Alexander Chee on child prodigies:
I remember thinking I’d started writing fiction late for having started at age 19. I remember joking when I turned 29 that I was having a mid-youth crisis because I wouldn’t publish my first novel by 30. The mystique of the child genius storyteller is hardwired into our national psyche, as is the longing to be one—whether it’s Salinger and the Glass family child prodigies, or Carson McCullers, or Truman Capote, or Ender from Ender’s Game. One of the only stories I remember of Jesus in the Bible from my lackluster Methodist churchgoing as a kid involves the time he was found telling stories to adults, who all listened, enchanted by his wisdom. Wherever you go in American culture you end up near this myth about a talented child and a story.
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Today is Ireland’s referendum on marriage equality, best of luck and support to our Irish Toasties.
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You should not need subway etiquette guides BUT I GUESS YOU DO?
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I’m very, very enthused that the president of the Boy Scouts is suggesting it’s time to end their ban on gay leaders.
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On the question of reviewing your friends’ books:
I don’t believe there exists in this world a single thinking person without biases, aesthetic or otherwise. It’s good to declare them when there is a fear they otherwise may not be demonstrated in the piece itself. Because the overlap between book and media circles is large, I give the following guidelines. You should be able to give an honest review of a book by someone you know in the context of parties and social media, but if you share an editor, parent, or child you are certainly too close. Between those extremes, it’s usually better to err on the side of disclosing too much rather than too little.
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Mark Kishlansky, one of my favourite profs, has died. He was a great scholar and writer and teacher, but I remember him MOST clearly for a day we ran into each other in the history department. He didn’t know me from a hole in the ground at that point, but I was taking a big survey class for which he had assigned his own, excellent book, which cost almost two hundred dollars, and I said something awkward about it because I could NOT stretch my books budget that far, and he tossed a shrink-wrapped new copy at me, literally tossed it, with a smile, and told me to enjoy the class. RIP.
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I’m enjoying this chat about writing and belonging to “minority” religions in the US:
Aisha: I can relate to that but from a writing POV. Like, I don’t mind reading swearing and sex scenes in books at all but I don’t like writing sex in my books. That doesn’t mean I’m against it in YA or in books in general just to be clear, but since my characters usually have at least one MC who is Muslim it just doesn’t feel comfortable to me. That doesn’t mean Muslim teens don’t have sex of course but it just makes me uncomfortable personally to write about. There’s a story I’m writing where it’s an Afghan refugee and his relationship with a girl he works with, and its hard because the story seems to want to go towards them becoming intimate and yet it’s not something I wanted to do so I’m considering making them friends and platonic. It’s a tough line to balance personally with wanting to write in a way that is true to me but also how the story wants to be written.
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Even though Nikki counts as an IRL friend by now, we have many of our conversations over Twitter, and yesterday we had a lil chinwag about what we do with racist pitches and racist deleted comments. I get a lot of requests for us to publish more deleted comments, and a few people were asking for a roundup of rejected pitches, and there’s a reason we don’t really do that! More than one reason, I guess?
When I run a deleted comment, I try to make it something really outlandish and stupid or totally misguided, but I deliberately do not run really racist ones. Even if we’re all going “tee-hee, this bigot!” together, people still have to, y’know, see that someone said [use your imagination] about [group who already knows people say stupid shit about them.] White Dude Book List? Let’s just say we left out a LOT of comments I didn’t want POC to have to see.
With racist pitches or submissions (we don’t get a ton, for the record), it depends so much on how the person comes across. If they’re just a dick, we reject without commentary and don’t bother getting into it. If the person is clearly just clueless, we’ll often say something like “we’re sure this wasn’t your intention, but this could come across as [way it obviously comes across.]”
[Note from Nikki: Our general policy against running pieces about racism by white people, about transphobia by cis people, etc., prevents a lot of this from even being an issue, and I’m really glad that Mallory and Nicole established said policy. It’s not necessarily an editor’s job to educate pitching writers about racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., and the pitch email/editorial response isn’t the sort of interaction that lends itself to long heart-to-heart chats about weighty topics! I’m more likely to say something if I know the writer a bit and feel pretty sure of their intentions. If we actually accept a piece that has, say, one problem line but is otherwise fine, of course we’ll address that with the writer during revisions, prior to publication. In my experience, writers are usually very happy to work with us if we have any concerns.]
And, too, pitch emails are not MEANT to be read by anyone but an editor, as opposed to comments, which are obviously meant for a bunch of people to see, so I prefer not to interfere with their expectation of privacy, as a courtesy.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Here is a story to restore your faith in young people. It was a very cheerful thing to read this morning.
More excellent young people – Tessa Hill and Lia Valente worked to get consent included in Ontario’s new sex-ed curriculum.
Slightly OT, but I’ve had my faith in teens restored ten times over since I started canvassing for charity. Nine times out of ten, the people who stop and listen to our pitch are high school/college students, and they’re also often the people who end up donating while the older people walk right on by. (My favourite was a couple of university students who sponsored one child, then came back an hour later because they decided they wanted to sponsor TWO.)
Go n-éirí an t-ádh leat, Ireland. Let’s hope that the love spilling out on #hometovote turns into a happy result in the polls.
We are all rooting for you, Ireland!
Really interesting–the New York Times asked Irish readers about their thoughts on the referendum. Definitely worth reading.
That hashtag has been both my morning and afternoon library cries.
Re: #hometovote, no it’s cool I’m just openly crying at work right now.
Is someone cutting onions and blowing dust around your office as well? Strange how it’s affecting both of us…
Why is there not more media coverage of this global dust-and-onionstorm?
Thanks!! So nervous! I was out handing out Yes stickers earlier today and response seemed kind of mixed. I’ll be a ball of nerves until its over.
When will results start coming in? Is there a good source for official numbers?
Turns out I do know how to use google: http://referendum.ie/
“Referendum.ie is currently under maintenance” 🙁 🙁 🙁 Maybe it crashed from traffic overload?
I read this morning not to expect results until Saturday.
The polls just closed half an hour ago! As far as I know they start counting at 9am tomorrow morning and the results should be in sometime between lunchtime and afternoon? That’s based on previous referendums though so if there’s a higher turnout in this one it’ll probably take longer. So excited/terrified. I’m going to watch the count in a pub in town so looking forward to that/terrified about being devastated.
Early here, but by all accounts there has been a landslide of love, huge turnout, even the more traditionally conservative constituencies running at 60% yes and above. Right now, it’s unstoppable! Never been more proud of my tiny little nation.
We’ve made history, and for the first time ever (hard to admit) I feel like a full citizen.
Well done, yourselves! Here’s to a day and a night of celebration, and a lifetime of freedom to love openly.
(Ad Intensedebate semper aliquid novo; it won’t log me in for some reason.)
Oh this is amazing I am so glad!!!!
Not lists of rejected pitches necessarily, but it might be interesting to see “frequently pitched ideas to which we will always say no”. This would be anonymous and informative, but also interesting for non-writers. Like that publishing house that revealed it received about 12 stories per month entitled “Dust”.
