My mom and I were at Whole Foods in her town yesterday and it was quite amazing how 97% of the shoppers acted like they were doing something far more significant than buying groceries that would eventually be digested and then released into a toilet.
I’m reading Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish and so far it is absolutely intense and magnificent. This is not my normal “type” of book, but I am 20% in and enjoying it thoroughly.
I know I am 20% in because I am reading the book on my Kindle. I go both ways when it comes to book reading, and well, most all good things in life.
The Taft Museum in Cincinnati has a residency for an African American writer or artist. Apply, perhaps. It comes with a $7500 stipend.
Butchbaby is making maternity clothes for genderqueer parents.
This guy is trying to make the cover of Men’s Health magazine.
Rembert Browne has some necessary words for how we act and treat one another online.
This story about Adam Sandler’s latest “movie” doesn’t surprise me. Good on those actors who walked out.
HERE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT NEWS OF THE YEAR!!!
A grammar lesson on lay/lie/whatever.
There is a big boxing fight coming up.
We like Emanuel Pacquiao because he is small. We admire him because he will tuck his head and duck inside the dangerous space made by a much larger man, where he will punch upward, like a deranged songbird pecking away at a cat. We like Manny because this situation reminds us of his childhood, wherein a backwoods Filipino boy, so poor he sometimes survived on a single meal a day, stole away for the city, where he punched other children for pennies. We like him because now, when he goes back home, he receives long lines of his hungry countrymen like a generous king. He pays their bills. He builds them hospitals.
There is going to be a Dr. Seuss museum!
When Dr. Seuss wrote the words “Oh, the places you’ll go!,” he may never have imagined that would mean Springfield — his birthplace — for travelers from around the globe. Pretty soon, there will be a museum dedicated to his work in children’s literature in the city — the first of its kind in the world.
Few people showed up to a march for Rekia Boyd and it is a painful reminder that we forget how black women’s lives matter too.
Edwidge Danticat writes about missing her mother.
I had walked the 15 or so blocks between the Newkirk Avenue subway station and my parents’ house in East Flatbush for 25 years, but never with such a sense of dread. My mother had recently died of ovarian cancer, and I wanted to revisit that stretch of Avenue D that she and I had sauntered, strolled and marched along together throughout much of my life. I wanted to see if she would still be walking these same streets — alone, invisibly, without me.
These ladies know their alcohol.
Bridget Firtle interrupts our interview when an alarm sounds. The water has reached the right temperature for the next stage of making mash. I watch as she drives a forklift truck carrying 3,200lb of the thick, black molasses to siphon into the bubbling tank, the room filling with a sugary aroma.
“I wasn’t always so good at this bit,” Firtle tells me, while doing a three-point turn around a pillar in the middle of her Bushwick distillery, The Noble Experiment. “There’s a giant hole in the wall over there to prove it.”
As far as we’ve come in terms of gender stereotypes in the workplace, the assumption remains that distilleries are a man’s world – it conjures images of stout gentlemen quaffing drams of whiskey and mumbling appreciatively beneath a set of whiskers.
I really enjoy the website Eater.
Meryl Streep stays awesome.
I am always fascinated by amnesia. This woman woke up and it was the future and nothing made sense.
Naomi Jacobs was a 32-year-old single mother living in Manchester, England, when she went to sleep on April 30, 2008. She lived in a small flat with her ten-year-old son Leo and their cat Sophia. At the time, she was unemployed, but she had gone back to school, where she was pursuing a degree in psychology. When Naomi woke up the next morning, she didn’t remember any of this. Instead, she woke up believing she was 15 years old, bewildered by how she had ended up in the future.
The Whitney got her hair did.
The Lex, San Francisco’s last lesbian bar, is closing.
The Lexington Club is packed, shoulder to shoulder. It’s been this way for nearly an hour. All those bodies have made the Mission District bar warm and loud.
A pool table has been shoved into a corner and a microphone stand sits on top. A little after 8 p.m., Joey “Cupcake” Stevenson climbs up. She quiets the crowd and makes a few announcements, and the eulogies begin.
One after another, people come to the microphone to share their memories — of spin the bottle and bathroom fights, love stories and ghost stories. Stories about community and stories about loss. “I’m scared of how it’s going to feel to miss you,” somebody says.
And everybody gets it: The Lex is closing.
Blah blah blah Drake blah blah blah. Still, this was an interesting profile.
I appreciated this article on designing for people with disabilities.
The cane soon became a source of self-consciousness. “My eyeglasses would get compliments,” she told me, “but my cane would get a funny tilt of the head from people, as if they were thinking, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ ” For months, she was despondent. One thing that helped her recovery was finding a purple cane, while browsing online, to replace her drab, hospital-issued one. “I went from walking hunched down, wanting to hide, to actually being proud of it,” she said. Sometime afterward, she was shopping at J.Crew, her favorite store, and it occurred to her that her cane would look beautiful with the brand’s Kelly-green T-shirts. That led her to begin asking J.Crew, through e-mails, blog posts, and open letters published on Facebook and Twitter, if it would sell a fashionable cane—to broaden its customer reach and to help ease the stigma attached to assistive devices.
Tags: link roundup, the internet
I tried the last two links and repeatedly got redirected to Walmart–a Ninja juicer, a folding walker, and a set of headlights.
A folding walker is kind of handy, though. Just sayin’
download a malware scanner, you have an “optimizer” running somewhere on your computer. Google your browser + “remove hijacker malware” and read a few sites to see what the consensus is for your browser. (if you use firefox, there’s a handy suggestion in their help for what to download, I’m sure there is for chrome, too).
Are you clicking them on your computer or your phone? I had similar problems with my phone this morning but on the computer they work fine.
I gave up trying to read the Toast on my phone months ago – I get the weird redirected links thing all the time if I try, plus this annoying floating pop up bar that I can only close by hitting the tiniest of “x’s” at just the right spot. I know people have complained and communicated to The Powers That Be but it hasn’t changed at all, which is a huge bummer.
Trying to read Toast links on Chrome (whether at home or work) is always a crapshoot of “is this going to go to the link or an Idaho tourism site?”
Hey, so can we talk a moment about the movie “Little Boy”? I saw part of a trailer and thought it was just kind of schlocky nonsense, but apparently, the title (and the nickname of the main character) are references to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which is also the climactic event in this movie? Kid prays, God obliterates a Japanese city? Something like that?
It was also the codename of the bomb itself (in reference to a character from The Maltese Falcon).
Yup, according to the AV Club review that’s pretty much how it goes. Pretty gross.
Bitter lol at anyone who thought Adam Sandler was going to even try being respectful. Like, I know you’re always supposed to have hope that people are going to be less horrible than they have been, but I’ve just given up on white-dude comedy in general.
It’s hard to know for sure, but I can definitely see a lot of Native American actors signing on to do it in the hopes that those guys wouldn’t really have the gall to be that kind of disrespectful to their faces.
And you know, I’d have guessed they wouldn’t, too! It’s one thing to make a shit joke about Native Americans, but it’s another thing to have to do it TO Native Americans.
So, I guess I foolishly thought better of Adam Sandler and his posse than was merited.
Me too, and you know, I’m disappointed in myself for somehow continuing to overestimate Adam Sandler.
I can certainly see those actors signing on for the money and the credit. Guessing that “acting jobs for Native Americans where you also get respected and taken seriously” is a short list. Which makes me extra respect the walkout.
