This once was a very serviceable driver’s license. Then Sansa found it.
The situation with Zika infection is so scary and only getting worse:
Since the first reported case of Zika infection triggered by Aedes aegypti mosquito bites in Brazil in May, the virus has rapidly spread spread to 21 countries and territories in the Americas, with mosquito-borne cases as far north as Puerto Rico.
“Zika virus will continue to spread and will likely reach all countries and territories of the region where Aedes mosquitoes are found,” said the WHO statement.
In Brazil, where the mild flu-like virus has infected more than a million people, the disease has been linked to nearly 4,000 cases of severe brain birth defects in infants. Zika has also been linked to an earlier outbreak of Guillaume-Barre syndrome, a rare paralytic syndrome, in French Polynesia.
“The circumstantial evidence is suggestive and extremely worrisome,” WHO chief Margaret Chan told the executive board of the world public health organization.
Putting disability issues on the political agenda:
There are over 56 million Americans with disabilities. Tens of millions more are caregivers or family members of people with disabilities. In fact, pretty much everyone is at most one degree of separation from someone who is disabled. This is a large population that has all hallmarks of a powerful political constituency. Its members are diverse, stretching across the population; they are aware of their rights; and they rely on government officials to enforce the ADA, fund programs like Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and otherwise work to make American society more inclusive and accessible. Other well organized political groups, such as gun owners or the elderly, have long since found ways to push their issues into the national political dialogue, tapping wealthy donors and organizing interest groups like the NRA and AARP. Why not disabled Americans?
This woman is doing the Lord’s work.
I found the New Yorker‘s investigation of the Baby Doe case almost impossible to read, because it’s so sad, but it’s also very important, especially on the history of poverty, foster care, child abuse, and government oversight:
Programs for the poor are poor programs. And they are made poorer when they fail, and when they are needed most. Natural disasters like blizzards, earthquakes, and hurricanes drive reform and the allocation of resources, leading to improvements in public safety. The tragic but ordinary deaths of people in situations in which people are likely to die don’t usually change policy. When someone dies in an ambulance, that death is not generally followed by an investigation into the qualifications of E.M.T.s. “We don’t stop funding FEMA when the economy gets bad,” Maria Mossaides pointed out, when we met. Mossaides, an attorney, was hired by Michael Dukakis in 1977 and moved into child welfare soon after the Gallison disaster. Deval Patrick had hoped that Mossaides would be willing to serve as D.C.F. commissioner. Instead, she accepted Baker’s offer to become the state’s new director of the Office of the Child Advocate. One feature of a scandal-reform cycle—“Kids die and heads roll,” she says—is a policy pendulum. “The pendulum has swung at least four or five times in the last forty years,” Mossaides says. It swings between family preservation (keeping kids with their family of origin) and removal (removing kids from their homes and severing parental rights so that the kids can be adopted). “We inevitably have cases where we don’t get the safety assessment right,” Mossaides says. “Then you have the high-profile death, and the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction.” When Jeremiah Oliver was reported missing, the governor’s office was boasting that the number of children in the care of the state was down to seven thousand: family preservation was the priority. Two years later, that number has risen to ninety-two hundred, a record. “Pull every kid” is what Mossaides suspects D.C.F. workers are being told. “The only way that happens is social workers have become afraid to leave kids with their parents.”
I promise that this story is worth your time:
I don’t read enough short fiction, but this story in Catapult held me right from the start:
Wide World of Sports
she
SPEAKING of Catapult, please spread this far and wide:
As part of trying to be really good to myself this past weekend, I re-read Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy’s The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny (if you do not already own a blessed hard copy you can get it for your Kindle!), which is a perfect example of how the best kind of book to read is Books By Amateur Historians About The Weirdness Of The British Aristocracy That Reveal That The Amateur Historian In Question Is Also Pretty Weird, and then I read his memoir, and I will share with you just a few tidbits from each:
What to do if your Latvian servant takes ill, apparently:
When your dad is an A+++ doctor:
When your Uncle Eddie was actually one of Waugh’s inspirations (along with Stephen Tennant) for Miles Malpractice:
When nannies internalize the class structure that runs their lives:
So, I have made good strides on not being “haha this nimrod on the internet” because I do not think that is how I should interact with my fellow humans, but then Jess Zimmerman found this NYMag piece about a fella she saw on OKCupid (whose profile was as you might expect it to be) and then I HAD to share it (also, he and this unfortunate woman have split up, apparently):
Are you currently in a relationship? Is she smart?
The girl I am with right now is very intelligent, but she’s also Japanese, so there’s a language barrier. It gets challenging trying to discuss some concepts, including responsible non-monogamy, which doesn’t really exist for women in Japan. It’s under the table there, and accepted because men have needs but women just have to put up with it. It’s a double standard and I’m not a big fan of those. I’m happy for my girlfriend to sleep with other people. So we have a bit of an interpretation barrier. The biggest problems come when we discuss concepts. She can’t keep up with conversations, and that frustrates me.
And then one of Jess’s friends shared this old MeFi thread on a similarly delightful soul, and now I cannot go on:
Yet I have, in fact, approached (hundreds?) of women on subways and city streets (mostly in NYC) to tell them them they’re gorgeous, and ask them out on the spot – most are taken, it’s never proceeded past a coffee even if they’re single, but 99% were grinning a mile-wide even if they said “No.” (Perhaps I was too young? At its height, I was 20 or 21). Nevertheless, the abysmal success rate did do a number on my self-confidence. Fact is, I would very much like to meet a lovely lady or two in the flesh, while out on the town, and woo her by virtue of my own merits.
I just have no idea how. Help a man out.
Pros: I am, apparently, quite attractive – I regularly sport pinstripes and a fedora, and I’m informed that pictures of me prompt girly coos (which confuses no one more than me). I have a natural accent – I am often thought to be either British or Eastern European (having lived in both places), despite being born and raised in the States. I read everything I get my hands on, and have wacky tales of adventure to amuse and intrigue. I also tear up the dance floor at clubs.
Okay, so I know this isn’t the open thread, but I need some advice from you lovely Toasties on a thing with a guy liking me, and me being anxious and somewhat asexual and panicking. It got long so I’m gonna put it in a second comment.
So I’ve been talking to this guy for a little while now; I met him online and he lives in another state from me. (Like, several states away.) I like talking to him because we share a lot of interests and he’s surprisingly open-minded (we managed to have a whole convo about feminist issues once without me wanting to hit him, which is always a plus tbh), and we occasionally flirt, which I find nice in a “safe” way. The thing is… he apparently LIKES me as more than just that, and lately every time I am vaguely flirty (like, in a friendly way!) he brings up how I must really like him (??? all I said was that I miss having him around to talk to when he’s at work now and he got all suddenly romantic on me last night it was so awkward), and how he likes me and wants to date me (long distance, with the idea of eventually meeting in person judging by the way he was talking). And I… don’t. For a myriad of reasons, but especially because:
1) While I am comfortable talking to people online, I have really bad social anxiety irl, 2) I am biromantic, but also somewhere on a fluctuating asexual scale, where from a distance I can flirt and even have semi-sexual conversations and such, but in person and such the idea gives me panic attacks. Like the idea of anything physical irl literally just makes me SO anxious and so NOPE NOPE NOPE YIKES YIKES right now. And 3) sure, there’s a possibility that if I really liked someone, over time I would be more comfortable with the physical stuff, as I have had physical relationships in the past usually after feelings have developed and I’m very very very comfortable with them and find them attractive. But the thing is… I’m not physically attracted to this guy. Like, at all. So I know that will never happen because while I really like talking to him and flirting from a distance, irl I don’t think I would be (physically) attracted to him, which means there’s not even a slight chance I might eventually thaw towards him in the physical regard.
I’d be perfectly happy just being friends with this guy and occasionally flirting and you know, having someone I can talk to during the day and be friends with, but nothing else. Only see, this is where my anxiety comes in, because I don’t know how to tell him this without sounding vain and/or selfish. Only I feel like I have to say something because now I’m fixating and I’ve been anxious since last night when he was all “I’d totally date you if I had the opportunity” and kept talking about how he didn’t mind long-distance relationships. And I feel like if I don’t say anything, he’s gonna keep trying for it. But I don’t feel like I can say: “I like you and I like talking with you and sometimes flirting with you, but right now I don’t feel like I want to date anyone irl. I am comfortable being single, and I have no intention of ever marrying again, let alone having kids, and I know you want those things. Also I’m somewhere on the asexual scale and the idea of dating you gives me panic attacks because I dread physical contact and also I don’t find you physically attractive, but hey, let’s be friends haha.”
Maybe I should leave out the “I don’t find you physically attractive”? HELP!!!!
(Alas, I’m pretty sure it’s sadly impossible to find someone who ONLY wants to long distance date and probably never meet up irl and never be physical. LOL.)
I think everything you say after ‘But I don’t feel like I can say’ there is a completely reasonable thing to say. If you don’t want to bring the asexuality and anxiety into it, leave it at ‘… and I know you want those things.’ You might have to stop being friends with him, which sucks, but might be for the best if he can’t get past his own feelings. Just lay it out for him, and if he doesn’t respect the fact that you want to remain single, if he keeps pushing it, then he’s being an asshole quite frankly. His feelings will probably be hurt, but that’s not because you’re being unreasonable – it’s because it sucks when someone you like can’t return that. But that’s something we all have to deal with, and it sounds like you’ll be as nice to him as you can. Just don’t be so nice you don’t actually make your feelings known.
Man, if “just don’t be so nice you don’t actually make your feelings known” isn’t the story of my life, idk what is. I know I need to, you’re right. I just wish the idea of doing that didn’t ALSO give me anxiety tbh.
(Also I really wish I hadn’t added him on multiple forms of social media, I have no outlets now ugh.)
I get that– it might help to frame it as ultimately, the being nice actually hurts both of you in the end. Obviously hurts you because you’re not getting what you want, but I bet also hurts him, because he’s investing in a relationship that he thinks both of you do want. The actual kinder thing is to be clear and let him know where you’re actually at so that he can make choices about what he wants to do next.
I got to say only that I don’t think it’s ever vain or selfish to tell someone what you want out of a relationship. I mean, they’re not always going to be cool with it, that happens in relationships sometimes, but wanting things is not something that is, of its nature, selfish.
Logically I know you’re right, but my brain keeps telling me I’m selfish for some reason, for wanting to be just friends and maybe vaguely flirt with him but not want anything more?
But thank you, it’s good to be reminded that it isn’t selfish to want/not want some things.
Oops, sorry to double comment– I would say that if he told you he was interested in something more and needed some space to let go of his feeligns for you, and then you continued to reach out to him. flirt with him and text him, *that* would be selfish. Stating what you want isn’t selfish at all!
You don’t owe anyone a reason for not wanting to date them! Some people, not all of them and maybe not this dude, but some will take any reason you give them as a negotiating point so I always err on the side of not giving a reason. Your first sentence actually sounds pretty darn good already: “I like you and I like talking with you and sometimes flirting with you, but right now I don’t feel like I want to date anyone.”
Ugh, yes. Last night I kept trying to… give excuses but not straight up say “no”, because I am still very bad at saying no, but that just went like:
Me: Well, you live in another state and all.
