NICOLE IS BACK, but I’m still pulling Link Roundup duty on Tuesdays for a while, so you’re stuck with me today.
“Punitive depilation of men, especially burning off pubic hair, was intended as a mark of shame in ancient Mediterranean cultures where male body hair was valued.” If you want to read a long academic article about BADGES OF SHAME, click here. If you want to read the summed-up Wikipedia page that’s intellectually friendly and willing to hold your hand (THAT’S WHAT I DID), click here.
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NO NO NO NO NO NO
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“Belyaev wanted to unlock the secrets of domestication, the links between behavior and breeding and physical traits, but plenty of non-scientists are aware of the project for a different reason: foxes are adorable, and we want to hug them, and we want them to like it.”
It is about time we got around to domesticating new species. We’ve been coasting on “cats and dogs and sort-of cattle” for millennia, and I’m sick of it.
“Domestication is not like taming. You can tame many wild animals so they won’t try to kill you, by raising them from birth, but that’s just learned behavior; that animal is unlikely to exhibit what we know as affection toward you, and the behavior it does have is not passed down to the tamed animal’s offspring. Domestication is actually change at the genetic level: an animal repeatedly breeds, either through intentional human effort or not (or a combination of the two), to emphasize certain behavioral traits. In the case of animals that would, in the wild, be aggressive towards humans, those traits are easy to decide on: we want the most docile, least aggressive, and least skittish animal.”
Obviously this calls for a link to the classic FOX GOES FLOOF.
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I give you my word that if you click on this link, you will see a picture of a koala attempting to drive a car.
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I can’t not read pieces by doctors who have been themselves diagnosed with terminal illnesses, as if they somehow have a secret to dying better than the rest of us.
Verb conjugation became muddled. Which was correct? “I am a neurosurgeon,” “I was a neurosurgeon,” “I had been a neurosurgeon before and will be again”? Graham Greene felt life was lived in the first 20 years and the remainder was just reflection. What tense was I living in? Had I proceeded, like a burned-out Greene character, beyond the present tense and into the past perfect? The future tense seemed vacant and, on others’ lips, jarring. I recently celebrated my 15th college reunion; it seemed rude to respond to parting promises from old friends, “We’ll see you at the 25th!” with “Probably not!”
Yet there is dynamism in our house. Our daughter was born days after I was released from the hospital. Week to week, she blossoms: a first grasp, a first smile, a first laugh. Her pediatrician regularly records her growth on charts, tick marks of her progress over time. A brightening newness surrounds her. As she sits in my lap smiling, enthralled by my tuneless singing, an incandescence lights the room.
Time for me is double-edged: Every day brings me further from the low of my last cancer relapse, but every day also brings me closer to the next cancer recurrence — and eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to “live life to its fullest,” to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time, it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races.
IT SEEMS LIKE IF YOU WRITE AN ESSAY THIS THOUGHTFUL YOU SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO LIVE AT LEAST TO NINETY
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very metal: “A monk’s 1,000-year-old mummified body was discovered inside a Chinese Buddha statue after it was taken to hospital for a CT scan in the Netherlands.”
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….huh
Tags: link roundup, the internet
There a ton of foxes in Glasgow that just roam around. Usually when I lived there and I’d see one crossing the street at night I’d think it was a cat and then realize that it was in fact a fox walking in front of me.
Anyway, someone please tame or domesticate a fox for me, please?
The hard part about the domestication process is that they have to select which animals to keep and which to discard from the breeding program–which ones aren’t quite as friendly and interested in people. The National Geographic article on the Russian project covered how hard that can be:
“The fox-farm experiment is, of course, just that: a scientific experiment. For decades the project has been forced to manage their population by selling off to real fur farms those foxes not friendly or aggressive enough to be research candidates. For the scientists, deciding which ones stay and which ones go is a harrowing process; Trut says she has long since passed on the job to others and stays away from the farm during selection time. ‘It is very difficult emotionally,’ she told me.”
I worked at an arctic mining camp for a couple of weeks that had a tame fox. The guy who did the camp maintenance said that every night when he’d bring the dinner waste to the outdoor incinerator, she’d walk next to him (and sometimes try and pull the bag out of his hand) and then lie next to him while he sat and watched the garbage burn. She had kits, and I’m sure she was just hanging around trying to get more food, but there was no way I could convince him she wasn’t being affectionate.
She was probably also trying to get warm, so I’m sure her motives were complex and nuanced.