What’s sad is that I’ve repeatedly heard that Adam Sandler is one of the nicer people in Hollywood. But, you know, once a douchebro, always a douchebro.
good example of “nice” not necessarily meaning “good” or “kind,” I guess.
I’m going to guess that he’s probably very nice to other rich white guys who then tell everyone what a nice guy he is.
Did you hear Netflix’s response? It’s utterly disappointing and infuriating:
“The movie has ridiculous in the title for a reason: because it is ridiculous. It is a broad satire of Western movies and the stereotypes they popularized, featuring a diverse cast that is not only part of — but in on — the joke.”
Yeah… the cast that left in protest and in tears was definitely “in on the joke.”
I just can’t believe how disgusting this whole thing is.
exactly. I might have bought that “in on the joke” business if a bunch of members of the cast hadn’t just demonstrated pretty clearly that they were not.
That’s the worst part of all. I mean, yes, it’s a comedy/satire and maybe the Native Americans didn’t read the script closely enough (???), but this is similar to a consent issue: you can say yes, yes, yes, yes… but the moment you say no, consent has been revoked, stop, no one’s “in on the joke” anymore.
Satire is when you punch up or sideways. Punching down is just being a dick.
“According to Indian Country Today Media Network, which first reported the news, about a dozen actors, including an adviser on Native American culture, left the set Wednesday after learning the names of some of the film’s characters, among them Beaver’s Breath and No Bra. A female Native American character was to urinate while smoking a peace pipe, Indian Country reported.”
So satire! Much respect! Good joke!
Ugh.
Yes, that genre is filled with stereotypes and tropes that are ripe for satire. But if the people you are making the movie with say “hey, this is just as insulting to us as the stereotypes you are trying to skewer”, the response is to say “that was not our intention! Would you be willing to help us find a way to meet our objective without offending you?” not, essentially, “it’s a joke! don’t take it too seriously!”
Yeah, when the Native American consultant you hired specifically to prevent you from being a dick, walks off because of your unrepentant dickishness, maybe, just MAYBE you need to take a good hard look at your “jokes”.
IN on the JOKE. Ugh.
McDreamy died. I’m not done crying yet.
I had no idea Grey’s Anatomy was still even going & thought (until I googled) that Patrick Dempsey had died.
WOW I havent watched that show since the blonde one performed a heart transplant for her hospital bf? How’d he die? I will never look this up but really want to know!
Derek was driving in a remote area and came upon a car accident. He saved the people involved. But then he got back in his car and was hit by a semi.
He was brought to a hospital that wasn’t a Level 1 trauma center — and because of the doctors’ incompetence, he died of his injuries.
As a send-off to a beloved character, the episode was really bad. Rumors on the net are that Patrick Dempsey was acting like a diva on set. I’m starting to believe that Shonda Rimes can’t get along with anyone, given the sheer volume of actors that she has killed off the show because of their diva-like behavior.
Except remember that Columbus Short got canned from Scandal for beating up his girlfriend, so, you know, not always a bad decision!
And let’s not forget the whole TR Knight vs Isaiah Washington debacle.
From the TV show “Justified”:
You ever hear of the saying “you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole; you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.”
OK, i’ll throw myself on that grenade <checks>… Stopped his car in the middle of the road to check his phone, got hit by a truck. Dumbass.
He was in a car accident after he saved a bunch of people who had also been in a car accident (a different one); a semi hit his car. Then they fucked up at the hospital they brought him to, didn’t get a CT scan, didn’t get the on call neurologist on site fast enough, and he was brain dead and Meredith had to pull the plug. At this point he and Meredith were married and had two little kids.
ohhh they got married? WEIRD. Hm. Didnt they throw in a long lost sister for Meredith who was also trying to be a Dr or something?
Two of those, now. One’s dead, the other is the head of cardio surgery.
I don’t watch that show, but maybe it would be kinder to put this kind of thing in the comments for folks who haven’t gotten a chance to watch it yet?
I am flat out refusing to watch it nope nope nope nope NOPE
My reaction entirely!
THANK YOU. I just posted on Twitter “I don’t watch much TV but I love spoilers so someone tell me what happened on Grey’s” and nobody was talking about it bc spoilers but ahh thank you.
Okay, but, so there was a LOT of speculation about this after last week’s episode, and the general consensus was that he’d be back in a lot of flashbacks because he’d signed another season’s worth of contract, so… is that not true?
I am firmly in the denial stage right now, bargaining to come soon
I can’t find anything about that. It seems like some entertainment websites are dealing with fans who are saying they won’t watch the show again after this … almost like Shonda Rhimes is trying to get them to deal with the backlash. I’m still in the denial stage, but I cannot believe I’m so sad about a character dying. Well, a character I had 10-years to get to love.
Huh. I guess he’s breaking contract…. Hollywood Reporter has it that he’d signed through next season. Crap, crap, crap.
Rumors are that Dempsey was acting like a diva on-set so Shonda wanted him off. She fired him or wrote him off the show. According to an article on Entertainment Weekly (ew.com), the episode came together quickly, over the last month or so. They published an interview with Dempsey and it sounded to me like he was a bit blindsided.
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/23/patrick-demp…
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/23/shonda-rhime…
And the article that made me think that Entertainment Weekly was trying to do some backlash control by imagining a Grey’s without Dempsey/Derek:
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/24/ew-debates-d…
weeping
I had actually heard (a while back) that Dempsey wanted to quit to focus on auto racing (which would explain part of why he was gone so much the past season). I’d read that long enough ago that I was actually wondering when he was either going to flat-out leave Meredith or die.
I watch on Hulu, so always the next day, which is terrible for spoilers. Someone already spoiled it for me last night on Facebook though, and I finished watching the ep this morning.
Yeah I just completely fluffed that … sorry about the spoiler.
I honestly wept. I’ve seen every episode many many times and I can’t believe they would do this to Derek.
This is not just another principal character getting killed off, this is one of the two main romantic leads of the show. The first episode literally starts with their love story. I’m devastated.
I know, it’s not hyperbole when I said I was still crying. So many feelings.
denial denial denial denial
Another (rather far-fetched given the Shonda/Dempsey interviews) fan theory: this is the first evidence of Meredith’s incipient Alzheimer’s, Derek isn’t really dead, and Meredith is slowly losing cognition.
I don’t like that either but.
This was a pretty shitty thing to do, I haven’t gotten to watch this episode yet.
I am SO EXCITED for the 8th movie in The Fast and The Furious franchise to release– two weeks before my birthday, no less!!– but come ON, Variety. It’s not going to be called “Furious 8.”
What are your bets? I’m thinking maybe “Furious & Fast” (no number).
(Furious 7 was great, I loved it, I cried at the end. It passes the Bechdel test many times over. If you haven’t seen it yet, please do, so Vin will keep making them until the end of eternity.)
I really hope they go with FuriOCHO.
YES
YES YES
I finally watched F&F 1-6 the last week after all the positive posts here and at the Hairpin, and it was glorious! Vin, the Rock AND Michelle Rodriguez! what more can a girl want? (Samira Wiley playing Michelle Rodriguez’ girlfriend is what)
Furiouser & Furiouser
One of my greatest joys in being at UCSD is being able to walk into the library and see a rotating display of Dr. Seuss’ drafts and drawings. I hope the Springfield museum is getting some of them! There’s something spectacular about seeing the process behind writing/drawing these books that I practically know by heart.
