Sansa is very big. Sansa is still insisting that I cannot shower without her coming in and watching me to make sure I do not slip and then licking water off my feet. Also, she has bat ears now.
The story of how Target Canada crashed and burned (it sure did!):
Fisher, 38 years old at the time, was regarded as a wunderkind who had quickly risen through the ranks at Target’s American command post in Minneapolis, from a lowly business analyst to leader of a team of 400 people across multiple divisions. Launching the Target brand in a new country was his biggest task to date. The news he received from his group that February afternoon should have been worrying, but if he was unnerved, Fisher didn’t let on. He listened patiently as two people in the room strongly expressed reticence about opening stores on the existing timetable. Their concern was that with severe supply chain problems and stores facing the prospect of patchy or empty shelves, Target would blow its first date with Canadian consumers. Still, neither one outright advocated that the company push back its plans. “Nobody wanted to be the one to say, ‘This is a disaster,’” says a former employee. But by highlighting the risks of opening now, the senior employees’ hope was that Fisher would tell his boss back in Minneapolis, Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel, that they needed more time.
This old Mark Singer profile of close-up magician Ricky Jay launched me into a day of YouTube clips:
“Now, why might that be unfair?” he continued. “I’ll tell you why. Because, even though you shuffled, I dealt the cards. That time, I also shuffled the cards. Now, this time you shuffle the cards and you deal the cards. And you pick the number of players. And you designate any hand for me and any hand for you.”
After shuffling, I dealt four hands, arranged as the points of a square. I chose a hand for myself and selected one for him. My cards added up to nothing—king-high nothing.
“Is that fair?” Jay said, picking up his cards, waiting a beat, and returning them to the table, one by one—the coup de grâce. “I. Don’t. Think. So.” One, two, three, four aces.
The Native fashion community takes charge:
The Native fashion community is not new, though the buzz surrounding it is.
“We’ve always been here, but the internet has helped us get much more of a response,” says designer Jamie Okuma. “Social media has really changed the landscape. You can be your own PR person and get visibility just by posting.”
Okuma is one of countless Native American designers creating clothing and jewelry that draw inspiration and use designs from their tribes. While some have attended fashion school, many aren’t professionally trained. Making clothes is simply a part of Native culture.
“A lot of Native Americans learn crafts from a very young age,” says Jolonzo Goldtooth, the 28-year-old Navajo designer behind JG Indie. Living on his family’s ranch on the Navajo’s Huerfano Chapter in New Mexico, Goldtooth earns his income mainly by making traditional garb for his tribe, but he also takes personal orders for his contemporary line. “My grandmothers are seamstresses, so that’s how I learned to sew, bead, and put garments together. We’ve always made our own clothing.”
THE DARK SIDE OF THE SHOW-DOG WORLD (makes tea, settles into bed):
In the days that followed, the media erupted with sensational reports and lurid headlines about the scandal: MURDER AT CRUFTS, blared The Sun. “A canine whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie,” reported the Associated Press. “A murder mystery more outlandish than any Hollywood script,” The Telegraph chimed in. British dog-lovers took to Facebook, their preferred means of communication, to express their outrage. Soon, there were reports of other dogs’ possibly having been poisoned at Crufts, including two Shetland sheepdogs, an Afghan hound, a Shih Tzu, and a West Highland white terrier. According to one owner, they had not been lethally dosed but were believed to have been “given something to mess up their chances in the ring!”
“You have found who you’re looking for,” the man replied with a flash of defiance. “I’m Ratko Mladić.” It was the end of 14 years on the run.
Mladić had at one point told his elderly cousin Branislav to shoot him rather than let him be taken alive. He even showed him the gun he was supposed to use. But Branislav was out on the morning of the arrest. Anyway, Branislav told Šaljić, he could never have brought himself to pull the trigger. Neither, as it turned out, could Mladić. His Heckler & Koch was found lying among dirty socks at the bottom of a wardrobe.
This horrible school shooting in Saskatchewan:
A small community in northern Saskatchewan is in mourning after shootings at two locations — including a school — left four people dead.
Several others were wounded in the violence Friday in La Loche, Sask., a Dene community nestled on the shores of Lac La Loche with a population of about 3,000.
Jaya wrote this amazing thing about why cartoon bombs look the way they do:
In 1920, the popular newspaper comic strip Jerry on the Job was adapted by Bray Studios into a few animated films. In “The Bomb Idea,” Jerry and another character read that “Bolsheviki” are on the loose throughout the country, and that all citizens should be on alert. Shortly after, a man arrives carrying a heavy, black sphere. Jerry and his friend panic, assuming the item is a bomb, when eventually it is revealed to just be a bowling ball. But it’s clear that by 1920, everyone knew what a bomb looked like.
OLD FRIENDS DOG SANCTUARY OLD FRIENDS DOG SANCTUARY HOLY SHIT
This is the best thing:
After college and graduate school — Rafi has a master’s degree in crisis and trauma studies from Tel Aviv University — he settled in Denver. Rafi began working as a community organizer, then a regional manager, for the Jewish LGBT advocacy group Keshet. In 2014, he took a job at Ramah Outdoor Adventure, a Jewish camp affiliated with the Conservative movement; he is now the director of camper care.
“We welcomed Rafi as a Jewish leader, and one that pushed us to live our value of being open and accepting,” said the camp’s executive director, Rabbi Eliav Bock.
Summer session 2015 at Ramah Outdoor Adventure, which serves children in grades 3–12, coincided with the third trimester of Rafi’s pregnancy. Rafi was met with a round of applause when he told the camp staff his news. But he asked his colleagues not to discuss his pregnancy with campers, who, Rafi said, “just thought I was a fat dude.” By the end of the summer, with Bock’s blessing, Rafi disclosed to the high school-age campers that he was pregnant.
As mentioned here numerous times before, Serena Williams’s entire career has been a prolonged troll for White Tears. From the moment the Williams sisters emerged from Compton and disrupted the tennis world’s effete and bourgeois establishment, White Tears have trailed her the way breadcrumbs trailed Hansel and Gretel. They’re shed when she wins, when she receives awards, when she expresses happiness, when she expresses anger, when she just exists. It’s almost as if she’s a Medela Swing Breastpump for White Tears, her very presence helping them drip and squirt, distilled and delicious, into BPA-free bottles.
This water-tasting piece is surprisingly entertaining:
Tasting Notes: “This is not black. It is distinctly brown, like root beer or a good Belgian quadrupel that’s been left open too long. Objectively, if you get past the color, it’s pretty neutral and tastes like water. This is the most structured water we’ve tasted: It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I would never drink something that looks like this. I don’t dislike it, and if for some reason I needed to drink it, I could survive.”
Would Pair Best With: “Something hearty and rich, like beef wellington or this rabbit pot pie we do at The Dutch. This is not an aperitif.”
SLEEP AT NIGHT LIKE A NORMAL PERSON DO NOT DO SHIT LIKE THIS:
Everyman has proven more accessible to aspiring polysleepers. Staver estimates that of people who start out trying Uberman, three-quarters end up on some version of Everyman. The online Polyphasic Society describes more than a dozen sleep schedules with varying numbers and lengths of naps, their details laid out in daily pie charts. In the diagrams for Uberman and “Dymaxion” (another schedule modeled after Buckminster Fuller’s), sleep appears as vanishingly small slivers in the nearly pristine pastry of the day.
No one gets there easily, though. The Polyphasic Society’s website warns of side effects people may experience while they’re adapting. There’s “metabolic panic,” meaning either constant hunger or a total loss of appetite. There may be chills, moodiness, constipation, and eye strain from keeping your eyes open all the time. The ominous-sounding “zombie mode” is also a concern.
Hey, guys, thank you so much for your support last week when we lost Doug. I felt very loved. I have decided to stop reading the detailed accident report over and over, because it doesn’t do any good.
“I have always relied on the kindness of [internet] strangers.” – Nicole Cliffe
YES I am SO glad you linked to the Crufts story because it is INSANE and everything I want from a story (drama).
Also, who wants to beat sleep? I fucking love sleep. It is my friend. That seems like a ridiculous way to spend your time fucking around with alarms and timed naps and nonsense.
Even if I wanted to beat sleep (spoiler alert: I don’t), I don’t think I’ve ever successfully woken up from a nap at the time I intended to, even with alarms involved.
On the one hand I’d love to have more hours in a day… On the other, if you gave me two more hours, I’d probably spend at least one of them sleeping because sleeping is amazing.
I’m not so much a fan of sleeping as I am being half awake after a good sleep and knowing I don’t have to move yet.
Ooh, or rolling over and continuing to sleep/nap. Which I did until noon last Saturday #noregrets
On days off I purposely set an alarm like 2 hours before I wake up on work days just so I get to roll over and go back to sleep even more times than just normal sleeping in.
I love the feeling of going to sleep at night, when I’m exhausted. But going back to sleep in the morning, when I’m only slightly drowsy, is amazing.
Y’all are my people. #backtosleepjustabitmorelseep
I really like the idea of polyphasic sleeping, but only because I want to be able to nap during the day.
Can’t we all just come together and agree its totally ok to nap at work? My life would be so much better
Sometimes when I’m really tired at work I indulge in my fantasy of how, if I were a boss with my own company (hah!), I’d have a “nap room” with a “nap room attendant” who keeps track of the time (everyone could take up to a 30 min nap once a day), wakes people up, stops anyone from getting frisky, etc.
