I’ve been thinking a bunch about this Sady Doyle piece, which is just chock-full of horrible stuff you might not want to know about, but also has some interesting nuance on being wrong and trying to fix things, and how best to facilitate that as a society and as a person:
Horovitz explained it pretty clearly, in the context of a song he wrote against street harassment: “Sexism is deeply rooted in our history and society that waking up and stepping outside of it is like I’m watching ‘Night of the Living Dead Part Two’ all day every day. Listening to the lyrics of this song, one might say that the Beastie Boy ‘Fight for Your Right to Party’ guy is a hypocrite. Well, maybe; but in this fucked up world all you can hope for is change, and I’d rather be a hypocrite to you than a zombie forever.’”
In other words: They made the joke because they didn’t know, at the time, that it was a bad joke. They were just wrong.
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Canadians are raised to think that the word “Eskimo” is a slur (having been used as a kind of blanket pejorative for ages), so it’s weird for me to see it used here, but the internet reveals that the usage is viewed quite differently in Alaska, and life is a rich tapestry. NOW THE IMPORTANT PART:
Obama met two Husky puppies, Feather and Moose, who are roughly three months old. He grabbed Feather — dubbed that because the dog is smaller than all the others in the litter — and murmured, “Sweetie, you’re okay, sweetie.”
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On Twitter yesterday, I was talking a bit about Canada’s failures in the Syrian refugee crisis, and how ridiculous it is that we’ve theoretically agreed to take 11,300 people in, when one of Canada’s greatest moments saw us take in 65 THOUSAND Vietnamese refugees in 1979-1980, all driven by civilian outcry and organization. My mom remembers how many people and churches in her community sheltered whole families, and anyone with an extra bunk bed filled it, and most of those men and women and kids stayed to become Canadians themselves, and the country is much richer for it. If you’re interested in learning more about that time, and why it should impact our country’s attitude towards the refugees fleeing Syria, here’s a great place to start. The people here want to help, and Chris Alexander needs to shut his face and do his damn job.
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While we’re talking about goodness, this sweet dad needs a double lung transplant, and is drowning in medical bills, and I would love if you could help him out.
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The sharecropper’s daughter who made black women proud of their hair:
The details of Madam Walker’s early life are hazy: She was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, in 1867 to sharecropper parents who worked on a cotton plantation where they were previously enslaved. Both Sarah’s parents passed away by the time she was 7, and she moved with her sister Louvenia and her sister’s husband to Vicksburg, Mississippi, just across the river. Sarah didn’t have the chance to attend school, and from around age 10, she began doing the difficult manual work of a laundress, which gave her a glimpse of the luxurious lifestyles enjoyed by some of Vicksburg’s white families.
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Just learned a whole bunch about tacos:
With the Spanish conquest of the land we know as Mexico, beef, pork, chicken — today’s common taco fillings — were introduced to indigenous people, making the taco a very mestizo tradition. Lard was also introduced into the indigenous people’s diets which gives tamales their soft, fluffy texture and which is also used to create flour tortillas, depending on who you ask. While chili and chocolate from Mexico was traded and became globalized, corn did not because it was associated with lower class indigenous people. When maize arrived in Spain and the rest of Europe, the Spanish didn’t know the methods of nixtamalization so it led to pellagra. So in the Spanish’s eyes, corn was equated to poor people and disease while wheat was associated with Spanish conquistadors and the elite class. The origins of flour tortillas aren’t clear but it probably was influenced by Spanish colonizers forcing indigenous people to use wheat instead of corn. For people living in Northern “New Spain” they made mostly flour tortillas because of regional patterns of agriculture.
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I am VERY excited for Beasts of No Nation, which is getting great, great hype, and is based on a WRENCHING novel by my college friend Uzo Iweala, a certified genius.
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Here is a piece about Dad Magazine! In keeping with media, I spoke glowingly of Dad Magazine for about half an hour on the phone and the result is what it is:
“I know that sometimes it’s hard for our readers who have bad dads to read, obviously the bad dad is something that exists in our society,” says Cliffe. “Sometimes the warm celebration of this particular kind of dad can be hard. Not only is it not their dad, but it’s upsetting that it’s not their dad.”
ANYWAY, you know I love Dad Magazine, but there I am, repping for those of you with bad dads.
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I am obsessed with Debra Winger, and so is Tyler Coates:
I never realized it was my dream to run into an ex with his new slam piece and then completely show him what he’s missing by practically rodeo-fucking a mechanical bull, but now that I know that it’s possible… It is all that I want to accomplish.
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My friend Carrie’s new puppy has a sodden fox:
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
PRESIDENT OBAMA CUDDLED A BABY PULLER DOG
/dies
No matter how I feel about how they’re doing politically, I always get super gooey over the Obamas when they let slip how much they adore kids and animals.
If I were nestled in the president’s arms, I would have a decidedly different expression than that skeptical looking puppy.
But the puppy’s never met a president before! That’s skepticism for the office, not the person.
President Obama also joined elementary schoolers in traditional dance!
Also! That puppy is wet and covered with sand from playing on the beach where she lives, and he is not in the least concerned about getting messy!
Here are some MORE pictures because this made me so happy:
Wait. Wait. FEATHER THE BABY PULLER DOG HAS ONE BLUE EYE. This is crucial information which I previously didn’t have!
Also her brother’s expression, peeking over that shoulder, is absolutely priceless.
No one expects a sodden fox!
That puppy is a star!
In fact, those who do expect it…….. I’ll come in again. (leaves room)
We’ve had our differences, but I am really going to miss this president. Possibly for the rest of my life.
Agreed. He seems the most human president I can remember.
It’s funny because so many people think of the presidential candidates in terms of “someone I can relate to” and I’m always like “I don’t care whether I can relate to them, can they run the darn country” but you’re right, Obama is very relatable in a way that some of the more dudebro candidates out there are not…
Yeah, after seeing the most terrible example of a “relatable” president, it was very weird to realize Obama was a candidate *I* could relate to. I kinda figured “relatable” was always in reference to a certain Regular American Guy, not, like, all kinds of humans and also PUPPIES.
