Negotiating skills are so important, particularly for women, and Latoya Peterson offers some advice on salary negotiation and also gives us some insight into her work life.
There is going to be a new Ghostbusters movie. All the leads are going to be women. That cast has been announced.
Japan has a hikkimori (shut in) population of young people and the country is struggling to find ways to help them.
When the Kimura family moved here from Tokyo, their middle school-aged daughter missed her old friends. Midway into her first year in high school, she stopped going. Between 14 and 19, she barely left the house, and for one year hardly left her room, interacting only with her parents.
Now 33 and recovered, Ms. Kimura says she was “hikikomori.” That’s the name of a type of social withdrawal that can be so severe, people with it don’t leave their houses for years. It’s also what those who suffer from the condition are called.
Nerds can be a nuisance.
World records are a big deal in India. I would like to win a world record for most days getting absolutely nothing accomplished. I feel I am close.
The first time Nikhil Shukla adjudicated a Guinness world record, two million people turned up. Standing on a makeshift dais just before dawn in January 2012, Shukla gazed with bleary, incredulous eyes; he was 28, and he had never seen such a mammoth crowd in his life. Tolls on the national highway from the nearest city, Rajkot, had been suspended to accommodate the traffic, and Shukla had to trudge 20 minutes from his V.I.P. parking spot, squeezing through dense thickets of bodies, to approach the stage. The throng that gathered in this patch of dusty farmland in western India to watch the event came from villages and towns across the district. They had responded to a call from a Gujarati community organization that, with a vague aim of promoting public harmony, wanted people to pair off and shake hands with one another, setting a world record for the most simultaneous handshakes.
This guy is 100 years old and is still writing class notes. That is dedication.
Edward Gerson, a retired button manufacturer and plastics innovator, started his writing career late. He was 87 years old, to be precise, when he took on the role of chronicling the goings-on of Dartmouth College’s class of 1935.
When he started writing the alumni updates in 2001, there were more than 150 classmates and lots of material. As he noted in his inaugural column, “the Lord will provide the obits, but the news of your lives has to come from you.”
Also, button manufacturer seems like a cool job.
I wish I had the energy to really respond intelligently and reasonably to THIS. I don’t. I appreciate what Alex Pareene had to say on the matter, though.
Meanwhile.
If you enjoy tiny spaces, here is an essay about a capsule hotel. Personally, that is the stuff of nightmares.
What sounded like a scream jolted me awake at 5:54 a.m. Less than two feet away, the man in the neighboring capsule had awakened from a nightmare, but the way he followed it with three quick sneezes made me wonder if his cry was actually the first in a series of predawn sneezes. There in my narrow capsule, at the top of two stacked rows of sleepers in a warren of hallways, I rolled on my side, my knees pressed against the tan plastic wall, and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t fall back asleep.
A profile of sorts in which the word cantankerous is lovingly used to describe David Simon.
The famously malcontent Simon is harrumphing as usual. His new HBO miniseries, Show Me a Hero — about the fierce and unbelievable public-housing desegregation battle in 1980s Yonkers — is shooting down the hall. It will wrap at the end of the month and won’t air until later this year. And here he is in this uninhabited part of the set, patiently, convincingly, and dramatically explaining why it also will fail to find an audience.
I am feeling cantankerous, myself.
Tags: link roundup, magic, the internet
I also enjoyed Jessica Valenti’s response to the PC article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan…
Especially this line: “It seems the only kind of speech Chait thinks should be “free” is the kind he agrees with.”
Also, Toast Acceptable Man Matt Lubchansky did a nice comic!
Chaiters Gonna Chait
Love it!
At the end of the… third? paragraph in Valenti’s response (thanks for linking, btw), she references the conversation that could be had about call-out culture and its complicated relationship to productive debate. Is anyone having this conversation? Anyone read a good article or book? Because while Chait is a twit and I’m in agreement with many of the counterarguments, I cannot deny that there is a serious problem with some of the ways we engage with one another, especially online.
Ironically, this very conversation occurred in progressive games journalism early last year, about the unsafe space created by online call out culture. But then Gamergate happened and survival became a higher priority. Here are some good articles by Quinnae Moongazer and Mattie Brice: http://quinnae.com/2014/01/03/words-words-words-o… http://www.mattiebrice.com/on-anger/
Oh, I had read “Words, Words, Words” when it was first posted and loved it. Thank you for reminding me about it. Happy to see there’s now a follow-up.
