@unc professor & @nytimes columnist. I write to change your mind for good. avi 📸: @photoninja357 All inquiries: @doriankarchmar w/@wme
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Aug 29, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Whew. I was wholly unprepared for the white middle class woman culture of dieting. I only recently figured out that one never has to actually become thin or "fit", which I have no idea what that means. They must only perform WANTING to become it. Thus, the apps, tips, etc.
There was a template for this in my cultural toolkit. You are supposed to be eternally suspended in almost-thinness. I have no idea how to do that. To perform it, I download food tracking apps and learn to say "whole 30" every second day of the week. That seems to help.
Aug 29, 2018 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Yes and god bless (white?) Americans and seeming belief in a "uncontroversial" subject when talking about even the weather is very classed and regional and culturally specific. Down south, down class you talk about how the weather is making your life hard.
Up class, maybe across region, you talk about how delightful the weather is. Up north, across class, the weather is a trying to kick your ass and you commiserate together. Working class? The heat got your boss tripping and made it harder for you to make a dollar.
Aug 28, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Small talk as a minority person means performing acceptable majority culture expertise, which can be emotionally and cognitively exhausting.
The small talk I don't consider burdensome is generally that had within group because it is almost a somatic response
Also, the risk of forming instant, ephemeral intimacy across power dynamics is almost entirely borne by the person with the least power
Aug 28, 2018 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Man, Vivian is a bawse at shenanigans. When I told her this story as it happened she immediately said, "pfft, no one does real business like that. It's a convenient story for them running our of money." Vivian might be GOAT but I will never acknowledge it.
I can call my mother and be like, "so and so is tripping" and she will respond, with no other information, "oh she is having an affair with that man you mentioned a year ago and he messed up her key card but so and so peeped her and now they're stuck." I be like
Aug 6, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Honestly I read this whole thing and my main takeaway is that the writer's grandma was a badass nytimes.com/2018/08/04/opi…
Her grandma got sperm at an ACE hardware and yasss queen yasssss
Aug 5, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The dude on the airplane wanted to drop some version of this on me the other day and I legit sighed and removed my eyeglasses as she spake it. Sir, I cannot see you. You no longer exist. Let me be.
I have to start lying about my job. Because they hear professor and think 1) here's my chance to try out all this brilliant rhetoric I learned on reddit and 2) an educated negro is a safe negro. And man is all of that wrong when I'm the one they're thinking it of.
All of them instructed you to send a "self addressed stamped envelope". Which I took to mean I had to write the address on the envelope... myself. 😭😭😭
Jul 25, 2018 • 8 tweets • 1 min read
I could be wrong but I cannot imagine that a white dude who does what I do would have to put up with half the crap that I do. I'm going to stop doing any of it. I'm tired. It should not be this difficult to get support to do my job.
The problem is that I don't have a wife. And this job is still predicated on having one who books the travel, manages the social life of work, types the documents, etc. And those actually can't be hired out. There is no system for that in academic labor.
Jul 22, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
In 2013 I decided to leave white people and all their academic labor arguments alone because I had written dozens of essays on just how utterly white they all were. All I got from it was a list of people I got to cuss out should I ever meet them on the street.
And oh god the great quit lit debacle of 2015! Lol I had forgotten
Jul 19, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
That whole stretch by VCU, off Belvidere almost down to willow lawn is the hottest of messes. And school isn't even in session yet!
When you make a left turn onto broad from Belvidere you are immediately in the bus lane because there is a traffic pattern shift mid turn. Wut. Then there are maybe five more pattern shifts for about a mile.
Jul 19, 2018 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
I think we have made all the mistakes and ironed out most of the bugs with the roll-out and so here we are. I am launching a newsletter this week. Let's talk about it a lil bit.
It is called The First and the 15th. There a couple of reasons for the name. One:
Jul 16, 2018 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I think people think there are like ten trolls or obtuse questions lobbed at you #onhere. And that's true at maybe a couple hundred or thousand followers. Somewhere north of 50k the scale changes dramatically. It's pretty human for that to be overwhelming.
It's probably unrealistic to ask or want people to police themselves a bit. But it's not just being mean or rude. None of us is set up for thousands of trolls, sealions, repetitive questions. It's one of the shortcomings of networked media.
Jul 14, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Once a month or so I go to the bookstore where I close my eyes and randomly select 15 or so periodicals. I spend a few hours paging through them. It's a tradition for me and @jadedid
Sometimes they're in French or about cars or some weird art mag. Don't care. No tradesies. I developed the habit when I was 29, broke and desperate to fix my life. I was at such a table full of periodicals when I decided to go back to school.
Jul 8, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
My theory on this is multifold: 1. men have a lot of desirability bias making them say they want smart women as partners. But the reality of being with such a woman exceeds many men's ability to manage their own identities
(that one is just a riff off data on gender parity and economic power in the domestic sphere fyi) 2. What many men mean by "smart" varies quite a bit, both among men and between what women believe as smart for themselves.
Jul 7, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A lovely person just asked on a social media about crockpots. They are a newbie. Someone told them that crockpots are dangerous. I. Am. Personally. Offended.
Crockpots are my people's religion. It never occurred to me that someone would FEAR a crockpot. I trust a crockpot more than I trust MYSELF. I would burn my house down. A crockpot would NEVER.
Jul 6, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Yeah I love us but we gotta stop giving country to the Tucker Carlson show et al. There is no upside folks. Yes, you're brilliant and can take them in a logic off but like my grandma told me about checkers, whomever owns the board always wins. You can't outsmart producers etc.
This isn't a classroom or your conference salon or even a cage match. This is actual propaganda and you won't win. It won't sell your book or get you more gigs or whatever. It will only invite trolls into your life and make bystanders avoid you. It is such a bad deal.
Jul 5, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Really looking forward to reading about Bushmaster
And Shades.
Jul 1, 2018 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Um, I just hit the Lulu episode. Is there a support group?
Did...did Lulu steal this baby? I can't be the only one asking...
I have had to stop telling any of my medical professionals what I study for a living, especially the natural/homeopathic ones. It ruins my appointment. I had an acupuncturist with almost $160k in debt.
My sense is that almost everything at the margins of "Healthcare" is shady af: "eastern" medicine, nutrition, holistic, naturopathy. In #Lowered I talk about how the veneer of medical field provides a lot of cover for dubious programs. IDK if it has gotten better or worse
Jun 1, 2018 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
One of my informal department tasks is helping our students transition to work. I don't know how it became my task but that is neither here nor there. I do it most often for sociology masters students but also some undergrads. A few things:
The week you graduate isnt too late to look for a job but it is too late to look for a job that will pay your next months rent.
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