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Marc's Assortment of Yokeless Brainstorms and Experiences 6-sided die showing the number 6

The Scott Award

Saturday June 6, 2020*

Ahem. Is this thing on?

Today I’d like to publicly thank and congratulate “Scott” for his contributions to humanity.

Indeed, so great are my thanks that I am hereby slotting Scott into the award-winner category.

Have you seen the blog’s Buy Me a Coffee button? Recently I posted a little note over in our blog’s casual, trendy Sidebar-town:

The coffee-buying feature has not been used once since it was installed earlier in 2020. LMAO. I will dedicate a blog award to the first INTJ who buys me a coffee.

You see, at first I thought the button was broken for a while. Huh. Works for me?

Then, during some of those rough moments, I started to imagine the worst. Man, what if it’s a bunch of hyper-unhealthy INTJs out there, mocking blog-kun’s little orange button. “Altruism is for people who don’t understand economics. Give me something worth paying for. Economic Straight-talk radio with Miles & Jake is WAY better than some guy’s dumb blog, and I don’t buy coffee for Miles and Jake”.

Well, maybe ya should, I think is what I’m feeling about that little scenario, scenario-guy.

But then I realized people probably don’t visit Sidebar Town that much in the first place. Like our RSS Chipmunks. They have no concept of a sidebar, except as a sort of mega-long list of categories of things they are missing out on more and more with every passing [timed refresh period].

While kind of a bummer, the upside is that this means we can continue to preserve that wabi-sabi chic, the Sidebar cachet. Don’t tell your friends about Sidebar-cho! And its Italian scooter-riding, watercolor-sketching, donut-eating group of wabi-sabi types that meets every Saturday to smile with one another and create works of art! Casually!

Back to the Award Promise

But everything changed today. Out of nowhere came Scott.

Scott with his thumbs-up, the thumbs-up that changed the world of blogging forever.

screenshot of Scott screenshot of Scott

The Award

The Scott Award is Hereby Inaugurated, on this 0111 UTC’th Moment of the 6th Day of Blog-kun Local Time June, in the Portentious Year of Our Blog 12020.

A thumbs-up enshrined in a glass dome case on a gold and expensive-wood base

The Scott Award: A simple thumbs-up, awarded for a universally understood and potent demonstration of goodwill toward all mankind. Cuz coffee’s potent.

Scott is entitled to download the award image and affix it to a flat or semi-curved surface of his choice.

This blog award will be thought about by its creator for a while. I need to decide who ELSE gets it, for one. If you have any ideas, let me know.

Oh and I’d like to thank Wikimedia user Raoli for their contribution of the thumbs-up-model portion of the award, without which we might well be staring at a greatly-magnified generic emoji. Beautiful job, Raoli.

That’s all for now. The Award-naming season has closed temporarily. Thank you all for attending today’s ceremony. And thanks again, Scott. A hearty thumbs-up right back at you.

Filed in: Randomness /26/ | Goals /52/ | People /74/

I Stayed at this INTJ's Apartment Once

Friday June 5, 2020*

Speaking of product reviewers.

I slept over in this INTJ’s apartment once, while I was traveling through town. He wasn’t there but his apartment was always in that kind of “shabby presentable” state. You know this state? I know this state. I think his reasoning was, “I’ll contingency-plan for visitors, otherwise they’ll drive me up the wall.” Whatever it was, it kind of turned him into a visitor-lover. YO, STAY AT MY PLACE. NO PROBLEM.

He had this stack of brand-new erasers on his dresser. Nothing expensive, but a little bit rare. Like if I ask you, “have you tried the ain stein” and you go OH YEAH, then you’re in our boat here. (Otherwise it’s just a treasure that awaits you, maybe)

I immediately knew what was up with eraser INTJ. He had found his gold. I gave him a quick mental hug before collapsing in his bed, near-certain the mattress had been optimized for cost and performance.