I am seriously on board with Nap Rooms (or just a comfy quiet room for relaxing during lunch/breaks)
I often day dream about when I’m a big boss with an office and I can just close the door and nap whenever I want (and lead by example so that everyone else feels free to nap too.). Although considering how work culture is going these days its unlikely I’ll ever have an office of my own.
Why can’t all the old CEO’s who think face-time is important just retire so we as a culture can embrace flexible working and nap time at work. Just think how glorious the world would be if we were all well rested!
I spent three months this time last year as one of two locksmiths at a door company that needed approximately half of a locksmith and we were constantly thiiiis close to just slinging a hammock up in the stock closet and taking turns sleeping.
I have the same fantasy, and have also considered submitting a nap room suggestion to HR at my current company. We have “phone rooms” with little do-not-disturb signs on them for private phone calls – could they not also double as nap rooms? If I choose to spend part of my lunch hour napping, that should be my choice to make!
I definitely used the phone rooms for napping — what’s the difference, really? Put that do not disturb sign up and sleep in peace.
I learned about polyphasic sleep from an episode of Going Deep with David Rees and on one hand, I see the appeal (sleeping when you’re tired! not trying to sleep when you’re not tired!) but on the other hand, I am a person who lives in the world and can’t really set my own schedule that much, and I also love sleeping for long periods.
We have a cot in a back room at our store, and I’ve been known to eat lunch while working so I can spend my lunch break taking a nap.
I have come to realize that my hour long lunch break and my two 15 minute breaks (which I often forget to take) are mine to do with what I want. So, since I have an office with a door that locks, I sometimes set a timer on my phone, lock my door, and make myself cozy under my desk. It is surprisingly refreshing.
My best naps, I have discovered, are when I am comfortable, but not too comfortable. Comfy enough to fall asleep, but with enough potential for discomfort that I am perfectly happy to get up in 15-20 minutes.
I was awake until 4 a.m. last night despite going to bed at 10:30. 🙁
“POLICE ARE FOLLOWING ALL LEADS” says The Sun. I see what you did there…
RE: polyphasic sleeping, I tried a version of that in college during a summer session. My only memory of the ~month I spent in those two classes is of my friend introducing me to Game of Thrones.
(one of those classes was a pre-req for some other classes I had to take. I do not recommend polyphasic sleeping)
Instead of polyphasic sleeping, why not just do a sleep study to find out what is wrong, and then make steps to correct it so you can SLEEP MORE??
Why don’t people in general do that? I don’t know.
My problem was obviously that I had signed up for more coursework than I should’ve and hadn’t paid attention to my health for the preceding semester.
But polyphasic sleep is a very seductive idea to work-obsessed college students. You get to test sketchy science on yourself and possibly magic a few hours per day out of thin air? And it’s in that lovely age spot where you’re old enough to call yourself an adult but not so old that your brain recognizes what a moron you’re being.
I’ve always struggled with interrupted sleep cycles (hello anxiety my old friend) and at one point in my late twenties, I decided to just roll with it and do the polyphasic thing. Not like in the article, though! More like: sleep 3-4 hours, get up and do whatever till I got tired again, sleep an hour or 2, go to work for 5 hours, come home and nap for another hour or so, rinse repeat. It was actually great though not conducive to a full time 9-5 job with other middle-aged person responsibilities, but I think if I were ever in a similarly marginally employed place, I would do it again. Took the torture right out of insomnia.
Sansa has one sticky-up ear and one slightly-bendy ear, which means she will always look Pretty Jaunty.
As a Jaunty myself I heartily concur.
I kinda want to beat sleep. I’ve never slept a “normal” amount, I never fall asleep easily. I’d love to have a way to get the benefits of sleep without eating up eight hours and dealing with the grogginess every morning and setting 10 alarms to wake up and spending an hour tossing and turning and waiting for my dumb brain to stop working every night. I don’t feel this is like Soylent, where people want to hack food consumption, because eating food is actually a pleasant experience, whereas sleeping is just a lack of experience, a daily mini-death, and a waste of a third of my time.
every time I contemplate what sleep actually IS my mind boggles a little bit. I mean basically you’re just dead 1/3 of your life, that’s so freaky.
RIGHT?! I feel like this all the time:
Maybe it’s not like Soylent, but I’m pretty sure “hacking” sleep is just as impossible as “hacking” eating is. Let’s just not try to “hack” bodily functions at all, we are not computers. (And we don’t understand them well enough to be effective anyway.)
Ok, fine, throw out the word “hack” if you don’t like it, but we don’t all react to food the same way and we don’t all react to sleep the same way (or drugs, or physical exertion, or pretty much anything), and the idea that there’s one single ideal approach to sleep seems to me to be about as ridiculous as the idea that there’s one single ideal approach to food, or one single ideal medicine for every disease. I’m glad there are people out there who want to push the boundaries on this stuff, because one size very clearly does not fit all.
That’s not what I said at all! Of course not everyone sleeps the same way. I personally need like 9 or 10 hours to feel properly rested. (Which is usually pretty unrealistic.) It sounds like you haven’t figured out what works for you. But that’s not the same as this whole “bodies are computers we should be able to disrupt them” Silicon Valley bullshit.
I think you guys are agreeing that what needs to change is expectations about sleep to match the specific body in question’s needs rather than what we’re generally doing now which is trying to force the body to go along with the sleep schedule that matches the way society is set up.
It’s almost as if the old “just go lie down in a dark room for hours I’m sure it’ll work out” is the body hack some people are attempting using Megano!’s meaning of “hack.”
Since early childhood, I’ve always hated sleeping. I mean, I recognize the importance of being well rested, but even now, as an adult person trying to get my 7-8 full hours lest I feel like the inside of a garbage can, I just wish I could stay awake all the goddamn time.
Maybe your personal sleep clock is set to something less than seven hrs and that’s why it feels bad. How do you sleep on vacation? How much sleep feels good? 7-8 is an average, not mandatory.
Well, it really varies – I’ve also really struggled with interrupted sleep for most of my life. 6-7 hours is my standard but if I sleep 8 hours for several nights in a row (a rare occasion), I really do feel pretty great. I just hate it!
Agreed. I love sleep but only because I’m a night person so I’m tired all the time having to get up at 6am for work. If I could get by on 2-3 hours I’d do it in a second.
Yeah, I can’t remember a time where I didn’t want to stay up all night. There’s stuff out there I don’t know, how can I possibly fall asleep right now. (The internet has just made this worse, because while I know so much more because of it, I am also painfully, constantly aware of all the things I don’t know yet.)
ARE YOU ME???
I don’t hate sleeping. Once I am asleep I don’t particularly want to stop. It’s just that I never have the discipline to make myself go to bed as early as I should. Things are happening! If I go to sleep I might miss them!
Hahahaha. Maybe.
Oh, you are my people at least! I hate sleeping (but oddly enough like napping) and I thought I was the only one. I have a horrible time falling asleep, I always wake up in the middle of the night several times, and I don’t find actually doing it pleasurable because obviously I’m not aware of it happening to me. When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about being able to take a pill that made me not have to sleep.
I am there with you, and I have had the exact same fantasy. I have tried lots of stuff, especially in college – the light behind the knees, regulated nap schedules (reaching for something like polyphasic sleep), sleeping in two blocks of time. None of it has worked great for me, but regular sleep continues to also not work great for me. Now I have responsibilities and stricter schedules, so I sleep in something approaching an abbreviated “normal” schedule and abuse caffeine most days so I can function at a reasonable level.
Haha I want someone to study all of our brains! Surely there must be something different with our wiring.
I love sleeping and I’d still like to beat it. I love the feeling of being tired and letting yourself fall asleep, and the feeling of waking up refreshed, but you’re only actually experiencing these things for maybe an hour, and you lost six hours in exchange for that one relaxing hour. I doubt that this weird sleep thing would actually work, but at least in theory it sounds like it could actually give you more of the fun parts of sleep without so much “dead time” that you weren’t conscious of anyway.
I enjoy sleeping–as in, naps are almost a recreational activity for me–but I would like it to be not so inevitably necessary, in the same way that I enjoy eating as well, but not every single meal needs to be made exclusively from fresh (if not raw) ingredients and impeccably plated. (The main problem with Soylent for me was that it gave me horrible gas and left me feeling bloated; other nutritional-shake-type things were just fine and helped me get my daily nutrients when I either didn’t have time to eat or just didn’t feel like going to the trouble.)
Not to get into a huge debate about it, but I recently bought some Soylent, and it wasn’t because I dislike eating (I love eating!!) but because I am terrible at planning, and often work overnight shifts in a neighborhood with nothing open at night, and stopping at the organic grocery store for take-out on my way to work was using up a ridiculous amount of my income and half the time once I clocked out for “lunch” I didn’t even want what I brought.
Soylent is also a way of dealing with “I need to eat” when I forgot to buy soymilk and I need to have “breakfast” before going to bed when I go home at 6:30 am. Or for when my Adderall (for my ADHD) has killed my appetite and I know my blood sugar is low.
How is it? Do you drink it straight or mix it with stuff? How’s the texture? I want to know everything.
I find that it tastes reminiscent of pancake batter. I love pancake batter, so this is a good thing.
I’ve only had it straight so far but people do mix it with other stuff all the time. It’s a little thick, and it’s a little gritty when freshly mixed but improves with a night in the fridge. If you water it down more than called for it gets much weirder-tasting and not in a good way–like the taste of chewing a vitamin that isn’t meant to be chewable.