Oh man the President-as-regular-Joe thing has always irritated me and now that I’m unpacking it, even more so.
Speaking of Dad Magazine, Obama is definitely one of our more dadly presidents. I heard him speak once and he went off on a tangent about something he watched on HGTV.
Seriously.
It’s going to be interesting to see where the historical consensus settles on him. I’m looking forward to seeing that (or maybe I’m not; my dad was convinced that by this point in his life, Ronald Reagan would be accurately regarded as a war criminal and one of the worst presidents we’ve had). I suspect he’s going to be viewed similarly as Lyndon Johnson, although I think both his successes and failures were less extreme than Johnson’s. Which seems about right; he’s been a great president, but not on the scale of a Lincoln/Washington/Roosevelt, unless, of course, historians realize the severity of the the Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks was way greater than we realize now.
I discovered the snake people add-on because of this comment, so thanks.
You’re welcome! It’s the best.
I assume you mean you’re going to miss him being president, since he’s relatively young and I imagine him being more of a Jimmy Carter-type ex-president than a W type of ex-president.
Yes, exactly! He’s not going anywhere…except out of D.C. politics. 🙂
I’ve started a new job as an overnight concierge of a swanky retirement home. I told them I was competent at computers and thought I was.
But it turns I suck at Microsoft office. I keep making dumb errors and getting confused and frustrated. It doesn’t help that I’m here ALONE all night.
I am the oldest person who works the front desk and I feel like the old fart who can’t adapt.
Been there. Don’t panic – that will keep you from adapting as you need to. I’d recommend seeing if your public library has access to Lynda dot com, which is a video site for learning about various business tools and skills. Might as well make use of all that quiet time overnight. Good luck!
There are a lot of free tutorials online – and some paid ones as well. It might be worth while going through some on your own time. It can be really frustrating but these skills ARE achievable. Just try not to be too hard on yourself, maybe?
Hey April – you will learn, just be patient with yourself and use Dr. Google a lot. Also, libraries often have classes in that sort of program. If you get really stuck post the problem here in this thread and I will try to help.
Lynda is a pretty solid resource. Is there any chance your employer might be able and willing to foot a month or two of training if you did it on your own time?
oh, also! lots of public libraries have Lynda subscriptions that you can access for free if you have a library card. I recently learned that mine offers free Lynda access and it’s great.
Hey! I think this is really common – we like to pretend like there’s a certain level of tech literacy inherent amongst the population, but that’s just not true. It’s not even true for younger people – I see so many new university students with NO idea how to use things that a lot of people would consider basic, like Word and Excel.
There are some good resources online, starting with Microsoft’s own support site; Youtube is another great place to go if your work computer isn’t firewalled. Finally, a lot of local libraries offer workshops on things like Microsoft Office. I’d highly recommend contacting them.
Good for you for taking on a new job, and for reaching out to your fellow Toasties!
Don’t worry, it’ll get easier!
1. The best way to learn a program is to have to use it – I have trained a ton of people at my office on certain data products etc but it’s only when they actually have to use them that they really actually learn the ropes. The more you use it, the better you’ll get.
2. I work at a tech company and people (usually young people!) come to me constantly and ask basic questions about MS Office all the time; it’s natural to be unfamiliar with features you haven’t used before.
3. Do you have an internet connection on your phone or your computer? Everything I learned about office I learned by googling ‘how do I do X in PowerPoint/Excel/Word’. In fact when the above people come and ask me for help and I don’t know the answer, I just secretly google it and then relay that to them :).
4. Office is not always straightforward! Sometimes there are some seriously roundabout ways to get things done, and the interface can often be very counter-intuitive. When you’re more comfortable with the software, you’ll see these as irritating little quirks that you have to work around, but when you first encounter them it’s just baffling!
And ctrl Z is your friend – whenever I do something wrong (all the time) or get one of those funny excel error messages, I just undo my way out of there :p.
I want to second this whole excellent comment. I also work at a tech company, and am one of the people who asks very simple MS questions. Could you get a copy of “(your version) Office for Dummies” and bring it to work?I often use excel with a book on my desk.
Also, please post any questions you might have! I’d love some tips from other brilliant Toasties 🙂
Oh and to clarify number 3, I should have said ‘do you have an internet connection on your phone or your computer at work‘, as I find it easiest to learn the things I need when I actually need to do them – taking courses in advance means I often forget the things I learned before I get to use them! Of course you may be different though :).
Part of the problem is that I don’t know what terms to google! I was trying to change the file name and everything Google gave me was unhelpful. When a coworker showed up to relieve me she showed me that the “save as” was on a different screen! (Why?)
Part of the problem is that the interface changed with different versions of Word as well. In Word post-Office 2013 (?), the Save and Save As are both on the File menu. Of course, that assumes you know what “Save As” means
But you’re right about how it can be a bit dissatisfying searching for things in Google. I managed to find something useful with “how to save file with a different name word 2013” – try and include the version of Word you’re using next time you do a search.
As for stuff you don’t know, I’ve been a systems administrator for 17 years, and all I use Excel for is sorting things by fields and maybe adding up columns of numbers. I think I’ve done a VLOOKUP like once. Years ago, I had a partner show me what CTRL-C and CTRL-V do, after I’d been working with Word for at least a few years.
We switched to Office 2010 a while ago, I’m very comfortable with fucking around on computers and teaching myself how to do things, and I’m STILL Googling for how to do things, because it’s terrible. Don’t feel bad.
I second amanita – Google is your friend!
Which apps in Office are you having particular trouble with?
Outlook and Word, mostly. It’s more that I just don’t know where the hell stuff IS. Looking around the screen for half a minute trying to figure out how to put an attachment on an email is MADDENING.
It’s not your fault! They’re notoriously overengineered products with too many features.
