I sure hope you’ve already read Friend of The Toast Ezekiel Kweku’s piece about the police:
If stopped by the police, I thought to myself, I would set my phone to record audio and put it on the passenger seat. I would send a tweet that I was being stopped and had every intention of complying with the police officer. I would turn on Periscope and livestream the stop, crowdsourcing witnesses. I would text my family and tell them that I was not feeling angry or suicidal, that I was looking forward to seeing them soon. There would not be time to do all of these things, but maybe if I prepared in advance I could pull off one or two of them. What all of these plans had in common were that none of them were meant to secure my safety, but rather to ensure that my death looked suspicious enough to question.
I was figuring out how to enter evidence into the inquiry of my own death.
*
Ella’s Tall Man on the process of going to a fertility clinic to preserve his chance at giving Ella some science babies after he kicks it (I have been clear with him that I want him to have lots of almost-dying incidents to up the pageviews for Ella’s series before a miraculous recovery in time for the December ad-buys, and he is going to try to accommodate us):
…and yet. However anti-breeding I feel as I type this, it seems futile not to acknowledge that something as lifechanging as a cancer diagnosis has the potential to alter your opinions not just now but down the line. I cannot imagine ever wanting kids – not least because if I survive this palaver I intend to live, devoted entirely to my own pleasure, in a castle made of roughly-hewn Turkish delight – but if Future John develops incorrect opinions about fatherhood then he must be left to deal with them as best he can.
The other great thing about getting ahead of yourself re: production, of course, is that you can basically palm off (ahaha) the decisions onto someone else. If I turn out to be dead by Christmas but I’ve taken the appropriate steps to safeguard my legacy, Ella can always conceive and raise my not-even-technically-fatherless child; possibly in the manner popularised by the horrendous film Clone (formerly Womb), in which Eva Green plays an absolute monster who clones her dying boyfriend (Matt Smith, for some reason) and raises him as her son. (I spent six solid hours editing a review of Clone (formerly Womb) in 2012, and I feel like it owes me something. If I want to superimpose its dreadful plot onto the lives of those I leave behind, I damn well will.)
*
You may now tear into shreds this pathetic, douchey little man for my amusement. (Smiles beatifically, leans back in her chair.)
*
I was on a gym hiatus because my baby was no longer little enough to be happy at the gym, but now I’m baaaack and went with my bestie yesterday, this workout was great:
*
Laura Ortberg Turner, on anxiety:
Anxiety is a small man who wants to have tea with you while you work, and you tell him not now and please come again later, and he says okay!, and then he comes back in twelve seconds and says, now?
Anxiety is a schoolkid who rings your doorbell at precise, seven-second intervals so that you can never quite settle into your writing chair and your dog keeps barking and your heart is on alert.
*
Steve Silberman’s new book is great, and so is Elon’s thing about it:
But the damage done by Kanner, intentionally or otherwise, is inescapable. For far too long he perpetuated ideas about autistic children that were simply not true. And for too long no one was the wiser. “By burying Asperger in history, Kanner obscured the breadth and diversity of the spectrum,” said Silberman. This, in turn, meant “many children who would have been eligible for a diagnosis under Asperger’s more expansive model of autism were left to struggle along on their own in a world not made for them.”
*
Here is a picture of my friend Carrie’s new puppy (my husband and I have decided that we will agonizingly wait until spring and then get a new dog – we are on like a two-year waiting list for an experimentally long-lived direwolf creation bc Big Dogs Who Live Forever is the dream but we’re going to crack and just get some hard-luck shelter mutt like always):
*
This is one of the first interviews with Stephen Colbert that I feel really digs into the question of his faith a little more deeply, like he has some THEOLOGICALLY COMPLEX shit to say here:
He was 35, he said, before he could really feel the truth of that. He was walking down the street, and it “stopped me dead. I went, ‘Oh, I’m grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.’ I felt so guilty to be grateful. But I knew it was true.
“It’s not the same thing as wanting it to have happened,” he said. “But you can’t change everything about the world. You certainly can’t change things that have already happened.”
*
This true crime story is almost unimaginably difficult to read, but I had to keep going because a) it’s very good, and b) I HAD to know if they found out who did it and if he’s in prison now (THEY DID, HE IS, FUCK THAT GUY, RIP JO, MICHELLE, AND CHRISTE. He’s actually on death row, but I do not support the death penalty, and want him to just be miserable.)
*
I’m currently interviewing Liam for the site, he does a lot of great work smacking down this (incorrect, ridic) statement:
Experiment. If you are African American and have endured “the Irish were slaves too!” retort when discussing racism or slavery, please RT.
— Liam Hogan (@Limerick1914) August 16, 2015
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
I’m so excited you’re interviewing Liam! His work is so interesting and accessible, and he’s great on Twitter. Irish Twitter can be unbearably parochial; Liam’s contribution puts issues in historical and international contexts. And yes, the ‘Irish slaves’ cohort can go take a running jump.
So my mother sang us songs of Irish rebellion as lullabies, I was definitely raised to know about the oppression of my Irish and Catholic ancestors both in Ireland and here in the US. But, um, the point she was making is that systemic oppression has long-lasting effects on people and it’s a process to unravel it over generations after the laws are changed.
I don’t see how you can possibly ever, under any circumstances say “my people were oppressed and we still suffer for it but you people who were also oppressed, your oppression totally ended the day Lee surrendered at Appatomattox.” IF ANYONE SHOULD SYMPATHIZE WE SHOULD
Exactly. This. I was looking for how to phrase this correctly, but you did it. I was raised in an Irish-Catholic Midwestern family that started with people who fled the famine and who watched as their relatives were starved to death back in Ireland, who hated the British on a genetic level for what they did, and that inspired them to be, to steal an Orwell line describing Dickens, on the side of the underdog, always and everywhere. That’s the foundational creed: “People kicked us while we were down, so it’s our job to help anybody else who’s getting kicked when they’re down. (Plus, it gives us a chance to morally one-up the English.)”
EXACTLY. I was raised to understand, not that “No Irish Need Apply” and waterfountains labeled “White” and “Colored’ were equivalent pains, but that they were similar cruelties, and having suffered one should make you more sympathetic to someone who suffers the other (and worse). I will never understand people who think their own ancestral suffering trumps someone else’s current lived oppression.