Speaking of someone who spent several years with insomnia: watching more TV instead of sleeping is totally within your grasp! Doing well on my exams with only four hours of sleep? Not so much.
I just want to say that the #TraditionallySubmissive hashtag is awesome, and even more awesome for having tons of older women in it:
The polyphasic sleep thing makes me want to tear my hair out. Deep sleep is so important for cognitive function, and appropriate melatonin levels/circadian rhythms may play a role in overall survival.
Also, I’m annoyed my ex tried it when we were dating. He decided to get edgy and weird with his sleep, and all I could do was roll my eyes with the force of my entire soul.
It’s a great example of white dudes with too much time on their hands deciding to “optimize” stuff that already works.
The great thing about DC not being able to handle snow is that I get to “telework” today, so I can gleefully and with abandon read all of these links without keeping a tab of fake work open to click over to when my boss comes by.
Also for about 75% of my job I need to be in the office, so today’s work responsibilities include playing Banjo Kazooie.
Over the weekend I saw someone boasting “I’m from DC. We know how to handle snow where I come from!” And I genuinely could not tell if it was a joke. I….are we talking about the same DC? ARE we? Because I have to say, not known as a place with fantastic snow policies and procedures!
Luckily, I have yet to meet a person like that, because, hoo boy, I don’t know how I would react. But yeah, for a city that has snowfall every year, and at least for the past five years or so has had at least one pretty major snow event, they all act really surprised when it happens!
“we are so good at snow our snow plows get stuck in the snow!” *theatrically rolls eyes*
the other end of the Annoying People in DC When It Snows spectrum are the people who are like “Ugh, DC is soooo soft, I am from (insert northern state) and I can’t believe they’re freaking out over two feet of snow.” EXCUSE ME TWO FEET OF SNOW IN LESS THAN 48 HOURS IS A BIG DEAL ANYWHERE i think AND I AM FROM MICHIGAN AND HAVE LIVED IN MINNESOTA SO THERE. snobs
I try very hard not to be one of those people. Mostly, though, I feel like my rage and confusion would be quelled if Bowser or whoever actually gave rationale and a breakdown as to why they use the snow removal strategy they do. I know money’s a big part of it, but that can’t be the only reason.
Also shutting down ALL public transit for the whole weekend predominantly (by their own admission!) because they didn’t want people to leave their houses, thus creating more dangerous situations for people that did have to leave their houses!
ARGH some people have to go to work no matter how bad the weather is. That is just a fact. Nurses and doctors and 911 dispatchers ALL HAVE TO WORK.
As a Minnesotan, when I heard the amount of snow y’all got over the weekend, I was suitably impressed. Two feet of snow in one go is rough no matter how you spin it.
I’ve been saying for months that our alarmingly warm winter so far just meant we were going to get hit extra-hard later on. And then look, it snowed for 30 hours straight.
I like winter, I just wish we didn’t have to do it all in one weekend.
up here in Canada, on a team meeting on Friday the storm came up and we mentioned that DC was gonna get 2 feet over the weekend and that that’s a lot at a time even by our standards. And then we talked about how Olivia Pope doesn’t own a parka.
There is nothing ‘soft’ about not having an adequate system of snow removal set up to keep your city functional. We rarely if ever get snow days in Montreal because we have an army of plows working all night to clear the streets and it’s really, really expensive.
Which makes perfect sense for Montreal, but it would be crazy for D.C. to have on hand the amount of snow removal equipment needed to clean up this weekend’s storm (which dumped 1.5x of our yearly average snowfall all at once) without a hiccup.
And it doesn’t make sense for D.C. to invest in a fleet of snow removal machines when this isn’t a regular occurrence. The cost is worth it for us because if we didn’t have an army of plows we would have snow days every other day. Not the same for D.C.
I heard that Philly can put plows on the front of the trash trucks and use them for snow removal. I feel like there are less extreme options than Own A Fleet Of Plows!
I was like that last winter, when Midwesterners were poo-pooing the east coast snowfall. I was like, “You guys, I spent the first 38 years of my life in Wisconsin, 18 of those in lake-effect-snow Milwaukee, and I’m telling you, this is literally the worst snow I have ever seen in my goddamn existence.”
closing everything and not going to work for days is THE BEST snow policy, how dare you
(I am not native to DC but this is perhaps my favorite thing about living here.)
Yeah, at this point, it’s kinda hard to argue with that. This is my first DC winter, though, and coming from NYC, and before that, Syracuse, it is still BAFFLING.
#thanksnowbama
LOL WHAT I AM FROM DC AND WE MOST CERTAINLY DO NOT
Mostly because when we get it, it doesn’t usually come 2 feet at a time, and also we only have so many snow plows so YEAH
I grew up in Prince George’s County, MD. 20 years there. I feel pretty qualified to say nobody in the DC area can handle snow, unless “handling” means “stay at home and praise the disposal income that bought generators so you have a single warm room when the power goes out”. I loved those generators.
I grew up in Northern Virginia, with family still in the district and now I am in PG county and concurring with this! Heartily! If by “handle” snow they thought DC’s attitude is “maybe ignore it I dunno doesn’t it melt into the potomac eventually?”
I am thankfully off again today, I dug my car out but am at the bottom of a hill with very little sun and I’m worried it is just going to be a sheet of ice.
we know how to shut down 66 and the Beltway completely for hours when an inch of it sticks on the ground
Shout out for the fake work tab!
Enjoy your work from home day.
Also teleworking, which means I get to comment on things! 😀
I’m in DC and am joyfully reading the links without a fake work tab too! YAY for my fourth day of pajamas!
I haven’t interacted with a human being (apart from texting) during this time and I’m a little worried that my social skills (such as they are) have evaporated.
Team FourthDayinPJs! I am going to have to get up and about eventully though because some cabin fever victims want to have happy hour at the neighborhood bar, which means I have to go get my car from the parking garage I stowed it in.
We have a very small office, and my computer is placed in such a way that both my boss and the office manager can see the screen at all times.
I am working from home in NYC because one of our VPs declared that we should all just work from home and not face today’s commute! It’s great. I do need to accomplish things and most of my job can be done from anywhere, but I’m going to do a load of laundry today and I’m wearing sweatpants and fuzzy socks.
These polyphasic sleepers should just get jobs as newborn nannies. That’ll give them all the polyphasic sleep that they could ever want.
Seriously. I have a toddler, go to school full time, have a 15 hour a week workstudy job, and work overnights at another job. Polyphasic sleep can kiss my ass. I would literally murder all adherents of Uberman in exchange for one week of uninterrupted, normal-human eight-hours-a-night sleep.
I’m not crying at work reading the story about Rafi becoming an Abba, you’re crying about it!
…how did you know
I’m a tear psychic, obviously!
(But ugh it made my heart ache. TOO EARLY for this!)
The usual PSA to nevereverreadthecomments, but if you do, there are some great trans Jews and allies fighting the good fight.
I’m always a little conflicted when articles include “and here are some pre-transition photos”. But the story itself made me happy.
Holy shit there’s a lot in the Roundup, today. I am not clicking on the old dog sanctuary article because it’s not even 8:30 and I am not going to run my mascara before 10:00 at the earliest. That Ted Cruz quote reminded me that I stopped listening to the news during the last presidential election cycle and never resumed and I haven’t missed it at all (sorry, NPR, we had a good run while we lasted).
Also I think I need to watch Best in Show again sometime soon.
The Old Dog Sanctuary article is really quite joyful!
Any extreme emotion generates tears for me and animals (especially old dogs) give me ALL THE FEELS.
No, you should come back, it’s getting really good! Sarah Palin is back!
I mean look obviously at this point we have to admit there is a very good chance that this isn’t just an elaborate advertisement for the next season of The Apprentice, but still: Trump/Palin ’16 is clearly trolling.
I wish either of them had that good of a sense of humor.
You don’t need a sense of humor to troll, just a genuine (anti||a)pathy towards your fellow humans (although I suspect both of them have “unique” definitions of who gets to be considered a fellow human)
Try as I might, googling “Trump still really how?????” isn’t giving me any answers.
I’d forgotten how incredibly annoying her voice is. Put her in a room with Donald Trump, and I need earplugs to make dinner while my roommate’s watching the news.
Kittens and puppies are all well and good but goddamn I loved my elderly pets… They’re so sweet and just want to cuddle. I haven’t read the story since I lost my sweet old kitty last Wednesday (my poor baby) and I’m crying a bit at my desk just thinking about that link!
If anyone here is on facebook yet somehow *not* following Susie’s Senior Dogs, please remedy today. Have all the feels for Susie & Simey, plus all the wonderful seniors out there looking for love and needing a little extra spotlight. PS Best in Show is my favorite ever movie, could watch daily.
Fun Fact: I knew almost all the final best in show competitors when I worked as a vet receptionist at a very busy and “big breeder” favoured animal hospital (the movie was filmed in Vancouver and casted some of the hospital’s clients).
And yes, people and their show animals can be CRAAAAY-ZEEEEEE (the stories I could tell you…)
Sounds like something worth pitching…
Ooh…!
Me too on the news. Two campaigns I was like “I am getting nothing out of this” and stopped paying attention and most of the important stuff (and plenty of the not so important stuff) makes its way to me on social media, link roundup, or the occasional times I watch something like John Oliver.
I just want to report that I am looking at flights to NYC, because I am going to Hamilton in July, and I just can’t stop myself from singing “Maaaan, this flight is NON-STOP!” as I peruse the schedules.