My husband worked at a northern silver mine with a long history…all his water-testing spots (old adits and settling ponds) had resident foxes convinced that trucks only came to bring them sandwiches…he got seriously dirty looks for not sharing his…
Some argue that the monk is “not dead” but just in a deep meditative state.
Put this on my gravestone please.
In her house in R’lyeh, Beachlass waits, dreaming.
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and with strange aeons even death may die.
Hearts in my eyes, omg.
That MH370 article… Dude, I don’t think people not talking to you is the clue you think it is. Still, it’s kind of fascinating to see how this kind of descent into conspiracy theory can happen even if you have some sense of how obsessive and ridiculous you’re being.
I just finished reading this and I loved reading it. I love the feeling of “ohhhh, now I get it” and I loved borrowing his crazy, crazy theory for even a few minutes. It is really interesting to see someone able to walk the line of seeing it both from the joyful, emotionally-affriming side of certainty and the skeptical side.
Certainly, it’s a lot more fun than when I was assigned to watch JFK for a class.
Like, the airport JFK? You got class credit to people watch? Sounds fun, and like a scene from Love Actually.
Ha, no, that would probably have been more tolerable. The class was “Oliver Stone’s America” and it looked at late-20th/early-21st Century America through a weekly movie assignment and related readings. It was an insane class taught by an insane professor that I had hoped would be more interesting. It was the same semester as my sleep-depriving internship, though, and the official copies placed on-demand in the library were all the 3-hour-long director’s cuts.
Listening to Kevin Costner wax expositionally about all the evidence is really even all that fun before they add in an extra 45 minutes of it.
Ahhhh it’s a *movie* JFK. Hahahaha.
I actually did a job at JFK airport alongside one of the runways and while the location was quite thrilling the actual work was boring and we had a TON of time to watch the planes take off and land (Elyse, if you’re around, you may have put in some time there, no?). It was actually really helpful in me feeling much less anxious about flying — there were planes coming and going every, oh, 10 minutes for most of the day and they were all fine.
This sounds like something I very much want to read but I can’t figure out what article you are referring to! I have scoured the Link Roundup post like 5 times and I don’t see anything about MH370. Am I blind? Can you please provide a link and end my suffering?
I did the same thing! It’s not in there, but here’s a link to what I assume it the article
It’s at the very bottom, the link just says “huh…”
“I give you my word that if you click on this link, you will see a picture of a koala attempting to drive a car.”
I would appreciate entire posts resembling lines like this one.
Foxes are big fans of almonds.
Not that I know from experience or anything, but they totally are. If you’re looking to domesticate one, they would probably be good to have on hand. Just sayin’.
That koala is very conscientious. Checking its blind spots and everything!
In case anyone is having a rough morning, and/or would enjoy a few seconds of gentle entertainment, please have at these Vines of a hedgehog who is also a jazz musician.
The headline claims that the hedgehog plays the jazz measures “inadvertently” but I maintain that it knows exactly what it’s doing. Also, I would pay good money for an all-animal band, jazz or otherwise. Rabbits would make great percussionists since they are skilled in the areas of thumping their hind legs on the ground and picking things up in their mouths and knocking them against other things.
My day started with one of my children throwing up all over her bed. This has helped. Thank you.
Rabbits are especially skilled at those things just before dawn at 5:30 AM, when you would really like to be asleep but they are 100% convinced it is the best time to run laps around the room and make as much noise as possible, way more noise than you’d expect out of an animal that weighs 2 lbs and is terrified of everything.
Aaahaha “Just Checking In” is horrifying but hilarious. They did a great job. My current “pet” anxiety-inducing email is students from my alma mater emailing me about jobs at my company. Instant waves of guilt/sympathy/helplessness/annoyance. I totally know where they’re coming from, but I graduated last year, I’m not sure what weight they’re expecting me to pull to get them hired, and emailing multiple times asking for a hiring manager’s direct line without even including a resume certainly isn’t going to convince me to push for them… toasties, what emails make your stomach drop?
Anything from my supervisor. Even though most of them are innocuous.
Jesus. Yes. Great performance review? Projects all going well? Doesn’t matter, any email I get from my boss is immediately surrounded by a cloud of “oh fuck fuck fuck they’ve found me out I’ve finally screwed up so bad I’ll have to go live in a cave somewhere fuuuuuuuuccccckkkkkk”
Thank God it’s not just me! Even now, when I am a temp at a job I know how to do and literally LIVING WITH MY BOSS, anything from her (even “Gonna be late tonight, don’t get worried if I don’t show up for dinner”) is freaking. me. out.
this this this this this
Especially ones labeled “timesheet”
Anything from my son’s teacher or from my sister in law – especially those with the subject “RE: Your father.”
