My fake internet friend Dustin went to see the IRL Amazon store:
Amazon Books—yes, Amazon named their bookstore Amazon Books—is across the street from a Tommy Bahama, at the entrance to an upscale outdoor shopping mall named University Village. (The mall resembles neither a University nor a village, though it does have very nice landscaping, a place that sells athletic woolens, and a Starbucks at either end.) It opened at 9:30 yesterday morning. When I arrived at eleven there were a dozen people being held outside by a man with a walkie talkie “to prevent overcrowding.” Some in line had heard about the opening on local TV spots. Many took photos in line and again once they were in the store. “Who’s inside?” a woman with three visible bangles asked me. I told her that I did not think any authors were inside, but that the store was opening today. I did not use the phrase Day One, but wondered whether the staff, including presumably Walkie Talkie, had taken a moment before opening that morning to reflect on Amazon’s jargon, including that bit of eschatology. He did seem to have a zeal.
In case you missed it, our very handsome tech goth is now Marco, instead of Maria, and we are going to be joyously plugging his top surgery fundraiser until he has top surgery or the world ends in fire and/or water.
LOOK, now, words have MEANINGS, and I do not accept that American wizards say “no-maj” instead of “muggle,” that is FUCKED and I will NOT allow it:
In shifting the franchise away from the U.K., author J.K. Rowling — who also wrote the movie’s screenplay — is poised to introduce several new words into the Potterverse lexicon, and the most significant might be what Stateside wizards say instead of Muggle: “No-Maj” (pronounced “no madge,” as in “no magic”).
NO. Nope. No.
I always like hearing about the desert island reads of others (and Mallory and Roxane took part!)
My town of Salt Lake City has just elected its first openly gay mayor:
While Utah is very red, Salt Lake City tends to be a reliable outpost of blue. Before Becker, Salt Lake City was led by Rocky Anderson — another LGBT-friendly Democrat who pushed environmental issues, opposed the Iraq war, and in 2011 launched a new political party. The last time the city elected a Republican mayor was in 1971.
Salt Lake City is home to the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church, which is culturally conservative and has supported anti-same-sex marriage laws, including and most famously Proposition 8 in California.
But the city is also home to a thriving LGBT community, and while those two cultures are sometimes at odds, they also, sometimes, are not. Case in point: Both sides came together earlier this year to pass a non-discrimination bill.
Licorice is nasty, but I admire stubborn people:
Kado imports licorice from 10 countries and stocks powder, tea, liquors, syrup, roots, and even toothpaste — all flavored with licorice. But most customers are partial to the gummies, which come in numerous shapes and flavors. Varieties from Italy, France and Belgium are often made by small, family-owned operations and often infused with local ingredients like mint, violet, honey or laurel. Salmiak licorice, for example, is seasoned with rock salt and produced in Nordic and Baltic countries. In addition to selling to regulars, Kado gets strange orders from licorice-lovers in far-flung locations, including a monk who ordered by post from the Brazilian jungle. “I actually just got a call from a prisoner in Berlin,” Böge says, of a local order. “They’re allowed to have one package weighing two kilos a year and he wanted to order two kilos of licorice.”
It’s not been a good year for cat owners. Previous research has indicated that not only does your pet see you as an inessential landlord, but they also tend to view us as idiotic, furless cats who can’t hunt. This new study, led by the Bronx Zoo and researchers at the University of Edinburgh, has compared the domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus) to the Scottish wildcat (Felis silvestris grampia), clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), snow leopard (Panthera uncia), and African Lion (Panthera leo), and has essentially concluded that domestic cats are like miniature lions in terms of their overarching personality.
Leslie Miley’s departure from Twitter, and what it means for the future of black leadership in tech:
Though Miley was laid off as part of Twitter’s cuts in October, he says he had already told Twitter that he had planned on leaving at the end of October. He also passed on the severance package so that he could speak openly about his experience at Twitter. So, it seems as if Twitter was hoping to silence Miley by bundling him into the company’s layoffs.
A particular low moment for Miley, he wrote, happened when he asked a question at Twitter’s engineering leadership meeting about what specific steps Twitter engineering was taking to increase diversity. Twitter’s senior VP of Engineering responded, “diversity is important, but we won’t lower the bar.” Miley did not name names in his post. A visit to the leadership page on Twitter’s website will reveal that the company’s SVP of engineering is Alex Roetter.
Deleted comment of the day:
Lisa Hanawalt ALSO did an XOXO talk, and I think she’s very cool and talented:
It is SIXTY FIVE DEGREES on November 5 in northern Michigan and clearly it’s the end of the world
It’s supposed to be in the low 70s today and tomorrow in Boston and it’s really lulling me into a false sense of security. I feel like it’s going to be like this until winter’s almost over and then it’ll be “Haha, here’s 9 feet of snow in a month, hope you’re looking forward to completely nonfunctional infrastructure!” like last winter.
I am having a very hard time dressing for this hot (?) Boston fall- I wore a sweater dress and tights yesterday and I was so hot!
We’ll have 5 feet of snow by the end of the month.
Yup! Plus, for me, there is also the extra confusion of commuting to Boston from Providence. Some days it’s like 30 degrees warmer at home than in Boston because of all the damn wind. Some days, like yesterday and today, I look around at people in flip flops and no jackets and realize I have definitely overdressed.
My problem is the 20-degree change over the course of the day. How should I dress so that I can be comfortable all throughout the day, without having so many layers that it’s just stupid?
There’s also the fact that the T is paying its typical lack of attention to reality and has the heat blasting.
It was a high of 73 in NJ yesterday and I slept all night with my window open, I am not complaining but this is definitely weird!!
It’s supposed to hit mid-70s in southern Michigan today! The warm weather plus it getting dark super early is really fucking with me.
Honest to God if it hadn’t been nearly full-on dark when I got home last night, I’d have gone to the beach. A bunch of my friends DID.
THAT is the weirdest part! I was saying to my friend that I was planning on reading on my porch when I got home and she was like…are you planning on bringing a light or…?
Yes! This is truly the worst part. I’m in Metro Detroit and I keep forcing my co-workers to take walks with me at lunch time because I know it’ll be dark by the time I get home.
it hadn’t rained here in a WHILE and I was getting antsy, it rained this morning though.
I hate it so, so, so much. As my friend said, “The wrong things are living, the wrong things are dying.” This is not good for the nonhuman world and as this thread is showing, it’s not great for the human world either–the seasons are how we know what to do and how to feel, and when they’re messed up, we’re messed up.
Yeah. There are new blossoms in my yard and this morning I saw a bee. Bee is supposed to be asleep.
the high today is 88 in FL. Yesterday when I left work my phone said it was 82 (feels like 90) and I just about went on a rampage. It is NOVEMBER, this is NOT RIGHT.
It rained briefly (but heavily, big fat raindrops) earlier this week, and I was shocked because usually in FL rain = cooler weather, at least briefly? and NOPE it’s actually HOTTER this week than last week!
I was like “it’s Florida, I should be used to 90deg, even in November” but we had a few weeks of seasonally appropriate low-80s/upper-70s and my internal regulator already forgot how to deal with upper-80s/lower-90s. :K
yeah, it has rained twice here in the last week and it’s just made it hotter! Part of it may be that I lived in IN for a few years and then moved back to FL, but also I’m very far north here and the past two years have been relatively chilly (compared to what I remember growing up with in central FL), so I don’t think this is the norm??
We are wearing BARE LEGS and SHORTS in November in Ontario; and my parents went SAILING YESTERDAY ON LAKE HURON.
This. Is. Madness.
I live in upstate NY, in the snow belt, and it was 75 here yesterday. BRING BACK MY SWEATER WEATHER.
Yeah, I’m solidly in Lake Effect Land and same.
It’s 75 degrees where I am but I’m in central Texas so this isn’t really out of the ordinary. It’s actually surprising to me when I see people talking about snow. I’ve seen snow but it still surprises me.
Utah is having seasonably normal weather, which is kind of weird. And it’s snowing in the mountains, but not in Salt Lake City, which means I can’t see any snow 🙁 The clouds are covering the mountains.
I want snow so much right now.
it’s 55 and rainy in phoenix. i get to wear a sweater 😀
(i understand that the rest of the world is going to hell in a handbasket, climate-wise, but it’s been quite lovely here in the valley,)
So wrong here in Chicago, too.
IT is supposed to be 80 tomorrow here in DC. I mean, I like that it’s not freezing, but that seems excessive.
Here in the UK, somewhere in Wales recorded the hottest November day on record on the 1st of November. It’s concerning.
*whispers into the aether* I actually like no-maj because it sounds less like a slur to me
Yeah, no-maj seems fine and reasonable to me.
It’s utilitarian, to-the-point, and slightly awkward. It’s a perfect fake American slang term.
I can’t help but think of the terrible punctuation that is “no homo”.
“Aw yeah that Necronomicon looks readable as hell, no maj, bro.”