The mindset is so familiar. You know what happens with a gold eraser like this? It flies off the shelves. Well…maybe. One never knows, maybe it’ll be discontinued. It would be just our luck. So of course he bought a stack. More than 4, less than 20, is what I remember.

You know what other people think of this? They go, “OH GOD THIS GUY HOARDS ERASERS” or whatever. So that was a bit of a gem to me, because I get it and when you get a little thing in the universe, it’s like your identity is affirmed right there. You don’t exist as some kind of a standalone mistake in the universe. This other eraser geek is also a mistake like you, at the very least.

And I get that buying an eraser can be metaphorical, like maybe a way for your subconscious to beg you, “stop trying to outrun your past—go back and address that stuff.” But also: Whatever, it’s cool, we can just talk erasers if u like.

Filed in: Randomness /26/ | Technology /41/ | Interests /112/

You know what's awkward? Product Reviews Edition

Friday June 5, 2020*

This is what’s awkward. When you’re trying to relax and you end up on Amazon, reading product reviews. “I need one of those neck fans.” —Me in 2020

Man there are INTJs all up through the entire joint there. The backbone reviewer of Amazon is this meta-INTJ who drops in every so often to drive just a truck of a review right through the store’s front window.

14,400 People Found Your Review Especially Helpful. The Inventor Has Issued a Death Warrant Bearing Your Name.

I’m on there, and some of my reviews are so corny. Information is just corny, at some level. But I guess it never made us any guarantees in the first place. “I’ll help you fix your cat’s thyroid, but I’ll also make you want to buy my new coming-of-age romance novel at the same time.” If a thing like that happens, it takes so much energy that you definitely aren’t out there getting rent paid AND writing that stuff. Or at least—I couldn’t.

I accidentally come across my own reviews sometimes. I start reading and then I go, “BLAH BLAH BLAH whatever” and scroll down really fast, because who needs self-inflicted trauma these days. Close tab. Same thing with blog-kun, on a bad day. Poor blog-kun. Hugs.

Though I admit it’s kinda nice to use this secret personality knowledge as a way to filter reviews. Just keep an eye out for the standard bloviating text formations of your typical pro-am sizer-upper. Then divide by unnecessary contingency thinking, and subtract some points for possible tiredness. What’s left over can be pretty valuable.

Hmmm. That also sounds like a method for learning to tolerate just about any INTJ when we’re having a bad day. Hahaha! OK I’m done here. The weekend has arrived.

(There are a lot of great, even amazingly well-written reviews on there—I exaggerate a bit)

I bought a neck fan, by the way. It’s kinda neat. Try not to imagine me wearing it, because I guarantee it’s too sexy for your life. But anyway right after that I discovered a big secret to keeping myself cool in an office that’s pushing 90F, and without having to turn on the nuclear-powered AC. So the neck fan is temporarily gathering dust.

Filed in: Technology /41/ | Interests /112/

Watch Anything Good Lately?

Friday June 5, 2020*

H. writes,

Watch any good movies lately? It sounds like you must be consuming media at an incredible rate.

Oh nice, H is up in here referring to the Great Video Desktop Experiment of 2020.

That’s true, H. They really do fly by. But I have no interest in remembering everything that appears on my screen, if that makes sense. The point is that stuff grabs me, and I watch for a while, and feel better. I don’t even know what’s on right now, but some of it is definitely good. And that’s cool.

I just finished Knives Out and I really enjoyed it. My kids are gonna flip when they find out about the, ahem, super-patriotic bad guy.

Before that, Inherent Vice which was all-around great.

I also watched Hitchcock’s Family Plot (1976) for the first time and liked it. Sympathetic characters and an interesting story. Awfully sexy scripting for 1976 though. Holy ssssmokes.

And 2002’s Blood Work…yeah, OK, a fun watch!

On Youtube:

I love watching a grown man enjoy burgers as much as I do (mouth sounds warning) and he has the best laugh to boot. Some crazy-fun ESFP energy there, observationally speaking.