It especially annoys me because I’ve heard that kind of thing in Great Lakes cities where Irish-Americans run basically *every* major institution– e.g., City Hall, courts, school boards, banks, police and fire departments, etc.
When I lived in Cleveland, particularly, it was to the ridiculous point where people running for municipal judge were literally changing their names to sound more Irish on the ballot.
I just want to shake those people and tell them, You ARE the establishment now, get over it and have some empathy for other people .
My Great-aunt used to complain about “those dirty English sparrows” but she gave them breadcrumbs anyway.
One picture of that puppy every day, from now until forever. Please and thank you.
Color me unsurprised that yet another dude associated with Mugglenet has turned out to be a garbage human.
I don’t know anything about the Mugglenet, but if it’s in fact full of garbage humans, the name seems… painfully ironic?
Which other one turned out to be garbage?
I have vague memories of interactions with one of them (or someone who claimed to be one of them, anyway) when I was younger, but I can’t remember which, unfortunately.
I seem to remember an article not too long ago about how Emerson grew up to be The Worst.
EMERSON. I’m pretty sure that’s the one I interacted with back in the day. Or someone pretending to be him, anyway. He had a mugglenet email and asked me to make some graphics and banners for the site, then disappeared without paying/compensating me after I’d made them. I always assumed it was someone pretending to be him, tbh. This was like 8 years ago.
IT’S EMERSON, EMERSON IS THE WORST.
God, I love when Toast comments turn to the HP fandom. I can relive my “lurking on fandom_wank” days, it’s fantastic.
Memories, right? Haha. Gosh, I used to be so big into the HP fandom, back when it was all on LJ. That was where I got sorted for the first time! (And it stuck.)
Yup. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/viro…
“When I asked him what he did for a living, he replied, ‘I’m passionate about virality.’ I must have looked confused, because he said, ‘Let me bring that down from the thirty-thousand-foot level.’ ” Rage. Just so much rage.
To be fair, “confused” and “incredulously staggered” are pretty similar facial expressions.
First I thought he was passionate about virility which works equally well.
I think that’s implied…
Wow. I’d never seen that. I’ve met Jimmy Odom, mentioned early on in that article; he’s a nice guy, but he’s definitely a tech buzzword-y person. Emerson sounds like an incredibly obnoxious person.
“Spartz left before dessert, which he called “a low return on investment, calorically.” On his way out, he sent me an e-mail as an aide-mémoire. The subject line read, “Hi. Stay in touch!” and the entire text of the e-mail was “Viral guy.”” This is amazing.
It makes me kind of sad still because Mugglenet was such a huge part of my childhood? And so was MuggleCast?
Me too, it’s really too bad.
I’m with you. I didn’t even spend a lot of time on Mugglenut, but it was a big staple of fandom (along with Leaky Cauldron, Fiction Alley, etc.), and I still giggle when I think of “Emerson and his Harmonian Slaves.” But yeah, it’s disappointing to hear how these dudes turned out. I hope Melissa Anelli is doing well…I still have her book.
Oh man, my FAVORITE part of MuggleNet was the part with the weird/hate mail they got sent in…especially the Harmonian edition. I learned so much about snark from that site.
Melissa is doing really well- she recently got profiled by BuzzFeed about her GeekyCon empire. So we can hold on to that at least…
Mugglenet (and Mugglecast) were huge parts of my childhood too! They were part of my first foray into fandom, and even though I haven’t had anything to do with them in years, it’s still weird to have it pop up like this! I take some comfort in the fact that both Ben and Emerson always seemed to rub me the wrong way. I could never put my finger on it, but they were definitely my least favorite of the people running the site/podcast.
I just realized I was actually facebook friends with that dude! I met a bunch of them at a Borders a million years ago and friended them for some reason. I read that article and defriended with a quickness.
one starts to suspect that guys who facebook bootycall based on ‘heeey we both liked the same wizard adventure books when we were 15!’ might be a bit immature
It’s not only the Mugglenet dudes, though – a few years ago, there were some pretty awful abuse accusations against some Wizard Rockers, including Alex Carpenter and Luke Conard (who both went on to be YouTube Personalities). The worst part is that everyone assumed this fandom to be a safe and welcoming place for everyone – and then the very people who “had done so much for the fandom” turned out to be so very terrible persons. And for years, nobody called them out on their behaviour because they were so popular in the fandom!
This is all so awful. It’s good that Grace Spelman is speaking out.
ETA: Don’t know if anyone will still see this but I found an interesting article about this whole thing, and unsurprisingly, there are a lot of of other people who cut ties with Ben because of his inappropriate behaviour: http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/ben-schoen-grac…
Your friend Carrie’s new puppy is somehow the most serious-seeming little goofy dog. He WILL be a puppy-lump of limbs, but his dignity is inviolable! I like that in a puppy.
It will be at least four years before I can have a puppy. I might die of yearning first, though. We’ll see what happens!!
In my property buying search this wk (again- WHAT?! ADULTHOOD IS HAPPENING) a nearly perfect home was presented but the condo board doesnt allow DOGS and so, alas, it was never meant to be.
Any home that doesn’t allow dogs is not nearly perfect.
Ah, one of my Irish friends told me about Liam Hogan, as I was complaining to her about the guy in my office who talks about “Irish slavery” allllllll the tiiiime at work. I have since sent workdouche some Liam Hogan links in an effort to shut him up but it hasn’t stuck unfortunately. Here are some quotes that workdouche has said out loud in real life:
“I was annoyed at 12 Years a Slave for underrepresenting white slavery.”
“My people were more likely to be in shackles than being the ones doing the selling or owning of the slaves, you know.”
“Irish slaves sold for less than Black slaves in America.”
Oh god how do I get him to stop saying these awful things.
Wow. This is the first time I have ever thought “that guy would be less wrong if he got his history from Gone With the Wind.”
Haha! That is actually what my friend suggested to me as one of the things to yell at him. “SCARLETT O’HARA!”
ugh man the Irish spent so many generations demanding respect and now all that happens when I hear someone talk about it is I roll my eyes and think “the fucking Irish“
I think you’ll find that you mean ‘Ugh American-*Irish*’
Cause their not really Irish and they really don’t get it.
Well, I suppose that’s to the point — not only are the American Irish annoying, but they’re defaming actual Irish people by extension.