Him: Well I have NO problem with long distance.
Me: I’ve never had luck with long distance, I’ve actually had several bad experiences. [Gives examples.]
Him: Well I would never do any of those things to you!
Me: [in my head] okay… but… okay but… YIKES.
And then I linked him a vine of a funny bird and went LOOK AT THIS BIRB and then literally vanished for a good half hour.
(But if he brings it up again, I will try just that one sentence, you’re right, it does sound like it would work.)
It’s really hard to say no, you’re not alone in that! You seem very kind and you are trying to avoid hurting his feelings. I think it’s just at this point, he really is interpreting all of these reasons as things he can overcome with his feelings, and you don’t think you would ever like him. And it’s okay that you don’t think you would ever like him like that! (There are a bunch of Captain Awkward posts about similar situations, maybe some of the other commenters can dig up some relevant ones?). Also, it’s kinder, in general, to stick solidly to “I don’t want to date you” than to get into specific reasons about why you wouldn’t want to date this *particular* person. No one really wants to know why.
And it’s okay to just say “I don’t want to date anyone” (even if you think you might, at some later time, date someone). You don’t have to lay everything about your sexuality and mental state and all the reasons behind your decision out for your friend. You can just say “I don’t want to, please stop asking me and referring to how you’d like to date me, because that isn’t happening and it’s uncomfortable,” and that deserves to be respected. Good luck to you!
“I like you so much but only as a friend. I hope you understand. Please let’s not discuss this anymore.” I wouldn’t even say “not right now,” because he will hear “but later, right?” Giving reasons for not-dating is like giving reasons for a breakup: it just makes it seem like a negotiation when it isn’t.
I’ve sort of been on the other side of this one? I do think it is possible to string someone along as a kind of significant-other-but-not, but I don’t think you are doing that. If he keeps pushing for more maybe you need to shut it down, but it seems like early days.
A thing that will feel awkward to do, but might be worthwhile is to bring it up yourself, rather than wait for him to bring it up again. It might help clear the air.
Something like,
“Hey dudefriend, last time we talked, the topic of dating came up, and I feel like I acted really awkward in that conversation, and it’s kind of been nagging at me, so I wanted to just clear the air. I like you a lot as a friend, and I really value the time we spend together, but my feelings for you aren’t romantic.”
If he responds by asking why (which he shouldn’t! but people are not perfect.) I’d just say something like, “Romantic attraction is complicated. There’s not always a specific reason why I’m attracted to one person and not another, but I need to be true to my own feelings about this.”
Like smrtcookie said, “I don’t want to date you for reasons x, y, and z,” opens up the possibility that he’ll argue with you over those reasons, and in the end, it doesn’t matter what your reasons are anyway. Just be gentle and firm with communicating that you don’t want a romantic relationship, and since you know he’s a good guy, you know he’ll respect your wishes.
echoing the other great responses to say- you can absolutely say everything you typed and it is not vain, no matter his response. You’re just stating how you feel and what you want which is important!
However if you happen to want to try a more subtle approach to Shutting It Down before laying it out (I only offer this as an option bc sometimes it has been helpful; other times not so much), I would suggest comments that gently counter any time he tries to get romantic. I’m not great at coming up with scripts but like assuming he has not written you specifically about his Love for you and instead just dropped hints, you too can drop hints that you’re not interested! “omg I’d totally date you” “oh dude! you’re great but we’re better friends tbh” “I HAVE ROMANTIC FEELINGS” “aw bro I am 100% not interested in a romantic relationship!” “I would totally do long-distance!” “dang really? I wouldn’t; that seems like a lot of work!” and/or just injecting into the conversation “ugh I really love being single” “yeah I am really not into having a relationship, it just is not something that I’m interested in!” “you know you really remind me of my brother”
Pro: If he’s pretty good at picking up on cues he will pick up that you aren’t interested w/o too in-depth of a conversation. Con: if he’s not good at picking up on cues you may have to resort to a direct “here are the reasons I won’t date you” anyway.
Great advice. I would emphasize you do not need to give any kind of reason, even if he asks. Just say no, you aren’t interested in dating. Like, he doesn’t need to know why, it’s irrelevant.
Also, you could write out a short email/ g-chat to send to him like, “enjoy talking with you, I definitely don’t want to date” cause then you can edit it to your hearts content and not have to think of something on the fly. I do that sometimes, when I worry I will say the wrong thing or I know it’s hard to say no when I’m actively talking to the person.
He likes you. You don’t like him back, not the way he wants. Tell him that. You don’t have to tell him why.
a) Being of a pretty similar inclination as you, and having been in exactly the same situation as you right now, I second all the others’ advice. He sounds like a nice dude, so make it quick and painless, and gently but firmly tell him “no”.
b) But on the other hand, I’d find it hilarious if everytime he brings the topic up, you’d react with LOOK A BIRD and just post various bird vines. No explanation. Just birds. If he asks, claim ignorance.
c) I appreciate your username, although it gives me Sad Feelings.
He’s into you, and you’re going to hurt his feelings, but you’re going to hurt them a lot worse if you aren’t clear now. You may lose him as a friend, which would be bad, but that would be even more likely to happen if he showed up on your doorstep with roses and you had to send him away.
I will say this: I am not AT ALL challenging however you choose to identify yourself, but sometimes I feel like people are so eager to find a category for themselves in the crazy messy world of sexuality that they lock themselves in and toss away the key. I get a slight feeling of “…but I think of myself as asexual!” from your comment. All I’m saying is: don’t constrain your feelings in the future because you feel you have to fit into a particular identity, even one you’ve chosen for yourself. Being true to yourself is more important than epistemological tidiness.
I’m definitely not locked into my sexuality, especially considering it has changed a lot over the years. It was hard phrasing it right above, but it’s not that I’m thinking “I’m asexual so I can’t be with this guy”, more like, when I think about ‘being’ with this guy irl/in person, my sex aversion rears it’s head like NOPE NOPE YIKES YIKES YIKES.
I am like the least competent person ever to give advice on dating topics (my phone just told me how many likes I had on tindr and I hyperventilated a little) but I had a kinda similar situation but IRL with a guy who lived in my dorm freshman year, and I still REALLY wish I had figured out how to say I wasn’t physically attracted to him (which, in my head, is still a thing I’m struggling with–I feel so unattractive and scared of being judged on my photos that I feel like the biggest, most hypocritical jerk to listen to my inner “nope” on attraction. . .but that’s another issue.)
Anyway. In retrospect it seems pretty clear we were both iffy on a physical relationship at all at that point (aside: it definitely freaks a girl out if you write in your blog a clear reference to here making you reconsider your philosophical commitment to celibacy) , and I still wonder if I’d been able to keep the friendship (I think only one or two people in my life ever made me feel I was so smart and interesting) if I hadn’t been so weird and ghost-y about the attraction issue.
You probably won’t be able to avoid hurting him. He’s into you, you’re not into him, and that can be painful and disappointing. There is also the chance that if you tell him, it will end your friendship or put it on hold temporarily. I understand that this is a scary prospect and that it’s not the outcome you’d like.
However, if it helps with your anxiety, consider the alternative. In this other scenario, you let him think you feel the same way and let things happen. It will hurt both of you and your friendship. The outcome may seem similar, but the likelihood of hurt feelings and ruined friendships is higher.
Just let him know how you feel and state it clearly. You don’t owe him a long list of reasons, especially if you’d rather keep some of them to yourself. You can simply say that you’re happy being single and don’t see that changing, and that you’d rather remain friends.
Your comment makes it sound like you feel a bit guilty for flirting? I don’t know if that’s the case, but if it is, don’t feel bad. Flirting might have clouded the issue, but it doesn’t automatically indicate that you want a relationship of the specific type he has in mind.
Hi! I’m another asexual gal who dreads physical contact. I don’t have much in the way of helpful advice, just letting you know you aren’t the only one.
It IS weirdly nice to know I’m not the only one, thank you! <3 It does suck sometimes because I like close friendships and even romance, but when I think about physical contact I’m just all NOPE.
My fellow Mitford fans, they are auctioning off some of Debo’s things and it is a TREASURE TROVE. You can own:
-a novelty lobster inkwell
-bespoke poultry boxes
-Nancy’s pocketwatch
-the family and friends version of Brideshead Revisited
And that’s just from the preview…
I emailed Nicole in a frenzy of excitement when I saw this elsewhere on the internet. (I am so torn – on the one hand, Mitfordania! On the other, it will be expensive and useless and a source of stress because I’ll have to worry about keeping it in good condition. So I will almost certainly buy absolutely nothing, but I am tempted by That Family Photo which appears in all of the books and which is not ruinously expensive.)
I am SO tempted by the family photo. I’m trying to convince myself that it is ridiculous to drop $500 on someone else’s family portrait but not succeeding AT ALL.
It would be ridiculous. AND YET.
Also, it feels super weird to auction off one’s mother’s stuff (I assume the things now belong to her children).
I am confused by the poultry boxes. Are they used to carry around one chicken at a time? In what circumstances would one be doing this? Wouldn’t something a bit more breathable along the lines of a cat carrier be more comfortable for the chicken? The listing says it’s monogrammed, but would one monogram a poultry box with the owner’s initials or the chicken’s?
I desperately want the poultry boxes, and am trying to convince myself they would be a Good Thing. I could put things in them!
Things like chickens!
I want a House Chicken so badly, but my partner will not let me, and I weep. He’s not even played the “immunocompromised” card yet. Or the “we live in two rooms on a main road” card. Only the “you’re an idiot” card.
(And I suspect they are for Shows. Country Shows are the greatest, and also mad.)
Obviously the chicken’s! What kind of establishment do you think this is?
I don’t know what I would use a novelty lobster inkwell for, but I NEED IT.
I want to say you could put ink in it, but I think there are concerns about keeping fountain pen ink in metal containers. On the other hand, it’s possible that a modern, non-corrosive ink would be fine. It’s also possible that there’s actually a glass inner container.
Ok, I kept thinking about this until eventually I googled it. It turns out there are lots of pictures of very similar-looking antique brass lobster inkwells online. The pictures where the lids are open tend to look like this:
So plainly they were meant to hold glass inner containers. Some auction listings mention that the containers are there, but more often they seem to be missing, so you might need to find new ones. Or you could store something else that was the right shape, but I don’t know what.
They do seem to be fairly pricy even if they weren’t owned by anyone famous, so that may be more of a problem.
Diamond clips, first-edition novels, and poultry boxes are the most Mitford things I can imagine.
I have never wanted poultry-related objects so much in my life.
YOU GUYS!
ACOG REVISED THEIR STATEMENT ON BREASTFEEDING AND FORMULA FEEDING MOTHERS!
I WILL BE HOSTING AN ALL-CAPS CELEBRATION OVER HERE
HOORAY FOR REASONABLENESS!!
My standard reaction to any of these kinds of guidelines/changes is ‘No shit’
Women are happier if they feel supported to breastfeed, but not bullied if they choose to use formula
No shit.
ugh Gwynne Watkins is such a liar she doesn’t even have a Star Wars PhD, she just has a Star Wars UNDERGRAD degree and she got it from the same school I did!
Admittedly, it was not a great school for Star Wars studies at the time, but I heard they have been expanding their research department and some of their programs, so, I don’t know, maybe it’s better now.
