My bestie got to meet Sansa this weekend. It was very convivial.
A lot going on here (the highs and lows of California’s work to get more inmates out of the system):
Gonzalez had just served a long stint on a life sentence for his role in a grisly 1996 murder. Until his release last April, Gonzalez had no doubt he would die in prison: “If you had a life sentence . . . you were going to do life. No one was getting out.”
But Gonzalez, 36, returned to society and is now answering phones in downtown Los Angeles as a paid intern for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition and Human Rights Watch, two nonprofit groups that sponsored the law that cleared the way for his release.
Gonzalez is among thousands of felons benefiting from a grand experiment, an act of mass forgiveness unprecedented in U.S. history. In California, once a national innovator in draconian policies to get tough on crime, voters and lawmakers are now innovating in the opposite direction, adopting laws that have released tens of thousands of inmates and are preventing even more from going to prison in the first place.
“My Top 100 Episodes of 2015” (this is a very worthy endeavor)
You can stream this incredible documentary on PBS for another week or two, please do.
Watkins was an instrumentalist, not a singer, which made her even more of an oddity. The images of black men playing guitar and black women cradling a microphone long ago became our ubiquitous hieroglyphs of the blues, and even now the image of a black woman playing guitar still registers as something crackling and new. It’s not that Watkins had no one to look to as she was coming up—in the thirties and forties there had been Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie; in the fifties and sixties, Peggy Jones was performing as Lady Bo in Bo Diddley’s band and Odetta was modestly popular on the folk scene. But the path cut before her by these women was faint, and mostly uphill.
Not that Watkins needed a path. The greats rarely do. In the first verse of “John Henry,” the steel-driving man is just a baby with a hammer in his hand, singing, “Hammer’s gonna be the death of me.” As John Henry was always John Henry, Beverly Watkins was always Beverly Watkins. Sometimes fate just makes itself known.
You know I love Lisa Hix at Collectors Weekly, and “Out Of the Shadow of Aunt Jemima” is fabulous:
Tipton-Martin first picked up on the Jemima Code as a food writer at the “Los Angeles Times” in the late 1980s. While sorting the newspaper’s culinary library she noticed “the cookbooks attributed to African Americans in our collection did not reflect the images of the women that I knew in my community,” as she tells me over the phone from Houston. “Instead, I saw a stereotype, the way black women have always been portrayed. So I started collecting African American cookbooks as a way to hear the voices of real people.”
One obstacle she encountered was that throughout American history, black people have had less access to publishing than whites. Of the roughly 100,000 recipe collections that have been produced in the United States since the late 1700s, she’s managed to hunt down and collect around 300 cookbooks written by or attributed to African Americans, many of which are rare, self-published volumes. In addition, her research included deep dives into the archives at the David Walker Lupton African-American Cookbook Collection at the University of Alabama—which documents 450 volumes—as well as the Culinary Archive of the Clements Library at the University of Michigan and the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. All told, she reviews 160 cookbooks in The Jemima Code.
Friend of The Toast Carmen Maria Machado over at Catapult:
The history of dating shows (so interesting):
The Dating Game began its initial run in 1965 and ended in 1973, followed by several different syndication revivals (including one in the ‘90s that was presented back-to-back with The Newlywed Game for “The Dating-Newlywed Hour”). Leading up to The Dating Game, competition-based series like What’s My Line? and The $64,000 Question, wherein the prizes were monetary, had become commonplace. Here, people had the chance to compete for people.
The Dating Game was simple: three contestants would compete for a date with a person of the opposite sex. Each contestant was introduced to the audience before the bachelor or bachelorette (way before The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, this is how dating shows referred to those seeking love on TV) was brought to the stage, seated out of his or her eyesight behind a rotating wall. After several rounds of questions, the bachelor or bachelorette would make a decision. There wasn’t much more to it than that.
The perfect Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah on Chirlane:
Each time McCray and I talked, she was keen to give me what she called ‘‘context’’: photos of her family life, the brown cloth dolls her mother made, stories about tables full of fruits and vegetables from the garden her father tended. McCray was born in 1954 in Springfield, Mass. It was clear that she was not at all comfortable with how her childhood had been portrayed by the press. McCray was too guarded to linger on the hardship of growing up a black girl in an all-white world, but it seemed to bother her that her childhood was perceived as evidence of some unique damage. She repeatedly stressed that her parents worked hard to provide for their three girls. ‘‘They were both coming from families who were broken or missing, and they didn’t know how to do it right, and they were very smart, and they put pieces in place,’’ she said.
I am quoted on adblockers in The Observer, and thank you so much for all the donations we’ve received since last week! I was touched by your support, and so was Mallory:
“There’s nothing you can do about people who find your site via social media, etc., and those people are way more likely to have and use ad blockers than regular readers,” Ms. Cliffe said in an email to the Observer. “With regular readers, we’ve had great response from just being honest about how it impacts revenue, and asking that they make a small monthly donation to offset it or to whitelist our URL.”
According to Ms. Cliffe, it’s working well so far. After she “Got Real about revenue last week,” she said, the company’s “PayPal lit up with very gratifying $5 monthly donations.”
God gave you the letter “y” and the letter “o,” why dost thou reject His gifts?
“He is so gracious and forgiving in spit…”
I need no other salvation from this point on. This is all the salvation I needed. Salvation by saliva.
more like salivation amirite
*Attempts high five. Misses because forgot to look at elbow. Comes back for even more epic high five.*
Our cat will sometimes groom my husband’s (shaved) head and this is the image I’m getting – God furiously cleaning us like a momma cat, loudly exclaming how dirty we are.
The Bible says we are made by God’s hands out of spit and clay, so I’m sure that’s what our commenter meant.
I like your generous heart.
I have no such generosity.
he loved u so much he gave his son for u
This is the most adorable god-guilt-trip ever.
i would die 4 u
http://uploadsociety.com/video_v130944
Nothing compares 2 U. (Annoyed me then, annoys me now. Gorgeous song, though.)
Only tangentially related (to the article about the history of dating shows): the latest episodes of The Allusionist are all about the history of the personal ad, from lonelyhearts adverts to OKCupid profiles, and they’re great.
Allusionist love! One of my favorite podcasts.
Nicole, your bestie has a very nice hoodie and the people would like to know where it comes from.
SECONDED, motion carried
All in favor?
Aye!
Looks like a standard H&M hoody to me, try there!
Looks like American Apparel or Alternative Apparel. You can find cheaper hoodies that look the same (because hoodies are sort of a one-look deal usually) at Target etc but they will not be as soft and thick…
I am a HUGE fan of Costco hoodies. They’re cheap and super soft!
I have a question about adblockers! I have my adblocker turned off for the toast on my work computer, but I work in a school so the proxy servers we use here make it so that ads don’t show up anyway. Does it still count somehow? I’m guessing no, and I will make a donation either way, but I’m just curious how that works.
I am delighted that there are so many episodes of Steven Universe in that top 100 list. I just got caught up with it last week and it is so great.
It is the best and all the Crystal Gems are The Best and I love them all.
I spend a lot of time saying to myself “Pearl is my favorite! No, Garnet is my favorite! No, Amethyst! Actually, Steven!” It’s such a delight to have a show where I love everyone. (Well, at first I found Peridot annoying, but even she’s growing on me now.)
“limb enhancers” makes me giggle every time i see a gif related to them ngl
peridot is my favorite now.
Yay Steven Universe!
Garnet is probably my favorite right now, and rewatching the show knowing what we learn in the Big Reveals makes a lot of her character even better and more touching the second time around. I also absolutely adore Lion because 1) he has so much personality and character without being a Talking Animal Sidekick, 2) Steven’s interactions with him are hilariously adorable, and 3) it’s so much fun trying to figure out how he fits in with Rose. I love all of the characters, though. Everyone is imagined complexly; there’s no one-dimensional cutouts or stereotypes, even among the tertiary characters like Lars and Mayor Dewey’s son.
Oh, and speaking of Peridot gifs, this one is my favorite:
I love Garnet so much, and pretty much did from the start (well, except I liked Steven’s Dad best for a little while) and her interactions with Peridot in the latest episodes were so perfect.
But Peridot’s need for logic and not emotions and her alienness have endeared her to me so much. I think it started with the limb enhancers, and also the spinning in the toilet that made that gif (which is perfect!)
I do also like the way everyone has more than one side to them and aren’t cut-out roles. It makes for a very satisfying experience and rewatch! 😀 I can’t remember anyone’s name ever though.
Another Steven Universe newbie!! My fiance and I just devoured it over the past month. So good. And those are some good choices for the to p100 episode list, too.
I would quibble with the ranking–I would put “Jail Break” first, then “Sworn to the Sword,” and then flip a coin between “We Need to Talk” and “Cry for Help”–but the first two of those are my two favorite episodes (we’ll see how the recent ones shake out in my head over time), and they are all very very good.
(This is not because I feel I’ve said anything particularly mic-dropping, but because it’s referenced in the article and I love it:)
I am almost caught up and it is such an amazing show.
As a nursing student, the thought of God being full of patients is really discouraging. Like, jeez, I go to heaven and I have to deal with all these patients? Can’t I be a break?
I am bound by the laws of friendship to pass on this horrible GNR joke created by my friend:
Did you hear Axl Rose was considering going to medical school?
He wanted to be a pediatrician because all he wants is just little patients.
I was also wondering what the patients are doing inside of God. I mean, is that really necessary?
I just figured that’s where God was keeping them until some more nurses got up there to deal with them. Like, keeping them warm and dry.
I made a concious decision as a teenage to reject ‘ur’ and its ilk for some reason. I remember making the decision, but I don’t remember why. Probably because I wanted to feel superior.
Now the use of text speak online burns my eyes with the light of a thousand suns.
I did much the same, for much the same reasons (because I was Too Smart For These Plebes Around Me; I may have been unbearable in high school) and it’s had the same result. My texts now are apparently overly formal, and my use of punctuation makes people think I’m mad about things that I’m not mad about.
Teenage Assholes unite!
I feel like I come across as far too perky in text because I try to use exclamation points and emojis (in personal emails) to mitigate the formal way I write!
I tried PR for awhile, but my copy is either very formal and rather dry, Or I’m Super! Perky! About! Everything!
Yes, I have the same problem with exclamation points. My colleague and I have a rule to always remove at least one exclamation point from our emails because we’re trying so hard to avoid dry that they end up Super! Perky! And our department is decidedly not super perky.
I always use appropriate punctuation in texts and messages; you are not alone. I will say, though, I’m way more lax about acronyms now. I spent last year in London, communicating with my bf primarily via messenger apps. So it was all atm, brb, ttyl, etc. I even started saying ‘tho’, because the ‘ugh’ added to the end takes twice as long to say the same thing. It makes me feel a little bit like a tween whenever I type it, but I am lazy so I do it anyway.