I’ve also been watching some Pewdiepie again with my sons. He’s still fun. Our all-time favorite gets re-watched or at least referenced in our conversations every month or so. Son #2 laughed super hard last night when we watched Pewdiepie trying to compete for popularity with a children’s nursery rhyme channel.

A bit of observationally-I’m-thinking-ENTP Featureman here and there, a little Car Pal for sensory entertainment, another ENTP-like smart person giving a pretty funny tech presentation on Unix power and I think that sums it up.

Though when I close down the office, I have been listening to Parcels lately. Music yep, but also video.

How about you guys?

Watch anything you like lately? Let me know! Email’s in the sidebar.

Filed in: Sensation /40/ | Interests /112/ | Therapeutic Practice /147/

Keyboard Shortcuts as A New Manual

Thursday June 4, 2020*

Recently I blogged about reading the manual and how reading the manual for things is a great INTJ gift on which to capitalize.

Toward the end of the same blog post, I also mentioned that writing one’s own manual can yield really powerful outcomes. And I wanted to share a micro-example of that: Keyboard shortcuts.

Here are my most recent additions. It so happens that they’re all using Ctrl + Super + some-key. (Super is the “Windows key” on my keyboard. Also, my Ctrl and Caps Lock keys are swapped)

  • c-su-F11 = Shuffle mp3s, pick some, make a random playlist, play it.
  • c-su-F12 = Toggle qmmp shuffle mode / shuffle off.
  • c-su-7 = Open VLC window with a playlist full of 150 randomly-selected videos.
  • c-su-c = Open client folder for browsing
  • c-su-/ = Catfish full-text search of frameworks
  • c-su-. = FSearch filename search of frameworks
  • c-su-h = Play a happy John Denver yodeling sound
  • c-su-m = Open Google Messages (text messaging) in browser
  • c-su-n = Catfish filename search of frameworks
  • c-su-o = Open Orage calendar for quickly checking the calendar…
  • c-su-u = Open GPick color picker
  • c-su-v = Open xfce4-popup-clipman for picking from clipboard history.
  • c-su-y = Open today’s journal entry file in Geany.

I have a lot more planned. And they’re not easy! The way I design these things, I often have to write a system script before I can even start figuring out where the shortcut goes.

Previously I was more of a “learn the existing shortcuts” guy. I didn’t create many of my own keyboard shortcuts, but instead I’d review the existing ones from time to time. I think this was similar to reading the manual—“what did the author intend” was kind of the point.

In comparison, developing my own shortcuts seemed pretty lame, because what if the software environment was already designed around a given set of shortcuts in the first place? Wouldn’t it be a waste of time to write my own shortcuts from scratch? What if I inadvertently hobbled my ability to learn the system?

As it turns out, no, it’s not a waste of time. Whatever else it may be, it’s mine. And for an introvert, anything that’s mine is basically the same as free energy.

And you know, while I have my own software-batcave tools, this keyboard stuff is more like watching the formation of a physical batcave, in a weird way.

Filed in: Technology /41/ | Interests /112/ | Control /112/

INFP Hans was A Hitler Youth, and Other Fun Memories

Thursday June 4, 2020*

I was raised, in part, by a remarkable Hungarian ISTJ named Eva.

My ESFP mom was on the go quite a bit when I was a lad. To her, the house was not a place to remain for long, unless you wanted to get depressed AF. So she was always busy driving 25 miles in this direction and then 50 in the other, “taking care of” this or that little task.

My INTJ dad was hard at work too. And since my parents were religious fundamentalists, dads like my dad were not really taught to be uh…dads. I mean, they were dads, but their role was basically to work and “provide” and not to worry about caring for their kids during the work day.

So when things really got going, and mom forgot about me, or just got overloaded, Eva would step in. She was always helping my mom with errands and day-to-day stuff.