I heard that they are basically a Star Wars diploma factory, so whatevs.
yeah it’s really all about the money these days, I don’t think anyone is even that interested in Star Wars scholarship anymore, you just get a diploma and cross your fingers that you’ll get one of the handful of cushy teaching positions.
Those final two dudes make me want to crawl out of my skin. Any time anyone is all “Pah, fie on thee, clown! I am in search of a true lady to woo who will understand my dry British wit and unflinching need for sexual congress,” despite being a 20-year-old from Poughkeepsie, SO MANY ALARM BELLS. More red flags than a May Day parade! Does anything say more clearly “I’m terribly insecure and clutch desperately at my clothes and books in lieu of a personality. Also I’m really horny and would like an 18-year-old model Cool Girl please.”
Aughghghg there’s even a bonus “emotions are so dumb but I acknowledge them cause I’m just so brilliant!” At the end. NOPE. Emotions are just as important as logic for HUMAN INTERACTION, and if you can’t understand that looks like you’re not as smart as you think you are.
“natural accent” *screams*
If my face weren’t already trying to crawl into my hairline, that would have done it.
INSTANTLY suspicious of anyone with a “natural accent,” doubly if they claim it as one of their more appealing traits.
What does that even mean??? Is that a term I’m supposed to know? UGH this guy.
It’s code for “I speak in a weird, stilted way bc I want people to ask me if I’m British”!!!
I immediately pictured him as “Daddy’s Boy” from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, except more so.
YES.
“I know I sound like I’m from London, but that’s just my worldly demeanor. Really I’m from Bakersfield, but I love travel, and I’ve even been to Canada. I also watch a lot of BBC America.”
hint: you definitely do not sound like you’re from London and anyone actually from London will throw something at you
“I just pick up accents from whatever I’ve been watching on TV lately, ah cannae help it.”
Yes, you fucking well can, and nobody thinks you’re cool.
Wait, this actually happens to me. Not from TV but from reading a lot and/or visiting other places. After a few weeks in Canada I find myself copying some of the accent; and after reading so much fanfiction for Sherlock I kept blurting out British slang for shit. And every time I know it sounds like an affectation and it’s embarrassing.
I mean, I do it too, and have to pay attention to make sure I don’t sound like I’m making fun of people’s accents during conversation. The difference is that we recognize that this sounds like an affectation, rather than playing it up as just something we can’t help doing, ha ha, but look at how secretly clever it makes us look, please ask us more about our linguistic mimesis.
all pursed lips furrowed brow studying Dr. Who and scribbling down notes
I did love the responses to the last guy in the MeFi thread: every one of them was calling them out on his shit
Besides the ones that were like “maybe you should try being a PUA.” Other than those they were great though.
Actually some of them both called him on his shit and suggested that he try pick-up artistry, didn’t they? Interesting combo.
“You seem like a dumbass sketchy loser, just like a PUA. Go hang out with those guys, maybe they’ll think you’re cool.”
Oh, I missed those! I must have been skimming too quickly.
I think the good ones outnumbered those, thankfully 🙂
This is why I don’t feel too unkind making fun of these dudes on the internet: it is so important to build up that red flag compendium!
Ok, I could only stomach a skim of the NYMag genius, but I HAVE QUESTIONS:
Did you specialize in a certain food [in competitive eating contests]?
I’ve eaten over 20 different foods in competition, including ice cream, hard-boiled eggs, baked beans, canola, corned beef and cabbage, and pierogi.
WHAT IS A CANOLA EATING CONTEST. Please tell me he said granola and it was mis-transcribed?
(ETA: The first 2 pages of google results for “canola eating contest” yield only baking contests sponsored by the canola industry.)
Before that, I had a huge crush on Little Orphan Annie, who I knew from the cover of an LP my father owned (to make matters worse, it might even have been a cartoon version of her on the cover)….she would sing, “I love ya tomorrow,” and I would think, Oh really, you’ll love me tomorrow? I didn’t quite get the grammar of the song.
Ok, this could be a lot of us and our respective cartoon character crushes, yes? Except for the admitting it in a major publication and deciding it speaks to a DEEP NEED FOR LOVE part?
When we all met at the airport, I thought, What would the popular guy at school do? He would look at the nearest hot girl and wink.
He would not do that. He is the popular guy, not the creepy guy.
I THINK they must have meant “cannoli eating contest” (which is a Thing) because otherwise I’m picturing him chugging a bottle of canola oil and…. no… 🙁
CANNOLI! Okay, that makes way more sense than granola. And way, way, WAY more sense than canola.
MYSTERY SOLVED.
That was really bothering me (I mean of course, it was far from the only thing bothering me about that whole article, but anyway)–Thank you!
I’m wondering if he thinks ‘canola’ is the plural form of ‘cannoli’.
omg I really, really hope so… that would be the icing on the cake.
Oh my god. OH MY GOD.
Having once drank part of a glass of Wesson oil by accident, I second your… no… 🙁 heartily.
That would just…that would do terrible things to your digestion for days.
And then there’s: “I thought I’d be a professional baseball player to the day I died”
Which seems to really undermine the whole “genius” claim unless he planned to be hit by an errant and fatal line drive at the ripe old age of 34.
Ugggghhhhh, what’s worse is when they get older. And then they’re like “I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW HOT 18 YEAR OLDS WON’T DATE ME.”
The “fedora guy” is kind of notorious on MetaFilter, to the point that every once in a while someone will post a “what’s wrong with fedoras?” question on Ask Metafilter and this post will get linked (along with the obligatory “fedoras are OK, it’s trilbys that get associated with douchebros”). It’s a very young-guy-with-no-real-sense-of-personal-style-who’s-trying-way-too-hard kind of post, and I have a certain amount of sympathy for him, having gone through my own fedora period in my late teens during my first year or two in college. (In my defense, this was only a few years after Blues Brothers came out.) There’s also a MetaTalk thread (for those unfamiliar with the site, MetaTalk is where MeFites can discuss threads and other site issues; the popular abbreviation is MeTa) during which, among many other things (it’s a long thread), some people theorize that the original post may be satire.
Original Blues Brothers-related fedora wearing is entirely legit, tho.
man, the worst thing these guys ever did was ruin two perfectly respectable hats.
edit: that’s probably not true, probably some of those guys have done a bunch of genuinely awful things like harass or assault women or something, in addition to contributing to a pretty gross culture of male entitlement. I am just mad about the hats as well.
I was so confused here for a minute because I was sure you were talking about Jake and Ellwood. Which, I mean, obviously they caused some major property damage, but also they DID save the orphanage, so.
The hat thing is almost certainly the worst thing they’ve done to other men.
despite being a 20-year-old from Poughkeepsie
See, I read comments like this and feel like I dodged a gigantic bullet by not going to Vassar.
Ehh, I went to Vassar and there was a pretty heavy divide between campus and town for the most part (which is not to say that that was a GOOD thing, it was decidedly not).
You probably did dodge several bullets though, because there were fedora-types APLENTY and an astonishing version of straight male entitlement that comes from being a minority on campus AND having had lower criteria for acceptance than the female applicants. I went to Vassar straight from an all-girls boarding school so… got riddled by several small and disappointing bullets. The whole experience did help fuel later misandry though, so in the long run probably worth it?
I mean, I went to Connecticut College, which also had an insufferable amount of straight male entitlement. On the plus side, there were considerably fewer fedoras.
I am suddenly reminded of my favorite Ask Metafilter post of all time, “Is it a grand gesture to anonymously give a woman I think is beautiful a banjo?”: http://ask.metafilter.com/140517/Is-it-a-grand-ge…
The banjo thread is absolutely all time, and I have work to do today, must post an ask mefi on how to balance these competing priorities
work, vintage ask mefi threads, and the beautiful woman that i am 100% in love with and committed to but she’s been giving me mixed signals in the three weeks we’ve been dating.
on the other hand, banjos are expensive, always take a free banjo
Srsly I am learning to play another instrument quite badly, would swap it for a banjo if one arrived in the mail.
SWF looking for no strings banjo
PLEASE SEND PICS
but if the banjo has no strings, how can she play it under that picturesque tree?
badum-bump, tss
THAT WAS THE JOKE
Yes, yes, and we don’t need no dirtbag banjo bearer. That doesn’t mean I don’t want one.
Imagining a series of unstrung banjos arriving at my door, a series of panicked calls to Homewood music asking for advice and tutorials re:stringing, tuning…. God I might as well just buy one myself.
yeah but i think you’d want your banjo to have strings tho?????
That’s a thing of beauty.
If anyone is still hesitating about reading this thread, I present the following post by spinn:
“Nothing says “I have a heartfelt wish for your life to go well” like the majesty and the gravitas of the gift of a banjo.
If it helps in your thought process, imagine if instead of the actual banjo, you availed yourself of one of Hallmark’s line of “This Anonymous Note Sends You Good Wishes In Lieu Of A Banjo” cards, unsigned, and sent to her parents’ house. If you envision that having a good ending, then maybe you can take baby steps towards the banjo to see how that works out for you, like a kazoo discreetly left at her lunch table with her name and a bow, or a mouth harp tucked in the top of her car’s sun visor so it drops delightfully into her lap next time she has to save a parking garage stub.”
Now go read the thing.
The winter white cashmere shawl has always been something I loved as weird ask stories. http://ask.metafilter.com/166208/Should-I-pay-to-…
Oh my, that was delightful.
Oh, to have the complete arrogance and unselfconsciousness of winter-white cloak lady!!
That letter is amazing. I wish there was an update! And I sincerely hope the new associate who was engaged to this crazy person dumped her before she destroyed his career.
There was!
“So, crazy girlfriend of co-worker got more and more wacky as time went on. Eventually she emailed the HR person at my husband’s firm and demanded a copy of his review, gave us a 5 min monologue about how we need to provide filtered water to the employees and asked to put up a wallpaper border in the associate’s shared office. So weird. The associate and shawl lady have since broken up. The associate is doing well at my husband’s firm, and is generally a good guy (who just can’t establish boundaries).”
Happy endings for all! Except the winter-white cloak, alas.
I don’t know if I should be relieved or kind of disappointed nothing like that ever happens here. 🙁
Who even ARE these people?
This thread is amazing and I love all the Mefites who call him out on selfishly involving this poor woman in his fantasy. A very nice case of “you are pretending this is about doing something nice for someone else but actually it is about doing something for yourself (and incidentally creeping someone out at the same time).”
HAAAAA The dude comes back and is like “what if I give the banjo to somebody else, is that ok guys?” I love this thread.
The truly dedicated may also enjoy the 150-post meta-thread ABOUT the banjo question. (Maybe. I have not re-read it myself since I am trying to maybe get some small amount of work done today, so I don’t know whether it contains anything amusing enough to wade through it.)
You’ve neglected to mention whether she is the kind of person who might enjoy a banjo is my favorite response, because that is a delightful sentence. The many, many variations of “dude, why a banjo” are so beautiful.
I am still making startled owl screeches of indignation and awe and amusement over that.
Aaahhh the banjo (and the shawl) are highlights of mefi history.
a) this was great
b) the word “banjo” has lost all meaning
Without reading the actual post: Yes, yes it is.
