Sansa is very snowy, and her ears are beginning to go up. Her dad’s ears are floppy, and her mom’s ears are straight, so we weren’t sure, but right now she’s starting to always look like she’s listening (she is not always listening.)
I am experiencing that winter desire to eat everything the light touches, and I miss New York this week, so this list of great places to eat near Times Square (a noted wasteland) and this list of the 100 best restaurant dishes in New York City in 2015 proved excellent ways to torture myself. Please tell me your favourite dish at your favourite restaurant wherever you happen to be. Please tell me THE BEST THING YOU HAVE EVER EATEN.
The best thing I’ve ever eaten was an unending series of challah-and-butter-and-caviar sandwiches that a Russian friend’s mother made me at midnight after our flight landed. She opened a JAM JAR of caviar and proceeded to make me sandwiches until my jaw got tired of chewing them. It was wonderful, and I was so sleepy, and the saltiness against the sweetness of the challah…
It actually reminds me, thinking of it, of one of my favourite Alden Nowlan poems, “Great Things Have Happened”. Isn’t that a wonderful poem? Alden Nowlan is mostly only known to Canadians, so I am happy to share him with you.
Renting with a disabiliity (spoiler: it’s terrible and difficult now, and as the Boomers age, it’s only getting worse):
A new report from Harvard finds that more than 7 million renter households have a member with a disability. (According to the Census Bureau, about 57 million Americans, or 19 percent of the U.S. population have a disability, many of whom are senior citizens.) The most common challenges associated with these disabilities involve mobility and difficulty with lifting or grasping objects. There are five features that are considered basic when it comes to accessibility. To help those who struggle with mobility, the most common disability challenge, it’s important to have a step-free entryway, a single-floor layout, and wide doors and hallways. For those who struggle with grip, it helps to have door handles in the form of levers instead of knobs. And for those who are are not of average height or use a wheelchair, electrical controls such as light switches should be accessible from lower heights. While not every person with a disability needs all five features, only 1 percent of rental housing (about 365,000 apartment units) include all of them, according to the report.
captain awkward column lives up to its name, oh noooo how awkward and also painful:
Dear Captain Awkward,
I accidentally found a diamond ring in my boyfriend’s bag when he returned home from a recent trip to see his family. We have been together for three years, but have been on rocky territory for a while. We had a fight shortly before he left to see his family, which led to me saying I thought we should get counseling, which he wasn’t super interested in. As a compromise, I said we should give ourselves two months to work on our issues, and if we couldn’t make headway, see a counselor, and then…. ( I realize I didn’t make it explicit in our conversation, but I meant that if we couldn’t make things right, we should break up, as four months will take us through the end of our lease).
I’ve been feeling not great about the relationship, and seeing the ring, and the oh fuck feelings it brought up, makes me realize that I’m basically done. However, he is not an asshole, and I don’t want to to hurt him. I am worried he may be thinking of a Christmas proposal (there is a suspicious package under the tree), which… please no. No no no no no no no. How do I head off this potential proposal off at the pass? Or, if that isn’t possible, how do I very gently let him down if he does propose?
Saddling Up the Nopetopus
Dear Saddling,
Ohhhhh my heart goes out to both of you. All of your options are awkward.
THAT NASTY-ASS MAST CHOCOLATE IS A LIE, IT IS GROSS AND I HAVE ALWAYS SAID THIS, IT SULLIES SHAKE SHACK TO SELL IT
also, this piece is like “we were suspicious because their chocolate originally tasted good, because bean-to-bar is gross, and then it started tasting gross, so they must have started finally doing bean-to-bar, but also their bean-to-bar sucks”
BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE TOO FANCY WITH THEIR CHOCOLATE, IT IS TOO DARK AND IT TASTES LIKE TREE BARK
(i wrote about this extensively)
The third installment of Meaghan Winter’s series on crisis pregnancy centers is out at Cosmopolitan, it’s worth your time:
Last year I attended Heartbeat International’s annual conference in Charleston, South Carolina, where roughly 1,000 crisis pregnancy center staff and anti-abortion leaders gathered for training and networking. There, I heard movement leaders directly instruct pregnancy center workers to “compete with the abortion industry” by concealing their religiously motivated anti-contraception and anti-abortion mandates. Suggested tactics included operating multiple websites with different messaging, choosing pro-choice seeming names like “pregnancy options,” removing religious paraphernalia from waiting rooms, and advertising free medical services and counseling.
This was sent to me by a reader with the subject line “Big Dog Dressed As Henry VIII” and I was not disappointed:
I found this look at autistic representation in children’s literature really fascinating.
Rewatched Terminator 2 this weekend. It is a basically perfect movie, and I am OBSESSSSSSSED with Linda Hamilton’s arms, look how veiny and rad they are:
You may or may not know that I care passionately about the pursuit of El Chapo, and this longread about the relationship between the DEA and his Sinaloa cartel is RIVETING:
Herrod is 50 years old now and nearing the end of his career with the DEA. In the time he spent hunting the Arellanos, his hair and goatee went from black to salt-and-pepper to finally just plain salt. He’s proud of the audacity and perseverance it took to bring down the cartel, and he knows he helped prevent murders and kidnappings. But when he looks back, he doesn’t see the clear-cut triumph portrayed in press releases. Instead, he and other agents who worked the case say the experience left them disillusioned. And far from stopping the flow of drugs, taking out the AFO only cleared territory for Joaquín Guzmán Loera — aka “El Chapo” — and his now nearly unstoppable Sinaloa cartel. Guzmán even lent the DEA a hand.
This is the story of the investigation as the agents saw it, including accounts of alleged crimes that were never adjudicated in court. “Drug enforcement as we know it,” Herrod told me, “is not working.”
My boot camp trainer is a fuckin’ nerd and I love him:
