Teju Cole has written a beautiful essay on photographing black skin for New York Times Magazine.
What comes to mind when we think of photography and the civil rights movement? Direct, viscerally affecting images with familiar subjects: huge rallies, impassioned speakers, people carrying placards (“I Am a Man”), dogs and fire hoses turned on innocent protesters. These photos, as well as the portraits of national leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, are explicit about the subject at hand. They tell us what is happening and make a case for why things must change. Our present moment, a time of vigorous demand for equal treatment, evokes those years of sadness and hope in black American life and renews the relevance of those photos. But there are other, less expected images from the civil rights years that are also worth thinking about: images that are forceful but less illustrative.
This guy has become obsessed with the goddess, Ina Garten aka the Barefoot Contessa. Welcome to the world, Gary.
What do you do when you retire from the NFL? Dog competitions!
A teenager has invented a $500 dialysis machine that could make the lives of dialysis patients much easier!
I like articles about restaurants so here is an article about a fancy restaurant doing something fancyish. I also like the word fancy.
Tags: hey it’s Friday, link roundup, the internet
“For those on a budget and not inclined toward romance, one can get a horrific $995 version of Roxxxy with no arms, no legs and no ability to listen to or talk about anything other than sex acts. ”
There’s not enough D: in the world. BOXING HELENA WAS NOT AN ASPIRATIONAL FILM, FELLAS.
homosexual Chinese females
*Ferengi females macro*
I love the Ina article, but do we really say butter “bhudda” in America? I say butter .. with an R at the end and Ts in the middle.
Maybe if you’re from New England? I’m Southern and I say “budder.” Hard R, but the Ts become Ds which I think is pretty par for the course for the South.
Also the midwest says this.
Same, budder for life.
I thought maybe she referred to some special kind of butter called Buddha that’s only available to people like Ina Garten (but if you can’t get it, store bought is fine).
Almost all ‘ter’s get blunted into ‘der’ in the US. See also water and battery. Region notwithstanding
I have to be careful when I say “water bottle” because I have a tendency to mangle it into “wadda badda.” I don’t know why, my tongue just flops around in my mouth and can’t work the syllables properly.
This is where the Philly “wooder” comes in handy. No muddling “wooder” with bottle!
No maybe about it. Eleven years in New England qualifies me to report “buddah” is, by far, the most common, if not the only, pronunciation.
Nah, this is true of New England also, in my experience. I guess those with a real proper Boston accent would end up dropping the R too, though, so that would be “buddah.”
I have absolutely never heard it pronounced that way. The thing that got me was the thing with kosher salt? It’s different from regular table salt, that’s why it’s specified as such, yeah?
Kosher salt has different size crystals too, and they vary among brands, so you have to watch your amounts if you use a variety that that is different from the recipe
I definitely pronounce the t’s and the r (from Texas). On an unrelated note, my best friend’s ex was from Long Island, and he would always say “wuh-dur” (water) and it made me not want to have ears.
Ah, good ‘ol Lawn Guyland. My 5th grade history teacher (a PA native) used to pronounce it like “warter” – I think it was something with the way she said the letter W, because George Washington became George Warshington.
Oh man, my grandma did that too, but she was from Chicago. We also had “dahls” (dolls), dahl and warsh.
Wait, how else would you pronounce “dolls”? (I grew up near a grocery store named Dahl’s, and these two words were definitely homophones)
Maybe I should’ve rather written it “daal”? It is a flat ‘a’ sound. I’d rather say it with a “taller” ‘o’ sound, so that it rhymes with all.(Disclaimer: I’m not a linguist)
Philadelphia: wooder
Wooder is in parts of Maryland too!
Marylander here and my friends in college made so much (good natured) fun of me for the whole wooder thing.
My grandmother liked to remind us to “warsh our teeth” before we went to bed. She wasn’t from Long Island though– I always thought it was more of an “I lived on a farm during the Depression” thing.
My dad is from Pittsburgh and says “warsh.” I make fun of him often.
This is a southern-Midwest thing too. My relatives in southern Indiana and Kentucky say “warsh.” Also flower becomes “flahr” and water is “wudder.”
Don’t forget, midwesterners store their cars in a grodge.
And our cars, of course, are vee-hick-els.
You may also be drinking melk with your cookies, depending on where you are.
A good way to get made fun of here is to pronounce “karaoke” like “carry-oaky.” You gotta roll the r’s and say the vowels differently.
I have never heard an American pronounce karaoke any other way. Are there Americans who are saying it properly, or are you located elsewhere? Just curious.