I mean it makes sense that the Americans would have different slang, right? We do for like, *everything else*.
Exactly! It’s a regionalism! Regionalism exist and are cool, I love hearing about different names for the same thing based on where you are.
I don’t entirely understand the “everything Rowling does now is terrible and I hate her for it” bandwagon. What do people expect her to do? She’s not dead or incapacitated in some way.
I wonder if people reacted to Tolkien putting out more Middle Earth material in this way.
I’m seriously considering making a prompt in open thread tomorrow saying, “So, Star Wars fans and Tolkien fans. Did your franchise have the same blowback when the Extended Universe came to be and when Christopher Tolkien started finishing and publishing Tolkien’s stories?”
I mean, people loved the EU, even though a lot of it was dreck. Star Wars fans seemed to largely take the attitude that the more toys in the sandbox the better. Tolkien fans were much more angry about the Christopher Tolkien mess.
I think it can be a little on the over-explaining side. Like how she mentions Dumbledore is gay, and you’re like, great, representation in the Potterverse, that’s interesting; and then she’ll go ‘But So and So is totes straight, don’t be slashing him; and Dumbledore’s falling in love was part of his Moral Corruption, and actually, when I said X in the book, I meant Y…’ when less was really more.
Can you be more specific with that second example, when she said someone else was straight and not to slash him? I’d just like to know.
I don’t remember her saying “don’t slash” but I found it quite weird she said Charlie wasn’t gay; he just preferred dragons or whatever that was.
Well, like with Dumbledore, she’d know best.
I have no opinion whatsoever on his sexuality, but saying he prefers dragons is a weird way to answer the question. I also still think there’s a lot of. . .weirdness about her ex post facto Dumbledore reveal in part because in a series that makes such a big damn deal about the Power of Love, I find it not great that the “inclusive” example of non-het love is incredibly toxic and destructive. And I feel like by dropping stuff like that outside the books, it makes it hard to engage with. It just sits there.
Oh, I misunderstood — I didn’t realize it was the “he prefers dragons” you found weird. That’s much more understandable, though I personally just read it as a joke.
+10000000
I partially object to it because of how it’s said – like, it is a badly put together term.
Also it’s terrible for pluralizing.
My biggest complaint about it, yes.
Wouldn’t the plural just be the same word? “A bunch of nomaj”, “That group of nomaj over there”, “The nomaj will never understand why we can’t use our fucking magical powers to completely solve every single problem in the world and would hold it against us since we have the power to CREATE LIFE OUT OF THE ETHER and would probably be super angry that we have been FUCKING HIDING INSTEAD OF FIXING THE WORLD, so we’ll just keep being cowards in our fancy posh schools and shadow government until the day they figure us out, tear it all down around our ears, and probably put us to the sword.”
Naw, magical britain at least never got past post-by-owl and talking-by-shoving-your-head-in-a-fireplace. I don’t even want to know what their plumbing situation is like if you can fit a 9 year old sized tunnel in the bathrooms with out anyone noticing for thousands of years.
If they were ever discovered we’d be running commercials about how for just 50 cents a day we can make an impact in a wizard’s life.
I mean, when teleportation is an option, long-distance communication technology is certainly going to be stunted. But I don’t think a culture that can literally create our money from thin air would need any more of it.
I have a lot of very strong taeks to offer on the subject of class relations in JK Rowling’s world.
That always baffled me! Like wizards clearly picked up some muggle technology/inventions because they had candles and furniture and buildings, but for some reason they stopped? Like they were okay with using the knowledge base of muggle medieval craftsmen, but just never bothered to learn about electricity (or to use ballpoint pens or pencils to write instead of fucking QUILLS).
I assumed that muggle-borns were introducing technology, but that it was generally slow to catch on because (a) there aren’t that many muggle-borns, (b) many wizards to look down on muggle technology and (c) things don’t become popular until someone has fine-tuned some everyday spells for interacting with them.
For (c), what I mean is that if you have a spell for lighting/extinguishing your candles and lamps and you can cast it from bed pretty easily, then maybe a light switch on the other side of the room doesn’t sound so great. You could probably flip the switch with an existing spell, but you’d have to aim it carefully, and who wants to do that in the middle of the night? But if a muggle-born who understands that light bulbs have real advantages over candles develops an easy light-switch-toggling spell, then electric lighting may start to catch on.
I think this is semi-explained by the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. It was passed in 1692, so that’s when wizards fully went into hiding from Muggles. So yeah. Candles and furniture and buildings and then… Not much else. 😉
Where does the money for Hogwarts even come from? Are my taxes supporting the magical world?
I agree with you there. i also feel like it’s a little clunky and inelegant – perfect for America. i can only assume that by the 1920’s “wands” would “zap sticks” or some shit 😀
No-maj sounds enough like 1920s slang (‘that flapper over there’s a no-maj but she’s a real live wire anyway’) that I can almost buy it for movie purposes.
“I was hoping to read something useful” is really a great way to start any comment.
Also, re: American wizard lingo – I’m not sure what to expect. Something that sounds like a real slur, given America’s racial history, or something that sounds more dignified, given our general resistance to British classism.
I’m not into Harry Potter but I kind of like to listen to people talk about it and what’s come up from this seems to be that yes, it is appropriate that Americans would have a different word but JK could have done something so much more interesting (and relevant) than this.
“Muggle” always seemed sorta clunky and longwinded from the elegant civilization that brought us “wog”
I really like Piers Anthony’s use of “mundane” in the Xanth books* for people without magical abilities.
*I was young and didn’t have much to read, okay?
And I agree that neither this nor muggle has the nasty sting of “squib.”
Implies that we think of them like gypsies/Arabs? (Nomad, nomadj) great, so that’s great. Muggle sounds like a class distinction but we make it racial.
I’m pretty sure the all-time peak of anti-gypsy/nomad racism in the US amounts to “wait, those are real?”
Uh…definitely not the case. Romani aren’t a big group here, but they’ve drifted around the States since the 1860s, and they’ve experienced a lot of the same prejudice here they’ve gotten everywhere else. At one point during the Great Depression a group of them camped on my great-grandfather’s farm in western Iowa for a while; chickens started to go missing some time after they arrived, and whether they were responsible or not, they were blamed and driven out of the community for it.
Okay, so I *know* that I’m supposed to be annoyed at how much JK Rowling is zombifying the author with her constant stream of extra details and retroactive rewriting of the meaning of her text, but “no-maj” is infinitely more annoying than any of that. But I’m going to pretend that it was just a weird 20’s fad that died out. Right everyone?
Haha, “zombifying the author.” I suppose its a sign of the times that I actually first learned about the concept of “death of the author” from JK Rowling’s constant canon revisions?
Maybe it’s just me being grumpy, but I feel like “muggle” fits perfectly into the British tradition of using cutesy-sounding slang terms, whereas “no-maj” sounds like it was invented by an author who has no idea how U.S. slang works at all. Or, as you said, maybe it’s super-duper dated? *shrug*
Yeah, I think that’s part of it. I can fully accept that American Wizards would have different terms for muggles, but there is something about “no-maj” that just doesn’t actually sound very American.
I came here to post exactly this! No-maj sounds totally British imo.
I was thinking that. It reminds me of something that would be in the glossary of a Georgia Nicholson book.
Aaaaaaaand now I’m imagining Georgia as a wizard. Yikes, imagine all the damage she’d do with beautifying spells. And she’d totally use “no-maj”.
I take issue with our slang terms being called “cutesey” when American English includes terms like “panties”.
I can only conclude from this that America is overrun by cyberpunk wizards wearing rad 90s shades
I actually love that she’s doing this, because I’m not really a fan of HP and it’s fun to see people melting down about stuff that doesn’t change anything in the actual books/movies that they’re fans of. It’s like the slightly-more-literary set’s version of the nerds who whined about Michael Bay’s “Transformers” movies ruining their childhoods.
I gradually grew less and less enchanted, so to speak, (and I thought the first ones–I think I started reading when book 4 came out–were fun, but not nearly what I would put in my personal top 20 or so best books about magic and kids), and I was sort of relieved when it was over, because I felt kind of tapped out arguing about how race was handled and parts I thought were really unintentionally creepy (there were very few characters I actually thought of as pleasant people to spend time with by the end), and now I don’t have the energy and it keeps coming back and back and back. . .
Okay, but with all respect…you don’t have to engage with the fannish debates, do you?
I don’t actively participate, but it seeps into my other spaces a lot, and I find it a bit exhausting to skip through sometimes. It’s the equivalent of a polite smile and nod–I’ll do it, but I still sometimes roll my eyes a bit once I’m home in private.
Oh yeah, I forgot that it was the ’20s.
That’s really the peak era for American all-purpose hatred. The anti-miscegenation laws date from the 1920s, and that’s the time when eugenics was in vogue and Americans were advocating mass sterilization, particularly for people of color, anyone disabled, and the poor in general.