I was hoping when I clicked the link that the museum would be in San Diego for this reason exactly! I guess other cities can love Dr. Suess too
Fucking YES, I’m tearing up
<a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMvd72X2S0E” target=”_blank”>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMvd72X2S0E
OMG HOW GOOD IS SCOTT GLENN AS STICK THO?????
I am currently composing a Facebook post about how this scene has led me to profound revelations about my late father.
Not that he was like Stick, but why Stick affects me the same way as he would him.
It continually blows my mind how deep this show has been able to get. It’s easily my favorite part of the MCU so far, other than Agent Carter.
Welcome to Unexpected Tuesday Night Tears Of Love.
Oh shit….father revelations. You know that bit on Mr. Show where the detectives are trying out the lie detector and Paul F. Tompkins inadvertently gives himself a literally shocking insight?
It’s like reflexology. There’s a Nagy Rocky pressure point (and our leg stamps, our tail wags and a tear comes out).
He was a closed-minded prejudicial guy, was John Paul Nagy II (I’m not III because I have a different [maternal] middle name) (yes, I like having the same actual name as Linnell and Flansburgh {“John, I’ve been bad and they’re coming after me”] and I like when Ms. Washington calls me “John”) so the implications thereof didn’t bother him and therefore the Confederacy gave him THAT JOLT. “Okay, but I don’t get it, though visiting the Shiloh battlefield park is nice enough….” But I understand now what he was trying to tell me once about “reBELLion”. My mom said “John’s not prejudiced, he hates *everybody*” and he was, shall we say, unenlightened.
BUT…the story Brienne told Pod this week about how she came to be a sworn guardian of good people despite having shit thrown in her face and being accused of murder (to say nothing of the honorable Jon STARK standing his goddamn winter ground), the way this Nike magazine ad I hadn’t seen in years made me tear up at work yesterday http://the-toast.net/2015/04/27/interview-with-ja… (that last one about being “a girl”), J.P. Nagy shaking on the couch (on more than one occasion) as Rocky re-matched with Clubber Lang and then taunted him by staying upright and defiant (“ain’t so bad!”), hell, probably the recaps of The Pretender he was giving me in line for Space Mountain in the summer of 1997 (I haven’t seen the show) I never understood why he seemed to be nearly as much into Star Wars as I was/am.
I GET it now. Yes, it’s about defiance, but more so I think it’s about transcendence…like how it DESTROYS me when Harry “Radcliffe” Potter thinks his father has aided him and then realizes he’s summoned his own mighty patronus (SPOILER ALERT) as a passing of the baton and is therefore even stronger. (that scene is also an overall helpful meditation on death, I’ve found, and I’ve tried to convey it to someone in need before)
It’s this notion of “don’t settle for the lesser version of yourself, embrace the entirety of yourself” that I realize we have both been profoundly sympathetic to and inspired by.
This has been Jay’s Sudden Epiphanies (Tuesday Edition)
Holy Hannah – Roxanne, this link roundup is just WOW. I have oodles of tabs opened and waiting for me to make this a real deal 5% friday (or 0.5% friday) and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this possible.
Also – RICH PEOPLE AT WHOLE FOODS STORY:
I was at my whole foods maybe a year ago. I had parked my car, and started walking towards the store when a woman beckoned me over to her. She was farther away from the store than I was by maybe 20 feet. I went over to her (curiously) and she said “oh thank you, here’s my cart”. And I was like “…what?” and she said “well, you’re going up anyway, can’t you just take my cart?” and in my head I was like “YES I COULD BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN I SHOULD YOU RICH ENTITLED COW” but out of my mouth came “um… I guess?” and I fumed about it for the rest of the day. FIN.
5% Friday is a term I am stealing. Thanks!
Also oooooh my lord that Whole Foods story. That is awful!! My blood pressure rose just reading t, but I’m also giggling because Rich People.
Whole Foods — one of the reasons I stopped shopping there is that the other customers are so often mean! In mine, there was an epidemic of people letting the door swing shut on you when you are carrying a bag of groceries in each hand, before you can stick your foot out or whatever to keep the door open. Also people walking through you, because their rush was so much more important than your rush. And nobody smiling.
There was article a while back about a study showing people actually were ruder at the Whole Foods because of some funny psychological mechanism whereby they felt shopping for organic food was good/moral/responsible, so they felt they had just done something moral and the muscle was a little exhausted; they could snap at another person because they had already proved their “goodness” subconsciously to themselves.
I don’t know about that, but I am definitely back to shopping at my beloved cheap Market Basket next to the cemetery that has a much wider and better selection of produce anyway thanks to our immigrant neighborhood and big-family bulk shoppers.
I think you and I might shop at the same Market Basket. Unless there’s more than one MB next to a cemetery. Which, you know, totally possible. Lots of bones in New England.
ETA: Market Basket is the best.
I was just gonna say, I, too, occasionally shop at a Market Basket next to a cemetery. Is Market Basket secretly run by a vampire clan, or do we just all live in the same greater-Boston area?
I suppose it’s possible we’re all ‘villens, but I like the vampire clan theory better. Adds an interesting twist to the ownership/labor dispute last year.
Somerville what’s up!!!!!
I find that Whole Foods psychology thing so funny because my primary feeling when shopping there is guilt, like, OH LUCKY YOU YOU CAN SPEND $10 ON THREE DIFFERENT COLORED BELL PEPPERS SO YOUR STIR-FRY IS ~PRETTY~, COULD YOU NOT HAVE DONE SOMETHING ~USEFUL~ WITH THAT MONEY, YOU KNOW YOU WILL HAVE TO GET ON THE BUS AND ALL THE PEOPLE ON THE BUS WILL SEE YOUR SHOPPING BAG AND THINK YOU ARE A SNOTTY RICH PERSON, MAYBE YOU ARE. I feel like I have to be extra polite to everyone!
(I say this with the feeling that I am probably Among My People here.)
Oh dear, yes, Emily. You certainly are my people.
[fist bump] We’re not those guys in the real estate articles and we never will be.
exactly.
Yes! That stressed-out feeling also contributes to feeling like snapping at people.
I only go to Whole Paycheck for things like oatmeal and rice (it’s about the same price to frequently buy small amounts of their their self-serve grains, which are priced by weight, as buying the packaged kind elsewhere & helps me not have so many silverfish in my pantry) but I live near a Sprouts which is where I go for basically everything else out of laziness and the phenomenon is very similar. People are complete assholes in that parking lot. When I drive a bit farther away to a Ralphs or Albertsons, people are sooo much nicer and actually stop for pedestrians in their cars.
Oh my gosh, an elderly man did that to me at Kroger a month or so ago. Thing was, I ALREADY WAS GETTING MY OWN CART. He was inviting me to walk all the way over to him and use his instead? I just…didn’t. Don’t disguise your laziness in helpfulness, dude.
it’s such a shitty tactic! get someone to come closer to you and then ask them to do something that you should be doing yourself, but that they will feel obligated to do because now they are so close to you and to refuse would make them feel horrible.
Wait, what? *paradigm shift* I often walk a few steps and take someone’s cart for them and take it into the store. I rarely get one from inside the store. It’s just a nice little gesture that’s easy to do; a simple, easy random act of kindness. What’s an extra few steps? And it made their day a little bit easier? It’s like when my neighbor returns my trash can from the curb for me on trash day. It brings a smile to my face, and my neighbor doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. Why not do these simple nice things for people?
