the anti-gentrification ghosts!!!! this whole thing is hilarious (but also, all motion-sensor lights are terrifying and designed to reveal ghosts):
It quickly developed another reputation. In January, a woman was standing in her kitchen when the overhead lights switched off. A doorman was watching security-camera footage one night when the motion-sensor lights in a stairwell flipped on one by one—first on the seventh floor, then the sixth, and on down to the ground floor—with no living thing in sight. A cabdriver dropped one resident off with a warning: “Be careful. It’s full of skeletons.” Turnover seemed high among the building’s doormen, one of whom, according to the Post, said that 123 On the Park was “a messed-up place to work because it’s haunted.”
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Oh, man, this account of the 1995 Chicago heat wave is really something (it’s also very, very hard to read):
By the afternoon, temperatures hit 104 at O’Hare and 106 at Midway. It felt like 125, according to the heat index, which factors in humidity. In what’s known as the heat island effect, brick buildings, asphalt parking lots, and tar roofs trapped the warmth and then radiated it outward. Add to that moisture-heavy air, a dearth of wind, and ever-present air pollution, and the city felt like a grubby urban sauna, even at night. “At midday,” a Los Angeles Times reporter observed, “those crazy enough to be out on Chicago’s streets seemed to be walking in a daze.”
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being. an. extra. on. magic. mike. xxl.
“I worked down in Atlanta [as an extra] on The Hunger Games, and that casting director has a list of people that she trusts, who she knows will be there on time and whatnot. She sent an email saying, ‘Hey, I need actors for this really big convention scene — they’re having issues with all the fangirls. We need people tomorrow.’ Savannah is about an 11-hour drive from where I am [in Louisville, Kentucky]. But then she told me what movie it was for and I said, ‘I’ll make an exception.’”
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Friend of The Toast Lindsay King-Miller on men in their twenties who date teenagers:
I knew, abstractly, that older men who dated younger women – not women but girls, high school girls, girls not even old enough to drive – were creepy and better avoided. But for some reason it never occurred to me that that applied to my own life. The guys my friends and I dated made it seem like there was nothing strange about men in their twenties sexually pursuing teenage girls – after all, we were so old for our age. We were so wise. They had never met girls like us, girls who knew so much, girls who understood them so well. They told us this over and over, every one of them, like reading from a script:You’re so cool. You’re so different from all the others. When I was young, I didn’t understand that as an insult, lifting girls up in the singular while putting us down in the plural. I was dying to feel older, which I accomplished by wearing impossibly short skirts and sky-high platform shoes, carrying a tiny knife disguised as a tube of lipstick in my purse and feeling sly and dangerous. I wanted to feel desired, and the men I met were more than happy to comply – to tell me I was beautiful in my Hot Topic bustiers, breasts hiked to the collarbone, boots laced up to the knee.
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I was born in Kingston, and grew up on Montreal St, and this story in the Whig Standard (yes, it’s called the Whig Standard, I know) utterly chilled me. It seems so unbelievably clear that this man is a danger to the public and should not be out on the streets, and yet he has served his sentence. I wish we had a better system, and if you’re in Kingston, please be aware of his existence, and know I’m thinking about you and my hometown right now:
Alexander Casselman, 56, appeared in Kingston’s Ontario Court of Justice on Friday, the day he was released from penitentiary, and voluntarily entered into a two-year public safety peace bond requested by Kingston Police after they learned he’s decided to take up residence on Montreal Street.
Casselman served every day of his sentence and assistant Crown attorney Elisabeth Foxton said he refused to participate in sex offender treatment while in prison.
She told Justice Allan Letourneau that his last prison assessment, in January 2013 ranked him as having a high risk of re-offending. She also disclosed that Casselman once told a correctional officer that he was going to go on “a killing spree” when he got out and would become known as “the phone book killer,” because he intended to randomly select a page and murder the people listed until he was caught and sent back to the penitentiary.
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Rachel Dolezal talked to Vanity Fair, said basically nothing:
And yet, Dolezal’s claim on black womanhood still seems to be non-negotiable. Even in conversation with an actual black woman on the other end of the line or sitting in her cozy home, Dolezal unequivocally identifies as black. (Never mind the ancestry.com heritage test that arrived on her doorstep the day I visited.)
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I have so enjoyed not discussing Rihanna’s BBHMM video on The Toast, but I also have to link to the Miss Piggy version.
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lol the show is getting better so I haven’t had fire in my belly to mock it, but this is correct
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what idiot called it 2nd Corinthians and not Moreinthians
— Mallory Ortberg (@mallelis) July 20, 2015
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
When [Matt Bomer] came out to do that scene, he looked at the ladies around him and said, ‘OK, ladies, you have to make me look straight.’
Joe Manganiello, he was so cool, because he came out eating — he was taking a break or whatever, and someone brought him this little Tupperware filled with meat. So one of the girls asked him, ‘What are you eating?’ and he turned around and was like, ‘Beef. Want some?’ He was going for it, with all that beef.
The movie coming here was probably one of the best things that happened to this town and one of the best things that happened to women’s sexuality. Women felt like goddesses when they went home; they were like, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m so excited to see my man,’ or, ‘I’m so excited to feel better about myself.’
This article is a goddamn gift and it should be required reading for literally everyone.
I think I just fainted in my chair at that first line.
There would never have been a better time to yell “I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE” and mean every goddamn word.
Oh man, I would help Matt Bomer look so straight, you guys.
coffee went everywhere and i’m still too dazed imagining things to do anything about it.
Beef? Beef tupperware? Joe, what happened to the chicken bag?
Hothouse beefsteak!
chicken bag gets you there; beef tupperware keeps you there.
so true, so wise
Pork trough brings you back.
Clearly, casting him as a werewolf on True Blood was casting him as himself.
“He was going for it, with all that beef.”
It’s been several minutes and I can’t stop snickering, send help.
And that one woman! Magic Mike XXL literally changed her life! It showed her the way, the dream, the path. I love this so much.
ALL THAT BEEF.
This is why they need to do a goddamn live show. ROXANE MAKE IT HAPPEN.
I am grinning so hard there are literal tears in my eyes. This article is AMAZING.
Important Ask A Manager news: http://www.askamanager.org/2015/07/update-i-racke…
Show of hands, who’s moving to New Zealand with me.
I’m pretty shocked they didn’t fire him too. He must be very good at his job.
seriously, those managers are unbelievably classy. though I guess firing him would really just be punitive, not necessarily a good move for the business (sounds like he does sales or something with a lot of personal customer relationships, not to mention his repayment plan kinda relies on him having a job). But yeah, hard to picture many American companies not taking the “fire immediately, sue for the $” approach.
still in awe of how few “omg LW you are the worst why can’t you get your life together it’s easy spend less than you earn!!!” comments there are.
The original post had a fair number of those, but I think the update shocked everyone into polite submission.
seriously, the update is mind-blowing in its “everyone behaved well all around.” it’s the anti-duck club!
DUCK CLUB.
That’s got to be fake, right? After the update?
i’m on Team Not Fake. after so many other AAM stories of spectacular dysfunction and incompetence, this one’s wacky but not unbelievable.
Fucking in other people’s cars?? I can’t remember what else, but that was the one that somehow seemed Too Far.
I think it’s more likely that they know they’ll never get their money back if they fire him. It’ll be interesting to see how long he’s there after the debt is repaid. At least they took his card away.
Very good at his job, or just a white man of the right social class? I’m in favour of second chances, but I don’t think many people would get this particular second chance…
Not that I want this dude to be depressed and broke and unemployed but what the fuck??? His boss says they should keep him because it would cost the company money to replace him, but what about the importance of having employees who aren’t a) complete dumbshits, and b) untrustworthy? JFC.
Yeah, I want the best for LW, but I can’t help but think… they’re only keeping him on until he pays this off, and then they will absolutely fire him. Especially because it sounds like they’re a small company: they don’t have a $20k slush fund to pay off the bill, either, so his lack of ethics and sound judgement could have hurt a lot of people.