This is unrelated, but I recently got an email that I’d made it to the short list for a prestigious fellowship, only to get an email ten minutes later that the first email was a mistake. So basically now I’m never going to accept any good news by email without thinking that a “Haha joke’s on you, fuckface!” email will shortly follow.
That aside, my biggest anxiety-inducing emails tend to come from students 1) right after I post grades and 2) right when something is due. I love waking up to a bunch of panicked emails sent to me at 1am (“Plz email me back professor I cant find the assignment”) because I simultaneously feel annoyed that students think I’m awake at 1am and guilty that I wasn’t awake at 1am to help them.
Ugh, that sucks about the fellowship email. Sorry to hear that.
I know someone who found out that she was going to be laid off in a big, secret group lay off because one of the managers accidentally cc’d her on an email to her manager asking if they could keep her on an extra week for some work he needed done. Why are people so bad at checking who they’re sending super-sensitive emails to?!
Oh that’s awful! Check your emails before you send them, people!
Oh, that’s so awful! I’m sorry. How weirdly like a dream: “Hey, great news! NOOOOPE, I take it back.”
I work in publishing and I hate getting emails from authors. It usually means something went wrong and they’re unhappy!!!
Not so much anxiety-inducing as irritating, but I have gotten several emails in a row from students wishing to work in my lab addressed to “Mrs. TessierAshpool” or Miss TessierAshpool”. I would accept Ms. or Dr. but anything else is right out. What really bugs me is that
A) They have no way to know my marital status, so why on earth would they assume one over the other?
B) They have no way to know my educational status, but PhDs are common, so why would they assume I didn’t have one?
I am doing my best to give them the benefit of the doubt, since these are (very) young women, who I would in fact like to mentor in the ways of science, but it’s really hard to be nice after what feels like an insulting address. My instinct is to snottily ask them “so, did you do a ton of online research to find my resume, and then carefully read the ‘education’ section? Uh huh. So how did you know I didn’t have a PhD?” But I don’t actually want to make their lives difficult–I would rather get them in my clutches and improve them. But Aaaaarrrrrggggg.
On a similar (but not totally) note, I use Ms. as the default for basically anybody that doesn’t say they’re “Dr. So-and-so” or “Mr. and Mrs. Blahdyblah” and when I worked at a hotel I got SO MANY ANGRY EMAILS. “I’m MRS Frankenfurter,” they say. Well, cool. But why would I assume you’re married? You were booking a girls weekend away! You could be there with your wife or sister or long-lost mortal enemy who is tricking you into the weekend so she can poison your cocktail, I don’t know!
All this to say, get them in your clutches and train them up right so that, even when people are unreasonably attached to letting the world know their marital status, they can still give everybody the benefit of the doubt.
Signed,
Somebody who plans on being referred to as “Ms.” for the rest of my life, or until I earn a PhD.
Right, that’s why Ms. EXISTS. To be the default. So that you never have to wonder or ask. Why are they not using the default? The default that was made to spare them from precisely this situation? WHY.
No lie, part of the reason I got a PhD was to avoid kerfuffle with people who can’t bring themselves to use “Ms” (looking at you, Mom).
“Fine, just call me DR aqueousmedium then.”
I also really like the idea of being “Dr and Mr So-and-so”. I’d even consider taking my husband’s name just to make it nice and easy and beautifully uncomfortable for the super traditional people in my life.
A+ plan
I actually got an email from my supervisor consisting only of the two words “call me” barely a minute after I sent a deliverable to our client (and of course copied him). Note: HE HAD MY PHONE NUMBER, he could have just called me directly instead of emailing me to CALL HIM. God, he was an asshole.
My employer is known in my area for mass layoffs and has already done it to me once, so, mass emails from upper management with “looking forward” or “the future of [my department]” in the subject line.
I have one coworker who is notorious for making every email into an opportunity to show off just how abrasive she can be. Like, I’ll get emails from my other coworkers that say “Hey, could somebody take a look at the printer?” But if the same email comes from her it will be like,
“bird_internet,
As you know, we have a policy about replacing the printer paper. It should not be this difficult to understand, so it concerns me that you seem to have used the printer earlier today and yet there is no paper in it. You and I have had this discussion many times and I hope that it does not become an issue again.”
