I IS DOG. MIGHTY AND TALL.
Brexit (this is a nightmare, I am so sorry, when I went to bed I still didn’t think it would possibly happen, so am woefully sad and also underprepared, please share what you’re thinking and reading):
For Jim Plows, in Clacton, Essex, the news of Brexit this morning triggered “panic stations”.
Despite voting to leave Europe, the 77-year-old said he was surprised by the news. His wife, Pam, said her first thoughts as the results came in was: “Oh dear.”
The retired couple from Jaywick, in Essex, were among several visitors to Clacton pier to say they were concerned about the process for Britain leaving the EU.
“The next year will be a worry,” said Jim Plows.
abusive murderer Oscar Pistorius takes it to a new fuckin level:
In his first TV interview since his girlfriend’s death, Pistorius said he “couldn’t disagree” with those who felt he should be punished. “At times I don’t feel like I should have the right to live for taking someone else’s life. What’s difficult is dealing with the charge of murder,” he said.
But Pistorius said he did not want to “waste my life” behind bars. “If I was afforded the opportunity of redemption I would like to help the less fortunate like I had in my past,” he said. “I would like to believe that if Reeva could look down upon me that she would want me to live that life.”
This Mother Jones investigation of private prisons is…whoa (there are some horrible, horrible stories in this piece, just so you know):
I started applying for jobs in private prisons because I wanted to see the inner workings of an industry that holds 131,000 of the nation’s 1.6 million prisoners. As a journalist, it’s nearly impossible to get an unconstrained look inside our penal system. When prisons do let reporters in, it’s usually for carefully managed tours and monitored interviews with inmates. Private prisons are especially secretive. Their records often aren’t subject to public access laws; CCA has fought to defeat legislation that would make private prisons subject to the same disclosure rules as their public counterparts. And even if I could get uncensored information from private prison inmates, how would I verify their claims? I keep coming back to this question: Is there any other way to see what really happens inside a private prison?
Cherished Friend of The Toast Joel Kim Booster KILLLLLLED his set on Conan last night, don’t miss it.
actual gasp (emphasis mine):
Dear Prudence,
My boyfriend is amazing, but his parents have a loose concept of hygiene. I’m admittedly a bit of a germaphobe but this weekend his mom made brunch while announcing she was sick, coughing over the plates, licking her fingers before touching food, using paper towels from out of the garbage to wipe off food prep surfaces, and using the dog’s water bowl (with a secondslong rinse) as a serving bowl. I love this guy and want to spend my life with him, but I can’t fake indigestion or lack of appetite for the next 10 years. If I talk to him about it, he’ll just say he eats their food and he’s fine. What do I do?
—Gross In-Laws
Friend of The Toast Erica Westly’s book on softball is out!!!
In other exciting Friend news, The Toast’s Madame Clairevoyant has found a home for her lovely horoscopes over at The Cut, and her weekly column starts 6/27!
arggggggleojnfg’ozhfg (Atlas Obscura had their tech people make little insects crawl over the page as you scroll and it’s THE WORST):
“A ritual gone wrong, satanic. The gas lamp in the old church explodes in your face when you light it,” Schmidt later wrote about his battle with the Fierce Black Polybia Wasp.
This description is one of 78 entries of ant, bee, and wasp stings in his Pain Scale for Stinging Insects, widely referred to as the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Schmidt, a biologist at Southwestern Biological Institute and researcher in the entomology department at the University of Arizona, willingly offered his arm to different stinging insects of the order Hymenoptera to create the index featured in his new book The Sting of the Wild. The index ranks stinging pain on a scale of 1 (Red Fire Ant) to 4 (Warrior Wasp) and recounts Schmidt’s face-off with each insect with a poetic, and sometimes humorous, description. We have depicted a selection of insects included in Schmidt’s Sting Pain Index above, scaling the insects by how agonizing their stings are.
look we’re almost over, i’m gonna link to a hate-read for you:
My main group of friends and I call ourselves the Core Four—I’m known as the Plus One—and for the most part, we’re philosophically aligned. First, there’s my older brother, who works in banking as a financial analyst. He’s our de facto hype man, the guy who goes from 0 to 100 in the time it takes to down two shots of tequila. Five years ago, for his birthday, we drank $130-an-ounce, 30-year-old Macallan scotch on the Park Hyatt rooftop. I’m convinced that’s what gold tastes like. My brother also lives at home with my parents and me. Next, there’s a criminal lawyer, whose wife runs a pharmacy. Could they afford to buy? Definitely. But it makes more sense for them to rent and write it off as a business expense. My cousin is our ringleader and the one who got me hooked on the living-large ethos in the first place. He’s a mid-30s Bay Street entrepreneur who runs a tech software company and rents a penthouse in a luxury hotel downtown with his fiancée. He’s the kind of guy who can get a reservation at Reds when they’re booked solid. My cousin started in banking right after finishing his economics degree, so he’s been making money for longer than the rest of us. He spends a hundred hours a week with his clients, so when he finds time to be out with his closest friends, he goes hard. His influence has rubbed off on me. When I’m out on a date, I’ll buy an $80 bottle of wine. But when I’m out with him, I just pick whatever I think is the best, which usually means a $200 bottle. And then there’s our group’s voice of reason. He’s a teacher who wants to own a house one day, and he gets anxious when we’re all out on a bender. He passed on the opportunity to buy a house for $350,000 some 12 years ago when he was a couple of years out of teachers’ college and has always regretted it. He tries to rein in some of our more excessive behaviour, but we tune him out. (I’ve kept all names out of this story to protect my buddies from your scorn.)
