The situation for the Nigerian girls is not looking up.
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On the woman who will judge [abusive, whiny murderer] Oscar Pistorius:
Even today, Masipa still belongs to a minority—only seventy-six of South Africa’s two hundred and thirty-nine judges are women. Earlier this year, the Women’s Legal Center and Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre, nonprofit organizations promoting women’s rights, stated, “With 51.3 percent females in the country, having only two female justices in the Constitutional Court, the highest court on Constitutional matters, is inexcusable.”
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Roxane Gay, on Leslie Jones’s Weekend Update segment:
Some people are bristling about how cavalierly Jones dealt with what we know was rape, and how black women and men’s bodies were used to produce more stock for white slave owners. As a critic sensitive to how popular culture deals with sexual violence, I understand. But there is so much more taking place within Jones’s monologue. I have watched the clip several times now. Beyond the surface of the joke, I see pain. I see rage. I see a woman speaking her truth.
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I’m sure everyone sees and responds to OUR video ad content, advertisers!
By many estimates, more than half of online video ads are not seen, either because they are buried low on web pages or run in tiny, easily ignored video players on those pages, or run simultaneously with other ads.Vindico, an ad management platform company, deemed 57 percent of two billion video ads surveyed over two months to be “unviewable.”
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I am on vacation next week! You will have a wonderful, wonderful substitute editor, or “supply editor,” as we would call her in Canada. I am in Miami. I will mostly be swathed in fabric and floppy hats and celebrating the wedding of a friend, but I will take your restaurant recommendations at this time. All I know is where people have been shot on Burn Notice.
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Hope for old media, even if it is only that they recognize true genius.
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So much streamable Werner Herzog.
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Cecily McMillan has been found guilty. She faces up to seven years in prison:
In the trial, physical evidence was considered suspect but the testimony of the police was cast as infallible. Despite photographs of her bruised body, including her right breast, the prosecution cast doubt upon McMillan’s allegations of being injured by the police – all while Officer Bovell repeatedly identified the wrong eye when testifying as to how McMillan injured him. And not only was Officer Bovell’s documented history of violent behavior deemed irrelevant by the judge, but so were the allegations of his violent behavior that very same night.
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How your “Dear Polly” sausage gets made:
By 5:45 a.m., I am sitting down to write. First, though, I need to fire off an email to the editor of my weekly advice column about maybe getting a check soon since it’s May and I haven’t been paid yet this year. “HEY IS THERE A CHECK ON THE WAY FINALLY? LOL! THIS BIG GUY WITH A BASEBALL BAT AT MY FRONT DOOR WANTS TO KNOW! OMG MY KNEES! XXXOOO” Always be super-polite and light-hearted with your editors, and never give them any indication that you’ve been waiting for a check for so long and your credit card balances are getting so high that your pulse starts racing every time you think about it, so much so that you’ve started to soothe yourself by imagining choking the life out of their ineffectual shit faces with your bare hands. Lol.
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QUESTLOVE IS BACK FOR MORE:
A few years back, there was a video on YouTube that featured the rapper Lil Boosie. It showed him counting out his money onto the pavement of a parking lot. You can see it here. I haven’t studied too much contemporary performance art, but whoever’s doing it — Vito Acconci, Marina Abramovic — can’t be doing anything stranger than this. (You too, James Franco.) The money is a pure abstraction. Nothing is purchased with it — no goods, no services. It’s a series of symbols being thrown to the ground, one after the other. And as each one lands, the message gets stronger and stronger. You don’t have this money. You may never see this many hundreds. You don’t belong here.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I can inform potential toast advertisers that as long as they don’t do annoying auto-play ads I will pay attention and possibly purchase their product.
Right now, for me, every ad on this page is book-related, so they’ve definitely got their audience targeting down.
I’ve got Self-Publishing services (lulu) a fat-acceptance book, and YA literature, so not too bad.
Agree, my ads are always book ads on this site. However, on other sites, they are all shoe/clothing/handbag ads. Obviously I am at my best self only on The Toast.
