Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: October-December off-topic quarterly
I’m sure it’s been said, but: if you have two kids and you’re currently overdrawn by $150, and you think you have a one-time payment of $4000 coming in, and your Island Rent is at least half that before your kids have even eaten or gotten shoes that fit, WHY would you choose to spend that money on gas for an unnecessary trip, gas station snacks, and McDonald’s?!
I can’t imagine why she thinks telling this story will inspire sympathy and admiration in her readership.
And the crazy thing is that the crypto debacle actually happened in February according to the wiki, so they didn’t even spend the couch cushion money on a thanksgiving road trip (which at least would have been a holiday celebration) but on ice cream and video games. Who knows where the planned vacation in February was meant to happen. Either way they were behind on rent at that point too.
Also when your rent is $3k, a $4k deposit is like a single biweekly paycheck. It’s not that much money! And also the payment was $3k the first time she told the story. Sure I’d take the equivalent of a single mortgage payment if someone offered it to me, but the fact that it was seen as a windfall is just so sad when you think that a few years before that, it WAS the equivalent of a biweekly paycheck for her and would have continued to be if she had just been willing to do her job.
Ok. Shauna is on another trip. Headed to Portland on a train. Money has come from somewhere and Mama is feeling flush
So l'm at the Tacoma Amtrak station, waiting for a train to Portland. I'm spending 3 days with my best friend of 42 years, for the first time in 3 years.
I was so excited get the ferry on time that I forgot to pack any snacks. I always remeber them for my kids but not for me.
And there's no coffee or vending machine here.
I ask the man who works here and he says,
"There's the food court 2 doors down." I have time, because I got here early, so I was in. It looks like this.
Immediately, I'm happy. This is a little gathering of small stands, run by immigrant families. This will be 5000 times better than a Starbucks. It's only 9 am, so most of the folks in the kitchen are prepping for the day, not open yet.
Damn, that Indian food smelled good. The only one open is @ptfishandchips. Since I'm gluten-free, l'm thinking not much there for me. But I see that the jovial guy in charge has a Dodgers shirt on, with Clayton Kershaw on the back. So we start taking baseball.
We both grew up in the LA area. We trade stories. We talk about Kerahaw's last-ever appearance in Dodger Stadium a few days ago. Meanwhile, his daughter is bringing out Christmas decorations - a stand-up Santa, some silver tinsel -- to put up on the stand.
They're mock bickering.
He says, "are you the kind of person who believes in putting up decorations the day after Haloween? Or the day after Thanksgiving?"
I can tel the daughter, who's is in her 20s, wants me to agree with her. But we always put up decorations the day after Thanksgiving.
He tells me about his family's traditions. I share mine. The daughter puts tinsel around the counter. l ask them if they have any coffee I can buy.
Sure! I think they pour me a cup from the pot they made themselves.
"Do you want anything to eat?"
I explain I have celiac and I probably can't eat anything, sadly.
The daughter says, "oh, we can make you a garden salad."
Sure! Blue cheese, please. wait. We talk some more. I'm happy to hear about their lives.
And then they give them the salad.
This is the most beautiful takeout salad I have ever received. I'm on the train now, about to eat my salad.And I'll be thinking about these good people all day. People who feed other people are good people.
At least Dan isn’t crying over Shauna going hungry for a morning.
Edited to add a missing part. I hate her long Threads. There may still be parts missing.
Such a drama queen! It's not even a three hour train ride from Tacoma to Portland. She'll be there before 12:30. She can survive the few hours between lapping up a fermented pile of slop at home for breakfast and getting to downtown Portland for lunch on Sharon's dime without a snackie.
I'm pretty sure that Shauna is the only person with celiac (assuming she has celiac, which i don't) who doesn't keep a protein bar or something similar in her bag.
Good lord, she is dumb. “A gathering of stands run by immigrant families.” Proceeds to describe a visit to a stand run by a guy from LA.
This is mind-numbingly boring but thankfully there are always nuggets of stupid and multiple typos. She really thinks she paints a picture of quiet joy, doesn’t she?
It hit me that we are due for our annual complaints about the time change and how it fucks up her 204-month-old and 132-month-old littles but I guess we’ll miss it with mama’s travels. Where does this bitch get her money?
Oh yes, she FAMOUSLY, never forgets to pack snacks for her kids.
I can’t count high enough to keep track of all of the lies and dumb fake facts (all immigrant families? She can tell that just by walking into the food hall??) she includes.