I get like two of these a day and even though they are never about an actual problem I still shudder to see them. She isn’t even my supervisor?
Can you send them to your supervisor? That seems MORE than unnecessarily harsh. Go over her head.
She does this to everyone, so I imagine my supervisor is already aware. I usually just answer with an impervious “ok, I will keep that in mind” if I answer at all.
Oh, hey, I think your coworker is my old landlord. She’s type up a formal notice for everything, including forgetting her weird policy of not allowing people to brush the snow off their cars in the parking lot, and then she’d cc her lawyer on it! Because god forbid she just stick a note saying “remember to move your car to the alley to get the snow off, please” and not freak people out unnecessarily.
It was all worth it when someone stole a room divider she was storing in the hallway and she put a typed out note under everyone’s door ranting about how “someone in this building is a FUCKING THIEF!!!” for a full page.
How…how are you supposed to drive your car anywhere when it is covered in snow? I think that beats my landlord who forbade anyone to bring metal objects into the bathrooms, lest they fall and crack the tile.
The alley was right behind the parking spots so I would leave my driver side door open so I could lean out as I backed up, but it was an alley that people regularly drove and walked down so it was still pretty sketchy.
Yikes. That is super unsafe and depending on how jerky the cops are around you, could get you ticketed. Sheesh.
UGGGHHHH i have a similar coworker. Also anytime he needs me to do something a certain number of times, he will spell out the number and include the numeral, like “please print me three (3) copies of this.” DUDE I KNOW HOW TO READ AND THIS IS NOT A FORMAL CONTRACT!
If it bothers you, you should mention it! Talk to her first maybe, in person, like an hour after she sends you something like that. Maaaaaaaaybe she doesn’t mean to be a raging juicebox and doesn’t realize that her tone is awful.
If she reacts badly, or keeps doing it, loop in your manager. Just because she does it to all of your peers is not a guarantee that someone else has already spoken up.
I had a coworker for a temp job that was so pushy that she made me glad I was only a temp. She couldn’t abide noise and found it distracting so no one was allowed to talk or listen to music or anything, just sit in silence.
Wait, is your coworker our company bookkeeper? Because this sounds remarkably familiar.
…Oh wait, you used capital letters, so the email must be from my (ex-) boss, not the bookkeeper.
As a teacher of young children, any email from a parent with the word “incident” in the subject line is terrifying. “Incident on the playground,” “incident during lunchtime”…oh God, what did I miss? What were they doing to each other?
Striking me through with fear: any message sent to my Facebook page, because
A. It’s probably sent by someone I know well, because I keep my FB friends list small;
B. I periodically drop a status update giving my email address and reminding people I don’t often check my FB messages, so the sender either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about my preferences;
C. as soon as I open it, it will have a timestamp telling them I’ve seen it, so reading and sitting on the response will get remarked upon, ugh.
To sum up: Facebook messages, font of terror.
re: point C – I downloaded a Firefox addon that disabled the notification that I’d read the message, so the other party wouldn’t know, out of fear of the same.
Thank you, you benevolent genius! I’ll look for ’em, but is there a specific extension you’ve been happy using?
I do not remember what it is called exactly – we’re forced into using Internet Explorer here at work, so I haven’t downloaded any addons – but I will check as soon as I get home!
I’m going to see if I can find one for Chrome. I hate that notification thing so much.
Ask IT about that — I used Chrome when I worked there 😉
Ugh, unfair. They have put a software block on anything that isn’t IE now, and the XP-based computers are still running IE8. Which nothing will safely load in. I am envious of your Chromeabilities :'(
ps is aforementioned boss from here??
No, strangely. It was the job I took to get out of there. That place was a nightmare, of course, and I couldn’t seem to get along at all with the total incompetent robot person they promoted to be my boss instead of the person I interviwed with (who was a large part of why I took the job). And of course their internet filtering was insane and just showed they don’t trust their employees. Try doing a Phase I when they even block the city government websites. Ugh.
Between the new boss, the culture, and retail petroleum making me nuts, I went to a place that had a more varied industrial/chemical client base. But I really should have listened to my gut after I interviewed there; something felt very off about this guy that I couldn’t put my finger on. I made it 8 months there (normal, apparently, for women) and left to go back to school. My former coworker from the place we both know and do not love took my job there and I hear my ex boss is no longer in direct supervision of anyone.
