Dude, don't play with my stuff in meetings. Are we 12? Because when you're 12, I'm 12. I can't help it.

Today was my first full day by myself with no parents around (Mom went home yesterday afternoon). I ended up waking up on the couch at 6:00 am and have been up since. I did manage to start my next cross stitch project after finishing the one I've been working on for two years off-and-on last night (woo-hoo!). But, my full laundry basket is sitting next to my apartment door waiting for me to take it downstairs sometime tonight. Then, I have to do my homework for this Saturday's class tomorrow and then get started on cleaning out my bedroom drawers and closets.

I'm heading back to work on the 20th, and since I still have 25 hours of PTO left, I'm going to see if my boss will go along with my idea of only working five hours each day for the rest of the year. That'd be great if she agrees.

V. sad about Elizabeth Edwards - when I heard yesterday's news, I kind of assumed that "resting at home" was code for "hospice" and "could be weeks" was code for "please don't come sniffing around here". But still. She was smart and sharp and by far the class in the marriage, or very possibly the whole damned state.

I need help from the Hivemind! How do I tell someone from my previous job agency that when/if my manager opens up the vendor position for me, I have chosen to go with a different agency? The tricky bit is that if the vendor position doesn't happen, my previous job agency is the one that is the best bet for finding contract work. (They just suck as a vendor company.)

I almost posted this in b'crazy, but here: Flaming drives online social networks.

The researchers also noticed that avalanches of negative emotion – floods of messages with low happiness scores, spurred by a single post – produce self-organised behaviour amongst users.

Negative emotions accelerate the number of messages sent by users, in turn generating social groups from nowhere, says Thelwall. A single post can quickly generate a community of feeling if it is provocative enough.

It's not our fault! It's in our nature!

It's not our fault! It's in our nature!

Doctor Who posited much the same dynamic to make himself feel better about his partial failure in Genesis of the Daleks.

What failure, poopyhead??

It's not our fault! It's in our nature!

One of the ways I help dog people understand the distinction between the way they think, compared to their pets is:

Primates stare at trouble! That's why soap operas, politics and car wrecks are so compelling.

It's a survival instinct that is the burden of the higher order thinker...It is constant, even when we'd be better off without it.

Now I can add flame wars and social media as examples.

What failure, poopyhead??

Yeah, it all turned out well, as Daleks are inherently amusing.

What failure, poopyhead??

His instructions were either to destroy them or modify their development to make them less one-note emotionally. He didn't accomplish either, instead only imprisoning them for a millennium or so.