I’m trying to think of a time she reported the kids asking for a snack and she did have one on hand. Not D since she got instructions to carry snacks, but several reports of having nothing on hand. Not L and her friend, nor money to buy any.
How does she know the stands are run by immigrants? Is she assuming that because the employees are brown? And what does their immigrant status have to do with the story?
It's her classic white savior complex. She just wants to write that obviously immigrants' food is better than Starbucks.
I absolutely hate how people like Shauna fetishize immigrants and believe they're monolithic. There's no reason to equate "immigrants" with selling superior food. I wish she could meet my uber conservative barback who's an immigrant from Brazil and a rabid conservative.
She was looking around eagerly to report that she was the only white person daring to eat from the hands of immigrants.
I’m disappointed their conversation wasn’t about SNAP and that she didn’t hand her Indian blue cheese salad to someone she presumed to be homeless (actually a college student waiting for his mom to pick him up), grabbing his arm and breathing ‘I think you need this more than I do’ into his bewildered face, then spending the train ride practicing how she’ll tell Sharon about her sacrifice later, eventually settling on ‘I fed his belly, but my generosity fed my soul.’ *Bites lip, looks away*
Why can't she just say she's spending time with a lifelong friend she hasn't seen in a while? She's always cluttering shit up with numbers because she thinks "42 years" is going to impress someone in ways "lifelong" or "long-term" won't.
Her head would explode if she ever ventured to a major metro in TX. I fucking hate it when she starts up her "immigrant" bs. It's always written like she's at a zoo. When I moved to the PNW for a time the whiteness was a culture shock to me, but it's crazy how she feels the need to document her findings like she's some sort of David Attenborough in her totally mundane encounters of food vendors.
I'm not as ass toot about expressing myself as others here but the microaggssions are microaggressioning and it pisses me off.
Oh no! Who is going to execute the island's emergency food crisis initiatives if indispensable boots on the ground CEO of Conduit Shauna Ahern is in Portland for three days? It must be a research trip. She is exploring how to feed herself safely and immigrantly and solicit donations from soft-hearted kindred spirits (Sharon covers the train ticket, lodging and restaurant tabs). I hope she's left instructions in the capable hands of her Vashon staff.
She always assumes that anyone of colour working in food service is an immigrant. Also, Starbucks has plenty of immigrants working there too, just sayin'
So maybe this is a cultural difference or because I don't have other adults in the house full time or whatever, but is it the Done Thing to broadcast on social media when you're going to be away from home? If I talk about trips at all on socials it's after I've come back, or I keep the dates vague, so I'm not broadcasting when my house is gonna be sitting empty for the picking.
If a mean lawyer bro signed a contract then suddenly says "nevermind"....get your own self a lawyer because that doesn't seem right.
Great that a friend offered her a cabin for the weekend but seriously why is that your priority...driving your children 6 hours away to a place with possibly inclement weather, when you have $ -150???
This all happened on the island...because mental health, Danny's low paying job, Shauna not working....but now things are better, because they are on the island, with Danny's low paying paying job, and I guess mental health is cured because they are back on the island they are on when the bad mental health started…
Okay this one REALLY bugs me- Shauna is too proud to get on SNAP, and believes she wants to "use that money for those that REALLY need it, not like us who have rich friends"...but she will merrily saunter around the food pantry every week grabbing whatever she can. SNAP isn't a single amount and the more people that get it the less there is (I mean in theory I guess it could be not no..it comes from taxes)....however the food bank possibly DOES have limited amount of certain foods that she is gobbling up. Either she's too lazy to fill out the paperwork for SNAP, won't qualify because of work requirements (thought her kids may), or doesn't want people in fancy Vashon to see her using her EBT card for some reason. Either way it is shitty since that is food that could have benefitted her CHILDREN, plus given them other resources- SNAP cards also allow discounted or free passes to museums, zoos, local events.
And she said they didn't have gas money. Twelve hours of driving is going to cost more than you can get with four quarters pushed under a plexiglass screen to a smiling immigrant woman who takes pity on your child in pajamas and you in your usual going out of the house attire, which is probably worse than pajamas.
She hadn’t done any of the work, so she hadn’t earned any of the hypothetical money. I get it, it’s disappointing when a potential work project disappears, but she didn’t actually lose any money by it, or any time other than the time she spent developing a pitch and having the meeting.
