(no subject)

i think if i were to write one of those 'how to corporate books' one whole chapter would be titled 'never negotiate with those who hold your dignity hostage'

(a thought aimed at some bsky wank i was rolling my eyes over, but useful advice everywhere.)

(no subject)

talking to my grandma ($stitching_grandma) absolutely rules because that lady has the most fascinating stories i've heard from anyone. like this is the lady who accidentally traveled to china literally the day after tiananmen square happened and mentions how incredibly eerie and locked down it felt.

anyway so tonight's conversation started off with me asking her if rice was more of a colombian thing (she married a colombian husband) or a swedish thing. no to the later, but they do have a swedish tradition about hiding an almond in rice pudding for good luck? which is so cool. :o i wonder what other cultures have the whole hide-something-crunchy-in-a-thing-that's-not-crunchy like the eating the mardi gras baby thing. (yes really.)

the OTHER amazing story i heard tonight is when she and her husband went to sweden from switzerland.

... and they were about to cross the border when her husband realized he forgor his passport at the hotel way back in germany. :'D

so they goes to the embassy with husband in tow and before they can mention the issue, embassy lady goes 'you'll have to come back in a week, we're remodeling.' now mind. this is like in the 1970's, way before cellphones. you can't just say 'hey dude can you overnight the passport'. you are up shit fuck street at this point since you have to time all these train/plane rides just right and there's no way to reschedule/coordinate everything.

so this lady. keep in mind, the absolute quietest, gentlest, sweetest grandma around.

my apparently stealth badass grandma. absolutely flips her shit and goes 'MY HUSBAND HAS A BRAIN TUMOR AND WILL DIE IF HE DOESN'T GO TO SEE THE DOCTOR IN SWEDEN' sort of very technically half stretching the truth, he had a surgery somewhat recently for such a thing and he still looked absolutely horrible while also not even the least bit hiding how amazed at her performance lol.

embassy lady was, as you can guess, mildly taken aback. goes to her boss and Stuff gets sorted out and basically because my grandparents always had three photo-copies of their passports on them (in case if one got stolen, they traveled a lot internationally), were allowed to have a real-copy-made at the embassy overnight.

anyway tl;dr they got to go to sweden :P

(no subject)

i think my most controversial opinion is i wish more online-left-of-centers would learn how to effectively use jacksonian negotiating.

sometimes i call it 'southern shotgun porch diplomacy' lol.  grandma sitting on a porch with a shotgun mildly telling some punks to get off her yard with the implicit backup of following through on a real threat even if it's said all mild-mannered-like

is a hell of a lot more effective for certian situations than just endlessly fucking snidely yapping at people. (yes you can change minds talking with people and it's powerful as hell, frankly even more powerful than porch diplomacy in the long run, but that's another complex reasoning tool where there has to be real empathy and mutual common ground or it ain't going anywhere and has a real chance of backfiring. and mutual nuanced common-ground finding is. hm. not the public internet's strength to put it mildly..) 

ngl i'm reminded of chelsea manning's "negotiating with the mob" line here. she gets it.)

anyway it's how i approach all high stakes negotiating deals and it's effective especially when the other person sitting across the table knows how to use it; there's an inherent grudging respect you get from them if you show that you can speak the language regardless of what your actual opinion of them is - you can hate their guts and they wouldn't care. which is typical when you get somebody of a certian generation with more of an old-school business mentality.