I actually just posted a comment elsewhere, but “tho” is the one area where I haven’t just caved, I am a complete convert. I’m trying to relax on stuff like that – my younger cousins aren’t going to change, so I just tease them occasionally and use the vernacular when it doesn’t drive me too insane. I figure it’s not important enough a hill to die on.
I work in tech, in an agency, acronyms are life. Although I have to stop myself from just typing ‘atm’ in work emails, it takes so much extra time to type out ‘at the moment’, but I worry that my 50yo clients and colleagues won’t get it and then I’ll have to spend even more time explaining it.
I do, quite often, find myself googling acronyms though. ‘BAU’, ‘COP, what is this! (Business as usual, close of play for anyone who cares)
I use a lot of acronyms and abbreviations on Twitter and sometimes I catch myself using them in work emails and have to stop myself.
*TEENAGER.
Christ. I’m so sorry people of the toast who have to read my terrible grammar mistakes. I type fast and have a serious over reliance on spellcheck, which doesn’t always pick up my idiocy.
I made the decision not to use textspeak as a teenager, but it was mostly because I figured typing out everything all the time would increase my typing speed for when I was writing papers and stuff.
I was not that pragmatic with my choice, but my typing skills were amazingly improved between this and my LJ days, and as someone who is convinced I can’t learn any kind of instrument, I wish I had invested that time in practising piano instead of flamewars.
LOL. A lot of my typing skills were developed by playing a pirate-themed MMO. I’ll take what I can get, here.
Puzzle pirates?
Yuuuuup. Fun times 😀
——– Original message ——–
Oh man, I played that for so long. Then I couldn’t get the new client to actually work on my mac, so sadly I let my account get deleted. I’m still kind of sad about that…
I miss it sometimes! Just sitting around, playing puzzles and listening to music or an audiobook was really nice. I stopped because now I have a laptop and I don’t have a good surface to use a mouse on.
I wish I had invested that time in practising piano instead of flamewars.
there we go. the universal Internet Era epitaph.
same, re: never using text speak. i can’t stand to do it in regular conversation. but…..since i started being on twitter more, i now use it when i want to sound like a sullen teen from online, for cOmEdIc EfFeCt.
I have become one of those assholes who deploys it strategically
Like, in a quick “where’s your book?” text or making plans, I keep it mostly formal (aside from the line-break-instead-of-ending-punctuation thing)
But the second my parents message me a fullly-punctuated no-line-break slab of text, or a sibling goes full chatspeak, the ironic “ur” comes out in full force
I have never used text speak because a) why would I? I can spell stuff and b) I always want to feel superior, and am a terrible person.
My phone is an ancient Nokia and I don’t use predictive text; I loathe texting because it takes forever. If I relaxed my uptight principles about correct spelling and punctuation in all contexts it might be easier, but I refuse because I am a glutton for punishment.
I had a brief, BRIEF period early in high school, when we got shiny new computers with an inter-school chat program. I thought using text speak was What the Cool Kids Did…and then one of my friends wrote “I actually don’t understand what you just wrote” and I retreated in shame.
Now my job is a solid 40% sending emails, and I spend my time agonising over the proper placement of punctuation to convey the *exact nuance* I’m going for.
the “too”s are getting at me more than the “u”s.
*shudders*
JUST WAIT TILL TRAGDY STRIKES
Will it become comdy in time?
Right? How can the suggestion that this person is eschewing God’s gift of “o”? There are too many of them in too many places.
“God’s gift of ‘o'”
Something something that’s what she said amirite folks?
/rim shot
ty.
Weirdly, I feel really weird about having seen exactly, literally, one episode of the one hundred episodes listed.
I’ve seen six, five of which were because of Mad Men.
I’ve seen 25, which is a lot more than I would’ve expected (and I would have seen ~40 if I wasn’t behind on so many shows I watch). Lot of that is from Mad Men and Justified, though.
I feel really weird about not having heard of a lot of those shows at all.
Yeah, the *only* thing on there I’ve seen was “Indians on TV” – I mean, I know I’m not super with-it, pop-culture-wise (and I do watch Jane the Virgin and the Americans…but I’m not caught up on either), but…now I feel *very* out of the loop.
Mine was The Flash. Which is fine. It was just… weird. Pop culture, man.
I have also seen only one (Penny Dreadful) and I am entirely at one with it.
I’ve watched only 8 of the 100 episodes listed, but what was the one that you watched?
I basically just scrolled through looking for Hannibal.
I scrolled through looking for Jessica Jones. DENIED. Not even WWJD?
I’m gonna go the opposite way and feel weird that I’ve seen 50/100? And several other episodes I haven’t seen are just because I’m not caught up? Do I watch too much TV?
I have only seen two, and they are both from the same thing (Sense8). I watch almost none of the other programmes included in the list, and when it comes to the ones I have (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Community, Parks and Rec) I haven’t made it that far yet (combination of being in the UK and watching things on DVD/Netflix).
I’ve only seen eight thanks to my inability to finish Sens8 (I like it! But it got intense!) and my weird refusal to watch Justified or go back to Mad Men.
I should probably watch Steven Universe, huh?
Steven Universe is really really great.
I love dating shows. My college roommates would always always watch Blind Date and Elimidate together. Where have they all gone? It’s hard to imagine there isn’t a market for them anymore.
And the one that was on MTV when I was in high school that I cannot for the life of me think of the name of
Singled Out??
YESSSSS
Back in the day I spent so many hours of my life watching MTV dating shows. Mainly Next, but also a fair amount of Room Raiders and Parental Control.
If only we had cable in college… I think all for of us would have failed.
Oh I had cable in college. And the frequent Next marathons really did not help my procrastination problems. How could I not watch 10 episodes in a row of a show where a guy once rejected a girl on sight because he didn’t like her sneakers??
If I had had Netflix and Hulu in college I DEFINITELY would have failed.
Wasn’t Room Raiders the one where they would just go into some guy’s room and take a blacklight and be like “ohhh he’s been gettin’ some lately, hahahahaha”? I only watched a handful of times; it’s all pretty fuzzy.
Also, Next was just gross. Everyone on it was a walking ball of STDs.
I think it was more like people going into a guy’s room with a blacklight and being like “Wow he masturbates a lot!” And also guys going into girls rooms and finding vibrators and freaking out because GIRLS ENJOY SEX?!?!?!?!
Oh and yes pretty much everybody on Next was disgusting but that was part of the fun! I was always rooting for whoever the Nexter chose to take the money and run.
I always loved Aziz Ansari talking about Next.
Those were my favorite ones too. I loved when the contestants on the bus on Next had more sexual tension with each other than they did with the person they were there to date. I feel like that happened a lot.
I watched Married By America solely because Linda Holmes was recapping them for Television Without Pity. They remain gems of gemitude.
(the recaps, not the show)
I have not seen Married By America, but the recaps have provided me with lots of entertainment.
I used to watch “Blind Date” with the smarmy Roger Lodge because the people were all so awful, and seemed to be set up to fail by being mismatched with each other, and it made me feel much better about being single in a rather nasty, Sin of Pride way.
Now I just read anything anyone has ever posted to an advice column or in the comments on an article about relationships, ever. And it’s more in a Sin of Despair way.
Everyone on Blind Date was the worst. My favorite moment was from a date where this Very Stereotypical Blonde Girl was out with a normal-ish guy, and she got out of the car and put her arms out to indicate that she wanted him to button up her coat for her, and said (in a super little girl voice) “FIX ME, DADDY.” I will never forget the way that guy physically recoiled in horror.
My favorite guilty pleasure dating show was this fairly low budget syndicated thing called The 5th Wheel that I watched on breaks from college (individual dorm rooms didn’t have cable so I generally just binged on the most ridiculous crap as soon as I had unfettered TV access).
In the show they’d send two couples on a double date and then another person would just randomly show up at some point and try to stir up trouble. The couples would switch partners as well and in the end everyone had to choose who they liked best (“no one” was an actual option). There were some Pop Up Video-style animations added in post as well.
In conclusion: I really miss Pop Up Video
Pop Up Video needs to come back in some form. I loved it so much!
Oh, man, I loved Pop Up Video so much! HOWEVER, did anyone else see the Washington Post ‘annotating’ Beyonce’s new video? It autoplayed after another video I was watched on their site, and it is just completely mind-boggling in a way that I can’t even really explain (like both super condescending but also kind of pitiable, in a way?): https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/entertainmen…
1) I miss Pop Up Video. Dang.
2) That Washington Post approximation was…lacking.
I have The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks out from the library and it looks fascinating. Glad to see the article.
The article on Chirlane McCray is so good. Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is an excellent writer who should be talked about more.
I saw “Collector’s Weekly” in the roundup and actually said “Yes!” out loud. I’ll have to see if my library has a copy of that book, too.
I hope they know we love them. We’ve told them, right?
If you’re interested in reading one guy’s love letter to one cookbook with a black author, here’s one! http://www.seriouseats.com/2016/02/cookbook-love-…
I love everything of hers that I have ever read.
That 100 TV episodes list made me so sad about Looking all over again! Although I disagree with the choice to put the Halloween episode on there because I can’t handle watching characters humiliate themselves.
<3 Chirlane, loved the profile.
I will continue to fight the good fight on the word “you”, but I will warn you all that I have totally caved on “tho”; the youths are right, “though” is a stupid construction, free your mind.
I have caved on Tho in casual conversation as a distinct choice (dat ass tho.), but being from Europe, and in particular Ireland, I will cling to my extra unnecessary letters until my dying breath.
THRU IS NOT A WORD.
Also Bh is pronounced V. Welcome to Irish spelling.
I made my peace with Irish spelling when I realized that letters are sometimes punctuation, nbd.
I’ve never thought of it like that! I’ll admit my Irish is horrific beyond belief, I refused to learn it in school out of spite (it’s very badly taught in Irish schools), but a lot of the ‘irish-english’ words and loanwords that we use (collectively known as Hiberno English) are spelt pretty strangely. And depending on the school you went to or the area you were from you could be dinged for using the Irish spelling or the English spelling. I think eventually you just learn how to say and spell them individually, but lord help Irish dyslexic’s like my brother, if you ask him to write his address he just panics!
Place names are a big one for that; all the signs have english and Irish on them, but sometimes the ‘English’ name is actually just an anglicized butchering, so everyone uses the Irish spelling (since they’re pronounced the same way), or the Irish name is just a translated version of the English name, so everyone uses the English spelling/pronunciation. And then there’s the places where the english name and the Irish name developed separately, and so the ‘Irish’ version is nothing to do with the English name and no one is every really sure which one to use (It usually defaults to the English version, because colonialism)
For example; I’m from a town called Dun Laóghaire (pronounced Done-Leery), that is alternately spelled; Dun Laorie, Dun Leary, or was called Kingstown by the English when they lived there (That has died off.)