You have no idea.
Wanna talk cultural appropriation and micro-aggression? I present example A: ‘St Patty’s Day’
(Obvo discrimination against Irish people is no where near the scale of shit that POC have to deal with these days, but if I have to deal with one more smug English person making a joke about how my country is a parochial back water I’m gonna nut them. Yes its a parochial sexist homophobic backwater, but its my parochial sexist homophobic backwater and only I am allowed to make jokes about how shit it is.)
Ugh, in Philadelphia — where we’ve got a pretty substantial Irish-American population from Olde Time Dayes, and also a not-insubstantial population of drunk fucking assholes — St. Patty’s Day is a week long and they’ve got a special bus (“The Erin Express”) to take people on the never-ending pub crawls.
I count as Irish-American — to these guys, anyway, for whom even a 16th Irish is Irish enough, even if your grandmother came to the US because the rest of her Irish family was in jail (for…in my family’s case…actual definite crimes) and you wouldn’t recognize Irish Gaelic if it was tattooed on your ass, probably even if you’re Welsh or Manx or something, no one here cares.
But who’d want to do that? These guys are embarrassing.
I haven’t experienced Patrick’s Day in the US, but in Dublin its hell on earth. The only people who go out are tourists and kids out drinking for the first time. Everyone else is nursing a hangover from the night before (Paddys day is a holiday so everyone goes on it the night before) or so plastered by 6pm that they have to go home.
Down the country its a bit better, less tourists but the same amount of drinking. Its a stereotype for a reason, but its fucking awful to be around
Is there green beer in Dublin? I mean, have the Irish turned around and imported the Americanized version of St Patrick’s Day?
Hahaha funny how he’s mad at 12 Years for underrepresenting white slavery but not mad at 99% of other media set in that time period hahahahaha I wonder whyyyyy
dude just wants someone to horsewhip him and make him till the earth
Sounds like workdouche has a persecution complex and is a white Irish supremacist.
My ancestors were worth at least $2.50 more per head. AT LEAST.
The only thing that comes to mind is a swift punch to the throat.
I was so excited to see Tall Man’s post yesterday; I’d been refreshing the tab open to his blog for WEEKS. Pulling for him and for Ella SO HARD.
Oooh horse drama http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/totilas-retir…
Those of you who follow horse sports or Dressage may know of Totilas, he’s a big fancy black dancing horse. He made big waves at the 2008 Olympics and then at the 2010 World Games in Kentucky and was then sold for more money than God (like 8millions supposedly), there was owner drama and he was given to a new rider and has never really reached the top again. It was a total scandal in the horse community, with all the arm-chair riders getting up in arms about the the treatment of ‘Poor Toto’. And now, after 5 years of struggling they have finally retired him from competition
Anyway, its been a fun one to watch
…not so much fun for Totilas.
Also it’s not just armchair riders who thought rollkur was abusive and damaging and cheating before we saw poor Totilas’ blue tongue? Idk man, Team Poor Toto I guess.
The horse was always trained with Rollkur, Edward Gal is one of the main proponents of it (Was the blue tongue incident Totilas? There’s been a few, but I don’t remember it ever being him). Regardless of his training methods (which I do not agree with), he is a very very good rider, and the issues with the horse started when he was given to less capable (not bad by any stretch, but not as experienced or talented as Gal) rider and they changed the training methods (IIRC they tried to train without Rollkur, which didn’t work and then they brought in the Dutch trainers to show them how to use Rollkur).
Personally I don’t think the horse was abused; yes there was some instances of bad riding, but you can bet that his care is second to none. And I actually feel a bit bad for Rath (not that bad, but a bit) because he was a young rider given a very talented horse, who’s been ridden a certain way his whole career, and expected to hop on and start winning all the GPs. There were many teething issues that they never really got over and they were constantly under severe scrutiny, which is enough to make anyone unravel.
The arm-chair riders comment was more because there were rumors going around that the horse was being kept locked in a dark stable 24/7 and other bollox, and everyone got up in arms.
In the end it all comes down to money, Gal wanted to keep the horse but couldn’t afford not to sell, and Schockemohle only wanted him as breeding stock, and I think only gave him to a rider for the sake of it; by the time he bought the horse he’d done everything he needed to do to have a long breeding career. Personally I would have retired him sooner, instead of waiting for him to go lame; he probably has enough star power to get breeders anyway, but a history of lameness will affect the value of his progeny
(Sorry for the novel, its been awhile since I dipped my toe in horse drama, I’m off to the Chronicle to watch it unfold there)
Blue tongue was Patrik Kittel.
I’ve felt horribly sorry for poor Totilas for a long time, I’m glad he’s retired now, I’m glad a different style of riding and training is coming to the fore, I’m glad Valegro’s groom posts picturs of him in the field every day on facebook, and jumping, and hacking out with a 77 year old woman in a snaffle and merrily dragging her from bush to bush to eat the leaves.
Being stabled 24/7 is, sadly, perfectly normal for a lot of these expensive horses. Makes me feel a bit sick and very glad the top-class versions of the breed I ride aren’t worth that much money.
I’m a huge fan of Carl Hester, I’ve been watching him for years! His Fantastic Elastic class was my favorite training video (baby Valegro!). And I find it interesting that the Dutch team seem to have faded into the background since their main Rollkur riders have lost the top spot. Hesters way much better for producing happy fit horses that have long riding careers (Again look at Valegro, 6 years at the top without a single issue!)
Having worked with high performance horses, I understand why some people choose to stable them without turnout; personally I think it does more harm than good, but I understand the reasoning behind it. Its why I preferred working with Eventers than Show Jumpers, the event horses literally get pulled out of a field the morning of a big event!
I really don’t get it. You wouldn’t expect a human athlete to be on bed rest when they weren’t actively training, I don’t understand how people are surprised when horses break down from working hard 2 hours a day and being stood in a stable the rest of the time.
i know they’re worth a lot of money, but it sticks in my throat. I’m so happy the Hester/Dujardin method is paying such dividends – hopefully it will catch on.
Its all about risk/benefit, especially with the arena based disciplines; if your heading for a big championship, can you afford for the horse to get a nick on its leg that puts it out for a week? Is it safe for the horse to go galloping around the field with friends when its worth so much? But it is a trade off against fitness, the less they move the less fit they are and the more prone to stress/strain injuries they are, is a few nicks/bumps in the field so bad compared to tendon strains or soft tissue damage that puts them out permanently? and then there the people who keep their horses in 24/7 for ‘safety’ and then lunge the legs off it to get the fizz out, and then wonder why the horse is crippled lame.