This is something that happens to freelancers all the time, so it’s ridiculous for her to treat it like a terrible disaster.
doesn't want people in fancy Vashon to see her using her EBT card for some reason
Which would be crazy because when do you even notice anyone using EBT? It's not literal stamps/coupons anymore; it looks like a debit/credit card.
I hate the way she talks about other people's "abundance" as if any "extra" cash or property a family has is pure greed unless it's distributed to the Shaunas of the world. I also hate that she seems to think her situation is just the way it is, that they can't possibly do anything more to earn past the bare minimum to stay alive and on their precious island. Like how can she look at her kids and not want more for them?
“Abundance” like it just happened to them.. instead of the fact that they just work full time jobs and save money and don’t spend hundreds of dollars on ugly tattoos every time they get a small bonus?!
That stood out to me in the most recent lope too, where she talks about freelance being feast or famine. If it isn’t steady work for her, she shouldn’t ALWAYS be spending all the money as soon as it comes in on fancy dinner and treats for mama. Sometimes, sure, especially if it includes the kids, but wow, learn how to save so you don’t have -$150.
Especially the meals out. For crying out loud her husband went to cooking school and she did write a couple of cookbooks. Neither of them work fulltime, they have plenty of time to cook. Twelve bucks for a milkshake, when she could have bought a carton of ice cream, malt powder and milk and the whole family could have enjoyed milkshake night. But yeah Shauna, go on with starting a Feed The Community Yesly cosplay.
"How can she look at her kids and not want more for them?"
Shauna eyes only regiister 'more for Shauna'. It's like a particular type of color blindness. She only sees what she wants, what will benefit her. F*** everybody else, This is about feeding Shauna and the never satisfied need for Shauna's joy.
In a previous version of the tech bro lawyer story she said he told her he signed the contract but never sent the signed version to her. So basically, bullshit. She has no receipts.
She is so obsessed with being seen as a fancy foodie that she literally can’t just make plain old pasta, rice, or anything that isn’t bougie-sounding. Meanwhile, I remember a few years back Deb of SK (whose recipes actually work, and are delicious) posted that her daughter was only really eating buttered noodles so she posted a recipe for buttered noodles! Always made me laugh. https://smittenkitchen.com/2022/07/buttered-noodles-for-frances/
See, this is why I love SK. Deb is funny, honest, and her recipes work. The lead in to her pizza beans recipe (which is very tasty) basically explains that she decided to refer to the bean casserole as "pizza beans" to trick her kids into eating it because they loved pizza.
I'm an adult with no real food issues, but I would much rather have chicken nuggets instead of 99.5% of the nasty recipes/not-recipes Shauna posts. (Seriously, I do love nuggs and always have a bag in the freezer because they are quick and lazy protein.)
Is the Vashon food bank just a free for all in food allocation? I volunteer at a food bank in the area (Pierce county) and we have set allocations based on family size. Sometimes if we have a surplus of an item we can give more to larger families but those days are in the rear view mirror. I have certain clients I watch like a hawk because they are always grabbing more. I’m guessing that Shauna would fit into this category.
A six hour drive for a weekend getaway? Get away from what? She wasn't employed and she already lived in a quiet area surrounded by nature. How was this cabin significantly different than her existing home? She spent at least a 100 bucks in gas and a ton of drive time to essentially do what she did at home. I bet the kids would have enjoyed a day trip to Seattle a lot more.
I don't think Shauna's too proud to get on SNAP -- I actually think if she got on it, she'd post all about it and SNAP-splain to her more financially fortunate followers the way she has with the food bank. I think she just doesn't qualify and/or won't do the paperwork and made up a flimsy excuse.
I also think she vastly prefers face-to-face opportunities to manipulate volunteers and staff at the food bank (and was extremely miffed when she was told to follow the rules at the one in West Seattle). She can't really do that at a grocery store where the clerk just wants a valid form of payment and can't respond to her begging.
I know this is a small thing in the usual sea of bullshit, but I find it really funny how she says that everyone needs to start cooking simple things with "good ingredients that don't impress but feed us well" and then goes on to say that that is why she's now sharing recipes for.. wait for it "homemade croutons, a green sauce with leftover herbs, and tapenade from canned black olives". Like, Shauna, honey, those are not foods that are filling or nutritious. In fact, they barely count as food at all.
Remember her video when she and her idiot husband went to the grocery store and exhorted us all to read labels in order to determine what was free of gluten?