What a nice story about your professor.
http://the-toast.net/2014/02/21/how-to-submit-wor…
Yup. But I’m thinking that perhaps, over a year later, Mallory is no longer looking for as many pieces on Moms (or maybe she is!), and maybe pitches on Girls aren’t as much a thing, but maybe pitches on something else have increased in volume? Maybe Mallory has new banned words?
(she types, anxiously considering putting together my very first pitch, too scared to google my idea to find out someone else has done it better, and with full knowledge that even if I finish it and it turns out awesome, it may not be right for the toast, and that wouldn’t reflect on me as a person. I’ve only told my partner about it, and he assumed it was the sort of thing that would have already been pitched a dozen times, which makes me more confident in it as a Good Idea but less confident in the actual pitching and uggggggghhhhh. Okay. Promise to myself: I will at least google to see if anyone else has done it by the end of the (long) weekend. If it already exists elsewhere, then I can stop worrying about pitching it entirely. If it doesn’t exist, I can stop worrying about finding out it exists already. Win-Win.)
Write a draft before you google. I bet even if it’s a topic with a lot of coverage, a first draft will clarify your thoughts and maybe help you find an angle, or refine *your* angle. I read lots of Buffy tVS coverage (yes some people still talk about the Buff) which is…pretty focused reading. But slices from the minds of different people really enriches my experience.
What I’m saying is don’t let a high number of hits keep you from having your say.
#unsolicitedadvice
Ps And good luck!
<3
Even if it was just an every so often update to this? State of the Toast or whatever?
brb, renaming all my short stories.
Awwwww, Nicole, that story about your professor is just the sweetest thing.
“You should not need subway etiquette guides”
Spoken like someone who does not ride the subway every single goddamned day. (GET YOUR BACKPACKS OUT OF MY FACE)
AND MOVE TO THE CENTER OF THE FREAKING CAR, you unwashed miscreants.
I never had to commute on the NYC subway, only the DC Metro, and seriously people, I promise you will be able to get out at your stop, it will be ok, just MOVE TO THE CENTER OF THE CAR MOVE IN OMG MOVE IN.
That is why I loved the Broad City subway scene so much. SO REAL.
Barefoot on the subway. Gross.
The same should apply to buses dear gOD
Yesterday on the (very packed – not even standing room left) bus home, a visually impaired man came on board and LITERALLY NO ONE even tried to give up their seat, until I elbowed some people out of the way and guided him to mine. WTF PEOPLE.
I saw something similar happen a couple of months ago and the driver literally pulled the bus to a halt on the side of the road to turn around at us and go “SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE? THE BUS ISN’T MOVING TIL THAT LADY GETS A SEAT.”
A+ bus driving, made me wish they had a tip jar.
When I broke my ankle I switched from riding the subway to taking the bus (even though it was longer) for exactly this reason. How someone can sit in the seats reserved for the handicapped, playing with their phone, and not notice someone on crutches directly in front of the is beyond me. On a subway car there is no driver to shame them into moving.
This is literally why I don’t sit down on the subway. I am paranoid that I’ll be reading or playing with my phone and not notice someone who needs my seat, so I just lean on the door instead. (In direct defiance of the “please do not lean on doors” sign, but let’s be real here.)
the other day there was a man at the front of the bus ranting pointedly about how “women are driving buses these days, they have WOMEN driving the buses!” I broke the “exit through the back door” etiquette rule to make sure I thanked her for the ride. A+ for not snapping.
I’m seriously thinking about getting like $5 Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts gift cards and giving them to bus drivers b/c WHAT A JOB. I had a very irritable bus driver yesterday and was like, ma’am, I feel you, I would truly murder every person here if I had your job. There is not renumeration enough in this world for bus drivers.
What a fabulous idea! I am going to figure out how to swing that financially.
As a former pro driver, the absolute best thing you can do: make sure you can identify their bus route/number, the time of day, and if possible their name. Call their agency and say they did an awesome job, and give details. A lot of municipalities have online feedback forms. In my city, good news gets posted in the driver breakroom, and cheered at meetings.
There’s a dearth of positive driver feedback.
Today it’s the riders who try to block the seat next to them because they don’t want to “share” (IT ISN’T YOUR SEAT TO SHARE) even though the train was absolutely packed and every inch of the aisle was taken up by a human body.
Do not fight loudly with someone on the phone. Especially not the person you are having sex with.
LET PEOPLE OFF FIRST FOR THE LOVE OF GOD
(I had a fabulous conductor on the 2 train in Brooklyn/Manhattan once, who used the stops as an opportunity to plead for better manners. “Please, folks, please please PLEASE let your neighbors off the train before you step aboard.” It was both heartwarming and a little bit sad, the futility of it all).
Related: if you are on the train and someone is clearly trying to get past you to get off the train, LET THEM PAST YOU. There will be an empty space once they are gone, which you can then fill, and they won’t miss their stop. IT IS BETTER FOR EVERYONE.
Signed, someone who rides the uptown A train during evening rush hour.
Seriously. LOOKING AT YOU, IMPATIENT COMMUTERS AT PENN STATION.
Irish Toastie here, I’ve cast the most emotional vote of my life and have been reduced to tears several times already today (and it’s still early!) by the #hometovote stream on Twitter and messages of love from unlikely folks on FB. I am hopeful, very hopeful, that the nation will take its cue from Molly Bloom and “yes I said yes I will Yes” the heck out of this thing.
Thank you, Nicole – The Toast has been my go to place for solace through this campaign whenever things got rough.
Love, love and love to the SS Toast and all who sail in her.
We’re rooting awfully hard for you. Sending lots of good thoughts across the Atlantic.
I’m just finding myself in random tears all morning, and stalking news sites, and gah!
(And I’m not even the Irish one in my family. My husband’s from Dublin, and he’s totally incapable of working today, with all the refreshing & the thumbs-upping & so forth he’s doing.)
We had a rota change in work last month and my awesome boss made sure I got put on the step that would give me today off. Thankfully, since I’m a complete mess of nerves and pride and still liable to dissolve at the slightest provocation. I may have to take a little break from Twitter and FB lest I dehydrate myself completely due to happy tears. Today, people are mostly overwhelmingly wonderful. Fingers crossed that tomorrow is a helluva party!
That prodigy article hits home. I ended up doing multiple “letters to your future self” things through school. One in sixth grade, to be given back to me at the end of eighth grade, and one in seventh grade, to be given to me when I graduated high school. In BOTH of those letters, I asked my future self, “Have you published a novel yet?” I am gradually getting better at accepting that the fact that I have not published a novel in my youth is a reasonable and normal thing, and not a sign that I will forever be a failure as a writer.
That first paragraph about not having to study for tests but still acing them? That hit me right where it hurts.
If it’s any consolation, my mother was in her sixties when her first book was published. You can definitely do it!
Ooooh. That paragraph. I have uncharacteristically come to terms with my messed up relationship with writing, but when it comes to the way not needing to put much work into academics in childhood has had strange effects down the line is still a thing I struggle with.
