If you are not aware of the very, very tragic case of Rehtaeh Parsons, read this, and then follow #youknowhername for updates. Not a great day for the Canadian justice system.
All of this, and also that shirt was absolutely hideous and made him look like a dumbass. Everyone knows what space scientists are supposed to wear:
An imaginary Deep Springs syllabus!
The History of the New York Times‘ Styles Section:
Despite its youth, the section has a much longer history, one that encompasses the long effort of women in journalism to be taken seriously as reporters and as readers, the development of New Journalism, large-scale social changes that have brought gay culture into the mainstream, shifts in the way news is delivered and consumed, and economic consolidations and disruptions that the section has, sometimes in spite of itself, thoroughly documented and cataloged. The Styles section may well be pretty stupid sometimes. It’s also a richer and more complex entity than any of us would like to believe.
This is a great and disturbing piece of journalism and it’s amazing/depressing how “yeah, well” I get when I hear yet another tale of total institutional failure on the part of an organization to take sexual assault seriously.
Serial and white reporter privilege.
Just an incredible piece in the Oxford American about Edgar Ray Killen, the man most responsible for the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner:
And then I asked the question. There was no hesitation, no quiver to my voice. I simply asked it: “Have you ever killed anybody?”
I wish I could remember the expression on his face, whether it registered any surprise, but I have only his calm, even, “No, ma’am.”
“Would you ever?”
He gave a slight hesitation, then answered, “I couldn’t imagine that offhand,” which, as I write this, strikes me as a curiously uncertain answer for a man who had spent the better part of an evening proclaiming his innocence, who, when I asked, claimed not to condone any of the civil rights movement violence, though this too came not as a strong disavowal.
“How do you feel now about the three guys getting killed?” I asked. “Do you think they had it coming?”
Killen didn’t answer immediately. His thumbs stopped, and then he looked me squarely in the eye. “I have a lot more feeling about the boys we lost in Vietnam fighting the same characters as the two white boys,” he said in the same unfettered drawl. “I have a feeling for any human being—” He stopped and seemed suddenly a little flustered and unsure of how to proceed. “I don’t exactly know how to answer you because I don’t know exactly if I really understand the question. In other words, if you are saying ‘Would you have planned it,’ well, I didn’t and I wouldn’t. After knowing the things I know today, had I done it, I wouldn’t have any regrets.”
“Bill Cosby Raped Me: Why Did It Take 30 Years For People To Believe My Story?”:
I’ve been telling my story publicly for nearly 10 years. When Constand brought her lawsuit, I found renewed confidence. I was determined to not be silent any more. In 2006, I was interviewed by Robert Huber for Philadelphia Magazine, and Alycia Lane for KYW-TV news in Philadelphia. A reporter wrote about my experience in the December 2006 issue of People Magazine. And last February, Katie Baker interviewed me for Newsweek. Bloggers and columnists wrote about that story for several months after it was published. Still, my complaint didn’t seem to take hold.
Deleted comment of the day:
I’d missed deleted comment of the day! Good to see it return in fine form.
They are always delightful. This one is particularly so – the irony of the “horribly written” part is exquisite indeed.
I was very pleased that all the people I follow on the science-side of Twitter were firmly on the side of “that shirt is gross and demeaning and sends the total wrong message.” And they reminded me of the awesome NASA scientist who shaved the stars and stuff into his mohawk and it was wonderful.
Bobak Ferdowsi, JPL dreamboat! He’s adorkable.
Seriously. He’s my Astronaut Mike Dexter.
Hah! He’s mine as well.
Thank you both for bringing this man to my attention.
He’s the nerd of my dreams…
And his name is “kabob” backwards! What’s not to love?
I was going to mention him! One of my friends dressed as him for Halloween one year.
He missed the perfect opportunity to wear this:
That shirt should have a place in every astronomer’s wardrobe.
If I was landing a probe on a comet I would go full out Ms. Frizzle.
Sigh, young(ish) Ed Harris.
Everyone knows that space scientists are supposed to wear Ed Harris’s face.
Yes! I am delurking to comment on this, apparently. It was quite wonderful to see so many people commenting on this being inappropriate. He also apologized quite nicely in the Google Hangout livestream thing, so learnings all around.
And Bobak Ferdowsi, what a dreamboat.
I am baffled (although not surprised) by the number of men arguing “well it’s tacky, but it’s not SEXIST,” like what exactly do you think sexism is, son?