::nodsnods:: Yeah it really seems like there’s not any good options for his company here either. Ugh what a mess.
Yikes, I don’t know. I mean, it sounds like the company the LW works for has now taken on the deep shit that LW was in, and there is no good way to pay this expense off, and the company basically has to keep the LW on until it’s paid off because there just aren’t any other good options. I wouldn’t bet that LW keeps their job once it’s taken care of, though.
The problem with Caledonian Hospital is that they hired Ivo Shandor to do the remodel in the 1950s, I think.
You build something with cold-riveted girders with cores of pure selenium using the same schematics that NASA uses to track pulsars in deep space, you’re going to get some daggone ghosts.
SO BE GOOD FOR GOODNESS SAKE! WHOOOOAAAA SOMEBODY’S COMIN!!
we gotta get out of here
I don’t know. How big of a Twinkie are we talking about here?
If today’s readings are accurate, it would be a twinkie thirty-five feet long and weighing approximately 600 lbs.
That’s a big Twinkie.
I gotta split; the mayor wants to rap with me about some things.
Just as when I watch this line the movie, I am now crying with laughter
WELL THAT’S WHAT I HEARD
All I have to say about BBHMM is that a 2015 Kia Rio is also a brand new foreign car.
Now imagining Rihanna driving around in a Prius, bragging about the really great mpg.
“But Rihanna, what about speed?”
“If you’re important, people will wait.”
I have a 2014 Kia Rio, and I highly recommend it to anyone planning a kidnapping and extortion.
I rolled a 2010 Kia Rio four times and walked away alive. 10 out of 10 would not recommend, but if it happens, not the worst car to do it in.
If you’d like to have some nightmares, read the Whig article about the crimes that man committed! It’s utterly horrifying! Thanks, justice system, we feel so safe in SE Ontario now!
The thing to remember for your peace of mind is that if he was going to re-offend he would probably pull the same thing he did in BC and disappear only to show up in another province. They’ll be keeping too close a watch on him in Kingston. That was what I used to tell myself when I was living in Kingston, relatively close to the Pen — that if Paul Bernardo or any of the other violent offenders inside ever escaped they would want to get as far away as possible.
Good Lord. People like that are why we have dangerous offender status. That’s where I shift from restorative justice to throw away the key.
(Love Kingston, lived there for seven years)
Oh my God, that heat wave article. I am weirdly terrified of hot weather – I don’t really sweat much, and I’ve fainted due to heat. I can’t even imagine hospitals without AC. Sweating through your surgical scrubs!
When it got up to feeling like 45 in Toronto a few years back (115 or so in Fahrenheit), I rode the air conditioned subway for six hours. I regret nothing, and I got to see parts of the subway line I had never seen before.
I got to the part about young children and lost it. The babies!
just finished and only 3 children under the age of 10 died, but I am still shaken! Ooof.
I will fully admit to buying an entire day’s worth of movie tickets during heat waves in order to be in A/C for a few hours.
As a recent transplant to Chicago, I learned about the heat wave last week and was utterly mortified. It was first presented in the context of “this happened 20 years ago,” so immediately I thought, “OK, it happened in the 70s, A/C wasn’t really a thing back then,” because my frame of temporal reference is permanently stuck in the 90s.
But NO. I was ALIVE when this happened. So were my Chicago friends! They lived through it! (I asked them if they remembered it; most were too young to really have any significant memories.)
I’m still appalled by the Daley administration’s lack of response. As much as Emanuel is a shitstain on the city, it doesn’t seem like he’s much worse than what Chicago had before.
I remember it as a kid living in the suburbs and it kind of creeping up on me that the weather reporters weren’t just being their normal alarmist selves, this was bad. And feeling so guilty that we couldn’t, idk, send AC to people in the city.
It really was this bad. I was 13 and we didn’t have A/C at our house in the burbs. My mom took my brothers and I to the mall for three days straight. You couldn’t sleep at night. We knew it wasn’t good, but my mom still talks about how terrified she was and how guilty she felt about the people in the city.
“blue balls in your heart.” is the title of a Country song. Get on this, Bro Country singers! It writes itself.
The Kingston article won’t load for me, but based just on what’s written here I might actually be terrified enough to move if I lived there.
From the teenage girls dating adult men piece: Did anyone here have a 5 am curfew as a 15 year old? I’m not sure I even see the point of a curfew if it’s 5 am. “Make sure you’re home in time for breakfast”. I think mine was probably like midnight.
I don’t know about other parts of the country but there was definitely a legal curfew if you were under 18 (or maybe 17?) where I grew up. I think it was 11PM.
Yeah, where I grew up it was 11 pm. 5 am is…”well, see you tomorrow!” Like I don’t see the function of a 5 am curfew.
I believe it was 1am where I lived, because that’s as late as you could drive on an under-18 license without an adult. I imagine they have the same kind of driver’s license restrictions in most states? How are you even getting home after that, if not by dating creepy older dudes?
In Michigan I think the driving curfew was midnight for..,16 year olds? I don’t remember this that clearly, I guess.
A *legal* curfew? Like people under the age of X are not allowed to be out after Xpm each evening — and the police can take you home? I’m shocked that exists anywhere? I grew up in the UK, and never had a curfew. But I only got my full drivers licence at 18, so either I needed my parents to pick me up or I needed to stay at a friend’s house (perils of being a teenager in the countryside where there is no public transport after 6pm). I was a very bookish teenager though, so it might have been different if I was a bit ‘wild’.
(the alcohol thing was totally different for me too — my parents bought me alcohol to take to teenage parties from the age of about 14. I was offered wine with dinner by my family from about age 10.)
I also find the idea of a legal curfew, especially age-based, very strange. (Canadian.)
American here, and I’ve never heard of a legal curfew in the sense that you aren’t allowed to be out and about, just that people under a certain age can’t legally drive vehicles after a certain hour.
Oh, yes. We do have that in Ontario! If you’re a beginner’s level (G1, they call it), you’re not allowed to be driving between midnight and 5 AM (plus a bunch of other restrictions). I’m not sure I find that terribly rational either, but do accept that nighttime driving is often more dangerous (but for *everyone*?).
Wow, I’m learning so much. I’m pretty sure you don’t have that on a UK licence. When you have a ‘provisional licence’ you can’t drive on a motorway and need to have a person (over 21 and with 3 years of full licence?) in the car with you, and display ‘L’ plates. But no curfew.
My granny drove with ‘L’ plates into her 60s I think, because she found other drivers were more courteous. I doubt she would have done that if there was a curfew. But then I know my aunt (her daughter) refuses to drive at night or on the Continent, so women in my family are perhaps not to be trusted on the road 😉
My aunt remembers growing up with Actual Legal Curfews–as in, unaccompanied kids under 18 had to be off the streets at a certain time or the cops would pick them up and deliver them to their parents with a stern talking-to and dire threats if they didn’t shape up. She remembers it because it was unevenly applied. Hers was one of the few Mexican families in their town, and there were a few times when she was walking home from babysitting jobs, like, a block away and getting hauled off by the police because they all know what those girls were up to.
Ugh, oh my god, that’s so gross. I’m betting her white peers had pretty different experiences.
This is the problem with curfews! Your poor aunt. And besides it requires the police to guess how old people are, or for everyone to carry around ID that proves how old they are.
Ugh that sucks but is totally not surprising.
We have that in Ohio. My kid got caught. I never did, but that’s because he was in a suburb where there is nothing better to do, and I lived in the inner city as a teen, so nobody cared!
In Baltimore, there’s a ridiculous youth curfew: nine pm for 14 year olds and 10 on a school night (11 any other night) for kids as old as sixteen. That’s not some leftover piece of the emergency curfew from April, by the way – it was quietly put in place last year.
