What if people told European history like they told Native American history?
Pre-contact Europeans wore clothing made of natural materials such as animal skin and plant and animal-based textiles. Women wore long dresses and covered their hair, and men wore tunics and leggings. Both men and women liked to wear jewelry made from precious stones and metals as a sign of status. Before contact, Europeans had very poor diets. Most people were farmers and grew wheat and vegetables and raised cows and sheep to eat. They rarely washed themselves, and had many diseases because they often let their animals live with them.
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Cord Jefferson promises this is “the last time I’m gonna ever write about living in a place and then moving away from that place.”
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This is Mallory adding a last-minute interjection to Nicole’s Link Roundup. I have never done this before; her work is her work and I consider it sacrosanct. Also, it is more than a little ridiculous to link to this, because it has nearly 7 million views and has presumably been seen by everyone in the nation. But it is the funniest thing that I have ever seen in my entire life. I have watched it every day this week at least three times a day, often just before bed, chortling heartily to myself until fat tears roll down my cheeks. I have no regrets. Please watch it full-screen and in high-definition. I can assure you the facial expressions are worth it.
I have made every member of my family watch this, except for my mother, who flies home tomorrow.
I will make my mother watch this tomorrow. Of this you can be sure.
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As Waffle House goeth, so goeth the nation:
Nearly a decade ago, Florida’s emergency management chief, W. Craig Fugate, noticed that when information was scarce after a disaster, the status of a 24-hour Waffle House restaurant often indicated whether an area had electricity, gas, and passable roads. So he created a three-color rating: green (fully open), yellow (limited menu), and red (closed). Then he brought it with him to his current post as FEMA’s administrator.
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Auditioning for the MET Orchestra:
“I love it.” That was Boris’ immediate reaction when asked how he feels about the fact that, in all MET Orchestra auditions, the screen (which divides the candidate from the committee) stays up through the very end. “I concentrate on my playing, not on how I look. Sometimes I sit with my legs crossed, and I prefer that! I play better like that! All four auditions I have won were screened [until the end].” In auditions in which the screen comes down, “I think about ‘looking good’ too much…I feel like I shouldn’t just play musically, I should look musical, too. They’re looking at you, not at the music.”
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When vanilla was brown, and how we came to see it as white.
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One of my friends who, like myself, is raising non-LDS kids in Utah was not super-duper-stoked to be notified that the 4th grade field trip at her daughter’s (public) school would be to, why, The Church History Museum. Now, you can point out, correctly, that the history of Utah is pretty indistinguishable from the history of the LDS church, but there are a BUNCH of fantastic non-affiliated-with-a-particular-religion museums in the area that have pioneers and local history and dinosaurs out the wahzoo, so it’s curious to me that the administration decided to make that call.
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You’ll be hearing more about The Essential Ellen Willis from us, but here’s the book trailer in the meantime:
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Conrad Black is pretty good at Twitter so far:
.@NRO Here is the little Star Baby Raccoon I wrote about. cmb pic.twitter.com/r4Gk9d4B6x
— Conrad Black (@ConradMBlack) April 17, 2014
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When Spider-Man fought inaccurate sex-ed.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Oh Christ, I forgot all about shred videos! There goes my day.
I can’t look because of work…what is a shred video?
It really doesn’t do them justice to describe, but for now, this has a pretty good description: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/x-shreds
I watched the video for about two minutes, all the while trying to figure out what was going on. I legitimately though that this was either a foreign band with a poor grasp of English or some sort of twisted reality show where 5 deaf men were told to perform a song on stage.
Your comment has allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief, as it is neither of these things. I can now laugh without guilt.
Yeah, this probably would have been a lot funnier if I had ever heard One Direction perform. I don’t know how I’ve avoided that up until now.
Everyone needs to look up the Beach Boys “I get around” shred. Or just, here, go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYc4DT18EJg
The first time I saw this was the hardest I have laughed at anything, ever.
I’m still vaguely unclear on this whole “shred” concept and this is only marginally related, but everyone’s seen Pharrell’s “Happy” video without the music backing, right?
Here it is.
Gallopin’ gargoyles, that Spider-Man comic…!
He WANTS them to be…in dead-end jobs…sitting home every night trying to find the time and money to go to a movie or buzz out to the burger stand.
Don’t worry, Spider-Man. Turns out it isn’t teen pregnancy that leads to this. Just the utter destruction of the global economy (thanks to the banking industry and the baby boomer generation).