A lot of dudes, I’m finding, have LITERALLY NO IDEA what sexism is. Yesterday my coworker/friend who knows I’m vegan got all excited because he found this book called “Meat Is For Pussies” (ARGH UGH RARRGH) and I was like “ew that dude is so sexist”. And he was like “oh no, really? why?” I explained that I hate it when people call things “for pussies” and his response was “Oh. I thought you had a REAL reason to dislike him, like he actually did something bad.” So then I had to set him straight.
To his credit, I think he had kind of a lightbulb moment about sexist language and such, but I hate that I had to fucking spell it out for him.
There’s also the contingent arguing that the designer was a woman, and so therefore the shirt can’t be sexist.
From the Dame piece, BOOM: “You do not support women in STEM. You don’t want them there. If you did, you’d make a micron of effort to detect and dispel the Man Only fumes settling over your lab. Instead, you’re sitting at your microscope in the middle of a dense fog of poison you’re immune to, telling women “come on into the gas cloud, I don’t see why you wouldn’t, it’s fine for me.” And the sensor is inches from your hand, but you’re too lazy to pick it up.”
it’s amazing/depressing how “yeah, well” I get when I hear yet another tale of total institutional failure on the part of an organization to take sexual assault seriously.
I have learned recently, through the process of trying to support a friend, that while I am very “yeah, well,” when I hear about such tales in the news, I am not NEARLY cynical enough about the institution I am actually a part of. I THOUGHT I was cynical, but it has gone so far below my already minimal expectations for decency that I am left breathless.
That article left me feeling sick, literally. Since it was so long, it just kept hitting you over the head with different cases until the “well yeah” factor was gone. Which, props to the writers, but very intense.
And it’s even worse because swimming is a sport with lots of female athletes, but the coaches are overwhelmingly male. I used to swim, and I can’t even think about how lucky teams in my area were to have hired coaches who respected their team members.
That USA Swimming article was horrifying. How on earth can any person receive multiple reports of sexual abuse by a coach and IGNORE IT? How on earth can people still think that survivors report rape to get attention? Even when the survivor is believed and the reporting process “works,” nothing about reporting sexual assault is fun. At most, there’s a thin, bitter satisfaction that, after recounting the worst events of your life for countless strangers, someone powerful enough to do something about it believes you.
signed, someone who was sexually assaulted by a coach
I hope this article makes it into more “mainstream” sports writing, too — I love Outside and I know it has a wide readership, but nothing like Sports Illustrated. This author needs to be bombarded with interview requests, given the number of kids who swim/play on community-run teams. (Or school teams, obvs, but I suspect the community-run teams have higher participation rates.)
I want to be a mindless good! It sounds profitable.
But will you be peer reviewed?
Ugh, that shirt! He finally apologised during a Q&A session today, but anyone who thinks sexism doesn’t exist in academia should take a look at the discussions about the incident on various forums. On a Facebook group for astronomers, there were multiple people (men AND women) arguing that the shirt wasn’t offensive, and that “twisted feminists” were taking things too far.
Yeah, I made the mistake of going on reddit this week and everyone was all “WE LANDED ON A COMET HE CAN WEAR WHAT HE WANTS SHUT UP FEMINAZIS!” Which, you know, isn’t really the point. Sigh.
That shirt is not appropriate for work regardless of what kind of work it is or how male dominated the field is. THERE ARE NAKED ANIMA LADIES ON IT WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?
Matt Taylor, in addition to wearing that shirt, also described the mission as “the sexiest mission there’s ever been. She’s sexy, but I never said she was easy.” So….there’s that too.
And meanwhile in the UK we have one of the media appointed spokeswomen of young feminism announcing that ‘feminism is NOT about making a grown man cry for his shirt.’
Sigh.
Yes, I’ve seen a lot of those too. Lots of women going “I wasn’t offended by that shirt! There is no sexism in astronomy!”, too. Congratulations, how wonderful.
So that piece on the naked lady shirt was great, but this line:
“It doesn’t mean lab doors have signs saying ‘no open-toed shoes and no chicks.'”
Like… yeah that sign doesn’t EXACTLY appear. But even though all PPE/What Not To Wear requirements are totally set up for the safety of everyone!! it’s definitely women to whom those rules are disproportionately applied. I once had one of my advisors pointedly tell me that women shouldn’t wear cosmetics into the cleanroom, which was correct but (1) I wasn’t wearing any makeup, (2) dudes in the cleanroom regularly wore gallons of cologne which was obviously more of an unnecessary detriment to the air quality and (3) he would regularly unzip his bunny suit to pull out his phone and wrote with a pencil.