*applause*
One of my e-mail threads at work has the subject line “One more thing,” and I keep reading it in Hamilton’s voice and transitioning into Non-Stop.
Thank you for reminding me to start looking at tickets, as I am also going to Hamilton in July!
It looks like my options are either: 6 AM flight going to NYC, 10 PM flight back (non-stop), or more reasonably-scheduled flights that cost a lot more :/ I hope your flights work out better!
I’m seeing that 6AM flight to NYC as well. Yuck. Luckily, my best friend lives in Boston and we’re planning to work that into the trip, so now I’m looking at direct flights to BOS, which seem to be cheaper. Still ridiculous flight times (WHO WANTS TO BE AT THE AIRPORT AT 4AM, THE THINGS I DO FOR YOU, LIN-MANUEL) but Hamilton and seeing my friend are worth it. I guess, haha.
What day are you going?
I’m in NYC right now (seeing it Wednesday) and it’s a constant struggle not to burst into song at the slightest provocation
Yay to Hamming out in daily life! Over the weekend I read Some Harry Potter fanfic (that was recommended in a post here, the Aragon not legit Gondor ruler I think) and more than once I yelled out “Muggles! We get the job done!”
My boyfriend has recently become as much of a Hamilton fanatic as myself, and we keep quoting it at each other whenever possible in conversation. I have chosen well.
Oh my sweet lord. I never want to beat sleep. Due to my last job I had to change my schedule because I had to get up at 4 am. In the morning (5-12 am) I was mostly fine, but in the afternoon I got tired, moody and couldn’t concentrate. Needless to say that after switching back to “normal” schedule” (22pm-6am), I’m great again -.-
I have so many problems with the NFL which I have discussed before here, but Cam Newton is so incredibly charismatic and I am loving this piece on him and Serena.
ESPN recently had a great piece on Cam Newton that I highly recommend! I hate football and find it really, really pointless, but I do love Cam Newton and his black excellence.
I will have to find it. The way that Steph Curry is so fun to watch even people who aren’t huge basketball fans will watch him is the way I feel about Newton. Also funny they are at least friendly and root for each other (Steph’s from North Carolina), given how dominant they both are.
I find it really interesting the divide in public opinion over Steph and Cam. Both were raised in God-loving dual-parent households, with Dads who were professional players, and siblings who are also athletes. Not to say they had the same childhood, but their path to professional ball was paved for them both.
And their professional careers are pretty similar: left school early (though Cam got his degree eventually, not sure if Steph did), good draft picks, worked hard and got better, both taking their teams to championships.
Yet Steph is seen as this low-key player who overcame ankle issues and has unbelievable ball handling skills and is basically America’s sweetheart. He celebrates every 3 on court (which means he’s basically constantly celebrating), and he and his family have entered the public sphere with everyone ooh-ing and ahh-ing. Meanwhile Cam is a disrespectful, uppity black man whose TD celebrations are seen as a smite on America’s soul, and his wins are somehow undeserved. Nevermind that his private life is just that; since he had a kid out of wedlock he’s clearly a terrible man with no respect for God.
I love them both — love watching the ball they play because it is entertaining as HELL — but…why? Why is Steph seen as black excellence, and Cam is a thug?
My take on it:
1. Colorism is still a big deal. Steph’s a light-skinned dude and Cam is much darker. I also think this plays into the difference between how Steph and LeBron are viewed by many people.
2. Different fanbases = different majority opinions. There are a lot of white people who think Steph is too cocky/full of himself (I just spoke to one of these people at a bar a few weeks back), but the audience for the NBA is younger and blacker than the audience for the NFL. The same people dislike both of them, but more of them watch football than watch basketball. The people who see Steph as black excellence also seem to see Cam as black excellence, and the people who see Cam as a thug are likely to think Steph is a diva and a me-first player.
3. There is still a body of people who think it’s a bad thing for players to take money in college. That population seems to be shrinking, thankfully, but they still exist, and lots of them view Cam as the apotheosis of the mercenary collegiate athlete. (This view is ridiculous, and I have never met anyone who holds it who isn’t twisting themselves into logical knots to justify it, but it exists.)
Yeah, it’s mostly white expectations for how players who play those positions should play. Quarterback is a high profile position where being acceptable to white mainstream opinion is viewed as necessary by too many. Russell Wilson doesn’t face it so starkly because he just isn’t as (enjoyably) brash as Newton. But even he was underestimated I think partly for racial reasons (also because he’s not very tall).
Steph does, as protocoach point out, get celebrated because of the different sport, but colorism is the main reason, because LeBron never was beloved in the same way. I am a huge NBA fan, and couldn’t name LeBron’s partner’s name off the top of my head, whereas I know who Ayesha Curry is.
I haven’t watched any football this season and I’m strongly considering checking out entirely for ethical reasons but I am really glad that the Panthers are having this season because Cam Newton (and the panthers as a whole really) has been so good for so long and this year its impossible to sincerely downplay it, to write a narrative against them that isn’t just transparent refusal to accept reality.
I’m one of those people who literally Cannot Understand football, but reading that article and the back links–this is one of those “I hate people,” Mondays, huh.
I love that piece about why bombs look the way they do. I think it’s brilliant when symbols of things vastly outlive the original object they were imitating: the Save icon is now completely reverse-anachronistic, and battery icons and camera icons are heading the same way.
The fact that the “save” icon is a floppy disk is something I will never stop loving. There is literally a generation of younger people who only think of it as a “save icon” and have no idea why it looks like that??? Amazing.
I didn’t even consider until now that the camera and battery icons are probably gonna end up the same.
I have some floppies in the attic. i’m going to get them out and ask my kid what he thinks they are. Will report back 🙂
Skeuomorphs! They are so great. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph
There’s a WORD! <3
And the telephone receiver icon.
We found an old Fisher-Price telephone for sale in a charity shop, and I’ve no idea whether my daughter knows what it is.
I bought a house recently and it has a phone jack right in the middle of the wall. It feels wrong somehow to take it out. Also the previous owner very kindly updated the house by installing ethernet jacks in each and every room. It seems so weird now!
The ethernet jacks seem weird? Cause wiring for ethernet was the first thing I did when moving into our new house.
You really only need one for a wireless router. Two if you want some flexibility about where it goes.
Eh, wired is more stable and faster, I prefer to have hardwired access everywhere for devices that aren’t moving around. Also I really need a wifi extender or something because my current router’s wireless sucks.
Some houses really do need the hard connection. Too many walls for wireless to get signal through. Interference from kitchen microwave. General weirdness filed under This House Was Built Before Grandma Was Born.
One of the prettiest houses I ever lived in was an old farmhouse. Enough charm to drown in happily. But would have required 5 wireless routers. So the landlord just wired every room for ethernet cable.
The audio version of that is the record skipping sound we still use when something comes to an abrupt stop. Yes, I know records haven’t totally gone away, but that’s still not a sound the vast majority of younger folks are familiar with.
As a hobby photographer I hope the camera icon doesn’t end up the same. I think there isn’t really an substitute for good quality glass in big lenses. But I agree the compact camera is going to disappear (if it hasn’t already, does anyone ever use them anymore?)
I can’t remember where I heard this but a friend of a friend (I think) had an old floppy disk out for some reason, and her kid was like “How did you 3D print that save icon?”
Soccer balls! The “icon” image of a soccer ball is from the 1970 World Cup, which was the first to be broadcast live – it made a major impact, clearly. Soccer balls now don’t have that patterning at all, if you notice.
“He died like a dog, because he was a dog,” I am here for that kind of writing.
I’d also forgotten how great show dog names are. Thendara Pot Noodle indeed.
may need to make this my new user/warrior name
Many years ago, I briefly immersed myself in CKC confirmation shows with my Golden Retriever “Caber” AKA Cabernet’s Golden Sirius but alas, success eluded us because I was a terrible handler. So we switched gears and went with obedience and we were still terrible because although I was a much better handler, the dog HATED it (he almost fell asleep in the long sit portion, he was drooping all over the place and I swear I saw the judge snap Caber awake with a discreet finger movement). OH, and the difference between obedience folk and confirmation people are like night and day: your newfound obedience buddies want you to succeed but your confirmation competitors want to see you BURN, BURN, BURN.
that is a good dog name but it’s still no “Charlie Potato Hashbrowns”
I am convinced that my husband would leave me for Ricky Jay if the opportunity presented itself. I’ve seen his HBO special one and a half times, and that’s just me as a spectator to my husband’s fascination.
La Loche :'(
So horrible. And (almost as? even more? how do you even phrase this?) just as horrible are the conditions out of which the situation evolved. The area has an astronomical suicide rate related to poverty, substance abuse – the effects of residential school are still felt – and absence of opportunities coupled with insufficient social services. My heart goes out for everyone there.
I am with you. My partner occasionally works up North (La Ronge, specifically, but he works with La Loche folks a lot too) and… there are a lotta lotta good things, but there are a lot of really terrible things to go along with the good. I really hope that this is taken as an opportunity to address the systemic underfunding of these kinds of communities, but I don’t actually have high hopes that that is how that will go., especially given the gov’t currently in power in SK.
Me neither, especially as the Sask Party theme for the next election seems to be “We are the fiscally responsible budget cutting people, please ignore where all our surpluses went”.
The NY Times article ends with this powerful quote, from the school’s principal back in 2010
“You take away the land, you take away the traditional livelihoods, you feed them booze, you introduce smallpox in your trade wars,” he said. “We won’t call it genocide, because we’re white guys and white guys don’t do that. That’s just other evil people in the world.”