Even Dublin, is a anglicized viking name Dubh Linn (Black Water/Pool, cause the river was nasty when the vikings moved in apparently.), but in Irish it’s called Bailé Átha Cliáth, which means something like crossing of the sticks (Something to do with a Fjord over the river at some point.)
Oh, my Irish is nonexistent (I’ve tried to teach myself a few times, but I’m American, there are no classes and no one can understand why I’d bother), so I have no room to judge! But I do a lot of research on ancient and medieval Ireland, and realizing that slapping the Roman alphabet on top of a Celtic language through the efforts of some very independent-minded monks makes the whole thing…well, not make sense, but at least it makes sense as to why it *doesn’t* make sense.
I did find place names fascinating when I was in Ireland, the way sometimes you could see the connection and sometimes you couldn’t and the histories behind them. (And how some of them have turned into American names with Americanized spelling through years of attrition!)
“Also Bh is pronounced V. Welcome to Irish spelling.”
I would appreciate if you could explain this to everyone I introduce myself to.
Are you a Siobhan? I can only imagine your pain.
There’s lots of Irish names I didn’t realise were ‘hard’ to pronounce until I left Ireland, like Orlaigh or Aine, or Caoimhe.
I have a young niece who is an Áine. It often gets mispronounced; we usually tell people to just say “on ya”. It’s close enough.
A friend of mine is an Aine and I never thought her name is hard to pronounce until we moved to London. English people really struggle with it!
I think its the accent, because they all pronounce is as OnYa, whereas we would say it a bit more like Awnya. Still it’s better than the people who say Annie!
Or worse. In the US, nobody’s ever heard the name, even with the Irish name trend that happened a few years back. She’s gotten “ane” (rhymes with Jane) more than a few times.
Ouch. Poor kid.
Don’t get me startes on the ‘Irish name’ trend. Buzzfeed did a post of ‘cute Irish names for 2016’ that I found so offensive I nearly punched my laptop. If you’re thinking of using an Irish name and you don’t know why anglicising the spelling is offensive, please refrain from using the name. And learn some history.
My boyfriend is just plain old Seamus and that gets butchered plenty.
After watching Song of the Sea I said we should name a daughter (which we’ll never have, we don’t want kids) Saoirse. He said that was mean. I suggested Aisling instead.
I am a Canadian living in London, and work with a Niamh, and I was really surprised at how hard a time English people have with her name! Just yesterday it took her a full 90 seconds on the phone saying “…Yes it has an ‘h’ on the end but it’s pronounced like ‘N-E-E-V'” before she could get on with the topic of the call.
I can’t believe how much it baffles people sometimes! The whole mh/bh=v thing is just natural to me, although it did used to mix up which one to use; my sister’s name is Siomha, which I thought was spelled Siobha for awhile, until I wrote that on her birthday card and then she beat how to spell her name into me.
Completely unrelated; are you in the London Toasties FB group?
(Sorry – I replied hours ago and just thought I’d double check to make sure only to discover I failed to post!)
I am in fact, I recently joined, and am looking forward to making some Toastie friends!! 🙂
Here’s an American’s guess at how those are pronounced:
Or-lay
Ay-nn
Cow-imm??????
What are those names????
So close but so far 😀
‘Or-la’, ‘Anya/Onya’ and ‘Keeva’ (yeah that one fucks everybody up, but its a nice name!)
Irish uses letters in ways I never thought possible. O_o
Yes! I am indeed. (Or, depending on my mail, Sobpjam or Sibbhzn).
My firm belief is that modern Irish spelling is passive-aggressive retaliation for years of the English banning the language.
Have you read Myles naGopaleen’s little pieces in English, rendered in Irish spelling?
That does sound a particularly Irish form of revenge. I love it. English people are constantly baffled by the lack of postcodes in Ireland, and while I do love the postcode system while drunk in London, I also love explaining to them that Irish people have magic geo location skills and can navigate by trees and cow pats on the road.
I have not read it, but now I’m going to go look for it!
There are a bunch in The Best of Myles.
I know I should let myself embrace “tho”, but I just can’t. Where’s the rest of the word? It’s the wrong shape!
Yes! I love thinking of words as with shapes, tangible.
It is the wrong shape and that is why it has a somewhat different meaning! It’s not interchangeable.
I want to pronounce it “thuff”. Which is a fun, fun word.
Everyone in my office has the lurgy, we are all sneezing and coughing and mouth-breathing and it is miserable. The entirety of February really ought to be a national holiday.
Lurgy!
I’m currently on the tail end of an awful cold that ate my weekend, and the train to work was like something out of 28 days later with all the coughing and sneezing. I wanted to have a bleach shower when I finally got off.
February is the worst month, no one can convince me otherwise.
In my part of the world, February is actually breeding lilacs out of the dead land this year due to an unseasonable mild winter, which is to say – yes, agreed, and February itself agrees too.
When I was in college, my friends and I renamed February “The Month of Baguettes” in hopes of attaching something vaguely appealing to The Worst Month. It stuck until the gluten-free fad kicked in. 🙁
I keep suggesting that we make February a nation-wide month of hibernation. That hasn’t caught on but I have about 3 weeks of pto saved up and I’m dreaming of making it a thing just for me.
YES YES where are the evolutionary psychologists when you need them, 99% of what they say is nonsense but I need them to make a compelling science-y case for FEBRUARY: THE HIBERNATING.
i fully support your position and will be voting “SmrtCookie 2016!”. i have had to fight with every fiber of my being to not become an inert object these last couple of weeks. why can’t i just sleep until i’m done sleeping? i know 14 – 16 hours sounds like a lot to some people, but it’s not to me *pout*
I spent most of February in Hawaii a couple years ago and am pretty convinced that is just what should always be done with February forever.
I’m the only person in my family of four who hasn’t puked in the last 5 days. Yaaay can’t wait for it to get me! February — all winter really — may kindly show itself out.
Ughhh meeee tooooo there were like five zillion germ-carrying, adorable, friendly little kids at the Super Bowl party I went to, and several of them were too young to really grasp “do not lick the spoon in the dip and then replace it in the dip.” Now I’m losing my voice, coughing up interesting mucous/phlegm, and sneezing. Terrific.
I haven’t been able to breathe properly since January 26. At this point, my nostrils are no longer an actual faucet during all waking hours so that’s an improvement; as of Saturday I am no longer constantly sneezing so that is also an improvement. HOWEVER I am so dried out and deeply dehydrated fro the two weeks of cold meds that my sinuses are still irritated as fuck and making me WANT to sneeze all the time that I am mouth-breathing and drying out even more and what kind of vicious hell is this, anyway.
In the UK there’s a cooking/dating programme called ‘Dinner Date’. Five people submit menus they’d cook for a date. The bachelor/ette (I’ve seen gay and straight couples) chooses 3 they like, and goes to those people’s homes and has dinner made for them by their potential partner. After all three dates, the bachelor/ette chooses one person to go on a proper date with. Over the end credits there’s a ‘where are they now’ bit to say if they stayed together. And the two losers get microwave meals delivered to their homes (and they have to eat them too!).
It’s the only dating programme I watch on the regular because it has a horrendous success rate! I keep hoping against hope these crazy kids can work it out, but rating someone both on romantic potential and cooking skills is a recipe for failure.
And they do screw up the cooking really badly. They always make stuff they’ve never done before to be impressive and get surprised when it goes wrong. One girl ended up getting her mum to make everything.
The fact that that show has a horrible success rate is actually kinda surprising to me. That set up seems like the kind of relatively low-stakes encounter that has most accurately indicated whether or not I actually want to date someone. I guess the TV aspect ruins it. (I suppose that makes it less surprising.)
I knooow, it’s so good on paper and so frustrating that it never works. I think a lot of times the bachelorette chooses the hot one instead of the one who’s better suited to her. But hey, with the editing, who knows?
I don’t think the budget is very good, so they’ve had a lot of weird people. It’s just fun to try to watch these strangers struggle through a three-course meal. There was one woman who brought her stuffed toy on all the dates, gave it a seat at the table and all.
Wait, is it low-stakes, though? Cooking for someone you’ve never met seems really nerve-wracking to me (I am obviously not a skilled or experienced cook) and I think I would have a hard time watching other people struggle with it. I guess mileage may vary based on personal anxieties. 🙂
I mean, I’m not a great cook or anything, but if you give me some time, I can whip up a decent meal, and I’m presumably doing this at home, where I’m already comfortable. “Let me cook you dinner” mostly worked out pretty well for me when I was single; you fire up the stove or the grill, pour some wine for both of you, and chat while you cook. You’ve got a reason to be moving around that’s not just “I’m fidgeting because I’m nervous”, you’re demonstrating that you’re reasonably competent in the kitchen, you’re showing them you can keep a reasonably tasteful and well-maintained home (obviously, all of these to be prefaced with “hopefully”).
I guess I’m thinking in comparison to the ridiculousness of something like the activities they cook up for “The Bachelor”, cooking for someone in my own home seems dead easy. I didn’t realize these people made it so much harder on themselves; if I were doing this, it’d be some fruit for snacking while I’m cooking, then good crusty bread, a good steak cooked properly, chopped romaine with tomatoes, carrots, croutons, and a homemade sauce for the main course, and some homemade sorbet for dessert. Nothing a high-schooler couldn’t pull off, basically.
The first time my now-husband cooked dinner for me, he later confided that he’d had to run out to the grocery store twice during the preparation, both times because he’d burned an ingredient so badly it was beyond saving. His confidence in the kitchen has grown by leaps and bounds since then – I’m glad I didn’t judge him solely by that first meal!
It’s awesome he made the effort, though! I think it’s safer to do ready meals if you’re not sure how to cook but it’s not really kosher to pass it off as your own cooking. He def had the love in his heart to do it right!
I know what I’m doing today instead of being productive. Thanks.
I LOVE CHIRLANE. She is so cool and also such A Mom and I like her so much.
I was convinced Sansa was a koala in that picture and was very confused/jealous
I mean, you may not be wrong…
New Hampshire primary discussion anybody? I’m vacillating between many feelings all at once: sadness for the Clinton loss and frustration at the campaign for its recent negative tactics that clearly didn’t help, joy for the unprecedented 60% Bernie win, with some serious socialist Jewish pride thrown in there, horror at the Trump victory. So I’m basically numb from all the feels at this point and still haven’t resolved my Bernie-Hillary decision.