We’re in Hawaii, so the only people who say carry-oaky are mainland transplants who we then tease mercilessly.
Aha, that makes perfect sense.
I say butter this way too and it is the way I usually hear it said. I’m in California. Maybe sometimes the Ts sound a little like Ds, but always with an R at the end.
“You might think that Ina Garten is nothing more than an anagram of Argentina, but you would be wrong.”
If this is what it takes to make me LOL first thing in the morning, it’s best that I accept I’ll never be cool.
This is what got me “She has two sorts of friends: women who sell cheese or run a charity providing handbags for orphans, and men who know about flowers.”
Sometimes the men know about tablescaping!
Heard this piece on NPR yesterday about a new MacGyver series, which will center around a woman, and wondered if anyone here had heard it/had any thoughts on it: http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2015/02/19/…
I have not heard about it, but I think it sounds nice.
I have Thoughts about the lady hermit article. I’ve been increasingly craving solitude lately, and I know that at least part of that is some mental health issues I’ve been having. I’ve never identified as an introvert, and the idea of needing to recharge by being alone has always been really foreign to me, and so this has been very weird. Even weirder are my friends acting like this is totally normal and not noticing that it’s very, very unusual for me. I appreciate the support, I suppose, but being told that, “well of course you need to recharge your batteries by being alone!” by people who supposedly know me well feels oddly isolating.
Maybe rather than telling you that “you’re crazy” or something else unhelpful, they are getting the impression that you want validation for wanting to be alone? Do you talk about it being abnormal for you? If I were your friend, I’d probably say the same, but that’s because I am the type of person who does need to spend a lot of time in silence and alone to be able to spend time with others and enjoy it.
Well for some people I think it’s more understandable and that they are trying to be supportive, but for people like my spouse or my best friend of over 20 years, it feels off. I have spoken about it being abnormal for me, to which BFF did say exactly “well, you do need to recharge those batteries!” That’s where it felt isolating — here I am saying that I’m really struggling and finding myself doing things that are extremely weird for me and I’m being told basically that it’s normal and ok…
Hmm. That does seem a bit odd. Why do you think that they would do that?
::shrug:: I have no idea — My guess is that it’s because he’s working hard to be supportive and there’s been a big push lately to improve the acceptance and understanding around how introverts generally function. So the new script for people who want to be “good people” is “I totally understand that you need to be alone, gotta recharge those introvert batteries!” The problem is that the scripted response comes out automatically.
It feels similar to when people used to complement me on how thin I was when actually I was very ill (although that comes from a gross body-policing intent and not a “be a nice person” intent). Especially because if someone had pointed out earlier how skinny I had gotten so quickly, I wouldn’t have spent so much time being sick.
Yeah, you are right, and I think could definitely be interpreting their actions correctly. Did you bring that up with them, in a sort of, I appreciate your support, but that’s not what I’m looking for exactly? Maybe they need your help to understand how to help care for you? I’m sorry for all of the question marks, but I want my intonation to be clear that I am hearing you and trying to help as best as one can through internet comments. I guess for me, that’s what I have to do with my husband because for as well as he knows he, he still can’t read my mind. (as much as I think that he should because I feel like being honest and thus vulnerable, is about as fun as pulling teeth.)
I don’t know how to express this carefully enough. Please trust that my intention is to be helpful and kind.
What response would you like from your spouse and friends? I think this is a very good exercise for you, to write out specific responses you wish they would give spontaneously. Not necessarily something you need to tell them you want, but that wouldn’t be bad, either. Finding the response you need will tell you much about what else you need.
Meanwhile, solidarity fistbump from a depressive introvert celebrating having the house to herself today.
I understand what you are saying, and I guess I don’t have anything in particular, but it’s very weird to tell someone that you are experiencing something weird and unusual for you and have them come back with “well that’s normal for some people so I’m sure it’s not a symptom of anything for you.”
I appreciate the input from you and from doublehoagie, but it’s not particularly what I need right now, so I’m going to respectfully request that we stop therapy-ing at me and move on from this discussion.
It is tough as i have a friend who is isolating herself more and more and it is so out of charachter for her but then she is quite offended if you mention this and so it iis easier to say “recharge those batteries!” instead of “i am concerned”.
I guess people dont know how to be good friends.
I am coming in very late to the party, but I feel the need to chime in because I pretty recently flipped from extrovert to introvert and no one seemed to notice that it was a big change. I still see my friends pretty often, but the number of nights at home alone definitely outweigh the number of nights spent out with friends. I think very few people noticed or said something because I have several groups of friends, rather than just one, and maybe one group just assumed I was hanging out with another group, or something.