Which, as a kid, I now realize—I guess I was errands and day-to-day stuff, a lot of the time.

I would walk out of the school grounds after school to find Eva waiting there. Five foot nearly-nothing. Dark black curly hair. Colorful clothing.

Oh, and with her arms akimbo, which was a pose she totally owned.

“MARC, I AM HERE AT CHOOR (your) SCHOOL TO PICK YOU UP BECAUSE YOUR MOTHER IS BUSY.” She said this as if to get the information out, almost like it was her informational self-talk to keep herself on track. You could visualize a little checkbox being checked.

I’d ride with Eva in her little car, and hooray—I could then chill in her amazingly introverted household for a while.

Eva was not a religious fundamentalist. She was a social Catholic. PHEW, this factor was also so relaxing.

Psychologically, going to this house was like being handed some kind of calming recreational drug, maybe, after living in my own majority-extrovert house. Damn I loved Eva’s quiet little house.

(You know, it’s interesting to me now—somebody out there might right at this moment be creating an environment that would chill you all the way out. Just by being themselves, and doing their thing. Funny.)

Now, Eva is just about as ISTJ as you can get. Loving, but in everybody’s favorite tough as jerky fashion. Phew. At the grocery store: “Marc, you want to get some candy? Go get some candy. MARC, DON’T BE CHOOSY,” she’d call out in her loud, heavily-accented voice.

And she was also not fancy, which I liked about her, compared to my own folks. My mom was a total peacock of an ESFP. She wanted to do everything just a bit extra. Especially if other people might notice. Dad would get roped in by her energy. Everything felt extra fussy. It was not a very calming lifestyle.

Eva is married to Hans, who’s a German INFP. Hans, Mom let me know, was a Hitler Youth. And sure enough, there was this big party at my house one day, and one of us (possibly yours truly) brought up the topic of World War II, and Hans was there, and he was pretty damn nuanced about Hitler. That’s right, Adolf himself, the same MF who kept dad’s cousin in Stalag-whatever over Christmas back in 1944!

But Hans also had a PC with games like Chessmaster 2000 and Countdown so I had to give him some doubt-benefits.

Hans was this classic Fi-dominant personality. INFPs are Introverted Feeling (Fi)-types. If you don’t know what that means, maybe just leave it at “pretty damn nuanced about people and relationships, and sure, maybe even Hitler”. I mean, that’s extreme and it’s not like every INFP loves Hitler or anything like that (oh god what an album title that would be) but it’s also a general perspective from which INTJs can benefit, this idea of being nuanced about people.

For her part, I was told that Eva didn’t like Jews either. She didn’t like Russians or Jews. She was some kind of equal-opportunity discriminator.

Mom told me that Eva was the daughter of the Mayor of Budapest, and the presence of Russians drove her to leave, and then she had a bunch of bad experiences after that. She liked Hungarian stuff, let’s say. Maybe American stuff. Not even sure about that, but dammit, she lives here, so that might say something. It’s complex.

What I really liked about Eva’s house is, I’d walk in to this dark, relaxing little house (my dad was always complaining about light, so he’d buy houses for their big windows) and there on the table, just for me, would be a glass of high-fat milk (dad made us drink skim) and a chocolate chip cookie. HOLY SMOKES. That right there was just something out of another world.

And sometimes, I’d walk in and there would be a glass of delicious, fatty milk and a whole flippin’ Ritter Sport sitting there! KNICK! Man that made me so happy. I’d sit there quietly, not a single emotion on my little face, but absolutely groaning with pleasure inside.

“DO YOU HAVE HOMEWORK, MARC?”

“No,” I lied. “Not today.”

Why lie? Because…

“OK GOOD. Here, you can watch the TV.”

There we go. TV level unlocked. Man, I’d chill on this little couch, in the small, dark, step-down family room, and watch TV, all alone, until my mom came to pick me up. So great.

Thanks Eva. Thanks Hans. You didn’t do anything super fancy but that’s what I preferred. You made my younger years better.