(Three guesses which population this disproportionately affects.)
there is a suburb around here that made its name as a counter cultural hangout in the 60’s. The grass where the hippies would play guitars is all concrete (that happened when it was the center of the alternative rock scene in the 80’s, ahem, I was there then). Now the suburb is less affluent and the cops put a curfew that ONLY applies to the street IN FRONT OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, this “cool” street a mile away, and the street with the hip restaurants. It’s 6 pm. 6 pm. High schoolers, in front of the high school, can get arrested at 6 pm!
Catching up on Link Rounds Ups and this sounds so much like where I live! Thankfully the curfew is less unfair – 11pm – but the former-hippie street still has the Grog Shop, where of course shows aren’t over before 11pm!
When I was a teen, we used to hang out after shows, head over to the park on the corner and run around on the playground. We still got yelled at, but at least there weren’t cops taking us home. Thinking about it must be now is depressing.
I definitely did not. I didn’t really have a curfew until I started dating my then-boyfriend/now-fiance, since most of my social activity took place at my house, but I think at that point it was 11 or midnight except for special occasions like prom.
I technically didn’t have a curfew, but that’s because I was a socially inept bookworm (lol, “was”) and never went out.
Ha, same! Looking back, I could’ve gotten away with SO MUCH, considering how much my parents trusted me. But I guess they trusted me because I never actually did anything.
It was the opposite for me! My parents were overprotective, and my mother especially often seemed suspicious of me and my activities to a degree that I felt was totally unjustified, considering that I never got into trouble. I don’t blame her for it as much now, because I think if I had a child I would be just as anxious about their safety, but at the time I really resented it. One time when I was about 15 I went to the public library after school and my mother practically interrogated me about it, because I pretty much never left the house again once I had gotten home from school (not that they locked me in or anything! I just didn’t need to go anywhere except the corner store). I remember thinking, Some girls my age are pregnant or runaways or drug addicts and you’re freaking out because I wanted to get some books? it was really frustrating.
The library was the only place I was allowed to go without supervision. Very strict parents, abusive actually. Girls were to be accounted for at all times. Unless going to the library. It was quiet and safe. And no one minded if I read all day. It was my sanctuary. Librarians were kind to me. I will forever consider librarians superheroes.
SAME HERE. I was the kind of kid who, if I did something even approaching naughty and my mom gave me a Look, I would dissolve completely. Straight as an arrow, and even when I hit my “this is RIDICULOUS, if you’re going to be this strict I’m going to at least try to give you a reason for it” phase, the worst I ever did was go to the amusement park under the guise of “with my best friend!” when we were actually meeting two boys for a double-date. Or maybe going to the mall with my other BFF to swear in front of younger kids and “scandalize” them. Or told my mom I was going to my friend’s Lutheran church, when in fact it was Catholic.
I had very similar experiences with my parents growing up. There was one time that I was at a cast party at a teacher’s house after closing night of our play (aka nerd central directly under the supervision of a teacher who was friends with my mom) and I got home at 12:03. My mom was waiting in the dark to interrogate me about why I was THREE MINUTES LATE.
My freshman year of college was kind of a tailspin because the idea of being out doing whatever I wanted without having to inform anyone of my whereabouts and obtain permission blew my poor little brain.
Yesss. First year of university I was like “I’m going to dye my hair black and get a lip ring!”
It was the same for me, and I still think it’s unjustified. There’s this whole narrative around teens that’s really prejudiced and judgmental, like “never trust a word they say, they’re all little monsters, they WILL do bad things if you ever let them loose, watch them allll the time”, and I don’t think it’s any more justified than “you can’t trust women, they’re all bitches, she WILL turn on you, you need to be in control”. People do behave differently in their teens sometimes, and many take a few risks, but they actually don’t become unpredictable demons. Also, I think some rebellious teen behaviour stems directly from being locked up and controlled all the time, so it’s more like prison riots than actual lack of insight.
It’s like our culture encourages us to pretty much develop a phobia against Unexpected Things Happening To Kids. When kids freak out because they feel like their parents might die every time the parent leaves or does something unexpected, it’s called separation anxiety. If a parent feels that they have to be in touch with or in control of their kid literally all the time, because otherwise they start to picture the kid murdered in a ditch – I really believe that that’s not a parenting style, it’s an anxiety disorder. If they demand that the kid should be restricted so that nothing bad can happen, they’re pulling the kid into their disorder. People NEED to do stuff, kids NEED to grow up.
ha ha ha haaaaaaah guess why I have grown into the type of person who, if my husband comes home from work later than expected, immediately assumes he must have gotten knifed in an alley, even though we live in a great neighbourhood in a city with very little violent crime.
Yeah, I only understood kind of recently that most people don’t do this. I don’t freak out about it, but death is always the first possibility that springs up in my head. But I was almost literally taught that the normal, adult, responsible way to behave was to figure out the absolute worst case scenario and then use that as your assumed scenario. Do everything in your power to avoid it. If you can’t come up with anything, you can always fall back on “anything could happen!”. So, basically don’t do anything, ever. It’s the responsible way!
And I also only recently figured out that the subtext “if anything slightly bad happens at all, it means you need to avoid the thing forever, because now you have proof that Stuff Happens and that means that truly bad things are very likely”, and “if you fail once, you lose the option of ever doing the thing again, because it would just be Stupid to do the thing again, and people aren’t allowed to be Stupid” actually means that you can’t trust other people to help you. Apparently, the only way to stay safe is to never take any amount of risk at all, because there are no solutions and no one to help, it’s only up to you. So don’t use your judgement – anything that is possibly harmful counts as actually terribly dangerous. No precautions are enough! Avoid the world and accept the blame!
Great life lesson, great.
+1
My parents were mostly like, “Call or something if you’re going to be late” (this was pre-cell phones) and I was like “Yeah okay I’ll be in my room reading A Girl of the Limberlost for the 80 millionth time”
Same here (also, it seems to be less of a thing in the UK? Or maybe my social circle is just dull). I never went out, so a curfew would have been pointless.
Yeah. When I was 18, I started dating a guy who was 5 years older. My parents didn’t want me to sleep at his place, generally, so I’d go over, we’d have sex, and then I’d get up and head home around 3. Which I don’t see how it’s any better, but whatever.
5am?? dang, I don’t remember having a specific curfew, but I had to call often and report on my location & who was with me, and past 11 was pretty much off the table unless it was a girls-only sleepover. I spent a lot of time “driving someone home who lives far away so I won’t be around a phone for a while.”
Ahhhhh the sleepover! The sleepover was what helped me skirt the curfew issue entirely. I would go spend the night at my friend Erin’s house, and neglected to tell my parents that she had no curfew at all which meant we could be out doing whatever we liked at all hours.
I didn’t have a curfew in high school, but I didn’t usually stay out too long past when the subways stopped running because night buses are a pain. Sometimes if I went dancing, I would walk home and get home by 3am in high school — but over an hour of that would be just walking home (through perfectly safe streets). My parents and I trusted each other.
the concept of a curfew was pretty much lost on my parents, whose view was generally “no, it’s a school night” or “we’ll pick you up at 9:30. are their parents going to be there?” depending on what day of the week it was.
I remember having a parentally-imposed curfew of maybe…11pm? Unfortunately for my parents’ intentions, I learned that the consequence of breaking curfew was to have my car taken away for the next day, so whenever I had no plans for the car, I felt free to break curfew. (Not that I was doing anything wild. I was probably at Barnes & Noble.)
The legal curfew for 15-17 year-olds where I grew up was 11pm on weekdays, 1am on weekends, but I never heard about anyone getting in trouble for it. I don’t think I knew it existed when I was the relevant age.
Ah God that article about older dudes and teenage girls….that was almost me, and it was a LOT of girls I knew. She is right about desire at 15. It’s like a runaway truck on mountain switchbacks.
I never dated in high school (shy nerd) and I used to regret it, thinking that I missed out on a lot of Life Experience that way. But then I read things like that and you know what, as far as the teenage experience goes, mine wasn’t so bad.
Me too. I think back and I’m glad I didn’t end up dating. I wasn’t ready, and looking back, I either would have winced at how bad/dramatic it got, or known how boring it was. Maybe I would have learned a bit about being who I am and asking for what I want, but I didn’t gain that self-awareness for a long while (*cough*).
