talk there out of that chat. That should do it for this bit of curiosity for the small town Americana thing. Should have dragged it out - there were a few more interesting people on the list.)

Huh. Advisor was very strongly pro-Small Town - more money for less work, leaving more scope for own research, which he thinks I should be focusing on. So I got back to Big City, who told me I'm in a great spot to negotiate and said they'll get back to me on a salary match and a 60/40 instead of 80/20 split on project/my stuff. I also got more info and the project budget, and it's actually smaller and probably more manageable than I expected. On the one hand, there's less money, but on the other, fewer people are actually directly getting paid and most of the budget is for research students. IE, I can tell these ones what to do. There is also a dedicated travel budget and expectation that I would do most of that, which is actually a plus as far as I'm concerned.

Definitely what I need is confusingly charged and sublimated relationships with clearly tortured yet never quite formally unethical power dynamics and boundaries wrt academic hierarchies.

Lol we can play hot/cold? @Starkess I'm actually leaning Big City, I think I just needed the one day of entertaining the bucolic wonder of the quintessential college town (this place is the first hit when I google "quintessential college town") given that I spent the rest of the day on the phone with VLO being condescended to by an IT guy. I'm also wary of low-key depressive/mental health issues which I'm not sure a lot of alone time and a limited social life (it will probably consist of nodding politely to married colleagues' kid photos and politely being nodded to by 20-something grad students in turn) will be great for, however quaint the setting. The dating pool is also probably microscopic and I think I'm over that, after years of small, eccentric expat settings.

Oof sorry this got long - It's all of the above, but especially CyrTesla's point. I am still trying for a tenure track positions, just reminding myself that it's not at any cost, not any TT, and that I'll give up after a few rounds if it's just not happening. It's also a lot about signaling, since I'll be applying for some 2024-25 jobs literally before I'll have started the postdoc. The town population is 30k, inclusive of 20k students. The state and the county went blue, but every surrounding country is red. The nearest city is about 50 miles away, and it's population is 145,000. It's airport has no international flights. (I could probably just say where this is but the geography pub quiz fiend in me can't.) I will definitely need a car and I will definitely have no social life. It is also a place of Proper Winters. People-wise, I'm getting better vibes from Small Town. Much clearer expectation, more believable in their claims to their commitment to my overall career development and wellbeing, more collegiate, warmer. The problem is that it's a very weird position for a postdoc, funded through a teaching center. The actual teaching component isn't high - 1 course per year, with a sort of supportive non-instructional role in one other course, basically helping the department up it's quality of pedagogy. They're trying for 50-50 teaching/research, and the postdoc designation means I can apply for research funding, travel, etc, but - for anyone not in the weirdness of tertiary education - having a lot of teaching on your CV is a bad thing. I'm primarily interested in research intensive academic roles (probably wouldn't consider a SLAC) so doubly a bad thing. I think the appeal of Small Town is just immediately emotional where it's probably just a more chill gig. I have a lot of teaching experience (so triply a bad thing to get even more) and ome may also remember my marxist commune days where creative pedagogy was the name of the game. I think I'm just picturing this routine of the collegiate town with its autumn leaves and coffee, driving around in my imaginary car, teaching my pet seminar (they want my pet seminar) and catching up on my writing backlog of PhD material and that's kind of that. This may or may not be utter bullshit. They've never had this role before and my field is so small it's hard to point to patterns in people's trajectories. Small Town salary is actually substantially better, but it has high housing costs and with factoring the car that salary erodes a lot. Big City gig is just intrinsically harder. Its a research manager position that will require wrangling a good dozen people in five or six institutions (I genuinely have lost count) in four countries for work on three cities, most more senior than me. The project is somewhat vaguely defined, with a huge breadth of methods and research designs (this is how you get the big money apparently - just hit all the buzzwords and strategic vagueness on the rest? Also a good skill to learn, probably.) It leaves less time for my own stuff, but puts me on a new project, with a good expansion scope (I love my PhD work, honestly, but it's niche and outside most US-based researchers' experience) and much more networking and obvious publication opportunities*. But a lot of it is managing up, defining work and timelines which are then out of my control, and ALWAYS run crazy long. ALWAYS. It may well end up being a disaster or just incredibly unproductive. Small Town is a somewhat more prestigious university, which does tend to matter, but Big City has a very large and prolific department in my field. The job itself is actually at a well connected interdisciplinary research center at this very large research university, which is likely better than being tied into a department for this role. It is a very large city and I would not need a car, and they did not vote for anyone because they're in Canada. (There are also Proper Winters). The visa would also hold fewer possible mines - J-1s suck. I think I'm still getting over a bit of burnout, and I've had a lot of different issues lately with kafkaesque bureaucracy, lack of accountability, boundaries and clear relationships with managers, exploitative work dynamics, etc, at both my current school - another huge research university - and at the VLO (see above) and minimizing all that suddenly seems like a great life choice. Probably not the basis for a 2-3 year decision with major life and possibly career-long implications. * academic weeds: I've already opened the conversation on building in single- or first-author publication strategies for the juniors on the project (including me) from the get-go. ETA - Small Town has a Trader Joe's, which Canada - all of it - does not.