Personally I think the more time horses spend outside the more used to it they get and the less lunacy there is. If a horse is only out 1 hour a week there’s gonna be idiocy in the field cause they need to get it all out, but if its out 5-8 hours a day then they’re less likely to be idiots (but there is always a chance). I think Carl Hester has a really smart set up, lots of small paddocks so the horses can’t really get any speed up and they can see their friends, but they don’t have to be out with another horse and they get to be outside all day (I’ve seen racing yards with a similar idea, except its literally a stable with no roof).
There is also a school of thought where I’m from that comes from necessity; land is scarce and wet, so in the winter turn out is limited or completely not available because the owner doesn’t want to tear up the only two fields they have. I severely dislike this school of though, after my first horse stood in for a year for this very reason, but there are people that think this way
And the high performance horses I’ve know who don’t get turn out, do get brought out multiple times a day (am work, walker, lunge, hack, pm work and regular hand grazing), but its not the same as free turn out time
Yeah, I understand the theory, I just violently disagree with it, as you do! Mine live out 24/7/365, I believe very strongly that they are far more physically and mentally healthy being out as much as possible (on suitable ground, of course – not on a knee deep mud patch in winter). Luckily my yard owner is the one who taught me that philosophy (I’ve been there since I was 9) so all ours are at least out in the day, and the only one in overnight all the time is the elderly stallion who frets and fencewalks if he is out overnight because he worries what his sons are getting up to on his territory! He’ll stay out if the other stallion is next door to him so he knows he’s not missing anything, but overall it is easier to have him in overnight.
We’re not Olympic level by any means, but national level competing and the horses do have the odd scratch and whatnot, but their welfare on an everyday basis is so much more important. They keep themselves fitter, legs are harder, lungs better, etc etc. They’re horses, they didn’t ask for their competition careers and for me, we have to balance our expectations against their needs.
I mean if I could just wrap them in cotton wool and lock them in a box in the week leading up to a show I would, especially my TB who is an accident prone idiot who swells up at the slightest mention of a cut; but its not good for him, and being out a lot makes him much happier and much more ride-able (He will tell you when he feels there’s been enough arena work or he fancies a hack.)
So instead I just stuck to fanatically checking legs and shoes every time he came in and praying to all the gods that he would injury himself. Then I gave him to a girl who didn’t quite grasp just how accident prone he was (I tried explain that he’s a drama queen and he’s usually fine after some kisses) and she spent the whole year with him on the phone to her vet, oops!
Awww! He just wants some love!
My arse, he just wants in out of the rain usually. I swear he faked a stomach ache one day so he didn’t have to go out in the cold, spent the day in his box grinning. He’s a complete princess, and has his new home completely wrapped around his finger, they all love him cause he’s quiet and amenable, but little do they know he’s slowly bending them to his will, next thing they know they’ll be out changing his rugs in the middle of the night because it dropped a degree and he ‘looks cold’.
Google fails me; is there a link to these pics? I would like to see because reasons. Loving, admiring, snorgle-those-Blueberry-ears reasons.
It’s not a happy thing to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hIXGiV4N4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo8W2fUjdM4
NONONONONONO the cute Valegro pics from the groom, not the horrific rollkur ones. I should have been clearer.
Did you mean these https://www.facebook.com/www.carlhester.co.uk/pho…
Oh goodness, sorry!!
https://www.facebook.com/alan.c.davies/posts/1020…
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid…
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/features/12-valegr…
Ahh much better, thank you. (I’m no more a fan of rollkur than I am of hot-shotting Tennessee Walkers for competition or gingering up quiet horses for sale; it’s a tremendous pleasure to see Valegro and Dujardin disproving the theory that it’s impossible to win without rollkkur.)
Those poor big lick horses give me sleepless nights.
googled hot shotting and gingering. WTF is wrong with people?! how can people be so mean?
(in happier news that horse looks super cuuuuuute dressed as a zebra.)
It’s supposed to confuse the flies. Dexter’s BFF has one as well, and a zebra fly mask.
I’m excited to see the news that Meredith Talusan (interview with her for the Toast here” http://the-toast.net/2015/04/23/an-interview-with… ) has been hired by Buzzfeed!
http://www.advocate.com/media/2015/08/18/5-questi…
Stephen Colbert made me cry at my desk.
“The next thing he said I wrote on a slip of paper in his office and have carried it around with me since. It’s our choice, whether to hate something in our lives or to love every moment of them, even the parts that bring us pain. “At every moment, we are volunteers.”
I struggle to do this, but he’s right. Yes, we are
Stephen Colbert is one of my favorite humans. His podcast on the making of the show is tremendous as well.
YES, oh my God, favorite podcast in ages. So great just to hear him talk, and I’m mesmerized by his anecdotes of starting out on TV writing with Strangers with Candy. Between that and just finishing Tina Fey’s book — I really wish I’d been born ten years earlier, ended up in New York, and had double the talent. I want to toss and smash CDs with a bat all day as part of my creative process.
“Tremendous” is a perfect word to describe his work and him.
That interview is astonishing. I want to do my job/think about my job (that is nothing at all like being a late night talk show host) exactly like Colbert.
did yall ever read the Playboy (i know, i know) interview he did? He talked a lot about his father’s and brother’s deaths and it was so eloquent and heartbreaking.
Oh yes, some quotes in it were just amazing. My favorite:
The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I’ve always liked that phrase “He was visited by grief,” because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing. It’s not like it’s in me and I’m going to deal with it. It’s a thing, and you have to be okay with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at your door.
I always get a little uneasy at statements like that: they are true and important for the group for which they are true, but it’s dangerous to apply them to others. (E.g., the “bonded” kiln workers in Pakistan aren’t volunteers.) Not that the article wasn’t great.
The way I read that—and I could be wrong—was that “we are all volunteers” = something like “we are all choosing to continue with life, no matter how hard it gets.” And yeah, some people don’t, but those of us who are still here still are.
