I work in my company's internal PR division and one of our tasks is to prepare the daily newsletter that is sent to all of our employees. The slightest mistake this month is becoming reason for public, vocal complaints made by our chief, citing risks to our division's reputation. It's like working in a nuclear power plant's control room and having a potential chernobyl incident every single day.

Also I feel that our area lacks some sort of manual or white book. Having to remember by heart several rules and exceptions is just too stressing. It's like playing those platform games where out of nowhere a hole opens after you dodge some obstacle and you lose anyway.

Correct me if I'm just being cranky or lazy.

I know for a fact that this exists and even has an explanation, peer-reviewed studies and so on. But on the last few months I've felt attracted (and I mean real attraction, not just 'she's cute, she's nice, she would be a rational choice') to women just to find out later that she's already in a relationship. Of course if I don't feel I can really repurpose my feelings towards a true friendship I break contact, but this gets me thinking and looking for some explanations.

The thing is that people tend to see others already "committed" as "relationship-rated", but that didn't explained why I felt attracted before knowing it. But it seems, and there are studies that apparently support this, that people in relationships feel generally more at ease and have nothing to prove to others, and this reflects in their demeanor, body language, self-confidence, behaviour. Single people that are looking for a significant other, however, normally feel the pressure to "perform" and be desirable, therefore are sometimes perceived as nervous and excessively careful, or even as aggressive. For women, things could be worse, since we live in a profoundly aggressive society towards them, and showing openness could either mean a nice relationship, romantic or not, to being in a toxic relationship, to worse, I mean, way worse.

At least that's what I read about. Did anyone felt the same, even in same-sex interests?

I work in a state owned company in Brazil that provides IT services to the federal government. About 90% of our workforce is currently fully or partially remote and we're happy about that.

Now, some capital-funded MPs are looking for something to strike back at the government since they had to swallow a highly popular bill that creates an income tax exemption for anyone earning less than about 12,200 usd per year, and greatly reduces it for those earning about 18,000 usd. It was passed unanimously much to the chagrin of the opposition since they couldn't simply tell their voters "we're not gonna do it".

So they've chosen an administrative reform, and their evil package includes restricting the rules to achieve job stability (right now, 3 years after being admitted you cannot be fired without an internal inquiry), restricting the rules for admission but flexing rules for subcontracting (right now public employees can only be admitted through a public test), and of course restricting remote work to a single day per week. It's not approved right now but the report on the bill is already transiting through some commissions in the chamber of deputies, the federal lower house.

It's not clear if this will affect state owned companies, but of course this fell like a bomb among me and my fellow workers. At least most of them. We were discussing this development in the union's Whatsapp group, and some clown came with these ideas that "regular presential work is not that bad, there's nothing we can do about it, remote jobs reduce efficiency". And then came the cherry on top of the shit sundae: "anyone that campaigns for the maintenance of remote jobs is a corrupt".

Now this guy has been saying shit for some time, and I told him: "Well, easy to say that on a Whatsapp group, would like to see you telling that to someone in person, about a meter from you". The cunt completely lost it and challenged me for a fistfight on our office's premises.

Sorry about the rant, just wanted to share that.

I've met this person and we texted for a while for a couple of weeks. I even asked if we could go out on our own to have a coffee together, and she accepted, but asked for some time to sort things out on her life (I know that she was studying for a difficult selection for a public position. Plus, she's a single mom). But I realized that I was starting and maintaining our interactions every single time. So I decided to give her some space, just to see if she would talk back to me. A day became a week, which became a month, and no sign of her. Did I ghosted her inadvertently, or she wasn't interested in the first place, or she's probably having too much happening in her life and I should be more supportive?

Fuck around and find out, bozo.

Brazilian fascist deputies Mario Frias and Eduardo Bolsonaro (this last one the son of former fascist president Jair Bolsonaro and currently on the run and receiving help from the U.S. government), both from São Paulo state, published this picture of them with Trump on his X account. Frias' caption reads "take the children out of the room!", while the quoting xweet reads "what a caption choice huh".

Frias, a former teenage telenovela heartthrob turned into a hack then turned into fascist thug, was the former secretary of culture during Bolsonaro's government and was elected deputy representing São Paulo state in 2022, with about 122k votes, or 0,52% of all valid votes.

well, so much for west's moral superiority.