Microsoft Office is kind of a nonsensical program, so I think this is pretty normal. I have to Google stuff all the time.
This is totally common and has nothing to do with old-fart status. I went into a job thinking I was good at Office, and then they need all these crazy mail merge fuctions and building tables into Word documents and nearly lost my damn mind.
What I found helpful was a combination of Google and running my own drills, which required figuring out what they needed from me in the first place. Maybe sending an email to your boss/the outgoing person, saying something like, “Hey, before I get much further into this job, there are a couple areas on Office I need to brush up on, and if would be helpful if you could ID specific tools that get used a lot in my role,” would help figure out where to focus? If you’re there alone, presumably you don’t have someone leering over your shoulder barking at you to quit noodling, which can be nice as you learn, too.
Ahhhh mail merge, my old foe. Has it gotten any easier since 2005?
Mail merge ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
No, not any easier…
I provide tech support for a living and I make a point of telling people that they are NOT stupid and how to use software is NOT intuitive. Understanding how to do something with any software is generally a matter of practice and experience, not age or intelligence. Don’t be shy about asking for help, here or elsewhere, and I agree with all those who have suggested Google (or your search engine of choice). You’ll learn the most when you have a particular problem to solve and someone shows you how to use a new feature to solve that specific problem. Hang in there! 🙂
I have met people just out of college who are incompetent with computer programs. You’ll do OK. The other commenters have great suggestions – and I’m sure you’ll do great!
Thanks for the reassurance, everyone. And the information–I bet we have Lynda at my library, and we do have wi-fi and a lot of downtime during the overnight.
My manager sent me a text just as I was going to bed (I get off shift at 6:30am or so and she gets in at 8-ish) saying I’d done fine, and the coworker who relieved me for the day shift showed me how to do the thing I couldn’t figure out via Google (where they’d moved the “save as” function).
Puebla’s tacos árabes are a wonderful variant of the standard meat plus carb wrapper equation and are basically the love child of a taco and a gyro. Some places put a peeled pineapple on top of the rotisserie so that there’s a steady stream of caramelizing juice dribbling down the sides of the spitted meat, and each taco is served with a slice of the smoky grilled pineapple as well as tiny limes and minced cilantro and onion. Ridiculously delicious. Cultural mixing at its finest.
This sounds a lot like the “tacos al pastor” that I can get around me. Is it the same thing, or is it somehow different? Because if it’s different, I have a new thing to add to my list of foods to seek out!!!
IIRC, al pastor has a slightly different spice mix (maybe heavier on adobo? I’m not a chef), and the Puebla version uses a pita-ish soft bread rather than a tortilla. The basics are the same, certainly, but don’t let that stop your quest!
In 1989, thirteen boys in Glen Ridge, New Jersey — all high school football players, in a town where high school football was very, very important —
Even if I hadn’t read the snippet here or the trigger warning at the top of the piece, I would have known exactly where that introductory story was going, and that makes me so sad. But the piece really is brilliant – I get so angry with people who seem so callous to the pains and/or truths of the marginalized, but it’s helpful to be reminded that even I was a dumb uneducated baby once (physically obviously, but also I was kind of a dirtbag in high school, because I didn’t know, and there are so many things I still don’t know) and I should treat encounters with dumb uneducated adult-babies with kindness and patience, because I want similar kindnesses when I run into my own limits.
Even if I hadn’t read the snippet here or the trigger warning at the top of the piece, I would have known exactly where that introductory story was going, and that makes me so sad.
Sometimes knowing where something is going takes some of the emotional impact out of it, and sometimes knowing exactly where something is going just adds to the emotional impact.
Like you, I knew where that was going. Not in the details, but it was clear. But oooooooooooooooof. Sady Doyle executed it so well. Despite knowing, despite being warned, it still felt like a punch to the gut when it got there. SO well done. So important!!!
Ugh. Yes. I stop there, because I don’t have it in me today. The Glen Ridge border runs right across my lawn. This is a town which was formed because a hundred years ago the rich people in my town didn’t want to deal with the poors, so they incorporated up there on the hill to hoard all the nice shit for themselves. They’re not too terribly different now.
Eagleton vs. Pawnee was a very on-point piece of satire. 🙁
God, I hadn’t even made that connection. Yes. Very much so. I only moved here last year, so I’m not super well-versed in the day-to-day (and this part of NJ is very hectic and crowded and yet pretty isolated, because it’s unpleasant to be a pedestrian around here, so that neighborhood-feeling you get in some cities is non-existent), but the physical differences in the two towns is so obvious.
(Especially since Glen Ridge painted a line down the center of the street yesterday and stopped right in front of my house, leaving the rest of the block to the right of me unpainted, because that block is Bloomfield. They even pave the roads separately, so the run of street in front of my house is half cleanly-paved, half a crazy asphalt patchwork).
That piece is AMAZING, so compassionate and clear-minded. I read “People don’t know things, until they do. Education was invented for the sole purpose of addressing this well-known human problem” in the context of what she was talking about and just sat there for a moment. We’re ALL dumb uneducated babies at some point! Some of us well into middle age!
I think the difference between the callous people and the Adam Horovitzes of the world is the ability to accept being wrong and that working to fix being wrong isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It’s not fun being wrong, but I’m sure grateful for the chance to fix it whenever I am wrong.
I am bringing home 2 rescue doggies today, 10 year old chow-shepard siblings. Anyone with dog-cat integration advice, please chime in! Blurting here cause I’m so excited! and nervous for the cats!
We have kennels and gates and leashes all prepped.
Yay! Rescue doggies!
Just make sure that the cats have someplace they can go to get away from the dogs. My cat has a shelf above the tv that she sits on and looks down at the dogs. Also be aware that dogs like to get into the cat liter because they are disgusting creatures at heart.