He added, “I began to understand that colonization isn’t something that’s a long time ago, it’s something that’s at work right now.”
Our Target down the road never seemed to have major supply issues until the end (other than being curiously overstocked on some decorative items) and oh man oh man I am mad at them for blowing the whole thing up, particularly as now the only man left standing in the same category is Wal-Mart.
We had two Targets in our area, and walking through them was the weirdest – huge gaps in shelves, staple items that would be there one week and totally absent the next, aisles after aisles of zero customers or staff. Often we would imagine we were survivors in some post-apocalyptic near future.
Yes! It was very eerie wandering around Target! I mean, it was kind of nice to go somewhere to shop and not have to deal with crowds, but then you might have to go to a second store ’cause the might not actually have what you needed to begin with.
I loved our local Target — it had amazing selection and lovely products. (Seriously, their Homewares department had so much nice stuff). They were making progress! And now it’s just … nothing
I can see why low cost department stores struggle, though. Competition from chains like Loblaws and Canadian Tire is intense.
Mine was pretty bad, and on more than one occasion I bought food that was expired because they left it on the shelf rather than leave it empty.
I really miss Zellers. They had nicer clothes than WalMart. In a continuum of dept. stores it seems to go: Giant Tiger, WalMart, (Zellers/Target), Sears, The Bay. In my mind, Target didn’t grasp what it was Canadians liked about shopping in the US branches (mainly price and the capsule collections). And they didn’t really seem that different than what you could already get at the Superstore with Joe Fresh.
I used to work for BiWay and I even get a little nostalgic for that. They had really decent basics and served smaller communities than even Giant Tiger.
I used to love Biway so much.
I also got 50% off at Bluenotes and Fairweathers. But the owner of BiWay seemed determined to run it into the ground when WalMart came.
And then I just remembered wandering around a mostly empty Eatons. Canadian retail is tough.
A lot of the Zellers stores I shopped at were not great. They were badly run down, with pallets full of boxes in the aisles all the time. I still kind of miss them because it was nice to have an option that wasn’t Walmart, but I don’t miss them that much.
Something I found really confusing at first when I spent two months in the Canadian Prairies as an American (on a long bicycle tour): The store Co-op.
Here co-op is a kind of store, not the name OF a store. My first time in a Co-op was in Calgary. The cashier asked if I had a co-op number, and just like I did at every grocery co-op in the states I said, “Not at this one, but I do at home,” because many grocery co-ops in the USA will give you the member discount (if there is one) if you belong to another one. My cashier was REALLY confused.
There were Co-ops in every tiny town in the prairies, it seemed like. There was one in Elfros Saskatchewan that was only open M-F, 8-5, and closed for an hour mid-day. Which leads me to believe they had exactly one employee.
I used to buy all my work clothes at Zellers and then Target took over and their clothing section was approximately 95% Juniors and 0% workwear :(:(:(
I was so happy when they announced they were coming because the internet had told me that Target had a fair selection of cute plus-size clothes.
And then they didn’t have a plus-size section. They announced that they were going to change that in their last big “we’re turning things around!” announcement, but of course they never got to it because they went bankrupt instead.
I stopped shopping at my Target over a year ago and don’t miss it one bit. Various reasons necessitated this: inconvenient, crowded, traffic clogged location, the fact that it was feeling more and more like a Walmart experience, and most of all that they were ALMOST ALWAYS out of something that I went in for. I do not live in Canada! Not sure if their inventory system is managed by living beings who are just terrible at their jobs or a computer system, but seriously Target, it’s 2016, let’s get with the program! How hard could it be to make sure you have conditioner to go with it’s corresponding shampoo?????
I hate Cruz SO much. Years ago, even after we already knew he was a jerk, I found out that he was an Agenda 21er (although I hope that for that one, he’s just saying it for the crazy white person vote). That pretty much sealed it for me. I can’t believe he gets to represent my state. It KILLS me.
I mentioned to my (conservative but usually reasonable) father the Agenda 21 thing, and my dad actually suggested he could be right about it. I don’t know if my dad has reached the age of believing crazy things or if he just couldn’t stand to lose an argument to me about someone he voted for (that’s a distinct possibility), but it signaled the end of me discussing politics with my dad ever again. I love my dad, we have a lot of fun hanging out together, but that is just insane.
To be fair to your dad if you don’t have the deep-set knowledge of just how ineffectual the UN is the major news outlets (conservative or not) wouldn’t give any reason to believe that a UN “agenda” has only slightly less official power than my own drunken policy recommendations slurred out at a bathroom mirror.
That’s a good point. I would agree with you, except my dad’s a pretty knowledgeable guy about that kind of thing, plus I re-explained all that to him, and he has another daughter who is an urban planner. So to accept Agenda 21, he has to accept that his daughter is in on a UN conspiracy or is essentially a gullible rube who doesn’t recognize what’s going on in her own profession. That’s especially true because she advocates for a lot of the policies that are supposedly part of the plot.
I would very much like to hear your drunken policy recommendations. Instead of reciting them to your mirror, you should livestream them.
I admit when I saw the Harvard Law story, I went to check the dates if Ted Cruz was there then. (Not–I was off by a year. But still, two hates that taste great together.)
I hate the idea Ted Cruz is probably who my dad supports at this point. (Our state will go blue anyway, but ugh. My brother is disappointed my dad didn’t provide him fodder for political arguments during my parents’ last visit Chez Frere, but it’s a lot easier to be curious and amused when you have an ocean and seven hours between you as opposed to 40 minutes.
It could be worse. My mom is pulling for a Christie/Fiorina ticket. Or Fiorina/Christie, she’s not picky. She believes everything Fiorina says about Planned Parenthood and she just likes Christie for reasons she either refuses to or can’t explain. Its going to be a long year.
Blech. My dad used to have somewhat decent “moderate” Republican credibility, but he’s doubling down, along with the idea that I’m kind of frivolous to care so much about social issues and thinking indiscriminately bombing the Middle East is a bad idea.
My mom is a Democrat, but with VERY weird gaps (like, sympathizing with that police officer floor-slamming a girl in class WTF Mom?).
Toasties of Chicago who sent me Facebook messages over the weekend (re: Hamilton), I have finally responded to you individually. Apologies, my laptop died and I had to get a new one and I was in A Dither because of buying such an expensive thing. But it’s done.
And on the plus side, I have a shiny new computer!
Ugh, so sorry about the computer! (Dying, I mean–yay for the shiny new one!) You are being a boss organizing this!
So much good sense in not looking at that accident report. A friend of mine died years ago in a drowning that was front page news. I bought the papers but then put them away,so I couldn’t keep reading them. The beach near where he drowned is a popular one and I have to explain,when people invite me there,why I don’t want to go.
This is almost exactly me, except it was my brother and I don’t tell people why I don’t want to go to that place.
Sometimes it’s impossible to make sense of something, no matter how many times we read the report.
“We got a lot of seahorse toys, for obvious reasons.” <3 <3 <3
Wow that Harvard Law wiki is so disgusting. That poor woman. Her poor husband.
Agreed! I pulled it up so my husband could read it. His jaw dropped. He said “how many of them died in shame over this??” oh my poor sweet husband, exactly zero of them. Several of them are probably upset they even had to apologize.
I just can’t understand why it would even cross their minds! “Hey, one of our colleagues’ wives was murdered horribly a year ago. Want to write and distribute a thing mocking her?” “Sounds great!” SAID NO-ONE EVER, surely!
>>”I’m a Christian first, American second.”
Which is funnily the old argument against Catholics and Mormons.
Yes! I definitely remember reading (or maybe my dad told me?) that people were so afraid of Kennedy’s presidency because obviously he would defer to the Pope on all things.
He actually had to come out and publicly say that he wouldn’t be controlled by the Vatican.
My mom went to a Catholic high school and apparently when he died, the nuns went into pretty serious mourning.
i am not catholic but i would go into pretty serious mourning for Pope Francis, the #1 pope of my heart forever
I knew several very conservative families during the ’08 primaries who were very anti-Romney because he ‘swore fealty’, I believe was their phrase, to the Mormon Church.
Oh God I have so many feelings about Rafi and Ettie and THAT BABY IS SO DAMN CUTE I am so happy with my religion for having stories like that in it
This piece about getting rid of sleep also popped up a few days ago (it appears to be in the same series as the one linked above): http://motherboard.vice.com/read/lets-cure-the-di… No, let’s not try to cure the disease of sleeping! That is the sort of creepy science-fiction stuff that feels like it’s guaranteed to go wrong; there was a Doctor Who episode about it just last year! Sleep is great.
A few minutes ago the button came off my new work trousers. I am in the middle of a work day. Toasts, do you have any clothing-mishap stories to share in order to make me feel less awkward?
(Actually, I have one, which is far worse – first year of university, a one-on-one tutorial with my Linguistics tutor, wearing a dress that was fairly tight across the chest and made of fabric with no give. About a quarter of the way in I sneezed and the bodice split down the front. I spent the rest of the tutorial with my pad of A4 paper clutched to my chest. Neither of us acknowledged anything. I still wear the mended dress.)
I once had dinner with one of the higher-ups at work. Got to my hotel room, discovered that I had an enormous grease stain from the lasagna I’d eaten on my shirt.
The sole came off my shoe the other week at work.