Filed in: People /74/ | ESFP /4/ | Relationships /78/ | INFP /3/ | ISTJ /2/

Heraclitus LOL

Thursday June 4, 2020*

I’m new to Ancient Greeks and Ancient Greek philosophy, because the way I was raised, these guys were basically heretics / heathens / people who shoulda known better. So forgive me if this is old news…

…but so far, the life of Heraclitus seems like such an INTJ flex:

  • Spoke in metaphor, “reasoned” in metaphor, died and left us with metaphor
  • Argued with his doctors.
  • Grumpy af
  • Critical
  • Harbored a comparatively shallow notion of the “best man” (in e.g. a group of men)
  • Intellectual yet not terribly open to outside ideas
  • Accused by others of not reasoning (Ti) and contradicting himself (this is like the classic INTP “that’s not logical” feedback on INTJ stuff. Blog-kun included)
  • Saw life as dynamic and changing vs. static (this tends to be a huuuuge INTJ differentiator in the psychology of philosophy)
  • Philosophy was heavily development-oriented as a result
  • Seemed to struggle to maintain a positive mood
  • Fell back on single words as weighty meta-signifiers
    • Philosophy of Simplification-convergence
    • Branching into specifics from the “big picture” word / signifier, rather than vice-versa
  • Seemed to believe in a single shared truth? (Logos is common) Uh oh, covert contract trouble was in this guy’s life for real
  • Could have picked any element, picked fire because of his burning heart (I made up that last part)
  • Generally favorable toward conflict and war
  • Believed in and focused on the unity of opposites (but not the transcendence of opposites, at least not that I’ve been able to see)
    • The oppositional state is strife; stability is justice
  • Seemed to think in projected outcomes; here’s what would happen if you do that
  • There was no real structure behind his becoming a philosopher, just kinda was one.

IDK. I still have a lot to learn about Heraclitus. But from the moment I stared reading, I was like, oh no…no…no no no no no. Not that I’m complaining—he deserves his share of reverence and gratitude. It’s just that one begins to see his life unfolding, hoping against hope that he didn’t drive his doctors up the wall, thinking he knew everything…little things like that.

Filed in: People /74/

Describing my Shadow

Thursday June 4, 2020*

Friend with $800 glasses writes:

What does your shadow-guy look like? Can you sketch him?

Ah. Just one? Man, I’ve got a Legion of Shadows. They are many, and ever changing. Just when I’ve reconciled with one, another begins stalking through the periphery of my consciousness…

Lately The Legion has sent out a bloviating INTJ like my dad. The kind of guy who writes these long, stinging and subjective critiques:

“Dear Marc,” he writes,

“Your mother and I read your latest email to us. You seem to think you know a lot about life. You have a lot of big ideas. Well, be that as it may, here’s what I’ve accomplished in my own life:

(Long list of scrod, from selling ice cream cones to buying a huge trucking house and three Cadillacs)

I think this qualifies me to say that while your ideas may be creative, the proof is in the doing. As the Lord says in Scripture,

(Quote from The Lord, Who has Apparently Taken Dad’s Side, which is Just Great)

I think that should be enough for now. We paid for your education. You have a lot of work to do, if you are going to prove your worth in this world. Even a simple ice cream salesman could tell you that.”

Are you getting an idea of the kind of person this is? My dad would write these letters to anyone who made him remotely uncomfortable. And part of the purpose of these letters was to push away his own regrets and emotional pain.

You could have literally just received word that you made a billion dollars by working hard and being good, and you’d feel on top of the world, and then one of these letters would arrive, picking apart your billion dollars! There was no stopping the negative vibes.

So this person is also the shadow of optimistic “idea-Marc”. It’s the “yeah, ideas—great. But what are you doing” voice.

That path is tempting in its own way. If you’ve been a working INTJ before, you know what I mean. You start talking and thinking like, “OK, but we need to just do it.” At work, everything is either an economic expedient or it’s barely worth the mental energy.