If you have a room where the cat’s litterbox and food will be, consider one of those pet gates that has a little tiny door for the cats. This one looks hella expensive, but it’s an example: http://www.wayfair.com/Carlson-Pet-Products-Desig…
When introducing the dogs to the house, I’ve heard that you should keep the cats separate at first, like in another room with the door closed, bring the dogs through, let the dogs get relaxed, then introduce the cats into the situation, maybe keep the dogs on the leash while they are getting introduced? This link might be some help: https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behavi…
I actually did a lot of research on this at one point… Long story short, I never ended up introducing a dog to a cat, but maybe it will help you!
And post pictures!!!
Upstairs will be cat-only territory, and we actually bought 2 gates very similar to the one you linked to! Thanks for the tips everybody!
Keep the dogs separate from the cats for a while, so the cats can get used to their smell/noise. Make sure the kitties feel safe accessing their food/water/litter box. It might be a good idea to designate one part of the house “cat only” so they have a safe space to escape to when they feel overwhelmed. Since you’re adopting older dogs, they’re going to be way calmer than puppies, which is good! Cats get along best with dogs who more or less ignore them.
Cats flee UPWARD. Also, feed them separately. Cuddle the cats when the dogs are present. Dogs learn the command NO KITTY very easily, actually. You’ll be fine.
My husband is a Vietnamese refugee from a later wave, and I am constantly impressed with how many Canada took in and depressed at Canada’s immigration policy now. I’m trying to immigrate to Canada and have been trying to do so for literally years now–I live here and have lived here for a decade and the process takes forever and costs thousands of dollars–and I think people who are refusing refugees truly don’t understand in a fundamental way what immigration takes and what it’s like to refugee somewhere and why these things are different. My in laws lived in a refugee camp for years and had two children under age five there and they would have crawled over broken glass to get their kids somewhere safe, and when Canada opted to take them and send them to Fort McMurray they said, okay. Sure. Comparing that to what I’m going through which is ridiculous by itself but in a whole different ballpark? These aren’t even the same ballpark. They’re different games entirely. One is baseball and one is slicing carrots. The only similarity is that they can take place maybe in the same area. That’s it.
Anyway, also Ashley Callingbull Burnham is gorgeous and I want her to keep yelling the truth until people finally fucking listen.
Hmm, the mechanical bull in that video clip from Urban Cowboy doesn’t seem like it’s going that fast, which is dangerous because I now have all kinds of undoubtedly incorrect assumptions about how fabulous I’d be at riding a mechanical bull.
Back when I was a kid you could go to Gilley’s during the daytime to ride the bull in easy-mode. It was harder than you’d think!
It is surprisingly hard, and nothing like riding a horse (as I found out). best advice I was given was to lie right back, hook my feet under its horns and try to stay horizontal.
I wrenched my knee attempting to ride a mechanical bull. I say “attempted” because I actually hurt my knee while trying to jump on to the bull, and never made it to the riding part.
I’d also had a lot of moonshine at that point, so I didn’t realize how badly I’d wrenched it until later. Work trips!!
Thank you, Nicole, for thinking so compassionately of us with bad fathers. It means so much to be included, to be considered with kindness.
Yes! Dad Magazine makes me sad, which is fine, it just means it’s not for me, and there are many other things for me to enjoy on this site/the world in general. But it is nice to be acknowledged.
I love reading these stories and being able to be happy for others, but it also hurts. I appreciate Nicole’s comment SO much. Thank you.
Absolutely, 100% agree — thank you so much!
Dad Magazine doesn’t make me sad, but I do appreciate Nicole acknowledging that not everyone has loving parents. My childhood was such a nightmare that there is absolutely nothing I could say about my parents that’s appropriate for light conversation. And it’s hard not to feel ashamed of something that’s not acceptable to mention in public. Well-meaning people are always asking me things like “so what does your mom do?” (Actual answer: “I have no idea if my mom’s even alive”. Answer I gave in a panic: “She’s a yoga teacher!”), and it’s the wooooooorst. Not assuming that everyone has the same experiences as you is always a plus in my book.
Yes, I like reading Dad Magazine because I think it’s cute and funny, but it doesn’t mean anything to me because my dad was not that kind of dad at all. It doesn’t offend me, but I just don’t get it on the same level as a lot of other people.
What does KIND OF offend me is when a friend of mine always says to me “Ooh! A new dad magazine is out!” and sends me a link like I should be excited about it. Like, I get that her dad is exactly the kind of dad they are talking about, but she KNOWS my dad wasn’t.
DADDY ISSUES!
Um, people make similar comments like this to me all the time (“oh this is such a DAD thing”) and it drives me CRAZY.
YAY DADDY ISSUES!
I was just going to comment something similar, but you beat me to it! I find Dad Magazine hilarious, but also off-putting in a way I never could put my finger on, and this summed it up well. Just acknowledging that not all of us have had the greatest fathers in the world (especially when it’s a thing that isn’t acknowledged enough or is a “thing we will not discuss” issue in a lot of company) is really kind and fantastic (and more proof that The Toast is the greatest). YAY VALIDATION.
Not a huge fan of buzzfeed, but this is a very important article:
Tom Hardy took his dog to a movie premier and there was much rejoicing.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kimberleydadds/i-want-to-…
shut up, this is GREAT. It has taken me a long time to come around on Tom Hardy, but good lord he is trying so hard to get me to like him, and I think it’s working.
Ok, I may see this movie purely because of this photoset.
Thank God for Jessica Chastain and her Mom or else he might not have gotten the pup. The more I hear people talk about being with her/in her proximity the more I love her.
“I found him with Jessica Chastain. We were in Atlanta, Georgia, doing ‘Lawless,’ and he was in the motorway. We almost ran him over with a Prius… And he ran off into the motorway, and Jess was like, “No, no, no! You’ve got to go after him!” He was only 11 weeks old, and so we got hold of him and he became the on-set dog, and Jessica’s mom looked after him for me for about six months while he cleared quarantine, and then we brought him back to London, so he’s my dog now. He goes on all my film sets now. He’s a great on-set dog.”
