This Baltimore Sun report on police brutality is required reading before anyone has anything to say about the #FreddieGray protests:
Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson.
Bruce, guys. Sending all my love to Bruce. Also, super stoked that women get to claim the ol’ decathlon gold medal now. FEMALES ARE STRONG AS HELL.
The earthquake in Nepal is absolutely horrifying.
Loved this interview with Monica Byrne, partly because there was a genuine back and forth and OCCASIONAL DISAGREEMENTS, like HUMANS HAVE.
Tatiana Kanga was nine months pregnant and had her 3-year-old daughter in tow when she set out from her native Cameroon, headed for Spain.
Kanga’s journey took her and her young daughter, Chantel, across the continent northward to Morocco. From there, they crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a rubber dinghy.
“It was an inflatable boat, with 17 people,” Kanga explains. “Seven of them were women, three children — and six of the women were pregnant, including me.”
my commitment to science is very limited, apparently:
“I wonder what Louis’s microbiota looks like,” I wondered aloud.
“We know,” Justin said.
“You sequenced his stool?” I asked.
“We did,” he said.
WORKOUT:
big shout to my pals who praise the wire for its realism but also have trouble believing the baltimore PD would do anything untoward
— nomchompsky (@nomchompsky) April 25, 2015
And things keep getting worse… http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/04/27/40…
Charity Navigator has a great page set up to help you uh, navigate, how to donate effectively to help relief efforts: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=con….
Pretty good interview with Michael Eric Dyson by Jamilah Lemieux for Ebony, for anyone who was curious about why he wrote the piece (ETA: on Cornell West in TNR, for those who missed this) and his response to some of the criticisms, http://www.ebony.com/news-views/mike-check-dyson-…
The Girl in the Road is $1.99 on kobo today! I just bought a copy.
On Amazon too, I just picked it up as well 🙂
Yay me too!
Oh, good tip, thank you!
Nicole! I love your workout postings, but I miss Feel The Burn. I have certain passages of old posts memorized, since I referred to them so often in my commitment to PICKING UP HEAVY SHIT.
I am just blown the fuck away by the Baltimore PD payout information. Wrongful death by cop in Baltimore has a going rate from as high as $375K to as low as $35K. Thirty-five thousand dollars for a man’s life.
You know what’s fun? Contrasting this with the amount of money Baltimore PD has gotten paid in overtime this week while “manning” the protests. For context: https://www.baltimorebrew.com/2014/12/09/police-o…
hoooraaaaay!
Inflation’s sent the value of everything else through the roof but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t stack up well against weregeld standard
Lord, that microbiota article. Scientists make for the most interesting parents. I remember my first year of grad school, I went to a talk by a vision scientist who, as soon as his daughter was born, strapped a camera around her head so he could monitor how her gaze changed as she developed. His wife was not thrilled. I am both terrified and kinda looking forward to seeing my classmates become parents.
But keeping stool samples in the freezer with your food is going TOO FAR. I look forward to when this whole “the gut is EVERYTHING” fad passes. It’s exhausting.
HE MAKES HIS OWN KEFIR BECAUSE MICROBIOTA.
I am so glad that my science doesn’t really have a biological focus because I know that I would be ABSOLUTELY LOOPY if I were a parent.
There was an article in the NYT a few years back about neuroscientists who study development including their kids in their studies. My mother cut it out of the newspaper and placed it at my seat at the table with a note informing me that I should never even consider including her future grandchildren in such a thing.
Seriously, I can’t wait until some of my friends have kids.
…I make my own kombucha! But not because microbiota, but because four bucks for a bottle is too many bucks.
You can just picture their decision to get a dog. “They’re correlated with greater microbiota diversity!”
….I mean, I might be filing that excuse away for next time my partner gets impatient with me fawning over cute dogs on the sidewalk.
Protip: All academics, as soon as they have children, change their next research project to the “infant and early childhood deevelopment” version of their former research topic.
I’ve also noticed that developmental psychologists who study early childhood suddenly develop a KEEN interest in adolescence about 12 years after the birth of their first kid.