I get all book ads most of the time as well. The other day I got a “Fracking is totally safe!” ad and I majorly side-eyed that one.
They sometimes show me books, sometimes Canadian banking services, and sometimes TRUCKS! So I feel they’re killin’ it.
Let’s see: book, book, audiobook, fat-acceptance book, self-publishing,
… avocado beef burger video ad? Where’d you come from, sweetpea?
(I have been bragging in gmail, and in a forum open in another browser, about last night’s dinner, which included deep-fried avocado halves filled with sweet miso dressing. I wonder if that’s the trigger for the video ad.)
All books for me, except for a tiny ad that I can’t rollover, that appears to be for some form of hand cream?
So, nice job, Toast advertisers, that’s pretty much me in a nutshell. Throw in some snacks and we’re all set.
Mine are mostly book-related, but I do have one for lawn products for some reason. And over on the life milestones post, Sears is trying to sell me a “Cocktail Dress With Built-In Body,” which is basically what made me come back to comment on this thread.
Video ads will make me actively hate your product.
Intrusive autoplay video ads will make me between 10% and 80% less likely to buy your product, depending on how irritating they are.
It maxes out at 80% for you? I’d put that range between 100% and slightly more than 100%. I don’t really like using AdBlock on the Toast, but those video ads drive me up the goddamn wall. I tried to read the site without ABP for a couple of months and they just grate on me too much.
They percentages stack. With each video for the same product.
I have Flash disabled in chrome so that I have to click on the grey puzzle piece to make flash play. Kills most of the video ads and makes my pages load faster.
Mine are also for books. Well, books and a Dutch insurance company. In case I drop my phone in soep.
The sad thing is that my mother always counsels me to stay away from protests because it could be dangerous – but I bet she never thinks that the most dangerous people are the ones who are supposed to protect you.
My parents were pretty heavy into protesting when they were younger. Their protest advice was always along the lines of “there may be dangerous people in the crowd with you,l but the police are a bigger risk to you when you;re there.”
And then they told me what to do if I was arrested, and how to create a fake name and identity, just in case.
Is the idea to give the police your fake name and identity? Wouldn’t that just create bigger problems down the line if you were taken in for questioning? Or is there another scenario where it would be better to give a fake name? Sorry if I’m missing the point here, but I’m genuinely confused.
When my mother was protesting, she regularly used a fake name with teh police. This was, however, in teh 70’s and 80’s, when things were different.
The whole point THEN, in Thatchers Britain, was to prevent your protesting actions from negatively effecting your future. Her groups were full of horror stories of people who were basically harrassed by the police for decades because they sued their real names.
oh, that makes sense. Thank you!
She was just trying to avoid theratening behaviour and stuff, and it was pre modern tech so they couldn’t have traced her otherwise. Especially since she lived in squats.
My aunt was a Greenham Common woman. That was, apparently, even worse.
Greenham Common! Give her a high five for me.
Funny story. We wre studing Grennham COmmon in my history class, and my aunt was in the picture in the book.
If you haven’t actually been arrested yet then jesus christ don’t tell protest cops anything true and personally identifying. Assuming you’re not forging official documents or anything it doesn’t matter if “down the line” they realize you aren’t actually called Cornholio. If you have been arrested it’s pretty dumb to make up obvious lies they’ll figure out immediately anyway, but you shouldn’t volunteer any information true or false without a lawyer around either.
OTOH in Occupy DC the very first thing the cops made a point of showing newcomers is that they already know exactly who you are, in detail.
Wait, what happened here? This reminds me of the text messages that went out to everyone who was protesting in Kiev – sort of “big brother is watching you.”
What, at ODC? Whenever kids did something to attract the attention of the feds, as one is wont to do when joining a leftist protest a stone’s throw from the White House, they’d just quietly take them aside and launch into an extremely detailed interview where they’d ask you to comment on specifics of anyone you might have talked to in the past few years, library books you’ve checked out, internet comments, etc.