I definitely assume that many of my adult troubles (mostly re: laziness) stem from having it way too easy in school. Makes me want to go ahead and figure out how to do private school for my offspring (assuming she / they turn out smart, which seems likely, but I guess is not guaranteed…) I find the idea of private school morally objectionable, and practically a pain in the ass and the wallet, but public school here downright suck, so I don’t know.
I liked the bit in the paragraph in question where a mother held her child accountable for studying, even though the result was good. In college, I read a lot about goal setting within the frame of athletics– about process goals vs. outcome goals(shortest version- we can control process much more than we can control outcome, but as a society, we undervalue process. it takes conscious effort to add back in the importance of process). That really resonates here.
I guess that I found physical activities that I enjoyed but had to learn how to work hard at, and I wish I’d had something academic that was the same way a lot earlier in my life.
And, perhaps, in keeping with that, you may not find that it’s really important for any offspring of yours to be challenged in EVERY area, as long as they find SOMETHING an academic challenge, and so have to learn how to study/work hard/etc in that area, so at least they have the skills to translate to other things later? And if that’s the way you go, private school or homeschool doesn’t have to be the answer. It could instead be enrichment classes or tutoring or a programming hobby or whatever, which could be easier? Perhaps this is a bit of wishful thinking on my behalf.
I’d have been completely screwed in that regard if I hadn’t gone to England for a junior year abroad, thrown into a different educational system, where facility wasn’t enough. Had to do bloody research and learn to form a cogent argument based on deeper thinking about a question. (Then went back to the state U to finish college & impressed / confounded people there. Turns out I could have been doing proper academic work all along!)
I still prefer the easy way out. But at least I have a snooty English angel on my shoulder reminding me I should do better.
My senior year of college I took a seminar (topology) with an expert-in-the-field prof that just WRECKED me, I carried the textbook (thankfully a deceptively small softcover) with me everywhere, worked on the psets with nearly the entire class for HOURS several times a week, augmented that with working on it during one of my other classes (an entry level astronomy class I took with a good friend who had taken topology elsewhere the year before, so she took good notes and offered them to me without guilt or judgement before exams)….
Easily the hardest thing I have done, but I passed the class, and even felt prepared for the final exam.
Obviously the thing to do here is to keep redefining “youth” until you either publish your novel or die of old age. Works for me!
It took me a loooong time to accept that. Didn’t help that I married a guy who signed a two-book contract the week after his agent sent his first novel out on submission, at 26. And we were graduates of the same writing program, so our profs & classmates were all: so, Mr. Daki’s success, hope for us all, right? Where’s your contract again?
And then my agent spent months trying to sell my first novel, and then she quit her job, and I was a 31-year-old failure.
And then I switched to genre fiction, and self-published my first romance at 44. So my adolescent self can just shut it with her yelling at my 20s & 30s selves.
I started writing when I was nine, and was OBSESSED with the idea that I had to publish a novel before I turned twenty, or I’d be a failure. Fortunately, by the time twenty rolled around I was in university and had other things on my mind, but it was definitely the consuming passion of my teen years.
Yeahhh I was such a darn prodigy with my unfinished YA novel when I was in elementary/middle school that I proceeded to almost flunk out of high school (because suddenly I couldn’t just not do my homework) and then drop out of college because my job in a line of shitty jobs was not willing to work with my school schedule. Took me till almost 30 to get my BA.
Oh, and who knows whatever happened to that thing anyway? It was written in Wordperfect in the 90’s and I haven’t seen it for over fifteen years and have no idea what disk it was on that I lost.
So is now a good time to talk about the day I was on the bus and there was a woman who was eating from an open container of tunafish salad and I spent the whole commute trying not to vomit? Because I will never be over that.
I forget where I read it but I saw a good rule of thumb the other day: if it emits a smell, don’t eat it on public transit! Granola bar? Crunch away! Tuna salad? NOOO FOREVER NO.
Yes. Also, please do not leave your gross discarded chicken bones on the floor unless you are a literal animal and not just a figurative one.
This happens with such alarming frequency. I’m a vegetarian and sometimes briefly forget that humans eat meat off bones, leading to me being temporarily horrified at the tiny ossuary under the seat in front of me. Then I’m just grossed out.
It’s just totally incomprehensible to me. Surely the chicken came in some kind of container; why can’t the bones go in there? Was the container made out of chicken too?
brb, inventing chicken-based chicken container.
I believe that is called a “chicken” 😀
Hihihihi, ‘tiny ossuary’ hihihihihi *giggles*
Brb changing my screen name…
The medieval mind is not gone from our midst. Huzzah.
Likewise, please do not leave your discarded chicken on the floor. I once rode an early morning bus where a box of fried chicken had clearly been spilled at some point over night and it was pretty gross.
One time some jackass left their chicken container in the back of our truck and then it rained. I almost threw up all over myself trying to dispose of it. 🙁
WHAT, is this a thing??
Unfortunately.
That must mean it’s also the place to talk about how I saw a guy on the bus eating clam chowder, cold, out of a can, with his fingers.
oh my god
i just gasped out loud, “no!”
Just want to make sure that everyone has seen this article/photos about a man eating half a wheel of brie on the subway: http://gothamist.com/2013/10/11/subway_cheese.php
one time i saw someone polish off an entire half of a rotisserie chicken.
the bus driver only yelled at him when he took out his rolling papers and started to roll a blunt. like, excuse me, sir, this is a bus, not your living room.
The first time I was pregnant, I took a very slow, very full, very stop-y bus all the way downtown for work, and was working 12 hour days. I get motion sick when I’m NOT pregnant. This was when the scent “Opium” was a very popular thing. I managed ok, but there was an old guy who was obviously a crony of the bus driver, who would get on every morning, sit behind the bus driver and underneath the sign that said, “no smoking”, and smoke a cigar.
He got on one morning while I was standing right there, and I looked at the bus driver, and I looked at him, and I said, “Put that cigar out or I will throw up on you right here”.
He did.
Re: writers of minority faith roundtable: So, as a writer, I’m really intrigued by this intersection and tension between where one’s characters want to go, and where you, as the writer, are comfortable with them going. My kneejerk reaction was, “Get out of the way and let the story be!” but obviously it’s more complicated than that. But it’s also interesting to hear about a moment when a writer put the brakes on a scene or storyline because she knew others like her might not dig it.
I find it fascinating, too. There might be storylines that a writer is willing to see their characters move and evolve within, but they may not have a way they feel comfortable writing said storyline. And I think your point about the readers is really good, too. If you know your audience is coming from a similar background as yours, how far are you willing to push their comfort level? What’s the line between respecting your/your audience’s boundaries and self-censoring?
That was a really interesting point to me, too. Have you read Aisha Saeed’s Written in the Stars? She managed the tension between teen hormones & faith / cultural expectations really really well, and it served the plot & characters quite organically. I presumed that was her intention at the offset, though. It’ll be interesting to see if the ‘make them be platonic, sorry, kids’ overriding she’s doing now (if that’s how she goes with it) plays out in her future publication.
From the subway etiquette guide:
“Don’t vape.”