Only, it didn’t come off all the way, but clung on to the front bit. The rest of the day I stuck to my desk, hoping noone would call on me. “No” I imagined myself saying, going pink with embarassement, “I can not come with you to-day. You see, my shoe is broken and I must remain at my desk and can not join you on a brief excursion to another room in this building, asI can no longer walk like a normal person!”.
That happened to me (but the other way round so the heel was clinging on for half the class) in a really deep muddy field where I was competing in a horse show. I did the whole show with my flappy boot and my horse and I got a mention in Horse and Hound for being ‘this graceful pair’.
Ooooh, that happened to a pair of my favorite boots a couple years ago! Walking out of the building (including across an enormous lobby) was so awkward at the end of the day. I basically just slid my foot forward, limping.
When I was about fourteen and well on my way to my current H cup, I was minding a toddler at church very near the front, who somehow managed to pop all the buttons on my dress, exposing my bra to the preacher.
H-cup solidarity fistbump!
*raising fist for bump* …..oh, wait, I have mere 38-Gs….. *sheepishly putting fist back down*
Here, have some of my 38-K volume. Take it, please.
The button had come off my jeans, so I could only wear them with a belt.
Me and my then-girlfriend went away for a few days, I packed the jeans and forgot to pack the belt. So I had to wear them with a safety pin.
We went to visit an old university tutor of hers, who was a lovely man with the filthiest house I have ever been to. Like, he took the plastic cover off a packet of dips, and then put it dip-side-down on the carpet. The coffee table was covered in newspapers, and he spilled orange juice on them and just left it there to dry out sticky. It wasn’t just dusty-dirty, but astonishingly, stickily grimy everywhere.
So, anyway, I went to the loo.
And as I did my trouser up afterwards, the safety pin pinged out of my fingers described a perfect arc and … went … straight … into… the … loo.
Oh.
So. I pretty much had to go full Trainspotting. Then I washed my hands about six millions times (there was no soap.) Then I went back to the living room and made polite conversation until we could leave and I could have many, MANY showers.
Like, he took the plastic cover off a packet of dips, and then put it dip-side-down on the carpet.
… why?
I really hope you did not get dysentry or something from this experience.
One time I was on vacation and after a long day of walking around, a crucial sandal strap broke. I was nowhere near my hotel and couldn’t find any place nearby to buy either duct tape or replacement shoes, so I ended up using several of the elastic luggage tags they give you at the airport to hold the sandal onto my foot. It looked ridiculous.
That is some first-class sandal-McGuyver-ing
I once broke my flip flop at Bonnaroo in the middle of the night and had to wait for dawn to walk back, shoeless, across gravel with a hearty helping of broken beer bottles. It was my last Bonnaroo. Which is to say, your ingenuity is to be praised.
Only kind of a work story, but when I was in graduate school, I got through two of my own classes and a class I was a teaching assistant for before realizing that the shirt I was wearing was see-through (made worse by the fact that my bra color wildly clashed with the shirt’s color).
I’ve also lost buttons on my pants or blouses before. Binder clips are magic.
I wore a dress to work that got a 2″ rip in the back seam after a few hours of work. Black dress, beige undergarments, bad stuff all around. I went to CVS, bought a sewing kit, sat in a bathroom stall and stitched it up. On the way home it ripped AGAIN, and this was during summer so I wasn’t wearing a coat.
The button on my work pants fell off too, a few weeks ago! And then we had massive layoffs later that day. :/ Hope that doesn’t happen at your place!
I asked around for a safety pin, couldn’t find one, so resorted to (lol) a binder clip for the rest of the day. It did not work great.
Annnnd I just remembered why I haven’t seen those pants in my closet since, it’s because I haven’t sewn the button back on yet. At least now I know where they are.
The classic – first time wearing a specific pair of trousers at work and the whole back seam just fell apart, like it couldn’t go on anymore and simply collapsed. Not even a tight pair, so weird. Anyway I stapled it together in the bathroom and went to buy more pants at lunch.
I’ve had a few incidents of front-closing bras exploding while I was walking down the street. (I don’t buy those anymore…)
I once was wearing a light grey skirt suit when my period came completely unexpectedly in the middle of an all-day meeting. I didn’t notice the red stain on the back of my skirt until I was in the bathroom and it was large enough to have been there for several hours… and I couldn’t do anything about it other than shuffle around with my front to everyone as much as possible. I have never been more mortified and now only wear black / navy clothing except when i’m 1000000% sure I won’t be bleeding that day.
I was out of clean underwear and I had to run to work in a hurry, so I decided to go commando under my work pants. Obviously that was the day that I caught the rear pocket on my bike seat and ripped the entire crotch seam from belt to zipper. The whole downtown got a show on my ride to work that day.
As a wee college dirtbag, I was backpacking around Southeast Asia for Christmas with some friends when I inexplicably gained a cup size in my already-well-represented chestal department.
The day we crossed the border from Cambodia to Thailand, I felt compelled to wear a button-down shirt and didn’t even notice the pleasant breeze airing out my underboobs until a local heroine kindly pantomimed to me that I’d hulked out of my shirt and flashed the hell out of the border control guy while he was taking my visa picture.
Great day.
Speaking of elderly pets, here is an article about cat funerals in the Victorian era.
My heart.
My mom tells me that their rector recently had to make an announcement in church saying that he wasn’t sure it was appropriate to include ill or deceased pets in the prayers of the people.
I’m so torn here, on the one hand I agree with him (prayers for pets are for the “unspoken prayers in our hearts” part, obviously) but I don’t think I could bring myself to say that out loud!
It was getting out of hand. One group email went out to the choir, saying that a choir member’s sister-in-law had died, and there were a few consolations. Another went out, saying somebody else’s dog had died, and the whole list blew up with consolation, sympathy, memories of the dearly departed dog, etc. Apparently, the dog culture at their church has gotten out of control.
Also, he’s only the interim rector, so he can afford to take a few risks.
I don’t blame him one bit! That must have been so awful for that poor person whose sister died!
It was on the day of her retirement party, too.
The retirement party is totally, absolutely the right time to let ‘er rip with Things What Needed Sayin’.
Oh, there’s no overlap between “people who are on this email list” and “people who were at this party.” It was just an especially unfortunate time for a death in the family. The “caring more about the dog” thing came later.
I thought the vicar made the announcement at the vicar’s retirement party and I was proud of her chutzpah. To mix metaphors on multiple levels.
I might have imagined myself a somewhat more-exciting-than-real-life church group for your mother. But then church behind the scenes stuff can get messy.
Edit to add: this is why the reply through email thing I s dangerous. I need to read everything again before commenting or I get way confused.
Oh no, sorry. The dog/choir thing was unrelated to the prayers, but just another symptom of the out-of-control dog parents issue (and the bereaved choir member isn’t their priest, although that would be an interesting twist). The interim rector, Steve, made an announcement one week (or possibly in a vestry meeting, I don’t recall) that he wasn’t sure putting dogs on the official prayer list to be read out in church was ok.
I’m very bad at giving timelines and backstory. It’s a problem. I’m also relating this story second-hand based on a phone conversation with my mother two weeks ago.
Thank you for bearing with me through my confusion! You were doing fine until I forgot the rector was a he and got mixed up.
Although really, it’s wonderful that that’s an entirely reasonable mixup.
Someday O, my Catholic family, we will have this problem too. Please God, someday soon.
I am HERE for the senior dog sanctuary article :’) :’)
ELDERDOGS <3
I’m sure how many of you have been following Ontario’s Twitter trial, but my local social media turned into a complete shitshow Friday as all the MRAs turned out to gloat in full force.
Essentially, a well known local twitter troll was found not guilty of criminal harassment of feminist activists, and it turned into a field day for the MRA “free speech” harassers.
http://m.thestar.com/#/article/news/crime/2016/01…
OMG, his face. that is the face of someone who knows he has done wrong and gotten away with it and is gleeful about it.
Oh yeah. He’s clearly enjoying leaning into his privilege.
Yet people out there are complaining about how these “false accusations” have “ruined his life”
Pffffft. Like a loser who has nothing better to do than troll women on Twitter has a life to ruin.
That’s a Backpfeifengesicht if I ever saw one.
O the Germans. A great word for everything.
A lot of them seemed to think that it cleared him of being a jerk. It was an important test case to figure out if criminal harassment applied to social media. There’s every possibility that laws could be revised based on this case.
I am happy that at least the crown did prosecute him, and that the legal system is at least trying. There’s the recognition that his behavior was horrible and inappropriate, but our systems just have no good way to deal with it.
(One idea I heard over the weekend was advocating for an “online restraining order” — essentially banning harassers from talking to you online. It would have to be fairly easy to get, less onerous than a traditional restraining order, but would make “intent to harass” much easier to prove in court if it was violated.)
I know hearing about other people’s dreams in incredibly boring, but I dreamed I was in Utah with all of you at some sort of Toast meet-up/pride parade, and I was babysitting for Nicole, whose baby was lovely, and somehow it was summer and we were in a meadow full of yellow flowers. So that was nice.
false, the recent charlie potato hashbrowns dream was magical to contemplate
Relevant to our (Serena Williams) interests: http://goodstuffhappenedtoday.tumblr.com/post/137…
According to that article the Target CEO’s severance package – after he had to step down because he lost the company billions – was $61 million dollars. He cost tens of thousands of people their livelihood and he gets to live for the rest of his life in obscene comfort and at his leisure. Why. Why is this a thing that happens? Whyyyyyy.
Because capitalism.
Apparently they were paying him $20 million a year at one point. I figure that either he had enough saved to live in obscene comfort anyways, or he’ll be so used to spending excessively that he’ll manage to blow through the severance package eventually and then be broke.