It’s a shame that this productive conversation got derailed by Gamergate.
You are very welcome! Yeah, one of the biggest shames of Gamergate has been the pushing out of a ton of fascinating voices from games criticism, and that progressive criticism is forced to defend its very right to exist (and that of its purveyors to be physically safe), rather than having so many more interesting and vital conversations.
I found this article awhile back on how it is possible for left-wing radicalism to tend to view everything in very black and white terms (“Everything is problematic”), written about the author’s own experience with student activism: http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2014/11/everything-pro…
I didn’t agree with everything in it,but I found it better than a lot of the other articles whining about “pc politics”
Flavia Dzodan wrote an essay I really liked: Feminist and Social Justice blogging as performance and bloodshed:
Call out culture, a phenomenon that casual readers might not even notice, is to me, the most toxic aspect of blogging. Not because it is set to correct wrongs and engage in meaningful ways to actually enact change. No, call out culture is toxic because it has developed as a tool to legitimize aggression and rhetoric violence.
Jo Freeman also wrote about a similar issue for Ms. Magazine back in 1976 called Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood
These were great – thanks!
This piece by Ngọc Loan Trần on Black Girl Dangerous is excellent and I think about it a lot.
http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2013/12/calling…
I really liked Jia Tolentino’s response to the article as well: http://jezebel.com/a-note-to-chait-dissent-isnt-s…
jia is a treasure.
If you don’t feel like rage-reading the Jonathan Chait piece, The Belle Jar did a very very nice recap/response as well.
Look the whole political correctness thing can be fixed with one simple law: It is legally required that anyone about to say “I’m just being Un-PC” replace the phrase with ‘I’m just being an asshole”.
Seriously though, THAT GUY. I was only skimming and hadn’t paid attention to who the author was, but every sentence just kept thinking “This is definitely a middle aged white guy”.
Ah, but don’t you know it’s unfair to take the characteristics of an author into account when judging their ideas?
(you know, something tells me he more easily dismisses ideas from the non-white, non-male, non-straight and/or non-cis. But that’s totally different, of course.)
For people who think that being “un-PC” is totally fine, it’s amazing how quickly they conflate someone saying “That thing you said/did was not okay” with “I think you’re a bad person.”
“it’s amazing how quickly they conflate someone saying “That thing you said/did was not okay” with “I think you’re a bad person.”
I think investing energy in teaching people to break that link between saying un-okay thing/being bad person, is worth every calorie, and will free up the road to change enormously.
I mean, raise your hand if your reaction to criticism is far from stellar…
Hand raised!
But how to teach people that? I mean, I have some ideas, but it seems very tricky.
Jay smooth has some ideas on that subject, but in practice I’ve found that some people are just not capable of hearing that distinction, no matter how many times you say “I think you are generally a good person (or I wouldn’t even bother having this conversation), but that was pretty sexist/racist/whatever.”
In which case, I have no answer for you other than to walk away, and hope maybe some of what you said may sink in when they’re not so busy being defensive at you. But I couldn’t agree more that uncoupling one’s identity as a thoughful/good person from one’s ability to say something wrong is a hugely important step in opening up productive conversation.
I’ll back your law if you back mine, which would similarly replace “I’m just being honest” (or its variant, “I’m just being blunt”) with “I’m intentionally being an offensive jerk.”
This one infuriates me! Some of the best people I know are honest and direct in a way that I really admire. They tell you what they want and they don’t take shit and they’re awesome. They’re also not assholes, because there IS a difference.
The one person I know who prides herself on “just being honest” is a racist dickbag who is so massively, consistently unpleasant that nobody invites her to parties anymore.
I’ve found that the first category of people you mention, the ones who take no shit, rarely bother saying that they’re “just being honest.” They just tell you what they think.
Deal. All things to be implemented once when the revolution comes and the Misandriarchy is ours.
McKinnon is going to mothaeffin KILL it. SO excited for that movie!
I briefly mixed up Kate McKinnon in Ghostbusters and Catherine MacKinnon in the Chaitverse and gave this comment a really different context.