Their word for muggle is going to be nasty, but maybe with some pseudoscientific veneer. Maybe something from “degenerate?” Degens? Gennies? Or from troglodyte? Trogs?
Morlocks? Except HG Wells was English, and it sounds too much like warlock.
I really like “trogs”. It sounds suuuuuper 20s with the slangy-cutesy invented word that is actually very offensive.
I will never understand how strongly people disapprove of the author continuing to add to what’s in HER OWN SANDBOX, the one SHE CREATED and we wouldn’t even know about it if she hadn’t written it down and persevered to get it published. Everyone’s free to disregard whatever details they don’t like (because, after all, it’s all fiction!), but why are we in a tizzy because she hasn’t sealed it away like a relic? She’s not dead yet! It’s going to be hers to do what she wants with as long as she breathes.
> Everyone’s free to disregard whatever details they don’t like.
Only if they never talk to other people or read about it, possibly moving into a cave on Mars with their fingers in their ears if it’s something with the reach of Star Wars or Harry Potter.
I don’t give much of a shit about the books, or any fictional world really, but there’s a bunch of people for whom it’s central to their lives in some form or another. That means J.K. Rowling has the ability to change their lives, which can be for better or worse.
I don’t know. Like a lot of people my age, I literally grew up with Harry Potter and it pretty much defined my childhood. JK’s Twitter shenanigans don’t change anything about that experience.
I have a real hard time with people who tip over the line from “I love this fictional thing” to “this fictional thing DEFINES ME AS A PERSON.” I feel like this is particularly prevalent in nerdier circles/fandoms, and is at least part of the reason why (some) super-fans freak the fuck out about criticism or movie casting choices or reboots or weird shit the author says about minor characters on Twitter. Having that kind of relationship with a work of fiction just seems exhausting and upsetting.
But…it’s not in the books, or in the movies. You can go back and read your books and watch your movies and they’re the exact same. This isn’t like George Lucas inserting scenes into Star Wars and then buying up old copies so that only the new ones would exist. It’s just her saying stuff about the books/films that has no connection to the reality of the books/films themselves.
Which is fine until you want to try to talk about these books that are Very Important to you and discover that everybody else that wants to talk about them is working off a different set of facts.
Considering the wide range of opinions on the new information over the years shown in this comment section alone, I don’t think that each new “official” tidbit of Potter lore immediately changes the conversation for everyone. And if you’re having a conversation with someone about Harry Potter (or any established franchise–Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc), and that someone goes “Well ACTUALLY” to your statements instead of engaging with you in a conversation about your mutual interest, I think that’s a problem with that person.
(Not that the “well ACTUALLY” phenomenon isn’t a huge problem in franchise fans. It’s one I personally am guilty of slipping into when talking to, say, people who have seen the movies but not the books. But I’ve come around to the realization that this is a problem with me, and not the fault of a movie production team)
Thank you! I’m a die-hard fan of the books, and they fill a central spot in my heart, yet I have no clue what most of the stuff on Pottermore is. I’ll be happy to read it one of these days, and I’m glad it’s out there, but it has no affect on how I view the books. Yeah, if J. K. Rowling makes something in the Harry Potter universe and it’s terrible (really concerned about those so-white NYC photos), it will be heartbreaking. However, that’s her right. She made the whole thing up. We as fans have the right to dislike something, argue about it, or ignore it, but I get extremely irritated when people act like J. K. Rowling doesn’t have the right to create anything new in the Harry Potter universe.
Thank YOU. I’m glad I’m not alone here.
Oh my Rowling, I mixed up “affect” and “effect” in that post, I’m glad I, a professional editor, noticed that after the work day was over or I’d have been suffering through a serious bout of Imposter Syndrome today…
I’m not offended, per se–I was fairly disenchanted with the series by the time it ended and had my fun in parts of fandom where that was the general vibe–but it does seem awkward and kind of off-putting to me. Maybe because in various writing workshops I feel it is so drummed in that your work has to stand on its own; no matter how intricate your backstory or how clever you think that metaphor was, you can’t grab every reader by the arm to tell them how to interpret your work, and it kind of feels like that’s part of what she’s doing. And yeah, I guess you can do that when you are practically the most famous writer in the world, but it still feels a little tiresome to me, especially these drips and dribbles instead of another interpretable text.
So, I mean, she can do it, obviously (and I don’t care much either way about the content, except for a few comments I found spectacularly eye-roll worthy), but it does feel very sleeve-tuggy to me, and it’s hard to avoid entirely unless I stop reading any entertainment or book news site at all.
I wanted to be so excited about Fantastic Beasts but I’m not over being disappointed about the casting of Newt… and basically the whole (very white) cast in general, TBH. (Okay and tbh I don’t see the appeal of Redmayne at all, especially since Danish Girl, ugh.)
Someone on Tumblr once suggested that Nathan Stewart-Jarett would be a good Newt Scamander and… I just kind of filed it away as fact, I guess, because I spent a while yesterday, looking confusedly at the set photos and wondering where he was.
Sigh.
I had to look him up, but ohhhhh he’s the hot guy from Misfits, yes please!
I went through the very same process. And I almost want to re-watch Misfits now, but that first episode scared me so much when I watched it the first time, so I’m a bit skittish. But oh that series was soooo good, right up until it jumped the shark in a spectacular fashion.
I didn’t know his name as an actor, so I just had the pleasure of googling and saying aloud to my empty room: “OMG yesss Misfits!”
I was going to pretend that I remembered that his character’s name was Curtis, but I didn’t until I got to his IMDB page. In other news, I’ve got a whole lots of things to add to my to-watch list now. And I’m also disappointed that he won’t be playing Newt Scamander.
ETA: And I took a moment to see what Antonia Thomas has been up to, and I see it’s Scrotal Recall. Should I give that series a watch then? The title is so unpromising…
It’s got a terrible title but Scrotal Recall is actually a very sweet and funny British romantic comedy. Antonia Thomas is great and the lead actor is also one of my favorite folk singers. I was sad when I finished my bingewatch and found out there wasn’t a second season.
I felt disgusted and annoyed when Netflix emailed me about it telling me they thought I’d like to watch it.
Really good show, worst title ever, though.
Yes to this! Scrotal Recall is wonderful, and Johnny Flynn is just the best.
Yesss, he was all over tumblr as the top choice and that’s ALL I can see now. So every time I see Redmayne I’m just disappointed.
(I mean besides the Danish Girl issues, his face to me is the same category as Benedryl Curdlesnoot, aka that category where girls on tumblr swoon and I’m like ????????)
His mouth is strange. It always looks like he’s smudged his lipstick.
My sister and I refer to him as Weird Mouth.
I had the exact same problem. I saw the new poster with Eddie Redmayne and got really confused because he wasn’t Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Sometimes Tumblr fancasts really really well.
Redmayne! Did you not see Jupiter Ascending?
Nope! I’ve thought about seeing it (not for him, but for Mila/Channing), but I’ve been pretty turned off from Redmayne since the Danish Girl nonsense. I mean not just his casting, but some of the things he said and excuses he made, which of course I can’t find right now because I’m tired and at work, haha.
Yeah, the Danish Girl is indefensible.
(he is my absolute favorite part of that movie, and that’s saying something because I love the shit out of that movie)
His face is so horrible. Amazing.
I’m entranced by the color change.
Yeah, I was disappointed that a British-white-boy-of-the-moment was cast as Newt and then the rest of the cast sounded so white, too, that I’m just feeling very “meh” about the movie. I’ll probably still have to see it, though, because my little cousin is an HP fanatic.
OK but…does Harry Potter have all that many people of colour in it? Like, I know Harry had an Asian crush at one point, but I remember those movies as really white too. (I only saw like, the first couple though.)
It has more than Fantastic Beasts. Which is kinda sad tbh because yeah, HP didn’t have a lot of diversity either so the fact that Fantastic Beasts has even less is kinda ridiculous. I would expect (or want, I guess) them to improve, not get worse with that.
HP had more “minor” (aka non-major, though some had more plot than others) characters of color. Cho Chang (Chinese), Lee Jordan (black), Dean Thomas (black), Angelina Johnson (black), Kingsley Shacklebolt (black)… I might be missing some. There was a black girl playing “Lavender Brown” as a background character, and she was recast as a white actress which was just, ugh. But yeah, it had some diversity. (There’s also Anthony Goldstein in the books who is Jewish but he’s not really in the movies afaik.)
Also the Patil sisters!
Oh yes I knew I forgot someone(s)!
There was a relatively good amount of background diversity, despite the disappointment that all of the main-main characters were white. (I do especially love tumblr’s fanart of Hermione as a black girl. THE HAIR.)
Yes, love black Hermione!!! And I’ve seen a lot of Desi Harry, which makes total sense to me too. At the very least, the series seemed to actually represent Great Britain in the 90s, population-wise, unlike the mostly white version of 20s New York they’re presenting in Fantastic Beasts.