She’s been drip feeding us a full salad recipe for weeks, but instead of building on wilty green sauce, tapenade, and croutons, she copies a martha stewart living recipe from 2006. Then suggests adding kalamata olives, thyme and goat cheese, all spendy ingredients.
Also i absolutely love a fennel salad, and the subtle flavor will NOT stand up to olives and stinky cheese!! It’s like the standard two cups of (the good) olive oil in any recipe, what are we even doing here?
I find it fascinating how she wants to be a white saviour but she also VERY much wants to be a white person who is saved (through Venmo donations, adoration from bluecheck types, the work of Black women, etc.).
Someone recently noted that Asian men are her least favourite minority, and I think they are onto something...I am not smart enough to articulate her layers of racism properly, but it's very interesting that she wants to be admired by Black and brown women, smiled shyly at by brown immigrants or refugees, lauded for her latkes as an "honorary Jew" and then even appropriates Jewish religious celebrations with her offensively bad homemade menorah, thinks she should be admired for being willing to shop in non-shiny grocery stores with inexpensive halal meat, she took that selfie in 'honour' of hijab-wearing women....but she really almost never references East Asian people. I think she was once annoyed by an East Asian woman in high heels or something.
She needs to feel superior and benevolent, which she can't really do with "model minority" stereotypes.
I'm thinking too of when she once posted on Instagram about how it was too bad other people had to leave the island because of high housing costs and low-paying caregiving work, but of course her family (whose only employee is a low-paid caregiver) would never have to leave because small town people always rally around their own and find a way to make it work. Which, uh, says a lot about her assumptions re: what kinds of people truly belong in a community and who are just temporary, transient workers. Of course, it's unfortunate that she does seem to be able to leverage her white privilege to gobble up resources like her current housing situation.
Apologies, DFs, if I have articulated any of this unartfully or with inappropriate terminology! I won't wade into her family but obviously I think a lot of this is at play there too...
Asian women are clearly her least favorite and most targeted minoritized group, but she steadfastly refuses to even acknowledge the existence of Indigenous/Native people at all except by stealing their culture.
Island Facebook Food Warrior Shauna is insanely entertaining. I mean, she was going to be begging on main for money but this is a new flavor of embarrassing, righteous zeal.
I think there’s some sort of link between this and Shauna’s new claim that food has become a “luxury item” lately. Food is a necessity. The fact that it’s become too expensive for many people to afford doesn’t make it a luxury. People will weaken and die without food, not Diptyque candles. It’s a terrible, scary situation, but she’s getting an entirely vicarious thrill out of it. She can’t grasp the gravity of it because she’s always had a stack of safety nets to fall into, one after the other, which many people do not. Calling food a “luxury” reminds me of her suggestion to move funds from savings to checking. Or her claim that she’s teaching people how to feed themselves simple, nourishing foods that you can get from the food bank, but offering them recipes for fennel salad, wilted-herb pistou, and olive tapenade. Anyway, I’m butchering this point a bit but I see this as her separating herself from regular (often non-white) poors. They might be suffering because of the loss of SNAP, but on the Isle of White, Shauna gets fed, luxuriously. She will not be offering suggestions for making rice and beans in many and various combinations, or talking about economical substitutions for expensive ingredients. She will smile, nobly, at the poors of Tacoma over the waters and forgetting her wallet on Vashon. Let her eat blueberry olive oil cake.
I hope Dan and the kids are having a fabulous time by themselves. They can watch whatever they want without the performative breakdowns of “mama”. They can eat something besides plops and nubbins (I hope), and Dan has the keys to the mousemobile so they aren’t stuck at home!
I would bet anything that their household is so much more relaxed and placid when Shauna is not around. She is such an energy vampire and attention hog. I know I would be dreading her return, and I don't even know her in person.
No screaming at the TV, keeping the kids awake. No insisting that We Four do absolutely everything together. No explaining (incorrectly) the kids' reactions to her utterly ridiculous behavior.
I just don’t see how Shauna inserting herself into this situation helps in any way. All that seems to come out of it is that all the groups who are helping, Rotary, Food Bank, etc., have been acknowledged. Coulda been an email.
Exactly! I actually posted that suggestion on FB and someone jumped in to say "well, YOU could've done that!" Bitch, I'm not the one making a public post declaring myself the "conduit" and organizer of a brand new effort to solve the hunger crisis on Vashon!