I love her so much and I can’t wait until she and Aidy Bryant are in all of the movies together.
KATE MCKINNON IS A GHOSTBUSTER. I CAN DIE HAPPY.
Would you like a cringe-inducing discussion of the medical instruments found on Blackbeard’s ship The Queen Anne’s Revenge? Why of course you would. http://www.livescience.com/49563-blackbeard-pirat…
The link to the photos is a bit buried, so I’ll leave it here. http://www.livescience.com/49564-photos-blackbear…
Wow I would not want that syringe anywhere near my urethra, thanks.
Sentences I thought I’d never type, part one.
Generally, it would be filled with mercury, too. Eesh.
Great article.
I’ve heard the book The Republic of Pirates is very good, and tells the history of Blackbeard amongst others. I haven’t read it yet by it is on my list.
Anyone else here watching Black Sails?
The Republic of Pirates is my go-to pirate history book; it’s excellent for Caribbean piracy. (My other favorite is The Pirate Wars by Peter Earle, which is very, very partisan toward the Navy but also covers piracy in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean a little better.)
Thanks! Adding The Pirate Wars to my list.
I love all discussions of heinous and historical medical instruments. See also: descriptions of horrifying past surgical practices (for which I have a special fondness, since I published something on that once).
Re: Ghostbusters. I live in hope that Melissa McCarthy’s character isn’t relegated to a mockery. She’s so talented and so smart and it bothers me deeply to see her characters devolving. (Case in point–compare “Tammy” to “The Nines,” in which her character is Ryan Reynolds’ soul mate, and a fully-formed and intelligent character in her own right.) I know it’s her life, her choices, but still.
Uuuugh same. I had only seen her more recent work and never really enjoyed her much, until I watched Gilmore Girls and got to see how awesome she is in a role that isn’t “LOL FAT GIRL IS LOUD”
I’ll have to check out “The Nines,” my only exposure to her has been the lol loud fat girl bit and it pains me to be so unenthusiastic about my favorite movie franchise.
It’s quite good. If you can find the accompanying short, it’s REALLY funny.
From Latoya Peterson’s interview: “So my husband takes care of the kid at the moment while I work, but he expected the division of labor to be more 50/50 and I felt like since my job isn’t neatly into a 9-5 bracket, he should just be flexible. So it’s an ongoing dance.”
Hoooly crap. Her discussion of the topic is fascinating and very important to me, and I think what she has to say on it is well reasoned and an honest presentation of both her and her husband’s sides. And then it also recalls that horrid fatherhood piece by the BU guy, who found 50/50 division of labor so preposterous even when he was on sabbatical….
“A writer, of all things” has become common in my household to indicate a certain type of oblivious and repugnant sexism.
Super interesting. My first reaction was a little bit ‘burn him with fire!’ but then, it also just seems more like he is making reasonable points that stay-at-home moms ought to have an easier time making more often. Both parents have responsibilities even if one is home most often, and probably neither should just be the ‘fun dad’. The issue is that, even when men are willing to subvert traditional gender roles and be the primary caretaker, they still come with more entitlement than women ever do, and even when they’re right it’s kind of annoying that they get to insist on equalities that women have been denied for centuries.
Also, I will totally help them out on the childcare front, if she comes over to my house every day to give me life advice while I play with that chubby-cheeked baby.
I really love the piece on hikkimori and it really shows that WSJ can still do reporting (and tv recaps) even if the oped and editorial section are not good.
Ah yes that was a good article. It also helped explain why, when I was really into manga, there seemed to be an oddly large number of characters with siblings who never left their bedrooms.
Throughout the whole article it’s “hikikomori” but in the link roundup it’s called “hikkimori”… how can you read the article and not recognize that it’s the wrong word?
Because spell-check won’t recognize it and the visual patterns the letters form in both (correct and incorrect) spellings are so similar that distinguishing easily between them is hard, especially if the original article isn’t also open in a tab (or if a hard copy isn’t to hand) at the same time.
Loved the David Simon article. If anybody walked out of American Sniper feeling vaguely disappointing, and you haven’t seen Generation Kill, I recommend it. For some reason this one always gets left out of the ‘Prestige Television’ conversation, despite being one of the few pieces of cinema to address the war as it was still happening. Also, Ziggy from the Wire is in it, and despite playing the exact same character, is a thousand times less annoying.
definitely! I need to rewatch Generation Kill eventually – it was excellent.