It was nothing totally different from what every activist’s known the cops are gonna peep on since the 60s, mostly what was impressive was that they’d have the whole shebang ready, organized, and waiting for folks within 24 hours of showing up, like they’d been compiling their dossiers on random 18-year-old Oklahoma Baptists for ages like they’re Martin Luther King. They were pretty nice about it, all around, and it made for a much more effective buzzkill than the metro police’s (or for that matter NYPD’s) blood slavering.
Hell, I went to UC Berkeley. We always knew the pigs were the real enemies
I have nothing constructive to add, except that I am furious that this is happening. Justice system, this is the exact opposite of what I wanted! 🙁
Agreed!
I’m just happy I finally figured out the correct configuration of all my privacy tools to actually let me see ads on The Toast.
The part of me that is convinced I’m on a watchlist somewhere tells me I shouldn’t say what I think about police. I’ll go soothe myself by catching up on Continuum instead.
I don’t know exactly how the Toast ads work, but the top bar ads for me are always books. And I FREQUENTLY click on them because they look interesting, even though I never buy books because I am poor and also I Support My Local Library. (This is why I never get to read books until four months after they come out, but whatever.)
But I loathe auto-play video ads SO MUCH. So much that I keep my computers on silent so they never take me by surprise.
I click on a lot of ads by accident… does the Toast get any money from that? :-/
What is even the theory behind the autoplay ads blasting obnoxious noises out of nowhere, “Hey so uh sorry about getting you fired, but now that you’ve got a lot of free time why not catch Two and a Half Men Saturday nights on Showtime?”
Like, do they want to discourage us from browsing at work? Because I feel like that’s where a lot
of their viewing time would come from.
I also have mostly book ads, and one inexplicable Palmer’s Cocoa Butter ad, which, sorry Palmers, but I actually don’t like the smell of chocolate.
“LADY-FOCUSED HUMOR SITE.”
Much better term than “cult lady-blog.” The cult part is cool, but “lady-blog” rubs me the wrong way.
That was no lady, that was my omnipotent misandrist army of the darkness that looms at midday.
So much less appealing sounding than the cult-lady blogs
Definitely didn’t realize The Toast had ads… just whitelisted it on my adblock! Only for you guys.
omigod how did you think we paid for things magic beans (thank you!)
It’s just SO weird how EVERY time I read a Roxane Gay piece someone is nearby cutting, like, ten thousand onions.
She thinks all the reactions she has heard to the segment are totally valid, too. All aspects of it are depressing.
I think, what I’d like to hear is what she (Jones) has to say, rather than what’s been said to her. Is what is bothering me.
Jones did respond on twitter http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/05/yes_snls_l…
That is the first one I’ve read, but I’m definitely going to check out more. Wow.
Right now I’m getting an ad for a diet cookbook AND an ad for an anti-diet fat acceptance book. Good times.
cook the recipes but then eat four servings, problem sorted
ahahahaha I am getting a fat-acceptance book (how ’bout a fat-adoration book, I am ready for the next step, y’all) and an avocado beef burger ad awwwwwwww yeeeeeeah
My adds on The Toast are for Toast, which is immensely pleasing.
I’ve become a big fan of Questlove’s essays for lots of reasons, but the main one has to be that his writing is so exploratory. He writes his thoughts and feelings, and I can see him reaching within himself so much in his writing. He’s always been very open to criticism of his writing (which he’s gotten a lot of) and seems to continue his exploration with the criticisms.
And then there’s stuff like this:
“I don’t know exactly how much a Bugatti costs. Oh, wait: I’ve been told by my business manager that it costs Amused Laughter. Very few people I know, including several best-selling artists in various musical genres, can afford this item, which depreciates as violently as whiplash the minute it’s off the lot.”
i loved the line ” it costs Amused Laughter.” Questlove is my favorite. He shall be spared in the revolution & invited to poolside sangria Saturday.
