The attack in Ottawa yesterday. Love to all our Canadians. Here’s what we currently know about the shooter.
Buzzfeed did a great look at the history and present of “painting down” stuntpeople in the wake of the incident on the set of Gotham (which I am watching the crap out of, btw):
In 1971, stuntperson Marvin Walters led the charge when it was discovered that a white stuntperson was painted down to double for Lou Gossett Jr. on the Warner Bros. film Skin Game. He contacted the U.S. Justice Department, and that move helped to change the opportunities for women and minorities who also worked behind the camera.
On behalf of the Coalition of Black Stuntmen and Women, he filed lawsuits — which they won — and damages were paid out to stuntpeople of color.
“In 1976, I filed 32 EEO charges against the motion picture industry, and I won five settlement agreements,” Walters, now 76, said in an interview with BuzzFeed News.
jaya, always jaya
YET ANOTHER interview with Mallory Ortberg:
I’m a huge fan of your work on The Toast, and—please don’t take this the wrong way—while Texts from Jane Eyre has its distinctly weird moments (William Blake is a personal favorite), it isn’t quite so out of nowhere as some of your other work. Where do pieces like “Erotica Written by an Alien Pretending Not to Be Horrified by the Human Body” come from?
THE ALIEN IS ME. Oh man, the alien is me. I find the entire world to be out of nowhere, and horrifying, and creepy as all hell. I mean, everything in that piece is true, you know? We use our mouths for breathing AND eating AND intimacy? Sometimes for more than one of those functions at the same time? We act like it’s normal because we’re used to it, but good Lord, that’s just bad planning. We put bits of ourselves into other people for prolonged periods of time, and that’s what sex is! It’s great, you know, and it’s perfectly normal, but if you stop to think about it for more than a few minutes, it can really throw you for a loop.
Anarchy in the UK[‘s] schools (utterly fascinating):
The London Free School in Notting Hill opened in 1966. Soon they were cropping up all over the country – Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, and Brighton all got one. Liverpool had two, London at least four.
To modern ears they sound like nothing short of anarchy.
There would be no timetable, no compulsory lessons, no uniform, no hierarchy. Teachers would be called by their first names. The children would make up the rules and decide what they wanted to learn.
There’d be no fees, fixed hours, term times or holidays. They were to be schools without walls – and open whenever the community wanted them.
Many of them quickly folded – with some communities not receptive to the idea of educational anarchy. But a few put down solid roots.
A guide to PrEP for sex workers:
We believe that if done right, PrEP has the potential to be one of the best tools brought to market for receptive partner protection and power since the pill in the 1960’s. PrEP doesn’t double as a contraceptive, but it does reduce your risk of HIV by 90% when taken correctly. It’s still a sweet tool to have in your make-up bag, hard femme box, tool kit, whatever you call it. We are still in the middle of an epidemic, with trans and cis women, men who have sex with men, and injection drug users still being hit hard and unjustly. We deserve to have access to all the options that protect us against HIV.
In what follows, we’d like to lay out the basics of PrEP (no really, what is it? does it cost the first month’s rent?), add context to some of the controversies, and offer our take on what this means for sex workers. We do not anticipate that we’ll be able to answer all the questions people have in this one post, and we hope that you will comment or reach out to us directly if you’d like to know more.
This Billfold story about “interviewing” at a start-up gave me CHILLS OF TERROR:
“Congratulations! Ajay thinks you’d be a great fit. The next step in the process is a tryout day. It will be a full day of work, like an extended interview, and unpaid. Could you come in tomorrow?”
I quickly agreed.
“Great! You’ll need to bring your own laptop and smart phone. Will that be a problem for you?”
My laptop had been stolen a year ago, leaving me with a creaky old Dell hand-me-down running Ubuntu, and my iPhone was two generations behind. I assured her it would be fine, anyway.
“Okay, our Customer Experience Associates normally begin work at 8 a.m. and wrap up the day around 8 p.m. They work five days per week, plus one rotating weekend shift. Is that okay?” She looked at me warily.
I hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Yep, that will be fine!” We shook hands and I left, feeling good. I was sure that since things were moving so fast, the job would soon be mine.
All women are precious to us, but some women use the hair dryers at the gym to dry their pubes. Elon Green wanted to know if it was true (I have seen it with my own eyes, but only with the handheld units, not, like, thrusting your junk at the wall machines) and Mallory and I were wondering if we could hear from other eye-witnesses or perhaps even women who have Done This Thing. And since our readership is 35% male, have dudes seen this in the men’s locker room? Please tell us.
It’s just…your Toast editors don’t even blow-dry the hair on their HEADS, does not a rough towel suffice for your pubes?