The banjo, the cashmere shawl, the fedora and pinstripes guy. These are some of the all time AskMe greats. The Toast comment section is clearly filled with kindred spirits.
Pros: I am, apparently, quite attractive – I regularly sport pinstripes and a fedora, and I’m informed that pictures of me prompt girly coos (which confuses no one more than me). I have a natural accent – I am often thought to be either British or Eastern European (having lived in both places), despite being born and raised in the States. I read everything I get my hands on, and have wacky tales of adventure to amuse and intrigue. I also tear up the dance floor at clubs.
TAKE ME NOW
PINSTRIPES AND A FEDORA i am swooning
doesn’t…. doesn’t everyone have a natural accent?
no no the American midatlantic way of speaking is the human default, everything ELSE is an accent, don’t worry tho it’s an easy mistake
Girly coos. GIRLY. COOS.
Hey, no one is more confused about the girly coos than he is!
Girly. Coos.
Maybe he has girls confused with pigeons?
That would make sense! Do pigeons like pinstripes?
I mean, maybe he dropped some sandwich crumbs on his lap while he was eating lunch in a wacky and vaguely British way.
I COULD BE WRONG, but didn’t Bert wear pinstripes and a fedora when he sang and danced about Doin’ the (coo coo) Pigeon on Sesame Street? DIDN’T HE??? Y’all, this bro is Bert!
And Bert ALSO has a “natural accent.” ALL SIGNS POINT TO YES.
Which means this guy has one fewer than the normal number of eyebrows.
pfffffffffff
“Well, did you show her my pic? Did she coo?”
“Did she what?”
“You know, coo. A girly coo. Like, ‘ooo, he’s cuuuute’. Cooing.”
“…no, man. She didn’t.”
“Damn, that pic usually works to elicit at least a little cooing. Women, amirite??”
Maybe they coo because he looks like a baby deer trying to walk on ice?
Incidentally, I only do that to things I pity but don’t want to step on. Like “aw, poor thing, can’t get a girl.”(subtext: no wonder.)
You had me at wacky tales of adventure, M’Lord. How I adore being amused and intrigued.
Fortunately, with this guy, I think I can do that from a distance.
“But what few sex parties I’ve attended have always been fascinating and hilarious, even though nine times out of ten I ended up reading books (I come prepared)”
GUYS. he brings BOOKS to SEX PARTIES.
…though tbh I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’d probably do that too. 😛
look though, why would he go to ten sex parties if after the first nine he spent the whole time reading books?
the world is a rich tapestry and everything, but my feeling is if you don’t have sex at nine sex parties then maybe sex parties aren’t really your thing.
and how must the other people at the sex party feel being called “fascinating and hilarious.” Pretty sure that’s not normally the intended vibe.
I feel bad laughing at this guy but he could not more clearly have a checklist of “things that uncool people think make them sound cool,” and “going to sex parties to show that I am worldly and experienced in the ways of sex” is right after “not being super interested in sex parties to indicate that I am a superior romantic partner” on that list.
How do you get invited to 10 sex parties if you don’t really participate?
Wait, how do you get invited to sex parties?
still like to think I’d actually try to participate instead of cultivating an air of amused detachment though, in case anyone was looking to invite me
don’t look at me, I have been invited to zero sex parties
…well, I do know people who have been invited to sex parties who don’t participate. It’s usually because they are witty, lively, good conversationalists, etc. who add to the party part, just not the sexy times while not shaming or bringing down the sexy vibes. Or are the witty, etc. non-participating partner of a participant.
That still doesn’t explain this shmuck.
Or because they’re excellent at making sure the “snacks and hydration” part of the evening goes smoothly. Like designated drivers, but for sex parties.
I feel like those folks need their own snappy, euphemistic name, but I’m too under-caffeinated to come up with one…
Munch brunch monitors? Servants to the servants of Venus?
one of these days someone is going to take a break from getting eaten out, notice this fascinating guy off reading in the corner alone, and ask him about Proust, and everything he has built towards in life will finally have paid off
I mean, not that I think this guy is on track to become a presidential assassin, but now I’m totally reminded of the chapter about Guiteau in Assasination Vacation–that he couldn’t get laid even at the free love Oneida commune.
I remember that! Good times.
Books are really the very last thing I would think to pack for a sex party in the interests of “coming prepared”… like, I feel as though he’s (probably intentionally) missed a some key aspect of the concept of a sex party.
I’m a proponent of carrying a book with you at all times though. What if you get a flat tire on the way to a sex party and are stuck waiting for triple A for 45 minutes. Then you’ll feel prepared.
Note: A slightly modified version of this experience has happened to me, guess which part is modified?
as someone who recently literally grabbed a book en-route out the door of my apt to help a friend who’d locked her keys & phone in her car in the snow…..I relate.
Triple A only takes 15 minutes!
Pros: I am, apparently, quite attractive – I regularly sport pinstripes and a fedora, and I’m informed that pictures of me prompt girly coos (which confuses no one more than me).
Wrong. He cannot POSSIBLY be more confused than I am.
Pros: I am, apparently, quite attractive – I regularly sport pinstripes and a fedora
Thank you, I was trying to describe my expression when I read that and these work much better.
This is literally what my face did upon reading this line.
That was EXACTLY the face I made.
this was 5000% my actual reaction
GRANTED I am a younger Toastie but were fedoras not looked upon with the same horror in 2007?! Or is this dude just lacking that much self-awareness?
Perhaps he is the ur-fedora-wearer.
I was wondering if this was the Fedora Dude who made MeFi history and I’m pleased to see that it was.
Ok, so warning: this link is very depressing on one level, since it concerns people banding together to harass an opinionated woman on twitter… but on another level, it’s HILARIOUS, because a) they did all this on a public thread while trying to be all covert and shit and b) when they were caught… well, they actually believed people would buy this.
Long story short: I now follow Lyndsay on twitter, and I would like to propose a toast to ladies who won’t let themselves be silenced.
Yes, indeed!
I’m hoping she’s okay
Same. Friend of the Toast (TM) Sarah Jeong has also been having a shitty time of it lately, with Bernie-bros pounding on her (for extra irony: she’s actually pro-Sanders!). Twitter can be great, and I love the Toast community on there, but man can it be shitty, too.
ToastieTwitter is such a lovely oasis of supportiveness, it’s easy to forget how awful the rest of twitter is
I have no idea what the hell anyone is yelling about there, I’m guessing I’m better off not knowing.
You guys, I’m contemplating this “genius” poly guy’s wish to grow his hypothetical children up sex positive, who yet must be born in wedlock so they are not shamed as bastards. It’s like meditating the sound of one hand clapping, and I may be approaching total zen enlightenment.
I can’t even wrap my head around it. Because, of course, society still frowns upon children born out of wedlock with the full force of the Victorians.
(Edit as it got too personal )
See, I’m just horrified at contemplating the possible lives those poor hypothetical children would lead. Like, unfortunate boundary erasure is the best-case scenario, and it just gets more upsetting from there.
Honestly of everything in that piece this bit was the part that made the least sense to me. Like, he doesn’t want his children to be outcasts so he has to get married to have them, but is also not willing to give up being poly and will not hide this fact from them or anyone else, despite knowing that being openly so will make them outcasts. I think that’s the “logic” there?
Hmmm no, see, he’s very logical, so if you don’t understand then you must be letting your emotions get in the way. Sorry (not really though, because being sorry serves no logical purpose).
Oh, to me his use of “bastard” read as a weird petty insistence on using Precise Dictionary Definitions for Everything, probably to show how smart he is. “Like, that’s just the WORD for a child born out of wedlock, why would anyone be offended by a WORD.”
It’s also an opportunity for him to accuse society of having medieval views on bastardy.
I ALSO TEAR UP THE FLOOR AT DANCE CLUBS
I dunno about anyone else, but that line is going to get me through the rest of today.
BTW, if you do a search on Tumblr for “what if canada was real” you get some very fine results.
(this was in the early 2000s, before the court challenges, when Canada was still way ahead of the US on marriage equality.)
My brother used to work as a short order cook. There was a guy there who was from Canada; my brother would tease him about it by calling him Mr. Tumnus. “Canada’s not a real place! A magical forested land where it’s snowy all the time, where gay people can get married, where they just give away health care to anyone who needs it… I mean, come on!”
Of course, being from a place where they value good public education and literacy, he got the reference without further explanation and laughed along with pride.
Oh, Canada!
Sometimes when I’m feeling down I do a google image search for “misandry gif” and spend 5-10 minutes going through all the results. It brightens my whole day.
Quality use of time!
I love the Wonder Woman/Batman one. Have you seen it?
Yes, so good. Top of my list is the Black Widow/mace one, though. It’s really the gold standard.
That’s my favorite, too! It’s the one I have saved in my reaction gif folder.
Fantastic.
What is actually supposed to be happening there?
I think she might be getting vision of something happening to him? I dunno. I love it too much out of context to look up the episode info. I don’t want to be honestly informed.
[life, changed]
The CBC has the latest in IMPORTANT SLOTH NEWS for you right here.
Lotufo said the highway encounter was “very rare.” He also said the officers told him later that the sloth was “pretty calm” and appeared happy when they took him back to the forest.
k but are sloths even physically capable of being anything but calm and looking anything but happy? Has there even been a news story about an out-of-control rampaging sloth that had to be brought down by tranquilizer darts?
Look at its face!
As always, there is a Simpsons clip for that.
I hate to admit it but I read your post and saw the picture below and thought, wow, I didn’t know sloths lived in Canada! Maybe I should move to Canada.
Clearly my love for sloths does not extend to actual knowledge about their habits or habitat. I just see them smiling and my heart melts.
I once read a story in college from a sloth researcher who apparently did something to provoke a sloth accidentally. They can apparently move quickly when motivated to do so. One scampered down a branch, bit him, and scampered off.
He said the worst part is that he couldn’t ever tell anyone how he’d gotten the injury because no one would believe him.
A scampering sloth bite! Amazing. Though I can see how that would be tricky to convey:
“What happened to your hand?”
“A sloth ran down a tree and bit me!”
“… Dude. Haha. What actually happened to your hand.”
Poor sloths; they try to rampage in an out-of-control way, but they just do it so slowly that it has no effect.
I feel like this is way too apt a description of my life.
They are fierce! but ineffective.
I saw a sloth in Costa Rica once, by the side of a dirt road! It pushed itself up and opened its arms SO WIDE and looked like it was grinning from ear to ear, and no other animal I have ever seen in my life looked as much like it wanted a cuddly hug as this sloth did.
“Oh, he’s trying to scare you away,” our tour guide explained. “See, he’s showing you his long, razor-sharp claws.”
I regularly sport pinstripes and a fedora
*backs away slowly*
I have a natural accent
SO DOES EVERYONE, YOU’RE NOT SPECIAL.
That book about nannies sounds amazing and I must get my hands on it instantly. Regarding the bit about nannies internalising class structure, there’s a bit on one of Deborah Devonshire’s books (The House, I think) where she talks about how at Chatsworth in the 20s, when her husband was a child, the grandchildren were given nurseries, seats at the table, etc., in strict order of precedence. It filled me with rage.