OH MY GOSH I will tattoo this on my forehead if it gets people to comply. Obviously your choices are your choices and if you want to vape at home, on the street, in your own car, that’s A-OK by me, but in my experience, the plupart of vapers are dudebros who take advantage of the fact that it has not yet been explicitly banned and they vape. EVERYWHERE. In the office! In coffeeshops! On public transit!
A vape store just opened up next to my favorite coffeeshop, and although the coffeeshop usually opens up its garage-door-style front window during the summer, recently, if you sit near the window, you get literal clouds of fruit-smelling glycerine smoke wafting over from the shop, which you cannot see into because the smoke is so thick.
Sorry. Had to rant. This has been pet peeves with sausagedog!
WHAT IS VAPING? I hear about it all the time. Kids these days, etc….
So when I was a yoof, vaping was just a pot thing, where it would be atomized into water vapor and inhaled like that instead of smoked. But these days it refers to e-cigarettes, so… vaporized glycerine carrying nicotine and flavorings. Vaping connoisseurs would probably squawk about the differences between personal vaporizers and e-cigs but I don’t know and don’t care.
I never thought I’d miss the days of widespread tobacco use, but at least tobacco smells good. #getoffmylawn
I’ve never been a smoker but in my misbegotten youth I used to dip snuff/chew tobacco, because I am a delicate and ladylike flower. I quit, but I’ve always wondered about SNUS, the nicotine-y mint-type thing that you don’t have to generate brown spit puddles with while still getting a tiny rush of delicious drugs. Seems ideal for commuting, but I dunno.
Tobacco smells horrible!
That’s how they’re often advertised too: “Now you can smoke LITERALLY ANYWHERE!!” Well, no…
There were several animated threads on vaping on buses/in bus stations on the Ottawa subreddit and there was always at least one asshole who would go on about how vaping only produces steam and you inhale worse every day just walking down the street and what, do you think it would be better if I were smoking an actual cigarette on the bus? Would THAT make you happy, you anti-vaping Spanish Inquisition?
Like not smoking anything for the duration of your bus trip is just unthinkable!!!
It’s not just water vapor though! People wouldn’t do it if it were just water vapor! It’s got all kinds of chemical particles that have not yet been analyzed for safety by any sort of regulating organization.
Nicotine addiction is serious, but if smokers manage to get through overseas flights, you can get through a 20min subway ride without sucking at your PV like a pacifier.
Idea: hand out pacifiers to subway vapers. (Possibly a dangerous idea. But sounds like fun to me!)
If it’s just water vapor, why does it smell like goddamn air freshener or gross fake-fruit candy?
I’m late to this thread but I always want to ask one of these bros why they’re smoking the body spray I wore when I was 15.
I pass a vape shop on my way home from the subway almost daily and I inevitably pass one or two people* who are expelling clouds of early-teenage-me nostalgia because that shit smells like all the fake-fruit-candy “perfume” and makeup they make for baby teens.
*90% of the time, these are buff, sweaty dudes who also frequent the gym a block away.
I would like to add a note. Don’t chew tobacco.
Yes, this means you seatmate on the early flight to Atlanta.
Basically, just don’t use tobacco products of any kind. If you really can’t make it that long without a nicotine hit, consider using gum or something else to get you through.
OH GAWWWWD I still have nightmares about working in a tiny office with a manager who chewed tobacco. The spitting! The bottles of spittle and tobacco sitting on his desk! :(:(:(
YES – and I know the laws vary from state to state (and probably some large municipalities) but in many places, it is ILLEGAL to vape anywhere it is illegal to smoke. Just saw a guy vaping this morning on the subway platform!
So today might be a very dusty day at work watching Ireland vote.
“In Thurles [County Tipperary], one of the team members came back to the bus in tears. He said he had spoken with a man in his nineties and the man himself broke down and said, ‘It’s too late for me now, but I really wish you all well and I certainly will be voting yes.’
http://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/ireland-…
It’s just my allergies acting up, I swear. *sniffle*
no it’s raining on YOUR face
oh, please tell me somebody gave him a hug or something
Oh my god I thought that was going a different direction and it caught me totally off guard! The tears!
SO MANY GODDAMN ONIONS IN THIS OFFICE HERE
“I’m making a lasagne… for one.”
Oh hell. More tears. I need rehydrating before I read one more thing from Ireland.
Oh MAN.
Headline of the day: Sex-obsessed seal sent to girls-only park.
Common seal Sija – very common, apparently – originally from Belgium, has been transferred to Weymouth Sea Life Adventure Park where there are no male seals.
The Weymouth Sea Life Adventure Park agreed to take Sija, who they described as “sex obsessed” and “randy”, to stop her breeding.
On the seals’ arrival this week, the park’s Fiona Smith said they would be getting “lots of extra love, attention and feeding activities to keep them occupied”. Obviously not the kind of extra love that Sija is after.
Humph. Compulsory seal heterosexuality.
Show them what’s what, Sija, hump all the things.
Well, it’s more like compulsive seal lesbianism now, since they sent her to a girl-seals-only place.
Can guarantee you’ve made a bunch of folks who’ve had their pitches turned down feel better (not that I, ahem, know anyone like that). They can say, “Well, at least my pitch wasn’t racist (or transphobic).”
Cracked link! http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-atheist-commun… Just so much YAAASSSSS.
And this is making me so happy and yet cringey at the same time http://fedora-atheists.tumblr.com/ WHY DO THEY WEAR FEDORAS? I do not understand.
Today I’m wishing i was home in Dublin, and I’m alternately so hopeful and then shit scared about this referendum. As a child of a lesbian, and an Irish person who left because the entire country is shit, I really hope that this is a sign that Ireland is changing for the better and my generation is FINALLY getting to take over from the old boys who currently run the show
I tell people who ask (and the internet!) that I’m an atheist philosophically, but not socially – mostly because I reached a calm place of acceptance a long time ago (when I realized no one was going to send me to Hell for being gay) – and I just can’t with the Dudes of Atheism, who are so wretched. It might be that I am not only female but a different generation than a lot of the people in that article, so I just don’t see a need to evangelize; people know atheism is a thing, and they can do the thing if it feels right, no argument from me required.
Also, I was recently in Ireland with my wife and – anecdotes! – everyone was lovely to us, even in hinterlands B&Bs. I think things must be changing for the better, and hope that today proves it. Best of luck to all the Irish and the expats!
I would say I’m agnostic or non-secular, I don’t really think about it much. Personally I’m not religious or even spiritual, but I have no problem having their own beliefs. I don’t particularly care for organised religion, especially the Catholic church for obvious reasons.
The writer perfectly hits on why people get so riled up about these topics though (Particularly boys of a certain age, topics include Religion, Gaming, comics etc), their opinions and beliefs get so wrapped up in their identity that they can’t separate the two, so they feel the need to defend who they are as a person any time someone doesn’t agree with them.
