Ithaca: So Many Gorges
Why does “not required” apparently mean “but you’ll be demoted or fired”?
My company has just announced an overnight, all expenses paid corporate strategy meeting. The meeting begins Thursday at 7 a.m. and ends Friday at 5 p.m. Our regular hours are Monday-Friday 8-5.
I have a very small child, under 5 months, and I do not have child care after 6 p.m., nor do I feel comfortable leaving my child overnight.
I was told it is not required but strongly suggested that I go and stay overnight. If I do not, I will be replaced as the accounting manager, and either be demoted or fired. I am not allowed to bring my child to the meeting, and I would have to pay the difference to have my own room overnight with my child. (Again, no child care). Can my company do this? What options do I have?
If you’ve got a strong stomach (IT ME) settle in with Jezebel’s “What’s the Grossest Thing Your Body Has Ever Done?” roundup. Then tell me yours.
Husband of The Toast Matt Lubchansky contributes brilliance to The New Hairpin: When Bad Hats Happen To Good Actors
We haven’t really been covering the Panama Papers in link roundup because it’s pretty far out of our wheelhouse, but Fusion has a fantastic interactive introduction.
I am reading a deliciously trashy biography of Grace Kelly while I travel, and that woman was DTF and I am HERE FOR IT, get yours, Grace, your life will be short and troubled, so if you get the chance to hop on Gary Cooper’s dick, fuckin’ DO IT. #noregrets #exceptbingcrosbybchewasanabusivedad
How diving became soccer’s greatest crime:
Most of my American friends don’t understand why certain players fall at the slightest touch. The dive is something beyond their grasp. It involves two grave infringements of American morality in sport: a willingness to cheat, and the demonstration – perhaps the celebration – of physical weakness and self-pity. (The flop, basketball’s closest equivalent, is less dramatic and tends to be associated with foreign players.)
To be strong and athletic, full of skill, and then to break down once you reach the penalty area seems absurd. In many ways it is. But all sports have their own peculiar absurdities, and what determines a foul always carries a certain ambiguity. In tennis, there is the foot fault – a simple and literal crossing of the line. In American football, there is pass interference, committed when a defensive player holds or pushes a receiver, or deliberately obstructs his vision of the ball while not looking for the ball himself. Pass interference is full of ambiguity and therefore open to a referee’s interpretation. Even mighty American wide receivers, in the attempt to win the referee’s favour, have been known to exaggerate their falls.
The rise of Aboriginal hip-hop in Australia:
“We have an oral history, so telling stories, you know, is natural, it is part of our genetics,” said Adam Briggs, a Yorta Yorta man from the Victorian town of Shepparton, who is an accomplished rapper, actor and comedy writer.
Even at the age of 29, Briggs, his stage name, has the air of a hip hop veteran. When he speaks, people listen, and for him it is a golden opportunity to vent age-old grievances.
“The racism in Australia is just prevalent and it hasn’t been dealt with,” he told the BBC in the Waterloo district of Sydney. “The conflict of white and black Australia is every day. The kind of struggles and the conflicts exist in every song. I’ve got a great platform to use and I can’t afford to waste it.”
obviously you can care about many things at once, but probably you can care about better things than this:
Is it political correctness, or a shrewd way to clean the scales off an 82-year-old federal program? Will it secure more money for wildlife, or wreck one of the better things the United States government has going?
We speak of the duck stamp.
Essentially a national license for hunting migratory waterfowl, the stamp — now costing $25 and each year featuring a different painting of a duck, goose or swan — must be affixed to every hunter’s state permit. The proceeds are used to acquire new lands for a national archipelago of wildlife preserves, including this bird-rich stretch of tidal Delaware, 95 percent of which was purchased with duck-stamp money.
Now the Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed making the traditional waterfowl share space on the stamps with birds that are not hunted, like herons or hawks. The idea, officials say, is to drum up more interest in the stamps from birders while preserving the loyalty of duck hunters.
RIP, Merle Haggard:
< https://youtu.be/uIxBmyRQlwQ >
Oh, boy, this is so unreasonable (and dangerous for Fred, too):
I wanted to share about my experience, so I wrote a Facebook post. It was overwhelmingly positive. Many people reached out to me to share their experiences as well, including an extremely distant acquaintance from high school. Call him Fred.
Fred has also had challenges with depression. From what I can gather, he’s having some challenges with drinking and drugs too. Ever since my post, he’s taken to checking in with me every couple of days.
At first I thought that was nice–people supporting people in their shared experience. But his check-ins have turned into demands. Call me! I’m triggered! Call me! I’m suicidal! Call me! I’m in trouble.
I know how hard it is to ask for help. I get that he’s not in a place where he’s going to be graceful at it. I would really like to be supportive. He’s in a lot of pain, and he’s isolated. However, he’s stressing me out.
When he contacts me, it’s with demands that I stop what I’m doing immediately and talk to him. We’re not on equal ground–he isn’t willing to schedule a call to talk to me at a time where I have time and energy to pay attention. And his check-ins aren’t about me, they’re about me asking how he is.
Last night I stayed up (far past my sleep time) trying to get a sense of the territory of his dilemma. Two hours in, I asked him a question to try to understand, and he responded, “Plz stop analyzing it. It’s not helping!!!! You can analyze on your own time.”
Memories from one of the original jurors in the OJ trial:
What was it like to be sequestered for that long? I remember hearing that you guys couldn’t watch TV, certain parts of the newspapers were cut out. You were pretty much isolated from the outside world even though you were right in the middle of Downtown L.A. How did that affect you psychologically?
If it had gone on for very much longer I think I would have had to ask to go home. You’re so close to home but you can’t go home. You’re constantly being guarded by sheriff’s deputies who are actually armed. So it was somewhat like you were a prisoner, but you didn’t commit a crime. Everything you did was watched. When we made phone calls it was in a telephone room. You would go in, and the deputy would call the person that you wanted to call. They would admonish them, letting them know that, “This was number 1233 calling … you can’t talk about the trial” and just sit there and listen. On Wednesday afternoons after court, you could have people come down to the courthouse to visit.
(image via)