Yeah, I do a lot of simple nice things for people, like take someone’s cart from them when we’re near each other walking to the same destination. I’m actually huge on doing little nice things for people. But when someone beckons you from 20 feet farther away from your destination and then hands you a shopping cart, that’s taking advantage of people.
(ETA: I also think that it’s imperative to let people offer to do nice things. When you create a sense of obligation for someone to do something nice for you, it’s actually really manipulative and rude. You don’t know what another individual has going on – maybe they have 32.7 seconds to dash into the store to grab an ingredient, maybe they’re in a massive amount of pain that they’re managing to mask so they can go to the store and get out for once. It’s really obnoxious to put someone in that position)
If you ask someone nicely to do something, you are giving them the opportunity to feel good about it. Even if asking takes a few seconds longer and you both know they are going to say yes, ask anyway!
When someone tells me to do something or presumes that I will do something, instead of asking (even if I would have 100% said yes!), I am filled with sudden white-hot rage and then I feel pissy the whole time I’m doing the thing.
Learn to say “no”. A polite “no thanks!” and then just walk away. If they want to get pissy because they have to return their own cart, then let them. That’s not your problem.
Right, it’s different if you offer to take their cart vs them offering you to take their cart for them because they are lazy.
*Especially* a dude, who is likely counting on your girly socialization to be helpful and not refuse his request.
YES thank you for saying this. Would it have happened between two dudes? Most likely not.
I forget what I was reading (possibly a link from another Link Roundup?) but I learned that to find the lowest levels of vaccination in the country, you can basically just look at wherever there’s a Whole Foods.
I shop there a lot for produce and expensive treats, but I try to remember that there’s no such thing as a benevolent capitalist corporation. If only their tiny $7.99 ice creams weren’t so damn good!!!
there’s no such thing as a benevolent capitalist corporation
I have an organic free-range beef with Whole Foods anyway because that was the name of the local food co-op long before the big guys came on the scene…and the big guys sued the co-op. Co-op won. Ha ha! That’s for all the real hippies out there, capitalist bastards!
+++organic free-range beef
I work at a Whole Foods (IN MANHATTAN no less), and awful rich people abound. I can say with certainty that 95% of the people who shop at Whole Foods are the worst. The other 5% are angels who had no other choice an sometimes actually appear to feel bad that they’re even in the store to begin with, which is the proper attitude to have.
Also, I take great joy in telling many of the awful people that our hot soups are shipped to us, in plastic bags! And that half of our hot bar food is also shipped to us in plastic containers. The horror on their faces is pretty much the only thing that keeps me going at this point.
That is actually hilarious to me because, seriously, did they think the stuff at the food bar was prepared from scratch? By grocery employees? Who are also busy running the store? I mean some grocery stores have full-on delis in them but even then you’d expect a lot of that stuff to have been prepared maybe days in advance and refrigerated. It’s not… exactly gourmet.
We don’t have a Whole Foods around here, but the next town over does have two other similar chains really close to one another. One is clearly the rich people organic market (dark, mood lighting, classical music, orchids everywhere) and the other is clearly the dirty hippie organic market (bright, colorful, smells like patchouli whenever you walk by the health & beauty section).
The customers at the dirty hippie market are so much easier to deal with. They watch where they’re going!
They watch where they’re going <—– THIS. What is it about Whole Foods and the people who shop there that they have ZERO kinesthetic awareness or use of peripheral vision?
Those real estate links make me feel a LOT better about my plan to spend about $1500-2000 on new furniture in the next few weeks.
Right? Whenever I need something new for my house (read: rarely), it takes me weeks to convince myself to spend the moderate sum of money that my middle-class life permits to get a decent version of said thing, rather than buying a cheap thing that I will need to replace in a couple of years.
What I’m trying to say is, enjoy your new furniture!
We’ve reached the stage where we are slowly starting to upgrade our Ikea furniture into decent pieces made from REAL WOOD and it is very exciting. I will admit that I have some Ikea pieces I genuinely love and I still consider a trip to Ikea a treat.
I genuinely love IKEA furniture. I do wish it were slightly cheaper, because I treat it as disposable, pretty much. The trouble with nice, real furniture is that people feel obligated to keep it (see the hideous 120-year-old headboard that is in my garage because it is a piece of family history). When I die, feel free to put all of my IKEA on Craigslist.
Yeah, I’m going to be needing a new dresser soon because the particle-board laminate one I’ve had since I was 12 just isn’t cutting it (and is somehow so heavy it takes two and a half people to move, so I do *not* want it going with me to any more apartments). I keep checking Ikea’s website for their Hemnes chests and thinking “Ooh, that’s so pretty and so inexpensive!” but it’s not cheap when you imagine it wobbling from side to side two years on once the lock screws have gotten loose and the drawers are getting janky. I have to keep reminding myself that if a dresser’s assembly instructions include bolting it to the wall so it doesn’t tip over, it is *not* going to be moving-friendly.
Roxane. I saw “Nothing Even Matters” and I thought… is it… could it be Lauren Hill & D’Angelo this early in the morning? COULD IT BE. **AND GODDAMN IT WAS** THANK YOU. Please enjoy your day / wkd / life accordingly.
Right? Life gets 1000% better with a Lauryn kickoff in the morning. I played it loud enough to drown out my three year old’s stupid Curious George.
100% needed a Lauryn Hill soundtrack this morning, thank you!
I will read everything you’ve got about lesbian bars. Philly’s only lesbian bar closed a couple years ago, and it remains a great mystery to me. It’s not that that there aren’t other queer spaces, and there’s actually a sort of roving group that schedules queer takeovers for bars around town, so that’s great and all. But given how both Philly’s bar and the SF bar were well-attended and much-mourned, you’d think that a brick-and-mortar space designated specifically (although not exclusively) for queer women is enough of a need that another bar would emerge to fill the niche. But nothing has yet in Philly (to my knowledge), and the article described a sort of drought in SF, and I would really like to know why that is.
That article about the Lex is a tearjerker. It was one of the first bars i went to when I first moved to The Bay, 10 years ago, and it was such a welcoming, one-of-a-kind place. So sad to read articles like this EVERY WEEK about San Francisco, even though I don’t live there any more.
I’m actually a new ish queermo, and going to the Lex for the first time tonight for the goodbye party. I’ll have a drink for you 🙂
I really hated Sisters, but it is crazy to me that no one has opened another lesbian bar in Philly (and that there was only one to begin with. This isn’t Highlander. I can name at least 5 gay bars off the top of my head, and that’s before you leave the Gayborhood). If only I had capital/experience in the restaurant industry/any business acumen whatsoever.
Right? I don’t even have the business acumen to really understand why no one has does this, let alone to do it myself.
P.S. Phillytoast, there is a group for us ICYMI.
Sisters closed?? As a baby queer girl I always felt kind of awkward there but there wasn’t really anything else. Woody’s was fun but so much more for the boys (although there were cute girls there).
It’s my great dream of life to open a lesbian bar named Cathy’s. (I’m in Vancouver, BC, and also baffle a little over the lack of queer women’s bars…..although there are several vegan-friendly, beer-serving restaurants that serve as de facto gathering places. Still.)
That article on Manny Pacquiao was great. He is an amazing boxer, but also just a really decent human being who always seems to be trying to do better, and to help others have it better.
And his boxing technique is AMAZING.
His philanthropic work is indeed impressive, but his vocal opposition to the use of contraceptives (including condoms) isn’t very helpful in lifting people out of poverty.