I pretty much grew up in the Irish lesbian scene, its good fun 😀
My dad can sort of be a strident atheist, but he was raised in a much stricter Catholic setting than I was, and he had to wait most of his life (until his mom passed away) to talk about it openly, so I don’t really begrudge him. On the other hand, I can’t come up with any good reason why *I* should be ANGRY about the existence of religion. I was raised by halfassed, secretly-atheist Catholics and I live in a day and age when it’s comparatively easy to just not do religion. I like to say that I think about it the way I think about sports– don’t ask me to pick a team, I think it’s boring and can sometimes make people act like idiots, but as long as you’re not dragging me along to watch the game, I don’t really care what you’re into.
I will admit to you here and now that I did kinda chuckle at the “Fun fact: all facts are fun” one. The rest are eeeegggghhhh.
If you haven’t already, may I suggest devouring the works of this lady? I personally just consider her the Queen of Athiesm and pretend none of the shitty dudes exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Michael_Hec…
She’s also sort-of a friend of mine and I’m pretty much as proud of that as I would be of being friends with the Queen of England.
Omg, that Cracked link is great and sums up EXACTLY why I avoid organised, social atheism. I can’t wait to share it and have dudes in my friend list go on #notallatheists tangents.
Okay, I totally loved that religion roundtable and now I really feel like I need to get off my ass and write that bat mitzvah MG book that I’ve been meaning to write for like, ever. I can count on one hand the number of non-Holocaust Jewish characters I saw in books as a kid (two. There were two and both of them were named Heather for some reason) so I’m glad that there are an increasing number of YA books with protagonists from minority religions.
My daughter is three. I’m sure she’ll love it when she’s about 11. You’ve got time. Go go go.
dooooooo itttttttttt. (Name her Heather.) (Do NOT name her Heather. That’s so weird!)
I tried to talk my son into writing one, but all his fiction is, like, brilliantly bizarre oddworld stuff, so instead I just keep throwing the occasional reference to my characters’ Judaism in my contemporary romances (we are the laxest of Reform types. But the kid – whose Confirmation is tonight – is the one who keeps us going to the synagogue, and who keeps mentioning how few Jewish characters populate the books he reads.)
I was the same way with my parents- they dragged their feet about joining a synagogue until I was in 3rd grade and requested that we join so “I could meet Jewish boys to marry.” Still the only member of my immediate family who keeps Passover and most of the major holidays. I think maybe it’s because both my parents grew up in Jewish communities in their respective countries/states, and the only Jewish kids I knew were in Hebrew school. When you grow up actively looking for people like you, their absence can become more clear.
Mazel tov on your son’s Confirmation! In a lot of ways, that meant more to me than my bat mitzvah- I was older and it had been more of a choice to prepare for than my bat mitzvah had been.
Is this the place to talk about Starglass? Starglass! And the sequel Starbreak, which I haven’t read yet! By toastfriend Phoebe North!
Obviously glad the Boy Scouts are talking about not being horrible bigots, but they aren’t exactly doing it for the right reasons. Two choice quotes from BSA president Robert Gates (yes, that Robert Gates) regarding this issue:
“We must deal with the world as it is,” he said, “not as we might wish it to be.”
“If we wait for the courts to act,” he said, “we could end up with a broad ruling that could forbid any kind of membership standard”
Soooo, stop some hate, even though they do not want to, in order to protect future hate? Nice.
Ew. Ew ew ew. The first quote is bad but the second quote is toxic. Heaven forbid the courts rule that BSA has to abide by anti-discrimination laws.
Man this is why I quit the Boy Scouts, that whole organization is a bunch of tin-pot fascists.
yeah, it’s such crap reasoning. the idea that the gay Eagle Scouts I knew in scouting are somehow not worthy is utterly ridiculous. Or rather as it stands now, that they were fine when 17 and an Eagle Scout, but at 18 no longer welcome to be Assistant Scoutmaster.
The wholesale anti-gay bullshit of the Boy Scouts is really depressing to me. I grew up in the scouts; my friends were scouts, it’s where I learned to tie a knot, light a fire, keep myself alive in the outdoors, and actually enjoy being out and about. I’m a naturally indoors person most of the time, but BSA was where I learned to love nature and it’s where I was able to test myself repeatedly against challenges that most people avoid. It was also a place where I could try out different versions of myself while I was figuring out who I was. I want my (theoretical future) kids to get those same skills and experiences, but I couldn’t send kids to the current organization with a clean conscience.
Kishlanksy! Oh, no.
In my AP European History class in high school – a class, taught by an incredible woman, which changed my life in a lot of ways and taught me skills that have directly translated into professional success – we used one of Kishlanksy’s textbooks. It was incredibly dense and very difficult and probably the best textbook we could have had. We moaned about Kishlanksy all the time. My sophomore year of high school I probably said his name ten times a day, usually in a tone of despair. But that book was so great in the end, and your story about him makes me smile. It’s good to know he was a good guy. I am so very sorry he passed away.
My first two history degrees had a focus on Tudor-Stuart Britain. I loved Kishlansky’s work and was (initially) heartbroken when I was wait-listed at Harvard for grad school. I’m very sad about this.
Uuuuuuugh you guys I’m 31 and realizing I may not be a prodigy.
I’m going to have a candlelit bar in a foggy back alley for people like us to sit in, and stew, and plot.
It shall be called the Salieri Club*.
*yes, I know the movie was ahistorical, DON’T CARE.
I’m 37 and I’m only just coming to terms with the fact that I’m not going to get Chosen as a slayer.
29, same boat. Whatever. Let’s pretend we’re going to live to be 200 and so we’re still cosmic babies.
this is my go to fantasy for dealing with getting older. And also maybe it’s not a fantasy, maybe it’s the future!
Samesies! Honestly, the best thing that ever happened to me was to “fail” in the eyes of my parents. I was a prodigy! I was so smart! Then I failed in every way possible. Once I was no longer interesting to them because of being a pierced, cigarette-smoking, restaurant-working, sex-having, non-college-attending, bisexual epic failure who was never going to gain them bragging rights (so they turned their laser eyes on my sister–sorry, sis!) a funny thing happened.
Free of parental expectations, I was able to grow and learn and live my life and make mistakes and do things right and set boundaries and learn how to be happy!
Not sure if this is true for all of us prodigy-wannabes, but for me it was all about suffocating under unrealistic parental expectations which never accounted for who I was or who I wanted to be, and left no room for failure. Failing is amazing! It helps you learn who you are.
Same here. Since I’m going to be a tattooed, bicycle-fixing, polyamorous communist instead of an internationally acclaimed trumpet virtuoso, they’ve decided that my brother will be an internationally acclaimed formula 1 driver and win family glory that way. Failing and being given up on was the best thing that ever happened to me
I think…and this is a lot of conjecture here so obviously take it with a grain of salt…I think that it is part of a process of rejecting “normalcy” by actively rejecting the fashions of people that they think are dumb or deluded — like, the fedora is sort of the anti-baseball cap, which is the hat that the unenlightened dopes that used to make fun of you in high school for being so much smarter than them wore.
ETA whoops this is a reply to Selma’s question about why Brotheists wear fedoras.
Very interesting point. I just can’t get over the sheer irony of them literally becoming exactly the preaching bullying people that they supposedly oppose. So much lack of self awareness.