And man. I’m so much more equipped to identify bullshit now, as well as end relationships that aren’t working, and I still strongly self-doubt. What would have happened to 17-year-old me? I feel sad to think it.
This Scarleteen article, ‘Why I Deeply Dislike Your Older Boyfriend’, was such a revelation when I first read it: http://www.scarleteen.com/article/abuse_assault/w…
In retrospect, going out with a 20 year old when I was 16 was too large a maturity gap. But I didn’t realise that until I was old enough to know what it was actually like to be 20.
Same same same. In my hometown, the college students would come back for the summer and throw parties where ALL the men were college-aged and ALL the girls were in High School. We, the High School girls, were drawn by the promise of free booze (which is the best argument for lowering the drinking age I have ever experienced), and I ended up dating a 21-year-old when I was 16. It all seemed so normal back then! But the moment I turned 21, I was overcome by the desire to time-travel back to those parties and defend teenage me by swinging a bat around wildly and yelling “STAY AWAY FROM THE CHILDREN!!!”.
i especially like the, “everyone teaches you it’s OK to say no but what if you don’t want to say no???” bit. i didn’t want to say no. i wanted to sex all the things. i was actively pursuing whatever dudes i could find, regardless of age. if someone had taught me about Good Sex instead of just Saying No, i would’ve maybe learned how to have some Good Sex and quit searching relentlessly for it in an endless string of one night stands and short flings. i had no idea what to do to have Good Sex so it was all Lame Bad Sex but i figured i hadn’t found the right guy so i kept trying. aaaaarg! my poor teenage self 🙁
This was my experience in college and my early 20’s though – our sex ed is really godawful. I didn’t even know it wasn’t normal for women not to orgasm every time they have sex until I was 19 or so. I was just super confused that I wasn’t more into it.
I lived in Chicago during that heatwave in a 2nd floor apartment with no AC.Fortunately I had a claw footed bathtub I filled with coolish water each night and would hang out in it while watching TV. It really was horrible though nothing cooled down, the floors remained hot through the night. It is how I learned that cats tolerate heat really well though and discovered the joys of putting ice cubes in their water dishes.
This paragraph from the article about older guys really struck me:
“When I was fifteen, I was exploding with desire. I felt wild and barely contained. There were days when I wanted to fuck so badly I could feel it in my teeth. In the narratives of teen girl sexual awakening I’d encountered at that point, the girl is passive, sought after, acted upon. I didn’t know how to seek out sex with an appropriate partner; all I could do was try to make myself an appealing target. I was told “Wait until you’re ready to have sex.” I was told “It’s okay to say no.” I was never told how badly I would want to say yes, with no one around to say it to. I was never told how to know when I was ready. So I became this shaken-up Coke bottle full of desire, ready to burst if anyone cracked the cap.”
I identify with that so hard.
omg yes this paragraph. I remember feeling torn between haaating catcalls but kinda liking being stared at by men old enough (& smart enough) to know better than to say anything. so gross to think about now, seriously, reading that piece reminded me of so many skeevy flirtations I thought I’d forgotten.
and I gotta wonder how many of those awful awkward feelings would have been dispelled by a quick visit from the vibrator fairy.
Such a good, good paragraph.
don’t say “yes” just because you’re afraid you’re never going to get a better offer. Well there’s me.
I always went out with older guys, and generally hung out with people older than me as a teenager, and I was not into ‘nice’ boys. I really couldn’t get on with anyone my age though, I was always more mature (I thought) than them, I was drinking and smoking at 14, working by 16 and moved out at 17, so dating guys who had cars or their own houses just made sense. Plus it was nice to be treated as a grown up and an equal, not patronized all the time.
I think about the kind of guys I was into then though, oh boy. They seemed so cool! But then I continued growing up and they staying exactly the same, which is why I think they date girls younger than them. Even now though I can’t date guys my own age because they are just useless, seriously, have you met 22-23 year old guys recently? When will they get their shit together!
Teenage girls will probably always be attracted to older guys, they represent adulthood and freedom, and they make you feel good about yourself (at the beginning at least), when you’re a weird looking teenager coming to grips with your body and sexuality, it feels great to have a guy come a long who is sexually confident and takes charge and makes you feel sexy and wanted, teenage boys are awkward and un-confident (and often pretty disrespectful). I suppose girls are told that its only boys that want lots of sex, but that’s just not true, girls aren’t often told ‘its ok to want sex’.
“don’t say “yes” just because you’re afraid you’re never going to get a better offer”
I did this not with sex, but with relationships. Staying in them even when they weren’t working because I was afraid no one better would like me. It’s something I really regret now.
I’ve done that, after being alone for most of my teens, I stuck out a relationship that wasn’t working purely because I didn’t want to be alone and was afraid I wouldn’t have another relationship ever (I haven’t actually, but I’m cool with it)
I also always accepted the other persons terms on the relationship (hence why I never had boyfriends/actual relationship, the boys who wanted me didn’t want a relationship with me) because I was afraid of scaring them off I guess, or that if I insisted I wanted a relationship, they wouldn’t bother with me at all (which did happen a lot). I still kind of do it, I wait around for someone to approach me, and wait for them to dictate the level of the relationship, partly because I never really know if I want a relationship with them or not until they start pushing for it, and also because frankly I’ll take what I can get. I’ve worked through a lot of my issues around confidence and relationships (as a teenager even the thought of a relationship gave me panic attacks), but I’m still not perfect.
At 15 I was kinda the opposite…and worried about it like “other people seem to be really into this whole sex thing and I have like been benched by the coach of teen hormones and am sitting out of the game watching it go by, oh crap am I broken, is going to kick in at some point?” Not denying that what the author says is really powerful, just saying that I had a different sort of experience with that.
Every year or so during annual Christian High School sex chapel (did you guys also experience this Y/N?) I would be like, “ugh do I even need to be here? Let me go.”
What’s a sex chapel??
DAMN It Not like that – How do I not think about these things before I say them.
Once a year at least we would have our usual Friday chapels replaced with ones where they would split up girls and guys and then say things about sex like “there are STDs, STD’s happen to people who have sex, so don’t have sex. Jesus loves abstinence and sex is for marriage” Blah blah. I don’t know what they said to the dudes cause I wasn’t one…hmmm that might be interesting I should ask my brother.
+1 what’s a sex chapel? My imagination cannot be right in this case
Your imagination is the opposite of right in this case.
They were long talks about abstinence and stuff.
Ahh sex chapel! I’d forgotten about that…we had it at Christian university. I was the same, always wishing there was some way to get out of it because hello, asexual.
thank you I knew this was a thing! mmm Christian university I happily ended up at an extremely religious Catholic college but I never had to go to any religion things (unlike those Christian college mandatory chapels) because nothing was mandatory and I was protestant/fading agnostic. Also I ended up just being on the slow boat to libido not asexual – but a similar situation certainly.
Sex Chapel is the day that you walk into weekly Chapel and it is basically a cross between Mean Girls Gym Class (“if you have sex, you will get pregnant, and DIE”) and all the chapel scenes from Saved! with the Jesus hands and altar calls… it’s quite an event and not single person wants to be in that room for that hour.
and everyone finds an empty corner of the ceiling to stare at so they don’t have to make eye contact with other people
except maybe the student chaplains who are totally into it?
Yeah, I spent most of middle and high school wondering what the hell was wrong with me for not being a raging ball of hormones. Was I unknowingly gay? Asexual? Just plain broken? I still feel like I missed out on some fundamental human experience by having a very slow and non-dramatic fade into adult sexuality in my late teens. It ironically caused me a ton of stress (OCD tendencies didn’t help), and it honestly would have been wonderful if someone had just pulled me aside and told me that different people have different sex drives and experiences.
