Anna Holmes on how “diversity” has lost its meaning:
Bragging about hiring a few people of color, or women, seems to come from the same interpretive bias, where a small amount is enough. It also puts significant pressure on the few ‘‘diverse’’ folks who are allowed into any given club, where they are expected to be ambassadors of sorts, representing the minority identity while conforming to the majority one. All this can make a person doubt the sincerity of an institution or organization — and question their place within it. When I was starting out in magazines, I was told by a colleague that my hiring was part of the company’s diversity push, and that my boss had received a significant bonus as a result of recruiting me. Whether or not it was true, it colored the next few years I spent there, making me wonder whether I was simply some sort of symbol to make the higher-ups feel better about themselves.
The New Yorker’s Food Issue is out, and it’s always the best part of my year. All of it is tremendous (and put together expertly by my IRL bestie, Amelia Lester, which influences me only two, maybe three percent), and you HAVE to read all of it, but especially Lauren Collins on ranking the world’s best restaurants:
The Web site Daily Meal recently ran an article that, citing a debate on Twitter, questioned the credibility of the 50 Best awards: “The Oscars of the Food World or a Complete Schmozzle?” They are probably both, in that they are indispensable to the industry—in terms of both its bottom line and its self-regard—even as they command less respect than attention. “It’s a silly, silly list,” Frank Bruni, the former Timesrestaurant critic, said. “But you need someone to collapse the universe for you. As surely as the nineteen-fifties housewife turned toConsumer Reports to figure out whether to get a Maytag or an Electrolux, the 2015 gourmand is turning to San Pellegrino.” The 50 Best, which is as much about a sort of competitive hedonism as it is about connoisseurship, is the restaurant guide its era demands—edible clickbait, a Baedeker’s for bucket-listers. If the wine industry has become Parkerized, then the restaurant world might be said to have been Pellegrinoed.
Friend of The Toast Anna Pulley on being the wallflower at the orgy:
My girlfriend is often busy drawing the debauchery at orgies, so I’m mostly left to fend for myself. This rarely works out well. As a person with social anxiety, I do what most people do in such circumstances: Find the nearest animal and talk to it. This isn’t hard at Girl Pile because, though the location changes frequently, there is always a cat somewhere. At the last party I attended, the cat I found was gray, fluffy, and skittish, like me. I became determined to “win it over,” and a short while later imagined myself telling others that I spent the entire orgy petting this one pussy, and how it would be the saddest white lie ever told.
My plan to become super-popular with the cat was put on hold when I was almost accidentally flogged by a woman wielding two thick, braided, purple ropes. I felt the breeze from the flogger’s wake on my neck, and moved out of the way, back to the empty love seat to take up the other occupation that helps me kill time at parties: Peruse the owner’s bookshelf.
David M. Perry is a great disability journalist and has a son with Down syndrome, and I loved this piece on holidays and conformity:
My son, an eight-year old boy with Down syndrome, doesn’t eat candy. Nico mostly eats plain noodles, yogurt, blueberries, craisins, pretzels, cottage cheese, cheerios, oatmeal, Fig Newtons, some crackers, and applesauce. None of these are Halloween staples.
Nico does like superheroes and other imaginary figures just fine, but he hates wearing costumes. As is typical of many children with Down syndrome, he has texture sensitivities. Costumes, at least the ones my busy wife and I buy for him, tend to be constructed with cheaply made scratchy fibers, designed to be worn once and then forgotten. They rub at the back of his neck and his wrists. Capes subtly change the weight of clothes in ways he finds uncomfortable. He’s happy to put them on for a minute or two, grin, and say, “Batboy!” or (this year), “Superboy,” but then he’s “all done” and impatient to have the itchy garment removed.
Today, in important Hamilton news:
American history just got a little sexier for 20,000 New York City high school students. A $1.46 million grant from the Rockefeller Foundation will provide the NYC Department of Education with 20,000 $70 tickets to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s SRO rap-rooted Broadway musical about Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. The tickets will then be distributed to kids at the “Ham4Ham” lottery rate of $10, according to the participants, the other $60 paid for by the grant.
Men (not my boy Andy, though) can’t HANDLE Joanna Newsome (I do not listen to her music either, but I defend her right to annoy men):
But really, what is a musician’s voice if not distinctive? Isn’t that… good? Entire pieces have been written about the voices of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, so American and vital and wise in their manly scratchiness, like unshaved bristle and whiskey and dirt. Man voice make music good. Woman voice music bad: Too high. Too sharp. Too warbly. Sounds like birds, screams, mother. It speaks volumes that men always seem to love PJ Harvey, she of the deep timbre.
You should pitch The Establishment
The joy of being a black nerd:
I am a nerd.
I am a four-eyed, flappy-handed, squealing geek prone to public freakouts of over-excited fan proportions.
For reference, you can read this series of tweets that happened shortly after I watched an interview with Michael Dorn about my dream come true, Captain Worf.
Porochista Khakpour on some unlikely works of Iranian origin that you should take some time to read.
this is a lil video of a lil rat snuggling in a person’s cupped hands while feeding itself cooked spaghetti, and it’s worth your time to watch it
Here’s how you can donate your books to prisons (great tips on what to give and what NOT to give and how to do it)!
him: what’s your safe word? me: ROCHAMBEAU! you have your orders now go man go!
— Tracy Claytomb (@brokeymcpoverty) October 27, 2015