So. Sorry. I get that they were making a joke but it sucks when the “joke” is not all that far from reality. Tl;dr: naked lady shirt dude is a dirtbag, but sexism in science is often more blatant than that article seems to think.
Being the ignoramus that I am, I had this brief moment when I thought you worked in a place where people did experiments dressed like giant, possibly pink, rabbits.
Google (and common sense) quickly dashed that merry fantasy against the rocks of reality, but that was a glorious moment indeed!
*whispers* Me too…
“THAT’S not very professional attire either!” I thought to myself. :-/
HE’S A SCIENTIST HE CAN WEAR WHAT HE WANTS YOU FEMINAZI
These comments made me giggle out loud at the mental picture.
It would have been great if he were wearing an actual bunny costume suit, but then I would have chalked up his comments to.. other factors, not institutional sexism I think.
I sometimes wear a mustang suit for work. I’ve had to explain that it is not in fact a horse costume so you’re definitely not the only one.
…and I wear a duck mask. We’re either not very inventive in naming PPE or being a scientist = zoo funtimes.
Co-signed. The lab safety people have been making the rounds more frequently in the building where I work lately, and recently it was pointed out that among things we can be cited for is wearing “nightclub attire” (this is a subcategory in the “inappropriate clothing” section), which is total bullshit. Call me when some dude is cited for wearing a buttondown and jeans, or Ed Hardy and too much cologne (both normal lab attire, alas re: the latter); otherwise that rule is aimed directly at women and women’s clothing.
There are times when I wish I was a person like Mr. Fargles there, just wandering through the world in a fuzzy haze of absolute, self-righteous certainty.
Fear not ladies who would like to wear shirts with pin-up dudes on them. The Alexander Henry pin-up fabric collection provides equal opportunity for sleaziness: https://www.fabric.com/quilting-fabric-shop-by-de…
A few Halloweens ago Joann Fabrics had similar stuff that was CLEARLY shirtless Edwards and Jacobs and it was terrible/amazing. I’m still kicking myself for not buying bolts of it.
I am the proud owner of the shirtless werewolf fabric. I made little makeup pouches with it: http://awaywesew.tumblr.com/post/63291728391/shir…
AMAZING!
I clicked the link and I was not disappointed.
Karen Ball (a UK sewing blogger) made a hilarious pair of pyjama bottoms with sexy Santas on them last year: http://didyoumakethat.com/2013/12/01/sewing-chris…
I want a pair of those stuffed in my Christmas stocking SO BAD.
I’ve had a yard of the construction worker version sitting around for a couple years now! I have no idea what to make with it.
A tote bag to carry all your misandrist library books in?
Cushion cover, pillowcase, tote bag, waistcoat, miniskirt?
Oh, a waistcoat that I then wear when I go on construction site visits. That would be ideal.
A friend of mine has promised to make me a pillow out of the Christmas one.
“He just thought it was a fun shirt!” Yes yes, thank you for locating the problem exactly, congratulations. Good job. Now let’s work on critical thinking skills, O Scientist.
#whyhumanitiesareimportant
STEM education is super important you guys! We don’t need that other stuff!
I made The Beloved a cream-colored brocade vest inspired by Gene Kranz’s wardrobe. More vests and ties in the geek world please.
Also, I missed Deleted Comment of the Day, too. Hurray for its return! And also, fuck you MBTI stuff is the best, even when (especially when) it’s half in-jest. This is one of my favorites.
ahahah I LOVE this. “best value at this price tier” thank you weirdly accurate internet thing!
AW YISS! Fellow ISTJ, then? I test evenly 50/50 ESTJ/ISTJ and I gotta say I’m pretty happy with both those analyses.
I’m kinda ISTJ/ISFJ cusp? When I am in survival mode I am all ISTJ but like, I’m also that person who helps you move or drives you to the hospital or bakes you cookies. But only in the last year or two has that settled out – before that pretty much the only consistent thing when I took MBTI tests was the J. I am the J-est J.
Uh, INTJ here. I think I’m a minor dick, at best, but the rest sort of falls into place. Sigh.
I’m laughing so hard at these. “prone to making you laugh but then days later you will wonder whether you were the butt of the joke.” TOO REAL
Eerily accurate for INTP me.
Let’s talk about the Serial/white privilege article! I have thoughts!