I mean, it’s still totally unfair, but it seems likely to not actually make much difference to his life.
I don’t know if this has been discussed on the Toast before (and apologies if I am super-late to the game), but I just read a few pieces about “Southside With You”, the movie coming to Sundance this year about Barack and Michelle’s first date, and it looks and sounds pretty great. Here’s a clip from the movie, and here’s a pretty glowing Variety review.
That dog sanctuary is one county over from me and I need to go visit it.
Thanks so much for sharing that old dog sanctuary link! I’m very much into older dog fostering/adoption (I recommend following wolfgang2242 on instagram if you are too). Since my dog recently passed away and I’m moving, I’m trying to wait a bit before I get a new dog (or two! or three!) in my life, but its really hard!!! Hopefully donating to that org will keep my inner voice that just repeats “you need a dog just go get one” satisfied for a bit.
I am fairly confident that I’m the last person in the world to have seen this clip of LMM in 2009, in which he performs an early version of Alexander Hamilton for the President, but JUST IN CASE, HERE YOU GO
I refuse to believe it took you this long to see that.
Um. Yeah, it was Thursday, so technically you are correct. (YES IT’S APPALLING I KNOW I’M SO SORRY)
Better late than never. It’s okay. We forgive you.
I am loving all the #dogcontent (must re-watch Best in Show now), and Sansa is SO BIG! My favorite thing is watching my full-grown dog (50 lbs.) interact with puppies who are the same size he is. I wish he and Sansa could have a play date.
Also, thanks to The Toast for running an interview with Deniz Gamze Erguven; I saw Mustang last night and it was lovely.
When I rewatch Best in Show, I start naming nuts. It’s a painful price to pay.
“Harlan Pepper… if you don’t stop namin’ nuts!”
Is your dog fluffy or sleek? Sprinter, herder, ratter, or guard dog? I would love watching your dog with puppies. Aren’t other people’s puppies the best? All of the fun, none of the work.
I love watching big puppies at play. My brain switches between grown-big-dog and no-wait-such-silly-puppy-moves, back and forth. I enjoy the mental vertigo. A roller coaster ride for my brain.
My old LittleGirlDog plunges into the mix when she suspects a fight. Her 12 pounds in the middle of 50-pound puppies, snapping at them, “You kids settle down and behave yourselves right now! Don’t make me nip you!”
And those big puppies submit to her instantly, every time. Something about the Mama Dog posture and tone. It seems small size is not relevant.
He’s a pit mix of some sort, so kind of sleek and muscular. But although he’s full-grown skeletally, he’s only 15 months, so he still has a bit of a babyish squishy look to him, like he’s got some baby fat or his skin is still a little too big. It’s pretty cute. He loves to run in circles and particularly to be chased by other dogs.
We’ve got a black lab puppy down the street who is sometimes out in her fenced-in front yard. I’ve watched her grow from about 15 pounds to maybe 35-40 over the past few months, and I’m dying for them to play together. So. Cute.
Your little mama dog sounds adorable. 🙂
Ooo! I love sleek and muscular Pibbles. Great dogs. Wish I could offer him my hand for sniffing and see if he’d accept petting under his chin. If he did, I’d transition to rubbing behind his ears. Glad you’re socializing him often.
LittleGirlDog would rush up to your big (relative to her) Pibble mix and ask if he’s ok, does he need any mothering? She’d sniff him thoroughly to determine to her own satisfaction that he is ok. Then she’d ignore him. Until some other dog approached your cute boy. Then she’d be on alert, trotting over to sniff the newcomer and to let them know she won’t tolerate any threat to your young circle runner.
I just started following @DeathMedieval on Twitter. Life was rough in the Middle Ages.
What wacky Twitter accounts are you following?
Sadly, my favorite wacky Twitter account @JennyHolzerMom has been dormant for about a year now. @ProBirdsRights cracks me up pretty regularly.
“…but the lower part of his body was ruptured.”
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???
I really like Chaucer Doth Tweet, @LeVostreGC. Also, this isn’t wacky but I find the Guardian Style Guide, @guardianstyle, is often good for language snark laughs.
Well, now I’m following @DeathMedieval, for one. Clerks appear to have been violent assholes.
I also follow @NightValeRadio, which I find oddly comforting.
If you like that you might also enjoy @DreadSingles. It’s consistently hilarious, terrifying and relatable (often all at the same time!)
The Emo Kylo Ren Twitter (@KyloR3n) has not yet lost its charm for me. I also enjoy @ProBirdRights, @_FloridaMan, @lolmythesis, @A_single_bear, @NYTOnIt, @GuyInYourMFA, @OnMarsFirst, @NYTMinusContext, @feministhulk, and @TweetsOfOld.
@weratedogs is making me lol on the regular lately
I love when they push back on people who are not getting the joke. Especially when they block critics and post a screencap of said blocking.
Yessssssss.
their use of pupper kills me every time.
I like @WolfOutside, @kylor3n, @MagicRealismBot, @BibleStdntsSay and of course @probirdrights
My fav recent addition is @evilbmcats, but am also a devoted follower of @_FloridaMan
@18thcenturyjoke for old and terrible jokes.
Also, follow both @knghnryviii and @richard_third for general war of the roses related joke fights.
@batlabels because Gotham has a labelmaker and they aren’t afraid to use it.
@dogsolutions because is know to pet deg.
@knghnryviii and @richard_third, because it’s fun to watch them trade historical insults, and @losfelizdaycare, because one twitter account is sufficient to get my quota of Portlandia-hipster jokes.
@fakelibrarystats is definitely my favorite. Particularly since I end up Saturday librarianing at the same time as the person who runs the account fairly regularly.
@RealCarrotFacts is the best ever. Sample tweet: “the average goat is 9 carrots tall if you measure goats in carrots”
@80sDonDraper is one of the greats, although it ended a while ago.
Ralph of Stoke killed Richard Underwood by reason of an ancient grudge.
Amazing.
Currently deeply in love with Ted Cruz’s freshman roommate at Princeton, @clmazin. A truly unexpected delight in this awful election cycle.
“‘As a successful and very “presentable” young woman…'”
Ugh. There is just no right way to be a woman, is there? Much less a woman of color. HOW DARE SHE BE PRESENTABLE AND A POET AT THE SAME TIME.
the second-to-last paragraph in the Serena Williams article contains this sentence: “And its no more obnoxious than Peyton Manning’s annoyingly performative Asperger’s.”
(I can find nothing saying that Peyton Manning is autistic, but either way that sentence is pretty gross?)
I enjoyed the article (points for explaining football nuances for non-sports people like me) but that sentence rubbed me the wrong way.
A) yes that is extremely gross in many ways.
B) As far as I or anyone knows he does not have Asperger’s and/or is not autistic. He simply has a reputation for being bafflingly focused on being the best quarter back he can be ( A Grantland profile sums him up well ).
Ableist af.
Thank you for pointing this out! I have a related problem in real life, which is that people enjoy referring to an awkward person I work with as having Asperger’s, and no one seems to listen when I point out that it’s rude and inappropriate (I haven’t tried actually calling it ableist because I don’t think they would take that seriously at all). Once again the Toast proves to be the kindest, most thoughtful and pro-justice space in my life.
I always feel oddly protective of Peyton Manning because he has a cleft palate (I have a cleft lip). So, this enrages me for many reasons.
“I’m a liar first, a lunatic second, a narcissist third, a bastard fourth,…” – Ted Cruz
Imagine Bernie using this construction. “I’m a Jew first, an American second, a socialist third, and a Democrat fourth.” The Republican presidential field would look like the final scenes of “Kingsman”.
I was linked to that Mary Joe Frug article yesterday, and immediately felt the need to turn off the computer and take a shower. It’s funny how the writers attacked Frug for “having no sense of humour” when their idea of “humour” appears to be “mocking a murdered woman in a milleu where her loved ones will almost certainly see it.” Comedy!
Surely it’s been mentioned, but what kind of dog is Sansa? She’s lovely.
A custom mutt that Nicole refuses to divulge the origin of.
I am on record as being happy to discuss with anyone who emails me.
Wow, you guys, Kwame Kilpatrick is saying that state and local government know about water issues in Flint as far back as 2004.
…? I’m very confused because I thought a big part of the scandal was that the lead contamination was caused when the Snyder-appointed emergency managers of Flint switched over the water without treating it properly. Something like two years ago.
It sounds like Kilpatrick is saying that discussions in 2004 between Detroit and Flint regarding Flint’s water system brought up the fact that Flint couldn’t afford to treat the water.
I am deeply conflicted as to whether I want that to be true.
One of my exes tried the polyphasic sleep thing. He was actually sort of more pleasant to be around when he kept randomly passing out all the time.
I’ve just been reading through Ta-Nehisi Coates’ timeline, which is full of retweeted criticism of his latest article on Bernie Sanders. I’m feeling a little disheartened at how vitriolic it is. The article is VERY critical of the Clintons, but people are still cooking up conspiracy theories about the Atlantic getting its funding from Clinton-supporting institutions and, I guess, making its writers toe the line? It’s such an ideologically heterogeneous publication I don’t know how they think that is supposed to work, but never mind that: there are primaries coming up and someone criticized Sanders, therefore he must be a Clinton operative.
I guess I don’t have anything in particular to say about this, except that I miss the old TNC commentariat, and that I don’t know where on today’s Internet anyone can find that kind of thoughtful ongoing conversation about political critique without the assumption that it’s all about stumping for one candidate or the other.