I just keep hoping for a BBC miniseries adaptation.
England has been fairly diverse for a long time, and the rate of muggle born wizards is probably race neutral, so I would suspect the HP world is whiter than the real world–all those old magic English families would be white–but the younger generations are more mixed. How long ago is Beasts set? Seems like they should at least try to have representation from some of the longer established UK minorities, like Indians. I’m not very thrilled about this movie, really. They’re squeezing a fairly dry orange at this point.
It’s set in the 1920s so approximately 70-80 years before the HP world we already know, and it’s set in the US not the UK
Well, then the whiteness is just silly. Depending on region, the US had huge minority populations at that time–African-American obviously, also Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, etc. This movie sounds less interesting all the time.
I don’t see the prior movies’ lack of diversity as a reason to keep on being so white-centric, especially when it is a story so far removed from the original stories. If the same moviemakers are at the helm, then, I can see why the status quo is being upheld.
I categorically REFUSE to accept “no-maj” as a substitute for Muggle, except as a weird quirk of the 20s that went away as language evolved (especially since, as someone pointed out on Twitter, “muggle” meant marijuana in the 20s).
Also, GODDAMN does NYC look white in the 1920s. What a disappointment.
“No-maj” sounds exactly like a british person’s idea of American slang. Honestly, a lot of our slurs are based on acronyms or abbreviations, or corruptions of existing words, so would it have been so hard to come up with something more believable? There’s not a single hard or percussive consonant in that phrase.
Oooh, well done Mental Floss. It wasn’t until I got to the lone dude writer at number 20 of that Desert Island books list that I realized the previous nineteen writers were all women. I love when subverting the standard is done so casually.
The lone dude writer also happens to be the only one saying he would choose his own writing over literally any book written by anybody else, ever.
I was a tiny bit disappointed that they tossed in a token dude at the end, but then when I read his submission it was kind of like a punchline. “We asked 20 writers to talk about books and we got 19 lovely answers and an ego,” basically.
COVERT MISANDRY.
LOL now that I actually read it I find it even funnier that it’s James Patterson, since I thought it was pretty much an open secret that a lot of his recent output is partially ghostwritten anyway.
good god, this comment on the “cats are basically lions” article:
“hahahahaha, that’s cute. A 10 or even a 30 pound cat trying to kill me huh, well good luck and who gives a shit. My kitty loves me and trying to kill me would be a mistake. I am the alpha male in this household. And I weigh 200 pounds and just as mean and guess what, I also have weapons, so bring on the pussy, I will make a video for the human pussies to watch.”
MY CAT CAN’T KILL ME, I’M AN ALPHA MALE. P.S. VAGINAS
My cats could totally kill me. I mean, one of them only has three teeth left and still manages to kill plenty of mice (and used to catch and kill birds too before we put a bell on him).
If you’d asked me one year ago, I’d have disagreed with the article because my cats trusted me but really didn’t like strangers (they liked the boy, too, but were clearly more comfortable around him when I was also in the room). It turns out though that if you’re nice to cats for a prolonged amount of time, enough to make them stop seeing humans as threats, they stop making that much distinction between different humans. They’ll beg strangers for attention now, and one of them now clearly prefers the boy to me (the traitor). Oh well.
That’s interesting — we’ve had the same cat sitter for oh, maybe 10 years, and our cats are pretty old (one is 17, nearly 18, one is 9), and they still hide when we’re out of town and the cat sitter comes over.
The cats do recognise the girl who cleans our house, and they HATE her (and the vacuum cleaner – these things are probably related). The run outside as soon as they see her. They even once tried to go through the cat flap at the same time. I was unfortunately not there to witness this, but apparently it was hilarious.
I used to have a dog that would attack a broom or a vacuum cleaner. Other cleaning tools/activities were OK with him. Over the years it became clear he was attacking an enemy. You see, this dog loved to eat dust bunnies. (My house never looked so clean as the years I had that dog.) The broom and vacuum were stealing his snacks!
huh, this has not happened for my cats, and I think I’m pretty nice to them! I think I’d have to have someone in the house at least three weeks before the cats decided to they didn’t have to hide all day. It was a MAJOR accomplishment that we convinced one kitty to take one of her favorite kind of treat from my friend’s hand as she scooted back further into the closet.
I imagine Alpha Male of This Household’s train of thought is the same anytime he hears or sees the word ‘cat’, and it’s just a frantic, panicked scramble to write or say the word ‘pussy’ as much as he can before an Alpha Male of Another Household can get there.
“Good luck and who gives a shit” is a great life motto, TBH
We need to add that to our spreadsheet of Toast phrases (appropriate for throw pillows, etc.)
Masculinity so fragile it’s threatened by a cat.
“Alpha” males aren’t even a THING the way you (not you, mr dudeman) think they are ugh I am so sick of this terminology.
P sure wolves would be as confused about the alpha concept as they would be about truck nuts. And those two things are about as relevant to wolves.
I COULD TAKE AT LEAST ONE HOUSECAT HUUUUAGH YEAH
FUCK YOU BABY, YOU THINK YOU’RE HARD, I BET YOU DON’T EVEN LIFT
GURGLE AT ME ONE MORE TIME MOTHERFUCKER I DARE YOU
I HAVE WEAPONS
more like “no-vaj” amirite
omg that might be why no-maj looks so wrong with me–I thought it was just the ending in “J”!
No-vaj is literally all I can see when I look at that phrase, I hate it
My brain is making it ‘no-raj’ for some reason??? WHY brain? I think it’s because I associate the term ‘raj’ with those sort of quietly-but-systematically racist, very british, 1920s books.
So how is he not understanding the distinction between “thinks and feels like a lion” and “has the same physical capabilities as a lion”? Logic: only for pussies.
I am a licorice fanatic and I am actually a bit heartbroken that I didn’t know this shop was in Berlin while I was there. I was literally around the corner from it an all!
*cry*
Clearly this is a reason to return!
Also, i am now putting Berlin on my shortlist of places to visit when I save up enough money to make another visit to Europe.
I have been there, and it is a wonderful magical store!
They have just about everything (except Tyrkisk Peber!!!)
I had no idea they did mail-order, though, so now I am contemplating some highly self-indulgent Christmas thoughts.
My brother is a bad Scandinavian and didn’t introduce licorice to his children when they were young, so now they don’t like black licorice and think ‘licorice’=red licorice, which is clearly wrong (I mean, I like that stuff too, but it’s not LICORICE, like the licorice root, come on, it is “strawberry” flavored!), so now he & I are the only people in the living part of the family who like it and I am very disappointed in him. But maybe I can keep trying with more varietals from Kado!
And just a note up above: I have always been under the impression that salmiak=some kind of edible ammonium salt added to the licorice, not rock salt. People add it to lots of desserts to make them crisper.
Sheepdogs are guarding tiny penguins in Australia, and I’m re-evaluating all my life plans right now: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/world/australia…
Dogs are just the best part of Earth.
Oh my GOSH.
(Literally I just kept saying that at my screen as I read the whole article.)
“a local chicken farmer known as Swampy Marsh”
HELL yeah
penguins are just “chooks in dinner suits”! I love this article and will bookmark it for future days when I’m feeling sad about the world.
Everything about this is delightful.
That is a thing of beauty and joy.
and they’ve built little houses for the little penguins eeEEEeeeeEEeeeeee <3
Oddball is retired and lives under Farmer Marsh’s house! This is amazing.
omg the picture here: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/hands-off-my-new…
Oh my gooooodoooddddddd
Seriously this should be made into a delightful picture book. Even the names are perfect!
Re: desert island book choices
1) love that the list is mostly women authors
2) love that the first comment is a man saying he would choose better
Also, all the women give these thoughtful, funny answers and then they get to James Patterson and he’s all “lol I’d bring a notebook because I’m the best, har har.”
At a rough guess I’d say 30% of the books Target sells are “co-written” by James Patterson. Which just… HE DIDN’T WRITE ANY OF THEM HE’S JUST SUCKING UP MONEY SO THEY CAN PUT A FAMILIAR NAME ON THE COVER.
I just have to say that I was intrigued by the “Murder House” he is credited with on the Mental Floss article, but the amazon page does not make it seem at all like a house that murders its inhabitants. That is a disappointment.
Patterson totally comes off sounding like a smug jackass there.
I realize he was probably asked the question in isolation, but I question the editorial choice to cap the whole article with him, basically, saying that if you were really cool you wouldn’t be so enthusiastic about books you didn’t write yourself.
Ah, I don’t read it that way, I feel in the contrast between everyone else and Patterson in that list, Patterson certainly comes off as the smug fool.
It’s odd that I don’t care for licorice candy, but am fond of absinthe.
SAME. See also: anise.
I don’t care for licorice candy, but am fond of the anise-flavored liqueur sambuca. However, that might be mainly because I can light it on fire.
Oh sambucca! Memories. In university, a friend gave me a bottle of sambucca with a pour spout, so I could pour a full shot directly into my mouth. Actually, I’m surprised I can remember that.