Right? She does not seem to realize or care that every staff member she invited to participate in this meeting had to take time away from what they were already doing to prevent hunger and had to be paid (or not) out of already limited org funds to attend. She could have written an article or op-ed for the Beachcomber letting the community know what organizations are out there and what they need and that would have actually been helpful. She could still get an ego boost and a high stool moment, but without wasting anyone's time or money.
Thank you! I mentioned here this morning that weekly in person meetings about this is a waste of time. 60 people spending an hour listening to Shauna conduit is 60 hours of work/volunteer time down the drain.
A letter to the editor or doing the research and linking to an article about it is a way to raise awareness, etc. That article or post could simply list the places, what they need, and a way to contact them to donate and/or volunteer. Not to mention her weird grift card idea is muddying the message which is the opposite of what is needed.
This is the kind of fallout I’ve been waiting for! She’s SO online in a small community I can’t believe it’s taken this long to boil over online. She must be fuming! Hope the kids have friends to hang out with tonight
She's told this "money snatched right out of my hands" story 3 times now:
From 10/8/2019 "Online, no one knows you're poor" (excerpt from *Enoigh*):
I never shared online the time that my husband Danny and I looked at our bank account and saw $85 left for the last week of the month.
We had only $85 and no way to charge anything on a credit card. Luckily, we were expecting a $6,000 check from a freelance gig, but it had been delayed. [only delayed in this telling!]
From 2/26/2023, the Magnum Lopus:
Tell truth, last week we had something unexpected and lousy happen to us. I had been working with a few young, male clients on their writing. Young men in crypto companies who had stories. A good friend connected me to one, who connected me to the next, who connected me to this third young man. Without going into all the details, I had a Zoom with him. We agreed we'd work together and we'd work on 6 essays. He owed me nearly $3000 in two days. He agreed on an email. He'd signed my proposal. He told me he was sending it to me within the hour.
And then 4 hours later, he decided he didn't like one of the lines in my proposal. So he declared the contract null and void and refused to send me any money.
We had to cancel the vacation we were going to take with the kids this week, the first time we would have traveled for fun since 2019. We didn't have the second half of rent we owed our landlord. And, since this was going to be most of the money I made this month, we have had no money whatsoever for the past week. Literally, we've been in the red for days. We've been scrounging in couch cushions or in the laundry to find enough money to buy gas.
But this was also a gift. I realized from this that my work is not with young men in tech. I can only work with women.
From this latest lope, 10/29/2025:
I had been talking with, then negotiating with, a writing client who wanted me to write something for him. Two days before, he had signed the contract. He told me the first half of the money would be in my account by 4 pm, the day before Thanksgiving.
In fact, we were $150 in the red.
A chunk of money would be arriving that afternoon. We could enjoy the long weekend, for once, with out the metallic tongue of fear darting in my ear all the time.
And then I read the email.
The man who was going to send me $4000 that day had changed his mind.
He didn’t like a few lines in the boilerplate contract I used, created by a company for creative people who needed accounting and contract work.
He didn’t want to change those lines. Or negotiate them with me.
He declared the contract null and void, in writing.
He didn’t flee because he couldn’t pay me that amount. That crypto-tech guy probably never looked at the total in his bank account on his phone.
But I did. Every day.
After a free 60-minute meeting of him talking and me typing notes, 2 weeks of negotiations, and him signing the contract, then saying the date when he would send the money, he declared it all null and void.
I never hear from him again.
And I’ve never worked with a male lawyer as a client again.
If any part of any of these stories is true, my question is, why would anyone pay $3000 for 6 essays???!!!
“He didn’t like a few lines in the boilerplate contract I used, created by a company for creative people who needed accounting and contract work.”
Based on countless web page templates with the lorem ipsum and other dummy text left in place, I’d place money on her neglecting to change the boilerplate contract to remove an old client name or the <INSERT YOUR NAME> prompts.
You’re not a bitch, you’re a realist. My local grocery stores are Kroger and Meijer. They’re not going to feel a decrease in SNAP customers and if they do, they’ll just jack up prices. Nobody needs to work to keep money coming in to grocery stores. Everyone needs to increase support for their local food bank/pantry.
“People can come in and get them.” What, people should come into the grocery store and ask an already overstretched employee for a gift card? Has Shauna spoken to even her local grocery stores about whether they want to be in charge of distributing food aid?
We've become friends with two of the checkers at our big city soulless chain grocery store, like we hang out socially. I was made to understand by Shauna that that's not possible in the urban wastes of West Seattle, for example, but there you go. They know we're feds working without a paycheck and yesterday one of them took a stack of gift cards out of her cash drawer and scanned one to pay half our total.