But I’m also an idea guy; it’s a strength so I use it. Idealism is turning out to be a strength. So thus, I guess, all the negativity from the shadow. It’s a fear, a fear of coming ungrounded and floating up into the metaphorical sky.

And why fear? Well, maybe it’s because I’ve never been this version of myself before. I’ve changed a lot. And that’s scary. So my past comes in and wants to discuss how terrifying this is, and how this kind of change may not lead to good things, in its frightened opinion.

Sometimes I write letters back to Dad, even though he’s long since passed away. Having my dad in my shadow is really painful at times, but writing about it has helped me find out what he’s really getting at. There’s some substance to it that was non-obvious from the start, so I kind of avoided it at first.

One day, some years ago, while I was practicing an active imagination exercise, I had a shocking “intuitive visit” from a younger, healthier version of my dad. He wore a medical smock and he was in black and white, straight out of the 1950s. He was pleasant, composed, and yet purposeful. He examined my head and seemed satisfied with my progress. Then he was gone. It felt amazing—I’ll never forget the positive emotional impact of that subjective-perceptive event.

Otherwise: Man, what else can you do sometimes, than avoid that painful shadow. It has thrown some really evil people at me. Sometimes I talk to them and things end up well. At other times I grumble and groan and just can’t be bothered.

One of my shadows previously was a large lump of mud, shaped like a boy. The epitome of laziness. Not talking, just sitting at a table eating fruit loops. At that time in my life I was a bit too active overall. At first he was a frightening and concerning vision, but over time I grew to love him and try to protect him. This also helped me discover new empathy in my relationship with one of my kiddos, who I love dearly, and yet who does a “lump of mud” impression remarkably well at times. ;-)

There’s also an effeminate dragon in my shadow, which is kind of a fun one. We reconciled long ago, but when circumstances get the best of me, we sometimes still need to reconcile. She’s not me, but she represents a part of me.

Filed in: Therapeutic Practice /147/ | Ni /42/ | Intuition /63/

Somebody Else is Taking Care of Me; Is this Weird?

Thursday June 4, 2020*

Multiple People writes,

Is it weird that I’m nearing 30 years old and my parents are still paying my rent? It feels like it’s just “my thing” right now, and it kind of works for me.

Nope, not weird. I hear this from various people, INTJs included, all the time.

Is it weird that I’m 25 and I have a job that pays me far less than what I’m probably worth, and yet I don’t want to leave? I really like the people here, but I also feel some pressure to make more money and move up in the world. If I end up staying here and making it work, is that weird?

Nope, not weird. In fact: Long may you enjoy such a position! See also:

Is it weird that I’m 45 and basically a reprobate, living off of my spouse’s income as I do? I feel guilty but things are otherwise going OK. She doesn’t seem to mind and has told me so many times.

Nope! Not weird. See also:

Is it weird that I live with my in-laws, and they buy all my groceries, and treat me far better than I deserve? They seem to think I’m helpless. We do enjoy watching movies together.

Nope! Not weird. And finally:

Is it weird that I’m 65 and could be working harder toward retirement but don’t really feel like it? At this rate I may never retire. But I am also kind of OK with that.

Nope! Not weird.

In fact, you may find it helps to think of the situation as intuitively OK. Maybe it seems irrational, or less sensible than you’d like, but we have to give the INTJ intuition some credit: We have this gut feeling that’s worth giving a listen, and all of these people are, in part, saying that at some level they really feel OK about their irrational circumstances.

So: Why do we need to fight that? Sometimes the sensible view, the bell-curve view, is just wrong for a specific person and their circumstances.

OK, but what if I also kind of want to change this situation?