I have no actual analysis. I’m just happy that the results of Iowa and New Hampshire are all over the place so everyone has to keep guessing.
And yesterday I learned that Bernie might not get on the PA ballot? I’m still not entirely sure how this works because the more I read about the process the more ridiculous it sounds and it’s really bringing home to me exactly how much I don’t understand about our electoral process, but if he doesn’t make it it would certainly solve my Bernie/Hillary dilemma.
I wouldn’t be too sad about Clinton’s loss I think Bernie was predicted to win big in New Hampshire since he is from Vermont.
I think South Carolina will be the first real test for Clinton. Bernie does well with white liberals but Clinton generally beats him with minority voters and South Carolina will be the first state primary where minority voters make up a significant part of the voter base.
The primary system is crazy for a lot of reasons but especially when you realize that Iowa and New Hampshire are the 6th and 3rd least diverse states in the U.S. So many candidates are weeded out by primaries in states that are increasingly not representative of the U.S.
Yes, this. Our primary system has so many problems, but the impact of early, disproportionately white states is one that bums me out quite a bit.
Yeah, I’m comforted by the fact that Sanders was projected to win New Hampshire anyway, and it’s not necessarily indicative of future success. Today I read from the New Yorker that no one who has won New Hampshire has won the presidency since 1988;
This is the first presidential election where I’ve actually paid close attention to the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary and it just strikes me as crazy how much weight they’re given, especially by the media, which doesn’t help. They are sooo unrepresentative of the country.
I agree that we shouldn’t be giving disproportionate weight to any part of the country, I will say one thing about my home state– Iowa may be an outlier in some ways, but it is remarkably average in other ways– income and poverty, educational attainment, political affiliation. I too would like to see more diverse states given first say, but I also appreciate the fact that working-class people living far from the centers of power get their shot. I dunno, I grew up with the caucus but it’s something I have complicated feelings about.
NPR had an interesting analysis of this- http://www.npr.org/2016/01/29/464250335/the-perfe… (excuse my linking abilities). It turns out Illinois is best representative of America as a whole, which I would not have expected, honestly.
This is fascinating as heck. Kansas is 2nd?
Hillary does well with minority voters partly because of both her AND her husband’s policies.
We don’t know if younger minority voters, who haven’t been watching her and Bill for years, will necessarily support her. Given that exit polls were showing 84% of young voters were supporting Sanders last night, I’m curious to see data specifically about how young minority voters feel.
I’ll also be interested to see what happens with women voters elsewhere, since Bernie got the majority of the women’s vote in NH.
Yep. I’d been struggling to decide between Clinton and Sanders until I looked at the primary schedule and saw that the Democratic primary for (minority-majority) D.C. is the very last in the country. Now I have so much time—until June 24!—to mull over who will receive my pointless vote!
Voting in DC is the weirdest. I get really excited when we have any sort of referendum on the ballot because that’s literally the only place where I feel like my vote has any significance.
I was really confused because the Arizona primary isn’t until August 30th, which is after the Democratic Convention. Turns out we are have a “Presidential Preference Election” in March.
Hello fellow DC voter. Virginia is a super Tuesday state! I’ll be knocking doors for Hillary this weekend. I’m sure Sanders has staff on the ground as well.
I’m glad Bernie has a win, because it’ll push Hillary to the left and I think a competitive campaign is good for getting people interested in politics, training activists, etc. I’m a little worried about progressives eating their own, because that’s what we always seem to do. But I think the next few races will easily go to Hillary and people will start to unite.
As for the Republican side, it’s starting to sink in that Trump might actually be the nominee, and I just… I don’t even know what to think about that?
I really hope you’re right, but just last night I heard a very liberal person (in real life, not the internet) who would never in a million years vote for a Republican express a great deal of genuine disgust and hatred for Clinton. He talked about her as though she were a terrible, corrupt person who would instantly go back on her word if elected — instead of in the upper half of decent politicians who are responsive to their constituents, which is how I perceive her.
And since that only echoes what I’ve read a million times online, I’m worried that there’s a sizeable percentage of people who really do have an irrational dislike for Clinton and that those people will *not* unite with the rest of the left-leaning voters if she’s the nominee, and might decide to just not vote at all. Very worried about that.
I have several Democrat-voting friends that hate Hillary so much they’ve decided not to vote in the general if Bernie doesn’t get it. It makes me LIVID every fucking time.
That kind of thing is just plain sexist. Like, is Obama a corporate sell-out too? WTF is wrong with people? She’s a bad-ass lady who has grown and evolved over the years, and knows how to do politics. How else would she have made it through all the bullshit? I am convinced that it’s the media’s constant scrutiny of her and the misogyny that pervades every article written about her has seeped into the public consciousness.
Ugh, yes. Some dude stranger-interloper in my weekly sewing group interjected into a polite conversation about the NH primary with a vehement “Yeah, FUCK HILLARY” and I was just like
I share your feelings. I have a lot of respect for Bernie Sanders and his win is exciting for a few reasons, but it’s stressful to me that Hillary is no longer the clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, especially since my support for her has solidified so much in recent weeks.
I’m also horrified by the Trump win, but I just don’t know who we’d even want for the Republican nomination down the line, you know? I would love to see Clinton eviscerate Trump, but it’s so scary that he’s even getting this far and rallying this much support.
This election is deeply distressing ugh.
Yes yes yes to all of that. I had been telling people I liked her for least worst reasons and then realized I actually just like her and am really moved by her approach to politics right when things got shaky.
Tangentially related: My bf was sort of gloating about the Bernie win, and how great Bernie is (I don’t disagree with this, fwiw, and would be happy to vote for either of them in the general election), and throwing out slightly bothersome statements about Clinton being a liar and untrustworthy. I couldn’t care less that he supports Bernie over Hillary, but I find it unsettling that he has so much vitriol over Hillary that he wouldn’t have for similar male politicians (like Bill), or any of the totally insane Republican nominees. It feels more like he wants Hillary to lose than he wants Bernie to win. I’m discomfited by this, and attempting to discuss it got me nowhere.
On a cheerier note, this made me happy: Dems had two record-breaking primary/caucus weeks in a row: first woman to win, first non-Christian to win. Progress.
I don’t understand the sheer amount of vitriol for Hillary out there. The majority of it feels at least a little gendered to me. And it’s bothersome because there are so many (often contradictory) qualities she has to embody to people as a woman that wouldn’t be asked of a man, and yet she’s still getting all this hate.
Yes, and I also think it’s “interesting” that she’s personally responsible and should be held accountable for every Not Great thing that happened during the Clinton presidency, but she had absolutely nothing to do with anything good or worthwhile. I understand why some people don’t like her but sometimes the reasoning is not only very gendered but also very arbitrary to me, honestly.
I think there would be far less vitriol if Bernie wasn’t running. Not because of the Berniebros, but because he acts as such a compelling foil for Hillary – progressive going back decades despite all odds, also an outsider as a Jew and avowed socialist, staunchly against Wall Street – he’s poking holes in the mainstream Democratic narrative as no other Democratic candidate has done, and because of the wider climate it’s catching fire. I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for, but it’s pretty fascinating.
That’s so true. The argument that Hillary will say and do whatever she can to get elected, that she’s not genuine, etc. etc. is ONLY viable because Bernie is running. 99% of politicians use focus groups and careful wording to avoid offending one group while catering to another. It’s what they do. Bernie is an anomaly, not Hillary. But the message that gets thrown out, because the two are competing against one another, is that she is abnormally untrustworthy, and abnormally ambitious.
Abnormal. Thanks for using this word, because that’s what’s been striking me about the criticisms levelled against her. Most of the criticisms have a baseline of accuracy to them, but they’re warped by this exaggerated implication that she’s abnormal, and that’s neither accurate nor reasonable.
So so true! I’m happy he’s running for all those reasons, and because he’s pulling her farther to the left. It’s immensely pleasurable to see them debate — the way they challenge each other and expose each others strengths and weaknesses — especially in contrast to the Republican debates.
I read that only 31% of the U.S. even identifies as liberal, though, so it’s kind of crazy that the democratic race has turned into a contest of who is more progressive. I’m pretty pro Hillary, but it is fascinating to watch to be sure.
I’ve been imagining what would have happened if Joe Biden ran and I feel like Bernie would have been a fringe afterthought and all his bros’ problems with establishment, insufficiently progressive candidates would never have materialized. Uncle Joe would be doing great, in the same way that Bernie is, because a lot of people just really don’t want to get behind an old lady. And there would have been just as much vitriol for Hilary, because a lot of people are desperate to convince themselves that they’re against her for reasons beyond the fact that she’s a woman.
I’m not discounting the very real misogyny at play, but I think Hillary is also saddled, rightly and wrongly, with years and years of Clinton baggage. I mean she fought hard for healthcare, but also backed DOMA and DADT and welfare reform. So you can’t really compare her laterally to Uncle Joe, even though I’m sure he’s also taken plenty of Wall Street $$.
Interesting thing about Biden. I’m sure he’s taken all sorts of $ from all sorts of sources I don’t like for his campaigns, but he’s been very, very good about not raking in the personal bucks. (For instance, not making big-ticket speeches, etc.) To the point that when his son recently died, he thought he would have to sell his house to help look support his grandchildren. I have no interest in him ever being president, but he definitely impresses me as a human being.
It find it a little ridiculous that I’ve seen people decrying Hillary for promoting the 1994 crime bill that passed during the Clinton administration (you know, the huge one that turned out to be completely catastrophic in its consequences?), but make NO MENTION of the fact that Biden was the bill’s lead sponsor and Bernie voted for it. Hell, a full 2/3 of the House at the time–most of them Democrats–supported it.
As she was not in fact an elected official at the time, Hillary did not vote for it, and yet I’m seeing people saddle her with the blame.
I didn’t know about Biden’s involvement, even though it was apparently called the Biden Crime Law. Woah.
Still, reading her line, quoted in Michelle Alexander’s piece, about (black) children being “super predators” “without consciences” and needing to “bring them to heel” felt like a punch to the gut.
I’m not a Hillary fan (I don’t hate her, just don’t really like her–I am a Bernie supporter, but if she wins the nom, I will vote for her).
However, I was watching Rachel Maddow’s Monday show right before the primary coverage last night, and I found something interesting. She was showing clips of Bill from 1992, and mentioned the Gennifer Flowers thing, and how it didn’t seem to affect Bill’s political success. She also cited a poll that only 1/3 of people who voted for him actually believed he was honest and trustworthy.
So despite all his gross behavior and the fact that most people didn’t find him trustworthy, he still managed to make a comeback and somehow come out of all of it vaguely unscathed.
But Hillary could look at someone the wrong way and would be criticized for it years later. Something doesn’t add up there.