I use one in Chrome called FB Purity that does that! It’s not perfect but that feature seems to work.
I got an email from my flood insurance agent a few weeks ago asking me to “please contact me when you have a moment.” Emailed her back — of course she sent this on a Friday at 4:30 PM, so her office would be closed by the time I called — in a bit of a panic, thinking WHAT IS GOING ON, IS MY FLOOD INSURANCE DELINQUENT, HAVE YOU SUDDENLY DISCOVERED SOMETHING TERRIBLE, HAS MY HOUSE… UP AND MOVED? CLOSER TO THE BAYOU? SOMEHOW? THIS IS PROBABLY A CATASTROPHE, and got the not-at-all-reassuring reply “It will be easier to discuss over the phone, please give me a call on Monday.” Called in an even bigger panic first thing Monday morning. The ‘catastrophe’ in question: “We need you to verify that this is your primary residence. Can you send one of these six forms of proof? I’ll wait while you scramble around for a pen to write them down.”
1) That is the EXACT OPPOSITE of something that is easier to discuss over the phone than via email.
2) WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE PUT “… about whether your house is your primary residence” AT THE END OF THE FIRST EMAIL, IT IS NOT EXACTLY A STATE SECRET
Ugh that is AWFUL, what??
I used to work with this incredibly difficult and nitpicky (but dense) accountant at a company that my company was doing a project with, and I still get twitchy when I have to go back and find something she sent me. It was inevitably about something I did wrong or asking me to fix something I’d already fixed or repeating her concern over something I’d already explained and she didn’t understand. I haven’t actually had to deal with her since last July and I’m still traumatized.
For some reason, there are people in my life who think it’s okay to use the subject line “Sad news” for emails that are not about someone dying. I have done so much unnecessary panicking!
Also, grade complaints from students.
Subject line: RE: Midterm grades are posted
My blood pressure always always rises preemptively.
Any email from a student after the semester ends! They are, like 1%, thanks for a great semester! and 99% whhyyyyyy did I get this grade/my GPA depends on this!!!
“Whhyyyyyyyy did I get an A minus whhhyyyyyyyyyyy?”
ahahahaha I have never forgotten the lesson I learned my first year, when I took up the professor on his offer to go over our exams during office hours to discuss how we could improve next time. As I sat there noting down where I’d gone wrong and how to improve (cite more sources, give more examples) and thanking him for clarifying, he suddenly blurted out [something like] “I can’t change your grade! This is a B+ exam, and that’s that.”
I said [something like] “Of course not! I want to do better next time, and this is very helpful.” He was stunned. Apparently, no student had ever taken him up on his offer in earnest; they all came in to contest the grade.
It made me much more aware of the nonsense professors put up with, and I learned how much more productive it is to start any post-grading conversation with a quick, subtle clarification that I’m not arguing about my grade.
An email from my department head or assistant principal that says, “Please come see me at ____” with no reason listed.
Not email, but I freak out anytime someone texts or calls me after 10pm. I’m always sure it’s an emergency/something awful’s happened. Nope, I just have a sister and a friend who like to call/text late, even though they know I hate it.
I got a heart-stopping meeting invite from HR recently that said nothing but “General discussion” in the subject line, with a time set for 10 am the following day.
(Fortunately, it was fine, and it was just a general information thing for the whole office. But I was 99% sure I was getting canned).
…he insisted that they were not only to be ‘sharpelye punnyshed’,
presumably with the apparatus of social discipline with which Ian Archer tells us the
streets of the metropolis had become littered, but ‘allsoe to loose their pencyons’.
Dude, it wouldn’t kill you to throw in a “such as…” We’re not all instantly familiar with the work of Dr Ian W. Archer M.A., D.Phil., F.R.Hist.S.
(I’m betting on “gonnes impeled withe springges, that do shute at ye unwarie a ball formed of potatoe’s flesche, or that of lyke tubers.”)
Oh god. I should have read the doctor piece before the ‘NO NO NO’ piece so at least the hysterical laughter would have come after the tears.
I read a National Geographic article about the Russian fox domestication program a couple of years ago and have wanted one desperately ever since. Foxes seem like the perfect cross between dogs and cats. I’m pretty sure you can litter-train them. Also, all the stuff about how the foxes physically changed (floppy ears, more variation in coat markings, etc) through each generation of the breeding program is insanely fascinating.