Mainly, I think it raises an important point to consider, and the TAL style of reportage and storytelling is something that, while enjoyable, deserves some critical analysis. But the argument is made in such an unconvincing way it almost undermines that point, for me. I thought the author extrapolated a lot that I didn’t see in Koenig’s framing, ignored or dismissed points she’s made, and drew a lot of conclusions that have the potential to be undermined as the podcast continues. That said, the comments and tweets on it I read yesterday (Jodi Kantor’s springs to mind) gave me hope for online discourse. They were respectful and intelligent and expanded and made more complex (in a good way) my view on Serial and the Awl piece.
As much as podcasters want/claim to be progressive and changing the face of journalism, not much seems to have changed since Radiolab’s awful treatment of Kalia Yang and her uncle.
I listened to that recently (not knowing anything about the episode beforehand) and…wow. They were so callus. It made me feel sick, and they didn’t seem to think they’d done anything wrong.
Ooooooh good example.
Woah, I think Yellow Rain is way, way, way worse than Serial. I don’t think it’s fair to Kalia Yang or her uncle to make that kind of comparison. (Full disclosure: I’m not even sure I fully buy the Awl article’s arguments.)
You’re right, Yellow Rain was much, much worse than Serial. I guess I would frame it as the Yellow Rain episode being a macro-aggression, and Serial being a continuous series of micro-aggressions.
Yeah, I agree that the argument was unconvincing. This part annoyed me the most:
Koenig notes, “Her diary, by the way—well I’m not exactly sure what I expected her diary to be like but—it’s such a teenage girls diary.” (My emphasis added.) This statement seems to suggest a colorblind ideal: In Koenig’s Baltimore, kids will be kids, regardless of race or background. But I imagine there are many listeners—especially amongst people of color—who pause and ask, “Wait, what did you expect her diary to be like?” or “Why do you feel the need to point out that a Korean teenage girl’s diary is just like a teenage girl’s diary?” and perhaps, most importantly, “Where does your model for ‘such a teenage girl’s diary’ come from?”
I feel this is a really disingenuous extrapolation of what SK meant. I think most people will see that SK meant that, as a murder victim, she thought that Hae’s diary would be more of a source of darkness and drama that would elucidate what led up to her murder.
Or just that it really fulfilled certain stereotypes about teenaged girls in a funny way. I agree that that example really undermined the author’s argument.
Yeah, that’s definitely how I interpreted that comment. You think a murder victim’s diary might be dark or mysterious, not completely ordinary, because being murdered is definitely not ordinary.
Yes. That part alone kind of threw off the rest for me. I didn’t see any ill will in that statement. She was expressing surprise at the ordinariness of a diary written by someone who was murdered. It wasn’t a cultural observation, and pulling that into it put me on my guard for the rest of the essay. Like PomoFrannyGlass said, I’m interested to see this be discussed – especially as I hadn’t noticed these issues, and would be glad to have them pointed out to me so that I can learn – but this didn’t seem to hit the mark.
Yeah, I agree that the two big arguments–SK said it was “such a teenage girl’s diary,” and SK used the words “immigrant parents”—weren’t the right ones to use. In the latter example, she set up a statement of fact (Adnan and Hae’s parents were immigrants) and let Adnan explain what that meant re: dating.
It could be argued that she used “Adnan and Hae had immigrant parents” as a shorthand for “strict parents,” to prime the audience for the words that would come out of Adnan’s mouth, but it is also straightforward and unembellished, at least on her part. She didn’t say anything gross like “Adnan and Hae had immigrant parents, so they didn’t get to date like Americans.”
I thought it was especially helpful that SK gave Adnan’s mother a platform, too. The Awl article made it sound like SK was making broad assumptions and claims without letting members of the community speak, which is untrue.
Do you have any links to any of the tweets? I haven’t listened to the podcast yet but I’m really curious for a number of reasons so I went ahead and read the Awl piece anyway, since I am a daughter of immigrants who grew up about 20 miles away and was two years younger than Hae and Adnan.
Re. the piece itself: I was really struck by Kang’s particular example about the inference that Syed’s quote about “parameters” re. dating was really “immigrant culture.” I mean, I get that it’s not really fair to paint “the Lees and the Syeds have been rendered as Tiger Parents—overbearing and out-of-touch” BUT I did the exact same thing in HS for similar reasons. And it wasn’t just me–I had plenty of friends and acquaintances from different immigrant backgrounds through college (and beyond, quite frankly) who hid their dating life extensively from their parents because their parents did have a hard time grappling with American dating culture. I also know some children of immigrants who didn’t have to do it, but I always felt that it was the exception, not the rule.