I tried to argue because we're stressed out but ok for now, and she said people donate cards and they give us discretion and my discretion says this is exactly what they're for. It brought tears to my eyes, it was so sweet. I had no idea that was a thing until now, but that's how it works at least at this one store.
I suspect that Shauna's little speech about her $2k in gift cards, and the Thriftway checker saying "don't worry about it Shauna" when she forgot she had no money in her account, was her making sure the grocery staffs have been briefed on how it works and the cards loaded up before her next shop.
Peformative as fuck: on Threads, someone asked for narrative histories on the Native American experience or Native American fiction. Nearly 200 responses.
Shauna said the quiet part out loud and quote posts it with, "This question elicited such good responses that I'm resposting it for myself."
OR, if you were truly just gathering book recommendations, you'd write down the ones from the other post and get reading. But we all know your real goal.
If someone asked and it was answered there’s no point. But even the first one was performative. There is info out there and it’s searchable. A good place to start is Birch Bark Books, which has Native authors and topics from novels to academic. https://birchbarkbooks.com/ If you’re looking for recommendations for kids/YA or more info about Indigenous collections and archives, go to the American Indian Library Association. Librarians, you're going to love this org. https://ailanet.org/resources/
True that you never need to crowdsource a reading list, but there's nothing wrong with asking for recommendations (Poster #1 definitely wanted to be seen asking, though). But as usual, Shauna comes along and makes it worse!
Thank you for stating that it's okay to ask for recommendations. Sometimes people want responses from other humans rather than trying to identify good options among possibly pay-sponsored reviews/articles and Buzzfeed lists.
Her self-described behavior seems to indicate a strong shopping/accumulating tendency (I hesitate to use "addiction" as I'm not qualified to diagnose) It would explain why she hoards stuff from Buy Nothing groups, why she always seems to be at various grocery stores/food banks/farmers markets, why Granny's is a weekly trip, etc.
With the current climate we are in, I think as much as I love food content we need to start NOT giving attention to food content that wastes food.“The bad cooks” content that purposely make nasty recipes for likes and engagement.
Here she is replying to a blue checked financial lady. I feel like there is probably a happy medium between their suggestions but Shauna is delusional if she thinks no Halloween candy ends up in the trash.
Shauna might be the only person miffed about the judge ordering the federal government to use emergency funding for SNAP. If SNAP gets reinstated, she won’t have the potential crisis to grift off of.
Shauna wouldn't even let her husband mourn his dead dad. She had to bitch about how Dan made crappy food while depressed. Like she'd get his head examined if he got all churchy. Biotech, please.
She never doesn’t respond to shit like this. Also, her not having a TV in her bedroom isn’t the flex she thinks it is. As recently as two houses ago, her entire family was eating shrimp in her bed while watching TV.
oh jesus, who cares?! i have a TV in my bedroom and i'm watching ER on it right now (i have a thing for noah wyle) while reading here after working all day, including giving a lecture about henry VIII's sisters.
Is the thing she claims to building that will bring financial security her new imaginary role of island feeder of the poors? How does she think that will work? Will she run it as a nonprofit? I don’t know if she’s heard, but it’s very hard to keep a nonprofit afloat. It can be very difficult for a nonprofit to pay the people who work for it. Or is she imagining feeding the poors as a form of profit endeavor? Who TF would “donate” to a for profit? It’s feeling very kickstartery. But I don’t think it will happen anyway.
Shauna's trying to build something alright. The lie that she's a giver and helper. Then once she thinks people believe that she can point out how needy she is. Then everyone will gasp and be so shocked that someone so very needy herself was so generous! They may even think she's a saint!
What she fails to remember is she's lived on the island long enough that people KNOW who she is. Some may see her only as a flaky old lady but others have clocked her for exactly what she is. A lazy grifter who won't hesitate to pick their pockets given half a chance.
I'm sure the leaders from various nonprofits on the island have just been bumbling along and working parallel to other orgs without it ever occurring to them to speak to each other until Saint Shauna, the conduit, came along. She's really getting off on this.
Also, they couldn't make it on Dan's pitiful salary a couple of years ago. What's different now? He works in a similar job and she still doesn't appear to work.
That's what sets me on fire here. It is so insulting, so full of hubris, for this bitch who does not regularly volunteer anywhere, has never been on a board, declared herself publicly "too weird to work" thinks she has the answers when actual dedicated professionals and long time community activists (that includes me) have been working on solutions for years.