Aw, dang. I missed that. 🙁
Yeah, he’s actually a pretty bad guy in a lot of ways. Don’t Believe The Hype: Mayweather-Pacquiao Is Not Good Vs. Evil. Unfortunately, this fight is pretty much over-the-hill-REALLY EVIL vs. over-the-hill-SORTA-EVIL-BUT-IN-AN-INSTITUTIONALIZED-CONTEXT.
I wish there was a way to know that clicking links would send me to the NYT website. I don’t want to blow my “10 free articles a month” wad on stories about ungodly sums paid for real estate. (Not a complaint about Link Roundup, just wish there was like a hover feature to tell you where the link will direct you).
In Chrome, and I think Firefox too, if you mouse over the link, a little box or text comes up in the bottom left corner of the window that displays the URL.
See if you can find the status bar on your browser! In Safari, it’s command-/ to turn it on. Most browsers let you see the link address at the bottom of the window.
I agree, I gotta train myself not to click on New Yorker links unless I REALLY want to. Though if your browser doesn’t display a URL preview you can probably install a browser extension that does (like this one for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-re…
I pretty much assume all of Roxane’s Rich People! links will take me to the NYT and tell me about absurd real estate. It’s why I click every time!
Also, NY Times has a neat little loophole where if you get to the page and it paywalls you, just google the title of the article and you should be able to access it from the google links.
I’ve also heard Incognito mode in Chrome works as a loophole (sometimes?).
Always. Just open the link in incognito. When you hit your limit, close all incognito windows. Then open a new incognito, and you are back to five/ten articles.
I think you can also clear your NYT cookies too and it should reset it.
So, just in case you didn’t read it, but that second LOL Rich People link is about a guy that bought a 91 million dollar apartment that he doesn’t even want to live in, he wants to just hold on to it and then sell for a profit.
The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
Good for him, I say.
Property is theft. Therefore, theft is the only right.
I know where I’m going to be living this summer.
Let me know if you need an extra crowbar or something.
Bearing in mind, of course, that it is permissible to destroy other peoples’ property if somebody altered your design for it.
$91 Million Apartment Blown Up by Architect: “They Changed A Thing.”
Rich people, I could not figure out what the heck a duplex is outside the context of “house divided into two apartments.” Explain yourselves.
In the case of rich people, it probably means an apartment made of two houses.
With a futuristic space-tunnel made of lexan connecting their second floors, maybe.
… An apartment on two floors? That’s what it means in a Euro context, anyway.
I hate Bill Ackman so much. He’s just generally an instigator juicebox who makes waves in the stock market just so he can artificially drive a stock up or down for his own benefit. Ugh.
This kind of shit is deeply offensive to me, because man, think of what you could do with 91 million dollars. Like, think of what you can DO with it, and all this guy wants is to use it to make more money.
Well, what the fuck is the point of having all this money?
Presumably this is to break his fall when he gets divorced, or indicted of something, or something else (that will most likely be entirely his fault) happens to “rob” him of all his “hard-earned” money.
I was reading this yesterday, and the writer compares wine investors to wealthy Manhattan apartment investors, in that the rest of us are just completely incredulous that anyone would spend that money on something they won’t enjoy. Can you imagine owning something that is supposedly the best of its class and not using it and sharing it with your loved ones?
I can’t even wrap my head around $91M except as a WHERE DO I EVEN START TO MANAGE THIS MASSIVE RESPONSIBILITY nightmare, but I can wrap my head around owning a bottle of the world’s best wine and hell yes I’m gonna drink it and pour you a glass too.
(I will always read about bonkers-expensive wine, it is so weird but fascinating, and I can be 100% assured I am punching up when I laugh at its buyers.)
I cannot wrap my mind around that, but I am basically a Marxist and actually cannot even get my mind the idea on what it means to own something that you don’t use.
“I bought this twenty thousand dollar bottle of wine! It is the best wine in the world, and I OWN IT.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“Basically, it means that I spent a lot of money to keep anyone else from drinking it.”
I will admit to hearing with poorly-concealed glee the (possibly apocryphal?) stories of the New York wine cellars where rich people store their never-to-be-enjoyed wine being flooded during Sandy and all the labels soaking off and floating away. Now your absurd investments are worthless! You should have cracked the bottles while you still could! Maybe the wine’s still good after soaking in floodwaters (I don’t know anything about wine) and now you have to drink it all, never knowing which bottle was the most expensive one because you can’t taste the difference anyway! ohohohoho
Aw, man, it is very satisfying to think of that!
See, I would be one of those people who inadvertently lets the wine sit past its useful date, because I would feel like no occasion was fancy enough for my fancy wine, and I would keep saving it for the “right time.”
oh, my mother’s disappointment when i informed her that the bottle of fancy champagne she saved from her wedding reception would be pretty terrible if she was really saving it for her 25th anniversary…
weirdly, that set her off on a path of wine tastings and not she’s really into it (but nowhere near the level of the people with really fancy stuff – she likes the $20 bottles from Publix just fine)
The only person I ever forgave for owning offensively expensive bottles of wine was forgiven because he showed me a picture of all of the bottles of wine that his family drank at Christmas and was excitedly telling me about how incredible it was to drink these wines and which ones were corked and which ones were at their peak and which ones hadn’t quite matured to the ideal stage. It was so cute and he was so cute that is was like “Oh, that bottle cost how much?” and then I possibly fainted for a moment but at least they freaking drank it. (Also I should mention it was a family of sommeliers and I am realising maybe I am one of Those People a little bit? But I promise I don’t shop at Whole Foods.)
FOR REAL
If I had 91 million dollars, I would:
a) pay off my student loans
b) buy a house (a nice one, but not a ridic one)
c) buy a car
d) start trust funds for myself, my parents, and my other loved ones
e) use the rest to endow a charitable foundation, scholarships, etc. I would be the chair of the foundation and work 20-hour weeks and pay all my employees really competitive salaries with ace benefits and we would give grants to small, grass-roots organizations. I would also personally be a major patron of the arts and general philanthropist.
(I may have spent a lot of time day-dreaming about this…)
my plan is to do something like adopt a neighborhood (usually West Philadelphia in these imaginary sequences) and then use a complex series of interlocking trusts to buy up commercial and residential real estate, and then use profits from the commercial real estate base and from the trust investments to underwrite cost of living expenses for the residents.
I had never heard of this man but I already hate him
RONBLEDORE 4EVA.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/f…
“From Albus Dumbledor being an elderly time-travelling Ron Weasley to Harry Potter not being the chosen one (it’s apparently Neville Longbottom), the internet has unrelentingly produced thousands of Harry Potter fan theories.”
(it does link to the toast article as well)
YESSSSSS. Make Ronbledore spread like fiendfyre.
“Five or 10 years ago, a $40 million sale or listing was an outlier. And today it’s almost commonplace.”
HAHA NO WAY ARE WE HEADING TOWARD ANOTHER ENORMOUS HOUSING BUBBLE COLLAPSE MOVE ALONG CITIZENS NOTHING TO SEE HERE
Like people would fall for that again.
(See also: is that a tech bubble over there on the horizon?)
That was exactly my thought when I saw that article! Like, um, guys? Guys? This….I feel like this sounds familiar? Maybe we should do something? Guys?
“Hey, let’s buy really expensive homes as an investment, and then flip them in 10 years, when they’ve doubled in value! This could not possibly go wrong!”
