Your Most Disturbing Realizations

[LizzieMaine]

Pretty much. My rule of housekeeping is "If I don't see it, it ain't there."

 

[Trenchfriend]

My rule of housekeeping:

You must not make your life needless difficult to yourself.

 

[tonyb]

My rule of housekeeping:

You must not make your life needless difficult to yourself.

Believe me, no one will ever mistake me for Martha Stewart. Still, I work from home, so I spend a great deal of time here, and I find my life much easier, and my affairs much more manageable, with things in some semblance of order.

I've known, and still know, people who have some nice stuff, and homes that might have been pleasant places, but they and their visitors couldn't enjoy their homes, and their stuff, because it was all buried under all their other stuff. And it seemed they were always acquiring more. Seriously, clothing almost completely covering the floors, kitchen counters that had to be cleared of dirty dishes and cereal boxes and whatnot before they could be used as kitchen counters. That level of messiness makes life MORE difficult. And if my small sampling is reflective of a larger phenomenon, it isn't uncommon. I can think of a few such people, right off the top of my head.

I moved twice in one year, most recently a couple of months ago. I'm still putting things away, and I'm still searching for some items whose MIA status makes things more difficult for me. Complicating matters is that some rooms here are still awaiting paint, and a modest remodeling project, which involves knocking out a couple of walls and gutting a bathroom, won't commence until the new year. No sense in organizing a room only to pack it all up and move it out again a couple of months later.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Oh, that was a mistake!
I mean not, living with the "messy-syndrome" is a good idea. I really don't like messies and messy-(rental)flats, too!

My posting means just and especially on german mommies:

Not making your life needless difficult to yourself, with all such useless cleaning-works. For example, washing roman-shades, although they look clean, like on the first day. Or cleaning your bath-tiles, although there are no dirt on them.

But, I polish my bathtub everytime after using, to prevent these nasty chalk-stains.

 

[2jakes]

Up here we communicate our fondness for each other thru cutting hostility. It's a New England thing.

If cutting hostility is a way to communicate fondness as you put it .

What is there to communicate that you are not fond of each other ?

 

[LizzieMaine]

When you don't like somebody around here, you throw your snow in their dooryard.

 

[Trenchfriend]

When you don't like somebody around here, you throw your snow in their dooryard.

Imagined that here in Germany, oh woooohoooo....

 

[LizzieMaine]

It actually comes to violence in my town. Last winter a man here went to jail for beating up a 60 year old woman who threw snow in his driveway. He had a long history of throwing snow in hers, and when the worm finally turned he couldn't handle it.

 

[2jakes]

Snow place like “home” !

 

[tonyb]

Oh, that was a mistake!
I mean not, living with the "messy-syndrome" is a good idea. I really don't like messies and messy-(rental)flats, too!

My posting means just and especially on german mommies:

Not making your life needless difficult to yourself, with all such useless cleaning-works. For example, washing roman-shades, although they look clean, like on the first day. Or cleaning your bath-tiles, although there are no dirt on them.

But, I polish my bathtub everytime after using, to prevent these nasty chalk-stains.

A favorite aunt of mine, who died back in 1989, had settled into the life of a domestic goddess when she married, back in 1950-something. Her home was always spotless -- so clean and organized that anything out of place truly seemed out of place. I recall seeing her scrub the bathroom tile grout with a toothbrush. Just what she was removing was invisible to me.

That level of obsessive cleanliness is its sort of mental disorder, and results in making a home nearly as inhospitable as those overwhelmingly messy places I alluded to previously.

 

[JimWagner]

We had that here, too -- it was the genesis of the all-white bathroom. There's a reason why I painted my bathroom green.

To look like an asylum?

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

 

[LizzieMaine]

To look like an asylum?

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

It might not be an asylum, but a good bathroom is always a refuge.