I WILL gag if I have black licorice or anything black licorice flavored (Nyquil, Good ‘n’ Plenty) but you can have my anise hard candies after you pry em out of my cold dead hands. It’s so weird!
I used to think I hated all licorice-tasting things. But now I know: I dislike licorice candy, will tolerate anise seed in biscuits (especially if toasted), like fennel seed in chai and vegetarian sausage, and LOVE fennel bulb.
Basically, I like the savory applications of the flavor, but not sweet ones. (I think I may have more sweet taste receptors than average?– I seem to get overwhelmed by levels of sweetness that many people enjoy.)
I canNOT handle licorice or anise-y liquors, so no ouzo/absinthe/sambuca/etc, but do appreciate fennel seed in small quantities. Some basil varieties, also, come across as anise-y to me in certain applications and that’s usually fine. Same idea maybe?
NO to “no-maj,” which feels weirdly British to me. Maybe because it reminds me of veg as an abbreviation for vegetables, which is definitely not American usage.
Yeah, cutting the word “magic” off at the G causes you to either overemphasize it (“no-maDGE”) or just kind of whisper it away (“no-maʒ”). Neither feels right.
Yeah, I feel like “noma” or “nomie” would be more likely.
we do say fridge though, so there is some precedent.
the “no” part seems the weirdest to me. unmaj maaaaaaaybe. no-maj? no. nonmaj is better than no-mag.
“muggle” seems very british, and I will accept an alternate american term, but it’s true, mo-maj is not it.
To make muggle less British, I’d shorten it to “mugsy” like Bugsy Malone or similar. Or “Mugs” like ‘Bugs’ Moran himself.
Agreed that un- would be better as a prefix. Or non-. Anything but no- :/
Oh, I like ‘mugs’.
I was thinking about it and I came up with ‘lacker’, pronounced like ‘lacquer’ but now I think about it that’s probably the Australian one, really lends itself to that nasal drawl (I am Australian, to be clear).
I think, wrt fridge, that when we (both american and british speakers) shorten stuff to end in the soft g – j sound, it’s only ever one syllable, i.e. we don’t say Refridge.
What I mean is I think the two-syllable thing in no-maj is what’s throwing me off.
Maybe we can just call them [us] nulls or something.
nulls is good. I was also thinking it’d be plausibly cute if we went from “no-magic” to gnomes.
Sounds very London to me, to be honest. Working class London specifically- I think it’s reminding me of “ledge” for “legend” and similar stuff.
The only way I can hear it in an American accent is if I imagine the speaker is a hardboiled detective. “We got a no-maj down on 42nd.” “I’ll be on my broom in 5.”
10-4, pal. Let’s ay-kay [Avada Kedavra] the mo-fo.
Sorry, apparently I can only imagine a hardboiled detective who is also a death eater.
This hardboiled mobster 20’s-era deatheater story is the only set-in-America HP prequel I want.
wait, really? Am I unAmerican? I say “veg” all the time. I had not really thought about it, but I think it is short for “veggie,” which is kind of an ugly word.
I say “veg”. It does sound better than “veggie”. If that makes me unAmerican, then so be it.
Yeah, no-maj doesn’t feel American to me either. I think we actually tend to use longer words for things, like “African-American” or “first-generation college student.” Maybe this is a regional thing, though, like “remote control” sounds more American to me than “clicker” or whatever. So I feel like we would actually say “non-magical people,” without shortening it.
How does Rowling know what American Wizards say? She’s British. I think her wizard sources are giving her misleading information on purpose, to cover their tracks
or like, as a prank maybe? like, “Oh yeah, americans totally don’t say muggle, they say, uh,” *snickers to self* “no-maj. yeah. definitely no-maj. you should tell people that. because it’s definitely true.” *stuggles to keep a straight face*
Like Tom Wolfe’s informants among young women at college?
omg THAT BOOK
One thing I have learned from the news is that people are accidentally shot by dogs – never cats.
Cats never shoot you accidentally.
Dammit, that was what I was going to say!
also, this: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Cat-helps-S-F…
That literally brought tears to my eyes.
Mine too.
A Dog Took My Face and Gave Me a Better Face, to Change the World
Well, dogs are always found guilty of the accidental shootings. Which is exactly how the cats want it.
Sometimes I think about our glorious space future and how microgravity will probably mean we can’t justify have dogs in space and I get sad.
…
That’s weird right?
Guess we just need better gravity simulation in space!
I was hoping to read something useful, and I did! Desert book lists and cat things and twitter info! Oh my!
Deleted commenter, I share in your disappointment. I was hoping to read something useful when I started to read your comment but instead I read what I see is partially responsible for what is wrong with our old people today… sad
(That’s a lie, I expect nothing useful from the deleted comments.)
Entertainment is useful!
The poor commenter! my first reaction was, did anyone e-mail him? explain what satire is? I bet he could have gotten it with a little help! 😀
Good job, Salt Lake City.
I’m sitting here in Houston, not only having to say goodbye to kick-ass & also openly gay Mayor Annise Parker, may she go on to wonderful kick-ass things, but dealing with living in a city that not only won’t PASS the Equal Rights Ordinance, but my fellow voters overwhelmingly voted no.
Cue Book of Mormon:
Sal Tlay Ka Siti
The most perfect place on Earth
Where flies don’t bite your eyeballs
And human life has worth
It isn’t a place of fairytales
Its as real as it can be
A land where evil doesn’t exist
Sal Tlay Ka Siti
And I’ll bet the people are open minded
And don’t care who you’ve been
And all I hope is that when I find it
I’m able to fit in
Will I fit in?
Guys I have a job interview today and I’m terrified! Y’all know how much I need a new job so please send good Toastie vibes my way! I love you all.
Got everything crossed that its the perfect job and they love you! (which they will!)
All the good vibes for you!
GOOD LUCK!
You can do it!
Good vibes!
Oh Frumiosa, I am wishing you the very best.
Good luck! ~~~~~~~~~~~good vibes~~~~~~~~~~~~
“No-maj” is clearly just the start of a sanctimonious statement by Homer Simpson to his wife.
Heh, I never really think of Boston accents when I read words, but filtered through Homer it sounds totally like that. No-maj, it’s chowda!
I think, err-um, you guys are thinking of, err-um, Mayor Quimby!
For the old, what’s mainly wrong with young people today is that they’re young.
(And their music sucks)
Seriously though the youth of today do listen to some shitty music. There was a house party in my neighborhood recently and I kept saying “I am going to go over to this house and stage an intervention with the Rolling Stones.”
I hope to outlive the Autotune age.
(there are a lot of good new bands. They’re just hard to find)
Apropos to the Autotune age, lat time I got a haircut, one of the stylists loudly announced, “Why does everybody on the radio sound like damn robots nowadays.” At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old person: Word, lady. Word.
The other day I heard a song on the radio and I thought ‘what? They’re playing humorous Adventure Time songs on the radio??’ because of that thing where Finn sings and it’s obviously ramped-up autotuned.
No. It was just a regular pop song.
Oh I agree completely! I love finding new music THAT IS GOOD. 🙂
I think it depends on what you listen to! I’ve been getting into stuff that falls under the Americana label lately, lots of indie acoustic stuff, and I’m delighted by a lot of it. But bluegrassy blues stuff isn’t really everyone’s taste.
Anyway! I’ve been finding music by browsing Noisetrade. I was surprised by how useful it is, but I’d really rather not get the daily emails (too much email).
I did not expect the NYT to call Victoria “Victoria State” in its article. We just… don’t do that? It doesn’t even work for most of the others “New South Wales State,” “Western Australia State.”
We’d go “the State of Victoria” or you know, just call it “Victoria.”
I don’t even understand. Do they do that to US states? ‘North Dakota State’ ‘California State’ ‘Texas State’?
Sometimes we do, like when we’re distinguishing between Washington DC and Washington State, New York City and New York State. But we Americans generally suck at geography and they had to clarify that it’s a state and not a city, I guess… hahaha.. it does sound weird!
I also think Lisa Hanwalt is great. Love her and Emily Heller’s podcast Baby Geniuses and one day I’m gonna buy this dogs doing gymnastics sweatshirt (or if I get real bold, this plants with dicks sweatshirt).
I am thankful every day for people who have no sense of irony
Wow! It’s great to be appreciated this way. You have made my week.
You bring so much amusement to the world! Thank you!
No-Maj just sounds like some alternative, subversive protest against Madonna.
NO-MAJ HERE, YOUR FIERY BISCUITS ARE NOT ALLOWED.
(Madge is short for Madonna in Britain. Also Her Majesty.)
Maybe it’s a subtle royals dig – No, Maj! One’s fiery biscuits are not allowed!
I like the idea that after the US declared independence the Americans just ran around shouting ‘NO MAJ NO MAJ NO MAJ’ for a few months.
