Emchap's Shit from the Internet 01/27/21 🍠

I have worked remotely for the last three years, at three different companies (and with a fourth in a previous non-contiguous stint), and one of the most consistently startling things about it is that—if you are unable to meet your coworkers in person because of visas/pandemic—you can often develop deep relationships with people who are a completely different size in your head. Which is one of those things that doesn’t matter a single bit but, also, makes you question your entire perception of reality.

Unlike your more traditional internet friends, who you may never meet in person or interact with over video, internet coworkers wind up being people you see on video chat a lot. So you can actually become quite familiar with their faces and the corner of their house their office is in and their usual coffee mug—except scaled entirely incorrectly.

And then you meet them in person, often in some nicer hotel than you would get on your own, and discover that someone you’ve talked to every day for the last year is 6’4” or 5’2” or whatever, and it’s fun, and you move on. (For coworkers you interact with mostly aysnc, the leveled-up version of this is discovering that someone’s voice sounds nothing like you thought it did, which is also a trip.)

But it’s even weirder when you fail to retain things that actually are visible on screen—not realizing that someone moved homes rather than just changing which room their desk is in, or realizing that a coworker is usually in their bedroom for calls even though if you think about it their camera is angled up to hide a bed.

I had a particularly disorienting one today when chatting with a coworker who I have now worked with for 2 years and 2 companies, with whom I used to have a weekly meeting, when I asked him if he’d somehow gotten a nose ring during the pandemic. He had not; the nose ring predates our acquaintance and has been there the entire time and I have somehow completely failed to register it and only today did my brain realize that shiny nose go brrt and ask about it.

My current company will have likely the longest interval between starting and first meeting my coworkers in person of any remote job I’ve had, and it feels fake to think we might all be in the same place sometime this year, so I try not to. I am curious who will be Wrong Sized in my head over the interval, though.

Things to read

• A good explainer of the whole gamestop stonks situation which lol we live in a stupid timeline.

• Shocking nobody, the far right is picking at the bones of the QAnon exodus.

• I miss my acquaintances and friendly strangers. A friend recently posted about missing her commute friends (an old woman and a small dog who she walks at the same time). I want low-stakes social interaction back so badly.

• This hit at left-ish NIMBYism was, I thought, really solid—and provided some context on why people wanted to save what is in fact an unremarkable structure.

• Everything is bad and nothing works.

• Only read if climate fatalism is your thing but I thought this was well-done.

• This piece about a man who used to be unhoused and his path into housing and working at the church whose services helped him was sweet, I thought—the church in question is very near me, so I am now kindly disposed towards them.

• The Plague Year was perhaps not the most enjoyable thing to read through first thing Saturday morning but it is so well done.

• The Wee Lesbian speaks about clothing and it’s great.

• cool cool cool cool cool dot gif

Shit to eat

1. Use a food processor to process whatever portion of an onion you have left in your fridge at the moment and a few handfuls of breadcrumbs or—as I did this week—stale bagel chips.

2. Eventually, it will become sort of an aggregate paste.

3. Toss that paste into a bowl along with salt, pepper, dill, and an egg.

4. Smoosh everything together.

5. Into it add a can of salmon with the water drained.

6. Smoosh more until it’s a patty-able texture.

7. You do want to smoosh enough that the bones break down, too.

8. Pause to reflect on how much the bones startled you the first time you used canned salmon.

9. Heat up a pan with some oil in it. I used cast iron.

10. Shape the mush into four or five patties depending on preferred size. Place them into the hot oil pan. Cook until brown and solidified one each side. It’s pretty forgiving.

11. Enjoy your salmon burger on a bun with some honey mustard and lettuce. Feel pleased with your choices.

Shit to listen to

• This performance of Grits Ain’t Groceries.

Shit to buy

• This chai kit, which I have been told is great.

• This snake bralette with which I am Obsessed.

• These tights with a fun fringe detail that looks like the fanciest girl at the rodeo.

• These very cute D&D candles.