I cannot read the amnesia article because forgetting who I am is one of my great fears. Also, there is a very high incidence of early-onset Alzheimer’s in the Burgomaster’s family. Not knowing one’s own self or loved ones? Ugh. UGH. Too much to think about on a Friday morning.
I will, however, consume pretty much anything related to Vin Diesel and cars.
I think anything that messes with your mind, be it personality or memory or whatever is my biggest fear. Like yes having my body physically break down would be terrible but your mind is who you are.
If it’s any consolation, I’m very sceptical about that woman’s story. She said it was a “psychological cause” and not biological, but that kind of amnesia is usually caused by a tumour, head trauma or some kind of lesion or infection. As far as I’m aware, that just does not ever happen with out some kind of neurological disorder or trauma.
Tall One’s mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alz at 55, and a dozen years, no denial, and plenty of therapy later we’re still grappling with the ramifications for us, our relationship, and our potential progeny. *solidarity hug*
Good to hear about the Seuss museum! Between that and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art up the road in Amherst maybe people will plan regional kidlit trips. There’s far more authors and illustrators in western Mass, too. Mo Willems, Norton Juster, Julius Lester, the folks behind the Spiderwick Chronicles, and a buttload more. (Some of whom I know because my schoolmates were their kids! Fun times.)
I think the part I am having the hardest time with wrapping my head around this morning is that the ADA only came into effect twenty five years ago. I was alive when it was not in effect. What the fuck.
It came into effect *while I was in college*. Our campus was built on an old quarry, with a huge cliff dividing upper and lower campus. None of the buildings were accessible to folks with walking-related disabilities. They’ve had to do a lot of re-architecting, I guess.
There was a conference celebrating the anniversary in my office this week! (Said office is attached to a hotel/conference center.) It led to much Googling on my part, and my dropping ADA facts into conversation all week.
” far more significant than buying groceries”
A Whole Foods opened next to the Borders I worked at in Midtown Atlanta. Immediately it became hard to get a parking space when I went to work. Everyone seemed importantly pleased and impressed, with the store and themselves. They put some tables out in front and “Look at us eating al fresco with our Whole Foods food! My but this enhances Midtown and my shopping experiences.” My coworkers were beside themselves holding their little containers. “It was eight bucks, but it’s so GOOD!”
I hated it all. I’ve still never given them any money.
We recently got a Whole Foods here in Ottawa and they have caused QUITE A STIR by opening on Good Friday, which is apparently against the law here because that’s how stupid Ontario politics are sometimes. The police actually came out and shut them down and they’ve been charged and everything.
I’ve been there exactly once and I have to admit that their cafe and prepared foods section was intriguing, and everything was shiny and new, and they had brands I’ve never seen anywhere else here. But considering we have another, less expensive grocery store 2 blocks from our apartment, we’re probably not going to be shopping at Whole Foods very frequently.
They don’t fuck around with the long Catholic weekends, huh?
Here in Georgia it’s Confederate Memorial Day on Monday and yes there are government offices that will be closed.
White People!
WHAT. I lived in Georgia for 5 years and somehow missed that that was a thing! (Granted this was age 9-14 and I went to private school, not public, but still.) Ugh.
I’ll be working extra hours on Monday just to protest that this thing exists. Every once in a while I can forget I live in the South until something like CMD.
Mind you, this place is three times as aggravating to be in. But it’s a lot cheaper. http://www.dekalbfarmersmarket.com/
My reason for hating whole foods is because they sell rabbits as meat which is horrible and like typical grocery stores they don’t raise them in humane conditions.
Hi friends! As many of you know, I’m on Twitter as @HieuzOn1st, and I’m a Baltimorean. It’s hard for me to know for sure how much attention is being paid to Freddie Gray’s death outside of Baltimore City, but I have been tweeting everything I can about it a lot. In case you all are interested, WBAL has the most recent piece about what happened to him.
I’m a little dubious about this because traditionally WBAL leans a bit to the right, but it’s the first time I’ve seen in a week that the police admit that they did anything at all, so.. yeah. This is news. The Baltimore Brew and the Baltimore Sun has been covering it extensively too, but I haven’t seen any links about this latest development on their sites.
I don’t know, I still think it’s weird as fuck that there’s footage of a man who was detained for running being dragged with limp legs into a back of a police wagon, only to have his spinal injury caused only by a very rough police ride, but what do I know? /s
Also, for funsies:
–A Baltimore Sun article about “rough rides,” including a story about a Hopkins librarian who was detained and taken on a rough ride for simply trying to mediate between police who showed up at her house to answer a noise complaint and a party guest who was talking shit. I guess the Sun had to throw that in to respond to all of the naive folks who say “if you don’t do anything wrong around the police, they won’t hurt you.” (Actual sentiment from my FB feed.)
-Another Baltimore Sun article about how Freddie Gray and his sister were involved in a lead paint poisoning lawsuit because they grew up in a house with a shitty landlord.
Hey, I’m from Baltimore and living in Boston, but I’m following this story pretty closely. I guess it was only a matter of time before this bullshit happened in our city – or rather, happened again.
Yeah. I think the thing for everyone to remember is that this kind of stuff happens in every city. I’m honestly ashamed that I didn’t know about the extent of it though, but if a good thing that has comes out of #BlackLivesMatter as that we now can quickly know that other people are pushing back and we can do the same.
In case any other Bmore Toasties are interested in supporting some change and may not be able to go to the protests for any reason (I’m just getting over a cold myself this week), please know that the Baltimore Racial Justice Action group, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Associated Black Charities, and UB are holding a Legislative Agenda review next Tuesday evening. LBS and others were pushing for police reform in the last MD General Assembly, and they’re going to go over policy items to advocate for. I’ll be there.
Holy crap that article on rough rides. I feel so ashamed and so so lucky to not have known about this particular method of police abuse.
Same here. I can’t imagine it’s a practice unique to Baltimore, either.
Everyone should go read the longform piece on Eater about DC Central Kitchen because it’s a pretty cool org that one of my sisters is involved with!
For his 18.6-acre estate in Atlanta, Ga., which is listed for $48 million, J.K. MacDonald is throwing in art and antiques he found traveling the globe including a Picasso watercolor, a three-panel poster by Toulouse-Lautrec and a mosaic from the floor of a Roman villa dating back to 450 AD.
He FOUND a 1600-year-old floor mosaic? For sale? With a legitimate and above-board antique dealer?
ಠ╭╮ಠ
That seems… unlikely, is the nicest way I can put it.
Totally just found it. Lying there. Like, on the ground.
I mean, it was slightly attached to this historically protected Roman villa, but really. Just lying there. For anyone (with a pry bar and a pocket full of customs bribes) to find.
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH NO YOU ASSHOLE I HATE YOU PUT THAT BACK RIGHT NOW.
I wonder if the Dr. Seuss museum will discuss his WWII-era stuff. I say this not to do the “did you know this person you like also did some racist stuff?” bit because I don’t know if that kind of thing is helpful (like, literally, I just don’t know), but because I would be interested to see how one might deal with that in a museum context.
that was my thought, too. it’ll be interesting to see how they handle his propaganda work (if they do at all)
Hmmm. I have only been to one lesbian bar in my life, and it was in San Francisco, and it was amazing because approximately every half an hour they played “Livin’ On A Prayer”, pausing the song during the chorus so the whole bar could sing along. I wonder if that was the Lex? Does anyone know if that was A Thing there?