I just BOUGHT the Nannies book. Only 1p on amazon uk
Yay! I will follow suit.
I can’t help but feel that he actually means “I have a slightly unnatural accent and I would like you to notice that.”
What he really means is ‘I have an affected unnatural accent that I’ve put a lot of effort into in order to make myself distinguishable to the ladies’
Ah, yes. I think this is what I meant but you put it so much better.
Oh man I was really hoping the guy with the pinstripes and fedora was also into riding a unicycle.
oh my GOD, it would be icing on the douchecake.
I’m not proud, but I briefly dated one such douchebag in college. He was more hipster douche than fedora, but definitely rode a unicycle around campus. He tried breathing into my lungs once because he found it to be intimate (protip: don’t try doing that unless the other person is literally not breathing) and told me that once he graduated he was moving to Portland and probably never speaking to anyone at [our tiny Ohio college] again. Btw he was a junior at the time, and I thought he actually liked me, so I was like, well, what am I? Also you have a year left to be friends with people?? How does that work??
Thankfully I never actually slept with him. Dodged a unicycle-sized bullet.
I (for a few short weeks) dated a self-described poet who owned not one, not two, but THREE copies of Ulysses. He also thought I was “intellectually disappointing” because I would make small talk about the weather and the food in the dining hall. AMA.
Dear god, 3 copies of Ulysses. I can’t even begin to imagine the pretension.
Why would he need three copies of Ulysses? Was he worried people would steal two of them?
He breathed into your lungs. That’s just… what even is that. I don’t understand how people can say things like that without collapsing from shame.
It was massively uncomfortable (as in, I would cough every time, because THAT’S NOT HOW BREATHING WORKS) and I could tell he was disappointed that it never was the poetic, beautiful thing he imagined it to be.
Every time? You mean he tried it more than once? Thank God you never had sex with him, given his fundamental misconceptions about anatomy.
Well, technically it was one time, but multiple tries in that one hangout session. If that makes sense.
I’ve done it as part of pot smoking, it’s not terrible.
I should add — one person has to breathe IN while the other person breathes OUT into their mouth. You can’t just …….. blow into another person’s lungs.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh trust me, we tried (also he was not the best at explaining, I’m sure.) I coughed every damn time. Probably my body was like “what are you even doing, this is a sign, leeeeave” and I didn’t listen.
That’s how you get TB that is. Or at least it sounds like it.
tried breathing into my lungs once because he found it to be intimate
ohmyGOD WHAT
this was going to be my reaction too. *thomas jefferson voice* Whaaaaaaaaat!
Also, I think unicycles look kind of fun and if I had better balance maybe I’d try, but it’s the combination of all these cliches that is the killer. Just in case anyone reading does ride a unicycle, but doesn’t also wear pin stripes and a fedora.
Yeah, I don’t know either. He (made up?) some bullshit about how he did it with his ex (who actually died the summer before in an accident) and it was sooooo intimate to “share breath” with someone and here, let’s try it. It didn’t work, and any medical professional can tell you why.
19-year-old me hadn’t quite learned the art of saying “no, yeah, that sounds dumb” to boys.
Did he think you were a horse or something?
Please tell me you went to Oberlin. Because that’s where my unicycle-riding, mandarin-learning, genius who 15 years later and an expensive education later is a janitor and still a pothead, went.
Haha I did not, sorry. As far as I know, mine never learned Mandarin, but he definitely smoked a lot of pot and was a philosophy major. I have a feeling tiny liberal arts colleges are like a breeding ground for their kind. And Ohio has a lot of those, so: sorry, rest of the country.
I was also about to ask if you went to Oberlin. I’m now trying to think of other small Ohio colleges with a reputation for hipster weirdos.
Kenyon? Antioch?
There are just so many!
No, he’s the guy here who rides around town on a pennyfarthing.
Ugh, I ate a bag of Dole Salad yesterday, and then was notified it was recalled due to Listeria. I am waiting to see if I die. That said, that Posh Nanny story made me laugh.
I had two bags last week and now every twinge I’m convinced is my impending doom.
I have a stomach ache. Possibly psychosomatic.
Oh my god THANK YOU for saying something though… I didn’t hear about the recall and I’m not sure if the salad mix I have at home is Dole or not… now I have a giant post-it note on my purse (because lol who uses iPhones for important reminders??) to check as soon as I get home. So, seriously, thank you, and I hope you don’t die 😉
“Voting sites are not always fully accessible, depressing the percentages of disabled voters in any region.”
It’s not just voting sites that are inaccessible. I’m constantly unable to attend functions that are on the second floor of historic buildings here because I can’t climb stairs. People forget to think about inaccessibility when they book events. Then I have the uncomfortable choice of shaming them or not attending.( So far I’ve been gently declining and telling them why. They get embarrassed. GOOD.) The city is a death trap right now for disabled people due to ice and snow. The ADA was just a start; we have a long way to go before disabled people have equal access.
Come on man pinstripes are for special occasions only, like if you make the Yankees in 1915.
You’re killing me today with these. You know that.
If there’s any UK political Toasties out there, The Womens Equality party are looking for a Digital Comms director http://www.womensequality.org.uk/we_are_hiring
I’d love this job but I doubt I’m anywhere near experienced enough (and I can’t copy write for shit)
Also, join the Women’s Equality Party!
Brb, just laughing for a million years at that shirtless shamer article from Buzzfeed. I’ve seen it sooooo many times on Tinder, guys all like ‘Want a girl with some self-respect, not one of these half naked hos’ and then five pics of themselves wrapped in a dick ribbon of manhood and nowt more.
Ok, somehow I read that last part as “5 pics of their dicks wrapped in a ribbon of manhood.” I can’t say that either way would surprise me, although the ribbon might be a nice addition to the usual plain, unadorned dick pics.
You think correctly http://the-toast.net/2015/09/09/men-wearing-a-mil…
How did I forget??? Seconding LaxMom, must always remember dick ribbons.
I forgot about the dick ribbons. Must always remember dick ribbons.
DICK RIBBON OF MANHOOD! *does jazz hands*
“Dick Ribbon, Agent of MANHOOD”.
Oooooh, Debo’s stuff, oooh, I’m having palpitations here, aaargh, wonderful wonderful wonderful….Ok, calm down dear…Thank you toasties…
Do you think these guys that pin their whole identity to their high IQ know that the IQ test was designed as a benchmarking test for children and wasn’t intended to be an indicator of intelligence at all? with the original test it was understood that the scores should improve as the child got older.
They definitely don’t.
The general rule is: anyone who makes a big deal about their or other people’s IQs (a) doesn’t understand IQ testing (b) is an asshole.
I think everyone would be better off if we didn’t put intelligence on this weird pedestal. Both celebrating IQ and denigrating IQ does the same thing (confirms that it’s special somehow). Most people have no problem admitting that people are good at different things. We don’t have to put a spotlight on it, but we don’t have to hush it up either. We already know that people differ in how good they are at figuring things out or picking up new knowledge, and that’s what IQ is, it’s not magical.
If “logical” Internet men were actually logical and didn’t just assume that they must be good at logic because they’re bad at emotions (a less than logical conclusion), they’d figure out pretty quickly that nobody wants to hear their test scores or look at their fedoras. But, alas…
The only things IQ tests are good for is testing how good someone is at taking IQ tests.
I wrote a paper on Lewis Terman in grad school and ended up even more unimpressed with IQ tests than I’d been in kindergarten, when I’d steadfastly refused to put my finger on the duck because I could see the duck just fine, thank you, and didn’t NEED to put my finger on it to prove I understood, and could we please get on with the test because it looked like it would be a fun game?
My mother got a phone call later that day saying I was untestable.
Kindergarten you might be my new role model.
D’awwww. It’s true that I had a healthy disrespect for authority even at a tender age, and it didn’t exactly get better as elementary school went on. When my second-grade teacher asked me if I would like to read something out loud for the class, I responded politely, “No, thank you.” A few years ago she told me, “That was when I learned never to ask a seven-year-old if they would like to do something.”
My 4-year-old just failed her first hearing test because she said “They gave me earphones and a little robot voice talked in each ear and then they asked me what the voice said.” Her answer? “I said it doesn’t matter, it was just a robot talking.”
Robots are people too, notreallydorine.
Obviously we need to be more careful about our anti-robot propaganda when the kid is around.
It’s important to acknowledge the voices of our cybernetic brothers and sisters.
Your daughter and I would understand each other.
That’s not true, and I feel I have to say something. There would be no point with a test that only measures what you get on the test. Psychologists have worked for a hundred years to figure out good tests, and today’s tests are pretty good. IQ test scores correlate with a LOT of stuff, even when everything else has been accounted for – educational outcomes, future salary, health, being good at your job, not ending up in prison, etc etc.
The different subtests also correlate with each other, meaning that they pick up on the same underlying ability. If you have a high visuospatial score, you’re more likely to have a good verbal ability. They’re related. But that’s not because everything in the brain correlates with everything else. Well, everything does correlate slightly, but that doesn’t mean that everything is intelligence. Some things are part of IQ, some are not.
It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what intelligence is, but at least it doesn’t mean “being good at things” or “being insightful”, thankfully. For example, artistic ability, social skills and personality aren’t part of intelligence. The IQ tests are trying to catch people’s ability to generally learn – how fast and adept they are at picking things up and figuring stuff out. (Obviously the tests don’t sort people into “can learn” and “can’t learn”, it’s more about the speed and quantity of learning, and accuracy of course.) Figuring things out is a real mental ability that we use in many many different situations – not just when we solve tests.
That said, being a psychology student I have a love-hate relationship with IQ. There are plenty of people who believe, like assholes, that IQ symbolises your human depths or your soul’s potential for greatness or something like that. Those people are snobs, and it’s totally psychology’s fault that they even exist, because the field of psychology has committed a lot of shady or outright evil acts. But since it turned out that IQ is useful and can be used to help people, we still need to use it. If it was worthless, if it was simply “the ability to take IQ tests”, we could have freed ourselves from the entire concept. As it is, we’re stuck with it.
These are all fair points, but cynicism about IQ tests is to be expected given their legacy as a eugenicist tool and the sheer number of assholes who still see IQ the way Lewis Terman did. It seems that people currently working within psychology understand the current version of the test, while a huge percentage of the general population still sees IQ the way it was seen 100 years ago, as a measure of innate intelligence designed to sort the intelligent from their alleged inferiors. That is a big problem.
It’s a huge problem! That’s why I’m writing these comments, and also why I argue whenever I feel that people act like higher IQ means “better person”. The concept of IQ is useful, just like the concept of mental illness is useful, but both of those concepts have terrible histories. All of medicine is pretty bad, honestly, but psychiatry may take the price. But I still don’t think we should all become “psychiatry sceptics” who believe that psychiatry is fake.
Psychology is like a knife. You can perform lifesaving operations with it, but also murder someone. It’s all in how you use it. Laypeople usually believe only one of those things – either that IQ is totally defining, elitist and cool (these people usually assume that they have high IQ), or that IQ is pointless, unimportant and not true (these people usually believe that IQ can be low, because intellectual disability exists, but not high, except for a few very rare and extreme geniuses). We all lose when an important concept is widely misunderstood.