After losing my nephew to leukemia in 2013, I get this now. It’s a hard thing to explain – but the pain of losing him exploded the part of my heart that used to live in fear. I have grown – my heart has grown – a million sizes as the result of that grief – and I am able to feel deep compassion for others and to empathize deeply with their pain in a way I couldn’t before. And even though I grieve the loss of Sam’s life, I am in some weird way now able to be thankful for all things, even for his death, because I have found redemption in it, and beauty in the suffering, and I know that Sam wanted that for me. Pain and suffering themselves do not have intrinsic value, but when you are able to enter more deeply into the communion of humanity as a result, then that, truly, is a reason to be grateful for those painful experiences.
FWIW, I am Catholic (the religion of my birth that I rediscovered after Sam’s death), and Colbert is absolutely the model for the Catholic I want to be.
I’ve reread your comment several times, and I find it deeply moving. Thank you for sharing it.
I’m glad it was meaningful for you. 🙂
I told my husband yesterday that I thought Stephen Colbert was the spiritual successor to Mr. Rogers. They both find such joy in being devout, and while I lost my faith long ago, I think they both exemplify what being a Christian can be.
I think I love Womb (or Clone if you will) for exactly the reasons Ella’s Tall Man hates it.
(I am rooting for him to see Christmas and beyond with every fiber of my being, I feel I should add. But also Womb is great.)
I’m in a book group reading The New Jim Crow, and someone showed up for the first time on the 4th week, had not done any reading, but did have in hand a book all about Irish slavery and how they overcame that she said we should all read her book instead because it was “more accurate.”
I am not black, and I was livid. I can only imagine how immensely frustrating it is to hear those things when it’s more personal.
Wait what? …But the vast majority of “The New Jim Crow” isn’t even about slavery??
Yeah but the new Jim Crow is nothing compared to the new Paddy O’Reilly, I guess.
Well, she didn’t feel she needed to read the book because clearly it was about making excuses instead of BOOTSTRAPS.
oh my GOD no.
The killer in Angels and Demons was executed a few years back; they later found out he had killed at least one other woman. Euuughghhg
How are the business transactions going, Vincent?
Good. I have to go do more business.
That mugglecast dweeb (who is destroying the good name of muggles, imo) is just trying SO HARD to be SO EDGE.
HITLER REFERENCES, Y’ALL. The edgiest.
Holy fucking shit, Stephen Colbert. I did not ask for these feelings first thing in the morning.
Oh my god that MuggleNet guy needs to get a grip! That whole article reminded me of this one time that this dude on FB added me to a group he ran (can we also talk about how awful it is that FB lets people just add you to their groups against your will?) and I didn’t notice for a while because I don’t use FB much, but when I did I left the group immediately because a) I didn’t care about it, and b) this was a guy I had never met and was only friends with because we briefly posted on the same message board like 10 years ago. So I got a message from him the next day asking me to rejoin the group and I considered telling him to fuck off but just unfriended him instead. And then I got ANOTHER message from him like “REAL MATURE UNFRIENDING ME LIKE THAT LOLOLOLOL.”
I’m deeply creeped out not just by Schoen’s general manner (and tweets like this one), but also the whole “Feminspire” thing. (His name seems to no longer be on the site, although it’s not clear if he’s actually left or been booted/nudged out, or if he himself scrubbed his name from it. The bio for Rhiannon Payne mentions that Schoen is her partner, but I’m guessing not that kind.) That a guy like Ben would ever be associated with a site like that reminds me of this Onion article (TW, lots of stuff).
I’m not sure, but Grace’s tweets seem to suggest that he’s running Feminspire on his own now (I don’t know how to twooter but it’s a conversation between Grace and @abbeybabbles). Going back through Schoen’s tweets to check up on stuff though, and I see that Neil Cicierega (remember him?! bless) is telling him to chill the hell out. Dawww.
That Onion article is creepy af.
Neil Cicierega is a grade A Good Dude. I am so relieved.
He apparently got married 10 days ago! Mixed feelings – my dorky mid-20s crush is crushed and I am unreasonably happy for two people I’ll never meet.
I was going to read that Onion article. I even clicked the link, but then I read the first line and saw the author pic and then noped right on out. Too real, Onion. Too real.
AUGH
Chicago Toasts! Violet Hour meetup a week from today, August 25 at 6:30. Yay!
Adding it to my gCalendar now! So excite. 😀
ETA: Also I might be a bit late because I have a dentist appointment right before then. BUT I WILL DEFINITELY TRY TO MAKE IT.
In that case you will need a drink!
I will be prepared to make sympathetic noises re: dentist!
Ben Schoen: “Dr. Dre beats the shit out of women and gets billions of $. I email one filled with apologies and I get the PC police sicc’d on me”
I like this, I wish everyone had a Dr. Dre card, you could just pull it out any time someone criticizes you in any way.
WHOAH WHOAH, FRIEND! I REFUSE TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR MY ACTIONS UNTIL DR. DRE IS!
“Oh, hey, fair point dude. Carry on harassing strangers!”
This kind of implies Dr. Dre made his “billions” [barely restrains self from googling “Dr Dre’s net worth”] from beating women? These are not comparable outcomes, Ben.
He definitely made billions by inventing Beatz by Dre and getting bought out by Apple, but yeah, what? What is the argument here?
Yes, it does indeed feel like someone missed the basic lesson from kindergarten: life is unfair. Sometimes people do bad things and there are no consequences. Does that mean there should never be consequences? What kind of ridiculous world would that be?
I like the implicit assumption here that all problems have to be evaluated in order.
Ben Schoen; “Whoah, people are criticizing me for harassing a woman? What about Dr. Dre?”
Dr. Dre: “Hey, you can’t criticize me for being violent against women, what about ISIS?”
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi: “Hang on, you can’t criticize ISIS, not without FIRST addressing the dehumanization caused by global militarized capitalism, I mean come on.”
I guess it’s good to have that kind of philosophy, it means you can feel self-righteous whenever you’re persecuted for committing small offenses because when are we ever going to get to you?
Global militarized capitalism: Good luck trying to catch me, suckas.
$700 million, so he misses the billion mark. It does give a morbid signifigance to the Beats by Dre line of headphones.
But yes, lots of abusers go on to be publicly reveared as artists, Paul Simon and Norman Fucking Mailer come to mind as does that monster Sean Penn. It’s one of the myriad injustices out there, and of course it doesn’t excuse anyone’s behavior. It will unfortunately be a cold day in hell before most abusers are held accountable for their actions, not even just the rich and famous ones.