I’m glad you asked! If something’s bothering you, it’s a good idea to poke at it a bit, IMO:

  • Can I isolate the parts that feel wrong?
  • Can I visualize any other outcomes that feel right?
  • What could I try next?
  • Can I track what I’ve tried and record the results?
  • Huge changes can cause huge problems. What are some little experiments I can try that don’t upset my current flow too much, and yet also open the door to positive change, if possible?
  • Can I calendar a check-in with myself or someone else, to stay accountable to this desire to change?

So in summary, maybe the answer’s not a yes or a no. Maybe the answer is: Life’s an experiment. Let’s be a little scientist and see where it goes. Bring the best parts of your intuition and comfortable life forward, and open up to a little bit of sensibility and discomfort, in the name of discovery.

And a little bit of meta-advice: Keep showing gratitude to those who support you, when appropriate. They’re good people and sometimes all they want is some recognition.

Filed in: Control /112/ | Productivity /120/ | Therapeutic Practice /147/ | Anxiety /32/

How's this for an example of the Fe Blind Spot?

Thursday June 4, 2020*

Weber State professor resigns after tweeting threats at those involved in police protests

One post was a response to a video of a police car driving into a crowd of protesters in New York City while they were demonstrating against deadly force by officers. That action has been criticized both by the New York police commissioner and mayor, along with those at the rally who say they feared being run over.

Senjo wrote: “That’s not how I would have driven the car into the crowd.”

Cringe. Yeah, behold the very moment of the blind spot thunderstrike.

(I’m over here practically crossing myself, hoping I never wander into that kind of territory again, and recalling past events in my own life. In Twitter-style reactive & extroverted discourse, I think it would be easy to get caught up in the waves of cultural stake-raising, and end up saying something starkly uncalled for, no matter where you’re at on the sociopolitical spectrum.)

What’s also interesting are some of the INTJ fingerprints in the professor’s decision-making style. For example, he wasn’t asked to resign:

In a statement Wednesday, Allison Barlow Hess, the school’s spokeswoman, confirmed his resignation, but she said the school never requested that Senjo leave. He had been placed on paid leave while WSU began reviewing the situation.

…and yet the professor’s subjective intuition of future events seems to have driven him to make the decision:

I studied the situation and the public fury is too great. I have to resign immediately. There’s no other option.

No other option! Now there’s a phrase I’ve had to learn to watch out for. There are many, many paths to reconciliation—none of which are guaranteed to be easy, but quite often it’s the smarter decision than effectively taking one’s toys and leaving. And it would be just like a troubled INTJ to get over-defensive, pouty, and leave before their personal value proposition, their very worth! is challenged.

Which is really kind of sad in its way—I don’t think the main intent of the pushback is to challenge this professor’s right to be a professor, so much as it is to challenge his most recent decisionmaking. According to him, even though he made poor decisions, he was also acting in a manner common to Twitter’s particular pattern of discourse:

“I agree that my tweets were far beyond the realm of acceptable university policy as well as acceptable social norms,” wrote Scott Senjo in a message to The Salt Lake Tribune. “I made those tweets in the oftentimes vulgar, extreme back-and-forth that can occur on Twitter and they were simply wrong.”

“Those are my tweets,” he added, “but I don’t stand by them and will have to suffer the consequences of my recklessness.”

From this perspective, he sounds like he’s heaping punishment upon himself needlessly. If it’s true that he deserves punishment, it should at least also be true that a little bit of time and discussion would yield a more nuanced outcome for an experienced employee of a university.

Unless, that is, his covert intent is to punish those who are criticizing him, creating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. “You said in the past that I’m a really talented professor? OK, here’s what happens when you act like you can even think on my level, and take me down a notch. I’ll take you down a notch by leaving.” The diva effect. This kind of thing could also be expected of a troubled INTJ.

So: Huh. I do wonder about the details.

Finally, bias blind spot is a formulation of the blind spot term which is new to me. Of additional interest: Naïve cynicism and Selective Exposure Theory.

Filed in: Fe /20/ | Feeling /64/ | Control /112/ | Relationships /78/

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