(and he spins amazing sets – speaking as a Philadelphian who has boogied to many of them and may or may not have tried to fist bump him in an alcohol-induced dance euphoria)
I’d be happier with the Toast’s delightful and informative ads, ads that make me a better, kinder, smarter person, if the web design did not cover up one third of the actual Toast content, when an iPad is in Portrait Mode.
Seconded! I like to read in portrait mode, but I can’t on the Toast.
YES. I’ll switch to landscape because the Toast is worth it, but it’s not as convenient as it could be.
don’t come to me with your ipad problems, use a computer like me
“the least helpful webmaster in the world,” that’s me
Re: content: Polly would look good on this website. If she were to get that idea, I could free up a space in my Bookmarks folder. That Jezebel/Crasstalk/Hairpin slot (three down) gets a lot of action.
And if she were on this website, maybe she’d get paid on time. Sheesh.
Hit Miami, keep going south, keep going, keeeeeep going, OK make a quick little left and now you’re on the Overseas Highway, keeeeeeep going, there’s really only one way to go at this point, keep going, OK now you’re in Key West and it’s the best place. My restaurant recommendation is breakfast burritos on the beach.
I wish I was in Key West right now.
I loved that how to be a writer bit from Heather H. Heh. It felt a little too real, maybe.
She is a national treasure.
One time I opened like 5 Toast tabs and 2 or 3 auto play videos came on and one was in a Germanic language whilst I was listening to music. It was very frightening, like a bunch of evil music boxes playing all at once in a horror movie from the 70s. That was when I had to have a little talk with The Toast.
But yes! I love the book ads on here and I will follow them if they look interesting. In fact, I just followed the link to The Bone Season.
When I saw the news about that Cecily McMillan verdict last night (from that same Guardian article, actually), I was so angry and upset that I had to leave the room to cry. Between the “we will sell your girls in the marketplace” video/news from NIgeria and that and everything, I was like NOPE NOPE NOPE no more computer today. BURN IT ALL DOWN/take to the sea/become Pirate Jenny.
I wish my internal voice was Herzog’s.
I love Werner Herzog, pretty much. I want him to be my grandfather.
There are reports that 2 or 3 of the Nigerian girls are dead (one article said from snakebites), and another 18-20 critically ill. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/nigerian-girl-desc… Al Jazeera is saying 8 more girls were kidnapped yesterday from another village by the same group.
I have been absolutely sick with rage since hearing about that guilty verdict. I have never lost so much faith in humanity in such a short amount of time.
YOU GUYS, who is going to be our guest editor? “You will have a wonderful, wonderful substitute editor” The suspense is killing me. Who could it be? Its a lady so its not Matt and Jaya.
Toastfolk! Toasts of the town. I’m glad everyone’s been keeping up with the McMillan trial. Angry? Want to know what you can do about this?
1) Sign this petition to pardon Cecily McMillan http://www.change.org/petitions/governor-andrew-c…
It only takes a minute, and if politicians are aware of nothing else, it’s numbers and the way that numbers translate to votes. This one’s already got over 7,000 signatures, and if it gets big enough they are going to have to take notice. This is a quick and easy way to say “this is not okay.”
2) I was present in court for some of the trial, and I saw Judge Zweibel give the gag order to the lawyers. This guy is who you get if you call Central Casting to send someone in for the role of Scion of The Patriarchy.
His eyes were practically popping out of his head as he spluttered at the defense attorney, “Talking to the press prejudices the jury!”
“How can that be if the jury is forbidden from looking at the press?” Stolar shot back.
He looked away. “We’re moving on.” He had no legal reason.
This guy is DEFINITELY afraid of the press. Maybe he knows that none of this will hold up under scrutiny. That means that the press has power in this scenario. Read and share articles and news coverage, tweet with the hashtag #Justice4Cecily. If the specter of accountability makes him uncomfortable, then GOOD, I’ll enjoy that, and maybe it will come with some consequences.
3) http://justiceforcecily.com has updates and more information. Check it out.
They’re silencing her because they think it’s the easy way out, but I think it’s important to remember the Achilles heel of these people is the public eye.
Thank you for reading. Praise Ronbledore.