I watched Generation Kill (highly recommend) before the Wire and all I could think for the first several episodes of Ziggy was “Ray. Ray what are you doing. Ray stop.”
There’s a light novel/manga series about hikikomori called Welcome To The NHK that I haven’t seen yet, only read wiki articles about, but sounds very interesting and I’d like to see it.
Not really relevant but this wikipedia category feels like something that could belong in a link roundup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Phantom_isl…
This is wonderful!
Oo, that’s really interesting, thanks!
Aaaaaaand there goes my morning
well that’s my morning, then. coffee, invoices, learning every phantom island on wikipedia!
It’s in a larger wikipedia category called “Error” which is awesome
Anyone with a love of phantom islands should consider reading Hippolyte’s Island by the very excellent Barbara Hodgson. It’s fiction and it’s been a while since I read it myself, but I remember it being quite charming.
So does Elugelap count as a phantom island? Or does the category of “phantom island” only include islands that absolutely never existed even though we thought they did?
“Trigger warnings aren’t much help in actually overcoming trauma — an analysis by the Institute of Medicine has found that the best approach is controlled exposure to it, and experts say avoidance can reinforce suffering.”
So… that’s a decision Chait thinks people should feel entitled to make on behalf of trauma victims? Got it.
Really, where does one even start with that article? Yikes.
Also, I’m not sure how he got from “controlled exposure” to “exposure based on the random whims of white men who wanna say stuff”
Right?! Like the whole point of trigger warnings isn’t allowing people to control their own exposure in whatever way is best for them.
Yeah, I mean, I’m not sure there’s any better way to achieve controlled exposure than…. trigger warnings.
Yeah, I mean, his summary of the Institute of Medicine seems like a big ol’ endorsement of trigger warnings, because what says “controlled exposure” like providing warnings of upcoming exposure to a trigger.
I guess one option is to work with a mental health professional to identify how and when to expose yourself, using trigger warnings to identify when those moments are coming. But I much prefer to leave my mental health in the hands of Jonathan Chait. FIX ME, JONATHAN, WITH YOUR WHITE MAN WISDOM.
What’s really uncomfortable is how *important* he thinks it is that he should have the ability to expose young women to sexually explicit content, without their consent or even knowledge, even though he knows that it will be upsetting to them.
Not even with some logistical defense like “how can you know what triggers everyone in a class of 200 students?” Or even the baloney claims about academic freedom or free speech. He’s saying that *for their own good* this should happen.
I struggle with this one. “Controlled exposure” has a specific medical definition that usually refers to a specific setting, and trigger warnings don’t really match either parts of that since they happen in an uncontrolled space and depend on an external party anticipating a possible situation. (Meaning, “controlled” is less about “please help me avoid that when I am out in public” and more about “my therapist has introduced the topic while I am in a safe, clinical setting.” I make no assumptions about the value of either.)
That said, I want Chait to CITE HIS SOURCE. Because I highly doubt the Institute of Medicine report says what he is using it to say, and 3 minutes of searching PubMed without more specific keywords failed to produce it. It’s not like the IoM published something with the title, “The Efficacy of Trigger Warnings,” either that would pop right off the National Academies website, so it looks to me like he’s hoping no one who reads his piece will try to follow up and find the original rsearch.
I mean, the pushback against trigger warnings generally boils down to “I don’t want to think about how the content I consume might contain elements that are upsetting in the extreme to the people around me”
which I guess is fine, it’s kind of a dirtbag position to take, but it’s fine
but like, is it in fact necessary to ridicule people who 1. put content warnings on things, and 2. rely on those content warnings to minimize or mitigate intense negative emotional responses by avoiding or anticipating the content that might cause them?
(No. It is very much not necessary to do that.)
Nobody is taking anything away from you here, dude! We are just looking to make the world a little easier to navigate for people whose experiences are not the same as yours!
Seriously… I read it just marveling at how someone could publicly immolate himself so expertly. He must enjoy it because he got such a royal intellectual smackdown from Ta-Nehisi Coates previously.
Just remember – pointing out someone’s biases and prejudices is not part of the debate. It’s censorship!
What an ass.