I tell people about the prof who strapped a camera to his daughter’s head all the time. It has great mileage.
I also had a infant and early childhood development professor who showed us lots of videos of her daughter doing developmentally interesting things (like asking her daughter to count how many cups were on the table and getting the “one..two..many” response, then pausing the video to discuss the thought process her daughter is having).
I was born when my mom was in grad school for audiology/speech language pathology and so I was involved in SO MANY speech acquisition studies. There are videos of me playing with my mom in a lab like once a month so some poor grad student could count how many words I knew.
Bruce was just phenomenal. It’s nice to see him break out of what one op-ed piece called a “Dad Knows Least” role. I don’t watch KUWTK regularly at all (although the K&K spinoff shows are a guilty pleasure) but he’s always seemed so disconnected, and he was so… connected in the special.
On a lighter note, can we talk about this absolutely terrifying robot that you’re supposed to strap to the back of your head so that it can force-feed you tomatoes while you run?
Running while also having a ruthless machine around my neck that exists solely to shove things down my throat is my personal idea of hell, but ymmv.
That robot is ADORABLE.
Yes! It’s everything I didn’t know I always needed.
Those are fairly decent sized tomatoes, too. I was expecting little cherry tomatoes that one could easily chew and swallow, not larger tomatoes that require multiple bites. Given how hard it can be to cut through tomato skin with human teeth without having tomato guts burst at least a little onto your face, I feel like this is excessively terrifying and will help me to put the rest of my day in perspective. No matter what happens, at least I don’t have an 18 lb robot on my back force-feeding me tomatoes while I run with dried tomato guts on my face.
You forgot the part where the acidic tomato juice squirts into your eyes as you run and the robot mercilessly pounds tomatoes against your clenched teeth.
Ooh, you’re right. I always forget about physics. That makes it even more of a nightmare machine.
The Toast: come for the misandry, stay for the 2-day-old comments about tomato robot nightmares.
(I REGRET NOTHING, especially not the hours I’ve spent today, catching up on a week’s worth of articles and comments.)
This comment is excellent and also vividly written. I can almost feel the tomato guts on my face!
Ha, thanks! The feeling of tomato gut on my hands as I chop is one of my least favorite things (how can it be both drying AND sticky at the same time?) so the whole idea of this robot brought up some pretty raw emotions.
I’m just worried he (she? it?) would go haywire and start shoving tomato after tomato in my mouth as I ran, sobbing and choking, down a public street.
It’s the expression on the thing’s face that really does it. Someone made the conscious design decision to have the mouth open and close and almost but not quite resemble a smile. Someone else might have chosen a cheerful grin, someone else might have chosen a ruthless-personal-trainer-esque yelling face.
Oh god, it’s like that horrible pre-Porky Pig cartoon where he has that nightmare about being force-fed pies as a punishment for gluttony.
Does anyone have any advice for navigating tragedy with coworkers? The coworker I’m closest to is from Nepal, and many of his family and friends are still there. We’re work-close, though, not friend-close, and I haven’t heard anything from him since Friday. I feel that it may not be appropriate for me to bring up first, but I also don’t want to be callous when he might appreciate support.
I feel like it’s always appropriate to say something as long as it’s genuine and doesn’t demand anything from him. I’ve used a line (in past similar situations) like ‘I’ve been watching the news from [place] and thinking of you. I’m so sorry.’ You could offer conversation or other kinds support, too, if that feels appropriate to the relationship.
Any little bit of kindness helps, and acknowledging his pain and offering support can never hurt. My dad died in a car accident a few years, and while that’s not a straight comparison, I can say I genuinely appreciated every kind word I received. Having others tell you that they recognize your pain and loss, and that they offer support can mean the world. So definitely send an email or note, it certainly won’t hurt and can actually cause more comfort than you realize.