THE COLLAR HAS A BOW TIE
I just read the Dad Magazine article and somehow I missed the “Hydration!” headline on the August issue. My younger sister and I went to Disney World in June and he constantly talked about hydration beforehand and via text while we were there.
President Obama is such a good Dad-in-Chief. Did everyone see him dancing with the kids? http://jezebel.com/president-obama-is-having-the-…
omg. most def saving that gif for later use.
The comment section!
I am loving give no shits Obama. Its like the campaign Obama has come back. Its funny how enthusiastic he was coming in and the system was just like Nope. But now he’s got nothing to loose, so fuck it lets dance with some kids and legalize gay marriage (I get that Obama wasn’t the one who did that, but still)
I’m not sure that words can express how much I love that Sady Doyle piece.
I’ve had this ongoing conversation/feud with a B-School DudeBro of my acquaintance about “political correctness” for months, and I’m hoping this one will really get to him. The only reason I’m still bothering is that I have actually managed to change his mind on issues in the past— we’re FB friends at all because of the time I called him out on his really casual use of the word “rape” (IE, that sports team really got “raped” while playing their sport)—- and he actually thought about it, apologized, and then STOPPED. AND he’ll come to me (even respectfully, most of the time) with questions where I’d really prefer he ask me than some of the other people in his life he might ask (ie, what’s the difference between trans people and drag queens?)
But I”m hoping that this— with it’s tone of “I point this stuff out because I think that your words matter, and that when I point out that you’re wrong, you’ll get better, because you aren’t a bad person” —- is the sort of masterful calling in that I want to do with this dude, but sometimes lack the language.
I was thinking the other day that, especially in the internet age, we need a much more detailed vocabulary to say “I disagree.” Because it is too easy to interpret people’s opinions as either “YOU ARE WORSE THAN HITLER” or “I ENDORSE LITERALLY EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER DONE,” with little space in between. Of course in reality most opinions are more like “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, it’s just not a very good idea” or “It’s not like there should be a law against it, but it’s kind of shitty” or “I am not totally committed to this argument, but I saw it on twitter and it reminded me of something I heard once…” Can we get emoticons for all of those feelings? It would cut out a lot of defensiveness and needless outrage.
YES. I’d like to add “I’m not saying it’s rape, but it’s also not the kind of sex I think we should be aiming for”. and “I could be friendly with a person who did/said things like that, but I couldn’t be a close friend with that sort of person”. and “that seems well intentioned, but you seem to have missed something sort of important to the bigger picture”. “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.”
That shirt constitutes a true statement in essentially all situations.
I have mixed feelings about the piece. On the one hand, I agree completely re: not conflating a person w/ their opinion. I also absolutely love her commentary about comedians and their stance in this whole debate over political correctness. However, I also found it to be really condescending. It felt like she was trying to strike a conciliatory tone, but in effect, it read more like “let me explain to you why I’m right and you’re wrong.”
I mostly agree with her points, but at the end of the day, we are talking about opinions here and she uses the word “wrong” more times than I can count. She speaks in such absolutes. She makes the point that she believes in “criticism and not censorship,” which I absolutely love and agree with. However, a critique is, by definition, an opinion. If someone makes a joke I take issue with, I can say, “I find this problematic for these reasons.” To me, acknowledging that everyone in the conversation has value is not the same thing as agreeing with me. They might agree with my reasoning, and they might not.
She dismisses those who don’t share her opinion as ignorant, immature, or angry. At first, I thought it was going to be a step back from the latest “someone is wrong on the internet” cycle, but after finishing it, I’m not so sure. Is “I’m right and you’re wrong” really any more productive than “No, you’re garbage”? Everyone is so caught up in winning the argument, or climbing the endless mountain of moral high ground, no one is actually listening.
I liked the piece, but I thought it had two theses that got confused somewhere about 2/3rds of the way through, and neither ended up being fully developed by the end: the “harmful ideas are wrong ideas” thing, which I thought she was going to explain but she just left it as read, and in this context it should most definitely not be taken as read; and the “art has impact and artists need to be mindful of the art they produce, specifically comedians” thing, which was better developed by the end but didn’t jive with the first thesis for me, because if we’re talking about art, how can art be *wrong*? Like factually? So I can see a lot of what you’re saying here.
Toasties, did you know Tom Hardy took his dog to the Legend premiere last night? Because !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Send help.
I have died. I am dead.
You did not mention that the dog is WEARING A BOW TIE!!!! Oh my god, I too am dead.
Tom Hardy may have solved the paparazzi problem, because every camera there was (righfully) aimed straight at the dog.
WOODY
first Canadian and first First Nations woman to win the title of an international pageant that judges contestants on their advocacy record rather than their bikini catwalk (though they only qualify if they’re married)
Does this mean that contestants are only eligible to opt out of the bikini catwalk portion of the pageant if eligible to win Miss Universe if they’re married, or what? I’m confused by the phrasing here.
I believe they are only able to compete in Mrs Universe in general if they’re married. But that this is the first time the winner has been chosen by virtue of her answers rather than her body. It’s quite clumsy, though.
Or maybe this is standard and not new for Mrs Universe? WHO KNOW
Ahh, somehow I missed that it was a Mrs. Universe pageant – I thought it was a Miss, and that her title was Mrs. because she’s married. I am not up to date on all the latest pageant news.
Screw the idea of “which candidate would you like to have a beer with”. I want people to talk about “which candidate is more likely to cuddle and soothe a puppy”.
This actually kind of isn’t a bad rubric for candidates. Which puppy from a litter do you cuddle and soothe: the big, strong leader of the pack or the little one who needs extra help? That says a LOT about a person’s priorities and personality.
Wow. That was kind of a lot more serious than I thought it was initially.
Holy shit, we may have come up with a whole new political rubric that will allow us to incorporate puppies into the presidential race.
The Toastariat: Changing The Course of American Political Leadership Since 2015
ALL OF THEM. The answer is you cuddle all the puppies.
(This does not reflect any actual political stance, but my stance on puppy cuddles is universal and unwavering.)
Equal cuddles for all puppies!
