Middle of the week is quiet for me
Sep. 10th, 2025 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutApparently there was some news that just about everyone has something to say about, by which I mean the deeply ironic event in Utah. I will otherwise refrain. I tried to make some kind of sense of the Nepal thing, but it’s pretty opaque to me. Obviously, shutting down how people connect with the folks sending remittances is going to kick off random, and unknown additional folks will exploit extensive random, but making any sense out of that from outside is much harder than I’m really capable of participating in.
I had a walk with M., a phone call with J. I had dinner at Rail Trail Pizza with R.
I really enjoy quiet, boring days.
Oh, and A. and I went to see A. (therapy) which is always interesting. I have some thoughts now about communicating complicated things, but my daughter has just started talking to me and I can’t quite keep it straight enough to blog about right now.
ETA:
Apparently she read about pool skimmer boxes, small children and horrible intestinal damage and was worried about our future pool. I had no idea that was a thing, but I also don’t think we have comparable equipment. Yikes. The things she finds out to worry about.
Anyway.
We had an interesting discussion about beliefs and identity and my assertion that many people build identity around things they don’t properly understand, and so I tend to focus on the _I_ believe, the identity part, and ignore the details of the content of the belief. Therapist thinks that a lot of people simplify (perhaps not correctly) complex ideas into simpler beliefs, and those simple beliefs can result in them being drawn to people sharing those simple beliefs, even if the larger surrounding / more complicated “official” beliefs are wildly incompatible. This is a pretty good idea!
And it dawned on me that what I tend to think of when I think about Republican partisan messaging history is missing a key piece. I resent the micromessaging (telling small groups what they want to hear, even when incompatible with what they are telling other members of the coalition) and I find the “tell people how to feel about it” part … cringe. But this is a way to get form a complex message to a simple message that resonates.
There’s no obvious reason my team couldn’t take complicated stuff and tell people what the simple version is. People generally like my team’s policies better anyway. It’s just that we don’t explain how to simplify it, and when other people do it on their own (or are directed to by opponents) it doesn’t go so well for us. This is framing, but it’s a …. Different frame on framing. So to speak. I like it! I’m going to run with it, and see what happens.
Also! A. had some questions about people who refuse to acknowledge when they are wrong, and I said, well, understandable cornered behavior. But this turned into a hilarious bit about whether or not anyone exists who would straight up identify as a person who will never admit they are wrong, even / especially when they are. Obviously, we’ve run into this behavior, and some people really have a rep for it, but the idea that someone would self-identify this way is hilariously improbable. So hilariously improbable I’m thinking of introducing myself that way just to find out how people react.
I had a walk with M., a phone call with J. I had dinner at Rail Trail Pizza with R.
I really enjoy quiet, boring days.
Oh, and A. and I went to see A. (therapy) which is always interesting. I have some thoughts now about communicating complicated things, but my daughter has just started talking to me and I can’t quite keep it straight enough to blog about right now.
ETA:
Apparently she read about pool skimmer boxes, small children and horrible intestinal damage and was worried about our future pool. I had no idea that was a thing, but I also don’t think we have comparable equipment. Yikes. The things she finds out to worry about.
Anyway.
We had an interesting discussion about beliefs and identity and my assertion that many people build identity around things they don’t properly understand, and so I tend to focus on the _I_ believe, the identity part, and ignore the details of the content of the belief. Therapist thinks that a lot of people simplify (perhaps not correctly) complex ideas into simpler beliefs, and those simple beliefs can result in them being drawn to people sharing those simple beliefs, even if the larger surrounding / more complicated “official” beliefs are wildly incompatible. This is a pretty good idea!
And it dawned on me that what I tend to think of when I think about Republican partisan messaging history is missing a key piece. I resent the micromessaging (telling small groups what they want to hear, even when incompatible with what they are telling other members of the coalition) and I find the “tell people how to feel about it” part … cringe. But this is a way to get form a complex message to a simple message that resonates.
There’s no obvious reason my team couldn’t take complicated stuff and tell people what the simple version is. People generally like my team’s policies better anyway. It’s just that we don’t explain how to simplify it, and when other people do it on their own (or are directed to by opponents) it doesn’t go so well for us. This is framing, but it’s a …. Different frame on framing. So to speak. I like it! I’m going to run with it, and see what happens.
Also! A. had some questions about people who refuse to acknowledge when they are wrong, and I said, well, understandable cornered behavior. But this turned into a hilarious bit about whether or not anyone exists who would straight up identify as a person who will never admit they are wrong, even / especially when they are. Obviously, we’ve run into this behavior, and some people really have a rep for it, but the idea that someone would self-identify this way is hilariously improbable. So hilariously improbable I’m thinking of introducing myself that way just to find out how people react.