Ugh. Whole Foods. I swear there are certain bits of Vermont that feel like living in one. All the organic stuff, all the hippy dippy rich people.
I am perpetually torn between my desire to sell people $20,000 outdoor kitchen projects, and my hatred of people who have $20,000 outdoor kitchens.
I want a SECRET $20,000 outdoor kitchen. Like, I’ll have one, but no one will know about it, and when people come over I’ll say “this old thing? used to be a literal trashpile. my very handsome husband Lee Pace is very good at DIY so he made it all with his bare hands and bare chest while I watched him do it.”
(oh hello over-active imagination, you old friend.)
Whole Foods is a dangerous game indeed. We just got a brand new HUGE one in Chicago, and not only did my dude and I *go there specifically as a date*, we took his dad there the following weekend. Just to hang out at Whole Foods! Why? I mean it’s truly amazing but I hate myself.
I almost went on a date to Whole Foods too! Mm, grocery stores.
I just realized, it’s kind of the sophisticated version of when my college friends and I used to go to Walmart just for something to do, because we were A) too broke to do anything else and B) living in a super rural college town anyway.
My dear, I am 29 and we are Canadian and we JUST went to the States explicitly to go to Walgreens, Target, and Trader Joe’s. We would have gone to Walmart if we hadn’t gone on a *previous trip to the States.*
😐
Canadians, you are a beautiful mystery.
That’s what we Canadians say about Walgreens and Trader Joe’s. (But not about Target anymore.)
Haha I am 30 and Canadian and I am eagerly counting down the days to our next America trip for groceries and household goods. I have a list of items I have been living without (such a long list! I miss you mascara!)
I used to have a lot of panic attacks in the middle of the night, and I would always go to Walmart. Because it was open, it seemed like I was less likely to get murdered there than if I was just walking around in the street, and I knew that no one was going to kick me out for being a hot mess. Also, cheap nail polish always makes me feel better.
That’s funny, because when I was in college we used to go on Walmart/Wegman’s runs in the middle of the night and as much as I love Wegman’s, I would eventually get overwhelmed and have to leave (even when it wasn’t crowded) in a way that I now realize were mild panic attacks. I think they are triggered (for me) by the lighting, because I’ve also had them in Target.
Wegmans definitely has that effect on people…
the WF in Charlottesville VA has a WINE BAR and it’s charming and I went there on a date with my husband.
My ex had a girl suggest a date there! Made me giggle.
Oh, I’ve gone on many a date to Whole Foods. Hey, we were in grad school and they handed out free samples like it was a party!
Often as not we’d wander around WF looking for inspiration, then head up the road to the normal supermarket and get supplies to make dinner at a more viable price point.
I completely relate to this.
I’ve only been a few times (and pretty much hated myself afterwards), but WOW, they do have some good stuff there. My boyfriend and I once literally spent an hour talking to the guy at the cheese counter and trying cheese samples.
I live in the land of Wegmans now, and we usually take all of our out-of-town guests to gawp at the fanciest one (their flagship store, which is pretty amazing).
Sorry if this has been posted, but BLOOD GUACAMOLE:
http://thebillfold.com/2015/04/say-goodbye-to-you…
“In Mexico, where avocado farms are so lucrative that avocados are referred to as oro verde, or ‘green gold,’ the problems are even more troubling. Seventy-two percent of the avocado plantations in Mexico are located in the state of Michoacán, and much of the industry there is controlled or influenced by the Caballeros Templarios drug cartel. The extent of the money laundering, extortion, and murder around avocados in Michoacán led one writer to equate avocados to Africa’s blood diamonds, whileothers have adopted the phrase ‘blood guacamole,’ which might sour the mood around the chips at your next Super Bowl party.”
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
it’s like the healthiest thing my kids will eat, we go through avocados constantly.
Get a little avocado tree? Maybe?
CURSES.
They require a lot of water, too, don’t they? So the ones from California are droughtsuckers and the ones from Mexico are products of the drug lords.
D:
This is your friendly, neighborhood USDA regulator (for serious!) just popping by to say that we just closed our comment period on a proposal to let avocados in from all of Mexico, provided they meet certain standards for pest freedom. It was written by yours truly.
So hopefully that will help things?
Few days late. Nicole was asking for Daredevil comments. I posted a screencap of Matt talking to Claire about his senses. “When you won’t shut up and kiss her” Because it was ALL too relatable.
(far too relatable)
(Is the Kingpin the autistic crime boss?) (He’s awkward as hell on a date *too*)
I dunno if he’s autistic so much as awkward with women and filled with RAEG.
Either way his toady is a lot more effective in business meetings.
Slate has posted a 1769 fugitive slave ad published by Thomas Jefferson. It’s a downer, but worth a read. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/09/30/t…
I read the Hemingses of Monticello semi-recently and that was basically 700 pages of me gritting my teeth and yelling “WHY DOES JEFFERSON HAVE TO BE SUCH A DOUCHENOZZLE ON EVERY AVAILABLE OCCASION?!?!” That being said, it’s an excellent book.
It is a great book, and rightly won a bunch of prizes.
I have a friend, who (like me) is a UVA grad, and says this about Jefferson. “Great man. Raped his slaves.” I think that pretty much sums up old Teej pretty well.
Maybe it’s just that I’m not really paying attention to other shoppers when I’m at the grocery store, but my only beef with the Whole Foods in DC is that every time I go there (not that often, I ain’t made of money) there’s a ginormous line that wraps all the way around the back of the store. I don’t know, maybe the people who make sure that their bread doesn’t contain fluoride or whatever could try applying that same level of diligence to customer service?
If, when I was fifteen, I woke up to find myself fifty (my current age), I’d be enraged because I would assume that fifty-year-old me had swapped bodies with me. On the other hand, if I could swap bodies with fifteen-year-old me, I would do so because that little shit blew some amazing opportunities. In conclusion, I guess I’m kind of evil.
I know I am 20% in because I am reading the book on my Kindle. I go both ways when it comes to book reading, and well, most all good things in life.
Am I the only one who LOVES Kindle reading?
1) I can read on my work computer, on my phone in line at the store, on my iPad, at home, on my actual Kindle…pick up the same book anywhere and pick up right where I left off.
2) I have my progress displayed in convenient percentages, in a way that almost gamifies reading, not that I need it, unless I’m reading Donna Tartt.
3) The Kindle app estimates how much more reading time is left in the book AND in the chapter. So when it’s bedtime and I think, “Oh, I have time for one more chapter!” I can actually see if that’s true.
4) I can check out local public library books remotely.
5) All my favorite highlights, even highlights in library books that I have returned, are stored on the Amazon server and can be accessed from any browser.
I still read physical books, but Kindle books are my first go-to.
I was vehemently anti e-readers for a while until my mom gave me her old Kindle. MAGIC. So easy to read in bed, which is where the best reading occurs for me. So great for travel. So full of instant gratification. Click a button and hey, you have a brand new book! Hours and hours of fun!
I adore that sucker and it is dying. I will weep bitter tears when it goes, and then replace it.
Kindling has been a godsend for me – I read so much more now! I’ve replaced about 900 paperbacks, my flat is more spacious, my luggage is lighter, I have no downsides. I sometimes try to read a book I want to read that I only have in tree-format, and I never finish them. I have filled up one kindle and am halfway through a second.