Or you’re Mitt Romney and you tie the family dog to the roof of your car on a road trip. That pretty much said it all to me.
Clearly, you cradle the little one protectively with one hand while you chase the big one in circles with the other hand formed into a claw. Obviously.
PUPPIES.
But Donald Trump wouldn’t be allowed near them. He doesn’t deserve puppies.
“…and that’s why I’m voting for Putin.”
The GIF has me confused because I’m pretty sure I’m voting for Ron Swanson now?
Friend Carrie’s Puppy is in that gawky tween puppy stage and I die, I die, look how long and goofy those legs are in comparison to the puppy sausage body. What a treasure.
My dad died when I was a tot, and I’m a married lesbian trying to have kids, so sometimes people’s affectionate dad jokes and the idea of peak dad do make me a little sad. Also – and I know we’ve talked about it on the toast – I feel pangs for our society that puts moms into boxes of caring and nagging, and doesn’t celebrate their goofiness. But Dad Magazine is good, and the toast is a respectful place – perhaps the best place for such a feature to have begun – and Matt and Jaya are treasures! tl;dr – thanks for remembering them of us who have a different experience.
in my not so long 32 years on this planet, I have learned that just about anyone can be a “Dad” in the goofy, loveable way Dad Magazine celebrates. Sex/Gender/Age/Culture don’t seem to matter so much as the spirit of the thing. So be encouraged that your kids, even if they don’t have a “guy Dad” in their lives, can still experience the treasure that is goofy love and mild obsession with preparedness. <3
This is one of the nicest comments I’ve ever read.
That’s what we hope to encourage!
You do, definitely. Dad Magazine is very enjoyable, even for those of us who had different/bittersweet experiences. We’ve all been fond of an all-caps dad-type person, even if they weren’t ours!
Thank you very much! It’s true, some aspects of this stuff transcend all boundaries. Our kids will have to live with a variety of Dad Mag headline behaviors, including a focus on hydration and pulley systems. 🙂
But that still means we’re gendering “goofy” and “prepared” as being dude-parent things, rather than lady-parent things, like couponing.
Awww. This is so true and lovely. My Dad was never the typical (or best) father. HOWEVER, my best friend’s dad could be on the cover of Dad Magazine. Absentminded professor, who asks us what certain slang means and then tries to insert them into conversation (“does anyone want to get Froyo?”), attempts to chase geese off their front lawn, makes terrible puns, etc. I adore him and regularly look forward to my best friend’s updates about the ridiculous things he’s said, so thanks for the reminder!
My grandfather also could have been a good contender. He was obsessed with collecting both toothpicks and free mints from restaurants, and definitely knew how to work WWII into any conversation.
I live near enough to the Canadian border to pick up CBC Radio One, and that icky minister Chris Alexander was on The Current this morning. So much facepalming.
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-fo…
I posted about the whitehouse.gov petition on Syrian refugee resettlement (https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/authorize-and-resettle-syrian-refugees-us) and volunteering for the IRC in yesterday’s link roundup but IRC have put out a press release on what you can do to help here: http://www.rescue.org/blog/make-refugeeswelcome-e… which may be of interest.
For Irish toasties this list of places to donate may be helpful -http://www.thejournal.ie/what-can-you-do-migrants-2309710-Sep2015/
Your whitehouse.gov link is broken.
Try this instead: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/authori…
Thank you!
Thanks for these links!
I’m really interested in this disconnect between the sort of political will to help refugees and the public will to help refugees — that thing in Iceland, where the government agree to take 50, but the actual population had more than ten thousand families offering to help is a good example — it seems unclear to me what the political value of stopping it is when there’s so much popular support; surely, even if you hate refugees, you’ve not got much of an argument for why someone else shouldn’t take them in? How problematic is it for a government to just say, “Well, we want to take in as many refugees as we can: volunteers?”
There are 400 million people in America; if that averages out (roughly) to 100 million households, if even one in every thousand people agreed to take in a refugee family, that’d be 100,000 families housed. Surely this is a solvable problem.
I come from an area where people spend a lot of time worrying about population loss and an aging population; the small towns that are surviving are the ones that have immigrant communities. Of course this is America and racism is widespread and there are a lot of nasty people out there. But I have also seen a lot of commentary in the past couple of years about how immigrants are revitalizing a rural economy and ought to be welcomed. During the recent wave of child refugees, I was surprised by the number of small-town leaders who were like “no no, they can come to our town.” But even when the will is there at a local level, even when it’s agreed that new residents will be good for the entire region, politicians are only playing to the racists. WTF.
Yeah, most economists seem to agree that while there can sometimes be short-term economic problems with waves of immigrants, in the long run they almost always improve economic conditions, because in addition to getting jobs and working, they also buy stuff. So, I don’t know. If I lived in a house that had more than two bedrooms, I would definitely offer to house any kind of refugees.
When I was a kid, we had a family friend whose relative had just arrived in the US and was having some sort of housing/residency issue (I don’t exactly know, I was 8 or 9) and so he stayed in our guest room for about 6 months. It wasn’t weird or inconvenient, we didn’t expect any compensation but he ended up doing a bunch of handyman work on our house to thank us. My parents have offered up their extra rooms to people who need them (my mom is a high school teacher and sometimes she has students who need an emergency place to stay) a few other times now that they’re empty nesters and I don’t think they’ve had any problems. What I’m saying is, if I had the space, I see no reason not to do something like that.
Right??? I’m sitting here thinking to myself, “Well, we have a guest room, plus the finished attic space, and TWO whole toilets. Surely we could take in like, four or five people in an emergency, which this is. And my stupid neighbors’ Victorian mansion is empty 80% of the time…”
There is some validity to security concerns, though. If Iceland accepts every single person who claims refugee status without even a cursory glance, some people whose actual motive is to hurt Iceland will get through (…. if those people exist, who wants to hurt ICELAND???). But even ignoring those concerns for the moment, I’m not that well educated about this conflict, but my understanding is that it’s really complicated, and the last thing you want to do to the refugees is bring in refugees from other factions that might continue the conflict and then further traumatize everyone, and even a small total number of aggressors could make the situation bad for a lot of people. (NOT that this is a good reason to bring in 50 people rather than thousands, surely there are thousands of people who are pretty unambiguously not security risks, but it does make things harder).