“He’s a hundred-millionaire! Why do people always round up?”
Haha, whoops, misses as in overshoots!
ETA: In my defense, because I have brooded over why I always mess that up, I did grow up with the millón < mil millones < billón progression alongside the 100 millions = a billion scale. Excuse? Probably yes. But I just wanted to post a wee tiny defense of my oversight above.
Wait, a hundred million is a billion? I thought a billion was 10x that, like 1,000,000,000
help
Oh no, I may well have muddied the waters further, because yes, even in English it appears that 100 million does not equal a billion. So it’s actually directly in line with the mil millones mark, which means that it’s slightly less confusing than I thought.
This helpful article explains that there used to be an American English “billion” and a British English “billion”, but they have since fallen together: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/how-many-…
Anyway, I’ll just be over here rocking in a corner. Appologies to @meetapossum for completely misunderstanding your comment.
It was actually a quote from How I Met Your Mother when Robin is dating a millionaire (or, rather, someone who makes many hundreds of millions of dollars), but her friends keep calling him a billionaire. But I am fascinated to know there was ever a difference in British English and American English definitions of billion!
GChatting with my daughter about Mugglenet guy , she says
” in the NYmag comments of the harry potter fanfic guy
one person pointed out
“you know bill cosby offered to help with all those women’s careers too”
BOOM
winner of the entire debate”
Your daughter’s all right I think.
After a (too) long hiatus, I was all set to get up super early this morning and go for a run. Alas. MiniWren decided last night was her night to die on the hill of NO BEDTIME BEDTIME IS FOR SUCKERS and kept myself and Mr. Wren up all.fucking.night. I am exhausted. I barely slept. There is not enough caffeine in the world to get me through today. blah.
In other news, I admire Stephen Colbert quite a bit, and find him to be a generally Good Human ™. What a great interview.
in related (but not new or surprising) #BanAllMen news, Ottawa twitter last night was trending #ThingsFeministMenHaveSaid and it is GOLD. HORRIBLE TERRIBLE FILLED WITH THE RIIIGHTEOUS ANGER OF A THOUSAND SISTERS GOLD.
I saw that and loved it! All stuff we’ve all heard
Someone on my Facebook feed this morning mentioned the Press Your Luck scandal, and I’m down that rabbithole, in case anyone would like some articles about vaguely modern quiz show scandals! Here’s a Mental Floss article about the same thing, but also embedding the episode itself as well as the GSN documentary on it from a few (…10+? Yikes!) years ago.
This distraction mostly presented by how much I am heart hurting after reading the first article, incredibly poignant and important.
I like how the mugglenet dude is trying to claim that he didn’t say the things he’s accused of saying even though WE CAN READ THE WHOLE THING VERBATIM because it’s THE INTERNET
“I have been nothing but respectful towards women! How dare you! If you knew me, you’d know that I NEVER say things like that!” *closes tab, opens twitter, publicly jokes about how someone must be on her period*
his twitter feed is some impressive flailing I LIVE FOR THIS SHIT why are you all picking on me I’M A TWITTER HATE MILLIONAIRE THANKS SUCKERS victim of a literal, literal crucifixion here HITLER WAS AN UNDERACHIEVER man these howling mobs will just persecute anyone over anything
My favorite part is when he threatens to sue her for defamation or some shit. Like, are you hoping the judge doesn’t know what screencaps are, bro?
And yet people are STILL offering opinions on how she could have let Mugglenet guy down easier OR how she should been more clear in her intentions OR how women shouldn’t be afraid to say no to men as if it’s our fucking fault.
It’s all a trick. There will never be a single instance of a man being rejected where someone will say “yes, you did that correctly.”
Someone on the nymag article commented “Rejecting men is like a box of chocolates” and nobody has ever been more right.
Yeah… you never know exactly what you’re going to get, but there’s a good chance it’s nuts.
Or something gross that you can’t quite identify…
You know, I feel a little guilty about it, but every time I read an article like the one about the Mugglenet douchebag I feel a little more validated about that time in college when I ordered a book used off Amazon and the guy sent an extra (related) book with it. I sent him an email because I thought it was a mistake and offered to return it, and he got SO ANGRY because I did not properly appreciate his GIFT to some POOR, STRUGGLING, IGNORANT GIRL (who already owned a copy of the book he’d “generously” added to the package) and I was paranoid for six months that he’d come to campus and stalk me. I felt bad for hurting his feelings because wee baby jenavira always assumed that it was her fault, but I didn’t apologize.
Oh, God. Gross. No guilt. Feel NO guilt.
what the fuck
this is only tangentially related to your story (and separate from the fact that this guy is a dick) but if a company sends you something you didn’t order, you can 100% keep it without guilt: http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0181-unorder…
Being in the later stages of raising a puppy (10 months old and currently trying to dig a hole in the couch because I’m reading the Toast instead of taking him on his morning ramble), I can’t imagine being willing to care for both a puppy and small children at the same time. Nicole continues to impress.
My friends acquired a puppy like two months before one of them gave birth – I have no idea how they’re managing it, but they seem to?
I mean I assume it has to do with being less of a whiner than I am, and perhaps having an enclosed yard.
Maybe the puppy was…good training for the baby? (i dont know anything about babies).
I have a labrador puppy (now 14 mos, we got him at 2 mos) and multiple people have told me that raising a child is easier, but takes longer. No idea if this is true.
If the “Carl the Rottweiler” books have taught me anything, it’s that dogs are awesome and reliable babysitters.
And that leaving them unsupervised with stranger children is fine and will only lead to fun hi-jinx.
Me, re: Mugglenet dude:
I tried to read a Serious Eats article about sourdough starters but there were so many “oppressive mothers” jokes in the first several paragraphs that I gave up.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/08/sourdough-star…
Ugh. Maybe she should work on her issues in therapy, rather than on a popular food site?
haha oh man did you notice that a sourdough starter is called a mother and that’s the same as your mom????
Anyway, the jabs really soured me on the article. They seemed pretty crummy, but I’m guessing she probably thought they were just light and fluffy humour and didn’t mean for them to get a rise out of anyone.