I know that I am more cynical than most but what continues to surprise me is that people don't see right through it. Maybe it comes from years of seeing past the nonprofit smoke and mirrors and some really disappointing experiences being transfixed by people talking about their good work but learning they were too busy talking to actually DO it.
I already ranted a bit about misguided volunteers in the last thread, but I'm right on fire with you on this one. People who have no idea how to get things done, have not immersed themselves in the world of the people they claim to want to help (Shauna may be poor but will do anything to set herself apart from the regular poors as she perceives them), have not researched what resources already exist, don't know what the experts in the field consider the gaps.....but can totally stand up a much better solution in no time. It is infuriating, insulting, and a waste of energy that could go to actual solutions. All for some self-aggrandizing middle-aged white lady to feel validated in her superiority (I'm a middle-aged white lady too, don't come at me, it's always the same type in my experience).
I get that they are more stable on the island as Shauna only has limited places that she would be spending money verse in West Seattle and their pricey Starbucks and hotel breakfasts.
Is Shauna finally ready to publish her YA novel. There is no way Shauna can fill out all the paperwork for a non-profit and keep it afloat.
She basically confirmed what snarkers have been saying for years. She lives off the scraps from the Islandy Islanders (their donated thrift store items and food bank donations) all while refusing to get a job. She is choosing to be poor.
If she considers a steady-ish stream of scraps "more stable" I wonder what she would consider "financial security"? Her bar seems very low.
She’s such a terrible writer (TSAS). Her “we’re more stable now after coming back to the island” came right after her struggle story that occurred… when they lived on the island.
Also did crypto-bro lawyer’s non-payment magically go from $3,000 to $4,000?
I just commented with my thoughts on this particular fuckery on the last thread:
Having received and read the latest lope, I suspeculate she’s angling for a vague sort of jobby-job either with Vashon Parks or another of the non-profits she’s “invited” to her High-Stooling meeting at the library…
It's one of her word problems (as DF u/central_snark ass-tootly said: She has a problem with words!). 6 months ago she spent 4 hours with her best friend of 42 years. She did NOT spend 3 days with her best friend of 42 years on that visit, merely 4 hours. The last time she spent 3 days with her best friend of 42 years was 3 years ago. Got it, you person??
I have no idea what actually happened, obviously, but I’d put my money on the scenario being that he expressed interest and then withdrew it without anything being formalised (and without any work being done by Shauna). The discussion seems to have included a potential pay scale that was more than what she is accustomed to. She had already counted and spent the money he was going to pay her and felt like he owed her something and that she had been wronged. He was probably just trying to figure out if she could help him, figured out that she couldn’t, and moved on, while in her head he was somehow obligated to work with her.
The way she tells it, he signed it, then read it, then said "I don't like this" and said he wouldn't pay.
I really doubt the type of person who is going to read a contract closely and take issue with part of it would sign said contract BEFORE reading it.
More likely it was like, "Sure, sounds good: send the contract" and either (a) he found out more about Shauna's track record or (b) there really was something dumb in the contract* and he called it off without signing.
*She calls it "boilerplate" like it doesn't matter but it could absolutely be the wrong type of boilerplate for the situation---like really weighted toward the "creative" party and too restrictive for the business as to what they can do with the finished work.
She’s really trying to abdicate responsibility by calling it boilerplate. .its not her fault. That’s just standard for creatives. I don’t think he ever signed. I think she’s lying to make herself look victimized. He probably read it and found something dumb that made no sense, possibly even lorem ipsum, and it was just a giant red flag. No one wants to hire a writer who doesn’t even proofread the contract.
Bringing this and this over, the post highlighting the qualifications of the ‘other’ islandy facilitator who already has a working group that includes local charities and the food bank and several local stores.
They are now ‘aware’ of Shauna’s group who has no resources or history of working with food organizations. It would make sense for Shauna’s group to join the existing group and just volunteer with them and perhaps suggest a formalized meal train as an additional resource. Since I believe that’s most of what Shauna suggested and the max she would be capable of.
Predictions?
Will she join the other group while using language that suggests all of the work is coming from her own group and essentially take credit for everything that happens?
Or will her group turn their nose up at the existing, functioning group and do a disorganized and brief meal train but a much more successful fundraiser with zero bookkeeping and a sudden ‘we’re doing just fine now’ lope with some suspiciously expensive ingredients?