Me too, it’s nice to hear that. And yeah, I was raised fairly loosey-goosey UCC, but so much other “youth Christianity” stuff was about being SO STRONG and VIRTUOUS against sexual temptation, and I mostly felt meh. (Combined in some part with terrible self-esteem, so to some extent it was maintained by not believing anyone would ever be attracted to me, so why think about it. And a truly horrible ob/gyn experience in which I was sharply told that if I didn’t learn to relax, no man would ever even be able to have sex with me.)
Sex Chapel is a way funnier name than anything my youth group ever did, though. 😉
Sex Chapel. A good band name?
hahaha you wrote my comment for me
I was completely bewildered by sex chapel because, like, why is this even a big deal? i… took a really long time to understand that teenagers can have libidos and don’t have sex just because it’s there or they’re coerced into it by someone older or because it’s forbidden like smoking/booze, but do it because they actually desire it. (i still have trouble relating, though, as I’m asexual – I didn’t know the word until I was 20) all the abstinence stuff was a joke to me, it seemed waaay overblown and exaggerated the issue. i also thought it was dumb to insist on abstinence in the first place, sex isn’t some major crime (well, outside of actual sex crimes), and contraception exists. I maybe wasn’t the best catholic student.
but i did write in my Religion class journal once that i was afraid i was broken because i had zero interest in marrying or sex or anything and did that mean i was a sinner? did i have to become a nun to make it better? (my teacher reassured me that even though one of the seven great sacraments is marriage (or being ordained, I guess), someone isn’t lesser for not taking it. but he wasn’t exactly the most…Papish…religious instructor I had in school, probably because he quit seminary to experience the world and that made him a bit liberal)
I’m glad it’s not just me who had that sort of teenage experience! I didn’t feel like there was something wrong with me, exactly, but I didn’t really experience much of that typical “teenage” stuff – I didn’t have many friends, and I didn’t want to get drunk or do drugs or go partying, and I had no interest in sex/relationships with the people in my life (fictional characters were much more appealing). I just stayed in and did my homework and read books and talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the internet. (Then I went to university and met my current boyfriend, and have now been in a monogamous relationship for six years.) That sort of stuff just wasn’t on my radar.
YES thank you I came here to post exactly that paragraph. NO ONE TOLD ME! I was extraordinarily repressed growing up thanks to religion (True Love Waits program grad here, that’s’a me!) and no one ever told me how bad I would want it. Luckily I have a pretty decent internal compass and was able to justify – ahem – taking care of matters myself, to relieve the tension without needing to involve other people. Which is good, because basically everyone I wanted to date in high school was utter crap. I didn’t have my first kiss until near the end of senior year and I am honestly glad of that now.
ALTHOUGH: who gives a 15-year-old a 5am curfew??!?
eurgh, I had a pretty liberal, informative, & secular sex ed thing in high school, and it STILL left me with the impression that sex was something girls only wanted to do because boys pressured them into it. At least the drugs half of the curriculum got across why people think they’re fun.
Same here. The prevailing message my (male) class got was that girls never get horny, and that it was a bad and selfish thing to want to have sex with them. On the one hand, I suppose it was a good thing to tell us that it’s never right to pressure someone to have sex, but on the other, it led to a warped sense of how sex and relationships work, to the point it painted it all as an adversarial thing, and where the best scenario any guy could hope for was that a girl would respond to a sexual advance with something like, “Alright, fine, I guess we can do it, if it’s that important to you.” Now that I think about it, sex ed at my school wasn’t particularly liberal (thought they did at least tell us what condoms were and where we could get them).
In my Catholic SexEd through church the lady pretty much said that if a girl agreed to sex she was probably ovulating. In my Catholic SexEd through HS the lady pretty much said that girls have a sex drive just like boys do and it’s stupid to pretend girls don’t. In both cases the ladies were married women with at least 6 children. I really liked the HS sex lady and I liked the church SexEd lady when she was fighting for girl alter servers to be allowed in our diocese, less so when she talked about sex.
That curfew was the only thing I got out of this whole thing and it is making me feel extremely sheltered and prudish. I mean, I guess I am/was, but seriously…why even bother with a curfew at all if you’re ok with your teenager be out till the next morning???
Heh, I remember when I was 17 and my mom asked me if my boyfriend (also 17) was pressuring me to have sex. In complete honesty, I told her nope, not at all.
Reading this, I am so, so grateful for my high school boyfriend and how kind, respectful, curious, and non-judgmental he was. I’m friends with him on Facebook and sometimes I wonder if it’d be weird to write him and just say thanks for not fucking me up. But then I remember he married a woman with my same first name and I get weirded out about that and decide not to.
Good on him! I lolled at myself b/c I looked at your username and was like ‘interesting that he found two women called Ethel, that’s a pretty old-school name’.
I’m cackling!
I’m friends with the guy I dated at 17 and even though my parents haaaaaated him, I have to say the best thing he ever did was turn me down when I said I wanted to sleep with him. He knew he was planning on breaking up with me and did not take the chance to sleep with me before doing so. Adult males would not get cookies for this, but a horny teenager? Yeah, I’m gonna give him a couple of cookies.
(Whoops, this went to the wrong place!)
Yes, this was totally me. I wanted to have sex so badly, but I knew I wasn’t supposed to express that I wanted it, because nowhere was it ever acknowledged that the girl might be active, not passive in her desire. And I assumed that all boys wanted to have sex all the time, and the only reason a boy would say that he didn’t would be because he was trying to be a nice guy who didn’t pressure girls. This lead to many miscommunications between me and my boyfriend, both of us saying one thing and meaning another and trying to read into what the other was saying. I wish I’d learned sooner how to say what I wanted and didn’t want. No wonder boys learn that no doesn’t necessarily mean no, and girls learn that it’s their fault even if they did say no.
I *still* have this instinctive assumption all men want to have sex all the time (even though I know it’s not true). I realized a little while ago that while a big part of this is my personal hang-ups about myself and other things, this assumption that all men want sex all the time with almost anyone makes it really difficult to believe any of their desire is really about me as a person. Oof.
It fucks you up, doesn’t it? As an adult I was still fighting against it. The first time my boyfriend was too tired to have sex I took it extremely personally, because if guys want to have sex all the time, what had to be wrong with me that he didn’t want to have sex with me right then? I was really hurt and that lead to some behaviour that I would not at all condone in light of what I have learned about consent since then. It seems silly to have believed that now, but I’ve done a lot of unlearning since then.
“It fucks you up, doesn’t it?”
Ugh. YES. Whenever a man tells me he finds me sexy, I’m like, “Nah, you’re just being a dude. I could be any woman!” Which, man, typing that out … is not flattering to anyone.
Yet, conversely, I also had reactions like you … I also took that kind of “no thanks” — “rejection” or “refusal” are both way too strong — really personally. To a much lesser extent now, I think, but the feeling lingers. This is all unhealthy.
I feel like it probably also shames men with sex drives that are anything but the “three times a day, thinking of sex every seven seconds” variety.
YES THIS.
God. It’s awful. I’ve always had a really high sex drive, and it’s been messy sometimes. I remember once saying to my uni-boyfriend ‘once a day is not. Enough’. I still remember the look of horror on his face but IT WASN’T ENOUGH. And now somehow I don’t have a really high sex drive and that’s confusing and messy in a different way, and it really makes me sad how much of my self identity is tied up in having a high sex drive/being available to my partner basically always/pretty much being ‘the cool girlfriend’. My brain knows all that is bullshit, but you know…
I had a pretty excellent, non-emotionally-manipulative, factual sex education. I do wish there’d been more discussion and emphasis of ‘you will want to do this because it feels good and be aware that this will tempt you to make some maybe not-good decisions’. I mean we got the ‘use a condom’ stuff but not much emotional stuff.
Apparently there is an upsettingly high accidental pregnancy rate amongst people with autism, specifically because they get the sex ed, go ‘ew that sound gross’ (I mean… it’s pretty gross, objectively) and check out of the rest of teh discussion. No one ever tells them it will feel good and they will want to do it (or I guess they don’t listen is also an option), and so they’re not prepared. Same with queer uterus-having people – lots of us assume they don’t need to know that info because they are only into other uterus-having-people and then there is an exception and… whoops!