No matter how you slice it, though, I kneaded to get out of there. Oh well. Sometimes that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
HOT DAMN the Tall Man’s blog is so good. How is it a blog about his cancer but it made me giggle and laugh and go “oh!” and “daaamn” all in the course of three entries? What a true writing talent.
This is probably the best thing I’ve read today:
So far, Schoen has refused to apologize for his emails to Spelman, instead insinuating they are part of a “punching up” campaign aimed at a BuzzFeed writer, and that he is enjoying watching the “sheeple” come after him. He then accused Spelman of being on her period, and compared himself to Dr. Dre.
Perfect.
Oh wait, this too:
“My attorney tells me I have a case already …”
DOES HE THOUGH
I can never understand why Buzzfeed writers are the “top of the pile”; like, I want to be a nun, minus the waking up early to pray and believing in a deity bit, so I understand everyone’s dreams are different. And yet, the Buzzfeed dream, I find it hard to fathom.
It exists though: http://www.theawl.com/2015/03/i-hate-myself-becau… Hmmm.
And here I was thinking I was alone with the whole nun thing.
Me too! I’m an atheist, but I worked for two years for the Catholic Church and met some really remarkable nuns, and they all seemed so full of joy and life, and I can definitely see why.
Yes, I was almost sold until I learned about how many nuns are being screwed over by the church in retirement. It makes me so angry to think of awesome women devoting their lives and, in some cases, worldly belongings, and then just being left out in the cold.
Me, I wanted to make amazing knot gardens and take a vow of silence.
I come from super Catholic stock (two different rites of it!) so sudden conversations on religious retirements are normal dinner convos for us. Pretty sure they’re still trying to nudge the youngest brother towards seminary… Meanwhile I think I’ll wait until I’m old and rich and experienced and have drunk this sinful world to the dregs, then make like a medieval queen and enter a convent. And possibly become an anchoress, though I’m not certain if that’s still a done thing or not.
The nuns of my childhood were all terrifying and alien as a rule (thanks, St Michael’s Catholic School), but as I slide further into confirmed spinsterhood it seems like pretty sweet deal. Maybe when I’m old and ready to give up all my hardwon stuff.
They do seem like kind of a mixed bag. My grandma loved the nuns at her Catholic school and college, whereas my grandfather had the more terrifying, tie-your-hand-behind-your-back-to-make-you-un-lefthanded type.
I think a cloistered life sounds pretty sweet, really, if I could just take out the (a) getting up early and (b) having to actually profess any religious beliefs. If they really want to convert people, they should make it possible to be a nun just by basically being a shut-in who watches a lot of Netflix.
We have some cool nuns around here. (Including a bunch who care for severely disabled kids 24/7, which I’d consider the “put your money where your mouth is” aspect of being pro-life). We also have some rabble rousers who got excommunicated for being too liberal, and set up their own church.
I’m not a big fan of the Catholic church as an institution, but I really like old-school, Dorothy Day/ Catholic Worker types.
The great thing about nuns (and Sisters) is that the Church doesn’t really care about them, so they’re free to be as anti-establishment as they like! While still remaining nuns under the authority of Rome, I mean.
Reading In This House of Brede made me think being a nun sounded very appealing. Having no religious belief whatsoever would be a bit of a hindrance, though.
I’ve always assumed that that letter is fake, mostly for my own mental health, because if it’s real every awful thing the Olds say about us snake people is true and we should all be sent to mine for ore on Io.
I go back and forth about this! Part of my wants to believe “yes, totally fake” like those terrible guys who think that taking a woman’s name upon mariage makes them mere slaves to the matriarchal godess culture or whatever, and yet another part of me thinks, “hmm, plausible…” Because I do know people who work for zine like publications, and they rag on buzzfeed constantly. But why? Yes, they have listicles, but they also have well researched and well written articles. ¯\_(“-)_/¯
That whole quote is just douchebag bingo.
God I know, it really really is. It should be framed and hung in a museum.
I’m trying to find a clip from Colbert Report where he’s interviewing an author about his book and I can’t recall the premise (something about fallen angels, free will and Satan) and Stephen clearly knows more about the topic than the author does and just destroys the entire premise of his book (something about God’s love?). Does this ring bells for anyone? It was incredible.
I love it when Stephen knows more than the interviewee, be it religion or LOTR. (He smacked down James Franco once pretty hard too, it was glorious. He even ended with, “You come into MY HOUSE…”) He’s so sharp and thoughtful, I’m very pleased with his success. It assures me something in the universe is going right.
Yes, that rings many bells! After some Googling, I think we’re thinking about “The Lucifer Effect.” Although he also had a similar discussion with the author of “Jesus, Interrupted.” I need to watch both of those clips again after work today…
It was the Lucifer Effect that I was thinking of!
Stephen really gets going around 3:30, but the whole clip is good for context: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/8sjpoa/the-colbert-…
and a few other occasions here: http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/6-times-s…
DID YOU GUYS SEE QUEEN LATIFAH ON THE COVER OF VARIETY, JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL
Oh my gooooooooooood the “I wasn’t hitting on you, just trying to help your career, you ungrateful cow” line. Like, no, you were totally hitting on me, but thanks for adding that intrusion into my professional life. I appreciate the way you’ve snuck in that implied threat to my career there, reminding me that you’re higher on the food chain than I am, and can help people succeed or…not, depending on your whims. Way to not be terrible, fucko.
If I’m remembering the tweets I saw this morning correctly, dude is SIMULTANEOUSLY claiming to be “punching up” at her because she’s a Buzzfeed writer AND claiming to be about to offer her a better job than the one she has. Dude, make up your mind about your relative status.
Not just an implied threat – at a certain point he tweeted at her that she should be writing listicles and he was going to tell her bosses she wasn’t working. Her actual boss starred that tweet 😀
I could definitely see that career stuff as a setup for smearing her in case she actually took him up on his offer. Something like, “you were just leading me on in order to take advantage of me for your career, boohoo, conniving women…”
It’s about ethics in journalism! (I wish it were even possible to take that sentence seriously any more.)
Nicole, can you tell us more about this mysterious Dream Dog that will live forever? This sounds like heaven and I am super intrigued.
I have seen those I think. I think it may be a Tamaskan? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamaskan_Dog
Ahhhhh they look like wolves I need like 5!