So I don’t know how well they’ve publicized the event, but my alma mater is having its first “Forum on Race in America” tomorrow (featuring guest speaker TNC!!!). If any Toasties are in the area, you should try to go!
http://web.jhu.edu/administration/provost/initiat…
Fellow JHU alum here! I saw that come through my email the other day and was so sad that I’m not remotely in the area 🙁
Well you can be there in spirit! (Also is your first name Ethyl, because if so that is a sweet handle.)
Oh man, I cannot go, but really wish I could!! (Fellow alum here.) Thank you for posting about this, maybe I can follow the ht on Twitter.
I wish you guys could go too! If anybody from here is going, let me know and we can meet up.
Wow. I think TNC was going to be at Loyola last week (??) but the event got cancelled. It’s nice to see he’s coming to Bmore! One of these days I’ll have to see him speak.
Uggh the earthquake is so awful. I find it odd that CNN was weirdly focused on the avalanche at Everest and the people who were trapped at Camp 1 and 2. Like yeah, that’s pretty awful but THOUSANDS of dead people in Katmandu. Uhh….so…
I feel like I have seen more stuff on the one white Google exec that was killed on Everest than the entirety of the 3700+ people that are dead/missing in Kathmandu.
Interesting I wonder why that could be (haha no I don’t).
RIGHT? I WONDER, HUH.
I love reading about Everest climbing stuff (the drama! the in fighting! the trash on the mountains! the culture clashes! the egos! the corpses??) but when I saw that I was all um yeah so that’s terrible and I’m sure it will have repercussions to the climbing community and yes the climbing community does generate a lot of income for the locals but you know. PERSPECTIVE, PEOPLE.
Yup I saw some “news” article about a celebrity who flew to Nepal because brother was hiking Everest when the earthquake hit. I mean, I hope everyone’s loved ones are all alive, but if a celebrity is openly disclosing that he is going to the site of a gigantic, tragic disaster, I truly hope he will help in rescue and recovery efforts for people who are not just his brother.
I’m sure in a few years there will be a movie about that one white family stuck on the mountain and how they overcame the odds 🙁
<3 the daily workout posts, have 0 idea what they meaaaaan
YES. This one lists reps, but sometimes when they have time noted I add up (what I perceive to be) the total workout time and think… is Nicole at the gym for FOUR HOURS? That can’t be right, can it? I mean, I don’t know her life, but I suspect I am probably reading the charts wrong.
Re: #Freddie Gray:
-Freddie Gray’s wake was yesterday; his funeral service is today. Rest in power, Freddie Gray.
-Again, for any Baltimore Toasties: there’s going to be an event at UB tomorrow evening going over the efforts to reform police practices in the 2015 MD General Assembly, how well they went, and what the next steps will be. It’s being led by some really great Baltimore activists, including Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle and Baltimore Racial Justice Action. For more information, click here. I’ll be there, and if you are there and spot me, feel free to say Hi. I’ll probably be the only Asian woman there with an asymmetrical haircut.
I just finished this fascinating article on a woman who works as a feminine image consultant, specifically helping trans women who want to appear more feminine. It’s a really interesting look at how she works with clients to get them where they want to be while also being uncomfortable with a lot of the advice she has to give them (i.e. women don’t interrupt people as much).
I liked that article a lot! I thought the anecdote about trans women feeling uncomfortable sending an overcooked steak back to the kitchen, and how awkward it made them feel because of the inherent “masculinity” of complaining like that. Just fascinating, and something I hadn’t considered.
Yes! I always get so uncomfortable about complaining about my food in restaurants, and I have always chalked it up to my weird food issues. This is honestly the first time I’ve ever thought about sending food back being coded as masculine. There’s so many little things that would never occur to me as presenting as feminine.
huh! I never thought of that either. I always chalked my discomfort with that to “having worked in foodservice” + “not wanting to be one of ~those~ vegetarians.”
Funny, you definitely think of the stereotype being “women are more picky about food than men,” but if you saw a woman on a TV show sending back an overcooked steak it would be sending the message “she’s not like other gals, she likes her steak bloody.” Social constructions of food are so complicated & fascinating!
I don’t know any women who like rubbery-ass steak so that’d probably offend me.
Jesus, this IS complicated.