Also there’s been some larger conversations about interethnic dating among Asian Americans precisely because kids from different immigrant families kind of get being delicate about PDA, etc. in front of parents a little more intuitively than non-immigrants. (The second half of this article touches on that a bit.
I think the overall point of “the reporter is white; how are her blinders changing and impacting this narrative” is a good one to consider though.
I was waiting for her to mention the Muslim thing, but she didn’t, not for a long time. Then I realized that this was pre-9/11. But still. Surprised she never mentioned it, when the prosecutors must have played on that in the courtroom, explicitly or not.
I thought she did mention it. I thought she said in one of the episodes that descriptions of Adnan’s “dark side” and possessiveness may have been inaccurate, and coming from prejudice against Muslim men. I can’t remember what episode it was in, though.
Yeah it was pretty recent. I listened to the first six all at once so i don’t remember when exactly she mentioned it.
In the most recent one, she talked about how the jury may have been more inclined to take Jay’s side because he was black and Adnan was Muslim.
Yeah, I also remember her talking about how anti-Muslim prejudice played a role in the prosecutions arguments at trial, and fully getting the impression that unfair racial/religious biases were important to how Adnan was portrayed/why he was convicted. I think it was in the earlier episodes. It was definitely discussed.
There are some moments in there that are really complicated. Like when she was trying to describe Jay to the audience, and the first voice she uses is someone saying “He’s like Dennis Rodman!” and I was all WAIT YOU DID NOT JUST DO THAT but then she has, like, four other people of different ages, genders, and (presumably) racial backgrounds say “he’s like Dennis Rodman!”
ok can we talk about how ghoulish it is to turn someone’s horrible personal tragedy into an Upworthy, and then the Upworthy actually goes viral? This makes my skin crawl.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/richardhjames/father-sing…
God, I agree. And no, death in childbirth isn’t some romantic weepy movie, you assholes. You wanna talk about death in childbirth? Let’s talk about death in childbirth. http://www.ebony.com/news-views/black-womens-heal…
I CANNOT. I CANNOT EVEN. I LITERALLY SEE THE DESCRIPTION IN MY FACEBOOK SIDEBAR AND I WANT TO DIE.
this is not something anyone else should ever have seen
IT WAS TRENDING ON FACEBOOK! PEOPLE WERE GAWKING AT THIS MAN’S TRAGEDY!!!
When I saw this “trending” on facebook I had to just read it out loud to my partner because HOW IS THIS ‘NEWS’ THAT IS ‘TRENDING’ THIS IS SOMEONE’S LIFE.
This has been my thought for twenty-four straight hours. I am so angry that Facebook even informed me that this personal moment happened, that I even have to be slightly aware of it. It is none of my business!
you know, just in case you forgot the internet was a horrible, horrible place for a second…
I don’t even really understand what motivates someone to want to be a voyeur to what is likely the most poignant moment in this man’s life. Are we meant to applaud him? pity him?
They’ve now changed the description from “dies in labor” to “dies in her sleep,” which somehow makes it worse.
A few people on facebook linked that yesterday and I was HORRIFIED. Upworthy is a cesspool.
UGH WHAT. I just saw that full URL and went noooooooooope. Tragedy porn, cool.
GOD I AM GLAD I AM NOT THE ONLY PERSON WHO FEELS THIS WAY. I kept seeing it on the Facebook sidebar and wanting to cry. Is this how we feel our feelings now? Petty voyeurism between meetings and conference calls?
Yes! I was horrified.
YES! I saw this on my sidebar too and wondered who recorded that…and did that horrible person ask this grieving person for permission to post his personal tragedy all over the universe?
The posts I have seen are actually trying to guilt people into watching the damn thing. Like “this is what people should be looking at rather that pictures of someone’s ass”. I feel like many internet people do not know about boundaries or choices.
The Rehtaeh Parsons verdict is just ..so tragic and heartbreaking.
Her father’s victim impact statement is overwhelming powerful: http://glencanning.com/2014/11/victim-impact-stat…
(On a side note — Canadian Twitter has been intense and moving this month between #beenrapedneverreported and #youknowhername)
It is a staggering miscarriage of justice.
[note: a bit of a rage rant follows]. So, this week, I had someone tell me that they were so happy they were expecting a boy, because “boys are so much easier to raise than girls.” Which is, fine, they’re excited about their baby, and entitled to their opinions” but the whole mantra that “teenage boys are so much easier to deal with than teenage girls” is especially rage inducing in light of the Rehteah Parsons verdict.