It depends on what I’m reading. I loathe any kind of deep reading on the Kindle, because it lacks visual cues to aid in memory/text retention, and if I want to skip back a bit to reread something, it’s a pain in the ass to find it (because I don’t know in advance to mark it!). And then, for some reason, when I have books on my computer that aren’t from the Kindle store and I smoosh them onto my devices, they don’t sync to each other, so I keep having to find my place again. 🙁 (I buy epubs a lot, or download from like ProjGutenberg or wherever, convert to mobi with Calibre, but then Kindle doesn’t recognize them as “books”)
Also, if I don’t have a physical book, I sometimes forget that it even exists to read when I’m hunting for a new thing. For some reason, scrolling through the carousel isn’t the same as seeing books on my TBR pile.
ALL THAT SAID I love ebooks for romance novels and YA fluff, it’s so fast and easy and I like screencapping to tweet, way more convenient than trying to photograph a page in a book.
Library check-out is a wash for me, because I work next to one of the branches and can request any books I want to be picked up there instead of driving all over town 😀
I read on it most of the time because it is just so convenient. I still like paper books but man, for carrying it around on the bus or traveling it is so much easier. Plus footnotes! So much easier than keeping two bookmarks or flipping back and forth!
I think I’ve sold Kindles to more than one person because of how enthusiastic I am about them. Their main benefits for me:
1) Not only do they take PDFs, but they save everything I highlight into ITS OWN FILE that I can then look through at my leisure. I’m a grad student – I read a lot of journal articles (and sometimes ebooks) and make a lot of highlights and then need those highlights to make references, and then they’re all in one place! And you can take it off the Kindle and it’s a text file! I’ve been coding that file directly in Atlas.ti and now I have a bunch of little files of everything I ever wanted to save on “simulation” and “interaction” and “authenticity” and I do not want to go back ever.
2) Travelling. I live a continent away from my family, and also travel a bit for work – no longer am I packing heavy books. I just have the one little Kindle that comes with me. This gives me more space for shoes and sweaters. And if I’m on vacation and have miscalculated how many books I need, I can buy new books and not have to rely on what can be found at the Stop & Shop. I love it.
Oh my god that highlight thing is awesome. I spent several days last week wishing for that exact function in my stupid PDF reader.
I vastly prefer the Kindle to paper books. The only advantadge to paper books is that they never run out of battery.
My kindle weighs less, it has digital copies of all my favorite books, it never gets dog-eared or beat up in my bag, and it is SO MUCH easier to read either one-handed (say, standing on the bus) or in bed (I sleep on my side, and reading physical books in that position is much harder).
I also love/hate the instant buy feature, because it is great to be able to finish a book and immediately get the next one in the series, but it is also very easy to accidentally spend too much money on books (not that I didn’t have this problem in the past)
Okay. That Drake article though. I was all-in for a while there, when I thought it was legit music journalism (I have never heard of this Four Pins website before, but I am An Old – at 29 – so I figured that was on me). But then he shows up at Coachella – again, still for this piece of “journalism” – doesn’t have an artist pass, so to cure his angst about that, pops some molly his friend gave him.
I have nothing against drug use, especially at concerts, but if you are at a concert to report on an act or a person you’re profiling, MAYBE USING DRUGS IS A DUBIOUS DECISION. Is the writer, like, 20? Blerg.
Oh good and now I seem to have reached the shrooms portion of the article. Double blerg.
Oh god oh no
I pass a woman in an ankle-length, powder blue coat. She’s wearing sunglasses, smoking a blunt and her specter is intoxicating. I perform a very thirsty 180-degree turn when I realize that it’s Rihanna. I walk up and tap her from behind: “Yo, you’re a goddess.” She assesses my general desperateness with one glance, silently ashes her blunt on the palm tree between us, turns back around and walks off without saying a word.
i thought he was kind of douchey for bragging about all his drugz but at the same time that fool is texting drake like it’s nbd this entire time so fuck it, he’s awesome, good on him for livin my best life. i spent the entire time losing my shit at the way he describes drake just livin his life.
I LOVED THE RIRI PART.
Have spent a few years now sitting on my hands and not asking where the expression “Bye, Felicia!” came from because I knew eventually someone would clear it up for me. Thanks!
I had never heard it until Shonda Rimes used it in a tweet to someone obnoxious, and so I thought she had made it up!
oh mannnnnnn Whole Foods.
my gf works out at a place near a whole foods so sometimes I go in and get a breakfast burrito, (which is like, $7, but then I don’t want to eat until 1) but I like it because at 7 in the morning in this semi-industrial part of Seattle there is a mix of yoga pants/barefoot shoe people and like, dudes wearing safety vests on their way to work.
I also try to be extra extra nice to the baristas because I imagine they catch a lot of bullshit, and they are real sweet to me. Which is great. Ever since coffeeshops have been a thing I have had this idea that baristas are like, untouchably cool and wanted to be like,”you really really like me!” and this seems mostly to have come about because of everyone else’s bad behavior, I am comparatively delightful.
OK but someone on my Twitter TL was talking about a Drake anime for some reason the other day, and honestly I’ve never wanted anything more.
I am currently composing a Facebook post about how this scene has led me to profound revelations about my late father.
Not that he was like Stick, but why Stick affects me the same way as he would him.
Welcome to Unexpected Tuesday Night Tears Of Love.
Oh shit….father revelations. You know that bit on Mr. Show where the detectives are trying out the lie detector and Paul F. Tompkins inadvertently gives himself a literally shocking insight?
It's like reflexology. There's a Nagy Rocky pressure point (and our leg stamps, our tail wags and a tear comes out).
He was a closed-minded prejudicial guy, was John Paul Nagy II (I'm not III because I have a different [maternal] middle name) (yes, I like having the same actual name as Linnell and Flansburgh {"John, I've been bad and they're coming after me"] and I like when Ms. Washington calls me "John") so the implications thereof didn't bother him and therefore the Confederacy gave him THAT JOLT. "Okay, but I don't get it, though visiting the Shiloh battlefield park is nice enough…." But I understand now what he was trying to tell me once about "reBELLion". My mom said "John's not prejudiced, he hates *everybody*" and he was, shall we say, unenlightened.
BUT…the story Brienne told Pod this week about how she came to be a sworn guardian of good people despite having shit thrown in her face and being accused of murder (to say nothing of the honorable Jon STARK standing his goddamn winter ground), the way this Nike magazine ad I hadn't seen in years made me tear up at work yesterday http://the-toast.net/2015/04/27/interview-with-ja… (that last one about being "a girl"), J.P. Nagy shaking on the couch (on more than one occasion) as Rocky re-matched with Clubber Lang and then taunted him by staying upright and defiant ("ain't so bad!"), hell, probably the recaps of The Pretender he was giving me in line for Space Mountain in the summer of 1997 (I haven't seen the show) I never understood why he seemed to be nearly as much into Star Wars as I was/am.
I GET it now. Yes, it's about defiance, but more so I think it's about transcendence…like how it DESTROYS me when Harry "Radcliffe" Potter thinks his father has aided him and then realizes he's summoned his own mighty patronus (SPOILER ALERT) as a passing of the baton and is therefore even stronger. (that scene is also an overall helpful meditation on death, I've found, and I've tried to convey it to someone in need before)
It's this notion of "don't settle for the lesser version of yourself, embrace the entirety of yourself" that I realize we have both been profoundly sympathetic to and inspired by.
This has been Jay's Sudden Epiphanies (Tuesday Edition)