Because being able to decide if you want to be exposed to something is definitely not controlled exposure.
OMFG. Do you suppose it ever occurred to Chait that TWs can help with the “controlled” part of “controlled exposure”? Christ on a cracker.
ETA: I see I am not the first person to whom this thought has occurred.
Ugh. Also in refutation of that point, trigger warnings often create controlled exposure as to opposed to *SURPRISE! TRAUMA REMINDER!*.
Also correct me if I’m wrong but it seems like the “trigger warnings on college campuses” thing is one of those welfare-queen-esque straw men that has a vastly larger presence in self-righteous internet rants than it does in real life. I hear that “some campuses” are doing it but they never seem to describe a verifiable incident.
God yes, it’s the thing that gets trucked out in nearly every one of these pieces.
PC gone mad! Putting words in front of other words to preface the content of the following words! ON CAMPUS! WHERE WILL IT END?!
Yeah, I looked it up and the study he’s talking about (I assume, it was the 2nd result on Google and I can’t imagine he researched it more) was exposure therapy done by qualified professionals in a hospital setting. So actually, if a college prof left off trigger warnings and cited that study, there’s a good chance they could be sued into oblivion for – practicing psychology without a license? Unethical research on human subjects? Basically a zillion things that boil down to “simmer down, sparky, you’re not now and never will be my therapist.”
WAIT what search terms did you use to find it? I couldn’t even get PubMed to ork it up for me.
(Btw, that’s not “practicing psychology without a license” – it’s just a horrible misuse of evidence in making a very shaky argument.)
God, that bit. I wanted to shake him through that whole paragraph.
“Can’t you see that this is exactly what you’re saying? What part of ‘controlled’ do you not understand? HOW IS THIS NOT ABOUT A PERSON CONTROLLING THEIR OWN EXPOSURE?”
It seems to me he objects to people who write helping the people who read, and what he views as standard is just an audience of quiet, complacent mouths open to accept his thoughts whenever he sees fit to pop them in. He does not react well to a closed mouth.
“Do I look like a chicken-salad-eating motherfucker?!” is the line that got me to watch this probably depressing and violent mini series.
Ghostbusters Ghostbusters Ghostbusters Ghostbusters Ghostbusters! Speaking as someone who lives in a fire station, I could not be more excited.
I agree with those above who hope Melissa McCarthy is not just “the fat chick”. I also hope Leslie Jones is a fully formed character. (http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/11/05/ghostbusters-ernie-hudson/)
But, in the end, I will watch it no matter what, and if it isn’t completely and utterly terrible, I will probably festoon my house and self with related promotional materials. Ghostbusters.
how are you that awesome??
Fire station and/or converted church are my top two ‘places that used to be other things that should be my house now’
It’s not so much that I’m awesome (though I’d like to think I am) as that I forked over all the money I ever had, and ever will have, and now I have two fire poles and a leaky roof. It’s just all about timing! My best advice is to spend more of your time idly browsing Zillow on your phone in bed, and have a realtor friend you can call to show you things on a whim. It doesn’t hurt to have a husband who studied something useful in college, either.
do you feel at all better about this decision in that the state of your purchase and of the firehouse almost EXACTLY MATCHES those in Ghostbusters?
I’ve had just a couple friends take the house buying plunge, and it is scary amounts of money but pretty amazing
Yeah, maybe, except I have yet to catch any ghosts, so I don’t think the disrepair is getting me anywhere 🙂
I have decided that people shouldn’t buy houses unless their #1 hobby is fixing houses.
As a little kid, I had deep desires to score a Guiness World Record but also very little patience. I’d like to find a category that requires absolutely no dedication whatsoever, because I’d kill it.
Also, on a completely unrelated note, I posted this AMAZING fake brochure for a place called DadLand on the last DADS related post, but did it super late at work, and so I don’t know if enough people saw it’s glory. It was placed in a real tourist kiosk! It’s like Disneyland for DADS! I promise this is the last I’ll say on the subject! http://imgur.com/a/n0wEv
I love that it’s across the street from Best Buy.
I knew I shouldn’t have read the Chait piece but I did it and now I am filled with regret.