I think it’s a combination of blatant misogyny + comparing her to Bernie, who is honest to a fault.
Oh my god yes. Only one of them was actually in government during the clinton admin and it wasn’t her. Also she really had no other options than standing with her husband on policy, especially during the 90s and especially when she was already gettign flack for being too political.
Yeah, I am hardening more and more into a Clinton supporter the more I’m exposed to pro-Sanders vitriol/smugness directed at her. But sometimes I think about how amazing it would be to have a non-Christian nominee (or… president!), to break this stupid lip-service to “God bless America” and “a Christian nation” and all of that infuriating exclusionist crap. ((Also, while Sanders isn’t *that* critical of Israel, he’s likely to be able to get away with a harsher line than a non-Jew would. Or at least this pro-Palestine secular Jew would like to think so.))
But — goddammit, I know Clinton is a terrible neo-liberal in a lot of ways ([let’s skip the pragmatic discussion of what a president can get done/who’s electable]), but I still love her. Starting from when I played her in the Presidents and First Ladies Pageant in 1st grade, where my mom helped me write a script about health care for all Americans being a priority.
This is sort of where I am at. I was very undecided between the two but am becoming more in support of Hillary for similar reasons. I don’t hate Bernie and agree with him on probably most issues except guns.
My Facebook feed is full of smug Bernie fans constantly shitting on Hillary and it was driving me nuts so I set up one of those word replacer browser extensions so “Bernie Sanders” is replaced with “Tilda Swinton.” It’s worked wonders for my blood pressure.
If Tilda Swinton was running for president she would have my vote.
Isn’t she a British subject? I wouldn’t feel right voting for her, for that reason.
If only there was a real world equivalent! But if that existed, I would prioritize using it on any Trump supporters I came across.
oh my god this is genius
brb, replacing “Bernie Sanders” with “Dwayne Johnson” and “Bernie-bros” with “cod-pieces”
I’m still staunchly on the fence, but this made me think, especially the part about race and private prisons:
https://medium.com/@Cerebralhem/of-bernie-bros-an…
I just want to note that Bernie voted in favor of that same omnibus crime bill that’s mentioned in that article, most democrats did. There was a good article someone posted in a comment here recently about Hillary’s policy evolutions that I found interesting. Of course I can’t seem to remember the article now.
Huh. I’ve heard about the Clinton leadership on that bill so often, but this is the first time I heard that Sanders voted for it. You’d think that would come up more often!
IT NEVER COMES UP. I swear to god, for all the pieces I’ve read scrutinizing Clinton’s every vote and cherrypicking quotes she said decades ago, I have seen almost nobody mention this.
Ditto the people praising Sanders as a longtime supporter of gay rights and tarring Hillary as a wishy-washy flip-flopper who is probably just pretending she supports the gays because it’s more PC these days. Actually, in 2006 Bernie opposed same-sex marriage in Vermont (favoring civil unions instead), and as mayor of Burlington, said that gay rights were not a priority for his administration and that he would “probably not” support a bill preventing job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Which, like…both of them have evolved on the issue, and are now in a pretty solidly pro-gay-rights area. And that’s a good thing!
Thank you so much for sharing this, as I had not heard that before either.
More info here if you’re interested. Again, I like Bernie too! If he gets the nom, I will happily vote for him! But I don’t think it’s helpful to perpetuate the narrative that we have one candidate who is a lying, manipulative trainwreck and contrasted with one who is a saintly political outsider.
THANK YOU.
The thing that’s made me feel the warmest toward Sanders was the video of him passionately defending gay people on the floor of the House in 1995. I don’t have *too* many hard feelings toward the Clintons about DOMA because it was 1996 and it passed with veto-proof majorities so what was he supposed to do, veto it? (and also, obviously, Hillary Clinton herself was not holding elected office), but man, publicly defending gay rights in 1995 is legit. I’m still pretty heavily leaning toward Hillary, but watching that video of Sanders was one of the moments where I thought, “you know, sometimes politicians can be pretty okay people.”
The stuff he did as mayor of Burlington is not great, but I do think the political move to get civil unions in Vermont was ultimately one history is on the side of. Vermont’s civil union law was absolutely the first in the nation to provide ANY legal union to same-gender couples, and I don’t think same sex marriage in Massachussetts would have been possible without it, let alone all the progress since then. It was extremely strongly contested, even in liberal-ass Vermont (people painted “Take Back Vermont” on the sides of their barns), and I don’t think marriage would have gotten through.
Yeah, it’s like, am I wishy-washy for changing my mind about gay people when I was in college despite being brainwashed for years about how bad and wrong it was? Like, we WANT people to stay the same as the families they were born into? Or do we maybe change and grow as we learn and expand our worlds and gather information and evidence?
And why does no one talk about Hillary’s crusade for children’s rights? That’s way more revolutionary than socialism, believe me! I live in a socialist-leaning country! We exist. Children’s rights, not so much.
I don’t have deep thoughts at this point (or really most of the time, tbh) but I do find it interesting that Trump received 95,000 votes (so far) and Hillary 91,000 votes.
I really don’t know how you can handle your election process! It must be exhausting. In Canada, our party leaders are picked at a big party convention and really only the CBC (our national broadcaster) covers it breathlessly. No one gets invested in it except real politics lovers. Then we have short elections. Our last one was 11 weeks and Canadians were so whiny about it. So long! Yours feels like some kind of dystopian Hunger Games winner by attrition thing.
That’s exactly what it is. I don’t even know how it got like this. Who is benefiting? The cable news lobby?
The primaries developed as a way to keep candidates from being chosen exclusively by wheeler-dealers in back rooms. They were seen as a way for citizens to have more impact. But that meant more need for fund-raising, starting the campaigns earlier, and all that. I think primaries still could be a great tool, if they were bunched into a shorter period shortly before the party conventions, and especially if there were more regionally-grouped voting days like Super Tuesday within that shorter period.
This. The long slog of the primaries, and the attendant need for fundraising etc., has resulted in the nominations going to whoever’s warchest can hold out the longest, i.e. the richest candidate with the richest friends (esp since Citizens United). Another thing to reform.
YES YES YES YES. I don’t think we can do anything meaningful about campaign finance on the supply side, even if the SCOTUS nonsense wasn’t in the way. Candidates allllll up and down the ballot have to sell themselves first to primary voters and then to all the “I vote the person, not the party” voters in the general. And even managing to convince busy voters to learn your name costs a lot of money.
The “party leadership picks party leadership” systems definitely have their own weaknesses, but they also mean that politicians don’t have to spend hours and hours calling donors every day, and they generally promote stronger party unity in the legislative branch (Ie, budgets not being held hostage by the Liberty Caucus or whoever).
in some ways it is obviously awful but in the canadian model Bernie would never even have a shot. It’s nice that he gets to present his message to the people and they get to make a decision even if it does take so damn long
We also don’t vote for our leaders. We vote for our individual members of parliament by riding (I’m not sure what the US equivalent is). And then whoever is the leader of the party with the most MPs in the House gets to be PM.
We’re pretty socialist, so Bernie would probably be OK here. The NDP, for example, is a social-democratic party.
We’re not a 2 party system, so there’s room for more than either/or. Thank goodness.
sorry my point was poorly phrased. I know that Bernie’s poltics wouldn’t be a problem in canada. What I was commenting on was the idea of transplanting the canadian system of picking party leaders into the us.
I thought this was a really good read about Hillary over at Medium. It goes into that Elizabeth Warren video, and why it doesn’t hold up against what actually happened (the bill Sen. Clinton voted for had substantial amendments to the one she helped veto). It goes into the fact that her “big bank” donations are really just from individuals who work for big banks rather than as institutional endorsements. It goes into the fact that Bernie has a set of values not a set of plans. It paraphrases a lovely line from 1984 that is at the center of my critique of Sanders: “It doesn’t matter that what Sanders is telling us isn’t true. We should vote for him because he’s so truthful.”
https://medium.com/@zacharyleven/the-case-for-hil…
Also, I think it’s really important that Wall Street is supporting Hillary because it decouples the 45 year unholy marriage between the religious right and bankers. If we stop having the money people support and donate to the anti-choice people, we can undermine the political coalition that’s always defunding planned parenthood, and work with them on incremental compromises (like gender equality in fiance, which Hillary gave a speech about at Goldman Sachs). We can leave the birth control debates in the past if those politicians loose their funding. And we can build on Dodd-Frank. That feels more revolutionary to me, honestly. Center-Right Wall Street and Beltway republicans supporting Hillary is a GOOD THING because it pulls the whole country leftward, and leaves the nutcases out in wilderness. With Bernie, without that centrist support, we’re going to be stuck in the same 45 year long Roe v. Wade battle. We’re going to be stuck trying to not repeal his plans every six minutes.
Your second paragraph makes such a good point.
I’m a Hillary supporter constantly having to defend myself to Bernie supporters, and I’m definitely going to bring that up the next time someone gets anti-Hillary all over my Facebook feed.
That’s such an interesting point about the support of bankers. You’re right, if Wall Street stops bankrolling the religious right that will be a big, destabilizing change for the GOP. I need to think about that some more.
I think the current GOP field looks like a hot mess because the Capital-B Bankers are with Hillary, and there’s no Romney-type to seem “rational.” The best they have is Muppet Rubio who’s bankrolled/invented by the Koch’s money. I mean, Hillary is poised to undo Nixon’s Southern Strategy. I feel like the Occupy people don’t totally get that? And this extends to a lot of issues including incremental Wall Street reform, pro-choice/birth control/gender equality, civil rights, ending the war on drugs (because you KNOW those bankers do so so so so so many drugs & give zero voting fucks about that), LGBTQ rights, and basically most progressive social issues. We’re not going to get big poverty measures passed because my faith in raising taxes isn’t very high (and that’s what it amounts to), but we will have the opportunity to target policies that affect people in poverty. I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to have banks lean toward progressive values, because the alternative has majorly suuuuuuccckked since the 70s.
Re: your second paragraph, I’ve felt that Hillary’s connection to the banks has been overly emphasized and admonished but I hadn’t thought about it that way before. You’ve articulated a really important and salient point there.
Genuine question from a fence-sitter — wouldn’t the big banks turning to Democrats mean that the party would be toothless in any fight for banking reform? Rather than the bankers just turning their funding elsewhere I’d love to see genuine electoral funding reform that prevented them from funding ANY party, as much of a pipe dream as that might be… because even if the banks go Democrat (which, to some degree, they already have?), people like the Koch brothers are always going to be there to pick up the slack as long as they’re legally allowed to.
My take on it is that to do that we need democrats in office. And have a better chance of getting them with a crap ton of money to compensate for all of the natural resources money.