I think that a big problem we have when we talk about movements like this is that we inadvertantly concede the atheists’ point that this is an argument over ideology: i.e., whose ideology is better. So these guys do the same preaching and bullying thing, but they say, “no, it’s our IDEOLOGY that’s different and that makes us right”, or anyway “it’s our WAY OF THINKING” [i.e., “reason”] and THAT makes them right.
But this is all a kind of bullshit. It seems to me that when you look at what these kinds of guys do, “atheism” is really a social movement that’s sort of predicated on rejecting the social hierarchies of English and American public schools more than it is anything else. Its allusions to “rationality” have more to do with a fetishization of reason — and an imagined futured whereby being good at school studies or figuring things out is valued more highly than social conformity — than it actually has to do with, for instance, the formal process of logic.
I don’t even have a reply because you’re so right.
For some reason this is a male (usually white cis) only thing too. Just an observation. Could being raised to believe you’re always correct and entitled to everything maybe be a problem…?
The rejection of society tho. I think there’s also an element of if you don’t try you can’t lose. If they reject society’s parameters for success then they don’t have to be judged against them, and therefore never fail. aka an ex of mines life philosophy; ‘I don’t want to change who I am just to fit into ‘their’ idea of a good person and get a job’ except ‘who he is’ is a stoner whiteboy with dreads and a superiority complex who’s ‘choosing’ to be unemployed. Instead of admitting that he just can’t get a job.
I’m sure there’s a lot to it, but I think also a part of it is that white guys have a real different relationship to ethnic identity than everyone else. For most people, a kind of political identity (whether it’s racial or gender based) is essentially a form of protection against systemic power. And (usually straight) white guy is deifnitely a political identity, our relationship to that identity is very different: it’s sort of designed to be invisible from our perspective, so it doesn’t really feel like we have one. And I think that leads a lot of times to this kind of floundering for group identity, and a corresponding anxiety about its legitimacy that makes us real defensive about it.
Related to that, I guess, is the fact that patriarchy and white supremacy are kind of insivible from the inside, is this feeling that all the criticism of it come out of nowhere, and are really personal accusations, which fuels this paranoia.
oooh I like that conjecture. My theory is nostalgia for a time when Men were Men and fedoras were fashionable. I base that on the handful of dudes I’ve met who make a fedora look good. Take them, subtract [deep appreciation & knowledge of the era their sharp suit & fedora aesthetic came from] and [understanding that the past was not so great for non-cishet white dudes] and [desire to distance themselves from other wearers of the fedora] and you’ve got a bro who thinks he looks like Sinatra and shouldn’t the ladies want a man who looks like Sinatra?
But now I am taking that logic and applying the atheist angle to it and wondering why they don’t dress like guys from the Enlightenment or something. All those wigs and stockings would fill me with glee.
Here’s the thing: if I legitimately thought I could bring back waistcoats and tailcoats and tricorner hats, I would be all about it.
Most atheist dudes though don’t actually LIKE fashion (I expect this is a kind of coded misogyny, but they’ll tell you that it’s fundamentally frivolous), they only like those parts that are the signifiers of their own identity.
Yeah I figure at this point a fedora means nothing more than “I’m one of Those Guys and I’m not ashamed of it, not one bit.”
Tailcoats tho, hmmmm, how long til they start showing up at least on Brooklyn cocktail bartenders?
We got so far to go, though, they have to do cravats first at least, and I think we’ll probably get morning jackets before we get tailcoats.
FWIW I would happily rock the shit out of a tail coat.
I used to be a semi-pro horse rider, and all I wanted was to get good enough that I got to wear a top hat and tail coat for a dressage test (look it up, fly motherfuckers.)
It’s a shame we had to lose the fedora, but I am seriously thinking of just getting a nice flamenco hat and trying to work that angle for a while.
Oooo! I hope it’s based in misogyny. Can I be the one to tell the bros that fedoras were originally invented as women’s fashion? Pleeeeeeease?
Aw man you’ll have to beat me to it because I tell brotheists about Princess Fedora every chance I get.
I think there’s also a forlorn hope that wearing a single, highly visible symbol of that iconic masculinity actually endows the wearer with the attributes they associate with the larger image: the unarticulated idea that a guy can just plop a fedora* (or trilby, or porkpie hat) on top of their customary attire and gain the charisma or authority of a film noir character.
But A. an out-of-period hat plopped atop your everyday attire, if your everyday attire includes a t-shirt, an untucked shirt, or sneakers, looks costumey and attention-hungry, which is very often the opposite of what they’re hoping for;
B. hey, fedora guy, I hate to break it to you, but those film noir characters were almost always chumps or lowlifes. Aspire to more.
*I always like to point out that the fedora and the trilby were originally women’s hats, named for female protagonists, and we should take ’em back.
Re: fedoras and other hats: how many of these Brotheists realize they run the risk of being mistaken for hip Jews who eschew the yarmulke?
But also, in terms of times when Men Were Men Because They Wore Hats, the intersection of loudmouth atheists and anti-feminism, to me, is especially excruciating because it seems to inadvertently expose how much of this strand of atheism is about rejecting religion as being too emotional, i.e. feminine, and we can’t have that now, can we? It’s like the biggest Freudian slip ever.
Re: reviewing a friend’s book
“if you share an editor, parent, or child you are certainly too close”
Is there really that much of a relationship between an editor’s edit-ees? Just because you have the same editor doesn’t mean you know each other, I’d think. Or is the idea that they want to do their editor a solid?
I think your editor would tell you both to write really good reviews of each other? And you would, so you could win editing points which you can then redeem for bookmarks, tote bags, and extra chapters. (Obviously I am well versed in publishing.)
it’s actually, if you send us chocolate, we send you tote bags. : )
(I don’t speak for everyone with my job title, but personally, I would never tell one of my authors to positively review another author’s book. That would be a huge ethical breach. I often don’t even know if one of my authors is reviewing another author’s book! At most, I might in casual conversation say something like, “hey, I just published xyz book by so-and-so, and I think it might be right up your alley, if you want to check it out.”)
I expect it’s that, if I have a positive relationship with my editor, I’d be less inclined to trash a bad book that they worked on. I mean, at a certain level I’ve got an actual financial interest in it — if my editor’s other books do too badly, that could jeopardize my own ability to keep getting published. (I’d argue that if you share a publisher you probably shouldn’t be reviewing each other’s works, unless you Chris Priest and DGAF about anything in the world).
This makes sense, thanks! I guess I was confused because it seemed like they were focusing on being emotionally unable to distance yourself, whereas with the editor thing it’s less “I love the author and am blind to their faults” and more a strategic business decision.
Depends, but usually no. My authors don’t always know who my other authors are. I have authors who hate each other. On the other hand, I have authors who have been referred to me by other authors — but in that case, the two people were friends/knew each other and I’m sort of… irrelevant to the conflict of interest discussion.