One nice thing: my GSA had someone from our school’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion office come in to talk to us about what they’re planning once the new Vice-Chancellor arrives, and it’s the first time I’ve heard someone in any position of power talk seriously about micro-aggressions and how they’re a huge issue for underrepresented student populations. It was very satisfying. They’re also doing a study on whether female job candidates get interrupted more than male candidates during their job talk. Our administration is fucked up in many ways, but it seems like they’re actually doing some good work in that office!
Ahhhhh a juicebox I went to high school with just posted the Chait article on facebook with the comment “a breath of fresh air.” Noooooope!
I wish there was a way to set up an “auto-unfriend” for things like that. Like a Google alert, but for sexist and racist shit your terrible acquaintances post. And then they would just disappear from your feed. And maybe from the Earth.
I wish! He’s also the same offended white man who replied to something a WOC classmate posted (an article about race, the Oscars, etc.) and started his incredibly long comment with “Tell me more about myself, please! I take real issue with this piece.” And then I laughed too hard to keep reading his comment, and that was probably for the best.
I wish to read this thread immediately.
WOW same
Haha ok guys! Your wish is my command. The article in question is here. White boy’s response:
Tell me more about myself, please! I take real issue with this piece. “But the Je Suis Charlie movement among white American liberals is nothing short of disingenuous. It represents an attempt to displace black people from the center of a political moment…” that’s extremely selfish. The author [WOC] seems to believe that her greatest cause must be everyone else’s. There are many, many worthy causes to fight for – freedom of speech, public security, religious tolerance (three that are at the center of the Charlie Hebdo discourse), climate change, healthcare, equal rights, international development, women’s rights, etc etc. Everyone has their own top causes.
The original poster wrote a really long and thoughtful reply. Also just realized the offended white man lives in my city 😐
A guy (an old college acquaintance) on my FB feed posted the Chait article under the heading of “At least conservatives are honest. THIS is what the liberals have been up to lately.” And I’m all, “wait, what?” LOL UNFOLLOW. My life is too short for the conversation he needs. I mean, he needs someone to explain that Chait does not represent the liberal position OR an “honest” conservative position…but I don’t have to be his teacher.
Ugh, a nominally progressive college acquaintance did the same with the caption “Great article.” NOPE.
Yeah, mine was just with a pullquote. He’s probably long overdue for an unfollow, although I do try to give real-life humans one go-round on the “here’s where you’re missing the point” routine before hitting that button.
Man, what’s up with juiceboxes and that phrase?
What are other people’s thoughts on the capsule hotel article? Something about the tone rubbed me the wrong way, I got a bit of a “Japanese culture is exotic” without really unpacking the cultural differences. But he acknowledged it’s the first time he’s been overseas, and he’s not well versed in Japanese culture, so taking the approach he did is better than claiming that he was an expert…
I dunno, did anyone else pick up on that, or is it just me?
Yeah, that’s the tone of most English-language media re: Japanese culture stuff. The “Japan is wack” story pitch is a really cheap and lazy one, but really marketable.
I think he needed better earplugs. I haven’t stayed in a capsule hotel, but I have stayed in western hostel dorms several times, and with good earplugs I can easily sleep through or ignore nearby alarm clocks & people moving about next to my bed.
I also think that I’ve read enough articles by people who aren’t Japanese attempting to explain Japanese culture for one lifetime, but that it’s good that he at least didn’t claim to be an expert.
I was mostly impressed that he was able to fill so much space with such little information. He got to the hotel, he slept, he woke up, he took a bath, he checked out. He acts like staying in a capsule hotel was the strangest and most revolutionary idea in the world. He thinks that every minute was worth describing for its lessons on the culture of Japan. That article was thousands of words long! For a hotel review!
Suuuuuuuuper late to the party, but my main beef with the article was his “in-depth analysis” of Japanese culture, when:
(1) it was his first trip there;
(2) “When you’re stuck on an island, you’re stuck with each other. It creates the sense of, ‘We’re all in this together. Don’t rock the boat.'” HAS HE EVER BEEN TO THE ISLAND OF MANHATTAN??!!? We are all terrible and rude and apparently there are invisible-to-me signs that say “why yes by all means please stop dead in the middle of a midtown sidewalk with all 5 of your hellspawn so you can take a shitty picture of a boring landmark.”
Like, maybe travel just a little bit more, and then get back to me about generalizing cultures.