Me neither, nor how stressful it could be to think “shit, I don’t know how to act right! Do I?” As I’ve said before, I don’t have to face that so I can’t judge a THING and don’t want to.
I would hope that rejecting an overcooked steak just means you’re not 12. (I don’t eat out much, I’m just saying I know better now how steak *should* be prepared)
This article is great! Thanks so much for sharing. Monica sounds like an A+ human.
My (white) boyfriend was born and raised in Baltimore, and I’ve spent a lot of time there with him over the years. We live in New England now, and I’ve come to realize that how people talk about Baltimore is a pretty good “how secretly racist are my white friends” litmus test.
For example, we were out with some friends the other night and one of them was following the Red Sox/Orioles game on her phone, and at one point said, “hey, people are rioting in Baltimore right now.” My brain was one step behind (thx beer) and I said, “oh wow, why?” and she responded, with some real venom, “ugh, I don’t know, because it’s Baltimore?”
At that point I’d caught up and was like “NOPE IT IS BECAUSE THE COPS KILLED A GUY AND ARE RACIST,” but ugh.
This is also a reliable test for people who live a lot closer to Baltimore than New England, and should know better…. Anne Arundel County, Carroll County, Howard County, Harfod County… sigh.
Oh totally, I grew up in the wider DC area and it’s just as true there. Definitely a white person problem, not a geographical one.
Yeah. I grew up in AA Co and have been un-following some old HS acquaintances on FB.
The interesting thing to me is that there’s been a number of white, politically conservative folks who have been just as aghast at Freddie Gray’s death too. There’s also been white acquaintances who I thought were more progressive who have been all like “what is the big deal with police brutality, what about black on black crime?” It’s definitely been a litmus test but some results have been surprising.
“also have trouble believing the baltimore PD would do anything untoward”
Soooo did they black out during all the scenes at police HQ?
Also I use Cheese’s “that shit was unseemly” at any opportunity. Unfortunately fitting here.
“House of Toast, which takes place at Drink, Shop & Do in Kings Cross, invites participants to create architectural structures made out of bread. Teams are awarded bread and jam for the best entries.”
really, we should host regular events EVERYWHERE there are toasties, to represent the original House of Toast
Sigil: A black piece of toast inset with a white T
Words: A Willing Foe, and Sea Room
sign of greeting: All Men Must Die*
*it’s not like a philosophical statement about mortality or anything, we just really want to kill all the men.
I like the Season 3 Daenerys/Missandei exchange, too.
Missandei: “Valar Morghulis.”
Daenerys: “Yes. All men must die. But we are not men.”
Also if you ‘ship Daenerys and Missandei the name is Misandry.
Drink, Shop & Do is an excellent venue that I think Toasties would be very comfortable with. London meetup?
Fair enough on the labeling comment, although I think it's acceptable to point out that for most of their lives, these women have been socialized as men, acting as men, and enjoying the privileges that men enjoy. These people are used to lives as high-income, upper-social-status, white men. I came away from the article with a sense that they still hang on to that privilege. Once they begin to inform people of their transition, they may indeed be subject to drastically different circumstances. However, I still think they have a responsibility to be honest with their partners as early as possible, to the extent that they can do so and be safe. Personally, I can't fathom the idea of spending so much money and time on appearances while ignoring the deeper issues of divorce, "tearing apart" the family, etc.
I've reread your comment and I have to say that I think it qualifies as that kind of stock complaint in the way it's worded. How does the reference to 'pulling one over' on wives not make these women sound deceitful?
Think about what it means to be a woman, or a man, or any gender at all. People only interact with you in a way that fits your gender if you meet their expectations of that gender. You, for example, I assume to be a femme cisgender woman. I figure you're cis because of how you regard transitioning, but what makes me think you're a woman when we've never met? Your profile photo.
I look at the face you present and make conclusions about who you are before your words really register. People do it all the time IRL. That's how you get hunches about a person's sexuality, class, race, etc. before you ever learn that they're, say, a bisexual Afro-Cuban investment banker. And gender is one of the things that is most obvious when done "wrong."