Well, so I now actually have two offers, but both still sans-paperwork. The Small Town School got back to me within a few hours of the interview - ie, today - which is nice. I'm still leaning Big City School, but it's not an obvious choice. They're really, really different and it's a bit apples and oranges, and across all elements - the job responsibilities, the location and lifestyle, the institutions, etc.

So I got a tentative offer for a postdoc a week ago - informal 1-line email - with a quick expectation-setting call afterwards. The point person is someone who I have a significant academic relationship with, while not being particularly personally familiar. I haven't received a contract yet (much less signed one, and will send a nudge tomorrow if I haven't heard anything) though I generally indicated on the call I was accepting the role. Meanwhile, a different postdoc which I interviewed for weeks ago got back in touch asking for a second round interview Monday. I'm probably more inclined to the postdoc-with-the-offer - Big City location, research oriented, international project, strong center within the university, and while the postdoc-with-the-second-interview has some pros - 3 years vs. 2, better salary, strong university - it is in a VERY small town and is teaching oriented/kind of weird (postdocs are not supposed to be teaching oriented), but may actually provide me more research time. Anyway, it wouldn't be the worst either and frankly I'm always nervous until the ink is dry. At what point do I let either one know I've half-accepted/am still interview for another role? Meanwhile at the Very Large Organization, I am going through the rigamarole of trying to get a consultant rate increase (end of the FY in June, they turn into pumpkins) and have now got my manager's manager admitting the past years have been very unfair ("fair" is the word they keep using. I like "exploitative") but also that their ability to do anything about it is meh, they'll try, can't promise anything, don't get your hopes up. Given a bunch of other idiotic frustrations, I'd love to peace out the VLO at this point, but the extra income would be welcome for 1-2 more years in balancing out a postdoc lack-of-pension*. I can do most of what they throw at me in my sleep at this point (actually another frustration). Instead I got huffy on a call with different VLO team on a different project and told them they had utterly unrealistic expectations of not just workload but project management and decision making from an underpaid external consultant who structurally cannot see the puzzle you're asking me to solve**. They said they'll get back to me. *after that, you heard it here, I'll give up academia and go get a real job. Will not do a second postdoc. Remind me of this if I'm waffling and drinking the coolaid in 2025. **ONE of the SIX tasks they proposed for a probably 30-workday project was that I develop multiple iterations of a data collection strategy to solve one of the hardest, worst-defined problems in my field, in a way that's maybe theoretical but also really practical and which they would want to fit in with the other work the other teams I'm doing and the project's political buy in. Oh, right, I've never been in communication with those teams and previously didn't know they existed. And of course I can't be privy to the project politics, that's not my role, technical consultant yaddi yadda. And for some city but they're not sure which city (I have never been to the country of any of them)*** assuming several different levels of budget constraints...while three people refused to say what those budgets were. ***I may have wrangled myself a trip. It may or may not be possible, passport-wise, but they don't seem to get that. It may or may not also be legal, in either country. But I'm willing to let VLO manager figure out middle eastern geopolitics from scratch for a little while.

@dbunting,

Efficiency gains! OMG congrats!

I'm with the guardian - maudlin ending, insufferably, cheap in a lot of ways, both narratively and emotionally.

I actually stuck the first episode on - it is not all cloying sunshine at all, the start of the show is a lot more angry and vulgar than it becomes, with Ted not just an absurd fish out of water in the UK/in football, but also a clearly oddball optimist in an otherwise harsher-edged world, rather than the overall pile of goop it's become now (Rebecca notes she would like Rupert to feel "like he's being fucked in the arse with a splintered cricket bat, over and over, in a constant loop, like a gif." It's awful and funny and I can't image a line like that in Season 3.)

