Shroom ‘n Gloom

This blog exists now because I can’t be as weird as I want on my finsta. So here I am with my rawest and least filtered thoughts. Yes, there will be dream posts and I’m not sorry in advance.

Lydia :-) Buonomano:

holy shit you guys I canNOT beLIEVE the absolute BUFFOONERY I was just involved in

Erin Dowling:

What happened????

Lydia :-) Buonomano:

ok so I got up at seven am like a good working class citizen this morning and trotted on into the office to work on this piece I was gonna have done by the end of the day. All good, its going well, I get home to finish the rest from my screen porch. and this LADY from the Business Journal (quarterly mag put out by the sentinel) emails me being like uhhhh theres been a lot of changes can I just confirm what Im supposed to write again? her boss (also my boss) emails back oh yeah sure heres the list, pls note the changes — theres some article she says is now this lady’s assignment and says “this one was previously assigned to Lydia you can have it now” (IVE never seen that article assignment in my lyphe I’m like guys no this is not correct) then I keep reading and the article I am CURRENTLY typing that I’m halfway done with and that I’ve done four different interviews for already (which isn’t a ton but I still had to drive all over kingdom come getting lost and whatnot) this boss lady says IM NOT ASSIGNED TO ANYMORE!!! and I’m like LADY what do you mean I’m not assigned to it IM WRITING IT AS WE SPEAKKKK. SOOOOO I fire back this super super polite, groveling email being like omg I’m so so osososo sorry if I misunderstood anything but guess what I’m halfway done with this thing and have four audio files of interviews with people I’m just wondering if any of the info I already have could be useful to whoever is writing it now. And she emails back: oh yeah actually you can just finish it nbd, also were you gonna write me a second piece? and I’m like lady WHAT second piece like about WHAT you can’t just ask was I gonna write you “something” like idk thats actually your job to decide that??? So I email back AGAIN (THIS HAS NOW TAKEN LIKE A PRECIOUS HALF AN HOUR OF MY LIFE BECAUSE IM TRYNNA BE SUPER PROFESS AND POLITE BUT IM STEAMED) and I’m like wlelllllll heres an extensive list of all the pieces Ive written related to this topic did you perhaps mean any of these? and thats where we are at now and she hasn’t responded so idk. oh and also at the end of the email I was like Thanks so much for clarifying btw my internship ends in two days lol and I’m boutta peace so keep that in mind 😊

anyway now that eveythings sorted out I have realized none of that was a big deal I’m just sort of annoyed because people at the Sentinel have actually been neglecting to brief me on important things all summer which I think is at least minorly frustrating (like that time they didnt tell me the lady I was interviewing was co-hosting the event I was interviewing her about and also I would have no way of figuring that out on my own because this is the first year its happening and the website isn’t up yet etc.) ANYWAY but also Ive been pretty chill with being out of the loop all the time because I super dont mind just barreling ahead and figuring things out by myself but also sometimes communication is actually important like when you’re assigning articles to people lol

moral of the story adults are just overgrown children and every prob you think will be solved by people maturing just continues to happen in the adult world lol so its up to us, the few and the proud, to champion clear and proactive communication tactics 😊))))))))))) everywhere and with everyone 😊))))) until we die 😊))))

It has come to my attention that people that disagree aren’t often sure what it is they even disagree about. Two people will fire back and forth for hours and their arguments will be so riddled with logical fallacies and misdirection that they will circle their actual beliefs without ever touching down on them. At the end, both people leave frustrated and unable to understand how on EARTH the other person could have such a ridiculous point of view.

Here is my one and only greatest wish: to host a modern day idea salon arbitrated by ME. Two people with opposing opinions enter a room. No one is allowed to leave until we identify the conflicting values actually fueling the disagreement (kidnapping but it’s fine). Each person is given infinite time to outline their argument and ask for responses from their partner. I am the mod. I see a logical fallacy? Nope. Pause. That shit gets explained to everyone in the room and the person committing the fallacy has to change their argument to conform to the rules of logical discussion. You make an invalid comparison? Birch we will sit there and map it out on a whiteboard until everyone accepts the two things being compared as comparable. 👍 etc. etc. We go until we hit ideological bedrock. Ie we figure out the fundamental principles or values that y’all actually disagree on.

You think you disagree about trans rights? Nope it was actually an argument about the rights of minors to make medical decisions all along. Plus a lot of other things that were originally masked by off topic points, name calling, and an unwillingness to concede the parts of your opponent’s argument you did actually agree with.

How do you think you’re gonna make change if y’all can’t even understand what other people are on about. No more dismissing people’s ideas as “dumb”. Time to separate an ill-constructed argument from its underlying belief system and challenge the belief system after that if you want.

If you think this is obvious, trust me, we’ve all failed to put in the work at one point or another. It can be exhausting to wade through another persons emotions to get to the root of them, but it’s almost always necessary to reach an actual understanding in the hope of moving forward.

Also I didn’t even get to the idea that people’s basic “facts” often conflict, but that’s like a whole separate can o worms.

That was a lot of strong statements in a row, so feel free to pare away any stray assumptions or logical missteps that I dumped into this ~manifesto~ in my 8pm fit of passion.

TLDR: with my new idea salon, and a whole lotta luck, you too can think like me. KACHOW.

Lydia Buonomano
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5 min
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4 cards

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