Link Roundup! -The Toast

This is my puppy, Sansa. She is only three weeks old in this picture (she’s five weeks old now), and she’ll be living with her mom until she’s twelve weeks. I talk to her like she’s already here. We have had dogs, but this is my first puppy, and I would love your Puppy Book Recommendations.

Since I specifically wanted a Puppy Who Would Become The Size of A Brontosaurus and also Live For A Thousand Years (I adore big big dogs and they usually keel over tragically soon), I wound up choosing a breeder who has a specific big-dog-longevity-and-no-fucked-up-backs-and-hips bent and a two year waiting list, and have donated the same amount I paid for her to my local municipal shelter as a dog carbon offset. Which is unnecessary to mention, really, and sounds defensive, but I don’t want people to think I’m just merrily swanning around BUYING DOGS like a MONSTER without making some ethical tradeoffs and thinking about it with seriousness and intent.

Me right now

Q: What IS she, though?

A: Fuzzy and genetically diverse, like a cuddly FrankenDog.

Michelle Goldberg did a really good job parsing how SOME Sanders supporters criticize Hillary in a straight-up sexist fashion:

But it’s a different thing altogether to be contemptuous of the desire to break that ceiling at all. It’s a different thing to act as if women’s weariness at being always and eternally ruled by men is inherently elitist. The problem with the progressive men who’ve lately become experts on feminism isn’t that they won’t vote for Clinton. It’s their defensive petulance at any mention of anti-Clinton sexism. “Are you planning to vote for Bernie Sanders when primary time rolls around? If so, I am discouraged to report that you are a sexist, and also tremendously uncool,” the MattBruenig.com post says with peevish sarcasm. The writer sounds like a conservative grumbling that you can’t criticize Obama without being called a racist.

NICHELLE FOREVER

Laura Ortberg Turner on the Storyline controversy (if you are a Christian or just interested in the issues of racism and homophobia in Christian culture, make sure you follow Jeff Chu on Twitter, he’s great):

Public critique of a public event is not shaming, nor is it unloving or inappropriate. Our history as Christians is shamefully full of racial exclusion and outright racism, and the homogeneity of the church will be its death if nothing changes. “By 2040 the racial demographics of this country will no longer be predominantly white,” W. Anne Joh wrote in the New York Times. “If any church group, including U.S. evangelicals, wishes to stay apace with this momentous change, and welcome nonwhite members, its leaders and members must listen to the experiences of these new groups.”

Speaking of horrible things:

Children of same-sex couples will not be able to join the Mormon Church until they turn 18 — and only if they move out of their parents’ homes, disavow all same-sex relationships and receive approval from the church’s top leadership as part of a new policy adopted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In addition, Mormons in same-sex marriages will be considered apostates and subject to excommunication, a more rigid approach than the church has taken in the past.

The new policies were contained in a handbook for lay leaders that was disseminated on Thursday to those who administer the church’s 30,000 congregations around the world. The church made no public announcement of the change, but it was leaked to the news media and confirmed by a church spokesman.

The candidate who was so bad that “nobody” seemed like a valid alternative to voters (HT: Ren):

Over 40 percent of voters in his district voted for nobody instead of him. No other candidate for council in Boston registered anywhere near the number of blanks Linehan received. An additional six percent of voters wrote-in someone else. If blanks alone were counted as an actual opponent, the District 2 race was the most competitive in the city on Tuesday, even more so than District 4 where an incumbent lost to a challenger.

Friend of The Toast Christina Tesoro on falling in love:

I lost my innocence — not my virginity, but my innocence — to a boy I met that summer. He was my first skillful, enjoyable kiss; my first hot-and-heavy make out session; my first date (Central Park, where I got to second base for the first time, and was simultaneously thrilled and ashamed that it had happened in public). He was a boy I hardly remember now, except for a vague sense of irritation and wounded pride. At the time, though, there was no one more compelling: “He lives in Brooklyn, plays the trumpet, sings like Frank Sinatra, has smoked pot and gotten trashed,” I wrote in my diary, emphasis mine circa 2006. Sweet summer child that I was, he was the epitome of sex, drugs, and rock & roll.

If you have not read this feature on attending Beyonce’s dad’s horrible seminar, BUCKLE THE FUCK IN:

It’s hour six of Mathew Knowles’s day-long seminar “The Entertainment Industry: How do I get in?”, and he is yelling across the theater at an usher who just told him new microphones are “on the way.”

“If this were a Beyoncé show and you said it was ‘on the way,’ your ass would be on the way,” he shouts at her from the stage. It’s not the best burn, but we get the gist.

The room is silent until another usher appears with two fresh microphones so the audience Q&A can get going. Weirdly, it takes a few minutes before the crowd loosens up.

Lisa Kolb on the second year of being a widow:

Year One is a struggle merely to eat, merely to get dressed in the morning, merely to think straight while confronting a crushing list of knife-twisting administrative to-dos, like car title transfers and insurance claims and endless calls to robotic customer service reps to tell them to cancel your husband’s account/subscription/delivery because he is dead.

By Year Two, those things are largely resolved. No small feat, yet it is all replaced by an equally daunting, though less obvious, list of second year to-dos, like learning to live with a new, solo identity after years of partnership. Like knowing that other people must think you should be functioning and working at a back-to-normal level again, and being ashamed and frustrated that you are just not. Like facing the immutable truth that he is still — still! — gone, always will be, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Tyler and Joel’s “Who Would You Rather” column has come to an end with one final, majestic entry: The Rock or Vin Diesel?

Joel: I understand that, and goodness knows I appreciate a lot of things about The Rock. His massive forearms, his painted on hair, his love of French culture. But I also feel like you’re giving Vin a bit of a bad rap. Sure he seems unpredictable, but there’s a real innocence about him that contrasts with his rough exterior that I find truly endearing. I love that he records really earnest dance videos to Beyoncé songs. I love his insistence that Furious 7 will win an Oscar. I love that his strong ties to his chosen family. All his weirdness suggest a depth to me that the Rock simply does not posses. As kind as he is, I think what you see is pretty much what you get with dear old Dwayne, whereas Vin is like a puzzle you pick up at a Cracker Barrel gift shop: simple and wooden, but impossible to solve!