I guess it’s too much to ask our cultures to rationally consider female pleasure as part of the equation. But man. It’d be NICE.
Is anyone else following the Gawker meltdown with eye-rolling disgust?
http://gawker.com/tommy-craggs-and-max-read-are-r…
To be clear, my disgust is at the sanctimonious and self-pitying departure letters about “INTEGRITY!!!!!” Like. You outed a private person and then threw a temper tantrum when the adults stepped in to try and fix the situation. Guys, I’m so glad the Toast is here and I’m no longer dependent on any of the Gawker media properties for entertainment.
Yeah, they’re trying to make it all about process, and no one outside the hothouse Gawker bubble is paying the slightest bit of attention to that, and they don’t seem to get it/care. Editorial independence to do what, guys? I’m sure they’re very sincere about their process complaints, but I also suspect that some part of this is that they felt humiliated to be overruled.
Meanwhile, even friends of the Toast like Jia are making this about what this whole thing means for how Gawker employees feel about working for Gawker.
There are a lot of really talented, smart writers working at a lot of Gawker properties who are absolutely shitting the bed on this, and it’s been really disappointing.
I really want them to explain how this is unethical of business to override the editors. This isn’t Buzzfeed taking down a piece critical of Dove because Dove is an advertiser (funnily enough, reported on by Gawker and why I do sometimes like their reporting!). That is a clear breach. I feel like I must be missing something, but so many smart people outside of Gawker are on the same page.
I think they think that this breach opens the door to a crass commercial breach like the Dove thing? So it’s a basic slippery slope concern. Could even be right, but what they’re not getting is that if Gawker’s journalistic integrity has been fatally compromised by the business decision to take down the post, it’s the editorial staff’s fault for abandoning any editorial judgment and creating a big, indefensible problem for the parent company.
The Gawker folks chiming in on this are either totally unwilling to discuss editorial/journalistic judgment or want to acknowledge the failures in an aside and rush straight on to griping about the takedown decision. They are missing that for most everyone outside Gawker, the failure of editorial and journalistic judgment is the most interesting and reprehensible aspect of this.
so in their minds business/ management should never have any say in editorial decisions no matter how questionable? I mean I guess that could be the way to go, but isn’t the response then to fire the editors and get editors with better judgement? Which basically seems to be what is happening.
I read that earlier, with absolutely no context because I’m not a regular Gawker media reader. It all seems a bit baffling and high school somehow. Although one thing that stuck out was the email forwarded by Jessica Coen at the end of the article – is that Nick Denton saying that, as a ‘truth absolutist’ he thinks it’s totally ok (and encouraged) to out people even if they don’t want to be out?
Because he sounds like a douche.
Oh I checked twitter and Nick Denton has…clarified:
“@jessicacoen Okay, let me clarify: “Don’t out someone who doesn’t want to be out — unless there is a worthwhile story there.””
https://twitter.com/nicknotned/status/62326555488…
Well THAT’s fine then – that makes it all better!
They’ve outed people before, but I think that the rubric has been “if person is a public/religious figure who has made anti-gay statements/is a politician who has cast a vote against LGBTQA+ rights, then it is hypocrisy and they should be outed.” Arguments can be made against THAT standard too. But even that rule of thumb didn’t apply here. There’s no apparent record that the man who was outed ever spoke out against or harmed the LGBT community, and he’s not a lawmaker or religious leader, he’s a finance guy with a good job and a family and a famous brother. (The people shouting for the sex worker to be outed can shut it too, as far as I’m concerned. It sounds like the sex worker tried to engage in blackmail, but until there is an actual arrest and court record, that’s a matter for the police, not gossip sites.)
it was such a terrible article! what a hill to die on. Outed a private person, effectively outed a sex worker and just in general it was clearly not in the public interest.
I also don’t understand why they’re yelling about the “indefensible breach” of the firewall between the Suits and editorial staff, when they were all too eager to blackmail a Suit at Gawker’s biggest competitor in the first place.
Someone on twitter (or maybe here?) made a comment which pretty much summarizes my feelings on this whole goddamn debacle: this is why high school newspapers have faculty editors.
I went to journalism school, even though I don’t work in media now, and I have been salivating/eye-rolling over this story since it broke. I think it’s fascinating, and also, my ethics prof would have absolutely crucified me if I wrote or edited such a deplorable story and tried making the excuses that the Gawkers are making today.
I emailed her a catch-up note yesterday letting her know how much I valued her.
Yes! The information about how accurate/inaccurate the article was has dried up* but even with that it seems there is reason to believe that there was Bad Journalisming going on. I’m not sure it was covered in my Media Ethics class but I’m pretty sure that “don’t do a blackmailer’s work for him” is one of the major reporting guidelines.
*I want the whole thing to have been an anti-Gawker hoax because I’m not a nice person who loves reading about the crazy. I would love more for them to have never posted the dumb thing though, but if that’s not an option I want the full bonkers monty.
Apparently we should stop making 5 year plans, anyone? http://lifehacker.com/be-flexible-rather-than-hav…
I’m a strong believer in 5 year plans, but I kind of understand what they’re getting at, and I think its something I already do; I don’t make hard plans of exactly what I’m going to do, but I do sit down and think what would I like to be doing, and what are the likely steps to get there. and then as each opportunity comes my way, I compare it to my goals/plan and see if it lines up with the kind of things I want to be doing.
Last year sort of marked the end of my 5 year master plan to get a career/life together, so now I’m just coasting a little bit with a rough idea of the kind of things I want, but not much of an actual plan. Ho hum, its such a hard life I have;.
I think instead of making ONE five year plan, you should always make SEVEN five year plans — three contingency five-year plans for the three things most likely to go wrong in the first five year plan, and then another contingency for each of the contingency plans.
“Chance favors the prepared mind.” — Eric Bogosian’s character in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.
That’s just tempting fate with my anxiety. Give it a month and you’ll find me in a bunker somewhere buried under 5 year plans.
I get analysis paralysis pretty bad, so I prefer to just set a large goal, then mini-goals that feed into that larger goal, and any options that come up are weighed against the goals to see if it the right way to go (and if that fails, eeny meany miney mo always does the trick)
Ugh, no. Failing to plan etc. Obviously be flexible, but this smells like Agile, and I am allergic to that shit right now. Not having a plan is how you drift from thing to thing for years and sorta fall into stuff and then wake up and realize life is passing you by. (Not that I know anything about that, why would you say that, no etc.)
As usually people tend to go to extremes (Lifehacker is a bit of a drag that way, they simplify things too much and make it seem like this is the only way)
I think being flexible =/= don’t make a plan. I tried to explain this to a BF once, but he was having none of it, his ‘life plan’ was ‘I’ll see what comes along’, you can imagine what he’s up to now. You have to at least set a target, maybe the target will change as you go along, but at least it gives you an idea of what your doing and something to work towards, and once you start working towards something, often you’ll find that other opportunities come along that suit you better (I wasn’t working towards a corporate job when I started college, but then it became clear that it was something I should do and the opportunities started presenting themselves)
I can’t imagine trying to run a business in this supposedly ‘Agile’ way, you’d never make any money! If you look at the source article its actually about small businesses being adaptable to market opportunities that have become apparent, not having no plan at all!
Speaking of Agile, do you have anything specific against it? I’ve never used it (agency based means rigid waterfall process), but there are elements of it that interest me and could be useful
ALLOW ME TO WRITE YOU A NOVEL.
No, I’ll try to keep it brief. I think that Agile was an understandable reaction against waterfall, but taken to an extreme, you end up with a situation where you’re constantly in a sprint and you don’t take enough time to plan things that do actually need to be thought out, and then you end up with code architecture that doesn’t follow any of the good rules that we’ve come up with to make programs make sense and you burn out talented, intelligent people and turn off people who want to have a work-life balance.