Enhh (that’s a bemused grunt) to the tail of that Elon piece. Asperger’s namesake has been removed from the DSM but in terms of clinical practice, his victory over Kanner is more or less total, so it’s a happy ending? It just took longer than it should. Asperger’s Syndrome is out but so is every other discrete subclassification of autism, including autism. I’ve been grandfathered into a designation that no longer officially exists, every kid who meets the criteria now is just a spectrum kid with her own panoply of exhibited symptoms, just as Asperger intended. Kanner’s the new Skinner, an important figure that no one actually heeds anymore.
Can you tell me more about that workout? How many rounds do you do? What is a sit up stand up? I guess I could look that last one up.
Oh my god, that piece about the murders of Jo, Michelle, and Christe Rogers has broken me a little bit today.
I’m reading it over my lunch, and I feel fucking horrible, but I need to keep reading. God, those poor women.
Same, and I just finished it and had to come back to see if anyone else was left as absolutely bereft by it as me. Jesus.
I just came back for that same reason! OH MY GOD. This just destroyed me.
I started crying at work.
I read it over my lunch break and nobody tell my superiors that I KEPT READING INTO MY WORK TIME because I couldn’t get anything else done. I’m so horrified. I’m struggling with the rest of the day.
THREE DAYS UNTIL COLLEGE!
Im so terrified but my school is full of the best women I have ever met. I got a message from my dorm neighbor that just said “I just want to go to Agnes Scott but have all the Toasties there too.” <3 y’all got a lot of scottie love
Scottie alum love back to you <3
One of the things that I still find baffling about the Mugglenet article are all the comments (I haven’t read them all but the majority I’ve seen so far) that go something like- “she’s totally right, this guy is an ass/creep/whatever, but this is why women shouldn’t be afraid to be rude. I never bought into society’s demands that I be nice, and no one should.”
Like, that’s great for you, but maybe I’m being nice because I’m genuinely afraid of getting killed. Yes, there’re a lot of societal expectations to deal with and I do find myself defaulting to “nice” just for that reason BUT I also had a BF sophomore year of HS who proceeded to creepily contact me for two fucking years (he was a senior! when we dated and he still liked to harass me whenever he came to town). I was “nice” when I dumped him because he was a manipulative asshole and I was AFRAID of him. He went out of his way to scare me when we were dating! Why should I think that I’d be safer after we broke up?
TL;DR- it’s great that you don’t take any shit from anyone and women should feel free to stand up for themselves and not worry about hurting anyone’s feelings BUT maybe there are reasons that they don’t beyond “socialization”. Like fear.
I’d go as far as saying fear is a form of socialization. A particularly effective one, unfortunately.
So when I first read the title to this article – Is Nefertiti in Tut’s Tomb? – I thought, “Oh come on, another crackpot ‘archaeologist’ just looking for fame.”
But by the end of it, the theory actually seems somewhat plausible?? And I learned a lot about the politics of ancient Egypt. So much incest!
There may be context or tone that I’m unaware of, but I was offput by Colbert comparing the church massacre to an ancient evil that we thought was gone; it makes me wonder to what extent he’s out of touch with what’s going on with race in America.
I love Colbert, but like most of us I haven’t seen much of who he really is, and I find this worrying.
It seems to be the settled-upon narrative you have to repeat if you want to continue to have a job in media; we all thought Racism Was Over until it reared its ugly head again (even if you’re on record as having been perfectly aware that Racism Wasn’t Over), much like Nobody Could Have Known that Iraq was a bad idea and Everything Changed On 9/11. Nobody knew better, none of us, but we all learned our lesson and we’re all right now, because important people in the industry don’t like hearing told you so, and if all of us together were wrong then it’s really sort of like we were right all along, too.
It’s not like he never engaged with the high-level race-baiting that goes on, or fringers talking violent revolt, or race-baiting fringers talking violent revolt before, and it beggars the imagination that he was actually too stupid to realize that someone out there might actually be serious about it, but who would take a GQ interview as their opportunity to finally nail up their 95 theses about race in America instead of saying something profound like ‘tragedy is sacred’
I might be wrong, but I interpreted his analogy to mean that the act was barbaric and that it shouldn’t be happening anymore.
I may be wrong about this, but could that be specifically because of the “church” part? Every single police killing is horrific, an outrage, and a tragedy, but speaking from a religious perspective, the fact that someone would cold-bloodedly walk into a holy sanctuary planning to commit a massacre seems like it has an extra level of horror and evil.
Not that the “ancient evil” metaphor was a great way to phrase it.
If I turn out to be dead by Christmas but I’ve taken the appropriate steps to safeguard my legacy, Ella can always conceive and raise my not-even-technically-fatherless child; possibly in the manner popularised by the horrendous film Clone (formerly Womb), in which Eva Green plays an absolute monster who clones her dying boyfriend (Matt Smith, for some reason) and raises him as her son.
Oh god, I remember reading about this. It sounds amazing and terrible; I think I had wiped it from my mind.
(Also, that was a funny and moving and wrenching post, and I am sending as many good thoughts as possible to John and Ella, while repeatedly nagging everyone I know to get on the bloody bone marrow donor register already.)
Shelter mutts are the BEST (though my shelter mutt is tiny, not huge).
Also, I have spent a lot of time immersed in Irish history, and frankly unless you were an Irish Catholic surviving under British occupation, maybe shut up with those comparisons. There is such interesting stuff with Irish writers being very fascinated with Jewish and African-American experiences and writing because they feel a connection to it, but it is so much more about empathy and shared struggle than who wins at the Oppression Olympics.
I read it over my lunch break and nobody tell my superiors that I KEPT READING INTO MY WORK TIME because I couldn't get anything else done. I'm so horrified. I'm struggling with the rest of the day.
I read the whole true crime story about the Rogers family and then I googled the guy who did it. He maintained up until his execution in 2011 that he was “an “”””innocent””””” man” and yet just LAST YEAR they connected his DNA to another unsolved murder cold case from 1990.
Why do such terrible people exist.
I read the whole true crime story about the Rogers family and then I googled the guy who did it. He maintained up until his execution in 2011 that he was "an """"innocent""""" man" and yet just LAST YEAR they connected his DNA to another unsolved murder cold case from 1990.
Why do such terrible people exist.
Oh my god, that piece about the murders of Jo, Michelle, and Christe Rogers has broken me a little bit today