ALSO. See this piece about post-Katrina generosity, and how sometimes things get complicated.
These are implementation problems, though, not capacity problems; sure, of course review all of the people who are coming in, of course get consultants to make sure you’re not housing people with ancient enmities next door to each other, of course, but none of these impact the total amount of people that you’d actually able to support. Unless, was the argument that Iceland’s government only had the capacity to review 50 people?
I don’t know, obviously taking in 100,000 refugee families into the US is substantially more of a risk, because there’s a lot more anti-American sentiment in the first place and we’re in no small part responsible for the wars that people are fleeing in the second, and in the third, definitely there are going to be a lot of people who take in refugees hoping to convert Muslims to apostolic Christianity. There’s no question that we’re going to see a lot of the same thing like you’ve posted in your article — a kind of fake generosity, where you try to give of yourself because you prefer to think of yourself as generous, but in fact you don’t really want to give up anything.
And I am sure that there is going to be racism and Islamaphobia and a lot of problems, both logistical and cultural.
Plainly, the preferable solution is to end the wars in Syria and resettle everyone in their actual homes, but even if we had the political will to do that (which I don’t think we have in the US yet) and even if we had the capacity to do that (which we don’t have and probably never will), that’d still take years. It seems to me that the least we can do in the meantime is assume the risk of being attacked by secret refugee terrorists that comes with opening our doors.
Ok so I was debating replying to this at all but I just want to push back a bit on your comment on security concerns. This is often used as a sort dog whistle about Muslim refugees. I am not saying this was your reason for writing that. A big reason that Europe/US/Canada have been slow to address the crisis is because of conscious and unconscious biases against Muslims. The call to take in refugees does not mean that there will be no process. In the US there are questions about your involvement in the conflict and it would be pretty difficult if not impossible for a person involved in the conflict to be granted asylum. The official UN definition in fact precludes identifying as a refugee if one has committeed a serious non political crime.
I 100% agree that there are racist/anti-Muslim/anti-Arab/etc things going on with a lot of the people who are concerned about the security issue, especially as it relates to being worried that these people will commit terrorist attacks against the country taking them in.
This is especially easy to see in the case of the US dragging our feet on allowing translators that have worked with our military in Afghanistan, and eventually aren’t safe at home anymore, but it may take an ABSURDLY long time to allow them into the US. They are in trouble because they risked their lives to help the US, they have a significant working relationship with a number of people who are specifically trained to analyze threats, and yet we think that they might suddenly develop terrorist tendencies after getting on a plane? That’s entirely irrational. And there aren’t so many people in this position that this should be as big a problem as it is.
At least when we’re talking about Syrian refugees, there is the more understandable problems of there being a much larger population, poor access to records (birth certs, marriage certs, criminal records, etc). Not that any of this explains HOW VERY BAD we’ve been at this- This is not a new problem, we should be better at this sort of thing rather than worse.
And I’d assume it was mostly explainable by anti-immigrant sentiment as well as racism/islamophobia.etc etc etc, except we’re really bad at all sorts of other bureaucracy stuff, like all of the VA, so I don’t even know where to start sometimes.
The Afghan translator issue is infuriating and just so wrong! Back on the Syrian refugees lack of access to records is a pretty standard refugee issue since forever because people don’t generally have the time to get their paperwork together before they have to flee for their lives from war/violence etc. In the U.S there are tons of accepted ways to prove things for birth for example you can (though this is not the preferred form of proof by any means) prove birth through affadivits from two people present at the time of your birth to attest to date, parentage etc.
Please DON’T take this as an endorsement of any present government’s refugee policy, but: people offering up their homes are unquestionably acting on a very generous impulse, but generous impulses will only get you so far in dealing with this kind of intractable problem. Refugees, especially refugees in countries with very different cultures and languages, require substantial long-term support, well beyond just housing. The public’s attention will move on, but the need for services–and the corresponding costs–won’t. The Hmong in Minnesota are still disproportionately poor and in need of assistance, thirty years down the line. (Will the costs of support be small relative to some other ridiculous government programs? Most likely. Will refugee-assistance programs be targeted politically nonetheless? Yes.)
So, on the one hand, yes: many of the people are better and kinder and more compassionate than their leaders imagine, and it’s moving to see. On the other: resettlement needs to be handled with a lot of care, because of both the huge logistical challenges involved and the long-term deployment of significant political capital it requires.
(My family’s church took in some Laotian refugees in the early 80s when the U.S. social safety net was more generous. They would have a much much harder time of it now.)
I don’t disagree that there are a lot of long-term logistical issues that have to be dealt with, but I’m also not sure that the fact of those issues obviates the need to solve short-term problems. Ten thousand Icelandic families isn’t going to end the refugee crisis, or provide long-term capital support for Syrian refugees, but neither is only taking on fifty refugees and leaving the rest to drown.
Under international law (and as a practical matter), it is very difficult to again resettle refugees once you’ve accepted their asylum claims. So if you take a refugee in, you had better be prepared to support them long-term. You can’t really offer temporary housing/support only.
In the moment, for the most part, people aren’t actually drowning because there’s no place to put them, they are drowning because getting to Europe from their countries, or from the countries in which they are currently encamped, is itself challenging. (That’s definitely an imperfect generalization, I know, but to the extent it inadequately represents reality, I don’t think the issue is the availability of Western European housing.) I agree that conditions for refugees upon arrival are unacceptable, and temporary housing could certainly help with *that*, but that’s a different cost-benefit analysis and one in which it’s more reasonable to take into consideration the long-term issues.