[tiny font] it sounds like “nomad” with a “dz” sound instead of a “d” sound at the end, to me…..
Same here.
Lions live in social groups and other wild cats…do not. I would have thought domestic cats would be more like lions in personality for that reason alone, no?
Study shows domestic cats are social creatures, widely hailed as proof domestic cats are not social creatures.
This is exactly the nonsense I was talking about a couple weeks back about how domestic cats “independence” is largely a rhetorical trick.
I remember up-thumbing that comment with glee.
Last night I was at a lecture where I was the only person under 30, and one of maybe 2 people under 50, and the lecture partially focused on discovering new voices in Israeli literature in the 1980s. So I was designated by the lecturer as the Does Not Get It Millennial, a role I protested.
“This was before cell phones — ”
Me inwardly: I remember pre-cell phones
” — before the internet — ”
I remember life before the Internet!
” — and before photocopy machines.”
Aw, shit, man life in the 1980s was hard.
Wait, photocopiers totally existed in the 1980s. Colour copiers even existed, although finding one was harder.
I mean, I was about six when the 80s ended, so my personal memories of the 80s are pretty dim, but my school, the library, and the church we went to all had photocopiers as early as I can remember, and no one ever made a fuss about it being a new thing that they were widely available, the way they did when cell phones replaced, like, car phones. Colour copiers were a bit harder to come by, though I think there was a coin operated one at one of the supermarkets? My memory’s a bit fuzzy on that bit.
Also Wikipedia says they’ve been around since the 60s (the 70s for colour copies), but I probably would have accepted that they were rare in the 80s if I didn’t know better.
I suppose the lecturer might have meant that people didn’t have printer/scanner/photocopiers in their homes, which is true, but that’s not the same thing as there not being photocopiers at all.
I had a lot of school worksheets that were mimeographed, not photocopied, in the 80s. They all had a kid of purple ink from the mimeograph machine. And we used carbon-copy paper too, which is a similar technology. Photocopiers really weren’t that widespread, especially in the early 80s — they just didn’t feel very new because we had all those earlier similar technologies like mimeograph that they were related to. Especially outside the US, I think.
That purple ink smelled so damn good!
I don’t think I ever had a mimeographed worksheet, but I didn’t start school until 88, so it’s possible my school hadn’t had their copier that long.
I still think “no photocopiers” and “fewer photocopiers” are not the same thing, though.
I vaguely remember a few places still using mimeographs when I was young–the purple ink, and I was born in 1981.
I was born in 1985 and my elementary school phased out “dittos” in favor of photocopies while I was a student — 1992-93 or so, I think, was the last time I got a mimeographed worksheet.
yeaaap. I was born in 1989, got my last ditto around 1995? Because Appalachia.
I had a job in 1999 where we used a mimeograph. (it was a PIRG, and we just used it for internal stuff, but still.)
Last Christmas I went to a carols thing and there was a surprise sermon in the middle (it WAS in a church but I’ve been going to this event for years and they never did more than a ‘think about jesus, aren’t we grateful ok next carol’ before). The priest started out giving context to the bible story he was telling, saying that it was ‘before the internet… before tv… before technology’. I spent the rest of the sermon whispering ‘fire is a technology… sandals! Those a are technology. Do this happened before clothing, then? No clothes in the bible? Cos THEY are a TECHNOLOGY’ while my boyfriend shooshed me.
Mallory I didn’t think I could think you were more awesome, but A Canticle for Leibowitz?? You perfect human you.
Here’s an old post by her about it
Somehow I had missed this! Thank you!
“Oh, she did one about Canticle?!” AHAHAHA of course I had commented on it.
I love Canticle for Leibowitz so much, and one day I hope to be able to re-read it.
Now I have to read it….
My desert island book: D&D players manual, because I want to start a group so badly (critical role, anyone), but I have to write my thesis…and I think that would give me a lot of imaginary friends fodder to keep me company.
I am LIVING and DYING for that picture of Marco as Fanny Pack Dwayne Johnson
<33333
My partner pointed out that humans have bred dogs to love us, which is kind of manipulative. Cats decided on their own that we were pretty cool to hang out with. So which type of animal really loves us more?
Still dogs, because cats are terrible and contemptuous, whereas dogs are loving. Look, Homeward Bound should have put this question to rest a long time ago; Shadow is the platonic dog and is the best, and Sassy is the platonic cat and is the worst.
Dogs’ love is too freely given. Cats make you earn that shit. As much as I like dogs, a cat trusting me enough to let me rub their belly is far superior to dog snuggles.
The fact that it is freely given is what makes it meaningful. Cats only love you if you can do something for them. Dogs just love you for you.
Dogs love everyone because they can’t help it. I could be a terrible person and a dog would still be excited to see me. A cat loving me is a kind of validation that I’m not a completely terrible person.
I’m sure Ernst Blofeld’s cat loved him, but I don’t think that means he wasn’t a terrible person.
I maintain that if a cat loves you, you cannot be COMPLETELY terrible. You may still be mostly terrible, but there is some good in you. Even if you are Ernst Blofeld.
I don’t know who Ernst Blofeld was but when I heard that Stephen Harper (Canada’s evil and finally ousted Prime Minister) had turned his top floor into a foster home for cats I felt so conflicted.
Bad guy from James Bond. The quintessential villain (i.e. Harper’s role model). He’s the reason bad guys pet a white cat while they explain their plans.
See, this is why I couldn’t have a dog. It would love me and be loyal to me pretty much no matter what, and I would always feel bad about it! I’m not that great, dog.
You ARE that great! The dog just knows you’re the best.
Dogs just manipulate us in ways we recognize as loving. Cats manipulate us in a less pack-oriented way.
As I’m reading this, I have a cat lying on her back in the crook of my arm demanding belly rubs. I call this pose “cat taco with belly filling.”
The cuddliest of all possible tacos
I rather feel like we’ve been breeding cats as pets for the better part of 10000 years.
IIRC dogs came first, very early on when humans were still hunter-gatherers and lived outdoors. Wolves befriended humans for food scraps and humans in turn took the wolves in for security and hunting help. Humans have been breeding dogs for more specialized purposes every since
Cats turned up at some point before the Egyptians and have largely remained unchanged.
Not really, though. They decided they liked our mouse-filled granaries a few thousand years ago, but they can and do go back to wildness if they are born outside human control. And their genes are still mostly the same as wildcats. http://www.latimes.com/science/space/la-sci-sn-ca…
And dogs decided they like our table scraps a few thousand years before that. Somehow when we see feral dogs, wolf/dog and coyote/dog hybrids nobody seems to think this is evidence of dogs not being domesticated.
As the article I linked below points out, ALL domesticated animals have a period as babies where they have to be handled by humans or they’ll go wild.
There are still feral cats, who cannot be domesticated, and they are biologically different. But what people think of when they think of wild cats is domestic cats gone wild – they still vocalise, which is an infantile trait that feral cats don’t have, and they’re more social than feral cats, etc.
Yes but how is that genome expressed? I was going to type more here but I don’t really know what I’m talking about I’ll just link this http://koryos.tumblr.com/post/57769837146/cats-le…
Excellent article.
The amount of times a cat (even in the case of cat I know and like!) will try to bite you “playfully” for no good reason or put its razor claws into you as it’s jumping off your lap make me grateful for the gentle comfort of dogs.
They don’t understand how tender our flesh is. They’re not doing it maliciously. They bite their own skin when they’re grooming themselves.
I have a cat sitting next to me right now. I know she loves me because she comes to me for snuggles and when I leave the house I am told she meows piteously, and when I go on a business trip she gets more and more upset as the me-less days wear on. Even though there’s a perfectly good kibble monkey there.
My cat does it maliciously and he very much knows it hurts. It’s just too much fun to resist.
He still loves me, though, or close enough that I don’t care.
Perhaps for your dog. Mine is a 65 lb ball of clumsy muscle with a penchant for stepping directly on your feet, and who has a whip tail.
Our new kitten however does find nose-flesh particularly toothsome.
Aw come on tho! I always get covered with scratches when playing with my dog friends too. My best dog friend was a 70 pound pitty and I’m convinced that when she jumped on me, 100% of her weight was born on her dagger-talons.
For me, big dogs (not even super big–labs and standard poodles at least fit this category) are way more likely to jump up against me with their paws on my shoulders and bang a sore trigger spot.
Just loving this Toastie cats vs. dogs thread.
About that… http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/1…
A licorice store? How wonderful!
If domestic cats are basically mini-lions, does that mean my dream of one day rubbing a lion’s belly is achievable?
Having had the chance to touch a number of big cats at various points: aim for tigers. Lions are, honestly, the only big cats who I’ve ever met that universally give me the creeps. It was so clear from their body language that I could be food. The tigers I’ve met have been much more like housecats: wary but open to a pat from a polite stranger.
ahhhh TIGERS WOULD BE EVEN BETTER! What job or life circumstance has allowed you to do this/can I replicate it? Also, a cheetahs as tolerant of humans as they’ve been made out to be? I’ve always thought my best chance of attempting big cat cuddles and surviving was with a cheetah.