I’ve definitely seen reviews of International Good Book Publishing Concern Inc Ltd, where I work, that were written by people who are FOR SURE too close to IGBPC, Inc, Ltd, as an institution. But it’s always in ways that wouldn’t be apparent to the editor at the publication who assigned the review. As the editor of the book, I have no control over who is picked to review my books in the media; that’s done by the editor at the publication that’s running the review.
For the sake of transparency, I should note that I publish nonfiction, where the pool of qualified reviewers (that is, people with knowledge of the subject matter who can write a thorough, thoughtful review and turn it in on time) is necessarily much smaller than it is with fiction, which usually doesn’t require any specialized subject matter background. So the “no same editor” rule might make more sense in fiction circles, because you’re not prohibitively eliminating some large chunk of your reviewer pool.
I relate to that child prodigy post so much. I was the designated “smart one” in my family. Aced every test without studying, got into a competitive music program in high school, graduated a year early with an extra 15 credits. Every one expected me to go on to music school and become a famous virtuoso – my aunts started buying me Carnegie Hall swag when I was 11. My entire life from age 9 and on was trumpet practice, musical theatre and church. And I got into a highly selective university orchestra at age 16 and … I failed. I often say that I realized a life of constant auditioning wasn’t for me, but the truth is I just wasn’t good enough for the program. I am very skilled, but not internationally-recognised orchestra levels of skilled, and I do not have the chops to get there.
Figuring out what to do with the rest of my life at 17 after a failure of that magnitude, with all that expectation and no other idea of what I could possibly be good at or interested in – that lead to a lot of other failure and despair. Ony now at 23 do I have any idea of who I am as a person outside of the child prodigy narrative I was cast in all my life. I lost 6 years of my life! The “best” years too, the ones that everyone makes films about. So yes, down with the child prodigy narrative!
At 24 I moved across the country with 2000 dollars in tips and no plan whatsoever and it was amazing. I know you’re going to have an amazing life and it will be all your own with you setting the milestones and making your own mistakes and learning from them.
Funnily enough, I’ve recently done something similar and it seems to be working out. Next plan involves a 2-year + bike tour to South America
I love the Toast, honest to God, but PLEASE do something about your incredibly forceful video ads, for the love of God. Today it took me a dozen tries to even read this short post, because the video ad was REDIRECTING THE PAGE to the comments section, to where the video was playing in the sidebar, every time I tried to scroll! I had to go to my site settings and block plug-ins for The Toast again, to even get the page to function! I DON’T LIKE TAKING MONEY AWAY FROM YOU, honestly.
This is a new one, but what’s been going on for much longer is how any Toast page I open (and God forbid I open more than one in tabs, as I’d really like to do) crashes Javascript across ALL my Chrome windows. That is more than a little inconvenient and a serious deterrent to how often I visit your site (which I’d like to be, oh, all day every day).
I am serious: I love the Toast and I absolutely want this to be a profitable endeavor for all of you. Let us give you money in order not to see any ads. But even without that subscription OPTION, PLEASE choose ads that don’t interfere with reading the actual content you provide, or interfere with my enjoying content on other sites simultaneously! I don’t think that’s too much to ask. 🙁
You can rig up your own give-money-to-not-see-ads system by getting AdBlock, turning it on for The Toast, and then setting up a recurring PayPal donation. But it would be nice if that system were a feature! And if the ads were less screwy.
I’ve had to swap over to Safari for the Toast, because it was just absolutely unreadable in Chrome.
Co-signed! Thank you for bringing this up! The only device I have that can even handle this website anymore is my work computer (forget the tablet or super-old-home-laptop) and even that is having serious issues. I love you, Toast, and I want you to have all the moneys, but I’ve seriously curtailed my reading because of this.
I gave up trying to read on my phone or a tablet months ago – this annoying tiny pop-up ad bar comes up and it has the tiniest “X” that you have to click at just the right spot to dismiss the bar otherwise it just hangs out and floats in front of what you’re trying to read (or you wind up going to the ad page), and trying to read comments is completely impossible as clicking on “replies” for some reason also redirects to ads? It’s incredibly frustrating. I know The Toast is run by a small team and doesn’t have unlimited funding but this has been a problem for a lot of people for a very long time and it would be nice to see it addressed.
Oof, yes. And not to mention The Toast is not exactly work-friendly, a lot of the time. >.> Which is fine, of course, but difficult when you’re only able to access it at work. Also, someone advised me to do adblock + donations, which would work except I’m trying to be better about using incognito Chrome windows to access NWS stuff like The Toast, and apparently extensions like adblock don’t work in incognito windows!
Adblock does work in incognito windows in Chrome — you have to go into your settings and specify that it is available while incognito (otherwise it defaults to not working). I don’t like taking revenue from the site, either, but if I don’t use adblock, I pretty much can’t read anything on here.
Thank you for that tip! I’ve been baffled because I know I’ve gotten extensions to work in incognito windows before (but I’ve started a new job with a new work computer).
Yeah, it’s really really not good that their site is so difficult to people without these workarounds. It’s literally not a working business model. I really hope they can find some major fixes soon. Because, again, I love the Toast and really want them to succeed and be able to buy lots of nice things for themselves and want to keep doing this.
I’ve said this before too. I can only read the site with Flash turned off.
It has really helped me to install a Chrome extension that blocks Flash. You can allow Flash when you want to, but it defaults to off. It also seems to help with the comment-threading problem, though that could also be a coincidence.
You can also just disable Flash natively in the browser- Settings->Show Advanced Settings -> Content settings-> Plug-ins -> Manage individual plugins. Or chrome://plugins/ on a Chromebook.
(I find my entire internet experience is more pleasant with Flash set to only play when I tell it to, so I leave Flash off and donate money…Flash in Chrome is just awful on the Toast).
THIS, so much. For me, I think it’s Shockwave/Flash that keeps crashing constantly on Chrome, and it’s definitely a Toast-specific problem. Like, it happens occasionally on other sites, but it happens at least 60% of the time I open a Toast page. I love this site, and so I struggle through it, but it kind of puts a damper on the excitement of reading a god article if I have to yell at my computer for 10 minutes in order to access it.
Yes, exactly — I misspoke earlier, it’s not Javascript but Shockwave/Flash. And it never happens on other sites the way it does on the Toast.
Hi! We’ve been trying to kill auto-play ads. I got this from someone helping us out with this:
Two favors, if you don’t mind, the next time you see you one, can you please:
1. Grab a screenshot
2. And if it clicks through anywhere, please send me the clickthrough URL?
So you have an idea of the general problem here:
Even though we have the ad quality settings set so that auto-play ads should not slip through, there are bad actors who when self-classifying their ads misidentify them. So that is what we’re fighting against. If I have the click-through URL though, I can block that.
You guys can always email me these things, nikki@the-toast dot net.
Thank you so much for responding! Glad to know this is under work. I’l do my best to help (including allowing ads and plug-ins to run, so I can get you those screencaps and links).
Sorry to be a pain. I hope you have a really good weekend!
Please don’t apologize! Just wanted you to know we’ve been seriously working on the issue. I’ll post a little thing about it in a link roundup next week, too.