The good parts are pretty obvious – I have never taken a first draft to a client and heard, “Perfect, we’ll take it!” Getting feedback quickly, iterating rapidly, testing your assumptions constantly – that’s all good stuff. But you also need people who can take a longer view, and people who want to do it right the first time, and the places I’ve seen and been that whole-heartedly embraced Agile tend to select against those types of people. (And I am definitely not one of those people, I’m more of a hack-it-and-ship-it person, but I have worked with enough of them to realize the value they bring to the table.) Agile is awesome for a project where the deadline is three weeks and it needs to get done and you’re ok with some problems that you can solve after launch. Agile is terrible for a project where the deadline is 9 months and your security needs to be rock solid and your bug count needs to be approaching zero.
Thanks for this! Its interesting to hear from your perspective, I’ve never worked agile and I’ve only ever heard ‘OMG its amazing!’
Is it just me, but I have a stereotype in my head of a Silicon Valley Dudebro, and they are always the ones who take things to extremes! ‘Heres a good idea, lets only use this forever and not accept any other ideas until this one fails.’
I just do websites so we tend to only work towards one massive GO LIVE DAY (Which gets pushed for months…), but I am keen to bring some agile elements into our processes, like getting a beta version in-front of the client at the earliest possible opportunity, because for some reason our clients are always surprised when they see the actual site with their content in it, that it looks different from the flat jpegs full of placeholder that we showed them months before (We’ve literally had ‘but the pictures are different’), and our clients have trouble visualizing the webpage based on the wireframes and designs that we show them, so they get their own ideas of how the webpage will work -_-
We’re currently in a ‘disagreement’ with creative, because they always design sites that take longer to build than the number of days agreed in the budget, but since we’re waterfall the budgets are always agreed and signed off before strategy and creative. I think we (the digital team) are all in agreement that this is creatives fault, and we can’t move to an agile approach here because the client’s head would explode (Yes Mr client, we can build you a website, but we won’t tell you how much its going to cost until we’ve done 3 months of strategy and design that you then have to pay for.)
It’s 1000% an SV bro thing to be all Agile, all the time. I think the beta idea is great, and we try to do that for everything. Some Agile stuff does seem like it would help you a lot. You hear about it less from the programmer dudes who think that designers are worthless, but a lot of the actual Agile books, and the people I learned it from, focused on interdisciplinary meetings. I think way too few businesses do that, and that sounds like it would help with some of your issues; get some devs in the room with the creatives while they design and maybe you could iron out some of those issues with over design, plus it builds some good will between departments.
get some devs in the room with the creatives while they design and maybe you could iron out some of those issues with over design, plus it builds some good will between departments.
HAHAHAHAHAHA. If only. We got a new head of digital design recently, and it is getting better, the designers are getting better at walking over to the dev team (we work 30ft apart.). But most of the creative department are print designers, and the whole team is run by a print designer, on print design principals, so yeah, we run into issues occasionally. One day we might get our own designer who just plays with us and everyone else can fuck off #dreaming
Ohhh. That sucks, I’m sorry.
Actually, when I worked Agile (Scrum) one of the worst things was the amount of meetings. Planning meeting every sprint, Review, Retrospective, backlog grooming, and all the daily standups? Most of these meetings would have been better accomplished with people focusing on their own subsets of the project. I needed to have some idea what people are doing on Feature X, but I’m on Feature Y and you don’t necessarily need my input. The process requirements sometimes got really overwhelming. I think some of it is great: definitely the focus on demos and prototyping, but it could get really nonsensical. I’ve never really worked somewhere that does waterfall though.
The only thing I know about Agile is how much I hate the word “scrum.”
I’m a rugby fan, so all scrum makes me think of is big guys pushing against eachother, so maybe not what you want in a collaborative team?
I mean, it’s pretty much what we ended up with at least on one of my teams…
It just makes me think of Monkey Island
I totally agree with you, but I reeeeeeeeeally want someone to ask me about my 5 Year Plan within the next 5 months… so I can reply, “I don’t know, I don’t have 2020 vision” and magically someone will hit a snare drum in the far off distance.
I only ask for simple things here, people.
Or you could follow it up with the lowered sunglasses and a “YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAH”.
Toasts, I saw Ant-Man last night and… it wasn’t terrible? It was actually pretty… good? It was definitely better than Age of Ultron in my opinion. The Big Bad was absurd and hard to take seriously, but there was a lot about it that I liked. I find Paul Rudd charming, and that goes a long way, so ymmv, but I was pleasantly surprised!
I have heard a lot of the same, “hey, yeah, it wasn’t so bad!” opinions about it, but am still def. disappointed that we’ll never see the full-bore Edgar Wright version that I wanted.
I actually thought it was great! It was much lighter and more fun than some of the recent Marvel movies, IMO – sometimes the stakes feel like they’re getting so heavy and huge and in this one, it felt like just a fun, clean, straight-ahead story.
Yeah, I would think that the Avengers sequels have the burden of too high expectations to really succeed.
I really liked it! Though…. I may not be the most reliable judge because I will watch anything that has Paul Rudd in it, no matter how terrible it looks.
Was Paul Rudd included in the dogs magically turned into celebrities post? Because he definitely is. I’d say…a very chill black Lab?
Paul Rudd is basically the only person I will accept in the role of ‘Hapless Schlub’
Aww nooo I’ve used up my free New Yorker articles for the month! 🙁 I wanna read about anti-gentrification ghosts!
emailed u
<3 <3 <3 <3
Sames 🙁 🙁 🙁
psssst you can use incognito/private browsing to skirt this too…but you didn’t hear it from me!
Toasties. Yesterday afternoon I was at a loose end, so I had a very strong cocktail and toddled off to see Magic Mike. It was . . . incredible. Truly, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of The Lord.*
*who is a woman according to Channing Tatum (also yesss Channing get on your knees for Jada)
I saw Magic Mike XXL this past weekend with a female friend and my husband. It was amazing and may be my new favorite movie ever.
God dang it, I *have* to get my act together and finally see this movie.
If you live in NYC, I will be your date! Much like Fury Road, I think MMXXL is going to be one of those movies where I’ll have to (“have to”) see it a million times so that all of my friends can bask in its glory as well.
I saw it on Friday and have not stopped thinking about it. A friend was staying with me and we saw it together and literally talked about it every hour or so for the rest of her trip.
My plans for next weekend are as follows: take girls from work, get tipsy, see MMXXL. That is literally all I want to do next weekend and I would be happy to do it 4 or 5 times.
I saw it two weeks ago and the people I saw it with wanted to see it again this week. I turned them down and now i am regretting it. I can’t stop thinking about it.
Instead, this last weekend I just recounted my favourite bits, aka the whole movie, to my boyfriend. Who was very nice about it.
oh man, the ghosts story references a NY Supreme Court case where an owner knowingly sold a haunted house, and the court ruled in favor of the buyer because the haunting wasn’t disclosed! it’s great, how have I never heard of this?!
Fascinating! In Minnesota it’s actually illegal for a realtor to disclose whether a house is haunted. (Well, specifically to disclose that there have been deaths in the house, but how ELSE are you gonna get a haunting?) It’s really frustrating for my mum, who’s a realtor who works with a lot of Hmong clients, and apparently in Hmong tradition you Absolutely Cannot live in a house after someone has died there. Which leads to my mom essentially going, “No trust me, this house actually isn’t a good fit for you but I can’t disclose why.”
Oh wow. I know that New York landlords have to disclose if there have been bedbugs in the building (ICK ICK ICK), but I’m now wondering if there are any laws on the books for ghosts.
I haven’t really been able to find a comprehensive state-by-state roundup of laws, but I did find this delightful article on Realtor.com that gives tips on how to sell a haunted house. One of those tips is legitimately to bring in an exorcist
http://www.realtor.com/advice/4-tips-selling-haun…
I am looking forward to the upcoming episode of Pretty Little Liars in which the girls read Lindsay King-Miller’s piece and start to ask serious questions about the adult men in their town…
OH MY LORD I ALSO THOUGHT OF PLL. I don’t actually watch it, but I’m addicted to the Snark Squad recaps of it (and of…everything, really, they are my other favorite internet place) and they talk about the Pedolationships on that show all the time. It is disgusting!