I'm currently reading A Murder of Magpies, by Judith Flanders (who I think is the same person as the historian of victorian capitalism and domesticity) about a middle-aged London book editor who gets caught up in a murder mystery when one of her authors is killed. Not to be confused with The Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz, about a middle-aged London book editor who gets caught up in a murder mystery when one of her authors is killed. Otherwise slightly alarmed by how many mysteries I've read since last posting at the end of December, since it's generally been a response either to stress or COVID - ...also not to be confused with Magpie Lane, Lucy Atkins - not strictly a murder, but a nice messy missing child story with wildly unreliable narrators and an academic setting. It's unsettling and debatable, much like her other academia-set unreliable history between very different women, the Night Visitor, which I also really enjoyed. The Golden Spoon, Jessa Maxwell - a murder at the Great British Bakeoff filming (well, strictly it's a fictional American version, but it took me like fifty pages to notice it's in Vermont.) TBH, the baking bits were significantly better than the murder/plot/whatever bits, just a little bit acidic in breaking down the hunger for reality tv glory as expressed by choices of pie fillings. I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai - deconstructiveish sort of thing about a 20 year old murder at a boarding school which current and former students are caught up in solving when they create a podcast. A bit of Gen X/Gen Z side-eying, which apparently has now replaced Boomer/Millennial side-eyeing? Yay? Fairly generous and fun though. High Country, Nevada Barr - Anna Pigeon #12 - I periodically pick up the next one of these and they;re a nice enough groove. The mystery here felt a little underbaked and the National Park Setting - Yosemite - somehow seedier than most, more about the tourist facilities and grotty parties than the great outdoors. The inevitable extensive sequence of Anna going through gruesome pain and exposure is especially long and grim in this one (easily a third of the whole book) after it seemed like maybe she was finally toning it down in previous books. I'm still baffled by the extensiveness, brutality and sadism of these sequences in each book (not to mention lack of realism - she should just be dead) and wish someone would like write a paper about it. (They haven't, I've checked.) Not a Happy Family - Shari Lapena - wealthy couple murdered in upstate New York, did one of the kids do it for the money? Actively bad, truly terrible writing, cheap pov manipulation to drag out the mystery, everyone is incredibly annoying. The Last Remains - Elly Griffiths - good (probably) ending! Otherwise, reliably more of same - bodies, ruins, sea, marsh, cat, etc. The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels - Janice Hallett - I love this kind of stuff - epistolary story-within-a-story, unreliable narrators, etc - and I thought this was even a step up from the Twyford Code (that was maybe a little too twisty?) though not quite as acerbic as The Appeal. Daisy Darker - Alice Feeney - family twist on And Then There Were None - a bit ridiculous and overlong. The Last Party - Claire Makintosh - small town detective dealing with a celebrity death in a lakeside Welsh village, past secrets are revealed, serviceable. The Resemblance - Lauren Nossett - University of Georgia-set, I think, murder of a frat boy. The book is more interested in the detectives various childhood traumas, which are less interesting than the murder.

I thought that was really weak, tbh. The Dannny-Zorreaux thing made no sense and mostly wasn't funny (so Danny is what, a sociopath? Contrary to every bit of characterization of him to date? Except it was nice to have team members get a bit more airtime.) Ted's whole patter and asides also feel really random and are just material, mostly not very good, but nothing to do with the character, the moment or the situation (remember the sit in sitcom?) I could take or leave Roy and Keeley, but Rebecca swooping in to save Keeley's business is just easy and absurd. Firstly, that's a good way to ruin a friendship and a business, but also is just bad writing and shows how low stakes and uninteresting the whole Keeley's agency plot is. Also Roy's Shirt was not funny. Also, that kid is too old for that kind of tweeness. Jaime paying up for swearing and eyeing Roy's sister was the only funny, in-character bit. The superleague thing was dated, as noted, and Rebecca's speech was too on the nose. Nate's departure from West Ham being off screen was weak, just like Roy and Keeley's reconciliation actually being off screen - sometimes eliding a big moment can work, steeping it in surprise or inevitability, but in this case there's a sense they just couldn't be bothered to write the actual dramatic scenes, or couldn't figure out how to make them work, probably because by and large, they don't. Also I still don't quite get the appeal of Jade - she was all but mean to Nate for two seasons. Now it seems like the opacity/blankness is a bit of a character trait rather than an overt defense, but she's still not exactly interesting in any way. The only part that unabashedly rang some bell was Rupert making a move and being genuinely shattered for a moment there (ye olde acting from all involved) when Rebecca all but laughs at him.