I cannot even begin to pick out my favorite part of that comic. Off to see if my local comic shop can dig me up a copy…
“And what would a bunch of teenagers be doing boarding one of these whirly birds this time of night anyway? They should be home listening to their new Henry Gross albums.”
Initially read the comic as “Terry Gross albums,” got excited.
Holy hell I started to watch the 1D vid (I’m at at work of course) and I had to stop cuz I couldn’t hold back the laughter and I was afraid I’d bite my lips right off if I kept trying.
NOT-HARRY SCREAMING AT 2:26 OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
By 3:26 I had both hands clamped over my mouth and tears violently shooting out of my eyeholes.
Me too!!! I don’t know why it’s so funny but I CAN’T stop laughing!
OMG I am laughing so hard at my desk that I am now full on crying. Thank goodness I have tissues at my desk. *wipes tears away* *tries to look like I’m working*
Yep, LDS history is hella fascinating (I only know some, but I assume it doesn’t get LESS interesting when you learn more), but it sure as hell ain’t for kids.
Misread this as LSD history, still made sense.
That European history post is brilliant.
I came here to say the same thing!
It reminds me, sadly, of when my AP U.S. History teacher was preparing us for the exam in the last few days, and said, “Historically, there are about 3 questions on women’s history on the test. Here are a few names to recognize.” Needless to say, we had not studied these women during the year.
And then he said the same thing about African American history. Of course, Native American history didn’t even get that cursory of a treatment.
That One Direction video is causing me to make the ugliest most insane holding-back-laughter faces at work. Unrelated (or maybe related?): WHY ARE THEIR PANTS SO TIGHT?
WHY ARE THEIR PANTS SO TIGHT?
I feel like this is a trick question somehow…
It is definitely a trick question, but it would go a long way toward explaining all the yelping.
OMG so here for The Essential Ellen Willis. Read Out Of The Vinyl Deeps last year and was just blown away by the clarity of her writing.
The entire MET blog is great. Everyone should click over and read the article about the music librarians.
They even did an adorable Onion-style April Fool’s Day post!
That’s a great article! I used to work with one of the old Met librarians; it can be surprisingly fun work.
When we first moved to the South, I remember remarking to my husband, what is WITH all the Waffle Restaurants?
Then David Wilcox explained it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6TagFKBVm8
I went on a road trip from Detroit to Nashville a few years ago and we played “Count the Waffle Houses!”
Here’s a fun game: make any culture sound shallow and stupid just by explaining its people’s actual motivations for doing anything.
“Despite ready access to food stores and sufficient funds to purchase eggs and meat, they would raise chickens on their property in order to show others that they possessed sufficient land on which to raise the chickens, free time to care for them, and the education and social connections required to learn to do so.”
hehehehehe I love this
“The car, as well as a mode of transportaion, was a status symbol. People bought larger and more inefficient cars to prove to their peers that they could afford to run and care for them. They then performed the ‘petrol prices’ ritual rant, complaining about the cost of this limited resource”
“Mating rituals were complex and required a deep and instictual understanding. They would meet in a variety of places, but most common were ‘clubs’ and ‘bars’, places where low light, loud music and mild poisoning combined to lower the inhibitions. They then boasted to each other, exaggerating their achievements and thus their attractiveness, hoping against hope to be allowed to mate.
see also: jonathan swift
Is it good form to share other links in the Link Roundup comments? If so, this was a frustrating/interesting read about HONY (Humans of New York, for the acronym-challenged among us).
I am surprised that the blog-writer was surprised that people (especially internet commenters, who we all know are the worst of the worst except on The-Toast) are racist?
Being blocked by the HONY page is weird and certainly an over-reaction on the page’s part, but why the writer is surprised any of this happened, I do not know.
NPR vanilla story ,you’re killing me – Elizabeth I may have had a sweet tooth (also lots of bad teeth) but vanilla isn’t sweet by itself. The New World had neither honey nor sugar until after European contact. Chocolate as a drink in Aztec times was not sweet, and Vanilla is a bitter flavor, not sweet by itself.
The Americas do have stingless bees that produce honey, which do have a long history of being farmed through Central and South America. They just didn’t have the European honeybee. I’m not saying they mixed it with the cacao, just that there was indeed honey available.
I should have said Honey BEES – the native bees did not sting. Old world bees do.
One Direction makes me very confused as the band members seem to range in age from 15 to 42.