That beautiful young woman killed herself because of what her peer chose to do her. Her parents lost their daughter because of a “boys will be boys” attitude. And those young men, who I’m assuming that their parents thought were “so easy to raise”, got off scot-free, with a “boys will be boys” verdict.
(Also, additional point, it’s usually only white parents who can say that “teenage boys are so easy to deal with” because they don’t have to worry about their sons getting killed or imprisoned)
Right, because raising a boy means you can totes ignore all that pesky rape culture! ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh, NO. >:(
Hmm now I’m thinking of “I’m so happy I’m having a boy, I can finally dismantle the patriarchy from within.” “I’m so glad I’m having a boy, I can finally have an influence in ending rape culture.” This could be fun!
“Boys are easier” is such internalized misogyny.
THANK YOU. I’m currently pregnant and it’s too early to tell what we’re having, but I’d prefer a girl because feminism and also because I find boys a bit hard to relate to. Anyway people keep saying how much ‘easier’ boys are and it’s been squicking me out but I haven’t understood why until your comment. Now I think I’ll just hit them with an “oh? Why’s that?” and see what happens. Having said that the opportunity to raise good feminist men isn’t nothing.
The Awl article on Serial really has my antennae whirring – my past employment includes journalism AND private investigation for criminal defense cases (usually death penalty cases). I’m a white lady, and as a PI, many of our clients were either black or Hispanic men. Talking to their friends and the people in their lives was always challenging, but more so because of the nature of the interaction (“Can you tell me what he was like before he allegedly committed this horrifying crime?”) rather than the realities of race. In retrospect, I’m sure I was a little clueless at times. More than anything, I want to see how Serial plays out – Koenig should’ve addressed the atmosphere of race in this case earlier, but I kind of wonder if that won’t be an episode in and of itself at some point (soon I hope).
So are you listening to Serial yet, Nicole?
I don’t exactly agree that Sarah Koenig is “whitewashing and stereotyping” Hae and Adnan, but it is curious and frustrating that race and the immigrant experience has largely been left out of the narrative.
I have heard it mentioned, but mostly in the context of how perceptions of race may have affected the people originally involved in the case and the jury, rather than Koenig’s own attitudes/biases.
She’s so quick to admit that she isn’t the impartial, disinterested journalist in this series, except for that one aspect, and it’s a strange omission.
There have also been people commenting about how Sarah keeps referring to the victim as Hae, instead of as Hae Min, her full first name. But since that’s how she was referred to by everyone else involved in the case, I don’t see how this is strange. If that’s what she preferred to be called, why shouldn’t she call her that?
From the comments on the article about the t-shirt with cartoon tits (tit-shirt?): “It’s just a T-shirt! Come on!”
[Tour guide voice] And over here we have a prime example of the Common Internet Douchelord, displaying typical behaviors of being exactly the opposite of helpful and missing literally the entire point, did you even read the fucking article.
On a positive note, yes please keep doing the deleted comment of the day.
My mom made me a pillow case out of hawaiian surfer pin-up boys, and I have an apron made out of the lumberjack ones. I love them both.
Welp, there’s holiday shopping for my fiance taken care of.
not related to your point: the guy standing behind ed harris, in the brown suit, is my grandfather! my mother and aunt were very jealous when he got that role, because he got to touch ed harris.
ommmmgggggggg
Edit: TRUE STORY, I was about 12 when that movie came out, and I went to see it with my parents. I went on an emotional journey! I was afraid and excited and I laughed and I cried. At the end I turned to my parents and said, “Wow, COULD SOMETHING LIKE THAT REALLY HAPPEN?!”
<3 <3
They did not make fun of me, and told me yes indeed that shit really went down, and I DON’T KNOW WHY, I immediately was like, “Oh boy, I want to be an astronaut!”
I made pajamas for my sister in this: http://www.equilter.com/product/123976/all-i-want…
She is a VP in a Fortune 500 company. She does not wear the pin up pajamas to work
That Oxford American article is just an amazing piece of writing.
I’m a freelance science writer (not anyone you’d ever have heard of, I promise) and watching Rose Eveleth and other female scientists and science journalists get told to kill themselves on Twitter because they made a snarky remark about a shirt is … discouraging. Is this what success looks like in this field? Being high-profile enough that strange men notice and abuse you?
I should be more badass, but I’m frankly considering a career change that would get me off the Internet.