Also, historically banks and corporate america are big donors to candidates on both sides and high profile pols on both sides because they want to hedge their bets. No amount of money buys people a forever free pass. The key is just to ensure that the moment picked is a good one, and I have more faith in Hillary doing that than Bernie.
I think you make a good point, but do you really think a Hillary win would decouple that unholy marriage? They’ll still give money – they’ll just give it to both the right and the left, like they’ve been doing.
I’m not sure Wall Street donating to Hillary means that Wall Street is throwing their support to Democrats. I think big companies that make political donations often donate the max to several candidates (of different parties) because they it helps them to secure access regardless of the outcome. “I made this huge donation, hear me out on this issue. Do you want another huge donation when you’re up for re-election?” It doesn’t particularly matter that they may have donated the same amount to an opponent, what matters is that they donated at all.
Totally anecdotal, but I have a sense from a number of finance people I know / Georgetown types are saying “I can’t believe I’m voting for Hillary Clinton.” I know a handful “east coast elite” republicans who have hated Hillary her whole career, but she’s their smartest vote, and they are legit afraid of the government shut down burn it all message of their party. So the more the “RINOs” are alienated, I don’t think it’s 100% terrible for them to swing left, which is kind of an anathema to Bernie’s rhetoric. I mean, I don’t think that Hillary is a superhero who can single handedly undo half a century of political allegiances, but I think it IS possible for her to mark a shift.
I personally believe it’s possible to get better Wall Street reform if they’re not throwing a tantrum trying overthrow/block it every step. I also think that when the door closes, Hillary is a very serious and gifted negotiator–much more so than Obama or anyone else on the stage right now. Obama wasted 6 years trying to be likable to those determined to hate him. And no one has ever described Hillary as “likable”–in fact, it’s her biggest political hurdle that she doesn’t emotionally need the approval of others, but does in the polls. It took Obama, a popular kid, a LONG time to get comfortable with the fact that it’s okay for everyone in the room to not think well of you (and I like Obama a lot, but how much more satisfying has his term been since he stopped trying to please the crazies?).
I share A LOT of the same concerns with @owlbrick below. Especially those re: congress, gerrymandering, and the significance of the Senate and Supreme Court. I just don’t see Sanders’ fans coming out to vote for those congressional elections when it counts. And I don’t see him as tough against all the noise.
Yes! Obama has improved 100% since he stopped giving a sh*t
(ps not that I blame him for initially caring – there are legit reasons he was able to just get on with getting stuff done)
It’s not a bad read; but my biggest issue with Clinton’s pragmatic incremental approach isn’t that its not ideologically pure enough; it’s that the Republicans have a near-unassailable lock on the House until at least 2020 (and quite possibly beyond) because of the gerrymandering they were able to pull off in 2010, and they are using that at as a lever in power against the entire rest of the government. It doesn’t matter how reasonable and pragmatic her policies are compared to Sanders; they will face just as much opposition from the Republicans in congress as his would. Obama has hardly been a liberal firebrand in office, but they still scream about his left-wing tyranny until they are blue in the face and shut down every nomination and every proposal. I’ve lost count of how many times they’ve even tried to shut down the actual day-to-day operation of the government via budget negotiations. It’s a win-win for them, after all. Even if they lose a budget standoff, they’ve succeeded in making the government that much less effective, and have gotten that much closer to drowning it in the proverbial bathtub.
The days of collegial give-and-take in the halls of power are over, and I fear that a strategy of appeasement and compromise is doomed to fail. That, I think, is the anger and frustration Sanders has so effectively tapped into… the realization on the left that the time for playing nice with the center-right may be past. Clinton’s moderate appeal has the potential to appeal to Wall Street and Beltway Republicans; but the same is true of Obama, and that hasn’t broken the deadlock on Capitol Hill. The only times Obama has been successful with the current congress has been when he’s been willing to stand firm, or to simply push past them. I feel like Clinton’s half-measures would be drowned in a sea of stalling tactics, whereas Sanders seems to be under no illusions about trying to compromise with unreasonable, immovable objects.
The real key will be whether the Democrats are able to retake the Senate, which is a real possibility… especially if there is a real swell in left-wing populist political engagement like the one the Sanders campaign is effectively mobilizing. If the only option left open to a Democratic administration is executive action, then the major check to that power is right-wing judicial activism. If the Democrats can successfully retake the senate, the backlog of judicial appointments can finally proceed and the balance of Republican-appointed federal judges can be tipped back in the other direction. And of course the Supreme Court is never far from thought, either. The notorious RBG won’t stay on the supreme court forever, but neither will Antonin “Tony Soprano” Scalia. Whether we’d prefer Hillary or Bernie to be the one to make the next nomination, we’d better be damned sure it isn’t Trump… or worse, Cruz. But regardless of the president, the Senate is still the gateway; and we only win it back if we get major turnout. If Hillary wants to get that, she’s going to need the support of the left, and not just hope for crossovers in the shrinking middle.
I still think Hillary would make a good president. She’s smart, capable, a good leader who seems to know how to get the most out of every opportunity. I’m just afraid she’d give away too much of the game before even sitting down at the table. I’ll still vote for her in the general; hell, I plan on campaigning for her if/when it comes to that. But I hope hope hope that by the time she’s contending for the Oval Office she acknowledges who the real enemy is, and makes the case that the people of this country are her real constituents. If she can do that, and follow through, she could be a *great* president.
Oh my god the gerrymandering. Every time I get hopeful about anything good happening with the government in the foreseeable future I remember the gerrymandering and want to cry. We are so fucked.
I know I’m coming back to this thread super late, but I just wanted to say thanks for this really thoughtful comment. This really resonated with me: “The days of collegial give-and-take in the halls of power are over, and I fear that a strategy of appeasement and compromise is doomed to fail. That, I think, is the anger and frustration Sanders has so effectively tapped into… the realization on the left that the time for playing nice with the center-right may be past.”
Thanks. For real, right? It’s been one of the stated goals of the current congress that they want to inhibit the ability of the president to functionally perform his duties. And we all know how much they love Hillary and are willing to compromise with Democrats to help her! I just don’t see the fact that she’s a political moderate willing to work with the supposedly centrist Republican leadership as a bonus when they are unwilling to work with her. Compromise, for them, means “you compromise and give us what we want, we give you nothing.” Stating that you are looking to make deals with people who make surrender a precondition to negotiation is not a good bargaining position. She’s done an amazing job of weathering the storm of rightwing attacks with poise and aplomb for years; but now she needs to show us that she’s willing to push back against the right’s assault, not merely endure it calmly. And unless and until she gives some sign that she is going to give more than lip service to the left’s priorities (environment, social justice, financial reform, wealth inequality), it’s going to be hard to work up real enthusiasm for her campaign. I have tremendous respect for her, and hope that if she does get the nom that she will step up to the challenge; but until then I’m still going to be supporting Bernie. I’m under no illusions that he’d have a difficult time with the realities of governing with a divided government; but I think that he isn’t either, and at least his priorities are in the right place.
Not that I have any say in it anyway; I live in California, so our primary is basically a stamp of approval on a foregone conclusion. It will likely be decided long before then.
Seconding coloredlights, I’m really undecided, but your second paragraph brings up a really important point that I honestly had not thought about in that way before.
This article by Kate Harding summed up a lot of my feels (except that unlike her, I have supported Bernie early on over Hillary this election): http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb…
I’m recognizing that I don’t want to have to vote pragmatically. It’s a drag. I want to vote for revolutionary changes that I think should have happened yesterday, even if I know they probably won’t happen regardless of who is elected. So now I’m thinking about that even though it’s not fun, and that’s moving me back toward Hillary.
But omg Hillary, if you want young peoples’ support don’t say patronizing lines like, “Even if they are not supporting me now, I support them.” As though we are just oblivious, and not differing with you on actual issues. I swear, between that line and Steinem’s remark…
LEGIT on how disheartening it is to be forced into voting pragmatically. You know, the way to vote for revolutionary changes is to start local. That’s where my is energy going (in a notoriously and shittily corrupt political system so it requires quite a lot of energy.) That’s where you can find the true progressives and where you can make local, real, and effective change from the bottom up. (And then watch them get swallowed by the machine 10 years down the road lolsob.)
Hooray for local politics, yes! I’ve been a little annoyed watching all my Maryland friends post things about how Very Important Bernie-voting is, when there is literally a US Senate primary in that state between two very-progressive folks who could reasonably be destined for national-level careers in the next decade. Hypothetical President Bernie won’t carry out a dramatic new legislative agenda from the White House, but whoever wins that Senate primary well might!
Here is my antidote to disheartening national fucking politics:
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
– Howard Zinn
That line made me twitch a little. Like she’s a saint for not vowing to get revenge on everyone who didn’t vote for her.
I support Hillary (and I also haven’t been paying as much attention to the primaries because I’ll vote and canvass for whoever the Democratic nominee is), so that’s definitely informing my take on it, but I read that line as a contrast to Mitt Romney’s 47% remark from 4 years ago.
That’s basically how I feel. Lately I’ve developed an appreciation for the hardworking cynic in politics. Bernie (or at least the image of him that his campaign presents) reminds me of a number of politicians that I’ve followed or supported over the years: the guy who tells it like it is and wants to do away with politics as usual. Hey guys, has anyone ever thought of just getting rid of all these terrible social problems? But then they get into office and it turns out to be frustrating as hell. It takes a lot of coalition-building and deal-making; even on “your side” there are wildly competing interests and priorities. The agencies you have to work with are bound by statute and budget constraints and existing responsibilities. Momentum is hard to maintain. Passionate speechmaking counts for nothing. So these guys either end up being ignored or disliked by their fellow policymakers, or they change their tune in order to get shit done and get accused of breaking campaign promises.
Maybe Bernie isn’t like that, I mean he’s been in the Senate for a long time. But I was reading something the other day about how Bernie’s most complicated record is in relation to the VA– maybe that’s because he’s actually spent time in the trenches on that issue, working around bureacracy and gridlock, so he can’t be so clear and idealistic about it. I wonder how much the rest of his platform would hold up under similar conditions.
I mean I, too, want a political revolution, and that’s why I also gravitated towards Sanders early on. But I don’t think that casting a vote in a presidential election is the best way to get there.
I’m also frustratingly undecided! Most of the people I talk politics with are Sanders supporters (I even live in a house with a Bernie sign on the lawn). I’m super glad he’s in the race and we’re having an election where “socialism” is used to refer to an actual political philosophy and not a gremlin that’s going to steal America’s exceptionalism. But I just don’t see a clear way to get excited about having a socialist president in a country without a socialist party. I keep hearing that Sanders is drawing the support of people who want to change the system, and it seems to me like the presidency is the last place for systemic change to occur. Obviously it matters who is president, the POTUS makes a lot of decisions, but changing how decisions are made? That’s got to happen in the legislature, and I think it has to start at the local and state level.