Thank you for introducing me to the Snark Squad! There are Charmed recaps! That’s my weekend plans sorted because, of course, I have to rewatch the episodes so they’re fresh in my mind, right?
I mean, only you are the boss of you, but probably yes, you totally should. Also, YAY. I love bringing my internet loves together! I got started there with the 50 shades of grey recaps (which, only read them if you have the emotional energy to feel CONSTANT RAGE, but I’m so grateful to them because now I can actually explain to people why those books are terrible abuse excusing bad message nonsense without having to actually read it. Also, they are hilarious), but then they started doing BUFFY and I was doomed.
Sometimes, at work, when I want to be watching some buffy to soothe a bad mood but can’t (cause work) I reread the recaps. No shame!
Yup, IMMEDIATELY thought of PLL too.
YASSSS truly The Toast is a hive mind
Toasties, I thought I fixed the issue of Chrome auto-playing ads and forcing them into view on this site (so I can’t like, read the full article without having to hit pause and then scroll back up and then probably do it several times over while scrolling through the comments) but it’s happening again today. Anyone know how to get it to stop?
I have this issue in Chrome, too. I usually just turn on adblock for the page in question, finish reading, and then turn adblock back off. It’s not an elegant solution and I always feel bad if I forget to turn adblock back off after….
thanks!
Ghostery/uBlock combination. I don’t like doing it, but when I turn those off, Ghostery is registering 125 scripts on the page. Turn them back on and the page loads 50 times faster and you get none of the cruft.
thanks!
I have my browsers set up to not autoplay flash- if it wants to do flash, it asks permission, and I say no on the-toast. It’s fixed all sorts of ad issues (like the ones where i try clicking on something and instead it takes me to the ad link) as well as the misthreading comment issue.
That’s how I tried to fix it the first time, by changing my settings not to autoplay flash. Not sure why it’s not working now.
boooooooooooooooooooooooo technology.
I know i had to recently update flash. is it possible that you had to as well, and that a setting reverted during that process?
(yes, this is “stab in the dark” tech troubleshooting mode now)
ETA– doing as others suggested and adding things like adblock/etc are probably the more effective way to go, but my work computer doesn’t give me the permissions to do that sort of thing. so i offer this on the off chance others are in my position as well.
ha! that must be it. fixed. huzzah for stab in the dark troubleshooting and thank you!
I live in the same neighborhood as the supposedly haunted building and have walked past it once or twice. It does not look at all spooky, but I guess you can never tell.
Ugh, no, True Detective has just become such a beautiful disaster I can’t look away. Blue balls in my heart.
we fell an episode behind and i am absolutely delighted that i get 2 hours of train wreck this weekend.
Oof, that article about older dudes dating younger girls got me hard. I wasn’t actually a teenager, but when I had just started college I had…a lot of bad things happen to me, most of which involved older men, many of whom I met at Rocky Horror. It sucks because I love RHPS in so many ways- the camp, the friendly, free-wheeling atmosphere, the oceans of queerness. But like all permissive environments, it’s also a super convenient place for predators to hang out and prey on all the ittle baby weirdos who don’t understand relationships or consent yet.
I don’t want to take away from your experience, and it sounds like what happened was truely shit and I’m sorry you had to go through that
but:
that article about older dudes dating younger girls got me hard THAT’S WHAT HE SAID. (and he sounds like an awful creeper) ;D
Same reaction here — my eyes went quite wide, wondering if our lovely mods had yet to screen this.
When I saw this, I went to find the original comment to make sure it was okay, and then giggled a whole bunch.
HAHAHAHAHA. Oh man. I cannot BELIEVE I missed that. I guess hit me hard would have been better, huh?
And never feel bad about pointing out things like that! I am the queen of that’s what s/he said jokes, and I just got a good chuckle out of this one when you pointed it out, so I’m glad I made the typo! Bad jokes for all!
Just jumping in to say that my peer group usually replaces “that’s what s/he said” with “sounds like my first time!,” usually to hilarious effect, but your first comment is probably the one place where the “first time” version wouldn’t have been funnier.
I read that first sentence about Rocky Horror and sent the article to one of my best friends/my ex, because he was into Rocky Horror when he was a teen, and he has some bizarre crazy insane sex-related stories that stem from Rocky Horror. If I had a kid and they wanted to join a Rocky cast I would have a looong talk with them about sex, relationships, drugs, etc. before letting them join. (I also am sure that not every RH cast is like that, but I have heard so many stories from so many people that I have to believe it’s not uncommon.)
Exhibit 2 in this proceeding: my time in the SCA. Thankfully I only had one experience myself, but I know there was a lot of predation (sometimes underage drinking, too, which here meant teenagers) and in fact I and my friends essentially left because nothing was being done about it.
Late today – car trouble!
Hey, what color is Rachel Dolezal?
Is she black or white?
Is she a racial co-opting weasel,
or does she have the right
To join whatever culture club
the US has to offer?
And does it matter, there’s the rub
whatever race she proffers?
Is she deluded, is it a scam
Can she be de-blacked?
I tell you I am confused ma’am
with how I should react.
At least right now the problem seems
to be quite localized
when more people start switching teams
don’t act too surprised.
A cabdriver dropped one resident off with a warning: “Be careful. It’s full of skeletons.”
I want to live in this building so bad. ‘Good neighborhood, convenient shopping, central A/C, full of skeletons.’
Janine Melnitz is not her real name; her roommate had demanded that she conceal it. “She doesn’t want them to come after us,” Melnitz said. She meant the ghosts.
This delights me also. Vengeful spirits get all their information from The New Yorker. They’re just sitting around in the netherworld, and then one spectre happens to read the article and spit-takes ectoplasmic coffee all over the ethereal plane. “Hey, that woman in 15-A is badmouthing us in the press! Let’s go poltergeist the hell out of her china closet.”
technically ALL apartment buildings are full of skeletons
“technically ALL apartment buildings are full of skeletons”
I cannot stop laughing about this send help.
Wait, if someone doesn’t want to give a journalist their name, the journalist can just name them after a Ghostbusters character? Why don’t they do this for all stories? “The Administration account was disputed by Egon Spengler, a high-ranking Pentagon official.”
Holy shit I did not even notice that she was named after THAT Janine. That’s beautiful.
I had not put this together. When I read your comment I snort-laughed and diet dr pepper went up my nose.
That is what I want to do when I am a ghost, because I will retain my highbrow taste even after I have left this plane.
The mental picture of ghosts hanging around reading the New Yorker sounds almost like it could be a New Yorker cartoon. Meta-ghostery.
I guess when you’re dead you finally have time to get through the stack of New Yorkers that’s been on the coffee table for a year.
Woohoo! It’s sounding better and better.
The anti-gentrification ghosts were a story on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me! I got it wrong (didn’t pick it as the real story), because I thought that a lot of the hipster-ish people I knew in New York would LOVE telling people their building was haunted.
That anti-gentrification ghosts story is fascinating, and makes me want to write an actual ghost story about Brooklyn and gentrification. Only I wouldn’t use “former hospital converted into apartments” as a premise, because that’s almost as much of a cliche as “house built on a burial ground.”
Related to ghosts – my wife works at a high school, and this morning she sent me this creepy security report from the other night:
(Finally got this to work!)
I highly recommend that everyone has a younger sister who is Asexual. A+ would recommend, v relaxing (mostly)
Yes, I think the question of difference is far more important at the beginning or in something short-term. Just today I saw a write-up of an article which said that couples who are more different in physical attractiveness tend to have been friends first. So once you know someone for a while (platonically in this case) the differences between you dissolve, and you are equally likely to find lasting love with them. So maybe finding someone who could be your twin might work in the short term, but doesn't make you happier in the long-term?
(The article is described here https://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/ne…