God, I am still NOT OKAY that Oliver Sacks is dying. His goodbye piece one of the most genuinely upsetting and beautiful things I’ve ever read, because there are very few authors who have had more of an influence on my life than him. I don’t know if I would be in graduate school if it wasn’t for him. FUCK CANCER.
Have you written to tell him that? I’m sure he gets fan mail, but that’s also the kind of thing that can help people as they close chapters of their lives, and perhaps you’d feel a little more at peace as well. (Yes. Fuck cancer. Fuck it right in its metastatic earhole.)
I haven’t, partly because I don’t think I’ve ever done that before, and partly because I don’t even know whether I could put together the words without sounding like an idiot or feeling like I’m bothering him at a chapter of his life where he just wants to be with friends and family. But I just might.
He probably has people helping with his mail, and if he doesn’t want to see fan mail or letters from people he doesn’t know, they’re likely filtering that. You could also post something online or in a local publication, if you don’t want to feel like you’re demanding his attention at a quiet time, or write something you never send or share. Anyway, hugs to you as one of your mentors moves on.
I bet he would enjoy that- he seems like a lovely person.
I had the pleasure of meeting Sacks briefly several years ago, when I was in college. He was kind enough to appear at a benefit for the college movie theater was I working at the time. We showed a screening of “Awakenings”, along with a BBC documentary about the real-life patients the film was based on. He also gave a great lecture about his work with them. He was incredibly gracious and lovely to everyone, and signed a book for my mother.
(As an aside, it was *insane* how well Robin Williams captured his personality and mannerisms in the film, and how much he physically looked like him).
Agreed. I know the man is like 80 but it still feels way too early. How did he influence you? For me, he opened the door to the brain (which had an immense impact on me, as a person and as a student) and I feel like I’ve learned so much about how passionate science can be through his books. Curiosity is a kind of love, it’s a complete non-judging acceptance that embraces everything. I want to write to him before it’s too late but he probably won’t be prioritising fan mail…
FOXES! Foxes are my favorites. And now I am welling up at a) the idea of domesticating one and b) that video. Why am I welling up with happiness at a video?? aaaaahhh….
Omg, thank you for that Medium email exchange. And the truth about how we want both to hug foxes and for them to like it.
The worst work email I’ve received: my supervisor sent a message consisting only of the two words “call me” barely a minute after I sent a deliverable to our client (and of course copied him). Note: HE HAD MY PHONE NUMBER, he could have just called me directly instead of emailing me to CALL HIM. God, he was an asshole.
Gawker has a great piece right now by a young Muslim woman and it’s great and so far the comments are great and you should read it: http://truestories.gawker.com/practicing-islam-in…
That is amazing and gorgeous and painful writing. Thank you for sharing it.
From: Virginia Heffernan
To: Paul Ford
Subject: Red Bull men on “is rape exaggerated?” — series for Virgin America seatback + Roku distrib
We think this is really gonna be a fun one
Kiley Angelino
@HOTtimesPOP
______________________________
This almost made me spit out my coffee.
At least it wasn’t Red Bull?
“A monk’s 1,000-year-old mummified body was discovered inside a Chinese Buddha statue after it was taken to hospital for a CT scan in the Netherlands.”
Like, obviously it was good that they did that, because they found a rad corpse sealed inside, but I think it’s pretty funny to imagine some Dutch guys finding a 1000 year old statue of a buddha and immediately taking it to the hospital for medical tests.
“But Florian! He could still be alive!“
This just confirms the suspicions I have about most statues so I probably would have done the same.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_McCurdy
I feel like I need to address my life choices because I recognized the doctor with lung cancer as Cup of Jo’s brother in law without looking at his name.
Thanks for pointing that out! I really do like Cup of Jo, and was sad that her family had suffered a loss.
Did Mallory just forget to do the link roundup on Thursday? Was it because of the holiday weekend [again]?
YOU’RE LIVING IN THE PAST, MARGE, QUIT LIVING IN THE PAST
Hahahaha I wondered the same thing but didn’t say anything.
Keeping us on our toes is just one of the charms of The Toast.
The Flight 370 article – okay, thank you. Aside from being overly pissed off that they never ask us female airline pilots to go on CNN/whatever (we aren’t “authoritative” enough I’ve been told), I’ve always wondered where and how they get the absolute morons they manage to drum up and put on the screen with their idiotic theories that go viral and scare the living crap out of everyone. Retweeting the shit out of that article because honestly, it’s the first intelligent thing I’ve read on the crash all these months later.