I have never found a commentariat quite like the Horde. Metafilter and the Toast are two of the best commentariats on the internet, but neither is quite the same, and neither quite scratches my itch for reading and occasionally participating in wonky policy discussions.
Also, TNC’s Sanders articles were both great and depressing. He’s entirely correct about the limits of liberal imagination in this country.
Oh my goodness, me too. Election years bring out the most intense in internet opinions, but good grief, I have a hard time with some of it. This go round seems so much worse than the last few times. I’m for Bernie myself, but I deeply appreciate TNC’s critiques, and certainly bear him no ill will for it… that would be ridiculous! Both the Clinton supporters and the Sanders supporters are taking this primary election very personally, and the internet channels are becoming unreadable.
I feel like every place I used to go for thoughtful conversation has turned into a youtube comments section flame war, and am so so so grateful for everyone here at The Toast.
I get why things seem worse, particularly since twitter can be so terrible, but I just don’t think Sanders vs. Clinton has gotten as nasty yet as Obama vs. Clinton was.
Heck, Ted Kennedy vs. Jimmy Carter in 1980 was pretty brutal.
I am already exhausted thinking about the coming nastiness. 😩
I wish Sanders supporters could get it into their heads that yelling “HE DOES SO HAVE AN ANTI-RACIST AGENDA!!!” at people of color expressing concerns about Sanders’s approach is not exactly the way to reassure anyone that the Sanders campaign is genuinely invested in anti-racism.
I really enjoy his retweeting them- I don’t want people to pile on them I just find it interesting to see what kinds of criticism he gets. And it does seem that some of them didn’t read much more than it was about Bernie and decided it must be bad.
Another one who misses the Horde here. To begin with, I was very puzzled by the reaction to TNC’s Sanders pieces: I mean, he more or less leads with “no one could possibly expect a strong anti-racist, pro-reparations position from Hillary Clinton, but I expected more of Sanders” and that’s just not Sanders-bashing. But then I argued about this a while with my husband, and came to see that the problem is that people who actually believe that Sanders has a chance to win the nomination are worried/outraged that TNC is hurting that chance, whereas people (like me, and maybe even TNC, I dunno) who might prefer Sanders but don’t think he has a chance in hell of being nominated feel that he ought to get all the issues out there, ask for the moon, be extreme. And that assumption that Sanders doesn’t have a chance is what is really riling people who don’t agree.
I guess that makes sense, but I’m surprised that these articles are being given that kind of weight. Someone on twitter said that it’s a big compliment to Iowa voters if Bernie’s non-support of reparations would hurt his chances there. And while I understand the impulse to disbelieve anything bad someone says about your favorite candidate, it’s pointless to shout down all criticism of that person–if we have a democracy at all, it works by means of the people asking for what we want politicians to do, not just by fervently nodding along with everything said by whoever we like best.
I agree with you. Also, “Someone on twitter said that it’s a big compliment to Iowa voters if Bernie’s non-support of reparations would hurt his chances there” = heh
Reticence =/= reluctance or hesitance, Canadian Business. RETICENCE DOES NOT MEAN RELUCTANT HESITANCE. I CAN SEE HOW YOU WOULD THINK THAT BUT IT DOESN’T.
you guys. B.o.B might be a flat earth truther. unclear if all of the tweets are sincere or an elaborate troll
well let’s hear him out, I think he’s onto something
At first this was funny and then when I got to the part where he said “Airplanes flying in a straight line would go to outer space!” I just wanted to cry.
Why *is* the horizon always at eye level? Really makes u think.
This is a thing I just read and I think its real and true internet home is the Toast. http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/alternatives-t…
SOOO many of those every day.
Yes. A very Toastie piece.
McSweeneys is awesome. I wish you could comment there.
The best thing about that Harvard Law Review story is that, of the two people who wrote the parody article, both are now enormously wealthy business executives. One is a marketing executive, and the other is, like, the head of commodities trading at Merill Lynch or something.
Also when I said “best thing” I meant “thing that makes me furious about society”
Anyone want to discuss the X Files?
Semi-spoilers in comments.
So, here’s my hot take: it was terrrrrrrrrible. What was that dialogue? What was that garbage? It’s like they took a 90’s TV show, kept the 90’s part, threw away the good parts, and decided not to update it.
And the splattered blood on Scully’s neck every time she came out of surgery? Wth? And she was drawing her own blood while covered in someone else’s blood? As if!
Yes, horrible. Writers weren’t even trying. Or weren’t allowed to do anything good.
So glad I’m not the only one who noticed the blood spatter. WTF?
And Tad just waltzes into Scully’s work area, with sensitive patient images and detailed info on display? No one challenged him? How did he get past security and other HIPAA-trained staff?
And Tad’s hand on Scully’s shoulder made me see red. She asks to stop the car, gets out to have a private phone conversation, and Tad follows her? No respect for privacy! And he puts his hand on her? And she doesn’t reflexively kick him, or flip him over her shoulder onto the ground, or spin around with haymaker to his face?
YES! There was something deeply misogynistic about the whole episode… Creepy. And not in a good way. Just gross.
Will not come back for more.
Every time Tad opened his mouth all I could think was (*cue John Oliver voice): “Shut up, Winger!”
Seriously, that guy is the worst. Please don’t make him a regular for the season.
Chris Carter is a shit writer. Soooooo much boring exposition and the new conspiracy is total bullshit that doesn’t make a lick of sense. The next few episodes are rumored to be excellent because they have the All-Star writing staff back.
I hated or at least almost always disliked the large majority* of the mythology episodes so I can’t wait to get a good Monster Of The Week episode.
*Unless they have the Lone Gunmen in them, but that’s not going to happen now.
I sort of enjoyed the attempt to ditch the entire old conspiracy and establish, and thoroughly explain, a new one in like 3 minutes via montage and fast-talking total nonsense, just because it was so goofy and inept.
I’ve heard the second episode is also not great, but that the third is much better.
– Does Boston still have some old law on the books that allows for tarring and feathering people who are morally and ethically corrupt? If so, Craig Coben and Ken Fenyo have an appointment.
– Ricky Jay is amazing. Speaking of X-Files, he’s been in an episode, and he also had a small part in Mystery Men, sadly not as a card-throwing superhero (or villain). Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women is pretty amazing; so is Cards as Weapons, although it’s been out of print longer, and also has the risible aspect of some of the throwing techniques demonstrated by a nude woman for no particular reason.
– Yeah, that whole sleep-hacking thing… I already commented above about the wish-fulfillment aspect of it, but I’m struck by the real scientists talking about the real problems with it. “No problem here! I can see through time, and count atoms when I’m bored!”
I’ve noticed a marked decline in Likes on my Facebook posts since I stopped posting cute dog pictures and switched to all kinds of informative feminist articles. I really want to post that Harvard Law Review story. But with a picture of a chihuahua getting a bath.
Did the chihuahua consent to having its photo taken at bathtime?
Oh dear…I have the signed paper somewhere… the terms were pretty specific. Temperature, 95, liver snaps every 15 seconds, walkies after.
Did anyone else see this interview with Rachel Bloom? http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/25/…
Nice to see her standing up for diversity as both being more interesting than the same old white-people-only story *and* representing the world more accurately.
Sansa is the best puppy.
I am confused by this aside in the Crufts article: Therefore the idea that they would go out to ‘nobble’ [canine-speak for sabotaging a rival dog] another competitor is just madness. Is “nobble” not a word in non-canine contexts?
I’ve never heard that word, ever.
Oh, maybe it’s UK-specific.
‘Nobble’ is definitely a word. Maybe the author hadn’t heard it before so they assumed it was field-specific?
It’s a very English word, isn’t it? I don’t think it shows up in t he US very often.
It must be! I had never really considered it.
Without sleep aids it sometimes takes me hours to fall asleep. Any nap under two hours is just not worth it. I just want to be able to go to bed and sleep through the whole night.
And I’m WAY nicer when I get enough sleep.
This girl is collecting 1000 books featuring black girls as protagonists. http://www.phillyvoice.com/11-year-old-jersey-gir…
It's very UK-English, though. It's not even that common in the various Commonwealth Englishes. I'm not surprised a US magazine got the context slightly wrong (not restricted to dog world, obviously, unless US exhibitors use the term too?)
How is it? Do you drink it straight or mix it with stuff? How's the texture? I want to know everything.
I heard that Philly can put plows on the front of the trash trucks and use them for snow removal. I feel like there are less extreme options than Own A Fleet Of Plows!
I used to buy all my work clothes at Zellers and then Target took over and their clothing section was approximately 95% Juniors and 0% workwear :(:(:(
We still sleep more in the winter! You don't have to fall asleep exactly at dusk and rise exactly at dawn to see the effect, but the long hours of darkness do make us sleep longer, while more daylight in the summer makes us sleep less.
Actually, I wondered very much which latitude they did that study at. When I go camping in the summer, the sun will barely set at all. The lecture where I learned this was held at 59 degrees north (60 degrees is the line that splits off Canada's Northern Territories – all Nordic capitals except Copenhagen are near or at that line), and I couldn't help but wonder whether the results could be generalised to us. Most studies are done in the US, which is pretty far south of where I am, but north of where most people in the world live, I think? People who live close to the Arctic circle literally don't have daylight in the winter, or darkness in the summer. (Nobody lives far enough south for this to be an issue in the opposite direction, except the scientists in Antarctica.)