I always forget how comments on the NPR site make me simultaneously delighted and despondent. The grammar quibbles, the indictment of problematic argument structures, the absolute lack of any kind of sense of humor anywhere ever. The detour into not understanding the grammatical and cultural construction “Because, chocolate drank” might be my favorite thing ever, but then there’s Gene Denby coming in elsewhere to start a rebuttal with “Actually, yeah.”
I <3 Gene Denby.
That Met audition article made me nervous reading it (flashbacks to middle and high school band auditions), but it sounds like they’ve really got the system down so it’s fair, which is nice! They mention at the end that the Met is unusual in that it always offers someone a job at the end of the audition process–is this something that not all orchestras do? If so, WHY, that seems ridiculous.
A job doing what, I wonder? How can they have so many positions?? If I find myself in dire straights can I take my haven’t played since high school clarinet, bomb an audition, but get a job???
Good to know.
(I mean this somewhat not-sarcastically, since working for the Met would be really cool, but I just don’t get how giving a job to everyone who auditions would work!)
I read that statement as saying that out of everyone they audition, they will definitely offer one person a job. I.e. they don’t say “everyone who auditioned sucks, we’re going to wait to fill the position”
Oh that…makes much more sense. I see my critical thinking skills could use a boost this morning.
Well it is my early evening, so I’m at an advantage there
Yes, sorry, this is what they meant! I should have worded my statement better.
I was surprised to read that they’re considered unusual for having an audition process where the screen never comes down. Why are there half-blind audition processes? What’s the point of having the screen at all, if you’re going to take it down by the end???
Also a super valid question! Either have the screen or no screen, but doing it half and half is very bizarre, you’re totally right.
The article (and this thread) are very interesting, but none of it is making me any less nervous for my kid, who has 2 violin auditions coming up. They’re only for Boston youth orchestras, but still…
Auditions are nerve-wracking, no matter what they’re for. Good luck to your kiddo!
The thing about that 1D video is that I am pretty sure that’s how they would sound without fancy studios and overpowering music to help them out…
Yeah, you’re not far off. (And yeah, that’s really how they broadcast it, with Harry’s mic not working at the start and everything.)
As a writer who grew up in Tucson and has since moved away, I burn with a jealousy I have never quite known at the fact that someone wrote a Tucson piece that has been linked on all of my favorite web sites before me. I’m so jealous I can’t really even read it. AND he’s best-known for writing a similar piece about the city where I currently reside! Stop it, Cord! Just STOP. /rant
cos ill be gooarrn, gooooarn tonaaaght, a deep boo deep ba dee soooopen wiiiide
runneen uftah yoo, ees like chaysing da claaaaaaah-oood
Waffle Hooooooouuuuse! It’s one of the few things I miss about living in Georgia.
I wonder if there are articles about people who don’t really have hometowns and are in constant search of a place to settle down and make a community but are also super restless at the same time (basically someone needs to write about me).
You write about you!
There has been a cell phone from 1998 going off in my office for at LEAST 15 mins, that at turns gets louder (as if someone has taken it out of a bag) and then softer (as if they were like “yeah, that IS my phone!” and put it back in their bag) and it clearly does not have voicemail because the ringing is incessant and I might stab everything.
RE: The Cord Jefferson Tucson piece, the part “Instead, it seemed as if most of the white people with whom I interacted reserved their racial animosity for Tucson’s large population of Latinos, like when a high school teacher I had always respected allegedly told a friend that his job as a restaurant dishwasher was one better suited for “wetbacks.”” just reminds me of my racist ex-step-grandmother, who disliked Mexicans (all Latinos were Mexican to her, as far as I can remember) and I’m pretty sure she also hated Native Americans, and I’m just really glad that after she bankrupted and then divorced my grandfather, I never saw her again and no one invited her to the memorial service.
That Spiderman PSA comic reminds me of my favorite PSA comic from childhood: http://www.politedissent.com/archives/2127
Supergirl’s Seat Belt PSA. I maaaaaaybe still have a copy of that somewhere? Perhaps I shall dig in the basement at my folks’ house when I’m home in a month…
In college, in my early modern British Lit class, the teacher didn't teach on women authors. Once a week, a student would give a 5 minute report on one of 12 women the professor had picked out as worthy of notice; but that was it. The women weren't on the exams or important enough to actually spend real time on.
OH…MY…GOSH…I…CAN'T…BREATHE…THE…CLAPPING…OUCH. HAHAHA…
It is definitely a trick question, but it would go a long way toward explaining all the yelping.