OH GOD. So I’ve been wondering why I never got notifications from intensedebate and the answer turns out to be that I must have used my super old yahoo mail address that I check every 2 months or something. I just found this. I hope YOU get a notification!
Depending on the zoo/sanctuary/what have you, there might be a chance to pet/feed a cat or six near you. I’ve hung out with servals in Melbourne, had a backstage walk/talk with the big cat keeper in Adelaide where I got to feed the tigers and lions, and done a private walk with one of the tigers and keeper at Tiger Island in the Gold Coast (all in Australia). Different places have different rules, because they’ve socialized their cats differently. The coolest was the walk with the tiger. If you are of a similar age to me, you might have seen a special on Animal Planet in the late 90s about Tiger Island and their 4 cubs. My brother and I swore we’d go, so when i moved to Australia we had to.
ETA: Said brother also has worked in a big cat sanctuary and agrees with my assessment about lions. Bunch of jerks.
Yes! Though their purr is terrifying the first time you hear it, like an oncoming earthquake that could also eat you.
Any time my cat licks me I think about how a lion’s tongue can rasp your skin off of your bones. Uuuugh
I remember reading that on a sign at a zoo and was oddly thrilled. “Look, this is amazing! Lions’ rough tongues can rasp flesh off the bone! That’s why cats have rough tongues!” It was a good day.
I can’t answer your question, but I’d like to take the opportunity to share this gif, which I have saved as “who is this man what is his job”.
ugh so cute! Also, either he is some kind of cat whisperer or he walks around with peanut butter on his head.
you can definitely achieve that dream…once
I had no idea Amazon opened a physical store in the Village, though that makes total sense as a place to do it.
I happened to drive by it the other day — it’s where Blue C used to be (it moved to somewhere else in the Village). But yeah, it’s quite in keeping with the U-Village Thing. (I hate U-Village.)
U-Village is the worst.
I would completely hate U Village, but they have Pasta & Co. It’s a huge treat to me when I’m visiting my parents and they want me to pick up some fresh ravioli, and I can go try all their samples and treat myself to a lunch of, like, lamb meatballs and brussels sprouts and beet salad.
A friend of mine apparently works there (she got the job months ago, but wasn’t allowed to tell anyone what she was actually doing until the store opened), so from a staffing point, at least, I’m optimistic. I feel like I’m supposed to have strong feelings about this, but I don’t really think it’s any different from if Barnes & Noble had opened a location there – I don’t think this is actually going to have much of an impact on the Seattle independent bookstore scene.
I did kind of crack up reading this toungebath in the Atlantic (this is a beautiful gathering place for community!) immediately followed by this Billfold piece by someone who actually went there instead of just (I assume) re-wording the Amazon press release.
I don’t overly mind the idea of a physical Amazon bookstore, it is certainly better than nothing which seems to be the trend as bookstores close all over. And it is encouraging they are paying decently. Although it sounds like they could use some improvements in store layout and design.
It certainly fits the feel of the Village though, which seems to be half corporate storefronts (Apple, MS, Sony??)
It seems like it might actually be a decent place to shop for books, using the data they have about who likes what, & one of the things I read about it (Seattle Times, I think?) said that they may specifically try to push books that might are low in the sales rankings but have high star ratings, which could be cool.
Yeah! There are definitely some uses on integration with the online stuff that would be really cool if implemented well.
mmm licorice
except for salmiak, sorry, i can’t do the dubbel zout, it burns my mouth.
I love the salty licorice too. Give me all the licorice.
JKR’s cannon revisions started as a weird annoyance and now I’ve started to take them personally. The Harry Potter saga is the closest thing I have to a fandom and it’s so important to me and she is RUINING IT. It’s turning into a “love the text, hate the author” situation.
At this point, various fans’ headcanons are far superior to both the actual text and JKR’s weird post-publication modifications.
Right! But her edits almost feel like, insulting to us. Like, “Oh, you thought these characters and this universe existed in your imagination now? LOL NOPE.”
I really should just learn to ignore it.
I’m happy to ignore it, but it does come up in pretty much every entertainment/media space I read.
I can’t help but bitterly believe that if her non-HP books had been better received (or just…better), she’d have shut up about HP by now.
Link fun: Design Sponge has a new series that started yesterday called My Teenage Bedroom. I am so into this idea. The first spotlight is Jasika Nicole of Fringe/Scandal/Welcome to Night Vale fame. http://www.designsponge.com/2015/11/my-teenage-be…
i am outraged at the possibility that the Amazon Answers desk is staffed by a human and not a table full of Amazon Echos/Alexas
No-maj is an aural echo of “no mas,” which could be a cool linguistic inheritance… but now I’m looking at all the Fantastic Beasts articles that are “why is this movie nearly all white people” and I’m like “nope, probably not then.”
“So I was just about to hop on the ol’ sweepstick, when this lousy no-maj starts getting in my face. Well, I drew my hexrod and iced him with a no-viz whammy, then sidestepped into the mojozone to AAUUGGGHH (SUCKED THROUGH REALITY VORTEX INTO POCKET UNIVERSE WHERE WILLIAM GIBSON AND J.K. ROWLING CONSUME EACH OTHER ENDLESSLY)
Wait, don’t stop! I would read that fanfic pronto. It’d be so chrome.
The adoption of “chrome” as slang is something I can definitely get behind. (I have discovered that I have a compulsion to enthusiastically thumbs-up any comment that makes any sort of Fury Road reference, all other content irrelevant.)
If anyone is still around, I am accepting condolences for having gotten STUCK IN TRAFFIC and thus MISSING MY BUS to my BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING.
Best lady, more like worst lady.
(It is fine, I am taking a later bus, but also I AM THE WORST and CHICAGO TRAFFIC IS THE WORST and also, I AM THE WORST).
It is Chicago’s fault all the way. This city is awful. Are you going to make it if you take the later bus?
Oh, well, yes. Today’s actually the day before the rehearsal dinner, so I’m not missing any of the actual event. I’m probably just missing out on packing welcome bags, which I’m deeply unsuited to do in the first place, so it is okay, but I feel terrible!
I’ve used up all the bad luck allotted to the weekend, is what I’m telling myself. Everything else is going to be perfect.
I’m sorry! That is awful. It wasn’t your fault, just a shitty thing that happened. Hope you get to participate and enjoy the occasion anyway!
Thank you! I’m not actually missing anything, since I was planning to get into town a day early. I just feel crappy about it, and am bummed about missing time with my niece and nephew.
ugh, so sorry. Chicago traffic is so awful. You are not the worst!
I am on the next bus now! Chicago traffic will have to try harder to defeat me (please do not try harder, Chicago traffic)
No-maj isn’t racist enough to be American for anything, especially 1920s American.
Stay golden, right wing nutbars. http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/05/war-on…
Plain red is still Christmassy with the green Starbucks logo too soooooo…
No one wins 🙂
It’s just amazing to me that christianists like the author of that article are so ignorant of their own church history. It seems they really believe there were no celebrations of or near the winter solstice before the birth of Jesus. I like to ask them what christmas trees were called before Jesus was born. But I ask only when they have goaded me for some response. I remain a *gentle* atheist.
“Christianist”? Really?
People who advocate making society as a whole more Christian? That’s how I took it. Seems like an accurate description people like this.
Yes, thank you. I meant to distinguish between those who emulate Jesus and those who claim christianity without practicing Jesus’ kindness. I am open to respectful suggestion for alternate terminology.
The bible presents Jesus as a learned man, calling him Rabbi (teacher) and depicting him reading aloud from sacred scrolls even as a child. The bible’s Jesus would never assume his own experiences represented all of history.
And the bible presents Jesus as gentle with those of other faiths, willing to listen. Jesus was harsh only with those actively harming others or with those of his own faith community.
Yep, totally trying to do away with Christmas. Can’t have any relation to the chain’s branding/packaging moving to more minimalist in general, nope.
Oh my god, the insufferably smug opening paragraph made me physically nauseous. It’s hard to believe there’s actually people who think like this and are actually satisfied with themselves. (Starbucks and espresso drinks are elitist and ludicrous, hahaha? Really? Is he writing from 1995?) For some reason I always think things have gotten better since I was growing up reading crap in the newspapers in the 90’s, and nope. I just stopped reading it is all. :/
I always think “keep the Christ in Christmas” is pretty hilarious, if incredibly annoying. Glad I’ll have the Toast to get me through the holiday season this year.
So do they find it more blasphemous to decorate the cups with season materialost frippery (baubles, candy canes, Santa) or plain colour omitting any imagery?
That was hilarious, thank you.
Personally, I always get a little bit annoyed by the Christian friends who always send a super-duper Christian Christmas card (think something depicting the baby jesus on the cover and wishing you a “blessed christmas” or somesuch). I’m always briefly tempted to send them a profane one, before I remember that sending out physical Christmas cards is way too much work.