‘Being high- profile enough that strange men notice and abuse you?’ That’s what success looks like in *every* field.
Man, for dudes to get that level of “success” they have to write The Satanic Verses or something. Aren’t we lucky.
Is this what success looks like in this field? Being high-profile enough that strange men notice and abuse you?
I’m starting to think that this is less what ‘sucess’ looks like and more like what ‘being a lady who says something about men’ looks like 🙁
When did death threaths become the go-to response to a woman having an opinion on the internet? I’m sure it’s just my personal ignorance, but I never noticed it until a few years ago. Was the internet always like this and did Twitter, etc just make it more visible? Fucking depressing.
I was just saying to my partner this evening that it feels like it’s becoming a culturally-known response for a certain type of man. Jessica Ennis-Something just said that she wants her name removed from a Sheffield United stand if Ched Evans (footballer & convicted rapist) is re contracted. Cue inevitable death and rape threats.
I think there must be certain kind of man who just used to fume about Women Saying Feminist Things in private, but now there’s been so much coverage of people receiving abuse on Twitter that that’s now a legitimate option for them to vent their rage. What do you even do with that?
Considering how many men/Martian rover parodies who made snarky remarks on the shirt later noted that they’d received precisely zero death threats, it’s clearly how success looks like for *women* in the field. Or on the internet. Or just breathing. Fuck.
(Also, I want to hear of you! Small-time science writing peeps unite! [I am a very, very small-time science communications person])
Woo, there are more of us! It’s a real problem; I have no interest in spending large chunks of time dealing with trolls, so I don’t use my work Twitter account nearly as much as I should for engaging and self-promotion. I really respect people like Rose who call it out and cope with it.
Hello, I’m Emby. You might remember me from such previous careers as Science Journalist, and Freelance Ragamuffin Frazzle! I recently joined the dark side of academic science media relations and let me tell you: The stress is miles and miles and miles below what I was used to in the big leagues. I thought I would regret no longer seeing my name in Very Important Bylines, but eh. I go to work at 8, I leave at 4:30, my weekends are generally free, I have an office.
Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of other new and fascinating institutional bullshit to deal with, but for my tolerance for stress and jackassery, it’s a better fit. So, maybe an option!
Of course, DLTBGYD if you’re set on actual honest-to-god journalism. The old guard I was used to was 95% older white dudes who really, really didn’t get it, but they’ll be dead soon and you’ll inherit the earth.
I do remember you! I am glad to hear that the PIO side is so warm and inviting…mmm. I actually have no great wedded love to Real Journalism; 5+ years of working in online media has disabused me of any notions of grandeur. A lot of people working on the academic media relations side are doing fantastic work under far less pressure, I think.
Right now, freelancing works for family/flexibility reasons, and it’s far less stressful than my old staff writer job in a lot of ways. But even now, if a PIO-type job popped up in my area, I’d likely jump for it. Probably smarter than my alternative plan of bombing my career from space and going back to school for ?????
Can we talk about how there is a tiger or other Big Cat loose in Paris? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30035666
STAY SAFE, FRENCH TOASTS!
also: As darkness fell, the Montevrain council said on its Facebook page that the search had been called off for the night
“Well, we still haven’t found this thing, but… it’s getting dark now so… whatever… lock your doors I guess.” A+ public safety measures right there dudes.
[outrageous French accent]: “Frrankly, we would prefair NOT to find it at night, you know? It is dangereux!”
Sacré bleu! Ze tiger, she is free! Hon hon hon.
It is apparently not a tiger: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/14/pari…
It’s a tiger to me, damn it.
Yes!! I don’t know if any of us french toasts live out there though? It’s all the way at Disney World
The cat will inevitably have much better night vision than its pursuers, so maybe not a bad call!
Eheheheh french toasts :3
Everyone knows that tigers are just big cats = cats cannot operate keyed locks = locking your doors = TOTAL SAFETY.
That is a foolproof plan right there. Nobody needs to leave their house at night, right? OK, awesome!
And definitely you do not need to leave your house after dark in winter.
And clearly no cat has ever tried to scrabble through a window.
If I meet it, I plan to whistle famous Beethoven’s famous Ninth Symphony. It worked for Ringo.
I love your comment. And I thought that tiger’s name was “Roger” (instead of “Rajah”) for YEARS.
Me too! Like, I’m pretty sure I only figured out it was Rajah some time in the past year, which means I spent about twenty years thinking it was Roger.
I only realized it when we watched it with the closed captions on. Once again, the Toast lets us know we aren’t so alone!