This whole situation breaks my heart and I believe that more must be done by both individuals and (especially) governments all over the world, but it really is a lot harder to deal with than “hey, we’ve got space, you can crash for a little while.” Individual citizens think that way, and it’s very much to their credit, but I do think governments need to consider the ramifications more broadly. Even a government completely free from xenophobia or the urge to pander to it (which I would not argue is what we have!) would need to do so.
My friend’s mom (who is a badass) wrote an opinion piece in the Toronto Star about Canada’s failure to aid Syrian refugees:
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/09…
I love that Sady Doyle piece and I appreciate what she’s trying to say, and yet every time I see her name on something I remember when she jumped all over abuse survivors over a difference of opinion regarding a movie. She wrote an article running down the movie “Sucker Punch” and got a fairly large response from abuse survivors (mostly female as far as I could tell) saying that they’d liked it, because it spoke to their experiences of PTSD and dissociation. At the very least that’s an interesting POV, but she was super harsh and snitty with everyone who disagreed with her. This was on tumblr I think? And I seem to recall a similar brou-ha-ha about A Song of Ice and Fire; that she treated female fans of that series as though they were idiots.
I’m not saying 10000 years jail forever or anything like that; I do understand people change and I hope that she has. It’s just always been odd to me that she could write such well-considered stuff about human complications but reacted SO badly to anyone questioning her opinion even a little.
I remember writing a piece about Sady Doyle’s response to Alyssa Rosenberg about Game of Thrones, and being really angry with her about it, but she also ended up writing some comments to that piece that I felt like were productive and we had a good conversation about it. I think in the long run I like Sady Doyle, but I think she also has a tendency to get her back up about stuff in a way that is sometimes less than ideal.
Yeah, I liked the piece linked above a lot, but it feels weird to read in light of her George RR Martin piece, the conclusion of which was “VERDICT: George R.R. Martin is creepy.”, and that people who derived value from his work (their “toys”) were all manbabies who couldn’t handle criticism of their favorite author: “And at the end of the day, here is what the people in the “fandom” are going to take away: You don’t like my toys? I hate you!” Which, fuck. Game of Thrones (particularly the TV show, but also the books) has a TON of problems, which should (and have subsequently been!) discussed at length. But so much of that article basically amounted to “Haha, this is shit, and if you like it, you’re an IDIOT.” I see this sometimes with feminist writers who are also “cool” cultural critics – entirely justifiable progressive criticism (e.g., “Sucker Punch has some problems with how it represents women”) gets mixed up with some snobbish value judgements (“Sucker Punch is a horrible movie only fit for teenage boys.”). This causes the critic to totally erase the female audience, and to ignore how women might get value from a certain work. Anywho, maybe she’s mellowed a bit since then, since the linked piece is really wonderful.
Yeah, I remember bumping into her a few years ago and being very “eahhhhhhhh” about how she handled criticism. Then again, I was just as bullheaded and absolutist back then (just with a much smaller platform, THANK GOD) and hopefully we’ve *all* mellowed out in the intervening years.
In the 70s and 80s there was a huge influx of people from Viet Nam and Laos into Houston. They revitalized a flagging fishing industry and gave us a much better restaurant scene, and added to our town’s culture in numerous other ways. We could do with a much more open policy on refugees and immigration in general. I’m looking at you, Hillary Clinton!
I don’t have a very “dad” dad, but he did just send me this link with the subject “Free tuna money” : http://wtop.com/consumer-news/2015/08/starkist-ma…
My dad is a very Dad Magazine type of guy. One thing I only just noticed the other day is that he says “National Public Radio” every.single.time. he talks about anything on NPR. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say “NPR.” The convo where I realized he did this was one where he prefaced the actual story by explaining the premise and rules of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” I’ve listened to this show with him dozens of times before. DADS!
Both my parents are very “Dad’-ish. My mom has great enthusiasm for Tilly hats and strong opinions about folding chairs, for example.my dad has an entire renovated barn devoted to tinkering with engines and his 3 vintage cars, which he has owned since his youth, when they were merely old junkers. My mom asked for and received a dremel for Christmas once. And I wonder where I get it…
As someone with a bad dad, I’m fortunate in that I don’t have a painful reaction to Dad Magazine — just baffled indifference, as one would to something that’s completely irrelevant to their experience. When I was 14 and my mom was getting serious with my step-father (a decent person), and he said to me, “I hope I can be a better father to you,” I looked him dead in the eye and said, “I don’t want a father.” (And when he later wrote an inscription in his book that he loves me “as a father should love a daughter,” even to this day I still cringe with an “ugh, gross” reaction.) So yeah, I’ve not done much pining. As a writer, though, it’s good to know about the more positive archetypes.
Thanks for linking to that Sady Doyle piece! Can I just say how anger-inducing it is that Adam Corolla designates himself as a “truth-teller” about society? The guy who hosted the Man Show calls other people idiots?! I realize I’m not saying anything new here. I just needed to vent.
Dad Magazine makes me silent laugh so much – every single time – that it brings tears to my eyes. Love it.
My favorite part of Dad Magazine is the comments. Both the suggested headlines and the True Dad Stories.
Hold up, NICOLE ARE YOU ONE DEGREE FROM IDRIS ELBA AND NEVER FUCKING TOLD US!?
Yeah, I remember bumping into her a few years ago and being very "eahhhhhhhh" about how she handled criticism. Then again, I was just as bullheaded and absolutist back then (just with a much smaller platform, THANK GOD) and hopefully we've *all* mellowed out in the intervening years.
So I know you have said before that you would be open to signal boosting good causes/fundraisers…I am not an official Friend of the Toast but I’m “have been pubbed on the Toast” status and I’m trying to raise money for a car so I can keep working. If you’re open to posting it I’d be greatly appreciative — if not, sorry for the shameless plug! http://www.gofundme.com/3h35khyc
Ah, also, I might note: half the reason I’m fundraising & can’t afford this myself is due to leaving an abusive parent home 3 years ago & recovering from a lot of financial abuse involved in that, among other things.