People attack little boys over painted toenails and assume women with short hair are secretly men or lesbians; seven trans women have been murdered this year and we haven't hit May. If a transgender woman goes outside and expects to live, she has to pass- perfectly. That takes conventionally feminine makeup and clothing; that takes practice; that takes hormones, sometimes. Most of all, it takes time.
A six-foot, forty-year-old lady who's AMAB and has no vocal training or makeup experience will not be "ma'am"ed at the Costco checkout line. She will get a long, questioning look at best, and a "shemale" or "fag" at worst. Above all, she will not be treated like the woman she is until she can get any average Joe to believe that she's a woman. And if she's not treated as a woman, she's going to feel just as bad as you would feel if everybody and their cousin Stacey started treating you like a man.
1) I should have been more thoughtful there. I apologize. They have spent most of their lives being perceived as men, and what led me to post the comment was the feeling that they were still acting out of that privilege. But you're right, at this point I should say women.
2) Maybe? But I would assume that trainer expenses, massages, etc, are openly discussed. I find the idea of secretly spending large sums of presumably shared money without discussing it to be problematic. Then again, I have never been at a point in my life where that was an option, so maybe once you have enough money it doesn't matter.
3) There are certain points in the article where they hint at this, for example, "But the thing is, sure, maybe my wife would support me, but she’s not going to stay married to me." Knowingly harboring a secret which would cause your spouse to divorce you is generally not okay. Yes, it is on a very different level from Roger Sterling. But yes, I will also argue that adult spouses should be honest with each other if they are safe doing so. Should you really tell NY Mag before your wife? Is it possible that in some cases, there might even be less fallout to deal with, if the families didn't feel like so much change had taken place without them being given the opportunity to process it?
I was trying to distinguish between "these women sound deceitful to me" vs. how I thought you read it, as "trans women generally are deceitful". The second reading I absolutely do not agree with and I hope that no one would (although I'm sure they're out there). The first reading I am open to discussion on — the comments here have made some very good points about trans women's need for secrecy, given the risks they may face — but I did originally intend it as a critique of the several women profiled in the article, not as a blanket statement. I'll reiterate what I said below to PierrePoutine: I think that adult spouses should be honest with each other as long as they are safe doing so.
1)Thanks, I appreciate that you can see where I'm coming from.
2) But we don't actually know anything about how each of these women manages her family budget. When I read it I thought 'whoa, these women have the kind of money I could only dream of', but that's it. There's no reason to assume that they and their partners don't have a policy of spending that kind of money without consulting each other. It would be different if this was a story in which it's explicitly stated that Stacey has been spending all the family grocery money on her femme coaching, but it isn't. So why leap to that conclusion?
3) "Adult spouses should be honest with each other if they are safe doing so." I totally understand that finding out that a spouse's gender or sexuality isn't what you were told/assumed is usually devastating. But what constitutes safety? Emotional safety is complicated. There is one woman pictured in the article, who is presumably out. The others are described so vaguely that it's unlikely their families will be able to identify them. The ultimate goal is to come out and tell the truth and it sounds like they're all working hard to get there. No one is unscathed in this situation but we have transphobia and homophobia to thank for the fact that so many of these marriages exist in the first place.
I really needed an Outlander recap/outlet this weekend. I needed to discuss the scene where Jenny laughs in Randall’s face and also talk about why we are only allowed to see flaccid penii on premium cable (not in relation to that scene, but just in premium series in general).
I really needed an Outlander recap/outlet this weekend. I needed to discuss the scene where Jenny laughs in Randall's face and also talk about why we are only allowed to see flaccid penii on premium cable (not in relation to that scene, but just in premium series in general).
GUYS DID YOU SEE THIS?????
sorry, shouting. I loved this SO HARD and I think you will too: http://therumpus.net/2015/04/build-a-bear/
GUYS DID YOU SEE THIS?????
sorry, shouting. I loved this SO HARD and I think you will too: http://therumpus.net/2015/04/build-a-bear/