I see differences between psychiatry and the popular construction of IQ. Critics of IQ don’t want to do away with psychology, just this one particular concept. I have never met anyone who argued that drapetomania is a legitimate diagnosis, but the widespread belief in IQ as a measure of innate intelligence and superiority is still alive and well. The idea that IQ sorts people into an intellectual hierarchy is very common.
Psychological and cognitive testing is absolutely necessary to help children access resources that help with learning disabilities etc. But do we need to test EVERYONE and locate everyone on a hierarchy? Kids who struggle need to have educators determine where they need help. They don’t necessarily need a test score that will follow them around forever.
Advanced students need stimulating activities designed to challenge them. They don’t necessarily need a badge like IQ, and their own scores may encourage educators to see them as lazy when they do actually struggle with a particular subject.
And do we need to keep calling this test ‘IQ’? The persistence of eugenicist/antiquated beliefs about IQ aren’t a surprise given that various versions of the Stanford Binet have continued without interruption. Those who promote this test could chip away at its legacy by differentiating it from its previous incarnations.
You said what I was thinking, only in a much more well-thought-out way.
I think the way we talk about IQ belies the misconceptions we have about it. We frequently say that someone is “a high-IQ” person” or that they “have a lot of IQ” as if their IQ score is a measurement of some innate trait. But we would probably never refer to a smart person as “a high-SAT person” or say they “have a lot of SAT.” And any admissions officer will tell you that SAT score alone does not give you the full picture of a kid’s academic potential.
For some reason, a lot of people seem to think that smartness is a physical quantity like height, weight, or electric charge, and that it is measured in units of IQ points – and that, just as a 6 foot person is incontrovertibly taller than a 5 foot person, a 120 IQ person is incontrovertibly smarter than a 110 IQ person. This belief is definitely bogus, but annoyingly persistent, especially among people who are trying to convince you that they are geniuses and want to prove it empirically.
You are making me so very happy, PierrePoutine.
Oh, my teenage dirtbaggy dismay when I discovered that my natural test-taking abilities were not, in fact, enough to take me far in life.
Do I occasionally wistfully pine for the days of Imperial China, where life was probably terrible but careers were determined by performance on the civil service exam? More than I should admit in public.
I got a certificate framed on my wall says I put the star shape in the star shaped hole, top of my class
Which one are you talking about? The early tests I know of were attempts to measure learning ability in schoolchildren. (Happily, they were trying to figure out which kids needed extra help, they weren’t going to declare them unteachable. Of course, the tests were later used for that anyway, because everything sucks.)
I made it halfway through the NYMag article before scrolling back up to see the guy is 41, not 24. Now I’m just sad for him.
That man will always be 24.
OH NO
I was so sure he was 23, maybe 24. I was holding out hopes he would look back in a few decades and cringe and laugh at himself. Ohhhhhh noooooooo
ETA: Actually I was thinking of the fedora-wearing bro with a natural accent and who tears it up on the dance floor. Still hoping he’s not yet 30, don’t want to check.
Well the post was from 2007 and he was 24 at the time so he’s probably past 30 now and hopefully past this mindset, but I really doubt it honestly.
“I’m apparently quite attractive, see?! I regularly sport pinstripes and a fedora, see? I have a natural accent, see? I’m too big for any city police force to handle, see? It took the United States government to pin the rap on me. Thousands of guys have got guns, but there’s only one Johnny Rocco. M’yeah.”
LOL, thank you for that.
Toasts I am staying home from work today because of crushing misery. Somebody tell me about a time when they were depressed and then shortly afterward they became not-depressed anymore?
I am reading the disabilities article with great interest, thank you Nicole.
I went through a month-long period of severe depression and anxiety around this time last year that led to a mental breakdown at work and an emergency room visit, and am doing much better this winter. Unfortunately, I don’t have a quick solution. I very gradually crawled out of my hole with the help of therapy, pharmaceuticals, a SAD lamp, and extra vitamin D pills. It was the worst I’ve ever felt in my life, but I made it through to the other side, and I’m cheering for you to do the same. Depression is the worst.
I, unfortunately, am going through something similar with anxiety, but I can say as a life-long sufferer of the wonky brain, it does get better. I’ve had small, situational depression/anxiety ruts pass within a few weeks, but usually it takes months. I have to have a Strict increase of regimented self care, blah blah blah, but the big thing is just holding on and taking it day by day. This stuff sucks and is hard, but it doesn’t last forever. And you aren’t alone. *Jedi hugs if you want them*
I do want all the Jedi hugs!!
Thank you. It’s…semi-situational? This big hard uncertain project at work is bringing up every sad feeling I’ve ever had. As long as I was kicking ass at work and getting plenty of sleep, everything was fine; the second my delicately calibrated routine goes a bit off kilter it’s SLOUGHS OF DESPOND.
I did once bounce back VERY fast from a depressive episode, but that episode was directly caused by a particular (prescription) drug. Stopped taking the drug, depression went away! Magic!
{{{{{{{{{{nicola}}}}}}}}}}
I had bad, semi-situational depression in the fall. Four months later I am happier than I have maybe ever been and my life is better than I could have possibly imagined then. Some of it was therapy, some of it was Situation just passing with time. Some of it was actively dealing with Situation in the best way I could. (Some of it was therapy to understand that Situation was not a binary choice with two terrible options.)
Be good to yourself, in both the immediate and long-term sense. (I have a hard time remembering when I am depressed and anxious that eating well, moving about regularly, etc, are also important ways of being good to myself.)
If this guy is so smart, why doesn’t he just learn Japanese?
Because that would require him to compromise his brilliance and meet somebody else where they are, rather than waiting for the world to recognize his innate perfection.
He’s trying to put his weeaboo days behind him.
Because if they talked in Japanese, he might be the one with trouble communicating, and then what would he feel smug about?
Because then his girlfriend would understand that he wanted to sleep around, and his clever “it’s ok in Japan if you don’t talk about it” and “I’m really into honesty” juxtaposition would fall apart.
“I told you I was sleeping around! Just in English, which you don’t speak! I’m a great communicator about sexual ethics, you are just dumb and didn’t understand that we were involved in an evolved, open and honest poly relationship!”
Toasties: I saw Mustang last night. It was beautiful and sad and sorta uplifting and i couldn’t stop crying afterwards. Go see it if you haven’t already!
I have a set of really complex, difficult emotions around that New Yorker article, because my recent experience with CPS (what they call DCF where I live) is that the employees, at least the ones I had the pleasure of interacting with, are stunningly incompetent. I really feel terrible for saying that, but it is God’s truth. The lawyer we hired to deal with our issue said that, in her experience, they *always* make the wrong call–removing kids they shouldn’t, leaving kids they shouldn’t. (I mean, she’s a lawyer, so she’s obviously only getting involved in certain types of cases, but still.) And the agency in our county has a particularly bad reputation, according to some local teachers I know. But, again, still. Children dying in their homes is an absolute fucking tragedy. But terrorizing innocent families because you are ignorant liars is not really the solution.
owning my agree, only due to anecdotal personal experiences. There has to be a better way and a more humane method somewhere.
I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that.
It is ridiculous; they go after perfectly good parents for ‘child endangerment’ because they allow the child to walk to the park alone, but then completely miss the children being beaten and sexually abused.
The article does at least make some good points that prevention is far better, but expensive and messy; plus the government and media like to punish poor women, so preventative programs (like universal income, mental health support, child care support, just some fucking support for poor struggling mothers) would never go over well.
Its a whole big interconnected mess. There’s a lot of child abuse in my country; its a catholic country without comprehensive sex education and abortion is illegal (unless you can afford to travel for it) so a lot of young, poor, women end up with babies they never wanted, which are then beaten and neglected. Then they grow up to be alcoholics (like their parents before them) and criminals (because education is underfunded and failed them and there’s no jobs), and have unwanted babies of their own and the cycle continues.
If only someone in government was smart enough to look at the whole picture.
If only someone in government was smart enough to FUND the whole picture.
It sounds like (from the article, my reading, and anecdotally) we know what helps, but it is messy, complicated, and s l o w. And hard to drum up support, both politically and financially.
I think it is really hard for child protection workers to make the right call because in the cases that get attention, it winds up coming down to: could this worker tell the future? A person’s best prediction, no matter how much training they have (and I agree that in many places they could have much more or better training), is never going to be right 100% of the time. I feel for the workers who are vilified for leaving kids in places it turns out they shouldn’t have, and those who remove kids who would have been better off staying in place. And then I feel for the kids and parents who have to live with the consequences of those decisions that in many cases seem not to have been made in their best interest. It’s really hard and I’m sorry to hear of your experience.
Also Nicole’s story about the most Canadian thing that has ever happened is actually warming my heart. It’s related to something I’m thinking about a lot in re: education and achievement, etc — in the US we act like the only two options for measuring kids’ progress is RUTHLESS COMPETITION versus EVERYONE GETS A TROPHY (but also don’t get me started on that straw man argument) but it’s really not? We could just take the shame out of making as many attempts as are necessary to achieve something, whether it’s a certain reading level or mastery of a certain concept or whatever.
Can I get a fuck yes for this? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/us/2-abortion-f…
Fuck yes!
FUUUUUUUUUUCK. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSS.
(now, please convict them. Then pass a law where we aren’t allow to lie in the media. As long as I’m dreaming…)
Yesssss!!!!! There are not nearly enough opportunities to use the term “hoist on [their] own petard” but this is a legitimate one and for that I am doubly excited.
The headline of that NYMag piece – “What It’s Like to Be a Polyamorous Genius” – presumes the reader hasn’t already been told what it’s like, at length, by the self-proclaimed polyamorous geniuses in their life. It reminds me of that “how can you tell if someone’s a vegan” joke – don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
Oh, this comment is wonderful.
This is deep truth. I had to scroll back up to the top of the article to double check I didn’t actually know this person.
If he’s such a fucking genius he could maybe learn some Japanese to better “communicate” with his girlfriend.
No, you’re missing the point, it’s the girlfriend who has the communication problems because she’s the one who has the audacity to be Japanese.
Yeah she just, at a deep, fundamental level, can’t understand “concepts”
(Which concepts??? ALL concepts???)
Little known fact: there are no concepts in Japan.
he communicates perfectly, it’s everyone else who fails to understand him or be understood by him
right?
also, LOL @ “concepts”
He’s not self-proclaimed, he’s been tested (according to the article). It’s not that strange that someone who’s being interviewed about their talent or brain quirk will talk about their talent/quirk. Make no mistake, I still didn’t like him, but that was because of his misogyny and irrational contempt of emotion.
I agree with everyone saying that he should try learning Japanese instead of complaining about her English, but learning an entirely new and very different language isn’t easy just because you’re an unusually fast learner. EasiER is not easy.
I know I come off like I’m defending this guy, but I’m not, I’m just really not into the tone this comment section sometimes uses when talking about some psychological things. The Toast is WAY better than the rest of the Internet, but let’s focus on the ways this guy is an asshole, not on the way his brain is wired.
So yesterday I learned that B.o.B is a flat-earth truther and today he released a song called Flatline ft Neil Tyson (yes, that Neil Tyson). Actual lines from the song: “Stalin was way worse than Hitler/That’s why the POTUS gotta wear a Kipper” This has nothing to do with anything but I needed a space to properly convey my bafflement at this
Twitter is entirely baffled/horrified and I’m enjoying it tremendously. John Hodgman is a particular joy atm
<3 John Hodgman. This is like the perfect goofy Internet situation for him.