(We won’t discuss the way I also thought Captain von Trapp’s first name was “Gaylord”, like in “Show Boat”, until my parents heard me say something about “Maria and Gaylord” and made fun of me.)
“Gaylord” does somehow suit him, though, in a very high-school derogatory slang kind of way.
Dirtbag “Sound of Music”!
“National Socialism? More like National Ho-cialism!”
Let’s talk Deep Springs! I just read Edan Lepucki’s California, where “Plank”, which is so totally Deep Springs, is a major thing for many of the characters, and from what those characters did/felt… they NEEDED to take that class.
Haha, my mom’s fiance used to teach there. I’ve never really asked him about it because the concept of Deep Springs has always seemed so annoying to me.
I haven’t followed the Rehtaeh Parsons closely, so I went to Wikipedia to refresh my memory, and wow my desire to see Christie Blatchford suffer some sort of painful public humiliation has not abated in the slightest:
On April 26, 2013, Christie Blatchford wrote in the National Post that a problem in the case was that one of Parsons’ friends claimed Parsons was “flirtatious” on the night the photo was taken and was seen laughing in bed with two boys, and also that there were “accounts from Rehtaeh herself and independent evidence, including retrieved online messages, that supported the suggestion the sex that took place was consensual.”
I don’t have links, I’m sorry, I just follow a bunch of internet media folks on Twitter who were commenting yesterday – very much in line with comments on the article, which are probably better anyway b/c they’re longer.
I totally agree that the overall point is a good one to consider, and (to someone else’s point) that the racial dynamics of the courtroom have been touched on but not fully acknowledged or explored yet. Perhaps I’m giving the production team and Koenig too much credit but I assume that will be explored in depth down the road. This seems like the style of the show, so far–Koenig will tease something by mention it in passing and then later dedicate a full episode to it. I expect her to go into far more detail about Syed’s defense attorney’s shady reputation, which is another important factor she has only mentioned in an off-hand way through ep 7. This is part of my struggle with the Awl piece–it’s written on the assumption that these off-hand comments re: race are all we’re going to get.
So the analysis of that particular quote was interesting to me, and I think I’d have to go back to that episode and listen to it again to form my own opinion on the disconnect between what Syed is actually saying and how Koenig frames it. BUT the claim that Koenig has painted the Lees as Tiger parents felt really off to me, I think that was when I started to question the argument — that’s not been my impression of them thus far (note: I haven’t listened to yesterday’s ep yet). Paralleling others’ takes on the diary comments, I think part of Koenig’s frame is the secret lives of teenagers, all these things they’re up to that their parents and other adults are unaware of–whether it’s that they’re smoking pot in the state park or dating someone of whom their parents would disapprove. I have no doubt that that experience is shaded differently within different communities but I think it’s common among high schoolers.
So yeah. I think the overall point is valid and important, but I had some issues with the author’s takes on what has been presented so far, and felt that his approach assumes these issues won’t be explored in depth as the show progresses–that just seemed weird, given the show’s format and the fact that there is no published end date.
I can never figure mine out because every time I try and take the personality test I’m trying to decide whether to answer as sober me, drunk me, or try to remember how I would have answered before my great depression, which is kind of hard. I always give up.
I’ve been reliably informed that my personality is always pretty much the same, whether I’m baked, fried, sauced, or in a funk. On one hand, this is comforting, but it’s also kind of depressing because I’m not what you’d call a happy, peaceful sort of person.
ugh omg PEAR I can't believe you'd smile quietly while you knit but not share what exactly you are knitting
that's just rude
I'll be frowning in disapproval into my own knitting: a pair of socks, a lightweight cardigan, a beaded blob that will, someday, turn out to be a lace shawl
I only realized it when we watched it with the closed captions on. Once again, the Toast lets us know we aren't so alone!
(We won't discuss the way I also thought Captain von Trapp's first name was "Gaylord", like in "Show Boat", until my parents heard me say something about "Maria and Gaylord" and made fun of me.)
I hope this article makes it into more "mainstream" sports writing, too — I love Outside and I know it has a wide readership, but nothing like Sports Illustrated. This author needs to be bombarded with interview requests, given the number of kids who swim/play on community-run teams. (Or school teams, obvs, but I suspect the community-run teams have higher participation rates.)
"Gaylord" does somehow suit him, though, in a very high-school derogatory slang kind of way.
Dirtbag "Sound of Music"!
"National Socialism? More like National Ho-cialism!"