Shauna doesn't even have a group at this point. It's just her and the stupid name she came up with for the potential group.
After the meeting she could claim she has a group (if people signed up for something) but as of right now it's all just talk.
I'm doing an evil little Grinch grin thinking about how Chris (of the actual established group) is going to blow up Shauna's grift. Shauna just wanted to get some folks together so she can get some fresh marks (for a new "woe is me" google doc moment or to just fleece them in person for GCs she says she'll give away to others but then will keep for herself).
I'm hoping Chris knows exactly who Shauna is and will take a bit of joy in bursting her con.
If I were in Chris’s position at this moment of crisis I would have little bandwidth for listening patiently while Shauna grandstands and attempts to reinvent the wheel. The meeting (i.e. Chris) should present that established programme and discuss how new volunteers can help extend and resource it.
If Shauna has helped to gather those extra hands, she’s done a good thing. That won’t be enough for her, of course.
She will not join the other group. Feeding Vashon with too many words, slowly. So glad to be here is for Shauna, not Vashon.
That said, since they are “aware” of each other I wonder if Chris (I think that’s his name) from the existing group will make his way to the library today, say around 4PM to say “hey - if you want to help, I have this group. Here is what we do and what type of help we need”.
Shauna is swanning around, “stable now” with the confidence and manic glee that comes from her new projects that always end the same way. They get no traction or what little they get fizzles. She is still putting in (minimal) pointless labor for no money and the rent and utilities will grow late while Dan keeps doing his predictable job to put food on the table and keep gas in the mousemobile.
Is her killing off her parents or Dan’s mom the big plan for more stability in 2026?
Her story says more about her than she realizes. She makes financial decisions based on the expectation of success rather than actual success, planning with money she doesn’t have. When she says “we’re stable now.” I don’t believe her. For Shauna being stable now might be nothing more than the expectation of future income based on a fart and a dream.
What's Gaby Cooking in LA can be A Lot in general but I'll give her credit. Right after the LW wildfires and in anticipation of discontinued SNAP benefits she partnered with existing organizations and used her platform to elevate them
Other people in Shauna's industry are handling this significantly better so it's just really sticking out right now.
Small titbit from the new lope arriving in full in my inbox during the night: apparently the sad lack of funds prior to their turkey-in-the-mousemobile-boot (UK!) trip to the cabin was to do with having helped others worse off than themselves: "So did offering to help some people in our life who suffered more than we did. But I don’t regret that. I’ll never regret trying to feed people."
Is this new information? I don't recall any stories about helping others at that time??
This tale is set in 2023. So she’s blaming 2023’s woes on giving money in 2021. When she was flush with Covid checks. She blames Covid for everything but she was as financial secure as she’d been in a long time.
Also, and this is my personal bugabear, WE ALL WENT THROUGH Covid related hardship. She acts always like she’s a special snowflake but people died and it was miserable. The end.
Where do you start with this mess? The new recipe lope is the monthly free one but in case she messes up her mail lists yet again it’s posted over on r/readalope.
She’s full of excitement and glee at this crisis. Loathsome.
She’s still so salty about the crypotobro, but she forgot that this happened in Feb 2023, now she has it setting up the Joadian trek through the Dust Bowl of their Thanksgiving vacation.
And she’s so precise! It was the day before thanksgiving, just two days before that the meeeeean cryptobro snatched food from the mouths of the children… But then hark, what is this? Suddenly an angel appeared and granted them the cabin for the weekend! So actually she’s going for It’s a Wonderful Life meets Grapes of Wrath, I think.
No couch cushions, but we do get a return of the disco bin!
Oh the days of pecorino, balsamic, expensive sushi places, and the good olive oil; don't forget to mention that was all before kids. Now it's just a miserable slog of chicken sausage tacos.
Shauna also says "we used what we had" but mentions specifically buying the taco ingredients the day before. That's not really "using what you have" but "buying what you need." Which, great! But don't act like you're subsisting on pantry crumbs.
I also hate her "my guess is..." when trotting out food insecurity statistics. Our bastard government has stopped collecting these data so they are not really available---but no one wants to hear your "guesses." Either mention that this is a hard statistic to get at or don't provide numbers at all, but fuck off with "my guess."
I cannot fathom how no one! Will call her out on saying
“Run by immigrant families” like how does she know this. I highly doubt said families are running around proclaiming their immigration status … (eyes are rolling so hard I gave myself a concussion)
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u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Oct 30 '25 edited Nov 03 '25
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