From reading this original comment and your replies to other commenters, it seems to me that the real concern is you feel uncertain of how to handle this change, and maybe you’re worried that it signifies something deeper or more distressing than just a different way of handling the stressors of everyday life. You want to feel supported in a period of your life that feels unstable. Consider speaking up! Maybe to your partner, maybe your best friend, but you could let them know that you’ve noticed a fundamental change in yourself and you want to work through your feelings and uncertainty about it.
The switch for me isn’t super distressing, although I do wonder at the cause(s), because I have no clue why the switch happened. I’ve been learning to enjoy solitude, for my part – it isn’t for everyone but I’m finding that I really am more productive now when I embrace my inner lone wolf instead of fighting it for “this is who I used to be”-‘s sake.
Yes to Anya Pogharian! Yes to being a hermit!
Which of these Americanisms is most irritating? British guy, YOU are pronouncing bayzil wrong.
My husband is crazy about Ina too. She is a Goddess.
He’s right about heavy cream, though. What we call “heavy cream” makes my British coworkers look sad and think fondly of their Double Cream, which is the most delicious thing ever and they can just buy from vending machines or ice cream trucks or have delivered by real life milkmen maybe. Sometimes I think the American Revolution was a huge mistake when I contemplate our lack of Double Cream.
I only recently learned about double cream when a recipe called for some. I was devastated when I learned that we don’t have such a glorious, high-fat product in our stores. I had a theory that some of the table cream you can find in Mexican grocers might work, but so far they’ve all had thickeners. It just sounds so perfect and lovely, and the thought of whipped double cream makes my heart skip a beat.
What is dark is neither blank nor empty. It is in fact full of wise light which, with patient seeing, can open out into glories.
Woah woah woah Teju Coles’ piece is SO GOOD. Examining the political and social contexts for photographing black bodies is excellent in its own right, but I love that he even goes on to point out the technical reasons why there’s still a bias against it. It’s so interesting and will really make you look at photography differently.
Really enjoyed the French piece, it is interesting to take a look a set of social issues similar to my country’s own, and filter them through another culture. I’m probably not saying this coherently enough, since I just woke up, but I’m going to come back later to read it more properly.
In Canada, a country which according to our prime minister has no history of racism or colonial violence, two First Nation children died in a fire when the nearest fire department refused to respond to the fire because the band supposedly owes them $3300.
I just… I know there are some terrible people in the world, but when your job is to fight fires and you instead let people die over unpaid bills? I can’t believe that anyone could actually weigh that choice for even a second, let alone actually choose inaction when inaction will lead to people dying. What the FUCK.
Ugh. Thanks for sharing the article. Those toddlers had nothing to do with the unpaid bill. 🙁
I am astounded at how nonchalant the firefighters are about it. Like they just sort of shrugged about it? TWO KIDS DIED FOR FUCK’S SAKE. But oh no, no race issues or colonial history (/present) here. >:(
I CAN’T STOP WATCHING THE TINY MEALS SEND HELP.
I could seriously watch all day.
also, my childhood feelings toward TINY VERSIONS OF REAL THINGS pretty much exactly map the possessive yearning in yesterday’s Beasts of Birdin’ piece.
Such joy whenever I found a new tiny thing at the hobby store or out in the general world. Weirdly, I had no interest in getting a doll house, I just had a big tin bucket that my mom emblazoned with the words “Tiny World” in nail polish, which I’d dump it out pretty regularly to go through my hoard.
What I’m saying is, I’m home sick today and these videos are my plan for the next couple hours. Roxane, you have made my morning!
I’ve been reading about ISIS lately, specifically these two articles, which are just fascinating: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/… and http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/20/…
The second is by Asra Nomani, whose voice I find super interesting.
Me too! Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds very much like a millenarian movement, and that description makes the whole thing a lot clearer to me. But I haven’t really heard the media describe it that way. Is that term not in use outside of college history classes?
I am not familiar with that term….
It’s the idea that you will effect political change not by doing it directly yourself but by imploring a higher power to unleash some sort of destructive/restoring force. In this case they believe that if they rebuild the Caliphate then god will bring about the end times and then all will be right with the world (I think? I have a very limited understanding of Islam, much less wacky radical Islam). It’s a really common theme in uprisings worldwide, usually but not always in colonial situations. The ones you usually hear about are the Boxer Rebellion and the Ghost Dance Movement, but there are a whole lot of others.