Just went to look up John Hodgman’s twitter and DAMN WHEN DID HE GET SO HOT???
I got to meet him in person last fall when he toured in Portland! He was so charming with me and my mom (not surprised by that in the least), and I also saw he’s become startlingly thin, in a TV actor sort of way. My first impression of him was formed in his Apple commercial, early Daily Show days (it seems he’s currently using his first appearance there as his Twitter header image, heheh), so it was quite a surprise to see him now. Like, he’s thinner than any non-TV man his age would be. His hands were spidery.
I mean, this is kinda apples and oranges, even though they are both similar, but in a way, Stalin was worse than Hitler.
Not that it makes Hitler good.
Or explains any of the next line.
Or just helps with the bafflement of this being in a song.
honestly those tweets were one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I feel ok being entertained by it because, as someone on tumblr pointed out, there’s really no harm in being a flat-earther. It’s not like anti-vaccine people where actual lives are at stake and if anything, it’ll encourage other people to actually learn something about science maybe.
Ugh, the number of “why don’t you try being a PUA” advice comments in the Metafilter thread.
I feel like the thread is a weird lil artifact of the times before women really got together on the internet to call these guys out. There are so many words for this guy that we now have in our collective vocabulary! I bet a lot of those commenters have since learned that PUA stuff is not about building confidence & social skills.
I sincerely hope so! Poor benighted internet commenters of 2007. At least one person noted that it’s a completely misogynist viewpoint.
Yeah I was surprised by that, too! Perhaps it’s just a relic of 2007, but I was so disappointed to see people rec’ing PUA to this guy. If anything, that would make him worse!!
Just playing hooky this morning (class was cancelled because my advisor is still in DC, and I decided to take a nap since work wasn’t expecting me anyway and my cramps suck).
I really really love grad school, I forgot how much until I realized I was killing time by researching on google scholar. I could have done anything, and that was my choice. Hmm, maybe academia *is* for me.
Anyway, I like my classes, I’m nuts, because I’m taking quantitative geography, and GIS theory together plus catching up on research and remote sensing. But the GIS theory class will involve some arduino, it seems? so this is meshing with my interests very well.
My eldest is avoiding talking to me/texting/anything. I think he thinks I’m going to yell at him for the kid with the broken hand. All I want is for him to see a counselor and not spend 20 hours a day in his dad’s basement.
Jerkbrain is trying to break free (see hormones above). Today I realized that, if I got my period at 13, skipping 2-ish years for late periods and pregnancies, adding up ALL the weeks of PMS and suicidal tendencies that I had to cope with until, at age 45, I found a drug that mostly tamps them down if I also skip some work, sleep a lot for a day, and use all my self awareness? I have lost over 8 years of my life to hormone related severe depression. But I was raised in the 70’s and 80’s where you were a feminist traitor if you admitted that your period made you less productive than a man. So I didn’t even seek help for decades. Sorry, but a big old fuck you, second wave feminists. Just. Fuck. Off.
(sorry, jerkbrain, I warned you.)
Does anybody have a cure for the jerkbrain “let me remind you about something unfixable and horrible about your life to fixate on for the next 36 hours” blues?
I’m not a parent. Is there a way for you to text your eldest something like “I’m not going to yell at you for the broken hand. All I want is for you to see a counselor and not spend 20 hours a day in your dad’s basement.”
I have no clue if that’s how parenting works. I just imagined myself as a teen and the message felt OK to me.
But you are a Rock Star Parent and I trust your judgment completely.
Yeah, that’s pretty much where I’m going today. I’m gonna check with a mom friend who brought her son home sophomore year due to too much drinking and see how she got him through. Problem is that the only people I see who’ve managed to do that only have one housing option for the kid, so the kid is stuck within naggable/nudgable distance. OTOH, her kids respond to nagging. My kids reflexively shut down.
(as an aside, how reluctant are my boys to ask mom for help? High school boy is having history troubles. In counseling, I suggested he let me help, since I must be good at this school thing if I’ve convinced them to let me get a PhD. He looks at counselor, looks at me, eyes go HUGE. “mom, I just realized. You’re a HISTORY. WRITER. ” (archaeology, but I’ll take it, it’s still old stuff) “Maybe I SHOULD ask you to help me write history essays!!!!!”)
I’ll text the older boy later that I’m not mad about the hand. Can’t hurt.
Thank you.
Guess what? As soon as I texted “I’m not gonna yell at you”, my phone rang. You have good instincts!
🙂
Ughhhhh that sucks. My suicidal PMDD has tapered off a little bit since when it was very bad in my mid to late 20s, but it’s still not, you know, GOOD. I am not sure what to do about the jerkbrain. What I usually try to do is, when I realize it’s my PMDD, just journal and distract until it goes away on its own when the hormones settle down. It’s really, really, really hard to do that, because it FEELS like the wrong thing to do when it’s happening, you know? Like …. something bad will happen if I don’t focus on this? Ugh.
I’m scheduling my uterine ablation for next month but I’m not too optimistic because if it IS adenomyosis then the ablation won’t help and I’ll have wasted months and months and I’m so goddamn sick of this. I mean, I’ve literally, LITERALLY tried everything (meaning: do NOT give me advice please and thank you not you LaxMom but anyone else), and all that’s left is lupron (FUCK NO), ablation (probs won’t work), and hysterectomy (ugh).
I”m holding out for the MRI ultrasound thing. But even with 2 teaching hospitals nearby I haven’t found anybody who says they do it on their website.
If it helps, my friend who got an ablation in her early 30’s said it changed her life. She had to fight to get them to do it, but she is very happy with the results.
I try to be kind to myself, and I have been known to say, “it’s a migraine day, so if I’m not making sense, just ask me again tomorrow”. I figure even if I manage to avoid the migraine I still am having legit brain problems and people get migraines, so it’s not lying. I have to make sure I don’t expect high performance out of myself, but allow myself to maybe not get everything done, or maybe do things not as well or as quickly as I might have ordinarily. That was hard to let happen with my perfectionist brain. Like today I had to fight the “well you have found time with your cancelled class, now make up that day at work”, to let myself listen to my body and go back to sleep for an hour after doing the morning kid stuff.
A hahahahhahah hah haaaaa even with my insurance covering it at 80% the ablation costs $500 out of pocket, so….that’s not happening.
Yeah migraines suck, and even if you take your meds in time to head off (hah) the actual pain, you’re still stuck with brain fog and all those other symptoms. Being kind to myself about what I’m actually ABLE to do vs. what I feel like I SHOULD be/be able to do…..well. If you figure that one out, let me know 😀
how is the ablation *supposed* to help PMDD? my mom keeps saying i should do that instead of uterinectomy for the pain, but how would that even matter if the PMDD is hormonal? don’t your ovaries keep producing fluctuating levels of estrogen and progesterone??? which is the culprit behind the depression? i mean, the pain doesn’t help, but the PMDD for me starts several days before the pain.
Oh sorry, as far as I know, it doesn’t, I was just updating LaxMom on my endometriosis/adenomyosis issues, as we had discussed them at great length last week. Right now my GAD and my PMDD are sort of under control with a mixture of therapy, meditation, and meds. My PMDD was the best when I took nonstop birth control pills, but after a while those started to make my migraines happen about every week, so it wasn’t sustainable for me, and I really really miss it.
Oh man I should have included some contextual things to that comment, because I was sort of asking in general, if you knew, since you were so dismissive of it!
I’ve had a few different people suggest that I get an ablation done, because “it will help your periods” but if the worst thing about my periods is the PMDD, I’m completely bewildered about how it is supposed to help.
I really miss being on non-stop BC, too. I would eventually forget to take it a few days in a row, which was terrible, but dear lord it was so nice to not have to plan my activities around a week of being too miserable to get out of bed. I’m really sorry that they became unsustainable for you.
So I had hysterectomy for fibroid tumors and adenomyosis in 2000 and they were able to do it vaginally (which means laparospically) and it was the best thing I ever did in my life. Before it, I was on 2 different kinds of pain meds every 5 hours just to try to get through the day in my job as a lawyer. I guess what I am saying is that having a hysterectomry was WONDERFUL for me. I realize that YMMV though. And I had already had all the children I wanted to have.
Thanks! I am going to call my doctor back tomorrow and see if I can talk with him about my options again with cost in the discussion. It seems ridiculous to me to spend $500 now on something that may or may not work and then have to have a hysterectomy later for $????, you know?
I feel like if there’s a strong chance that the siege wouldn’t work, why not just burn the village down? I mean, it costs $$$ to siege and it’s not permanent, but you really need a permanent solution, so get to pillaging and burning already.
I may be biased, though, because I’ve desperately wanted a hysterectomy since I was 12 years old (hey, that’s going to be 20 years soon!), and the main reason I haven’t pursued it (other than laziness depression) is fear of unfortunate surgical side effects. The enemy you know, and all that.
Yes thank you! My lovely spouse thinks I’m being weird for being like “fuckit take it out” before trying a less invasive approach but he’s not the one who’s had 24 years of pain and so much bleeding that you have to use paper towels instead of tp just to go to the bathroom (yeah I know about the antique sewer system but I also don’t want to bleed all over the floor every time I take a leak). And I mean, $500 is a significant amount of money for us to come up with right now, as it would be for most people, I’d expect. I just have no idea how to approach this at this point because I want to feel better but up to this point my approach in dealing with healthcare is to just give up when things get complicated.
Oh no no no I am so there on “either option is expensive, it is horrible when broken, do the thing that is 100% guaranteed to work that might need to be done anyway.”
I think you should just say that when you next see your doc to discuss the ablation. If you’re apathetic/antipathetic towards having a uterus, say so. You might be a candidate for a uterinectomy rather than a full hysterectomy, which might be easier for your doc/spouse to accept, since you’d be keeping your ovaries.
(I mean, if they’re part of the “to be a woman means to have a uterus” contingent, which was unfortunately Everything I saw when I was researching side effects of hysterectomies, other than surgical accidents, and everything was women lamenting how they’re no longer women or whole people after their medically-necessary-but-not-really-wanted hysterectomies, which I think could partly be due to changes in hormones from the loss of the ovaries, too.)
Yeah last time we discussed taking out the uterus he said we would likely leave the ovaries. And I have no attachment to this stupid painful muscle sack. Wish me luck on future discussions.
I can’t find the post, but a while back there was a thing on Tumblr about Internal Spock: that is, every time Jerkbrain kicks in and says, “you’re an idiot and everyone thinks you smell bad,” imagine a tiny Mr. Spock sitting on your shoulder, saying, “That is illogical, Captain. You are in fact quite smart and your friends have shown no sign of olfactory discomfort in your presence.”
Ugh, I texted Helen three hours ago and she didn’t text back. She must be mad at me.
That is illogical, Captain. It is 2 p.m. on a Wednesday. Helen is likely having a busy day at work and will call you to commiserate when she gets home.