You’re a pilot!? I would love to hear…anything, really. Whenever I travel by plane I hope for a female pilot, and it’s only happened one* time. I wanted to grab her and talk to her for hours but I settled for a big and hopefully non-creepy smile and sincere thank-you.
*The person who made all the cockpit announcements was a dude, but I think she was in the pilot’s position.
Happy to talk any time (if you really want to hear me question my career choice, blerg). And yeah, I usually make the co-pilot make all the announcements, too. Because no one listens to me…they hear a female voice, assume it’s the flight attendant talking and don’t listen anyway. So I don’t even bother anymore. On the plus side, I did once have this bizarre all female flight – not just crew, but flight. Some Red Hat Society Ladies’ Convention chartered one of our flights for a huge convention in New Orleans. By coincidence I had a female co-pilot, all female flight attendants…even the tug driver pushing back the airplane in Houston was female. It was pretty awesome. (And on the very, very rare occasions there are two female pilots the cockpit is henceforth known as the box office. The more you know, right?)
Erm, Captain, please pitch your stories to the Toast, stat.
There is a family of foxes in the woods behind my house.I see them all the time. I would love to have a pet fox.
Catherine of Braganza had a pet fox, but history tells us it was shy and fearful of everyone but her and her maids
“we want the most docile, least aggressive, and least skittish animal.”
hahaha have these people ever had a tiny dog?
re: domestication of foxen:
but what I really want is a tiny pet manatee that can live in my bathtub
is that too much to ask???
also:
calmingmanatee.com if you’ve never encountered it before
particularly:
Just constantly buying the Trader Joe’s nori packs, and sticking them in your tub.
hats made out of iceberg lettuce
necklaces made from leafy carrots
at least until he got hungry and ate them.
but think of the bathtime cuddles!
Guy from the water district stops by twice a week with half your manatee’s weight in water hyacinths they’ve cleared out of waterways.
On the topic of the domestic foxes, the experimenters ALSO decided to see what happened when they would breed for fearfulness and aggression, though I can’t seem to find the results. There’s only one line in the Wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Konstantinovich_Belyaev) about the researcher that’s rather chilling:
“After initiating his selective breeding program for tameness, Belyaev also began breeding a line of fearful, aggressive foxes”
“The research team was never seen again. Investigators found no trace of the research facility; it had vanished as though it had never been. On dark nights, faint screams are sometimes heard from deep in the forest.”
The Channel Islands foxes (in California, because maybe there are other channels with islands in the world) are 1.) rare, 2.) plagued by distemper spread by domestic dogs and 3.) so tamable that often distemper treatment results in affectionate tame foxes.
Also they have the well known endemic trait of island cuteness.
Well, the essay from the neurosurgeon dying of cancer is beautiful and sad and now I’m quietly weeping at my desk while I listen to “For a Dancer” on repeat.
While we’re on the subject of fantasy pets, I would like an elephant with the size and personality of a well-trained labrador retriever. I could feed him peanuts and he could use his trunk to help me in the garden.
Can I have a puppy-sized polar bear, if we’re putting requests in?
So you want a 1-year old elephant, is what you’re saying.
yes but staying that small and better-behaved than the average toddler.
I would name him Peanut.
I feel like this link is relevant to the Toast’s interests: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31581592
It is a tired hare who now races.
Foof. I ain’t even had cancer, but frantic activity is NOT my bag.
Panicked serenity is more my style.
I give you my word that if you click on this link, you will see a picture of a koala attempting to drive a car.
In exchange, here’s a dog succeeding
Happy to talk any time (if you really want to hear me question my career choice, blerg). And yeah, I usually make the co-pilot make all the announcements, too. Because no one listens to me…they hear a female voice, assume it's the flight attendant talking and don't listen anyway. So I don't even bother anymore. On the plus side, I did once have this bizarre all female flight – not just crew, but flight. Some Red Hat Society Ladies' Convention chartered one of our flights for a huge convention in New Orleans. By coincidence I had a female co-pilot, all female flight attendants…even the tug driver pushing back the airplane in Houston was female. It was pretty awesome. (And on the very, very rare occasions there are two female pilots the cockpit is henceforth known as the box office. The more you know, right?)
Your old manager sounds like a total bastard, so pleased you have a proper boss now!