Can we talk about this Philip Pullman interview tho http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/11/…
I have some issues with those books, but man does that interview make me like Pullman. “I think we all really like animals!”
Yeah, I’m not a Tolkein fan so that part didn’t piss me off, and the rest of it was so lovely and thoughtful. I loved all the stuff about children and innocence and growing up, and his obvious enthusiasm for the different adaptations of his work and for writing and reading in general. And that he thinks his own daemon would be a magpie!
“Tolkien’s work has very little of interest in it to a reader of literature, in my opinion…I respect Lewis more than I do Tolkien.” Pontificating gasbag says what?
I mean…that part sounds bad, but you elided his explanation for that, which is dead on:
If that’s what Tolkien’s up to, he’s left out half of it. The books are wholly male-oriented. The entire question of sexual relationships is omitted.
I am a huge Tolkien fan, but this is entirely true.
Someone who sniffs that Lewis’s writing has more to recommend it to a reader of Litrachoor than Tolkien’s is not operating with any metric I’m comfortable with. Tolkien was writing myth, which isn’t much concerned with daily life as we live it, so that’s an apples-to-oranges comparison; Lewis, for all his intelligence, didn’t have much of an ear for poetic language, and assessing writing solely on how realistic it is seems one-sided to me. (Also, barring the spectacular Till We Have Faces, Lewis is awful about women; I still enjoy his books, but I have to read around bits of them.)
I liked the first book of the Golden Compass trilogy, but everything I’ve read by Pullman since makes him sound like Richard Dawkins’s favorite drinking buddy.
I wouldn’t have phrased it that way, because obviously lots of people do love Tolkien and find it pleasurable to read, but I’ve made multiple attempts and I find the prose very uninviting, and when I was a kid, literally the reason I gave up was 100 or so pages into Fellowship and no sign any girls or women would appear ever. It’s in the category of “I get why this is influential, I get in theory why people like it, but. . .no.”
But in general, Pullman often does as quite the jerk in interviews.
I guess I got a little bit of grumpy old man vibe, but I do cut some breaks for actual old folks, who have lived long enough to be grumpy. And I liked how excited he was about the comic about his work, and that he’s still working on new stuff.
Oh, yeah, grumpy is the perfect word–I’ve always felt like he’d probably be quite fun and interesting in real life, but in interviews, it comes off as more–aggressive? arrogant? But yeah, his excitement is charming.
Also, back in the day, when I was nine, the sort of–straightforwardness–at the end of the second Sally Lockhart regarding Sex Having Happened kinda blew me away.
L’esprit d’escalier, but I wish I had said “cantankerous”.
I am not particularly interested in categorizing books as either Great Literature or Total Garbage, and I def wouldn’t have phrased it like he did (because, rude), but I do kind of agree with what he’s trying to say about Tolkein’s writing. It’s boring, it’s ponderous, and there are no ladies! Tried it, super not for me (but I’m still glad it exists so we can have all the nice things that came after).
Agreed, I can’t get into Tolkien. He spends 5 pages fawning over how pretty the golden leaves in the elf forest are and then it’s all “look, it’s a black thing up in the sky, be afraid” and I’m supposed to actually feel like the Balrog is terrifying? Nope. I’m still just bored.
I never got into Lewis or Tolkien, so this interview made me cackle out loud.
HDM was an enormous letdown, and from this I glean that the things I hated were exactly what he intended. Oh well, I guess.
I like both Lewis and Tolkien much more than he does (and think he’s an ungrateful dick for not owning his literary impulses and giving Lewis more of the benefit of the doubt), but I think he’s right about the relationship of Tolkien to the literary novel. Tolkien does leave out quite a lot of what makes humanity human, especially if your literary standard is the Victorian novel: Lewis’s people are much more recognizable and humanly complicated and changeful. I’m not sure Pullman is much better though.
Muggles is 1920’s slang for cannabis.
No-maj is terrible.
I JUST MET GEORGE RR MARTIN IN A RESTAURANT IN EVANSTON AND HE WAS CHILL AND I AM HYYYYYYPPPPPEEEEEDDDDDD.
EEEEEEE That is so exciting! Tell me everything!
He was very cool. I was trying not to be an annoying fanboy, so I didn’t get a picture or bug him about when the next book’s coming out. I just said hi, told him I was a big fan and thanked him for his work, we chatted about Evanston and why he was up here, and then I left. It was a short interaction. He seemed like a nice guy. I guess he’s getting an award from Northwestern.
So this morning at the bus stop I was trying to eat some of a burrito so I could get something in my stomach to go with my meds before getting on the bus to go to an appointment. Older guy rides by on his bike and says, “If you eat all that it’ll make you fat!”
I immediately yell “Shut the fuck up” and then, seeing he has earbuds in, louder, “asshole!” Which… I was not expecting to do? People at the bus stop across the street did not react. Then I looked around like, oh thank God, there’s no kids around.
I’m not sure how to feel about this. I’m a bit scared I guess because it was an automatic reaction and in some situations that would not be safe (well, would be less safe, we’re already starting at “unsafe” here). I guess I’m just really sick of standing there and taking this gross treatment while I’m just out and about in my daily life. It definitely felt better afterward than having said nothing. The incident repeated in my head for awhile but then faded more quickly than other times when men have made unsolicited comments to me about my body and I’ve said nothing or even just said “Don’t talk to women on the street like that. That’s disrespectful” (when they’re giving a “compliment”).
In summary, kill all men. Thoughts, please?
Also, it’s silly but this is making me a bit happier right now:
I heartily approve every detail of your comment. You are entirely correct.
You guys, I love you.
You are so badass. I cannot believe how rude people are sometimes. Also, I love that not all men Tumblr post.
YES to your response, and YES to that Tumblr post. LMM is the Ultimate Man.
This is perfect. This is SO perfect.
Yes, this too! 🙂
BRILLIANT.
I’ve grown out of that phase where I think the person who created a thing I like MUST be perfect because the Thing is perfect, but goddamn, Lin’s close.
Another Tumblr post:
thisisaworkevent:
i dont think lin manuel miranda is even real
linmanuel:
#2460OOOOOOOOOOONE
I love your tumblr, btw
Daaaaaamn thanks. I am overloaded on validation today. Having to talk down the tiny but noisy cutting-down-to-size voice in my head. Probably will just have some ice cream to top off the day.
Oh, and then someone turning left almost hit me in the crosswalk, but I was watching so instead of getting hit I got to do the New Yorker “Hey I’m walkin’ here!” gesture right in front of her.
Speaking of Amazon, they just sent me an offer of “hand-picked” playlists for reading. Apparently my experience of reading literary fiction would be enhanced by the soundtrack to Dances with Wolves and Yanni. Part of me is tempted to pitch a journal in which I try them all, had I world enough and time at the moment.
OH NICOLE BLESS YOU I AM BUYING ALL THE LICORICE RIGHT NOW
My cart says this:
Please note our minimum order value of € 14.50. Please add liquorice worth 10.90 €
HOKAY
So look, the more I read the deleted comments, the more I want to write something that attracts them. How bad is that? It’s just that I have an article idea and now I’m wondering if it would get any hilariously bad comments.
Thanks, Toast, for making me want this, and for making me terribly unclear on how sarcastic that “thanks” needs to be.
DO IT!
I am excited by the idea of an all-licorice brick-and-mortar store, even if I am unlikely to be able to visit it in person any time soon.
Meanwhile, I will have to console myself by buying salty coins and some black laces on http://www.licoriceinternational.com/
(Thank god my husband loves licorice as much as I do, or this could be awkward.)
I was so bummed out when I read that really fairly modest amounts of salted licorice can cause your blood pressure to spike. Something in the licorice, not just the salt. My blood pressure’s iffy and I only dare have a few pieces now.
I also find that more than a little bit of licorice eaten at a time causes…digestive troubles of which I will not speak further…so I have learned to have just a few pieces at a time if I don’t want to regret it the next day. This is for the best.
In what universe is the “Cats are tiny lions” thesis not (A) already common knowledge, and (B) a major selling point?
The first time I saw the term “hauspanther” I nearly died because it is so perfect.
(sorry if there’s a duplicate in moderation!)
Any Chicago Toasties reading who are definitely planning to go for First Thursday at Rogers Park Social? I have a huge phobia of being the only one who shows up to a gathering, especially after facing the Red Line at rush hour from the Loop.
Reading the desert island books thing, I can’t help finding it really jarring to see “Katherine Applegate, author of Crenshaw” and “Ann M. Martin, authur of Rain Reign”. Animorphs! Babysitters Club!
Any word ending in “aj” just makes me think of vaj.
Actually it sounds much more British to me. British slang seems to consist of a lot of abruptly shortened words. Reminds me of "vej" for vegetables.
Yes! I thought the same thing.
Thanks