Don’t know how it works for bigger problems, but it’s been an effective (and mildly entertaining) way of dealing with my interpersonal frets.
i love this. it reminds me of the rubber ducky method of solving problems (usually computer programming, but it works for almost everything): explain something out loud to your rubber duck, and you’ll often see a solution you missed.
Wow! I may need to do this. I may also tell my kid this.
I’ve found this article about how to stop thinking about something pretty helpful. The thing I was trying to not think about when I found it was kind of different in nature, but the techniques are pretty general, I think?
Uncle Eddie was truly living his best life.
Nicole, I said so on Twitter already, but I am eternally in your debt for introducing me to Gathorne-Hardy.
I am so happy for you! The British public schools one is OFF THE CHAIN NUTS.
ok but
“There’s a lot of intelligence that goes into competitive eating. You can do physical things like train your body by stretching your stomach, but there’s also a lot of strategy — how you put food in your mouth, how much water you wash it down with.”
No matter how you spin it eating a lot of hot dogs at once is still eating a lot of hot dogs, dude. The fact that he can’t admit something he used to do WASN’T an intellectual exercise is so stupid. It’s an eating competition!!
“I’m laughing at jokes as soon as the punch line comes out” THIS JUST IN, if you pause for a second before you laugh at a joke it means you have a slow brain!! Sorry guys!!
“I’m highly intelligent, proof: I laugh at jokes and eat competitively, getting jokes and eating competitively require intelligence, QED.”
Eating and laughing normally is for plebs, everybody knows that. Only true intellectuals eat by dipping hot dogs in water and eating 50+ at once. He has to do this because smart brain better than urs.
it’s like chess, but played against a mountain of wieners
I’m rooting for the wieners.
wiener v. wieners
One man, one “genius IQ”, one pinstripe suit, one mountain of weiners. Amen.
This isn’t related to the Link Roundup, but I’m going to see Hamilton tomorrow and have to express my excitement!
Right there with you! I’m going tonight. I’ve managed to stick to my plan of only listening to the first half so I’m pretty excited (slash nervous) to find out what happens between “Treasury or State?” and Weehawken.
oh my god, i’m incredibly happy for you
Wooooo!!
Me too! High five! I am VERY EXCITED.
I’m seeing it on SAUTRDAY!!!!!
ALSO I am thrilled to share that if you are like me (1. Lives in DC; 2. Does not own a Kindle; 3. Is interested in reading about British nannies), the DC public library has a copy of The Unnatural History of the Nanny and you can get in line behind me for your turn
BTW, are there DC Toast meetups? Or should we plan one?
Fun little-known thing: DC-area residents who don’t actually live in the city can still get DC library cards!
SAN FRAN/WEST COAST HAMILTOASTS, YOUR TIME IS NIGH
Yayyyohdamnit. I’m moving to the East Coast in six months. IT’S LIKE I DON’T EVEN CARE BUT I DOOOOO, I DOOOOO. Hamilton! Damnit.
SO EXCITED. I did see it in NYC because I’m from there and returned to the motherland for Christmas/Hamilton, but now I can see it again! (and again and again and again) ((probably not that many agains, I’m a grad student and tickets are expensive))
We bought a season subscription just for Hamilton. CANNOT EVEN WAIT.
What do you guys think of this essay?
Girlfriend, Mother, Professor?
We should brainstorm some alternative archetypes!
I’m not sure that linked right so here’s the essay without any pitiful attempts at html:
mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2016/01/25/girlfriend-mother-professor
Ok, I’ll go first.
Nun/Abbess
Witch a.k.a. Wise Woman of the Woods
I had female professors who would fit into those categories. If you’re going Abbess, lots of severe, draping modern-looking gray and black clothes. Conversation style: Straight shooting and moral high ground. Bonus points for shaved head a la Buddhist nun.
If you’re not a minimalist, go for the Witchy archetype. Lots of earthy and/or esoteric accessories. If people perceive you as a bitch, at least they might be also a little bit afraid you’ll put a curse on them.
Granted, both of these archetypes can be perceived as maternal, but more like the spiritual power of motherhood without the cozy parts.
I like Weird Design/Art Lady. Probably more effective for cowing students outside of those actual academic fields.
On second thought, it occurs to me that this may (at least in my head) be a combo of Nun & Witch.
Both those dude articles are reasons I don’t date.
Self-proclaimed smart dudes are the WORST. Self-centered, narcissistic, and enjoy putting people down. Fuck that shit. If I wanted to hang with self-centered narcissists who like to prove their superiority, I’d just call my mom. At least she doesn’t expect sex when we have dinner together.
ok so this is horrible but also the most bonkers thing in the entire world so I have to distribute it far and wide
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/magazine/the-st…
the star-crossed romance of a severely from-birth mentally impaired man from a poor household, and the ethics professor who uses him as her personal Ouija board to discover he’s secretly a highly educated guy who shares all her political views and tastes in wine and is deeply attracted to her
Oh god I read that I while back and then spent a solid week doing basically nothing except shaking my head and muttering “… what the fuck?”
Around the same time I also read a Wired profile on the disgruntled professor who murdered several of her coworkers at the University of Alabama several years ago. That one is also horrifying and bizarre if you want to read more in the “criminally disturbed female academic” genre.
I looked up that article, here is the URL for those interested.
http://www.wired.com/2011/02/ff_bishop/
See, this is why i am extreeemely dubious re: claims of facilitated communication’s effectiveness. I know it’s got some support in the autism community, but it seems like such a clear case of confirmation bias to me. I do believe that alternate methods of communication can be discovered and can be useful, but not like that.
That was bonkers indeed.
Yeah, I read that awhile ago. I think the thing that horrified me the most is that I think that this woman really, really believes that this worked and she did nothing wrong and he actually is a highly educated guy etc etc.
My favorite people:
You don’t agree with me? The problem must be that you don’t understand. Let me explain it again!
No, I get it, I just don’t –
If you fully comprehended the nuances of what I’m saying you would be helpless to disagree. It’s not possible you could chose any side in this argument but the obvious Right and True Path to Enlightenment.
My mother is like this. It’s the woooooorst but also I can sympathize; it comes from a childhood of not being listened to. But it makes arguments TRULY the wooooooorst because it’s just her talking and talking and talking until you submit out of exhaustion.
Mine is like this too but if you disagree with her after more than one explanation she rages out at you, which I feel is somewhat less sympathetic.
She was the 5th of 8 children, though, so she probably never *did* get her opinion heard until she developed Strategy Just Yell Your Opinion Louder.
This happens every time I talk about how I don’t really like Christopher Nolan movies.
I assure you, Man, that I understand Inception, I just think it’s stupid.
Once Inception got to the snowmobile chase part I was legit like, “Wait, I’ve played this videogame level before.”
Pretty sure it was in Tomb Raider II, in fact.
When I saw the Baby Doe headline I thought the article would be about Anjelica Castillo and then I clicked and realized that no, it’s about that OTHER baby doe, and that is too much sadness for me to deal with before noon.
Whereas I always associate the name “Baby Doe” with this Baby Doe who is much less sad. Although possibly bittersweet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Doe_Tabor
I take it back, it is sad. But not as sad as the others.
The biggest problems come when we discuss concepts.
Such as:
– why is there sand
– where is math
– can trees tell time
– who is baseball
– do raindrops get hurt
~~concepts~~
This genuinely made me laugh out loud. Poor girlfriend of MensaMan, she will never truly understand who baseball is.
Ah yes, concepts. If only they had those in Japan his problems would surely be solved.
Where. Is. Math. Hahahaha thank you for that!
The true poetry of your concepts made me think of this Robert Hass poem I love, The Problem Of Describing Trees. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/27/the-… just for anyone who wants to read a poem full of Concepts.
I am laughing way too hard. WHO IS BASEBALL. (We are all baseball.)
I bunt; therefore I am.
Just after I turned 30, I was messaged by a 21-year old who told me he liked older women (!), and that he’d “show [me] things [I] couldn’t imagine,” or words to that effect. I know that it was something along the lines of my imagination being inadequate to thinking about his sexual prowess. I told him that he had no idea what I could imagine, and he responded with “haha ;)”
Oh, honey.
ew ew EWWW. I am in awe of your graciousness – I would have SCREAMED at him for calling me, effectively, old.
He was just so adorably eager, I decided to have some fun messaging him back and forth. And then he suggested that my imagination was unequal to his sexual prowess, and he needed to be put in his place.
Also, Kim Cattrall is my model for “woman who owns the ‘sexy older woman’ label and calls people out on their shit,” so I’m happy to get an early start on being like her, sexually.
To be fair to Sansa, Utah licenses are unbelievably flimsy. Especially given that it takes them three weeks to come in the mail.
I mean, she knows you deserve the best and only the best, and clearly the construction of that licence was inferior.
comma apparently comma
I just booked tickets for NYC in April and cannot contain my excitement. The exchange rate and sold out Hamilton bums me out, but I will be there for my birthday! *Happy dances*
Maybe what I’m about to say is dumb and bordering on “choosing to be offended,” idk. I know that the comics in the New Yorker are just randomly generated basically as ads and not intended as companion pieces to the article but whenever I’m reading something serious there… like the Baby Doe article… the comics are so jarring, seem rather insensitive, and come off as especially stupid and try-hard.
Totally agree! Certainly not a big deal in the scheme of things, but it bugs me every time.
AGREEEEEE.
AGREE AGREE AGREE.
Does anybody here have problems with intense debate and university networks? I have been kicked off this twice in 10 minutes and on top of that I can’t log in with my user name, I have to use my email. Is there a secret trick?
I have had lots of problems getting kicked off intense debate on my phone, but I’ve never had specific problems with university networks (currently posting from a university network on my laptop).
No, but my issue is that it never lets me log in through wordpress on my phone? So then whatever I comment there as myself doesn’t get logged on my list o’comments intense debate page, and I forget to reply to people? IDK
I can’t even imagine being in the same room with that Metafilter guy, let alone DATING him! I wonder if he’s ever had the honor of a person staring at him blankly and them just bursting out with laughter (or nervous horror) at his ridiculousness !!! Shocking, just SHOCKING, that he’s still searching for Mrs. Right!
Can I just take a moment to publicly applaud Mallory’s beautifully firm and unequivocal trashing of crisis pregnancy centers in today’s Prudie column? Because it was DELIGHTFUL.
Yes, the reply to the #notallCPCs question is on point. The first one is Good, the second one is FINE.
Came to post this exact comment. No messing about, CPCs are unacceptable.
What makes it awful is that the name implies a service I would actually want to exist. Pregnancy is weird and hard and uncertain even when you want to be pregnant – it would be nice to have someone to turn to with all your misgivings. But that is not what CPCs are.
I would pay actual money for the dirt from that guy’s law school classmates, because he’s That Guy to the nth degree and That Guy never makes it through law school without making enemies.
Oh lord, yes…
“You know entirely well what you did, and I will not grant you the absolution you are looking for. ”
If Mallory ever said this to me I would likely crumble into actual dust.
And the real problem with this world is this: the people who would find it shameful to get that response are never the ones writing in for advice.
Ain’t that the gods’ truth.
I am so thrilled that the toast has found the fedora dude thread.
He COMES prepared OMG
I'm really late to this, but I looked at his other posts, and he's been a Toast contrib!! http://www.metafilter.com/activity/98819/posts/as…