I had assumed it meant ISIS was mostly unemployed millenials. Which… according to many sources, is a major source for their recruiters.
It comes from the idea of “bringing the millenium” i.e. the second coming or what have you. But yeah, that’s also true. Relatedly– I was kind of stunned to hear about its more mystical elements, because sometimes I like to waste time clicking around on conspiracy theory videos on youtube, and I have definitely seen more than one “MUSLIM PROPHECY OF END TIMES!” video, which in retrospect…. yeah, that was ISIS. The internet is fucked up, man.
Specialist in Middle Eastern Studies here! Yes, they are millenarian, but in a much more intense and direct way than most Muslim millenarian movements. I mean, the dominant Iranian Shi’a ideology is quite millenarian in name, but in practice what they did, ideologically, was invert that so as to make it okay to take more “normal” direct political action now while they wait for the Twelfth Imam to return, instead of just waiting because it’s not right to engage in politics in an impure (non-apocalyptic) context. There have been millenarians like ISIS before, but what’s distinguishing is that those groups never got very large or managed to control territory in a sustained manner. (As far as I know.) They were more blips, not so much An Event.
I love this website because I can ask a question like that knowing that an academic specialist will pop up to answer it!
You are all overlooking the most important item: Roxane NEEDS a middle name!
One of my college directors had no middle name. For each concert program, we would ask him how his name should appear. “What was it last time? Reginald V Singletree? Make it Reginald O Singletree this time.” (Not his real name.)
Neither my wife nor my mom have middle names, funnily enough.
I suppose there’s always H, like Jesus H Christ. (or for Hermit?) Or S, like Harry S. Truman.
And a family member who lacks a middle name is bitter about it because his six siblings all got middle names. But refuses to adopt one. His parents had a lifelong fight about what his middle name should be and never came to agreement. Though both parents are dead now, he refuses to revisit the issue for fear of dishonoring one or the other or both.
When my mother was pregnant with me, my grandfather dreamt that he had a granddaughter named ___ so I was given that as my middle name. My grandfather promptly forgot all about his dream and denied ever having it.
We let my sisters give our kids their middle names, and I always hoped the names would come to them in their dreams while my wife was pregnant. Alas, it never happened – instead, my sisters each considered thoughtfully for several months before giving them long, beautiful Hawaiian names which neither of my kids can pronounce yet.
Anita.
On Lady hermits:
Fun fact – Way back when, my college roommate and I christened our room “The Hermitage” and often made fantasy plans about our dream living situation in which all our female friends lived together in the Scottish highlands on a gorgeous estate with a huge library, beautiful gardens, horses, copious amounts of tea and baked goods, and lots of cats and dogs.
Men were totally banned except for a select few (read: our favorite celebrity crushes at the time which included pretty much the entire cast of LoTR, Ewan McGregor, and Heath Ledger) who would be allowed to make nightly carnal visits and then get promptly kicked out in the morning.
Actually, that still sounds amazing. Viva la hermit life!
Lady hermits, where are you at?
I’m pretty sure we’re all here commenting on The Toast.
Any Toasties following NPR’s TL;DR kerfluffle with Vivek Wadhwa over his position as the go-to person who talks about women in tech? WNYC took down the episode and they posted another one, featuring an interview with Wadhwa that I could not fully get through because he was talking over the (female) interviewer so much and just generally came off as a jackass.
The original post that inspired the TL;DR episode: Quiet, Ladies. @wadhwa is speaking now
And Gizmodo’s summary of the aftermath: Why Did NPR Take Down Its Podcast About The ‘Expert’ On Women In Tech?
Oh, wow. I hadn’t heard of this guy. Gross.
I’m only partway through that Gizmodo article but this seems relevent:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-finally-put-…
There’s a term for this: “intervocalic alveolar flapping”! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervocalic_alveola…
I'm only partway through that Gizmodo article but this seems relevent:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-finally-put-…
Also guys: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/automobiles/lux… RICH PEOPLE HAHAHAHAHA
Also guys: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/21/automobiles/lux… RICH PEOPLE HAHAHAHAHA
The link for the Noma article isn't working! Would appreciate the fix.
My dad uses kosher salt in cooking, to the point where my mom actually developed an iodine deficiency.
See also: aluminium.
JUST HOW.
Ahh, but it kind of is! The original sound was a plain old z, but then people started using the zh/dj sound out of analogy to the Italian word for it (parmigiano).