One of the most interesting conversations I’ve been part of was between a friend of mine and an acquaintance of his when they were talking about who they felt they could ethically review and how they had come up with their rules. (For context, both are writers, my friend is a well-known critic in his country, and they were just about to go onstage where my friend would interview his acquaintance.) It’s funny to me that the art world in general is so insular sometimes and yet we seem to want to have this pretence of objectivity in reviews, but I love hearing the ways people come up to draw their own boundaries within that framework.
Guys we have been talking about The Rock a lot I guess, because I have a sidebar ad for WWE.
Guys. Guys. http://codepen.io/mudrenok/full/gpMXgg/ this has been driving me crazy all day.
If you can do it you’re a bloody genius. And if you can create something like this (hell if you can even understand the code) your are obviously a god.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to win. Gomoku as a game has been solved – the player who goes first (in this case the green X) will always win if they play perfectly, and I think that’s how the algorithm is playing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomoku#Analysis
Interestingly, apparently Tic-tac-toe is a version of Gomoku using a very small 3×3 grid. So the rules for Tic-tac-toe apply.
ETA: the name of the type of game under which both Gomoku and Tic-tac-toe fall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M,n,k-game
ETA2: Also apparently you can play as X and go first, in which case if you play perfectly you will win. So that can be fun to try!
Interesting, on of the guys in work apparently beat it in about 10mins, but I suspect he faked the screenshot. (We have a group email for tech and creative that we share this stuff and generally waste time)
Me and head of front end were talking about it, even he couldn’t get his head around the js needed
“Let us give you money in order not to see any ads.”
Yes, absolutely. I’m down with this.
Much as I love the Toast, it kills Chrome, ads start blasting loudly and can’t be silenced, and navigating on my phone is a nightmare (often tapping the Link Roundup link leads me to six different external ad sites before I can get through).
Oh yeah — I didn’t even get to the fact that there’s no way to silence ads, which even most news sites let you do! It is really, really obnoxious when you’re trying to listen to music in another window and have to pause it until the ad feels like it’s done OR until you close the Toast. Which is a sucky option, but the one the site pushes me toward.
Yeah, I only read the Toast on my work computer and use AdBlock, but every so often I’ll have disabled AdBlock for work-related purposes and forget to reenable it before coming here and man I only did that once before permanently putting my speakers on mute.
Just chiming in to say that I think the Toast’s deleted comments stance is just right. While I enjoy an occasional deleted comment post (especially when the comments are more in the tone of being confused by Toastiness or just generally silly/out of touch,) I personally couldn’t finish the deleted comments to the “White Dude Books List” post. And I’m just a white lady–I can’t really imagine having to look at a similar list of hateful racist comments as a POC. Or rather, I can imagine it, and I appreciate the Toast’s decision to avoid that scenario.
In terms of a list of rejected pitches, as someone who had a pitch rejected rather recently *shudder.*
When on the subway, vomit only on the person to your right. If facing a person, vomit toward their left side. Afterward, it is considered courteous to offer them a handful of moist newspaper and used Burger King napkins as a gesture of apology.
prodigy [prod-i-jee] noun, plural prodigies.
1. a person, especially a child or young person, having extraordinary talent or ability: a musical prodigy.
2. a marvelous example (usually followed by of).
3. something wonderful or marvelous; a wonder.
4. something abnormal or monstrous.
5. Archaic. something extraordinary regarded as of prophetic significance.
I think I can honestly claim that I was a child prodigy by at least one of these definitions.
I really enjoyed the minority religions roundtable. It did bring this back into my mind: the Ottoman parliament discussing whether America was biased against Muslims in particular or just polygyny in general.
“My father had the gift of being able to ace his tests without studying, a gift I have, as does my sister, as does her daughter, now in the second grade. My niece for example recently scored perfectly on a spelling test she hadn’t studied for—but my sister still held her accountable for not studying. The reason being that a talent like this doesn’t give you any reason to develop study habits—it’s a strength that creates a weakness.,exacts a price. It’s even a way of starving your intellect.”
This really hit home for me. I was always that kid who got A’s without studying for ANYTHING, and now, as an adult in grad school, studying is like pulling teeth. I get distracted easily, I get frustrated, I wonder whether I should be trying to commit more things to memory. If something generally sparks my interest, I’m fine, but I have to push myself to work hard at anything else. Honestly, I think my work ethic would be much better if I’d had to learn it earlier. :/
Oooh yeah I am all for deleted comments but publishing bad pitch letters (unless they were like, to tell us what NOT to do, and still you would need to ask permission) would feel like a bit of a violation of privacy.
My biggest transit pet peeves are when people block the fucking doors and then don’t get out of the way. Actually just blocking anything on transit is likely to make me mad at you. However, I feel like I must add that I watched at girl on the bus eat an entire salad a couple of months ago, and it was the GREATEST THRILLER OF ALL TIME. I think I livetweeted it.
François Sagan. Goddamn her.
François Sagan. Goddamn her.
Same here. Since I'm going to be a tattooed, bicycle-fixing, polyamorous communist instead of an internationally acclaimed trumpet virtuoso, they've decided that my brother will be an internationally acclaimed formula 1 driver and win family glory that way. Failing and being given up on was the best thing that ever happened to me
Or, just gonna throw this out there, maybe historically there have been fewer people who started publishing/creating/making “later in life” because life expectancy was drastically shorter then? Also because before the advent of social safety nets, once you hit “too old to work”, if you were still alive, you were probably a pauper (unless you were a gentleman or Dowager Countess) and focused on things like “place to live” or “obtain food” rather than writing. Also, overall literacy was much lower in the past not to mention writing being dominated by men of a particular social status.
Basically, your pool of “who would be a child prodigy and/or someone who could discover writing later in life” was waaaay different in the past, so it’s really hard to make historical comparisons of “look at all these child prodigies over time” versus “contemporary period”.
#historianperspective
For kicks:
Jane Austen (died at 41)
Bronte sisters all died from TB or associated ills before age 40 (and had siblings who died as young children — who knows what they could have written?); published under male psuedonyms…as did J.K. Rowling, to an extent.
Edgar Allen Poe died at 40; if current or future mental health treatment were available would he have lived longer?
If we get into mental health I can start listing Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Vincent Van Gogh and so many others as people who died “before their time”
Not to mention people who died in childbirth, from currently-treatable infectious diseases (smallpox, what), lack of clean water, etc…who count as lost creation potential.
tl;dr Maybe historically it wasn’t “publish OR perish O Ye Child Prodigies” but “publish quick before you perish of some horrid malaise or ill humours, unless you are someone that won’t be included in the historical record anyway”, and we as a culture have just forgotten that it used to be normal for people to die at 40 (or way before).
I'm late to this thread but I always want to ask one of these bros why they're smoking the body spray I wore when I was 15.
I pass a vape shop on my way home from the subway almost daily and I inevitably pass one or two people* who are expelling clouds of early-teenage-me nostalgia because that shit smells like all the fake-fruit-candy "perfume" and makeup they make for baby teens.
*90% of the time, these are buff, sweaty dudes who also frequent the gym a block away.