Forgive the Open Thread topic, but would anyone be interested in a FB/Secret Twitter group to talk about working out? I’m breaking up with my trainer (he’s great but I can’t afford it) and we’re spending the next month getting me set to work on my own, but I’d love to have strong Toasties to talk with about what I’m doing. I cannot deal with My Goddamn Fitness Pal or whatever and want something like that delightfully pun-filled SwoleAcceptance sub-Reddit that we all enjoyed last week, just less Reddity, you know?
So, Burnt Toast Talk: Who’s in?
I’d be into this! I’m pretty bad at twitter but I love talking about exercise.
I am! I made a pledge last week to do –something– every day (well, 6 days a week) to get my heart rate up and I’ve done it exactly…twice? Maybe a bit more, but anyway, it’s not going well. Are there groups on twitter now?? A google group might work too.
I think my vision of Secret Twitter was using a different handle than my normal one. A Google thing would probably work better, or a closed FB group if people are on FB.
And two days is better than no days!
If you wanna, email me at madgehowlet/gmail.
I would definitely be into that! I’m trying to up my exercise regimen (from 0 to literally anything that requires movement) and would love to have a place to ask dumb questions and for recommendations. I was about to go back through the Feel the Burn posts (still might!), but an ongoing discussion would be lovely.
Yes, please, I would be into that! I’m not on Twitter, so some other form would be my vote.
Yeah, I think this would work better in a Google group or something similar.
I made a group! Try this: Burnt Toast
Woo!
The Chait PC article reminds me of this time I was have a discussion with a male friend. In the middle of me trying to explain my opinion he interrupted to say – I really do not see the point in debating this. I obviously think my opinion is right. If I thought it could be wrong I would not hold that opinion.
What do you say to something like that?
“Bye”
“Is your opinion based on…data? Do you have all the data? … Are you sure?”
1. laugh heartily for many minutes
2. post it on Twitter and laugh heartily for many more minutes with other people
3. embroider it on a hanky
4. blow your nose with the hanky
5. pat him on the head in a condescending fashion
6. strategically place Lego on the floor around his place
7. peace out, preferably on a seashell, like Venus.
“embroider it on a hanky”
Using that phrase forever.
BONUS POINTS if you pat him on the head with aforementioned besnotted embroidered hanky
I just clicked on the David Simon article and I feel like I decided I wouldn’t read Grantland anymore at some point? Does anyone know what I’m talking about? What shitty thing might they have published that turned me off?
Chuck Klosterman? Let’s assume Chuck Klosterman.
I really like the younger people who work there, but they have a handful of garbage-ass old white dudes.
@mikelywhiplash got it, but that’s also an excellent reason!
Outing Dr. V, leading to her suicide?
Their apology: http://grantland.com/features/what-grantland-got-…
Yes! This was it, thanks. I feel like sometimes I decide I’m never going to read a publication and then they keep publishing good stuff so I get over it, but that – that’s still pretty unforgivable.
I felt like there was a lot he didn’t know about Japanese culture, and he was trying to paper over the cracks by overdescribing his experience at the capsule hotel and overquoting from other sources about what it all ‘means’, in order to look more knowledgeable than he is.
But, as you pointed out, he did ‘fess up about not being an expert, which is pretty refreshing, considering the “I spent two weeks in Japan; I will now share my comprehensive wisdom” genre, and the monsters it breeds.
This made me happy today: https://twitter.com/rtphokie/status/5583405284846…
Here you go, Mallory: The button manufacturer who went to the Battle of Waterloo to see what he could see.
My partner tried to get me to read that Chait article last night. Opened the page, read the title, read the subheader, read the byline…closed the page.
He’s all “Maybe actually read the article”
like
nah, I don’t actually need to read someone’s garbage opinions to know they are wrong garbage opinions.
Also I know what kind of demographic NYmag and NYT and WSJ and the New Yorker cater to and that’s business, it’s their business, fine
but it’s a brand of bougie white faux-progressive liberalism that I cannot and will not subscribe to
anyway I think he’s kinda mad at me now, it’s fine, he knew what he was starting with that
and FURTHER complaint, all these fuckin financially secure Prototypical Straight White American Men waltzing around spouting all the social justice words they know and acting like it’s ridiculous
I think the…Army Times? ran a piece with some guy talking about how avoiding discussing and facing your trauma is Bad and that’s why we don’t need to talk about microaggressions and
Look, I appreciate that you’ve learned some words for some concepts! Having a vocabulary to discuss these issues is a good first step!