 

[Trenchfriend]

BAAAM, WOOOOSH...
Germany loves him, forever.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Look, really nice!:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=green+bathroom&FORM=HDRSC2

http://i1.wp.com/www.healthyhomecleaning.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/green-bathroom.jpg

 

[Edward]

It disturbs me how the concept of personal privacy seems to be dissappearing. It's not just that actual privacy is threatened but that every little thing in your life is shared nearly real time with essentually the whole world and that's as it should be. There really does seem to be a hive mind developing.

I don't think it's as bleak as that. Certainly, one has to be careful, but at the end of the day, the web "only" has on you what you put into it (including the sites you visit...).

I see a big rise in the interest in privacy, though. A generation who were kids online has come thruogh and gotten bitten by it; the undergrad kids I'm now teaching might use social media (about a third don't at all), but they're careful about what and how they put out there. They know their settings and how to work it. And Data Protection law, while not perfect helps quite a lot.

The rise of social networking online means that people no longer have an expectation of privacy, according to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The 25-year-old chief executive of the world's most popular social network said that privacy was no longer a "social norm".
"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people," he said. "That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."

It's what I've always said: it's not that Zuckerberg disrespects privacy - he simply doesn't understand the concept.

You just have to remember that when you're getting a service for free online, it's because you are the product, and watch yourself accordingly. They can't know what you don't tell them.

Only if you choose to do so, fortunately we still have the choice. 'Social media' is simply a means to give those who have nothing to say an opportunity to express themselves.

In that regard, it offers no change whatever from everything that has gone before, bar more people in the town square who aren't listening.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You just have to remember that when you're getting a service for free online, it's because you are the product, and watch yourself accordingly. They can't know what you don't tell them.

That's the most valuable piece of advice anyone will ever get online. A lot of people still have this naive 1994 view of the internet as this DIY ultrademocratic down-home people-helping-people sort of deal, but that hasn't really been true at any point in this century. All these nifty platforms we use to exchange words and ideas are designed for one real purpose -- to glean information about us, which in the Boys' world is the most valuable commodity there is.

If you still think Google and Facebook -- organizations answerable to no one except their stockholders and owing no allegience to anything but the dollar -- don't know every possible thing about you, from your address and phone number to the kind of car you drive, the food you eat, the politics you vote, the people you know, to your sexual preferences, the books you read, and whether you wind your toilet paper over or under the roll, then you're in for an unpleasant surprise some day. Never forget, "On keppitalist web, internet surfs you!"

 

[2jakes]

That's the most valuable piece of advice anyone will ever get online. A lot of people still have this naive 1994 view of the internet as this DIY ultrademocratic down-home people-helping-people sort of deal, but that hasn't really been true at any point in this century. All these nifty platforms we use to exchange words and ideas are designed for one real purpose -- to glean information about us, which in the Boys' world is the most valuable commodity there is. "On keppitalist web, internet surfs you!"

The other day I was on another site shopping for a winter coat.
I found one & thought it was interesting, but decided to pass it up .
Nevertheless, this coat keeps popping up even here.

I am so naive !

 

[JimWagner]

It's what I've always said: it's not that Zuckerberg disrespects privacy - he simply doesn't understand the concept.

And that was precisely my point - neither do many of the people using social media today. I cannot tell you how many times (many) I've had this discussion and the other party just looked at me with no comprehension at all. The idea of not sharing everything online is alien to them. And it's not just the young.

I don't know exactly when the concept of personal privacy, and respecting it, began to erode but a common reaction to refusing to share private information these days is, "what do you have to hide?"

 

[LizzieMaine]

The other day I was on another site shopping for a winter coat.
I found one & thought it was interesting, but decided to pass it up .
Nevertheless, this coat keeps popping up even here.

I am so naive !

When I have to go to Amazon to get something for work, I always make a point of searching up the most absurd things possible to go with it, just to mess with their AI. Up yours, Bezos.

 

[Trenchfriend]

That's just the reason, why people are using script-controllers like "NoScript" on Firefox. You have to decide, what script to allow.

Big Google/Facebook/Weyland-Yutani-Brother is watching you.