This primary feels especially daunting because I live in a caucus state and have never caucused before. Literally standing up and being counted feels intimidating when I’m trying to make up my mind.
Yes yes yes let’s channel some of this Bernie energy into engagement in local politics, please. I know too many people who get worked up about national politics but have no idea who their state rep is.
That’s basically how I feel, too. I agree with Bernie on most everything but I have little confidence that he could actually push his plans forward in our political climate, even if what we need is fundamental, structural change. Obama had a fairly decent mandate both times and still struggled for moderate progressive wins. If nothing else, Bernie’s put democratic socialism into the mainstream conversation, which can only be a good thing, whatever happens. Hopefully the interest in his ideas can make some changes on the local/state level.
Caucuses sound kind of cool (democracy party, yay!) but I also think the ability to vote anonymously is really important. Especially if you think about, like, the Asch conformity experiments (the “which line is longer” ones) and how easily people can be made to go along with things they don’t believe.
I haven’t even heard of a lot of the shows on that Top 100 Episodes list. Am I old and behind the times already?
I have only seen 6 of the episodes listed, and have only heard of about half of the shows. I don’t have cable, so this result isn’t totally unexpected. Plus I’m really behind on Mad Men.
Yeah, me neither. I’m pleasantly surprised to see Fortitude on the list though, because that show is BONKERS and not enough people (who I know, anyway) watch it.
Sense8, though. That episode with all their births. *sobs*
“Leslie & Ron” was also way too low on the list. Top 10 ep of the year in my book.
I’ve heard of most of them but watch none of them.
I haven’t either. I feel like a cultural ignoramus.
For everyone enjoying the Beverly Watkins piece, I highly recommend She Shreds magazine / website. They do a great job highlighting the women who have always been there playing guitar.
Look Toasties I found a pretty on the wall today!
I’m blinded by the beauty! You should warn us before you post something so striking 🙂
I like that the lone man is looking up wistfully.
Ha, I have been miserable in that very auditorium!
I found a big one too!
Well now Denis is just wistfully gazing at Nicole. I’m sorry, Mallory, it’s Nicole. It’s always been Nicole.
So I got to work today and my trash can was gone? Like, the cleaning person just decided to take it away or something? I mean possibly it was gremlins and/or the universe playing a trick on me, but no one else’s is missing, and I am just really confused.
Clearly that is a sign you should just go home.
Believe me, I am strongly considering it.
My university took away our trashcans as a part of a initiative to reduce waste. They gave us these tiny cardboard containers for paper recyclables that we had to empty ourselves.
But no one elses’s trash can is missing! I am baffled.
That is a tiny, sinister mystery that would drive me up a tree. If possible, take someone else’s trash can to transfer the confusion to them. If enough people are confused, someone might look into it.
Just continue the cycle and steal one from someone else.
this happened to me yesterday! I have two in my room thankfully, so there’s still one, but it is very annoying because I usually keep one by the front door for kids, etc. to use and one by my desk for me. now I only have the one so everyone just has to come over by my desk which i really don’t like.
I caught our branch manager removing a coworker’s trash and recycling cans. I asked her not to take things from people’s desks that they use to do their jobs, and she decided I was a Crazy Recycling Person and went around telling everyone how upset I was.
They’re releasing the Cursed Child script as a book
*collapses from the joyful sobbing*
And they’re releasing it this summer rather than waiting until the play has run awhile!!
Oh thank god.
literally the exact response I was going to type, verbatim, down to italics, ty
AAAh they’re publishing it one week after I see it. Perfection.
Oh snap, I gotta get a couple of copies of that. I’m my junior high-aged cousin’s penpal and she is a Harry Potter OBSESSIVE.
Your cousin. Riiiiight…
Oh trust, I adore me some Potter, too. But I’ve eased off since college whereas she is young and DEEP in it still. That and Minecraft which I still know nothing about.
I saw that and was SO relieved.
Relatedly, apparently they changed the Pottermore Sorting Hat? Should I re-sort? What if I end up Gryffindor?
I re-sorted, expecting that this would help me resolve my existential crisis over whether I am a Ravenclaw or a Hufflepuff…and it sorted me into Slytherin. That has NEVER happened before in ANY sorting quiz (I may have taken… a lot). Now I don’t know what’s going on.
Oh man, that happened to me on the old Pottermore – I’ve always been sorted Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw and it put me in Slytherin!! The new Pottermore has me as an official Hufflepuff though, which feels finally right tbh
I was Gryffindor the first time, and I re-tried it, and it asked me to flip a coin at the end, then I got Ravenclaw.
I’m thinking it was probably down to Gryffindor and Ravenclaw again, so I’m sticking with Gryffindor for my own personal reference.
I was resorted into Ravenclaw and it was more traumatizing than I thought it would be. I’ve always know I was a cross between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, but I am a badger at heart.
…so I took it again with a different email and reclaimed my spot in Hufflepuff, haha. If Harry can choose (“Not Slytherin, not Slytherin, etc”), so I can I!
I went from Gryffindor to Hufflepuff! I was NOT expecting that, but my preferred version of the Harry Potter MBTI chart matches me with Tonks, so there’s some consistency there. And their common room really does sound like A Dream.
I got Slytherin the first time then Slytherin with the new one too! I always thought of myself as a Ravenclaw
I’ve never taken the pottermore quiz. I just asked my friends which house I should be in. They said Gryffindor pretty much unanimously, so.
Yes!!!!! My chances of making it to London as a broke graduate student were approximately zero, but I can definitely get the book!
I teach history students about primary sources a lot, and I’m continually tempted to give them Collectors Weekly articles because they do a great job of talking about some of the issues when it comes to defining what a primary source means, how media has shaped our perceptions for a very long time and how we deal with uncomfortable topics.
Now, to convince a faculty member to assign it as reading before I have sessions with them.
I would totally assign that. Might do it next semester even. Great idea.
Blah, I am having a very tough time at work these days, Toasties. What are your favorite soul-warming things to do in your spare time at your desk? One can only read so many books on the Kindle web browser before the brain melts.
Duolingo! So many fun languages to learn, well some phrases at least.
I hear ya. I’m having a tough time at work too.
I listen to music on Soundcloud and 8tracks and Spotify, whether it’s calming jazz, dance music, or indie hip hop. It’s particularly exciting when I find stuff that I can actually work to at the same time as listening.
Your handle is so fitting to your dilemma … and I empathize completely. Online courses maybe?
I actually have a craft table in my office, and most mornings while drinking my coffee I spend 20 minutes or so doing cross stitch. It’s been about five years and I haven’t been fired YET, though I appreciate that not all workplaces would be into it.
I am also enrolled as a proofreader at Project Gutenberg, which anyone can do, so occasionally when the office is super quiet I contribute to the preservation of the written word and feel good about myself, even though a LOT of the books are out of print for a reason. (www.pgdp.net)
In re: that article about releasing inmates, there’s Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles-area nonprofit that provides services, training, and placements for people who are leaving gangs and/or prison and trying to find jobs and stability. You can support the group directly, by purchasing food and swag from their online store, or, if you’re in LA, by stopping by their realspace restaurants and food trucks. Although their founder is a Jesuit priest (who has bucked the church on at least one occasion when they tried to relocate him), they’re a CBO, not an FBO.
Father G is the BEST. He’s the real deal. I love everything about Homeboy Industries & urge Toasties, if you don’t know about him or it, to go find interviews (there’s a great one on HuffPo) or read his book. His capacity for both empathy and action deserve a monument.
I heard an interview with him on Fresh Air once and was really struck by one comment he made about churches trying to offer ministry in the kind of neighborhoods where he works: “Unless your church is offering concrete help to those gang members, Jesus is not interested in the prayer meeting.”
And I have to say, their chips and salsa (which are sold in the campus stores here at UCLA) are quite good.
To actually comment on one of the link roundup articles: the WaPo article about California’s efforts to reduce prison overcrowding was great. I especially liked how they included the fearmongering from law enforcement officials, then the stats that explicitly disproved that fearmongering. Good reportage. (Also, Scalia’s sour, shitty dissents are the best. I just like to imagine his dog’s asshole of a face twisted up in dismay at the idea that somebody somewhere might not be miserable. What a turd of a person.) But I felt really bad for the father who founded a child search organization “to give meaning to his daughter’s murder”. He’s wrong on the issue of rehabilitation and release, but I can’t imagine that pain, and I’m sorry he’s had to bear it and that it’s clearly warped his life so heavily.
yeah, I thought they did a really good job with this piece – it wan’t explicitly one sided, but they did take time to subtly indicate that one “side” of the issue is made-up fear mongering, using actual stats.
Personally I’d appreciate it if the toast changed the link description to “the highs and fearful, completely anecdotal lows that the data show are actually unrelated to California’s prison reform”
Top 100 Episodes list lost me at their affection for Faking It’s worst, least gay plot points: Felix, and Lindsay Shaw playing a straight woman.
The end of that dating show article made me think about First Dates, which I think is just a UK thing, but it’s the best dating show in forever! You are literally just watching two people on a blind date in a restaurant, but it’s a lot nicer in set up than most dating shows (there’s not a live audience or anything, the staff at the restaurant are meant to help out and be nice if things look like they’re going badly) and you just root for the participants so much! Because it’s more like a normal date rather than a dating show, you get so much more caught up in it emotionally – we all know what going on a first date is like, after all. It’s just the best.
Blind Date in the US had episodes that were painfully funny. I kind of miss it, but I think I’m too old to enjoy that kind of embarrassment.
On Room Raiders (which arrived in the middle of the decade), three contestants were dramatically abducted from their homes and had their bedrooms searched by the bachelor or bachelorette (a blacklight was involved).
Hahaha whaaaat.
My only experience with dating shows was Rock of Love, because my freshman year roommate was a fan of Bret Michaels.
I remember Room Raiders! Horrifying.
My abiding memory of Room Raiders was an episode where a guy was searching through the girl’s underwear drawer. He found some black underwear and commented on how sexy that was. The 3 girls all watched the video feed together in a room, and that girl laughed and said those were her period underwear.
I wouldn’t let my bf of 10 years have free rein to rifle through my laundry right now. That show was insane.
OMG there was another episode, now that I’m remembering this…where the girl searched through 3 hotel rooms and picked one. Without knowing that the rooms belonged to members of Maroon 5. She did not pick Adam Levine, I remember that. Bizarre.
and that girl laughed and said those were her period underwear.
That was my first thought at “black underwear.”
Yeah, wow, all of that sounds skeevy as hell.