It does also help to understand the words in their proper context though. It’s great that the guy you talked to does not have PTSD. But here is the thing–are you sure he never did? And…I have no idea where microaggressions could coherently come into play there, in the specific context of trauma and the military.
That’s a whole heap of condescension for the group of Americans most noted for having severe, endemic issues with trauma and triggers and a long history of struggling to address them collectively
Yeah, it was like “this one guy I met experienced severe trauma and his face is extremely disfigured from burn scarring but he’s all chill about it and he makes jokes and stuff, maybe the trouble with trauma is how we’re so delicate about it!” (my browser history is NOT coming up with this piece and neither is google, I’m a bit perplexed)
I mean, I really hope neither the author nor the soldier in the anecdote ever need to access treatment for trauma in the future, but like
I also hope those opinions change because they are wrong and harmful
and we’ve definitely tried the whole “pretend nothing is or ever has been wrong” thing and that SURE DID work out well for a whole lotta vets, huh?
I know the military isn’t really the place you look for people being gentle and kind with one another, there’s a whole lot of military culture (at least with US forces) that is deeply, deeply rooted in toxic masculinity and misogyny
but that was…more tone-deaf than I expected.
I read the COMMENTS on that Chait piece and am filled with regret.
Also I am part of the secret Facebook group in question and he can literally eat all of my poo.
The thought I kept having after about… 2/3 of the Chait article was that this seems to stem from a denial of life lived through words.
Like the people who say that online life isn’t the same as real life (which, I know, but also as we all know online life can be very important and supportive and life-affirming, SEE: The-toast) and that we all need perspective and we should get out and chat to our neighbours and visit the park like in the old days, &c, &c.; like those people, he believes that we are all READING TOO MUCH INTO words (specifically his words and the words of others like him, “liberals”) and that we need to stop policing everything (specifically him and his thoughts).
He believes that we are focusing too heavily on words and their perceived impact. He believes words are not important enough to be impacting on outer lives. He believes that this dangerous and undemocratic focus on the impacts of words on the people who read them is damaging and obsessive.
His angle in this piece is purely one-sided: “I cannot conceive of a world where words, or the lack of them, hurt, traumatise, and marginalise, and those impacts are real and have real effects.” All he sees is a world where certain words are now no longer being given the same weight – or the same free pass – they once were.
And it all seems to feed into the modern-old-man attitude of willfully ignoring the internet and its real, genuine impact on the way life is lived for a lot of people.
Yeah, but at the same time, the entire premise of ~being un-PC~ is that it is SO IMPORTANT to be able to say any and all words, at any time, without consequence, it’s THE MOST IMPORTANT of EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE THING IN REALITY.
It’s such an incoherent position! I AM FRUSTRATED WITH IT AND I HAVEN’T EVEN READ THE DAMN THING
Yeah, it was like “this one guy I met experienced severe trauma and his face is extremely disfigured from burn scarring but he's all chill about it and he makes jokes and stuff, maybe the trouble with trauma is how we're so delicate about it!” (my browser history is NOT coming up with this piece and neither is google, I'm a bit perplexed)I mean, I really hope neither the author nor the soldier in the anecdote ever need to access treatment for trauma in the future, but likeI also hope those opinions change because they are wrong and harmfuland we've definitely tried the whole “pretend nothing is or ever has been wrong” thing and that SURE DID work out well for a whole lotta vets, huh?I know the military isn't really the place you look for people being gentle and kind with one another, there's a whole lot of military culture (at least with US forces) that is deeply, deeply rooted in toxic masculinity and misogynybut that was…more tone-deaf than I expected.
BONUS POINTS if you pat him on the head with aforementioned besnotted embroidered hanky
Yeah, but at the same time, the entire premise of ~being un-PC~ is that it is SO IMPORTANT to be able to say any and all words, at any time, without consequence, it's THE MOST IMPORTANT of EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE THING IN REALITY.
It's such an incoherent position! I AM FRUSTRATED WITH IT AND I HAVEN'T EVEN READ THE DAMN THING