Oh man I remember watching bits of that show. It was a wild ride.
Oh man, I lived for all those VH1 shows. Flavor of Love! I Love New York! A Shot at Love with TIla Tequila! Real Chance at Love! ROCK OF LOVE BUS.
Flavor of Love! Yessssssssssss
Omg, I was an avid viewer of Room Raiders, I loooooved it
The TWOP Rock of Love recaps were the best.
Room Raiders was great.
Speaking of ‘the Dating Game,’ there’s a movie about its creator called ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’ that I recently watched on Netflix. It’s directed by George Clooney and it’s pretty good, but also completely bizarre.
Chuck Barris! Oldies like me remember him from the Gong Show, which was an epic subversive talent competition. “Talent” was broadly defined, as was “competition”. Soooooo good and weird at the same time.
That movie has some quality Sam Rockwell content.
It’s the most Sam Rockwell of all Sam Rockwell movies I’ve seen to date.
“Pretty good, but also completely bizarre” is how I feel about Sam Rockwell’s career, I guess?
I used to watch Love Connection with my parents when I was a kid, and I never realized how weird that was until recently. I guess they just assumed I wouldn’t understand any of the innuendo.
A propos of nothing, last night my co-worker tried to explain to me **the concept of time zones.** Literally, he tried to explain to me the fact that when it is 6pm on the east coast of the US, it is a different time in Europe. In response to my asking what time he arrived home from vacation.
Awh, he probably only just learned about them! At least, that’s the only vaguely understandable explanation I can come up with.
There should be a big siren with flashing lights that goes off at times like these. *MANSPLAINING ALERT! BE ON GUARD!*
Maybe you should explain back to him how the sun rises and sets at different times within the same time zone depending on both latitude and longitude. So the actual DAY and NIGHT follow a continuum that will not be wrangled by human time zones.
Personally, I’d launch into an explanation of how Greenwich Mean Time was originally created in order to facilitate longitude-finding by ships at sea, and then explain why you have to use a ship’s clock set to GMT because the ordinary kind with a swinging pendulum will not be accurate on a rocking boat, and then get into why the earth’s tilt makes latitude so easy to find but longitude so difficult and end with an explanation of how the tropics and ant/arctic circles are defined with respect to the sun’s apparent behavior on the solstices. It might also do to get into the difference between solar and sidereal time, but would that be too informative? Clearly he has an interest in chronometry, but I wouldn’t want to bore him.
I hate how everywhere I turn in the last 3 weeks, there are articles and tweets and other things reminding me of the terrible terrible no choice I had to make between seeing Sara Watkins, Anais Mitchell and Patty Griffin at the Florida Theatre OR the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra performing Shostokovich’s 10th symphony 5 minutes away at the Times-Union Center, both at 8pm this Saturday.
I’ve been looking forward to the Symphony for months (it’s my very first live and in person!) but Sara Watkins is one of my favorite musicians evar. (And even though the Symphony offers 4 performance options, I can really only attend the Saturday one because it’s also exhibition opening week at the museum where I work, which means every other night is tied up this week.)
Anyway, great A+ link about Beverly Watkins, but curse The Toast for making my miserable choice wave a flag of “ha ha ha” at me through name linking.
(Someone reassure me that I made the correct choice in choosing the symphony, and I can always see the women on tour on a later date.)
Always the symphony. Always the symphony.
(I may be very biased as that is my favourite symphony of all time. Have fun!)
Haha, I am pretty excited about it. I just wish I didn’t have to make the choice and could go to both.
Shostokovich is one of my favorite composers, and I just finished reading M.T. Anderson’s biography of his 8th symphony, so it’s not like I am not looking forward to it or regret the choice at all!
guys guys I know it’s not an open thread but I just took the nclex and it shut off at 75 questions and I have to tell everybody because I am FREAKING OUT
I hope you are ok! Can it be resolved/fixed?
75 questions is the minimum you can take; if it shuts off it’s either an automatic pass or you were so bad at it that you failed. Here’s hoping it’s the first!
That’s passing with flying colors, right? 🙂
My friend who passed in 75 says based on the quality of the questions I was getting I almost definitely passed but I won’t know until Friday!
Congratulations!!!!! You TOOK THE NCLEX!!!!!
Freaking out is a sure sign of passing. (When I took the NCLEX, I didn’t freak out afterward. Then I worried that “not freaking out” would = “not passing,” so I proceeded to freak out about THAT, and then lo/behold, I passed!)
Also when I took the NCLEX I also freaked out about being 1 minute late for my appointment (it was snowing; I had to take a bus to NJ [I don’t live in NJ] and walk around this weird office-building complex) and the woman who registered me for the exam told me that she can read auras, and that MY aura was (is?) WHITE.
I had the two NICEST dudes as the intake/moderator people! They both made terrible dad jokes and the moderator told me, “Well we don’t know if you passed or not but I’m sure you did fine.”
“Your aura is white” sounds like an insult to me. Like one step away from “your aura is clear.” That being said, iirc* no one has tried to determine mine before. If they said anything other than indigo or red-orange or MAYBE green, I might be upset.
*either that, or it was yellow. Which I probably would have ignored.
You totally passed! Keep us posted!
An important paleoanthropologist, Brian Richmond, was named in Science yesterday (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/sexual-misconduct-case-has-rocked-anthropology) as someone who sexually assaulted a student and has a history of sexual harassment and assault. Rebecca Ackermann, a paleonathropologist in South Africa, posted a pretty amazing essay about her experiences (https://tenureshewrote.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/it-is-time-my-personal-journey-from-harassee-to-guardian/). “It was never about protecting the perpetrators. It was about protecting myself. Now it’s time to protect others.”
Every time I read posts like these I am sincerely thankful that all the male professors I’ve worked with through my undergrad and masters were decent human beings. I just wish my experience wasn’t so unusual.
So, this happened yesterday for all Hamilton/Comedy Bang! Bang! fans.
https://twitter.com/Lin_Manuel/status/69707867583…
Heynong man, let’s get Lin on CBB!
Heynongman!
That made me so insanely happy and I wanted to tell all of my friends. But then I remembered that none of them listen to CBB! I’m glad to see someone here was as happy about this as I was.
Hearing LMM, PFT, and Scott messing around would be fantastic.
Oh my god, someone else who watched Manhattan! (I felt so alone.)
oh my god, that carmen maria machado piece is tremendous.
Currently reading the 100 episodes article, but I had to pop back over here to yell about Fargo: “In two years Fargo has somehow become the consensus pick by critics as Best Show on TV. The show isn’t doing anything unique enough to deserve this title, but it makes sense in an era where so many of the great TV shows have niche audiences that one that mostly plays it safe would get the most praise.”
***~***SPOILERS FOR S1 AND S2***~***
SURE, because a show that, in its first season, had a mother-fucking Molly Solverson, a beautiful, awesome, ass-kicking fat woman, as its protagonist, a show that let her not only get the guy, but let her stay a cop and a hero while he left the force to become a mail carrier, a show where this choice is right for him and doesn’t make him less of a man or father, a show that spent its entire first season essentially engaging with toxic masculinity in the form of Lester, is a show that’s PLAYING IT SAFE and NOT DOING ANYTHING UNIQUE. And then in the second season you get Peggy, who’s not as straightforwardly admirable as Molly, but who serves as a lens, for me at least, on the complicated nature of women’s shifting roles in the 1970s, and how she didn’t feel that she’d been able to choose anything in her life, and when she finally got the chance to seize on something outside of what had been automatically placed in front of her for her entire life, she took it, and it was a choice that had horrible consequences, but the initial tragedy was the lack of choice that she had, and the lack of language she had to express that (like in the police car with Lou in the finale).
ANYWAY. I just really love Fargo. HERE ENDS THE FARGO YELLING.
I’m done with Season 1 have yet to watch Season 2, but I want to agree with you that it really is just simply the best.
1.) A+ gif usage
2.) Watch iiiiiit! If you enjoyed season 1, then I’m willing to bet you will enjoy season 2, also. Jeffrey Donovan is great, Jesse Plemons is great, Nick Offerman is wonderful, Cristin Milioti is wonderful, and Patrick Wilson and Bokeem Woodbine and Kirsten Dunst are amazing. It’s on par with season 1, although I still love season 1 just a smidge more, I think. I can’t wait for season 3!
Sounds amazing, thanks. I can’t wait to get to it!
So it’s not like the movie? Because I remember starting to watch the movie Fargo some years ago and being like …. ugh. I can’t remember why, I think I probably hated all the characters.
I love Fargo too!! But I’m still pissed that (spoiler for Season 1) Molly was not the one to put an end to Malvo.
I am 100% with you on this, especially Molly being a radical choice for a protagonist.
I would also say that the exploration of masculinity continued in season 2: if you need an example of non-toxic masculinity, you can do a lot worse than Lou Solverson (who, btw, ALSO quits the force between season 2 and season 1). He’s brave without being reckless or boisterous, kind to everyone regardless of age or gender, and strong when he needs to be but also very aware of the limits of his strength.
On the subject of adblock, I disabled it on here ages ago and used to see ads but now I don’t. I just checked and it’s still disabled for The Toast. Is it normal? Does it still count as viewing ads?
By the way, has anyone noticed the spambots in older threads? They use usernames that link to spam sites (I never click on them but I see that when hovering over their names) and their comments are often just copy/pasted portions of other comments. I’ve been reporting them as SPAM when I see them but please tell me it’s not just me?
I haven’t seen that on the Toast but I’ve seen it on message boards. It makes you do a double-take because they can be surprisingly sophisticated (or lucky?) in choosing a snippet to quote that sounds like it could, maybe, be a substantive additional to the thread.
Rufus Estes had SERIOUS swagger, damn.
YES, so glad to see him mentioned in that article!
There’s a strong element of bogosity, even for a listicle, in a 100 Best Episodes roundup that includes multiple episodes of some series but nothing of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, or Better Call Saul.
What I took away from that listicle is that some people out there watch so much TV. I think I’ve heard of maybe 15 of those shows and seen 3 or 4 of them. I can barely keep up with all the shows I want to watch from seasons past on Netflix, how do you watch so many shows from a single year in real-time?
Edit: Also, tons of Steven Universe. The only show with more episodes on the list was Mad Men, I think.
Here’s an article about online harassment of female Jeopardy! contestants: https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/big-tits-f…
Warning — some of the comments they quote are graphic and gross.
Much like a hospital, God is full of patients.
I didn't know about Biden's involvement, even though it was apparently called the Biden Crime Law. Woah.
Still, reading her line, quoted in Michelle Alexander's piece, about (black) children being "super predators" "without consciences" and needing to "bring them to heel" felt like a punch to the gut.